#1875.start

[pinkysberg]

do u have an entire vandermatthews timeline in your notesapp or are u normal

[divinesolas]

LURKING !

monsterfuckertober day 2

summary: your life is completely shit. but one day you decide to do a good deed and clean a gravestone. and the ghost is very thankful towards you. maybe a little too thankful

w.c: 1.5k

c.w: ghost!jace, more plot than smut, fingering (fem), reader has a very depressing life, but dont worry jace is there to cheer her up, going based off my own ghost lore, talk of death, not proofread.

monsterfuckertober masterlist

taglist (open) @chimmysoftpaws

you were going nuts. you were so sure of it.

Your life had taken a massive downward spiral within the last two years. Both of your parents had died in a horrible car accident, then you found out your boyfriend of five years was cheating on you with your best friend and the rest of your friend group had chosen them over you and had left you all alone, you had been demoted in your barely paying retail job and could barely afford your bills.

Life was completely shit. spending most of your time alone in your apartment barely being able to afford groceries eating some shitty cheap takeout. You cried and you cried but your life never changed.

Yet it took one day for strange things to start happening to you. The worst thing had happened, after a long grueling shift dealing with annoying customers and shitty managers your car wouldn't start no matter how many times you tried. You cant even bring yourself to cry anymore, simply too wore down from everything going on and knowing you definitely cant afford to fix it or call a mechanic you simply leave it there to deal with another day and start the long walk home.

You end up stumbling across a graveyard you had never even noticed before. A particular gravestone catches your attention, you should just keep walking, go come and take a cold shower, since the heating in your apartment hasnt been working, and cry yourself to sleep but you cant take your eyes off of it.

its so dirty, like someone hasnt visited it in decades, you cant even read the words on it. You dont know what compels you to drop all your stuff next to it and spend your last 15 bucks on some supplies to clean it at a store nearby.

Suddenly you're on your knees scrubbing down the old stone until your wrist grows sore. after far too long and far too much sweat builds up on your body you can finally read the words on it.

jacaerys velaryon

1875-1896

beloved son and brother

you trace over the name with your dirt covered thumb as a sloppy attempt of pronouncing the name leaves your mouth. You don’t know why but a cold chill runs down your back, its almost as if a hand comes to caress your face and you jump back. Youve spent far too much time here you fear you’re starting to hallucinate. You head on your way home, sure you’ll regret the money you’ve spent tonight later knowing youll not be able to afford dinner tonight and sigh.

When you wake up the next day your apartment is warm. It's unusual, knowing the heating in your apartment is broken but when you go over to it you almost burn your hand at the heat of the radiator. did they fix it while you slept? That would be strange wouldn't they need to come into your apartment.

You try not to think about it maybe it was a problem with the building? you try not to think about it and walk towards the kitchen to eat. You freeze when you see a basket of fresh fruit sitting on the counter. you certainly cant afford that, and you get even more scared when you open up your fridge and cabinet and see them packed filled with your favorite foods and snacks.

You think maybe you just blacked out and went into debt buying yourself a bunch of stuff but when you check your account it looks normal. Now you worry, maybe you were still dreaming? but it seemed as real as it could get.

Your eyes hit a bouquet of flowers, red roses contrasting the bland apartment walls. you walk closer to it and notice a small note attached to the top and your breath hitches.

thank you.

now you’re even more lost. were you genuinely going crazy? who would even be able to do this and who would even be thanking you? when was the last time you did something worth thanking.

no. theres no way right? ghosts arent real. and they certainly dont have the ability to be able to do things like this. Maybe whatever higher power was out there was playing tricks on you. It started to feel less and less like a trick when you walked outside to go to work and saw your car there, perfectly fixed up without a scratch.

It grew harder to ignore the strange things that were happening in your life when people seemed to no longer bother you at work, it seemed like your bank account never dropped even when you would buy take out or have to pay rent for the month, the food in the fridge would stay stocked. You actually began to enjoy life, you smiled a lot more, without the troubles of bills or annoying customers and coworkers you actually felt like a weight was lifted off your shoulders.

It also grew harder to ignore the presence that felt like it had entered your life and you didn’t want to. It was a welcome presence to you at this point, you had no clue what it even was, but you could feel the soft caresses on your face, the slight tingle of arms wrapping around you. Its strange, you should run in fear, be scared for your life but you cant help but revel in the airy affection. Its never touches you too strongly though you know it can after some ‘accidental’ grips and strokes onto your skin.

You later on learn its a he, further confirming your idea its this jacaerys though he never outright confirms it. he leaves you little notes along with a fresh bouquet everyday. It was romantic. or maybe you were just so touched starved that you had begun losing your mind and none of this was even real.

one day the tides in your relationship completely change. as your feelings for the mysterious figure in your home grows the more your desires grow. knowing he’s lurking in your home you’ve never taken the liberty to pleasure yourself as your imagination runs wild in the nights you spend in your apartment feeling his hands on your arms. you cant take it anymore.

Its been an especially long shift after work, your clothes are stuck to your skin from sweat, you cant even be bothered with eating right now as you toss of your clothes with a wicked fast pace as you make your way to the bathroom not bothering to check if there were any notes or gifts from him waiting for you.

You sigh as soon as you step in and allow yourself to soak in the steaming water for a good while. you soon enough notice a heart in the steam covered glass and your breath hitches. hes probably seeing you naked right now, it never truly occurred to you he’s probably seen you naked all this time. The idea has your mind running rampant on a track you cant seem to stop.

You cant suppress the whine that creeps up in your throat and you decide to fuck it. Theres nothing he can really do right? hes always around, you have to relieve yourself one way or another.

you leave your back against the wall. maybe you can make it a show for him. Your hands run down your body, giving your tits a light squeeze before continuing to drag them down your body towards your awaiting hole. He makes no move for awhile, even as your hands toy with your aching clit, as you whine and moan out as your insert one then two fingers into you, pumping them in and out of you.

What causes him to finally show himself is when you breathily say his name in a whisper, calling out to him. your fingers suddenly stop as a harsh grip is forced onto your wrists and your hands are ripped away from you. you look up at the empty space infront of you, you almost go to whine and complain before you feel pressure on your clit and throw your head back.

His hand quickly replaces yours, making quick work to shove his fingers deep inside you and pump and press them against your walls. you eagerly accept this phantom like presence as your legs begin to shake, you call out to him like a siren, hangs gripping at your breasts playing with your nipples while he continues to bring you pleasure, releasing with a long shout of his name.

you stay in the shower for awhile longer before exiting with your skin pruned and shaky legs. You take a deep breath as you go to do your skincare in the mirror and your freeze. A man around your age, curly dark hair and stunning eyes looking at your affectionately in the mirror. you turn around but see nothing there.

looking back in the mirror it was odd. finally seeing the man who had been doing you so much good. he was far too attractive, you did not know if he was always naked but he certainly was right now and it bas you throbbing.

you feel him as you see him wrap his arms around you and tug down your freshly put on towel to expose you once again and you allow him too, but this time you wont be taking your eyes off him.

—

sometime during the month ill definitely write them actually fucking LMAO but take this for now lovelies later.

[amymbona]

Soft launching a relationship with Tashi Duncan - social media au

(I couldn't find certain faceless pictures so whichever random girl u see, pretend it's y/n)

tashiduncan thank you @.stanfordtennis for the promo pics 🎾

❤️ 6 739 💬 398 ➡️ 1624

view tagged

view comments:

stanfordtennis we are glad to have you! 🙌

y/n.serves who's that sexy girl I see over there? ;)

➔ tashiduncan @.y/n.serves me??? 😇

artiedon these are good! :O when do I get my promo @.stanfordtennis?

➔ stanfordtennis @.artiedon you have to be the best

show more...

y/n.serves just two girls playing some tennis! 😜

❤️ 2382 💬 79 ➡️ 143

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tashiduncan i wonder who's the other girl

➔ y/n.serves @.tashiduncan and who's the first one 🤨

pzweig69 y'all getting too close

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y/n.serves hard preparations

❤️ 1571 💬 152 ➡️ 324

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view comments:

pzweig69 not the only thing that's hard

➔ artiedon @.pzweig69 what???

➔ y/n.serves @.pzweig69 i'm blocking u

tashiduncan couldn't u have put some filter on? :( i look silly

➔ y/n.serves @.tashiduncan shut up you're gorgeous 😡😡😡

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y/n.serves WE ACTUALLY WON GUYS!!! @.tashiduncan love u love u <3

❤️ 5 203 💬 197 ➡️ 1265

view comments:

tashiduncan we're the best!!!

tashiduncan love u y/n!!!

artiedon good job girls :) did good and looked fab!

➔ y/n.serves @.artiedon <3

pzweig69 two tennis girls bouncing on it

➔ y/n.serves @.pzweig69 perv...

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pzweig69 we kicked their ass!!! @.artiedon ure short

❤️ 2 392 💬 247 ➡️ 1875

view comments:

y/n.serves shut up

tashiduncan don't care didn't ask

pzweig69 @.y/n.serves @.tashiduncan u guys are so mean :(

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y/n.serves went to an art gallery and she started taking selfies with the paintings???

❤️ 2 835 💬 37 ➡️ 496

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tashiduncan now u can say i have a selfie with van gogh :D

➔ y/n.serves @.tashiduncan you're so stupid i love you [this comment was deleted]

➔ y/n.serves @.tashiduncan you're so stupid

artiedon the paintings are so pretty!

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tashiduncan we tried to match

❤️ 4 209 💬 271 ➡️ 1438

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artiedon so cute! :3

pzweig69 gay

➔ tashiduncan @.pzweig69 i've reported this comment and your whole account

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y/n.serves quality time ❤️

❤️ 💬 ➡️

[this post was deleted]

tashiduncan sleepover :)

❤️ 2 340 💬 173 ➡️ 742

view comments:

y/n.serves my gorgeous wife

y/n.serves oops

y/n.serves you look good 😁

➔ tashiduncan @.y/n.serves thank u baby <3

pzweig69 two girls playing with each other at a sleepover

➔ tashiduncan @.tashiduncan kill yourself

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[mitchellpete]

Kinktober Day 6 - Cockwarming

pairing: pete “maverick” mitchell x f!reader

cw: instructor!mav, student x teacher relationship, power imbalance, angst if you squint?, age gap, office sex, oral sex (m receiving), penetration, cockwarming

word count: 1875

kinktober masterlist here.

18+ ONLY | MINORS DNI

-

It takes Maverick about a minute to notice you standing in the doorway to his office. He’s swamped with paperwork, his pen nearly running out of ink at the scrabbling he’s been doing the past couple of hours. It seems you’d both ended up with irritable days, hence the reason you found yourself here in the first place.

It was late, thank God, and no one was really around anymore and you really didn’t feel like leaving base and spending the rest of the evening sulking alone at home. You knew that Captain Mitchell was staying in late, knew that if you didn’t wander in to see him, you might not see him at all over the next couple of days.

It was a bad habit he had. He gave you too much space. 

“Lieutenant,” he greets you now, a small smile curving the end of his mouth at the sight of you.

You ignore his propriety, stepping inside and shutting the door behind you. You try to match his smile. “Hi, Mav.”

He immediately drops the act. Eyes darting from you to the closed door, he asks in a hushed voice, “What are you doing?” 

You approach his desk, your failed smile replaced by a frown. You want to hug him. You want him to hug you, you mean. To make it all better. You’re not sure how to ask for that, though.

“Just wanted to see you,” you say instead, curious hands reaching for the objects on his desk. 

He doesn’t break eye contact as he takes each object from your hands, placing them back in their spot as you move them. “I’ve got a lot of work to do, sweetheart.”

Your heart sinks a little at the rejection, and he seems to notice the disappointment cross your face. 

“Come here,” he says then, beckoning you over with a single nod.

You step behind the desk and into his space, leaning down to meet him for a kiss. It’s risky; you didn’t lock the door and the blinds aren’t fully shut, but the kiss lasts maybe two seconds. It’s fine.

Mav smiles and looks up at you with a soft glint in his eyes, the one that reads I’ll see you soon, okay? It’s the look he gives you every time he sneaks out of your house, or drops you off. You’ve started to dread it. There’s so much uncertainty that comes with it. Every single time you see him after that affectionate look, he’s just your instructor again. The affection is gone and you’re never sure when it’ll return. It doesn’t matter how much you ache for him. 

Boy, how badly you ache for him now. A kiss is never enough.

You’re almost going to swallow your pride and leave his office, seemingly satisfied with the one little kiss, until your eyes land on his lap. Then at his paperwork, then at the door.

He cocks an eyebrow, curious.

Fuck. You slowly stride over to the door, battling with your choices, but decide you have no intention of leaving. 

“Wh–” Maverick sits up straight at the sound of the door locking, and then watches as you move towards the windows to start shutting the blinds all the way. “What are you doing?”

“I wanna try something,” you say confidently, like he already gave you permission.

“Try something?”

“Mhm.” You shut the last set, take a step back to make sure they’re all closed and then turn your attention to him again. “Blinds shut, door locked. I think you’ve left for the day.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. He drops his pen instead, tilting his head as he tries to figure out what it is you’re planning.

He sort of gets an idea when he notices your eyes scanning his side of the desk.

“Baby, I do have a lot of work to do.”

You smile. “And if I promise you won’t get your hands dirty? At all?”

Mav chuckles, shakes his head like it’s the most absurd idea he’s ever heard. It might be, you think, but it’s something you can pull off. The door is locked, after all.

“I think we’d be really stupid if we tried,” he admits, though his smile doesn’t falter.

“You don’t have to do anything,” you reiterate. “I just want to sit there. You can continue working.”

It’s like he opens his mouth to protest again, but then his lips press together instead, and he beckons you toward him with a nod like before.

Excitement fills you as he scoots his chair back to grant you access.

It’s hard to get on your knees in the cramped space underneath the desk, so you have to urge Mav to move his chair back with a gentle push to his legs. He complies, does his best to make as much room for you as he can. You find that you’re sort of shaky when your fingers pry at the button on his jeans, so he helps you with that, too. The position is slightly ridiculous, the chair a little higher than it should be, so you end up on your haunches when you pull his cock out of his briefs, and then sort of yank his garments down with your other hand for easier access. 

His eyes are still nervously peering at the closed blinds, making sure there aren’t any shapes or sounds coming from behind them, but you ease his worries when you take his shaft into your mouth. There’s no time to prolong this, so you get right to it; you take him in as much as you can, using a hand to stroke him at the same time. His knuckles are white from gripping the arms of his chair as he hardens in your mouth. Stifled groans leave his lips, filthy wet ones coming from yours. 

He throws his head back in silent satisfaction when you swirl your tongue around the tip, and accidentally groans out loud when you dip your head and trace your tongue down, and then back up his frenulum.

The noise he makes reminds you that you’re not supposed to make him cum here, that this is something different, and you pull back after a minute or so. Maverick is biting down hard on his lip, watches as you stand up off your haunches and immediately work your pants off. He shifts in his seat, positions himself as best he can for you.

With your pants completely off and kicked aside, you grab onto his shoulders and mount yourself atop his lap. Hovering above him, you reach down to grab him and line yourself up with him the best you can; usually he would do that for you but you did promise he wouldn’t have to get his hands dirty. 

“No moving,” you prompt, exhaling softly at the feel of his tip against your slit.

You whimper at the stretch—it stings just a little from lack of foreplay—but gradually sink onto him little by little. You let your body accommodate him, feel yourself growing wetter around him before you sink any lower. He tenses up, tries to minimize his reaction by gritting his teeth. The long groan that leaves his mouth is inevitable when you fully slip onto his lap, his cock buried inside you to the hilt. Christ, this is gonna be harder than you thought.

He seems to think so too, as his grip around your waist tightens slightly. “Sweetheart, I don’t—I don’t think this is such a good idea,” he groans.

“Just get back to work,” you whisper, arms wrapping around his shoulders.

His hands leave your waist to resume his task, but his breathing remains heavy near your ear. You relax into him, face buried in the crook of his neck, breathing him in. You’ve got your hug. This is all you wanted today.

Maverick scoots his chair forward as best he can, picks up his pen and shuffles through his papers. 

You try not to clench around him, a very difficult problem when he scoots forward slightly a second time, his balls rubbing up into your clit. You try to focus on something else, on his scent, past him at the frames on the wall, on the bits of light coming in through the blinds.

A minute passes.

Two minutes pass.

Three, and Mav still hasn’t touched pen to paper yet, clearly dazed by the situation. His eyes skim over the words he’s already written instead, trying to give his brain an idea on where to get started again. 

He wants to move very badly. It’s a terrible itch he needs to scratch.

He starts to think that this is maybe a form of torture. You try not to think much of it, try to pretend this is the hug you were here for, and it sort of works. Sort of. His cock prods at a very delicious spot inside you the more he begins to shift his hips, and it becomes harder and harder to stay still.

It’s when you hear his pen drop and roll across the desk that you realize Maverick is not so fond of your idea. Get back to work how, he must be thinking, and God, you hope he’s not frustrated that this whole ordeal probably just set him back. 

If he is, he doesn’t show it, instead wrapping his arms around you and inadvertently rolling his hips underneath you. You gasp, taken by sudden surprise, clasping a hand over your mouth when his hips jerk a second time.

“Mav,” you whisper. “I said—fuck, I said no moving.”

He scoffs, bows his head to lazily kiss at your collarbone. “You’re killing me. I’ll never go back to work like this.”

You bite back a moan. “I promised you wouldn’t get your hands dirty. I just wanted to sit he–”

He shuts you up with a sharp, fully intended snap of his hips. His arms drop to cup the bottom of your thighs, and neither of you care anymore after the first stroke. The sound of skin meeting skin fills the room and it’s hard not to make any additional noise, suppressing your moans into little whines instead. Maverick starts fucking into you as if it were the first time, as if he’d never felt something so good before. 

Neither of you last very long.

Maverick’s thrusts get sloppy when you’re both seconds away, his tiring pace beginning to stumble. He’s smart enough to take you in for a deep kiss when you both cum at the same time, your quiet, high-pitched noises trapped in between your mouths. He continues kissing you through your unplanned orgasm, tongue licking against yours.

When he pulls back, you’re both panting heavily, savoring the glow. 

He helps you off of him eventually. Your legs are a little sore and shaky, and you clumsily stumble back against his desk. Maverick’s good reflexes prevent your fall, an arm around your waist, and you avoid landing on his messy stack of paperwork. You can’t help but snicker at how absurd this really was.

Maverick, on the other hand, has a smirk on his face at the sight of you propped over his desk.

[vidavalor]

The Hoff

I think that we've seen that very distinctive and unusual, capital F in Fell in the the note inside Aziraphale's copy of Modern Magic before...

What could explain that? 😊

Ok, so, first things first... to be clear: there really was a Professor Hoffman who published a book called Modern Magic. His real name was Angelo Lewis and, until its publication of Modern Magic in 1875, there wasn't really a major book in English that acted as a guidebook in for teaching aspiring magicians what they would need to know to be able to perform. It is seen as the first magic textbook, basically. So, the book really exists but this is where we have to talk about the apparent "autograph" that we were shown in 1941.

If you've ever had an author inscribe their book to you or received an autographed book as a gift, you probably have noticed that the author almost always signs the book on the title page or, if not that, on some other page on which there is type in the very early part of the book. They usually do not autograph books on the 1-2 blank pages of paper that are included at the start of most hardcover books... which is the spot where we can see that the note in Aziraphale's copy of Modern Magic is written. There are a couple of reasons why authors do not autograph those pages.

The first is that autographing one of the printed pages of the book helps to ensure that the author's signature stays with the book. If they sign a blank piece of paper at the start of the book, the signature can be more easily ripped out of the book and potentially used by someone for something illegal-- especially true of the pre-computer & cell phone eras but something which holds over into today. There is also that one of the reasons why the blank pages in the front of the book are included in the first place is to help keep the book clean in order to preserve it for longer, with the idea being that the blank pages can be removed if the book gets dirty over time from dust and dirt falling inside the cover.

The last reason, though, is the reason most relevant to what we're talking about here and that's that the blank pages are also meant to be a space for personal notes. Not just for something the reader might wish to jot down but for a message to the reader from the person who gifted them the book.

If you gift a book to someone, the tradition is that you write them a little note on the inside of the book. In a hardcover book, this is meant to be written somewhere on the blank pages. We are specifically shown Aziraphale opening his copy of Modern Magic to the very first, otherwise-blank page and reading the note that is the only other thing on the page, in the upper right hand corner.

Ok, you might say, but the note is written from Professor Hoffman and mentions Aziraphale being a 'wonderful student', so even though the unique and significant capital F's are a match... how could Crowley have written the note?

The note is actually signed The Hoff and there is already some wordplay in the 1941, Part 2 minisode in which Aziraphale uses that word while referencing Professor Hoffman on the surface but in such a way as to really be referring to Crowley.

Later on in 1941, when the two are drinking wine at the end of the minisode, their whole conversation is word-nerdy flirtation and Aziraphale responds to Crowley's inquiry as to how he got the photo back from Furfur with this line: "Who needs miracles when you've had private lessons from The Great Prof. Hoff. man himself?"

Here's where that Crowley-mentioned "tone of voice" from the start of 2.01 comes into play a bit...

In this post, we looked at how Aziraphale's emphasis in the "Prof. Hoff.man" sentence suggested he was using Professor Hoffman's name as wordplay to really be referring to Crowley. Prof, short for professor, is rooted in profess, which is to state something, while hoff is a Welsh term of endearment that means my dear and my beloved. (Some Welsh pet names in this show starring Michael Sheen? Couldn't be! 😂)

Used in that way? Prof. Hoff.man, spoken the way Aziraphale did in the wine scene in 1941, is actually referring to Crowley and calling him his dear (and deer) man and his beloved. It's "my dear" and "my love" but in Welsh. This, then, is Aziraphale referring to Crowley as his hoff... which is how the note in the Modern Magic book is signed.

Further emphasizing this are the other words being used in the wordplay in the same sentence that talks about private lessons from The Great Prof. Hoff.man.

The first is Aziraphale adding the adjective of great ahead of Prof. Hoff.man. In a couple of other posts, this word has come up already but to sum it up, great in their speak is dry use of the adjective used to describe The Great/Ineffable/Divine/Whatever Plan to describe their relationship or one another, instead. It basically means what we all know great to mean but with added humor within their speak being that it's blasphemous to use it that way in their supernatural world and that it comes from the root words related to to rub or to grind together. It also contains the word eat-- self-explanatory for the food-obsessed Crowley and Aziraphale.

In the Odegra scene in S1, in which basically all of Crowley's work presentation is in his and Aziraphale's vocabulary, he refers to the Biblical Great Beast on the surface which, in their vocabulary, they've actually jokingly made a phrase that refers to Aziraphale between them. When Maggie tells Crowley that he and Aziraphale don't say how they really feel, Maggie doesn't realize it but Crowley responds to her in his and Aziraphale's hidden vocabulary, because he's understandably a little put off. His response concludes with the deceptively simple summary of his and Aziraphale's relationship as a whole: "It's great."

In the Prof Hoff scene, Aziraphale refers to having had private lessons from "The Great Prof. Hoff.man" himself. If the wordplay in the scene has The Great Prof Hoff.man here being a reference to Crowley then so, too, are the private lessons. This is not to say that Aziraphale might have never taken magic lessons with Angelo Lewis aka Professor Hoffman. It's just to say that he is happily using Professor Hoffman's name here as wordplay to refer to Crowley in this moment. It's using Aziraphale's human magic as euphemistic for their romance, which also what The Bullet Catch and many other scenes have done. While private lessons manages to sound quite innuendo-y just on the surface alone, there's also some other layers that make it especially top shelf.

Lessons, in this case, are a mixed French-English phonetic joke-- they're les sins, or the sins. Crowley and Aziraphale don't see sex as sinful but referring to it that way with tongue firmly in cheek is their type of blasphemous humor, yeah? Even funnier is the fact that the French word for sin is peche, which also can refer to both a peach (so, a fruit, which also happens to be pretty uniformly euphemistic for an ass) and, even more amusingly, for the act of fishing.

Additionally, lesson comes from legere, which is the root of many words related to act of reading. Originally, the word lesson referred only to a reading aloud of The Bible. The word private in Aziraphale's sentence does just refer to a sense of privacy in the way that we know it but there are also the words it contains.

Besides the food-related ate, there is vate. The Latin word vates meant a prophet or a seer. By sometime prior to the 1600s, though, the word vate had splintered off from vates and had evolved to mean something that Crowley already canonically is-- a poet.

"Private lessons with The Great Prof. Hoff.man himself" on a wordplay level is really Aziraphale referring to romance and lovemaking with his dearly beloved poet.

Ok, so, we've established that Crowley can easily be The Hoff who wrote the note. Now, let's go back to the note written inside Aziraphale's copy of Modern Magic and look at the romance and humor of it being written the way it is if we're saying that it's written by Crowley and not by the Angelo Lewis version of Professor Hoffman.

Let's start with "a wonderful student." Here's the thing... you wouldn't need to be instructing Aziraphale on anything to refer to him that way. A student is a person who seeks to and works to gain knowledge and Aziraphale is constantly doing that. He is a curious, life-long learner, as we all should try to be, right? From knowing Aziraphale as the story shows us, all of us could say that Aziraphale is a wonderful student, could we not?

There's a sweet sense of humor in using the adjective wonderful in there as well. A person who is wonderful is full of wonder, which is to say that they are miraculous. They inspire pleasure, admiration, and a sense of delight. Synonyms for wonderful include other words associated with Mr. Fell and his magic-- amazing and marvelous.

So, let's say that Crowley bought Aziraphale his much-beloved copy of Professor Hoffman's Modern Magic and so is part of the reason why Aziraphale has a human magic act in the first place. He wanted to write a note to Aziraphale in the book but obviously could not write something that isn't a bit oblique because they're a secret. There is a very Crowley-esque humor in hiding that he is the author of the note by making what he wrote at the start of the book sound like a note written by the book's author.

Crowley signs the note "The Hoff" and there are actually additional meanings to that besides the Welsh term of endearment one we looked at above-- all of which are extremely Crowley.

Hof and Hoff are Old Norse words that evolved into Dutch and German to refer to, over time, a wide variety of buildings. Originally the word meant a hall and, at that time, that was less in the sense of a passageway between rooms inside a building and more any roof-covered building. It is still present a bit in what we call a couple of types of buildings (a town hall; a music hall, etc..).

Because the word comes from the Proto-Indo-European root words meaning to cover or to conceal, a hof or a hoff began to mean basically any kind of building covered by a roof-- including both a court (as in, a royal court), a temple, and a farmstead. It also began to mean anyone working any jobs associated with life beneath any of these roof-covered structures. From this also formed the term heathen hof, which referred to a Germanic pagan temple.

A hof or a hoff, then, is a roof-covered place of protection and concealment from the elements or someone occupied under one of those roof-covered places.

A hof or a hoff? Is a canopy...

But we're not at all done... Because of hoff relating to places like royal courts and farmsteads, it also evolved to mean the person who manages the domestic affairs of a household and the person whom a monarch or the owner of the building has given authority to represent them, to rule in their name and to guard their assets and reputation. The word that we use today to mean this derived away from hoff and came about in a messy way that involves so many language overlaps that people are honestly still kind of trying to fully puzzle it out and aren't entirely sure of the results. For quite a few centuries now, though, what was once referred to as a hoff-- in terms of people and not structures-- has been more commonly referred to as a steward.

A steward can be someone who keeps watch over a household and guards its inhabitants and one who can manage the affairs of an estate for the person who is, technically, that estate's owner.

A steward is also the officer on a ship who is in charge of meals and provisions. This also later applied to trains as well, once they were invented.

In fine dining, a wine steward, for example, is another name for a sommelier-- one who provides knowledge of wine and serves it.

It also refers to someone who oversees the social arrangements of a household.

The occupation of steward is also the root of surname Stewart and its alternate, French-originating spelling of Stuart. Stuart is also a first name for which Stu is a nickname and that nickname is one of the words contained in The Steward/Hoff's love note to Aziraphale: the stu within student. Also within student? The word den. Meanings include a dwelling for animals (a fox den), a recreational or study room in a house, and, especially applicable to Crowley and Aziraphale: a place in which people meet to engage in illicit activity in secret in order to evade detection.

So, within the letter Crowley signs The Hoff is the word student, which contains words referring to the role of a hoff/steward (stu) and the den he serves and protects in that role. It's clever. 😊

For some funny, food-related bonuses: the word steward also obviously contains stew and, depending on where you are in the world, the word hof today can evidently refer to either Carlsberg beer or a Korean-style bar or pub. In Danish, it also refers to a garden and, apparently, the history of hof referring to a royal court also led to an evolution of hof referring to admirers as a result of crossing over with the use of court as a verb-- as in, to court a person.

Fish stew. Anyway!

But you might be saying: but why not inscribe the book to Aziraphale? What's with the 'To Mr. Fell' and this weird capital F?

For that, we have to bring in two of the most romantic things you can think of: a little grammar and Hastur.

Just bear with me. 😂 It's worth it, I promise...

Back in S1, we had a bunch of scenes that illustrate that the demons are seen as a collective who all belong to Satan and are not to have any sense of autonomy that overrides that. It's best summed up by Hastur harassing Crowley through his tv by reminding him that, collectively, they are known as The Fallen and only their shared goals of servitude to their master, Satan, should be what matters:

When Crowley is in public and at risk of being overheard, he will speak that way about Hell, such as in the case of "Mozart's one of ours" or "was that one of yours or one of ours?" with regards to The Reign of Terror in 1.01. In this post, we already looked at how, on a hidden language level, Crowley is crafting those public sentences to Aziraphale to really work as being about the two of them on another level while sounding like they're about Hell on the surface level because, as we know, he does not actually wish to be part of The Fallen.

This is where the little bit of irregular verb grammar comes into play. It relates to tenses around the verb to fall. As most of us know, both the future tense and the present tenses of the verb to fall is fall. If it's a fall that has yet to happen, you use fall. As in: "She should be careful as she could fall out of that tree." If it's a fall that is currently happening, you also use fall, as you would say: "She is falling." It's when you start to talk about a fall that already happened that things get a little more complicated... and if you don't think Crowley and Aziraphale would find that relevant, may I direct you to them flirting by way of pretending to be confused over the irregular past tenses of the verb to smite in S2...

Fallen is the past participle tense of to fall. The simplest way to explain that for those who are grammar-averse and find this confusing (and it is confusing-- English is a nightmare lol) is that you use fallen as 'has fallen' or 'have fallen' to describe a fall that took place at an unspecified time in the past, as well as a fall that happened already but may still also be an ongoing thing.

For example: your friend might refuse your request that she climb a tree with you by saying something like: "No, thanks. I have fallen out of too many trees before." This indicates falls that happened to your friend in the past that are now over and done with but are just not being referred to in such a way as to reference a specific point in time. If your friend wanted to refer to a specific fall she had at a specific time, she would use fell, not fallen, and would say something like: "No, thanks. I fell out of a tree last Thursday and I'm still feeling it."

Meanwhile, though, you could be thinking about investing in a company, say, and, in researching the company, read a sentence like: "The stock price average has fallen x percent over the last x months." This indicates something that has taken place in the past-- the descent of the stock price average has already happened. However, fallen is being used because that falling stock price average might still also be ongoing, as it could keep falling. That is an example of using fallen to refer to a fall that happened in the past but is not necessarily seen as completely done and continues on.

How is this relevant, you ask?

Let's say that it's long ago and you're an angel who is in love with a demon who has for millennia been referred to by everyone in Heaven and Hell as one of The Fallen to a point that The Fallen is basically the closest thing he has to a surname. And let's say that you're creating a human identity for yourself and taking on a surname so you can live amongst them more directly. And let's say that you are well-aware of the fact that marrying this demon is not something at this time that seems like it would ever be possible for an endless list of reasons ranging from the fact that you're supernatural hereditary enemies to the fact that doing so would be illegal by human standards.

You don't like the term The Fallen because you feel it doesn't apply-- to your demon partner or to any of the demons, really. The past tense of to fall is fell. It's something that happened once, at a specific time in the past, as in: "He fell out of the tree." It's over and no longer relevant, unlike the way that Heaven and Hell use the phrase The Fallen to continuously demonize the demons. They refer to them that way to perpetuate the idea that they are forever "evil" and damned for it. Added into this is that to fall, as we know, is also a verb used to describe feeling romantic love, as the humans say that people fell in love. There's also that he calls you daily what you are-- an angel-- in a romantic way and you would like a way to refer to what he is in a loving way, instead of just the teasing, double-meaning way you sometimes use words like demon and fiend.

So, if you were this angel named, say, I don't know, Aziraphale lol... and you liked the human custom of a partner taking the surname of their spouse when they married and you were making up your own surname anyway for your human identity and you were very sure that you'd never be able to actually marry your demon partner so this was what you thought then was maybe the closest you'd ever get to being able to do that... the cleverest, most romantic surname you could actually choose for yourself that would be taking his name but in a positive, word-nerdy way that reflected the love of the two of you would be to name yourself Mr. Fell.

Aziraphale has been Mr. Fell for who knows how long because it is the proper verb tense for what happened to Crowley, it sounds enough like '-phale' that Heaven won't ever really put it together and he has an excuse there if they ever ask him why his alias sounds a little demonic and, most importantly, because he wanted to take that part of Crowley's "name." Why?

Because, like with most humans, Crowley didn't choose that surname and, as is the case for a lot of humans as well, the name has a negative history that he wishes it didn't. Crowley can choose to change his name and add to his name and he does-- Anthony Crowley and others are his own choice-- but he's stuck being tied to the "family" he came from-- The Fallen-- as there has never been a way to change that. To Aziraphale, taking on that name is the same as anyone marrying into a family with bad history and a terrible reputation because they love their good partner who is stuck in it. It's an act of commitment to that person.

Aziraphale tweaked it to Fell-- the correct use of the verb, a common human surname, and something that sounds enough like the end of his own first name that it acts as a bit of sleight of hand to keep most from noticing that his last name is just the frequently confused with fallen, other, past tense of to fall and that he took it as a way to take Crowley's name.

It also adds a whole other feeling to Aziraphale reading the note aloud to Crowley in the bookshop in 1941 and the part where he says "'To Mr. Fell'-- that's me!" with the little grin and wiggle.

Crowley inscribed the book 'To Mr. Fell' because that's their name. It's an equivalent of writing something like 'For my husband'...

Another clue to support this is the Crowley-and-Aziraphale-paralleling Mutt and his beloved spouse, as Mutt referred to them as. Beloved, as we said above, is one of the Welsh terms of endearment meanings of hoff. Mr. Fell is Aziraphale having taken Crowley's name like someone might of their spouse. Since its opening, the name of the bookshop has been A.Z. Fell & Co.. On one level, it is meant to look like A.Z. Fell is a variant of Aziraphale, likely to evade suspicion from Heaven. In reality? Aziraphale is just Mr. Fell from A to Z. Just Crowley's, from soup to nuts.

Adding some humor is also that a fellow, as we know, is a term for a man, or a person in the same position or group as someone else, or a person with whom someone is sharing the same activities, as well as member of a society of learning. To Mr. Fell, a wonderful student...

A fellow-- or the slang fella-- is also a boyfriend. Plus, the silly humor of fellow as fell- ow!. "But, my deer/dear fellow..."

So, Crowley wrote the inscription in the book as a note to Aziraphale that makes it look like it's an autograph from Professor Hoffman and the other hints to this lie in his distinctive capital F in Fell and the other word hidden in the signature.

If you look closely, you'll notice some things in the way that Crowley wrote The Hoff. The o in the word is actually made up of two letter o's linked together. Besides the whole hugs and kisses of x and o in writing and the rings aspect and the fact that he drew them in such a way to look heart-like, there's that this creates a new word hidden in hoff, which is hooff, which isn't a word but the word contained within it-- hoof-- sure is.

A hoof is the foot of any of three animals to which Crowley is frequently referred to as: a horse, an ox, or a deer. It's also slang for the human foot and, as to hoof it, for the act of walking, as well as sometimes slang for dancing.

The Crowley-and-Aziraphale penned title of Demon's Guide to Angelic Beings Who Walk the Earth, which is a phrase meaning to live life. In the opening credits of every episode of Good Omens, Crowley and Aziraphale are shown living life together throughout history-- walking the Earth together. The same 1941 minisode that gave us this note that we're looking at gives us the love letters they wrote each other and published under Hell's nose as entries in Demon's Guide, furthering the suggestion of Crowley having written the note in the book.

Now, look at the distinctively-written letter F in Fell and in where we've seen that before in the 2008 minisode:

Crowley's signature on the form for his assignment to take Adam to the nuns in 2008 is him drawing with his index finger the same pattern he uses when writing with a pen to make the capital F in Fell.

Why does Crowley write it this way?

Because while the end result is that anyone not looking closely sees a cursive capital F, the way that Crowley writes that capital F is by using the pattern of a cursive capital L-- for love. If you look at it closely, you'll actually see both a L and a F overlapping as one letter in the word Fell in the note.

While I'm sure Aziraphale has no doubt as to what he was reading in Crowley's note in Modern Magic, if the 2008 minisode is any indication, Crowley has actually been using this Love F when writing his own signature-- both on Earth and in Hell-- for quite some time. Likely because while he loathes being part of The Fallen, he feels the exact opposite kind of way about Aziraphale having taken his name to a point that he wants to actually put Fell somewhere in his own name.

The result appears to be that he uses The Love F as both a purposefully kind of unintelligible signature when he signs for things in Hell... but also in the more readable signature of his name when he signs things on Earth. Why do I say in the human name, too? There's a hint to that in 1941-- back in the Part 1 of it.

I think Crowley makes their mark as the middle initial in his signature on Earth because I'm noticing here that this romantic Love F thing could be the explanation regarding confusion over a certain third capital letter... the letter J.

I now think it possible that Crowley didn't actually write a J on the document the Nazis saw. He wrote the romantic F for Fell that he writes to also look like a capital L, which got it mistaken by Mr. 'Betamax/Peter Max' Glozier for a capital J.

When Glozier said the J aloud, Crowley did use two words relating to he and Aziraphale in their speak-- just and really-- to try to explain what the letter was to Aziraphale but I'm not sure that Aziraphale heard it that way. Crowley also made it sound like he didn't want to clarify what he had really written. To be fair, saying "that Nazi thug mistook The Love F for a J" wouldn't have really worked in the moment but he also seemed squirmish about admitting to Aziraphale that he doesn't just use The Love F when writing him love letters but as part of his signature.

In Lockdown, Aziraphale appears to have written a note addressed to Anthony J. Crowley. So, either Crowley hadn't told Aziraphale by then that the J was The Love F, or they now have an in-joke from 1941 about Crowley's middle initial being J when they both know that it's not, or Crowley actually then went and came up with a middle name that begins with J after 1941.

Finally, there's the note in a gifted book that we didn't see in S2 but definitely heard about...

I have no doubt that Aziraphale has a first edition of S.W. Erdnase's Expert at the Card Table. I do doubt the next bit, though, wherein Aziraphale is pretty obviously lying his ass off. This is a now well-practiced version of 'those three kids are absolutely Job and Sitis' new children':

I would bet pretty heavily that Aziraphale's first edition of Expert at the Card Table has a 'To Mr. Fell'-style note in the inside that, when read, makes it look like it was autographed by the author but which is really a note that Crowley wrote to Aziraphale when he gifted him the book.

Aziraphale realized in the above scene that if he lets Mutt look at the book, Mutt is going to think that however Crowley signed the note was Erdnase's real name so Aziraphale just complete bullshitted the provenance of the book to cover up the fact that the autograph is a Crowley love note in order to bribe Mutt into coming to the party. 😂

This is also really why he won't give Mutt the book or let him try to buy it. It's beloved to him because of its magic importance, yes, but really also because Crowley gave it to him. The super-rare Doctor Who annual issue that Mr. Arnold was lusting after is something Aziraphale can part with (after all, he's sleeping with The Doctor so it's not really necessary). That was just one of the many rare items that Aziraphale does have in his shop and wasn't a present.

The copy of Expert at the Card Table, though? Aziraphale will never part with that.

Both books that Aziraphale has that we've mentioned here are first editions and, given their subject matter, Aziraphale would have wanted to get both books immediately after they were published. That means that Crowley bought Aziraphale Hoffman's Modern Magic in 1875 and Erdnase's Expert at the Card Table in 1902. For timeline context: He gave Aziraphale the copy of Modern Magic with the romantic note we've spent this meta looking at 13 years after the 1862 Holy Water argument. The gift of Expert at the Card Table was 27 years after that-- 40 years after the 1862 scene.

This, along with things like Aziraphale buying a dozen cases of Chateauneuf-de-Pape in 1921 "for special occasions" and Aziraphale and Crowley being in communication when Crowley bought The Bentley in the early 1930s all contribute to the idea that they had seen one another plenty between 1862 and 1941.

Crowley's faux-griping about Aziraphale's magic act is also made even cuter-- and more transparent lol-- by the fact that he's been gifting Aziraphale books about human magic for ages.

On a sadder note, it also adds another layer of horror to the bookshop fire. I think we all figured Crowley had bought Aziraphale books before but having seen one now and the love note in it and knowing there are a ton more makes Crowley standing in the middle of the shop with them all burning around him even worse.

On a cheerier note, remember Aziraphale reading books on magic (and plenty of other interesting stuff) during Lockdown? Perhaps some of the books were in the pile because Aziraphale was also going through them to re-read Crowley's love notes?

Finally, what do you think... it's a little different but... is that a Love F on his tie?

[greythemed]

𓂃 ♥︎ⴰ bloodhounds . kim gun-woo

˚ TITLE 𓂃 ♥︎ⴰ perverse behavior. ˚ WORD COUNT 𓂃 ♥︎ⴰ 1875.

"would you ever fight me?". the question came from nowhere, in gun-woo's opinion. the ringing sound of the seoul traffic outside of his mom's apartment high enough for the boxer to not pay the deserved attention to you, his ears getting cold from the snowy weather out-of-doors.

gun-woo was tired.

his mom had to reheat the food because of his delay and he felt bad about it. plus, you were waiting for him to watch boyz n the hood for the very first time, after weeks of complaining he didn't watch proper shows on his teenage years.

what do you mean you've never watched the last game and asphalt man?! you are not korean if you've never watched those! you have said it in such a thrilling way that gun-woo hadn't the heart to say no to you, and now it's been three weeks that both of you are marathoning different korean tv series every thursday night.

he was still carrying his boxing gear on his shoulders when you had jumped him into the entryway, making the man almost lose his balance while his mom excitedly greeted him from the kitchen.

"woah, when did you get in here?", was his first question when he felt your arms trying to wrap around him, two kisses pressed on your face as usual, before kicking the door closed behind him and lifting you in his arms.

"turns out I and your mom are besties now", you had said with so much confidence that he had to turn around to look at his mom to confirm it in the kitchen. "she taught me how to properly cook samgyeopsal and i was stunned with the amount of gochujang comes with it!".

gun-woo giggled at the surprise, tapping at your leg three times so you could get up and help his mother with the dishes. his tense physic was viscerally beaten by his coach today, and he doubted he could stand for more than two minutes without collapsing on the floor.

that's why your question had him exceptionally shocked while devouring his mother's samgyeopsal minutes later, salty lips outlined in a 'o' form while looking from his mother to you in confusion.

"what?". he asks.

"would you ever fight me?". you repeat genuinely curious for the answer.

"no". gun-woo answered simply, round innocent eyes staring right back at you as if you had grown another head.

you slouch back in your seat. cheek pressed to the couch as you look disappointed at your boyfriend eating at the table.

"why not?". you both could hear gun-woo's mother laugh on the other side of the table, finding something to quickly excuse herself from the living room and eavesdrop on the entire ordeal from her room.

"w-why?", gun-woo analyzed your posture to see if you were pranking him or something, but he found none. "i d-don't think that would be nice... for any of us". he replied with a terrified look on his face, the scar on his cheek hid underneath his right hand.

"just for your information, i was a gold medal in taekwondo once in school". you defend yourself.

"when you were 8 yeah, i know".

“and!”, you continue, ignoring him. “woojin-oppa already told me i was quite strong for someone my height”.

“baby, woo-jin just wanted you to pay for his dinner that day, you know that”. gun-woo explains blatantly, making you gasp at his lack of manners.

"i wanna fight you though, i could totally beat you", you said getting no response from the fighter, which was starting to infuriate you even more. "kim geun-woo, do you love me or not?". you asked starting to get up from the couch.

"stop looking at me like that, you're scaring me". you roll your eyes, getting up from the couch and walking towards your very tall and built boyfriend who refuses to fight with you. "what's up?". he looks up at you, wondering what the hell happened to his girlfriend that night.

"fight me". your serious tone shouldn't have a strong man like gun-woo scared, but that's what it does.

"look, i'm tired today okay? give me a second". he whines like a child and you would be finding him adorable because of his pout if it wasn't for the scar across the right side of his face staring right back at you.

hot unaware boyfriend indeed.

"kim geun-woo, don't you love me?" you hold the collar of his shirt, brows knit together in fake intimidation as gun-woo raises a brow your way.

“ya, you’re scaring me”, he repeats the statement looking at you as if challenging you to do what you are thinking. "you're not going to let me live if i don't fight you right now, are you?". he rubs the plush of your clothed thigh and you slap his hand away, glancing in the direction of his mother's room with your brows still furrowed, surprised at his bold antics.

"mister kim, you are under arrest for perverse behavior with your ring opponent".

"arrest?". his brows shoot up and a big smile emerges from his mouth. "aish-, don't be so hard on me, judge". he plays along, rubbing your waist quickly before taking your hands off his collar. “if you succeed in moving me from the chair, i’ll fight with you”. gun-woo had that stupid smirk he has when he’s about to win something.

you were about to prove him wrong.

“deal!”.

in instant seconds, you’re already beside him, using your entire body weight to push your boyfriend off the chair. the clock begins to tick away as gun-woo calmly finishes his dinner, enjoying a little too much of your little grunts as if you were not even beside him.

“how…much….did…you…eat today?”. a stupid grin was displayed on your boyfriend’s face when you gave up and you did not appreciate it.

it seems mister kim liked the ego soothing, after all, he was still just a man.

“why are you even smiling like that?!”. immediately, his grin was erased as if it was never there in the first place. “i’m 100% sure it is just because of the samgyeopsal your mom made. have you seen how much pepper that woman put into that?! no? i have!”. gun-woo laughed loudly at that, wondering in which standup comedy mister hong found you.

just when he thought it was over, you kept pushing his shoulders in the other direction, making him laugh even more.

“you’re not giving up, are you?”.

“never!”. gun-woo had to breathe calmly to steady his laughs and gently push your hands away.

“c’mon let’s clean this and go to bed, right?”. the gentle smile his lips displayed was hands-down playing unfair in your opinion. you could tell it in his eyes he was tired, defeatedly letting him go. “if you keep grunting my mom will come asking if everything is alright”. his gaze was so gentle that it almost made you angry.

“it is not alright”. you played the puppy eyes on him, hugging his figure while he moved from the table to the sink to clean his dishes.

that's when you noticed his little wince when you hugged his torso.

“my boyfriend didn’t let me win, he doesn’t love me”.

“you’re just weak, admit it”. again, the smirk was there and you hated it.

“where do you think you’re going with this audacity, mister?”. you unglued him and crossed your arms in front of the sink, taking the dishes from his hands and stopping him from doing any more work today. you both stared at each others eyes with fondness, silently speaking your concerns.

kim geun-woo, you do not fool me.

“anywhere i want, since you can’t stop me”. he laughed out loud, and you knew then that your boyfriend was more tired than he was showing. he only showed his boldness in other situations, so it was really surprising you his sense of humor right now.

which made you worry.

“ya, how much you and wonsuk-subaenim trained today?”, you asked concerned, putting the dishes aside to analyze his eyes on your tip toes. “you should’ve eaten more before training this morning”. there was an unconscious pout on your lower lip and gun-woo noticed that, smiling weakly while gluing your body into his.

“don’t worry, i’m okay”. he smiled grateful, even bowing his head a little in gratitude for you, a peck left in your brow that made you temporarily dumb. "he just wanted to test some more of my limits".

"are you sure?". starry eyes staring right back at him was hands-down an unfair playing, in his opinion. "can i see it?".

of course, you would notice it, gun-woo knew that much. but even so, he didn't want to make his mom worry more about him, and so did you.

"can we do that when we get home?", he politely asks while rubbing your arms, tone not much louder than a whisper now that the topic was more serious. "i wanted you to take a look but mom's here and i don't want her finding out about the championship yet". he explains.

"are you sure?", you ask worried, soothingly rubbing the balmy spot you could feel underneath his sweater next to his left rib. “it feels damp, oppa”.

gun-woo glanced at you and stopped your hand in the rem of his shirt with a silent plead, silently asking for you to let go. his kind smile and polite nod convinced you that the bruise could wait a little more, and you had no other option than to trust him.

“what happened?”.

“we used the machine again”, he starts explaining sensing your curious concern. gun-woo knew that you needed a little more reassurance, since you weren’t used to leaving patients with bruises behind in your line of work. “it presented a little malfunction, two sizes above mine and i almost went flying across the wall”.

“you and your stupid machines”. you scold angrily, making him laugh. “why train with a fucking machine when you pay thousands to have a coach like him?”.

“it’s solved now, don’t worry”. you looked in his eyes searching for any sign of discomfort. you knew about his surprisingly high pain tolerance, even for a fighter, plus your boyfriend tend to have a habit of hiding his sorrows from you.

intensively staring at him, gun-woo noticed by your eyes that you were quickly going to get lost in your own thoughts, so he had to react rather fast.

“hey, i’m good now, okay? we got 8 months for the tournament and i’m doing pretty well, i’m not going to lie”. he took your face in his hands, making you focus on his pretty eyes and his innocent smile. “do you trust me, baby? i’m okay”.

"okay", you nodded understandable and he left another kiss on your right brow, proudly looking at you.

“you could’ve told me, i would have brought the food to your house so you wouldn’t have to drive more”. still not yet convinced, you check his temperature with your bare hands to check if everything is okay, guiding him to the couch so he could rest. “i will clean everything and then we can go, ‘kay? i’ll drive”.

“no, no, no, i’m okay. you don’t have to”. he excuses, refusing to sit down and taking your hands with him.

you hated his excessive politeness sometimes.

“ya, i’m calling your mom if you don’t obey me”. you threaten him and he lightens up a little. “now sit and wait, i’ll be quick”. when he finally sat down and smiled at you, you felt his grip on your wrist tighten again.

“you look too cute taking care of me”. a kiss was stolen from your lips and quickly your eyes were as round as your mouth.

“gun-woo! you’re crazy!”, the slap was maybe a little too much, but that’s not really your fault, now was it? “we are on your mother’s apartment!”.

“ouch! she is not even here right now, don't go nuts". he said rubbing the shoulder that you slapped. "for someone your height, you are quite strong, did you know that? jesus christ”. he mocked you with a pout.

"that's it, i'm suing wonsuk-subaenim's ass for making you delulu". you pretend to run away and gun-woo laughs at that, pulling you onto him one last time to kiss you.

"i am wounded, woman, have mercy". sometimes, you miss the unaware, irritably-innocent, and extreme-shy gun-woo you met a few months ago after he became friends with your cousin.

"kim geun-woo, behave or i am going to let you die on the streets".

"i'll accept it if you don't drive".

"are you calling me a bad driver?". the insult-

"no". he said nonchalantly, placing a last kiss on your cheek and letting you go. "let's go so we won't be late".

heya! a little disclaimer: everything i post is part of a one-universe post-ep8 that i've created, if that's okay. hope you liked it xx

[marzipanandminutiae]

Hey Marzi could that black silk afternoon gown from 1875 that you reblogged be considered a mourning dress? I’m still trying to figure out how mourning attire worked

This one?

Could be, yeah! In a certain context only, though.

So, the way Victorian mourning often seems to have worked in practice was kind of like...having a black cocktail dress that you could wear to your aunt's funeral but also out for drinks with friends. It's very dependent on context and accessories, because black was a popular color for women's clothing in general (just like it is now).

Really, despite what listicles often want to say, there are a VERY small number of extant gowns that could only ever have been For Mourning SpecificallyTM. The rules varied, but it tended along the lines of "in the first, deepest phase of mourning, you wear only black with no other accent colors and nothing shiny or sparkly, including shiny silk-satin." People often forget the No Shiny rule in rushing to label all black dresses Mourning. Then later on, you could start adding back in shine and accent colors, generally white, purple, mauve, and sometimes red depending on where and when you lived.

Except those were also popular accent colors for non-mourning black clothing. And non-shiny black dresses existed in other contexts, too.

Yeah. You can see where this gets confusing for modern researchers.

Accessories played a big role in showing mourning- important, because the whole point of formalized mourning was to convey "be gentle; I'm going through something hard." Matte black jewelry, as from bog oak, jet, or sometimes hardened rubber later on in the 19th century, especially with certain symbols. Anything with a willow and urn motif. A hand holding a wreath. A piece of jewelry marked with someone's name and their age/the year when they died. Sometimes, but not always, jewelry with skulls and skeletons (sometimes that's just because they thought those motifs looked cool). Wearing a veil was also a great way to show mourning, in context with everything else- it's now often associated with especially widows in the mid-19th century.

(It was even harder for men at times, since black suits were wildly popular. Sometimes a black armband would be worn, or strictest matte black in all jewelry like collar and cuff studs. But I've actually read etiquette manuals that are like "it's really hard for men to show that they're in mourning; oops.")

I feel like the idea of formalized mourning is so foreign to us now that we've gotten a little bit overexcited and forgotten that, if it doesn't make sense to us to buy a whole new wardrobe when someone dies, that was probably true back then as well- and if we like black clothing in non-mourning contexts, they probably did, too. You can find advertisements for retailers selling mourning clothes, so people definitely did buy new things for the occasion at times- but they also made good use of what they already had, just like we do now. And wore those same outfits with different contextualizing accessories when mourning was over.

Oh, and the notion that there was a strict, specific term of time you HAD to mourn for different losses in your life, and everyone knew the term and was keeping score? Not as much a thing either. I've read a few books that do proscribe a specific term for different relatives or loved ones who've died, but most also specify that mourning is highly personal and the length that one might mourn varies from person to person. Also, no, widowers were not only required to mourn for a year while widows mourned for two: I found that in a couple of books, but far more that advised the same minimum length of mourning for both losses. There might be judgmental people who thought you Hadn't Mourned For Long Enough, but that's not quite the same as a strict, universally-accepted rule.

And there were all sorts of exceptions- a bride was generally advised to cast off mourning for her wedding day (although one could get married in a black dress, so I guess that just means accessorizing in a more normal way), keeping children in mourning for too long- or sometimes at all! -was believed to be too hard on their little minds during a time of stress...it was all a lot more malleable than we often think nowadays.

Hope this helps!

[beautyofaphrodite]

The Birth of Venus

I’ve started making posts where I dive into certain artistic depictions of Lady Aphrodite. Many are technically Lady Venus but they’re generally depicted the same. I’ve created one on The Birth of Venus by Botticelli already, and an anonymous person requested The Birth of Venus by Cabanel, so here you go!

Alexandre Cabanel

Alexandre Cabanel was a French painter born on September 28, 1823, in Montpellier, France and died on January 23, 1889 in Paris. He tended to paint historical, classical, and religious subjects in the “academic style”. Cabanel was Napoleon III’s favored painter.

Description of the Painting

The Goddess Venus, depicted as pale with long, orange hair, lays on the waves, looking to be asleep or just waking up. Above her, the Erotes, winged babies, blow on seashells and watch over her.

About the Painting

The birth of Venus was painted in 1863 using oil on canvas. Its dimensions are 150 cm × 250 cm (59 in × 98 in), and it is displayed in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Two smaller versions from 1864 and 1875 are on display in the Dahesh Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When painted, this artwork was immediately purchased by Napoleon III for his personal collection.

[zetsubo-bani]

Black butler timeline

Here's a detailed breakdown of the timeline because why not

Confirmed dates will be marked down in red

Dates that are based on my speculation are marked down in blue

State: pre hiatus

Spoilers for the manga obviously

I will continue updating this one

1819: undertaker quitting

1830: 5th april: claudias birth

1851: 13th june: vincents birth

1858: 24th august: agnis birth

1863: 2nd april: jokers birth

1871: 15th march: snake’s birth, somas birth

1874: lizzys birth

1875: 14th december: the birth of the twins

1885: 14th december: vincent and rachels death, the kidnapping of the twins

1888: ciel getting kidnapped by azzuro

may-august: ciel getting hired for the jack the ripper cases

9th november: the last jack the ripper victims death and madam reds death

14th december: lizzy and francis visit ciel for his birthday

december-january: agni and soma come to england, the curry contest, agni trying to give himself in to the police

1889:

january-february: ciel joining the circus troupe and getting sick

9th february: the death of the circus troupe and baron kelvin

10th of february: ciel visiting the orphanage and ninas visit 

march: the murders at the manor, snake being hired as a servant

17th april: the campania started it’s way to america

19th april: the bizarre dolls run free 

20th april: ryan stokers death and the ship sinking

april-may: ciel joining weston college

3rd June: party before the match

4th June: cricket match and the midnight tea party

5th June: the p4 getting expelled

15th august: ciels trip to germany,

16th august: ciel being bedridden and sebastian serving sieglinde

17th august: sieglinde and the phantomtroupe escaping the forest

19th august: ciel bringing sieglinde and wolfram to england,

august: lizzy’s disappearance, ciel getting hired to investigate the music hall

15th november: agnis death, rciels appearance and ociels arrest order

16th november: ociel arriving in lau’s place 

6th december: the phantomtroupe escaping london 

7th december: mey rin arriving at the manor, bard arriving at the sanatorium, finny and snake arriving at the orphanage 

8th december: ran mao getting the invitation, bard getting caught sneaking out by ada

9th december: snakes death, ran mao disappearance, bard confronting ada and lau, finnys escape from the orphanage with the kids,

10th december: mey rin completing her mission, bard getting injured

[luvkyu]

what are we? ( park jongseong/jay )

jay x male!reader

jay and his best friend define their relationship.

content : 1.5k words, fluff, high school!au, bub pet name toward reader

a long, drawn out yawn left y/n's mouth as he looked out of the window in his last class of the day. his closed palm supported his chin on top of his desk, completely spaced out.

"y/n?.. bub!"

y/n snapped of his trance to see his friend standing by his desk now.

"class is over?" y/n asked as he looked around to see everyone gathering their things. jay snickered and nodded.

"daydreaming again? you can borrow my notes again if you need to," jay offered. y/n clicked his tongue as he stuffed his books carelessly into his bag. jay smiled to himself, watching him struggle with the tetris game that is fitting everything into one bag.

"sorry that i don't really care when some not-really-that-important person in history took a shit in 1875 or whatever," y/n responded with another yawn.

jay rolled his eyes and stuck his hand out for his friend to take. y/n finally stood up from his desk before seeing the gesture. he happily took jay's hand as he swung his bag over his shoulder. jay then led the way out of the classroom, following other eager students who were ready to get home.

y/n felt his heartbeat intensify just like it always did when jay held his hand. no matter how many times he silently scolded himself, the feeling never went away. the pair had been friends since their first year of middle school, and y/n's feelings seemed to grow by the day. it didn't help that their peers would ask frequently if they were dating yet, as they were usually holding hands or displaying other kinds of affection. y/n always assumed jay just didn't care what others said or thought, but he was starting to grow desperate to know if the male really only saw him as a friend.

"oh hey, i forgot," jay's voice cut through the noise of the hallway while the two stopped at their lockers, "tonight is the film festival i told you about like a week ago. i know it's short notice, but do you wanna go with me?"

y/n's eyes brightened in excitement at the invitation. there was nothing he'd rather be doing on his friday night than spending time with jay.

"of course, that sounds fun!" he replied. jay nodded, turning his face away from the other to hide his smile.

"cool. well, i have a study group i'm meeting in five minutes, but i can pick you up later and we can go together?"

"sure, that works!"

jay closed his locker while nodding again at the reply. he ruffled y/n's hair fondly before putting his newly filled backpack on.

"i'll text you, bub."

y/n nodded and watched him turn to head toward the library. his nerves, as usual, were left a mess from the nickname jay frequently used. he finally looked away when jay turned a corner, out of sight. he then resumed moving the rest of his books and materials into his bag and closed his small locker door.

before turning to leave, he saw another friend skipping toward him energetically.

"woah, this is the first time i've seen you not with your boyfriend, y/n!" sunoo exclaimed, stopping in front of him. y/n rolled his eyes.

"not my boyfriend, sunoo."

"tsk, sure. not yet."

y/n scrolled through his instagram feed as the opening credits of a film began to play. he was now sitting on a blanket that jay had brought along to the festival. the male had just left to get them snacks and drinks, insisting that y/n stay and relax.

the weather was perfect for a movie night. there was a large screen set up and fairy lights streamed in a few places. many other people were scattered across the grassy hill with blankets and comfy chairs. y/n couldn't help but notice all the couples. he hadn't thought about the fact that the film festival would be filled with couples on dates. the idea of this being a date with jay then seeped into his mind, and it made chills go up his arms.

"okay, i got popcorn and some candy and drinks!" jay's eager voice brought the other out of his thoughts.

"oh, thank you," y/n responded. his cheeks now glowed with a bright pink, which didn't go unnoticed.

y/n watched jay sit down closely next to him, getting settled with the snacks. jay took another large blanket and draped it over their legs while y/n decided to brush off his thoughts for now. if he focused on such things, he knew he wouldn't be able to really enjoy their night together, date or not.

"you okay, bub?"

y/n looked at him and gave him a convincing smile.

"i'm fine!"

jay grinned at the cute response and nodded before the duo turned their attention to the screen and began eating.

throughout the movie, they managed to finish their popcorn and naturally move closer to each other without a thought. jay's arm soon hung around y/n's shoulder while the latter's head rested on his chest. this was nothing abnormal for the pair, having cuddled many times before, but something felt off. something different was in the air between them tonight and y/n couldn't decide if he was crazy or if jay could feel it too.

"open," jay said quietly as he held two pieces of candy in front of his friend's mouth. y/n smiled and obliged before jay fed him one piece and popped the second into his own mouth. y/n looked up at him, but jay's gaze was already turned back to the film.

y/n's line of sight suddenly landed on his other friend from a ways away. sunoo was comfortable with sunghoon on their own blanket, but sunoo's view was trapped on y/n and jay, making kissy faces toward them. y/n felt his anxiety rise, hoping jay wouldn't see.

to y/n's relief, sunghoon saw sunoo's teasing. unsurprised, he simply turned sunoo's head back to the screen and pat his head as if saying, 'now stay'. y/n made a mental note to thank sunghoon later.

eventually, the film finally ended and chatter filled the area. jay yawned lightly while y/n stretched in his arms.

"there's another one playing right?" y/n asked.

"yeah, but i think there's a small break before it starts."

y/n nodded and sat up to stretch a bit more. jay gazed at his friend, a little disappointed at the loss of closeness. he watched y/n run a hand through his hair and then check his phone for any notifications. jay felt mesmerized by the view, but could feel nervousness sprout in his chest. he didn't think this was how just friends were supposed to feel. he'd been unable to decipher his feelings in the past, but lately they'd become much clearer.

jay's thoughts were cut off as y/n set his phone down and went back to cuddle him. he now laid on top of jay with his head on his chest again, jay's hands going to play with his hair.

jay couldn't stop a smile from curving on his lips. he somehow felt his confidence bubble up in that moment, deciding to finally go for it. but before he could speak, y/n beat him to it.

"jay?"

"hm?"

"what are we?"

jay's heart skipped a beat.

"oh.. well," he paused. what exactly were they? y/n meant the world to him. he was the first person he thought of in the morning. he was the first person he shared good news with. y/n was just everything.

"we're best friends," jay finally said. he couldn't quite read y/n's reaction, but decided to continue anyways.

"but i'd like to be more."

y/n's face brightened now, a little shocked.

"really?? like.." he stopped while jay smiled again and nodded.

"like boyfriends," jay finished for him.

y/n's whole face went red, unable to stop his own smile now.

'boyfriends', he thought. the simple word ran on repeat in his head for a minute. this couldn't possibly be reality.

"boyfriends.. jay's boyfriend. y/n and jay boyfriends," y/n mumbled in awe. jay laughed lightly at his disbelief.

"you're so cute.. is that a yes, then? ..boyfriends?" jay asked. y/n finally looked at him again and nodded happily.

"boyfriends," he replied as he tightened his arms around him. jay quickly hugged him back as they laid on their blanket in content.

"y/n?"

the male looked up again at the sound of his name, meeting jay's gentle eyes.

"can i kiss you?" he asked. y/n's smile somehow grew even bigger. he nodded again before jay moved to press their lips together softly.

once separated, jay pulled their second blanket back over them as the next film's intro began playing. y/n's head rested on his chest again, not really caring much for the film as nothing could quite amount to the comfort of his new boyfriend.

[achillesuwu]

Modern with magic au where reincarnated Arthur (doesn't remember a thing yet) and the others 100% believe merlin cheat in magic class because there is just NO WAY and they try to prove it

Merlin is a student or a teacher? Who know, which one is funnier.

Wait actually BOTH are extremely funny lol Like you get that one teacher who teach basic magic to that group of 20-23 years old and everytime they start their class their hands are shaking because THE MOST prestigious magic teacher and Emrys ™ is RIGHT THERE and last time they dared to glance at his note he was literally resolving an impossible magical problem by drawing a magical circle into a fucking eyes.

Poor teacher is not pay enough for this 😔

Also the idea of the teacher asking Merlin if he could stay a bit after class and Arthur, Gwen and the Knights thinking he finally got caught but unknowingly to them it's just the teacher asking if Merlin could do a autograph on their "Impossible Magic LVII - New edition of 1875 by M." book (it's a book about all the magic one theorical can do but in practice you need to be at least 100 high ranks magic users to do the easiest spell and the other are just "Only Emrys can do it" but many people like to learn them to understand better how magic work on larger scale)

[tamayula-hl]

Headcanon about Sebastian and my mc, Sakurako

NOTE ･Sakurako is a Mary Sue-like character with an unrealistic personality. Reading is not recommended if you don't like Mary Sue-like OCs! ･It's very long. To be honest, all the descriptions of Sakurako are nothing more than a product of complacency for me. I am a little embarrassed to disclose my headcanon, which is filled with these particular settings and delusions...😳 ･Read from the top right in Japanese manga style. ･And again, please bear with my poor English🤣

Until admission to Hogwarts

In 1875, Sakurako was born into a former samurai family when the cherry trees (sakura) were in bloom. In Japan, the samurai society was abolished around 1868 and the samurai were forced to take the status of commoners. Sakurako's samurai-turned-commoner father became a successful trader and took young Sakurako and his family to Britain to get serious about the raw silk trade with Britain. (At the time, there was a thriving raw silk trade between the British and Japanese.)

Her father, who had a male-dominated mindset due to his birth in a samurai society, restricted her from academic opportunities that she did not need for a better marriage. Whenever she went out of the house, local children always made fun of her yellow skin. One day, after such a depressing life, with the sudden awakening of her magical powers, Sakurako received her Hogwarts acceptance letter and became a member of the Wizarding World, a place free of sexism and racism, where she had a fateful meeting with Sebastian and formed a warped love with him.

During the relationship quest with Sebastian

In my personal opinion, I consider Sebastian to be a very calculating character. Sebastian initially comes into contact with Sakurako as a means of breaking Anne's curse. Sakurako takes an early liking to the boy, Sebastian, who is very kind and helpful to her in her first time in the wizarding world, but it is around the 'In the shadow of the study' quest that Sebastian begins to take a liking to Sakurako. Having grown up watching her parents become arrogant new rich through their success in the trades, Sakurako has a desire to be a good person who is not conceited by her talents and luck. Impressed by the fact that the wizarding world is free from sexism and racism and that everyone treats her with openness, Sakurako is so excited that she takes on any request from anyone without refusal. Sakurako feels threatened by Sebastian's obsession with the relics after "In the shadow of the study", but she can't refuse Sebastian's request and continues to cooperate with him. Then came the tragedy of 'Avada Kedavra'.

After all is over, Sakurako realises how stupid she has been. She continued to help Sebastian (and the other students) out of kindness and goodwill, but as a result she realised that she was not a good person, but an arrogant monster with no sense of right and wrong. Sebastian's mistakes were all her fault, and she blamed herself from this moment until her death, and she would have lifelong thoughts of 'rewinding time and starting all over again'. Sakurako was deeply in love with Sebastian at this point, but out of remorse she tried to distance herself from him. However, Sebastian forcefully continued to contact Sakurako, confessed his fondness and they began dating.

About relationships

Elsewhere, Sakurako had established a friendship with Anne over a number of correspondence until tragedy struck, which was disrupted by Anne's disappearance after Solomon's death. In my headcanon, Sebastian heard the news of Anne's death in the seventh year, and Sakurako was also deeply saddened and even more remorseful when she heard of her death. Sakurako kept Anne's letters and the last letter she was unable to send to Anne for the rest of her life.

Subsequent relationship with Sebastian Since she and Sebastian have been seeing each other, Sakurako has been constantly worried that the love Sebastian has for her is not genuine love, but an obsession caused by the confusion and trauma of losing Anne. She was aware that their relationship was codependent, not healthy love, yet she spent her days loving Sebastian so much that she could not reject him. She dreads every day that one day Sebastian's love will disappear and he will instead resent her and saying 'Solomon's death was your fault'. When she is in the seventh year and thinking seriously about her future life, she finally decides to break up with Sebastian.

When Sebastian realised that Sakurako was acting strangely and that she wanted to break up with him, he asked her to marry him in The Great Hall at a crowded time, in front of many people watching, in a situation where she could not say 'no'. As per Sebastian's cunning intentions, Sakurako is unable to reject Sebastian and becomes engaged to him. However, even after her engagement, Sakurako's insecurities were not exhausted. Worried that she would never be happy even if she married him in an unhealthy codependent state, Sakurako finally came to her senses and, after secretly returning the engagement ring in Sebastian's bag after the graduation ceremony, disappeared without saying anything to him. Sakurako then went to Japan and spent her days learning about Japanese native magic, which she had long been interested in. However, after about a year, she is discovered by Sebastian. After Sebastian apologises for how selfish he had been, he asks Sakurako to marry him again. After a few days of deliberation and discussion with Sebastian, Sakurako accepts his engagement with a smile.

(This is an Illustration I drew for a previous Twitter post introducing the MC's image song) Afterwards, Sakurako returned to Britain and officially married Sebastian, giving birth to their first daughter the following year, and then to male and female twins the year after that.

About the death of Sakurako Sakurako became Unspeakable of the Department of Mysteries shortly after returning to Britain. https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Department_of_Mysteries#Early_history It is official canon in the Wizarding World that the Department of Mysteries conducted time travel experiments in the 1890s and then had a serious time accident in 1899. I have built on this canon to create a head canon in which Sakurako dies in 1899.

Ever since the tragedy of 1890, Sakurako had been harbouring a wish to 'go back in time and do it all over again so that Sebastian would not make the same mistakes'. Then, she is asked by the other Unspeakables to help them with a time travel experiment using her ancient magical powers. She understands that it is a dangerous experiment, but with a strong desire to redo the past, she accepts the request and takes part in the experiment.

Then one day in 1899, Sakurako was involved in a time accident with Madam Mintumble and her existence was lost. The Department of Mysteries determined that she had died in the chasm of time.

When Sebastian heard the news of his wife's death, he despaired violently, but had no time to grieve as he had the three young children Sakurako had left behind to look after. He vowed to raise them well on his own. After his wife's death, Sebastian, who had been active in the outside world as an Auror, moved inside work and, after the twins entered Hogwarts, became a Professor of Charm, watching over his precious children as they grew up.

The consequences for Sebastian and Sakurako I consider an even more specific headcanon for Sakurako: 'She survived only her soul by the power of an ancient magic, losing her memory and trapped in an endless loop of time'.

She loses her memory but somehow survives with only her soul and travels back in time to 1890 with only her soul for her obsessive wish to 'start all over again for Sebastian'. But because she has lost her memory, she ends up repeating the same mistakes and is unable to save Sebastian, despairing and wishing to 'start all over' again. Trapped in the Ouroboros circle of time and tormented by eternal guilt… is the headcanon about her. (I love novels and movies about time leaps and infinite loops… 😳) But I also have two possible outcomes when she is able to escape the endless loop. The first is route A. If Sakurako is able to time leap without losing her memories.

(I like Butterfly Effect soooooo much!!!!!!!!) During that fateful encounter with Sebastian at DADA on her first day of transfer, when he spoke to her after class, she rejected him and said terrible things to him. Sakurako thinks that that tragedy happens because she and Sebastian have become friends, so she tries to save him by making Sebastian hate her… and so the ending goes.

And Route B. If by the power of love she accidentally escapes from the infinite loop and travels back in time to a world 100 years later. (Never mind the details. The power of love is powerful in the Wizarding World, right?)

She is miraculously reunited with Sebastian, who has been surviving and waiting for her return for all of a hundred years… and that is the ending. Having fulfilled his purpose in life, Sebastian soon dies, and Sakurako's soul, weakened by multiple time slips, also ascends.

In any case, Sebastian and Sakurako do not end up completely happy… which is my preference. I love tragic love stories 😂 But it's nice to see these tragic couples having fun in extra episodes and so on!

(The drawing on the left is part of a cartoon I drew when the Sebastian T-shirt was decided to be launched. The drawing on the right is a parody/trace of a meme that used to be popular in Japan)

These are my headcanons on Sebastian and Sakurako! I'm honestly embarrassed to reveal my brain fantasies 😳. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this long post! 😭💓 The following are the Japanese versions!

[daydreaming-en-pointe]

the swan and her princess (part 1)

summary: Swan Lake isn’t all beauty and grace, contrary to popular belief. And you experience firsthand that as you wage a one-sided war with your “rival” for the role of the Swan Princess, Odette.

pairing: Gwen Stacy (Spider-Woman) x fem!Ballerina!Reader

word count: 842

warnings: uses of Y/N, lots of ballet terms and references, the teacher displaying blatant favouritism ig?, mildly petty reader 💀

a/n: I finally got around to doing it! yay :D academic rivals to lovers ftw honestly

gearing up for my first official chapter-based fanfic WHOOOOOOOOO

dividers by me btw! it’s my first time doing dividers so any feedback would be appreciated <3

part 1 // part 2 (pending)

glossary:

Swan Lake: Swan Lake, Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. It is now one of the most popular ballets of all time. The ballet is based on a German fairy tale, and tells the story of a prince named Siegfried who falls in love with Odette, a princess who has been turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer

Odette: Odette is the main female protagonist in the ballet "Swan Lake," which is composed by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. She is the White Swan, also known as the Swan Princess/Swan Queen.

Anna Pavlova: Anna Pavlovna Pavlova was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev. (basically, every ballerina’s idol)

first position: In the first position, the heels are together, with toes turned out until the feet are in a large, open V or a straight line.

relevé: Relevé is a French term meaning "raised up." It is one of the basic ballet moves. The dancer starts in a demi-plié (a move where the dancer bends their knees halfway while keeping their feet on the ground) and then rises up into demi-pointe (on the balls of the feet) or en pointe (on the toes), either on one foot or both feet.

“Let’s take it from the top, Y/N. More turned out this time. And your ‘wings’ aren’t flowy enough. You are the very Swan Princess, not a struggling cygnet. You die gracefully.”

You blew air threw your nose a little more forcefully than you usually would, trying your best to follow your ballet teacher’s instructions.

“Ah, Gwendolyn! So nice of you to join us.”

That statement was usually used sarcastically in most settings. So why did your teacher’s voice take on a note of adoration? You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, not even looking at the new arrival. All she ever did was drop into class half an hour late - without even doing her hair in a proper bun - and get showered with praises for everything she did. Always Gwen this, Gwen that. You were so sick of it.

“Gwen, if you decide to try out, you would be a perfect fit for the White Swan,” Your teacher eagerly told her, and your ‘flowy feathers’ tightened into fists. Just brilliant. In her eyes, you had no chance at Odette, did you? Once again, Gwendolyn Stacy would swoop in and snatch up something you had worked so hard for, spending hours upon hours on late nights at the studio practising alone, all because the teacher thought she was the next Anna Pavlova. But every time, you bit your tongue and kept your head down. One day, you would show them. You would show them all how good you were. And little Gwendolyn Stacy, the number one teacher’s pet, would watch and weep.

You cleared your throat to jolt your teacher out of her rambling. “Miss? My audition?”

She blinked as if she were just noticing you. “Ah, right. Yes, you may continue.”

You were ready to hurl your pointe shoes at both of their annoying faces, but you focused on making yourself extra turned out and extra graceful. Oh, how the tables would turn when you got this role.

You risked a glance out of the corner of your eye and noticed with a smug satisfaction that Gwen was staring at you, eyes wide. Completely enthralled.

Ha-ha, Gwendolyn Stacy. Look upon actual, hard-earned talent and despair.

You finished the Dying Swan - the Swan Lake piece you were doing for your audition - and bowed, standing in first position with your head held high.

“Thank you, Y/N. That was very nice. Everyone, let’s get started. Get your shoes on and get into your positions at the barre, please.”

Ugh, the barre positions. Your arch-nemesis, apart from a certain Gwen Stacy. Well, maybe not apart from her, since your barre position was right in front of her.

“One, two, three, four - hold, two, three four…”

You tuned out the voice of your ballet teacher; the exercise was purely muscle memory to you by now, and her voice was only distracting you at the moment.

“Hey, Y/N.”

You were pulled out of your intense focus by the voice behind you. Once you realised who it was, you had to resist the urge to scoff. “What is it?”

“I, uh… I just wanted to say that you did amazing. It was very graceful. You’ll make a good White Swan.” That almost made you lose your balance in a relevé and twist your ankle, because what?

Gwen Stacy thought that you’d get the role?

Oh. That was new.

Or maybe it wasn’t, and you were just imagining the whole ‘undeserving slacker’ thing and painting her as the bad guy…?

You almost giggled at that. Nah. This was definitely some ploy to get you to relax a little, to stop practising almost obsessively. Yeah, she was just trying to ensure you weren’t a threat. The moment you let down your guard, she would snatch up the role of Odette. You just knew it. Well, she could try all she wanted; you would not make it easy for her.

“Oh, I know,” You replied coolly, ending the exercise with everyone else and turning to offer her a politely bored smile. “But thank you.”

Gwen’s smile dropped a little and her eyebrows scrunched together slightly, her piercings glinting in the studio’s warm light. “Okay, well… I’ll see you around, I guess.”

She reached down and grabbed her duffel bag, unceremoniously dropping her teal pointe shoes into the mess of clothes and who knows what else she kept in it.

You kept your eyes on her until she disappeared out the studio’s door after a quick goodbye to the teacher. She was like a ghost, always appearing and flickering out just as quickly as one. And somehow always getting away with it, every single time. Not to mention… she was also somehow really good. Despite missing classes and coming late.

“Remember, class. Now that I’ve seen all your auditions, the roles will be up next week. Don’t be late,” your teacher called as you all left the building.

You kissed your teeth in annoyance. Yeah, don’t be late. Unless you’re Gwen Stacy.

Good grief, that girl would be the death of you.

Taglist: (reply to be added!)

@hobiebrownismygod @l0starl @therealloopylupin2099

[hazyange1s]

Garreth Weasley HCs

To round out the big three… here’s my favorite ginger and all the rotting thoughts about him straight from my brain. HELP because they are well and truly eating away at me

Excellent baker. Constantly surprising his friends with random desserts he’s made (some of which may or may not be magically enhanced…)

Man just loves his food. One of the only times you’ll ever see him truly angry is when he hasn’t eaten in a while.

Gryffindor Beater = canon. Gotta put that pent up energy to good use somehow.

Favorite color is a light sage green.

Surprises everyone with his talent and passion for Herbology — he works on the family garden at home as well, and finds that it’s one of the few times his mind is quiet.

Really, Garreth is just very hands on in every sense of the word. It’s why he doesn’t do as well in the more theory-based classes.

BI-CON I SAID WHAT I SAID

Starts selling his (tested) brews in sixth/seventh year to save up for his own Potions shop after graduating.

Seems oblivious, but he notices a lot more than he lets on. Keeping things light and easy is preferable to causing a fuss in his mind.

His birthday is August 12, 1875. He’s a leo sun, sagittarius moon, leo rising.

Secret wizard’s chess prodigy

Horrible short term memory, AMAZING long term memory (very ADHD)

Amortentia: cinnamon, (caramelized) brown sugar, hay/grass, and cauldron fumes

Has four siblings. A younger sister; Charlotte, and three older brothers: Archie, Owen, and Phillip.

Really close with his mum, as well — like, owls her on schedule every week.

Shockingly Type A and obsessive about the things he loves (Potions being one of them, obviously) to the point of exuding “mad genius” on a regular basis. I just imagine him buried in notes and pulling out his hair over the right ingredient.

HUGE flirt with absolutely everyone, though 99% of the time it’s all a jest, and sometimes he doesn’t even realize. Somehow, he gets rather flustered when it’s turned back on him by the true object of his affections.

Because underneath that easy confidence and carefree attitude is someone who constantly wonders if they’re not enough — or too much.

Still the most encouraging and loyal friend you’ll ever have. golden retriever energy

[rebeltarot]

FORECAST ➕ Your 2024

Your reblogs are highly appreciated. Thank you so much for supporting my work!

[3 piles] ・ [3 decks] ・ [8 cards for each pile] ・ [letters, signs, messages, songs]

Hello friends! How insane that we are almost at the end of 2023. How has this year been treating you, and what are you looking forward to in 2024? Definitely let me know. I am so excited for this new year which is why I decided to create a reading all about what 2024 has in store for you. Enjoy. <3

Painting: The Birth of Venus - Alexandre Cabanel (1875)

Helpful Links: How to choose your pile ➕ Request a reading

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© rebeltarot 2023 - all rights reserved ・ do not steal, copy, change, or redistribute my content.

PILE 01 ➕

Disclaimer: All Tarot readings on this blog are meant for entertainment purposes only. My Pick-a-card readings are based on my knowledge of the tarot and my intuition. Tarot is a divination tool and should not be considered a replacement for medical or professional guidance. It is not intended to be used as such, and any choices made in response to my readings are your own responsibility. All interpretations are speculative, and whether you believe in it is your choice. Readings are for self-reflection purposes only; take what resonates, and leave the rest. My readings are timeless unless stated otherwise.

CONFIRMATION

Signs and confirmation that this is your pile. This can be anything from your initials, astrological placements, significant messages or signs, places, songs, etc. Please use your discernment.

14:14, E, E, L, N, Good news in two weeks, Big, Like a thief in the night you stole my heart and called me yours, Empowerment, You got me painting pictures in my head, Wherever you go - go with all your heart, July, Cancer, Leo, 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

Life path or personal year number: 6, 5, 2

Song: My Power - CHIKA

YOUR 2024

Tarot: 6 of wands (Challenge Winner), King of cups (The Single Dad), 2 of pentacles (Final Two), 2 of Cups (Cheers)

Oracle: Socks, (Community), The Pillar, (Manifest)

Hello, Pile 01, and welcome to your reading. How has this year been treating you, and what are you looking forward to in 2024? Wow, we are starting with an amazing card: the 6 of wands. In 2024, you will experience success and public recognition. Something that you have been working towards and desiring to achieve will make a lot of progress, moving you toward the finish line. You will be celebrated by your surroundings and the people in your life, and I do feel like this win will lead to you having more confidence. The Final Rose deck that I am using for this reading also has additional keywords on its cards; in this case, it reads Challenge Winner. You will achieve something that was not easy, but you were passionate about it. You will be recognized for it not just by those around you but also by yourself. The King of Cups is our next card, and it reads: The single dad. You will meet a new person in 2024. This could be a father figure or just a figure of authority in your life. Someone who is guiding you through your journey. This could be someone who has achieved something on their own and is now teaching you to do the same with knowledge, intelligence, and a lot of compassion. This person seems devoted to either you personally or your cause. For some of you, you might be starting something new. We have a child standing on their dad's feet, and he is guiding the way. It feels like whatever you are starting or birthing in 2024 will be supported and guided by a benefactor. Someone who has already forged the path and is willing to guide you and help you balance your heart and your head. In 2024, you will have multiple priorities in life, and you will be improving your time management. Your resourcefulness will be key during the upcoming year, and it will help you adapt to whatever situations may come your way. It's so interesting because the King of Cups has talked about balancing your head and your heart, and the 2 of pentacles confirm just that. You might be making impactful decisions in 2024. Your bottom deck is the 2 of cups. Two figures are toasting to each other with a glass of bubbly. Again, there is a lot to celebrate, and this King of Cups person seems to play a big role in terms of you achieving your goals. This could simply be about a supporter with similar goals and interests, or it could be a romantic relationship and a partner who supports you and cheers you on. Take it, however, it resonates. Either way, love will play a role in 2024 as well, as it draws through your entire reading with it being your bottom deck, aka your underlying energy. I am so happy for you, pile 1. You will experience a lot of wins, and there will be multiple reasons for you to celebrate.

Your first oracle card is the socks card, and it talks about being cozy and introspection. Funnily, it made me think of the Beyonce song 'Cozy' which essentially talks about being cozy with oneself. You might want to give it a listen. I do think that you will be comfortable with who you are and who you are becoming in 2024, but do not let your comfort stop you from experiencing yourself and the world around you. Community will play a huge role in your coming year, especially this King of Cups person, as it sits above the community card in your spread. Partnerships in general are a big topic, be it professional, business, friendship, romantic partnership, or even all. You will come to find out the significance of 1:1 connections. Next, we have the pillar, which lets me know that you will build a strong foundation in the coming year, one that will support you through the years to come. This obviously relates to the community you are building, but it might also relate to the decisions you are making throughout the next year. It seems significant, and with the manifest card being the bottom deck here, it also heavily relates to your goals and your wishes. So overall, you will be laying the foundations for your manifestations to arrive in your life. This is such a wonderful reading. May you have a very blessed 2024! I would love to hear what you are excited about and what your goals are for the coming year. ♡♡

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© rebeltarot 2023 - all rights reserved ・ do not steal, copy, change, or redistribute my content.

PILE 02 ➕

Disclaimer: All Tarot readings on this blog are meant for entertainment purposes only. My Pick-a-card readings are based on my knowledge of the tarot and my intuition. Tarot is a divination tool and should not be considered a replacement for medical or professional guidance. It is not intended to be used as such, and any choices made in response to my readings are your own responsibility. All interpretations are speculative, and whether you believe in it is your choice. Readings are for self-reflection purposes only; take what resonates, and leave the rest. My readings are timeless unless stated otherwise.

CONFIRMATION

Signs and confirmation that this is your pile. This can be anything from your initials, astrological placements, significant messages or signs, places, songs, etc. Please use your discernment.

C, I, G, T, Friday, Toxic, Gamine, Winter, Passionate, Younger, Christmas isn't a season - it's a feeling, June, Gemini, Cancer, 4, 11, 18, 25

Life path or personal year number: 5, 9, 2

Song: VKTM - SICKOTOY, INNA

YOUR 2024

Tarot: 5 of swords (Tattletale), The Hierophant (The Host), The Moon, Page of Swords (The Gossip)

Oracle: Frozen, Free Will, Death, Paradox

Hello, Pile 02, and welcome to your reading. How has this year been treating you, and what are you looking forward to in 2024? In 2024, you will find out who your real friends are. There might be some conflict and some arguments that you will have to deal with; however, it will allow you to get rid of people who bully and intimidate you. This hostility is something you have carried over from this year. These people that we are talking about here are people who judge you for the things you love and for what you stand for. They are unhappy and are therefore projecting this energy onto you. With two major Arcana cards showing up, it feels like a significant year. One in which you will discover your values and your morals. You will reflect on traditions, weed out what doesn't align with you, and keep the things that bring you joy. It's a year of spiritual wisdom as well as learning and education. The moon card confirms that you will discover something—some sort of truth—that will disillusion you and that will help you face your fears and your anxiety. Funnily enough, in this deck, there is a dancing couple on the moon card, and again, the hierophant is represented by a host. I do think that you will be open to whatever lessons are coming toward you. Whatever the moon card will unveil, it will be a blessing for you and will lead to a lot of magical moments. Your bottom deck is the page of swords with the keyword gossip. There is someone in your life who has negatively influenced you—someone who loves to gossip about things but equally gossips about you to others. I feel like this is a person who is curious and prying, and this someone rarely has good intentions when sharing personal information or judging other people. This could be someone younger than you and who might be an air sign (Libra, Aquarius, and Gemini; Sagittarius also came to mind).

We have the frozen card as your first oracle. It reads as follows: "Someone or something in this situation has gone cold. Some things are meant to remain in a state of winter; others can thaw out and be brought back to life again." This challenge card is sitting below the 5 of swords. I do think some of you will cut contact with this person or these people, and others will resolve this issue and start afresh with said people. Either way, it won't be easy, and it will lead to uncomfortable conversations, but with the free will card, we can see that eventually, everything is your choice. You decide how this will end and whether there is something to salvage. You have to make a decision, though, because the status quo is not meant to be carried over into 2025; it has to be dealt with in 2024. Next, we have the death card, which talks about change as well as the ending of a cycle. Changes are coming towards you and an exciting new beginning and experience. Some things will come to an end. It does not only have to relate to the person but also to your mindset and negative thought patterns. You will clean the house in 2024, giving yourself a fresh start. The paradox card is our final card. It made me think of the saying "the beginning of the end," which in itself is a paradox, no? But if we shift our perspective and consider an end as something that happens over multiple instances or chapters, then the meaning of the saying becomes clear. I do think that, essentially, you will learn that endings can be a good thing and that death and rebirth can be exciting and something you look forward to. This year might have two sides of the coin for you. And when you think you have lost or experienced something bad, you will soon realize that it was a blessing for you. It's a year full of change and growth for you, and you will come out of it wiser and stronger. I am so excited to hear your thoughts on your reading. What are your plans for 2024, and what are the goals you've set for the upcoming year?

Your reblogs are highly appreciated. Thank you so much for supporting my work!

© rebeltarot 2023 - all rights reserved ・ do not steal, copy, change, or redistribute my content.

PILE 03 ➕

Disclaimer: All Tarot readings on this blog are meant for entertainment purposes only. My Pick-a-card readings are based on my knowledge of the tarot and my intuition. Tarot is a divination tool and should not be considered a replacement for medical or professional guidance. It is not intended to be used as such, and any choices made in response to my readings are your own responsibility. All interpretations are speculative, and whether you believe in it is your choice. Readings are for self-reflection purposes only; take what resonates, and leave the rest. My readings are timeless unless stated otherwise.

CONFIRMATION

Signs and confirmation that this is your pile. This can be anything from your initials, astrological placements, significant messages or signs, places, songs, etc. Please use your discernment.

A, I, B, blank, Look out for trouble within a few days, Your next love affair will surprise you, Do you want me the way I want you?, Don't forget to be awesome, February, Aquarius, Pisces, 5, 12, 19, 26

Life path or personal year number: 9, 3, 6, 1

Song: I am - Jim Jones, Hitmaka, Stefflon Don

YOUR 2024

Tarot: The Hermit (ITM), The Hanged Man (The Cliffhanger), 6 of cups (Butterflies), 10 of pentacles (Hometowns)

Oracle: Socks, Maze, Dare to Dream, Self-Love

Hello, Pile 03, and welcome to your reading. How has this year been treating you, and what are you looking forward to in 2024? The hermit is your first card, and I love this energy for you. In 2024, you will go within and discover that you possess an intrinsic value. It's a year of discovering your self-worth and practicing self-love. You will be seeking out your own company more, getting to know yourself, and gathering as well as honoring your internal wisdom. The hanged man is reaffirming this message. The way you look at yourself and your worth will change and shift into a perspective of acceptance and appreciation. I do think that for most of you, this is a journey that you have already embarked on and that you will continue in 2024. I do feel that you will graduate in this area in 2024. The 6 of cups relate to childhood memories, innocence, joy, goodwill, and sometimes nostalgia. In this deck, it relates to butterflies. You will have a glow-up this year, both internal and external. You will graduate from your old mindsets and your old ways of being and seeing the world. Whatever perspectives dictated your life before 2024 will be overcome during the next year, and it will be a process that ultimately leads to freedom. Most of you will heal old wounds and old negative mindsets, and I do think that there will be a newfound appreciation for your inner child and your childhood as a whole. The 10 of pentacles confirm that you are ending a cycle successfully and starting a brand new one. Some of you may be returning to your hometowns; others might be leaving them. Either way, I do feel like in 2024 you will reflect a lot about your past as well as past connections and experiences. Family, be it by blood or by choice, will be a source of support for you during the end of this cycle. You might even consider or reflect on different traditions that you want to continue or let go of. This is a prosperous year for you, one of windfalls and abundance.

The sock card lets us know that you will be comfortable, not just overall but especially in your skin. You will be able to sit with yourself even if it's uncomfortable, or rather, especially when it is. What you will find out is that you can rely on yourself and that you are the last person who will ever abandon you again. It's a big year of introspection and getting to know oneself. However, make sure that you do not get too cozy and shut out the entire world. Solitude is important, but balance is key. The maze card is next, and it talks about a choice. I feel like something that was put on hold is coming back up again in 2024, and a choice has to be made to move forward. You might have been stuck in a certain area of life; however, you will find the puzzle piece that is missing, helping you to move forward. Next, we have the 'dare to dream' card, and I love that it sits below the 6 of cups. You will break through any barriers or boundaries that have kept you small and confined, and you will allow yourself to live authentically. You are going for the big dreams and the big goals this year. You allow yourself to take up the space needed, and you say yes to yourself, your dreams, and your goals. In combination with the self-love card, it's a blessed and prosperous prediction. You will find pride in yourself, and you will have reasons to be proud of who you are and who you are becoming. Your year is filled with a lot of elements that will fill your cup. I hope you have the best year ever. Let me know your thoughts about this reading and what your big plans are for 2024. Have a blessed year. <3

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© rebeltarot 2023 - all rights reserved ・ do not steal, copy, change, or redistribute my content.

[pmamtraveller]

SCENES FROM MODERN LIFE; THOMAS EAKINS

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) was an influential American painter known for his realism and focus on the human form. His father was a calligrapher and writing teacher, and at first, that seems to have been Thomas Eakins’ direction, too. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he learnt drawing and anatomy.

The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull) (1871)

Created to commemorate the victory of Eakins's friend, Max Schmitt, in a rowing competition on Philadelphia's Schuylkill River. Eakins, a passionate oarsman himself, depicted Schmitt in a moment of calm rather than in the throes of competition. The painting captures great detail in the water, oars, and weather, Eakins even included himself in the artwork, rowing in the background.

Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic) (1875)

It is a portrait of the renowned Philadelphia surgeon in the surgical amphitheater of Jefferson Medical College (now part of Thomas Jefferson University). Eakins includes himself in the painting, seated at the far left, sketching the scene. The patient's mother, who looks away and shields her eyes, unable to watch the surgery, is also included. The procedure took place before the advent of aseptic technique, so instruments were clean but not sterile, gloves and gowns were not worn.

Arcadia (c 1883)

This painting was an unusual venture into mythology, created during a period when Eakins was experimenting with photography. Eakins had bought his first camera in 1880 and started to use it as a photographic sketchbook. Although it can be read as another step in his campaign for painting from life, the work features models posed in a pastoral setting, including his future wife, Susan Macdowell, and his nephew, Ben Crowell.

Swimming (The Swimming Hole) (1885)

Bathers have been a popular and recurrent theme in paintings since the dawn of the art. Here, Eakins features identifiable figures, which are Eakins himself and several of his students. However, its exhibition in 1885 sparked controversy due to its graphic portrayal of nudity and identifiable figures. This backlash contributed to Eakins's resignation from the Academy in 1886 after a series of complaints about his promotion of nude studies.

The Agnew Clinic (1889)

This fine painting shows the surgeon performing a partial mastectomy, and the whole scene is a testament of how surgery had advanced in just fourteen years. The clean white gowns worn by the doctors, the use of sterilized instruments, techniques promoted by Agnew. Eakins completed the painting quickly, in just three months, rather than the year he took for his earlier masterpiece, The Gross Clinic.