#I think literally the only things from this book I accurately remembered were

[sprucestairs]

hhhhhh I need to properly reread Percy jackson again. This post brought to you by the fact I was about to make a post about a scene I very vividly remember of Will Solace trying to convince Pollux not to keep fighting with his good arm broken before Percy manages to convince him not to bc he promised Dionysus, then thought to myself "huh maybe I should fact check that- I mean I did also convince myself that Travis stoll died in this battle when he actually just went to college." And guess what? That scene ✨️didn't happen.✨️ Pollux was trying to convince Percy to let him rejoin the fight very half heartedly, while propped against a tree, and Percy was just like "hmmmm... no"

[chu-uu]

Why is nobody talking about how cute this story is???

I'll write roughly what happened so majoorr spoillerr

Mind you that i used google translation so it's definitely not accurate

It all starts with kid!Gil exchanging letters with his mother. He wanted to write her something other than the usual about what he does with his only friend Chevalier, which was reading books and eating at food stalls. He then suggests they play a rhodolitian game.

Gil can't play with other kids because he runs out of breath quickly + he's not good at walking or running so he couldn't play with them in the end. After countless rejections from chevalier, he suggests they host a tea party (a rhodolitan tradition) that's what he observed clavis doing with other kids.

The whole story goes on by chev saying to gil " I dont remember being your friend". He's being a tiny tsun tsun whenever gil calls him my friend.

On that day, gil keeps waiting until the sun sets. He senses something wrong because chev isn't the type to break a promise. Finally, Chevalier appears and Gil immediately notices that chev is sick, he has a fever, a poisonous one. He asks him how could nobody in his family notice! Well, we already know how everyone walks on eggshells around Chev (except for clavis). Gil asks he why he'd come if he is poisoned, chev replied by saying that gilbert would keep waiting for him until the morning.

Gil literally cried

So Gil decides ( while holding chev's hands) that he'll take care of chev and stay by his side while he rests since chev already reached his limits

Here's what he said

* I think they meant chev sweaty hands never left Gil's cold hands.

Now back to when they are adults.

Kind of the same thing happens

Chev notices Gil's fever from his irregular breathing and tells him indirectly to rest ��� "shut yourself in your room and be quiet I'm responsible if anything happens to our guests"

The story ends in a sad way where they talk about what changed ever since they were young

gil says he has a lot of friends now !

As chev snorts and leaves majestically gil continues..

[jasonsknight3]

Welp, it’s time, the new story has officially begun. This story takes place in Arkham knight. The Halloween that ruined so many lives and brought o the worst of the worst. However, what part do you play in it? How do you fit into the story? Well, fear not because I have to e answer.

Side note: this story is planed to literally take place during the time of the Arkham game and comic book. I will keep it as accurate as possible however, I will be taking and changing some things because I’m adding you in it. It will largely stay the same though. Enjoy!

The longest night

Chapter one

“Memory lane”

Jason. The closest thing to love you felt. Being with him felt good. Even though you were only 15, you felt that you could marry the guy. A match made in heaven. He was your voice when you couldn’t speak up, you were his reason when he had none. The emotional connection between you two was undeniable. Jason was also Robin, a hero, a boy with a heart of gold. Maybe that’s why you felt for him. Despite his rough upbringing and living on his own from 13-15 with his troubles his heart had golden roots.

Shrugging on your jacket, you left your apartment to buy a week's worth of groceries like you usually do every Monday. The fall air was a little nippy but not too bad. The only downside was there wasn’t much foliage in gothams cores so, no colorful leaves to be found unless you went outside the city. The walk to the store is a good fifteen minute walk, your family only had one car to share between the parents and you hadn’t paid your monthly bus pass card yet so, that’s not an option either. However, a nice long walk was just the medicine to clear the chaos at home from your mind. Your family wasn’t bad, not at all. You loved your mom and dad and they you. It’s just that money is extremely tight. Sometimes parents argue. Say things. That’s just how it is.

Whistling a tune the sound of an engine slowing down a little too close for comfort made you pause and turn your eyes to whoever was deciding to cause trouble. All of the unsure feeling melted away the moment you laid eyes on a familiar face. “Well if it isn’t trouble chaser Todd.” You comment with a wide grin. “You flatter me, such high praise (y/n)” he replied, sliding off his bike helmet and setting it down to rest between his legs on his bike with a lopsided grin. “So, where’s a girl like you heading on this…fine evening?” He asked, mimicking a British accent. “I happen to be going to the market on this chilled eve.” You respond in the same manner. “Would thou like an escort fair maiden?” Laughing, you drop the accent. “This fair maiden would love a ride.” Jason held out the biker helmet to you “your chariot awaits.” The helmet was a little big but still would do its job. Jason was special, Everyone would know that if they just took a closer look. He was smart, loved literature, funny, and kind. The ride was nice, clinging to Jason, your head resting against his back as the wind blew your jacket behind you. Since Jason showed up tonight, everything felt like a moment to remember, a moment to think about when you felt low. A core memory. Pulling into the parking lot, he shut off the engine and kicked the motorcycle's kick stand before helping you dismantle the bike.

Walking inside “Got the list?” Jason asked, pulling his hand out of his pocket to take it. “Yea, I got it.” Handing him the list his eyes read over the scratchy writing. “This is the same list from last Monday.” Jason stated his eye locking with yours. “Well, it's cheap and still keeps us fed. Besides, even with all three of us working, my mom, dad and I make only enough to get by.” Looking over the list again he smiled. “I think I can spice up your food selection a little.” You open your mouth to protest but he beats you to the punch. “And before you say “oh you don’t have to do that” I know. I can and want to.” The smile and warmth you felt in your heart was involuntary. Throwing an arm around your shoulder he said “Come on, let’s go get some good stuff.”

As you went through the isles you guys talked about your week so far. His was the usual excitement, fighting crime, school, all the things. Yours was the same as usual as well, school, work, a few screaming fights between the parents about money. Jason enjoyed giving you small gifts and little things here and there for you. Jason selected some produce, fruits, healthy and unhealthy foods. After checking out a d bagging the items it was time for the awkward ride home. It was a small struggle, you held on to a few plastic bags, some evenly divided on the handle of the bike. You had to stop only once to pick up the bags you dropped. Honestly, you were impressed with how well you both did hanging on after the one incident. When you guys got to your home, Jason helped you and your mom unpack the groceries and put them away. Your mom liked Jason but your dad was a little skeptical, as expected. Jason’s kindness earned a homemade dinner and a movie with you, your mother, and himself.

A fond day to cling to now

The sounds of laughter and cocky attitudes echoed in the batcave. “Remember (y/n) keep your hands up to protect your face and or swing, elbows low and in to protect damage to your ribs. Keep light on your feet so you can move quickly. Also-“ cutting him off you lunge at him tackling him to the mat on the floor. Jason cried out in surprise. “Oh shi-“ Alfred cut him off “language Master Todd.” Jason looked up at Alfred. “Sorry Alfred.” Alfred nodded and turned his attention back to nightwing and tending to his physical ailments from the night’s festivities. Jason turned back to you. “Now that wasn’t very fair of you.” Giving a triumphant smile you retort “Aren’t you supposed to be ready for anything?” Pursing his lips he thought about it. “Yea, I guess you're right.” In one swift moment he flipped you on your stomach having you I. A choke hold. No to together though, his legs wrapped around yours locking them I. Place. Your hands automatically shoot up to try and pry his hold off. Jason's breath tickled his ear “admit I’m the best.”

You: “you stink.”

Jason: “say I’m the coolest guy you know.”

You: “You're the weirdest guy I’ve ever met.”

Jason: “Admit I’m smart.”

You: “You have the brain of a toddler.”

Jason: “Say you think I'm sexy.”

You: “Look like a wet dog.” You snicker enjoying the banter. “Ugh, if I wanted to watch teenagers get it on I would rather watch a trashy romance movie. You guys are ridiculous.” Dick commenter to which Jason snapped back. “You’re just jealous I’m able to maintain a relationship.” The expression on Dicks face spoke volumes. Jason definitely hit a nerve. “Oh yea?” He inquired. “Yeah.” Jason nodded. Dick got off the seat. “Get up Todd.” Jason let go and whispered in your ear. “Watch this.”

Getting up you decided to stand next to Alfred who protested against dick fighting falling on deaf ears. Alfred realizing that this was happening whether he wanted it to or not he sighed. “I don’t know what to do with those boys.” Sitting back the duel began. Jason was bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Come on chickenwing! Bawk! Bawk!” Jason taunted with a wicked grin. “It’s Nightwing.”Dick corrected seething. The battle of honor began. Jason swung first, his fist connecting with Dicks lower run cage which seemed to just make Dick angrier. Dick swept Jason’s leg knocking him to the floor before pinning him and having Jason in a tight choke hold. “It's not so fun when it's not your girlfriend is it!” Dick said with a smug look. “Screw you!” Jason yelled anger very apparent in his voice as he jabbed his elbow into Dick’s rib again making him let go. With the new found freedom, Jason straddles him and starts pounding on him, punching him where he could. It was honestly a little scary watching from the outside. “Master Todd! Master Grayson! Enough of this childish behavior!” Jason stopped looking up at Alfred with a guilty expression before a fist connected to his chin knocking him off of Dick. Alfred and you intervene, you take Jason while Alfred takes hold of Grayson. “You mother-“ Dick cut Jason off “I will always do better than you, be better than you.” He said venom in his words. “At least I don't dress like I’m going to a fuckimg disco party to fight crime and look like a little bitch.” Jason yelled at him, that caught you so off guard. You had to fight to stifle the laugh. “I designed the suit myself you ass!” Dick retorted. “Yea, I can tell, Dick.” “Boys, enough for the last time! Separate or so, help me I will tell Bruce to keep you both off missions for a Week!” Alfred is clearly fed up.

Both boys went to their rooms to calm down. “You really did a low blow going after the wardrobe.” You started breaking the silence as the both of you sat on the bed. “He’s an ass.” Jason was still very clearly in a mood. You take his hand, “I dot. Have siblings, but I do have a family. Family can be your worst enemy and your best friend. The rough patch will pass.

It’s a terrible thing, just as they were starting to work things out. He was gone.

Harsh words sounded through the off white walls of the apartment. Same old thing, money this, money that, we have to this, we have to that. After a day of work and school, arguing was the absolute last thing you wanted to hear. What better place to go to escape the noise than the fire escape.

There you were, eyes closed, the breeze gently cooling your skin. A wonderful feeling. That’s when another sensation touched your cheek, a warmth, something soft. Opening one eye you see what you knew was there. Jason’s lips left your cheek. “Hey.” He smiled. You wave your hand in front of your face trying to wave away the smell. “Geez you smell, and you're sweaty, wanna shower?” You offer jokingly but with kindness. “That would be amazing. Thanks.” He commented. “Oh, uh don’t be alarmed by the way. They are just arguing. That’s all.” Jason nodded knowingly, “Alright, I’ll keep that in mind.” Following him inside he tossed his duffle bag to the ground and pulled out some clean clothes and stuffed his sweaty red shirt in the duffles bag before disappearing to the bathroom and turning on the shower.

A few minutes later you found yourself reading a magazine. Something about Bruce Wayne and another charity he supported. Seems like a nice guy. Shortly after you thought maybe you’d be nice and wash his clothes. You needed to do your own laundry anyway. It was starting to pile up. Reaching into the back you pull out the shirt with just your pointer finger and thumb and the shorts. That’s when something caught your eye, something bright yellow. Touching the fabric it felt soft. Pulling it out more revealed the rest of the suit, the yellow turned out to be a cape with black on the other side. Under the cape however…was a suit. Not just any red and green suit, the Robin suit. Your mouth practically dropped to the floor. Is Jason Robin? Is this fake? No it could be, the suit is too well made to be a costume. Wait, if Jason is Robin does that mean Bruce knows? Wait…is Bruce Batman? No that can’t be right could it? The sound of the bathroom door opening snagged your attention. There stood Jason with worry in his expression. “YOU’RE ROB-“ Jason tackled you to the bed, his hand cupping your mouth, his face panicking. “Shhhhh, please, just be calm. Relax. I’ll explain everything.” He took a moment to look at you and recompose himself. “If I let you go, will you be quiet?” After you nodded in agreement he let go and got off of you help g you sit up. “Okay, um, I am Robin. I’ve been Robin for a while now. You know, fighting crime and helping Batman.” You listened as he spilled everything. Putting his trust in you. “I need you to keep this to yourself, okay?” Nodding you agree. “I promise.your secret is safe with me. On a lighter note-“ you smile feeling excited “you being Robin explains so much. Would you be willing to…can you put on the suit and show me. I wanna see it up close!” Jason laughed and agreed,

Sometimes you wonder if you didn’t know if Jason suddenly disappearing and never being able to come back would have made it easier.

[prolibytherium]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[strikexlightning]

Ryan Howard x Male Reader

notes: this might not be show timeline accurate, I'm not even gonna lie :'), it's supposed to take place in season 6, I had the wiki open the whole time so hopefully it's at least passable, also sorry if the characters are ooc a little, I'm still in the process of rewatching the show.

cws: mention of ryan being into pain, fucking at work, they don't use lube

Your head falls into your hands, overwhelmed by whatever bullshit Jim was doing to Dwight today. Sometimes you found it funny, but on days like today, it made you question why you accepted the accounting position all those years ago. You at least wished you could work in the annex, or in that cozy little closet Jim put Ryan in.

You push back your chair, getting up and walking into the kitchen, deciding to get more coffee because you couldn't possibly think of going back into that area of the office without any sort of caffeine.

“Hey.” Someone behind you says. It makes you jump and almost spill scalding hot coffee all over your hand, and you turn, wondering how you didn't hear anyone walk in before you remember Ryan's “office” is directly behind you.

You give him a little nod in return, not in the mood for listening to his pretentious bullshit. The last time you came into the kitchen, the closet door was open and he made you look at the…interesting pictures he's been taking, trying to be artsy. He literally made you stand there for 30 minutes straight while the phone on your desk rang.

As he looks through the fridge, it's clear he's just pretending, using it to hide the fact that he keeps glancing over at you, trying to see if you acknowledge his presence. As you finish up making your coffee, he shuts the fridge, realizing it's not gonna work.

He passes behind you, leaning against the counter as you clean up the small amount of coffee you spilled. He's too close, his elbow almost touching yours.

“Got any plans after work?” He asks, and you shrug.

“I think everyone's planning on going out for drinks.” You answer, taking a sip from the mug. You weren't really interested in talking to him but you didn't want to be rude.

“Well I was asking about you specifically…silly.” He says, with a weird, awkward laugh. He added the “silly” at the end in a way that made it sound like he was debating on whether or not to say that, and you can tell he instantly regrets saying it as he awkwardly glances towards the film crew when you don't respond and then retreats back to his closet, shutting the door.

You squint at the door before slowly walking back to your desk, Dwight now back in his seat and Jim nowhere to be found. You work for a little bit before you start to get bored, switching tabs to a random game. When lunch comes, a few people leave together, leaving the break room empty because the few people still there were up to other things. You didn't really care, all you heard was ‘empty room all to yourself’.

You grab your food and get comfortable, being the only one in there. You read as you eat, some random fantasy book you had picked up somewhere. It was peaceful, without any shenanigans, no camera crew because they were off filming the interesting stuff.

And you jinxed it, because the second you start to enjoy your lunch, Ryan himself comes striding in, straight towards you. You didn't know exactly why you disliked him so much. He wasn't really that horrible to you, though he did kind of suck, and you didn't really care much about the others’ to hate him for any personal reasons. Part of you wondered if it was some kind of sexual frustration, because he was kind of hot and clearly didn't have anything against sleeping with coworkers. Maybe it was the sex dreams you had of him when he was VP, you just really wanted to put that man in his place, but he kind of did it to himself when he got arrested so after that the dreams kind of just stopped.

The fact that you found him sexually attractive freaked you out, not because he was a guy, but because it was Ryan of all people. The last thing he needed was another ego boost.

He stands in front of the table you're sitting at, staring at you until you look up at him. He sits next to you, getting comfortable and once again, way too close. He's practically on top of you, his hand squeezing your arm tightly, probably so you can't get up and leave.

“Listen, man. I found this new…business venture, let's say. I figured you'd be interested.” His voice is a low whisper, like he's telling you some mystical secret or something, and he stares at you expectantly.

You have literally no idea what the fuck he's talking about.

You stare back at him, a confused look taking over your face. “...you’re not doing coke again, are you?”

He shakes his head. “Nope. I just think you and I should…discuss…business strategies. After work. Tonight.”

You're pretty sure he's just trying to fuck you and can't come up with a better reason to get you alone other than straight out asking. You're not completely opposed, so you shrug.

“Sure, I guess.” You glance over and see someone from the camera crew recording you through the window from outside of the door. There goes your undisturbed lunch break.

He grins, letting go of your arm and patting your back, his hand lingering for a little bit. “Sweet.”

You nod in response, not knowing what to say. Now that you're aware of what he's doing, it just makes it weirder that he's doing that rather than coming right out and saying it. You saw how he was with women usually, so you figured he just didn't know how to flirt with men.

He stands back up and stops in his place when he sees the crew filming the both of you, and then he continues to leave. You can see him saying something to them, but you can't hear it. You sigh when you check the clock, realizing your lunch is over and you barely got through the first ten pages of the book. You retreat back to your desk, finishing out the rest of the day playing computer games and avoiding doing actual work.

When it's time to leave, you grab your jacket, relieved that the day was over. You were actually intrigued to see where Ryan was going with his horrible attempt at asking you to come over. You knew it was some kind of sexual advance just by how see through he is to you, but you didn't exactly know how it would play out and it was a little exciting.

“Are you coming to the bar with us?” Meridith asks you as she comes up next to you. You shake your head.

“No, I'm…going straight home. Gonna get some rest. You have fun though.” You respond in a suspicious manner. Luckily she doesn't care and says goodbye to you before leaving with everyone else.

You see Ryan out of the corner of your eye, and you turn your head, not expecting him to be staring directly at you as Michael is trying to talk to him. Michael sees that Ryan is looking in your direction and he waves you over. You give him a small smile as you walk over.

“I was just telling Ryan about that new Mexican restaurant that just opened, we should check it out one of these days. You know, just us three guys. Hangin’ out.” Michael tells you. He seems really excited at the idea of that so you nod along, not wanting to decline.

But Ryan isn't even paying attention, eyes still locked on you. He's basically just eyefucking you, running down your body and back up to your face. He doesn't look away when you stare back at him. The two of you stay locked in a sexually charged staring contest, and neither of you notice when Michael realizes you aren't paying attention to him and leaves.

You make the first move, lightly pushing him against Jim's desk, to which he leans back immediately. That one action seems to awaken both of your urges, urges that were held back for the sake of being professional. He pushes a few things out of the way to fully get onto the desk, pulling you closer by your tie as your hands fall to his waist.

He presses his lips to yours in a heated kiss, letting you get in between his legs as he holds a hand in your hair and the other gripping your arm tightly. You unbutton his shirt and loosen his tie, hands grabbing at his waist and torso underneath his shirt. He wraps his legs around your waist, pulling you even closer as you make out while he bucks his hips up against you, moaning into your mouth. He pulls away, hands unbuttoning your shirt and then sliding down to your belt.

“I've always wanted to do it here.” He says, his face slightly flushed as he catches his breath.

“Why?” You ask. It didn't surprise you that he wanted to though.

Ryan shrugs as he gets your belt off. You do the same for him and he ruts his hips against you again, groaning softly.

“It's one thing you're not supposed to do, obviously I'd want to do it.”

You make a short humming sound to acknowledge what he said as you grab his hips again, grinding your clothed erection against his, straining against his pants. He moans, looking up at you with the most desperate look you've ever seen from him.

You lean forward, lips brushing against the man's neck. He lets out a soft sigh, moving his head to give you access to his neck. You kiss down to his shoulder before biting down, pulling a moan from him. One of your hands comes up to the back of his head, tangling itself in his hair as you kiss and suck at his neck and shoulder, trying not to make marks in spots that could be easily seen.

“Fuck..you can do them wherever, I don't care if people see.” He says, his voice breathy.

You raise a curious eyebrow and then move upwards, your hand sliding up to the side of his head and pulling it to the side more, which he softly moans at. You leave a mark in a very visible spot before you can tell Ryan is getting impatient.

Your fingers loop around the waist of his pants and you pull them and his underwear down, his painfully hard cock springing out. You do the same for yourself, your dick against his thigh. He stares down at it, biting down on his bottom lip. You stop what you're doing and he looks up at you.

“We don't have lube. Unless you have some.” You say. He looks off towards where the closet is, thinking for a minute.

“There's some in my desk.” He responds, but he grabs your arm to stop you from going to get it. “Just leave it, it's fine.”

You raise an eyebrow again. “Are you sure? It'll hurt.”

He looks away from you, grip on you loosening and moving to rub at his eye. “I don't, uh. I don't mind.”

You instantly understand and you even laugh slightly. You wrap a hand around the base of his dick, rock hard and dripping. It throbs when you slowly start to move your hand, pumping it up and down a few times. Ryan bucks his hips into your hand, letting out breathy, desperate moans.

You lift your other hand, spitting into it and wrapping it around your cock. Moving to hold his thigh, you guide yourself into him, making him suck in a sharp breath. He presses a hand to his forehead, and once you're fully in, he releases a high pitched moan. You're about to comment on it but decided against it, slowly starting to thrust in and out.

Ryan's eyes are shut tight, his mouth open as breathy high pitched moans escape him every time you push back in. You start to speed up, your hold on his hips getting tighter as you groan. One of his arms reaches out behind him, looking for something to grab onto and knocking over a cup of pencils and pens in the process. He grabs onto the edge of the desk, the whole thing rocking with you, things falling over and being knocked onto the floor.

You dig your nails into the man's skin, and his head falls back as he cums, landing on his chest and stomach. His cock twitches from the sensitivity when you only speed up more, pounding into him. He moans loudly, not caring if there's anyone still in the vicinity.

His legs squeeze tighter around you as he loudly begs you not to pull out with a lot of expletives. You groan out a “fuck” and bury yourself in him, releasing your load and riding out your high before slowing to a stop.

You both are silent while trying to catch your breath. Eventually, you pull out slowly, and back up, letting Ryan hop off the desk. He stumbles a little bit, his legs weak underneath him. He pulls his pants back up.

“I'm gonna go clean up, I'll be back.” He says, going off to the bathroom. You readjust your clothes, buttoning your shirt back up, and tying your tie back on the right way.

You try your best to fix Jim's desk, picking up all the stuff you knocked over and hoping he doesn't notice something is off. While you wait for Ryan, you think about the fact that you had sex with a coworker. In the place you work at. On top of your other coworkers desk.

You kind of understand why Ryan wanted to now, it was fun.

He comes back out, tie still loose and the top few buttons of his shirt undone, but his hair is fixed and he's less flushed. The two of you walk outside, walking past a few cleaners you did not know were in the building yet. Some of the camera crew are standing outside when you walk out the door and you almost jump. You and Ryan are silent before awkwardly going your separate ways to separate cars, the cameraman zooming into Ryan's marked up neck.

They had a lot of interesting questions to ask on Monday.

[khattikeri]

i really love that mdzs pioneered the idea of golden cores in cultivation fantasy fiction being a transferable organ-like body part and especially that mxtx used it as a metaphor for social class.

jiang cheng, whose abilities are consistently evaluated as average and who has been envious and bitter about it for decades, could not have maintained his position if not for the efforts of the servant beneath him (wei wuxian) literally being carved out and implanted into jiang cheng's own now empty cavity. it elevates jiang cheng and leaves wei wuxian ultimately losing whatever flimsy place he originally had among other upper class cultivators.

jiang cheng may have been tricked about the specifics of the transfer, but remember: when wei wuxian suggested sacrificing his own personal gift from his mother's shizun, baoshan-sanren, meant for wei wuxian’s exclusive emergency use, jiang cheng snapped up the offer immediately and without any concern whatsoever for wei wuxian possibly getting harmed for it. the only thing he does is get excited that he can get his core back and get suspicious that wei wuxian is lying.

jiang cheng takes this gift that renewed his own core completely for granted. to him, it's practically a given that wei wuxian should offer a gift like this up to him; he questions the mechanics and specifics of baoshan-sanren and her mountain, but never once worries or even seems to think of the impact it might have on wei wuxian.

nor does this incredibly generous use of wei wuxian’s mother's gift temper jiang cheng's later choices to force wei wuxian out of the yunmeng jiang clan to save his own face (even if they faked a falling out at first), and to lead the siege of the burial mounds which kills wei wuxian.

naturally you can argue that jiang cheng's parents and all their fellow disciples were just killed, their home was just destroyed, they're hardly 18 years old and clearly mentally and emotionally unstable from everything... but wouldn't someone in that position worry equally as much about the safety of the one and only other companion they escaped alive with?

what happened to asking "what about you?"

it's a very natural turn of phrase that makes it easy to reciprocate concern. but it didn't come out of jiang cheng's mouth even once.

it all makes the ending of the book emotionally that much more impactful. because when jiang cheng finally finds out the truth-- that too, from wen ning, arguably the one person he hates more than wei wuxian, while wei wuxian had just fallen unconscious after jiang cheng stressed him out to the point of bleeding from all seven apertures-- jiang cheng realizes exactly how unequal he and wei wuxian have been.

after screaming, crying, and running around the whole night frantically demanding everyone test out the sword, jiang cheng is unavoidably confronted with what he was unconsciously always expecting and demanding of wei wuxian, and the way wei wuxian delivered without a word.

and it leads to jiang cheng letting go. he stops chasing, stops demanding eternal payback, and lets wei wuxian go. they both move on without each other. a phenomenal end to a relationship that was ultimately never healthy for either of them.

golden cores as used in mdzs are such an accurate and unique metaphor for lower classes propping up and later being scapegoated by upper classes. i have to applaud mxtx for crafting it.

[cleos-cafe]

Obey me! Brothers with a MC who is overworked (pt.1)

Welcome back! I hope you are having a good day, please enjoy the content dear reader.

Pt. 1 (you're here) | Pt. 2 (soon)

-Sincerely with much love Dahlia★.

Summary: The exams season is just around the corner at RAD and this time you plan to give your best (as you usually do). So you decide to study one night with the "cramming*" method. Clearly this leaves consequences on your sleep schedule and so on. How would the brothers react to find you in this situation?

TW: mentions of lack of sleep, skipping meals, poor mental and physical care, stress overload, small mention of academic validation in some parts. Please stop reading if any of the topics make you uncomfortable.

Dictionary:

Cramming: the practice of working intensively to absorb large volumes of information in short amounts of time. It is often done by students in preparation for upcoming exams, especially just before them.

༶•┈┈⛧┈♛༶•┈┈⛧┈♛༶•┈┈⛧┈♛༶•┈┈⛧┈♛༶•┈┈⛧┈♛

Lucifer

Everything had started off simple, Lucifer decided to check for you at night as he used to do to make sure his brothers didn't leave the house late at night.

He knew that you had been making an effort to study and although on several occasions he praised you for your commitment, he was also worried that you were taking it to extremes.

Which was an accurate suspicion when he saw the light in your room still on, he simply sighed and went into your room.

His original plan was just to ask you to stop what you were doing and go to bed.

But the moment he noticed how you were biting your nails while you were anxiously moving your leg and trying to write clearly, he changed his plans.

The first thing he noticed was that you had headphones on, those headphones were given to you by Levi so they had sound cancellation.

Slowly he approached you and took off those headphones carefully, trying not to scare you in the process, then he put them aside and leaned towards you.

"MC you should go to sleep, I know you are anxious about the exams, but you need to rest properly if you want to give it your all, how about you collect your books and study material while I prepare some tea for you?"

Trust me, after that he will make sure you rest.

If you didn't get sleepy after you had that tea Lucifer started talking about how it was bad for you about exerting yourself (even though he does the same thing).

If you even mention that he does the same thing you'll get a look from Lucifer.

But you're right! Although your comment only made Lucifer start a lecture about how you being human makes your body incapable of sustaining a hard workload unlike him.

Hey, at least you're already asleep after listening to him talk for a long time.

After that encounter Lucifer somehow becomes more gentle with you, doesn't push you as much with some things and checks on you more often. He even brings you a snack or two from time to time.

"Remember that you are part of the family, we care about you a lot and I worry about seeing you neglecting yourself by overworking yourself and while I'm proud to know that you take things seriously I don't want you to hurt yourself in the process either. If you think I can help you with anything feel free to come find me, I'm available to you anytime."

Mammon

He would probably be the first one to notice something is wrong with you.

Usually hangs a lot around you and, now that you suddenly seemed to be occupied was pretty shocking for him.

He was making his way to your room since he wanted to spend some time with you (leave the man alone, he misses you).

Once he barges (it's that how it's spelled?-) into your room, he's surprised to see you biting your nails and almost pulling your hair.

Okay he may not be as gentle as Lucifer, literally rushing to you and grabbing both of your hands.

"Hey! Wat'cha think ya doing human?! Get yo hands out of your hair right now!"

Literally panicked the moment he smelled blood.

(Yeah the demons can smell blood, you can't change my mind).

Literally took car of you afterwards, he took he's time wrapping your fingers in band aids.

I think he would've take his time combing (again is it spelled like that? ಥ_ಥ) your hair carefully, even asked Asmo to let him borrow some products that could help with your scalp and hair.

After that incident he's a lot more aware of how much time you spend studying.

Will drag you outside or to you bed, he'll make you take a brake once in a while.

"I know ya' worried about exams and stuff and, even if I can't exactly help you with it.... It's important ya' take some breaks, k? So don't go worrying The Great Mammon like and take some breaks will ya?!"

Leviathan

He was one of the few who knew you were gonna study a lot.

After all you told him you were gonna have a break from your weekly hang out plays since you wanted to study.

He was kinda sad but he didn't tell you, since after all he knew your grades were important.

(Bc literally, you're and exchange student. It's supposed to be your duty to have good grades for the program)

Although that didn't mean he couldn't be in the same room with you right?

But of course, who would like to have just some company of a yucky otaku like him, right?

Well you do.

To summarize it, he knew about you stu(dying)but it took him a whole time actually do something about it.

After asking if you wanted to have him in your room (which you obviously said yes), he got his console and walked towards your room.

Did you forget about him coming to your room? Yes-

He was pretty shocked (not in a good way actually-) once he saw 1st his fast you were chugging that D- Energy and 2nd the amount of empty cans around the floor and desk.

"H-hey! Stop drinking it right now! Do you know how harmul that is?!"

Actually worried sick about you.

Did he have the same habit? Yes he does. Is he more worried about you then himself? Double yes.

He's very much aware of how harmul is a ton of caffeine in your body.

And after he forced you to take a break he starts rambling about how a lot of D- Energy can affect you.

He makes sure to be in the same room as you when studying after that.

The moment he sees you taking a bunch of D- Energy or sees how much you're stressing yourself, he steps in and makes you have a break but playing with you.

"I know this isn't something I usually say- but I'm worried about you okay? And I don't want you to be in so much stress so- if it's anything I can help you with, I'll do it okay? Ejem- n-now there's a few new features added to MonokeLand! Y-you wanna see them?"

[rosesfox]

✿ acftl review! ✿ (spoilers!)

🚨 i'm seriously warning you, it's a review and therefore there will be spoilers. read at your own risk! 🚨

✿

✿

✿

✿

✿

things i really liked:

❥ the rhythm of the book was perfect for me. i was able to dive into the story very easily and it's something constant for me in sg's books. the way she develops the plot is perfect. i thought everything was well placed and the pages were used wisely.

❥ the evolution of jacks and evangeline for me is something totally palpable; evangeline continues to have the same essence as always and i love that about her. she is a romantic girl, she is a soft girl and she is sweet. but she is also intelligent, she is strong and she doesn't let herself get carried away by situations. she makes her decisions and she is in control of her life. most of all, i loved that evangeline loves jacks and believes in her love more than anything. all she wanted was him and after three books, seeing them both embrace their desires so openly was extremely satisfying.

the same goes for jacks, who also had two other books to develop as a character. his essence is the same, he remains the sociopath we all love. but he is in love. he is desperately in love. and in this book there was no room for anything other than the two of them fighting for each other. it was everything evajacks needed, and sg delivered it to us perfectly.

i would like to add that i found jacks' povs completely necessary. i saw someone saying they weren't, while i thought they helped us understand his evolution, more of his character and the way he feels about evangeline. i particularly loved it and i don't know how Stephanie thought about not including it!

btw i think it's very important to read this book remembering that it's the third in a trilogy and stephanie is not underestimating our intelligence. she will act as if this is the third book and waste no time drawing so that we understand. she has already established that evangeline and jacks love each other, here they are just on the journey to actually be together.

❥ i loved the way jacks' curse unfolded. it was better than i could have expected and i also love the way eva managed to kiss him. there is no doubt that evangeline, throughout this time, was the only girl on jacks' mind. and she is literally the only one he has ever truly loved.

❥ apollo was disgusting from the beginning to the end. i think that, for what the character proposes, he was developed very well and to some degree i think his participation was quite interesting. aurora is a pest, but i like how stephanie decided to build her.

❥ chaos and lala! i really want the two of them to have a solo book (mainly to read more about evajacks), and i really liked their occasional appearances.

❥ i honestly thought it was an amazing closing for evajacks. there was absolutely nothing missing for me (mainly because of one of the epilogues), and i'm very grateful to stephanie!

some of my analyzes that were accurate: (im so happy about it)

❥ jacks says that since the day at his church he couldn't take his eyes off her. since that day he had to convince himself that she was just a tool. since that day, he started to care. i always said that since ouabh he cared, but i didn't even imagine that it would be from the literal beginning and i loved that.

❥ eva says that the first time jacks betrayed her trust, she felt her heart break. she says that she had been in love with him ever since, so, again, i was right when i said that the two of them fell in love right from the start.

points that I found strange:

❥ where is luc? didn't he even think about visiting eva? i understand that there wasn't time for him in the book, but i would have liked to have seen him.

❥ where is marisol? (do i really care? no)

❥ kisses! i would have liked a more descriptive kiss, but what we had was incredible and cute and really suited the context and i wouldn't trade it for anything. i just wanted others.

i give the book 5 stars and i'm very happy because my favorite couple had a worthy, brilliant and wonderful closure! i don't know what i'm going to do with my life now and what i'm going to think about.

[lamestteenagegirlever]

as a book reader i ADORE the series but if theres one thing i love more than anything is seeing baby percabeth from an unbiased perspective bc theyre so cute but also percy is so LAME like hes so embarrassing i love him. like in the books hes just like yeah i think she looks like a princess and we only hear his internal thoughts so i LOVEEE actually seeing how awkward he is with his crush on annabeth.

its so cute and i honestly think pretty important for the viewers because it rlly helps to drive how young they all are and how insane it is that theyre being put in these crazy situations. like his dorky face when annabeth smiled when he started singing the consensus song? his voice cracking after annabeth laughed at his potty joke?? the look of brief panic on his face when he realized grover saw the face he was making when he hugged annabeth back followed by the really awkward smile??? THE WAY HE WAS THINKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT A PRETTY GIRL HUGGED HIM FOR SEVERAL DAYS STRAIGHT AND SAW ANNABETH WAS ACTING WEIRD SO HE ASSUMED SHE WAS DOING THE SAME BUT SHE HAD ACTUAL SERIOUS STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT SO HE JUST ENDED UP TELLING ON HIMSELF???? LIKE THAT IS ACTUALLY SO EMBARRASSING I WAS DYING WATCHING THAT PART. THE WAY HE INDIRECTLY ASKED HER ON A MOVIE DATE AND WOULDNT MAKE EYE CONTACT EXCEPT FOR A MILLISECOND TO SEE HER REACTION BEFORE DARTING HIS EYES AWAY SO FAST????? THE TUNNEL OF LOVE SCENE OVERALL?????? THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HER LIKE YOU CAN LITERALLY SEE THAT HIS PUPILS ARE DILATED IN A GOOD COUPLE OF SCENES WHEN HES LOOKING AT HER LIKE THIS LITTLE BOY IS DOWN ASTRONOMICALLY HE IS SO FUCKING LAME. like we obviously knew the way they were both ready to sacrifice their lives for eachother in a heartbeat and how well they complimented one another and the way they changed each others world views and made the other strive to be better versions of themselves like ive known they were the blueprint since like literally 2nd grade like that didnt stop me from repeatedly bawling my eyes out over it but thats not the point. like we knew this and we could see it in the books but we couldnt see, or at least not fully see, how big of a stupid embarrassing crush percy had on annabeth and how she obviously feels the same way but is better at hiding it like oh my god i love them i wanna squeeze them until their eyes pop out like those old pens at the scholastic book fair do yall remember those?? im sorry guys im so autistic pjo and specifically percabeth has been my special interest since i was 7 and now 10 years later i get to watch them on tv in an adaptation WITH YOUNG RYAN REYNOLDS ARYAN SIMHADRI AND THE ONE AND ONLY MISS LEAH JEFFRIES thats almost entirely book accurate but also adds in fun stuff that works great in the plot and for the most part even better than the original scenes in the books bc the show is how rick would write the series NOW with all of his new gained writing experience like im actually going to explode the show is so good

[badass-at-fandoming]

Hi, you were recommended to me by ryttu3k fir your knowledge of Anatole.

Their is one question from clan novel saga by the Prophet that always confuses me.

"the young wizard’s sire is within the clay.”

A bit of context- he is saying this with two Kindred present, Victoria Ash, and Jeremiah (an obfuscated nosferatu). It is said within Leopold's art studio.

The young wizard is obviously Leopold. It is revealed that he is not a toreador but is the childe of tremere antitribu, Nikolai.

But the sire is in the stone????

There are a few named statues at the art studio. A bozetto of Petrodon, but he's the deceased nosferatu Justicar and Sire of Cock robin and Julio Martinez. There is also a bust of Victoria Ash. Later their is a tower made of gangrel and Hannah (a tremere) fuses with it. But neither are Leopold's sire.

This causes Ms Ash, unaware of Jeremiah or the Justicar bozetto, to think that Anatole is saying Leopold is her childe. He is not. This causes the nosferatu to gain this incorrect info temporarily too.

It does save the day at the end, as Ms Ash walks up to Leopold (and eye of hazimel) and this distracts him long enough to be killed by Ramona.

But, as far as I'm aware, their is no Nikolai sculpture in the book. Cock robin is not a "young wizard" so it can't be about the bozetto.

The only thing I can think of, was that Anatole deliberately lied to cause Leopold to be distracted later in the book and die. But why would the prophet of Gehenna deliberately lie?

What is the answer to "the young wizard’s sire is within the clay.” since I swear there's no Nikolai sculture?

If you can't tell, Anatole is one of my favourite non nosferatu vtm characters of all time.

Hello! Awww, I'm honored to be considered to have insight into Anatole and his Malkavian prophecies. Thanks @ryttu3k! You seem anxious for an answer, @roseate-felidae, so I'll do my best. Honestly, I'd probably need to have read the Clan Novel Saga for a confident answer. Browsing the wiki and the context you've given me are good enough for guesses. In order of most to least likely:

1) Your first instinct is right, Anatole is lying. More accurately, Anatole could be manipulating his report of his vision to achieve a better final outcome. A fun layer to Malkavian visions is the difference between the vision itself and the interpretation of the vision. For example, Anatole used to think his visions were literally God talking to him, but now he's like, nah, just a Kindred power like Potence or Celerity. He could be false reporting what he's seeing or hearing, or only sharing a suggestive portion, like you first guessed.

As why would Anatole lie: well. He and Victoria Ash aren't friends. She manipulated hunters into burning down his Paris haven, with his ghoul Paul inside. She's too powerful and connected to eschew outright, but I wouldn't describe their relationship as "good." At the end of the Saga, Hesha Ruhadze has the Eye from Leopold, and Hesha is on friendly terms with Anatole and his faction, the Mnemosyne. It could be that Anatole foresaw that Ash & the Nos thinking Leopold was Ash's childe would benefit him in the long run. Maybe he foresaw and wanted the happier ending you described. That, or he just wanted to throw a spanner in the works of Victoria's plan and/or general unlife.

Being a Prophet of Gehenna and a Malkavian doesn't preclude Anatole from deceit. He has to lie to humans all the time, remember, about his identity and Kindred status. He lies to his friends, including Beckett, about what's under Jerusalem. Victoria Ash points out the obvious logical flaws in his prison "rehab" program, and he self-deceives that there's nothing wrong. "We're natural liars," as Beckett says.

2) Nickolai is in a stone/clay building. While the location in Leopold's studio jumps the mind to clay sculptures, the Malkavian Cobweb's reach is not limited by immediate geography. From the wiki, I can glean that Nickolai is in his haven in NYC, which is warded with blood sorcery. NYC has stone buildings, or clay might be a ward ingredient. It's probably not a reference to a basement encased in clay-type soil, because NYC's soil is the silt-loam type of dirt (yes, I looked this up). This theory can be disproved with a description of Nickolai's haven, so I kicked it down the list.

3) The young wizard is Aisling. This theory switches the young wizard part of the equation. Malkavian visions are not necessarily about the topic at hand, after all. To a methuselah like Anatole, Aisling Sturbridge is quite young and she's a Tremere. Instead of Leopold as the "young wizard," Anatole could mean Aisling, and the clay part a reference to her sire, Lucien de Maupassant. Lucien disappeared while on a mission from the Inner Council in 1948. "Within the clay" could be any number of hints to his fate, including his ashes mixing with dirt.

4) Nickolai is being controlled by the Eye. This is a biiiiiiig stretch, but whatever. Hazimel used to a stone mason, which is a profession that works clay. Compared to Hazimel, Nickolai is an incredibly young wizard. Nickolai thinks he's manipulating Leopold and the Eye to his own ends, but perhaps Hazimel is working him. Anatole is saying that Nickolai is within Hazimel's thrall, or influence, and Nickolai is being shaped like clay under a mason's hands.

The number of problems this theory has is Many, no matter how much I like it. First off, I don't think the Eye shows full sapient intelligence: it more like, makes its bearers into powerful rage machines, like the Beast. If someone as cool as Hazimel was controlling it, the Eye would be more sophisticated. The theory is also very Lord of the Rings-y with the whole "cursed object wants to return to its master." Vampire: the Masquerade doesn't draw inspiration from Tolkien. Last, the theory falls apart under a Doylist lens. In-universe, sure, Hazimel could know that manipulating Leopold and Nickolai would drop his Eye in Hesha's hands, and Hesha would find the Eye too hot to handle and therefore drop it on Beckett, and Beckett would return it to him. Out of universe, the Clan Novel Saga was published 1999 to 2000 in a hysterical frenzy. The story of the Eye's return appears in Beckett's Diary, which launched its Kickstarter in 2016. Sixteen years is a loooonnnggg time to pay off one line in a previous book. Possibly longer than 16 years, depending on if the story was written after or before the Kickstarter was funded. A meticulous planner could do it, of course, and maybe a nebulous idea of the Eye's return existed in the White Wolf writers' heads, but I am full of doubt. The BJD story itself doesn't call back to Anatole's prophecy either, which weakens the idea further.

The prophecy is a fun puzzle! Thank you for bringing it to me to play with. If any other Clan Novel Saga or Anatole fans want to chime in with their ideas, feel free :D :D :D

[yellowroseswrites]

yo. so i just saw that spencer x reader you wrote featuring an ED. i was wondering if maybe you could write it as an imagine/one shot/whatever but from a different perspective? im struggling with losing weight unintentionally due to drug use and its starting to scare me. last time i was this thin i did have an ED. so would you be able to do one where the reader is just as concerned as spencer about their weight loss? maybe he helps find foods that work for them, encourages them to eat, etc? id love it of spence were cheering me on to finish a bowl of cereal (⋟﹏⋞)

"One more bite?"

Spencer Reid x Reader

Author's notes - {I have quite literally no clue if this is good or accurate, but I did my very best. I did a little research but I still wrote it very vague to avoid as much invalidating as possible. I hope this brings at least a little comfort, and my apologies for any and all inaccuracies}

TW- {Plenty of eating talk, reader eats, Spencer eats, they eat cereal, milk is mentioned, past eating issues are mentioned but barely, Pulp Fiction is mentioned, probably inaccuracies about movies, Dead Poets Society mention, there's a 420 joke but it's from Spencer so it's not really said as a joke, Autistic Spencer Reid, but that's just how I write him,not proofread, if there's any more lmk! love you all please eat some food and drink some water lovelies <3}

“I’m not hungry.”

God, it sounded so sad on your tongue. You wished you could just eat, you really did. You weren’t like you used to be, you didn’t want to be like this. You just wanted to eat.

Spencer’s face fell, but only a bit. He was used to this by now to, your body working against you. Your body craved things that would destroy it, but it refused to accept the things it needed, like food. It was scary for you, and it was positively horrifying for Spencer. He was watching you fight back, but wither away anyway, and he hated it.

"I know you aren't, but it's important that you eat it."

You groaned in annoyance. You knew Spencer was helping, but it was the same thing you've heard over and over again.

Reid seemed to think a bit before moving again, this time pouring milk into his own bowl before putting away the milk and the cereals, (fruit loops for you and raisin bran for him, which he insists helps him remember things during cases).

He came back to his bowl and started eating in front of you, "You like Tarantino movies right?"

"Uh, some of them, why?"

While you spoke he took a bite of his food, signaling with his spoon for you to do the same. Once you grabbed your spoon, he spoke again.

"Did you know that almost every clock in Pulp fiction is set to 4:20? Some people have said that they only have 2 scenes where they are set differently, but to be honest I've never seen it so I wouldn't know."

"Wait a minute," You said, "You have never seen Pulp Fiction?"

"That's what you got from that?"

"Who hasn't seen Pulp Fiction? It's a classic!" You took another bite of the cereal.

"That's what you said about Dead Poets Society." Spencer replied.

To be fair, he had read the book. He knew everything that would happen, it was definitely not your fault he spent the whole time pointing out things they got wrong. You simply nodded your head at his reply, messing with the fruit loops left spinning in your bowl.

"Wanna take one more bite for me?" 

There was barely any left in the bowl, half of you wanted to fight back, and half knew it was stupid and that Reid wanted the same thing you did. You took the bite and slid the bowl over to him, which he quickly took with his to the sink. 

"Ok," You stood up from your seat at the table, "We are totally going to watch it now."

Spencer giggled at your excitement, walking over to you and kissing your forehead. "Uh-hu. Go turn it on, I'll be in in a second."

 

You turned to walk over to the couch when Reid stopped you again, 

"And hey, I'm proud of you."

He gave you a quick smile before you walked off again, and his smile only grew as he washed your empty bowl.

[malleux]

freedom. | quest for tyr [III]

[main page] | [t.o.c] | [spellbook] | [ << | >> ]

young adult!atreus x reader

-> synopsis: The only times you had ever experienced adventure was through your books. It was hard to live an exciting life while trapped in Alfheim.

You know you're meant for something greater than wasting away underground.

[loosely based on the events of Gow: Ragnarok]

-> chapter warnings: all chapters contain spoilers, cursing, anxiety, vomit mention, fighting, fight scene not accurate to canon, blood, injuries, trauma mention

The day before was nothing compared to the pain you were in today. 

Just opening your eyes was a task that seemed to take all of your energy, and your body was so stiff that the smallest movements hurt. Breathing, speaking, literally anything seemed impossible as you slowly sat up the next morning. 

Atreus was by your side the second he heard you curse under your breath, gently helping you up and handing you a plate of whatever leftovers were scavengable from the night before. You ate slowly, listening to him, Kratos, and Mimir formulate a plan for the day. 

"Earlier, I saw a mine down below, and Mimir saw tracks to another train we could take down there. Hopefully it'll be just as safe as the last one," Atreus smiled at you reassuringly during his last sentence, remembering how much you hated them.

You pursed your lips and side-eyed him. You were appreciative of the gesture, really, but heights just really weren't your thing and an old contraption that had your death written all over it didn't help.

You didn't take long to get back to traveling. You didn't feel like holding the trio back from anything they wanted to get done just because you were a little hurt. You could grin and bear it. 

The pain was almost worth it as you saw more pretty views on the mountain top. 

"Father..." Atreus interrupted the peaceful silence. "What if a war with Odin isn't just Tyr's to fight? What if it's ours too?" 

"War is not the only way." Kratos responded. 

"But we're gods. Better gods. We're trying to stop Ragnarok, to help people, and what if the only way to do that is war?" 

"Atreus." 

"I'm just not sure we should immediately jump to that conclusion." You said a bit nervously, "My home was— and still is— torn apart by war. It's not something you really want, especially when you've experienced it."

"Wh— I thought you were on my side!" Atreus whined, turning to you as he continued to walk backwards. 

"I'm on your side with stopping Ragnarok." You shrugged, "I just really, really want to look for any way that doesn't involve war. It's not fun." 

Atreus continued to argue with you as you came upon the rest of the train tracks, but you knew it wasn't a serious thing. He had a playful glint in his eyes— one he had often when he decided to mess around with people. 

You watched in almost awe as Kratos lifted the train and realigned it on the tracks. It amazed you how he barely broke a sweat— he must have been an incredibly strong god. 

Atreus was the first in. Then Kratos and Mimir. 

They looked at you expectantly and you shuffled your feet, looking to find a solid way up into the creaky, wooden cart. You really, really didn't want to go in. 

A hand appeared in front of your face. 

"Here," Atreus helped hoist you up, keeping you steady as the train car squeaked once more under the added weight. He remembered your apprehension and patted your shoulder. "We'll be fine. We don't have much farther to go now." 

"The Kraken hatchling gave you a stone." Kratos pointed out as the train began moving. His voice was a good distraction from your incessant urge to look out the window and scare yourself even more. 

"The Kraken...? Oh, Dinner. Yeah, it's covered in algae. I was thinking we could show it to Brok and Sindri when we got back. Here." Atreus tossed it to his father, who pocketed the stone. "Okay, we came looking for Tyr because we don't trust Odin, right? If you think about it, war could— uh oh—"

The train became shakier and shakier, it's noisy wheels creaking even louder. You stand up in a panic, frantically looking over at your companions, but they look just as confused. 

A creature— a Grim, you recalled— grabbed onto the window ledge closest to Kratos, trying to scratch its way inside. Kratos quickly punched it and sent it flying, but there wasn't much time until another Grim appeared in its place. 

You swallowed your nerves and raised your spear, using the butt of it to knock out a Grim from the window on the other side. 

"Skjalfa!" You cried, sending them out just as quickly as they were coming in. You wanted nothing more than to use your favorite little fire spell, but with a wooden train like this you knew you'd probably set it on fire too. 

"Atreus, look for a brake to stop the train!" Mimir called out, "Should be a lever of some sort!"

"I found it— but it's stuck!" 

"Try harder!" You shook out your hand as you hit a Grim that had actually made it through the window. You grabbed it and threw it back out, hitting two others that threatened to enter and sending them all back. 

"I'm trying! But— it's—" 

The lever broke in two. The handle flew out of the window you were guarding. 

You all could only stare at each other for a moment before the train began to fall— the one thing you prayed to the Nords wouldn't happen. 

"Shit." Atreus grabbed your arm and pulled you between him and Kratos, presumably to shield your fall or protect you from the rest of the Grim. "Shitshitshitshitshit—"

"Ow!" You yelped as you hit the ground. 

Kratos was up before you could even fathom what was going on. He pried at the opening at the top of the train, climbing out and yelling out a rough "Get up!" before taking out his axe and disappearing from your sight. 

He reached back down once he returned, grabbing both you and Atreus and setting you down on top of the cart. You were definitely put down more gently than Atreus, but you wouldn't point that out. 

"I can't believe we surv— are you serious?" Atreus was frustrated now, more Grim coming from seemingly out of nowhere to attack you. 

You whipped around to survey your surroundings, choosing to stay further away from the heat of the fight. The headless troll that laid to your right told you what Kratos had done earlier, and you silently thanked him for making things easier. 

You pointed your spear at Grim that tried to tag-team Kratos or Atreus, choosing to save your magic energy and use some Dark Elf skills. An energy beam shot out from the tip of your spear, slicing the unsuspecting Grim in two. 

This continued for only a few moments longer, then you finally could drop your weapon. You still held onto it tightly, though, still on guard. You jumped down to rejoin everyone. 

"That was crazy." Atreus breathed out. 

"You said it, little brother." 

"That was awful." You shuddered. "I hate heights. I also now hate trains. I knew something was going to happen." 

"You jinxed us, then!" Atreus teased, "You can't sit there and think bad thoughts and then expect good things to come. You gotta look on the bright side." 

"I didn't jinx shit." You mumbled, watching as Kratos looked around for where to go next. "I was looking on the bright side. I felt like I was going to pass out, and if I was unconscious at least I wouldn't feel it when I died." 

"That's— that is not what I meant. Just, come on, I think Father found something." 

It was a small crawl space, which all things considered could be either better or worse than falling off of the side of a mountain on a train. 

Atreus went first, then you, followed by Kratos. You noticed he always took up the back— probably to protect you both from whatever may sneak up behind. Smart. 

"Quite the mouth you had back there, lad." Mimir broke the silence. 

"It's just a word." Atreus rolled his eyes. "I've heard way worse from Br-"

"The word does not matter. You lost control." Kratos reprimanded. His voice was always stern, but this held an even harsher tone. 

"We were falling. Through the air." Atreus defended, "I thought we were gonna die." He gestured to you, "She says it all the time!"

"She was not raised the same way you were. What is acceptable for her is different from you. Is that truly what you wish your last words to be?"

You were glad that was Kratos's view, because the second Atreus brought you into it your heart seized. You did not want to get scolded by Kratos. 

"No." Atreus gave up arguing. You thought that was a wise choice. 

"In moments of crisis, panic does nothing. Harness it. Let it serve you." 

You let his words sink in as you came across another area, this time finally in the open. You kind of wanted to laugh— Kratos wasn't even talking to you, and yet you held onto his words more than you'd ever held onto your own father's. Kratos had a lot of wisdom, but Atreus wouldn't heed it. 

You figured it just be a father-child thing for you and Atreus to never listen. 

"What is this?" You looked around the area in a bit of awe, taking in the wooden structures and water wheels around you. 

"The Jarnsmida Pitmines, lass." Mimir answered joyfully, as if he was reminiscing on something. Probably some memories that he has in that infinite brain of his. 

"Look on the ground. Tracks." Atreus pointed out, "They must lead into the mines." 

"And what exactly is in these mines?" You stood beside him, eyeing Kratos once more as he studied the area. It seemed like every place you went to had some gods-awful puzzle just to make it through and it made your brain hurt. 

"Hopefully Tyr." He smiled at you, and you pursed your lips into a half-smile in return. Your adrenaline was wearing off and the impact from the train crash made your injuries from the Dreki feel brand new again. 

You took a deep breath, only being able to inhale so deeply, and nodded. "Hopefully. I just want him to be here and us not just find another clue and be on a wild goose chase." 

"This is a super prominent mine, I'm pretty sure. If he's anywhere in Svartalfheim, he's gotta be here." 

Atreus's words did little to comfort you, but you couldn't say much as Kratos summoned him to help with a mechanism to open the mine. 

You reached into your pocket and toyed with a piece of paper— the one Sindri gave to you before you left. You didn't have time to read the rest of the spells he had written down for you, so you pulled it out to scan over it. 

You already knew the three first ones, even if you hadn't gotten to use most of them yet: 'Logi: fire. Sverð: sword. Verja: defend.'

Turning the paper over, you saw three more spells written down in neat handwriting— characteristic of Sindri. 

'Iss: ice. Kanna: search. Ausa: water.' 

You hummed. One of these spells was not like the other. Every one of them seemed self-explanatory, except for Kanna. What could it mean to search? Would it help you find something? 

Folding the paper back in your pocket, you took a deep breath and closed your eyes. You felt like you'd have to have an idea of what you were trying to search for, so you sent your intentions to something simple. 

You'd ask for it to find anything with magic in it. 

"Kanna."

You waited for a second. You waited for something— a feeling, a voice, a tug, anything. Assuming nothing had changed or you'd done the spell wrong, you opened your eyes only to gasp out loud. 

Everything around you was covered in a very, very translucent light blue. You looked around— the weapons on Kratos's back glowed a bright blue, much more opaque and noticeable than the blue that spanned the rest of the terrain. Your own spear emitted the same light, as did the palms of your hands where you felt the burn when you did your fire spell. 

Atreus's bow was blue, and so was Mimir's head. Small rocks that blocked entrances glowed as well— rocks that you or Atreus could easily use Skjálfa to destroy.

Ah. Kanna did work.

And from the way Kratos, Mimir, nor Atreus said anything about the sudden shift in color from the original terrain, you could assume you were the only one seeing it. 

You whispered the spell under your breath again and slowly, the blue hue faded from your vision. The mines were restored to their normal, dull brown color. 

'Kanna.' 

Your intention this time included living things— bugs, monsters, whatever. 

The blue crept back into your vision like a rapid flood, but this time the brights were different. You could see Kratos and Atreus shining brightly as they worked together. Mimir's blue flickered a bit, but it made sense. Was the decapitated cursed head really alive? 

You could see little glowing dots shining through rocks like x-rays, showing you where all the little bugs hid underneath. 

More brights caught your eye as they moved towards Kratos and Atreus. 

"Guys, watch out!" You called, "Logi!" 

Fire erupted from below the feet of the monsters. You were able to see them easily with how they shined against the rest of the area. 

You were aware of many more, but this was starting to hurt your eyes. You turned off the spell and rubbed your eyes. They felt sore— sunken in deep and dryer than usual. You'd definitely have to use this sparingly, or risk a massive headache.

Kratos and Atreus quickly took out the few Wretches that threatened them and as soon as it began, it was over. 

The three of you— plus Mimir, but you really couldn't figure out if he counted as a full person or not— stood in front of a crane, watching water flow through it. A large wooden box blocked your path to the next ledge of land. Your hands were on your hips and nobody spoke, trying to find something to help you get across. 

"Looks like the water powers the crane that's keeping the cargo up." Atreus pointed out. 

"Think freezing it could stop the water?" Mimir suggested. 

You quickly held out your hand, aiming it near the end of the crane where the water flowed out. "Iss!"

Ice crystallized in the middle of the flow, encompassing part of the crane in cold fractals. The water built up on the other side of the crane and began to pour out of one of the sides, effectively stopping the flow from hitting the water wheel that was beneath it. The cargo box lowered and you made your way across.

"When did you learn that trick?" Atreus asked as you continued to push forward, coming across the next stupid little platform of puzzles. 

You shrugged. "Just got a little help from some people." 

"Atreus, Y/n, come."

You headed towards Kratos, who assumed a squatting position near the next contraption you came across. Atreus automatically stepped into his hands and was hoisted up onto the wood, and then it was your turn. You assumed he wanted you to do the same, so you quickly followed and hoisted yourself the rest of the way up. 

You explored the area for a minute, Atreus straying away from you for a second before he spoke up. "Father, there's a gate up here heading towards the entrance to the mine. If you can get up here, we'll need your help lifting it." 

"If..." Kratos mumbled under his breath.

"Oh come on, you can jump that! Your knees aren't that bad."

"Atreus." Kratos warned. He used his axe to freeze a water flow that was causing a platform to move unstably and jumped across. 

"I hope you can make that jump!" Atreus joked again and you elbowed him in the side. "Hey!"

"Give the man a break." You laughed. 

Kratos soon joined you both and you headed towards the entrance of the mine. It was covered in debris and a gate that seemed quite heavy. Atreus was right about needing Kratos's help. 

"I sure hope Tyr is here..." He mumbled. 

"Atreus, we seek information." Kratos reminded him. Atreus rolled his eyes. 

"I know. Stop acting like I'm trying to start a war."

"Yet you do not say otherwise--"

"Brothers, maybe we can lay this to rest a bit, eh?"

You were thankful for Mimir's interjection. It was always awkward to be in a a group with two people arguing, but it felt a bit more powerful between Kratos and Atreus. They were both very prominent, strong presences and you knew enough about them already to know that neither of them were likely to back down should the conversation get more heated. 

Kratos was right-- you didn't want to start a war. Atreus had told you numerous times that war wasn't his intention, but once more Kratos seemed right to you. He wasn't denouncing it very hard. He may be against the idea of a war, but he wasn't taking many precautions to truly prevent it.

You continued on in silence, helping out if needed but mostly staying in the back. This wasn't your journey— you were just lucky enough to be allowed to tag along. You did what you were asked, including helping Atreus push back a cart that blocked the way to the mine, finally revealing the rest of the entrance and—

"Sindri?" 

The dwarf waved awkwardly, as if he hadn't just appeared out of nowhere for the second time in Svartalfheim. "Got something else for you." He waited until you all were near to continue. "Since you're currently lacking a light source--sorry-- and have no way of seeing exactly what untold horrors lurk in the dark, these will help."

"Thanks for making me feel better." You mumbled under your breath. Sindri gave you an apologetic look before pulling out three... things. 

"Okay, back to your exploring now. Off with you."

"Thanks Sindri," Atreus commented, "What, uh, do you mean by untold horrors?"

You were wondering the same thing, but Sindri gave no answer. You all put away the light sources that he had given you and turned back to where the dwarf stood, but he was nowhere to be found. 

"How does he do that?" You tilted your head. 

"No idea." Atreus sighed, but then turned to you and grinned. "Let's get going. It looks like the actual entrance to the mine is blocked, but there's gotta be another away."

"This way." Kratos began moving. 

"Nice. Not a dead end. Let's see where this goes."

You jumped down from a ledge into a deep pit-like area. A few Wretches came from the shadows, but you all were able to quickly cut them down. They were nothing more than a nuisance now-- this weird lizard things were so annoying. 

Atreus used his bow's sonic vibrations to break a few rocks to reveal a crawlspace. You internally cringed at the tight quarters. After being locked up your whole life, you didn't necessarily want to be trapped again in something even smaller. Nevertheless, you followed after Atreus with Kratos once again taking up the back. 

"It certainly smells like we're headed into a mine." Mimir piped up. 

"I think I can hear the water too."

"Slow down, Atreus. Take care. Be ready."

If Kratos had a bad feeling, then you did too. Especially once you heard the loud, gurgling roar of a monster when you crawled out of the space. The area you were in now was rather open and spacious, save for the pillar in the middle, the numerous Wretches that seemed to swarm around your feet, and the giant... creature across the room that grew angrier by the second. 

"What the Hel that?" You grabbed your spear and held it across your front. 

"It's called a Bergsra." Mimir answered, his voice echoing through the cavern as Kratos took out a few Wretches. 

"Its like the Grim if Thor decided to procreate with them." You huffed, kicking a Wretch that decided to bite your ankle. "Ugly and huge."

The Bergsra did not like your analogy and yelled out loud enough to shake the cavern walls. You watched as Kratos landed his first hit against it, and decided to join in on the fun. You ran towards it while Kratos distracted it, but you must have severely pissed it off when you called it an offspring of Thor. The Bergsra turned toward you and knocked its head back, lurching a giant green blob out of its mouth in your direction. 

"Verja!" You quickly yelled out. Defend. 

Light emitted from your non-dominant arm-- the one that wasn't holding your spear-- and you instinctually held it up as the blob came closer. It didn't hit you, instead exploding across the large bronze shield you had managed to conjure. 

You looked at your arm in surprise. In hindsight, Verja was a lot more self-explanatory than you'd expected. Especially considering the spell next to it-- Sverð-- was literally sword. 

Another green blob was coming your way. Kratos had been knocked back for a second and Atreus was attacking from long distance, so the Bergsra's attention was once more turned towards you. In a split decision, you rushed towards the creature and it's blob, using your shield to hit the poison back at it. It hit the Bergsra in the face and it roared out in pain, clawing at its face. 

Kratos was back up and threw his blades towards the Bergsra's back. They latched on and he propelled himself forward, kicking it down and landing on top of it. Using his bare hands, Kratos grabbed the head of the monster and twisted. It came off in a loud, gruesome snap and you had to look away from the scene just to keep your breakfast. 

The Wretches stopped attacking as the Bergsra was killed and crawled back into the little nooks and crannies that they came from. And it was over. 

"Ugh, the smell these things leave behind is so gross." Atreus groaned.

"A small consequence for disturbing their home." Kratos replied. You tilted your head at how he almost  humanized them. 

"...Let's keep moving."

[commsroom]

When Eiffel asks Hera for her top 5 stick-it-to-The-Man songs, she has a whole list of criteria she's evaluating the songs by. I was kinda under the impression they didn't have that much pop culture stuff up there. (Obviously in the real world the Kinda Evil Genius crew doesn't have the $ for copyrighted stuff.) Do you think Hera has like, sheet music but no audio recordings, or that she *does* have recordings but Eiffel doesn't actually like listening to music (which seems weird with the classical pieces, but it could be that those are novel and Eiffel loves novelty).

i think about that a lot, too!! there are a lot of things hera "shouldn't" know that, well. she does. from a character perspective, i think it works because she's written much more as a sheltered woman rather than anything that literal/speculative about AI, but in-universe i think some options/considerations are:

eiffel, being eiffel, forgot that hera wouldn't have heard these songs, and she doesn't want to have that conversation with him again, so instead she's making an excuse while she looks through all of the books available to her to find anything relevant. (which is a whole other question re: what media hera has access to. i think "all the writing" is a wild exaggeration based on hera's inability to conceptualize how much writing there might actually be in the world, personally, but evidently there are tons of books in there and she can read them... did no one ever bother to ask her, or does something prevent her from displaying them on a station terminal? are they encrypted in a way only she's allowed access to? ... why?)

eiffel, being eiffel, expects hera to remember and accurately interpret his attempts at singing these songs.

maybe there is a collection of sheet music in the hephaestus's archives? she recognizes bach somehow, after all, and i would believe it's likely at least for classical music. ... and what about minkowski's play? was she just going to put it on from memory? is hera learning her lines from the actual script, which she cannot reproduce for whatever reason, while minkowski is doing the rest from memory? what's going on at all, ever?

clearly they were allowed at least some personal media on lovelace's mission, but not on minkowski's; lovelace is listening to paradise valley diegetically. and they just left all of the stuff from lovelace's crew up there. eiffel finds hui's lovecraft book, etc.

hera does reference anarchy in the u.k. to eiffel at the end of that conversation, so clearly she picked that up somewhere.

personally, i don't think she has access to audio recordings of songs that aren't the transmissions; with the overall theme of music re: humanity, it feels like something goddard would probably deny her, and i like the idea of hera developing her music taste for the first time post-canon. and there's no way, in my opinion, if she did have access to music, that eiffel wouldn't be really annoying about finding a way to access that for himself. he is definitely a Music Guy. i'm a big fan of the idea of hera hearing some of the songs eiffel likes to sing to himself for the first time on earth, with the Eiffel Version in her head. some of them maybe she's fond of for that reason. and some of them she's probably like, wow. that wasn't even close. ... but do i think there is a satisfying answer with internal consistency here? definitely not. you've kinda gotta roll with it. it's fun to think about anyway.

[starry-eve]

January 1st 2025

Everything is going pretty well except for one thing:

My weight.

It’s not merely from a place of vanity that I am concerned about it.

I’m obese. And I’m of the age where I need to worry about diabetes.

And I think appearance does matter for my job.

When you are really overweight people tend to think you’re lazy and sloppy.

The people who get promotions where I work are all healthy looking (and physically fit) and the ones who end up getting fired (or in trouble with management) are all obese.

Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe being obese does actually affect the quality of your work. I think it might. I feel like I could do much “more”—at work and in my personal life—if I were physically fit.

I would be more confident. I would not be fatigued and exhausted and always trying to conserve energy.

This year my ONLY FOCUS needs to be my physical health.

I started to do better at the very beginning of December. I noticed a difference and had more energy. But I got seriously derailed when I started listening to the news and getting panicked by what was happening.

I lost sleep.

I went off my diet.

And everything spiraled downward again.

I call these “derailments” rabbit holes.

In 2024 I had a looooooot of rabbit holes:

• Catholicism (losing sleep over comments on a Catholic YouTube channel)

• social media “projects” where I couldn’t decide on what kind of content I wanted to make (lost sleep again, several times).

• finding out that a popular author (Charles Dickens) was abusing his wife sent me down a huge rabbit hole with loss of sleep for days.

There have been many more, I can’t remember them all.

This year I don’t want to do that sort of thing. I can’t allow these “obsessions” or “triggers” (more accurate) to derail my health.

I see all these triggers as part of my processing of my past. Each one is in some way related to my past and how I “feel” about certain things. That’s what triggers do. They make you think about things that disturb your peace of mind.

I did learn some things from each of the above triggers:

• avoid spiritual legalism, but embrace spirituality that is positive and healing and healthy

• reading authors or books that you don’t want to read or are not interesting you at the moment is not necessary. Just read what you like. Not everything needs to be looked at in a black or white way—you don’t need to “cancel” every book or author that has negative aspects, because there are positives as well.

• there is almost nothing whatsoever that you can control when it comes to news events. Stop obsessing over them and getting angry over something that is completely out of your control.

This year, I am going to avoid these pitfalls:

• replace scrolling with reading

• make health my number one priority

• start with sleep—make sure I’m always getting enough sleep and never losing sleep over these triggers because it always spirals into something else

Lastly…

It’s OKAY not to “know everything”. Sometimes I push myself into these obsessions because I feel like I MUST KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERY SUBJECT. I get so embarrassed to be “wrong” about something.

For example…

• innocently enjoying a book by Charles Dickens without “knowing” he was a jerk.

• enjoying certain aspects of Catholicism without “knowing” the harsh legalism of canon law regarding divorce

In the past, it really bothered me to “not know” these things. I was afraid of being exposed or embarrassed by someone saying “Hey, did you know that the thing you are enjoying has baaaaaad stufff as part of it!!?”

So what. So what if I am “naive” or innocent or even (God forbid! 😱) INCORRECT about something.

It’s totally normal. I don’t have to be afraid of that.

And there’s literally no way for me to know everything about everything anyway!!

So I need to stop these obsessive compulsive rabbit holes.

They’re affecting my health. 😟

[lucky-clover-gazette]

prince's gambit highlights & annotations

chapter 8

indented text is from the book. some quotes have commentary, some do not. some comments are serious, and some are definitely not. most of them will only make sense to people who have read the series. and, like, there are spoilers. so please read the books first if you're interested!

also: part of the reason i'm doing such a close reading is to study cs pacat's style, especially in terms of how she does romance and erotica. there are "craft notes" that might seem weird, like i'm being redundant or restating something rather than analyzing, but those are more things that i want to remember/take away from the writing!

i'm going to tag these longer posts with "sam reads capri" in case anyone wants to read them all at once.

this is a google doc i wrote with overall content warnings for the captive prince series. it's not perfect, but i do think it's important to include.

It had not been easy to prise out all the information, but Damen had provided the mercenary with a sustained, methodical and unrelenting incentive to talk.

this is a fun line. also, another little hint that kinda offsets the flogging in book 1. like yeah it was bad, without or without the Brother Killer Context, but it’s not like damen is above similar methods of torture towards his enemies. and that’s what damen had been to laurent, at the time—literally his worst enemy in the entire world, except for maybe the regent.

Damen would need to take his horse off the road, and ride straight, as the crow flies, cross country. He didn’t hesitate, spurring his horse up the first slope.

and now i’m hearing the twilight princess hyrule field music. i am not complaining

It was a tactic that reeked of the Regent. All of this was: this convoluted trap reaching across the landscape to splinter the Prince from his troop and his messenger, so that to save one meant to sacrifice the other. As Laurent had proven. Laurent, to save his messenger, had surrendered his own safety, sending away his only protector.

context: yeah i think this is actually an accurate assessment of the situation

Damen tried, for a moment, to think his way into Laurent’s situation, to guess how Laurent would evade his pursuers, what he would do. And realised he didn’t know. He couldn’t even make a first guess. Laurent was impossible to predict.

damen: imagines laurent pulling off some kind of insane rube goldberg machine of tactical evasion, or taking out several armed men while cornered in an alleyway

laurent:

Laurent, the infuriating, obstinate man that he was, was impossible, wholly and completely.

His arrogance was unbearable. If he had deliberately left himself open to attack, if he was caught by one of his own games . . . Damen swore, and focused his attention on the ride to the camp.

oh i go CRAZY for the “i’m upset with you because you endangered yourself and i want/need you to be okay” trope

Laurent was alive. Laurent sidestepped everything he deserved. He was slippery and sly and he had escaped the attack in the town with chicanery and arrogance, as usual. Curse Laurent for this.

okay i’m lost, why is damen mad at laurent? to my understanding, it went like this:

people came to attack laurent and the messenger, splitting up between the two tasks

which then forced damen and laurent to split up. damen did not want to leave laurent unprotected, but knew that somebody had to make sure the messenger was okay. he told laurent to trust that he would succeed and return to camp, agreeing to make it back in a certain timeframe.

damen learned that the people pursuing the messenger were on horses, which meant that the timeframe was miscalculated. but still he went and stopped them, interrogated one, learned about planned attacks on laurent and the camp, and hustled to get there.

in the uber there, damen alternates between fretting about laurent’s safety and imagining all of the harmful ways laurent could have somehow manipulated him or the situation.

it’s unclear to me here if, at this point, damen has actually arrived and found laurent alive (and is pissed about it?), or if he’s just entertaining a hypothetical scenario in which laurent has manipulated him into… what? protecting the messenger and interrogating the pursuers? damen was going to do that anyway. it was in both of their best interests that it got done. and laurent hadn’t known about the horses, so the timeframe had seemed reasonable.

i thiiiiiink this is a hypothetical imagining, and an aftershock from the past 20 chapters, rather than an accurate assessment of the present situation. damen still expects laurent to screw him over, despite the night they shared, because he’s experienced the entirety of the captive prince and 7 chapters of the prince’s gambit. in terms of pattern recognition, it’s not an unreasonable thing to expect. still, it does frustrate me, which might be the entire point. a first-time reader might be thinking more along the lines of damen, which bodes well for that assumption being proven wrong shortly.

also - i could just be totally missing something, or underestimating laurent’s overall situational awareness. that’s what happened the first time i read the series—i felt so awful for laurent towards the end of book 2, and was frustrated with damen for keeping up the lie! although in this case i suppose i’m thinking less about laurent's awareness and more about his intentions? i don’t know. i’ve scrutinized this passage enough. i’m just going to keep reading.

The Laurent who had sprawled out by the fire seemed so far away, limbs unwound, relaxed, talking . . . Damen found that memory was inextricably tangled with the glint of Nicaise’s sapphire earring, the murmur of Laurent’s voice in his ear, the breathless brilliance of the chase, rooftop to rooftop, all of it woven into one long, mad, endless night.

laurent’s conscious delusion about damen not being the same person as damianos, vs. damen’s subconscious delusion about bitchy laurent not being the same person as charming laurent. everyone loses

None of the men he saw was a yellow-haired prince in a woollen cap. And just as he feared the worst, just as all that he had not let himself believe for the long ride began to push itself to the front of his mind, Damen saw him, drawn out of one of the mostly intact tents not six steps away, and gone still at the sight of Damen.

haha you didn’t want him to be deadddddd

it might be scarier to damen that laurent is not trying to screw him over and has survived, than if he had done something hurtful and/or died. given the way laurent freezes at the sight of damen, he’s probably thinking something similar about his voluntary return. like “shit—the worst hasn’t happened. what now? and how do i deal with the fact that laurent dying/damen leaving was, in fact, the worst-case scenario?”

His newly minted hair was uncovered, and he looked as fresh as he had emerging from the baths the night before, as he had waking beneath Damen’s hands.

context: laurent disguised himself as a prostitute in a brothel. the yassification was a convenient side effect of the overall scheme

‘You’re alive,’ Damen said, and the words came out on a rush of relief that made him feel weak. ‘I’m alive,’ said Laurent. They were gazing at one another. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come back.’ ‘I came back,’ said Damen.

“i wasn’t sure” there’s no way in hell you thought he would come back, laurent. maybe logically you weren’t sure, but in your heart you accepted the abandonment the second he left your sight. just like nicaise did, when you left arles :’(

also they do a lot of gazing. i should have started a count earlier but i’m too lazy to go back now. for the record: they do a lot of gazing.

Damen tried to stop looking at Laurent. He had a hundred questions. How had he escaped his pursuers? Had it been easy? Difficult? Had he suffered any injury? Was he all right?

“was he all right” SHUT THE FUCK UP 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 <3<3<3

With the damage of the insurgency still awaiting his attention outside...

wait, so if the insurgency was a part of the overall plan, that tells us conclusively that there are like. inside men working for regent within the camp. which yeah, we already knew, but they’re actively getting intel somehow. or maybe this was planned from the start? this couldn't have been all aimeric, right??

To Damen, it seemed obvious that the uprising was planned, that the instigators were paid, and that their plan had relied on the fact that the rest of the Regent’s men, rabble-rousers, thugs and mercenaries looking for an outlet, would take the first excuse to lash out at the Prince’s men, and join in.

okay cool i was right about that

Two weeks ago, the troop had been a rabble split into two factions. They had not developed the fledgling camaraderie that now held them together; they hadn’t been sent to their sleeping rolls night after night exhausted from trying to outdo one another at some mad, impossible exercise; finding to their surprise after they had stopped cursing their Prince’s name, how much they had enjoyed themselves.

two weeks ago, they had not participated in the “i’ll make a man out of you” montage/musical number from the animated film mulan

It could have been far, far worse. Damen thought of all the ways that this might have played out: Laurent dead, or returned to find his troop in tatters, his messenger cut down on the road. Laurent was alive. The troop was intact. The messenger had survived.

an interesting counterpoint to damen’s catastrophizing en route to the camp.

i think between damen and laurent, we’re seeing the way trauma affects people at different distances from the traumatic events:

damen has very recently been traumatized by his father’s death, his brother’s betrayal, and the events of book 1. he is hypervigilant, almost perpetually disoriented, and prone to spiraling and expecting the worst. because everything is so fresh, he is unable to separate logical expectations from fear-based pattern recognition. he is feeling this hurt, whether he wants to or not, and cannot prevent it from affecting his perception and judgment.

laurent, meanwhile, endured similar trauma—loss, betrayal, sexual abuse—seven years ago, and then for a few years after that. it isn’t raw anymore, but that doesn’t mean that it’s gone. laurent’s trauma absolutely impairs his judgment, both strategically and emotionally. his wounds have not closed properly, his bones have set out of place (i don’t know enough about injuries to make good metaphors here). but he has no intention to fix that, because it would mean exposing the wounds or breaking the bones again, and enduring more hurt.

This day was a victory, except that the men didn’t feel it. They needed to feel it. They needed to fight something, and to win.

i see you’ve taken laurent’s philosophy of taking great pleasure in small victories to heart, damen

‘I prefer to think my way out of traps,’ said Laurent, ‘rather than use brute force to simply smash through.’ The words had the air of finality to them. Damen nodded and began to rise when Laurent’s cool voice stopped him. ‘That’s why I think we should fight,’ said Laurent. ‘It’s the last thing I would ever do, and the last thing that anyone, knowing me, would expect.’ ‘Your Highness—’ began Jord. ‘No,’ said Laurent. ‘I have made my decision. Call in Lazar. And Huet, he knows the hills. We plan the fight.’ Jord obeyed, and for a brief moment Damen and Laurent were left alone together. ‘I didn’t think you’d say yes,’ said Damen. Laurent said, ‘I have recently learned that sometimes it is better to simply smash a hole in the wall.’

and laurent has taken damen’s philosophy of Rip The Thing Out of The Wall to heart, too!!!

It was a succinct speech that was equal parts rallying and infuriating,

i would love to actually read a laurent speech on the page. i’m imagining something between a regina george/heather chandler backhanded bitchy monologue, a dungeons and dragons player explaining their convoluted plan to the dm, and a musical theater director addressing the cast on opening night after a week of grueling dress rehearsals

‘Orlant’s dead.’ ‘Dead?’ said Damen. ‘He was killed by one of the insurgents?’ ‘He was one of the insurgents,’ he was told, shortly. ‘He attacked the Prince as he was returning to camp. Aimeric was there. He was the one who took Orlant down. Got cut up doing it.’

context: pretty sure orlant was trying to warn the prince about aimeric being a traitor…

He remembered Aimeric’s tense, white face, and thought it best, before riding out into a fight, to check on the boy.

damen gets a pass for this misjudgment of character because everyone else fell for it too (i think laurent fell for it? at least at this point?)

‘A traitor,’ Aimeric echoed hollowly. ‘Would you have killed him for that? He was your friend.’ And then he said it again in a different voice, ‘He was your friend.’

context: aimeric is a traitor. he asks jord, his “friend,” if he would kill a traitor (like him). and then he repeats the sentiment in a different voice, because aimeric cares about jord, and he knows that he killed jord’s friend and feels guilty about that.

Damen and the group of fifty men he led were the bait. With them were the wagons that mimicked the appearance of a full troop making an attempt at tiptoeing their way stealthily south, under cover of night. When the enemy attacked, they would appear to fall back, and instead lead the way to the remainder of the troop led by Laurent. The two groups would trap the attackers between them, cutting off any escape. Simple.

foreshadowing of them both being kings—competently in charge of their own forces—but proving more effective as a unified team

He saw the flash of confusion in Lazar’s eyes and thought for a single heart-pounding second that his order might not be followed—despite the authority that Laurent had lent him for this mission—because he was a slave.

okay but like i think the second you came back instead of attempting escape, you made it pretty clear to laurent and everyone else that you’re not

Their attackers fell back, or simply fell. Pulling his sword from the man who had tried to knife him, Damen saw the mercenary at his right fall victim to a precise killing. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the bait,’ said Laurent. ‘There was a change of plan,’ said Damen.

stop flirting, you’re in battle (just kidding, i love battle couples)

‘I’m not used to my uncle miscalculating,’ said Laurent, after a pause. ‘It’s because he’s working at a distance,’ said Damen. ‘It’s because of you,’ said Laurent. ‘What?’ ‘He doesn’t know how to predict you,’ said Laurent. ‘After what I did to you in Arles, he thought you’d be—another Govart. Another one of his men. Another one of those men today. Ready to mutiny at a moment’s notice. That was what was supposed to have happened tonight.’

context: i think this is true! which is funny that i have to specify, but since like 70% of what laurent says is in some way untrue for the first two books of this series, it does help

‘Instead, you have saved my life, more than once. You have made fighters of these men, trained them, honed them. Tonight you handed me my first victory. My uncle never dreamed you’d be this kind of asset to me. If he had, he would never have allowed you to ride out of the palace.’ He could see in Laurent’s eyes, hear in his words, a question that he did not want to answer.

“why are you helping me?”

there are other ways damen could be helping akielos, without helping laurent. they both know it. but he’s choosing to do this instead, and they both know that too.

He pushed away from the tree. He felt an odd dizziness, a sense of displacement, and to his surprise he was prevented from moving off by Laurent’s hand clasping his arm. He looked down at it. He thought for a strange moment that it was the first time Laurent had ever touched him, though of course it wasn’t; the grip was more intimate than the flutter of Laurent’s lips against his fingertips, the sting of Laurent striking his face, or the press of Laurent’s body in a confined space. ‘Leave the repairs,’ said Laurent. His voice was soft. ‘Get some sleep.’ ‘I’m fine,’ said Damen. ‘It’s an order,’ said Laurent. He was fine, but he had no choice but to do as he was told; and when he tumbled onto his slave pallet and closed his eyes for the first time in two long days and nights, sleep was there, heavy and immediate, drawing him down past the strange new feeling in his chest into oblivion.

head in my hands, i love them so much. so many of these little details remind me of the way it feels to develop feelings for someone—little signs that you could potentially fall all the way in love. the sensation of innately understanding that you could give this person your heart, mind, and body, and they would understand what to do with them. that you could want them to have those things, and you could want theirs too. not right now, perhaps never at all—but the potential is there. it’s a strange feeling because it’s a million feelings at once: excitement, enchantment, fear, confusion, and so on…

also, i think i made a note previously on the nature of tenderness through damen’s perspective. inflicting pain vs. caring touch. if i do any kind of overview at the end of this re-read, i’ll want to take a quote from this passage for that specific theme.

[mdhwrites]

Sorry If we keep bringing this up agan and again but: I was going through the TV tropes page of The Owl House, and I found this listed as an example of the "Common Knowledge" trope on the YMMV page: "Luz is often stated to have let loose poisonous snakes and set off fireworks in the middle of her class during the first episode. However, her book report seems to have gone well, the issue being that her backup snakes escaped when she wasn't watching. As for the fireworks, Luz is shown to have not set them off, implying she decided not to."

Any thoughts?

Okay so we all know what bad faith criticism is, right? It's where you take the worst possible reading of something because you have an inherent bias. This is the opposite.

Her response to the question "What about these (the fireworks)?" is "Those were for the act three closer." This implies that she did not get to the act three closer. So that part is already wrong but it's better to say she chose not to. It paints her in a better light. She is, factually, stated by the principal, in the office because of how her book report went which means it went bad enough to land her in the principal's office which means that part is also inaccurate. He LITERALLY says "Your book report is why you're in here."

The only part of this analysis that is accurate is that no, she did not mean to release the snakes... Kind of. The principal gestures outside, she looks, she looks back with a cute, quirky smile and says, "Oh, that's where the backup snakes were." So she already knew the backup snakes were missing but she didn't bother telling anyone wild snakes had gotten loose in the school. Which is actually just in character for her. Remember, one of the last three times she's been in the principal's office is for releasing a swarm of spiders as part of her project.

This is not hard to check. It is literally less than thirty seconds of dialogue. It all happens within the first MINUTE of the show. But... This person doesn't care about correcting to what actually happened. The goal is to say critics like me are simply stating the facts in bad faith because the facts themselves are bad for the show and for Luz. I mean, she sees someone being attacked by a snake and smiles. That is... Not a great starting point for someone who will not grow throughout the runtime of the show and be told this was an entirely okay thing to do eventually.

But I also want to point out that you are asking me for my thoughts on a fan page of a kind of wikipedia that takes less than thirty seconds to fact check. If I could not talk about how you can absolutely show something too much good faith, I would have zero reason to discuss this because... Check for yourself. Use your own critical thinking skills. Don't just believe what you see on the internet because that's not useful for everyone. Even now, I provided quotes but you can, and even probably ought to, double check that I got them right because that's how this goes. If you question something, check it.

Using something like this as a reason to beat the same dead horse for the half a dozenth time though? Don't we have something better we can all do with our lives? The show is flawed, incredibly so, and at this point it's probably just best to move on if this is where we're having to go for more talking points. See you next tale.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.