#It's an interesting contrast how the moment he can he makes a bunch of fancy clothes and then spends 3 years wearing the One Outfit

[insufferablemod]

top 10 worst celebrities ever

[grison-in-space]

man I've been listening to Guards! Guards! again, right. I was going to do Feet of Clay again but I wanted so badly to spend some time with Lady Sybil in her element, so I detoured over to the beginning. (Incidentally, Making-Money!Vetinari up against Guards!-Guards!Vetinari is one hell of a contrast. One gets the sincere impression that older Vetinari would wipe the floor with his younger self if they ever met, and then be painfully embarrassed afterward; and yet you can see the potential among the arrogance. I wrote this bit before I wrote a longer piece about that exchange, but I'll get round to linking it in here in a moment.)

But I wanted to discuss Sybil.

The first thing you have to understand about Sybil is that she is an archetype of a certain kind of autistic person, usually a woman (or a queer man). You find them in every kind of domestic animal fancy, although Sybil is of the class and rank that generally focuses on relatively large, expensive, and impractical animals; the dragon fancy is mostly based on the dog fancy, with strong influence from horse fancies and sometimes cat or falconry fancies. It is not a coincidence that Sybil is unmarried and that most of her time is spent with other women, often middle class or upper class women, who share her all consuming interest in dragons; this has been a really common social circle for autistics, especially autistic women with independent money, into a given animal fancy since the cultural concept of animal fancies existed.

The second thing you have to understand about Sybil is that she is not at all a conventionally attractive woman. Here are the things we learn about her as Vimes does, in order: she has inherited wealth and status that she does not particularly care about; she is large--taller than Vimes himself, or at least tall enough to loom over him--and "booms" confidently and incomprehensibly at him; and even after she takes off the heavy protective armor useful for conducting a dragon mating, she's tall and fat and (implied to be) heavily muscled under the fat. Her figure is compared to the Venus of Willendork, or perhaps an operatic Valkyrie, and she wears wigs because she is generally fairly bald, or at least singed. She's loud by nature. She wanders around with a dragon on her shoulder creating awful smells and occasionally dribbling.

God, I love her. Speaking as another erstwhile animal fancy autistic, she's really living the dream there. And this little Watch man shows up in her life, totally fails to understand what she's asking for when she tries to conscript him into the easy job for the breeding she's trying to facilitate, and then sits and asks her a bunch of pointed questions about her beloved dragons. He's weird in his own way and a little drunk, and he really is unfortunate enough not to have any dragons experience at all, but he sits down and he asks her questions and he listens to everything she can infodump at her with, as far as I can tell, rapt fascination.

This is not an experience Sybil Ramkin has frequently had. He doesn't try to escape or change the subject or draw her back to the pieces he cares about even a little bit. He's clearly dazed and confused and probably, knowing Vimes, a little bit drunk, but he's not even visibly discomfited enough to shove poor old Dewdrop Maybelline Talonthrust the First out of his lap. Sybil clearly knows that most people don't appreciate being drooled acid on, and tells Vimes repeatedly that he can shove the old man off, but he makes no effort to do so at any point. Given that dragons are described as having a quite pervasive smell, and given all the other details of their biology, I can't even begin to imagine how awful the old dragon must smell... and Vimes just sort of rolls with it.

(It's a pity Pterry didn't understand show names at all, of course; the ones we get should tell us something about the relationships among dragons and kennels, and the prefixes should be repeated, and whatever Sybil's own kennel name is should be present in many of the dragons she mentions. Probably it's either Talonthrust or Moonmist, but either way Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm is named entirely wrong. He's clearly of her own breeding, so he should have a kennel prefix or suffix that aligns with hers, not a name that has nothing in common with her other dragons and implies that his dam was bred by the duchess of Quirm rather than by Sybil herself.)

He listens and he listens and he asks questions and he goes down to the kennels to look at her pride and joy and listen to her explaining what makes each of them so nice. And then he brings her an incredibly exciting present. And he expresses interest in the sweet little whittle she's been trying to work out what to do with, who is totally not a breeding specimen but is too weird even for the sort of people who adopt dragons from the Sunshine Sanctuary. He doesn't even try to leave until the big dragon overhead causes a big stir, and then when she has him taken to her house to recover, she finds him reading her book about diseases of the dragons with every evidence of fascination.

Small wonder she takes notice of him, really.

[welcometothejianghu]

Hey, you! You should watch Hikaru no Go!

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: Hikaru no Go/Qi Hun/棋魂.

Based on the manga of the same name, this drama is the Chinese live-action adaptation of a story about a boy who plays Go, the spirit only he can see who teaches him how to play Go, and all the friends and enemies he meets along his journey to become a good Go player.

...Wait, no, come back. I swear it's more interesting than that makes it sound.

What it is, is a character-driven tale of a charming young boy who, among a bunch of weird and wonderful people who love him, grows up to be a charming young man.

(You see how his shirt says SWEETIE CUTIE? That is because he is a sweetie cutie.)

It's a sports manga, so you've got Training Montages and The Big Game and all sorts of tense moments like that. But there's also lots of fun, gentle plotlines that are equal parts tearjerking and heartwarming. It is incredibly written, act, and produced, and I can't believe that it's not more popular, because it's so good.

Here are five reasons you should watch it:

1: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Word of Honor is merely the second gayest thing I have ever seen a c-drama do. Hikaru no Go is gayer by an order of magnitude.

I think the way they got it past censorship was by saying, oh no, this isn't gay, it's just a sports rivalry! But come on, what do you mean sports rivalries aren't gay, have you seen how all those Canadian and US hockey players keep marrying one another? This is that. This is the tale of two boys who've been in love since they were seven figuring out that they've been in love since they were seven.

(And speaking of seven-year-olds, the kid casting is amazing.)

I mean:

This is an actual still from the show.

So is this.

So is this.

These are not taken out of context. The context would make them gayer. That's how gay they are for each other.

But you know what the best part is? They're not the only pairing. And I don't just mean this like, oh, here's two other cute boys, you can imagine the times they kiss -- I mean, the show itself has its own ships! Ships you wouldn't expect! Intergenerational gay Go solidarity!

Now here's the catch: You have to wait for it. But oh boy, the payoff had us clutching our heads and screaming as quietly as we could because it was after midnight and we were losing our minds.

That last episode!! You have to see it to believe it!!!

2: EMOTIONS!

Bring the tissues. There are parts where it was kinda hard for me to watch because I was sobbing.

Because it's a sports manga, there are lots of triumphs and tragedies. Not everybody can make it to The Big Game. Not everybody gets to live out their dreams. Sometimes you try your hardest and it's not good enough. Sometimes you play your best and you still lose. Some people have to give up on what they love. Some people who were there with us at the beginning don't get to make it with us to the end.

What really makes it is that the show sits with its emotions. Events will affect people's emotional states for multiple episodes to follow. People who have sadness don't just snap out of it. Loving someone doesn't automatically fix them. Shit's hard!

Of course, this contrast makes the triumphs even more wonderful. I will tell you that the show has a happy ending, but not always the ending you would expect would have been their happy ending. It is overall an incredibly uplifting show. You'll need tissues for that, too.

3: (Nearly) Everything Is Pretty Dang Normal

Part of what I mean by that is that while a lot of the actors are real pretty, they're also done up in ways where, like, if you met this person on the street, you would think, this person is pretty! and not, what the hell fancy-ass magazine cover did you just step off of?

Look at these normal goobers:

There are two exceptions to this. The first is Chu Ying, because he is a ghost energy being from the distant past, and ghosts energy beings from the distant past get astonishing eyeliner.

The second is Fang Xu, because his actor, Han Mubo, is an actual idol. Congratulations on your face, sir.

However, I also mean that the story is delightfully mundane. Sure, there's that one supernatural element to it, but everything else is just a regular story about regular people who have regular human problems. There are characters who disappoint their parents and mentors, struggle to pay their bills, try to balance school and extracurricular activities, have crushes, argue with teachers, flake on responsibilties, get lost in the woods, and do some pretty normal human things. Nobody's avenging anyone or trying to slay anything. It's just people being people.

It's even a bit of a period piece -- the show starts out in 1997, then jumps forward to the late '00s, so everything's just charmingly slightly outdated. Damn, I love everybody's flip phones.

4: Actually Good Television

Okay, if you like c-dramas, you know they can be ... janky. Episodes sometimes end practically in the middle of sentences. CG leaves much to be desired. Obvious cuts and last-minute overdubbing really stand out. You can tell where the censorship mandates got in there and started mucking around with things. That kind of jank.

This show feels different. It feels like someone thought out each episode, start to finish, and then created each piece to fit that vision. Every episode even has a title and beautiful title card. They start and end in dramatically logical places. The cinematography isn't anything particularly artful or experimental, but it's solid and clean and lovely. (And if you're sick of shows so dark you can't see them, you've got no worries here.)

The CG in the show is unobtrusive, and most of it is spent making Chu Ying subtly transparent.

There are a bunch of secondary characters, but to me that never felt overwhelming. Most of them are interesting, three-dimensional characters, no matter how short their screen time is. And while there definitely could have been more female characters, the show itself is pretty open about how sexism in the Go world means that it's mostly a boys' club -- and the ladies that are there are great.

In short, this is a show you can show to people who don't have c-drama brain and thus are less inclined to overlook some of the more cringeworthy aspects of their productions. I bet that your Average American Television Enjoyer Who Can Handle Subtitles would have no trouble getting into the groove of it, which I imagine could be very useful for those of you who have people you'd like to watch c-dramas with, except you don't feel like stopping every five minutes to apologize for one thing or another.

5: Better Than The Source Material?

This is the point where I have to admit that I myself have never read the manga or seen the anime. I came into this with only the vaguest familiarity with the source material. I can only tell you that the live-action drama is good; I can't swear that it's better.

However, @jianghootinandhollerin can speak to this comparison more authoritatively than I:

When I was 20, Hikaru no Go (manga) was my favorite thing, the primary obsession, the source of multiple livejournal themes, custom winamp skins, and a fanfic where Hikaru got a go stone stuck up his nose. Because of this deep love in my history, I was dubious about a live action version and the changes it made, but hey, turns out, those changes were exactly what the 20 years older version of me needed. This version of the story benefits so much from having the full, completed story to work from from the outset. The manga didn't know where it was ending when it started, but this show got to, and the story gets to be richer and the characters' stories get to be deeper thanks to that. And also, very importantly: everyone is older and much, much gayer.

Look, I understand if "but it's not the original manga/anime" is a dealbreaker for you. There are adaptations of things I can't watch because no matter how good the end product may be, I'm going to hold it against it that it's not the source I'd rather be seeing, and that's not a fair standard. That's fine. It happens.

But if you can, give this a go (pun unintended). It does not replace the original thing; it is a different take on the same idea. And yeah, it's one that really speaks to me here, on the other side of forty as I am. Maybe I would have missed it at twenty, but the person I am now really respects its attitude that while Being The Best is all well and good, it is not the only thing, and it is absolutely not more important than being yourself and doing what you love with the people you love. Sometimes you peak and can't advance anymore, so you become a teacher, and you know what, that's better than okay, that's actually pretty great. (Do I overidentify with Bai Chuan? Listen: maybe.)

Have I convinced you to watch it yet?

You can watch it on iQiyi, or you can watch it on iQiyi's YouTube channel. I hope you love it as much as I do.

[messydiabolical]

@dandenbo asked me for the art asks: 🎠What is a typical 'workflow' for a piece from idea to finished? It turns out to be a long answer so here's its own post, under the cut to save your dash! How I go from screenshot to painting: (This is not intended to be a 'this is how you do it!' kind of guide. I absolutely don't do an optimal route, this is just how I go about painting and what works for me! I've done a workflow for a screenshot to painting as I do a few different things but this is one I could explain somewhat coherently. My comics tend to be created pretty chaotically lol)

1) I take an ungodly amount of screenshots while playing. Also pester friends for their screenshots or stalk the group discord for interesting shots.

2) Go through all those screenshots cursing why I took so many, looking for those great moments that I want to paint. I’m particularly looking for nice poses/captivating moments, dynamic lighting or interesting expressions, and they don’t need to have all 3 as we can fix some of that in the next step. Here’s the screenshot I chose for my Keahi x Thane piece:

It was a cute, soft moment between them and I liked the highlight at the edge of their profiles. 3) Refine the screenshot. I don’t use anything fancy for this. I game on windows PC, so I open up the screenshot with windows photo editor. I crop the image, play around with saturation, exposure, contrast, just basic editing until it looks tastier. For this piece I wanted it to be hyper colourful and vibrant, leaning towards warmer tones.

4) Decide what I will change, then gather references for those changes. In this case I was fortunate that not a lot needed changing. I knew I wanted to move Thane’s eye position to looking at Keahi rather than the way he is slightly off focus, do a more realistic ear with earrings for Keahi, make Thane a little more smiley and lower his eyelid and give Keahi nicer eyelashes. I keep a whole bunch of art guides and tutorials on my PC so I grabbed the necessary ones and sent them to my ipad ready to have on hand for the sketch stage. I have Thane’s character model in XNApose, so I can check things like his eyelid specifically in that (this is actually for a different project but shows you what I mean)

If I was going to change up the lighting/shading I would also gather references for that. For example sometimes i’ll take screenshots of lighting schemes I love from films/tv shows (think the strong teal and orange scheme in Mad Max or the neons of Blade Runner). Or for precise shadows, I can again use XNApose. I also have a little 3d printed Thane head I can shine a torch at and take photos of to get shadow ideas. For humans there’s lots of reference to be found with online searches, I find pinterest more useful than google for this. For specific expressions or body parts, i’ll just take photos of myself (hand poses, smiling from the right angle etc.) My camera roll is an interesting place. I have drawn drell frills on my neck and on my chest before to see how the lines would fold at certain angles. 5) Setting up a canvas I work in procreate. For a piece like this I try to go pretty big, say 5000 x 4000 pixels, then i’ll crop down later as needed. 300 DPI. As I work, I’ll make duplicates and continue on the copy each fresh session. When i’m finished I make a backup save of the PNG and .procreate files on an SSD. I immediately turn the background colour down to a more muted colour to not burn my retinas. If i’m using a textured background like an oil board i’ll insert it, and any overlays like canvas effects. Set up my layers from the start basically for easy toggling throughout. I try to be good and label things to make life easier, it doesn’t always happen though. I don't wear a digital glove or use paper effect screens but I do have a bottle of screen cleaner and a microfibre cloth handy at all times. 6) Sketch. I’m still very much learning to draw. I tried for a long time to do the classic ‘ball for a head, draw the planes/lines etc. It was a constant struggle and never clicked for me, the ball especially always made things much worse, turning a circle into a 3d image in my head just does not happen. I find it better to just start drawing and work things out as I go (I use procreates reference window to see my screenshot). So I’ll have my sketch in one canvas, and i’ll also have a second canvas with the photo ref on it at the same size, and if I feel like something is really wonky and off i’ll test my lines over the photo to see what’s gone wrong, then go back to the sketch and correct the areas that revealed. Sometimes I’ll use the grid feature if i’m getting stuck.  Here's a few of the sketch stages:

Here I tried out the lines on the photo and noticed that Thane’s frills were a little too far to the left, and Keahi’s eyebrow needed to arch down towards the nose.In the next pass I correct these:

Also, and I know i’m gonna get side eye from some people for this but I really could not care less to be honest. On some pieces i’ll just trace the screenshot. Sometime I just want to get to painting, am not in the mood or mindspace for a learning experience, and this is a hobby. It’s my screenshot, no one is getting ripped off. My latest Javik piece was done this way 🤷‍♂️ 6) Painting. I’ll start by blocking in the background and the portrait flats, usually on separate layers. I try to have an idea of the background colour from the start as this can effect the whole piece overall, but sometimes you just gotta change it as you go so having it on a different layer makes this much easier.

The painting itself I’ll lay down wider areas of colours, then start going in and refining bit by bit, I tend to work on one area at a time, and sometimes I’ll get pretty well rendered on a small area before moving on, other times work on a wider area. It really depends on my mood and what i’m vibing with that day. Like you can see here I’ve done some general messy colouring all over Keahi, but done a lot of refinement on the eyeball:

7) Finshing the piece, uploading and testing: When I’m sick of rendering the painting and don’t think I can add anything more to it without gnawing my own wrist off, it is time to finish up! I make sure I toggle all the layers I want on, add a top signature layer (lol I lie I forget this all the damn time). Then i’ll upload the piece to my google drive and open it up on my big 4k monitor on my PC, and on my phone, and see how it looks (my ipad is a 9.7inch air). I find that once off my ipad, it often looks a little less saturated and contrasting as it does in procreate. So I might go back and change the levels if it’s too big a difference until it looks decent across devices (it’ll never look perfect on them all though, just gotta find that happy medium).

8) Posting online I really don’t have any strict steps for this. I know some people go for optimal posting times, and will make multiple copies of their pieces in different sizes to fit better on different sites (damn you instagram and your need for everything to be square). I… do not do any of this lol. I post when I’m done whatever time or day that is. I do tend to reblog/retweet etc before I go to bed, as I live in the UK and that will at least be getting into evening time in US. I reblog my own stuff a fair bit.

[kurt-wagner-official]

Post #118: UXM issues 235-238

God I forgot how good the Outback era is. Broodfall was great and this issue starts A Green and Pleasant Land, another standout arc, which heads right into Inferno. It's the most creative and interesting the book has been since From the Ashes. This arc is maybe the most politically overt story Claremont does, with a blatant allegory for South African apartheid, which was a huge global focus at the time. The opening line of narration reads "This is the present. This is the world," which is a really bold stance to take in Marvel's biggest book at the time. It's not something Marvel would have published a few years before when Jim Shooter was still in charge, and it's not something you'd see now with Disney as the parent company. We open with a man sneaking through what looks like a military installation to hide his toddler son on a plane about to take off. Some soldiers take notice, so he runs off to draw them from the baby, and we learn that he's a mutant. They call him a genejoke, I think the first time that slur has been used. The soldiers, Magistrates of Genosha, pump him full of bullets, and in his last moments, he smiles because his son can live free. Cue a brutal jump cut to the next morning, where some Genoshans, are given the assignment to go collect the baby from an Australian hospital. First, though, they're ambushing another runaway, an adult mutant named Jenny who is living in Australia as a traveling emergency doctor. When her plane lands, the Genoshans try to arrest her, but luckily Maddie has picked up some shifts as a service pilot and was flying with Jenny. She sends a distress signal before being arrested herself by the Genoshans, who are not in Magistrate uniforms, call themselves the Press Gang, and have powers themselves. They tell Jenny that she fled from her duty and zap her with a scifi ray that digitizes her and sends her as a phone signal back to Genosha, before doing the same to Maddie. The X-Men arrive soon after and track the kidnappers scent to the hospital, where they're kidnapping the baby. They get into a fight, but one of them uses the fancy zapper thing to summon a bunch of Magistrates. They take out Logan and Anna and zap them away with the baby while the rest of the team engages in battle. Alex, who could barely bring himself to kill Brood last arc, is shooting to kill against mysterious enemies who hurt Maddie, which is a telling detail both about that relationship and the character. In a weird little detail, the final panel of the issue is some Aussie cops arresting the Magistrates that got knocked out by Logan and Anna. They tell them that they sure hope whoever beat them up to save the baby is doing well in the fight, which is a weirdly supportive and hopeful note to end part 1 on. Maybe it's to contrast with how evil and oppressive Genosha is in the next few issues.

This issue opens with Anna and Logan battling their way through Genoshan Magistrates until a man named Wipeout uses his powers to turn off theirs. We're then introduced to the Genegineer, a mad scientist who does experiments on mutants, whose name is Dr. David Moreau, and his son Phillip. David gets called into work by some Magistrates who pick him up in like a little rocket helicopter thing, and Phillip has a slave zap the lawn with superpowers to fix it. He arrives to study Logan and Anna, who thanks to Roma's spell are invisible to all the fancy scanning devices. He's shown the prisoners in their cells, Logan sedated and Anna curled up in a ball. He asks what's wring with her, and the head Magistrate mentions that some of the guards sexually assaulted her. He's so casually cruel and dismissive about it. If possible, it's made even worse by the fact that Anna has never in her life had a sexual experience. Her first kiss activated her powers, and since then no physical contact. She loves making jokes about it, flirting with everyone and wearing sexy outfits, but with the understanding that she'd never actually have it. And now, for the first time, she may be able to touch someone with her own hands, and that choice is immediately taken away from her. It just makes my skin crawl in a way that this book never has. Jean was violated in the Dark Phoenix Saga by Mastermind, but even then it was telepathic, which gives it at least a little distance from real life. Sexual abuse was also heavily implied in the Magik miniseries, but not as directly in your face. But this is something explicit that's happened to people I know and love, treated as lightly as real life monsters treat it. Back in Australia, the other X-Men telepathically interrogate the Magistrates in the prison, and after Betsy does a little psychic torture they're off to rescue their friends. The Press Gang, Hawkshaw Pipeline and Punchout, arrive soon after to free the Magistrates. Side note- the fact that Genoshans give their mutant slaves superhero style codenames is so insidious, especially through the lens of modern X-books, where those names are a sacred part of mutant culture. Even that gets twisted and mocked. Before we get back to the action, we cut to X-HQ, where the demon N'astirh shows up on the screen. Is this his first appearance? I can't remember. That's such a Claremont demon name. I like N'astirh. He's really polite and has a pretty humany speech pattern, which is a fun contrast against S'ym who's more the classic Christian demon. In Genosha, Phillip sees Magistrates arresting the human family of Jenny, which freaks him out. A Magistrate is rude to him until he recognizes him as the Genegineer's son and tries to apologize, saying he was only following orders. Every time that phrase pops up in X-Men, it's a very intentional Holocaust reference. Claremont, a Jewish man, equating the Magistrates to Nazis feels like a show of solidarity to those suffering under apartheid. Anna, meanwhile, has withdrawn so far into her own mind that she sees the psychic residues of all the people she's ever absorbed. It's a neat concept with a ton of potential for character exploration, which is why later writers keep coming back to this mindscape with her. Most of the residues want to attack her, except for Carol Danvers, who's as real as Anna herself. Since Anna is breaking down, Carol offers to take over the body and get them out of there. There's something very interesting about the fact that Anna, who's just had her autonomy take away by force, is now giving it to Carol, who despises her. This confident, brave hero has been so traumatized that she's afraid to face what may be her last days on Earth. And while it is scary to think there's another person inside of you who could take over, there's also a bit of wish fulfillment here, the idea that when you can't go on anymore this other part of yourself can take over and protect you. And she does; Anna!Carol (probably gonna just call her Carol) beats up two guards who Anna absorbed earlier who want revenge.

One of the guards is a woman, which I think is telling about how other marginalized communities will ally with the majority group if it can protect them. Carol then rescues Logan, who without his powers looks like a shitty old man. They look for Maddie and Jenny, but they've already been taken away. It's here that we finally learn the full, sickening truth of Genosha. Every mutant child is take away at age 13 and altered by the Genegineer. He rewrites their brains to make them obedient slaves and then alters their genetics to change their powers to whatever is the most useful for their slavers. This is called the mutate-process, turning people from free mutants to slave mutates. Suddenly the Press Gang and Wipeout go from complicit villains to heartbreaking victims. Jenny ran away from this, but now that she's been caught she's due for the slaving process. Phillip is upset because he was in love with her as a child, but his father tells him it's her duty to serve. In the room where they do this process, Maddie is also strapped down until N'astirh pops up on the screen and asks if she has a minute to talk. She says she can't so he's just like "okie dokie" and then blows up the power to the building as a favor to her. The lights going out gives Logan and Carol the chance they need to escape and begin planning their revenge.

/I don't know why but the cover of issue 237 has always been stuck in my brain. It's just Logan and Anna!Carol holding on to the top of a train. I have always thought action scenes on the top of moving trains are the coolest, maybe that's why. Anyway, we open with the Magistrates chasing a stolen aircraft which they assume holds Carol and Logan trying to escape, but it's actually empty and rigged to blow when someone opens the door. Right off the bat, this issue has two superheroes using bombs to fight back against an oppressive regime, which is a powerful statement. They're actually still in the city, trying to stay ahead of the Magistrates till the X-Men arrive. They've worked together before, and Logan is glad to see Carol again, even at the cost of Anna, who he does also consider a friend. You have to wonder how she feels about it though. All though the city, there's propaganda posters and videos advertising Genosha as a utopia for all, regardless of gender, race, or anything else. It's a pretty scathing commentary on minorities looking the other way when they aren't the one being oppressed, which is another Holocaust parallel. It's a refreshing and important theme in a book which often, especially in older stuff, strays uncomfortably close to model minority politics. They run into Phillip starting a bar fight with some Magistrates and getting arrested. It's the first human on human violence they've seen, and they hear the Magistrates mention the "mutie train," so they tail them. In the Genegineer's office, he's talking to Jenny before she goes through the brainwashing, telling her she's making an important sacrifice for the good of Genosha. She begs for freedom, so he guilts her for abandoning her duty. Finally defeated, she asks if she'll still be a nurse as a slave. He can't even give her that small, selfless comfort, planning to assign her to manual labor and use her to breed future healers. In the bonding room, they're about to start the process on Maddie when she lets out a scream that sends waves of energy. The rest of the X-Men, meanwhile, have finally arrived, and immediately start beating up Magistrates. The Magistrates are, to the X-Men, about on the same level as the Brood, to the point that Peter of all people suggests they execute them after they knock them out, but Ororo tells Betsy to wipe their minds instead. But when she opens her own mind, she's hit with a wave of psychic force that knocks her for a loop, and then we cut to Maddie's room, where the scientists have been sent flying and impaled on machinery. Back on the train, Logan and Carol are discovered, but have stolen Magistrate uniforms and IDs, so the other Magistrates send them on their way with Phillip to return him. As they drive off, Logan swears to Carol that he's going to bring this country down.

The final part opens with a telepathic transcript from the psychic studying Maddie. In her minds eye, she's a young girl picking flowers in a field and singing "Going to America" by Steeleye Span. The Magistrates call attention to that, which means Claremont wanted to. It's a song about losing your husband because he was arrested and taken away. That's an interesting insight; does she view Scott as having been forcibly taken by Jean? Or Jean as a punishment for Scott? Anyway, in the interrogation, Maddie perceived the telepath as the Genegineer, which is freaking the Genegineer out now that he's watching this. Just to freak them all out, she turn the field into Genosha and blows it up with a firebomb, and the only thing left is the Genegineer/telepath, now dressed like Mr. SInister. Maddie shows up in like. A loincloth and the highest crop top you've ever seen. It's her Goblin Queen outfit premier, and it's ridiculous slutty comic book villain, but it's also very interesting in that it looks like Jean's Hellfire outfit but instead of fancy and expensive looking it's all tattered and ragged. And instead of the Hellfire Club she's gonna throw actual hellfire at people. That part's probably a coincidence cause Claremont likes hell though. She tells the telepath he needs to be careful striking matches, and then kills everyone in the room, which is where we last saw her. We now jump to Logan, Carol, and Phillip, who they've brought into their schemes cause he wants to save Jenny. He's shocked when he sees the prison camps that the mutants live in, having turned a blind eye to the details of the slavery. The trio are caught and brought before the Genegineer. Phillip yells at his father that this is wrong and the humans deserve to know the truth of how the mutants are treated, but he says that it's no secret and people just don't care enough to look. But since Phillip won't shut up about it now, he's an enemy of the state. Logan drops a backstory hint that he's been a slave before and won't do it again, and starts fighting back while in another part of the building, the X-Men attack. Phillip runs off looking for Jenny and teams up with Alex, who's looking for Maddie. Maddie has gone to the nursery, where she finds the kidnapped baby, who she learns was the only natural mutant birth in the country in a long time. Usually they're grown in a lab from mutant DNA, and Maddie feels a strange connection to the body growing tubes. The Genegineer shows up and tries to kill her, but Alex and Phillip stop him and demand to be taken to Jenny. It's too late, though, as she's been turned into a mutate. The X-Men discuss just toppling the entire nation, but Phillip asks for a chance to rebuild the government, starting by getting the word out locally and overseas about how mutants are treated here. The X-Men agree, but tell him that if he fails, they'll be back to take down the country. Alex blows up the entire Genoshan citadel as a threat to everyone remaining on the island, and Maddie kisses him before the X-Men walk through a portal back to their homebase.

There's not a whole lot left to say, because while this is an incredibly powerful story, it's not a very subtle one, and everything is kinda right there on the page. It's maybe Claremont's most chilling story. One of the shortcomings of the mutant metaphor is how few mutants there are, which is why introducing a whole nation of large scale oppression is so effective at getting those themes across. The random mutants in the background as slaves, the father who got shot in the opening pages, and poor Jenny, who only wanted to help people, make the suffering feel very real. I said this before, but it was really important for this book to do commentary on South Africa. Most of Claremont mutant metaphor stuff has been allegories for gay and/or Jewish people, but it's really important for the metaphor to be available to every marginalized group. It never works one-to-one, and it doesn't map onto racial politics quite as well as it does queer politics, but it's there and it's important. This was a great story for Maddie, who's hardcore embracing her new demon friends, and Anna, who hasn't gotten much focus for a while and got some really interesting stuff with Carol in her brain. One of the problems with this arc is that it takes so long before the X-Men actually go back to Genosha. In universe, it's not really that long, the book is just about to get really really busy, and they also have to wait till the big three mutant books are all available for the crossover, X-Tinction Agenda. It just makes the X-Men come across kinda negligent, which is unfortunate. Nowadays they would immediately release a followup miniseries about how Genosha changes, but that's just not an option when you have a handful of X-books and a crazy number of plots going on. That doesn't take away from this story in a vacuum, though, which is really good.

[sindri42]

The original meaning of Mary Sue was not just somebody beloved by the author or overpowered. It was about somebody who stole attention that others deserved. Specifically it was a fanfic-specific term for the OC who gets inserted into an established universe and makes it all about themself. Any time somebody in the setting is known for being exceptionally good at a specific thing, the best in the universe even, Mary Sue is better at it (usually without any explanation as to why). Any time there's a long running romantic pairing, depending on whether the author likes it or not, the established characters will either immediately break up with each other because they realize that they love Mary Sue more, or demonstrate that their relationship is falling apart but it can be saved by the timely and wise intervention of Mary Sue's genius advice. No matter how much the other heroes collaborated to find solutions in canon, or traded off time in the spotlight so each could demonstrate their unique talents (and flaws) as they approached different problems, as soon as Mary Sue is introduced she becomes the only person who is ever allowed to address any problem.

So, strictly speaking, you can't have a Mary Sue in an original story, only in a derivative work. If the spotlight was always hers by right to begin with, she can't steal it.

However, you can have an original story that has a lot of the same problems as a mary sue story, for a variety of reasons. The most egregious example I can think of at the moment is Rimuru from that 'reincarnated as a slime' franchise; he started the game as just a little guy, inconsequential really, with two powers... one of which makes him immune to all harm, and the other allows him to gain a new ability instantly as soon as he encounters somebody who has that ability, and then use it more effectively than the people who spent their entire lives training to do that one thing. This makes for an incredibly boring story, because the answer to 'can he really-?' is always a flat yes, none of the other characters matter except maybe to introduce a new superpower once, and every bad thing that happens in the setting is a consequence of the protagonist just not caring enough to do anything about it rather than any actual limitation.

In contrast, there's a bunch of characters that literally never lose, but are still interesting parts of excellent stories. Saitama from One Punch Man, for example, will never lose a fight. We already know that. But it's fine, because of two factors: the challenges he faces are not ones that can be solved by violence, and a majority of the screen time (especially when action is happening) is given to people whose names are not on the cover. There's a huge cast, and we watch all of them struggle and suffer and triumph and grow individually, with only maybe 30% of the story focusing on the nominal protagonist, and most of that spent either watching how his presence affects the development of those around him, or laughing as he fails miserably at his attempts to do anything other than violence. Or take Alucard from Hellsing, who's essentially a god. He doesn't lose, he doesn't get embarrassed, there's never a thing he wants and doesn't immediately get, there's only one thing that causes him a temporary inconvenience and even that just makes him stronger... but this isn't his story. Hellsing is the story of Victoria Seras, and through it Alucard is sometimes a mentor, sometimes a savior, but most often he's just a really fancy terrain feature. He's background. An element of the setting that the real characters will either use to their advantage or have to figure out a way to get around, like a vaguely character-shaped mountain.

In the end, I think there's two real factors to consider for judging a character and their role in the story.

First is, how much attention do they get from the narrative? This is perhaps the most important thing about the crafting of any kind of media, because the time and attention of the audience is limited. That's the primary price they pay, hours of their life and other things that they could be doing, and the reader/viewer/player wants an appropriate return on that investment. So on one hand, you can get away with a lot more bullshit for a character who has less screen time, or who acts as a secondary factor in scenes focused on somebody else. But on the other hand, if the audience thinks that you're spending all their time on the least interesting parts of your setting, they're gonna wander off. And if you've got a single character who never gives up the spotlight instead of shifting focus between multiple characters, you had better make sure that your one character is fucking fascinating.

Second is, how predictable are you being? This point has been over-emphasized in a lot of recent media, with idiocy like writers changing the end of a TV series after the original plot got predicted by fans, or refusing to let actors know what's going on in a scene to try to prevent leaks, so I should clarify that predictability is not inherently evil, and some degree is in fact necessary to have a narrative feel coherent and meaningful. But if the audience knows exactly what's going to happen in advance, there's no point in them spending all the time and effort it takes to get through the events that they've already worked out. You might not need to leave a question as to whether or not they win a fight, but if the audience already knows how they'll win and you continue to spend more than a page explaining it, you've done something wrong. Killing off random characters for shock value adds nothing, but having the protagonist lose something important once in a while (and actually suffer consequences for it) adds a huge amount of tension to future conflicts. Also note? The certainty of suffering is even more boring than the certainty of victory. Making your protagonist lose all the time is not in any way superior to making them win.

One trick I've seen that's transformed stories that could have been shit into gold? Play with the intersection between these factors. Say you've got a generic Gruff Toughdude protagonist, who never loses a fight but is terrible at personal relationships. If you have a hundred pages of him winning fights for every ten pages of relationship difficulties, you have a crappy book. You took the part where the reader already knows the answer (will he win this fight? yeah obviously, he's Gruff Toughdude) and you gave it all your screen time, while the part that's unknown and requires elaboration (will he ever work up the courage to ask out Mr Suave McBishonen?) got squeezed into whatever space was left. But if you flip that around, and write fifty pages of Gruff Toughdude struggling his way through a clumsy attempt at forging meaningful connections and building a comfortable domestic life for himself, and then punctuate that with him casually blowing away the threat that had been building in the background for half a book in two paragraphs, that could be awesome.

The Author's Darling

So I follow a lot of people who post a lot about OC/self-insert positivity. And that's genuinely great. I love people's OCs and self-inserts. But occasionally, I will see someone, in an attempt to Defend The Honour of OCs and self-inserts, defend a particular kind of writing mistake. And that pisses me off, because it does everyone a disservice.

There are plenty of people who write OCs and self-inserts who do not make this writing mistake, and equating the two is unfair to every OC writer who works hard at their craft. There are also plenty of people who write canon-character-only fanfic or original fic who do make this mistake-- and that hurts both them and their potential readers.

The mistake I'm talking about? Writing a sort of character I'm going to call an Author's Darling.

I'm going to talk about what Author's Darlings are, why they're bad, how you can avoid writing one, and what an Author's Darling isn't. I put a cut in this post, because it's long.

What is an Author's Darling?

An Author's Darling is a character who cannot fail at anything that matters to the author of their story.

What this looks like in practice depends on the author-- different authors prioritize different things. Some authors think their Darling should be stone-cold badasses and never lose a fight. other authors are fine with their Darlings getting knocked out every time they try to throw a punch, but would be very upset if their Darling got rejected romantically.

Plenty of characters succeed at most things they try. Superman wins most of the fights he takes on, but he's not necessarily a Darling. But if you look at a character and you can say, "oh, this character would never lose a fight", or "everyone loves this character and would never get mad at them"? You've got an Author's Darling on your hands.

And- especially in fandom- a character can be a Darling in the hands of one author and a perfectly fine character in the hands of another. Steve Rogers/Captain America is an example of a character who gets Darling-ified a lot. Captain America is supposed to be a shining example of The Best that humanity has to offer- he's virtuous, strong, brave, and oh so pretty. It's easy to fall into the trap of making him incapable of failing at whatever you want him to do, whether that's "punching a lot of Nazis" or "supporting Bucky in his recovery". But a lot of writers manage to thread the needle and write Cap as the lovable, flawed person he's supposed to be.

Why are Author's Darlings bad?

Well, two reasons:

Writing an Author's Darling is a really good way to give yourself writer's block, especially when it comes to the plot. If your character can't fail at anything important, this means that it's really hard to build tension. If your character is going to automatically succeed at anything that's important to the plot, all you're writing is "and then they win, and then they win, and then they win". It can get pretty monotonous pretty quickly, especially if you're writing genre fiction. You can run out of ideas, or your inner critic can go "this isn't how stories work???? the FUCK???" and block your creative flow. If your character can't fail at anything- important or not- it's hard to come up with a good story for them at all. You know how sometimes you get a character rattling around your head but you can't get a plot for them at all? One of the first steps in fixing that is making sure you're not writing an Author's Darling.

Writing an Author's Darling makes people not want to read your work. Now, look. I know everyone says "you should write for yourself, and screw anyone who says otherwise!" But let's be honest here: it sucks to spend hours working on a piece of writing, post it, and then get, like, 2 hits and no kudos, or 1 tumblr like from your friend who likes everything that crosses their dash. It's incredibly demoralizing. Author's Darlings are one of the big factors that make people stop reading a story. As soon as a reader gets the sense that the protagonist can't screw up- that they're "too perfect"- the tension in the story is gone. There's no reason for them to keep reading, because they know the character's just going to Press The Win Button And Win. So they'll click out without saying anything, and you'll wonder why no one's reading your fic.

What isn't an Author's Darling?

This section is haunted by the ghost of Mary Sue. If you're reading this list and you're new to fandom/young, you might wonder why I'm calling out certain specific things; this is a fandom war you missed, don't worry about it.

An Author's Darling is not a character of any specific gender. Male, female, and nonbinary characters can all be Author's Darlings.

An Author's Darling is not necessarily an OC. In the current fandom climate, it's way more likely that a Darling will be a 35-year-old canon male character the writer calls "babygirl".

An Author's Darling is not necessarily a self-insert, but it's really easy to make a self-insert into a Darling. There's a reason people recommend that newbie writers avoid self-inserts- it can be really hard to write a character based on yourself that screws up something important. It takes a lot of vulnerability and courage to write, and it's not something you want to show everyone.

An Author's Darling is not an "overpowered" character or a "cool" character. Your character can have sixteen katanas and do air dashes and still not be a Darling- and your character can be a powerless human in a superhero setting and be the biggest Darling to ever Darling. Having "too many" powers or standing out "too much" in the setting is often a symptom of a Darling- if you don't want your character to fail at anything important, and being The Coolest Person In The Room is important to you, you're going to make your Darling overpowered and good at everything. But it's not the thing that makes an Author's Darling bad.

An Author's Darling is not a 'perfect' character, or a character without flaws. There's a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram, don't get me wrong... but you can load up a character with "flaws" that don't matter to you. A lot of dudebro male writers, for example, will make their Darlings emotionally constipated, mean, and Bad At Relationships. These genuinely are character flaws... but these writers don't give a flying fuck about the character's relationships. They're happy to let their Darling fail at this stuff to prove he's FLAWED!!!- but try and make them write a fight scene their Darling loses, and they'll break out in hives.

Why should I care? Writing is supposed to be fun, and writing characters failing is not fun for me.

Writing is a craft. It is no different from knitting a sweater, making a stop-motion film, or trimming a bonsai. There are ways to do it well, and there are ways to do it poorly.

It can be fun and rewarding to knit a shitty sock with holes in the heel where you forgot how the pattern works and weird lumps in the calf. It is more fun and rewarding to get good enough at knitting that you knit socks you can wear.

Similarly, it can be fun and rewarding to deliberately write stories about overpowered Author's Darlings that are boring to read for anyone who isn't you. But it is more fun and rewarding to get good enough at writing that you write stories other people will want to read.

And you know, maybe you don't care about that. Everyone needs a hobby that they're bad at and have no interest in getting better at; it keeps you humble. Maybe writing is yours.

But plenty of writers do care. And tarring every writer who writes OCs and self-inserts with the same brush- the brush of "this is supposed to be fun! we're writing deliberately bad things! yay!"- is an insult to anyone who writes OCs and cares about their craft.

If you want to write well, you should be aware of what an Author's Darling is, and if possible, you should try to avoid writing them. If you don't care about writing well, that's fine- but please avoid implying that every OC or self-insert character is badly written in this particular way.

[purplehoodiesimon]

You know, I've got a few thoughts about hair in Young Royals.

Simon's hair is au naturale, he has his curls and he has them through the entire season. He never really does anything special with them, they're just there. It's very in character for him, and makes sense for his character. He's not upper class, there's no pressure on him to look presentable and fancy all the time, and hair is hair. If he wants to do something fancy, he will do it because he wants to. Sara, in contrast, starts having more interest in her hair as she tries to fit in with the popular crowd. In the beginning, we see her with it down, with it in a ponytail, it's just another part of her body that's cared for and adjusted accordingly. And then she makes friends with Felice, and we have a lot more focus on her and her hair. She wears the hairclips, she smoothes it down in the mirror. It's not her pride and joy in fitting it, she is a lot more focused on clothes than her hair, but it's a little something that shifts over the season, and she does place great value on those hairclips. Wilhelm's hair is nothing of import for most of the season, it's just there, he sometimes runs his hands through it as an anxiety thing, but most people do that. Until suddenly it's the most important thing—it's the identifying feature as him in the video. As the Hillerska students said, only they know it's Wilhelm's room. To the entire rest of the world, the only thing putting Wilhelm's name on 'that boy in the video' is his hair, and it's how they deny it. Anyone can have similar hair to the prince, it's just hair (Even though it's not like that, it is him). The symbolism/narrative/whatever we want to call it, of Felice's hair is more subtle than the others, but it's still there. She straightens it, worries about it being curly even when it's not at all, gives Sara her hairclips without a second thought because she probably has a bunch more like it. Her hair—and by default the rest of her appearance—is her pride and joy. We see a little bit of it through her mother, but as a black girl in high society, the pressure on her to look presentable is through the fucking roof, and her hair is a HUGE part of that. And that brings us to the last character whose hair has an important role in their story and being, August. And this is kinda what got me thinking about the rest of this. As we know from Malte, August's hair is super fucking insanely curly. He's got it gelled to high hell most scenes he's in. Even when he's exercising, he puts less effort into making it flat and in place, but it's still neatly styled and 'tamed'. And it's interesting to note, during the more formal moments of the show—Wilhelm arriving, parents day, Lucia—he's got it WAY more styled and gelled. It's flat, it's straight, there's not a single curl out of the place he's put it. August is obsessed with his image, in part because that's how all the nobility are raised and in part because now that he's having money issues, he has to rely on his appearance. It's everything. It's a little hard to tell with the lighting and angles, but I'm pretty sure that even during sex with Felice, he's got it gelled a little.

Idk, the hair in Young Royals is just so fascinating to me. Simon and August's hair contrasts completely—both curly, Simon couldn't care less and August couldn't care more. August and Felice's hair contrast and compare in interesting ways—they're both expected to keep up appearances, but where we can see bits of curls on the edges and they fall out of the gel during workouts, Felice has to nigh on destroy hers to keep it straight at all times. Felice and Sara's hair contrast, compare, and build up a lot of this narrative. It's all just very interesting and tbh I have probably watched this show too many times and may be reading into it a little bit too much, but idk it's just interesting.

[mayihavethisdanse]

“What is this, the Dark Ages?”

Or, Arthurian themes and allusions in the Brotherhood of Steel mythos as seen in Fallout 4. (But that’s a lot of words.)

Yep. We're doing this. 

First, some obligatory caveats: there is no single Arthurian canon, just 1500 years of assorted fanfic based on the whims of whoever was writing at the time. For this extremely highbrow Tumblr meta, I have ignored most of it and drawn on my favorites. Also Wikipedia.

Also, I am not an expert in Arthurian literature (or Fallout lore, come to that), and I preemptively beg the pardon of anyone who is.

Finally, in no way am I claiming that all these parallels and thematic echoes are deliberate or even significant. In fact, I'd break it down into:

Clearly deliberate allusions, whether in or out of universe;

Probably coincidence, but could be someone deliberately capitalizing on a coincidental similarity;

Almost certainly coincidence, but fun to speculate about; annnnd

Blatant Monty Python references. (Because of course there are.)

I'll start with the big one.

Arthur Maxson, boy king and unifier

(source)

So across all the retellings and variations of King Arthur’s life story, there are a few consistent elements, particularly in his early life and rise to power. Some of these threads are echoed in the Fallout universe, specifically (and unsurprisingly) in the person of Arthur Maxson.

Both the legendary King Arthur and Arthur Maxson were born with a claim to power lying in their ancestry, both were fostered away from their families, and both proved themselves in combat at a young age. 

King Arthur united the warring kingdoms of Britain into a single entity, making them stronger against outsiders and receiving general admiration and acclaim. Arthur Maxson united the divided factions of the BoS after the events of Fallout 3 and is held in similarly high regard by his men.

The name Prydwen is a reference to the ship of the original King Arthur. Presumably, Arthur Maxson (or someone in the BoS who anticipated his promotion) christened the airship in a deliberate homage to the Arthurian myth.

King Arthur is associated with his legendary sword. I think it’s notable that Maxson’s legend is associated with a bladed weapon, too. ("He killed a DEATHCLAW with a COMBAT KNIFE!”)

Probably coincidence, but fun: the historical emperor Magnus Maximus, who pops up a lot in early Arthurian legend, was known in Welsh as... Macsen. (⌐■_■)

Round Table, but make it dieselpunk

(Continued under the cut.)

Moving away from obvious allusions and into some looser parallels:

Like the Round Table, the Brotherhood is an exclusive knightly order with its leader being the one able to open it up to his chosen few.

Like the Round Table, the BoS sees itself as defending human civilization against forces of chaos. (I’ll touch on their tech-hoarding tendencies when I get to the Grail stuff.) This idea of civilization in the face of chaos goes back to the BoS’s founding, even though the level of isolationism we see in most of the Fallout franchise is not exactly what founder Roger Maxson had in mind: “Notably, Maxson's ultimate intention was to establish the Brotherhood as an organization that works closely with people outside of the Brotherhood, as guardians of civilizations, not its gatekeepers.” (source) In a lot of ways, Arthur Maxson represents a return to his ancestor’s original ideals.

Renegade knights? Internal politics? Traitors within? We gotchu.

In both the medieval legends and in all chapters of the BoS we’ve seen, there’s a big focus on bloodlines (ew). Ironically, it’s probably Arthur Maxson’s unquestionable ancestry that allows him to be more progressive than either of his East Coast predecessors when it comes to boosting Brotherhood numbers by recruitment (even though you can still see a clear division between “born Brotherhood” and recruited soldiers, but that’s a topic for another day). Maxson sees himself as an Elder who "cares for the people"—however misguided and patronizing that attitude might be—and whatever else you might say about the guy, you can't say he doesn't believe he has a duty. Which brings us to…

Know Your Enemy: Danse as Gawain

Before I start this section, an acknowledgement of authorial bias:

Gawain, as portrayed in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is my very favorite of King Arthur’s knights. (Other stories aren't always as flattering, but like I said at the outset: I'm sticking to the ones I like.)

That poem is my very favorite piece of medieval Arthurian literature. In this section, I'll refer to the modern English translation by Simon Armitage.

...that’s it, I have no other biases to disclose. 

What? 👀

(Art: Clive Hicks-Jenkins)

All right. So in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you’ve got this himbo loyal knight of Arthur’s who finds himself caught up in... you know what, let me just paste in the Wikipedia summary. (The Toast, RIP, also did a pretty entertaining and more-or-less accurate recap.)

It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who dares any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving the lord and the lady of the castle where he is a guest.

Don’t worry too much about the plot details, though; for this post, I’m more interested in the thematic parallels. The Green Knight story is full of contrasts: order vs. chaos, civilization vs. wilderness, mortal man vs. Other... but let’s start with Gawain himself. 

Some stuff to know about Gawain:

He was "as good as the purest gold, devoid of vices but virtuous and loyal". Gawain took his principles more seriously even than the rest of Arthur’s knights, not out of pride but out of humility: "I would rather drop dead than default from duty," he says. 

He’s faithful and honorable and never even tempted to betray an oath, even when offered every variety of seduction and riches, except for a single moment of weakness in a desperate desire not to be executed for random shit by powerful forces for reasons he doesn't understand.  

Even though he doesn’t really understand why he needs to die, he sticks to his oath. Gawain's one weakness is a moment of desperate, private, human desire for survival. He'll submit to the headsman’s axe if he has to, but he'd still rather live. 

Above all, Gawain is the ideal of a human man: he might be the bravest and loyal man there is, but he’s still fundamentally human.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

A few more fun facts about Gawain that resonate with Paladin Danse’s story:

He’s got a bunch of really shitty brothers. (No comment.)

Gawain (SPOILERS!) doesn't actually end up beheaded, but he does willingly kneel for his execution and gets a cut on the throat as a reminder of his sin. And, uh, Danse can also get his throat cut! It doesn’t end as nicely but it’s, you know, a thing that can happen.

Gawain might be a really good guy, and he tries really hard to be one, but in the end he’s nothing more than that: there’s nothing supernatural about him, he has no special powers beyond his own principles and devotion. He’s just a dude doing his Best. 

Wait, why not Danselot?

Oh, that guy? Here’s the thing.

Lancelot personifies the continental ideals of courtly love that became popular in the High Middle Ages. Central to his story is the prioritization of personal relationships and romantic feelings in a way that you don’t really see in Gawain's, at least in the Green Knight tale. (Later stories hook Gawain up with an extremely delightful lady, but even that is a different flavor of romance than Lancelot's and has more to do with Gawain honoring his word and his egalitarian treatment of women (hell yeah). In the poem, Gawain is impressed by Bertilak's wife but resists her temptation; in fact, the biggest risk is not that he'll yield to her advances but that he'll be discourteous to her, i.e., violate his principles and cause dishonor to his king and his host.)

Lancelot is driven by passions over principles in a way that Gawain never really is (at least in the stories I’m talking about; later writers have committed character assassination to various degrees). Yes, you could argue that both Gawain and Lancelot betray their oaths, but Lancelot’s betrayal is never, um, blind. He knows what he’s doing and makes a deliberate choice to prioritize his love for the queen over his love for the king. It doesn’t make him a bad guy—he too is an ideal knight with one fatal flaw—but his character isn’t as comparable to Paladin Danse. 

Yeah, Gawain is (in most stories) a prince and a kinsman of Arthur’s, but he’s ultimately a native boy who doesn’t break the mold of a Knight of the Round Table. Likewise, Danse is portrayed as competent and valuable to the BoS, but not exceptional or breaking the mold of what a BoS soldier should be: he simply represents the ideal. Meanwhile, Lancelot is a foreign prince who was marked from childhood as special and fancy, and his storyline goes alllll over the place. (Much like this post.)

For example, Lancelot goes to absolutely absurd extremes to prove his devotion for no other reason than to prove it. (“I’ll do any useless humiliating thing you want. I’ll betray every oath except the one I made to you. That’s what love is!”) Gawain would never. Danse would never.

Ultimately, Gawain's tests are of his character and not of his love. And like Gawain, Danse’s devotion is to service and his principles, not to another person—even Arthur Maxson.

All that said, there are some similarities: both are beloved by Arthur, both are held up as the ideal of what a knight should be. And even if their fatal flaws are different, both make the point that no matter how good and brave and loyal they might be, no human being can be perfect. 

(Except Galahad. Who is, as a result, very boring.) 

I’ll conclude this section with a quote from someone else’s take on the Greek Knight poem:

I like Gawain. He’s not perfect, but he’s trying his best which is all any of us can do. He’s not like the other knights in the Arthurian legends who occasionally ‘accidentally’ kill women on their little adventures and then feel hard done by when they have to deal with the consequences of that. Gawain holds himself to a high standard – higher, it seems, than Arthur and his knights hold him to considering how hard they laugh when Gawain tells them how bad he feels about the whole thing.

I think Gawain is very relatable in this story. We all want to be better than we actually are.

And that, more than anything else, is Danse.

The Grail myth

What’s that? Lost relics of power? Better send some large armed men after ‘em!

The parallels to the BoS’s tech-hoarding ways are obvious enough that the games themselves lampshade them (albeit by way of Monty Python). But it also ties into the larger themes of “purity” versus “corruption” and the BoS’s self-image as a bastion between civilization and chaos. (See Maxson's line in response to the Sole Survivor’s quip about the Dark Ages: “Judging from the state of the world, it wouldn't be a stretch to say we're living in that era again.”)

But the ultimate futility of the Grail mission is also worthy of note. The BoS might want the power of prewar tech on their side, but they’re no more to be trusted with it than any other group of human beings. No matter how they try, the “corruption” of humanity can’t be overcome as long as they’re striving to harness power for their own ends. You can only achieve power by surrendering control of it.

The death of Arthur

The nature of gameplay being what it is, it's not guaranteed that the Arthur figure will be fatally betrayed, bringing Camelot down with him—but it's not unlikely, either.

Awkward.

Some final spitballing:

Outside the Brotherhood, there are some fun parallels of the Arthur myth with the rest of Fallout 4. Betrayal by one’s own son, for example.

The key difference between the BoS and the legendary Round Table: King Arthur’s knights, for all their flaws and human weaknesses, are usually presented as unambiguous Good Guys. The BoS is... a little more ambiguous...

...but damn if they don’t think they're the good guys. 

A-ad victoriam, fellas!

[sopxhiea]

Lush

Alfie Solomons X Reader

Summary: Alfie finds himself in a party thrown in a finishing school that teaches ladies how to be proper in all senses of the world but a rare jewel of a wild young woman catches his eye.

“Sorry, is that supposed to impress me?”

Gold and silk.

It’s on the walls, coated in layers of sparkly paint as light reflects to the silk curtains. It’s on the tables, dozens of champagne bottles resting on top of the finest silk material while the sweet classical music fills the marble walls. The place reeks of the posh and their extravagant perfumes.

Alfie’s forcefully brought to the occasion.

Miriam, the old woman who’s appreciative of Alfie’s donations to the community, had decided that it was time for the man to make more public appearances. She’d forced the grumpy man into the crowd and the fancy outing as a way of branching out to the rest of the community for the Jews.

The night is organised by a bunch of English community elders for the new women’s school opened up right around the corner. It’s easy to recognise their pupils, all of them dressed properly as they greet as many guests as they can. Young ladies are all over the room, their lavish dresses flowing around their legs as they flash their kindest smiles to the people around.

Except you.

Accident, fate or bad luck. It was one of the three that had caused you to end up in the said school. Apparently, you weren’t a proper lady and also happened to lack the ability to act your age, or so you had been told after climbing a tree with your friend to get your hands on the fruit it so graciously had blessed you with.

It didn’t bother you in the slightest but there you were now, standing in a room full of bourgeoisie in a slim dress tailored by one of the maids who worked for the house you stayed in. Unlike all your other classmates, your face is absent of any smiles and the only thing that leaves your lips are snarky remarks.

Annabelle, who also happens to be your etiquette teacher, pinches your arms every now and then to either get you to act properly or to shut you up but it doesn’t work. You know her harsh movements are bound to create bruises on your arms but you don’t care, you hate every moment of the forced event.

You’re the odd one out, naturally.

Although you’re dressed properly with fine jewels and silk gloves, your fake laugh does not fill the air. You’re sulking, almost, as you listen to one of the elderly man talk about his business to your friends and you while you stand around. 

The crowd is made up of women with rich men on their arms, just what your uncle wanted you to be when he had put you in the school two months ago. They’re wearing their finest dresses, most of their hairs are kept in a short form as they plaster smiles on their paint covered faces, nails painted with vibrant colours while they laugh at a stupid joke the rich makes.

And there’s him.

He doesn’t stand out per se, just when you manage to observe him for a while. He’s wearing a suit much like everyone else in the room but there’s something rough about him, something rugged as you stare at the broad man. He has an elderly woman on his arm, she’s talking his ear off while his eyes roam around the spacious room. 

You don’t look away when his blue orbs meet yours.

He’s watched you all night and although you’d been sulking for most of the time, he still thought that you were the most beautiful woman he’d seen in a long while. He’d seen you make smart remarks towards some of the gentlemen, putting them in their place before you would walk to the bar to get some relief.

But this time, there’s a gentle smile on your lips.

He feels his breath get caught on his throat but he’s quick to recover while your gaze returns to the boring old man in front of you. Your dress is similar to the ones the girls are wearing but it hugs your body a little tighter, a fine pearl necklace graces your neck. Your hair is not short, opposed to most of the women around, but kept in wavy shape as it creates a frame around your soft features.

You seem like the youngest of them all.

But you also happen to be the wildest. In the last two months of you being there, all you’d caused was trouble. You’d not sleep and climb out of windows to disappear for a day or two. Your uncle would bring you back with a frown on his old face but you’d find a way to make trouble and piss the ladies off again. It was the only fun thing to do around the house you were kept in.

“It was very lovely to talk to you about your boring business.” you speak to the elderly man who’d been talking for the past hour with you and your friends, a smile rests on your painted lips. The man frowns at your words and is about to speak up when you wave at him and disappear towards the bar once again.

Alfie watches you as you move.

Your painted lips that had just been faking a smile now greet the transparent material of the crystal that holds the liquor you so badly need. You take a couple sips, a sheepish smirk on your lips as you feel someone approaching you from behind. You can tell who it is, his steps aren’t the most subtle or rhythmic.

Your small figure turns around swiftly turns around to face the pleasant stranger, a contagious smile on your lips as you look at him from head to toe. He sees the glint of wickedness swimming around in your orbs and he’s sure you’re the girl every cockney has been trying to get their hands on.

Alfie’s heard of a young woman who just won’t behave. As far as he’s concerned, most people think she should be married off to some boring bloke but the uncle won’t let them do it and he’s the only family she’s got. He’s heard of the wild dancing, the kind of moves that are nothing but filth and also the countless times of the escapes she’s made.

And there you are, the infamous wild lady, standing right in front of him.

“Hello, Mister.” you say, amused as you giggle at him. He copies your expression, a low smile on his lips while you feel his smell take over you, vanilla and rum.

“’ello to yourself, Miss.” he speaks, accent dripping from each word as you watch him, he’s even more handsome up close.

Your eyes drift along his tall form, he’s still tall even though you have your heels on. Your gaze lingers on his white shirt, it’s not as smooth as it was when he came in, or so you figure. He’s dressed sharp, his facial hair kept in a nice shape as the golden wires glisten underneath the many candles and chandeliers around. You don’t bother and be subtle as your eyes drink him but he’s doing the same to you.

You chuckle lowly as he takes a sip of the drink you’re holding, it’s much too strong but you’re only getting started.

“You, yeah, are makin’ quite the noise today.” he speaks, not a swear word within the sentence since he’s being proper for the occasion.

“As per usual.” you say, a sweet smile on your lips while you lean on the wall and he hovers tall above you, his face inching a little closer each time he speaks. “Interested?” you speak, wanting him to say yes because he seems to be the only one worth spending time with around here.

“I ain’t answering to that, love.” he says, head shaking at his own words and you watch him under the pleasant light as they create shadows around his face, he’s far too good looking for a bloke with his reputation.

Your eyes drop to his hand, decorated with lines and bands of rings and a crown tattoo, the rough skin makes you smile as your soft fingers trace his. His eyes flutter, the slow song filling the night and flowing out of the spacious house you’re both standing in. You blink a few times, seeing the glint of thrill in his eyes as you stare and stare, the night is long.

But your patience is non-existent.

“You’re no fun, Mister.” your words are barely audible as they leave your lips and he knows you’re teasing, his eyes flutter once more as a small whine leaves your lips and it’s all it takes for him to be envisioning your naked frame, although he’s already done it multiple times up until that point.

You try to be sweeter, appeal to his good nature to get what you want. You know that if a lady from the school is to leave today, with a gentlemen on her arm, it is allowed and you see it as your exit ticket to never return to the hell of a place. Your hands trace the head of his cane, feeling the cold material contrast the warmth of his hands. “What shall I call you?” you ask, danger swimming in your orbs.

“Name’s Solomons, luv.” he speaks, knowing that he needs to be proper and that means saving his name for the more intimate part of the conversation but you don’t seem pleased with the consideration from his part.

“No.” you speak, like a whiny girl and he thinks you’re the most charming whiny girl he’s seen but he waits for your painted lips to part and the sound of your sweet voice. “I knew that. Tell me what you like to be called.” you speak, voice smooth as silk as it delivers the words. He wonders what your voice would sound like if his head was between your soft legs.

There’s evident evil in your eyes but he’s drawn to it, like moth to a flame.

You half expect for him to tell you something absurd. This isn’t something you ask other people but in the rare occasion that you play with fire, the answers have been nothing but disappointing. They’d told you to call them baby, husband or sweetheart.

How pathetic, you thought.

“Alfie.” he speaks, voice low as his eyes don’t leave yours. A smile finds your lips and he stops himself from leaning in and kissing them.

“That’s a very good name.” you speak, satisfied for the first time in a while with a man’s answer. They seem too dull to you, most men are shallow and simply daft but this one seems to shine on you. 

“Fuckin’ flattering old me.” he speaks, amused as he shakes his head and clicks his tongue. You’re far too young for him but that doesn’t seem to occur to you as you ogle him.

“Old?” you speak into his face, your perfume surrounding him as you play with his crisp shirt. He’s close to kissing you senseless but he figures Miriam wants him to act proper for the event. “I don’t think so.” you speak again, answering your own question and he watches the light flicker on your face.

“What is a pretty little bird like you doin’ in the corner?” he speaks, breath almost fanning your face while you almost lose yourself in the smell of him. He seems promising thus far.

You look up at him with an open mouth, seeing as he’s interested. Your agape mouth turns to a smile soon after, this victim of yours seems like a proper gentlemen. The truth was, you didn’t really belong there from the start, it was your uncle’s masterplan since your deceased parents were far too gone to do anything. You’d be a proper lady and the school would tame you down, get you a goodie two shoes husband and let you be on your best way.

But you weren’t the little gentle kid they were expecting.

Trouble made life worth living, there was no fun in the four walls you slept in most days and occasions like these were your ticket for the exit. You knew you’d have to tell the head of the class that you’re leaving with a gentlemen but that’s the point of the occasion, to make sure the girls get to know the people around and maybe even snag a husband of their own.

“Talking to you.” you speak, eyes looking up at the tall, handsome man as he sizes you up. He’s already made up his mind to donate a good amount of money to your school solely because of you.

“Ya’ know who I am, lass?” he speaks, no swearing induced with his words because he sees just how young you are, even though you look younger than you are.

“You just told me. Mr.Solomons.” you whisper against his face, voice breathy as his eyes threaten to flutter. 

But you barely have a clue.

“I, yeah, am a bad fuckin’ man, luv.” he speaks, eyes locked into yours as his face moves. You watch the way his lips shift with each word and a blush rises on your cheeks. You giggle against his face this time, the music in the room constantly changes its melody.

“Sorry, is that supposed to impress me?” your voice is filled with amusement and laughter. It’s not like you’ve asked him to fuck you or take you home, not just yet. 

He looks at you with wide eyes, taken aback by the bravery of such a little thing. You don’t have an ounce of fear in your eyes as you smile up at him and he speaks before you can.

“I don’t think, right, you want to be seen with me, luv.” he says, very aware of the fact that half of the room have been watching you and Alfie for the last hour. But you’ve already been seen with him, so you see no sense in what he’s saying.

“Nonsense.” you speak, the reply is almost automatic and you don’t break eye contact.

He chuckles, it’s low and you’re sure it would be impossible to hear if you weren’t standing so close. You hear his deep voice as he shakes his head. “Fuckin’ hell.”

“You’re the only one worth talking to in this goddamn party.” you whisper without realising it. You don’t intend on telling the gentlemen that but the sparks in his eyes when you change your mind.

Fancy events like this did not interest you, you wanted something real. It didn’t excite you that the carpets in the venue were brought from Milan or that the fine silk curtains were hand-made, you wanted things to be real, raw and not pretentious like all the posh souls were making it out to be. Alfie saw that, mostly because he felt the same way.

You wanted to run away from this place, to talk with someone about the possibilities of what the night had in stock for you and walk on the pavement with bare feet and listen to their laugh and ask them what they really thought of the place they were put in.

Alfie saw that in your eyes, you were young after all.

While you fiddled with your freshly painted nails and tried to ignore the obnoxious color the maid had chosen for you, you let him size you up. You were dangerous in the most complex ways but he liked that, he worked inside danger anyway.

“Say, luv..” he spoke, the pet name making your eyes flutter as he looked down at your small form. You didn’t look out of place here in the fancy venue but it was clear to him that you felt that way. “Do ya’ dance?”

Alfie didn’t dance, that was easy to tell and you weren’t a big fan of slow dancing either, too much intimacy was packed up in it for you. “Only If I like the gentlemen who asks me.” you spat out, true and honest as he watched you like a hawk.

But before he could even get to say anything, Miriam appeared out of thin air. She had been watching Alfie for the past hour as he made conversation with the one girl Miriam hoped he’d stay away from. Her eyes were glistening with excitement and anger, all packed up in giant orbs as she stared at you with a smile.

Alfie cleared his throat when he realised the lady had come in and needed to be introduced. Your posture clearly straightened while he started to speak, uninterested but the deed had to be done so she would leave.

“This is Miriam.” Alfie muttered, almost like a little kid who didn’t want to do it but he soon realised you hadn’t told him your name. His eyes met yours as you looked at the lady next to him and she spoke up at last.

“And who is this lovely lady?” Miriam spoke, voice a little deeper than you’d expect but it suited her. You smiles and took her hand, shaking it like how businessman shook each others’ hands and Alfie smiled at your tomboyish attitude.

“Y/N.” you spoke softly, subtly looking at Alfie direction when he muttered your name under his breath. It sounded right.

“Oh! What a lovely name!” she exclaimed, making you giggle at her excitement for such a normal part of the conversation. You nodded at his words and thanked her like you’d been taught to do.

“Thank you. That’s very kind.” you spoke, a fake smile plastered on your lips while Alfie watched you under a heavy stare, you were perfectly conversing with the lady but it was obvious you wanted to be your own self.

“You two have been talking for quite a while. You don’t mind if I steal Mr. Solomons for a while, do you, dear?” she spoke, almost testing you but you had been trained by the best to not show any emotion. You nodded and smiled, realising that you were a little further down from the bar.

“Of course not.” your words were forced but the lady wouldn’t notice. You shot Alfie a charming smile before the lady dragged him to meet a couple new investors for the Jewish community. It wasn’t like they needed them, but Miriam thought that it was only natural for him to meet people who’d do the same thing as he was doing in terms of donations.

------

The venue was now filled with music, the lively kind. All the couples were tired from the endless slow dancing with the music they had put on so you had finessed the perfect plan to seduce the man who handled the live musicians and although all you had given him was a precious smile, he had started playing tunes you could easily dance at your request.

Most of the girls from your class were now on the dance floor, dancing the day away in the most proper way possible with more than two dozen young men around. No matter how big the opportunity was for them, most of them looked stiff as they moved to the music. They didn’t quite know how to move their bodies in a way that would make men their slave yet and seeing as that was what you were currently doing, you grabbed one of the girls and began teaching her slowly.

Alfie had been talking to a businessman who owned a few casinos up town. He was new to the world of being a gangster but the man seemed speakable enough for him to endure a fifteen minute conversation before he heard familiar giggles overlapping with the music that was being played.

And there you were.

You were an expert at getting yourself in trouble as far as Alfie could tell and the way you moved to the music was the sole proof of the fact. Your body moved to the rhythm, the kind of sways coming from your hips that would be enough to have any man floored if only you’d ask. Miriam watched as Alfie gulped at the sight, he was in deep trouble.

But one tug at his sleeve and he was back to normal.

He ignored the smile on your lips as your drunken state moved to the upbeat song, you were a little too fragile for any man around that night. Tonight was supposed to be about everyone getting to go home with a man on their arm, the sole purpose was to find the grown girls someone to tie their knot with so that the school could invite younger ones.

But you were sure you’d be the last to go.

Men liked to look at you, there was the innocence of a doll mixed with the deadly sins inside your small frame and that was enchanting but it wasn’t enough to keep them interested for the rest of their lives. You were stubborn and didn’t behave like a proper lady should, or so that was what you’d heard since you were a small girl. 

So you found no point in trying to act like one.

An hour passed in what felt like the blink of an eye and you stumbled on your way to the big sofa in the corner of the room. Some of your classmates were already gone with men in their arms to keep them company through the night and you had a look around to see who you could entice.

And to your surprise, the pleasant stranger was still here.

He had been watching you for the last hour with the old lady in his arm. She usually talked about giving back to the community and Alfie was all for that but there was something that kept pulling him to you. He had watched as you eyed every person in the room until your eyes landed on him, a small smile playing at your lips and he realised you weren’t as drunk as he thought you were.

That wasn’t you being drunk, it was you being nothing but trouble.

“May I?” your voice was soft against the air while you tried to get to the whiskey on the table but Alfie was blocking your access. You had walked graciously towards him before that and he was sure you wanted something.

“No fucking way.” he spoke under his breath and your eyebrows shot up at the words. He was amusing after all. 

While he blocked your hands from reaching the whiskey bottle, you shot him an innocent look and he felt as though he was playing with something a little bigger than himself.

“Why?” you asked with a dash of threat lying under. You could make this moment very difficult for him but it went both ways. 

“You, yeah, are too fuckin’ young to even be here, luv...” he speaks and you watch the way his eyes drink you up. You’re too young for drinking but now young enough to keep his eyes to himself, apparently. “...let alone be dancin’ the way you were.” he finishes his sentence and your amused chuckle fills his ears. It’s not what he expects to hear.

“Liked something you saw?” you ask, daring as you look into his eyes. He chuckles, he’s clearly taken aback.

He shakes his head instead of answering. Most of the people around are gone with their gentlemen and the party will be over soon, you figure you’ll be going to the cold bed you woke up in. He catches the faint sign of disappointment on your face and he’s smart enough to put two and two together.

But you seem far too dangerous for a man like him, he thinks.

Before he can answer your question, Annabelle comes around with a plastered smile and starts speaking in the tone you hate so much.

“Y/N! The party is over, dear. You best be on your way to your room.” she speaks, sizing Alfie up along the way. You huff and stare at the old lady. You didn’t think the party was a grand idea anyway.

“Alright.” you speak, knowing she won’t like it and Alfie enjoys the way a hint of smile plays on your lips while Annabelle turns furious for a second.

“What have I taught you?” she says, composing herself in front of the guest and Alfie watches the whole thing play out.

“Yes, Miss.” you say with a fake smile but you’re far from done. They both hear the words as you mutter them under your breath. “Your wish is my command.”

Alfie can’t help but laugh.

You know Annabelle won’t let this go but she smiles at the guest as a sign of kindness, something she hasn’t shown you in your time around here. Alfie turns to you to see the horror in your eyes and he can tell it’s because of the old grumpy lady who keeps bugging you.

And he decides to be the gentlemen.

You’re about to say goodnight and go to your room but he speaks up first to Annabelle, you don’t protest when his hand grabs your small one and caresses it while speaking.

“Actually, this one right here, yeah, will accompany me for the rest of the evenin’..” he speaks and catches the way your eyes light up but he’s composed while the old lady looks at you first and then looks at Alfie.

She’s sure it’ll be a disaster.

“Of course.” she says, wanting to get rid of you as fast as she can.

You watch her leave and Alfie’s hand engulfs your small one in the process. With stars in your eyes, you return to the kind gentlemen but he’s fast to speak before you can thank him. “We best be on our way, lass.”

And he leaves with you on his arm, unaware of the things the night has in stock for the both of you.

----

Tagging: @clairecrive  @parkbearum @sourirez  @vetseras​ @mollybegger-blog @babylooneytoonz @peakascum

a/n: I know i have been inactive but i have one more week of school before the winter break so i’ll be better, I promise!! and please let me know what you thought or/and if you’d like to be tagged!! <3 Happy december!

[cheers-mdears]

doesn't matter

ship: Edward/Stede

words: 875

rating: mature

tags: masturbation, heavy angst, hurt no comfort, post-break up, pre-kraken, season 1 spoilers

summary: Ed morosely speculates on what went wrong and cries and jerks off on the clothing Stede left behind just like he did Ed. (Not crack despite how that sounds) AO3 link

A/N: I tried to write Ed as drunk but have never been so much as tipsy myself so am basing it on what I've seen in movies and stuff, sorry

Ed's shoulder jars against the solid shelving while reaching for the little suit doll. Fuckin'...mannequin? Lever. Definitely a lever or something. Closet opener. Like a can opener except for closets. This closet. Secret closet, that Stede only shared with him.

The lever finally holds still enough for Ed to pull it and open the hidden door. He cusses and swats at the weight that almost fucking brains him on the other side of the door when he closes it behind himself. Things really need to stop having it out for him. He's just... just trying to see the closet. All the pretty clothes.

There's sunlight like the first time he was in here and he remembers for a moment how excited they'd been. Peas in a pod. Stede happy to share, Ed fasci-- fas-- interested. A lot. The orange breeches they'd both worn had come from here. That had been the first time forrrfuckingever that Ed had been unbored.

He stumbles while trying to find orange fabric and tries to catch himself again, but the stupid clothes aren't solid like the shelves and he hits the floor hard, taking a couple useless summer linens down with him.

"Fuckin' ow."

Oh no. Ed fumbles at the shirts, checking for tears. If he's ruined them, Stede will be--

Stede won't be anything. Because Stede isn't here. It's been two days since Ed got here, plenty time for Stede to catch up. If he was coming. Which he's not. Why would he if he already left Ed behind once?

Ed blinks away the extra blur and turns to the winter jackets. If Stede isn't coming back, then Ed can do whatever the fuck he wants with his stuff.

The jackets are a bitch to yank down, but Ed has a nice big pile of fancy clothes fast enough. He runs his fingers over lace, embroidery, patterns, buttons, silk, velvet, linen that feels rough in contrast. He rubs an extra fancy stitched design over his wet cheeks and the beginnings of the first stubble he's had since his...teens? Twenties? Like at least half his life ago, however many years that was. He still feels cold.

Ed's been trying over and over and over and over again, but he can't figure out where he went wrong. If Stede didn't leave him to come back for his rich people things, what the fuck did he leave for? Had he remembered that Ed's a bad person, the worst, someone who killed their own dad? Or that he'd tried to kill Stede that one time? But they'd decided to forget about that and Ed would never--he'd rather chop off his own fuckin' dick than hurt Stede. Stede had to know that. Didn't he? Or maybe he'd finally saw that Ed will never fit him. Stede is sunshine and fun and nice things and Ed doesn't deserve any of that.

But Stede had kissed him back, Ed knows he did. And he'd said--

Ed drops face-first into the pile and hugs it tight.

Stede had said with his own mouth that Ed made him happy. So why--

Ed sniffs back snot and smells lavender and the cologne Stede had worn to the fickle fuckheads' party. He shoves his face in deeper and lets the building sob out. The headache that had settled behind his teeth earlier rushes back to his face.

Maybe it was because the kiss had been a weird angle? Cuz it had been, and it was Ed's fucking fault. Ed should have...should have climbed into Stede's lap like he'd wanted to a bunch of times, gotten as close as he could, found a better angle, and kissed him dizzy. Make sure he kissed Stede better than his wife ever had. He should have--fuck.

He pulls the clothes even tighter towards himself and wiggles his hips against them for friction as he imagines it. He should have laid Stede back and shown him how fuckin' good they could have been together. Nothing to slick the way and all the fucking sand meant buggering wasn't on the table, but Ed had gotten a lot of practice in his youth and could have sucked Stede until he saw goddamn stars. He could have found out what Stede's cum tastes like. He could have--shit.

The button of his pants snaps open easily--finally something doesn't fight him--and Ed has to lift his face from the clothes to gasp as he takes himself in hand and starts tugging.

He could have touched all over Stede's high-life soft skin and the scars from his recent adventures, kissed the sparse chest hair Ed had stared at while waiting for Stede's fever to break. He could have found out how Stede's prick fit against his palm.

He'd thought they'd have more time. Half-baked images of teaching Stede how to fuck Ed same as he'd been teaching him sword fighting mosey through his mind's eye and the pressure in his face builds into an awful throbbing ache as he nears climax. He thinks about the little cute-as-fuck noise Stede had made before Ed had ended the kiss and cums with a tear-stained cry.

He'd thought he'd have more time.

He'd thought--

Doesn't matter now.

[yellowocaballero]

Opening Line Tag Game

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favorite authors!

Tagged by @actualbird, who did not mean to bait me with the opportunity of director’s cut, but he absolutely did. I’ll just go through my last 15, which are all  for The Magnus Archives. 

Opening Lines: 

1. Most people who were unlucky enough to meet Jonathan Sims assumed he had no friends. This was true, up to a point two months after Jon became a researcher at the Magnus Institute: afterwards Jon had no friends, except for Sasha James. (Fahrenheit 101)

2. Jon had one final dream, then. (Hope, Etc. (Dickenson et al.))

3. It was a perfect day for his wife’s funeral. (Sucker’s Bet)

4. Monday morning, two hours into their brainstorming session into how to rescue Daisy from administrative labor, the Archives received a package. (Solitaire, part 3 of Roleswap AU)

5. The act of object reacquisition was a subtle and refined technique. (The Crow’s Funeral)

6. Jon was reasonably sure that his History teacher was a time traveller. (The Monster at the End of This Book)

7. “I don’t care what Elias says,” Melanie said, watching Basira uncap her dry erase marker with a vengeance, “we aren’t letting that pig Stoker into the polycule.” (Minesweeper, part 2 of the Roleswap AU)

8. In Melanie’s defense, she wouldn’t have had to do it if working at the Magnus Institute wasn’t so freaking boring. (Space Cadet, part 1 of Roleswap AU)

9. “Our boss is an immortal psychic vampire and I can prove it,” Tim told Sasha two weeks after the worm incident, barging inside her office after hours. (Human Relations)

10. If asked, Martin would say that he became the shadow director of the Magnus Institute by accident. (Feste)

11.  Martin dreamed that night of opening the door to the Archives and walking down slimy cement steps, stopping in front of a wood oak door. (Martin and the Dream Boy)

12. [My Chemical Romance lyric but I’m not counting that] Ah, Jon thought, unlocking the door to his house. Just what any thirty three year old man loves to hear upon returning home from a long day at work: the sweet, dulcet sounds of My Chemical Romance peeling the paint off the walls. (No Sin But Ignorance)

13. Jon was reading out sections of Georgie’s battered copy of Encyclopedia on Ghosts out loud just to bask in the sound of his own voice when he heard a knock on the door, quickly followed by a choked scream, and a thump. (Bell, Book, and Candle)

14. Daisy woke up to Jon standing over her with a knife.  (Attempted Assasinations)

15.  Jon woke up at 5:45 AM Monday morning with what, at the time, he assumed to be a head splitting hangover, despite the fact that he was not a known heavy drinker and could not recall partaking last night. (theatre of the absurd)

Thoughts: 

If you want advice on writing opening lines, Zak “Actual Writing Major” Bird gave good advice. I find writing opening lines to be really similar to writing summaries, and you kind of have to play the same game with all of them.

I’m going to agree with basically everything he said, as I do the same thing - especially with the orientation, and then the cliffhanger. As Zak said, opening lines especially have to play many different roles. I tend to apply that ‘triple time’ rule to scenes, because I want every scene to play a plot/thematic/suspenseful/character-building role, but if you’re a better writer you can get it down to the lines. Here’s what I was typically trying to do with my opening lines:

1. Orient you in space and time. Where in the canon am I? Who is the point of view character? What’s going to be the problem we’re facing? This is doubly important because I tend to pretty much exclusively write AUs, so the first thing I want to establish is that it’s an AU. The BBC line establishes that Jon’s living at Georgie’s place pre-S3, and that something exciting’s about to happen that didn’t happen in canon. The NSBI opening line establishes that Jon is...living a happy domestic life, presumably with a teenager?. In Space Cadet, you get that this is when Melanie’s working at the Institute but...it’s boring? What’s going on?

(For a non-fanfic story, this kind of orientation would establish setting and character.  I also tend to do that, but it’s more important in fic that you’re grounded in where we are)

2. Establish that SOMETHING WEIRD IS HAPPENING??? My stories have a lot of ‘weird’ factor, or so I’m told, and I want the opening line to establish that. I often pull that ‘what the fuck is going on’ further into the story into the entire first scene, so I’m always hitting the ground running and waiting for the reader to catch up. Why is Jon standing over Daisy with a knife? What do you mean Martin’s the shadow director of the Institute? What does arson have to do with anything?! It’s a cliffhanger, and you’re already presented with this ‘question’ in the first line of the story. Evilcon’s a good example of a line that does 1 + 2: you understand immediately that this story is about Jon, who is probably a child in school, and that he’s having a very canon non-typical encounter with the supernatural. Same with Sucker’s Bet - the opening line brings up so many questions: we understand that we’re at a graveyard and probably not in canon, but Jon has a wife? His wife is dead? Why would it be a perfect day for a funeral?

3. Set tone. You can pretty much tell instantly from these lines which are comedy and which are not. The (relatively) serious ones start out with some kind of action or engagement - Martin’s walking down stairs, Jon’s waking up with a hangover, Jon’s standing over Daisy with a knife. In contrast, the more comedic ones kick off with a joke, some dialogue, or a relatively whacky moment. Crow’s Funeral is more thoughtful and atmospheric. My style of comedy is very machine gun and incessant, so when the story starts off with a joke and just doesn’t stop, then you know what you’re getting into. 

4. Just punchy. Don’t get too long, or too fancy, but make it sound good. I do typically try to get them to stand on their own in an interesting way. Maybe only half of them have particularly snazzy opening lines (which tend to get used in the synopsis), but typically I either open up the document with a snazzy line or a snazzy scene in my head. A lot of the time that’s all I got. 

Actually, I’d say that it’s super similar to writing synopses. A lot of these rules also apply to first scenes. I do remember a writing teacher when I was 20 telling me about a bunch of rules for opening lines but I don’t remember them. As usual I’m vibe based. Anyway, uh...Hannah get your butt over here I know you like talking about this too @lazuliquetzal.

[thiswasinevitableid]

93. I hire your matchmaking services but all the people you set me up with are horrible and I’m demanding a refund and you’re asking me for one more chance??? what are you going to do? be my date?

Indruck, nsfw, please!

Here you go! I was inspired by @kriskukko's incredible art for the orc designs in this, and I highly recommend checking them out!

“Indrid? Some from Kepler House is here to speak with you.” Ned pokes his head into Indrid’s rooms.

“Drat” Indrid hisses, dressing gown whipping about him as he scrambles to put the apartment in order while also dragging his notes on the man in question to the forefront, “I didn’t forsee anyone coming by today, goodness, he had his first engagement with Lady Austens daughter last night, what on earth could they need to see me for?” He tosses his spare pens aside, landing them in his second set of house slippers.

“Well, dear boy, given the luck you’ve had with them lately-”

“It’s not luck, it’s simply very unlikely futures. Please just, just stall whoever it is a moment, Leo is usually patient and-”

“I’m afraid I cannot do that my friend.”

“Why not? I watched you once talk an entire flock of constables away from your door. Praytell, why can Ned “Silver Tongue” Chicane not get rid of a single attendant?”

“Because the attendant ain’t here this time.”

Indrid slams the drawer of his desk, looking up as an orc in a deep brown suit steps into the room, tossing his hat onto the table. He’s shorter than Indrid and Ned (stout and strong, according to the notes Indrid received), wavy black hair streaked with grey at the front. One eye is blue, the other brown, and both regard the harried matchmaker with casual annoyance.

“Mr. Newton, I, ah, I was not expecting you to visit me.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to be on a date where she found me so damn dull she hailed a cab as soon as dinner was done. I was already in town on some business for Minerva, so I decided to come tell you I ain’t in need of your services anymore.”

“I beg your pardon? Your benefactor employed me to find you a suitable match and I intend to do just that. I know there have been missteps, but such things are to be expected when searching for one’s lifelong partner.”

“Uh huh. And the fact I’m Lady Minerva’s chosen heir, which means there are a bunch of folks waitin to mimic my style and choices, has got nothin to do with it.”

“I, ah, I can’t say that I’m ignorant of the potential repercussions of being the one assigned to locate a spouse for you.”

“Which is the long way of sayin you know damn well that if I decide to stop askin you for help, no one with money is ever gonna come to you again.”

There’s a determined set to his rounded jaw, and a glimpse at the future suggests Indrid will have better luck with a different tactic

“....were they really so awful?”

“Yes. They were rude, or thought I was rude, or thought I was dull, or we just had fuck-all in common.”

“Have you considered you might just be a tad more demanding than average?”

“It ain’t demandin to want the person I spend the rest of my life with to actually like me.” He sighs, “I’m sorry, Mr. Cold, but unless you got a real winner up your sleeve, I’m done.”

All responses, all timelines show Duck ending his time as Indrid’s client and walking out the door.

“You could try me!”

“Really?” Duck looks deeply unconvinced.

“I will admit it’s unorthodox, but I, I foresee us having a perfectly nice time together. It will let me prove that I am capable of choosing companions for you.”

The shorter orc looks him up and down more deliberately and Indrid fights not to draw his dressing gown tighter. He will not be intimidated by some newcomer from across the sea.

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal. I got to go to this concert tomorrow; someone from Kepler house is expected to show and Minerva is busy. You’re comin with me.” He holds Indrid’s gaze, daring him to renege on his offer.

Indrid summons his best, professional grin, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

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

Indrid smooths his waistcoat and jacket as he steps from the cab, tucks a strand of his silver hair behind his ear. It’s his only concession to the nerves skittering up and down his spine.

Gatherings such as these are nothing new to him; he goes to them to gather new information and new clients, to remind the well-to-do families of London and beyond that he is the matchmaker extraordinaire. But there is always the moment between when they see him and when they recognize him, when every face in the room wonders why someone like him dares to enter their space.

Somewhere in Indrid’s ancestry is a love story between an orc and a goblin. His silver hair, very angular features, and complete lack of tusks or fangs is the proof. The red eyes don’t help--they unsettle everyone who sees them--but his mother insists they’re evidence of other orcs gifted with rare magic on her side of the family. He wears red spectacles over them just to be safe; he rather likes how the color stands out against his skin, and his glasses let him avoid prying questions.

Duck is waiting for him under the awning outside the music hall; he’s in a grey day suit this time, looking just as understatedly handsome as he did yesterday morning. Indrid must admit his desire to save his reputation is not the only reason he agreed to this; he cannot understand why Duck is having such trouble meeting his match. He’s good looking, moneyed, American--an exotic background in the eyes of the average, sheltered upper-class orc--but still has family history here in England. All Indrid’s matches showed a high probability of success. The point of failure must lie with the orc himself.

“Afternoon, Mr. Cold.” Duck smiles with everything but his eyes.

“Indrid is fine, given the reason for our meeting.”

Duck nods. Indrid wishes the ground would swallow one of them up. When the pavement fails to oblige, he offers his arm. The shorter orc takes it, both of them doffing their hats as they step inside.

“I, uh, like the earring.” Duck indicates the moth cuff on Indrid’s left ear, a stark contrast to the single gold hoop in his own.

“Thank you. A friend gave it to me. I, ah, I rather enjoy working moths into my wardrobe; I find them fascinating.”

“Y’know, back home we got moths that look like hummingbirds.”

“Really?” Indrid’s ear twitches, “how big?”

Duck holds up his hands to indicate the size. Indrid is about to demand details when they’re waylaid by their hostess and pulled into a cluster of families. Indrid breathes deep, feeling crowded in, and notices Duck routinely being cut off in conversation or given disapproving looks behind his back. Yes, Indrid supposes his manners are a bit rough, but there’s no harm in that. Too, everyone seems far more interested in the goings on at Kepler House and with Lady Minerva than with Duck himself. By the time they’re seated, their arms feel locked together from shared tension.

The violinists are quite good; Indrid enjoys strings, his recordings of them being his favorite music to listen to while drawing. But his mind is so consumed by futures and by thoughts about the orc beside him that he struggles to focus on the music. Duck is having a similar issue, though he hides it well; were they not side by side, Indrid would miss the way he fidgets with the knee of his trousers.

“Are you alright?” He whispers under the applause.

“N-ye-uh. Fuck. I, the musics real nice but I gotta say I’m gettin kinda bored. But I got no fuckin clue if leavin will piss everyone here off.”

“Intermission is soon. When it comes, keep quiet and follow my lead.”

When the guests rise to stretch their legs and fetch refreshments, Indrid guides Duck to their hostess.

“I’m so very sorry, but I’m afraid my stomach is rather angry with me and it’s best if I go home. Duck has agreed to accompany me so I do not pass out in the street. I’m sure you understand.”

She nods, and in a matter of moments they’re out on the street, each breathing deeply.

“Thanks for that.”

“My pleasure.”

“Guess I oughta just head back to the hotel.” Duck sighs.

“You could. But, ah, we’re not far from Kew Gardens and the weather isn’t miserably cold for once. If you’d like-”

“Hell yeah. Wait, fuck, sorry, tryin to swear less in public.”

“I don’t really mind.” Indrid starts them down the street.

“Lots of them do” Duck tips his head back towards the concert hall, “I mean, at least that rule is easier to figure out. It’s not that there aren’t weird rules and class stuff back home, but I grew up learnin them. Here I always feel like I’m one move away from makin an ass of myself. No one’ll say anything because of Minerva, but I know if it weren’t for her, none of ‘em would give me the time of day. It makes every interaction so goddamn stressful.”

Indrid twinges with sympathy, “When I first started in these circles, I wrote myself notecards and had Ned test me on them.”

Duck giggles, so absurd and loud it draws stares from passersby, “why? You seem to know your stuff.”

“I didn’t come from money, and I don’t always read social situations the way others expect. It was learn or live as a penniless artist for all my days.” As the gardens come into view he adds, “I know the basics of your life in America but if you weren’t here, what would you be doing there?”

“Workin in the Yosemite valley. I was a ranger there for a few years before Minerva called me here.”

“What was that like?”

Duck tells him as they wander the first stretches of the gardens. He’s midway through a tangent about bears when he stops.

“Holy fuck, you’re really still listenin.”

“Of course I am, this is fascinating.”

His companion smiles, “Glad you think so. But it ain’t polite for me to dominate the conversation like this. Now you gotta tell me what you do when you’re not gettin fancy folks together.”

“...You promise you will finish the story about the bear and the tent later.”

“You know it.”

Indrid knows that time passes more quickly with good company, but he’s still startled when the sun sets. The Savoy, where Duck is staying, is closer than his home, so their cab stops there first.

Duck pauses halfway out the door, “Meet me here for dinner tomorrow?”

Indrid grins, “I’d like nothing more.”

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

“I didn’t know the line even went this far.” Indrid watches the moors race by them out the window of the train.

“You and me both.” Duck rotates his map, glances at the letter he received a week ago, “okay, once we get off at Amnesty, we need someone to take us down Greenbank road. The house is at the end of it, somewhere around here.” He taps a patch of moor miles from anything else. Indrid studies his fingers and is glad that, of his more rugged habits, one he elected to keep was letting his nails stay claws rather than filing them down.

“My visions suggest that as long as we don’t ask anyone to drive us out after dark, we should have no trouble reaching it.”

Indrid tries not to be too giddy at the prospect of spending weeks and weeks more or less alone in the countryside with Duck. They’re going because an anonymous note informed him that he did indeed have a family estate and--once they determined that the house near Dartmoor did indeed legally belong to him--it was decided he would go to see how the old place was doing and perhaps take up residence.

He asked Indrid to come without even glancing up from the telegram from the solicitor. Indrid agreed without looking away from his drawing. If two months of semi-courtship in a crowded city got them close enough for that, Indrid dares to hope that being out here together will bring them closer still.

Amnesty is small, as they both expected, the air chilly and fog threatening to swallow whole buildings as they make their way to the Lodge where they’ve been told they can find a driver. When Duck asks the young woman working the counter for help getting to Greenbank Hall, she quirks her lips in a frown.

“I’m not sure there’s even a place called that around here….OH! Do you mean Beacon House?”

“Maybe?” Duck looks at Indrid, who quickly looks at the futures.

“Yes, it seems we do.”

“Okay. Since it's still light, I should be able to find someone to get you out there. If it comes down to it, I can, like, drive you out myself.”

They end up being driven by a friendly young man named Jake, who deposits them and their bags on the steps of the massive house with a friendly wave farewell.

“Agh” Indrid shivers as they step through the newly unlocked doors, “I think it’s actually warmer outside.”

“No kiddin. Damn fog means it’s already gettin too dark to see too. I’ll go get some kind of fire started, you see if you can find some lanterns or candles so we ain’t trippin all over ourselves.”

Indrid begins his search, comes to the kitchen and finds some matches and a candle. The solicitor arranged for food and other supplies to be brought in ahead of time, so in theory lanterns should be somewhere nearby. He’s just glad that the paltry light shows no signs of rodents getting into their food.

When he gets upstairs, he discovers two things; one, all the lamps are gas, so he’s able to light them easily. And two, a mother tortoiseshell cat is nesting with her kittens on a guest bed.

“Well, that explains the lack of mice.”

Footsteps behind him, “Got a fire goin in the sittin room, if you wanna pick a room for yourself I can light one th--awwwww” Duck moves past him towards the cat, who hisses at him, “now, there ain’t any need for that, missy. I ain’t gonna hurt you or your babies. But we oughta bring you somethin more’n mice to eat.”

“I saw some tinned food in the pantry.”

“Perfect, lemme go find a bowl.”

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

Beacon House has seen better days, but Indrid discovers the houses loss is his gain. Duck decides they can do many of the repairs themselves, and sets about ordering supplies from London or bringing them in from Amnesty. The few times they need help, the cook and several others from the Lodge come to assist in the project. These gatherings are far more pleasant than any Indrid had to attend for work (well, except for the ones where he was with Duck). And they always end before dusk.

Indrid occupies himself with figuring out why. There was no mention of this house when he first researched Duck, and even using the local name turns up very little. It’s not until he finds a diary belonging to one H. Newton in the library that he understands.

October the 15th, 1805

I fear the worst is upon me. I cannot leave the house, dare not even peer out the windows for fear of what I shall see. Lucy says it is my health, that we should travel to warmer regions so it will improve. But I know it is not so simple. Were we to flee, it would merely wait for our return. It may even waylay us before we reached town. I am cursed. We are cursed. We always will be.

Beneath the words is a hastily sketched image; yellow eyes and sharp fangs peering from between the bars of the front gate.

There are no more entries.

Indrid is unsure whether to raise the matter with Duck. On the one hand, he wishes him to know of any possible dangers. On the other, his friend is so very content these days, coming in from some project or other with grime on his skin and a smile on his face. Indrid’s own desire to stay with him here, in a house he can pretend is theirs, threatens to drown out all other reasons.

Eventually, his conscience shouts it down while he and Duck are on their evening walk.

“Oh yeah, Barclay told me about that a few days ago. Some ghost apparently wanders around the moor at night; got somethin to do with a murderous ancestor.”

“That does not alarm you.”

“You know I don’t believe in curses and destiny or anythin like that. People make up all kinds of stories when they’re alone in wild places.”

Indrid’s foresight guides his arm, gripping Duck and keeping him from moving forward.

“Does that look like a story?”

Directly ahead of them, a tor rises like a spike. Atop it, revealed by the rising moon, is a gigantic, fur-covered shape.

“See” Duck whispers, “were we back home, I’d say that was a bear.”

“And now?”

“Given there ain’t been bears in this part of the world in decades, I say we get the hell outta here.”

They take off back down the slope, the hall a collection of yellow squares of light in the darkening distance. A howl splits the air behind them and Indrid quickens his pace, keeps his eyes on the future in hopes of protecting them both.

This means he doesn’t see the burrow in the path until his ankle goes sideways in it.

“‘Drid!”

“Under no circumstances are you to try and help meAH!” He yelps as Duck swings him over his shoulder and continues his flight towards the house. As he’s bounced about, Indrid watches a glowing shape bounding closer.

“Thank fuck.” Duck crosses the gate, slams them closed, and lowers Indrid to his feet. Nothing glares at them from the path. But a growl creeps from the shadows and follows them until they shut the door.

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

“How’s the ankle?” Duck drops his coat on the chair opposite Indrid before tending to the fire.

“Better than yesterday. I should be up and moving tomorrow, if the futures are to be believed.”

“You know you don’t gotta rush. I’m happy to take care of you.”

Indrid picks at the ends of the blanket in his lap, “but I miss being able to aid you with work.”

“There’ll be lots of time for that. We got plenty to do to get the house to where we can live in it full time.”

“We?”

Duck goes completely still, then fails to put the fire poker back in place three separate times. When he finally meets Indrid’s eyes, he looks worried.

“‘Drid? What’s your endgame? With, uh, with me?”

“I…” Indrid grabs his teacup, intending to drink it to buy time and finds it empty, ‘I...I don’t know. I, I wanted to prove to you that I could find you a companion who made you happy, hoping you would give me another chance to locate your perfect match. But lately I, ah, I struggle to see that plan working. As I do not wish you to have any match but me.”

Duck moves across the rug, shadows on his face making it hard to read.

“I know that shows great selfishness on my part. If that is not something you wish to have in your life I, I…” he shrinks back as Duck leans down, certain this is the timeline where he accuses him of being a conniving monster.

“Funny you should say you’re bein selfish” Duck braces his arms on either side of the chair, “because I’ve been beatin myself thinkin’ I was selfish for keepin you out here so long.”

“Keep me here forever.” Indrid whispers. Duck smiles, closes the remaining space between them. His lips are still a bit chilly from working outside; Indrid does everything he can to warm them with his own.

The shorter orc straddles him and he whines so needily that Duck snickers in reply.

“What’s wrong darlin? Kissin too much for you?’

“On the contrary; it is far too little, but my injury means my ability to drag you to my bed and beg for more is greatly impeded.”

“Good thing we live alone.” Duck pulls the blanket from Indrid’s lap, nibbles his ear as the seer catches on and begins frantically undoing the buttons of Duck’s workshirt and shoving his suspenders. When at last he pushes it open he loses himself a moment, tipping forward to tongue at the golden ring in Duck’s left nipple.

“AHheh, gettin right to it. Good” Duck unbuttons his pants, “because I’ve been wantin to fuck you since before we even came out here.”

“Oh I see” Indrid purrs, “you lured me into the countryside to sully my virtue.”

Duck laughs, full throated, as his tusks catch in the firelight, “You forgettin the time we got drunk instead of goin to the opera and you told me you convinced two sailors to take you home?”

“Only if you’ve forgotten telling me about the young ranch-hand you gave several rides to” Indrid nibbles along his neck, his twitching oddly in their quest to grind against him without jostling his ankle.

“Not a chance. But I don’t care about reminiscin right now; right now, I got the best lookin fella in the world beggin for my dick.”

“I’m not begging.” Indrid tilts his head back to help Duck get his shirt open some.

“Not yet.” Duck grins, then shoves his hand down his trousers.

“Ohhhhhyes” Indrid reaches for him.

“Keep your hands on the armrests until I say you can move ‘em.”

“But, but” it’s hard to argue when he’s trying to stare a hole through Duck’s remaining clothes. His partner notices and makes a show of moaning louder.

“Only good boys get to watch the show. You gonna be good for me?”

“The best.”

Duck kisses the tip of his nose, then wiggles and kicks his pants and underwear off. Indrid can only watch, growing more envious by the moment, as he fucks himself open and rubs a thumb along his cock. Indrid tries bucking his hips, only to discover Duck is keeping himself out of reach.

“Cruel creature.” Indrid groans.

“Cruel? I’m giving you a seat to the best show in town.”

“I’d rather you take the best seat in town.”

Duck laughs, is still doing so when he bends to kiss him. Indrid whimpers, nails digging into the upholstery to keep his promise of good behavior. Duck notices.

“Good boy.”

“AHHHnnnthankyou, thankyouthankyouthankyou” Indrid moans as Duck drops his weight into his lap, grinding on his clothed cock with abandon. He flings Indrids hands up to his shoulders. The seer glides them up to his hair, burying them there where he’s now certain they’ve always belonged. Duck mirrors him, lips only leaving his to bite the tip of his ear.

“Fuck, Indrid, that’s it darlin, lemme ride you like the sleek little beast you are.”

He whines, loses his thoughts as Ducks hips quicken.

“I know ‘Drid, you like bein mine, like that I’ll bounce on this fuckin perfect dick as often as you want as long as you’re my good, sweet, ohsweetfuck, fuck, darlin’” Duck drops his forehead to Indrid’s shoulder with a groan as he cums, soaking the fabric of his pants. Before Indrid can think about stopping, Duck picks up again with as much force as before, growling in his ear to be a good little social climber and cum for his lord.

Indrid cums at that with a chirping sound he thought he’d stopped making long ago, legs spasming from the force of his climax. Unfortunately, this means his pleasure is chased by a burst of pain. He whimpers, flinches, and Duck spots the problem.

“Oh, oh darlin I’m sorry” He drops to the floor, rubbing Indrid’s thighs, “thought the position would keep you from hurtin.”

“Apparently not. I, I want you to know I don’t regret it in the slightest.”

Duck smiles, relieved, and rests his head on Indrid’s stomach, “Guess you did find me a match, huh?”

Indrid bends slowly, nuzzling his hair with a hum, “Yes, I believe so.”

[wordsbeyondimagination]

Christmas Lego Date

Hey, Hope you all are safe.

I wanted to say that I don't feel any confidence in my writing, and the situation here is also not very good. Everyday we are living like owing time. If you all can suggest any genre or any changes to the themes, then please feel to ask. I will surely reply because writing is something that I love the most.

Take care.

Mama Suh always wanted to see her grandchildren, and play with them but to her disappointment, her son never got time to date, anybody. So, she had to take things in her hand.

She set up a date for Johnny in Chicago when he was home for Christmas. The first date went through knowing each other’s name, interests, and work. And that was like a total clash when an introvert meets an extrovert. He was the one that set up the atmosphere and made you comfortable around him. That was the only thing that made you look forward to your second date with him. He had planned a date at a fancy restaurant but changed it at the last moment and asked you to visit his home.

Johnny had already planned the whole evening. He had brought a Christmas tree and lots of lights and mistletoe. He had prepared the dinner himself. And prepared gifts for you. Well prepared and was only waiting for the doorbell to ring.

He was overwhelmed when he heard the bell ring.

“Good Evening, Y/n, did you have any problem finding my house?”

“No, it’s such a good location, why would there be any problem.”

“I had brought fruits for Uncle and Auntie.” His parents were not in the house that’s why he chose to invite you or else Mama Suh would have asked you about the date of marriage.

“Yeah, I will say her when she comes back.” He took the basket from your hand and escorted you to the couch.

His house had a warm feeling. It sharply contrasted the snow falling outside. Your string was getting stronger with him. With his personality, he was like a fireplace to you. You were always considered cold because of your introverted personality but he understood you. He always made efforts to make you comfortable around him.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Hmm…”, he said arranging the table.

“Why did you choose your house for our date?” Johnny smiled at you. He admired your innocence and curiosity.

“I planned to take you out but Mom said that she is going out with Dad, so, I invited you here, and also I thought a house would’ve different feeling. Don’t you like it?” He asked with fake concern that panicked you.

“No, no, no, it’s not like that. I like quiet places. I like your house very much. It’s warm just like you,” you mumbled the last three words but he heard that and pretended like he didn’t hear anything to make you comfortable around him. It was rare to have someone have feelings from the first blind date but you two were just fools in love.

You noticed the Christmas tree and decorative laying behind the couch.

“Have you tried this?” You asked pointing to the tree.

“Yeah, I wanted to surprise Mom and Dad but I have no idea.” He said scratching the back of his neck.

“Will you help me? You can come up with ideas.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, let’s do that after dinner.”

The dinner was full of laughter. He narrated the 10th-floor stories. Some deadly, some comedic, and some horrific. You almost choked once because of his stories, he hurried to your side with water and patted your back. It was that moment when you realized that you need him in your life, for a lifetime. Both of you settled and again he started with all his stories, his stories didn’t end and your laughter didn’t stop. It was a moment that was going to be memorable for both of you till death.

After dinner, you both settled on the floor for decorating. Although Johnny insisted on sitting on the couch, still you said that it wouldn’t have any feeling of a family. It gave him hope.

“I saw your designs on your Instagram page, how do you get so many ideas?”

“They just come. I don’t do anything for them to come.”

“We also have a bunch of kids in NCT who design, you would love to meet them. You would love to meet them all. We have everyone younger than me except one and trust me even though he is the eldest but he is like a baby. I hope I can take you there.” You just smiled at his words but never replied to anything so he didn’t ask you anymore but little did you that he was asking you to come with him. You couldn’t even ay him that you watched every NCT video at least 10 times to know more about him and you memorized everybody’s name.

You two sat decorating the Christmas Tree, and he was helping you and also narrating the stories when he decorated trees with his groupmates. Unaware of time, you two enjoying your date, a date that you wanted.

“Y/n, I have something for you.” You looked at him and he ran to his room and came out with two folded sweaters for him. When you unfolded it, you saw that it had your initials on it and Johnny had also his initials.

“Wow, I like it. Thanks.” He smiled.

“Well, I also have something else for you.” He again ran inside and came with a wrapped box.

“What’s this?”

“You will know when you open it. Come on open it.” He became excited and started to jump and seal clap and for the first time, anybody’s excitation excited you. You started to unwrap it.

“Hogwarts Castle Lego set! Thank you very much. But how do you know that I am a Potterhead?”

“Oh. I saw your Instagram and you had many drawings of Harry Potter, so…”

“Thank you. I love this.”

Only this! not me! Johnny thought.

“Johnny, it’s getting late, I think I should go. We will meet next time.” He never wanted you to go. You were the one he wanted the most and always treasure you and protect you. He wanted you to stay by his side.

“Okay.” He stood up and went with you to the door but as soon as he opened the door, a chilly gust of wind blew and it was a snowstorm.

“Looks like a blizzard!” You were just about to go inside when he grabbed your wrist.

“Y/n, we are under the mistletoe!” You looked up and indeed a mistletoe was hanging and you both under it.

“When did you hang this?”

“When you were busy decorating Christmas tree.” He said with a shy smile. Yeah, you should’ve known that it's his idea.

“Y/n, I think we should kiss.” He placed his lips on yours. Even though the chilly winds and the snow were cold but you felt warmth under his touch. It was love. When you separated, his eyes were full of feelings for you. A home for you.

“I think I have to stay here. The snow won’t allow me to go.”

“Hmm.” Even nature was on his side.

He closed the door.

“Y/n, I want to ask you something.” You looked at him. He was serious.

“Yeah.”

“Would you…would you like to come with me to Korea and stay by my side? You can carry freelancing there.” You smiled at his confession. That is not only what you wanted but that was what you needed. You were crazy for him, and you needed him.

“Yeah. I would love to.” Johnny was overwhelmed with your response, he hugged you at once. But something came between you two ‘Lego’.

“Johnny, do you want to try this with me.” He nodded.

“Wingadium Leviosa ”

“Expelliarmus”

And you two were in a sleepless night, sitting near the fireplace and joining the Hogwarts castle and casting spells on each other treasuring the memories with your kiss and hugs that you shared.

[natromanxoff]

How prog were Queen?

By Dave Everley

On 9 January, 1971, Kevin Ayers and Genesis played a show together at the Ewell Technical College near Epsom in Surrey. Ayers was 18 months out of Soft Machine, and making a name for himself as a psychedelically-inclined art-folk rake. Genesis had released their second album, Trespass, a few months earlier, and were carving out a place in the vanguard of the burgeoning progressive rock movement.

There was a third band propping up the bill that night, a bunch of transplanted Londoners calling themselves Queen. In contrast to the wilfully artful approach of the headliners, their music was more straightforward: a heavy, if ornate blend of Led Zeppelin’s earthiness and the flights of fancy of Yes.

Not everyone in the small crowd watching them was impressed, but they caught the attention of one person. After the show, Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel pulled Queen’s blond-bombshell drummer Roger Taylor to one side. Gabriel’s band were about to dismiss their own drummer, John Mayhew, and were looking for a replacement. Was Taylor interested in joining Genesis? The reply was instant: thanks but no thanks. Taylor was utterly dedicated to Queen – there were gigs to play, places to go, and many musical adventures to embark on.

Had Taylor accepted the offer, the course of music – and specifically prog – would have been very different. Genesis would have flourished with Gabriel upfront, though whether they would have survived and prospered as they did without a Phil Collins to step into the breach after their talismanic singer’s departure was another matter.

The knock-on effect on Queen would have been greater. Taylor was an essential part of their carefully balanced four-way chemistry; a chemistry that would go on to throw up some of the most ambitious and game-changing music ever recorded. While Queen weren’t a capital ‘P’ prog band, they were infused with the spirit of the movement, combining its forward-looking values with its absolute disregard for the existing rules. Taking their cues from the likes of Yes, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator and even Pink Floyd, their flamboyantly cavalier approach would go on to inspire such modern masters as Dream Theater, Queensrÿche and Muse. And, in Bohemian Rhapsody, they ensured that one of the biggest-selling singles in history was, at heart, a prog song. Forget the luxuriant moustaches and sawn-off mike-stands that would come to define them: if the prog ethos meant avoiding the expected, then Queen were definitely a prog band.

“Diversity was probably their greatest asset,” says former Dream Theater drummer and confirmed Queen devotee Mike Portnoy. “From song to song, they could be so different. You could have something that was folk followed by something that was rockabilly followed by something that was metal. And that’s one of the biggest things about prog, having that open-mindedness.”

Queen’s schooling in prog came early on. Brian May’s very first band, 1984, played a 4am slot supporting Pink Floyd at the Christmas On Earth Continued all-nighter in 1967. A year later, his next outfit, Smile – also featuring Roger Taylor – played with Floyd again, this time at London’s Imperial College. By the time of their gig opening for Kevin Ayers, Smile had changed their name to Queen and recruited Freddie Mercury. Collectively, they admired Yes, Van der Graaf Generator and especially Genesis. “Foxtrot is a prog rock classic,” Roger Taylor later wrote in the sleevenotes to Genesis box set 1970-1975. “Arrangements were highly complex in these early days, setting a benchmark for the style of the times.”

When it came to finding someone to produce their debut album, Queen’s first choice was John Anthony, who had worked with both Genesis and Van der Graaf. With Anthony and co-producer Roy Thomas Baker behind the desk, the eponymous album trod heavily in Led Zeppelin’s footsteps. But there was another, altogether more visionary band straining to spread their wings: My Fairy King was a filigreed slice of flamboyant rock’n’roll, while Liar metamorphosised through several different time changes and timings.

Those wings were fully unfurled on the follow-up, 1974’s Queen II. The title was the most prosaic thing about the record: the music inside was as fevered and baroque as rock gets, informed equally by Zeppelin, Yes and crazed Victorian artist Richard Dadd, whose 1864 painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke inspired one of the album’s most prog-leaning tracks. It may have been rooted in the heavy rock of the times, but its cavalier approach and sheer sense of scale pegged Queen as a defiantly progressive proposition.

“Queen weren’t like Yes, who had a dualistic role of guitar and keyboards, where both shared the terrain,” says Yes guitarist Steve Howe, supported by Queen at Kingston Poly in early 1971. “Brian had the terrain to himself. The remarkable thing was that he was the front and the back man. It required him to come up with more than guitar solos… He had to come up with a semi-thematic approach to play the guitar. And what he did was keep colouring.”

Queen’s prog inclinations would be deeply woven into the fabric of their early albums, from the audacious multi-part theatrics of Queen II’s March Of The Black Queen to the schizophrenic attack of the two-part Lap Of The Gods from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack. Even in their more commercial moments, they marched to the beat of their own drum. What other band would have dared serve up something so unusual as Killer Queen?

“It was their diversity,” says Mike Portnoy, who first heard Queen as an eight-year-old in the mid-70s and covered many Queen songs while in Dream Theater. “Their albums took the prototype that The Beatles laid down with the White Album, where you had four different artists bringing in very different styles. Every song was so diverse. You get to A Night At The Opera, and you had this giant multi-layered epic like Bohemian Rhapsody next to something like Seaside Rendezvous or Love Of My Life.”

A Night At The Opera was Queen’s grand artistic statement and their most unashamedly prog album. Pitched around the epic twin tentpoles of The Prophet’s Song and Bohemian Rhapsody, it married their far-reaching vision to a distinctly British barminess. Taken on its own, the eight-minute The Prophets Song, with its incredible ornate a cappella middle section, would be enough to grant Queen access to the Prog Hall Of Fame. But even that sits in the inescapable shadow of Bohemian Rhapsody. Time and success might have lessened its impact, but that song remains the most dazzlingly unique piece of music ever to sell five million copies.

“There are epic things that come along every so often,” says Steve Howe. “There’s Sgt Pepper, there’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. And there’s Bohemian Rhapsody. I don’t know when I first heard it, but once it was there, it was such a formidable thing. You’re thinking: ‘How many tracks did they need to do those vocals? How did they write it? Who invented it? It really was astounding.”

Bohemian Rhapsody encapsulated one of the key things that gave Queen such a distinct identity. Like The Beatles and Beach Boys before them, they used the studio as an instrument – not least when it came to their vocals. And Bohemian Rhapsody raised the bar about as high as it could go.

“They sang each of those parts and triple-stacked them,” says Mike Portnoy. “You heard all three of their voices singing in all three vocal ranges. That’s what made the depth of their music so complex. It wasn’t the instrumentation, it was the vocals. That’s unusual for prog music. When I think of my favourite prog music, it’s always the musicianship that draws me. But with Queen, it was the vocals. It was so deep.”

For all its success, A Night At The Opera would be Queen’s grand kiss-off to their prog roots. Later albums streamlined their sound into a more conventional format. Much like Genesis, the 80s found them swapping experimentalism for chart rock.

It wasn’t until the end of their career as an active band that Queen would again sound so adventurous. During 1989 and 1990, the band began work on their penultimate album, Innuendo, in London and Montreux. In the summer of 1990, Yes guitarist Steve Howe paid a flying visit to the Swiss city, where a chance encounter with a former guitar tech found him being invited to Queen’s studio to hear the album as a work-in-progress.

“Inside, there’s Freddie, Brian and Roger all sitting together. They go: ‘Let’s play you the album,’” says Howe. “Of course, I’m hearing it for the first time: I Can’t Live Without You, I’m Going Slightly Mad. And they saved Innuendo itself until last. They played it and I was fucking blown away.”

If that was surprising, then what happened next was utterly out-of-the-blue. The members of Queen asked if Howe wanted to play on the title track. The Yes man politely suggested they’d lost their minds. It took the combined weight of Mercury, May and Taylor to persuade him.

“They all chimed in: ‘We want some crazy Spanish guitar flying around over the top. Improvise!’” recalls Howe. “I started noodling around on the guitar, and it was pretty tough. After a couple of hours, I thought: ‘I’ve bitten off more than I can chew here.’ I had to learn a bit of the structure, work out the chordal roots were, where you had to fall if you did a mad run in the distance; you have to know where you’re going. But it got towards evening, and we’d doodled and I’d noodled, and it turned out to be really good fun. We have this beautiful dinner, we go back to the studio and have a listen. And they go: ‘That’s great. That’s what we wanted.”

Released as a single in January 1991, Innuendo gave Queen their third Number One single. Like Bohemian Rhapsody 25 years before it, it was as unlikely as hit singles get: a six-and-a-half minute musical jigsaw, complete with flamenco runs, classically-inclined orchestral overloads and maverick 5/4 timing. Queensrÿche covered the song on 2007’s Take Cover album, while you can hear its echo in Radiohead’s Paranoid Android and Muse’s more elaborate sci-fi epics.

“In the world of rock, Queen stands out as a good example of the clash between guitar and piano in songwriting,” Muse’s Matt Bellamy has said. “I think that’s where you stumble across those more unusual arrangements and chord structures.”

Today, Queen have left a bi-polar legacy. They’re arguably best known for their pop hits – Radio Gaga, I Want To Break Free and of course, Bohemian Rhapsody, that ultimate prog Trojan Horse. But their spirit of adventure remains unmatched by all but the boldest of their peers.

“There was no rulebook for Queen,” says Mike Portnoy. “They broke most of the rules that existed, and then they wrote a new set.”

[the-iron-orchid]

36 (face-sitting) for Jinana & Turel?

(weeks later) OK, so this one may have... gotten away from me a little....

Title: Without Words

Pairing: Jinana/Turel, ~2460 words

Warnings: Bodyworship, facesitting, mild domination, mild biting, masturbation

Synopsis: A foraging trip for Jinana becomes an alfresco tryst with Turel.

Notes: A follow-up to The Sound of Distant Thunder.

🔞🍋18+ Only! Minors DNI 🍋🔞

Jinana has been finding more time to be in the forests around Vesuvia of late, wildcrafting herbs for the shop and goods for the kitchen. This time of year, one may find king boletes, hen-of-the-woods, and even chanterelles amid the trees and mosses, and pine nuts abound.

Of course, there is another reason s/he has been making the time to explore the wilds, often with Anjali in tow (when the sky does not promise rain). S/he never quite knows where or when, but sometimes s/he will encounter the peculiar giant of a man s/he once found amid the falling rain, sitting silent and still as a stone.

Turel is a craftsman, a maker of things, his huge hands capable of finer and more delicate work than one might expect; Jinana knows just how delicate and fine that touch can be. S/he isn’t quite certain how to define what is between them - it is something born of the strange magic of being in wild places, and the way two people can sometimes read one another’s unconscious cues. Very often they will go with less than a handful of words exchanged, but communicating all the same.

There is something about him that is so soothing to hir, his energy a deep and steady current, in such contrast to the restless, chaotic energy that crackles through hir being. But when they are together, it’s as if hir own energy slows its pace to match his - the way a heartbeat might, or breathing.

Today it is cool and misty, and Jinana draws hir shawl more closely about hirself as s/he casts hir glance over the trees, looking for distinctive fungal formations. Ah, there… a mass of delicately frilled shapes clustered at the base of a tree. S/he slips hir gathering knife from hir pocket and bends down to harvest the fruiting body of the mushrooms.

When s/he rises again, s/he is only mildly surprised to find that s/he is being watched with silent interest. Jinana smiles and offers some of the bounty s/he’s just gathered; there’s plenty about. But Turel declines with a gesture and a small smile; instead, he beckons hir to follow. Intrigued, s/he does.

It’s a fine walk; they cross a couple of small streams, and Jinana mentally marks the location of a few persimmon trees. Right now their fruit will be astringent, but as fall deepens they will sweeten. They come to a part of the forest where firs congregate, and Jinana gathers some of the fragrant needles for teas and bath herbs.

Turel hunkers down at the base of a stand of trees, indicating little cleared spots in the leaf litter, probably the work of animals. Jinana, too, peers down at this. Summoning hir mage hand spell, s/he pushes the debris aside with a gesture. Beneath, s/he can just see three paler objects poking out of the dirt. Curious, s/he uses the same magical force to dig them out.

They are small white truffles, growing amid the roots of the trees, a true treasure of the forest. Jinana indicates with a tap to hir lips and a small wink that s/he will preserve this secret.

They spend some time in companionable silence, absorbed in the hunt for the elusive fungi. S/he takes only as much as s/he and Heron will be able to use; the delicious life-span of a truffle is finite, after all.

With the bounty secured in hir gathering basket, Jinana takes a moment to sit back against the trunk of a tree, watching ants trailing their way across the roots. S/he had almost forgotten how soothing and restorative it could be just to sit quietly in nature; humankind has tried so hard to distance itself from such things. Spending these brief times with Turel has re-taught hir the lesson that even a magician - perhaps especially a magician - is at their best when they take a moment to reconnect with the natural world.

Closing hir eyes, s/he reaches out with hir othersense, feeling the life that surrounds hir. The tree at hir back, hundreds of years old but thrumming with vigor, sharing its strength with its fellows through some mysterious web of connection. The ants’ nest below the ground, seething with activity and purpose. Squirrels, birds, insects… it is a vast jeweled net of living things, each with their own energy.

And s/he feels Turel’s energy, familiar to hir now, at once entirely harmonious and very different to that which surrounds them. S/he has not asked, but s/he suspects that, like the tree, he is a being of centuries, and perhaps more. Human, and perhaps not human… but human enough.

It is his energy which announces his approach, for his step is very light for one of such size. He seats himself next to hir, and Jinana leans lightly against his side, letting the contact ground hir in every way. S/he fancies that s/he can feel the wild magic that swirls and leaps within hir coming to rest, settling like water in a bottle. 

They stay like this for a time, a sort of meditation. When s/he opens hir eyes again, s/he feels calm, refreshed, even invigorated. S/he sees that while hir senses were elsewhere, a large mantis has taken up a position on Turel’s knee; seeing hir move, it spreads its wings in a defensive posture. The absurdity of it makes hir laugh, and this proves too much; the insect takes sudden flight.

It feels good to laugh. It feels good to be out of the city, in the greenness and the mist, away from it all. It feels good to be right here, in this moment, resting against the calming solidity of Turel’s body. He seems somehow more solid, more real than anything else, in a way that Jinana cannot explain.

Turel’s quiet answering chuckle is less a thing heard than a thing felt. Moving with a certain deliberation, he lifts one hand, gently running the backs of his fingers along hir jawline. The gesture is a question, one that Jinana answers by rising to hir feet, standing before him. S/he reaches out and tips his chin upward, bending down slightly to place a kiss upon his lips - he is so large that were he to kneel, still he would tower over hir. It is only when he is seated like this that s/he can reach him at all.

It is because of this difference, and because of Jinana’s own inclinations, that he yields to hir in these things. Jinana knows perfectly well that this is but a thing permitted, because it suits him to do so. But there is something thrilling in feeling such strength held in check, in commanding that strength for hir pleasure, however temporarily.

S/he runs hir fingers along Turel’s jawline as s/he pulls away, then grins and makes a particular gesture, speaking the words of magic under hir breath. S/he rises easily from the ground, levitating hirself to where s/he can be seated upon a nearby branch, more than hir own height off the ground. Smiling, s/he beckons with one hand.

Turel rising from a seated position is a sight in itself; it almost seems as if he will never stop rising, until finally his full height is reached. He steps over to where Jinana reaches hir hand out to him, palm-up. He takes the hand in his, where it immediately seems lost. He presses his lips to the flower of henna on hir palm, looking very slightly up at hir with amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes.

Jinana laughs in return, the sound becoming a sigh as he places a kiss on the inside of hir wrist. His eyes on hir are unblinking as he works his way up hir arm in a slow, steady trail of kisses and caresses. S/he has become accustomed to this unwavering gaze, the way he regards all things. S/he loves watching the way those eyes change with desire, their darkness deepening.

Turel reaches hir shoulder, the side of hir neck, and as he draws back to choose the next part of hir that he will give his attention to, Jinana leans forward to kiss him again. S/he parts hir lips, feeling him answer the deepening of the kiss with tremendous gentleness... but no lack of heat.

When s/he releases him once more, he continues his journey down the other arm, ending at the matching henna-traced flower in hir other palm. He then begins anew at the henna that graces the top of one foot, hir ankle, traveling up hir leg, his hands pushing up the fabric of hir skirt before him. Teasingly, Jinana keeps hir thighs pressed together; s/he knows what he wants, and he knows the game they are playing.

Only when Turel has made his way back down the other side does Jinana relax the tension in hir legs, allowing them to part. His huge hands skim up hir thighs, over hir hips in the bunched-up fabric of hir skirt. They come to rest at hir waist, long fingers wrapping around hir ribcage. It isn’t hard to feel the strength in those hands, and s/he gives a small shiver of delight.

“Lie down,” she tells him. To hir surprise, he brings hir with him, lifting hir effortlessly from the branch. Cheeky. But he lies down on his back on the mossy forest floor, and places Jinana so that s/he straddles his chest, his hands moving lightly over hir legs. S/he leans in once more, savoring a long, unhurried kiss. Then she lifts hirself up, bunching the skirt around hir hips and waist as s/he kneels over him, slowly bringing hirself within reach of his waiting mouth.

Turel’s lips are full and soft; his tongue is like an instrument of divinity. He explores hir differently with every caress, seeking out every source of pleasure. Jinana tucks hir skirt into place so s/he can thread hir fingers between his locs, hir hips starting to move of their own volition.

S/he tips hir head back, moaning softly; he needs no further encouragement, no verbal cues. His lips and wonderful tongue move with hir, giving more when the movements of her body demand it, backing off when s/he lifts herself away, drawing it out a little.

But it feels so good that s/he sees no reason to deny hirself for long, and the difference in their sizes frees hir to grind hirself against his face with abandon, moaning aloud with pleasure. His soft answering sounds are so deep that s/he feels them resonate through hir body, and this, too, adds to the sensation. S/he has no idea exactly what it is that he is doing with his tongue, only that it feels incredible. S/he grips the long locs of his head, lost to both moderation and reason as she feels hirself rising and rising, a split second of weightlessness… and then the great breakers of orgasm roll over hir, drowning hir in pleasure. S/he can hear hir own voice crying out, startling some small creature that dashes away through the underbrush.

But that isn’t the end of it; Turel is both patient, and very clever. His hands rest on hir hips, encouraging hir to stay, to take hir pleasure from him again… and again. When Jinana is finally released from the grip of ecstasy for the third time, she can feel hir legs trembling almost uselessly to either side of his head, barely able to hold hir up. After giving a final few kisses to the tender skin of the insides of hir thighs, Turel assists hir to rise.

Jinana laughs at the wobbliness of hir own legs as s/he untucks hir skirt, letting it fall to cover hir once more. S/he seats hirself on the soft moss, urging Turel to rest his head in hir lap. S/he bends down to kiss him once again, upside-down; the sutras of the art of love say that the greatest pleasure of the kiss is when both may kiss the fullness of the lower lip. Jinana cannot resist sinking hir teeth into the plumpness of his lower lip, just a little, before raising hir head again.

Of course, he has been holding his own desire in check, while s/he rode him to hir satisfaction. S/he thinks that s/he would very much like to see him bound in silken ropes, to leisurely play the games of endurance that s/he favors... but alas, the wilds are not ideal for such things. Still, there are other diversions to be had.

“Touch yourself for me,” she murmurs with a smile, arranging the locs around his face with gentle fingers. “I want to see.”

S/he is fairly certain there is nothing s/he could say or ask for that would shock Turel. He gives hir the impression of being… not jaded or weary, but well-experienced, one who has seen it all and still finds wonder in the world.

It’s a lesson s/he could stand to learn.

Jinana bends once more to visit soft kisses to his cheeks and forehead, sharper kisses to his lips and chin, as he eases himself from his clothing to hir view. S/he runs hir hands over his chest, amused by how tiny they appear upon him, feeling the very slight raising of the skin over the tattoos beneath hir fingertips.

S/he continues to visit kisses and caresses as he strokes himself, his eyes finally sliding closed to shut himself in with the sensations. Jinana places kisses here, too, with exquisite lightness, feeling the faint trembling of each shuttered lid under hir lips.

He is quiet in this, too, as in all things. His body moves gently against the ground beneath him, cushioned by the thick moss. Jinana watches, fascinated, a part of hir taking note of what causes him to sigh, to move a little faster (though, as in all things, he is unhurried in this too).

The sounds he makes are quiet, but Jinana feels them transmit themselves through hir thighs, through the very ground. S/he watches his face change with his pleasure, until climax crests through his body, too, shuddering beneath hir hands.

Jinana continues to cradle his head in hir lap as he relaxes, still gifting him those little gestures of affection, because it pleases hir to do so. And when Turel’s eyes open again, s/he smiles down at him.

There is no need for words.

[theawkwardterrier]

How about 14 + 21, dealer's choice pairing?

On This Thanksgiving Day

Prompt: Stuck together for a long period of time/“They’re wrong about you.”

Summary: Sloan’s first time meeting Don’s family doesn’t go particularly well. (The dialogue came to me in Thomas Sadoski’s voice, so I guess the dealer wanted Don/Sloan for you, Sarah.)

“Apparently we don’t have very good luck on trips together,” Sloan says, although not precisely to him. She’s facing out the window, as if she can see anything other than pitch blackness - as if there would be anything to see, even in the daylight. They hadn’t made it much past Derby-Shelton when the train had broken down; he’d guess that if they could see more than darkness and their own reflections, they’d mostly be staring out at Naugatuck State Forest.

Which might offer a distraction to make things a bit less awkward, but not by much.

“I’m not exactly in a hurry to get anywhere this time,” he says, trying for humor. “Luckily there isn’t much urgent news to report on Thanksgiving.”

“There isn’t always much urgent news to report on May 1 of any given year.”

“Well, sometimes we just get lucky.”

She turns toward him then. Her hair, which she had taken down from whatever fancy style it had been pinned up in earlier, swings forward, briefly obscuring her face. “Is that how you feel? Lucky?”

“I feel lucky with you every day,” he says truthfully. He can’t tell if she believes him. Either way, she does not smile, although after the day they’ve had, he wouldn’t really expect her to.

It had been an easy decision to ask Sloan to come home with him. Her parents retired to Arizona the previous January, and if it already didn’t make much sense for her to fly across the country for barely a weekend, they had told her months ago that her brothers would be at their in-laws, they had no plans on cooking, and they were booked for mixed doubles with the Drummers on Friday.

Don’s family, by contrast, would all be gathering back at his childhood home, a quick couple of hours on the Metro-North. He and Sloan had been dating for over a year now. It would have made sense to ask her even if she wasn’t facing down a holiday weekend of takeout and economics journals alone in her apartment (regardless of the fact that she had set aside a few of the “best issues” to enjoy).

He knew it was a mistake from the moment they walked in the door.

Despite his mother’s thanks, it was clear that she thought the bottle of wine Sloan had picked out was pretentious, and she eyed the sheath dress Sloan wore, with its gray, black, and white geometric design, as if deciding precisely how excessively formal it was for a small family gathering. Don, having seen Sloan’s closet, could have told her that this was one of the more informal options, at least not counting workout clothes or lingerie, but started in on small talk instead before offering Sloan a tour of the house.

Those few moments of watching her smile at the pictures of him hanging along the hallway - round in a Christmas sweater at age three, a gawky, grinning advertisement for the necessity of orthodontia at twelve, only slightly less gawky and slightly more grinning in his high school graduation photo - and hearing her tease about what embarrassing poster had once been taped in the large, discolored place above his bed...it still wasn’t quite enough to get him through the rest of the day.

Sloan didn’t watch whatever show his mom and sister and sister-in-law were going back and forth about, and she had little interest in entertaining the brigade of Keefer kids roaming around. She furrowed her brow as she sat next to Don in the family room and tried to get him to explain all the minutiae of football even as the others were trying to watch the Eagles. She was perfectly polite, asking questions of everyone and telling them about her family, her work, her interests when asked, but it was obvious from the glances traded around the table that the others noticed the slight hitch to her cadence and the way she didn’t always laugh at the jokes being told, and that it mattered to them.

As they dug into turkey and Mom’s excellent stuffing and terrible sweet potato pie, his dad (who clearly didn’t think the wine pretentious, or at least not enough to be a problem) started talking about how all he saw on the news these days was these protests, and of course it was a shame when things went wrong, but cops were just trying to protect themselves and didn’t need to be lectured by those who didn’t know what it was like on the ground day to day - he had friends who were cops, and they were just trying to do right and get home to their families, and was it any wonder they had to react like they did, considering the damage being done out in the streets? Don, who had tried and eventually learned to bite his tongue when it came to this conversation, placed a hand on Sloan’s knee, but she went ahead anyway, citing statistics and studies and historical precedent, all while the others looked at her as if she was exactly the kind of person by whom they didn’t want to be lectured.

Still, they might have been able to push through, except that Don’s brother cornered him on the way back from the bathroom and asked...well, Don’s blocked out the exact wording, but the implication was that he wondered if the pictures he’d seen of Sloan online did her justice.

After Don had punched Rich, sticking around for Black Friday brunch and leftovers didn’t seem to be in the cards.

“I can be a little bit of an acquired taste,” Sloan says, leaning forward and resting her forearms on her thighs. “I know that might be shocking, considering how charming I am—”

“Exactly the word I’d use.”

She throws him a glare for the dry tone, but he’s glad for it; it makes her look a bit more like herself. “So, I’m used to not always being liked. But they...I was really not liked back there.”

“They’re wrong about you.” The carriage is empty except for them - luckily for those who don’t want to be trapped on a broken down train, the middle of the evening on Thanksgiving doesn’t seem an especially popular time to travel into the city - and they had been able to take seats facing each other. He leans toward her, but does not take her hand. “Hey. They’re wrong about you. You know that, right? Sure, you’re single-minded, a little bit weird, a frequent pain in my ass—”

“I have yet to hear the part about them being wrong.”

“—but you’re also kind and loyal and wildly ethical and the smartest person I know and pretty solidly better than I deserve. And I just happen to be related to a bunch of assholes who can’t recognize that.”

Her knee bumps against his. “I imagine Christmas is going to be a pain when you have to spend time with a bunch of assholes.”

“Christmas was already a pain for that and many other reasons,” he says. “And honestly, maybe I won’t go back for it. Maybe I won’t go back next Thanksgiving either.”

She doesn’t look at him like he’s crazy. Instead, her face folds into concentration, as if she is trying to figure out a puzzle. Slowly she says, “I don’t know that you can just give up on your family because of the one time that they weren’t nice to your girlfriend.”

“They’ve never been nice to my girlfriends because, again, they’re assholes.” He settles against his seatback and makes sure she is looking at him before he says, “I’ll probably end up seeing them again because I’m not quite lucky enough in life to avoid it. But when I have the choice, I want to spend as much time as I can with the family that taught me to be better than them. So maybe next year we’ll rope Mac and Will into eating dry turkey with us - or hey, he can probably swing for some that actually tastes good.”

“You know that Mac will make us say things that we’re thankful for, and she and Will are going to get into an argument about the legacy of Thanksgiving even though they essentially agree with each other.”

“Well, maybe we’ll cook—” Her eyebrow raise is sharp and perfect as always. “Okay, we’ll get takeout together. Because I swear to God, Sloan, sitting around having popcorn shrimp with you sounds like a much better time than anything involving my mother’s pecan pie.”

“I was actually looking forward to the pie,” she says a little longingly, but she moves to sit in the seat beside him and lean her head on his shoulder, not even startling as the PA system crackles to overly loud life.

“Sorry, folks, we’re going to have to go dark here for a sec as we try to get things back online, but we hope to have you on your way shortly.”

“Hey,” Don says in the moment before the lights go out. “You know that I’m thankful for this, don’t you? Just getting to be here with you.”

“No one’s thankful for a train breakdown, Don,” she says, voice sounding as if she’s shaking her head at him. And he can feel the stupid smile coming over his face anyway as the overheads power off, leaving them with only the eerie emergency lighting. Who knows how long they’ll have to sit here like this considering the amount of faith he has in the MTA? He rests his head on top of Sloan’s. He can wait. They’ll get home together eventually.