#J.R.R. Tolkien: FIRST OF ALL HOW DARE YOU--

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

This is the best thing in the entire world. I love how much Tolkien loved trees and how fiercely he defended them. Here is a transcript:

Beautiful place because trees are loved From Prof. J.R.R. TOLKIEN SIR—with reference to your leader of June 29, I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying “gloom,” especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two-legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things, but it was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story. It would be unfair to compare the Forestry Commission with Sauron because, as you observe, it is capable of repentance; but nothing it has done that is stupid compares with the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetrated by private individuals and minor official bodies. The savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing. J.R.R. TOLKIEN Merton College, Oxford

Need y’all to know that in the 1970’s a letter to the editor was published in Daily Telegraph where the author offhandedly used the phrase “Tolkien-like gloom” to describe an area with barren trees and JRRT himself wrote back an incensed rebuttal at the use of his name in a context that suggested anything negative about trees.

[artbyblastweave]

Hi! I've been reading a lot of your thoughts on superheroes, and wanted to ask you a question if that's okay.

I've always been interested in the genre, but lately I've gotten frustrated with how "safe" the entries play it. No matter what, there's always a Justice League, a world built on superscience, and most "importantly" of all, a Superman. I wanted to ask if all of these things a required for a superhero story, and if so, how far can they be stretched while remaining within the genre?

My conjecture is that from a bunch of directions, it’s a legibility issue. 

Long swaths of rumination under the cut.

The superhero genre, out of all genres, is one of the most self-referential; it’s subject to an exaggerated, snowballing and self-reinforcing instance of the Mount Fuji Problem, as laid out by Terry Pratchett:

“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”

Superman is Mt. Fuji. 

Superman is enormously popular. The first modern superhero, the one the rest of them are patterned on or in conversation with. In the early days, a lot of superheroes were just naked attempts to cash in on Superman, to the point of IP slapfights (This is how DC acquired the rights to Shazam/Captain Marvel.) In the interregnum period caused by the Wertham Scare, he was one of the only superheroes that survived and saw continuous publication. As a result of this bottleneck, superheroism is a genre monoculture; all characters conceived of as “superheroes” are only a couple of creative generations removed from Superman. All of this gives him- and characters patterned directly on him- an outsized influence in both the public and authorial perception of what a “superhero” looks like. 

So fifty years down the line, when you’ve got creatives crawling out of the foxholes to try and make some superhero things that are new and innovative or parodic, a few things start happening:

Number 1. Superman is Very Legibly a Superhero. Superheroes, up until the MCU boom, were pretty niche in the mass market; a lot of pre-MCU films (and actually a lot of MCU films, this is my perennial beef) are structured in a way that makes it seem like they’re apologizing for daring to be superhero properties. Note the aversion to code names, the costuming choices made in the X-Men films, the irony poisoning. Superman was one of the exceptions to this, (Others being Batman and Spider-Man;) he’s too iconic. He’s one of a handful of characters who’s clearly a superhero and nothing else. (I’m going to return to this point later.) So if you wanted to invoke superhero at a glance in a mass-market property, making them have costumes and/or powers like Superman (sometimes with hints of Batman) was a fast way to communicate this. As the number of works that do this increase, the gravity of the bias swells because of the pool of precedent- the likelihood that your audience has seen not just Superman, but numerous parodies of Superman. (I was friends with a woman once who knew almost nothing about Superman beyond the fact he existed, but upon being told the broad strokes of his backstory, said, “oh, like in Megamind!”)

Number 2. Superman attracts the interest of Creatives and Iconoclasts. This is the non-cynical take on the above; Superman’s outsized presence in popular culture means that inevitably, a lot of really competent writers are exposed to him, grow up with him as one of their blorbos, and rotate him in their head non-stop for years until they’re finally in a position to write something. The Superman pastiches in Astro City and Irredeemable and Supreme Power and Invincible and Jupiter’s Legacy and The Authority and BNHA and Powers and on and on and on- they’re in there because the writers wanted to tell a story about superheroes, sure, but more specifically they want to yell their hot takes about Superman, who they love, out to the world. And many of these stories are thoughtful and reflective of the human condition or whatever, and so the canon of “Oh my god you have to read this” superhero works, inevitably start to contain tons and tons of Supermen pastiches. (And Batman pastiches; he’s subject to a similar dynamic.) The effect is reinforced.

Number 3. Even in niche or fan-oriented superhero works that don’t suffer from the above-described marketing pressures, familiar character archetypes are useful shorthand that lets you get to whatever novel point you’re trying to make faster. This applies to Superman, who I’ve focused on up until this point, but this is also a good point to start talking about one of the other things you mentioned, the Justice League. 

In Invincible, the Guardians Of The Globe, world’s premier superhero team, are 1-to-1 pastiches of the classic Justice League Lineup. I own the ultimate collection in which Kirkman explained that choice; beyond the fact that they were very powerful heroes, and that it was very very bad for the world that they were dead, the actual nature of the Guardians was immaterial to the story. All things being equal, it therefore made the most sense to him to just piggyback off pre-existing comic book fan affection and reverence for the JLA, because his editor was breathing down his neck to get the actual story moving after the six issues of relatively low-stakes adventure that Kirkman had insisted on in order to make the reveal hurt more.

Strong Female Protagonist is (was?) a webcomic about the world’s most powerful superheroine sliding into semi-retirement after neutralizing all the superheroic threats and realizing that her actual toolbox with which to enact lasting societal change is pretty limited. There are a lot of powersets you could give to the most powerful hero in your setting; a lot of aesthetics you could give her; actually, by making her a woman at all you’re already breaking the mold. But there’s utility in starting somewhere bog-standard so that everyone’s on the same page when you start doing the social commentary.  

Black Summer is a story about John Horus, the most powerful hero in the world, deciding that the only way to stay consistent with his commitment to evenly applied justice is to execute George Bush for War Crimes, explain why he did so, present the evidence, and ride off into the sunset; his five surviving teammates are then left holding the bag as a pissed off military closes in. The most powerful hero in this case is pointedly designed to look more like Magneto than Superman, but the seven-person team dynamic is clearly meant to broadly invoke that of the Justice League; this gives the readers somewhere to start when picturing what the team dynamic looked like before it collapsed, and it makes the ways in which the group is really obviously not at all like the Justice League pop.

Superhero story which are about someone needing to replace the world’s greatest superhero? Often rely on this fan-legible shorthand. (BNHA, Dreadnought, a couple others.) Stories in which the most powerful hero died as part of the backstory and left an imperfect world for the survivors? Often rely on this fan-legible shorthand. (Welcome to Tranquility, Renegades, etc.) Stories about the kid of the world’s most powerful hero trying to live up to their expectations? Often make use of this fan-legible shorthand (Sky High, Hero, etc.)

Extend it to other individual superheroes. You want to critique the economic injustice implied by superheroism, or the ways in which it would physically and socially destroy you? It’s efficient to invoke Batman or Iron Man, quintessential billionaire powerless capes, and go from there. You want to examine the hellish existence of the working-class teen superhero? Efficient to invoke Spider-Man and go from there. You want to examine the uphill battle of the female superhero in a male-dominated field? Efficient to invoke Wonder Woman and then go from there.

When you can simultaneously save time and creative energy AND demonstrate to your audience that you know the genre canon, the shared referents, the in-jokes- why reinvent the wheel? 

The effect is reinforced.

Number four. In works that are about a more unconventional or unique superhero, A tertiary Superman-figure can be a useful genre signifier.

So, the obvious rebuttal you could provide to everything I’ve said so far is that the superhero genre is obviously, comically, massively more diverse than just Superman and copies of Superman. You can make a superhero based on almost anything, intersecting with almost any genre. This is, in fact, the key to the genre’s longevity; the degree to which “Superhero” is such a nebulous genre category that you can cram basically anything into it and have it work. You can remix it forever.

However, this is a double-edged sword; while a superhero universe can accommodate literally anything, many of the resultant “superheroes” are superheroes purely because they exist in the context of a superhero universe; they stop existing as such if removed from it. Blade is a superhero, but the Wesley Snipes Blade films are not really framed as superhero films. Doctor Strange, extracted from the rest of Marvel, could just be an Urban Fantasy property. Green Lantern and Nova and Captain Marvel could be yoinked out and reframed as participants in the Space Cop flavor of Space Opera. Context-scrubbed Thor could be high fantasy. Context-scrubbed Hulk could be a monster movie. Context-scrubbed Guardians of the Galaxy becomes Space Opera. Ant-Man wasn’t originally a superhero; Hank Pym debuted in a one-shot horror/adventure comic about a scientist who nearly gets killed fucking around with a shrinking formula and an anthill, and then he got retooled when Marvel realized superheroes were coming back. Logan was a fantastic film but like many X-men films it divested itself from the framing of superheroism as much as it possibly could. On the opposite side of things, you could take a property like Buffy The Vampire Slayer- generally not viewed as a cape thing- and slot it into the Marvel or DC universe without having to alter anything. If someone like Shepard from Mass Effect, with their armor and future-weapons and/or their biotic powers, crash landed on Marvel or DC Earth, they’d transmute into a superhero just by virtue of who they’re now standing next to when shit starts going down. (This is the backstory of at least three superheroes, probably more.) Superheroism is incredibly fluid. It’s incredibly modular. It’s incredibly contextual.

There are a handful of characters, though, for whom this isn’t true; as I mentioned above, they’re superheroes and nothing else. They’re the platonic implementations. Batman is one example; the most grounded and gritty version of the character ever put to film still couldn’t get around the fact it was about a vigilante in a bat costume beating up the mob. Superman is another; It’s basically impossible to make a Superman film that downplays the iconography, the power, the social position and license of the superhero.  The social position and license are huge parts of this!

So, if you’re gonna write a story about a unique superhero- a superhero with a cross-genre origin, or an unconventional aesthetic, or really esoteric powers- a way to keep your story anchored in the genre is to include a Superman-style figure or a Justice-League style organization as a tertiary presence within the worldbuilding, in order to make it 100 percent clear to your audience what lens they’re supposed to view this story through, and to emphasize the contrast posed by your esoteric cape. Worm does this, juxtaposing a protagonist who controls bugs and thus has to fight like a maniac for every victory against an all-powerful Superman-analogue who exists in the background of the setting (although he swells in narrative importance in the back half.) Another example is The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang, which is a comic about a Chinese-American vigilante in the 1930s who, due to a poorly worded pact with a spirit, becomes invulnerable to bullets and nothing else; a more traditional Superman Analogue called “The Anchor of Justice” exists in the background of the setting, only getting a couple of speaking lines, and is mainly used to demonstrate the double standard society applies to superheroism when someone other than a white guy starts doing it. Incredibles does this as a background gag, with the sheer number of heroes in Edna’s “no capes” montage who were clearly trying to fill the Superman niche but continuously couldn’t cut it.  Valiant comics did this. Wild Cards I think did this. City of Heroes I think was doing something like this by having prototypical flying-brick Statesman as an NPC while all the PC heroes were (by virtue of being PCs) significantly more diverse and outlandish in powers and presentation. There are other examples of this juxtaposition trick that I’m not thinking of.

So, what are some works that don’t do this?

Here’s a non-comprehensive sample of works that unhook themselves from the standbys;

First off, The Marvel Universe. I think I’ve talked a few times about how the Marvel superhero community is pretty heavily dysfunctional, disjointed and fractious in comparison to the DC superhero community; The Avengers are an absolute shitshow in comparison to the Justice League, as individuals and as an organization. It’s easy to forget due to their total conquest of contemporary pop culture but Marvel was churning out unconventional cape after unconventional cape for years without stepping on DC’s toes; for a long time they were the answer to this question. Any time that Marvel has played at adding a Superman analogue to the setting, it’s usually in the context of pointing out how radically different the setting would work if there was a number-one top-tier hero like that running around.

Heroes, the first season at least, is heavily in conversation with traditional superheroism without actually featuring any of the aesthetic markers within the show itself; no costumes (because supers are simply too new as a widespread phenomena to have the institutional backing for that) no obvious Superman figure (one power per person) and the handful of cast members trying to behave like superheroes are explicitly doing so because of the existing cultural referents of fictional superheroes; by the end of season one nobody has made it all the way to the finish line in terms of costumes and codenames.

Absolution, a comic miniseries by Christos Gage about a superhero who snaps and starts playing Dexter, using his versatile forcefield powers to emulate dozens of different murder weapons so that the killings can’t be traced back to him. The setting is aggressively and deliberately street level, with almost no obvious character analogues, a host of novel powers, and “superheroes” that are universally incorporated into police departments as superpowered SWAT teams. However, the books politics are noxious; it seems that the author’s objection to the police is that they don’t kill enough people. But I bring it up because it’s visually clearly a superhero work while still having a strong aesthetic aversion to all of the tropes you specifically mentioned.

No Hero by Warren Ellis, which is about a superhero team created in the 1960s by a counter-culture chemist who stumbled upon a psychedelic drug that provides superpowers. The team is, in universe, very visibly attempting to carve out an aesthetic identity independent from that of traditional superheroes, brutally fighting crime in varied combinations of gas masks, latex, and evening wear; the group is also tiny, due to the team’s founder being rightfully paranoid that the government is going to jump on his secret recipe. It’s also an incredibly visually horrific book. Body horror galore. 

Uber by Keiron Gillen is an alternate history in which World War 2 was fought by super soldiers, developed initially by the Axis and then by an increasingly-panicked America and Britain. The project of the comic was to repudiate the idea of the superhero as an individualist figure who can overcome anything through grit and moral righteousness; in the words of Gillen, it’s a comic about how Galactus is going to beat Spider-man, every single time. In keeping with this, the superhumans are fairly cookie-cutter (developed in batches down known lines of research) the outcome of superhuman fights are determined purely by which of the two superhumans were better made, and as military projects the “heroes” are named using the same conventions as battleships (USS Colossus, HMS Dunkirk, etc.) 

Watchmen is an interesting situation. The one powered hero, Dr. Manhattan, is mainly used as an exploration of Superman’s geopolitical impact- the effects of the most powerful thing in the world being an American agent. But in terms of actual origin and aesthetic Manhattan is primarily in conversation with the Marvel Stable; a lab-accident origin, space-age energy powers, presence within the setting’s second wave superhero resurgence rather than having gotten in on the ground floor. That one is picking and choosing recognizable elements in order to do a bunch of different things at once.

Most of these tie back to the Mount Fuji thing; the absence of immediately recognizable figures in these works are, due to the volume of precedent, themselves a very pointed and noticeable choice. Sometimes even a choice the characters themselves are making within the story. And this presents a challenge to any capefic author who deliberately eschews familiar archetypes because they’re sick to death of them; go too far out of your way to excise Superman from your story, and you run the risk of just providing implicit commentary on his ubiquity instead. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

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One last note; you clarified in DMs that the “super science” you were referring to was that of the crop of pulp heroes; Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Phantom, et al et al. I think something different is going on here from everything else I’ve been going on about. When superhero settings incorporate these proto-heroes, it’s part in-joke and partly a nod to legacy; these were the characters immediately preceding Superman and Batman, the prototypes, the incubators for a lot of ideas and aesthetics that later superheroes would take and run with. Many 1930s-1940s superheroes are visually the “missing link” between the two genres; examples of this include The Spirit, The Sandman, and The Green Hornet. In superhero settings that are built “from scratch” outside of the big two, with a setting history that stretches back before the 1930s, it’s therefore common to incorporate a few figures patterned along these lines as a form of tribute. The flip side of this is that the archetype is also very easy to attack and parody; many of the pulp “men of science” were predictably tied to very yikes-inducing ideas about race, gender, and so forth, and thus if you want to criticize the basic assumptions of heroism, one way to do this is to take the archetypes at the root of the genre and then make them period-appropriate jackasses.

I’ll cop to being significantly less informed about this last bit, and thus significantly less confident in the conclusions I’m drawing about it; I’m therefore going to refer you over to @maxwell-grant, who’s very into the pulp hero side of things and can probably give you a more informed perspective both on how the science hero types informed the development genre, and the varying degrees to which they’ve hung around as both objects of tribute and parody. 

[fils91]

The Black Need to Move Out of South Park (A Tolkien Black Rant)

It's been two years since I ranted about a mistreatment of a character on this show--I ranted about Butters previously. But right now, it's time to rant about the mistreatment of Tolkien Black. He's been the source of race-based behavior for years on the show. His original name was a reference to being the "token black guy" of a "white-bread mountain town". And then T&M decided to not only change his name as a reference to J.R.R. Tolkien, but also have the audacity to insult us, the audience, as if trying to backtrack on their origins of his name. "Nuh-uh, we weren't thinking that he was named because of his race, you were! How dare you assume such things!" It is absolutely enraging and disgusting that two men in their 50s continue to act like the same immature, misanthropic manchildren that they were when they were in their late 20s. I just wish they'd grow the fuck up for once in their lives. Anyway, the racist jokes made at Tolkien's expense include (from my memory): Cartman assuming that he can play bass, Garrison giving him a brown egg, showing up in whiteface disguise along with the other blackface disguised kids to take Willzyx, Cartman wanting to kill him on the whiteboard in "Tsst!", and let's not forget the George Zimmerman and Black Panther/school shooting episodes. I've been wanting to rant about the former for a long, long time after eleven years. There is nothing "funny" about Cartman causing three plane crashes and claiming dozens--if not hundreds--of lives all because of his paranoia about Tolkien coming after him after the George Zimmerman acquittal trial. (A lot of plane crash survivors have had their PTSD in full force and I hope it was worth it for T&M.) And then Cartman shooting him and Tolkien not doing a goddamn thing about that. In fact, he also doesn't so a goddamn thing about Cartman harassing him about not seeing "Black Panther". He beat Cartman's ass at the end of the Christian rock episode, so why the fuck isn't he doing that again?? The first Covid special, of course, has Tolkien being shot again by the infamously incompetent SPPD. I really wish T&M would know the meaning of "too soon", because it is highly inappropriate for any insensitive thing Black-related to be going on post-George Floyd. And then Randy is at odds with the Black family for starting a rival weed farm right across from his weed farm. At this point, the Blacks need to move out of South Park. They have no right to be repeatedly mistreated by Cartman and Randy. They deserve to live in a proper African-American community where they are accepted. Somewhere in Denver. It's almost like this PC movement and the MeToo movement don't mean shit in the realm of comedy in this day and age--as evidences by this show, the "Ted" prequel series, the "Sausage Party" series and "The Boys". This is why I cannot stand comedy anymore. Everyone is always bitching about the media being "woke" and "sensitive" when the media has a point and they should just get over themselves and accept the fact that society is changing. TL;DR: The Blacks (Tolkien, Linda and Steve) should get the fuck out of South Park. End of rant.

[felinedetached]

🍄❄️ 🦴 gday banshee

DJ!!! Afternooon <3

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

Oh god uh. I love the idea of Sakura & Ino keeping their competitiveness even when they get together! With much less vitriol involved, of course, but like. Competing over who's team will pass the Chuunin exams first when they're both Jounin instructors - stuff like that.

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

SO this depends on the fandom! For BNHA which I don't read a huge amount for anymore I love stories that deal with Izuku's stalkerish tendencies! I don't really have a dream author I think, because I've read a few already and most of them were great! I'd just like to see more.

For ATEEZ I just want more fics that deal with the lore! More specifically: I don't like the direction the lore headed with Golden Hour, and so I'd love to see a fic that took the lore the direction I thought it was going to head - with ATEEZ heading back to World A after destroying the chromer & immediately trying to figure out how to prevent World A from becoming World Z. Like, okay, I know this was unrealistic because this IS coming from a corporation and what corporation would ever write actual rebellion and anarchy in a way that actually works, but I had hopes!! I have no real dream writer for this either, mainly because I have already internalised that if I want to read this I'm going to have to write it myself.

Oh also Gothic horror. I'd just love to see more people writing Gothic horror in general.

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 

Oh, SO many. You have opened pandora's box.

Music/MVS: - Sweet Juice, Purple KIss - Phantom, WayV - Don't Stop, Ateez (unfortunately this MV only exists in 480p now) - Halazia, Ateez - The World Ep.1: Movement, Ateez - Guilty, Taemin - Blood, Sweat & Tears, BTS - Deja Vu, Dreamcatcher - Chill Kill, Red Velvet - Animal Farm, Bibi - Grand Romantic Life, Mom Rock - Don't You Dare Forget The Sun, Get Scared - Cradle, The Joy Formidable - Thumbs, Sabrina Carpenter - Six Feet, Patent Pending

Books: - The Gloaming, Kirsty Logan - Wilder Girls, Rory Power - The Raven Cycle, Maggie Stiefvater - The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien - Frankenstein, Mary Shelley - Dragonsbane, Patricia C. Wrede - The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

Shows/Movies: - Addams Family (original tv series + 1990s movies) - The Magicians - The Untamed - The Sandman - The Witcher - All Of Us Are Dead - Castlevania - Derry Girls - Hotel del Luna - Spirited Away - Princess Mononoke - She-ra - Violet Evergarden

Misc: - Betrayal at the House on the Hill (board game) - Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic by Alister MacQuarrie - The poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, but especially Glory of Women and The Hero

All of this is just off the top of my head, or stuff I could look over at my bookshelf and go "oh yeah, that" about. I'm sure there's a lot more that's inspired me in my life, including probably half of the stuff we read and watched in high school — The Great Gatsby, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, Macbeth etc — but this is the stuff memorable enough to stay with me!

There's also an incredibly large amount of fanfiction that changed my life once I read it, and so many that I've literally sent to friends with the caption "I want to write like this". So to other fanfic authors: I love you.

Writers truth or dare asks!

[littlemissaddict]

Negotiations - Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

Summary: Eddie and Reader have their study date and finally their first date. Follow on from Thank You but can also be read as a stand alone fic.

Word Count: 5391

Requests are open!

“So I was thinking we start by going over the key events that happened in the book, does that sound okay?” She asked, taking a seat on the bed opposite Eddie where to his credit he looked, dare she say it, eager to start.

Despite this being the first time they had spoken to each other, save the other day that had put all this in motion, they had surprisingly fallen in sync with each other. Nothing about it seemed forced or awkward, except maybe for the five minutes Eddie had gotten stuck talking to her mom as she had answered the door before her, but the drive back to Eddie’s trailer had been as comfortable as if they’d been friends for years.

“Key events?” Eddie repeated slowly, his eyes widening like a deer caught in headlights before he quickly dropped his gaze to the book that rested by his crossed legs, looking more and more guilty by the second.

“Please tell me you’ve at least read the book?” she sighs, a pained look on her face as she realises what she’d gotten herself into.

“I tried, I did it’s just not my thing” Eddie replies defensively, a small pout on his face as he crosses his arms over his chest, looking very much to her like a small child who can’t get his own way.

She tries not to laugh and instead presses her lips together into a thin line as she watches him, “Look I know it’s no J.R.R Tolkien or Stephen King” she says as Eddie drops his pouty look in favour of a more dumbstruck look, probably because of her words and he’s trying to piece together how she knew. “The books are on your night stand” she points out, a small shrug accompanying her words, “and I’m not saying you have to enjoy it but if you want any hope in passing this year then you are going to have to start putting in the work” she adds, hoping that he didn’t feel like she was patronising him because that’s the last thing she wanted to do, she only wanted to help him as she had done earlier in the week.

Eddie’s shoulders sagged as he slouched back against his pillows, “I’m sorry I’m such a fucking screw up” he said weakly, all the fire gone out of him in such a short space of time. He’d gotten his hopes up that somehow he could impress her enough that she’d want to stick around and get to know him and maybe even agree to a proper date but now there was no chance of that.

Her chest ached at how deflated he looked, even though she didn’t know the full extent of it, and for the second time this week she felt that pull towards him, the want to help him although this time wasn’t going to be as simple as handing a pen over. Moving her bag to the side she shuffled closer to him, edging her way over the small space of his bed and stopping when her knees bumped against his. The small contact was enough to get his attention and when he lifted his head she could see how glossy his eyes had become.

Without thinking of the consequences of her actions, she reached over to gently cup his face in her hand and when she was sure that he was listening she spoke, “You Eddie Munson are not a screw up, I don’t care what anyone says or even if that's what you truly believe” she says it with such conviction that he doesn’t for a second think that she is lying to him, “from what I’ve seen you are incredibly caring, passionate and about the only person I know in this stupid town that is their true self which is very brave considering the shit that gets thrown at you because of it,” she tells him, again leaving no reason for him to doubt her words but it still doesn’t seem to sink in. “All of which are things that I would consider more important than passing Ms O'Donnell's class but unfortunately the world we live in does not share the same views” she sighs, dropping her hand from his face to rest against his leg.

The room is silent when she finishes, only the muffled sounds of the wind and shouting from outside the trailer drifting in through the open window can be heard and she waits for him to say something. She doesn’t even care if it’s just him telling her that she’s overstepped and she needs to mind her own damn business, anything really as long as he stops staring at her like that. His big chocolate eyes are boring into her, her whole body tingling under his intense gaze making her feel vulnerable as if he’s looking straight into her soul, she tries to say something, maybe play it off with a joke to lighten the mood but no words seem to come to her. Eventually Eddie speaks, although it’s nothing like what she’s expecting.

“You know the only reason I asked for us to work together was because I didn’t think you’d want to spend any time with me if it wasn’t under the pretence of studying together” he reveals, his eyes still bearing that kicked puppy look.

Eddie wanted to hang out with her. Never in a million years was that something she'd expected to hear. She was the quiet girl that always flew under the radar, never drawing attention to herself while he was the outspoken 'freak' of the school and she wasn’t sure why she'd been dealt these cards but she sure as hell wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to get to know the boy she's admired from afar for so long.

"Well you may regret asking me" she chuckles, reaching for Eddie's discarded book and pushing it back into his hands, suppressing her amusement at the confused look he gives her. "Let's just say if you do well we may be able to negotiate getting to know each other so I suggest you get reading" she adds with a teasing smile that finally brings the hopeful look back to his face.

"Wait but what are you going to do?" He wonders aloud, momentarily pausing his movements to open the book now that he has something to work towards.

"I'm going to work on the assignment" she replied simply, hoping that it was enough for Eddie to begin reading.

The next week passed quickly and she saw little of Eddie except for in their shared classes, not that she’d expected him to invite her to hang out will the rest of his group after one little study session, though he always flashed her a smile when he caught her looking his way and she'd be embarrassed if he wasn't already looking at her. What she wasn't expecting was to walk into class on Friday and find him already sitting in his seat, in fact it made her a little suspicious and from the look on Ms O’Donnells face she was just as suspicious of his unexpected early arrival.

“This is new” she commented with a quirk of her brow as she took her seat next to him, trying to ignore the fact that Ms O’Donnell was certainly listening in to their conversation to find out what was going on.

“Well” he smiled, sliding what looked like his completed assignment across the desk towards her, “didn’t want you to miss me actually handing it in on time, you know the deal” his smile morphing into a small smirk as he sent a wink her way.

Feeling heat spread through her face at Eddie’s very obvious flirting, she hoped that it wouldn't be too noticeable to him as she fought the urge to hide her face behind. “Well it’s a good start but you’ve still got some negotiating to do, handsome” she teased back, giggling at the wide eyed look of confusion that spread across Eddie’s face with a rather adorable blush that she didn’t think she'd ever seen on him before. She wasn’t sure where this new found confidence seemed to come from but she was willing to ride with it for as long as it was there if it meant turning him into a speechless, adorable blushing mess and proving that he wasn’t the only one that could affect the other in that way.

“So hanging out is a yes,” Eddie asked, finally pulling himself together enough to speak again.

“Like I said, you still got some negotiating to do” she teased, there was no way she was going to say no to him and she had all the confidence in him that he’ll have a passing grade on the assignment, she just wanted to make the promised reward all the more sweeter for him. Then hopefully she could convince him to do well in his other classes so that he could graduate this year as she knew how much it would mean to him.

“That’s not a definite no, I’ll take it” he laughed, a little too loud earning him a glare from the front of the room, “Whoops guess handing this in on time won’t save me from everything” he joked, not bothering to suppress his smile while she hid her laughter behind her hand. Just a couple more days and then Eddie would have his wish and maybe she would have hers.

The weekend had come and gone with little excitement except a single phone call from Eddie. It may have only been the one call but they had talked for hours and it had been about nothing in particular, just a lot of laughter from both sides. Although before he rang off, mainly because her parents had threatened to pull the landline out if she didn’t come off the phone, he had slipped in an offhand comment wanting to know if she was doing anything next Saturday night. She wasn’t one for parties and there wasn’t really anything else to do in town so of course she was free, Eddie seemed pleased and told her to keep it that way before the line went dead. She had laughed at his antics before letting the excitement bubble up in her as she wondered what he had planned.

Ms O’Donnell had had them wait another week until she handed back their graded assignments, much to Eddie’s disappointment because he wanted to see if all his hard work had paid off. Though mostly he just wanted to know if he’d done enough for a date which despite him brushing off her almost no’s he was actually worried that she would say no to the date. Geoff and Gareth who shared some classes with the two of them had tried their best when the topic came up, which it did a lot with Eddie, because they had seen from an outside perspective how she interacted with him and they were 99.9% certain that she wasn’t going to say no. Obviously there was going to be that very slim chance she would say no but they highly doubted it considering it was her that had come up with this ridiculous but rather smart plan that had gotten Eddie to study successfully for once.

When the papers finally got handed out, she had watched Eddie's reaction very closely, knowing that he wasn’t one to hide how he was feeling especially when he got excited. That and he had snatched the paper up before she could see it, probably so he could hide it if it wasn’t what he expected or that’s what she thought anyway.

“Holy shit!” Eddie’s voice was quiet but full of surprise and when he turned to face her, she was already waiting with a soft gaze and an excited smile. She had guessed from his reaction as he hadn’t immediately tried to hide it that it must be good but the smile that split across his face when he finally met her eyes confirmed it, “I got a B, can you believe it” 

“I can” she confirmed with a small nod of her head but a proud smile on her face as she watched the realisation hit him that he was capable of achieving good grades without help if he put his mind to it. She was also looking forward to seeing more of Eddie finally realising how smart he actually was and proving to those who doubted him, if he let her stick around to watch that is. “Looks like you got yourself a date Munson” she teased, watching his smile grow even bigger as if he’d forgotten their deal.

“Hell yeah I do, pick you up tomorrow at 7”

She’d been filled with a giddy excitement since the moment she opened her eyes, so much so that even her parents had noticed a change in her. “What’s gotten into you this morning darling?” her mom had asked, though something in the way she was looking at her told her that she knew exactly what it was.

“Nothing, I’m going out later is all” she had tried to sound nonchalant but the smile was hard to keep off her face no matter how cool she tried to play it. Her mom didn’t sound convinced of her answer of ‘just a friend’ when she asked who she was going out with and at this point her dad had taken an interest in the conversation, clearly sensing what her mom was hinting at.

“And this ‘just a friend’ doesn’t happen to be that young man that picked you up the other week, Eddie was it?” she asked, a smug smile perched on her lips as she noticed her dad raise his eyebrows as if it was the first time he was hearing about it.

“Mom that was nothing, I was helping him study is all” she groaned, hating the fact that her mom seemed to see straight through her, “and yes it may be him” she added, voice a little quieter as she felt the flush begin to crawl over her skin under her mom’s gaze.

What really finished her off was the little ‘thought so’ her mom uttered before her dad pitched in about wanting to have ‘a little chat with this Eddie’ and she darted from the room wishing the ground would open up and swallow her whole so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the embarrassment of that again. She understood where they were coming from, if things went well between the two of them he would be her first boyfriend and it was only in their interests to protect her, they were her parents after all but sometimes they took it a bit too far. Or maybe all parents were like that, she guessed that it was part of the job of having kids but either way she planned to hide in her room until it was time for Eddie to pick her up.

Since Eddie hadn’t told her what to expect for their date, she kept it simple. Her favourite washed out grey jeans paired with a white button down shirt and her combat boots, she even remembered about the leather jacket she had but never really wore, figuring Eddie may like it but she found it also completed the outfit quite nicely. Now all that was left to do was wait for Eddie and pray she got out the door without interruptions from her parents.

It was about ten past seven when she heard the familiar sound of Eddie’s van pulling onto her street, just in time she’d thought as she was beginning to get worried that he wasn’t coming. Grabbing her jacket and keys from where she’d left them with arms reach she dashed down the stairs, passing through the living room where she startled her parents, “I’ve got my key don’t wait up for me” she panted as she headed for the door avoiding any more questions from her parents.

Yanking the door open she came face to face with Eddie where, from the looks of his raised arm, was just about to knock on the door. “Someone’s eager” he joked, an easy smile resting on his face as a hint of mischief glinted in his eyes as he stood taking in the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she breathed a little harder than normal.

“Nosy parents is all” she tried to play it off, slightly worried that her eagerness would scare him off as if Eddie hadn’t been persistent in reminding her this was a date, “speaking of, I suggest we get moving unless you want the dad talk” she revealed, trying not to laugh at the look of panic that spread across his face as he reached for her hand tugging her along to his van and just barely giving her time to close the door.

The doors closed behind them with a bang as they climbed into the van, a silence enveloping them for a few seconds before they burst out laughing, both of them doubled over with belly aching laughter that made them breathless afterwards. “Well I didn’t think that would’ve been on the cards for tonight” he admitted, a smile still etched on his face as he pulled off down the street glancing over at her as he did and becoming nervous all of a sudden, “You uh you look great by the way, s’different from how you look at school, not that you don’t look good at school you do you just look more metal like this I guess” he winces at his words as he rambles, his gaze still flickering between her and the road ahead.

She smiled softly over at him, a little unsure of how to answer because she wasn’t used to getting compliments so she settled for a rather awkward “Thanks Eddie, you too” which made him smile.

“You don’t have to lie just because I didn’t dress up as much as you” he chuckled, he was aware that it looked like he hadn’t made much of an effort as he stuck to his usual look of ripped jeans, band tee and statement jacket but he had bought this new Dio tee just for tonight as most of his others looked tatty and he did want to impress her. Although he had a feeling that she didn’t want to be impressed by him, she just wanted to get to know him, the real him, not the front he put up and that scared him more than he cared to admit.

“Hey just because you wore what you’re comfortable in doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what you’re wearing” she pouted, crossing her arms over her chest as she glared at him, though he couldn’t help but think she looked more adorable than intimidating. “I like your band tees, you look good in them” she shrugged, finally dropping her arms in favour of resting her hands on her lap again as Eddie pulled up to a stoplight and turned to her.

“Then thank you sweetheart, I appreciate the compliment” he said with a wink but she could see in his eyes that he meant it, he wasn’t just playing with her.

“Anyway you haven’t told me what your plan is for the night, how do I know you’re not kidnapping me” she joked, nudging his arm and gesturing to the light changing.

“Now that’s an idea” he teased back, glad that things weren’t as serious anymore as he carried on driving, “but I was thinking we grab a take out from Benny’s and head up to lovers lake” as he was speaking he could see the way her eyebrows raised at the mention of lovers lake and he could tell what she thought he was hinting at, “now I like the way you think but that wasn’t in the plans unless you know you want too” he winked at her, watching the way her eyes widened and her cheeks flamed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about” she mumbled, not quite meeting his eyes as she dropped her gaze.

“No need to go all shy on me now although it is cute” he teased, laughing at how she whined his name, “Okay, okay I’ll stop, besides stargazing does sound a lot more romantic for a first date don’t you think” he asked, the teasing tone still clear in his voice and she rolled her eyes in fake annoyance in response but the smile never left her lips.

When they pulled up to Benny’s, Eddie was quick to jump out and run around the front of the van so that he could open the door for her. “M’lady” he spoke, making sure to bend in a low bow as he extended an arm out to her to take as she stepped out. She giggled at his dramatics as she got out but didn’t let go of his hand as they walked into the diner, smiles on both of their faces at the small contact between them.

Though once inside when it came to the subject of paying, Eddie was adamant that it was his treat but she didn’t feel right letting him pay for her even though it was expected for the man to pay on a date. Their back and forth bickering lasted for about 5 minutes, holding up the queue for a few disgruntled customers behind them until the cashier had finally had enough warning them that if they couldn’t decide then he wouldn’t serve them. That had forced them to decide and Eddie slid the money across the counter before she even got a chance to reach for her purse.

“You’re so difficult sometimes, you know that” Eddie had huffed as they stood off to the side to wait for their food, ignoring the dirty looks being sent their way for the hold up.

“I’m sorry but I don’t like it when people buy things for me that I could get myself” she pouted, wide eyes staring up at him. It had been this weird thing she’d had for as long as she could remember whenever someone bought something for her, other than her parents or immediate family, she would feel like she owed them for it but she couldn’t figure out why or how she’d come to feel like it.

“Well then if it makes you feel better think of it as a thank you for helping me with the assignment” Eddie suggested, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. Figuring it was all good when she squeezed his hand back in response and the smile returned to her face, “now no more pouting, we’re supposed to be having fun” he playfully scolded her and she agreed just as their food was passed their way.

Once they were settled back in the van with the food securely held in her lap, Eddie began the drive up to lovers lake. There was less talking on the drive up there, mainly because she was aware that Eddie was having to navigate the roads in the dark and she didn’t want to distract him, plus they’d have plenty of time to talk while they were there. She found that even though the drive was in relative quiet, it was a comfortable silence, neither of them feeling the need to fill it as they were more than happy to just enjoy the others company but they were just as happy when Eddie parked up in a spot overlooking the lake but also had a great view of the sky. They were here to stargaze after all.

Eddie slid out of his seat, making his way around to the back of the van this time and as he opened the back doors he looked over at her where she was watching him, still in her seat. “Are you coming or am I enjoying this view alone?” he asked, an eyebrow raised up and an amused smile on his face as he watched her almost fall out of the van in a rush to meet him, “I hope you didn’t drop the food” he joked, catching the eye roll she did as she rounded the back of the van.

“Very funny Eddie” her voice full of sarcasm as she joined him on the blankets he’d covered the floor of the back of the van in, in an attempt to make it a little bit more comfortable to sit on. Crossing her legs as she sat, she pulled out a container of food and passed it to him before helping herself to her own. “Huh all that’s missing is the chocolate covered strawberries” she giggles, earning her a confused look from Eddie as he was mid bite of his fries, “You know like those rom-coms where they go on picnic dates and the man feeds her strawberries” she asks, eyebrows raised although she shouldn’t be surprised because rom-coms certainly doesn’t seem like Eddie’s movie type of choice.

“Well if you want to live out those fantasies there’s always next time” he shrugs before his lips tug up into a small smirk, “although I could always feed you fries instead” he says, slowly picking up a fry and stretching his arm out towards her making her laugh.

“No it’s okay but I’ll hold you to that next time” she jokes and Eddie laughs with her, shooting her a wink when he tells her he’s looking forward to it before he pops the fry he was holding out to her into his mouth.

“So, so far I’ve learnt that you drive a hard bargain, like rom-coms and fantasise about being fed fruit, are there any other surprises you’ve got for me?” he teases as he finishes off his fries and pushes the empty container to the side before wiping his hands on his jeans.

She sits quietly for a minute as she thinks of anything he might have missed but she comes up empty, “Nope I think you’ve about summed me up” she chuckles, pushing her own container away from her and copying Eddie’s previous motions of wiping her own hands on her jeans before she pulls her jacket tighter around her, feeling the cold a little more now she didn’t have the warmth of the food to warm her.

Eddie’s notices, she’s not surprised as one of the things she’s picked up about him is that he’s very attentive around those he cares about, he reaches for one of the spare blankets and drapes it over her shoulders, without a word. She also notices how he shuffles closer to her before hesitantly laying his arm over her shoulders, looking as if he wants to ask if it’s okay but she answers without words, leaning into his side and resting her head against his shoulder. Her body relaxing into him as his arm around her feels less hesitant and more sure as he holds her close to his side.

“It’s really nice out here, calming” she whispers, she’s not entirely sure why she’s whispering but she doesn’t want to break the comfortable silence they’ve fallen into yet again.

“It is, it’s where I come to think when everything gets too much” he admits, his own voice quiet as if it’s something he’s scared to admit out loud. She understands though, the stress of senior year is enough on its own but she can’t imagine what it feels like to be repeating it for a third year while getting shit off everyone for just being himself but it’s definitely nice to have somewhere quiet like this where none of that matters even for just a little bit. She’s also hoping that he ends up trusting her enough so that he feels he can confide in her so that he doesn’t have to deal with everything alone as no one should.

She doesn’t know how long they sit like that, cuddled up in the back of the van looking out over the lake, only that it’s long enough for it to get cold enough that the blanket and Eddie’s body warmth are no longer enough to keep them warm. “It’s late, I probably should be getting you home so your parents don’t worry” he says, almost sounding disappointed and she hopes it’s because their night together is ending and not because of their date.

She nods, a little regretful herself that it’s ending and because Eddie’s let go of her and no longer cuddling her. She feels silly for it that she’s missing his touch after such a short amount of time but she can’t help it as she makes her way back to the passenger seat letting him take the blanket from her as he cleans the back, closing the doors before making his own way back to the driver’s side and turning the heating on so that they can warm up again.

The drive back to her house makes her feel a little sleepy and she’s not sure whether it’s the warmth or Eddie’s quiet humming that’s got her eyelids feeling heavy. Although the moment they pull up outside her house the feelings are not as strong as her reluctance to leave him, for the night to be over.

Turning off the engine, Eddie turns in his seat to face her and she can’t help but notice how solemn his face looks. It makes her panic slightly that he’s going to say that he’s changed his mind and he doesn’t want to hang out anymore but his words were nothing like she thought they would be.

“I know I can’t take you out for a meal at a fancy restaurant or shower you with gifts” Eddie spoke, dropping his head as the frown deepened on his face, “and I understand if you don’t want to do this again but I had fun tonight and I like you, a lot” he rambled, his eyes not quite meeting hers which she guesses is out of fear of rejection. A fear that seems to have affected them both tonight but she’s quick to let him know that’s not how she feels at all.

“Eddie I don’t know how to get this through to you, I’m not here to be spoiled or to go out to eat at some fancy restaurant where the waiters would probably look down on us anyway” she sighed, a little frustrated that after everything tonight he thought she wouldn’t want to go out with him again, “I am here because I like you Eddie, I want to get to know you, hang out with you until you get sick of me and while that maybe what other girls want there is only one thing I want” she smiled softly, twisting in her seat so that she could face him as she lifted her hand up to gently cup his cheek and guide his head up so that he could see how much she meant her words.

“I don’t think I’d ever get sick of you sweetheart” he smiled, sounding so sure that she didn’t doubt that he meant it.

“I think you’re gonna regret saying that,” she chuckles, feeling brave as she leans forwards, towards him and presses a soft kiss to his cheek. When she pulls away she finds him staring at her with wide eyes and a big smile on his face that she can’t help but match, “Goodnight Eddie” she says softly as she climbs out of the van, vaguely aware of him watching her walk up to the path to her house where she stops to wave at him before going inside.

The smile on her face doesn’t leave as she closes the door behind her, glad to find that her parents aren’t awake for an interrogation. It doesn’t leave her face as she’s climbing the stairs to bed or even as she’s climbing into bed and she definitely doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep anytime soon, her mind racing with thoughts of how good the night was and the possibilities of what could be to come. Whatever's ahead, she knows she’s looking forward to it, especially if it involves spending more time with Eddie.

[tinker-tanner]

Tag Nine People You'd Like to Know Better

Favourite colour: intense, vivid green. I don't know how to describe it properly, but if you imagine the glow of radioactive waste in a cartoon, that's about it. Purple, orange, red, and black also suit me well.

Favourite flavour(s): My palate is unfortunately rather unsophisticated thanks to having almost zero sense of smell until age 27 (thank you estrogen for my life), so my sense of taste hasn't historically had a lot of room for variation. That said, there is nothing in this world quite like top-notch cheesy garlic bread.

Favourite music: indie rock writ broadly. This ranges from folky stuff like The Mountain Goats to metal-adjacent prog like Polyphia to the vast soundscapes of Sigur Rós. Also enjoy quite a bit of rap, electronic music, and folk.

Favourite movie: Attack the Block, always and forever. It's the perfect mix of horror, teenage shenanigans, comedy, and genuine emotion. This is also John Boyega's first starring role. I genuinely cannot believe he pulled off this kind of leading man energy as a teenager: watching this movie in 2012 lets me sincerely say I was into him before it was cool.

Favourite book: Two-way tie for first. Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe might be the smartest book I've ever read. Not that it makes the reader feel smart - I have rarely felt dumber than when I'm trying to understand what Severian is leaving out of a story - but that there's so much going on and every reread enhances how much you can extract from it. The Sisters of Dorley by Alyson Greaves helped give me the courage to finally acknowledge I was a woman and is also just a stupendous psychological drama filled with women who have so, so many things wrong with them. Honorary mention to The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, which is still up there but no longer quite in the top spot.

Favourite series: Revolutionary Girl Utena. I did not know TV could ever be this good. I do not expect any TV show to astound me this much again. Watching Utena, I could feel my brain physically reshape itself. The show is unexpectedly blunt about rape and child abuse considering it's shojo, so watch out for that, but if you can handle it, watch this show.

Last song: "Sun Bleached Flies" by Ethel Cain. The perfect song for a certain mood when you need to reckon with not being Christian anymore. The first time I heard her sing "God loves you, but not enough to save you" was like a revelation.

Last series: Afraid I don't watch enough TV to remember this.

Last movie: The Boy and the Heron. Miyazaki near the peak of his powers, which I never expected to see again. The big screen added a lot to this one. Even by the usual high standards Ghibli sets, it's incredibly gorgeous.

Currently reading: Beowulf (as translated by Maria Dahvana Headley). I'm a sucker for Old English literature. Took two courses on Old English in undergrad and they were some of my favourites of the degree until the person who taught me turned out to be profoundly racist. Headley's take is bizarre and therefore compelling to me: I'm always interested in seeing how weird someone can get with the source material.

Currently watching: Nothing. I weeded and organised my bookshelves for the first time in the 2020s and am taking advantage of this to read my TBR list at a ferocious pace.

Currently working on: Nothing in particular. I'm not all that creatively inclined and what little writing projects I did have were pushed aside by all the real-life nonsense I'm juggling. Tarot reading has been a joy to learn, though; attempting to interpret real-world events through knotty tangles of symbolism is exactly the sort of thing my brain likes. Shoutout to The Tarot Restless by Winslow Dumaine, which dared to ask "What if I made up my own Dark Souls cosmology and put it in a deck of cards?"

Tagged by @tobermoriansass, which I find terribly considerate given how hard it is to drag him away from his elves these days. Tagging @sophibeans @stackslip @licoricefern @deadciv @catgirltoes @loki-zen and whoever else would like to join in!

[dothwrites]

15.18 coda--the best of things

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

---

There’s something. 

This is significant because, for as long as Castiel can remember, there’s been nothing. 

The Empty alternates between shoving him forcefully into sleep and yanking him out of it, just so he can experience the full horrors of wakefulness. He wanders and doesn’t know if he’s walking, screams and listens as his cries are swallowed by the darkness. He pulls at his hair just to feel, but even that bright pain is muted. 

I want you to suffer, the Empty had warned, and so far, it’s lived up to its promise. No, he doesn’t regret anything, he’d make the same decisions time and again, as long as they led him here, but he can’t deny that he is suffering. 

It would be better if he could somehow quench the little gutter of light and warmth that still resounds in his chest, but he can never quite manage to do so. Somehow, it still beats, giving him purpose, allowing him to set his compass by its enduring beat. 

And somehow, impossibly, there’s finally something for it to latch onto. 

Castiel walks forward, feeling the sensation of movement for the first time since he can’t remember when. His steps quicken as he runs towards the something, towards something that he almost forgot. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, how many centuries have passed. Time ceased to have meaning a long time ago, and in between bouts of sleeping and waking, Castiel forgot the knack of telling it. Now, he remembers, along with other long forgotten concepts such as fatigue and hope. 

His long neglected heart beats then, violently, with enough force to send him staggering. Castiel runs faster. 

If he were human, if this were earth, then the breath would be tearing out of his lungs. As it is, he feels a ripping in his chest, like he’s shredding apart from the inside out. He feels like a piece of paper torn in half, and he doesn’t know how much of him will be left by the end, but he continues to sprint forward. 

There’s something up ahead. 

A faint golden glimmer, a thread of hope so slender that if he thinks about it too long then he’ll shatter. It twists and turns in front of him, so far in the distance as to almost be a mirage. 

But for once, there is distance. 

Castiel forces his legs to keep moving, even as the pain claws through his chest, ripping into his very essence. Every step brings him the worst pain he’s ever known, but he doesn’t dare to stop. He keeps his eyes fixed on the golden line, now guttering as though it’s struggling to survive. With every step, memories flood back to him. 

The scent of coffee in the mornings when he would start a fresh pot before Dean and Sam awoke. 

The smell of leather and gasoline as he sat in Baby’s backseat. 

The feel of blood and grit underneath his fingernails. 

The salt and butter molecules of popcorn exploding across his tongue as he watches yet another inane movie starring a young Harrison Ford. 

The clear sound of Charlie Bradbury’s laughter. 

The whiff of sulfur that followed Meg, the crisp ozone of Hannah, the tang of what he was informed was an ‘84 and not 19, you have no taste, Cassie, by Balthazar. 

The rough flannel of Bobby Singer’s shirt. 

The whisper of Eileen’s fingers moving through 

The fragile strength of Jack, warm through his jacket as Castiel hugged him for the last time. 

The warmth of Sam’s arm slung around his shoulders, the steadiness of him, the unwavering loyalty, the brightness of his smile and joy of his friendship. 

Dean. 

Dean. 

Dean. 

Breath finally tears out of him as he sprints, pushing legs which refuse to move faster to fly. The golden tear glows in front of him, the only bright thing in an eternity of nothing. He has to reach it. He has to. 

A scream rips out of his chest as he stumbles his way forward. By now the pain is almost overwhelming, obliterating everything else except the most basic desire for survival, but he can’t give up, he can’t, he can’t--

Even in Hell, Dean’s soul glowed like a beacon, even when he lost hope he was still the most beautiful thing Castiel had ever seen. The smoke and whiskey smell of him, the strength and gentleness of his hands, the rumble of his laugh, the rasp and growl of his voice, the careful way he handled delicate things, the light in his eyes as he would look at Sam and Jack, the sheer love he’d seen shining out of his soul--

With a desperate cry, Castiel launches himself forward, straining towards the beautiful golden tear. 

His hand goes through the rip in the world and for a second, there’s nothing, nothing, nothing--

Strong fingers grab his wrist and pull. 

It feels like being tugged through quicksand, the Empty finally realizing that something is wrong and seizing onto him. Darkness covers him, and Castiel can’t see anything, can’t scream, can’t hear. All he knows is the strength of the grip around his hand, the fierce flare of hope in his chest even amidst the ripping pain. 

No, he thinks, with all the force left to him, no, I want--

Something finally bursts in his chest, and he thinks he screams, though he doesn’t hear any sound leave his mouth. Instead, he’s pulled, shredded, torn apart, eviscerated, and then, and then--

There’s light and sound and sensation and touch and smell and taste and a thousand different things like gravity and mass and body and Castiel can only gasp, helpless as a newborn as his sightless eyes blink through all the light. 

He’s shivering, cold and aching, and he’s never felt this kind of pain before, but it’s glorious. He wouldn’t give up feeling like this for anything, the sunburst of agony flaring through his body as he tries to sort through his senses to try and understand where he is. 

Something warm and soft settles over his shoulders and it’s then that Castiel becomes aware of his body, down to his toes and fingers and the tip of his nose. Naked, he thinks, somewhat innocuously, that’s why i was cold. 

Then the larger realization comes, which is, if he was naked, that means that he has a body to be unclothed. 

With a final blink, sight returns, though it’s unreliable. Smears of color appear and disappear from his vision, too quickly for him to hope to make sense of them. Sound returns, in deep rumbles like he’s underwater. Stop, he tries to say, let me just wait a second, but his voice doesn’t seem to work. He opens his mouth and all that emerges is a pathetic sounding croak. 

Syllables garble above him and then something cool and hard is pressed to his mouth. Cold and wet explodes over his lips and tongue, and Castiel thinks Water. 

It’s never tasted this good before. 

He gulps greedily until the glass is taken from him. He whines, wanting more, but his wordless request is denied. Touch explodes over his cheeks, his neck, and shoulders, and Castiel struggles to make sense of it. He would like to rest in the comfort of those hands, but they’re gone before he can process their being there at all. 

The sound coalesces into a single word, and Cas blinks, stupefied. He knows that word. More importantly, he knows that voice. 

He tries to force his rusted voice to work, but only a low croak comes out. Frustrated, he licks his lips and tries again, putting all of his force into the word. 

“Dean?” 

Touch returns to his cheeks and this time, it stays. He blinks again, and the haze in front of his eyes clears, and he can finally see that face, familiar and beloved. 

“Dean?” he asks, sure that he must be dreaming, even though the Empty never allowed him to do so. Perhaps this is a hallucination, a cruel manifestation of his hopes, perhaps he’s still there, in all that nothing, and this is no more than a dream--

“Cas, stay with me,” Dean says, his voice urgent and worried. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” His voice breaks on the last repetition and warmth envelops Castiel. 

A hug. Dean is hugging him, somewhat fiercely, if the lack of air in his lungs is to be trusted. 

Castiel blinks, surprised. He’s never needed air before. Come to think of it, he’s never needed water either. 

He shifts underneath the blanket, careful not to dislodge Dean’s arms from around his body. His palm presses flat against his chest. Underneath it, he can feel his heart, beating steady and strong. 

“Human?” he asks, blinking in wonder. 

Dean’s arms release him, though they take a long time to do so, as though he’s regretful. “Yeah,” he says. Castiel’s eyes aren’t working well enough to pick out the intricacies of his facial expression, but he thinks he sees guilt in the depths of Dean’s eyes. 

“It was the only way to get you out. Sam found the spell and Jack powered it up, and I...” It’s then that Castiel comes aware that one of Dean’s hands is bleeding, is leaving smears of red across the blanket and the skin. “I did what I had to do, but there was a catch.” Dean’s breath hitches for a moment before he looks back at Castiel. “You see, we looked into it, and it turns out that the Empty only cares about angels and demons. Humans, it doesn’t have any power over. So in order to get you out--”

“Human,” Castiel repeats, his mind working through the problem. It’s an elegant solution in its simplicity. The ripping and tearing makes sense, as does the pain. 

Anna described tearing out her grace as the worst pain she’d ever felt, like digging a kidney out with a spoon. Castiel understands. His whole body aches with the memory, muscles screaming for rest, his stomach for sustenance, and his nerves for peace. He doesn’t want to sleep; there’s been too much of that. But he does want to rest. 

“Dean.” Castiel pauses to let the word sit on his tongue, to feel the weight of it. It feels as good as it ever did. 

“Yeah, Cas?” 

Castiel could get lost in Dean’s eyes. Have they always been that green? Have those crow’s feet always bracketed them, like lines on a map, proof of a life well lived? 

“Home?” Castiel finally asks, once he realizes that Dean is waiting for an answer. “Can we go home?” 

Dean’s face splits in a smile, kinder than the dawn and brighter than the sun. “Yeah,” he says, though he makes no effort to move. “Yeah, Cas, we can go home.” 

Castiel tilts his head, wondering why Dean doesn’t move. Instead, he looks like he’s working himself up towards something. His teeth bite at his lower lip, while his eyes dart to either side of Castiel, like they can’t bear to land on his face. An unwelcome spike of fear lances at Castiel’s chest. 

“Dean,” he begins, but a harsh movement stops him. 

“I gotta say this,” Dean says, his voice rough. “What you said, before you were...” He swallows before he finally looks at Cas, his eyes brimming over with tears. “I haven’t been able to sleep in a year because all I could think was that I never had a chance to say it back to you.”

Hope flares and bursts in Castiel’s heart. A happiness so bright it’s searing tears through him, and this time, he can feel it, he can feel it all, he can have it--

“I love you,” Dean says, his unbloodied hand resting on Castiel’s cheek. “I love everything about you, you stupid bastard, and don’t you ever, ever try and leave me again, don’t you ever, you’d better die after me because I’m going to stick with you until we’re old and gross and creaky and we’re going to have to figure out how to have old people sex with all my fake joints and--” 

“Sex?” Castiel’s brain might not be working fast enough to pick up on every word Dean says, but he’s aware enough for that. 

Dean blushes, the tips of his ears turning red. “Yeah. I mean. If you wanted. And if you didn’t want, that’s fine, because i know you said once that angels didn’t--”

“I’d very much like to have sex with you,” Castiel interrupts, because even in his state, he can see when Dean is trying to work himself into a hole. “But not right now.” Exhaustion hits him like a wave, dragging him under and only reluctantly giving him up. He looks up at Dean, finally allowing himself to be weak, allowing Dean to step in and take care of him. “Home?” he repeats, wanting nothing more than to sink into Dean’s bed and rest. 

“Yeah, Cas. Let’s go home.” Dean shifts, but doesn’t move, and Castiel is just about to complain about the lack of progress on the home front when Dean leans forward. His eyes are determined, his lips slightly parted, his hand trembling where it rests on Castiel’s cheek. Fireworks and galaxies explode in Castiel when he realizes Dean’s intentions. 

He’s lived through several ice ages, through meteors and wars, through life and death and rebirth. He’s seen the formation of planets and constellations, seen entire solar systems collapse into themselves only to birth a new sun. 

But he’s never seen or felt anything as wondrous as the first touch of Dean’s lips on his. 

The kiss is soft, barely pressure, but it feels like everything. It feels like a promise and a wish. It feels like a homecoming. 

It feels like a beginning. 

---

Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.― Stephen King

A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it's the most painful thing you'll ever have to do and that you've ever done. But what's yours is yours. Whether it’s up in the sky or here in your hands. And one day, it'll fall from the sky and hit you in the head real hard and that time, you won't have to put it back in the sky again.― C. JoyBell C.

[thefruitsaladdemon]

Fintolkien but it’s an actual fanfic this time!

It’s my first time posting fanfiction on this site! Yay me! Am I writing about a nice wholesome gay ship? Why, no! I’m writing about Fintan Pyren and J.R.R Tolkien falling in love! Awesome, right?

Anyways, I did absolutely no research for this except Wikipedia. So if you notice a little bit of historical inaccuracy, do not come after me for it, because frankly I do not care.

Title: there’s no title except for ‘catastrophe’, psyche

Word count: approximately 1.5k

Read if you dare… 

————

“Are you kidding? You should definitely base one of your characters on me!”

It was a beautiful, balmy summer evening in the year 1913, and two men were sitting on the shingles of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s townhouse. The small-minded white-haired grouch John had been boarding with for the summer had gone out for the night, leaving the poor Oxford student with a lengthy grocery list and a grumbled reminder of the rules. He hadn’t meant to break the aforementioned rules, and yet…

When John had finished stuffing the demanded wilted produce into his satchel at the market and was just about to begin the trek home, he had noticed a strange figure. The figure looked like a man, but so ethereal the way he had stood there, a silent observer, seemingly astounded by the perfectly normal occurrences of the marketplace.

And he had pointy ears.

Naturally, and of course rather warily, John had strolled casually up to the stranger and struck up a conversation. And now he was stuck with a real live elf — with nowhere to stay for the night, I might add, uncertain in this world of humans — next to him on his roof.

Fintan, or so he called himself, was a beautiful specimen, with blond hair that swirled like smoke around a handsome face and of course those ears, sharp as a quill. It was almost magical to be sitting next to him in the periwinkle starlight, learning about crystal cities and another language.

Poor John couldn’t take his eyes off him. He didn’t know what was wrong with himself.

Fintan, meanwhile, was having a grand time. Just grand. He couldn’t stop grinning at his new human friend’s disbelief at everything that to him was second nature. Of course, there was the added bonus of the human being a cute one, with a smile that lit up everything around him.

“Well, I’d not name him Fintan; that would be stealing yours,” John answered, remembering to blink.

“Come now, John, I don’t exactly have a record in your world,” laughed Fintan. He was certainly not oblivious to the way John the human stared at him. Not in the way any sensible human would stare at Fintan, but something else. Something glowing in those eyes of his.

John was hopelessly, arguably in love with Fintan. Oh, how wonderful! thought Fintan. I seem to have fallen for him, as well. Grand, I’ll just have to kiss him and see what he does.

“I have never preferred using the names of existing people in my stories, especially ones as fantastical as this. It’s why all my characters have such outrageous names,” said John matter-of-factly  in that crisp accent of his. Trying not to stutter in front of Fintan’s glowing presence.

“Well, you’re creating a language for your elves, are you not?”

“Er…erm, yes. Probably. I mean, most likely.” John cursed himself inwardly. So much for not stuttering. What was going on with him? He’d only felt this way when confronted with that girl from Oxford. Ethel, was that her name? Oh, well. Ethel didn’t matter at the moment. Only Fintan and his answer.

“Well then, my John,” Fintan said with a flourish; John blushed. “In your elf language, my name should be one of the words. Fintan. Have it mean, erm…” He scratched his chin. After a second, his eyes lit up again; he pointed a finger into the abyss and announced, “Hairdresser! You see, because of how awe-inspiring my hair is!”

Fintan — that insolent Fintan, thought John, putting a spell on him like that — performed the most graceful of hair flips, ending with another one of those stunning grins in John’s direction.

John choked on his own breath. “Al — alright, I’ll file that.”

Welp, Fintan would have to mean hairdresser now. So utterly stupid, and yet how could he not? With how beautiful Fintan was  the fact that Fintan was an actual elf, John just had to listen to him.

Fintan laughed. He could practically see the rays of I’m in love with you drifting off of poor John Tolkien.

And Fintan? There was no simpler way to put that Pyrokinetic’s feelings in writing: He really, really, wanted to kiss John. He did enjoy the looks John gave him when all Fintan did was look at him. Well, okay, that and flipping his hair and calling him ‘my John’.

It was sort of his hobby to fluster people who were in love with him. Especially those he had feelings for as well, which happened to be the case that night in the summer of 1913.

There was a silence. There was nobody about, and the roof of that townhouse was too high to attract unwanted attention. Fintan and John had known each other, had been talking, for about five hours now; the sun had dipped below the horizon, and it was dark out. Fintan thought at last it was time.

“Hey,” he said after a long-ish while staring into the Void, in the general direction of John. John heard, and turned toward Fintan.

Fintan decided to be quick and straight-forward. Well, definitely not straight, but you get the idea.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

John immediately went red. He’d only ever kissed someone once in his life, and that had been a girl. Not a man, definitely not a man, and wasn’t it a criminal offense for a man to kiss another man?

“M-me?” he stuttered, just making sure.

“Of course you, my John. I suppose the reason is that any other human who might have come across me, should I tell them what I really am, they'd've put me in the zoo, run tests on me. I am truly glad I found you, John Tolkien, and you seem like a wonderful, amazing person, and I seem to have fallen rather fast and hard for you, and I’d love to kiss you. Can I?”

Fintan was a master at such speeches, as anyone who’d courted him in the past knew full well. John, on the other hand, did not.

“Erm,” he said several times, trying to compose himself. It was not one of his favorite idiosyncrasies, the fact that he got deathly flustered the moment anyone he loved made a move, but it happened every time without fail. Though, no other man had asked to kiss him before now. It was strange, a first for him.

“Y-yes,” John muttered, eyes wide. He leaned a little toward Fintan, not facing him, hoping to feel Fintan’s lips on his cheek for less than a second. He wasn’t so lucky.

Fintan laughed at the innocence of John. Anyone with a brain knew Fintan Pyren simply didn’t deal in cheek pecks. He grabbed John’s shoulders, spun him around to face forward, and kissed him full on the mouth.

John felt as if he were floating through time and space. There were no other ways to put it. The shingles of the roof had disappeared, as well as everything else except him and Fintan. I am being kissed by an elf, said his mind, but honestly? It felt rather more like being struck by lightning.

When Fintan pulled away, John gasped like a fish. Fintan chuckled, smiling from ear to pointed ear. “That was nice, thank you,” he said, ever unflustered.

John, on the other hand, felt as if he were on fire. “That,” he said after a while, “was no small kiss.”

“No,” Fintan agreed. “No, it wasn’t. If you weren’t smiling so much right now, I’d even be sorry.”

“If you were to say sorry I’d think something was wrong with you,” John said, realizing finally that his cheeks were starting to hurt from his grin. The thrill of the kiss was over, and instead of getting flustered, his love just…settled, warming him from the inside. He didn’t blush, didn’t stutter. It felt almost good not to.

Fintan reached for John’s hand in the darkness. It had been hundreds of years since he’d been quite this in love. And somehow, it felt right.

Even though John — his John — was a human (of course, Shakespeare had been no elf, either; those sonnets were truly something), he loved him just the same.

“Oh nothing’s wrong with me, my John. I’m just a fool of an elf who is hopelessly in love.”

John laughed, leaning his head on Fintan’s shoulder. “If you’re hopeless, Fintan Pyren,” he asked, “then what am I?”

The End

Congratulations, you read to the end! That means this whole thing is in your head now and there's nothing you can do about it! Hahahahaha

I am tagging @fintan-pyren because you know why.

[the-expose-on-girls]

The Power of a Lie

In The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, we see the full power of well-crafted lies, when they bring down whole civilizations. Valinor and Numenor were beautiful, shining realms before lies caused their upheaval and ultimately, their doom.

(Full context will not be provided for sake of post length, so if you are curious to hear the full story, the book is highly recommended.)

Melkor's corruption of Valinor

The chiefest of all darkness and evil that has ever existed in Arda, Melkor was allowed by the Valar to wreak havoc on the world for a long time before they finally battled and imprisoned him in the void beyond. There he lay wait for three ages before the Valar released him for a hearing.

"Before the gates of Valmar Melkor abased himself at the feet of Manwë and sued for pardon, vowing that if he might be made only the least of the free people of Valinor he would aid the Valar in all their works … But fair-seeming were all the words and deeds of Melkor in that time, and both the Valar and the Eldar had profit from his aid and counsel, if they sought it; and therefore in a while he was given leave to go freely about the land, and it seemed to Manwë that the evil of Melkor was cured. For Manweë was free from evil and could not comprehend it." -Silmarillion, chapter 6 "Now in his heart Melkor most hated the Eldar, both because they were fair and joyful and because in them he saw the reason for the arising of the Valar, and his own downfall. Therefore all the more did he feign love for them and seek their friendship, and he offered them the service of his lore and labour in any great deed that they would do….the Noldor took delight in the hidden knowledge that he could reveal to them; and some hearkened to words that it would have been better for them never to have heard." -Silmarillion, chapter 6

The elves, he corrupted with lies that they were mere playthings and prisoners to the Valar...

" 'Slaves are ye,' he would say, 'or children, an you will, bidden play with toys and seek not to stray or know too much. Good days mayhap the Valar give you, as ye say; seek but to cress their walls and ye shall know the hardness of their hearts. Lo, they use your skill, and to your beauty they hold fast as an adornment of their realms. This is not love, but selfish desire -- make test of it. Ask for your inheritance that Iluvatar designed for you -- the whole wide world to roam, with all its mysteries to explore, and all its substances to be material of such mighty crafts as never can be realised in these narrow gardens penned by the mountains, hemmed in by the impassable sea.' " -Silmarillion, chapter 6

To the Valar, he spread falsehoods of the Elves...

“And Melkor knowing this was in great anger against the Elves, and going first before Manwe bowed very low, and said how the Noldoli [Elves] dared murmur to his ears against Manwe's lordship, claiming that in skill and beauty they (whom Iluvatar had destined to possess all the earth) far surpassed the Valar, for whom they must labour unrecompensed.” -Silmarillion, chapter 6

Deceit wormed its way through both "camps" until their ideas of the other were completely distorted. This corruption which could not be undone, ultimately resorted in the end of the blessed time and the flight of the Noldor from the Undying Lands.

Sauron's corruption of Numenor

When Melkor was no more, the most powerful of his underlings, Sauron, stepped up to lead further destruction of Middle Earth. In a battle against the king of Numenor, an island nation of great splendor, he twisted his loss to his own gain by putting on a fair appearance and humbly surrendering himself before the great host of men. The vain king took him as a prize back to the kingdom, where Sauron manipulated his way up to the chief counselor. In that influential position, he slowly began to spread his malice and corruption throughout the flourishing society. He created a dark cult to worship his former master, Melkor (then known as Morgoth), and encouraged human sacrifices as an expression of fealty. Great temples were built to honor the dark Vala.

The greatest of Sauron's deceptions was convincing the men of Numenor that their mortality was an intentional curse by the Valar, who live in eternal bliss in beautiful Valinor. He persuaded the aged king of Numenor to build a powerful Armada to storm the Undying Lands and take immortality from the Valar by force. In sending the men on this mission of mutiny, he brought down punishment on them all from Ilúvatar himself. The sea opened up, swallowing the armada and Numenor itself. Sauron's physical body was destroyed and thereafter, he was never able to assume a beautiful form for the means of deception.

The blessed race of the Dúnedain would have been ended, if not for the escape of The Faithful on nine ships, led by Elendil and his two sons Isildur and Anárion. But the shining island of Numenor would forever be mourned.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Don't be hard on yourself for being naively deceived or manipulated by someone skilled in pretty-sounding language.

Never take lightly the falsehoods spread by those with evil intent. Lies don't just destroy reputations, careers, and relationships; they can destroy entire civilizations, a truth not lessened by its demonstration in works of fiction.

When you encounter people of lies, run and take everyone you love with you.

[violetmuses]

"Shattered" Part 2 || Rick Flag (A "Parachute" Drabble)

TITLE: Shattered Part 2 || Rick Flag

POINT OF VIEW: First Person

FANDOM: “Suicide Squad” Universe

CHARACTER: Colonel Richard “Rick” Flag

MAIN PAIRING: OC Lorraine Tucker + Rick Flag

STORYLINE: Hunter G. comes face to face with Lori and Rick.

MAIN WARNINGS: Death mentioned, violence, grief, language, angst, dark content, etc.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This chapter also includes a flashback to Lori and Rick’s wedding shown in italics. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Tagged: @nerdysuperchick @a-reader-and-a-writer @babblydrabbly @lacontroller1991 @shadowkittybucky @loverhymeswith @fairchildflag @justin-hammers

____

2021

Hunter Griggs

“If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

“Didn’t answer my question.” One commanding Southern accent echoed through the darkness of this hallway before I even noticed that Rick had emerged from these shadows.

“How the fuck are you alive, man?” I dared to pick up my clamored phone and barely sputtered again, still trying to process who the hell was in front of me now. Almost haunting silence fell between us, even as Lori stood right next to him.

Rick sported another dark windbreaker, but didn’t put on this Task Force cap to match this time around. He replaced the crew cut with blonde hair while overhead lights flickered. Belle Reve locked down criminals, but utilities were shit.

“Heart replacement surgery. If surviving medical experts in Corto Maltese didn’t find me in the lab, I wouldn't be standing here right now.” Rick folded both arms while looking towards me, still rasping through the answer with simmering anger.

“Your death was confirmed, Colonel. This is impossible.” I struggled, already pacing back and forth at this point. Even Lorraine shook down her curls.

“Like I asked before, who lied to you?” He brought the question again, leaving me to panic internally for the second time now.

“Waller. She handed over this brief on the mission, but I never knew that your death was a lie….” Realization kicked in and I quickly stepped back, both pissed off and shocked all at once.

“All right. Thank you.” Rick nodded without shaking my hand and looped his sleeved arm around Lori’s shoulder before walking right back down this shadowed hallway together.

“I’m sorry, man.” I whispered to Rick through the darkness while their booted footsteps moved away from this hell-hole.

No one answered back.

***

2016

Someone else was supposed to be the Best Man that day, not me.

Lieutenant Edwards, Rick’s second in command, had been called to hold these wedding rings for safekeeping right up until Lorraine walked down the aisle. And yet, God called Edwards home during the Enchantress mission, which left Rick to call me up instead. In turn, I was here.

“With this ring, I thee wed.” During this powerful wedding ceremony, Rick delicately took Lorraine’s hand and placed this sacred wedding band onto Lorraine's left finger.

All around this church, guests already cheered before the pastor even spoke back up to introduce these two as husband and wife. Rick sported his service uniform that day and braved Louisiana weather with bulks of fabric and medals draped on.

“May God bless this union in all ways. Richard, you may now kiss your beautiful bride.” The pastor cleared his throat and spoke up as planned while drawling another deep accent.

From what Rick told me, his mother Sharon grew up here with of course no clue that Belle Reve Correctional would exist decades later.

I whistled along with everybody else as soon as Rick kissed his bride. These two were lost in each other. On the other hand, Lorraine had worn this sleeveless gown and hid dark curls with an ivory veil to match.

Once Rick smiled and held hands with Lorraine before walking down the aisle that afternoon, I realized that this couple would truly spend the rest of their lives together.

That one special day taught me that marrying your best friend meant everything.

Now, five years later, I just knew that Waller could never respect their unconditional bond.

[eileenslibrary]

Hey It's me Eileen, quick rules.

(also you can find me on Wattpad my username is Eileens_Library)

I will not write real people and I just find it disrespectful. And no people Irl.

My asks are Open!

Feel free to ask. (I will try to get to everyone's asks done in 3-6 days depending on how packed I am and how big the req is) (Please for the love of god send in asks, give me every fleeting thought and hc you have I will take it and write a damn song if need be)

I do write

Fluff

Smut

Angst

Platonic

LGBTQ+

x Reader

Stardew Valley

DnD

Anime

And match up

Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact Characters And Rules

My mains I am Working on from the poll

Lord Of The Rings/The J.R.R Tolkien trilogy in general

My own OCS and creations

Masterlist series

Krall Masterlist 

Plot boardl

I thought you were different 

You may have glued the pieces back together but the cracks are still there

How dare you!

I never mattered to you, did I?

Who cares, I mean you did leave me after all

You betrayed me, and now you are paying for it

You’re one to talk about love

Cheater! Cheater!

My heart has been shattered enough!

Why would I put my trust in you again after what you did?

You are worthless to me

Your pitiful words don’t affect me anymore

You monster!

You just come crawling back to me and yet you expect me to be there for you each time even after all you’ve done

Why don’t you love me anymore?

I don’t want you to see my scars

My body is torn

I can’t do this anymore

I can’t do us any more

I can’t keep this relationship alive anymore

Why can’t you just listen for once

It’s already too late

Go find someone else to hurt!

You scorned this relationship

I love you

I have to say I love you

I am so happy you’re my first friend

Hold me close, please?

It’s -30 outside get your butt back in bed

What’s yours is mine

Kiss me 

Promise you’ll dream of me while I'm away?

I don’t want to get up yet

You’re my dearest 

To the moon and back

You’re my cupid

My one and only

Promise you won’t leave me like they did?

I promise 

I wish to wake up beside you and see you smile when I do

My sweetest I get a sweet tooth just looking at you

Your body is beautiful

If you can’t accept or love your body I’ll love it for you

I love your scars

You look gorgeous 

Let me see you truly 

We can come back to this moment later so you can dry your tears

[hecallsmehischild]

Recent Media Consumed

Books

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. About ten or fifteen years ago, I tried to read this and was totally overwhelmed by it. I kept it around, hoping maybe someday I might be able to read it. I finally have, and here are my impressions: WHY SO MANY NAMES. WHY YOU HAVE TO NAME EVERYBODY, AND EVERY TRIBE OF PEOPLES, AND EVERY INANIMATE OBJECT, AND EVERY LANDSCAPE FEATURE. WHY. *ahem* So. I have a general comprehension of the events of The Silmarillion, but I dealt with it by doing what you do for an impressionist painting. I (mentally) stepped way back and let all the names flow by me, and if there were names that were repeated a lot, then I mentally attached appropriate plot points and character details to those names so I could track with who they were and what they were doing. And, actually, I found myself able to hang on and enjoy the book for the most part. This is going to lead into a re-reading of the Lord of the Rings books, since I haven’t read those in about as long…

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I haven’t read some of these books since pre-teen years, with one required re-read of The Two Towers in high school (i.e. it’s been many an age since I’ve read these and my memory of the stories has been far more heavily influenced by the movies). In re-reading the first book, I was struck by the extreme tone shift for the Elves and Dwarves. Elves seem much closer to happy, mischievous fairies than these ethereal, solemn pillars of elegance and grace the movies show them to be. And Dwarves are far more bumbling and craftsmanlike than the movies show. Aside from that, The Hobbit was a pretty solid adaptation from the book, and the book also reminded me that this story was the first time I experienced “NO, MAIN CHARACTERS DON’T DIE, HOW DARE YOU,” and probably was the first book to make me cry. I must have been 8 or 10 years old. I FORGOT HOW MUCH THIS STORY INFLUENCED ME.

A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell. I have a longer-than-usual list of things to say about this book. First is that it was just that level of difficult that I was struggling to understand while reading it (on Audible), but I think I got it. Sowell has several base concepts that I see repeated throughout his books, though he does like to dedicate whole books to specific aspects of the same topic. He is pretty damn thorough that way. So, for example, I would put this book in the middle of a three-book spectrum of similar concepts: Intellectuals and Society (most concrete and easiest to read), A Conflict of Visions (next-level abstraction, a little difficult to read), Knowledge and Decisions (root abstract concept, very difficult, I have not been able to get past chapter 2). The second thing I have to say is about a couple interesting concepts it proposes. Its whole point is to help readers understand the roots of two ways of seeing the world that come into severe conflict politically, and he calls them by their root titles: the constrained and the unconstrained visions. He traces the path of each back through the intellectuals that most spoke of them (tending to contrast Adam Smith with William Godwin and Condorcet). Though he leans heavily toward the constrained vision (based on reading his other works) he does his best to make this book an academic study of both, with both of the visions' strengths and flaws and reasoning and internal consistencies fairly laid out. In doing so, he helped me understand a few things that make this situation really difficult for people on opposing sides to communicate. One of them is that root words and concepts literally mean different things to different people. I had some vague notion of this before, but he laid out three examples in detail: Equality, Power, and Justice. It was kind of astounding to see just how differently these three words can be defined. It makes me think that arguing about any specific issues rooted in these concepts is fruitless until first an understanding has been reached on terms, because otherwise two parties are endlessly talking past each other. Another really interesting idea he brought up is the existence of “hybrid visions” and he named both Marxism and Fascism as hybrid visions. This was especially fascinating to me because I have seen the accusation of “Nazi” flung around ad nauseam and I wondered how it was that both sides were able to fling it at each other so readily. Well, it’s because Fascism is actually a hybrid vision, so both sides have a grain of truth but miss the whole on that particular point. In any case, this was a little difficult to read but had some fascinating information. For people who are wondering what on earth this gap is between political visions, how on earth to bridge the gap, or why the gap even exists in the first place, this is a really informative piece.

Movies

The Hobbit & Fellowship trilogies (movies). I mean, it’s definitely not my first watch, not even my second. But I went through it with Sergey this time and that means the run-time is double because we pause to talk and discuss details. This watch came about partly due to Sergey’s contention that Gandalf’s reputation far outstrips his actual powers, so we ended up noting down every instance of Gandalf’s power to see if that was true. Conclusion: Gandalf is actually a decently powerful wizard, but tends to use the truly kickass powers in less-than-dire circumstances. That aside, this movie series was always a favorite for me. I rated The Hobbit trilogy lower the first time I saw it but, frankly, all together the six movies are fantastic and a great way to sink deep into lore-heavy fantasy for a while. And I’m catching way more easter-egg type details after having read the Silmarillion so it’s even more enjoyable. (finally, after about a week of binge-watching) I forgot how much this story impacted me. I forgot how wrenchingly bittersweet the ending is. I forgot how much of a mark that reading and watching this story left on my writing.

Upside-Down Magic. Effects were good. Actors were clearly having fun and enjoying everything. Story didn’t make enough sense for my taste, but it was a decent way to kill flight time.

Wish Dragon. So, yes, it’s basically an Aladdin rewrite, but it’s genuinely a cheesy good fluff fest that made me grin a whole lot.

Plays

Esther (Sight and Sound Theatres). < background info > This is my third time to this theatre. There are only two of these in existence and they only run productions of stories out of the Bible. The first time I went I saw a production of Noah, the second time I saw a production of Jesus. My middle sister has moved all the way out to Lancaster, PA in hopes of working at this theatre. My husband and I came out to visit her. < /background info > So. Esther. They really pulled out all the stops on the costumes and set. I mean, REALLY pulled out all the stops. And the three-quarters wrap-around stage is used to great effect. I tend to have a general problem of not understanding all the words in the songs, but I understood enough. I highly recommend sitting close to the front for immersive experiences. This theatre puts on incredible productions and if you ever, ever, EVER have the opportunity to go, take it. Even if you think it's nothing but a bunch of fairy tales, STILL GO. I doubt you'll ever see a fairy tale produced on another stage with equal dedication to immersion.

Shows

The Mandalorian (first two seasons). Well. This was pretty thoroughly enjoyable. It felt very Star-Wars, and I’d kind of given up after recent movies. Felt like it slipped into some preaching toward the end? Not sure, I could be overly sensitive about it, but I enjoyed this a lot (though I did need to turn to my housemate and ask where the flip in the timeline we were because I did NOT realize that the little green kid IS NOT ACTUALLY Yoda).

Games

Portal & Portal 2. Portal is probably the first video game I ever tried to play, back when I had no idea what I was doing. Back then, I attempted to play it on my not-for-gaming Mac laptop. Using my trackpad. Once the jumping-for-extra-velocity mechanic came into play, I just about lost my mind trying to do this with a trackpad and gave up. Later I returned to the game and played it with my then-boyfriend on a proper gaming computer. Now, after having played several games and gotten better at "reading the language" of video games, I decided I wanted to see if I could beat the Portal games by myself. Guess what. I BEAT 'EM. Yes, I remembered most of the puzzles in Portal so that's a little bit of a cheat, but I'd say a good 2/3 of Portal 2 was new puzzles to me. It is crazy how proud I feel of myself that I could beat Portal 2, especially. Learning how to play video games at this age has really knocked down the lie, "You can't learn anything." Though I still suck at platformers and games that require precision. Since I find those types frustrating, I probably won't be playing many. Games are about enjoyment, so I'll push myself a little, but not to the point where I can't stand what I'm playing.

The Observer. I like the concept and the art but I don't think I could keep trying to play this game. It's really depressing. My in-game family members all died of illness or accident or committed suicide. I also kept getting executed by the state. In order to keep us all alive I'd have to do pretty terrible things that I have a hard enough time contemplating even in a fictional setting.

Baba Is You. Fun and interesting concept, but I got stuck pretty early on. Don't think I want to push as hard on this one.

[wearethekat]

The Truth About Tom Bombadil

At last, the mystery of Tom Bombadil's identity has been solved.

Ready?

Tom Bombadil and the Witch-king of Angmar are the same person.

1. We never hear of Tom at all during the whole of the First Age. The Nine Rings aren't forged until the Second Age. QED.

2. You never see the two of them together.

3. In the first part of Fellowship of the Ring, the Nazgul are sent to the Shire to look for the wandering Baggins. Interestingly, Tom says to Frodo at the dinner-table: "...I was waiting for you. We heard news of you, and learned that you were wandering... But Tom had an errand there, that he dared not hinder" (Fellowship p.137 hardback, emphasis mine: note the fear Tom has of his master, Sauron!).

4. In Tom's questioning of the Hobbits, JRRT notes that "there was a glint in his eyes when he heard of the Riders." (Fellowship p. 144) I think he was concerned that his double-life might have been noticed. Interestingly, Tom immediately changes the subject of conversation! Furthermore, the One Ring had no effect on Tom - which seems consistent with Tolkien's observations about how the Nazgul would have handled the same priceless object (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #246): "They were... in no way deceived as to the real lordship of the Ring."  ...

6. Perhaps most damning, however, is the incident with the Barrow-wights (Fellowship pp. 151-155), where Tom - with nothing more than a few simple words (p. 154) - commands the Barrow-wight to leave. And it does, without argument. Why would the Wight be so completely under Tom's control? Because in his alternate guise as the Witch-king of Angmar, Tom ordered the Wight to inhabit the barrow in the first place! Turning to Return of the King, Appendix A, p. 321, "evil spirits out of Angmar... entered into the deserted mounds and dwelt there." Obviously the Witch-king was responsible for sending the wights there; just as obviously, the Witch-king (disguised as Tom) would be capable of ordering them to leave!

...Yep: I think we have an airtight case here. :)

...It's worth noting that, after the Witch-king was dead, Gandalf said he was "going to have a long talk with Bombadil" (Return of the King, p. 275). Curiously, he never tells anyone about the meeting later... and he's right there at the Grey Havens at the end of the book, undelayed it seems by long conversation. I think we can therefore theorize that Gandalf made it to the Old Forest, but that Tom (once the so-called "Witch-king" had died) was nowhere to be found!

...Of course, all this brings up the curiosity of motive. What would make the Witch-King of Angmar sport such a double identity? I suppose that the Witch-king, once of proud Numenorean ancestry, felt trapped by the guise of evil which Sauron had tricked him into, and in the fullness of time forged this alternate identity for himself so that he could occasionally feel happy, helpful, noble, and more at one with himself and his lineage... It therefore makes sense that the Witch-king's other identity would be so peculiarly enigmatic, and perhaps sheds light on JRRT's observation in Letters #144: "And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)."

...Who else would be aware of Tom's double-life, I wonder? Since Tom repeatedly claims to have been around "before the river and the trees", and indeed even claims to be older than the Ents (Fellowship p. 142), surely the eldest of the Elves would know he was lying. Elrond plays along with Tom in public, being kind enough not to reveal his secret, but also seems to know that Tom and the Witch-king are one and the same; hence his refusal to give the Ring to Tom for safekeeping (Fellowship p. 278-9): "Power to defy the Enemy is not in him."

(a classic from the Flying Moose of Nargothrond: http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/theories/bombadil.htm)

[simplyswooningk]

Fanfiction Teaser: The Strategist| Coming April 2021 to FF.net and A03 | Chapter One, “The Professor & The Madman”

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Ron and Hermione

Premise: Begins Post Half-Blood Prince. “Wars are not for children,” Arthur said with a deep sigh. 

“It’s a good thing I’m not a kid anymore, isn’t it, Dad?” 

                                                     The Strategist  

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”-J.R.R Tolkien

“The Minstrel-Boy to the War has gone! In the ranks of death, you will find him. His father’s sword he hath girded on and his wild harp slung behind him. ‘Land of song,’ said the warrior-bard, ‘Though all the world betrays thee. One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard. One faithful harp shall praise thee.’”-Thomas Moore

                                                    One:

                          The Professor & The Madman

Ronald Weasley had never seen Hogwarts so silent. The place seemed frozen, stuck, dead. He shuddered at his train of thought. It had been barely an hour since Albus Dumbledore, largely regarded as the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had ever known, had been laid to rest.

His murderer, Professor Snape, was gone, had left like the ruddy coward he was along with the rest of the Death Eaters. Snape had never been anywhere near Ron’s favorite teacher, but he never could have imagined anything like this. To make matters worse, Dumbledore had trusted Snape. That mistake had cost him everything.

Ron found himself sitting on the Quidditch Pitch. It was empty, no one had a thought for Quidditch. The days of worrying about his Keeper abilities and how to pass his N.E.W.T.S seemed as far away as his life before Hogwarts.  

His parents were catching up with old friends, but they had announced that they would be leaving in two hours, his mother was especially was eager for him and Ginny to be at home. He didn’t have the heart to tell her he wouldn’t be staying long.

Dumbledore had given Harry Potter a mission. You Know Who had a secret, several of them it seemed, and they had to find them all and destroy them. Horcruxes.  

He, Harry and Hermione Granger were setting off a mission to find and destroy each of those Horcruxes. Seven of them. Two had already been dispensed. And one would only be gone when He Who Must Not Be Named popped his clogs for good.

 Apparently, they could be anything. One they knew about. It was the locket of Slytherin. But who knew where they would find that?  

And then there was this mysterious R.A.B character who had somehow stolen the locket.  No one had the foggiest idea who he was. So, they were heading headlong into disaster without a clue as to what to do.

He honestly shouldn’t have been surprised. After his first year at Hogwarts, having to deal with a giant, living chess set and then a murderous diary, a violent tree and a killer snake in his second had pretty much taught him to be prepared for anything.  

There was a part of him that wanted to just go home. A part of him that wanted spend a quiet summer at home, go to Hogwarts for his seventh year and start life in the real world.

But he knew he was kidding himself. With Dumbledore gone and You-Know-Who gaining ground every second, if they didn’t end it, there wouldn’t be a real world. So, he would fight. There was nothing to do but fight. He knew Hermione felt the same way, but if he could’ve kept her away from it all, he would. More than anything, he wanted to keep her safe.  

Harry had disappeared somewhere off with Ginny, and although he had had his reservations about their relationship, there were far worse guys for his only sister to date. Although she couldn’t have picked a more troublesome bloke.  

Then again, Ginny had always liked trouble. She'd be coming back to school next year. Ron couldn’t imagine what Hogwarts would be like without Dumbledore.  

He looked up to the window where the old Headmaster’s office had been. It was hard to imagine anyone else ever being there.  

Hs eyes fell to the window where Potions class was. Snape had taught there, pretending that he wasn’t a Death Eater, pretending that he could be trusted. The whole thing made him want to vomit and then punch something.  

And then he thought of Slughorn. He apparently had written a fucking book for Voldemort: How To Make A Horcrux: A Guide for Fucking Demented Psychopaths. His mother had often told him that not all Slytherins were evil, but the whole lot of them seemed to be nothing but trouble.  

But then again, if he’d wrote the book, he might have the answers. 

He made his way back into the castle, grabbed the Marauder's Map from Harry’s trunk and searched for Slughorn’s name. He was in a part of the castle Ron had never ventured. But there was no time for trepidation now.

He made his way to the Teacher’s Wing. He found himself outside Slughorn’s quarters. He knocked, but there was no answer. Normally, he would’ve turned away, but it was no time to waste on civilities.

He walked in. “Professor? Professor Slughorn?”  

He heard some shuffling about and he instantly reached for his wand. These days, no one could be too careful.

“Oh, Mr. Wemby!” Ron fought the urge not to roll his eyes. This man literally had taught generations of his entire fucking family and he couldn’t remember his last name. It wasn’t as if they all bore a strong family resemblance and had the same hair color.  

Oh, wait a second, it was.

What made it worse was that he’d nearly died because of Slughorn and a box of Love Potion-tainted chocolate cauldrons.  

“How are you, my boy? Avoiding more poisonings, I hope?”

“Doing my best, sir,” Ron said with a smile. “If I might have a word?”

“Certainly, my boy,” said the aged professor and Ron noted that he took a rather pointed look at his hourglass. “Although I am in quite of a hurry.”

“You’re leaving Hogwarts?”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t dare. Now, with everything that’s happened. You-Know-Who will come for this place, I guarantee you. Someone will have to help watch over the students. No, I was just heading down to the greenhouses. With Death Eaters knocking on every corner, there’s a couple of plants that I should like to have on hand.”

Ron nodded and squared his shoulders. “Well, I won’t take up too much of your time, sir. Sir, I’m aware of what you gave Harry about...You-Know-Who.”

Ron watched the professor’s face go white. “Sir, believe, I’m not here to give you a hard time about it,” he said quickly. “I just want your help with something.”

Professor Slughorn’s back straightened. "I've already given Harry everything.” His voice was stiff and dismissive, but Ron didn’t have time to get upset.

“I know. But I was just wondering, is there anything else you know that might be helpful. You see, Harry’s going to try and destroy all of the Horcruxes. That’s right, he did make Horcruxes, sir. Six of them, apparently.  I'm going with Harry. Me and Ms. Granger. Is there anything you know that may be able to help us? Anything about Horcruxes, anything about You-Know-Who. Dumbledore said you were his favorite teacher.”  

The professor scoffed. “Ah yes, my claim to fame. The favorite teacher of the Darkest Wizard our world has ever known. What a nice epithet that will be, I’m sure. Of course, Harry would go for the Horcruxes. He’s Dumbledore’s man through and through.” Slughorn turned thoughtful for a moment. “That may not always be a good thing, mind you. Sit down, Weatherby.”  

Ron did as he was told.  

“I really shouldn’t tell you much,” the professor began. “It would be quite... well, I suppose none of that will even matter.” He sighed and Ron thought he was looking at a man who was clearly at war with himself.  

“I’ve often thought about that night, the night I told him about some of the darkest magic known to Wizarding kind. I believed his curiosity natural, admirable. How wrong I was. The first thing you ought to know is that none of the items will be insignificant. They'll be things that were important to him.  But they’ll also be things considered magically significant. He likes power, he like things connected with the past. Dumbledore—,” his voice caught briefly as he mentioned the old Headmaster, “may have told you as much. And his favorite place is this school. It is the only place he ever felt at home.”

Ron’s eyes widened. “Do you think one of the objects is here, sir?”  

“Well, there could be no better hiding place, could there?”  

“Sir, do you know how to destroy one?”

Slughorn sighed. “I have never learned the spell to create one. But a good wizard is curious about such things. But only curious. What I can tell you is that making horcruxes is not an easy business, my boy. Destroying them is far, far worse. There's only a couple of things in the world that can do so and most of them will kill a wizard just as easily. Basilisk venom, for one. I don’t think I need to tell how hard that is to come by. And no, I haven’t got any. If I did, I'd give it to you. There’s also Fiendfyre. It’ll destroy the Horcrux but if you’re not careful, it’ll take you right out with it. And then there is a Potion.”

“A Potion?”

Slughorn nodded. “Horcruxes, my boy, can be anything. Including flesh and blood. Now normally, you’d just kill the living thing and the Horcrux inside it right along with it. But, if for some reason, you want to remove the Horcrux without killing the host, there is a potion for that.”  

Slughorn got up from his chair and walked back to a cupboard, shuffling about for a moment before picking out a small vial with a reddish-black liquid. He brought it back to the table and handed it to Ron.

“This is Actuscaria. It's one of the rarest potions in the world. It's incredibly tricky to make and it has about a thousand different uses, one of them is destroying Horcruxes inside of living things.”

Ron looked at the potion, fascinated, more fascinated than he’d ever been by a potion before. “How does it do that, sir?”

“Actuscaria can only be made by love.”

Ron looked at the professor, blue eyes clouded with confusion.

“As in the act of love.” Ron still looked perplexed. “As in making it, Mr. Weasley.” 

Understanding dawned in Ron’s eyes, he turned bright red and eyed the bottle curiously. He was so fascinated that he didn’t realize that Slughorn finally got his blasted name right.

“But not just any act of love Mr. Weasley, the first act of love. To put it into frankly, the potion is made from the blood of a virgin witch.” Ron turned even redder, but if Slughorn noticed, he didn’t let on.  

“The blood that is shed during the act of deflowering.” Ron blushed again, this time the color of a ripe tomato. “Also, the blood has to be combined with the seed of the wizard who has deflowered her. Given that she has been deflowered, this combination happens rather naturally. Also, you need the entire fingernail of each of their left hands. Combine that with three drops of phoenix tears, brewed in a cauldron made from dragon’s eggs and the fire lit only with elm wood for eight days and seven nights. But the most important part of this is that the witch and wizard must be in love. Not some childish, silly infatuation, but truthfully, truly in love or it will not work. Horcruxes are formed by murder, a violation against nature. But the act of love, true love at its purest is the very affirmation of nature. It’s Old Magic, you see, nothing more powerful. Guard it, Mr. Weasley, with your life. Even if you never have cause to use it, it’s worth five times its weight in gold.”

Ron reached out a slightly trembling hand to grasp the potion. It seemed so unremarkable, so ordinary. It didn’t look revolting like Polyjuice or deadly like Night of the Living Death.

“Thank you, Professor...for everything,” Ron said, standing up. “I’ll need to finish packing.”

Professor Slughorn nodded and Ron began to walk away. Right before, he reached the door, he turned around.

“Professor, is there anything, anything else at all that you can tell me?”

The aged potions master looked up from his desk. “Yes. Godspeed, my boy. Godspeed.”  

Ron nodded. That wasn’t terribly helpful but he knew he meant well. Which considering the circumstances, was probably the most anyone could do.

“Mr. Weasley,” the professor called out before Ron had reached the back of the classroom. “Before you go, if you have a moment, feel free to take whatever you’d like from the Potions Storeroom. If you’re going to try and stop...him, you never know what you may need.”

Ron nodded and with one final farewell, he left the Good Professor to ponder that one fateful conversation. Ron had learned this year how much damage one action could cause.

As he headed back to Gryffindor Tower, he thought of everything the Professor had told him. Was it possible He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had hidden a Horcrux at Hogwarts? He didn’t pretend to know how the psycho thought, he left that up to Harry.  

But if you were going to hide something you never wanted anyone to find, where else would you hide it?  

He arrived in the Gryffindor common room, which was all but deserted. Hermione was sitting on the couch her legs propped up on her trunk, clearly deep in thought.

 He was supposed to meet his parents and Ginny in the Great Hall in a hour and a half. Hermione would be coming with them and then taking the Floo Network back to her house.  

She looked sad, she looked worried. She looked beautiful. All he wanted to do was hold her.

It hadn’t been the best year for their friendship. Theirs had always been a friendship of push and pull. But the past year, there wasn’t any pushing, only pulling away.  

He honestly didn’t know where it had all gone wrong. Okay, so he did.  

Jealousy, immaturity, insecurity, Ginny’s goading, Lavender’s sudden attention, Quidditch fears and Quidditch glory; it had been a toxic cocktail.

They were back on good terms finally. Near death experiences tended to make people forget pettiness.  It was nice to know that they could never really be angry with each other. He never doubted her being there when it counted. He hoped she thought the same.

But that was part of the problem...he didn’t know what she thought...of him. He could read her moods like the back of his hand, could tell when she was angry, moody, stressed. He knew how to piss her off like nobody else. But he hadn’t quite worked out how to make her happy.  

He had just begun to realize that was what he wanted to do, possibly, probably, definitely more than he wanted anything else.  

Denial had long been his picked poison when it came to his feelings for Hermione, but now, now he didn’t want to hide them anymore. But there were a million reasons he had to.

There were a lot of things unsaid. It didn’t make sense to say them now, not when the whole world was at stake. If they lived, there would be time to say it all. But of course, that was a very big if.  

“Hey,” she said with the smallest of smiles. He returned her smile and came to sit beside her.

“Where’s Ginny?” he asked. “Mum and Dad are going to be in Hogsmeade in an hour.”

“She’s down at Hagrid’s...with Harry. I think she wants to spend as much time with as she can.”

Ron nodded and then shook his, not needing that particular image in his head. Harry had been his best friend for the better part of six years, but still there were just some things one didn’t want to imagine about their little sister.

“How are you?” he asked. “I mean, really?”

Hermione shrugged. “Fair,” she responded. “It’s a lot to do. A lot to plan. I’ll be coming to the Burrow next week.”  

“So soon?” he asked. Not that he minded. But Hermione usually didn’t come to the Burrow until the last week of summer.  

“Yes,” she said rather quickly and he got the distinct feeling that there was something she wasn’t saying. “Is that all right?” she asked, brown eyes searching his.

He turned red. “Of course. Of course, it’s all right. I just thought that maybe with everything that’s going on, you’d want to spend more time at home...with your folks.”

Hermione shrugged. “With everything that’s going on, I'd love to never leave home. But that’s not really an option, is it? No use in prolonging the inevitable.”

“Have you thought of what you’re going to tell them?”  

Hermione didn’t answer for a long moment and then just shook her head. “I don’t know how to have that conversation. But in any event, have you thought of what you’re going to tell Mrs. Weasley? That's the real dangerous one, isn’t it?”  

Ron, despite his worry and trepidation, laughed. “You’re right about that one,” he said with a grin. She grinned back and for a moment, everything was okay.  

“We’ll be okay, Hermione,” he told her with confidence he couldn’t quite justify.

She scoffed slightly. “You sound certain.”  

“Well, you’re coming, aren’t you?”  

She smiled, the first one he could remember seeing that reached her eyes in a long while. Then he remembered his conversation with Slughorn.

“I went to speak to Slughorn,” he said. “To see if he knew anything that could help us.”

Hermione frowned at that. “Ron, we’re not supposed to tell anyone! You could put him in danger.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “Hermione, for Merlin’s sake, Harry already told him something. And in case you didn’t notice, all of us are already in fucking danger.”

Hermione bit her lower lip and exhaled loudly, the way she always did when he was correct and she didn’t want to admit it. “Well, what did he say?” she asked finally a long pause.

Ron proceeded to say tell her the gist of his conversation with Slughorn. Although, he left out the part of the instructions for Actuscaria. There were some things he just didn’t feel comfortable talking about. Not with her.  

Besides, Hermione being Hermione, she would, at some point, look up the recipe anyway.

“Basilisk venom,” she said once Ron had finished his story. “Where on earth are we going to find Basilisk venom?”  

Ron thought for a moment. “I know where. Come on,” he grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. They had no time to waste.

He dismissed the way his heart was beating as nerves and anticipation and not having anything to do with the way her hand felt in his. No, that had nothing to do with it at all.  

They stood there for the briefest of seconds, hand-in-hand, eyes searching into another and for a second, the never-ending fast-fowarding tape that had been their experience at Hogwarts seemed to pause.

But that moment, like all moments akin to it, ended too quickly.

“We’ve got to hurry,” Ron said blinking rapidly, breaking the intensity of their eye contact.  

“You mind telling me where we’re going?” Hermione asked as they raced down the steps of Gryffindor Tower.

“Girls’ lavatory on the second floor.”

“What?” Hermione asked as she ran beside him, their hands still tightly clasped. 

“Chamber of Secrets,” he said in a hushed whisper though the halls were nearly deserted.

They got there in record time. Ron had never known it to be so easy to sneak around Hogwarts. Without Dumbledore’s presence, nothing felt safe.

He didn’t like that feeling. Hogwarts’ had been his family’s home from home for centuries. Despite everything he had been through in his six years there, he had never felt truly, truly at risk.

Of course, the Ministry would do everything they could to keep everyone safe. But if he was going to judge by the stories Bill had told him about the early days of the First War, he wasn’t exactly filled with confidence.

But now wasn’t the time for his fears to get the better of him.

He gripped her hand tighter as they entered into the bathroom and found themselves facing the row of sinks.  

He felt for the Snake-shaped clasp hidden since Tom Riddle had walked these halls. It felt weird doing this without Harry, he had to admit. But he had a feeling had things were going to get dicey, Harry would need all the help he could get.  

“How do we get in?” Hermione asked curiously.

“Parseltongue,” Ron said as he thought back to the last time he’d been there. Parseltongue always sounded creepy and disturbing to him, but Harry mumbled it a lot in his sleep. Ron had only picked up on it subconsciously, but he hoped he had enough not to botch it.

The whispery, slithery words felt unnatural and harsh on his tongue, but it worked. The tap began to move and Hermione gasped in awe.

“Oh, my god,” she whispered as the tunnel to the Chamber of Secrets opened.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to jump,” Ron told her. “You may want to hold on.”

Hermione peered down the tunnel, eyes wide. “Hold on to what?” her voice was highly confused.

“To me,” he said motioning to his shoulders.  

“Oh,” a blush crept across her face and Ron pretended he didn’t notice as he fought his own burning cheeks. Her arms wrapped around the top of his chest and he prayed that she couldn’t feel his heart beating, though he knew it was pounding.

Her little hands clasped around him, delicate and dainty but he knew what damage those hands could do. The contrast simultaneously amused and aroused him. But he shook himself of those thoughts. Focus, focus, she’s only a girl.

But of course, even as they jumped down the tunnel, he knew he was kidding himself. She was The Girl. The Girl He Wanted, The Girl He Needed, The Girl He Loved. Love?  

It seemed so foreign, yet as they whooshed down the tunnel, he could think of no reason to dispel it. He loved her. When the fuck had that happened?

It was unsettling to be with the notion of love as they were sliding down a dark, creepy dangerous tunnel in preparation of an even more dangerous mission where the best-case scenario was if they won, they most likely be dead as a result.

They slid down the tunnel and Hermione rapped his shoulders tighter as their speed increased.

Ron cast a silent Cushioning Charm because the memory of barreling into hundred thousand mouse skeletons was far from his favorite thing.

They landed with a thud and Hermione’s hands instantly left Ron’s shoulders. He was surprised by how instantly he felt the loss of her touch and how much he longed for it again.

“Oh, my God,” Hermione said as she looked around. There was rubble, dust and ash everywhere.

“We’ll have to bombard our way through,” Ron told her pulling out his wand. “Three tons of rock dropped last time, so let’s be careful.”  

Hermione nodded and pulled out her own wand. “I’m right behind you,” agreed with a grin.  

He took her hand in his. “If we need to make a quick exit, Side-Long Apparation?”  

She nodded and they pressed forward until they reached the Chamber Door.

Another round of Parseltongue from Ron later, the door opened and they found themselves in a room which they had only heard about secondhand from Harry and Ginny.

“Do you have any idea what you’re saying?” Hermione asked as they entered the Chamber.

Ron pulled a look. “Are you serious?” he asked. “Yes, I've spent my free learning the secret language of psychos.”

“Not all Slytherins are evil, Ronald.”  

“Name one you like.”

He had her there. She gave no answer and merely shrugged.

They both paused when their eyes fell upon the basilisk skeleton.

“Bloody hell,” whistled Hermione as she took the whole thing in.

“Hey don’t sweat it. It's dead. We’ve got living monsters to worry about. What's that Shakespeare quote you always say, ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here’?”

Hermione stopped dead in her tracks. “I said that once three years ago. You remember that?”

Ron colored slightly and shrugged in reply. “I guess. Let’s get the fangs.”  

He started to kneel down, reaching to grab a fang.

“Ron, wait! We should remove those with magic. What if you accidentally scratched yourself?”

Ron had jumped back at her words. “Oh, right. Brilliant, you are.”  

She smiled at that and pulled out her wand. They carefully magically removed twelve basilisk fangs from the remains of the vicious snake. Hermione conjured up a backpack for them to place them in.

“You know, Ron,” Hermione said as she zipped up the backpack. “This is going to be really dangerous what we’re doing.”

He nodded, as she rose to stand right in front of him. “Have you thought about it, if we don’t make it?”  

She nodded and then shrugged, though he thought he saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes. “I have. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? What matter is—,”

“Harry,” he finished for her. “Harry has to make it through. That's what the prophecy said.”

Hermione sniffled. “Harry,” she agreed. “God, if I had known that we may not be coming back next here, that we may not be coming back at all, I would’ve done so much so differently.”

He looked at her for a long moment, wondering if she was talking about what he thought.  

He looked down at his shoes. “Me too,” he began rather meekly. He lifted his face to meet hers again and smiled. “I think about all that time I spent worrying about Quidditch. Like that matters now.”

“Ron, I’m sorry about the birds, if I never apologized for that before.”  

He grinned. He hadn’t been expecting her to say that. “Thanks,” he said honestly. “I’m sorry about...everything.” Although, he couldn’t remember what he apologizing for. But he figured it was best to cover the bases.

She chuckled lightly. “You don’t know what you’re apologizing for, do you?”  

He shook his head, amused by her ability to see right through him. “Not really, no. But I figured it couldn’t hurt. I'm sorry about Lavender.”  

She shook her head. “Don’t apologize,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault she fancied you. I just overreacted...a bit.”

He raised his eyebrows. “A bit?”

“All right, a lot. I just I can’t believe you fancied her.”

“Well, I didn’t...I mean not really.”

“Ronald, that’s horrible.”  

“I know,” he said somewhat guiltily. “It’s just she fancied me, and I guess I fancied that and before I knew it, it had gotten out of hand. Then you weren’t speaking to me—,”  

Hermione scoffed. “Oh, so you were trying to stick it to me by snogging her? Real mature, that is.”

Ron found his ire rising. “Oh, and just what the fucking hell were you doing with McClaggen, then? Research into the mind of right arrogant pricks?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t!”

“Well, I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t....” he trailed off, not wanting to finish that sentence.

But Hermione was having none of that. “If I hadn’t what, Ronald?” she folded her arms and waited and he knew she would wait. Because the only person more stubborn that him was her.  

He knew he wasn’t about to admit to rational behavior, which is why he did not want to admit it.

“Ginnyutoldmeukissedkrum,” he said quickly and primarily to the floor.  

“What?”

He sighed. He didn’t want to have this conversation. But maybe, just maybe, now wasn’t the time to leave things unsaid.  

“Ginny told me you kissed Krum.”

Hermione blinked very fast for a few moments, the way she always did when she was thinking. She looked confused, then she looked agitated, then she looked annoyed. Very annoyed. At him.  

“You mean two years ago?” she asked her voice dripping with derision.  

His eyes looked at the floor again. “Well...yeah.”

“Let me get this straight: you started snogging Lavender because Ginny told you about me and Viktor?”

“Well, I started snogging Lavender because she started snogging me, but I can’t say that didn’t have something to do with it.”

Hermione shook her head and rolled her eyes. She raked a hand through her hair. “This is all so silly. You could’ve talked to me about that, you know?”

“I can’t talk to you about him,” he said honestly. “It makes me crazy.”

“Why?!” she exploded. “Why does it drive you so mad?”

“Because,” he snapped, just as heated. “Because,” he said somewhat more calmly once he saw the look in her eyes. “I just...it’s the thought of him with you...instead...instead of me.”

He hoped he didn’t look as crestfallen or as foolish as he thought he sounded. But he was sure he saw pity in her expression.

“Oh, Ron,” she said softly. She shook her head again and he knew she was thinking that he was an idiot. “You didn’t even know I was a girl back then.”  

He colored. “I did. I knew you were a girl. I just didn’t know back then that you meant something to me...as a girl, you know, not just a friend.”  

She blinked and her face lifted in kind of a smile. “It’s all right,” she said. “I understand.”

“You do?” he said, surprised.

She nodded. “I go red with rage when I think about you and Lav-Lav.”

“I noticed,” he said wryly thinking of birds pecking his flesh.  

“You know, all this could’ve been avoided if we had only spoken to one another,” she said with a resigned sigh.

He nodded. “You’re right. You're always right.”

“Not always.” She looked  

“You know if I had known if we weren’t coming back here next year, if we might not be coming back at all...I would’ve asked you to the Yule Ball. I would've gone to Slughorn’s Christmas Do. But in my defense, I didn’t know you were asking me out.”  

She raised her eyebrows, but he didn’t give her a chance to respond.

“I mean maybe I thought or maybe I hoped but it doesn’t matter. The point is if I had known how high the stakes were going to get, I would’ve done a lot of things.” He took a breath, not wanting the moment to pass. “Most of all, I would’ve done this.”  

He leaned forward, way, way, way forward, since compared to him, she was practically house-elf sized. He waited for her to stop him, waited for her to push him away or flee from the expanding closeness between them.

In the back of his mind, he didn’t know if he had the right to do this, after all, no admissions of feelings had passed between them. Then again, maybe when you knew each other as well as they did, words were a little less necessary.  

He kept leaning until their faces were inches apart. He could feel the blood rushing in his ears, his heart pounding dramatically.

His lips brushed against hers, softly, slowly asking a question. He thought he felt her gasp or shiver or something he couldn’t quite name. Her lips were soft and they tasted like honey. He pressed his against her lips harder, asking the question again.

She answered, her lips playing over his in return. God, he was kissing Hermione. And she was kissing him back. It was nothing like those lung-collapsing snog marathons with Lavender. It was soft and sweet and...intimate.  

He dared himself to be bold, there was no point in turning back now. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. She felt small and frail against him and a wave of protectiveness ran through his veins, barely reined in by his desire to keep kissing her.  

Her mouth opened and suddenly her taste was everywhere, on his tongue, in his mind, in his heart. Her hands clasped around his shoulders, bringing him deeper and he heard her moan slightly.  

That one, little breathy exhalation went straight to his cock. All the things he wanted to do to her rushed through his brain in a series of flashes. Suddenly his lips were on her neck, chasing the sound that fell from her lips. Her skin was feather-soft against his lips and all he wanted to do was mark it, claim it as his own.

His lips lingered on a spot underneath her chin which caused another raspy moan, louder than the one before to fall from her lips.

Ron felt himself harden, and they were close enough where he knew she could feel it. Something in the back of his mind told him to stop, but he couldn’t. He was addicted to having her in his arms, on his skin, and the sounds and shudders she made as he touched her. His lips sought hers again for another deep, nearly bruising kiss.

His hands began to roam up her waist, she shifted closer to him, her foot kicking the backpack. One of the basilisk fangs fell out and clattered to the ground.

That one sound snapped Hermione back into reality. She pulled her lips away abruptly. Her hands left his shoulders and she moved an inch away.  

Ron’s eyes shut open, afraid that he had gone too far, pushed past the limit. He waited for to say something. Waited for the inevitable heartbreak he knew was coming.  

“We can’t do this,” she said softly.

He instantly deflated but tried to hide it. “You’re right,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t sound shaky. “I’m sorry, I should have never. I didn’t mean to...take advantage of you and I can’t blame you if you want to slap me or hex me or send more birds but I've still got scabs from that so if you could lay off—,”  

“Ron, what are you talking about?” She looked up at him, confused. “You didn’t take advantage of me.”

They both blushed as the weight of their action sunk in.

“Soooo,” Ron tested the waters. “You don’t want to hex me?”

She laughed softly. “No, no, quite the opposite actually.”

He couldn’t help but beam at that. She placed a hand on his face, cupping his cheek. “We can’t do this...not now,” she quickly amended. “Right now, we don’t matter. The only thing that matters is—,”

“Harry,” interjected Ron. “The only thing that matters right now is Harry. Harry has to make it through.”

She dropped her hand from his face and matching sad, resigned smiles crossed their faces.  

“We could die,” Ron said briefly. He wasn’t sad, or even upset about it. He knew it was a fact.  

Hermione nodded. “We could. But that really doesn’t matter either, does it?” She shook her, frustration clouding her features. “You know, this year was a waste. When I think that we could’ve just...”

“Spent all year snogging,” Ron suggested for her. No use in beating around the bush anymore  

She rolled her eyes. “You did spend half the year snogging.”

Ron shrugged sheepishly. “Well, yeah, but she wasn’t you.” He enjoyed the smile on her face at his words.

“Are you scared?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Not of dying. I’m more scared of what’ll happen if we don’t win. But I was scared of dying before I lived.”

“You’re not anymore?” she seemed surprised.

“Nope,” he said with a rakish grin. “I’ll get to remember the last five minutes for as long as I live. So, if You-Know-Who pops my clogs tomorrow, that’d be all right.”  

She laughed. “You’re impossible.”

Ron grinned. “Yes, and you love me.” He had meant it as a joke, it was supposed to be a joke. But she didn’t laugh. She just stared into his eyes for a long pause.

When she did speak, her was clear and earnest. “I do.”  

He felt like he’d gotten hit with a Stunning jinx. But then she was staring up at him with her huge brown eyes, a hint of fear at the edges and he realized she was waiting for him to say something.  

“I do too,” he said quickly. She smiled and reached for his hand again, their fingers intertwined.

A long, sincere beat passed between the two of them. But it ended all too soon. “So, if we win and we don’t die,” she said an edge of humor. “Can I get one of your Weasley sweaters?”  

He laughed. “You can have them all.”

“And your Quidditch jersey?”  

“Let’s not get carried away,” he said, mockingly scandalized.  

They stared at each other again and All Ron wanted to do was kiss her again. He thought she was thinking the same thing too, but she looked away.

“We’ve got to go. Your parents will be ready to leave soon.”

He nodded. She was right. “Yeah, yeah, we should. Oh, I totally forgot. Slughorn said we should go to the Storeroom, pick out whatever we think we may need.”

Hermione went straight into Hermione mode. “Ronald, why didn’t you say so? We haven’t got all day, have we? Let's go!”  

She picked up the backpack, shrunk it down and stuck it in her pocket.  

“Ronald, come on!” she beckoned him forward and out of the Chamber.

Despite everything, the danger they were in, the uncertainty of the future, and the deranged, powerful psychopath who wanted to destroy everything he held dear, all he could think of was if and when he’d ever kiss her again.

[taleweaver-ramblings]

Book ask game numbers 4, 5, and 11?

4. What is your favourite book this year?

I have gotten this question so many times, but you may have missed the other times I answered, so I'm not holding it against you. To recap: it's pretty much a three-way tie between Rhythm of War, Return of the Thief, and The Werewolf of Whitechapel. I love them all for different reasons; don't make me pick one.

5. What is your ultimate favourite book?

First of all, how dare you. XD

As an actual answer, we're going to say The Lord of the Rings by virtue of it having been on my top five favorites list the longest. (It's absolutely one book. I have it in a single volume on my shelf. Therefore it counts.)

11. Favourite authors?

J.R.R. Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, and Anne Elisabeth Stengl form the semi-holy trinity at the top of the charts. And then right below them, jostling good-natured-ly up and down the ladder according to whatever I read last, we have Diana Wynne Jones, W.R. Gingell, Bryan Davis, Margaret Rogerson, D. Barkley Briggs, Andrew Peterson, Kari Maaren, and most-recent-addition Suzannah Rowntree. (Oh, and Howard Tayler if we count webcomic authors.)

[dmsden]

Monster of the Month - the Red Dragon

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Here we are in November, and we’re going to warm this chilly month up with one of the most iconic and fiery dragons in D&D - the Red. As always, thanks goes to Scott “ArtMutt” Fabianek for his wonderful original art. If you’d like to see more of Scott’s art, you can find him on Twitter as @Art_Mutt

In some ways, red dragons are what people think of when they think of dragons. They’re terrible, vicious predators who breathe fire, have a tremendous lust and greed for gold and other treasures, and who have no scruples about devouring anyone who keeps them from it. The most classic dragon of literature is, of course, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smaug, and, even though he’s sometimes referred to as “Smaug the Golden”, the description of him specifically calls him out as “a vast red-golden dragon”, and I’m convinced this is what TSR used to link red dragons to breathing fire. In the animated Hobbit that I saw when I was 8, Smaug is very red indeed, so, when I turned 10 and started playing D&D, it made perfect sense to me that red dragons breathed fire.

Red dragons are true dragons, so they have all of the standard abilities that dragons have, only more so, as they are the highest challenge rating evil dragons in the game by age category. Their breath is a cone of fire, and they fly at an awesome 80′ per round. It’s easy to imagine a red dragon using 40′ of movement to get just in range to tag as many of a group of adventurers as possible with this breath, breathing, and then wheeling and climbing another 40 ‘ to get out the range of most spells and ranged attacks.

Red dragons are chaotic evil. They are greedy, vain, and cannot be trusted. They will take what they want with no regard for anyone else, and they possess a tremendous disdain for any other being who thinks it can contend with them. They constantly wish to increase their hoards, and this may be the one way to bargain with one, but one must be very careful. It would be wisest to offer to lead a red dragon to a treasure than to bring the treasure to it to bargain. And it would be wiser still to possess the means to teleport away, because the dragon is as likely to breathe fire on you and claim the treasure as not, whether or not it’s already fulfilled its end of the bargain.

When it’s time for an adult red dragon to claim a lair, it looks for mountainous terrain or badlands. The image of a red dragon on a high, rocky perch, lording it over its domain is very apt, as they often consider themselves kings and queens of all the lands around their terrain. Like most dragons, these legendary beasts begin to warp the land around for miles. Earthquakes begin to rock the land, water becomes warm and sulfurous, and, more alarmingly, rifts open to the elemental plane of fire. A village near the dragon’s lair may begin to be beset by fiery creatures, and this may be the first hint they have that a dragon has roosted in the mountains nearby.

A dragon’s lair becomes a terrible place for anyone foolish enough to try and enter. Poisonous fumes can choke a brave adventurer, tremors can make footing treacherous, and magma can blast out in geysers, burning and wounding anyone at the dragon’s command. Even alone, a dragon can be terrible, but red dragons often have slaves of many stripes. They love to command evil humanoids to do their bidding, sometimes destroying a group’s chief and claiming lordship. Bugbears, gnolls, orcs, and troglodytes all make excellent choices for this role, not to mention kobolds, who’ll likely serve without hesitation.

The most iconic story to use a red dragon in would be something similar to The Hobbit - a red dragon has taken over the ancestral lands of a group of people, and the people want the adventurers to help them get the lands and treasure back. Another interesting tale might be for the adventurers to be hired to get a particular treasure from the dragon’s hoard. Maybe the crown prince of a kingdom the dragon wiped out needs the Crown of King Amunthar to claim his legacy, and he hires the PCs to steal it from the dragon’s hoard. Unfortunately, red dragons know every bit of their hoard, and they will likely stop at nothing to get that piece back. Cities might be burned in a dragon’s wake as it sought to punish the daring thieves who took as much as a copper piece.

At challenge rating 24, an ancient red dragon makes an excellent main villain for a campaign. With an average Intelligence of 18, they can be savvy and cunning, but your players can still potentially out think them. You might begin the campaign with the dragon’s servants, perhaps kobolds and then orcs, attacking villages to gather treasure for their master. As the levels continue, the PCs could work on foiling the dragon’s plans. And those plans should be something more than simply “get treasure, lord it over others”. Maybe the dragon wants to assassinate a local king and become overlord of the whole region. Or maybe the mastermind of any plans is a dragon-blooded sorcerer of the dragon’s lineage who is working with his illustrious ancestor. He’ll become King of the lands, but he’ll swear fealty and surrender regular tribute to the dragon in exchange for the dragon acting as the enforcer of his will. This is a terrible situation, and it definitely needs a group of heroes to stop it!

I hope this look at our friend, the red dragon, has gotten you thinking of how to use them in your own campaign. There’s only one month left in our Year of the Dragon, and we’ll have them visiting before the holidays are in full swing. Stay safe, gentle readers!