#Non-Standalone

[typing-catastrophe]

It was lonely. Empty and cold; ever so cold with no source for the freezing feeling that seeped deep into your bones.

But the worst part was, it didn't have to be. He could see you. You knew it.

This wasn't like the times when you were screaming and crying and pleading for him - for anyone - to hear you.

He. could. see. you.

And you knew it.

[watatsumiis]

Xiao knows how to read and write - of course he does. He knows enough to be able to read any missives sent his way, and scratch out basic messages and reports to his commander, but any further than that and he gets lost pretty quickly. It's not something that was ever really required of him. He's fine with spoken word, but often defaults to using the older Liyuen script, which isn't always ideal for most situations.

He'd have others think that he's perfectly capable of these things and simply chooses not to, but in reality, he often finds himself ruminating, silently brooding to himself as he realises that the world has seemingly left him in the dust, with both a more modernised form of Liyuen, and Teyvat's universal common language, which has changed so much over the millennia that it takes everything he's got just to speak and understand it.

He quickly gets prickly and embarrassed if anybody brings up the subject, even if it's in passing or has no relation to him whatsoever. To anybody who bothers to pay attention, his cues are almost painfully obvious, and the underlying frustration even more so.

Xiao isn't normally one to be so embarrassed at his lack of skill in certain areas that he'll resort to feigning them, but in some cases, especially around those he looks up to, he may pretend to be reading signs, or observing whatever books they're reading, when in reality, he can barely understand any of it outside of the most basic characters that haven't changed since he first learned the alphabet, all those centuries ago.

Please don't repost, steal, copy or otherwise plagiarise my writing! I do not consent for my works to be translated and posted elsewhere, or copy - pasted into bot or AI technology.

[bishopony]

damn I went to write some notes on my bg3 tav-turned-OC on toyhouse so I could remember their full story and ended up just writing a bunch of narrative for them and now I have no time to draw them 😔✊

[monsieuroverlord]

One of Marvel's Pride Stories this year, apparently:

(Hi, still internally screaming, thanks for checking in!)

[giffingthingsss]

[leqclerc]

Do you have some sebchal recs? I try to look on ao3 but I barely find any, so I imagine most of their fics are more old

Hello! ❤️

Interestingly, I find myself having the opposite problem. I feel like the fandom - and, by extension, the interest in Seb/Charles as a ship - has grown exponentially since 2020. I think there's like forty pages of published works on ao3 right now. Which might not seem like a lot, especially when compared to other juggernaut ships or fandoms, but considering the fact that there were maybe 3 when I first looked up the tag... 😳 Anyway, over time I've kind of figured out what I like and what I don't like in relation to the ship, so these days I tend to be more selective and pick through to find what really speaks to me, what really knocks my socks off, if that makes sense. 😂 We all have different tastes, both as readers and authors, so different people will gravitate toward different things. Not everything scratches the itch, basically. TL;DR: it really depends on what you're looking for and what you like. 👀

That being said, here are some of the fics that made an impression/that I find myself coming back to:

Canon/Canon Adjacent (aka still set somewhere in the realm of F1):

postcards from places that miss you by streetlightsky T | 15,108 words ↳ Seb wanted to leave quietly. That was the one thing he had asked above all else. Or, the one where Seb retires, but Charles refuses to let him disappear. -> I honestly recommend pretty much anything by this author ⭐ immortality on their faces, night at their back by wintrs E | 16,147 words ↳ Sebastian had always wondered about Charles—but maybe he’d known the truth all along, and he’d just never let himself acknowledge it. no flowers, no flashbulbs by superoxide E | 10,736 words ↳ Sebastian frowns, without thinking. They’d both ridiculed the idea of some kind of staged paparazzi friendliness when it had come up. He wonders what has turned Charles around on the idea so suddenly. (Charles has a plan to improve their image; Sebastian is less convinced.) see you falling by redpaint E | 3,653 words ↳ “I can’t— There are no words. No words. I just need to get this out of my head, okay? Before you go.” -> I honestly recommend pretty much anything by this author, especially the 'conflict resolution' series for that 2019 feel⭐ those who miss each other by sionisjaune E | 8,401 words ↳ Charles’s phone is burning a hole in his pocket. This is something he should be filming, but he doesn’t want to. He thinks he shouldn’t, for some reason. He thinks he can keep this encounter for himself. + bonus: (yes I'm sharing my own fic shhhh) been a long year by ssilverarrowss M | 7,123 words ↳ The days stubbornly march forward. Sometimes it feels agonisingly slow, and sometimes it feels like everything is moving too quickly, like Charles is going to blink and all the time he’s spent with Sebastian will be in the rearview, gone forever.

Alternate Universe:

scenes from an american artist by tetrapod M | 9,389 words ↳ Excerpt from an interview with Charles Leclerc. August 1974. Q: How did it all end? CL: The way all relationships end, I suppose. Inevitably. flesh of my flesh by charlotte_stant E | 4,749 words ↳ Sebastian, still smiling, tilts his head and looks at Charles speculatively. “Can I take you for a drive, Father?" he asks. "To continue our conversation. I find myself in need of… spiritual direction.” Charles ought to say no, but he doesn’t even consider it, not really. Sometimes falling is like that: as easy as opening your mouth and saying “Yes.” the language of another world by redpaint G | 2,568 words ↳ Charles is sent down from Oxford (drunkenness, absenteeism, behavior unbecoming of a Balliol man) and becomes the research assistant to a botanist who is doing fieldwork in the Shetland Islands. and VASI to guide you in by anonymous T | 1,375 words ↳ Nobody at the tiny Aeroporto di Maranello Enzo Ferrari can figure out why and how the runway lights manage to stay on through the night—long after curfew and long after the last worker has left the premises, taking the main ops key with them. However, newly promoted Captain Charles Leclerc of floundering charter airline Ferrari Air knows the answer to that question. He just won’t tell it to anyone. Ever. the tools to rebuild by astronomical_light T | 22,645 words ↳ After months of stagnating in his recovery following a high-speed crash, Charles gets referred to a specialist clinic tucked away in the Swiss mountainside that feels as much like a high-end wellness retreat as it does a physical rehabilitation program. He doesn’t have many expectations going into it, but he knows one thing for sure—he definitely wasn’t expecting Sebastian.

Seb/Charles feat. other pairings:

stringe il cuore della stella morente by partywitharichzombie E | 14,634 words ↳ The announcement is almost poetic in its sweet simplicity: a photo of Daniel, aged three, the cavallino rampante a stark contrast against the white of his oversized t-shirt, radiant grin as disarming then as it is now. No caption. None necessary. (Daniel signs with Ferrari for 2021 and beyond. He hopes he and Charles can avoid ending up in a scenario of assured mutual destruction.) high speed weekend survivor by babypapaya T | 18,608 words ↳ Formula Student is a student engineering competition held annually in the UK. Student teams from around the world design, build, test, and race a small-scale formula style racing car. (in) clover by tetrapod T | 5,895 words ↳ “I was thinking we could take the boat out,” Charles said. spacetime invariants by distressedgremlin M | 6,615 words ↳ Lewis arrived midway through the season of dust storms. Sebastian met him on a shabby starport that barely clung to the atmosphere of a frozen-over planet, the only one within forty light-days’ distance that the dust did not reach.

[thatofabeavers]

Just watched Twisters-

and you instantly know who the love interest is when they look like Dean and survive a near miss with the protagonist xd

[kurokoros]

first of all, the duffers absolutely didn't have the full series planned out from the start because Stranger Things was originally pitched as a limited series with 1) the potential for a direct "sequel" that would follow the younger kids as adults (basically, they pitched "It") or 2) an outright sci-fi horror anthology. second of all, even if the duffers did have everything mapped out from the start that doesn't mean that plan isn't garbage.

[zoekrystall]

Did that fav pkmn thing on a whim and I'm sorry for all my babies I didn't choose bc I really like too many by some.

Love how it's mostly pretty ones and then there's clodsire. Even tho I got it in my team since the beginning of violet do I continuously forget its name bc I just call it by the nickname blobby (one of the rare times I didn't spend hours googling the perfect nickname but it nonetheless is a perfect one)

And for fun without any legendaries as fav

Reg nicknames I even write all down so I only spend decades once for each pkmn (unless I don't like the prev one anymore). Need to update that someday since it's mostly old revolution ones but hey. Blaze do I use for arcanine nowadays more and ninetails got others. Gardevoir got soteria nowadays which I prefer more. Etc.

[sylvarilining]

They both bite

[barbieaiden]

i love sam and aiden but damn sometimes they are very depressing i literally havent seen them smile in 8900 years they are always like :| or :( or :/

honestly. it's mostly because i can't perfectly capture the way they smile in my head in blender so i just make them. not smile lmao. but they will smile eventually!!! and genuinely too i will give them good moments that don't mention anything bad at all and they will smile the entire time

[danothan]

YOU DIDNT ASK so im sorry in advance (especially because i wont be explaining this well) But. ill be so honest i dont think the t-shirt kon is bad in a vacuum like it could be cute 😭 i do think its genuinely kinda fun when the characters wear their own little merch. the t-shirt outfit is even kind of funny because hes literally just wearing a t-shirt and jeans 😭 i love kon no matter what!!

but in the context of the transition from young justice (the comic) and the gang "graduating" into the teen titans (vol.3) i feel like it was a regression for him. idk i read into kon and transness+being lgbt too much so ive seen interpretations of it being his internalized homo/transphobia because its also a time where he has a secret identity for the first time in small-town america... and i do enjoy that, but it was Not intended by the writes (especially considering who was writing him in the mid-late 2000s)

kon's character to start off is really about identity and the reclamation of it when he was intended to be a Thing, and how he struggled under the weight of acting like he thinks he should/expectations placed on him (especially because he did not have an alternate identity or a name at first, he was just superboy. THEN kon el and conner kent) and how he expresses himself by replacing a tag cadmus put on him with a gold earring and generally dressing in a flashy and flamboyant and alternative way

so then when we transition to the teen titans kon, they sort of......strip him of that expression of personality. hes put in a t-shirt and jeans. they take away his earring. hes put in a relationship w/ cassie sandsmark (who btw. is very wlw coded to match him in the YJ comic, and both of their designs suffered what we call the cishetifcation) that is ultimately so bad for their characters (meanwhile kon is written into the most gay coded friendship w/ tim drake for like. a decade.)

and the young justice cartoon is an adaptation that was attempting to take the teen titans run from the 80s i believe? and young justice 98-2003, AND the 00's teen titans run. (decades of story to work with and way too many characters and groups, leads the cartoon to, in my opinion, suffer from a too many cooks situation)

and it does not handle kons character very well at all either </3 AND they used the t-shirt design while sticking him in a very unhealthy relationship w/ a character hes never really interacted w/ much in the comics. so umm. TL;DR very mixed feelings on t-shirt conner

i do recommend reading young justice though <3 (AND IM GLAD YOU LIKE MY DESIGN !! tysm <333 the curly hair is a must <3) sorry for the essay i just wanted to expand on why i put the t-shirt boy in the "sigh" categories 😭

ah, when i said i liked t-shirt conner, i didn’t mean the outfit, i was specifically referring to the young justice cartoon’s characterization ^^; i do acknowledge that it was a mixed bag that was forced to cherrypick years of history as an adaptation, and i get why conner fans don’t see him as Their Conner, but i’m gonna be so real with you. i liked him a lot in the cartoon 😭 as a standalone show, the first season does a rly good job of letting you understand his struggles and thought process, there were a lot of moments that endeared me to his angst while also letting him still feel like a kid. but i think i’m also biased towards characters that default to anger as a trauma response (completely unrelated to recent events believe it or not! wacky coincidence tho! foreshadowing even…?)

conner and m’gann’s relationship was def not the most interesting to me, but it’s also not the worst one. i have other biases against. other couples. but i’m curious to see how it develops bc unhealthy or not, i wanna see how it affects the characters, ykwim? like i’m not in it for the shipping, even if we All know there’s a better conner ship U__U

idk i just feel worn out by comics cynicism bc while i get it (i’m a hal fan, by god do i get it), i also don’t want to treat anything in dc too sacred. it’s more fun for me personally to view new iterations/adaptations as puzzles to work out rather than view them as character assassinations if even that. there are some truly unsalvageable things out there, but i generally think there’s smth good to gain in everything. and the young justice cartoon gave me a t-shirt conner to gain in my heart, so i can’t fault his character change too much as drastic as it is

all of this to say tho: the alt look is obviously superior. NOTHING beats a cropped jacket <3

[avalentina]

So... I'm working on something big!, Should be around 20k or so words when I'm done, but we'll see. Stay Tuned for more details!

[industryupdate]

5G Infrastructure Industry Is Driven by Increasing Deployment Iot Applications and Products

The size of the 5G infrastructure market is expanding, and this growth of the market can be credited to a surge in the acceptance of technologies that require fast internet connection, like artificial intelligence; a surge in the requirement for low-latency internet, the surge in the acceptance of virtual networking building in telecommunication, and development in the count of mobile information…

[coreydoras]

if you use multiple, pick the one you use the most, not your preferred one.

[oceantornadoo]

your weighted blanket (simon riley x f!reader)

part of this two lieutenants series but it’s standalone

—

“you know what i want?”

“wha’?”

“a weighted blanket.”

simon turned away from his bedroom desk to stare at you, his dark eyes squinting incredulously.

“what?! i think it’d help me sleep.”

“wha’ the fuck is a weighted blanket.”

you huffed a sigh. “it’s literally a weighted blanket simon. having weight pressing down on you helps you sleep, it’s scientifically proven.” you rolled your eyes, crossing your arms as you laid back on his bed.

turning off his desk lamp, he made his way to his bed. he joined you on top of the covers, giving you plenty of space. keeping it platonic. not that he wanted to, but that was another thing.

“can’t jus’ have some sop lay on you?” the words hurt coming out, but it was the only thing he could say. desperately looking for a sign that you were talking to someone as you were so tightlipped about your escapades until after they ended.

“i’m on a man break. they all suck.” no one measured up to the unending care simon gave you, even if he was just a friend. just a friend who lets you come into his room every night, talking yourself to sleep. just a friend who never forgets your favorite body wash or candle scent on supply runs.

“they don’t know how to treat a woman like you.” his words echoed in the dark, ideas of what they meant bouncing around in your brain. “a woman like me?” silence. “don’t be mean, si.”

fuck he was so stupid. needed to watch his tone better, like gaz was always telling him. “dove, jus’ meant a smart independent woman like yourself. yer lookin’ for a partner and they’re look for a mother or a fuck. or both.” your jaw dropped. “oh. thanks.” his words thickened the air. no one had ever talked about you like that, like you were something to be treasured, not kept. like he respected you.

“if you really need a weighted blanket i-“ “yeah?” you sounded too eager, but you didn’t care. you turned towards him, catching his eye in the gleam of the base lights outside his window. “could be yers. if you want. strictly platonic.” he scratched his head, looking away. embarrassed. “yeah, platonic. course, yeah. that’s fine. good, i mean.” you needed to get your act together and stop sounding like a teenager, but he just offered to be your blanket. surely that was more than platonic.

“now?”

“sure.”

you sat on his bed like a dead fish, arms at your sides. you were not about to initiate what surely would be the most awkward non-cuddle session in your life. simon pressed one large paw into the mattress, hauling his huge body up on one arm. he moved down farther on the bed, his head parallel to your ribs. then, with the uttermost care, he shifted on top of you, hovering. waiting. “you can lay on me si, it’s okay.” he released his hands slowly, the full force of his body laying on you. 250+ pounds of pure machine, a body honed from years in the military. a soldier, a sniper, a lieutenant, now at your mercy, body covering yours completely.

“not too weighted for you?” you giggled. an actual giggle from his fellow lieutenant. “no, si. not too weighted.” your hand instinctively went to his hair before you could stop yourself. “is this comfortable? you’re on my ribs.” he grunted. it actually hurt like a bitch, your bone pressing into him through layers of fat, but he was laying on you and therefore could not complain. “you can move up, i won’t mind.” well, if you were letting him. he wanted to make the most of this blanket situation, this type of intimacy so foreign to him.

simon scooted up your body and laid his head on your tits. built-in pillows, one might call them. you hand went to his hair again, slowly scratching his scalp. “this ok?” you never touched like this, had never touched him like something precious. he grunted, a yes in “ghost” as you liked to call it. you continued running your hand through his hair, surprised at the softness of his locks. his face was against your breast, and usually you’d be embarrassed, but lines had been crossed and all bets were off. his body was heavy, sure, but the weight of it was comforting. all you could think of was him, not the annoying recruit from this morning, not the bad dinner you had at the mess hall. only the smell of the base shampoo and his natural musk, something uniquely him but not gross.

all simon could hear was your heartbeat. it had quickened when he first laid down, but now it was slowing to a comforting beat. you were here, you were breathing. the gunfire and the smell of bombs in his head meant nothing as long as he had you like this, in his arms where no one could hurt you. he could feel your body relaxing, muscles losing the day’s tension and giving themselves over to sleep. as your breathing slowed and you moved to a lower, more comfortable position on his pillow, he knew time could stop and all that would matter was you, right here, with him.

--