#a very tenative offer

[neon-lights-stardust-nights]

Bruh I need to find someone I can force to write this, or make my brain cooperate long enough to write it.

I nearly stopped typing, because this summarizes so many fics in my head.

Specifically, the above is about affectionate dissection. Technically the Faust fic of my dreams KIND OF EXISTS. They don't go all the way though! It stops in the middle of the fun!

A loving dissection. Being shown each organ and how they work. Learning a lot between the proclamations of adoration. Learning about anatomy, about the body, how it all works.

Maybe it goes places it really ought not to, but Faust is a doctor! It's all fine. If he rearranged faers guts to do it, he can put them all back in working order again. There's no need to fear...

And I wanna read that so baaaad WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[little-pondhead]

The Curse Of Hope

_

Danny is in another universe. He had a reason, but he doesn’t remember anymore. He can only stare, horrified and disgusted, at the sickest city spirit he’s ever seen. Shivering and swaying with every step, core exposed, and ectoplasm leaking from wounds that are decades old. A ratty blanket was thrown over their shoulders, barely hiding the spirit’s pale grey skin and protruding black bones.

The spirit didn’t even sense him until he reached out to touch its wispy shoulders. The spirit flinched, clutching at the dozens of trinkets hanging from their neck and tucking in on themselves like they were expecting a blow.

“Oh, shit,” He swore, floating back a few feet, hands in the air, to show he meant no harm. “I’m sorry. I promise, I’m not here to steal from you.” The spirit shivered again and rolled a pearl necklace in between their fingers. A nervous habit. “Uh, I like that pocket watch? It’s very nice.”

That got their attention. They peeked at Danny, and he saw that more tattered cloth was covering their eyes, blending in with the stringy hair that reached the ground. Their blanket fluttered weakly, revealing hundreds of thousands of tiny marks etched into their skin. Scars, really. Scars that wrote out curse after curse onto the spirit’s very being. They burned with evil intent, and even reached inside the spirit’s body and wrapped around their core.

Occasionally, blinding specks of color raced across their body, temporarily erasing the writing, but it always returned quickly. He watched, a little detached, as one particular line rewrote itself across their rough forearm, drawing fresh ectoplasm like someone was writing it with a thin knife.

“Are you…alright?” Danny stuttered. A stupid question.

The spirit cocked its head. He couldn’t see their eyes, but he felt their burning gaze as they pondered the question.

“The pain of others becomes mine own.” They rasped. “The lights of the city dim as rotten wealth clogs mine veins. Magicks long forgotten have eaten mine skins, pulled mine cloak, and darkened mine skies. Helios has refused to grace mine doorstep, and the seasons of the Earth have revoked their kindness.”

Danny held his breath. It felt like he was the one with the exposed core, not the spirit.

The spirit shivered once more. “Tell mine soul, little lamb. How could this Forsaken City know peace, when it was long since ripped from mine hands?”

Shit, he needed Frostbite. And maybe Clockwork. Now.

-Or-

Danny meets the spirit of Gotham City. The villains and rogues that have plagued the city for decades are literal curses that are taking quite the toll on Gotham, and honestly, Danny isn’t sure how much longer they can hold out. The heroes seem to be doing some help, and are probably the reason Gotham made it this far, but the poor city needs help from the Realms if they want to get better.

Luckily, Danny can provide that help.

But only if he could get Gotham to leave their city behind. Because recovery is going to take a very long time.

[sweetteaanddragons]

Pick Your Battles (Pick - Different Battles. Put That One Back.)

(I wrote this at Christmas and put it up on AO3, but it looks like I forgot to crosspost it here!)

(Having written a lot of time travel stories where people wish they could just attack Melkor, I decided it was finally time to let someone. Time travelling Fingon seemed perfect for the job.)

“You attacked Lord Melkor,” Fingon’s father said with incredulous emphasis, “with your teeth.”

“With a chair, first,” Fingon said. He had attempted to use weaponry before resorting to unarmed combat. “I wanted Uncle Feanaro’s sword, but I didn’t think I could get it away from him in time.”

He was aware that this was not actually helping his case. It might have helped his case if he had collapsed into some kind of mock breakdown instead, puddling onto the desk in his father’s study in heaving sobs, but he had never been much of an actor, so he stood before it instead, a reporting soldier before his general, instead of a penitent youth before his father as he should have been.

He might have been able to dredge up some penitence, actually, if only for the pain on his father’s face, except the provocation had been so very great that he really felt he could not have done otherwise.

His father at last stopped his pacing and collapsed into a seat behind his desk, holding up his hands in supplication. ”Why, Findekano?”

Fingon paused.

His reasons were entirely natural and entirely irresistible.

However.

They were not reasons that would have been at all comprehensible before Findekano had found his way to Thangorodrim and become Fingon.

“I had sworn to do so,” he tried.

The last time he had seen his father look so despairing, it had been right before he went off to go fight Morgoth, although not, admittedly, with his teeth.

He thought. He'd never actually asked.

“You swore to hit one of the Valar with a chair,” his father clarified in the flattest tone Fingon had ever heard from him.

Technically, no.

Technically, what he had sworn was to never let Morgoth lay a hand on Maedhros again. The fact that he had not pictured anything remotely similar to these circumstances when making that vow did not exempt him from it; nor did he particularly wish to be considered exempt from it.

Just because he had somehow found himself in a time before Morgoth had revealed the evil in his heart did not mean that evil was not already beginning its foul work.

“Swore an oath to whom?” his father demanded.

Fingon did not think the truth would be useful to family tensions, or the fully explained truth to the recently shaken belief in his sanity.

In the face of his stubborn silence, his father’s exasperation slowly drained away, leaving only his weariness behind. “You could have been killed,” he said. “If Lord Melkor had lost his restraint for even a moment - “

For a moment, it was not his father’s current, unblemished form, that Fingon saw.

Whatever his father saw on his face, it made him change tactics. “This cannot be kept quiet. If we can assure the Valar it has been handled, perhaps it need not come before Manwe, but - “

An idea suddenly blossomed, one born of a very different case before Manwe.

He did not wish to approach the Valar with the truth of his situation, not when he didn’t wish it undone.

But certain other truths . . . well, they had come out in a trial once before.

“Let it go before Manwe,” he said, interrupting his father. “Let it all be handled in the open. It will be better that way.”

“Findekano - “

“It will be,” he promised with a quick bow before darting out of the room without waiting for leave.

He suspected his father wouldn’t want him to leave the house at present, but he really must; he needed to find Maitimo as he had a horrible suspicion he might have accidentally hit him with that chair.

[tahopo]

i know i went into the idea of a teen rook as a funny haha thing but i actually think a teen inquisitor would be like, a Certified Horror story.

[widowshill]

— Are you sure Burke wants to buy Collinwood? — Yes, he said so. I'm just afraid it's only the beginning of what he wants.

[sophieswundergarten]

I really want to see a hostage negotiation where the Ten Men have one of the kids or something, but the others have Crawlings

And Mccracken's like "..... Do we really need him?"

But in the end they have to go get him back because they know he'd give up all their secrets (probably on accident)

[greenerteacups]

most of my AO3 comments are really amazing but every now and then i'll get one that is just wildly entitled

like someone just wrote a comment on ch38 that's like "please have them get together soon i don't want to wait. also [x] needs more character development." ??? bitch i'm not a menu why are you out here trying to order

[charliethemanticore]

Hi btw being trans does not automatically grant you supernatural understanding of all esoteric trans knowledge. You actually need to put effort into learning or put effort into keeping quiet about things that don't pertain to your specific experience

[grison-in-space]

also I am grudgingly having to admit that it is at this point just fucking easier to use she and they interchangeably as far as pronouns go, based on the reactions I get when I don't bother to specify and then people flutter around and worry about it.

goddammit I'm going to have to actually interrogate my public identity label set. I hate that. hate having to figure out how to position myself formally in Discourse but I mean, if I'm gonna work in sex differences--currently a big part of my work--that kind of does need to be something I think about. augh.

[expired-lemonade]

today is the first day of the marching season!! no idea why there’s a football game a week before school even starts

[lightspren]

Ok so I keep freaking out about if I can actually do this dog thing, if I’m actually enough. I love this dog dearly but i’m so exhausted all the time and that’s made worse this weekend by being sick. and I know that love is not enough to give a dog what she needs to be happy and healthy.

however. look. my big concerns are not being able to give her the exercise and stimulation she needs and wanting to be able to just Chill and cuddle my spouse and cats in calmness. and like. she’s almost certainly a great pyrenees mix. Relatively (as in, relative to other dogs I like, aka shepherds), she doesn’t need that much exercise. A good run in the yard a few times a day should do her, especially once she’s not so much of a puppy. And that’s the thing too— she’s a puppy. She’s excitable and chewy and a Lot because she’s 12mos old and still growing up. that takes time. and the cats are unhappy and won’t come cuddle— because she’s been here four days! they’re still adjusting!

i really need to take a step back and calm down. four days is not long enough to throw in the towel on this. she’s a puppy and we’re all adjusting but there is room in our lives for her. we can do this. i just need to fucking chill for maybe like five minutes and understand that this is an adjustment for the humans too, and that’s okay. I just need to chill.

[wearfinethingsalltoowell]

Real OTP personality test is when they go to the store which one does the shopping and which one follows while eating grapes they have not bought

[sanstropfremir]

Wait while we're talking about Hybe's business philosophy, something that has has been bothering me for ages is that period of time where hybe would acquire a company with fairly successful groups and then? those groups would disband? like i was only a casual nu'est enjoyer and am by no means a fan of gfriend but i've been struggling to find a reason. nu est was probably some sort of internal disagreement bc they at least had a final album, but it seems like gfriend were dropped like a hot potato. idk. firmly believe society is better bc of it tho! it just nags at me a lot and i was curious if you had any thoughts on it.

oh gfriend got canned bc they had a nazi scandal, so that one was deserved, but nu'est got nuked without warning like a month before their ten year anniversary + album. from the verbiage used by the guys when they've talked about it, it appears like hybe essentially didn't offer them a contract renewal as a group. the two guys who stayed with the company have extant commitments (minhyun i believe is on an acting contract/had some acting gigs lined up and baekho does a huge chunk of songwriting and producing and would probably lose all his copyrights if he left), but the other three had nothing to keep them there without the group. obvs we're probably not going to know actually what happened but the general consensus is that the members and perhaps even pledis staff got blindsided by the decision, because the guys were talking about their anniversary and looking forward to the future with the group at their winter concerts (if they had known they were disbanding on the anniversary we would have also known bc they're all criers) and there straight up was a bus ad campaign that ran in seoul until AFTER they had already disbanded? which why on EARTH would a company pay for a whole ass ad campaign if the group was about to die? there's also a theory that their last album was just meant to be a tenth anniversary cb with galaxy as the actual title track, bc it's much more in line with a tt from them, and again was meant to be the anniversary song bside. the guys are pretty close (mcing/going each other's fanmeetings, ren's guested on aron's podcast at least twice) and they fought like HELL to stay together as a group for the last ten years (they're literally the group that pioneered the survival show flop revival) so them disbanding was extremely out of left field. as for why hybe would have incentive to not renew them? nu'est have a fair amount of domestic popularity and a very stable and loyal fanbase BUT not a very large intl one and not one that was actively growing. they were quite large in japan as well, but they never hit big with a western audience and as we know, that's the only audience hybe cares about. plus, as ten year veteran idols and staples of the industry they would have likely had a lot of negotiating power during contract discussions. hybe probably knew that they wouldn't be able to beat them in line with their company vision if they stayed together so the easiest solution was to just disband them.

[vivalasthedas]

sims 4 released another overpriced kit consisting of content you can get better of for free, and it's called Modern Luxe. So it's meant to be like fancy and luxury.

The bed has an energy recovery rate of 5.

[dirt-str1der]

Keep thinking of the yakuza “fantheory” that crack and meth are very common in the series but we dont see it because kiryu just doesnt know about it

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Month 2, day 22! No idea what I did tonight. Things? Stuff? Tried to fix things? Wound up needing to fix other stuff? Idk, but I did them! I'm tired :D