#admittedly it’s been ages since I read the other books; but I thought this was a decent ending

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Eternal Ones

final book in a YA fantasy trilogy

follows a girl with divine powers and her friends searching across the land - and realms - to find a way to defeat the gods who are bleeding their land dry

[writeyouin]

Hello, for holiday fics, can i request MTMTE Bots X Reader Headcanons where its Christmas time and there's a gift exchange? Thank you!

MTMTE Bots X Reader - Gift Exchange

A/N - A-All of them?! There's… That's a lot of bots. Imma just pick a few, then if anyone wants more you can just ask me for them.

Warnings - None

Rating - T

Swerve

Swerve is far too nervous for this.

It's your first Christmas aboard the ship, and he is determined to confess his love for you. Like, he has spent every last second planning this for months.

Now that it's time though, he thinks he might purge his tanks.

What if you don't like his gift? Worse, what if you reject him? He knows you won't be mean about it, but... he doesn't want to spend his life without you. He really loves you, and nothing terrifies him more than his own feelings.

Still, here is the moment. You've given him your gift.

It was a crocheted blanket, so he'll be comfy on movie nights. When did you have time to make this? Oh wow. He presses the material to his face. It's so soft, and if he takes in some air, it smells like you. Of course it does... You've clearly spent ages making it.

Swerve hugs you and he holds on for a few seconds too long. You laugh amiably, and make a joke about being Christmas crushed.

Finally, he lets you go and bashfully presents you with his gift. It isn't wrapped very well. It must have been difficult for him, since it's relatively small. You can see where the tape has come up a few times, stripping the paper of some of its colour. All this just makes you smile more.

You tear open the gift, and it's a datapad, specially made to be human-sized. You flick on the screen and find that it's filled with music, in a specially arranged playlist.

Admittedly, Swerve doesn't know a whole lot about Earth music. He's more into TV and movies, but he knows how much you love music, so he really tried with this.

Moreover, the first word of each song creates a message, and it is a long message. It's a confession. You might have missed it, had the first word of each song not been highlighted.

You take a while to read what's written. Meanwhile, Swerve is stuck in limbo, feeling entirely sick. Part of him wants to snatch the datapad back and laugh it off like it was all a mistake or a stupid joke. Instead, he waits, trying to stop his servos from shaking by resting them on his thighs.

When you've finished reading his confession, you let your thumb glide over the first song, hitting play.

You smile, get to your feet, and approach Swerve.

"I love it," You say quietly.

Then, you kiss him.

At first, Swerve is completely taken aback. Then, his hands find their way around your back and he's holding you close, your first kiss to Nat King Cole's 'The Very Thought of You.'

Rung

Rung didn't actually want gifts. The only thing he asked for was an evening alone with you.

Normally, he's so busy with his patients, and everyone always wants time with the ship's only human, usually so they can ask you questions and place bets on what the answer will be - Rodimus is still pissed that he lost 100 shanix when you were asked what a colander was (Sufficed to say, his answer wasn't kitchen utensil for draining water).

So, that's exactly how you spend Christmas Eve with Rung. You're sat in his lap, laid back on the sofa while he reads to you from a book you chose.

His fingers gently glide over your head - You feel safe with Rung - loved - and you know that he feels the same when he's with you.

Despite that, you did get him a gift, and little do you know, he's got you one too. They will both wait for tomorrow however, as you relax into one another, with no obligation to anyone else.

The next day, you wake up atop the berth, and realise that you must have fallen asleep when Rung was reading and that he has carried you to bed.

Yet, he isn't there with you. You're just getting up when you hear him humming. Your shared hab-suite isn't like the others on the ship - it's the only one wherein the rooms are separate as if to recreate a normal Earth apartment.

So, upon getting up to explore, you find Rung in the kitchen - He's never been in here before, except when he's looking for you.

This is his gift and his surprise. He knows how much time you always put into cooking, and unfortunately, there's nobody else who could ever cook for you, which he has been led to believe is a normal part of human relationships and something most humans are grateful for.

It took a while to research the recipes, and even more time to find out what ingredients could be substituted. Moreover, Rung has spent months practising this, between meetings, and now, he's rather good at it - he always was good at following instructions and handling delicate objects.

So, your Christmas brunch is courtesy of Rung, and you make sure to tell him how delicious everything is, kissing him afterwards so he might get a taste of the wonderful meal he's made as his arms wrap around you and he presses you against the dining table.

Later, after a long, and frankly heated make-out session, you present him with his gift. It's a model ship of the only one missing from his collection - the Lost Light itself. His eyes light up when he sees it, all ready to be put together.

That afternoon, the two of you sit together and start building the miniature, all while listening to Christmas music which plays serenely in the background.

Megatron

Megatron is staring at you quite intensely. If you weren't used to him, you might think he was glaring at you.

Still, you feel like you might have done something wrong or that he hates your gift to him. It was after all, rather personal, and Megatron isn't a huge fan of PDA.

The gift in question was a song. As it turned out, Nautica was something of a musical prodigy, so with her help, you had written a song about Megatron - She had composed the tune, while you wrote the lyrics.

You assumed that by involving another bot, Megatron felt exposed; it was entirely possible that he didn't like the idea of someone else singing about him or your relationship with him.

You couldn't be further from the truth.

The truth of the matter was that Megatron loved the song. You had poured your very soul into it, and it was so much more than he could have asked for.

... And in return, he had gotten you a gift basket. Soaps, shampoos, lotions - His research had led him to believe this was the social norm on Earth. He couldn't give you that now!

How would that look? You had given him a piece of your soul, and he got you L'oriel "because you're worth it."

No. It wasn't good enough.

"Excuse me a moment, I need to retrieve something from my hab-suite," Megatron said coolly, before leaving you.

You deflated, feeling that all was lost, especially since Megatron took a good thirty minutes to return.

Yet, when he came back, he held out a datapad for you, mumbling an apology that it wasn't wrapped.

You swallowed nervously when he wouldn't meet your eye, and then you took the present reverently.

You flicked on the screen and found it open in a folder - "(Y/N)'s Poetry."

There were well over a hundred entries, all of them dedicated to you.

'The Radiance of a Smile', 'Promises of Forever', and 'Forgiveness of the Past', were just a few at the top of the list. Even more surprising was the fact that a great many of them were written before the two of you began dating. When you looked at the earlier entries, you saw how Megatron's feelings towards you had come about and evolved into something more.

You were speechless, yet on your face, Megatron was pleased to see that you knew how he felt for you, and that your love for him was just as much of a weight, though it was one you were glad to bear.

[side-shuffling-hyperfixations]

Some people may think it's "boring" or a copout that the only hobby given in '03 Leo's bio is reading but it doesn't have to be. Leo being a bookworm is a fun thought in my opinion -- admittedly a biased one because I grew up as a bookworm myself. The phrase "Readers Are Leaders" was one I lived by, and how perfectly applicable is that to Leo? Imagine!

When they're tots, he helps the others learn how to read! Getting gently scolded by Master Splinter for staying up late reading under the covers. Setting up a cozy little reading corner in his bedroom stacked with battered books he's read front to back and back to front.

The excitement when Master Splinter scavenges dumped books for him to read; doing his best to clean it up, feeling crushed every time he finds pages stained beyond repair, torn or missing but he'll try to fill in the gaps of the plot with the information he has (training his foresight and attention to detail in the process, which will help a lot in the future.) Rereading the salvage half a dozen times within the week. Trying so, sooo hard not to spoil parts of it to his brothers because he's just so eager to see how they react to the twist!

He and Don bond as book buddies since they read above their age level. Mikey gets to flex his art skills making personalized bookmarks for Leo because one of his biggest pet peeves is losing whatever page he was on. Raph pretends he's too old now for Splinter's bedtime stories but hey, he wouldn't complain if Leo decided to relay it to him secondhand, since Leo's got it memorized already.

The day he learned about libraries, free for humans to have their pick of all the books they could want, it really started to sink in for him how different it was for their family, how much they were missing out on topside. That hurt.

Whenever his brothers get their turn with a book first, they can feel him hovering around, itching to get his hands on it -- which probably distracts them from reading as quickly as they could so eventually they're just like "Okay, fine, take it already." Leo devours it until he hits the part where his brothers left off and then reads the rest to them so they can experience the ending together!

He probably has a great reading voice. There may be a few books the others won't read on their own because it's not the same when it's not Leo doing the voices. Mikey jokes that he should record some audiobooks and maybe it's not a bad idea! Maybe he does. (Maybe one of his brothers listens to them after he's been sent away to Japan because they miss him and want to hear his voice as it used to be, free of the pain and anger that's been so common these days.)

Escaping into familiar, easy reading when he's stressed. Leaning on the stories with happy endings when he needs a boost of morale and hope. Curling up in private with a book that he knows will make him cry when he needs an emotional release. Reading aloud at his brothers' bedside whenever they're seriously injured, either to distract them from the pain or hoping his voice will lure them back to consciousness, as their voices did for him.

Bookworm Leo isn't boring to me <3

[cherrychilli]

Slip of the Tongue

A mini series I 18+ I Enemies to lovers

Chapter three

Chapter Summary: Things turn sour in the days after you scramble out of Eddie's trailer, leading to an interesting confrontation at your old alma mater.

Chapter warnings: Oral sex (m)

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It’s been a week since that day in Eddie’s bedroom.

During that time, you hit the books, powered through your shifts, made it to every lecture and finished your midterms, now holding the fruit of your labor in your hands.

You managed to score in the 90’s again, relief filtering into your lungs with deep, calming breaths because it accounted for 25% of your final grade. With your academic progress still intact, you slipped the glowing results sheet into your bag, allowing yourself to think of your neighbor again.

And as weird as it is to say, you do feel strangely grateful for his contribution.

You’d awoken the day after bolting out of Eddie’s place with your head already crowded with thoughts of him but admittedly, having slept better than you had in a long time. He’d talked a big game and he delivered – the encounter having unwound you enough to get back to work with renewed focus.

So yes, you were grateful but also, you were furious.

Seven whole days had passed by and you hadn’t seen Eddie once.

You tried not to read into the fact that for that entire week, you didn’t hear him play his guitar once. Tried not to let your chest cave in when you didn’t catch him outside working on that tetanus trap on wheels he called a van when you took off for work. Tried not to grit your teeth when you didn’t run into him even when you returned home. Every trace of him gone.

It wasn’t that you wanted to see him exactly, but you couldn’t ignore how his absence made you feel – like a mistake he was trying to run away from.

On day four, the day after your exams, you’d even gone so far as to try wheedling some answers out of Wayne when you passed by the older man on your way to work, attempting to be as inconspicuous about it as possible.

It wasn’t uncommon for you to share a few polite words with Wayne whenever you ran into him but it was out of the ordinary for you to bring up his nephew in any other context that didn’t have to do with a noise complaint.

Segueing into it as gracefully as you could manage, you tried to make it sound as offhand as possible, like a casual observation rather than the heavily rehearsed thing that had consumed your mind all day.

“It’s been pretty quiet in the park lately. He sick or something?”, you asked him while toing at some nearby gravel like your own interest in the question was waning.

You refused to say Eddie’s name, afraid that just by mentioning it, it might put a crack in the eggshell thin mask that holds your hurricane of emotions at bay.

As you had expected, Wayne regards you with some surprise – catching his nearly imperceptible squint, his craggy brow crinkling too. It was both unavoidable and understandable. You would have reacted the same way if you were him.

The weight of his second long silence borders on excruciation, something almost surgical about the way he assesses you. Dissecting you is what it really felt like but thankfully, he shows you mercy.

“Says he’s got things to do at school – doubt there’s any studying involved though”, he lets out a huff, a dry, almost laugh that conveyed his long suffering history with his nephew’s unbeaten record for flunking.

Eddie willingly spending more time at school? The same boy who once climbed down out of a second story window, slipped and hauled ass on a sprained ankle just to get out of taking a math test?

So he was avoiding you.

Despite the bitter taste clawing at the back of your throat, you mustered up a laugh of your own and hoped it was convincing enough, waving goodbye to Wayne as you parted ways.

For those seven days you blocked out the thought of Eddie as best you could but now that your exams were no longer a concern, you were finally free to confront the spineless louse.

If he thought he was going to be safe holed up at your old alma mater he was dead fucking wrong.

Treading fire onto campus, you marched through waves of highschoolers, making a steady beeline for the drama room, remembering that was where he held those weird meetings with his weirdo friends in their weird matching t-shirts.

The teenagers hastily parted off to the side in an effort to get out of your way, some of the seniors who recognized you beginning to whisper, speculating as to what brought you back and looking so incensed.

Stomping up to the room, you let loose all that had been simmering inside you – all that frustration from being evaded and those acrid feelings that felt too close to rejection, parting the doors open forcefully with both hands. It makes for your desired entrance when they swing back and bang closed behind you like a thunderclap, startling the boy who’d been busy scribbling in his notebook getting ready for his next campaign.

His pen clattered to the floor from where it flew out his hand and bounced off a nearby theater prop. You can’t be sure given how abrupt it was but you think he might have yelped too, a high pitched eep like some sort of puppy who had its tail stepped on by mistake.

Sitting askew on his carved wooden throne, Eddie’s cast in warm hues of orange and yellow underneath stage lights and candlelight but nothing shines brighter than the sheer surprise overwhelming his face. It pleases you more to recognize the unmistakable tinge of fear he’s incapable of hiding behind his wide eyes when they land on you.

Good. He should be scared, your mood far from friendly as you turn to lock the door behind you and retrieve the key, clutching it tight in your palm.

Was this overkill? locking him inside with you? You didn’t think so. Not after he’d weaseled his way out of talking to you for an entire week. You weren’t about to leave room for him to plan an escape route too.

You stepped closer to where he cowered at the D&D table, your lips pulled into an imitation smile, curved up exactly like one but so clearly absent of any sweetness or warmth, only radiating danger.

To Eddie, your menacing saunter resembled a cobra leisurely winding its way up to cornered prey, jaw seconds away from unhinging to swallow him whole.

He flinches when you slap down your results sheet on the table, now crumpled from how you had it clenched in your fist on your way over here. Better the paper than his neck you supposed although truthfully, you were still on the fence about that.

“Uh, what’s this?”, he finally dares to speak, a nervous croak of a sound that scratched its way out of his throat, cautiously leaning closer to examine the paper. The spiteful devil perched on your left shoulder chittered and sneered, whispering all sorts of encouragement to make you reply with spite, to make some underhanded remark about how you’re not surprised he couldn’t recognize anything that didn’t have a row of F’s stamped all over it given it’s his second time repeating senior year.

But the lenient angel on your right shoulder leaned in and spoke reason into your other ear, dulcet but insistent reminders that you only came here to inquire, not injure.

The devil withers away with a snarl when you clench your jaw, holding your tongue at bay, unable to spit that kind of venom at Eddie.

Before now, your main gripe with him was his disruptive influence, the way he wedged himself into your life like a splinter caught underneath your fingernail with his head rattling music and blood boiling snark. Grinning like his biggest pleasure in life was annoying you enough to darken his bedroom window day after day with a face full of fury and a mouthful of fuck you’s. He was too carefree for your liking as well, able to shrug off his plummeting grades when a minor slip of yours would have you digging out your emergency pack of cigarettes to chain smoke the stress away in secret. But taking shots at his intellect like all the other assholes you went to school with felt too…slimy.

The same assholes who had looked down on you and your trailer park background. The same assholes who rolled their eyes when you got accepted to your College of choice. The same assholes who cackled when you had to enroll in a nearby Community College instead when your family’s finances fell in the red.

Maybe you weren’t a cobra after all, only masquerading as one.

“My midterms. I passed”, you answered him flatly, watching recollection flash across his face.

The stress it had caused you was the reason why this all started in the first place after all.

 “Couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t helped me out”, you added pointedly, tone almost accusatory.

Even under the vivid stage lights that paint his complexion like a sunset, you can still make out the way his cheeks pink up at the vague mention of what had happened in his bed that day.

“Oh, uh– that’s great”, he offered you something that resembled a smile, face so twisted with nerves that he couldn’t get his lips to curve up the right way. Jesus, you’d never seem him like this before. He was barely recognizable and for the first time in your life, you found yourself preferring his usual tornado presence and boisterous anti charm.

“Yeah. So, why’ve you been avoiding me?”

His jaw tensed at that, throat bobbing as he swallowed. Obviously, you hadn’t come by to say thank you.

“Listen, the club will be here in an hour. They already know I’m in here so just give me the key and…we’ll talk about this later, okay?”, he attempted to negotiate with you in the same way one might try to approach a skittish horse, overly cautious with an undertone of fear, holding out a shaky palm to collect the key but you weren’t about to give in now.

“What, so you can find somewhere new to hide?”, you sneered.

To show him you’re serious about seeing this conversation to the end you make a show of dangling the key to the drama room in front of his face – his only hope of escape, but it’s what you’re doing with your other hand that gathers his attention.

Hooking a finger into the neckline of your t-shirt, you pull it low enough for your cleavage to show, soft swells sitting high on your chest, framed by pretty lace. And despite the dread trickling down Eddie’s spine, thick like tar, one thing becomes abundantly clear in that moment.

He’s only a man.

The little flash of tit is enough to trigger his hormones. Stupefied, he takes in an eyeful, committing the contours of your breasts to memory – the newest entry into the sordid vault of his spank bank before he’s able to snap out of it. He attempts to snatch the key from you but he’s too slow, stomach cartwheeling as he watches it disappear into your cleavage when you tuck it away for safe keeping in your bra cup. Honestly, he can’t decide if he’s more upset about it or turned on.

Face twisting with exasperation, he locks his eyes back on yours.

“You’re being ridiculous!” he accuses with increasingly reddening cheeks.

Unbothered by the claim, you shove a couple of dice and a few of his notes aside to sit yourself on the edge of the table, arms crossed underneath your breasts, showing your defiance.

This isn’t like when he’d gotten you to beg for your release, chipping away at your resolve with his touch and tongue until you crumbled under the weight of ecstasy. You’ve molded yourself into an imposing shadow of the girl who came undone on his sheets, obstinate and immovable and it’s clear that you’ll sooner wear him down for an answer even if it means being stuck here in this room all night than leave without one.

Eddie’s hardened expression falters as he realizes this, sighing. Relenting.

“Fine”, he slumps back in his chair.

“I didn’t mean to…I didn’t know what to say– “

“Bullshit”, you cut him off with an icy scoff. Eddie Munson at a loss for words? Sure. And Steve Harrington’s a bald virgin.

“It’s not bullshit”, he attempts to deny, some heat behind his words.

“Do I need to remind you that you’re the one who offered to help me “relax” in the first place?” you bit back with heat to match.

Your rebuttal has him silent – both of you knowing he can’t argue otherwise.

“Where’d all that bravado go, Munson?” you poke again just to see the vein at his temple bulge but he doesn’t answer, jaw set firm.

You’d hoped to scare it out of him at first or even force it out of him by locking him in here but for once that metalhead menace is tightlipped and damn good at it.

Taking another moment to consider your options you gird yourself to ask the one question you’ve been dreading. Casting your eyes down, arms tightening under your breasts, the key shifts into an awkward angle, jabbing your soft flesh but it’s not nearly as unpleasant as what you have to say next. You weren’t sure if you wanted to hear the answer but you force it out, tongue turning more sour the longer the question sat there unasked.

“Do you regret it?”

It’s the way your tone loses all of its heat, crumbling slightly at the end of your question that makes him feel like the world’s biggest jackass. Another awful second of silence passes before you’re startled by him shooting out of his seat, chair screeching noisily against the floor as its forced back so quickly, his hand reaching for yours but he stops short of your fingers touching.

This close, you can smell him again. That same scent that clung to his bed. That same scent that hung on your hair. The same scent you reluctantly washed away in the shower that night you got back home. It makes you feel woozy, like a cloud full of pheromones to the face. If he takes one more step, you’re afraid you might leap up and bite his chest through his shirt like an animal in heat.

“I don’t regret it”, he answers you, gentle. Honest.

And just like that, all the anxiety you’d carried around for a week unravels with those four words. In its place, relief strummed on your ribs like nimble fingers plucking strings on a harp, a hopeful tune building up to a crescendo inside your chest. But you don’t let it show – forcing an impending smile away, keeping your expression unreadable because you liked the way he looked back at you, sweating with uncertainty.

“Okay – then you wouldn’t mind me returning the favor, would you?”, you rose up from the table, placing a palm in the middle of his chest.

“Huh?” he stumbles back, the back of his knee connecting with his chair.

“Fair’s fair right?”

With a little effort, you push him back into his seat, dropping down to kneel between his legs when they spread for you.

“Shit shit wait- really?”, he sputters as your fingers climb up to his belt, working open that damn handcuff buckle you’d become curious about to the point of near infatuation in the last few days.

You roll your eyes in reply like his question is a nuisance to you, growing excited under the surface.

Popping open the button on his jeans and pulling down his zipper, you can see that he’s already half hard underneath his boxers, a thick outline of his cock growing more prominent.

He’s warm in your hand when you pull his jeans and boxers down to grasp him, watching it spring up, feeling him grow harder by the second. Your fingers are dwarfed by the size of him although you already expected that after what you had seen in his trailer.

Eddie tenses when you bring your face closer, lips parted, breath puffing against his flushed, throbbing tip. Just a little more and-

“But before I do, you’re going to tell me why you avoided me”

He blinks back at your wicked smile and sharp eyes, plummeting.

“You’re fucking evil, you know that? First you hold me hostage and now you’re going to interrogate me with your fist around my dick?”

You grin back, squeezing him mostly gently, the warmth of your hand alone enough to make him feel compliant.

“Do it or I’ll stop”, you threaten sweetly.

Somehow, he likes the sound of that even less than the fear of you doing something like snapping it clean off.

There’s something so perversely satisfying about getting to use his words against him – withholding his release in the same way he had done with you. Being on the other side of it, you now understand why he enjoyed it so much, the potent thrill of being in control.

“Fuck okay”, he lets his head fall back to thud against the back of his throne, the column of his neck stretched and bared for you to see the way his Adams apple bobs in his throat with a thick swallow.

“I thought about you all the time…” he starts, tipping his chin down to look at you again, eyes dark and shadowy from this angle. “Shit, I couldn’t sleep after what happened in my bed – had to get away because I knew if I saw you again, I’d just drag you back there”

Something about the image of him manhandling you, maybe even hauling you over his shoulder, all overcome with unbridled cave man lust for you as he takes you back to his bed brews excitement in your bones. You only hoped it didn’t show on your face.

“And I knew that- well, I thought, because you didn’t actually say, but all you wanted was a one time thing…right?”, he asks, a hint of disappointment in his tone.

That was your intention when you first climbed into his bedroom, yes. But now…

“You seemed to hold back just fine when I came in here”, you skirt around the question in favor of focusing on what he’d said before that, starting to stroke him slowly as a small reward for his honesty.

“You scared the fuck out of me”, his breath grows shorter now that you’re moving your hand. “And we’re in school – didn’t think you’d actually come down here. You liked this place less than I did”

That’s true, you did. You just didn’t expect him to have noticed, let alone have remembered that fact. Guess all that ganja didn’t total his memory completely.

“Well, I couldn’t just let this go on after everything that happened”, you state plainly, twisting your wrist slightly around his base before pulling back up to trace his tip with your thumb.

This time he doesn’t shy away from the vague mention. You can almost see the memory reflecting off his umber eyes as it replays in his mind.

“Didn’t even want to throw my sheets in the laundry”, he admits, a throaty timbre to his tone that makes you stroke him faster.

“That’s gross, Eddie”, you deride, nose wrinkling but he can see right through it. He recognizes it easily – the same forced disgust you’d showed him when he flicked his tongue at you and offered to get you off, trying to hide how much you liked it.

“Could still smell you on them even after they were washed you know – even though I knew they were clean. Like one of those subconscious things or whatever. Every time I thought of you, I felt like I could still taste you on my tongue”

He’s clearly done holding back, no longer the shrinking Dungeon Master you’d stormed in on not too long ago. This is the Eddie you knew well and knowing the thought of you had affected him to the point that it impacted his senses, haunting him even, makes you rush with pride.

“I never got to taste you”, you suddenly recalled, surprised you’d forgotten even for a moment considering how much thought you’d given it in the few days prior.

And with that you leaned forward, lips parting, tongue seeking his cock, licking from the bottom of his veiny shaft up to the head.

The slow, wet drag of your tongue along his sensitive skin is the kind of sensation that will not leave him quietly, groaning around all kinds of expletives as his palms clamped down on the armrests of his chair, knuckles turning white.

Taking the first few inches into your mouth, you wrapped your lips around him and sucked slowly. Swirling your tongue around the leaking tip, you get a proper taste of him, collecting a dribble of precum before pulling off. The texture of it is silky on your tongue as you sucked the mix of tangy and salty sweet onto the roof of your mouth, letting it slide down the back of your throat like honey and swallowed.

“What else did you think about?”, you asked, missing the sound of his voice as you moved to lick along his shaft again, tongue feeling around the veins adorning it.

How he’s able to keep up a conversation when you’ve got your mouth on him like this he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s the fear that you might threaten to stop again. Maybe it’s the way your eyes look up at him all cloudy with need and your thighs clench together when he talks about the thoughts he’s had about you.

“Everything we didn’t get to do that day. I know we only agreed on helping you out but after watching you tidal wave my bed I couldn’t help myself”

The crass description nearly makes you snort against his dick despite yourself; your whole face going supernova with a mix of amusement and embarrassment. It makes Eddie grin.

“I thought about this a lot. I couldn’t believe it but I knew – you wanted me in your mouth back then too, didn’t you?”

Imparting a little honesty of your own, you answer him with a whisper, licking off another clear bead of precum from his slit. “I did”.

Eddie's eyes lit up, lips turning up into a smirk. “Watching you leave after that was torture, you have no idea. You’ve ran that smart little mouth of yours at me for years – hated missing my chance to shut you up for once”

That earns him a deadpanned look and calls for a warning.

You bring a hand down to squeeze his balls and smirked when he groaned, this time nearing on pained, hands releasing the armrests with his palms held up in surrender.

“Okay okay! Easy. You’re a soft spoken delight, alright?”

With a pleased chuckle bubbling up your throat, you relinquish your hold to massage them gently instead, rolling them in your palm, continuing to stroke him with your other hand.

“Did you think about fucking me?”

“Yeah…”, he answers at the end of a thick gulp.

“How?”

“Huh?”

“How would you fuck me, Eddie? rough?”

He considers it before answering. “Not at first…but yeah, I’d – fuck, do that again? – I don’t think I could be gentle for very long because I know you can take it”

It’s like he’s reached inside of you and flipped a switch you hadn’t even been aware was there. You’d been wound so tight for so long. You needed him to use you.

“Could you be rough with me now?”, you asked, triggering a sly quirk of his eyebrow.

“You asking me to fuck your face, sweetheart?”

There’s that cocky edge again and you're quick to spar with it.

“Yes or no, Munson?”, you return, all stony faced. There won’t be any begging from you today.

He frowns when you pull out his last name again.

“Aren’t we beyond that now?”

You grin back, too stubborn for your own good.

“No”

Eddie's frown fades, a grin stretching across his face to match your own.

“Open your damn mouth”

Ringed fingers weave into your hair as you part your lips for him, allowing him to breach the wet velvet of your mouth. His girth puts some strain on your jaw but you’re able to accommodate him, tongue cradling the underside of his cock as it glides over the muscle. You’re doing well so far, letting the hand on your head, firm but gentle, guide you down until the tip of his cock bumps the back of your throat and you gag.

“Go on – choke a little for me”, he grunts.

Tears wet your eyes as you try to breathe through it, throat squeezing back against the intrusion, saliva pooling in your mouth as it begins to drip past your lips.

Eddie starts to thrust into your mouth and you take him as far into your throat as you can manage. Your nails dig into his thighs through the short, ragged pumps, past even what you thought to be your limit when your nose presses close to his pelvis, brushing the thatch of hair at his base. You find that you like how he smells there too – musky and masculine.

The sounds you pull out of him make your core ache – every hitch of his breath, every choked off moan, every rumbling groan and throaty grunt. But you stamp down the hot roiling in your belly and ignore the sticky need pooling in your panties because you really did mean what you said about returning the favor. It was your turn to please him, sidelining your own pleasure for the time being in the same way that he had done for you. Not that there wasn’t any pleasure to be derived from being in your position.

The part of you that was greedy savored every sound and liked knowing you were making him feel good – that all those noises he was making was because of you. And the part of you that was competitive took pleasure in knowing you were proving he wasn’t the only one here with a skillful mouth.

Growing more and more used to it, you take it well as he fucks your throat and he tells you as much.

“Knew I was right about you. Knew you could take it – Christ, yes, just like that”

The praise makes you bob ardently, saliva soaking his cock, trailing down to his balls. You’ve adopted a pace of your own now, Eddie’s fingers still tangled in your hair but no longer guiding you.

"Shit– I’m gonna cum. where do you– "

You pull off his cock, his eyes trained on your wet, swollen lips gasping for air, your hand taking over to pump his spit-soaked length.

“Do it in my mouth”, you finish for him, desperation staining your tone.

You take him in your mouth again, not all the way this time, using your hand to stroke what you can’t fit past your sore lips anymore.

“Fuck – oh g- fuck”

Eddie’s hips jerk and then it happens – you feel the hot lines of his release begin to spurt onto your tongue, tangy and creamy thick. You swallow it down with his dick still in your mouth, throat contracting around his twitching, spent length. You pull off slowly until it’s just his tip your lips are wrapped around, lingering on it, sucking it like you don’t want to let go. You’re forced to let it slip from your mouth when his groans near pained again, sensitivity proving too much for him now.

Sitting back on your haunches, you watch his chest puff up and down while he recovers, head thrown back against the back of his chair.

When he’s able to, he puts his softening cock away, redoing his jeans before he pulls out a bandana from his back pocket and offers it to you.

“It’s clean I promise”.

The sweetness of the gesture makes your stomach flutter. Managing a meek ‘thank you’, you use the dark material adorned with bones and skulls to wipe your lips and chin of the sticky mixture of saliva and Eddie’s spend.

Next, he offers you a hand and you take it, letting him help you off your knees and on to your feet.

“Listen, I’m sorry for last time. When you had to leave, I mean. And for avoiding you after that”, he informs you, much more tender than you're used to with him.

“I didn’t even get to uh…”, patiently, you wait for him to finish but he doesn’t, watching his face twist, all conflicted. You can see the thought ping pong around inside his head, wishing you could just reach in and pluck it out for yourself but he brushes it off before he’s able to share it with you, leaving you wondering.

“Never mind. Jeff and Gareth are going to be here soon and you probably don’t want to be seen in here with me like um, thisss”, he drags out the single syllable, unsure of a more tactful way to phrase it.

You don’t need to ask him to know that “thisss” means you look like a fucked-out mess because that’s exactly how you feel with your unruly hair and your sore jaw.

Just as before, there’s too much that’s been left unsaid but the threat of another close call has you reluctantly fishing the key out of your bra, tossing it at Eddie while you attempt to tame your hair back into something presentable, wiping off your damp cheeks too. You’re yet to realize that you haven’t returned his bandana, still clutching it in your hand.

Eddie catches the key though he doesn’t make a move towards the door, staring down at his palm like he’d just been gifted a bar of gold.

“It’s warm”, he says quietly, one of those thoughts that wasn’t meant to be said out loud but slipped past the barrier of his lips quicker than he could notice, you surmised.

It’s kind of cute actually – that dopey, spellbound look spilling over his face.

“Unlock the door, Eddie”, you sigh, subduing a laugh. At least you didn’t accuse him of being gross again like you would have an hour ago.

“Oh, right”

He steps over to the door while you gather yourself, daylight shining into the dingily lit room when he unlocks it and pulls it open.

After a quick look around outside to make sure no one sees you leaving, he steps back and holds the door open for you but you linger.

…all you wanted was a one-time thing…right?

No. Not anymore.

You weren’t sure what the two of you were now. Neighbors who got each other off? Former enemies but not really friends with benefits?

The specifics didn’t matter. At least, not right now. All you knew was that you didn’t want whatever this was to end.

Turning to Eddie, you say something you never thought you would. Not to him.

“My family’s gone for the weekend. You can come over tonight…if you want”

The smile that crosses his face is both warm and cocky, much like the one he’d flashed you from his window when this all began.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah”, you soften but only slightly. Unsmiling but not inimical.

“Oh, and if you stand me up?”, voice heating up, you jabbed a finger against his chest, right between the L and the F of his Hellfire shirt. “Try to run away again?”, you jab again and he staggers a step back, wincing when you press over the same sore spot again. “I’ll nail your balls to your front door, understand?”

For a moment he stares back at you. Stunned. And then, true to the freak riddle that he is, he smiles back even brighter.

-

Tag list - @honey-flustered @cryingglightningg @cadence73 @taccobelle @mrsjellymunson

[coralhoneyrose]

I was wondering: what do you imagine Robin's childhood was like? Did feh change that in any way?

Oooh what an interesting question! Admittedly, I haven't thought about this in extensive detail, but I do definitely have Some Thoughts™️.

So, we obviously don't get much to go off in canon. Validar says that Robin's mother was "seized by weakness and fear" and that "she betrayed us—stole you from your crib, and fled with you in the night!" and then adds that he knows "naught of [Robin's] life thereafter". Presumably the 'us' there is referring to the Grimleal…and if she betrayed them as a collective group she must have been a part of said group previously. The fact that Validar says she stole Robin from their crib also implies that she ran away with them sometime between birth and age 3-ish.

If she was trying to get away from the Grimleal, I assume she would have wanted to leave Plegia if at all possible. We know that the last war between Ylisse and Plegia ended about 15 years before the start of the game, though. So if we assume Robin is about the same age as Chrom (19) then that would have put Robin around four years of age when the war ended. So either Robin's mom was trying to make do in Plegia for a while, or they potentially hid out in Ferox for a time. When it comes to my personal writing, I admittedly like to play with those timelines a bit, but that's my best guess for how things went down in game.

Either way, I assume they probably lived an extremely nomadic life style. They couldn't risk being found, which means they also couldn't really risk putting down roots or settling in one place long term. I imagine Robin was probably very lonely growing up, as all that moving around and having to lay low would mean they didn't have much of a chance to make friendships with other children. Presumably the trend continued into their adult life too given that no one in the story (aside from Validar) ever recognizes Robin or remembers them from prior to when they met Chrom. If that's something that was so lacking in their life previously, I think it makes the game's messages about the importance of the connections we choose all the more meaningful. Also I am just really partial to the idea of Robin being touch starved prior to meeting the Shepherds and Chrom's subsequent touchiness and familiarity with them taking them completely by surprise as a result haha

Honestly I suspect a lot of that is why they came to love books so much too. The books were an escape to other worlds but they would have been a small slice of stability as well, since a story is the same every time you read it. They may not have had friends in real life, but the characters in their books would have always been there for them between the pages. I imagine Robin got very good at amusing themself too and probably had a very rich imagination growing up. The fact that they traveled to so many different places may also have played into them developing their strong sense of curiosity.

I'm sort of undecided on what point in Robin's life I imagine that they lost their mother / how exactly they lost her. That's one of the things that's always really interesting to see other fan's interpretations of, as there are a variety of interesting possibilities there. Either way, given that Robin's inability to have made many connections outside of their mother, I imagine they took it incredibly hard.

As far as if FEH impacted my interpretations in any way, I would say it didn't really change them, but that it did fill in some details for me! Robin's coat being visibly too big for them strongly implies it was a hand-me-down from their mother for one thing (which I'd sort of assumed before but never had direct confirmation of). I'd also been very curious just how much Robin understood about who they were on the run from / why they were hiding, so hearing that their mother cautioned them to keep their hand hidden and that they do seem to have some sense of that being the source of their power as well as 'an evil omen of an unlucky fate' was very interesting as well.

That's everything that comes to mind at the moment! ASfhsdf I like that I started by saying I haven't thought about it in extensive detail and then proceeded to type all of this up...But honestly, writing all my thoughts out wound up being super helpful for organizing them. It also has my chrobin brain-cell vibrating at high speed going into the weekend, so you have my gratitude, anon! Thank you for giving me such a prime opportunity to talk about one of my favs <3

[merbear25]

Would you write Uryu dating a witch!female reader? Please :3

At first I thought headcanons would do, but I decided to write a short fic instead! I hope you like it! 💜💜

There was something different about you, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The air felt lighter when you were around, and his heart beat faster whenever you looked at him. Without even saying a word to each other, you were on his mind night and day. When he finally got the chance to talk to you, there was no denying the instant connection.

CW: SFW, fem!reader, early stages of relationship, fluff, reader is a witch

Timid hearts (Uryu)

Captivated by your subtly dark charms, your air of mystery was the first thing to draw in his attention. The first time meeting you was in passing. You were quietly reading when you looked up, your gaze meeting his. The calmness on your face shifted into warmth. Without saying anything, he gripped the strap of his bag and hurried off. 

Even after returning home, he could still feel your presence. He brought his hand to his face; the heat of his blush remained. His heart wouldn’t settle down, leaving him to wonder more about the girl he just so happened to walk past that afternoon.

He noticed you around more often after that first encounter. You were typically by yourself, which he perceived to be because of your lack of friends. Perhaps it wasn’t the kindest assumption, but each time he saw you, you were blissfully unaware of those around you. The same book from earlier was opened in your lap. The spine looked worn and the pages were rather aged. Your delicate fingers turned each one with care so as not to accidentally rip through the knowledge they held.

His eyes lingered on your hands, not fully aware that he was staring. Your brow furrowed, while you retained whatever was capturing your attention. When your eyes flickered up to him, that smile from the other day appeared more bashful. Quickly, he averted his stare, his cheeks burning as you giggled at his clear embarrassment.

“Would you like to take a seat?” Your voice was softer than he imagined. Letting out a sigh to ease his nerves, he sat down next to you.

His eyes shifted to the side, seeing what looked to be a recipe. “Do you cook?” The question was tangled with confusion, since it obviously wasn’t what he originally thought it was.

“You could say that.” Your hand rested on the page. “It’s a book that’s been passed down through my family for generations.” Your fingers traced the handwritten letters, a sentimental tone playing at your words.

Uryu was reminded of the book of his own heritage he’d found not long ago. Where his brought on a sense of dread, yours seemed to bring forth one of serenity.

“You were wondering if I had any friends, weren’t you?” 

The question caught him off guard, making him stutter in denial. “No, no of course not.”

“It’s alright, I’m not offended. It’s a personal choice, though. I usually prefer being away from others, so that I can listen to the surroundings better.” You looked out towards the river and took a deep breath.

“I shouldn’t have jumped to that conclusion. I’m sorry.”

You shook your head slightly. “It’s not a problem, but if you don’t mind me asking, why do you spend so much time alone?”

“It’s just easier sometimes.”

Your eyes draped over him, taking note of his slumped posture. A sense of companionship fluttered in the pit of your stomach, one which only lost souls could form. Leaning slightly towards him, you could tell this early stage of a bond was mutual. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

The more you got to know each other, the stronger that bond grew, eventually blooming into young love. Admittedly, there were aspects each of you held that the other found troubling to an extent: you being one of the few with whom he shared his Quincy heritage, and him being the only outsider to have learned about your family's witchcraft. Your problems were worlds apart, and yet you were the ones who understood the grief that came with that secret history more than anyone else.

Both quiet in nature, you often spent your dates in libraries, studying the different parts of each other’s worlds. However, books couldn’t replace getting it from the source. Stories shared under the nighttime sky, little spells you casted while you cuddled by the fireplace, and some of the attacks he’d been mastering pulled the curtain back more than those authors ever could.

As your skills improved, you branched out into medicine. With your powers reaching new heights, he dreaded the day that you may need to use them on your loved ones and even yourself. Pushing the inevitable aside for the time being, you came back into focus just as you were: caring, genuine, and eager to soak in the world around you.

“Perfection,” he whispered.

“What was that?”

He straightened his posture and coughed. “N-nothing just thinking out loud.” 

Your nod in understanding as you carried on with your studies made him kick himself. Despite being in a relationship for the past few months, he hadn’t worked up the courage to kiss you yet. His cheeks flushed just thinking about it. Rubbing his eyes, he then propped himself up on his hand.

Watching you overworking yourself lured him out of the fog he’d found himself in. Getting up from his chair, he offered you his hand. The slight smile he wore never failed to make your heart skip a beat. Placing your hand in his, you followed him outside to the path behind his house.

He knew how much you’d grown to love this section; the greenery was luscious and was scattered with vibrant flowers. Strolling by your favorite section, he sighed at the sight before you. Many of the Shibazakura weren’t in bloom yet, still only buds between the dark green leaves.

“They should have bloomed by now,” he mentioned with a hint of disappointment.

Your eyes held onto his expression for a moment, letting his emotion sink in and be transferred through your fingertips. With nothing more than a gentle wave of your hand, the late bloomers sprouted petals. Staring at the marvel you’d created, he smiled to himself. Reaching down, he plucked one from the ground and brought it closer. The smell was sweeter than usual, making him think that your very essence was living through its vines. 

“Such beautiful flowers reflect the one that made them.” He brushed your hair behind your ear with his other hand, stroking your cheek with his thumb before finally tucking the Shibazakura behind your ear. 

The way you leaned into his touch was a balm to his soul, quieting all the worries that’d been collecting over the years. As he stepped closer, your eyes naturally fell to his lips. 

“If it’s alright with you, I’d really like to kiss you right now.” His request was barely above a hushed tone, making the heat on your cheeks deepen. Your nod made his breaths shaky, suddenly feeling an overwhelming amount of tension.

As his lips pressed against yours, the rest of the garden came alive. Each tree and flower grew in full bloom and was more vibrant than ever before. Pulling you in closer, he deepened the kiss when you threw your arms around him. Such a loving exchange was the most magical experience either of you could have conjured.

[lizzybeth1986]

A Child of Babel

Book: The Royal Romance

Characters: Kiara-centric. Hints of Drake x Kiara (unrequited) and Hana x Kiara.

Word Count: 3, 484 words

Summary: The five times Kiara uttered the proverb of a language under her breath, and the two times she did it to someone's face.

A/N: I really wanted to try out a 5+1 fic format but somehow it became a 6+1 fic instead haha

Tagging @kiaratheronappreciationweek for KTAW Day 3: Languages, @choicesficwriterscreations for FoTW, @choicesmaychallenge24 for Hermes: Travel

Wolof

Princesses Lerato and Lesidi will never forget the exact moment they knew Lady Kiara Thorne would become their friend.

At lunch today, it was hard initially to tell if the meal today was to her liking. She'd made all the right noises, said all the right words. Rich. Meaty. What bold flavours. But how does that count? She's the kind of girl who has likely been coached enough in courtly propriety and gastrodiplomacy (at age 11. Eleven!), that you can't quite tell if she genuinely enjoyed the food or just wanted to please her hosts.

The sisters shift uncomfortably in their plush seats at the dining hall of their palace, their eyes barely leaving the young girl's plate. Benachin jollof rice was hardly for the weak of heart (or stomach) but that never stopped the royal family of Orphys from showing pride in this particular dish. It was, after all, the jewel in the crown of their ancestral Senegambian cuisine.

So it would pierce the Orphysian soul to its core, in very specific ways, if one didn't like their jollof. Probably just as much as it would shatter a Cordonian's spirit, if you told them you thought their Cordonian Rubies tasted vile.

"Ohhh," Lady Kiara mumbled, visibly relaxed at last. "Xifuma wante samay bët suruñuuuuu". The final word comes out elongated by a leisurely moan of satisfaction. I’m not hungry but my eyes aren’t full.

For a moment, the two girls are stunned to stillness in their chairs.

Little Kiara - Lerato is beginning to recognise - is trying to utter an old Wollof proverb about the joys of their ancestral cuisine. It's said so softly you can barely hear her, and both she and her sister can hazard a guess as to why.

Of the five words said, she pronounced three wrong. Kiara knew that, and felt ashamed.

The sisters pass each other a look of knowing affection. Not many in Europe, outside of Orphys, know this proverb that well. It is indeed the kind of phrase you will chance upon only if you've been consistently trying to learn.

She had to have been learning for over a year to get to this point.

Terrible pronunciation be damned. Next time they meet Kiara again, Lerato and Lesidi sure as hell know they're gifting her the recipe.

French

"Dammit," Kiara hisses at...well...no one in particular, and especially not to the retreating figure of her longtime (and forever clueless) crush. Now that he's gone, the urge to kick herself is becoming increasingly more difficult to suppress.

Drake Walker's loose overshirt flaps against his back as he walks out of the stable, in quick, sure, decisive footsteps. There has always been some sense of purpose in his movements whenever he leaves someplace, even if - to Kiara's knowledge - he hasn't exactly had a job as such ever since that stint he took at the stables the summer she turned fifteen.

It's almost as if that is the only thing he's certain he wants to do here. Leaving.

Kiara presses her head against the door of the stable, his fists balled up so she can resist the unnecessarily dramatic urge to bang it against the wood. She's done everything - everything her admittedly-gauche, relatively-inexperienced 18 year old brain could think of - to catch his attention.

Educate herself on horses (for obvious reasons).

Read up on woodworking (Olivia had mentioned once in passing that he adored good carpentry - nothing much was said about whether he liked practicing. Still, not a bad idea for a conversation starter)

Tried to enjoy whiskey. (Didn't get past half a mug, unfortunately. It was...interesting. She treated herself to her favourite bottle of Tempranillo later).

Came to the stables today for what she tried to pass off as a friendly chat about the winning stakes at the upcoming Derby. (She could have been talking to a haystack for all it mattered. He just looked up from his saddle tack set, took off his disgustingly well-disguised earphones, raised his eyebrows and said, "You were saying something??" before leaving without an answer)

(She'd worked so fucking hard to sound like she knew what she was talking about)

Kiara groans again against the door, weakly punching it one final time before she opens it, muttering furiously underneath her breath.

"Just give it up, Kiki," she scolds herself, hands jammed into the pockets of her coat. "C'est comme pisser dans un violon."

"Eww," a high-pitched, rather sweet voice says behind her, "That sounds like an...uncomfortably specific preference for a place to piss."

Kiara tries - and fails - to hide her grimace. On any other day, she'd be proud of Savannah for coming this far in just a few months. She's certain that her dear friend's rather successful attempt at translation is more a miracle of guesswork. A combination of remembering the few words she has been taught so far, and figuring out the ones that sound closer to their English counterparts.

(And that is how it must be. That is how Kiara knows that Savannah is serious about learning this language)

On any other day she'd praise her. But today... today she just wants to erase the last ten minutes from her brain. The last person she wants to know about her deep, tragic humiliation is the sister of the man who had crushed her umpteenth attempt to impress him to dust. With his fucking headphones.

"Forget you ever heard that," Kiara mumbles, "come, let's go see what snacks they have for tea. I'm starving."

Darija

On the day Prince Leo and his fiancée, Countess Madeleine, visit Castelserraillan after their engagement tour, there are only two members of the Thorne family waiting to receive the entourage. Kiara, and her father.

Ezekiel is barely - if ever - noticed and he would rather leave it that way. But Maman...they had to create a story for her.

The official excuse is that she'll be hosting an immensely important international art fair around the same time - one that heralded the work of Cordonia's local artisans. One that was time-sensitive and couldn't possibly be shifted around, Crown Prince or no.

In reality, her mind had been made up, the moment Lady Kaouther - the young woman her parents had sponsored for the social season this year - returned to the province in tears, swearing to never set foot in the Capitol again, reluctant to even tell Maman and Baba what had gone so wrong.

But Maman had found out anyway. The press was loath to criticize the countess' treatment of her ladies-in-waiting, drooling like sick horses over every scrap of charm and quotable quote she threw their way.

But when Ana de Luca is close enough to you to have your number of speed dial, there's no end to the tea that'll be willingly spilled at your table.

Poor Kaouther was still getting threats and harassment from afar. Mostly to keep her mouth shut about her former employer's exploits. Both midly annoying and deeply sadistic. Both sober and rum-fuelled. Some may be impressed at how Countess Madeleine managed to maintain such secrecy, from even the royal family she is marrying into.

Maman cursed and swore she would never entertain a viper like that in her presence, and who could blame her?

Kiara swallows as she sees the entourage approached. Baba knew his relationship with the royal family was already hanging by a frighteningly precarious balance. He couldn't afford any further damage, and he hardly wanted to expose Madeleine's misdeeds without Kaouther's consent either.

So yes. They were going to go through the motions of greeting the royal entourage. They were going to be perfect hosts. But Madeleine would know. Madeleine would hear their words - cascading in waves of poisoned honey - and know. And be unable to tell anyone anything. That will be Kiara's unsaid, unheard promise to Kaouther, and to herself.

The Countess is stopped by the press before she walked over to their manor, her smile perfectly in place and her hand on a rather diffident Prince Leo's arm as she answers their questions. Yes, we are in love. Yes, our economy is strong. Yes, my aim is to build strong relationships with my people wherever I go. To let them know I do it all for them, and them alone. To be the Queen that Cordonia needs, that my subjects can trust.

Kiara has never heard so much horseshit spill out of a courtier's mouth, and she's been part of enough royal courts to see the worst.

"Shakuwn daha fik alhurirat 'aw albalbulat nahar aleid!" Kiara says roughly in Darija as the entourage - led by the Crown Prince and his future consort - approach. She thinks she's so special, but really she's only about as special as a plain harrira soup served at an Eid-ul-Fitr banquet.

Hakim gently nudges his daughter's shoulder with his own. "But ya Babba," he teases, probably to lighten her mood a little before the group arrives, "I thought you liked harrira soup."

Kiara gives Madeleine one last glare before schooling her face to a more neutral expression.

Her next words are going to be quite nasty by Castelserraillan standards, but for all the sacrifices they are making today her father can surely afford her this one luxury. "Not if it wears a face as sour as her's."

Greek

Just a five minute break, Penelope had promised, thirty minutes ago.

Kiara has only herself to blame for believing that nonsense, after being in close quarters with her for an entire month - but there's something about that woman that makes most people want to keep giving her the benefit of the doubt.

('Me,' Kiara wants to say, 'I'm people')

The beam she is carrying for the barn-raising is small, but heavy enough that you'd get tired out quickly if you didn't take help. By ten minutes Kiara has to will herself to move ahead. By fifteen her thighs begin to cramp, and by twenty her head is swimming and she has a brief spiteful thought about making Penelope carry twenty beams as a belated apology. Though knowing her (and it pains Kiara to admit this; she likes Penelope too much) she would find some way to make herself the victim.

Thirty minutes have passed now, and the only energy she has left is wasted in gritting her teeth and groaning "Just...a few more...steps...till I can drop this...stupid plank...Mon Dieu!!!"

Kiara's mind goes blank for several seconds as she feels the weight of the beam falling on her, a dull pain already throbbing on her ankle.

"Ohhh thée mou," she hears a rough, gravelly, rather disgruntled voice above her, its sound causing her heartbeats to pound violently in her chest and its owner already using his strong, strong hands to save her...

"Ópios den théli na zimósi," she whispers, completely drained, "déka méres koskinízi."

It's a proverb Kiara has often heard in the Capitol - specifically for procrastinators - and she has now lost count of the number of times Penelope has left something she doesn't like to do "for later"...often leading Kiara to finish the job alone.

Drake stares back at her, confused. Mentally, she kicks herself. Again.

Of course. She should've known. Drake Walker is familiar enough with Greek that he'll maybe cuss or blurt out a phrase he'd learned from his childhood in the palace, but clearly he has no patience for metaphors, allegories, idioms or proverbs.

"Oh, uh...merci beaucoup," she backtracks, awkwardly.

Drake shakes his head - his eyes, amused, still on her face - and throws the beam away. It doesn't mean much, but that ten-second glance is fuel enough at this point for a month's worth of dreams.

Almost as if from a great distance, she thinks she can hear Esther's voice, low and concerned. "Kiara? Are you okay??"

Kiara locks eyes with Drake, and for once he meets her gaze. Doesn't say anything, doesn't even show a reaction - but at least he isn't looking away like she doesn't matter.

She smiles brightly. "I am now."

Gujarati/Mandarin

Married as they have been for six months now, Kiara can tell by several small, subtle signs when Hana is nervous.

Not that Hana makes observing a very hard task, not at all. She has an immensely expressive face.

Kiara massages the soft parts of her palm - just the way she likes it - while Hana takes several deep breaths.

"This is the first Parsi wedding I'll be attending, ever," Hana says slowly. "The bride is my cousin. This is supposed to be my family, and yet all of this feels as alien as if I never had a mother from this community." She closes her eyes then opens them again, gazing at the wedding sign on the gate. Delnaaz weds Zubin. "What if I mess this up?"

"You won't," Kiara takes both Hana's hands in hers. "And even if you do make a sliver of a mistake, Delnaaz is not going to judge you. And she's the bride; she's the one who matters. She's nothing like your mother or your uncle Cyrus."

Hana lets out a shaky laugh. "God I hope not." Her finger strokes lightly against Kiara's cheek. "One last kiss? For luck?"

Kiara presses her forehead against Hana's after they're done, sighing gently. Mon Dieu, how I love this woman.

"Remember that saying you hear from practically all the nice people in Bethulia," Kiara winds her arms around Hana's waist. "It's so prolific they should start painting it on their coat-of-arms. In Gujarati."

"Khavanu, pivanu, majja ni life." They both laugh gently as they whisper the phrase, hugging each other tighter. Eat, drink and be merry, indeed.

Hana seems to take that advice to heart once they go in, and most of the family (whether enthusiastically, or under duress - the latter perhaps a result of Delnaaz having a stern talking-to with relatives who had rejected Hana earlier) openly welcomes Hana into the fold.

The wedding goes terrifically: Delnaaz appears resplendent in a gorgeous white silk-and-lace Parsi Gara sari (that, Hana informs her, has been the family heirloom for five generations now), her (now) husband looking very distinguished in his white dagli and a black fetah atop his head. Once she finds herself comfortable among people who should treat her like family, Hana practically shines in her interactions - scintillating at conversations, singing and dancing and joking with the rest when she can.

Her Gujarati is a little shaky still, but that's hardly a problem. After all, this is the first language we're going to learn together, ma moitié, Kiara had reassured her once.

A few hours later, when the party started winding down, Hana and Kiara shifted to a smaller, more secluded alcove within the wedding venue. Dinyar - another of Hana's Bethulian cousins - pointed it out to Kiara, whispering conspiratorily that very few in the wedding party noticed this place at all and they could have all the privacy they wanted. Hana made sure they carried a sweet along.

And so here they are, now, inside a romantic little gazebo, sitting together - Hana taking a spoonful of Lagan nu Custard and raising it to Kiara's lips. They close their eyes as they savour. Silky. Creamy. Decadent.

"Look at us, playing hooky at an event when you were so worried about behaving right just yesterday. Yet won't you say this little moment by ourselves was the best one?"

Hana winks. "You know me so well."

"Only as well as you do, darling," she says, cupping Hana's cheek, "My soulmate."

When they kiss, Kiara can taste hints of cardamom and nutmeg on Hana's tongue. She laughs into their kiss.

"Zài tiān yuàn zuò bǐ yì niǎo..." Kiara says, the grin hardly leaving her face when they part.

"...zài dì yuàn zuò lián lǐ zhī!" Hana wipes the last bit of custard on the tip of Kiara's nose, then uses that as an excuse to gently bite it off her.

They tighten their arms around each other. That saying has always been a favourite with both of them.

In heaven let us be two birds flying ever together, and on earth two trees with branches interlocked forever.

Bonus: English (with a tiny side serving of Cajun French)

Queen Esther seems almost transformed when their entourage sets foot in Louisiana. In some ways, she seems even more at home here than she had ever seemed even in New York. And to think, everyone thought that place was her home!

"It is," she'd explained once, when Kiara had asked her, "but NOLA was where I was born. I spent my entire childhood here. A part of me will always remain here."

She takes them to an old favourite of her parents', a mom-and-pop shop that's still miraculously standing and - according to Esther - that still possesses the same incredible flavours. Hana is already all praise for the gumbo and the bananas foster.

"Try the beignets, Hana," Esther suggests, her eyes sparkling at her open joy. "Dip them in the hot chocolate. Best that way!"

She does...and next thing they know, Hana's best friend and wife are treated to a happy dance on a chair.

Kiara's eyes are set on what seems to be a more humble (but moist, glistening, crisp on the outside!) preparation. A croquette of some sort?

"Boulettes de chevrette," the server replies, closely watching her face.

"...shrimp?" Kiara says, after a pause too significant for Esther to miss. The server nods.

"You certainly took a little extra time to mentally translate that," she says. "Is it called something else in French?"

"Yes," Kiara replies, "We call it crevette. But that's not the part I find interesting."

Intrigued, Esther raises an eyebrow, nodding at her companion to continue.

She clears her throat. "I'm beginning to find that certain words in your French have retained their original form from older versions of our language. And with others, they've evolved over time into different words, while in our language that word remained the way it was. Chevrette was what we used to call shrimp before we started using the Norman regional variant, crevette."

"Oh wow," Esther says, amazed, "I had no clue."

Kiara smiles. "Now you do."

Later that evening, the queen confides in her.

"You know...I used to be nervous speaking French in front of you."

Kiara's eyebrows are knit together in confusion. "Pourquoi?? You spoke very well."

Esther sighs. "It's silly."

"Tell me all the same."

Esther laughs, almost as if at the foolishness of her younger self. "I thought you'd make fun of me for "speaking French all wrong". That you'd look down on me."

Kiara's heart sinks to her stomach. "Did I really sound that snotty back then?"

"Oh no. No," Esther reassures her. "Especially not with languages."

Kiara is familiar enough with Esther now to teasingly nudge her arm a little with her elbow. "At least not unless you're asking me to sleep with you. You can't imagine how many people would just say voulez vouz coucher avec moi ce soir to my face, and think they could get away with it. And this was even before Hana introduced me to Lady Marmalade!"

Esther rolls her eyes, chuckling ruefully. "I introduced her to that one."

The laughter doesn't last very long. Lines of humour then dissolve into lines of tension on Esther's face. She isn't quite done explaining yet. "I guess I was just...feeling a little out of place. So I may have projected a little back then."

Kiara nodded. She did remember how hard that season, and the subsequent engagement tour (which she often things of with a little regret), had been on Esther. And she'd never allowed those fears and insecurities to show on her face. "That makes sense," she says, "but you know there's this saying I read a while ago..."

"What?" Esther asks, her curiosity now piqued.

"'We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.' It's a quote by a Hungarian translator mamed Kató Lomb."

Esther seems to open her mouth to protest the appropriateness of the quote, when Kiara stops her. "For the record, it doesn't correctly apply to your use of Cajun French. That is a dialect. It has its own rules. En vrai, I'd love to learn more."

The Queen relaxes, even smiling at the casual reference to her - something she knows Kiara will only use when she's sure they are friends.

"I'm just saying that even if you did get phrases in a language wrong, that wouldn't be reason enough for me to scoff at you. I'd be a hypocrite if I did that. After all, I wouldn't be this good at ten languages if I weren't constantly making mistakes."

As she often does since that eventful first meeting in Orphys, she remembers the kindness Lerato and Lesidi showed her, despite her terrible, terrible attempt at saying something in Wolof. The recipe for Senegambian-style jollof, that they gave her the next time she had visited their kingdom, still holds pride of place in her personal collection of precious things.

"I think what I'm saying is," she says, taking a deep breath, "when you make mistakes but the result is that I'm hearing a new language come out of your mouth, it's a wonderful thing. To me, it means you want to learn. And everyone's pace is different, so I'm no one to judge if you take more time to learn it than on someone else. There is never anything wrong with that."

Esther smiles again, softer this time, and more admiringly. "Noted," she says softly. "And we should definitely pack some fried alligator and remoulade sauce from here to snack on later."

Kiara grins. Her mouth is already watering. "We certainly will."

--

Translations:

Xifuma wante samay bët suruñu (Wolof) - I’m not hungry but my eyes aren’t full (basically the food is really really delicious). Source: Grace in Senegal

C'est comme pisser dans un violon! (French) - It's like pissing inside a violin! (Used to describe something useless and ineffective, or to complain about not being listened to after asking somebody to do something. Pissing in a violin is ineffective, it won't make a sound.) Source: Untranslatable

شكون داها فيك الحريرة (أو البلبولة) نهار العي

(Darija)

Describing someone who is incredibly pleased with themselves, but in actuality they are like Harrira on Eid al Fitr. Used to criticize someone who thinks very highly of themselves but has no justifiable reason to do so. Kind of like saying "you think you're hot shit in a champagne glass when you are really cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup". To explain the cultural context a little, Harrira is the soup Moroccans eat every day during Ramadan. On Eid, it stays in the fridge and people eat a lot of sweets. Source: Arabic Easy Language blog

Όποιος δεν θέλει να ζυμώσει, δέκα μέρες κοσκινίζει (Greek) - "Whoever does not want to knead, sifts for ten days". It is used to describe a procrastinator who finds every reason not to engage with their assigned task. Source: GreekPod 101.

Khavanu, pivanu, majja ni life (Gujarati) - khavanu refers to eating, pivanu refers to drinking, majja ni life means life is fun/amazing or to enjoy life. So it's basically "eat, drink and make merry". It's a popular Gujarati saying, I think, but it's associated most with the Parsi community.

在天愿作比翼鸟，在地愿为连理枝。(Mandarin) - In heaven as two birds flying together, On earth as two trees with branches interlocked forever. Basically a romantic proverb about soulmates. Source: China Plus

Notes:

The full quote from Kató Lomb goes like this:

"We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly. If someone knows how to play the violin only a little, he will find that the painful minutes he causes are not in proportion to the possible joy he gains from his playing. The amateur chemist spares himself ridicule only as long as he doesn’t aspire for professional laurels. The man somewhat skilled in medicine will not go far, and if he tries to trade on his knowledge without certification, he will be locked up as a quack doctor.

Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people. Asking in broken Italian which train we are supposed to board at the Venice railway station is far from useless. Indeed, it is better to do that than to remain uncertain and silent and end up back in Budapest rather than in Milan."

The line about chevrette/crevette is something I read from the LSU website, from their Department of French Studies. This is what it says:

"Change is inevitable for living languages. It would be unreasonable, however, to expect change to happen in the same way in places remote from each other. In some cases, Cajun French has maintained words, structures and pronunciations which the French have long ago abandoned. For example, Cajuns have maintained the original chevrette to refer to shrimp, while the French adopted the Norman regional variant crevette as their standard word. In other cases, Cajun words or pronunciations have evolved while the French word remained stable. The French recevoir, for example, has become reçoir in Cajun French."

Source: LSU Department of French Studies

[phantomdialogue]

˗ˏˋ. ݁₊ ✶ ˖ 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐢𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 - 𝟒.𝟐𝟓/𝟓 ☆ . ݁ ˖ˎˊ˗

chestnut springs book five

premise: since beau eaton came back from his last, and final, deployment, he hasn't been the same. he's lost his purpose and feels adrift from his family. bailey jansen has always been the black sheep in chestnut springs, cast out by everyone for her family's criminal history. when beau makes a bet with bailey that her last name isn't what the problem is, that her luck wouldn't change if she took his instead, he quickly learns that faking an engagement might not be as hard as he once thought.

couple: beau eaton and bailey jansen

tropes: fake engagement, age gap, virgin fmc, (small amount of) betting, military/veteran mmc

available on kindle unlimited

review below!

review:

i am pleasantly surprised by this book. i burned through it in two days and really fell so in love with the characters. still can't rate it as high as theo and cade as they are extremely near and dear to my heart but i really found myself loving beau. i've seen a lot of people rank this as last or second to last for the series but i think that it deserves a little more love. admittedly, i went into the book with a little bit of apprehension simply because with the way that beau was set up in book three and then ignored in book four, it felt odd to come back to him. however, i completely understand why elsie silver did it now that i'm done.

beau was a surprise of a love interest for me. i was worried that the book was going to lean into the over the top tortured veteran trope and i feel like there wasn't a lot of that. obviously he's got some pretty deep trauma as anyone would but it felt really natural instead of just pouring on the angst. bailey was in a similar way. i think it can be so easy to read a character like her with self-worth issues and want to yell at the book telling her to just get her head together but it's handled really beautifully. rather than finding her constant doubt annoying, the way that it's written really makes you sympathize for her and understand why she thinks like that.

i love this series... i wasn't expecting to love this series half as much as i did. it's easily a 5 star series for me and that really did shock me but i'm so so happy about it. i could read about 10 more books with these characters. i want a harvey book even if his story was covered as a b plot in some ways. i want a book that is literally just the girls all going out and having fun and stuff. i'd read a book just of the men being stubborn idiots and corrected by their wives/fiancees all the time. i'll read the spin off series' eventually but i truly am just so in love with these characters that saying goodbye to them is incredibly bittersweet.

q & a:

are they endgame? - they need therapy. without a doubt. BUT i don't think they break up and i think they are happy together endgame. i think the need for therapy comes on an individual level rather than them needing to seek it as a couple. they have done a good job at helping each other up to this point but i think long term they'll need professional help and there is nothing wrong with that. so yes, they are endgame but they will both need to seek therapy eventually.

did i cringe? - i don't think so. there were some awkward moments but nothing that outright made me cringe.

favorite part? - this was the perfect ending to the series - an ending that made me cry and was perfect. it really felt like the closing book in a comforting way. i feel like a lot of the plot lines for the majority of the characters were finished in reckless but then this went ahead and finalized everything with beau and bailey (because elsie silver doesn't just introduce a character and then throw them away. i've been waiting for bailey's moment since she appeared in flawless all the way at the start) along with any little tidbits left over for everyone else and of course, sweet harvey. it wrapped everything up with a beautiful bow and i am so heartbroken to leave these characters in the most bittersweet way.

least favorite part? - i wish that beau and jasper's friendship was explored a bit more. that's the main thing that stood out to me as something that irked me a bit. i liked the way that the virginity aspect was handled because i feel like that can often be poorly done but i just wish there was a bit more jasper and beau. i think it was set up in book three a lot but we didn't quite get to fully see their dynamic in person and so i was hoping to see it here. we got some small moments but i would have liked a little more.

favorite quotes (some spoilers here, of course, but minimal):

One who starts pulling up a stool every Sunday through Tuesday to drink chamomile tea until midnight, so I don’t have to close by myself.

“If we’re struggling, we’re still in motion, yeah? Heading somewhere better. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway.”

“I know you’re scared of losing control around me.” Her chin tips up as though she’s told me something that will make me back down. Run me off. It doesn’t. “No, I’m scared of you becoming something I can’t live without.”

“Bailey. I’m not ignoring you.” She licks her lips. “You should.” “Impossible. I’m memorizing you,”

“You’re relentless, you know that?” And I just give her a salute and a wink. Because yeah, I am. No one has ever showed up for Bailey, but she’s about to get the full experience. “No, sugar. When it comes to you, I’m downright hopeless.”

"That’s how I know I’ll love you in every version of yourself, because we’re all constantly changing. Growing. Becoming."

"Without you, this version of me doesn’t exist. Without the next version of you, the next version of me doesn’t exist either. We’re going to grow together."

“This is . . . this doesn’t feel like alone together. This just feels like together-together.”

[leggerefiore]

In relation to your N poll since it refused to fit in the comments: I firmly believe that N is a human. Ghetsis probably lashes out at him because he can’t accept defeat (his enraged speech about N after he failed to defeat the protagonist in BW, completely shutting down in B2W2, pushing and taking Lillie hostage in USUM, while other bosses were rather chill) and is jealous(!) (I think that both of them are distantly related to King Harmonia, and N is the one to inherit his ability to speak with pokémon, aka the chosen one. So the only logical thing to do (I condemn) in Ghetsis’ mindset, is to berate N for his uniqueness and make him think of himself as inferior). Also it’s easier to shift the blame for failure and redirect agression on someone else (coping). <— I don’t think any of this proves that N is a pokémon. Ghetsis sees pokémon as inferior beings and tools, so he degrades N to their level. The only healthy Ghetsis imagine I can come up with: is him being dragged by his partner to a psychiatrist (I am not in position to diagnose anyone, but from what I’ve read from books, I think Ghetsis may have ASPD). I like both Ghetsis and N (admittedly, I am thirsting for like Ghetsis more) because they provide so much room for theorizing, I wish we had more info on them. Now that I am thinking about it, I wonder how Ghetsis treated Anthea and Concordia, and at what age they both were adopted. Don’t remember seeing anything related to that in the first game. And what happened to N in the alternate universe USUM Ghetsis is from? What a messy family our old man cooked.

Anyway, now that I am here, I absolutely love your writing! The characters are written so… in character, it’s obvious you love all of them, and it makes your imagines so delightful to read, thank you so much! (I began adoring Lear because of you too, haha.) Don’t reply if you don’t see the need in it, just wanted to let you know my opinion. (Also I made a meme a while ago about writing Ghetsis content I was too anxious to send to you, but after your last post it now seems outdated. Sorry in advance for bad English and chaotic thoughts flow.)

Eh, you can send in whatever. I don't like Ghetsis, but I can laugh at him. Honestly I think the only times I've ever been like "??? No" was when people asked for actual child characters, like Alistair.

I would love for some more backstory on either of them, too. Why does Ghetsis have a ninja group under him? Why is he like that? Who are N's supposed real parents? Literally anything about Concordia and Anthea. Colress? How did Ghetsis meet him? A canon (not Masters) interaction between N and Colress is something desired. Also, any actual canon discussion about the King Harmonia those two are supposed to be related to. So many things to be desired.

Off-topic a bit, but one line from the previous post was from USUM Ghetsis about humans being easier to control. N probably still ended up having a change of heart in that universe... He also notes confusion at Colress betraying him, meaning Colress was at play somewhere there. I want to see all the USUM verses kind of. Maybe not Archie's or Maxie's. 7.8/10 too much water (and sun).

To be honest, Ghetsis's dialogue alone wasn't enough to really sway me. It was more Masuda's comment on N's possible backstory.

Granted, it's just a rumour, but I do find the thought experiment fascinating seeing as there are apparently people born from pokemon? Like the Froslass guy in the Alabaster Icelands in PLA. Ghetsis doing some freaky science experiments to make a Zoroark hybrid kid perfect for his plans really doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility. (I want to explicitly state that I do not pull any of this from his personality and character traits. He is a socially uncertain, sheltered, and brainwashed guy trying his best – That does not make him something inhuman.)

Thank you for your kind words! I try so hard to learn about the characters as much as I can before I write them. I'm ready to write a dissertation on Cyrus's lore (which has now been mostly confirmed). And don't be afraid, I don't get mad at discussion. It's healthy for any theory, no?

[warrior-cats-rewritten]

I think my most controversial Warrior Cats opinion is that I actually really like the Cinderpelt-heart reincarnation plot. Or at least I would really love a version of it without all teh ableist implications. StarClan realizing that teh “no kits for medicine cats” rule is hurtful, and also that disabled cats are often pushed into roles they don’t want and aren’t suited for, and they reincarnate Cinderpelt for those reasons, not because a disabled life isn’t a full one. Cinderheart feeling pressure from teh clan, maybe even her family or even Lionblaze, to be a medicine cat when she finds out. It has potential idk.

I liked it at first, because... Admittedly, I read Po3 before I read TNP and before I finished TPB.

So Cinderpelt was this mysterious, not quite known character to me. I went and read TNP and thought "hmm. I wish it had been more 'this is happening because your life is going to be cut short now due to the move to the lake and that isn't fair because you were supposed to live a long time so go become your niece, really sorry about the badgers, xoxo PS sorry about your mom slowly starving to death in the forest'"

Instead it hinges on her having had "not a full life", which.... When I went EVEN FURTHER back and finished TPB.... She did. She loved Medicine. It was HER choice. The Erin's forgot, made a weird retcon that has become her entire character: "I loved my teacher and didn't tell him", and had Lionblaze be the... Reward for that?

I liked it, it was just done for a stupid reason. Another one of those "we wrote this plot point to make sure a character does xyz" instead of just... Writing it. Snowkit's death is the most egregious example of these writers pretending they have no control over these fictional cats.

I have some controversial opinions of my own.

The Lake territory is cool but also sucks. We need to either leave the Lake or start redoing things about it. It has no landmarks to hang out at or have what I call 'set pieces' whatsoever, and more importantly no threats (thunderpaths, snake rocks, gorge, the tree with a huge Owl, Carrionplace) and I'm pretty sure the writers feel this way too since we leave the Lake once an arc. I wouldn't mind moving territories again, to a more dangerous but still natural place.

Breezepelt should be a permanent Queen. I know it would mean seeing less of him (which I dislike) but him being a gentle parent and helping others raise their kits would be a PERFECT wrap up to his arc. As much as I desperately want Breezestar I think he would fit more as a perma-queen.

A trip to the distant future or past would be both good and bad. A whole new cast would be kinda cool but let's be honest, these writers suck. What is needed is a whole new writing team of people who actually LIKE the books.

I never really liked canon!Riverstar that much, we really didn't know anything about him because DOTC is less Dawn of The Clans and more "pwease like our power trip fantasy oc who knocks up a girl his son's age 🥺". I genuinely cannot remember anything River Ripple even does. He just... Isn't there. Maybe more prevalent in the last 2 books but I never got past the first 3 chapters of book 5 and never opened book 6 aside from looking at its last scene and rolling my eyes. Petal's death was where I drew the line, the narrative bending over backwards to make Clear Sky a poor sad baby crossed it.

• I've come around thanks to Bonefall but I genuinely hated Star Flower as a kid. The way she was described was uncomfortable, annoying and made it feel like the writers were trying to force you to think she's this gorgeous, perfect cat, it made her boring, bland, and anything with her in it a slog to get through because of the way Thunder spoke about her, going on and on about her beautiful she was, getting worse when Moth Flight's Vision described her with purple eyes to go with her star-shaped pupils... Also, I was really attached to Petal, who died suddenly when Star Flower entered the picture, and I was on the assumption Clear Sky and Petal were going to get together, while I didn't like Clear Sky, I just wanted my favorite to stay alive unlike every other female character. Starf also suddenly becoming a helples damsel in distress added to the annoyance so badly that I actually never finished DOTC, and it made me take a break from the series altogether. I really wanted her to be playing the long game. A sincere thank you to Bonefall for helping me reread who this character is, and while the way our 'Camera' describes hee is still annoying, I can at least look past that and see the roots of this character.

I love Leafpool, and Hollyleaf. Met a lot of Leafpool fans who seem to think Hollyleaf is this monster when she very much reads as someone who cannot handle their religious and emotional abuse based trauma and lashed out at the wrong person. What she did to Leafpool was awful but she was basically an irrational teenager. Just like apprentice does not always equal child, warrior does not always equal "grown ass adult who should get over it". Her own existence went against every single thing she believed in and was told by her own mentor to never ever question.

As sweet as the scene with Dandelionkit and Juniperkit in Starclan was... There was really 0 point in giving Squilf 2 dead kids, other than "the writers hate her". The only thing I can see a point for it is for a long-shot setup to Squirrelstar for some lives seeing as you just know they absolutely forgot about Squish's friends.

• I think Ivypool has somewhat of a right to be upset with Dovewing. HEAR ME OUT. She is allowed to be upset, NOT take it out on Dovewing. She also needs to learn that she helped drive her sister out, but the writers are allergic to that kind of thing in favour of "make character a background conservative. If female = mom. If mom = soft until politcal debate scenario." She is allowed to be sad and upset that her only sister is gone, she just needs to acknowledge she messed up, as well as lots of Thunderclan cats messed up.

It's time to kill Brightheart, Brackenfur, Thornclaw and Cloudtail. Enough is enough, start retiring cats who were full warriors when TNP started. Tawnypelt should be in the Elders den and Oakfur should be rotting in hell for what he let happen to Berrynose. On that same note, I hope Russetfur went on trial for that and her attempt on Firestar's life. I like her but good GOD, that was egregious, and looks even more pathetic when Yellowfang's Secret reveals she herself wasn't Clanborn.

Tigerheart's Shadow is a good book (aside from that one 'territory' bit, you know the one) and this series could go FAR if they embraced the mysterious mystical elements they set up, people are far too harsh on the experimental things.

Moonkitti makes good points sometimes but I need younger fans to stop taking everything she says as gospel and start thinking for themselves; case in point the recent Mapleshade drama that REEKS of "if I was Orpheus I wouldn't have turned around". The writers call the Moonstone the Moonpool every time we revisit the forest, do you really think they remembered The Bridge? Did YOU remember the bridge or did Moonkitti point it out? Also, with how cosmically doomed from the start the story was, the water probably would have overtaken the bridge and STILL swept them away. For every one good take Moonkitti has they seem to have more than a few bad ones.

My silly one. FERNSONG SHOULD HAVE BEEN NAMED AFTER HONEYFERN AND BEEN A HONEYFERN CLONE APPEARANCE WISE. No problem with him being named for Ferncloud but could they PLEASE acknowledge that Cinderheart is Honeyfern's sister too? Poppyfrost named her baby boy after Molekit and Lilyheart named her daughter Honeykit despite never having met Honeyfern, and those don't feel like coincidences.

I dislike the Tribe as its concept, but I like some of the characters that came from it, know what I mean? I like OG Stoneteller (though I always pictured him very differently. I saw him as gray tabby with white paws!) I think he is an interesting character, and Outcast was a huge letdown with having him be wrong. It would be a nice change in story if the Clan cats had tried to push their way, only for it to NOT work, for there to be a different way to do things, or a trick the Tribe used in the past that they "could give another crack at", and for the Clan cats to learn that their way of life is not a golden standard. Could you imagine Hollypaw learning this? I also really like Brook. I dismantled her and I know she is a play on the stupid "Indian princess" trope. I love how sweet she is, though I hate how it was painted against the Tribe. I plan to keep that wisdom and kindness, while also making The Tribes just as good a place to live.

I don't think Tawnystar would've been a good idea, as good as a name like that sounds. She, like Bramble, is too old, and the writers can't stand killing off Arc 2 characters in favour of killing off Arc 3 and 4, we would have been stuck with her and the writing for leaders atm SUCKS. Tawnypelt also just... Isn't that great. While I like her, I don't think she would be a good leader. Same goes for Mothstar, though I feel like they could have it done better if they do have it happen by making her not want the 9 lives. After the absolute Christian slog ASC has been about "non believers" it would be cool to see her prove that wrong and put this shitty arc's hinge point in the ground once and for all.

I'm tired of Med Cat protags. We've had one since TNP barring Dawn of The Clans when arguably it would have been the most beneficial from Pebble Heart or Dappled Pelt. Leafpool was cool because she was the first, Jayfeather was kinda cool still because of blindness and being part of the Prophecy, and while his POV in OOTS was a necessary evil, we did not need Alderheart. There is no reason to have Alderheart be the POV when Sparkpelt has the objectively more interesting setup and Alderheart's "anxiety" works better when we can't see through his eyes, as the authors don't know what actual anxiety is. Shadowsight and Frostpaw are alright, through Frostpaw's pov suffers around Nightheart and she does suffer from Camera POV Syndrome at times... Not helped by her being a Female Warriors Character with all the lovely things that come with it. Shadowsight was cool until the writers completely fumbled the bag and made him rude, argumentative, and dropped his epilepsy for no reason. All this is NOT helped by the new retcon that you're just "born different" with some kind of inherit special connection to Starclan, like it wasn't some kind of learned thing, hence Cinderpelt struggling with it as a lot of the time she was on her own!

Let Daisy retire and let Sorrelstripe take over the nursery. These new characters are in desperate need of personality, let Sorrelstripe be a feisty, confident midwife who won't let Queens be bullied into things.

[the-golden-ghost]

Tagged by the esteemed @dying-suffering-french-stalkers to answer: a bunch of questions

Last song: "Slut like you" by P!nk. Why? Because it fucks

Last book: Last book I finished was Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea and yes it WAS my first ever delve into anything by Le Guin! Better late than never. Last book I picked up was Song of Achilles which I started a few months ago and then took a break cause it wasn't grabbing me. It's still kind of *hand wavy gesture* but it's definitely well-written and once you get past the first few chapters it moves quick

Last movie(s): JUST watched Girl Shy (1924) tonight but before that it was Scarlet Street (1945). Or (1946). It was definitely mid-40s.

Last TV show: Arcane season 2 back in November I think. I've been trying to rewatch the Twilight Zone but can't find it though I admittedly haven't been looking that hard

Last thing I Google searched: Aging Untouchable (hear me out meme reasons)

Favorite color(s): Gold/yellow, dark blue (BEST combo!!)

Sweet/savory/spicy: Hmmm I'm gonna say savory yeah though spicy CAN hit but I can only handle it in smaller amounts. Savory never gets old <3

Relationship status: *Talking Heads voice* Same as it ever was

Looking forward to: OUGH uh... huh. Naptime. My next movie foray

Current obsession: Been movie foraying since I lost my job and now have time to apparently watch every film on the face of the earth (which considering I'd seen like 2 movies prior to this year, is saying something). I've been maining film noir pretty hard though? I'm still limiting myself to Tubi for now but I have found other options to try since their selection doesn't have a lot of the really Classic(tm) "good" ones, although it has a few. Honestly though some of the B movies are really funny and surprisingly not bad. So far my list has been The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Third Man (1949), Dial M For Murder (1954), Kansas City Confidential (1952), New York Confidential (1955), Please Murder Me! (1956) The Woman in the Window (1944), Nightmare (1956), The Killing (1956), and Scarlet Street (1945). Honorable mentions to I Want to Live! (1958) which was marketed as a noir but I wouldn't really call it one, and The Lady Vanishes (1938) which I thought was a noir because I blind watched it and it turns out it wasn't, but it was good!

Tagging: YOU, reading this!

[msunitedstatesjames]

I finally finished Light Bringer. Here's my thoughts (obviously, spoilers incoming):

-First and formost, RIP to the king of my heart, Cassius Bellona. The worst part about his death is that you know it's coming the whole book. You don't take a character like him, a former enemy, give him a solid redemption arc, make him the most ABSURDLY likeable character and source of all humor in the book, and then not kill him off. But still, I held out a tiny bit of hope. I really dreaded getting to the end of this book just because I knew it would be coming. But, you had to respect the way he went out at least. Dude's gonna be legend if that counts for anything.

-So, The Abomination was WORRYINGLY absent from this book, aside from a couple of mentions and that (maybe) he's Virginia's mysterious source of intel? Like, everyone is worried about how Atalantia is sitting around building up her power while everyone else is duking it out, but what about the Abomination? I know he's not anybody's most immediate threat in this book, but is anybody else extremely worried about what he's going to get up to in Red God?

-I was happy with the Virginia chapters we did get, but I hope she gets more time in Red God. Also, same to Victra. She was awesome in this book, as always, but like, I want to see you do even more destroying, girl. We love you. I also missed Electra.

-The Bromance in this book was next level, even by the standards previously set in this series. I loved having a little break from the relentless battles and death in Dark Age, to just get the dudes (and Lyria) hanging out and trying to work out their differences. This also helped get back some of the old humor I missed from earlier in the series.

-This was Lyria at her best in my opinion. She was great. I only wish we got to see more Lyria and Cassius because they were just so heart warming.

-Sevro is back! I loved getting to see the old Sevro make his triumphant return for the last third of the book or so. Sevro walking up to Gaia au Raa and just going, "shut up, crone," really made my day.

-Lysander has killed my favorite character of the book two books in a row now. And both times with a gun. I love how this dude talks about how he's secretly really good with a razor, but every time he's confronted with someone who's actually good at using one he just shoots them point blank. I know I've said this before, but seriously guys, fuck Lysander. I mean, even Atalantia is becoming more likeable than him. She may be an evil, power hungry tyrant, but at least she's pretty much honest about it. Everyone knows she's the worst and she barely bothers to pretend otherwise.

-Admittedly, it's been a few years since I've read the other books in the series, but this might be my favorite of the bunch. Pierce Brown really hit every emotional note and character perfectly in this one, and it felt a lot more balanced compared to the (necessary) bleakness of Dark Age.

[princkleeatscookies]

personal cookie run headcanons!! :0

My drawing tablet's arriving soon so I guess I'll have to share some of my personal headcanons in cookie run as promised (most of them are clotted cream cookie's,,,, ehehe-)

admittedly, it's a pretty "short" list but I will update this once I thought up with new ones :>c without further ado, let's start those headcanons~! ٩(⊙‿⊙)۶

┌─── ∘°❉°∘ ───┐┌─── ∘°❉°∘ ───┐┌─── ∘°❉°∘ ───┐ ➽─────────❥

- Clotted Cream Cookie owns a stuffed teddy bear/jelly bear as a gift from his mom from childhood / v \ He still holds onto it to this day and doesn't want to admit that he still owns that due to embarrassment ahaha.. He hides it in his room (specifically under one of the pillows in his bed) and pulls it out whenever he was having such a hard time

- Clotted Cream Cookie doesn't know modern slang or anything that Cookies around his age do for fun in the casual. He was raised in a much higher-class so he was only taught proper manners and eloquence. If he was exposed to such stuff, he'll be extremely confused or fascinated and wanted to mimic it himself (basically he's a young boomer lmao, but he is learning~!)

- Clotted Cream Cookie is a bit of a book nerd, as he always reads books (ranging from fantasy books to history books) during his leisure time. He also has his own reading area in his room!

- He never shows it to anyone, but Clotted Cream Cookie is surprisingly vocally talented (in other words, HE CAN SING-). Though he never does sing in front of anyone because he's self-conscious ahaha. He usually sings alone whenever he's in his room or during work aaa,, though Financier Cookie did hear a little bit of it (although it was very faint and didn't believe it was Clotted Cream Cookie at first) (uhuhuhu this is just me inserting the "secretly vocally talented but is too afraid to show it in front of anyone" hc ;v;)

- I'd imagine Clotted Cream Cookie to be around in either in his early 20s or just about to turn 20 (19 years old)

- Clotted Cream Cookie does have a biological father... but let's just say he isn't in the picture anymore, although Clotted Cream Cookie is very much traumatized. not gonna elaborate on that due to how dark it is. (well not yet at least)

ok that's enough Clotted Cream Cookie headcanons for this post HHSDSJDFDK let's continue~!

- Espresso Cookie and Affogato Cookie are related as brothers, but they have long been since separated each other. They don't even know if they know of each other's existence as brothers, but Affogato Cookie does recognizes Espresso Cookie a bit and has a soft spot for him, just a little bit. (I'd like to imagine that only some of the coffee cookies are indeed related to each other. not all but some.)

- Financier Cookie being a big sis to, not just the orphan cookies, but to other cookies as well ehehe (Kouign-Amann Cookie and, to a lesser extent, my cookie run oc for example)

- There were a lot of times where Licorice Cookie kinda regrets being in the Cookies of Darkness All he ever wanted is some sort of validation.. He had no other option after all. He wanted to turn to the good side but Licorice Cookie just believes there's no way for him to be good. I mean, Licorice Cookie isn't all that evil- He's just now trapped on his own decision.

- Cream Puff Cookie sometimes visits the shore to play with Peppermint Cookie during her days in the Parfaedia Institute. Though ever since she became an alumna and busied herself with studying her magic further, alongside protecting the city. She never had time to visit the shore, Which made Peppermint Cookie a little sad.

- I'd like to see that Madeleine Cookie and Financier Cookie are a little bit older than Clotted Cream Cookie (maybe 24 or 25 respectively)

➽─────────❥

【☆】 ★ 【☆】 ╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯ 【☆】 ★ 【☆】 I think that's it for now ahdshasd, I told you this is gonna be a short list, ;v; thank you if you read this far ~! I'll probably think of some stuff but for now, here's the current list this definitely tells that Clotted Cream Cookie is my favorite character lololol

notes:

fun fact, the bit about Clotted Cream Cookie being secretly talented at singing and is reluctant to sing in front of everyone is based on the crk 2nd anniversary stream where his eng va, aaron dismuke (aka miyuki shirogane in kaguya-sama love is war s1-s2 and william james moriarty in moriarty the patriot), was asked to sing in-character but he straight up refuses HAHSHSAHD

the last headcanon was based on the drawing I saw on twitter where young Madeleine Cookie disturbed baby Clotted Cream Cookie. In the drawing, Madeleine Cookie was depicted to be a kid and Clotted Cream Cookie being a baby Which means that Madeleine Cookie is older than Clotted Cream Cookie and I just personally find it both cute and hilarious

The bit where I mentioned my cookie run oc... I might reveal it here on tumblr sometime. But not right now.

once again, thank you guys so much for reading these stupid headcanons of mine ahahsdhsd

[arcane-vagabond]

✨

Okay, so kind of a personal post, but I wanted to get my thoughts down, and I will end up deleting this later lol

For my whole life, I have loved books and stories. I have literally been writing stories since before I even knew how to read and write. Somewhere at home is a picture frame that my great-aunt put together of a drawing I made when I was like two or three, and it was a sloppy finger painting, but it's clear that it's meant to be two people and some kind of creature. And she typed up a caption for it, and I guess it was the description I had given her of what the painting was supposed to be.

"A prince saves a princess from the scary dragon, and they live happily ever after."

Not my best work, admittedly, but it's the first documented time of me making a story, and I looked at that picture frame with fondness. Who knows where it is now, probably tucked away in some box in the attack after my parents moved.

But, then I got super into writing in like the third grade when I came up with my first original story, and then my love for writing snowballed from there. I can't tell you how many stories would flit in and out of my brain over the years, but somehow I think y'all have an idea just based on the ideas I pitch on here. But, just know that the ones I put on here are only a fraction of the ones I come up with.

I don't know why I'm so in love with writing and stories exactly. Maybe it's the thrill of making my own worlds where my problems aren't so present and overwhelming, or maybe it's because I love to find the magic in different possibilities. That sounds kind of smarmy, doesn't it? But, I think it's still true.

But, something that's been part of my personal journey as of late is the idea of doing things for myself and not others. My whole life, I've been such a huge people pleaser, and now at my big age, I've decided that I don't want to live my life like that anymore, but I'm faced with the problem of: how do I stop?

I'll start off by saying that I love my parents a lot. They've made a lot of sacrifices for me and they do a lot for me, and I'm forever grateful to them. But whether they meant for it or not, there was a lot of pressure to be a certain thing growing up. I could have hobbies like writing, acting, painting, drawing, singing, etc. But I had to be realistic, and that meant that I wasn't allowed to pursue those things as my main goal. I had to find a way to stuff myself into the box of "STEM, business, or something that would make money." And I get why. Financially, life was rough for a really, REALLY long time growing up. Both of my parents came from households where their parents worked more than one job to make ends meet, and this was back in the 60s and 70s.

So, for most of my life, I allowed myself to have those hobbies, using them as an escape for the growing pressure I was feeling at needing to be "perfect" for my family. And that's just it. I was never "perfect" enough. I could have won first place at a tournament for speech and debate, and I would be given critiques on how I could have done better. They always told me they were proud of me, but the word "but" always came after their words of praise.

"You did such a good job, but..."

"That was really good, but..."

"It would have been even better if you just..."

I didn't hear the words "I'm proud of you" by themselves until I was 12 years old and it was from a family friend. I remember waiting for the "but" to come, and when it never did, I had to excuse myself to go cry in the bathroom.

So I escaped further into my little worlds, and sometimes I would share them with my friends who would always tell me that they loved my stories, but there was always the nagging feeling in the back of my head that they were lying. They had to say that because they were my friends, but also because the stories weren't...perfect.

I've always been a perfectionist, and it's something I'm learning to get over as time goes on. These past few months have been such a journey for me because I've been allowing myself to be bad at shit.

But then I started posting on here, and it made me feel so good to know that literal strangers thought my writing was good too. You guys didn't have to lie to me and tell me that it was, you genuinely thought my writing was great! And it makes me so happy! It refueled my love for writing, and I hope I can keep writing for years to come!

But I've also been telling my mom about all of this (leaving out the 18+ bits lol) and the other night she looked at me and asked me if I had considered actually getting a story published.

Now, this was a bit of a blow for me for a couple of reasons. Yes, I'm so happy that she's finally taking an interest and seeing how passionate I've always been about writing, but...

But why now? Are you asking me that because you genuinely think I'll get published, or are you asking me because you're hearing that people actually really appreciate my hobby and you think I can make money off it? Why are you suddenly so enthusiastic about something I've made clear that I always wanted to do?

Idk, I'm probably just overthinking the whole thing, and I know she's genuinely happy for me, but it still kind of heart. Yeah, the dream is to one day be a published author. It always has been, but who knows if I'll ever finish anything good enough to be published, ya know?

Anyway, if you stuck around this long you can breathe out a sigh of relief lol I'm done rambling and ranting for now. I'll get some of the updates out to you guys when I can

[boilingrain]

Rain Draws Squirrelflight, Leafpool & Bramblestar a Few Times

Since these three won my poll on which protagonists I should draw, here they are!

They don't get as much art per character as Ashfur did, because that was one character and this is three. Trust me, this was faster and more do-able

So anyways, first up is the Squirrel herself!

I draw Squirrelpaw generally softer & bouncier looking than I draw Squirrelflight, because at this point in time she's just a kid. She has not yet witnessed the Horrors(tm)

Even when I was reading The New Prophecy for the first time as a kid, I always imagined Squirrelpaw/Squirrelflight as having little round ears. Maybe it was just the "Squirrel" prefix, but that trait has always stuck with me and I've always drawn her with small ears.

This isn't a trait unique to Squirrelflight with my designs though! In her family alone, Cloudtail, Alderheart, Lionblaze and Nutmeg also have small, rounded ears (Princess might also have them, but I haven't decided yet. I also haven't decided if any of Cloudtail or Lionblaze's kits have the rounded ears, but at least one probably does)

I wish that she had kept her telepathy thing with her sister, I honestly thought it was interesting. It's a shame that the Erins quickly ran out of uses for it and decided to pretend it never existed. This may or may not be why in my rewrite of Warriors that exists in my head (like many others in this fandom), the telepathy thing didn't stop existing as soon as it wasn't super useful the plot anymore.

Admittedly, she's always been my favorite of the cats who journeyed to the sun-drown place (though tbf, most of them didn't really get any proper development, and the other one was Brambleclaw. I do have a soft spot for Stormfur and Tawnypelt, though).

Also I... forgot to color Squirrelkit's mouth. Whoops

The lady with a somehow worse taste in men than her sister, Squirrelflight!

Please Squirrelflight, you could've done so much better than Bramblestar. You deserve so much better than Bramblestar.

That aside, Squirrelflight has been one of my favorites for a long time. I just think she's a fun and interesting character

I think I said basically all of the things I was going to say when I was talking about Squirrelpaw, tbh. Also, much like a lot of the fandom for some reason, I don't really remember much of what happened during OotS? I don't think Squilf was particularly relevant during that arc, but it's possible she was and I just genuinely do not remember.

Why is Omen of the Stars basically just a void in everyone's memory. What's going on there.

Anyways, those aren't the final designs for Lionkit, Hollykit & Jaykit in that little doodle. Those are just kind of rough concept designs for them, and when I eventually draw them they'll probably look different. Also this is tortie Hollyleaf propaganda

If Lionblaze can be golden (though I typically draw him as cream) when both of his parents are functionally black (brown = black when it comes to cats. Also Leafpool shouldn't be a brown tabby anyways, because her dad is red and her mom is cream, which is a dilute version of red. I should stop talking now, before I get too deep into rambling about cat genetics), then Hollyleaf can be a tortie. (Jayfeather's fine btw. Gray is a dilute version of black, and both of his parents carry dilute. Crowfeather from Ashfoot & Leafpool from Sandstorm)

Okay, I'll finally shut up about cat genetics now

If Squirrelstar doesn't happen, I will eat my hat. I will eat several hats.

I actually don't even know how old Squirrelflight is currently in the books. It doesn't help that the Erins are weird with ages and don't seem to know how cats work.

For my purposes, I choose to believe that the Clans have been at the lake for at least a decade, making Squilf at least 10 1/2 - 11 years old, depending on how old she was when the Clans left the forest territories. And putting her around that age would, in fact, make her a senior (for a house cat, at least. Real feral cats don't typically live that long, but tbf the clans have medicine and stuff, so their life expectancy might be longer than regular feral cats. But cats are considered seniors once they hit 10 years old)

Also all things considered, she's probably been stressed as hell for a while and experiencing the Horrors(tm). So she gets some gray on her muzzle from a combination of age and stress.

Honestly she deserves to go on a nice, relaxing vacation where she doesn't have to deal with the Erin's less than good writing choices and shitty treatment of female characters.

Anyways Squirrelstar's leader mark is her nose spot becoming star shaped, because I love it when leaders are depicted with some sort of star shaped marking. I eat it up every time.

I'll talk more about leader marks and how I do them at a later time, though.

Leafpaw! My sweet baby Leafpaw!

My version of Leafpool is big and very fluffy, and you can't stop me from drawing her that way

Right off the bat, you'll probably notice that her design has changed a bit from the original concept design that I posted, as she's now a tortie instead of a regular brown tabby. Admittedly, a big part of why she's a tortie now is that I just love torties & calicos haha

If anything, her name makes even more sense now, because the combination of brown and orange makes her look more like leaves during fall! :)

Why's Leaf a tortie but Squirrel isn't? Maybe Squirrelflight is a secret tortie, or maybe she's trans, who knows? (The actual answer is that I had already finished all the Squilf art when I randomly decided to have Leaf be a tortie, but I didn't want to go back and change Squilf's design because I love it)

I hope it's obvious that I love Leafpool a whole lot

Once again, Holly, Lion & Jay's designs in this are not their final designs and when I eventually get around to actually drawing them, they'll definitely have at least a few design changes.

Also it's really hard to draw tiny little newborn kittens on a small scale like this.

Anyways I've never actually read Leafpool's Wish, so I don't know if it proves or disproves what I'm about to say, but I think that with how much Leafpool loved her kits, I believe that she would've raised them herself if she had the ability to.

I also personally believe that if Squirrelflight hadn't decided to take in the kits, or if Leafpool had decided that she wanted to raise her kits instead of her sister doing it, Thunderclan wouldn't have done shit about it. I mean, she definitely wouldn't be as trusted as she was before, but I don't think she'd lose her job (at least at first) or be exiled. She was their only medicine cat, they literally couldn't do shit about it. Additionally, she's Firestar's daughter and also related to Sandstorm and Squirrelflight, who are both individually forces to be reckoned with.

She'd probably have to train an apprentice as soon as possible and then have to step down from her role as medicine cat, but I definitely don't think she'd be exiled or anything.

Leafpool but she sparkles

For anyone who didn't see my Ashfur post, some of the rules I have for Starclan designs is that Starclan cats are lighter in color and have sharper & more star shaped markings compared to when they were alive. They also have their appearances change over time in a way connected to their names, which is why Leafpool is starting to grow leaves out of her neck fluff.

Additionally, Starclan cats will typically have a sharper shape, to go with their sharper markings. You'll notice that while she has the sharper markings, Leafpool's fur is still soft and rounded.

I feel like Leafpool's whole thing with her trial would affect her Starclan appearance, but that's not really something that results from a trial, so her not becoming sharper in shape is the exception rather than the rule.

I didn't design a Dark Forest Leafpool, but I imagine that the changes she'd get there (because my DF cats have their appearances change based on their crimes) would be that she would still grow leaves out of her body, but she'd also grow feathers and would have particularly long and sharp claws that she wouldn't be able to sheath. Each of these things is representative of the "crime" that she was sentenced for (even though Spottedleaf, a Starclan cat, literally encouraged her to do that)

The leaves would specifically be holly leaves (representing, well... Hollyleaf), the feathers would be a mix of jay and crow (representing Jayfeather & Crowfeather) and the claws would represent Lionblaze (though for this one I went with something meant to represent his power instead of his name. With Leafpool being a medicine cat, I think it fits)

If Leafpool doesn't give Squirrelstar a life we riot

The bramble man

Honestly even as a kid Brambleclaw wasn't exactly my favorite character. I wasn't really old enough to really process how he sucks, honestly I just kind of remember thinking that he was boring. Maybe that's just the fact that I've always liked Squirrelflight & Leafpool way more than him, but I just didn't really care for his POV chapters during The New Prophecy

I did love the Hawkfrost scene, though. Because I wasn't on any warrior cats forums or anything as a kid, I didn't get spoiled about stuff like Hawkfrost's death or the Fire Scene (along with many other important scenes), so I think those scenes hit way harder for me.

When I was a kid reading Po3 for the first time, I genuinely didn't even suspect that Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw weren't Hollyleaf, Lionblaze & Jayfeather's biological parents. So you can probably imagine how shocked little elementary school me was

But anyways, yeah. While I didn't hate Brambleclaw as a kid, I just didn't really care about him.

On another note, my Brambleclaw/star design is pretty similar in shape to my Lionheart design (just with extra toes and not as big of a mane). Since Lionheart was Goldenflower's brother, I thought it would be interesting if while everyone else just saw Tigerclawstar in Bramble's appearance, Goldenflower didn't.

My Tawnypelt design has a more similar shape to Tigerclawstar, though.

Bramblestar!

Leader marks are usually an already existing marking that becomes star shaped (like how I made Squirrelstar's nose spot star shaped), but sometimes a new marking entirely will appear as the leader mark.

While I easily could've made one of the spots on the backs of his ears into a star shaped for his leader mark, I have plans relating to Bramblefake/The Imposter and Bramblestar's mark.

You'll see said plans in a moment, but what I will mention about it is that my Ashfur design has a broken heart shaped marking on his chest.

On an unrelated note, Bramblestar should have someone else name warriors for him because great Starclan is he bad at names.

There's totally nothing wrong with Bramblestar, what possibly could've made you think that

Anyways, a combination of the whole being possessed thing & Ashfur's broken heart marking have caused Bramblestar's leader mark to "break". It actually doesn't get fixed after he's no longer possessed, his leader mark stays that way.

The Imposter's fur is darker and droopier than regular Brambkestar. I don't have a real reason for the darker color (other than that it looks cool), but the fur is Ashfur's doing.

Another thing that is Ashfur's doing is the blue pupils. Bramblestar is supposed to have red pupils (due to him training in the Dark Forest in TNP), but being possessed kind of overrides that and so The Imposter's pupils are blue. They do turn red again after Bramblestar is no longer possessed, though.

Honestly, I still kind of wish that the theory that Bramblestar had rabies was canon. The possession was interesting, but I don't think rabies has even been mentioned in the series. Which is a bit surprising considering that it's basically a soap opera with cats, but then again the Erins sure do love taking the opportunity to ignore possible interesting new plots. Why do anything interesting when we could instead have a billion more badly written romances

But I will admit, it was interesting to have Ashfur come back to be awful again. I'm still mad that he got let into Starclan after trying to kill at least 4 people because he "loved too much" and that gave him more of an opportunity to pull this shit. They absolutely butchered Yellowfang after she died. Not really even recognizable as the same character as her living self.

I'm not doing more art for this post. I'm tired and I'm going to go get some sleep. Tomorrow I will get back to work on hypokit requests, but for now it is time to put away my art supplies and lay in bed.

[caliburn-the-sword]

final cress thoughts!!!!

i absolutely inhaled that book holy shit lol. got winter at the bookstore today because shipment just arrived and i gotta say it's HELLA chonky. i am EXCITED. of course fairest will have to come first

since the plan has been explained to us the readers, that means it's DEFO gonna go wrong (note: it did - sybil ambushed them)

god why is cress married to everyone. first thorne now wolf

rolling my eyes sighing bile is rising in my throat. i CANNOT take this alpha nonsense. admittedly when cress says it in a brightest star of a constellation way, that's cute. unfortunately the omegaverse connotations cancels it out completely

OMG CINDER AND KAI FINALLY. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SO LONG. rip to everyone that was reading these as they came out because i can't imagine how PAINFUL it would have been to wait two years for them to see each other again as opposed to me just binging the books across like 3 weeks max by the time i finish the series

respect for torin holy shit that must have been SUCH a hard choice for him to make to not only let the prince go but to reveal his tracker chip

NO ERLAND IS NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE LETUMOSIS AND HE'S NOT ALLOWED TO DIE AND HE HAS TO REUNITE WITH CRESS. CRESS NEEDS TO KNOW. I AM LITERALLY IN STUDIES OF RELIGION CLASS RN I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS PAIN

I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT THE PLAGUE IS BIOWARFARE. i'm a genius. but the mutated strain was just genuinely a coincidence judging by levana's reaction LMAO

was absolutely baffled why tf thorne was kissing cress before i remembered the promise he made. i feel sickly and nauseous. get off that minor rn

as much as i hate thorne. gotta admit that the shooting scene was badass

YES SYBIL TAKE THAT, BITCH

wonder who the queen is married to

i respect every ounce of rebellion in erland's bones. yeah piss off the queen!!

grossed out by cress and thorne some more. please man keep pushing her away. literally his responsibility as an adult. ew

holy shit scarlet actually lost her finger

it's nice to properly meet winter

something very strange seems to be going on with winter. master and pet lunar stuff?? weird af. wants to be besties?? girl are you even understanding the situation?? also has she never met a ranga before??? is she HIGH????? and what's with the role playing games??? she's somehow more delulu than cress, acts even YOUNGER than her actual age than cress does

winter seems to THINK that she was friends with cinder. interesting. once again i want cinder to get her memories of pre-fire back real bad

winter is a SIMP for jacin

OH I'M SO DUMB HOW DIDN'T I REALISE THAT SHE WOULD BE DELULU BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T USE HER GLAMOUR. respect for winter has increased. this means that ALL the time scarlet spent thinking about how beautiful winter is was the truth LMAO. gay gay homosexual gay. is it too much to hope for a polycule?? they'd literally be like parks and rec. "i'm wolf andthis is my gf scarlet, this is her gf winter, this is winter's bf jaycin".

ofc a lake on the moon is gonna be called artemisia lake LOL. now we've had one moon titan and one moon goddess reference. chang'e when????

NOT FARAFRAH. i bet you all found it downright HILARIOUS when i went on about how much i love farafrah back in one of the other posts

ngl think it's too early for cinder and kai to be eating each other's faces. kai got over his issues REAL fast lol. idk how i feel about it but willing to see where winter takes us

i didn't even think of the implication because i don't consider kai and levana legitimately engaged so i find it HILARIOUS that the silly family tree of kai being engaged to one woman and then making out with her niece. reminds me of ouat

revolutionary cinder ftw

speculation for fairest:

i did the maths and realised that since levana is like 30 and cinder is 16 then she was about 17 years old when she decided that cinder just had to go. I'M 17. cannot imagine killing a 3 year old. cray z. and then she was even YOUNGER than that when she killed her sister for the throne. ALSO insane. that will be one deeply disturbed mind to dive into in fairest

read the blurb and don't exactly have anymore thoughts other than trying to figure out who the in universe equivalent to her REAL husband would be since we're defo getting backstory on that. since she's the evil queen then it must be winter's father "the good king", however because of the blurb i reckon it's some kind of "mirror mirror on the wall" figure. idk what exactly that would entail. some kind of royal adviser???

speculation for winter, because i don't want to forget everything i'm thinking by the time i'm done reading fairest:

mother reveal for cress - i don't remember if any lunar scientists have been mentioned or named yet, but i WILL be keeping an eye out. i suspect someone who has something to do with the wolf soldier hybrids, she might even know wolf. regardless hope the bitch dies

father reveal for cinder

from the way jacin calls garan linh's device an equaliser, it's DEFINITELY gonna be reproduced in this book, ESPECIALLY with winter going all delulu, and the way cinder is concerned about becoming like levana

jacin pov chapters now that miss marissa doesn't have to make his motivations and loyalties ambiguous

ngl i HATE prequels, ESPECIALLY when they're about the villain of the story, and i often skip them. i'm a bit apprehensive about going into fairest, but i want to have the proper reading experience of tlc, and it's important to the story. putting my personal feelings aside and hoping for the best!!

@eddisfargo @francforever @winterrhayle @winterpinetrees @shellyseashell