#also i will say i think i've ignored or failed to follow every piece of advice i gave here so you know. you do you

[eskawrites]

hi! i've seen you give writing advice before and i've been asking around for some tips on writing in third person limited? i've had a really hard time giving my narration life/character and everything i'm writing feels so flat as of right now. your writing style is really awesome and i was wondering what your advice is for making your narration "in character" instead of just setting a scene/telling not showing?

(i'm looking for more general advice, but if you have any specifics for nancy i would also appreciate that because im less used to writing from her pov)

thanks and have a great day! :3

oooh okay yes i love rambling about writing, let's go

so in general i think it's important not to think about it too hard, especially if you're writing a first draft/still trying to figure out plot, dialogue, pacing, etc. If you get caught up in the details of nailing down tone, it's really hard to get the actual story down on paper. and the actual story is what's going to inform a lot of your character voice

on that note, a lot of character voice and tone is rooted in action. for example, say you have a scene where Nancy walks into a room with everybody else. who does she look at first and why? maybe her eyes are drawn to Robin because she's just been thinking about her. maybe she's annoyed with Mike because of a previous scene, so she scowls at him quickly before addressing everyone else. maybe she very pointedly does not look at Jonathan because she feels awkward around him ever since he came back from California. no matter what it is, that can be a quick detail--even just a single line of writing--that tailors the narrative to nancy's pov as you start the scene.

as far as showing not telling goes, one of the most straightforward tips is to write in mannerisms instead of emotions. if you're in an awkward situation, you're not going to sit there and think 'i feel awkward.' you're going to shift your weight or fidget with something or look around the room. keep an eye out for sentences like 'nancy thinks...' or 'nancy feels...' and see if you can replace them with action (nancy scowls, nancy drops her gaze, nancy sees robin fidget, etc.) although again, this is second draft advice--don't worry about it too much until you've got the structure of the scene/story figured out

also, it's easier said than done, but putting yourself in the character's shoes helps. take a minute and stop to think about how Nancy would react to the scene. what would she be thinking, and how would that differ from what Robin's thinking, or what Steve's thinking, or what Max is thinking?

i have a habit of opening scenes with a few paragraphs of internal monologue, especially if i'm switching povs in a story. this can definitely turn into telling instead of showing sometimes, but it is a good way to get into the rhythm of that character and get a feel for their current mindset--all of which makes it easier to continue the scene in their pov/tone of voice. and honestly, it's not a bad exercise just on its own. if you're struggling with a specific point of view in the story you're currently writing, try writing a different little drabble or something from their perspective. or try rewriting a scene that's already in a different character's pov, and this time write it in Nancy's pov. the more you practice, the more you get to know the character--and specifically your characterization of her--and the easier it is to naturally tailor your writing to her pov

as for Nancy-specific advice, i always try to keep her curiosity and inquisitiveness at the forefront of my mind when i'm writing. she's literally always looking for clues. she latches onto details. she doesn't know how to let go of a question until she has a satisfactory answer. and maybe all that curiosity has her being nosy with her friends, or maybe it has her investigating murder cases. either way, that burning need to get answers is what drives her, and it's going to be influencing her inner thoughts (not to use this ask as a plug, but my robin coming out fic is one of my favorites in terms of nancy's pov, because the entire thing is structured around nancy latching onto clues and trying to solve a mystery. it's the most nancy-oriented approach to the situation ever)

finally--and this is something i struggle with in my own writing, but--feel free to make her wrong. third-person limited is not supposed to be a flawless, objective perspective. let her overreact, give her wrong information, make her angry or stubborn or selfish or pitiful, especially in the privacy of her own mind. make it so her thoughts don't line up with her words. make her come to conclusions that are driven by the limited information she has, or the past experiences she's lingering on, or the specific feelings she has in that moment (this is of course another way that plot influences pov and vice versa--the more naturally you can intertwine the two, the easier it is to make your narrative feel in character)

thanks for asking, anon! i have no idea if any of this is in any way helpful, but i hope it is! good luck writing!

[animasola86]

Kinktober: It is that time again.

Notes: Listen! I woke up feeling naughty again this morning and yet I somehow produced a fluffy, wholesome family life lovey dovey omg they are so freaking cute piece, at least for three pages, after that we're going straight to the topic of @kinktober2023: breeding kink.

Pairing: Sebastian Sallow x f!reader

Genre: Fluff/Smut // Words: 8k // [Read on AO3]

Warnings: NSFW! MDNI! Marital sex. Oh and also: breeding kink.

Warning: After you die of diabetes or cute aggression by reading the first part of this, there will be severe filth following. (Though to be fair, I think I've written worse before >_> Still, it's smut: so if you want to keep your innocence, please look away!)

It is that time again, darling.

It is Friday afternoon in the Sallow cottage, and you're sitting on the couch by the fireplace, enjoying a good book – completely ignoring the loud and certainly obnoxious argument your twin boys are having. They do it all the time, so it's nothing new.

They come after their father in so many ways, it's almost scary. From the messy brunet hair that you failed to comb so many times, to the deep brown eyes that can turn your anger into adoration in only a few seconds (they know that fact by now, which is never a good thing) – to the insatiable hunger for knowledge and the equally insatiable desire to always get what they want.

Benjamin and Archie Sallow surely are Sebastian's sons. As they bicker over who gets to play with the toy train first, your gaze wanders to the corner of the room to your quiet daughter.

Little Anne is in her own world, surrounded by various sheets of parchment and paper, her colouring pencils strewn about as she scribbles away, equally ignoring her arguing brothers. You smile softly as you take in her features. She comes after you, has your eyes and unlike her brothers and father not a single freckle on her pale little face, probably because unlike the men of the house, she likes to stay indoors, drawing and reading with her equally sun deprived mother.

Just as you return to your book, the door opens, and the noise of your bickering boys subsides immediately and turns into a wail of joy as the twins jump up and into the arms of their father. You look at Sebastian with wide eyes and an equally wide smile, you haven't expected him home this early.

“I'm home!” he calls, laughing with one son on each arm as he enters the small house.

You stand from the couch and walk towards him, unable to stop the need to kiss him. As you do, your sons issue grunts of displeasure, yet you only laugh and kiss your husband more.

“Did you miss me?” he asks softly, his dark eyes on you as he sets his sons to the ground again.

“I always miss you,” you whisper and wrap your arms around him.

“You know, I'm only on the other side of the lake, right?” he teases and grabs your chin to plant another kiss on your lips – followed by another synchronised noise of disgust from the twins.

He is right, of course. You chose this house in Aranshire so you can always look over the lake to the castle, imagining your husband walking the halls of Hogwarts, teaching kids in Magical Theory, being in his element. He still spends a lot of time there, has his own room in the castle if his work load gets too much, but every Friday to late Sunday he will come home to you and spend as much time with you and your three children as he can.

“I still wish I'd see you more...” you whisper and lean against him, your hand gently grazing the stubble on his cheek.

“You could teach too, you know? You were offered a position, remember?” he says as he guides you back to the couch.

“You know I can't,” you sigh and look around the house. Your boys are back fighting over the train toy and Anne is still so fixated on her drawing, she hasn't even noticed Sebastian's return yet.

“Soon you can,” he whispers and makes you sit on the couch. “The boys will be at Hogwarts and our little princess here –” he starts and sneaks towards the little girl sitting with her back to the room. “– can handle her own. Hey princess, Daddy's back!” he then says as he grabs his daughter under the arms and lifts her up swiftly. She squeals and kicks, then quickly relaxes and throws her tiny arms around his neck as a wide smile comes to her lips.

“Hello Daddy,” she squeaks, and he laughs softly as he hugs her back.

“How's my little girl?” he asks and tilts his head to look at what she has been drawing.

“Don't look!” she says in that sweet, high-pitched voice. “It's a surprise!”

Sebastian chuckles and presses his lips to the top of her head. “Fine, fine, I won't look! Keep your secrets!” he sets her back to the ground and gently ruffles her hair before he lets her go back to her drawing and finally returns to you.

You reach your arms out to him, and he follows suit immediately, settling down next to you on the couch, your arms entangled as he pulls you closer to kiss your forehead. For a moment you just sit together, looking into each other's eyes, the bickering of your boys just another background noise.

“I've been thinking, darling,” he then says, and one of those wicked smirks comes to his handsome face.

“Yes?” you ask carefully and arch an eyebrow.

He barks a laugh and quickly leans closer to kiss your raised eyebrow. “Don't give me that look, I know for a fact that you'll love it,” he then says and winks at you.

“Really?” you wonder and watch how he disentangles your limbs and stands from the couch, returning to the bag he has left at the door.

“Oh yes,” he calls back and rummages through his bag before he walks to the twins, holding something behind his broad back. “Boys,” he says with a mock-stern voice to get their attention. The mini versions of himself look up with big eyes, their fight momentarily paused. “Have you been nice to Mummy and your sister?”

The boys nod eagerly, already knowing what's coming. He always brings them back gifts when he returns on Fridays. They know the drill and yet they are always so excited about it. You smile softly as you watch the scene before you.

“Well, how about you give your Mummy and Daddy a little break and take this outside?” he then says and produces two toy trains in his big palms.

The twins stare at him, and Benjamin, the cheekier one of the two, raises an eyebrow. “Dad, we already have toy trains...” he says and holds up the toy that he has finally snatched from his brother's hand.

Sebastian laughs. “Not these ones. If you push this button, they'll get bigger,” he says and shows them what he means. “But you can only use them outside, do you understand?”

The twins rise to their feet and crane their necks to look at their father. You already dread the day when they would become as tall as Sebastian, but luckily both of them have yet to hit any major growth spurt. He holds the toy closer and looks at them intently.

“Do you understand?” he repeats in a rather stern voice.

They both nod. “Yes, sir,” they say in unison and quickly grab the toys from his palms and run outside.

“Be good! No terrorizing the cats, alright?” he calls after them and then closes the door again, turning towards you now with that wicked smirk. Through the closed door you can hear your sons laugh and giggle as the sound of a train horn fills the square.

“Will they be alright?” you whisper as you stand from the couch and walk towards him.

“Of course, don't worry! Edgar will have an eye on them as usual,” he says with a disarming smile as he grabs your hand and eagerly pulls you along, right towards your bedroom.

You hold him back and take a look towards your daughter, who is focused on her drawings once again. “What about Anne?” you whisper, knowing what your husband is up to.

“She'll be fine, too,” he whispers back, leaning over you to brush his lips against your ear. “She won't hear a thing...”

You blush at the implication. When you look up at him, you can't help but smile back as he watches you with those dark eyes that can make you do anything. Biting your lip, you nod and follow him into your shared bedroom.

As the door closes behind you, you are very glad that he put up all those silencing charms and protection spells and anything else that will keep whatever happens in here out of earshot of your precious children. Because when he grabs your waist and pulls you flush against his body, you know you won't be able to keep your noises to yourself.

He doesn't waste any time and starts to undress you with nimble fingers, quickly unbuttoning your shirt as he leans down to shower your face and neck with light, innocent kisses. You inhale sharply.

“Do you know how old our sons are?” he then asks as he pushes your skirt down your legs.

You are a little confused by his question and frankly, a little too distracted to think at the moment. “They are... ten...” you whisper.

“And how old is our baby girl?”

“Five,” you reply and tilt your head, letting him nibble on your neck as he gets rid of the last of your garments.

“And do you see a pattern there?” he then says and leans back to look at you with a wide smile.

You blink slowly. “Sebastian, what –”

“It is that time again, darling,” he says with a smirk and quickly pushes his mouth to yours, silencing any doubts for the moment. Your hands reach up and cup his face, and when you finally manage to push him off your lips, you stare at him.

“Are you sure about this?”

He laughs. “Yes! Absolutely! It's time for another one, don't you think?”

“But we already live so cramped here...” you start finding arguments, when in reality you don't see any real reason not to indulge in his desire for another child.

“You realize you are a witch and I am a wizard? We'll just add another room, no worries! And I thought you loved the cosy feeling of our tight little space...” he whispers, leaning back down to kiss your cheek.

You breathe a little harder. “Yes, I do...” you whimper as he sinks his teeth playfully into your neck.

“Then I see no problem with me indulging in your tight space,” he says, and his words make you shiver, or maybe it's his fingers slipping between your legs, teasing at your folds.

“Another one, hm?” you whisper breathlessly.

“Or two, who knows?” he laughs and quickly picks you up to carry you to the bed. You frown at his words. “Those twin genes are strong...”

You groan playfully as he sets you down, and you scramble back on the bed, watching him. He is out of his clothes in no time, and when he crawls over you, settling right between your open legs, he gives you a serious look.

“Only if you're ready,” he says quietly, his dark eyes wandering over your face.

You watch him, and despite the emotional blackmail of those damn eyes, you find yourself smiling and already imagining having another baby. You also think about the last times the both of you decided on adding to your little family. The many hours you had spent in bed together come to your mind, and you can only imagine how long it will take this time. The thought alone causes your legs to twitch.

“Yes,” you eventually say and reach your arms out to him. “I am ready,” you whisper, and when he follows your beckoning to lie on top of you and bury his face in the crook of your neck, you add: “Put your seed in me, Sebastian.”

He leans back immediately and stares at you, not having expected these kinds of words from his beautiful, innocent wife. A sly smirk breaks from his lips. And you smirk right back. He must know by now that your sweet face is only a facade. He's corrupted you a long time ago. And even though you spend nearly every weekend in bed together, enjoying the other's body, the prospect of doing the deed with a purpose, makes it even more exciting for you.

“Then we won't need these,” he says with a wider smirk as he leans over you to the night-stand, rummaging through the first drawer where you keep your contraceptive potions. “Instead we might need... this,” he whispers and produces a tiny flask. “It's going to be a long night, love,” he adds and looks at you, before he downs the contents of the potion he rarely uses, but when he does, you know you're in for a treat – that will last (him) a very long time indeed.

You blush deeply and bite your lip, the heat already spreading through your body. When he leans back, gently putting his entire body weight on you as he cups your face with both hands, you see something you see very rarely: a tear in the corner of his eye. You quickly lean up and graze your thumbs over his cheeks. “You make me very happy, you know that?” he says softly, smiling at you.

You smile back and lean up to kiss him gently. “I'm trying my best,” you reply.

He chuckles. “Oh you don't even have to try, darling,” he says and kisses you back so gently you almost forget about what will come next. “You just do, no matter what you do, what you say, how you look, just thinking about my beautiful wife and all the things she has already done for me...” He inhales deeply. “I love you,” he says and presses his lips to your cheek, his eyes boring into yours. “And I will always love you.”

The warmth his words (and the way he looks at you) create in you almost overpowers the heat you feel for him. Grabbing the back of his neck, you pull him down onto your lips and kiss him deeply. “I love you too...” you whisper breathlessly between circling your tongue around his. “I love you so much, Sebastian. And now fill me up already!”

You feel him chuckling against your mouth. “So eager,” he teases and pushes his tongue deeper into your mouth. When he leans back slightly, planting tiny kisses on your lips, cheeks and jaw, his low voice vibrates through your very core. “My naughty, naughty girl...”

You watch him with your head spinning from lack of air, a small smirk playing around your lips as he moves his mouth to your neck. While you play with his hair, he sucks and nibbles on your soft skin, marking you as his own, as if the ring on your finger and the three children somewhere beyond your closed bedroom door weren't enough proof that you were his and his alone. That is the last time you'll think about your beautiful offspring for this day (or so you hope), as other things settle in your mind and you really don't want them to mix.

When he is done with his mark, gently lapping at your bruised skin, he kisses your neck and leans back on his arms, taking some of his weight off you, allowing your chest to rise and fall faster as you watch him. He looks at you with those dark hungry eyes, and you inhale deeply as he starts showering your bare body with kisses, all the way from your collarbone over the peaks of your plum breasts (that he gives a gentle squeeze with one of his hands as he moves down) until he presses his mouth to your stomach, his fingers softly massaging your skin.

“I can't wait to fill you up,” he whispers hoarsely, kissing your stomach, his fingers pressing down firmly. “I'll fill your womb...” he says and rests his head on your lower torso as if listening for something that isn't even there yet. “And I'll watch you grow... knowing it was my seed that made you so...” You feel his heavy breaths on your skin as you reach down to gently caress his hair, digging your fingers through his locks, smiling softly to yourself.

He stays like that for at least ten seconds, giving you the illusion of peace and quiet and hopeful dreams of the future, a really tender and romantic moment, and once those seconds are over, he presses his lips to your stomach, pushes himself up and quickly leans back, looking at you with that wicked smirk again.

“Let's prepare my beautiful breeding vessel,” he teases and grabs your hips to position himself right between your legs.

You stare at him. “What did you just call me?” you laugh as he puts your legs on his shoulders.

He just smirks wider, and without any warning, he leans down and presses his mouth to your aching centre, kissing your lower stomach down towards your quivering core. You forget about his wording the moment his lips close around your clit. A soft moan escapes you as you throw your head back into the pillow. You feel his tongue prodding at the throbbing bundle of nerves as his fingers wrap around your thighs, squeezing them hard.

“Ugh, call me whatever you like...” you groan, your hips bucking against his face as he keeps sucking with vigour. He chuckles against you, his voice and the feeling of his stubble on your sensitive skin giving you all the friction you need to produce another long moan.

“Sweetheart,” you hear him say as he releases your clit and plants soft kisses on your heated skin. “Darling,” he continues, and you shiver with every term of endearment and every kiss. “Honey.” He keeps going, whispering more names as he presses his mouth to your lower lips, his tongue gently swiping along them. “Love. Sweetie. Baby...” He pulls your soft skin between his teeth and gently sucks on it, coaxing more moans out of you as your fingers grip his hair tighter. “Kitten. Pet,” he finishes as he releases you again and leans up to look at you.

You watch him out of half-lidded eyes, your breaths shallow. As he holds your gaze, you feel one of his hands moving over your centre, his fingertips tracing the outer edges of your labia. Warmth settles in your cheeks as he keeps rubbing his fingers over your sensitive skin, his dark eyes boring into yours, a concentrated look on his handsome face. When he teases a finger between your folds, he looks down and raises his eyebrows.

“So wet for me, my love,” he whispers and moves his finger up and down your slick, the slight squelching sounds filling the room – and you with enough embarrassment that you turn your head away and put a hand to your mouth to hide behind. “You are so beautiful,” you hear him whisper. “Everything about you... Don't be ashamed.”

When he suddenly leans over you and grabs your face with both hands, making you look at him, you gasp softly. His wet finger grazes your ear, and you bite your lip, swallowing hard.

“No need to hide from me, darling,” Sebastian says sternly, watching you closely. “I know every inch of your body, I've seen it so many times and it still amazes me to this day and all the days to come. What your body has given me in all these years... I cannot express how proud I am of you,” he whispers intently, before kissing you softly. “But I will always try.”

You grab the back of his head and kiss him back with fervour, not letting go of him now. He complies and deepens the kiss as his hand moves back down between your legs, continuing its journey through your warmth. When you feel him prod at your entrance, you whimper softly into his mouth. He shushes you and keeps his tongue in a playful wrestle with yours before he pushes one of his fingers into you.

Yours walls clench around him as he starts to explore your tightness, pushing against and scraping over your soft wet flesh until he pushes as deep as he can from this angle. It is when he begins to pump his finger in and out, slowly at first, then much faster and harder, that you moan into his mouth and hold onto him tighter, feeling the tension building up quicker than you've expected.

Suddenly he leaves your mouth and scrambles back down between your legs, repositioning himself right at your quivering cunt. He adds another finger and continues pushing them into you hard and fast, while his free hand holds down your hips that you can't seem to control any more. More moans escape you, and you have to grip the bedsheets as he leans his head down and sucks on your clit again.

His tongue is eagerly lapping at your nub, rigorously pressing and prodding it, licking and rubbing, while his fingers speed up more and more, the wet sounds echoing through the room. But you're too aroused to be embarrassed now as you thrash your head around in nothing but pure ecstasy. You moan his name louder and louder, and when the tension reaches its highest point – he suddenly withdraws his fingers, and you feel his face pressing against your folds as he slips his tongue past your stretched entrance.

“Come on my tongue, darling,” you feel him mumbling into you, and as he moves his wet fingers to feverishly rub at your clit, you comply without hesitation as the coil burst within you, and you cry out and press your back into the mattress, your release pushing out of you with a force that shakes your entire body as you arch your hips off the bed and right into his face. He moves with you, holding your rear with his free arm while he laps at your juices.

More tremors and shivers rush through you, before you slowly come down again, gently placed back with the help of his hand. Breathing heavily, your heart thundering inside your chest, you watch out of hooded eyes how he eventually emerges from between your legs, his entire face covered in your release.

You sit up then, shaking badly, but you feel the need to do this as your hands find his cheeks, and you wipe at them, watching him with your own cheeks bright red. He chuckles and grabs your wrists, leaning towards you to claim your mouth instead. You taste yourself on his tongue as you deepen the kiss hungrily. When he leans back, you sneak a hand out of his grip and push a strand of his messy hair out of his forehead, smiling softly at him.

He smiles back and gives you another peck, before he gently but firmly pushes you back down on the bed, his hand trailing your chest, teasing at your hard nipples, until he rests it once more on your shivering stomach. Pressing down hard on your skin, you see him lick his lips. You swallow at the sight, knowing what is going through his head right now, and soon enough he moves again.

You watch him scramble off the bed, your eyes inadvertently moving towards his hard arousal twitching slightly (the potion seems to have worked already) as he comes to stand at the foot of the bed. His hungry eyes move to yours, and in the next moment, he has grabbed your waist and pulled you towards him, your legs falling off the bed. You let out a surprised shriek-laugh. He then grabs a pillow and shoves it under your lower back, raising your hips up.

He's always so gentle in his preparations that you sometimes forget what kind of animal he can turn into once he is done with said preparations. Yet he's usually quick to remind you. As he positions himself between your legs, you watch him grabbing his cock with one hand, the other ghosting your stomach downwards until he teases your throbbing clit. When he pushes his tip against your folds, you brace for his intrusion, watching him with your lips parted, yet he takes his time and lathers his girth with your wetness first, slowly rubbing it up and down through your slick.

You moan softly at the sensation, one of your hands moving up to caress your firm and currently unattended breast. While you watch him stroke his cock with confident strength, you roll your nipple between your thumb and index finger, whimpering quietly. His eyes snap to your face, and the dark look he is giving you almost freezes you on the spot. As he stares at you, he aligns his tip with your entrance, and at the same time as he pushes into you with one swift snap of his hips, his hands move forwards and grab both of your breasts at once, firmly squeezing them as he rolls his hips against you.

A loud moan escapes you, and you quickly retrieve your fingers from his grasp before you claw them into the bedsheets. Your walls may have expected his intrusion, but when it happened, it still took them and yourself by surprise. His force is unrelenting, and he only stops pushing into your tight channel when his balls press against your arse. You gasp, barely able to breathe for a moment, as you try to adjust to his size.

He's holding onto your breasts tightly, using them to guide his pelvis flush against yours, and once he's satisfied with how deep he is inside of you, he starts massaging your soft flesh, his palms rolling over your nipples, coaxing more and more whimpers out of you. “I wonder,” you hear him say gravelly, “I wonder how big they'll get this time...”

You chuckle softly, even more so when you catch the slightest bit of pink on his cheeks. Unclenching your hands, you rest them on his, causing him to look at you. His smile is almost shy and reminds you so much of the boy you fell in love with all those years ago. Even back then, he has been able to do the most vile things to you, but when it came to your breasts, he had always cherished them greatly, probably even more so now that they were so much bigger.

He licks his lips and folds his body over yours, moving within you as he does so, causing you to gasp slightly, before he places a soft kiss on your mouth, holding his face there for a moment, as if asking you something he cannot quite put into words. But you know what he wants to do, and with another chuckle, you put your hands down and move your chest up against the firm grasp of his. “Go ahead,” you whisper.

His eyes light up, and as he lowers his face down, moving his hands to hold your waist, his mouth quickly finds the pert bud of your left breast, eagerly sucking on it. As you moan softly, your hand starting to caress his hair once more, you watch him swirl his tongue around your sensitive skin, his teeth grazing it almost a little roughly. After nurturing three very hungry children, feeling the mouth of your husband there doesn't come as a surprise to you.

His words, however, catch you a little off guard. “I can't wait for you to lactate again...” he mumbles against you, and you hide your blush with a soft laugh.

“You might need to put a baby in me first, you know?” you tease him after he keeps caressing your tender tits, sucking on one and massaging the other with his fingers. You even buck your hips against him, reminding him how he's still buried deep within your warmth.

Without leaning back, he looks up at you, the creases in the corners of his eyes deepening as he smirks against your chest. “Who's impatient now?” he teases right back and gives your hard nipple a firm suck and a quick nibble.

You inhale sharply, glowering at him. He laughs as he leans back eventually, his fingers drawing soft lines on your stomach as he does. Once he's towering over you once more, with his hands now firmly on your waist, he tilts his head. Without another word, you feel him pulling out slowly, your walls clenching around him, trying to suck him back in. He almost slips out all the way, but then he thrusts forward harshly, hitting your cervix with a force that makes your breath hitch in your throat.

He repeats the exact same motion several times, each time pushing as deep as possible with as much strength as he trusts himself to exert against you. You quickly turn into a moaning, whimpering mess, your legs twitching badly with every slam of his pelvis against you. In the middle of your haze, you admire his control and wonder when he'll lose it as well. But he stays very deliberate in his movements, guiding his length in and out of you with slow but hard stabs that leave you shuddering and aching for more.

His grip on your waist betrays him though, you can see the veins and muscles popping beneath the skin of his arms as he tries to keep that steady rhythm for as long as possible, even though you know he wants nothing more than to ram into you in rapid, forceful little snaps of his hips as he fucks you open to finally receive his seed.

You watch him out of half-lidded eyes, your lips parted and swollen, your noises bleeding into the slapping of skin against skin that fill the small room. You manage to move your shaking hands down, gently brushing against the vice-like grip he has on your waist. He looks at you then, his eyes darker than ever, his own lips trembling before he presses them together into a straight line. In-between softly moaning, you smile at him – and that is all it takes for him to change his rhythm.

He moves his hands to rest on either side of your hips, clenched to tight fists, as he then starts to plunge into you faster, no longer as deep, but still pushing with as much fervour and vigour as he can muster. His groans fill your ears, and you close your eyes as the sensations build up more and more inside your stomach. Every thrust rocks you up the bed, but before he pushes you further, you raise your twitching legs and wrap them tightly around his waist, the change in angle coaxing even louder moans out of your throat.

Grabbing your thighs, he holds you in place and keeps slamming his pelvis against yours, eventually finding a rhythm that is both fast and deep, and every single inward motion hits that sweet spot right at your cervix. You squirm and writhe, whimpering more and more as you arch your back into the mattress, completely overwhelmed by the pleasure he is giving you. You throw your arms back and grab at the edge of the bed, holding onto it as if your life depended on it. The way your muscles contract it certainly feels like it.

“Come for me, baby,” you hear him grunt quietly, and when your eyes move to his face, you see that he's holding back his own release with how his jaw is clenched.

You start moving your hips with him, and it doesn't take long for you to fulfil his wish. The pleasure explodes inside you, sending you thrashing around on the bed, a long cry escaping you, before your entire body freezes and the coiled up tension dissipates in nothing but pure bliss that gnaws at the edge of your vision. He holds you tightly during your orgasm, keeping his rapid rhythm, forcing you higher and higher, until his hips snap against you for one final deep thrust, and it feels as if he's even deeper now, his tight, quivering balls buried in your folds as he comes right after you with a loud groan.

Your walls flutter around his cock as you feel him twitching within you. His warm seed pumps out of him with every twitch, painting your walls, squeezing into any orifice it can find, and as it does, he moves one of his hands to your stomach and pushes down hard again, feeling the sensation of his release through the deep tissue of your skin. You whimper slightly, and he eases his grip and looks at you, panting just as much as you do, but he still gives you a smile that almost pushes you over the edge again.

You reach your arms out to him, beckoning him closer, and he complies, leaning over you to press his lips to yours as you embrace him tightly. You can still feel him twitching inside you, still filling you up, as his tongue invades your mouth hungrily. Kissing him back, you moan softly against him, your crossed feet caressing his lower back as you do so. The warmth within you is indescribable, be it the actual seed seeping into you or the thought of what it will do to you eventually, it fills you up to the brim with happiness and then some.

You feel the same emotion coursing through him as he holds you firmly, his hands slipping beneath your body as he presses you to his chest and lifts you slowly into a sitting position. Once he releases your mouth again, you rest your forehead against his shoulder, breathing heavily.

Yet as you think he is done with you, happy with filling you up, you must have forgotten who it is that's holding you in his grasp. You should have known better than to think that Sebastian Sallow will leave it at this. He knows what he wants, and you know he won't stop until he gets it. It being the absolute certainty that his seed has found a home in your womb. And as you look at him, your limbs twitching in exhaustion, you know he isn't done with you yet.

That wicked smirk is back on his lips, and as you notice it, he presses his mouth against yours for a quick kiss before he slowly lets go of you, his hands prying your thighs open until your legs fall boneless to his sides. Pressing his hand on your lower stomach, he slowly moves back and pulls out of you. Sitting on the edge of the bed, you bite your lip as you watch him, the sensation causing more tremors to rush through your body.

As soon as his cock leaves your warm embrace, covered in your combined juices, he puts his palm over your entrance, trapping the seed that's bound to spill from you. “Hmm,” he makes in thought and looks from his hand to you and back down.

Raising an eyebrow, you witness the gears turning in his head, amusement settling in your chest. When he then grabs your hand and switches his hand with yours, pressing it gently against your wetness, you frown deeply. “Do you expect me to sit here with my hand down there, waiting for something to grow?” you tease, your voice slightly hoarse.

He chuckles a little nervously. “No, of course not,” he says and looks around the room. “Hold it for me for just a moment, okay?”

You watch him walk around the room until he stops in front of your dresser, shamelessly rummaging through your underwear drawer. He retrieves a pair, but then his eyes fall onto the box you store on top of the furniture piece. He drops the garment and grabs something else instead, and as he returns to you, your mouth falls open. “Sebastian... what –”

But you can't stop him as he takes your hand away and shoves one of the many wand handles you collected over the years right into your quivering cunt, plugging it shut. It feels cold and hard as it pushes against your walls. You gasp and shudder deeply, staring from the intricate black object poking out of your entrance up into his flushed face.

“You can't be serious,” you just say and shake your head. “Is that one of the marble handles?”

“It is, fits perfectly, doesn't it? I'll clean it after, don't worry,” he adds cheekily and leans down to kiss you. “Now turn around for me,” he then commands, waiting for you to obey.

You do, obviously, and stand up on shaking legs. You feel his hands guiding you as you turn around, clenching your thighs together to keep the handle inside. Once you climb back onto the bed on your hands and knees, you feel his fingers pushing the object back in as it threatened to slip out. Shivering, you lean down on your chest and elbows, arching your body to only keep your rear in the air. As you settle in the new position, he steps behind you, grabbing your hips to move you a little closer to the edge again.

You turn your head and rest on your cheek, taking a shuddering breath as you watch him out of the corner of your eye. He has his cock in one hand and gives himself a few tight strokes, breathing heavily. Apparently the potion still works, and he has a lot more to give you. His other hand plays around with the wand handle lodged inside you as he pulls it and turns it, teasing you with every slight movement.

“We should use toys more often, don't you think?” you hear him say, and you let out a tired chuckle that's almost a groan.

“Well, next time you bring gifts to the kids, think of me as well, alright?” you whisper into the pillow.

He laughs and pokes at the object again, pushing it deeper. You whimper quietly, your legs shaking at the sensation. “You can't tell me you never thought of sticking these things into your pussy,” he says quietly through laboured breaths.

“Who says I haven't?” you reply with a smirk. That renders him completely speechless. “You're usually gone all week...” you purr and lick your lips. “And a girl has needs...”

He exhales loudly, and suddenly he grabs the wand handle and basically rips it out of you. You shriek and squirm, and with a heavy thud it lands on the floor next to the bed. Before you can complain, you feel his tip pressing against your entrance. “You would choose one of those,” he says through gritted teeth, “over my cock?” He doesn't wait for your answer (and frankly it's not necessary), he simply rolls his hips forwards and rams his entire length into you.

Coated with his seed and prepared from the handle, your walls welcome him back with ease. You moan as he pushes in deep once more, wrapping his arms around your stomach and pulling you flush against him as he folds his body over yours. You can feel him pressing against your cervix and almost further as he stands balls deep over you, holding your shuddering body that would certainly fall into itself at the sensation if it wasn't for his strong arms.

“Doesn't this feel so much better?” he whispers as he leans down more, his lips brushing over your ear.

“Yes...” you whimper. “Of course... it does...” Breathing seems hard in this position with his body weighing on you and his cock prodding your womb.

He kisses your earlobe and starts grinding his hips against you in small circles, each movement coaxing more noises out of you. This time his noises join yours, and the heavy breaths he issues right against your ear make you close your eyes and moan softly as you dig your fingers into the bedsheets.

“Have you thought about names yet?” he then coos, and you can only groan as a shiver runs down your spine.

“No, Sebastian...” you mutter into the pillow. “Kind of... busy here...”

His laugh and the low timbre of his voice almost send you right over the edge. “I was thinking... Beatrice... if it's a girl... or Bartholomew if it's a boy...”

You squirm beneath him, exhaling loudly through your nose. “Bartholomew?”

“Yes...” he grunts as he starts giving you tiny thrusts that send tiny jolts of pain through your body. “Seems... fitting... you know with... Benjamin... and Archie... and Anne...”

“Sebastian!” you squeal and buck your rear against him. “Can we not talk about our children while you are balls deep in my vagina?”

“Oh sweetheart,” he chuckles into your ear. “That's where those children came from, why shouldn't we?”

You groan and bury your flushed face in the pillow. “I like Beatrice,” you then mumble, earning you another low chuckle that makes you shudder deeply. You feel him kissing your cheek.

“Would be nice to have another baby girl,” he whispers and inhales deeply as he halts the movements of his hips for a moment.

You relax slightly, but it only lasts for so long before he leans back suddenly, grabs your waist and starts ramming his cock deep and fast into your quivering cunt. The moans that fall from your lips are loud and quick and make your head spin. You grip the bedsheets tightly, your knuckles turning white, as you brace your body against his rapid thrusts.

Once again you'd be impressed by his stamina if your head wouldn't be so empty. As he grunts and groans, his movements far from deliberate now and more on the rougher side, you can only lie there, your face pressed into the pillow and your knees shaking so badly you wonder how you can still keep them up like this. Perhaps it's his grip on your waist that holds you up, or it's sheer willpower as you try to do your part of this deal in providing him the best angle for him to push his length into you.

You can feel him going deeper and deeper, and the slight shudder in his movements tells you that he's trying to press himself into regions he shouldn't possible enter, yet he tries nevertheless – and the pressure of his attempts is what kicks you right over the edge. The tension in your stomach coils up once again, and when your body starts spasming violently, you know you can't hold it any longer.

As your knees give way under the intense tremors, you feel your walls tightening around him painfully, all of your muscles contract, and this time, it's a long and loud wail that leaves your lips as you fold under the pleasure of your third orgasm of the day. The tight grip of his hands on your bruised waist holds you in that position, and you feel him leaning closer, one of his knees propped up beneath you in support as he keeps slamming his pelvis into yours forcefully.

All you can hear is the blood rushing through your ears, the almost obscene slapping of skin against skin and his deep, animalistic grunts as he exerts himself to crash over the edge as well. When he finally does, he groans loudly, his final thrust into you so powerful it pushes you right into the bed before his body falls on top of yours, his cock ramming deeper as he shoots his load right into your womb.

You cry out in a mixture of pain and pleasure, buried beneath his weight and overwhelmed by the sensation of his cum shooting into you in thick warm spurts as his cock twitches inside you, filling you up more and more as he lies heavily on you, his shallow breaths right in your ear. You can barely breathe yourself, but somehow it doesn't matter.

You're one step closer to bearing his fourth child.

It takes him a moment to collect himself again, and when he does, it's due to an interruption you both haven't anticipated. There's a faint knock on the door that makes you shudder deeply. He shifts on top of you slightly, inhaling sharply as he stretches his hand out to summon his wand from the pile of clothes next to the bed. You hear him muttering something and you know he's lifting the silencing charm on the door to answer whoever is on the other side.

“What is it?” he calls, trying to sound as composed as possible – despite the rather indecent situation you both find yourselves in.

“Daddy? Archie hit his head!” you can hear the faint voice of your daughter through the door.

You immediately start to stir beneath him as your motherly instincts kick in. But he holds you down with a firm hand to your shoulder as he leans back up slightly.

“Is he bleeding?” he asks through the door.

“No,” comes the hesitant answer.

He exhales loudly. “Is he conscious?”

“Is he what?”

“Can he talk? Cry? Are his eyes open?” he explains, in spite of everything calm and patient.

“He's crying,” Anne answers quietly.

“Then he's fine,” Sebastian mutters under his breath, and you are tempted to hit him if any of your limbs would work. He notices your reaction nonetheless and quickly kisses the back of your head. “I'll be there in five minutes!” he then calls to his daughter. “Go and get Mr Adley!”

“Okay, Daddy,” your little girl squeaks, and you can hear quick footsteps hurrying away.

After he puts the silencing charm back up, he drops his wand next to your head and leans down once more, pushing you deeper into the bed again, his lips brushing over your ear. You can still feel him twitching inside you, he's still not done filling you up. While you feel a little ashamed to have been interrupted by your daughter (though she luckily didn't catch you in the act, you really don't want your kids to ever see you like this), his body just kept going, and you admire his willpower once again.

You admire him, period.

For a moment you just lie there, your bodies moulded together, before you stir slightly. “Sebastian,” you whisper quietly, your voice muffled by the pillow beneath you.

“Hmm?” he hums softly against you.

“You realize that Edgar will come here, right?” you say with a soft chuckle.

“Oh blast!” he then hisses, and suddenly he leans back, unfolding his body from yours, leaving your skin tingling and cold without his warm embrace.

You feel him scrambling back, and when he pulls out, you moan softly as your walls clench tightly, threatening to pump his seed out as well. Yet he is one step ahead of you, and without any warning, you feel the cold, hard wand handle plugging your hole again. Squirming against it, you feel him grabbing your hips and turning you around before he pushes your thighs firmly together. “Hold that for me, will you?” he urges and then proceeds to dress in what must be a new record for him.

As you look at him, you can't help but smile. Inhaling deeply, you lean on your elbows and watch him. There he is, back in his shirt and his trousers, his soaked, throbbing cock hidden away behind the stiff fabric, not even hinting at the erection that he forced into hiding. He must be very uncomfortable right now, yet he doesn't show it one bit. When he notices your smile, he walks around the bed and leans down to kiss your sweaty forehead.

“I'll be right back, alright?” he whispers, watching you closely. “I promised you a long night, remember?”

“Oh I remember,” you whisper back and grab his arm gently. “Take care of our children, okay?”

“Of course, love,” he says and kisses you once more. “I bet Edgar would love a sleepover party, don't you think?”

You laugh softly. He winks at you, grabs his wand from beside your head and unlocks the door, before he leaves you alone in your bedroom, filled with his seed and the promise to give you even more. Lying back with a sigh, you close your eyes and shift against the wand handle between your legs.

Ending notes:

I almost feel the need to continue this and build a whole ass story around it. I mean, imagine a 30-something Professor Sallow, teaching Magical Theory, stepping into Fig's footsteps, teaching and inspiring young minds. And then when he's home, he has his cute little children (who'll attend Hogwarts soon-ish) and his loving wife and oh the potential this has! (But we'll see. Maybe I'll just drop a little more snippets of life with Dad!Seb in the future, who knows.) (Psst! Part two just dropped! Look!)

(By the way: The names of his kids are kindly borrowed from @subastian-swallows who made a Dad!Seb-bot whose prompt alone inspired me to write this!)

Oh and that wand handle... is this one, just for reference, if you need it.

Also, maybe a little disclaimer: I am not a mother and never intend to be one, but this mf of a pixel boy makes me indulge in things I never considered before, so I hope my attempt at portraying a family was somewhat realistic.

Thank you for reading!

Btw:

THERE'S A SECOND PART NOW!!!

[ masterlist ]

Other Kinktober submissions:

Pleasant dreams... and tentacles (somnophilia, tentacles)

A scholar and a pervert (overstimulation, sex toys)

The horny ghost (voyeurism, masturbation, spectrophilia)

It belongs to me (deepthroating, semi-public)

A Filthy Fantasy (1/2) (cnc, bondage, sensory deprivation, orgasm denial)

A Filthy Fantasy (2/2) (threesome, oral/vaginal/anal)

[umi-adxhira]

ᝰ.ᐟ SERENITY | 006

FANDOM: TWTPTFLOB

WARNINGS: Idk mention of seduction lessons but we don't take it, Lante is his own warning

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hey yall. I've already done the writing for this and the next chapter. I wanted to plan all of the chapters before publishing them but I'll probably do that after Chapter 10. There's not a lot of reader's thoughts because I think I'm overdoing it ngl

◄ PREVIOUS CHAPTER NEXT CHAPTER ►

The room smells of burnt cigar, a smoky undertone mingling with the sharp tang of polished metal. Lante’s office is exactly what you’d expect from a man like him: a cold shrine to his ambition of being a powerhouse of drugs and weapons. It looks just like the manhwa. Dark, gloomy, kinda cool. He leans back in his high-backed chair, a smirk playing on his lips as you stand before his desk.

“You know why you’re here,” he says, eyes boring into you, calculating. Lante doesn’t speak for the sake of speaking. Every word he speaks is like a piece on the chessboard.

You nod slightly, uncertain. “No… what’s happening?”

His smirk deepens. “Don’t insult me by pretending you’re clueless. Yggdrasil. The most important event in the world, where alliances are forged and enemies weeded out. Where opportunity lies for those sharp enough to take it.” You are the enemy, dude. Also, Yggdrasil so soon? Well, it is it be expected. It never mentions what time of year the event takes place, but last time I checked… autumn? Yeah, the leaves are falling.

You clasp your hands behind your back, maintaining an air of innocent ignorance. “What will be required of me?”

Lante rises from his chair, pacing slowly around the room. He stops to inspect a gleaming dagger displayed on the wall, running his finger along it. “You’ll play your part, of course. You’ll smile, you’ll flatter, you’ll intrigue. It’s a simple game if you’ve the wit for it. But I’ve noticed a certain… roughness around the edges with you.”

Your jaw tightens. “Roughness?”

“Your manners,” he replies, deadpanned. “Or lack thereof. You’re seem clever, I’ll give you that. But cleverness alone won’t open the doors I need you to walk through.”

“And what do you propose?” If you say lessons I swear to the mighty Lord in the sky I will-

“Lessons,” Lante declares, the word falling from his lips like an order, not a suggestion. I hate you. “You’ll be under Griselda’s guidance for etiquette and manners. She’ll teach you how to carry yourself properly, how to speak in a way that turns heads and commands respect. You’ll learn to walk like someone who belongs.”

“Like I belong? But isn’t the part of my intregue is that I don’t belong?”

Ignoring you, he adds, “And Roxana will handle the… other aspects of your training. Seduction. Subtlety. The art of disarming someone without drawing a blade.”

“Seduction lessons?” you say, the disbelief setting on your face. “People aren’t blind. People know when they’re being seduced, they simply choose not to act on it. It’s not about some elaborate act - it’s about giving them a reason to trust me. A reason to feel secure. I feel as though it’s a small way of giving back all you have gave me, my Lord,” Besides, there isn’t enough time to teach me anything meaningful in a week anyway. Hopefully buttering him up will let me avoid taking these stupid lessons.

Lante’s brow arches at your audacity, but you can see the wheels turning in his head. For all his arrogance, he respects practicality. That’s something I’ve seen time and time again. Finally, he exhales, waving a hand dismissively. “Fine. No seduction lessons. But if your… natural charm fails us, it’ll be your head, not mine.”

“Understood,” you reply, relief hidden beneath a stoic mask.

He claps his hands once, summoning a maid from the shadows of the room. She’s new, younger than the others you’ve seen in his employ, younger than Elaine, her wide eyes darting nervously as she approaches. “Take her to Griselda,” he orders curtly.

The maid nods, gesturing for you to follow. As you leave Lante’s office, you can feel his gaze on your back, heavy with expectation.

⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆

Griselda’s chambers are a stark contrast to Lante’s oppressive office. The room is bathed in warm light, soft tapestries hanging from the walls, and the faint aroma of blooming lilies fills the air. Griselda herself stands by a long table, arranging a set of delicate teacups. Her dark brunette hair cascades down her hair, and her smile is so disarming and innocent it takes you a moment to catch the glint of mischief in her eyes.

“Ah, you must be the new doll,” she says, her voice lilting with amusement. She gestures for you to sit, her movements graceful, similar to her younger half sister Roxana.“Come. Let’s see what we’re working with.”

You take a seat, folding your hands neatly in your lap. “Uuuh, Miss Griselda,” you begin.

“Oh, no need for all that formality,” she interrupts with a laugh, though her eyes study you like a hawk. “We’ll be spending quite a bit of time together this week. Might as well skip the pretenses.” She’s a lot nicer than usual. Perhaps this is also a ploy? Maybe she doesn’t feel the need to act so coy towards Roxana. Maybe this is the side she shows everyone else as a cover? She glides to your side, inspecting your posture. “Straighten your back,” she instructs, tapping lightly on your shoulder. “Chin up. You’ll need to project confidence, even if you don’t feel it. People can smell weakness, and they’ll pounce on it like horny dogs.” Wow that was a stark contrast. Horny dogs?

The next few hours are a barrage of instructions. Griselda corrects everything from the way you hold your teacup to the precise angle of your bow. Her tone is light, almost playful, but there’s an undeniable sharpness beneath it. You get the sense that she’s enjoying herself a little too much, though she never lets it interfere with the efficiency of her lessons.

During a brief pause, as she adjusts the fall of your cloak, Griselda speaks again, her tone more conversational. “So, tell me about your old world. What was it like?”

The question catches you off guard, “Why do you ask?”

She shrugs, a coy smile playing on her lips. “Call it curiosity. You’re a fascinating puzzle, you know. And I do so love piecing things together.”

You hesitate, considering how much to reveal. Griselda’s kind demeanor is a thin veil over a calculating mind, and you’re certain she’ll twist any information you give her into something useful for her own ends. Still, you decide to give in, enough to satisfy her without giving too much away.

“It was… simpler,” you say finally. “Less politics. Well, to someone of my age. I was too young to engage in the higherups like presidents or political parties. In my world, people were more straightforward about their intentions, not covering their true intentions under a guise,”

Griselda tilts her head, intrigued. “Simpler doesn’t necessarily mean better. I imagine it must have been dull, no?”

You smirk faintly. “It had its moments. I’d watch the news or scroll on Tiktok and nothing new happens, so it gets boring a bit. But I’ve adapted to this world just fine.”

“Oh, I’m sure you have,” she replies, her eyes sparkling with amusement. She chooses to ignore the unfamiliar words that escapes your lips, focusing on getting you to talk. “But adapting isn’t enough. If you want to survive, you’ll need to thrive. And thriving requires… improvement.”

[eimearkuopio]

Hozier - Nobody's Soldier (Official Audio)

If I am a prophet - and it feels like I am, but I might be wrong - then I am not the only one currently stirring. I have told the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church that I am not a prophet for the world, just for them. I have given them my message first, pointing it out to them in every place I found it, taking the shattered pieces of myself that their failures left me with and choosing to remake myself into something that may not be what God intended, but that is at least a sound vessel that can contain something without leaking!

I believe the Roman Catholic Church realised in the 1970s just how wrong they were, but the bureaucracy threw their faith in God out along with their faith in themselves, because if Jesus Christ is not the risen Saviour then their faith is in vain. Mine is not. They declared there would be no further general revelation because they lost faith in general revelation as a concept. I believe Vatican II was their attempt to resolve their issues, but they lacked sufficient enlightenment. I believe the present effort on synodality is an attempt to iterate further into something worth being, to get the world out of this Hell that their good intentions have led us into; but I also believe that it is an attempt to abdicate responsibility without abdicating power, and I will have none of that. If you will not listen to the Word of the God you claim to follow, you will hear me instead. Change, or die. It's a prophecy, not a threat. I spent too long building a life I could bear to live in spite of their best efforts to silence or ignore me to give it up just to save their miserable hides. I have been saying for decades that I am still a Catholic so that, if the time comes when I feel the need to speak to them, I will have sufficient cachet that they will listen. I prayed that time would never come, and yet it has. I have just about survived 40 years of my mentally ill grandmother and the hierarchy of the Church reenacting Two Girls One Cup with their mutual worship of one another. I am sure that disgusting analogy has been going on the world over, as people who have no faith claim to nourish people who believe, without anyone bothering to truly change the system and while children starve because none of the adults can be bothered to check whether they are handing out bread or stones - each of which has their place in our lives, but I think we can agree they are not interchangeable! Just because you got lucky enough to mostly receive bread, doesn't mean the current system hasn't resulted in an unnecessary number of cracked fucking teeth!

I believe that I am, at worst, a livestock guardian sheepdog whose instincts are so strong that I have learned their language so I can teach them to do better even if I can't teach them the true will of the One whose sheep they claim to nurture. I believe that the previous generation of sheepdogs have good instincts, but were trained by bad shepherds and hoodwinked by false prophets and wolves in sheep's clothing. I'm not here for the whole world. I'm here to sort the sheep from everyone else, to care as best I can for the domestic animals these shepherds have rustled from other farms and the wild animals they have caged; to give them permission to put down the truly rabid before their disease can spread, and to rehabilitate and release the caged predators whose niche in the ecosystem they failed to recognise when they paved this road.

It doesn't matter if I'm right or not. What matters is, if they believe in God and want to do what He wants, they should listen to what I have to say and then make up their own minds; and if they don't believe in God but they think they know better than everyone else, well, I've read Animal Farm.

[japanese-cryptic-beauty]

Post 2: Correcting Post 1

Or: The journey of Japanese is a journey of folly.

So, I wrote that Japanese has pitch but it's usually not important for meaning, you just sound unnatural.

... Which is something you could say ... Kinda ... sorta ...

Only the Universe has been bombarding me with the importance and prevalence of pitch ever since. So I want to qualify the statement, at least.

Check out this interesting post I found here. Now, if I read this slightly cryptic answer right (it talks about "word-accent" which I assume can mean both "pitch" - Japanese, Chinese - and "stress" - English), pitch is significant to distinguish words with same sounds (homonyms) as follows: Chinese - 71%, Japanese - 13%, English - 0.47%.

Unsurprisingly, in a language (Chinese) using (in its standard pronunciation/main dialect) 5 pitches to differentiate words, pitches are "damn important" (71%). But 13% is actually also quite significant. Your mileage may differ.

Personal bias in skimming information

Now, for me, myself, this is not so surprising. I may have come across the information that pitch exists in Japanese probably twice but my brain may have chosen to willfully ignoring it.

(Textbooks may mention it but then omit it to not overload beginners, I guess.)

Thing is, I have a horrible history with learning how to stress words in other languages. These little accent-y things and squiggles on top of words? They're my nemesis. So I guess I wanted there to be no equivalent of that in Japanese.

I had three years of Ancient Greek in school, an investment of my time that taught me a valuable lesson: Don't learn Ancient Greek. I'm kidding - or am I? - the valuable lesson was to do my choices in a less knee-jerk way. In hindsight, nothing of value would have come of learning Ancient Greek even if I did well. Your opinion may differ. Fine. I really think it's a colossal waste of time unless you make a job choice requiring it. The best it could have done for me was get better at the learning itself or the learning of languages in general. But it failed in the most important thing that language does: connecting people. If it fails at that, it barely has any right to remotely exist as a subject. Nobody likes you Ancient Greek, go away.

Besides the letters, Greek gave me major problems with the stress accents. Put it on a syllable and I would never manage to pronounce the word. I always put the stress wrong. My brain hasn't unlocked how that works. I notice the same in Spanish. I may emulate a speaker (not that I speak Spanish, but when I repeat after someone), but even then I might not even hear the difference.

I know I've aggravated my Swedish teacher for not hearing the difference between his "ooh" and "uh" sounds he was making for the letter "u." (Ironically a song based entirely on the sound "U" is now playing on shuffle.) Hopefully continued exposure and awareness of the problem might help...

There's some good news, though

While my chosen learning method of WaniKani doesn't display stress, it features two speakers, Kyoko and Kenichi that say the readings. I wondered on occasion if they were real, but they do use pitch when pronouncing words. (And they might slightly vary between each other.)

So there's a neat little feature:

You pick your speaker and chose to let pronunciation play out every time the reading is featured - in case of reviews after you transcribed it yourself first.

I have to admit I was in the habit of not playing it when I could do multi-kanji word readings well, but this exposes me to pitch and pronunciation peculiarities I might otherwise ignore.

More exposure!

[EDIT:] Probably more good news, depending where you come from

So, in researching this I came across this article. It provides two pieces of context that I want to quote .

A reply to a letter to the editor of a manga magazine printed in Romaji (without accent marked) quoted in point 5: "When two or three words sound exactly alike except for pitch accent, context is going to resolve the ambiguity virtually 100 percent of the time. In practical terms, accent is probably the least important aspect of Japanese pronunciation no matter what your level of language skill."

In other words, even bad pitch accent will be understood almost always. This is where I first will employ the most horrible, stereotypical example that's ALWAYS trotted out to justify anything: the chopsticks/bridge example.

Chopsticks and bridge both transcribe to "hashi" (and to the same Hiragana). They only vary in rising and falling pitch. Now you could argue that makes pitch important. But as the above quote states - context usually resolves that quite reliably.

I mean, having browsed reddit and Quora for a while, you will inevitably see this being trotted out, and people ask the rhetorical question: Don't you think it's important to know if the bridge is burning or a set of chopsticks?

Rhetorical questions are, of course, only questions in the most technical sense. They're usually just people being smug or actually making biased or even bad faith arguments.

As mentioned above, people are not dumb. Japanese is already incredibly context-sensitive. You constantly have to keep track of things said before - because omission is common. You can leave out the subject because you mentioned it before as "the topic." Good luck with translating that, AI...

You usually can infer what is being said. But propagators of the burning chopstick dilemma are trying hard to make you think their way. Or are they even trying? It's so tired an example. If there were lots of these, surely people would quote them, too? Who cares what's going on with the damn bridge, anyway?!?

Okay, moving on.

I found this from point 6 a very useful and probably true assessment: "People without hearing impairments can mimic the melody of language, but they can hardly interpret visual accent markers into the oral/aural domain without special training because visual and auditory stimuli are processed very differently in the human brain. In all likelihood, the author of the above-mentioned letter simply feels more comfortable visually with accent markers. But using such markers to speak Japanese creates pronunciations that are worse than a crude synthesizer."

Well, I was notoriously bad at it in one language already. I guess I will hold my horses on trying to make that my method. Thankfully, audio material is available in enormous quantities, so we can learn from the melody of native speakers. And that is good news.

[christmasintheloonybin]

mmm idk,my problems seem to be more from the fact that i'm a anxious ugly girl. I've been following you for a while. I really like what you say because somehow I read and I feel a little less lonely. Today I was scrolling through your blog reading because I was so bored in class and I don't have real friends or shit like that (everyone ignores me every time I fucking open my mouth) Your post reminded me of my relationship with my parents I know it's not the same case but my mother doesn't seem to care much about what happens to me either and she doesn't even see me, i don't blame her she is really depressed. On the other side my father, is a misogynist who has always treated me like a piece of shit just for not meeting his standards of what he believes a woman should be, he believed that by having a daughter he would have a kind of model to show off to his friends or I don't know what the fuck he thinks, so I'm just his ugly daughter that he's ashamed of. He doesn't care about my well-being and has never really played the role of a father, he can't play any role as a father because he doesn't love me so he doesn't make an effort to interact with me or support me in something like school or shit that normal parents do.

And I think we have a similar musical taste lol (i love your username btw one of the reasons why your blog caught my attention) #oversharing

(sorry if there is a serious misspelling here i am not a native speaker)

you were very clear and well spoken, no need to apologize.

it is an odd phenomenon that I'm sure has existed but I think is particular to our times, parents who are completely self involved. I think a lot of it has to do with their parents being boomers and the environment they were raised in, "live for yourself" etc, from the Vietnam protests to today there has been no sense of community or some thing that is larger than the individual that a person has no choice but to submit to. of course this attitude has been around for centuries! but this has been the most distilled form, at least in previous generations there were remnants (you MUST go to church, you MUST go to war). a system built around choice is a system that will always lead to unhappiness.

anyways, my point is that the family disintegrates because individuals can only see themselves as individuals, not even archetypes. a woman cannot be a mother and a man cannot be a father because they see themselves as individuals making some stupid free decision and thinking that they can go about things in their own way and that they are doing something new and daring which only leads to psychologically damaged children. society needs significantly less freedom, freedom and individuality only lead to unhappiness because of course a person cannot solve the problems of the universe on his/her own. I would argue that parents as they should be in many ways do not exist anymore, it is more than anything a begrudging arrangement that they feel stifled by. like marriage, if divorce is a valid option then marriage no longer exists. but I am getting off topic.

my parents more than anything are both just unintelligent people in addition to the problems of their generation, and I think obviously this is also the case for many people. I am sorry to hear of your troubles but if it's any consolation my point is that this is not necessarily a strange or unheard of situation and is no way due to a personal failing on your part. I hope things improve for you. this has been much rambling and little empathy but I am happy to know that my obsessive fucking compulsion to TRY and explain every aspect of my life has had some positive effect on someone.

<3

[sketching-shark]

I always appreciate people who are willing to criticize LMK. Even if I don't agree with all your points. There's a vocal section of the fandom that do nothing but praise it and get upset when you find fault with it or any of their beloved characters. I like the show too but there are plenty of flaws and room for improvement. But many don't want to have that discussion. So it's just nice to see some watchers not mindlessly soak up everything the writers give us. Because despite what people say ad nauseum, the show isn't perfect.

Monkie Kid spoilers below:

Huh well anon firstly while I am aware that it can be hard to convey sincerity on the internet, genuinely thanks for messaging me with the approach that you can appreciate me complaining about a lego cartoon even while you don't agree with everything I'm saying. Too often I've seen even what started out as little disagreements in fandom circles explode into gigantic messes because of this all or nothing attitude that's engulfing more and more of fandom. I feel like that more than anything is the reason why I've adopted an perspective of "don't like don't read goes both ways" when it comes to fandom stuff; people should be free to praise or criticize a piece of media as much as they please as long as they're not harassing people over it, and one can follow, ignore, or block as one sees fit.

But hmmmm I know every fandom has its absolute admirers, but in terms of JTTW understandings in the west I feel like that's a liiiiiiitle bit worrisome here because of the way Monkie Kid--at least to me (haha yea subjective opinions ahoy)--seems to rapidly be falling victim to the storytelling detriments of "moar epic!," fandom character favoratism, and demand for angst. I mean, this show started out with the premise that it was going to be a fun adventure aimed at children where they'd get to by-proxy do cool things with one of the most beloved characters from Chinese mythology. But seasons 2, 3, and now 4 have been following this pattern of "Sun Wukong is largely absent--something really bad happens partially because of the big villain but also because the Monkey King made a massive miscalcuation that made everything 1000 times worse--Qi Xiaotian gets trauma upon trauma as a result--we all get together to blow something up at the end which magically fixes everything. FOR NOW."

So yea, in accordance with what seems to be general fandom tastes we get an increasingly traumatized Qi Xiaotian. We get a Six-Eared Macaque (the obvious fandom meow-meow) who now apparently used to be the main member of Sun Wukong's Best Friends Forever club and who obviously never did anything wrong evaaaaaar (what with the show forgetting about all the stuff he put Qi Xiaotian through & everything in the plot so far indicating the shadow monkey believed wholeheartedly in the Monkey King right before Sun Wukong the evil betraying bastard bonked him to death), and we get stakes that are literally about the fate of the entire world or even all of reality every season. But the cost of all of that was a plot structure that is increasingly failing to address many of its threads (hey remember how the Demon Bull family were the ones who released Lady Bone Demon? R we ever going to address that?), less and less and less genuine interactions between Sun Wukong and Qi Xiaotian, and, well, an increasing tendency in both fanon and canon to depict Sun Wukong as a careless screw-up at best and a selfish asshole at worst, or as a traumatized & miserable mess who needs to spend at least 100 years in therapy before he could even think about being anyone's mentor.

I mean hell, based on what I understand from the last twitter blow-up about all of this the response to the possibility that Sun Wukong was Qi Xiaotian's bio dad--you know, something that in a different context could have been a source of joy and excitement if it was about a father and son who had been torn apart through outside circumstances and were finally reunited--was first even MORE anger at the Monkey King for being a deadbeat dad on top of all his other screw-ups, and then relief when a lego show writer felt compelled to make it clear Sun Wukong was not the father. Because at this point if he was indeed Qi Xiaotian's bio dad, especially if Sun Wukong knew it the whole time, the implications would be really, really bad. Add all of that to every other character in Monkie Kid yelling at Sun Wukong for being a dumb idiot and/or terrible person, the absolute silence (except for some very brief flashbacks) on Sun Wukong's thoughts about any of this, and the "chaos monkey uwu" framework that Sun Wukong and his journey is already commonly understood through in the west (plus this weird reluctance and even refusal to consider what happened in the og classic that I've seen in some circles), and it feels like a lot of the Monkey King & co.'s nuance, complexity, and more fascinating aspects are being erased from common western perceptions of Journey to the West. And YEA obviously a silly lego show isn't going to get into the theological & moral complexities of a ~1,400 page novel, but given that Monkie Kid seems to have become one of THE primary ways that a western audience is being introduced to this story, I do wish that there was more of an effort to at least acknowledge what happened in the og classic.

IDK, in terms of Monkie Kid maybe future episodes will finally give us some answers for what happened to the og pilgrims that will be satisfying. Maybe they'll finally provide a decent aswer for why the Monkey King betrayed his sworn brotherhood and became a isolated failure who's hated by basically everyone who actually knows him. But as it currently stands I just think that if you've got a plot where the shifu and tudi pair now barely interact & a fan base where a significant portion is THAT quick to think the absolute worst of the Monkey King even though this is literally a silly lego show about having adventures with the Great Sage, then you really need to pause and think about why we're at this point :I

[cheri-translates]

Headcanon - When you’re angry and say “Don’t touch me”

Original title: 当你生气地说 “你别碰我”

Original writer: 池离子 (chi li zi)

[ VICTOR ]

You’re seated on the sofa, staring at the hour hand of the clock as it points to “1″, trembling with anger. 

Victor! He promised that no matter how busy he was, he’d return by 11pm. Yet, even now, he hasn’t even called to give you an explanation. His phone is turned off, you couldn’t find him at the office, and all the employees had already knocked off.

Feeling upset, you think about heading to bed, but your immense worry causes your hands and feet to turn cold, and the blanket is unable to keep you warm. As such, you have no choice but to send message after message to Victor. 

Since you once made a promise with him not to head out at night, you wait for him to return home obediently. With this thought in mind, you climb into bed, covering yourself up before breaking into tears.

Click.

Although separated by the bedroom door, you can still hear the sound of the main door opening gently, followed by the soft sound of leather shoes stepping on the wooden floor. You know that he has finally returned, but you have no intention of forgiving him for breaking his promise and not returning your calls.

You hear the rustling of clothes being removed, followed closely after by the sound of the bedroom door opening gently, the familiar footsteps nearing you quietly. The space beside you on the bed dips slightly, and you can feel Victor pulling the blanket from your face.

"Dummy... why are you covering yourself up? It’s so stuffy.”

He speaks softly.

When Victor's hand is about to touch your face, you suddenly grab the blanket and turn over, your back facing him. He’s clearly stunned, and then realises that you weren't asleep, and are even a little angry with him. So he shakes your shoulder and says a soft “I'm sorry”.

"Don't touch me!" You shrug his hand away roughly. Curling yourself up, you begin to sob again.

Victor wants to pull you up, but you avoid him with equal determination, before dropping a cold “don't touch me.”

Victor sighs, then explains himself in a fatigued voice. “Sorry. I returned very late, and it’s my fault. When I drove past the park after work, I saw someone selling the taiyaki that you like, so I bought one. I didn’t have a firm grip on my phone and it fell into the water, so I couldn't turn it on.”

"I was going to buy a new phone along the way, but Goldman suddenly rushed over, saying that E Company requested to terminate our partnership due to contractual issues. Because we were pressed for time, I drove to E City with Goldman to hold a meeting, and only managed to rush back at this time... I’m sorry."

After listening to these simple words, you can’t help but feel an ache in your heart. You sit up with guilt. Despite how tired Victor was, he still had to deal with you being angry when he returned home. This... is really sad.

You turn over to look at him. Realising that your eyes are red, he reaches forward to hug you gently, leaning against your ear to say another “sorry”.

There’s a paper bag sitting at the corner of the bed, and you’re able to see half of a cold taiyaki.

"I'm so tired... let me hug you for a while..."

He embraces you tightly, and you reach out to pat his hair, as if touching a helpless child. 

-

[ GAVIN ]

"Sis-in-law, he really doesn’t take advice. I already told him not to rush ahead, but he did it anyway. Now, he doesn’t even dare to step into the house, and it’s really difficult for us...”

You’re listening to the voice message sent by Eli. Gavin was injured during a mission, and was caught red-handed by you. Eli is the spy you’ve arranged to be by Gavin’s side.

“Eli, tell Gavin that I’ve fallen sick, and that I haven’t told him about it because I don’t know what illness it is yet.”

"Sis-in-law... is this... a good idea?"

"Trust me. I can give your team a brilliant tomorrow.”

"Thank you, Sis-in-law!”

Turning your phone off, you lie down quietly. Thirty minutes later, you hear Gavin opening the door while shouting your name. You listen as his footsteps draw nearer, finally pausing at your bedside.

“Wake up, are you okay? What happened? Are you okay?” Gavin reaches out, wanting to pull you over to himself. Enraged, you slap his hands away and yell at him. “Don't touch me!”

Sure enough, he stops, and you hear him sitting down. What follows after is a protracted silence.

Your thoughts: I’m doomed. Does he find me annoying?

Gavin’s thoughts: Something’s wrong. I definitely did something wrong. What did I do wrong? Anyway, I should admit my mistake first.

"Sorry... I was wrong..."

You hear him saying this softly.

"Why were you in the wrong?”

Gavin is dumbfounded.

"I don’t know...”

Despite your anger, your heart aches. As you sit upright, you hear him asking with concern, “Are you sick? How are you feeling now?”

"I'm not sick. I asked Eli to call you home. He said that you were badly hurt and was afraid to see me. Am I that fierce?"

Gavin shakes his head.

"I'm not afraid of you being fierce. You can scold me however you like, but I'm afraid that you’d get tired after scolding me, and feel sad when you see my injuries, so I didn’t dare to return."

Pearl-like droplets of tears fall again, and he hurries forward urgently, wiping them away.

"Don't cry..."

"Where did you get hurt this time... don't be afraid to let me see. What I’m most afraid of is not knowing anything. Don’t refuse to come home..." You’re held in his arms, sobbing as you finish your sentence in bits and pieces.

He coaxes you while rubbing circles on your back.

“Okay, okay... next time, I’ll come straight home. I promise."

[ A few days later ]

"Sis-in-law, didn’t you say there wouldn’t be a problem? Us poor kids had to carry weights on our backs while climbing up a mountain...”

-

[ LUCIEN ]

You dislike that bunch of female students! You! Really! Dislike! Them!

Under the pretext of the lecture, they’d look for Lucien. Once Lucien finishes his class, they would surround him, and Lucien would be in the middle, explaining the questions to them patiently.

It annoys you to death!

You’re nestled in the sofa watching a show. Having finished his shower, Lucien steps out of the bathroom, wiping his hair dry while walking towards you.

“MC, the bathroom is already warm and I've filled the tub with water. You can take a bath now.”

As if you couldn’t get angrier, you notice that the tone of voice he uses with you and the female students is obviously the same! So you purse your lips, ignoring him.

Thinking that your lack of response was because you couldn’t hear him over the sound of the TV, he sits beside you on the sofa, leaning in closer.

"Little Butterfly?”

You turn your head away, unwilling to give him any attention.

Assuming that you’re feeling shy, he reaches out to hug you, but is pushed away. He even hears this:

"Don't touch me!"

Lucien's hand stops in the air. For a long time, neither of you speak.

Just when you decide that you’re causing unnecessary trouble and turn to glance back at him, it’s as though you see the ears of a large canine drooping, its tail swinging slightly.

Why does he look wronged? Also, he's a fox, not a dog!

"MC... do you no longer like me?”

You watch as his handsome brows furrow. His movement of leaning over causes his bathrobe to reveal his neckline, and you’re cornered by him on the sofa.

"Don't touch..."

Before you manage to finish speaking, Lucien buries his face into the crook of your neck, his damp hair rubbing against your shoulder and earlobe gently. His hand reaches out to hug you tightly, and you can hear his muffled voice from the side. 

"Are you leaving me? Don't leave me..."

Huh? You heart aches instantly, and you pat his back. 

“Okay, okay... I’m not leaving you. I was just angry because those female students like you so much! I’m sorry for just now...”

"Next time... I’ll pay more attention... So MC, shall we take a bath together?”

"?"

Today has once again been part of Lucien’s plan.

-

[ KIRO ]

As you stare at the black circles underneath Kiro’s eyes, a certain thought drifts to your mind. 

He must have accepted too many job offers, then failed to get proper rest! 

You’ve already told him several times to reject work if he’s able to. After all, he should give himself a break. The last time, he was so tired that he fell asleep on the sofa in the makeup room and was caught red-handed by you. Now, the situation is not only worse, but he spends his free time accompanying you.

This is outrageous!

"Miss Chips! Let's watch a movie tonight! I starred in it! You’ve seen the trailer and poster, right?" Kiro picks up the cap which he uses as a disguise, then hops around you excitedly. But you just can’t ignore the blackish hue underneath his eyes.

Seeing that you’re ignoring him, he grins and steps forward, tugging on your hand. Fuming, you slap his hand away.

"Don’t touch me!”

Kiro’s hand pauses in mid-air. In just a few seconds, you hear the sound of sobbing. 

"Miss Chips..."

Turning your head to look at him, you see that tears are flowing down his cheeks. His eyes are red, and he’s wiping his teardrops with the back of his hand.

Is this the prowess of an actor? Being able to summon tears at will?

His sobbing turn even more aggrieved, and he carefully reaches out to tug on your hand again. Your heart aches, and you don’t fling it away this time.

"Miss Chips... do you hate me? Don't hate me... I work hard because I want you to lead a life which is worry-free, at least in terms of money... I love you so much..."

Ah! Stop talking! I’m a sinner!

You quickly give him a hug, patting him on the back.

“That will never happen! I like Kiro the most, but I’m very worried about your health. You’re still so young, but you’re this tired every day, so of course I’m distressed and angry. I don't hate you...”

He nods, planting his chin on your shoulder.

"I’m already very happy! I haven’t had to worry about money at all. You’ve worked so hard that I’ve got a surplus of wealth now! I want you to turn down a few projects and stay at home with me for a while, okay?”

You feel some movements on your shoulder. He’s nodding.

"Miss Chips... I like you so much..."

"I like you too!"

"Then you should kiss me now!"

He says with a grin.

?

(Did he follow Lucien’s study plan?)

-

[ SHAW ]

“Spring Thunder! Spring Thunder! You! Spit it out right now! Give it back to me!”

[Regarding the nickname] The CN version of MC’s “Mary Sue” alias is 刘春梅 - Liu Chun Mei (“Spring Plum”). Meanwhile, the CN community likes calling Shaw 刘春雷 - Liu Chun Lei (“Spring Thunder”)

Amid your blood-curdling screeches, Shaw dolidges your flailing hands and successfully chomps down your final strawberry cake.

...

With no intention of speaking to him anymore, you stagger a few steps, collapsing onto the sofa.

Shaw opens a bottle of Cola and a bottle of Pepsi in the kitchen, mixing his favourite, unique drink happily.

When Shaw returns with a large cup of mixed Cola and sees your current condition, he calls out to you twice. However, you have no intention of paying any attention to him considering your enraged and depressed state.

He sits beside you, patting your head. 

Your eyes are sharp, and you slap his hand away, saying the cruel words:

"Don’t touch me!”

In Shaw’s heart, he knows that something bad is about to happen. You didn’t call him “Stinky Brother” this time, which meant that you’re genuinely angry.

“No way, what’s up with you? You have such a reaction just because I ate your cake?”

You’re in no mood to argue with him. Your favourite strawberry cake no longer exists. Without it, you will crumble. 

"Spring Plum?”

"..."

He sets down the Cola, attempting to wrap an arm around your waist. But he’s slapped away once again.

"Don’t touch me!”

"..."

You watch as Shaw retracts his hand, gets up, grabs the keys, opens the door, then leaves. All in one swift movement.

? 

Stinky Brother! He was obviously in the wrong, so why is he the one throwing a tantrum!

You close your eyes, missing that sweet and wonderful strawberry cake. Your mind has no room to think about Shaw.

After some time, you hear the sound of the door opening, followed by Shaw’s footsteps, then something being placed on the table. He sits beside you quietly.

Opening your eyes, you see that Shaw is seated, giving you a piteous look.

The scene before you resembles a world famous painting.

"Sister... I'm sorry... I went to buy a new cake..."

On the surface, you seem engrossed in your thoughts. However, your heart has long since been doing flips.

"Forgive me, okay...? Don’t give up on me just because of the cake...”

As though you’ve just survived a huge bloodbath, you sit up with a “hmph”, then pull the cake box over. Sure enough, there’s an entire cake, decorated with strawberries. 

Placated, you wrap Shaw in a hug and give him a kiss.

"What are you talking about, my beloved Shaw? Why would I not want you! I want you more than cake!”

Shaw's eyes darken.

"In that case... let me see just how much you want me..."

–

More translated and original works: here

–

[ Permission to translate ]

池离子: OK! Just state that the source is LOFTER池离子. Also, if you’ve posted it, could you also take a screenshot for me? No need for the whole thing - just a little will do!

[prome-th3us]

Some Runes readings and how to create Runes

Now that we're done with the meanings, let's talk about some Runes' extractions. I will talk about some if the traditional ways of reading them and then I will tell you my personal way of doing so: I really encourage you to find your own way once you're familiar with the traditional readings, because it will give you a better connection with the Runes and it will help you figure out what they want to say.

Before getting into the topic, I want to tell you something more about the meanings. Don't rely only on the "straight"/" Reversed " Meanings, but rely on what the Rune represents: what kind of success will you achieve? What kind of protection do you need? Some of them have basically the same meanings, but they are telling you something different. Let's have an example. ᛏ means "success", but the one achieved after fights and troubles, while ᛊ also means "success" but the one that a seed achieves thanks to the sun. That's what I mean.

One rune

Think about a question (it should be precise, it will make everything easier), then grab one Rune and gently throw it in front of you and see if it's straight or reversed. This is useful when in comes to a quick question like: how will be my day? Should I do this?

Basic oracle

After thinking about your question, grab a variable number of Runes and gently throw them in front of you. You will see some Runes facing upward and others downward: ignore those and concentrate only on the upward ones and if it's straight or reversed.

Nornir' oracle

It's very simple: throw three Runes sequentially:

The first one is the past and what we can't change (Urdh, the Norn of past)

The second one is the present situation (Verdandi, the Norn of present)

The third one is showing how will be the future looking at how the energies are shaping it rn (Skuld, the Norn of future)

If a Rune is facing downward, just turn it as you will do with a book's page. If you want more details, you can throw other Runes for an insight.

Oracle of the nine Runes

It goes in the same way as I will explain in the next paragraph, but there are some differences:

If a Rune is far away from the others/it's outside of your "mind scheme" ( I explain this in the next paragraph), it can be ignored or it can be more important than the others, it's your choice

The Runes near the centre are more important and personal, the others are more general

My way

Now let's see how I read them: as I said, it's a personal view and you can find it wrong, I'm not saying that this is the only correct way.

I have a scheme in my mind, depending on the question i'm asking:

If it's a question that needs an insight on the future, like "Should I go out with him/her?" Then I'm looking at the influence parts (past with influence, present with influence and so on); if the question is about me or someone I love, like "what's happening? Why am I feeling this way? What can I do?" Then I want to understand what's going on inside myself and if i'm conditioned by other people (inside/outside parts).

If a Rune is following one of the arrows, than it means that I should pay attention to it, but it depends on the shape of the extraction. Anyway usually I go for this:

Above the other Runes: this Rune is influencing the others/my path is leading in this way

Under the other Runes: this rune is kind of "bullied" by the others, I need to find more space in my life for it/ that's the origin of the problem.

Now the extraction. I don't do readings that much so when I do, I want a complete insight of the situation, so I go for 9 Runes. Think about your question, grab them and gently throw them in front of you. You will have some upright Runes which represent the present situation; leave the others for now cause they reprents the outcome. This is an example:

Now let's see where the Runes are pointing, leaving the unknown one for now.

We can see a lot of connection here:

ᛟ/ᛚ are pointing to each other

ᛜ is pointing at ᚺ

ᛗ is pointing at ᛏ

ᛏ is in the middle, so it's a central topic

Then we have three other possibilities:

ᛒ is watching over ᛜ,ᚺ,ᛚ

ᛒ and ᛉ represents two opposite aspects

ᛟ is watching over ᛜ,ᛚ,ᚺ (but I wouldn't say that, it's clear that it's connected to ᛚ)

I like the add a little more spice to the readings, this time nothing like that happened but let's just complete what can happen:

When two Runes form a cross touching each other, than they are opposite aspects of the same thing

When two or more Runes touch eachother without forming a cross, than they complete each other. They represent different aspects of the same thing and together they will give you a complete insight of it.

Let's give an example, with the question "how will this academic year go? Will I achieve my academic goals? Did I make the right choice?"

Let's start with ᛏ: success in every aspect, but after fights and struggle. It's reversed, so probably I will fail some exams and rn i'm struggling with studies or other things.

ᛟ/ᛚ᛬ Othala is reversed, so it means something like a loss of harmony in my family/clan, the loss of security that it gives. But we also have Laguz: there will be a growth, an hard one, but if we keep an eye on it should be fine. It can mean that probably my parents aren't happy with my academic choices, but this shouldn't affect what I decide because it's helping my growth: the water (Laguz) can be stirred sometimes and it can be difficult swimming through, but it will become placid again.

ᛜ/ᚺ᛬ Ingwaz is straight while Hagalaz us reversed, so we have the counterpart of Berkana and the destructive power of the hail. It can mean that we are definitely ready for a change (our college studies for example), but we should remember that changes never come without the destruction of something that was already here: we may face tests but it's what we have to do to become who we want to be.

ᛗ/ᛏ᛬ Mannaz pointing to Tiwaz is reminding us that it's ok to fail, that I am a human and this means that I have positive and negative qualities. I may be struggle and I may feel like shit for that, but i'm human and I'm not perfect, but I will get through it. Reversed means that I can't see a way out and that I have to rely on myself to find it.

ᛒ/ᛉ᛬ Berkana is straight, so we are talking about fertility. Algiz is reversed, so it's like a warning. Basically they can be saying that it's a time of personal growth and "mental fertility" as well so I did the right choice, but I shouldn't let my guard down and I remember to protect myself, both mentally and physically.

Now let's move to the future outcome:

(don't mind the position of the runes I just noticed that it's different, relay on the last pic sorry)

So the last one is ᛈ , and ᛜ/ᚺ is pointing at it.

Perth means "box", something in which you can put something else, but it's original meaning is unknown. If we take this, it can mean that our changes and our path, which we already see may be hard, once we got ok with that, it will lead to the knowledge of our faith. This means that it doesn't really matter what subjects we are studying, but the reason why we decided to do so: we can't know where this is leading but we will soon understand if it was the right choice or if we should completely change our path.

Sorry but I struggled a little with doing a reading for this question lmao, I really just grabbed nine runes without asking anything so I tried my best

How to make runes

I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this topic, because everyone has a different way of making and preparing them.

You will see plenty of rituals on how to do so but they can be pretty difficult to do, especially if you don't have the time or possibility to be seen doing so. Here are some methods:

When I first approached to Runes I really didn't like the energy that the ones from the store had, so I made them in a quick way. I found 24 rocks, I washed them into a river with the intent of making them bond with life/reality (water is a symbol of life), then I went home and with a marker I wrote them on the rocks. Super quick and super simple. Then I slept with Them under my pillow for a week, to bond with them.

Use a little branch. Just cut it in little pieces and wrote the notes on it with a natural ink or if you can it, use a pyrography.

You can make them using the clay that you buy at a store. If you want to color Them, try using natural colors if you can.

You can buy them of course, but be careful with the energies that they have. I did find a store which has perfect runes, but I've been having mine for ages and I really don't feel like changing them.

Someday you will feel the need to cleanse them. This is what I do:

Full moon. Leave them outside for one night (I prefer on the ground, like dirt/rocks) and if they still need a cleanse or more energy, leave them for the day as well

Smoke cleanse/blowing air on them

If it's a material that goes in water, wash them

Pass them throw a flame for a fire cleanse

Then I sleep with them for some nights again, just to be sure.

And that's all for this beginner-friendly introduction to the Runes! There's still a whole world to say about them, but I will get into it in the future, for now here you can access to the whole grimoire I made and if you have any question, feel free to jump into my DMs or to make a question from my profile. I hope it helped you and that you got some interest in this amazing form of divination.

Blessed be 🌑

[shadowturtlesstuff]

Enchanted

finally finished this!!! im so happy with it, and will be writing it in thomas’s pov as soon as possible and perhaps part 2? 

Sleep evades me. My mind keeps returning to last night, specifically to a certain person I had met last night. I pull the covers higher, burying my head as I finally gave into my wandering mind.

~

I stand alone, needing a break from my aunt Amelia. The music was beautiful, a soft sound that filled the entire room. The party itself was decorated in a magical way, the columns in the building encompassed in vines, the tables with floral centrepieces. It was a mixture of whimsy and magic, yet no one seemed happy to be here. Everyone I spoke to was forcing smiles, men faked laughter as they believed this was not a party but a way to make business deals and enforce their own reputation. It was absurd how no one was just admiring the effort people put into making this perfect. It was the same every month, I'd walk to the edge of the room and watch. To calm my nerves, to explore the different flower pieces, the musicians and the flickering candles from the chandelier. The gowns women wore only once to try and show their wealth, whilst I tended to wear the same, as it fit the magical atmosphere this room desperately tried to make people see, yet they were too blind by their greed, the need to prove themselves to everyone to just simply stand back and enjoy themselves.

My cousin Liza seemed to be in conversation with Dacina, the host of the party, someone I had spoken to a few times, each being more enjoyable. Her calming demeanour and charm always lifted my spirits. Her family organizes this ball once a month, her father hates it but makes a lot of business so it is always left to her to plan and design it. With the help of Illeana and lots of their servants they always make this place ethereal. Her brother, Thomas Cresswell, only ever shows up for a few hours then leaves, only being able to handle the faking niceties for so long. Dacina told me of his tolerance, or lack thereof, to society. She speaks highly of her brother, as I once did, yet I have never met Mr.Cresswell. 

The varnished wooden floor slowly gathers marks as couples danced. How I longed to be one of those dancers, being swivelled by someone I loved. They would look at me as if I was the most magical thing in the room, with a soft smile and adoration in every word he whispers to me. I would be his equal as we spun around, the world fading into nothing as we held each other. Alas, those dreams are not likely for someone cruel enough to carve the dead. 

I snap out of my fantasy as a group of older men walk towards the buffet near me. They talk loud enough so everyone can hear, shockingly talking about work. I roll my eyes at them and look away back to the dance floor. The lights above cast shadows, making the scene feel like my imagination as I sit by a fireplace to read a romance novel. If this was a novel, there would be my love interest here, watching and finding the courage to say something. There are families at the table, children clinging to mothers as the men sit and discuss whatever. My father, uncle and aunt sit together in a seemingly civil conversation. I look for Liza again, deciding I should probably stop brooding in the corner but as I look for her my attention keeps going back to the men at the buffet. Not by choice, but by their obnoxious decision to shout their conversation. 

“A woman led the strike, ridiculous, she had to go,” I heard an oldish man say, followed by murmurs of agreement, “these strikes are out of hand, demanding we pay more, absurd notions.” The man is none other than Mr. Birling, a notoriously cold hearted man, much like dacianas father apparently, both of whom value money rather than people. Even their own families. The group of men who looked the same as him, slightly wrinkled face, greyish hair, miserable faces with hints of conniving schemes being plotted against each other. Friends until one of them was earning more money and was more successful, then they were enemies again. 

The men were in a heated discussion about their business and from what I can dissect from their ramblings is that they fully believe themselves to be hard working men, a rarity these days, and they must do what is necessary for their companies. Meaning, budget cuts, strikes from workers, firing people, and any horrible decision in the name of money.  I refrain from rolling my eyes, or going over to berate them. 

“Mr. Birling would not know what a hard day's work is.” someone says quietly behind me. His voice is smooth, confident, and whilst I agree due to what I have learnt about the birling family and the conversation I had just overheard, I still wouldn't say it aloud with him being this close. Not that he pays any attention to anyone but ‘hard working men’. 

I turn my head slightly, the man behind me is tall, a smirk playing at his lips. His suit is finely tailored in a dark grey, with a peach tie. He takes a step forwards and stands at my side, staring out into the crowd, a glass of half drunk champagne in his hand. I return my gaze to the crowd. “Whatever makes you think that, surely you heard him talk about how much he works,” I try to suppress my own smirk and I also sneak a glance at the strange man. He merely takes a sip of his champagne. 

“Right of course, his words, I shall listen more closely next time.”

“As you should. You wouldn't want to misinterpret someone's work ethic and make a fool of yourself in front of a stranger.” 

“You consider me a fool now?” he turns to me now, hands pressed against his chest in fake offence. His brown eyes meet mine as I face him. His sharp cheekbones feel familiar, but I can't place where from. 

“Yes. how could you consider someone such as Mr Birling, a man with such talent and tolerance of others, a man who clearly built his company and was not handed it by his father, how could you with a straight face imply he doesn’t know hard work.”  we stare at each other for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. He has such a pure laugh, we seem to be the only sound in the room. People around us stop and stare, upset two people are having fun at a party. The stranger leans against one of the columns, disrupting the vines slightly. Yet he doesn't seem to care, as he slowly starts to regain his composure from our outburst. 

Mr. Birling is one of the men looking at us with full disdain. He perceives us as two kids who do not understand life, he specifically tells his accountant that there is something wrong with us if the rumours are to be believed. Children of science. Outrageous. Especially a girl. A girl, not a woman. I ignore his pathetic whining, intent on not letting him ruin my night and return my focus to the stranger. Who, I realise, is someone who enjoys science. His face is more solemn now, having also overheard Mr.Birling. He quickly recovers and plasters a smirk on his face, a spark shines in his eye and I can already tell this won't be good.

“I want to meet this ‘girl’ who led the strike, perhaps she could use some help. I mean, all they ask is fair pay,”

“But fair pay is absurd. Completely and utterly absurd. Why should the wealthy share their wealth to those who ensure it.” he finishes for me. The men that run this world will end up being the reason it fails. We share a look, full of understanding and he lets out a sigh. Now we're talking about work and politics at a party. 

“Aside from those charming men, how are you enjoying the party?” He gestures to the men around us and I snort. Charming was one word for them. Being with him and trading remarks felt like passing notes to each other, telling secrets during class even though we are meant to be listening to the teacher. I can't help but think I know him, and by the look in his own face he knows me. Perhaps we met but didn't have time for a full conversation like we are now. 

“Mostly entertaining, the place is spectacular as always, the people are..” I searched for a word to describe the people, as well as my family. I love them dearly but they can be insufferable. “An interesting mix. My family is dramatic, so I escaped to the edge to peace and quiet, which apparently isn't possible. "I give him a pointed look but he takes no notice. 

“My family is also dramatic, and I came for peace myself but found myself captivated by you, specifically how you watched the crowd, listening, and how you curled your fists in an attempt not to go and publicly humiliate the poor man. Which, by the way, I think you should've. Would've made the whole thing worth it.” He takes a sip of his champagne and I nearly roll my eyes at him. Of course he'd want that. From what I can tell he isn't someone who enjoys society and has no problem saying it. I also think about the families in attendance and which of those are dramatic. The only person I can think of is Darci's brother, whom I've not met but heard about his nature over wine with her. 

“If I was merely standing here minding my business would you still have found me captivating enough to talk to me? Or is my appeal in my anger?”

He downs the rest of the drink and straightens himself taking a step towards me. I cross my arms, impatient but he gives me a soft smile. “I've been trying to get the courage to talk to you for months, I always see you here at the edge, always. My eyes find you instantly in any crowd. Transfixed, captivating. It was an added bonus to me when I saw the fierce nature in your eyes up close, I knew I was right to want to befriend you.” 

Silence falls as we both take in his words. I feel bad, not being able to figure out who he is. His honesty is admirable and makes me smile, as well as blush. I can feel heat rise to my cheeks. Just as I begin to rectify the situation by asking for his name, a man comes behind 

me, he’s around 40 probably, and looks at me horrendously in an attempt at a smile. I recognised him from earlier, he's one of the men that spoke with Mr Birling and that alone makes me instantly want to recoil. 

“Can I help you sir?” I asked and I can hear my own clipped words, yet somehow he does not. The smile widens and he looks me up and down. Then he offers his hand to me and I realise he wants to dance. With a woman half his age, that he has never met. 

“Miss Wadsworth, dance with me?” more of a common than a question. Since I am already highly aware he doesn’t like when females have opinions or say no, I refrain from rolling my eyes and just walking off from him. Instead I take a step back, so I'm by my new friend’s side and smile widely. 

“I'm afraid I already promised the darling Wadsworth a dance, we are just finishing our drinks first.” As if to prove my point he drinks the last of his drink, mostly to hide his smirk. Something else the man doesn't seem to notice. His face drops, but his pride makes him believe he can stand there, waiting for me to run to him. There is an awkward silence until I feel hands reach down and take mine, they are warm and make me jump slightly at the contact. Not in a bad way, not in the way I would have if it had been the man in front of me with his gaze like fire as he looks at our joined hands as though he has a right to be mad about it. I feel my own fire burn as he stares, so I tug his hand away from the man. I need to just escape into the dreamlike nature of the dancefloor, as well as thank my saviour and learn his name.

He leads me to the dance floor, nearer the edge and his hands slip down to my waist as I find his shoulders. His touch is hesitant but reassuring. Somehow he looks calm and terrified, as though he never expected to dance with me but never wants to stop. I can't help but feel the same as we begin to move. My skirt swirls around us and we say nothing for a while as we both calm ourselves and let the music envelope us. In a way, this is as close to my daydreaming as I might ever get. Being here on the dance floor with someone who isn't twice my age and the definition of misogyny. We dance as equals, neither of us truly leading but letting each other float around each other. We're sure of our movements and demand nothing from each other. It is a weird calmness that settles. We are strangers as far as i know, and yet we dance as though we have known each other our entire lives. 

“You are a delight, miss Wadsworth.” he breaks the silence, somehow louder than the music for me, yet it's quiet. Almost like he didn't mean to say it aloud. 

“How do you know me?” my voice matches and i feel bad asking, but i need to know. My tone is not accusing, and his face only burrows in confusion for a second before he smirks at me. A smirk I'm seeming to become familiar with.

“My sister Dacina speaks highly of you.” my eyes must expand as he laughs softly. That's why I recognized him. He has the same structure as Dacina, sharp cheekbone and soft skin. Perfect complexion. 

“So you are the infamous Thomas cresswell?” this time I smirk and his eyes widen. 

“Infamous? What on earth have you heard of me?”

“Your sister has lots of opinions on you.”

“Of course she does. Whatever she has said is most likely not true.” He blurts out and I laugh at his relationship with his sister and him wanting to impress me. “Unless she told you I am utterly irresistible, charming, quick witted and incredibly smart.” winking at me he sends me into a surprising spin and my hands land on his chest. We've sped up slightly, yet our heartbeats are both faster than necessary and I can see a hint of a blush creeping up on his cheeks. 

“She did mention you have an overly large ego. She'll be happy to know I agree with her.” I feel his hands tighten at my waist slightly and I watch his curls fall down in his face as he shakes his head. I'm delighted by this turn of events. Daci is wonderful, and if this is the Thomas that I get to see, not his reputation, then I shall try and keep this in my life for as long as possible. His spark in his eyes shows how he may think the same. Also, if daci, liza and ileana are with Thomas, then i might have the most fun I've ever had in my life.

His voice slides through my thoughts, but also reinforces them. “I am sure she failed to mention how big of an ego she has. Honestly, Darci is worse than I. Have you met Illeana? She will surely agree with me on this.” 

“I'm sure she would, I've also heard you are a scientist, what do you study?”

“The dead. Much like you and your uncle.” There is so much certainty in his voice, no resentment or the usual tone I hear so I gift him an earnest smile. 

The song ends, and we stand, hands still on each other for a second longer than we should. Just as I go to remove my hands from his chest I feel him pinch my sides lightly. Then his warm hands slip from my waist and I wish more than anything to dance again. 

We go to return back to the column near the buffet, where we first spoke, and as I take a step I feel him move so he's pressed at my back, his hands finding mine. Even though we are gloved, even though no one can see our hands due to how close we are, and how many people are moving about, my heart pounds at his bold nature. I adore it, so I squeeze him and keep my head facing forward as I lead him off the dance floor. We settle back, Thomas letting go of my hand to pick up two glasses of champagne and hands me one. We both take a long sip, perhaps settling our brains or making it worse. Well see. 

“You look,” he pauses, as if trying to find the right words, brows furrowed slightly as if he was reading a dictionary, “enchanting.” he finally finishes, gifting me a rare smile it seems. No longer does he smirk at me, but shows me a genuine look that I want to have painted as it is the best thing I have witnessed. Heat rises to my cheeks as I look down at my dress. Someone at least understood what I was going for, with a pale peach colour, sparkling bodice that runs along the length of the skirt. The long sleeves adorned with tiny gemstones, golden to match the accented colours of the hall. In response to Thomas I look back up at him with my own genuine smile, perhaps some of the only true smiles to be shared this evening. His suit fits him perfectly, showing off his defined features, his tie a pale peach as well. I assume Dacina helps him, as her dresses always astound me with the details. There are tiny, miniscule gems on his tie, that snake down and remind me of vines.

“You look,” I act the way he did, scanning my brain for something that fits, handsome or charming doesn't do justice but I'm sure whatever I use will only boost his ego and be used against me, so I settle with: “bedazzling.” 

“Bedazzling?”

“Thomas, I study the dead, I have to look closer than one should at things, so of course I noticed your tie. Henceforth: bedazzling.” The air shifts back to our teasing tone and he smirks once again.

“You are the only one to notice, except Daci of course, nothing gets past her. Am I correct in assuming you like the tie?” Despite his teasing I feel a hint of worry as if I wouldn’t like his tie. 

“I adore the tie cresswell, everyone here should be weaning ties with tiny jewels.”

His face falls as he scans the crowd, eyes narrowing slightly as he takes in the groups of men. “I cannot tell if you are being serious with me or not, but I agree nonetheless. The men here are awfully drab, boring, plain. It's insulting to us really. Daci puts so much time into making this beautiful and these people do not see it.” He is shaking his head. I agree, I have heard how much work goes in and despite my effort to help she insists that I do nothing but enjoy the party. I have a sneaking suspicion though that Liza helps. The flower centrepieces are her favourite, and whilst that might be a coincidence I know how stubborn and convincing she can be. 

“I do. I love her parties. I always find myself standing here, watching and noticing all the changes from the month prior. Like, last month she went for more of a red theme, with red roses as the centrepieces, little red accented chairs and carpets. Whereas this month is more of a forestry vine, hence the vines around the column.” I point as though they are a secret thing you need to search for even though they are obvious. Yet he turns anyway and runs his finger down the length of it with his adorable face set at a soft smile. Thomas might have been there when she got the idea, or placed them or he might have placed them himself and is now remembering it. 

My gaze finds Thomas and he looks at me, baffled, and I feel the blush creeping back up. It is not the same confused look that I get when I tell people my love of science, but one of intrigue. As if he could listen to me talk forever and not get bored. It's as if he has never thought anyone would notice such things about his family's party. “Enchanting.” is all he whispers to me. Then he clears his throat, an ever so soft shake of his head as though once again the words were meant for him and not us both. 

I stare out at the crowd again. I'm sure my family will want to know where I've disappeared to, I normally do not leave them this long. Liza I'm sure will want to know why I danced with Thomas. Yet the thought of leaving him makes my legs leaden and my heart sink and anchor me right next to him. Im completely wonderstruck, and feel ill have a permanent blush, especially when i look at his stupidly handsome face, his quick smirk and small smiles that feel special. It is odd, I've only heard stories, spoken to him briefly and danced, yet I have enjoyed his company immensely and hope this never ends. I want more dances and to steal more smiles to keep forever. I want to make fun of people together, and dance. 

I go to steal a glimpse of him, expecting to find him staring at the crowd like I was but his eyes are on me. “I have to leave,” his abrupt words anchor me in an entirely different way, “I mean,  I want to stay and I'm sure you want my amazing presence always now Wadsworth but I have to wake early. New job. So, my darling, I shall see you tomorrow.” Thomas hesitates for half a second and begins to walk away. I watch him go and say goodnight to his sister and then leave. His words fill my head. It’s reassuring to know he enjoys my company as much as I do.

~

I bolt upright in my bed, the lights, music and memories falling away as I focus on the last words he said to me.

I'll see you tomorrow. 

What does tomorrow mean? Does it mean he has a job where he thinks I visit? Will he be making an effort to befriend me? Does he know my family? I am so confused. How had I not caught these words sooner? Perhaps he wants to tell me he had a terrible time, that he doesn't like my presence. I'm on my feet without realising, pacing back and forth, the cold air hugging me close. I wish he was in front of me now. I wish he would whisper the words enchanting again. I wish I knew what was happening in a few hours that warranted him saying those four words. I run my hands over my face, untie my hair and let my curls fall over my shoulder, brushing away the colder ever so slightly. I'm ridiculous. Four tiny words sent me spiralling. I climb back into bed, my hair fanning out around me and the blanket returning warmth back into my system. Immediately my mind returns to Thomas, his face forever in my mind. Even if tomorrow could be the last time I see him, there is a chance that it is just the start. 

Enchanting…

Those words fill me with confidence that yes, Thomas might become someone special to me. That perhaps our dance sparked something and now all I wish is that I can tell him how enchanting he is.

@fangirling-again @kittycat2187 @goatahoan @city-of-fae @purplecreatorhorsewagon @boredbookwormgirl @goddess-of-writing-wars @loveyatopluto @lovecakeandmore @yikesitsmaddie @bookscressworth @androgynousdeputylawyershoe @fandomtakeover @throneoftsc @the-hoofflepooff

[inukag]

I've seen some people say that Yashahime is canon only to the OG anime, but I'd make the argument that it's not even that! Think about it:

While the Inuyasha anime did mess around with the manga lore or make up their own here and there, they still did bring to attention some lore that they CLEARLY ignore/retcon in Trashahime. Like in one of the 1st episodes of the OG anime where Myoga explains how Tessaiga was made to protect Izayoi, Inuyasha's mother. Yet, later on in Yashahime we find through a flashback that Touga apparently had Tessaiga long before he met Izayoi? What?

I actually talked about this next one with @loveyou-x3000 a long while back, but remember Hosenki l? Remember on how in the OG anime we found out he was the one whole created the black pearl that was in Inuyasha's eye? Well, I apparently found out that by Yashahime's logic, the black pearl was created by Izayoi's or somebody's tears? I'm sorry, but how does that make sense? (Correct me if I'm wrong there)

They even ignore the lore they created themselves from the OG anime, like when InuKag give Moroha the lip stick shell that was destroyed by Naraku in the Anime-only episode "Tragic Love Song of Destiny". What, am I just supposed to assume that InuYasha's been walking around with a bunch of his mother's old make-up stuff this whole time? And that he never thought to give one to Kagome, his wife, even tho he gave it to Kikyou and his own daughter?

Let's also not forget what the director has said in one of the recent interviews about demons apparently throwing their kids out in the wild as a "test of courage and cowardice", AKA Demon parents apparently not caring about their kids and abandoning them similar to how lions apparently treat their cubs. This absolute bullshit because not only is this not true in the manga, but the OG anime itself has shown several examples of demons caring about and raising their kids!!! Think about Shippo's dad, that little cat demon's dad when Inu trained with Totosai, Kuroro (demon cat that looks like Kirara), that demon dad who got his head chopped off by Hokudoshi, and even that insect demon that Jeniji killed who went out to teach its offspring how to hunt and feed! Its important too note that a good chunk of these parents are anime-only characters.

Hell, even the demon parents who didn't get to raise their kids still gave a fuck about them!!! Just look at Shiori's dad who clearly had every intention of raising his kid and even when he was dead STILL came back to protect her from her grandfather! What about Jeniji's dad who left his farm to his son so that both he and his mother would have a place to call home!?

What about Touga who sacrificed his own life so that his hanyou son could live??? (And that was from one of the movies mind you, so its anime lore.)

So now your telling me that the demon way of parenting was to leave your kids out in the middle of the woods when they're not even old enough to hold up their heads by themselves? If the OG anime series and movies followed that logic, then Touga wouldn't have even bothered to save Inuyasha's life on the night of his birth. Better yet, Touga could've just left Inuyasha in that fire, but saved Izayoi. He wouldn't have even bothered to give InuYasha his name if he just figured that his son failed his "test of courage" for being in that fire that he surely would have perished in if Touga didn't get there in time.

Also, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Yashahime's director HIMSELF (who worked on the OG anime too) say that a certain pairing that I won't name was never depicted as romantic in the original anime series? We all know it wasn't in the manga, but a while back I swear I read an interview where the director said it was never depicted in the anime either. Clearly, Yashahime threw that out the window, too.

And finally, I don't think I have to mention the retconning of all if the OG cast's character developments that were CLEARLY SHOWN IN THE OG ANIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that is why I don't think Trashahime can even be considered canon to the anime either. I rest my case.

(Sorry for the long post. I just had to vent and get that out of my system)

Don’t worry about venting! I agree with what you said there, I would love to add more plotholes and inconsistencies that are in Yashahime to your list but... I get exhausted just thinking about it lmao

The Tessaiga retcon is especially bad. First, like you said both in the anime and manga it is said that Tessaiga was forged for Inuyasha’s mother, who in Sunrise-canon was born 200 years ago, but in Yashahime Toga had Tessaiga and was using a perfect meido zangetsuha 500 years ago to destroy the comet... 

^^ He literally has Tenseiga on his hip even though Tenseiga was created to take Meido Zangetsuha out of Tessaiga lmao

You’re not wrong about the black pearl and Hosenki. Hosenki II says in chapter 298 that he and his father “cultivate” the pearls, it has nothing to do with tears, and Inuyasha’s father commissioned the black pearl before his death... 

The rouge / lipstick is not even a different rouge, they imply in episode 15 that it’s the same one Inuyasha gave to Kikyo, but Riku somehow found it and gave it to Hosenki II for some reason. 

That raises SO many questions... When did Riku find the pieces of the rouge? Was he spying on Kikyo and Inuyasha this whole time?? How did he know the rouge belonged to Izayoi?? Is he a time traveler?? Why did Riku and Hosenki II even work together to create the new black pearl?? Is this ever going to be addressed??

Oh man the interviews... I get a headache every time I read them. Personally, I don’t really think it’s ooc for Sesshomaru to set up some kind of rite or trial for his hanyo daughters to prove their strength. I never imagined him being soft and loving with them, especially not with the way he treated Inuyasha. But like you said, it’s definitely not a universal yokai thing, we all know that. Sesshomaru is just Like That lmao. I still don’t understand why his “rite” had to take 14+ years, why it involves Kirinmaru and Zero and what it has to do with Inuyasha, Kagome and Moroha...? If he wants to make his daughters go through that, that’s his business, there’s no need to also ruin Moroha’s childhood by letting her parents rot in the border to the after life when he could get them out whenever he wants (since he can go through the gate to the afterlife thanks to Tenseiga).

Other hilarious things that Sumisawa mentioned in the last interview: - Moroha knows Sesshomaru’s scent because he’s famous amongst demons - Everyone call the girls “yashahime” because Treekyo started the trend (no one was there to hear Treekyo except the girls...?)  - Kirinmaru met Jesus Christ and Buddha at some point 

And probably other stuff I’m forgetting... I’m so tired lol

[bookwyrminspiration]

WAIT. I'm late to the party but I just remembered all those anons were sending in "why I send you asks" and their reasons and I actually really want to participate, so I hope you will accept late applications?

The reason I send you so many asks is because you've just...built such a nice feeling that anything can be discussed, and it's never too niche or cringy or boring, and that's really relieving and amazing.

I'm sure you (along with many others) have realized by now, but I suffer from....really bad anxiety, both social anxiety and just in general, and it very often gets in the way of my life. Because of this and past experiences, I'm always very scared and hesitant to talk about my interests and my thoughts on anything.

But every time I've sent you an ask, even if it was, in retrospect, probably really annoying to read through the one hundred "sorry"s and "my bad"s, you've always been nothing but kind and interested in my ideas, and that was just...so surprising. Because I never really knew anyone who was willing to talk about anything, and it was just...really amazing to meet someone who was! Especially because I love and am interested in so many different things and kind of need someone to bounce ideas at. And it was really cool to see someone that was unashamed of their own interests and thoughts, but didn't make others feel bad for having different ideas.

Every time I send you an ask, you always have something interesting to say back. Something I hadn't thought of or considered, or a query that would make me rethink my own theories, or just a very well-thought-out answer to a question. I remember sending in tons of asks about the wings AU before it was released, and writing those was probably the highlight of my day, because I knew you'd take them and run with the ideas, and do your best to match my energy, and I was really grateful for that. And you were always willing to dig deeper, to think "but what if there was more?" and that's just...incredible! I don't have any other word for it!

I love sending you asks because you don't dismiss an idea or deem it as stupid, and you're just...such a kind and wonderful person that can make even the most obscure subject infinitely more interesting than before, and you never fail to make me consider things again, to expand my thoughts and views, and I'm really grateful for that.

So, because it should definitely be said by now, thank you!

And, well, that's why I love sending you asks :]

- pyro

there is no timeline so there's no way to be late! and I'm answering this a few days after you sent this, so if you believe yourself to be late then we can both be late together :D. you are fully welcome to participate if you want to (which you said you did)! it was mostly just a random question I had because i'm just as analytical with myself as I am with keeper, and knowing how other perceive and think of me is helpful for that--and I was curious about how i'd aquired so many asks so quickly, and then you all just turned it into complimenting quil hours for some reason !! (but on to your ask before I get even more distracted)

(note from a quil who has answered all of this: got very long so that's why there's a readmore! i love you /p)

this means so much to me--specifically your use of "built" because I do try pretty hard to maintain a positive atmosphere and welcome everyone in and treat everyone with the same attention. it didn't just fall into place, i try to be encouraging to everyone and support all the amazing work--art, writing, ideas, etc--I see from people. (note: i've been wanting to do a thing where I ask for fic/art/other recommendations from others (can be friends or their own) so i can go through and reblog a bunch of them with comments and the like, I just want to get through more of my asks before I start something like that). But you're right--nothing is too niche! there's so many details in the story it's impossible for one person to notice anything, so people bringing up the obscure and their own thoughts makes the story richer and more fleshed out for everyone else! and i think it's really cool to just see what other people focus on (like I said, my analysis isn't limited to characters, but I'm not like dissecting you all to understand each of you in a creepy way or anything. I just like to get a better sense of someone so I can respond in a way more tailored to them when we interact)

anxiety can really suck, so as someone who also has anxiety i am giving you a comforting hug if you'd like one. it genuinely impacts everything you do and think about, rewriting how you experience life. a single, inconsequential experience to someone else can literally change major aspects of how we think, which makes interactions so scary sometimes. i remember things people said years ago and still base my actions around them, but those people have absolutely no recollection of ever saying it, but just the fear of having done something wrong once permanently altered my thinking. (this is not to make this about me, I'm just trying to show I understand by sharing an experience of my own).

reading through all your "i'm sorry"s and "my bad"s wasn't annoying and never will be. you have never had anything to apologize for, and I know that sometimes you feel you need to enter a conversation and first apologize for being there, but I'm thrilled to have you here and always love seeing you in my inbox. I don't know how to articulate this properly, but I'm going to try. i saw your apologies and your apprehension as...a puzzle? that's absolutely not the right word but I can't think of the right one so please let me explain (I don't mean to imply you're like something to be solved or a problem in any way. words can be difficult and I'm trying to describe something very intangible rn, so I hope this doesn't sound bad). I didn't see it as annoying (you're never annoying), I saw it like it was something to work through, and while it's not my job or anything to help other's with their personal problems, it was like if I could just provide one space where I could encourage you (not just you, but anyone) as a friend to try shifting your language and start thinking of yourself more positively, then I wanted to give that.

because I am interested in your ideas! and I want to be kind and welcoming to you! but I also want you to be kind to yourself, so any impact I've had to give anyone a safer, less scary space is really cool. I don't know if that made sense, but I'm not trying to talk down to you or anything or be like I'm this high and mighty figure harboring lost souls or something, just that connection is important and I like being there for people. kinda worried that sounded bad because it feels worded strange but I'm trying to reciprocate and say i appreciate you and am happy to talk about anything!

i love bouncing ideas back and forth and you are more than welcome to say anything and everything you're thinking about. talking to you is always an absolutely joy and I get so excited when you send me an ask and when you're reading my response, because it often feels like this like...buzz? like we're just vibing on this frequency and it makes it so much fun to throw ideas back and forth and just listen to each other talk. i am very glad to have surprised you and met you! I don't know a lot of people like myself either, so having someone like you interact with me and just go all out on these little things and what we personally like about different parts of the so much fun. a lot of the other people I know irl feel like they just scratch the surface, they say things just to get credit for it and to appear like they know what they're talking about while ignoring all these other things that have such an impact, so it's amazing to have found someone else who looks at everything and anything like I do. my brain really is "a little bit of everything all of the time" so knowing you have so many different interests too is really cool. i am giving you an internet high five and pretending you aren't so far away.

I spent so much of my life being quiet when I had so many thoughts, so now that I have this kind of outlet I just! want to say everything I can! i want to look at everything from every perspective possible! the world is a huge collection of things tied together and I love following the strings to find the connected pieces! but I think that's a way of approaching the world not a lot of people share (I could be wrong), so it's really cool to hear you think my thought process is interesting!! my brain is practically composed entirely of questions. any subject at any time of the day and nearly all of my thoughts are just wanting to know more and trying to understand things, so having that opportunity to ask further questions and just learn things (about what other's thing, how things work, etc) is so much fun. you might've seen me ask some questions of other's in a few of the asks I answer, but those barely scratch the surface of just how many I have. my handle is in_quil_sitive (inquisitve) on nearly every social media platform (except for this one) for a reason.

I remember some of your asks from before the wings au was published, too. those were absolutely incredible, and I got a rush of excitement every time I saw you sent another. those were the the highlight of my week, too!! your enthusiasm and excitement for something I hadn't even posted yet gave me so much motivation to continue and you helped me think through so many future ideas and consider things from new perspectives. i know i specifically wrote that you inspired one chapter in the notes, but you've had an impact on every single chapter of this story/ it wouldn't be what it is without you, and I mean that with complete sincerity. you were the one who made me think "what if there was more" so I could make this au even better and work towards something bigger. I just have so many thoughts about everything all of the time, I can't go more than a few minutes without being distracted by a different train of thought, but knowing there was someone who would want to hear all the weird, disjointed ideas i'd strung together and composed into a more cohesive format was so cool. there's just so much to think about!!

I probably sound repetitive at this point but I love answering your asks because you're so receptive to the way i say things and it's like you're actually listening and want to hear what I specifically have to say, not just the general ideas. you want to know my unique, personalized opinions and perspectives and don't just dismiss them when they're not what you expect to hear or aren't generic. you're incredibly kind, too, I hope you know. I love the description of how I can "make even the most obscure subject infinitely more interesting than before." that is such a meaningful compliment to me. I just keep thinking about this line over and over again and it just...it really means a lot. because you're saying it's me that interests you and not just what I talk about. I could talk about anything and you'd still want to interact with me and that's so fucking nice. I hope you know the same goes for you. we can challenge each other's thinking together and make things even deeper and more complex before together <33.

thank you for being here and being my friend, pyro. talking to you is always one of the highlights of my day and gives me a very positive feeling that I carry around for a while. I do this thing sometimes where I film myself to later observe my behaviors in the middle of intense emotions to understand myself better (back to that whole analysis thing again), but it's not just negative things, it's also when I'm really excited or pleased with something and jumping around and stimming and all that, and some of those are from when I interact with you. that might sound a little weird but I mean it positively, as in talking with you makes me ecstatic.

I have said. so many things. so I will stop (for now). but I really appreciate having you in my life <33

[mc-critical]

Hello! Hope you're having a good day

I have a question about mck. I haven't watched it but I've seen a lot of cuts from episodes on youtube and fan's discussions so I hoped you might explain something to me.

Everybody says that Kosem killed her sons only for power and it wasn't for the good of the country. Is that true? Was Murad a good ruler in the show? All I know is that he was harsh and in the end wanted to kill his brothers. What Ibrahim? In history he clearly made a very poor ruler. What about the show?

Hi!

Fans often have different interpretations of the subject matter and what is perceived on-screen, so some of them might say that Murat IV was a good ruler in the show and some might say that he isn't. Really depends on what you consider a good ruler - is it someone who goes on campaigns and wins wars for his country, is it someone who cares about the people, the janissary and their opinions above all else or is it someone who considers himself unquestionable authority and refuses to take any advice, even if they took the wrongest, most problematic decision ever?

To me, show!Murat is anything but a good ruler. He ascends the throne as a kid, with Kösem as a regent, and I feel that he never actually gained any experience in how to truly rule the state. And yet, when the time comes for him to actually take matters into his own hands, he is ecstatic to finally assert his will and dominance for everyone to see and learn. One of the key problems with him are that he not only wants his decisions to be completely unparalleled and undebated, he considers everything he does as right out of principle. He has the mindset that every single decision he takes is absolutely correct and is beneficial for the state, but not because it's actually correct or beneficial, but only because he's the padişah and "the shadow of God on Earth". And there are quite a lot of decisions that are problematic at best (forbidding alchohol and then you yourself drink it) and outright destructive and dangerous at worst. (leaving just like that, even it's after a traumatic event for you, caused a huge literal revolt!) And even if he realizes what he's doing isn't right, he ignores every kind of advice when people around him tell him to do the precise opposite. This guy is so drowned in his own ego and authority that he destroys everyone around him.

But then again, there's that side of things where, writing-wise, you understand where all that comes from - most of Murat's flaws as a ruler stem from the massive past trauma of Osman's death, which only caused irreparable damage to the mind of such a small kid. It created such unrelenting paranoia that Murat began to forever believe that he couldn't count to anyone but himself. This is what his "meeting" with Osman in E47 symbolizes, he hears both what he wants to hear and that part of Osman which could never accept Kösem's outside interference. That's also the episode where "one Murat went away, there comes the other" and there he began to go further into the abyss of his own beliefs. Murat has Süleiman's paranoia, but upped to eleven in a more offending form, because while with Süleiman this paranoia grew gradually and he could let it go more easily, because despite of all he knew how to rule a good state, with Murat it was always there from the very start, constantly preventing him from doing the right thing, especially due to the constant fear of being manipulated and deceived by someone else (just like Osman thought he was.) and always thinking he's in his mother's shadow.

Speaking of which, Kösem and Murat's dynamic is the central conflict of season 2 of MCK and that's not only an interpersonal character conflict, as it would seem at first glance to someone who's new to the franchise in example, it's a conflict of one newly established and another already established powers in the palace that would never back down and fight for what they think is right. Kösem and Murat have a different relationship with the state. The state for Kösem has a dynamic role - firstly, it was a role she had to accept for the greater good (her standing in front of the people in Ahmet's name in E07 of season 1.), then she saw herself engrained in it due to her strong sense of justice. (getting revenge for her father, trying to expose Fahrye, then Handan and Derviş and lastly, ''protecting the country" from Iskender.) By season 2 country and power are already synonymous to her due to her fully taking the responsibility of a regent and taking the country in her wing of protection, always keeping an eye on it and consistently representing it without a second thought. The state for Murat, however, is static - it is something given to him by God himself, it is something he takes for granted, without truly trying to improve it. The first steps he takes as a ruler is to seemingly "clear" his own path, to remove the traitors around him. And while that seems correct and valid at first glance, he never sees the bigger scheme of things, due to his paranoia. He doesn't see the people who actually conspire to remove him (which is why he never found out the true traitor in his palace and died, thinking this person was the most loyal man ever.), but sees what he wants to see, this shadow who is looming in for years. Murat thinks his mother is a problem, which is why the first step he takes, is to immediately remove her regency and then send Kemankeş to follow her around. These two forces clash with each other incessantly, with their opinion of a state at constant odds. There have been many times throughout the show where Murat does a problematic thing, Kösem tries to snap him out of it and fails, because he doesn't want to listen to her no longer. He's always felt that she overshadowed his own reign, even in her regency years (see the flashbacks in E56.) and he wants to believe that he's already a big man, a person who can do anything, even with a big lack of experience. So whoever tries to give him decent advice is immediately washed off and out of the question, because who are they, they don't know better, he's the only one who does. This mindset is reflected as totally wrong in the show with the people and the janissary despising him, with the numerous revolts (the season literally began with a revolt.), with the multiple traitors around him, with everyone (Atike and Farya aside) turning against him sooner or later. That of course isn't appreciated by Kösem, and she, being the self-and not-so- self- proclaimed representative of the state, tries to fix this all, even if it means acting behind Murat's back. She doesn't really wish her son harm only due to him eclipsing her own power, she just sees the genuine flaws of his rule and is willing to achieve everything to fix it. Later on she began to indeed consider him as unworthy due to all the mistakes he made, claiming that the country is able to defend itself and listing qualities that all padişahs should possess like virtue and justice. She saw how messy all of it became and instinctively began to search for solutions that even came to ending him. (her ordering the doctor to cease healing his illness.) The narrative doesn't actually condemn this choice, highlighted by Murat's last flashback with him reuniting with his mother.

Murat is the one that killed Kasım and Bayezid in show, because he considers them a threat to his own power, first and foremost. Bayezid's the primary one, him being the eldest heir, with people wanting him on the throne from the get-go, when Murat was alive. Murat doesn't accept threat to his own power, and his brothers aren't exceptions, even though he told them certain times that he wouldn't put them in the kafes or take their life. Even though Bayezid became so much like his toxic mother (Gülby, I love you, but sorry.), prone to revenge, harsh actions and gaining questionable one-sided morality, his death was heartbreaking. As for Kasım, Murat took drastic measures, because Kösem thought Murat was dead and tried to calm down the people by bringing to them Kasım exactly as the next sultan. This was extremely harsh, because after all Kösem used it only as a desperate measure, to calm the people down and to apply the most optimal solution. Putting Kasım in the cafes when you once said that you wouldn't is honestly chief irony, reaching Süleiman's level, but worse.

Yes, Kösem was the one who ultimately sealed the pact to kill Ibrahim, but this was due to manipulation. Turhan Sultan wanted his death to pave the way for her little son and gain absolute power, so she indeed pushed Kösem's love and dedication to the country against her. She was put in a position where she had no other choice but to accept - we had a mentally ill Sultan as a ruler, one who could be reckless, one who could cause imbalance and instability and one who also doesn't really listen. So she decided his destiny and the theme of the loss of innocence, the core theme of the whole show, came full circle. She killed Ibrahim, but she wasn't happy with it, she was devastated and her conscience spoke so loudly, she couldn't unhear it. And that deed of hers made her give it all up - by the time of her death, she only wanted piece, nothing else, and she wasn't even interested in who gets the ring of power and she wasn't all that focused on her own death, either. Life was over for her.

Anyway, yeah, it all depends on interpretations of the events and characters and where your sympathies extend. MCK has really interesting and complex themes and I wholeheartedly recommend for you to watch it to drive your own conclusions. Thanks for the question and have a nice day!

[heroicadventurists]

Robin 80 ***spoilers***

Robin 80 was a wonderful celebration of the first sidekick... the Boy Wonder... Robin. This issue consisted of 10 stories focusing on the different iterations of Robin. While Carrie Kelley received a pinup in the issue, she did not receive her own story. Robin 80 focused on the five canon Robins. While some are upset that Duke was not included in this lineup, he was never an official Robin to Batman. If we count Duke, we have to count all of the "We Are Robin" crew. When given the choice by Batman, Duke chose to pave his own path as his own hero, which is commendable. Dick received 4 out of the 10 stories in this issue, which was fitting considering it is also his 80 year anniversay. My favorite thing about this issue was the acknowledgement that Bruce adopted the male Robins. Below I rank the stories in Robin 80 from my least favorite to my favorite.

10. Dick Grayson, Nightwing in Aftershocks

Writer: Chuck Dixon

Starting off my list is Aftershocks.  This story follows Dick after he has quit being Robin, and has assumed his new identity, Nightwing.  This story highlights perfectly how Dick operates as a solo hero.  He is brave, quick on his feet, witty, and of course, he saves the day.  This was a good one-shot but it didn’t have the impact that some of the other stories in this issue had.  However, it did serve it’s purpose of showing Dick coming into his own.

9. Nightwing and The Titans in Team Building

Writer: Devin Grayson

Like Aftershocks, this story serves to show how Dick operates as a team leader. He was smart, strategic, capable and decisive.  He was everything you want in a team lead.  As before, this was a good one-shot, but it also lacked the emotional impact that other stories on this list had. 

8. Dick Grayson, Agent 37 in The Lesson Plan

Writers: Tim Seely and Tom King

Like Aftershocks and Team Building, this story follows Dick as Agent 37.  In this story he is a mentor to a young recruit named Paris.  He gives her lessons throughout the story that contradict every lesson Batman ever taught him.  When he gets to the final lesson, he tells her the one thing that he agreed with Batman on “Ignore Your Mentor.  Do What You Do Best”.  One thing I really appreciate about the stories focusing on Dick is that each story is a progression in his vigilante career.  He has an actual arc in Robin 80.

7. The Supersons in My Best Friend

Writer: Peter J Tomasi

This was an adorable story about how Jon views his friendship with Damian.  Damian is a lot more vulnerable when he is with Jon, and honestly, he acts like the kid that he is.  This was a lighthearted and sweet story that shows a different side to our current Robin.

6. Tim Drake, Robin III in Extra Credit

Writer: Adam Beechen

This was a wonderful piece that highlighted how awesome Tim is.  For so many, Tim is their Robin, and it was nice to see him getting recognition in this comic. 

5. Stephanie Brown, Robin IV in Fitting In

Writer: Amy Wolfram

Out of all of the stories in this issue, Stephanie’s story made me think the most.  There was a very deep meaning behind this story once you get past the surface level.  So let’s breakdown this story.  The story begins with Stephanie showing up late to a training session.  She suits up in one of Tim’s old costumes.  Of course there are issues with this and Stephanie is busting out of the seams (not because she’s overweight but because she has breast, butt and thighs to contend with).  She complains about her hand-me-down costume while Bruce focuses on training.  Even with her top busted, Bruce is still training.  He even has the nerve to tell Stephanie she is distracted. Alfred shows up with Dick’s old costume as a replacement, and Steph asks for something “without a cup”.  Bruce FINALLY makes Stephanie a suit fit for a young lady, but when she puts on her new costume, Bruce tells her “no more excuses”.   Let that sink in.  He saw her complaints about wearing a male costume as an excuse not to train.  Let’s carry on.  They go to Western Town to take on Firefly.  The villain du jour does not take Stephanie seriously and calls her “Cosplay Girl”.  Stephanie is rash during the fight and does not follow Batman’s orders, resulting in her capture by Firefly.  She is able to avert disaster (barely) and saves the day, but Batman still chides her. 

Batman: “Tim would have waited outside”

Robin (Stephanie): “I’m not Tim!”

Batman: “I know”

Stephanie tells Bruce that she wants to be her own Robin and to stop trying to make her into something she’s not.  Bruce hears her and makes her a special closet in the batcave with her own costumes. This seems like a step in the right direction but we know how her Robin story ends.

At no point in this story did I feel like Stephanie was being sexualized.  it was more awkward and embarrassing than anything else. Neither Bruce nor Alfred said anything inappropriate to Steph, and no skin or nipples were shown thru her shirt.  She was just in a predicament where her costume was too tight because Bruce was making her wear Tim’s old costume.  And that was the point of the story (at least for me).  Bruce wasn’t trying to find a replacement Robin, he was trying to find a replacement Tim, and eventually get Tim back.

Bruce has a bad habit of trying to replace people in his life.  He did this with Jason and he did it with Stephanie, and the results where dang near the same.  Bruce replaced Dick with a direct copy, down to the hair color, race and costume.  Bruce was trying to do the same with Stephanie, however it was unsuccessful for obvious reasons.    This story really made me think about all the extra pressure Bruce put on Steph and Jason by trying to have them live up to Tim and Dick respectively.  Instead of playing up their strengths and letting them define what type of Robin they wanted to be, he wanted them to be replicas of their predecessors.    Both results turned out in disaster with Jason dying and Stephanie nearly being killed after she was fired. To me this story highlights how badly Bruce tried to use Stephanie to get to Tim.  It makes absolutely no sense that he wouldn’t make her a costume to fit her body.  But is it surprising b/c he did the same thing to Jason.  To me this story was a lot deeper than Stephanie busting out of her top.  It was about 1.  Bruce’s need to get Tim back 2.  Bruce’s lack of respect for Stephanie and 3.  Stephanie’s disastrous run as Robin.  Say what you will but she held the mantle for less than 3 months and almost died trying to prove herself to Bruce.  Stephanie never got a fair shake at being Robin, and this story highlights that perfectly.  She was literally setup to fail. Maybe I have overthought this story, but those are the points I got from it, and they are important points to be made, which is why it takes the # 5 spot.

4. Dick Grayson, Robin in A Little Nudge

Writer: Marv Wolfman

This is a story about a boy becoming a man and setting off on his own journey. In this story, we see Batman and Robin clashing on patrol, as Batman wants Robin to fall in line and Robin wants to make his own decisions. The issue ends with Dick thanking Bruce for everything he has done for him but leaving the nest to become his own hero. Bruce knew this day was coming, and instead of talking to Dick, he purposely picked small fights with him so he could make that step on his own.

3. Damian Wayne, Robin: Son of Batman in Bat and Mouse

Writer Robbie Thompson

This story lands in my #3 spot This story focuses on the fundamental differences between Damian and Bruce. Bruce knows that something is going on with Damian, he just can't figure out what it is. He wants to fix it but he doesn't know how. He can't rely on Alfred, as this story takes place after his death. On Damian's part, he is blaming everything on Bruce instead of taking responsibility for his own actions. While some see Damian's current storyline as a regression, I see a lost kid with no guidance. Alfred is dead, Dick is Ric and Bruce is emotionally inept. Jason tried to step-up, but that relationship soured quickly. Damian has no one to guide him, and is making bad decisions as a result. This story sets up the eventual showdown in the upcoming Teen Titans annual.

2. Jason Todd, Red Hood in More Time

Writer: Judd Winick

I was not expecting Jason to have the most heartfelt story in this issue. This story was beautiful and now I want Judd Winick to write another Red Hood miniseries or ongoing. This story highlighted the complicated relationship between Jason and Bruce in the most purest way I've ever seen. Even the artwork had an innocence to it. The story goes back and forth between a young Jason, who loves Bruce wholeheartedly, and an older Jason, whose relationship with Bruce is way more complicated and strained. This story highlights why Jason will always be a part of the Batfamily, because even with their complicated relationship, they love each other. This story just adds to the wonderful stories featuring Jason in 2020.

1. Tim Drake, Red Robin in Boy Wonders

Writer: James Tynion IV

The brotherly bonding in this story is what landed it in the # 1 spot. This story takes place prior to Detective Comics # 934. In this story, Tim cannot decide if he wants to attend college or join Bruce in forming the Gotham Knights. He seeks advice from Dick, Jason and Damian, with each one telling him something different. Dick tells Tim that he's a hero that the next generation can look up to. Jason essentially tells Tim that Bruce is stuck in his ways and he has the opportunity to be better than Bruce. The best advice however came from the little Gremlin in Tim's life. After some well placed insults, Damian tells Tim that he has accomplished everything he has set out to do, and has been successful in his endeavors. At the end of the day "You do anything you damn well please". The confirmations Tim received from his brothers was much needed for him and helped him make the decision to form the Gotham Knights with Bruce. I loved getting a "behind the scenes" look at how The Gotham Knights protocol was formed. Because of these factors, Boy Wonders has my #1 spot.

What is your favorite story from Robin 80?

[clean-bands-dirty-stories]

Special Skill ~ J.P. (part 1)

A/n: After Drive By part 2 WIPED me the fuck out, I tried to rejuvenate myself with some lighter content and ended up realizing that I actually ADORE Bradley Steven Perry, so I went back and watched some old shows and movies he’s in. When I stumbled on Pants on Fire... well, you know I had to ;) This was the piece I was so excited about! It’ll be a two parter because I cannot do all of ANYTHING in one part it seems lmao

Warning: This is male reader and also PURELY self indulgent. Also, LOTS of lying and manipulation. Being ignored. Highschool. Nothing too serious.

Word Count: 5600+

MASTERLIST

Everyone has a special skill. Some people are just really great at school. Some people are fast learners. Some people are natural, easily funny. Some people are good with kids. Some people were fantastic at keeping promises, or never failed to do what they felt had to be done no matter the cost.

Jack Parker's special skill was lying.

Y/n's special skill was being completely invisible.

Not like in a  superhero way, but in a high school way. Y/n was really quiet and reserved. He wasn't caught up in the normal high school things like relationships and popularity. In fact, he was withdrawn on purpose, finding most kids his age to be really annoying or ridiculous on some level. He was never rude, but he did prefer people watching and laughing to himself, to actually interacting with others.

He never meant to eavesdrop, it was just that he'd be sitting on the floor, leaning against a book shelf reading a book when someone on the other side of the bookshelf would start talking about something that he tuned into without thinking. Or, his quietness allowed people to forget that they weren't alone while walking or riding the bus and they'd talk loud enough for him to hear when he wasn't too far away. He perhaps could have tried harder to avoid people and give them their space, and he almost had... until one day he'd overheard Jack Parker and his best friend Ryan talking about something so very interesting that it convinced him to never stop listening to people ever again.

Jack Parker was... an interesting person, let's start there. A few people were pretty sure that half the things he said were true out of sheer improbability. However, Jack was such an amazing liar that no one could prove him wrong, and after a while even the ones who disbelieved him the most fell for his confidence and charisma. He just SEEMED like he was telling the truth. Everyone believed Jack when he told them something happened, especially when he became a local hero for tutoring some boy from another school. Mikey.

Well, almost everyone believed him at least. His very best friend, Ryan, knew the truth because Jack had told him. And Y/n knew because he'd been within earshot when Jack had told Ryan in the first place.

It had been what usually happens. The two boys had been in the back of the bus, as they both got off at the last stop - along with Y/n. They didn't know this though, because Y/n sat in front of them, just a few seats. He didn't talk, or even move a lot. He even sunk a lot into his seat as he was quite small, and leaned against the window to look outside, one earphone in his ear. As usual, his weird talent to be invisible no matter how hard he tried - for god's sake he was wearing a neon red jacket that day - he went completely undetected. So when Jack had explained to Ryan that he had lied about Mikey, and what it meant for them, Y/n had been well within ear shot to hear the whole thing.

Y/n could have told someone. Probably should have. But he had... a sort of crush on Jack, and selling him out wouldn't get Y/n anywhere with getting on the boy's good side. Not to mention, there weren't many people that would believe him - if there were any at all. He probably could have figured out a way to show Jack up. To rip apart his tapestry of lies and expose him to everyone. But Y/n believed that mistakes should be learned from. If he exposed Jack now, all that would happen is that Jack's life would be ruined and Jack would hate him. Things would come out eventually, and hopefully it would be from Jack himself. If that damage had to be done, Y/n wasn't going to be the one to do it.

He never really was, though. He never did much of anything.

All of that being said, Jack and Ryan were not the only ones stunned when the very Mikey that had been a ruse, suddenly turned up at school. Solid and smiling and talking and very much real. He passed every test and followed through treating Jack exactly how you'd expect Mikey to be. With him came Jack's super hot girlfriend from Arizona, even though Jack was so obviously crushing on one of the girls at school - Jenny. If that hadn't been bad enough, Jack and Ryan themselves broke into the room where Y/n was having shop class, being chased by lumberjacks who seemed to have it out for Jack. Weirdly enough, that fit another one of Jack's lies - once he'd broken his arm apparently single handedly fighting off two lumberjacks, but Y/n had seen Jack at the bike park the day before, and had seen him fall and break his arm, so he'd known better. Seeing them here now worried Y/n. So of COURSE he offered to take the two men out of the school where they belonged, and used it as an opportunity to dip out of class and follow after Jack to see if anymore of the lies Jack had told had come true.

Maybe even figure out what the hell was going on, and stop it.

Jack probably didn't deserve it, but if this got serious then Jack would be in danger from lumberjacks and aliens and pro wrestlers alike - and those were just the lies Y/n had heard about. Life was hard enough without your life being in danger, and that directly putting others' lives in danger as well. Y/n usually sat back and did nothing, but this wasn't one of those times.

After school, Y/n decided to go home - he wasn't going to follow Jack THAT far. But only the very next day, the rumor that Jack had been outside Jenny's house covered in all kinds of different things - including makeup - Y/n realized that maybe Jack needed an extra pairs of eyes to help him out. Unfortunately, Y/n lost Jack pretty early in the day as none other than Mikey himself approached after having a short exchange with Ryan and Jack. "Hey!" he greeted warmly.

Y/n stared back for a few seconds. Mikey seemed to get uncomfortable - the first negative reaction he'd had to literally anyone his entire time being here. "Hi," Y/n finally responded evenly, narrowing his eyes.

The response seemed to cheer Mikey up again. "Now that I'm transferring schools and coming here permanently, I think I want to make friends outside of Jack. He seems to be close with everyone here on some level, except for you and a few others. Figured I'd try each of you guys until someone - or even all of you - want to be my friend too!"

That made Y/n smirk. "I know you're full of shit."

Apparently, Mikey hadn't been expecting that. "I'm sorry?"

Shaking his head, Y/n scoffed. "I know Jack lied about there even being a Mikey. If you're just here to psyche Jack out, or for some magic thing, why are you trying to be friends with ME? No one wants to be friends with me."

This time it was Mikey who didn't respond right away. "You're less invisible than you think. I saw you in the window yesterday, watching me and Jack. I also saw you take those lumberjacks out of the school, which probably saved the boys a lot of time. I also saw you following Jack around the rest of school after that. You're the only one in this entire school who seems to be questioning anything." He smirked. "I have a friend who would really appreciate your help, especially since you know the truth about Jack... if you wanted to get him back for it."

Okay that wasn't what Y/n had been expecting. "Will I finally know what's going on?" Mikey nodded. "Will I have to participate in duping Jack?"

Mikey only shrugged. "We'll see what she says. Probably not."

How could he say no? "Who's this she, and what are you guys up to?"

Finally, that huge grin returned to Mikey's face. "I'm so glad you asked."

-

When Hannah had finished explaining the lengths she'd gone to in order to shake Jack up enough to finally tell everyone all he'd been lying about, Y/n had only one thing to say. "So you're lying to him to get him to come clean about lying to everyone else? At least now we know for sure you're both related."

That made her go a little red. "Listen, you have a little sister. You bring her to the fun center all the time." To that Y/n had to nod. "I see the way you sort of blend. I've picked Jack up from school for enough years now that I also notice the way you look at him." Y/n went stiff and Hannah chuckled. "Listen. He's a tool, and I have NO idea what you see in him, knowing what you know. But if you help me do this, maybe I'll help you out with your dilemma."

Y/n crossed his arms over his chest, suddenly not in a very cheery mood. "As much as I appreciate the thought Hannah, I'd rather like him from a distance than have to be friends with a straight boy I've liked for years okay? I'll keep my mouth shut - don't make any other promises you can't keep. Especially because-" Y/n swallowed a thick something caught in his throat. "He likes someone else.

There was an odd look on Hannah's face, but it was hard to read and she wasn't about to explain it which was most clear when she just kept on talking. So Y/n dismissed the look altogether. "Fine, that's fair." They parted ways there as Y/n noticed Jack and Ryan walking over to head home. Y/n had left class early to talk to Hannah in the empty parking lot, but now his time was up. "See you around, Hannah. Good luck." She winked and the boys shot Y/n confused looks as they got in the car and he left. As he went, he could hear them asking Hannah who he was, but she just said that Y/n had been asking for advice because they worked together, and left it there.

With how easy the words had left Hannah, and with how much confidence she'd had, perhaps Jack's talent for lying was more of a family thing than Hannah would like to admit. The thought amused Y/n enough to cheer him up. For now at least.

The next day in PE very quickly ruined his mood again though, as they were set up to play dodge ball. Mikey ended up being one of the team leaders, and he chose Y/n first to be on his team. Everyone was surprised. No one ever picked Y/n first. Even standing in front of them dressed in bright blue and red, he still blended into the crowd and it was often that not until everyone else had been picked they even realized he was there at all. Unfortunately, Y/n knew why Mikey saw Y/n so clearly. Why Mikey had picked him first. And he wasn't happy about it.

During the games, Mikey didn't talk much to Y/n which was appreciated, but the attitude Y/n gave him every time they DID interact seemed to catch Jack's attention - exactly what he didn't want to happen. Especially when a few games in everyone was picked off one by one until Jack and Ryan stood against Y/n and Mikey. Two on two, with Jack's eyes trained on Y/n in a way that made Y/n feel like he was going to explode. Perhaps it was that exact energy that demanded to be used that had driven him to pick up a ball and throw it at Ryan, nailing the red head right in the chest. "Nice shot!" Mikey congratulated. Y/n rolled his eyes.

In his moment of distraction, Jack hit Y/n with a ball as well. Y/n looked over when he was hit and the two boys' eyes locked. Jack seemed to be asking a question Y/n didn't want to even look at. Didn't want to hear, let alone answer. So he ducked his head and dipped, bee lining it for the water fountain on the opposite end of the gym to wait out the rest of the game so he could have as little downtime as possible to interact with Jack. It was that action which caused him to miss Jack nailing Jenny in the face with a ball aimed for Mikey, but he'd hear enough about it later to plenty make up for it.

After class was lunch, and Y/n would have made it peacefully to his usual spot under the bleachers, but Hannah stopped him on the way. Y/n was expecting her to ask him to be nicer to Mikey, but her eyes were only full of concern. "Mikey told me what happened in PE. How Jack noticed you, and how you ran away. He said you looked upset."

Y/n sighed, his shoulders sagging. "Honestly I just..." He wasn't used to having someone care about him, or talking about his feelings. It felt so promising to finally be able to, but also terrifying. Perhaps he and Hannah were in cahoots now, but she had no reason to actually care about Y/n. She was probably only asking to make sure that he didn't slip and tell Jack anything, which gave the thought that once this whole thing was over, she wouldn't care anymore. That meant Y/n could NOT get attached to her. Temporary things weren't worth putting effort into. "Nothing. I'm just used to noticing, not being noticed. Mikey sort of drew attention to me when he picked me first and it threw me off." He shrugged. "Now if you'll excuse me-"

"Hannah?" The sound of his voice made Y/n freeze, perfectly still. Not even breathing. "Drive us to Funland."

"Please?" She prompted, eyes staying purposefully away from Y/n, who kept his back to Jack but was still unfortunately in full view of her.

"Hannah," Jack tried again, voice laced with irritation. "Drive us to Funland. Please." the last word came out sarcastic and sharp. Y/n felt himself relaxed, ever amused by Jack's unceasing attitude.

"No," Hannah answered bluntly, smirking as she crossed her arm. Y/n actually smiled, and that only served to encourage her even more.

"Come on," Jack complained.

Ryan seemed to be less sure about wanting to go though. "We can't go back there," he reminded urgently. "Otis banned us for life." Y/n shot a look at Hannah, whose smirk only grew. Y/n had known for a long time that she worked at Funland - after all, he did take his little sister there like she'd said. He was beginning to wonder what shenanigans he'd been missing out on.

"We have no choice," Jack argued, turning to his friend. "If we want to get rid of Mikey once and for all, we have to find that purple hippo."

That caught Y/n off guard, and without thinking he turned to face Jack, too confused to think clearly. "I'm sorry, you're looking for Hurley?"

Jack only then seemed to realized Y/n was there, and he stopped a second, as if realizing it was the same kid who's been playing dodge ball with Mikey. Ah yes, back to being invisible. "No," Jack picked up again. "We're talking about a purple hippo at Funland who stands around and hands out balloons."

"Yeah," Hannah said this time. "His name's Hurley. And he doesn't hand out balloons."

"Well, when Emma and I went yesterday, Bart was off," Y/n piped up, directing that at Hannah. He didn't want to address Jack yet, and every time he looked at Ryan, the red head had gears turning so visibly not even his narrowed eyes could hold it off.

"That explains it," Hannah affirmed, nodding.

Jack was the next one to pipe in. "How do you two know all this?"

Hannah answered that one. "Jack, I've worked there for two years. I see Y/n there all the time with his little sister."

"Seriously?" Jack's shoulder relaxed, and Y/n realized that he'd pieced together why Y/n and Hannah were so casually talking to each other. He must have paid as close attention to Hannah as he did to Y/n though, because Y/n and Hannah had never really talked until all of the recent stuff that had been happening.

That theory was confirmed when Hannah huffed, "Where did you think I was going for four hours every day after school?"

"Well I don't know." Jack's eyes went wide as he shrugged. "I was just happy you were out of the house." Hannah sighed and took Y/n's arm to drag him after her as she began to walk away. There was only a second before Jack trailed after them, desperation leaking into his voice. "Hannah," he pleaded. "Hannah, please!"

Hannah was strong. Y/n wasn't. He pulled out of her grasp, turning to face Jack. "If you're really set on finding Hurley for whatever weird breakdown you seem to be having, his main habitat is the jungle mini golf course. Look for him there, okay?"

Jack grinned. "I like your new friend Hannah. He's awesome."

Y/n looked away to hide his blush.

"Yeah yeah, now go," Hannah dismissed, and the two boys ran off to go find Hurley. She grinned at Y/n when they were gone. "You know I'm Hurley, right?"

Y/n winced. "I know that now."

She giggled. "It's fine. This could be a good thing actually. They seem lost - I'll give em a little nudge." She leaned closer, bumping her shoulder with his. Her finger on the other arm reached up to tap his nose. "Push him in all the right directions." She winked, and then took off walking without Y/n this time, leaving him with a sinking dread in his stomach.

He pushed it down to take Emily to Funland just like he always did though... which had been a mistake. He thought that it would have been a big enough place to avoid Jack and Ryan, but only an hour later they were heading out of the jungle mini golf course when Ryan walked up to them, which of course meant Jack followed after. "Hey, I never caught your name?"

Y/n wished in that moment he could just die on the spot. "It's Y/n," he answered, hoping that would make Ryan go away. Long story short: it didn't.

"You've been coming here with Emma for a few years," Ryan continued. "Do you have any idea who Hubert could be?”

"Hurley," Y/n corrected tiredly. Ryan nodded. Y/n let his eyes drift away, searching out Emma as she climbed the rock wall. Unlike Jack, he wasn't good at lying. People never asked him questions - they never talked to him at all. But he had to lie. On some level. He DID know who Hurley was, but he couldn't exactly tell Jack that. Damnit Hannah, why did she have to tell him?! "Not really," Y/n finally caved. Ryan rose an eyebrow. "I mean I saw Hurley without a head once when I first came here, but they were fired as far as I know so I'm assuming it's someone new. That was three and a half years ago." It was truthful in full. Aside from the just the story, he didn't really know Hannah personally. He could have told them he knew it was her now, but he just. Didn't. Everything else had enough truth to it that it wasn't hard to sell.

Jack stepped up. "This probably makes no sense to you, but I just wanted to thank you for helping out. I think I've seen you around school a few times, but we've never like talked or anything. I just have to ask... why ARE you helping?"

Y/n shrugged. "I hate lying, and there's no harm in telling you what I did." Only then did he look away from Emma again as she began to reach the bottom of the rock wall, directly into Jack's eyes. "You have a lot going for you. It would be a shame if some unexpected drama were to ruin everything else." Jack's eyebrows came together, but before he could say anything Emma had reached the bottom and had made her way over - as Y/n had intended.

"Who are your friends?" the ten year old asked.

"Not my friends," Y/n corrected in the same nonchalant voice he'd used to remind Ryan of Hurley's name. "Just people I got to school with. They were just leaving-"

Emma's eyes went wide. "Wait, you're Jack aren't you?" Y/n went stiff. "My brother used to talk about you all the time! You're like the coolest kid at his school."

Jack turned his raised eyebrows on again, still aiming them at Y/n. Y/n shrugged. "What teenager who goes unnoticed and completely uncared for doesn't want to be friends with the popular kid?" He put either of his hands on Emma's shoulders, steering her away. "Nice to see you guys, later!"

Unfortunately, Jack didn't leave it there. "No wait!" He jogged over and Emma stopped, which forced Y/n to as well. "You've been cool. I wouldn't mind being friends."

Ironically, Y/n flashed back to what he'd said to Hannah. How much he had so NOT wanted this exact thing to happen. But what could he say. 'Sorry don't want to be friends with my crush, that would suck'? He couldn't that. But else would make sense? "Sure," Y/n sighed.

For some reason, that made Jack smile. "If you guys are set on staying here for a while longer, you can, but you could also come hang out with me and Ryan at my house if you wanted."

Y/n went to decline, but Emma got to it first. "Only if I can come along," she stated firmly. "This is sibling time. You get to join, not interrupt."

"That's fair," Jack agreed. "Come on!" The four kids headed outside after getting Emma's shoes and stuff, ready to catch the bus back to Jack's house. Y/n was sweating bullets. Unfortunately, going to Jack's house was the least of his problems. The second they were outside, Jack froze. "Perhaps... we should cancel the whole going to my house thing," Jack began nervously. His eyes moved to the others slowly, fear in them. Y/n seemed to put together what had him immediately - another lie had come to life. As if on cue, Jack looked at Y/n and Emma before his eyes glued to Ryan with purpose. "Remember when I told Eric that I was late meeting him because I was abducted by aliens?"

Ryan immediately went tense, and Y/n went pale. All four pairs of eyes turned to the roof, following Jack's lead as they saw what he had. Two men, wearing odd glasses like Cyclops from the X-Men comics. They seem to look identical - down to the matching shiny, silver suits and black, polished shoes. Very... what one might assume... alien vibes.

"No," Ryan whispered, forcing himself to reject what he was seeing. "I absolutely do not remember. I refuse to remember!" He even turned away, eyes focused purposefully on the cement.

"Too late," Jack shot down, his voice full of regret and resigned fear. He looked at Y/n and Emma, and in that moment the look that Jack had on his face would be burned in Y/n's mind forever. This is the face Jack made when he told the truth. "They're back."

"There are no such thing as aliens," Emma argued, shaking her head even as she looked up at the two men on the roof with awe.

"Right!" Ryan agreed, getting his momentum back. "Those are just two dudes, you know, wearing weird suits, standing on top of a roof." Jack and Emma nodded along, but Y/n was the one who had kept his eyes glued on the men, so he was the one who first saw the very bad news.

"They're running down it!" He screamed, jumping back to push Emma behind him, protected for maybe only a second longer than if he'd just left her be.

The two men landed, removed their weird glasses to reveal glowing red eyes, and then opened their mouths to release a high pitched, terrible shrieking sound. Y/n was most disturbed by the fact that they seemed to be even more identical with the visors off. So when Jack said to run, all four of them did, taking off into the garbage and hopping into the back of a truck. The aliens ran by and they were home free... well, until they almost ran face first into the lumberjacks, who had been so good as to find Jack again - this time with even more friends in harm's way. They were all running again, booking it into the elevator and to the top floor where they came out on the roof of all places. Where, to everyone's luck, the lumberjacks also were as they'd taken the stairs. Where, just as well, the aliens were as well, having run up the long way - through the parking lot. Even Otis was here, on his little golf cart to run them down as well.

Just as all hope seemed to be lost, Jack's fake girl from Arizona - Y/n never learned her name - pulled up in a red convertible, yelling at the four of them to get inside. Emma, Y/n, and Ryan all piled eagerly into the back seat, but Miss Totally not Fake Girlfriend locked the car before Jack could join them - right after he thanked her too, which finally gave Y/n her name. Lisa.

"Not you," Lisa snapped.

"What?" Jack almost screamed. Y/n couldn't blame him - Otis, the lumberjacks, and the aliens were getting closer by the second.

"You broke my heart, Jackie Bear," Lisa whined. Y/n looked away, his hands curling into fists. Putting Jack's life on the line was NOT worth having a heart to heart. This was NOT the time - how selfish did someone have to be? She didn't have to come at all if she didn't want to help, so why wasn't she just doing it and then talking about it later? She could have locked all of them in the car once they were safe and not let him out until... but then was when Y/n realized what this was about. The fake danger would force Jack to spill his guts and be honest, even if he wouldn't have in literally any other situation. Hannah was a genius.

"Lisa, please," Jack pleaded. "Whatever you want, I'll make it up to you."

"You're just saying that because you're selfish and you don't want your brains sucked out of your skull by aliens." The sentence was ridiculous, but Lisa DID have a point. Jack was only using her as an escape - he didn't really care that he'd hurt her.

Jack finally cracked though, not having enough room to think rationally. "Okay what do you want me to say?" he snapped.

"The truth," Lisa stated firmly.

And then, for some reason, Jack looked directly at Y/n, and in his eyes was that same fear from earlier. Y/n realized that the high opinions of others meant everything to Jack. Even now, thinking his life was on the line, with Y/n in the car, he couldn't bring himself to say it. "Just tell her, Jack," Y/n demanded. "I know as well as Ryan does that this whole lying thing has gotten out of hand."

Stunned, Jack looked back to Lisa. His confusion was replaced by regret as he saw HER. The girl he'd hurt by blowing her off to hide her from Jenny. Jenny, who had been hurt by all the other lies as well. Y/n, who seemed to know Jack had been lying but seemed hurt anyway. In that moment, he realized that Y/n was right. This HAD gone too far.

"Why don't you want to be with me?" Lisa asked gently, leaving no room for half truths or cop outs.

Looking around, Jack finally took in his situation... and gave up. "I-" His eyes flickered to Y/n again before landing on Lisa solidly. "I made you up so my friends wouldn't make fun of me."

Lisa smiled. "Get in." The car unlocked and the door opened and Jack was inside, and then they were pulling away and headed to Jack's house.

It was dark when they pulled up and unbuckled. Jack turned to Lisa, thanking her. She only smiled. "I know how much you love trouble, Jackie. Someone's gotta watch out for you." Ryan's eyes found Y/n's in that moment, and Y/n got the terrible feeling he'd been officially wrapped up in something he'd been trying to avoid.

"Listen, I'm sorry I lied to you," Jack apologized now. "I never, ever meant to hurt your feelings. It's just... I'm kind of into someone else." Y/n found himself having to look away, but he didn't miss the way that Ryan caught the pain flickering across his features. He only hoped Ryan wouldn't put together why.

Lisa was unphased. "If you like this someone else so much, Jackie Bear, just... try being honest with them. No one wants a relationship built on lies."

Jack nodded, then looked at Y/n. Feeling his eyes, Y/n looked back. "Speaking of..." He rose an eyebrow and Y/n nodded, recognizing without saying it that they needed to talk. They all got out of the car, said goodbye to Lisa, and then stood there and watched her go. It was then that Jack turned to Y/n again. "How did you know Lisa was a lie?"

Y/n sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. "I know a lot of things about the people at our high school. I don't MEAN to, people just... don't notice me." He shrugged. "Say things without realizing I can hear you. I was in the bus with you guys when you told Ryan that Mikey was a lie. I was also at the park when you broke your arm on your bike, so I knew you lied about the lumberjacks. I'd hear the "my secret girlfriend in Canada" line so many times it was easy to put together that you were full of crap about that too. I eventually wrote off that most things you said that sounded ridiculous on any level, were. Like your Asian parents and the wrestler and Mikey's dog's bionic tail."

After a second, Jack let out a breath. "Why didn't you ever tell anyone?"

At this, Y/n could only bring himself to shrug. "I don't owe anyone anything, and there was no harm coming from it at the time. I mean, the other people lined up for Student of the Year were annoying, and that was as far as I knew when it came to who you were affecting. It's not my job to keep you from making your own mistakes - you have to be the one to tell them. You have to learn from it. Now more than ever. All of these things happening are affecting more than just you, and Lisa was right. Jenny has probably been hurt by the lying most of all." Jack went to argue, but Y/n just rolled his eyes. "Half the school can see the way you look at her, Jack, you're not lowkey." That shut Jack up immediately.

"Well," Ryan sighed. "Now we know how to fix the whole thing. It worked with Lisa, and it can work with the others too. You just have to tell the truth - that isn't hard."

But then a look crossed over Jack's face, and Ryan and Y/n seemed to realize what he was thinking without him having to open his mouth. "Jack..." Y/n whispered softly.

"I'm just so CLOSE, you guys!" He huffed, looking at the with desperation. "Student of the Year gets announced tomorrow."

"Are you crazy?" Ryan snapped. "After everything we've been through?"

"The hippo said I have to confess to everyone. He never said when," Jack reasoned. "I'll just do it after Student of the Year. You even said it yourself Y/n - those kids are annoying anyway. I'm showing people that grades and crap don't matter - heart does! That's a GOOD thing."

Y/n stepped away when Jack reached a hand out to put on Y/n's shoulder. "But you're not winning on good character, Jack. You're winning through lies. Lies that are becoming a serious problem. And what do you think will happen when they realize you've been lying even after you got the award? You think there are aliens and lumberjacks coming after you and anyone close to you, but you still prioritize what? Being a bat boy?" He shook his head, grabbing Emma's hand. "I was wrong about you Jack. I thought every teenager was afraid of being hated and invisible. I thought you did it because you cared about being able to do the cool things you can - like stop bullies two years older than you from messing with other kids, or getting a whole school to rally together through love and excitement. But the only thing you're doing it for is the glory, and you care more about that than your friends and family." Jack went to say something, but Y/n just shook his head. "I was stupid to have a crush on you. You suck." And then without seeing Jack's reaction, he turned and walked away.

He figured that after his little confession, Jack wouldn't try to be friends with him anymore. Before, he'd been silently afraid of that. No matter what he told himself, he wanted Jack to see him and smile. To know he existed and to enjoy being around him. Yesterday, or just a few minutes ago even, that would have been enough...

Now, Y/n didn't care in the least. If that was how Jack treated people he saw, Y/n was just fine curling up in the shadows and never having Jack look at him again.

[samwise-writes]

The Gala: A Dance?

Part one, because this got really heckin' long. I've sat on this for too long, so here, have a thing.

Follows A Promise and The Invitation so those might be worth a gander for context!

CW: Hisoka; stalking; Possessive behaviour

She was uncomfortable. The fabric that was draped around her body felt as though it was suffocating her - she was painfully aware of how the outfit restricted her movements and of the overwhelming number of blind spots in the room. She fidgeted with a lock of hair that had escaped the carefully crafted updo she had managed to wrangle her ginger strands into only a few short hours earlier.

She was brought back into a more present state of consciousness as Mairi took a step closer to Serena's side. She must have sensed the shopkeep's uneasiness, as when Rea met the other woman's gaze, sympathy coloured the Hunter's blue eyes.

Rea held back a cringe and forced a smile onto her face, attempting to ease her posture into something even just slightly less defensive (at least in appearance). It certainly wouldn't do for the entire ballroom to observe how uncomfortable she was - the last thing she needed was hundreds of Hunters and other highly dangerous people to mistake her discomfort as something more threatening.

"I wasn't being facetious when I told your clown that these sorts of events were not my cup of tea."

Mairi made a face of displeasure at the mention of the redheaded magician - "Not my clown."

Rea snorted and a genuine smile cracked across her face for the first time since they had stepped into the building.

"Hey, you brought that nuisance into my life, he is yours." She paused thoughtfully before smirking, "Anyways, he seems to be a bit of a package deal with your boyfriend... so, he's yours, no take-backs!"

Mairi looked confused for a split second before a look of realization dawned and transformed into a look of horror, "Excuse me? No? Illumi is not my boyfriend." Rea cackled at her friend's reaction.

"If he isn't your boyfriend then why is he always lurking around the shop like he thinks he's being stealthy whenever you visit me?"

Mairi blinked at Rea.

"He what?"

Rea was not expecting her friend's reaction to be... well, what it was.

She didn't know that he had followed her to the shop all those times.

Rea was thinking as quickly as she could; now was not the time nor place for frightening revelations, (as one of the Zoldyck family members following you tends to be).

"You are way too easy to tease, you know. He only seems to be around when Killua is with you, so you can chill out. Probably just being a creepy and possessive older brother, like you said he has the tendency to be."

It was a lie - he hadn't only been there when Killua was with Mairi, but she didn't want to send her friend into a panic. She paused, closely observing the other woman, but for once Mairi's expression was difficult to read. Linking an arm with the Story Hunter she started pulling her deeper into the room, "let's go find something to drink."

She hadn't realized how much of an effect her words would have. Although reflecting, she should have known better. She herself had had a similar reaction to the Story Hunter’s when she first noticed the assassin's presence. It had taken a while to even become aware of him (and if he was anyone other than a Zoldyck she would've accused herself of getting rusty).

The eldest Zoldyck child was very much the opposite of Hisoka - while the magician was more than happy to make himself known through his loud and dramatic behaviour, and by flexing his aura and bloodlust all over the place - the assassin kept a very tight control on his own: if he didn't want you to know he was there, you wouldn't, at least not until it was much too late. It was a coincidence that Rea had even noticed him - and it was very much thanks (unfortunately) to Hisoka. The magician had seemed to sense something when he was in her shop one day, and the flare in his bloodlust seemed to trigger the slightest slip up in the assassin's aura (it was, after all, incredibly difficult not to instinctively react to Hisoka's bloodlust). That day Mairi had yet to make an appearance, so the shop owner hadn't initially connected the assassin's presence to her friend. She had a moment of panic where she lost control of her own aura, thinking that the Zoldycks had finally figured out who she was - and she had to fight to retain her control. She wasn't quite quick enough, and when she dared to glance at Hisoka he was looking at her with a manically delighted look. She hoped that he thought her reaction was simply from the unexpectedness of the flare in his bloodlust; something in his eyes, however, told her that he knew that she too had become aware of the assassin's presence and that the ravenette was the cause of her momentary loss of control. Needless to say, he was very interested to know what the possible connection between the little shopkeeper and Illumi was: as far as he knew only the Story Hunter had met the assassin before. In an attempt to deescalate the situation, Rea had stuck her tongue out at him in the most childish manner she could muster and told him to: "stop looking at me like that, you creep."

After that, Rea had been able to pick up on the assassin's presence whenever he did make an appearance. He never came in, but the former-Hunter was able to connect the fact that his appearances often coincided with her friend's visits. While she was concerned for her friend, she felt herself relax in the knowledge that he wasn't there for her, and therefore the Zoldycks likely still didn't know who she was. She never brought up the issue with her friend, she had clearly wrongly assumed that the woman had known.

Despite the levity that Rea had attempted to introduce by teasing the other woman (because let's be honest that royally failed), there was something undeniably charged in the atmosphere of the room. It was making the back of Rea's neck prickle. She wasn't sure if it was due to the disquiet that had fallen over her friend, or simply her own unease of being at the gala.

Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as simple as that, and it didn't take very long to understand the true cause of the uneasy atmosphere.

The two women had managed to collect champagne flutes and were standing off to the side of the ballroom's dance floor, talking in hushed tones, both seemingly comparably more at ease than they had been just a quarter of an hour ago.

Suddenly Rea tensed up to a greater degree than at any other point during the evening so far. She stood stalk still as a certain aggravating presence loomed up beside her.

"Well, don't we just look positively delectable tonight," Hisoka purred in her ear. She could practically visualize the smug look the magician would be sporting; Rea had to fight every instinct in her body not to whip around and smack the man in the face. The women, in a controlled manner, turned to face the magician and another unexpected figure.

Rea thanked Mairi for what she did next because frankly, Rea had not expected Hisoka to look like that.

"What are you doing here?" Rea's eyes were going between a very normal(?!) looking Hisoka, her friend's quickly reddening shocked face, and a man with long black hair, a blank face and dark eyes that resembled pieces of the void. After she got past the initial shock of Hisoka's appearance Rea gathered enough wherewithal to discover that the dark-haired man was in fact the assassin who had been stalking her friend.

"You know, it is only good manners for you to return the compliment," Hisoka tore Rea's attention back to him, getting in her face with a smirk.

"You know,” Rea gave the magician a practiced bored look, “it’s bad manners to fish for compliments." She was proud of her acerbic tone. She would NOT give him the satisfaction of knowing how attractive he looked. He kept staring at her, a smirk growing wider - she could feel her own face slowly becoming more and more flushed by the second.

She gave a huff, and crossed her arms, trying to play off her affectedness with nonchalance, eyes returning to her friend who seemed to be growing tenser and tenser.

"You don't look like a clown for once: congratulations."

The assassin's eyes moved from Mairi for the first time since the men approached them, and fell to Rea, before quickly angling toward Hisoka; he blinked as though taking in the other man's appearance for the first time.

"She is right, you know."

Rea had to swallow the laugh that came bubbling up her throat at the ravenette's monotone delivery and oddly unobservant treatment of his companion. She wondered if he really hadn’t noticed or if he was just acting like he hadn’t in order to get under the magician’s skin.

The assassin returned his gaze to Mairi, his eyes drinking her in.

After a short pause, he spoke again: “To answer your question… I was invited.”

Rea watched her friend blink a few times face getting even redder, shifting ever so slightly under Illumi’s gaze.

“Oh. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.” There was a pause and Illumi seemed perfectly intent on continuing to stare at Mairi. Finally, she cleared her throat and began again, “Um. Right. Hello.”

Rea wanted to save her friend from the awkward situation but was also attempting to ignore Hisoka, who looked unfairly good in a suit and was staring her down as though she was his favourite dessert.

Rea slipped her arm through Mairi’s again, but this time pulled the other woman into her a bit closer, she proceeded to intertwine their fingers and gave the hunter’s hand a squeeze. Illumi’s eyes narrowing the tiniest degree, fell to their hands, before following Rea’s arm back up to her face.

Interesting.

“So, what, Hisoka,” Rea started, returning her gaze to the other man and inwardly cursing herself for doing so, her voice much breathier as she continued “I refused to bring you, so you annoy this guy into doing so? Wanted to dance with me that bad, huh?”

Hisoka took a step closer so that there were mere centimetres between them, and Rea had to tilt her head up to meet his eyes: they flicked down to her mouth momentarily before meeting her gaze once again.

“Is that an offer?” His voice was so low it sent a shiver down her spine. He grinned at her reaction – and then suddenly he had one hand clasped around the back of her neck, thumb stroking over her pulse-point ever so slightly. A small gasp escaped her lips – she hadn’t even seen him move. Fire spread over her shoulders, and up into her face – she could only imagine how flushed she was.

"Oh, is this why you didn't want me to be your date? Because you knew your undeniable attraction to me would be a distraction from the evening?" He had bent his head down, his red hair tickling her forehead, as his breath danced across her ear. That snapped her back into action. Using her one free hand, she pushed him away from her with a solid press to the middle of his chest.

She sputtered, "NO YOU CLOWN. Shut UP. Just. Leave. I'm leaving."

Then she tugged on Mairi’s hand, attempting to draw her attention away from the other man who was back to staring at her: however, to Rea’s dismay, she was met with a sight she hadn’t expected. Illumi had one hand extended to her friend – was he asking her to dance?

She saw her friend was looking at her with wide eyes, as though looking for an escape. Serena opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out, Hisoka stepped closer to her again, placing his hand now lightly at her waist.

“Dance with me.” His voice sounded in her ear again, this time more serious than Rea had ever heard him. She made an apologetic face at her friend. They were stuck in the situation, it seemed.

Serena redirected her gaze, opting to trace the pattern of the marble floor, rather than meet Hisoka’s too-close eyes.

“I don’t know how to dance.”

There was a pause and Rea finally met Hisoka’s gaze. It seemed he was waiting for her to do so, as his sharp grin spread further across his face.

“Worry not, Dearest, I won’t let you fall.”

She cursed under her breath “Sure you won’t.”

She heard him chuckle, assuming he had heard her, as he proceeded to guide the woman out to the dance floor. He stopped a reasonable way in, avoiding the other dancers who had already begun to gracefully move through the waltz and then turned to face Rea.

She stared at him wide-eyed for a moment, as he rearranged them: taking her right hand in his left, and placing her left on his shoulder, before replacing his hand back at her waist.

“Wait – do you even know how to dance?”

He just raised an eyebrow at her for a moment.

And then he took the first step.

A/N: Frankly I had way too much fun writing this, and once again, I blame @crocworkships and our fantastic conversations for this.