#and actually sitting down to think about the genetic science

[starcurtain]

The existence of Ratio's vertical pupils indicate that his species evolved as potentially apex ambush predators, while Aventurine's more diamond-shaped pupils suggest Avgins occupied a middle rung of the Sigonian food chain, with divided need to both track prey and maintain wide-angle vision to identify predatory threats. In this essay, I will--

[cherryredstars]

I'm so happy you did part 2 of fear or lust ❤️ It's one of my favorite pieces you've done.

Can we get a last part of the series where reader and Miguel are about to graduate and how she is getting job offers from halfway across the world. Miguel obviously doesn't want her to leave him, so he bullies convinces her to stay with him.

Love your work!

Kisses 💋💋💋

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x fem!reader

Warnings: 18+. NSFW, Toxic!Miguel, Manipulative Sex, Penetrative Sex, Choking, Forced Agreement

A/N: Thank you, sweets! Enjoy!

Unedited

Part 1 Part 2

You are destined for greater things.

That's what the university's dean had said during their graduation. Miguel knew that was particularly true for the two of you, everyone else he didn't quite care. He had already been offered positions in the biggest corporate businesses specializing in science and genetics, the offers still pending and eagerly awaiting his response. He's seen from the common snooping around on your phone that your emails were spammed with similar offers from different businesses across the world, some you've kept personal contact with through messaging. It makes him sour, not because he doesn't want you to succeed, but because he doesn't want you flying halfway across the fucking world to do it.

He finally has you trapped between his claws, but now you're already planning to escape him. Makes him grumpy, his mind already brewing with ways to get you to stay, to get the offers beckoning you with fully-paid flights to different countries to suddenly disappear. Ways to make you stay with him. He's already narrowed down the job offers in you're onslaught of requests that align with the location of the offer he's going to accept. A nice position in Alchemax right here in Nueva York. You would still have a great selection of jobs to accept here, a few five or more positions that are stationed around the same area. All he has to do is convince you to take up their offers.

That's why he has you trapped under him, his hand wrapped around your throat as his chest sits flush with your back. Your lips are just as puffy and wet as your eyes as tears run down your cheeks. Miguel feeds harsh, slow thrusts into your drooling cunt, slowly dragging against your walls just to spear you on his entire length again. You let out broken sobs, eyes half-lidded and staring into nothing as you get lost in the pleasure.

Miguel's mouth rests just by your ear, speaking words so low and casual as if he isn't abusing your precious cunt.

"Think some nobody across the world s'gonna make your pussy feel this good, hm?" He mutters to you, smiling evilly at the way the words cause your spine to jolt.

"N-no," You force out through wobbly lips, blinking slowly as your mind tries to process what he's actually saying.

"Then why would you wanna leave, Bambi?" Miguel chuckles, furthering his point with a suffocating thrust against your cervix, making you choke on your next breath.

"I-" You begin, brows furrowing. Why was it you wanted to leave? You don't remember. You don't even remember what he's talking about. "I don't know..."

"You don't know?" Miguel chuckles, something dark and condescending in his voice. "Well that's stupid then, don't you think."

You nod in agreement, eyes rolling back with a drawn out moan as Miguel forces his hand between your body and the mattress to rub at your swollen clit. Miguel leans further into you, his teeth capturing your ear as he gives it a bite that he soothes with a long lick.

"Should just stay here with me, Bambi. You don't really want to leave, right?"

The way he says it, even though he presents it like a simple question, seems final. Like he's already made the decision for you. But your mind is too overloaded to catch it, for it to break it down and blare out warning bells. Instead you nod with a half-assed hum as you feel your orgasm approaching. Your mouth drops open in a moan, a shaky call of his name forming on your lips as you feel your body beginning to stiffen as that ball in your stomach is on the brink of explosion.

You cry out when Miguel stops completely, keeping his cock snug and motionless against your fluttering walls.

"Why-" You sob, trying to move your hips despite the impossible weight he presses into you. "Miggy- I- so close!"

Miguel snarls, his hand tightening around your throat. A panic seizes in your chest as your airway contracts.

"Say it," He grits into your ear. "Say that you'll stay."

You hesitate, your mind trying to understand the words and push away the pain around your neck. But Miguel only adds to the pressure when you don't respond, feeling his patience wanning.

"I-" You choke, words strained until he lightens his hold, "I'm going to s-stay."

Miguel seems to suddenly brighten, turning your head so his forehead rests against your sweaty one. "Promise?"

"Yeah," You whisper out, sniffling as your tears gather at the corner of your lips. "I promise."

Miguel grins, something ruthless and demented before he crashes his lips against yours. The kiss seems more like a punishment rather than a reward, his tongue thrashing in your mouth and his lips bruising. When he pulls away, he licks away the tears from your face, chuckling before he adjusts his position.

"Good girl, Bambi. Was that so hard?" He laughs, his hand leaving it's place against your throat and clit to wrap around your hips.

He begins thrusting again, faster and rougher than before. He leaves your head completely empty as he praises you for falling into his trap, feeding your blank brain with prettied up images of how nice your future will be. Feeds you with dolled up images of the two of you moving in together in a nice apartment in Nueva York that's a fair distance from both of your places of employment. Grunts about how happy he'll be to come home from work to find you splayed out on your shared bed waiting for him to return and fill you up again and again.

He doesn't stop until you're screaming out your release, coating his cock in a beautiful sheen of milky white until you're too exhausted and fucked out. He rewards you with a gift of his own cum, stuffing your cunt just like he promised in those worded glimpses of your future together. He makes sure to care for you after, caring until you get sleepy and fall into a deep sleep. It's only then that he goes through your phone, writing a rejection to send and copy and paste to all your other job offers. What type of man would he be if he didn't take care of this for you when you're completely incapable of doing it yourself? Don't worry though, he promises he'll sit down with you and help you write your acceptance to any of the other jobs here in Nueva York.

Promise.

[angelyuji]

professor miguel o'hara headcanons :)

miguel o'hara x gender neutral reader

+ yandere headcanons!!!!

professor miguel o’hara would be so OFUAN:EOAFIDNWFBOWE”NJP sorry im just feral for him

professor o’hara would actually be the worst professor to get tbh like he’s a strict grader, he’s super anal about late turn-ins, all that jazz. like he’s got a shit ratemyprofessor rating… he’s the worst. he’s not the type to insult you or make you feel like shit for getting questions wrong or failing an exam HOWEVER he does say that if you fail an exam, just drop out cuz you’re not passing yeahhh he sucks lol

also he has a p.h.d in genetics and genomic sciences (totally didn’t just search up what the major is called and pasted it on here… definitely not) so he’s a huge stickler on being called doctor o’hara

however, when you mess up and say professor, he doesn’t seem to mind it all that much

professor o’hara who obviously has favorites (based on who participates more/does the best on exams)

Miguel would send students that come to him for help to students that do really well in the class (he does not care to reteach or help with essays) “you should’ve paid attention when i was explaining. im sure one of your classmates like (y/n) can help.”

motorcycle professor, office hours are always open for questions or concerns, he’s honestly chill just super strict and mean-looking

however no matter what, every single bitch has a crush on him… have you SEEEEEN him. yall know that scene in criminal minds when spencer reid is teaching a class and basically the entire class was auditing the class becuz he’s hot… yeah that except miguel o’hara is a lot meaner about chasing those people out.

yandere :0

:IBFP(I)IU*Y&^&TFRTCVGBHIK\

sorry

lemme set the scene, ur one of the smartest of your class, you’re his favorite student like ur pretty, smart, and kind to your classmate and honestly…. he was downright obsessed like mf knows ur entire class schedule, he knows ur address ur number ur email. e v e r y t h i n g

ur kindness to your classmates is gonna be ur downfall, someone (who is known to be a cheater) is gonna go to him asking for help on a project. miguel is gonna be like “lol im not helping u but yk who will? (y/n).” miguel knows that your classmate is gonna cheat, but that’s a part of the plan

they go up to you, ask to see ur project and when ur not looking, take pictures of ur research and everything. you won’t know a thing becuz ur a nice friend :)

you’ll just turn in ur stuff and chill. the next class after the due date, professor o’hara asks you to stay after class.

“(y/n), it looks like you and another classmate have almost exact project.” miguel turns his screen towards you, showing your project and your classmates

“what? dr. o’hara, i don’t know what’s going on, but i promise you, i didn’t cheat off of anyone.” you beg.

“i’m sure that we can get to the bottom of this, (y/n)…” miguel pretends to think for a second. “how about this, come to my office around 6. i think i’ll be done with classes for the day. we’ll have a chat.” he stands, rearranging his papers.

“of course. i’ll be there!” you thank him and rush out to meet your friends, holding back tears.

i mean, of course you’ll go to see your professor. you’ve been accused of plagiarism and that shit can get you expelled.

you knock on the door. “dr. o’hara?”

“come in.” you walk in, anxious to get the situation resolved. you see your professor sitting at his desk, but you don’t see your classmate.

“i thought the other person would here too…” you feel a weird sense of dread fill in your stomach.

“ms. (l/n), i don’t think we need them here for this discussion.” he motions for you to sit down at the chair. “plagiarism is a very serious offence.”

“professor, you can’t seriously believe that i copied off of them!” you’ve got the best grades in the class, you feel flabbergasted.

“ms. (l/n)!” he frowns.

you lower your head, ashamed, “i’m sorry, it’s just. they came up to me, asking for help…”

“i understand, (y/n), but do you have any physical proof of that?” you stay silent. “i can… find a way to help you, but… you’re gonna have to do something for me, (y/n).” miguel leans in and you feel that dread in your stomach worsen, but you have no other choice.

“of course, professor! anything!”

eDTRUTYGYH*(J)(_)_JIHUUGYFR^%&T*Y(UOIJL

he’s gonna take advantage of your situation. at first, it’ll be like secret dates, small (expensive) gifts at your door, then it moves up.

soon, he’s making you come to his home, making you stay overnight….

it was raining when you had went over and the rain was getting worse. his house was in the middle of a neighborhood in the woods, everything about this situation was grossing you out. “dr. o’hara, i don’t-” you, hesitantly, walk through the doors into his home.

“miguel. i’ve told you, (y/n). you should call me miguel when we’re alone.” he smiles at you and locks the door behind you.

“right… miguel, i don’t think that this is appropriate.” you look around his home. it was quaint, clean… almost like it wasn’t even lived in. you would’ve thought it was a random rental if it wasn’t for his diplomas framed on the wall.

“(y/n), do i need to remind you of our deal?” he looks at you, and for the first time since this situation started, you felt afraid. miguel disappears into the kitchen and you decide to step back closer to the front door, itching to run. “(y/n),” he pops his head out and smiles, “take a seat at the dining table.” you see fangs in his mouth and your fear grows.

dinner goes by uneventfully, but you feel uneasy as miguel chats it up with you. he had been too… nonchalant about the arrangement, but this was a new development. he wouldn’t ask you questions about yourself, but he somehow knew everything about you. it creeped you out. “if dinner is over, i should go home.” you stand, pushing back your chair.

he grabs your hand, “there’s no need to rush, (y/n)… unless,” he lets go and leans back in his chair, thinking. you freeze. “if you want to leave, i can always go to the board and tell them about your essay.” miguel shrugs and gets up.

“no! no… i’m sorry, doctor- sorry, miguel, i’m not leaving.” you sit back down.

miguel laughs, straightening, “you’re so cute, sweetheart. i’ll go get dessert.” he steps back into the kitchen. you grab your phone and text your roommate asking for help, but they don’t respond. miguel walks out with two plates of cheesecake. he continues to talk to you, asking about your classes for next semester. you gingerly answer his questions and eat, eager to finish and go home. you look behind miguel’s head and notice that the rain had gotten worse. if you didn’t leave now, you’d get stuck here.

“i should get going then.” you carefully place the fork down. “the rain is getting pretty bad.” miguel turns to look and you check your phone. still no response. miguel hums as the rain pelts the ground. he looks back at you.

“any minute now.” he doesn’t say anything else.

“ha, yeah. it’ll get worse any minute now.” you repeat and stand up. all of a sudden, your head spins. you stumble and grab your chair. immediately miguel is at your side, helping you steady. your head won’t stop spinning and you hear your words slurring, “fuck, i don’t feel good.” miguel picks you up with ease, holding you bridal-style. “put me down, please, miguel. i need to go home.” you feel yourself lose consciousness and lay your head against miguel’s chest, too tired and dizzy to fight.

“everything is okay, (y/n). all you need is me.”  the last thing you feel as miguel whispers in your ear, is a kiss against your forehead.

[kiwinatorwaffles]

hermit species headcanons: volume… 2!

i made this post two years ago when i was fresh to the series and was just getting to know the hermits. a lot has changed since then, but a lot has also stayed the same! my headcanons are getting refined every single time i talk about them, so chances are, this list won't even be accurate to my thoughts a year later.

with that being said, let's get started! click the cut to read them all

bdubs: glare! small, hates the dark, is a feral creature, will never let go of the moss. he and pungance were born from the same tree in the same patch of moss so they are brothers LMAO

beef: vampire! but not a full one. he was bitten by a bat and gained two vampiric traits exactly: fangs and sensitive skin. beef thinks his tendency to get sunburnt easily is just something in his code or a genetic condition. he never got it checked.

cub: alien shapeshifter! his original form is this shapeless void blob, and he can only copy how other beings look like. his forms were taken from two astronauts he saw in space, an old man and a young man. his void form can be seen slightly on his inner arm, where there is just a sliver of night sky hanging out

cleo: zombie (duh) cleo was permakilled by a witch's curse but when faced with the pearly gates they were like. nah. i'd rather be down there. and just straight up left and came back as a zombie. that's how she met joe. because he was sitting on top of her tombstone eating a sandwich

doc: originally a fae, but now he's super fucked up? what can i even say. he was a fae who got super interested in the sciences and started experimenting on himself just for the hell of it. there was that whole dinnerbone cyborg arm thing but he also managed to make himself a centaur form that he uses for extra storage and height. nobody knows where the creeper came from. was it from his dad's side? did he give it to himself? not even stress, his cousin, can tell you how he came to be. what the hermits DO know however is that he can steal pronouns by asking for them

etho: redstone deity! etho was an ancient builder who was executed for witchcraft upon his discovery of redstone. he was resurrected by the universe as a second chance and to spread his knowledge to the world. you can read more from my fic here ehehehehe

false: human! yes she is 100% human. i just thought it would be funny if such an awesome and skilled fighter was just some normal ass human with a bit of social anxiety

gem: forest spirit! she has nature powers and can change parts of her body to reflect parts of nature. she's a deer? an elf? nope! only sometimes. she can mix and match whatever traits she wants on any given day. but be careful of those deer legs and horns. they Hurt

grian: red macaw avian! he has bird feathers covering his ears, parrot wings, and bird talons! he is also able to mimic voices perfectly (which he uses to play pranks and swear in other hermits’ voices) and is a Hollow Boned Menace. he carries a lot of bird tendencies, like being a piece of shit or preening his friends’ hair when it’s too messy (which is always). in start of seasons, he has x lock away usage of his wings to keep himself from an unfair advantage. he also has stolen powers from the watchers, which he can use to change his wing colors or view the entire map from afar.

npg: ????????????? he’s supposed to be a robot, but he has wings and flies sideways?????? he’s somehow even more fucked up than robot grian. not even grian is sure of what he created tbh. he just knows he did NOT give npg those conure wings to begin with.

ariana griande: galah avian! she is grian's cousin who is a pop star. she has never actually been on hermitcraft before -- that was grian cosplaying as her.

hypno: human warlock! he accidentally made a pact when he replaced his tooth with a piece of cursed gold. jokes on his patron though, his faulty human memory can't even remember how he got his powers! he has lots of inscriptions as tattoos written in galactic just all over his body that he completely forgot how to read at this point and is immortal. maybe that's a bit bad for his sense of self-preservation

impulse: demon/imp! he used to be a gargoyle that dispensed candy, but a wizard passing by granted him life and well. now he's here! demons are actually underworld spirits that punish permadead players who have been genuinely horrible to the players around them, but impulse wanted to build houses and play with redstone instead of stirring the torture soup. so when he met skizz he decided hanging out with the players was the best thing to do. he also used to have larger horns and wings but his time on the surface has made his wings very tiny and unusable without the help of an elytra. skizz always teases him for this.

iskall: cyborg! the hermits don't know if he was fully human before the cyborgification. me, personally? i think it would be funny if she was actually built to protect a village but had too much of a personality so the villages just let him go have fun with the players. not sure if i want to adhere to that though

jevin: slime! certain slimes have evolved to be more like players. jevin is from the blue variety (that's his gender)

joe hills: ???????? void-born universe being??? joe is actually the oldest living being in the universe. he was just popped out of void (even predating the void gods) and spent all this time just doing whatever fuckall was around to do. he looks like a normal human being but just Slightly to the left, like his a bit-too-many teeth or slight lean when he stands. other than that, he acts like any other human!

joel: human mage! he actually only has powers of illusion that changes only how he looks. he Really wanted to be an orc but the spell couldnt last forever (as his fae wife lizzie found out after marriage). every day he wishes he had as much swag as shrek did. more on the headcanon here

keralis: weird fucking eldritch cryptid being? except he looks exactly like a human. nothing weird about him, nope. just don't look too closely at his eyes. he promises that he blinks like a normal person and not with his pupils.

mumbo: robot! with a core heart and stretchy limbs, he runs mainly on the consumption of redstone and occasionally typical foodstuffs. he had a creator before the days of hermitcraft (who originally built him as a war machine but something went deeply sideways during construction) that taught him all there is to know about redstone and the outside world. he also inherited the british accent and mustache from his creator. his creator did want him to be free and wiped mumbo's memory of his creation before setting him off into the overworld and letting him roam free. now he's just a silly guy!

grumbot: robot! he was first built to give suggestions on what to do with the mayoral elections but then he developed actual attachments to his horribly neglectant dads </3 but it's alright! he now chills with renbob and goatman up in the hermitheus

pearl: moon spirit! she was the moon from a player's hardcore world. the player used to talk to the moon for fun, but suddenly disappeared from the world one day. now feeling lonely, pearl took a humanoid form and descended to find where her player went, but she ended up discovering the joys of being a player herself. contrary to popular belief, she had no influence on the season 8 moon.

ren: weredog! can shapeshift into a dog form, which he usually uses to either run fast or play fetch. he’s also more prone to change when the moon is larger…. except he just becomes a hyperactive dog who chases his tail all night and is deeply embarrassed by it. he also probably has rabies, but everyone whom he has bitten probably already had something deeply wrong with them to begin with anyway

renbob: human...? he's related to ren from the human side, or at least that what he tells people. but he might as well be 50% weed by now

scar: human(?) wizard! he can fly, subtly change his physical appearance, cast spells, and do all sorts of magical shenanigans! he also can read galactic fluently, which is how he learned that hypno enchanted himself with loyalty at some point. jellie is his beloved familiar. also he's a capitalist. nobody knows where that came from

skizz: angel! why are there angels in minecraft, you might ask? some people are satisfied with their lives and let themselves permadie. skizz, after being born randomly from an angel statue (i wonder if it’s related to the other statue guy) was supposed to be one of the angels who helped escort players to the pearly gates, but he met impulse while his demon clan was taking a field trip to heaven. the two immediately became besties and skizz begged the universe to let him join the players. the universe begrudgingly agreed and now he's here! he hides his many other halos as ring tattoos on his arms as well

stress: fae! she's got fairy powers, magical swag, an affinity for flowers, and will beat you up if you assume she's the resident server cleric.

tango: ex-blazeborn! he saw some yummy packed ice and ate it, which extinguished his internal flame. his blazeborn tribe felt bad for him but knew it would be dangerous if he stayed, so tango just left for the overworld instead. he tries to convince people that he is 100% a human and not suspicious at all because he's embarrassed of having to explain that he lost most of his powers due to eating some yummy ice cream. a more detailed post about my headcanon can be found here

tfc: human! the only non-human aspect of him is a prosthetic leg. contrary to popular belief, he did not lose that leg while mining. it was after fighting a horde of skeletons. (he won)

wels: human. he's just a human. nobody believes him when he tells them because they've seen him accidentally level a building while sparring before. but nope. he's just a human. and a very fucked up one at that

hels: ???? techncially has the traits of wels, beef, and etho????? is there a species for evil clones created by copying machines or

xb: guardian! he was a guardian made to guard the magical treasures of ancient builders, but he got bored of staying in the same spot for centuries and his creators never returning. hypno casted a spell of bipedelity on xb, so now he can walk on land! i wrote a fic about it here too

xisuma: voidwalker! created by the young void gods, he was made from a fucking mspaint file where the void gods dicked around with the program and made a deeply fucked up being (him) on accident. he has no mouth, his hands are as black as the void, and his voice is terrifying without a modulator, which is why he wears a helmet. more about it in my fic here

evil x: also a voidwalker, but this time the void gods pressed random on a picrew and sent him out into an alternate dimension. he grew up in super england until x fished him out of the void. this little rascal has red scleras, ram horns, and a devil tail. he doesn't need to sleep, so he gets all his energy from eating, which is convenient because his sharp teeth can crunch anything and he can digest everything. his hair acts like an enderchest with a portal to the void, where he keeps snacks and various trinkets.

zedaph: human, but he’s not sane. i mean look at this guy. look at what he’s doing. nobody knows how he became so deeply fucked up but he's truly just Like That. he gave himself sheep features once on accident though

worm man: surprisingly, human. he's lucky to have stayed human for this long with his brother's insane experiments. accurate to popular belief, he has no superpowers.

[accihoe]

Case Study 1

Pairing: detective!Bucky x doctor!reader

Summary: Prologue of how the geneticist and the detective met.

Warnings: Angst (in chapters to come)

A/u: 80s (Starts off in late 70s)

A/n: Howdy. Same drill; PLEASE DON'T STEAL MY WORK. God bless.

xxx

August 31, 1979

"Barnes." Stark acknowledges as he walks into the detective's office. "Stark." James says, removing his glasses and laying them on his brown desk. "Here are the evidence forms. We contacted Doctor Banner, but he's caught up in something. So, in place, he's sending his brightest intern." Tony states, sitting on the desk. "An intern?" James sighs, rubbing his cheeks. "Apparently she's good." Tony shrugs, lighting his cigar. "No smokin' in here. Ma complains about the smell." James waves away the smoke. Tony rolls his eyes and walks to the door. "You two start Monday, September 3rd." With that, Tony leaves.

September 3rd, 1979

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Doctor, I'm detective Steven Rogers." Bucky hears Steve as he walks into the building. "The pleasure is all mine, detective. I'm Doctor Y/N Y/L/N." Y/N smiles warmly, shaking Steve's hand. "Doctor? I thought you were a novice." James states as he walks in, and Steve shakes his head with a quiet sigh. "I'm a Probationer, actually. Mr Barnes Junior." Y/N states. "Is that so?" James asks, lighting his cigar. "Indeed. However I lean more towards the science in genetics than medical practice." She says. "Very well. Well now that we've passed the introduction phase let's get to the case, shall we?" Barnes changes the subject. "Yes of course." Y/N smiles. James feels his heart jolt at her warm smile, so he returns it.

September 21st, 1979

"You're aware that the case ended like a week ago, right?" Sam Wilson asks, slipping his coat over his shoulders. "Oh we're very aware. Doctor Y/L/N is just helping me uncover more family schemes and suspect. Because she's a genius and all." Barnes shrugs. "Right. And that's why she's sitting on your desk." Sam says as he leans against his colleague's doorframe. "Goodnight Sam. Take care." Y/N smiles and singsongs. Sam sighs and shakes his head as he leaves, and once his back is turned to them he allows the smile to take over his face.

November 16th, 1979

"Buck, can I ask you something?" Y/N looks over at James, tucking a strand of overgrown hair behind his ear. "Ask away, doc." He smiles, looking down at the filed paperwork on his lap. "How would you like to meet my family?" She hums, twirling his hair between her fingertips. "Isn't it a bit soon, dollface?" He asks, finally looking at her. "I don't think so. For all they know we could've been together since September 3rd." She states calmy. Bucky smiles at his girl, taking her hand into his. "They're going to swoon over you. Trust me. Just brace yourself for questions. They have loads of them. About anything and everything." She says. James laughs, tilting his head to the side. "I can't wait to meet them. When and where do we go?" Bucky is quick to shift closer, intrigued and excited.

They shared their first kiss over New Year's. And, 4 months later, Y/N had a shimmering engagement ring adorning her left hand.

September 3rd, 1980

"And do you, James Buchanan Barnes, take Y/N Y/M/N Y/L/N, to be your lawfully wedded wife?" The pastor asks. "I do." James smiles, more sure about his answer than he's ever been. "And do you, Y/N Y/M/N Y/L/N, take James Buchanan Barnes to be your lawfully wedded husband?" The pastor asks. Y/N sucks in a breath of excitement as she looks at all the seated and waiting guests, and then to her almost husband, his beautiful baby blues shining with the utmost love and adoration, "I do.". "You may now kiss the bride." The pastor announces. The crowd cheers and applauds as James dips his wife and kisses her.

"This is so bananas that on this very day, a year ago, we met for the first time. And now we're married." Y/N says dreamily as her husband kisses her knuckles as they sit at the bride and groom table. "Yeah, love acts in mysterious ways." He agrees, feeling himself get physically lost inside her eyes. "I love you, Y/N Y/M/N Barnes." He smiles, eyes scanning over her breath-taking features. "And I love you, James Buchanan Barnes." She hums in agreement. "Tonight I'm exceptionally grateful that Doctor Banner was busy." James smiles. "Want to know a secret?" Y/N whispers. "Always." He whispers. "He wasn't really busy. But I asked to go in his place." Y/N smiles up at her husband. "Wait. What?" He asks, scrunching his nose up as he smiles.

"Well, I wanted to gain experience fairly quickly, and word about NY's hottest detective on the look for a Geneticist came my way, so I pulled a few strings." Y/N admits. "So I have my beautiful wife to thank for this?" Bucky asks with a smile. "And Tony, for allowing a rookie in on a big case." She smiles playfully. "You helped us ace that case." James says in return.

xxx

This will probably just be a mini-series. But I'll see how it does, and decide thereafter.

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

Who do you think would be friends with whom between the Fatui and the people from Guili Assembly?

Say, the Tsaritsa and Labolas 'coz they're both Childe's mother figures.

What about Arlecchino, Guizhong and the others?

you're probably right about the tsaritsa and labolas, but i think the tsaritsa and guizhong would also get along rather well. also the tsaritsa and morax. that woman will adopt literally everyone that looks younger than her. arlecchino in this au is Actually A Good Parent to the orphanage kids, so she'd probably end up being all like "go spend time with your boyfriend, Tartaglia, i'll take care of the kids" and all the children of the assembly would immediately adopt her as their wine aunt from a different world. she'd also get along great with skirochka. i think you can add pulcinella to this as well. i think columbina and sandrone would get along nicely with madame ping, and sandrone would be like... fondly exasperated of guizhong's needling about how her wheelchair works. capitano would probably get along rather well with morax and depth claws. and like. zhihao. it'd be funny. i think moon carver and mountain shaper would inadvertedly adopt pierro and pulcinella into their old coots club. pulcinella would enjoy chatting with them while pierro just sits there wondering what his life has become. he'd never admit he actually finds the topics of conversation interesting. as for the rest, i honestly don't know. i think pantalone and guizhong and morax would have quite a bit to talk about, but i find it kinda funny to think that pantalone would get along like a house on fire with urth (sal vindagnyr's princes). i know she was hardly in the story but i had a bit of personality thought up for her and she'd get along great with pantalone. they would bully dottore to hell and back together. i'd also like to think he'd take a liking to nadezhda.

i think scara and trail clearer would get along well. also aspasia. like i think if you sit scara down to just chat with a pair of normal, kinda quiet, kinda lowkey ladies without any expectations he'd rather enjoy himself. free therapy. dottore would NOT let him live it down though.

i have no idea who dottore and signora would get along with. signora i could see ending up with moon carver and mountain shaper in the old coots group just to bully pierro with pulcinella and share gossip with them.

dottore i still got no clue. i guess like. genuinely? if he finds out about ajax' planning to see how he can bring about the blorbos' existence? i think he'd get overly invested in that. like run the calculations make the science do the maths kinda invested. he's a researcher at heart, and if he's not a piece of garbage in this au, then he's not doing reprehensible stuff on the sidelines. ajax comes in one day to visit and offhandedly mentions his idea to arlecchino, who comments it to dottore without really thinking much of it. when ajax next drops by the madman finds him and sits him down for a five-hour presentation on genetics and science and probability and the maths behind the entire operation. he saddles him with a backpack full of folders and papers that ajax can hardly read bc dottore's handwriting is absolute dogshit, and sends him off back to teyvat. ajax has no clue wtf happened. guizhong finds the entire ordeal hilarious.

[pokemon-ash-aus]

Thank you for the lecture Professor Peach! Honestly you brought up some really interesting points I'd never even considered when thinking of those Paradoxs so thank you for talking to us about them

To move away from the frustration of Paradoxs do you have any theories on pokemon that might have shared ancestors in the past actually rooted in science and logic and not fiction? Or any pokemon that make sense in their evolutionary root/changes via type change ect

Peach: Not so much rudimentary typings, but I do have a confusion over Gendered evolution.

Peach: Now, take note- as a Two, and partial Mew, Gender doesnt really process in our bodies the way it does in other pokemon, so its always a fascination to me when it evolves into pokemon

Peach: I understand Nidorans, two gendered speicies usually offset by the visual differences between them. I dont doubt that there is an intersex species that takes on both visuals or maybe just one or the other.

Peach: But then we have gendered evolutions like the Ralts line. Why are males only able to evolve into Gallade? Do they create a certain pheremone- do they have a certain dna strand that allows them to evolve that Gardeviors dont? But if that's the case, why can they still evolve into Gardeviors?

Peach: Why does the Bounsweet line only consist of females? Was the an advantage? Or do we as a species cant differentiate the difference between male and female. Are they even gendered? Is it entirely possibke that we're applying gender on this pokemon simply because it makes us uncomfortable to not label a living pokemon as nongendered?

Peach: Why are some males unable to evolve at all? Like the Salazzle line or the Combee line? The females are such a low probability of even hatching, so you would presume that the males would be able to evolve in order to protect the colonies better. Do they have a seperate reproduction that we arent aware of just yet?

Peach: "Why does the reproduction matrer so match? That seems sort of inappropriate." Fuck you, I'm a biologist, thats the shit i look at! That's how species survive! But it doesnt seem to make sense that there is such a low female to male hatching rate unless there was a reason for it!

Peach: But here's the catch- cause i know the fucking answer and yall are about to sit down and fucking listen to me!

Peach: Species that are male dominated are primarily due to the environment around them- these are species that are strained in some way or another. Its literally pokemon that are so stressed that Males WILL be geneteically produced more because it makes more sense. This is especially true to those that are environmentally stressed.

Peach: And Female dominant species are usually because they have a certain chromosone within their body that can alternate between producing an equal 50/50 to a more skewed 80/20 for females!

Peach: But then that does bring the question, why do we have Fully female species and fully male species.

Peach: My biggest bet so far is that we're missing something important. We're missing a crucial part within the sex of pokemon that produces all male and all female species!

Peach: Wait, i was talking about evolving- FUCK

Peach: Evolving is an entirely different branch that im not super adversed in, but ive prodded other professors about it so hopefully we come up with something to replicate or figure out why it happens the way it does!

Peach: I wonder if there's the possibility of multiple genders within a pokemon that we arent aware of and we're only looking at the base level in comparisons to humans... I dont know i'll look into it!

Peach: Peace!

[scrunkalicious]

🤝GRAHHH dude the one u sent me is gonna make me go crazy /pos

OKOK FINALLY GOT TO THIS ONE YALL,,,,, GET READY FOR THIS ONE YAALLLLL

WORD COUNT - 2017 EAT TGIS UP YALL

errmm based offa personal experiencez it SUCKKZZZZ BUT WHATEVA

Late nights, heavy eyelids, and lack of sleep. A list of things that were all familiar for the young artist and scholar. Hunched over at her desk, Marly worked her way through a portrait, upscaled on large paper. It was a final for the art course she took at the Academy. Though that wasn’t the only thing she seemed to be working on. 

The artist had her own little workroom, rented out for the school year. While she had the main portrait in front of her, textbooks and papers for her other subjects lay in differing parts of the room. A science textbook strewn open, with complimentary notes and papers with an abundance of questions. A math book with its open pages crumpled, with practically unintelligible numbers and formulas scrawled about. Papers from classes she didn’t even have work in, somehow finding themselves in her workspace due to her untidy habits. The risk of messing them up with art supplies, and the risk of stepping on some sort of pencil she left on the ground were both high. 

Stepping back from her work, Marly groaned. The composition of the portrait didn’t seem right. The colors didn’t blend the way she had wanted them to, as it was a mixed media piece, including mediums that she didn’t use often. Reaching out towards a nearby table, she fumbled to grab her marker, desperate to place any marks down that will somehow pull the piece together. Though her efforts are fruitless, so Marly groans as she sets the marker down. She looks around, staring at the other papers in her area. 

She hates how she had procrastinated her work, as all of these things are due tomorrow for her. Yet, she has to get the work done. Marly knows she’s always been seen as a smart individual. Acing her classes, always on good terms with her teachers, able to help struggling students, the pinpoint perfection for a level and steady person. Yet, here she was, with so much undone work around her, head in her hands as she could barely think of how to finish what she had needed to finish for so long. Stress pounded at Marly’s  head, and she felt just about ready to give up, and have her body give out on her. Grumbling to herself, Marly moved to go sit in her chair, taking her glasses off and tossing them to her table, well aware they may end up with ink or paint on them. 

Marly was unsure of just how long she sat in that chair. She’s covered up the clock in her room to prevent stress about the time, though she believes that it’s well past midnight. Marly could attempt to take a break from art, and rather do mathematics, or even science. But she doesn’t understand the topics. In math, she can’t seem to wrap her head around the equations or the problems, something that even her calculator can’t assist her with. For science, they’ve begun a new unit, and it isn’t genetics, her strong suit. She’s just following what the textbook reads, without actually understanding the content. 

With four knocks to her door, Marly is jolted to stand, immediately feeling her head pound as she stands. She trudged over to the door, opening it slowly, not even bothering to check who it is. She seems to have a good idea though, the only sure thought she’s had this entire night. 

Even with her blurry vision from not having her glasses on, Marly’s is able to depict the figure’s brown hair, sharp face, and amber eyes. She could barely keep her own eyes open as she looked up at him. 

“Marly? What are you doing up so late?” Concern laced Viktor’s voice as he glanced down at her. With her messy hair, dark eyebags, and tired eyes, Marly’s current appearance was a stark contrast to her usually well kept outlook. “I went to your dorm a few hours back and waited, but you did not appear for quite some time,” He added. 

Marly stared at him for a few moments, half lidded eyes blink slowly, “Huh?” She mumbled, before continuing, “I have work to do,” she stated simply. Her stance was slouched, and she leaned heavily against the doorframe. Viktor raised an eyebrow, before looking over her tired form. As he spotted her mess of a workspace, Viktor then looked back to Marly. 

“My Marly, you’re aware it is past midnight?” Viktor noted, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. Marly squinted, seeing that upon closer inspection, he was in his pajamas, in which Viktor had just put on a pair of shoes and coat over what he already had on. 

“I’m well aware,” Marly muttered, “Why are you even here?” She asked, closing her eyes for a few seconds. 

“Well, you should be sleeping, yes?” Viktor told her, to which Marly shook her head in response.

“I must do my work,” She slurred out, “Its due,” 

“You look like you’re going to fall asleep,” Viktor replied, moving towards her, “We should sleep,” At the thought of stopping her work, Marly shook her head repeatedly, seemingly panicked by the idea. The tiredness left her voice when she replied, replaced by desperation and what could almost be described as fear.

“No!” She exclaimed sharply, “I have to do the work!” 

Viktor’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, not expecting such a response from her, “But you are tired,” He noted, “It will do you no good to keep working like this. Besides, I’m sure your teachers will understand, yes?” In all honesty, he was unsure as to why Marly was all panicked. 

But as for Marly, she shook her head again, pressing her lips together firmly, feeling a tightness becoming present in her chest.

“But I have to do the work!” She squeaked, feeling herself lose her composure. 

“Are you aware that your health is much more important than schoolwork?” Viktor asked, keeping his voice soft, not wanting to startle her. “You know I’m not going to chastise you,”

“I don’t know,” Marly replied quickly, pent up stress ebbing away at her. She rubbed her hands tightly against the sides of her body as she turned away, a sign of being overwhelmed. “I don’t know,” she repeated, whispering the words. She could feel her breathing grow erratic, and she felt as if she needed to burst out of her skin.

Marly hated this. She felt awful with Viktor seeing her like this. The idea of falling academically behind was terrifying to her. Letting imperfections show through her upright character was something that she desperately wanted to avoid. The silence weighing upon the two was a strong one, though soon broken as Marly sniffled, before she pressed her hands against her eyes.

Viktor was quick to react, and he stepped closer to her. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out Marly’s pink plush lamb, before holding it out to her. He has brought it to give himself some company, and to give to Marly sooner or later.He had brought the plush to give himself company, and to give to Marly later on. 

“Here you go, my dear,” he whispered. Marly removed one of her hands from her face, and Viktor slowly moved the toy side to side, before pressing it into her open hand. Marly took Lambie gratefully, squeezing her. Such a familiar sight. The plush she has had since birth, and one of the only things she was sure of nowadays, along with Viktor.

“Thank you,” she whispered, attempting to calm herself down. Viktor nodded his head, smiling softly. He then looked around her workspace. After spotting Marly’s glasses, which had been thrown onto a table earlier, he walked over, and folded them onto his shirt. He led Marly outside, softly closing the door to her mini-studio.

“Let us go. You need rest,” he insisted, as the two were equally stubborn. But Marly didn’t have the strength to retort, and she sighed as she walked over to him, grabbing his arm with her free hand. Viktor nodded his head, before slowly beginning to walk, adding on, “My dorm is closer, alright?” Marly nodded her head slowly in response. At this point, she felt too tired to even care about the mess that her workspace would be when she came back to it. 

The rest of their journey was slow and silent. Marly didn’t know what to make of her thoughts, and Viktor didn’t want to say anything that would further upset her. Along with that, Marly could tell that her fatigue was creeping back on her. So when they finally got to his room, he sat her on the bed, and left to go get some for her to change. Viktor returned with the softest pair of pajamas he found, and looked over at Marly.

“Let me help you, please,” he murmured, though with his words, he was referring to the situation as a whole. Marly nodded her head, and Viktor moved to sit next to her. She gently set Lambid aside, before looking back to him. Marly raised her arms over her head, and allowed for him to help her change. Viktor gently slipped off the clothing she currently had on, replacing it with the clean pajamas, tenderly caressing her skin as he went. When he was finished with that, he lay his cane against the wall, placing Marly’s glasses onto his bedside table. 

Pulling the blanket back, he coaxed Marly underneath it, before laying next to her and pulling the covers over them. “I’ll let your teachers know about the work, and request they be lenient,” he told her.

Marly shook her head, “That would be abusing your role as assistant to the dean of the academy,” she whispered meekly.

Viktor shook his head, “Not when you were about ready to collapse,” he wrapped his arms around her, slowly pulling her over him, a switch up in their usual position, as Marly was usually the one underneath. Though, Viktor assumed it wouldn’t be well for her to take on that role tonight. 

Marly sighed, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, placing a light kiss on the mole she knew was present there. “Mahal kita,” she murmured, at last seeming to give in to him, and allowing herself to relax. After closing her eyes, it didn’t take long for her to fall asleep, granting herself some well needed rest. Despite having retaliated against his suggestions to rest, Marly could feel herself relaxing. Perhaps she could live with this. It was warm, and Marly usually got cold during the night, so this was a pleasant experience for her. So for now, she would sleep. Truth be told, she was really grateful for Viktor. 

Viktor’s breath hitched slightly when he realized she finally slept, and he wrapped his arms around her more firmly, pulling her closer as he nuzzled his face into the top of her head. The inventor was thinking of possible ways to make tomorrow a good day for her, as he planned on calling off letting her attend classes, and he would do the same for himself so he could tend to her.

It was heartbreaking to him, to see his usually upbeat and ever so smiley Marly, now beat down by something such as schoolwork. Viktor had a few theories as to why she seemed so upset, but he wouldn’t dare bother her while she clearly wasn’t ready to talk yet. To him, all of what he was doing was “the least he could do”, compared to every single time Marly had been the one to comfort him, and hold him close. He wanted to do everything he could to make her feel as safe and loved as she had made him feel.

But for now, Viktor knows that he also needed to sleep, so he softly kissed the top of her head, before whispering, “Sweet dreams, mahal ko,”. Viktor let himself drift away to the lullaby of his lover’s breathing, allowing peace to the both of them.

TAGLIST UNDER CUT (ask to be added/removed lmao)

LUCCCYYY (but u get notified for yo ask) @h0t-p1nk-ch33tah-pr1nt @kiawren @l0v3sickl0s3r @mirr0r-image @mrsmunson1986

[homeofhousechickens]

Ive noticed on chicken forums a lot of people reccomend not interacting with roosters to stop aggression. They'll say "dont pet him, dont let him sit on your lap, dont get too close, dont hand feed, walk very slowly around him, etc." I see people with house roosters interacting with them all the time. Is that wrong? These people make Roosters sound like wild animals and not domesticated pets. Whats the point of having one if you always have to either fear them or pretend they dont exist. Otherwise you're "making them think hes dominate and he'll become aggressive."

Its bunk science. Those people typically also believe if you pin your rooster down or hang him upside down you can "dominate" him and he will "submit" to you but that really only leads to more defensiveness and more fear. So many chickens are hatchery birds and they are the chicken equivalent of inbred puppy mill dogs, aggression and other behavioural issues are incredibly common (feather picking for example) in some cases it really is just bad genetics "hatchery bird" or not.

Handling a rooster more and making him part of your routine can actually help aggression. Some people can cure an aggressive roo just by carrying him under their arm doing farm chores while feeding hin treats and sometimes you have to actually have to train him via positive reinforcement and counter conditioning but that takes time, consistency, and patience which is in short supply for most people.

There is also the problem of some people misinterpreting their roos behavior in the first place. A well handled young cockerel might find himself temporarily infatuated with your feet or hands when he is coming into his hormones. He might nip and try to mount them and for someone who has been taught roosters are naturally violent and mean they tend to think this is purely a violent attack and react via kicking or running away which can then cause a genuine pattern of fear. The moment that foot makes contact or someone runs away frantically a negative pattern has been established which can lead to actual acts of aggression like spurring.

In those situations like with the young cockerel simply redirecting him on to a stuffed toy can stop that behavior towards you. Seperating hormonal cockerels by themselves while they are coming into their hormones so they dont have hens to feel defensive about is also huge help and something to really consider. Having him away from those stressers at that critical time can help with not establishing negative patterns and it will allow any pullets he grew up with to mature peacefully without a horny boy bothering them. I really really suggest the stuffed animal and to seperate rowdy boys when they first come into their hormones.

[nobodysdaydreams]

Hello! You mentioned enjoying well-written science fiction and fantasy books in the 5 things that make you happy. What are some of your favorite books in those genres?

That's a great question! The sad answer is that while I love sci fi and fantasy, I haven't had the opportunity to actually sit down and read any in the past few years (due to life things), but hopefully I can get back into it soon (I say as I casually take on a million other things).

However, I can talk about some of the books that I've read in the past that have left the biggest impression on me, and as I was thinking about it-

-I realized that one of these books perfectly leads me into an unhinged rant about one of my MBS theories involving Nicholas, Nathaniel, and SQ. Which I thought you might enjoy.

The book in question is "Double Identity" by Margaret Peterson Haddix. (I'll try to talk about the plot while being as spoiler free as possible).

The premise of the book is that a 12-year-old girl named Bethany discovers that she is a clone, created by her scientist/doctor parents, Hillary and Walter (I forget if one or both of them was a scientist or doctor, it might have just been her dad). They created Bethany when their older daughter, Elizabeth, died in a car accident at the age of 13. Basically, they were sad that their daughter died, so they decided to create a clone to replace her. Bethany, however, does not find out until age 12 that she's a clone or that she ever had an older sister. There's a lot of other stuff in the background involving other family members, this other guy, and some shady financial stuff (creating human clones is expensive), but what I've told you is the basis of it, and I won't spoil anything extra in case someone wants to read it.

Now, I read this book a long time ago, and I mean like over 10 years ago, and yet it has really stuck with me. Not only because of the cloning premise, though that is interesting, but also because of how the book shows just how far the grieving parents go to "recreate" the daughter they lost. For example, when Bethany is around three years old, her parents take her to the pool and "accidently" dunk her under water. Bethany happens to instinctively take a breath of air before going under, opens her eyes underwater, and loves it, later going on to swim competitively. However, Bethany's parents seem very unhappy about this. It's later revealed that Bethany's sister, Elizabeth, the sister she was cloned from, was also taken to the swimming pool by their parents and accidently dunked under water around the same age. Since that day, Elizabeth refused to go near water and devoted her athletic talents towards gymnastics instead. There's more examples, but it becomes creepily clear that Bethany's parents were trying to copy Elizabeth not just in her DNA, but in her life experiences, trauma included, and were very unhappy when things didn't work the same way they did the "first time around" (which. Being doctors, you'd think they'd understand that's not how it works, but they are also portrayed as being really unstable and in grief, especially the mom). The book also raises interesting ethical questions around the idea of "designer babies" and how selecting what genetic "traits" we want in our children can turn from good things like preventing fatal diseases to things like eugenics, capitalism/commercialism, and at its core, just another way of projecting our own values, ideas, wishes, and goals onto our children before they are even born and deciding a future for them that their environment and life experiences might steer them away from, possibly for very good reason.

Now, what does this have to do with an unhinged MBS rant?

If I was a normal sane person, absolutely nothing, but my brain is broken, so I find unhinged MBS rants everywhere. And this book leads me to a theory about SQ that I ultimately abandoned but will share here in case anyone is interested: That SQ is a clone of Curtain (and by extension, Nicholas, since they are identical twins, and as Miss Perumal points out in Season 1 "share the same DNA").

This theory does have some evidence supporting it and there are a few cool things they could do with it.

For example, we know that Curtain misses Nicholas and has always wanted a family, so it would make sense for him to either make a clone of himself as a "mini me" to be his own family since he believes no one else could ever love him (which is actually similar to one of "Double Identity's" subplots, spoilers again sorry), OR if he wanted to make a clone of Nicholas- a clone that "wouldn't leave him this time" - he could use his own DNA since he and Nicholas are identical twins.

Some more evidence supporting this theory are the fact that the actor who plays SQ kinda looks like the actor who plays Curtain/Benedict and the fact that the show states that SQ's birth dad was a neuroscientist who used to work with Curtain, but says nothing about SQ's birth mom (this would be a clever hint at Curtain making a clone to replace Nicholas- since he and Nicholas used to be close and Rhonda and Number 2 mention Nicholas giving neuroscience lectures). Further evidence is the fact that Milligan leaves Curtain's employ because as Curtain states "his conscience" wouldn't allow him to keep working there. So it's possible Milligan found out about Curtain's plans to clone himself a kid, deemed it unethical, and that's why he was brain swept.

There's some cool stuff the show could do with this theory/AU. For example, we see SQ as a teenager and the twins as kids (through flashback), but we don't see the twins as teenagers and we don't see SQ as a child. So, after doing a reveal where we the audience discover SQ is a clone of the twin's DNA, the show could show flashbacks of the twins as teenagers using the actor who plays SQ (Ricardo Ortiz) as the actor for both Nathaniel/Curtain and Nicholas. They could also show flashbacks of child SQ using the actor who plays the twins when they are children (Luke Roessler), or an actor who resembles him (since child actors do age and they might need to recast depending on the season they wanted to do the flashbacks). This could be a really fun opportunity not only to show the versatility of some of the young actors in the cast, but also to establish more connections between Nicholas/Nathaniel/SQ and convey the message that even though SQ is like the twins in a lot of ways, he is also his own person, who isn't an exact copy of either one of them.

However, I ultimately decided to drop this theory and ended up never posting about it because it seems very unlikely.

Despite the previous evidence I presented, I don't believe there is enough to support it. First of all, SQ is older than Kate, and Kate was three when Milligan was brain swept, which means that if Milligan ethically objected to Curtain cloning himself SQ and raising him to be a copy of himself or Nicholas, Milligan wouldn't have found out about this until SQ was older. Which is technically possible, but seems less likely (and also how would Milligan have randomly found out that his boss's elementary school aged kid is a clone?) Furthermore, they mention Milligan being an chemist, Garrison being an engineer, and SQ's birth dad being a neuroscientist, but there is no mention of Curtain or anyone in his employ working in biology or genetics specifically, which casts doubt on the cloning theory. We don't see anything in Garrison's lab that would suggest that or that she or Curtain have done any research involving cloning or genetics in the past. Also, if SQ was a clone of the twins, he would likely have narcolepsy, and yet this is never suggested or even hinted at in season 1 (I suppose it's technically possible they were saving that for season 2 but just couldn't get the actor back, but we have no way of knowing).

Anyway, sorry for ranting. I hope you like the book rant as well as this crazy unhinged AU!

[maxtothemax]

hey do you guys wanna hear about how i'm making river's backstory Worse™? of course you do

okay technically it isn't backstory so much as the actual plot of On The Wing (which isn't coherent yet but i'm getting there). for context, river is 15 years old when this happens, and so is zipper.

but basically the climax of OTW is that amity (evil science lady masquerading as a benevolent do-gooder who saves hybrid kids from unethical labs) finally manufactures a decent excuse to vivisect zipper (by mildly poisoning them and then claiming it's appendicitis) (btw she wants to experiment on them bc apparently they can't die and she wants to know more about that bc she, too, cannot die). BUT ideally she'd like to have a control specimen, and guess what! river is the same type of hybrid that zipper is!

and river has known amity for half his life already and trusts her and is so super grateful to her for rescuing him from an unethical lab. so she really doesn't need to do much legwork with manufacturing a reason to do surgery on him. instead she sits him down and says "zipper is really really sick and needs a new kidney, and you're a genetic match for them. i know you don't get along with them, and of course you don't have to agree to anything you're uncomfortable with, but it would save their life." and when she puts it like that … like, clearly there's a correct decision for him to make in this situation. but she gives him a day to think about it, because of course she knows what his answer will be anyway.

and this part is a little shakier (still working out logistics) but river thinks about it for a little bit and decides that he wants to go through with it, because it's the right thing to do, so he goes to find amity so he can tell her he'll do it. he arrives outside her office and hears her talking to agent green, one of her most trusted agents, and they're talking about river. and river doesn't want to eavesdrop, but he kind of overhears something that … well, kind of implies that amity wasn't telling the whole truth to river, but she's confident that he'll agree because he's so trusting, almost to a fault. and when river hears this, he doesn't want to think that amity's taking advantage and outright lying to him, but … that's what it SOUNDS like is happening.

now river's freaked out, kinda panicking, so he does what he always does in these situations: he goes and talks to gavin. because gavin will know what to do, he'll figure it out.

buuuut the thing is. gavin, by this point in the story, has been replaced by his clone, who is completely loyal to amity. so the REAL gavin is MIA (i haven't figured out what's going on with that yet, but i'm sure it'll fit together eventually). so river isn't talking to HIS gavin, he's talking to evil!gavin. and evil!gavin says that river must have misunderstood what he heard, or not heard the full conversation, because amity is a good lady who would never want to hurt him, and evil!gavin says they should go talk to amity together and sort things out.

so river calms down, because gavin is probably right; if amity was evil, river would know it by now; he's known her for seven years, so she would've had plenty of opportunities to take advantage of his trust if she wanted to, right?

so river and evil!gavin go talk to amity, and she laughs and reassures river that she wasn't saying what he thought she was saying, but she can understand his confusion. she was just hopeful that river would agree to be a donor for zipper, and saying that he's such a good, selfless kid that he probably would, but it wasn't up to her.

river is relieved, comforted by her reassurances, and he says of course he'll do it; he wants to help. internally, he feels kind of silly for doubting her. of course there's nothing sinister going on. why would she lie to him?

when he goes under for the surgery, he's a little nervous, but he feels confident that he made the right decision.

when he wakes up, he's in a room in a part of the foundation that he doesn't recognize, and instead of the small incision he expected, there's a big, Y-shaped incision down the full length of his torso, and suddenly he's not sure what's going on at all. because why would amity lie to him?

(undecided yet whether, at this point, amity will keep up the ruse or finally admit the truth. i think both options have interesting possibilities.)

[devitalise]

HI IMO I SEE UR ONLINE + PLANNING 2 SEND THE BOOK ASK THEREFORE I MUST TRY AND BEAT U TO THE PUNCH HI <3 how did your June reads go!! I see you gave ur Bear thoughts already (haven't watched yet but will return 2 it once I do), but other than that, do you have anything else on your Summer Watch radar?

beating you to the punch does make me giggle i'm sorry babe! june was an interesting reading month! answering early as i'm busy the next couple days and i love sitting down to give my full attention to the

june book wrap up

bonjour tristesse & a certain smile by francois sagan

french coquette-like teenage girls in ""relationships"" with older men, hurting the people around them? snooze! just really disinterested in the story here, and not blown away by the writing sorry

(abandoning the music links i did well to last 5 months but. yeah :))

the atlas six by olivie blake

lol. fanfic writers entering the traditional publishing space would be fine if they remembered that they have to develop characters from scratch. so much telling! not half enough showing to pay off. too large of a cast to be introduced at once and some of it felt so juvenile. i think this is YA though so like. quirky indie romance lead, brooding angry guy 1, nonemphathetic guy 2, egomaniac 3, sad distrustful person. the magic system was so boring to me it was grounded in way too much science for me to find it interesting. do readers really need to know the metaphysics behind being able to see time? no! actually i'd have liked to know something about someone that wasn't "x is like this". yeah a lot to say here.

the country life by rachel cusk

i had to return to a control point of a good book. lovely. Cusk can do it all for me and i think the woman escapes from her city life to fumble around in the country is the perfect subject matter for her. full of so much whimsy, a lot of heart and interesting characters! made me laugh and feel and reading this is in similar weather conditions just added to the sense of delirium towards the end of the book

diary of a film by niven govinden

my kind of book! film maestro travels to italy for a film festival, meets a woman and a story that sticks in his head and is overcome with the desire to commit this to screen. related to this so much, that kind of being swept up in an idea and the urge to put your all into it. had a real slowness to it, too, made a lot of the conversations feel so tender and from a real place of love. great read :)

my father's diet by adrian nathan west

so glad i saw this in a bookshop i wouldn't have come across this otherwise! so cool! if music was a book. i listened to air's moon safari that really contributed to the middle america shopping mall in the 80s vibe. sleepy town kind of feeling. anyways, i tore through this book what it had to say on turning to a physical extreme to make sense of feeling inferior internally. fraught, disjointed parental relationships. bodybuilding! i'd recommend in a heartbeat

i'm currently reading the thief's journal by jean genet and have been for about a week or so. after finishing my father's diet and my general uptick in reading i thought i'd increase my reading goal, but this is going to take me a while to read. it's hard but it's worthwhile.

i haven't really considered much summer watching tbh i'm trying to be outside and doing stuff and going places as much as i possibly can this summer and if i'm ever at home long enough to put a show on it's been reality tv lately. just a girl out in the world this summer!

next read will be #3 in the neapolitan quartet because i remember reading the first this time last year and they're such summer books to me. this feels very long! love the opportunity to wax lyrical <3

[space-snake]

My spider person oc is Gwaine Stacy. He was full of idealistic naivety and thought he could reform the police from the inside. He slowly gathered evidence on all the cops in his precinct and slipped it to Internal Affairs. But IA is also cops so one day when a suspiciously timed break in happens at Octavious Labs while he and his partner are on patrol nearby, they go check it out…

And Gwaines partner shoots him in the back and leaves.

While bleeding out on the floor, a genetically modified radioactive wolf spider that was in one the destroyed tanks bites him.

He writhes on the floor in agony for hours, but eventually Dr. Otto Octavious walks in and exclaims “what the fuck!?”

Gwaine has enough mental faculties to ask for help and Otto is all like ‘hm, well I guess. Oh shit your bullet wound is healing really fast, the venom must be healing you somehow instead of killing you! Neat. I’m just sit and watch then.’

Somewhere in there Gwaine grits out enough info to convey he was basically trying to single-handedly bring down the police institution by being a police officer and got shot for his troubles. This amuses Otto.

Eventually Gwaine is no longer in pain but he does have fangs, claws, and red eyes. He can make all that go away though.

Gwaine gets cleaned up and realizes he can’t exactly go back to being a cop now that the others are definitely onto him, so they concoct a story where Gwaine says ‘gosh whoever broke into the lab must have still been hiding nearby and shot me. Kinda pissed that my partner ran away and left me. I’m gonna quit about it’. This gets him away from direct danger and makes the cops think they’re in the clear and that Gwaine will stop bothering them.

Since Gwaine is out of a job now, Otto excitedly demands he become his bodyguard/science experiment. Gwaine agrees to the bodyguard thing and very limited experimentation. Otto is clearly a little horny about all of this. Gwaine is a little scared because there’s definitely something Off about Otto (the guy just sat there smiling while the venom painfully went through Gwaines system) but he also thinks Otto is cute so he just sorta goes with it.

Experiments happen, Gwaine becomes Wolf Spider and starts taking down the police, sexual experiments happen, Otto gets blown up so bad he breaks his back, they confess their love for each other, Otto builds himself some new arms to help with that new chronic pain, he goes all supervillain for a hot minute and it’s real angsty but also incredibly hot before Wolf Spider finally takes down Doc Oc and puts him in jail.

Then there’s a couple of years where Wolf Spider is SadTM but still trying to dismantle the police when suddenly Norman Osborn becomes Green Goblin.

You see, while Otto was in jail Norman stole his research and made a new genetically modified radioactive spider and gave himself powers. He thought this was awesome and tried to sell it to the military but nearly all the soldiers they tested the venom on died. He realizes letting the military be Special Like Him would have been a bad idea anyway. Actually he kind of wants to be the Only Special One. Time to kill Wolf Spider! Let’s go break his “arch enemy” out of prison for some help!

Otto loves not being in prison because he has his sentient robot arms back. He does NOT like working for Osborn, especially on his little ‘kill the Wolf Spider’ project.

He eventually manages to discretely contact Gwaine and tell him everything that’s happening. Over the next few weeks they’re trying to figure out what to do while Otto drags his feet on Osborne project as much as possible but then, well

Otto is trans (did I mention that yet?) and Norman is Very Queerphobic so things deteriorate quickly between them, not that there was much there to begin with. Norman managed to hide Ottos arms so Ottos having a tough time without that back support and the convenience of arms that can move without jostling his arms. He no longer has to pretend to drag his feet, he genuinely can’t keep up anymore. This angers Norman and he, uh, tries to attack Otto is a sexual manner if you catch my drift.

But Harry walked in and is fucking horrified by so many things at once. Norman tries to placate Harry but he’s not having it. He tries to get Otto away and in the process Norman accidentally claws Harry instead of Otto. Harry is pretty much cowering and Otto is in too much pain (back pain! Normans attack didn’t go anywhere!) for either of them to do anything, but Wolf Spider appears out of nowhere (a vent) and savagely fights Norman!

You see, one of Wolf Spiders powers is the ability to communicate with spiders and see and hear through them. He and Otto were using this ability to keep in some form of contact. So he saw everything and only just got there.

Wolf Spider is seconds away from killing Norman but Harry says ‘Stop!’ ‘cause the guy may be completely vile but he’s still Harry’s dad. In that moment of hesitation from Wolf Spider though, Norman bites his arm and runs away.

Wolf Spider is in pain because Norman has venom. No not Venom, just regular spider like venom.

Harry tries to call the police but Otto is like ‘fuck that, find my arms, I need to get Wolf Spider back to the secret lab’. So he does that and comes back to Otto holding Wolf Spiders face and calling him darling and stuff and he gives Otto the arms and they go off.

Harry is left in a destroyed lab knowing that his dad is the worst kind of monster there is.

After a bit of a think, he starts packing because he Cannot live in this house anymore (he’s 22 so it’s fine) but then his dad comes home and freaks out about Harry trying to ‘leave him’ and fucking bites him all like, “either you’ll change or you’ll die. Either way, you’ll never leave me”

Anyway the spiders in his room saw the whole thing and they’re still in spy mode so they telepathically report to Gwaine and he tells them to spell out ‘help coming’ for Harry to see.

Harry is terrified but he sees the messages and is relieved and passes out

He wakes up in Ottos secret lab, sees Gwaine without the Wolf Spider mask and blurts out ‘pretty’, prompting Otto to snap the pencil he was writing with in half.

Anyway he recovers in the lab, gets powers, but does not become evil! Instead a threesome happens.

That’s all I got for now

[darkysilverwing]

So imagine Groundhog Day, the movie with Bill Murray in it where he's stuck in a time loop. He can be shot, stabbed, burned to death, and he wakes up just fine. That's the scenario I'm kinda living in, only time keeps going for me.

I don't know what happened when I turned 20, but when I turned 25 I was walking down the stairs in socks, carrying a big plate of mashed potatoes. I ended up slipping down the stairs and breaking my neck, next thing I know I'm sitting at the bottom of the stairs, perfectly fine, as a matter of fact i'm feeling better than fine! All the way until I turn around and see my own dead body, head twisted at a sickening angle, a bit of blood dribbling out of the mouth, it was... intense...

I'm honest enough to admit that I threw up, I still can't look at creamed corn the same way, but shortly thereafter one of my friends popped by unanounced for a visit, only to find me standing over my own corpse.

Cue about an hour of us both freaking out, Followed by a little bit of a struggle as they assumed I was just a lookalike trying to steal their life or something cause they were a bit of a conspiracy theoriest, it took one sharp blow against the coffee table to disprove their point as I apparently appeared right next to them in a flash of light.

A few more questions later they decided to help me bury the bodies in the back yard cause there is no way in hell the police were going to be called for this, what would I even say? what would happen if I got the death sentence and then just appeared next to my dead body? No it was just seen as a lot simpler to just bury the bodies and never let anyone see.

That was almost 150 years ago.

I did manage to die of old age once, back in the 60's, my grandson had just returned from the war missing a few fingers and an eye, but otherwise alive and well, he held my hand and cried as I slipped into the abyss, only to instantly become furious when turning in the hospital to see some 20 year old kid standing behind him. He instantly assumed that I was some long lost grandkid from some sorted affair, which was easy enough to spin as true, just had to fake a letter, which was easy since I had the same handwriting.

Only downside being the fact that I also ended up the perfect age to get drafted.

I'll be honest, I don't remember too much of what happened in the war, spent too much of it dead, my platoon called me Catboy cause they assumed I had 9 lives. So many stories floated around of them me stepping on a landmine and getting lucky by jumping into a nearby, hidden ditch, or falling into a punji pit and missing every spike.

Soon enough they took it for granted that I was somehow just lucky, which was great cause they never questioned when i got shot, or poisoned or burned or whatever else was thrown at us, I'd always end up back at camp without a single scratch on me.

Granted there were a few days where I hated my abilites, watching my best friend get stabbed and slowly bleed out with no way of me to stop it wasn't great, and I've never actually figured out what caused my abilities to manifest. It wasn't genetic cause none of my family seemed to have it, and it wasn't chemical cause I've done my fair share of studying the physical sciences and I've found no deviation from the norm in my body. Only thing I can think of is either it's fucking magic or science hasn't caught up to what I am yet.

I think the worst part is thinking of the implications though, like back when everyone was afraid that russia was going to nuke us I was worried about how being the only human left alive would affect me, how much succumbing to radiation sickness over and over again would suck, how the entire earth could be covered in a thick layer of my corpses before I stay alive enough to foster a bit of a life.

I even asked one particularly confused butcher on the best types of dishes that could be make just using the body parts of an animal, with no herbs or spices, and I did learn how to make bone bread so I guess I could always just eat my own dead body over and over again if it really came down to it.

Thankfully things did seem to clear up around the turn of the century. Tech started innovating like crazy, people started becoming much more connected, and sure, things ended up being a lot more visible so the world seemed to start getting worse but in all honesty crime's been dropping for decades, you just see more of what's actually happening.

And that's where we reach today, where once again I was carrying a plate of mashed potatoes down the stairs in socks. You'd think I'd learn my lesson after all these years but I guess not.

Looks like I gotta find the shovel again.

[transfennecbuddy]

HI HI HI HELLO I have a THING! That I want to show y'all! HEHEHEHEHEHE I have another rant!! I shall hide it behind the read more thing but yeah!!! Hehe rant!!

(Also! Legal disclaimer! [Not really but same vibe.] This rant is about a super fancy snazzy spiffy science thing [CRISPR] but I'm not a science professional! I'm just doing a school project on this! This is what I got from YouTube videos and websites and such, yeah? If I get things wrong, that's why!)

Hi hi hi so you came to see my rant huh? Huh huh huh? Well I shall show you hehehe!

Have you heard of a thing called CRISPR? I'm gonna assume that you haven't so that I can explain!! It's a gene editing tool that uses a protein called Cas9, which is commonly found in bacteria! You see, bacteria have been using this fancy thing all along for ages! Like whenever bacteria get attacked by a virus (which happens a lot) and that virus is new to it, it doesn't really have a fancy defense mechanism to protect itself. But if it survives the attack, then it takes a bit of the virus's DNA and saves it in a section of its own DNA using Cas9. And then if it gets attacked by that virus again, it'll check the virus's DNA against the samples it has in storage, recognize the DNA, and make pieces of RNA to attack the virus right at its DNA!

Cool, huh? Well scientists found about this lil whizzy thing called Cas9 a while ago and were pretty excited, for good reason. With CRISPR, we can not only edit the DNA of creatures that haven't been born yet but also creatures that are very well and living which can pave the way to treatments for genetic diseases!! Plus it's much cheaper than it cost to do genetic stuff the old way!!! (As in, some folks are trying to get laypeople to try out CRISPR on themselves, and their main struggle is with convincing people to do it cause the cost isn't that big of a factor!) We already have GMOs like the Flavr Savr tomato (which takes longer to rot on store shelves thanks to being genetically modified). If CRISPR is safe (which folks are still trying to work on since there's still so much about genetics that scientists don't know and messing with folks' genomes can lead to unintended consequences [also fun fact: the word consequences is used colloquially to mean a bad effect of something, but in stuff like psychology, it just means an effect of something!!]), then it can be super awesome!

I learned about this lil thing back in... I think 2018? I watched a Kurzgesagt video on it a few years ago at least, and I rediscovered the vid during the pandemic while everyone and everything was shut down and there wasn't much to do during the summer other than sit on the couch and watch TV. And like, I LOVED that video when I first watched it?? I watched it multiple times and I even forced (read: persuaded/begged) my parents to watch it too. And I still love hearing about CRISPR and genetic engineering and genetics in general now because of that (and it's impressed at least two important people in my life so I consider it a success!). Like when we touched briefly on CRISPR in my biology class last year, I was SUPER excited in the back of the classroom because it was CRISPR!! One of my childhood interests that has significantly influenced my life!!

So when we had to do a project on new science in my physics class this year (for... reasons), I immediately looked up new stuff going on with CRISPR within the last couple years. AND TURNS OUT! FOLKS HAVE MADE A CRISPR 3.0 NOW! Like I didn't even get to hear about CRISPR 2.0, it was just straight to CRISPR 3.0!! And hopefully CRISPR 3.0 is safer, more effective, and easier to use than the original version of CRISPR.

ALSO! CRISPR IS BEING TRIED OUT TO HELP FAMILIAL HYPERCHOLESTEROLEMIA(high cholesterol risk passed down genetically)!! THAT'S SO COOL!!! AND IT'S BEING TESTED ON PEOPLE NOW! I will literally SCREAM this is so cool!!

So yes! I'm having a fun time, hehe. And I'm writing this instead of actually working on my project, but that's cause it's helping me put together my thoughts! Totally not because I'm just too excited to work on it without being able to gush to someone about it (/sarcasm), lol.

[a-dragons-journal]

So Let’s Talk About Werewolf Magick

So I recently reblogged a post showcasing a book titled Werewolf Magick, by Denny Sargent. I was curious, so I looked up some samples of the book, and then I was intrigued because it looked both interesting and promising (a rare combination for me these days when it comes to witchcraft books; I haven’t actually bought a new witchcraft book in probably years), so I went ahead and stopped by Barnes & Noble’s to check it out.

Long story short, I ate through the entire thing basically in one sitting, and I am fascinated by this book and will most definitely be trying some things from it out and potentially incorporating it into my Craft and/or my spirituality. Wanted to jot my thoughts down, and since this is a journaling blog, here we go. Be aware ahead of time that this is not so much a book review for the benefit of other people as it is a personal journal post about my own thoughts on what’s relevant to me specifically, though it will probably be helpful to anyone wondering if they should look into the book as well.

Some things up front for anyone thinking about buying it:

No, the book is not about physical shapeshifting; that was the first thing I checked for, so I thought I’d get it out of the way.

I wouldn’t by default recommend this book for someone totally, completely new to magic; the author definitely comes at it from the perspective that you already know some basics about magic, and having that under your belt will help you understand it. That being said, if this is the only thing you’re really interested in, you should be able to start with this book, but be ready to have to figure out a couple things as you go along.

Be aware that this book does talk about using sex/masturbation and sexual fluids in magic - it’s not a big focus, and it’s not explicitly detailed or anything at any point, but it’s present, especially in later chapters. If you’re underage and/or uncomfortable with that, this may not be the book for you.

It is very focused on wolves and werewolves, obviously, but I don’t actually think it would be that hard to modify for other species if you so desire.

And now my own loosely organized thoughts, under the cut for the sake of everyone’s dashboard.

The Genetics Thing

Probably the weakest point of this book, and the thing that annoyed me the most, I do wish the author would quit bringing up the genetics thing. He mentions a few times toward the start of the book that “humans share 85% of our DNA with canids and other wolves,” sometimes stating that that “genetic connection” helps with shapeshifting, which, like... a) stop trying to justify your metaphysical stuff with science when the science absolutely does not justify it, you’re just weakening your own credibility, just own up to the fact that it’s purely metaphysical, and b) we also share 50-60% of our DNA with bananas and something like 95% (off the top of my head) with chimps, but I don’t see you suggesting that we should become werebananas or werechimps. At one point there’s also a ritual where one visualizes going back through evolutionary ancestry, ending up at wolves, and I had to stop reading for a second bc like... dude, you understand that we are not in fact directly descended from canids, right?

That aside, as annoying as it is, it’s a pretty minor thing and only comes up a few times. Easily enough ignored.

Wildness, Wyrd, and Way

There’s an entire chapter dedicated to the cosmology and underlying principles behind werewolf magick, and part of that is the idea of Wildness, Wyrd, and Way, the underlying principles of it. Wildness is essentially exactly what it says on the tin, base nature and connection to the earth; Wyrd is the interconnection between all things as “embodied in every ecosystem,” the idea that you are not separate from every other thing; and Way is essentially borrowed from Taoism, understood here as to be without sense of self and to act without “knowing”, as “Fish do not “know” when to spawn, birds do not “know” when to migrate, and wolves do not “know” how to behave in a pack. It is just part of the Way.”

This is... really interesting to me as a set of paradigms, because it’s something that really appeals to me and that feels Right to me. Every time I go on a walk in nature it reminds me how much I need what this book calls Wildness to breathe, I have always believed in the interconnections between things this book calls Wyrd (and even longed for it to be more concrete than it is in this world, as it is in Eywa), and the idea of Way as following instinct and nature appeals to me as well (it reminds me somewhat of the Ways portrayed in Golden Treasure: The Great Green, where each animal has a Way or Good Way that it follows for good or ill, describing its behavior). Wildness, Wyrd, and Way is one of the things I may actually adopt formally, because it’s basically already there under different words, but I like how that set of words encapsulates the concepts.

Wolves and Dragons

So the book is entirely focused on wolves/werewolves, presumably because the author is one - he mentions now and again that people have shapeshifted into other animals as in shamanism, but stays focused on werewolves specifically. That being said, I don’t feel like it will be that hard to transfer the book’s ideas into Dragon instead of Wolf - slightly different noises, which are already instinctive to me and shouldn’t require all that much experimentation, different visualizations, slight changes to the wording, but the principles of werewolf magic should hold regardless of species. (It will probably be somewhat easier for me on account of also being an apex predator with a lot of mythos associated with my species, especially since the social aspects of wolfness aren’t really focused on here (which is a little strange, but makes sense considering most werewolves will be practicing alone rather than with a pack), but I don’t think it would be that difficult for a prey animal or a small predator or what have you to tailor the basic ideas to themselves.)

Wings are... perhaps going to be an issue. Going to have to make sure we don’t do any intensive shapeshifting rituals near any steep drops I could potentially do something stupid over while in the thrall of an intense shapeshift until I know how the rituals in question affect me and whether that would be safe.

Shapeshifting

Speaking of the shapeshifting rituals, I am really intrigued to see how that’ll go for me. I’ve never really had mental shifts in the way most people who have them describe them; I sometimes slide a little more feral, but I never lose my humanity in the process at all. The shapeshifting in this book is a combination of mental shift, intense visualization, and likely phantom shift; I have never really experienced the former, am relatively good at the latter but usually only in short bursts, and experience the last all the time in great vividity. I will be interested to see what the rituals in this book can induce with a little practice. Regardless, I do think this book has the potential to be very useful for therians and otherkin in connecting to their nonhuman side more and learning how to integrate humanity and nonhumanity.

As a side note, I do also appreciate that he doesn’t use psychoactive substances in his shapeshifting salves and offers alternatives, as someone who isn’t comfortable using those myself.

The Werewolf Gods and Spirits

The book espouses four main gods and spirits, or maybe categories thereof (the author seems to be into the “gods have been called by many names and taken many forms but they’re still the same entity underneath” idea, which I have moved away from, but I get the idea that for general usage, you can kind of tailor these to your beliefs) - the Lord of the Forest (who can be seen as a wild god like Pan, Herne, or Cernunnos, or as his own being), the Moon Goddess (including Selene, Artemis, and Hekate), Gaia/the Earth Mother, and the Wolf Spirit.

For me, these make sense more as their own beings than they do as the potential names he offers for them, since those are their own entities, so I think I will work under that framework for the time being - the Lord of the Forest, the Moon, and the Earth each as embodiments of those concepts. And... the Wolf Spirit.

The Wolf Spirit is kind of explained in two different but related ways in this book. First, it’s explained as a general spirit of wildness, of primal nature, that just takes the form of a wolf - which should reasonably apply to any species of were, one would think. Second, however, it’s explained as the collective power and egregore of all wolves (past, present, and future) - which, I get the vibe that this is more important and that the Lord of the Forest already covers the first part, and this does not, presumably, apply to anyone other than werewolves. There should, however, logically exist such a spirit for any species (and, indeed, the author talks briefly about having interacted with a Bear Spirit as well while under the instruction of a group of shamans).

Herein lies my problem: is there a Dragon Spirit that can reach me here, given that there are no physical dragons in this world? If there is one native to this place, would it be markedly different given that the dragons that exist here are spirit-beings without physical form? If there is a Dragon Spirit of my own world, and my gut tells me it’s a reasonable possibility, would it even be able to hear or reach me here?

I suppose the only way to find out is going to be to reach out and see if something answers. We’ll see how that goes, I guess. I do suspect I’ll have more luck if I can do the Calling the Wolf Spirit ritual in the book out in a park somewhere, but I also suspect I may not get the chance super easily, so we’ll see.

Doubles and Fetches

Not something I personally am interested in doing, but fascinating in the context of nonhumanity: the author talks about evoking your Animalself as a Double, an astral entity, and then being able to invoke it and treat it as a separate being in order to work with it. The author uses this technique to create a Fetch that can then be ridden in astral travel and/or used to protect and do tasks for you, essentially creating a familiar from your own Animalself, but I could easily extrapolate out a similar technique for conversing with your own kintype and learning from it - past knowledge if relevant, present wisdom, subconscious desires. We so often frown on the idea of viewing your kintype as separate from yourself in any way, but I could see this being an extremely useful technique for some people, even if I’m not sure I want to explore it personally - I’d be interested to see any results other people get.

So yeah, that’s my initial thoughts on Werewolf Magick. I will likely keep this blog updated on my adventures with it going forward, given that that is the entire idea of the blog, but I do recommend checking out the book to anyone who’s interested in the idea.