#and i occasionally see this little falcon

[2-shots2-thehead]

- I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else.. But you -

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Summary : Dating Spencer headcanons bc I luv him n wanted to write smth smosh related >-<

Pairing : Spencer Agnew (Smosh) x GN!Reader (Use of Y/n)

Warnings : suggestive joke, other than that pretty much just fluff

A/N : the spencer brainrot is real oml 🙏🙏 im so fruity

- oh my god

- it took this man SO LONG. to ask you out

- like im talking working together for YEARS

- but once he finally did, it came off as like the most casual thing ever

- even if he was psyching himself up for this for MONTHS

- “hey, y/n, maybe after we’re done filming y’wanna grab lunch? like..as a date.?”

- he only started showing his nerves once you actually said yes

- he looked visibly surprised and then just nodded shyly without another word and walked off

- ever since that little interaction, you guys were together

- constantly.

- never seen without the other.

- “where’s y/n?” “well, i just saw spencer in the games studio so probably there”

- pretty much every single social media post since when you started dating has been about you

- CATS.

- you guys have at LEAST one cat

- you cannot convince me otherwise

- but hopefully more because you can never have too many, right ?

- always just bringing you random shit to work

- we’ve all seen the smosh mouth TNTL where spencer just keeps pulling random drinks out from under the table ?

- there’s just always little treats like that at your desk where you occasionally edit

- more often than not they’re drinks he grabs from the gas station, along with a kickstart for himself, of course

- just how you two are always inseparable, it increases by about 10 billion percent at parties

- i mean, let’s be real, there’s never a day where he’s at a party and wouldn’t rather be home playing a video game with your cats

- if he doesn’t know anyone else at the party, your hand is in his the entire time and he’s talking your ear off

- speaking of which, hand holding.

- so. much. handholding.

- like he wouldn’t be big on pda, but it’s just the little things like that

- him carrying you for many a TNTL bit

- or just putting your head on his shoulder while he’s streaming (we all know what i’m talking about)

- aside from the little surprise drinks, there are more often than not little sticky note messages on your desk

- especially at times where you’re editing and he’s filming and that means you’re apart for however maybe hours

- on days like that, he’s making it everyone’s problem

- “yeah, so then we-“ “y’know, this would be fun with y/n”

- yet another person who uses horrible pickup lines as a joke

- sometimes the sticky notes are the most poetic, sweet, romantic thing you’ve ever read

- ..and sometimes it’s “are you a beaver ? because DAM”

- “are you my laptop ? because you’re really hot and i’m a little bit concerned”

- “my favorite pokémon’s beedrill because i’m gonna bee-drillin’ y-“

- you guys build lego sets together all the time

- sometimes they’re little roses

- sometimes it’s the millennium falcon

- but his personal favorite is the hedgehog picnic date ⬇️⬇️⬇️

- they are now sat atop a very high, fancy shelf in your shared apartment

- you guys watch movies n shows together all the time

- you have a specific show though that you always and only watch together

- “you didn’t watch it without me, right” “don’t worry, I turned it off when you fell asleep”

- you guys play video games together all the time

- maybe you’re not as good as him, but he’s always open to teaching

- you guys practice instruments together if you play

- if not, he just plays guitar for you

- never too loud, but you can hear it of course

- he picks special songs he thinks you’ll like and learns them

[absideon-ephemeral]

Dog Tags | Bucky Barnes

Bucky Barnes x (fem) reader

Summary: there is something about Bucky’s dog tags that drove both of you crazy.

A/N: SET AFTER THE SHOW THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER. I have a head cannon that Bucky ended up moving to Louisiana and buying a house close to Sarah.

Warnings: (hopefully) tooth rotting fluff, mild language, Reader described as having boobs, suggestive themes, illness, idk what I missed so read at your own advisory I guess.

There was something about them.

Those fucking dog tags.

He wore them every moment of every day: didn’t even take them off to shower or sleep.

They were just pieces of metal (although they had special value to him) so you couldn’t figure out why it drove you crazy whenever you caught a glimpse of them.

I was a good kind of crazy though. One that would make you go feral for him. You never voiced this to your beautiful lover, but he knew. Oh, he knew.

After finding out about your obsession from Sam a little birdie, he would make any excuse to show them off. In the shower, working out, cuddling? Bucky did it all. (His favorite was seeing them dangle and slap your face while he has you folded in half).

But his ultimate favorite ended up happening on a quiet Sunday morning. . .

———————————————————————

It was early. Early enough to just begin to hear the birds chirp and see the sun start to rise. Bucky unlocked your shared front door and crept inside as quietly as possible.

For the past week, he had been away on some diplomatic mission to tie up loose ends left from the Flagsmashers. His week was crammed full of press conferences, meetings, and the occasional man hunt for a left-over Smasher. And for the past week, his stress has been through the roof.

It all started when he had managed to forget his dogs tags on the bathroom counter the morning he left. For the rest of the week, an unsettling weightlessness sat on his chest and the absence of the familiar, cool metal was strange. The tags brought him comfort: it kept him grounded and reminded him of who he is. On rough days, they acted as a form of emotional support - reminding him that he is James Buchanan Barnes and not him. Without them, a strange hollowness followed him everywhere.

And to make matters worse, you ended up falling sick with something close to pneumonia the day after he left. He was helpless and couldn’t do anything more than call and pester Sarah to check on you.

So he felt empty and stressed, but now he was home and wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with you.

As quietly as possible, Bucky set down his bag and toed off his mud-crusted boots, making his way to the kitchen after. He tried (keyword, tried) to quietly recreate his mom’s famous chicken noodle soup for you, but it was a bit hard when his metal arm ‘clinked’ against the pot and bowl.

Once he was satisfied with the meal he prepared, he grabbed a glass of water and made his way to your shared bedroom.

Nudging the door open, he was greeted with the sight of your sleeping form sprawled out on the bed. Setting the soup and water on the bedside table, he sat on the edge of the bed to silently admire you.

There you lay, hair a messy halo on the pillow and small snores accompanying each breath. He took note that you were wearing his old red shirt with the words “can you give me a hand?” written across it (Sam had given it to him during a visit to Wakanda when he was an armless mess). But the thing he noticed most was the harsh rasp and rattle of your lungs with each breath. A frown fell upon his face as he decided wether or not to wake you up. On one hand, he wanted you to enjoy your, seemingly peaceful, sleep; but on the other, he knew that you needed to clear your lungs before you suffocated on mucus.

The thought of you not suffocating won over and he gently shook you awake. It took a couple shakes and the quiet repetition of your name to elicit a groan from you. From there, he began to gently coax you further into awareness.

“Come on doll, I’m finally home and want to see those pretty eyes. I need you to get up, hon.” He spoke softly.

Slowly but surely, your eyes opened and you had to blink a few times to clear them. Upon seeing the beautiful face of your lover you shot up, despite the protest of your sluggish body, and threw your arms around his neck.

“I missed you so much.” Your voice was hoarse from coughing and sounded so frail.

“I missed you too, darling. I know you’re probably still tired, but how about we take a nice, warm shower together, hm? That way we can both be clean and we can loosen up that gunk in your lungs.”

You simply nodded, too tired and on the brink of falling asleep against him. He wrapped you up in his arms and carried out of bed and to the bathroom. Once inside, he set you down on the toilet and turned on the shower all the way to hot. He stripped himself bare, save for his boxers, and then began to help you.

Kneeling in front of you, he placed his hands on your waistband, a silent ask of permission. You lifted your hips just enough for him to slide your shorts off. The shirt came next. But it’s what was under it that caught him off guard.

It wasn’t the fact that you weren’t wearing a bra, no, he was used to that.

But it was the fact that you were wearing his dog tags.

His dog tags.

The ones he left behind and had felt their absence all week.

Sitting so prettily between your breasts, shining and slick with condensation.

For a minute his brain short circuited - snapping into a daze as the bathroom began to fill with hot, thick steam. But it was your voice that brought him back.

“Bucky?” The small call was followed by a series of coughs that racked your whole body.

He immediately sprang into action, rubbing your back and pushing your damp hair away from your face. Reassuring words spilled out of his mouth like a poem; guiding you through it and reminding you to try and breathe. By the time the coughing subsided and you could breathe again, your chest hurt and your lungs were so tired. Bucky could see your exhaust and it pained him to see you so tired.

“Whats on your mind?” The question caught him off guard.

“Nothing hun. Just thinking about how pretty you look wearing my tags.”

A small grin broke out on your face, “you like when I wear ‘em?”

His eyes met yours. “Honey, I absolutely fucking love it.”

A raspy chuckle escaped you. “Good. Cause I want to wear them if that’s okay with you. Especially when you’re not here. It’s like I have you right beside me no matter what.”

Bucky smiled and stood up, stripping you and himself of the remaining clothes and guiding you off the toilet and to the shower. “Doll, you can wear them whenever you want. You can wear them forever if that’s what it takes to make you always feel safe and loved,” he stepped into the shower, allowing the warm water to hit him first, “but I will always be by your side. With or without those tags.”

A small smirk crept upon his face as you fully joined him in the shower.

“You don’t know the things you do to me wearing my tags. Actually, I want you to wear them every day. That way, everyone will know you’re mine.”

———————————————————————

And he kept true to his word. Everyday, he would place those tags around your neck, making sure they fell just right on your chest. More often than not it ended up with him bending you over the bathroom counter and watching in the mirror as his tags slapped against your tits. And he made sure you always had them when he was away as well. No longer had he felt anxious or empty without them for he knew that they were always beside your heart.

So, it’s safe to say, that his favorite way of seeing his dog tags, was on you.

[selencgraphy]

— 𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐌

PAIRING: sebastian stan x f!reader

TAGS: set during quarantine, established relationship, age gap (if you squint, it's not directly mentioned), just fluff :)

A/N: yet another lost selencgraphy fic! wrote this during quarantine in attempt to lift my spirits :) happy reading <3

WORD COUNT: 912

masterlist || request box <3

You and Sebastian have been stuck in the tiny apartment that the two of you shared for what felt like forever. When the pandemic hit, he was still filming for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so he had to finish it up. Somedays you would get the occasional FaceTime call at lunch and be "graced with the presence of Choclachino" as Mackie titled it. It wasn't how it normally was but it was fun while it lasted. 

Once they finished filming, he was stuck at home with you. Sure, the world was put to a pause but that didn't stop the two of you from having some fun of your own. "Y/N, I swear to god if you don't get your ass back here right now!"

Life with Sebastian never had a dull moment and being stuck with him during a pandemic just amplified your already chaotic energy. You two had tons of movie and game nights. But some days you would just lay in each other's arms and cuddle. Pranks became a common theme in the household and unfortunately for him, your pranks never failed. Today, you threw confetti all over him as he was about to get out of the shower.

His eyes grew wide as he stopped in shock and quickly met yours. "You're so going to pay for that," he muttered with a chuckle before he lunged towards you.

"Oh shit, OH SHIT!" you screeched as you avoided him. Quickly, you ran back out to the kitchen and devised a game plan. There was no way in hell you were letting him get his revenge. Eventually, he was going to catch you, and then you'd both be covered in confetti. So you snatched your phone, wallet, mask, and keys and ran out the door. You’ve been meaning to go grocery shopping anyways.

—

The groceries you needed were acquired, and it was finally time that you made your way back home. Hopefully after leaving him home by himself for a couple of hours let him cool off. You quietly used your key and opened the door. He was just sitting down on the couch, which Mackie was 100% correct about even if Seb denied it. It didn't look like he noticed you were back home. To make sure, you removed your shoes to make no noise. Tiptoeing to the couch, you looked over his shoulder to see what he was looking at. He was on his phone. He was looking at TikToks. "No fucking way," you thought.

Very quickly, you snuck your hand up and around his head and snatched the phone out of his hands. "What the fu-"

"Ah ah ah," you tutted, wagging your finger in his face with his phone in your other hand. "Is the Sebastian Stan looking at TikToks? Let's see what you've been looking at."

You scrolled a bit and noticed a common theme. They were all mostly memes of him and Mackie. You pulled one up and let it play. "I'll see you next time! Bye Sebastian! HuNgRy EyEs! OnE LoOk aT yOu aNd I cAn'T DiSgUiSe-"

He reached out over the couch to try and swipe his phone back. You quickly pulled it back out of his reach. "Y/N... Give me my phone back. Please..."

"Or what?"

Suddenly, he was jumping over the couch and you turned and started to run away again. Lucky for him, your apartment was incredibly small, and you had little place to run. His arms wrapped around your waist, and he pulled you back into him. "Gotcha," he whispered, "I'd like my phone back now, please."

Even though you had no more options, you didn't give in. You continued to hold the phone close to your chest, a smirk settling on your face. "So that's how you wanna play it? Okay..."

He let you go. You thought you were free. You thought wrong. He quickly turned you around, picked you up, and threw you over his shoulder. "Seb, put me down!" you pleaded, laughing as he walked back to the living area.

Before you knew it, he threw you back onto the couch and started to tickle you. He knew you were extremely ticklish and unfortunately, he played to your weakness. "This is for earlier," he giggled while continuing to tickle your sides.

Soon enough, the tickling got to you and your grip on his phone loosened. He swiftly grabbed it back and stood back up. "Fine, fine you win," you let out, trying to catch your breath, "Why were you even looking at TikToks anyways?"

"First of all, Mackie sent these to me. Second of all, I'm teaching him how to use Instagram, but all the kids these days use TikTok so I'm uh..."

"Go on," you encouraged.

He sighed. "I'm trying to get with the program if you will."

Your boyfriend. Sebastian Stan. Gen Z's current internet crush was trying to get with the program. You tried to hold in your laughter and he could tell by the look on your face. "You better not laugh at me or I will tickle you even more."

You threw your hands up in surrender. "Hey! I'm glad you're trying, babe." You turned to head back to the kitchen to put the groceries you just bought away. As you walked away, you said back, "About time, old man!"

"What did you just say?"

"Nothing!"

"No, I think you just called me an old man!"

[perlen-gold]

An Angbang Fic

Of Fairest Flame

Inspired by @melkors-defense-attorney and this post!

At Mairon’s heels the whole world was made of gold.

When he passed, even the black-oblivion, obsidian-sleek walls of Utumno lit brazen-bright. Pits of bonfires woke beneath the iced rocks, and gilded flame-tips licked at his limbs from the sheer walls of Angband, polished to hot embers and glowing coals in his presence.

Wherever he trod was the flame of his hair. However dark the night, its lustrous strands wove glowing rubies into the roaming night. Whatever darkness he summoned around him was pierced by the golden gaze of his eyes.

His shadow dissolved into a golden crown when his fairness shone forth, as he willed it to, as leaping water over steep stones and cleaving rocks.

And I saw him take it, this heated glow of his as he had taken the rising crown from my hands. Oh, I had stared at him, harder and deeper than any mountain flesh or gaping chasm. I could have struck him down, torn him asunder as easily as I called spitting heights and depths to my biding. And yet his flame never even flickered in my direction. Not even when, contemptuous, he took the gleaming jewels, heady with his disdain, from me. For my little flame did not shape mountains and chasms.

Gilded iron was his alloy and will his anvil.

It was beauty alone that Mairon shaped.

Patient, or as patient as I would, I watched him call forth in the forge the spearing splendor of my crown and the hideous shape of Orcs under the skies just as meticulously.

There is a fearsomeness in unpleasing appearance and Mairon knew it well. The dread Orcs inspire in the common man was of his design also-

So was the stronghold of Angband. A rock-hewn fortress of efficiency, warfare and secrecy, I never tired to wander its complexity, wondering and, with all my heart, occasionally longing to fell it just to see how Mairon would rebuild and recreate its terrible beauty all over again, though I never told him so. He knew anyway, of course, and kept his keen golden eye on me like a wolf guarding its prey.

Yes, ghastly they were, the creatures Mairon unleashed upon his foes, the heinous Orcs and gruesome goblins, mountain-trolls and blood-teethed wolves, swathed in the blinding darkness of my Balrogs and fire-drinking dragons.

Mairon, however, ceased to be fair in battle.

Oh, he could have seduced most of his adversaries, forced onto week knees with his sorcery many more and all the rest. But a cobra will not feed upon limp flesh, the cheetah must race, the falcon swoop to pierce the songbird onto its claw.

And so, with his flickering flame-smile, Sauron, as they called him, set a different trap entirely to spring.

The light upon his face was an uncanny ally of his.

Illuminating the finest of his bones to marble-cutting flawlessness.

Chiseled heights, darkness and light were there ought to be neither, glowing shades and whisper-gleaming rays of sunlight beneath a blackened sky.

His voice rang the air like silvered iron, mellifluous and haunting at once, as commanding as a furnace and as tender as a caressing hand, his laugh bright sunlit pearls and cruelly suffocating ashes.

At the dawn, on the shore of battle, the highest elven kings, fiercest queens and most spirited warriors rode for him without hesitation. Sauron, the cruel, they murmured stern-faced among them, and he was indeed wickeder than any Orc or Balrog of mine.

They set out and rode and stroke to earn their place facing him, swords held aloft, their steadfast resolve soaring to shield their people and beloved ones and let detested Morgoth’s lieutenant perish at last.

What they met utterly unnerved, unrooted, unhinged them.

Comeliness.

Handsomeness.

Fairness.

Pulchritude.

Beauty.

Those are mere words. Spoken tumbling winter-leaves struggling to paint a hail storm.

He was all and naught.

And more.

And more.

And more of it.

Both women and men trembled in mesmerized dread and eerie, bloodcurdling want, gaping upon him. Intoxicating pleasure rose in them when they first caught his eye. It was like pain to them.

 By then Marion’s battle-born strides would have become languid-long strolls. The few who still had any morsels of wit left about them tried to break away their eyes from the light-infused apparition frantically, searching for the malice of his mace, gripping their swords with their sweat-slippery fingers.

It always charmed him into the smallest, most dazzlingly curving smile. They almost never realized that to Mairon the sword tip’s deadly dance was just another art, another craft to master and shape.

The most valiant were always wild on their obedient horses to shoot like arrows at him.

Towards the end, they all fell, crawled, cursed, glowered, quivered under the tip of his iron-clad foot. I have always thought him nearly never more beautiful than when he coaxes his cruelty like a lover’s kiss before the bite.

Around them their friend’s torn faces and daughters’ and sons’ smeared lips, honeyed with crimson blossoms and singing gold flowers. The unnatural light painted the blood-gasping ground and changed their fallen comrade-in-arms’ gruesome wounds to crimson-cold brocade.

Mairon had them between his teeth till they died of bliss and horror alike.

Until they sighed and shrieked and moaned and wept.

 “You are Sauron,” they would utter, staring, accusing, spitting at him.

Oh, yes, Mairon said. Smiled. Oh, yes, yes.

Sometimes the very young ones, well-trained boys and girls, would beg him then. Then, Mairon’s rose-soft, velvet-curling lips smiled even more beautiful.

Around him the thrusting, piercing, blood-lilting, iron-soaked air was limned with gold. In this pause, this endless biding of time against the grey-spraying portrait of misting blood and blooming battle, he liked to pull off his helmet at last. Slow and delicately this one, rapidly in a great sweeping arch the other time.

It is the last thing they always see.

The reaching length of his hair curling into fire-lit waves of gleaming water ripples, his sun-shaming light pouring as endless waterfalls.

The pinkish tip of his tongue a glimpse between his curving, gold-dusted lips in the moment of his kill.

In the blink of a startled eye, Mairon’s beauty rippled into a haunting, living, wraith-like phantom.

The high-browed elven lord’s eyes always widened and their lips spit on the ground before his last smile.

Before he opened them as ripe figs bursting on touch.

When I came forth from my fortress, the ground shook with satisfying anticipation and a rumble swept through our armies, his and mine, mine and his, ours and theirs. As I stepped forward without forewarning, the roiling battle was surging under Mairon’s sway as usual.

A draught of wind … I could listen to the softness of Mairon’s petal-perfect skin in it. I could savor the unnatural shadows illuminating his brow and cheekbones whispering across his features and taste the lashing of his hair in my mouth, scarlet-sizzling as coals. On his flaming head his crown – for it was more iron crown than helmet – was a smooth black somehow enlightening the flawlessness of his features even more. His iron-slinking armor, sharp as curving wolf teeth, clung to the virtue of his shape. His fiery hair, tamed in the forge only, was afly like shimmering birds. I saw it whip through the air as Mairon turned abruptly around even before the roaring Orcs next to me blinked at my sudden presence.

At once, I saw the flare in him bright as sunlit gemstones as I set foot on the battle field, his intricate thoughts shooting like spider’s webs into a myriad of calculations at once.

The mind of any other Vala and their servants are like lily-bedded ponds. Deep their water runs but slow, and the pebble thrown barely bounces across the surface. The ripples are soon gone.

Mairon’s mind, however, darted like fire prancing, dazzling to watch its hundred and thousand swift flickers.

I seldom partook in battle and, oh, hard it was becoming already to stifle my laughter.

Promptly, I could see his clever embers stirred in their battle-focused ash-bed, swiftly and instantaneously.

Ah, how often had I thwarted his meticulous plans in the past before for no obvious reason – not obvious to him, that is – at all?

Sometimes I had leapt into action when he would have stalled my impatient hand, sought to preserve what I annihilated and at other times I had cherished what Mairon had deemed worthless.

So wary was his gaze as it first flew into my direction like a sleeping volcano’s first glimmer that I could sense a thousand thoughts ignite into a hundred interweaving sparks at once. He knew I was seldom to do what he bid me to and never to follow a plan to its end.

Oh, but he was a quick-bright little flame, and whatever havoc I wrought upon his elaborate schemes he would never be surprised nor deceived twice and what could scratch upon the perfection of his composure once never even reflected on the polished marble sheen of his features ever again.

Oh, but he knew me so well indeed, as the fire knows the logs it steadily consumes. It had become increasingly hard to catch him unawares, to make any impression upon his clever, ever-calm countenance.

A thousand wiles I had played upon him through the ages already and a thousand predictions and presumptions were lapping at his flame-spurred heels now.

As soon as I set foot on the ground it trembled and Mairon’s gold-flame hair was afly.

Instantaneously, his face turned in the direction of my arrival and, though he was far away on a lone hill, in the midst of battle, a commander of forces who would be commanded by none other, I could see his shimmering beauty whip around.

Belike, I would seek his advice or perhaps I would undo all his careful webs and sunder all his admirable designs upon a mere whim of mine – he was fascinated and loath to watch me do it.

So, as the ground rumbled beneath my iron-clad footfalls and even the darkest creatures of my armies shrank away in fright, I could see him not step back like them but instead devise and foretell a thousand things to be prepared for me, to predict my wisdom – of which he doomed little upon me – and envision the chaos I could wreck.

Bright could I see the light of his mind as he drew it, keen as the nimble blade he was wilding.

A lesser being he was, yes, so much more fragile and less mighty than I. But none of the other Vala, let alone their servants, possessed his mind’s spark-gleaming quickness, second only – or so I hoped to believe – to my own infinite-stretching mind.

Golden thoughts sparked within it, darting as light, trying to decipher the cause and – more important in Mairon’s glittering mind – the ends of my wild stepping into battle.

Again, I almost burst out laughing.

My hammer, however, dragged a gaping gorge behind me. I did not lift it nor unleash its deadly power and that, I thought, a brimming in my chest, was what drew Mairon’s suspsicion most. 

From my path, my army swayed, Orcs and darker creatures shrinking back.

But I am a god and it took me scarcely more than a few strides before I reached him.

Mairon’s face was like marble showing neither dent nor impression whatsoever. If I had knelt at his feet his splendid expression would have shattered – but in my mind the idea I carried within me was of another kind and I thrilled with the anticipation of it.

Ah, how unearthly, uncannily, unrelentingly beautiful he was!

Mairon, his sword reluctantly held, raised his gold-infused gaze to me.

Inside the dazzling gold there were cold calculation and smug disdain aglitter.

Ah.

That potent mixture of mocking smugness and complacent taunt.

I have never told him that, though lesser in being, immortality and power, Mairon’s visage bore one fruit none other in Eä could offer.

In all other beings I had seen and sniffed it, beasts and birds, elves and orcs, wild things and god-like creatures alike. The other Vala, too, I had seen the sheen of it upon them – why, even Manwë – and it had filled me with glee unimaginable.

Not him, though.

Never him.

Forest of wiles, oceans quick as arrows and mountains sharp as knives, I could see a whole world blazing in his aureate eyes.

Even jeering derision, if he had the nerve for it – and Mairon almost always did. Even, in those rarest moments when he was most unguarded, trust.

Amidst the tides of our forces I stood still in front of him. Around Mairon’s flaring hair and golden limbs curled the smoke grey of his armor, somehow illuming the brilliant symmetry of his features even more, his iron-slinking armor clinging to the sculptured fairness of his shape.

That fierce serpent beauty flashed.

Yes, my lord? What is it that drives you forward to my meek reign?

The scarlet flame of his hair tangling around him in a windless breeze, a luscious bow, mockingly coy, of curving lips and white teeth. I could hear his voice tingle in my head.

Having left your hideout, is there something you ask of me?

Ah.

Insolence and impudence. Arrogance. Amusement.

A whole world but never fear.

I could have wrapped my hands around his slender neck and squeezed without even a gleam of scare in him. I could have lifted my hammer, torn the earth beneath his feet, dictated the skies to strike him with thunder and lightning.

Ages and aeons ago, in the sweltering gleam of Aulë’s forge, he had spotted me among the darkness long before I revealed myself. His eyes shone in the dark brighter than any cat’s. Instead of raising his voice, crying wolf and havoc for help, he watched me and I could feel his gold-gaze lingering.

I went back to my underground halls that day, pondering that brazen insolence just to return the next night trying to break his unwavering gaze.

“How do you know I will not smite you where you stand?” I asked him upon the next day in the deserted forge when I let go of the shadows at last to bend over him.

He had cocked his head like a bird and returned, sleek as a raven:

“How will you know I will not betray you where you sit?”

The cheek! I was a poisonous viper and he was another and, oh, how fiercely I wanted him to be mine, mine, mine then and mine alone!

His soft neck was between my hands before even he could elude me. Instantaneously, the gold in his eyes sparked with realization and horrified shock of what I was about to do in a split heartbeat ere I was upon him. His lustrous hair flew like gold ribbons in a wind where there was none, his skin was iridescent in his otherworldly apparition-beauty.

His gilt-rimmed pupils dilated but it was already too late.

I pressed my mouth amidst the surging battle forces upon his pearly lips and kissed.

Flame-swift, Mairon’s rage was so instantaneous I had to swallow my cackling laughter just to prolong the touching of our lips a little longer before he could defy me.

A conflagration met my mouth and I, made of ice and fire, allowed him to singe me till I felt actual pain as I burnt and grinned now beholding the utter outrage in Mairon’s gold-limned eyes.

I could not fathom what incensed him more – the fact that I would do this outside the secrecy of his sweltering bed chambers or the incidental truth that I had accomplished to take him yet again by utter surprise.

Suddenly his hot-white fury came, ever more terrifying and beautiful than a thunderstorm.

He looked like he might have struck me down then and there, me, in front of everyone.

Then Mairon turned – not because he could not but would not strike me – and away he  went like an inferno to ravage the battlefield, descending upon our enemies as the sun, golden-bright and blind-burning, veiled in the light of stars and comets, and I watched him, his beautiful blaze transforming into a wraith-like furnace which he cast upon the enemy so that neither elven nor mortal survivor – if they survived – would be able to look upon a beautiful face, be it fair maiden or lovely lad or sweet rose, and bear it ever again.

As my thunder-laugh broke from my chest the ground around me shook and shuddered.

Pierced as though scorched, the swelling of my lower lip seared.

Oh, I was looking forward to golden vengeance he would spin to wreak upon me.

I laughed.

[visenyaism]

I made a great bastard oc and my original plan was to have her go insane and go to old valyria and definitely die there but when I told my sister about her it made her sad so she made her own oc to save mine haha. My oc is named Saena, and she's a bit obsessive, so she gets into researching everything that catches Her interest and hyperfixates so much that she can disappear into her library for days on end. Her hair has grown out all the way to her ankles because she keeps forgetting to cut it, and when she's really in research mode, she can go for days without sleep. Her main special interests are old valyrian magic and dragons, and she spends all her days researching old texts obsessively. Basically, everything the church would try to burn, ban, or kill she wants in on. She actually tries some magic herself and can do a few spells. it's a really, really good thing she's got her sister because without Baen (sisters oc), she would absolutely have become the Westerosi version of Dr. Frankenstein. Eventually, she becomes convinced that a random stone she finds is actually a dragon egg, and she's going to be the one to hatch it. She takes this as a grave and important responsibility and decides she must give her all to it. She decides the best way to prepare to have a dragon is to train birds of prey so that she can learn to work with predatory flying animals. … Unfortunately, she's terrible at falconry. Like comically bad, the birds all hate her. Her twin sister Baen is very supportive of her, though, and decides to step in to help. Baen is also terrible at falconry, though, just in the opposite direction. The birds all love her, but they're too spoiled to actually hunt. Saena and Baen end up with a whole flock of various birds, they've got falcons, hawks, crows, at least twelve pigeons, and one fancy foreign imported parrot their overly supportive step father bought them. They decide that their massive flock means they're clearly ready to be the best dragon riders the world has ever seen. Just one problem: Baen doesn't have an egg (Saena still believes in her rock). The pair decided to set out together to old valyria to find her one. Luckily for the girls, Baen misread their map and they end up in a random uninhibited archipelago instead. They are shocked to find “old valyria” is not the apocalyptic wasteland they were expecting. The girls are in awe of its natural beauty and filled with dreams of the glory of rebuilding their ancestral home. They go back to Westeros to try and recruit others for their cause. While there, they find out that the king legitimize them, and the girls are shocked and delighted at what they see as proof their birth father really always loved them deep down. They are heartbroken that he died just before they made it back home and thus missed out on the chance to reconnect with them that he so clearly desperately wanted. They decide that the only reasonable course of action here is to steal their fathers bones and reanimate them to try to bring him back. They grab the wrong bag of bones, though, so the guy they bring back is just a random civil servant. He's a little better off than Lady Stoneheart, but he lost all his mortal memories, so when they tell him he's their father, he just kinda goes along with it. The girls gather together a few of their half siblings and some knights whom their stepfather ordered to protect them and head off to their new island home. It turns out that the civil servant was actually very competent in life, so he's actually their saving grace. He takes over ruling the island, and they actually manage to build a thriving little community. Please ignore the occasional dark magic. Just ignore it.

Love everything about this

[elemom]

What are your thoughts on Echo and Dr. Julien's relationship?

Hi anon. I sure hope you’re prepared for a yap sesh!

I have SO MUCH to say about them.

TL;DR: Echo is Julien’s son AND his deeply flawed creation. And that dynamic is Difficult.

We’ll start off with:

Dr. Julien’s Perspective

Ok so i think the most important thing to get outta the way is that i don’t think Julien is *evil,* but rather he occupies a “creator” dynamic with echo (and by extension, zane) i’ll explain more, hopefully

I personally think Julien created Echo out of desperation and loneliness. The first time he was lonely, back in the birchwood forest, he built zane, and that basically fixed his loneliness problem. After such a long time in the lighthouse, he was desperate for *anything* to help him in his isolation.

Thus, I don’t think he was in a clear mindset when he was creating echo. Fueled by grief and a little bit of hubris (*he created mechanical life for crying out loud, he should never have to be alone again when he can just infinitely create consciousness!*) he used zane’s blueprints to build a brand new nindroid.

As the process went on, i think he lost more of that clarity and ended up wanting this nindroid to be a new zane, something he would later be deeply ashamed of when he realized he basically just built a replacement son. Once echo is complete enough to be activated, I think he realizes just how bad of a hole he’d dug himself. He’s disappointed: not in Echo, in but himself. He tried to create a life in the image of someone else, and he couldn’t even do that right.

Which brings me to the “creator” dynamic. While Julien sees Echo as a son, he also sees him as his creation; he’s something to fix and perfect and fine tune. Echo is imperfect, and as a creator, Julien wants to fix those imperfections. He views Echo (and zane) as sons, but also as his creations, and that’s a *really* hard dynamic to balance.

(as an aside, I dont think echo or zane mind getting tune ups/upgrades/etc. I think a lot of the internal conflict julien has with echo is because he needs *so many* fixes that it’s hardly feasible to do, so he’s left dealing with echo’s imperfections and echo is left as kind of A Mess.)

Now all the stuff I mentioned above about the creator + creation dynamic is still there, but I don’t think it’s the MAIN thing going on. I really truly believe Julien was a good father to Echo despite their circumstances. Like, I think he made Gizmo as a buddy for Echo like he made the falcon for Zane, he made toys and stuff for him, played chess with him, etc. However, I think Julien’s disappointment with himself and his regret over creating a replacement for Zane occasionally comes through.

Which leads me to…

Echo’s Perspective

Echo is completely 100% trusting of Julien. That’s the big thing, I’d say. After all, it was Julien that gave him life, who cares for him and reassures him when he’s down. (And he’s also the only other person Echo knows.)

It’s this trust that leads to Echo’s��. Issues. See, Echo eventually comes to realize something’s up with how Julien sees him — or at least, how Julien seems to act when certain topics about his creation come up. Like I mentioned in his section, Julien can’t hide the disappointment/regret/etc he feels about creating echo — none of which are echo’s fault of course. But echo sees that he’s imperfect and that his father sometimes gets upset and he blames himself for that.

Echo knows Julien doesn’t hate him. He knows he’s trying his best and that he really does care. But he still wants to do everything in his power to make Julien happy. So he’s keenly aware of how he’s Not Zane and how he’s Not Perfect and how his father created him to Be Zane but didn’t do a great job at it. Julien always reassures him that he loves him, and it’s true! Julien *does* love him. But Echo feels like he could be doing better.

Depending on your interpretation and headcanons and AUs and all that, Echo can stay in this state of trust after s2 (waiting in the lighthouse for an eternity) or go in the complete opposite direction (Rejecting the idea of being Zane and becoming Mr E)

I might go into more detail about Mr Echo and how being found by the SoG impacted his view of Dr J. If you wanna see that, I’d be glad to infodump abt it on another post :3c

I also have some thoughts about Why echo got left behind in the lighthouse, but i dont think any of them were out of malice on Julien’s part. Some are worse than others, but I think he wanted to go back Eventually.

Maybe he died shortly after s2 and didn’t have the time to go back. Maybe Echo had shut down due to malfunctions and Julien didn’t know he was alive (Gizmo would have repaired him before the events of s6). Or maybe Julien was procrastinating, because he would have to admit to zane that he tried to replace him. Or maybe he just forgor 💀

ANYWAY thanks so much for asking!!! If you or anybody else ever wants to hear any more hcs feel free to send me asks about them. Because I have a LOT to say. I have put enough mental energy into thinking about the jfam that i could probably power Los Angeles for a month.

(disclaimer, many of these HCs come from melting together a bunch of ideas from fanart and fics and HC posts on tumblr, so a lot of these thoughts aren’t original.)

[kimbapisnotsushi]

here have a medley of miscellaneous timeskip pro team headcanons bc WOW i haven't posted in a while and this is my only stress outlet other than binging new series <3333

starting off strong with ejp raijin LET'S GOOOOOO

washio 🫱🏼‍🫲🏼suna 🫱🏼‍🫲🏼komori: being EXHAUSTED from carrying the pro team world on their backs

no no i'm kidding. mostly

they keep a tally of other pro team matches in which their former teammates go up against each other and are REALLY smug if their respective teammate wins. which means you get shit like this

komori, cheerfully: "so how about that hornets v falcons game last night, huh?" suna: "oh shut UP tell iizuna tsukasa that aran-san could kick his ass any day of the week you little SHIT - "

they ARE united on the jackals front tho. all three of them want the adlers to go down HARD.

is suna nursing a grudge against ushijima from high school? yeah. is he ever going to get over it? probably not.

only komori feels bad bc he is fond of kageyama, but, hey, family's family

they ask washio why he hates the adlers and he looks them dead in the eyes and goes "hoshiumi kourai . . . he is a man that requires constant vigilance"

actually wait i know we all saw everyone watching and talking about the game (which makes me wanna cry SO bad) but god. how fucking funny would it be if players from monster gen convinced everyone else on their very professional and very mature teams to take sides

ejp raijin captain, who's been friends with hirugami fukurou for like ten years: "okay so explain to me again why we need to blow our entire team budget on jackals merch when we're not even going to the goddamn game?" komori: "well, it started on a cloudy but beautifully crisp spring day in 2012 - "

SPEAKING OF TACHIBANA RED FALCONS

hakuba joins the team, sees aran, and IMMEDIATELY starts texting the old kamomedai group chat

altho tbh i don't think there's no way that the "who-from-where-made-WHAT-pro-team" news never breaches the high school circuit. like come ON you know everyone's keeping up with the third year stars when they graduate

by the time the first years are third years they've got everyone pinned down on a fucking MAP. they have a shared file where they update each other on EVERYTHING. it's way less creepy than it sounds they're just a really passionate bunch okay!!!!

well that AND they can't help but brag about their amazing upperclassmen

okay sorry back to it. so it really goes more like

hakuba: "HOLY SHIT OJIRO ARAN FROM INARIZAKI IS HERE" suwa: "hakuba, we already knew that. i linked the article when it first dropped, remember?" hakuba: "yeah but it's still so WEIRD like it's OJIRO ARAN from INARIZAKI" hoshiumi: "lol atsumu told me he talks in his sleep, go find out if it's true"

aran actually does recognize hakuba mostly because gin paid him a compliment ONE (1) time and then aran had to listen to atsumu complain incessantly about the "stupid wall of muscle with stupid hair and his stupid height and stupid arms" ever since

ALSO. i think people get hakuba and hyakuzawa mixed up a lot. they've both got a similar height and build and hairstyle and play the same position

(not to mention the similar backstories)

it becomes a running joke throughout the pro leagues and makes for a fun time with falcons v warriors matches

in the event of a hyakuhina hookup (which i feel like actually could happen) they somehow get onto the topic of "haha it'd be even harder to tell them apart with your eyes closed!" and hinata, without thinking, goes "well, i probably could" and everyone is like "WHAT"

he digs himself an even deeper hole by saying "no, i just meant - i know hyakuzawa's body really well!!!" and everyone immediately starts screaming

poor hyakuzawa is dying on the inside

i think shibayama (MY BELOVED) kind of occasionally forgets that he also has his own fanbase and is sort of semi-famous as the libero of tokai heavy industries esperanza bc. he knows kenma and yaku and lev and komi and yamamoto and fukunaga and, in general, a bunch of people that he believes are much more well-known than he is

he's always so flattered whenever someone stops him in the street to ask for a pic or when he sees posts online gushing about him

this is extra funny bc he never talks about his friends like they're famous so all of his teammates don't really know that shibayama is friends with all these other famous people

and then one of them, an avid kodzuken fan, spams their group chat when kodzuken's newest video is released and shibayama shows up in it

they're like "SHIBAYAMA!! HOW COME YOU NEVER TOLD US THAT YOU'RE FRIENDS WITH KODZUKEN??" and shibayama is like "i have?? i talk about kenma-san all the time??" and they're like "YOU'RE TELLING ME KODZUKEN IS THE SAME KENMA-SAN WHO RIPPED HIS HIGH SCHOOL JERSEY TRYING TO JUMP OVER A FENCE???"

(shibayama's second year. they'd been dealing with things. it worked out, in the end. even if they had to lie to nekomata and naoki about why all their jerseys ended up with holes in them.)

i love the pro teams you guys they're so fucking funny

[yandere-daydreams]

‘al’ means ‘the’ in arabic, and the character is named after ibn al-haytham, a famous mathematician and astronomer, ‘al-haytham’ meaning ‘the young falcon’. obviously hoyo does not give a fuck so the character is called alhaitham with no hyphen or space. typically you would write it as Al-Haitham, but a lot of people, specifically native arabic speakers have taken to calling him haitham, as al is just an article. if you wanted to you could even type it as the traditional haytham, it’s really up to your personal preference since there tends to be multiple spellings of arabic words and names

hmm i see i see,,, hoyoverse does definitely have a habit of just mashing multi-section names together for the sake of simplicity (zhong li as zhongli my beloathed). i do think alhaitham is a little more passable specifically because he's named after a historical figure and therefore his name is a little more of a homage than a direct pull, but hyphens cannot be that expensive. i think i'll probably stick with alhaitham just because that's what's commonly used in fandom spaces, but perhaps there will be the occasional haitham. as a treat.

[thebiscuiteternal]

I am a dumbass and accidentlly deleted the ask while trying to edit the draft, which meant typing it all over again, but here are some notes for the nonnie who asked for more of the reverse Nies with a larger age gap.

This Huaisang is probably one of my most quiet and withdrawn ones. Being the only child for so long meant he was given no slack by the grown-ups, so any frivolous things he likes are buried way, way down deep where they can't be mocked or taken away from him.

He still paints on the very rare occasions he can get time to himself, and he looks after the sect's hunting falcons with great zeal (a trait actually encouraged by Papa Nie, and the first thing they actually bonded over), but he never lets anyone see the paintings and he is so, so careful not to let himself get too caught up in wanting, or even looking at less "useful" birds.

Ironically, two of the people he was closest to before the murder were Wen Ruohan and Wen Xu.

The former was like an indulgent uncle (he thought at the time, though he came to question that quite a bit later), always praising his cleverness and never forgetting to bring a gift when he visited, and the latter was the one to sometimes drag him out of his metaphorical defensive shell and off on an 'adventure' (usually ending in some new food he'd never tried before).

He was introduced to the Lan heir and spare as a child, but he and Xichen never hit it off like Xichen and Mingjue would have (they're... okay, just kind of blandly polite to each other the way they'd be expected to be as sect leaders) and Wangji was of the age where he didn't like anybody.

Due to becoming sect leader on the same year he would have been sent to the lectures, he has to miss them. Lan Qiren "sells" him copies of the materials with the price being he has to keep up some kind of correspondence to show he's actually reading them at least occasionally. They become friends? Sort of? Though it's more like an amiable mentorship.

Mingjue is a rambunctious little hellion from day one. His laugh is loud, his crying is loud, and the only two people he actually calms down for are his wet nurse and Huaisang.

There are those in the sect who accuse Huaisang of trying to hoard Mingjue's attention and mold him into a less-than-proper heir to protect his position, which Huaisang tends to roll his eyes at because 1) who would want the kind of sect leader role he's been crammed into, and 2) it's deeply rich that they accuse him of doing the same thing they want to do to his baby brother.

Whenever Mingjue is being a particularly big handful, Huaisang calls him "Beastie"(<3) or "Little Monster"(<3), which just makes Mingjue laugh and laugh even though he has no idea what the words mean.

Mingjue's first word is "Ge" to the surprise of no one and the annoyance of many.

Mingjue's favorite animal in the whole wide world is tigers, and it's common to see him clutching a stuffed one as he snoozes in Huaisang's lap.

Once he's weaned, Mingjue loves mushed up fruit, but he likes gumming on preserved meat the most, because he is his father's son. Huaisang makes sure he always has snacks on him, and this also winds up forcing him to quit skipping meals because Mingjue gets snippy and won't eat without him.

There are nights where Huaisang is just so tired and so miserable from constantly fighting to do anything without being judged or second-guessed that he just wants to curl up in a ball and cry until he's empty, and then Mingjue will crawl across the bed and pap his face with little baby hands in a demand for sleep cuddles and the love of and from his baby brother is usually enough comfort to get him through to the next day.

[tygerbug]

Captain America: Brave New World- The former Falcon flies high but the MCU is on autopilot. Edited with a lawnmower and both dramatically and politically incoherent, the movie occasionally comes alive enough to be a 30-minute TV episode, but is deathly afraid to be ABOUT anything. It's watchable enough but anyone experiencing "Marvel fatigue" or "superhero fatigue" will not find the cure for it here.

The film appears to be 50% reshoots and ADR by volume. It's the kind of movie where every line of dialogue is followed by an over-the-shoulder shot which has clearly been redubbed in post, with a voice-over by the actor, sounding a bit different, explaining exactly what's going on in the plot right now. Then we cut back to the actor in a visibly different position and mood, as if a minute of edited footage has just been cut out. It goes on like this for 118 minutes. Film producers tend to assume that audiences are too stupid to notice when this is happening in a film, but even if audiences can't name the exact problem, they certainly notice that something is wrong to this degree. The film is edited like a reality TV show, and I personally don't like being treated as if the producers think I'm a moron.

A voiceover is explaining the plot at basically all times, and it's not hard to guess what the test screening notes were that led to these voiceovers. For example, at one point Sam Wilson has to make a tough choice and abandon his soldier sidekick, Joaquin Torres, who has nearly died. About a hundred awkward voiceovers and reshoots follow, seemingly edited in at random, assuring us that this was the right choice and everything is being taken care of and the medics are on their way. Boy, it stinks. Not to a "Madame Web" degree, but very little actual acting has survived the surgery.

This mess was originally announced as "The Serpent Society" with Seth Rollins and Rosa Salazar as baddies. (The previous film Civil War was also announced under this title.) You won't see them here. Instead Giancarlo Esposito shows up as Sidewinder, leading something just called Serpent, which is not elaborated on. Esposito memorably played Gustavo Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and has clearly been hired here so that he can do the exact same thing without anyone asking further questions about who this guy is. That must have simplified things a bit. The film was then announced as "New World Order," which made it sound like an anti-semitic conspiracy theory. Production began in 2023 under the title "Rochelle Rochelle." Mark Ruffalo's Hulk was cast then uncast.

Anthony Mackie has a few decent scenes as Sam Wilson, now Captain America, with the subtext being that a black man without superpowers has a lot to prove. Mackie is charming enough, and so is the conceit that he is often getting injured and working through it. But anything that might be interesting about his performance is usually lost in an incoherent barrage of ADR and reshoots. Carl Lumbly is also often affecting as Isaiah Bradley, an aged super soldier jailed by the US government for decades, whose backstory is politically charged enough that the film has to make the story incoherent rather than get "political" with it, playing up the danger that Bradley might pose (even if the actor is 73).

Politics, or the lack thereof, is very clearly the problem here, as it was in the 2021 TV series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I've made a lot of jokes about how that series was clearly intended to be political, but was so watered down by notes and reshoots taking it in a more right-wing direction that it ends up being politically incoherent. A subplot about an unleashed virus hit too close to home and was reshot out of existence. This film is even worse, as it makes no coherent political statements at all, to the degree that there's no point in it even existing. Having a black Captain America onscreen must have resulted in a flurry of notes and complaints from any right-wing person working anywhere at Disney and Marvel. With any hint of politics removed, we're apparently supposed to think that "both sides sure are crazy, and need to work together," without any understanding of what these "sides" are, what their motivations and goals are, and what they might represent. The film has no point of view, which makes it eminently skippable.

I'm also sorry to report that most of this film's good ideas were used up in that mediocre television series, including a larger role for Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes, who merely has an awkward cameo here. Daniel Bruhl's Zemo is also absent, along with anyone else I might care about. Instead, Sam Wilson is running around following up on plot threads from a 2008 Hulk movie everyone else forgot about two Hulks ago. The result has about enough plot for half a trailer.

And, to be clear, this is a movie where a black Captain America has to fight the President of the United States, who is a half-dead senior citizen and a big red rage monster, who wanted to lock Sam up and gets locked up himself. The jokes about how this transfers to our current politics write themselves. In real life, American democracy has been dismantled by fascists. But this film is afraid to come up with a political take more complex than "What if there were a red guy?"

To be fair, it is an impressive red guy. An ancient Harrison Ford seems awake enough, replacing the late William Hurt as Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (Hurt died in 2022 during the movie's development). And the effects artists seem to almost be having fun recreating Harrison Ford as the Hulk. It's kind of a dumb idea but at least it's an idea. Meanwhile Tim Blake Nelson has some fun playing a villain, reprising a role from the 2008 Hulk movie with Edward Norton that we should have forgotten about by now. His role was clearly rewritten and reshot quite a bit, like everything else in this movie, as he has a handful of eccentric or clever character lines that seem completely out of place, when all the other dialogue is just flatly restating what is happening in the plot right now, as if the target audience are not watching the film. It's also unclear whether Nelson and Mackie were actually onset together during key scenes.

The film also spends a lot of time teasing the idea that Liv Tyler might also show up, because of a Hulk movie 17 years ago that hasn't been canonical since 2012. I just watched the movie and I'm still not 100% sure she actually did show up and talk to Mackie or Ford, although we hear and see something that might as well be her.

Our heroes include a bunch of interchangeable military men, which is uncomfortable and/or uninteresting. There's also Danny Ramirez as the soldier Joaquin Torres, who was in the TV series and wants to be the next Falcon. He's irritating, mainly because he's the sidekick to a sidekick to a sidekick to a sidekick, and you feel that with every line. Anthony Mackie has enough screen presence that you don't think about that. Mackie can play the lead, but Torres is just some guy.

There's also the matter of Shira Haas, playing tiny Israeli agent Ruth, based on the controversial comics character of Sabra. She's five feet tall and twentysomething, and looks about half that height and age due to childhood kidney cancer. It's not entirely clear why she's even there, although I can take a guess.

By comparison, the previous film titled "Captain America," 2016's "Civil War," introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man, two of the most popular Marvel heroes, as well as Ant-Man's Giant-Man persona, and a fight between all of the Avengers. What we get here doesn't compare. It's as if you'd booked Beyoncé Knowles for the Super Bowl, but she cancelled, and your niece who plays in the high school band was drafted as replacement.

Racism and sexism can manifest in a lot of ways. One of them is the feeling that when someone who isn't a white man is the lead on the poster, everyone else down the line is no longer bringing their A-game. Maybe the previous Captain America movie introduced Black Panther, Spider-Man and Giant-Man and had all the Avengers, but that was Steve Rogers and this is Sam Wilson. So we've got Joaquin and little Ruth and that's it. As far as I noticed, the film never calls itself "Captain America" either, onscreen. Maybe in small print somewhere at the end.

And to be very clear, this is also what the movie is about, to the extent that it's about anything. Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez and Carl Lumbly are very clearly acting their hearts out in a movie that's about how people of color have to work ten times harder to get any respect at all. And they're being set up to fail miserably by Marvel and Disney, as a movie studio, for that exact same reason. The movie is terrified about being about anything, but when the leads are allowed to act, it's about them risking their lives for a country that sees them as disposable, and a poor replacement for the real thing. You genuinely feel how this will probably kill them, and these scenes are genuinely good and affecting. The movie ends with one of those scenes. But the movie can't reckon with that for long, because it's doing the exact same thing. It can't care about a black Captain America too much because that's "political." We know that Steve Rogers fought Nazis, but Sam Wilson can't express anything like that because it's "political." There's no mid-credit scene because they're out of ideas, and the end credit scene has the villain kind of hinting about multiverses, something that every other Marvel project has already done while this one was delayed.

We do have Marvel fatigue right now, because after the big "finale" of Avengers: Endgame, the franchise took a more experimental approach, introducing new heroes and turning to television. Covid then delayed and confused things, and the result has been that Marvel has introduced at least seventy-five new heroes in the past few years, very few of which seem destined to do anything more at the moment. Every Marvel movie used to feel like a big event, back when they all starred blond white guys named Chris. Eventually, the most racist and sexist of the Marvel executives left, and I'm mainly talking about Ike Perlmutter here. And we started to get movies and TV series starring women and people of color. Lots of them. Almost too many of them to keep track of.

Like The Marvels, which is edited down to be one of the shortest Marvel movies, as if they're afraid audiences might turn on them at any moment. And there started to be a narrative that Marvel had lost its way, at the exact same time it started making movies and TV shows that didn't just star white blond guys called Chris. Mostly that's a narrative from idiots yelling on Youtube who don't watch the movies anyway. But sometimes you get the sense that people at Marvel agree, that they lost their way somehow and need to course correct. Not by making the movies feel special again, but by hiring Robert Downey Jr. again, and Chris Evans.

And that's Blernsball.

"A Leela of Her Own" is the 48th episode of Futurama. Leela becomes the first female Blernsball player, a confusing future replacement for baseball. She is hired as a novelty, because she's actually a terrible pitcher who "beans" the batters with a ball to the head. Rather than actually be a symbol of female progress in the male-dominated sport, she is being used as a joke to further show why it should remain segregated.

When the 82-year-old Democrat Joe Biden was considered (in the press) unfit to serve another term as President, he was hastily replaced in the campaign by his 60-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris, a woman of color. Voters were hugely excited about this possibly historic election for awhile, but as Joe Biden's staff took control of the messaging, Kamala ran to the right and largely promised not to change course from what the unpopular incumbent had done. The Democrats raised a huge amount of money for all of this, and seemed to conflate raising money with winning. That's not the same thing, and Harris did not take office as President. What I'll say next is a matter of opinion, but it seemed to become clear after the election that, behind the scenes, the Democratic staff lost interest once Biden was deemed unfit. They ran Harris to have someone to run, but many felt that they'd already lost by losing Biden, and were now going through the motions. They seemed to share none of the voter interest, in running someone new, a possibly somewhat left-leaning Dem rather than the old-fashioned and fading Biden.

Captain America: Civil War is about a fight between all the Avengers which digs up old buried secrets and divides the team in two. Black Panther and Spider-Man show up. The previous Captain America movies are considered among the best in the franchise. The Winter Soldier in particular has vivid, realistic fight scenes and balances superheroics with some of the tone of a grounded political thriller.

Brave New World, as it's titled onscreen, has the guy who used to be The Falcon doing Falcon stuff, and is about what if there was a red guy. It's watchable. It's also skippable. It's Blernsball. And I'd be curious about what kind of stuff they shot for this, but decided was too political or interesting to screen right now, as the USA falls apart during a second Trump Presidency, never to be the same again.

[macaroni-stars]

You won't believe how happy I am that I found your blog. Just reading through stuff is SO COOL AND FUN. I LOVE IT

So! Since valentine's day is near..

Any ideas for romantic dates of your fav ships? Whatever ships you like! It would be interesting (yes, this is also an opportunity to yap about landoleia. go wild)

- Ollie

VALENTINES DAY HEADCANONS PART 1

Han × Luke 

Neither of them are ones to go on big pompus dates. Their wedding was so simple that they both wore Han's clothes and half their guests weren't even aware they were at a wedding until years later. For them, going on a mission together is a date enough. One or two stolen touches, a couple of flirty comments, and they are happy enough until they are in their room alone to get the pent-up love out full scale. Sleeping in each other's company or otherwise engaged depends on the day. 

Their love language is definitely quality time (which is such a shame since the canon keeps taking that away from them). They love reassembling the Falcon together while sharing occasional stories. They love training together, sweaty, smiling, teasing each other. They don't need a fancy date. They just have each other.

That changes when they get kids, though. 

Luke wakes up on the Festival of Love day, extremely surprised to find an empty bed next to him, and starts to get worried, because the only times Han wakes up earlier than him are for trips or when something is wrong. And there are no trips planned for that day. 

But then he hears giggling from under the door, and there is whipering, and shuffling, and a piece of paper that's a little crinkled gets shoved under the door, before an unidentified number of feet stumble down the hallway. Luke smiles, gets out of bed, and picks up a pink glittery card that contains a dinner invitation from a 'secret admirer'. He walks around the temple with a smile, eating his breakfast, collecting everyone for their training, noticing smiles and whispers, and a couple of annoyed faces around aswell. He tries to find Han to ask him about these shenanigans, but surprisingly, Han does seem away on an unexpected trip. 

When Luke tries to walk into the kitchen after lunch, he immediately gets shoved out by three little guards, telling him there is a secret mision going on, and he is banned from the kitchen. But Luke can swear he hears Han's annoyed grumble over the whistle of a boiling pot. 

When his eyes are getting tied with a blindfold, Luke doesn't try to say he can see through the force either way, but obidiently pretends to stumble over while being led through the forest. To a presence he knows so well, the one that he had been missing all day. 

He takes the blindfold off himself, knowing they are now left alone, to reveal shimmering lights wrapped around the trees and a table, with two plates of an attempt at a fancy meal in the middle. And softly smiling Han that is clearly trying to hide his akwarness under a mask of warm annoyance.

"They were very insistent." he huffs, waving his hand around, and Luke couldn't be more happy that they were.

part 2 (landoleia) is up!!

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

Find four lines

Thanks @melpomene-grey here!

Rules: find four lines in your WIP that match the prompts, then change ONE prompt for the next people!

A line about music

From The Secret Portal Part One (Akash POV)

“Hey, Ash, what instrument do you play?” “Oh,” she looked down at her Falcon Intermediate Band t-shirt, “euphonium. And occasionally tuba if needed.” “I sit near her when she’s playing tuba,” said Gwen. “But it depends on which instrument I’m on.” “It’s cool you can play more than one instrument,” I said.

A line about pain

From The Secret Portal Part One (Jedi POV)

The world around me spotted as I dropped to my knees, bending over. My teeth soon couldn’t push against each other any more, and my voice ran out of my body in a cry that I didn’t know it was capable of making.

A line about isolation

From The Secret Portal Part One (Robbie POV)

But despite that feeling of isolation, I didn’t care much, since I had Akash. We were both a little lonely, but being lonely together was better than being lonely alone.

A bittersweet line

From The Secret Portal Part Two (Noelle POV)

I hope you know he sees you as…” she cleared her throat, “a sort of…” she waved her hand, “protégée, I guess.” I felt a pang in my chest. I knew the word Dr. Asghar was searching for was probably deeper than that. In truth, Jedi was becoming a pseudo-mentor for me. I didn’t have any adult male figures in my life that I could look up to, but knowing that my biological dad was out there somewhere made me hesitant to call Jedi anything more than that: a pseudo-mentor.

Tagging @sunset-a-story @somethingclevermahogony @novel-nook-blog @leahnardo-da-veggie @authorcoledipalo

Your lines will be: a line about music, a line about pain, a line about relationships, and a bittersweet line!

TSP intro

TSP tag list (ask to be +/-): @thepeculiarbird @illarian-rambling @televisionjester @finchwrites

@nebula--nix @literarynecromancy @honeybewrites @the-golden-comet

[avirael]

FFxivWrite 2024

Day 14 - Telling

Curiously A‘viloh looked up to the blue sky and tried to imagine what the star constellation Rael talked about looked like here in the Sea of Clouds. A’viloh had asked about their studies and for a while now Rael had tried to explain to him the basics of astrology.

„So what do the stars tell you? Will we soon be able to leave Coerthas and go back home?“, he wondered and turned a tarot card around between his fingers.

Rael shook their head.

„You know, astrology is not exactly fortune telling, A‘vi…“

„That’s a shame…“, A‘viloh sighed and plucked an apple from the bag between them.

„Besides…“, Rael added with a bit of hesitation. „Eorzea isn’t my home…“

His ears twitched and A‘viloh sat up as if he just remembered a very important detail he had entirely forgotten.

„I am sorry… I’m behaving like an idiot and forgot you probably feel even worse…“

„No.“, Rael said but kept browsing through the astrology book in their lap looking for an illustration they had wanted to show the Miqo’te. „This is not what I was trying to say…“

„I remember you said you were homesick. Is that what’s bothering you lately? I can imagine this place must be horribly different from your home?“, A‘viloh asked and eyed the viera, hoping to see some reaction, something that would make him understand them a little better.

For a moment Rael just silently stared at the book in their lap, but clearly without reading it, then they closed it and instead turned their gaze to A‘viloh. „It indeed is very different and you are right…but that’s not all of it…“

Attentively the Miqo’te looked at Rael and waited for them to continue. It was very apparent that Rael chose their next words carefully.

„You know, I realised you and me are not so different after all. I am not at all better than you. Not wiser, not more unfailing and certainly not braver. Everything that ever made me special was my magic but—“

The screech of a bird echoed through the air and both of them looked up to see one pass by far over their heads. The silhouette was difficult to recognise from this distance but A‘viloh thought the call had hounded like a falcon. The Ishgardians sometimes used falcons and owls to deliver messages over longer distances and judging its direction he assumed that this one could be headed for the Rosehouse.

„What were you trying to say?“

As he looked back to Rael, the Viera’s eyes still followed the bird gracefully sailing through the sky on silent wings.

„Mh?“, they snapped back to attention as A‘viloh spoke again. „Oh… yes! Uhm… Astrology! I was trying to say that it helps greatly to not feel as useless around here! As you know I am mostly trained in magic but you see, even here in Ishgard as strange as it might be, there are still new and interesting things to learn even for me!“

A‘viloh eyed them sceptically. Their voice sounded entirely different now, much more casual than before and somehow he doubted that this was what Rael had been about to say.

But why wouldn’t they be telling the truth?

„You see, all I am trying to tell you, A‘vi, is that maybe you should try learning something new too? If only to keep you busy until Yugiri returns with information. Lord Haurchefant once mentioned one of his friends is developing a new fighting technique at the Skysteel Manufactory, that is so easy to learn he even recruits common people with no experience in fighting at all. Maybe you could visit and see if it interests you?“, Rael explained and smiled friendly at the Miqo’te. But it wasn’t the same smile Rael wore when they truly were happy about something. It was the smile they used on strangers. To reassure them that everything was perfectly fine, even if that occasionally was a lie.

“I don’t know…”, A’viloh answered, more wondering about if there was a way to ask Rael about it without accusing them of lying. But that opportunity seemed gone.

[perlen-gold]

Of Fairest Flame

Yeah, I'm TOTALLY on time for this (wait, it's already November you say?!) but this is something I've been working on for @ainurweek for Day 9: Melkor I Mairon

(I have something for Day 1 - 8 too... just not yet finished... it's a good thing I'm never late.)

Read on on AO3 or under the cut as it's so long 😆 (and also totally unrevised ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

Reblogs and comments are very much appreciated ❤️ though I can understand if you're too bored to read!

Also, I'd like to thank the people here on tumblr who encouraged me and assured me this was a nice fandom. Having been a wholly silent part of this fandom for years and years this is the first thing I have picked up the courage to share and I want to tell you, guys, THANK YOU! ❤️❤️❤️

At Mairon’s feet the whole world was made of gold.

When he passed, even the black-oblivion, obsidian-sleek walls of Utumno lit brazen-bright. Pits of bonfires woke beneath the iced rocks, and gilded flame-tips licked at his limbs from the sheer walls of Angband, polished to hot embers and glowing coals in his presence.

Wherever he trod was the flame of his hair. However dark the night, its lustrous strands wove glowing rubies into the roaming night. Whatever darkness he summoned around him was pierced by the golden gaze of his eyes.

His shadow dissolved into a golden crown when his fairness shone forth as he willed it to as leaping water over steep stones and cleaving rocks.

And I saw him take it, this heated glow of his as he had taken the rising crown from my hands. Oh, I had stared at him, harder and deeper than any mountain flesh or gaping chasm. I could have struck him down, torn him asunder as easily as I called spitting heights and depths to my biding. And yet his flame never even flickered in my direction. Not even when scornfully he took the gleaming jewels, heady with his disdain, from me. For my little flame did not shape mountains and chasms.

Gilded iron was his alloy and will his anvil.

It was beauty alone that Mairon shaped.

Patient, or as patient as I would, I watched him call forth in the forge the spearing splendor of my crown and the hideous shape of Orcs under the skies just as meticulously.

There is a fearsomeness in unpleasing appearance and Mairon knew it well. The dread Orcs inspire in the common man was of his design also, naturally.

So was the stronghold of Angband. A rock-hewn fortress of efficiency, warfare and secrecy, I never tired to wander its complexity, wondering and, with all my heart, occasionally longing to fell it just to see how Mairon would rebuild and recreate its terrible beauty all over again, though I never told him so. He knew anway, of course, and kept his keen golden eye on me like a wolf guarding its prey.

Yes, ghastly they were, the creatures Mairon unleashed upon his foes, the heinous Orcs and gruesome goblins, mountain-trolls and blood-teethed wolves, swathed in the blinding darkness of my Balrogs and fire-drinking dragons.

Mairon, however, ceased to be fair in battle.

Oh, he could have seduced most of his adversaries, forced onto week knees with his sorcery many more and all the rest. But a cobra will not feed upon limp flesh, the cheetah must race, the falcon swoop to pierce the songbird onto its claw.

And so, with his flickering flame-smile, Sauron, as they called him, set a different trap entirely to spring.

The light upon his face was an uncanny ally of his.

Illuminating the finest of his bones to marble-cutting flawlessness.

Chiseled heights, darkness and light were there ought to be neither, glowing shades and whisper-gleaming rays of sunlight beneath a blackened sky.

His voice rang the air like silvered iron, mellifluous and haunting at once, as commanding as a furnace and as tender as a caressing hand, his laugh bright sunlit pearls and cruelly suffocating ashes.

At the dawn, on the shore of battle, the highest elven kings, fiercest queens and most spirited warriors rode for him without hesitation. Sauron, the cruel, they murmured stern-faced among them, and he was indeed wickeder than any Orc or Balrog of mine.

They set out and rode and stroke to earn their place facing him, swords held aloft, their steadfast resolve soaring to shield their people and beloved ones and let detested Morgoth’s lieutenant perish at last.

What they met utterly unnerved, unrooted, unhinged them.

Comeliness.

Handsomeness.

Fairness.

Pulchritude.

Beauty.

Those are mere words. Spoken tumbling winter-leaves struggling to paint a hail storm.

He was all and naught.

And more.

And more.

And more of it.

Both women and men trembled in mesmerized dread and eerie, bloodcurdling want, gaping upon him. Intoxicating pleasure rose in them when they first caught his eye. It was like pain to them.

 By then Marion’s battle-born strides would have become languid-long strolls. The few who still had any morsels of wit left about them tried to break away their eyes from the light-infused apparition frantically, searching for the malice of his mace, gripping their swords with their sweat-slippery fingers.

It always charmed him into the smallest, most dazzlingly curving smile. They almost never realized that to Mairon the sword tip’s deadly dance was just another art, another craft to design and shape.

The most valiant were always wild on their obedient horses to shoot like arrows at him.

Towards the end, they all fell, crawled, cursed, glowered, quivered under the tip of his iron-clad foot. I have always thought him nearly never more beautiful than when he coaxes his cruelty like a lover’s kiss before the bite.

Around them their friend’s torn faces and daughters’ and sons’ smeared lips, honeyed with crimson blossoms and singing gold flowers. The unnatural light painted the blood-gasping ground and changed their fallen comrade-in-arms’ gruesome wounds to crimson-cold brocade.

Mairon had them between his teeth till they died of bliss and horror alike.

Until they sighed and shrieked and moaned and wept.

 “You are Sauron,” they would utter, staring, accusing, spitting at him.

Oh, yes, Mairon said. Smiled. Oh, yes, yes.

Sometimes the very young ones, well-trained boys and girls, would beg him then. Then, Mairon’s rose-soft, velvet-curling lips smiled even more beautiful.

Around him the thrusting, piercing, blood-lilting, iron-soaked air was limned with gold. In this pause, this endless biding of time against the grey-spraying portrait of misting blood and blooming battle he liked to pull off his helmet at last. Slow and delicately this one, rapidly in a great sweeping arch the other time.

It is the last thing they always see.

The reaching length of his hair curling into sunlit waves of gleaming water ripples, his sun-shaming light pouring as endless waterfalls.

The pinkish tip of his tongue a glimpse between his curving gold-dusted lips in the moment of his kill.

In the blink of a startled eye, Mairon’s beauty rippled into a haunting, living, wraith-like phantom.

The high-browed elven lord’s eyes always widened and their lips spit on the ground before his last smile.

Before he opened them as ripe figs bursting on touch.

When I came forth from my fortress, the ground shook with satisfying anticipation and a rumble swept through our armies, his and mine, mine and theirs. As I stepped forward without forewarning, the roiling battle was surging under Mairon’s sway as usual.

A draught of wind … I could listen to the softness of Mairon’s petal-perfect skin in it. I could savor the unnatural shadows illuminating his brow and cheekbones in the exact, precisely perfect way whispering across his features and taste the whipping of his hair in my mouth, scarlet-sizzling as coals. On his flaming head his crown – for it was more iron crown than helmet – was a smooth black somehow enlightening the flawlessness of his features even more. His iron-slinking armor, sharp as curving wolf teeth, clung to the virtue of his shape. His fiery hair, tamed in the forge only, was afly like shimmering birds. I saw it whip through the air as Mairon turned abruptly around even before the roaring Orcs next to me blinked at my sudden presence.

At once, I saw the flare in him bright as sunlit gemstones as I set foot on the battle field, his intricate thoughts shooting like spider’s webs into a myriad of calculations at once.

The mind of any other Valar and their servants are like lily-bedded ponds. Deep their water runs but slow, and the pebble thrown barely bounces across the surface. The ripples are soon gone.

Mairon’s mind, however, darted like fire prancing, dazzling to watch its hundred and thousand swift flickers.

I seldom partook in battle and, oh, hard it was becoming already to stifle my laughter.

Promptly, I could see his clever embers stirred in their battle-focused ash-bed, swiftly and instantaneously.

Ah, how often had I thwarted his meticulous plans in the past before for no obvious reason – not obvious to him, that is – at all?

Sometimes I had leapt into action when he would have stalled my impatient hand, sought to preserve what I annihilated and at other times I had cherished what Mairon had deemed worthless.

So wary was his gaze as it first flew into my direction like a sleeping volcano’s first spark that I could sense a thousand thoughts ignite into a hundred interweaving sparks at once. He knew I was seldom to do what he bid me to and never to follow a plan to its end.

Oh, but he was a quick-bright little flame, and whatever havoc I wrought upon his elaborate schemes he would never be surprised nor deceived twice and what could scratch upon the perfection of his composure once never did even reflect on the polished marble sheen of his features ever again.

Oh, but he knew me so well indeed as the fire knows the logs it steadily consumes. It had become increasingly hard to catch him unawares, to make mark any impression upon his clever, ever-calm countenance.

A thousand wiles I had played upon him through the ages already and a thousand predictions and presumptions were lapping at his iron-clad feet now.

As soon as I set foot on the ground it trembled and Mairon’s gold flame hair was afly.

Instantaneously, his face turned in the direction of my arrival and, though he was far away on a lone hill, in the midst of battle, a commander of forces who would be commanded by none other, I could see his shimmering beauty whip around.

Belike, I would seek his advice or perhaps I would undo all his careful webs and sunder all his admirable designs upon a mere whim of mine –  he was fascinated and loath to watch me do it.

So, as the ground rumbled beneath my iron-clad footfalls and even the darkest creatures of my armies shrank away in fright, I could see him not step back like them but instead devise and foretell a thousand things to be prepared for me, to predict my wisdom – of which he doomed little upon me – and envision the chaos I could wreck.

Bright could I see the light of his mind as he drew it, keen as the nimble blade he was wilding.

A lesser being he was, yes, so much more fragile and less mighty than I. But none of the other Valar, let alone their servants, possessed his mind’s spark-gleaming quickness, second only – or so I hoped to believe – to my own infinite-stretching mind.

Golden thoughts sparked within it, darting as light, trying to decipher the cause and – more important in Mairon’s glittering mind – the ends of my wild stepping into battle.

Again, I almost burst out laughing.

My hammer, however, dragged a gaping gorge behind me. I did not lift it nor unleash its deadly power and that, I think, a brimming in my chest, is what drew Mairon’s suspsicion most.  

From my path, my army swayed, Orcs and darker creatures shrinking back.

But I am a god and it took me scarcely more than a few strides before I reached him.

Mairon’s face was like marble showing neither dent nor impression whatsoever. If I had knelt at his feet his splendid expression would have shattered – but in my mind the idea I carried within me was of another kind and I brimmed with the anticipation of it.

Ah, how unearthly, uncannily, unrelentingly beautiful he was!

Mairon, His sword reluctantly held, raised his gold-infused gaze at me.

Inside the dazzling gold there were cold calculation and smug disdain aglitter.

Ah.

That potent mixture of mocking smugness and complacent taunt.

I have never told him that, though lesser in being, immortality and power, Mairon’s visage bore one fruit none other in Eä could offer.

In all other beings I had seen and sniffed it, beasts and birds, elves and orcs, wild things and god-like creatures alike. The other Valar, too, I had seen the sheen of it upon them – why, even Manwë – and it had filled me with glee unimaginable.

Not him, though.

Never him.

Forest of giles, oceans quick as arrows and mountains sharp as knives, I could see a whole world blazing in his aureate eyes.

Even smug disdain, if he had the nerve for it – and Mairon almost always did. Even, in those rarest moments when he was most unguarded, trust.

Amidst the tides of our forces I stood still in front of him. On Mairon’s flaming hair his crown – for it was more iron crown than helmet – was a smoke grey, somehow illuming the brilliant symmetry of his features even more, his iron-slinking armor sharp as wolf teeth clinging to the sculptured fairness of his shape.

That fierce serpent beauty flashed. Yes, my lord? What is it that drives you forward to my meek reign?

The scarlet flame of his hair tangling around him in a windless breeze, a luscious bow, mockingly coy, of curving lips and white teeth. I could hear his voice tingle in my head.

Having left your hideout, is there something you ask of me?

Ah.

Insolence and impudence. Arrogance. Amusement.

A whole world but never fear.

I could have wrapped my hands around his slender neck and squeezed without even a gleam of scare in him. I could have lifted my hammer, torn the earth beneath his feet, dictated the skies to strike him with thunder and lightning.

Ages and aeons ago, in the sweltering gleam of Aulë’s forge, he had spotted me among the darkness long before I revealed myself. His eyes shone in the dark brighter than any cat’s. Instead of raising his voice, crying wolf and havoc for help, he watched me and I could feel his gold-gaze lingering.

I went back to my underground halls that day, pondering that brazen insolence just to return the next night trying to break his unwavering gaze.

“How do you know I will not smite you where you stand?” I asked him upon the next day in the deserted forge when I let go of the shadows at last to bend over him.

He cocked his head like a bird and returned, smug as a raven:

“How will you know I will not betray you where you sit?”

The cheek! I was a poisonous viper and he was another and, oh, how fiercely I wanted him to be mine, mine, mine then and mine alone!

His soft neck was between my hands before even he could elude me. Instantaneously, the gold in his eyes sparked with realization and horrified shock of what I was about to do in a split heartbeat ere I was upon him. His lustrous hair whipped like gold ribbons in a wind where there was none, his skin was iridescent in his otherworldly apparition-beauty.

His gilt-rimmed pupils dilated but it was already too late.

I pressed my mouth amidst the surging battle forces upon his pearly lips and kissed.

Flame-swift, Mairon’s rage was so instantaneous I had to swallow my cackling laughter just to prolong the touching of our lips a little longer before he could defy me.

A conflagration met my mouth and I, made of ice and fire, allowed him to singe me till I felt actual pain for I burnt and grinned now beholding the utter outrage in Mairon’s gold-limned eyes.

I could not fathom what incensed him more – the fact that I would do this outside the secrecy of his sweltering bed chambers or the incidental truth that I had accomplished to take him yet again by utter surprise.

Suddenly, the hot-white rage came, ever more terrifying and beautiful than a thunderstorm.

He looked like he might have struck me down then and there, me, in front of everyone.

Then Mairon turned – not because he could not but would not strike me – and away he  went like a conflagration to ravage the battlefield, descending upon our enemies as the sun, golden-bright and blind-burning, veiled in the light of stars and comets, and I watched him, his beautiful blaze transforming into a wraith-like furnace which he cast upon the enemy so that neither elven nor mortal survivor – if they survived – would be able to look  at a beautiful face, be it fair maiden or lovely lad or sweet rose, and bear it ever again.

As my thunder-laugh broke from my chest the ground around me shook and shuddered.

Pierced as though scorched, the swelling of my lower lip seared.

Oh, I was looking forward to golden vengeance he would spin to wreak upon me.

I laughed.

[culturalmochiart]

Your secret identity AU has plagued my mind so harshly-

I want so many details on it (also your art is fucking GORGEOUS and yummy)

~A-Anon

THANK YOU!!!!! OOOO okay okay umm hmmm

I haven’t drawn it in a while, admittedly but lemme try and write down the general timeline. It’ll get a bit long so I’ll do a read more PLUS there will be spoilers for the whole au down under :)

So it’s like pilots/season 1 era, after saving Nya, her and Kai go back to their shop, Jay lives with his parents, Zane stays at the monastery, and Cole probably camps around nearby since he can’t go home.

Zane is the first to reveal his identity, figuring he doesn’t remember anyone from his life, so he can’t put anyone in danger. Wu is a little annoyed his student disobeyed, but he sees Zane’s logic and knows he meant well. Things continue on, feelings start to develop, and the timeline starts to move.

The ninja will occasionally interact while in civvies, but again, they don’t know who is who so they interact differently than when under the mask. Kai thinks jay is annoying and doesn’t like him spending so much time around Nya but he LOVES blue and thinks his same jokes and mannerisms are silly. After the reveal of Zane, he starts tutoring Nya which Kai feels soooooo normal about. Jay goes from having a crush on Nya to becoming her best friend, as they have late night talks and both discover maybe they don’t feel romance in the typical way, and definitely not for each other. Poor Cole is just hanging out in the woods :(

Things skip to around Home and Snakebit, Zane finding the bounty is just as angsty but more so bc it’s stretched over a few days, and he misses his tutoring sessions with Nya which worries THE HELL out of all of them. Wu likely stays with Kai and Nya, Kai telling her his home burned down and he needs a place to stay for the moment. I imagine they see the falcon flying around and follow him to the bounty, where Zane is waiting with a meal for them :]

Jay is revealed next in snakebit! He’s a mamas boy and tells his parents everything, and they’re supportive!! So they don their most clever disguises and go for a visit!! They’re so excited to see their boy they call him by name, so oops!! They get to meet Jay AND his parents!! Kai breaks for a while bc the guy he likes is also the guy he dislikes, and he’s weird for a while until he notices Jay doing the same cute things he did as Blue and

When Jay visits Kai and Nya next, Kai is a lot more civil if not a little embarrassed.

In the snake king, Kai learns Nya is Samurai X, and she ALSO learns Kai is one of the ninja. He keeps the others’ identities secret because it’s not his place to tell her.

We eventually get to tick tock, Zane regains his memory and unlocks his true potential, but he’s a little more sad after, because now he knows theres no one out there looking for him. He falls into the comforting embrace of his teammates. In once bitten twice shy, instead of confessing to Nya, Jay confesses to Cole, Kai, and Zane. This is when they start dating!!

Cole is next!! He’s revealed during his true potential episode. Instead of having his teammates help him win the cup, he decides to go at it alone but in some way or another, the others decide to join in and help him win. Cole reveals himself backstage after the concert when he confronts his dad, and Pythor, seeing that one of the ninja’s parents is in the open and vulnerable, takes his chance to drop all of the equipment onto Cole and Lou. They’re okay of course, but it ended up being quite the scare.

Kai is last to his potential AND his reveal. He knows Nya is capable and that she can handle herself in danger, but the incident with Cole and his dad has him afraid for what Pythor could do to her, his only baby sister. He’s also nervous that if they knew the true him, they wouldn’t like him as much as they do now. All his fear causes him to distance himself from his boyfriends, he loves them deeply, but the danger of it all makes him question whether he should keep being a ninja. All the fear and doubt and his rush to reach his true potential is a very bad combo of feelings that culminate in the volcano with Lloyd.

He feels that he can prove himself worthy of being green ninja and that he’s good enough for his bf’s by getting the fangblade, bc if not for him being special, what the point of keeping him around? Idk it’s a lotta self doubt like in the actual show but gayer.

He hears Lloyd call out to him, realizes what’s truly important, and reaches his true potential. Everyone is waiting on the ship with bated breath as the volcano explodes, too shocked to feel any emotion at the moment. And then they emerge!! In a ball of fire, Kai and Lloyd land on the deck. Maybe the lava caught his mask, maybe his fire subconsciously burned it away, but Kai is revealed in all his blazing glory to the shock and awe of his boyfriends.

Lloyd runs to his dad, and Kai is dog piled by his boys, green ninja stuff happens, and that’s basically the end!! I’m sure I didn’t include every little detail but this is basically the gist!! :]

An older doodle for u too <3

[justsomerandomfanfic]

Hii!

I was wondering if I could request a romantic matchup? I really love your writing! I’d love it from Star Wars or marvel ( both if you’re feeling particular nice but either one will do)

My pronouns are she/her and I would like to be matched with a man.

A little bit about me: I love psychology and literature and I’m a very big family person.

I love to read and write the occasional poetry. I loveeee dogs ( I have one right now) and I’m pretty funny.

I get pretty self conscious, but on the off days I’m not in kinda like the life of the party and I’m very hyper sensitive to people emotions and reactions.

I’d say I’m pretty smart and focused; and if I have a goal in mind I almost always get it done. I tend to be a little hard on myself but I’m working on it and o have a really sassy streak.

I love making people laugh and feeling included; but I’m still searching for my ‘person’ yk? I’d say I’m pretty smart and sorted and I love trying new things.

I’m pretty spontaneous and I love my culture (I’m Indian) a lot. My favourite tv shows are friends and Brooklyn 99 because I love things that make me laugh; and my secret pleasure is that I loose soft toys.

My love language is definitely physical touch and words of affirmation, and I love talking to people about anything.

My favourite artists are Taylor swift, one direction, Sabrina carpenter and Gracie abrams to name a few and I’m really into cricket and f1!

Yeah that’s a little bit abt me hehe; thank you ik advance !!

Here ya go! I always do all listed fandoms, (my longest matchup request was 10!) they are never a burden to do and always fun so I don't mind doing them! You are free to even request more too. Anyhoo, I hope you like your matchups! <3333

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(Romantic);

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Star Wars;

Han Solo:

🌙 You met Han before he met Obi-Wan and before he met Luke; just maybe a couple of months before - though, you weren't a bounty hunter or anything, you were just doing your own thing

🌙 For some reason, the two of you worked together, traveling space together - you and Han work well together - though you and him sometimes butt heads - you get the work done; somewhere down the line, you and Han became a thing

🌙 You and Han, when not bounty hunting, you and Han chillax. Resting in the Falcon, you reading while Han fidgets around with some tech that he's trying to fix - though sometimes if you have no more books to read, Han is more than willing to teach you how to fly the Falcon, (he probably won't let your fly all the time, maybe if there is an emergency, but it's fun overall)

🌙 Han is always there to listen to you - he'd be a good listener - just sitting down somewhere together in the Falcon, just listening to you talk about literally everything and everything; this chatting will probably lead to cuddling, maybe even a nap

🌙 You and Han are a pretty powerful couple, the both of you are persistent and do what you can to get what you want - it's hard for the other bounty hunters to track you both down; you always run away scott-free, hand in hand, your laughter ringing throughout the air

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Marvel;

Matt Murdock:

😈 You actually met Matt when you were called to the stand as the Psychologist in some smaller-lesser known crime court thing - Matt though, when he heard you speak, he was like (★‿★)

😈 After the case thing, and though he could see in a cooler/different way, he was able to follow your voice as you spoke to someone outside the courthouse - he may have slightly spooked you, and you may have been a bit nervous, but when Matt complimented you about your knowledge and how impressed he was; well, swoon

😈 Once official, which may have taken some time, you and Matt move in together and you did a lot together - going to the gym, and listening to your favorite music

😈 A lot of cuddling, just staying up at night - when Matt's not fighting crime - staying up at night together, playing with each other's hands, soft music playing in the background, whispering sweet nothings to each other

😈 And if you're feeling down, Matt will be there for you, trying to soothe you, but if you want some alone time, Matt is more than willing to give you some time and space - he'd probably just go out and fight a baddie, and bring Chinese food home when he does