#and into each other

[pilesofpillows]

Back to the WIP asks:

Bigger Than Love - Another Arranged Marriage AU

Bigger Than Love || Another (Happier) Arranged Marriage AU

Aahhhh... Bigger Than Love... because who doesn't love an Arranged Marriage Trope? 🤭 Let's Get Into It!

So this was Like Real People Do before I had the bright idea to turn it into the absurdly long fest of angst that will end with one single kiss 😅 but it has since pivoted to be what I hope is a fun twist on the Arranged Marriage trope.

It'll be set about 2-3 months post-canon, so feelings are still fresh all around. Wakanda and Talokan are both on the verge of civil war within themselves, and the alliance isn't going exactly the way leadership might've hoped. If you know me, you know I don't believe in doing things the easy way, so Shuri is still mad (and a little homicidal), Namor is unwilling to work with anyone other her, and M'Baku is ready to fully revert Wakanda back to T'Chaka levels of seclusion (Talokan and Western Powers be damned).

In all of this, our leading duo have found themselves as unlikely friends and equally matched sparring partners. There's just one rule though— no politics. They spar in the training arena, by the riverbank, in Okoye's backyard... but under no circumstances do they discuss the growing tensions between their two kingdoms. What happens in the throne room, stays in the throne room.

Until it doesn't of course...

Things are looking bleak for the alliance, and even finding moments to spar has become difficult with the pressures they're both facing. One night, Okoye jokingly suggests a marriage alliance might fix all of their problems. They both laugh it off, but when he's alone, the thought won't leave Attuma's mind. Peace matches are arranged all the time in Talokan; he's the product of one such marriage himself. Would marrying Okoye really be so bad? She may be a surface dweller, but she is the first equal he's met in far too long. But worries still linger: if they do marry, can he accept the potential risk of losing another so dear to his heart?

Okoye keeps trying to convince herself that she was joking. She couldn't possibly be willing to get married again— not after W'Kabi. But the more she thinks about it, thinks about him, the more she finds herself wanting. Her uncle has not relented in his quest to see her remarried, no matter how lacking she finds her suitors. Attuma wouldn't be marrying her for status, or money, or connections to her uncle or the crown. Theirs would be a mutually beneficial arrangment— the treaty could finally be formalized, they'd have peace in both their kingdoms, and maybe, just maybe, Attuma might end up wanting her too.

[suzypfonne]

Before January 2025:

If you are a USAmerican in a relationship that might be affected by legislation that dissolves same-sex marriages, who may no longer be recognized as next-of-kin, especially if you have children, get your rights in writing!

Your marriage certificate may not be enough to prove you have rights to make medical decisions for non-biological children or for a same-sex spouse or partner.

Go to a lawyer, get it spelled out as clearly as possible that you have a voice in emergency medical and legal situations.

[hansoeii]

the honda odyssey, huh?

[3liza]

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/theyre-not-human-how-19th-century-inuit-coped-with-a-real-life-invasion-of-the-walking-dead

Indigenous groups across the Americas had all encountered Europeans differently. But where other coastal groups such as the Haida or the Mi’kmaq had met white men who were well-fed and well-dressed, the Inuit frequently encountered their future colonizers as small parties on the edge of death.

“I’m sure it terrified people,” said Eber, 91, speaking to the National Post by phone from her Toronto home.

And it’s why, as many as six generations after the events of the Franklin Expedition, Eber was meeting Inuit still raised on stories of the two giant ships that came to the Arctic and discharged columns of death onto the ice.

Inuit nomads had come across streams of men that “didn’t seem to be right.” Maddened by scurvy, botulism or desperation, they were raving in a language the Inuit couldn’t understand. In one case, hunters came across two Franklin Expedition survivors who had been sleeping for days in the hollowed-out corpses of seals.

“They were unrecognizable they were so dirty,” Lena Kingmiatook, a resident of Taloyoak, told Eber.

Mark Tootiak, a stepson of Nicholas Qayutinuaq, related a story to Eber of a group of Inuit who had an early encounter with a small and “hairy” group of Franklin Expedition men evacuating south.

“Later … these Inuit heard that people had seen more white people, a lot more white people, dying,” he said. “They were seen carrying human meat.”

Even Eber’s translator, the late Tommy Anguttitauruq, recounted a goose hunting trip in which he had stumbled upon a Franklin Expedition skeleton still carrying a clay pipe.

By 1850, coves and beaches around King William Island were littered with the disturbing remnants of their advance: Scraps of clothing and camps still littered with their dead occupants. Decades later, researchers would confirm the Inuit accounts of cannibalism when they found bleached human bones with their flesh hacked clean.

“I’ve never in all my life seen any kind of spirit — I’ve heard the sounds they make, but I’ve never seen them with my own eyes,” said the old man who had gone out to investigate the Franklin survivors who had straggled into his camp that day on King William Island.

The figures’ skin was cold but it was not “cold as a fish,” concluded the man. Therefore, he reasoned, they were probably alive.

“They were beings but not Inuit,” he said, according to the account by shaman Nicholas Qayutinuaq.

The figures were too weak to be dangerous, so Inuit women tried to comfort the strangers by inviting them into their igloo.

But close contact only increased their alienness: The men were timid, untalkative and — despite their obvious starvation — they refused to eat.

The men spit out pieces of cooked seal offered to them. They rejected offers of soup. They grabbed jealous hold of their belongings when the Inuit offered to trade.

When the Inuit men returned to the camp from their hunt, they constructed an igloo for the strangers, built them a fire and even outfitted the shelter with three whole seals.

Then, after the white men had gone to sleep, the Inuit quickly packed up their belongings and fled by moonlight.

Whether the pale-skinned visitors were qallunaat or “Indians” — the group determined that staying too long around these “strange people” with iron knives could get them all killed.

“That night they got all their belongings together and took off towards the southwest,” Qayutinuaq told Dorothy Eber.

But the true horror of the encounter wouldn’t be revealed until several months later.

The Inuit had left in such a hurry that they had abandoned several belongings. When a small party went back to the camp to retrieve them, they found an igloo filled with corpses.

The seals were untouched. Instead, the men had eaten each other.

[drizzledrawings]

Only you

[eddiegettingshot]

"their relationship is strictly platonic" "they're so in love" well, more importantly, they are fucking weird and abnormal about each other in an undeniable way

[kidrat]

U can watch Star Wars so many times and it doesn’t prepare u for how dumb Star Wars is. For one thing I think we gloss over how kenobi (who has definitely been at the club. Please.) describes the mos eisley cantina as the worst most villainous place ever and then u get inside and it’s a pack of muppets vaping

[thought-begone]

I guess the real glorious evolution was the homoerotic yearning we made along the way

[spoondrifts]

something about vi never wanting anyone in her life to change. something about jayce not caring at all how much viktor has changed so long as he's alive. something about the way vi associates radical change with death, perceiving jinx's continued existence as a kind of necromantic horror—the way jayce would shatter fundamental laws of nature without a second thought in order to give viktor the best chance at survival, in whatever form that may take. transformation as rebirth vs murder, hextech vs shimmer. nature has made us intolerant to change, but fortunately, we have the capacity to change our nature. and then jayce, realizing that he hasn't changed at all, not really—that he is a scientist at heart, and he shouldn't have tried to be anything else. and then vi, realizing she has become someone unrecognizable—never thought my sister would turn bluebelly. and for both of them, it's too little, too late.

[archi-pelago]

maybe never forgive. but things are different now. so we'll use maybe.

[rotzaprachim]

not only are there no bad languages there are also no bad or annoying dialects

[mythtakens]

“these characters should be mentally healthy before they get together 😌” ummm no I actually think we should smash their mental illnesses together like clumps of play-doh and see what colors it makes

[pouletpourri]

"You just have to look closely."

[swan2swan]

Whoever conceived and animated this moment, I hope they're doing well and thriving. This is S-rank romance stuff here.

[intercrusher]

this is their foreplay