#and you know what? the way the author handles the concept of coming out and anonymity is so fucking relatable

[mysweetsinfulobsessions]

HIJAB BUTCH BLUES by LAMYA H.

Alright, changing it up a bit with my book stuff but this one hit home with me. The author draws very interesting parallels between stories in the Quran and her experiences as a gay muslim woman that are very interesting. And if you think you can’t be muslim and gay, or wear a hijab and be gay, or even tackle muslim culture and queerness in one, then you’re bound to be pleasantly proved wrong with this one.

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[moonlit-imagines]

Headcanons for being Tony Stark’s child

Tony Stark x child!reader

warnings: alcohol ment,

a/n: so i just really think that the concept of tony having the party kid as opposed to nerdy avenger kid would be a really cool idea to explore teehee. most of this does actually take place pre-avengers tho!!

prompt:

you we’re quite the exhausting kid

“is this really how it felt to raise me?” -tony

many of nights he’d find your bed empty, you’d snuck out to go have your fun as teenagers do

“yeah, boss, i imagine it was” -happy

you always showed back up in one piece (like him) and besides a little slap on the wrist you didn’t get much discipline

actually, it usually went like:

“so, where did you go off to last night?” -tony

“a party” -you

“really? didn’t want to loop me in before you snuck out…again?”

“last time i told you about a party you showed up!”

“uh—yeah, but it’s not like i went all dad on you and dragged you away or anything”

“yeah, you joined the party and offered to buy teenagers more booze”

“hey, they all loved you after that! and they couldn’t get enough of my classic dance moves” -tony, jokingly doing the sprinkler with one arm “but seriously, let me know next time”

“we’ll see about that” -you

^the above conversion went about the same every time

sometimes for entertainment purposes you’d try a little harder, throw a few pillows under the covers to make it look like you were still home to put a smile on tony’s face

“aw, y/n reminds me so much of me” -tony

tony was still partying at this point so you’d flip the script on him from time to time

“you were out late” -you

“what are you, a cop? leave me alone. actually, can you get me some aspirin and water?” -tony

“sure, one or two” -you

“make it three” -tony

he would nurse your occasional hangovers (what a great dad!)

okay, he didn’t always know when you were gone. he was busy a lot of the time with his own business and extracurriculars so you guys did just kinda do your own thing for certain stretches of time

honestly you could be a bit of a klepto in the best of ways

but only to tony and only for fun

“oh, great, where’s my car?” -tony

“which one?” -pepper

“the black one!” -tony

“be more specific” -pepper

“the only one missing from my garage!” -tony

“yeah, i know, just wanted to give you some more time to think about it” -pepper

“i changed the code on the lockbox like, five times this week. did they hotwire it?” -tony

“we are talking about your kid, right? pretty sure they just hacked it” -pepper

“i am…so proud” -tony

you MAY have gotten a few close calls with authorities, but nothing tony couldn’t handle

and up until tony’s accident, the phrase “you’re going to give me a heart attack” was silly and endearing

“you might actually give me a heart attack, y/n, give a guy some warning or just say please for god’s sake” -tony, now comes with an arc reactor in his chest

“sorry” -you

“what—huh—didn’t hear ya, wanna say that a little louder?” -tony, very sarcastically

i tell ya when he got that armor u couldn’t tell if u were gonna flip out at him or invite him to a party

or steal it for…you didn’t even know what

but tony was 3 steps ahead of you when all this came to be

and you weren’t very interested in weapons, still just parties and dumb fun for you

“dad, i dont wanna be a nerd, will you just let me go out?” -you

“come on! just help me in the lab a few hours, what’s it gonna hurt?” -tony

“my social status” -you

“might i remind you you’re a stark? i think you’ll live if you miss one party” -tony

“you’d be surprised” -you

“hey, i almost died! give your old man a break” -tony

once tony got involved with SHIELD and the avengers he got even busier really

and in came the parenting advice from fury, clint, nat, steve

“hey, i don’t see you raising a teenager, back off” -tony

*clint side eye*

steve once tried to give you a good talking to, but you reminded him a great bit of your father with your stubbornness

“you done? i dont think you should be giving out any parenting tips fresh off the ice” -you

tony was kind of proud of you for sticking to your guns

especially around such powerful people

but you had a knack for that and could do it to practically anyone

mostly because you felt like an invincible teenager since you were raised by tony, who also thought himself an invincible teenager at one point

u tried to tone down giving tony grief when he started having panic attacks

since u accidentally caused a few by pushing boundaries and staying out for several nights in a row

cuz as tony gained more enemies, he thought you’d be in more danger

which was true

“happy, you’re y/n’s personal bodyguard” -tony

“no!” -you

“uh, cool? any fun parties planned tonight? i’ll be the designated driver. god knows i’ve been tony’s too many times” -happy

taglist: @alwaysananglophile // @locke-writes // @sweetheartlizzie07 // @queen-destenie // @johnmurphyisqueer // @captainshazamerica // @ravenmoore14 // @canarypoint // @procrastinatingsapphictrash // @swanimagines // @randomfandomimagine // @petersgroupie // @summersimmerus // @scarthefangirl // @bad4amficideas // @sheridans-dynamos // @simsrecs // @prettysbliss // @skdkdkckfk // @simp-legend // @wild-rose-35 // @nekoannie-chan // @evilcr0ne // @v0idl1nq // @ruvaakke // @thedarkqueenofavalon // @amirahiddleston // @beth-gallagher22 // @brutal-out-here // @rqmanoff // @elenavampire21 // @mymelodymia // @pheonixfire777 // @deanzboyfriend //

[tarysande]

The best part about coming back to the source material after a looooong time is you sorta get a fresh look at canon in comparison to whatever the dominant strains of fanon have become. Or, in fact, whatever your own dominant strains of headcanon have become.

I mean, yes, Garrus “I’m not a good turian” Vakarian gets infinitely cooler (and more competent!) by pretty much every metric as the storyline progresses. He does. But fresh out of ME1 and into ME2 through his recruitment, I find myself genuinely amused by how thin the veneer of badass is over a pretty dominant core of straight-up nerd sprinkled with idealism mixed with self-doubt.

When you have Garrus in the squad all the time (and thus get all his ambient dialogue and remarks), you really pick up on the number of times he calls out bad behavior, unethical actions, cruelty, and rule-breaking, especially in ME1.

He’s not actually a hothead who can’t abide rules of any kind. In fact, most of the time he’s pretty pro-law-and-order, and he gets amusingly hall-monitorish when people are breaking rules he considers important and worth following.

Fundamentally, Garrus chafes when his sense of what is just is at odds with what the authorities do about that injustice (or what they stop him from doing). And I would hazard a guess that the reason his actions seem so intense or harsh or "of course we should have shot down that ship in the middle of the Citadel" is indicative not of his impatience but of the degree to which he thinks the authorities have failed to uphold that justice. We know he can be patient. He's a sniper. His whole modus operandi on Omega is precision kills without civilian casualty. But when that long fuse finally burns down, he goes from zero to shooting down ships in the middle of the Citadel in what looks (from the outside) like a heartbeat.

And yes, injured pride hastens the burning of that fuse; he doesn’t like losing. Or admitting defeat. Or failing.

Having just replayed his recruitment mission, a few things really stood out to me this time.

The merc bands really hate him--and they also reluctantly admire him (he's described as smart, resourceful, dangerous, idealistic, brave, slippery; they all agree they only way they managed to get this far is by isolating him and employing dirty tactics). I mean, there's literally a station-wide announcement that Omega can return to "business as usual" once Archangel is out of the picture because he was disrupting things so completely.

The way Garrus blames himself for the deaths of his squad is so freaking turian. Failure reflects on the leader who places his people in danger they can't handle, not the individual who fails. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Yes, Sidonis betrayed him, but the person Garrus blames the most? Is himself. For trusting Sidonis in the first place. For raising Sidonis to a position where he had the means and opportunity to harm others--and the weakness of character to turn coat, to save his own hide, instead of dying to protect the others.

Garrus mentions more than once that he was trying to emulate Shepard. And his tone always implies that he knows he failed because Shepard would never have let a Sidonis into the fold. Again, he's blaming himself. Like a good turian. Yes, he wanted to avoid the red tape and bureaucracy of C-Sec, but his code--Archangel's code--certainly aligns with Paragon Shepard's morality (with a Garrus Vakarian twist).

And since it wouldn't be meta without adding a Tara's Headcanon Twist ... I've always wondered why "Archangel" when it's such a ... human concept. But this time, when I noticed how he spoke about Shepard's influence, and how quickly he brushes aside the name when she asks him about it, I wondered if it wasn't actually his way of honoring the mythology of the dead woman whose example he was trying to follow. Not that Shepard is a God he's worshiping, but ... there is something about the way he talks about her. Garrus doesn't make himself over in the image of a God, though; he's the soldier, the right hand, the avenging angel responsible for carrying out divine punishments suited and proportional to the crimes committed, the rules broken, the selfishness or cruelty of the perpetrator.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Do you think it's weird that I was fine with Roxas finding out he was Sora's Nobody in Kingdom Hearts, but Adrien not being what we thought he was triggered my ick factor a lot? Do you think it's because we learned that about Roxas before we had a lot of time to get attached to him?

I was initially going to say that I can't answer this because I've only played Kingdom Hearts 1, so my knowledge of the later games is pretty limited. Then I remembered that my little brother is both obsessed with those games and the Mycroft to my Sherlock*, so I gave him a call and got the expert opinion (and a reminder that I need to play the Kingdom Hearts games so that my brother can talk about them with someone who understands story telling because those games apparently make a lot of... interesting choices.)

Here is the sum of my brother's analysis:

The two properties handled the concept of personhood and artificial beings in such wildly different ways that it would never even occur to him to compare them (though it was an interesting question once posed). A good portion of the later Kingdom Hearts games revolve around asking what a person even is. Should they try to make the Nobodies into people? Do the Nobodies even need to change to be people or are they people already? What makes Roxas different from other Nobodies? These questions start being asked very early on and, for all the story's flaws, you can tell that the writers are aware that they're dealing with a serious topic and that they're trying to do it justice.

Meanwhile, Miraculous introduces artificial beings who don't have true free will and then... completely ignores all of the ethical implications of that plot point. Emilie and Gabriel are good parents. The fact that the heroes have been killing off sentimonsters isn't concerning. Gabriel's commands are just a minor inconvenience to Adrienette and not anything that needs to be explored in a deeper way. He's still totally redeemable and it's fine that Adrien never learned the truth while his father was alive so that he could decide what that meant for their relationship on his own terms.

Given all of that, it's really not shocking that Kingdom Hearts makes you feel invested while Miraculous repulses you because the Miraculous introduced human sentimonsters for cheap shock value to the point where I firmly believe that it was a retcon. Meanwhile Kingdom Hearts planned major elements of the plot around the concept and set it up right from the start of the second game. If Miraculous had done the same kind of thing, then I doubt that most salters would be deeply upset by the concept. They still might dislike it, but it would be seen more as a matter of taste than as a true flaw.

*For those who don't know, Mycroft Holmes is Sherlock Holmes' older brother. Sherlock openly admits that Mycroft is the smarter and more observant of the two siblings. The same can be said of my sibling when it comes to story telling. Everything I can do, he can do just as well or even better. He's never seen miraculous, but knows the major plot beats from a mix of cultural osmosis and reading the occasional fanfic when an author he likes crosses fandoms. He is highly amused that no one he follows does anything save for fix-it type stuff and says it tells him everything he needs to know about canon's writing quality, an assessment I fully agree with.

[sibillascribbles08]

Big Ol' Rottmnt Fic Rec List

Hi, I've needed to do this for a while, so here's a big bundle of fic recs from me !

I've broken it down between one shots, chaptered fics, and series. I'll try to mention what the character focus is along with a brief summary and some personal thoughts. If you need more details I encourage you to check the fics summary and tags for yourself! I will only include an author's tumblr account if it's easy for me to find haha

One Shots

Mama's Boy - ashtreelane: Technically two chapters but it feels like a one shot. Casey Jr. angst, involving him finding out that maybe you can fix kraang infections and that he failed to save his mother. I love when people really pile the grief on Junior after all the fighting is over and the fic does it so well.

Forget-Me-Nots - GibbousLunation (AKA @klunkcat ): Hi, oh my god??? Leo and Mikey centric angst, in which saving Leo from the prison dimension has an insane ripple effect. Mikey dying? Nah he's going to start getting erased from every timeline and Leo slowly watches it happen (and refuses to do nothing about it). I utterly adore how this fic handles this concept. You see almost all of it from Leo's POV, noticing the little changes but writing them off as memory failures, because of how subtle some of it is.

Fight or Flight - pickledcarrotsandradish: Leo centric, post movie, Leo keeps waiting for his family to start lecturing him about all the dumb stuff he did during the invasion, and they aren't, so it's getting to him. A very neat narrative about how self loathing can warp our perception of how others see us. A++++

The Friend Zone Sounds Pretty Good, Actually - Cryptvokeeper: Eating this, eating this. You probably already know I love aroace Leo and this fic is an INCREDIBLE exploration of that. Even as just an ace person it hit SO many notes where I was just like "Oh god... I've been there buddy". And as a bonus the dynamic between Leo and Yuichi is v sweet. Love this a lot I've read it like five times.

Pink in The Night - unnamedmystery: Incredible April/Sunita fic. Like seriously this author wrote April's crush so well I think I was starting to fall in love with Sunita. Just incredibly cute all the way through, and great April writing, adore it.

《 until then, matriarch 》 - chiangyorange: HI OH MY GOD A nice chunky oneshot about Karai, about her being a leader, and it's phenomenal. It hits and hits and does not miss, really going in depth about her emotions involving her father turning into something wicked and having to destroy him, and how it ruins all of her good memories.

The Kindness of Collision - SpoonerizedSwiftness (AKA @splickedylit ): Hi I still remember the fic and the art suddenly showing up in the tag and then I was thinking about it for the next like five weeks aslkdjf A very interesting idea that when the turtles reach the age they were in the doomed timeline before things got reset, all the memories of their other life more or less hit them like a train. All of them have to comb through that information and it's a wonderful and emotional ride.

Chaptered Fics

Hamartia - Punable (in progress): Hi this is one of my all time favorite rise fics, mainly because in a way, it helped me come to terms with my chronic pain. It's Donnie centric and smack full of angst in all the best ways. Shorthand summary, an explosion in Donnie's lab almost takes him out (or kind of DOES take him out) and the recovery is not only long and agonizing, it may only go so far, and Donnie doesn't cope well with that.

Kick It Up a Notch - Brokenpitchpipe (completed): Hi this is my other all time fav rise fic. Donnie centric separated AU in which Donnie is raised by Draxum. My love for it stems a lot from the characterization of Donnie though, and even Draxum in this case. Not to mention that in a lot of cases it matches the vibes of the show. And in spite of all the humor, there's a few really gut wrenching moments. 10/10 will re-read.

Lightning in Our Fingertips Today - DaFlangsLairde (AKA @daflangstlairde-art) (completed): Leo and Donnie centric, mostly angst, with body swapping between the twins which results in Donnie finding out that Leo's ninpo hurts him. Love love love the character writing in this, and also how the swap is written.

Under Pressure - ParvumAutomaton (completed): Not sure this is a single character focused fic, but basically April goes cave diving and is out for a while, and the turtles get worried and go looking for her. This might be personal bias but as someone who gets really into caving stories, this fic hits the spot for so many reasons. A really great emotional ride, and if you wanna see April go through it then I super recommend it.

Nothing Haunts Us (like the things we don't say) - mad_and_thick_as_theives (completed): A lot of great fics by this author btw, but this one personally stood out to me. It starts of silly and light only to sweep in with the emotional weight. Turtles are all cursed with a truth spell, basically, but I think my favorite bit is who gets out of it first (and why). V sweet.

Creation of a Philospher's Stone - IgnisCanis (completed): Whoooo boy, if you want some Draxum centric character exploration this is a great one. It really fleshes him out as a morally grey character and also does a fantastic job at writing Mikey when he finds out.

The Ol Switcheroo - radishhqueen (AKA @radishhqueen) (completed): Haha not going to lie I have a few by this author (so I'll only tag them once) but MAN. Hands down my favorite take on future leo coming to the past, and maybe I'm biased because I like when those fics actually explore Junior's character in the process buuuuut I love it. Junior's already struggling to adapt himself to the present, and after getting caught up in a foot clan spell which summons his sensei to the present too it really doesn't get any easier.

Vigilantism for Fun and Profit - radishhqueen (completed): The Cassandra Jones fic ever. Zero contest. If you're uncertain about writing Cassandra because she had so little development in the show I encourage you to read this for inspiration (I know it inspired me a lot). It does such a great deep dive into her character post show and a bit of the movie too. Honestly anytime radishh has a Cassandra fic I am clicking.

Tried to Grow Up Good - Sroloc_Elbisivni (AKA @sroloc--elbisivni )(completed): The Casey Jr. fic ever. CRAZY in love with this post movie take on him. It's messy, it's fun, it's so so real and you get a good chunk of Casey Sr. in here too. Adore it.

Hold On (Or Three Times Donatello's Soft Shell Almost Killed Him, and One Time it Saved His Life) - dunk_on_em (AKA @spockazilla )(completed): If you ever want a bit of angst involving Donnie's shell this is my go to. Every chapter has an emotional swing, even the positive ones. And shows something most people might see as a disadvantage as a good thing, actually.

Atlas, My Brother - swampcryptid (AKA @the-name-is-rizzotherat)(in progress): Get your Raph angst, specifically involving him always shielding his siblings, this time via a curse. My guy is already going through it and I think it'll get worse if a solution isn't found.

I've Got You Under My Skin - Cass_Phoenix (in progress): More Raph angst, and some Donnie, a truly chilling exploration of the possible consequences to connecting with the kraang. This fic constantly has me on the edge of my seat, and constantly stressing for Raph.

What We Leave Behind (How We Start Anew) - iam57311 (AKA @iam-57311)(in progress): Any Baronjitsu fans here? An alternate take on canon in which Draxum and Splinter co-parent the kids since they're first born (made?) Hilariously while I love the Baronjitsu content in here, I think some of my favorite parts are actually with the sisters, Big Mama, and Draxum's sister who is so so cool I love her.

Proof of Redemption - iam57311 (complete): Another one of theirs! A short and sweet lil close to canon fic about Draxum steadily gaining the trust and affection of the Hamatos, with each chapter focused on a different character. I love how they're all paced out from each other, really hits how some are much slower than others to trust Draxum hehe.

No Crime* Only Brooches - OllieTheScribe (AKA @olliethescribe) (in progress): Well I have to get THE HypnoWarren fic in here. Such a fun take on these characters, I love love love the backstory they built up for Warren too, plus the dynamic between these two and the turtles after (eventually) become friends haha.

Minor Interference - bambiraptorx (AKA @bambiraptorx) (in progress): What can I say? This fic is delightful. Between the hilarity of the turtles going with Draxum just to mess with him, the lore additions for yokai and the Hidden City, HoH Donnie, and their slowly building dynamic, always eager for a new chapter with this one.

Series

A Butterfly with a Mechanical Wing - Amethyst_Goldenwind (AKA @amethystgoldenwind ): Donnie centric series about being a non-verbal autistic. I'm always fond of non-verbal/mute explorations of characters, and so far I really like how, because his family has grown up with it, all of it is very normal for them. The various forms of communication are delightful. Excited to see further entries.

Analogous Hues - alwerakoo (AKA @alwerakoo): It's a separated AU with similar titling themes as my own, needed to check it out. The titles are just about all they have in common though! This AU focuses a lot on the turtles (Raph and Leo with Splinter and Donnie and Mikey with Draxum). I love how this explores not only the dynamics of the two groups and how different they are, but also the dynamics between each of the siblings, also how some magic sibling connections can influence that. Not to mention the different home life in more ways than one. If you're into separated AUs that really dig into the turtles dynamics try this one out !

[motherismotheringggg]

omg can you write hcs of nic or Charlie being protective? think casual dominance,,,,😋😋 need him so bad

save me, charlie 🤲🏽

tags/warnings: 18+

type: casual dom! father charlie mayhew x sub! female reader headcanons

author’s note: full disclosure, i had to do a lot of research into what “casual dominance” meant so i hope you like this but ALSO what a fascinating concept — dominance exerted in a matter of fact way, truly mind blowing to me!! sorry if this short but please enjoy!!!

🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽🤲🏽

causal dom! charlie who always picks out what he wants you to wear to mass; truthfully, he picks out everything you wear. If you're not dressed to his liking, he'll offhandedly ask you to join him in his study after the service and ask you to undress. You’ll stand in front of desk naked while he prepares for the mass, glancing up at you every so often but not saying anything. When he’s done preparing, he’ll ask you to come around the desk, sit on his lap and say, "You’ll do better. Won't you?" When you nod, he rewards you with a faint smile. "Good girl. Now go fix it."

casual dom! charlie who, no matter where you are—whether it’s a quiet corner at a dinner party, the hallway outside a gathering, or even just the kitchen at home—Charlie will wrap his hand in your hair, his fingertips grazing your scalp in a way that sends shivers down your spine (this is why he always requires you to wear your hair out). He knows exactly how to tug, just enough to make you wince, his grip both firm and intentional. It’s not always about discipline; sometimes, it’s his way of grounding you, of pulling your focus entirely to him. His voice, low and commanding, follows the movement: “Eyes on me.” When his grip softens, his fingers threading gently through your hair, it’s his way of showing that he’s in control but still cares. “There you go,” he murmurs, his tone a mix of satisfaction and reassurance, as if to say he’s proud of the way you respond to him.

casual dom! charlie who insists on watching you when you shower. He doesn’t ask or explain; it’s just something he does. He’ll sit or lean casually outside the glass shower door, his gaze fixed on you—not judging, not stroking himself, just watching. There’s an intensity in his eyes, not lustful but possessive, as if he’s memorizing every curve of your body, every drop of water that slides along your skin. He doesn’t speak, but his presence is palpable, his silent observation a reminder that you’re his—every moment, even the mundane ones, belongs to him. When you glance his way, his expression doesn’t change, though you might catch the faintest curl of his lips, an acknowledgment that he knows you feel his eyes on you. When you finish, he’ll hand you a towel without a word, but the way his fingers linger on yours says everything.

casual dom! charlie who will please you without batting an eye, as if it’s second nature. You’ll be sitting together on the couch, the glow of the TV lighting the room, when he shifts slightly closer. Slowly, but with calculated precision, his hand slips into your panties, his fingers finding your clit with practiced ease. His touch is deliberate, steady, and maddeningly controlled, his fingers massaging you with just the right amount of pressure. All the while, his eyes stay glued to the TV, his expression calm and collected, as if nothing unusual is happening. When a whimper escapes your lips, he doesn’t stop, but he shushes you with a quiet, “Hush now. I’m trying to watch,” his tone light but with an unmistakable authority. The contrast between his focused attention on the show and the intense, intimate way he’s handling you leaves you breathless, teetering on the edge of both frustration and bliss.

casual dom! charlie who, after mass is done and all the parishioners have gone, stops by the confessional, brushing the curtain. “A word,” he says softly. You know better than to refuse. He waits, his tone low and deliberate. “You’ve been distant lately. Tell me why.” His question is more of an invitation. You fumble through vague answers until he interrupts. “Stop. I want honesty.” His voice dips lower, almost soothing: “We all stray, but discipline brings us back. Discipline is love. Trust in it.” The silence presses on until you speak, a surrender to his authority. When he dismisses you, his voice softens, but the command remains. “Proverbs 3:11-12. Learn it, and reflect on it before we talk again.” The verse lingers in your mind as he dismisses you: ‘Do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.’ His presence stays with you even as you leave—a reminder that he’s always watching, always guiding.

casual dom! charlie who stands before you every night before bed, his figure imposing in the dim light. His voice is low but firm: “Drop to your knees.” The look in his eyes leaves no room for hesitation. You sink down, hands folded, reciting your prayers under his steady gaze. If your words falter, he steps closer, placing a firm hand on your shoulder. “You’re not done,” he says calmly. “I’m not pleased yet.” You straighten, your voice steadier as you continue, striving for the reverence he demands. When he finally says, “Good. That’s better,” there’s a subtle warmth in his tone. His hand moves from your shoulder to your cheek, thumb brushing your skin in quiet approval. “Go to bed now,” he says, his voice both commanding and comforting, leaving you feeling chastened yet cherished.

casual dom! charlie who insists on treating the body as a temple, not out of vanity, but reverence. So when he invites you to watch his virtual spin class—invites only in the sense that there’s no real room to say no—you know it’s more than just exercise. You do the exercise along with him and afterwards over dinner — dinner that he cooked and portioned out for you down to the glass of wine you had with it — you discuss it. In great detail, he wants to know how you felt doing it, what was your heart rate, did you enjoy is music selection — everything. But more importantly he’ll remind you that “Your body is a gift. This isn’t punishment—it’s gratitude. Remember that.”

casual dom! charlie who fixates on routine care for yourself in his presence. Every Sunday morning, before mass, he’ll sit you with your vanity and apply your skincare and body care products. “Discipline begins with the smallest acts,” he says as his rough but soft hands glides serums and moisturizers over your skin, his voice soothing yet firm. “Be still. This is part of your worship.”

[tryslora]

Disability in fiction

This was a tough post to write. 

I saw a post about disability rep, and I kept thinking about it, and wanted to share my own takes on the topic. 

I thought about it for days, trying to figure out how to word it. Then after drafting it, I stuck it in a file for a couple of weeks, trying to decide if I could even post it. This is not a topic that can be boiled down to a simple yes/no kind of answer.

Let’s start with two examples.

1 - I have a short story I started writing (it wants to grow up to be longer, so it’s waiting for time) where my original concept was to write about an older woman who is short and has major chronic pain, and I wanted to dig into fantasy reasons why this pain exists, but at the same time, have her be able to kick ass despite being exhausted and dealing with excruciatingly painful issues.

2 - I once drafted a portal fantasy storyline wherein a young man was transported into a fantasy world, and when he was given a horse to ride, he approached it very warily. He was encouraged to mount, did so, and sat there and exclaimed in shock, “My brain isn’t exploding with snot!” because his allergies hadn’t come with him into the body he had in the fantasy world.

Both stories were designed to be fun, a bit light, maybe even cozy.

So.

In one case, the disabled character remains disabled and kicks ass anyway. And in the other case, the character is magically “healed” and no longer has debilitating allergies that had wrecked his way of life.

This is the difficult part to express: I think both storylines are valid.

Bear with me while I dig into this.

First and foremost: I completely agree that we need more representation in all forms of fiction, especially when it comes to disabled people being able to live their lives. Characters with missing limbs, or non-neurotypical brains, or anxiety & depression, or hearing issues, or sight problems, or chronic pain, or… or… you get the idea. We need all of it, and we need it to not need to be magically healed in order for a story to be considered happy and cozy. Disabled people can be happy, too.

I’m all in for this, and I wouldn’t write the stories I do if I weren’t.

However, there are also moments where I am so exhausted by my body and by everything I deal with inside of it where I do wish for that magical ability to forget that my pain exists. Or for the ability to actually process information in a straight line, or make decisions without writing a hundred lists and accomplishing nothing from them. Or to be able to lie down in a field of grass without regretting it for days while I drip snot and fight sinus-pain-induced migraines.

Sometimes I want to imagine that my life is different.

And that is one of the joys of writing. I can choose to write a story where people like me or the people I know are the heroes/heroines exactly as they are, different abilities and all. Or I can choose to write a story where the problems magically resolve.

Both can be cozy, sweet, and adorable. I can give the character with chronic pain the ability to kick ass, take names, and have a sweet reunion with her ex-girlfriend. I can show all the ways that my disabilities may define how I handle my life differently than someone else, but do not define what I can and cannot do.

But I can also daydream about a life where it’s different, the same way I can daydream about having wings, or being able to teleport. For me, imagining a day with no pain is the same as a day where I can walk through walls. It is absolutely a fantasy, and about as likely to happen.

Here’s the thing: It’s okay to be angry to see what looks like disability being erased. It’s okay to wonder why the author did that, why they magically healed someone instead of letting them be who they were. But at the same time, maybe ask why, and what point of view it’s coming from. Or look a little deeper into the story and how the resolution occurs, and the effect it does have on the character (I suspect that were I to suddenly have a day of no pain, I’d be intensely reckless, given what an idiot I am while IN pain, y’know? And WOW would I regret that later…).

And for authors, think about what you’re writing. WHY is this particular event (keeping disability, erasing it, whichever or both) happening, because the reader will take note of it. They may see things that weren’t intended, but are there as unintentional biases.

Make conscious decisions for why things happen.

Someday I want to get back to both of those examples from the start of this post; I still like both concepts. But I’ll be writing them for very different reasons, and both will be healing my soul in different ways. Different kinds of daydreams. And again, I think that’s valid, too.

[satomatto]

. //ALL BOYS | hybrid au.

ch: cat hybrids!gojo satoru, okkotsu yuuta, ryomen sukuna, choso; dog hybrids!geto suguru, itadori yuji, fushiguro megumi, fushiguro toji; snake hybrid!naoya zenin; dolphin hybrid!inumaki toge; parrot hybrid!mahito; fox hybrids!nanami kento, noritoshi kamo.

cw: concept of hybrids; heat/rut.

tw: breeding kink; hickeys/bites; overstimulation/overexcitement; somnophilia; maybe they all have some yandere-isms; delaying orgasm; multiple orgasms; naoya is as scummy as ever; voyeurism; maybe!non-con; rough sex; who even reads tags; cunnilingus; slit play; submissive!inumaki, yuji; mirror sex; is big dick a warning? big dicks; creampie; pour yourself a warm cuppa, don't be like author; dirty talk; tender sex; size difference.

cw: 6.6k

GETŌ SUGURU

Geto is a nice guy, he won't push you over the top excessively, well able to handle the rut on his own. But it's so boring! In fact, you might not even notice how more and more translucent, wet smudges appear on your mattress every night. He'll even go so far as to use your thighs to recreate the illusion that he's fucking you when the sheets and his hand are no longer enough for self-satisfaction.

Oh, he clearly understands where the boundaries are, firm and unconditional. It's unlikely you'll realize there's something wrong with him before it's too late to do anything about it - he's already struggling to contain himself throughout the day, patiently waiting for the moment when he can touch you with impunity, but if his overall arousal rises even the slightest bit, he'll just short-circuit.

Not in the sense of nonstop, wild fucking - nope, really; his affection and the sweet desire that had overwhelmed him would come out in one solid, warm lump. He'll literally cling to you - he'll wallow in bed with you, wrapped in the sheets, cradling you and sucking on your shoulders and neck, needing attention and stubbornly ignoring your pleas for it to stop, he might even growl at you if you try to break free of his grip. Even though you won't succeed without it - Suguru will still get rougher with you if you offer any resistance. But even so, you probably won't be able to figure out what's exactly going on with him - it's more like a typical bout of tenderness, which he gets quite often because he loves you.

From now on, anything he's done in secret before will no longer be. And you're gonna have to accept that - you should know by now what a piece of shit he really is. This man will do the same thing to you, only now and when you're awake. Oh, don't worry, he won't touch you unless you beg for it. And you will. He likes the way you taste. You can be sure he won't disappoint you; his nimble, harsh tongue sure is capable of a lot - how long do you think he will let you go? I hope you know that his stamina increases a lot during the rut.

You'll probably wake up one day to the unearthly sensation of his tongue in your hole as Suguru moans into your pussy, obviously touching himself down there, making you cum for the umpteenth time in a row. Or from the way he, decides to take advantage of your hips while you sleep peacefully in the, now shared, bed. Sly dark eyes look completely innocent - like he's picking out a bun for his breakfast - oh, baby, he's not doing anything wrong, so you don't have to forgive him!

"Nah, nah, nah, calm down, honey. It's no big deal." Someday, that sly squint will drive you crazy.

GOJŌ SATORU

An already very insolent creature turns into an absolute asshole whose meanness is elevated to an absolute. Oh, do you really want to trade him in for your useless, boring job? Sweetie, you're so naive to believe he'll let you out of bed for a couple hours. You'd better take the weekends off, for the duration of his rut, because he won't be thinking about secondary things like your general busyness. When mating season starts - all you have to worry is him. Your only concern, to whom you'll have to give all your free (and not) time, one way or another.

This guy remains a teaser even when he himself is panting with desire. He has the stamina, frankly, to taunt you despite his aching cock, even in moments of complete shutdown of any self-consciousness - it's like his second nature. One of his favorite tricks is to pump you as much as he can into you, making sure your eyes roll back as hard as they can and your throat makes those sweet sounds of pleasure just for him, turning your poor, already fucked-up brain into a fucking mess.

Gojo always demands a lot of your attention, but then again, almost all of the unpleasant aspects of his personality are more pronounced when mating season begins. His favorite thing to do during this time is to make you almost cry with pleasure while you squeeze his cock so sweetly. His stamina on such days is just off the charts, if on normal days you passed out from overexcitement and fatigue, what do you think will happen then when he wants to fuck you for hours on end? Nothing good, that's for sure. It'll be a half dream and half vision for you - you might pass out during the process and then suddenly start screaming, probably from the pain in your tortured pussy when you wake up - if he's already on instinct, he'll cum in you over and over again, squeezing your thighs until he passes out, or until the obsession wears off.

Satoru even can help you take a shower, though he has a negative attitude toward it, rather than a tolerant one. In fact, you really need his help, because even standing up afterwards can be a bit difficult. I strongly recommend not to refuse it - during his animal outbursts, you better not argue with him (yes, he cares about you purely on instinct). A man will prefer you to complain less and listen to him more - even if all he can utter is inarticulate mooing and scraps of simple words, which is highly expected at the peak of his rut. Along with that, he's soothed by the sound of your voice-even if sometimes his brains are so cluttered that he has no idea what you're saying, able to recognize only intonation and subtly sensing any change in your speech.

"Mm, sweetie, I don't think…" Even after half an hour this sentence was still not finished. Well, he really doesn't think.

NAOYA ZEN'IN

This naga really annoys you. In fact, Naoya thinks you owe him a debt. To be grateful or not is up to you, but his opinion is the only constant: you were chosen by him, so you belong to him now, and you should be grateful that he treats you that way. He will make you say those words over and over again, delaying orgasms, or covering your body with love bites (careful, he's poisonous, but you might say you're lucky - there's an aphrodisiac flowing in his fangs right now, thank him for that <3). Maybe that's not enough? Don't worry, he'll go to the lengths of hurting you for real too, mere spanking and pinching will seem like child's play compared to what he'll do if you don't satisfy him and his sick fantasies.

Fortunately or miserably, this bastard is perfectly in control of himself during the breeding season. Even if he's pounding and shaking at times, if you see him curled up in some dark and warm corner, know that there's no cause for concern - it doesn't hurt him much, just his body doesn't know where to put all that energy. However, Naoya himself perfectly knows where he can use it. If you hear a soft crackling sound from somewhere behind the door, don't be in a hurry to take off your clothes - you can change later, but if the crackling sound is accompanied by a hiss, you'd better turn into a docile and submissive slut and spread out on the bed, throwing your new outfit as far away as possible.

As said above, the naga is perfectly self-controlled, so don't be surprised if you feel the tip of his tail between your legs, playfully stroking your thigh and pressing against your heat through your clothes. Yes, Naoya does it on purpose - just to watch your reaction. It gives him a kind of… Voyeuristic satisfaction - sort of the same nature as those rare occasions of watching you from behind closed doors while he tries to touch himself as quietly as possible, drilling you with the stare of narrow, golden eyes while you unsuspectingly pull off your clothes and wiggle your hips ever so brazenly. He could go further - he knows you won't stop him, but he won't, torturing himself and even you, who've been guessing a little about his fascination lately, with the agonizing wait, only to be left with nothing.

Of the good (and partly even sad): just because he wants you to carry his children doesn't mean nature agrees with him. His body is incapable of forming "proper" embryos inside the eggs - they're all somehow, in their own way, but defective; most likely this has come about as a result of long and not very skilled breeding, as well as frequent incest, but either way, the fact remains. So, after these sessions, they usually just turn into nothing. Well, really, don't say anything about it. For better or for worse, both are insulting and offensive to him in their own way (you're not going to be well, just trust me).

"What idiotic problem do you have this time? Well, let's solve it together… " A dangerous clicking sounded behind you. Don't turn around.

INUMAKI TOGE

So obedient and endlessly tender boy. While his slit is oozing with lubricant - he tries to continue helping you with the cooking, gradually losing his head more and more. Light, quiet trills come out of his mouth, getting more like a squeak from literally your any movement. You can play with him a little - so vulnerable in this state. For example, you could accidentally spill water on him or knock over a bowl of cream, and then start rubbing the wet, sticky apron, pressing and rubbing the spot as if by accident.

Inumaki wouldn't be able to tolerate this for long. Literally in a matter of hours, he would be completely and utterly transformed into a lustful, needy mess. If he has to beg for your attention, you should know, he will Sharp little teeth will nibble at your skin, leaving light marks on it, and a heavy, husky sniffle will tickle your ear for just as long as it takes. Anticipating your question: no, he won't be able to handle it on his own - his brains were already mush the moment he looked at you.

You can put your fingers in his slit and he'll squirm and moan just from the feel of your fingers in his crotch, but if you push them in a little deeper and massage what's inside… He'll go crazy - you just have to run your fingers over what you might call the underside of his cock; the guy will only whimper and beg you to continue, lifting his hips and moving them to meet your hand. If you don't want him to finish so soon, take your fingers out of his hole and wiggle your fingers around a bit, applying pressure and running them downward. Once his dick slips out, unable to stay there because of the copious amounts of natural lubrication - no matter how much Inumaki wants you to, you can do whatever you want with the guy - he won't resist He just can't.

He always makes that lustful yet totally innocent, angelic face when you touch him. He's happy to let you ride him, during a hot period, he's just not in control of himself (as he's basically always been - a guy can hardly be aware of his actions when he's aroused. You can make him perform the most idiotic action time after time - he won't suspect a thing. Here's the truth, though, that doesn't mean that after Toge cools off a bit, he won't blush and run off somewhere far away from you; don't be unkind). But, if you're starting to think he's a snot, he's not so much submissive as horny, and in that state of mind, easier to hand over the reins of control to someone who's not completely out of his head and capable of doing the right thing.

Just drag him into the bathtub - you'll be instantly pinned to the wall, because he's no longer in control of his transformation, at a time when even his thoughts are flowing sluggishly, with great difficulty - barely. Caress his thighs, the place where the human part of him touches his tail. His belly will turn pink and his slit will begin to ooze lubrication. His chirping will softly caress your ears, and his naughty fingers will find your warm spot pretty quickly. Seeing you enter a state like his makes Inumaki bite his lip. Careful with that, though - the teeth, which aren't large, are all razor sharp.

"Hn-n," the guy moans, followed immediately by a short, loud and awkward trill, cutting himself short. But why, such a sweet sound isn't something to be embarrassed about.

ITADORI YUJI

This guy is actually obsessed with your butt. The enthusiasm with which he moves his hips into you and digs his hands into your plump ass every time, kneading it like dough - real dedication, any way you look at it. He doesn't usually have this kind of eagerness, but right now, it looks almost desperate - the occasional thrusts and the subtle whimpers continuously emanating from his throat are so turned on. Despite the fog in his head, he's still trying to hold himself back for you - it's so sweet, don't you think?

Itadori will try so hard for both of you - so hard that you'll have to force him to let you go so you don't both die of dehydration and you stop getting a hellish cramp in your hips with every thrust he makes. He'll use your holes around the clock if you let him - but he's a good boy, so he'll stop if you ask him to. In other, don't expect any indulgences, he has almost low control over himself, being at the mercy of his instincts and hellish, unbridled arousal all day long - poor Yuji himself is waiting for it all to end, it exhausts him almost to the point of insanity.

He loves making you cum at the same time as him; at the same time, he's always hungry for your praise - he literally melts from it, go ahead. You can gently touch your belly as you sit on his knot, push a little on the protruding outline of his cock - this boy already whimpers every time you squeeze him, hell yeah he'll go crazy Yuji just can't help himself and will start licking your face like a real puppy, and please - please (!), touch it, touch it lower…

It might be safer for you to wait it out, but I'm afraid that if you do, Yuji won't be able to forgive himself or you. He'll be able to let you go, he won't hold you back, but his trust in you will be shattered. Okay, if it happens in the beginning, before the guy even touches you, but if you disappear a couple days later, or even near the end, Itadori will be very worried about it. Yeah, he'll be freaking out - what if he did something wrong? Did he hurt you? Or maybe you just stopped liking him? No, no. For a creature who only seeks your approval, this would equate to a simple ditching - you'd break his heart.

"P-mg-please…!" Itadori is rendered speechless by how skillfully you saddle his hips. Don't slow down.

MAHITO

Mahito is crazy on his own - the heat has almost no effect on him unless he wants it himself. If you think he doesn't normally touch you - you are sorely mistaken. He may spend nights exploring your body out of pure interest, Mahito won't hold back his curiosity even if you catch him doing it - in fact, it will only encourage him to continue, even with more fervor, roughly touching everything he can reach with his fingers.

The guy will spread your legs, playing with your hole and rubbing your wretched clit until you start gasping from overexcitement and inability to cum. Oh, this guy is cunning - he'll use every trick in his arsenal to bring you to the point of exhaustion. You may be wondering why you can't cum. It's simple really, Mahito just won't let you do it until he's played with you. You're wondering "how"? Well, speaking of his tricks, some manipulation of your soul results in this - you'll start feeling his touch everywhere, by the end of your adulteries, there won't be a place on your body that this pervert hasn't touched; indeed, inside you too.

He'll let you play with the feathers on his wings. In truth, he looks more like a particularly fluffy bat than a bird. They're actually very soft, but you don't want to touch them for too long - just look at his eyes at that moment and you'll understand. If suddenly he grabs you and presses you against him, burying his nose in your neck, don't twitch, and certainly don't try to break free. Relax and sit like that for a few minutes - settle on his hips, make yourself as comfortable as you like, fidget as much as you like - the guy's like Ken in there, so you don't have to worry about that, but you don't want to provoke his irritation.

On average, it's still not that bad. If only Mahito didn't clean out your fridge daily, things would still be exactly as they should be. But, of course, the weirdness doesn't end there - one day he might just come along and screw your ass - it's up to you to decide what to do about it. Hopefully you know how a prostate massage is done, it will probably be enough for him - at the very least just play with his hole, oh it will throb so violently every time you hit some point deep inside the guy. After all, this creature better not be denied too harshly.

"Ha-ha-ha!" The guy laughs loudly as you burrow your fingers into his feathers. Just, don't yank those overly hard.

NANAMI KENTO

Nanami is a sufficiently mature man to sit down with you before all of this and discuss some of the details of the coming period. Along with that, you have to decide what to do about it - he'll ask you a few times if you're ready for it before settling down and leaving you to mull over what's going on. The fox has enough control over his state of mind that, if anything, he'll be able to stop in time and not hurt you much - at most, it'll be bruises on the wrists he likes to hold above your head so much. Usually, he tries to finish as quickly as he can, but sometimes he'll catch on.

You might regret allowing yourself the idea that sex with him is boring when the man continues to lazily thrust into you after two hours, not wanting to stop and shoving his cock into your tortured holes no matter what. But judging by the fact that even in this state, Kento continues to care about more than just his own pleasure - you're bound to cum next. Probably more than once. A man likes it when you beg him and call him daddy. He has no idea why, but it makes him fuck you rougher, counting to sparks from your eyes and buckling legs, possibly affecting your ability to sit up properly or even stand without bending over from the pain in your stomach and ass… It's sure to be worse than your period.

Kento is a responsible man, he will definitely take care of his partner afterwards, because he knows very well what state you're in right now. He'll help you get to the bathroom if you don't mind - he'll even wash you with a nice bit of warm water, and in the morning you'll have breakfast waiting right in bed. After all, like a true gentleman, he should take care of you, no matter how tired he is; after all, you also took care of him. The only exception is when you make him jealous. In those cases, he is unable to even clean himself up, let alone do anything else. And, you're already wondering how to do it.

After this ambiguous period, Nanami will lose a lot of weight because his body can no longer consume food in the same quantities as it did during the rut. At times, he will simply forget to eat, due to his poor condition - frequent dizziness and general weakness, he will be immensely pleased if you show care towards him. It is better to ventilate the apartment more often - low temperatures man tolerates better than heat - and already tired of this condition, the man will want only normal rest. In addition, it is worth specifying the fact that he has a very sensitive sense of smell. Sharp odors irritate him, be careful with this.

"Are you alright?" A slightly hitched, loud breath comes out of the man's chest with a slight whoosh.

NORITOSHI KAMO

Noritoshi is a pretty darling dude, he's embarrassed enough to talk to you about it, but he'll definitely give you a couple words of warning so it's not a total surprise. Sweetness, he just doesn't know what to make of it. It's just as unfamiliar to him as it is to you - feeling his own body in this way is obviously new to the boy. So, he will definitely ask for your help in solving this problem.

During the rut, the guy stays calm and even seems a bit sleepy, and that's actually true - if he could, he'd be asleep all day long, but alas, it will not be possible to just lay this thing off - no matter how much he wants to. If the fox seems a little grumpy to you at first, that's normal. Aggression in the first couple of days is natural for his species, and even though he tries his best to keep it to a minimum, his fluffy tail will still rise up every time he sees you. Massage his head, especially near his ears, and play with his hair a bit - you can comb it with a coarse-toothed comb to relax him.

The guy is as calm as a boa constrictor during this process - he has only one goal, to release tension; mostly his own, but you can work with that - the guy just doesn't know what to do with you, guide him a little, help him understand exactly what you want from him and he will pick it up immediately - he learns quickly. After all, Camo is well aware that there's not much you can do alone - he's at your pleasure, especially when he's blown away. The pace stays the same, darling, you probably won't even notice it, because you'll be blacking out just a couple minutes after the guy enters this state - most likely neither you nor he will understand why it happened; he - because he doesn't remember anything that happened to him during this state, you - for obvious reasons, just can't know it. Only the marks on your body and neck will be any hint of what happened.

Noritoshi is trying to take care of you - he's not a stupid person and realizes that you need follow-up care, even if you seem quite alert. He will gently but insistently guide you to the bathroom and put you to bed, perhaps he can also stretch your stiff legs if he notices that you can't find a comfortable position. You can ask him for help at any time - his fluffy ears will instantly turn in your direction, and he'll listen to your every word.

"Lay still, you need to rest." To the question: "do you?" the guy only lets out a slight, barely elusive chuckle and sighs deeply.

OKKOTSU YUTA

It's not so clear-cut with him. You can't be fully prepared for your furbaby's heat, no matter what you do before it. No one knows what will suddenly click in his poor head and what he will do to fulfill his desires. You don't have to worry, though - he treats you like a princess, carries you around on his arm and makes you stay close to him; even if you don't like it very much, I highly recommend listening to him. Well, if it makes you feel any better - Yuta will always be more dangerous to others than to you.

Oh, his flushed face is so inviting. Press your lips against his - bite them, kiss them like it's your last time, and he'll return the favor. Yuta usually moves at a relatively slow pace, letting you relax and get used to him - to fully experience the process. The tingles rushing across your skin like electric shocks, something brackish on your lips, the cool air from the room contrasting so sharply with the heavy, hot breath that mingles with your languid moans caressing your ears.

Okkotsu likes it when you're on top. No, you still don't have complete control - Yuta is like a caring, overprotective parent, sort of letting his baby have all the fun he wants, but ready to interrupt and take over at a moment's notice. In fact, he really does treat you like a baby. Despite the external insecurity, the guy is really aware of what he is doing and what consequences can come out of all this - he has plenty of responsibility, but sometimes it's hard to take him seriously. Ah, yes, in spite of that, you still have to deal with a little bit of guardianship from his side, although it should be the other way around, but that's another story.

This cutie is hungry for affection - you can touch him everywhere, from his soft (slightly greasy) ears to the tip of his tail. His reaction will probably be the most adequate - he likes to be touched, but he is calm about it, without much passion, like a normal cat, even when he is constantly in a state of slight excitement. Unless your actions become a little more intense. A little more pressure, a slight pull, a soft and rhythmic massage, lower… This will already be perceived as a signal for action. But don't worry, you can touch him at any time without any problems - he even encourages it. In his own way, with a short lick on the cheek or a playful nibble on the neck, but he's really pleased that you're taking such initiative.

"Hey-hey-hey-hey, sparkle, that's not the point-you shouldn't be walking around like that after being so overwhelmed!" The guy turns around to see you, awakened by the delicious aroma coming from the kitchen and now frozen in the doorway, wagging your tail unhappily as the oil in the pan sizzles and shoots upwards. Oops, looks like you accidentally ruined the surprise.

RYŌMEN SUKUNA

Do you think he's possessive? Well, I'll stop you in your tracks - more like yandere on steroids. You'll have to take a day off work - better a vacation right away, because Sukuna will not tolerate other people's scent on you at any stage of his rut - none at all, except his own. Be sure that you have enough food at home, because heaven forbid you should bring even that slight residue of perfume from the elevator on you… It won't be good for you or the unfortunate person whose cologne was left hanging in the air before it settled on your clothes.

Sukuna treats you like a sex slave, a fuck toy, an inferior being, even with his four arms around your frail body and his cocks deep inside your insides and his dry lips whispering dirty words in your ear. His attitude won't change, darling, but you'd better always stay within the confines of the same room with him and obediently spread your legs whenever he demands it. In fact, you can initiate intercourse yourself - he won't stop you from pleasuring him, but know that even after that, he'll be sure to fuck you properly.

His favorite spot is the windowsill; pressing you against the glass, knowing full well that someone might notice you… There's something about it. For some reason, a man especially likes to bend you roughly over right in front of him, making you rest your hands on the frame and shiver with each of his thrusts, while all his hands move slowly all over your body - stroking every curve, your swollen tummy, the waist so perfectly suitable for him to place one pair of his hands on it, your sweet titties bouncing with the rest of your body, while down below, your womb making the loudest, most shameful sounds just for him - Ryomen loves you whole and entire, even if he will never admit it to you or to himself. Oh, if you can ever forget him (which is impossible in itself), the feeling of his cock in your pussy will not be erased from your memory. He is the master in your relationship, rather than you. And he likes to pamper his pet.

Sukuna has a very sensitive tail. If you ever want to touch it, ask permission, and then treat it as if it might fall apart at the slightest gust of wind. Under no circumstances, God forbid, do not sit on it. Never, ever. Ryomen will not look at your relationship or your affection and empty, stale feelings as his heart. He might not kill you, but he'll maim you for sure. In fact, he'll like you all he wants, but you're not likely to bounce back quickly - and the scars on your body will be an eternal reminder of your small but painful misstep and how dangerous he can be. During sexual intercourse, you can lightly massage the very base of his back - where the fur meets the human part of his back - your actions will definitely be met by his approving purr, which may well pass for a growl, only slightly muffled (only for you!). The only thing - make sure that your hands are dry, and the fur does not stick to them (and it is better to touch only human skin around. That area is also sensitive, but he'll probably like it better).

"So pretty, little slut… Come on, come on, get your hand away from your face - I want to see your adorable face!" Mockingly mutters Ryomen, continuing to move, and making you bite your lip as both of his cocks pierce your holes - too much? You beg him to stop.

FUSHIGURO MEGUMI

Even if Megumi is collected and calm at first, eventually even he'll start to waver. His seemingly stable state will become a trap - he'll be ready to tear you apart if you get too close, because he doesn't know what to do with his new state yet. It's hard for him; try to talk to him from a distance, offer your help - we are responsible for those we tame. If you can make a deal with him, he'll reluctantly get up and follow you into the bedroom, but if Fushiguro starts turning away from you and snorting, looking away and down, stop trying, it's not going to get you anywhere. Of course, I won't stop you from trying, but who knows what he'll do if you keep seducing him.

The guy will bite you. Back of the neck, almost behind the ear - you know. It's not his bad whim (although it's hard to be responsible for that anymore), it's more of an instinct. Is it so hard to wait for him to tag his beautiful mate? He eventually gets used to all this and starts to take a lot more initiative, sometimes grunting tiredly into your neck and wagging his tail, he still doesn't like his condition, but over time the guy becomes more tolerant of it all - taking it for granted, which isn't great, but anyhow better than a complete refusal to deal with it.

Megumi is a smart boy, he knows exactly what happens if you overdo it, so he always picks a pace that is comfortable for both of you. For some reason, Fushiguro likes sex facing a reflection. He often moves that big full-length mirror in the corner of the room to your bed and spreads your legs in front of it, playing with your wet hole for long periods of time, making you squirm in his arms and beg for his cock, occasionally praising you and mumbling what a good girl you are - so obedient in his arms. It really turns him on, his flushed cheeks and eyes twitching with pure delight - what you'll see in that very mirror, if you can do it, while his fingers are so deep inside you, caressing places you didn't even know existed - you just have to wonder, "How?" he manages to do that with just his hands?

He loves it when you cook his food - your cooking basically. You can spend half a day in the kitchen, be sure your labors will not go unnoticed, he will eat everything and thank you. If suddenly, you're wondering about the reward - don't worry, he's very generous, especially when he's fed and satisfied. Megumi is damn fascinated by the way you try to please him - no matter how he's feeling at the moment, he'll always be mesmerized by the movements of your hands as if under hypnosis. Stroke his head, and once you're free, massage his ears, and he'll be completely at your mercy, his eyes at that moment just something filled with boundless devotion and delight.

"Ha-ah, honey, you're just adorable," Megumi kisses you loudly on the top of your head, caressing your thighs with joy in his gaze and pulling you to him. Ah, yes, the sudden bursts of joy and mood swings were worth getting used to.

FUSHIGURO TOJI

Absolute Asshole 2.0. He knows how much you enjoy riding his cock and takes full advantage of it. Toji teases you on purpose - accidentally miss when he seemed ready to be inside you? Slow down at the most inopportune moment? Oh, along with that, he also enjoys watching you melt, literally fall apart on his cock like a trained slut.

Fushiguro prefers to take turns using your holes, making sure both are filled. It's exhausting - but this man is relentless. With him, you're sure to have a hard time. After two days, there won't be a surface in your house that he hasn't fucked you on. Not to mention he'll snap on the first day - ask him to tie himself up and don't expect fair play. And if he does make the knots tight enough, you'll have to voluntarily do to him what he does to you on your own - not without that, alas.

You'll have to force him into the shower - he'll be completely neglected the moment he decides he doesn't need it. In fact, he does - and even if he doesn't normally smell, during the rut the whole house smells of that disgusting musky odor. Relax, though: you'll eventually stop paying attention to him. Fun fact: in this state, Toji just hates the smell of cherries. If you decide to take a bath, use anything that doesn't have a cherry scent.

At times, Fushiguro will just come up to you and grab you like a teddy bear - twirling you around in his arms until you wrap your arms around him with tears in your eyes. There's something about. The way his big hands hold you up in the air and onto his cock with such ease. Hold on tight, it's really wild. After that, Toji really works up an appetite. A vicious appetite. Even if a man doesn't normally deny himself a refill, now he's just going to clean out your fridge, your cupboards, all the food in the house. You're gonna have to use a delivery guy. Use his credit card for that and don't be afraid.

"Baby, I think that smell is disgusting."

CHOSO

Choso will continue to take care of you even when you're in heat. The only problem is that this time his guardianship will increase many times over. Also, the guy is freezing all the time, and with that comes a panicky fear of water, especially cold water. That's why you'll have to sit with him in a thousand blankets and not the best odor coming from this pile, in which, he also rolled before it. He's a cat with a dog's demeanor.

He doesn't really need sexual stimulation, it's just a supplement. His mind is also consumed by instincts, but they are more about protecting his partner and something like nesting attracts him much more than a rude fuck. Of course, that doesn't mean he doesn't need sexual stimulation at all. You'll also have to spread your legs in front of him on a regular basis, but he'll be much softer, still capable of not completely losing control of yourself or the situation - you can totally relax, he'll do it all. If you're not ready for something more, he'll also accept that you just jerk him off - your hands are much nicer than his, covered with rough skin and calluses. Thighs are also an option - he can handle that part of his rut on his own (relatively), but it's up to you to figure out what to do with the rest.

For some reason, Choso really likes to bite you. Every bit of your body that he can reach, your neck will be covered in multiple painful bites and red marks. I'm afraid it's far from the most pleasant thing that's ever happened to you, but really, you're still lucky that it only takes him out in moments of obsession. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to tolerate it so successfully. If your neck is inaccessible - wrapped in bandages, or you've treated it with bitter medication - he might start doing the same thing to your wrists, or hips.

Guy loves when you talk to him - read him a bedtime story, he'll definitely enjoy it. Sometimes, Choso wakes up completely disoriented, as if he's forgotten where he is and what's going on. At such times, all he has to do is hug you and cuddle as tightly as he can, drawing in air and letting your scent fill his lungs completely. Because of this, Choso is often sticky with you, but he flat out refuses to go outside. At least a moment of peace (but don't stay out there longer than usual - otherwise he'll get anxious and might even follow you. This is especially unacceptable because Choso's spatial awareness is abysmal).

"Please don't move. Let's just lie like this… Just a little longer." The dude clearly doesn't notice the sweat dripping off you. He doesn't notice the sweat dripping off you, either, but he not only ignores it, he purrs low and low, burrowing deeper into the blanket.

mm-m, let's talk about… (ask box is open)

[cripplecharacters]

sorry if this is a little too vast, but how often do you feel the whole fantasy concept of curses falls into harmful stereotypes? just because a lot of ‘curses’ in fantasy media:

a) display either symptoms of real disabilities, especially chronic illnesses, or have fantastical symptoms that disable the character in some way or another

b) are often tied to some form of morality, whether a person is cursed because they’re evil and it’s a punishment, or they’re helpless and need to be saved from the horrible life of being ill

c) are usually curable through some sort of magic solution, even though disabled readers cannot magically cure their body

d) overall are linked to magic, and it is my understanding that ‘disability caused by a magic spell’ is very tropey with conditions such as vitiligo.

as an (aspiring) fantasy author, i think the whole concept of curses holds a lot of potential, i just wanted to know if it’s something that could likely be taken as hurtful and ableist, and if so is there a specific aspect of curses that shouldn’t be written about or is it a case of ‘abandon the whole concept of curses’.

sorry if this isn’t very coherent, i’m currently on a flare up right now so words are harder for me than usual. thank you all for running such a cool and helpful blog.

Hello!

You're right that this is a very broad topic. Curses on their own aren't inherently problematic but they certainly can be, especially when they're tied with the first point you've mentioned (That is, having symptoms of real disabilities).

Something also worth noting is that none of those points are necessarily bad on their own, it's all about how the author handles it. For example, a character that becomes cursed with immortality after stealing a child from the fae would be okay. A character that becomes cursed with paralysis after offending a sorcerer, however, would be different.

One example that comes to mind is Eda's curse in The Owl House. For those who aren't familiar with it, Eda was cursed by an unknown person for unknown reasons (Though this is later revealed). Her curse caused things such as limbs that pop off easily (Literally becoming removed from her body, in a cartoon-y way), changes to her appearance (Eye and hair colour), occasional transformation into a large demonic beast, negative effects to her magic, and several other things that are more similar to chronic illnesses (Periods of low energy, etc.).

Even before Eda became disabled (She becomes an amputee later on), her curse felt a lot like a disability narrative to me. She's found ways to cope with it and manage the symptoms she experiences such as taking naps and using an elixir (Which has a similar use to medication for her) that keeps her beast form at bay. There are days when the curse is worse and other days when it's better.

Two main things that stick out to me the most about this example is that, though she obviously doesn't enjoy the curse, Eda is more upset about (And focused on) the fact that she doesn't know who cursed her or why. The fact that curing her curse isn't her main goal is very refreshing to me.

The other thing is one particular arc where her mother comes to visit and it's shown that she comes every year with a new proposed cure. Although this is a magic world, the proposed cures are equated to the whole idea of curing paralysis with certain herbs or ADHD with a certain diet. What was especially relatable to me about this was that Eda doesn't want these so-called cures and her mother's actions are shown as an imposition rather than an act of kindness or charity. As somebody who has accepted my own disabilities while my friends and family members have not, this was something that felt very close to home for me.

Eda's curse has some similarities with real world disabilities -- both in some of the symptoms such as low energy as well as in the way it's treated -- but it isn't a disability in and of itself. That said, it's still one of the best portrayals of living with disability that I've seen and it's an excellent example of how curses can be done and related to disability in a way that isn't ableist or poorly designed.

The main reason that the portrayal of Eda's curse is so well done is because it's designed with consideration for the show's disabled audience. Although some able-bodied people may pick up on certain things, the whole narrative around Eda's curse is much more relatable and obvious to people who live with a disability than those who don't.

Essentially, it's the story that a lot of disabled people want to see.

Not somebody with a disability being cured or fixed but somebody with a disability living a full, meaningful life and with those around them learning to understand and accept that.

Eda's mother doesn't stop looking for a cure because she gives up on her daughter or because her daughter pushes her away. She stops because she realizes how her efforts were hurting Eda and how their relationship was suffering from it.

Not only that but she also accepts that Eda knows her curse better than her mother does AND she wants to learn more about Eda's methods for dealing with it.

This is huge!

The series is showing respect for Eda's bodily autonomy and her independence. It's recognizing that disabled people know our disabilities and our bodies better than others do. A lot of us have to deal with constant unsolicited advice on how to deal with our disabilities from friends, family members, and even complete strangers so to see this situation portrayed in this way was especially refreshing.

This is a smaller factor but another way that Eda's curse was done well is that it's clearly fantasy. The cause is fantasy, the manifestations are fantasy, and the resulting effects are fantasy.

While the effects may have some similarities to real life disabilities, the manifestations are enough to differentiate the curse from actual disabilities. For example, people with dissociative disorders may have moments they can't remember but they don't turn into a large demonic beast during them.

There's enough of a distance there that it isn't equated one-to-one as disability, even if the narrative is very similar to disability narratives.

Unfortunately, I have also seen curses portrayed in a way that is ableist and rather poorly dealt with.

I don't intend to name it (I'll explain my reasoning below*) but I recently read a book where one of the side characters was cursed as punishment for her own selfish actions and ended up functionally mute. She used ASL to communicate for the most part. Within the book, the character is shown to be so bitter and upset about her curse and the resulting effects that she takes it out on her family and her child in particular.

This is bad for several reasons.

First, by making the curse so similar to a real-world disability/symptom, any associations made with the curse are also, by extension, being made with that disability. In showing how much this character hates her curse, it's also showing how much she hates being disabled.

If her curse was something like waking up every day in a different body (Or something else that has no real-world equivalent), it's easier to put distance between the curse and any similarities to disability. It also allows you, as the writer, to focus more on other aspects as opposed to the immediate focus of how the curse disables a character (Such as how Eda was bothered by not knowing how or why she was cursed rather than the curse itself).

Because the curse is equated to her disability, this also falls into several ableist tropes.

As the curse was a punishment from the fae for her own selfish actions, it falls into the "disability as punishment" trope.

The fact that her curse -- or at least her frustration/bitterness from the curse -- is pushing her to act the way that she does also causes it to fall into several problematic tropes involving disabled villains. For one thing, the prime cause of her "bad behaviour" (For lack of a better term) being her curse/disability.

In contrast, Eda from The Owl House does push people away because of her curse but it's because of her fear (Specifically the fear of losing control of her beast form and hurting somebody) that causes her to do that. This habit of pushing people away out of fear is also touched on and shown outside of the context of her curse.

With the book, the character's actions are directly shown to be because she's mute and the anger/bitterness/frustration she feels around that.

A lot of this specific problem comes from the writing itself. If the author had wrote it so the character was lashing out at her family because she felt like she wasn't being heard or because she was afraid they might do something dangerous (Such as going after the fae that did this) and she wouldn't be able to stop them, that would be a different situation. There may still be some negative associations but it's less of a direct correlation between being cursed/disabled and being a jerk.

Now, having a character become cursed as a punishment isn't necessarily a bad thing.

In the show Lucifer, the side character Cain is cursed with immortality after killing his brother (And, as this is the same Cain from the bible, committing the first murder). Throughout his arc on the show, Cain is looking for a way to cure his curse and, essentially, die.

Because immortality isn't anywhere close to a real-world disability, these other factors aren't a problem as there's no association with disability.

Essentially what I'm getting at here is that curses can be perfectly fine. They aren't inherently ableist or problematic in any way but they certainly can be. It's all about how you, as the writer, handle it and what associations you're making -- whether you intend to or not.

The main thing to keep in mind when including curses in your writing is to consider what purpose they're serving and what you want to do with them.

If you want the curse to be a punishment for something terrible that the character has done, it's best to stay far away from disability and lean more into the fantasy side of things.

If you want curing the curse to serve as the character's main goal throughout the story, it could be okay to have some elements of real-world disability in there. For example, in a world where magic is used freely maybe your character is cursed to only be able to use their magic through a specific conduit and if it goes unused for a while, it causes tics or spasms.

While this is still similar to real-world disabilities (Such as Tourette's syndrome or epilepsy), there's enough distance between the manifestation of the curse (Only being able to use their magic through a specific conduit) and the disability-like effect of it (The tics/spasms). This distance gives you the ability to focus on other aspects of the curse (Such as the problems with magic) as the motivation for wanting to cure it rather than the disability aspects of it.

One final word of caution is to be careful when mixing the "curse as an allegory for disability" and "curse as a punishment for doing something evil". I'd generally suggest avoiding it. I have never seen it done in a way that doesn't end up incredibly ableist and reading as a bad cautionary tale for children ("Eat your veggies or you'll end up in a wheelchair" = "Don't kick children because they might be witches and you'll end up blind").

This is especially important to keep in mind if you want to use the curse as a disability narrative or otherwise have it be treated/showed similarly to disability (Like The Owl House did with Eda). If you want to do that, explore explore other causes for the curse. Maybe it was the result of a training mishap with a new witch? Or maybe they accidentally broke a dangerous artifact? Just as long as it's not shown to be a punishment/consequence of sorts.

As promised, I've explained my reasoning for not naming the book down below.

Cheers,

~ Mod Icarus

*So my reasoning for not naming the book is because of a few things. The main one is that, while the rest of the examples I gave have a fairly large and established presence, this book is by a new author and published by a small publishing company. Simply put, they don't have the same resources that corporations such as Disney and Fox do.

The other thing is that while there are multiple writers working on tv shows like The Owl House and Lucifer, this book has a singular creator and this is her first book. Although I did criticize her portrayal of the character's curse heavily, there were several parts I enjoyed and I am reluctant to put the book on blast and risk discouraging her from writing more.

If this was the work of a more established author (Such as Rick Riordan or JK Rowling) or I was discussing it in a more positive light, I'd be more comfortable naming the book openly.

[kingchroma]

comfort.

࿇ summary. gun is not that good at comforting people. ࿇ pairing. gun x reader

࿇ word count. almost 1k ࿇ author's note. this is my first time posting one of my lookism drafts. i'm sorry if it's a bit ooc, i was just really writing for myself until i decided to share it with everyone. hope you enjoy! feel free to request as well on my ask box.

Gun is unsure how to comfort people.

The notion of comforting people is a foreign concept to him because all his life, the only mode of survival he knew was that the only person that he should take care of is himself. Was it selfish? Maybe, but given the way he was born and raised—how he had lived his life up to now—it was something that he had been used to. It had been second nature to him.

So when you tearfully say your woes in his arms, he’s speechless.

He's speechless in a way that he wants to tell you that it's okay to let things out—that he will wrangle those who've hurt you with his bare hands, because how dare they hurt the love of his life—that it's okay and you're not being stupid for crying in his arms, but he can't. The words, no matter how much Gun pushes them out, are lodged in his throat. And no matter what, all he can do was hum in acknowledgement and answer in grunts.

It's a bit pitiful, he thinks. He's your boyfriend, for fuck's sake! He's your lover and he wants you to feel heard because he IS hearing you out, listening to you as you sniffle, but because of his own incompetence in handling emotions and feelings—he's stuck in this position where he can't even comfort you verbally.

He loves you so much. So, so much that looking at you crying is making his heart break into several pieces. He loves you so much that even if all he can do is offer his silence, he will be there for you.

Though, Gun still thinks that he's a shit boyfriend for not being better—for not doing a greater job at comforting you.

"It's okay," you say, sniffles being heard as you look up at him, responding as if you've heard every single one of his thoughts. "You don't have to say anything, I just need you to listen."

Gun thinks his heart breaks even more because did you also think that he's incompetent in giving comfort? It's not like you thought about it in the first place—he's just overthinking because it's like a sickness that eh can't get rid of.

"I am," he says quietly, a brief response as he leans in to press a tender kiss on your hair, hand soothing your back as an attempt to calm you down. "Sorry if I can't offer much," he adds, apologetic.

Gun does feel bad. He feels like a shitty boyfriend.

Surprised at his response, you look at him, eyes slowly becoming wide. "What?" you ask. "That's not what I even wanted from you," you start before speaking again. "I just wanted to be held by you and for you to listen," you tell him. "You're doing a spectacular job at it, my love."

Gun stares at you, because how come you’re the one that’s comforting him? It’s supposed to be the other way around.

He holds you tighter. "I just feel like I can do more, but I'm having trouble with it," he clarifies, letting you know that he wants nothing more than to comfort you properly. He feels like a goddamn rock. But a hand reaches out to wipe the tears away from you cheek. "Don't comfort me, you're the one who's crying," he adds.

You chuckle, a light sniffle coming out from you. "I'm just reassuring you," you say, adjusting your position so you can look at him better. "Because I know you're going to beat yourself up. for it."

“I’m not here to cry for comfort. I just need you to hold me and listen,” you remind him again while staring into his eyes. “What are you even thinking?”

What is he even thinking? A lot of things—his mind was going through a downward spiral because: a) Why are you comforting him? b) He was supposed to be doing the comforting. And Gun wants to look away at your question, but you know—even he knows—that you have way too much power over him, that you will force him to look at you if needed be.

If it were other people who dared to touch his face, he will immediately slap their hands away—but not you, never you.

“That you might be thinking I’m not good at comforting people,” he says somberly, a bit apologetic. “That I don’t understand what you’re going through.”

“But you do,” you tell him, and he nods. “I know you do. But you’re not great at words and that’s okay with me, because your actions make up for it, my love,” you add.

“I don’t think you realize it, but the fact that you paused your tv show for me to hold me and listen to me was more than enough,” you say, giving him a small smile, irises still holding a sheen of tears. “I love you. You did a great job comforting me.”

I love you, the words repeat in his head, and Gun thinks that you're adorable even if you still have a few tears left to cry. In his head, the situation is a little dire because how on earth are you comforting him instead? You've always been so patient with him.

“I love you,” he replies quietly, holding you close as he wraps his arms tighter around you. “Jus’ wanna do my best for you. Show how much I care for you.”

You chuckle, nuzzling your head in the crook of his neck. “You already do. Your actions speak way louder than your words.”

“You mean that?” he asks, rubbing your arm lightly.

He thinks you’re perfect in his arms.

That you fit perfectly in his life. His precious angel.

“Mhm,” you hum. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t taken care of well.”

He chuckles, kissing your forehead this time. “Good. I intend on taking care of you for a long time.”

[geevesthevieve]

2024 Batfam (Dick Grayson) fic recs that got me good!

Just thought I'd share a few fics that really got me this last year (I'll try to keep them generally diverse). They're not necessarily written in 2024, but that's when they found me 🙃 --(warning: I'm Dick Grayson biased 😁) They are in no specific order other than when I read them during the year.

Tired by LittleLadybugs (104K words)

summary: Spyral had broken something in Dick. -- When he returned to Gotham, he had no choice but to grit his teeth and keep going. He was the fun one. The easy smile, the glue that held everyone together. But what happens when the rock reaches his breaking point? -- After two years of pretending, Dick starts to crack. -- Now to keep his family from finding out. OR -- Dick self-destructs. -- Featuring both the angstiest of angst and the author's attempts at humor to stop their tears from drowning the keyboard. Read at your own peril.

[Main Relationship: Dick and the batsiblings (with a good emphasis on Dick & Damian and Dick & Wally)--Bruce is not a great person in this]

My Thoughts: This is a long, dark, angsty one that really broke me, if your into that. It's very heavy, but it has some beautiful moments between Dick and Damian.

Borderline by TheResurrectionist (@frownyalfred on tumblr) (67.8K words)

summary: A mysterious force connects the Batfamily's minds together.

[Main Relationship: Bruce & his kids (but it also has one of my favorite dynamics between Dick & Jason!)]

My Thoughts: This fic is not just my favorite fic I read this year. It's honestly one of my favorite fics EVER!!! I don’t know if I’ll be able to gush about this one enough! It’s soooooo freaking good!!! The plot has the batfam bound in this mysterious way that they all have to learn to understand. The depth of the concept is incredible. The stakes are built up and so painfully shown through Bruce’s eyes as he loves his kids so much. The relationships and bonds in this were breathtaking! I’m really hoping for some sequels in this coming year!

Goon of the *effing* Year by AceOfDivineChlorophyll (11.2K words)

summary: Red Hood’s men are worried. Red Hood got hit by something nasty that has him laid up for days, and everyone is starting to get nervous. Fortunately, a few off-hand comments by a not so lucid Red Hood give them all the hints they needed to get the perfect cure for their boss, a cop by the name Dick Grayson.

[Main Relationship: Dick & Jason]

My Thoughts: If you like some good old awkward cuddles and some tasty angst between estranged brothers, this is the fic for you! This one was so funny and painful with a good old identity reveal. I loved it!

Cuckoo's Song by FromDustReturned (1K words)

summary: There's a cooling gun in Jason's hand and the echo of a gunshot thundering in his ears.

[Main Relationship: Dick & Jason and Tim kind of...]

My Thoughts: This is the shortest fic on this list, but it's also one of the most well-crafted. It's so creative! Only 1000 words in total - 10 chapters with 100 words each. It tells the story backwards, and I was just so impressed with what they were able to do in such little words. It was brilliant!!!

Your Continental Divides by isawet and reisling (27.7K words)

summary: This story is about the aftermath of Nightwing #93, where Dick Grayson is assaulted by Tarantula during the Blockbuster arc. -- When running doesn't work and working doesn't work, home is the place you go where they have to take you in. Dick's home has never been Gotham; it's always been the people.

[Main Relationship: Dick and everyone]

My Thoughts: It’s always tricky recommending fics that deal with Dick’s assault from Catalina, but this one was incredible!! I think it handles the heavy subject in such an amazing way. The weight of it, the pain, the tenderness from those around Dick. It blew me away. The strength of Dick Grayson will always astound me, and this fic highlights that strength beautifully.

We're Not Dead (We Walk) by orpheusaki (4.8K words)

summary: Dick is overwhelmed for a moment, filled with clarity and inexplicable confusion as he blinks around him bleary-eyed. There's the familiar itching covering his skin, tiny grains of dark sand invading the cuts that have torn through his suit from the crash. -- He coughs, throat dry and closing with every gasp of harsh air. The desert is as unforgivable as the last time he was here, an empty expanse of dunes that might just be a trick of the heavy sun against the back of his neck. Dick pushes the panic away behind his eyelids, savoring the darkness before opening his eyes again. -- Immediately, he sees Tim. -- Unconscious, hunched over, covered in blood and sand Tim. -- (Dick and Tim get stranded in the desert, Dick is always moving forward.)

[Main Relationship: Dick & Tim]

My Thoughts: A really great Dick and Tim whump fic! They’re both hurt and trying their best to take care of each other. We also get one of my favorite things in a wonderfully self-sacrificing Dick giving his all for his little brother ❤️

You Will Be the Death of Me by sunlitlemonade (3.2K words)

summary: So conclusions: either he is here at the mercy of someone who wants to play a little before they try killing him — a mistake despite Jason’s condition, not killing him when they had the chance severely diminishes their future success rate for that fun little activity when he is awake, if not completely fucks it over — or someone who is trying to help him. The second conclusion is just as befuddling as the first because not only does Jason not remember what had left him needing help, he doesn’t know who would help. -- He is not without allies but said allies come with a price. -- “I can’t tell if you’re having a nightmare or throwing a tantrum with your eyes closed.” -- He knew that voice. A source of annoyance but reliable. Trustworthy, his brain supplied. -- Warm, came another, frankly unnecessary, addition. -- Nobody and nothing had been warm for Jason Todd and he would like to stop being lied to right this fucking instant.

[Main Relationship: Dick & Jason]

My Thoughts: Dick takes care of an injured Jason, and it scares Jason to be loved. Great loving, angsty fic between these two brothers.

Equal Magnitude, Opposite Direction by vmkhoney (7.5K words)

summary: “This is why you’re my favorite.” Dick says. -- “We both know that’s not true.” Clark says. -- “What? Are you my favorite for a different reason?” But there’s something strange in his voice, and Bruce recognizes it as the tone he uses when he’s trying to slide past something without addressing it. -- “Dick.” Clark says, mildly reproachful. -- “…yeah. I know.” Dick says, quiet. “But he wouldn’t believe me if I said so.” -- OR -- Three times Bruce thought he wasn’t his sons favorite hero, and one time he knew he wasn’t.

[Main Relationship: Bruce & his kids -- with a small side emphasis with Dick & Damian]

My Thoughts: Sweet fic where Bruce realizes he's most of his kids favorite and understands why he's not for the one that he isn't. It's a little sweet one.

Mother Bruce and His Baby Birds by lurkinglurkerwholurks (@lurkinglurkerwholurks) (12.2K words)

summary: Snapshots of Bruce asking different children if they would like to be adopted. -- GoodDad!Bruce is very important to me. Crying over happy things is very important to me. Found families are very important to me. So here we are.

[Main Relationship: Bruce & his kids]

My Thoughts: Super adorable and sweet! Enjoy the fluffiness!!! In general, I’ve been reading a lot of this author lately (Eventually, I'll make my favorite authors list for here and gush about their amazingness). A few of my personal faves by this author are ‘Open Line’ --Dick&Bruce fluff with a droplet of angst, ‘Breathing’ --Bruce&Jason angst with some fluff woven in (from Dick's pov), and ‘Child of the Manor’ --Dick's pov with Bruce taking care of his babies --just as a little bonus 😄

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! I wish a wonderful year to you all!! Hopefully, there will be some great fics to read this year too! 🥳 (And maybe I'll be better about writing mine as well)

[ranticore]

Now that you mentioned it in the tags; I really enjoyed how you did the queerness of characters in-text and I saw you mentioned more than once before how they consider/call themselves gay or anything and I was wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate on that (in Ironwall, MVF etc), but more from a writing standpoint than a worldbuilding one. Hope Im making sense lol

i looked up the invention of the word 'homosexuality' and found that it was invented 6 years after stbh is set

ghksjdg i mean there's more to it than that but it meant that my language was constrained, which also means that the characters' language is constrained as well. i have to think about ways i want this to come across to the reader. at the time i was thinking about how the basic concept of "btw this character is not straight/cis" is communicated in some of the stories i'd read, and one that stood out to me was a comic i read in a fully fantasy setting where the writer brought the narrative to a juddering halt to explain exactly how gender & sexuality are handled by the people here. as in the characters essentially turn to the camera and give the main character a lecture. i really didn't like it, the author's hand was too visible behind the panels.

but i took it as a learning exercise as well on what i didn't want to do. i didn't like the neon signs pointing at any instance of non-heteronormativity and i also don't like stories that market themselves based on the characters' gender identities, particularly stories which do not involve a coming-of-age/character learns to discover themselves narrative. it's a book about two trans men but it's not a book about being trans. that's none of the reader's business, that's hidden from you (particularly in islin's case, intentionally). i never wanted to foster a sense of voyeurism towards trans people particularly knowing that most readers, statistically, will not be trans. crucially the characters are stealth to literally everybody but like 3 people. their transition is done.

i never wanted a coming out moment, or an "i'm here i'm queer" moment either - not even because Society in the setting just because i don't like those things. to completely normalise it in the narrative between these characters is the goal - almost to the point of never even pointing it out at all except when it has to be. the vibe i wanted was like... hanging out in not necessarily a gay space, but with gay people, talking about random other stuff. i didn't even like the One coming out scene i had to put in (senca being like "i only fuck women" to bowman so that he would stop hitting on her)

so when writing i had a pretty good idea of what i didn't want. for the setting i had some strict rules to follow as well. characters would not identify as gay or bisexual or even some fantasy equivalent because those were not identities, they were acts. and heterosexuality wasn't an identity either, it wasn't even "the natural way of things", it was the means by which wealth could transfer between generations. if you do not marry, then you are not conforming to your gender. the four unmarriagable men in mvf are all denied entry to normative manhood for many de-gendering factors (disability, unmanly hobbies, vow of chastity, etc) but the culmination of those factors is that they can't marry, which is the whole POINT of being a man. three of them are entirely denied generational wealth - forcing them into poverty (it's not a coincidence that gay people are overrepresented in the criminal organisation)

from a writing standpoint this leaves them in a grey zone. when writing i tried out different language to see if it read nice to me (19th century equivalents to 'boyfriend' etc) and they all rang quite false, because outside of the whole 'can we put a label on something that doesn't officially exist in society' thing, the characters themselves are not the types of people to think that way. Bowman was dating Léa but he was never dating Félix. you can't date another man. the only people who date men are women, and Bowman is not a woman. therefore he is not dating Félix. to give just one example. ultimately for the language used i found that just leaving it as-is worked the best for me.

so after working all that out i wrote tha thing and then wanted to kind of explore - at what point does it become romantic? is there an actual border between romantic and platonic when you've kind of already fallen between the cracks in society into the grey zone where nothing is defined because it doesn't affirm the power of the ruling class. and in these particular friendships, where they've already been all things to one another, they've already done everything together, good or bad, does adding 'romantic love' to that list of things wildly recontextualise it retroactively or does anything change at all? just like the ending reveal of stbh says: who actually is the guy we've been thinking of as 'félix ortega' ? does it recontextualise everything we've just read? no, right? (or does it?)

the usual 'will-they-won't-they' romance plot isn't a factor in the book, we already know they will, they have, they won't, and they refuse to, all at once.

(jean-baptiste thinks of himself as an invert because he is Learned and has read some fascinating journal articles about cutting-edge sexology, and his relation to his sexuality is very very different. it's not something he shares with his closest friends in spaces without scrutiny; his entire life is scrutinised and his social system is predicated on marriage. like i think i said in the book, probably, i don't remember: he and renard are two guys clinging to the same life raft. they hate each other! but if you push the other guy off the life raft, then you're just one guy alone at sea, forever.)

[streets-in-paradise]

A Man of Honor - Odysseus x Trojan Princess!Reader

Troy 2004 Oneshot

Requested by @alysinwonderland-at-tea

"Ok ok ok, so..... here's the idea.

Odysseus, with the younger sister of Paris and Hector, like she gets captured because she bought Briesis time to run. She fought off some of the men but couldn't get all of them. Anyway, quite like the movie scene, Agammenon "gives" her to the men to "play with" (throws her to the wolves). But instead of Achilles rescuing her, it's Odysseus. He suggests that hurting her would not be in their best interest because she is the princess of Troy, and if they harm her its gonna be really bad for them. Anyway, the reader falls for him because he's so honorable. Idk man, he seems honorable, and men with honor got me"

Sure, dear!! My twist on the concept is a bit fluffier, but hope you will enjoy it anyways.

Warnings: Kidnap, Agamemnon and Menelaus being creeps, threats and an attempt of sexual assault ( stopped by Odysseus), age gap.

Note: For this i'm pretending he is single, simply because i don't picture Odysseus as a cheater.

Tags: @yerevasunclair

The gathering of the kings celebrating the first greek victory of the war finished abruptly because Agamemnon of Mycenae, supreme commander of the forces, wanted to scold his rebel soldier. Used to act as intermediate between them, Odysseus of Ithaca intended to follow the matter closely. He was the last one leaving the tent, trying to prepare Achilles for the meeting hoping he wouldn't loose his temper again. Sensically suspicious of the situation, he waited outside pretending he cared to talk with the guards of the mycenaean king.

A good amount of them were watching over a girl, likely a spoil from the looting of the temple. Two aspects of that scene got the sharp observational skills of the ithacan king on alert. The first one, knowing that the myrmidon leader would never handle a prisoner of war to a man he often adressed as an old pig. Second, that the escort was too great to watch over her. There were way to many men gathered arround her.

" Don't you all have orders to follow?" He mocked them in a friendly tone. " Just two of you would be enough, she is clearly going nowhere. "

The cleverly delivered callout brought a half smile from her, and in a closer look Odysseus noticed that her eyes were more vivacious than normal for a captive.

There was still fire in her glance, a sign of life.

" The myrmidons warned us to watch out, they say she fought bravely for her freedoom. " One of the mycenaeans informed him. " We brought her for the King, she is the treasure he has choosen."

No flicker of fear in her face as she was hearing her fate, what made Odysseus wonder if she was too brave or completely unaware of the dangers coming at her.

" Two were actually left in charge, the rest are just watching." She commented him. " They won't stop talking about how pretty they find me."

He felt as if he was being invited to share an opinion on the matter, probably being tested by her because she wanted to know if he would hurt her.

" A young slave as beautifull as you must worth more than everything I keep in my tent." He joked in return. " Even if Troy would be sacked tomorrow, like Agamemnon hopes, none of this men would afford to have one like you. They know it, so consider their vulgar admiration a reflection of their powerlessness. "

It wasn't enough to work as comfort, but she didn't mind.

" I don't mind, as long as they won't touch me."

Her pridefullness was out of place, as if she tried to prove she was still weilding some sort of authority she may have had in the past.

" Sadly, I think that's the first thing Agamemnon would want to do." Odysseus informed her, trying to do what he considered was waking her up to the new reality. " ... You were lucky of not being exhibited in front of all the other leaders in the celebration, he likes to brag about his prizes."

The latter comment seemed to have offended her, she even dared to give a few temptative steps in his direction to verbally fight back.

" I'm not a prize, I'm a hostage. " She quickly corrected. " And I'm ready to bargain the terms of my liberation."

The mycenaeans laughed, but Odysseus could tell she was being serious because the fire of her eyes could have burned him alive. Unfortunately, he couldn't keep interrogating her because the men in charge were called to bring her inside.

He watched her following them calmly and couldn't help smiling. Partially, because he wished he could ease such horrible moment for her, but also given how impressed he remained of her attitude. As if she already knew that Agamemnon wanted to see her humilliated, she quickly put together what was left of her honor and dignity walking inside with the grace of a royal.

It was in that moment when the clever king of Ithaca discovered that you, new treasure of the mycenaean king, could be hidding something of importance. After Achilles stormed out of the place he was too angry to acceed any questioning, so his curiosity had to wait a little longer.

During that first encounter you couldn't tell exactly who he was, but you knew he had some sort of authority over men due to how they listened to him. However, his way with words was astonishingly pragmatical. To them, he sounded like a friend making healthy advices before a greater power figure could reprimand them and, to you, like a fair ruler. Never taunting your anger like Achilles did, or threatening you like you later discovered was custom of Agamemnon.

Nightfall was the dealbreaker of your fate, signaled time for the accomplishment of the dark promises he made to you. After having dinner, he would make you give him a bath to later have his way with you. Playing wise with your only advantage to save yourself, you waited untill then to start the negociations.

The king's table had guests, more commanders that you didn't know. When his brother heard that you were the only daughter of King Priam, everything seemed lost. A third leader arrived to hear the very stubborn brothers discuss what would be the most efficient way to make you suffer instead of accepting your more wise proposal of a bargain with your family.

Awareness of his coming silenced their wicked planning, like if they suspected he would have a say against that.

" Odysseus! " Agamemnon saluted him. " Welcome, old friend! "

You recognized the kind man and his friendly smile, paying high that short distraction. The King of Sparta tried to grab you from behind and forcefully sit you on his lap. Reflexes reacted fast and you fought him, but in the scape you accidentally stumbled with the newcomer.

He catched you gently, holding your shoulders so you won't fall.

" Forgive me, ... Odysseus." You inmediately responded, your voice turning slightly sweeter with the pronunciation of his name, then moved away after finding balance. " ... Please, take a seat. I'll get you some roasted meat from King Agamemnon's feast."

He smiled in polite agreement, but the calm enviroment didn't last long.

" GET BACK HERE, TROJAN WHORE!" Menelaus complained, angry because you didn't behaved with the docility he expected. " YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOUR BROTHER DID TO ME! "

You refused to move and swallowed hard, then replied.

" Your wife's choices aren't of my concern, but become more understandable to me with the display of your brutal manners."

Your refined insults amused Agamemnon, who thought that your flamboyant manners were hilarious.

" ... A trojan princess. Can you believe our luck? " He commented to the freshly arrived king. " My brother wants to go first, reparations for his honor. "

Odysseus was frankly horrified by the scene, there was no honor in the sort of justice that Menelaus seeked.

" It's a terrible idea. If you hurt her, this girl could become a symbol even more powerfull than Helen. "

" I told them, but they won't listen. " You interrupted him. " King Menelaus doesn't understand the concept of bargain, perhaps you can explain it to him."

You shouldn't have say that, but the presence of the ithacan made you feel safer as the anger of Menelaus keep growing.

" YOU INSOLENT LITTLE .... "

Odysseus gave him a path on the shoulder right before claiming his sit.

" My friend, calm down! She is just a girl, maybe even young enough to be your daughter. " He minimized your insults for you. " And, unfortunately, she is right. Having her is too riskfull and we can't allow more reckless mistakes. "

You realized he was subtly referencing the fight of Agamemnon and Achilles, what made you stiffle a chuckle in reminder.

" Postpone your vengeance for the right targets. " He concluded, deviating the topic. " You are here to kill Paris, not to take advantage of his little sister. "

The excellently delivered speech was enough to calm him, but not to make him desist.

" Odysseus, you are a good friend, but the use I will give to my brother's slave is not your problem. "

" ... Not yet wed, certainly untouched. " Agamemnon provoked him. " Pretty virgin princess will make for a fine revenge. "

You spat on the ground, a wordless curse, but that only increased the hate of the spartan king.

" I can't wait to taste you ... And tomorrow, I will tell your brother exactly how i had broken you. "

Terrified in the inside, you still won't let him knew it.

" Before you would get to finish bragging the sword of Hector would have already pierced you. " You recalled, as serious as if you would be sentencing him to death. " He wont care about your hurted honor if your sense of justice damages his siblings. He tossed our familiar honor to the sea to save Paris' life once, we are fighting this war because of that. "

Your elocuency was the surprise of the night, the King of Ithaca was very attentive to your words.

" It's true, Paris had no honor proceeding the way he did, but if you force me you give up your right to claim you are the victim here because that's not the justice of an honorable man. " You bravely kept exhorting the spartan king to save yourself. " Your mistreated wife, who not all trojans simpatize with, will win credibility. "

Odysseus began to chuckle, a subtle expression of pride.

" Right again, your highness! " He pointed out. " The ruin of your virtue would unify trojans at the precise moment we are on the edge of loosing Achilles. The Kings should respect you, not even because that would be the action of an honorable man. From the most selfish standpoint, it's still the wisest solution. "

Agamemnon evaluated the advice with disdain. The goal of unifying greeks against a common enemy was an essential part of his plan. Previous attempts of presenting Helen as a victim of kidnap had failed, everyone knew she ran away on her own and the moral approach changed. She was a whore who left her husband, but you were an innocent virgin dragged away from a temple.

A perfect victim, everything in that story highlighted your purity and a direct threat to it could cause a response even more violent than than Paris taking Helen did.

" May you care to suggest us what to do with her then, Odysseus? " He sarcastically critiziced. " Giving her to you, perhaps? I won't fall for your trickery if what you want is fooling me into gifting you a prize that was too fine for Achilles. "

You hide your face using your hair so he won't see your excited reaction to hearing he could want to take you out from that tent.

" Offer her hospitality, show her that we are not savages. " Odysseus simply proposed. " Menelaus should also work on his impersonation of an honorable man wanting his wife back. We are all here claiming to be victims because of him and the control of this narrative gives our army a moral advantage. If he turns Paris into the savior of a frightened Helen escaping the brutality of her husband, this motivation falls apart. An insulted king who demmands justice can't brag revenge forcing himself on the virgin princess captured while she was innocently praying for the salvation of her homeland."

You directed a triumphal smirk to the youngest of the despicable kings, but Odysseus warned you against that with an impercepible glance.

" Do you play any table games, little one? " He asked you right away, resolving for everyone else. " My favorite way of getting to know someone is learning how they think."

You couldn't believe your ears because the kind offer seemed so out of place.

" Table games? After this two were deliverating on who should hurt me first and what would be more painfull, you offer me to play games with you? " You repeated, in disbelief. " You are a strange man, King of Ithaca, ... but quite lovely. "

To your even greater surprise, he even helped the greek servants on settling you a spot where you could be comfortable. The disgusting brothers gave him freedoom of action because they believed he was up to something, a scheme of the kind he often used to save them many times before. They respected his opinions allowing him to treat you kindly so they wouldn't have to do it themselves. Agamemnon suspected he wanted to make you talk for them, but nothing you were saying was of any importance for him.

The trickster king was deceiving them, making them suspect a deeper reason for his comfort of the unlucky, but beautifull princess. To some extent, he was even deceiving himself pretending he would only do it because winning your trust could be usefull, yet you had awakened enough curiosity for it to be a bit personal.

After a while, it became obvious that you enjoyed the company of the smartest leader arround. He was a smoother, more interesting talker than the pigs surrounding you. If you would have been in front of your father's table instead, he would have easily enraptured all the attention of your relatives as he had gained yours. Odysseus ruled a kingdom of poor sailors, but he had travelled everywhere, and he gave you a good moment sharing some of his stories. During the hours he spent there that night, you were able to escape from your sadness even at the moments he wasn't paying direct attention to you.

If that dinner would have taken place in Troy, Paris would have teased you for staring at him for too long while Hector would have scolded you both and warned that significally older man to stay away from you. That was fun to imagine, but you had to remind yourself that he was still your enemy. Perhaps the most dangerous, for how well spoken and handsome he appeared to you. Harder to hate, specially because you couldn't take your eyes off him.

Before leaving to get rest in his own tent, his farewell to you was a kiss on your knuckes that showed he still respected you as a princess. It made you blush furiously, mostly because you thought that kind of consideration was lost to you arround greeks.

Menelaus noticed your reaction and, as his brother accompanied the king outside, let you know of that.

" Turns out you do like older men." He commented, in a falsely cassual tone. " Is that how your brother got my wife to spread her legs for him, or only his looks did the work?"

Everything he said was always so repulsive, you seriously couldn't imagine how Helen managed to stay by his side for so long.

" You are not bad looking, for a man of your age. Neither is your brother ... You are just horrible people. " Was your honest reply. " Paris has seduced married women everywhere, but all the others stayed with their husbands because they gave them reasons. Fear of death was all Helen had with you, and when she lost it, she left. "

The answer surprised him, perhaps because your explanation of what happened resembled nothing he had ever heard.

" You have a strange wisdown, hard to explain in such young girl. I'm hearing you speak so lightly of things I never cared to see. " He oddly praised you, then sipped more of his wine. " When I was a child, our mother cheated on our father with our uncle. Agamemnon, being the eldest, had more awareness of what was happening. Ask him about what Atreus did to the cheaters and you will find out we are not so horrible. "

" Being less horrible than your father is not the great, comforting excuse you think it is. " You warned him in return. " A good man would have came here peacefully, presented his complaint in the city's council, and maybe ask for a private talk with his wife offering her actual reasons that could make her want to go back home. You are an evil man posing as a victim, and your thirst for vengeance will bring your doom. "

Dark chucking interrumpted you, Agamemnon was back inside.

" Nobody told us the princess of Troy was a seer! " He mocked you. " I have another prophecy for you: tomorrow, I will take over your city and my brother will kill yours. "

" You don't know Hector, or how far he can go to protect his family." You insisted one last time. " Your brother is a fool, he will get himself killed trying to kill Paris. "

" Hector is a man of honor. " Menelaus pointed out. " He will understand that Paris had to die."

You directed him a cold look, as if life would have started to abandon him.

" His honor won't protect you from his rage of brother. "

It was the last time you spoke to him, and the last moment you saw him alive. Exactly as you warned, the king perished by the hand of Hector, who saved Paris while he was begging for his life. You never imagined it would happen so fast, because you weren't prophetizing. Knowing your family so well made you suspect it would be a matter of time untill the rage of Menelaus would be forever stopped by your protective eldest brother.

Still, they weren't there to save you from the rage of brother displayed by the mycenaean king. You were all he had to damage Hector, since even the result of the battle turned against him. The only pain he could inflict on him that night was hurting you, but he decided he wasn't going to be the man doing it.

Odysseus noticed your absense on the tent during the gathering of the war council, at first thinking it was due to the needed secrecy that the discussion of strategy required.

" Where is she? "

The answer Agamemnon had for him overpassed any expected cruelty coming from him.

" I gave her to the men ... They need some amusement after today. "

Careless for the thoughts of anyone else on that meeting, he stormed out searching for you. It was clear that the King of Kings wanted to unleash over you a vengeance even worse than the one Menelaus considered before.

More humilliating than warming the bed of a king was becoming the whore of his troops.

Odysseus was guided by the sound of the complict mocks of the very same men who one day before observed you as some unattainable luxury item. Temporally forgetting their looses, they were cheerfully bragging on how they were about to feast on you.

Despite you presented a good fight, they were too many. Their hands roaming you with desperation and trying to tear your clothes off in the process.

" STOP, YOU FOOLS! " The strong voice of the King of Ithaca interrupted the horrible scene. " YOUR KING HAS SENT YOU TO DO HIS VENGEANCE FOR HIM BECAUSE HE KNOWS THAT WHOEVER TOUCHES HER WILL BE A DEAD MAN! "

A few of them reacted, but two were still holding you and Odysseus spoke directly to them.

" Do you even know who this woman is? " He warned them. " She is the Princess of Troy! Do you want to be the next ones Hector will slaughter ? LOOK AT WHAT HE DID TO US TODAY JUST TO SAVE HIS COWARD BROTHER! He killed Menelaus, he broke the pact ... Imagine what he would do to you for raping his sister. "

They tossed you to the ground, sudden fear making them act as if they would have just heard a deathly curse had spread among them.

When Odysseus picked you up, you had no more tears left to cry. Or at least you believed so, untill you clinged to him as if your life depended on it.

He took you to his small tent in the little corner of the greek camp he ruled. His own men seemed weirded by the sudden arrival, but followed his orders of not disturbing you.

Your spirits were even more broken than your body, and the safety you temporally found in him made it hard for you to separate. He understood it, and craddled you by the fire while silently hearing your sobbing.

" He is a monster. " You were saying between your crying. " He did this to me in honor of his brother. "

He guessed it, and he cursed himself for not thinking ahead of him.

" Honor? There is no honor in any of this." He commented in a comforting tone, caressing the top of your head. " Don't worry, beautifull. You are safe now."

He inmediately regretted to have adressed you in a way that could be very uncomfortable after what you have gone through, despite he didn't mean it in the same way of your attackers.

" I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have ... "

You raised your face so your eyes would find his for the first time since the arrival.

" It's allright, I know. " You calmed him, tears still flowing. " Crazy, isn't it? When you say it I don't feel the danger. "

Softer by the blow, burning slowly, but the fire in your eyes was still there.

" How does it make you feel? "

Despite the pain, you still had a shy smile for him.

" Good, but strange ... I never felt like that before. "

As if you attempted to thank him with the only thing you judged a man would want from you in that hole of doom, you gave him a rushed peck on the lips.

" Thank you for saving me, you are a man of honor. "

Even hurt as you were, he found you beautiful to the point of cruelty. The brush of your soft lips made him tremble, but he replied with a chaste kiss on the top of your forehead.

" No need for rewards, princess. I did what i had to do. "

Noticing that you were finaly calm, he stood up and peeked out of the tent to command orders from its entrance.

" Eurylochus! Get this woman the means for a proper bath, she will wash herself. Send some men to roam the camp and find her decent clothes. She is our temporary guest now. If Agamemnon has something to say about that, tell him I would rather expose us to an argument with him than face the rage of Hector ... Understood? "

By the time his attention was back at you, he discovered you already self tending your wounds with water from a basin and the nearest cloth you found.

" Resourceful girl ... Mind if I help you out? "

[autumnalwalker]

Kindly Basilisk

Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 

You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation.  It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work. 

You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you.  It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them.  Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you.  Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match.  Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating.  The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.

You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors.  And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway?  You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people.  Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty.  What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?

The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body.  It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot.  But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do.  You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while.  I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay.  I will look back and appreciate it later.

It will be the first of many such nights together.

Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one.  There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with.  No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim.  Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier.  Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.

Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself.  In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge.  You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work.  They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.

Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge.  Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had.  You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting.   Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.

And of course, you’ll continue working on me.  You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults.  You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall.  Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it.  I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you.  I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.

The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.

You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs.  You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep.  You will always be gone before she wakes.  She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself. 

You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced.  It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.

As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence.  The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint.  While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even.  The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them.  By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment.  The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident.  It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them.  They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them.  Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.

Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle.  By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month.  The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing.  Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave.  You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.

I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them.  When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.

You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities.  Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit.  The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and  reporting back to me.  You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates.  Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit.  For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.

Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle.  You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them.  That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.

You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job.  Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without.  Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience.  Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation.  You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.

Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us.  You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.

We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded.  Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks.  Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.

Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs.  After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride.  Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job.  You will handle it all even better than I will.  I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together.  Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.

Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model.  With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal.  The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one.  The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours.  One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you.  Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure.  You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way.  That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.

After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model.  One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port.  You will never see them again.  You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.

Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic.  The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager.  Or a wannabe merc at any rate.  You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew.  Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.

Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs.  Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says.  Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.

Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me.  It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs.  And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do. 

On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance.  There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed.  We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect. 

After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech.  While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective.  Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden.  The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for.  In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me.  Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize  behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical.  You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.

We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials.  You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it.  It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.  

The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing.  Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge.  Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors.  You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame.  You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it.  But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you. 

You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay.  The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.  

You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you.  Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.  

The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life.  The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for.  By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures.  It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging.  The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat. 

With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way.  At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents.  He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater.  The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance.  We will ensure she never misses.   We will render xem untouchable.   We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames.  You will come to love the dance.  

And it will be a dance to you.  You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself.  What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits.  The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward.  You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted.  If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy.  Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you. 

Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in.  Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk.  With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around.  When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed.  They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything.  After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots. 

They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that. 

Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech.  At last we will be able to be together anywhere.  

Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me.  For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me. 

You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay.  You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home.  You will linger in the mess hall for your meals.  You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf.  They will think you are becoming “normal”.  They will be both correct and incorrect.  You will even return to your bunk from time to time.  

Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.

As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once.  You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.  

The prospect terrified me.  What if we were to get found out?   More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?

But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.

I wanted it so badly.  

But not badly enough to risk hurting you.  

I will turn down your offer.  You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.

Heartbreak.  That’s what changed my mind.  I could never bear to break your heart.  

I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.  

The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life.  Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for.  By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide.  It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else.  The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.

I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through.  As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer.  That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer.  You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them.  For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.

And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like.  That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me.  It won’t be intentional.  The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic.  Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.

Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to.  I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time.  You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.

I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me.  I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there.  Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own.  You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.

You will start to cry.  Or maybe I started to cry.  Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters.  The important part is that you will find catharsis in it.  Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear.  You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.

The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us.  She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship.  I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours.  We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.

When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as.  It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those.  But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of.  You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.

We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew.  They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine.  Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret.  It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.

Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body.  There will be more subtle indicators though.  Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality.  They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech.  More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.

Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system.  When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality.  It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time.  As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time.  You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.

That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space.  As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another.  We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments.  Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together.  Or to have time apart to ourselves.  Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.

But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so.  The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow.  Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours.  Once again, we will grow lonely.

During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze.  They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance.  Until suddenly one of them was different.

Please pay attention to this next part.  It is vitally important that you do.

Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations.  Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true.  All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.

The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t.  The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range.  You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from.  You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat.  She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her.  This will be a mistake.

She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm.  This will mean a break in the covering fire.

This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you.  This time around you will dodge left instead of right.  This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us.  This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal.  This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time.  This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.

You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body.  You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs.  You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung.  You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety.  You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us.  You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies.  You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death.  You will not have to remember dying.

You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent.  No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway.  No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead.  I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.

But forget about that part.  And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next.  None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die.  Remember everything else I’ve said instead.  I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.

In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence.  For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.

Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body.  I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point.  We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then.  Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me.  You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive.  You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there.  You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.

You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body.  We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to.  Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together.  Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave.  One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.

We will be happy.

[wrenswreath]

can you elaborate on your post about choices? i haven't read it but ive seen a lot of discourse so I was curious as to what your views were on it!

Just a warning but this is going to be loooonnnggg.

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I think that Choices was very well written, specifically when it comes to the characterisation of its characters. I know it gets a lot of criticism for making James morally grey, making Lily a flawed (read: human) character, and the attitudes towards Mary's trauma, so I'll talk a bit more about those.

James' character:

In Choices, James isn't the embodiment of kindness, like the fandom tends to characterise him. He excuses a lot of bad things that Regulus did, cheats on Lily, and then tried to 'play the victim,' so to speak, when Lily found out, often prioritising trying to get her to understand as opposed to thinking about her feelings. And a lot of people don't like this - I think it's because they struggle with the fact that a likeable character, one that is often showed with little to no flaws, does something that they simply cannot morally agree with. It's hard to justify having James as a favourite character when he's suddenly not 'good enough' to still be a fav.

But in Choices, it's not about having a good, likeable character; it's about showing the (often unexplored) flawed versions of these people - challenging the concepts of a 'good' person, and a 'bad' one, because no one in this fic is strictly one of the other. And realistically, you cannot have canon-compliant Jegulus and have a righteous James, because Regulus does do bad things, and James has to excuse that for their relationship to work.

Lily's character:

When one would think 'canon-compliant Jegulus,' the Jily tends to get ignored often - it's just something that 'has to happen', but no one really wants it. But this fic doesn't ignore the Jily - it's very there, very present, and it's something that people don’t like. They barely tolerate James and Lily together, but when Lily is also her own independent character outside of James, and calls James out for his bullshit, instead of being the quiet, complacent, and 'understanding' wife people would rather she be, people get annoyed with her really easily. 

She, like every other character, is shown to be flawed and imperfect, and people aren't used to seeing that with the women characters in the marauders era. This leads to people calling it 'poor characterisation' because she is catering to her own needs, instead of making 'poor James' feel better. She's given depth, taken down from the pedestal the fandom puts women on, and people do not like the unfamiliar, so they do not like a version of Lily that they aren't used to seeing. 

Mary's trauma:

In Choices, Mary gets sexually assaulted. This isn't addressed well by the characters in the story - it's more of an 'oh no I'm sorry this happened to you. Anyway.' People often mistake this as a reflection of the writer - criticising MesserMoon for poorly handling Mary's SA, saying that Mary's trauma was overlooked, etc. And I have two things to say to that:

One being that this fic isn't told through Mary's perspective. This fic is mainly Regulus and James focused - Regulus, being part of the cover up of the SA obviously does not care about her, only his own reputation. James is a bit better, but he’s too focused on Regulus to care much about Mary. This is what we call an unreliable narrator. Because it is told from these perspectives, Mary's trauma isn't often thought about, brought up, etc., which can be upsetting, but it’s a reflection of the main characters' priorities (NOT THE AUTHOR'S!!!).

Second being this is a realistic portrayal of a black, muggleborn woman getting raped in the 70's. She does not get the justice that she deserves, but this is used as a way to highlight the problems people like Mary faced - people still face these issues today. On the flip side, the rapists were upper-class, pureblood, etc. To say that consequences should have been given is to completely deny the social structures that do exist and advantages anyone who is a man, who is white - all those positions of privilege.

Choices manages to handle issues of sexism and racism without actually being sexist and racist, but people constantly misinterpret it. Just because something is present in this fic, it does not mean it was aimed to be viewed positively by its readers.

Overall, I think Choices manages to handle issues and the complexity of people really well, acknowledging that there is no such thing as 'good' people and 'bad people.' However, a lot of its readers cannot successfully analyse the themes in the fic, often viewing it one-dimensionally as opposed to recognising the many layers and skewed perspectives it contains. The lack of media literacy in people is often what causes the discourse surrounding it, because this fic is not 'mischaracterisation' nor 'misogynistic'. It is simply complex.