#but i really do think we need more cross discipline communication

[runesinthenight]

One of the important things to consider is that everyone is an expert in their own field but knows nothong about others. There is always something someone else knows that you don't. When I took a collections management class, there were things I knew more about than my professor because I was a geologist and their background was art. I'm not saying my professor didn't know what they were talking about, because they were very knowledgeable about collections management, just that they had more experience with art collections than natural history collections.

Most art or history museums only really have to worry about marble, granite, or gemstones in their collections which are stable at normal museum conditions. Typically, the main concern is to make sure gravity or getting jostled doesn't damage them because hardly anything else in the collection will. But that's not true for all rocks and geological collections may comtain rocks which are unstable or potentially hazardous to your health. Rocks like gypsum can start degrading in too dry of climates. Marcasite has a tendency to degrade over time. Pyrite disease can destroy specimens if it's too humid. Some specimens can be slowly disolved if there's too much moisture in the air. Some rocks are radioactive or asbestos and will try to give you cancer.

What I'm trying to say is that everyone has something they know a lot more about than the average person. For me that's rocks. For someone else that may be hairstyles. For another person it could be leatherworking or paper making techniques. No one knows everything. It's literally impossible. So it's important to know when you don’t know someone and to ask people who do. Sure you can, and should, do your own research, but you need a sparting point. Someone who's never done leatherworking isn't going to think to research leather burnishers because they don't know they exist. It's important to ask people when you're stumped because you never know who might be just the right expert to ask.

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them. 

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.” 

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just. 

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job. 

[casualaruanienjoyer]

post war Jeanpiku?

Hello anon! Thank you for requesting something so tasty!😭 I love Jeanpiku. I've not writted Pieck so I hope I can nail it!

Anyway, onwards!!

Sharing a bed

Jean and Pieck bicker often. So often, in fact, that their tents at Fort Salta couldn't be further apart.

It's only been a couple of weeks since the rumbling and things were still looking pretty unstable around Fort Salta. Armin, now commander, was tasked with organizing everything from resources to communication. They would do manual labour during the day, and meetings late in the evenings.

Jean was Armin's right hand, and he was there to support him no matter what. But tonight there is no meeting.

The catastrophic events of the rumbling had affected the weather, making it extremely unpredictable. Today was one of those days.

The rainfall was short but heavy enough to damage some tents. Armin and Muller decided it would be best to sort out the issue during daylight, so everyone was asked to form groups and share some of the intact tents for the night.

This is why, unfortunately, Jean is now stuck between a snoring Connie and a smirking Pieck. His tent never felt this small before. They had to push two makeshift mattresses together to fit the three of them, and even so it was still very much shoulder to shoulder. Fortunately for Jean, Connie fell asleep the moment he hit the mattress. At least he didn't have to deal with him tonight. Unfortunately, he has other problems.

Jean rests on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling of their tent. His back feels stiff and he cannot relax for the life of him.

"Look, don't get too cosy in here, alright?" Jean is uncomfortable. Not that those shitty mattresses were ever comfortable to begin with, but at least before all this he had his own space. -Personal- space. Which is now breached by an intruder.

"Aw but Jean, I'm just trying to relax a bit" Pieck teases him. She's resting on her side, awfully close to him.

"Remind me again WHY you had to pick OUR tent to sleep in?" Jean groaned. "Why couldn't you pick Annie's?"

"She's sharing it with her dad, and his reduced mobility means he needs the extra space" she shifts to rest her head in her palm, elbow digging into her pillow. "Besides, I think we need to work on -us- a bit, you know?"

"What does -that- mean?!" He hisses at her, but keeps his voice low. He really doesn't want to deal with two pricks tonight.

"You know, I feel like you don't really like me. And I want to know why". Pieck's hair cascades over her shoulders, and Jean avoids looking at her visible cleavage.

It's not that he didn't like Pieck. After all these years, Jean still didn't know how to approach girls he had a crush on. Yes, Pieck is, unfortunately, exactly his type. Long, black hair, soft eyes and a nice figure. But unlike Mikasa, who was stoic and level-headed, Pieck was seriously driving him nuts: cunning, mysterious and above all, a seductive devil.

She knew exactly what she was doing every time she teased him around camp and every time she tried to hug him tightly. She's manipulative and Jean has no idea how to deal with women like her.

Every other girl he met in the military had always been very righteous, disciplined, well maybe except for Sasha. Pieck is a mystery to him. An alien.

"You're making it very hard for me to like you, quite frankly" he crosses his arms over his chest, sighing. "There's nothing to talk about, we should sleep."

"Ooor, you could tell me what I could do to make you feel more comfortable around me~". She whispers in a low purr, tucking some hair behind her ear.

"First of all, stop that. You always overdo it" Jean manages to look at her, trying to remain calm. But even in the dark she looks so beautiful that he can't help but blush.

"Overdo what, exactly?"

"Y-your flirting. It's not elegant at all." He mutters, looking back up at the ceiling. It's so much easier to talk when her face isn't a distraction.

Pieck's eyes widen. "Flirting? Me? With you??". But her tone is playful.

"Look, if you want something just tell me. I don't enjoy being teased. And I certainly don't like girls who play with my feelings" he shifts, uncomfortable. Now he's done it.

"Is that what you think of me...?" Pieck whispers, sounding somewhat sad.

"Well, you're confusing, that's for sure." He pauses, measuring his words. "Look...guys like girls that are direct." He sighs. "How am I supposed to know if your flirting is genuine or not-?"

"Kiss me"

Jean blinks. Once, twice. His face reddens.

"What?!"

"You want me to be direct? I can be. So kiss me." She whispers, pointing at her lips.

This can't be real.

"Pieck, I swear, if this is another one of your games-"

"Jean, I know you like me"

Silence. Utter silence. Jean wishes he could disappear.

"W-what makes you think that?!"

"You're not very good at hiding it, you know?" She laughs softly.

Jean closed his eyes, thinking of of all the choices that led to this very moment. All the times he found himself glancing her way. The times where they worked together day and night. The way she made him feel like he was falling in love again. He was already a lost cause, might as well go for it, right? "And what if I do?"

"Then kiss me"

💜This fic is now also on AO3 !

[dmwrites]

It all started with Doc bursting into Xisuma’s office. Xisuma had just been about to take a sip of his tea, but a shard of the door landed directly in his mug, and he decided against it.

“Hello, Doc.” Xisuma said, putting down the mug sadly. “What’s up, dude?”

“That beady-eyed birdie and his smirking friend have me at my wits end!” Doc began pacing back and forth over the now-broken door. “They broke my machine, and giggled like little school children while showing me what they’d done!”

Xisuma hummed. “Beady-eyed… oh, you mean Grian and Scar! Yeah, I heard about that, what an unfortunate situation! I heard through the grapevine that you’re going to kill them, and badly. Sounds like fun.” He looked over Doc as he paced and cursed. Doc looked ruffled, lab coat in even more disarray then usual, and his crocs missing the straps. And on top of his head…

“Are the cat ears a… statement, or something?” Xisuma asked.

“Huh?” Doc felt for his head and tore the ears off with a growl. “Ah, fuck those ScarLand ears, forgot they were there.” He threw them into the garbage can by the door- he missed, and the cat ears just kind of flopped to the ground.

“Doc, I can see that you’re upset.” Xisuma held out a placating hand. “But is there a reason you came to my office? I know you’re more than capable of dealing with them yourself.”

Doc puffed out his chest at the complement. “Yes, yes, of course I am. I came here to ask a favor of you. You see, I have a plan- well, me and the hivemind have created something of deadly proportions. But the machine will take time to plan and build. I need someone to tell them off now, so they don’t forget that they were bad.”

Xisuma frowned. “Doc, it sounds like you think that Grian and Scar are children with no sense of object permanence or guilt.”

“They are children- look what they’ve done, and giggling the whole time!” Doc raged. “And they need to be disciplined like such until I can get to them.” He gave Xisuma an almost evil look that had him wondering if he would have to pay off the Minecraft board of ethics to look the other way for this DocM payback.

Doc seemed to have planned for Xisuma’s trepidation, and tossed a stack of diamond ore blocks onto his desk. “Please, man. I need time, and they must know of their crimes.”

“You know, I think I have just the person for the job.” Xisuma said, pocketing the diamonds. “They’ll leave Grian and Scar feeling very sorry for themselves indeed. You go do your planning, now, let me handle this.”

Doc cracked a smile. “Yeah? Awesome, thanks man.” He left, picking up the cat ears on the way out and stuffing them into his pocket.

Xisuma sighed at the state of his office, but picked up his communicator and made a call.

——

“Sit.”

“Already sat.” Scar said cheerfully.

“Not you, Scar, I was talking to Grian.” Xisuma replied, and gestured for Grian towards a wooden chair he’d placed under the HHH pavilion at spawn. Grian sat down, and Scar positioned his chair next to him.

“What’s going on, X?” Grian asked, crossing his arms and furrowing his eyebrows.

“Well, your recent actions against a certain DocM77 have not gone unnoticed.” Xisuma began, crossing his arms too.

“Oh my god.” Comprehension dawned on Grian’s face. “Are you going to lecture us on our bad behavior, X?” He began to laugh.

“What? Is that why you called us here?” Scar giggled. “Now, Xisuma, you’re a wonderful man, really, but you don’t exactly strike fear into my heart. But by all means, lecture away, tell us how bad we are. I’m sure we will be scared into being good little boys for the rest of time.” He wiggled his eyebrows at him.

“Oh, no, you see, I’m not going to be the one lecturing you.” Xisuma said with a smirk. “I’m just here as a teacher’s assistant, if you will.”

“Teacher’s assistant?” Grian asked, confused.

Scar looked at Xisuma, fear in his eyes. “Wait… you don’t mean-”

“Doc’s redstone? Really, guys?” Cleo landed on the ground in front of the pavilion, a frown firmly in place. Xisuma had to smother a laugh as he watched Grian and Scar gulp in fear at the same time. He’d had to pay Cleo thirty diamonds to come lecture Scar and Grian, but he had a distinct feeling he was in for a real show.

[thefirstknife]

Was looking through some older posts of yours and you had answered in an ask about Guardians changing classes and Rezzyl Azir/Dredgen Yor that:

“So while they may be naturally attune more towards some aspect of Light wielding, they still have to train to actually become their class in full.”

Can you elaborate a little more on that. Like how long would that take and how extensive of the training? Has there been any lore going more into detail about that?

Sorry if that’s a lot. Thank you for everything you do for this community it’s Greatly appreciated!!

It's okay!

Unfortunately, we don't really know how that took place. With Rezyl Azzir/Dredgen Yor it's super hard to say because he's very much a mythologised figure. His transformation into Yor was so mysterious and complete that most people never knew it used to be Rezyl and that was by his own design.

So how long it took him to get into the persona of Dredgen Yor and start behaving more like a Hunter? We have no clue. It might have been a gradual transformation as the Thorn corruption was spreading. Also, since we have no information on Dredgen Yor ever using any Light abilities, we don't even know if he only dressed as Hunter or if he started using what we would typically associate with Hunter abilities. So ultimately we don't even know if he actually trained in any Hunter disciplines.

This is especially a problem for Dredgen Yor in particular because he was such a reviled figure that I don't think he would've had the option to actually have a Hunter or Hunters teaching him. He might've learned through observation only and learned what he could. It was also fairly imperfect for him, as you can see on his cloak that the Hunter symbol isn't quite made properly. This maybe hints that without a proper teacher and enough time, one can't really learn these things easily. But that's purely speculative.

Felwinter also doesn't specify how long it took him to learn cross-class abilities (he learned shoulder charge from Titans). He of course didn't switch his class entirely, but learning other abilities surely takes time. However, we don't know how much time.

Outside of simply gameplay reasons, that's a really interesting question. Perhaps Ghosts have something to do with, as well as maybe some intrinsic attunement to the Light. Maybe the way the Light manifests in someone newly rezed is innately more geared towards a specific type of ability. But then in order to truly perfect this ability, one has to train for it. It's very unclear how it works and we have no idea what are all the elements that affect someone becoming a class or choosing a subclass.

There's some information on newly rezed Guardians in lore. For example, this one from Ghost Stories which is a Ghost recounting his experience with rezing his Guardian for the first time and that Guardian being forced to fight the moment she was rezed:

Problem was… my Guardian—the one I'd spent a very long time looking for—was lying dormant in their path: a lifeless husk in need of a wake-up call before her remains were atomized and I was left, for eternity, without my chosen. That I'd found her seconds before the Red Legion's survey team arrived was… unfortunate. But I had to do what I had to do. Some risks, after all, are worth taking. It was now or never. And besides, there's no timing like bad timing. I opened myself up to the Traveler's gift and enveloped her in Light just as the mining rig settled. My new Guardian gasped and sat up, crying out as if waking from a nightmare.

Basically, the Ghost had to rez her before the remain would be permanently destroyed, becoming unrecoverable. After the initial shock, the Guardian immediately started fighting. With her bare hands. No Light was used and there's no real indication of her class or subclass. There's a mention of her charging, but it's not clear if this is a Titan-type charge. Dodging is also mentioned. Nothing about Light is shown. I'm thinking that it's far more likely that new Guardians don't pick any specific class/subclass until a bit later and that us being rezed with a class is just a gameplay feature. Basically, all Guardians have the potential to use Light and to attune to certain abilities, but at the end of the day they still have to be taught and learned.

Osiris also recounts his experience of seeing Aunor being rezed for the first time.

"I remember the day you were raised," Osiris says with hushed strength. "Curled up beneath a ruined bus, screaming for help. Too terrified to listen to your Ghost, too frightened to hold the gun it had nudged under the wreck for you."

It seems getting to a weapon was more important than Light, possibly because newly rezed Guardians aren't really capable of doing anything specific with it. Which means they have to learn it later, possibly through exploring it on their own or with a teacher (or both). There has to be something innate about it, I think; that everyone's spark is inherenty leaning more into some specific way to use the Light, which then turns into a class through training and learning. Osiris himself is shown, very early in the Dark Age, as wielding Dawnblade. We don't know how long it's been since he was rezed here, but Dawnblade is very much defined almost exactly as we know it even that early in the Dark Age. Very curious.

Already mentioned Felwinter, but if you look at his lore book, he is never shown using the Light here. When he's rezed, he's just confused and in danger, mostly shown running away and using weapons. When he fights a Warlord over what would later become Felwinter's Peak, it is only said that Felwinter shot the Warlord's Ghost. On page 4 of the lore book, Felwinter meets another Exo Guardian and they get into a fight against the frames and only the other Exo is shown using the Light, much to his own surprise:

It was Gryphon who saved them in the end, with three bolts of Arc Light that erupted out of his hands. As the frames closest to them disintegrated in a shower of blue light, Gryphon whooped and said, breathlessly, "I've never done that before."

This is super vague as far as Light abilities go. No clue what class Gryphon-11 would be here. He was capable of using the Light, though clearly has not done so before, and his Light isn't defined into any specific class or ability.

Felwinter later became known for being a void user, but it seems that only came to prominence after he joined with the Iron Lords. He probably ended up favouring the Warlock class for a variety of reasons, but he wasn't really rezed as one in the same sense that it happens to us in the game.

This has also been shown with Zavala in his story trailer. He is never shown using his Light in his early fights; the first time we see him wielding it in the trailer is later in the City.

It's a really interesting thing to think about and so far, we've seen a lot of different things, both in lore and gameplay itself. Lore seems to imply that when a Guardian is rezed, they don't immediately know their class and they don't use their Light right away. But then again, in gameplay we get the Light really quickly. Could also be to indicate that the Young Wolf is special! But either way, there's still a lot that's not super well defined and now with Lucent Hive, the'es even more questions. Seems like the reason they mimic our classes and subclasses is probably because that's what Savathun learned while exploring the Light, as well as possibly something tied to Ghosts and how they've learned that Guardians work. I'm hoping for more on the Lucent Hive over this topic, as their experience would be unique and allow us to study the process in a way that we couldn't do back in the Dark Age.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[ARTS ::  Jorie Graham confronts past, present, and future

+

GAZETTE: Every day, it seems, we hear about the death of the humanities. How do you see the situation, both as a teacher and a poet?

GRAHAM: Perhaps the death of the humanities is exaggerated? Gen Z, we are told, appears to love books again. They apparently don’t want to read on screens and tablets. When interviewed they say — to my amazement — they love “the smell of books.” Bookstores (which we were told were going extinct, remember?) are opening and thriving. When I look at the University, I see a huge desire for the study of the humanities — more than I’ve seen in years. Does this equate with the desire to commit to certain “concentrations”? I’m not sure. I do sense that interdisciplinarity beckons. Perhaps because cross-pollination is more like life itself these days? 

The students who meet up in my workshops — graduates and undergraduates — no doubt benefit from “concentrating” in some discipline. But besides English, they reach my classes from law, public health, divinity, computer science, physics, economics, math, design, the Medical School, and from our labs. Their individual porous imaginations, as they meet the communal interdisciplinarity, provide the spark, as I see it, for the success Harvard is having in this arena. The publication record is extraordinary. Few MFA programs in the country match it. Writers, artists exist all over this University — so finding and connecting them, making their network live — creates the high-voltage current of imagination we call the humanities.

GAZETTE: Why do you think the humanities have this kind of drawing power?

GRAHAM: Because humans — even those privileged enough to be at a place like Harvard — know that life has some pretty major curveballs in it. You are not getting a pass. Will the future be secure? has never been anything but an unsettling question. Will the crop fail, will the newborn survive, will there be rain, will I find love, will my people survive, will justice prevail, will war come again. … The humanities teach us many things we crave more than ever now. They teach — don’t laugh at me — virtues. They teach us to have courage. They give us a way of understanding that we are not as alone as we think. They help us reckon with our mortality and that of those we love. They help us grapple with whatever we mean by fate, accident, chance, luck, miracle. They help us grasp cruelty, greed, brutality, evil in the human heart. They help us intuit the difference between being saved and being spared. They ask us — in the deepest way possible — do you really want to be spared? Our first answer is most often — mistakenly — yes. … Young people alive now are going to need — as much as each generation has needed — and in some ways perhaps more — courage. And the wide aperture on the human I have just alluded to is where courage is nourished — where its capacity can be awakened. They will also need imagination — more than ever. Imagination is a form of courage, as courage is a form of imagination. The humanities are not in trouble. I wish people would see that.

[The Harvard Gazette]

[sweetdreamspootypie]

🙃

I'm flying out tomorrow

Had a good night tonight

But

Vent / processing / just capturing some of the stuff I've been thinking about

It's so strange how different my worldview is because I'm a Covid nurse

Or maybe everyone else is insane

Who is to say

TW car accident, child injury

Managed to go see the last set of cousins tonight

My aunt was like

" oh yeah last few days I've been really sick

Had a really bad flu

Still coughing actually

But we don't believe in taking to our beds for just a flu lol"

And my cousin mentioned she doesn't know when the last time she took a RAT test was. Didn't even recognize the name. Said "oh yeah that's kind of outdated"

And NOBODY I've talked to has even been aware that there are still Covid booster vaccines happening and relevant?

They only ever had the initial course of 3 or 4 and then stopped? Didn't even know that further boosters are a thing at all?

and cousin told me that you don't take time off work for Covid here because it's not considered life threatening anymore

What the fuck is wrong with england

Why would you invite guests over if you actively have the flu?

Fuck man

Like it was actually a pretty good evening and it will probably be fine

But it's just so weird seeing the increasing divide in basic values

Like yeah I value hard work and discipline and etc etc and I want to get better at it

But how do these people value self care so little?

Idk I'm just hyper aware of it as well bc of my family's thing with chronic fatigue syndrome and how precarious wellbeing is

But also stuff like

Hard work is "being responsible" because idk doing your part at work on the project or whatever

But in my line of work

If I don't rest

If I don't eat or take my breaks or I haven't been sleeping well or burn out

Then I cannot provide the healthcare to others that is needed

I've got such vivid visceral memories of standing there as I'm realizing I need to hit the medical emergency big red button, at times when I'm over tired and not feeling my best self

Feeling my words and thoughts running like treacle and just being so aware of oh shit I'm not actually up for being responsible for this right now actually

And when I'm in that state and the adrenaline hits, it just makes it worse

I can feel my heart pounding in my ears and my dehydration headache and having to muster ok I have to be reassuring and communicative and make sure I'm dexterous enough to manage a complex situation

And if I can't manage it, people get hurt

And there's a very real risk that someone gets closer to death than they needed to, or would have if I had been on the ball and my best self

The other day, on Monday

I had a coffee at 12 noon

It was a really nice rich mocha from a chocolate specialist

I'm not accustomed to caffeine any more these days, so I was awake until 4am Monday night

On Tuesday night, despite being tired, I was also awake til 3am because of the disturbance to my sleep schedule it caused

On Wednesday, I was feeling gross from the sleep disturbance. I went to my room and tried to take an afternoon nap

At 4pm on Wednesday, there was a car accident outside of our house. A car hit a 3 year old child crossing the road with his mother.

My dad came to get me because I'm a nurse and that's my job.

When he came in I was in a groggy half asleep haze

I had my shoes on and was out the door but was still carrying a head of groggy haze

The kid was fine

Someone else was checking him out, asking all the right questions

And within a couple of minutes an ambulance arrived, and got to do a further assessment

It looked like the child had a bit of a bumped knee, probably from where he fell, but was otherwise just fine

Mum with him was being a champion at visibly keeping it together until tonight after the kids are put to bed, when she'll fall apart

I was able to be there to see that it was under control and looked on until the ambulance arrived

But I was so aware that I wouldn't able to clearly speak. Wouldn't be able to project calming competence with even just the simple fact of introducing myself as a health worker available if needed

Everything was fine

But if it hadn't been

I would not have been able to fulfil my role

Because I hadn't taken proper care of myself

I'm going to remember my guilt over one badly planned coffee I had on Monday, for years

Because my job is to be the one who knows how to make it alright when everything is wrong

Why the fuck can't other people do the simple things like isolate if sick

And not expose illness to people going back to the home of their 89 year old grandmother

I don't want to live to work

I want to live well

And wellness and happiness are important values and resources

And not contradictory with working hard to make progress on goals

People need to learn to rest

I didn't realize how bad it was

[santacoppelia]

Never thought I'd comment on a Scooby Doo post, but they mentioned "semiotics" and here I am.

Yeah, I ADORE semiotics, and what I found fascinating is the mix of "semiotics" with "molecular neurobiology". Because… you see… there are a lot of different specializations of semiotics (for example, I'm specialized in cultural semiotics, the way culture creates significance and how that changes over time). The mix of those two disciplines implies that Daphne is working in one of two really cool fields:

Biosemiotics, the field that studies the crossings between biology and semiotics. For example, we are talking about people who are obsessed with the way trees communicate and how they do it and if they recognize and communicate changes in the environment (those things are not only studied by biosemioticians, but they are on that field)

Neurosemiotics, a field that mixes what we know about neurosciences and every sliver of comprehension we have about how we create symbolic systems and process them in the mind (and the mind as a symbolic system). Charles Sanders Peirce, the American philosopher who started the studies on pragmatism and semiotics, was sort of obsessed with that… but he lived on the XIX century. I could never, but to think that Peirce would have loved to live in this exact time, just to know neuroscience and mix that with his studies on logic and "semiosis" (the process through our minds process and build significance)…

I just felt the need to infodump, sorry. I was always more of a Velma fan, but this idea makes Daphne 1'000,000 x times cooler to my eyes 😅🤓

[saturnbellfromhell]

SATURNIAN ENERGY

I'm really exited for this post, since it hits close to home! Other than being a Capricorn sun, my moon is also ruled by Saturn and Saturn is the second master in my 1 House. So, me and Saturn have known each other for some time and established a love-hate relationship. It can be quite hard with prominent Saturn placements, but you have to learn from your mistakes and accept many life challenges, because they will mold you into a resilient individual in my eyes.

⬛ Saturn, the last planet one's naked eye can reach in the night. In ancient Rome Saturn was the God of generation, time, abundance and wealth, also being called "the God of time".

In my heart,Saturn is the strict father of the planets. His energy is very dark, ancient, wise, patient with a sprinkle of misery and a good coming of age tale. He seems like he wants to step on you, make your eyes tear up...but he knows why he's doing such. He has witnessed all of this sorrow and wants patient thinkers above all. No daydreamers nor hot-headed individuals in his books.

⬛Many times Saturn breeds lonely individuals. One's who's life path is better without extra baggage.

⬛He really inbodies authority, maturity, boundaries, responsibility, discipline, wisdom, patience, karma, higher thinking and challenges.

⬛ It can be seen as the "boring" planet, since it's energy is so mature, but nevertheless Saturnian energy is extremely powerful.

⬛The lesson is very simple...there is no negotiating with Saturn. No crybabying, no remorse. His cruelty is a lesson to be seen in a positive light. The faster you change your habits, except rough times and be thankful for them...Saturn will charish you with light and knowledge! Also having many Saturn placements means anyone who will double cross you, will get their karma. So not all is dark, not all is bad, not all is ploting against you.

⬛ Saturn rules feminine Capricorn and masculine Aquarius, even though Aquarius is also ruled by Uranus, but I like looking at the duality of the two signs.

⬛ Capricorns are traditional in a sense. They are the grounded grandmother of the signs. With years of downfall and a gaurded attitude they can seem cold hearted. That is farthest from the truth, they are just extremely picky with people they surround themselves. The love language they speak is gift giving/receiving, even though I look at Capricorns as the sugar daddies of the zodiac. They are so in infatuated with working hard to spoil their loved one's. Yes, they are hard working most of the time, yes they can be lonely wolves, yes they can be man/woman eaters. The biggest issue I see with Capricorns is how they perceive themselves as unworthy most of the times, even though they are highly independent. Another note to my fellow sea goats is to not be so vengeful and prideful. Not everything is money and assests, enjoy your family, friends and partner.

⬛ On the other side we have the dizzy Aquarius. The non traditional air sign, clawing away their emotions to seem aloof and careless. But deep inside they really care, but mask it with their amazing sarcasm and humor. Aquarian energy is very humanitarian. They unlike Capricorn have a collective energy. They mold themselves to fit into any group setting. The chameleons of the zodiac. Always trying new things, traveling, meeting new people. They really never stop to think deep, that's where the issue lays.

⬛ So the difference in Saturn's teaching for both the signs are:

〰️Capricorns should release themselves from tradition and try new things to climb higher. They should stop being so stubborn and try to listen.

〰️Aqurians should try more traditional aspects, try solitude for a change. They need more patience.

That's why I've seen a lot of bitterness between the two signs, they are fallen sisters, but always butt heads. It is hard for a serious earth sign to communicate his deep feelings to an intellectual air sign and vice versa. They are so alike, but also so different!

⬛ Also Saturn rules the 10th house or the MC, meaning Medium Coeli or so called your "Midheaven". It rests at the top of your chart and represents career choice, publicity, the workplace, your public persona, status, reputation and sense of responsibility.

Some observations about Saturn placements/aspects:

〰️ Having Saturn in any house means that wisdom in that department will come later in life. For example if you have Saturn in your 7th house, marriage will come a bit later in life. You will have nasty relationships, but at the end you will never settle down with a dusty partner, knowing damn well how that goes. Another example is Saturn in the 1st house, you can struggle a lot with self acceptance and confidence, but it will all get better after maturing. The Last example is Saturn in the 9th house, you maybe will not succeed in greater education at an early age, or you might not travel long distance until your 30s/40s.

〰️ Saturn hard aspects (square, opposition) any planets means the same thing. They are challenges you need to conquer. Ex. Mercury square Saturn, this can mean you have a hard time communicating with yourself and others. Also writing can be quite difficult for you at times. Don't worry, it will come with age and some practice :)

〰️ Saturn in the 1st house can mean you always had to pick yourself up as a child. Too independent, lost a lot of fun years because of it. Also, if Jupiter or Saturn or both are in the 1st house, this means you have a lot of masculine energy. Embrace it, be a father figure to yourself or to others.

〰️ Cap Venuses can be very tricky. Bringing Saturian energy into a house ruled by Venus, the fiery planet of love and romance can be difficult. They need a long time to find their true lovers. Can be very cold and bossy towards partners. But a little secret, since Caps are very dominant, Cap Venuses like a dominant partner at times, passionately dominate. No degrading kinks and such. They love thigh touching and back rubs. You have to be extremely smart or a businessman. No rusty dusty partners over here. Also buy them a gift, doesn't have to be expensive, just very thoughtful.

〰️ Saturn in the 12th house can bring a lot of challenges into your spiritual life.

〰️ Capricorn Mars, especially men are so attractive to me. They are kind of intimidating in a way, but take action so calm. They know what/how to do it. Just a little bit of advice, try to be the listener sometimes!

〰️ Cap in the 10 house means business, and l a lot of it. They don't mess around with anybody that's lower than them. They also have ideas that they think about for years, trying to perfect them.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls

- Chapter 13 - ao3 -

The wedding of a sect leader with the stature of Wen Ruohan was, as Lao Nie had predicted, an experience unlike any Lan Qiren had ever had before.

It was also, as Wen Ruohan had predicted, loud and full of crowds, things that Lan Qiren didn’t especially like. Luckily, despite being the groom’s ‘brother’, Wen Ruohan wasn’t requiring Lan Qiren to actually participate in any way, and he was just able to watch from a distance.

He tried not to think of Wen Ruohan’s casual admission that he had, in fact, devised the marriage just to deal with the issues with Lan Qiren’s reputation – and Lao Nie’s concern thereof, no doubt – and reassured himself that the bride was undoubtedly well prepared for her new life and would soon find her footing as the mistress of the Wen sect, where she would more than likely be happy in time.

That was how such things went, wasn’t it? Even with his sect’s notorious tendency towards love-madness, the people like his father, who married for love, were the exception and not the rule…

(He also tried not to think about the fact that Wen Ruohan accepted all the toasts for his wedding using a drinking bowl in Gusu style, painted with a border of vermilion birds, or the fact that, despite Lan Qiren having gifted a set, it was the only one of its kind on the table, leaving Wen Ruohan's new bride to drink from a much fancier gold-gilded bowl – but that was more because he didn’t understand what it meant, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.)

“Did you even get a chance to see him?” his brother asked when they returned, looking coldly disapproving.

“I did,” Lan Qiren said, thinking to himself less of the dinner that they’d shared with Lao Nie and more of the brief moment when the Lan sect delegation been about to leave, a servant appearing and whisking him off briefly back to the family quarters where Wen Ruohan, looking as composed as ever, pressed a too-familiar hand to his head and told him that he was sure he’d be seeing him again soon. “He didn’t say much.”

Nothing his brother would care about, anyway.

His brother nodded, looking unsurprised, and dismissed him, remarking unnecessarily, “You missed the first few days of classes,” as if Lan Qiren wasn’t aware of when each season of classes started for the disciples better than him. After all, Lan Qiren hoped to become a teacher one day, when he tired of traveling, and to do for future generations of the Lan sect what his teachers had done for him, and he took it as seriously as he did anything else.

The seasonal classes were his favorite, largely because such classes were open not only to the Lan sect disciples but to certain guest disciples – typically the children of rogue cultivators that the Lan sect wanted to encourage to join the sect, which meant that they had to pass through the same rigorous standards applicable to the usual sect disciples. Lan Qiren had always thought it was a shame that their classes were so limited in scope, although he acknowledged there wasn’t much to be done about it; after all, how many sects would be willing to send their children to be taught by outsiders?

A puzzle for another day.

For now, Lan Qiren made his way to the classroom, taking advantage of the lunch break to settle his things in his familiar seat at the side of the room. He hoped that coming in during the middle of the day would reduce the number of whispers that seemed to invariably greet him these days – luckily much more inclined to see him as a source of information rather than a victim or, worse, a perpetrator – but he didn’t have much faith in it.

“Hey, you’re in my seat.”

Lan Qiren looked up: it was a female disciple. Her face was unfamiliar to him, which suggested she was a rogue cultivator – while men and women lived separately in the Cloud Recesses, they came together for meals and other such events, and despite his introversion, Lan Qiren knew most if not all of his peer group by now.

“Sanren,” he said politely, rising and saluting. “Forgive me, but this has always been my seat.”

She frowned at him. “You didn’t claim it at the start of classes.”

“I missed the start of classes due to an unavoidable conflict.”

“I’ve been using it all week,” she said, and looked at him expectantly, as if anticipating an answer.

Lan Qiren wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say here. “I’ve been using it all my life. What’s your point?”

“So you’re not going to give it up for me?”

Lan Qiren stared at her. “Obviously not.”

She grinned toothily at him. “All the boys give up their seats for me. I understand that it’s a matter of etiquette.”

“Whoever told you that was lying,” he said flatly.

“Oh, I like you,” she said, and crossed her arms – an aggressive posture, although her tone, like Wen Ruohan’s, seemed more amused than anything else. How strange to see a sudden resemblance, when they very clearly had nothing else in common. “How would you know? Maybe it’s in the rules.”

Well, that was a mistake.

“Really,” Lan Qiren said, and smiled. “Why don’t we examine that supposition?”

She blinked at him, suddenly wary, but it was too late: if there was one thing Lan Qiren knew, it was his sect’s rules. Learning how to beat people over the head with them on purpose was a more recent development, and he was still working on fine-tuning that – most people started begging for mercy while he still felt irritated, but when they continued listening with apparent interest, as the rogue cultivator girl did, he swiftly forgot that he was trying to make a point and shifted over to actual enthusiasm for the subject.

“Cangse Sanren!”

Lan Qiren’s listener started and very nearly fell over – she’d put her chin on her hands at some point during the discussion of the origin of the rules regarding interactions between men and women, and hadn’t accounted for that when twisting to see who was calling her.

It was a mixed group of sect disciples, with some of Lan Qiren’s cousins and disciples of other surnames that he recognized, plus a few more that were likely rogue cultivators’ children as well.

“Oh,” she said. “You. What is it?”

“I see you got caught up in one of Lan-er-gongzi’s boring rule lectures,” one of the disciples said – one of Lan Ganhui’s friends, with Lan Ganhui himself nearby, grimacing at him in an attempt to make him stop. Lan Ganhui had gotten a lot more likely to leave Lan Qiren alone ever since Lan Yueheng had decided to befriend him, even intervening to make his friends leave off, but this time the other disciple ignored him, his eyes too focused on those ahead of him to pay him any mind; he was smiling intently at the rogue cultivator girl in a way that was clearly attempting to seem charming. “Don’t feel like you have to listen to him just because he’s main branch, you know! No one else does.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” one of the others muttered, glancing warily at Lan Qiren. It wasn’t apparent whether he was concerned about Lan Qiren’s rank, personality, or family connection.

For his part, Lan Qiren just felt tired. He would like to think that they were all part of the same sect, learning the same things, but he knew that wasn’t how the world worked. There were good people and bad in every sect, and the undercurrents that came with any community were inescapable.

“You’re joking, right?” the girl – who had the title of Cangse Sanren, apparently – said unexpectedly. “His explanation is three times more interesting than the stupid learning by rote we’ve been doing so far.”

“Learning by repetition has a long history of being the most effective way of learning something,” Lan Qiren objected. “Even the most unrepentant scoundrel would learn the rules by heart if he had to copy them down for a month, and then when that was done and the foundation built, you could get started on explaining the why of them.”

“But repetition’s not as interesting,” Cangse Sanren said. “I really liked that story about Lan Yi.”

Lan Qiren looked at her suspiciously. He’d never outgrown his tendency to speak in a dull monotone – one of his peers had once compared it to the thudding of grinding stones in a mill – and it was the rare person who actually appreciated the rules the way he did. His teachers, of course, and some of the other more studious disciples did, but even with them he’d be hard pressed to say they actually liked his rambling.

She held up her hands. “Really! I feel like I understand why she put the rule in place now, whereas before it felt like I was just learning the rule for the sake of learning the rule.”

“That’s because you need to learn the rules before you learn the background,” he said. “The rules are a house built without nails, each piece in its place doing its part to maintain the whole - one rule backs another, while being supported in turn. Only once you know what the rules are can you move to understanding the reasons behind them.”

And from understanding to accepting, allowing our ancestors’ wisdom to act as a guiding light that clears the fog from your path, he wanted to say, because he loved the rules, truly and sincerely.

People made fun of him sometimes, thinking him boring or stuffy or overly strict, with no flexibility and too little empathy, saying he was obsessed with the rules for no beneficial purpose, but to him the rules were a gift from the past to the future. The Wall of Discipline represented the accumulated life experience of dozens if not hundreds of Lan sect disciples before him, turned through debate and contemplation into advice they thought would be able to help guide those that came after them to living a good, clean, happy life. As their descendant, how could he fail to honor that which those people, who had loved him without knowing him, had strained themselves to give him?

In just the same way, it was his duty to love the future generations that had yet to be born, to act as the bridge to that unknown future, entrusted by his ancestors to carry to them the rules that would be both his inheritance and his legacy. Those nameless faces dressed in Lan white, unborn children with his brother’s face or even his own, of his cousins and fellow disciples alike, all those souls that had yet to enter this world but who he loved so much already – if he could spare them a single iota of pain through his own experience, how could he not do so, and gladly? How could he not do everything he could to give them everything he had received from the rules, that sense of pride of their history, the strength and wisdom that could be passed down no other way? How could that be a burden?

Lan Qiren had never really had the chance to explain any of that to anyone, his tongue too stiff and clumsy to convey what sometimes he felt could only be expressed in song or poetry, and he did not have such a chance now: as usual, the other disciples were already laughing, dismissing him as a teacher’s pet, overly rule-bound, obsessed with homework and test-taking, a boring old fart whose soul was prematurely aged.

“What’s wrong with being old?” Cangse Sanren asked, her voice flatter than it was before, and the boys in front of her suddenly scrambled to start apologizing so fast that Lan Qiren was left wondering what exactly he’d missed.

“Class is starting soon,” he said instead of asking, though he promised himself he’d ask around later. Surely someone would know. “Everyone should take your seat – no, Cangse Sanren, as I’ve said, that one is mine.”

She grinned unrepentantly at him and stepped back over where he’d kicked his foot out to block her. “You win, this time,” she said, and took the seat next to him with absolutely no remorse for whoever might have been sitting there before. “Watch yourself, stick-in-the-mud.”

Lan Qiren glared, though somehow Cangse Sanren’s teasing didn’t feel as annoying as the other disciples’ usually did. Even if she did make several more attempts on his seat over the course of the day, causing him to have to fend her off or think ahead to evade her latest attempt.

He initially thought that she might try to come to class early the next day to try to claim it before he did, but instead she dragged herself in only moments before class was due to start, face haggard as if waking up at the very tail end of mao hour was the equivalent to rising at yin, although she was back to her regular form soon enough, bright and clever enough to make any teacher fond of her.

This became something of a pattern, in fact – sluggish wakening, intellectual jousting during class and an unspoken competition over the seat that had formerly been reserved for him outside of it. In the afternoons she usually went off with the more martially minded disciples, while he spent his time in the library or musical halls, though at some point she started dropping off random foodstuffs by his door in the early evening as if she thought he was too thin.

“Maybe she has a crush on you!” Lan Yueheng said enthusiastically; bizarrely enough, he seemed to like romance as much as his explosions or his math.

“I think it’s a little closer to treating me like a stray cat that she found and took a shine to,” Lan Qiren said, shaking his head. All the boys in the sect would have paid in gold and jewels for Cangse Sanren to give them a second look, and she didn’t care one whit for the best of them; there was no need for her to go courting when she could get three serious offers of marriage just by winking. “Give them here, I’ll redistribute them to the younger children.”

“You can’t do that!” Lan Yueheng looked offended. “It’s her sincere offering! From the heart!”

“It’s food she purchased in town,” Lan Qiren said doubtfully. “It’s not as if she baked them herself. Anyway, I can’t eat this many sweets without getting a stomachache. What else am I supposed to do with it? Let it rot?”

“Qiren-xiong, you’re the most unromantic person I’ve ever met.”

“I’m going to assume that’s a bad thing,” Lan Qiren said, not taking offense. “Do you want some? Last offer before they’re gone.”

“…well, I mean, if you’re going to give them away anyway…”

He told Cangse Sanren what he was doing the next day, as a matter of politeness in the event that she wanted to stop once she knew what he was doing, and she just laughed – she always laughed at just about everything, he’d found. She didn’t stop delivering food, either, which he might have expected, though she did shift over into items that were easier to distribute.

Their entire mode of interacting was simultaneously very annoying and also not, and Lan Qiren didn’t have the slightest idea about what to do with it.

And then he got his first letter from Wen Ruohan.

[astubborntaurus]

Locational Astrology Part III - Choosing the Best Places to Go

Part I - Relocation Charts

Part II - AstroCartography Maps

Welcome to the 3rd and final part of my Introduction to Locational Astrology lesson! In Part 1 we talked about why location matters in astrology and the role of relocation charts, in Part 2 we talked about AstroCartography maps, and now we’re going to use that knowledge to pick out the best places in the world for you to go. If you haven’t read Parts 1 and 2 yet, I highly suggest reading through those before continuing so this lesson will make sense. Also, again, these techniques depend on having an absolutely exact time of birth for your chart, down to the precise minute. Even just a several minute inaccuracy can completely throw off the entire interpretation.

Here we go!

Start with the natal chart

Now that we understand relocation charts and AstroCartography maps, we’re equipped to start answering the fundamental question of locational astrology: “where are the best places for me to go?” The first step in answering this is to look at your natal chart to get a sense of your most advantageous and most challenging placements. If you have any planets that are in their ruling sign, are exalted, or have trine and/or sextile aspects, make a note of that. If you have planets that are in their detriment or fall, or have squares or oppositions to other planets, make a note of those, too. What we want to do in the next step is find places that put your best-placed planets on top of your AC, MC, DC, or IC, and in ways that line up with what you want to achieve through relocation.

Getting to know the planets

First, let’s look at the planets. Remember, moving to a location on one of these lines could turn up the volume of any of that planet’s traits for you, including those that come from more personal configurations in your chart rather than just the planet’s “normal” archetype. Things like rulership, aspects, sign placements, and anything else from your natal chart can’t be accounted for in this general intro lesson here, but make sure to consider those when interpreting what one of your lines will do. Each line will turn up the volume of that planet in your life exponentially, so you’ll want to get to know the planet’s role in your life as intimately as possible when interpreting what that line means for you.

The general effects of each line

Once you understand the personal role of a planet in your life, it’s a great time to start thinking about what the lines mean. Below are some general interpretations for each planet and angles on the lines. Be sure to check the interpretation for both the planet and the angle. For example, to learn about the Mercury MC line, read both the “Mercury Lines” and the “MC Lines” interpretations below to see which theme is being amplified and where in life it’s being channeled. 

Planets: Which themes you’re amplifying

Sun Lines: If you have a well-placed and well-aspected natal sun, these lines can amplify your vitality and life force, making you feel bolder, energetic, empowered, and inspired in these places.

Moon Lines: These lines put more of a spotlight on your emotions, family, fundamental roots, and sense of security. If you have a well-placed moon, this can go very well on your DC or IC, but it’s typically best to avoid more public-facing moon lines unless you have a really good reason for wanting to go more public with your emotions.

Mercury Lines: These lines can make you much busier and immerse you in constant communication with others and intellectual stimulation.

Venus Lines: These lines put more of an emphasis on themes like beauty, romance, and indulgence. These also tend to be great places to develop your sense of charisma if you have a well-aspected Venus.

Mars Lines: These places can really stimulate your passion, energy, and willpower, but also make you more prone to anger, recklessness, and accidents. They’re exciting, but can be a bit of a wildcard. They’re typically safest if you have a very well-aspected Mars.

Jupiter Lines: These are ideal lines for adventure, growth, and expansion. Your activities on these lines will probably expand to things much vaster than planned. They’re fantastic places to go if you’re feeling restricted and looking to expand more on something in your life.

Saturn Lines: On these lines, you may be forced to work harder and develop a much more rigid sense of discipline and responsibility. They also can make you feel very trapped and restricted, though, and you may end up stuck in these places (literally or metaphorically) and stay for longer than planned

Uranus Lines: These places will make you feel more rebellious and unsatisfied, demanding that you act on your need for freedom and independence to make changes and fight the status quo. They require a large amount of self-motivation, or else you might end up feeling angry and unsatisfied.

Neptune Lines: These lines are excellent for escapism and artistic endeavors. However, things might not be what they seem to be here, and you may find yourself seeing the world through rose tinted glasses in these places if you’re not very careful.

Pluto Lines: These are very intense places that will put you face-to-face with themes of death, the taboo, and very intense transformation.

Lunar Node Lines: These are probably the weirdest of the lines, and visiting them will likely be very deep and karmic experiences that feel too strange to be coincidence. These usually aren’t ideal places to live long-term because they are so spiritually exhausting, but shorter trips to these places can be life-altering experiences in unexpected ways.

Angles: Where in your life that planet will be channeled

AC Lines: These relate to your self, identity, and expression. These put the corresponding planet on the forefront of your identity, allowing you to explore formerly repressed parts of your identity and express yourself more truly to that part of yourself.

MC Lines: These lines make their corresponding planet become extremely public to the world and prominent in your career and public image. If you’d rather keep the traits of a particular planet private, such as your moon, don’t move to its MC line.

DC Lines: These relate to your relationships, coworkers, close friendships, and enemies. The corresponding planets of these lines might manifest in two ways: in the way you experience your connections with others, or in the kinds of people who come into your life here.

IC Lines: These lines make their corresponding planet manifest very strongly in your home and family life. This is ideal for stability-seeking planets that can help you build a solid foundation in your home life in the new location, but planets like Mars and Pluto on the IC can make your home life more volatile and unstable.

Good lines for challenging placements

Some lines may be extremely beneficial for some people, but rathe dangerous for others because of how the corresponding planet is placed and aspected in their natal charts. Earlier in the lecture, I said to take note of the strongest and most challenging placements in your chart to avoid moving to a line that will put your more challenging areas of your life on a pedestal. If there’s a theme in life that you want to develop, but it’s connected to a more challengingly-placed planet in your chart, another way to get beneficial effects for planets that are more harshly placed or aspected in your chart is to click the “w. harmonious aspects” button on the AstroClick travel map from Part 2. This shows where you can go to form trines and sextiles between planets and your AC, IC, MC, or DC in the relocation chart, getting a softer and more mellowed-down but harmonious version of what you’d get on the conjunction line. These can still be very powerful places to go with an incredible impact on your life. Seriously, these lines are epic - don’t underestimate them. 

What to do next

Looking at your AstroCartography map, make note of some specific locations on lines that you like. Once you have a few places in mind, check out your relocation charts for those places more detailed information about how they could impact you, and there you have it! You’ve done a locational astrology reading!

Advanced AstroCartography

These are just a few techniques used in interpreting relocation charts and AstroCartography maps, but many astrologers have their own individualized approaches to it. Some astrologers use techniques such as Zenith Latitudes to Crossing Latitudes to create even more lines, and some people even cross-check planets in both tropical and sidereal charts to see if a planet is well-placed in one but debilitated in another. Also, looking at any transits and progressions impacting the planets you’re hoping to amplify can give you a much more detailed view of what’s going on, but that’s more advanced and outside the scope of this lesson. That only begins the list of many other locational astrology techniques, but I hope that this lesson helped you get a feel for the general idea so that you can start building an approach of your own!

Thank you so much for reading this lesson, and I hope that it was helpful. As always, I’m here if you ever have any questions. This is one of my favorite topics in astrology and I’m always happy to talk about it more.

[paper-n-ashes]

New Endeavours

Characters: Modern AU!Kylo Ren x Female Reader

Words: 2k

Warnings/Tags: Explicit (18+), Sugar daddy relationship, sexual references but no actual smut, bisexual vibes, attending a strip club.

Author’s Note: This is all because of my love, @maryforyou. An AU venture she ignited and I couldn’t let go of. Read into this however you want, I’m an open book in terms of exploring sexuality without labels. Being the first AU I’ve ever attempted, I kept this as an intro, to hopefully dive into the more explicit content I’ve been ruminating on for too long as a Part 2 (depending on how this is received).

*

“Are you sure this what you want?”

You smiled sweetly, smoothing out the creases in your dress as Kylo handed you your coat and gloves. “Like I said every day this week, I’m very sure.”

He still appeared doubtful, plush lips twisted in a disbelieving frown. “I could give you anything your heart desires for your birthday, princess,” he urged, helping you to secure the top buttons of your waistcoat, his large frame shifting close to yours. “This barely seems like enough of a gift for such a special occasion.”

Kylo was used to showering you with physical symbols of his adoration in the 18 months you had known him. The man had more money than he knew what to do with, lavishing all types of jewellery and clothing on you, some of the pieces you were certain cost more than your tiny apartment in the outskirts of the city. Every time you tried to refuse the extravagant gifts, Kylo always replied with sweetened notions of needing to worship and adore the personified goddess he saw you as. And when spoken in his infuriatingly mesmerising tenor, they would quickly conquer your resistance.

You were acutely aware of what this looked like from an outside perspective. A wealthy older man courting a young woman over 10 years his junior. Bathing her head to toe in the finest attire, parading her around in places a woman of her standing wouldn’t have been able to afford in two lifetimes.

A label came with this kind of behaviour. One you didn’t particularly like, yet was still true.

Sugar daddy.

There wasn’t a way you could deny that’s how your association with Kylo begun.

You’d heard whispers of other girls at the college you went to doing it. Offering their bodies to the affluent men of this city. At first, you’d scoffed at the idea. But when that third overdue notice of your credit card debt came, with the threat of eviction hanging over your head, you didn’t really have much choice.

A name was given to you of a bar that specialised in these kinds of meetings, completely covertly of course. And there Kylo had found you, hiding away in a secluded corner, stirring the gin and tonic in front of you with a single finger. At first, you’d assumed he was a well-dressed bartender, seemingly too young and strikingly handsome to be in need of a place like this. So you smiled sweetly and told him you weren’t quite done with your drink.

Within such an innocent interaction, Kylo knew he had to have you. And he did, 45 minutes later in the poorly lit bathroom stall, half-dressed bodies clutched together as he had you perch on the porcelain sink, fucking you with an uncharacteristically reckless abandon.

He hadn’t intended to. He hadn’t been entirely sure what he anticipated from that evening, the recommendation being given to him from a higher executive who regularly partook in the questionable operations of this establishment. Kylo meant only to scope the place out, sit for a quiet solitary drink out of the way of other patrons. There, he’d discovered you.

Shrinking into your stool, somewhat inhibited, clearly out of your element. The shy smile that spread across your face after he murmured a stiff hello ensnared him in moments, simply for how sincere it was. He wasn’t used to that.

Another thing Kylo wasn’t used to was the type of electricity that followed in your conversation. Rarely had he experienced an exchange that was so charged yet… genuine. You didn’t appear expectant, didn’t care to know how much money he made or the status of his career. You simply wanted to talk.

It was interesting how this fuelled an urge to make you speechless, to have you resorting to whines and whimpers rather than articulate your thoughts with any words. He didn’t act on them. Content to bide his time, play his cards right, set a precedence of composure and restraint in the hope of securing another meeting. You, however, had never cultivated the same type of discipline Kylo had.

After too many long minutes of flirtatious banter, you leaned forward, mouthing in a hushed tone, asking him to meet you in the women’s bathroom.

The chance encounter had bound you for longer than predicted.

Although never explicitly stated, the two of you fulfilled a portion of each other’s needs. Kylo required adequate distraction from his corporate life, someone who could slip into his erratic schedule with ease to… relieve him of mounting tension. In return, he provided you the monetary means to live in the city of your dreams without constant fear of homelessness.

In the months that passed, your arrangement turned into something stable, secure. His presence a constant in your life. While his working hours were long and finishing times unpredictable, Kylo could always count on you to be summoned to him from a single text message. Be it in the middle of the day, or the early hours of morning, you would race to a place of his choosing. Sometimes at his lush apartment, sometimes his office, and a plethora of restaurant bathrooms across the city after particularly stressful business lunches.

Initially, your involvement was kept mostly out of public view. Kylo had wanted to protect you from the judgements and negative connotations that were unavoidable in the arena of his work. Around the year mark, these reservations about being seen with you seemed to dissipate. Soon you were linked hand in hand at countless high-class dinners and charity events. A poised and elegant couple, right until the last set of eyes moved away.

This is where you had your fun.

As spectacular as Kylo was at fucking you until you saw stars, he’d surprisingly gone this long in life without venturing into more creative territory when it came to satisfaction. His version of sex was fast and hard, needing as much as you as he could get, chasing release with no frills or diversion. He’d never had the time, or the right lover, to encourage any of his deeply hidden fantasies. Until you.

You were game for anything. Sexually adventurous. Ready and willing to try all there was on offer just to elicit the highest levels of ecstasy. It was difficult not to be at the thought of Kylo’s hands, his mouth, his tongue, any part of him.

Although a little more slowly, he began to welcome new experiences, new pursuits of pleasure. Witnessing your reactions to these efforts became somewhat of an addiction for him. The way you writhed and squealed when exploring anal play for the first time. The way you surrendered and adored his verbal degradation and physical strikes. The way your body twitched and spasmed after the use of a newly obtained toy purchased with his platinum credit card.

You never pushed him, or forced him into anything he found uncomfortable in the chase of a sexual high. Communication was paramount, and boundaries were respected.

Interestingly enough, tonight was a boundary he never thought you’d cross.

“This is what I asked for, remember?” you smiled, taking the opportunity to press a gentle kiss to his nose.

Kylo’s apprehension refused to dissipate, while still clutching you closer. “It just… seems like this is something I will enjoy more than you.”

You barely withheld the urge to roll your eyes. “You’re sure about that, are you?”

His eyebrows crinkled, thinking the question over. There was the hint of a smirk that tugged the corner of his mouth, a subtle excited quiver in the breath he exhaled. “So you’re not doing this for me?”

“Not at all,” you breathed. Your palm slipped under his clean-shaven jaw, skating a thumb reassuringly over his cheek. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”

“You have?”

You hummed a yes, drifting your lips intoxicatingly close to his, staring up with wide eyes.

Kylo’s mouth twisted slightly. “I wouldn’t want you to feel jealous, princess.”

“You’re only looking,” you insisted softly. “And, even if you touch a little…” You bit your lip at the thought. “Those women won’t be who gets to be taken home and fucked until it hurts.”

There was a noticeable tensing in the arms circled around you, as Kylo’s eyes began to burn with an impatient greed. “I could do that now, right against this door.”

It was difficult to deny how you’d happily allow him to make true on that statement. To slam you into the exquisitely carved oak door of his apartment and fill you to your absolute limit. However, the tantalising image of your planned evening was too consuming, heaving and tugging for you to indulge a deeply embedded desire you’d never been brave enough to pursue.

“Save it for when we get home,” you chirped, reaching for the doorhandle and dragging Kylo into the hallway.

 *

“Follow me,” the maître D instructed, her voice cheerfully welcoming. Even the sight of her silken, green dress was intimidating, the fabric glossing over her nimble shape as she guided you up the set of stairs. The lighting was low, almost too dark to see properly, Kylo’s grip strong as your steps were drowned out by the sultry music emanating behind the double doors at the apex. As they were opened to you, the hypnotic baseline ricocheted around your body.

You scanned around the large room, bold lights illuminating a risen stage with two currently unused silver poles at either corner. Plush chairs circled around, occupied by a differing array of men. Slinking between the patrons were women decorated with luxurious, high-end lingerie, each one styled and set to provoke unyielding temptation.

This was a completely new undertaking for you. Attending a strip club. Usually a male endeavour, seeking out instant gratification in the form of scantily clad bodies and paid attention. You knew this was an unusual request for a birthday outing, yet in truth there was nothing from Kylo you wanted more.

The two reasons were somewhat opposing, although they would still feed the same goal. Satisfying a craving.

One being that you had always found women to be alluring and captivating to a height you’d never really accepted, almost been afraid of. Only with time and maturity had you learned your attraction to them was a natural occurrence you were now ready to explore.

The other reason was a little more scandalous, and what you hadn’t quite articulated to Kylo yet. To have the view of his eyes roaming another woman’s almost naked body as she exposed herself to him, drove you wild. In a situation you should feel jealousy, you were only devoured by an uncontainable lust.

Occasionally your mind had forayed into imaginations where he would take another like he’d taken you countless times, able to watch his hands clawing at supple breasts, the smooth motion of his hips, how his thick cock would split a tight, dripping cunt in two. All the while he would deride and goad you, layering you with taunts, desperate to inflame your envy and ownership.

Your plan for this particular evening didn’t extend that far. You only wished to enjoy the performance of mesmeric women in their most enchanting form, observe Kylo’s undeniable arousal at the same lithe, flexible bodies, and return home to remind him that only you could ignite the billowing flames of a violent release.

Oh, but that plan crumbled when you’d each settled into your seats, just in time for the next show of seduction. A pair of glittered, platform heels slinked near to the pole closest to you, your vision roaming upwards over the statuesque figure they connected to. Delicately laced, ivory fabric shielded her most intimate portions from full view, conforming flawlessly to the curves of her figure. Somehow demure yet indecently sensual.

Lips parted, your breath hitched as the exquisite woman twirled around, her eyes trained to you as she let a wicked smile appear. You were sure this was a regular occurrence, a flirtation she expressed to all the patrons in this room. Yet, as she began to move in time with the decadent beat of the music, her eyes stayed transfixed to you marvelling stare.

In an unprecedented display of courage, you beckoned Kylo closer to you, whispering to his ear. “Her. That’s what I really want for my birthday.”

*To be continued*

Let me know if you don’t want to be tagged in future works! 

@tlcwrites @roanniom @maryforyou @mariesackler @sacklerscumrag @barbers-glimmerin-darlin @finn-ray-nal-beads @mylifeisactuallyamess @hopeamarsu @foxilayde @goddesstonythetiger @caillea @direnightshade @blackberries45 

[ms-m-astrologer]

Transiting Mercury enters Capricorn, pre-Rx Zone

Monday, December 13 - Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Yes, pre-retrograde zone time. At least this year it's missing the "holiday mailing stuff" season.

The first thing to note is that Mercury is transitioning from being retrograde in Air signs (Libra, Aquarius, Gemini) to being retrograde in Earth signs (Capricorn, Taurus, Virgo). Kind of like getting yanked out of our ivory towers and forced to use our brains in a practical way. (I'll have more to say about this when I get to my Merc Rx post, soon I hope.)

It's in our own best interests, then, to use this pre-Rx period to build up as much as possible a positive Merc/Cap experience. And I think that's going to be very possible! It isn't going to be a piece of cake, naturally - nothing in Capricorn is ever a piece of cake. The goal for Mercury/Capricorn is mental discipline and maturity. What do we have to do, to pull that off?

Input/Learning - Mercury run amok in Capricorn can make us disinclined to "learn" anything, if it isn't going to boost our bottom line. This is the same way of thinking that led to cuts in arts programs in public schools - that demands of us to "monetize" our hobbies - you get the picture. A better use of this would be to take a more disciplined approach to learning things. (And, just maybe, think about: what would be a good skill to take into my old age? Look for something that is really going to challenge you.)

Process/Thinking and Reasoning - one of the most useful college-level classes I ever took was called "Programming Logic." I didn't touch a computer all semester; we just learned how to do computer programming flow charts. (The fact that I have divided Mercury actions into "input-process-output" is a souvenir of the class.) Writing a computer program took a disciplined, careful way of thinking. If you don't take care figuratively to dot the i's and cross the t's, you (and your client) are going to be in trouble. What can you do to calm your mind down enough to take a more structured approach?

Output/Communication - Mercury in Capricorn doesn't waste words. A couple of styles come to mind: pre-Spirit Scrooge, snapping and snarking at everyone; and the wise old grandparent sharing some quiet wisdom. It would be smart to remember the saying "Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind" every time you are tempted (spoken or written) to put in your two-cents' worth.

The next 16 days will provide us with plenty of "evidence" that we need to adjust out Mercury processes. There are a lot of what I call "intermediate" aspects - semi-squares (45 degrees), sesquares (135 degrees), and inconjuncts (150 degrees) - which I think will give us all that kind of mental "niggling feeling" we all get at times. And if they push us into making our minds more mature, then good! I'll accept the inconvenience!

Major aspects include:

December 18, a square to Chiron Rx/Aries

December 20, a trine to Uranus Rx/Taurus

December 22, a conjunction to Juno/Capricorn and a sextile to Pallas Athene/Pisces (This will be an extraordinarily busy day, with a lot of those "intermediate" aspects happening for Mercury as well. Someone we love and trust is going to tell us something important; will we be mature enough to respond in a way that helps us mature?)

December 26, a sextile to Neptune/Pisces

[firelxdykatara]

You’re doing a LoK rewrite, correct? Would be really interested in hearing how you plan on fixing Suyin’s character and the Lin-Suyin conflict because……. oh boy. Man there’s a lot to unpack there. This is what happens when we don’t let Toph just raise her fucking kids for the sake of pushing a stupid as hell narrative about working women and single motherhood.

I am indeed!

In... you know, the way I'm doing most of my big potential projects, in that I have a folder with some documents that have plot notes and... some day I may actually get full, finished fics out of them (h2o AU is in there, as is my voltron!atla fusion AU, and uhhhh my book 3 atla rewrite, and a few other things), so... but I will say that the docs I have for my LoK rewrite so far amount to roughly 4.2k words of just Plot and Character Notes, which may some day turn into words of Story, hopefully.

ANYWAY, POINT IS: yes, this exists, and I have Many Many Thoughts.

Including how the Gaang kids would shake out! Cause I know I'm doing Zutara, and maybe Tokka???? Although I don't wanna just leave Suki out either... maybe a throuple??? Or Sukka having an amicable breakup before Sokka and Toph get together--maybe she already has Lin by then, and Sokka helps support her through the grief of losing Kanto???? Idk honestly, I haven't actually figured any of that out definitively yet except that Aang was perfectly happy to settle down with an Air Acolyte from one of the rebuilt temples because he grew up and out of his crush on Katara pretty easily once he hit puberty and matured a bit.

UHHH none of which is actually an answer to your question, because it's a valid one! Which is why I've been sitting on this a while (10 days I'm so sorry) bc I haven't made any solid decisions but I've been letting it percolate around my head a bit. And the more I think about it, the more I really like the Sukka -> Tokka idea (and I don't want to kill off Suki since the kids all deserve their awesome Kyoshi warrior auntie in their lives, and also I want a Sukka kid to be besties with Iara [zuko and katara's youngest] so maybe she gets with someone else after she and Sokka split? I could be talked into Ty Lee/Suki actually, the more I think about it....), but obviously having a stable father figure and a Toph who is... not what LoK made her out to be will dramatically change the Beifong family dynamic.

That said, I think I actually have a solution. (I'm so sorry for what I'm about to do.) Toph has Lin with Kanto--and he passes away when Lin is two or three, which is why she has very few memories of her father. (Although none of this 'she doesn't even know his name until she's 50+ cause Toph didn't tell her daughters about their fathers' bullshit.) Sokka is there for her through it all (all of the gaang is, of course, but you know that it sometimes just hits different when it's someone you're also starting to fall in love with, especially when there are older and much more deeply buried feelings there that are now resurfacing, because at least in my version Toph was deeply in love with Sokka when they were teenagers, but he was in love with Suki and she also loved Suki so she didn't want to mess up anything about their family or the group dynamics by making her feelings anyone else's problem), they fall in love, get married and have Suyin.

(Sokka may jokingly refer to it as a shotgun wedding, but the truth is he wanted to propose well before he found out she was pregnant, his attempts just kept getting messed up in increasingly comedic fashion.)

Throughout all of this, Republic City has been established, Sokka is Chancellor, Toph is something of a defacto police chief--mostly because, at the time, no one else was willing to volunteer, and she jokingly offered to whip the law enforcement, but unfortunately everyone else at the meeting took her seriously. However, she is also the founder of the probending league, and basically her feelings about law enforcement are complicated and she actively discouraged her kids from joining the force which is part of why Lin did. How else do you have a teen rebel phase with a parent like Toph? (Which, in this instance, means tough and firm but fair, with a 'you break it, it's up to you to fix it' attitude and very little desire to actually control her daughters and their behavior.)

Ah, but here's the rub.

Suyin is ten years old when Sokka dies, and Lin is sixteen. I'm not sure how he's killed--maybe by Yakone, to tie it into my plans for Amon and book 1. (Note that I'm not sure when the Yakone bloodbending trial happened in canon, but it doesn't matter. The timeline I'm gonna build will be completely different post-comet, and I'll eventually write it all down so that I can keep things straight.) Which would incidentally provide excellent means of having Katara have a very personal stake in the Amon conflict, and perhaps color the fight between him and Iara, but I'm getting off track. And I think Sokka being killed by Yakone, and Toph being unable to protect or save him, or deliver her own brand of justice to avenge him (because Aang is there to stop her and.... shit probably got ugly, I suspect she didn't talk to Aang for at least twenty years after Sokka's death--and this isn't to say I think Toph is particularly violent or murderous, but in that moment, she absolutely wanted to kill the man with her bare hands, and however much she may have regretted it afterwards, she took a very long time to forgive Aang for stopping her in the first place), is what results in Toph stepping down as police chief.

She didn't withdraw from her daughters or fuck off into the swamp or anything (words cannot express how much I hate that part of her canon history), but she did grieve for a very long time. Lin, meanwhile, felt like it was up to her to keep her family together, while also feeling a desperate need to... prove herself, I think. And because her mother was so adamant that she not join the police force, that's exactly what she does. I think Lin completely misread Toph's intentions, too, and believed that the discouragement was because her mother didn't think she had what it takes, when in reality I think Toph was scared of Lin losing herself in the job like she herself had begun to, and eventually coming up on something she couldn't change or fix and making the same mistakes she had.

(I think Toph and Lin have communication issues largely because they are both headstrong and willful, but where Toph thought she was giving her daughters the room they would need to make their own way, what Lin desperately craved was direction and she felt like that was something her mother simply couldn't understand.)

Suyin, on the other hand, fell in with a bad crowd like in canon. I think that what she desperately needed was attention, similar to Lin craving direction, and Toph was trying so hard not to be her own parents that she went a little too far in the other direction and Suyin began to feel like it didn't matter what she did, her mom wouldn't care, or get angry, or discipline her, or anything. Lin and Suyin butted heads a lot growing up, too, especially after Sokka's death, because Lin tried to rein in her sister's behavior and this was met with resistance and derision because Suyin felt like Lin was trying to be both mom and dad and she was neither but her big sister would never admit to being just as lost as she was and it made her furious.

So when Suyin is sixteen, and Lin is twenty-two and new to the force, The Big Rift happens. Lin catches Suyin and her gang, tries to apprehend her, gets a scar on her face in the ensuing conflict. But instead of abusing her power and sending her problem child off to her mother before fucking off to the swamp to avoid the consequences of her actions, Toph tries to actually fix things. Suyin cools her heels in prison for a while, because she was paralyzed by guilt at the time when she hurt her sister (a few inches lower and she could have slit her throat), and was still there when Lin's backup arrived.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh..... I'm so sorry I rambled for so long, BUT THE UPSHOT IS: I think Suyin learned a bit about culpability and taking responsibility for her own actions, Toph realized that her daughters had different needs than she did at their age (and I think a lot of the problem was that grief clouded her own ability to connect with her daughters, and in trying to not be her own parents she lost sight of how to be the parent her own daughters needed), and Lin, I think, had to realize that she had never fully processed the loss of not one but two fathers and had turned to her job in order to avoid actually confronting the grief that had overshadowed her childhood.

However, she did not forgive Suyin, at least not right away--and she wasn't forced or expected to. Suyin understood that she crossed a serious line, she took her lumps and did her time, and no one shamed Lin for her anger. I think, as a result, she had less reason to hold onto that bitterness, and perhaps by the time the story actually begins, she and Suyin are on much better terms, though I haven't worked it out exactly yet.

UHHH yeah I went on for days lmao. All of this is subject to change, too, depending on the needs of the story whenever I get around to actually writing it all down, BUT these are my initial thoughts, at least.

[siriuslyobsessedwith]

Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger: Nightmares

They are about three months into dating, still in the early stages of testing each other’s boundaries and asking guiding questions when Hermione sleeps over at Draco’s apartment for the first time

Stumbling through the door after a casual night out, their hands are on each other in a millisecond: Draco threads his fingers through her curls while she grins into his lips; Hermione’s hands slide up his neck and her legs straddle his waist and they tumble through the apartment and into his bedroom and the night progresses

Neither of them think to mention their nightmares before they fall asleep tangled into each other. Burgeoning love has a way of doing that to people, of turning normally careful, disciplined individuals soft with happiness and safety.

But the nightmares have come for both of them for years. Draco’s began the summer after 5th year when his father was in Azkaban and Voldemort set up his court in his home. For the first time in his life, he felt helpless, terrified, and, above all, alone. His father was gone and he felt the responsibility of protecting his mother in every waking moment. At night, he failed over and over and over again.

Now, however, his nightmares are of him failing everyone he loves and having to watch them die. But they are also of his very real failures, of watching his now-girlfriend scream and contort under his aunt’s curse, of watching his mother be punished for his inability to kill.

Hermione’s nightmares start the same time. She dreams of the curse she was struck with in the Department of Mysteries, of the cruel twist of the Death Eater’s wand as he sent the bright light toward her. As the danger becomes more imminent, her nightmares change to watching herself make a mistake that costs her friends their lives. She, too, lives with a constant burden of saving everyone. At night, she watches everyone die, and then wakes screaming as she too is punished for her failure.

After Malfoy Manor and the Battle of Hogwarts, however, her nightmares change. They are less visual, more visceral. She feels Greyback’s breath down the back of her neck, the lightning strike of each Crucio. She can hear the screams of Mrs. Weasley over Fred’s body and the whimpers of Lavender Brown in the Great Hall. She is surrounded by horror through all her senses but sight. Through it all, she can see nothing. She is helpless, lost, and in the dark.

They both wake up from nightmares differently. Draco convulses as the green light inevitably jets towards him or his mother or his father and his eyes snap open, and for a moment he is paralyzed with horror. His breath come in frantic puffs and his hands clench into fists. He lays stiff, eyes wide and staring, his mind willing his body to respond. But for a moment, he is trapped, unable to do anything but try to breath.

Hermione wakes up screaming every time. She bolts upright and her cheeks are crying and she has to hold herself to calm down, calm down, calm down. After the war, she took to putting silencing charms on her room when she was staying with the Weasley’s. The first night she forgot was the first day she started looking for her own apartment. The pity and pain in everyone’s eyes the next morning was worse for her than any nightmare.

Even though they are both nestled into the other, safe and happy and hopeful for the first time in a while, their nightmares still find them. Hermione wakes first, screaming and stuffing the sheets into her mouth in an attempt to muffle her cries. She buries her head into her knees and shakes and sobs as silently as she can. She didn’t want him to think she was so broken anymore. And she can’t possibly see the same pity in his eyes. That would break her forever.

Draco is an incredibly light sleeper, so he is slammed out of watching her scream at his home to watch her sob in his bed. For a moment he is still paralyzed, at once trying to calm himself down and trying to make himself move. He’s furious at himself for being so weak and so trapped that he can’t comfort her. For a solid minute he is trapped and just has to watch her sob and heave and tremble and god he swears it’s worse than any nightmare.

When his body lets him move again, he reaches out for her, threading his hand around her back and pulling her to him. She jumps, turning wide eyes to him that seem to search for something. He holds her gaze, and they communicate silently for a bit. Sometimes words don’t work.

I hear you, he thinks to her. I’m here and I don’t want you to be alone.

I’m sorry, she thinks to him. I’m sorry you have to see me like this and I’m sorry I’m too lost in my nightmare to help you with yours. 

I have nightmares too, they both think. We are both so broken, it’s almost funny.

Is their shared suffering beautiful? Maybe it’s not, but understanding without pity is something neither of them had every truly hoped for before this. They say a million important things just with their eyes, and then, in silent agreement, Hermione nestles herself into Draco and they fall into an uneasy but nonetheless comforting sleep. Hermione, lulled by the sound of Draco’s heart while he counts her breaths and watches her face, gradually dips into sleep.

They don’t mention the unspeakable. That their nightmares are opposite and the same. That he dreams of doing nothing while she suffers, and she dreams of the terrifying, impossible pain and the memory of being utterly helpless.

When Hermione wakes up to the sound of the coffee maker, she startles a bit, realizing that she isn’t in her own flat. And then she remembers last night. The spot in the bed next to her is cold, and she bunches the covers up over her chest as she shivers. 

She tiptoes out of bed, rustling through his drawers to find a t-shirt of his to wear, and attempts to wrangle her sleep-ruined hairdo from the night before into something kind of ok. When she tiptoes out of the room, she imagines she is leaving the nightmares behind. She catches him in the kitchen, humming to himself as he makes coffee just the way she likes it, and she smiles at him because this man, without the burdens of the world, is all hers. 

And then she remembers. And she’s guilty and angry and sad and worried. He heard that scream, watched her heave and shake and try to remember it’s over, it’s over, it’s not real. There’s no way he will look at her the same. The acceptance of last night was temporary, a necessity of two sleep-deprived war survivors.

“Granger, don’t you know it’s rude to stare? And a bit creepy, if I’m being honest.”

She’s startled out of her thoughts by a steaming cup of coffee and cream and she looks up and his eyes are full of understanding. Not pity. Understanding and promise. For a moment she thinks they are just not going to talk about it (and if she’s completely honest, she could live with that), but he proves her wrong, just as he has so many times before. 

“Nightmares, huh,?” he quips, eyes boring in to her without apology. “Every night?”

“Yes,” she whispers. 

“Always the same?”

“Yes. You too?”

“Yes. Do you--,” he pauses, hand worrying the back of his neck. “Do you want to...talk about it?” His eyes are hesitant, as though there is an invisible line he knows he can’t cross. 

“Not really,” she murmurs. “Do you?”

“No.”

They pause in silence for a moment. He’s thinking of how he can possibly comfort her if she doesn’t want to talk and then condemning himself for thinking she would ever want to talk to him about it. She’s imagining all the things he’s thinking, that she blames him or that she hates him or that she’ll never forgive him. 

They’ve never broached the subject of that night. He’s told her of everything he did to protect his family and stay alive, and she’s told him about the months on the run, of the months without Ron. But they’ve never talked about Malfoy Manor. 

At the very same time, they speak: “I’m sorry.” and “I never blamed you.” at the same time, and then terrified eyes lost in each other’s gaze. 

Hermione’s never been one for difficult emotions. She starts laughing, giggling at first and he’s looking at her like she is unstable and insane and she’s choking on how insane this all is and how did they find each other. 

“We are,” she breaks off, interrupted by another chain of giggles, “We are quite a pair, Malfoy. However did we find each other?”

Nothing else needs to be said. They find comfort in the unspoken: touches, eye contact, acts of kindness, protectiveness. They don’t need to talk about things they desperately want to leave behind them. 

“Well, Granger, I believe you burst into my compartment looking for a toad some years ago.”

“And you were an utter arse for the next 7 years.”

“And then you became obsessed with me. And of course I pitied you, so here we are,” he smirks, knowing he’s bought himself a thorough chastisement. 

He doesn’t expect his witch to launch herself into his arms, to place her soft lips on his in a touch that says everything and nothing. 

And their nightmares don’t define them. Maybe they’ll talk about them, maybe they won’t. They won’t let the darkness of before taint the dreams they have for the future. The dreams of something that might be, something that could be, some future that links them together. 

[medusinestories]

Black Sails, IV (S1, ep 04)

- Silver's horrified face when he finds out he's going to have to roast pigs is a Journey, starting with shock, then fake smiling, and then this horrified shuddery expression. It's just as interesting when they drop the dead pig at his feet and he clearly doesn't know what to do with it and also finds it disgusting. I can absolutely see where all the Jewish John Silver headcanons come from, especially since it's unlikely that a London urchin has never seen a dead pig and raw meat in general before.

- Here we have the first performance of Cassandra DeGroot: he knows that the bay they'd chosen to do the careening was too dangerous, and warns the crew. He's immediately countered by Flint, who has much more persuasive arguments to get the careening done fast but in a risky manner. (this whole thing reminds me of our current COVID/climate situation, where scientists get talked over by politicians, and people prefer listening to the latter because they seem to offer much better prospects than the “catastrophist” former)

- In this episode Billy is now quartermaster and he shows himself to actually be really good at disciplining the crew, something Gates, DeGroot and even Flint recognise. However, he also agreed to do the careening only because he's afraid to say no to Flint and allowed the men to have a fuck tent, which he feared would distract them - and it did, the two men who placed the rope on the wrong tree decided not to follow his orders and go fuck instead. This all weighs on him enormously after the disaster with Randall and Morley, who accuses him minutes before his death of already being in Flint's pocket. It's pretty clear that more responsibility doesn't do Billy's mental state any good.

- Morley's story about the Maria Aleyne gives some idea of a timeline, albeit a faint one. The incident took place "a number of years back", before Billy joined. This means that Billy is a somewhat new addition to the crew. We know that Randall was bosun when Billy joined. This also establishes that Lord Hamilton has been dead for several years, which now begs the question: who is the Lord Proprietor that Richard Guthrie is now in touch with? Did Thomas have a younger brother who inherited the Bahamas? Was someone new appointed? Was there a gap between Proprietors that allowed the pirates to establish themselves even more after Lord Alfred's death?

- I just adore the fact that Miranda actually went to stinking, violent Nassau because she was just too impatient to wait at home and wanted to be there when the Walrus came in and immediately hear the news of Lord Alfred's death. She is that vengeful and angry and I love her <3

- Speaking of which, this episode gives us the Passive-Agressive Sex Scene which makes so many people doubt of Flint's attraction to Miranda. Just look at Flint’s face: this man isn't uncomfortable or sad he is PISSED. He plays starfish and glares at Miranda all through it (while maintaining an erection all the same!). Miranda must be hella frustrated (or determined) because she manages to get off in spite of all of this (also, how uncommon is it for a sex scene to end when the woman climaxes rather than the man?) It's only when it ends that both Flint and Miranda are both shown as vulnerable and sad and reflective, with Flint reaching up to touch her but not quite getting there - imo because he's still angry but knows that she (and he) needs comfort.

- This leads into the argument over Meditations, and Miranda explicitly talking about Thomas and not wanting to forget him. The book hasn't been touched in a long time, confirming the idea that Miranda shared it with Richard Guthrie because Flint refuses to touch it. Her grief, her loneliness, are incredibly poignant in this scene, and we see Flint shift from bristling and stonily glaring at her, to absolutely melting (Toby's facial expression shifts here are just *chef's kiss*) and finally being gentle and tender with her. However, even though he promises to make things better, Miranda clearly doesn't believe him anymore.

- This brings in a big theme in the episode: betrayal from people you care for/trust. Mr Scott asks Eleanor not to do anything rash in order to get the Andromache’s guns, only to discover her Plan B: to kill Bryson if he didn't comply. In the meantime, Richard Guthrie tells (a very sceptical) Miranda that he can only support Eleanor and Flint, because he pretty much has no choice in the matter. He then proceeds to betray his daughter by making a deal with Bryson and with Mr Scott, who’s still smarting from Eleanor’s betrayal and who Guthrie tries to convince by saying that Eleanor's endeavour will lead to her death and Nassau’s destruction (considering what we later find out about Mr Scott, Eleanor’s safety is probably not be the argument that actually compels Mr Scott - but he certainly doesn't want the Navy searching the area and finding Maroon Island, and needs a stable Nassau to continue supplying his island).

- The Undercooked Pig scene and Silver's attempts at communicating with Flint will never not be funny. Silver looks so small when Flint glares him down, but that doesn't last all that long: once Flint has taught him how to cook the pork, Silver seems much more bold, asking Flint how he learned to glaze the pig, insisting that Flint should trust him and not Billy. This is also a moment where Silver shows that, unlike Flint, he is incredibly perceptive: he noticed that Billy is "straining at the seams" because of the lie he told. And while Flint spits a "there is no we" and calls Silver a rodent, it's obvious that Silver's words still have an impact on him. Their collaboration is sealed when Silver hands him the cleaver so that he can save Randall (and himself). When Flint returns the cleaver to Silver, he's ready to accept that Silver is actually on his side (albeit for selfish reasons) and listens to him for the first time.

- Max believed that she could charm Vane's remaining crew into being kind to her - and overall it seems to have worked. While again I hate this plot, it does give an interesting insight into how even the worst pirate crew is portrayed: most of the men are happy to comply with Max and get sexual rewards "for gentle obedience". Most of them, basically, aren't violent monsters deep down. However there's always one, in this case That Big Bastard (I'm sure he has a name, I just can't be bothered to google it), who clearly gets a kick out of torturing/raping people and hates the idea of a woman taking the lead.

- Fuck You Jack is another theme of this episode. Vane is high on opium and booze and has basically lost the will to do anything. Anne has been courted by several other crews, but Jack hasn't received any offers (note there's no loyalty to Vane here, Jack’s ready to leave, but nobody will have him) and nobody is willing to help him after the pearl cock-up. Then Noonan wants Max back, which Jack refuses because she's the only thing keeping the few members of his crew loyal - and Anne isn't on board with that, leading to her telling him to fuck himself. This, btw, might have crossed Jack’s mind considering the position she was in when he found her. I think it’s easy to forget that Jack is portrayed as pretty callous and happily willing to treat people like pawns too.

- When Richard Guthrie talks about Nassau, he describes it as a place "a place where she [Eleanor] matters, a place where you [Mr Scott] matter", and adds that a place like this isn't meant to last. Nassau, then, is currently an utopia where women and black people can have some semblance of power - and he doesn't believe that this will ever be allowed to exist because this kind of story never has a happy ending in their current society. But when Flint talks to Eleanor about their project, he's of the opposite view: people don't believe that it's possible, but when they succeed, they'll say it was inevitable. It seems Flint is firmly in the camp of "winners get to tell the story", and that the story will influence how the rest of the world sees them.

- When the Walrus tilts and squashes Randall, Flint stops Billy from intervening and rushes to rescue Randall himself - even though he knows the ship will be cut loose at any moment. He puts himself into incredible danger in this moment. Why? Theoretically, it could be for a manipulative purpose: to look good to the crew, or to get rid of Morley. But Flint seems genuinely involved in the struggle to save Randall, and he barely had time to think before he ran off. I feel that this is a rare spontaneous moment for Flint, where instead of thinking about his plans or his position as Captain, he just thinks like a person in an emergency who wants to rescue someone else. He absolutely could have died out there. And while Billy seems to suspect him of having killed Morley, I don't find that reading compatible with what we're shown of Flint trying to save Randall. True, he may have kicked/pushed Morley at the very last second, but we’ll never know that for sure.

- Back to the theme of people betraying their loved ones, we have Richard Guthrie getting back to Miranda, telling her he knows who she is and revealing the "Thomas went mad because Miranda and Flint cheated" story which he heard from Lord Alfred himself. So now Miranda knows that her identity has been revealed and that Richard could spread the story to, say, Pastor Lambrick (let's not pretend this didn't cross her mind, she keeps her identity secret for a reason). And then Guthrie offers her a way back to civilisation. This, right after a kid threw a stone at her, calling her a witch. This, after Flint has promised to make things better, even as he goes deeper into reckless/utopian plans of fortifying Nassau. Backed into a corner, was Miranda ever going to refuse, if she could be safe and have him be safe? And obviously, Richard Guthrie isn't doing this out of the kindness of his heart. He apparently figured out that Miranda was a way to get in touch with Pastor Lambrick and that ridding New Providence of Flint and winning over the “good”, normal inhabitants would be a perfect beginning to buying back his influence on the Island - the end goal being named Governor, of course.

- If there was any doubt that Vane’s tough guy thing is part of an act, his opium hallucination of Eleanor makes it crystal clear: "you're alone, you don't have to pretend with me". That is, pretend that he's not afraid and that he's not vulnerable. The hallucination also offers Vane an explanation for why Eleanor is how she is: like him she's afraid of appearing weak. He's actually spot on, a big problem in their relationship is that they're too alike and are struggling for dominance. Which is probably why Vane wants to overcome his fear and weakness, and regain power by confronting his old slave master (btw, nice parallel with Flint haunted by Miranda in S3). The scene where Vane kills Noonan also shows him in a very animalistic light - at first he's cornered and somewhat pathetic, beaten, throwing up, only saved by the fact that a gun misfires. Then he turns violent: quick, instinctive and relentless, deaf to Noonan's plea to leave him alive, even if theoretically it could have been profitable for him.

- I have to say, I snickered quite a bit when Pastor Lambrick sees Richard Guthrie and tells him "God teaches us not to cheer when someone stumbles, in your case I may ask his forgiveness". I mean, I really see his point. He leads a group of Puritans who are trying to make a life for themselves on this island. Historically, people who lived and farmed in New Providence were constant targets for errant pirates, who robbed, raped and killed a lot of them. This is what the Pastor is trying to protect his congregation from (and Miranda, since he doesn't understand why she's with Flint and is likely terrified that a pirate lives so close to his congregation, hence the spies he sends out). There's a bit of a parallel with Billy, where both Lambrick and Billy are presented as being very preoccupied with the well-being of the group they're responsible for, and both are presented as, well, Goody-Two-Shoes - (self-)righteous, loyal, honest, caring. Except they're both human, and sooner or later they falter.

[all-about-cr7]

The managers about Cristiano’s second debut:

Steve Bruce: “When you’re the best player in the world, arguably, then this sort of thing happens. It’s quite an incredible story of him going back. I’m sure they could have filled the stadium ten times over if they wished!"

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer: “Of course, we’ve followed his career from afar since he left here and everyone’s very happy to have him back. He can speak for himself, but it seems like he’s happy to be back as well. The mood has been very good, he’s worked well and we’re looking forward to Saturday of course.

"He’s been having a good pre-season with Juventus, he’s played for the national team, he’s had a good week with us here. He’ll definitely be on the pitch at some point, that’s for sure.

Q: Last time you spoke to us, you seemed a bit confused about where Cristiano would end up. "I wasn’t confused when I spoke to you. You were confused. I wasn’t. I was quite happy at that moment but couldn’t say everything, of course. Cristiano coming back in, just the way he’s conducted himself this week, he’s come in and we know what he’s achieved in his career, but he’s come in here to achieve more, and he’s come in here to put demands [on himself]; that’s what he does. He’s lived his life with the discipline of a top, top professional. Ever since he came here, I remember, he was the first one who did the prep really well. Every day, 45 minutes before the training session, you started looking at this kid doing this before training, and he’ll have the same effect with these players. Even bringing Raphael [Varane] in, he’s come in with a winners’ mentality, an unbelievable focus, but of course Cristiano comes in and there’s no place to hide when you’ve got winners like them. You can’t go into training and give 95 per cent and not be focused and that’s what he demands from everyone else.

"Everyone evolves and develops throughout their career. Of course Cristiano is a different player to the one who left but he’s in such good nick still, he’ll be looking at the next few years to play as much as he can, score as much as he can. He’s a threat from direct set plays himself but also to be on the end of crosses. He’s adding something extra that we haven’t got. His skillsets in the team, the mix of his skillsets, well, no one has [those] really, because he’s one of the best players that has ever played the game."

“We’ve got mutual respect for each other, you can't not have respect for what he’s achieved but he knows I have got to make the decisions, when to play him, when not to. Any player wants to play as much as possible but it’s my job to manage him and get the best out of him. I want to see the best out of Cristiano, of course. That comes with communication with him because we have played together, as you said, we spent a few years together at the club and we know each other, so that’s no issue. He doesn’t need me to tell him what to do, he’s always had this determination, this desire to be the best. He still has that. He prepares… he’s probably the one I’ve seen in my career, the ones I’ve played with, that’s taken the steps that he needs to. Of course we’ve got Ryan Giggs who played until 40-odd and I’m not gonna be surprised if Cristiano ends up [playing] at the same age as Ryan."

“He’s developed, he’s evolved as a player, as age goes by you have to change your game. I don’t think you’re going to see 18, 19, 20 stepovers before he goes past you but he still has that stepover, shift and shoot. He’s developed into one of the most accurate finishers that I’ve seen. I did see part of that when he was here, of course, and he developed, but what he’s developed in these years at Real Madrid impresses us all. He’s one of the best in the air, his timing, desire to get on the end of crosses is second to none. He still hits the target 99 times out of 100 as well when he shoots outside of the box. He knows the game more, he knows which positions to drop into and when to run in behind and he’s still as quick, it looks like from the stats, and he’s a shining leading star, everyone’s going to look up to him. He’s going to be a leader in this dressing room."