#but it can be read as a standalone

[lady-assnali]

Tiny Things (Crygi)

(I haven’t posted anything in ages! I’ve had a huge mental block, but I’m hoping we’re in the clear for a little while now at least!) Please listen to “Tiny Things” by Tiny Habits, as it’s the loose inspiration for this fic and I love that band with my whole heart. So here’s some baby, newly found friends Crygi)          

———

 The thing Gigi can most clearly recall from her childhood is the feeling of the kitchen counter underneath her as her mother sat her down on it. In most of these memories she’s nothing but a bean pole child; all arms and legs and a tiny little body, always with some form of bruise or scrape on it. She hadn’t been a tree-climber, or an adventurer. She never accepted the invitations from the neighbor kids to play baseball or street hockey, preferring to stay by her mother’s side and help her with her sewing by completing the little tasks she set out for her.

           There’s a stack of hand-sewn cotton squares to prove it, scraps her mother had turned into rudimentary projects Gigi had poured her heart into while reveling in the sound of her mother signing along to the radio and the smell of her very modest floral perfume. She’d listen to the hum of the machine between them for hours, content to be quiet in the comfort of it all, tiny fingers running along the vast landscapes of the varying fabrics draped around the room. Sometimes, she’d ask questions; what her mother was making, where it would go when it was done. She’d sit with big eyes and eager ears as her mother turned people into magic, ordinary lives into something worth retelling over and over again.

           So she spent most of her time in the sewing room. Sometimes, however, she’d be on the counter.

           Gigi would sit and wail, eyes welled up with tears and head turned away from whatever little scrape or bruise she’d acquired. And then, she’d cross her arms over her chest. Her mom always kissed her scrapes and gave her two tiny chocolate candies, scooping her off of the counter and into her arms, everything right in the world once more.

           As she got older, the bruises and scrapes turned into emotional upheaval. Gigi would come home from school and toss her backpack on the floor before sitting on the counter while her mother started to work on dinner.

           She’d always know when something was eating away at Gigi, no matter how hard she tried to hide things. Her boo-boo kissing, magical storytelling mother held the ability to take one look at her and know exactly what to do. Sometimes, she’d wordlessly pass over a spoonful of her work in progress. Gigi would hum in delight at the taste of her cooking, occasionally reaching in the cabinet over her head to pass over a spice for the sake of suggestion. Other times, Gigi’s mom would leave the stove to turn on a CD. They’d bond over “Like a Prayer” or “Papa Don’t Preach,” singing the lyrics into spatulas and wiggling around the kitchen in a ridiculous dance of uncoordinated limbs and raucous laughter.

           Sometimes, she’d sit on that counter and the words wouldn’t come out fast enough; she was being bullied. Her friends had all made newer friends and had left her behind. She’d come out, and while she was ready for the change there were a lot of people who just weren’t. But in that kitchen, with her mother’s arms around her and the taste of her cooking, the silly dancing, the chocolate candies turned over into her palm…the world was less of a challenge there.

           Moving away from home had been the most terrifying experience Gigi had encountered in her entire life.

           New York City called her name so fiercely that she had to go-had to see for herself what the prestige of a school thought it could teach her that her own mother couldn’t. She thought she needed a degree in fashion to pursue her goals, or at least the connections the school would allow her. She cried every night for the first week after moving, walking class to class with books in her tote and a tightening in her chest. The faces here weren’t mean, but they certainly weren’t rushing to make friends with her. So she went through the motions, kept herself strong the way her mom would want her to. When she called, she tried to make sure she always had at least one good thing to mention. And if that one thing was “I drank enough water today” or “I’m glad to be back from class now.,” they both moved on to conversations busy enough to distract Gigi from her gnawing homesickness. Sometimes, her mother would wield another one of her fairytales about a client and Gigi would sit with her head against the headboard, eyes closed, picturing herself back in that sewing room again.

           “I made a friend.” She’d told her mom this a few weeks into school as she walked from one class to the next, wiggling a borrowed pen between her fingers with a fond smile. “Her name is Crystal, she seems nice.”

           The daily one good thing to mention was transformed from one sentence to multiple, morphed into stories told with a lightness in her voice that made her mother let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She stopped calling as frequently, rather updated with little texts throughout the day until their allotted time to talk came through. She was joined more often by a polite girl with a wide smile and a curly mullet who’d taken to also sharing one good thing that happened to her during the day. Often, the girl’s stories overlapped with hers. They’d cut each other off, adding on where the other forgot something until the point was lost between giggling attempts to answer Gigi’s mom’s questions.

           Crystal embellished things.

           The things she wove into their stories often involved long-winded explanations of the little things; this man was wearing a suit with a silly tie, which means he probably had a child that gave it to him and maybe that’s why he was sprinting down the street near them. The little kids who’d stopped to jump in muddy puddles by the park were city kids who’d grown up there their whole lives, had never seen a lake like the ones in Missouri but got to grow up spending their allowances on street pretzels. (Most of the stories involved street pretzels, to be fair…Crystal had grown so fond of them that they’d get one every day after their shared class.)

           Crystal could make a popcorn scavenging pigeon into a feature length screenplay while they walked around the city. It made Gigi smile in ways she hadn’t since she’d moved to school. They’d walk from class to one of their homes and live in these fantasy worlds when they didn’t want to live anywhere else; when class was too stressful, or Gigi was struggling with a project, or they were arguing with their roommates.

           She was still a quiet stressor when things got really bad.

           On her second major project of the semester, Gigi felt herself floundering under the pressure. She’d called her mom twice for advice, holding up a long strip of the most delicate silk to the screen with big, wet eyes that reminded her mom of childhood and bandages and chocolate candies. She’d talked her through it, coaching as best as she could from the opposite side of the country, and Gigi had to start over and redesign the entire garment.

           There was a knock on the open door of the school’s little studio somewhere between her consideration between ripping a seam or ripping her own hair out, and while the loud noise made her jump her whole body felt relief upon seeing Crystal standing there.

           “You weren’t on your bench today.” The girl noted, her eyes appraising the chaos of strewn about fabrics and markers and papers torn from her sketch pad. And then there was Gigi in the center of it all, the slouched slope of her spine and the mess of it all enough to confirm her exhaustion.

           “This dress is killing me.” She admitted, tipping her head back and ruffling her hair. She’d been on the verge of tears again, stifling her words against her hand and shaking her head. “I don’t know what to do.”

           Crystal waited a moment before approaching, closing the door carefully behind her. She tiptoed over the mess, picking up only the things she’d been sure Gigi hadn’t strategically placed around the room. (which, to be fair, isn’t a lot. In the time she’s known her, Crystal’s learned that the redhead surprisingly leans more toward her own organized chaos when it comes to her thought patterns, and that trying to help tidy things up isn’t always the best idea.)

           She slid herself on the stool next to Gigi and rifled through the bag slung over her shoulder. Then, Crystal tapped the back of her hands, using her fingers to delicately turn them over so they would be palm up. A pile of tiny, candy-coated chocolates tumbled into Gigi’s outstretched hands and the light returned as her face brightened into a wide-stretched, brilliant grin.

           “I called your mom,” She admitted, placing the bag of candies between them and taking a few for herself. “She said these are your favorite.”

           It’s all Gigi could handle to let a sigh of a thank you leave her lips before she started crying again, pushing herself into the brunette’s arms for a tight-squeezed hug. They stayed there for a while, the candies melting where they were still kept safe in Gigi’s grip.

           “What can I do to help?”

           Then, Gigi’s energy was channeled into teaching Crystal how to carefully rip the seam of the dress. The tears stopped completely as she showed off her redesigned sketch. Between her delicate ripping and Gigi’s renewed zeal at the helm of the machine, they spent the afternoon laughing and lamenting over Crystal’s fabrication of an imaginary, very needy client who had clearly begged Gigi to rework the dress anyway.

           And when her grade was marked as an A, she took Crystal down to the park for a celebratory pretzel.

[rainbow-flavoured-skittles]

I’m finally halfway done with the first chapter of Cole Suffering Fic the name is a work in progress

[maedhrosdefender]

if you enjoy this do everyone a favour and read Songs of Rohan by ziggy on ao3

You can't tell me this isn't what they were thinking in this scene...

[mumblesplash]

part 2!!!! [read part one here]

transcript below the cut arranged into stanzas to help show where the rhymes are:

“that’s why they brought gem in? as a failsafe?” as a pawn. we were told to point her at whoever we need gone

“gem won’t hurt her allies. …yet.” the curse she carries will it’s had its eye on her since she lost the other eye she was specially selected for her hunting skill it’s quite the high honor. “wow. how generous.” we try

think about it: why does almost no one fight the curse? “given how fast scott killed skizz last season, i can guess.” [“any pain you spare your friends, you’ll have to suffer worse”?] it’s designed to shut down higher reasoning with stress

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[acediscowlng]

honestly very obsessed with the idea that matt reeves may actually managed to create a movie that is the perfect encapsulation of robin's thematic importance to the batman mythos accidentally.

like. he just did that entire movie. and did not realize he was actually talking about robin. made a whole entire movie showing batman as a protector of children and the need for a symbol of hope alongside the symbol of fear. and apparently did all of that while not thinking of robin the entire time. like. he was just "yeah the batman does need something to balance the violence with his genuine and sincere desire to do good" and somehow missed the eighty year old character that answers the question he poses at the end of the movie.

just. what an unhinged way to approach batman. my disappointment for a lack of robin is currently overpowered by the sheer fascination of the idea of matt reeves seemingly understanding and agreeing with the importance of robin but like. only on a theoretical level. because he also does not think robin is important enough to be part of the story.

i want to study this man like a bug.

[kingkestrel]

Silence is Golden (You’ve got my hopes up)

(rating e, Lando/Oscar/Franco, smut, threesome, gags, spit-roasting, choking)

Lando found Franco and Oscar at a booth in the corner, laughing and drinking, completely engrossed in conversation.

If he was feeling less needy he may have left them to it but instead decided to insert himself into the conversation. In perhaps the most Lando way possible.

“Franco’s really great with his tongue, you know.”

Part 2 of the Talk Too Much series

READ HERE

[starry-bi-sky]

changeling danny has his wretched little claws in me so here's some AU fey lore

Okay so, i've got a lot of ideas for the Fey Lore in this au. But to start out what may become a sling of posts: a simplified set up of the Infinite Realms. I think I mentioned it before in a reblog of the original changeling danny post, but the fey wilds exist in the IR. In most fanon I see the same scale as the rest of the realms, however i have a different idea for it.

In simplified terms, the fey wilds and the ghost zone are two different things. They both exist in the Infinite Realms, however, they exist on different planes of existence. In simplified terms, there are three separate planes in the Infinite Realms.

The Long Far: Highest realm in the infinite realms. Home to most, if not all, the Ancients. Beings that reside in The Long Far are eldritch abominations, gods, personifications of concepts, and other celestial-type beings. The only way to access the Long Far is through the Starflare Currents in the Feywilds. Which are a nebula of stars that work similar to the ocean currents in Finding Nemo. They are a rapid vortex full of stars that pass over the feywilds that can be seen at night. In order to reach the Long Far, one must fly up to the Current and latch onto one of the stars rapidly flying past. And then they must stay on the star until the currents begin to ascend rapidly upwards. This is harder than it sounds. Ever been indoor surfing? Where you lie on your stomach on a small board and try not to get flung off? Exact same concept. It’s basically the world’s most terrifying escalator to the gods.

The Fey Wilds: The Fey Wilds isn't exactly strictly home to the Fey, however for convenience sake I'm calling it the Fey Wilds. This is the home to fey and other folklore and mythological creatures that may not want to reside in the Ghost Zone. There are no Fey in the GZ. It's not that they hate being down there, but. well.. they hate being down there. They think the place is ugly. The Fey Wilds has ever shifting, expanding amount of biomes. These biomes range from massive redwood forests, to swamps, to essentially Pandora from Avatar. The place can look almost entirely human one moment, and then like a different planet the next. Fey and other inhabitants know how to navigate this easily -- but ghosts? Not so much. There are currently two known ways to reach the Fey Wilds from the Ghost Zone and vice versa: Lake Portals, and Cave Tunnels. Which I will expand upon in a moment.

Ghost Zone: Exactly how it sounds! The Ghost Zone is, well, the ghost zone! It's essentially the same as canon. Same looks, same everything. This is the home of mortal souls and the occasional mythological creature or two, as well as weaker concept spirits. By that I mean like, ecto-octopi. Concept spirits can manifest in both the GZ and Feywilds. Ghosts tend to stick inside the Ghost Zone and avoid venturing into the Fey Wilds because, well, they're still mortal souls. They're gonna get jumped by a fey looking for a new decoration or a new pet/servant/whatever. Best to honestly avoid the fey wilds as a whole.

Now, I just mentioned that there were two known ways to reach the Fey Wilds from the Ghost Zone: lake portals and cave tunnels. I made goofy little visual aides which I will attach below, and then I will explain how they work.

I'll start with the Lake Portals. They are, well, as the name suggests lake portals. Not every lake in the fey wild is a portal to the ghost zone, and vice versa. They're rather uncommon to find in both planes, but it's not like they're hard to recognize.

In the Fey Wilds, lake portals will have a sheen over the water like an oil spill. But instead of the regular rainbow-y colors, it will instead have the ghost zone's colors swirling in it; green and purple. The water will have that sickly green tint to it, and have a slight glow. The plant life surrounding the water are not typically what you'd find in the Fey Wilds, but might in the Ghost Zone. They look different from the regular noxious swamp bogs in the wilds, so its easy to tell that they're lake portals.

In the Ghost Zone, the lake portals will instead be shimmery and blue like a tropical ocean. And just like how there are GZ plants in the fey wilds surrounding the water, there's fey wild plants on the island where the lake is.

How these portals work is rather simple. You dive in and begin swimming down. It's a long swim down, but that's all you gotta do. It will get dark, as there are no plant life in these portals, and no aquatic life either.

It starts getting complicated when you reach what I like to call the border. The border is as the name implies; its a border between the planes. In the lakes it's not physical, however you will feel when you've reached the border and crossed it. Intense vertigo washes over you as your sense of gravity begins to shift and flip; up is becoming down, down is becoming up.

Your goal at this point is to try and push through that vertigo and discomfort and make it to the other side of the border, without getting flipped upside down and swimming back to the surface you came from. This is harder than it sounds as you become dizzy underwater, and since there's no light anywhere, you will try and instinctively seek it out and follow it. You're down too deep to know where that light is.

Once you've reached the other end of the border successfully, your gravity will have flipped without you needing to do anything. You are now swimming up to the surface, and once you do, boom! You're in the ghost zone! Lake Portals are faster to use than tunnels, but very disorientating.

Now cave tunnels are longer, but simpler. Essentially some caves have tunnels that lead into the ghost zone, similar to how in greek mythology there are random entrances to the underworld in the mortal world. I haven't exactly figured out what the tell is for when you're in a tunnel leading to the Ghost Zone, but I know that when it's the other way around it's rather easy -- as you start to climb up.

It's a less complicated explanation: essentially you are descending into the ghost zone through this tunnel. You are on your way down like Orpheus in search of his wife, or like Heracles doing his twelve labors. It can get claustrophobic and of course there is the border.

Unlike experiencing a shift in gravity, you're instead hit with the intense vertigo and an intrinsic fear to turn around. It's an instinctual response to your surroundings changing on a molecular level, and your body in response is telling you to Flee. Basically, you've taken a rip of the Cave Gasses and you feel like you're losing your mind. Once you exit the border its smooth sailing.

Sometimes you get unlucky and there's a Pit Drop and you're suddenly Alice in Wonderlanding your way down to the Ghost Zone. But hey! At least you're not swimming.

those are currently the only two ways i've come up with for traveling between the GZ and Fey Wilds. But all in all, it's meant to be very disorientating stuff; vertigo and nausea-inducing, with just a dash of Existentially Terrifying. Traveling between planes usually is.

[vaperarmand]

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

armand/daniel, e, 17.7k

tags: Post-Season/Series 02, References to Devil's Minion Era (Vampire Chronicles), the odyssey of recollection, Blood Drinking, New York City, Leather Culture, Public Sex, Getting Back Together, Enriching Armand with the technological marvels of the 21st century, Spoiled Only Child Daniel, Gardens & Gardening, Canon-Typical Freak Behavior

“Did we call each other boyfriend? Surely not. Sounds weird even saying out loud.” “You were my beloved,” Armand says. “My lover. My boy.” “Your human pet. Your mortal fool. I get it,” Daniel says, not neglecting to notice his use of the past tense. “You want to go see a movie?”

[firenati0n]

flip the switch and let the cauldron bubble

by firenati0n on ao3

T | 2.7k

tags: magic/fantasy au, college au, parent feels (catherine and alive!arthur), tooth-rotting fluff, sassy black cat david, tea as a metaphor for love, if you imagine david sounding like a mix of ian mckellen and patrick stewart it makes it 100x better

Henry is eight, and he can’t sleep. The trees outside are too big, their shadows too scary in his window as the wind makes the branches thump against the glass. He rubs at his eyes before digging his head in his pillow again, hoping sleep claims him. From underneath his door, light filters in from the hallway—his mother is probably in the kitchen, grinding herbs and ingredients for her potions. If there’s anyone who can help him, it’s her.

Or, Henry shares special potions that he learned from his parents over the years with Alex.

xoxo roop

my @flufftober fic for day 11: ingredients and spells :)

this is a sequel to my kiki's delivery service au with warlock!henry and baker!alex but can absolutely be read as a standalone. but that fic is very sweet and soft and i would recommend reading it alongside this for all the backstory and maximum feels<3

tagging the rest of the collection crew: @thesleepyskipper @theprinceandagcd @caterpills @kj-bee @exitariel000

@shesfromboston @msmarvelouswinchester @dani-dabbles @jafffacakess

[oldmanffucker]

New fic 💥💥

Bonnie is tired of competing with House for Wilson’s attention, forcing Wilson to come face to face with his affections for House. Wilson is basically a shaking wet kitten this whole fic. Bonnie is genuinely kind and understanding about it all but needs to put herself first.

time after time

based on gay thoughts by the growlers

[deoidesign]

Someone killed my boss last night and he sent me this I'm so fired

god I can't wait to make this comic.

[one-bunny-a-day]

02/12/2023

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Last Hour Between Worlds

fantasy locked room murder mystery

set in a world with alternate universes that bleed into it that get increasingly more eldritch as they go down, following a woman able to step between them

she’s on leave to take care of her newborn, but decides to attend a new years’ party to give herself a short break to socialise

but when everyone is murdered - only to suddenly be alive again, but with the whole building shifted one echo down, she realises she’s caught in a dangerous looping game and will have to find a way to stop them from dying permanently…. with the help of her rival slash almost-ex

very lightly demi-coded bi MC, f/f

[baphometsss]

I Touch Myself 1/2

Rating: M Relationships: Nonbinary Lavellan/Solas Word Count: 3801

It was getting harder and harder to resist her. Every fibre of his being was aching to take his lover by the hand and lead her up to her bedchamber—the one that had once been his—and lay her down on the soft bed where he could make love to her all morning. It was so clear in his mind; the angles he would take with his hips, the spill of her charcoal-black hair on white sheets, the shape of her mouth as she cried out her pleasure… He was in deep trouble, and he knew it.

Solas having a wank enjoy

Here

[epiphainie]

for thanksgiving can i introduce yall to my most beloved "thanksgiving buck is a nightmare but tommy loves him anyway" fic written by me