#but it will suffice

[troutfur]

For the prompts, Ash and Fern Augur AU, with Ferncloud's reaction to Squirrel snubbing her brother?

Fair warning for this one that Ferncloud is going to be portrayed as really, really xenophobic and classist. But that's kind of a given with Augur AU. Whenever I write Augur AU whoever ends up being the augurs by design adopt those opinions regardless of who it is. As I've said previously, it's an Arthurian romance not a Robin Hood ballad.

So, let's see where this takes us.

(Want your own chance at getting your prompt written? Check out my guidelines and submit one! I'm taking prompts up to the last day of the #CalmWrimo2023 challenge which is the 30th. Even if I have enough for the month I still like having more choices to pick from.)

Squirrelflight lay down on the patients’ nest inside the augurs’ den as she clutched her stomach. Whatever she’d eaten was absolutely murdering her right now. Since sunrise she’d had no appetite and now by low sun the growing discomfort growing inside her stomach had become unbearable. Beside her Ferncloud was riffing through her stores and preparing some kind of herb packet for her to eat, and surely a few doses she would be prescribing her.

The atmosphere between them was tense. She’d not brought it up but Squirrelflight could tell Ferncloud was not really pleased by the fact her brother had stopped sharing her nest and slept alone now.

The usually gossipy queen had been quiet, and as of the last few days she kept glaring at her from across camp. The treatment was not new to her, both her and Leafstep had grown up recieving it from the patricians of other Clans they met at the gathering or during the Great Journey. And it only gotten worse since those stuck up cats caught wind that her participation in the Sundrown Place patrol hadn’t technically been condoned.

But this was not really behavior that she expected out of ThunderClan patricians, even someone as prickly as Spiderleg. For better or worse more than a former kittypet’s daughter, low in birth as they come, in their eyes she’d always been Firestar’s, their glorious leader’s, daughter. The treatment from ThunderClan’s matriarch had even seemed to embolden her and Spiderleg’s mates in their own condescension.

“There,” Ferncloud said with an icy tone, sliding the packet of herbs once she was done. “Swallow it whole.”

Squirrelflight squinted at it as she took a whiff of the smell. She guessed asking for some honey to help it go down easier was out of the question. She forced it down her throat, the bitterness permeating every tastebud as she struggled not to gag. Once it was down she licked at her teeth, trying to dislodge whatever particles remained between her teeth to spit them out.

“Thanks Ferncloud,” Squirrelflight said with a nod as she prepared to leave.

“Sit back down,” Ferncloud ordered as she moved to block her passage. “There is a conversation we ought to have. I figure you must already know don’t you?”

Squirrelflight sighed. “Look. What happened between Ashfur and I... I just didn’t think he’d be the tom for me. I don’t think it’s something worth your attention.”

“I’ll say what’s worth my attention,” Ferncloud stated. “And one of the things that’s worth my attention is that you thought you were too good for a patrician.”

“Ferncloud, that’s not--”

“What’s worth my attention,” Ferncloud said louder. “Is that I think you and that sister of you are growing arrogant. That I think you are forgetting your place in this Clan, loners. I know Ashfur. He may be a little smothering, too eager to please, lacking in good judgement even. But for a patrician like him to extend not only the gift of his trust but his affection and for you to toss him away like that?”

“I didn’t toss Ashfur!” Squirrelflight defended herself. “We ended--”

“We?” Ferncloud said indignant. “By how devastated Ashfur has come to me it seems unlikely there was a we that ended this relationship.” With her tail lashing behind her, Ferncloud fixed Squirrelflight with a harsh glare. “I really shouldn’t have trusted that a friendship between my kits and you would have ended well. Not only does your blood already predispose you to this, I allowed you far too much access to the world of the patricians.”

A tense silence hung between them. Squirrelflight wanted to scream at the freckled gray queen that she was completely wrong, that she wasn’t being arrogant or stubborn or whatever else she wanted to project onto her. But the words failed her at that moment from how ridiculous the accusations were.

“Go now,” Ferncloud instructed as she stepped out of the way. “I am going to deal with this as needed. But for now just know: ThunderClan’s patricians are not going to be treating you the same ever again.”

With that, Squirrelflight tipped her head in a gesture of departure and maneuvered down the slope and away from the augurs’ den.

[yallstar]

pulling sqq into the pool seemed like good revenge at the time. (regrets were had.)

[dailyhatsune]

the old uncle who refuses to wear headphones on the train

[my-chemical-wheaties]

Never mind lol

I just remembered that I have Mountain Dew at home.

[fuckinart]

can you imagine

[road-kill-eater]

part 2

[phrysic]

teaching jack how to make a flower crown

[shkika]

cursed creature and the siblings friendly bickering

[rosewaterfish]

Navani ending up in a homoerotic rivalry with fantasy Oppenheimer was not on my Rythm of War bingo card

[justplaggin]

return of the king

[gentlebliss]

Hello, my name is Mochizuki Hajime, and I'm saving up money to move away from my abusive home. I'm a mixed (Japanese and Brazilian) LGBT adult male. In my home situation, I am a victim of several forms of incest, am sexually and mentally abused, and violence is often used against me. A lot of aspects of my life is restricted by my family, as I'm not allowed to have friends, privacy or leave the house (among other things).

You may donate to me via $app—which is the only way I can safely accept money currently—or you can pay for a drawing or some HTML work. I made these popular themes (1, 2) and multiple website layouts (1, 2) as well as Windchime on Neocities. Examples of my art can be found here, and my coding/website work can be found here.

$app: $gentlebliss You may DM me/send an ask if you are interested in receiving any of my work in return for money. Some photos of my work is under cut. Thank you and have a nice day!

[keekry]

been obsessed with tasuki ever since reading hell's paradise, and so of course i had to draw mizu going through the motions. for educational purposes. of course.

I used this video as reference: https://youtu.be/qs6y2gOfQfI?si=c9qt9oC4jHlw-dYP

[raconteur-wanpi]

Egghead from Stella's POV is very funny.

[greghatecrimes]

We always want to give our children what we never got for ourselves.

[kolbalissh]

carcar being soft and sleepy that i might as well just post (art block is beating my ass)

[audliminal]

Survivability Bias Pt 2

Masterpost

Danny spends the next few days exploring the town more, while he considers the implications of everything he’d learned  at the library. He’d taken notes, but they’re not exactly the best. Danny’s never been that good at taking notes, after all, but he has a pretty good memory, so the various key words and few quotes he’d scribbled down are plenty useful in reminding him of all the wild shit he’d read about.

There’d been a lot of history involved in the whole meta situation. It seems like these so-called meta humans, and various other races (species? Danny doesn’t know nearly enough about the cultural implications of that) have been around long enough to have had a significant impact on the world at large. And yet, at the same time, there really hadn’t been a lot of personal information on any of the heroes. Oh, there’d been plenty on some of the villains - and of course there’d still be villains here, he’s not lucky enough to escape that - but aside from various speculation about their romantic lives, and a few acknowledgements of family ties here and there, there’d been very few details about where most of them actually came from.

Superman, for example (he seemed to be this world’s go-to example of metas and superheroes), is listed as being an alien, who’s powers come from his biologies unique interaction with this planet’s atmosphere, although it doesn’t explain anything about what that means. Interestingly, there seems to be almost no speculation about Superman’s so-called secret identity. Only about half the listed heroes seem to have one according to the public, but Danny knows that song and dance too well to fall for it. Honestly, they’re even more likely to have a secret identity than Danny himself, seeing as Danny’s alter ego is literally dead. Not that ghosts seem to be much of a thing here.

He’d felt so silly looking up information about ghosts, right before leaving the library. Compared to the deep dive into recent history, googling “are ghosts real” must have looked insane if anybody could see it. The answer he’d returned had been not unlike the way things had been when he was ten or twelve. Before the portal, you’d see dumb ghost hunter shows where they never actually saw much of anything. Ghosts were, like, poltergeists that moved your furniture around and slammed the doors shut. The results here had been a little more interesting - clearly in a world where superheroes are a fact of life, fantastical stuff is a little more rational, and the speculation was clearly affected by that fact, but it still had been, seemingly, all speculation.

Of course, none of that really mattered when it came to Superman. Danny was at least ninety percent sure he wasn’t a ghost. And even if he somehow was, it didn’t change the fact that he either has a secret identity, or he basically never takes part in society. And if he doesn’t have a secret identity, then the question very much becomes why not. Because that means he either has no real reason to care about anyone here (which seems implausible), or he’s unable to spend that time in public. It’s that possibility that’s knocked out any chance of Danny approaching any of the heroes. Because there’s always the possibility that the endorsed heroes are being used to lure other metahumans in. And Danny doesn’t know nearly enough about this world to make any kind of judgment on what’s most likely here. After all, historically there’s plenty of examples of governments that  work with specific people among targeted groups, in order to more successfully take out the others. it tends not to end well for those people when it’s all over, but anyone who’s short-sighted or even just backed into a wall enough can fall for that.

Hell, the GIW had actually tried that line on Danny once or twice, not that he’d ever accepted. After all, they’d never realized that was actually sort of alive, so their pitches had always been... less than convincing. 

Danny blinks, reaching out to touch the brick wall in front of him. He hadn’t meant to come back here, but honestly at this point, he really shouldn’t be surprised. This random little alley on side street wouldn’t be interesting at all to anyone else. But if Danny stares long enough, he can almost see the green-tinged light of the portal that brought him here. Not that he’d ever seen the portal from this side. He hadn’t turned to look until after the light had faded. The idea of seeing his friends’ faces through the swirling green had been too much.

They had all known exactly what it meant when he came here. The difficulty of the journey was the point. Between the anti-ecto acts gaining not just mainstream awareness, but support, and the GIW gaining access to better funding and training, well, the second the GIW had started successfully ending ghosts, it seemed like all the denizens of the zone had collectively decided to stay the fuck home.

At first Danny had enjoyed it, had relaxed and been excited to finally be able to focus on just being a teen. But the GIW hadn’t calmed down, had just started going even more on the offensive, and the second he and Jazz had noticed agents showing up casually at their house, everyone had gone into full alert.

That’s how they found out that the next goal was to apparently take the fight to the zone itself.

The conclusion had been easy from that point. The portal needed to be destroyed, and fast. But with the ghost zone blocked off (and Danny’s death being the unknowing link that made the portal ever work in the first place), that would leave Danny as one of three remaining targets.

They’d all immediately agreed that Vlad could figure out his own solution. Dani- well, she had been traveling, but the second she turned up, the others had made plans to send her on her own one way portal trip too.

Of course, the likelihood that she’d end up here is probably minuscule. So he’s alone.

“Hey,” a stern voice cuts through Danny’s thoughts. He glances over to the person who’s standing at the door to a building. “There’s no loitering here.”

Right. It’s almost easy to forget, in the face of his life’s inescapable absurdity, that to everyone else in this town, he just seems like a possibly-homeless delinquent. Not that the delinquent part is unfamiliar.

“Sorry,” Danny mutters belatedly, realizing that the person is just waiting as he stares at them like a weirdo. He’s not very good with people anymore. Not that he was that good to begin with. Phantom had been a Ghostly Menace, constantly destroying the town with his fights, nobody had expected him to function as a person. Nobody had thought he was a person. But as Danny Fenton- well, he’d fallen short of just about every expectation set at Danny Fenton’s feet.

Distantly he wonders if his friends even bothered to disguise his disappearance. He’d always kind of wondered if his parents would ever notice if he and Jazz just- left. School definitely noticed, though most of the faculty would probably take it as completely expected. After all Danny Fenton was a terrible student, constantly skipping class and never doing his work, and even when he was in class he was usually halfway to falling asleep anyways. Lancer had certainly lectured him about his lack of discipline more than enough. So they might just come to the conclusion that he’d dropped out and run away.

He doesn’t know if he’d prefer that, honestly. The truth is messed up and complicated and frankly, unbelievable. But maybe if they knew the truth at least one person might feel a fraction of sympathy for all the bullshit that he’d been dealing with. Funny, Danny thinks, how coming here feels more like a death than when I actually died.