#but the theme is the same

[softquietsteadylove]

Hello!

Read the prompt with the teacher request wich was pretty similar to your amazing fic „A running Leap“ and wanted to ask if you still would do the prompt request but like a special prompt to your fic? Like a bonus chapter?

I hope you can understand how I mean it, I’m sorry English is not my native language! :)

The idea sounds pretty fun but if you don’t want to do it it’s alright too!

"They're really goin' at it," Druig noted as he joined his wife on the bleachers.

It was the beginning of the season, and as usual, the team captains were demonstrating some basics before the first game between the boys and girls volleyball teams began. It was a friendly competition, meant to be a teaching moment and help inspire the kids.

Supposed to be friendly, at least.

"Mine went farther!"

"You had a better angle!"

"Yeah, because I can jump higher than you!"

The familiar squabbling of the two team captains filled the gym, even with the teams warming up around them.

"Kids, please," Kingo sighed, holding a hand out between his own captain and the captain of the girls' team. "Is this not about the children?"

"No, it's about Ikaris eating his words about being able to beat every single person here," Thena growled back, obviously having taken the statement personally.

"Just a fact, T," he grinned at his fellow history teacher (and friend, despite what they both would say about that). "I'm the strongest of us, the fastest-"

"Thena's faster," Sersi informed him without an ounce of remorse. "And obviously Makkari is faster than all of us."

She was the gym teacher and track and field coach, as well as cross-country coach.

"Okay, fine," Ikaris shrugged, "but I'm stronger than everyone here, including Gil."

All eyes went to Thena. It was no secret that she and Gil were inseparable. And surely the overly-competitive teacher would not take any remark about him lying down. "What?"

"I said," Ikaris repeated, even grinning as Gil came into the gym, "I'm stronger than Gil, and I bet I can prove it."

The newly arrived English teacher just laughed, though. "He's been saying that since college."

They had even been on their college volleyball team together, after all. It was how Ikaris had met Sersi.

"Sersi," Thena handed over the ball she had been practising her serves with earlier, "do you have a life insurance policy on him?"

"Okay, okay, easy there, T," Kingo attempted to calm the blonde firecracker. He looked at Ikaris with a snort, "there's no way you're stronger than Gil."

"What?" Ikaris balked at his friend's disbelief in him.

"Look at him!" Kingo pointed freely, making poor Gil blush.

"Stop it," Thena smacked Kingo's hand out of the air. "He's right, though, Gil could beat you any day of the week."

"Well," he murmured, wandering over to them as Thena jumped to his defense. "I don't know about that."

"Yeah," Ikaris chuckled, looking over Thena's head at Gil (much to the blonde's frustration). "Maybe all those muscles are just for show."

"Thena, really, I don't care," Gil attempted to soothe her temper, which he knew was probably just about at a boiling point now. He put a hand on her shoulder, "he's always like this."

"His muscles are not just for show!" Thena argued in Ikaris' face, grabbing a handful just to illustrate her point. "I bet he could blow any serve of yours out of the water."

Gil's blush had only gotten worse as Thena gripped his bicep. Although, his friends noticed, he was no longer arguing his way out of it.

"Oh, really?" Ikaris growled right back in his fellow coach's face. It was one thing to argue like they always did. It was another thing entirely to drag their beloved volleyball into things. "What are you willing to bet?"

"Gil is going to win," Thena proclaimed, still holding onto Gil, "so ask whatever you want."

Ikaris crossed his arms at her, "you do my bus duty for all of december."

"Deal."

"Thena, are you sure?" Gil asked with a frown, mostly because he hated the thought of her out in the cold any more than necessary. As if he wouldn't be out there with her, offering her hot chai lattes everyday.

But Thena yanked his face down closer to hers by the arm. She had that look in her eye, and nothing was going to stop her now, "you can do this, Gil."

The two coaches walked to the end line, glaring at each other all the while. Gil sighed, unbuttoning his vest and handing it to a grinning Sersi, "I guess I can do this?"

Sersi just winked at her old friend, "y'know, I'm sure Thena would be extra impressed if you showed off a little. Just...as a side note."

Gil blushed, but he was already doing this on a silly whim. He was already letting himself get dragged into this little competition, and why?

Oh, right, because Thena had grabbed onto his arm and looked at him with those eyes of hers.

It was the same reason he would stand out in the cold with her to watch kids get off buses and bring her chai lattes in the morning. It was a reason everyone but Thena was aware of.

"Kingo, you better measure impartially!" Thena yelled down the court at him.

"I'm watching, I'm watching!" he yelled back, although they all knew he had the best eyes for the job.

Ikaris freely elbowed Thena out of his way as he tossed up the ball and took a running leap. He really did have decent form for it, hitting the ball so hard it was basically a spike.

"Man, Coach Ikaris is so cool!"

"Coach Thena can spike better than that!"

"No way!"

"What's Mister G doing playing volleyball?"

"Not bad!" Kingo waved from where Ikaris' ball had hit just on the side line.

"That's borderline out," Thena declared needlessly (just to piss of Ikaris). Sersi was already dragging him back with her when Thena handed Gil the ball.

"You know, jump serves were never a specialty of mine," he admitted sheepishly with all his nerves showing.

"You'll be fine," she smiled at him, letting her hand brush over his arm gently as she stepped out of his way. She kept her eyes on him as bounced the ball a few times. He always wore a vest to teach; it was rare to see him in just a t-shirt.

Gil tossed the ball up, his back muscles moving under the tightness of his shirt. He ran up to the line and jumped, curling back to let his dorsal muscles pick up some slack. He had beautiful form.

Thena stared as his arms flexed before hitting the ball. Even just his palm meeting the ball was loud, and it rocketed to the other side of the court with the sound of canon fire. It even bounced off the back wall hard enough to come back to their side of the net.

Gil sighed, stretching out his back and arms after the first serve he'd made in more than a decade. "Man, that rust is real."

"Gil that was insane!" Kingo laughed, rushing back over to them.

"Measure the dam thing!" Ikaris complained at his assistant coach.

"Oh, he blew you away," Kingo patted his buddy's shoulder without a hint of remorse, already poking Gil in the arm. "You, though!--where've you been hiding skills like this? Why aren't you the assistant coach instead of me?"

Gil shrugged sheepishly, though, "I've coached before, but I don't really know if it's for me."

"I shouldn't be surprised, I mean," Kingo shook his head, holding up Gil's arm, "look at the gun show, here!"

Sersi bumped her hip against Thena's, "you seem to be way ahead of him on that."

"Stop it," Thena grumbled at her, although her eyes inevitably drifted to Gil as Kingo poked and prodded at those arms of his. "Everyone knows Gil is strong. It's no...it's no...no..."

Sersi raised a brow at Thena's uncharacteristic mumbling. But then she looked over.

Gil pulled up the bottom of his shirt, swiping off his forehead with it.

Thena turned around completely, blushing red at the sight of Gil's unclothed torso, a perfect mix of muscle and fat, tapering down to plump hips. She had even caught a hint of dark hair leading down from his bellybutton.

Sersi rolled her eyes at her poor, flustered coach. "You started this."

"Shut up," Thena grumbled, toying with the whistle around her neck in nervous habit. She turned, hoping her smile seemed natural, "I knew you could win!"

"Oh," Gil blinked at her enthusiasm, tugging his shirt down again with a shy smile, "thanks for the faith in me. And now you don't have to do bus duty in december!"

"What?!" Ikaris squawked.

"That was the deal," Sersi patted her husband's shoulders.

"That was if I won!"

"And Gil did, so he gets to decide," Thena stood resolute, offering Gil a towel (because her silly little heart couldn't take him flashing his happy trail again).

They all knew what the verdict would be: Gil wouldn't ask Ikaris to cover his own duties, but he would have him cover Thena's.

[flawlessflesh]

everyones got a problem when the elf starts napping

[o0kawaii0o]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KING 🗣🗣🗣

[remxedmoon]

triplets! cute!!! they must have some difference between them… but i can’t see any…

greyscale versions under the cut!

[specialagentartemis]

Reading (listening to, as Homer intended) the Iliad making me go oh. Ohhh. I should have done this before I read Gideon the Ninth. I get it now.

Particularly thinking now about the tidbit that in early drafts, our beloved gray-eyed Necromancer Warden of the Sixth House was named Diomedes Sextus. For Diomedes, king of Argos, young, brave, noble, heroic. Favorite fighter of Athena, bestest friend of Odysseus. And, notably, fought gods and—well he didn’t win exactly. But he got them good.

And specifically, he fought and wounded Aphrodite; Aphrodite, who is also called Cytherea.

And then of course Tamsyn Muir said she decided to change his name so she could make the Sex Pal joke.

Palamedes is a less heroic, less fondly remembered character in the Trojan War, but according to Plato, he unrelatedly invented both number and the alphabet, so you keep that connection to scholarship even if that’s not the first association with him. More interestingly, imo, there’s also an Arthurian Knight of the Round Table named Palamedes, best known for his unrequited love for Isolde (and his apparent ultimately gracious acceptance of her choosing Tristan).

I think this is actually a super interesting shift in thematic naming focus: from favored-of-Athena, fought-gods-and-wounded-them to unrequited heterosexual love, but didn’t act like a dick about it.

Also y’know. Sex Pal

[hellenhighwater]

The weather is changing, and I am dreaming of Superior again.

It's not always; not even often. But enough that the dreams linger through the day. And it's not the same dream, either, it's different in little ways. Sometimes the beaches are rough pale sand with the treeline far away, retreating from the surf; sometimes it's wave-tumbled round stone, sometimes it's foliated shale, the rocky lakebed teeth chewing up the driftwood;and sometimes there's no beach at all, just the abrupt cessation of forest where the water begins. Always, I am at the shore, and the world is going wrong.

The sky is low and grey and green and roiling, but I don't look up, because there is always something closer, more desperate, that must be dealt with first. Years ago, it was a creaking grey wooden house, warping in the wind and sparking suddenly with fire. Did you know that house fires are loud? They're deafening, like something roaring with hunger, never stopping to inhale. Sometimes the burning house is Vermilion Station; sometimes it's just a twisting old thing that I cannot find the doors to. Usually I am not alone, and I am trying to get someone else out. Sometimes it's a stranger; sometimes it is someone long dead in the waking world.

Sometimes there's a pier, slick wet concrete or smooth-worn wood, old enough that the grain is worn into grooves. The pier juts like a spine out into the lake, and I am running down, yelling into the wind at a ship tossing in the dark waves, unheard over the storm. The ship is sometimes a steel mammoth full of cargo, sometimes a billow of white sails. Always it is just at the edge of capsizing, far beyond my reach. Often, the storm overhead begins reaching down, turning and turning into a tornado, into blinding flare of lightning, into a white curtain of blizzard. Sometimes, over the howling storm, I hear a different rush of water, like some flood is crashing down the Porcupines, heading towards the shore.

And the water is always black and endless, which is how I know it's Superior. Jagged white-capped waves, icy wind and no hint of salt in the air; spray that touches your face like sleet. The dreams are often long, often confusing, always hurried, but they always end the same way.

I am at the edge of the water, looking north, and the horizon begins to bow upwards, as whatever is in the deep water begins to rise, lifting the lake on its back, bigger than a ship, bigger than a city, displacing water but moving so quickly that the whole surface of Superior is bulging upwards, breaking closer and closer to the surface--

(watching on the shoreline, I am not afraid. Fear is what came before this. Now that it is coming, I am only waiting. I am only a witness to whatever comes next)

--and always, before it breaches, I wake.

It is October, and Superior is calling.

[limbel]

There was this time a couple of weeks ago – I was sleeping, and I was dreaming about you, just like I am always dreaming about you, and in the dream we are in the car driving eastward with the sun hanging huge and low in the rearview mirror. I don't know where we are headed, but it doesn't matter because it's us, and I figure it's fine as long as we are going.

some snippets from my fic Dreaming Hours turned into a little comic :)

[sansculottides]

pisses me off to no end when people on reddit or whatever complain that the show wouldve been better off without the tuunbaq.....did we watch the same show? the tuunbaq is everything, it held everything together. the tuunbaq is the main transformative element of the terror. the tuunbaq elevates the text beyond mere historical fact and lets it say something about the expedition's broader context of imperialism. it hunted the british men who were trampling on its home as a mere stopover, a side casualty, to finding the northwest passage (for, you know, "trade with china" after britain beat china into submission after the imperialist opium war). silna couldnt complete a proper ritual with it because of the british men - just as british colonizers have historically intruded and disrupted the practice of indigenous culture. and in the end the tuunbaq dies, after all the injuries it's taken from the british over the course of 10 episodes and finally chokes to death on the worst of them. because there's no escaping the reality of colonial history, and there is especially no fantastical escape for the colonizer. there's no proper way for us to move forward otherwise.

good historical fiction doesnt have to limit itself to accuracy - it needs empathy to draw out meanings in history using literary craft. thats what the tuunbaq means to me.... if you wanted a straight depiction of historical record, just go watch a documentary.. TUUNBAQ DENIERS DNI

[benevolenterrancy]

("Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this." -- paraphrased from The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket)

[that1notetaker]

My mom cried during the mom movie.

[abyssal-ilk]

playing as a tabris warden and especially playing as a fem tabris warden is just a constant over and over gut punch. you're getting married but then you, your cousin, and several other women from your alienage are kidnapped during your wedding by the arl's son. you slaughter your way out of it to save your cousin and the other women, but there isn't a victory in it— you know there will be retribution for killing a palace full of guards and several nobles even though you were defending yourself and your kin. you're forced to leave your home and join the grey wardens without being given even a single night to recover. you know there will be a purge. you don't know if you'll ever see your family again.

you're taken to ostagar where you are the only woman amongst the grey wardens, and not only that, you are the only elf among them. you remember nessa, the girl in your alienage who was afraid of leaving because she feared what the soldiers would do to her after going so long without seeing a woman. your status as an elf and a woman are constantly remarked upon. you have no choice but to stay. you are fed darkspawn blood by duncan; the blood kills one man while he slaughters the other in front of you. you are supposed to feel grateful to have survived this.

and even later when you seek help from the dalish, what do you learn from zathrian? the same injustices that were inflicted upon you have been repeated over and over for centuries. what do you learn when you seek help from the mages? templars lurk in every corner, always watching, driving mages to the same violence you yourself committed. what do you learn in orzammar? to be a castless woman is to be not considered a person, who's only worth is the children she can bear for the same nobles who keep the castless subjugated. to be chosen by a noble is supposed to be an honor. why does this feel familiar?

AND THEN. what do you learn from the deep roads? darkspawn in all of their corruption are no different; you learn of the broodmothers. it is the same everywhere, no matter where you look. nothing changes. even your other party members, leliana and zevran, have their own stories. and you don't have another choice but to keep pushing on.

[crescentfool]

reunion 🌸

[betweendyingstars]

Artist Regulus painting his lovers

This is a DTIYS I’m hosting on instagram to celebrate 1k, so if you’d like to join go find me on there!

[zoe-oneesama]

Got some SL Kwami Swap/Merch Swaps looks thanks to my Patreon Requests (Except Adrien who's in Ladybug merch, don't get it twisted lol)

Ko-fi | Patreon

[slavhew]

charmed, i'm sure

[dykedvonte]

I think depictions of Anya being cruel to Curly or drawing out his suffering are artful and chilling but completely miss the point of the story and her character.

I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have that "I told you so" moment with him but not in something callous or cold. Even if that is how it happened, she'd immediately feel guilty cause at that point she's not tormenting her tormenter or even the person truly at fault. She's doing something cathartic, similar to how Jimmy likely hits Curly to release rage he can't against the rest of the crew. She'd see herself as no different when she'd come back from the moment and see Curly cowering at her. She wants someone to take responsibility but how does being cruel to the defenseless help? Why would she want the power Jimmy has over her over Curly?

The idea of her extending someone else's pain is just so against the struggles she already faces and how she can't even bring herself to cause someone pain even to help them. Her very desire is to release herself from her own suffering and I doubt she'd even fine some sort of guilty release in being cruel to another.