#getting back on tumblr bc I can’t hold back the short stories

[meriguild]

Time of Death

Von Raben’s chapel has always been warm. Despite the damp and the cold that infects the rest of the manor, creeping in like a horrible mould to even the deepest parts of the house, the chapel is a sanctuary. The air smells bittersweet, it is always bone-dry, and there is a certain warmth, indeed, that comes from the stained glass; rays of rich amber and red flood the whole of the room when the sun begins to dip below the horizon.

It has long been my favourite (I might say my only favoured) place in the house. For each night when we first arrived in this place—the first week, I should say—I slept on the chapel floor. It was not particularly comfortable, as I often only had a pallet of cushions separating me from the stone ground. I would wrap myself in two down blankets: that being, the one from my chambers, and the duvet from the nursery. The mistress had asked me on the third night why I would forgo sleeping in the queen-sized bed, carved of lush Italian mahogany, in the south wing. I told her it was because I felt God in that chapel. In truth, it is not that He was present there, only that His absence is so very stark in the rest of the house that it felt divine, at the time.

And I mean it, the rest of the manor is a Godless thing. I have said it since the beginning, and I stand by this now. The attic, particularly, is a testimony to this. It is a cavernous creature, and its old bones creak and sway in the night, in the constant rain that has overtaken the valley each and every day for decades. In the almost year we have lived here, I have never once seen a clear sky, nor a sunny morning. No, it has always been the pitter-patter of rain, the roil of the eastern wind, the fat clouds of acrid fog that it brings with it. It was, from the first day on, as it is now: dark, wet, freezing, Godless.

I’m not sure however Lady Crowe grew so infatuated with this place. Twice, in those months she was with child, she had spoken of the Corr Valley and its lofty crown jewel, set sturdy in brick and lime: The Von Raben Manor. I took these mentions to be driven by a sort of hysteria. After all, Angelica’s pregnancy had not been kind, and Heather’s birth had not been easy. She began to fall into bouts of mania in the days leading up to the spring, and for a period of time, she had experienced what the physician referred to as postnatal hysterics. These strange behaviours had apparently subsided shortly after Heather had weened from her mother, but still, Angelica spoke of travelling to this place. She convinced Lord Crowe—who in fairness is not at home often enough to care where “home” is—to buy the land, renovate the manor, and resigned herself to raise her daughter in the belly of Von Raben.

I attended, of course, for a nanny is only needed where there is a child of that sort. Unlike the rest of the Crowes’ staff, I did not immediately voice any complaints about the house or grounds. The scullery maids, however, are a trio of gossips, susceptible to folk tales and frights of fancy. They quite hastily deemed the house to be haunted, and spoke very animatedly about the topic whenever they were able, conversing in an infectious manner that made one want to continue listening.

Thusly, fables of all manners abounded rather quickly among the servants. None were quite like the others, and certainly, none were the truth. But they made merry the cold nights, if enough brandy was passed around, and created a sense of camaraderie amongst the staff. I could not say, at first, that I believed any of them. However, they made their mark on my temperament. The storytelling formally ended two hours past midnight, when the cleaning staff had to attend to their nightly duties. This was most often the time I chose to depart, for Heather was wont to take her nightly bottle thirty minutes later.

As such, I was frequently left to wander the halls of the manor alone late at night. I walked from the servants’ quarters to the kitchen, where I would warm a bottle of cow’s milk with a drop of laudanum. I would then hurry to Heather’s nursery, quiet her to sleep, and put myself to bed. All of this I did guided only by the light of a candle. These long walks through empty, darkened corridors did wonders to spark the mind. Nearly every night, I felt as though there were eyes following me as I moved and worked. I would see shadows from the corners of my sight, and my heart beat wildly with paranoia. This extended very much into my dreams, which soon became harrowing.

I didn’t remember the nightmares, not at first. I would wake with a start, but without memory of what had frightened me so. This went on for some time, worsening by the day. By wintertime, I became afraid to even lay my head on the pillow. Sleep began to elude me. I would spend the nights in the nursery at first, managing a few hours in the rocking chair beside the crib. But within a few weeks, the dreams followed me, even as I watched over the baby.

It was nigh a month to Christmastime when Angelica first noticed the weariness of my countenance. Heather had gone down for a nap some hours beforehand, so I made myself busy by delivering some freshly warmed linens to the master bedroom. The rain had frozen into snow, and the chill had sharpened its fangs to gnash at the windows and floors, nipping naked toes and reddening noses where it bit. The last thing any of us wanted was for Lady Crowe to fall ill, especially before she was to receive guests for the holidays.

Angelica had done her best to make the house feel celebratory all through December, so much so that she hadn’t made it halfway through November before she ordered us to decorate. So, throughout the winter of 1878 (which I daresay, was the last happy time among the Crowe’s household), a grand evergreen stood in the drawing room. It was a fir imported all the way from America, decorated with all sorts of baubles and lit in candles, overseen by a porcelain angel perched on the highest bough. Garlands of winter flowers and dry oranges decorated every available space, and everything that came out of the kitchen was perfectly festive. In truth, it was much like dressing a corpse in their best clothes before a funeral. The scent of simmering wassail felt akin to the sweetness of dry roses scattered over a shroud, doing their best to cover the stench of rot. But it was no doubt more pleasing than the emptiness, somehow opulent in nature, that consumed the manor in less joyful times.

The master bedroom was no exception to this decoration. Porcelain dolls dressed in carolling clothes had been unearthed from storage, and behind Angelica’s dressing screen there stood a mountain of presents for her daughter, cleverly hidden from plain view. I knocked thrice before entering and only waited a few minutes before Angelica appeared at the doors. She threw them open with an enthusiasm rare in this house, a jolly smile on her face. “My dearest Rosemarie,” she greeted, “what perfect timing you have! I was just going to ring for a maid, but you are far better suited for this task; come, come!” she grabbed at my arm as she said this, and dragged me into her bedroom with a swift tug.

“My Lady,” I managed to say, and closed the doors behind me. “I’ve just come with some warm blankets for you.”

“And I shall take them with the most gratitude. But hurry to my vanity, and tell me what you think.”

I set my load of laundry on the corner of the bed, thinking with some remorse that they would cool before Angelica made use of them. “Think of what?” I asked her, taking up my skirts as I followed her to her dressing table. Laid across it was a gown, cut of a rich scarlet taffeta that flashed gold in the light. Two sets of jewels sat on its bodice, one of pearls, and one of rubies and glittering white gems.

“I’m picking out my wardrobe for the visit,” she explained shortly, “I usually wear the pearls, but these are new, and must admit I am searching for an excuse to wear them.”

“Then wear them,” I told her. She took up the necklace, and held it against my throat. She examined it carefully, and I imagined she might have been deciding whether or not it would be gauche to receive guests wearing such jewellery. “For what occasion is this gown?”

“Christmas dinner,” she answered, and smiled at the necklace. “So I think it is appropriate to wear something so extravagant.” Her eyes moved from the rubies to my face, and her smile readily disappeared. “Oh,” she said, immediately, “Miss Heathcliffe, are you quite well? I find you…paler than is usual, I think.”

I recall forcing myself to smile, and noting the way my lips crackled when I did. “I feel very well, My Lady.”

“Are you sure?” she asked and took me by the chin. “You look as though you haven’t slept in weeks. Is it Heather? Perhaps we should clear the chimney in her room, make use of it—”

“Your daughter is sleeping well, I assure you,” I said, prying Angelica’s gentle hands from my jaw. I held them between mine, and told her with the most earnestness, “And I am quite alright.”

Angelica sniffed, whirling away from me, her hands ripped from my grasp. “You know, you’re a rotten liar,” she said. “It is, in part, why I hired you.”

“It’s nothing dire,” I said. “Only a bout of insomnia. It will pass.”

“We have plenty of laudanum in the medicine cabinet,” she told me, “You might make use of it.”

I pressed my lips together. I, at this time, was not fond of the stuff. I cannot say that I am fond of it presently, though, only that I look at it with a great deal less scrutiny than I did that night. I stared at it for several minutes as I made the Heather’s night bottle later on, weighing the boons, and eventually resigned myself to ten drops on a pressed cube of sugar. I did not partake in it until after Heather was fed and fast asleep, but sure as the stars in the sky, it lulled me into sleep, and my dreams were mellowed. In fact, I might say that was the first, last—only—night which I slept soundly in many months. But bodies are weak; the small amount of medicine wore off rather quickly, and I was forced to increase the dosage I took the longer I relied on it.

I thought this to be a miracle, nonetheless, for I was sleeping better than I ever had, so long as I ignored the grogginess I faced in the morning, and the great difficulty of waking up to tend to the baby. Still, I felt rested enough as Christmas came ‘round, and even deigned to join the other staff once more for some hearty drinking the night before. Rather than ghost stories, on that evening, we told holiday fables. An account of Krampusnacht, now twenty days past, accompanied passages of Dickens and the newfangled American publishings of Alcott.

I am among one of the only servants able to read aloud, so I did most of the storytelling on Christmas Eve. As a girl, I had attended finishing school, and was rather prideful of my literacy and animated narration. You might imagine it would bring me great joy, then, to be given such an opportunity. But as the night wore on, I found that the air about me grew cold. I shivered, as if taken by a fever, and as I spoke, I was acutely aware of the strange feeling filling my arms and legs. It was that of stiffness, not unlike the stiffness of a corpse, and it came with an aching pain. A sweat broke on my brow, and for a moment, I was very sure that I was dying. I slammed the book shut with such force that it clapped, and had to hurriedly excuse myself to tend to the baby.

Thoroughly drunk, though, I was only able to stumble back to my room, and I passed out shortly after I managed to climb into bed. It was this night that I was first faced with the visions that would then torment me. I account it to my not taking a sleeping draught that day, but I am in truth not sure more laudanum would have chased away the dreams forever. But this was the first time I saw her, truly saw her, and it filled me with such a horror. I witnessed her, in a perfect likeness, in that cavernous attic, hanging.

I had not known then that these visions would worsen, and soon, I did not only see her body. I witnessed the tying of the noose. I saw the very moment the madness overtook her, and other such monstrous things; by the time the New Year had come to pass, I had, in truth, even seen her rotting corpse in my dreams. Laudanum no longer chased away the nightmares, rather, it made them more vivid.

I can recall it, now, in perfect detail. At first, it came to me in whisps, like cotton blotting over the darkness of my dreams. A widow, nestled deep within her web, spun in haste to house all overflowing grief that came from an empty bassinet; perhaps, she had also had intents on raising her child here, but I never saw a baby. Only the chest of unused childrens’ clothes, shrouded and perfumed as if they, themselves, were a grave. Von Raben had been decidedly emptier, then. Yet to be refinished, it was all bones and creaking wood. The haunting groan and sway of the building in the wind was worse when there was no asbestos to muffle it.

The widow was once, perhaps, a fine lady. Her clothes were always well made, hand-stitched of fine silk and wool, but they were worn and ill-fitting. Split shoulder-seams, unhemmed skirts, moth-bitten stockings, and sun-bleached fabrics: everything which I witnessed spoke of a taste, once refined, that could no longer be afforded. She drank from chipped crystal, and the wine was always cheap. She was equally matched, in her disrepair, to the gaping maw of the manor, which seemed to cradle her with all the love of a mother. I wonder what happened to her—to this day, I admittedly know very little of how she came to be this way.

It is difficult, to explain my interactions with her. For when I witnessed her, she somehow understood she was being observed, an inexplicable feat that lent a distinctly voyeuristic air to my visions. Her hollow eyes would meet mine, as if she wanted to make sure I was watching. By the end, she was a dead woman on two feet, and the memory of her gaunt face is forever burned into my memory like tintype, as silvery as she was colourless, save for an ever-present smear of crimson over her mouth. It always seemed as though she had a square of blood-stained linen tucked into the edge of her bodice, ready to cough into—spitting herself to death.

And there was always a madness about her, a bitterness, a heavy hatred of something. It was confounding, an infectious anger that spun like a dark, swirling sea behind her eyes. It had a strong current, one which gripped me by my very being and dragged me under. It became suffocating, it was suffocating, it is suffocating.

I saw her everywhere. Her silhouette in the fleeting shadows at the end of a corridor; the sound of her body dropping from the rafters in the steady drip, drip, drip of snowmelt creeping in through the ceilings. I saw her in the looking glass, when lack of sleep stole away the pinkish hue of my cheeks. There were bruise-violet rings beneath my eyes, an ever-present haunting punched into my visage—God, I was starting to look just like her. I wondered if she could see me, from wherever she was, as I rotted away. Was she gladdened? Did her anger tinge into sick satisfaction when she witnessed my ruin?

Long gone were the nights passed entirely in bed. The dreams took unto them a repetitive quality, in which I would watch from the window in the attic, back pressed against cold, stained glass. She would climb up a bed, one carved of an eerily familiar Italian mahogany, and perch herself upon the highest point of the four-poster frame; crouched like an animal, a vulture watching still and silent from the dark. She would stare at me. She would grin this sickening, sharpened smile as she tied the rope about her neck, knowing I could not force my eyes to flee from her sight. And then, she would pounce. Her body morphed from the twisted carapace of illness to the still repose of death. And then, the rafter she’d tied her noose about would snap, and I would—

Wake. The clock on the stairs would croon its call of night, the toll of a death bell, one, two, three, without fail.

I began to wander throughout the nights, taking to the darkened hallways in lieu of rest. I found, at this point, that sleep did very little to invigorate me. I still woke with sandy eyes that begged to shut out the dreary light of midwinter, with aching hips and ankles and vertebrae. There formed a fiery pain in the side of my neck that flared whenever I lay down, and finding that a final reason to avoid bed, I walked. And often, I found myself back in the chapel, and I looked upon the one spot of warmth in this carrion, and I begged God for reprieve, and what would you know; he never answered.

Still, I sat often among the pews, gazing up at Christ on his cross, and I prayed like a madwoman. Sometimes, I heard the tap of house-shoes on the stone. Angelica happened upon my quiet sacrament, every now and again, and she would wait in the door of the chapel, watching me, as I watched her. Most nights, that was all she did, before she would walk back to her own chambers. I always hoped she forgot about what she saw. But I knew Angelica better than that, and it seemed that she used to know me better than anyone; so of course, one night, she decided to approach me, and pleasantly inquire, “Having trouble sleeping?”

I did not answer her immediately. I had my hands clasped before me, bearing the breath of my frenzied words— “and banish her from my sight, allow me to see this demon no more, please, God, make her leave me alone—”

Angelica placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. It halted my fervent prayer, but there was still a crazed nature about me, widening my eyes and chilling my blood into ice. I turned sharply and met her gaze, and was so thoroughly rattled to be reminded there was warmth and softness in this house. “How long has it been since last we spoke?” I asked her, tongue unbidden; for I could not recall when last I had even seen Angelica. There was not a time before the widow, not anymore, my entire waking life had become her death, her spectre, her maggot-filled—

“Four days,” Angelica said. “You’re lucky that Heather has met your path more recently than I,” she scolded, but I could not remember seeing my charge all that recently either— “You look like hell.”

“I am living in Hell,” I told her, though it was quiet and unremarkable, for she did not mention the quip. She was right, of course, and my body informed me of its current state of emaciation with a painful cramp in my gut. I had lost a grand sum of weight, in those first months of winter—a stone or two, at least, which had loosened my clothing from my skin so dramatically that my corset no longer felt restrictive. Fine silks, ill-fitted, hissed a voice in the back of my head, that same frigid whisper that taunted me before the mirror in the washroom. Eating had become a feat of great stress. The spongy texture of bread was somehow evocative of festering injuries and soft flesh, and the bones of quail suddenly seemed far too human to break apart. “You shouldn’t be awake, My Lady.”

“Nor should you. And yet, here we are, very much awake—funny, how those sorts of things work.” Angelica sat down beside me and set a package swathed in a kerchief on my lap. I thanked her, then with trembling fingers, I untied the knot of fabric to unwrap what seemed to be a handful of dried, red plums. I stared at them, and on that square of plain white, the fruit looked so distinctly like droplets of blood. Like the linen tucked into the widow’s bodice.

Suddenly, I started, wincing back from the offering of food like it, itself, would hurt me. Plums tumbled from the tops of my legs to the ground to patter round my bare feet like coins dropped from a purse. Angelica made a hissing sound through her teeth. “Rosemarie, what on earth has gotten into you?” she asked me. “When was the last time you slept? Christ, when was the last time you ate?”

“I know not.” I drew in a shuddering breath, looking down at myself. My hands were trembling, fingers twisting into the soft cotton of my nightgown. “Christmastime—I–I think, I don’t…”

“...Miss Heathcliffe, it’s nigh February. Surely, that cannot be right.”

“Maybe not,” I muttered. “Has it truly been so long? What’s the date, ma’am?” My voice had been thready. I wondered if I had spoken at all, in the past few weeks, because it felt so very foreign to do.

“Why, it’s the 28th of January, haven’t you…” Angelica took up my hands, uncaring of the way I flinched. “Rosemarie, are you losing time again?”

“Again?” I asked. I refused to meet her eyes, keeping my gaze fixed on the tops of my knees. They were scuffed—when had that happened?

Angelica let out a long sigh, aired with a resigned sort of melancholy. “I suppose that answers that.”

“Has this happened before?” I did not wait to hear her answer, for I knew what she’d do, she’d look at me with that bone-deep disappointment only a mother was able to muster, and she’d say yes. Rather than weather that shame, I dropped to my knees, and began to gather up the plums. Some had rolled under the carpet which ran straight down the cathedral’s aisle, wedged in a ripple under the rug. I took it up by the corner and flung it back to reveal the stone beneath and the three pieces of fruit hidden from view.

“Just after Boxing Day,” She told me, and I could hear the frown around her words. I tucked each plum back into the kerchief, twisted it into a loose knot, and placed it back on the pew. Then I returned to the aisle, intent to replace the rug, but gave pause. My eyes found the worn engravings of two grave-stones, cut to fit between the tiles; for corpses, deep underground, somewhere, somewhere, somewhere—

“Marigold Blaire,” I read aloud. Bereaved Wife, Beloved Mother, it said, 1655-1679. And a stone below it, half the size, Lily Blaire, 1678-1678.

The Widow, the frigid voice told me, and a chill seized my entire being. Look there, Ro, she was just your age. Gooseflesh bloomed over my arms. No third headstone commemorated a Lord Blaire. This somehow felt just, for in Marigold’s seeping anger, I had been imbued with a deep resentment for her ever-unseen husband—a man I assumed to exist, of course, though he had never shown himself to me in my dreams, not even in traces. I dropped the edge of the rug, suddenly disgusted with the chapel. Her body is in there.

No part of this home seems to escape her anger. Not even this place of divinity, which I had hitherto found to be a place of comfort, knows peace. The whole house is as sick as she was, as I am.

And so, on this hallowed this morning, I am vindicated. Knowing there is not a spot in this house that is pure, that is clean from her misery, her anger, her loss. The entire place is infected, spitting itself to death, and I do not wish to be here when Von Raben finally croaks. I refuse to let it take me, too, I refuse to become Corr Valley’s next Marigold, I refuse–I refuse–refuse—God, I’d rather burn in hell than spend my death in the belly of this beast, because I will die here, I know it, I know it.

I can no longer bear to look upon the chapel, knowing that she wastes away beneath the floor. I cannot bring myself to sleep in that bed, but I think only of the dead babe whenever I enter the nursery, and the attic—

Nowhere. Nowhere is sacred. It is as it always has been. Godless. So long as Von Raben stands, Marigold shall haunt the valley, and who’s to say I am the only one being tormented? Perhaps I am only one of many servants that had been run mad in this place. Lady Blaire lives within each of us, for all I know, and we are all infected, we are all cursed, we are all in misery. It is cruel. This is what she wants, to ensnare as many of us as she is able, and to drag us down into this cruel fate, to make us as miserable and angry as she is.

I won’t let her.

And so, as I make my final pilgrimage to that cursed attic, I smile. I smile, because I know she will lose. She shall not entrance me any longer, nor shall she take the other servants, God forbid, she will certainly not take the Crowes with her. It has become plainly apparent to me that the rot festers in the very bones of Von Raben, for that was what had ensnared Marigold’s ghost in the first place, was it not? This place is mouldering from the inside out. There is only one way to stop such an infection, so I have heard, and that is to destroy it at the source.

The candles scattered about suddenly seem far warmer. They, I know, are suited to my task, and shall purge this place of sickness better than I ever could. All I need do is tip the tapers over as I wander by; all they need do is consume. I listen to the whoosh of flames as they take their meal, devouring cotton and wood and insulation as though it is the heartiest of meat. At times, they get greedy, sinking their teeth into the hem of my nightdress and clawing their way up my body; chewing at the coil of rope in my hand. I am forced to remind them that they may not have me, not yet. I bear their burns with little consequence, now, patting out the fire as I dash to the attic.

Much of the furniture in this place has become familiar to me. The oak chest of Lily’s grave, the pile of books marked with M. Blaire on the first page, the broken rafter that bore her corpse. It looks friendlier, all lit up in gold and red, as flames run up the bones of the house to their apex. I gaze upon the stained glass window which I had become so acquainted with. It disgusts me as much as anything. I take up a book—a copy of De Martelaersspiegel, bound in green and chewed away at by moths—and hurl it at the window. The sound of its shattering fills me with a sick satisfaction, and the sudden flux of air emboldens the fire. Sweat pools on my brow, and breathing becomes difficult. But I did not come up here with the intent to breathe, so I pay it all very little mind.

I knot the rope around a rafter yet untouched by the blaze. I pray it will hold long enough. Because burning to death hurts, this, I know. But I am still, perhaps, naive enough to think that the dead do not feel pain.

I coil the other end into my very own necklace of rope. It settles against my throat.

Shards of glass bite into my feet as I teeter on the edge of the windowsill, heaving one last breath of fresh air. Blood trickles from the wounds, but I cannot feel them anymore.

The clock chimes its weary toll, one, two, three, a shaky noise in the blaze, brass cylinders wobbling in the heat.

I wonder if my grief is as strong as hers.

I tip forward.

(The dead do, indeed, feel pain.)

[crosby-interesting]

i love ur blog so much. u allow truth. sadly it seems these days on gossip blogs u aren’t allowed to reveal facts, decipher lies, or knock down the white picket fence of perfection without being accused of being misogynistic. Since when did women holding other women accountable become misogynistic? Since when did exposing male cheaters who have sex with random women from restaurants, hotels, & clubs while they have pregnant girlfriends, wives, children, & dog moms waiting at home become misogynistic? Since when did exposing escorts & prostitution services that essentially promote human trafficking become misogynistic? As a feminist i believe the word “misogynistic” is sadly being diluted & loosing value, bc people carelessly throw it around to defend against any negative accusations surrounding women who’re linked to players they admire. I like this player so u aren’t allowed to call out him or his woman’s bullshit & if u do then ur misogynistic. U discuss Auston Mathews having TWO former prostitute girlfriends & CURRENT ex prostitute gf Megan Turner? ur misogynistic. U discuss Adam larsson cheating with girls the past THREE years on Vera soderberg while he’s away traveling for games? ur misogynistic. U discuss Lauren Kyle ignoring video evidence of Connor Mcdavid cheating with a college girl & accepting the public humiliation of the the scandal just accepting an “Im sorry” engagement a year later? ur misogynistic. U discuss Nico Hischier & Timo Meier hiring a spain prostitute to spend 3 days with them on a yacht LAST WEEK & following her on IG while she has pictures for the prices of lap dance, private dance, & “extra services” on her IG highlights? ur misogynistic. U discuss Elias Pettersson prostitute call girl -girlfriend Katelyn Byrd exposed on surveillance video kissing & being fondled by married musician Alex Pall, then his wife crying on IG stories after exposing the affair while Katelyn is getting her paparazzi pics with Alex outside of Nobu a week after the scandal? ur misogynistic. U discuss Katelyns other scandal of the ex sugar daddy FIANCÉ who publicly accused her of secretly taking large sums of money out of his accounts after he had already bought her FAMILY a house & discovered she was cheating on him with a younger man? ur misogynistic. U discuss Kasperi Kapanen intentionally make Dubai prostitute Matleena Laakso his girlfriend, so he can finally cheat with peace & understanding? ur misogynistic. U discuss Penny Liarakos cheating on William Nylander at the start of their ex relationship & running secret puck bunny tumblrs with her best friend & currently leaving Willy weird comments using fake accounts on IG? ur misogynistic. U discuss Mathew Tkachuk being given an ultimatum and forced by Papa Kieth to prospose to the blonde( who he unfortunately is just not that into) on the back of a fishing boat in an old t shirt & swim shorts while she’s wearing a white bridal shower dress bc she was actually involved in Papa Kieths plan, & Papa set up the whole proposal himself at 9am on a random Thursday because Papa was tired of Matt cheating with the mixed girls & latinas from the Miami bars? ur misogynistic. U discus Kathy Leutner working for a man who provided prostitution services & has victims accusing him of trying to recruit them into prostitution? ur misogynistic. U discuss Sidney Crosby's public humiliation ritual fcked up relationship? ur misogynistic.- Let’s be honest girls, none of those discussions are misogynistic no matter how much the truth hurts, as much as you want to deny it pls stop mislabeling facts as misogyny.If u can’t face the truth ur lucky enough to have the option of logging out & going back to living ur delusions of grandeur & perfection. Holding women accountable for their actions or lack there of is not misogynistic & calling out their male partners deceptions is definitely not misogynistic . I will be gathering any info of the NHL prostitution /cheating circus & sending it in. im tired of the bullshit.

-🇲🇽

This all sounds like a blessing! Thank you!

[nwjws]

getaways with jake

; pairing - jake x gn!reader

; wc - 385

; genre/tags - fluff ig, just cute fun time w jake at the beach ; warnings - none i think, other than getting salty water in your eyes

; notes - relationship isn’t specified (he could be ur friend or bf or whatever)

weekend getaways with jake would be SO fun

especially at the beach??

like you guys would just be lounging around your house on a lazy weekend

and he'll just suggest it

"let's go to the beach?"

let's go to the beach each

you two hop in his car and he just drives to one that's like A WHOLE HOUR AWAY.... 😨

but he insists bc "c'mon, it's pretty quiet there bc no one else really goes there"

he found it one day while walking layla to get his mind off things

and now he's bringing you there!! ☹️☹️ so cute

the drive there is definitely NOT boring either

you guys are blasting music with the windows down, the sun is beginning to set, the wind is getting in your hair

it's gonna be hella messy but that's a problem for future you

it's just so fun being with him in general

you guys finally arrive there and he immediately runs up to the shore

you follow him, the water going up to your shins

the breeze feels so nice on your skin

you’re just relaxing, closing your eyes as you listen to the waves crashing

and then water hits you

so you’re like “what the hell???????” 🤨🤨

jake starts up a water fight by flicking some at you

you get him back and send a whole WAVE of water at him

so now, you guys are just chasing each other, trying to see who gets the other more wet while laughing your heads off 😭😭

have fun coughing up the salty water that gets in your mouth :)

speaking of salty water, your eyes HURT SO MUCH by the end of the day

like they feel DRY DRY but keep tearing up too

jake’s just trying to hold his laughter in as he watches you rub your eyes furiously

which obviously doesn’t help, you’re just getting more salt in them

“STOP LAUGHING AT ME”

“I’M NOTT”

he honestly can’t say anything against you bc his eyes are also dry and hurt like hell 💀

you guys spend the night at a nearby hotel

it’s such a relaxing way to end the day

just watching the tv in comfortable silence

you’d def be watching bluey on disney channel and he’d be SO invested

it’s a weekend well-spent :)

; author’s corner! hii first fic on here and i’m relatively new to using tumblr but anyways i wanted to get a few short stories out before i release a LONGG one shot i’ve been writing :))

[leclerced]

Lando and dirty talk. That’s it. He likes to talk and he doesn’t shut up when going at his girl. And it’s not a few words or a sentence and then he’s shutting up oh no. He describes everything. How good she feels, how her pussy is getting red from him slapping her directly on the clit and from his balls, how her thighs are all wet cause she’s so desperate she’s gushing slick all over both of them. When she’s giving him a blow job or especially when he’s fucking her it’s on a whole new level. He’d degrade the shit out of her. Call her his little slut and tell her a whole story about how good she feels. Ugh I’m horny now

so annoyed i rambled ab his for at least 30 mins and tumblr shat the bed . redoing it but its not the same as my original tbh

imagine them when they first start dating and they’re making out and grinding for the first time, she pulls away to catch her breath and lando starts kissing her neck while guiding her hips against his, and he starts telling her how good she feels against him. then starts telling her about how bad he wants to taste her, that since they met all he’s thought about is how good she’ll taste and how pretty she’d sound cumming on his tongue. she’d be shocked into silence, wondering where her sweet, shy lando went and where this confident, crude man sex god came from.

she’d be so embarrassed by how turned on she is by it, soaking through her panties and pajama shorts and when he goes to rub her through them he’d start teasing her about how soaked she is when he hasn’t even done anything yet. tell her how sexy it is that she wants him so badly, tease her with his words and his fingers at the same time. when he finally starts fingering her he’d tell her to be quiet bc she’s so loud. once she chokes back the moans he’d laugh gleefully, and point out the slick sound being made by his fingers fucking her, “you hear that baby? was moaning so loud before you couldn’t, but you hear how soaked you are for me? your pretty little cunt is dripping for me.” and as if to make a point, he’d pull his fingers from her and lift his hand up, showing that even though he only had two fingers in her, his whole hand is soaked in her slick from her grinding against his hand.

or like him stripping her down so she’s completely naked and he’s still dressed, making her ride his thigh and he’d taunt her over soaking through his jeans, point out the wet spot getting larger with each roll of her hips. call her his desperate slut for begging him to fuck her while she rides her thigh, bit he wouldn’t touch her or fuck her until she’s worked for it, earned it by getting herself off on his thigh.

also, i think he’d love getting her all worked up (maybe even in public) by telling her all the things he’s gonna do to her. tell her how badly he wants to eat her out, that if she just let him, he would get down on his knees and eat her out right then and there. he’d go into detail about how he’d circle her clit with his tongue before nipping and sucking at it, how he’d hold her down while he fucks her with her tongue. get her all worked up then he dips his hand between her thighs and realizes she’s gotten her inner thighs all wet, literally dripping for him. he’d tease her for that too, rubbing his finger along the slick skin of her inner thigh as he says, “look how wet you are, dripping just for me, yeah?” and she doesn’t realize he wants a reply until he pinches her clit and she instantly answers, that it’s all for him and only him. it’s exactly what he wants to hear and he’d reward her for being good and knowing the answer.

when she’s sucking him off, he’s nonstop talking about how good it feels, telling her he loves when she sucks on his tip and flicks her tongue over it, when she jerks him off and sucks on his balls. he’d praise her for being so good at it and then degrade her for enjoying it so much, call her his needy whore who can’t go a day without having her mouth or cunt stuffed full.

[aft3rhrs]

So I took a break from tumblr for uni(can’t read smut gotta study lmfao💀) and I seen that u moved blogs bc of hate and ik this is like completely random bc I never sent an ask to u on ur other blog(😭 i was shy) but I love ur writing style so much and I wanted to know if u have any advice for writing. I’m currently working on a taehyung fic and I’ve been struggling for months. what would u recommend for getting past writers block? (ps I love u sm🫶🏾🩷)

hi baby!!! ❤️ no need to explain yourself at all, you're so sweet ily 💕

to be honest I'm not sure if I'm the best person to ask for advice on this aaah... but... I think it really depends on what's blocking you, figuring that out is so important imo. if you're burnt out, stressed, overworked, then I wouldn't suggest adding more pressure on yourself — you need some good rest. I usually get into TV shows and fanfiction, it's distracting, it can be inspiring as well, it resets your brain. though these days I don't have that much energy, so drabbles, webtoons and short stories are great too!

I also like looking at prompts, or creating my own along with moodboards.

if it's the fear of judgement or your fic not being received well that's holding you back, as hard as it is, try to let go of that — everything gets easier when we let go of our fears. it's also important to remember that the number of notes and or a negative comment don't define you or your talent — not every fic is for every reader, and rude people exist everywhere! not your problem. ❤️

I would also like to quote a writer I admire, Stephen King, because when you're really stuck and it's none of the issues I mentioned above, sometimes you just gotta kill your darlings. sometimes there is a scene, a plot point that you wanna write so bad, but for some reason you can't move on. it does wonders to remove it, change the direction of the story, even though it can be hard, because it's an idea you loved. killing your darlings doesn't have to mean burying them though. sometimes the concept is better fitted for another story or another time, but that can be a factor too! it has been for me many times.

also... don't ever try to change your style, your voice is unique and that's what makes it beautiful. we all have weak points but we get better with practise. don't restrict yourself with rules, write whatever you want, however you want it, start in the middle, end at the beginning — it's your story!

good luck baby and please keep me updated on how it goes ily 🫂❤️

[sugaftrm]

♡ sweet sope ♡

love notes for my mutuals hi everyone, this past week has been full of extra love and wanted to share my appreciation, not just for this joyful community, but for the people who brighten up each day with their presence! 

@blueandtaes - hi my sib, i love you. being in this fandom together is a godsend. through the weeping, the cackling, the impulse purchases, the city adventures and home dance parties, i’m so blessed to be doing it all with you. ​

@zmalik - sabrina shonaaaa you’re one of the first people i followed on this website (i legit think you were the second person after my sister), i dont know why you followed when you did since i was a chaotic mess back then but i am so so thankful that you did! i remember our early convos and i still fantasize about deshi food hangouts in the city, whether that’s yours or mine. you’re the kind of person who in many ways I aspire to be, because you say what’s on your mind without the fluff. I’ve been meaning to ask you why you hate ji changwook btw but I’ve been scared! one day let’s talk about it over chaa nastha? Love you, and sending all my affection to you and ur new kitten!! @yoonglet - hello angel aahana! I feel as though no matter how I try to word how I feel about you, it will always fall short. You are one of the most generous, strong-willed, friendly people I know. Your aura is bright and I am so honored to witness you, even if it’s through this limited window of armytumblr. thank you for believing in me, when I didn’t believe in myself! Your support means everything <3 @artsyjoons - anj! i distinctly remember an early convo we had where we were talking about namjoon doing an srk pose lmfao thank you for understanding what i was rambling about in the tags and initiating a convo with me! every morning i wake up and i see you enriching my feed with your thoughts, your humor, and your captivating energy! please share with me the secret to being so sweet and cool??  @rosebowl - my sweetheart Sharika, when I think about you honestly… I feel anxious and giddy! Because I wonder what luck I must have accidentally stumbled upon to find a desi army friend right here in New York, and that too someone who shares so many of my own values and interests!!?? Sounds like a dream, hope I never wake up! My adoration for you grows every day, please know that I am rooting for you and support you, just how you show up endlessly for all of us! Can’t wait for our future adventures xoxoxo @taefiore - hi my darling raabia! (I hope you’re resting and not stressing when you read this, but if you are stressed I hope this makes you smile) I feel like I have to thank run-on for bringing us together?? I have enjoyed every single one of our conversations and interactions, you’re easily one of the most clever and sweet people on this site! thank you for listening to my dreams, for all your kind/witty commentary on things I post, and for being an all-around incredible person! i know how hard you work and I hope your future is just as bright as you are, love you! @bibillyhillsbaby - lovely helena, are your legs tired? Cus you’re running through my mind oooooh! we’ve said this to each other many times, how fun it is to chat about shows, about our love for these men,™ and more! but have I told you about the times you’ve generated warmth and peace for my soul? your compassion has not gone unnoticed dear friend <3 you’ve made so many of us laugh and smile, lended kind words when we’ve needed them the most. I hope that when you see flowers and trees, you think of all our love blossoming for you!  @kithtaehyung - oh ryen! when you created the ‘still with you’ gfx you officially stole my heart! but then you went and kept it for good when you made the ‘magic shop’ gfx during a challenging time in my life. your empathy and your cheerfulness was a clearing for my foggy mind! you’re a stellar person and i get such a burst of joy when i see you on my feed. if i could handwrite notes for you everyday, i would! <3 @pinkjjoon - sara i can’t remember our first conversation, but i could’ve swore it had something to do with the term “namjaan” lmao! though we’re timezones apart, i am glad the internet brought us together cus i really need more desi army visibility! i appreciate your candidness, your humor, as well as your kind words during hard times. i hope bts gets their act together and holds a concert where you are cus you more than deserve it!  @hazeltae - allison, ive been trying to put to words why i feel so drawn to you and why you always make my day and i think it’s bc you’re a capricorn sun/pisces moon!!! no wonder you have this way of making people feel steady, held while also relating to them on an emotional level! i love talking to you about rj, about yoongi, about totally normal shopping habits <3 thank you for all that you are and for being such a sweetheart!  @gimbapchefs - hello nat!! even though we’re newer mutuals, there’s such a refreshing ease in our conversations that i truly appreciate! i find myself resonating with your thoughts and reactions, and cackling at things you reflect in the tags! i also admire your dedication to your studies, even when you get a little distracted ;) we need more people like you in the field, i’m so excited to see where your journey takes you!  @intronnevermind - hi raf! it’s such a pleasure to be connected here! we haven’t spoken much but your posts and content leave me with a great sense of joy/admiration! i am so impressed by your style and am looking forward to anything you create in the future. thank you for sharing sweet remarks about my amateur content and for being such a lovely part of this community! @ourownwings - wings :) i am so in awe of the creations you provide for the community and all the tender labor that goes into relaying the BU stories here! i can only imagine the time it takes to do that, but you’ve done above and beyond - and i’m so proud of your milestone! i was delighted to chat with your about your life outside tumblr, and wish you all the best in your future endeavors! thank you for being such a sweet, supportive presence in my orbit!  @jintae - padya, it’s likely you’ll see this if/when you return from your hiatus but you should know that i appreciate our exchanges and how excited i was to connect with another nyc bengali army! i hope you are taking care and finding enjoyment during your days <3 i think about your written piece about the impact bts has had on you as well as the publication you created for the community, and am so proud to know that you’ve spearheaded these meaningful spaces for others. i hope our bond can grow over time, universe-willing, and that you get every happiness you absolutely deserve!

to my lovely mutuals who amaze me every time with their creations & their talent, and have given me much laughter/much comfort, i am grateful for you. i have much warmth in my heart for you all and appreciate the conversations we’ve had about life, about bangtan, and anything in between. thank you for being here: @duckjinnie @ayosuuga @yoongisshadow @userjiminie @jinbestboy @mykrokosmos @marvelousbangtan @jimindelune @floraljimin @flowerseokjin @dinamitae @zhujieqiong @thegoddessly @kooseokss @dalbichigom @jinjagi @joonsrack 

[babypandawrites]

Allies, Pt. 9

The Northern Air Temple 

Pairing: Sokka x F Reader Warnings: None Word Count: 3,813 Summary: You thought that the chance of there being Airbenders other than Aang was too good to be true, sadly you were right. 

Note: How I completely forgot about this until now I'm not sure but! Another piece of this series I’ve done for the fun of it is outfit designs- If that kind of things in fics isn’t your cup of tea then feel free to act like these don't exist! But for those who are interested or who might just wanna see; here you go.  This is just what I personally envisioned while writing, again feel free to ignore it if you want, but I figured I might as well share :)  I was also going to wait until tomorrow to post this bc Wednesdays is my upload day for it on Ao3 but I’m also a chapter ahead there and wanted to get my tumblr uploads caught up- so back to back post today and tomorrow :) Yay 

-Navigation- | -Atla Masterlist-  -Last Part- | -Allies Masterlist- | -Next Part- 

Taglist: @boomeraangin​ | @brokennerdalert​​​

“So, travelers, the next time you think you hear a strange large bird talking, take a closer look, it might not be a giant parrot, but a flying man! A member of a secret group of air walkers who laugh at gravity and laugh at those bound to the earth by it!”  Aang smiled. “Aren’t airbender stories the best?” “Was it realistic? Was that how it was back then?” Katara questioned.  “I laugh at gravity all the time. Haha! Gravity.”  A pair of hands holding a hat suddenly appeared in the space inbetween Sokka and Y/n. The storyteller shook the hat, the jingling of coins being heard.  “Jingle, jingle.”  The two searched their pockets for any money. Y/n didn’t have anything, and the only thing Sokka pulled from his coat pocket was a small ball of lint and a bug.  Y/n offered the storyteller a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”  “Aww. Cheapskates!” The man left them, going to ask other audience members for donations.  She turned to look at Sokka, a disgusted expression apparent on her face at the bug that wiggled around in his hand. “Why… was there a bug in your coat?”  “Hey! Don’t question a man and his bug.” The bug rolled over, and started to crawl up his hand. Sokka yelped and shook it off.  Her expression twisted into amusement. “A man and his bug, huh?”  “It’s not my fault we can’t afford to keep him fed.” 

The next morning, the group found themselves on the way to the Northern Air Temple. Apparently, the airbenders in the story they heard were seen the previous week. It seemed a little too good to be true, that there might be airbenders other than Aang still out there, but Y/n wasn’t going to be the one to crush the kids' hope.  That was Sokka’s job, not hers.  “Hey, we’re almost at the Northern Air Temple! This is where they had the championships for sky bison polo.”  Y/n looked at Aang with a smile. “Sky bison polo? That sounds fun.”  “It is fun! So much fun!”  Katara moved to sit next to her brother. “Do you think we’ll really find airbenders?”  “You want me to be like you, or totally honest?” Sokka asked, focusing on whittling a piece of wood.  “Are you saying I’m a liar?” Katara crossed her arms over her chest.  “I’m saying you’re an optimist. Same thing basically.”  “They’re not the same thing at all.” Y/n commented. The boy just shrugged his shoulders.  “Hey guys, look at this!”  Appa was starting to approach the Northern Air Temple. It sat up on a sheer peak, several people flew around it, and smoke rose from a few pillars.   “Huh! They really are airbenders!” Aang leaned, crossing his arms unhappily. “No, they’re not.”  Sokka pointed up at the people flying around. “What do you mean they’re not? Those guys are flying!”  “Gliding maybe, but not flying. You can tell by the way they move. They’re not airbending. Those people have no spirit.”  Y/n tipped her head to the side, watching the gliders. “I mean, they look like they're flying to me, but you would know best.”  As she finished speaking, a glider passed over the group's heads, nearly taking them off. The glider’s pilot laughed, turning to pass by Appa again. Getting a closer look at the kid, it could be noted that his glider was built out of the wheelchair he sat in.  Katara pointed in the glider’s direction. “I don’t know, Aang. That kid seems pretty spirited!”  The glider made another pass, and soon Aang was standing up glider in hand, before taking off. Another glider flew in front of Appa, startling him and causing Katara and Y/n to fall backwards into Sokka. The three grunted at the impact.  “We better find some solid ground before it finds us!”  Appa made a landing on one of the temple’s outer terraces, the trio getting off him and watching as Aang and the boy in the wheelchair glided through the sky. Aang eventually came down and landed next to them, the other boy also coming to a landing. A few kids came other and detached the glider from his wheelchair, before he wheeled over to the group.  “Hey! You’re a real airbender! You must be the Avatar! That’s amazing! I- I- I’ve heard stories about you.”  Aang rubbed at the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Thanks.”  “Wow! This glider chair is incredible!” Sokka rushed over to the kids who had the glider setup, inspecting it.  “If you think this is good, wait until you see the other stuff my Dad designed.”  He began to wheel away, the group following. They were led through the huge main gate of the temple, into the main chamber. The room was dominated by steam-powered machinery with many wheels, gears and pipes.  “Wow!” Sokka ran forward, looking around the room excitedly.  “Yeah, my dad is the mastermind behind this whole place! Everything’s powered by hot air. It even pumps hot air currents outside to give us a lift when we’re gliding.”  Aang took a look around. “This place is unbelievable.”  The boy in the wheelchair smiled. “Yeah, it’s great isn’t it?”  “No, just unbelievable.”  Y/n tried to hold back a laugh, clearing her throat to force down her laughter.  “Aang used to come here a long time ago. I think he’s a little shocked it’s so… different.” Katara said, before following after Aang when he walked off.  “So better!”  Rolling her eyes, Y/n elbowed Sokka in the shoulder. He gave her a look.  “Come on, you don’t think this is cool at all?”  “Not really.” 

Soon they followed the boy, Teo, to another part of the temple. This time it was a courtyard of sorts, it was untouched, and there were statues of airbenders.  Aang was much happier about this, than he had been about the other room. “It’s nice to see even one part of the temple that isn’t ruined.” He spoke, as him, Y/n and Katara looked at a huge statue of an airbender monk.  “Look out!” A voice shouted out, shortly before a wrecking ball crashed through the statue. The three flew backwards with the debris, and everyone started to cough from the dust. As the dust settled, several people could be seen through the hole that’d been created. One of the people walked forward, a middle aged man with a mostly bald head who wore a monocle, a green tunic and an apron.  “What the doodle! Don’t you know enough to stay away from construction sites? We have to make room for the bathhouse!”  “Do you know what you just did? You just destroyed something sacred! For a stupid bathhouse!” Aang, clearly upset with the man, took on an airbending stance.  The man waved a hand in front of his nose. “Well, people around here are starting to stink.”  Aang pointed at him. “This whole place stinks!” He slammed his staff against the ground, sending a strong gust of wind through the hole in the wall, knocking the wrecking ball and it’s rig off the building's foundation. “This is a sacred temple! You can’t treat it this way. I’ve seen it when the monks were here. I know what it’s supposed to be like.”  “The monks? But you’re twelve!”  Teo wheeled over. “Dad, he’s the Avatar. He used to come here a hundred years ago.”  Aang walked closer to the man. “What are you doing? Who said you could be here?”  “Hmmm… doing here… A long time ago, but not a hundred years, my people became refugees after a terrible flood.” He gestured his arms for effect, before moving to stand behind his son. “My infant son, Teo, was badly hurt and lost his mother.” Sniffling, he held back tears. “I needed somewhere to rebuild and I stumbled across this place. Couldn’t believe it! Everywhere pictures of flying people. But empty! Nobody home! Then I came across these fan like contraptions!”  He held his arms out as if they were wings, making flying motions with them as he walked about the courtyard for a short moment. He stopped in front of Aang, who was clearly still upset.  “Our gliders.”  “Yes, little light flying machines. They gave me an idea. Build a new life for my son, in the air! Then everyone would be on equal ground, so to speak! We’re just in the process of improving upon what’s already here and after all, isn’t that what nature does?” Aang was still upset, while Sokka and Katara stood behind him, teary eyed from the story. Y/n rolled her eyes at the siblings, before moving to stand next to Aang, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. Sure, the story was sad, but to her the boy’s feelings were more important.  The Mechanist turned to look through the hole in the wall he’d created. “I suppose that’s true. Unfortunately, progress has a way of getting away from us.” He looked down in a bout of sadness, before his head snapped up to look at an odd candle device..? A bit aways from them. “Look at the time!” Three candles burned brightly on a stone pedestal, each separated into their own sections. Next to the pedestal, a large mallet rests, sitting head down. The Mechanist turned to one of the scribes behind him. “Come the pulley system must be oiled before dark.”  Sokka approached the candles, observing them. “Wait, how can you tell the time from that thing? The notches all look the same.”  “The candle will tell us. Watch.”  The candle’s flame snapped four times in a row.  “You put spark powder in the candle!” “Four flashes, so it’s exactly four hours past midday, or, as I call it, four o’candle!”  Sokka let out a laugh, as The Mechanist looked at him, seemingly pleased he was interested. “If you like that, wait till you see my finger safe knife sharpener!” Y/n’s attention moved to the man at the mention of that, watching as he held up his left hand, where three of his fingers were made of wood. He detached them from his hand, before tossing them to Sokka. “Only took me three tries to get it right!” Sokka let out a scream, as he caught the wooden fingers. “Follow me!”  The Mechanist turned to leave, the men who were with him and Sokka quickly followed. As the boy passed by Y/n, he grabbed onto her wrist and dragged her along with him. She offered a quick goodbye wave to Aang, Katara and Teo as she was dragged away. 

Quiet steps echoed through the narrow hallway, as Y/n, Sokka and The Mechanist descending a narrow staircase. Each of them held a lantern, glowing with sparse blue light.  “These lanterns are terrible! I can’t see.”  Y/n ran into Sokka’s back, as he abruptly stopped to open the jar to his lantern. She flicked the back of his head, as he continued to speak. “Why would you want to use fireflies for light- Hey!”  She snickered, watching the firefly that escaped from his lantern.  The Mechanist turned to look at them. “Hey, close that up! They’ll get loose. Fireflies are a non-flammable light source.”  “Are you meaning to say that something down here is flammable?” Y/n asked, as they all continued walking.  “Well, why else would I need a non-flammable light source?” The Mechanist offered a chuckle, as they approached a door. The edges of it were blocked by some sort of sealant, which he felt around, probably to check for leaks.  After checking he turned back to them. “Cover your nose and hold your breath.”  Once they’d done so, The Mechanist slid open a panel in the door, which they all looked through. It just showed a dark and empty room. “Okay, so you brought us all the way down here to see an empty room.” Sokka spoke with a somewhat confused tone.  “Wrong.”  Eyebrows furrowing together, Y/n watched as the panel was slid shut again. “You brought us all the way down here to see a room full of flammable explosive gas?”  “Correct! It’s filled to the brim with natural gas. Came across it my first time here. Unfortunately, I was carrying a torch at the time. Nearly blew myself and the whole place even more sky high. Thought my eyebrows would never grow back! Anyway, there’s a vital problem that needs solving. From time to time we have gas leaks and they’re nearly impossible to find.”  Y/n took a few steps back, as Sokka helped check the door for leaks. “So this place is an explosion waiting to happen?”  “Yes, until I figure out how to locate something I can’t see, hear, smell or touch.”  “Right, is it safe for us to be around this gas? Should we be wearing masks or something, in case we come across a leak so we don’t, you know, inhale it?”  “Oh don’t worry, we should be fine.” The Mechanist paused for a moment, straightening up after finishing checking for leaks. “Well, as long as you aren’t a firebender or something- hah!” He let out a laugh, which Sokka quickly shared.  Sokka nudged her in the arm, as they started walking back. “Oh come on, that was funny. You know that was funny.”  “Yeah, hilarious.”  He threw an arm over her shoulders. “Come on, loosen up. We’re gonna be fine, even if we do come across a leak.”  She put her hands up in defense. “Okay, okay.” 

The Mechanist led the pair to his workshop, and very clearly told them not to touch anything, before going to look over some papers on his desk. Sokka, of course, did not listen to that and started poking through things the moment the man's attention wasn’t on them.  “Sokka, he said not to touch anything.” Y/n whispered, smacking his hand away from something he was about to mess with.  He gently pushed her away a bit, before going right back to poking around. “Calm down, it’s fine. It’s not like I’m going to break an-” Sokka cut himself off, as he knocked some stuff over. Grimacing, he tried to keep it from falling to the ground.  “I said don’t touch anything!”  When The Mechanist spoke up, Sokka dropped the things to the ground. Y/n crossed her arms over her chest. “Not gonna break anything, huh?”  The Mechanist came over, to help Sokka pick the things up. “Oh, don’t worry, that experiment is old and that egg was just part of last week’s lunch.”  Y/n kneeled down to help them too, as Sokka sniffed the air. “Ugh! Week old egg smell!”   “Quick! Find that egg!”  The three started to crawl around, looking for the egg, but none of them were having much luck.  “How could something that’s so small you can’t even see it make such a big stink!?” Sokka complained as they looked. The Mechanist perked up at the comment. “That’s the solution to our problem!”  “Yeah!” Y/n looked at the two, confused, as they faced each other with excitement. “What?”  “If we put a whole mess of rotten eggs in the cellar where the gas seeps up..” Sokka started the thought, which The Mechanist continued.  “The gas will mix with the smell of rotten eggs…”  “Then, if there’s a leak…”  “You smell rotten eggs! Then you just follow your nose to the place where the smell is coming from..”  “And plug up the hole where the gas is escaping!”  “You’re a genius!” The two spoke in unison.  Still, Y/n looked between the two with a confused expression. “ What? ”  Suddenly, a large bell started to ring, and The Mechanist was quick to get up and rush from the room. “Something’s wrong I’ve got to go.”  “Wonder what that’s about.” Sokka said, getting up himself. He helped Y/n up, grinning. “We should follow him.”  “Always a snoop, huh?” Laughing softly, she shook her head. “Alright.”  Grasping onto her wrist, he dragged her out of the room to follow after The Mechanist. They’d followed him to another room, one that was filled to the brim with different war machines branded with the Fire Nation’s insignia. 

“You make weapons for the Fire Nation!?” Sokka was clearly angry with his words, rightfully so. Y/n was pretty mad about this development as well. She pointed a finger at The Mechanist.  “You! You're terrible. Horrible terrible!”  The Mechanist looked at the ground in humiliation and shame.  Teo looked at his father angrily. “Explain all this! Now!”  “It was about a year after we moved here. Fire Nation soldiers found our settlement. You were too young to remember this tale. They were going to destroy everything, burn it to the ground. I pleaded with them, begged them to spare us. They asked what I had to offer. I offered… my services. You must understand, I did this for you!” Teo turned his wheelchair away, clearly upset. The Mechanist turned on his heel, and walked back down the hall, leaving the five kids in the room.   Teo shook his head. “I can’t believe this…. This is terrible.”  “I know..” Aang looked at the weapons with disdain. “There’s so much here.”  Y/n crossed her arms over her chest. “The Fire Nation could be coming for this soon…”  Aang breathed out a sigh. “Your right… I’m going to go figure it out.”  “I’ll come with.” Teo said, as Aang started to leave the room, before following the boy.  With Aang and Teo’s return, they found out that the Fire Nation was coming soon. And they were intending to burn this place to the ground. They were all outside on one of the walkways, trying to figure out a plan.  “This is bad! Very bad!”  Katara looked over to Aang. “Aang, what are we gonna do? How can we possibly keep them all away?”  “I’ll tell you how.” He pointed to the sky. “We have something they don’t. Air power! We control the sky. That’s something the Fire Nation can’t do. We can win!”  “I want to help.” The Mechanist approached the group, as he spoke up.  Aang offered the man a smile. “Good, we’ll need it.” 

“We finally got the war balloon working, thanks to Sokka. This boy’s a genius!”  “Thank you. You’re a genius!” “Thank you!” Y/n rolled her eyes at the exchange. “Can we get on with this?”  Sokka cleared his throat. “Right. See, the problem with the old war balloon was you could get it airborne, but once you did, it just kept going.” He demonstrated with a model that flew up and hit the ceiling. “You could put a hole in the top, but then all the hot air would escape. So the question became, how do you keep a lid on hot air?”  “Ugh, if only we knew.” Katara commented. Y/n, Aang, Teo and Katara herself all laughed at the remark.  Ignoring them, Sokka pulled the model down from the ceiling, now showing off the mechanism to open and close a lid on the top. “A lid is actually the answer. If you control the hot air, you control the war balloon.” He demonstrated again, but this time the model didn’t fly up to the ceiling, thanks to the lid that could be pulled open with a string.  Katara crossed her arms. “Hmm. That’s actually pretty smart.”  “Okay, we’ve got four kinds of bombs. Smoke, smile, fire and-”  The Mechanist cut Sokka off. “Stink. Never underestimate the power of stink!” 

“We’re going to have to modify this to the new design, and fast.” The Mechanist said, as him, Sokka and Y/n worked on bringing the War Balloon he’d already constructed outside. “With both of you helping we should be able to get it up and running pretty quickly though!”  “Yeah! And I’m pretty sure Aang and Katara will be able to hold off the Fire Nation with everyone’s help.”  Y/n furrowed her eyebrows. “They’ll be able to hold them off, but we can’t count on them too for too long, even if we have the skies. The Fire Nation’s army is huge, who knows how many soldiers will show up.”  They got the balloon set up to do the necessary modifications. “Oh she’s right, time is not something we have on our side right now.”  Sokka nodded in understanding. “Right. It’s only one modification though, so it can’t take terribly long, right?”  “Let’s hope not.”  Getting to work on the War Balloon, they probably could have gotten things done a little faster. But nonetheless, they got it done, and just in time too apparently. While Sokka and The Mechanist got ready to take off in the war balloon, Y/n went to find the others to see how they were holding up.  “How are things going out here?” She asked, once she found Katara, Aang and Teo. The three looked at her with slight concern.  “Not well.” Katara started. “Please tell us Sokka is coming with that war balloon soon.”  Before she could give an answer, the war balloon rose up from behind them all, and started moving towards the battle field. From where they all stood, they could see Sokka and The Mechanist dropping giant slime bombs onto the Fire Nation soldiers. The bombs that they had didn’t stop the soldiers, however, and they were starting to advance closer to the Temple.  Katara put a hand on Y/n’s shoulder, to get her attention. “What are they doing..?”  She squinted in the direction of the war balloon, trying to see what was going on. “I’m not sur-” She cut herself off, watching as something fell from the basket of the war balloon. Was that the balloons fuel source? “Did they just push out their fuel source..?!” “What?!”  A sudden explosion set off, a really really big one. The entire Temple got clouded in a ginormous wall of grey smoke. When the smoke dissipated, it was revealed that the Fire Nation was retreating.  Aang pointed to where the army was leaving. “Look! They’re retreating!” Everyone started to cheer at the success, but the joy was cut short, as the war balloon started heading downwards quickly. Thankfully though, Aang was able to get Sokka and The Mechanist before the balloon crashed below.  Currently, they all stood outside on the main terrace of the Air Temple.  “You know what? I’m really glad you guys all live here now. It’s like the hermit crab.” Aang spoke, as he carefully picked up one of the hermit crabs near them all. “Maybe you weren’t born here, but you found this empty shell and made it your home. And now you protect each other.”  Teo offered a smile to the boy. “That means a lot coming from you.”  “Aang you were right about air power.” Sokka pointed to the sky. “As long as we’ve got the skies we’ll have the Fire Nation on the run!”

[i-did]

hi hello i couldn't sleep last night so i was scrolling thru all ur asks and stuff and ur opinions and analyses are so interesting!!! and then afterwards i was thinking about what u were saying about mlm smut and i'd also been thinking about such things a little bit recently bc like.....at a certain point it becomes quite clear that the vast majority of smut-writing is just imitation. like there's the sex noise verb list and all and the whole general mechanics of the sex and those things just .... replicate over and over. and the whole thing w people writing mlm vs wlw smut regardless of their own sexual orientation..... like i feel like a big part of that is just a self-perpetuating thing. like if u have not had sex and u r getting all ur (pleasure-related) sex ed from fandom (even if u do watch porn, that doesn't rlly tell u how to describe stuff? idk) regardless of What fandom , the majority is going to be mlm smut. which is itself majority imitation of other mlm smut, imitating and imitating back to whoever knows what the first smut fanfic was etc. there's just way More to mimic than there is on the women side of things. which then becomes a self-perpetuating thing, bc the mimicry continues and generates more and more. and---if there are fundamental misunderstandings of anatomy involved---those self-perpetuate as well. and maybe even exaggerate. and yeah. does this all make sense? idk i was just thinking about it. like all the stereotypes and stuff continue bc writers are getting their inspo from other writers rather than their own brains. or something. idk!!!!! it's just all... divorced from reality? bc words. or something!! i hope u get what i'm trying to say. just thoughts i've been thinking. anyway i think ur thoughts are cool. and ur writing. ok bye have a good day!!

Okay yeah this is kinda messy but hope u see this, uhh yeah I think you're right about the echo chamber effect fr about stuff. I think it's a mix of projecting too sometimes. talk more under the cut and also link to a video essay since I love video essays.

Here’s a video that sort of touches on this topic: 

“Gay fanfiction” by Sarah Z. (has CC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8E_C00dKwI

This video begins to talk about fetishization at the end, but also… not really. The words “gay fanfiction” is used as a catchall, when really gay fanfiction is largely mlm written by non-mlm.

Fandom is a largely women's space dominated by the female gaze in a media industry world that is dominated by men and the male gaze. I'm really glad women have this space to explore creativity and queerness, and I don't expect the female gaze to go away, but I am still ultimately bummed out I can’t read most fanfic or interact with most fandom spaces without having fetishization in my face. 

So about 80% of fandom is women, and most of those women aren't straight, but 90% of those women prefer mlm ships. Why don’t they prefer wlw ships? Well definitely part of it is the fact that queerbaiting is centered around white straight men, and then there is also the fact that women tend not to be written as well charcter wise. But the fact still remains that you get jerjean getting priority over Layla and Alvarez who are in canon just as much and are a canon wlw couple who actually interact as well as Alvarez could likely be a woc because of her Hispanic last name. Korasami doesn’t get nearly as much hype as zuko and saka, despite the fact that they are 2 fully dimensional characters who canonly kiss and hold hands, something the creators fought for and ended up having to sacrifice another reboot for. 

I do believe the fandom echo-chamber is largely responsible for… a lot of things, like you're saying. But what's interesting is that the complaints I've heard about visual porn from non mlm in the fandom space is that they can’t get off to it because its for the male gaze and misogynistic usually. But they also don't seem to notice how the mlm smut circles has the female gaze and is also… almost always mlm. If it was a pure anatomical not knowing thing, I get that, but I also think that leads to the question of “then why the male body for porn, and not your own? The one you know and are familiar with?” 

I know some people want to get outside of their own body for porn and don’t want to think of their own anatomy at all, but overall I'm still uncomfortable. If an anglo said “well I watch porn of only Mexicans so I don't self insert” I'm gonna be like … hhhh in a similar way. I understand people “like what they like” but I wish they also noticed said patterns in the first place. I understand the t4t tumblr porn circle, and how it's different from cis people who only watch trans porn. 

I actually wished that instead of fandom focusing on mlm ships where some asshole guy hits on bottom troupe charcter for top troupe character to save, was instead… a wlw character experiencing said shitty getting hit on and other wlw swooping in. what's interesting is fandom writes a lot about misogynistic experiences without often realizing it. Ive read fanfic where guys get called sluts for sleeping with people or called bitch for speaking their mind, these arent things men usually experience, but rather women. Fandom has a lot of internalized misogyny and also queerphobia imo. Women characters often get pushed to the sidelines and men become the canvas for female fans to project onto. 

There is this natural inclination to mlm. When people are talking about “gay shipping” or “gay books” or “gay feels” or even just “gay” mlm is what’s largely in mind. I honestly am kinda saddened by this because if gay fanfiction was really solely about writing more to feel represented, then you would see a lot of bi and ace and lesbian rep, but this isn't the case. Queer women are seriously underrepresented, and I want to hear their stories and read them in fanfiction as well as published. 50% of lgbt literature is mlm, and of that its largely written by women. Becky Albertalli, Rainbow Rowell, Maggie Stiefvater, are the YA big names and are all women writing mlm. Red white and royal blue is written by Casey McQuiston and Captive prince (which is not YA) is written by C. S. Pacat, who is non-binary, but is also TME and not mlm. These are all the big names in mlm lit, behind them is some gay men, but honestly their stories aren't preferred, they're not the right “flavor” for the consumers usually, who are largely women. In general YA consumers and authors are women, but I wish that they… just wrote about women too. I think there is a certain… snowball effect to the overrepresentation of mlm representing the whole LGBT community that leads to fetishization, as well as misogyny playing a factor in: less women characters being written well to write fanfic on, when they are written well they're taken less seriously or the audience struggles to relate to them, they're less marketable then men. 

Idk I never feel “seen” or “represented” by any of the books above, which don't address boyhood and manhood and queerness intersecting really, and AFTG doesn’t either. I relate to AFTG as a trauma victim who has experienced a lot of what many of the characters go through and have gone through in the EC as well as them just overall being very well written characters, but I don't relate to it as a mlm really. I've never seen like.. gay voice or being straight passing or femphobia or how boyhood can be affected from a young age by those around you sensing you're ‘other’ or if you didn't experience this you feel outside the mlm community. Let alone sub cultures like bear and leather and pup, at most you see the word “he's such a twink” in fandom which... i fr hate non mlm using that word because it's usually used to replace the f-slur essentially, used derogatorily or to call him “such a bottom” and stuff like that. It’s like a joke or an insult.

Long story short, idk mang this was a ramble and I think I'm coning down with something. I wanna see more queer women rep and women authors writing about being a queer woman too. I think it's a complex web of fetishization and a bit of forbidden love yaoi culture (or it used to be in the BOYXBOY days) as well as misogyny on an industry level, creator level, as well as reader/consumer and fandom level. I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to explore other peoples stories and what we read has to be segregated, “only mlm are allowed to read and write mlm, only wlw are allowed to read and write wlw,” but I also think author’s intent and audience and background is telling, as well as overall statistics. Like about an hour ago I was looking for cookbooks in spanish or in english, and I was looking for some mexican food cook books, but I had to look for them using words in spanish because otherwise what came up was a bunch of “fiesta party, easy as uno dos tres authentic cooking!” and I was like… hm. Since I could tell they were marketing to anglos. (also the author’s last names were like michelle smith, james cooper, and this could be for a variety of reasons, but I trust Hispanic names more tbh and deadass would look at the authors pictures and if they had other books in Spanish or what their specialties were.)

anyways. not sure how to end this. uhm if anyone has any book recs (my to read list is like 500 books tho no joke) preferably not YA white mlm written by a white lady, hopefully queer women written by queer woman, LMK, I need more wlw and queer women stories on my list. I have a decent amount but always looking for more. I kinda wanna link my goodreads or my storygraph but I also don't want to get doxxed and it has my legal name on it so.

Also, I'm dyslexic and using spell check but if there's like some wild typos my b.

[mrpenguinpants]

Oh lore?? I read your post on Dainsleif and BOY it gave me a lot to think about dsfjgkd

Along the same vein, what do you think of the relationship between the unknown god and Kaenri'ah? In Albedo's trailer they seemed to reference two new elements (time and being) and if perhaps the unknown god is the god of time, then does Khemia make use of "being" in its creation of life?

In Mihoyo's other game (honkai) they introduced a new "type" about halfway through the story which seems to me to be similar to the abyss in Genshin. The quanta type is independent of the three types that were present from the beginning of the game and it's tied to an abyss style region called the Sea of Quanta. Maybe I'm reading too much into it and they don't plan to imitate what they did in Honkai but?? Time and being as new "elements" introduced a few years into the game seems possible at least?? Maybe they're exclusive to delusions bc there's only the seven Archons at this time so no one can grant time/being visions lol

Djfkdj I hope this was at least slightly understandable I love looking into lore especially for things I write about!! I'll end this now before it gets too long lmao the new tumblr asks give me too much power XD

TUMBLR DELETED MY REPLY AHHHHH I HAD TO RE-WRITE EVERYTHING. THAT’S WHY I’M LATE TO THE PARTY. I’M SO SORRY CATTY 😭

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Major spoilers for Khaenri’ah and minor spoilers for the unknown god

:DD I’m glad you read my word vomit haha. I love talking about lore so much, ty for enabling me. 

What do you think of the relationship between the unknown god and Khaenri’ah?

The logical side of my brain thinks:

They either have nothing to do with each other and Mihoyo really likes using the same star for everything and Khaenri’ah just happens to live in the void or sky so the easiest way to distinguish citizens from there is the star (or it was just hot to put star pupils in and you know what, they were right). 

Or there’s some sort of connection between the Eclipse dynasty that ruined Khaenri’ah and the unknown god. Since genshin really likes to do that (see Zhongli and everyone calling him Morax before 1.1 dropped). 

Re-watching the prologue cutscene and “we will be reunited” (Gonna refer to this a WWBR) Aether drew the same two stars into the sand which makes me believe that either a. stars literally have nothing to do with anything and Teyvat only knows how to draw one star (which doesn’t hold up well considering Mona’s outfit and pin) or b. there’s some kind of connection there. The way Paimon phrases her question she says: 

“But when you wanted to leave and go onto the next world your path was blocked by an unknown god?”

It implies that Aether and Lumine have already travelled through Teyvat since we see two yellow stars travel over Liyue and Mondstadt. I know Aether was sent into some sort of deep sleep and only now awoke and met Paimon (since in the trailer we can see the lantern festival and the genshin upload was in march (chinese new year is in feb) but I’m not super sure on these details but I’m pretty sure it’s canon that this happened based on WWBR). 

Then when the unknown god appears and the same 3 red stars appear [tumblr throws a fit when I try and upload this]

She refers to us as Outlanders and calls herself 

“The sustainer of heavenly principles. The arrogation of mankind ends now.”

This could be a reference to “being” that was in the Albedo trailer while Dainsleif is “time” since time is "not something he lacks". If we’re going on the theory that Dainsleif is actually a god then maybe they are fighting? Or in some type of push and pull war. It would make sense since the Unknown God believes in heavenly principles (so the rules either set by Celestia or Gods themselves) and believes mankind is arrogant and wishes to either destroy it or remove it entirely. The complete opposite of Dainsleif who believes in mankind and hates anything relating to the Archons.

Or dainsleif has nothing to do with the unknown god and is just a final challenge to the player who will then face off against the Unknown God. 

In Albedo's trailer they seemed to reference two new elements (time and being) and if perhaps the unknown god is the god of time, then does Khemia make use of "being" in its creation of life?

In this theory, this would make the Unknown God the god of time, which is also equally as valid. Since she does talk about time and how the arrogation of mankind ends now. I think it’s right to assume that Khemia makes use of being in its creation of life since we see Albedo talk about chalk and turning things from “nothing” (it’s not really nothing, he’s still using something or the “being” in order to transform it) to something. 

If Dainsleif uses Khemia or even created it then taught it to the people of Khaenri’ah to help them survive in their archonless land, that could be a valid reason why he believes in the strength of mankind. Since the unknown god’s power seems to consume the person trapped within (as we see in the prologue). Plus in WWBR we see first hand how destructive that power is. This could also be the time where Dainsleif lost faith or hated the celestial beings. 

---

In WWBR, according to the wiki it states that our sibling was taken to another point in time, in an unknown location. But this event leads the sibling (Lumine) to become the leader of the Abyss Order. 

Lumine says: 

“But until the abyss has engulfed the thrones, my war with destiny will see no end.”

Lumine seems to know about the archons and the abyss mages follow her so it’s safe to assume that the “abyss” she refers to is either something entirely new or the red blocks we see here. It seems as if she’s trying to change destiny which could be why Dainsleif wants to save her. 

I will say right now, I really hope the theory that Paimon is secretly the unknown god doesn’t come true. I know it’s funny and I would enjoy seeing our emergency food pull a turned table on us but unless there are more instances where it’s hinted or it’s handled really well I would not like it. I just finished a manga and I felt like I was watching 20M plot twists happen in the span of 3 pages. I would totally be okay if the unknown god and paimon were somehow related (I can understand that) but I unless it’s handed really well or as the story progresses and we get more info on paimon. it would just be really out of left field. I haven’t seen any theories on this and I honestly try and stay away from lore posts until I’ve finished mine because I feel that might make my ideas biased.

The “everything must be connected into some kind of plotline or I will make it a plotline” brain thinks:

Now, this is just be spit balling and making up my own headcanons with no lore to go off on. This is pure indulgent stuff with no research to back it up besides very loose threads. 

I’d like to believe that since the Eclipse Dynasty was the last dynasty before Khaenri’ah fell. That might be what is being depicting above in WWBR. Perhaps khemia backfired or the unknown god turned against the people for their arrogance (I’m not sure if people know the myth but in short terms, a giant stole fire to help the people who were cold. He was punished for going against the gods and saving the people, this could be similar to Dainsleif). 

Perhaps Lumine and Aether had stopped this event from happening and as they were about to leave, the unknown god appears and separates them for their arrogant actions against the Gods and sends Lumine back to the past. Without her brother she ended up failing in saving Khaenri’ah. Or, the image we see is actually the future and she goes back in time to try and prevent that event from occurring, still trying to beat destiny but this time in the future. 

Or another idea, Lumine has only seen the evil that’s depicted and hasn’t personally met any of the archons. We actually got to meet Venti and Zhongli so we obviously want to protect them from Lumine’s point of view, that might not be the same so she aligns with the abyss order that tries to control Dvalin. So her goal is to somehow defeat the archons and that could be why the Cyro archon is trying to collect them all in her war of peace. 

Honkai and quanta

It’s kinda funny but there’s no reliable wiki source for this sea of quanta like there is for genshin, or at least I couldn’t find anything. I think they might nod at certain things between the two but I think it’s totally fine to believe they might do some sort of crossover and take some inspiration. We have Mona who was able to read the stars and Scaramouche who said the sky was a giant hoax so I think time and being becoming new elements is very possible. But I don’t really know a lot about Honkai so I can’t really say too much about it haha. 

---

Yep no worries, it was fun talking about some more lore and if you have any more I’d love to hear them. Haha, honestly pop off I love getting long asks. As always, it’s nice seeing you again catty 💕💕

[alwaysspeakshermind]

tag game!

Tagged by: @carladuquette Thank you and sorry I’m just now doing it! At this point, I should just declare my habit of showing up late to social media things and disappearing for ages soon after my brand.

Rules are to answer the questions and tag 9 people you want to get to know better/catch up with!

last song: “Davy Jones Theme” by Hans Zimmer if we’re talking last piece of music (I like to put it on a loop because it’s too short, leave me alone)...if we’re talking last song with lyrics, either “Hypnotize” by The Notorious B.I.G. or “Till I collapse” by Eminem (I don’t remember because it was at the end of yesterday’s workout when I was TIRED, lol)

last movie: The Philadelphia Story (I love this film not wisely but too well probably, whoops)

currently (re)watching: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (hence the icon/header; found out recently my sister had never seen it, so naturally I had to introduce her to the Hellmouth), Cheers, How I Met Your Mother (because I want to anger myself all over again, apparently), The Nanny, Dance Moms (I hate myself so much for this but it’s weirdly addictive), Forensic Files, I Love Lucy/Perry Mason/Twilight Zone reruns, plus The Flash, Riverdale, and Nancy Drew. Also Jeopardy! if that counts, and just finished up The Mandalorian and WandaVision :)

currently reading: Just finished rereading And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie for the bazillionth time and am about to start either The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler because I’ve only ever seen the movie and I want to know what audiences went in there expecting, Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin because I *think* I read it back when I was like 10 or 11 but can’t remember for sure, or the book of Jane Austen’s letters that I started last summer but still haven’t finished because I keep forgetting what letter I was on and having to go back (also, my fanfic TBR list is HUGE now, so who knows?)

Going to tag @akane171 , @monica-posh , @fairychamber , @angelofmusic1296 , @andsmile , @theeternalblue , @tuesdayschildd , @varchiesryissa , and @ronniesandrxws because:

some of you have tagged me in things I can no longer find due to me being stupid and accidentally burying the posts in the abyss that is my Tumblr likes

some of you I have not talked to in forever and that’s sad (sorry or you’re welcome for the respite?)

some of you I don’t technically know but I read at least one of your fics over lunch/on a break or a slowish period but we’re not gonna talk about that bc I am a model employee no really at work and I want to say hi in (temporary) lieu of the comment I couldn’t leave because I was on my phone and my phone is ancient and hates ao3, me, and basically any activity that requires it to hold a charge for more than 20 minutes. So...hi! I promise I did leave anonymous kudos, that I will return at some point and leave some well-deserved comments, and also, tag you’re it. Hope you’re bored and this helps? <3

***If I didn’t tag you and you want to do this/you’re bored enough to try anything/want to say hi but don’t know how to start the conversation, please feel free to go ahead and do it and tag me in it. I’m not unfriendly or anything, I just like...forget to be sociable when I’m scrolling 😬

[the-butch-of-blaviken]

Get to know your mutuals!! when you get this, it means i want to know more about you, so list 5 things about yourself you want your followers to know. It can be as simple as your age or as complex as your deepest fear, as long as it’s something you’re comfortable with sharing.

Tagged by @eredins-a-king-aint-he and @crunadh , thank you for tagging me!! <3

1. English isn’t my native language; i first learned “casual” English on social media then academic English at university, and it’s by mixing the two that i can write (short) stories in English, but if you ever find a weirdly phrased sentence in one of my fics, please be indulgent, i’m still not 100% bilingual yet 🙇

2. I first joined tumblr in 2015-16, then left it for twitter a short time after the purge in 20(18?19?) then came back earlier this year because twitter was just too much for me. I haven’t updated my app in years. All these new features i see people panicking about can’t reach me here

3. I’m not as socially anxious as i used to be but i’m still having trouble initiating conversations, especially on social media, so if we’re mutuals but we’ve never talked, it’s probably that i want to interact with you but i’m holding myself back bc i’m worried about being annoying 😅 (i’m....working on it)

4. I started playing D&D last year thanks to one of my friends and it honestly saved me. I love coming up with new RP characters and exploring certain things through them, but it’s also a fantastic way of meeting new people and getting to know them!

5. I’ve been daydreaming about imaginary worlds and characters since i was very young, making up stories in my head whenever i felt bored or lonely (and that was often the case when i was in elementary and middle school). Back then, it could take entire hours out of my day, and now i have to be careful not to lose track of what’s happening in front of me because my mind wanders so easily. I learned recently that there’s a name for it, it’s called maladaptive daydreaming

Tagging @alllthequeenshorses and @gingerlambert if you haven’t done one of these already (no pressure of course!) and anyone who wants to join!

[exciting]

As requested, books / series I read in 2020 in the order I read them, with a few brief thoughts. (This took me a hot second because there are a few and also I moved cities) Should I keep a consistent goodreads? Yes I should but I didn’t think of that at the time, so bone apple teeth & sorry if I offend you abt your faves x

P.S. I can’t figure out how to do a read more on mobile so long post ahead!

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas - This is one of the most vivid published fantasy books I have ever read... I read it twice in rapid succession. The fandom POPS off. I must say I have issues with certain aspects e.g. fae lore completely ignored à la Twilight, all love interests 500+ years old and technically a different species, etc (I’m not going to deconstruct the entire series here but just know that I could... Nesta deserves better)

Cruel Prince by Holly Black - This fucking slaps, HB clearly has done her research, the lore is near immaculate, and it explores the Fae in such a unique way, tying it to the modern world subtly and seamlessly. My only qualm was that the books felt quite short; truly wish there had been more content.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas (6/7) - So basically I read this in one single, hyperfixated fit which meant I literally locked myself in my room for three days straight and read all six books back to back in a row from morning to the wee hours. Which is not to say it was spectacular; although it was a VERY rich world, sometimes it was too much... this felt like 6 stories in one. Ik she was young when she wrote this but it is my humble opinion that SJM needs a better editor & I personally think Rowan is a grade A asshole / straight up abusive (& personally think the ACOTAR Tamlin plot was born from that?). It’s good but not as good as ACOTAR. Skip-read the last book. 

Grishaverse (Shadow and Bone) by Leigh Bardugo (3) - This is essential to read before SOC but was very much simply a YA fantasy book, although the world was cool and the way the love plot played out was, imo, a subtle middle finger to the fantasy trope. Felt very much aimed at younger readers though? Really liked the sandwhich structure of the Proluge and Epilogue, especially in #2

Six of Crows series by Leigh Bardugo (2) - INCREDIBLE continuation of Grishaverse, better than the original series by a mile. It has the range, the diversity, the representation (the male lead is a disabled asexual and still the most cunning of the entire cast of characters), the plot is phenomenal, and it manages such a well rounded plot in only two books which means nothing is stretched out or squeezed in more than need be. Deserves all the praise it gets.

King of Scars series by Leigh Bardugo (0.5/1) - Personally I don’t consider this book canon, and while it’s nice to see the rest of Nina’s journey & the world again & everyone else, I don't like it. I will, however, be reading book 2 when it comes out, so shame on me, I suppose.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (1/1) - this was incredibly cool although it went off in a completely different direction than I thought it would based off the first few chapters? One of my favourite YA-author-debuts-New-Adult novels in 2020 though!

Crescent City by Sarah J Maas (1/1) - This was supposed to be SJM/s New Adult debut, although personally I would put her other series in New Adult, and I can’t say a remarkable amount was different with this except they said “fuck” and “ass” a lot. WHY is the romantic interest 500 years old AGAIN. I just... don’t... I just don’t think it was necessary... the world was cool though, and the last half of the book was riveting, but the beginning was quite slow and I thought the sword thing was predictable. I am interested to see where this goes though.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab (3) - This world is so fucking cool... four Londons aka parallel universes & the one in ‘our’ world is set in industrial era London. Magic, girls dressing up as boys, thieves, pirates, royalty... it all just slaps. Schwab is an incredible writer & I was completely immersed.

Midnight Sun by SMeyer - I didn’t think anything could possibly detract even further from the Twilight story but I was sorely mistaken... seeing the stalking from Edward’s POV - and it was worse than depicted in Twilight, for the record - completely obliterated any sort of romance the first half of the original book may have portrayed. I still hold the opinion that the entire series would have been better if some kind of vampire lore had been abided by, if only to see all of the villains thwarted by someone dropping a bag of rice on the ground, forcing them to have to count them all.

An ember in the Ash by Sabaa Tahir  (3/4) - This was just a very stereotypical ya fantasy series, emphasis on the YOUNG... it wasn’t anything to write home about but I remember quite enjoying it at the time. 

The Power by Naomi Alderman - This book is FUCKING incredible and EXCEPTIONALLY thought provoking... essentially women alone develop a power of electric shock etc. and then take over the world from men, and it explores feminism and the balance between equality & tipping the scales in the other direction. Written by a friend of M.Atwood in a similar tone to handmaids tale, I would say? Content warning; there are some exceptionally graphic scenes in the latter half of the novel. 

Hamlet by Wllm Shksp - I can’t believe it took me this long to finally read it but Ophelia is my favourite name in the entire world & we love to see a woman go batshit (although she didn’t deserve that). 

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas - this was unsettling in the best sense of the word... it was a little slow & honestly more of a concept than a big reveal, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I finished it? A Secret History vibes but make it blurry like the memory of all those dystopian novels you read when you were young?

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue by V.E. Schwab - This is without a doubt my book of the year, and probably the best book I read in 2020? I stayed up all night on a friend’s couch reading it, got a book hangover and reread the ending, and then thrust it upon my mother who doesn’t usually read but read this, and loved it just as much. HIGHLY recommend and you HAVE to read it, it’s beautiful and endearing and just plain wonderful.

Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat (3/3) - I went into this knowing it was going to be terrible, because I had received a blow by blow telling me as much; although I must say that it did learn a remarkable amount of new words, the books did get better as the series went on, and it did have a rather charming ending? BIG content warning for almost everything.

Sapiens by Yuval Harari - mind-expanding & must recommend for everyone, there is everything in this and I daresay everyone should posses this kind of knowledge? I listened to it as an audiobook (which I recommend because it’s rather hearty) but will be buying this in hardcopy & rereading it with annotations. 

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - Without a doubt, one of the most beautiful novels I have ever read, and certainly the most beautiful portrayal of the story of Achilles and the battle of Troy I have ever seen. Patroclus deserved the justice that was given to him in this book; indeed, all of the characters were written with justice and grace. Highly recommend.

Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan (3/5) - Apollo is my favourite Greek God, and the sexiest greek god, and Rick Riordan’s writing slaps, as always. It did pain me to see Apollo, the sexy immortal, have to be forced back into a 16 year old’s body but everything else? Whimsical & wonderful, as expected. 

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong - a retelling of Romeo and Juliette, except it’s set in Shanghai in the 1920′s, and the protagonists already have a history. Very well done, characters are incredibly diverse in race, sexual orientation, gender, and ability / disability (and honestly, representation has never appeared so effortless and elegant). Also it includes a monster and possible magic. Incredibly underrated and highly recommend.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix. E Harrow - this was such a unique concept, and truly captivating, the story was charming, and felt like the kind of beautiful fairytale you would read as children but with more grit? ABSOLUTELY recommend this one

The Pisces by Melissa Broder - I hated this so much, not my vibe at all. Mermaid smut x therapy but make it cynical and judgemental (I know there was a moral in there but that’s not my point) also the dog dies.

Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith (1/2) - really interesting & unique concept (all unwritten novels / ideas reside in a special library that is part of Hell and then sometimes the books can come to life) however, my first thought upon reading this was “this reads as if it’s stemmed from one of those writing prompt tumblr posts” bc of the tone and whatever and as it turns out I was somewhat correct, it did stem from a short story (not bad just obvious). It did kind of settle down as it went on but I found reading it kind of a drag, and I don’t think I will read the second one.

Abandon by Meg Cabot - 1. Meg Cabot’s writing always fucking slaps 2. Hades and Persephone but make it modern & very 2000′s & somehow kind of unique 3. I literally loved this, sue me

Medusa Girls (Sweet Venom) by Tera Childs - Like Percy Jackson except they are descendants of Medusa so they are Gorgons and have fangs & venom (hence the title). Gave me very 2000′s vibes? Quite cool but tbh I found the books quite short (like two hours each, if that)? Do NOT read the GoodReads description of the book before you read it, you will spoil it for yourself.

Bring me their Hearts by Sara Wolf - In my opinion, this is one of the most underrated YA series I read in 2020. The heroine is endearing, self aware, witty, and loves to look pretty even while kicking ass which in my opinion is an incredibly underrated trait. Also, immortality without being hundreds of years old? VERY sexy. HIGHLY recommend. 

A Deal with the Elf King by Elise Kova - High commendation to be given for the fact that it is a standalone and yet manages to fit in the plot of what would usually be a full fantasy trilogy without cutting corners or being a million miles long? Also sweet storyline & beautiful ending? If you liked ACOTAR you should read this as a “what would have / could have been had SJM had a different editor” (No shade I promise).

The Iron Fae by Julie Kagawa (4/4 + novellas) - Incredibly detailed faerie set around the modern world & our current use of technology & iron in it. Very neat adventure-style series, by the time I read the last novella I was well and truly done with the world (aka provided enough content to be fulfilling). Was definitely aimed at a younger audience though, NO smut / smut was brushed over.

The Modern Faerie Tales by Holly Black (3/3 SS) - This is technically the prequel to Cruel prince, set in the modern world, but with the fae world inside it as it traditional? All I have to say is that it is excellent & I highly recommend it.

Bridgerton series (The Duke and I) by Julia Quinn (9/9) - I read this after watching the Netflix show twice through and I am obsessed, although the books were not quite as elegant as the show, and some parts that made me cringe either by their portrayal (it is very firmly set in the 19th century and thus some things are not handled with tact or grace), the characters were exceptionally loveable and I am so excited to see where the show takes them! Lovely language & an abundance of words I had never seen before (always a plus). 

[chrisevansgoodgirl]

do you want more of this? isn't it glorious?

summary: requested: Imagine the victory sex after Andy wins a case. It’s a mix between the softest and most harried sex you’ve ever had, bc he’s so excited but he also wants to slow things down and just revel in the moment. also he feels guilty about working so late all the time and ignoring you for this case, so he of course has to make it up to you somehow

warnings: just smut. a lotta smut. pretty vanilla smut tho. it’s cute smut.

word count: around 5,000

pairing: andy barber  x reader

a/n: so okay, if you’re upset with me that i haven’t been writing. i am guilty, definitely, but the real culprit is this story! (okay, it was technically me for being an idiot and editing a post ON tumblr instead of the word doc, but) i just got really attached to this writing and when i lost some of it, it was actually really sad and i could not make myself finish this request until literally two days ago even though i started working on it at the start of june. and plus also, i really am about to have to find a new song, running out of lyrics l o l

Andy wasn’t anything close to optimistic when he left that morning. He was exhausted because he’d crawled into bed at three in the morning. He was scattered, his keys in his office, his phone upstairs and uncharged, the files he’d been looking at the entire night either in the kitchen, living room, or his office. He was nervous, something you only knew because he asked you to tie his tie.

But Andy wasn’t some overly emotional man who needed your support to win a case. He relied on himself first, you second—and that was okay, that was what you signed up for. Andy loved taking care of you and there were some lines that that meant you weren’t able to cross.

You wanted to tell him that you knew he would do the best he could, you wanted to claim that that was all that mattered. It was bigger, though. It wasn’t him that had failed, it wasn’t even the evidence or the police. It was about politics, he had explained when you asked a few days prior. It was about a case that he had known was always going to be a long shot at best, and well, impossible otherwise.

So, you simply knotted the tie, smoothed your hand down it, and told him you loved him in gray. He scoffed. How could you not be tired of seeing him in gray at this point? Instead of giving him an answer that would make him blush, you kissed him.

He asked you about work and you told him it was just another day. Actually, you would be skipping work, not much to do anyway, and you knew that this case was important. You didn’t want to chance getting caught up in anything and making it home after him. You wished him luck on his way out and he kissed the top of your head and thanked you.

Nothing major, of course. Because he didn’t want you to know that he was worried about this. When you were just dating Andy, picking up on these signs was almost impossible. As soon as you were living together, he was completely and unintentionally transparent.

Sometimes, he would come home and it felt like he had a raincloud with him. Sometimes, he would just lay with you, hold you in his arms for hours, just wanting to hear you talk. Sometimes, he was too disappointed in himself and holed up in his office until you forced him out.

Other times, he was sunshine and full of happiness and pride. He would hold you all the same, but he would kiss you and tell you how much he loved you. He would want to celebrate, go out for dinner, plan a small vacation. You loved him always, wholly, but when he won, that was when you were happiest.

As mentioned, there wasn’t much you could do. Andy was big on little gestures. He didn’t need you to be some cheerleader waiting at his side and telling him that he was doing everything right. He needed to do this alone, win or lose on his own, and then come to you with the results. He wasn’t too keen on letting you be involved in the cases anyway, he didn’t want you worrying or hearing about those terrible details that had made him cancel the newspaper a long time ago.

So, it was a Friday, and if he lost or won, that meant that you would have the rest of the day, Saturday, and Sunday to react to it. You guys could stay home and eat terrible food, watch movies, and just be with one another. He’d told you several times that being with you was the only thing that could make him feel better after a loss.

You were baking cookies, his favorite. Oatmeal chocolate chip. You didn’t bake much, and cooking was fairly equal, so this was definitely a “special occasion” type of thing. He’d informed you of this preference on your first date. Then explained that if he had one chance to go back in time, it would be used to find the person who thought up oatmeal raisin cookies and help imprison them for the rest of their life.

It was one of those moments that you realized you would be just as crazy to let him go as you would be to keep him. If only because you knew you were going to fall so deeply in love with him. Clearly, you were right since your third anniversary was approaching.

It was four when he got home and you rushed out of the kitchen. Early. Too early. That normally wasn’t a good sign. He wasn’t smiling but he wasn’t frowning. When he looked at you, you were even more confused. There was something in his eyes, but you weren’t sure if you’d ever seen it.

You set your oven mitt on the counter. “Baby?”

He walked up to you, just watching. His eyes never left yours as he tossed his jacket onto the floor, loosened his tie, then unbuttoned the sleeves of his button-up.

“Andy?”

He took your shoulders, turning you away from him. “The wall, walk to it.”

“What?”

He kissed the top of your head, then whispered, “Come on, baby, be a good girl and do as I say.”

You turned up to him curiously. It was one of those days, you were not allowed to argue. You would say yes, and he would make it worth your while. Currently, he was trying to call your bluff, he wanted you to say no almost as much as he wanted you to just say yes.

Andy liked it when you fought a little. Sometimes. To an extent. But never when he lost, and you were too scared of that possibility. Maybe the trial was extended and the stress was getting to him. He could use you for the relief, it was one of the most flattering compliments you’d ever received. Besides, he offered you the same when you had a rough day at work.

You looked forward and made your way to the wall. Was it wrong that you were already wet? There was something about Andy. Something irresistible when he spoke to you this way, when he was in one of these moods. Something so sexy when he let you have no room to breathe, to compromise, to pull away from him at all. You were his completely and he was reminding you.

“Take your shirt off.”

You did so, attempting to hide that you were shaking. You weren’t scared, but the things you were anticipating were terrible. The way you wanted him to fuck you until you were incapable of thinking or speaking.

“Touch yourself?”

Your hands immediately went to your breasts, uncaring of how cold your skin was. Your wedding ring, especially, something that never failed to make you smile whenever it brushed your skin. You pulled on your nipples hard, letting your head fall back as you moaned.

It was a few minutes of nothing but the whimpers that came from you, before he said, “Your shorts.”

Again, you obliged. Only, this time you did so with less haste because you weren’t wearing any underwear. You expected sex, that was always a given regardless of win or loss, but you hadn’t thought it would work out so perfectly.

You hadn’t heard him move closer so when he grabbed your ass, you startled. You reached back for him, but he took your wrists in his hands and set them back to your sides.

“Keep them there. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“I love you, okay?”

“I know,” you promised. “I always know.”

“I know sometimes I don’t take care of you like I should…I get lost in a case because I believe that’s the only way I will win. But I want you to know that nothing is more important to me than you. I could win a million cases, but it doesn’t mean a thing if I can’t come home to you after every single one.”

“Andy, there’s never been a second that I’ve ever doubted it. And I love you. You know that? I don’t care about the cases, I don’t care that sometimes you come to bed late or sometimes you’re distracted, you’re the best man I know and you’re just trying to help people.”

“I know you do, baby.” His arms wrapped around your waist and he set his chin to your shoulder. “I was thinking about you the entire time today.”

You smiled. “What were you thinking?”

“How badly I wanted to be inside you.”

“Because last night wasn’t enough?” It had to be quick, it had to be a lot of things. It wasn’t disappointing, he never was, but it seemed like it only left both of you wanting so much more. Sometimes, you had to wonder if he did that as encouragement to speed up whatever he was doing.

“I will never get enough of you, my love. You know, I have this awful fantasy… Wanna hear about it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s whenever I feel like I’m losing…like I’ve just made a mistake, and all I want is you laid out on the table before me. I want to watch you fuck your fingers until you can’t move, until you’re shaking and crying, begging me to get you off because you can’t do it anymore.”

“You want them all to watch?” you wondered.

“Yeah, maybe… Maybe I want them to hear the way you scream my name, the way you beg me to fuck you harder, when you ask me to choke you. I want them to see how wet I can get your pussy without even touching it.”

“Then what?”

“Then I want to fill you up and watch my cum drip out of you.”

You sighed longingly. That was your favorite part of Saturday mornings. Most of them were spent fucking and he loved coming inside you, loved making you stand up so he could see it trail down your thighs, or getting you down to your knees so he could see it on the floor after he finished in your mouth.

“Like the sound of that?”

You nodded.

“Then I’ll make you clean it off the table with your tongue.”

You tried not to blush, clearing your throat quietly. “The end?”

“Of that one,” he confirmed.

You turned up to him, a pleading look on your face. Andy rarely ever told you about the weird shit he thought of. It was always a relaxed progression and sometimes, you felt like he was holding back.

He smirked. “If you’re a good girl, I’ll tell you some more.”

“I’ll be good,” you promised.

“I know,” he assured. “You always are.”

You nodded. “Always.”

“Okay, ‘always’ was an exaggeration,” he scoffed.

“No, always.”

He kissed the pout off your face and took your chin in his hand to face you forward again. His palm trailed up your cheekbone and into your hair. As he pressed you into the wall, he angled your face so that your cheek was pinned there.

You shuddered when you felt the first smack across your ass. It was very light, more noise than anything else, but it was enough for you.

“This is another one,” he informed. “The idea of people watching you get so needy to be spanked. The things you say, the way your body moves because you need it so bad, how you cry because you want more. I want to bend you over that table and spank you for hours until your entire ass is red.”

You made a small pleading noise, pressing your hips back more. He understood immediately and repeated the hit on the opposite side. “Andy,” you whimpered. “Please.”

You weren’t sure what you were asking for. You needed relief, you needed an answer. You had to know if he won or lost because you needed to act accordingly. You figured him not telling you in a straightforward way was just another way of either regaining or maintaining control.

You reached back without his permission, which you knew was pushing it, but you couldn’t stop yourself. Your hands found the button of his pants and you indelicately tore them open. You pressed your palm up and down the length of his cock.

It took him a moment to recover but he swatted your hands away and yanked his pants down. His hands closed around your upper arms and he pulled them back, propping your chest up as he used his own body to press you completely into the wall. It was cold enough that you tried to squirm away, but he gave you no room to move.

“Andy,” you whimpered. “Please, I need you inside me.”

He slipped his arm between both of yours and your back, you couldn’t move and that was exactly what he wanted. He used his other hand to tease you with the head of his cock. He slid up and down your soaking cunt several times and when he finally pressed in, even though it was just a little, you shuddered.

“Ask for it, baby.”

“Please,” you choked out. “Please, please fuck me. Andy, please, I need you.”

He pushed in the rest of the way and you both moaned. It was humiliating how badly you needed this. Though, last night was different. He was stressed, you spent most of the time on his lap until he couldn’t take not being in control anymore and threw you down on the coffee table.

He let you adjust around him, all the while kissing your shoulders and the back of your neck. When you turned your head back slightly, he kissed your cheek and nudged your attention back to the wall with his nose. He placed one hand on the wall for some balance, set his chin on your shoulder, and slowly pulled out.

You let your forehead rest against the wall. “Fuck, Andy.”

His hips bucked forward and yours slammed into the wall. Perhaps this was potentially dangerous, perhaps not the best investment for your hips in the far future, but fuck, this was too good to suggest that he be gentler. Last thing you wanted.

As he found a steady pace, pulling out almost completely, and pushing back in as deep as he could, you couldn’t stop moaning. He had found that spot inside you and didn’t shy away from it. There would be no teasing tonight, just him fucking you until you couldn’t stand.

His hand on the wall slid down, catching your attention. You were sure he was about to reach for your neck, but instead, he placed it over your mouth to stifle your screams.

“I want them all to hear this, too,” he muttered in your ear. “How absolutely wet your pussy is for my cock.” You had never heard anything more obscene than when he would thrust back in, to the point where his body was flush against yours, the wet sound echoed and your cheeks burned but Andy truly seemed to love it. “And this sound,” he pulled his hips back at an agonizingly slow pace, “when your pussy is desperately trying to lock me inside because you know there’s no better feeling than my cock.”

You felt as though you currently had no control over your body. It always did what it pleased in reaction to Andy, but when he decided to take advantage of the desire you felt for him, that was enough to make even you blush. It wasn’t like being married to Andy left any room for modesty or even tradition. He was a creative and demanding man who wanted to explore you in every way he could imagine.

He kept you as quiet as he could, all while grunting in your ear. Normally, you were much louder than him and you could barely hear the sounds he made, now it was all you could hear. And you had been under the impression you couldn’t get wetter, but those deep sounds that you felt from his chest where he was pressed against you and his hot breath against your skin did something to you that you couldn’t explain.

He chanted your name when he was close and it was enough to give you a completely numbing orgasm. You knew Andy loved you, but sometimes you got so lost in your own pleasure that you weren’t sure where he stood. Andy had the complex job of reassuring you that he physically wanted you just as badly as you wanted him, he didn’t seem to mind having to do so. Actually, it seemed he enjoyed the creativity that was required.

You were shaking as he continued to pound into you at this agonizingly slow pace. He was never slow because he simply couldn’t make himself hold back, but that was no longer the case. You felt the tension in his body, you could feel his muscles moving, struggling to hold onto that admirable restraint that first attracted you to him. He let his hand move to your jaw and you instantly began blurting out his name, how much you loved him, how you just needed him to keep going, and pleaded for him to fill you with his cum.

When he did, he pressed his body flat over yours. You paid no mind to how uncomfortable your arms felt trapped between your bodies or how some of your bones were digging into the wall, you simply reveled in the feeling of him finishing inside you and the moans that poured from his open mouth.

His breaths were short and his chest was moving quickly. He stayed inside you while he was coming down, chin still laid on your shoulder, head now angled to rest against your hair. He continued to hold your arms back and your jaw in his hand, and now his thumb and fingers were moving, rubbing these delicate shapes into your cheeks. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” you echoed. It always gave you butterflies when he requested that. It was so simple, so sweet, so little. But his voice always told you that was all he needed. Andy was not a high maintenance husband, he just wanted to be loved wholeheartedly and unconditionally.

He pulled you from the wall and his hands roamed over every inch of your skin. He started with your hips, working up to your breasts where he grabbed them hard and pinched your nipples. He moved down your stomach to your pussy, spreading you with one hand when his other hand traced a soft, careful circle around your clit.

You rested back against him, sighing. “I love you.”

“Mhm,” he hummed in encouragement. He kept you against him even as he began to walk back from the wall.

“I love you,” you repeated. “I love you.”

He turned you both around, moving toward the table while you continued to say it. It was awkward trying to walk with him still inside you and would have been impossible if not for his impressive length.

You had assumed he was going to bend you over and fuck you. That he would pull your hair, spank you, make you tell him how bad you wanted it. Nope, he wasn’t feeling predictable. It wasn’t like you ever minded Andy’s predictability, he still made your toes curl. In fact, you liked the stability of how he made love to you. You liked that he made the world outside just disappear with his insistence on taking care of you and letting you take care of him. However, that didn’t mean you would turn down anything else. You were always humiliatingly eager for whatever Andy wanted you to have.

He pulled out and took your arms once more, turning you to face him before he pushed you back onto the table. “Lie down.”

You were careful as you obliged, trying to keep the cum from dripping out of you. You gasped when he took your waist and yanked you down to the edge of the table.

He angled your hips up and you set your calves on top of his shoulders. He pushed in and then pulled out inch by inch, watching the entire time. His cock was covered in cum that he would have much preferred to see on you, so he took himself in his hand and spread what he could over your pussy and your thighs.

“Andy,” you said quietly.

His eyes flit up for a moment before his hand pressed down between your legs and his gaze followed.

“Andrew,” you huffed.

He lifted an eyebrow at you. “Y/N?”

“What happened? With the case?” After what he just did, you would spend the rest of the night on your knees with your mouth around him if he wanted it. Normally, when he lost, he did.

“Number one rule, baby. We don’t talk about work here.”

“The table?”

“Well, we said the bedroom—”

“You said the bedroom—”

“But I’m fucking you here, so it still counts.” Before you could protest, he leaned over and kissed the center of your stomach.

You snorted, rolling your eyes. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t respond verbally, he merely kissed up the middle of your torso, between your breasts before veering off to the side. He gently kissed around your nipple, then swiped his tongue over it.

Your eyes fluttered shut and your hand came up to tangle in his hair.

He repeated the same on the opposite breast before trailing up to your mouth. You loved kissing Andy. Sometimes, you would both spend the entire morning in bed just kissing. Hours. Just pressed against each other. Smiling. Laughing. Whispering against the other’s lips. It was also Andy’s favorite recovery activity. The quickest way to get him hard again.

He was resting on his forearm, opposite hand touching your face as his lips moved with yours. His kisses were long and breath-taking, just like the first time he kissed you and how he had been kissing you ever since. Sure, there were the chaste goodbye kisses, the moments when a kiss like this would result in both of you not wanting to separate even if the world was ending so you would have to keep them short and innocent, but most of the time, Andy acted like his job was to pour as much love into every kiss he gave you.

He broke away to touch his lips to your cheek, your jaw, your forehead, your nose. That was always how he liked to end it as he was stroking himself until he was ready to fuck you again.

He stood as he pressed into your asshole, eyes fixed on where your bodies connected.

Your back arched as your arms shot out to grab to the edges of the table. He was slow about it, you would even say cruel. He watched you with unconcealed smugness, a truly animalistic part of Andy enjoyed how much you enjoyed him fucking your ass. It was the noises you made, the tears that would fill your eyes because it was so good, the way you would press your body back further, wordlessly pleading for more. When he wouldn’t give in, you became impatient and bratty, and he loved having to put you back in your place.

He wouldn’t do it this time, however. He could tell you were too tired, too focused on him and the case. His hand found your center again where he rubbed your clit with just the tips of his fingers.

You were whimpering, your hips jumped, your legs pulled him in closer where they were still draped over his shoulders, you clawed at the table, possibly left some marks. This was always his goal, to get you so mindless and dependent on the things only he could make you feel, and it was an exhausting process, but you wouldn’t want anything else.

He grabbed one of your hands and brought it to your clit. “Don’t stop unless I tell you to.”

With two fingers pressed flat, you began tracing sloppy circles over your pussy. You didn’t have the muscle control to focus on one small area at this point, but you caught your clit enough times to get yourself close.

He leaned over you, hands pressing down on either side of you as his hips picked up speed. His eyes were locked on yours, desperate to see that overly loving look you gave him every time he made you orgasm.

You let your legs fall from his shoulders, wrapping them around his torso. He couldn’t be slow anymore or even remotely controlled. His hands pushed you up the table as he crawled onto it as well. He practically collapsed on top of you, his hips driving into you so hard the table was starting to move just a little.

You pulled your hand away even though he didn’t tell you that you could and grabbed his shoulders. He pressed his body flat against yours so that his pelvis would rub against your clit with every thrust.

It had been so long since you left scratches on his back. He liked them, but you were sure they had to hurt, so you attempted to find other coping mechanisms. But then, it had been so long since he was this uncontrolled, and as your nails dragged down his skin, that only encouraged him.

The table squeaked against the hardwood floor, skin slapped skin, and moans and curses fell from his mouth. You were breathless, a scream caught in your throat while he coaxed you closer to a finish. Anywhere you touched him, you could feel his muscles moving, his back, his ass, his thighs.

He fucked you without his usual concern of possibly being too rough, he simply did not care in that moment. He grabbed a handful of your hair and yanked your head back. He kissed and bit over the parts of your breasts he could reach. His hands moved along your sides, fingers digging into your hips or pressing your thighs up further to open your body even more for him.

When you informed him you were close, he leveled himself to see your face. His brow was furrowed and it was fascinating to see the way the blue of his eyes moved. Not to sound like such a cliché, but it reminded you of waves in the ocean.

“Come on,” he panted, “I want to hear you begging.”

“Please, please, please.” You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, pulling yourself just a little closer to him. “Please, I want to feel you come inside me.”

“Yeah?” he cooed. “In your ass?”

You nodded frantically. “Please. Please come in my ass.”

His head dropped to the bend of your neck where he bit down rather hard to drown out the sound that followed his orgasm. You didn’t mind even though you knew there would be a mark, even though you knew your coworkers would eye you. No one was surprised anymore, they had this image of your husband as the sex-crazed lawyer, and in reality, were they wrong? Not exactly.

You were just seconds after him, wrapping yourself around him as tight as you could. You sobbed his name and about a million other incoherent things while he kissed around that tender spot that his teeth had just been, whispering how much he loved you and how good you were.

He pulled out and kissed you after you whimpered. He rolled over, lying flat on the table and bringing you up to his side. His fingers brushed through your hair and you both attempted to get your breathing back to normal.

You were silent, reveling in the feeling of his cum slipping from your ass down the back of your thighs. Your skin was sticky and you were sweating, your hair was sticking to your forehead and your back. You couldn’t have looked beautiful, but Andy still kissed the top of your head and claimed otherwise.

You turned your head up to him after you had both settled. “Did you lose?”

He scoffed. “You have such faith in me.”

“You’re the only person I have faith in. The jury? Well, any time you lose, they’re morons.”

He smiled. “I guess they were smart this time.”

You lifted yourself onto your forearms. “You won? Baby, you should have told me! I baked a billion cookies, but…we should celebrate! I can make a reservation, we could go—”

He took a handful of your hair and pulled your mouth against his for a slow kiss. He was the one who broke away, just to see that dumb look on your face whenever he surprised you with a kiss. “We did just celebrate.”

“No, I want to do something special for you.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Well, I have a few ideas.”

You realized exactly where his mind was going, the last place you had suspected. Really, you should know better by now. “What other boxes do you want to check? You’ve tied me up. You’ve bent me over a Paris balcony. You’ve fucked me everywhere in this house. You’ve fucked me in the car. My childhood bedroom in my parent’s house.”

“I have a long list of all the things I still want to do to you.”

“So, tell me what you want.”

He leaned up and kissed your nose. “Let’s clean up and order some food, I’ll think about it.”

You rolled your eyes as you watched him get off the table. “And was ‘list’, like, a figure of speech? Or do you have a physical list?”

He hesitated a moment before glancing back at you.

It was totally an existing list that he had hidden somewhere and suddenly, you wanted it more than anything else in the world. “I will burn this house to the ground if that’s what I need to do to find that list, Andrew.”

He snorted. “Well, good luck because you will never find it.”

[cosmicmoved]

FORMAL INTRODUCTION FOR KITAHARA KOJIRO

hi, for some bizarre reason unbeknownst to even me, this muse has been like half a year in the making (actually, it’s been 5 months but that’s close enough for to still feel shame), but he’s finally here. the ““ evil ”” witch oc! witch man who does murders! whatever you want to know him as! anyway, from now on you just know him as kojiro or koj bc that’s his name <3 please look under the read more link for more info! (WARNING: the following will touch on darker themes like death, murder and, to a lesser extent, abuse. this is a heavy character so please keep that in mind if you ever wish to interact!)

BASIC FACTS

firstly, this oc is mostly connected to tsukidate sho, my witch detective oc. the connection mostly lies in the fact they’re both witches who interact with crime/murder in some capacity but their families are also close.

his name is kitahara kojiro ( 北原浩二郎 ), known as either kojiro or koji by those around him. i haven’t decided his exact birthday yet but he was born in 1990 and is approx. 31 years old. (i understand this is ‘older’ by tumblr rp standards but, by normal people standards, early 30s is still relatively young so basically, if u make old ppl jokes, i will bite u)

technically speaking, kitahara is his father’s surname but he never really knew his father and was raised by a single mother. however, his mother made the choice of raising him with his father’s name in an attempt to distance the pair from her own family. i’ll explain why that is the case in the backstory section of this post.

kojiro is a witch. he’s not involved in any broader witching community nor does his being a witch have much bearing on his professional life but he is a talented witch, despite being trained only by his mother. what he DOES use his magic for, however, is to cause a lot of problems.

oh yeah, he’s also cursed. and he kills people. because he’s cursed. again, i’ll explain this in more detail further in the post but it’s kind of an important fact. he was cursed to die at twenty years old and he’s still alive eleven years later because the only way to hold off death is to kill other people <3 omg that’s awkward

in his normal everyday life, kojiro works as a cake decorator and does photography on the side too. he’s a creative person and tbh he developed a lot of stupid hobbies in his teens, thanks to the belief he was gonna die by the end of them, so he ended up making a living out of what he liked. he also didn’t go to uni because he didn’t see the point because, again, he thought he’d be dead by 20 and then, when he wasn’t, he stopped caring.

it’s also important to note that he, uh, doesn’t give off murderer vibes at all. he’s friendly and sociable (and not in the ‘this guy’s definitely a weirdo’ way). 

i kept calling him ‘evil witch oc’ while i was working on him but, as i’ve said before, i think that’s actually a little too simple and i wouldn’t actually call him evil. he’s NOT a good person but i don’t think evil is the right word for him either. he doesn’t believe he’s a good person either but he’s learned to justify his own actions as a means of survival. kojiro doesn’t enjoy killing people, he doesn’t take any pleasure from the act of murder, but he’s also relatively calm about it too. since he doesn’t have to do it on a super regular basis, he prefers to target shitty people and esp corrupt witches in positions of authority (not really in a self-righteous way, more just because they piss him off). he has specific personal reasons for this.

he has a pretty intense fear of death. you think he’d be over it, having spent his whole life knowing he was meant to die early, but the ability to push his death back sort of flipped some switch in his head and, over the years, he went from quiet apprehension to paranoid obsession.

why is this muse 30 years old? firstly, because i want him to be. that would probably be enough but also his age actually IS important. the vibe i’m going for with this muse is, as i’ve said like once before, is what happens to the hero of the story after they complete their quest? what if that quest doesn’t go as planned? kojiro’s quest was to hunt down the demon associated with his curse. that’s his original ‘story’. what i want to explore here is the aftermath of that, what happens after the weight of the quest comes crashing down on the hero and they return to normal, everyday life where they’re forced to shoulder it as though it’s nothing. a decade after his initial story, he’s worn out. he’s not the same person he was at the start.

BACKSTORY

this isn’t going to be written in a super formal or tidy way because i honestly just can’t be bothered turning this into a proper piece of decent writing. this is only going to be in paragraph form because i don’t like putting backstories into bullet points unless it’s super brief.

kojiro was born in 1990 as the first (and only) child of his unmarried mother (as yet unnamed) when she was just nineteen years old. she was raised in a strict and traditional witching family so the fact that she’d had this child out of wedlock AND that the father wasn’t a witch didn’t exactly land well. regardless, they let her stay in the family home but it would soon turn out that the child was cursed. according to a member of tsukidate family (i.e; sho’s family who, as i said before, are on good terms with kojiro’s family and who are also knowledgeable in the realm of curses), the curse determined that the child would die on the day of his twentieth birthday unless he was able to kill the demon associated with the curse.

as if the judgement from her own family wasn’t enough, the curse brought with it a lot of stigma from the witching community and so his mother made the decision to leave home by herself when kojiro was a year old. all she could afford was a small, one bedroom apartment but, so long as she and her son had a roof over their heads, anything was good enough. kojiro would live a relatively normal life, going to school with other children his age and away from other witches, but his mother would teach him what she knew. although she wanted to him to live as easily as possible, she felt she had to prepare him for his inevitable encounter with the demon. kojiro grew up knowing about the curse too. there was no way to keep it a secret --- even if weren’t cruel to hide it from him, the curse had left a visible mark on him (still working out the details of what this looks like and where on his body it is but it basically looks like a tattoo to most people).

when kojiro turns eighteen, he decides he’s old enough to face this demon and claim control of his own life (maybe i’ll write this as an actual drabble / piece of writing one day bc i’m reeeally brushing over it here). it had been trapped by his family and forced to lie dormant until kojiro would arrive to take it down. what the demon reveals to him, however, changes everything. there is no cure to this curse, the demon tells him, everything he was told is a lie. the curse, it turns out, has tied the demon to him and the only way to kill the demon is for kojiro to die along with it. the reveal is this: when kojiro born, they took him from his mother for a short time. i want to emphasise that her family are pretty shitty people because they decided this would be the perfect opportunity both to punish her and to solve a very specific problem -- getting rid of this demon. the same member of the tsukidate who ‘diagnosed’ the curse was the one who put it on kojiro. i’ll explain the actual curse and story behind it (and the demon) in more detail at a later date but the basic gist of it is that kojiro’s family lied to him and used him as a disposable means to an end. his mother, for the record, was entirely unaware of this. but what else does the demon tell him? although the curse cannot be lifted, it can be held off. this demon thrives off death and, through death, it can stay strong and continue to keep kojiro alive. if it grows weak and it is not sustained, kojiro will grow weak along with it and inevitably die. kojiro informs the demon that he will not kill anybody. that is out of the question.

a month before his twentieth birthday, kojiro kills a man. he had tried to forget about everything the demon had said, tried to forget that his own family had set him up for guaranteed destruction, but it hadn’t been easy. it had set him on edge and he’d become unstable. he’d fallen into a slump and his friends grew worried for him. yet, after a while, he came to accept it and tried to make peace with his life as it was. he put it to the back of his mind as best he could. but he’d discovered that the man his mother had been seeing over the past few years since he’d moved out to live on his own was abusive. so he killed him. everything the demon had told him risen to the surface and he’d asked himself does it matter if this guy dies instead of me? after all, kojiro was curious. he didn’t really want to die and he had wondered if the demon was telling the truth. to this day, kojiro doesn’t know what to believe but it’s much too late for all that now. he followed his mother’s boyfriend home and broke his neck in a dark alleyway. thanks to the magic he’d been taught growing up, he was able to ensure that nobody every traced him to the accident and, when the clock struck midnight on his twentieth birthday, kojiro broke down crying with relief.

he wasn’t dead. he still isn’t dead. he’d never wanted to die. over the years, the killing has gotten a lot easier. over the years, the answer to that question comes much quicker; if somebody has to die, why should it be me?

[queenangst]

A Collection of Fic Prompts

These are all genfic/non-romantic fic ideas that I (and some of my friends) came up with in a game where I write a summary for a fake fic title. Some titles have multiple summaries. You can view my tag ‘fake fic asks’ to view the original asks. 

My blanket permissions for prompts apply: Please credit and link me on Tumblr (@queenangst)/on AO3 (achievingelysium). If possible, link to this post/original post. Feel free to use these as prompts or inspiration for any creative work such as fic or art, and feel free to adjust or adapt them to your liking. I’d love to see them!

Please reblog if you like these!

I may end up using some of these in the future (marked with * if you’re interested), but all of the prompts are free for you to use if you’re interested. 

Below the cut is a categorized list of the summaries, by characters/themes, including: 

All Might, Izuku, OFA, and AFO

Midoriya Hisashi/Dad for One

Shimura Nana

Quirklessness

Aizawa, Present Mic, and Shirakumo

Teachers

Dekusquad

Izuku & Bakugou

Izuku

Bakugou

Todoroki Family/Dabi

Eri

Class 1-A

Misc.

All Might, Izuku, OFA, and AFO 

Once Upon a Time

Quirk reversal canon rewrite AU. All Might is a hero with a mysterious Quirk: one that can take and give away Quirks at will. With this Quirk and multiple Quirks given willingly, All Might defeats villains easily. When he meets the strong-willed Midoriya Izuku, he offers Izuku a Quirk and a chance to be a hero.

One for All has been searching for a successor—and his brother’s Quirk, All for One—and finds one in the volatile Shimura Tenko, now Shigaraki. Combined with the power of Decay, Shigaraki’s new Quirk can level mountains and destroy cities.

Izuku has always wanted to be a hero. With a new Quirk and a new enemy, he can be.

Shatter the Sun

All Might walks into a fight he doesn’t expect to come back from. Fueled by rage and grief, he ignores every warning Nighteye has given him and takes down the villain who killed his predecessor… All for One.

All Might limps out of a fight he hadn’t expected to come back from. He defeated his enemy, but it comes with a cost.

And then he wakes up again on the same day, All for One still waiting for him. Each time All Might defeats him. Each time the day restarts. Again and again. All Might had been prepared to fight All for One for the rest of his life, but this is something entirely different.

i’ve been found (but i’m still lost in the morning)

When Toshinori passes on the torch to his successor, he only wishes Nana were there to see it. When Izuku begins dreaming of the past wielders, he begins to feel the weight of the legacy he carries on.

All for One may be gone, but in the wake of his defeat, both Izuku and Toshinori struggle to find their place in heroism and at home.

Cross the Delta

All Might takes Izuku on a road trip in America, and their relationship deepens from mentor and student to father and son.

if only you'd listened

When Izuku complains of headaches and strange dreams, Toshinori doesn’t think much of it beyond offering what comfort he can and painkillers. After all, it’s exam season, and his students are stressed; the common room is loaded with energy drinks and textbooks alike. Izuku also confides he thinks there’s something wrong with his Quirk, but having unlocked two more, Toshinori is under the belief Izuku is simply adjusting.

Then Izuku starts sleepwalking, sometimes with One for All. And there’s the time he almost doesn’t wake up at all, and when he finally wakes up he doesn’t seem like he has control of himself.

Because the closer Izuku has been getting to One for All, a connection has been forming with its other half—with Toshinori’s greatest enemy, All for One.

kiss your fist and touch the sky

After his retirement, All Might is no longer the hero he used to be. But Class 1-A still seems to think so, and quietly All Might begins to learn how to save people in smaller ways.

lead me down the styx

OFA!AU. When Nana dies, a piece of her remains within One for All—just as the other holders have before her. Every time a holder comes close to death, they see their predecessors.

All Might sees his mentor again in dreams a few times, but he thinks they’re just that: dreams. The first time Izuku sees the ghosts of One for All, he’s just nearly broken himself beyond repair. The next time is when he takes a hit meant for someone else. After the next Izuku realizes there’s a pattern, that the ghosts he sees out of the corner of his eye are real and getting stronger, and there’s something they want to tell him.

I Have No Plans to Die Today

Alternating POV. Half is All Might desperately trying to hold on to the remains of OFA as he fights AFO because after all these years he finally has things to live for again. Half is Bakugou trying to escape his captors, not knowing if anyone’s going to rescue him, equally desperate to fulfill his dream of becoming a Hero (from @happi-tree​).

Your Heart In Your Hands

In a world where every year on the day you first meet you see a vision of you and your soulmate’s future together, Izuku and All Might meet under a bridge—and Izuku begins to see a future where he can be a hero.

Bonus notes from my tags: #pl bkdk soulmates bk was scared of the future #tho the future vision is limited i think so bkdk doesnt see anything after ua until after dk meets am #bc that future wasnt quite set in stone

The Aftermath

All Might wakes up in a hospital alone. He has lost his stomach, though perhaps more painfully, his most trusted advisor and sidekick. He has nothing, and no one. And his time with One for All dwindles.

But he keeps going—and meets one Midoriya Izuku.

A story told backwards in six parts, from loving Izuku to meeting him to those lonely years before.

Once Upon a Time

Fantasy AU. The Tale of Two Brothers is known throughout the kingdom, a myth passed down through the generations to explain why Magicks exist. No one expects the story itself to be true, least of all a young Magickless boy on the run from his tormentors. But now? Well, now, Midoriya Izuku knows differently (from @happi-tree​). 

Midoriya Hisashi/Dad for One

But That Was So Long Ago*

Time can’t erase an absence, a person who was never there. Ten years after Midoriya Hisashi goes overseas for business, he re-enters Izuku’s life—not just as a father, but as a vigilante, chasing a lead for a villain with connections to the League. Working with Hellhound, who can manipulate fire and smoke, Izuku begins to notice his new ally’s strange similarities to the father he’s constantly arguing with at home.

You know what family means to me, Hisashi? Resentment

Midoriya Hisashi drags his son Izuku on a short surprise trip to America, where Izuku is separated from his friends as Hisashi teaches him about his business. Izuku is left miserable and angry about the life Hisashi is trying to force him into. What’s meant to be family bonding and their already fragile relationship quickly falls apart, and all Izuku wants is to go home.

Eternal Slumber

In his second year, Izuku and All for One begin to share dreams. Izuku’s afraid All for One is both the person he thought and not, and they seem to share more similarities than Izuku expected.

A Dad For One fic.

In the Flesh*

Right after Izuku enters U.A., Midoriya Hisashi abruptly returns from business overseas, taking an interest in his son’s new Quirk and committing himself to his family again after years apart. Izuku feels uncomfortable with the stranger he calls “Dad,” but stays quiet seeing how happy his mom is when he’s home.

Yet as the school year progresses, Hisashi’s story seems to have different holes. Research into his dad’s business leaves Izuku with dead, outdated links; any questions Izuku asks about work go unanswered; and still Hisashi presses Izuku about his Quirk, driving a wedge between them.

Hisashi’s Quirk is fire breathing—but Izuku accidentally discovers he has a levitation Quirk, too, and more after that. A breakthrough in research connects Hisashi to the address of an old, run-down bar. And a story Izuku’s mentor All Might tells him, of a villain who can take other people’s Quirks, leads Izuku home again, to one Midoriya Hisashi.

Shimura Nana

Oddity Amidst Time

Shigaraki travels back in time and meets his grandmother, Shimura Nana.

Remembrance

Nana’s legacy is a line of death that becomes before her and goes on after her. But what if things were different?

When Nana fights All for One, she wins. Still, the danger of All for One’s lasting influence remains, so Nana makes the decision to leave her son alone as she continues to fight villains and train Toshinori into the Symbol of Peace he wants to be.

Kotaro is the only regret Nana’s ever had. She spends her days wondering what might have been until she meets two siblings who share her smile—and her last name.

if i die young

At the end of his life, Gran Torino gets a chance to travel back in time to when Nana still lived, and the two of them have a conversation about life and loss.

Quirklessness

Out of the Fire

Izuku reflects on how many micro aggressions he dealt with as a quirkless person that evaporated with OFA (from @wildinkling​).

You get used to things, even if sometimes you shouldn't

All Might has carried One for All for a lifetime, and he’s nearly forgotten what it was like to be Quirkless, much less understanding how different Quirklessness is treated in society today. After Izuku confides about what his childhood was like and now navigating life after being a pro hero, All Might begins to spend more time looking for ways to help Quirkless youth feel less alone, fighting a villain of a different kind.

Do Not Go Gentle*

When pro hero—and Eri’s big brother—Deku saves her and sustains life-threatening injuries, Eri does the only thing she can think of. In desperation, she pushes her power and rewinds him, leaving Deku not only young but Quirkless again.

For Years I Have

Midoriya Inko, and coming to terms with a not-Quirkless son, her love and fears for him, and the mistakes she’s made.

Battles are First Lost in the Mind

At fourteen, Midoriya Izuku gives up on his dream of being a hero. He puts away his notebooks and resigns himself to a quiet, Quirkless life.

Four years later and as a new graduate from U.A., Kacchan swallows his pride, apologizes, and asks Izuku for help taking down the villain Shigaraki, hoping Izuku’s analytical skills can turn the tide.

Izuku isn’t sure, but in the end agrees; and four years after giving up he’s presented with his dreams in reach and an entire former class telling him he can be a hero.

changing the subject again and bite your tongue (until it bleeds)*

Midoriya Izuku never talks about being Quirkless, or about Quirklessness. No one would understand it. No one wants to try. The topic rarely comes up, until a new semester begins and there’s talk of a new, Quirkless student in Gen Ed looking to transfer into the Hero Course.

Then Quirklessness is all anyone wants to talk about. Now something Izuku can’t avoid, he struggles to deal with his own past, the piece of his trust he hasn’t extended to his friends, and a look into a life that might have been his.

Aizawa, Present Mic, and Shirakumo

when there’s blood in my ears, i’ll hold you closer

Present Mic had always had a rough time controlling his quirk. The day he finds out about Oboro, he slips. Aizawa is always there to comfort him (from @tolerantbean​).

It’s getting hard to breathe under here with you, my dearest nemesis

The villain Present Mic has a Quirk that could level buildings and cause a lot of destruction. The hero Eraserhead is one of the few people, if not the only person, who can stop him.

At the end of the day, Hizashi and Shouta are best friends, carefully tending to each other’s wounds and never speaking of either heroes or villains. Until a bigger problem forces them to work together.

an empty mirror only shows what's left inside*

Time loop AU. A few days after Shirakumo’s death, Shouta wakes up to find his best friend is alive again. Time has reset—and now Shouta finds himself racing to save Shirakumo this time.

It doesn’t work. Days pass. And the loop starts again.

A mystery forms in the pieces of a strange doctor, a missing body, and discrepancies in the local newspaper. As Shouta fails again and again to save Shirakumo, he must try to figure out why he’s caught in a time loop… and what seems to be happening to Shirakumo after his death.

Come Around (Your Song is Calling)

Hizashi has always known that he and his best friend Shouta are soulmates. It’s why they work. It’s why Hizashi can see the glittering thread that ties them together when no one else can, and in the deep silence when he touches it he hears music.

Shouta goes missing. The bond goes silent. But Hizashi refuses to give up on his friend—not now, and not ever.

shades of blue*

After graduating, Aizawa Shouta isn’t where he wants to be. His decision to go underground is a lot different than most of his peers, and with everyone busy planning debuts and looking for agencies, Shouta feels isolated. The reminder that Oboro doesn’t get to be a hero follows him, yet at the same time the Hero Commission sends Shouta somewhere his Quirk and his youth will be useful—to help infiltrate and take down an illegal Quirk fighting ring.

Unable to confide in Hizashi about the mission or his struggles, Shouta continues to work alone, distance straining his relationships. Pitted against kids only a few years younger than him, each of whom begins to remind Shouta of Oboro, and fighting to keep his head above water, Shouta must keep his secrets close to him or lose it all.

they’ll think of me kindly

It’s easier to think of society in black in white, in heroes and villains. But Aizawa Shouta doesn’t do easy, and Kurogiri—Shirakumo Oboro—certainly isn’t making things any better. In a bid for information and to return Kurogiri to the person he once was, the investigation team brings in a specialist with a Quirk that allows for two people to be temporarily joined mind-to-mind. To experience each other’s thoughts, emotions, and memories with the danger of losing themselves.

Shouta’s scared if he goes in he won’t come back, but he’s also desperate to reconnect with the friend he’s convinced is still in there. Kurogiri consents to the connection. And after deliberation, Shouta does, too.

Together, they’re not just hero and villain, but somewhere in between as Shouta looks for the memories that have been hidden from Kurogiri and relives a few of his own.

Teachers

to die like a martyr (is no way to live)

All Might is beginning to learn to live again, redefining a path of self-destruction after retirement and meeting Midoriya, when he sees his co-worker and friend Aizawa heading down the same lonely path he was on. Reaching out, All Might and Aizawa form a friendship and struggle together so they may continue to teach their students, and to live as people and not just heroes.

Dekusquad

holding you up (while the world crashes down)

Five times Izuku comforted his friends, and one time they comforted him.

Izuku & Bakugou/Platonic BKDK

Do No Harm

Bakugou goes missing when he’s seven. Years later, Izuku still believes he’s alive and out there.

He is—as a Nomu that falters when Izuku recognizes him and calls him “Kacchan.”

for you know my demons, and i know yours*

Izuku and Katsuki parted ways after a mission gone south a long time ago and their relationship soured, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not still drift compatible. A Pacific Rim AU.

let’s start with the past in front

Pro heroes Ground Zero and Deku are sent back in time to when they weren’t the friends they are now, forced to deal with conversations they never had, their younger selves’ broken relationship, while looking for a way home.

Memories of the Dead

Midoriya Izuku’s funeral is held in the summer. They bury an empty casket and look around at all the faces who have outlived him.

Katsuki goes. There’s a lot of reasons he attends Deku’s funeral—for Auntie Inko, for All Might, for Deku himself. Katsuki was the last to see him alive. They’d shared breakfast the same day Deku disappeared.

But Katsuki doesn’t go to Deku’s funeral because he’s dead. Katsuki goes with the hope and gut feeling that he’s alive.

Izuku

Your Claws Rend Flesh

Midoriya Izuku has never been allowed to stay out past sundown. He always comes home early to his mother, the only person who he won’t hurt when he transforms into a monstrous beast.

His new Quirk and U.A. complicate things, to say the least.

Bonus notes: There’s a reason why Inko is so protective of her son, and resistant to him being a hero.

can you hear me?

Izuku, a few years after his pro hero debut, lands himself an injury that keeps from work for a while. Seeing Izuku unsure of what to do, the Wild, Wild Pussycats invite him to spend summer on their property in the woods to recover and recuperate; and, of course, as an excuse for Kouta to see his hero.

He’s happy to slow down, spending time learning to take care of himself, and to enjoy the woods. As he gets his strength back, he hikes often with Kouta, until one day they’re separated when a storm hits. With only a set of walkie talkies connecting them, the two struggle to find each other and shelter, before anything worse happens.

5% luck, 20% skill

Principal Nezu takes on Izuku as a student.

Bakugou

Out of the Fire 

Bakugou as Gordon Ramsey... (from @aizawa-wears-crocs​). 

Snap

Katsuki is hit with a Quirk that dulls physical and emotional feelings. At first it seems fairly harmless to his friends, until he gets hurt and his reaction is much different than anyone expects.  

lead me down the road less traveled

When he’s young, Bakugou Katsuki decides what he wants to be when he grows up: a villain.

And Katsuki always gets what he wants.

Todoroki Family

the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had

There’s a ghost haunting the Todoroki mansion. Rumors say it drove Todoroki Rei insane. Shouto has never seen it himself, has only heard footsteps in the hallway sometimes, but one day he discovers the stories are true—and the ghost is someone he knows, his own brother.

The Fire Within You

Scared of the Quirk he’s inherited from his father, Midoriya Izuku runs away from home after a terrible accident. And though the police and his mother search desperately for Izuku, someone else has found him first - an older, scrappy boy whose Quirk is similar to his own. Dabi takes Izuku under his wing, and their meeting lights a fire that may never have started otherwise.

violets are blue | blood is red

Todoroki Rei has been receiving flowers from her husband. At least, that’s what Shouto believes until she goes missing. The key he has to find her is the blue flowers on her windowsill and a tenuous connection to a villain: Dabi, whose motives remain unclear yet who seems to have a particular grudge against the number one hero.

Arsonist's Lullaby

Here is one secret few people know about the Todoroki family: Todoroki Natsuo is Quirkless. He had no power over fire nor ice, and his father never speaks of his Quirkless son—or his dead one.

Studying health and welfare, Natsuo keeps his head down and his anger simmering. He’s no hero like Shouto. Without a Quirk and with too much resentment, Natsuo has never considered the life of heroics or anything related to it—that is, until a strange encounter where bleeding, dangerous villain Dabi asks Natsuo for his help.

Natsuo doesn’t know why he helps Dabi, nor does he understand why Dabi doesn’t seem to want to hurt him. But one encounter with the villain turns into more, until Natsuo realizes one day he understands Dabi better than his own father Endeavor. He doesn’t get why Dabi cares so much or why he feels safe around him. When Dabi offers to help Natsuo leave his life behind, Natsuo is faced with a choice… and his own family.

When the Glitter Fades

When Todoroki Shouto is hit by a mysterious Quirk, he drops, unconscious. Though his friends worry, there seem to be no visible effects. No damage. Nothing wrong.

But as the days pass, Todoroki just… doesn’t wake up. He’s caught in a neverending dream that shows him his own deep desires—his family, whole again and happy. And he doesn’t want to leave.

Digging Dreams Out of the Fire

Moments of recovery between Todoroki Rei and her son Shouto.

Eri

when there’s blood in my ears, i’ll hold you closer*

Even after Overhaul’s defeat, there are still villains looking for more Quirk-erasing bullets, and for the girl they come from. When Eri is nearly kidnapped, Aizawa makes the difficult decision to take Eri temporarily into hiding with him. But their safe houses aren’t as safe as they’re supposed to be either, and Aizawa begins to suspect that the Hero Commission has reasons to want Eri, too.

take your medicine

Aizawa Eri did not like doctors. This was a fact. Eri had also never received proper vaccinations in her very short life. Luckily, her big brothers Mirio and Deku are there to hold her hand, even as she begins to spiral in the waiting room (from @happi-tree​).

Other Characters of Class 1-A

Now You Don’t

Traitor!Hagakure AU. Class 1-A deals with their friend Hagakure’s mysterious disappearance, sharing their favorite stories of her and hoping for her safety as the search parties continue to come back empty-handed. Meanwhile, Tooru contemplates if going to the League was the correct decision - or if her new Sensei only sees her as another tool (from @happi-tree​).  

My Grand Plan

Hagakure Toru is surprised in her second year when she’s approached by a support and hero management firm that promises they will make people pay attention to her, but soon she accepts the offer to work together. But soon Toru realizes the firm’s support gear, plans, and inviting environment seems to cover something suspicious. And when they ask Toru for more information about her classmates and school, she begins to wonder if the support is for heroes or for villains.

visual (invisible)

Toru’s internship is drawing to an end, and though she’s grateful for the experience, she’s glad to be heading back to normal with classes and lunch with her friends without looking over her shoulder all the time. Not that anyone sees her, anyway, if she doesn’t want them to.

On her last day, she takes a bullet to the shoulder, and that’s when things fall apart.

They can see her. Toru’s friends, her classmates, her teachers: they can see her. It’s Toru’s childhood dream come true, all her prayers to the distant stars in the dark of night, her birthday wishes. No more going unnoticed. No more being invisible. No more of people looking right through her.

But it comes at the cost of her Quirk. Lost, unsure of her next steps, Toru has to figure out what it means to finally be seen when she’s been invisible her entire life, and what it means when she can no longer hide anything to anyone—or to herself.

balloons can’t make you fly

Five times Uraraka solved her problems by making them float, and one time she didn’t need her Quirk for it.

Don't ever tame your demons, but always keep them on a leash

When the Hero Commission gets involved with concerns about Hitoshi entering U.A.’s hero course due to his “villainous” Quirk, Hitoshi suddenly drops out of U.A. entirely, leaving his friends and teachers concerned about where he’s gone.

If the Hero Commission is law, Hitoshi makes the decision to defy it, taking a more direct approach to chasing his dreams: vigilantism.

Do you trust yourself?

Yaoyorozu Momo is supposed to be perfect. She is a recommended student, has a powerful Quirk, and comes from a family with a history of heroics.

But for all of her expectations, Momo knows she has one weakness: a crippling lack of confidence. But Momo’s friends and mentors are happy to teach Momo to trust herself.

A Momo-centric fic that spans her years at U.A. and her first steps as a hero.

Ignorance is Bliss*

Maybe Kyoka shouldn’t have been listening to Midoriya and All Might’s conversation, but she was curious. She ends up hearing more than she should—but not quite enough to get the full story.

Struggling to come to terms with “All Might’s legacy” and a connection to the villain who destroyed Kamino, All for One, Kyoka asks her classmate Todoroki for help unraveling a secret. The two form an unlikely team and friendship as they begin looking for the truth: about All for One, All Might, Midoriya, and the ties that bind them together.

Fear the Anger of a Kind Soul

There’s a bit of an unspoken rule in the dorms. Don’t mess with Uraraka.

Mineta tries. The story starts with him trying to sneak into her room, and ends with an expulsion, a few holes in the ceiling, and a social media post gone viral.

Dissociation Potion

Todoroki, in a spur of bad-decision making, makes a drink he found browsing social media.

It’s not pretty.

A Siren's Call

AU—Jirou Kyoka is an up-and-coming singer, known better as JACK!, pursuing her dreams in music after graduating. Her fast track through school and constant work leaves her lonely. Though she won’t admit it, she’s on the path to burnout; even as her fanbase grows, Jirou feels like no one really listens to her.

After performing at a Hero Gala, there are suddenly more eyes on her than usual, including villains. When she’s attacked, pro hero Creati saves her, and they become friends. Creati, or Yaoyorozu Momo, introduces Kyoka to more pro heroes; suddenly Kyoka has friends her age who like her music but more importantly like her.

Not everyone approves of Kyoka’s new friends, especially not her manager. Rumors start on social media. And a dangerous accident almost threatens to tear Kyoka’s friendships apart, but she’s determined not to lose the people she’s come to care for.

dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight

One by one, students at U.A. disappear overnight. No one knows where they’ve gone, or what happened.

Tension grows as parents panic, investigation turns up nothing, and the teachers search desperately for their students. That is, until Aizawa discovers a calling card left behind, half-hidden, on which is carefully written: Let’s dance.

What’s revealed is a Quirk trafficking ring—targeting powerful Quirks, with no better to choose from than the most prestigious hero school in Japan.

Cross the Delta

Asui Tsuyu knows even at the young age of seven that her froglike features make her an oddity amongst her peers. She tries to let their jeers and taunts slough off her like water, but they seep under her skin instead. A Hero with a Mutant Quirk helps her to see differently. Asui Tsuyu will become a Hero, oddity or not (from @happi-tree​). 

Miscellaneous

Revenge of the Roses

A non-deadly Hanahaki fic in which characters try to get each other to fall in love without falling in love back.

They’ve got a deadline: exams, when Hanahaki will get them out of it. They’ve got dates planned.

And, well, it doesn’t seem to be working. (Either the characters stay as friends and end up doing really nice things for each other, or they’re both falling in love. Oops.)

Run If You Can

Tensei’s hero career is— well, it’s over. There’s no wheeling around the fact, but that’s okay; he knows Tenya will be a great hero following in his footsteps and carrying the legacy of Ingenium.

It’s just that some days Tensei wheels down the hospital halls and realizes he’s become of the people that needs the saving, not the hero anymore. It’s just that some days he gets a call from the office or a bouquet of flowers and feels worse for the well wishes, not better. It’s just that some days he remembers it’s all over, and he’s one of the tragedies.

He doesn’t regret Stain. He doesn’t regret standing up to him, or lying in the street bleeding out knowing he might have saved someone else. But he doesn’t know what to do now.

There’s no running when you can’t run anymore.

[seercayder]

No but I feel as though artists are probably experiencing one of the most hostile years of posting art online that they’ve ever experienced for maybe forever. And I mean this for both amateur artists and professionals (with maybe a lil bit of bias since I also do The Art).

Tumblr’s nudity ban has crippled any piece that is either NSFW or uses nudity as artistic expression and it ultimately drove away both the artists themselves and a lot of their fans, which destroyed any remaining traction for the artists who managed to remain. Tumblr is no longer an artistic freedom-friendly site and it shows, which is a fucking shame bc they genuinely have one of the better tagging systems than other sites and I believe that most feedback on art there has been positive and friendly, which has now gone the way of the dinosaur much like Deviantart.

Twitter has problems with image compression but their biggest issue is toxic abuse, which I find to be the most damaging to artists out of all the other problems i’m listing here. Both the lure of anonymity and the mindset that ‘Speak Loud In Little Words To Make Point Means You Are Important And Right’ has fuelled the absolutely vile comments I have seen directed at artists on the site. Although it’s mainly aimed at fanartists and ship artists, I have noticed unwanted (even rude) criticism on immaculate, well-done art pieces, which is extremely belittling and insulting because the artist (although they may be open to criticism) if they haven’t asked for criticism then that means that they are not in the right mindset to receive any, and therefore it is not your place to throw disparaging comments at them.

But the biggest issue with abuse on Twitter is obviously aimed at fan-artists, especially those those that draw NSFW or “problematic” content. I could go into a whole spiel about how a drawing of a fictional character doesn’t affect reality but in short: If you find disturbing art of a non-existent character (or hey, even non-disturbing art, it’s just something you don’t like) then ignore it. Don’t go and fucking bully the artist you psychopath. If it is truly illegal then report the piece and then see if it gets taken down. Because 90% of the time it won’t be taken down because it doesn’t go against guidelines and you’re just trying to police the site like you’re the thought-police, monitoring other peoples art as if you have the god-given right to. And if you’re a minor stay the fuck out of 18+ accounts. Don’t comment, don’t follow, don’t even look. I am absolutely amazed by the mindset that some children have to waltz into a space not made for them and having the balls to insult the 18+ artist, who have specifically said “no minors”, for posting icky content. It gets even worse when you see how they abuse the Privatter or Curiouscat links the Twitter artists provide, made for anonymous feedback or for being the final barrier for an adult piece that says “hey this stuff is NSFW, don’t click if you are underage, last warning”. I’m gonna go into this more when I cover TikTok in the next few paragraphs. But ultimately, the artists on that site are having to be constantly vigilant against abuse, and it’s not unusual for them having to spend hours going through their 1K+ followers and having to block every underage follower who just didn’t fucking listen to their warnings. Imagine how exhausting and irritating and down-right uncomfortable that must be; having to monitor every fan that sees your work out of fear that they’re a minor seeing adult content or that they could throw abusive comments at you. Horrible.

Instagram is saturated with bots attempting to steal your work or advertise it on their own page and feedback isn’t really a ‘thing’ on there. Also, their algorithm (which may have also been implemented on Twitter, I believe that the Twitter algorithm now avoids promoting popular artist terms, but I can’t be certain bc the Twitter post that pointed this out is long-lost in the depths of my timeline, bc again, no tagging system) is based more around sharing than likes, which can be a huge barrier to artists. Sure, you may like someones art and even leave a nice comment on it, but do you really want to share every piece you come across, especially if it’s not something you would show dear Aunty Susan who follows you? It’s infuriating that a whole site dedicated for images is so difficult to use for artists, and with Instagram implementing features that are similar to Snapchats ‘stories’ it’s clear they’ve moving in a different direction, focusing on momentary attention-grabbing photos. This is simply because Instagram is advertising itself as more of a promotional influencer site nowadays, and anything that could sully their reputation has to be thrown into the algorithm trash. NSFW art or just plain ‘bad’ art? Trash. If you’re not gonna make money for them then why should they bother? You wanna promote your art? Pay for it because the algorithm will absolutely be working against you.

Now, the biggest fucking offender for worst art-sharing site of the year is TikTok (no surprise there), which is absolutely rampant with reposts and uncredited artwork and a gateway for abusive comments against artists. Like the Ouroboros snake, it goes through the same pattern every time; People (usually minors) find art on Twitter or Pinterest and repost it, usually without credit or going against the artist’s wishes about reposting. Then it either goes two-ways: Firstly, if the piece is SFW it will get about five-seconds of interest, a like for the reposter and people will then just move on. TikTok is built entirely around short bursts of satisfaction, feeding a a constant loop of serotonin for a few seconds before you move on. So ultimately, people rarely then hunt down the original artist, especially if their credit isn’t readily available, and usually the original artists doesn’t see any rise in likes, followers or popularity and are usually unaware that their art is even getting any attention on TikTok.

Or, if the art is NSFW, it can go down the second way. It is reposted and, as the majority of TikTok users are under-18, many users find the image uncomfortable, especially if it is a bit more ‘out-there’ or of a ship they don’t like. The reposters sometimes find the image off of Privatter, which is even worse since the piece has been posted to Privatter not just as a final barrier against minors, but also as a form of directing the piece to a specific and niche audience due to it’s... spicer than usual NSFW content. I’m talking really specific pieces with really specific kinks. Now that piece is floating around TikTok, widely seen by the general fans of a fandom, who again, are usually underage. The viewers grow uncomfortable, as the piece is not made for them, especially since sometimes the reposter only posted the piece for shock-value, and would even encourage insulting comments by only posting the credits for the purpose of getting fans to throw abuse at the artist (”The artist is ***** but they ship **** and are icky”) and so the viewers finally decide to make the effort to hunt down the original artist, only to throw insulting and bullying comments at them, made worse by the fact that they are children who don’t have the sense to hold back and have been fuelling their mindset in the echo-chamber that is TikTok.

And as a result of a lot of this hostile feedback for artists, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a space for amateur artists who are just starting out, since the art community is becoming a little bit scary. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that new (or not even new but recently promoted) sites such as Artstation are becoming a better place for professional artists only, but it is very intimidating for learner artists. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - I believe that part of the reason for Deviantarts decline was that the tagging system was horrible, so good art was being drowned out by amateur, fetish content, so more advanced artists were distancing themselves from the site, especially if they were trying to build a portfolio for employment. I also find that fanart usually gets far more likes than more original art pieces, even if the original piece is amazingly good, which isn’t a criticism against fanart but posting your original piece on a site more aimed at professional pieces may help you reach your target audience better and improve likes and interaction. However, that does mean that if you are an amateur, or hell, just an average artists who is still learning, your best bet for exposure is posting your piece across multiple sites and very, very regularly, braving any abusive comments if you try anything slightly “spicy”. Which, obviously, become a very potentially toxic atmosphere and it’s not uncommon for artists to feel burn-out or depressed at their lack of attention or the cyber-bullying they may receive.

I’m not trying to say that posting artwork has always been easy, but there is definitely a more aggressive culture surrounding it and I think artists have to be aware that chances are they will face insulting comments, reposters, frustrating algorithms, cyber-bullying, a lack of interaction and burn-out as they try and appeal to websites that would do the bare minimum for you in terms of promotion.

This isn’t meant to be a post to scare away artists, I just wanted to point out that there is a big fucking problem and it feels as though it’s getting worse. Nowadays, websites have become a bit too comfortable targeting creators rather than fans when it comes to monitoring content and artists have been put under more and more pressure as they face more and more abuse that is rarely addressed, especially by the sites themselves that host the content. Things that are a huge punch in the face for artists, such as NFT’s, are becoming more normalised and it’s honestly just sad.