#i decide to scroll through tumblr for the first time in an eternity

[tenkobitch]

𝐀𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞

Neuvillette x Immortal! G/N Reader

Genre: Fluff, immortals/long living characters, eternal lovers, married couple, established relationship

A/N: I was scrolling through Tumblr and got inspired to write this from ONLY seeing Neuvillette's name. Anyways, I wrote this while listening to Malice Mizer (Gardenia, Au Revoir, and Baroque are my current favorites), so I hope y'all enjoy <3

You and Neuvillette have always loved each other, but you both often had doubts on if you'd be together forever. Especially given the fact that your husband is a dragon and you were cursed with immortality. And these doubts weren't because you didn't love each other or because you both didn't think the other person didn't love you. No, the doubts were because you both thought you'd get bored of each other.

You practically knew Neuvillette from inside and out, and you assumed that your husband knew the same about you. If you knew someone that well, you'd probably get tired of them after a while. Especially after being with them for 300 years.

You were cursed with immortality 100 years before you met your equally immortal lover, at the lovely age of 20. It wasn't because you did something wrong like break a contract, or even sell your soul to a witch and they gave you immortality. You were cursed because your homegrown garden had grown over to your neighbor's side of the fence.

Your neighbor happened to be a mage, or wizard, or whatever, and had a tendency to hold grudges. So, they sent you a letter that passed on the curse of immortality to anyone who read it. As soon as you were told this by said mage, wizard, or whatever they were, you burned the note to completion, and you never looked back.

You met Neuvillette when you first moved to Fontaine. You would hear all sorts of rumors about the man at court, and you often found everyone's words to be true. The rumors couldn't be more wrong, because you were confronted by a man that was nothing like what the whispered words said.

Neuvillette treated you as his equal, and when you became closer, a confidant. He never spoke badly about anyone, even the criminals he would sentence to a life in prison. He was always curious about how humans acted, and he couldn't be further from the image that you conjured in your head.

He was kind to anyone or anything he passed by, and even when he was faced with the public in court, he would make the trials as fair as he could. He never wanted to declare someone guilty unless he really believed they deserved it, and he was always consistent with his judgments. It did not matter how much he loved you, because if you ever did something that was against the law, he would make his conclusions based on facts. Never on emotions.

And as you saw the way he grew before your eyes, you couldn't help but feel entranced. Every time he spoke to you, you always wondered if he felt the exact same. He never alluded to his feelings for anyone unless he said how he felt, which wasn't often. You didn't notice your love for him until he finally spoke to you about his feelings.

"Dear, I do not know how to confess this to you, but I was told by the Melusines that my feelings for you were known as 'love'. Do you, perhaps, 'love' me as well?"

To say that you were shocked was an understatement. Regardless, you both explored the meaning of "love" with one another, and you both fell hard. Neuvillette couldn't be away from you for even a second, and he always whispered his desires to protect and love you forever in his sleep. You couldn't help but share the sentiment with him.

Now, the only things that had changed were Neuvillette's clinginess, and he seemed more sure and determined to make Fontaine a better place. For you, you finally stopped getting distracted at the thought of coming home to your husband and spending every waking second with him, and you decided that finding new hobbies to try wouldn't hurt you. Despite the changes, you both were still in love with each other. It was just more subtle, and not as needy.

Neuvillette was busy studying cases from the last couple of years, so you took it upon yourself to make a list of things you needed to buy from the market. You made a list of what to get, and you were on your merry way to the center of Fontaine.

When you finally arrived, you noticed all of the things that they had exclusively had at the markets. They had mini sculptures of the Hydro Archon, Furina, who you knew well. There were other knick knacks across the tables as well, but you only bought the things you intended to.

That was until you came across the cutest thing: a mini dragon sculpture. It was a beautiful sea blue, and it looked very similar to your husband's dragon form. You immediately picked it up and bought it. You quickly made your way back home and swiftly found the appropriate materials to wrap the tiny dragon in. You intended to gift it to Neuvillette as soon as he got home, and knowing him, he'd probably love anything you gave him.

You patiently waited for him to get home, and he did not disappoint you. As he walked through the door, undressing himself from his court robes, you stood in front of him with your gift waiting in your hands. He turned to give you a small smile as he leaned down to softly kiss you. As he pulled away, he noticed your hands moving the object in your hands impatiently, and he continued to smile at your antics.

You practically shoved the gift into his chest when he finally gestured for the item. He looked to you for guidance, and you only nodded, gesturing that he unwrapped your gift. He did so, and his smile turned into confusion. You laughed before giving him an explanation.

"I saw this at the market today... It reminded me of you." Neuvillette's eyes softened as he pulled you into his chest. You inhaled his scent and pulled him into you for a while longer. You both gladly stood there with one another, and you only broke apart when your husband had to continue getting changed.

And as you retired for the night, you felt a sense of calm wash over you both. When it didn't seem to go away, you spoke up.

"Neuvi, do you ever wonder if we'll drift apart?" You asked out of curiosity, but you regretted it when you heard his response.

"Well, of course I wonder. It is hard not to think about things like that." Even though you've always felt the same, you felt your heart crack the tiniest bit. It was one thing to assume that your partner felt that way, but it was another to actually hear them say it. But what happened next didn't surprise you in the least.

"But, if we've been with each other for this long, it seems that fate has destined us to be together for as long as possible." This eased your heart and it pulled you back into reality. Every couple, no matter how long they've been together, has thought about the possibility of breaking off, and it shouldn't be different for you both. You leaned back against the headboard as your husband leaned his head on top of yours. You stayed like that for a while, and without any warning, you kissed Neuvillette on the lips gently. He smiled.

"Well, I guess you are right. Even when we should be bored of each other, we're always together. You are the love of my life, and I'm glad I had a chance to meet you." You smiled up at the man in front of you, trying not to completely fall apart in tears. The long haired man nudged his forehead against yours, causing you to look into his eyes with the same intensity as his.

"I am glad that I make you as happy as you make me. Let us always be here. Let us continue to be here in this moment, in this decade, in this century, and hopefully for eternity. I love you so." You couldn't hold back anymore tears as you hid yourself in Neuvillette's chest. He stroked your hair as you continued to cry your eyes out in his (now) soiled night shirt.

When you finally managed to lift your eyes from your husband's chest, you heard the calmest noise ever. The one thing that could lull you to sleep if you weren't with Neuvillette:

Rain.

It was raining outside, and despite how calming it was, you knew what it really meant. You gazed up at your lover's face, but his eyes never looked sad or upset. He looked calm, and you could see a flicker of happiness beneath the sea of his dark blue eyes. You concluded that these were his happy tears, showing you every part of his love for you.

And you would get to experience every ounce of his love for the rest of your days.

*Bonus*

Neuvillette arrives at the Palais Mermonia with a small smile on his face, and the Melusines take notice.

Sedene (Melusine): "What are you smiling about~"

Neuvillette: "I don't know if I should tell you."

Sedene: "Come on! It's rare for anyone other than the Melusines to see you smile!"

Neuvillette lets out a relaxing sigh, turning to the Melusine.

Neuvillette: "I didn't think that I would feel this happy since I confessed my love to my partner, but I have been proven wrong."

He sighs once more before giving into Sedene's demands.

Neuvillette: "I am smiling because my lover for eternity has told me that they loved me, and that they are glad to have met me."

Before the curious Melusine could question Neuvillette more, he walked into his office, feeling the weight of the world fall off his shoulders. He would continue to fall in love with you over and over again, until fate had decided to take you both away.

𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭

[astranne]

— i love you to eternity but you never will.

fandom. genshin impact

pairing. kaedehara kazuha x fem!reader

content warnings. angstish, unrequited love, reader is younger!sister of alhaitham, written several months ago, not edited nor proofread because i’m lazy

word count. 726 words

notes. scrolled through my tumblr drafts and found this. idk why it was never posted, i completely forgot about it… yeah, have this and maybe i will return back to genshin

As the younger sister of Alhaitham, many expectations were demanded from you. Your brother was smart, shouldn’t you be too? Your brother was a student and scholar of the most esteemed Akademiya in whole Teyvat, shouldn’t you be too?

And you were. But you weren’t exactly happy with it. You wanted to be an adventurer, someone who wandered from one nation to the other, taking commissions to get food on the table and just enjoy life, being free of all responsibility. 

For the longest time, it seemed nothing but a dream. This is why you decided to take up the sword, but even there Alhaitham bested you. So you choose to learn the bow, then the spear, and in the end, you finally mastered the Claymore. And still… it seemed nothing but a dream.

Until you've received a vision. An electro vision- a vision, people haven't received for a long time. Why were you the honored one, why did you receive one?

Ambition and drive filled your heart again, you were determined to master your vision and maybe, maybe you could finally do whatever you wanted. Be free of your brother's shadow and the expectations of your family.

But you still went to Alhaitham to ask him for guidance. He owned a vision after all, and this much longer than you. And he knew how to use said vision with a sword, something you thought would be the best for an electro vision.

And the moment you mastered your vision, you left. You left everything behind, with nothing but a small note to your family, with your packed things in a bag swung across your back, leaving everything you've known your whole life behind.

Everything you dreamed yourself together in a life of adventurer was true and yet you weren’t prepared. Most commissions you took were easily done, but some of them were the most ridiculous things you’ve ever heard. Still, you completed them without any complaints and earned your money. 

And so you traveled from nation to nation, from Sumeru to Natlan, then a short stop in Snezhnaya only to leave for Mondstadt and then Liyue. 

Years passed, you collected scars and memories alike, hardening yourself as a true adventurer and even creating a name for yourself. And while sometimes were hard, money just barely enough to buy food and shelter, you were finally free and happy. 

You made friends with merchants, simple people, soldiers and sellswords, creating memories and stories with them. It was a simple life you lived, but it was a fulfilling one. 

When you heard concerning rumors about Inazuma, you first wanted to travel to the islands. But getting there was already complicated and by the time you finally made it to Liyue Harbor, the nation was already in a Civil War. 

It made you worry and nervous. You didn’t know what to do with yourself and so you just took commissions in Liyue Harbor, trying to get the news always at the closest source. 

Captain Beidou. The fellow electro vision owner was a fearsome woman and travelled with her ship and crew to the Nation of Eternity more often than enough. 

But she brought back nothing but bad news and only a few fleeing people. The war continued and Beidou was once again weeks away, until she finally returned back to Liyue Harbor. 

This time with another vision holder, a man you met and lost your heart to the first time you saw him. Kaedehara Kazuha. 

He was somber, silent and yet full of poetic words, carrying himself with an elegance unknown to most. His way with words and his sword was something would’ve never encountered. He fascinated you, kept you in a magic spell with his sad looking eyes and soft hair. 

You never told him how you felt, how you lost your heart to him, how you fell hard and fast for him. Instead, you cherished his presence, his stories and poems, and got to know him better as a friend. 

Now it was a common sight seeing Kazuha with you, the two of you wandering around in Liyue Harbor and beyond. Side by side but not truly together as you wished. But it was alright, even if it pained you, because you were together with him, just not as near enough as you dreamed it to be.

taglist. @keyz-writes , @obsidianjewel , @keqism , @stellumi , @wanderersbell , @k-zu

if you wish to be added to the taglist, please read this infopost!

ASTRANNE 2023

[yujo-nishimura]

"Told you so..." - Part 4

This is a private ongoing fic just for me and @lostfirefly

Since tumblr doesn't let me post it privately I need to share it publicly, but feel free to scroll through the content, since this is just for our own amusement. ;) - Also I finally have a hashtag!

"I need a break!" Buggy gasped, finally reaching the staircase that led further down. He had carried his girlfriend the entire way through the sandy terrain, past the starving prisoners who were barely clinging to their lifes. Buggys long blue ponytail was hanging in his face, sweat glistening on his neck and nose. It had been eerily quiet for some time, too quiet.

Helga released herself from Buggy's embrace and planted a quick kiss on his cheek, causing his face to flush an even deeper shade of red. "Thank you so much, my love. I know it wasn't easy for you."

Motivated by her words, Buggy chuckled. "No problem at all. Your admiration made it all worthwhile. But don't think I'll carry you again through this if we have to come back and can't escape down there!"

"Forget about it, I know you'll carry me again!" Helga smiled, fully aware of her ability to wrap her captain and boyfriend around her finger.

"Next is Level 4, the Blazing Hell, I believe," Helga pondered aloud, while Buggy struggled to catch his breath.

Suddenly, both of them heard a noise behind them—a thunderous stomping sound. It was likely more monstrous creatures approaching. Helga was the first to spot them—a peculiar-looking Koala and a Minotaurus wielding a weapon like morning star.

"Damn it, they found us!" she exclaimed, and Buggy swiftly turned around, assessing the situation.

"Should we run or fight?" he asked, knowing that Helga had a better sense of danger in such situations.

"Run, I suppose!" She couldn't finish her sentence, as the beastly Minotaurus swung its morning star, attempting to deliver a deadly blow. Buggy, trying to protect his girlfriend, leaped towards her, pushing her out of harm's way and evading the attack. They both landed in the scorching sand, with Buggy inadvertently ending up on top of Helga, who blushed beneath him.

"Thank you, I guess. I wish you could stay..." she chuckled, and he immediately scrambled to his feet, his face turning red as well.

"You decided to run, and you're right. Let's go. We can have our romantic moments later!" he quickly helped her up, just as the Minotaurus raised its morning star again, poised for another attack.

"I won't let you harm her, you beast!" Buggy yelled, extending his leg to launch a Muggy ball at the creature. The resulting explosion and smoke provided them with the opportunity to escape. Helga didn't look back to see if their attack had been successful; she simply started running, hoping Buggy would follow suit. Hearing his panting breaths behind her, she knew he was right on her heels as they descended the stairs.

"We're lucky they only sent those two!" she shouted, unaware of what awaited them on the next level.

The staircase stretched on endlessly, but neither of them thought about stopping or turning back. They forged ahead, running deeper into the prison's depths. The heat intensified, becoming increasingly unbearable. After what felt like an eternity, they arrived at Level 4, the Blazing Hell. Helga abruptly halted, causing Buggy to nearly crash into her as they reached the entrance to the next level, greeted by a searing wave of heat. They saw prisoners being herded across bridges, forced into labor without shoes, their feet likely scorched by the scalding ground. 

"This is awful...!" Helga whispered, her voice filled with sorrow. Buggy gently placed his hand on her shoulder, offering a comforting touch. "I know, but right now, there's nothing we can do. We have to focus on saving ourselves," he reassured her. She nodded, giving his hand on her shoulder a tender squeeze. She was immensely grateful to have him by her side. "Come on, cutie pie. Let's move forward, but we need to be cautious. This level has more guards stationed than the ones above," he advised, nodding at her in determination.  "I can't wait to receive all my rewards from you later!" he added, a mischievous grin adorning his face. Helga couldn't help but chuckle, appreciating his ability to bring a smile to her face even in the midst of such a dire situation.

In the depths of Level 5, sitting in a grim and desolate cell Yujo was desperate, her hunger gnawing at her stomach. She sat on the cold ground, her messy dark blond hair falling into her face. Exhausted and starving, she was too weak to even shed a tear. Seeking solace, she positioned herself as far away from Crocodile as possible. His recent assault had filled her with fear, and she dreaded falling asleep. Her stomach growled once again, and she let out a silent sigh, feeling utterly defeated.

Suddenly, a soft sound caught her attention. Something had fallen beside her. Surprised, she glanced to her right and noticed a half piece of bread lying on the ground. "Your stomach is almost as annoying as you..!" she heard Crocodile mumble. He must have thrown the bread to her. Without hesitation, she grabbed it and devoured it, desperate to quell her hunger. She didn't utter a word of gratitude, though she felt a sense of thankfulness. Without concern for manners, she licked her fingers, savoring the leftovers of the bread crumbs. This was the best meal she had in years. 

Silence enveloped them once again, and time passed until a warden arrived, carrying trays of food. Yujo's face lit up with anticipation, realizing it was dinner time, or perhaps breakfast time—time held no significance in the darkness of Impel Down. The warden approached their cell, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. He opened a small gap in the bottom of the cell bars and pushed in two trays.

Determined not to miss her chance this time, Yujo rushed forward to grab the trays, seeking revenge for her earlier missed meal. However, her anticipation turned to shock and disbelief as she discovered the same empty bowls and only filled water glasses from before. "What...? Did they forget our meal?" she murmured, inspecting the bowls to ensure there was no hidden food beneath them.

"No. They only feed us here once a week. Those bowls are just brought to mock us," Crocodile's voice emerged from the dark corner, and Yujo cautiously turned around, noticing his massive figure leaning against the stone wall. "But the bread earlier..." she began, a dreadful realization washing over her. "My ration from last week," he replied shortly, a smile playing on his lips. "Why, you bastard? I thought you had eaten my food, and now you... gave me your ration? I don't want to owe you anything!" Yujo screamed in despair, realizing that he had sacrificed his last meal for her. "You're so emotional and dramatic, Missy. You probably need the food more than I do!" he laughed, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes. For a moment, he appeared vulnerable, worn out and tired.

Carefully, Yujo approached him, holding the two water glasses, and extended them towards him. "Then please, have these. I drank yours earlier." He reached for one glass and took small sips, holding it in his hand. Yujo sat down next to him, his towering form providing a sense of security. In silence, they both drank their water, awaiting whatever would come next.

[cru5h-cascades]

So some time ago I was scrolling through Netflix, desperate to find something interesting to watch. While surfing through the service, I stumbled upon a strangely familiar show that I never watched. Maya and the Three. Looking at the thumbnail pic and such, the artstyle in the show reminded me of the Book of Life, a movie I loved as a kid (and still love!). I looked it up and turned out the show was made by the same folks who made the Book of Life! I knew my lil' bro would probably like this so I got him into the room and we started watching the series. During the week it took for us to get through the entire series (which was a season long btw; not because Netflix canceled it, but because the creater of the show was scared it would be canceled prior to the story's conclusion), we saw the story unfold. Incredible fight scenes, great characters, and an ending that made me cry lmao the show was that good. However, towards the end of the show some things felt a bit rushed like the romance plotpoint between Maya and possible tumblr sexyman 2024 canidate, Zatz, and Maya opening up more to her biological mother, the goddess of death. Also I felt like the realm of the gods and the gods themselves weren't explored that much, either. Which is why I decided "Hey, what if I re-imagined the series? This show only had a season anyways. It had so much potential!". And here we are now. My basic idea for a re-imagining of Maya and the Three! I might keep building upon the idea of the re-imagining in the future but I've got a shit ton of projects I wanna get out there (I gotta finish Your Side of Order, start Calamity Circus now that I got an idea of how the story will go, and brainstorm the story I had in mind for Ribbon & W.D) and because this is just a rough idea as I only thought about all of. Anyways here we go :D

Heart of a God (a re-imagining of Maya and the Three)

What I had in mind was this: Lord Michlan (now the king of all gods and the god of war in this re-imagining) has a rule about god/human hybrids: they're either taken to the realm of the gods at birth by the god that spawned them or they're seperated from their mortal family at the age of 15 and sent to the realm of the gods against their will. Either way, if they aren't sent to do something for the gods, they're stuck in the realm of the gods for all eternity.

The re-imagining starts the same way the first episode of the series does: Maya's being officially recognized as a princess and has to give up the rough and tough lifestyle she loves. But two things are different: A) Maya's brothers aren't there because to me personally they don't add much to the plot and B) the reveal of Maya's demigod-hood. Zatz crashes the party, reveals Maya's demigod-hood to the people of Teca, and goes on to tell everyone that he has to take Maya to the realm of the gods ('cause you know, the rule about demigods). However, he seems very unwilling to do this. He has a somber tone to his voice. Anyways, at first, Maya's parents are outraged and want to fight back, however, Maya turns herself in, still mad about having to give up her lifestyle. Her parents are mildly confused and shocked, only for Maya to justify that "isn't this what princesses are supposed to do? protect her people? if I can't fight I might as well do this instead, even if I don't want to. heck, maybe my birth mom is better than you two.". Maya's very clearly pissed off about all of this. She doesn't want to deal with any of this, so she heads to Zatz and the two start going to the realm of the gods. Maya's parents are heartbroken, but don't react with violence as they first indended... at least not right now.

After the first episode, we get to know more about the realm of the gods, the gods themselves, and see Maya grow as a character. At first, Maya isn't optimistic about this new life she has to live, being trapped in a world full of strange beings that have the ability to kill her in a heartbeat, but at the same time she doesn't want to go back to the life she knew ('cause she's still pissed off about the lifestyle thing and being lied to). And it doesn't help that, by order of Lord Michlan, Zatz has to accompany her throughout the realm of the gods until she's fully adjusted to this new way of life and as the story progresses, the two get closer (fixing the unaturally quick pacing of the romance plotpoint in the OG show) and we get to know why Zatz is the way he is (might elaborate further in a seperate post idk). Also, the goddess of death tries to find a way to let Maya be with her mortal parents again.

We don't spend all the series in the realm of the gods though because after a while, Maya's parents get desperate and decide to wage war against the gods and assemble an army and force our three other main characters from the OG series (Pichu, Chimi, and Rico) into this ordeal (since they're the chosen ones), sending them into the realm of the gods (again 'cause they're the chosen ones) to try to retrive Maya, with each one of them having their own emotional baggage (I liked their backstories from the OG show 'cause they were pretty solid so I'm keeping them) alongside the fact that they didn't want this. Each epsiode focusing on the chosen ones' missions will involve each of them wanting to kill the gods (especially Zatz 'cause he has to stay w/ Maya) and Maya & Zatz fighting them to get them to stop (and also help them with their emotional baggage or whateva). All of this will lead up to the finale where the mortals shatter the barrier between their realm and the realm of the gods and start the mortal v gods war, with the mortals' ultimate goal being to kill the gods (and demigods, specifically Zatz because this guy was the one who took Maya away from the rulers of Teca). Outraged by this, Michlan makes the strongest of the gods go to the mortal realm to punish the mortals, still not realizing that his rule is pretty fucked up. As the fight rages on, Zatz, Maya, and the chosen ones become determined to stop the war, with seemingly the only way of stopping it is killing Michlan since he is just so determined to keep his demigod rule in place.

Instead of killing off almost all of the best characters like in the OG series (bro why couldn't Maya just have her happy ending? I mean sure becoming the sun is pretty cool but seems kinda weak at least to me. what can you even do as a big fucking ball of gas??), here's what I had in mind:

Maya loses her arm fighting Lord Michlan (bringing the dislocation thing full circle; it kinda did in the main series but it would've been more badass than limping towards Michlan's heart thing or whateva)

Zatz and the goddess of death die, but because technically this show and the Book of Life happen in the same universe, La Muerte shows up after the battle with Candle Maker and Xibalba to intervene because all the gods are dead, and to reward Maya for her efforts she revives Zatz, however the goddess of death can't be revived because she is a god.

The turning into the sun and moon thing is ditched entirely.

And finally Maya reconciles with her parents about the events of the first episode.

And that's the basics of the re-imagining. I'll probably do more posts about this in the future since this is a pretty rough concept for a Maya re-imagining and this might need some polishing up so be on the look out for more of those ;D

[dasenergi-diary]

Hello Friends! I'm avoiding doing actual work that I'm getting paid for, so I thought I'd document some of my history on Tumblr:

My first Tumblr post was on August 24, 2009. I was a LiveJournal guy, but my gf at the time (Kristi Hart) used Tumblr. I joined because of her.

My first posts for the first couple of years were actually syndicated from LiveJournal. I didn't reblog anything or post any content original to Tumblr. Then in 2011 I started syndicating pictures to Tumblr using a site I'm surprised still exists today called Moby! I just looked, all of the pictures are still there! Here's one of my kids from 2011 at the Salton Sea.

A year later, in June of 2012 I decided my Tumblr needed a focus. I had a pretty large collection of behind-the-scene images from movies, so that became all I posted.

Some random examples: Behind the scenes of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, The Dark Crystal, Phantasm II, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Neverending Story

That continued on for several months, I probably posted 100+ of them.

In July of 2012 I created my @frankenbuddha account, since @dasenergi was solely "Behind The Scenes" movie posts, I needed someplace to post all my nerdy, lgbt, Buddhist, spiritual stuff.

By the end of 2012, I had given up on the "Behind The Scenes" posts on DasEnergi. They weren't getting any likes.

I abandoned FrankenBuddha and resumed posting all my nerdy, lgbt, Buddhist, and spiritual stuff on DasEnergi.

Two years later, my youngest child joined Tumblr in 2014. They were 13 years old. They came to Tumblr for all the cat posts! So I then used Frankenbuddha to collect all the cat and animal posts I could find, and share it with them. FrankenBuddha is STILL cute animal and humor posts now.

On DasEnergi, I started making a lot of my own memes and then added a bunch of tags to them, trying to attract followers. Here is one that was 100% true "I am desperate to just really connect with one other person." I was so depressed and felt so alone at the time. Here's another, "I have a crush on everybody who is nice to me."

I also posted a lot of selfies, trying to make that human connection with others. Here I am trying to look tough.

I also posted more about my life and my feelings back then. There's this one: "I’m considering shaving the beard. Maybe I’ll find someone who’ll love me if I’m clean-cut." I felt so broken. So unlovable.

Here's a creepy one from a year later, November 2013 - "Why yes, I did just go through the GPOY tag and liked a bunch of strangers pictures. I couldn’t help myself. They’re cute!"

As my tags strategy wasn't working, I was Liking people's posts trying to make connections and build my followers.

For those who may be too young to remember, GPOY is an acronym for Gratuitous Picture of Yourself. I don't think it's used anymore, is it?

Looking back on my archive, I had also realized in 2012-2013 that the only way to get followers on Tumblr was to reblog others work. So I started doing that a lot more.

I've always collected quotes. In high school I would spend my lunch break in the school library reading quotes from Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations. In 2013, I see I started posting a lot more text posts of quotes from my archive. I remember Tumblr even had an automated template I'd use for quotes.

Wow, yeah, as I'm scrolling through the archive they're mostly text posts, of quotes.

In 2014 I see I started posting A LOT more, and it seems to be 50/50 memes and text quotes. I also see fewer posts about my life and fewer pictures of myself. My mental health was much better. I wasn't seeking validation from Tumblr. This was the year I had my Awakening experience and fully embraced the magical and the spiritual. This was also the year I started dating Geronimo, my first boyfriend.

Right now I'm scanning through April 2014 and it looks nearly identical to what I'm posting now. Yep! The blog as you all know it now has been around for nearly ten years.

8,882 Posts 1,062 Followers 1,060 Following

I currently have 302 posts in my queue. I only queue five posts a day between 7pm and 10pm (Pacific time).

@male1971 has been around since September 2016 for all my nerdy posts, most from my childhood. (I identify as a male and I was born in 1971.)

@bi-buddha has been around since February 2019 for my LGBT posts.

@moovees and @melodiousmonk are both new, created last year for my music and movies posts.

And that's about it for my main side blogs. If you actually read this whole thing, THANK YOU for your interest in my Tumblr history.

I had some cringeworthy moments there, mostly healing from my 15 year relationship with my ex-wife and my five year relationship with Kristi Hart. But I'd like to think I made it out of those dark times a better, wiser, person. (Or I'm in deep denial about how depressed and messed up I still am.)

Okay, back to work...

[bukojuiice]

—the lovey-dovey things they do with you while you're both stuck at home during quarantine

ೃ chars: izuku midoriya, katsuki bakugo, shoto todoroki, eijiro kirishima and shinsou hitoshi x gn! reader

ೃ  tags: headcanons, fluff

ೃ  warnings: none!

ೃ  my nav  →  my mha writing masterlist  → my katsuki bakugo x reader smau

ೃ  please do reblog if you enjoyed!! it really helps writers and content creators on tumblr!  

ೃ  if you want to be a part of my mha taglist. send me an ask!  ♡

katsuki bakugo: cooking and baking with him! it all started on a cozy afternoon in April, you’re mindlessly scrolling through tiktok whilst cuddling with katsuki (your sparky bf practically asleep in your arms) when you stumbled upon some cute and interesting cooking videos appearing on your fyp. katsuki peers through your phone and groggily asks if you want to try out and attempt to make some of them and you immediately say yes!

the two of you start with something simple and basic, dalgona coffee! (even playfully arguing whether or not you should adding more whipped cream to your drinks or not), after that, you then take your culinary journey a bit further by making some baked sushi, cloud bread, and mini donut cereals among many other scrumptious delights! after a while, you decided to buy some matching “kiss the cook” aprons online and even started a tiktok account detailing all of the special twists katsuki made to the recipes (although he absolutely refused to make an account at first, with some probing and dozens of pouty faces and puppy eyes coming from his adorable significant other, he finally gives in) dancing and kisses in the kitchen, spreading flour on each other’s faces, leaving sneaky love notes by the fridge, and making each other coffee in the morning were just some of the little add-ons the two of you would do with each other.

izuku midoriya: online escape rooms and virtual museum tours! the national museum of japan were offering some free virtual tours around the museum and the two of you could not just pass up the opportunity to see all the intricate pieces being displayed in the museum. however, izuku wanted to experience something else that's similar to that and so, after seeing an ad on twitter for an virtual escape room experience, izuku excitedly told you about it. jumping and hopping around like a little bunny and you couldn’t help but agree as seeing him so happy and so excited for something will never fail to make your heart flutter. the two of you immediately book a reservation and even bring out your virtual reality gears for the full immersive experience. you’re clinging to his arm the whole time as you virtually traverse a horror escape game and your freckled boyfriend tries his best to be brave just for you.

with both of your intelligent and inquisitive minds combined together, with the occasional soft couple bickering, and having to listen to izuku murmur to himself for several minutes,  the two of you solved 7 escape rooms (for a week straight) in a span of three hours each. the two of you take turns in doing the tasks of the game, and whoever fails to do so, has to do the other person’s bidding for the entire day. although the two of you could never force the other to do any mean-spirited dares to each other, most of the bidding you told each other to do were peppering each other kisses on the cheek, long and warm hugs, choosing the movie for the night, cuddling in the bed and holding hands among many other things.

todoroki shoto: binging movies and tv shows on netflix with him! this was the perfect opportunity to help your icy-hot boyfriend finally indulge in everything pop culture. and what better way to do so than on netflix and other streaming sites? the two of you end up watching every romantic movie dear to your heart. mixed with bed or couch cuddles, blankets wrapped around the two of you, a lot of cheesy and loving whispers said, and paired with some comfort food you ordered online. your watching area varied. sometimes the two of you would watch in the bedroom, living room, and sometimes you would even make a pillow fort with dangling fairy lights attached to it filling the tent with fluffy stuff toys to lie on just so that the two of you can watch on the floor.

shoto cried when the two of you finished watching the notebook and the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. and all you did the entire night was give him all the hugs and kithes you could provide him. ever since then, the two of you opt for more light-hearted movies. rom-coms, disney movies and sitcoms where he endlessly referenced iconic lines from friends, the office, how i met your mother, and brooklyn 99. the days in quarantine go by with the two of you just mindlessly singing and dancing along to disney songs, rewatching rom-coms for the umpteenth time, reenacting some scenes from iconic movies with dry yet hilarious acting, and just discussing movie theories whenever he cutely and innocently asks you about some small details he missed every time you finish watching a movie for the day

eijiro kirishima: training and exercise routines with him! your shark-toothed boyfriend is a fitness buff through and through. to the point that a room in your house dedicated to just gym and fitness equipment exists. but when quarantine struck the world and your lovely home, you slightly lost your motivation to work out. eijiro continues to encourage you to do so ofc! with the two of you occasionally going outside to jog but aside from that, nothing much else. when he catches you watching a chloe ting video on youtube, he scoops you up from the couch, and you giggle trying to tell him to put you down yet he refuses to do so, as he carries you all the way to your little gym room. you notice that there are yoga mats sprawled about and since then, the two of you would do a lot of yoga as it has been proven to decrease anxiety. sometimes the two of you would get distracted and start dancing to the exercise music, accompanied endless laughter and giggles when kirisihima would do his daily planking exercise with you sitting on top of him as he does so.

there were also times when the two of you were so tired and sore. so you would give each other loving massages, there were also times when the two of you would just sleep it out or just lounge in the bed. excercise couldn’t stop your cravings and so, and there were also times when the two of you would do some food mukbangs you’ve been craving for recently.

shinsou hitoshi: playing video games with him and taking care of your little pet kitten! right before quarantine started, shinsou surprised you with a pet little kitten that the two of you decided to name gigi, named after the cat from kiki’s delivery service. the two of you always running around the house as if you were parents to a newly-born baby, watching your cute little kitten frolicking around, touching and interacting with everything he could find. after watching some “cat parents” videos on youtube and learning some tips, you attempt to give it a bath, resulting into a very wet failure. with the only time you can feel peace and quiet was when gigi was asleep or whenever he would be drinking his vet-approved milk. your quarantine life was hectic and chaotic but taking care of a cute little bundle of joy with your equally loving and handsome boyfriend... well, life couldn’t get any better than this.

when you were finally able to get the hang of the cat parents life, you and shinsou finally found the time to rest and relax by playing video games. may it be a horror, action, adventure, rhythm, or fantasy game, you were always playing with him. maybe as a player 2 or just as the supportive significant other who helped him solve puzzles, make story game choices that could change the game, and even help him with the buttons if he was trying to fight some hard boss. whenever there are jumps cares in the game, he would hold your hand and give you reassuring pats. whenever the two of you would play against each other on the other hand, he has his arms wrapped around you, with you still being extremely focused at the game at hand, he would give you pecks on the cheek to try and make you distracted so that he can win. your little pet kitten, gigi, sleeping on the couch as the two of you play to your heart’s content.

ೃ taglist: @chibishae34​  @lovelytarou​ @ramunegoddess​, @serossimpy @laudthingcat​​

[pigeonp0st]

May I request a fic where Wanda Maximoff tries to make the reader who is shy laugh and accidentally discovers that the reader is extremely ticklish and she pins down and tickles the reader? Could you make it around 900 words and fluffy? Thank you! :)

Wanda Maximoff x Reader #3

Words: 1,489

Warnings: A vaguely sexual sentence

Notes:

There’s not an ounce of angst in this? Who am I? And I’m uploading again after only 3 days??? I feel reborn! Anyways, thanks for requesting and sorry for spelling mistakes.

————

Supernova’s have nothing on you. That’s what Wanda thinks the first time she sees you smile. She thinks of supernova’s, planets, and comets in the sky and she thinks of how she’d give up them all just to hear you laugh.

She’d give star, on top of star, she’d give galaxies, and wishes that aren’t hers to give, she’d give you anything, if only she could.

Telling you that though, that won’t make you laugh. It isn't funny to her how much she adores you (how much she loves you), and she doesn’t think it will be funny to you either. Honestly, you’d probably cry, and then Wanda would also start crying— and you’d both just be crying.

No, Wanda decides fairly quickly, that isn’t a good decision.

So...instead she tries stupid jokes on the internet, pranks on the others, pranks on HERSELF, stupid faces... everything...but apparently everything is not enough to make you laugh.

It’s infuriating.

Infuriating because sometimes—sometimes, you look so close. So close to laughing that your shoulders shake with the effort to hold it in, and she’s left to wonder why you try so hard to keep her from the one thing she desires more than anything.

You’re her girlfriend, and she’s never heard you laugh. It’s quite possibly her greatest shortcoming in life (she has a lot of them). She’s heard chuckles, and breathy laughs, she’s heard small huffs of laughter, and she’s seen gigantic grins, but she’s never heard you laugh fully, and unapologetically.

Today— today will be the day it happens. She’s more determined than ever.

———���-

Today won’t be the day. She’s tried everything and more, and the only thing she’s gotten out of it is you looking at her like she’s crazy.

“I’ll pay you,” Wanda finally says, “please if you just...if you just…” She can’t bring herself to say what she wants because somehow it feels like she’s breaking the rules she’s made up in her head. “Can you just please?”

You watch her for a couple of moments, thinking so hard she can almost see the wheels turning in your head—yes, yes, yes, finally, Wanda thinks— but then you shake your head in exasperation, and continue eating your dinner.

Okay, this is fine; Wanda tells herself.

...tomorrow will be the day.

———-

“Have you...just tried to tickle her?” Sam asks Wanda the next day. “I noticed her holding in her laughter when that stray we kept last week started licking her foot—so she’s probably ticklish.”

She’s been complaining to him about her failures their whole lunch, and it seems to have paid off. Sam is a very smart guy. When she says so though he snorts and shakes his head in amusement.

“No red wizard, this time I think this is more about what you lack than what I have. You’ve been thinking too big.”

Wanda glares at him. “Call me ‘red wizard’ again the next place you’ll be flying is into a volcano.”

…Despite the change in their conversation, and the bickering it turns into, it was a very helpful discussion.

———

Mission ‘Hyena” is a go (she decided to name it Hyena because they are known for their laughs. She thinks it’s pretty creative).

All she has to do, she decides, is ambush you. The best time for it will be right after training—you usually decide to take a quick bath and lounge in bed afterwards, and you’re very sweet and gullible when you’re tired.

For some reason her plans make her feel like a very sneaky and awful person. She feels a bit of guilt…it doesn’t override her excitement, fortunately. She has been waiting for this day too long to feel any significant amount of guilt. Plus, it’s not like her end goal is malicious.

———

You're laying in bed scrolling through your phone when you get pounced on by Wanda….You’re not exactly surprised by the occurrence though.

Wanda’s been looking at you like a panther when she thinks you aren’t looking, but one that’s truly bad at hunting. So you aren’t surprised that she jumps on you, but you are surprised about WHY she jumps on you.

You were expecting something far more scandalous than a tickle fest.

———

Wanda doesn’t start tickling you immediately. She’s so utterly shocked by your expectant raised eyebrow that she just pauses for a moment, lost.

“Is it okay that i’m on top of you?” Wanda asks after a moment, because she realizes that she sort of has you trapped.

You pause, thinking with narrowed eyes. Then say, more amused than disappointed, but still slightly disappointed, “yeah.”

Wanda thinks back on all these past weeks, on all of her efforts to make you laugh—actually laugh— and starts to raise her hands-

“Is this the part where you tickle me?”

Her hands freeze. She freezes. You even freeze.

“Oh,” you say, smirking with a look far too smug, and far too victorious for someone who was supposed to be losing, “did you think I was an idiot?”

And Wanda drops her hands back down, this time not on your wrist but across her chest, and then over her face because she has truly never felt more ashamed. Not for her schemes, but for how she’s failed them.

She doesn’t know when this turned into some sort of competition, but it’s clearly one-sided.

“So...you’re not going to tickle me?” You ask when Wanda gets off of you.

Wanda grits her teeth, feeling more bitter than she ought to feel. “No, you dork, if I tickle you now it’s anticlimactic. You just had to go and talk, didn’t you?”

You actually have the decency to look guilty for a second, but then you realize what the two of you are talking about and just snort. “What is this, some badly written fic on tumblr by some overwhelmed gay author? At least try. Come on, it will be amusing for me. You might even get me to laugh at your struggles.”

Wanda doesn’t really stop to muse about how oddly specific you were, she just rolls her eyes and turns to leave...only to get stopped by you tugging on the back of her shirt.

When she looks over her shoulder to look at you your eyes are hard and determined, and she knows what’s about to happen now too. Just like you had.

She knows, because the determined set to your eyes turns soft the second Wanda meets her eyes to yours, and you're sitting back down now, letting go of Wanda’s shirt.

“You really gonna give up that easily?” You ask quietly, eyes shifting to the ground. And Wanda is just melting, melting because she loves you and you’re the sweetest person she’s ever met, melting because you're willing—you want— to give her what she wants.

Wanda lets out a small breathless laugh, turns around completely, bops you on the nose with a soft smile gracing her lips, and only hopes that it communicates ‘I love you’ effectively enough.

You smile back, unable not to, waiting for Wanda to look for what she wants. “Who cares if it’s anti-climatic, right?”

To your surprise, Wanda grins, kissing the top of your head, and says; “I wanna surprise you. It’s more fun that way.”

So you grumble and pull her into a hug, because if she isn’t going to tickle you, you expect her to hold you anyways.

She does.

———

Mission Hyena fails. She’s not too mad about it.

She can’t be, when just the next morning she wakes you up with kisses, and tickles, and you wake up grumpy and laughing all at once.

She can’t be when your laughter fills her sun kissed room with even more light, and she can’t be when this moment feels like it’s more than worth the wait.

As Wanda watches you laugh, watches as you throw your head back and force out breathless, soft pleads, she thinks that she would have waited eternity for this moment.

Supernova’s, galaxies, comets, wishes, and an endless amount of stars, they all would have been worth it, but none of them would have been a payment high enough. ‘Anything’ is not even sufficient enough.

You just look and sound so happy, and it’s all Wanda has ever wanted to give you. It warms her heart more than anything else ever could, warms it so much she wishes she could bottle this moment and keep it with her forever, because memories aren’t good enough either.

Still, when you ask afterwards, grinning and exhausted with your arm still clutching your torso and your voice still raspy; “was it worth it all?”

Wanda smiles, fulfilled and happy too, and doesn’t mention the price she was willing so pay. She just nods her head, and says; “Yeah. Yeah, I think it was.”

Like she wasn’t just considering if next time the universe would be enough.

[tundrainafrica]

Note: Instead of posting a meta or a fic today, allow me to take a quick break from that because I think I really need to appreciate some people here and the fandom overall.  

February 7, 2021. 

Today, I turned 24 and my boyfriend surprised me with a gift I think I’ll be taking to heart for a very long time. 

The story behind the gift was as precious (or even more precious) as the gift itself and I thought I’d share it since it turned out some content creators were involved in this gift and I very much want to express how much this gift has defined this day for me and will place my 24th birthday as one of those birthdays I don’t think I’ll ever forget. 

Apparently, I had casually dropped both my tumblr and my ao3 account during one of our conversations and somewhere around November he had started looking through my bookmarks, my posts on tumblr and some of my interactions with people in the fandom.

I should have seen it coming. It had started with my boyfriend suddenly asking about my hyperfixation with Levihan.

Sav? Shipping? Sav? Binge reading ships and meta posts? Sav? Gushing about a fictional ship?

And I remember gushing about this with my seemingly uninterested boyfriend a long night after explaining what was oddly the most out of character thing for someone like me. 

I was sharing with him my metas and hcs and maybe, I was dropping a few of my favorite quotes along the way and it turned out he was interested. Suddenly he was asking me about my favorite fics, my favorite scenes. Suddenly, he was rereading my favorite fics with me and a few times, he was quoting those same scenes. I did find out he was looking through my blog when I got a random message from a really sketchy tumblr telling me to open my facebook. 

I suspected a few times that he could be planning something. December passed with nothing and eventually he stopped asking so I clocked that as a fevered dream or unnecessary assuming on my end and didn’t think too much of it after. 

It turned out my boyfriend had messaged my favorite authors about their fics and he commissioned one of my favorite artists (if not my favorite) to draw a few photos and bound them into a Levihan Anthology 

And it feels fucking amazing to receive something like this. To get Levihan which helped me through the worst of 2020, bound forever as a book I can just open up and read anytime. And I guess tearing up at receiving such a gift had me thinking of a lot of things at once (which were always at the back of mind) but I thought of sharing now. 

The past year wasn’t easy. Actually. don’t think it’s an understatement to say this past year was dog shit. With the covid pandemic and all plans after that cancelled, I’m sure we can all agree we had our ups and downs. 

I had a lot of my own plans completely thrown out the window for numerous reasons. I had plans of going to law school part time while building a career. And, I got a job right after college to make these plans come true. In September the law school I got accepted to (after working so damn hard the past year to get accepted) denied my appeal for night classes. I decided to drop my enrollment to focus on my career. A week later, my job laid me off. 

And for once in my life, I wasn’t going anywhere. And I lived in a house where everyone was always doing something and as soon as I lost my job I was pressured to find another one. But as we all know, searching for a job during this pandemic isn’t easy. I was still reeling after having dropped my enrollment just to focus on my job only to lose that job the week after with no prior notice. Everyone around me was busy doing their own thing. I had no one to talk to and for a while, I was falling into this pit of depression. 

My days consisted of me hiding under the covers of my bed in between the few interviews I would take day to day. Around that time, I decided to binge watch Attack on Titan as well 

I was never one to get hyper fixated in ships. In fact, this was the first ship since Royai and Victuuri which I have been so passionate. And this is a whole new level of passion. I think this is the first time I’ve ever written so much in this small amount of time. It was slow going. Just like Levi and Hange’s relationship, my fixation with this ship was a slowburn. 

Those days alone, I was reading fanfiction by the bundle, I was scrolling through the Levihan tag like a simp, leaving kudos in ao3 on a throwaway account and just scrolling through random people’s tumblr accounts. 

What happened during the one month? And when I was alone, sad, lonely and stagnant with no one to talk to, when everyone around me was living their own lives, all I had alone in the bedroom was Levi and Hange’s stories to keep me company between interviews. 

And the meta analyses and headcanons I had about their relationship were teaching me things. They were teaching me that life was never about how quickly you progress or how far you go. Maybe the real winners in life are the ones who can build good relationships, build relationships so mutually satisfying they keep each other growing and in those few moments reading, headcanoning ships, I did realize, maybe even as stagnant as I was at that moment, my life wasn’t dogshit. 

No one’s life is dogshit for a few small bumps along the way. Sometimes it just is part of the process of growing, learning to get past the worse, learning to manage relationships. And maybe it’s these relationships which make life worth living. Maybe it’s these struggles depicted in these stories and the bounce back. Maybe it’s the love, the life, the emotions so carefully described and depicted in every single story which makes life, life. 

With every single fic I read and every single fan art I scrolled through. Levihan was teaching my things about love, loss and life. 

Sometimes, these fandoms are the things which can catch people before they fall too low into something. These works and stories authors and artists shared so generously were what pulled me out of this state and are what inspired me to explore this relationship for all the potential its worth and maybe share my own stories and headcanons which people may learn a thing or two from or maybe just find some comfort and hope in.  

And these inspirations eventually evolved to writing. Writing 10,000 words in a day in between three interviews? I never was a writer but somehow, I found myself spending hours exploring the themes of love, loss and life with our favorite pairing 

I didn’t start writing out of nowhere. I didn’t start making metas out of nowhere. I needed the right inspiration, the right content to get me into this point where I could continue writing, reading, meta-ing, appreciating, headcanoning and everything in between.

And I just wanted to express my gratefulness to every single person in the fandom who had made it possible for me to pull out of that blackhole. Fandoms are underrated and I believe there are so many lessons which can be learned from the right content and from the right people. 

To the people who so willingly went along with my boyfriend’s little project: 

@faerielleart​ I saved A LOT of your art and they’re sitting in my google photos under a folder called Levihan and maybe I did share a few of your photos (the cheeks one and the beast titan one and the les miserables) ones to my boyfriend unsolicited just to show him how beautiful Levihan can be. Thank you so much for these beautiful drawings.

@lizaloveslevihan​ You were one of the first people I talked with in this fandom and dreams really was one of those stories that fucked me up a little bit, had me make a few misses on the commute on the way home one day but maybe it did have me explore the angst genre a little more, maybe it did have me explore Levi’s character a little more. 

@ariadneamare​ YELLOW. OH GOD. You know those letters? The ones which Hange left Levi at the end of the story? I ended up copying and pasting them and sending them to my boyfriend right after reading and I remember talking to him about this. We might be facing that same type of story in the future and I guess that ended up becoming a lot of foundation of our discussion and I guess, it’s just proof that there is so much to learn from fanfiction. There’s just so much to explore and fanfiction as a genre just does not get the credit it deserves.

@fanmoose12​​ I was exploring your works even before I started this tumblr up again. Maybe it was even your works which got me building my own headcanons from Levihan and writing from there. And I think I did leave a few anonymous messages telling you how I started exploring other genres because of your fics. Your works got my out of my dark place, it got me exploring a lot of other genres and for that I’m eternally grateful.

And somehow, my boyfriend picked that all up from late night discussions and one-on-one metas. Surprisingly, he wasn’t just playing along to humor his girlfriend. He was exploring the themes of love, life, loss and Levihan right along with me. (And got spoiled about Hange’s death along the way… Oops.) 

And I am eternally grateful for that and I made sure to shower him with a lot of kisses after he kept me in the loop with what has been going on these past few months with his sudden interest in Levihan.

And this huge thank you goes out to all content creators (authors, artists, gif creators, shitposters alike). Sometimes you never know who’s thinking about your work, who’s shoehorning your works and quoting them to their best friends. Sometimes, you never will find out but your work had pulled someone out of a blackhole which they’ve been stuck in and sometimes you never know that your work has been that seemingly small thing that had taught them a lesson in love, life or relationships. Sometimes, that one work turned out to be an inspiration which got them writing and sharing their own stories or making their own drawings

And I guess, the point is, keep writing. Keep drawing. Keep sharing pouring your love, passion and emotions into works of art because you never really know whose heart you touched or whose life you changed.

I have a job now. I decided to push law school a few years back and maybe take the time to work on myself now and maybe spend the next months or maybe years writing metas and fanfictions. I was pulled out of my hole. I was inspired. I have my own stories to tell and I don’t think I would have been here if I hadn’t spent the last few months reading fic after fic, meta after meta, appreciating art after art, 

So anyway, I just wanted to share some pics of my favortie fics, immortalized in one anthology, all organized by my boyfriend. And I think he made some great decisions with these.

(Bookbinding credits to @mayerwien)

[drabsyo]

Hey! I’m new to the fleurmione fandom and I’m loving it here. I just stumbled upon the ship while scrolling through tumblr. Are there fleurmione fics that you would recommend I read? I would really appreciate your recs

So far I’ve read Aucune Defense Pour Toi, Saving Souls & Healing Hearts, and the Dusk of Summer series- all of which where amazing

Ah! Certainly, anon ;) Also welcome!!

Fleurmione fic rec p.2 💙💖✨📚 p. 1 here.

What We’ve Missed by lipeviez

(Oh gosh, this one. Beautiful. Angsty. Passionate. Hello?? I raved about this for an entire week, and had to reread it twice after reading it the first time. I think this one is definitely one of the best. Rated M for My Favorite and MMMM.)

Summary: Hermione detested failure. She hated entering a new situation where she wasn’t absolutely confident in her abilities to succeed. Dating women was one such new situation. She decided to arrange a no strings encounter but was not prepared for the feelings and memories it dredges up, feelings she thought she’d buried after she lost touch with a certain Frenchwoman.

Falling Towards Something (It Might Just Be You) by thewaywedo33

(Hello angst-trip! But so, so worth it. Into that high stakes, high tension setting? Well this one takes the cake. Beautifully written in Hermione’s third person perspective. You won’t regret reading this one. Fleur Delacour has never been more alluring, magnetic, enigmatic.)

Summary: At the Battle of Hogwarts Hermione discovers Fleur is not who she thinks she is. As they are drawn together again and again, Hermione might just discover she herself is no longer the same person either.

The Dress by waxwing_Saint

(Fleur and Hermione, happily married. Married couple things. Shortest one in the list, but the idea of these two living a blissfully domestic life is 💖. Please know that this is Rated E.)

Summary: The Minister For Magic and her lover secret away in the middle of a gala and find a quiet little stairwell all to themselves.

Cherry Blossoms Across Your Lips by Sosh_022

(This one is new and on-going, but I’m already obsessed. The culture. The plot. The rivalry. The characterization. HERMIONE. Brilliant. One for the bookmarks definitely!)

Summary: Hermione, Harry, and Draco have been nominated to represent Hogwarts in the biggest wizarding competition of all time - the Triwizard Tournament. Teams of three from nine wizarding schools all around the world will gather together to compete for a chance at eternal glory, fame, and money. It's here within the jade green walls and everblooming gardens of Mahoutokoro where Hermione and Fleur meet again. AKA an HP AU with HP characters. Voldemort never happened. Everyone is a seventh year student.

Witnessed here in Time and Blood by whistle.the.silver

(Definitely one of the classic Fleurmione reads. Poetic, painful, intricate. Shell Cottage has never felt more like home, has never felt this safe before, has never felt this torturous. I’d listen to To Build A Home by The Cinematic Orchestra while reading this. The fic is written in Hermione’s POV, but To Build A Home grants us a glimpse into Fleur’s perspective, at least that’s what I think! Not a lighthearted read but worth reading every word and so much more.)

Summary: When Shell Cottage receives a motley group, Fleur and Bill do their best to ensure their safety. In the weeks that follow, wounds are healed and plans are concocted. Fleur and Hermione find themselves coming to a new understanding of one another.

Our Minds Work in Mysterious Ways (But We Like It Like That) by  InsomniacAndBi

(Another awesome AU by InsomniacAndBi. Always been a fan of investigatory crime documentaries and series, and if you are too, then this is perfect.)  

Summary: Fleur was always an observer in life, choosing to watch and not get involved. So, she wasn't entirely what she was doing in a dingy old cottage with five other students whose minds worked in the same, odd ways as her own. An Au inspired by the Naturals book series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Hear No Evil by The_Lochness_Monster

(Another on-going fic, but absolutely brilliant. I just love this so much.)

Summary: There were three things that Hermione knew with absolute certainty: she despised ungraded homework, her front teeth were too large for her face, and she would never hear. Deaf Hermione AU.

Oath of Silver by i_shall_wear_midnight

(Because I can never get enough of the Witcher franchise, and this fills the void of longing for a wlw Witcher story.)

Summary: Fleur hires a witcher and then decides to keep her.

Cruel Intentions by Perpetual_Nonsense

(Okay, so... you know those rather cliché The Bet, I-Dare-You-To-Woo-This-Person stories? Well here you go. I swear. With this one, you’re in for a ride. This entire fic plays like a MOVIE, and if that isn’t everything, I don’t know what is. Watching those coming of age/teen romance films a guilty pleasure of yours? Read Cruel Intentions.)

Summary: Fleur Delacour is a seductive, manipulative heiress who gets what she wants when she wants it. Bored with her life, she decides she needs a challenge and sets her sights on Hermione Granger, the golden girl, during the Triwizard Tournament. She plans to take Hermione's virginity by the third task; Hermione has other plans.

I did my best to compile complete ones, except for the other two because I’m already so in love with those. I excluded the other classics like the ones you’ve mentioned but I’m pretty sure there are tons more out there, these are just the ones I’ve completed reading and tend to reread a lot. It got a bit long again... But please, I hope you have a happy reading! :)

[phoenixyfriend]

Madara and Obito... In SPACE

So the preface to this mess: I don’t know jackshit about Star Wars, so a lot of this went through friends who do know Star Wars (the primary of which does not have a tumblr).

(I have watched Episodes 7&8, and Rogue One. Of the first six movies, I remember watching maybe an hour total. I have not seen more than snatches of Clone Wars. Beyond that, nothing but fic.)

Anyway! Let’s go:

As y’all probably know by now, my favorite form of crossover is what I call “intrusive,” so... I'm enjoying the mental concept of "dump Madara on Coruscant and watch him go." (Prequels, probably.)

Does Madara know what's going on? No. Can he understand a word that's being said? No! Is he going to fight the first person to aim a weapon at him, and every person after that? Yes.

Is Madara fighting fit?

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnno, not really, he’s old as balls. This is "I was on cave life support but I'm getting back up to kick ass out of pure spite" Madara.

[Image description: A screenshot of a panel of the Naruto Manga. Uchiha Madara is old and visibly ‘decrepit,’ with spiky white hair and an amorphous black robe. He is sitting on a pale throne, and there is a scythe visible to the side. He has a speech bubble saying “I am... a ghost of the Uchiha.” End Description]

Two wrinkly old guys, staring each other down: There ain't enough room in this universe for the two of us. [Palpatine and Madara start fighting to the death]

Congrats, Palpatine! Your ass is getting kicked by a geriatric malcontent who doesn't speak any language you've ever heard or feel like literally anything in the Force. You may have Sith lightning, but do you have decades of frontline experiences and over half a century of cave-dwelling bitterness?

Both of them, simultaneously, in completely different languages: Get off my lawn, whipper-snapper.

Palpatine: Behold my mastery of the Dark Side, Foolish old man! Palpatine: [shoots lightning] Madara: Oh hey, you're like the seventeenth most dangerous person who can shoot lightning I've fought. Telekinesis? Fought that. Combat precognition? Fought that, have that, and let me tell you hwat, it doesn't help if you're opponent is just that much faster than you.

Now, I’ll take a step back and acknowledge that several people advised me that Palpatine would stand a chance against Madara, likely even win, if Madara just got hacked off of his life support and is down to one eye.

But. I want a shitpost, and also to clown on Palpatine, so Madara wins easily.

Madara also deserves to be clowned on, but the entire situation is clowning on him because he’s not in his cave anymore, and he really wants to go back to his Gedou Mazou statue.

Maybe Madara and Palpatine go Old Man Fight and then Obito just pulls a Ninja Move and kills Palpatine that way. Madara was ranting and Obito just. Ninjas behind Palpatine and slits his throat like “okay, you’re obviously evil so like... bye.”

(I just love causing "Wait what" reactions in characters that are used to having total control. Like. Have you read "Unexpected Guests"? The Bleach fic? Everything that happens in Hueco Mundo and after. That energy. I want that energy.)

Madara waves his scythe around like a cane. Obito just trails after like “Gramps, no” because it’s still pre-Sanbi, so he’s Mostly Innocent (you know, on the scale of how fucked up Obito is as a person), and just wants Madara to like. Stop.

Palpatine dies but nobody's sure what to charge Madara with since he did kind of expose a Sith? And Palpatine attacked first for [handwave] reasons?

Jedi: Well sir, in lieu of charging you with assassination of the emperor, we have decided to ask you politely to return to the elderly person's retirement home from whence you came. Please leave immediately. You are frightening the senate. Madara: [incomprehensible raving] Jedi: Yes yes, very interesting. Jedi, whispering: Does anyone know his caretaker???

Obito looks increasingly put-upon as events progress. You need Obito there to... well, not translate. Nobody can translate. But to at least poke Madara into being Slightly Less Homicidal.

Anakin seems sad about his friend dying and being evil so Obito challenges him to a spar. Madara and Obito get pulled into the Jedi Temple to help train Padawans? My first thought was "they wouldn't trust someone so obviously Weird, Crazy, and Incomprehensible around the younglings" and my second thought was "well they let Yoda do it and he's all those things so I mean? YEAH."

What if they put Madara in the bacta tank and he just freshened up like a daisy because of hand-wave Hashirama cell reasons (Blame Sir Tiddyface).

From “Decrepit and Reliant on Cave Tube Life Support” to “Will Call Down Meteors With Ease”

How many eyes does he have? Whatever’s funniest. Let’s say one Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan and one Rinnegan, for maximum chaos.

Would "half my body is missing" Obito freak out if Bacta regrew his eye? Can bacta regrow something like that? When characters lose limbs they usually just get cybernetic replacements, but  the person I spoke with said that apparently they saw somewhere that that kind of thing can grow back it just takes a really long time.

I want to imagine bacta would help Obito with the Zetsu integration.

Anyway! Yes. Have Madara help train people despite being... Madara about it. You know... kind of a dick.

(I’d put example gifs but I don’t feel up to it. Y’all know what Madara’s “weakness disgusts me” ass is like.)

Obito had to get his "these fools could never make me sweat" sass from somewhere, after all.

Do you think Obito could fight the baby Jedi that are around his age while recovering? I have no idea what their skill level is at fourteen, but I want to imagine Obito sparring the Padawans.

Obito + Zetsu + Bacta = he still needs physical therapy but he can spar again!

Madara is delighted to have a baby ninja to bully. He's too old to not bully baby ninjas, and Obito is the only baby ninja. TBH Madara just makes Obito his assistant teacher.

Obito: What are we even doing here and how do we get home? Madara: I'm still working on that. Obito: But I want to go home and see Rin and Kakashi! Madara, who was like two days away from triggering the Sanbi plan: I'm working on it.

Something sticking in my mind rn is Ahsoka&Obito, since Obito is still Baby.

I think Obito would be excited to have someone his age that thought he was Cool and Talented for being able to do Chakra Things instead of writing him off as "the dead-last." Like, Rin is friends with him, but she doesn't look up to him as someone more/differently talented.  He'd be excited to get to be "The Mysterious Cool Big Bro" for once.

I feel I also just like the idea of Anakin not knowing what to do with someone Several Years Younger that is also. Ninja Skill.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

Madara is a grouchy old man even AFTER he gets effectively de-aged via bacta dunk, for the record. He's back in his prime and the Jedi have no idea how. They're all concerned about tiddyface*. (When are people not concerned about Sir Tiddyface, really.) The mokuton is a problem.

*Sir Tiddyface is that random Hashirama face that Madara had growing out of his pecs for like... convoluted bullshit reasons.

(Madara doesn't have mokuton, but he has enough Hashirama cells that it interacted very, VERY weirdly with the bacta.)

Obito spends the intervening weeks trying to learn the local language. He's very eager. Not particularly fast. Still doing it though!

I want Obito juggling kunai as physical therapy while he's waiting for Mads to get out of the bacta tank and just gains himself the adoration of a gaggle of small baby Jedi children.

Madara comes out of the bacta tank looking like he did in his prime (which I mentioned earlier but whatever), and it absolutely incites a yelling match of an argument that draws way too much attention.

Someone tries to teach Obito how to access the Force, just to see what happens. He almost turns into a statue because the philosophy behind Force meditation is only a few steps away from Sage Mode Meditation.

Anyway, Madara smacks him with a stick like Fukasaku to make sure Obito doesn't turn into stone.

Madara grumps about the lack of paper and brushes and ink. Bitches about it until someone hits up an antique store or something to get them for him. The day before he and Obito are dispatched on a mission with someone, probably Anakin for plot reasons, Madara very publicly seals things into a scroll and then tells them that no, they can't learn it, because the Force isn't chakra so fuuinjutsu won't work for them, so There.

Obito practices some Teen Rebellion (tm) and like, tries to teach the Padawan friends he's made how to do Chakra Things... but he's so bad at explaining things that nobody can get it to work even if it were possible.

In Obito's defense, language barriers. Not in Obito's defense, he's just really bad at words sometimes.

[dayseternal-blog]

If you ever finish answering all of yours awaiting asks...

45 questions for you 👀

https://myaekingheart.tumblr.com/post/650107314353897472/fic-writer-ask-game

Lolllll BADLUCKBREBIS, you are so funny.

Inspiration and Reading Asks:

1. How long ago did you start reading fanfiction? Writing fanfiction?

It looks like I started writing in 2017. I've been reflecting recently on how there are so many regularly active writers now compared to in 2017-2018. It was the tail-end of some of my fave writer's activity within fandom. Utsus was posting less and less. The Tumblr NaruHina fandom seemed to disappear, a whole community of writers left for other things (matchaball, nekomamoru, magmawrites, cherryjutsu, spyder-m, tenney-shoes, eliphya, among others). 2018 was a very quiet year, but! I avidly read katarinahime and bunnyhoodlum's works! In 2019, quirrrky restarted things with NaruHina Week!

2. How do you spend your time when it comes to fanfiction? Are you primarily a fic reader, writer, or a perfect 50/50 split of both?

Recently I’m primarily a reader!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because there's so many writers now!!!!!!!!

3. Are there any fics that inspired you to write what you do?

Yeah, let’s list them.  “A Special Friend” by agitosgirl inspired “Nightdreams.  “Medicine” by @grimmjowkurosakidrake​ inspired “White Lilies.  “Torch Song” by @mmmbuttery inspired “About You.”  The language in “Unless the World Were to End” by @bunny-hoodlum​ inspired the language in “That was the plan.”  “In Between Drinks” by @peppercornpress inspired “In Between Drinks NH.”

4. Link your three favorite fics right now.

“Operation: Bring Home Naruto” by Dragonwannabe - Rated T, Canon-Divergent, Multi-chapter, Complete. Hinata's been assigned the mission of getting Naruto back home safely after his last dangerous assignment. But can she handle the undercover identity as his girlfriend that she’d been given without revealing her true feelings for him?

“The Mission” by Lunawraythe - Rated M, Canon-Divergent, Multi-chapter, Ongoing. It wasn't that Hinata never expected to work with Naruto, just never on a mission quite like this.

“The Loving Type” by @peppercornpresses - Rated M, Canon-Divergent, Multi-chapter, Ongoing. A few years have passed since the Fourth Shinobi War, in which...Rookie Nine steadily advances in rank. Naruto gets engaged. Hinata leaves Konoha. And Kakashi schemes for days.

5. What are your fanfic pet peeves? Do they have a huge effect on whether or not you decide to read something?

ahhh.  I do have quite a few pet peeves.  If the fic is Canon-Compliant or Canon-Divergent, I expect Naruto and Hinata to behave like Japanese people.  Say what you want, but the Naruto Universe is definitely Japanese in my book.  So that means no shoes in the house.  Nothing rattles me more than reading Hinata taking her sandals off before climbing into bed.  Like, what?  she was wearing her outdoor shoes indoors this whole time??

mmm... another pet peeve is when the writer describes Hinata in a kimono, but it sounds like an American Halloween costume, like the slutty version, instead of an actual kimono.

mmm... and the other big pet peeve I have is when it’s Hinata’s first time eating ramen because Naruto is showing her the wonders of ramen.  lol.  why.  how.  in what world would a Japanese person make it to their teenage years without ever eating ramen.

I have a bunch of other little pet peeves regarding Japanese culture in fanfics.  But in general, it doesn’t stop me from reading the fic if I'm already in the middle of it.  I’ll continue reading it and will probably recommend it to other people anyway. If I can tell based on the summary, then it's not for me, and I don't read it. If this makes anyone feel nervous about writing fanfiction, that's not my intention! I would also be happy to be a sensitivity reader if necessary.

6. How do you find new fic to read? Where do you primarily read fanfiction?

I primarily read fanfics on AO3 and ffnet.  I find new ones by constantly checking the Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto tag on AO3 or looking into a writer’s favorites list on ffnet.

7. Do you prefer to read short fics or long fics?

Short fics.

8. How often do you reblog/comment on fics that you like?

I reblog pretty often. I don't comment as often as I used to😕 I used to comment on every fic I liked.

9. Tag 3 fic writers you think are underrated/unknown in the fandom/fanfiction community.

Uhh?? Idk. I think recently the writing group here is pretty tight, everyone seems to know everyone.

10. What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for?

Naruto fandom and NaruHina.

Fanfiction Writing Asks:

11. How do you come up with your fic titles?

I usually take it from words used in the story or from the prompt.

12. Tell the author your favorite fic title of theirs (not the fic, strictly title). Author: what’s your favorite title you’ve come up with and why?

I think...maybe "Tell Me of Forevers" or "Nightdreams." I like those because they aren't taken word-for-word directly from the story, but touch on a theme in the story.

13. Do you outline your fics? How much of a headache would someone get if they just looked at an outline of yours without reading the fic?

Yes, I outline. They wouldn't get a headache, I think. It's usually just a summary.

14. Do you have a personal word minimum that you hold yourself too? Why or why not?

Nope. I didn't know people do that.

15. Tell the author your favorite fic of theirs. What’s your (the author’s) favorite fic you’ve written?

My favorite fic continues to be "It's No Secret."

16. Do you research for your fics? If so, how deep of a rabbit hole have you gone down by accident when researching?

Yes, I do. I've done historical and folktale research for "Little Samurai." I did area/location research for "Last Chance." I did historical research for "About You." I did fairy tale research for "Catskin." I did a ton of astronomy research for "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl." And I did lighting research for "Inspo." I go pretty deep.

17. How obsessively do you sit and stare at your fic after you’ve just posted and wait for feedback?

I don't. I usually have something else I need to do or I go to bed.

18. Do you have a WIP that you keep telling yourself you’ll eventually get back to, but deep down you know that’s probably a lie?

I actually think I can finish all of mine if I just try.

19. Do you edit your fics after you write them, or do you prefer to just hit post and run (because it’s someone else’s problem now)?

I always edit before posting to AO3. Anything I post directly on Tumblr might not be edited.

20. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

Posting!

21. What’s your least favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

Starting a new chapter.

22. Do you take fic requests? If so, for what characters and why?

On occasion. If someone sends me a request, I'll think about writing it. Sometimes I do write and post it, sometimes I leave them in my drafts for a better day.

23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write?

From what I already have posted, probably friends-to-lovers, secret relationship/forbidden love, or high school au. I don't think I have an intentional favorite.

24. What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write?

Public humiliation / public degradation.

25. Do you listen to music as you write? If possible, link your writing playlist.

No, not usually.

26. What’s your biggest distraction when writing?

Tumblr feed, all the pictures to scroll through mindlessly.

27. Do you like to give your readers some warning of what might be coming or just slap them in the face with content at random?

lol, whatever is fine.

28. How do you deal with writing pressure (ie: pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc)?

Well, pressure to update is not a big deal to me. I do this for fun, so I don't think I unnecessarily pressure myself too much. With negative comments, I don't get too many of those, and I think I do my best to avoid situations where I might get negative feedback.

29. Have you ever written for an exchange or event of some kind? Which one(s)? Did you enjoy it?

Yeah, I like the events. My favorite was NH2020, the year-long one last year. I also enjoyed the Secret Santa last year since @badluckbrebis was my giftee.

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words.

haha😈

Ecstasy slides through his veins, blooming over his mind, cocooning him in pleasant sensations, cum shooting out in eager twitches against hot, milking flesh.

31. Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

Naruto Uzumaki, always.

32. Copy and paste your top three favorite lines/jokes/sentences you’ve ever written. What fics do they come from?

Top 3 faves in order:

That was the plan: "She shifts in his arms, and cloth and cleavage come pillowing up to his face, and he’s certain that she’s scooped from the same puffy stuff his adolescent daydreams were made of."

Tell Me of Forevers: "What he wouldn’t do to inspire every blush, every smile of hers for an eternity when such moments already only speak “forever” to him."

White Lilies: "Whether at his feet, in his eyes, ears, mind, if not reaching his heart, she never landed anywhere. (It’s okay.)"

I consider "White Lilies" to have my technically best writing, so it was kind of hard to choose just one line from that fic! But I decided that one's my favorite line from the whole story.

33. What do you like writing better: one shots or multi-chapter stuff?

One-shots.

34. How much of yourself and your life experiences do you put into your writing? What do you think your readers’ image of you is?

A lot of my life experiences are in my writing. Hmm, I think readers probably think I'm...hmm...either empathetic or really perverted?

35. How much has writing fic changed your life?

I spend a lot less time on real-life social media than before.

36. Are there any fics or fandoms you’re embarrassed to have written or been part of?

I'm kind of embarrassed of "Honeymoon at the Hot Springs" lol. It's fine.

37. Give an update on your current WIP - if you don’t have one, give a sneak peek to a title or idea that you have and would like to write.

My current WIP is that A/B/O fic I started for February Smut Month Prompts: Sweet as Candy or Love Bites. I'm going to title it "Sweet As," and it'll be about how Naruto and Hinata become Alpha/Omega mates. It's really kinky, really smutty, and totally what I would want to read.

38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)?

uhh???? a 1?? I've never once thought of my writing process as chaotic. Ahh, then I think of bunnyhoodlum's multiple drafts for the same chapter, and I realize that there exist types of writing processes that I would not be able to handle...

39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

My smut.

40. How did you come up with the idea for [x fic]?

41. What’s your most popular fic (with the most notes on tumblr, most hits/kudos on ao3)?

Idk about Tumblr,,, maybe White Lilies got the most attention here. My most popular fic is Nightdreams on AO3.

42. Asker: pick three of the author’s works. Author: rank them 1 (the best) - 3 (the worst) based on whatever criteria you want - this could be something totally random that isn’t quality related (like simply ranking fics based on how many trains appear in them) - have fun!

43. Talk about a positive experience with fanfiction or the fanfiction community that you will always remember.

I will always remember how people congratulated me for finishing White Lilies😭 Also, when peppercornpresses made that FIRST art of my story, I just, I just stared at it all day.

44. Rant about something writing related.

hmmm, I don't feel like ranting about anything. I just recently ranted about my pet peeves above.

45. Fic specific questions - if you have any weird questions about specific works, here’s your shot to ask them!

I did them all! Nice questions.

[chemiste]

Voicemail. ~one-shot~

a/n: howdy babes, last night i was reading through @toothpastekissy​ masterlist, basically gobbling up everything and came upon Leaked Feelings! I loved the concept of it so I decided to write my own version :) lmk if y’all want a part two!

ALSO, i recorded myself singing both songs i wrote for harry,,,, if ya want to know the tunes i was thinking for them, comment if you want them and ill post em.

my masterlist

There they were.

The leaked files.

When you got a call at 4 am this morning, you did not expect your publicist to be telling you some of your exes songs were leaked.

“What’s that got to do with me?” You asked, still half asleep.

“They’re about you, Y/N.”  Well now you’re awake.

“What?” You shot up out of bed, padding over to your white desk, fuzzy pink socks on your feet. You opened your laptop and jumped onto twitter, scrolling through with one hand while the other held your phone. #StylesLeak was trending worldwide, as was #Y/N.

HarryUpdates tweeted:

OMG OMG RED ALERT WE GOT LEAK SONGS Y’ALL

FineFuckinLine tweeted:

OOF, what the fucccccck did harry do to Y/N? These are all apology songs!!! No wonder the break up was hush hush

E!News tweeted :

Hey everyone! We know Harry Styles and Y/N L/N stans are up early this morning! Leaked songs from Harry sales have been put out on the web for everyone to see. The two singers had called it quits 3 years ago, but now they’re the trending topic again! #shipname is now trending #1 worldwide, I didn’t ever think we’d see that one again! Go to our website for more!

You heard you publicist let out a big sigh, you put your phone on speaker and set it down on the desk next to you so you could keep looking.

“There are 7 songs, and each one has your name in it or as the title.”

It was a bit of shock, to say the least.

You had hung up with your publicist a while ago and were now debating on whether to listen to the songs or not, you had found a fan account that had the leaked files all ready to go for your entertainment, but something made you hesitate clicking the url.

“You Bastard!” You screamed, shoving him back into the wall. 

Mascara was streaming down your face, the satin red cocktail dress you wore now crumpled as your crouched to grab your suitcase from underneath the bed.

“Please listen, it’s not what you think—“ Harry started, you whipped around to the man before you, fire burning in your eyes.

“Oh, really Harry? How is me hearing you say ‘yeah Y/N is alright, but gotta keep the media happy ya know’ on a voicemail I probably wasn’t supposed to get not what I think?” 

Quickly, you zipped the bag closed, kicking your heels off and shoving your feet into your beat up converse. He let out an exasperated breath, tears starting to shine in his eyes.

“I—I was drunk Y/N! I was with some friends just joking around and—“ 

“Drunk words are sober thoughts Harry.” 

You snapped back, slipping your tench coat on and racing for the stairs, luggage in hand. You rubbed away the endless tears running down your face as you made it to the living room, collecting your keys.

H raced down after you, mumbling over words—

‘Excuses’, You thought.

Right before you opened the front door, he grabbed your hand that was wrapped around the handle of your suitcase. 

“Please Y/N, can’t we just sit down and talk this out—“ 

“There’s nothing to talk about Harry, you made that perfectly clear when I had to listen to you compare me some ‘other models’ while at a very important record dinner! I had to fucking sit there, eyes on me, and act like you weren’t ripping my heart out one word at a time!” 

You snatched your hand out of his and moved out the door, 

“Don’t call me,” was the last thing you said before slamming the door shut.

Bringing back those memories was something you didn’t want to do, it had been 3 years since the break up. Harry didn’t come after you, even though a part of you wished he had. Wished he had tried harder to get you back. But alas, shortly after, he started dating a model, Camile or something, and your relationship was tossed aside like yesterdays newspaper. 

You moved back and forth with your mouse on the link, eventually you closed the page. Instead of fully chickening out, you decided to go to your favorite platform for celebrity gossip, tumblr.

“At least one of his die-heart fans must have the lyrics written down already.” 

You mumbled to yourself, logging into your secret side blog about cats, Captain America, and cute outfits. 

After not that much digging you found a blog, harrysmygod, (you definitely rolled your eyes at the name) had a whole posting written out about it already.

“They’re sure on top of everything, I’ll give them that.”

You started to read.

Hello my harries! 

So if you’ve been up these past few hours, something big has happened! HARRY STYLES HAD SOME FUCKING SONGS LEAKED!!! And no, I don’t mean songs that could have been on the FineLine album, I mean OLD songs! 

And they’re about, you know my fav girl, Y/N! Now, we know their break up 3 years ago was very quick and hush-hush, not much details ya know? 

BUT WE GOT THE JUICE NOW LADIES!! 

The boy wrote 7 songs that got leaked, and you wonder why I know they’re about her? Y/N is a lyric or title word used in all of them! Thats right, all 7 songs. I’ve done the best thing for everyone and written out the lyrics for you to look through, I’ve only kept one chorus and each new verse, if you listen to the song and its repeated I only wrote it down one for you, blah blah you get it? 

Great! Heres the first one, it’s called Voicemail.

You took a deep breath and scrolled down.

The look on your face,

The hurt in your eyes,

Made me realize, my lover was gone,

I never got to say goodbye.

Oh, Oh, Ah, Oh.

The words I had said, not true,

I’m so sorry you heard them too.

When you came home in that dress,

Mascara dripping onto your chest.

I knew I had fucked up,

One voicemail turning us to dust.

If you ever hear this song,

Know that I was wrong,

You were the best thing in my life,

Now those flames have turned to ice.

Oh, Oh, Ah, Oh.

Y/N, please remember the love we once had together,

So I know I am real

And then maybe, we could try to heal.

Heaaaaaaaaaal.

Wow you guys, this SONG! Totally sucks that harry didn’t mean to release them cause totally invasion of privacy (sorry harry), but lucky for us we’ve got some info on what happened between Y/N and him! 

I’m thinking maybe a voicemail gone wrong? They could have been in a fight and he said something that cut too deep? Lmk what you guys think, heres the next on called Gone.

You scrolled through them, you read all the songs. Lover’s Funeral, Drunk Thoughts, Empty Seat, Your Sock Drawer, and then finally, Y/N.

Alright, we’ve made it to the last song my dudes. And personally it’s my favorite!!!! This was the last song leaked, but I feel the most important. Here’s Y/N.

Oh, Y/N, Y/N, Y/N,

You make my heart fly,

I feel as though I could touch the sky,

I only need your love to try.

My love, love, love

You shine brighter than any star above.

Make me count everyday,

I should have tried to make you stay.

Oh, Y/N, Y/N, Y/N

I know we can agree

That I’m a bastard

Im a flake,

You made the right choice

Walking out on me

But could I have

A second chance,

I know it would be worth it

In the end

Because I’d get,

On one knee,

And promise myself to you

For all eternity.

Oh, Y/N Y/N Y/N

My love, love, love

Oh, Y/N Y/N Y/N

My love, love, love

You gasped, basically jumping away from the computer like it was on fire. Thoughts raced through your mind, you grabbed your head, trying to keep it all together. 

He wanted to marry you? Impossible. 3 Years ago this man was thinking about proposing, then how could he say all those horrible things about you?

“He’s not worth another heartbreak, stop it, stop it!” You chanted to yourself.

While you paced back and forth making a dint in your soft white carpet, you had tuned out the notifications for instagram, twitter, and calls coming through to you. 

But then a certain dial tone popped up that you had only set for one person.

Ding!

Ding!

Ding!

You glanced to your phone on the table and froze.

Bastard (wasn’t allowed to block, fuck PR)

Sent you a message.

Bastard (wasn’t allowed to block, fuck PR)

Sent you a message.

Bastard (wasn’t allowed to block, fuck PR)

Sent a voice file “Mrs. Styles.”

Bastard (wasn’t allowed to block, fuck PR)

Sent a voice file “I Should Have Fought.”

Bastard (wasn’t allowed to block, fuck PR)

Sent a voice file “I’m Sorry.”

<3

here’s part 2!!!!!!!!!

[acespec-ed]

A Night of Self-Discovery

Thursday, February 21st, 2013. 

That was the day I discovered demisexuality. Like, within the first two hours of that day.

I had joined Tumblr several weeks before then, but wasn’t reblogging anything yet. Just lurking about. And yet I never came across the term “asexual.” Nor “demisexual.” Nor any of the acespec identities.

But gee golly whiz, isn’t Tumblr known for being the website full of special snowflakes with their special, made-up orientations? How could you be on Tumblr for nearly a month and not come across any of that?

Good question. But I bet you have a more pressing question to ask me. If I had not discovered the existence of demisexuals from Tumblr, then where the hell else would I ever come across that term in the year of 2013?

Reddit.

That’s right. Reddit. The site known for incels and anti-SJWs and people complaining about the special snowflakes on Tumblr.

The night of February 20th was no different than any other 2013 night. I don’t remember jack shit about what I did, that’s how insignificant of a night it was. And if anything significant did happen, it left my memory in favor of the significant event that was yet to come when the 20th rolled over to the 21st.

I was scrolling through Reddit, as I often do. And I spotted an eye-catching thread title, from the AskWomen subreddit.

“How often do you see a man and think ‘i’d fuck him?’”

I almost laughed. Women gazing upon a man with the desire to fuck him? What nonsense is this?? Maybe men do that with women. But it’s certainly not the other way around!

Do note that I had a lot of fucked up views about men vs women back then, and those views changed the moment I clicked that link. 

Every comment I came across could be summed up as a “yes.” Women do think about fucking men. Women do want to fuck men. And we’re not talking boyfriends and husbands. Not even friends. Some of these comments were about wanting to fuck random strangers! Some of these women had these thoughts often!

I scrolled through so many comment chains, desperate to find someone, anyone, who could see how irrational these people sounded! Surely I wasn’t the only person who never felt any interest in fucking a stranger? I couldn’t be. Could I?

After what felt like an eternity, I came across a comment that sounded as close to rationality as possible. The person said they didn’t feel attraction until they got to know the man’s personality. Someone responded saying they could be demisexual. Of course, I hopped right onto Google for more information.

And everything clicked.

The sex-repulsion. The lack of interest in wanting a boyfriend. How I cannot fathom the appeal of one night stands. How I could not understand needing sex. Why people seemed to have a hard time keeping it in their pants. Why “dying a virgin” was considered a bad thing, when it was originally part of my life plan. The confusion I felt when I first started developing sexual attraction towards my boyfriend. A weight lifted from my shoulders. A weight I didn’t realize I was even carrying.

Demisexual. I was demisexual. It explained so much. 

I stayed up until 2 in the morning researching all of this. Finally feeling understood in a way I never thought possible.

After much debate, I decided to share this exciting news with my boyfriend, who had long past gone to bed. I sent him a big message about it, summarizing my feelings.

He responded: “Okays! I <3 you!”

I was hoping for a bit more, but was relieved that he was okay and supportive of it.

Since my boyfriend was the only person I was ever sexually attracted to, and I wasn’t sure when exactly that attraction took hold, I eventually decided to call myself gray asexual instead. It’s hard to know how you experience sexual attraction if it’s only happened once. And when the years flew by with him being the only person, I figured I might as well call myself asexual. I related to them more than any other identity anyway. But of course, sexual attraction had to sneak up on me again in December of 2020. So now I’m back to gray asexual. Although I do wonder if I’m demi from time to time, given it has taken time for the sexual attraction to hit. I just don’t feel like I know the person well enough to call it a “bond.” So gray asexual it is!

[yeoldontknow]

❧ check in tag

tagged by the sweetest angel @propinqxity to do this little tag. this is such a cute list of questions, and some of these i dont think ive been asked before. thank you so much for the tag and the tumblr crush mention lovely. you truly are a bright spot on this website and i mean that sincerely <333

going under a cut because im certain i will ramble ~

1. Why did you choose this url?

its sort of like a pun between yall dont know and the fact that, hopefully, sincerely, chanyeol does not in fact know that i run this blog lmao i changed to this after a long time of being bread-jinie and i wanted to rebrand. i will, however, do my best to never change URLs again because the masterlist switch over was a complete hassle

2. Any sideblogs? If you have them, name them and why you have them

i have a fic recs blog called @yeoldontknowiread. as to why i have it, i know it hasnt been updated in ages since ive been kind of on hiatus, but i think reading and sharing work on this platform is immensely important. i actually read quite a lot of fanfiction, and i try my best to share the things i read. im very very behind on recs at the moment cause i try my best to write something substantial for every recommendation i make. as a writer, i know exactly the kinds of thoughts and feedback on fics that make my heart soar so i try to put in the same energy to my recs. community is only fostered when there is reciprocation

3. How long have you been on Tumblr?

hmmm since april 2017. i actually had my 4 year anniversary this year and i did have plans for things but i got roped into real life things and couldnt celebrate the way i truly wanted to :(

4. Do you have a queue tag?

no but sometimes i think i should. i view tags as a library on top of my knee jerk response to things. most of my tags are just my initial thoughts or feelings at any given moment, so those take precedence over a specific queue tag

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

when i was getting into exo, i was reading fanfiction like crazy. i used to write fanfic quite a lot in other fandoms, but at that time i hadnt written anything in about 2.5 years. exo was the first re-introduction to that feeling of excitement and inspiration. after about 3 weeks of straight reading, i decided i wanted to write again. i wrote the prologue to hero in about two hours and tried logging into AO3 to post it. sadly i forgot all of my log in information because it had been years, and was getting frustrated. i really wanted to put it somewhere out of fear that id lose interest if i didnt do something with it, and everything id read had been on tumblr. so i made a tumblr just to put hero lmao i didnt have any mutuals. it was a blog with straight 0. i hadnt even created an account to interact with writers before that moment, i really thought id be a silent reader forever. but exo woke me back up and for that i am eternally grateful.

6. Why did you choose your icon?

the yours music video is...so stunning? like the colour theory throughout the whole thing is truly so inspiring and gorgeous. and this shot of chanyeol looking at the painting took my breath away, truly. tulips and the color of peach, like do you know how evocative that is? ugh

7. Why did you choose your header

my header was made by @jamaisjoons for my birthday this year because shes literally the most talented person when it comes to graphics. and this was so kind of her to do, i cried a lot

8. What's your post with the most notes?

uhm....either the body through time or truth i cant remember which but i checked recently and its one of those

9. How many mutuals do you have?

honestly at this point im not even sure. i know ive lost a bunch while i was on hiatus because i was basically a dead blog, and some people do dash cleanses. and im certain others have left, too, for their own reasons. still, i have a good core of friends though who are active and that is enough for me

10. How many followers do you have?

more than i probably deserve

11. How many people do you follow?

399

12. Have you ever made a shitpost?

uhm i guess? there was a time when nng was not updated and every wednesday id post the days go by music video in sadness and grief but im not a big shitposter. if i make a text post its usually a life update or me crying about chanyeol, theres no inbetween lmao

13. How often do you use Tumblr every day?

tbh i havent used tumblr that often, not since march i think. i used to use it many times a day, checking in on friends and stuff, but once i started focusing on my phd applications i was only here sporadically. i didnt make an announcement either, just let my blog run on queue so i wasnt totally gone. i think i was checking in twice a week or maybe once every two weeks to refill my queue and check mentions etc. but now that my interviews are done im trying to get back on here daily to reconnect

14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

ive had my share of disagreements with people and any details about those situations shall remain as they are meant to: private

15. How do you feel about "you need to reblog this" posts?

in what context? like, you need to reblog this or your wish wont come true? or like, please reblog this to spread the word/spread awareness, etc? in the case for the former, i scroll right by. in the case of the latter, if im around and see someone raising a go fund me or some major event is occurring and i find a post with good sources or charities i will reblog. mostly though, the full extent my activism isnt really on this blog. its my escape from reality. my activism is usually placed on other platforms.

16. Do you like tag games?

i doooo!!! theyre so fun i love learning about my friends

17. do you like ask games?

i love those too! theyre so cute and usually a nice way to have interaction immediacy with people in the community

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

no one. can we please abandon this notion of fame on tumblr? arent we all here to write about some dick and some smut and some fluff and then hang out together and log off? lmao tumblr isnt reality and followers/fame is so arbitrary on this platform, no one has any control over any of it

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

i am in love with so many people here. let me name a few:

@yehet-me-up @kyungseokie @jenmyeons @j-pping @jamaisjoons @inkedtae @kookdiaries @yoonia @dulcetvk @kithtaehyung @imdifferentshadesofpurple @ditzymax @sugaurora @sahmbtsficrecs @junghelioseok @yeojaa @augustbutwinter @joonscore @btssavedmylifeblr @cutechim @sunshinekims @kimtaehyunq @ouvuo @delhyun @exo-stentialism @sooibian @softyoongiionly @jinseunie @zibermuda @bratkook @1kook @luffles424 @xjoonchildx

and so many other people and mutuals that i am certainly forgetting. love is such an expansive feeling, and it encompasses platonic ardor and creative desire. i admire every single person listed for so many different reasons, and cherish and treasure them or what they provide to the community. love is such an important and broad experience. truly, i hope they feel adored every single day x

[alpacaparkaseok]

utl group tag 

I actually just completed a year of being an active-duty ARMY on February 27th! so this is perfect lol

tagged by @moon-write !  💜

Who was your first bias?

*screams from my room* “does the entire Hyung line count? No?” lol definitely Namjoon and Jin. Actually, weirdly enough the first time I even saw BTS was in Mexico with a friend that was appalled that I’d never heard of them. she had a shoe box filled to the brim with black and white photos she’d printed out, and laid them out and told me to pick one. I picked Jin & Tae lol. Kings of visuals.

Who’s your bias now?

Seokjinnie is my ult bias, with Namjoon and Hobi right up there along with him. They all just keep getting better and better, you know? But Jin is my #1 best boy.

What was the first mv you watched by them?

remember how I first heard about them in Mexico? When I got home around mid-2019 was when ‘Boy with Luv’ was blowing up. I saw it...wasn’t a fan of it. hahaha, so I avoided BTS for a while longer.

What’s your favorite mv?

SPINE BREAKER 😂😂 kidding. although that is a masterpiece in its own right lol. oooh that’s such a hard question!!! I do love the mv for ‘Black Swan’, so well done. absolutely beautiful. But I also have such a soft spot for the little mv they did for ‘We are Bulletproof: The Eternal’. I cried. so both lol 

If you could listen to one of their songs for the rest of your life, which would it be?

oh my gosh this is horrible haha. automatically my thoughts go to ‘Tonight’ by Jin or ‘Scenery’ by Tae or ‘Outro:Tear’ by the rapline, but I feel like I should choose one with everyone haha. Probably ‘Magic Shop’, since it means so so much to me and I would never want to forget it. Either that, or ‘Let Go’, but that one makes me sad so I don’t think I could do that for the rest of my life lol

Who would you want to see them collab with?

ok ok, hear me out. they wouldn’t necessarily have to sing together, but I just think if we could get the boys and Taylor Swift to write a song together...some of the best storytellers of our generation unite!

What mv concept do you want to see them do?

ummm the concept where they are my best friends. that counts, right? 😂

Have you ever had a dream with any of the members in it?

I know I used to when I first became an ARMY, but I don’t even remember them now! I think since I started Tumblr back in October my brain decides to take a break from them at night haha

If you could spend the day with one member, who would it be and what would you do?

I mean, I’d love to spend the day with ALL of them, but if I had to choose just one, I’d have to choose Jin, right? He’d probably be offended otherwise 😂 I actually really love fishing. So we’d just go fishing and bring some food along and chill. Chat a bit. Suck at fishing but have fun nonetheless. confess my undying love

Which member do you think you’d get along with the most?

HA! Park Jimin! I think he was supposed to be my bias, but he’ll have to settle for being my bff. We’re pretty similar in some ways. you know, Slytherin culture. But I think I’d get along well with Yoongs, too. Our personalities complement each other. (I mean, seeing how jhope is my spirit animal)

Which member do you think you would argue with?

hmmm maybe Jungkook? we’re both maknaes, maybe we’d have a hard time sharing attention lol OR HE’D SNEAK MY FOOD I KNOW HE WOULD

If you had to let one member scroll through your tumblr, who would it be?

Min Suga lol didn’t he like low-key admit to having fan fiction tendencies in that one v-live?? 😂 we’d probably have a good laugh over it, and Taehyung would totally show up and give me pointers. 

I’m tagging: @dreamcatcherjiah @honeytae @eusticenatalie :) :) do it if you wanna!

[suki-schiffer]

Thoughts on Rule of Wolves

A compilation of my raw initial thoughts and feelings after reading Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo, sequel to King of Scars, seventh book in the Grishaverse. I just finished reading Rule of Wolves (RoW) yesterday and wanted to get some of my unaltered thoughts and feelings on paper before they become influenced by rereads and by being exposed to others’ opinions. There’s little rhyme or reason to this, it jumps all over the place, I’m not taking the time to check spellings etc. also, spoilers.

I am probably evaluating all the Grishaverse (GV) books a little too harshly because I can’t help but compare them to the Six of Crows (SoC) series which were the first books from the GV that I read. The whole reason I picked up King of Scars (KoS) last year was because I wanted more of that joy I got from SoC, only when I started reading KoS did I realize that the GV books aren’t just set in the same universe but have intertwining plots and characters at which point I realized I’d ruined the Shadow and Bone (S&B) series for myself but I did go back and read that too even though it definitely would not have been something I would have picked up if it had no connection to the other books. The S&B series wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, as it truly was a YA series with characters that were pretty one dimensional being driven by pure motives down a predictable plot. Many of these characters make a reappearance in KoS and RoW and while they have a bit more dimension to them now they are still too pure, too perfect, and my feelings about them from previous series still stuck.

I don’t like Zoya. I didn’t like her when I first read about her is SoC and I really hated her after reading S&B. Those feelings were hard to cast off when she becomes a slightly better person in KoS/RoW but the entire time I couldn’t help but think she was undeserving not just of being a main character but of being a member of the Grisha Triumvirate, of being Nikolai’s love interest, of that ridiculous amount of power, and of becoming Ravka’s queen. I felt like her “backstory” was rather forced to try to make us like her more. Like oh, how sweet, she has a secret garden with a plant for everyone she’s lost. She still came off as a bitch. I honestly still don’t know what drives her. In S&B first it’s her desire for power and beauty and the Darkling’s attentions then when her aunt is killed she joins Alina maybe for revenge? But other than Alina asking for her to be part of the Triumvirate I didn’t really know why she was in that role don’t know how or why she agreed to become Nikolai’s general, because she loved him? Or perhaps it’s because she’s still just power hungry wanting to lead the Grisha, wanting to lead the army, wanting to lead the nation?

Disregarding my feelings for Zoya, her power increase in KoS and RoW is ridiculous. How is it that she is the only Grisha (save perhaps the now dead saints) who can break down matter small enough to draw power from every order? You’re telling me that this girl manages to do this after a few weeks with Juris but people like Baghra or the Darkling who are hundreds of years old and significantly stronger and were actively trying to strengthen themselves couldn’t do this? Ilya Morozova, the Darkling’s grandfather, did all kinds of experiments, dabbling in merzost, how is it the Darkling, in all the years he spent waiting for a sun summoner, not at least dabble in the other orders in attempt to summon sun himself? If you were to rank characters by power on a scale of one to ten I would have said the Darkling was a ten but Zoya blows that scale out of the water when she becomes the dragon, a character this powerful just feels wrong. Not to mention she didn’t even really work for this power, she trains with Juris for a bit in the Fold and then makes his scales into fetters, there was no years of study and practice or meditation, no struggle, just bam! Power.

So yes, still don’t like Zoya and I think her character arc, if you will, decreased the quality of the book.

Again, I’m comparing things to SoC but in comparison RoW was rather predictable. There were definitely a few twists I didn’t see coming and a few questions that were left unanswered but with SoC I was constantly guessing at what would go wrong, what the new plan was, I was constantly on my toes. That constant guessing kept me interested, by comparison I was at times bored with this book, if I put a book down (mid-chapter even!) to scroll through Tumblr or watch Youtube videos or do something else for the sake of enjoyment before finishing that book that’s a sign it isn’t all that interesting, and that’s what I was doing with RoW.

It was just too predictable. Like oh no, the Darkling tricked you into meeting Alina and Mal, got his power back, and fled, who’d’ave guessed it? What’s this? Hanne ended up getting too much attention and might be forced to marry the prince, Rasmus, of Fjerda because of it? Ehri’s guards make another attempt on her life? Nikolai weasels his way out of marrying Ehri because his true love is Zoya, no way! Joran, this young Druskelle who is for some reason being punished by having to be Rasmus’ guard is the one who killed Matthias? Oh and why is guarding Rasmus a punishment when he could be the hope of getting Fjerda to end the war? Because he’s an abusive shit who hates feeling weak so he tries to make others feel weaker, didn’t see that one coming, nope, definitely not.

Now for a few of the things that surprised or confused me that I’m still sort of confused about. Let’s start near the beginning with the Fold suddenly, not so much as expanding as just, appearing in different places all over the world with seemingly no rhyme or reason. I didn’t really get how a pocket dimension existed within the Fold in the first place or how the saints got trapped in it but apparently breaking out of it allowed the Fold to take on a will of its own whereas it had previously been stable for hundreds of years. Also the Darkling not having any powers after leaving the Fold was confusing, I shouldn’t necessarily say “any” because he seemed to have been able to make subtle changes to Yuri’s body to make it look more like his own but I didn’t understand how his power could seemingly enter his body granting him control and consciousness but then he not have any power until he gets Mal and Alina’s blood (also wasn’t clear what he did with the blood, did he just have to touch it, did he stab all three of their hands so the blood mingled?). This just sort of felt unnecessary and that it was just a means to pull Alina et al back into the story.

In KoS it was implied that the use and existence of Jurda Parem was the reason Nikolai’s monster came back and the saints now had enough power to create miracles to entice them to the Fold and draw them into the pocket world, this theory is never mentioned again. Can you tell I’m just really confused about everything related to that pocket world?

Speaking of that interaction with Alina and co I was honestly hoping Yuri might have a bit more of a role in the story. Yuri had seemed sort of willing to let the Darkling use him as a vessel and Nikolai discovering he was still in there with the “there’s something in your beard” line didn’t clue me into the fact that there could be more to this because I assumed he was still on the Darkling’s side. But then he tries to warn Alina of what he’s about to do and I thought, oh, maybe he has second thoughts, maybe there’s going to be a fight now for control of the body and Yuri might be able to stop the Darkling from doing something sinister by fighting back at the right moment. Alas, he goes back to singing the Darkling praises. I get that Yuri is a bad guy but I still kind of felt bad for him, not enough to care about his wellbeing, at least not until the very end because as far as I’m aware Yuri was still in his body with the Darkling when the Darkling decided to have a bit of a redemption arc by condemning himself to an eternity of pain to close the Fold and keep it closed. As far as I’m concerned the Darkling deserves that fate, Yuri doesn’t.

Speaking of the Darkling taking control of another’s body another thing I was left wondering about happened in one of Nina’s earlier chapters when the new Wellmother from the convent Nina and Hanne had been at arrives at the Ice Court to accuse Hanne of worshipping the Saints instead of Djel. At the end of this chapter the Wellmother’s eyes are described as slate grey, I’ve only ever heard the Darkling’s eyes be described that way. I really thought that the Darkling was just pretending to be powerless and had actually developed a new power of taking over other’s bodies and he was just biding time by gathering intel and causing chaos this way, I thought this might have also been how he was creating the mini-Folds all over the world (look I know they had a Ravkan name that roughly translated to vampire but I’m not going back into the book to find the spelling and calling them vampires just... no). I was so concerned for Nina, here this woman is claiming to actually be part of the Ravkan spy network and that Nikolai needs her to get close to Demidov Lantsov. This order made no sense because Nikolai knew he wasn’t a Lantsov and the existence of another Lantsov doesn’t mean much, as long as the people think Nikolai is the legitimate son of the former king and queen then he outranks every other individual with Lantsov blood in terms of succession. Also if this were a legitimate request it seems like there would have been much easier and safer ways to communicate this than have someone come from across the country making false claims against Hanne that could put her under suspicion thus limiting Nina’s ability to move. I thought this was therefore some sort of trap to expose Nina, and potentially Hanne, and the fact that nothing came of it left me confused. We never see this Wellmother character again, Nina does not get exposed, when we get the Darkling’s POV in the second part of the book he mentions nothing of this encounter nor is it suggested that he actually has such a power.

I then thought perhaps if the Darkling survived and was now in Yuri’s body perhaps this was his mother, Baghra, come back to life as well. Then we get thrown a random line during one of the Darkling’s chapters where he mentions the existence of a half-sister that was also declared a saint that I don’t recall hearing about before this instance, in fact I’m pretty sure Baghra said something in the Spinning Wheel about only having one child because she didn’t want a repeat of what happened to her and her sister and that she didn’t even remember who Aleksander’s father was so if the Darkling knows of this half-sister we would assume it’s Baghra’s child. Apparently though this sister was referenced in the only GV book I haven’t read being Language of Thorns (just a side note RoW is said to be the seventh book in GV but if you include The Lives of Saints and The Language of Thorns it is actually the ninth). I could be wrong, maybe Baghra never said anything about her son being her only child, or maybe this is another case of Bardugo altering things between series. She did this with Nina’s backstory because in SoC when Matthias talks about courting her properly and having dinner with her family she said that she hadn’t seen them in years since she went to the Little Palace but in KoS and RoW she’s an orphan who grew up in an orphanage and doesn’t remember her parents. Point being, after that line I thought the Wellmother might have been the Darkling’s half-sister since she had claimed to have been a spy in Fjerda for thirteen years which would mean she’d been there since before the events of S&B, if that is true then it likely couldn’t be Baghra. I’m still hung up on this character though, for all the reasons outlined, yet the KoS series is over and she only made one appearance so maybe she just was a spy with slate grey eyes.

As mentioned previously I knew Nikolai wasn’t going to marry Ehri but I didn’t realize Genya and David were going to be the ones getting married, or maybe “renewal of vows” would be a better term. I’m perfectly content to have this come out of the blue, predictable can be boring, but then it started getting weird. I had just assumed previously that Genya and David had been married sometime between the end of the S&B series and the start of KoS as that’s when they start being referred to husband and wife (same with Nadia and Tamar) and I had no reason to believe it wasn’t the wedding they wanted. Then there’s mentions of them having a hasty wedding in Ketterdam and this just felt like yet another attempt to placate and garner hope in readers by referencing SoC. As far as I know David wasn’t in Ketterdam during the SoC series, he was the only one who stayed in Ravka, even if he was there and just wasn’t “on screen” I don’t understand why they would choose to get married then and there. And if not during the events of SoC then when? What reason did they have to both be in Ketterdam outside of the events of SoC and decide they couldn’t wait to have a proper wedding in Ravka? I was angry at this point because a similar thing was done in KoS where lines about SoC kept getting dropped and getting my hopes up that the other crows would make an appearance and they didn’t.

But back to the wedding, running off to his workshop because he had an idea during his own wedding is totally in character for David. Him dying was just evil. Didn't even cross my mind that this was a possibility, one minute we go from Genya digging through the rubble in her wedding dress saying she can’t find him then we are at his funeral. I thought he might have been gravely injured, unconscious for a long period of time, and that he’d had an idea for an invention that would help them win the war and he’d save the day by waking up in time or something. But no. My favourite character from S&B was killed off, just like that. And it was impactful, it made me cry, the fact they had found him pen in hand, fingers stained with ink, in his wedding clothes, the fact that in his notebook he has notes about how to woo Genya and she wants him to have it in death. Beautifully written, definitely salty about it. At this point in time I don’t really see how his death furthered the plot but death in real life is like that to, it’s unexpected, without reason, sudden. And perhaps, like Matthias’ death in SoC, it will be used to later start a new plot for a new story.

Now two paragraphs ago I was lamenting the fact that the mention of Ketterdam felt forced and had the intent of fooling the readers into having hopes the other SoC cast would return but then they keep hinting at it, they talk about contacting Kaz, about travelling to Ketterdam and I’m sitting there thinking please, please, please actually have Kaz meet them, don’t just be letters or some other minor Dregs sent in his place. (!!!! <- there are no words for my excitement!)

I made an audible screech when Nikolai gave money to the beggar because I knew that was Kaz in disguise. I was so pleased to hear that it sounds like Pekka did not return to the Barrel and that Kaz bought the Emerald Palace and expanded the Crow Club. I was slightly disappointed that Inej wasn’t trailing Nikolai and Zoya too or that she wasn’t meeting with them in the Crow Club probably mainly because I just wanted to see her again but there was also a sadness that it sounds like she did decide to walk a different path than Kaz. The fact that Nina had, earlier in RoW, talked about how she hoped for Inej’s sake Kaz had fixed his hair cut by now, contributed to this because obviously she thinks they stayed together. Maybe they are together in a way but long distance relationships without any suggestion of communication technology must be hard, especially when Kaz could be taken out by another Barrel boss or Inej’s ship blown up by pirates (or the Kerch as was implied by Nikolai) and the other might not ever know of their fate and certainly wouldn’t be there to save them, so I feel that due to this they wouldn’t actively be in a relationship. However, I am proud that Inej put her dreams before Kaz’s she could have given up those dreams to stay at his side and continue to be his spider, after all, that’s what he had asked her to do he wanted her and he wanted her to stay, in the Dregs, with him. Wasn’t too thrilled that she’s used as a sort of damsel in distress. Help us Mister Brekker and in exchange I’ll give you a device that acts as an early warning system against the submarines I gave the Kerch (yes they have a different name that starts with an i and there’s a z and y and m in there somewhere but instead of me trying to spell it lets call them what they are, subs) because the Wraith will be blown up otherwise as she won’t be able to get away in time.

I don’t know if it was because this part of the story was written better or if it was just because I like these characters so much more (my darling baby boys!) but I felt like the story finally developed momentum here that it was lacking previously. I love that Wylan and Jesper are living together with Wylan’s mother and acting like an old married couple. I also like that Wylan is trying to keep Jesper away from illegal activities but is also clearly continuing to work on chemistry projects and likely explosives and that Jesper’s love of Barrel flash hasn’t been quashed, Zoya actually even compliments it in her head. I also love how, as soon as Wylan hears this illegal act can help Inej, all restraint is thrown out the window. Kaz was able to pull off so many tricks in such a short time too, I love it. First dressing as a beggar, then pretending the operation will be more difficult than it is in order to drive the price up, then pretending that due to changes in how the goods are being stored at the military base they couldn’t carry out the operation with such a small crew, meanwhile he knew the Suli were there and would connect with Zoya and show them the “backdoor” to the base. Now I completely understand how Ketterdam was built on slavery or, as they like to call it, indentures, so I can see how Suli would have built the place, I imagine some of the Suli are still in Ketterdam, why they returned to the military base that night I don’t know. Also the fact they were all wearing jackal masks, something Inej said is reserved only for holy men, Suli seers, and wearing one was akin to sacrilege if you were not a seer, implies that all these people were the rare seers which seemed a bit unlikely. The fact that Zoya has this encounter and an earlier one made me think that maybe the Suli would play a larger role in RoW than what they end up doing (because this is the last we see of them, they don’t come to fight the battles, they don’t impart secret knowledge to help Ravka win the war, Zoya doesn’t find her father or her uncles or decide to learn more about her Suli heritage).

I was very disappointed with how quickly we leave Ketterdam, Kaz, Wylan, and Jesper. I suppose we do the same thing with Alina and co at the sanatorium where there is no proper goodbye. In one chapter we finish the job/plot point and in the next the main characters have left. At the end of the day I suppose I was just glad we actually had a few scenes with the crows and not just hints, was definitely the most surprising part of the book.

The crows were a positive surprise Nina and Hanne getting together was more of a negative one for me. It was hinted at in KoS but Nina has also been said to have made eyes at a pair of shoes so I had hoped the relationship wouldn’t grow beyond flirting, I feel it just diminishes what Nina and Matthias had. She also doesn’t seem to feel any remorse for moving on so quickly and even though she’s still thinking about him, about her promise to save some mercy for his people and country, and trying to fulfill her promises, she’s also forsaking him by getting together with Hanne.

That being said I, like Nina, really did believe Rasmus had killed Hanne near the end of RoW and while I hadn’t wanted them to be together the damage to the relationship Nina and Matthias had was done and I was thinking “really, you’re going to do this to my girl Nina twice, take away the person she loves, twice, for no good reason?” So that was a surprise and I was glad that Hanne did survive but I really don’t see how she could live as Rasmus and even if she could pull it off I don’t see the Fjerdan people, military, or royalty permitting a prince to marry Mila, a widowed fishwife. Nina was saying something about using her power to get the answers from the dead which I thought was a very weird development for her powers in the first place. In KoS when Nina said that she was hearing the voices of the dead I thought it was more about she was sensing a mass grave and could tell that the bodies were women and the death unnatural. Near the end of KoS I thought perhaps there were some memories left in the brains that she could access, names and how they died. But in RoW Nina is able to reach out to the dead, identify the queen’s best friend and lady-in-waiting and ask her questions and get answers and implies she can do this with Rasmus as well. There are a lot of logistic fallacies with this. One, it implies that people don’t go to the Saints or to Djel or to any kind of afterlife when they die but that they stick around their corpses. It also implies that Nina can probably override their free will, the women and girls at the factory had “called” to her, I doubt Rasmus and the lady-in-waiting would want to share everything so freely. Finally, if Nina can communicate with the dead then how come Matthias’ voice that she heard in the beginning of KoS was just her imagination and not really him? This could also make Nina incredibly powerful, no need to torture or bribe secrets out of someone or try to steal top secret documents, just kill them with a bone dart and demand answers of their ghost.

In regards to Nina’s power I am disappointed with how little she used it in RoW. With the exception of speaking to the dead I believe she briefly controlled two of the newly dead Priest Guard to restrain the Apparat for all of maybe thirty seconds and that was it for the entire book. While Nina has always done undercover work or subterfuge, pretending to be native to find Grisha in hiding, sneaking into the Ice Court pretending to be part of the Menagerie, pretending to be Mila the translator for Leoni and Adrik, she has always come off as a warrior to me so to not see her fight at all in RoW seemed a bit out of character. There was opportunity but it wasn't seized and honestly it left me wondering what Nina actually really accomplished during RoW, she didn't free Nikolai's true father, she didn't free any Grisha or destroy Fjerda's parem or find labs and holding facilities, she didn't help win any battles, didn't actually manage to dissuade Rasmus from war. Zoya took her from the Leviathan, flew her all the way to the frontlines of the north where there was death aplenty, and then flew her all the way back without her ever doing more than cling to Zoya’s back. Surely she could have raised some of the dead just to drive the point home, no?

The one thing I did like about the final battle was that we finally got to see the Darkling be less than perfect, a theme that sort of carried through the book. He started off with no power, mind you his scheme to get it back went off without a hitch, but then he was pretty much on the run having to trade manual labour for food. Yet he had this plan and I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t work out for him, that he’d go to the frontlines, preform a miracle saving Nikolai and Ravka, and manage to get himself declared a saint for his troubles. Instead we see him just as affected by the disk bells as everyone else, we see him try to summon shadow, try to summon nichyvoya (I acknowledge that’s spelled incorrectly, I can’t be bothered to find the correct spelling) and he can’t. I thought it was glorious.

While the Darkling did end up doing some good in RoW, helping Nikolai’s monster stay alive long enough to destroy the disk bells, shutting up the Apparat (why isn’t he dead, his character is a harbinger of bad things to come and he’s a creep, how did Zoya not kill him?) in order to give Zoya a better chance of getting the throne, and finally sacrificing himself to the Thornwood to undo the damage he let loose on the world with the creation of the Fold, I didn’t feel as though he had redeemed himself and for this I was glad. There are all kinds of evil characters in GV and the Darkling likes to pretend that his reasons are pure, that he’s protecting and strengthening the Grisha, but he is a mass murderer seemingly without empathy, he happily manipulates people to get his way, puts Genya, who at the time could be considered a child, into the king’s path, then later mutilates her as punishment for letting Alina get away, all for the sake of his own cause. In the GV I hated Van Eck and Brum and Heleen much more than the Darkling, but I do think he’s the most evil of them all, in part because his unnaturally long life has meant he’s been committing evils for centuries. I’m glad that it sounds like this is the end for his character and that while in the next series Zoya wants to free him from his eternity of agony that freedom will come in the form of death.

Speaking of the potential plot of the next series, I can’t believe that without even doing any research they are able to come to the conclusion that a “heart strong enough” is the heart of Saint Feliks and they intend to send Kaz after this, what if they’re wrong? Also, they finally bring Inej into the story for Zoya’s coronation, don't know what reason she had for being there. But then we’re done dirty because Inej doesn’t get to meet Alina although she catches sight of her, and they are ready to send Inej back to Kaz with a message about finding this saint’s heart but she’s already left so they’re just going to use a plain old flyer instead! You could have at least sent our darling Inej, treasure of our hearts, back to do Kaz the honour of acquiring him a new heart. But no, brief meaningless appearance and she’s gone.

Unfortunately, it seems there was a lot of things I was displeased with in RoW. I think overall the main problem the RoW (and KoS) is that it just became too big, the characters became indistinct because they grew out of character, there were too many references to past stories and characters in attempt to please readers rather than for the sake of the story, there were too many characters and plots to keep track of in general, and due to all this I couldn’t remain suspended in disbelief. I approach this as someone who entered the GV through SoC, I picked up SoC because the story was interesting, I picked up KoS and S&B because they were set in the same universe as SoC not because I particularly wanted to read those series. I had thought I could be interested in KoS on its own because it is more complicated than a typical YA novel and Nina is one of the main characters but now having finished RoW I have to say that if the GV really was just a collection of stories set in the same universe but with no intersecting of series I would have never have read this one. Will I go back and read KoS and RoW again? Yes, of course. Will I sometimes pretend that it never existed when I reread SoC? Yes, of course. But I do think the wait and the hype was worth it even if just for the few chapters with the Dregs again, because let’s face it, that’s what I personally was waiting for.

So I wrote this as a Word document over the span of three days and it’s now over 5000 words long, completely unedited, no order, probably reads like chaos. I want to see if and how my opinion changes over time but I’ve decided to post this because I like reading and watching others react to things I like so maybe someone else out there is like me and will find this and get some enjoyment from this.