#i feel like i should find someone to summarize them for me

[heretodefyfate]

girlfriends discussing about pkmn rejuvenation lores

[yuurei20]

Summarized transcript of the Twisted Radio episode with Diasomnia! 🐉🦇⚔️⚡️

Highlights: A very good episode, all the Diasomnia VAs love their characters and each other’s characters and each other and it is very obvious when they interact.

Disclaimer: These are not direct quotes, this is all general summarizations and paraphrasing~

Begins with how they are happy to be all together in one place, for the first time in two years.

The opening talk set by last week: what do you find yourself buying when you travel?

⚡️It seems 🦦-kun wanted to buy a dragon sword… 🐉 I’ve bought one before. 🦇 Why wwww 🐉 In elementary school

On topic: 🐉 I love milk. Every time I go some place I buy milk to drink. A recent musical I was in traveled nationwide and the milk in Hokkaido is different depending upon the area. I was so happy.

🦇I like to get things to remind me of the trip. It doesn’t matter what they are. It doesn’t even have to be related to the area. Just a prize from a Game Center or a gacha toy or anything is fine.

⚔️ Dragons. Apparently they’re growing in popularity. 

He talks about how around high school everyone loses interest, but then you become an adult and are like “actually yeah dragons are great” ww

🦇 We should get on that bandwagon. Officially recognized by Diasomnia ww ⚔️ We have the most noble and beautiful dragon of them all 🦇 Out of all the dragons that there are, he certainly stands out

(Everyone is laughing so much they are having so much fun)

⚡️I like getting fruit or something that was made from things grown in the area, even if it’s temporary, to remember the taste

(⚡️ is the host so it is his job to keep them on subject ww there are a lot of cuts in this episode, they must have talked for so long and needed to cut it down)

Fan letter: I had a dream where I talked about how wonderful Malleus-sama is for ten hours. What strange dreams have you had before?

⚡️I have been seeing the same dream since I was a kid. A kind of horror dream. The same dream where I am being chased by something. 

⚔️ There are dreams I had as a kid that really left an impression on me. I remember them pretty well. Like one where I became a character from a cartoon that could fly. I became one of the main characters. An enemy would appear, someone would say “Let’s go!” and they’d all naturally start to fly. And even though I was a main character, I’d say “Let’s go!” and I was the only one who wouldn’t be able to fly. Everyone else flew off and I couldn’t. I was the main character and they all left me behind. I started crying that I couldn’t fly and then I woke up.

🦇 I’ve had a dream about situation where I could fly, too. Even though I could fly, when I jumped from somewhere high up instead of going straight I would go fly upwards, then think, “Yeah, I can fly,” and that is when I could go forward. I perform safety checks within my dream.

🐉 In a dream I had in university I could fly, but just some light floating. Everyone else travels very quickly, and at first I can as well, but then I get lower and lower, and soon I am floating about 5cm. I’m technically flying, but…I saw that dream a lot.

(This entire story ⚔️ is in the background dying of laughter)

About Malleus

He was very mysterious when he first appeared. ⚡️ says he had the feeling from the start that he was a very good character. 

🦇 He had an atmosphere of someone who is difficult to go near.

⚔️ I like Malleus-sama even more now than I did before. Not just what about him that is firm but his soft side, his warm side, his cold side—we can see so many aspects of his character now, which has made him even more captivating. Because he is so mysterious something even more wonderful than what I had imagined has emerged—that is the impression I have of him now.

🦇 They did a great job with his casting. I didn’t really know anything at first, but doing this for so long, you can tell how perfect 🐉-kun is for this part. 

🐉 I’m so happy :D

🦇 Of course everyone wants to know more in the beginning because of his cool voice, but 🐉-kun has a kindness to him. And that is what I came to understand. They took that into account when they chose him. When I figured that out, I was extremely impressed. This isn’t something that just anyone can do. It’s not enough to just provide a cool character voice. It’s a distinct charm that he has.

⚔️ The character is really packed with substance, but there’s still space left, and you can sense that mysteriousness. Because there is so much going on inside of him there are things for you to grasp at while simultaneously stirring your imagination. I really sense that.

🦇 When you try to think of other seiyuu like that, no one really comes to mind. It has to be 🐉-kun.

🐉 Is it okay if I start to cry?

⚔️ And when he sings…

⚡️ That humming…

⚔️ That was amazing.

🐉 That was so hard to do. They told me, “please hum like you mean it,” and I thought, “what is humming that you mean?” Humming that follows a melody, that becomes a sound. I had never done that before. It was really hard. We tried several different patterns.

⚔️ It was scary. Both an ending and a beginning.

🦇 But as the story continues I find him cute, too. And 🐉-kun is cute, too.

(Everyone is laughing, I think ⚔️ is going to die here)

🦇 No I’m serious, really, really. 

🐉 While portraying Malleus the difficult thing is always not showing too much emotion,.The direction I am always receiving is “you can’t become human.” They’ll say, “that take sounded just like a regular guy.” The balance of how his normal is not normal for a human is always hard to do. And post-overblot Malleus—they’ll tell me, “Sorry, but Malleus sounds kind of scary.” I often get told “can you control the darkness a bit.” But through all that how do I still portray Malleus-ness…

🦇 The more you read for a character the more you come to understand them, but Malleus was last.

🐉 There was a lot of uncertainty in the beginning. I have concluded that he is cute. He’s a child. He’s been alive longer than the others, but his emotional state hasn’t caught up to that. He has so much power, but he lacks the normal concept of common sense. Things that are common sense to him are not so to others. I am always trying to portray that unusual dichotomy.

⚔️ talks about being able to see Malleus grow up in Book 7 through the different milestones were see in the flashbacks. There are places where he has always been the same but parts about him that have evolved. ⚔️ tells 🐉 that it seems like that must have been hard.

🐉 It was so hard.  I think there’s probably a way of interacting with Malleus that's in line with how he understands things, even though I don't fully understand it. When encountering him for the first time, people around him might think, 'Wow, he doesn’t react at all!' But Malleus does react in his own way. I would receive many detailed directions like 'Please be surprised!' or 'Please react!' I didn’t create this performance all by myself, it has come together from the efforts of the staff, and I’m really grateful for that. I tend to lose track of what was the right way to approach things as Malleus. You can get confused between doing events and the main story, so getting back into the right mindset every time is pretty tough.

About Silver

🐉 I thought he was really cool when I saw him the first time.

⚡️ I think it’s cute how he falls asleep—he’ll wake up, apologize, and then immediately sleep again.

🦇 He’s really pretty.

🐉 I thought he had a beautiful face the first time I saw him.

⚔️ My portrayal of him hasn’t really changed since the beginning. We’ve gotten more information and there is more of a backbone now, and of course things change when new things are revealed. Even from the beginning he wasn’t just a cool character, he had a naturalness to him, and not just that he spaces out, but he tries to solve his problems with physical strength. Like in Book 7 with “if I hit it that will fix it.” I think his humanity is being expressed more these days.

🦇 It took a while, yeah?

⚔️ It took so long.

🦇 It took us a while to get to Malleus, too, but he had the impact of his first appearance. Silver didn’t have anything.

Now they’re talking about Lilia’s farewell party and Malleus and Silver crying together and not knowing how to express their emotions. Trying to be mature. 

⚔️ He’s being a big brother to Silver!!

🦇 I figured something was coming soon, after that. And it went in an intense direction.

⚔️ There is so much about them that is a family. Father is Lilia, and Malleus-sama has a big-brother nature to him.

🐉 You really feel their familial relationship.

⚔️ He felt some responsibility. If the little brother starts to cry, the older brother—

🐉 He can’t cry.

⚔️ He’ll get desperate to try and be strong and try to solve the problem.

🐉 Like he has to step up.

🦇 So it was Silver’s fault.

⚡️⚔️🐉wwwwww

⚔️Not all of it. Silver would never say this, but the reason things became so difficult for the two of them is…their love for their father.

🦇 Sebek and Silver are a good combination, too.

⚔️ Such a good combination~~~

🦇 They’re complete opposites but they’re also surprisingly similar.

⚡️They’re both so honest.

🐉 They’re honest and serious and good kids, both of them.

⚡️ They never had the opportunity to show emotion like that until 7. They are both very quick to cry.

🐉 They’re so much alike.

⚡️I guess this is what happens when you’re raised together with someone. I think Silver is the older brother, looking from Sebek’s perspective. There is a moment where Sebek is scolded for the first time. In the moment, when I was reading, ⚔️’s portrayal really is angry. I even said it, “He finally scolded him for the first time.”

About Sebek

⚡️I think he empowers himself by speaking so loudly. Once he decides on doing something, he goes straight for it, true to his unique magic. With how strongly he sticks to his principles it’s like he could overcome any obstacle, like in that scene he had with Silver, but it was very cute that he actually loses there.

⚔️THAT WAS SO CUTE. That was a great part. 

(⚔️ is literally yelling into his mic about how cute Sebek is)

⚡️The fact that he was able to get out the words he really wanted to say after he lost the fight shows that he does want to say what is on his mind but there is a wall that he has to break down, and then he can move forward. That is a moment where you can really understand Sebek-kun’s feelings. And once he lets his emotions out, they’re out w

🐉 He can’t put the lid back on. Everything spills out.

⚔️ (dying in the background)

⚡️talks about how much effort Sebek puts into everything and he reads so much and there is so much he wants people to know, which is why he is so loud.

🦇Sebek and Silver have both had a lot more lines recently. Doesn’t your voice get worn out during recordings?

⚡️It doesn’t! I do stretches and things before recordings. I figured out that I need that kind of physical exercise to prepare.

About Lilia

⚡️ Mom.

🐉 A cute mom.

⚡️There was a lot of gaps* in 7.

*I can’t figure out a good way to say this in English. It is the difference between what you expect and what something really is.

🐉 Too many gaps, it was so surprising.

🦇 I had heard nothing about any of that.

⚡️ I had an image of him as someone who is gentle and cute and a senpai who enjoys pranks and looks out for others…

🦇 He used to be completely different.

⚡️And there was egg-sama.

🐉 Egg-sama w

⚡️⚔️It’s not inaccurate.

🦇 I have done a lot of crying scenes before. When you first look at the script it hits you, and when you think about how you have to portray what you just read so that the people listening to your performance feel the same emotion—there is a pressure to that. I can’t be the only one crying. I have to make others cry.

⚔️ Something that 🦇-san said (during the special talk show that 🦇 and 🐉 did together last year talking about Book 7 just the two of them) that I really liked and wanted to ask about: You and Baul’s VA Koyasu-san (🐊) have been performing together a lot over the years. And you came back together for the first time in a while for this. You said that you didn’t want to give him the impression of “So this is what 🦇 is like these days.” So there was that pressure, you didn’t want to give an embarrassing performance in front of him, and I realized that you have a passionate spirit that you don’t really show, in my opinion—but it’s there! I got really excited about that.

🐉 I was surprised, too, that even 🦇-san has those same thoughts.

⚡️Same!

🦇 Of course I do. The pressure was intense. I am glad that we were able to record together, but…

And with the Chapter 13 release announcement they say they have permission to share this information:

🦇 and 🐉 were able to record together!

🐉 It was amazing. It was truly an amazing time for me.

🦇 It was our first time performing together.

Upcoming calendar review~ and done!

[batfambrainrotbeloved]

"How do you summarize your story from your characters POV"??

Tim Drake: We can't be found family if I don't let them find me

Dick Grayson: Daily affirmations did NOT prepare me for having your entire world view shattered okay??

Barbara Gordon: Bounderies?? Were talking greater good here- feelings come secondary

Jason Todd: You can prove i'm wrong? Well I cant see the evidence if my eyes are closed

Damian Wayne: You fools- the truth is obvious!! *proceeds to completely dodge the truth*

Cass Cain: God forbid i'm ever wrong.

Steph Brown: In my defense, I was too gay to pay attention to the level of bullshit going on around me.

Alfred Pennyworth: Google, how do I adopt a child but for my child?

Bruce Wayne: Maybe I should have listened to my therapist about putting more effort into developing a seperate work and home life... Nah.

Lucius Fox: Parentification? No how do I childify someone who decided they're too grown.

Leslie Thompkins: These people make me wish I wasn't sober. I haven't tried anything, but I feel like it would help.

Duke Thomas: Bold of you to assume I'm not going to become a problem on purpose >:)

(Also fic link, clink the underlined "your story" in title :)

[thecheshirerat]

On TAZ-

Wow that sounds like I’m about to summarize some sort of discourse but I promise I’m not. I guess I’ll say that I really like this show and I will keep listening even if my worst fears come to pass, so keep that in mind!

For reference, I started listening near the end of Amnesty.

I’ve noticed, with the past few arcs- really since Ethersea- the narratives have just… not been fulfilling their promises, so to speak. They’ve been placing a lot of guns that don’t go off. What I mean by that is, the characters are great. Excellent, really. Lady Godwin? HELL YES. Emerich Dreadway? Fuck yeah! And so on! And the settings and premises have been epic- the goofiness and also horrifying nature of Engrave, the mad and thrilling world of Steeplechase- these things are COOL AS FUCK.

and then the actual narratives keep flopping?

And honestly, I notice it most in the endings, because you can really tell when an ending doesn’t land. You feel the sense of disappointment. But with vs. Dracula, for example, I could kinda see leading up to it that the ending couldn’t really BE anything special, because they lowkey didn’t set themselves up for it.

They spent the campaign fucking around in Engrave, finding clues and solving problems and not really experiencing any particularly meaningful character arcs or growth or, idk, forming relationships? So there wasn’t much to pay off, I’m not gonna lie!

Of course it doesn’t feel quite as dissatisfying when you’re in the thick of it, because they’re funny and the stuff is cool and- oh hey! Lady Godwin’s been turned into a werehorse against her will?? that’s got some real potential for a LOT of allegories and exploration of some fun character development! And then it’s kinda played as a joke. And then they do that again and again.

And they actually said that that was a move they made intentionally, in the TTAZZ. I’m not quoting them perfectly here, this is from memory, but I do remember them mentioning that they wanted lighthearted comedy without the burden of real life story stuff. And I get that, honestly, but… it’s not the choice I would’ve made. I do think you can keep a lighthearted tone while also, idk, forming relationships and wholesomely engaging with some amount of emotion. And sometimes going way too deep is funny as a tone shift!

But I digress. One thing that’s also popped out to me is the almost complete lack of any kind of romantic storyline or even references. This becomes obvious if you’re in a fandom because everyone is always dying to ship SOMEONE, and you can tell when people are really getting desperate. I don’t blame them for not wanting to roleplay romance with their family, and I do think stories lacking romance are COOL and SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED!

However if you can’t find ANYBODY to ship together… that may mean you just don’t have character bonds. The growing popularity of the PC polycule is interesting to me; I wonder if it’s partially because

a) none of the pcs have significant relationships outside of their party and

b) even within the party, there doesn’t seem to be much chemistry between any given pair of characters…? I hope I’m making my point well here- the PCs all seem equally close and have more or less the same relationship to all of their compatriots with little distinction, meaning, essentially, no shipping fodder that doesn’t involve just all of ‘em.

Either way, it makes me wonder if I can blame the “Graduation has too many NPCs!” critique. They really stopped giving the parties tag-along main NPCs after graduation, with the exception of maybe.. Urchin? Kodira? Shlabethany? Poppy? and even they get relatively little “screen” time. Steeplechase has great NPCs, I love them to death, but none of the PCs seem to ever have one on one conversations with NPCs or each other that do not explicitly focus on the plot. And I think that’s part of why the characters feel so underdeveloped despite having spent a lot of time with them- because in this character-driven genre, we get very little insight into their feelings or motivations or even their rudimentary backstories.

I started watching Fantasy High recently and it made me realize a couple things about TAZ.

1) Recently, TAZ has sooo few core NPCs, and it’s weird that the characters aren’t doing more one-on-one purely character based scenes. And that makes it really tough to develop them.

2) TAZ is- and I should have realized this before- one of many good dnd podcasts. They’re probably looking for a niche they can master.

And it sounds like they’re trying to get back to that old “Here there be Gerblins!” energy. They’ve referenced it so many times in recent TTAZZes- they wanted to be job-focused, allowing story stuff to happen organically, so they tried a more open world vibe with Ethersea. They wanted to be less afraid to kill stuff, so they tried playing criminals (and were still afraid to kill stuff). They wanted to be silly and light on character, as they tackled with taz vs dracula. Now they’re trying to bring in the silly cartoon vibe with Abnimals. I think they’re trying to make that family-friendly, funny and goofy show their niche. Something other actual plays can’t be better at them at.

And honestly it kinda makes me sad, that they keep trying to go back to Balance while ignoring everything they learned during it. Because I loved Dust. Because I loved Amnesty. Because I loved Ethersea. I loved these past arcs! But they keep doing their brilliant characters dirty for some reason!!! And i don’t know why!!!!

You know that meme about people who ask questions in movies and then the person responds “Have you ever been to a movie before? You watch them and the information is revealed.” There have been so many times in TAZ recently where information has Not been revealed and if they keep doing it the audience will stop bothering to suspend their disbelief, because the trust just isn’t there.

What is Montrose’s deal? What on earth was Carmine Denton’s whole thing? Tell me more about Zoox’s feelings, about Devo’s past, about Amber’s future. Show me how Lady Godwin feels about the body horror that is her life- like, seriously! WHY DID WE HAVE TO COMPLETELY DISMISS THE OPPORTUNITY TO DISCUSS GENERATIONAL TRAUMA IN MUTT’S LIFE FOR A JOKE??

Do you remember in Steeplechase where the boys were getting medical attention or something- i don’t remember, but they were all in one room and only talking about The Plot. And Poppy literally banged on the door (speaking for both Justin and me, tbh) and was like “does anyone want to share any feeeeelings??” and they were like NOPE! and they moved on!!

like. cmon. you can’t just put a character like montrose out there and then leave them severely underdeveloped to the point that what would be interesting in proper context, with audience insight, becomes confusing and chaotic.

I just wish they would take their stories as seriously as we do.

It feels to me like they don’t believe in themselves, and it makes me sad. Maybe they didn’t get the response they wanted from Ethersea and so they’ve been trying to pivot, hoping to recapture whatever it was that earned them a loyal audience.

Again, I love them. They’re so funny and I’ll keep listening until the day they stop making this show, and when it happens I’ll cry.

But i KNOW they have more in them. Remember the “we’ll grow gills” monologue from Justin in the Prologues? Remember Travis’s SOLID acting with Devo? Or his awesome choice to give Lyndon/Beef a clearly delineated work/irl identity? His excellent narration and prose? Remember when Montrose described being lonely?! Remember all those moments where Shit Got Real and you cared??? The nanofather said some dope shit! dracula and victor and sweater dracula had such a wild dynamic! Clint’s acting in Dust 2- I can’t remember the characters name right now- was ASTOUNDING, I genuinely didn’t know he had that in him and it blew me away!

I’m not referencing Balance on purpose, both because the fandom is way to hung up on it and because I want to prove that you don’t even have to look at Balance, or even Post-Balance arcs, to see this kind of good cool stuff!

GAAAAAAAGHHHH!!! I want them to have fun. But also. We’re starving out here.

[romancecroc]

Lucanis Romance (Pt. 2)

This is an alternative take on finishing his companion quest (confronting Illario after saving Catharina). In this version, the whole "I made paella and your favorite" drink did not happen.

Things have felt different between them. Especially after Spite somehow dragged Rook into Lucanis’s subconscious and helped them align on a goal.

Nothing had really happened before that. Just the occasional lingering glances. Hands brushing against each when nobody could see. Overprotectiveness during battles.

But with all that was going on, it was almost impossible to find quiet moments. To reflect. Or to talk. 

And with all her confidence, Rook didn’t dare bring the topic up again. Nor make a move. 

But she felt closer to him. Especially after witnessing all his inner troubles, his regrets. 

But was that enough? How would you name this? Having feelings for someone, feeling close to them and yet… nothing happening?

What exactly did I want to happen?

The thought caught Rook off guard.

Guilt was starting to build up. They never said they were in a relationship after all. Lucanis didn’t owe her anything. 

But at the same time… there was a sense of frustration?

“Rook! Are you listening?” Teia said, waving her hands.

“Ah.” Rook responded, finally snapping out of it.

She was in Trevisio. They were getting ready to save Catharina and set Illario straight.

Teia and Viago were preparing, but Lucanis was nowhere to be seen.

Apparently he would join in later.

“Don’t worry, Lucanis knows the plan. He’ll join you at the mansion. Are you ready to go?” Teia asked again, patting Rook’s shoulder.

“Yes, sorry. We will get Catharina out of the mansion and then we’ll confront Ilario at the gathering.” Rook said, mostly to summarize it for herself.

“What are you going to do with Ilario when all of this is over?”

Teia and Viago chuckled, grabbing their daggers and facing the exit.

“I’m sure our first talon will know what to do.”

And with that, they both vanished.

—

It didn’t take long to sneak through the mansion. The team had initially agreed to only send out Rook and Lucanis - the less attention they attract the better.

But where was he?

Rook noticed one of the hallways having more guards than the others. With a dagger in hand and magic in another, she swiftly took care of them within seconds.

Until she felt a presence behind her. 

Instinctively, she elbowed them in the stomach, using the opportunity to turn around and push them against the floor. Her mouth dropped when she was finally hovered above him, her knees digging into his arms, locking him in position.

“Not a bad move, Rook.” Lucanis said, coughing between his words.

“Are you insane? I could have killed you!” Rock angrily whispered, immediately putting her dagger away.

“Please, Rook. I let you tackle me. Why miss out on an opportunity to get overpowered by a beautiful woman? ” he answered, a chuckle between the coughs.

It should have made her happy. The small flirts between them.

But instead, it just reminded her about her own frustrations. The impatient feeling, the guilt.

Without responding, she got up and offered him a hand. Pulling him up.

“Rook?” Lucanis asked, concerned. He had expected a matching response.

“We should focus on the mission.” Rook responded, perhaps a little colder than she intended.

“Where do you think your grandmother is? I already checked the east wing, but no luck so far.”

It felt like he was catching on, but the mission’s urgency kept him from investigating further. Instead he started leading the way, casually sharing childhood memories whenever he saw something familiar. 

He hasn’t been home for so long - and yet she couldn’t bring herself to fully enjoy his stories. Once Catharina had been saved and Ilario confronted, Rook would return to the Lighthouse and spend some time alone in her room. Clear her head.

That sounded like a good plan at least.

“She must be here.” Lucanis said, stopping in front of a door not too far from his childhood room. 

Rook motioned to get ready, just in case.

Once the door opened, a cane started swinging around aggressively - until Lucanis grabbed it.

“My grandson!” Catharina gasped in disbelief.

Rook stepped away for a bit, not wishing to interrupt their reunion.

“You are mad as us. Why?!” Rook suddenly heard in her head.

Spite??

“Answer! It is…. distracting him!” Spite responded telepathically.

Rook wasn’t sure how Spite was talking to her. Based on how Lucanis was acting, he didn’t seem to be aware of it either.

I’m not mad. I’m just trying to focus.

“Hurt. Longing. Is it loneliness? No. It smells like… disappointment!” Spite continued on.

The last thing Rook wanted was a conversation about her feelings. With Spite. She imagined a mental block around her head - it must have worked because the last thing she heard was a disapproving growl from Spite. And then it was quiet again.

“Thank you, Rook! For returning my grandson.” Catharina said gratefully, looking over to Rook.

“He did half of the work. We should really bring you somewhere safe.” Rook quickly responded, rejoining them.

“Nonsense. Now go and stop Ilario, I won’t be far behind.” Catharina responded, waving her cane around again.

The expression Lucanis made, said enough  - there was no way to convince Catharina to change her mind..

—

“You must feel relieved having your grandmother back. Any plans for Ilario?” Rook asked, as they were approaching the gathering.

“I don’t know. But one way or another, he needs to pay.” Lucanis said, approaching the giant door.

One could hear Ilarios' speech from the outside. Monologues about how he was grieving Catharina’s death. How Lucanis was a shame to the family and the crows due to becoming an abomination.

And that he was taking the title of the first talon for himself.

“Whatever happens, I’m with you.” Rook said, preparing herself for battle.

“I know. Let’s finish this.”

And with that, the door was kicked open.

Everything happened so fast.

Ilario didn’t hesitate to attack Lucanis on sight, backed by venatori.

The crows, unsure who to believe, were fumbling around.

But like many other fights, this one was about to end quite fast.

“They will never accept you. You’re an abomination!” Ilarios screamed at Lucanis, almost like a child who wasn’t picked for a group activity. Most of his venatory allies had fallen by now.

“Are you sure you’re not stuck with a demon yourself, Ilario? Even Spite sounds saner than you do right now.” Rook said loudly, currently finishing off remaining venetario on the opposite side of the hall.

Embarrassment was plastered on Ilarios face. The sheer audacity of being compared to a demon. And despite having little backup left, he used whatever remaining blood magic he had to teleport himself past the crows.

“You will pay for this insult!” Illario yelled, appearing in front of Rook with a dagger in hand. Ready to stab her in the chest.

Growing up with the shadow dragons taught her well - especially on how to deal with crazy individuals that were about to stab you. There were different ways to make them stop,  even for a few seconds. They just need to believe they won. 

So Rook didn’t defend herself. Didn’t use any magic spells.

Instead she positioned herself in a way, so that the dagger would end up between her armpits. Her clothes were already torn at a few places, covered in blood. It would be hard to tell whether she was really hit or not. And a delusional blood mage wouldn’t know the difference either.

To dramatize the moment, Rook let out a terrible cry that melted together with Ilario’s victory laugh.

And multiple people shouting in the background?

Rook couldn’t focus too much on it, as she was busy taking a few steps back. Holding the dagger close, while she fell on her knees. And then to her sides, closing her eyes.

“Let this be a lesson for anybody who insults Ilario-”

The sound of something smashing against the wall echoed across the hall. Followed by a demonic snarl.

“They. touched. Rook! They die!” 

That must be Spite.

Oh…

Rook realized that she never discussed her cinematic move with the others. Neve was used to it. She had witnessed it too many times during their missions.

She hated it. But she couldn’t deny how it made enemies feel overconfident. Prone to making mistakes. Better to catch off guard.

But not something to do with unaware participants.

When Rook carefully opened her eyes, another body flew against a wall. Ilario was still standing next to her, looking in another direction. His entire body tensed up in shock. Apparently Lucanis/Spite had been brutally throwing any Venatory standing in their way against the stone walls.

“Cousin, you need to calm down. They are already dead!” Teia yelled at Lucanis, but Viago held her back.

The final stand was Lucanis/Spite finally reaching Ilario, grabbing him by the throat and hurling him across the hall. The impact was strong enough to make Ilario break a few pieces of furniture in the process.

“Not. Enough. He needs to… suffer!” Lucanis and Spite shouted, as if they’d merged.

He quickly kneeled next to Rook and despite his pupils not being visible, his narrowed eyebrows showed enough concern.

“I’m fine.” Rook whispered, already feeling bad for the entire thing.

“No! He hurt you. He hurt us!” Lucanis/Spite responded back, hissing.

He was going to kill them all. If he hadn’t done so already.

“I think you already punished them well enough. Here, look.” Rook said, grabbing the dagger and pulling it out.

“See? No blood. Your cousin just has a terrible aim. He thought he won and that made him arrogant, distancing himself from his allies.” Rook explained, though she wasn’t sure how much lucanis/spite caught in their frenzied state.

“No… blood.” Lucanis/Spite whispered back.

During all this, Viago and Teia used the moment to tie Ilario down. All the other venatori were dead due to… impactful wall slammings. 

“You’re disgraceful, all of you. It’s not enough he’s an abomination, but he also kneels?! How the crows have fallen!” Ilario continued to shout, but his defeat was imminent. 

Rook slowly lifted herself off the ground, kneeling next to him.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you about this little… stunt I use from time to time. Neve hates it too. I won’t do it again and-”

Lucanis pulled Rook against him, wrapped his arms around her as the purple glow in his eyes started fading away.  Burying his face against her neck.

“Never again.” he growled. 

Rook squeezed his arm as a confirmation. The embrace ended with him taking her hand and raising Rook back to her feet with him.

All the yelling subsided when Catharina finally entered the halls. Even Ilario finally closed his mouth.

Rook didn’t dare speak. As the situation calmed down, Teia and Viago complimented her on the dramatic stunt. Thanked her for all the help she’s given.

Rook politely nodded. She could feel Lucanis staring at her. Avoiding any instances of aggravating him further would be wise.

That, until Catharina announced him as the first talon. At this point, he was swarmed by crows. People who wanted to start building connections. Others who just wanted to share a celebratory drink.

Getting through the crowd would be impossible.

“I’m going home. Could you tell Lucanis when you catch him? I think I have worried him enough for one day.” Rook said to Viago.

He nodded and then sheepishly smiled at Rook. 

“What? What is it?” Rook asked, confused.

“Take care of my cousin, Rook. Enjoy your night.” he responded, slapping her shoulder in a friendly manner.

Rook shrugged and started heading towards the Eluvian. She looked back once more and managed to make eye contact with Lucanis. With hand motions, she quickly pointed towards the Eluvian and then waved goodbye. Before he could respond, Lucanis was swarmed by another wave of crows.

—

When Rook made it to her room, she wanted to throw herself onto the bed. What a day it was.

But these clothes had to go. 

She quickly slipped out of the blood soaked fabric that was already torn in a few places. Doesn’t look like it can be repaired.

She left it on the floor and moved to the baths. It was so late at night, she doubted anybody was going to notice.

After a good cleanup, a few bruises became visible. Nothing fatal. But some were going to stick around for a while. Especially the deep purple ones. 

Too lazy to dress up, Rook grabbed a robe and headed back to her bedroom. But she was hungry. There was no time to eat during the ordeal. Maybe the kitchen had something? Even just a snack.

She quietly snuck her way into the kitchen. Perhaps she could gather a few cookies and eat them in bed! Nobody would notice. It would be her little secret. It was also doubtful that Lucanis would already be back from his celebration.

“Rook.”

She froze. Her hand was so close to grabbing a cookie.

“Oh! You’re back already?” she responded, turning around. Caught in the act.

Lucanis was sitting on the couch. A cup in his hand, presumingly coffee.

“Yes.” he responded.

“I was actually going to come visit you in your room. After I had finished my drink.” he added.

“Visit me so late at night? Whatever for?” Rook responded as a joke.

But he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead Lucanis took another sip of his coffee.

“You’re wearing a robe.”

Suddenly Rook started feeling very shy. 

“Ah, yes. I was covered in blood and wanted to check for bruises. Nothing bad, luckily.”

There was tension. And she wasn’t sure in which direction it was going to go.

The sound of her heartbeat made it difficult to focus.

“I… should go. Get out of this bathrobe.” she added and slowly took a step back.

“A good idea.” he said, taking the last sip. And then placing the cup back on the table.

“You can then show me the bruises.” 

It took a moment for her to register what he said.

That, until he stood up and started walking towards her. Rook took another step backwards, only to find herself clashing against the kitchen table behind her.

It was too late now. Any means of escape were blocked. Lucanis stood in front of her, resting his hands on both sides - pinning Rock against the table.

“I thought you were dead.” he finally said.

Lucanis didn’t shy away from eye contact. Rook looked down instead, ashamed. At least until he gently lifted her chin.

“I was going to kill them all.”

His hand slowly moved to her cheek, caressing it.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.” she whispered back.

“You didn’t think I would react?” Help me understand, Rook.”

“No! It’s just… I didn’t think you would react like that. I didn’t expect it. I wasn’t sure where I stood with you, so I decided to focus on the mission and do my thing.” 

“And has today cleared your doubts?” he asked, his thumb brushing against her lips.

She didn’t respond. And somehow she already felt breathless.

“Mierda.”

His lips clashed against hers. It didn’t take long for Rook’s to wrap her arms around his neck. Her hands grabbing onto him. Lucanis lifting Rook and placing her on the kitchen table, keeping her close.

It felt needy. Urgent. Especially when his tongue was starting to dance with hers, moaning into her mouth. 

He grabbed onto her waist, pressing himself against her. From all the movement, Rook’s bathrobe was starting to slip and any exposed shoulders were bitten, licked or kissed. 

What they didn’t realize was all the noise. Every moment caused a plate to fall. Cutlery clashing against other metallic objects. 

They finally froze when somebody yelled “What is going on down there?!”

After that, silence. Followed by quiet chuckles between them.

“I know it’s not honorable, but we could pin it on Manfred.” Rook suggested, fixing her robe.

“Hmm… No, I’ll tell them the truth.” Lucanis smirked, kissing Rook on the forehead and giving her space again. 

“And what is that? Sorry, I was fooling around in the kitchen?” Rook asked.

“Fooling around is a temporary notion. I intend to keep you for a long time.”

Lucanis smirked again, witnessing Rook blushing. 

“Now go rest. I’m still planning on inspecting your bruises sometime soon.”

Before Rook could respond, Lucanis had returned to his room. 

Falling asleep would be difficult after such a promise.

[taeyegu]

confession is not flashy — 002. just for a month

previous // next

word count — 909

warning(s) — none... except a painfully whipped chan <3

lunch time at the hospital was always busy. today's lunch crew consists of the interns along with dr. moon from neuro and dr. hong from gs.

dr. moon took a small glance over at y/n who was currently pacing back and forth talking to someone on the phone. he then turned his attention to chan, "dr. jeon told me you actually met up with him for shadowing today--how was that?"

"it was fine…" chan sighed, "but y/n was with dr. kim today. i should have just followed them."

"you know dr. kim thinks you're really fond of pediatrics with how often you 'try' to shadow him." dr hong chuckled.

"he's only doing it so he can keep an eye on his girl." vernon said through a mouthful of rice. "we clowned him earlier today about it and i guess it was enough for him to finally follow his schedule with dr. jeon."

"oh? my girl?" dr. moon smirked, "when did this couple become a thing?"

"w-we're not a couple yet… unless y/n has said something about me…?" chan said in a hopeful tone. the whole table softly laughed at the youngest's antics surrounding his very obvious feelings. "a-anyways! sure, so what if i like y/n? it's not like it's that obvious!"

"it is very obvious." vernon deadpanned. seungkwan nodded along,

"you're always buying y/n lunch and never us…" seungkwan listed.

"that one time when you tried to arm wrestle dr. choi after y/n mentioned how strong he was and then dr. choi almost dislocated your shoulder…" dr. hong added.

"i also remember during the previous hospital dinner party, dr. kim and y/n were talking about their interest in eating chicken breast for protein and then you proceeded to eat an obscene amount of chicken that night and threw up…"

"okay!" the youngest exclaimed, "i admit, i am a little obvious…"

"i think all of the departments know about your little crush." dr. moon comforted chan, "we're all supporting you so don't worry!"

after finishing the phone call, y/n walks back to the lunch table and sits down with a sigh, "sorry that took so long everyone, did i miss anything?"

"is something the matter y/n?" seungkwan asked, "you look really tired after that phone call."

"it was just my mom again--she won't stop bothering me about the wedding!" y/n rubbed her fingers against her temples, feeling an oncoming headache at the thought of thinking back to the conversation.

"what happened?" dr. hong asked, "if you don't mind telling us."

"yeah it's not a big deal. seungkwan, vernon, and chan already know a little." y/n sighed once again, "my cousin is getting married and her wedding is like a month away. my mom has been pestering me nonstop to bring a date." y/n crossed her arms across her chest to display her annoyance, "i know she's worried about me with how busy school and rotations at the hospital have been, but i feel like a relationship right now wouldn't be the best for me."

"why does your mom want you to have a date so bad?" dr. moon questioned.

"i know she's just worried about me," y/n said, "but i also think it's because most, if not all of my cousins are in committed relationships right now. my mom thinks that i'm too focused on my career. she wants me to find a significant other before it's too late."

"that sucks y/n," dr. hong gave her a small pat on the back, "i'm sorry you have to deal with that right now."

"what does y/n have to deal with right now?" dr. kwon interjected as he placed his lunch tray down at the table.

"y/n has a family wedding to attend and her mom keeps pressuring her to bring a date." seungkwan summarizes to dr. kwon.

"why can't y/n just bring a fake date?" dr. kwon states like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"a fake date? what do you mean a fake date?" y/n perks up.

"it's exactly like it sounds." dr. kwon says, "find someone to be your fake date for the night so that you can get your mom to stop pressuring you--there's a bunch of websites where you can just pay someone to do this for you."

"on this salary… i don't think i can afford that option." y/n says dejectedly.

"or you can just ask one of your friends to be your fake date for free!" dr. moon exclaims.

"i've never really thought of that… that's actually a really good idea dr. kwon." y/n turns to look at her three best guy friends, "seungkwan? vernon? would you guys be able to?"

"sorry y/n, seungkwan and i bought concert tickets for aespa that night… we've been planning it for awhile." vernon says.

"o-oh y/n i can be your fake date--if there's no one else!" chan stutters.

"that's perfect y/n!" seungkwan exclaims, "you and chan would be great together!"

"would you really chan? i'd owe you my life!" y/n beams at him.

"haha, no worries y/n!" chan smiles, "i'm down to be your fake boyfriend for the wedding…"

"then it's settled!" dr. moon laughs, "congrats to the new couple at the hospital! love is definitely in the air!"

"very funny dr. moon!" y/n chuckles, "it's just for a month!"

[annawayne]

I came to invade your ask box. Do you think Ambassador Armin overcame his feelings of worthlessness?

Hello!

Oh, thank you for asking! Such existential questions are always interesting to answer, so let's dive into them without further ado.

To be honest, I believe that Armin is a character who won't ever fully overcome this feeling. Don't get me wrong; I genuinely wish it for him and believe in his genuine will. However, I think that entirely, like completely free out of the suffocating chains around his neck of feeling worthless—no.

He would have his ups and downs, and he would learn how to handle these feelings better - gradually, firstly, by finding solace and salvation in Annie and his Ambassador family, and then, also able to handle it by himself (that doesn't deny the pleasure of being supported by his loved ones), - but there always will be the moments when his head would be ringing with mischievous dark thoughts. Not because he's incapable but because some thoughts take deeper roots that are impossible to take away - like the trees that cling to the ground during the storm.

I think the main shift would be not his complete "victory" over the feeling of self-hatred but rather how his own approach towards it would transform into something that is not terrifyingly numbing but rather alarming: as a trigger for him to stop and to breathe, to close his eyes and to acknowledge that he spirals down the abyss of self-hatred, the place so familiar and so lonely for him.

Armin is a character who always looks for dialogue, and he searches for dialogue even with his inner monsters, with whom, eventually, he would find the right words to calm them down before they bare their teeth and tear him apart inside. It doesn't mean that it would be easy: I think, with the stress he will experience during the post-Rumbling, and with the enormous pressure on his shoulders, he would undoubtedly have a few huge downfalls, but what matters is that he would raise - with the bruises on his knees and dark circles under his eyes, but he would raise, so he can revalue what is essential for him and what he wants in this life.

All his life, he was put in front of the fact that he should achieve something extraordinary, something, to match his exceptional mind, something to deserve his place in life - the fact that he's a complete orphan, with no parents and grandad, I believe, made him feel that he has to fight to his right to simply exist and to gain the place in someone's life, so he's "worth" not to be abandoned.

Armin is used to seeing himself as someone who always should "match" something, the imaginary achievement board. If he fails any of these points - the feeling of self-hate intensifies because he "fails" his imaginary leadership board, where the only rival is himself and his high standards because, in his head, it's strongly connected with his survival. So, with time, he would embrace that his life was already worth it. He doesn't have to fight for his right to exist and to simply be; he can be just himself. He would be loved and accepted as he is, so the high (and unrealistic) bar of the expectations would be broken, and so he would deal much better with his sense of worthlessness, but "much better" doesn't mean "completely free".

To summarize, I think Armin won't lose it, but the shift will be made. He will learn how to deal with it so that it doesn't pull him down into the dark depths. Feeding the monsters inside of us is a dangerous task; they're always too hungry for the evil thoughts and the warmth of our hands, but Armin also knows how to tame them with kindness and understanding, which he always gives everyone but not himself. Giving these monsters warmth and kindness may teach him to give himself the same.

[yunhohours]

Reset

✗ Pairing: tutor!yonghee x fem!reader

✗ Word count: 3.4k

✗ Warnings: college au, reader is a bit of a bitchy brat and yonghee humbles her <3, fooling around in an empty classroom, yonghee watches reader touch herself, fingering (f. receiving), orgasm denial, unprotected sex (be smart), reader cries a lil, very brief cockwarming at the end

✗ A/N: i started writing this in march of 2023 SFSDFSK. i have thought about what i would write many many times since but haven't actually finished writing it until now. tutor!yonghee is lethal for me personally 😵‍💫

Yonghee is already waiting for you when you walk into the empty classroom. As usual, he looks gorgeous. You roll your eyes. When your professor “suggested”–more like ordered–you to allow Yonghee to tutor you, you were expecting to meet with your typical math-brained nerd. Someone that would be so unremarkable that you’d simply have to focus on your studies in order to not go crazy from restlessness. Yet here you are, meeting with the man that has been making frequent visits to your fantasies, uninvited but annoyingly welcome.

You step past the doorway and Yonghee seems to hear you, lifting his head from his book, soft dark brown hair swishing with the movement. You offer him a closed lip smile as you take another step into the room and then he’s standing and you wish he wasn’t. He’s wearing light wash jeans and a black sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. You’re not sure why such a basic looking outfit makes drool pool in your mouth, but it seems to be an effect of his that you’ll never be immune to.

Too busy ogling him to question why he stood in the first place, you hesitate when he clears his throat, your eyes refocusing back to reality. He’s pointing at the door behind you, eyebrow raised. “Lock.” Not a verb, a noun. He needs the lock in place. You sigh. 

You should be used to this by now. You pushed your luck a few too many times at the beginning of your sessions with him, your friends showing up to distract you and frustrate him. He won’t be taking that chance anymore. Now you have to have your sessions in a locked classroom and that feels a little bit too much like incarceration to you when you’d rather be doing literally anything else.

You turn, step forward, lock the door. You smile at him again when you turn back to him but it’s clearly sarcastic this time and it only makes him smirk. He’s very aware that you don’t enjoy this and if he didn’t find a way to enjoy that, he’d be just as miserable as you. He sits down, letting his back rest against the back of the chair, arms crossed. He looks at you expectantly, waiting for you to sit down too so you can get started. 

You make your way to the empty chair next to him and take a seat, pulling your textbook and other necessary supplies from your bag. You’d also like to get this over with as soon as possible.

“How was your day?” Yonghee asks to fill the silence as he leafs through his papers, reminding himself of where you left off. “Fine,” you mumble, not bothering to give him extra details when you two do not have the kind of relationship that would imply he cares.

So it surprises you a little when he stops what he’s doing and flicks his gaze to you, head tilting slightly in curiosity. “That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me more than you want to.” He clears his throat and motions to his book, signaling the page he’d like you to turn to.

You flip to the correct page and lean your head in your hand, elbow resting atop the desk that spans from one side of the room to another. Yonghee is already talking, summarizing what you learned during your last session, his eyes flitting between textbook and notebook. You know you shouldn’t be zoning out so soon, but you can’t help but just admire him. You’re not used to seeing someone this beautiful up close. Sure, you’ve seen a lot of guys–hot ones, even–much closer than Yonghee, but none of them could hold a candle to him. He has this natural charm and beauty that would stop anyone in their tracks. The small mole just beneath his eye conducts hypnosis on you every time you meet.

“Y/n? Are you listening?”

“Not really.”

Yonghee wasn’t expecting you to answer honestly. “And why aren’t you?”

“I’m looking at you. You’re distracting.”

You can’t help but notice how the corner of Yonghee’s lips pulls into a small smirk before he forces it off his face. He hums. “I understand, but you’ve got an exam coming up in a few days. You need to focus.” He pauses, eyes settling on yours. He looks a little bit stern and that makes your stomach churn. “Can you do that?”

You have to stop yourself from saying yes right away. Something about the way he’s looking at you makes you want to do whatever he says, but you can’t relent to him so easily. That’s against everything you stand for. And, really, you can’t say you can focus with confidence. You’re more confident that you’ll get distracted again than anything else. “I’ll try.”

Yonghee smiles and it looks genuine. “Good. Thank you.”

You do a much better job of concentrating than you expected from yourself. For about fifteen minutes, anyway. But as time goes on and Yonghee is showing signs of his own fatigue, your eyes are glued to him again. You watch as he pushes his hand back through his hair from time to time. You watch as he takes frequent sips from his water bottle, his adam’s apple calling the attention of your eyes as it bobs. You listen as his soft voice gets tired from so much talking, a low rasp accenting his speech. You follow his fingers as they glide across the pages to emphasize what he’s referencing, trying so hard not to imagine them doing other things instead.

“Y/n.”

“Hmm?” You’re not even cognizant of the fact that he’s speaking to you or that you’ve answered him. Your eyes are trained on the pencil he’s twirling in his hand furthest from you. It stops suddenly.

“What’s with you today? You didn’t even notice that I haven’t said anything for the last two minutes.”

You pry your eyes away from his hand and search for his eyes instead. You need to know how much he knows about where your mind has been. You’re hoping the answer lies in his pupils. It doesn’t, but his gaze is full of intrigue. You hadn’t expected that. You had expected annoyance.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” You regret swearing in front of him for a moment, and then you don’t. You never change who you are or how you talk for anyone. Why now?

He doesn’t say anything. You get the feeling that he’s waiting for more of an explanation than an apology and you groan. “My mind is just so not in it today. I’m so fucking distracted.”

“I see.” His voice is laced with sudden understanding in just two words. You turn back to your books to pretend he’s not still staring at you. You don’t like being under his gaze when you’ve been wasting his time–intentional or not.

“Come here.”

If you were already still before, you’re stone now. Your pencil falls from your hand, bounces as it hits the desk, and rolls off. It feels like a perfect symbol for what your brain is experiencing at the moment. What did he just say?

You reluctantly meet his eyes again, but they’re the same. “What?”

Yonghee leans back in his chair, letting his thighs fall to the outer sides of the seat and gestures towards his lap with his gaze. His hands rest atop his thighs as if to say look, there’s room for you here. “Come here,” he repeats simply.

You’re fully convinced that you’re no longer just daydreaming. You must’ve fallen asleep during your lesson and now you’re just dreaming. Regular dreaming.

“Yonghee, I don’t understand–”

He turns your chair to face his and reaches for you, carefully letting his hands take hold of your waist. He pulls you off of your chair and into his lap, adjusting you for a moment until you’re in a comfortable position. Your cheeks are burning. This dream feels too real.

“Is this okay?” He asks, his gentle voice sounding even better up close. He searches your eyes for answers the way you did to him moments ago.

“Well, yeah, but I’m still confused.”

“Mm.” He nods his understanding, his hands linking together behind your back. “Let me tell you what I think we should do, okay?” He waits for you to nod before continuing. “I think it’s obvious to both of us why you’re distracted. You didn’t hesitate to spell it out for me earlier. It’s my job to make sure your lessons get absorbed properly, but I can’t do that when your pretty little brain keeps wandering, can I?” He waits for a shake of your head this time. “So, in order to make sure you can learn from me, I should take care of any obstacles that stop that from happening. Don’t you think?”

You chew on your lip, hands fidgeting between your bodies, twisting the hem of his shirt in your fists. How is he making you nervous? He’s supposed to be the loser here. You nod anyway.

Satisfied, Yonghee smiles and taps your lower back with his hands. “Good. Now turn around for me.”

What? Turn around? So he’s not going to kiss you?

Yonghee can tell you’re not exactly sure what he’s wanting from you, so he helps. He uses his–surprisingly strong–hands to reposition you until you’re sitting in his lap once again, but facing away from him this time. “There you go,” he praises. He lifts one of your legs until he can plant your foot on the desk. His other hand angles your other leg, bending it just enough so it’s not uncomfortable but you’re spread open enough for him.

Yonghee maneuvers his arms under yours, his fingers coming to play with the strings of your much-too-small sweatshorts. He doesn’t do anything, just plays. He lets his head lean against the side of yours, his lips dangerously close to your ear. “You can tell me if you get uncomfortable at any point, okay?”

Once you give him an affirmative nod, his hands glide down the insides of your thighs. They’re warm but your body responds as if they were cold–with a shiver. He kneads the flesh briefly before bringing his hands back up, one hand carefully pulling the crotch of your loose shorts to the side. You hear an incredulous puff of air leave him when he sees there are no panties underneath. 

His other hand finds your right one and guides it, following the same path along your thigh but finishing at your lower lips this time. “Show me how you touch yourself. Show me what you like.”

Your breath catches in your throat, your fingers flexing in the air just above your clit. You can’t help but feel that if this was anyone else, you would refuse, insisting they stop teasing you and touch you themselves. Instead, you lower your hand, wincing slightly when you find your clit more sensitive than you had expected so soon. You think you should say something, but you feel a little shy to speak all of a sudden, so you just slowly rub circles on your clit.

Yonghee hums as he watches your movements over your shoulder. He watches as your fingers move over the little bundle of nerves, gliding through your embarrassingly wet folds, prodding at your entrance but feeling too bashful to slide inside. As your fingers move back up towards your clit, Yonghee’s hand moves between your thighs.

“Since when are you so shy?” He asks lowly, his middle finger testing before sliding inside. You try to swallow down the soft moan of relief. “This is what you want, right?”

You don’t give him the satisfaction of agreement, instead just watching as his finger moves in and out of you slowly, your lips parted as your breathing gradually loses its natural rhythm. Yonghee’s free hand tenderly brushes away a stray strand of hair that falls in your face. He speaks near your ear, his ring finger joining his middle inside your warmth. “There you go. This is what you needed.”

Your fingers keep up the stimulation on your clit, your head falling back on Yonghee’s shoulder as your eyes close. It all feels so good. You would almost feel embarrassed by how wet you are if it didn’t feel so fucking good.

Yonghee presses a light kiss to the side of your face as your hips start moving against his hand, pulling a barely audible grunt out of him. The sound reverberates from your ear all the way down to your core, making you clench around his fingers. Yonghee chuckles quietly, his cheek sliding against yours affectionately. You’re getting overwhelmed quickly, breathing heavily and moaning with need.

Yonghee can sense it.

“Uh-uh,” he chides gently, stilling his fingers inside you as his other hand pulls your hand away from your clit. “Not yet, y/n.”

You sigh in frustration, trying to take things into your own hands as your hips chase his fingers. He tsks, pulling his fingers out of you altogether. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.” He warns, his voice still dripping with sweetness. He gives you a second to stop squirming, waiting for you to resign yourself. When you do, he chuckles again, his fingers finding their way back inside you. “See? It’s not so hard.”

“You’re such an ass,” you breathe out, the sound lacking any intimidation due to the clear arousal in your voice. You twitch as his fingers start moving again, his thumb resting against your clit. He curls his fingers, his other hand wrapped over the top of your thigh. Even without seeing him, you can sense his smugness.

“That’s not very nice, y/n,” he murmurs, punctuating his light scolding with a firm press on your clit. You moan out before you can muffle it, surely fueling his ego. You’re too sensitive from being so close to the edge minutes ago–you can’t afford to keep instigating him when you can’t even sit still in his lap. His fingers continue to stroke and rub you, his hand on your thigh keeping you stable enough as he picks up the pace.

It doesn’t take long before you’re getting close again, your wetness dripping down his fingers and onto his jeans. You hear your stifled moans as if listening from outside of yourself, eager to experience an orgasm at the hands of such a beautiful, frustrating man.

And then he stops, fingers slipping out of you, both hands proactively holding you in place by your hips. “Don’t even think about it.”

You groan but it turns into a whine–something you never do with a man. Your brows are knit together, pained. ‘Yonghee, what the fuck?” You hiss, your hips restless in his lap. Clearly he was right to expect their rebellion. “Why the fuck won’t you let me cum?”

He presses soothing kisses along your jawline. “Because, pretty,” he starts, thumbs rubbing circles on your hips in an effort to comfort your spasming body. “When I make you cum for me, I want it to be a good one.” His lips travel back up to your ear. “Be still for me for a second, okay?” A question, but not. An expectation.

With a huff, you silently agree, your eyes squeezing closed tighter as you summon patience. At least it sounds like he’s planning to let you cum at some point. Going home and taking care of it yourself would not sate you at this point. 

Yonghee’s hands move away from your hips and he shifts underneath you, your body freezing momentarily. This is new. You hear the sound of his zipper and you’d swear you started salivating in your mouth like a dog with its eyes set on a piece of raw meat. One of his hands glides up your arm, moving into your hair as you feel the tip of his cock teasing up and down your slit. “Now, you wanna cum for me, y/n?” 

You nod eagerly this time, your attitude replaced with the need to feel him inside you. You’re not going to do anything to deprive yourself of that. “God, please,” you groan, desperate to have the release he’s denied you.

You can feel him smirk against the side of your face, continuing to tease you with himself for a few more long, torturous moments. He palms the back of your skull, finally positioning himself at your entrance. “Let’s perform a little reset on that brain of yours, mm?” Without a moment of hesitation, he pushes himself into you, inching inside at a snail’s pace clearly designed to make you crazy. And boy does it fucking work.

Your walls pulse and flutter around his slow intrusion, your fingers grasping at the air. The moan that comes out of you is prolonged and desperate, mirroring his extended exhale of breath. Once fully seated inside you, he gives you a few moments to accept him before he starts moving, dragging his cock against your walls much too slowly for the pent-up ache you harbor. “Better?” You can’t tell if he’s genuinely asking, taunting you, or both.

“Yonghee, it’s not– I need–” You stutter, struggling to clearly communicate when you feel like your mind is blacking out.

“Hmm? What do you need, y/n?” He purrs, his hips moving somehow slower, if that’s even possible. You can feel tears pricking your eyes, a complex combination of frustration and arousal.

“Fuck, please,” you rasp, your throat constricting at the realization that your pleading is no more clear than before. He’s just going to keep fucking teasing me.

Thankfully, Yonghee seems to take pity on you. Maybe the strain in your voice was too much for him to ignore. His hands slide over the tops of your thighs, holding the plushness of your inner thighs open for him. He starts thrusting earnestly now, gradually but quickly picking up speed to give you the stimulation you seem to need from him. You’re choking back sobs, the pleasure of him fucking you after being denied orgasm overwhelming your senses and clouding your brain.

“Oh, y/n.” He sounds almost fond of you as he kisses away a few tears that have escaped your eyes. His hands tighten their grasp on your thighs, his cock pushing deeper, pulling a pitched-up moan out of your trembling body. “Let it all out for me.” The edge of arousal in his voice strikes a pleasured chord in you, the sound echoing on loop in your mind.

You’re writhing on his lap, your back arching off his chest as he pants against your ear, driving himself into you relentlessly without being harsh. Your thighs quake against his palms as you feel the all too familiar sensation of an approaching orgasm, a brief flicker of fear flashing through your mind. He wouldn’t dare deny me again. “Yonghee…” A plea.

“Shh.” His head dips, pressing featherlight kisses along your neck and shoulder. “Go ahead, y/n. Cum for me.”

If you weren’t already crying from the pleasure, you could cry from the relief. Your body relaxes at his reassurance before tensing, preparing for the wracking of ecstasy. You barely manage a gasp before your mouth opens wider in a silent moan, your body seemingly ceasing to function aside from tightening around Yonghee’s cock and coating it in your release. You can hear his approving hum as he feels you, hands massaging your thighs to help you through your orgasm. He keeps thrusting as you ride it out, only slowing when he feels you go pliant in his lap.

You’re catching your breath, trying to remember how to use your brain again when you realize that Yonghee has stopped moving. But he didn’t cum. You blink your eyes open, feeling a slight burn from the tears shed. You lift your head from his shoulder, looking down and around you only to find Yonghee flipping through pages of his textbook. “Yonghee?” You don’t think you need to explain what you’re asking. He’s smart.

He smiles, moving his eyes away from the book and back to yours. “What?” He asks, a playful lilt to his tone. You raise your brows, encouraging him to explain. “I did what I was supposed to do, didn’t I?”

You almost smack him, an intrigued smirk forming on your lips. “Really? So now I’m just supposed to get off you and go back to studying?”

“No.” He says, his hands returning to your thighs. “You’re going to sit right here and study.”

For good measure, he rocks his hips into yours, eliciting a small gasp from you. He winks, holding your pencil up for you to take. Oh, he’s deadly serious.

[polyamorousmood]

I have a new bf, we've got together 6 months ago, but considering I have a relationship of 15+ years with someone else, it feels new still to me. He is not the first addition to the polycule, as I also have a girlfriend for 3+ years. The long-term partner and the girlfriend are both nesting partners, and considering the new boyfriend lives on the other side of the country by himself, I have been going there practically every other weekend for "alone time".

I have two challenges, though:

* the boyfriend is new to polyamory and struggles with not being my only partner, but tries his hardest for my sake

* the girlfriend seems to have some serious issues with jealousy and fear of being abandoned

The long-term partner has been the real MVP through this all. They have mediated between me and my girlfriend and shown their utmost support when I wanted to go away.

Meanwhile, I have been trying my hardest to make the change of my allocated time easier on my girlfriend by giving her some extra quality time in the form of dates and gaming sessions and movie nights. It never seems to be enough though.

She has been acting out every time I go away, spiralling in self-deprecating pits of despair or being overall catty and mean towards me. This has led to the new boyfriend feeling like she hates him personally and him not wanting to visit me because she's there. Moreover, it doesn't exactly sell him on the whole idea of polyamory. The long-term partner is also getting exhausted by this: they can recall having struggled when we first opened the relationship, but, as they themselves say, "they weren't this bad."

I am a little lost. Have you got any ideas on what I can do to improve this situation?

Cheers, 🧜🏻

Heya,🧜! So first I'd like to summarize what's happening. You had two partners, and things were pretty good. But the addition of a third who requires special consideration has destabilized the relationship with one of them. Its an over-simplification, but in its simplest form, this is the problem.

Second thing is should also glance over this post from my jealousy tag. Not 100% will apply to you, but there's a lot of overlap. And yes, it does link to 6 other things. They are also likely helpful.

Third thing is all these names for partners does NOT jive with my brain. So for the purposes of answering this ask, I'm going to call Long-Term Partner "Lit" (LT from long term, with a vowel to aid in pronunciation), and newest partner I'm calling Newsboy, because that's the funniest nickname based on the information I have available to me, lol. Out of fairness, girlfriend will be called Gif (GF, with a vowel added for pronunciation [except not really because of the Gif vs Jif debate]).

There are a LOT of things here. So many that even I, with my extraordinarily long answers, cannot get into all of them. Therefore, I hereby present The Bulleted🚅 List of Things to Keep in the Back of Your Mind🧠:

Regardless of how well you can address Gif, polyamory may still "not be for" Newsboy.

Even if someone can do poly, doesn't mean they can enter any polycule. It is no one's fault if a given relationship isn't a good fit. No one here is a bad guy.

Just because no one's a bad guy, doesn't mean everything is reconcilable.

Judgement is rarely helpful.

Nothing I say is gospel. It is my perspective. Consider whether it makes sense for you and how yourself.

Got it all safely shelved and accurately labelled in the mind back? Good. Okay. Now onto the shit to actively think about. Some of that shit may seem to be opposed to some of those points. I'm going to ask you, as the reader, to find the balance/middle ground/duality of man where applicable.

Lit 🕯️

You are, I'm assuming, least worried about Lit. That's good, blah blah blah. Just make sure you're not taking them for granted. You seem like you're in good communication and shit, so I won't spend too much time here, but their feelings of getting kinda burnt out on this is important too. Consider offering them a deliberate respite of some kind from this drama. (ex: 48 of not mentioning it; relief from mediator duties; etc). In any case, continue to check in with them.

Newsboy📰👦

6 months is long enough he's got an idea of what's up with the poly shit with regards to what he's chill with and what's really difficult. If you aren't already, I'd probably start talking the realities of what a relationship long-term would look like. This helps him both set his expectations appropriately and negotiate any major points. I would include shit from the next section, like what you expect Gif to be doing and what you guys are trying to work on that. You don't have to include every gory detail, of course, but he should know its a WIP.

Gif 📷

Gif clearly has work to do if she's going to stay part of an expanding polycule. Your role in supporting her doing that work will include but is not limited to: offering additional reassurances where you can (sounds like you're doing this) and having tough conversations.

And what a can of worms that is. Therefore, I hereby present, in no particular order, The Bulleted🚅 List of Bullet-Biting Discussions💬🗨️ You're Gonna Have to Have:

What can reasonably be achieved at this stage in your relationship. What changes might need to be made to your relationship, expectations you both hold in the relationship, or how might the ideal vision differ from the constraints of reality?

What behaviors of hers are out of line. With actionable steps on how she can do better. There's only so much she can do about her knee-jerk feelings, but she is in control of her actions and might need to put more work into curbing the cattiness or dealing with her emotions more independently, for example.

What behaviors of yours you can improve for her. With actionable steps on how you can do better. You did say you were trying to work with her, but maybe you're going about it in a way that doesn't really help, or you're missing some key component. Maybe what you're terming "cattiness" is Gif trying to drop hints and she's annoyed you don't seem to care, for instance.

These will probably be recurrent in your life for a bit. But as always, how you have the conversation matters. In addition to my usual advice, I want to emphasize here that it will, based on my understanding, likely be a tough thing to navigate. It sounds like everyone needs Gif to do a better job managing things, and I don't think its helpful to seriously undersell that. But at the same time, you can't be coming at her like she's the snake in your otherwise perfect polyamorous garden. I hope you find a way to approach the conversation that finds the balance between support and accountability. What I have found helpful in this, personally, is to make it clear that while, yes, its tiresome for you, you also really want it to feel good to her. Offer suggestions as things that might help her first and foremost. But, y'know, if this were an easy conversation to have you wouldn't be asking my advice, so...

You 🫵

While you're working on this, accept right the fuck now its going to suck a lot of the time. Progress is necessarily difficult. Make your peace with the fact that Gif is going to be pissy every other weekend when you leave, and you'll have to deal with it. Make your peace with the fact you're going to have to revisit these problems. Make your peace with the mess. Progress can be made, but first it has to be difficult, so roll up your sleeves and do the work. Pay attention. Praise your partners when they handle something well (or even just slightly better than usual).

Remember always: We love this life. We do it for love. 💙💖🖤

[tc-doherty]

Hey! In your practical writing tips - post you said novels require lots of telling. I've noticed this too when I read, amazing books that tell a lot vs. showing but all advice gears to show and that's what I've been learning to do. Since I can't find anyone that teaches when to tell vs. show and how much tell vs. show is right and why telling is good etc. I was wondering if you could elaborate on this? Why some books that tell a lot are very engaging and others can't keep my attention? I'm so interested to see your thoughts! Thank you.

Like I said in that post, teaching people how to write isn't really my jam so this is less a teaching guide and more just my assorted thoughts on the subject based on my own opinions and the habits that I follow.

I guess what it boils down to is this. You can't really say that either showing or telling is more important in a novel, but the things that you show are perhaps more relevant.

For example, if you describe the morning routine of your character in great detail every single morning, readers are going to get bored. The story will grind to a halt. Yes you're showing us that, which most people would say is a good thing based on "show don't tell", but the information isn't relevant. If you're setting up a fantasy or sci-fi story it might be relevant once or even twice to show us how things work, but not every single time.

Similarly, if your character gets news telling them that someone they love has perished, you don't want to simply say that it made them sad. You want to show us their reaction. What do they do? What do they say? What physical sensations do they have? Are they lightheaded, do they feel out of breath, does their throat hurt because they're trying not to cry? That information is all relevant to the character, the scene, and the reader. If you simply say they're sad, then your story feels too shallow.

Many people might consider dialogue a kind of telling, but really it's both. What the characters say, how they say it, and also what they don't say can show us a lot about who they are as a person, which is relevant information to the audience even if they're simply explaining something that would be considered exposition. But what do your characters actually need to say or hear? And what can you relay to us through something happening in the background, for instance?

And what about the genre? I like to write road trip novels, which means I spend a lot of time showing the minutiae of the journey. That's relevant because the story is the journey that's being taken. But sometimes your characters just have to get from one place to another, and you don't need to get bogged down in it. You can just say that they took a bus or boat or horse or whatever.

Balancing it in any given story is the writing equivalent of "this meeting could have been email". What do you actually have to get together in a conference room to discuss (show the readers in detail) versus what can be summarized in a few sentences in an email? What will make you bored out of your mind if you see too much of it, versus what will leave you lost and confused without it?

And of course just because something is telling or summarized doesn't mean that the way that you write isn't important! Your writing should still be engaging even when you're telling. Pay attention to the words you use, the rhythm of your sentences, the variety of sentence lengths, things like that. If something is pleasant to read it will keep the reader's attention on the page. If the sentence rhythms or lengths are too similar, it becomes "monotone" and causes people's attention to wander.

Something I pay special attention to is that - unless the narrator is subjective or unreliable - I don't tell something about characters in the narration which is shown to be false. Nothing gets me riled up like supposedly objective narration which tells me a character is like so and I should feel like this about them, but then their dialogue and actions reveal that to be patently false and I feel some other way. Of course that is something that relies on the narrator being objective and having access to more information than we do. If it's a POV character who might just be unobservant, overly arrogant, biased, or kinda stupid, that's fine

When it comes to showing versus telling in regards to the background/description...well. I struggle a lot with description because I have almost complete aphantasia and can't visualize things easily. So I cheat! Anything that I describe in detail is something that my POV character is actually paying attention to. The level of detail varies from book to book based on what kind of person has the POV and what sorts of things they notice. And again, that's relevant to the audience because it's information which is relevant to the character. This is also really great way to start building up to any kind of romantic interest, because people do tend to pay a lot more attention to people they're interested in!

I feel like this has gotten really long, so if there's anything that you would like me to elaborate on more or I wasn't clear about, feel free to send another ask! I won't say I'm objectively right (usually lol) but I'm always happy to talk shop.

Hopefully some of it can be helpful to you or at least give you some things to start thinking about. And of course, it's always a good way to start by studying books that you read and seeing what you like and what you don't like and how it's been handled in both.

[ryllen]

Please read this by putting it through google translate image translation feature on phone and cry with me,

or i can summarize it to you

"Why does human help the weak?" [ You just do it automatically, don't u think? ] - Kalim [ I was taught to do so. ] - Deuce [ Helping others is a beautiful thing. ] - Rook [ It's a natural for the strong to help the weak. ] - Riddle

[ It's just human's instinct of wanting to survive together, is it not? ] - Trey Jade finds it weird, because in the sea, no thought will be given to the weak. The strongest will survive. Call it an ego on land if you want, but that is how it has always been in that big pool of deep never ending water.

Jade is a mermaid type who is rather sensitive when turned into human. Walking with legs feel like walking on knives for him. To counter that problem, he always had his transforming potion mixed with a lot amount of pain killers.

One time he started to feel pain on his feet, he refused to be helped as he is fixated of being a strong creature & not wanting to be positioned as something weak. When he finally let trey helped him, he kept asking if there's any compensation he had to pay for having Trey helped him. "It is just pure kindness for underclassman", Trey said. Having it not sitting right on him, Jade told Trey his secret about his human legs' sensitivity problem as a form of payment. "That's too much information for that price." "Such critical thing! I never tell anyone that information as it would endanger my life!" "So.., are you telling me because you trust me?"

"No. I am telling you because I want (to keep receiving) that pure goodwill from you, my senior."

"That's an unnatural & greedy remark from a benevolent Octavinelle's student. Such a bad boy, Jade." Trey touched Jade's face in soft scolding manner & it made the mermaid quietly flustered with feeling he never knew he could felt before. Finding Trey's affection dear to him, at some other time later, he pretended that his feet hurts. And he lied about not bringing any pain killers with him. Trey who was wary about lying Jade, used his magic to overwrite the pain on Jade's feet, so he could walk by himself. But Jade sulked. Because, rly, he just wants to be carried by Trey again. Sensing this, Trey gave in, and carried Jade on his back, pleasing him.

Previously seeing Trey danced with Cater & Rook at other events, Jade invited Trey to go to an abandoned castle. He asked him to dance with him.

"I want to look good in front of you. But I'm not good at dancing," Trey said.

"Good." Jade replied with a smile, happy with his awkwardness. "I am not familiar with human's dance either."

They started to dance. And flirted a little. "Your eye is like olive." (Typical TREY) And when they were about to kiss, 3 overblot ghosts broke in.

"'ll take responsibility" Jade said, instantly feeling responsible as he was the one who brought them there. He managed to defeat one of the ghost. But in the middle of battle, the usual pain started to seep in to Jade's feet. For real, this time. His legs gave out.

With 2 overblot ghosts left still, Trey put himself into the middle of the fight. "I don't have enough magic to both overwrite your pain & defeat these overblot ghosts at the same time. So, run away while I try to hold them back."

Jade started to think how unacceptable it is that he is protected by someone who is supposed to be weaker than him. He should have been the one protecting Trey as mermaid is a stronger being, however he is nothing but a hindrance right now. Trey would even win the fight if it was not because of him.

So Jade found a way. He made noise to get the overblot attention's. He directed them to him so he could take them out by letting the chandelier fall over all of them together, including him. He was so ready to be crushed & took all those responsibility with him.

But, of course, Trey can't have that! Trey saved Jade at the last minute. He pushed Jade away, so the chandelier missed him. But in consequence, Trey had his legs broken as they were the ones that got crushed by the chandelier, instead -- together with the remaining overblot ghosts.

Jade who still didn't realize the situation, said "... Oh. That's too unreasonable to suddenly jump in, under the chandelier and come..." "I can't help it."

Jade slowly turned his head.

"It's too easy to want to help the person you love." "...So let me help you out." The horror of the current situation finally creeped to Jade's face.

"T-TREY-SAN! TREY-SAN!!!!!!!"

[ What do i do now?? What do i do??? ]

"Go, return by yourself even without me..."

Jade started to think of all his options. Phone? out of range. Magic? Out of the question, he just realized that his magic gem is now broken. The only mirror to come back to the school was at the foot of the mountain, while the castle they were in was at the very top of it.

[ Carry this person on your back. ] The voice in his head said...

"Carry this person on my back--?" he turned his head, and suddenly imagined the path of 'knives' he had to step on to go back. Not alone even.., but together with this person. ...The additional weight surely would pressed his feet harder to the ground, causing even more pain.

Trembling from the thought of the pain, Jade thought... "This is bad..., I only have one more painkiller...."

He took out that single pain killer in his pocket, and put into his mouth, seemingly ready and prepared to walk; at least a few steps back without pain. But no, he refused to do so. Trey is wounded. He must experience pain too right now. Lips-to-lips, he gave the wounded Trey the painkiller & let him swallow it.

"I'll help you now..." Jade said, repaying on Trey's deed & now walking back without painkiller, with his dear senior on his back.

His feet hurts. So badly that he started to bit his lips & let them bleed. The sudden thought of wild animals attacking them in this situation, made him shuddered.

Near them, he spotted a good running river.

...

[ I can just abandoned this person... and jump into the river. ...With that I can easily reach the foot of the mountain. ... With that, I can become a strong creature again, not the helpless one like what I am right now. ]

...

For a second Jade lost in thought of abandoning the weak like what the sea always taught him to do. But then, reminiscing how Trey carried him at that crucial time when he needed him to, he said to himself...

"No. That doesn't matter... "

"Because right now ..., I am helping him out of pure love."

And so, he kept enduring, until Idia who wandered at night to get his late night snack from the school's vending machine, found them who successfully came back, fainted at the hallway.

--

Time passed.

--

...

"Jade refuses to walk for awhile now." Floyd said, guiding Trey further inside to the longue. It might be because that event; so traumatic & painful, that Jade just wanted to forget entirely about walking all together. Or maybe it was out of guilt, for him being the reason that Trey had to be confined in the hospital room to recover & not being able to go anywhere. That's why, Jade isolated himself in the glass wall as a way to punish himself & share the same feeling with Trey.

"Sorry for the trouble." Trey replied, pushing his wheelchair with his hands.

"It's okay. It's Jade's own fault." Floyd replied, nonchalantly. Just like he always been. Oddly comforting, at the current situation. "Jade, sea turtle is here~~"

There he is. Jade, swimming in his mermaid form. Their eyes met. Seeing Trey sitting on a wheel chair, his eyes, glistened.

--

"So will your legs heal?" Jade was still in his mermaid form. He perched on surface of the longue's glass wall he was in, to talk to Trey.

"Yes."

"It's not just the bone fractures, right? It's also the ability to walk, right?"

"Of course."

...

Jade was relief. But he was still burdened with other feelings from the incident.

" --- IF I NEVER MET you, after graduating, I would have returned to the sea and keep being a strong creature forever....." "I am so scared and feeling so pathetic......."

...

Trey reminiscing the moment Jade carried him on his back, while enduring the tremendous pain on his feet, said, "You are...? At that time though, you looked like the strongest person in the world to me..." He patted Jade's head, consoling him.

Jade was relieved once again. " ... Trey-san ... " But it seems that this mermaid still has something in his mind...

"...When you risked your life, and let yourself be crushed under the chandelier..., was it all just because of the natural instinct inhabits in your body, OR-"

He didn't finish his question, and yet Trey answered. "It's because, I like you."

...

Jade proceeded to come out of the water, having his tail transformed to legs, once again after a long while. He approached Trey who sat there still with his immobilized legs.

"...I never thought I would ever need my legs again... He gazed Trey in the eyes. "But it is necessary...." "...There are a lot of things I want to do with you, with these legs..."

"...Many..."

And they both shared a kiss, which became the start of everything else.

[siyzuii]

  ✦    ⤹    점점 더 난 네게 빠져가    ⊹    ❍

    ⟢    ₊    ↷ 𝒴ou attack my heart!

⠀   ͡ ׅ ۟  kassiadreams/siyzuii  ָ֢  ֹ  ֹ ۪ 𝟥 new layout? do we fw it?

✦   ⁔⁔ ۪   my first moodboard ever idek what they're used for but i love making them (not dr related like i said it would be.. but oh well i'm obsessed with chuu in the underwater mv anyway) i hope it looks decent?? might put one for every post if i feel like it heheheh ⊹  ֗  

☆⠀⠀𓈒⠀⠀ׁ⠀⠀this song is truly the cutest thing ever and a literal masterpiece at that, dare i say my fav kpop song!! ok now back to the actual post sorry LOL⠀ ׅ⠀⠀ ͡

── NEW INTRO POST 🔔

◌⠀ׁ₊   ˚  hiii!!! this is my shifting blog (and also my main blog)!! my username used to be siyzuii and i used to go by xylia or léa so u might know me from there but i go by kassia now! (close friends can still call me stella ofc)

i shift.. obviously anyway i've shifted to my dr 3 times now and shifted to parallel realities (on accident too) like a whole lot of times i can't even count

i have discord, tiktok, and instagram but i pretty much only use discord & tiktok, i exclusively use insta if there's someone i'm friends with that genuinely doesn't have any other socials.

note that i also only post shifting content on here. but i'm also 10x more active on discord & tiktok (mostly discord) than i am on tumblr, so feel free to add me (pls ask for my user first bc i have anti shifter friends and i don't want them finding this lol)

i also write and make edits (like every 2 months) yay!!!!

── INTERACT NEOW!!!

other shifters (specifically kpop shifters i need my spotify premium back. hi yes lets yap about our drs together pls) (honestly i'll yap with anyone about each others drs) (this is a silent invitation)

i don't care if you don't believe in shifting, if you respect people who do believe in it (and aren’t gonna force your beliefs on them) feel free to interact! i don't know why you would but whatever

cool people!!!

── GO!!!!

anti shifters (bye)

basic dni criteria

people who actively hate on everything (do you have a life?)

── WHAT TO EXPECT FROM MY PAGE

shifting content (mostly storytimes & yapping and whatever with the occasional sprinkle of memes)

shitty & messy blog layouts because idk how this app works

rants

yapping

probably me going inactive for either 2 days or 2 weeks straight (school keeps me busy and i already skipped my homework for this)

i might call u slurs if we get close!! (THAT I CAN RECLAIM)

me NOT talking about my favs (i cant openly talk about them idk why it's so embarrassing bye)

potentially horrid english because english is not my first language (i pull this excuse every time)

slow replies on here bc i forget about this app 24/7

── MY CARRD

kassiadreams.carrd.co

literally this whole thing summarized

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ♡ ͟ ׂ 𓂂 THANKS FOR 400+ FOLLOWERS I LOVE YOU GUYS MWAH !! should i do anything special?? if u have any ideas lmk and i'll see what i can do LOL

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ⊹ ׂ ok i know a while ago i said to drop some stuff in my ask box bc i'm bored but i havent answered any of them yet BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE TO FIND THEM UNTIL I GOT ON MY PC AGAIN so i'm gonna restart this time i SWEAR ill actually go over them from now on everything you ask i WILL see. thx guys!!!!

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ⋆ ۫ ໒ give me post suggestions i beg..

[markantonys]

You saw the leak huh? Mat might go to Tanchico instead of the Waste in s3

i hadn't seen it until i got this ask! i looked it up and here's the source: WoTUp video. usual disclaimer that these are leaks so may not be 100% reliable, although i thiiiiink WoTUp has a pretty good track record for accurate leaks. UPDATE: they actually have a spotty track record with leaks and have reported false ones before (such as that faile would be in s2), so we should definitely be taking this one with a grain of salt!

to summarize the video, the only new piece of info is that mat, thom, and min were (allegedly) spotted filming scenes with elayne and nynaeve for the tanchico storyline. (he also says that elayne, nynaeve, liandrin, ispan, and moghedien were spotted filming for that storyline, which is of course not surprising!) HOWEVER, he says that he has no idea where in the season these scenes fall or whether it means mat is *exclusively* part of the tanchico storyline in s3, so at this point we can't say mat is 100% spending the entire season in tanchico instead of the waste - there's still a chance that he's in the waste for a portion and tanchico for another portion.

now, time to speculate! full book series spoilers below. this will be long because my mind is going a mile an hour!

fact #1: mat's hanging and missing eye were foreshadowed multiple times in season 2

fact #2: in this podcast interview, donal referred to mat's season 2 knifestick as a "makeshift ashandarei" (it could be he was just speaking with book knowledge about what a real ashandarei is, but to me it implies that show!mat will also be getting a real ashandarei. besides, the greatest general of the age inarguably needs a better permanent weapon than a knifestick!)

these facts make me still very confident that we will be getting at least 1 Mat Doorway Trip in the show. but that doesn't necessarily guarantee he'll go to the waste - it could happen anywhere. rhuidean is the book version, but falme has a "room of curiosities" per season 2, and tanchico has a museum thingy per the books, so there are several options for where mat could come across a doorway.

unless they're changing the doorway aspect of the moiraine vs. lanfear showdown (which i don't have any reason to believe they will, especially given mat's missing eye foreshadowing, which indicates moiraine will still get trapped in the finn realm and mat will rescue her), then there needs to be a doorway in whatever location the two of them find themselves in at the end of season 3 (or at least that's my best guess for when the showdown will take place). and i doubt moiraine would get over to tanchico, or that she would've carted a doorway from falme to the waste, so a rhuidean doorway for that plotline still feels the most plausible for me. however, there could be multiple doorways in the show, as there are in the books, so mat could go through a different one. so this entire point actually may be moot then, i guess haha but i will keep it in here nonetheless!

here are the overall options i can think of right now - note that i'm assuming only 1 Mat Doorway Trip for now to keep things simpler, but it's not impossible that he might still have 2 trips like he does in the books.

#1: mat goes through a doorway in falme at the beginning of the season (and gets cpr from rand, who went to the doorway to get his own answers)

-> #1A: mat is told by Falme Finn to go to the waste and does so, but partway through the season he heads over to tanchico (perhaps to fetch elayne at rand's behest because of rumors of trouble in caemlyn)

-> #1B: mat is told by Falme Finn to go to tanchico, and he never goes to the waste at all

#2: mat initially accompanies the tanchico crew of his own volition and goes through a doorway there (and gets cpr from someone who is not rand), and he never goes to the waste at all

#3: mat initially accompanies the tanchico crew of his own volition and goes through a doorway there, but he gets spit out of it in rhuidean (and gets cpr from rand, who has conveniently just emerged from his glass columns trip)

#4: mat initially accompanies the waste crew of his own volition and goes through a doorway in rhuidean, but he gets spit out of it in tanchico (and gets cpr from someone who is not rand)

i will be more crushed than you could ever comprehend if Cauthor CPR doesn't make it into the show in SOME way haha but i will start girding my loins now for the possibility (although i do still think it could happen). and no matter what happens, at least we'll always have Cauthor Homoerotic Stabbing Feat. Extended Cradling!

in all honesty, mat doesn't really Do that much in the waste plotline aside from his doorway trip. i would be incredibly sad to lose out on bonding time with rand and egwene (yet thrilled to get mat-elayne-nynaeve bonding - when god closes a door, he opens a window!), but in terms of mat's overall long-term story arc, there isn't anything for him in the waste arc that MUST take place in the waste, i don't think?

but on the other hand, if they're going to add him into the tanchico storyline, they have to have a good reason for it - it can't just be for the sake of having fun shenanigans and bonding with elayne and nynaeve. so of course, my immediate supposition is that this would be absorbing the ebou dar plotline and thus that the ultimate purpose of mat going to tanchico would be to meet tuon.

and honestly................that's a REALLY good idea! i've said a million times over that tuon and her relationship with mat need to be introduced much earlier in the show than they are in the books in order to have enough time for proper development, so combining the wondergirls' two different trips to seanchan-infiltrated west-coast cities into one trip and thereby having mat meet tuon by the end of season 3? that could be a very clever adaptational choice. we know so so little about season 3 so far that i really don't want to get myself stuck into any assumptions THIS soon haha so i'm going to try not to get to hung up on this idea, but i do feel pretty strongly that the best reason (and perhaps the ONLY good reason?) to add mat into the tanchico storyline is if they want to combine it with ebou dar and use it as tuon's introduction. and this would also work very well with mat's doorway trip, because he'd be getting his marriage prophecy in the same season as he meets tuon (though he and/or the audience may or may not not become aware of it until a future season).

but what would a season 3 mat-tuon meeting mean for future seasons? maybe they would just cross paths this season, then go their separate ways for some individual arcs and cross paths again later for the romance to begin. or maybe tuon would get caught up in mat's plotline for season 4 and potentially beyond.

(i do worry that making mat & tuon meet THIS soon could mean they believe they need to aim for the 5-season model instead of the full 8 because i'm not sure what tuon would do for 5 more seasons after this, but i'm already so far out on the limb of speculation here that i don't want to go any further until we know more! and they could certainly invent plenty of stuff for tuon to do seeing as she did not do SHIT in the books and desperately needs to lmao the seanchan heir being a channeler is something that is huuuuuuugely rife with story potential.)

going back to mat, let's think a little about HIS future storylines, in the scenario of him meeting tuon by the end of s3. i think the only other major pre-ebou-dar thing he needs to do is form the band of the red hand, which could be shuffled around to after meeting tuon instead of before. there's lots of possibilites for it - all mat needs to do is participate in a battle where a lot of other people are also fighting. maybe the seanchan try to invade tanchico, and he rallies the locals to protect the city. maybe in season 4 he carts tuon along with him back into rand's plotline, where he forms the band during one of the many City-Conquering Rand Battles the show has available to choose from (cairhien, tear, illian, caemlyn). i do feel hopeful that even IF tanchico stands in for ebou dar, it won't be the point of mat splitting off from rand & the main gang for the entire rest of the series never to return like ebou dar was in the books. especially because he barely does anything of story significance between ebou dar & moiraine rescue heist, so it wouldn't be hard to just move up the schedule of his & tuon's meeting and then return him to his TFOH/LOC storyline.

(............which again makes me worry they're aiming for 5 seasons total because what would MAT do for 4 more seasons if everything but the moiraine rescue heist is accomplished by the end of s4? but, again, don't want to go too far out on the limb of speculation. and 8 seasons has always been a very very lofty goal in today's era of television, so getting 5 would still be wonderful! and so much of books 7-13 is filler & sidequests that i think they could absolutely tell the most important parts of the story satisfyingly in only 5 seasons.)

@butterflydm and i have also speculated that elayne & nynaeve could potentially reunite with the waste crew by the end of s3 or early in s4, in order to give them some bonding time with those characters (particularly rand & aviendha and lan, respectively). so, if mat is in tanchico with them, maybe he could come along! maybe rather than getting split up in a seanchan attack, mat and the girls all kidnap tuon and flee the city together, and make their way back to the rest of the gang.

and finally, on a different note, min's presence in tanchico. intriguing! my first thought was that maybe liandrin kidnaps her from cairhien because she finds out min knows she's in cahoots with ishamael and doesn't want min to snitch, and that's how min ends up in tanchico. this would prooooobably mean she skips the tower coup plotline entirely, which i think is okay because siuan, elaida, gawyn, leane, and possibly logain would probably be enough to anchor that plotline for us. it would also give min the bonding time with elayne & nynaeve she didn't have time for in season 2, and if my tuon speculations are correct, then potentially min would enter her orbit this early as well, which would be interesting. rescuing siuan in the coup is The Only Thing min does in 14 books so it would be funny if the show cut it djkfjg but they can (and already have) invent new stuff for her to do instead, and honestly, min doesn't really fit in with the coup & salidar plotlines that well anyway since she isn't a stakeholder in anything relating to the white tower - none of that stuff truly MATTERS to her character, she just happens to be present for it. so IF she doesn't end up being in that plotline in the show, not a huge loss imo (though of course, she could still make her way to the tower later on, or maybe she starts in the tower but then siuan sends her to tanchico to investigate liandrin or something).

anyway, i think i've reached the end of my speculation for now, although i'm sure i'll think of more stuff later! in conclusion, this is my current mood:

[i-still-mask-because]

in the wake of all this new information during COVID, do you feel that maybe we should all just be masking all the time, COVID of no COVID? I mean it can't be the only airborne disease out there and immunocompromised ppl have always and will always exist so like. Following that thinking even if we don't have COVID we could still be risking other people's health (and lives) with other diseases we may have right? Idk I'm stressing a lot about this do I just need to wear a mask outside forever cos. Masks mess with my breathing and sensory issues and stuff but. I don't wanna?? Kill people by accident??? Aaaaa

Hello, thanks for reaching out about this.

I saw this ask about a month ago, and I needed time to think about how I'd respond to it (so I want to thank you for the patience!).

I'll try to answer all of this to the best of my ability, and I thought I'd answer this by going backwards (responding to the last things you said and then moving up with responding to the first things you said).

Everything is below the cut because this is very long!

First I'll try to summarize what I think you're asking here:

"Vulnerable people exist in this world all around me, therefore does this mean I'm constantly posing a threat to those vulnerable people's safety when I don't mask? The thought of this brings me feelings of stress, fear, and anxiety."

I find this is hard to answer candidly without risking stressing out you or anyone else who's aware of the consequences of their choice not to mask. Nonetheless, my honest answer is: yes, choosing not to mask means risking the lives and safety of vulnerable people, i.e. the disabled, immunocompromised, elderly, children & babies, and those that intersect those groups. That risk can take place directly (such as interacting with an immunocompromised elder) or indirectly (such as interacting with the parent of a disabled child).

I also want to add that it's not only those groups that need protecting. I firmly believe that regardless of your age and/or whether or not you self-identify as disabled or immunocompromised that everyone is at risk of the long-term consequences of this rapidly mutating, vascular, and immunosuppressive virus. No one is invincible to this, and I'll add: not even if you're vaccinated (still get vaccinated if you can, but know that you can still catch covid & develop long covid regardless of your vaccination status).

1. "Masks mess with my breathing and sensory issues."

I understand how that can be difficult to deal with, trust me. There are specific masks (such as most standard KN95s) that irritate the hell out of my face after a certain point. The way those specific masks brush against the hairs of my cheeks just make me want to rip the mask off my face completely. Finding alternatives has been a lifesaver, and they've allowed me to get through the day without wanting to maul someone lol. I don't know what masks you have tried out already, so I'll just recommend the one's I like as well as the one's I've heard good reviews on from people that also have sensory issues:

NIOSH 3m Aura N95 Respirators

Flo Mask

GATA Mask (Haven't tried this one yet, but I've heard a LOT of people say this has been a game changer for them because of how comfortable it is & how it doesn't trigger much sensory issues at all due to its silicone material. Probably the only con I've heard is the chance of the build up of moisture in the mask after a long period of use & water possibly dripping on your face— this happens to me sometimes with my Flo Mask. Edit on Sept. 26, 2023: I tried GATA Mask, and I personally have a tough time getting a comfortable fit & seal with it, even when getting the small/medium size for adults to see if it'll make a difference, and the nose bridge shape not fitting well for me is a huge con. Customer service is just suggesting I spend more, so I'll just give this one a break, for now at least. A lot of other people seem to like it though.)

Halyard FLUIDSHIELD [ASTM Level 3] Mask (My mom works in a hospital, and these are masks she brings home from work. They're VERY comfortable for me, especially when I'm masking at home. I recommend finding a way to tighten the loops that go around your ears to prevent as much gaps around the mask as possible. If tight loops hurt your ears easily, I recommend a mask brace.)

O2 Nose Filters (I haven't tried these out yet as well, but I've seen videos demonstrating how effective these are at filtering out SOOO many unseen particles. I don't recommend using these alone of course, because there's still a risk of inhaling harmful aerosols through your mouth. I would recommend using this as a reinforcement of the protective measures you take. For example: adding on a comfortable surgical mask— ideally one with a high filtration efficiency like the previous suggestion— with the nose filters. I think these nose filters would be great if you're removing your mask real quick to take a sip of water or if you're outdoors with enough distance from crowded areas & groups.)

In the ideal world, more people would mask during this on-going pandemic so those that deal with sensory issues and/or those that straight-up can't wear a mask due to medical reasons wouldn't have to worry so much about choosing between existing & risking their health. For now, we just have to find alternatives.

2. "Do I need to wear a mask outside forever?"

My answer to this is: yes until further notice. There's no foreseeable end to this pandemic right now, but it would be worth the patience to wait for adequate tech, treatment, and cures for covid-19 to be released before even thinking about getting loose with masking.

Societal mandates have been dropped way too soon, and public health in regards to covid-19 is being forced on us as an individual responsibility. As a consequence, this gives this rapidly mutating virus a lot of wiggle room to spread and do whatever it wants. This means doctors and experts don't have much answers yet for adequate treatment because there's a MAJOR lack of containment (such as masking & quarantining) and documentation (such as testing & reporting). This isn't to say there hasn't been any advancements whatsoever: for example, Washington University just developed a breath test for covid that gives results in just 1 minute! This is great news! And this is just one reason why it's very necessary for those who can mask to mask, so scientists are given more time to roll out helpful solutions & tools sooner.

Another thing I'll add is if you're symptomatic and/or are positive for covid, you should 100% be wearing a mask no matter what, point blank period. I say "and/or" because it is VERY much possible to have covid and not experience any symptoms at all; this is a major reason why it's necessary to mask up in public consistently, because you can't always know who you bump into that may have covid or not.

3. "Even if we don't have covid, we could still be risking other people's health (and lives) with other diseases we may have right?"

Yes, there is a possibility of spreading airborne diseases to vulnerable people unknowingly— without the protective & preventative tools that is.

I can only speak for America because that's the cultural zeitgeist I grew up in, but: I feel like many of us can agree that, unless you worked in a healthcare setting, what was "normal" (in America) before 2020 when it came to airborne illness prevention was definitely not the regular use of a mask. American health education mainly taught us if we're coughing & sneezing to try to do so in a tissue or into your elbow, as well as frequently wash our hands. That doesn't account for the way air actually works though. For instance, if someone with the common cold coughed into the inside of their elbow, the particles they coughed out are still able to linger in the air because their elbow isn't creating a tight seal around their mouth (their elbow may have caught the droplets from their cough— which are bigger & heavier— but the smaller, lighter aerosols would just spread around similar to how smoke does); it's the difference between 😪 vs 😶‍🌫️. The only sure way for the germs they've coughed out to be blocked from spreading to other people is if they wear a well-fitted, quality mask/respirator.

I feel like health education from a young age should include the benefits of masking; that way it would be easier to adapt to the need to put on a mask to protect ourselves & others as a collective. It would be phenomenal & wonderful if we as a collective were used to masking the same way we're used to putting on socks before putting on our shoes.

4. "Immunocompromised people have always and will always exist"

Yes, that is true. And that means necessary measures taken to protect them, as well as other vulnerable people, should be the standard.

5. "[Covid] can't be the only airborne disease out there"

Of course not. There's plenty of them. However, not all airborne diseases are the same, nor should they be treated as such. What's been observed in regards to the long-term effects of covid is not at all the same with other airborne diseases. Covid is a highly contagious virus that is more than just a respiratory disease. Its goal is to attack your immune system, nervous system, heart, brain, and/or other vital organs. That's what viruses do. They act smart and sneaky, and they have the capability to trigger illnesses in your body that you may not have had pre-infection:

Chickenpox is known to lead to shingles

Epstein-Barr is known to lead to mono

HPV is known to lead to cancer

Covid-19 has been found to lead to:

POTS

ME/CFS

Stroke & Heart attack

Alzheimer's

Dementia

"Brain Fog"; Memory & Concentration Problems

The list goes on, and these are only what we know of. Covid may not be the only airborne disease, but it definitely is a dangerous one with serious, long-term negative effects.

6. "Do you feel that we should all be masking all the time, whether or not covid-19 exists?"

In regards to masking with the existence of covid:

Yes. Masking is a vital method in the prevention of catching & spreading covid-19, because it is primarily spread through the air.

In regards to masking without the existence of covid:

See my answer for number 3, and also: given the fact wearing a mask can only do more good than harm for most folks, I don't see why not. Imagine a world where we don't have to worry about flu season or allergy season anymore because those aerosols are filtered out from consistent mask wearing. Sounds like the dream to me lol.

-

I hope this made sense! If anyone has anything they'd like to add to answer anon's questions, please feel free to share!

Thank you for reading 😷

[etoilesombre]

Hey, do you guys want to hear a story? Let me tell you about the romance between Lancelot and Guinevere, as recounted in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

So, I thought I knew the basics. I grew up reading modern versions of Arthurian legend that focused on other aspects, but had a general knowledge of the Arthur-Guinever-Lancelot love triangle. It didn't show up too much, but I assumed it was subtext in some other versions. What I picked up was that it was sort of pure, almost an ot3, and not the cause of a lot of problems. 

My friends. In this version it is NOT SUBTEXT, it DEFINITELY CAUSED PROBLEMS, and it is WILD. It is a true will-they-won't-they drama fest soap opera romance, and I need to share. So please, come on this journey with me.

[I’m looking at you, Black Sails fandom people. I need you to know that Flint canonically would have read this. He would almost certainly have also grown up hearing these stories. I’m not saying he’s Lancelot coded, but I am saying it's interesting that he would have been aware that was something it was possible to be.]

A couple notes, before we dive in. I am very much just summarizing what happened in the book. The thing is, the book is a million pages long and also in Middle English, and this is just one of many plots, which I think is why it's not more widely known. I will show some excerpts so you can get a feel for the text, but you don’t need to read them to understand the story. I'm referring to a version that is as close to the manuscript as I can find, though with spelling regularized. For real fun, see what the original looked like. Malory purports to be translating part of the French Vulgate cycle, which likely is where the character of Lancelot originates, but in fact he is doing much more than translating, and compiles other stories as well. Point being, when he says “so the French book sayeth” etc, that is the “book” to which he is referring. Because of my lack of knowledge about the language and cultural context, this lecture series from Mythgard Academy was absolutely invaluable to my understanding. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Inevitably, some of the opinions of the prof are reflected here. I do not have it in me to compare the scholarship of various medievalists right now, I just want to tell you about this DRAMA. 

Let’s start with a prophecy. When Arthur decides he wishes to marry Guinevere, Merlin advises him to take someone else, because if he takes her, she will betray him with Lancelot and it will destroy his kingdom. All of this is foretold, not only to us, but to Arthur himself. Of course he takes her anyway, and all is doomed from the start.

As we begin the main arc of this story (several books after the prophecy), Lancelot is widely acknowledged to be the best and most renowned knight of Arthur’s court. He is plainly and hopelessly in love with Guinevere, and she loves him in return. Arthur doesn’t have a problem with this - who wouldn’t love Guinevere? This sort of love is socially acceptable, so long as they do not sleep together, which would be treason. Arthur in fact seems to support their love, because it means that Lancelot will be Guinevere’s champion should she need one. This is a role Arthur himself legally cannot fill because he is the king, and so would have to be the judge. Lancelot is indeed a good champion for her, and fights for her when she is wrongly accused of murder. 

Lancelot is deeply chivalrous, in a way that seems sincere. This is a great place for a first excerpt, a conversation with a Random Damsel Lancelot has been helping:

‘Now, damosel,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘will ye any more service of me?’ ‘Nay, sir,’ she said, ‘at this time, but almighty Jesu preserve you wheresoever ye ride or go, for the most courteous knight thou art and meekest unto all ladies and gentlewomen that now liveth. But one thing, sir knight, me thinks ye lack, ye that are a knight wifeless, that ye will not love some maiden or gentlewoman. For I could never hear say that ever ye loved any of no manner of degree, and that is great pity. But it is noised that ye love Queen Guenivere, and that she hath ordained by enchantment that ye shall never love no other but her, nor no other damosel nor lady shall rejoice you; wherefore there be many in this land of high estate and low that make great sorrow.’ ‘Fair damosel,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘I may not warn* people to speak of me what it pleaseth them; but for to be a wedded man, I think it not; for then I must couch with her, and leave arms and tournaments, battles and adventures. And as for to say to take my pleasance with paramours, that will I refuse, in principal for dread of God. For knights that be adventurous should not be adulterers nor lecherous, for then they be not happy nor fortunate unto the wars; for either they shall be overcome with a simpler knight than they be themselves, or else they shall slay by unhap and their cursedness better men than they be themselves. And so who that useth paramours shall be unhappy, and all thing unhappy that is about them.’ 

So after doing his Knightly Deeds for this damsel, Lancelot asks if she needs anything else. She says no, but you are lacking one thing, which is the love of a woman. It is rumored that is because Guinevere has through sorcery made you love only her, and that causes all of the women great sorrow. In reply Lancelot makes this speech about how he cannot have a wife or paramour and be a good knight, but everyone thinks it is at least in part because his love is reserved for Guinevere.

Now, throughout the book his chastity DOES notably cause all of the women great sorrow. Everyone wants to sleep with Lancelot. Literally he is kidnapped by the four most beautiful queens other than Guinevere, and they say he has to choose one of them as a lover (not even a wife, a lover) or else die. He says he would rather die, though in the end he escapes. This is just an example, truly it is a recurring problem for him. He is, at one point, tricked into sleeping with a woman with whom he conceives his son Galahad (as was prophesied, it's a long story and the romance is only part of it. It is worth mentioning that something similar happens to Arthur, which is how Mordred is sired.) When Guinevere learns that Lancelot has been with someone else, she is angry and banishes him from the court. They still love each other and eventually reconcile. 

So, Lancelot goes on the quest for the holy grail. But he fails, specifically because while he is outwardly dedicated to God, in his private heart he is still dedicated to Guinevere. And so he makes a vow to renounce his love for her, acknowledging that it is beyond measure (beyond what is right, even if they have not technically done anything wrong.) However when he returns to Camelot, he cannot keep this vow, as we see. 

Then, as the book saith, Sir Lancelot began to resort unto Queen Guenivere again, and forgot the promise and the perfection that he made in the quest. For, as the book saith, had not Sir Lancelot been in his privy thoughts and in his mind so set inwardly to the Queen as he was in seeming outward to God, there had no knight passed him in the quest of the Sangrail, but ever his thoughts were privily on the Queen. And so they loved together more hotter than they did beforehand, and had many such privy draughts together that many in the court spoke of it, and in especial Sir Agravain, Sir Gawain’s brother, for he was ever open-mouthed. So it befell that Sir Lancelot had many resorts of ladies and damosels that daily resorted unto him to be their champion: in all such matters of right Sir Lancelot applied him daily to do for the pleasure of Our Lord Jesu Christ. And ever as much as he might he withdrew him from the company of Queen Guenivere for to eschew the slander and noise, wherefore the Queen waxed wroth with Sir Lancelot.

He and Guinevere start spending a lot of time alone together, and so there are rumors circulating about them in court. In order to put a stop to the rumors, Lancelot starts paying other women attention and doing more good knightly deeds for them. Guinevere is terribly jealous, but he tells her it's for their own good, and also tells her about the vow he made, and his concern that their love is beyond what is appropriate. She is devastated, and weeping banishes him from the court (again). 

Lancelot then rides in a tournament, disguised. (Why? Because this is simply a thing knights do.) To make it an effective disguise he takes the token of a woman, the sleeve of the fair maid of Astolat to wear on his helm. When she discovers that he was only using it for the disguise, and he does not indeed love her, she is so heartbroken that she says if he will not marry her or be her lover, she will die. He refuses, on the grounds that love must not be constrained and should arise from the heart, and offers her a thousand pounds a year instead if she marries anyone else. Properly insulted by this, she does indeed die. She has her body sent in a boat to Camelot, with a letter in her hand, saying that she died of her love for him, that he would not return. 

Seeing this, Guinevere reconciles with Lancelot, presumably reassured by the fact that he would let this very beautiful much younger woman die of her love rather than being with her. She insists that from now on he will not fight in disguise, and will openly bear her token. 

Then Queen Guenivere sent for Sir Lancelot, and said thus: ‘I warn you that ye ride no more in no jousts nor tournaments but that your kinsmen may know you; and at these jousts that shall be ye shall have of me a sleeve of gold. And I pray you for my sake to force* yourself there, that men may speak you worship. But I charge you as ye will have my love, that ye warn your kinsmen that ye will bear that day the sleeve of gold upon your helmet.’ ‘Madam,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘it shall be done.’ And either made great joy of other.

It is important to keep in mind that, to this point, there is no textual evidence that they were sleeping together, and a great deal of evidence that it was important to Lancelot that they not cross that line. There is much less evidence that this is important to Guinevere.

So then one fateful day in May, Guinevere goes picnicing with an entourage of knights. They are captured by someone else who is in love with Guinevere, and taken back to his castle, but she manages to send a message to Lancelot. At the castle, she insists that her knights sleep in her bedchamber on the grounds that they were wounded in the battle when she was captured and need tending, but truly she wants them there to keep her captor from raping her. 

Lancelot arrives to rescue her, and the person who kidnapped her agrees to give her back in the morning. She tells Lancelot to visit her room in the night. He climbs up to her window, which is barred. They have a heartfelt reunion and she says she wishes he could come in to her. He acquiesces and breaks the bars to get into her room, cutting his hand to the bone to do so. Despite the profusely bleeding wound and the ten other men sleeping in the room, they at last do sleep together, in this passionate blood covered consummation. He sneaks back out and replaces the bars.

In the morning, the man who kidnapped Guinevere comes in and sees blood all over the bed. He accuses her of being unfaithful to the king, saying she lay with one of the knights who had been sleeping in her room. She denies it, but it is very clear that she did sleep with someone who was bleeding. 

Lancelot says he will fight to defend her from this accusation, which is right and proper because he is her champion. In this story people take trial by combat and oaths before God very seriously, especially Lancelot. He really does try. So he swears an oath that he will prove with his life that Guinevere did not sleep with one of the wounded knights who lay in her room. This of course is TRUE, but only on a technicality. Lancelot, having slept with her himself the night before, is also the one who defends her honor after. I love this story so much. 

Instead of fighting him, the kidnapper takes Lancelot captive. In captivity he encounters ANOTHER damsel who insists that sleep with her in order for her to help him. He refuses, still faithful in his heart to Guinevere. Eventually she settles for him holding and kissing her, which is not across the line of appropriateness apparently, giving us some idea of where that line is drawn. Anyway, Lancelot gets out, fights for Guinevere and wins. There are indications that he feels like he barely dodged a devine bullet. 

Guinevere and Lancelot return to Camelot. Finally the rumors about them are true, the deed has been done, but of course nothing appears particularly different as there were already rumors about them. Two knights, Mordred and Agravaine, who have been intriguing against Arthur already, go and tell Arthur that Guinevere is being untrue to him. Here is his response: 

‘If it be so,’ said the King, ‘wit you well, he is none other; but I would be loath to begin such a thing but I might have proofs of it. For Sir Lancelot is a hardy knight, and all ye know that he is the best knight among us all; and but if he be taken with the deed he will fight with him that bringeth up the noise, and I know no knight that is able to match him. Therefore, and it be sooth as ye say, I would that he were taken with the deed.’ For as the French book saith, the King was full loath that such a noise should be upon Sir Lancelot and his queen. For the King had a deeming of it; but he would not hear thereof, for Sir Lancelot had done so much for him and for the Queen so many times that, wit you well, the King loved him passingly well.

Arthur says he will not hear of this without proof, because if Lancelot is accused and allowed to fight he would beat anyone. And, it is said that Arthur had some idea of the affair, but would not credit it because Lancelot had done so much for him and Guinevere, and he loved Lancelot greatly. 

So, one night when the king is away hunting, the two accusers contrive to catch them in the act, with a group of twelve armed knights. They do find Lancelot in Guinevere’s chamber, but the text is notably, pointedly vague about whether they are actually in bed. In any case, Lancelot asks for a trial. The knights say no, they have caught him and so may kill him. He is Lancelot, so he kills all of them instead, save one (Mordred) whom he leaves wounded. Lancelot flees, intending to return to rescue Guinevere and take her to his own castle to protect her from Arthur’s wrath. He maintains her innocence, and still intends that they will all reconcile.

Guinevere is to be burned at the stake (normal in this situation). Lancelot rescues her from the burning at the last moment, killing a number of knights of the round table. Arthur seems to blame the accusers more than Guinevere and Lancelot (for good reason; keep in mind that the romance is a subplot, there is a great deal of political intrigue going on.) Now a war will begin, whether anyone wants it or not, because of the people Lancelot killed. Lancelot takes Guinevere to his own castle. Battle lines are drawn, and Lancelot and Arthur confront each other in the fighting:

And ever was King Arthur about Sir Lancelot to have slain him, and ever Sir Lancelot suffered him and would not strike again. So Sir Bors encountered with King Arthur; and Sir Bors smote him, and so he alit and drew his sword and said to Sir Lancelot, ‘Sir, shall I make an end of this war?’—for he meant to have slain him. ‘Not so hardy,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘upon pain of thy head, that thou touch him no more! For I will never see that most noble king that made me knight neither slain nor shamed.’ And therewith Sir Lancelot alit off his horse and took up the King and horsed him again, and said thus: ‘My lord the king, for God’s love, stint this strife, for ye get here no worship and I would do my utterance. But always I forbear you, and ye nor none of yours forbear not me. And therefore, my lord, I pray you remember what I have done in many places, and now am I evil rewarded.’ So when King Arthur was on horseback he looked on Sir Lancelot; then the tears burst out of his eyes, thinking of the great courtesy that was in Sir Lancelot more than in any other man. And therewith the King rode his way and might no longer behold him, saying to himself, ‘Alas, alas, that yet this war began!’

So Arthur tries to slay Lancelot, but Lancelot, the better fighter, refuses to slay him and indeed when Arthur is unhorsed Lancelot forbids that he be slain, and gives him his own horse. Arthur weeps for the honor that is in Lancelot, and laments that the war began. 

The pope intervenes and tries to negotiate an end. Lancelot confirms that he is willing to return Guinevere to Arthur, and says he has always been willing to do this and will still defend her honor, but that he does not feel he can do so because Arthur has listened to liars and been misled, and he had more reason to take her away than the accusation of adultery - he does not trust she can be safe in that court, with things as they are. 

Eventually they do make a deal, with some assurances, and he surrenders Guinevere to the king. He kisses her openly, says that he will leave, but should she be in danger or ever again accused of being untrue, he will fight for her as he always has. He departs the court forever, to much great sorrow, and returns to his own lands. 

The war continues - eventually Mordred seizes the throne, Arthur kills him in battle but is mortally wounded himself and passes to Avalon. Following the king’s death, although her love would no longer be adulterous, Guinevere retires to a convent rather than reuniting with Lancelot. He seeks her out, and this is her reaction: 

Sir Lancelot was brought before her; then the Queen said to all those ladies, ‘Through this same man and me hath all this war been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain. Therefore, Sir Lancelot, wit thou well I am set in such a plight to get my soul health; and yet I trust through God’s grace and through His Passion of His wounds wide, that after my death I may have a sight of the blessed face of Christ Jesu, and at Doomsday to sit on His right side;* for as sinful as ever I was, now are saints in heaven. And therefore, Sir Lancelot, I require thee and beseech thee heartily, for all the love that ever was betwixt us, that thou never see me no more in the visage. And I command thee, on God’s behalf, that thou forsake my company; and to thy kingdom look thou turn again, and keep well thy realm from war and wrack. For as well as I have loved thee heretofore, my heart will not serve now to see thee, for through thee and me is the flower of kings and knights destroyed. And therefore go thou to thy realm, and there take ye a wife and live with her with joy and bliss. And I pray thee heartily to pray for me to the everlasting Lord that I may amend my misliving.’ ‘Now, my sweet madam,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘would ye that I should turn again unto my country, and there to wed a lady? Nay, madam, wit you well, that shall I never do, for I shall never be so false unto you of that I have promised. But the self* destiny that ye have taken you to, I will take me to, for the pleasure of Jesu; and ever for you I cast me specially to pray.

Rather than rejoicing in Lancelot’s presence, Guinevere laments that their love brought about the downfall of the Arthurian court, and the deaths of the knights of the round table and King Arthur. She calls upon Lancelot, by all the love that was ever between them to leave her presence, telling him to marry someone else if he wishes and see her no more. Lancelot replies that he wants no one else, and that he will respect her wishes, but will also renounce the world and join a religious order. He asks Guinevere for a final parting kiss, which she denies him. 

When Guinevere lies dying of illness, Lancelot sets out to go to her, having had a vision. She knows of his coming, and prays to die before she sees him, because she cannot bear it. She dies a half hour before he arrives, leaving instruction that he is to tend to her body, and then lay it to rest beside that of her lord King Arthur. Lancelot does this with great sorrow, and after ceases to eat or drink, and within weeks is dead himself. 

And there you have it, the love affair that doomed Camelot.

HUGE DISCLAIMER: Any and all mistakes or misinterpretations are my own. This is what I gathered, but I am not a medievalist. I am barely an interested layperson. I’m just a random fic writer who got obsessed with research for a story, and had to share this tragic mess. 

[demigod-shenanigans]

"I can go into why i dislike ToA (especially Tyrant's Tomb is. a book that exists) but box of pandora. Once open good luck shutting me up" (source: your tags)

Now that you said that, i'm geniunely curious. Open the box. I dare you

This should be obvious but @ the people who really enjoyed ToA, this post is not for you. I’m not sure I’ll even tag it because this is mostly me venting into the void because two people asked and not me wanting to ruin other people’s fun. These are just my personal opinions.

I also apologize if I get any details wrong, I did recheck a lot of the things mentioned but it’s been a minute since I read ToA and might not remember everything 100% correctly. Also, obvious spoiler warning.

*claps hands together* Okay, you asked for this but heads up, it’s going to be long. Maybe grab a snack and a glass of water beforehand.

My beef with ToA can be summarized into a few key points that I’ll elaborate on below but basically:

-It tries to wrap up character arcs for some of the seven (and Reyna) but does this through the eyes of someone with zero context and also treats these characters arcs as unimportant footnotes in the larger story

-Jason’s death and everything surrounding it was handled extremely poorly.

-I cannot remember any demigods staying mad at Apollo. Redemption arcs should not mean everyone has to forgive this character for all the shit they’ve done in the past.

-The death toll. This is not helped by the fact that a lot of the deaths feel like they exist solely for the purpose of making Apollo learn death sucks over and over again (Jason is the worst example of this, but there are others)

More grievances I have but don’t have enough to say about to justify a longer explanation:

-There are a whole bunch of new minor characters on top of the old ones already struggling for screen time. I don’t remember much about any of them, which is a shame because the idea behind some of them is really compelling.

-The story is centered around the Triumvirate as antagonists, with Python as a final boss, but book four just dumps an additional antagonist on you out of nowhere? Why?

-Reyna rejecting Apollo is nice and all but I still had to put up with him crushing on her and was very uncomfortable the whole time.

-Chiron sends a bunch of new demigods into what’s potentially a death battle and tells them it’s a fun field trip (what the fuck)

-This is a personal grievance more than anything but it took me ages (book five) until I really got attached to Meg. I feel like that could have been fixed if she at least got a few POV chapters.

-Dishonorable mention to the punch line joke. Two whole camps of people lining up to hit the canonically abused kid that saved them is not funny.

Details under the cut (Pandora’s box, I did warn you)

Character arcs:

The books really do try to tell meaningful stories for people whose arcs weren’t finished in Heroes of Olympus. With some of them, you can even tell the ideas behind wrapping up those arcs were solid. But the books also tells those stories through the eyes of a character who doesn’t know these people’s pasts and quite frankly doesn’t care a lot of the time. People will voice/do something that is huge for their character and instead of going into that it’s followed up with some random Apollo anecdote that’s only tangentially related at best.

Taking Leo as an example: Apollo has no idea why Leo settling down and finding a home somewhere after everything he’s been through is meaningful. That’s a story that could have been the focus of an entire book of its own, but instead it’s just a side plot to a completely different story. And that story really should have been told through Leo’s eyes, or at least through the eyes of someone like Jason or Piper who realize why this is huge for him.

Apollo also does not care why Leo and Calypso are fighting, so it’s not something that’s properly explored. Leo’s fights with Calypso are mainly mentioned/witnessed. You get some guesses as to how they started but they never mention the exact reasons. They both say they care about each other, but only to Apollo, when the other person isn’t present. When they sort things out it happens largely off-screen. I was also not a fan of the way many of their issues ended up being pinned on Leo being sexist when it was actually way more than that.

ToA does this a lot. It gives arcs to characters who honestly deserved to be explored more, but those arcs are barely footnotes in a larger story where these characters just cameo for a hundred or so pages.

The cameo stuff works okay for Percy and Solangelo because the books are very aware they’re cameos and they get to have fun but this is not their story. But the characters the series tries to give proper plots to are all over the place.

It’s said that Jason and Thalia are really close but they never interact in the books. Jason had a bit of a chance at a normal life finally but that’s barely gone into. (More on Jason later because my god did how the books handled him piss me off massively)

Piper’s struggles with her queerness get the random Apollo anecdote treatment. There’s some stuff about her reconnecting with her dad and her heritage but that’s not explored a ton either.

Frank’s firewood burns up and he’s fine, which is just sort of hand-waved and doesn’t feel meaningful, especially because I think the fireproof pouch was already a fine solution? Congrats on being free of this, now you can get stabbed to death like all the other characters, I guess.

Reyna gets a sort of arc but it feels really weird because it happens almost entirely off-screen. She spends a large fraction of the book chiding Lavinia for leaving her post, then gets her leg broken, is off-screen for a while and then just DIPS with the Hunters after her home suffered huge casualties.

I also think her joining the Hunters is a super lame way to resolve her arc in general (she just lays down one responsibility to sign up for the next, and a character not wanting romance/not wanting romance right now should be allowed to exist without having to join the eternal maiden’s club, but that problem isn’t isolated to Reyna and could honestly be a whole post of its own)

This also comes down to the fact that I’m here mainly for the demigods. I care about these kids having good arcs and good lives. I care significantly less about Apollo having to learn really obvious shit like “murdering my pregnant girlfriend was perhaps a little messed up”

Jason’s death and everything surrounding it

Killing off a major character (especially one whose arc isn’t finished) can be a plot twist that works at times. But it has to be handled well. Doing it to a character that’s suffered horrifically and is starting to heal is also a hugely shitty move, but I understand you want meaningful deaths for the plot sometimes.

But you cannot do it the way Rick did it with Jason’s death. If he was going to kill off one of the seven, he should have done it in Heroes of Olympus, with that character narrating and their friends getting to deal with the aftermath and grieve.

Instead, Jason dies in a book that he appears in for like. A hundred pages iirc? Two-hundred at most? You get Apollo narration on it, and sure, he’s big sad about it, but he also knew this guy for two days.

Piper gets a few pages to deal with his death, then disappears from the book and comes back for a heroic rescue later. Leo gets like two pages to deal with the fact that his best friend is dead. They then proceed to fuck off to Oklahoma instead of going to the funeral. For what reason? No idea. The book doesn’t bother to explain it.

Jason gets a Camp Jupiter funeral, with none of his Camp Half-Blood friends present, because fuck the fact that him belonging to both camps was a huge part of his arc, right?

Piper and Leo know Jason is dead but they cannot be there because they’d already used up their time as ToA side characters, I guess. Percy and Annabeth can’t come, they don’t find out due to demigod communication issues until the end of the series. Thalia also doesn’t get to go to her brother’s funeral. She doesn’t find out until the funeral is already over. We don’t even really get to see her grieving, her finding out Jason died happens off-screen too.

Because this is the Apollo show, Apollo is the guy who leads the funeral procession instead of, like, Reyna, who knew Jason for years.

Also, for some reason, the person avenging Jason is Frank? Absolutely no offense to Frank, he’s a great guy and I’m sure he cared about Jason, but that choice still feels deeply comedic considering I can remember exactly one meaningful interaction him and Jason had in HoO (Jason giving Frank praetor position at the end of HoH) and not a single conversation they had beyond that. If Rick had to write Leo and Piper out of the plot, why not at least have Reyna avenge him?

Jason dies specifically because Apollo broke a stupid oath he made on the River Styx. We’re told that people around him will keep dying because of this. He dies as a chess piece in a stupid game between gods, for the sake of Apollo’s character development. He dies so he can be brought up every hundred pages for Apollo to waffle about how sad his death was but how he’d also definitely not want to be brought back (I get it, we cannot revive people constantly, but having Apollo make this point when, again, he knew the guy for two days, is still really stupid. Nico also gets to make the same point at the end just in case the reader didn’t understand before that we’re not bringing Jason back)

Apollo is forgiven by everyone

Related to the above point. Like I said, we’re outright told that Jason dying is a direct consequence of Apollo’s oath. Apollo also knew taking them along on the mission would get Jason or Piper killed and he did it anyway.

Piper gets to be mad at him very briefly, but when he tries to apologize at the end of the book, she interrupts him and tells him “it’s fine” (her voice is described as “no anger, just natural heat”)

Thalia doesn’t get to be mad at him at all. Her baby brother died and she just pats Apollo on the back and tells him “it’s fine, Jason made his own choices. That’s what heroes do.” And then it’s made about how Artemis lost Apollo when he got transformed into a human instead of. Like. The fact that Thalia just lost her baby brother for the second time in her life.

IT’S FINE?? THAT’S ALL ANYONE HAS TO SAY ABOUT THIS??

Hell, Apollo even has a sort of dream hallucination of Jason’s ghost so that ghost can forgive him too.

Was that really necessary? Why do people think that a character learning to be better means absolutely everyone has to forgive them? Wouldn’t it have been a better sticking point for a god to learn people are allowed to stay mad at you?

The death toll

A lot of people die in these books. People dying in pjo books has always been a thing, but it’s never felt this pointless or this much like it was solely happening for a single person’s character development.

Jason is the most pointed example of this, but there are more. Starting with the fact that two of Apollo’s kids almost get torched in front of his face in the first book (Austin and Kayla) and somehow that is not a sticking point. I don’t think it’s ever brought up again afterwards.

Other characters that die so Apollo can learn death sucks:

-Several Dryads die saving the grove of Dodonna

-Heloise the Griffin

-One random unnamed demigod in Dark Prophecy (mentioning them because that’s where it occurs to Apollo demigod deaths also suck)

-Money Maker (Dryad)

-Crest

-Harpocrates and the Sybil of Cumae

The death toll in Tyrant’s Tomb is completely ridiculous. Like, “feels worse than Last Olympian despite not even being the final battle”-ridiculous. And unlike how Percy at least gets to use that tragic battle to change things in a fundamental way, the Camp Jupiter demigods don’t win anything significant. Their home is only almost completely destroyed. Some of them aren’t dead. That’s it.

If you remember the name of any side character Camp Jupiter demigod from HoO, there’s a very high chance they die in this book.

We don’t get exact numbers for how many people die. The book actually explicitly refuses to give numbers, stating “We didn’t count the dead. They weren’t numbers. They were people we had know, friends we had fought with.” (Which gets even more ironic due to the fact that, again, we barely have any named CJ demigods to begin with)

The closest thing we get to numbers are that 25 demigod members of the legion died in the battle before the book started, and towards the end there are fourteen total demigods still standing of the first to third cohort combined. Even if half the missing demigods are “just” so severely wounded that they can’t fight anymore, that’s still 60 dead kids! The pre-book battle was mentioned to have been hardest on the civilians. We don’t know how many of them died, and losses among the fourth and fifth cohort are also unknown, but that is a ridiculous amount of losses. Why are there so many dead kids in this book and why are we all just supposed to be okay with this?

Jupiter explicitly forbids the other gods to intervene. The only one who does is Diana, after an offering, and she takes her sweet time to get there. That camp is named after the guy! That’s people’s kids down there! I know the gods not helping their kids isn’t exactly new, but this is on a whole other level.

There are funerals but those are largely skipped over, and Frank announces that they’ll resolve this by asking Lupa to bring in more demigods so they’ll come back stronger, which. Baffling statement. Let’s just fix the dead people by replacing them.

TL;DR: Good on Apollo for learning to be better, but I really didn’t like how it was done. There were a handful of things I liked in almost all the books, not including Tyrant’s Tomb which wins the award for rrverse book I most wanted to chuck out of a window. Some of the ideas were good. I think the first and last book are mostly solid (largely due to the fact that those don’t try to shove in entire side character arcs). But the things I did enjoy just get very heavily outweighed by everything that annoyed and upset me.

I really wish ToA had been mostly new characters with maybe some minor cameos, and other people’s arcs had been saved for different books. I also think splitting the perspective between Apollo, Meg and maybe the HoO character who was trying to have an arc in that specific book would have helped.