#i got this one once and ancient twice which is a pretty good set of results

[vullcanica]

WHAT IS PECULIAR ABOUT YOUR SOUL?

Your soul is... Volatile

There is a deep, painful energy harbored within this soul... At its very core festers malice, and a deeply rooted pain that craves nothing more but to inflict itself onto everything around it. Special care has been given to it- to stop examiners from coming into any harm should they draw too near to it. You coil like a serpent, awaiting a moment to strike. To claim your revenge. It never comes.

Tagged by: @vilestblood 💕

Tagging: @vhgr (any) @chateautangerine @monstriiss @princguard @freak1ish @grownpale (any) @kurjaks @maramcna and you! 🫵

[thequeenofmyownscreen]

Yesterday night was our last session of my first D&D campaign ever

Last night we drank merrily, saying goodbye (for now) to the 4 adventurers in my first D&D campaign ever, for which I was the DM (1st time ever also). I feel very happy and a little sad also, so I thought I could write it all up here - mostly for me, and for you reading if that interests you.

It was more of a Wrap-up session, we didn't play per se, but I wanted to recap the last scenes, and give the floor to my players to ask some questions and discuss what we've been doing. It was a good idea, I think, it went great, we had time to reminisce and remember the beginnings, the roads not taken and the what-ifs, the monsters and the battles they were traumatized by, and what their characters would do now.

Flashbacks and sneak peeks and more thoughts under the cut

When I started to watch Critical Role, I had no idea what D&D was. All I heard were mentions of it in media (tv shows, mostly). It intrigued me more and more, and I started to look at the rules, and the books published, etc. And then one day on an impulse, I bought the Starter Set : Lost Mine of Phandelver, and sent a message to my sister and some friends, asking if they were interested to see what it was about with me.

In April 2021, with my sister and 3 friends, 4 players in total, we created their characters, and we started truly playing in May 2021. At first, we played only once a month, in person, because Roll20 is awesome for battles but not much for anything else (personal opinion). Plus we were going out again after the pandemic, it felt nice. Then in June 2022, one of my friends and players decided to leave, and we recruited another friend at the same time, so I still had 4 players to manage through and through. They were all pretty much novices like me (only 1 had played before), and so we all learned together during the years. In multiple ways ! small but important things like : who's taking care of the scheduling, who's time is it to host and what food & drink will we bring, who has many dice and can lend them, how can we figure the characters without buying expensive minis (we ended up using fèves, which is a very French thing I will explain now : at the beginning of the year, you gather your friends or colleagues or family or whatever to eat the galette des rois, literally cake of the kings, and whether you make it or bought it, there is always inside 1 very small porcelain figurine, and the person finding it gets to be King/Queen for the day. Yeah it's the same country who decapitated the last king, don't ask. Anyway sometimes people collect the small porcelain figurines, and then their grandchildren sell the collection, and we ended up with a lot for practically nothing.).

In late 2022 and throughout 2023, we decided to try and play more, and managed - with a few exceptions - to play twice a month, which we found was a good rhythm : for me, to not have too much prep work, and for my players, to not forget everything that happened last time. In the meantime, another friend of mine with whom I am having lunch at work with very regularly, got used to hear me talking about "the shit my players did last night" and was very interested in following this as a story ; she asked questions, and gave me a space to think, and even ended giving advice and suggestions ! I'm naming her my unofficial co-DM now. It was nice to have someone know all the twists and the structure of the story, and to exchange ideas and jokes.

One thing I was very happy to do, and was very happy when my players talked about it saying I did a good job : PROPS ! The adventure as written has a few examples of message of hiring mercenaries, strange letters sent by a mysterious figure, etc etc. For one, I took time to write in ink (in my teenage years I was obsessed by calligraphy and I still have a quill), and for another I passed the paper in coffee and tea and then dried it to give it an ancient look. Props like this costs nothing but it's awesome.

During 2022 and 2023, 2 of my players had moved far away, but we managed to set up remote video calls for them, while us 3 others gathered 'round the table, and we even had an elaborate if precarious system to film the map during battles (pictured down). And yes for the final dungeon, I printed the map in extra-large, and ended using the wall to show the progress in exploring !

I won't recap all of the story, it doesn't matter in the end, everyone who's ever played knows that you can do an adventure 30 times and it will end up in 30 different stories. What's interesting was that the Lost Mine of Phandelver is described as "a perfect campaign to start playing" : that I agree with ; but that doesn't mean it does not need work. Thankfully the Internet is awesome, and since it's the most played adventure of 5E, a LOT of people have advices, do nots and dos, stories of their own campaigns, useful links and tools, etc. 1st lesson : if it exists already, use that shit. Use it like the world is ending tomorrow. At the start, I was doing this on my own volition, and prepping way too much, while being scared to change things. Then I was inspired reading reddits posts (yes, it happens), and seeing videos, and I started adding more details of my own - or stuff I borrowed from others Internet strangers. The paradox was that I was getting more comfortable while prepping less, because... I got the hang of it, I think it's what happened !

I still have some frustrations, some I shared last night with my players : easier-than-expected batles for my players (the 1st was a conscious act of mercy, and the battle ended way too quickly of course ; the 2nd was I forgot an important detail of the villain's weapon and could not use it, but in the end she had other stuff and the battle was still epic). 2nd lesson : listen to Matt Mercer when he says that as a DM, you really want to use the nuclear option in your opponent’s arsenal on the opening round. If you don't, you will have regrets. My other big frustration is about the player that decided to leave ; we just didn't understand the game on the same-level, but it makes me a little sad that she left before it could click for her, and we could truly talk about it. Especially since last night, I was overjoyed listening to my players talk each about their "epiphany" of how the game works, and how they got comfortable after feeling this truth, and seeing how "you don't win at D&D, the fun is everything else", and I was like yesssssss YOU you get it. 3d lesson : communication ! (it feels like there's still room for improvement, but we have a nice flow going).

All and all, it was an amazing experience, 10/10, will do it again ; and we will ! we agreed we will come back years from now to Faerûn ! and I'll be back as a DM ! and we'll do another written campaign continuing from level 5 (I know there's written options out there). In the meantime though, my sister is leaving our group just for this year, but we're going to keep playing at 4. And this time, I'll be a player !! One of my former players, the amazing @greetingsprogramms will be our DM : she already did 2 one-shots throughout the 2 years, and she did a fantastic job. We're going where a lot of fantasy people have not gone before : spaaaaaaace !

[bonesandthebees]

You’re reading 20 (25)?! Damn that’s a lot. I’m trying to work my way back into reading books again over reading fanfic. I thought 5 is a good starting point and if I read more I can do 10 next year.

Also, I just had a lot of mandatory reading for my English courses, which made it really difficult to read for me. I’ve had years where I needed to read 600 pages per semester, but the books never match up exactly and the prof always pick a book too, so it was like 4-6 books just during the school year and I could rarely pick something I wanted because it would have to be British English or modernism or realism or certain authors. So now I have accumulated a lot of books I want to read and I need to catch up.

The excel is mainly so I can keep track of what we have and where it is. I also log owner, genre and language for the fun of it (currently up to 4 languages but I swear we have a book in Spanish somewhere). Some books we have twice, once in the original English and the second a Dutch translation (like the Book Thief). It also allows me to learn what books my parents have so as can find them when I want to read them. (E.g. I did not know we had the Princess Bride, it might have been mentioned, but what do you mean it’s been in the dining room this whole time? I will be reading that some time soon.)

Also, shifting the books around into different categories is fun, because as now know my mom has an entire shift of historical fiction and so many good thrillers. And I can find books based on genre and then author alphabetically. And I get to use all our different book stops as dividers between categories. It’s fun I like organising. (Also, I now no longer have a stack of like 4 book that did not fit in my shelves thanks to shifting things around and purging a few.)

Now I just need a ‘station’ for the library books because my mom reads so many of them (she reads at least 40 books a year I don’t know how she does it. And usually she reads multiple books at the same time too. Though I think reading like an hour every day at least does help, but I ain’t got time for that).

P.s. what’s the last book you read?

-🌲

I'm an overachiever lol I got back into reading books and decided to set a super lofty goal for myself so I had to make a habit of it to follow through. I think 5 books is a great goal though! and if it goes well yeah you can increase it to 10 next year, I think that's a very smart way to do it

I 100% understand not having the time and/or mental energy for reading when you have a ton of assigned reading in school. not being in school right now definitely gives me more time and brain power for that stuff but I'm sure when I go back to grad school eventually I'm going to drop off a bit with my reading

that's such an organized excel sheet I love that. organizing it by languages as well is especially cool. I'm a lame monolingual (technically I can read a tiny bit of spanish but definitely not enough to read an entire book) so all my books are in english. that all sounds super helpful though for figuring out what book to read next

40 books a year??? insane. I have friends who read 50 a year and I'm like how the hell do you do that. I also don't get how she reads more than one book at a time. I have to zero in on whatever book I'm reading I can't flip between different ones. I try to read for about an hour every night but sometimes it ends up only being half an hour a night or if I'm tired I just don't read at all, but I'm pretty good about keeping up the habit

right now the book I'm currently reading is The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin (sequel to The Fifth Season), but before that the last book I finished was Sparrow by James Hynes. It was really good, but also incredibly dark. It's a historical fiction novel set in the latter half of the Ancient Roman Empire about a slave boy growing up in a brothel. I did love how real and tangible it made living in the Roman Empire feel but man. It also just made me depressed. like I appreciated how it didn't shy away from the brutal aspects of slave life in Ancient Rome but man I really needed a fantasy escape after that hence why I'm now reading The Obelisk Gate. (Also the ending kind of fell flat for me, but everything up until then was incredibly well written and really engaging)

[gojuo]

Hello can i ask you a quick question can i have your opinion of the strong bastards please i know you don’t enjoy them and i personally think they are hollow af and without substance but what do you think im curious

Hmm I don't hate them really. I think they're spoiled and protected from consequences all the time, which is bad parenting, but the worst thing about them is their parents in my opinion. Rhaenyra and Harwin knew very well what trying to pass off bastards as trueborns set to inherit the Iron Throne meant (exile/death), yet they still decided to have children. Jace could have been an accident, fine, but then they went on to have 2 more kids, which is just awful. A good parent that actually cared for her children would never put them in such a precarious and deathly situation, yet Rhaenyra and Harwin still did it. Not once, not twice, but three fucking times. Rhaenyra having bastards is not high treason, it is the fact that she tries to pass them off as trueborn which is. The way to prevent her children's execution/exile would be to abdicate from the succession and just live her life as a normal noblewoman, yet she did not do this, therefore making sure that her children would always be on death's door. Jace, Luke and Joff did not deserve that. I don't believe that children should have to pay for their parents' sins and in the show we know that both Jace and Luke know they are bastards. I imagine growing up with the knowledge that at any moment in time you could be executed just for being born was extremely damaging to their psyche, but it was also made very clear to them from a very young age that they would always be protected by the crown. Which led to their sheltered/spoiled upbringing (less noticeable in Jace than in Luke). They got away with everything, with maiming and permanently disabling the king's son, with being bastards who by law cannot inherit yet still being pushed to inherit the IT & Driftmark, with never apologizing for any of the wrongs they have committed, etc. The example set by the adults around them led to Luke (less so in Jace's case and Joff is still a little child so let's forget him) getting away for years with his awful behavior towards Aemond. Aemond is the king's son, Luke is the king's grandson. In all fairness, Aemond is closer to the king than Luke is, yet Viserys clearly and publicly showed the entire court which of the two he actually gave protection to and which one he did not grant such sympathies towards. It's what led to Luke getting away with not once in his entire life apologizing for permanently disabling a prince. That's pretty fucking horrible. Losing an eye is not the same as getting a cut on your arm, yet Luke never had to face any consequences for it. It happened and that was it for Luke, but for his victim, for Aemond, his entire life changed. Then he had the gall to scoff at an ancient bullying joke right in Aemond's face. Like ???? Who tf even remembers such a memory from back when you were 5 ten years later? It just goes on to shows how Luke was unrepentant of any wrong he has committed against Aemond, and that's awful. Aemond deserved an apology. Aemond deserved multiple apologies actually and he deserved acknowledgement. But he never did. Everyone just moved on like it never happened, but Aemond has the permanent psychical evidence of why he could not just "move on". He was only 10 years old...

I'm lukewarm towards the Strong children. Jace is an ok character, even though he is just your average nice guy with little personality outside of being nice. I don't have any strong feelings against him. Luke is a different story as you've just read. I don't hate him, but I hate that his parents raised him to be this way. I don't think he deserved to die while terrorized, but I also don't mourn him. Joffrey is just a little kid so no opinions on him really.

[silverdragon-imagines-blog]

For headcanons how about Twilight who has never seen a rabbit discovers he is allergic to rabbit fur, or Time Sky and Legend compare their experiences time traveling, or as group cook Wild tracks what everyone eats and pays attention to what everyone likes or dislikes but gets frustrated because Fours keep changing

[So many good prompts but time travel my beloved. So take some 3 am bonding between these three ^u^ Hope you enjoy.]

Warning(s): Some spoilers for Skyward Sword and maybe Ocarina of Time and Oracle of Ages. Also swearing, but that’s just how I write them

Sky turned over for what felt like the fiftieth time. He turned onto his back with a sigh, rubbing at his eyes for a few minutes. Then he sat up, moving the sheets off him and touching his bare feet to the chilled hardwood floor of the Inn room. His gaze landed on the four other occupants of the room he had ended up sharing with.

Unsurprisingly, Wind was splayed out on his bed, sleeping peacefully, and causing Sky to let out a huff of laughter at the spot of drool collecting on his pillow. Warriors was on his back, still and stiff as he slept, while Hyrule was curled up in a ball with his back pressed against the wall. Legend's bed, however, was empty, the sheets thrown to end of the bed. His gear and boots were still in place at the edge of the bed. Sky furrowed his brow in confusion, though there was only one other place he could’ve gone.

Quietly, Sky walked over to the door to the room and slowly opened the door. He paused, listening closely to hear if anyone else had woken up when he had moved. With no new sounds of shuffling, the coast was clear, and he headed towards the main area of the Inn.

As he approached, the strong smell of what some of the others called coffee hits him, causing him to cover his nose at the surprisingly abrupt smell. If he wasn’t already struggling to sleep, that at least would have woken him up. Once he recovered, Sky continued, entering the lobby, and looking around.

There was a counter off to the side of the stairs, a woman with a beige apron and bandanna tying her hair back tiredly wiping it down. The room was relatively empty, no one sitting in the worn couches near the entryway and most of the wooden tables behind them empty of people. Sky could easily see two familiar figures sitting at one of the tables in the corner of the room. The Veteran sat slightly slumped forward, a steaming mug in hand, with the Old Man sitting across from him with a mug of his own, though it was suspiciously not steaming.

Sky approached the table, waving tiredly. Time acknowledged him with a nod as he took a seat while Legend raised an eyebrow.

"Couldn't sleep?"

Sky shook his head, crossing his arms and laying his head on top of them.

"Mind wouldn't shut up. Didn't hear you get up though."

At this, Legend chuckled, holding out his hand and flashing his many rings.

"Magic ring, let's me pass by unseen."

Sky looked impressed.

"Sounds pretty useful."

Legend smiled wider.

"Yeah, if only it existed."

Sky frowned, slightly glaring at the now laughing Veteran. Time was chuckling as well, taking a sip of his drink, the white streak on his upper lip showing that he was drinking milk.

The woman that had been behind the counter then approached with a tray at her side, looking at Sky, who now sat up straight.

"Did you want to order anything?"

Sky shook his head then paused.

"A glass of water maybe."

With a nod, the woman left then returned a moment later with a glass and a pitcher on her tray, placing them on the table and pouring water into it, the ice clinking as it hit the sides of the cup. Sky quietly thanked her as she left, watching as she returned to her station behind the counter, then he took a sip of his cold drink.

It was quiet, the three heroes quietly enjoying their drinks and lost in thought. The only audible sounds were that of the quiet creaks of the old building settling and the Inn worker moving around in her area.  Then Legend set down his mug with a sigh.

"The silence is killing me, someone start talking."

"About?" Time asked, raising an eyebrow.

"How about your adventures, not like there's very much else to talk about."

"Anything in particular?" Sky questioned, running his now cold fingers over his sleep tunic.

"Have any of you time traveled?"

Time subtly flinched, while Sky hummed in thought.

"A few times maybe, though not for particularly long. Unless you count items that altered time in a small area," Sky replied, ignoring the prickle of his skin at the thought of the final fight he had in the past. He scratched at his arm, hoping that the action wasn’t questioned.

"So? What did you do?"

"Well, there was Lanayru Mines and the Sand Sea. There were these gems called Timeshift stones that altered time in a small area. It was pretty mesmerizing to watch the sand turn into grass or water after striking the gems."

“Fascinating,” Time spoke, “just those two areas then?”

“Well, kind of? It was all over the Lanayru region in my area, all spread out and if you struck one, then the one you had struck earlier lost it’s power. I enjoyed myself quite a bit while there, especially once I found a few treasures I had never seen before, though that was just because I had never been on the surface before.”

“Treasures?” Legend perked up at that, eyes seeming to glitter slightly.

“What you and I consider treasure are quite different, my friend,” Sky chuckled, shaking his head with an amused smile, “The Timeshift stones brought back ancient things, including flowers and insects. I ended up with quite a collection of those flowers.”

Legend shrugged, leaning back in his chair, then turned to the Old Man.

"Being called the Hero of Time, I bet you've done some time traveling as well."

Time sighed, running a hand over his face.

"I have, though not all of it was particularly pleasant."

"You don't have to talk about anything you're uncomfortable with," Sky said, giving what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"Well... there was the time I caused a particularly interesting time paradox," Time replied, smiling as he took a sip of his drink, “I learned a song in one time period that I then taught to the same man in the other time period.”

"Been there, done that, got anything more interesting?" Legend asked, crossing his arms with an unimpressed look on his face.

"I've done that too," Sky smiled awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck.

"Fine then, how about going through a dungeon twice, once in the past and once in the present?"

"Okay, I’ve done that too, but go on."

Time rolled his eye, then leaned back in his chair.

"There was this dungeon in the middle of the desert that I could only get to after proving myself to the tribe that lived there. Once I got access to the dungeon, I had to first navigate the desert wastes to get to the entrance and then go back to the past to go through it the first time. Took a fair bit of time too," Time spoke, though he sighed after that, "That was only one half of the place though, and I had to do the other half in the present. Though I didn't mind doing that, it took much longer than any other dungeon I had done before."

"I can understand that" Sky nodded, "the ship I had to enter while at the Sand Sea took longer to get to the end of than I thought it would, but it was quite enjoyable."

Then Sky and Time glanced at Legend.

"I don't believe you've talked about yourself just yet," Time spoke, raising a brow with his arms crossed.

"Okay okay, you're right. Give me a second to think," he sighed, taking a swig of coffee.

After a minute or two, Legend put the mug back down.

"My second or third adventure, hard to say which was which, I met an Oracle who could control time. I had to save her from this witch by using her Harp to travel through time myself. As far as interesting events, I stopped this one idiot from killing his ancestor and making himself no longer exist."

"Time paradox, been there, done that," Time smirked, Legend looking annoyed at being quoted.

"Fine then, I did some similar bullshit to you. There was this one cave that I had to go through in two different eras, had to switch it up while I was inside it which was all sorts of disorienting. Got a new item, fought a mini-boss and a boss, got an important quest thing, you know the drill.” Legend sighed, picking up his drink again, “Fucking water temples pain in the ass.”

He mumbled that next part, though Sky laughed quite loud, startling the poor worker and Time, the latter of which looked somewhat concerned at the outburst. Sky’s face burned with slight embarrassment, though he giggled for a while longer.

“It wasn’t that funny, Sky,” Legend rolled his eyes, though the self-satisfied smile betrayed how he really felt about Sky’s reaction.

When he finally calmed down enough to speak, Sky wiped the small bit of tears that had gathered at the corners of his eyes.

"That's pretty cool," Sky said, stretching his arms above his head, "So was that all you did then? Granted, I guess I didn't say anything much about my adventure."

"Eh, there really wasn't much else to talk about, I guess. Did some bullshittery, met some ancestors, and saved a different land and a few people. You know, regular hero stuff."

This earned a chuckle from all of them.

“You met your ancestors though? I think that’s a new one, if you’re willing to share some of it.” Time said, gesturing for the other to continue.

Legend sighed, running a hand through his hair and slumping forward.

“I guess it’s fine to share, but don’t expect me to tell you my life story or anything,” with an accepting nod from both heroes, Legend continued.

“His name was Sir Raven, and he was knight of Labrynna, the place I was saving at the time. He was serving the current Queen, and he knocked me around quite a bit when we first met. He was honorable, taught me a few things too. Of course, with my fucking around with time, I changed his history. He was a more high-ranking knight than before, not that anyone noticed though, so I guess that’s a win for me.”

“That’s really impressive though,” Time stated, “I think it’s more than others in our group can say as far as knowing our families.”

Sky nodded, taking a sip of his drink, then clearing his throat.

"Okay, I guess I have one more thing I could share. There was this guardian dragon in Lanayru, but in the present, he had died. I had to use the Timeshift Stones to talk to him and figure out how to revive him. It took a while, but I figured out he needed a specific magic fruit to get his strength back. Took some moving from place to place and going back in time to plant the seed, then back to the present to get the tree fully grown."

Sky drank some water then, watching Legend's interested look and Time's nearly rapt attention. With a smile, he continued.

"Then it was just a matter of delivering the fruit back to the desert via a robot who hated my guts."

Legend laughed at that.

"Somehow I can see a hunk of junk hating only you for no particular reason."

“Would you believe me if I said he had a crush on the spirit of the Master Sword?”

The admission caused the table to erupt in laughter, the joyful sound echoing in the quiet space. The Inn worker loudly shushed them from her place, Sky and Time shooting apologetic looks her way as they calmed down. When the laughter subsided, the three sat in silence again. It was only broken by a loud yawn from Time.

"I think it may be wise to at least try to sleep. We're heading out early after all."

The two nodded, watching as Time left a handful of rupees on the table and headed back up to his room. Legend sighed, running a finger along the rim of his now empty mug.

“He has a point, but I don’t see myself actually sleeping much tonight. Ah well.”

He stretched as he stood up, then turned back to Sky.

“You coming?”

“Yeah, just give me a bit.”

The Veteran shrugged, making his way up the stairs and back into the room. Sky sat alone for a moment, thinking about the other things he did on his adventure and how the happier picture he had painted didn’t quite match up with reality. Finally feeling the pull of sleep, he left his glass on the table with a handful of rupees, making his way back to bed and finally falling asleep.

[acelucky]

NYE Post

I love a good NYE post where I summarise the ups and downs of the year and put into thoughts what I’m looking forward to next year. I try to keep it brief, I rarely succeed. I feel this is essentially like those old fashioned round robin letters people still occasionally do in Christmas cards!

Bad bits - All the World Events/cost of living and energy crisis/War and weather aside... I finally caught covid, an old friend passed away in horrible circumstances, my dear bunny Cloud died in June, a relative has fallen very ill and may not have long left to live and at the start of the year my mental health was in shocking shape. I also broke my wrist playing 5-aside football with work in September.

The Good - I completed an amazing course of therapy which has left me feeling so much more confident and happy in myself - it really has changed my outlook on life. I saw the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in March, I’ve also visited several fascinating museums and exhibitions. There’s been lots of concerts, the most amazing being seeing Placebo again at Portsmouth Guildhall, seeing Joe Jackson with my dad and after years of trying to see them live, getting to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at all points east festival with @cassandrafey  My husband and I had a long road trip up to the lake district to visit his family as well as see where he grew up and visit some of my favourite places too, it was lovely. I did a 27 and a half mile walk with work for charity (The Surrey Three Peaks challenge but we got a bit lost), it was the most physically difficult thing I’ve done in my life and I was so proud of myself. For my birthday we went to Longleat Safari and stayed overnight nearby - we fed the lorikeets and the seals, it was absolutely perfect.  In October my husband and I went abroad for the first time since June 2019, we went to Rhodes, Greece and it was beautiful, relaxing and romantic. We had a lovely wedding anniversary and went to the Theatre to see Swan Lake. And finally we had a 3 night family holiday to Bruges where we experienced all the magic of late Autumn/cold crisp winter and saw all the Christmas lights.

New Year’s Resolutions - I pretty much have one this year and that is simply. To be more mindful. More mindful about what I spend my money on, what I eat, how I take care of myself, how I react to situations, what I reveal about myself at work, how much I drink at comedy gigs, what and who I spend time and energy on. 

Looking to 2023 - On the one hand next year already has some very big plans and will be busy, but due to this my plan is to keep other times quieter than usual and focus more on me and the relationships I hold dear/my home. I’ll still be performing comedy but not doing as much or chasing it, I’ll continue to run the comedy night’s I run and will still perform once or twice a month at new gigs/the best gigs/gigs worth doing and am doing a Split show at Brighton and Ventnor fringe festivals, but that’s it. I want to focus more on the funeral industry and potential career change and my writing.

Plans for 2023 - There’s a few loose ones like my husband and I hopefully going to Ireland for a week. But set in stone the biggest adventure I have is going to New Zealand with my dad in May (and a night in Singapore) to explore, show him my favourite places and see family. We have Beltane Festival at the end of April at Butser Ancient Farm and in September I’m off to Budapest with the wonderful @cassandrafey to see IAMX. Oh and we may have bought tickets to see Def Leppard and Motley Crue in London....

So that’s my re-cap for the year, whether anyone reads it or not, it strangely makes me feel better knowing I’ve written it all down and can reflect in time to come.

In the meantime, I wish you all a very Happy New Year! 

(Photos are of: Cloud the bunny, Sunset in Rhodes, me on my birthday, The Lake District with my husband, Bruges)

[goldenraeofsun]

Good Ideas

1.5k of canon-divergence fluff, now on AO3!

Dean is almost finished with his standard gun cleaning (once a week whether they need it or not) when footsteps approach from outside his bedroom door. Heavier than Eileen but lighter than Sam - must be Cas. 

“What an awful day,” Cas sighs as he practically throws himself onto Dean’s prized memory foam mattress. He doesn’t even take his shoes off first, like an animal.

“Hello to you, babe,” Dean says, amused. He raises his head to fully look at Cas, now face planted into his pillow. Dean would like to say it’s unusual to see Cas this drained and frustrated after another shift at the Gas n Sip, but it’s become pretty much standard. And, because not-that-deep-down Dean’s a shitty person who lucked out and got a (fallen) angel to fall for him, he can’t entirely squash the pleased feeling in his gut that flares up every time Cas comes home to him, no matter the circumstances.

“Hello, Dean,” or that’s what Dean assumes Cas is saying, based on their past million and a half conversations over more than a decade.

Dean carefully sets down his colt and pads over to the bed. He takes a seat near Cas’s shins, the mattress slowly but surely dipping as it remembers Dean’s distinctive ass print. “What happened?”

“Humanity is stupid.”

Dean snorts. “Don’t have to tell me twice. What’d humanity do this time?”

Cas turns his head so he can glare balefully down at Dean with one brilliant blue eye. “Todd refilled the soda machine incorrectly. We had to reimburse ten customers who poured the wrong drinks despite the clear signs indicating the buttons were temporarily incorrect.”

“What a disaster,” Dean deadpans.

Cas groans a stream of indistinguishable words that might not even be English - knowing him, he’s probably insulting Todd’s mother ancient Aramaic or something - before he concludes, “It was a very uncomfortable situation. Todd is an imbecile.”

“Want me to kill him for you?” Dean asks casually.

Cas’s whole torso inflates with the depth of his sigh. “No,” he says, but the word is muffled and has zero conviction behind it.

“Come on,” Dean pokes Cas in the thigh. “You were the one who wanted this job in the first place. All the ‘human dignity’ you could choke down and all that crap.”

“I must’ve been mistaken.”

“Whatever you say, man,” Dean says, grinning as Cas rolls over so he’s lying normally on Dean’s bed. “Y’know, you could always do something else. Quit the Gas n Sip.”

“Like what?” Cas asks as he frowns up at the ceiling. “I don’t have much experience except in inventory management and customer service.”

“What about all your angel stuff?”

“I can hardly list ‘former Angel of the Lord’ on my resume,” Cas grumbles.

“You’ve got all those languages crammed in your brain, serious hand-to-hand skills - I could teach you all I know about cars, and you can add that.”

Cas gives a considering grunt.

“Look,” Dean says as he scoots further up the bed so he’s more aligned with Cas’s chest than his knees. “You were the one who was all gung-ho about getting a job to interact with normal people.”

“I needed a better baseline now I’m human because you and Sam are not ‘normal’ by any definition of the word,” Cas sniffs.

“Rude. Anyway, I told you to take things slow. So your first stab back at slumming it with regular folks isn’t going so great. Sometimes these things take a while to settle down,” Dean says, uncomfortably reminded of the time he had to comfort Sammy after three piano lessons didn’t turn him into the next Geoff Nicholls - or Elton John, as Dean had to amend after Sammy shot him a look of complete incomprehension.

“You don’t have to throw yourself into anything,” Dean adds gently to Cas. “We’ve got no big bad waiting out in the wings. It’s okay to take things one step at a time.”

“Because you provide such an excellent model of restraint and forethought,” Cas mutters.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Obviously. You don’t see me jumping back into Leave it to Beaver.”

“Because that’s not what you want,” Cas says, his eyes narrowing. “You said civilian life isn’t for you.”

Dean swallows. He pulls at a wrinkle in the sheets. “You so sure about that?”

Cas props himself up on his elbows, intrigued. “You’re truly considering retiring from hunting?”

Dean glances over at his guns, disassembled and gleaming on his desk. “I’ve been thinking about it. Sammy doesn’t go on many hunts anymore, says it’s more important to teach the next generation of fighters than handling everything by ourselves.”

“A wise thing to say, considering the limitations of the average human lifespan.”

“And you wonder why we never bring you to parties,” Dean says as Cas scowls in return, really only proving Dean’s point. “I’ve been looking into other stuff to do.”

“Like what?”

“Not sure,” he admits. “Sam’s got his Hunter Hogwarts thing going on - I could help Sam out, but the thought of reading and assignments makes me want to throw myself out a window.”

“You do like to be more hands-on,” Cas says diplomatically.

Dean sighs, wistful. “If the Roadhouse was still around, I would’ve kicked ass there. Talking with veterans in the business, passing along intel, throwing out the occasional brawler.”

Cas cocks his head. “Why don’t you rebuild one?”

“What?”

“Another Roadhouse,” Cas says like it’s obvious. “Those hunters Sam is teaching, they will need another meeting point once they’ve completed their training.”

Dean gapes at him, trying not to get his hopes up. He can picture it with alarming clarity, him behind the bar, Cas sitting off to the side, pouring over the books or a translation for one of Sam’s kids.

But this thing with Cas is so new - rescuing Cas from the Empty, telling him haltingly and not in so many words Cas could have what he wanted after all, doing their weird not-dating thing that works for them. Dean can’t be sure they’re on the same page about this.

Cas is technically human, but so many parts of him are still pretty out there in terms of fitting in with normal people stuff. Dean suggested they go on an honest to God date about two weeks after that went down - dinner at a fancy place in Salina. He even looked it up on Yelp. But, naturally, Cas had to ask ahead of time what usually happened on a date - a real date, Dean, because Metatron’s pop culture dump gave me many false impressions of what is normal or healthy for humans. 

When Dean embarrassingly couldn’t think of a single thing people did on dates except eat and have sex, Cas went to Sam because apparently there are zero boundaries when it comes to Team Free Will. And Sam, like a total Samantha, said most people talked about their feelings and life goals.

To which Cas turned back to Dean, said those big, I love you, words like they’re nothing and everything, and added his life goal was not dying before spending the rest of his human life with Dean.

The fucker even looked pleased Dean didn’t have to shell out the dough for a fancy steak.

“You have enough connections in the community to round up a decent clientele base,” Cas continues. “Not to mention your reputation, which would go a long way towards drawing hunters you personally haven’t met before.”

Dean clears his throat. “You really think I could do something like that?”

Cas narrows his eyes. “I think you could do anything you set your mind to,” he says with that patented-Cas sincerity that Dean would call bullshit with anyone else. Cas continues, “Twenty-seven percent of restaurants fail in their first year, but I have every confidence in you beating the odds.”

Dean snorts. Even Cas’s Beautiful Mind statistics aren’t enough to bring his mood down.

“And if you need help…” Cas drifts off sheepishly, “I do have requisite experience managing inventory. I cut down on unsellable food by fifteen percent two weeks ago.”

“You’re a goddamn genius,” Dean breathes as he bends over Cas.

Cas smiles up at him. “Would you want to?”

“Would I - ?” Dean breaks off incredulously to kiss him. “Of couse I fucking want to. But you really think it’s a good idea?”

Cas purses his lips. “It was my suggestion in the first place.”

“But maybe you were just spitballing,” Dean hedges. “So if you really think restarting the Roadhouse would be a bad idea, I can take it.”

Cas wraps a hand around the back of Dean’s neck, pulling him closer. “I don’t have bad ideas, Dean,” he murmurs.

That is so blatantly untrue, Dean almost bursts out laughing. But before he can make a sound, Cas’s other hand slides underneath his shirt, his fingers tapping lightly against the buckle of Dean’s belt. Dean raises his head to catch sight of Cas's face, and Cas’s eyes are dark with want.

Alright, so in times like these, Dean can admit Cas can have a good idea or two.

[stormwarnings]

luthien is pretty. 

luthien is pretty, and beautiful, and her father’s lovely little star, and from the moment she is born, she is pretty. it’s a mantra they repeat to her, as they dress her in deep blues and royal purples and shimmering golds, as they braid back her hair and teach her to dance and teach her to sing. 

what nobody really remembers is that luthien came out of the womb angry. 

melian hadn’t had a child before. melian wasn’t an elf. melian carried her child for due time, and when she got bored of the pain and the frustration, she gave birth. so luthien came into the world kicking and screaming. she came into the world just like her mother. ready to fight.

and halfway across the world, there’s an elf named feanor, named spirit of fire, and he too is born angry, and in this world of lovely things (the girdle around doriath, the calacirya past tirion) they are similar. not the same, but similar.

the difference is this - one of them is told yes my son, may you live long and love fiercely, and may you fight for that which you must defend. one of them is told no my daughter, may you dance often and shine brightly, but these ways of ours are alien to your father and his people. 

but both are told your ways are not for us.

and perhaps luthien is lonely. perhaps it is a horrible existence, this strange state of being that is singular only to her. (and not in the history of arda is there another like her, is there? her descendants, so odd and so strange simply due to her blood, and perhaps it is good there is no others like her, perhaps then the world would have broken into pieces - )

perhaps luthien is lonely, in her beauty and her dresses and her songs. but more than anything, she is angry. 

because this blood that she carries. it is not that of the second children (though her descendants, with their thrice-cursed lineage, they are another tale) and it is barely that of the first. it is that of stars, of dreams, of sparkling skins that shift like the heat that ripples off the fire, and luthien is a small child and she has to hold it all in like a raging inferno - 

luthien does not tell her mother of her dreams: of gull feathers, of a hidden city burning to the ground, of jewels so bright they defy possibility, of twins drifting through the wood and twins drifting through blood and twins drifting through the wood and two girls with her face, and a voice cold and dark and ancient -

melian says you must hide it. they are not like you. you are one of a kind. you must hide it. melian knew dreams. melian knew enchantment. melian knew how to hold it all in. luthien doesn’t. too many teeth, too many eyes, proportions put together all wrong because she doesn’t know how to be this kind of existence. all this anger. all these teeth. what does that make her.

what does that make her.

feanor dies on these shores. luthien doesn’t. everyone dies, on these shores, and luthien doesn’t. they fight battles, and luthien does not leave the girdle, but something starts flickering under her skin, all incandescent and familiar. luthien laughs. 

luthien meets a mortal man.

theirs will be a story for the ages, she knows. beren looks her in the eyes and says i am not afraid of what you are. luthien tells him you should be. beren shakes his head. you are far too beautiful to limit yourself, my lady.

and what can luthien say to that?

they send beren to find the silmaril, and send him away, and melian says to luthien he is no match for you, my love. did he not faint away from your might? did i not tell you? 

you must hide it.

luthien leaves. theirs is a story for the ages.

luthien remembers the beautiful fragility of her mortal love - how unafraid he was to spit in the face of terror, how unafraid he was to die. luthien remembers the beautiful fragility of his face when he did not falter before her. luthien laughs at celegorm and curufin and hopes they hear how her voice breaks in seven; hopes they see how her nails are also claws. luthien and huan rescue beren, and then they set off for angband, and when they come across the enemy, the great darkness of the north -

luthien sings him to sleep. he sees a mortal man and a shining girl-child, and he steps down from his throne, and that is his first mistake.

they cut a silmaril from his crown. theirs will never be a twice-done feat. it is only this once. the jewels are so bright they blind, and for a moment luthien in her exhaustion sees the carnage, sees the blood, and had she more strength, perhaps she would have destroyed them then and there.

but that is not how stories go.

it is said that theirs is a romance and a tragedy, an epic and a song. beren dies, and luthien faces mandos himself, and in all her fury and fire, beren is returned to her, and she is made mortal. they carry the silmaril, and they live happily, and the stories will not remember the most about luthien. will not remember the wings, will not remember the sorrow in melian’s eyes, will not remember how luthien bled light and cried blood, will not remember the screams she woke beren with, every night.

luthien is pretty. 

celebrimbor never met luthien. perhaps if he had, he would have held more wariness towards beautiful annatar. they were too similar, and when annatar finally shed his form and celebrimbor knew him to be sauron, he understood this truth that was at the very heart of luthien’s being - 

anger is beauty. beauty is terror. and terror is simply that which one does not know.

[liquid-luck-00]

Seven Deadly Sins x Maribat

Medieval Au

@maribat-bdbwm

Based on this idea

~~~~~~~~~~

Ten years ago.

On the outskirts of the city of Liones, of the capital of the country Liones, in the land of Britannia, homes destroyed, and countless holy knights laid butchered in the streets.

That day will go down in history for its infamy, the day the Seven Deadly Sins betrayed the country of Liones.

---

This is a tale of ancient times, an era before the human and non-human worlds were forever divided. When the Holy Knights, defended the realm, wielding their magical powers they were feared and highly respected. But among them a group emerged, that betrayed the kingdom, and became mortal enemies to all Holy Knights. They were known throughout the land as the Seven Deadly Sins.

---

Present day.

Near the Kaynes Village, there was a new tavern that was a buzz with customers.

“Here you go, drink up.” A young girl placed five steins of ale on the table. She had dark black hair that shown blue, pulled into twin pigtails by two pink ribbons, and bangs that framed her face and blue eyes. She wore a collared off-white shirt under a black vest with green panels. A pink skirt over leggings that reached halfway down her calf. And wore black and green boots. As more people come in, she directs them all with a smile.

“For a little lady, she is one hard working waitress.” A customer acknowledges.

“Oh no, I’m not the waiter, Buddy” She turns around. “I’m the owner of this place.” She turns to walk away.

“She’s the owner?!? A young kid like that.” But she doesn’t hear them.

“Alright, fresh from the oven. The meat pie that made the Boar Hat famous. Enjoy.” Three patrons dug into the pie, and promptly got sick. “You should have known. Our reputation is for having really good booze, but the food not so much.” She said with a completely straight face.

“Are trying to mess with us you little punk.” One shouted ready to fight.

“Wait guys, she’s packing a sword.” Another of the three pointed out. The handle was an emerald green and looked like a dragon with ruby eyes.

“Well, you guys, looks like we have a problem.” Her smile fell and she snapped her fingers. “Now let’s fix it.”

“Come on you call that a mess.” Out trotted a shiny black pig, wearing an earring tag. “Really what do you need me for?”

“Wait!!! That pig. He’s talking.”

“Yes, I’m a talking pig, what a bunch of dum-dums.”

“Plagg, we need to get this floor cleaned.” She spoke.

“Ugh, what a hassle.” Plagg complained. “Scrap disposal is a tough business.” He ate leaving, but before he did, he retorted. “Next time there better be some decent sized scraps.”

“You know I have an old family recipe for whole roasted hog.” She spoke to no one in particular, but with a deadpanned expression. Which changed Plagg’s tune quickly.

Then someone barged in. “I saw it. I really saw it.” He sat down. “I swear to all that is holy. I saw the wandering Rust Knight.”

“That’s just a made-up story, like how parents get their kids to stop misbehaving. The Seven Deadly Sins will come in blood rusted armor, oooh ahhh.”

“The Seven Deadly Sins?” She asks from behind the bar.

“You’ve never heard of them? They’re wanted posters are hanging everywhere, like those over there.”

She looks at the board and there were seven faces and seven names. Marinette, Chloe, Adrien, Luka, Felix, Lila, and Kagami.

“How long has it been? Ten years. When all those holy knights were slaughtered so fast, they couldn’t defend themselves. It was the Seven Deadly Sins that did it. From what I've been told the way the holy Knights’ grandmaster was killed was too gruesome for anyone to look at.” They began to talk amongst themselves.

“They say their captain, Marinette, is the scariest of them all. It's even said that she's brought down whole countries on her own.” Everything went quiet.

Until another patron spoke up. “Well none of them have been caught yet have not a single one.”

“They’re dead, they have to be the new Holy Knights would never let them live after what they've done.”

“Yeah you've got a point even now with the kings sick. The Holy Knights are making sure that the Kingdom stays safe for all its people. But those notices up on the board get updated every single year. Doesn’t that mean those seven criminals are still out there?”

“Yeah well some spooky knight walking around in rusty armor sounds pretty ridiculous to me.”

“You’re right.”

A crash, scraping, and banging was heard just outside the Tavern door.

“That smells an awful lot like rust to me.” Plagg sniffed the air and then cowered behind the counter.

The door opened and there stood the rusted knight. “The Seven Deadly Sins…” Hhe moaned as he entered the Tavern.

Screaming, panic, and everyone rushing out of the Tavern ensued. Fleeing from the rusted knight.

The girl jumped over the counter and stood her ground defiantly looking at the Rust knight. “Now who are you?”

The Rust knight swayed and then fell to the ground collapsed. His helmet rolled off of him. And then they saw his face, his eyes shut tight in the pain and exhaustion, his black hair short and messy stuck to his face from the sweat. And he wore a singular earring, a true blue engraved with something in red and gold.

“This kid is one of the Seven Deadly Sins?” Plagg asked the girl, and they took him up to the room taking the armor off of him. “He's just a boy.”

“Let’s just make sure.” The girl went up to the boy and started poking him first on his thigh, then his stomached, his bicep, she was leaning over him and was about to poke his cheek when his eyes flew open. “Yep, he's a boy.”

“Um, pardon me but what am I doing here?” He was quiet and soft spoken.

“Oh yeah you came into my bar then you passed out cold.”

“Your bar?”

“Yeah, the Boar Hat, my Tavern.”

“You’re the owner?”

“Is that so weird?”

“I just saw that sword, so I naturally assumed.”

“Oh, this old thing.” She motioned and pulled the sword from its scabbard. “Ha ha ha. Yeah, I guess if you only see the handle, it can fool ya huh.” All that rose up and out with her hand was the handle and a small stub was left of the blade, which was practically worthless in a fight. “It makes guests think twice about skipping out on their tabs.” She put the sword handle back into its scabbard on her back.

Which was when they moved downstairs to the raven again. Marinette cooked up something for the boy, and set the plate in front of him.

“First you nurse me back to health, now you're feeding me, how can I possibly thank you enough.” He barely choked out.

“First before saying thanks you should probably try the food first.” Plagg’s nasally voice cut into his words.

“What do you think? Awful isn't it.” She leaned down on the bar now watching him eat with a grin on her face.

“Yes.” He responded.

Which caused both her and Plagg to respond in unison. “Knew it was.”

But then something shocked them, he started to cry.

“Still its delicious.” Tears fell down his face.

“So what exactly were you doing walking around in that old armor, anyways?” She asked the boy.

“I'm on a personal quest to find the Seven Deadly Sins.” He answered.

“Why would you do that? You don’t even know if those guys are even still alive or not, and they’re serious villains.” Plagg reasoned.

That was when banging was heard on the tavern door, knights banged on the door, and ordered them to open up for them.

That was when she noticed the boy got slightly afraid at the mention of Knights.

After a moment of the Knights bickering to themselves, that gave her just enough time to think. She went and opened the door.

“Who are you?” One of the Knights asked her as she opened the door.

“I'm the owner of this place. What do you want?” She was relaxed.

“The Rust Knight is in there, send him out!” The same knight answered.

“Alright.” She turned around and looked back. “You might want to come out now.”

They all looked past her and saw Plagg dressed in the armor that the boy was wearing walk out.

“You have some nerve mocking the Knights of this land like this.” He grabbed her by the shirt and lifted her up off the ground. She was small, sure but he still held her up a meter off the ground.

That’s when the boy had snuck out of the back and made a run for it into the forest. Unfortunately, he was seen. “Look a boy just ran out, after him.”

The knight threw her back to the ground and she and Plagg shared a worried look.

The two of them ran after the boy and the Knights, Plagg mowed down, tackling each and every one, while she went after the boy. The last knight got pushed down off of the cliff at the edge of the forest by Plagg. While she and the boy were safely out of the way in one of the trees at the edge.

“So why are you looking for the Seven Deadly Sins anyways?” She asked him once they were back on the ground.

“To stop the Holy Knights.” He answered.

“Are you serious!! Why in the world would you wanna do that?” Plagg exclaimed. “The Holy Knights are the king’s men, the knights are here to protect us they are heroes.”

“But what if they were behind a plot to start a war in our country. Except for the king himself, the entire royal family was arrested and is being held by the Holy Knights.”

“Does that mean the king isn't really sick in bed?” Plagg asked the boy.

“That’s just a cover story the Holy Knights are using. I don't know what they think they can accomplish by driving the nation to war, but now they're drafting people. Taking men wherever they can get them they're preparing for war everywhere you look. So their reach will even extend all the way out here.” He shook his head.

“Yeah tough break, huh?” She finally responded.

“Wow you don't have any empathy at all. How does this tie back to the Seven Deadly Sins again?” Plagg shook his head.

“If there's even the slightest hope of preventing the Holy Knights from doing this. I know they're the only ones who can.” He was resolute.

“Just checking here.” She Butt in again. “You’re trying to find those guys even though you know what kind of people they are?”

“The Seven Deadly Sins are the most vile Order of Knights the Kingdom ever produced, made up of seven vicious bloodthirsty criminals each one branded with the mark of the beast. Ten years ago when they were suspected of trying to overthrow the Kingdom the Knights of the realm launched a full force attack scattering them to the four winds.”

“Well if you believe the rumors they each died a long time ago.” She spoke distractedly.

“Such amazing people wouldn't possibly let themselves get killed!”

“But they are criminals aren't they causing the suffering of the people right now?” She asked confused.

“When I was small, only five or six years old, my father would tell me stories about them and that's when I learned they are the most powerful Knights!”

A rumbling was heard and then the edge of the cliff they were on started to crumble and fall beneath them, dropping them down.

“I did not confirm whether or not they were people named in the report. Conclusion two individuals of unknown origin dead. What do you think men that sounds about right?” A man wearing red armor, silver grey hair and mustache.

“But Sir Twiggle, one of our knights was still under the cliff.”

“Simply put three fatalities in the report then.” Twiggle answered haughtily.

“But Sir, you can't! That’s too far even for you”

“How about seven fatalities instead?” The knight in red armor moved towards the rest of his men, but that was also when she jumped back up on to the cliff with not only the boy and Plagg in her arms but also the knight who fell.

“When I give a signal to you run into the forest got it.” She spoke quietly to the boy.

“Which one of them would you believe to be a member of the Seven Deadly Sins. Neither bears any resemblance to the wanted posters?” He then noticed something. “God is smiling upon me today, the crystal earring you're wearing is from the royal family. Conclusion you are Prince Jonathan!”

“Wait hold on Prince Jonathan?” The knights shouted.

“You're a Prince?” She added softly.

“Orders from the Capital are to determine your whereabouts. the order was to capture you alive and in healthy condition, but if you lost your life in an unfortunate accident…” Twiggle spoke aloud.

“I can't allow myself to get captured not yet!”

“Conclusion accidental death.” Sir Twiggle let off a shockwave of air magic chopping the entire forest down to the ground.

“Hi there, you alright?” She had pulled him down and covered him from the blast. “Plagg?”

“Seriously I'm a shaved pork on a skewer.” He cried. A single small little twig had splintered in his back. And he went off crying and screaming Tikki.

Johnathan stood and started to walk towards Twiggle. “Johnathan. Hey! What are you doing?” She called after him.

“There’s no escape.”

“Wait hang on you just said you couldn't afford to be caught or to give up.”

“Maybe if I surrender myself peacefully, he'll agree to take me back with him and your life can be spared.”

Sir Twiggle sent off another blast cutting into everything again, but she was able to tackle him out of the way just in time.

“Please get out of here while you still can.” He begged her.

“I think he wants to make sure neither one of us gets out of here alive.” She noticed as She was above him once more. After the attack ensuring he was fine yet again, the only real damage done to her, and that was her left sleeve was completely torn revealing her entire arm from shoulder to fingers. A mark barely visible on her shoulder.

“I was so happy when I met you. Searching for the Seven Deadly Sins, I so scared alone in that rusty armor. There wasn't any help I could ask for. Then you show up and show me such kindness, someone that you've never met before. I don't wanna see you hurt my problems anymore when I don’t even know your name.”

Memories flashed behind her eyes and a smile spread on her lips.

“Marinette. If you really wanna know.” She grinned from ear to ear.

“I… I don't believe it you can't be you're just.” Tears threatened to fall from his eyes.

That was when the knight who fell with them regained consciousness jumping up. “Where's the girl the one with the sword. I saw it when she saved me from the cliff the symbol it was right there. The symbol on her shoulder it… it… it’s her.”

Sir Twiggle struck again now closer, right on top of them. The magic was unleashed but Marinette stood up and was now facing the Knight.

“How is this possible? My technique was flawless I am certain my blade struck her!” Twiggle began to look even more and more frazzled. “But I was the one who felt the force of the blow. How could it have hit me?! And what is that in your hand?! A broken blade! Broken blade… now your face is beginning to look familiar. Truly it can’t! How can you look exactly the same as you did then?!? No matter your time's up! How dare you still exist!”

Their blades clashed their magic erupted, which sent Twiggle and his men flying high, high into the sky almost like a meteorite.

“Extraordinary power.” Johnathan breathed.

“Captain of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Dragon sin of Wrath, Marinette.” She announced.

~~~~~~~~~~

Permanent Taglist: @itsmeevie01 @adrestar @miraculouspenta @vixen-uchiha @animegirlweeb @jumpingjoy82 @thedragonbug @astoriaandroses @icerosecrystal @t1dwarrior-of-earth @moon5606 @zalladane @midnightrosecrystal @myazael @prettylittlebutterflie @toodaloo-kangaroo @roseisred @galaxymoon @queenz-z @mystery-5-5

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Story Taglist: just ask because after the bio dad even I won’t add the Event Taglist

[xelbleedsglitter]

I Went On A Manga Binge

So you don't have to

For those of you who have wisely avoided the shreds of it I've left around the blog thus-far, I had some weird notion to go re-experience Yu-Gi-Oh uuuuuh a week ago? We'll go with that. Time is meaningless.

I'd been able to read a good portion of the early manga at the end of highschool, and somewhere in my stacks and stacks of paper is fanart from this dark time, so you know I cared. I also still own a Dark Magician action figure somehow, so. I'd also watched a large portion of the anime with my brother because it had been laced with some kind of crack and we couldn't look away? I remember when we both were just like shit, wait, don't change the channel, I can't stop looking at it. And the next thing we knew we were waiting for new episodes and I was doing research on the Japanese original because I was that kid.

Anyway, unnecessary backstory out of the way, here are some... let's call them Observations and Consequences of having read somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 chapters (and growing) of a manga primarily hinged on card games from a spectrum of sources ranging from boringly lawful to sketchy as fuck.

Surprise actual character that develops in typical shounen fashion being Jounouchi. My limited experiences with the 4Kids dub and only early manga had not painted him in a particularly good light. I don't know if episodes were being aired out of order or if I had just missed the ones that established that he was making shit up as he was going along, but Wow I liked him a lot more going through the manga than I ever did watching the (dubbed, heavily edited and censored and thrown into a slurry machine) anime. I'd managed to come out with the impression that he was just as reasonably experienced with the game as Yugi back in the day. Wild.

I'm now reading every single comic-style post on Tumblr backwards.

Striking inverse to first point, wow, I don't like Seto Kaiba. Though he gets points for his general philosophy of the future, and the line I read in my sketchy online combo of scans and scanlations in which he said, "If God is in your way, you run him down," was Metal As Fuck. I somewhat shame-facedly admit to enjoying him a lot more as an Abridged Series character. (I watched Abridged as it came out back in the day! The experience of watching the anime with my brother had been so fresh that I got all the in jokes about the way things were edited and dubbed, it was great. Series remains influential part of my life to this day, which is hella weird.)

I almost understand how Duel Monsters works now. I don't want this.

That said, wow a lot of the decisions made in the anime made everything a lot more ridiculous than the admittedly already ridiculous original. I got the distinct feeling in the manga that the Duelist Kingdom stuff we were seeing was designed to be used and exploited in ways that don't make sense in an actual cardgame just played on a table like a normal person and this was part of testing everyone to think higher, differently. Maybe this is obvious to everyone already, I don't know. I had always liked that it was very, 'Not so fast, I'm going to blow up the moon to change the tides,' but I'm not really sure the anime gave enough explanation that this was an extra layer added to things for that event? You can see people actively getting used to it in the books, and people who aren't considering the real or 3D nature of it getting owned, but my memory of anime version is everyone just like, 'oh, shucks, fuck me, I forgot to consider the phase of the moon before i played this card, can't believe I forgot.' No one calls Yugi on any of this stuff because it's valid play in that situation. Plus Yami Yugi had mad trickster energy in the beginning and it suited him to think of ways to do things inside these little simulation boxes the way it suited him to set perverts on fire. I imagine the real card game trying to emulate this element as something that would be to its detriment, but I neither know nor particular care haha

Ryou Bakura.

Really, though. I think he became kind of casualty of 'wow, we have a lot of characters who really aren't able to do anything in this story anymore,' despite the fact that his whole inner life could have been as interesting as Yugi's. I always like thinking about the possibilities of stories in which main character falls into magical world and is given magical item and told they're the hero and then they find out they've been the bad guy the whole time. The first several volumes of manga were about the quiet weirdo kid that no one talked to who was always blacking out and turning into a fucked up version of himsef because he was so attached to his ancient Egyptian jewelry, so like, Bakura could have much the same shit going on. I want to know what's happening with him so much. He clearly doesn't love being possessed, but he's also so drawn to the ring. Despite it having stabbed him at least twice and him knowing it's a danger to him and his friends, he keeps being pulled back into it. You see so much more of him being like, 'Oooh, a creepy thing, I love that! :D' in the manga than ever in the anime, which I'm all about. Also more blood. I'm very about that as well. Though my memory of the anime also made it look very much like normal regular daily Bakura was just a weird facade in places before he ever would have been. I think that was it trying to compensate for what people didn't see from the Toei anime, but okay whatever, that I love everything about this guy is not news, I don't need to talk about Bakura excessively here, I'm pretty sure that's gonna show up on my blog by itself

On a related note though, damn, more of these people need to talk to each other. Can we have some existential crisis support clubs or something. Can we get like some apologies or something? "I respect you as a duelist." "Cool, but you literally built a tower designed to specifically assassinate me and my friends? You were supposed to get Better after I retaliated by putting you in a coma, but you kinda didn't." "Why would the coma have made it better" "I just told you it didn't" ---- "Sorry I went along with the plan of your evil parasite stabbing you, misled you, and then also jumped in and took up some real estate in your head too." "I understand, I also have an evil thing inside me that does things while I'm blacked out." "...no, I was conscious for all of that." "Oh." "..." "..." "..." "Do you like Ouija Boards?" "sure okay" ETC. Like damn we are reading shounen manga because no one is talking extensively about their feelings here and I'm tapping my foot angrily.

Holy shit there are so many mythologies happening at once. The ancient family guarding the Egyptian Pharaoh has a surname that's a Mesopotamian goddess. None of the god cards make any Egyptian sense except Ra, and just like. Baaarrrrely. Somewhere either Evil Ring Bakura or Mar/lik makes a reference to cremation and spirits being taken to heaven with smoke which several things, but definitely not Ancient Egyptian. Marik/Malik meanwhile is clearly trying to head Arabic, along with Rishid, but then, hey, our sister is just Isis. Goddess McGoddess. Sometimes they're the same goddess! Her name could be Isis Isis or Ishtar Ishtar. Meanwhile, all the obviously 'occult because Christians think it is freaky' stuff. ~ancient egyptian pentagrams~~~This isn't a complaint, I guess so much as a 'Wow, I can kind of see the cultural spot the author was coming from and where he was aiming' kind of thing.

Wonder where things would have gone if the card games had not been latched onto the way they were.

Managed to forget how gross the pre-cardgames stuff was on the sexual harassment front. I'm glad there was a sort of explanation of everyone drifting away from being dick heads and that that decision was made. It got way more comfortable to read after no one was bringing Yugi p*rn on VHS.

Yugi looks better with a nose, glad we got that upgrade.

Interesting to watch the series style shift as it goes away from being horror to being over the top cardgames and friendship (with blood!). The first picture of Mokuba is fucking Jarring. Also noticed that the nicer a character is, the less their teeth are defined.

Glad manga did not go as completely off the fucking the rails about Marik's face. I never got as far as seeing him back in the day because college occurred, but I remember seeing pictures and stuff and being like, "what in the Fuck happened to that dude, I think the house style has collapsed in on itself"

Things the author Really Likes: motorcycles, belts, SHOES, holy shit the shoes. These are some of the most lovingly rendered sneakers I've ever seen. All the detail on his characters goes straight to their feet and then it's stretched upward until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in 3000 years of trauma and bake face down in a crumb coat of scattered mythology. Remove when you roll two zeros.

Where the fuck am I going to put the extremely large omnibus volumes of this comic I purchased in order to balance out how much I would be reading for free on the internet. I should have grasped that a three in one edition would be Thick and yet somehow I was still :O when it arrived. Have I strategically purchased volumes that contain my favorite parts, maybe, what's it to you will i eventually get the whole thing because incomplete book series gnaw on my soul? yes

Wish the transition from "I've murdered several people in delightfully karmic ways" to "all you need is friendship in your heart and cards in your hand" Yami Yugi/Pharaoh had been discussed more/transitioned better. Buddy, where did you get this approved for television high horse? Please go back to strangling people with yo-yos or at least tell me why you stopped.

I still can't tell anything that looks like a big robotic monster apart from any other big robotic monster. My dude, I can't tell cars apart, all these monsters look the same.

Yami Yugi fascinated me way more in highschool? Maybe because it was still super early and the anime was like 'we need to torture you about his origins WeEkLy. Now I'm just like 'wait hold on, can we go back to Bakura and Marik for a minute, there's some extreme unpacking to do here?' Those two are paying so much more in baggage fees here my guy wow

Violently uninterested in any of the spinoff media

[papergirllife]

Tainted Innocence

Doyoung x reader x Jaehyun ( threesome )

Warnings: Explicit sex, unprotected sex

full masterlist

to request

“It’ll be fun. You can’t be studying in this golden era of our uni and not going to the golden boys’ party even once.”

“No. Please, Joy. You know I’m not the party type.”

The golden boys Joy is referring to are the popular bad boys of our university, Jeong Jaehyun and Kim Doyoung, they throw big party bashes every month for no absolute reason just to get people wasted. They rent a big house to throw parties and just to brag how rich they were.

Joy threw a dress on your face, a pastel purple summer dress.

“Let’s get dolled up, Y/N.”

‘Thank god I insisted on wearing flats.’ you thought to yourself as you walked from Joy’s parked car to the house, the house wasn’t as big as a mansion, but being compared to the tiny dorms you stayed in, it was heaven.

“Lele!”

I looked up to see Joy greeting one of her freshmen friends, the cousin of Jeong Jaehyun.

“This is Y/N.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You should drop by more often. I could finally meet the famous Y/N Joy can’t stop talking about.”

“She’s really shy. I only got her out because I typed out her report when she had a fever.”

“Enjoy yourselves. There’s a bottle of Henny in the third top cupboard if you get sick of the cheap beer.”

“You’re the best, Lele.”

Joy took your hand and led you to the kitchen and started filling a cup for you, she only poured a can of sprite from the fridge.

“Thanks.”

“Of course, you’re driving us home.”

She took your hand once again and took you to the center of the house where everyone was either dancing or socialising by the dry kitchen.

Joy saw another friend of hers and started talking to her, you sat on one of the bar stools and sipped on your sprite.

‘So much for fun.’ you thought to yourself.

You got up from your seat and walked out to the pool area where there were lesser people because of the cold. You took off your flats and dipped your legs into the chilly water, enjoying the silence.

“Partying isn’t your scene, huh?”

You turned your head back to see no other than Kim Doyoung and Jeong Jaehyun looking at you.

“No.”

You cursed at how your voice wavered when you answered them, and your eyes dropped contact after merely seconds.

They took off their shoes and joined your dipping session in their pool, two of them on each side of you.

“You don’t have to entertain me, I bet the people inside are waiting for the both of you.”

“But you’re our guest too.” Doyoung said as his eyes stared into yours, hand on your knee.

“And you’re much more entertaining than a bunch of drunk people doing nonsense, sweetheart.” Jaehyun said as his arm slung over your shoulder, pulling you close to him.

“You’re so pretty, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

“Y/N”

“A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

“You’re scaring her, hyung.”

“No. You’re the one scaring her.”

Like two overgrown kids, the two of them started bickering. Jaehyun started jabbing at Doyoung, hoping he’ll drop into the pool. But the hand supporting his weight slipped, making him lose his balance and crashed on top of you, you couldn’t support both Jaehyun’s and your own weight, so your body fell on top of Doyoung’s lap.

When you dared to open your eyes, you were surprised of the soft landing and Jaehyun’s face only milimeters away from yours. Jaehyun had a little smirk on his face, his warm hand reached up to cup your face, his lips connecting with yours. You instantly let Jaehyun dominate the kiss, letting him take all control over you.

Jaehyun pulled you up, his arms embracing you, you let out a squeak at his bold actions, your shy demeanor obvious to their watchful eyes. As Jaehyun was kissing you, you could feel Doyoung laying kisses on your neck, both their arms snaking around your waist.

You couldn’t differentiate which hand was who’s and it only added the thrill to it. A hand was cupping your clothed breast, another was grabbing your ass cheek under your dress. It was all a euphoric haze, you’ve gone this far with boys, but never more than one at once.

When someone’s hand brushed against your clothed slit, you let out a moan, to the delight of both boys. Jaehyun and you broke off the kiss when he ran out of air, his eyes were searching for any sort of objection in your eyes.

“How about we take this upstairs?” Doyoung asked, reading Jaehyun’s mind.

You quickly slipped into your flats as they wore their slides, Doyoung led the both of you to the emergency stairs leading to his room, away from the watchful eyes of the party goers.

When Jaehyun was closing the door, Doyoung crashed his lips against yours. He was less dominating compared to Jaehyun, but his hands were wandering all over your body, groping, pinching, and caressing every inch of skin he could find. You were drunk in his touch.

Doyoung moved the two of you onto the bed, but he ceased all his actions, only his hands were brushing your hair softly, eyes piercing into yours.

“Are you sure you want this, Y/N?”

“Yes.” 

You were already breathless from all the attention you were getting, but you craved more, you didn’t want this night to end.

Doyoung and Jaehyun started ridding their clothes, climbing onto the bed to greet you with their mouth watering bodies, the both of them had appealing points. Jaehyun was buffer than Doyoung, but Doyoung’s body was a perfect balance of masculinity and femininity.

The both of them started undressing you, you were grateful for picking a matching soft pink cotton set underneath your dress instead of the usual unflattering ones you wore. You knew the things you were about to do were wrong, but you couldn’t help but to crave their touch, the attention you were receiving, you never thought the school’s most popular guys would be seeing you in this light.

The innocent colour of your lingerie made Jaehyun and Doyoung snap on the inside, their minds filled only with thoughts of corrupting your purity. Just as Jaehyun was about to reach behind you to take off your bra, you stopped him gently, your hands holding onto his.

“I’ve never been touched before, I hope that doesn’t change the way you see me.”

“Never? Not even the slightest action from anyone?”

 Doyoung asked you, with a certain longing in his eyes that you can’t quite tell its meaning behind.

“No. I’m just an average girl that no one looks twice at.”

“Sweetheart, you’re so much more. People just don’t have an eye for a hidden gem like you.”

Jaehyun said as he littered love bites down your exposed body, from your neck to the insides of your thigh as Doyoung works on your other side. A hand reaches behind you to unclasp your bra, but before he did it, someone spoke up.

“Can I, sweetheart?”

It was somewhat mind-blowing because all the rumours you heard, Jaehyun fucked without any feelings nor even the slightest of care towards the girl, and here he was, asking for consent to take off your bra.

“Yes, you can.”

Jaehyun and Doyoung stared as your piece of clothing fell, they had a fair share of breasts of different sizes, but yours seem to perfectly fit the shape of the statues of ancient Greece goddesses, as if you’re breasts were moulded by the best sculptors.

The two of them cupped your breasts gently, your back arched into their touch, nipples hardening at their slightly cold fingertips.

“You’re so sensitive, Y/N.” 

Doyoung said as looked you in the eye, mesmerised by your reactions. Both of them begin playing with your nipples, pinching them, rolling in between their fingers, as the room begins to fill up with your beautiful mewls, fueling their desire to ruin your innocence, piece by piece.

Jaehyun took a nipple into his mouth, sucking onto your breast like a newborn to its mother. Doyoung’s hand slipped down to play with the waistband of your panties, sliding in between your crotch area to feel the arousal accumulated from their sinful actions. He moves your panties to the side to let a finger feel up your slit. Doyoung brings up his finger to show Jaehyun, who was distracted with both your breasts presented to him, how wet you were.Jaehyun took Doyoung’s finger into his mouth without any hesitation, tasting you.

“So fucking sweet, as expected, sweetheart. Who do you want for your first time, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should have her first, hyung. You’re more gentle.”

“Are you sure? What about you Y/N? Do you want me to be your first?”

You were so overwhelmed by their cautiousness towards you, that you just nodded.

Doyoung stripped off his clothing, leaving himself only in his boxers, a tent obviously confined in its confinements. He moved you to sit on his lap, moving to generate some friction for the both of you. Your body unconsciously circling your hips to his movements. The slight rough material of your panties rubbed against your clit deliciously, whimpers falling out your lips.

While you and Doyoung were preoccupied by your little sessions, Jaehyun sat at the corner of the bed, his cock in his hands, jerking himself off to relief his frustration. Your eyes were trailed at the sight, from the way he pumps his big cock, to the way his abs flex from his erratic movements.

Jaehyun caught you staring and gave you a wink.

“Like what you see, sweetheart?”

Doyoung was low key annoyed by your wavered attention, so he decided to pick up the pace and stripped you of your last piece of clothing along with his own boxers. He laid you down the bed and slipped a finger into you, his eyes zeroing on the way you clench around his fingers, he took it as a good sign and inserted another finger, scissoring you open, Jaehyun stopped pleasuring himself and started rubbing circular motions on your clit, you were dripping on the sheets from their ministrations.

Doyoung slipped his fingers out, and lined his cock at your entrance. He slipped in, inch by inch. Doyoung was thicker than you thought, so your walls were slow to accustom to his girth. You felt a slight pain from the penetration, but the way Doyoung slipped into you made you feel full, complete. When his whole length was inside you, he waited for your consent to move.The pain you felt initially was quick to be replaced by pleasure.

“Doyoung, you can move.”

Doyoung started off with slow and deep thrusts, but he quickly replaced them with hard and fast ones when you begged him to go faster. Jaehyun knew he was a sucker for girls who beg, but he was surprised that you didn’t even need to be told to beg. What an obedient girl.

Doyoung snapped his hips against yours, his length hitting against a spot that made you see stars as you held on for your dear life, fisting the sheets underneath you. Doyoung started going balls deep as you started clenching his length.

The room was filled with Doyoung’s grunts and your moans and whimpers, and the sound of skin slapping against skin. Your toes were clenched together at the repetitive pleasure from each of Doyoung’s stroke of his cock.Your mind was in a sexual haze, but you could feel the coil in your stomach unraveling quickly.

“D-doyoung, I think I’m going to cum.”

Doyoung slipped a finger to your folds to pinch your clit lightly, sending you over the edge. You could only see a flash of white before feeling your cum slip down Doyoung’s length as you screamed at the amount of pleasure your orgasm brought you. Doyoung gave a few more thrusts before cumming inside you, his warmth liquid filling you up.

Doyoung slipped his cock out once he was done riding out your highs, you could feel a mixture of your cum and Doyoung’s slipping out of your pussy. But before you did anything about it, Jaehyun used his finger to push it back inside of you.

Jaehyun carried you into a sitting position on his lap, pumping his cock in front of you before slipping inside you. You once again felt full, but even more so, given that Jaehyun was slightly longer and bigger than Doyoung. You were starting to develop an unhealthy obsession with the way how complete you felt.

Jaehyun started thrusting into you at a fast pace, making you bounce on top of him, your jiggling breasts a view to his eyes. Riding Jaehyun made you scream like you never did before, the way he accurately hits at your sweet spot continuously made your back arched, nails dragging down Jaehyun’s back.

You were so into the sex you were having, you hadn’t notice your phone ringing on the bedside table, Jaehyun ceased his actions and passed you the phone. He had already pressed the answer button, you looked at the caller ID to see that it was Joy.

“Hello? Y/N? Where are you?”

“Joy! I’m busy at the moment I’ll call you back in- Fuck, Jaehyun!”

Jaehyun had continue his harsh thrusts as you were on the line with Joy. You were sure Joy could hear the way Jaehyun was fucking into you. You were so humiliated that you just pressed the decline button, throwing the phone behind you.

Jaehyun had enjoyed the show, the way he felt your heartbeat quicken against his own, and the embarrassment making your cheeks red.

“Why did you do that?”

“To let people know you’re being fucked dumb by me, sweetheart, begging for me to fuck you good with my cock. Look at how you clench around me just because of my words, I’m going to ruin you.” 

Jaehyun said before focusing back on pleasuring you. You were surprised at how Jaehyun’s lewd words had such an effect on you, but you just crave for more of it. The thrill of being caught was evident in Jaehyun, but the way he said it sent shocks to your pussy. Jaehyun love how much him and Doyoung corrupted you. He looked over to Doyoung who was laying on the bed, enjoying the show in front of his eyes, but a slight smirk could be seen at the recent event that occured.

When you had enough energy to move, you started bouncing on Jaehyun, loud smacking sounds erupting from your butt coming in contact with his thighs. Your walls once again clenched tightly around Jaehyun’s length, your orgasm washing over you, making you feel spent but a sense of heightened pleasure since you were still sensitive from your previous orgasm. You bit onto Jaehyun’s shoulder when you came, your orgasm ripping a scream from you of Jaehyun’s name.

Jaehyun came not long later, his high brought by the final push of your teeth sinking into his shoulder. He pulled out of you once he was done, eyes trained on the way your pussy leaked so much cum onto his thigh. Jaehyun placed a kiss on your forehead before laying you down to rest.

When Doyoung came back to clean you up, you were already asleep.

“I’ll go find Joy to tell her about Y/N’s whereabouts after this.”

“Let her stay. We’ll keep her.”

“Really? Jeong Jaehyun willing to commit?”

“She's a special one.”

Jaehyun said as he played with your hair.

[mst3kproject]

The Giant of Marathon

For some reason, probably because I've seen them all so many times, I thought I'd already done all four Film Crew episodes.  Evidently this is not true.  Here's one, and if you haven't seen it... wow, Mr. Honcho was not exaggerating about the thousands of sweaty men.

Philippides of Athens is the greatest athlete there is, having won the entire Olympics. With the games over, he returns to his day job as commander of the Athenian city guard.  Followers of Hippias the exiled tyrant are plotting to take control of the city with help from the invading Persians, and they try to seduce Philippides to their cause by offering him wine, women, and homoerotic wrestling (it was ancient Greece, after all).  Philippides refuses to be seduced, and sets off to secure the help of Athens' old enemy Sparta in opposing the Persians.  His mission is a success, but upon his return a spy tells him that the Persians are planning a sneak attack on the harbour of Piraeus.  Can even Philippides get there in time to deliver the warning?

I don't actually know if it were possible to win the entire Olympics in ancient Greece.  I know there were several events and at least one of them involved reciting poetry.  The Battle of Marathon was in 490 BC and a table on Wikipedia suggests that there could have been up to twelve different sports, but some of them were only for children.

The Giant of Marathon touts itself as a tale of epic battles, daring deeds, and political machinations.  I'll get back to the epic battles and daring deeds, but what stands in for the political machinations is mostly a bunch of people pining.  Unimpressive villain Theocritus is pining for the beautiful Andromeda, whose father has promised her to him but she thinks he's a dick.  She's pining for Philippides, who is also pining for her but thinks she's one of Hippias' followers, so refuses to speak to her.  Meanwhile Theocritus' concubine Charis is also pining for Philippides because he's the only man who ever refused to fuck her, I think.

These relationships are important to the plot, too.  Andromeda's love for Philippides is one of the reasons her father refuses to join the traitors, and when Theocritus realizes he cannot have her, he ties her to the prow of his ship to force Philippides to watch her die.  Charis' crush on Philippides leads her to her death, as she is executed for spying.  Yet none of it is ever developed beyond 'these two pretty people saw each other and now they want to bone'.  Philippides declares his love for Andromeda after a single five-minute interaction.  Charis has seen Philippides twice, and both times it went badly, when she decides to betray Theocritus.

Why do the writers hang such important plot points on the 'love' between people who have barely spoken to each other?  I can't decide if it's because they're lazy, or because they're hacks, and I lean towards a combination of the two.  There is absolutely no subtlety to the writing in The Giant of Marathon at all.  Everything is told, not shown.  We know that Theocritus and Creusus are traitors because they talk about it, in dialogue that's clearly written for the audience, not as anything that sounds like a natural conversation. We know that Charis and Andromeda are both in love with Philippides because they say so.  The only thing we're really shown is that Andromeda hates Theocritus, which comes through in her body language (though we are also very much told), so props to actress Mylène Demongeot for that much.

The movie doesn't care about any of this character stuff, anyway.  It just wants to get straight to those epic battle scenes, and it's very obvious how much work and time went into those as opposed to everything else.  The battles are lengthy and elaborate, full of impressive stunts and props and miniatures being destroyed all over the place.  We get to see Persian chariots run down Greek infantry, and while I'm pretty sure this would have been orchestrated so the stuntmen didn't get hurt, I'm not nearly so confident about the unfortunate horses (and neither was Bill).  There are ships in flames and injured men screaming as they fall overboard.  There are even some pretty good deaths, like the guy who was hit in the eye with an arrow.  The desperate last stand of the city guard against the entire Persian fleet, with the Spartans arriving just in time to save the day, is very tense indeed.

I get the impression that this is what somebody really wanted to put on screen, and they did a decent job of it, but pretty much the entire rest of what ought to be the story is just an accessory to the fighting stuff.  It's as if the film-makers wanted so badly for their fight sequences to be epic that they forgot what makes epic-ness – which is the characters and their stake in the events. We don't know any of these people, none of them have anything we might call a personality trait, and so we don't care.

The focus on how epic it all is makes I seem a little strange that the battle ends on a shot of dead Persian guys floating in the water. You'd think they'd want to end with something that more decisively shows the Athenian victory, maybe the men cheering as the Persian ships turn around and flee.  Or perhaps some kind of victory celebration, which could mirror the celebration of Philippides winning the Olympics in the opening and call back to the scene where Philippides asks the goddess Athena to protect her city.

Instead, we cut to a shot of Philippides and Andromeda walking across the farmland together.  This feels a little too sudden, and is also a poor fit with the rest of the movie.  The only time we've seen Philippides on his farm is when he's gotten disgusted with the politics of Athens and returned to the countryside to sulk.  If the farm is supposed to be a place where he's happy and at peace, the movie never establishes it.

So that's political machinations and epic battle sequences, let's talk about some daring deeds.

Unlike the Hercules and Maciste movies we've seen in the past, The Giant of Marathon wants to be grounded in real-life history.  This means that while the script does reference gods and mythical heroes, none of them ever appear and there is no hint of them working behind the scenes to bring events about.  Likewise, Philippides is not a demigod, so we avoid several of the tropes associated with the genre.  Nothing important ever happens (or fails to happen) because the hero was asleep, and he never bends prison bars or drinks a love potion – although a love potion is mentioned, as if to draw attention to this.

This doesn't leave Philippides a whole lot of scope for daring deeds, and when they try the results are a little lackluster.  His main feat is, of course, running all the way from Marathon to Athens (the proverbial forty-two kilometres) to let them know of the impending attack, but while this ought to be the highlight of the movie it's shot in terrible day-for-night and we have nothing to suggest how far this is... I think the writers just assumed everybody knows the length of a marathon.  If we'd seen the army tired from making the march earlier, we would have a better sense of it being a long and tiring journey even at a walk or with horses, and it would seem that much more formidable as a distance for one man to cover before sunrise.  Of course, showing us these things is apparently beyond the scope of The Giant of Marathon's writers, but you'd think they could at least have a character say something like, “it's twenty-six miles!  He'll never make it!”

His other major daring deed is when he pushes giant boulders down a hill onto the attacking Persians.  This is kind of weird because Philippides is not Hercules or Maciste.  He's good at track and field, but we haven't seen any evidence of him having godlike strength, and this is a universe where gods don't seem to do much anyway, so it comes out of nowhere.  The rocks are huge – there are similarly-sized ones at the park near my house and I know one guy couldn't move them no matter how buff he might be.  Did somebody just forget that they weren't making a Hercules movie?

Between the battles and the various plot twists, The Giant of Marathon could have been a pretty fun sword-and-sandal movie, but it's like a tower without a foundation.  The fights have nothing to hold them up, so we just can't get into it. Also, what the Underworld happened to Hippias? We see him once, chatting with the king of Persia, and then he vanishes and the movie decides weaselly little Theocritus is the big bad instead. I'm sorry, but if you've got a character with a name as cool as 'Hippias the Tyrant', you really can't just drop him like that.

The Best Brains liked to complain about the tinyness of the costumes in these movies but honestly, nothing here is as off-putting as actual ancient Greek sports would have been to the modern viewer.  When I was in university I TA'd for a course called Introduction to Greco-Roman Civilization. It was an adventure in several ways – the students were mostly dumb freshmen who spent the lectures playing Farmville, and the professor didn't give a shit because she'd just been denied tenure.  I don't know how much anybody learned in that class, but I'm sure they all recall how, after the professor told us that Greek athletes stripped naked and covered themselves in olive oil before wrestling, somebody raised a hand and asked if they removed their body hair.  The professor cheerfully told him that they did not, so next time we see a Greek vase we ought to remember that these guys were much sweatier, oilier, and hairier than terra cotta can possibly convey.

[sakuatsu]

YELL 2 ME ABT SAKUATSU FIC RECS PLS

oh boy. oh boy do i have much to talk about

here’s a list of my sakuatsu must-reads under the cut! complete with links, word count, ratings, and occasional commentary because i’m incapable of shutting up. this isn’t in any particular order either 

(keeping this sfw and organized into canonverse/AUs. a * means i am on my hands and knees begging for you to read this)  

i’ll try to update this somewhat regularly :]

most recently updated august 25, 2020!

canonverse:

*your highs and lows (series) by astroeulogy 

a post-time skip canonverse series born from these two questions:

1. what if sakusa kiyoomi, known too-blunt jerk, is equally straightforward about his soft, tender feelings?

2. what if miya atsumu, resident big fat jerk who doesn't care if his teammates hate him, is too emotionally stunted to notice when his one of his teammates actually likes him?

this is like the sakuatsu series but it’s blasphemous to not recommend. the first fic in the series is all that you were (4.6k, T). mind the ratings on a few of the fics, but my personal favorite is #3: a masterpiece of domesticity called you have tamed me (5.7k, T). these make me ACHE 

*sakuatsu domesticity simulator by pseudoanalytics (T)

a vaguely interactive mixture of fic, art, and html, where you too can experience the inherent romance of a big fat jerk and a too-blunt jerk attempting intimacy

this fic...this fic...op is literally one of my favorite artists of all time but Did You Know that their writing is also off the charts. what a wonderful use of second person and the pacing is so good. too much skill in one person 

*The MSBY Black Jackals Read Thirst Tweets by isaksara (11.4k, M)

Sakusa’s eyes are very dark naturally, sucking in all surrounding rays of light and crushing them in his pupils. For an athlete, he is rather pale. His lips look very pink in comparison. Atsumu is suddenly catastrophically aware that in this instance, ‘accent’ is a euphemism. “Good enough for your Olympic-size ego, Miya?”

(In which Atsumu realizes that he is attracted to Sakusa Kiyoomi in the most inconvenient way possible.)

i think this is the fic that got me into sakuatsu in the first place lol i was looking very specifically for msby socmed fics and now here we are. this fic is unbelievably funny

*liminal spaces by hhatsuna (25.9k, T)

Fuck you, Atsumu thinks, pointing at the pixelated Sakusa in the grainy team photo on his bedside table.

It’s easier than you’d think to ignore loving your teammate.

*Better For Us Both by abrandnewheart (15.7k, M)

Where “You already make me the happiest guy alive, babe," gives way to, “I’ve not been happy for a while now.”

Alternatively known as the ‘mug fic’.

yes this is a breakup fic. yes im going to recommend it anyway. breakup fics usually scare me a lot but this one is too good for me to not say anything about. nuanced and delicious. i look at the mug on my desk and feel pain

dog eat dog eat dog world by perennials (8.4k, T)

You are your first and only line of defense against the universe.

Koi no Yokan; 恋の予感 by ymra (15.3k, unrated)

Wherein Sakusa dreams of his future selves and discovers a little something along the way.

autumn ends, but we remain by wolfsbvne (5.3k, T)

atsumu stares at his ceiling at 2am. he stares until he can make out designs in his popcorn ceiling. a cat there, an onigiri here, and then something that suspiciously looks like a mop of hair, triangle eyebrows, and oh those two bumps are moles right above what atsumu just mapped out as an eye.

(or, atsumu is in kind of in love. sakusa is maybe in like.)

your fingertips, branding irons by Ceryna (5.8k, T)

Between the accidental touches he's reconciled, the deliberate ones he's endured, and, from those he's built years of trust with, obliged– Kiyoomi has never wanted to let someone indulge.

Never, until Atsumu.

take what’s yours and make it mine by claudusdiei (5.9k, T)

atsumu falls in love four times in his life

(or: in which atsumu gets his heart broken twice, has the self-awareness of a sober mule and really likes yellow tulips)

every action has an equal and opposite reaction by akanemnida (10.4k, T)

Miya Atsumu gets a modeling contract with Calvin Klein, which sets Kiyoomi's heart in motion.

(Or: Sakusa Kiyoomi realizes that the rules governing the universe are absolute rubbish at explaining matters of the heart.)

*where i want to be by tookumade (8.8k, G)

In the time they’ve been teammates at the MSBY Black Jackals, Sakusa has never been to Atsumu’s place, and Atsumu has only been to Sakusa’s a few times. There’s an unspoken understanding here: that Atsumu knows him well enough to know that nobody’s house or apartment would ever really meet his ridiculously high standards, and he is most comfortable in the home he’s made for himself.

That, and, Atsumu being over at Sakusa’s means that he has to host him and do the cleaning afterwards, while Atsumu can just flit off back to his own place. So. There’s that.

Tonight. Tonight is not business as usual. Tonight is not familiar.

*san'yō expressway, 6:17 pm by yamabato (8.1k, T)

Atsumu tilts his head to watch a slice of orange light bend over the impassive planes of Sakusa’s face. He is absolutely, ruthlessly beautiful. It makes Atsumu want to punch something—put his foot through the windshield—scream, maybe.

Kiss him again, maybe.

They have 344 kilometers to figure this one out.

parallax error: angle of inclination by min_mintobe (10.8k, T)

But now there's the one person Atsumu'd promised himself never to touch. His eyes leave Atsumu breathless with guilt at seventeen, and he spends the next six years safe in the satisfaction of making things right.

Feelings, of the physical kind, and one kiss.

ft. competitive spirit, childishness, and late night conversations.

Atsumu POV.

four leaf clover by vicari_us (5.9k, T)

Once, Ushijima claimed that they ‘got lucky’. If properly honed, their body types could become near invincible weapons.

However, unlike Ushijima, Kiyoomi’s weapon required a bit more care over the years to reach the condition it had become. He was born iron, not yet forged into steel.

Exploring what it might have taken to turn a genetic mistake into an athletic miracle.

*the 28 postcards you left me by wheelspokes (8.3k, T)

Atsumu takes texting your ex to a new level by sending Sakusa postcards in Animal Crossing instead.

such a unique premise & this is so beautifully structured. stunning flow and who knew animal crossing could convey so much longing...

AUs:

Pas De Deux by hhatsuna (dancer!sakusa au: 19.0k, T)

The mystery athlete gives Kiyoomi a once over in the mirror. “Yer pretty tall,” he observes, and the twang of an accent rasps low in his throat. His brazen eyes drift to Kiyoomi’s legs, and something like exhilaration glints gold in his gaze. “Good quads, too. Ya ever played volleyball?” Ah. So it’s volleyball.

“I’m a dancer. Ballet and contemporary, mostly.”

*my love, take your time by bastigod (archaeologist!sakusa au: 9.0k, T)

There was something sublime about wandering around an empty museum. Nothing could compare to the sound of his shoes clacking against the marble floor, the morning sunlight gently streaming through the lofty windows and the peaceful solitude of ancient stone kings overseeing their silent kingdoms.

A day in the life of Doctor Kiyoomi Sakusa, Archaeologist.

i’ve literally been thinking about this fic every day since it came out. you will not find a story like this anywhere else, i guarantee you. what a clear labor of love this fic is it’s truly something so special 

three roses and a smile by strawberrycitrus (surgeon!sakusa & microbiologist!atsumu au: 19.7k, T)

“I just got this job, I’m not givin’ it up for some moral boost ‘cause I actually need to pay my rent, ya insensitive -” Atsumu waves his hands around, trying and failing to come up with the right word to convey the amount of injustice that this gaunt motherfucker has brought into his relatively simple life thus far.

“If you can’t pay your rent, go get a job at the McDonald’s over by 8th Street,” Sakusa growls, “it’ll pay more than your researcher position.”

If you even attempt assault on a coworker, forget teaching about cells - you’ll fucking be in one, Atsumu.

*Dance of the Parallax by astroeulogy (ogre spirit!sakusa au: 6.7k, T)

For the last twenty years, Atsumu’s done all that he can to break his betrothal to the ogre spirit Sakusa. If he can just make it through one more night, he’ll be free.

honestly, just read everything by astroeulogy. i’m recommending this fic in particular because it has such an ethereal voice to it. magical

across oceans, across centuries by starstrikes (pacific rim au: 20.0k, T)

Six days ago, Osamu died and left Atsumu with this: Atsumu, you have to—

(Namikira rises with the tides and rips Osamu and Vulpis Empress away in one fell swoop. Six days later, Atsumu wakes up alone in a hospital bed and learns how to swim.)

you don’t actually need to know pacrim to appreciate this. a wonderful exploration of grief and recovery. also it’s exactly 20k words which is both satisfying and terrifying 

*Notte Stellata by awkwardedgeworth (ice skating/dancing au: 20.8k, T)

"Your partner doesn't need to hold anyone's hand other than yours," Sakusa's father crouches, "And you can wear gloves."

Sakusa ponders. He hears the other skaters of rink two whiz past as they launch themselves into lifts.

"Alright," He looks up from the ice, not knowing how he'll dedicate the next couple of decades to this sport, this partnership, this boy.

what a stunning fic. a beautiful progression of sakusa & atsumu’s relationship, rife with references to real skating programs, beautifully written and structured. so full of longing i’m in mild physical pain

[gentlemancrow]

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

OK so I saw @hey-there-hunter ‘s JMart Wedding Challenge and I pretty much fan ficced immediately??  Like it was an instantaneous plot bunny that stabbed me in the brain and would not let me free until I made it exist.  SO HERE YOU GO!  Read it here or head on over to AO3 below!  And enjoy some unapologetically aggressive fluff with weddings!  Also subtitled someday Crow will stop abusing excessive astral imagery and symbolism for extended metaphors, but today is not that day.

Read on AO3 instead!

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

Jonathan Sims always thought of himself as a man with a deep appreciation for the great literature of the world.  A passionate turn of phrase, crystalline motes of clear imagery like snowflakes reflecting light in his mental scape, a devastating contemplation on the nature of good and evil in the hearts of all mankind, everything that could express the beauty and tragedy of the world in ways he never could.  Prose was a bright paintbrush on a ragged canvas of the universe he had known from an early age was swathed in shadow and pain and evil, and those words on those pages, for at least a moment, were another world he could hold in his hands, could cradle and protect, could mourn.  He liked the power of them as well, of the tinkling brightness of alliteration, the oaky sophistication of a well-aged metaphor, the evocativeness of the idiosyncrasy in a simple simile, laying bare truths in ways he never could have articulated for himself.

There was one thing he could not abide by in language, however, one cardinal sin liable to besmirch any piece of lush and sparkling verse or prose and taint it forever.  And that was idioms.

Jon loathed idioms and their dismally quirky cliches dressed in familiarity’s tacky clothing almost as much as he hated spiders.  Perhaps it was something about their reliance on common knowledge and repetition.  He couldn’t bear reading the same book twice, or even a book that felt too familiar, it only made sense that hearing a hackneyed phrase repeated in that awful singsong sardonic tone of someone who knows full well they’re saying something asinine that has been repeated ad nauseum for millennia would scrape at the back of his skull and down his spine.  They were too whimsical and blasé, crutch words for when one’s limited lexicon came up empty, or worse, for ill comedic effect.  They reinforced that staunchly English notion of skirting about the true depth and breadth of emotion for clipped niceties and unfeeling banalities.  Idioms to him were mere verbal window boxes, colorful and meaningless, dressings for untold disasters behind the shining windows they peacocked before.  

He hated them all with vaguely equal rancor, but there was one he could definitely single out as the one he hated the most, and that was the one about hanging the moon.  Such and such thinks you hung the moon, to me you hung the moon, and so on.  This particular rhetorical felony attracted his wrath only marginally because any moon symbolism never failed to feel outlandish and infantile, a mawkish image of love and care rampant in nursery rhymes and cheap commercialized slogans for t-shirts and wall art.  That was the least of it.  He hated the idea of hanging the moon mostly because once, another lifetime ago now it seemed, Tim Stoker had lobbed it in his face in a fit of smoldering rage and he had been completely, complacently, ignorant of its magnitude.  

Funny thing was, he couldn’t even remember what the actual fight had been about any longer.  Though he could remember exactly where he was standing, cornered next to the file cabinet for the year 1985, January through February, and the label had been peeling up on the upper left-hand corner.  He remembered he’d discovered a hole in the elbow of his jumper that morning and he had been obsessing over it all day, fussing with the dangling green thread and tugging at the knit as if it might magically close the wound.  He’d put his finger clean through it with his arms crossed haughtily over his chest without even realizing he’d been fiddling with it when something flippant about Martin came out of his mouth.  It hadn’t even been cruel, he couldn’t even remember how Martin had come up in the argument in the first place, he could only remember Tim’s mouth moving like he wanted to say something else, then him forcibly stopping himself before he snarled.

“Yeah well, god knows why, but he thinks you hung the moon, so you might try treating him at the very least like a human being once in a while.”

It was such a small thing.  Small words for a small feeling cloaked in a chintzy veneer of idiomatic dismissal.  A trembling little bird cupped in his scarred and battered hands and smothered.  Or so he thought.  Sometimes trembling little birds turn out to be phoenixes, and those who looked to someone else to hang the comfort of a wise, silvery moon in the sky already have the hammer and the picture wire at the ready.

As far as Jon was concerned, the moon only rose on their Somewhere Else because Martin deigned to pull the strings every night, not him.

It was Martin who brought him tea every morning, set it down on the breakfast table with that little flip of the tag and the deft, one-fingered turn of the handle toward him.  It was Martin who scolded him because whites are a separate load, Jon, were you raised in a barn?  Martin who talked him through every episode of the Doctor Who reruns that were the only thing their ancient aerial could pick up.  Martin who planted flowers in the garden and brought muffins from the sweet old lady at the grocers because they traded baking recipes.  Martin who still looked at him with diaphanous pools of ethereal moonlight in his eyes and his smile like he alone hung it in the sky over his head to wash him in its radiance.

Even after everything.

Even after it had been Martin who had to hold the knife buried in his chest as he lay gasping wetly for breath in an alleyway in Another Chelsea to keep the hemorrhaging at bay.  Martin who had cupped his face in his bloody hands with tears streaming down his and forced him to focus, furious love blazing in his sea mist eyes as they locked with his, screaming at him and him only, heedless of anything else.

“Look at me.  LOOK at me, Jon!  Stay with me!  Stay with me, DAMN YOU!”

Stay with me had not been a plea, it had been a command.  He had never once said please because it was never an option.  Shivering, breathing blood through his teeth, the streetlights a fading, star studded halo in Martin’s strawberry blond curls be damned, he was right.  Against every tangled thread of fate twisted deep into his flesh, or perhaps because they had been the only thing that held his torn innards together, he made it to the part where he awoke a few fractured times to nothingness, and then to fingers he knew every inch of inextricably bound up in his and a fierce whisper in his ear.

“I’m here, Jon.  I’m still here.  I’ve got you.  I’m going to fix this.  I’m going to get us out of here.  We’re going to be okay.”

It had been Martin who orchestrated their clandestine escape from the hospital the moment they both agreed he was well enough to survive under his rudimentary medical care and before the authorities got too invested in an urban ghost story of two men who didn’t exist.  Not to mention one of which should, by all medical and logical law, be dead.  It had been Martin who had stolen the necessary antibiotics, drugs, and wound care supplies, Martin who had picked enough pockets to buy passage on a midnight train to the only place they could think to go, and expressly told Jon not to ask where he learned how, even though he knew full well he would later.  Martin who had fought for everything and kept him hidden and safe while he lay in a dingy hotel room somewhere in Scotland, drifting in and out of consciousness between kisses, cold compresses, spoonfuls of whatever he could get him to swallow and keep down, and desperate ‘I love you’s.

Martin had been the one who hung the moon even on the nights Jon couldn’t see it, just so he knew it was there, that the light might finally guide him home.  Not him.  He could have never done something so selfless and simple and beautiful.  No not him.  Not The Archivist.  How could he have ever known that?  Stupid, myopic, pedantic, all-seeing and blind.  A blustering, sanctimonious Tiresias in a sweater vest and half-moon glasses.  And how important was the moon, anyway that he was expected to hang it too?  Would not night still come and the stars still shine?  The stupid, vapid saying should have been about the sun anyway.  Something that nourished and guided and warmed.  Not the moon.  Not the thing of night and hungry wolves and quiet loneliness.  Not a thing of the darkness they fought and still not won, not exactly, not in a way that mattered.  How could he have known the weight of such a thoughtless, frivolous, meaningless phrase and how far and how long Martin had borne it for him to protect he who hung his moon?  

He could see the weight of it so clearly now.  He could see it especially on the darkest days, which came, in grotesque mockery, the moment they found something like their safehouse and rest at last.  Jon had conned his way into a job at the village library with an ancient head librarian who didn’t care much for too many questions, or background or credit checks, and was more than happy to pay in cash.  With Martin’s help of course.  Martin himself had taken up stocking at the village grocers, and their life had teetered onto something so close to quaint and normal it suddenly laid bare the gravity of the depths of darkness they had escaped.

No longer did they have to run, no longer did they have to fight, they could finally lay down the chase and curl in upon each other to lick their wounds in quiet.  But without the driving, primal instinct to live, to survive, that ushered in the days where all the hurt came back to roost and brood and fester.  The days where he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, or the days Martin couldn’t bear the sound of his voice, or the days they shouted themselves hoarse, stormed apart for hours then came back, silent and broken, red-eyed and exhausted to hold each other and weep into the spaces between neck and shoulder where it still smelled like love and home.

He could see so painfully clearly the toll following him to the ends of the cosmos and back had etched its marks into his goodness, his body and soul, see how often he would walk down the road from their cabin, just a little ways, to stand on the heather spotted hills and gaze out into the frigid infinity of the gray sea.  Cold terror would grip him then, incite a desperate want to run after him, to throw his arms around him and bring him home, but also the fear it would only be to have him turn to mist and slip through his fingers forever.  He always had a cup of steaming tea waiting for him when he came back, just in case.

But again, and always.  It was Martin who would pick up Jon’s hands, kiss every slender, scarred finger through his tears and be the first one to utter ‘I’m sorry.’  Martin who told him with just a single scathing flash of stern blue eyes and not a single word uttered that he was certainly coming to bed and not banishing himself to the couch like an idiot.  Martin who wrapped him in his arms and warmth and boundless love and reminded him, “One way or another.  Together.  That was the deal, right?  You don’t get to back out now.  No returns, refunds, or exchanges, I’m afraid.”

And even through the deepest sobs he would find the laugh Jon didn’t think was in him.  Martin sifted through the mire and the muck and held fast to the tiny, shining things so easy to lose in the darkness.  Things Jon was certain were lost forever, only to be reignited and hung in the brightening sky of their story.  Even if they weren’t quite the moon yet.

It had also been Martin who, on a perfectly ordinary day, on a simple walk through the local farmers market, stopped to peruse one of the usual unremarkable stalls filled with crystals and oils and trinkets.  Jon had wandered off to procure the parsnips and the strawberries, unrelated recipes Martin swore, he had been tasked with finding.  When he returned he found him, a radiant monument tall among the faceless locals, rusty curls caressing his face in the salty breeze, carved of marble and rose quartz and gazing down at a pair of hematite rings on a velvet display box.  His eyes were distant, but not in the enthralled, disembodied way they were when he looked at the sea, or the broken way when they weren’t speaking, but in the contemplative, regarding of puzzle pieces way when he would look into the fire during their talks and turn his words in his mind over and over again like a rock tumbler until they were polished just right.

“Getting into crystals now, are we?” Jon had joked, “Surely I’m not so dull to be around that that’s becoming an attractive hobby.”

Martin snorted and shook his head.

“Supposed to mean healing, or grounding, or something.  Aligning your meridians, I think the lady said?  Whatever that means,” he elaborated, reaching out to touch.

They clinked weightily together, thick and glossy and the dark astral gray of a moonless night.  Martin turned over the card that went with them and read.

“’A grounding stone that belongs to the planet Mars.  It strengthens our connections to the earth and aids the warrior on their journey.  It is a stone of invincibility, but also fragility.  It balances yin and yang energies with its magnetic properties for the perfect reflection upon one’s own soul, astral, physical, and spiritual.’”

“Hematite, is it?” Jon asked, “Also more commonly called bloodstone.  You know if you scratch it, it leaves a red mark.  Like it’s bleeding.  Watch.”

He picked up one of the rings and firmly ran it down the corner of the card Martin had been reading from.  Sure enough, the black stone had left a faint, but starkly crimson mark on the yellowed paper.

“It BLEEDS?” Martin exclaimed in horror.

“It’s just a kind of iron oxide, so, rust, basically,” Jon explained with a chuckle, “Kind of weirdly romantic if you think about it?  This intimidating shiny black stone like armor, made of iron to boot, but with a bleeding heart at its core.”

“I just thought it was pretty, I didn’t know it bleeds,” Martin had laughed in that incredulous way he always did when Jon was telling him something he didn’t actually want to know, but appreciated anyway.

“I find that the strongest, prettiest things often do,” Jon had said in reply.  He remembered saying that particularly clearly, waxing poetic, feeling a swell of affection for the hugely beautiful man he leaned against and was adorably aghast at bleeding rocks.

“Yeah, I reckon they do,” Martin murmured back.

And then his cheeks had flushed bright red under his freckles and the stone steps of his shoulders crumbled a bit under the crushing ancientness and vastness of what he had originally been pondering.

“So, I mean, before you spoiled it with the blood thing.  I was thinking… Well, I was just having a browse and I saw these and I thought they were quite fetching, and then the lady told me they meant grounding and healing and a journey, like on the card.  A-And there were two of them, all by themselves, and everything else was so colorful and flashy these were just so… Um.  Maybe the blood and rusty iron thing makes it more poetic now, actually?  I don’t know.  Sorry I-  This sounded so much better in my head.”

It wasn’t his fault, Jon remembered thinking.  Martin couldn’t find the words because there weren’t any.  Not in this universe or any other.  Not for what they’d gone through, and especially not for what they meant to each other.

“I guess I was just thinking.  If… I bought one.  And wore it.  Sort of like.  Um.  You know.  Would… Would you-?” he had asked, his voice trembling.

Jon had never said yes, yes of course he would, faster or with more conviction in his life.  And there was that look again, rising from the ashes, that flooding of golden, unbound love and light, of eyes turned sky blue, of looking at the man who hung his moon in the sky come back to him.  He could still hang Martin’s moon all over again after so many nights of black clouds and darkness, even if it was only paper.  They’d paid for the rings in rumpled bills, exchanged them right then and there, and kissed each other as the crowd of oblivious people in a world they did not belong in flowed like a river around them.  Jon forgot the bag with the parsnips and strawberries.

But it didn’t matter.  It didn’t even matter that Martin’s fit nicely on his ring finger, but Jon had to wear his on his thumb, and even then sometimes on a chain around his neck for fear of losing it.  It didn’t matter that it was the closest thing they were ever going to get to a proposal and a wedding, consigned now forever to the shadows in a borrowed reality with only each other.  Because it was theirs, and they could begin to figure out how their broken pieces fit back together again.

But like most things that don’t matter, it didn’t until it did.

It began as simple things.  Seeing a wedding on some program they weren’t actually paying much attention to and Martin making a flippant, innocuous comment as he combed his fingers lovingly through Jon’s long and silvered chestnut hair in his lap about how he would have loved to have a cake that had a different flavor on every tier at their wedding.  Just so everyone could have something they liked.  And Jon woke up from his half catlike stupor and looked up at him with such aching regret as those words settled into the pit of his heart alongside ‘he thinks you hung the moon.’  

And soon they began to gather a collection of completely innocent remarks that ran the gamut from ‘would they have worn black or white?  Or one of each?  I don’t know… does it really matter?  And were these engagement rings or wedding rings?  I don’t know.  Neither?  both?  And do we say husband instead of boyfriend now?  Fiancé?  Whatever you want, Martin…’ To the heavier, cancerous weights that sank to the bottom of his gut, even below hanging the moon, like ‘I know Tim would have thrown the most amazing bachelor party for both of us, and his mum had always talked about him getting married someday like it was a farfetched pipe dream, but she would be happy for them, he thinks.’

He could never answer those questions.  There was too much at stake, too much finality and familiarity in them, a strange weightlessness in a world that weighed far too much.  The sun and moon continued their eternal dance of time, ignorant, unbothered, but Jon kept collecting those silent debts of normal life, secreting them away in a hidden singularity in his heart that only grew heavier and metastasized farther the more times Martin walked out at night, not him, beaming starlight from his eyes and his fingertips, to hang the moon again.  So soft, so full of wooly cows and pink heather and the smell of tea and sea salt and Martin’s shampoo on the pillow next to him did it become, that it was almost inevitable that one morning Jon awoke absolutely convinced none of it could be real.  

The moment he decided that, everything made so much more sense.  He could breathe again.  There was a reason he could never sit still, never just feel at ease or talk about the future like it was a real thing that could still happen.  He knew why the silence made his brain itch and why he still glanced around corners and glowered at anyone who dared let their gaze linger on his Martin too long.  Why Martin’s ring fit and his didn’t.  There was too much debt to the universe to be paid, too many broken promises, too many corpses in his wake, he had done nothing to deserve this idyllic life of love and peace and smallness and Martin.  It had to be Her doing, It’s doing, some carefully woven torture chamber that would lure them to the apex of their joy, the center of the web, where they would just be devoured over and over to empty husks and set up like chess pieces to fill with love and light just to knock down again.  He wasn’t free after all.

Jon had been halfway into his coat and halfway out the door to do, he didn’t know, something, anything, to go to the library to use their computer and research something he didn’t know he was looking for when Martin had seized his hand and whirled him around.

“Jon.  STOP.  It’s over.”

And he’d stopped.  He’d looked into those baleful blue eyes, fallen into their depths, landed on the precipice of madness, and broken.  It wasn’t over.  Not for him.  He finally understood.  It was still there.  The Eye.  It always had been.  Though not really, he understood slowly as he wept on his knees in their doorway into Martin’s chest, it had indeed closed forever on him, but it lingered as distant static, like a phantom limb, a metaphysical itch that could never be scratched.  Martin had cradled him close and listened, listened so patiently as he ripped the jagged black fear from the deepest, ugliest part of his heart, hauled it up bloody and messy from his throat and finally laid it bare for both of them to see.  And when it was done and he couldn’t cry anymore Martin had locked eyes with him in a way that made him forget any others could have ever existed outside of crystalline blue and filled with moonlight.

“Listen to me.  I know you think you have some cosmic burden to bear.  That you’re still wearing some… some fucked up crown and sitting on a throne of skulls and death and eyeballs or whatever image you want to put there, and that you have to sit and hurt and watch over everything so it doesn’t happen again, but...  Sorry, Jon, but that’s bullshit.  It’s just a scar now.  That’s all.  Just like the rest of them.  Ugly and beautiful and proof that you —Jonathan Sims— are still alive.  And you are not The Archivist anymore.  You’re just mine.  My Jon.”

He’d held his Jon’s stunned face in his hands and peppered kisses over the pock marks in his skin, over the slash on his throat, the burnt fingers that still couldn’t bend quite right, even the one on his chest, the one almost always hidden by fabric but the one he didn’t need to see to find.  His heart and fingers would always remember exactly where it was.  And he’d kept his lips there a moment, then turned his ear to his chest and wrapped his arms around his waist to listen to his heartbeat like a trembling little bird.

“If I can hear it and feel it.  So can you,” he whispered.

Unsteady fingers curled desperately into Martin’s silky locks, hematite loop cool against his scalp, “Thank you…”

Martin stayed for the kiss on top of his head he knew was coming and smiled.

“Okay, so it’s simple to fix if you think about it,” he murmured into Jon’s chest, “We just need that thing, you know?  The thing that makes you feel like you’re still doing the thing, but you’re not.  What was the word for it again?  A placeholder?  Like when you quit smoking and you hold a pencil or a straw or something that’s not actually a cigarette so you can wean yourself off the ritual?”

Jon blinked owlishly down at him as he dried his eyes.

“A… placebo?  Are you talking about a placebo?”

“Yeah!  That’s it!  We just need to find you a placebo for Knowing things!  That’s all.  Like… reality shows, or-or zoo cams or something!  We’ll figure it out together.  Alright, love?  I promise you.  It’ll be okay.”

Jon was skeptical, so very skeptical, but if Martin was determined to find a balm to soothe his jagged, ontological scars he would happily play the part of lab rat for him.  They’d tried a myriad things to replicate the feeling of Knowing and looking something deep within him still craved.  The zoo and animal livestreams were a bust, cute and entertaining as they were, but animals weren’t ever the purview of The Eye and the camera itself was barely a scrap.  Reality shows came closer, the more salacious the better, but even that temporary fix wore off when Jon’s disgust with the overall content and participants outweighed any benefit.  Martin was just happy to have finally converted him to Bake Off, at least.  They tried people watching in the square in the village, but it made Jon far too self-conscious and guilty.  He used the binoculars exactly once, and that was to look at the cows in the fields, and the choose-your-own-adventure books Martin had been certain would strike a sagacious chord wound up in the donation bin at the library.  But that was when he was struck with a bolt of genius.

Unbeknownst to Jon, which brought him no small measure of glee, Martin ordered, received, and then set up with a literal bow in their back garden the finest telescope he could afford on his meager savings.  He’d researched for days, asked on every amateur astronomer forum he could find, and had it delivered to the grocers so he could make it a proper surprise.  He’d even gone so far as to attack and blindfold a hapless Jon the moment he made it home from work on the day it was ready, and stood behind him giddily bouncing as he tore the tea towel away from his eyes.

“A… Telescope?” he’d blurted dumbly.

“Yes!  It’s perfect, right?  I asked around to find the one that had all the best features, and this one has the best overall magnification and the most lenses, but it doesn’t have the little satellite positioning thing?  I figured you wouldn’t want that anyway, you always like figuring things out and finding things on your own better.”

Martin had been positively radiant.  Jon had just stared at the gawping black tube and chewed the inside of his cheek as he processed what to say.

“I mean… thank you, Martin, really.  It was a sweet thought, but if the binoculars didn’t-“

“Screw the binoculars!  This is different!” Martin happily insisted, “You can look at so much more!  Stars and planets and galaxies and what have you, and it can maybe be sort of like you’re looking for other worlds?  Wormholes or whatever?  Or signs of The Fears and where they’ve gone?  Or even if the stars are the same here as they were back before?  Space literally has so many things to LOOK at we can’t even count them!  This has got to be it!”

Jon tried to smile and laugh and agree to try it out, at the very least, if only because Martin was beaming so sweetly with pride and hope.  Though that first night he didn’t, ushering them back in with promises of tomorrow, Martin, I promise tomorrow.  Tomorrow had been a lie.  As had been the next night.  In fact, it took Jon a full week to even remember they even had a telescope, and that was only after getting the smuggest, Cheshire grin out of Martin after casually mentioning there would be a visible, if partial, lunar eclipse that night.  He’d relented, only because he’d entrapped himself, and they’d both bundled up, looked in the manual for the best size lens to view the moon with, poured a few glasses of wine, and turned their eyes to the stars.

Martin had gone first, gripping the eyepiece and adjusting the focus all the while gasping in awe.  It was so beautiful he’d burst into poetry with a crooked grin.

“Art thou pale for weariness?  Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, wandering companionless among the stars that have a different birth, and ever changing, like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy?  Sounds a little familiar, eh?” he joked, casting a wry look over his shoulder.

Jon rolled his eyes fondly.

“Gross.  Keats again?”

“Nope, Shelley this time, and even he thinks you ought to have a look at the moon.  I think you’ll find you have a lot in common.”

Jon had sighed obligingly and shuffled to the telescope, fully expecting to look at something bright and round with a bit of a shadow on it that was distinctly unremarkable, have another glass of wine, and then go back inside to snuggle by the fire.  What he saw in that tiny pinhole of light pierced straight through the hazel brown of his eye and plunged him into another world entirely.

The sands of the moon glowed the purest white in the refracted light of the distant sun with which it waltzed.  He could see in crisp, shadowy relief the innumerable scars she bore, the depth and breadth of Ptolemaeus, the boundless lonely flatness of the maria, named for the oceans they were once thought to be, an insult to the rock plains forged a millennia ago in birth by cataclysmic fire.  Every crater remained wrought in perfect, frozen detail with no erosion or foliage to slowly heal them over, and she beamed them proudly, ostentatiously in her heavenly light.  A hulking, ancient protectorate, hung by the hands of creation at the dawn of time for a fledgling planet, hundreds of thousands of miles away, and yet so crystal clear and unafraid as he perused her millions of years of cosmic sentinel through a lens.  It was dwarfing, humbling, viscerally awe inspiring in a way he dared not voice for fear of snuffing out the fragile glow of wonder and excitement welling in his chest he had been so certain was gone forever.

Astronomy had never been something that had particularly interested Jon, back when his entire reality from the moment his childish hands had touched a single book was spent peering into shadows and watching his own back.  There was no point in wondering what lay among the stars when danger and death lurked so close behind with slavering jaws ever poised at his throat on terra firma, but now.  Now, he had been living in an alternate world, dimension, reality, somewhere, he couldn’t even say for sure.  He’d been hurled potentially through the very stars that twinkled coquettishly above, flashed through their nebulous veils and curtains under their indifferent gaseous gazes, but seen nothing.  Here was a vast expanse of complete chaotic indefiniteness inviting him in to see what few had ever seen, to guess and hypothesize and gesture wildly at secrets only the stars could keep.  To Know.

Jon had jerked back so suddenly from the telescope to survey the entirety of the astral dome above them that Martin had choked on his wine.

“Jon?  Are you quite alright?”

“Yes, I…” he’d murmured, only even half hearing that Martin had said anything at all, stars reflected in his wondering dark eyes, “I’m fine, I just… How… How much more can this see?  How deep does it go?”

Jon hadn’t seen the victorious smirk on Martin’s face as he set down his wine glass and picked up the instruction manual and lens guide.  They’d watched the rest of the eclipse, of course, marveling through the lens at the inky trickle of shadow over craggy white, but then they’d changed the lens to the strongest one, according to the guide, and spent the rest of the evening triangulating their position beneath their slice of the universe and plotting out the various stars, planets, and constellations above.  Jon had even dashed inside to grab a mostly blank notebook and had filled several pages with notes and observations and things to research later, all while Martin held back tears watching him come so alive over a project he didn’t even know he needed.  Eventually though, sleepiness and cold claimed him, and he kissed his beloved goodnight and left him, more than gladly, to ride out the intellectual flare up until it burnt both him and itself out.  

Martin had no clue what time it was when he finally returned, and it didn’t even matter.  All that mattered was at some point, a practically frozen Jon had climbed into bed, snuggled up close behind and wrapped his arms around him to kiss the back of his neck so softly like the wings of a butterfly and whisper.

“Thank you.”

Another victorious smirk and a loving murmur.

“Told you so.”

Where there had been nothing but an Eye shaped hole in him, scarred around the edges and aching in its vacuum, Jon had filled it with the names of nebulas and quasars, of the myth of Andromeda, and Orion, and Castor and Pollux, or Hercules, and why they had all been hung in the stars for eternity.  The stories were much the same as he remembered, but he’d found slight eccentricities, tiny irregularities in the sky which fascinated him even more so.  Night after night he would look at a different astral body, chart it down in his notebook, then come bounding in with starlight beaming from his eyes and his fingertips with some cry of eureka.

“Martin!  Did you know here Polaris is in the south and Sirius is in the north?”

“Martin!  Did you know the Andromeda Galaxy is actually a little closer to the Milky Way here?”

“Martin, you have to come see this!  Oh, no it’s not weird this time, it’s just I finally got Saturn in the telescope and you can actually see the rings!”

His nightly herald would always be different, but Martin would always rise from the comfort of the couch, put his slippers on, and let Jon talk as long as he needed to about his latest discovery, watching him smile again while he, too, watched the matching smile it never failed to ignite illuminate Martin’s face and they lit each other up in the fused brilliance of a binary star.

Martin no longer hung the moon for Jon, he’d finally just up and quite literally given it to him, and there was no mortal way to repay him for that.  Or so he’d thought.  It came to him, as most flashes of brilliance do, on a night he hadn’t even been thinking about it at all.  All he had been doing was sitting in a lawn chair with his telescope long after Martin had gone to bed, chewing his pencil idly, vaguely missing a cigarette and pondering notes on Vega and Lyra between watching it through his lens.  He’d been stuck for days on Vega and its potentiality for another solar system and what that could imply for their new Earth and their new sun, as well as Lyra and the tragic tale of Orpheus and his doomed love.  Even in their new reality he still turned back at the end of the story, still could not contain the roiling, effusive adoration to his own downfall.

Bitterness had risen like bile in the back of Jon’s throat as he replayed the myth again in his head, unsure why it was vexing him and rewinding in his brain so torturously.  “Stupid, stupid man, if he’d only just…” he’d thought again and again, each time giving the star-crossed musician a different decision, a different choice, urging him down another path somewhere, anywhere along his journey, but in the end, he’d always looped back around to the original.  It was the point of the story, after all.  Not so much the love itself or even the loss of it, but the power of it over one man and the creation born from his mourning and eventual destruction.  Patently Greek.  But the chorus would always begin again in Jon’s head.  If he’d kept his Eurydice, if his songs had been happy, if he hadn’t spent the rest of his life mourning so intensely he was eventually destroyed for it, would he have become the paragon of healing he was, the oracle, the lynchpin of the fate of the world he had eventually become?  Which of them was the stupider man?

Jon was only mortal now, he was no longer all-seeing oracle and dark savior, he had no authority to say, but it was a trifle easier to ponder the hubris of Orpheus instead of his own.  He couldn’t help but think, achingly, sometimes the heroes just deserved to pull their beloved from the pit of Tartarus, promise to love them for eternity, and then simply get married, ride off into the sunset, and live happily ever after.  A story wasn’t a story if it didn’t write itself upon the very bones and sinews of its heroes, that was the law of the universe, but when the story was done and the cracks and fissures in their tissues had faded to myth and legend, what became of the heroes who did not die a tragic or heroic death and were not hung in the stars?  What happened to heroes left behind?  Twisting his bloodstone ring on his thumb idly as it caught the shivering fire of those stars in its dark mirrored surface, the musical arrow of the muses pierced his heart, wide-eyed in wonder.  He’d asked the universe, but he already knew the answer.  He’d always known.  He knew, and he knew it with such clarion joy as he had never known anything before.

He could no longer be the man who hung Martin’s moon, he hadn’t been for a long time.  That much was clear to him, but he could certainly do something else.  Perhaps they had grown past the need for moon hangings in the first place.  He knew how their story ended.

It took months of saving, secreting, preparation, and then finally just simply waiting for the perfect, clear night.  The moment it came, the moment he knew it was the night, Jon struck without hesitation.  Poor Martin wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the couch, into Jon, when he returned from a late shift at the grocers, but found himself instead stuffed right back into his coat with a picnic basket in hand and hauled out into the frigid night in a flurry of Jon with little time to protest.  He bounded up the hill behind their little cottage beneath a perfect blanket of stars flaming coldly overhead, trailing Martin’s hand in his behind with his breath coming in silvery puffs of clouds, and paying no heed to the whining.

“Jon, whatever it is, does it have to be NOW?” Martin panted, “I am absolutely knackered and it’s beyond freezing and wouldn’t it be nicer just to curl up with a cuppa and fall asleep in front of Star Wars or something?  Doesn’t that have enough stars and space in it?”

Dauntless, Jon only tugged harder.

“There’s tea in the basket, and I’ve seen Star Wars.  And yes, it has to be tonight, it’s really important, I promise.”

“Look.  I love you.  So much.  You know this, and please know it is with the utmost love and deepest affection in my heart that I point out that you say that every time, and you’ve still shown me Pluto like, a hundred separate times.  While I quite like it, and I still feel sorry for it being bumped out of the solar system and all, it’s just a dot?  How many times can you look at a dot?” Martin sighed.

His words finally threw a caltrop into Jon’s warpath, and he paused, turning over his shoulder woundedly.

“What?  No, it’s not Pluto, I swear just- Please, Martin?  I’ll never ask again if you don’t want to, but just for tonight, please?” he pleaded.

Martin winced, and immediately folded under the onslaught of doleful honeyed brown eyes under a nimbus of stars.

“Oh, lord there you go with the puppy dog eyes.  Okay, okay fine, but there better be a nip of whiskey in this,” he chided lovingly with a gesture at the thermos in the basket.

The smile flared back to life brightly on Jon’s face as he turned back up the craggy little footpath to the top of the hill.

“Of course, hot toddy with tea.”

“Ooh, lovely, you do know me.”

The rest of the way was trivially short to the small, flat hilltop surrounded by heather where Jon had already set up a blanket and the telescope over a pristine vista of the dark line where the stars sank into the sea.  He ushered Martin to sit down first, then perched on his hip beside him and poured him a generous helping of tea and whiskey from the thermos before pouring his own.

“Thanks, much.  Right then, what exactly are we up here to look at that we couldn’t see from our garden?” Martin asked, accepting his cup of potent hot toddy and sipping it gratefully around the lemony steam that billowed up.

Taken aback by the sudden logic lobbed into the center of his romantic posturing, Jon looked momentarily stunned, as if someone had slapped him upside the head.

“Oh!  Oh, um, well-!  Ahah, that is to say- Uh.  There is a reason for all this.  It’s not that we couldn’t see it from our garden, we very much could have.  B-But it’s so beautiful up here, and you can kind of hear the sea?  And it’s nice and peaceful, and the heather is still blooming a bit and um…” he trailed off, cheeks burning.

“Okay…?” Martin probed, frowning a little.

“Er, actually...  It’s less about the stars than it is- W-Well it is about the stars.  Let’s get that clear.  But to be completely honest I mostly just… I-I well.  There’s something I need to tell you?”

Jon was ill-prepared for the look of abject horror on Martin’s face as he went paler than the moon overhead.

“Shit, what is it?  Did you find something?  You saw something?  There’s been a sign of The Fears?  Oh god it’s not HER is it?” he asked frantically, nearly slopping hot toddy all over his lap.

“What?  No!  No, none of that!” Jon spluttered, aghast.

Martin regained a modicum of color in his face and breathed in measuredly.

“Okay, so then what is it?  Oh god, you’re not… Jon you’re not ill, or something, are you?  Please, you can just tell me if-“

“No, I am not ill either, damn it, Martin!  If you would just listen to me!  I-!” Jon moaned exasperatedly, “I just wanted to do something… nice.  Something nice for you.  And nicer than I normally would because I am apparently much worse at crafting romantic moments than I thought and-“

“Wait…” Martin cut in, eyes gleaming with realization, “Jonathan Sims… Are you grand gesturing?”

��Well I am certainly trying but you are making it exceedingly difficult!” he retorted, red in the face and breathless.

“Oh my god, you are!  I’m so sorry!” Martin laughed brightly, “Oh god Jon you poor thing I’m so sorry, I’m awful, I’m the absolute worst!  No please!  Don’t let me spoil it.  Please go on.”

Grinding the heel of his palm into his forehead, Jon tried to summon the words again, only for Martin’s strong, warm hands to take it from him and tip his chin up to gaze into his eyes.

“Hey.  Hey, Jon.  Look at me,” he breathed, looking into his eyes idolatrously, “I’m sorry.  I love you.  You can tell me.”

Taking the steadiness from those clear blue depths he needed, Jon focused on them, on the strawberry blond curls tossing in the icy breeze, of the kiss of chilled pink under his freckles, and that eternal, sunshine smile.

“Okay,” he finally answered, smiling softly.

With a deep, shuddering breath, and a long swig of whiskey laced tea for good measure, Jon drew himself up and fished deep in his soul for the words he had waited a millennium to say.

“Okay… So here it is.  Um… I’ve um, I’ve had a lot of time alone lately with my new hobby, as it were.  So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  A lot of it is overly complicated and ridiculous and doesn’t deserve to live outside of my head but… a lot of it has been about you, about us.  And I know we don’t need to-to put a label on us or put us into a… a box or anything like that.  But every time I look at this ring on my finger, I can’t help but remember we never actually talked about what they meant,” he began, holding out his left hand and fidgeting with the loose band around his thumb.

“Oh Jon, don’t worry about that.  It was just me being a big sappy, sentimental dork.  And if I recall correctly, we’d had a pretty awful row a night or two before, and I just wanted to feel close to you again, I guess?  We both know what they mean to us.  It doesn’t matter,” Martin assured him sweetly.

“Except that it does!” Jon insisted passionately, “That’s the point!  You are a big sappy, sentimental dork, Martin.  I bet you were the kid that had a dream wedding all planned in a notebook with pictures cut out of magazines and everything.  I adore that about you, but big sappy sentimental dorks should have big sappy, sentimental moments like huge, expensive seaside weddings with three-flavor cakes and all your friends and family and rose petals and dove releases and whatever else your heart could dream up.”

Martin snickered and shook his head, charmed at least by the mental image of kissing Jon on a seaside cliff at sunset while doves flew in glorious formation around them and everyone they had ever known and loved cheered.

“Pfft, I don’t need a grand wedding and all that, I just need-”

“Me.  I know,” Jon finished for him with a smirk, “I knew you’d say that.  Maybe not.  But you deserve one.  And I know I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s necessary in this case.  You deserve it.  All of it.  Me on one knee with a ring in a box, you deserve us picking out flowers and tuxedos and arguing over the font on the invitations.  You deserve Tim’s awful bachelor party and laughing at me at the altar because I had to read my vows off a card and they’re still so stiff and awkward and they pale in comparison to the beautiful poem you wrote about me.  You deserve smiling so hard your cheeks hurt and crying as we exchange rings.  All of it.”

Martin weighed his words carefully on his tongue with a sip of his boozy tea to chase away ghosts of things that never even were.

“I mean, sure, not going to say I never wanted that.  And I did have that stupid wedding notebook, by the way.  But all that became a pipe dream the minute we wound up here, right?  No use being upset about something that can never be.”

“That may be so, but the crux of it is… you also contented yourself with the idea of it never coming true not because we’re here, but because you didn’t think I wanted it,” Jon answered, his unspoken truth hanging heavy in the chill night air between them, “Every time you tried to tell me you wanted to be with me forever, I brushed it off and painted it gray and tucked it away and carried on the way we always were like nothing happened and it didn’t matter.  Because it was alright, really, you were just so happy to have what we have, that I didn’t die in your arms that night, that we were still together after everything.  That I at least kept that promise after I’d broken so many.  You were so grateful just for what you were gifted after we thought we would end with nothing you didn’t dare think to ask the universe for more and I am so, so sorry it took me so long to see that, Martin.  I’m so sorry.”

His voice broke.  The breath caught in Martin’s chest as he reached out to touch his wrist comfortingly.

“Jon, I-“

“No, please.  Please let me finish I… I can’t give you any of those things.  I can’t give you our friends back, I can’t give you cake and doves and the sunset and crying through vows in front of the vicar.  I can’t even give you an elopement at the register office because we still don’t legally exist.  And I guess for a long time I resented myself for that.  For all of it.  For stealing that from you, for dragging you through literal hell only to give you a shadow of a life stuck here with me because I betrayed you.  But- no stop, don’t say anything yet I’m not done.  B-But now I finally realize.  You’re right, Martin.  You were always right.  It doesn’t matter.  Those things are all just… things.  I said to you once, a long time ago, and I’m still not even sure if you really heard me, that I didn’t want to just survive.  It was true then, and maybe it wasn’t true for a while, but it’s certainly true again.  We did not fight tooth and nail to just survive.  We fought to live, and live together.  So what I’m saying is… I know now I don’t have to give you tuxedos and white roses as long as I give you something… Something to prove to you that you are my everything, my entire world, something to show you that I love you more than I have loved anything in my entire life.  That I want forever with you.  S-So I…” he trailed off, sucking in his breath to give his gesture of undying love the ardor and grandeur it deserved, “I bought us a star.”

The proclamation rang out like the toll of a bell, its gravity sonorous and quaking.  Martin blinked.

“You… I’m sorry?” he squeaked.

Jon set his empty thermos cup aside, flailed his hands in the air and shook his head frantically

“I-I know, I know it sounds mental just hear me out!” he protested, “Technically I didn’t buy the star, if we want to get picky about it.  I mean obviously no one can own a star.  Just the rights to name it?  It’s a thing you can do online.  I was a bit gobsmacked it was real to be honest.  I just had this silly idea when I was out looking at the stars.  I was looking at Lyra and thinking about you and Orpheus, and I… W-Well I just typed it in, ‘can you name a star?’ and it came right up.  Right then and there.  It um… comes with… hold on.”

Remembrance placed a gentle bookmark down on Jon’s fluttering thoughts, and he rummaged in the picnic basket for a moment before pulling out a navy-blue manila folder covered in stars and full of the paperwork and certificates that had come with registering theirs.  He handed it to Martin, who took it in place of his own empty cup, numb, muscles quivering under his jaw, and opened it to the glittering gold typeface that proclaimed ‘Congratulations!’.

“It comes with paperwork, too!  See?  So, it’s official, at least?  The Jon-Martin star.  Not a marriage license I know, but at least our names are together on something legal?  Our real names?  I figured even if we manage the fake identity thing we’d have to get married as not us.  Not really.  So…  I-It could be like our marriage certificate?” Jon explained, chewing his lower lip.

Martin said nothing as his hand turned the pages of the documentation, his eyes distant in a way Jon had never seen before.  Not disembodied and enthralled, not broken, not even regarding puzzle pieces.

“Oh!  Um, also I-I got us a binary star.  I forgot to mention that bit,” he went on, filling the sudden void, “It’s, ah- What a binary star is- It’s technically two?  But they’re caught up in each other’s gravity and they orbit each other so tightly they look like one star together, one that just shines a little brighter.  They’re bound together forever by the most powerful cosmic force in the universe.  Just like us.”

Only silence answered, punctuated by one last crisp whisper of paper, and then the folder closing with Martin’s spread fingers atop it, bloodstone gleaming in the vivid pale light of the night.  Jon’s heart pitched frantically in his chest, and desperate, stranded tears pricked at his eyes.

“I uh… I would have rather gotten us a whole constellation.  Heh, you know?  But they don’t do that, obviously,” he tried softly, his fingers barely brushing Martin’s knuckles, “They record heroes in constellations, after all.  Great deeds, doomed romances, lovers who can be together no other way… That would have been a better way to honor us, I think.  Our story.  A-And who knows?  Maybe back on our world there are a few new stars to remember what we did, to mark the place we left it, so that everyone we left behind can look up and remember us.  They don’t know how the story really ended, and they probably never will, but we do.  We do, and I want to end it right here, right now.  With our star shining above us ‘and they lived happily ever after.’”

Martin still said nothing, but his head bowed, casting a slice of shadow over his eyes, and his shoulders quivered as a thin, bright line of wet silver trickled down his cheek.  Jon felt the very sky shatter above and begin to crumble around him.

“Please… M-Make no mistake, Martin.  P-Perhaps the gesture is silly and meaningless, but it was all I could think to do to go with everything I’ve said tonight.  Martin… Martin, don’t you see?  These are my wedding vows to you.  This is me saying ‘I do’ and also ‘Martin K. Blackwood would you do me the honor of making me the happiest man in the universe?’  All at once.  This is me saying I swear to you I will be yours, through everything, until the end of time.  M-Maybe I wasn’t before.  Maybe I was still punishing myself, but I’m telling you, I’m ready now to have my happily ever after.  With you, Martin.  If you’ll have me.  If I haven’t-“

He would never finish.  In a dizzying blur of blue folder, flashing hematite, and a wreath of golden curls, Martin kissed the words off his lips.  He kissed him so hard and so fierce, through wracking sobs with his hands woven so raptly into his long, wavy locks he thought his lips would bruise and his fragile soul would finally shatter to pieces in Martin’s arms.  Undone, all Jon could do was surrender and kiss him back with equal passion, thumbing away the hot tears as they spilled freely down his cheeks and anointed them both with their cleansing, hoary heat.  Their lips parted and they panted softly against each other in the space between, each afraid to break the sacred, pulsing silence.

“You’re crying,” Jon whispered at length, “I’ve said something wrong. Martin, darling I’m so sorry.  I never meant to-”

Martin laughed, raspy with tears, but ethereal, sparkling, like stardust floating on the breeze.

“People are allowed to cry when they’re happy you stupid, silly man,” he murmured in between kissing him again, and again.

“Oh.  Oh.”

He kissed him one last time, that idiot man who always burnt the toast and always knew the facts but never knew what to say, who finally figured it out and bought him a star, and threw his arms around him, enveloping his slight, fragile form protectively in his embrace.

“I love you.  I love you so much.”

Jon sank into that warm, familiar comfort and buried his face in his shoulder.

“I love you, too, Martin.  I want to be yours for the rest of my life.  I want to be me, I want to be us.”

“I know.  I’ve always known.  Oh god, you do know that right?  I know that you love me, it’s written in everything you do and say.  I have never, ever once doubted you love me with everything you are.  Even in the moments I was afraid that… that maybe we just weren’t meant to be together, I still knew it wouldn’t be because you didn’t love me.  Never because you didn’t love me.  Just maybe that we didn’t fit together anymore,” Martin replied in a small voice through his tears as they spilled down his cheeks.

As much as he wanted to vehemently deny there was ever a chance they might have not fit back together again after they had both been so shattered, to kiss him and tell him not in a million years would there ever have been a future where they weren’t Jon and Martin against the world, Jon knew it to be inescapably true.

“I’m so sorry you ever had to be afraid of that,” he swore, digging his fingers into Martin’s back pointedly, “After everything.  After we fought so hard to escape fear itself.  That I almost let it truly win in the end.  That I couldn’t just let go… Because… Because this was never about The Eye, was it?”

A heave of breath and its shuddering exhale shook Martin’s body free of lifetimes of grief, and fear, of ugliness carried far beyond the borders of their souls.  His fingers curled tighter in unspoken reply.

“No Jon, no it wasn’t, but I’m so very glad you finally figured that out.”

“Me, too…” he whispered.

They held each other in the quiet wake of being a moment and let the astral plane wheel calmly overhead.  An impatient star twinkled.

“Wait… you never answered me,” Jon finally said as he pulled back, sliding his elegant fingers down Martin’s strong arms.

“Huh?” Martin blurted, scrubbing under his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

“About marrying me tonight.  You never actually said yes, so…”

A twinkle in his eye and a slight mischief to his grin, Jon dove back into the picnic basket and emerged with a velvet ring box.  Martin’s hands flew to his mouth.

“You didn’t.”

“Of course I did!  Nothing fancy, but I thought it was high time to retire the blood rings,” he explained rising from his former perch on his hip to kneel properly.

The box cracked neatly open, and inside lay a simple, white gold band with a tiny circle of milky moonstone embedded in it on a midnight-blue satin cushion, blindingly bright against the dark.  Martin sobbed joyfully all over again.

“So, uh… I suppose if it had just been us, if we’d just been together, without everything, and we’d arrived at this moment.  I would have done much the same.  I would have brought you somewhere beautiful, somewhere I could teach you some inane fact you didn’t actually care about, but liked because it came from me.  Emulsifiers in ice cream and rum raisin…” they both snickered, “And I would have tried my best to make it into some sort of romantic metaphor but completely bunged it up and you would be laughing as I got down on one knee, just like this.  And it would have just been simple.  To the point.  Just… Will you marry me?  So…”

Jon assumed the traditional position, on one knee, arms outstretched, his every slender point a star in a perfect constellation of love.

“Will you marry me?”

Their eyes met, across a thousand different realities, across a thousand different worlds, carried on celestial winds to fall hopelessly, inexorably, into each other’s orbit.

“Yes, yes I do believe I will.”

With one last farewell kiss upon it for what it had meant for them both, Jon slipped the bloodstone ring from Martin’s finger and replaced it with the delicate band made of starlight.  It took its place radiantly, and shone as Martin drew his hand back to admire it with an equally radiant grin before it dimmed with concern.

“But what about you?” he asked worriedly as he watched the old ring entombed lovingly in the box.

Jon only smirked and produced a second box from the basket, which he offered on his open palm out to Martin.

“Naturally, I got one for myself.  Couldn’t pass up a chance to get a wedding ring that actually fits, could I?  It’s just… Don’t you think you deserve to give it to me the way you would want?” he urged.

Martin took the box eagerly, biting his lower lip in thought.

“Not sure you want to give me that freedom.  I had about five different ways of asking you in my head and all of them you would have hated so, so much.  But I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t kind of the point,” he answered wryly.

Jon chortled.

“Sorry I, the unromantic one, sprung this on you, the romantic one.  But I did want to surprise you.  I-I mean you can still write me a vows poem later?  If you want to, of course.  I’d love to have it, even if I don’t actually get to hear it at our wedding.”

Martin’s face flushed immediate crimson and his eyes darted coyly away as he toyed with the wedding band box in his lap.

“Oh that?  A-Actually I… I have it memorized, i-if you really wanted to hear it.”

“You- WHAT?” gasped Jon, his cheeks flushing in tandem.

“Oh yeah, I wrote my vows poem for you ages ago and I’ve gone over it so many times I know it by heart.  It was comforting, okay?  I-I’d read it again when times were good and I thought maybe you’d actually- um… a-and when times were not so good, when you were gone, in your own head, when I was afraid we were broken for good, whenever I needed it.  I’ve read it over a thousand times and never changed a thing from the first time I penned it.  Never needed to.  I’m surprised I haven’t recited it in my sleep at this point,” Martin admitted sheepishly.

Jon’s entire body flushed with a solar heat that melted his joints and his heart into a swirling flare of adulation.

“I can think of no better way, then, to receive my ring,” he breathed, reaching out to cup Martin’s cheek in his hand, “I’ve had my turn, now it’s yours.”

In mirror ballets of love exchanges, Martin cradled Jon’s hand against his cheek as he spoke the first lines of the vows etched ever on his being softly into his palm.

“Let he who, shadow dwelling, must In paper, pen, and book be bound Shake off the chains of dark and rust And chart his own bright fate unfound.

Let he with lifelong burdens borne Cut paper wings with thread of gold And hand in hand, the sky forsworn Flit clouds and sun in laughter bold.

Let he whose blood and soldier’s ken The world did shield from dark and fear Heal fast those wounds, be whole again And sleep at last, held close and dear.

Bring him to me with spirit free With stars in eyes and music sung From lips a joyful promise be One soul conjoined, one fate’s thread strung.

Two hearts rejoice in love renowned. We lift our heads, alive, uncrowned.”

He waited until the last couplet to pull the ring from the box and slide it onto Jon’s finger where it too, fit perfectly, like it had always been there, and shone defiantly bright in the moonlight.  Jon wept.  He had been weeping since the first words of verse left his beloved’s lips, but seeing that ring like a piece of his missing soul returned to him undammed the tears effusively.

“God that was… Martin, I don’t have words.  I-It was… so beautiful.  You’re so beautiful.  Thank you,” he cried fervently, “I wish I could tell you properly how much that meant, but I just-“

“Hey… That’s alright.  I’m the words guy.  You’re the emulsifiers guy.  Making you cry is all I need to see to know how you feel,” Martin assured him warmly, reaching out to brush his tears away as he chuckled.

“Yeah… add this one to the running tally.”

“Oh, I have,” Martin snickered, “Speaking of!  Now we’ve done the crying through vows bit.  Shouldn’t we say the ‘I do’ bit, as well?”

Jon pursed his lips with a shrug as he reached out with his left hand to take Martin’s left as well, twining their fingers together

“Yes, I suppose we should.  I don’t see why not.  Well then, Martin, do you?”

“I do.  And Jon, do you?”

“I do.”

“You may now soundly snog the groom.”

“Martin…”

The emphatic drawl of his name the way Jon only called it when he was frustratingly enamored of him perished gently against Martin’s velvet lips as they caressed his.  They kissed slowly and reverently, sealing a pact ordained by the heavens long before either of them had seen the stars in the other’s eyes, lighting with white flame the torch to guide them for the first time, forward.  They broke it only to punctuate it with two more featherlight kisses and a breathless laugh, bowing their foreheads together in deference to the forces of fate and the universe.

“I know this isn’t the wedding either of us ever dreamed of, but as far as I’m concerned, it was perfect,” Jon murmured, nuzzling closer into his husband, swaddling the new, fledgling and beautiful word in his heart.

“Well, hey, what is a wedding really other than just a formal declaration that this is it?  This is us, we’re forever, no matter what.  We did it.  And you did it for me, in the STARS, Jon… Can we just remember that again?  You put us in the actual stars.  I am so writing a ballad for our constellation later, you do know this.”

“Oh lord.  Of course you are.  But really, it was the least I could do, after you’ve done so much for me, sacrificed everything for me.  Waited for me for so long.”

“And you came back to me,” Martin reminded him passionately, “And I don’t just mean back to life, here, in this world.  I mean you came back, Jon, MY Jon, the Jon I was in love with the moment I laid eyes on him.  The fidgety and obstinate Jon who can’t make a decent cup of tea to save his life, who puts on two different socks in the morning because his nose is already in the paper or a book, who teaches me about bleeding rocks and binary stars and still reacts to the simplest acts of kindness like a warm cranberry orange scone without asking for one like they’re divine miracles he is undeserving of, who looks at me like I hung the moon or something every time.  Even when I thought I was a complete and total waste of a human being, you, Jonathan Sims, the most beautiful, amazing, brilliant man to ever walk the Earth, looked at me like I hung the moon.  And that was… Still is… everything to me.”

The heavens shifted, the stars wheeled, the last piece clicked smartly, smugly into place.

“W-What did you say…?” Jon asked with such urgency, grabbing his hands so fiercely, Martin startled.

“Wh-I-I don’t-?  Which part?  The moon hanging part?” he stuttered, rolling his eyes fondly as he realized mid-sentence, “Oh, right.  Ugh, Jon are you seriously going to get after me about your weird vendetta against idioms at our wedding?  Because if you are that would be annoyingly adorable and so intensely you and kind of perfect, but also can you not on THIS particular occasion?”

The laugh that tore from Jon’s throat was half mad, half euphoric as the weight of the moon lifted from his shoulders and became naught but an indifferent sentinel disc in the sky once more.

“No no no, it’s just… It’s funny, I had more than a few things very, very wrong for a very, very long time.  That’s all.  Don’t worry about it,” he explained, leaning in and pressing a delicate kiss to Martin’s forehead, “If you’re the one who hung the moon after all, then I suppose ‘written in the stars’ will have to do for me.”

Martin lit up with literary glee.

“Oh ho!  Two space related idioms in one go?  What a rare treat!  Maybe this is your gateway drug into puns…” he teased impishly.

“Absolutely no chance in hell.”

They both laughed, laughed with the billowing icy breath that reached with victorious fingers up to the heavens.  They laughed, messily sniffing back the pesky drip of tears and cold.  They laughed with lightness of the encumbrance of hematite armor shed, its bloody protections no longer needed to cage wounded hearts and keep them safe and close.  They laughed in breath and also in the dancing points of light in their eyes as they fell into one another free from gravity.

“So uh… Do I get to see my star tonight, or don’t I?” Martin finally remembered, relishing the utterly horrified yelp from Jon.

“Oh god I completely-!  Y-Yes!  Yes of course, it’s already set up at the proper coordinates!” he had already sprung to his feet, “Oh, though, hang on, it took longer to get to the star viewing part than I anticipated, so I might need to adjust it a bit.  Oh!  And I have a little strawberries and champagne, if you like?”

“I do like, please and thank you!”

Jon set to readjusting the telescope to the proper ascension and declination while Martin poured them two glasses of crisply bubbling champagne.  They twined their arms to drink a toast from each other’s glass, ‘to us’ or ‘to happily ever afters’, or to several other messily rambled toast worthy sentiments.  They couldn’t decide and toasted to all of it.  They ate plump red strawberries and licked the juice from each other’s fingers as they looked at their star, which was, after everything, just a dot, just like Pluto, but Martin had to admit that he rather liked looking at dots after all.  And that one was their dot.  The warm intoxication of love and champagne begged for music, and someone fumbled in the cold for a wedding playlist on some app, somewhere, it didn’t matter, just as long as they could join hands, gaze into each other’s eyes and dance inelegantly, stepping on each other’s toes, under the umbrella of stars in a gentle rain of moonlight.

“I don’t see your problem with cliches, idioms and all that, really…” Martin mused at length, laying his head on Jon’s shoulder as they slowly spun to the rhythm of a longing ballad and the song of the sea, “Like this stupid, great song.  They’re familiar and cozy and everyone knows them.  They’re like… like old friends.  Always there to rely on when we can’t come up with the words ourselves, because sometimes we can’t.  And if something trite and silly sums up the way you feel, why not just let it be?  Sometimes things are said over and over again because some truths are universal, you know?  They’re just… human.”

Jon pressed a kiss into the mop of curls that tickled his nose and smelled faintly of toasted sugar and lavender and mused on all of the romantic cliches that had just passed through his mind unbidden.  Who was he to deny he was but one star in the sky, a single gear in the grand mortal mechanism of the universe.  If he had handed himself over to the humanity of it all instead of rusting, stopping, looking outside where there was never anything to see, perhaps he could have had this dance much sooner.  It didn’t matter though, until it did, because that night Martin took his breath away, made his world go round, he was head over heels for his match made in heaven, and better than heaven, they were written in the stars.

“You know what, Martin?” Jon laughed in reply, “Tonight, being what it is, I am willing to concede.  You are absolutely right.”

“I’m glad…” came the tender acceptance, followed by a distinctly puckish beat of silence, “Then does this mean I can I start saying love you to the moon and back?”

“Don’t push your luck...”

[tigerkirby215]

5e Akshan, the Rogue Sentinel build (League of Legends)

(Artwork made for League of Legends by Riot Games.)

HE’S HERE HE’S HERE HESHEREHESHEREHESHEREHESHEREHESHEREHESHERE...

It’s no secret I’ve been excited for Akshan since he was first announced; the prospect of a grappling hook champ was simply too interesting for me. Seeing him now... I’m having slight reservations? I really dislike his Scoundrel mechanic (who had “bring back Garen Villain mechanic” and “revival mechanic” on their 200 years Bingo card?) and I kinda wish the grappling hook was incorporated more into his kit but... he still seems fun? It looks like he plays like a Twitch with more of an assassin focus, and Twitch has always been a fun character. I’m probably not buying him immediately on release but I’ll grab him when he drops down to a standardized price.

But anyways I’m here to build funny grappling hook man! ...Without his grappling hook. Look I’m going to tell you right now that while there is a grappling hook in 5e there’s little way to get a grappling hook gun like Akshan has, and while I’ll do my best to provide options in this build don’t get your hopes up. If that’s enough to make you lose interest in the build I’m sorry, but I do hope you stick around to read it anyways.

GOALS

Reclaimed by the light, yade yade yada... - Reviving people in real life is hard. Reviving people in League of Legends is a little easier. Reviving people in D&D though? Pretty easy.

Stealth time! I mean, stealth time...! - You will never guess what class the character with “Rogue” in their title is.

Only one way out of this mess; skyward! - Like I said I unfortunately can’t give you a grappling hook... gun. I can still give you the grappling hook item, and ways to climb out of dangerous situations!

RACE

Akshan is human according to the lore, so feel free to leave your complaints about Variant Human at the door. You can put +1 into your Strength and Dexterity for super Akshan action! You can also grab proficiency with the Persuasion skill (because how can you say no to that smile?) and whatever language would fit as Shuriman.

Of course Variant Humans get to grab a feat at level 1, and hello Crossbow Expert my old friend! Get that double-shot passive in while also fighting up-close and dirty. Oh and not needing to reload is obviously nice.

ABILITY SCORES

15; DEXTERITY - You’re still a marksman, which of course means Dexterity for shooting.

14; CHARISMA - You fight with a roguish charm. Rules are more like guidelines really, and why follow rules if they ruin your style?

13; STRENGTH - You need strength to throw grappling hooks if your DM doesn’t give you a proper grappling hook gun. Also carrying reobtained loot from warlords is nice.

12; CONSTITUTION - Even if you’re a squishy marksman / assassin having health is still a good thing.

10; WISDOM - You picked a few too many fights with bad people, but you’ve still got a good heart.

8; INTELLIGENCE - Grappling hooks are cool and all but attaching a grappling hook to an ancient relic used to vanquish a prophesized evil isn’t the brightest plan, and ignoring that prophesized evil for your own personal vengeance quest isn’t a good idea either.

Feel free to swap Strength and Constitution if you want better health but worse grappling hook tosses.

BACKGROUND

Akshan was an Urchin before being saved by Shadya. You get proficiency with Stealth and Slight of Hand as well as some tools, but I’d honestly suggest replacing them with Jeweler's Tools and Leatherworker’s Tools to keep your outfit in check. (Mostly because you get Thieves’ Tools from your class and won’t need a Disguise Kit.)

As a Shuriman kid you know all of the City Secrets. When you are not in combat, you can lead your allies through the city twice as fast as your speed would normally allow. Being a street kid does give you some valuable knowledge!

(Artwork made for Legends of Runeterra by Riot Games.)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - ROGUE 1

Wow who would’ve guessed the character with “Rogue” in their title is a Rogue?! As a Rogue you get proficiency in Acrobatics, Athletics, Insight, and Deception. But feel free to swap it up to make your own Akshan! You can also get Expertise in Acrobatics for rope-swinging tricks, and Stealth to hunt down scoundrels!

When you find the scoundrels deliver swift Comeuppance with a Sneak Attack! If you have advantage or fight dirty with an ally near the enemy you can do an extra d6 of damage with your shot! And to top it off you’ve spent enough times in the streets of Shurima to know how scoundrels talk and can use Thieves’ Cant to trick them that you’re one of them, or can listen to scoundrels talking to know when to stop them.

LEVEL 2 - ROGUE 2

Second level Rogues can opt not to attack and instead use a Cunning Action to Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a Bonus Action. “To the shadows; where the scoundrels hide!”

LEVEL 3 - ROGUE 3

Third level Rogues get to choose their Roguish Archetype, and to get the ability to swing around on ropes the Thief is about as good as you’re going to get. That’s because Second-Story Work makes it so climbing ropes doesn’t cost extra movement, and also lets you jump further if you have a running start. In addition you have Fast Hands, allowing you to use your Cunning Action to make a Sleight of Hand check, use your thieves’ tools to disarm a trap or open a lock, or take the “Use an Object” action.

Now here’s the thing about using your grappling hook: most DMs would consider throwing a Grappling Hook to be a “Use an Object” action. So as a Bonus Action you can throw your grappling hook and then use your climbing speed to climb up the rope, as if you were grappling upwards! Of course talk to your DM if that’s okay, but if they let it happen you’ve practically got a flying speed at level 3! As long as there’s walls to grapple on, at least. “Akshan, away!”

And to top it off your Sneak Attack also increase to 2d6.

LEVEL 4 - ROGUE 4

Feel free to skip your first ASI if you want some Sentinel abilities first, but I consider Dexterity more important for a Rogue. More shooting, more AC, and better stealth!

(Artwork made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 5 - WARLOCK 1

The Light Sentinels are a powerful, ancient entity who gave you powers in exchange for a set of rules. Just because the one who signed you up is dead and you don’t really follow the rules doesn’t mean you can’t still use their powers! But truthfully I just wanted a Charisma caster and you all know how much I love Warlock. Naturally powers against darkness and undead would be Celestial in nature! While you normally use The Absolver’s Healing Light to revive people healing is also useful. You have a pool of d6s equal to your Warlock level plus one. As a bonus action you can heal a creature you can see within 60 feet of you, spending dice from the pool. The maximum number of dice you can spend at once equals your Charisma modifier. Roll the dice you spend, add them together, and restore a number of hit points equal to the total. You regain all expended dice when you finish a long rest.

In addition as a Celestial Warlock you get Bonus Cantrips like the Light cantrip to see with your dumb human eyes as well as Sacred Flame cantrip to deliver Comeuppance! And of course to get cantrips you also get Pact Magic! You learn two cantrips from the Warlock list like Prestidigitation to be cool and flashy, and Mage Hand which can help you with your... legitimate business.

You can also learn two first level spells like Guiding Bolt and Cure Wounds, straight from the Celestial List! Mark a foe as a scoundrel and keep your friends alive and well! “Go; and die no more.”

LEVEL 6 - WARLOCK 2

Second level Warlocks get Eldritch Invocations: normally you get two but we’re only going to take one for now. But which one? Mage Armor is the best AC you’re going to get until you get magic armor which means that Armor of Shadows could be good, but Mask of Many Faces will let you choose your outfits however you please, and keep them from getting dirty! Basically I’m leaving you with a choice: if you want better AC but worse infiltration go for Armor of Shadows. Alternatively if you want the ability to sneak around in plain sight then Mask of Many Faces is a good choice for you!

You could also learn another Warlock spell but we’re going to wait for...

LEVEL 7 - WARLOCK 3

Third level Warlocks get their Pact Boon, and while the Absolver isn’t quite a “blade” Pact of the Blade is still the boon related to using cool ancient relic weapons! If you want to upgrade Pact of the Blade into “Pact of the Blade and also Sentinel Weapons” take Improved Pact Weapon.

Now here’s where I’m going to have to tell you to homebrew with your DM a little: for whatever reason Improved Pact Weapon lets you summon a shortbow, longbow, light crossbow, or heavy crossbow. Notice that there’s no Hand Crossbow on that list. This (technically) means that you can’t summon a Hand Crossbow, even if you take the Invocation tax for Improved Pact Weapon. Pact of the Blade does let you bind to any weapon... as long as its magical, and the lowest level magical Hand Crossbow you can get is either a +1 Hand Crossbow or a Crossbow of Warning. (Both good items to have but not necessarily something you’ll find in your adventures.) In short the official rules don’t let you have a Hand Crossbow.

Honestly I see no reason why you can’t have a Pact Hand Crossbow, but if your DM’s a stickler about it you can survive with either a Heavy Crossbow or a Longbow. (Depending on your preference.) If your DM doesn’t allow you to use a Hand Crossbow take Sharpshooter as your level 1 feat instead of Crossbow Expert, as you’ll get more use out of it.

tl;dr talk to your DM about letting Improved Pact Weapon let you summon a Hand Crossbow. If they say no edit the build with that in mind.

Anyways you can also learn more spells like Invisibility to sneak around, and Misty Step for good ol’ Flash.

LEVEL 8 - WARLOCK 4

4th level Warlocks can get an Ability Score Improvement... or a Feat! It would be easier just to grab Eldritch Adept now and talk about which Invocation you’ll use it for next level.

You can prepare another spell at this level at least, and also learn another cantrip! For your cantrip Minor Illusion can be used to make distractions while sneaking, and Mirror Image is a good spell to keep alive.

There are other spells you can take instead if you so desire. Lesser Restoration from the Celestial list is never bad to have, and Darkness can be used as a Smoke Bomb which you can’t see through with your dumb human eyes. And of course there’s the obviously good spells like Hold Person or Shatter. I’m trying to build what’s most accurate to Akshan, as well as what I believe would be the most useful. Feel free to change the build as you wish.

LEVEL 9 - WARLOCK 5

5th level Warlocks get more invocations like Thirsting Blade for a bit more attack speed with your Absolver. You can also cash in that Eldritch Adept Invocation to take One With Shadows, to hide in the shade of a wall until it’s time to surprise your foes! “That’s right; it is I!”

And finally we’ve got our revive! Take Revivify to bring someone back from the dead, as long as it was fairly recent. And the best part is you don’t even need to kill the person who killed them! But you will need a lot of diamonds, which can get expensive. “Dear friends: please stop dying. Love, Akshan.”

There’s several other third level spells you could potentially take (notably Thunder Step which might be a good replacement for Misty Step if you don’t mind throwing stealth out the window) but it’s up to you to take them.

(Artwork by @Tsvetyaa on Twitter.)

LEVEL 10 - ROGUE 5

Now that you’ve got the Sentinel part down it’s time to hone your Roguish skills! 5th level Rogues can use their reaction for an Uncanny Dodge, halving the damage from an attack they saw coming. In addition your Sneak Attack increases to 3d6.

LEVEL 11 - ROGUE 6

6th level Rogues get Expertise in two more skills: Deception and Persuasion would be useful to charm your way out of danger.

LEVEL 12 - ROGUE 7

7th level Rogues can swing out of danger with Evasion: if you make a Dexterity saving throw and succeed, you take no damage! And even if you fail you only take half damage! Oh and your Sneak Attack is now 4d6. “Consider yourself, absolved.”

LEVEL 13 - ROGUE 8

8th level Rogues get an Ability Score Improvement: let’s cap off that Dexterity to be the best shot you can be!

(Artwork made for League of Legends by Riot Games.)

LEVEL 14 - ROGUE 9

9th level Thief Rogues can never be found as long as they’re careful. Supreme Sneak gives you advantage on Stealth checks if you move no more than half your speed on your turn. This has insane synergy with One With Shadows as you can turn invisible and then get advantage on stealth (because for some reason being invisible doesn’t do that.) And of course if you go slow and steady you can sneak around just about anything, which is great for when you pop out to do 5d6 Sneak Attack damage! “Ha! I have you now!”

LEVEL 15 - ROGUE 10

Rogues get a few extra Ability Score Improvements... one extra, to be precise. But that means you can bump up your Charisma to be better at socialization and all that Warlock stuff.

LEVEL 16 - ROGUE 11

11th level Rogues get Reliable Talent, meaning the lowest you can roll on a skill you’re proficient in is 10. I always like to go through your skills when you get this ability to show what the bare minimum you can roll is, so...

27 on Acrobatics or Stealth

25 on Deception or Persuasion

21 on Slight of Hand

18 on Athletics

16 on Insight

And your Sneak Attack is now 6d6. What fun!

LEVEL 17 - ROGUE 12

12th level Rogues get yet another Ability Score Improvement, which of course means more Charisma!

(Artwork made for Legends of Runeterra by Riot Games.)

LEVEL 18 - ROGUE 13

13th level Thief Rogues can use any Sentinel weapon they reacquisition thanks to Use Magic Device. You ignore all class, race, and level requirements on the use of magic items, letting you have fun with whatever toys you find. And when all else fails your Absolver now packs a 7d6 Sneak Attack!

LEVEL 19 - ROGUE 14

14th level Rogues are so good at sneaking they can catch the sneakers! You have a 10 foot Blindsense to know if anyone’s hiding near you.

LEVEL 20 - ROGUE 15

Our final level is the 15th level of Rogue for Slippery Mind... You get proficiency in Wisdom saving throws. That’s it. Well how’s about 8d6 Sneak Attack as a final sendoff?

FINAL BUILD

PROS

I’ve got something for you! It’s... comeuppance - Three shots with a Hand Crossbow means three chances to apply your 8d6 Sneak Attack! Akshan is all about burst and burst people down you can certainly do!

Sometimes I even sneak up on myself - Supreme Sneak, One With Shadows, and the Invisibility spell will help you move around in the shadows without being spotted. And even without that you have a minimum 27 Stealth roll thanks to Reliable Talent!

You are reclaimed. Go! Live! - It obviously goes without saying but a little bit of healing helps a lot in the long run. Everyone can appreciate a pick me up.

CONS

You try to rest and some lowlife kills one of your palls! - You have a lot more limited resources than the average Warlock as your Healing Light only comes back after a Long Rest. What’s more is that most of your spells are utility based so it might be hard to get use out of the renewable nature of Warlock spell slots. And to top it off Revivify is expensive! So you’d best be ready to spend a lot of diamonds.

I live by my own code: don’t be an ass - Your Charisma unfortunately isn’t maxed out, which means your Warlock abilities aren’t maxed out. But you don’t really need maxed out Charisma as most of your spells are utility based... I’m just saying Sharpshooter is an option.

Shadya would approve of this... I think - You missed out on level 17 of Thief Rogue which means you don’t get arguably one of the strongest Rogue abilities in the game: Thief’s Reflexes. If you’re not going to get to level 20 anytime soon I think that this build is quite good but if you’re going to get to a high level maybe ditch the revives? (It’s more than likely that Cleric can do it better.)

But you’re enough of a hero without the super-awesome relic weapon that can bring people back from the dead; that’s just an added bonus... as is the grappling hook! Use your natural awesomeness to sneak up your foes and then use your legitimately-obtained weapons-of-mass-absolution to vanquish any scoundrel in your way! And if a depressed ghost king comes knocking tell him that the maximum time limit on your revives expired. “Silly Viego, we can’t bring back those we’ve lost. I mean, I can. But not you.”

(Artwork made for Legends of Runeterra by Riot Games.)

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

BBC Merlin 4x05: His Father’s Son

Here's a round-up of my main observations from BBC Merlin's "His Father's Son" (4x05).

1- MERLIN AS A KNIGHT 

I have to admit that Merlin as a sorcerer and trusted adviser appeals to me the most, but I did write a lengthy post analysing how Arthur had turned Merlin into an excellent fighter. This refutes claims that Merlin gave more to Arthur than he received in return. 

At the beginning of 4x05, we see Merlin selected to play a new role: that of knight. How did this come about? Arthur Pendragon is best known for his skills as a warrior, but he deserves more credit for his military tactics. These destroy the popular yet false idea that he is unintelligent. More on the latter in a forthcoming post.  

One of Arthur’s favourite tactics is using decoys. Previous examples of him using decoys include: The Castle of Fyrien (3x07), when Arthur used Merlin as a decoy to entrap Cenred’s soldiers; Aithusa (4x04), when Arthur used himself as a decoy to get Sir Percival to safety; Arthur’s Bane Part 2 (5x02), when Arthur uses Merlin as a decoy to enrage the slave traders before they escape-- by far my favourite example. 

All things considered, I don’t think it takes long for Arthur to choose Merlin. Furthermore, this decision may have taken place before they reached their selected location, as Agravaine later mentions a previous attack by Caerleon on the border. This choice demonstrates that Arthur has higher confidence in Merlin's abilities than he does of in his knights-- else he would have chosen them. We must conclude that Merlin is Arthur's best fighter, though at first glance, we wonder why an unarmed man follows trained knights into battle. 

Merlin is sharp, fast, has high stamina, and is incredibly resourceful. Most of all, however, he is incredibly brave. In fact, when rewatching 1x02, I was surprised to see Arthur acknowledge that Merlin was "braver than you look." This despite Arthur’s frustration that Merlin did not try hard enough during practice ("Come on, Merlin: I've got a tournament to win!"). 

What’s more, in that same episode, Merlin complains about his first day, but later on, we see his fascination wth the ongoing tournament. Then he admitted to Gaius that working for Arthur (in the context of said tournament) "isn't totally horrible all the time." It took one day for him to change his opinion! 

Sure, Merlin would continue to treat the fighting as pointless violence, and Arthur as having nothing more in his head than a desire to knock "the seven bells" out of other people (3x04). However, even in 1x02, when he applauds Arthur's fighting, his actions tell a different story. We associate this habit of liking something whilst pretending otherwise to Arthur, yet Merlin has it as well. 

As I have said before, Merlin and Arthur have profound differences, yet are profoundly alike. 

2- MERLIN AS A SERVANT 

It comes as no surprise that Merlin would return to serving after the beginning of 4x05. However, what that change represents sets the tone for this entire episode: Arthur dismissing Merlin's counsel repeatedly in favour of listening to his uncle. 

When Arthur says, "so please, stick to what you do know," you have to wonder whether Merlin remembered being entrusted with the role of knight. Now, Arthur puts him back in his place. 

Here's another example: "My conscience is clean, which is more than I can say for my room, so just... do your job, will you?" Yet just yesterday, that job involved Merlin risking his life against enemy forces by dressing as a knight. 

By the way, you can tell that Arthur doesn’t believe his own excuses, because he keeps using the passive voice to justify killing Caerleon: “...a show of strength was necessary… an example had to be made… My conscience is clean…” 

Merlin’s face after Arthur claims he doesn’t need anyone is self-explanatory. 

3- NEW THOUGHTS ON ANNIS

Is Queen Annis a good person? Actually, no. 

First of all, she knows and approves of her husband invading foreign kingdoms to plunder their wealth. Such invasions naturally cost not only the lives of Arthur's men, but her own, too. 

Furthermore, despite accepting Arthur's offer of a fight by single combat, she is prepared to cheat by enlisting Morgana's power. Perhaps if Arthur had died, too, she would have felt some remorse. Yet she still takes a monumental risk with Arthur's life in blatant violation of the knight's code. One has to wonder about her reaction had Camelot plotted against her armies in the same way. 

Then we have Annis calmly ordering Merlin’s execution without giving him a chance to explain himself. The lack of emotion in her voice suggests she has done this before. 

Speaking of cruelty, Annis’ champion seems to enjoy inflicting pain on his enemies, yet the Queen claims that he “served my husband well.” I dread to think what she means by “served”. 

I will also note that Queen Annis disdains magic, referring to Morgana as “witch”. As I have said before, Uther did not begin prejudice against magic; sorcerers were disliked and feared elsewhere, too, including by those who disliked Uther. Many sorcerers caused this prejudice by engaging in manipulative, violent, and wicked deeds. 

Examples include High Priestesses using Fomorrohs to enslave people’s minds (4x06); Cornelius Sigan using his power to change day into night and acquire vast wealth (2x01); sorcerers using special blades to murder people (3x04), and so on.

None of this takes away from Annis’ complexity, nor does it undermine her immense humility when she accepts defeat and withdraws from Camelot. After all, much of Annis' rage and desire for vengeance stems from intense grief over Caerleon's death, so we can assume her marriage was a happy one. 

Forgiving the man who destroyed her domestic happiness (as well as leaving her people without a king) shows tremendous nobility on Annis’ part. I think Arthur sees that, for he is always humble and respectful before her. 

4- LONG LIVE THE KING 

Few people respect Arthur more than Merlin. So when he doesn’t join in with cries of “Long live the king!”, you know something is wrong. 

5- CONTROL YOUR FEAR 

Episode 4x03 has a hilarious scene where a drunk Arthur claims he isn’t even a little bit scared, because, “I’m a warrior. You learn to control your fear.” Then Arthur walks smack bang into a pillar. Never fails to make me laugh. Minus the drunkenness, Arthur was telling the truth about controlling his fear.

You can see this at least twice in this episode: first, when he sees how many men Annis has brought against Camelot, and secondly, when he sees the size of Annis’ giant. In both cases, Arthur harnesses his fear into determination, which is another sign of a great warrior. 

Next up, we have a fascinating scene where Arthur watches his men joking by the fire. It's a great way of showing Arthur’s care for these men, as well as his guilt that impending war will end their lives. In a sense, Arthur has to control his fear yet again. 

6- TRUST IN MERLIN 

After the above scene, Gwaine asks Merlin if Arthur is all right, and the fact that Merlin can describe Arthur's feelings without even questioning the King once again shows the unique nature of their friendship. Merlin sees Arthur's expression, and he just knows. And Gwaine knows that, hence why he does not question the King himself. 

Listen to the silence after Merlin's response. Nobody questions Merlin's judgement: they just reflect. Given the way Arthur has repeatedly dismissed Merlin's advance in favour of his uncle, I think he could have learned something from his own knights. 

I wonder whether the knights would ask Merlin something about Arthur in this way, whenever the king was absent. In ancient kingdoms, kings had advisers, and in order to earn the monarch's favour, you spoke to the latter first. Did Merlin ever play that role for the knights?

7- MERLIN’S IDIOCY 

Now, I have a problem with Merlin telling Arthur that 1)- he would have taken any other option but to face war with Annis, and 2)- his decision to kill Caerleon “was made in the best interests of Camelot.” 

Sorry, but it wasn’t. Merlin knows that. I understand that he has to rally Arthur’s spirits so that they can win against Annis, but I am glad that Arthur knows full well he has done wrong. Both Merlin and many fans do not give Arthur enough credit for recognising his own errors. 

However, even these foolishly optimistic statements pale in comparison to Merlin's reckless and self-righteous interference when Arthur negotiates with Queen Annis. I burst out laughing when he trips and falls headlong into the tent, a metaphor for his impetuousness.  

Merlin eavesdrops outside Annis’ tent, gets caught (so he didn't conceal himself), and then has the audacity to say, “Sorry about this!” to Arthur! Not only that, he got angry over being called a “simple-minded fool”, when he couldn’t even walk in a straight line to follow the king, got himself caught and almost killed by enemy soldiers, and made Arthur look as though he were double-crossing Annis! 

I completely agree with Arthur’s anger: “Oh, I was being kind, believe me: you almost got me killed in there!” Correct. Merlin simply could not trust that Arthur knew what he was doing, and decided to interfere. Instead of apologising for getting Arthur into trouble, Merlin remains on the defensive, claiming without evidence that Arthur was “doing a pretty good job of that yourself!” 

This is untrue. Arthur surrendered himself to Annis’ men. The most injury he received was a slap. He asked a favour. That isn’t risking your life. In fact, Arthur was trying to save lives, and if Merlin had been listening properly (or just stayed in bed), he would have seen that. Only after Merlin’s sudden entrance did Arthur face serious danger from Annis. 

Now, Merlin’s explanation for this is, “I’m your friend! I was looking out for you.” I don’t doubt it. But once again, Arthur is right: “I appreciate that in your very confused way, you’re only trying to help, but please: don’t do it again.”

Condescending? Of course. But this time it was Merlin who provoked him into this anger. 

8- MORGANA 

Despite all her power, Morgana still has to defer to non-magical kings and queens. After all, she requires their military assistance to take over Camelot. 

You can also see how Queen Annis detects Morgana’s hatred, greed, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and bloodlust. In one glance, Queen Annis begins questioning the wisdom of working with a sorceress she does not trust, not least on account of Morgana being a sorceress. 

In fact, Arthur’s prowess as a warrior impresses her more: “You have as much to lose as I if Arthur wins…” Fascinating scene. 

9- THANK YOU, OLD FRIEND 

It’s ironic that arguably the best scene in 4x05 begins by showcasing Arthur’s cynicism. No guesses why Arthur did not tell Merlin about breaking off his relationship with Gwen earlier. That speaks volumes. If he had told Merlin, I think they would have had an argument similar to that of 4x11. 

Only when Arthur realises that he may die does he ask Merlin to pass his ring onto Gwen with an apology. You can see the guilt etched onto his face as he refuses to make eye contact. Interestingly, Merlin does not ask any further questions. 

Arthur’s entrusting Merlin to look after Gwen in the event of his death says a lot. For example, that ring is technically royal property, yet Arthur gives it to a servant for safe-keeping, rather than his next-of-kin, Agravaine. Despite claiming to need his uncle’s advice, Arthur will not trust Agravaine with such duties. Has Arthur made a medieval will or testament? Obviously, I have no idea, however, this episode already shows Arthur’s reliance on Merlin to deal with family matters. 

Another interesting aspect to this scene is Merlin’s silence after Arthur makes an indisputable point. This dispels any idea that Merlin’s advice was always correct. On several occasions, Merlin had to defer to Arthur’s judgement, because he saw the truth and wisdom behind it. “I don’t know what will happen. But for the first time since I became king, I know in my heart I’ve made the right decision.”

Got to love Arthur’s half-amused, “You’re not about to start crying on me, are you?” He expects Merlin to be either in good spirits or confident, because that is how he, too, remains confident. Arthur is an optimist, yet Merlin becomes a pessimist, so the king must pull Merlin together with light and yet serious teasing. 

Needless to say, Arthur calling Merlin “old friend” implies that they have been friends for a long time. So why do some fans still think that Arthur had trouble admitting that Merlin was his friend? Also, the word “old” in this context can imply reliability, constancy. Arthur chose that word to describe Merlin’s value, as well as the length of their friendship. 

The great thing about Arthur is that while he makes some serious errors, when he does repent, he does so well. Not only does Arthur graciously thank Merlin for his concern, but he makes it clear to Agravaine that he relies on Merlin’s judgement prior to entering battle. This supports my earlier statement that Merlin is Arthur’s best fighter, as well as right-hand man; Arthur does not leave for the fight until Merlin has confirmed his readiness. 

On top of this, Arthur later admits that he might be a cabbage head. “I should have listened to you, Merlin. Just this once, I think you were right-- even if you are the worst servant in the five kingdoms!” 

By implication, Agravaine is wrong. Arthur won’t say that, of course, but we saw Merlin’s sound advice competing with Agravaine’s lies for this entire episode. We can only conclude that regardless of what he says, Arthur trusts Merlin more than members of his own family. 

And this is a theme which will continue and grow for the remainder of Season 4. 

FURTHER POINTS:

Merlin’s fighting skills

Paradoxes of Arthur and Merlin’s friendship