#i have over 1000 images with him in em

[typhra]

sorry one accidental bit of exposure of osomatsu san sent me back to thinking about karamatsu constantly

[section-chief-prentiss]

puzzled

Summary: In your spare time, you and Emily start working on a puzzle in her office. 

Pairing: Emily Prentiss/Reader 

Word Count: 2429

Ao3

“You can refresh your email as much as you want,” JJ teased from the desk next to yours. “But it’s not going to make a case appear.”

You sighed, glancing over your computer at the blonde agent sitting across from you. Her light hair was thrown back in a ponytail, and she had a light blue blouse on and black slacks. Her legs were crossed, and she looked at you with amusement in her sparkling eyes.

“Four days,” you said, running a hand through your messy hair. “We haven’t had a case in four days.” 

“For the first time since joining the team, I’m caught up on paperwork,” Luke commiserated from his desk a few feet away. “I never knew four days could feel so long.” 

Spencer whirled around in his desk chair, his brown, curly hair flying in every direction. “A recent study found that bored participants tended to think more about time, which caused it to feel like it was moving slower. Since we’re accustomed to frequently working on cases, it’s only natural that the unexpected downtime we’re experiencing would cause us to feel that time is moving more slowly than it is.”

You set your hands on your desk and pushed yourself up to a standing position. “I’m going to see if Emily has anything for us. Maybe that’ll help time move faster.” 

Spencer perked up. “Time doesn’t actually speed up when we’re occupied; it’s only our perception that—”

A groan from the rest of the team drowned out the rest of what Reid was going to say, as you navigated your way out of the bullpen and up the stairs toward Emily’s office.

You knocked twice on her door, straining to hear her response on the other side. 

“Come in!”

You opened the door a crack and peeked your head through the space. “Are you busy?” 

Emily cracked a smile. “As busy as any of you are.”

You made your way inside, closing the door behind you, and took a seat in one of the chairs opposite Emily’s desk. The Unit Chief’s raven hair hung in a curtain around her face, her bangs perfectly cut just below her eyebrows. She wore a long-sleeved red shirt—your favorite color on her. 

“No new case yet?”

Emily sat forward in her chair, clasping her hands together and resting them on her desk. “Not yet, it appears all serial killers have taken the week off.”

“Do you have paperwork you need help with?” 

Emily chuckled. “You’re so bored that you’re asking for paperwork?”

You frowned at her. “Em, I’m desperate.”

Emily’s brown eyes locked with yours for a moment. She bit her bottom lip—her tell that gears were turning, and an idea was forming in her mind. 

Nodding, she opened one of her desk drawers, reaching for something you couldn’t see.

“Hotch left this in his desk when he resigned,” Emily said, setting a box down between you.

The top of the box showed a 1000-piece puzzle depicting dolphins cresting over waves, a sunset behind them. 

You softened, thinking of the previous Unit Chief, who’d left the team to enter witness protection to keep himself and his young son safe from a serial killer. 

“Aww, for Jack?”

“No,” Emily grinned. “It was for him. He loved puzzles, said they helped him focus on a case when he was stuck.”

You picked up the box, studying the image. There were a lot of similar shades of blue, but you hoped that would present enough of a challenge to keep you entertained while you waited for a case to come in.

“Are you gonna help me with this?” you asked. 

From your first day at the BAU, being in the same room as Emily caused butterflies to flit around in your stomach. Her kind eyes, her dark hair, the confidence she strutted around the BAU with—you couldn’t help but feel drawn to her. But you’d never had the nerve to ask if she felt the same way.

You were sure she couldn’t. Even if she did, the HR nightmare of entering a relationship with your superior was likely something neither you nor Emily were willing to risk. You both loved your jobs too much, cared too much about helping people, to put any of that in jeopardy.

You watched Emily as she weighed your offer, her eyes flitting from yours to the stack of unfinished paperwork on her desk. 

“It’s either the puzzle, or we sit in here in silence working on paperwork,” you said. “Which sounds more fun?”

“Fuck it,” Emily said. “A break wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Your face lit up with a grin. “Exactly.”

You both relocated to the couch at the far end of her office, and you set the puzzle box on the coffee table in front of it. Emily cleared off the table while you opened the box and flipped the contents onto the table.

“Edges first?” you asked.

“What am I, a sociopath?” Emily joked. “Of course edges first.”

You giggled, searching through the pile for any border pieces. “In college, my ex-boyfriend refused to start with outside pieces when we’d work on puzzles together. He said it was too easy and he wanted to engage his brain.” 

“Gee, why did you ever break up?” Emily asked dryly.

“He cheated on me. Repeatedly.” 

“Like I said,” Emily paused, holding up a corner piece as evidence. “Sociopath.” 

You tried, and failed, to fight the smile tugging at your lips. She was right—your ex, Sam, was a douchebag. You deserved better than how he treated you.

And you hoped that better was sitting next to you.

You fell into a comfortable silence as you worked, sorting through pieces. While Emily searched for edge pieces, you transitioned into organizing the middle pieces into piles by color. 

Once that was done, you collaborated on putting the frame of the puzzle together—Emily assembling the sunset on the top half, and you focusing on the varying shades of blue that made up the water on the bottom half.

As you snapped the two halves of the border together, there was a knock at Emily’s door, startling both of you. 

Emily grinned. “Come in!”

Penelope rushed through the door, file in hand. “We got a case.”

An hour ago, you would’ve loved nothing more. Now, you were already missing this one-on-one time with Emily.

“I guess we should clean this up,” you said, reaching for the box.

Emily put a hand out, stopping you. “That’s okay; we’ll leave it here. Work on it during our downtime.”

You raised an eyebrow at her, silently wondering when the next time would be that you had downtime. But you weren’t about to turn down the offer, so you nodded.

“I’ll grab the team.” 

***

On the elevator ride back to the sixth floor at the end of the day, you felt yourself nodding off, head bobbing up and down in an attempt to keep yourself conscious.

The rest of the team was too exhausted to comment on it. The elevator ding startled you awake, and you moved through the BAU on autopilot, beelining for your desk and grabbing your bag so you could get home as soon as possible and sleep for a few hours before you had to pick up the case in the morning. 

Fortunately, the case kept you in D.C., so you’d get to sleep in your own bed tonight. Throughout the day, the team scattered between the BAU, Metro P.D., and various crime scenes, assisting where you could. 

But before you could hightail it to your car, the light on in Emily’s office caught your attention.

“See you tomorrow,” Tara mumbled, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Yeah, see you tomorrow,” you said, making your way toward Emily.

You were too exhausted to bother with knocking—it had been a long, emotionally exhausting day, and you couldn’t bring yourself to care about protocol. 

Emily was sitting up on her brown leather couch, her head tucked toward her chest, fast asleep. There was a puzzle piece in her hand.

You took a moment to memorize this moment, since you knew if you pulled out your phone to take a picture, Emily would actually murder you. 

Her hair was still perfect, somehow, even after a day of running around. Her blouse and pants were wrinkled from all of the activity, and as you walked toward her, you saw that she’d even fallen asleep with her shoes on.

You reached out to gently touch her shoulder and whispered, “Emily.”

She woke with a start, wincing from the light but searching for danger.

“You’re fine,” you said softly. “You just fell asleep.”

“I wanted to… work on it,” she yawned, gesturing to the half-completed puzzle. 

Earlier, while the team was building a profile and getting frustrated that things weren’t lining up, Emily suggested the puzzle. The team had gathered around the coffee table, debating which parts of the profile would need to be changed. The whole time, you kept your gaze on Emily, as if you were still the only two in the room.

You took a seat on the couch next to her. “We can work on it tomorrow.” Or so you hoped, assuming the case had wrapped up by then. 

Em nodded but didn’t move. You slid forward on the couch to get a better look at the progress your team had made on the puzzle, and you were impressed. Most of the bottom half was done—the difficult part, mostly due to Spencer—which just left the hues of red, pink, orange, and gold of the sunset. 

As you admired the puzzle, one piece jumped out to you—half red, half pink—and you saw immediately where it needed to go. You popped it into place and started searching for the next one. 

Next to you, Emily took the piece she’d been holding and slid it into place. Surely it couldn’t hurt to add just a few more pieces. You could always drink coffee in the morning if you needed a pick-me-up.

Your previous exhaustion melted away as you focused on your task—entering a flow state where nothing mattered except the picture in front of you and the women beside you.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed when you found yourself staring at the last few gaps, scattered in various places around the image that needed to be filled in. 

It wasn’t until you were down to your last three pieces—you and Emily had taken to silently alternating back and forth, and at this rate, you were poised to put the last piece in—that you realized there was one missing. 

Maybe you were just tired, you told yourself. It had to be here somewhere. Hotch was too organized to have ever lost a piece. 

You put down a piece that filled in the last piece of one of the dolphins. Emily finished off part of the sunset on the horizon line, but there was a gap where one piece needed to fill in the blueish-purple tints in the sky.

You frowned, glancing at the floor around you.

“Are we missing one?” Your voice was scratchy from tiredness and the fact that you and Emily had mostly worked in silence.

Next to you, Emily was silent as you peeked under the table before standing to search the couch cushions.

When you turned up empty, you sat back down with a sigh. “Well, that’s disappointing.” 

You glanced over to Emily to find her face flushed and hands balled in her lap. Her beautiful, dark eyes wouldn’t quite meet yours.

“Are you okay?”

Her light skin turned an even deeper shade of red as she unballed her right fist. Sure enough, the missing piece was sitting in the middle of her palm.

You laughed. “Em, if you wanted to place the last piece yourself, you could’ve just said so.”

“It’s not that,” she said, putting the piece on the table but not in its spot. “I, um, didn’t want to finish it because I’ve really enjoyed spending time with you.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I didn’t want it to be over.”

Your heart raced. Were you deliriously tired, or was Emily really saying this?

You opened your mouth to respond, but when no sound came out, you closed it again.

Emily swore, burying her face in her hands. “I knew it,” her voice was muffled. “I knew I was reading this all wrong.”

She looked up to face you, and your heart sank in your chest. “I don’t want to make things uncomfortable for you; if you could just forget I even said that—”

“Em!” You interrupted. “I feel the same way.”

But Emily was already shaking her head. “No, you don’t have to say that. This was so inappropriate of me; I’m sorry, Y/N. I’m too tired to be thinking clearly…”

“Emily,” you said forcefully. You took her hand in yours and smiled, color flooding your cheeks. “You don’t understand. I feel the same way.”

The raven-haired beauty’s eyes widened as she took in your words. “Oh! Oh.” 

“Yeah,” you said with a giggle. “But I know it would be complicated, and I don’t want to mess with either of our careers.”

Emily sobered at that. “Neither do I.”

“But…” you hedged, glancing at the clock. “It’s 4 in the morning, and we need to be back here in two hours, so the time for good decisions has already passed.”

Before you could lose your nerve, you picked up the last piece and snapped it into its place. But you couldn’t even bring yourself to marvel at the completed image, because the person sitting next to you was even more mesmerizing. 

Pressing your palms against Emily’s face, you pulled her toward you until her lips were crashing against yours.

It felt even better to kiss her than you’d imagined. Her lips were soft, and even after a long day, she still smelled of her floral perfume. You ran your fingers through her soft hair, and Emily moaned against your mouth. 

Emily’s hands gripped your waist, pulling you closer. Where you touched, your body hummed with electricity and desire. 

Too soon, you pulled back. 

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for that,” you confessed. 

“I’d hate to make you wait again,” Emily said, a teasing smile on her lips. “But if we want any sleep tonight, we should probably head out.” 

You pretended to ponder that before shrugging. 

“Who needs sleep?” you mumbled, throwing yourself once more into Emily’s welcoming embrace.

Tag List:

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[aomine-in-gensokyo]

Hey guys, Daiki Aomine here

Once again Midorima, you've done it. But maybe I should've expected it. After all, you are the ace of Shutoku, aren't ya? Still, Kyouichi looks like another tough opponent. But knowing you, you've stocked up on enough lucky items to make it through the entire week. Go get em Midorima.

===

once again midorima has shattered all of my expectations... is there nothing this carrot man cant do???? so as a special treat lets dive into some of the lesser known knb content and get a glimpse of midorima, shall we?

as you might already know, midorima LOVES his lucky items! he will do ANYTHING HE CAN to get them, because he ABSOLUTELY NEEDS THEM!! like its been stated before in both mine and other essays, midorima is so unlucky that he needs lucky items to offset his natural unluck!

and seriously these lucky items bring him so much joy! look at him in this kuroko replace plus manga chapter! this takes place back when he was in middle school, but things are still the same for him:

[Image ID: 3 manga panels from right to left and top to bottom. The first panel contains Momoi (bottom left), Kise (above her), Midorima (on the left of Kise), and Kuroko (on the left of Midorima). Kuroko is holding a maneki-neko piggy bank. Midorima is staring at Kuroko's item. Kise, Momoi, and Kuroko are all worryingly looking at Midorima. The text at the top reads, "What is it now?" to refer to Midorima's suddent outburst at stopping the photo to observe Kuroko's item. The next panel is a closeup of Midorima, asking Kuroko, "Kuroko... What's that object you're holding?!" The final panel contains Kuroko on the right, and a side-shot of Midorima on the left. The text is Kuroko responding, "You mean Nyantaro here?" and Midorima questioning "Nyantaro?!" as he is unsure about the name. End ID]

here we have the midorima eyeing a particular object! this object ofc is kuroko's maneki-neko piggy bank! for context, everyone here (plus aomine and murasakibara who are not in frame) are about to take a picture! but midorima stopped them because he ABSOLUTELY HAD TO KNOW what kuroko was holding! it was a little surprising for everyone, but ultimately harmless! and kuroko, being the nice guy he is, lets midorima take a look!

[Image ID: 5 manga panels from right to left and top to bottom. The first panel is Kuroko (on the right) holding the maneki-neko piggy bank to Midorima (on the left) so he can see it. The speech bubble is Kuroko asking, "I just have him a name. Do you want to see it?" The "him" refers to the piggy bank. The next panel is Midorima holding the piggy bank in front of him with both of his hands. The panel after that is Midorima raising the piggy bank above his head, with Midorima looking up at it. The next panel is Midorima returning the piggy bank to eye-level, where he is inspecting its bottom. The final panel is Midorima, still holding the piggy bank in front of himself, looking at Kuroko (furthest to the left). The characters in the back from left to right are Momoi, Kise, Aomine, and Murasakibara). The speech bubble is Midorima saying "Kuroko..." End ID]

here we have the midorima looking at the piggy bank (which kuroko named "nyantaro") very closely. hes a very meticulous guy! so he needs to be 1000% sure that what he is looking at is the thing he so desperately needs! if youve been following along, i think you can predict EXACTLY WHY midorima is so interested about this particular item!

[Image ID: A single panel of Midorima exclaiming, "You're handing this over to me?!" Midorima stands in the center, the lines around him representing his suddent outburst. On the right of him are Kise (on top) and Momoi (on bottom), who have their eyes and mouths wide open. The text between says "Ehh?!" representing their confusion. Kuroko (bottom right) responds with, "Uh, yeah." End ID]

you can really see how much this maneki-neko means to midorima!! he does not often emote so strongly, so seeing him like this is a special moment! even our resident, usually stoic glasses guy has a funnier side to him! and its pretty funny to see him freak out over a little cat piggy bank tbh!! even kise and momoi are shocked! kuroko, being the nice guy he is, is not!

midorima then goes to explain that the day's lucky item for cancers is a maneki-neko!! however!!! he couldnt find one, so he had to give up finding it... but kuroko, being the nice guy he is, noticed that midorima was without his lucky item, so he gave it to midorima for him!! and midorima's reaction?

[Image ID: A picture of Midorima looking up happily, overjoyed with having the piggy bank. There is a light shining on Midorima to symbolize his victory. His right lens of his glasses is completely shining, covering his eye. His eye and mouth are open, with a smile. His arms are holding the piggy bank in the air (out of frame). The speech bubbles read, "I was thinking I'd have to stop by an antique shop on the way home today, to think I'd get one in a place like this! Kise, Kuroko ... You have my gratitude." End ID]

overjoyed! grateful! so many positive emotions coming from midorima!! truly this is one of the rarest times midorima emotes so much with so much happiness!! and midorima is a nice guy to return the thanks for people who have genuinely helped him! so despite his stoic exterior, he IS a nice guy!!

heres some extra midorimas after he gets the piggy bank:

[Image ID: Two pictures. In the first picture, Kise stands in the center. Directly behind him is Murasakibara. On the left of Kise is Aomine, and on the right is Midorima. Below on the left of Kise is Momoi, and below on the right is Kuroko. Murasakibara looks bored. Aomine is glancing at Midorima with a concerned expression on his face. Momoi is looking at Midorima with closed eyes and a smile. Kise and Kuroko are also glancing at Midorima, both smiling happily. Midorima is still raising the piggy bank above him with a victorious smile on his face, and a light shining only on him. The speech bubble is Momoi saying, "That's great, huh, Midorin!" The second image is a closeup of Midorima and the piggy bank. Instead of looking at the camera, he is looking off to the right, gazing solely on the piggy bank. His face shows no emotion, but there is a slight blush on his cheek. On the bottom right is Kise, with a single tear in his eye and closed eyes, because his face is being pushed by Aomine (not shown in the picture). There are snacks being held by Murasakibara behind MIdorima, and a basketball hoop in the background. End ID]

so!!! thats our midorima for you! so serious yet so comedic!! everything about him stays the same yet completely changes when lucky items are involved!! you wouldnt expect a guy like that to be so enamored with lucky items and horoscopes!!

please consider voting for midorima!! he'd really appreciate your support!! (but a tie would be really funny too!)

Daiki Aomine heading out

The Green Hair and Pronouns Tournament, Quarterfinals Match 3

ID in alt text

[gghero]

assorted casphardt doodles from the last couple years that I probably never posted here! marriage edition

Part 1 | Part 2

Image descriptions under the cut!

[Description start:

Image 1: a color comic depicting Caspar and Linhardt in their war-phase attires. The first panel shows a smiling Caspar effortlessly twirling a surprised-looking Linhardt in his arms. In the second panel, which depicts them in a more simplified style, Linhardt has comically spiraling eyes and Caspar looks worried as he shakes him and blurts out: “Oh crap, Linhardt, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me, I shouldn’t have--”. In the third panel, Linhardt looks determined and has a little blush as he holds Caspar’s hands and says: “Do that again”. Caspar looks confused and he exclaims: “Huh?!”

Image 2: A grayscale sketch depicting Linhardt cradling an injured Caspar in his arms. They are inside a fort. Caspar has his eyes closed and sleeps peacefully Linhardt kisses his forehead. They are covered in blood, and pieces of Caspar’s armor are scattered on the floor.

Image 3: A colorless sketch depicting a shirtless, bandaged Caspar resting in bed. Linhardt is by his side and they are holding hands. Both have soft smiles on their faces.

Image 4: A colorless sketch on a gray background depicting a scene from Caspar and Linhardt’s A support. Caspar is pumping his fists and grinning as he looks at Linhardt and exclaims: “You are a strategic genius, Linhardt!” while Linhardt is blushing, smiling bashfully and averting his eyes as he says, “Nonsense, your strength carried the day...”

Image 5: A color comic parodying a scene from Parks and Recreation. Edelgard is looking at an excited-looking Caspar and a bored-looking Linhardt as she says, “I have total faith in you”. In the next panel, she stares deadpan at the “camera” as she says, “There’s like a 30% chance they’ll both die.”

Image 6: A colorless comic depicting Caspar holding up two wanted posters with his and Linhardt’s face on them. The one with his face on it offers a 1000 gold reward and he is wanted dead or alive, while Linhardt’s poster offers a 999,999 gold reward and he is wanted alive. In the first panel, Caspar is smiling proudly and saying, “Look, Lin! They got posters with our faces on ‘em!” In the second panel, his expression looks troubled as he glances over at his poster and says, “...wait. Uh oh.”

Image 7: A colorless sketch on a soft pink background depicting Caspar and Linhardt standing next to each other. They appear to be in their fifties. Caspar is smiling sincerely as he flexes his bicep. He has a receeding hairline and some stubble, and a larger gut than he had in his youth. His right leg is missing and he has a peg leg. He is dressed in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his shoulders and a pair of simple pants rolled up to his knees. He has a leather toolbelt around his waist. Linhardt has a smug smile on his face and he is holding a book. His long hair cascades down his back and shoulders, and a few strands near the front are braided. He is wearing glasses and earrings, and is dressed in a poofy-sleeved shirt, a vest, and a long, ample skirt down to his ankles. They both have matching wedding bands.

Description end.]

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

Some really tasty factoids here.

Cut for length.

Dragon Age: Origins

The continent of Thedas was at one point going to be named Pelledia, a name initially floated by James Ohlen

“Qunari” was a temporary name that ended up unintentionally sticking, much like “Thedas”

Mary Kirby wrote the Landsmeet. To this day, nobody understands how it works, except possibly her. If she’s “really really drunk” she can explain how it works. There’s as many words in it as Sten’s entire conversations put together

Concept art for Thedosian art - as in in-world art - draws heavily on Renaissance-era portraiture, the Art Nouveau movement, religious styles and media like stained glass, and favorite pieces from the golden age of illustrations in the early 20th century

Andrastianism in-world (art-wise) is depicted in wildly different methods depending on who in-world made the art in question. “One religion, 3 different lenses”. There’s the Chantry take, the Orlesian take and the Fereldan take; each with its own different interpretations, different mediums and different stories

The stained glass images were drawn by Nick Thornborrow for DAI, to decorate religious spaces in that game “and beyond”

irl Viking art influenced Ferelden

Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais

The book also had other insights into and anecdotes from the development of DAO, but I’ve transcribed them recently as they’re essentially the stories DG has recently been relating on the awesome Summerfall Studios DAO playthrough Twitch streams. (On those streams he provides dev commentary while Liam Esler plays through DA. The ones with DG are currently once every two weeks. Check them out! Here’s a calendar where you can check when the next one is) Instead of repeating myself I’ll just provide the link to the first transcript. From there you can navigate to the subsequent parts. Note these streams are ongoing. At this point I will also point you to a related post which is cliff notes of the Dragon Age chapter in Jason Schreier’s book Blood Sweat and Pixels.

Dragon Age II

DAO had the longest development period in BioWare history. In contrast DA2 had the shortest

Initially DA2 was going to be an expansion to DAO. A few months in EA said “Yeah, expansions like these don’t sell very well, so let’s make it a sequel.” So it suddenly became DA2 and they had to make it even bigger, although they still only had 1.5 years of time in which to do this

Production of DA2 officially lasted only 9 months, and at the time the team was still supporting live content for DAO! They finished development that January after the design team crunched all the way through the holiday period that year. Then it went to cert 9 times

The limited time they had is why the story takes place mostly in and around 1 city, and over 7 years (so it was temporal, rather than over physical distance, because a more expansive world would have taken more irl time to make)

They had no time to review even the main plot. Mike Laidlaw pitched the idea of 3 stories taking place at different points in the PC’s life, tied together by Varric’s recollections of events. DG rolled with this and made 1 presentation on the idea. This presentation was then approved and off they went

As they were writing DG realized that there was going to be no oversight and that everything was going to be a ‘first draft’. “Because nobody had time.” He sat down with the writers and said “Look, here’s the conditions we’re working under. A lot of what we’re putting out is gonna be raw. We’re not going to get the editing we need. We’re not going to get the kind of iteration we need. So I’m going to trust you all to do your best work.”

Looking back, DG has mixed feelings on DA2. “A lot of corners were cut. The public perception was that it was smaller than DAO. That’s a sin on its own.”

Despite this he thinks DA2 has some of the best writing in the series, especially character-wise. The DA2 chars are his favorite

The pace with which production progressed may in some ways have helped. “When we do a lot of revision, we often file away [as in buff off] some of the good writing as well. Somehow DA2′s whirlwind process resulted in some really good writing”

The pace meant chars landed on the writers in various stages of completion. For example Isabela was fairly defined due to appearing in DAO. In contrast Varric at the start was just that single piece of widely-shown concept art

Varric was conceived as a storyteller not a fighter. His skills are talking and bullshitting. Hence the question became, so what does this guy do in combat? The direction was to make him as different as possible to Oghren, so not a warrior. He couldn’t be a dual-wielding rogue in order to differentiate him from Bela. But you can’t really picture this guy with a bow. “For a dwarf, it would probably be a crossbow. We didn’t have crossbows, or we only had crossbows for the darkspawn. And they were part of the models. We didn’t have a separate crossbow that was equip-able by the chars. They had to like, crop one off a darkspawn and remodel it. And that became Bianca” (quote: Mary Kirby)

“Dwarven mages are exceedingly rare.” [???]

If DAO was a classic fantasy painting, DA2 was a screenshot from a Kurosawa film or a northern Renaissance painting. (Here Matt Rhodes was commenting on art style)

John Epler: “In any one of our games, there’s a 95% chance that if you turn the camera away from what it’s looking at, you’ll see all kinds of janky stuff. The moment we know the camera is no longer facing someone, we no longer care what happens to them. We will teleport people around. We will jump people around. We will literally have someone walk off screen and then we will shift them 1000 meters down, because we’re fixing some bug.” John also talked about this camera stuff in a recent charity Twitch stream for Gamers For Groceries. There’s a writeup of that stream here

Designing Kirkwall pushed concept artists to the limits of visual storytelling, because it has a long history that they wanted to be present. It was once the hub of Tevinter’s slave empire, so it needed to look brutal and harsh, but it also then needed to feel reclaimed, evolved, and with elements of contemporary Free Marches culture

The initial plan was for DA titles to be distinguished by subtitles not numbers, so that each experience could stand on its own rather than feel like a sequel or continuation. (My note: New PCs in each entry make sense then when you consider this and other factoids we know like how DA is the story of the world not of any one PC). Later, DA2′s name was made DA2 in a bid to more clearly connect the game to its predecessor. For DAI they returned to the original naming convention. (My note: so I’d reckon they’d be continuing the subtitle naming convention for DA4)

DA2 was initially code-named “Nug Storm”, strictly internally

The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March

This was a precursor to DAI

It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI

It focused on the fallout from Kirkwall’s explosion, with Cory serving as the villain

Meredith’s red lyrium statue was basically going to infest Kirkwall and it would end up [with what would end up] the red templars taking over Kirkwall and essentially being Cory’s army

To stop him Hawke would have recruited various factions, including Bela’s Felicisima Armada and the Qunari at Estwatch, forcing Hawke to split loyalties and risk relationships in the process

It was meant to bring DA2′s story to an end and end in Varric’s death. DG was very happy with this because all of DA2 is Varric’s tale. The expansion was supposed to start at the moment Cassandra’s interrogation of him ended in the present. “And we finished off the story with Varric having this heroic death.” It tied things up and would have broken many fan hearts, something BioWare writers notoriously enjoy. But between a transition to the new Frostbite engine and the scope of DAI, the decision was made to cancel EM, work any hard-to-lose concepts into DAI, and in the process save Varric’s life. DG has talked about the Varric dying thing before

Concept art for EM explored new areas previously not depicted in the DA universe, with costumes that reflected next steps for familiar chars. Varric was going to war, what would he have worn? With Anders, if he survived DA2, the plan was to present a redeemed Warden

A char that vaguely resembled Sera in DAI was first concepted for EM. This fact was mentioned near this concept art (see the female elf) and this concept art of Bethany with the blond bob

The writers sketched out plans to end it with Hawke having the option to marry their LI. This included alternate ceremonies for party members like Bethany and Sebastian if the player opted not to wed. There was even a wedding dress made for Hawke. This asset made it into DAI (Sera and Cullen’s weddings in Trespasser). The dress can also be seen in DAI during an ambient NPC wedding after completing a chain of war table missions

The destruction of a Chantry was explored in concept art as it might have happened in EM. This idea ended up carrying over to the beginning of DAI. (My note: Lol, the idea that DA2 could have had 2 Chantries being destroyed in it 😆)

World of Thedas

Sheryl Chee and Mary Kirby started with “a disgusting little dish called fluffy mackerel pudding”. In the middle of DAO’s busy dev period one of them (they can’t remember who) found a recipe online for this, scanned in from a 70s cookbook. “I don’t understand why it was fluffy. Why would you want fluffy mackerel pudding?” MK says. “We loved it so much we included it in a DAO codex.”

This led them to create more food for Thedas, full recipes included, like a Fereldan turnip and barley stew from MK and SC’s Starkhaven fish and egg pie. The fish pie became Sebastian’s favorite. “To me it made sense for it to be fish pie because a lot of the Free Marches are on the coast”, SC says, “It was something that was popular in medieval times, so I thought, let’s make a fish pie! I looked at medieval recipes and I concocted a fish pie which I fed to my partner, and he was like ‘This is not terrible’”

For WoT the whole studio was asked to contribute family recipes which might have a place in Thedas. SC adapted these to fit in one Thedosian culture or another, including a beloved banana bread that localization producer Melanie Fleming would regularly bake to keep the DA team motivated. “Melanie’s banana bread got us through Inquisition”

DAI

It says part of DAI takes place in or near the border with Nevarra [???]

This game was aimed to be bigger than DA2 and even DAO in every conceivable way

The first hour had to do a lot of heavy lifting, tying together the events of DAO and DA2 while introducing a new PC, new followers etc in the aftermath of the big attack. DG rewrote it 7 times then Lukas Kristjanson did 2 more passes

DG: “Our problem is always that our endings are so important, but we leave them to last, when we have no time. I kept pushing on DAI: ‘Can we work on the ending now? Can we work on the ending now? Can we do it early on?’ Because I knew exactly what it was going to be. But despite the fact that it kept getting scheduled, whenever the schedule started falling behind, it kept getting pushed back... so, of course, it got left til last again.”

“The reveal of the story’s real antagonist, Solas, a follower until the end, when he betrayed the player”. “Solas’ story remains a main thread in Inquisition’s long-awaited follow-up” [these aren’t DG quotes, just bits of general text]

Over the course of development they had 8 full-time writers and 4 editors working on it. Other writers joined later to help wrangle what ended up being close to 1 million words of dialogue and unspoken text. While many teams moved to a more open concept style of work for DAI, the writers remained tucked away in their own room, a choice DG says was necessary, given how much they talked. All the talking had a purpose ofc as if someone hit a bump or wall in their writing they would open the problem up to the room

As writing on a project like DAI progresses, the writers grow punchier and weirder things make it into the game. This is especially the case towards the end of a project (they get tired, burned out)

Banter and codexes require less ‘buy-in’ (DG has talked about this concept a few times on the Twitch streams) from other designers. DG liked to leave banter for last as a reward because it was fun. Banter begins as lists of topics for 2 followers to discuss. These may progress over time or be one off exchanges. One banter script can balloon to well over 10k words. “The banter was always huge because we were always like, laughing, and really at that point, our fields of fucks were rather barren, so we would just do whatever”

The bog unicorn happened pretty much by accident. It was designed by Matt Rhodes and was one of his fav things to design. They needed horse variations and he had already designed an undead variant which was a bog mummy [bog body]. irl these are preserved in a much different way to traditional mummies. When someone dies in a bog their skin turns black and raisin-like. The examples we know of tend to have bright red hair for whatever reason. It’s a very striking look and MR wanted to do a horse version of this as he thought it’d be neat. 5 mins before the review meeting for it he had a big ‘Aha!’ moment, quickly looked up a rusty old Viking sword, and photoshopped it through its skull like that was how it died. “And I was like, ‘I just made a unicorn. Alright, in it goes!’” It got approved. “So we built the thing. It fit. It told a little story”

With the irl Inquisition longsword, one of the objects they tested its cleaving ability on was a plush version of Leliana’s nug Schmooples

The concept art team explored a wide variety of visuals for the Inquisitor’s signature mark. It needed to look powerful and raw but couldn’t look like a horrific wound. In some cases, as cool as the idea looked on paper, they just weren’t technically feasible, especially as they had to be able to fit on any number of different bodies

Bug report: “Endlessly spawning mounts! At one point during development, Inquisitors could summon a new horse every time they whistled, allowing them to amass a near infinite number of eager steeds that faithfully followed them across Thedas. “You could go charging across levels and they’d all gallop behind you,” Jen Cheverie says, “It was beautiful.” Trotting into town became an epic horse siege as a tidal wave of mounts enveloped the streets. Jen called it her Army of Ponies”

The giants came from DA Week, an internal period when devs can pursue different individual creative projects that in some way benefit DA. They also had a board game from one of these that they were going to put in but they didn’t have time. It’s referenced though. It was dwarven chess

Josie’s outfit is made of gold silk and patterned velvet, with leather at her waist. She carries “an ornate ledger” and she has “an ornamented collar sitting around her neck, finished by a brilliant red ruby, like a drop of Antivan wine in a sunbeam”

Iron Bull’s armor is leather. His loose pantaloons and leather boots give him agility to charge

On DAI in particular, concept artists took special care to make sure costumes would be realistic, at least in a practical ‘this obeys the laws of physics and textiles’ sense. “While on Inquisition, we thought about cosplay from a concept art perspective. Given how incredible a lot of [cosplays] are, I now am not worried about them. In fact in some cases in the future I want to throw them curveballs like, ‘All right, you clever bastards. Let’s see if you can do this!’”

2 geese that nested on the office building and had chicks were named Ganders and Arishonk (it wasn’t known who was the mom or the dad). Other possible names were Carver Honke, Bethany Honke, Urdnot Pecks, Quackwall, Cassandra Pentagoose, the Iron Bill, Shepbird, Garroose, Admiral Quackett, Scout Honking, HChick-47 and Darth Malgoose

Bug report: “The surprising adventures of Ser Noodles!” DAI was the first time the series had a mount feature, meaning this had a lot of bugs. A lot of the teams’ favorite bugs were to do with the mounts. There was a period of time where the Inquisitor’s horse seemed to lose all bone and muscle in its legs. They had a week or so where all quadruped legs were broken. It was a bit noticeable in things like nugs and other small beasties but the horse was insanely obvious. “The first time we summoned the horse [for this] and started running around, the entire QA exploration room just exploded with laughter.” Its legs flapped around like cooked fettucine, leading testers to lovingly nickname it Ser Noodles. At galloping speeds the legs almost looked like helicopter blades, especially when footage was set to classic pieces such as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries

For DAI the artists were asked questions like “What would Morrigan wear to a formal ball? Can Cassandra pull off a jaunty hat?”

On DAI storyboarding became the norm. John Epler: “Cinematic design for the longest time was the Wild West. It was ‘here’s a bunch of content, now do it however you want’, which resulted in some successes and some failures.” Storyboarding gave designers a consistent visual blueprint based on ideas from designers, writers and concept artists

Quote from a storyboard by Nick Thornborrow (the Inquisitor going into the party at the end of basegame sequence): “Until Corypheus revealed himself they could not see the single hand behind the chaos. A magister and a darkspawn combined. The ultimate evil. So evil. Eviler than puppy-killers and egg farts combined.”

A general note on concept art:

In the early stages of any project, before the concept artists are aware of any writing, they like to just draw what they think cool story moments could be. It’s not unusual for the team to then be inspired by these and fold them into the game as the project progresses

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

[sequinsmile-x]

New Beginnings

Emily and Aaron celebrate New Year together.

A short, fluff filled thing for all of you! Happy New Year <3

Words: 1k

Warnings: None

Read over on Ao3 in my collection of mini fics, or below the cut

Emily had celebrated New Year in more countries than she could count. So many years spent abroad, fascinated by different parts of the world entering the New Year first, time zones never seeming as strange as they did in those moments. Often she was alone, or at least felt like she was in the large ballrooms that her mother would throw parties in, standing in a corner as the hours ticked by.

The past few years it had always been the same. Dave inviting everyone round to his, the whole team and their families gathering in his large home, champagne flowing as easily as the love between them all. She never felt lonely anymore, surrounded by the people she had come to consider her family, the ones who had saved her life more times than she could count.

After she returned from Paris it felt strange. She had only really been back a few months and was still trying to find her place in her old life. She’d spent that first Christmas back with the Hotchners, the invitation from Aaron soft and unassuming as he realised she had no plans for the day. It was nice, a taste of something she knew she desperately wanted.

He kissed her just a week later that New Year, when the countdown ended and everyone celebrated. He pulled her in for a hug because they’d been standing closest to each other, something that the others had commented on throughout the evening, and as they pulled back he kissed her like he had done it 1000 times before, not like it was the first.

They’d been inseparable ever since.

This New Year was different yet again, a new experience for her entirely, and she wouldn’t change it for anything.

The tv in the corner of the room was on, but muted, images of the crowds in New York on the screen, all of them preparing for the ball to drop. She groans as she shifts in the bed she was in, wincing as she tries, and fails, to get comfortable. She looks at the sleeping bundle in her arms, the tiny baby only hours old, and she smiles.

“I know I kept saying not Christmas Day,” she says to her sleeping son, “but New Year's Eve isn’t much better.”

“At least he’ll always have a party to go to on his birthday.”

Emily looks up to see her husband standing in the doorway of her hospital room, a look of adoration on his face as he looks at her and their little boy. He gently closes the door behind him and walks over to them, leaning down to kiss her before pressing a kiss to their son's head.

��At least there's that.” Emily quips, her attention settling back on the infant in her arms for a moment before she looks back up at Aaron. “Is everything ok? I hope Dave isn’t too annoyed we’re missing the party.”

Aaron barks out a laugh that makes the baby shift in his mothers arms, before he settles back down, still fast asleep.

“He did say something about if you didn’t want to go you didn’t have to go to quite these lengths to avoid it.” He says, laughing again when Emily rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to curse out their friend, but Aaron stops her, his lips against hers again for a second before he pulls away. “No cursing in front of the baby.”

“He’s 3 hours old, honey.” She replies, raising her eyebrow at him. “I’m sure we have some time before he starts to repeat everything we say.” She frowns as he starts to settle into the chair next to her bed. “What are you doing over there? Get over here.”

“Em,” he hesitates, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. Please?”

She smiles at him because she knows she has already won, he’s never been able to deny her anything, and he concedes, standing from the chair and helping her shift in the bed, saying nothing when she winces, and settling behind her. He wraps his arms around her as she leans back on him and he rests his chin on her shoulder looking down at their son.

“I think this is the best New Year's Eve ever.” He says idly, turning his head just enough to kiss her cheek.

Emily scoffs. “Easy for you to say Hotchner, you’re not the one who spent the majority of the day in labour.”

Any reply he has, soft in his rebuttal of her response, is interrupted by a sharp cry from the baby, the high pitched sound only newborns make, as he opens his bleary eyes to look up at his parents.

“Oh you’re ok sweet boy.” Emily says softly, readjusting her hold on him as she brings him up to kiss his forehead and then his cheek. “I fed him whilst you were making all your calls, I think he just wants attention.”

Aaron moves one of his hands to stroke over the shock of dark hair on his son’s head, the boy calming already. “Screaming for attention, I wonder where he got that from.” He looks at his wife's face and sees no response except a raised eyebrow. “Jack says hi by the way.”

“Nice save.” She murmurs. “Is he ok? I feel kind of bad, this is probably the first New Year he’ll make it all night and we’re not there.”

“He’s fine, delighted at getting to stay at Uncle Dave’s tonight, and excited to meet his baby brother in the morning.”

“I’m excited for that too.” Emily replies, her attention briefly grabbed by the tv in the corner. “The ball is dropping.”

They count down together, in the silence of her hospital room, and turn to each other and smile when it hits zero, a new year starting with a new part of their family wrapped up tightly in Emily’s arms. She leans in to kiss Aaron, smiling against his lips as his hand moves to cup her cheek.

“Happy New Year Aaron.”

“Happy New Year Emily.”

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Ok I do want to talk about lighting actually. Lighting is so important for skin tone I'm not even joking. Like I saw a disagreement the other day where a piece of art of ed was drawn a bit on the lighter side and I didn't think it was out of his skin tone range by any means, perhaps the background would suggest that there was less light in the picture than the skin tone would suggest. But basically the artist was having a disagreement with a rather polite anon about skin tone and I was like, this is 1000% a lighting issue. I'm gonna drop some examples of lighting.

Ok here we have three pictures of the same fucking guy right. His skin pigmentation is the same, he's not tanner in any of these images. And yet.... When I go to color pick

All of these colors are Taika Waititi's skin tone. One of them is fucking purple. So obviously not all colors that we can pick are created equal. Now if I were incredibly fucking lazy and didn't care how racist I was being and I wanted to draw Izzy and Fang, but I didn't want to bother with two separate skin colors, and so I just made em both white and then someone called me out on it I could do something like this

And then say, They're both standing on the deck. I picked from the most highlighted portions of their faces. But you'll notice that fangs got a bright whitish light shining on him from one side. where as Izzy is in pretty neutral , muted lighting

Now if you actually gave a fuck, which why are you even making art if you don't give a fuck tbh, You would do something more like this.

Now sometimes it is an honest mistake. Drawing Fang and Izzy the same skin tone never is, because I fell like your "i've fucked up" alarm bells should go off long before you post it to the internet. But I'm a Stede/Ed/Jack/Izzy enjoyer and pictures of those 4 actors in the same room don't exist, so I have to either guestimate skin tone or go searching for pictures that are roughly in the same lighting. And Even in a picture like this if you pick from literally the darkest spot on Izzy's face his contour will be much darker than Fangs because his face touching Fang's shoulder is creating a much darker shadow than any shadow that exists on Fangs face. That said, this is what separates us from the AI. We have critical thinking skills and we can, assuming we're not colorblind, look at hues and tones and values and evaluate whether they're correct or whether this particular photograph isn't really working and we need to go find another one.

That said one of the most common lighting mistakes I see, and I understand completely why it happens, is using a picture of a actor in studio lighting, which brightens the apparent color of their skin significantly, drawn against a background that would suggest that the character isn't in that sort of lighting. The reason this happens is because if you google an actor the first pics that show up are all professionally shot in studio lighting. I would take a screen cap from a show over that 90% of the time.

All of this is tangential to the issue I didn't mean to derail I just feel like it's useful for artists to have this info so they don't mess up in problematic ways, and it's useful for non artists to have this info so that they can recognize when an artist is being disingenuous.

was just casually scrolling twt and came across p recent art of Fang/Izzy/Lucius/Pete and Fang was literally the same color as Izzy 🥴

[walkerwords]

“The Savior Sessions” Part 11 of 33 - Negan x GN!Reader

IMAGE CREDIT: GENE PAGE/AMC

SERIES MASTERLIST

Summary: Part 11! The reader has to greet the newcomers and try to convince Michonne to do the right thing...

Word Count: 2584

Warning: Swearing

Song I Wrote To: “Off My Mind” by Radio Company

Note: Bit more of a filler, but I am slowly trying to map out the timeline that extends from the beginning of the whisperers all the way through s10 finale. I am going to be staying as close to canon as possible with a few changes. For example, Negan getting out, certain deaths, and of course Alpha and company. There will be spoilers in the upcoming chapters.

------

Staring at the group in front of you, you felt an immense amount of pressure building in your chest. 

The man before you, Luke, was still gripping your hand. He was waiting for you to say something, but your brain was moving a mile a minute. Not just because of Negan, but because you hadn’t been faced with a decision such as this one. Michonne was the one to make the rules.

It was an unspoken thing, her reign over Alexandria. Before Rick had died, he was the one in charge, but since the bridge incident, the council had been born. However, everyone knew that if Michonne said no, that was the law and she would not be happy with what was happening right now. 

“This isn’t my decision,” you said, taking back your hand from the stranger and giving your full attention to Aaron. 

“It is now,” he said, and coming up behind him was Gabriel who was nodding in agreement. You looked back to the newcomers and noticed one of the women was signing to another, translating everything that was going on. You also noticed that the woman who was injured wasn’t looking much better. 

“(Y/N),” Judith said, pulling your attention. You looked down at the girl, worry still on her freckled face. “This is Luke, Connie, Kelly, Magna, and Yumiko. They need medicine and water, please.” All you wanted to do was be there for the little girl, but you had never been put in this position before. 

“I don’t know what to do,” you admitted. “Michonne, your mom, she needs to be the one to make this decision.” Judith frowned, ready to make her case when suddenly the far gate opened and you heard the unmistakable pounding of hooves along the road. Michonne was home. “Oh, thank god,” you whispered.

“(Y/N), please,” Judith begged. You reached down and squeezed the hand that was gripping the bottom of your shirt. 

“I’m sorry, Jude, but it’s up to your mom,” you said, and with barely a glance towards Luke and Company, you jogged over to Michonne as she dismounted from her horse. 

“What is this?” Michonne asked, already seeing the small group forming around the others. 

“Judith found them,” you explained and it was enough for Michonne to rub the space between her eyebrows. 

“My kid, always the good one,” she muttered and then let out a deep sigh. It was then that you could already tell what she was thinking and it wasn’t good. 

“Michonne,” you began, “just let Siddiq look at the woman. She’s hurt and Judith saved them. I know your rules, but we’ll keep them under guard.”

“You know that we can’t,” Michonne said, her hand snaking back around her waist to hold onto the sheath that held her katana. You noticed that she did that whenever she was on edge. It seemed that was her natural state these days, not that you could blame her. Michonne had seen enough terror in her life to last a lifetime.

“We are better than this and you know it,” you challenged. Michonne blinked at your strong tone but relaxed her arms. 

“I am thinking of our people, (Y/N),” she said back, staring you down. 

“And you don’t think I am? Alexandria has always been a place of refuge. What would our people think if we just said, ‘good luck people, go and fend for your damn selves,’?” you asked, crossing your arms. 

“We did,” Michonne reminded you and your mind flashed back to those days on the road after Terminus. You glared at the woman, knowing that she was trying to get you to cave, but you had dealt with enough of your own bullshit over the years. 

“Aaron found us,” you argued. “He invited us here and you were one of the only ones to convince Rick to accept Alexandria. Aaron took a chance on us and because of us, we helped this place thrive. Hilltop, Kingdom, Oceanside, all of them accepted us and we helped them because we believed that there were more good people out there.” 

“You weren’t there, (Y/N),” Michonne said and you knew what she was referring to. Only she and Daryl had witnessed the horrors of Jocelyn. You weren’t even sure if Judith remembered the day she was taken. 

“I know,” you said, this time your tone much softer. “However, I also know that we are not the kind of people who have stopped caring.” She was quiet for a moment, thinking over your words and eventually she hung her head before looking back towards Aaron. Her eyes fell on her daughter who was looking at her with those big brown eyes of her and the determination of a Grimes. She looked back at you and then nodded. 

“I will speak to the council,” she settled on and you sighed, 

“Thank you, Michonne,” you said and she nodded once before grabbing her bag and heading over to her daughter who was still looking at her with a pleading expression. Not wanting to intrude, you decided to head out of the community to make sure that nobody had followed them 

The last thing you needed was for Michonne to blame you for something you championed for.

------

You had killed a lot of Walkers since the beginning of the Apocalypse, but it still never failed to gross you out. 

Once you realized that the group had been alone, after all, you began the trek back towards Alexandria. Nevertheless, the monsters of the new world had still managed to ruin your day. After fighting through a small pack of them, you were exhausted.

Your mind began to wander towards Hilltop as you walked through the woods. You hadn’t been to see Jesus in some time and you were missing him a lot. When you had met the eccentric man the day Rick and Daryl dragged him into Alexandria, the two of you had connected almost immediately.

With your skills as a long-distance fighter and his close-quarter combat ones, you were an unusual, but strong duo. You often worked as a spotter for the man, keeping your hand on the Walkie as he fought through hoards of Walkers or smaller groups of Saviors. Then, when Paul had approached you about taking the survivors of a Savior outpost back to Hilltop to keep them as prisoners instead of killing them, you had backed him. 

Maggie was not thrilled that you were not willing to kill the Saviors, but that wasn’t how you thought anymore. You knew that you had to kill to survive some times, you had even done it yourself, but there came a time when the killing had to end. 

Jesus always told you that holding grudges would never amount to anything and you believed him. It was why you had never told anyone that Rick had actually come to you to discuss what he was going to do with Negan.

You had told Negan that there wasn’t a vote, but what it actually was, was a conversation between you and the man you trusted most in your life. You weren’t sure if even Michonne knew what was going to happen on that field when Rick slit open Negan’s throat. 

That day had been one that nobody wanted to remember. There was already too much loss on both sides and after losing Carl, nobody wanted there to be more carnage.

Well, except for Maggie Rhee.

You couldn’t even begin to think about what she would be thinking right now if she knew what you were feeling when it came to the man who murdered her husband. 

You were close to Maggie once, but after Glenn died, the two of you had begun to pull away from each other. You both missed Glenn, but while you were just trying to resolve the issue, Maggie was out for revenge. Never once did you blame her for it, she had every right to want Negan dead, but you weren’t so sure that Negan was still that man. 

At least that was what you felt. 

As you approached the main gates of your home, that analytical side of you, the one that made you such a great teacher, began hounding you. You couldn’t stop all the scenarios that ran through your head and all the possible negative reactions that could happen if anyone outside of Alexandria found out about you and Negan.

However, there was still one thing that offered you comfort. You knew that your best friend, Paul, would not judge you and as you stepped into Alexandria, you felt the urge to run all the way to Hilltop. Instead, you let Eugene roll the gate behind you and seal it shut.

--------

The next day, Judith Grimes sat on the steps of her home as she did her homework.

“Airplane ‘A’ and airplane ‘B’ are 1000 miles apart. If airplane ‘A’ is flying east at 500 miles per hour and airplane ‘B’ is flying west at 650 miles per hour, how…”

“You know what?” Negan interrupted, “I would definitely recommend booking a seat on airplane ‘C,’ because that is shaping up to be one hell of a mid-air collision.”

“You gonna help me or what?” Judith asked with a frown, the small sheriff figurine in her hand as she read from her textbook. Negan chuckled, watching her from the small window of his cell. 

“All right. Let me ask you somethin',” he began, “you ever seen an airplane fly in any direction, at any speed?” 

“No,” Judith said. 

“Do you think you ever will?” Negan asked. 

“Probably not,” Judith said. 

“So, what the hell difference does it make?” Negan asked. “See, math problems are supposed to apply to the real world. You want my help? Give me a question or a problem from right here, right now.” Judith was silent for a moment as Negan waited patiently for her to continue, but instead of math, she diverted the conversation. 

“You know the strangers we brought here yesterday? My mom's gonna make them leave,” Judith said with a sigh, pushing up the brim of her hat slightly. 

“Well, no, I didn't know,” Negan said with a smile, “but let me guess. You being you, you wanna help 'em.”

“I found 'em. I brought 'em here,” Judith argued. 

“What does (Y/N) think? Ain’t they second in command or somethin’?” Negan asked, wondering where your head was at. 

“They think that they should be able to stay,” Judith revealed, closing her book and bracing her elbows on the cover. 

“Does your mom agree?” Negan asked. 

“No, but (Y/N) got her to let Laura stay after the war,” Judith explained. “They’ll get Mom to let these people stay too. I’m almost positive.” That bit of news had Negan slightly surprised. 

“They wanted Laura to stay?”  he asked. While he knew that Laura was the tamer of his former fighters, she was still a Savior and he didn’t think her transition into Alexandria would have been that easy. 

“(Y/N) wanted as many people to live after the war as possible,” Judith told him, “They don’t like it when people die. I like that about them.”

“Me too,” Negan said softly. 

“What are you two chattin’ about?” you said as you approached the duo. Negan’s eyes lit up as you came into view, a bottle of water swinging from your fingers as you looked at Judith with a smirk on your lips. 

“Math,” Judith said nonchalantly. 

“Mmhmm,” you said, not buying it for a second. “Your momma is askin’ for you, Jude,” you said with a nod towards her house behind her. 

“Okay, fine,” Judith said with a sigh. 

“Wait a minute,” Negan said, “Where you going? I thought you wanted my help.” you looked over at him with a smile and he sent you a wink. 

“I do, but just with math,” Judith said, gathering up her stuff.

“Why just math?” he asked. 

“Because it doesn't matter if you're a good or bad person on the inside. The numbers don't care,” she said with a shrug as she jogged up the steps and into her house. You watched her, your mouth open in shock. 

“Wow,” Negan said as soon as the door closed behind her. “Since when is she that sassy?”

“Since she was born,” you said with a snort as you leaned against the gate, turning your back to him. “Just lettin’ ya know, shit might start hittin’ the fan. Michonne is on edge.” 

“Ain’t she always?” Negan asked with a sigh. “This about the newcomers the kid found?” You nodded, twisting off the cap of your bottle.

“She thinks Hilltop will take them. Apparently, the meeting didn’t go too well. One of the women is a bit… edgy.”

“Will Maggie take them?” Negan asked. 

“It’s not up to Maggie. It’ll be up to Jesus and Tara,” you explained. “Maggie isn’t at Hilltop.”

“No?” Negan asked in that curious tone you liked so much. 

“She went away for a bit,” you said, “At least that’s what Enid told me last time I talked to her.”

“So what does this mean?” 

“It means that Michonne is going to have to finally talk to the people we once considered friends.”

“And you?” he asked. 

“I am going to have to keep my head on a swivel,” you said with a sigh. All the drama that had come up hadn’t helped the insomnia that had crept up on you in the past couple of weeks. 

“Which you will, of course,” he said and you rolled your eyes. 

“You really have so much faith in me, don’t you?” you asked with a sly smile. 

“I like to put my money on people I know will win,” Negan said and you just knew he was shrugging.

“What exactly is the competition?”  you wondered. 

“Life,” he simply said. 

“I am not so sure you can win at life, Negan,” you said with a small chuckle, drinking from your bottle.

“I don’t know, (Y/N), I seem to be doing pretty damn well,” he said, his voice lower and you almost choked on your water right then.  You weren’t quite sure what to follow with after that statement and he seemed to realize. “Too strong?” he asked, worried he may have pushed it a bit far. 

“No, no,” you said, turning to face him. “I just, uh,...” you tried to find the words.

“You’re blushin’,” he pointed out with a sly smirk.

“It’s hot,” you said. 

“Not really,” he whispered back. 

“Shut up.”

“Is that a challenge?” he asked with a quirk of his brow. 

“It’s an order. I am still technically your warden.”

“I thought that was only when I was in your bed,” he said as he wet his lips with that grin of his. 

“You were never in my bed, just beside it,” you clarified.

“Optics,” he said with a  wink, and you were reminded of the time you had said the same thing to him when discussing the details of who started the war. Pushing off the gate, you straightened your clothes. 

“I am going to go and do something...something else,” you said, still flustered. 

“Yeah, maybe ask Siddiq about what to do about a heatstroke,” he teased and you flipped him off. “How adorable,” he cooed. 

“I hate you!” you called as you walked away.

“No, you don’t!” he yelled back and you chuckled under your breath. 

No, you really didn’t.

TAGS: amaroho  @thanossexual @yes-sir-hotchner @boom-bunny @delusionalteenagewhispers @scootankle @ritajammer21 @writteriguess @tea-atfive @jennydehavilland​ @halszka-potter​ @yespleasejayhalstead​ @fmunegan @hoemadegrace

[illuminated-cowboy]

Stag Serenade

Chapter 2

Wildfire

 Arthur shoved his hand into the dirt, feeling absolutely nothing as he phased right through it. He pulled through, trying to dig up at least a small amount of the loose soil, but he couldn’t manage.

An idea occurred to him, maybe he couldn’t dig up his body, but if he could get to his body, maybe he could dig himself out?

He reached in again, attempting to pull himself through while not being able to push off anything. He just floated in place in the dirt, kicking his feet as he tried making sense of the physics of being a ghost.

He realized there weren’t any.

“Come on, there’s gotta be a way to do this.”

“Are you still trying to get to your body?” a disembodied, yet not unfamiliar, voice embarked.

Arthur groaned, knowing it was his immortal curser again, “Yes I’m still trying to get to my body, dumbass!”

“Here, I’ll make this a bit easier for you.” With the sound of a finger snap, Arthur found himself face to face with his own body, cold dirt surrounding his almost fresh corpse.

“There you are, you ugly fool.” Arthur rolled over and held his own hands, what was left of the right one at least. Like a glove, he slid himself in, relaxing until he felt a click, a bump, something. He really wasn’t sure how he’d know when he was truly back in his own body again.

“I’d like to warn you of something, Arthur.” The strange man’s voice called out again.

“And what might that be?”

“Once you’re in your body again, you will not be able to die. But, you will feel like you are dying.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Because so far feeling dead has just frustrating.”

“Just a warning. I felt like it would be wrong not to warn you.”

“Right, but you didn’t feel it would be wrong to offer a dumbass like me immortality only for me to think you were joking, did you?”

“Oh come on now, there are so many possibilities ahead of you. You could become the smartest man in the world by the time you’re 1000. You’ll witness firsthand all major events going forward, even the end of the world most likely!’

“Right. So how long until I-Argh!” A sudden jolt of pain made its way through Arthur’s body, his lungs felt crushed and scarred, his torn arm began bleeding heavily as every nerve began to gain feeling again and his heart started pumping his old cold blood throughout his veins.

“Fuck! You son of a bitch, fuck you!”

“Good, you made it before there was too much nerve damage. I’ll leave you to it then.”

Arthur fought against the uncomfortable feeling of dirt entering his nose and eyes, the earthy taste and unpleasant crunch filled his mouth as he screamed in agony. Realizing he could only use one arm, he reached up above his face, trying his best to angle himself in a way that he could lift himself up without packing the dirt down on his lower half.

I will kill that bastard if I get the chance, I will rip his fucking throat out for doing this to me. I just wanted to be dead already, fuck!

He felt himself moving upward, a positive result for sure. He felt a spiritual power surge through him, it helped him to keep going harder and harder despite feeling weak and exhausted.

Finally, he reached air with his hand. A couple more breaths and one final pull, and his head emerged, like a mangled newborn baby. He screamed and cursed at the world as he burst through, dragging his revived corpse away from his grave and over to a tree to rest. His arm was done for, once he had his strength back he’d have to cut it off completely.

He spit out particles of dirt and blew black snot from his nose, coughing up far more than blood in-between. He struggled to breathe, every breath felt like eternity and the satisfaction of an oxygenated lung was far from grasp. He looked to the moon to take his mind off the pain and misery he was feeling, it illuminated his dirty, dampened features and reflected off his eyes gloriously. He couldn’t see himself, but he was sure he looked like a dead man walking.

Once he was sure he had hacked up every bit of dirt and blood left in his body, he reflected on the coming sunrise, realizing an entire day had passed since he had died. This was a sunrise he was never meant to see, and he wasn’t sure if that made him feel like a badass for cheating death, or a miserable man cursed to walk a world he was never intended to walk.

He finally felt recovered enough to rise to his feet, a dull ache radiating through his body and intensifying with every step. He wasn’t sure where he was even going, but he was sure if he walked long enough, he’d end up at a lake where he could wash up eventually.

He performed a dance of dragging his feet, groaning to himself, and taking large, unplanned steps in one direction or another. Sometimes he caught himself going in a small circle, and he’d have to recalibrate and jolt himself to the opposite direction.

The sun began to beam down on his dirt coated head, so he raised an arm up to shield the sun and happened to see the movement of an animal somewhere in the distance.

The whinny of a brown filly filled Arthur’s heart with a bit of relief, finally something besides a tree to stare at as he hobbled along.

As he approached the horse, he could make out a dark brown saddle on her back.

“Oh girl, please tell me your rider owns a bathhouse.”

The horse turned, noticing Arthur’s hobbling out of the corner of her eye. He reached out a hand and looked around for her owner, “Hello!” he called out as his hand touched the filly’s velvet nose.

She gave out a content snort at his presence, at least he knew that if her owner didn’t come around soon she’d likely be friendly enough to let a strange zombie man ride her.

A familiar voice called out from the woods, effeminate and soft, “is someone there?!”

“Yes ma’am,” Arthur looked around, unsure of where the voice was coming from and unable to put the name on his tongue, yet sure he had heard this voice before, “don’t be frightened by my appearance miss, I’ve been through one hell of a night.” His gaze settled on a woman approaching from the woods, a rifle in one hand and a dead rabbit slung over her shoulder.

She looked frightened and readied her rifle. “Who are you!?”

Arthur raised his hand and lifted a brow as he realized who the woman was, “Charlotte?”

She lowered her rifle and smiled in relief, “Arthur? What happened to you?!” She ran over to him excitedly, concern and worry overtaking her face as she realized just how torn up he was.

“Boy am I happy to see you.”

“I would say the same if your arm weren’t hanging off, what happened to you Arthur?” She gently touched just above the ripped section, trying not to let her shock overtake her ability to offer help.

“Wolves. Lots of ‘em.” Arthur chuckled painfully. “Only took one of ‘em to do this though.”

Charlotte cringed in second-hand pain. “Please, let me take you back home, you’ll die like this out here.”

“Kinda wish I did die, would hurt a hell of a lot less.” Charlotte shook her head, preferring to not think of her savior rather dying than being alive. She gently turned him towards her horse, assisting him up as much as she could before attaching her catch to the saddle and lifting herself up onto her filly.

Arthur held the woman gently with his living hand, steadying himself on the mare, “So, when did you get a horse?”

“I figured she was a necessity. Bought her in town one day, she’s been very loyal. Named her Wildfire.” The filly kicked up her hooves and began transporting her riders down the trail.

“She’ll be good to you til’ her last breath. My ol’ boy died about a day ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Was he ill?”

“No, no… It was, well, a rat. In a way.”

“A rat?”

Arthur tried looking for a way to describe what he meant without tainting her image of him. “I’m not a good man, Charlotte.”

“You keep saying that. But actions speak louder than words. And we are always our own worst critics.”

“It’s possible I have a chance to begin again,” he sighed, “but I’ve tried that so many times, always ends with someone getting hurt.”

“Well, you didn’t hurt me. You helped me, you saved my life. I will forever consider you my friend for that alone.”

“I was in with some bad guys. For a long time. The only ones who didn’t betray me in the end either died or left to make their lives better. And for that, I will never blame them. I should have left too.”

Charlotte slowly began to understand. “Well, it looks like you did leave. So now the question is, what will you do now?”

“I dun’ know.”

“Well, you can stay with me as long as you need to. I have an extra bed and you won’t be imposing.”

Arthur considered being stoic, denying her offer with something along the lines of “That’s alright Mrs. Balfour, I’ll get on just fine.” But instead, he sighed, and nodded to himself. “I think I could use the comfort of an indoor bed, thank you Charlotte.”

“I’m happy to hear it. I could use the company too. Maybe you can teach me some more survival skills as well!” She said cheerfully, looking behind her to catch a glance of the war-torn man. “Once you’re all fixed up, that is.”

The brown filly gave out a whinny as a fox crossed her path just a gallop away from the old cabin. Charlotte road her over to a fence post and dismounted, holding out a hand to assist Arthur down.

He chuckled as he oriented himself, attempting to first dismount alone. “In a normal world, I’d be helping you down, Mrs. Balfour.”

“Well, I’ve lost sight of whatever a normal world would be considered.”

With a shot of pain through his body, he winced, and grabbed for her hand reluctantly, trying not to fall or put too much pressure on the woman.

He tumbled down, buckling to his boots as Charlotte reached out to grab him, keeping him from falling far.

“This arm, Charlotte, it’s gotta come off.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened in response. “Shouldn’t a doctor make that determination?”

“Well, the last time I saw a doctor he told me I was dying, so I’d rather make the calls from here on out.” Charlotte wrapped an arm around him and assisted him as best she could, steadying him through every stumble and trip he endured as they made their way to the cabin.

“I don’t want you bleeding out on my watch.”

“I’ll be fine, Charlotte. I just need a good bath and a knife.”

She looked at him with pain in her eyes as she opened the door. “Well, if you think it’s for the best, I trust you.” She guided him inside to a chair, and he let out a moan of both pain and relief as he sat down.

“I feel like I could sleep forever, just right here.”

“I’m going to go get you a bucket of water and some soap and we can wash you up.” She gently patted his shoulder and grabbed a large wooden bucket by the door before heading outside to the well.

Arthur sat in silence for a moment, looking around her home. The home of a widow who, Arthur figured, was surely sufficient enough to have survived on her own.

Or maybe not. Maybe in another world, Arthur hadn’t helped her, hadn’t seen her when she needed him. And maybe nobody else had helped her either.

Maybe she was only alive because of him. The opposite of many, many people Arthur had come across in his life.

Arthur began undoing his shirt with his one good arm, getting down to the last button but finding it a struggle to actually get it off his shoulders, a mixture of pain and the lack of a second working arm being the culprit.

Charlotte walked back in; a bucket full of fresh water by her hip. “Oh, let me help you, Arthur.”

He leaned forward a tad, and she came around the backside of the chair, pulling as tenderly as she could at the blue button-up. One arm down, the healthy one at least. Coated in bruises but other than that, usable and strong.

His other arm was a different story, sticky blackened blood coating the ripped and worn fabric, she contemplated whether pulling it quickly was the right decision or pulling it slowly and possibly prolonging his pain.

He winced and turned away as she pulled it off, the blood pulling at his hair and torn skin. Fresh blood pooled on the floor in small amounts as she was careful to avoid touching the exposed flesh. Once it was off, he looked like half man, half bloodied beast.

“I’m so sorry, Arthur.”

“Hey, you didn’t attack me,” he mustered a grin as he took a good glance at his arm. The skin was completely torn away, the bone entirely dislocated from the rest of his skeleton, the forearm only hanging on by the thinnest strands of red threads, “I’d be real impressed if you did though.”

“Right. Well, I think you should get nice and clean before attempting major surgery on yourself.”

“Of course.”

Charlotte brushed her hair behind her ear before twiddling her thumbs for a second and asking, “do you need, help?”

“I do believe I might, but uh,” Arthur reached for the bucket with his good arm, “to save you the trauma, I’ll take care of the nasty bits later.”

Charlotte let out a relieved sigh. “I’ll go get something to scrub you with and a bar of soap.”

Arthur nodded in agreement. “Wouldn’t you rather we do this outside though?”

“It’s fine, I’ve been meaning to give the floor a good cleaning anyways.”

“Yeah but, this is gonna be a lot of blood and all, I don’t wanna-“

Charlotte came back from her room with a bar of soap, a hunting knife, and a couple towels. “I really don’t mind. It will be more comfortable for you in here.”

“Alright.”

Charlotte dunked the soap in the bucket, working the lather into a hand towel and taking Arthur’s good hand, rubbing the mixture up and down his arm.

Their eyes caught each other; hazel meeting blue. She refused to admit her heart skipped a beat at the sight, because despite his worn appearance and his dirt coated features, his eyes had so much more life in them than they did the last time they met.

She smiled, reaching a hand to gently touch his chin, pulling him slightly towards her as she gazed closer into those suddenly piercing eyes, “you’re healthy again, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“You were sick when you were here last time.”

“Well, you cure one thing, you end up with a lost arm I guess.”

She chuckled as she released her tender grip and continued to clean him up, handing him the towel and reaching for a new one to wash his face with, dabbing it under his eyes and behind his ears before wetting down his untrimmed hair and scrubbing it between her fingers.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly happened? I know you said it was wolves but, you look like you were buried underground.”

“Do you want the truth or do you want a lie?”

“I would prefer the truth, but if you’d rather be creative and keep the details to yourself, I’m still curious.”

“Well, I got the shit kicked out of me, died. God or Satan or whatever, he told me I was immortal now, but my body got attacked by wolves. I got buried then had to claw out of my own grave with one arm.”

“My, you are quite creative. I’ll have to keep you around for story ideas from now on.”

He smiled, “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You know, even on Cal’s deathbed he was still telling jokes too.”

He looked to her with awe. “Any man lucky enough to have you as their wife would die happily regardless of the circumstances.”

She grinned, her eyes almost tearing up. “That’s one of the sweetest things I’ve ever been told.”

“It’s been a good long time since I’ve been treated to a nice bath as well.”

“This next side will probably sting.” She said as she grabbed another clean towel and came round to the destroyed arm.

“I’ve felt worse, do whatever you need to do.”

She squeezed the towel, dripping cool soapy water down into the open wound. Arthur groaned in pain, his chest tightening as his teeth gritted against the feeling. He turned away, appearing to physically try and remove himself from the troublesome arm.

“Fuck,” he muttered through his teeth, struggling against it but knowing it had to be done, “give me the knife.”

She continued to rub down the arm, “I’m not even nearly finished getting all the dirt off-”

“Whatever is in there is in there, get me the goddamn knife!”

The woman reached for the hunting knife she had grabbed earlier from the table behind her, handing it to Arthur in one swift motion.

“Get my belt and tie it around my arm, as tight as you can.”

She hurried in front of him, kneeling and undoing the brown leather belt from his hips. Wrapping it around his arm and pulling it as hard as she could manage, blood squirting from the bottom, Arthur held the knife tightly before making one final request, “you got any alcohol?”

“Um, I have some rum in the cabinet.”

“That’ll work.”

She nodded, running for the container, and bringing it back to him. He placed the bottle between his legs, popped the top off, and took as many swigs as he could until the numbing feeling kicked in.

“I’m gonna need your help here, darlin’.”

“Anything, Arthur. I’m right here with you.”

“I’m gonna need you to hold this arm here as high as you can.”

She blinked twice. “You need me… while you…”

“I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t need you to but it’s gonna go a lot smoother if you do.”

“Okay.” She grasped his hand, cold deadened fingers between her own, and pulled the arm vertically, moving down to hold it by the length just before the wound.

Arthur stuffed a towel in his mouth, readied the knife, and began slicing into the flesh, screaming muffled into the towel as his entire body contracted in pain.

Charlotte held strong, looking away as blood splattered on her blue dress. With one final push, the arm came off, and the stump that remained poured with red liquid as Arthur tossed the knife and held the stub up as high as he could, pulling the belt tighter around it.

He spit out the towel onto the floor. “Candle!” he shouted, nodding to a candle that happened to be lit in the corner.

Charlotte dropped the arm and ran for the candle, handing it to her wilderness survival man without putting it out. He rubbed away as much of the blood as he could with a towel, then held the stump to the candle flame, trading his stinging pain for a burning pain.

The worst was over as he finished his self-surgery, laying back in the chair as Charlotte took the candle away. She returned to offer him more rum, to which he nodded and opened his mouth, silently begging that she pour it in and not stop.

With a bloodied arm on the floor, pools of suds and human liquids leaking from Arthur like a dripping pipe, he took one final moan and relaxed his eyes. “Thank you, Charlotte.”

“It’s no trouble,” she looked to the arm, the mess, the bloodied beautiful man in her chair, “I’ll go bury that in the back before it decomposes. Please, call for me if you need anything.”

And with that, Arthur was armless. He took one last look at the cold, bluish body part as Charlotte wrapped it with a towel and walked it out the door.

He picked up the rum and took another swig, the pain dulling his drunken state, yet still feeling the need to smile and say to himself, “I’m unarmed!” He giggled like a madman, trying to continue holding his brand-new stump above his arm, taking more sips in-between uncontrolled laughter, the majority of the rum dripping onto his beard and chest rather than his mouth.

By the time Charlotte returned, Arthur was far gone, flying high and performing a mixture of moaning in pain and giggling in pleasure.

“My angel!” He shouted at her. She took the bottle from his hand and rubbed some suds out of his hair.

“Do you want to keep bathing tonight or-”

“I will tell you,” he hiccupped and pointed a finger up, “what I want.”

Charlotte looked at him concernedly. “And what might that be?”

“I want for you to just give me the gentlest of kisses, right here,” he pointed to his forehead, “because women’s lips, they heal all wounds.”

She smiled, and kindly humored him, pressing her lips tenderly to his forehead. He pulled her close, his one good arm wrapping gently around her waist and pulling her in for a hug. She held his head under her breast, fingers trailing his cheek as she further indulged his desires for human touch.

“It’s been a while, darlin’.”

“Since?”

“Since I was loved.” He looked up at her, eyes looking even more pained than when he was cutting off his own arm. “I loved only so many women, and they didn’t love me, Charlotte. They used me, they used me and they left me when I couldn’t be what they needed. And that’s on me, I’m a horrible bastard.”

“No, Arthur, that’s on them honey.”

“No it ain’t, Charlotte. I hurt them bad, and I’d hurt you too if you got too close, but, I wanna be close to you. And I ain’t never wanna hurt you.”

“That’s enough of that,” she pulled away with kindness, holding his hand with both of her own in an effort to guide him somewhere to lay down, “come to bed, sleep this off and we’ll figure out the rest when you’re feeling better.”

He stumbled to his feet, holding her hands like they were precious jewels, looking at their every detail through his blurred, drunken vision, “I don’ wanna hurt you, Charlotte.”

“Don’t you worry about any of that right now, come with me.” She wrapped her arm around his back and assisted him into her guest bedroom, laying him down gently on the bed, holding his arm up and resting it on a pillow by his head.

She pulled out a blanket and laid it over his bare chest, keeping him warm for the rest ahead.

She kissed his forehead once more, wishing him a goodnight without words, then closing the door behind her to give him some privacy.

Arthur came in and out of a blacked-out state, desiring to go wander the halls and find Charlotte again to continue his self-deprecation, to show her and prove what an awful man he is, and why she would be right to toss him out and let him suffer. But she wasn’t going to do that, and he wondered if he really made such an impression on her that she would now trust him like this.

He could easily hurt her, maybe not physically but surely emotionally. That’s why Mary left him, right? He couldn’t change. He wasn’t redeemable.

But either she didn’t believe he would hurt her, or she didn’t care. Maybe she had been through the same pain as him, enough so that she didn’t care, just like he didn’t. Or at least, just like he kept trying to convince himself that he didn’t.

[the-deeds-to-shibden]

Wednesday 18th September 1839

[Anne and Ann engage an Englishman living in St. Petersburg as their local guide and general fixer, and start to make plans not only for what they need to see in and around the city, but also to learn Russian, and get a watch repaired. The guide is immediately, and predictably, discovered to be useless at the job (Miss Lister can sure pick ‘em), but has a colourful history. Anne’s banker thinks the “language too difficult to learn, the winter palace too difficult to be seen and the mines too far off to be gone to!”  – ooh, is that a challenge, do you think?  Anne gets to grips with the two kinds of Russian money, then visits Pushkin’s bookseller, and finally is fascinated by a “very fine” church (cathedral in fact), standing “as if riveted to the spot”.]

[up at] 6 1/2

[to bed at] 11 50/”

rain all night and rainy morning – breakfast had our valet Whitaker to speak to – engaged him – breakfast at 9 everything very nice – had Mrs. Wilson – then inked over the last 18 lines of yesterday and calculating differences of silver and paper money etc. till now 11 20/” –  should ask our banker for ticket to see (difficult) he ought to help us says Mrs. Wilson the Winter Palace – and must have ticket for

the mining corps, or college,  }

the mint                                   }

museum                                  }

academy of arts                      }     

watch maker Nelson

Bookseller Dixon

Fahrenheit 61º and fair but damp now at 11 1/2 a.m. –

out at 11 3/4 – i.e. 12 by Mrs. Wilson’s clock – to the bank i.e. to Messrs. Thomson Bonar and Company the head of the firm being now according to our valet’s pronunciation Mr. Hodgson –  very civil – he had received Mr. Hammersley’s letter making particular mention of me – said his wife had not recovered from her confinement or would call – seemed to think the language too difficult to learn, the winter palace too difficult to be seen and the mines too far off to be gone to! – However recommended Mr. Nouvel a Frenchman as Russian master – would see if anything could be done about the winter palace (under repair and therefore ordered not to be shewn) and would give us a letter that would be of use to us in Moscow – and will get us a ticket for seeing the École des mines – changed on circular number 8588 £25 = 531.40 paper money but given to me as = 531.65 at 39 1/2d per silver Ruble and 350 a. B N per silver Ruble why this double exchange into Silver Rubles and back in paper ditto, I know not    the a. B N must stand for assignations Bank Notes – and at 39 1/2d per silver Ruble £1 = 6 6/79 silver Rubles and 21 266/1000 paper Rubles 

An 1838 10-ruble note, like the ones Anne and Ann would have been paying with for the rest of their trip (image source):

from the bank to Dixon English bookseller – nothing about Moscow – he never sees an English newspaper from year end to year end – not allowed here – yes! certainly the Morning post and I do not wish to see any other – bought 2 little maps of St. Petersburg and Moscow published in London by the society for useful knowledge    

The map of St. Petersburg Anne bought, and no doubt used extensively during the three weeks she and Ann spent in the city (image source  – zoomable):

knows nothing of the mines, or road to Moscow – showed me an English Russian grammar by Mr. Head, master of the Lancastrian school here – the road map of Russia by the Etat major the best but old – a new one coming out this Christmas or with the new year – therefore did not buy the Weimar map in 4 sheets price 12 Rubels paper always count in paper except chez mon banquier – 

Luke Dixon’s bookshop was popular with the denizens of St. Petersburg, and the poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, the giant of Russian literature, had been among his customers; Dixon allowed him to buy foreign books on credit, and the poet ran up a debt to the bookseller which was paid off after his death in a duel in 1837. The building shown below (image source) is where Dixon’s shop was, at Bol’shaya morskaya ulitsa 24, but it looked different when Anne and Ann were there; in 1900 it was completely remodelled by the then owner, the famous jeweller Carl Fabergé:

Nelson the watch maker not at home – then to the Nevskoi Prospekt drive slowly – soon alighted and walked to beyond the [crossed out, F…ka visible] F .  .  . * canal then drove forwards to the Alexander Nevski church – Whitaker knows nothing of being laquais de Place –  came over here as an English groom – set up as a livery stable keeper and letter of carriages – did well – drank – thrown into prison for debt for six months – out some little time ago –  has given up drinking – an altered man says Mrs. Wilson who recommended him and no other! – the church under repair – saw 2 or 3 little churches under repair, an unintelligible mass –  then the pretty little eglise separée – then walked and drove down the Nevskoi prospekt to the Cazan Church and there about 1/2 hour  –

Kazan Cathedral on Nevsky Prospekt by Karl Beggrow (1799-1875) (image source)

service – very fine dimly lighted church – stood as if riveted to the spot in front of priest and chancel – then left my watch for a week chez Nelson – drove along the English quai and home at 5 1/2 – dinner at 5 3/4 – afterwards coffee and tea at 9 as yesterday – tired of the dining business –  must alter this – sat talking and calculating about the money –  rainy till between 10 and 11 a.m. afterwards fair but damp from about noon to 5 1/2 or rather before when it began to rain again Fahrenheit 62º at 11 p.m.

Marginal notes:

visible in pencil:

Rainy till between 10 and 11

and afterwards from about noon

to 5 fair but damp Fahrenheit 62º at 11 p.m.

Marginal notes:

£1 = 6 6/79 silver Rubles

£1 = 21 266/1000 paper Rubles

Notes:

*This is almost certainly the Fontanka.

WYAS pages: SH:7/ML/TR/14/0015       SH:7/ML/TR/14/0016

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 2

Perrin and Galad deal with leadership and its consequences, and I continue to not deal with the narrative conspiring to make me like Galadedrid Damodred.

Chapter 2: Questions of Leadership

With a title like that, this can only be a Perrin chapter.

Because average leader questions himself 10 times per book factoid actually just statistical error. Wolfbrother Perrin, who lives in a tent and questions himself 1000 times per book is an outlier and should not have been counted.

And that might be a new low for this liveblog, which is saying something.

A few days ago, the pervasive cloud cover had turned black, darkening like the advent of a horrible storm.

Luckily for you and the rest of existence, that particular meteorological phenomenon masquerading as a man decided against total annihilation of everything. *shakes head* Weather forecasts. Can’t trust ‘em.

(The science nerd in me now wants to write, like, a short story or something in the form of a journal article called Impact of localised heroic systems on global atmospheric chemistry and I think perhaps this is a tangent).

Anyway, we are indeed with Perrin, who’s been having a great time lately dealing with mud and plague. Yes, well, aren’t we all.

Both Asha’man had nearly died

Yeah well they’re used to that by now, surely. All in the job description.

Perrin you’ve had a month to work on that blacksmith’s puzzle in your pocket and you haven’t solved it? Just – give it to me. There. Solved.

(I used to love these puzzles. Haven’t come across one in ages though.)

Perrin’s taking in refugees because either he’s lying through his teeth or he’s ta’veren enough to slightly counteract Rand’s spoil-everything-edible influence, maybe.

He had bigger worries to bother him, not the least of which were his strange dreams. Haunting visions of working the forges and being unable to create anything of worth.

Is this the blacksmith equivalent of dreaming you’re suddenly sitting an exam you’ve not studied for, and also you’re naked?

Moving so many refugees was slow, even discounting the bubble of evil and the mud.

Hey at least you’re not also dealing with border walls and immigration control.

Everything took longer than he expected, including getting out of Malden.

Oh, TELL ME ABOUT IT. Me? Still bitter about the Malden plotline? Whatever made you think that?

All in all it seems like a pretty standard Tuesday for Perrin: slogging through mud, questioning his ability to be a great leader (not to be confused with the Great Leader), and trying to keep four nations’ worth of soldiers and refugees away from each other’s throats. Only one we’ve not ticked off the list yet is denying his wolfpowers, but there’s still time.

“Find out where they’re from, learn whether they did serve a lord, see if they can add anything to the maps.”

In which Perrin Aybara invents the census.

Oh hey! The road’s getting less muddy! Which is definitely not symbolic or anything.

“Where are the others?”

“They went on ahead, my Lord,” Fennel said, bowing from horseback. “I volunteered to stay behind, for when you caught up. We needed to explain, you see.”

I’m sorry, hold the phone, forward-thinking and communication – a plan specifically about communicating, even – all in one statement? Well. You know the apocalypse is coming when.

So everyone Perrin sent ahead has taken a detour because there’s mud up ahead, which may be the Pattern’s way of saying ‘we’re running out of time can you please just go where I need you for once’ or may just be bog-standard (see what I did there) geology and meteorology, but will, if the glimpses of Perrin through Rand’s special colour vision last book is anything to go by, result in a collision course for Perrin and Galad, which I’m… weirdly looking forward to.

“But from the look of things here, you decided to bring the entire town with you!”

Think bigger, Fennel. ‘Nation’ bigger, at the least. More likely plural.

Perrin does briefly consider splitting the party army nation(s) at his back, but the Shaido are conveniently in the way so instead I suppose they’ll all just make their way, amoeba-like, to wherever they can engulf Galad’s own group. Or be engulfed by. Alliance, phagocytosis; to-may-to, to-mah-to…

No I’m not sure where I was going with that either. Moving on…

He himself could Travel back to Rand, pretend to make up – most people would still think that he and Rand had parted ways angrily

This strikes me as being strangely sad, and I’m trying to figure out why. Maybe it’s because there’s a secondary reading of this which is that their ‘making up’ would be as much a pretence as their ‘fight’ because both of those have friendship as a prerequisite, and are they even friends anymore after all this time and all that has happened and all that lies between them?

Especially because, in terms of timelines, right now-for-Perrin, Rand is… not really in a place to be anyone’s friend.

I wonder, though, because I’m a terrible person who finds opportunities for Suffering even in things that should be entirely free of it, whether Rand-after-Dragonmount is in a better place to be anyone’s friend. I think yes, because that was very much the point, but I feel like there’s a bittersweet potential to it where ascendance is just as bad as damnation for maintaining a normal social life.

Or, less flippantly, there’s a strange loneliness to the messiah’s role, to being a force of nature and a champion of fate as much as or more than a man. He is known to all and all look to him and he stands, surrounded, at the centre, and he has learned to see the hope and promise in that rather than just the despair but there is still the sense of being alone on a mountain, alone on a pedestal, existing alone on a level that is not quite human but not quite divinity, touching all but no longer, quite, as a peer. Forces of nature don’t have best friends, even if they turn towards benevolence.

I mean, I’m spitballing here, because I’ve seen exactly one chapter of Rand-after-Dragonmount, and in fairness he seemed at peace with himself and his role now, but I still can’t help but wonder. And by wonder I mean wish. Because see above re: Suffering.

I guess mostly what I’m looking for is something along the series-standard line of you can’t go back, you can only go forward. And even when forward is better, even when forward is healing, even when forward is hope, it’s not the same as what you had or who you were before, and sometimes there is a sadness to that.

Sorry, this is a Perrin chapter and here I am going on about Rand, but I just… like thinking about all the friendships and relationships between all these characters, and how they change over time, and how those ties can be so altered and sometimes strained and yet even then they can also be what saves them all.

(“My best friend turned into the world.” “That’s rough buddy.”)

Faile was back now, and it appeared that his truce with Berelain was over.

NO.

*throws book at wall*

WHY. Damn it I was so glad when that finally died and Perrin and Berelain got to just work together and appreciate each other’s competence! Why must we return to this? Don’t you know that you can’t go back; you can only go forwards? WHY THIS. WHY ME.

The Prophet was dead, killed by bandits. Well, perhaps that was a fitting end for him, but Perrin still felt he’d failed.

Probably just because he doesn’t know that Masema was Faile-d.

I’m sorry. I’ll see myself out.

(That’s a lie; you’re just going to have to put up with me and my bad puns for at least another book).

His duty was done, the Prophet seen to, Alliandre’s allegiance secure. Only, Perrin felt as if something were still very wrong. He fingered the blacksmith’s puzzle in his pocket. To understand something… you have to figure out its parts…

Because you’ve only done the middlegame part of your duty, Perrin! You still have to get ready for the ending! And that means… *dramatic hammerstroke* forging. But, you know, metaphorically.

Perrin feels awkward around Faile now because when you’ve focused your entire life and self and nation, waking and sleeping, on achieving a single goal, and rewritten your entire world around that goal, and then you do achieve it, it’s sometimes hard to know what to do with the reality of having achieved it, of having that person back at your side but an emptiness ahead of you where the idea of them once occupied everything. Or at least that’s my suspicion but Perrin when this is all over you may want to, I don’t know, talk to someone about it.

Seriously, a qualified therapist could make a killing setting up shop in this world.

“I should start turning them away.”

“I suspect they’d find their way back to our force anyway.”

“Why should they? I could leave orders.”

“You can’t give orders to the Pattern itself, my husband.”

Perrin: “WATCH ME.”

Maybe you could ask Rand to, as a favour? He seems to be on good terms with the Pattern these days. Er. These days in his timeline, I mean.

Yes, Perrin, this is you being ta’veren. Or have you been living under a rock for the last several books? Denial’s not going to last you much longer.

“And so coopers learn the sword,” Faile said, “and find they have a talent for it. Masons who never thought of fighting back against the Shaido now train with the quarterstaff.”

It’s such a ploughshares-to-swords image, and I still just love the way this is how Perrin’s ta’veren-ness manifests specifically: the one who was so careful lest he hurt someone, the one who tries so hard to deny his capacity for anger and ferocity, the one drawn to the Way of the Leaf and a dream of peace, is the one to cause that rippling of peace into war, farmers into soldiers, a quiet nation into a waiting army.

Because on one level there’s the sadness of it, of the only one who returns home bringing that home back out into the world with him and leaving it forever changed, of the one who wants gentleness rousing a people to follow and fight… but even that then ties into the deeper issue of acceptance. Of realising that the potential has always been there – for a ploughshare to be a sword or a blacksmith to be a warrior, or a man to be a wolf or a town to be an army – and that drawing that potential out and allowing it to exist and be used doesn’t negate what was there before. That man and wolf can coexist, that anger does not preclude gentleness, that fighting a war for survival does not negate the hope, one day, of peace.

And so Perrin’s ta’veren power becomes almost another level in playing out what he will eventually need to accept about himself. Just as Rand’s darkness and then light spread out to touch the world around him, it’s as if Perrin’s lack of acceptance of aspects of himself keep these people from truly coming together (the dreams of forging things that don’t come out right), whereas if he can accept what he is, and accept all parts of himself, forge them into unity, then the part of the world he affects – the people who follow him – will be forged together as well.

At least he acknowledges to himself that Faile’s right about this one. That’s a good step.

“Once we have gateways again, I’ll send these people to their proper places. I’m not gathering an army.”

Sigh. Or not. Two steps forward, one step back.

Understand the metal and the tools and the puzzle in your hands, Perrin. Look at what you have. Not at what you wish you had, or think you should have. Look at what the pieces can and need to be made into, rather than forcing them into what you want them to be made into.

“A man’s got to see a thing for what it is. No sense in calling a buckle a hinge or calling a nail a horseshoe.”

The hilarious thing here is that he’s making my point, whilst thinking he’s disproving it. Because Perrin, seeing a thing for what it is means looking at all these people around you and realising you’re their leader and they’re following you and you’re headed for Tarmon Gai’don. No sense calling a buckle a hinge, or an army a random group of refugees. (Well, they are that, too. But if you try to return them home now, soon they will have no home at all).

I do appreciate that he sees and acknowledges some of his flaws from when Faile was gone. He’s a little too hard on himself in places, and misses out others, but it’s a kind of humility and self-awareness and ability to recognise where he could be better that I like.

“It’s not [Berelain’s] fault,” Perrin said. If I’d been able to think of it, I’d have stopped the rumours dead. But I didn’t. Now I’ve got to sleep in the bed I made for myself.”

Perhaps not quite the idiom I’d have chosen in this particular instance, Perrin, but…

When she’d been a captive, nothing had mattered to him but recovering her. Nothing. It didn’t matter who had needed his help, or what orders he’d been given. […]

He realised now how dangerous his actions had been. Trouble was, he’d take those same actions again. He didn’t regret what he’d done, not for a moment.

Well… partial credit for self-awareness, I suppose?

Frustrating as this is, though, it also feels quite realistic. And there’s a certain kind of maturity in the devastating honesty it takes to look at something you’ve done and say ‘I shouldn’t have done that, but in the same situation I’d make those same choices again’. Even if it’s a mistake, being able to acknowledge that about yourself is… impressive.

You couldn’t make a drawknife into a horseshoe by painting it, or by calling it something different.

Yeah, and you can’t make a ta’veren lord, leader, wolfbrother, and warrior back into a simple blacksmith’s apprentice boy by sheer force of denial, but don’t let that stop you.

“I’ve been thinking on this for the last few weeks, and – odd though it seems – I believe my captivity may have been precisely what we needed. Both of us.”

*throws book against wall and lets out an Elayne-like scream of pure rage*

ARGH.

WHY.

‘It’s fine, Perrin, you see I actually think it’s good that I was just used as a plot device to further your character development because I was tossed a bit of character development as a last-minute consolation prize, so really it’s all good!’

Sigh. Okay. I mean, in-story and in-character… I get it. It’s over now, it’s past, and they’re both trying to move on, and Faile has always been one to try to find a pragmatic angle – even an optimistic one – on a situation. And she’s strong enough to say this and make it sound (almost) believable. To look back on harsh lessons learned in harsher circumstances and appreciate the fires that forged her.

Which of course puts me in mind of Rand and his if a sword had memory, it might be grateful to the forge fire, but never fond of it ‘gratitude’ towards his imprisonment in Far Madding, but with Rand and that thought, we are given fairly obvious narrative cues that point to ‘yikes, Rand, that’s maybe not the healthiest of responses to trauma’, and we know full well that we’re not supposed to think ‘ah, yes, being locked in a cell with his worst nightmares was good for his character development so everything’s fine’. (Which is not to say we can’t enjoy it, because sometimes you just want to see your favourite character broken and bleeding and chained to a wall, but that’s uh. Neither here nor there).

But here, it’s as if we’re supposed to take Faile at face value. As if we’re supposed to nod and think ‘yeah, actually, that probably wasn’t fun but it was What She Needed’ (which… wow that is an entire pile of yikes, because yes, what a female character in this genre needs is to be held captive and sexually coerced and deprived of all agency… is maybe not a point you want to be making?). It feels like trying to hang a lampshade on that travesty of a plotline and say ‘but look! It brought them both character development! So it’s fine!’

Anyway I’m still just bitter about the way Faile has been used as a plot device for Perrin’s character development across the last few books, and this… while entirely understandable from a character and story perspective, from an external perspective feels like salt in the damn wound.

Moving on.

*

To Galad, apparently.

Galad who is bound and in pain after being tortured. I’m listening.

(Why am I like this)

All was dark around him, but pinprick lights shone in the sky. Stars? It had been overcast for so long.

Huh. There’s something almost sweet about how closely this echoes that chapter in TGS when Gawyn is wishing he could see the stars. I mean I’m certain it’s not actually intentional because it’s a spurious connection at best, but it’s just a kind of sweet-sad note of similarity between two brothers who haven’t seen each other since they both got lost trying to find their way, and are still trying and wishing, just for a moment, for the stars for guidance.

They’re not actually stars, just pinpricks in the tent, but that’s beside the point.

What’s not beside the point is the inventory of Galad’s wounds because honestly, it’s as if everything from then he did dance, all his grace turned in an instant to fluid death onwards has been a targeted attack on me as a person by going down a list of all the things I like to see in a character and going ‘do you like him now? What about now? What about now?’ and I’m mad about it.

Galad did not fear death or pain. He had made the right choices. It was unfortunate that he’d needed to leave the Questioners in charge; they were controlled by the Seanchan. However, there had been no other option, not after he’d walked into Asunawa’s hands.

I’m not sure why I find it so fitting that Galad’s experience at Asunawa’s hands is not unlike Morgase’s in the end, but something about it just works for me. There’s a whole set of connections here that this bookends, between the two of them and their fall from and rise to power, and choices, and Valda and Asunawa and the Seanchan, and for whatever reason it feels satisfying to have this coming to an end much like it began. Though Galad is spared Morgase’s…………… choice. But I suppose there’s almost an irony here in him avenging Morgase in one way but then sharing her fate in another.

Or maybe it’s just back to the classic ‘I like fictional characters in pain’.

Soon the Questioners would come for him, and then the true price for saving his men would be exacted with their hooks and knives. He had been aware of that price when he’d made his decision. In a way, he had won, for he had manipulated the situation best.

STOP. TRYING. TO. MAKE. ME. LIKE. GALAD. DAMODRED.

I just. Damn it. This is such a good look! And yet it’s Galad!

Standing, beaten but unflinching, determined and himself, ready to face whatever they do to him. Well. That’s how Morgase began, too.

Oh hey it’s his friends! Which means probably no more torturing of Galad, which is kind of a shame (I’m sorry), but is also not entirely unexpected.

Oh wow Asunawa’s dead. Okay. Can’t say he’ll be missed, though it’s just a shame Morgase didn’t get to kill either him or Valda herself. Ah well, can’t have everything.

And it wasn’t Galad’s men who killed him, so now he has won the Questioners to him as well. Questions of Leadership indeed. I see what you did there.

It is an interesting contrast in this chapter, to watch Perrin constantly second-guessing or trying to deny his leadership, set against Galad just… accepting his.

I will give Galad this: he has won his leadership by being entirely and unrelentingly himself, and true to his convictions, and standing, despite everything thrown at him, despite the corruption around him, as a determined and unassailable symbol of what the Children of the Light should be. What they can be. He doesn’t try to steal power, doesn’t outright challenge their ways; he just leads quite literally by sheer force of example.

Galad nodded. “You accept me as Lord Captain Commander?”

But also, I just have to remind everyone that he’s buck-ass naked throughout this entire scene, and some juvenile part of me finds that absolutely hilarious.

“We were forced to kill a third of those who wore the red shepherd’s crook of the Hand of the Light.”

What a pity. No, really. I’m weeping. How sad. Terrible.

None of them asked whether he needed rest, though Trom did look worried.

Again! Characters beaten and exhausted and hiding their pain in order to just move forward is a whole Thing, and putting that on Galad and throwing it at me is just unfair.

Galad didn’t feel wise or strong enough to bear the title he did. But the Children had made their decision.

The Light would protect them for it.

(The fact that ‘Galad’ means ‘light’ in Sindarin is just an added bonus here, really).

But I like the way his thinking about this runs: he doesn’t feel wise or strong enough, but that’s not the part that matters. The part that matters is that they chose him. As Galad sees it, what makes a leader isn’t what the leader thinks of himself, but merely the fact that others choose to follow.

He is their leader now, and whether he wants to be or not, whether he feels up to it or not, is irrelevant. There’s an interesting question here around choices, and the lack thereof – that he has no choice, in a way, but to lead. Because whether or not he wants to, people have decided to follow him, and so by definition he is their leader now. And so the only thing to do, because it’s the right thing to do, is to lead them as well as he can.

Next (ToM ch 3) Previous (ToM ch 1)

[ladyfawkes]

Fresh Chapter: Chapter 4 - Shattered Chapter 4 word count: 1273 Total word count: 6538  Excerpt from Chapter 4: “Pathetic,” seethed the terrifying and enormous goat-faced creature who had just thrown her to ground, yet again, “Useless pathetic vermin. Although I suppose I do have you to thank for freeing me at long last, don’t I?” continued the creature, its voice dripping with sarcasm. Cassandra had become the scapegoat and living ragdoll-plaything to a very moody and cruel ancient demoness. Suddenly the ugly beast reached down, grinding the knuckles of its enormous black claw against Cassandra’s back and proceeding to crush the young woman’s broken ribs even further into the rubble-strewn cavern floor. <em>“Thank you,”</em> the monster spat through clenched teeth. As Cassandra struggled to move, she experienced more intense agony than she’d ever felt in her life.  ====================================== Essentially, this story is a “what if....” type-rewrite of the last half of Season 3. In other words, it is non-compliant post-Cassandra’s Revenge.  Story Summary:  Post-Cassandra's Revenge AU. Grievous injuries occur to more than one character during Cassandra's fight for magical dominance. Yet not every wound is apparent right away.In the aftermath from Cassandra's Revenge at Black Rock Tower, Eugene is trying to use his rare alone time to process all that had happened. Thankfully, he has Lance to keep him grounded with his own irksome ways.One enormous weight had been lifted and Eugene's psyche was flying because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rapunzel reciprocated all of his feelings for her. He also witnessed exactly to what lengths Rapunzel would move heaven and earth to fight for him. Amongst his euphoria for Rapunzel, however, he must also figure out how to forgive Cassandra.

Chapter 4: Shattered  Searing blue-white pain tore through every nerve ending. Cassandra groaned with immense torment as her already-bruised and broken body slammed face-forward into the floor of the cavern beneath them. All remaining sense was knocked out of her for a time. "Pathetic," seethed the terrifying and enormous goat-faced creature who had just thrown her to ground, yet again, "Useless pathetic vermin. Although I suppose I do have you to thank for freeing me at long last, don't I?" continued the creature, its voice dripping with sarcasm. In the past however-long it had been (it could be one day, it could've been a week, it could've been a fortnight - Cass had lost any real sense of time after her Fall) Cassandra had become the scapegoat and living ragdoll-plaything to a very moody and cruel ancient demoness. Suddenly the ugly beast reached down, grinding the knuckles of its enormous black claw against Cassandra's back and proceeding to crush the young woman's broken ribs even further into the rubble-strewn cavern floor. <em>"Thank you,"</em> the monster spat through clenched teeth. As Cassandra struggled to move, struggled to breathe, struggled to even think - she experienced more excruciating and intense agony than she'd ever felt in her life. Tracks of dried salt smeared her entire face, head, neck, and upper chest….for Cass had wept more silent tears since her tragic Fall than she could recall ever having cried during her first 25 years of living. Her heart thundered in her chest, a rhythmic pounding in which she found little comfort. Surely, she couldn't live much longer under these conditions. Once again, Cassandra found herself wishing for her own death. After all the wicked things she'd been conned into doing the past several months, the dastardly way she had mistreated Rapunzel…she cringed outwardly, recalling her abominable behavior at Eugene's first real birthday party….and even more recently repeatedly trying to kill Rapunzel …..and even came within a hair's breadth of killing Eugene minutes later…. By this point, the penitent young woman was resigned; being held captive and immobile left nothing to Cass but fitful nightmares and ruminating about all of the terrible things she'd done. As a traitor, Cassandra deserved no less than a death sentence. It's what her own father would've said, it's what Rapunzel's father would've said…..and it was definitely what Eugene's father would've wanted as well. Hell, it's even what Cassandra the soldier herself would've demanded less than a year ago, had she been the one to find a traitor in their midst rather than becoming one. Although Cassandra had tried to catch herself during her Fall, she had clearly failed. By trying to move a limb, turn her head - any motion under her own power - Cass could only succeed with inducing even more nausea and vertigo. The eardrum-ringing ever-present throb in the back of her head was easily the worst of all. Very close behind were her multiple broken ribs...She could feel them jabbing into her gut and lungs. Her armor too had mostly failed, only barely managing to keep her alive from her 1000-foot drop. Something about the Moonstone shattering into multiple shards. And after the newly-freed Enchanted Girl had touched her physically for the first time, Cassandra's mind had been instantly flooded with cruel imagery. The young woman had finally learned and understood exactly who this disguised and deranged monster truly was….it was none other than <em><strong>Zhan Tiri!!!</strong></em> And only then the grievously injured Cassandra could tell that the demon's psychological iron grip on her was finally loosened. Her injured mind was no longer possessed by the ancient demon. This very moment in the cavern, Zhan Tiri was utterly furious with her but Cass couldn't figure out why, exactly. Without doubt, someone as powerful as the ancient demoness shouldn't care this much now that the Moonstone had effectively succeeded with killing another useless human. After all, it had to have been the demoness who manipulated Cassandra into shattering the stone in the first place. That was a crucial piece of info Cass hadn't discovered until it was far, far too late. Was the Moonstone's destruction not the demon's ultimate goal after all? And why oh why wouldn't Goaty McSquidbottom just get things over with and put Cassandra out of her misery instead of torturing her? Cassandra gasped again painfully as her whole torso abruptly flared to life with an instantaneous fiery heat; this molten energy simultaneously crackled and flowed through her like an electrical current and in turn, leapt outward and powerfully zapped the monster's claw. Cass sensed rather than saw the bolt of energy arc from her back and up Zhan Tiri's huge arm; the evil demon roared at the sudden nasty shock she'd just received. <em>That was...new,</em> Cassandra blinked and thought numbly to herself, as the incensed evil demoness flailed about dramatically behind her. The young woman contemplated if this was anything close to what her victims felt when she had elected to zap them deliberately via the Moonstone's power. So….it turned out that Cassandra's crystalline armor was still struggling valiantly to keep her alive, determined to keep on fighting against the latest tortuous onslaught from the demoness. That fact, in turn, had to mean the Moonstone powers were still at least nominally functional. But that didn't mean the egregiously injured Cassandra was in conscious control of it. Cass couldn't decide which was more ominous….the fact that the Moonstone was going rogue or the fact that at this moment she'd be better off dead, as long as it meant the Moonstone couldn't manipulate her to hurt others anymore. Because Cassandra knew that one way or another, if she couldn't somehow extract the embedded shards of dark crystal out of her body, and quickly, she'd certainly be better off dead in either case. Cassandra's eyes squeezed tight against the excruciating pain and rapidly rising heat still emanating from her malfunctioning bodysuit. Yet she determined her armor itself wasn't responsible; rather the energy was pulsating in every direction from what felt to be those infernal crystal shards embedded within her chest wall. Each new energy pulse was roiling through her and outward across her armor. The young woman was also afraid to look up for fear Zhan Tiri would just abuse her again out of spite. By this point in time, Cassandra had wished 10,000 times over that she'd never heard of the Moonstone. And just a moment or two before Cassandra lost consciousness that last time, her poor body unable to withstand any more, the last sound in the whole universe she expected to hear filled her ears. "Oh geez….!" a man's voice swore explosively in a string of epithets from a ways off down the cavern. <em>No! No! No!</em> Cassandra screamed internally, irrationally angry that she was hallucinating again. <em>Of all the people to hallucinate, why did it have to be <strong>him?</strong></em> She clamped her eyes shut even tighter, knowing she was unable to stave off the encroaching darkness for much longer. Nonetheless, footsteps rapidly drew nearer to her and in spite of every instinct telling her what she was perceiving couldn't possibly be real, that same voice spoke again, this time just above her. "Dear Jiminy Cricket on a busted crutch! <em><strong>Cass!??!</strong></em> What have they done to….where are…..if only I could help you somehow!" And although the injured young woman could only manage to crack open just one eyelid a few millimeters before she fainted…..the brief image Cassandra saw burned itself into her psyche. It was Eugene Fitzherbert's riding boots. "Cass!? Talk to me, <em>please!"</em> The figure above her dropped to one knee before silence finally enveloped Cassandra and everything faded to black.

[vivien-dot-exe]

Ask meme - every todoroki :eyes:

lmao BET

(this is super big huge I’m so sorry askdfjsh)

Shouto

NOTP

I don’t?? really think I have one. I’m pretty alright w/ all shouto ships tbh.

BROTP

todomomo. I get the ships but I kinda see em as them Good Supportive Friends that are just close enough that everyone Thinks They’re Dating n cannot believe they’re not but like. they never would. (am I projecting my best friendship onto shouto?? Maybe. fuck off.)

OTP

rn?? enjishouto lmao. I love love enjishouto man,, favorite child lovin,,,,

second choice

I ~guessss~ todobaku?? but tbh I’m not all that into most shouto ships. like we neutral most days. we just stay lovin bakugou + denying they’re friends???? so cute man,,

tied though is reishouto bc mommy kink. I won’t sit here and lie to you I just love gentle mommy kink sm

fluffy pairing

cliche fan fave - tododeku. we love a pair of supportive boyfs. I still do like seeing some tododeku art sometimes cause it makes our heart warm

angsty pairing

enjishouto again - I play things for angst so fuckin much dude,, if I can’t play my otp for angst then it probably isn’t gonna stick.

poly ship

can I say like. natsu/fuyu/enji/shouto. cause siblings that thirst over their hot dad together stay together

however hawks/enji/shouto is an incredibly tasty rarepair. there’s only one fic for it on ao3 but it’s So dang good,, 

weirdest pairing

I guess still enjishouto!! I have a very small amount of ships for the boy, man,,

Fuyumi

NOTP

n/a once again. every fuyumi ship I’ve seen to date or conjure up from crack shipping is cute bc she’s cute. I love seeing her in general.

BROTP

lowkey?? fuyuhawks. I can see them being excellent friends. I know romance takes are also good but. consider this: them chillin and acting goofy.

OTP

fuyunatsu. no question. it was my v first fuyumi ship and I will go down with it. (more explanation below)

second choice

fuyumi/miruko is really good!! maybe that’s just me being all ‘lesbians good’ @ the few fics n art pieces I’ve seen but Still.

fluffy pairing

reiyumi. we Love a girl n her mom huggin tight n kissing softly.

angsty pairing

fuyuenji. I’ve seen such good angst w/ these two man,, makes my heart heart Good ya feel?? them sad n guilty daddy’s girl feels Get Me

poly ship

sibling thorst: the ship (fuyu/natsu/enji/shouto)

weirdest pairing

if I was to make up a weird pairing,,,, bakuyumi. they interact Once but I like ships that are basically ‘we cook and it’s romantic’ (read: natsuki from ddlc anyone?). it’s a lil crack shippy and I’ve never ever seen any material for it, but wouldn’t it be cute to have bakugou cook w/ a cute older woman n have a cute romantic time while he’s all tsundere?? sighs wistfully,,

Natsuo

NOTP

hmm,, I’m honestly thinking I should take this option out. I really do think it cute to think the whole ass todofam w/ Anybody you know??

BROTP

natsushouto. like wow great job viv takin it Literally but as we don’t know much about natsu’s college life, I can’t exactly elect a best friend or nothin, and I Really love the concept of natsu and shouto acting like regular sibs. fighting n competing but hyping each other up, ya know?? sighs wistfully,, I actually really love brotherly dynamics a lot. like shipping em is usually my first thought but I also just???? like seeing em play around n be normal sometimes lmao. is that weird?? that it makes me happy?? idk.

OTP

fuyunatsu!! I love the concept of them constantly being there for each other, plus childish curiosity?? if you got sibs you know what that shit’s like. “you wanna try kissing??”

like listen not to be gross about it either but like. Puberty w/ that like entirety of the house to themselves. you can not tell me horny things never happened.

second choice

enjinatsu has Mad potential. I don’t get to see a lot of content for them but they make my heart happy. love the idea of both them being sweet to each other slowly in a path to forgiveness dotted with confessions and soft embraces,,,, or of course guilty dad thirst. both are Tasty

fluffy pairing

fuyunatsu is Cute. listen I want em to cuddle and support each other though they’re so different. like foils, ya know?? I am very weak for natsu having a weakness for fuyumi’s gentleness (though that could be said for the whole todofam. stan fuyumi)

angsty pairing

hmm,, I guess that’d be enjinatsu?? path to forgiveness enjinatsuo I can see being v feelsy and Tasty.

poly ship

sibling thorst Again.

weirdest pairing

man I don’t think any of these could be counted as Not weird. enjinatsu maybe?? as their dynamic is rather complicated n versatile + parent/child. I think the Least weird ship I’ve ever considered w/ him though would be natsuhawks, but I’ve not seen a lot of material for them nor do I have any ideas for dynamics. they just look nice together.

Touya (dabi)

NOTP

okay I’ll be real w/ you I lied I do have One notp and it’s dabihawks (hotwings). it’s. it’s okay, I’ll admit, but it kinda squicks me out in canon verses. like, reverse aus, genderswap aus, most aus really that slightly shift the dynamic, I’m good w/ dabihawks, but Not In Canon or any approximations of it.

(big rant on why, feel free to skip)

I guess antis just kinda fucked it up for me?? I was kinda neutral when it first was proposed, ya know like ‘oh that’s cute!! not for me but more power to ya!!’ but then dabihawks shippers started getting in hawksdeavor shippers’ faces n giving the usual arguments against age gap ships (as if a villain/hero ship was so uwu pure n unproblematic), and then there came the ‘hawks will betray the heroes and become a villain for dabi’ theories from them and it just. that was 2018 and it Still makes me uncomfortable to think about. 

I very much enjoyed hawks’ double agent thing!! but I knew an infiltration mission would end with betrayal from the beginning and that’s what I liked about it. him doing the absolute Most for the heroes even if it feels scummy to do so. I was Devastated for a moment when I saw hawks’ first meetup w/ dabi and it looked like he might be spying for them, but then we were quickly assured that it was a ploy and I was like Oh My God Thank God I Near Had A Heart Attack. but other people, the loudest group being dabihawks shippers, were dissatisfied with this and wanted canon to take a different direction and I Dunno Man, I just had very strong emotions about that and still do. 

I love hero hawks in all his double agent endeavor fanboy glory and people wanting to take it a different direction in canon felt like a blatant kind of???? idk defacing of character almost, even though that’s a mega mega mega dramatic way to put it loL don’t ask me why I got such strong feelins about it I couldn’t explain it if I wanted. I’d love to go back to being chill about it I really really would.

BROTP

idk, I think I might not???? have one for him. he seems kinda all or nothing to me, very intense w/ his emotions. if I was to Name one off the top of my head, maybe maybe togadabi, but even then I’m kinda hm on it.

OTP

first and favorite dabi ship is 1000% shigadabi. not even in most canon settings; I just like them chilling and being lovey (and going on large scale crime dates).

second choice

probably shoutodabi?? not Big on most dabi ships but love that older bro angst.

fluffy pairing

shigadabi bby!! if I wanna imagine dabi soft ever then shigadabi is a Lovely escape, canon absolutely notwithstanding.

natsutouya is also a good one to imagine, what w/ the image of them cuddling making my heart Warm

angsty pairing

shoutodabi. I saw this one reunion fic of them and I had So Many Emotions oh my god.

dabihaul is also a good candidate, though it’s less Angst more hurt little comfort. (not to mention I don’t ship it much myself lol a friend sold me on their interp) it’s not very emotional as I like my angst, more just got them whump aesthetics.

poly ship

good question. I’ve highkey not thought about it smH - maybe if I just,,,, *takes shoutodabi n shigadabi n smooshes them together*

idek how that’d work as a dynamic dude I Don’t KnoW LMAO

weirdest pairing

I guess enjidabi?? I think about it from time to time but I dunno how the dynamic would work but. very angsty whatever it is. lots of apology sexy times in my mind’s eye.

Rei

NOTP

n/a - rei is definitely one I will take any ship for.

BROTP

enjirei - I’m doing this out of order so I wrote the explanation on enji’s lmaO see below for details

OTP

oh man otp???? good question,, I’m a v big fan of reishouto tho. gentle mom lovin,,

second choice

rei/inko is also a good one!! something I still think is very cute from my early days in the fandom. just a couple of moms supporting each other and going on cute park dates,,

fluffy pairing

rei/inko is def the fluffiest. however, it can be argued that rei/anybody has good fluff material. rei is so,,,, ethereal lookin???? she looks like a flower or a ghost,, like breeze rustling sheer curtains in an empty sun lit room. gentle on the eyes but hella poignant. I can imagine her bein soft w/ everyone n everyone.

angsty pairing

reitouya. For Sure. rei taking care of her lost eldest who’s finally come home, ya know???? Sobs,,,,,,,, I don’t see shippy content of them ever but reunion fics/art Get Me

poly ship

this one might be a little weird, but inko/rei/mitsuki. I’ve only seen material for it Once but in my head it’s taking the cute mom ships of inko/rei and inko/mitsuki to make the Ultimate Supportive Mom Ship. and maybe masaru is there too supporting this bc I think he’s really good tbh I don’t want him sad or lonely.

weirdest pairing

uhhhhhh,,, idk man probably polyship is the only “Weird”/super rare one. mitsuki ain’t exactly gentle mom:tm: after all, but I think her spice goes well w/ it all, ya know?? inko n rei being gentle and mitsuki being the hype who arranges more fun dates n such for them to all take a cuddle pile nap afterwards,, and you know she’s the hype woman for the trio. 

Enji

NOTP

never met an enji ship I didn’t like tbh. they’re all good and I will fight on that.

BROTP

highkey?? enjirei. I ship em romantically sometimes, but I really like the idea of them divorced and getting other lovers but supporting each other fullheartedly. love that solidarity. like shit I could see them still living together n such but they just. drop the husband/wife shtick and support each other like friends.

OTP

enjishouto!! y’all been knew.

second choice

hawksdeavor is a longstanding fave. we love that fanboy/idol dynamic sm,,

fluffy pairing

oh jeez fluffy,, maybe enji/burnin?? I can see her being very energetic n supportive and being rewarded w/ soft forehead kisses. soft boss crush even if it’s one sided.

angsty pairing

both enjishouto and hawksdeavor provide Wonderful angst. the flavor is Immaculate y’all should try it.

poly ship

enji/the rest of the todofam/hawks/happiness. pls lma o

I am very much an enjibowl enthusiast, can y’all tell?? I just want him Smothered in love sometimes.

weirdest pairing

hmm,, enji/tsukauchi. I saw a doujin for it once and it was Lovely. an absolute crackship, but I love the hero/detective dynamic of toshinori/tsukauchi, but toshinori just doesn’t give it enough Spice in most interps I see. now enji being tsun n aggressive + level headed detective tsukauchi,, that was a tasty doujin for sure.

[commongroundop]

Post #8 - Fishers of Men

How many of you have ever gone fishing?

Storytime! Growing up, I’ve done quite a bit of fishing. I’m not a professional by any means, but I’ve caught quite a few fish on the St. Lawrence River, including but not limited to a 27’ Northern Pike. Anyways, Fishing is something that holds a lot of memories for me. In fact my earliest memory of my grandpa is fishing with him in his boat. 

I have some pretty funny memories as well. Like the time I caught my uncle. What happened was I was probably 7 years old fishing off the dock in the 1000 Islands in NY where we vacationed every year. My Uncle Tim was taking a fish off and replacing the worm on my hook. Being an easily distracted 7 year old I wasn’t really paying attention to what my Uncle was doing. When he uttered the word “Okay” I yanked on my pole ready to go back to fishing. However, he wasn’t ready for that, and I pulled the hook right into his finger. 

“While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”  Matthew 4:18-22

Most of us, when we think of fishing, envision a couple guys out in a boat or standing at the shore of a river or lake. We see them standing there with their tackle boxes. They cast their lines, and if after awhile they don’t have any success, they change the bait and go after it again. Fishing, in this context, is all about the bait. If the bait doesn’t work, change it and go at it again.

So, when we hear the phrase “fishers of men” we think of it in the same way. We have to throw out the right bait. And if the bait isn’t working, we change the bait until we find something the fish likes, and then we hook ‘em. Hence, our gimmick and gadget approach to ministry and evangelism. It’s all about the bait. The gospel isn’t powerful enough on its own, we have to find the right bait people will respond to so we can hook ‘em.

Jesus probably never picked up a fishing pole in his life. The kind of fishing that was done by Peter, James and John as a profession had to do with casting nets. It was more about going to where the fish were and casting a net over them, rather than sitting back and hoping your bait would attract them.

There are obviously some similarities. You still have to study the fish, know where they are, etc. But one focuses on the bait, while the other is about casting the net and in large part trusting Providence to fill it. Even when the disciples had a bad night, Jesus took them out and made them cast the net again, and it filled to breaking, showing that He was Lord of the fishing nets.

In this case, it’s about keeping the nets mended and in good shape; keeping our life and doctrine pure as Scripture says. It’s about faithfully going out day after day, casting the net of the Gospel and trusting the results to God. It’s not a matter of teasing the fish in, tempting them with this or that bait until they bite. It’s about obediently casting the nets and letting the God fill them.

Jesus told a parable about this kind of fishing. In Matthew 13:47-50

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

His point is that when we cast our nets, we will sometimes bring in both the good and the bad, and it’s not up to us to do any type of sorting or labeling. That is solely up to God. Still, this image is the fishing image Jesus has in mind when calling us to be “fishers of men.”

Just don’t actually fish for people, because you can ask good old Uncle Tim it’s not very pleasant to be literally hooked. Matthew 28:16-20 says “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Fishing for people will be challenging. Just like sitting out in a boat waiting for fish you’ll have to be patient and persistent. Most people don’t accept Christ into their lives the first time they hear about Him. But you can plant those seeds and once you do maybe those people will come back for more. Fishing for men might be harder than fishing for fish, but the rewards are so much sweeter. 

[selkiestory]

It was surprisingly easy to fall asleep that night even if a stranger was sharing his bed. He made sure he planted himself firmly on the opposite side of the bed. Too bad Marcas didn’t know that Aed rolled about in his dreams, but when the redhead woke in the middle of the night - limbs sprawled and foot pressed firmly against the the other teen’s back - his guest remained sound asleep.

‘“I’m used to sleeping in the waves”’ Marcas would probably say.’

Aed pulled the covers over himself again and squinted at the bright light. He forgot to move his curtains back and the full moon shone over the ocean, but also right into his eyes.

It was quiet.

One last calm night before summer turned to fall. The redhead grunted and rolled away from the window to face the door. It was too comfortable to get up and draw the blind.

As he waited for sleep to return he studied the other’s resting profile. His companion’s long hair gave the image of spilled ink on his ridiculously pale skin. The teen admitted that the other was handsome, but it was strange for someone as fit as Marcas to be so fair. Only hard work outside could result in muscles like those. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Marcas refused to put his pyjamas on after coming back from the shower. It had taken much persistence to convince the teen to at least wear some boxers before they went to bed. The only piece of clothing Marcas seemed comfortable with was his cloak, which he now had tightly in his grip as if it were a safety blanket.

The thought made Aed snicker. He quickly grabbed a pillow and pressed it over his head to muffle the noise. What a strange day today was.

Well he might as well get more rest. The teen leaned into the darkness of the pillow and, after what seemed like hours, finally went back to sleep.

*

The next morning the teen woke to an empty bed. For a split second he considered all of yesterday to be a dream before seeing his clean room and Marcas’ discarded set of clothes. Shivering in the morning air  Aed quickly dressed - the usual collared shirt and sweater - and went downstairs.

“After all, Aed doesn’t let just anyone into his room.”

“I really appreciate this. I won’t let you down.”

‘Well that’s that.’ His parents had come to their decision rather quickly. It was embarrassing that his Mam had to mention him, though. He waited another moment before slipping into the dining room and making a beeline for the kitchen.

“There’s some left overs on the stove,” Flann patted the space next to her, “after you heat them up please come here. I have something to discuss with you.”

“I know already. Marcas is staying,” Aed flicked the stove on and waited for the oatmeal to warm, “but are you ok with me not working with Dad?”

“You know we support you no matter what.” The teen ducked his head to hide a blush.

Marcas entered the kitchen and began washing his bowl. He offered Aed a smile and waited for him before they both returned to the living room.

“I have to go to work, now, so please clean up after yourselves. Aed, I’m waiting for a form to go though. You should be starting by Friday.”

Flann leaned over and Aed gave her a one-armed hug.

“Have a good one, Mam.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling a bit better. Remember to put some water on before I come home!”

The room went quiet as Aed started on his oatmeal. It was a bit awkward with Marcas just sitting there, but at least someone was home.

“So what túath are you?”

He paused from his oatmeal and gave the teen a blank stare.

Marcas elaborated upon noticing his confusion, “Ui Fidgente? Ciarraige Luachra? Corca Duibhne?”

Oh. The old tribes.

“Don’t know. Grandparents probably told me, but forgot.”

“Hm.” Marcas seemed to be scrutinizing him.

“What? That was ages ago,” he took a gulp of milk in his defense, “...what’s your tribe?”

“Murtagh. What do humans do then now days?”

“We have regular families and surnames. For example I'm Aed Carrick.”

“So you grew apart?”

“...” He had never thought of it in that way before, “Not really...I mean, annoying as she is, I don't hate Ena. My Grandma and Grandpa come often. And everyone in the village more or less gets along.”

The younger looked perplexed, then shrugged as if he just accepted that things were different.

“I guess I’ll be meeting them soon enough.”

Deciding to cut the chatter Aed cleared his throat.

“About last night...”

To his surprise, Marcas broke eye contact, the teen suddenly finding Aed’s oatmeal very interesting. Aed narrowed his eyes.

“What did you do?” If he stole anything...

“It got really hot. But if you saw, then you saw that I kept my cloak on.”

“Oh uhh” That was not what he expected...must have happened after he fell asleep, “I wasn’t talking about that.”

“Oh.” Marcas ran a hand through his hair, “then...what?”

“My research. If you’re going to help me, you’re going to need to learn how to read... and write since you probably can’t do that either.”

He saw the younger take on a guarded look, but pressed on.

“You’ll need to jot down figures for me and note descriptions of coastlines at the very least.”

After realizing that he wasn’t being made fun of, Marcas’ expression relaxed into a lazy smile.

“Alright. When do we start?”

“Now is better than never,” he crammed the rest of the oatmeal down, his mind buzzing with plans. A big swallow and he gagged. Shit. Wrong pipe.

His glass was pressed to his lips and he took it gratefully. The younger patted his back as he choked his way through the last of his meal, too busy getting air into his lungs than to shrink away from the teen’s touch.

“Thanks…” the redhead finally managed after a few minutes.

“Anything for a friend,” Marcas replied, hand comfortably resting at the base of Aed’s lower back.

Aed quickly pushed back his chair and tidied the kitchen instructing the other to meet him in his room.

The teen was lounging on his bed when he returned.

“It’s so weird, but I can definitely get used to beds.” Marcas bounced a bit, “there were some of them on Blasket, but they were all banged up. ‘Too busy partying anyway to use em, even if they were fixed. I like em though. They’re softer than rocks.”

“What do you mean? Blasket was abandoned a while ago” Aed shuffled through his books trying to find a simple enough one begin with. Creatures of the West Atlantic, 1000 Leagues Under the Sea, Earth Encyclopedia... He didn’t have any children’s books come to think of it.

“Which is why it’s the perfect spot for us. The times when we turn human could be dangerous if actual humans see us.”

Aed threw him a look that the redhead made sure clearly conveyed his exasperation.

It was hard to ignore ridiculous claims if they were shoved into his face at every opportunity. Yesterday, only his mentally exhausted state caused him to consider the teen’s story to be real.

“You really are stubborn,” Aed bristled at Marcas’ amused tone, “I thought you would be more accepting to the otherworld considering you were able to call me.”

The teen gave up on his shelf and considered his options. He could go to the library tomorrow and borrow some kids books (and get strange looks), or he could try and nick one from the school library when he went to check on his experiment he left behind. But if he got caught that would mean more questions...

He heard Ena’s voice from downstairs and smacked his head. Of course. Ena had most of his hand-me-downs.  

Aed left the bedroom and opened the door to his parent’s room where his sister slept. He picked a thick alphabet book (the chew marks from raising two children had considerably worn down the pages) and tossed it to Marcas when he returned.

“Come to the desk. You aren’t going to learn if you lie around all day.”

“Alright, Mr. Carrick,” the younger plopped down on the single chair and smoothed out the creases in his jeans. He picked up the book and smirked at the bite marks.

“I didn’t know you guys had a dog.”

“It’s Ena’s,” Aed noted with appreciation that the book was held correctly this time. The kid seemed to be a fast learner.

Having no other option he leant against the corner of his desk and pointed at the first brightly colored letter “So there’s the alphabet, and each letter…”

---

When he woke there was an empty spot next to him. Again. For someone so chatty, Marcas could be quite stealthy when he wanted to.

A bit of cautious hope rose with him as he got out of bed and dressed. Today would be the day they both started their jobs and resumed his research. Although they hadn’t made enough progress yesterday to actually begin reading instructions, Aed had given him a test: report back on the patterns of deep sea currents during the week. Those were easy enough to remember to ask, that making tallies would suffice. Although not exactly what he wanted to look for, he had data to compare to that at least...it still felt foolish that he was going along with the teen, but it was the only way today was going to feel productive.

“Me first!”

Before he could open the bathroom door, a flash of orange ran inside.

Sometimes it’d be nice to be an only child…

While his sister hogged the bathroom he stole a few more books from her room. His Mam was already downstairs. Dressed and ate breakfast by now, too. He understood. After all, she was the one who taught them to always arrive to things 15 minutes beforehand.

*

“Look at you, so handsome on your first day. Your tie is so straight!”

“Yeah-yes. I still remember how to do it from graduation.” Aed muttered as he bent down so Flann could push back his hair. Every last bit of red in its place.

“I know you’ll be fine at any job. Just remember to smile.”

And they were in the open air. The sky was grey, and the sea smelled extremely fishy. Aed couldn’t see anyone out among the waves…

They dropped Ena off at school then walked back through town past the grocer's and the post office, past the three pubs and the bed-and-breakfast to the little white bank on the end of mainstreet. When they entered he recognized a couple of his former classmates chatting in the back, and quickly sought out work. He already started later than them, so he had to play catch up. There was no time to socialize.

After being introduced to the bank manager, Osirin, he was sent to work. Sorting mail was plain enough, but book keeping was especially dull when it wasn’t for research. At least then he could visualize the meaning behind the numbers.

When 5 o’clock came, the teen had to contain himself from sprinting out the doors.

As soon as they stepped inside, Ena charged. Flann chuckled as Aed blocked Ena, the youngest Carrick switching to cling to her Mother instead. His sister stuck out a small hand and waved a bright pink paper at Aed.

“We had free time so I drew!“

He was able to discern that the crude image depicted two people fishing...but the fat grey ovals in the water were too big to be fish.

“It’s Dad, Marcas, and Marcas’ family,” the girl proudly explained.

Aed rolled his eyes.

*

The three had finished their dinner and Aed helped Ena with homework before retreating to his room. All of the books from yesterday’s ‘reading class’ were still stacked on his desk. He gave them a long look before busying himself with changing. Research would need to be done in order to teach efficiently on the days when Marcas returned. Luckily Cárnach was small, so boats came back almost every weekend. The easiest way would be to ask Ena. She was still in primary school, so she’d remember her curriculum.

He peeked into her room. Fast asleep.

Returning to his room he flipped through the books for a few minutes before pacing to the window. The sea was vast. A contradiction of pitch-black water and shimmering light from another clear night...but he still could not see any boats in the distance.

It could have been him out there in the dark sleeping above the fish. His father must have seen something in Marcas to take him abroad within a day of meeting him. But then again, he had spoken up for Marcas and his Dad had always respected his opinion.

He was glad. Glad how quickly his family had accepted the teen. It was almost too easy how Marcas settled in. If he really was a selkie, wouldn’t he want to go back to the sea as quickly as possible? In the stories they always left. But then again in stories they were always beautiful ladies. This was different. Marcas would return.

His gut feeling nagged at him. Did he just miss another opportunity? First uni now-no. Stop that.

The other’s story was unusual, but not enough for him to believe in selkies. And if Marcas wasn't a selkie he would have to return.

But it didn’t make sense for him to make up his story, did it? So far only he and his sister knew the teen’s ‘secret.’

He tried to sleep, but his tumultuous thoughts carried him off as slowly as a feather drowning in the open sea.

---

Come the end of the week the selkie had the biggest smile on his face as he stepped into the home of the Carricks. Neil followed, both chuckling as Ena initiated a tackling hug for each. Aed’s eyebrows shot up as the teen stepped away from ruffling Ena’s hair to next approach him. Before the teen could react Marcas leaned forward and they bumped noses.

“Hey, Aed!”

“W...what are you doing?” The redhead sputtered backing away.

Given the looks on Neil and Flann’s faces, the other flushed red as well, immediately realizing his error.

“Er...where I come from, we do that when we haven’t seen each other in a long time.” The teen offered. Aed saw both his parents questioning looks, so he took another big step back turning to address his father.

“Have a good catch?”

“The best in a while! Marcas here is a natural,” Neil nodded at the shorter teen, “quite a good listener as well.”

“It was good to be back at sea, and I’ve never gone fishing on this scale. Neil’s quite a poet. I never knew!”

“Come, let’s not stand here. You two must be starving. Dinner is ready by now,” Flann gently nudged the group into the dining room.

“What was the biggest fish today?” Ena stretched her arms wider than the plate in front of her, “This big? Did you get any pink ones?”

“No pink ones today,” Neil ruffled her hair, “I’m surprised how many we got considering all the seals being ‘round the boat.”

Marcas laughed lightly.

“It was the selkies!” Ena gasped, “Can I go next time? Please, Mam, Dad?”

“It’s too dangerous.” Neil gently chided.

“But it has been a while since we all had a day out,” Flann mused, “when it’s spring next year we should go. It would be lovely to be on the boat then.”

“That sounds great,” Neil shot Aed an amused look, “the last time we were at sea was when you were just about to start high school.”

Aed remembered that summer well. The one where he tried to wear the same shirt every day to determine which bacteria would grow. Highly experimental, but not directional. He cringed.

“It’ll be a few months, but it’s better to plan ahead,” Flann decided. And they dug in.

*

“I assume you’ll want to resume lessons in the morning?”

“I could do a little now,” the selkie gave a yawn and rolled off their bed to join Aed at the single desk. The teen sat up and straightened the small stack of books, ready to put to practice the lesson plan he had produced.

He had gotten through twenty minutes when he felt a nudge at his arm and of course Marcas had nodded off. A little miffed the teen lightly shook his ‘student’ then prodded the younger off to bed.

“Thanks,” Marcas muttered sleepily as he snuggled under the covers. The younger stared at him, seemingly expecting something, but Aed had no idea.

“What?” he finally said.

“...Strange human,” the selkie let out a snort of laughter and rolled to face away. Aed huffed.

“Rest well, because we’re staying in and studying all day tomorrow.” He slid onto his own side of the bed and waited for sleep to come.

---

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[who-is-the-king-of-new-york]

In honour of one year on this blog...

I’d like to thank the friends I’ve made along the way, whether we still talk or not... 

To anyone that isn’t mentioned but supports this blog or who have communicated with me in the past... Thank you! I can guarantee i’d be even less active than I am if it weren’t for all of you. Special mentions under the cut-

@ben-cook-can-cook is probably the first friend I made through this blog and oh boy do I miss em, we still talk from time to time and I will never, ever, let the fact that she dropped her cat go.

@we-dont-sell-papes was another of the original friends I had. The mother of the group and although we don’t talk anymore I’d like to say you are officially old and I respect you.

@newsies-seize-the-day the first of my children, a gorgeous girlie without who I don’t know what would happen to me if I didn’t have her craziness in my life. You keep going strong even with backlash and I applaud you.

@celestial-castellan is my son. I have known Red for ages and he is the only one that knows I’m making this post. He is honestly the nicest person I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to even though he did cheat on his boyfriend with apple juice once and then got mad at me over killing Elmer AND not telling him something which this blog is also unaware of. 

@brooklyn-anon is an amazing person! My co-parent in crime. Her dog is the best thing in the world along with her kids. She is an angel who puts up with my weird ramblings when people piss me off or our bonding over boy troubles.

@brooklynbadbois is the most beautiful person ever. She may not see it but I adore her and hate her memes. I am once again going to apologise for the creation of Juck which was 100% not my fault.

@tommy-s-s0cks you hate affection so you get this.

@stozzibof you probably weren’t expecting a shout out but alas it was me who’s fault it was that you got all those disturbing images from the one above. 

@infinity-fandom-trash we may not be friends as such but I’d like to thank you for all your support over the last year! Thank you for liking practically every single post I’ve made since the very beginning. 

@writer-of-camelot was one of the very first people who communicated with me and I thank you for that! 

@im-a-general-wee the very first person to have a conversation with me. It’s been an age but I still remember you when I hit my first hundred and now we’re at 1000!