#i love both clarke and persephone

[dyinggirldied]

royal consort au brainrot

the royal consort au by @dcxdpdabbles makes me lose my mind so i have to share this so i can go to bed:

danny has his own wikipedia page though there is ongoing debate on whether they should use present tense (since he is alive) or past tense (seeing as he is engaged to the ghost king/high king of infinity realm)

some part of the social media romanticizes danny's situation as a hades and persephone or cinderella or both. you just know that some girls and boys out there are maddeningly jealous that danny manages to bag a king who is seemingly deeply in love with him.

unfortunately, he becomes a standard of beauty (twink, short, black-hair and blue eyes) because somehow rumors leak that phantom finds him the epitome of beauty. bruce is a bit worried since tim sort of fits the bill. in another city, billy batson/shazam is being teased by his adoptive siblings also for that precise reason

surprisingly, danny can be a charming speaker which people thinks it's part of why phantom fell in love with him.

bruce (and a portion of the world, including constantine) is concern since danny is still young (not sure how old he is in original prompt so i left it vague) and this whole thing; being the most popular public figure in the world and being haunted constantly by paparazzi, his joining with the ruler of the dead, the political between his home world and his future one, might damage his psyche sooner or later and bruce is trying to find a contingency plan for that.

and what's even is batman's contingency plans for this kind of situation, i don't know. im not that smart but clark, diane and constantine and the flash family will need to be there. to make sure bruce doesn't accidentally go too far.

also, this one comes like a hammer to my head but what if one day, danny feels an itchy sort of feeling in his throat but waves it off as a cold? he regrets it when barely a minute later he coughs out a palmful of blood. danny might be in outdoor place or in the justice league headquarter but the point is: everyone panics. especially once he loses consciousness.

this one can be branched off into two:

someone, either the leftover resentful giw or amanda waller, decides to poison him.

maddie innocently makes lunch for her son, after finding a new bag of spice for the meat. that spice contains blood blossom, which is deadlier for ghost (or half-ghost) if you eat it. of course, clockwork will ensure no one finds out danny is a halfa by making the machine detecting it as allergy, if a bit unsual one and danny will still live, if a bit disgruntle and so done with his half life already

[royal-wren]

A continuation/part two to my favorite/lesser known Hermes epithets because I am a fool and forgot some or found more.

Hermes Psykhostasia - Weigher of souls (lives) or One who weighs souls (lives). In a mix of fulfilling his duty as a guide to all souls and being present before and after death while also being the messenger of Zeus, this aspect shines through. He carries out the will of both the Moirai and Zeus at times and in others he alone holds sway over the decision. Whichever ker (keres) was heavier (to the point of tipping the scales) was the one to die between the two individuals.

Hermes Panepóptēs - All-Observing. It's an epithet I can run with mainly found in the PGM

Hermes Kêryx - Herald of the Gods or Crier for a more rudimentary translation. It's a fairly interesting epithet in regards to naming Hermes as the son of Demeter (identified with Maia). In this specific incarnation, he has special control over the winged Keres in-flight into and out of Demeter Pandora, personified wine-storage jars blamed for all of the ills of humans, where only Hope lingered at the rim.

Hermes Hippios - Of the Horses. Hermes Hippokourios - Horse Tender. Though a rare aspect of his, he does connections with horses in a manner similar to Athene and Artemis. One of his famous sons was known for his skill when it came to handling horses, especially for races. He is also known for gifting the Dioskouroi with their horses and driving the chariot of Hades whenever Persephone enters or departs the underworld. Anyone that owned horses would pray to Hermes so they would thrive and for their increase.

Hermes Araoia / Hermes Araios - The Ram. One of the oldest attestations of the god is found in the Linear B inscriptions at Pylos and Mycenaean Knossos. With this epithet in mind, depictions of Hermes with sheep/ram horns would be fairly appropriate and a part of his appearance I see from time to time.

Hermes Kranaios - Of the Fountain? Of Springs. I know this one was on the last one but I really spaced on getting into why I love and appreciate it. It's a spring/nature sanctuary, one that ties him to water/rivers and what is heavily associated with deities that heal/can heal??? springs and pools of water!!!

Sources:

Weighing iconography of love in classical and early hellenistic art: considering allusions and metaphor in images of Aphrodite balancing Eros by Hannah Lisbeth Jones

L. D. Caskey, J. D. Beazley, Attic Vase Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

πανεπόψιος

Aischylos and the Trojan cycle: The lost tragedies by Ioanna Hadjicosti

Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals translated by Gillian Clark

Kerykes wikipedia entry

A Replica of the Hermes Propylaios by Alkamenes Found at Qasr Al-Hallabat by Ignacio Arce

Mycenaean Divinities

Where I pulled Hermes of the Fountain from as well as Hermes of the Springs

Kretan cult and customs, especially in the Classical and Hellenistic periods: a religious, social, and political study by Carolyn Schofield

Burning bulls, broken bones: sacrificial ritual in the context of palace period Minoan religion by Robert James Cromarty

Hermes Favor: Dioskouroi

“Dearest to be Man's Companion”: Hermes, Divine Aid, and Agency by David Chou

The link is down for now but has more information on Hermes and his connection to horses

[zephyr-ro-emenki]

I was not prepared for spinster/Cool Aunt to Demi-Gods!Diana Prince.

I mean, I knew factually that there existed DC × PJO fics, in fact I've read a few of them. But, I genuinely was not prepared for Diana being a genuinely sweet and much needed advocate for Demi-God well being that the PJO world needed. I haven't even finished the first chapter of the fic that introduced this concept to me, but just the mental image of Diana appearing in camp and the entire camp just jumping to Glomp her in a Hug because they all love her and know she genuinely cares about each of them individually is just so heartwarming.

Like

Diana being the elder sibling to Thalia and Jason that they needed.

Diana being the person who sat down and gently eased Percy into the Demi-God world and answered all his questions.

Diana sneaking Annabeth out of camp to the outside world so that Annabeth can have genuinely normal interactions with people and have a little day to themselves.

Diana singlehandedly settling feuds between Cabin's with her lasso, having both cabins realizing that they both were in the wrong and didn't want to admit it.

Diana going out of her way to ferry unknowing Demi-Gods to the closest Demi-God camp for their own safety, because of Course she found out about Camp Jupiter.

Diana picking up law classes at a community college in her free time so she can act as the Demi-Gods Lawyer whenever they (inevitably) get in trouble with Mortal authorities while either on a quest or because a monster randomly attacked them.

Diana having lunch dates/Girls days out with Athena and Aphrodite because all 3 of them Vibe together too much (and because Aphrodite and Athena are secretly interested in Clark and Bruce for 2 entirely different reasons.)

Diana being the Voice of reason to Hera, saying what we've all been thinking for years "Please, for the love of Hestia, Just get a Divorce already."

Diana attending every funeral of a Demi-God, making offerings to Hades and Persephone to ask that they be lenient in the judgement of the Demi-God in question.

Diana being a Shoulder for Luke to Cry on and an Ear to listen to his complaints about the gods, all in the hope that being there will help stave off any rashness on his part.

Diana, finding out About Shazam being, by all manners of the term, a Demi-God, and asking him *So which Camp did you attend?" In the middle of a JL meeting, making everyone else utterly confused.

[breakthcnight]

BREAKTHCNIGHT. lyrics from f&tm's howl.

penned by kelly. 40+. she/her. eastern timezone.

PREVIOUSLY stcllata. venusiiian, oxtaiiiled, tawruhs.

****

RULES. honestly, don't be a dick. common etiquette. anons are off. chemistry is key.

WORK SCHEDULE. sundays [ 2:00 pm through 7:00 pm ], mondays and tuesdays [ 8:30 am through 3:30 pm ] wednesdays and thursdays [ 8:30 am through 3:00 pm ].*

*AS OF 08/21/24 THROUGH 12/12/24. DROPPING TO LOW ACTIVITY DUE TO WORK. december date is approximate.

****

muse list is under the read more.

IMPORTANT CONNOTATION. there are characters here that are either smuse list is under the read more.ired by a canon, or are the offspring of canons, if you happen to play one (or both), i will not now, nor will i ever assume you'll accept them.

UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. PLEASE ASSUME SOME LEVEL OF CANON DIVERGENCE.

----CANONS.

ARKHAM GAMES.

TALIA AL GHUL.

ARROWVERSE.

RAYMOND PALMER. the atom.

DESCENDANTS.

GILBERT LEGUME. son of gaston.

RED. daughter of the queen of hearts.

UMA. daughter of calypso.

DETECTIVE COMICS.

BARTHOLOMEW ALLEN. impulse.

CASSANDRA SANDSMARK. wonder girl ii. sydney sweeney.

KORIAND'R. kory anders. starfire.

ZATANNA ZATARA.

GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

ARES. god of war and courage.

PASIPHAË. queen of crete; mother of the minotaur.

PERSEPHONE. queen of the underworld; accompanied by cerberus. sophie turner.

MARVEL COMICS.

CLINT BARTON. hawkeye. stephen amell.

STEVEN ROGERS. captain america. william levy.

POWERPUFF GIRLS.

BUBBLES UTONIUM. kiernan shipka.

BUTCH. froy gutierrez.

ROMAN MYTHOLOGY.

VENUS. goddess of love, beauty, fertility, victory, and desire.

SMALLVILLE.

CLARK KENT. superman.

LOIS LANE. bryce dallas howard.

OLIVER QUEEN. green arrow. derek theler.

SUPERNATURAL.

SAMANTHA 'SAMMI' WINCHESTER. rule!63 sam winchester. phoebe tonkin. no demon blood. still has telekinesis and visions.

WILLIAM HARVELLE. christopher eccleston.

TEEN WOLF.

CLAUDIA STILINSKI. holly marie combs.

HEATHER. britt robertson.

SCOTT MCCALL. bitten by derek; not peter.

THE ORIGINALS.

ELIJAH MIKAELSON.

GIA.

HENRIK MIKAELSON. nicholas galitzine.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES.

TATIA PETROVA. poppy drayton.

----ORIGINALS.

ALAYNA ROSTAGNO. lindsey morgan.

summary: human. hunter. mid 30s. she's quite combative, prefers using her hands though she's got quite the arsenal tucked away. fiery, assertive, passionate. you don't want to get on her bad side. pansexual.

BAZYLI 'BAZ' JACENTY STILINSKI. dylan o'brien (as dave hodgman).

summary: human. blind stilinski twin. younger by 10 minutes. quiet, sometimes withdrawn. likes to be as independent as possible. consistently believes he's the burden because of his blindness. turning him will not relieve this. pansexual.

CADEN HOLMWOOD. matt czuchry.

summary: human. graveyard shift nurse technician. he's a very logically minded person, intuitive, very hard working. also quite generous. given his career, there isn't much he hasn't come across. looks to be about his late 40s. bisexual.

GABRIEL KINGSTON. regé-jean page.

JEBEDIAH CAMPBELL. henry cavill.

summary: warlock. born in the 1840s, looks to be in his mid 30s. fluent in both french and italian. very much the lover more than the fighter type. a gentleman through and through. he is a lover of arts, particularly paintings and sculpture. bisexual.

GIOVANNA CRESCENTI. emilia clarke.

summary: human. heiress. daughter of the head of the crescenti crime family. late 30s. stands to inherit billions when her father passes. lives her life independently of her father, logical and unafraid, smooth and sensual. she will make you regret disrespecting her. homosexual.

MARIUS KAHR. nikolaj coster-waldau.

summary: born in 1948. mary winchester's older brother ( six years older ). uncle to dean and sam. demon hunter. nomad, almost reclusive. lives in the cheyenne mountains. definitely a gruff type, shoot first and ask questions later. heterosexual.

KELLY SAVARESE. floriana lima.

summary: alpha werewolf. hunter. big sister. packless. early 40s, but can be traced back farther ( some records indicate to the 1900s ). prefers not to instigate, would rather be civil. however, she will fight as a last resort. protective and nurturing. pansexual.

summary: alpha werewolf. looks to be in his late 50s, is actually much older than that. has been wandering around the world for centuries and he's just tired of most of life. has a lot of thick layers to penetrate. bitter. and a biter.

MILES KYUNG. felix yongbok lee.

summary: human. chauffeur. getaway driver. mid 20s. a very quiet and polite young man, who focuses on the task at hand rather than the dangers. he will do mostly anything without question, unflinchingly loyal. though that could prove detrimental in the end. pansexual.

MINA LEE. chloe bennet.

summary: human. slayer. early 30s. she's been active for about ten years, having died twice already. she's sassy and isn't afraid of anything. she's got a bit of a soft spot for vampires, but crossing her isn't wise. she'll easily wipe the floor with you. bisexual.

VIKRAM DEVI. rahul kohli.

summary: mage; loosely based on cult of ecstasy. he's such a gentle and sweet guy, who doesn't sleep a whole lot due to his abilities. in his late 30s, trying to not just let the anguish consume him. give him a place to rest and a good cuddle, he'll be a friend for life. pansexual.

WILLA HARVELLE. dominique provost-chalkley.

summary: daughter of jo harvelle and dean winchester. demon hunter. named for her maternal grandfather. on the road, out there to have fun. one day at a time. very much the love them and leave them type. rebellious to the core. mid 20s. homosexual.

[masschase]

Is casey also in AOM??

Yes and no!

If I ever get around to playing AOM I might heavily regret not having Casey Casey in that universe. But I've already implied that she was changed pretty drastically by the reset.

As I recall, you (the asker) weren't too keen on my theory on this, but(and I'll do a more visual representation of this some day):

Greek mythology name choice 1, mom's eyes (hazel) dad's hair (dark blonde), parents didn't take a potential move to Paris, parents didn't invest in some (as it turned out very good) stocks they wanted to -> Cassandra Clark

Greek mythology name choice 2, dad's eyes but bluer (his are blue-grey), mom's hair (v. dark brown/black), parents did take a potential move to Paris, parents did invest in those stocks -> Persephone Brimstone (née Clark, presumably)

Now obviously in Casey's universe Johnny doesn't make that choice, so any situation where he did was already an AU prior to the reset. So in that universe, was she already Persephone but the leader of the Saints, or was she Casey but became Persephone when the universe reset? I personally would choose the latter.

It's not something I'd probably ever explore fully(maybe a random drawing/oneshot about Persephone having nightmares where she's eating Freckle Bitch's or something), but I do love the potential links, even not taking into account the obvious stuff like the logo and the shared team members. Persephone= the queen of the underworld, which could be both underworld as in crime or as in God literally being afraid of the Boss raising an army against heaven. It's also forbidden to speak her real name which links back to Casey's secrecy around hers.

tl;dr: Casey is Sephy. Sort of.

[shekore]

connecting clarke to persephone is in fact my biggest galaxy brain moment sjksjsjksjs

[booksociety]

Book Society introduces its August and September reading event - Of Gods & Tales! As we are celebrating our fourth birthday this month, our members have decided for us to revisit the theme of our very first reading event titled Myths. As both names suggest, this event's focus is on books inspired by various mythologies from all around the world, as well as their retellings. This event is open to everyone, not just our members, so we invite you to come and join us on our mythical reading quest!

✧ how to participate:

optional: reblog this post; check out our network and members

read (or reread) a book of your choice that fits this month’s theme

share what book you've chosen, thoughts, reactions, and/or creations

use the tag #booksocietynet in your posts, and include “@booksociety's Of Gods & Tales event: [insert book title here]” in the description of your creations

the event starts on August 5 and ends on September 30

✧ reading recommendations (under the cut):

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (adult, retellings, romance, historical; 320 pages; Greek mythology)

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes (adult, retellings, historical; 368 pages; Greek mythology)

A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee (young adult, fantasy, adventure; 400 papges; Japanese mythology)

A Touch of Darkness (Hades x Persephone #1) by Scarlett St. Clair (adult, romance, fantasy; 282 pages; Greek mythology)

Beasts of Prey (Beasts of Prey #1) by Ayana Gray (young adult, fantasy, romance; 496 pages; African mythologies)

Blood of Elves (The Witcher #1) by Andrzej Sapkowski (adult, high fantasy; 398 pages; Polish and Slavic mythology)

Blood Scion (Blood Scion #1) by Deborah Falaye (young adult, high fantasy; 432 pages; Yoruba-Nigerian mythology)

Daughter of the Moon Goddess (The Celestial Kingdom Duology #1) by Sue Lynn Tan (young adult, retellings, romance; 512 pages; Chinese mythology)

Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood (adult, historical fantasy, retellings; 370 pages; Greek mythology)

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente (adult, historical, fantasy; 352 pages; Russian mythology)

Elektra by Jennifer Saint (adult, retellings, historical; 291 pages; Greek mythology)

Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean (young adult, fantasy, romance; 384 pages; Japanese mythology)

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (adult, fantasy, magic realism; 338 pages; Mexican mythology)

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (urban fantasy, humour; 491 pages; Biblical mythology)

Here, The World Entire by Anwen Kya Hayward (adult, fantasy, novella; 83 pages; Greek mythology)

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel (adult, retellings, LGBT; 478 pages; Hindu mythology)

Lore by Alexandra Bracken (young adult, urban fantasy, romance; 480 pages; Greek mythology)

Lore Olympus: Volume One (Lore Olympus Volumes #1) by Rachel Smythe (adult, romance, graphic novel; 384 pages; Greek mythology)

Love in Colour: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold by Bolu Babalola (adult, romance, short stories; mixed mythologies including West-African, Greek and Middle Eastern)

Neon Gods (Dark Olympus #1) by Katee Robert (adult, romance, fantasy, retellings; 380 pages; Greek mythology)

Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap (short stories; 297 pages; Philipino mythology)

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (adult, fiction, mystery, fabulism; 245 pages; Greek mythology)

Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (middle grade, fantasy, adventure; 356 pages; Navajo mythology)

Shadow of the Fox (Shadow of the Fox #1) by Julie Kagawa (young adult, fantasy, romance; 454 pages; Japanese mythology)

Sh*t Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby (adult, fantasy, short stories; 288 pages; Greek mythology)

Skin of the Sea (Skin of the Sea #1) by Natasha Bowen (young adult, mythology; 336 pages; West African mythology)

Song of Sacrifice (Homeric Chronicles #1) by Janell Rhiannon (adult, fantasy, retellings; 543 pages; Greek mythology)

Sunblind (Sunblind #1) by Ramona Meisel (adult, poetry, LGBT; 95 pages; Greek mythology)

The Bear and the Nightingale (The Winternight Trilogy #1) by Katherine Arden (adult, historical; 319 pages; Russian and Slavic mythology)

The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) by S.A. Chakraborty (adult, historical, fantasy; 533 pages; Middle Eastern mythologies)

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh (young adult, fantasy, romance, retellings; 336 pages; Korean mythology)

The Goddess of Nothing At All (Unwritten Runes #1) by Cat Rector (adult, fantasy, romance, LGBT; 430 pages; Norse mythology)

The Heartless Divine (The Heartless Divine #1) by Varsha Ravi (adult, fantasy; 434 pages; Hindu mythology)

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (adult, high fantasy, LGBT; 848 pages; Christian mythology)

The Shadow of the Gods (Bloodsworn Saga #1) by John Gwynne (adult, high fantasy; 480 pages; Norse mythology)

The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) by Pat Barker (adult, retellings, historical; 325 pages; Greek mythology)

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (adult, retellings, historical, fantasy, romance, LGBT; 352 pages; Greek mythology)

The Sunbearer Trials (The Sunbearer Duology #1) by Aiden Thomas (young adult, fantasy, LGBT; 352 pages; Mexican mythology)

The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore (adult, retellings; 368 pages; Russian mythology)

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec (adult, fantasy, romance; 359 pages; Norse mythology)

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid (adult, fantasy, romance; 448 pages; Jewish and Hungarian mythology)

This Woven Kingdom (This Woven Kingdom #1) by Tahereh Mafi (young adult, high fantasy, romance; 512 pages; Persian mythology)

Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse (adult, urban fantasy, postacopalyptic; 287 pages; Native American mythologies)

Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung by Nina MacLaughlin (adult, fantasy, short stories; 352 pages; Greek mythology)

Wicked Fox (Gumiho #1) by Kat Cho (young adult, urban fantasy, romance; 429 pages; Korean mythology)

Wildalone (Wildalone Sagas #1) by Krassi Zourkova (young adult, fantasy, romance; 384 pages; Bulgarian mythology)

Woven in Moonlight (Woven in Moonlight #1) by Isabel Ibañez (young adult, fantasy, romance; 384 pages; Bolivian mythology)

more recommendation here, under our 2018 event post

[littlefreya]

Henry’s characters weddings!

So following the fantasy wedding moodboard I made for Henry last year, the engagement rings and the houses, @the-soot-sprite​ has prompted me with weddings moodboards a few weeks ago. The waiting is done!  Thanks @the-soot-sprite​ for contributing Melot and Theseus. 🖤

Prepare for your fantasy wedding with Henry’s characters!

Not sure if marrying August Walker or Hades himself? Well we know August loves dark things. While you are dressed like a true princess, August will choose a sensual, romantic and dangerous looking venue where he will claim you as his Persephone before dragging you into the underworld. Dark roses will guide you toward your groom and these sharp-looking matching wedding bands are a clear statement of who you belong to. 

More characters below the cut. 

You never imagined a wedding in a farm could be so romantic, but Sy will prove you otherwise as he’ll wed you back at his home. Prepare for a rustic, country adventure. And yes these wedding bands are a bit tacky but once a cowboy, always a cowboy.

Mike is a total goth, and he won’t have his wedding any other way! Yes that is a black wedding dress, and those vials are filled with some yummy liquor. Your parents might crook an eyebrow and shake their head but be sure everyone will remember this wedding for years to follow. At least he back off from having waiters dressed as cenobites.

Clark ain’t looking for something too fancy, yes he is Superman but when it comes to your wedding, and Urban Chic themed one is enough. All he cares about is being your husband. Your dress will be lithe, plain yet magical, polygons and sharp angles will decorate the venue as a hint to Clark’s family crest and while he couldn’t be too blunt about the matchings, if you blink, you might see his symbol.

Geralt’s wedding will be a medieval feast, of course. A little bit of nature motifs, swords and how not, some dragon scales. Your wedding rings were crafted by a dwarven blacksmith he met in his travel and a certain bard is going to be your singer at the reception.

Your wedding with Leon shall be in an italian Villa. Mediterranean themes will kiss each corners, olive branches on your cake, and the most delicious wedding buffet ever at the outdoor dining area. As for your wedding dress, let’s just say Leon loves vintage and to show you off. 

And Irish wedding for our Irish prince. Swords, rolled parchments and candles will welcome your guests as Melot will take you in a traditional celtic ceremony. The music will thrum through the venue and he will decorate your hair with flowers and ribbons. 

 I stand by my word, Sherlock is as dark as they get and he will claim in his bleak Victorian castle. Candle lit and spellbound, you will join him in this union and forever be his bride. But it’s not like you don’t want to, right?

A royal wedding to a Greek Mythological king must take place in Athens of course. Theseus will wed you amidst the statues of his ancestors between the olive trees and under the sun of Zeus. A floral tiara on both your head will commemorate your union. From now on you shall be a queen.

A big Grizzly bear like Walter’s will prefer to have his wedding at the forest under the tree where the pines permeate into the air and the critters run wildly. Green spaling and tea lights will decorate the wooden tables. Your golden rings a unique craft emphasising your bond is as strong as the ancient growth that surrounds you. 

I am definitely still going on about Will Shaw being obsessed with the ocean. He will hold a coastal wedding at the late noon which will last till the small hours of the night. As fit, you shall be dressed as his siren and your wedding bands will show his love for the sea where he first met you. By the end of the event he will kidnap you into his yacht, where you will sail into the open ocean to start off your honeymoon. 

[burninghoneyatdusk]

WIP NUDGE GAME

feel free to send me an ask with the number or a description of any of these ideas/wips i have and hear more about them. specific questions or just general information requests are both welcome!

Tagged by: @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold and @queenemori. Thank you loves! ❤️

Published WIPs:

Religion’s in Your Lips (13/14)

modern au | a/b/o | best friend’s brother | age difference | slow burn | angst | smut

Chasin’ You (7/10)

modern au | small town au | high school au | friends to lovers | exes to lovers | flashbacks | country music

Let Your Heart Beat Here (2/10)

modern au | Plus One au | weddings | enemies to friends to lovers | slow burn | mutual pining

I feel like a hero (and you are my heroine) (1/10)

Danny Phantom au | superheroes | ghosts | friends to lovers | slow burn | hurt/comfort | found family

Currently writing:

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 1 (one-shot)

modern au | autumn | kid fic | single dad bellamy | friends to lovers | fluff | light angst

Planning & remaining prompts:

untitled original fic

fantasy | war, power & politics | *takes deep breath* enemies to lovers to enemies to allies to lovers

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 2 (one-shot)

The Mentalist au | friends to lovers | coworkers to lovers | angst | hurt/comfort

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 3 (one-shot)

modern au | strangers to lovers | age difference | angst | fluff | divorced bellamy | college student clarke

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 4 (one-shot)

sun & moon symbolism | curses | soulmates | reincarnation | exes to lovers | enemies to lovers

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 5 (one-shot)

s6 canon-divergent | unplanned pregnancy | friends to lovers | angst | found family

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 6 (one-shot)

graduation pact series | established relationship | smut | fluff | light angst

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 7 (one-shot)

canonverse | grounder au | friends with benefits | enemies to lovers | angst | smut

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 8 (multi-chap)

fantasy au | immortality | soulmates | enemies to lovers | heavy angst | king bellamy | witch clarke

bellarke t100fic4blm prompt 9 (one-shot)

Little Women (Laurie/Amy) au | childhood friends | friends to lovers | light angst

kanej prompt (multi-chap)

modern au | corporate au | allies to friends to lovers | marriage of convenience

Ideas I can’t let go of:

untitled original fic idea

rom-com | university | best friend’s brother | literally all the tropes - that’s the plot

bellarke idea 1

modern au | flashbacks | secret relationship | unplanned pregnancy | adoption | kid fic | heavy angst

bellarke idea 2

historical au | age difference | marriage of convenience | best friend’s brother | dad’s friend (kind of?) | angst

bellarke idea 3

modern au | brother’s best friend | age difference | angst | first time | mutual pining

bellarke idea 4

modern au | high school au | rivals to friends to lovers | unplanned pregnancy | fluff & angst

bellarke idea/orginal fic (next gen VITW sequel)

canonverse au | grounders au | friends to lovers | best friend’s brother | or sister’s best friend | mutual pining | angst

kanej idea 1

greek mythology au | hades/persephone | arranged marriage | allies to lovers | angst

——

Tagging: @stealing-jasons-job | @daisyjvnes | @sparklyfairymira | @andromedabennet | @elora-lane | @nakey-cats-take-bathsss | @eyessharpweaponshot | @icantloseyou-too

[topazy]

What we found

Parings: John Murphy/OC

Warnings: mentions of violence

Chapter: nine

Bellamy

“Now what? We are screwed!”

“We can find another way.”

“How?” I spun to face Clarke. “Luna was our last chance, and she said no.”

“She’s not the last night-blood. I think I know a way that can save us and stop A.L.I.E.”

“How?” I was confused.

“Ontari.”

—

“What? What does that mean?” I asked.

I was worried, I had never seen Clarke look so defeated before. “She's brain dead. She can't give us the kill code. It's over. We're trapped here.”

I shook my head in frustration. Ontari was dead, Abby was still recovering from almost hanging herself, and an army of grounders and Jaha’s followers were on their way to kill us. Murphy’s pacing back and forth was starting to irritate me.

“Well, what about Ontari?” He asked. “I thought you said we had one shot with that thing.”

"I told you, Ontari is no longer an option for the Flame. She's brain dead." Clarke turned to face me, “is the floor secure?"

I opened my mouth to answer when I could hear a banging noise getting louder. We all turned to look at the door which he had done our best to keep shut, except the noise wasn’t coming from there. It was coming from below.

“No stop!”

I spun around hearing Abby yelling behind me, I was shocked to see Cora standing with a knife to Clarke’s throat. I had never seen such hatred behind anyone’s eyes that I saw in Cora’s glare. Indra attempted to sneak up on the chipped grounder, but she must have sensed the movements behind her because Cora quickly spun her arm and hit Indra in the face, causing her nose to make a horrible cracking sound.

I took the chance to try and restrain her. Murphy stood for a moment before helping me. Cora took her opportunity and head-butted Murphy. He let out a loud groan, before stumbling back. “What is she doing here?”

Murphy pinched his nose, “she accepted the chip.”

She accepted the chip because her brother had died, and she wanted to numb the pain. I still didn’t understand how the grounder in front of me was so useful to Lexa’s previous plan, but I know it meant she was important.

“Look,” Clarke said, pointing towards a hole in the corner. “She must have snuck up through a passageway.”

Pike walked towards us and pointed his gun at her. “She’s a threat.”

“Wait!” Murphy stepped in front of Pike. “You can’t kill her! Clarke can fix her.”

“He’s right,” I added, before turning to face Clarke. “Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it fast.”

I wasn’t sure if it was in the influence of A.L.I.E or not but the strength Cora seemed to have was insane. Me and Murphy both struggled to hold her. Clarke approached us slowly trying not to startle Cora who now had her head hanging down low.

“Okay,” Clarke held out a scalpel. “I’m going to need you guys-”

She was cut off by Cora kicking her in the stomach, sending her backwards. “My mom needs to do it, she will never let me close enough.”

“We had our fun together didn’t we, Wanheda?” Cora said in a much deeper, and darker voice. She almost sounded like a different person. “You don’t like that name do you? Wanheda I’ll let you in on a little secret, the real Clarke Griffin is much worse than the commander of death. Atom, Finn, Lexa…”

Cora was trying to get a reaction the same way Raven did under the influence of the chip. “We don’t have time for this! Murphy, grab the rope and help me restrain her.”

“You know what I should have done Wanheda, while you lay asleep next to me?” Clarke’s face fell, while listening to Cora’s words. “I should have slit your throat.”

“Okay that’s enough.” Abby kneeled in front of Cora who was now restrained, and stuffed a rag in her mouth.

Clarke stared at Ontari as Pike informed us the stairs had collapsed. “Good. Then we have time.”

“Time for what?” I was confused.

“An Ascension Ceremony.”

Murphy

“Clarke, c'mon! We can't hold them off.” Everyone who was chipped was now closing in on us. I couldn’t help fighting them off while pumping Ontari’s heart so Clarke could stay alive. Bellamy, Octavia, and Pike had disappeared. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Cora wiggling out of her restraints. “Abby we-”

Suddenly it all stopped. Clarke woke up, and the fighting came to a halt. She really did it. I couldn’t believe it. As Abby removed the flame from Clarke’s neck, I finally let go of Ontari’s heart.

“John…”

I spun to see Emori staring at me with tears in her eyes. I ran to her, pulling her in for a hug and she started to cry. “Hey, hey.”

I felt her shake as she sobbed against me. “I'm so sorry, John.”

“It's okay. It's okay.” I whispered while Emori clung to me.

Looking over her shoulder I saw Cora still glaring at Clarke with the same look of hatred she had previously. Closing my eyes I lost myself for a minute in the comfort of Emori. I finally had her back, and I was scared of losing her again but It didn’t stop the nagging voice in my head telling me to ask Cora why she knocked me out and left me.

Cora

I watched as many people from skaikru reunited with loved ones. It was nice, Bellamy had his sister, and John had found his love. I was happy for him.

The moment my eyes landed on Wanheda I felt my blood boil. She was alive, and smiling at the doctor. She caught me staring and walked towards me with her hand reached up. She wanted to help me to my feet. I scoffed and smacked her hand away, before standing up.

“Core I-”

“Don’t,” I snapped. Noticing others looking, I lowered my voice. “If I wasn’t surrounded by your people I would plunge my dagger into your heart, just so you could feel an ounce of pain that you’ve caused me.”

“Please just listen, Lexa-”

I cut her off again. “Our heda is dead because of you, that bullet was meant for you not her.”

“I loved her…” she said quietly.

Love. She didn’t understand the meaning of the word. “You made her weak.”

Indra squeezed my shoulder. “I understand your anger Persephone, but a warrior shows no emotions until the war is over.”

I glanced at the blonde once again. “You might have saved your people from A.L.I.E but that isn’t redemption from all the other crimes you’ve committed.”

I shrugged Indra away and walked towards the window. It looks the same, but different. My words to Clarke were hypocritical but I didn’t care, she let me believe my brother was alive knowing I’d do whatever it took to find him.

Feeling a presence behind my I turned to see Bellamy. “Looks like your people won.”

“What are you planning on doing now?”

“Return to what’s left of my home village.” He leaned against the wall and waited for me to continue. “My village was on land that now belongs to ice nation.”

“You could get killed.”

I shrugged, I didn’t care.

“You’ll be safer staying close by.”

Snorting at his comment I shook my head, I wasn’t a complete fool. I knew what Lexa had told him, and now he thinks I’m someone important.

“Your heda thought you were someone worth keeping safe.”

If only he knew. How was I supposed to explain to him or anyone that there was nothing special about me, and everything was a fabricated lie to save myself? I couldn’t. If I did then the truth would come out and my loved ones would have died for nothing.

Notes: And that’s a wrap on season three!!

[shyestofhearts]

Oh oh oh ooooh, Greek Mythology!Jondami (specifically Hades and Persephone)

This is really up to you on your preferences, because it could go either way:

1) Hades!Dami is just minding his own business in his underworld realm, and Persephone!Jon just wanders in and decides that he likes the handsome god and thinks his realm is neat so he stays (ft. Cerberus!Titus, and Dami trying to get Jon out so he won’t have to deal with Demeter!Clark)

2) Hades!Jon trying to catch the eye of Persephone!Damian, who knows exactly what Jon is doing is doing and just kind of trolls him until he wanders into the underworld...just to pet his dog

I love. Both of these and man is it hard to decide but I think I'll go with 2 👀

Jon thinks Damian is so very pretty and wants Damian to notice him

Damian fully has noticed him and is messing with him by pretending he hasn't

Until he wanders into the underworld just to pet Kypto (Cerberus) and takes a really good look at Jon and just decides that he's staying now

So he eats the fruit and sticks around until Bruce throws a fit and they have to strike a deal (which they only come to because Jon talks Damian into it to soothe Bruce's nerves)

[wendimydarling]

Henry's characters as Greek/Roman Gods 😆

OKAY girl. I’m finally getting around to this. I did a lot of research as I’m not superly familiar with all of the greek gods and their stories, but I did a pretty good job I think, and I ran the list by @littlefreya and @agniavateira; they stan (for the most part)!

All of my info (including the quotes I will use) I pulled from this website, so if anything isn’t accurate, I’m sorry! Here we goooooooo!

Stephen Colley

Stephen Colley is Aristaeus, minor patron god of useful arts, such as gardening and hunting. I’m basing this off of who he was and his role to the family, NOT on the sudden acting career that was thrust upon him.

“In Greek mythology, Aristaeus was the god useful arts, such as bee-keeping and cheese-making, olive-growing, herding, and hunting. He was a rustic god, a god of the countryside and pastoral places.”

Aristaeus also would visit cities, see the problems, and find a solution, which is basically what Stephen did for the bitch he was in love with, to the detriment of his own heart.

Mikey

Mikey is Momus. the god of Mockery and Satire.

“Momus is typically depicted as a man lifting a mask from his face. In more modern art, he is depicted as a fool or king’s jester.

Greek tragedian Sophocles wrote a satyr play called Momus. Satyr plays were tragicomedies with choruses of satyrs. The plays were often full of drunkenness, sexuality, sight gags, and other forms of merriment.”

Mikey loves a good joke and to fool around. He didn’t take life seriously, he wanted to have fun. 

Melot

Melot is Dinlas, god of chaos and hatred. Dinlas was abandoned by his mother and banished to the underworld where Hades discovered him and turned him into an agent of darkness, similarly to how Melot wasn’t as well received by his uncle as Tristan was, and so was taken in by Wictred and used for evil.

Hades gave Dinlas a job that seemed right and good, much how Melot thought that he was doing what was best for the kingdom. Both of them sought acceptance and love wherever they could find it, and for both of them it was ultimately their downfall. 

Evan Marshall

Evan is the god Paean, physician to the Olympic gods. Paean treated everyone from Ares to Hades, he didn’t differentiate. This may seem like an obvious choice, but it goes a step further.

“The name “Paean” was also commonly used in a general sense to refer to anyone who could save people from evil or calamity.”

This is Evan. He was brought in by his brother to save their home from the evil that resided in that bunker, and he did what he had to, wishing to save not just his family but the family that lived there, regardless of what his brother thought. He didn’t differentiate, same as Paean.

Charles Brandon

Charles is Kratos, god of strength and power. I’m basing this off of the myths that include his lineage as the son of the Titans Pallas and Styx, which makes him a relative of the Olympian gods but not one of them directly.

“In this form, Kratos is seen as a companion of Zeus and the guardian of his throne. He is usually one of Zeus’ primary enforcers and is an extension of his will.”

This is Charles. Friend of the King and Enforcer of His Will, even when it means carrying out unnecessary vengeance, similarly to how Kratos was required to chain Prometheus to a rock to be tortured for all eternity after Prometheus stole fire for humans.

Clark Kent/Kal-El

Clark is Atlas, who was a Titan instead of a god. This might seem like an unusual choice, but hear me out. Atlas chose a side and lost, and because of it was forced to carry the weight of the heavens on his shoulders for the rest of his life. Clark too was forced to choose a side, and though he didn’t necessarily “lose”, he still had to carry the weight of that burden on his shoulders for the rest of his life.

“Atlas was known as being ‘stout-hearted,’ strong, resilient and only a little gullible”

Clark is all of those things. And when I say gullible, I more just mean that he’s so good, so innocent, people have been able to take advantage of him before. 

Napoleon Solo

Napoleon is Hermes, god of trade, thieves, travelers, and border crossings, guide to the Underworld. 

“Hermes was known to be quick and cunning and had the ability to freely move between the mortal and divine worlds. 

In some myths Hermes is also depicted as a trickster where he would outwit the gods either for the good of humankind or for his own personal amusement and satisfaction.

Both Homer and Hesiod portrayed Hermes as the author of skilled or deceptive acts, and also as a benefactor of mortals.”

This depicts Napoleon to a T. He played both sides to his benefit, and often “went against the man” if it benefited the greater good or if it amused him.

Captain Syverson

Captain Syverson is Zeus, god of law, order, and justice.

“Hesiod described Zeus as a god who “brought peace in place of violence” and referred to him as the “lord of justice”.”

There are many different character traits of Zeus that Syverson embodies: hospitality, willingness to avenge wrong, keeper of oaths, and he struck terror in his enemies. 

“According to “Work and Days” by Hesiod (line 59), Zeus was a carefree god who loved to laugh out loud. He was regarded as wise, fair, just, merciful, and prudent. He was also unpredictable – nobody was able to guess the decisions he would make.”

This also seems to me like Syverson. Although we don’t see him laugh much in the film, we do get a snippet of that smile when he greets Mahmoud.

“He is often described as a strong, imposing man with a regal body and long, often curly, hair. He usually had a short beard or scruff and carried his trusty thunderbolt at all times.”

Syverson is all of this except the long curly hair. His thunderbolt is the Beretta 92FS he’s always got tucked into his belt.

August Walker

August is Hades, god of the underworld. 

“Hades was depicted as stern and unyielding, unmoved by prayer and sacrifice.

[He] had a cap or helmet that made its wearer invisible.

His wife was Persephone, Demeter’s only daughter, whom he kidnapped and made his queen.”

August’s mission is his manifesto. He is unyielding in that sense; he will do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal, unmoved by the opinions and pleading of others. He worked for the CIA and they had no idea of his true intent, which makes him pretty invisible, and he would absolutely kidnap a woman to make her his bride (Trapped, anyone????). Although I think he would make her fall in love with him first.

Walter Marshall

Walter is the Hypnos, the god of sleep. Again, seems like an unusual choice, but hear me out. 

“Hypnos is said to be a calm and gentle god who helps mortal humans in their time of need.”

This is Walter. He is a gentle giant, who aids people when they need help the most. This is his job, this is his life. Hypnos lived in the underworld, in a cave that received no sunlight or moonlight. Walter lives his life in a similar darkness, his mind engulfed in the horrors of his job. Hypnos’s cave was surrounded by poppies and other plants that produce sleep, which explains why Walter always looks so tired. *cue laughing emoji*

Geralt of Rivia

I see Geralt as Heracles (Hercules). He did not choose the life he was given, but he used it for the good of people. 

“Heracles was known for his extraordinary strength, courage and cleverness. When his brawn would not suffice, he would call upon his wits...”

Hercules also had his Twelve Labors, which I equate to Geralt running around slaying monsters. Hercules often acted impulsively, and though done out of love, it would get him into trouble. Geralt does this too, though he would never admit it. His love for Jaskier, Yen, and Ciri gets him into heaps of scraps and trouble, which he is then often forced to serve his way out of. 

Thanks for this ask, @wondersofdreaming! Sorry it took me so long; it was a bit of a research project and I felt like I was in school again! 

Fan Club: @littlefreya @sciapod @thiccgeralt @fucking-hell-cavill @brexrif @peakygroupie @viking-raider @constip8merm8 @daniig95 @elinalfrida @hell1129-blog @oddsnendsfanfics @agniavateira @dearlybelovedluke @sofiebstar @wanderinglunarnights @mary-ann84 @nuns-and-roses @luclittlepond @thekingstachemademedoit @iloveyouyen @lestersglitterglue @funnygirlthatgab @wondersofdreaming @yoursecretsmutblog @valkavill @kevia1000 @trippedmetaldetector @lifeofrileyp @captaingothgirl1996 @sasusakubae @princess-of-riviaa @vivodinson @paradisecitychild @stuckupstucky @speakerforthedead0-blog @aletheladyinred @madbaddic7ed @magdelen69 @emelinelovesjc @msblkfire84 @mstgsmy @harlotforhenry @daddys-littlewhitegirl

(If your name is crossed out I couldn’t tag you, check your settings!)

[slytherinbarnes]

Sub Rosa [55]

x. die all, die merrily

Pairing: Bellamy Blake x reader

Word Count: 4.6k

Warnings: I mean, the title says it all, people die, there is fighting and violence. also some light smut, a lil touch of kidnapping, and some language to finish it all up.

Summary: the final conclave begins, and 13 clans fight for the ultimate prize: surviving the apocalypse. 

a/n: I AM NERVOUS TO POST THIS BC APPARENTLY THIS IS A LOT OF YALLS FAVORITE EPISODE EVER SO I HOPE I DID IT JUSTICE! the taglist for this series is open! I hope you enjoy, please let me know what you think!!!

previous chapter // season masterlist // series masterlist

March 27th, 2150; Polis

You wake to the sounds of yelling outside. 

Your eyes pull open slowly, blinking against the bright light of the sun that streams into the room from the balcony. You roll over, coming face to face with Bellamy, who is looking down at you and smiling. You give him a sleepy smile in return. “How long have you been up?”

He glances towards the balcony, before his eyes fall on you again. “An hour or so. Sounds like they’re prepping for the conclave.”

You hum in agreement. “Didn't Clarke say it starts tomorrow? I’m sure there’s a lot to be done and not much time to do it in.”

“Does that mean we have to help too?”

You laugh at the grimace on his face, clearly not excited about this prospect. “Probably.”

He sighs and starts to stand from the bed, but you grab his hand and pull him back down towards you. He looks at you in surprise as you give him a mischievous look, pulling him down even closer, until his face is inches from yours. “We can have some fun first though, don’t you think?”

He catches onto your line of thinking easily, and he gives you a look full of fire and passion. He answers your question with a searing kiss, your previous separation making you savor the kiss more than you usually do. His hands come to land on either side of your face, holding you in place as he kisses you like his life depends on it. Like he’s a drowning man and you’re a tank of oxygen sent to save him. His hands slide from your face, down to your body, sliding all over you, the feeling of his skin on yours electric. 

He pulls you closer to his body, tugging until you move to straddle him, the fur blanket sliding off of you as you do. You run your hands down his already naked chest, his shirt on you, your favorite thing to sleep in, and he smiles up at you. You tug the shirt off and toss it to the side, and his eyes roam your body with appreciation, taking you in. You have to resist the urge to cover up, knowing how much he likes to look at you, but still, you whisper, “You’re staring.”

“I’m admiring. I’m drawing a detailed image of you in my brain for later, and I want to make sure I don’t miss anything.”

His fingers trace over a few of your scars, the one on your shoulder from the arrow, the one on your leg from Roan, and the one on your side from the assassin, and you can see his eyes mapping their location on your body. You copy the motion with him, carefully tracing the scar on his side, the one you stitched up. He glances down at it, the small, jagged little scar, shaped like an uneven lightning bolt. “It is crooked. Sorry about that.”

“Don't be, I like it. It reminds me of you.”

“It looks like lightning. The perfect scar for my stormy boyfriend.”

He gives you a peculiar look. “You think I'm stormy?”

You lean down and kiss him, chasing away the insecurity that seems to creep up. “Not in a bad way. Storms are powerful, forces to be reckoned with. Sometimes they rage and crackle, but they cleanse too, and help the Earth grow.”

He smiles up at you, his face softening and his earlier insecurity now gone. “And you are radiant. Breathtaking. Beautiful.”

He kisses you in between each compliment, lingering on the last one, making it long and slow. You open your mouth, granting his tongue access, and they dance and move together in a perfect symphony. As he kisses you, you both slide out of any remaining undergarments, both of you naked and warm against each other. The usual vulnerability, and fear, that comes with being naked around another person is lost on you, because Bellamy is careful to radiate nothing but love and adoration, wanting you to feel safe and secure. 

He breaks the kiss to watch you as you sink onto him, both of you moaning with pleasure. He rolls you both, situating your body beneath his, his arms supporting his weight next to your head, caging you between them. Your eyes lock as you move together, finding your rhythm, and his other hand slips between your bodies to bring you closer to the edge. You fall first, eyes squeezed shut and head thrown back in pleasure, and the sight of you sends Bellamy over right after.

He kisses you again as you come down from your high, the kiss lazy and sloppy, both of you feeling like jelly as your pleasure rolls through you. Bellamy eventually rolls off you, laying down at your side, turning to watch you. You turn to face him, smiling up at his freckled face and messy curls, “Tell me about the gods.”

He smiles, always ready to oblige, before launching into his story. “Persephone, better known as the goddess of the dead and Underworld, wasn’t always known that way…”

-

March 28th, 2150; Polis

Bellamy’s hand is held tight in your own, slick with sweat from nerves as he leads you down the hall, towards Octavia’s room. The tradition of the Final Conclave has now begun, and in mere minutes, Octavia will walk onto the stage in front of everyone, and accept the sigil of her clan, your clan, and fight until the death for Skaikru. 

When Bellamy reaches the door, he turns and looks at you, nervous, and you nod your head, reassuring him. He lifts his hand and knocks, and Octavia looks his way, quickly looking away again when she realizes who it is. “You here to give me a pep talk?”

He drops your hand and steps into the room, settling onto the couch beside her. You linger in the doorway, here for emotional support more than anything, watching Bellamy make his last attempt to save his sister. “You don't have to do this. We can find someone else to fight. “

“If I die, I die. At least I go down fighting.”

“O-”

She cuts him off immediately, shutting down his argument. “Don't. This is my decision, Bell. I know what the odds are, I don't need you pointing them out.”

You hear footsteps from down the hall, and you peek behind you, watching as your twin approaches you. Her face is set in a grim expression, not optimistic at all, and as soon as she looks up and meets your eyes, she calls out, “It's time.”

You nod, turning to pass the message along to Octavia, but she must have heard because she is already standing and walking your way. You get a good look at her make up as she approaches, the dark war paint painted over each of her eyes in the shape of an upside down “L”. You realize immediately what her inspiration is, and as she stops in front of you, you whisper, “Lincoln’s tattoo.”

She nods once, confirming your suspicion, and you see a quick pass of nerves cross her features. You reach out and squeeze her shoulder, offering her comfort. “He’s always with you, especially now, and I know he's proud of you.”

She gives you a small smile before walking past you and out the door, walking down the long hallway to the stage. You and Bellamy follow her path until you meet up with Clarke, who leads you out a side door and into the crowd, just in time to watch Gaia, Indra’s daughter, announce, “Octavia kom Skaikru, step forward.”

Octavia steps up onto the stage and ducks her head, allowing Gaia to attach a necklace around her neck. “Accept the sigil of your clan and fight with honor as their champion.”

She walks across the stage and comes to a stop beside Roan, and you and Bellamy exchange a look as Gaia begins her final speech. “Soon will begin the Final Conclave, a battle to the death within the walls of Polis. These warriors will fight until only one remains. When that warrior collects all of the sigils from the fallen and delivers them to me, they will be declared the victor. This final champion alone will tell us which clan is meant to survive in the crypt of Bekka Pramheda, and which clans are meant to perish in Praimfaya. Osir koma op daun bilaik slip daun kom bleirona, ba mafta op Won bilaik hef em op mou beda.”

Kane translates for you and Bellamy, able to understand the words faster than both of you can. “We honor those who fall by the sword, but follow the One who wields it best.”

Somewhere behind you in the crowd, someone yells, “Daun bilaik ai!”

That would be me. You all turn and watch in shock as Luna stalks through the crowd, shoving people out of her way to get to the front, and you can sense trouble brewing as soon as you see her face. “Shit.”

Bellamy looks at you, not understanding what you mean, not aware of just how bad things got for Luna on Becca’s Island. She stalks onto the stage and comes to a stop in front of Gaia. “I'm Luna kom Floukru, and I'm the last of my clan.”

“We know who you are...The Natblida who ran from her conclave.”

“I'm not running from this one.”

Gaia turns and grabs the last necklace from the bowl, turning to face the angry Nightblood. “Accept this sigil, Luna kom Floukru. But with your clan gone, who will you fight for?”

“I fight for no one. I fight for death.” She snatches the necklace from Gaia’s hands and turns and holds it up for the crowd. “When I win, no one will be saved.”

Her words immediately send a wave of murmurs through the crowd, and Gaia quickly solves the problem by dispersing the crowd and sending the warriors down into the weapons room to arm up and prepare for the battle. You, Kane, Bellamy, Clarke, and Jaha all cluster in a circle, quietly discussing Luna's arrival when Gaia comes over to your group, voice full of authority. “Skaikru! Three advisors to the worgeda. The rest of you, report to your designated safe zone. Now.”

Kane gestures to you and Bellamy, “Come on. We have to get her ready.”

Jaha reaches out and grabs Kane’s arm, stopping him from leaving. “This conversation isn't over. The death wave will be here within three days, and here we are, risking the fate of our people on a blood sport?”

Clarke corrects him, “The fate of all people, You heard Luna.”

“She's just one of 13.”

You wince, remembering when you walked in a room to save Luna from at least 6 men, only to find that she had already saved herself. And that was after being repeatedly tortured. “You're wrong. She's a Nightblood novitiate, which means she trained in combat exactly like this.”

Bellamy looks at you, misunderstanding you. “You want us to cheat?”

“No.” You look at him, shaking your head. “I only mean that Luna is the walking definition of killer warrior, and that scares me.”

Kane adds, “Besides, you know the rules. If we break them, we lose, and if we lose, we die.”

“The rules are not the problem, Marcus. The game is. Even if we stop Luna, even if Octavia finds a way to win, does anyone truly believe that the Grounders will accept Skaikru as the lone survivors?”

“Yes. The conclave is sacred, they'll honor the winner. Like it or not, we're all Grounders now.” The words tug at a memory, Bellamy standing in the middle of a circle of delinquents, convincing all of you to fight the Grounders coming your way. But Kane pulls you from that memory when he looks at Jaha, and says, “You get our people to the safe zone, we'll have Octavia ready for the fight. The rest is up to her.”

You and Clarke nod at each other, knowing you’ll see each other again soon, after the Conclave. Either as the sole clan to survive Praimfaya, or as one of 13 clans left outside to perish. Bellamy walks close to you as you follow Kane into the weapons area, leading you over to Octavia. As you walk towards her, you eye the competition, taking notes on their weapons, their fighting, anything you can gather that might help her. Kane seems to have the same idea because as soon as he stops in front of her and you and Bellamy stop beside him, he starts, “All right, listen to me. The Blue Cliff Warrior, she has two corvo blades. I just saw her practicing. She's left handed, you go for her weak hand.”

“Okay.”

You add to his point, “Plains Rider and the warrior from Shallow Valley, they're strong, but slow. You can avoid them, not to mention the black rain, which could fall at any moment, so stay close to cover.”

Beside you, Bellamy fidgets in place, turning and looking away, which does not go unnoticed by you or Octavia. She snaps, “What, Bellamy? If you've got something to say, just say it.”

“You don't need any of this. When the starting horn blows, just stay out of sight and let the others thin out the competition.”

“You want me to hide?”

“You don't need to go up against the strongest warrior from every clan.”

“I came here to fight.”

Bellamy bends down a little, matching their heights, his voice almost pleading, “You were the girl under the floor. Use that, just like Mom taught us.” 

Kane nods, “Bellamy's right. You don't have to kill all 12 warriors.”

“I just have to kill the last one.”

All of you exchange a nod, now on the same page in terms of strategy. Behind you, one of the Flamekeeper scouts announces, “Ambassadors and advisors, to the tower. Champions, to your flags.”

Kane and Octavia hug, quick and fierce, before she turns to Bellamy. They hover near each other, unsure whether they should hug, and eventually Octavia settles on, “May we meet again.”

“Damn right we will.”

Bellamy’s voice is sad, and he looks like he wants to hug her, but he’s so worried about upsetting her before the battle that he doesn’t. He just turns and starts to walk away, leaving you and Octavia alone. You don't hesitate to hug her, reaching out and grabbing her, squeezing her tight and passing along as much love and strength as you can through the hug. She hugs you back tight, almost desperate, and when you pull away, both of you have tears in your eyes, aware this might be your last goodbye. You smile through your tears, “You were my first friend on the ground, and the first person to see me as someone other than the Invisible Twin. Now you’re my people, my family, my sister. I am so incredibly proud of you.”

She smiles at you and you see her fighting back her tears, not wanting anyone to see her crying. She squeezes your arm and whispers, “I love you. Bellamy too.”

You nod, already aware, because you knew the siblings couldn't stay upset with each other long. Lincoln's death left a mark on their relationship, but that doesn't mean their relationship was irreparable. You start to answer when one of the Flamekeepers grabs your arms and pulls you away, pushing you towards the door to the tower. You turn and wave one last goodbye to Octavia, eyes watching the small girl melt into the crowd of warriors who have been fighting longer than she’s been alive. You meet Bellamy at the elevator, and his face is fallen, completely upset. You slip your hand in his and he looks over at you in surprise, so lost in his own head that he didn't even hear your approach. “What did she say?”

“She said she loves you.”

Surprise takes over his expression, then regret, and he immediately drops your hands and turns away, “I have to tell her I love her.”

But the Flamekeeper who pushed you out of the room blocks his path, pushing him back towards the elevator, not allowing him to leave. You can tell Bellamy wants to fight it and fight him, but you reach out and grab his hand again, pulling him towards the now waiting elevator. “She’s going to win, Bellamy. You can tell her afterwards.”

He nods and you ride the elevator to the top, meeting up with Kane in the throne room, just as the horn sounds, signaling the beginning of the conclave. You can hear the sounds of fighting immediately, and the tensions inside the room are high as you hear the clang of swords and the thud of fallen bodies. Minutes later, Gaia comes into the room and announces, “The first two champions have fallen.”

Everyone turns towards her, absolutely terrified that she will say the name of the warrior from their clan, and you, Kane, and Bellamy are no exception. 

“Gael kom Ingranronakru, yu gonplei ste odon.”

One of the Flamekeepers walks over to the candle that represents the Plains Riders and puts the flame out, ending their battle for the bunker. You all watch the Flamekeeper turn away from the snuffed candle and walk towards the next one, and your heart drops as every step he takes brings him closer and closer to the Skaikru candle. Bellamy whispers, “Please don't be her.”

Luckily, but still heartbreaking, the Flamekeeper stops just shy, in front of the Trikru candle, as Gaia announces, “Fio kom Trikru, yu gonplei ste odon.”

Relieved, you turn to Bellamy. “Octavia's still out there.”

Bellamy’s eyes turn towards you, full of tears, his expression breaking your heart. “I couldn't tell her I loved her, even with the world ending.”

You squeeze his hand, still held tight in yours. “Trust me, Bellamy, she knows.”

He nods and his eyes drop to the floor, lost in his head again, and you and Kane share a look. With nothing else to do now, except wait, you and Bellamy head out to the balcony with your binoculars, watching the fights alongside Gaia. Kane comes out onto the balcony as you watch the Blue Cliff warrior kill the Sangedakru warrior, and Bellamy lets out a small gasp at the sight of the death. When you turn to look at him in confusion, he nods towards Kane, and you follow him as he leads you over to the Chancellor. Bellamy’s voice is low when he mutters, “We just saw the Blue Cliff warrior kill the Sangedakru warrior with a bow.”

“So?”

Bellamy looks at you, and you remember your pre fight conversation with Octavia. You tell Kane, “So, we saw her before the fight. She didn't have a bow, she had two swords.”

“Yeah, the corvo blades.” He shrugs, not understanding your worry. “Well, she could have picked up a bow off the battlefield.”

You and Bellamy exchange a look, both of you aware that someone you know is exceptionally good with a bow, and exceptionally good at betrayal. You both step back inside the room, scanning for the Azgeda spy, shaking your head when you don't see her. Kane comes up beside you, looking between you in confusion. “What is it?”

“Echo's gone.”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, Bellamy stalks out of the room, looking like a man on a mission, and you and Kane look at each other in panic before running after him. “Bellamy, wait!”

He spins around to face the two of you, annoyed at the interruption. “My sister is down there. Echo is cheating, and I'm gonna stop her.”

Kane shakes his head, “Let one of Gaia's scouts find her, and then Ice Nation will be punished.”

“They'll never catch her. Echo's a spy, this is what she does.”

He tries to walk away again but you grab his arm to stop him. “Listen to me, Bellamy, I’m with you. But running out there in broad daylight is not the way to fix this.”

“So, you think I should just stay here and do nothing?”

You shake your head, and Kane vocalizes a plan you were already starting to form in your head. “No. You wait until dark so you don't get caught. And then the two of you get her out of the fight and get back here without being seen. Clear?”

“Clear.”

-

The wait until nightfall is agonizingly long, and all you can do is hope that Octavia makes it until then, safely away from Echo’s arrows. When darkness finally blankets the city, only five lit candles remain. Floukru, Azgeda, Podakru, Louwoda Kliron, and Skaikru. 

Bellamy leads you through the streets of Polis, heading towards the building Echo is hiding in, careful to keep the both of you hidden from the view of any warriors or Flamekeepers. You’re close to the building when Bellamy abruptly stops and pulls you back behind a wall, disguised in the shadows. You know it’s too dangerous to ask why, but you don't need to, because a second later the Shallow Valley warrior comes into view. He seems to see something in the distance that you can’t see, because you watch him brace himself before a scream breaks free from the unseen force, and Luna comes running into view. She kills him quickly, easily, and just like that, five lit candles becomes four. 

Luna stalks out of view again, and as soon as Bellamy is sure it’s clear, he takes off running again, leading you the last few steps to the building. The two of you creep up the stairs slowly, remembering that Echo is up high, and when you reach the door to her hiding spot, Bellamy gives you two hand signals: push the door open and then immediately get down. You nod your head, letting him you know you understand, and then he counts you down from three. As soon as he puts his last finger down, you swing the door open as quickly and quietly as you can, before you immediately duck, Echo’s arrow landing in the door right above your head.

Bellamy runs forward and tackles her to the ground, and the two of them fight back and forth until he gets the upper hand, wrapping his hands around her neck and choking her. She is seconds away from death when you feel a knife to your throat and you freeze in place, voice frantic when you call out, “Bellamy.”

He turns and his face drops when he sees you, his hands instantly releasing Echo’s throat, allowing her to breathe. He steps away from her and the person at your back shoves you towards Bellamy, who catches you with ease, and when you turn around you really aren't surprised to see Roan standing there, sword pointed at you and Bellamy as he glares at you. “I should've known you three couldn't stay away. I heard you all the way down the street, you're lucky I wasn't a scout.”

Bellamy nods towards the Ice Nation spy. “We came to stop her.”

“Explain yourself.”

“I was only trying to help save our people.”

Roan sneers at her, “I am not my mother. I'm not willing to cast aside honor for power.”

“No one has to know.”

“You misunderstand. I will not allow your dishonor to give Luna an advantage, and you will not shame our clan ever again. You are Azgeda no more.”

Shock takes over Echo’s face, and you have to resist the urge to smirk at her. “Sire, wait.”

“You're banished, Echo, and when I win this conclave, make no mistake, there will be no place for you inside that bunker. Now get out of my sight, and off this battlefield without being seen, or know that you are the cause of the death of our people.”

She swallows hard, fighting back tears, before turning and leaving the room, sneaking out and off the battlefield, despite having nowhere else to go. Once you and Bellamy are alone with Roan, the sword comes back towards the two of you again, everything about the king threatening. “I take it by your presence here that your sister's still alive.”

“That's right.”

“If I call for a scout, she'll be executed right now.” He lowers the sword, leaving enough room for you to eventually pass. “But what fun would that be? You really think she can win, don't you?”

Bellamy smiles, looking proud. “I wouldn't count her out if I were you. She's survived harder things than this.”

“Before she dies, I'll tell her she's lucky to have you as a brother.”

“I got a better idea. After she guts you and before you die, you tell her I was the lucky one.”

Roan smirks at him and you feel Bellamy's hand slip into your own, letting you know it’s time to go. You step away first, pulling Bellamy behind you, both of you keeping your eyes on the Ice Nation King until you’re out of the room and back on the street. You begin the careful retreat back to the tower, taking a different path than before, just in case. It takes longer this way, but this path is darker, and easier to stay hidden in, and after a few minutes, you’re just outside the tower again. You and Bellamy look at each other and smile a little, relieved to have made it back without getting caught, but that relief is short lived. 

Just as the two of you start towards the door of the tower, two people jump out of the shadows, each one of them grabbing each of you, holding a rag over your mouth. The substance smells awful, and you know without a doubt that you shouldn't be smelling it, but you don't have much time to process that. You and Bellamy look at each other, both of your eyes wide in panic when you see the other in danger, and you fight against your captives. But by then, it's too late. The chemical has kicked in and you feel unconsciousness seize you rapidly, pulling you under at an alarmingly fast rate.

-

The first thing you notice when you wake is the heaviness in your head. 

It feels like someone popped open your skull, stuffed it full of rocks, and closed it up again. You try to pry your eyes open, but they feel heavy, weighed down by anchors. You groan and try again, prying them open with all your strength, closing them back again when they are met with a bright light. But then you hear someone next to you groan, and a hand brushes against yours, familiar and warm.

Bellamy.

This time when you get your eyes open, you turn his way, both of you looking at each other in shock before you confirm that each other is real. You reach towards each other, silently checking the other out, making sure you're okay. And as soon as you realize you are, you both turn and look around the room, realizing you must be in the bunker. Your eyes land on Clarke, standing at the desk in the room near Jaha, both of them looking towards you. You look between them, at the clench of Clarke’s jaw, the extra weight on her shoulders, and your stomach sinks. “What the hell did you do?”

Jaha is the one to answer, sounding unashamed of what he has to say. “If only one clan could survive, it might as well be ours.”

Bellamy turns to your twin, not believing what he’s hearing. “Clarke, you agreed to this?”

“It was her idea.”

You and Bellamy share an incredulous look, before you turn it on Clarke, in disbelief of what she’s done. She sets her jaw, trying to convince herself, and the two of you, of what she’s done. “We did what we had to do.”

-

next chapter

[avani008]

fic writer tag game!

Tagged by @allegoriesinmediasres and @partialdignity. Thank you both <3!

how many works do you have on AO3?

83.

what’s your total AO3 word count?

267, 880. (Oh...wow.)

how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Baahubali, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Jodhaa-Akbar, Padmaavat, Star Wars, Greek Myth, Arthurian Mythology, Fairy Tales, Genghis Khan-Music Video, Smallville, Devil's Cub, Ever After, Persuasion- Jane Austen, Idylls of the Queen- Phyllis Ann Karr, Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn, Sliding Doors, Hamilton, Black Panther, Original Work.

(20, effectively)

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Copilot (342)- the eternal WIP which fills me with SHAME, because "Han adopts Rey" still objectively strikes me as a good premise for an AU, but (1) the subsequent films didn't seem to find their relationship as interesting as I did and (2) by now, I have no doubts some genius has already written it, and better than I could!

Coming Home (299) - Proof that therapy fic and tragic parent-child relationships are....kind of an Avani thing? Welp.

Kathodos (230) - I am delighted but also...kind of surprised this one is so popular??? Anyway, I enjoyed turning the Hades/Persephone myth on its head, and my recip in the challenge was both lovely and seemed to enjoy this, so that's what really matters!

Enchantment Passing Through - (193) Eventually I might finish this, I guess, but it would involve a lot more planning and outlining and HP-deep-diving than I particularly want to at the moment. But again, I am so grateful people seemed to have liked this little prologue and been so kind about it!

Nidhana (157)- The fact that--presumably--one hundred and fifty actual people have read this and enjoyed it never fails to bring a smile to my face. I love you all so, so much.

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

In theory, yes, but I've gotten so far behind it doesn't seem like I'll catch up for a bit!

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

*shifty eyes* Hahaha, angst? Me? Surely you jest. Seriously, though, one of the Tumblr Mahabharata break-it AUs? Or if it has to be on AO3, personally I thought Sarvaga was the saddest, but if any of you guys disagree, I'd be curious to know!

do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

*laughs* Oh boy, do I ever. Um, aside from those already mentioned, there is a perma-drawer fic Baahubali/Black Panther crossover featuring dreamworld friendships, which is probably the weirdest thing I've actually even started to draft....

have you ever received hate on a fic?

If I have, I'm plainly too oblivious to realize it. Mostly, though, I think that this is because my readers are unbelievably kind to me.

do you write smut? if so what kind?

I don't, largely because I'm no good at it. I'll stick to innuendos and the occasional off-color joke, for everyone's sake.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to the best of my knowledge!

have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I recall!

have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! With the fabulous @parlegee, brainstormer/beta extraordinaire who patiently reads all my overenthusiastic drafts/notes and doesn't laugh.

what’s your all time favorite ship?

Ooh, this is a hard one. Um. Lois Lane/Clark Kent was probably an early one I imprinted on, but also Pratham/Gauri, the leads from a really terrible but also hilarious Indian soap from when I was a kid; Amarendra/Devasena probably works its way up to a lifetime one from all the thinking/ficcing/meta I've done about it; and honestly, I've been a Krishna/Rukmini stan since I was a wee one (Female agency and strikes against patriarchal-arranged-marriage FTW!)

what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Eventually, we will finish the Ramayana space AU because it really is the best of our crazy AUs. It just--might take a bit until then.

(On the personal front, I will finish this origfic someday? Mayyybe?)

what are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, characterization, plot, humor (I hope?)

what are your writing weaknesses?

Action scenes, smut scenes, That One Scene you need to get the plot from Point A to Point B but is boring as anything to hurry up and get done.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

IMO, best used as a garnish/minimally--otherwise, you risk breaking readers out, even if they are familiar with the foreign language you are using. That said, there are always exceptions: in Sarvaga, linked above, I use the direct transliteration of dialogue in Tamil, because a translation wouldn't at all convey the duality or the intent of it after all.

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

Really bad Lois and Clark fic, IIRC, which were mostly syrupy missing-scenes and episode tags.

what’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I think I have to go with Nidhana, simply because I can't believe I actually finished a multichapter fic with an actual plot!

Tagging @walburgablack @parlegee @queenofmahishmati @mockingjaypin @carminavulcana @holy-muffins @oldshrewsburyian @tuulikki and literally anyone else who wants to do this and wasn't tagged already!

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 2

Bitchin’ Bajas

The whole country is snowed in and Texas is starting to look a lot like the Terrordome, and we can see how people might not be laser focused on music right now, especially if they’re cold or sick or out of food. But music continues to pour in, in great quantities and beguiling diversity, and a fair amount of it is very, very good. So, while we encourage you to take care of your brothers and sisters first (by donating to organizations like Austin Mutual Aid, Community Care — Mutual Aid Houston, Feed the People Dallas or the Austin Disaster Relief Network), we also present another collection of short, mostly positive reviews of new-ish records that have caught our attention. Writers this time around include Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Justin Cober-Lake, Eric McDowell, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Tim Clarke and Mason Jones.  

Babyface Ray — Unfuckwitable (Wavy Gang)

On his new 7 song EP Unfuckwitable, thanks to his technical skills, Babyface Ray grinds through a great variety of trendy topics under a great variety of beats: from “not rap” rap to “bad bitch” rap to “we got it off the mud” rap. It’s all very professionally done, as you expect from a professional rapper, despite Ray’s claims that he’s not one. But midway through it, behind the misty fog of bouncy production and some lines catching the ear, you can clearly see at least two problems, with the EP and Babyface Ray. First, he doesn’t have anything to say (unlike some hip hop artists who ran out of things to say, he never had any in the first place). Second, he either doesn’t rhyme or goes for a lazy rhyming. The standout here is “Like Daisy Lane”, a catchy little song, with absolutely no substance behind it.

Ray Garraty

 Bananagun — The True Story of Bananagun (Full Time Hobby)

The True Story of Bananagun by Bananagun

Ooh look, it’s tropicalia from Australia! The five-piece Bananagun hails geographically from Melbourne, but metaphysically from 1960s Sao Paulo or swinging London. Their first album swaggers like a long-haired hipster in wide-flared hip huggers, fingers snapping, funk bass slapping, keyboards and flutes gamboling in hot melodic pursuit. Multiple band members got their start in similarly 1960s-aligned Frowning Clouds, so the psych garage freakbeat elements are, perhaps, to be expected. But Bananagun runs hotter, wilder and considerably less Anglo. “People Talk Too Much” rattles the foundations with scorching funk percussion, big flares of brass and a vintage Afro-beat call and response chorus. “Mushroom Bomb” likewise heats up psychedelic apocalyptica with seething syncopations of bass and drums. Most of these tracks are a bit overstuffed, with a pawn shop’s worth of instruments enlisted in happy, dippy, everyone-get-in-the-jam exuberance, but am I going to complain about too much joy? I am not. Bring on the Bananagun.

Jennifer Kelly 

 Andrew Barker / Jon Irabagon — Anemone (Radical Documents)

Anemone by Andrew Barker + Jon Irabagon Duo

Some names tell you exactly where you stand, and others raise questions. Take the name of this record, for example; did drummer Andrew Barker (Gold Sparkle Band, Little Huey Orchestra) and tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon (Mostly Other People Do The Killing, I Don’t Hear Nothin’ But The Blues) have the aquatic or land-lubber variety in mind? To get specific, is this record a buttercup, or a bottom-dwelling, plant-lookalike life form that waits for other aquatic species to come close enough for it to lance them, paralyze them with venom and chow down on their still-living bodies?

“Learnings,” the first of the album’s four tracks, is true to its name, being a distillation of instrumental tones and free jazz attacks that might remind you of moments from various Coltrane and Pharoah records. It feels familiar, but invigorating. The title tune comes next, and it’s a slower, more laconic performance, attractive enough to be either the sea or land variety. Then comes “Book of Knots,” which suspends an intricate percussive construction over slow-bubbling pops and barks. The record closes with “Branded Contempt,” a juxtaposition of pathos-rich blowing and restless brushwork. One can listen most of the way through this record without guessing whether it owes allegiance to Poseidon or Persephone, but the coarse intensity of Irabagon’s playing in the last minutes is the tell; this record packs a sting.

Bill Meyer

BBsitters Club — BBsitters Club & Party (Hausu Mountain)

BBsitters Club & Party by BBsitters Club

Label Hausu Mountain specializes in weird experimental electronics. Its release of a rare rock record might raise a few eyebrows. BBsitters Club, with the label's founders making up half the quartet, pulls off a tricky feat in becoming an arch rock band. BBsitters Club & Party has enough old-fashioned blues and psych-based rock to suggest a group taking itself seriously. Naming the opening track “Crazy Horse” immediately calls attention to its meta status, even if the track sounds more like Pink Floyd than Neil Young's collaborators (and there's a touch of hair metal in there, too). No group with songs called “Joel,” “Joel Reprise,” and “Joel Reprise Reprise” can take itself too seriously, and that kind of playfulness runs throughout the disc. At the same time, BBsitters Club does take its musicianship seriously. They avoid conventional forms, working in complicated structures full of surprising twists. The group can get a little proggy, but then twist it toward an Allman Brothers-style jam. If it starts to settle into the Woodstock era (see the clear nods to Hendrix and Cream), it jumps to the 1980s with an unlikely easiness. The band goes wherever they feel like rocking, with everyone invited to the party.

Justin Cober-Lake 

 Bitchin Bajas — live ateliers claus (les albums claus)

Bitchin Bajas - live ateliers claus by Bitchin Bajas

If we can all agree the pandemic has dealt musicians some dizzying blows, that’s hardly to say they had it easy before. Squeezed between tech platforms and spurned by a hostile federal government (speaking for the US, anyway), even on tour they had to contend with iffy financials, physical neglect and — because why not say it louder for those in the back? — literal theft. So Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan found themselves over 4,000 miles from home in May 2018, playing Brussels’s les ateliers claus on borrowed equipment after having their gear stolen (twice) on a European tour in support of Bajas Fresh. “Um, we’re, ah, Bitchin Bajas, from Chicago ... Illinois,” one of the trio says over the set’s first tentative tones. “And thanks ... for coming. This is gonna be great, I think. Or, we’ll see.”

Perhaps it’s not a question of either/or but both/and, the cosmic “we’ll see” of COVID-19 only amplifying how truly great it is to receive this music in the unimaginable future of three years later. As ever with the Bitchin Bajas, there is pleasure in the subtleties, whether that’s an excited concert-goer whooping as “Jammu” picks up momentum or the way each turn of the musical kaleidoscope seems to bring out new hues. That the recording doesn’t represent any dramatic departure from what we hear on the studio album or during other sets on other tours is part of its appeal and part of its power as a balm. We don’t need any more startling revelations right now. In this sense, the whole live ateliers claus series is a reminder that this venue and these artists — from Michael Chapman (vol. 1) up through Will Guthrie (vol. 12) — are still here today. If we can help repay what’s been stolen from them, they’ll be here tomorrow, too.

Eric McDowell  

 Loren Connors & Oren Ambarchi — Leone (Family Vineyard) 

Leone by Loren Connors & Oren Ambarchi

This is the first time that Loren Connors and Oren Ambarchi have collaborated, despite the myriad ties that bind the two guitarists across the global exploratory music scene. Leone offers a trio of pieces arranged like overlapping globs of paint on a painter’s palette: the two artists each perform solo with a collaborative piece in between. “Lorn” is a side-long Connors piece with the guitarist in an experimental mood, hammering the reverb-drenched strings to create a glorious cacophony. Ambarchi’s “Nor” recasts the guitar first as a church organ and then as a subaquatic communications device. When the two pair up for “Ronnel,” it is a symbiotic meeting. Connors picks out notes around which Ambarchi weaves contrails of tone. It is a mesmerizing piece, and, we hope, just the first of many joint efforts from these two.    

Bryon Hayes

Buck Curran — WFMU 'The Frow Show' Live Session (Feat. Jodi Pedrali) (Obsolete Recordings)

Buck Curran: WFMU 'The Frow Show' Live Session (Feat. Jodi Pedrali) by Obsolete Recordings

When we last caught up with Buck Curran, he was hunkered down at then ground zero for the COVID epidemic, socially isolating in Bergamo, Italy while recording the lovely acoustic-guitar-and-voice album, No Love Is Sorrow. Half a year later, still deep in the grip of a worldwide pandemic, he made this record, a duet with Italian keyboard player Jodi Pederali, revisiting one song from the previous album and adding three others. The tracks with Pederali fuse Curran’s electric blues with the bright, meditative melodies of Pederali’s piano. The two players interact and overlap in intoxicating dialogue. “Deep in the Lovin’ Arms of My Babe,” reprises the finger-picked folk of Curran’s earlier album, adding a glittering sprinkle of piano to its mournful, wistful melody. The set was recorded for Jess Jarnow’s show on WFMU and released on Bandcamp, and while not as long or as weighty as No Love Is Sorrow, it’s well worth hearing.

Jennifer Kelly  

 Jürg Frey — l’air, l’instant - deux pianos (Elsewhere)

l'air, l'instant - deux pianos by Jürg Frey

When you put two pianos together, there must surely be a temptation to see how much sound you can get out of them.  Swiss composer Jürg Frey does the opposite on the two compositions that make up this CD. Each is so sparse that an inattentive listener might think they are hearing one patient pianist, when in fact they are hearing a pair of deeply skilled interpreters.  The task assigned to Reinier van Houdt and Dante Boon is to place their notes in such precise relation to each other that they can influence each other’s pitches without interfering with them. Each musician is, as the title “toucher l’air (deux pianos)” (2019) suggests, inducing a slight disturbance in the atmosphere, lightly pressing transitory shapes into the silence that absorbs each note. “Entre les deux l’instant” (2017/2018) allows the two pianists to decide how closely they will match paces as they trade the roles of melodist and accentuator. Immune to gauche temptation, Frey seems drawn instead to see how much attention and how little sound it takes to accentuate the beauty of silence.

Bill Meyer

 Chris Garneau — The Kind (The Orchard)

THE KIND by Chris Garneau

Chris Garneau’s lush, stunning art-pop swoops and whirls and flutters in wild arcs of drama. In this fifth album, the New York City songwriter works in a restrained palette of guitar, piano, electronics and drums, but colors way outside the box with his vibrant, emotional-laden voice, which flies up into a falsetto register with an ease not heard since Jeff Buckley passed. “I know you loved me truly, but we don’t love one way, do we?” he croons on the gorgeous “Telephone,” lofting up into whistle range without losing the purity or the trueness of his tone. Cuts like the title song and “Now On” are prayerfully simple, just framing piano chords and Garneau’s highly charged delivery. But others like “Not the Child” are more intricately constructed with a lattice of picked strings, an antic syncopated beat and staccato vocal counterpoints that dance around the main line. The Kind’s songs are deeply personal and rooted in Garneau’s experiences as gay man, but they’ll resonate with anyone who’s ever loved or longed or regretted.

Jennifer Kelly

Gaunt Emperor — Femur (Self-released)

Femur by Gaunt Emperor

Some would-be emperors may no longer have clothes (looking at you, Trump), but Gaunt Emperor is unabashed about wearing its influences on its sleeve. Femur is the first LP by this California project, and Sunn 0))) and the first few records released by Earth are large presences, looming hugely just behind the sounds Gaunt Emperor generates. If you’re familiar with those other bands, you get the essential idea: deep (really deep) notes and long (really long) sustain from loud (really loud) guitars, and not much else. That said, Gaunt Emperor has an aesthetic vision that seems to be attempting to survey its own territory. While compositions like “Slow Submersion” and “The Birth of Obsidian” work from the playbook established by O’Malley and Anderson, the textures of Gaunt Emperor’s guitar tone have their own sort-of-subtle qualities. They’re pretty good. “Conception,” the second track on Femur, expresses a similar inclination towards melody that Earth began to demonstrate on The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (2008), but Gaunt Emperor retains an unrestrained relation to volume; you can feel the heat inexorably building in the overdriven amplifier stack. In any case, this is suitable music for pondering massive, ongoing phenomena, like the calving of icebergs off Antarctica’s coast or the steady disappearance of the Amazonian rainforest — not that Femur will make you feel any better about that stuff.

Jonathan Shaw

 Luka Kuplowsky — Stardust (Mama Bird)

Stardust by Luka Kuplowsky

Soft jazzy reveries coalesce around this Toronto songwriter’s offhand, semi-spoken melodies. Little accents of acoustic bass, slide guitar, hushed harmonies dart in and out of focus, but the songs themselves come up on you obliquely, filtering in from the vents in evocatively scented clouds. Rhythms sway in undulant, bossa nova syncopations, while chords slide into resolution from slightly off center. A half-remembered jazz flute lick lick lofts through the window. At the center of it all is Luka himself, posing, but not insisting on koan-like observations. “Perfection is a noose,” he confides amid the muted wreck and roll of massed jazz sounds in “City by the Window,” but he seems unbothered by it. Perfection is an accident, and if you look at it too hard, it disappears.

Jennifer Kelly

 José Lencastre / Hernâni Faustino / Vasco Furtado — Vento (Phonogram Unit)

Vento by José Lencastre / Hernâni Faustino / Vasco Furtado

Vento is the Portuguese word for wind, and the name conveys that combination of purposeful and chance operations that converged to make this record happen. The trio of alto saxophonist José Lencastre, double bassist Hernâni Faustino and drummer Vasco Furtado didn’t book a studio with the intent to record; they just wanted a place to play for a couple hours. But the engineers had just obtained some microphones and wanted to try out their new toys. Likewise, this improvisational trio did not bring an tunes to the session, but they play with a purposefulness born of shared aesthetic values. Whether are sailing a brisk clip, as on the title track, or gradually unwinding the music at low volume and velocity, as on “Ruínas,” they operate as a real time compositional cooperative, developing their music in linear fashion. While they share a direction, they also value contrast. For example, Lencastre’s breathy tone during the latter tune’s early moments balances Faustino’s pointed twang. Since remorseless microoganisms and anti-cultural politicians are each doing their best to keep live music down, records like this serve a necessary function in reminding us of the life force that motivates improvised music.

Bill Meyer

Lilys — A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns (Frontier)

A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns by Lilys

Kurt Heasley’s Lilys made some of the most ebullient and inventive guitar music of the 1990s. The best Lilys songs sound as though they’re flying apart and being put back together as they hurtle along, killer hooks tossed aside as quickly as they start to drag you in. Though they’re perhaps best known for their Kinks-indebted breakthrough Better Can’t Make Your Life Better, this was actually a sharp turn away from the dense shoegazey atmospherics of their first couple of records. Thus far, Frontier Records has reissued their first two albums, In the Presence of Nothing and Eccsame the Photon Band, both of which are superb. The A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns EP was originally released in 1994, a transitional period when Heasley was still exploring the textural joys of distorted guitars while starting to throw down pop hooks with aplomb. Opener “Ginger” hits similar pleasure centers as Weezer’s debut, released the same year, while on “Dandy,” Heasley’s vocal sounds uncannily like Stephen Malkmus. The previously unreleased “G. Cobalt Franklin” foregrounds searing guitar tones and bulbous bass, the bulk of the melodic layers sounding like they’re bleeding through from the next room, peppered with swirling flange and voice recordings. The second half of this expanded edition comprises songs originally demoed for Eccsame the Photon Band, and later released in 2000 on a split EP with Aspera Ad Astra. They’re decent enough, though feel like they’re missing the spark of the best Lilys creations. So, while this amounts to a far-from-essential Lilys release, it’s fascinating to hear Heasley in transition, working out how to reconcile his love for melody with his immersion in guitar noise.

Tim Clarke

 Fred Lonberg-Holm — Lisbon Solo (Notice)

Lisbon Solo by Fred Lonberg-Holm

As befits a guy who has also recorded a “solo” record in the company of a Florida swamp full of frogs, Fred Lonberg-Holm picks his recording locations strategically, and location has a lot to do with how this album turned out. It was done at an old and well-appointed studio in Lisbon, Portugal, where he could be sure that the microphones would catch every creak, groan and polyphonic wail he might draw out of his main instrument. But he also knew, from prior visits, that he would have access to some seriously over-the-hill pianos. While most of the album is devoted to savagely bowed attacks, the odd digressions into detuned, radiant chimes deliver just enough respite to keep you off balance and on the edge of your seat.

Bill Meyer 

 Dan Melchior — Odes (Cudighi Records)  

'Odes' by Dan Melchior

Dan Melchior is likely a recognizable name to Dusted readers; he has made quite a string of releases over the years. This cassette/digital release, recorded in 2016, is a subdued affair, nine songs for the most part following the same blueprint: a track of strummed or lightly picked acoustic guitar with a fuzzy electric lead layered on top. The foundational guitar tracks establish a calm, repetitive cycle, giving some of these songs an almost raga-like feel, in some cases through a hazy reverb: "Tybee" feels like you're sitting in the next room listening to him play through a closed door.  

Calling the overdubs "guitar leads" implies the wrong feel. While played through fuzz or distortion, the mood is a woozy one, more opiated than energetic, but in a drifting, pleasant way. There's an over-arching melancholy throughout these songs, one person alone playing to satisfy a need. Knowing Melchior was facing the recent loss of his wife Letha certainly colors it, but even a listener ignorant of that back-story would feel the emotional resonance.  

These nine ramshackle, loose instrumental pieces are personal, incomplete, and like having someone entrust you with private stories in song form.  

Mason Jones

Mint Field — Sentimiento Mundial (Felte)

Sentimiento Mundial by Mint Field

Mint Field, from Mexico City, filters the feedback and noise of shoegaze guitars through a pensive screen, finding an aura of nostalgia in between and among blinding walls of scree. Estrella del Sol Sánchez contributes two of the band’s signature sounds, the dreamy, delicate vocals and the swirling masses of altered guitar. She is supported by Sebastian Neyra on bass and Callum Brown on drums. The volume level varies song to song, but it’s all mesmerizing and good. “Delicadeza” breezes in on the tenderest sort of sigh, the softest, most lyrical strummed accompaniment, but “Contingencia” digs in and pounds, drums cranking, bass thudding and guitars winging out in wild arabesques of distorted sound. The easiest comparison might be the similarly hauntingly voiced Lush, but there’s something special here in the soft, keening soprano calm at the center of even the most agitated cuts.  

Jennifer Kelly

 Roy Montgomery — Island of Lost Souls (Grapefruit)

Roy Montgomery 40th Anniversary 2021 LP Series by Roy Montgomery

In 2021, guitarist Roy Montgomery celebrates 40 years of music-making with the release of four new LPs, beginning with Island of Lost Souls. Though 2018’s fantastic Suffuse included vocals from artists such as Haley Fohr (Circuit Des Yeux), Julianna Barwick and Liz Harris (Grouper), Island of Lost Souls is entirely instrumental, comprising four pieces, each dedicated to a late artist (actor Sam Shepard, and musicians Adrian Borland, Peter Principle and Florian Fricke). Though wordless, Montgomery’s guitar speaks volumes, flickering and flowing with the liquid grace of a player intimately familiar with both his fretboard and the effects pedals at his feet, sending waves of tone cascading with delay and reverb. Plus, on the side-long, climactic “The Electric Children of Hildegard von Bingen,” Montgomery pitch-shifts his guitar so it really ascends to the heavens, where it takes up residence for 22 minutes. Fans of Windy & Carl, Flying Saucer Attack and The Durutti Column, take note.

Tim Clarke

 Jon Mueller — Family Secret (American Dreams)

Family Secret by Jon Mueller

A family secret is usually a multigenerational skeleton in the closet that is either sorrowful or sinister. For percussionist and Volcano Choir member Jon Mueller, it is the former: a series of familial rifts that became the unlikely muse for this collection of reverberating drones. Mueller employs instruments that produce multiple resonant tones, such as singing bowls and gongs, to create rich pools of complex sound. Metallic hues brighten subterranean rumblings while enigmatic dapples of condensed steam coalesce into liquid shapes. The drummer conjures ghastly creatures through extending the vocabulary of his drum kit. Cymbal scrapes become banshee wails and scoured skins emanate uncanny whispers. With Family Secret, Mueller manifests his personal demons as phantom signals. He transmogrifies emotional strife into physical actions which then become ethereal. Ironically, the resulting sounds are actually soothing. Pain has never sounded so sweet.  

Bryon Hayes 

 Primitive Motion — Descendants of Air (Kindling)

Primitive Motion is the Brisbane-based duo of Sandra Selig and Leighton Craig, and Descendants of Air is their seventh album, previously only available as a CD given away at live shows. You can immediately imagine what the album sounds like based on the artist name and album title alone: rustic yet cosmic, full of space and open to spontaneity. Recorded on the banks of the Enoggera Reservoir, these eight meandering pieces prominently feature the sounds of wind and leaves, plus the calls of raucous Australian birds, while Selig and Craig insinuate suggestions of melodies and chords on nylon-string guitar, woodwinds, and battery-powered keyboards, and gently massage the air with percussive patters. Though part of the appeal of the recording is its deliberate vagueness, the most affecting piece, and the shortest, is “True Orbit,” where a strident theme built around melodica, keyboard and voice seems to emerge fully formed from the aether.

Tim Clarke

 Socioclast — S/T (Carbonized Records)

Socioclast by Socioclast

In heavy music’s current moment of endless genre-hopping and hybridization, it’s nice to hear a record that understands exactly what it wants to be. Socioclast is a grindcore record. Like Assück’s grindcore’s records. A lot like Assück’s grindcore records. You get all the high-velocity chugging crunch and guttural grunting — vocals so deep in the gullet that it’s pretty hard to pick up any lyrics. The song titles, however, suggest the ideological dispositions you might expect: “Surveillance, Normalization, Examination,” “Specter Signal,” “Psychodrone,” “Propaganda Algorithm.” There can be a fine line between paying tribute and being derivative, but Socioclast creates an homage rather than an outright imitation. This is 21st-century music. It sounds a lot clearer and slicker than anything Assück or the early Slap A Ham bands committed to vinyl. Like Slap A Ham, Socioclast is a California-based musical phenomenon, featuring dudes who have played in bands like Deadpressure and Mortuous; Colin Tarvin’s death-metal grooves are especially prominent on some of the record’s best tracks, including “Eden’s Tongue” and “Omega.” But this is assertively a grindcore record. Given that version of traditionalism (and yes, events have come to such a pass that grindcore has a tradition), it turns out that Socioclast isn’t all that socioclastic. So goes the strangeness of semantics. But the music is good.

Jonathan Shaw

 Space Quartet — Under the Sun (Noise Precision Library)

Under the Sun by Space Quartet

Space is a persistent and multi-faceted theme in the music of the Portuguese electronic musician, Rafael Toral. And while his name is not appended to the Space Quartet’s, make no mistake, this is his band, playing his music. But it is a music derived from ideas that can’t be realized without the right people. So, while Toral has delved repeatedly into the sounds that people imagine they might make and that they actually find in outer space, and he has explored empty and variously filled spaces as starting points for his music, the point of the Space Quartet is to find the right people, and give them enough space to realize a new kind of jazz. Under the Sun is the combo’s second recording, made with a substantially different line-up than the iteration that recorded the self-titled debut for Clean Feed Records. Toral has sacrificed the all-electronic front line and switched drummers, but in doing so he may have found the right crew to take him where he needs to go. Across the album’s two 21-minute-long tracks, there are usually several ongoing dialogues taking place between the players, which manifest intriguing degrees of mutual challenge and support. But the way that Toral’s elongated feedback lines and Nuno Torres’ stuttering alto saxophone phrases flow around Hugo Antunes’ stark, elastic double bass figures and percussionist Nuno Morão’s lightly deployed, carefully modulated streams of textures and beats that extends a lineage anchored in the language that Cecil Taylor’s trio first released into the air at the Café Montmartre back in 1962.

Bill Meyer 

 Stinkhole — Mold Encrusted Egg (Mangel Records)

MOLD ENCRUSTED EGG by STINKHOLE

The name sort of says it all, but to clarify anyways: Stinkhole languishes in a slimy musical ditch, bottoming out somewhere between the No Wave skronk of Mars and the transgressive caterwauling of Suckdog. As was the case with both of those acts, the dissonance and the gross-out antics can obscure some interesting ideas. Clawing your way through the dense layers of yuck (or, depending on how you’re wired, enjoying it) is integral to the challenge posed by the experience. All the gagging vocalizations, primitivist drumming and semi-tuned bass whomps on Mold Encrusted Egg occupy prominent positions on the surface of songs like “Orange Juice.” But listen to Mold Encrusted Egg a little more closely: there are some rabid grooves, feral guitar breaks and a lot of impenetrably weird environments of sampled sounds, tape manipulations and unidentifiable scree. Is it fun? Does it sound good? Fuck no. The band’s name is Stinkhole. They write songs with titles like “Slippin’ on Slug Slime” and “Emancipated by Hair.” They roll with the whacko punk and noise bands that have congregated around the Berlin-based Flennen digital music zine and its accompanying label. Dig the stink. Rock has rarely been so richly rotten.

Jonathan Shaw

 Styrofoam Winos — S-T (Sophomore Lounge)

STYROFOAM WINOS "S/T" by Styrofoam Winos

Stryofoam Winos brings together three old friends to swap songs in Nashville. You might recognize Lou Turner from her solo album, Songs for John Venn, a sly and subversion of the songwriter’s wholesome alt-country charm. Joe Kenkel is a kindred spirit, a folk rock singer with respect but not reverence for the certitudes of Southern life. Says Nashville Scene of his solo Dream Creator, “Kenkel, a sophisticated folk-rock songwriter, documents Music City’s idiosyncrasies on his debut LP, with acutely observant lyrics.”  And Trevor Nikrant completes this anonymous all-star line-up; his 2017 debut caught the ear of Aquarium Drunkard’s J. Steel who called it “Oddball baroque psychedelia broadcasted from a basement on the east side.” The three kicked things off with a lo-fi and charming debut, Winos at Home, in 2017, but this self-titled LP takes things up a notch with songs that balance craft with eccentricity. “Stuck in a Museum” jangles and rambles in an antic, neurotically intelligent way, as the narrator finds himself entrapped amid the exhibits, staring fixedly at a teapot from the Tang Dynasty. “Roy G. Biv” turns contemplative—and twangy—as Turner sings plaintively about rainbows and colors, the way things change and how hard it can be to keep up. “Maybe More” glints with mandolin, but remains pared back, as a down-trodden singer (one of the guys, not sure which) sings about a life stuck in neutral, same book, same coat, same jokes, but beautiful. The disc has the feel of a warm, casual gathering, with friends jumping in on harmonies or picking up the bass. The songs are sharp and lovely without a lot of fuss.

Jennifer Kelly

[batfamily14]

Jason!Hades x Reader!Persephone. Part four: Turning point.

An: As Zeus preys after young Persephone, Hades takes up Althea’s offer and hides her in the underworld. Things grow tense as the polar opposite meet but soon they both find themselves helplessly falling for another. Tags: @sarcasmismyfirstlove @loxbbg @champagnesugamama @jason-todd-squad

Jason desperately needed a distraction, something to submerge himself into to forget the past few days with y/n. He neglected his selfish thoughts of the carriage ride home. How she embraced him and slept upon him. How comfortable and warm he felt.

He dived into his judgments and often held trials all day and night.

“Jason!” A familiar voice chimes. Y/n enters in the great hall, flowers blooming at her feet, ones he didn’t recognize.

He look down at them curiously. “What are these ?”

She looks down at the flowers almost surprised by their present and groans.

“Gardenias.”

Jason reaches down to touch them , the flowers are soft and gorgeous. It makes y/n blush gold all the way up to her ears by the way he touches them.

He leans his head up looking at her. “What do they mean?” He asks.

Y/n eyes go wide and her face blushes more in embarrassment. “Nothing. I’m just losing some control over my powers lately.”

Jason nods, accepting her answer. Which makes y/n sigh in relief. “Do you wanna spend the afternoon with me?” She asks. Jason freezes, he hadn’t expected her to be so forward.

“Yes.” He said unsure. “I would like to speak with you in the library. Spend some time alone?” She adds.

Jason mentally shudders at the idea of being alone with her. “Of course.” He says.

He bent down and plucked a flower from the ground. Y/n winces when she hears the tiny “ouch” coming from the plant, only she heard.

Jason tucks the flower behind his ear. “How do I look?” he said seriously making a straight face. Y/n lets out a loud laugh. “Handsome as always.” She answers. Her response makes Jason smile. He winks walking away as another shade’s judgement begins. He can’t help but the notice small flowers blossoming at his feet. He throws a look back at her, and she shrugs. “Orange lilies.” She says.

—————————————————-

When y/n wakes its nearly nighttime. Although it’s hard to tell because the sun never visits the underworld. Y/n sits up stretching, eyes squinting in the dark room. She reaches to her bed frame noticing more flowers has bloomed, pink roses.

She sighs leaning over, finding more of them spouting on the ground.

She rises from the bed stepping over the flowers. She walks out the bedroom doorway making her way down the dark castle halls to the library. Jason back turned, sits quietly reading on his couch.

She sits next him as he reads the book intently. She isn’t sure how long she must had be watching him but she figures it was a long time. Because Jason yawns, he starts stretching making his back pop. His legs reaching out as he pushes his book aside.

Y/n tries to hide her distraction as she randomly picks up a tossed book but she moves too fast and cuts her finger. Distantly she hears Jason’s sleepy questions.

“I’m fine.” She dismisses. Jason is suddenly next to her but she barely hears him as she eyes how he’s dressed. He kneels before , holding her hand looking at the small cut. His hair is messy and clothing different from his usual attire. His strong arms and well built legs peering out from his shirt and shorts. Her brain is blank as she stares , trying not to linger too long on his scars. When Jason ushers her to his room, she moves without being fully aware or in control of what’s she doing. He sits her on his bed , and begins searching through his bathroom, coming back moments later with a small first aid kit.

It’s a caring side y/n has never seen before. He insists he takes care of the wound. Jason continues asking little questions but y/n can barely think as she focuses on his hands touching hers. She snaps out her trance when he sits beside her, grinning. His face challenging.

She smirks. “Not gonna kiss it better?” She says. The words send fire through Jason. His eyes glowing a dark red. The look sends a burst of gardenias through the room. Y/n barely has time to recover as Jason lifts her hand to his lips, y/n’s breath is caught in her throat. He gentle kisses her finger tip and then flips her hand over to kiss her palm. Y/n feels herself blush. He gives her a slanted smile, releasing her hand. She swears to herself when more flowers grown near his feet. She feels so dizzy now, but it’s a good feeling. The one that she only feels during moments like this. Jason stares at the flowers beneath his feet, his toes brushing against them. “I didn’t think so many things could grow in the underworld.” He says.

“It’s nice.” It takes a moment for y/n to regather herself. He must know what he is doing to her right? She makes a small noise of surprise , when he reaches past her to grab a book from his dresser. “It’s a bit of a romance novel, but I thought you’d enjoyed it.” She looks over the book, it looked like it had been kept in good condition, cared for.

She reads the title, “A Day Without You by Jaime Clarke”

She clutches the book close to her chest. “Thank you , Jason.”

He chuckles, “Of course.”

“There can’t be anything wrong with feeling this way.” She thought.

Demeter had often warded off men and warned her of the selflessness of the Gods, but this felt different with Jason. He felt new and refreshing. The way he accidentally touches her at times makes her forget how to breathe.

“Let me read to you before bed.” He suggests. Y/n nods and leans back onto bed as he opens the book. He clears his throat as he begins.

“I held her close to me tonight. Wondering if anything in my life had meant something until now. I was in love and finally getting control of myself I kissed her. I bought my hands to her body, my eyes closed. The softness of her skin against my own. It wasn’t that long of a kiss, it wasn’t the ones you’ve seen in the movies or read in novels. It was real but short, almost forbidden. I couldn’t remember anything but only the the moment our lips touched. It was wonderful and was a certain bliss that could leave you dazed for days. I knew I’d remember this forever.”

Y/n could feel her powers trying to gather more flowers but she held them down. She loathes for more to happen, feeling the room growing unbearably hot.

She needed to leave, and quickly.

“Could we finish this tomorrow?” She interrupts.

Jason stops hesitating, “you sure?”

“How about I read some of it in my room and tell you what I think tomorrow.” She says , ignoring the pink roses blooming. Jason says nothing, tracing the flowers petals with his toes again. “I’d like that.” He says.

They whisper a goodnight and she paces away to her room nearly slamming the door.

She leaps in her bed, snapping the book open.

She begins reading where Jason left off. “Love is always kind, it is us who are rude and impatient to another. There are no limitations of love, it’s here for anyone. Love is only truth, and the truth is I could not live without her.”

Y/n squirms burying her head into her pillow.

“Could this mean more? Him giving this to me?” She thought. She shakes her head. “No. I’m overthinking it.” She groans shoving a hand through her hair frustrated.

“Oh, Jason what are we doing?”

———————————————

Orange lilies- desire

Pink roses- desire

Gardenia - lust