#it's late and i'm incomprehensible but this is murdering me

[armulyn]

excuse me but the mental scars images created by 'cave paintings' WILL NOT leave me alone. [Spoilers through WatWK]

Artham and Esben, on opposite sides of the sea, both settled in facades of a home while pining for their family?? Artham high in the trees to escape the ground like a hawk and Esben deep in a forested cave like a hibernating bear entrenched in the fruits of Gnag's cruelty?? Both processing trauma and struggling to recall their past through the arts they were taught as Annierans?? Artham with his stacks and stacks of journals and Esben with wall upon wall of paintings??

[lovelykhaleesiii]

hi there! would you be up to writing smut

Dark!Aemond? something for example with age difference, daddy kink, corruption kink, degradation and breeding? If you are comfortable then Reader could be a Targaryen what would be great but if you aren't comfortable then Stark is perfect too

Twisted, Beautiful Minds.

PAIRING: Dark!Aemond Targaryen x fem!Niece!Reader

WORDS: 2,677.

WARNINGS: mentions of warfare/murder, mentions of death-threats, swearing, degradation kink, choking, Daddy kink, corruption kink, breeding kink, manipulation, narcissistic tendencies, male oral receiving [cock sucking], mentions of p in v sexual intercourse.

A/N - you know I'm always down for some dark!Aemond... I want to also dedicate this piece, as a small bday gift to my wonderful friend Mar @aemondsmoon you have been an absolute light for me on this hellsite, and one of my dearest friends... thank you for always being there for me, and thank you for being you. you are an absolute gem, don't ever change. ilysm! 🤍

The turmoil and toils of war had finally come to an end, when Aegon the Elder, your Uncle, had commanded Sunfyre to set your beloved mother, Rhaenyra, and younger brother, Aegon III, to death by dragonfire. Your heart shattered, and mind numb, you were certain your own death was imminent in the moments after: at the very least, your Uncle would punish you with a dragonrider's death... Yet that would not be the case at all.

It seemed other plans had been set in stone. Chained and escorted by the Kingsguard to return to King's Landing once more, where you had only days previous, fled in fear, were you welcomed by the cold stares of the "Green" Council. Your chains removed, as neither the King nor his Mother, had seen you as a threat, you felt no purpose to resist nor to fight back... Your family dead, your will had died along with them.

"Fetch for Aemond. Tell my younger brother that his betrothed has returned."

His stern words felt incomprehensible in your thoughtless mind, lagging to understand the notion. You felt a cool, chill course through your weak body, rigid as though you had turned to stone, and yet, you were still breathing, still ever so present. No one had consulted you on such plans or schemes. And you were certain that Aemond himself would definitively refuse to marry the daughter of a traitor [as you presumed he would justify]. Your Uncle, Aemond, was a formidable man, fought against your late father, and had emerged the victor... And as the war, and the recent imprisoned days had taken its toll on you, your eyes darkened with the lack of sleep, unable to eat a crumb of bread, you did not look as you once had in your frivolous court, as he had once remembered you.

Although, as he sauntered into the room with such poise and stature, a certain charisma of that of a victor oozing about him, with not a single word exchanged, other than a devious smirk supplanted across his once serious face...It seemed there was more to the union than meets the eye.

Since your captive return to King's Landing, a place in which you had once considered your home, felt nothing more foreign. The stone sand walls that you had walked and run through as a child, now looked strange, the unfamiliar symbols of the Seven proudly hung around every available wall and space, gave an ominous feel. The halls seemed less brighter, even during the break of day, with the sunlight blatant in the sky, you instinctively felt as though a shadow lurked around every corner, attentive to your every move.

Dragonless, and defenceless, you were less of a threat than the younger Princess, Jahaera. The King and his Council had deemed you stable enough to roam the castle grounds freely, with a close knight in pursuit, only to ensure your own "protection" [as Aegon would admit that Aemond insisted], although you saw it more as means to deter you from being tempted to run away.

Regardless, Aemond had not spoken a word to you since hearing of the betrothal. He attended dinners with you in sight, although you rarely spoke yourself, mostly pleading and bickering with Alicent to remain in the desolate confines of your chambers. She was incessant about you joining the family, as the union was to be set in a moon's turn.

He dared not even to sit beside you: constantly at opposing ends. Although, there were rare occasions you had caught the younger Prince, brazenly staring at you with his one good eye. Unapologetically, his full attention spanned towards you, even if he had noticed you had become aware, he did not cease gawking.

Something about his looming gaze made you feel uneasy, very much on edge: a dark tinge to his violet eye, his pupils darkened as they seemed dilated. It inevitably made your stomach churn, only forcing you to resign in defeat, often excusing yourself to bed.

And often you were left undisturbed to recluse in your chambers... Although tonight, it seemed you were not alone in your ventures.

Retracing the exact steps you would take most nights, often on your lonesome return to your quarters: this time there was an accompanying sound in the distance, echoing down the hallway behind you. Heavy footsteps that caught your immediate attention. Slowly panning around, the shimmer of his lengthy, silver hair against the pale moonlight that peaked through the open crescents of the corridor, was alluring to your eye. Halting in your tracks, your breath hitched against your throat, all in trepidation, as Aemond effortlessly caught up with you in a few short strides. This was the closest he had ever truly come up to you, his towering height against you, made him even more daunting face to face.

"Running off to bed again, I see. And why is that?"

The sudden eruption of his deep, low voice breaking the stillness of the castle passage, startled you uneasily. You had exchanged many words and conversations with your elder Uncle before, during an ancient time long before the Dance had spurred. Although, the dynamics had inevitably changed, blood had been shed viciously and cruel words spat. Despite the same Valyrian blood coursing through your veins as of your betrothed, you felt solitary in their surrounding presence.

"I-I lost my appetite, U-Uncle. I wish to retire for the night," You aimlessly stutter, too weak to hold eye contact with Aemond, whose gaze remained fixated on you. His vibrant lilac orb luring over every inch of your timid body.

"Do you think it wise to roam the castle your lonesome self? Has the war not taught you otherwise? Is my niece still that same stupid, little whore I have known?"

His harsh remarks shadowed by that familiar, sly grin struck across his slim face, was plenty to furnace an incoming reaction from you, your blood boiling beneath your tender skin.

"Ah- tongue tied now, princess? Have I struck a chord with you, hmm? Mayhaps you are as weak as your father was... Now, how would he feel knowing you are to marry me? That I'll fuck his little girl, like the common whores he saw."

Your mind had no correlation to your hand, and yet the simmering rage that blistered through your body sent your mind to abyss. The small palm of your hand, strikingly latched across Aemond's face furiously. And yet, although a sharp stinging sensation poured across your hand, Aemond remained unfazed and sturdy. It seemed you had smacked the grin across his face, and in its stead, that familiar, unnerving dark tinge in his eyes scorned across at you.

Before you knew it, Aemond gripped your sides firmly, forcing your body forward, as he harshly shoved you against the cold, stone wall.

"You think that wise, whore? After the mercy I fucking showed you. I could have your fucking hand for that, or worse your head. My pretty wife's head on a spike, I'll have it right outside my window."

The cruelty that oozed from his precise lips was relentless. You wanted to burst into tears or more, burst into flames there and then...

"Do you know how long I have waited to have you under my very touch? All the sacrifices I made, the arguments I fought against my own Council to keep you alive? Ungrateful fucking bitch. Did your Daddy not teach you to be a good, obedient girl?"

One of Aemond's calloused, rough hands reached up hastily, his long fingers wrapping just so lightly around your throat, as his thumb gently stroked at your lips. His viable eye ogling tentatively over your mouth, smacking his lips innately.

"I'm your fucking Daddy now. Teach you how to be a proper lady, and a good fucking wife. I'm going to fuck that pretty pussy of yours, till you are dripping of me. I'll have you begging like a pathetic, stupid whore. I'll fuck you till I have heirs of my own, till I see fit that you have disgraced your extinct, traitorous bloodline."

"A-Aem, U-Uncle-" You breathlessly whimper in fear: freshly, swelled tears glaze your vision, as they begin to clear with each shedding streak.

"What did I just fucking say? I'm not your Uncle anymore, bitch. I'm your fucking Daddy. You would be helpless without me. Probably dead without my doing. You fucking owe me."

"Y-Yes-" Another breathless whimper, although Aemond's grip loosened, his other hand began to slowly move its way over towards your breast. His uninjured eye moving in motion with his hand, eagerly wandering over your bust. That same, very hand, began to keenly grope at your plush side, kneading at your breast tenderly, it felt foreign and sensitive under his strange touch.

"All fucking mine... Finally. Did you really think, I would let some insolent lord have you to himself? I'd start a war for you, I won the war for you. And now you're going to repay me, just so-"

A mindless moan flew out of your wet lips, catching you abruptly by surprise, and by the looks of it Aemond, as his blackened pupil dilated with a ravenous hunger, his ears pricking and leaning forward in delight.

"I'll have you moaning for more, precious. Now on your fucking knees-"

Even with the hatred that roared deep within your belly, you felt reluctant to retaliate, as you knew Aemond would effortlessly overpower you. As he had in your youth, when you were caught in a brawl with him, often ending with him wrestling you to the ground. And after his detailed spill of such vile threats, you dared not to risk the second chance of life, you had been granted.

Your knees hit the concrete floor with some brutality, although you regained from the ache. As you steadied your propped position, your hands gripping tightly at Aemond's slim waist, he began to undo his grey, washed out trousers.

The sheer sight of his cock, was intense enough to have you questioning whether you could even take him. Although slim in girth, his length was extraordinary. A reddened tip just oozing lusciously with a white, clear film glistening over the crown.

"Suck Daddy real good, bitch. Show me that, that mouth has other good uses than for talking back."

Your attention lurking from below, dropping from Aemond's face to his cock and back up once more to his face: the sudden change in his mood shifting was palpable. The momentary, light-hearted look of ecstasy dismantled as a cold, unsettling gaze resumed across his handsome face, lingering over your kneeled state.

"Make me fucking repeat myself one more time, whore and I'll treat you worse than a whore. I'll have you forget that you are a Targaryen princess."

Aemond's large hands found their way at the base of your skull, teasingly stroking your loose strands away from your face, within a few seconds the sudden shove towards him, left you physically speechless. Your mouth slightly agape, was enough for Aemond's stiffened, pulsating tip to propel its way into your tight mouth. The friction of his hard cock against your silky, warm flesh inside, was enough to set Aemond's breathing into a speedy pace. Lean chest heaving, the mindless groaning on his behalf was somewhat alluring. You had never seen nor heard such sounds or vulnerability in Aemond before.

"F-Fuck, that feels so fucking good- Just as I prayed to the Gods. I'm going to make your mouth so numb, so fucking filthy of me, you'll be tasting me still in the months to come."

No coherent words exchanged from below his waist, only muffled moans and breath hitches, as you sulked with crave. As much as it infuriated you, pained you to admit, the feeling of Aemond's rigid, throbbing cock in your mouth, was elevating. You had to admit, in your youth, previous to the blood that had been shed, you had a childhood feverish crush on your elder Uncle, although thought it unlikely that anything would flourish from it.

"Seven Hells. Such a pretty whore, with a pretty mouth. J-Just the p-prettiest whore in the Seven Kingdoms."

With each plunge, rhythmically bobbing backwards and forwards, the raw taste of Aemond's cum, tastefully filling your mouth to capacity, as a mixture of his reside and your own saliva oozed from your crevices. The dreading thought of being caught in such a contentiously vulnerable position, especially before being wedded, was disturbing enough, for you were not yet widely favoured by the Council...

"Ughh- Swallow and get up, whore."

Self-disgust stirred nauseatingly in the pit of your gut, as you reluctantly devoured small mouthfuls of Aemond's load, almost convincing yourself you would retch it all up in a matter of seconds. Much to your relief, you remained poised, meekly wiping away the mess across your lips, shying away from Aemond's unmoving regard. As you regained your normal pace of breathing, Aemond lent a hand over, grasping your undivided attention. With such ease, Aemond aided you, lifting you up to stand, before confining you closely between the wall and his heated body once more, closing whatever space was made between.

"Now let's see what that cunt has to offer."

His skilful hands hiking your layered gown up, making way for his arms to snake around your bare thighs, lifting you idly off the ground.

"Can't wait till the wedding to tarnish you, I've waited long enough."

A sudden bolt of lightening pain shot from within your inner thighs, as your tight walls stretched out ceaselessly to accommodate, as Aemond shoved his rigid cock inside. Your back flattened against the sandstone wall, its texture rough against the delicate silk of your gown. Burying his length deeper and deeper with each harsh thrust, his heavy balls collided with your silky folds as he vigorously pumped himself back and forth. His pace, although rough, remained steady. His raw, sensitive tip pummelling at your cervix, felt scorching inside your lower belly.

"And if I fuck you so good, that you begin to swell with my child... What would your dead family think of their precious daughter then, huh? These tits belong to me now, and the mother's milk that comes with it. Your entire being belongs to me now. That babe in your belly will be all because of me, and you'll fucking love every bit of it."

"I-I owe you my l-life, D-Daddy-"

The words mindlessly slipped from you lips, and yet it felt instinctual to say. As Aemond's mouth lapped at the sensitive crook of your neck, you felt the smirk of his grin against your skin, his sharp teeth faintly biting at your soft flesh.

"That's right, baby. That's so right my needy, little slut. You have a Daddy now that can really take care of you, protect you... Love you."

The epitome of his words, the calm depth in his voice, had reached its glorifying peak, as Aemond's hot load shot up directly into you, reverently coating your insides. Like some royal orchestra in unison to his final thrust, did a growling moan escape his lips, followed by an whisper of a swear. Leaning his exhausted, heavier mass over you, as he safely guided your legs back down to the surface, his breath densely hot against your ear, his outstretched palms cladded against the wall for support.

"Clean yourself up, Y/N... Wouldn't want anyone else to see you as the whore that you are, and get any ideas-"

His heavy breathing made his voice less formidable and more husky. Eyeing over your form, as you once more scoured and polished up the mess he made between your thighs, with the inner layer of your gown. You simply nodded in response to his demand, before hastily attempting to rush back to the confines of your quarters.

Yet, a firm pull tugged at your elbow, causing you to halt in your tracks, unavoidably.

"I will seek you out again tonight... Be ready for me."

general taglist - @chompchompluke @fan-goddess @malfoytargaryen @hightowhxre @bibli0thecary @m1ndbrand @connorsui @elegantsplendour @randomdragonfires @sylasthegrim @arcielee @s-we-e-t-t-ea @sahvlren @aemondtargaryensrider @watercolorskyy @hypnos-daughter-certified @urmomsgirlfriend1 @backyardfolklore @snowprincesa1 @aegonslawyer

Aemond taglist - @megatardisbaby @harrypotteranna23-blog

credit for divider - @/itbmojojoejo

[withleeknow]

note (1): inspired by this ask. i literally do not know what this is !! i just know that i'm in a bit of a writing slump and i just wanted to post smth, so this is just word vomit lol. yes, i am aware that it is god awful ok bye

note (2): implied dancer!minho but not necessarily idol!minho bc i rarely ever write with them as idols in mind

you're used to late nights at the dance studio.

you often stop by after work and wait for minho to wrap up a session so you could go home together. sometimes, if it's a tougher choreo that he needs more time to really nail down, you'd bring him dinner and observe as he takes the extra hours to really study the movements.

you're sat in your usual corner tonight, watching your boyfriend with mesmerized eyes.

you've been watching him dance for years and yet, you're still blown away every time you see him in his element.

it's a little mind-boggling, a little incomprehensible just how graceful minho is, how he moves like water, how he makes every move look so effortless and poised.

he pauses the music suddenly, stands in the middle of the room for a few seconds to catch his breath, then calls out to you.

"c'mere."

"are you done?"

"no. just come here. wanna show you something."

you go to him out of curiosity. when you're within reach, he turns you to the face the giant mirror. "dance with me."

"what? nuh uh. nope. you know i physically cannot do the things you can."

"this one is easy!" he tries to reason. "it's slower. c'mon, just for a little bit."

of course you're hesitant, even though there's no one else around but the two of you. he's a miracle of movement and you basically have two left feet, zero sense of rhythm and sometimes trip over air.

he pouts a little, presses his lips against your cheek. "i'll show you how."

you bite the inside of your cheek. he takes you into his arms and kisses your face again.

"fifteen minutes tops, yeah?"

minho is cute about it though. he's always cute about it when he wants something.

"ugh, fine. but you can't laugh at me!"

the music starts from the beginning. you watch carefully by his side as he tries to slow down his movements to make it easier for you to follow but jesus it's hard.

"5... 6... 7... 8..."

you look like a cat on cocaine trying to walk like a human.

again, two left feet and absolutely no sense of rhythm at all.

he ends up laughing a little, when you fail to copy the way he skillfully maneuvers his legs and step on your own foot. you wobble for a few seconds trying not to fall on your ass.

"i told you not to laugh!"

"i’m sorry," he apologizes in between giggles. "you're cute. come here."

minho comes stand behind you then, taking your arms and moving them how they're supposed to move, kissing your cheek and the side of your neck whenever you slightly turn your head to follow your movements in the mirror. you blush every time.

it's easier than before, but that's probably just because he's literally operating your limbs like a puppeteer.

"look, you're nailing this."

you roll your eyes. "thanks."

the music dips, the melody flatlines. the song ends. he starts twirling you around a couple of times like you're ballroom dancing, which takes you by surprise a bit, makes you gasp when you finally land against his chest.

he's got his arms around you and a soft smile on his face, even as you look up at him with narrowed eyes, almost a squint.

"that was embarrassing."

"no, it wasn't. you're adorable."

"i was not. i looked like dori on catnip."

"and dori on catnip is adorable."

"that's not the point. when hyunjin misses the beat for half a second, you look like you could murder him on the spot but you call me adorable. check your double standards."

minho just laughs before he ducks down to kiss you sweetly, despite how you try to squirm away from him, complaining that you're starting to get hot even after just 15 minutes of moving around.

"of course i have double standards when it comes to you," he says after breaking the kiss, "you're literally the love of my life."

permanent taglist: @onlyycb97wife @starsandrqindrops @borahae-reads @abbiestearsricochet @cutiespaghetti @anthropologykpopmultistan @moonlinos @mjnhoz @caitlyn98s @piercidh34rts  @stayceebs97 @linocz @yaorzu-blog @biribarabiribbaem @kayleefriedchicken @extrhotjne @caitxx1 @palindrome969 @todorokiskitten @azuna-sz @meanergreener @nxzz-skz @jazziwritesthings @poutypoutybin @bookyeom @jisuperboard @wyzminho @amarecerasus @channection @lastgreatamericandynasty1 @judeduartewannabe @chanshyunjin @firelordtsuki @astronomicallyyy @alm334 (italicized = can’t tag)

[finnlongman]

About Me, My Books, and My Research (2024 Edition)

Hi, I'm Finn, a writer, medievalist, and all-round nerd. You may know me as the author of The Butterfly Assassin, "that person who wrote the trans Cú Chulainn article", the weird nerd in the Tumblr corner writing excessively long and incomprehensibly niche posts about their research, or something else entirely. I am all of those things! (Well, depending on what the 'something else' is, anyway...)

Currently, I'm a PhD student at the University of Cambridge researching friendship in the late Ulster Cycle (c. 12th-17th centuries). I have an MA in Early and Medieval Irish from University College Cork, and wrote my thesis about Láeg mac Ríangabra, my best beloved. I also have an undergrad degree in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic from Cambridge, and wrote my dissertation about queer readings of Táin Bó Cúailnge, including transmasculine readings of Cú Chulainn.

You can find out more about my research on my website, which also includes info about all of my academic publications. This includes the aforementioned "trans Cú Chulainn article", an article about Láeg in the Death of Cú Chulainn, an article about the seven Maines, and a discussion of a conference on Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire from the perspective of my own work on lament and grief. Whenever possible, I try to make my research available Open Access. If you're ever having trouble finding one of my articles, please contact me!

If you want recommendations for books about medieval Irish (or Welsh) literature, this list on my Bookshop page has all my go-to recommendations. If you buy via this link, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, so this is a great way to support me.

I am also an author, and I write both YA and adult novels. Again, my website is the place to go for all the info and links, but a quick summary:

The Butterfly Assassin trilogy (The Butterfly Assassin, 2022; The Hummingbird Killer, 2023; Moth to a Flame, 2024): YA thrillers about a traumatised teenage assassin who is trying (and failing) to live a normal life in a fictional closed city in Yorkshire. Featuring friendship, street art, Esperanto, zero romance, and a whole lot of murder, as well as increasingly unsubtle commentary on the UK arms industry and the military recruitment of vulnerable teenagers.

The Wolf and His King (coming Spring 2025 from Gollancz): a queer retelling of 'Bisclavret' by Marie de France which uses werewolfism as a metaphor to explore chronic pain and illness. Also very much about yearning, exile, and the mortifying ordeal of being known.

The Animals We Became (coming 2026 from Gollancz): a queertrans retelling of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi looking at gender, compulsory heterosexuality, and trauma, through the medium of nonconsensual animal transformations.

To Run With The Hound (coming 2027 from Gollancz): my take on the Ulster Cycle, looking at why Táin Bó Cúailnge is a tragedy and what it means to be doomed by the narrative, but not in the way you thought you were. Featuring a lot of feelings about Cú Chulainn, Fer Diad, and Láeg.

You can find out more about my recently-announced medieval retellings in this blog post.

I generally tag personal posts and selfies as “#about the author”; other than that, I think I’m pretty straightforward with my tagging system.

I’m very happy to answer questions about medieval Irish lit, my research, or my books, or just generally to chat. Send questions via asks, chat via DMs, and if you're looking for my articles, you can email me at finn [at] finnlongman [dot] com, which is also the best way to contact me for professional enquiries, whether academic or fiction related.

You can also find me on Bluesky, on Instagram, and on YouTube, where I (infrequently) retell medieval Irish stories for a general audience with lots of sarcasm and hand gestures. Technically I'm still on Twitter, but I'm trying to leave.

And finally, if you’ve found my research interesting or just generally want to support me, I have a tip jar and am always immensely grateful when somebody helps me to fund my book-buying habits: http://ko-fi.com/fianaigecht. You can also tip me directly on Tumblr if you like. I’m also a Bookshop affiliate, and you can buy books from my recommendation lists to support me and get some great reads at the same time.

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: The Snowman

There's just no sugarcoating it, this month has been rough for your dear old friend Peebs. It's mostly my ongoing struggles with mental health and mental healthcare bureaucracy, as well as my specific neurodivergence apparently being atypical. This is all to say that I'm grumpy af, and as such I will see Sucktember 2024 off with writing about two movies that I think are bad. First up is the 2017 cinematic disaster The Snowman.

Now, the Snowman is infamous for being a poorly made film, in part because that by the look of it they didn't get around to filming all of it. Dan Olson has a very good breakdown of that side of it, and as such I won't try to come up with much new to say about that. Yes, entire plot points are obviously created from B-roll and sloppy voiceover, the dubbing of Val Kilmer is strange and unpleasant to the mind, hell, that entire subplot could be cut down to not feature Kilmer at all if they had actually full-assed it, the ending is a fucking enigma, etc etc. What I will be focusing on, however, are just how weird of an adaptation it is. Like even if they got around to filming all of it and assemble it more completely, there would be parts of this movie that is just puzzling, and I want to get into that soft sweet meat a little today.

Ok, I lied. There's one exception. There is one nonsensical editing decision with this movie that I need to talk about and nobody's talking about it. The movie opens with a flashback to the backstory of the murderer, which isn't outrageous as these things go, it's a thing, especially in Scandinavian Crime Fiction. What really gets to me is that after this flashback, we cut to our hero, Harry Hole (pronounced with a long o, get your minds out of the gutter) waking up hungover in a park. Our hero Has Problems, that's not unusual either. However, I would argue, what the movie has told us with this sequence of events is that the Murder Flashback was about Harry, and might even have been a dream/nightmare.

Like this is Film Studies 101 stuff, the Kuleshov effect. The juxtaposition of two cuts convey narrative. If this was how the book started it'd be fine, The Snowman is smack dab in the middle of the Harry Hole series, perhaps the readers, or the narration, is mindful that they're depicting two different characters here. The camera, the all-seeing idiot of the screen, can't imply this kind of thing, and so characters need to show their thoughts and feelings through action. That is not what is happening here. In fairness, though, if the movie had the coverage to actually convey that Mr. Hole has been On The Drink Again, and how this contrasts with his character, that would be fine.

Anyway, let's get back to the weirdness. The first one is probably the biggest one. Why is this movie set in Norway? Like genuinely, why take a British and US cast all the way across the pond to speak English in the streets of Oslo? Yeah, you need snow for the snowmen, so it's not like you can film this on a LA backlot (at least cheaply,) but there are places that have snow over in the US as well, and while the Norwegian State Subsidies of overseas film productions have been pretty juicy lately, surely Canada hasn't been bled dry yet?

Ok, I'm being a cynic about this, but frankly, it's not like the movie makes great use of the setting. There's basically no Norwegian cultural details that moors this thing a bit and makes it feel like there's a story. There's Swedish songs, chiefly Härligt, härligt men farligt, farligt by Björn Skiffs, as well as the Swedish version of the birthday song. Now, in fairness, there is overlap between Swedish and Norwegian culture especially in the eastern part of country. Shame then, I suppose, that this song is sung in Bergen, the very westernmost edge of the country. The concert Hole and his son that isn't his son (but it is his son) goes to is incomprehensible nonsense, I assume by design, but it would've been a great excuse to drag in some local act for some cred. Mais non, I suppose, it's all set dressing for Fassbender to mope around in.

One thing I've noticed that is weird in this is that the movie ends up, mostly by accident, implying that basically all the locations in the movie are like... close to each other. The biggest sinner is the train ride between Oslo and Bergen, which takes between six and a half and seven and a half hours. It's not quite a full day's undertaking, but if you somehow went there and back again in a day, you're probably pretty tired and not, like our friend Harry, slunking around crime scenes like it's the only thing you know how to do.

Another thing that gets to me is how unwilling the city seems to be to show any convincingly scuffy sides of Oslo. Oslo is a reasonably clean city, and the local police's dilligence in herding the transient and narcotic-employing population city from the view of the tourists should be noted if not commended. That said, when Harry falls into a drunken slumber in a location that looks like one of the semi-fancy places downtown, it doesn't exactly sell the believability of it. Round those parts, you would not be left to potentially die from exposure. You'd be roused, and if you weren't willing to get the fuck out of dodge and freeze to death on someone else's property you bet your ASS some very firm-looking security guards would be happy to escort you off the premises. There are places in Oslo that look sufficiently scuffy to really sell the "guy's collapsed, uncertain if he's sleeping, drunk or high as a kite" kind of idea, but it seems nobody gave enough of a shit to find any of them.

Then there is how incongrous the setting seems in time. Beats By Dre product placement places us in the contemporary, but there is one thing that bothers me with it. Through the movie our heroes struggle with this clunky Web 1.0-looking piece of telecom tech that you keep expecting to be important in some way, at least as a weapon of blunt force trauma, but no dice. The villain of the piece thwarts it at one point to allow the requisite fridging of the movie's supporting actress raise the stakes without advancing the plot any. No, this strange piece of over-specialized impractical tech just kind of exists, as some commentary on the Norwegian Technocracy with all the relevance stripped away.

Part of this, I suspect, is Garbage In, Garbage Out. Yeah, making this feel like a story actually set IN Oslo and portraying distances and the general feel of travel in Norway would help a lot, but there is many things it would not fix. It would not fix said fridging where our Cop Lady gets Taken Off The Case For Being Too Close, and then goes on to try to seduce some juicy leads out of a suspect in the case. It's a total dud, as he is just a creep, and the real killer finds her and kills her with the creepy guy none the wiser and no actual progress made. What, this 90s crime thriller written by a man has some janky perspective on the lady characters? You don't say.

While it is not the graves of its sins, the ending of this movie is weird as fuck too. After standing up to his dark mirror The Snowman Killer and coming up one finger short for his troubles, the last shot in the movie is Harry... taking on another case? Sure, I mean yeah, but why stop there? Harry isn't planning on quitting, if anything he's a workaholic. It's not like he has gone through a journey of maybe wanting to work less and concentrate on the family that isn't a family (but it is a family) he has. Sure, he has expressed a desire to, but his failure to even try has been as lukewarm of a "distant parent" narrative could possibly be. So what is the ending supposed to make us feel? Good because The One Good Cop That Can Get Shit Done is still out there The Dark Knight-ing for us? Sad because this Disco Elysium protagonist in the making is still on the self-destructive cop beat? Excited because the Guy Who Investigates Grizzly Crimes Is Still Investigating Grizzly Crimes? Beats me, and by the look of it, it also escaped the film makers.

It should come as no surprise that re-watching The Snowman didn't exactly endear me to it. It's a sloppy, incomplete film that probably wouldn't be any good even if they had the chance to film it, although it would perhaps not scream out the choreography of the final twist so loud if there wasn't one character literally pointless apart from secretly being the killer all along. This, together with the awkward pacing, lacking introductions and altogether flat affect of the whole thing, makes it seem like an adaptation that took too much from the original work. While yes, a lot of adaptations could do with harking a bit closer to the source material, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

[tibby]

hey tibby, i got two questions about saw for you. firstly, when do you think the saw movies take place? like what specific year/s? i know theres a few writing errors when it comes to years in the franchise (the tag on jigsaw’s foot at the autopsy, for example) so i’m just trying to see what would make sense despite these errors.

also. what would the spiral killers role be in Jigsaw the family sitcom (more important than the other question)

i am a firm "saw the first movie takes place in 2004" believer. yeah yeah the idea of it happening the day before 9/11 is funny but it doesn't work with the few established dates we do have (gideon night takes place in late october of 2006, hoffman's sister is murdered in 1997 and baxter is released from prison after five years which makes hoffman's revenge kill and recruitment from john in 2002 at the EARLIEST, trying to include a coherent timeline of events by including jigsaw is impossible but fwiw logan was in the iraq war. i think. i don't remember the movie). also the idea that amanda and john manually set up the phone to that date just to fuck with them is also very funny to me. and my research suggests that the motorola used was released in q4 of 2001, which means it came out in october at the earliest. but nothing is conclusive and i respect all walks of life etc etc.

generally though from the time amanda is recruited (april 2004, because i do believe bathroom trap takes place in september regardless of the year and lawrence mentions being interviewed by police five months prior) through to the end of the final chapter (late 2006) it's like a 2.5 year time frame. nerve gas house takes place at least a year after bathroom trap, gideon night is six months after nerve gas house, and the events of v/vi/vii shortly follow. again, no canon confirmation, but given strahm's throat is still bandaged in v we can assume his tracheotomy wasn't that long ago and he dies like the day after being discharged from the hospital. and then hoffman's vi/vii clownery is like two nights back to back. so that's that. early to mid 2000s over a three year time period.

unfortunately the spiral killers don't really play a big role in jigsaw the sitcom simply because it takes place like 15-20 years later. which is a tragedy because i think jigsaw fanboy william emmerson/schenk having the worst "don't meet your heroes" experience of all time only to not learn from it is hilarious to me. i did vaguely conceptualise an episode where he starts his silly little copycat killings and they have to come out of retirement to trap his ass because oh now we gotta be responsible for this clown. and william really does think it's an honour that a bunch of middle aged retired murderers have reunited just to torture him.

my beloved dizzy did write a fic about this concept (not sitcom nonsense but adam/amanda/hoffman live and william loves team maim and kill). unfortunately my concept of retired-but-still-completely-off-their-rockers hoffstrahm (they're NOT dating and they're absolutely NOT married and strahm is still trying to prove hoffman is guilty and hoffman still plans on killing him one day but they do live together and have weird gay sex and are trying to figure out how to get married for tax benefits without actually getting married) having a honey where IS my supersuit moment from the incredibles about the glass coffin didn't make the cut. but we can imagine it <3

they also all try to impart "queer elder wisdom" (see: absolutely horrendous dating tips) onto william to help him with zeke. unfortunately he takes their word as gospel. hence the whole "torturing you and sending you body parts" stage of the flirting process. it's dawning on me that this message is completely incomprehensible i'm sorry. missed saying absolute nonsense about these movies to a public audience.

[goingsparebutwithprecision]

I'm so torn on the WIP game, I'd love to hear more about either "00Q DnD how is this my life" or the "Zeb and Fulcrum late night radio"

Oh ho ho you have hit upon two of my favourites be prepared for a wall of text!

So “00Q DnD how is this my life” will probably, eventually, go into the world under the moniker “Fully Realised Creation”, and it is about, depending on your perspective, Q being a massive nerd, Bond and queerness, difficult weirdos making Real Friends(™), or growing into yourself via wizard roleplaying with your mates. It is one of my favourite things to write partially because so much of it is very very funny, partially because I accidentally ended up having real emotions about queerness, masculinity, and performance, and partially because it is very important to me that the fictional man-who-is-a-weapon can walk out of the story at the end. Bond Will get out of this labyrinth of suffering, and he isn’t even going to have to die to do it.

A snippet:

Q's watching him. "Stop that," he says. "What?" James says, innocence personified. "I do not need you to assassinate my way out of this," Q says, the tiniest possible smirk tucked in around the corners of his mouth. "Nor do I need you to steal, bribe, threaten, seduce or explode my way out of it." "But just a little explosion -" James says, indicating size with a pinch of his finger and thumb. "The paperwork, Bond," Q says, "think of the paperwork." "Judicious use of Tasha's Hideous Laughter?" "No," Q says, lips twitching, "bad wizard." "I've been thinking about that," James says, "and since my character's a woman, aren't I technically a witch?" "I know you're goading me," Q says, pointing an accusing finger, "I know you know exactly what's wrong with that sentence, and I am not engaging -" Except of course he does, and James sits back, and lets himself be entertained. And if he is also, maybe, scheming, just a little, well. Nobody needs to know.

Meanwhile, “Zeb and Fulcrum late night radio” came out of a couple of things. Firstly, I’m a sucker for the tank who thinks they’re stupid/only good for bashing heads together getting to exist and being known outside of that, and I thought it would be funny/interesting if Kallus was the one to (mostly by accident!) give Zeb that. Secondly, I love it when sci-fi digs in on non-human sapient biology and cultures, and I think Zeb being the only Lasat in the rebellion is an interesting place to put that. And somehow from those two things I got “what if Kallus started sending live Fulcrum transmissions for Plot Reasons and Zeb keeps being the one who picks up? And also because vocoders are designed for human-standard speech/hearing, Zeb has actually known who the new Fulcrum is this whole time?” and now they have this deeply weird incomprehensible-to-outsiders friendship that nobody else in the rebellion can at all get their head around, and this entertains me deeply.

Snippet:

"Yep," Zeb says, folding his arms behind his head and leaning back in his chair as infuriatingly as he knows how. Sure enough, Kallus is practically vibrating with repressed rage. Zeb can see his fingers twitch like they're going to reach for the bo rifle. He lets his smirk get wider, tooth by tooth. He has no idea what's happening right now, but Kallus is in prime wind-up territory and Zeb has never let an awkward interpersonal discussion get in the way of a good time.

"Everyone excuse me," Kallus says, in his politest imperial drawing room tones. "I have to commit a murder."

"Hah," Zeb says, "like you could take me."

"Care to test that?" Kallus says, with that aura of palpable menace that Zeb hasn't been able to take seriously since he heard the guy shriek like a baby about one itty bitty bird monster.

"Sure," Zeb says, "maybe this time I'll break your other leg."

"For the last time," Kallus says, like a lothcat with a trod-on tail, "the impact of the escape pod with the surface of the moon broke my leg. You just happened to be present."

"Eh," Zeb says, "you say tomato."

[cleoenfaserum]

Revenge of the chocolate cream poisoner:

Broadmoor archives go online, revealing the story of its most crazed inmate By TONY RENNELL FOR MAILONLINE, 9 December 2011

For a mentally healthy person, insane people, even though it is a sickness, is incomprehensible to a sane person. The danger that some of these mental nut jobs, as many would classify them, is cause for concern because of their unpredictable behavior, suicidal or murderous actions, however, there are tamed crazies, totally alienated and completely out of it who need to be put away to be cared for because of their incapacity to fend for themselves. Many of these characters obtain notoriety because of the human damage they cause or may cause. There are many movies and TV serials produced that make for adrenaline rush of these people. This time around, I have included the history of the CHOCOLATE CREAM POISONER, in which her character has been made into a TV show called the WICKED WOMEN, that I have posted below.

833-1 https://ok.ru/video/3861120223976

But before we go into complete insanity, some ungodly behavior:

833-3

I have also included an article as manifested in the headline in two parts. One read out in an experimental method I am trying to develop, the other, story itself.

833-2 https://ok.ru/video/7303072385587

Following the complete text of the article: source.

She was a scheming, image-obsessed, murdering minx who in her younger days laced sweets with strychnine to see off the wife of the married man she desired.

Now, though, she appeared perfectly harmless as, in her dotage, she preened herself for her last attempt to entrap a man.

'Are my eyebrows all right?' the temptress asked a fellow inmate at Broadmoor, the hospital for the criminally insane, as she prepared for a Christmas dance at the institution in 1906. 'I was a Venus before,' she declared, the years of her incarceration seemingly forgotten, 'and I shall be a Venus again!'

The male doctors and staff could expect her full-on, sexually-charged attention, even if, in her late 70s, Christiana Edmunds's man-mesmerising days were long over.

Mad, bad and dangerous to know, she was one of the most notorious inmates of Broadmoor in Victorian times, her name a byword for something that hidebound era found impossible to comprehend or forgive — a woman's unbridled lust.

Sex pest, stalker, compulsive liar, manipulator, trouble-maker, murderess — there is something uncannily modern about her case, though the crimes for which she was locked up were committed almost a century and a half ago

Her story has been resurrected by a local archivist who was given unprecedented access to 19th-century patient records at the 150-year-old secure unit tucked away in a Berkshire forest. It is aired in what has become this winter's surprise internet hit.

Available free of charge on Kindle, Mark Stevens's Broadmoor Revealed has become one of most downloaded books, overtaking classics such as Dickens's Christmas Carol, Jane Eyre and Dracula.

Like some ghoulish Victorian precursor of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, his handful of heart-stopping Broadmoor reality stories makes compulsive reading.

Leaving aside Christiana for the moment, there was, for example, paranoid surgeon, man of letters and random killer Dr William Minor, who, in between contributing learned entries to the Oxford English Dictionary, was beset by deep-seated delusions that he was being sexually molested by hundreds of women.

He eventually sliced off his own penis (though with no effect on his fornicatory fantasies, which continued as before).

Equally lost in his own world was Richard Dadd, a hugely talented artist who ended up in Broadmoor after mistaking his father for the devil and slitting his throat. He spent his time obsessively painting fairies and biblical scenes in minute detail.

Lost in his own world: 19th Century artist Richard Dadd ended up in Broadmoor.

Broadmoor housed killers of all sorts, baby-batterers, rapists and arsonists. A few had taken potshots at Queen Victoria, including Edward Oxford, who was classified as an 'hysterical imbecile' at his trial but, once under lock and key, managed to master French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek and Latin and learn to play the violin.

A number of inmates thought they were actually the Queen and should have been resident in Buckingham Palace. But saddest of all were the likes of Mary Ann Parr, one of the very first inmates.

Brought up in poverty and afflicted by congenital syphilis, she gave birth to an illegitimate child, which she suffocated against her breast. Broadmoor saved her from a death sentence.

Found guilty of their crimes but insane, Parr and hundreds like her were sent there rather than to the gallows in what was in many ways an enlightened act of compassion given the general brutality of the criminal system at the time.

In its grim blocks and unheated, unlit bedrooms, there were no drug therapies or psychiatric analysis. Instead, inmates were subjected to a regime of routine and work designed for their moral improvement.

Some of these suffering and delusional individuals recovered enough to be allowed to leave, even Oxford, who had fired a pistol at the Queen.

But Christiana Edmunds, the so-called 'Chocolate Cream Poisoner', was not one of them. She would remain within Broadmoor's walls for 35 years until her death.

Unlike most of the female inmates, she was not a casualty of the grinding poverty of Victorian England's city slums. She was middle-class, educated and of independent means. Her downfall was sex.

Described in contemporary reports as tall, handsome and 'extremely prepossessing in demeanor' — Victorian-speak for pretty damn hot — she lived in fashionable Brighton, where she met and fell madly for a local doctor, Charles Beard, a married man. She sent him passionate and indiscreet love letters.

How much of the affair was real and how much in her mind remains unclear. He would afterwards insist there had been nothing physical between them.

But he returned at least some of her romantic interest and let matters take their course until, after a year of secret assignations, he tried to cool things down. It was over, he told her. She was not to write to him again.

But Christiana was unfazed by rejection, even taking to calling on the Beards at home. One day in September 1870 she arrived with a gift of chocolate creams for Emily, the doctor's wife. Mrs Beard ate some and was violently sick.

An outraged and no doubt scared Beard, wondering what demons he had unleashed, accused Christiana of poisoning his wife. She denied it, arguing that it couldn't have been her because she too had eaten a chocolate and become ill.

Whether or not the doctor believed her, he kept his suspicions to himself, fearful that to involve the police would mean scandal. But he told Christiana to stay away from him and his family.

Once again, she took no notice and continued to write to him three times a week, her love for him as undying as ever, her pursuit every bit as manic and devious.

What happened next was odd. Over the coming months, there were no more attempts on Mrs Beard's life, but a number of other people in Brighton fell ill after eating sweets and chocolates. There were no fatalities — until a four-year old boy named Sidney Barker died after visiting a sweet shop called J.G. Maynard's.

There was a coroner's inquiry, and Christiana, of all people, came forward to offer evidence, describing how the chocolate that had made Mrs Beard ill the year before had also come from Maynard's.

The investigation now turned to the sweet shop, and traces of strychnine were found in some of its chocolates. But how they got there was a mystery no one could solve, and the shop owner was exonerated of any intentional poisoning. A verdict of accidental death was recorded on poor little Sidney.

But the poisonings continued. More people in Brighton were taken ill. News spread. The town and the police were on tenterhooks for the next incident. It came on August 10, 1871, when six local people received parcels of poisoned fruits and cakes. Mrs Beard was among them, as was one of her neighbours and the editor of the local newspaper.

Another recipient was . . . Christiana Edmunds herself, presumably trying to cover her own tracks but in fact recklessly drawing intention to herself.

Dr Beard had now had enough. He finally went to the police to voice his suspicions about Christiana and handed over her passionate letters to him as evidence of her unstable mind and evil intent. She was arrested and charged with attempted murder.

She appeared in court, the ultimate femme fatale in a black silk dress, nonchalant and aloof. But the evidence was now piling up against her — a chemist said he knew her as 'Mrs Wood' and had supplied her with strychnine to kill some troublesome cats; an errand boy said he delivered chocolates to her from Maynard's.

Everything was now falling into place, and an additional charge was then laid against her — of murdering Sidney Barker.

Brighton was considered too small a stage for what had now become a sensational national case. Only the Old Bailey would do, and Christiana stood in the dock there, in black velvet this time, with a fur trim.

Witnesses told the rapt jury how she sent boys to buy sweets for her from Maynard's shop and then returned them for re-sale — now laced with poison — on the grounds that the wrong ones had been delivered.

As for motive, the prosecution suggested that after her first attempt to dispose of Emily Beard failed, she had embarked on her subsequent poisoning spree around Brighton because she wanted to blame Maynard's for the incident and thereby get back in her lover Dr Beard's good books.

Alternatively, she might have simply been experimenting with poisons before having another go at the hapless Mrs Beard. What seemed incontrovertible was that unrequited love had driven her on.

Her lawyer put up a defence of insanity. Christiana didn't know the difference between right and wrong, he argued, and the revelation in court that there was a history of lunacy in her family seemed to be in her favour.

But the jury was having none of this and found her guilty. She was sentenced to hang, a verdict she greeted by dramatically claiming she was pregnant and therefore the sentence could not be carried out. A doctor examined her and concluded she was in this, as in so much else, lying.

In prison, awaiting execution, she was seen by Dr William Orange, Broadmoor's medical superintendent, and another Home Office doctor. Their report was unequivocal — Christiana Edmunds was as mad as a hatter, 'with confused and perverted feelings of a most marked insane character'. On this advice, the Home Secretary reprieved her and sent her to Broadmoor.

The decision caused ructions. It was not just that two health-care professionals had chosen to overrule the clear decision of a properly constituted jury. There were also many who felt she had got away with murder and resented the cost of keeping her alive indefinitely when a long rope and a short drop would have been considerably cheaper.

On her arrival at Broadmoor in 1872, she was 43 — not the 35 she claimed — with rouged cheeks and an enormous wig. Orange wrote on her notes: 'She is very vain.'

She also quickly proved to be sly, getting her sister to smuggle in clothes and make-up for her, as well as extra headfuls of false hair to fill out her wig and enhance her glamorous appearance.

To Broadmoor's doctors she was a painted lady, obsessed with her personal appearance and motivated by romantic desire. She in turn flirted with them outrageously, demanding their attention and flaunting herself. 'Her manner and expression,' noted one, were 'sexual and amatory'.

'I shall astonish them all,' she insisted. 'I shall get up and dance ¿ Venus again!': Christiana Edmunds died just nine months later after uttering these words in Broadmoor

The decades made no difference. She continued to come on to any of the male staff she had contact with, and she never for a moment showed any remorse for her crimes.

Was she really mad? Many doubted it as she went about her days quietly engrossed in her embroidery, easy enough to manage, though she seemed to delight in winding up other patients until they lost their tempers and she could then complain about them.

There was never any question of her being released, particularly after her remaining family died and she was alone in the world.

Her health weakened, her sight faded and she could barely walk unaided, but she did her best to keep up appearances, still — judging by the conversation she had before the Christmas dance in 1906 — worrying if her eyebrows were sexy enough to capture a man's attention.

'I shall astonish them all,' she insisted. 'I shall get up and dance — Venus again!' She died nine months later on September 19, 1907, at 78, from old age.

Author Mark Stevens, senior archivist at the Berkshire Record Office, finds Christiana a woman who still tantalises more than a century later. 'She never denied her actions, nor offered up an explanation of what she was trying to achieve by them,' he says.

'There is still a sense of mystery about her motivation. It is unclear whether she wanted to have Dr Beard for herself or to ruin him.'

Was she just a frustrated spinster whose uncontrollable desires destroyed her? He believes she was a more complex character than that suggests.

'She was a slave to adulation, and thrived on the publicity that her criminal actions generated.'

If so, then the enigmatic Victorian Venus of Broadmoor may well have been that most modern of dazzling and bedazzled creatures — a fame junkie, made mad by her own desire not so much for sex but for celebrity.

[avaantares]

Hey! After seeing posts about it from you for a while, I wanted to check out tgcf, but I wasn’t sure what exactly it is other than cool vibes. Could you give me a little direction please?

Hi, Anon! Sorry if this reply is late; I'm not sure when your Ask came in, as I've had very spotty internet access while traveling, but today I'm on a train that has some form of wifi (though Tumblr still isn't loading completely, so I really hope this posts properly...).

Anyway… HI, FRIEND, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT TGCF

What it is:

Tian Guan Ci Fu, or Heaven Official's Blessing, is a Chinese danmei (M/M romance) novel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, the same author who wrote Mo Dao Zu Shi, on which the popular Chinese drama The Untamed is based. (You have doubtless seen that on my blog, as it's another of my obsessions!)

The story follows Xie Lian, a royal prince who, in his youth, ascended to immortal godhood because of his profound skill with the sword. However, he later fell into disgrace and was banished from heaven, abandoned by his allies, and divested of his spiritual power, vanishing into obscurity for centuries.

Eight hundred years later, Xie Lian unexpectedly regains his godly status, throwing the heavens into chaos. Anxious to pacify his fellow gods, he accepts missions to solve problems in the mortal realm -- but the assignments bring him into conflict with other powerful gods and repeatedly entangle him with heaven's greatest enemy, the Ghost King Hua Cheng.

The secrets and conspiracies Xie Lian begins to uncover are inextricably linked to events in his own past, forcing him to confront the fear and guilt he's tried to bury for hundreds of years. On the path to exposing the truth, he makes friends, makes enemies, shakes the foundations of heaven itself, falls in love, and… collects a lot of garbage. (It's his day job. No, seriously.)

Why I like it:

The novel (technically, novels; the story spans five volumes) ranges from light comedy to painful angst to soft romance to some extremely dark moments (trigger warnings may apply), so there's something for every mood. Xie Lian's 800 years of backstory provide plenty of room for twisty plot threads and mystery. The characters are engaging, as well: Xie Lian poses as a warm, fluffy cinnamon roll, but is secretly a tortured charcoal briquette who could actually kill you (my favorite kind of character!), while Hua Cheng can and will murder you with a sideways glance, but is in fact a closeted Cinnabon. The supporting cast is also a lot of fun.

Another plus is that the romance isn't the entire plot -- the story stands on its own merit, while the relationship progresses almost incidentally along the way, making it feel more natural. The romance is essential to the plot and guides characters' choices throughout the story, but it doesn't feel forced in a "NOW KISS" sort of way.

(I just realized that this entire description is probably incomprehensible outside of Tumblr. What would we do without the cinnamon roll analogy? LOL)

Ways to experience the story:

TGCF is currently being released in English by Seven Seas Entertainment. The first two volumes are out now (available in paperback or e-book from your book retailer of choice, or from many public libraries).

There is also an absolutely GORGEOUS manhua (comic), which would be my top recommendation for anyone who is interested in the story but doesn't want to commit to reading five books. It's more complete than the donghua (below) but a faster read than the novels -- plus you get to look at STARember's stunning artwork! The official English translation is free to read on the Bilibili mobile app and website, though you have the option to support it financially (and unlock new chapters faster) if you want to. (Note: The manhua is still in progress, currently updating on a biweekly schedule.)

As mentioned above, there's also a donghua (animated series). The first season, which covers volume 1 of the book, is available on Netflix in many regions, and a second season is slated for release later this year. The animation is very pretty; however, I will caution that the donghua tends to gloss over (or just leave out) some important story elements, so while it's a decent introduction, it's not necessarily the best iteration of the story.

Finally, there is a live-action drama slated to come out… sometime within the next year (I don't think there's an official release date yet), so if you try the story and like it, watch out for [what we assume will be titled in English] Eternal Faith!

I hope that answered your questions! Feel free to hit me up if you have more.

[potatotrash0]

Oh? Serial killer Nagito and detective Hajime? Why would you post this at 11 I'm going to be thinking about this for the rest of the night now >:^. For that blessing blurse curse you have to listen to me ramble now.

"The Luckster" killed those who are hopeful. Like, a lot. He says (note; he doesn't actually "say" this since if he told this to anyone they'd either get him arrested or they're dead. He'll leave notes that are fully intended to fuck with Hajime and frustrate him. This works very well because wdym there's no fingerprints? Or a traceable handwriting?? Hajime definitely doesn't lose sleep over this) that it's to inspire the "talentless" and help them become hopeful like those he killed, but some people suspect it's to get rid of people he thinks are above him (that's somewhat true, given his huge inferiority complex, but if he were killing everyone he thought was above him Japan would be fucking gone). He also tends to play with the detectives after him before killing them- "While you're practically beaming with hope, and I'd hate to kill someone merely trying to take out the trash, I can't simply just let you live, ahaha! So do relax a little as I practice my aim." Multiple had gunshot wounds through the eye. Some were bludgeoned. Some straight up impaled. It was... a varied result.

With Hajime, however, he couldn't really him let part from this world. Yes, he was filled with hope like the others, but this hope was... different. Like he was the only person who could contain it. Like he had true hope. And he couldn't take that away. So, he played with Hajime. But it didn't end.

It was strings of casualties theorised to be within minutes of each other. It was inconsistent pauses in his work that would happen constantly. It was the messages ranting of his hope and how he can't bear to tear it from humanity that were thrown through his window soon after a murder. It was the constant change of murder weapons (one time he had enough luck to drop a piano on a blonde girl wandering around far too late at night- it wasn't as funny as in the cartoons. Hajime would have a very hard time figuring out how the hell he got a piano to drop from such a weak tree.) that would range in awfulness. It was the occasional picture he would leave of obscure parts of him- smiles, tufts of hair, sometimes the of his feet around the blood of the victim. He was having a fun time, if you couldn't tell.

*woo little transition woo*

Hajime was a rookie detective. That being said, he grabbed the hardest case first chance to prove himself. Kirigiri wouldn't have permitted it, but she knew Hajime was capable. And so, she handed him the most recent murder files related to.

He luckily chooses one where the body wasn't found yet, but a tip off from a stranger(def not Nagito trying to lure a detective to murder their ass lmao). A body in a highschool auditorium, 12 blocks away. Hajime thanks Kirigiri, and heads off.

Chihiro Fujisaki, pinned up to a curtain on the stage, somehow not falling. It appeared to be bludgeoning, but there were other potential weapons lying around, seemingly out of place. He'd need forensics to do any more evidence searching. And so, he left the school, unaware of the cloudy haired man watching him leave from a seat in the back.

After that, every case related went to fucking hell. Strings of murders. Photos of smiles and feet near blood. Messages written with kind neatness but containing incomprehensible rambles that came off as... threats, maybe? Girls being crushed by fucking pianos. He only got sleep every few days. Coffee cups littered his desk and home.

God, he prayed for the day he got to arrest this bastard. ( I keep makin this shit so long wtf pls don't feel intimidated by it I know that happens when you get long asks :( )

So apparently my Long Ask Complex didn’t apply here because I ate this up????? Dude???????

God Nagito would toy with his food like this. He says he’s doing it for the sake of hope or whatever, but if you ask Hajime, he seems to be having the time of his fucking life doing it at the expense of everyone put on this damn case. But Hajime’s nothing if not stubborn, so he’s obviously gonna keep pushing through with this. Even if he feels like he’s being watched during these investigations more and more.

[the-turtleduck-pond]

I know I'm late but for the colors thing... red in a green [and slightly white] kind of way (please sleep), orange for yellow and peach reasons, blue (obviously), dark green because your writing ideas have to come from somewhere, pink and purple because enby solidarity (also you're really nice), dark blue (because obviously), and finally black because every time I see your blog I am pulled deeper into Zuko madness (as I'm sure you secretly intended)

You’re not too late for it at all!

“I’m going to attack you” “<3 get help” “Pity” “Fear” “Who are you??” “I can’t escape” “You’re the only bitch here that I respect” “Dark forces” “We will have a summer wedding” “We’re going to super hell together <3″ “[incomprehensible]” “Maybe you’ll stop appearing in my house”

So you want to attack me because I need help and mildest pity, but mostly because I need sleep. Never, I am up at 11:30 and don’t plan for sleep for the next 3 hours at least.

You fear me because you are unsure of who I am and you can’t escape. Good, there is no escape and being unsure of who/what I am is ideal.

Once again, being respected just feels nice. Dark forces are what give me ideas indeed.

I knew I was going to hell already and a summer wedding yet again (that’s like four summer weddings).

The point of this blog is Zuko appreciation and a reminder that he’s only not a murderer due to his small amount of restraint.

[queen18xo]

First chapter of my Mcdanno fan fiction.

There is an extended moment of silence on the other end, an uneasiness settling over Steve as he waits for the caller to talk. "Hello, Steven McGarrett this is Sargent. Duke Lukela with the Honolulu police department." The man on the other end of the call responds, his voice sounding weary and weathered.

Steve's mind flits through possible reasons the captain of the Honolulu police department could have for calling him. However, he finds himself at a loss. "How may I help you, Captain?" He questions his voice laced with an unusual amount of uncertainty and concern.

Sargent. Duke Lukela draws in a deep, shaky breath as he readies himself to reply. " It is with regret that I must inform you that late last night your father, Detective John McGarrett, was shot in the line of duty and was unfortunately pronounced dead on arrival." Lukela finishes his voice steady and professionally detached; however, after many years of learning to read people, steve finds that however hidden it may appear he can still detect the grief in the older man's voice.

Steve stands stock still his exhales turning from slow and steady to harsh puffs of hot air as he struggles to digest the information relayed to him. "What happened?" He answers voice cracking with sorrow as his eyes burn with unshed tears threatening to spill. He examines his memories of the man desperately trying to figure out how this could have happened. His father was one of the finest detectives Honolulu police department had; he was simply not the type to make an error like this. His deep jade green eyes narrow calculatingly as he attempts to piece together the slew of information that has been laid before him.

His thoughts are interrupted as he is brought back to reality by the police captain on the other end of the phone. "I'm sorry, but I am unable to disclose details at this time as this is still an ongoing investigation." Steve nods, although the other man is unable to see him. Steve begins to anxiously pace the secluded room he escaped to for privacy, trying to figure out where he goes from here. Does he go back to his home on O' ahu? As far as Steve is aware, there is no one else capable of getting his fathers affairs in order. It's not like he can entrust the task to Mary, hell he didn't even have the slightest clue how to get in contact with mary.

"Okay, thank you for informing me I will return to O' ahu. please let me know if I can be of assistance." Swiftly ending the call, Steve strides determinedly to the office of Luitenant Joe White. Once he arrives in the sizeable office of Luitenant White, he implores the man to place him in the reserves. He asks to be placed on an immediate flight to Honolulu national airport, informing his Luitenant of the gravity the situation he has found himself. Without pause, Luitenant White grants his request promptly sending him on his way to the landing strip where he will be transported from the base to Honolulu.

Steve sits wringing his hands anxiously, finding a calming sense of security in the unceasing hum of the jets engine. He stares blankly ahead his eyes fixed on the feathery soft-looking clouds passing below him; he gazes unseeingly as the vibrant shadow speckled azure blue sky slips away below him. For the first time since his earlier phone call, Steve allows himself time to begin methodically assessing his thoughts. The task is seemingly impossible as he tries to work his way through the disarray of his confused mind.

The first thought he finds crossing his mind is as heart-wrenchingly sad as it is straight forward his father, the man who raised him is, in fact, dead. The man he knew was a cold, emotionally detached detective whose work was commonly more vital to him than his family. The last time he saw John McGarrett was shortly after his mothers funeral, she had been killed in a hit and run incident. Instead, of consoling and comforting his two reasonably young and devastated children, he threw himself fruitlessly into his work, attempting to ascertain the identity of the driver responsible for her death.

Now the man Steve knew was a man who had been in an innumerable amount of dangerous and customarily life-threatening situations. Steve was more aware then most that eventually yes he would lose his father, and although the news of his fathers passing is heart-rending, he finds himself rather disconcerted over the kind of person that could take down John McGarrett. Before becoming a detective for Honolulu police department, John McGarrett was a highly decorated navy seal he advanced through the ranks undergoing some of the most physically demanding, ruthless, mentally exhausting military training ever documented. With that in mind, Steve knows no ordinary man would have the capability to take his father down. Now that begs the question just what kind of a man was he dealing with.

Steve is instantaneously awoken from his torturous dreams as the jet touches down on the long expansive of asphalt that makes up the private runway provided by Honolulu national airport. Finding himself off the plane, his body now unsheltered from the blazing heat of the late afternoon Hawaiin sun McGarrett makes a hasty retreat to the shaded runway exit.

As he takes a moment to compose himself and acclimate to his new surroundings, he hears heavy, fast-paced footsteps approaching from his right. Squinting directly into the intense beam of sunlight he catches the incomprehensible shadowed silhouette of what appears to be an impeccably dressed male. Steve mentally curses the fact that he has barely had 5 minutes to situate himself before being approached by someone who it is quite clear is here on some form of urgent business. This is not the first time that Steve McGarrett has been contacted in such a manner. However, from previous experience, he knows it would be unwise to decline anything they would request of him. However, that does little to dissipate his growing anger over the fact they couldn't even allow him the courtesy of a shower before proceeding to annoy him.

The stature of the man standing before him is not that dissimilar to that of his own body. However, the other many does have a couple of extra inches of height, and instead of his sandy brown locks and jade green eyes, the man before him has dark, dull brown eyes and well-tamed jet black locks, deep purple bruising below his weary eyes. Although Steve finds his interest piqued by the man that does not dissuade him from levelling the man with an icy glare, lips pressed tight into a solid line advertising his displeasure over the circumstances. "Steve McGarrett?" the man questions cocking one groomed eyebrow.

McGarrett nods his assent gesturing impatiently for the man to continue. " My name is Adam Noshimuri, and I am here on behalf of the FBI crime syndicate task force." The man states pausing to ensure what he is saying is falling on deaf ears. Steve once again simply nods to the man not wishing to bare his emotions to the stranger just yet. He is catching on to the fact that McGarrett would not be responding to him adam presses on swiftly. " This division has been specially created to track and bring down major crime families. We have reviewed your impressive resume and in light of your fathers recent passing at what we suspect to be the hand of none other than Daniel Williams we would like to offer you the job as head of this new task force." adam finishes with a solemn smile.

Steve's face hardens as his previously bright eyes darken their colour becoming similar to the ocean during a storm. "What could this guy possibly have to do with my father?" he asks unwavering in his anger. Steve struggles to place the name Daniel Williams, reasonably sure this is his first time hearing the name. He desperately searches his memories in a futile effort to produce any type of connection between Williams and his father. Drawing up empty, he sighs in resignation.

Adam holds firm under the stormy gaze of the navy seal. "it is believed that your father was murdered by Danny Williams, head of the Williams family mafia. However, we are still unsure as to the reason why." he states calmly. Steves mulls the information over. He knows the only reasonable answer to the job offer would be to say yes. At least if he accepts the offered job, he would be able to investigate his father's death, something about it still not sitting right with him.

Murmuring curses under his breath, wishing just for one his life could be simple. Even in death, his father can't make his life easy. "I will accept your offer to run the task force. However, I refuse to do anything until I have at least showered." Steve answers curtly motioning for Agent Noshimuri to lead the way trailing behind him at a sedate pace.

[dictionarywrites]

I don't know if you want a more specific request for BBC Merlin fics, but I'm always down for a good magic revealed fic if you have any ideas on that? Preferably not one where Arthur's just like, "Oh, that's cool Merlin! I love sorcerers!" Please and thank you? :)

My Ao3 | Send requests | Tip jar! | This is a WIP because I have no self control. Subscribe to For Want Of A King on Ao3. 

In the aftermath of Nimueh, it happens.

Merlin is joyous as he andGaius return to Camelot, both of them on horseback, and although it weighs onhim, somewhat, to have killed Nimueh and done it so easily… It isn’t that hefeels guilty, because he doesn’t, and he doesn’t think he ever could feelguilty for it, just like he couldn’t feel guilty for killing a monster about tokill somebody, or killing a bandit or a thief that’d kill Arthur. 

It’s just that—

It was so easy. 

He’d felt so determined whenhe’d risen up from the ground, his own charred skin and the burn of his tunicfilling his nostrils, the wound she’d left when she’d thrown his power back athim eating at his sternum, and it had come to him in the flash ofunderstanding, of inspiration, that magic so often does.

You are a creature of magic, some unseen voice remindshim, in a voice that isn’t a voice: it whispers across his mind and it tastesof truth, and he wonders what it means, to be a creature of magic, like theDragon… The Dragon, who was willing to let his mother die, and not care, andthe Dragon, who he’ll never let go, never. If he’s a creature of magic, does that make himlike the Dragon? Monstrous? 

The lightning hadn’t justcharred Nimueh’s skin or burned her: it had calcified her into something almostlike stone, and when she’d burst outward in a cloud of ash and chips of grit,he’d felt nothing but satisfaction.

“Gaius,” Merlin says quietly,as the outer walls of Camelot come into view on the crest of thehorizon. “Do you think it’s—” He trails off, and he thinks for a secondabout what Gwen had said about killing Uther. It would be murder, she’d said, even hating him, even after he’dkilled her father, and Nimueh had killed a lot of people, but hasn’t Uther,too? “Do you think it’s murder, what I just did?”

“Why?” Gaius asks. “Do you feel guilty?”

“No,” Merlin says. “Butif it is murder, and I don’t feel guilty, I think that’s probably worse. Don’tyou?” Gaius thinks for a few moments, his jaw set and his expression thoughtfulas he looks out at the path before them. When he speaks, it’s delicately andwith a very careful tone. 

“I don’t think it’s murder,no,” he murmurs, and he exhales before he continues, “You know, Merlin,sometimes we must see those die, who would do us harm, who would do othersharm.”

“But not Uther,” Merlin says,with the slightest bitterness he can’t quite hold back.

“Arthur,” Gaius begins in alow-suffering tone, and Merlin nods his head.

“Yeah, I know, I— I heard you,before. He’s not ready to be king.” Merlin shifts his grip slightly on thereins, and he feels a strange feeling thick in his chest. He’s excited to getback home, to see his mother healed and safe in her bed, and he’s excited to beback in Camelot, but not to go back into the castle. Not that he doesn’t wantto work - he’s willing to work. Not that he doesn’t want to be back within thesafety of the castle walls, but… Their destinies are entwinedtogether. “I wish I could tell him what just happened. That I saved him,that… Sometimes, I feel like he looks right through me.”

“You’re his friend,” Gaius says softly. “Hecares for you, and he appreciates your loyalty.”

“He appreciates a servant thatwon’t leave no matter how badly he treats him,” Merlin mutters. 

“Too good for being a servantnow, are you?” Gaius asks, and Merlin sighs, running a hand through his hairand leaning back on the horse, shifting his position slightly. “No, I knowthat that’s not it. But, Merlin, to tell him what you are… You would doomyourself. I would not see you executed for the sake of your pride.”

“No,” Merlinmutters. “Nor would I.” When they arrive at the gates of Camelot, it isMerlin that takes the horses to the stable, telling Gaius to walk up to thecastle to check on his mother first, and when Merlin comes home, he all butdives into her arms. Every pustule has come away from her skin, and she’s tiredand pale, but well. 

Merlin falls asleep with hishead in her lap and her hands in his hair, and when he wakes up, he entertainsher with a swirl of glistening magic that hovers on the air. 

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕☩

It leaves him distracted, holed up with his motherand with Gaius: sitting on the edge of the bed, his legs crossed, he shows offhis magic for her like he used to do, when he was only young. Coaxing up embersfrom the fire, he sets them to dance on the air, and he conjures a dragon thatflies on the air and then dives down to devour a sheep made of the same light;he makes a princess and a suitor that dance on the air; he makes a boat that sailson rolling waves, and then bursts into stars.

Gaius smiles at him, praiseshim on the delicacy of his form, and there’s so much sadness in his eyes -Merlin almost imagines him saying it, although Gaius doesn’t dare actually voice it. “I wish you could do that forArthur,” the look in his eyes says. “I wish everyone could see you do that.”

And even though Gaius doesn’tsay it, he’s bold and thoughtless and stupid in the next few days, out riding withArthur, when he’s hunting in the forest. Merlin’s never understood hunting, andin the aftermath of what happened with the unicorn, he understands it evenless, killing some defenceless creature just because you can. He doesn’tunderstand how a man can be so cruel, or want to lean into pointless killing. 

Merlin doesn’t think about it,and it’s stupid, he’s stupid, but he has to act fast. It’s a break in the rockthat does it: as the knights are all camped around the fire, and Arthur iswalking with Merlin as he looks for rosemary in the undergrowth. 

It’s just one man. 

He catches Arthur by surprise,knocks him over the head - he doesn’t see Merlin because Merlin is crouched onhis knees, and Merlin doesn’t think, doesn’t wait to see if Arthur is reallyunconscious. 

“Move,” he whispers in the old tongue, and he wieldsArthur’s sword with as much ease as anything, brings the hilt of it down hard on theguy’s head, to knock him out… He topples like a sack of bricks, and Merlincalls, “Knights! Knights! Here!”

And sees too late that Arthuris wide awake, his elbows back in the dirt, his eyes focused on Merlin.

Merlin’s blood runs cold, butthe knights come, and Arthur doesn’t say a word. Merlin looks at the bruise onthe back of his head, and Arthur doesn’t say anything to him or the knights -he doesn’t talk at all. Arthur doesn’t say a word to anybody until they comeback toward the castle.

Merlin studies his face, feelsthe real and genuine fear in his chest as they ascend the stairs and come intoArthur’s quarters, and he puts Arthur’s riding clothes away, sets his bag onthe shelf. It’s started to rain outside - started just as they came into thecastle - and Merlin looks at Arthur’s reflection in the pane of thewater-streaked window, at Arthur’s stiff-lipped expression.

He expects him to break thesilence as soon as the door is closed behind them, but he doesn’t. The silencegoes on and on, swelling like the ocean before a wave, until Merlinsays, “Do you want me to fetch your dinner, sire?”

It’s the first words he speaksto Arthur, the first he dares to say: with the silence broken, Arthur looks atMerlin, his blue eyes dark and shining with some deep, new incomprehension.

“How many times have you savedmy life?” he asks, soberly.

“Once or twice,” Merlin says,very slowly. 

“Not the times I know about,”Arthur says immediately, his voice sharp and abruptly biting. “Not— Notthose times. How many times, Merlin, have you saved my life? The real number,the true number.”

“I don’t know what you mean, sire,” Merlin says, feelinghis voice falter, and Arthur slams his palm down so hard against the table topthat the whole thing rattles, two of the candle holders shaking in their place,and a metal mug falling to the ground. 

The clatter echoes in thequiet of the room. 

“Don’t lie to me,” Arthursays, his voice thick, and he looks like he might burst into tears, his cheeksred, his eyes shining even more. “Don’t you dare. Tell me. Becausethat— That wasn’t the first time, I know that that wasn’t… That can’t havebeen the first time. How many times have you done that, when I haven’t seen itcoming?”

Merlin looks down at his boots. 

How many times has he waitedfor this moment, and prayed it would come? How many times has he wished,desperately, that it would come out all of a sudden, and Arthur would get it,and Arthur would forgive him, and everything would be fine, how many times…?

This isn’t like it’s been inhis daydreams.

Arthur is staring at him, withso much horror on his face, so much desperation, and Merlin cannot standit. 

“That’s why I came toCamelot,” Merlin says softly, his voice barely more of a whisper: his voice isthick too, and he feels like he might start crying. He’s just so tired, and sodesperate, and so terrified he can feel his heart beating in the back of histhroat. “You asked me, in Ealdor, why I came to Camelot, and that is why,Arthur, because I have magic.”

“Why Camelot?” Arthur asks,his voice harsh and barely under control. “Why come here, and not gosomewhere else?”

“My mother thought a citywould be better for me, than the village. She thought maybe I could findsomeone else like me, and I…” He thinks of Gaius, and his mouth isdry. “I haven’t found anyone. It’s… But it’s part of me, you know. Idon’t hurt anyone, Arthur, I’ve never hurt anyone except to protect you, toprotect anyone—”

Arthur is breathing heavily, looking not atMerlin, but instead into the middle distance, and Merlin takes a step forward,saying, “Arthur, I know that your father says that magic is…”

“When I was sick,” Arthurwhispers. “Just— Just days ago, I was in a coma, and all of you thoughtthat I would die, that it was inevitable… Did you do something? Did you— Wasit magic, that helped me?”

“Magic has helped you so many times,” Merlin says,looking at him with his hands clenched at his sides. “So many times,Arthur, I’ve helped you, and…” He’s rehearsed it in his head, how he’d say itif Arthur ever found out. 

Our destinies are entwined,one speech begins, before it trails off into oblivion. I was told of a prophecy, andit mentioned me and you, starts another, and then the words run out. I would give my life for you,Arthur, readily and willingly, and according to this big old dragon under thecastle, begins another, and that one is… probably the worst. “AndI’d never hurt you. I’d never hurt anyone. Remember Anahora, and the unicorns,the qu— the tasks, that you had to complete? I would have died for you, youknow that I would have. And I know that you are kind, and noble, and that youshow mercy, and what you have to understand is that magic—”

“You’re right,” Arthur says. There’s heavy emotionin his voice, but also a stiffness, an iron-hard composure, that hadn’t beenthere before. “I am merciful.”

Merlin feels himself sag inrelief. 

“I’ll explain from thebeginning,” Merlin says, but Arthur holds up his hand.

“From this moment forward, youare relieved of your duties as my servant,” Arthur says. “Your last wageswill be given to you as normal at the end of the week, and I will inform thesteward that you wish to focus on your duties as Gaius’ apprentice.”

Merlin stands very still, hislips parted, and he stares at Arthur, his eyes wide. His blood isn’t cold, now- it feels like it’s not even moving in his veins, and he can barely feel hisheart beating, can barely stand to breathe.

“And if I ever hear,” Arthursays, “from anybody, that you’ve used magic in public, or to hurtsomeone… I will have you executed, like so many sorcerers before you.” 

“Arthur,” Merlin says, andArthur bows his head to keep from meeting Merlin’s gaze. 

“Get out,” Arthur says, andMerlin heaves in a breath, and he runs. He doesn’t remember, later on, actually passingby the different corridors in the castle or leaving out toward Gaius’ cottage -all he remembers is the pound of his feet on stone and then on the wet groundoutside, the soak of the rain in his hair and his clothes, the way Gaius putshis arms awkwardly around Merlin’s body when Merlin lets himself sob, and wishes thathis mother had stayed one more day instead of going back to Ealdor yesterday,because he wants her here, wants her—

“What happened?” Gaius says, but Merlin isinsensible, can only sob and feel like a child for crying, like he’s just alittle boy, and it’s so stupid, so stupid, and it’s his fault for not being morecareful and not thinking—

“He saw me,” Merlin chokes out. “He saw me…And he let me go.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Gaius whispers,and Merlin cries until he can’t cry anymore.

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕☩

“Teach me more anatomy,” Merlin says the next morning,when he has risen from dark dreams and ill-gotten sleep, and Gaius glances upfrom the book he is reading, staring at him. Merlin stands in the doorway, andhe knows from the look of his reflection in his wash basin that his eyes arered-rimmed and with heavy, grey-purple bags underneath him; his lips arechapped; he’s pale. 

“You should rest,” Gaius saysquietly.

“I’ve rested enough,” Merlinsays, and he sits down heavily at the bench across from Gaius, rubbing hard athis eyes. “Teach me.” He can see the reluctance and the uncertainty in theold man’s face, see his hesitation, but then he slowly sets the book aside,nods his head, and he goes for his books on anatomy.

The lesson is long, and hard, and boring, andMerlin is grateful for every second of it.

It distracts him from thinking, from panickingabout whether Arthur will change his mind and turn him in, from wondering ifArthur will ever speak to him again, even worrying about how he will fill hisdestiny, if Arthur will never speak to him again.

When Gaius finishes the lesson, he reads throughthe chapters they’d gone over again and again, drilling them into his head, andwhen Gaius makes his rounds of the city, he goes with him, passing him theright things from his box of supplies, comforting family members as Gaiustreats his patients.

“You’re not angry?” Gaius asks as they come backinto the house, when the sun is beginning to sink down below the horizon, andMerlin begins to eat stew on the fire. “To have lost your work in the castle?”Merlin shrugs his shoulders, looking down at the pan instead of turning back tolook at Gaius.

“No,” Merlin says. “It wasn’t that much moneyanyway, and I barely ever bought anything with it, except books, now and then.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Gaius says.

“I know,” Merlin replies. He hears Gaius sighsoftly, but he doesn’t argue with him, doesn’t ask any more questions, andMerlin spends the evening, after they’ve eaten, practising spells in the quietof his bedroom. He has always practised nightly – this is no different.

(Except thatit is different, isn’t it?

Becauseusually, he wouldn’t have quite so much time to practise – he would bepolishing Arthur’s shoes, and setting up his clothes for the next morning, anddousing the candle as he left Arthur to sleep in his bed. And Arthur wouldsleep so soundly on his comfortable mattress, on his soft pillow, the handsomeplanes of his face neatly shadowed by the moonlight from the window, andsometimes, Merlin would hover for a second as he finished up his work in Arthur’squarters, and watch him sleep, before he came home to study.)

☩♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

Merlin.

The voice wakes him in the dead of night, andMerlin sits up straight, hearing the voice echo through his rib cage and on theinside of his skull, ringing through him like the peal of a bell he’s standingtoo close to. He knows that voice, knows its rich and sonorous tone, and theway it echoes whether he hears it in his mind or in his ears.

Merlin. Merlin!

No, Merlinreplies, forcing his voice to radiate outward from his chest with a burst ofmagic. No.

Merlin! the Dragon calls in hismind, and Merlin rolls over, wrapping the pillow tightly around his head andpressing it against his ears, but it makes no difference at all. The words arecoming into his head, after all, not coming into his ears.

He is up the whole night, and an hour before dawn,he finally relents, standing up from his bed and moving sleep-deprived throughthe hall beneath the castle, a torch in his hand as he rapidly descends thestairs. He stumbles when he comes into the great caverns beneath Camelot, and hesends a stone whistling down into the depths.

“You are unsteady on your feet, young warlock.”

“Well, that happens to humans when you don’t letus sleep,” Merlin snaps, rubbing his hand hard at his eye. “I told you. I’m notinterested in your advice anymore, or your help – you don’t care about me, youjust care about my magic.”

“You practised your spells for so long tonight,”the Dragon says, his voice quiet, and sly. “For many hours…”

“Arthur found out I’m a sorcerer,” Merlin says. “Hewon’t speak to me. Are you happy now?” The Dragon leans forward, and Merlinbreathes in as he comes in close enough that Merlin can see the reflection ofhis face in one of his big, yellow eyes, close enough that he can feel the heatthat radiates from his snout and from the hard scales on his nose and jaw.

“It was foretold,” the Dragon says smugly. “All iswell.”

Merlin can’t help the desperate thrum of hope thatvibrates in his chest, and he looks the Dragon in the eye, his lips parted. He’sbreathing heavily, and his heart is beating a little bit faster in his chest.

“What do you mean?” Merlin asks, slowly.

“It was foretold,” the Dragon repeats, leaningback. “This is as it should be.”

“You mean he’ll forgive me?” Merlin asks, hisvoice coming out rapid and quick and clumsy from his mouth. “You mean that he’lllet me back into the—”

“You are no servant, boy,” the Dragon says, in atone of satisfaction. “This was inevitable, and will bode well for youreducation.”

“I told you I’d never let you go,” Merlin says.

“You will,” the Dragon decides. Merlin opens hismouth to reply, to say that he won’t, not ever, but the dragon spreads out hiswings and gives one mighty beat of them, the wind off them punching Merlin backfrom his place at the edge of the outcrop of stone and blowing out his torch,leaving him in the darkness, flat on his arse.

The Dragon flies into the depths of the cavern,his chains clinking as he moves, and Merlin crawls up the stairs.

“Please don’twake me,” he writes on a piece of parchment that he pins to his door. “Couldn’t sleep last night.”

Gaius lets him sleep until noon.

☩♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

“Where is Gaius?” Uther asks as Merlin hands overthe medicine for the old wound in his shoulder. He doesn’t look at Merlin as hespeaks, and instead he focuses on the bottle in his hand, reading the neatlyprinted label Gaius had written on it.

“I’m sorry, sire,” Merlin says, “he’s outside of Camelotat the moment – he had to ride out to Gort, to the East? Their alderman is verysick, and since he’s the village physician, there was no one else to help.” Uthernods his head, and he sets the bottle neatly on the table beside him. His handsbehind his back, Merlin takes a neat step back from the king, and his skinfeels too tight with fear, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Heknows that if Uther knew, if Arthur had told him, that he already would havesaid something, that he would have had Merlin shackled in irons and burned atthe stake or whatever, but still the fear lingers and bubbles under his skin.

“Arthur says you’ve taken your leave of yourservice to him,” Uther says, conversationally.

“I’m grateful for Arthur’s employment, yourmajesty, but— It was a lot to juggle, both his work and what Gaius gives me,and… Without meaning to, um, to imply that working for Arthur isn’t important,sire, I thought I would serve the court better if I was putting in my earnestas Gaius’ apprentice.” Uther raises his head, and he looks at Merlin for thelongest few seconds – he never usually talks to Merlin if he can help it, andthe scant words he says are usually short demands or insults, but now… Merlindoesn’t know if he imagines it, but he does think that Uther is looking at himdifferently, his chin a little bit higher as he examines Merlin, more respect,maybe, in his face.

“Serving boys are not hard to find,” Uther says, “buta skilled physician is priceless. I have told the steward that I will be augmentingGaius’ wage in accordance with a full-time apprentice on his hands. You shallhave the allowance you had whilst on the castle staff.” He almost throws thewords out, and Merlin gets the feeling that he doesn’t even care, that itbarely gives him pause to put money in Merlin’s coffers even though he isn’tserving the prince anymore.

“Thank you, your majesty,” Merlin says, giving aneat bow of his head and bending his knee slightly.

Is that all it took, to gain the respect of theking, from the beginning?

“Mmm,” Uther hums uncaringly, waving his hand, andMerlin walks swiftly from the hall. As he walks into the corridor outside, henearly walks into Arthur, and he stands very still for a moment. Arthur meetshis gaze.

“What were you doing in the throne hall?” Arthurdemands. For a moment, Merlin keeps his gaze entirely neutral, fixing his stareon Arthur’s and challenging him to look away, his lips pressed together.

“I was giving the king his prescription fromGaius, your highness,” Merlin says crisply, arching one eyebrow in sardonic expectation.“For the injury in his shoulder. Gaius is abroad in Gort, some day’s ride away.”

“Oh,” Arthur says, leaning back on his heelsslightly, and for a moment he opens his mouth, as if he’s about to saysomething, but then he closes it, and he puts his head down. “Right,” he says,and he walks past Merlin, into the throne room.

All will bewell, the Dragon had said. This is asit should be.

Merlin makes his way back to Gaius’ cottage, andhe puts himself to bed.

[transmalewife]

@sheepskinnedgoat I don't have the patience for reply word limits so congrats you get a full reblog.

yes i know you can care about both. i just don't.

'admitting you don't care says more about you than your chocolate eating friend.' yes i know. this post is about me.

"Stop making excuses and just live your life lol' im trying to but you people won't leave me alone.

"How do you get ethically sourced meat?" from family friends who raise their own animals, when i can. certified farms when i can afford it. i do sometimes eat unethically sourced meat also. It's a choice i make to stay sane under late capitalism. ex. most of my clothes are thrifted/found dumpsterdiving. however every once in a while i do need to buy new underwear and i have to live with the fact that it was made in a sweatshop bc i cant afford anything else. actually i guess you can care about everything in the world at once, if you're rich enough to spare the time and money to find and buy everything from ethical sources.

"Can you ethically kill a human against their will?" bit of a wild fucking leap here don't you think? how much fucking clearer than i care more about humans than animals can i make it. also its such a wild example because idk. self defence? like even if this had any bearing on eating meat then its such an easily disproved claim thats clearly designed to pull on the heartstrings of anyone who thinks animals are morally equal to humans. sounds a lot like the arguments prolifers make actually. "how can you think murder isn't bad" they often say, but neither animal nor fetus life is morally equivalent to a full grown human.

"there is something about the ethics of consuming what you know is ethically wrong or dubious" you got a bit incomprehensible here mate, but if i'm reading this right, then, again. I do not think eating meat is inherently ethically wrong.

"Indigenous people, black people, immigrants, all suffer to feed the cow that feed you. Saying consumers have no responsibility to their consumerism is weak and avoidant." i have no fucking clue how you got that from this post because the whole point was shifting the narrative from the emotional uwu animals are so cute veganism OF THIS ONE PERSON I KNOW, NOT YOU. THIS POST WASNT ABOUT YOU AND IT WASNT TAGGED SO YOU WOULDNT FIND IT, towards what i see as the real problem in society: labor violations, of which i can't really imagine anything worse than child slavery. also, i could count on the fingers of two hands every time i ate beef in the last 3 years. funny how i was talking about my personal friend, and yet like 6 people have already come onto this UNTAGGED post, assumed it had any bearing on their own life choices, made it my problem. and then made wrong assumptions about my own diet and medical information.

"Woof typo ahoy sorry for this spam yo." thanks for the self awareness at least... I'm gonna assume you haven't read my original long reply to the first person who started shit on this post because 1. i adressed most of what you said there and 2. i also said I'd block anyone who came onto it to argue again. i do want you to read this and see if you can learn any lessons about letting strangers online live their lives if their choices don't personally affect you, but if you come back to argue i will block you because i love being a cunt i guess.

on a related note, thanks for reminding me that i do occasionally like eating beef, i think i'm gonna order myself a burger in your honor.

actually, new policy: from now on every time a vegan starts shit on my untagged posts i'm gonna eat some meat. lets see if thats more effective than blocking. gonna be real good for my health too, ive been meaning to make my diet more balanced.

idc if you think that makes me a bad person but i guess i just don't care about animals that much. like i once had a vegan tell me they just feel so guilty and sad every time they eat meat, and yeah that's valid, not gonna judge them for whatever way they choose to deal with living under late stage capitalism.

but they said it while eating chocolate. and not fair trade fancy chocolate either, but chocolate from a brand that uses slave labor. and I guess i just care more about child slavery than i do animals. I wear leather shoes that last a decade instead of plastic ones i have to replace every year. i eat meat when i get woozy and i think my iron's low. I eat meat because it tastes good, also. And i think there's an argument to be made about how supporting farms that treat their animals with dignity has more of an impact than refusing to participate at all.

But I get that same guilty feeling when i eat chocolate now, and I invite you to consider, if you are trying trying to make your food more ethical but can't give up meat, if this much smaller and less nutritionally essential part of your diet might be the better choice.

[blueberrywhale123]

This hurts.

Artham and Esben will forever be the most tragically beautiful of brothers that I have ever read

excuse me but the mental scars images created by 'cave paintings' WILL NOT leave me alone. [Spoilers through WatWK]

Artham and Esben, on opposite sides of the sea, both settled in facades of a home while pining for their family?? Artham high in the trees to escape the ground like a hawk and Esben deep in a forested cave like a hibernating bear entrenched in the fruits of Gnag's cruelty?? Both processing trauma and struggling to recall their past through the arts they were taught as Annierans?? Artham with his stacks and stacks of journals and Esben with wall upon wall of paintings??