#its Scandal Savage

[babygirl-but-a-boy]

DC PAY FOR MY FUCKING Therspy bill istg

[mooishbeam]

『♡』 In the Ring

♡ featuring: boxer!wriothesley x manager!reader

♡ summary: its hard managing a boxer full time. maybe it's time you relieve that stress. wc: 6.8k+ (???>":>?)

♡ cw/tw: mentions of trauma, mentions of violence, rough sex, overstim, face-sitting, size kink, unintentional edging, hair pulling, mentions of choking, argument, confessed feelings, slow burn, kinda toxic?

notes: can u tell how down bad i am for wriothesley. also do yall like the smaller text cause I do. jing yuan fluff next :)) art by sxnalien on twitter! <3 comments and reblogs are appreciated!

For a second, the crowd stills. Bright intense lamps illuminate the sweltering squared circle, buoyant under the nimble movement of the boxers. They trade blows, bobbing and throwing each devastating hook with an even deadlier counter. No one took a hit for the past minutes, and the audience scoots to the edge of their seats at the sheer stamina of the two. Both dripping sweat, barely holding on between the merciless clock and their steadfast opponent. You can almost hear the breeze of swift jabs cutting wind against their jaws. The one with blue gloves can barely manage to guard himself, with a swollen face and wobbly legs, while the crimson gloves deal relentless punches. The crowd shouts. Unintelligible echoes, some that pray for the win, others grieving the money they’re about to lose. He’s caught on the ropes, and attempts a wild swing to save himself, to save his career. Red gloves weaves effortlessly and delivers a brutal crush to his bloodied nose and possibly busted mouthpiece. The crack is resounding, it makes the commentators cringe. His skull flies back, and he comes crashing down from his dizzying tower. The head-first fall vibrates beneath the feet of investors in proximity. 

DING DING DING 

Mass uproar ensues. They jump out of their seats, flailing their arms, joy and pain in equilibrium. 

“And he is out! It’s all over!” the commentator yells. Confetti floats golden dust from the ceiling. The victor stalks the ropes before hopping on them, his gloves raised in the air. Glistening, high off elation, but somehow composed in his attitude, akin to a wolf. 

“A savage knockout from the untouchable world champion, the king of the ring, Wriooothesley!” 

“Wrio, Wrio, Wrio!” they chant. You’re standing near the ropes, already identifying which joints you’ll need to observe after his victory lap. It’s hectic, and you’re jotting down the state of his figure. Past experiences sew through each deep scar carving his rugged biceps and abs, the bruises display early signs of discoloration. He’s tall on the unseen throne, it feels like you’re there with him. A million eyes in that vast stadium, and yet, those midwinter eyes ebbed in silver only look at you.  

Your beginnings as a manager were tumultuous. You could barely comprehend how out of your league you were working for a renowned agency fresh out of college. Though you found quick success in your ability to grab the attention of investors through public relations, you weren’t equipped just yet with the hindsight in preparing for scandals. The other athletes you worked with served no problem, and so you never had to worry about their appeal. Higher ups praised your extensive portfolio, and at such a young age, it was even more commendable. You earned it, fame and respect, interviews and gossip—a delicate dance. You were always busy, assisting your clients throughout the day and maintaining their presence while they slept. It was hard work, but you loved doing it. 

That was until you worked with amateur boxer, Childe. 

A snappy, overconfident lightweight fighter with no regard for anything or anyone. He had an unmistakable void in his eyes, but you fought for him ceaselessly, to prove that he wasn’t the cold person he portrayed himself as. You bore with his flirtatious compliments and innuendos, the need to focus him whenever you documented his afflictions, and he’d not-so-subtly flex his biceps. Childe was unnecessarily violent with underhanded tactics. The media knew this and did everything to amplify that bellicose story. You’d combat it, negate it, but he only fed the flames with threats of retaliation. Taking his phone wasn’t enough, and you couldn’t get through to him. It was only a matter of time before he went off the deep end.  

The day you slept, you discovered a restlessness you’d endure indefinitely. The flickering glow of your device woke you at midnight as hundreds of notifications congested your screen. 128 missed calls from your agency, 50 from news sources, and none from Childe. When you processed the damage from his deplorable stunt, you nearly hurled your phone out the window. He posted revenge porn, and evidently turned off his phone. Surely, there’d be a way to fix this. The chances seemed to dissolve with each text turning green. You started pacing, battling with morality and loyalty and anger. What he did was disgusting, but it’s your job to save him, right? Is he worth saving? You spoke with 4 managers at once, switching through motives and bickering until morning. As you flipped through the television, another emotion struck you. 

There he was, on a tasteless gossip channel. An interview you didn’t arrange, with a man you’ve never seen before. And he was...crying? The sob story emitting from his deceitful lips was almost impressive. Childe went on about how “demanding and horrible” you were backstage. The crocodile tears dried up through dodgy anecdotes, but it was enough to have people hooked. You were allegedly physically and emotionally abusive. He was too scared to speak up due to your position and he just couldn’t bear it any longer. Then he dropped the bomb; he blamed you for his post. You forced him to do it, jealous of his previous partners, emphasizing how enamored you were of him. The questionable tears began to fall again, but this time he covered his mouth, withholding the duping smile crawling on his face.  

You were filled with blinding rage, unable to control the fury at which your remote connected with the screen. It was everywhere now, social media websites booming with live opinions. He had no reason to slander you, and you couldn’t pinpoint why he chose to hurt you like this. You cried for him, shared stories of childhood and family. The knife you used to protect him was firm in your back, twisting and digging with each disgusting message in your inbox. You had no game plan to conduct, and no tears left to cry.  

Within a week, you finally understood how cruel this industry could be. Within a week, you were no longer on top. You lost clients fast. It spread like wildfire and not a single outlet spared an ear for your side. People you called friends, coworkers, hadn’t replied to your messages. When you got back to work, the rooms were silent as you passed. You could feel their judgement, whispers rattled with rumors and accusations. They waited for the tiniest slip-up and pounced like hyenas—you were eaten alive by their pitiful stares. You attempted to tell your truth multiple times throughout the week, but it was consistently rejected. The headlines were eye-catching: 

“Manager From Hell: Childe Tells All!” 

“He Cries: A Story of Love and Jealousy” 

Your stomach churned to the magazines being shown. Despite the great amount of loss you suffered, you were thankful for the one person that believed you, your boss. 

“Childe is a lying little snake. The media knows that, too.” 

“Then why is this happening?” 

“Money. That story is making bank right now. But I know for a fact you wouldn’t do this” he reassured.  

“Thank you, sir. But...I lost everything; I just don’t know what to do.” The weariness was heavy in your voice. 

“I have someone you can manage. It won’t be easy, but if anyone can do it, it’s you.” You were unsure of yourself now, and he continued.  

“You’re one of my best. If you want to climb out of this, now’s your chance.” Yes, you were unsure, drowning in doubt. But if the only way to get above water was to keep swimming, you wouldn’t give up so easily. 

Wriothesley wasn’t exactly known for his kindness. Crude, cocky, maybe even spoiled were descriptions that circulated in the tabloids. He had a knack for pissing reporters off by not answering questions or humming over their voice with a shit-eating grin on his face. Women loved him, however, throwing bras and phone numbers written on scrap as the condemned “bad boy” departed post-game. They screamed his name at once, and he’d done nothing to deserve it. He relished infamy—that way, it was much harder to pry into his private life. 

It had to be a coincidence that it was someone you fangirled over. In college, your eyes were glued to the screen every Sunday, waiting for Wriothesely’s post-conference and behind the scenes interviews. He didn’t speak often, but just the sight of those inky strands streaked with ash made your heart flutter featherlight in your chest. 

When you first approached him, he was just as arrogant as you’d expect. 

“Good evening!” you beamed. You caught him outside the gym, and he still had his headphones in. Full volume and blankly staring as you went on about the opportunity, silent under the blaring music. He took one earbud out when you finished. 

“Hm? Who’re you?” 

You were slightly annoyed. “Let me reintroduce myself, I’m (Y/N). Your new manager.” 

“No. Bye.” He began to walk past you without an ounce of care. You couldn’t lose it like this. 

“Ah, wait!” He turned half-heartedly. 

“Listen, I get it. You don’t want to be bossed around. But honestly, your reputation is shit. That can’t be good for business.” you persuaded. He towered over you, the figure of a Greek giant peeked through the compression top as he lazily watched you. 

“So? Why do you care?” he remarked. 

“I’ll help you. Sponsors, advertisements, whatever you want. You’re good, but you can be so much better. Let’s make money together.” You held your hand out, awaiting a handshake of approval. He merely glanced at your limp wrist. 

“Help? You’re obviously not doing this for free.” 

“Of course not. Give a little, take a little. I don’t do charity cases” you shrugged.  

He groaned, raking his fingers through his thick mane. At the very least, he hadn’t walked away yet. “I'd prefer for my life to be private.” 

“Then I’ll guarantee your privacy.” 

“Really?” he scoffed. “What can you give me besides empty promises?” 

“Anything you desire. Work with me, and I’ll make it happen.” That offer enticed him. No one had been this persistent with him yet, he scared off any manager that dared succor him. It was slightly entertaining, the way you burned ambition in your eyes, you were so easy to read. Most people wouldn’t look directly at him, and here you were, ready to follow him home if that’s what it took. He chuckled, and his massive hand reached for yours. 

You shook hands, and your fates were sealed.  

That was a year ago, and ever since then he’s been a thorn in your side. Nonstop drama and rectifying consumed your life. You didn’t think a man who spoke so little in public could talk so much around you. Whenever you argue—which is a frequent occurrence—his smirk grew wider at your frustration. You weren’t sure why you ever liked him in the first place. He only puts in effort when it comes to sparring, but you’re determined to ameliorate his standing, and in turn, yours.  

The minute you open the doors to the hall, the sound of pummeled sandbags, clanking metal, and sneakers skidding across the floor roars in your ears. Some men are dialed in on abusing the inanimate objects, the rest tense through repetitions of dumbbell curls with a hiss. You're in quick strides, the phone arm's length away from you as the sponsor on the other end screams. Another petty drama surrounding Wriothesley grabs the attention of the internet. Luckily, you have thorough experience remedying this. 

“What are you going to do? You’re fucking with my money!” you hear the faint voice. You bring the phone back to your ear. 

“Don’t I always deal with it? He fights, I make up for the other half. Give me a few hours.” 

“I’m not going to wa-” You hang up at the response. 

You propel the double doors free into a large room with a boxing ring in the center. A group of trainers swarm the perimeter, you can barely see through.  

“Don’t be scared!” one of them taunt towards the sparring partner, who has an unthinkable panic creeping in goosebumps dotting his skin. Each sloppy dodge tilts him more and more off balance against the strikes. Wriothesley has a powerful stature, with his back curving in a way that accentuates the rough muscle shaping his spine. You drone an annoyed sigh at the commotion and push yourself through them.  

“Move it, move!” you yell, before jostling your way to the front of the ring. 

“Wriothesley! Times up.”  He turns his head to the side, unintentionally sparing his partner and glares at you. 

“Two minutes.” 

“No. Now.” you command. He looks up at nothing, as if considering his options if he cusses you out. Then he begrudgingly drops the gloves and pulls himself under the ropes. The group disperses from the lack of action and he’s mere inches from you now. Sometimes you forget how to breathe in his half-naked presence.  

“What the fuck is your problem?” He mumbles while drying his head with a towel. His colossal forearms are raised over his head, highlighting the happy trail thick down his abdomen and tufts of hair on his armpits.  

“You. How many times do I have to tell you not to train during recovery?” you seethe. 

“Damn. Must’ve slipped my mind.” He doesn’t sound convincing in the slightest. 

“Well then, I’ll be sure to remind you hourly.” 

“Nah, I’m good. Hearing you once a day is enough.” He tosses the towel to you like his dutiful servant and grabs his water bottle. The liquid drips down his chin and on his shorts, hanging below his v-line. 

Your eyebrow twitches from withheld vexation. “If you don’t want to hear me twice, I suggest you do what I tell you. We need to talk.” A heavy sigh leaves him as he stretches, and he passes you the water bottle. If you had the strength to collapse the bottle with one hand, you would. “Lead the way” he goads. 

Wriothesley follows you through the backdoor of the gym to a secluded alleyway. When you get there, he immediately pulls out a cigarette you didn’t know he had. You were aware he smokes occasionally, but seeing it physically coaxed a strange worry in your gut. You twist your phone to him, to display evidence of him instigating an argument with Childe on social media. He reads in silence, briefly laughing at the recollection of his own comebacks, then lights the cigarette. 

“What’s this? Didn’t I say keep a low profile?” you reprimand. 

He drags in a deep breath of nicotine, and you eye the foul scent with distaste. He blows it above your unhappy face. “Calm down. Once a month thing. That fucker's testing me.” 

“This can’t happen again, Wriothesley.” He ignores you to continue his mumbling. “I should break his neck like a twig. He’s lucky he didn’t say that shit to my face, fucking punk.” he grouses. You're struggling to gather your thoughts, the cigarette compacted between his thick fingers irritates you. 

“We all appreciate your restraint, however-” you get closer, and yank the stick out his hand. 

 “No-!” Before he can finish, you promptly smudge it underneath your shoe. You aren’t sure how he’d react, but you didn’t expect him to sulk like a puppy. 

“You aren’t doing this shit while I’m here.” 

“Oh my god” he pouts, throwing his hands into his face and pulling them down.  

“You’re lucky I don’t report it to the doctor. None of this, ever again.” 

“Fuck, alright just...” he lets out a defeated sigh. “What do you want me to do about it? Apologize publicly?” You need him to do nothing; neither agency wants controversy, and it’d most likely be swept under the rug in just a couple days. You point his water bottle to him. 

“Nope, I’ll handle it. Just sit there and be pretty.” you reassure. He leans down to your height with a sweet smile and even sweeter gaze. 

“I do that well, don’t I?” he quips. 

“You manage.” He latches onto the water bottle, and drinks from it in your hand while looking at you. A soft heat envelops you beyond words that never reach your lips. 

“Listen to what I’m saying. Low. Profile.” Wriothesley comes up from thirst, dragging his tongue along the straw to the top, and licks his blushed lips. He delights in your flustered reaction. 

“Low. Profile.” he repeats in a sarcastic drawl. 

Later in the week, you receive a call in your office. It was fairly busy today, with coworkers constantly “checking in”, more so to see Wriothesley sitting across from you. He had no reason to be here, and you were surprised at his arrival. Be it boredom or a certain longing, a dull swell pulsed in his chest once he saw your overworked smile. 

“Hello, this is (Y/N) of Boxe Association. May I know who I’m speaking with?” Wriothesley’s ears perk up at your sudden professionalism, and he mimics your cadence. 

“Good afternoon, it’s Isadora.” Isadora was an event coordinator you previously worked with before your controversy. You understood that she stopped communicating to protect her business, but the pain lingered. You twirl the phone cord around your fingers, and meet eyes with Wriothesley, who’s laid back in the chair, his arms behind his head. 

“Oh. Hey, it’s been a while.” you say. You turn your swivel chair away from him to continue the conversation. His eyebrow twitches slightly with an unconscious scowl, and he walks towards your chair. 

“It has. I’m calling because I have a proposition that might interest you. I believe a meet and greet would be appropriate for your client. A large chunk of his fanbase are young adult women, however, he’s also popular with children.” He spins the chair around with a firm hand and presses his cheek against the phone. 

“That’s true.” You side eye him, and without skipping a beat, mush his nosey face away. His hot breath on your digits makes your skin tingle. 

“Who is that” he mumbles. You'd never seen Wriothesley interact with children, and you have every reason to be hesitant. 

“Hmm...any positive activity with children is good publicity. I’ll consider it. I’ll let you know by tonight.” The second you hang up, you release his face. 

“Why are you being annoying-” 

“Who were you talking to” he chides.  

“Isadora. She’s an event coordinator.” His clenched jaw unwinds. “She wants to do a meet and greet with you and a few kids. If we go through with this, I’ll have a camera crew and some reporters there. It’ll be good for your image.” 

“Okay.” he agrees. That was quick.  

“...Are you sure? Kids are loud and obnoxious a lot of the time.” 

“So? Fine by me. I can teach them how to fight.” Your skin crawls at the thought of Wriothesley launching a child through a wall. “That won’t be necessary.” 

“It’ll be fun.” The more he assures you, the more uneasy you feel. 

“Wriothesley, I’m serious. Don’t screw this up” you plead. He holds his pinky out. “I won't.” His loose interpretation of promises was dubious at best, but you had no other options, and this might be your only opening. You curl to his word. 

After parleying the finer details, you broadcast a raffle for young fans to meet Wriothesley. The traffic to the website was overwhelming, and you quickly began sorting out tickets for the favored winners. 

 Fortunately, the next couple of weeks were par for the course. 

It’s the night before the event, and you’re getting ready for bed. You sit at your desk in a big T-shirt and do your daily review of personal data. As you're scrolling through and identifying what needs improvement, you get a notification on your phone. 

“Breaking News: Boxer Bar Fight!” Curious, you open the tab to a video. It makes your breath stall, sweating frantically. You can’t think clearly, and your shaky hands can barely increase the volume. Unidentifiable noises and wobbly camerawork made it impossible to catch anything besides those familiar inky black strands, throwing punches in a drunken stupor at a defenseless man. Your previous conundrum flashes through your memory in a horrific stop-motion; the duping smile on his face. 

No. It’s happening all over again. Why is he at a bar? You messaged him before he went to bed. He never goes to bars. Why now, the night before the event? It’s late, he doesn’t go anywhere without telling you. 

He promised. 

None of it made sense as you threw on any sweatpants in your drawer and ran out the door. You can’t wait until morning. Disaster punctures and tears any rational decision you contemplate. Shouting silently within your mind, a crashing rage—or sadness—boils in your nervous stomach. You’re tunnel vision in a taxi on the way to his address. 

When you get there, you bang on the door with a fury that vibrates throughout the archway. His home is extravagant, with two cars and an expansive driveway. You bang again. 

“Wriothesley!” He finally opens the door. He’s still half asleep, pajama pants low on his waist, groggily leaning against the arch.  

“(Y/N)? Uh, what’s up?” He slurs in a deep slumbering voice through heavy eyelids. You barge in without saying anything. “Make yourself at home, I guess.” 

The interior is just as opulent as the exterior, it almost looks untouched. Every corner has a case or shelf stacked with ornate trophies and medals of excellence. It was the home of someone who achieved peak perfection and reveled in it. He follows you to his living room, bewildered at your furious expression. You play the video in front of him, and he watches with that same puzzled attitude that makes you angrier. You try taking deep breaths to compose yourself, but they halt shallowly. 

“What the fuck is this?” you accuse. 

“What? I don’t know.”  “Like hell you don’t know, this shit is on every homepage. Are you serious?”  

The cranky boxer pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. You show up at his house, and it’s to badger him about a rumor. Your temperament only heats the smoldering ember fueled by incessant claims. He covers his mouth, physically stopping the involuntary response. 

“Okay” he says, and blurts a facetious chuckle. Your heart thumps in your chest and ears.  

“Oh, It’s a fucking joke? I bust my ass to save your career and you’re laughing?” you snap, voice increasing in volume until it reaches a broken peak. He returns with the same energy. 

“When did I ask you to fix anything? Did you ever think that maybe I don’t fucking need you-” 

“You can barely control your smoking habits you pompous ass-” 

“I would if you didn’t nag me all the time. Whining and complaining, it’s fucking annoying!” he yells. Neither of you meant the words spilling out the bubbling surface, but your tongues were solely seasoned with the next spiteful jab. 

“Yes, whining! Because all you need to do is be on the straight and narrow, but you take nothing seriously, Wriothesley, and that’s exactly why-” 

“Exactly why what? Why your career went to shit so you’re piggybacking off mine?”  

Your battle stops. You can’t find the words to rebuttal. All the opinions of your colleagues, the media, Wriothesley, and yourself coagulate into a lump that fills the tightening throat. Pride comforts tears brimming your eyes. 

He pauses, as though he came to reality. An apology attempts to form on his lips, but it never manifests. “(Y/N), I didn’t-” 

“See you in the morning” you choked. You walk to the door, and he reaches out to the infinite space thick between you two.  

You didn’t sleep the entire night. It’s morning, and you’re exhausted. You consistently replayed the quarrel in your head through the taxi ride home, and when you strived for rest, it plagued your mind. Your coffee is untouched during your morning routine, a movement comparable to zombies. You don’t bother to confirm if Wriothesely is at the building—either way you owe it to the event holders to be there. 

You arrive just before the children file into the training room. Thankfully, Wriothesley is there in the center. Live cameras from reporters and parents border the walls; if something were to occur, it would be irreversible. Your head suddenly hurts. 

Perhaps playing it up for his reputation, the smile stretched across his face is a sunny warmth you’ve never seen from him. He waves to them, and they erupt with screams. To your astonishment, he gets on his knees to be eye level with them. They all jump into his arms at once, and he topples over onto the mat.  

And he’s laughing. This grumpy asshole fighter is laughing. A hearty, genuine laugh as he wraps his sturdy arms around all of them and picks them up at once. He whirls them around and they orchestrate high-pitched giggles. “Ready to have some fun?” he chortles. They say yes to varying degrees of excitement, and the meet and greet proceeds. 

You can’t help but smile when he frolics with the kids. They chase him with boxing gloves, he pretends to fall dramatically. Dogpiling him, he lets out a shrill scream of defeat. He manages to work in proper defense techniques while they jump him like a test dummy. He tosses each kid in the air whenever they ask, and never tells them no. You receive another call from Isadora amid your admiration, and you step outside. 

“Hey! Good news, these views are off the charts and the internet is really in his favor right now” she congratulates.  

“That’s great...what about the video from last night? Did you see it?” you ask. 

“Video...oh, that! Don’t worry, it’s confirmed fake.” What? Oh no. Immediate regret stirs in your blood, and you force the phone away to catch your breath. You feel utterly stupid. 

“Hello?” You quickly bring the phone back to your ear. “Yea, sorry. I have to go; I’ll call you later.” you insist. You can’t facepalm any harder. You make your way back to the training room, where the kids decorate his gloves with iridescent stickers. Wriothesley occasionally looks at you, but you can’t bear to show your guilty face. 

When the event is over, you both make sure to hug every child on the way out and thank the parent for coming. You’re sorting through mountains of requests people made to see Wriothesley again, and you mute your phone over the influx of emails. Peeking at the broadcast, under the footage in bold letters:  

“(Y/N) Back from the Dead?”  

It wasn’t the most flattering title, but it proved that public perception was salvageable. You emit a sigh of relief, for you and Wriothesley. As you’re packing your things to exit, he blocks the door with his body. 

“Can we talk?” You were dreading this discussion, but agreed, nonetheless. The ride to his home is silent, you grapple with a proper apology. 

You lean against the kitchen bar, while he’s laxing on the couch. Sleep deprivation torments you, causes you to wander as you fill in papers from sponsors. You can’t see the way Wriothesley steals glances at your slack figure curving to the marble. He eventually spoke.  

“So, um.” 

“I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you. You did a good job today Wriothesley, you should be proud.” You flash a meek smile. He fumbles with his thumbs uncomfortably. 

“I am. Aren’t I the best?” he boasts. 

“You are” you say. The lack of sleep beckons you to a spur of honesty as you scribble. “You have stunning form, perfect accuracy, and immeasurable talent. Not just anyone can do that.” you return. He gazes at you, that dull swell pumping in his veins again. The cozy radiance of lights brightens your tired eyes. 

“You’re a big fan, huh?” he chuckles.  

“Of course, I used to watch you in college. I had a major crush on you” you snort. “Everything you are is amazing, but you know this. So cut it out.” He sits on the armrest, swallowing your confessions. The room is entirely too hot, he needs alleviation—he needs you. 

“Sorry. For what I said.” 

“Forget it. It's my fault, I was careless. I apologize.” you admit. 

“You know I didn’t do it, right?” 

“I know.” 

“I didn’t.” 

“I know.” you reassure.  

“What if some other bullshit controversy comes out. Then what?” You stop writing to give him your full attention. 

“Then, I’ll trust you. We’ve gotten this far. Even if no one else does, even if for some reason I lose my job and I’m not your manager anymore, I’ll trust you, Wriothesley.” you reveal. He doesn’t move. Wriothesley knew he wasn’t deserving of trust, and he’d made a plethora of mistakes throughout your arrangement. You had every right to leave him long ago. Nobody gave him the time of day or cared for his wellbeing like you did, but he couldn’t reciprocate. Even so, here he kneels, at the feet of an angel that shows him undying mercy. 

Wriothesley stalks at you, but you remain. He looms over you, pinning you to the counter with both arms, inches from your face. It isn’t a threatening force, but one that begs for confirmation. That slated storm searches for a specific craving, you feel his chest rising and falling laden with yours. 

“You’re too close” you quiver. The bitter musk and vanilla enveloping your senses makes you foggy, it lingers through the whole house. 

“Tell me to leave.” His mouth slants to you, and he waits expectingly. You ogle his features, the scratches of a warrior celebrated across his hardy torso. His hair brushes against your forehead, imperfect and uniquely beautiful. Why were you mad, again?

“Tell me to back off, (Y/N)” he pleads. The pads of your fingers lightly caress his ear, then his jaw. 

“Please” he whispers. Your thumb grazes his bottom lip, and he succumbs to the urge. 

You collide fervently, lips coated in definitive desire. Dancing with rough, bruising kisses that don’t make space for air. It smears on your face, dips down your neck and swiftly returns to your lonely mouth. The pressure of the counter bar burns across your lower back from his weight, but those mind-numbing kisses soften any injury. You bite his lip when he pulls away, and he groans. Suddenly, he lifts you effortlessly with his hands on your ass, and you clash teeth and tongue in a passionate challenge. He demands entry, and you moan into the wet mass intertwining through sloppy kisses. It explores your mouth, sending throbs to your nerves and subdues any control you have left. Your arms are wrapped around his neck, but you yearn for deeper contact. He licks up the organ, and spots moist, hungry kisses on your jaw. You both take a fleeting breath before converging again. You find passage in his hair and suck staining rose-colored marks on his neck while he carries you to the bedroom. 

“You’ve been waiting for this, hm? Slutty groupie” Wriothesley moans. You drag kisses along the shell of his ear. He tosses you onto the fluffy bedding and haphazardly strips to his underwear. The wide mirror opposite his bed gives you a glimpse of his thighs and shapely bottom hugging the briefs. You’re supposed to be undressing, but that thronging bulge made for a titan makes you nervous for what’s to come. He palms the erection to soothe the ache and climbs over you. He’s somewhat gentle, careful with the bulk of his body as he cradles your face for more kisses. The way he looks at you, a covet softness or misted lust tantalizing the wetness pooling in your panties. He moves to your neck, French kissing down your throat and on your collarbone. You feel like a virgin again, heart racing from every graze of his fingers and lips. His calloused digits grope the plush fat of your thighs, and gradually reach the hem of your skirt. You snake your hands over his pecs and abs and read the muscles. Moaning into each other's mouths, indulging every part of your bodies as you’ve wanted to do for months. He pulls your skirt off and you hold your button-down over your exposed panties. Heat spreads in your body, and he amuses at your sudden bashfulness. 

“Oh…you’re shy?” he teases, before popping the buttons off with a brutal rip. “Wrio!” you yelp. That’s the first time you called Wriothesley a nickname; he must’ve died and went to heaven. The lace gift wrapped around your breasts taunts him, and he buries his face immediately. He nips the sensitive skin and snaps the clasp off. “Cute. Need to feel you” he husks. He twirls the bud in his mouth, while manipulating the other between his girthy fingers. Alternating among loving hickies and harsh tugs of his teeth on your nipple. You whine, and his laugh tickles your raw skin. He flips over on his back and steadies you on top of him. Discards the rest of your top, and let’s out a shaky groan.  

“You’ve never been this speechless” he says. You smile and kiss his puffy lips, your hands kneading his chest. “You’re so pretty” you coo. He huffs while rubbing circles on your waist, eyeing your inner thighs covered in juices.  

“Then come fuck my pretty face.” He slips under the waistband and tweaks the fabric, but you grip his wrists. “Wait! Let me shower first- “ 

“You said you'd give me anything I desire, remember that? Keep your promise." He yanks the thin material down your legs in your weak clutches, trailing a string of drool that sticks to your labia. “C’mere” he grunts and lifts you towards his face. Your thighs are soft on either side of him, and you still in his grasp. He lolls his tongue out, but you’re reluctant to fully sit. “I’m heavy” you murmur.  

“Shut up.” He embraces your body, and you have no choice but to settle in his warmth. He keeps you flush with his flat tongue, swiping up and down the squishy flesh molding to his mouth. You writhe in his grasp, but he continues to lap at your clit with a starving lust. Wriothesely soaks in your velvet skin and perfumed essence dribbling down his chin. He doesn’t come up for air, and your brain is mush over him, his lips slurping your quivering cunt. A buzzing intensity courses through your twitching stomach. You rut your hips against his mouth, and he maintains his position while you use him. You’re grinding on his tongue, absent-mindedly biting your lips and mewling endlessly as you bring yourself closer to climax. He hums while sucking the nub and the vibrations make you cry out.  

“Wrio, ‘m coming” you whine. You hump his mouth until you come undone in a pulsating finish. His hands restrain you, greedily devouring the newly found honey as it pours out. You ride it through while he curls the tip of his tongue at your opening. Without warning, you feel the pink muscle push in your recovering vulva. “S-Shit, Wrio” you whimper, trembling on him as he drives inside. He seizes the back of your thighs and begins to bounce you up and down the mushy appendage slowly stretching you. The sensation is overwhelming, his nose skims your oversensitive clit each time you drop, and you sob. Wriothesley moves faster, your hands entangle in his hair. You babble please’s repeatedly, gazing sensually at each other as the coil winds in your gut. More, more. Then it snaps, an abrupt shock, clenching on his tongue as you cream. He raises your lower half; the wetness collecting in your convulsing heat makes his cock strain more than it already suffered.  

“Such a cute slut” Wriothesley husks. Your numb legs can’t navigate on their own, so he places you on your stomach. “We’re not done.” He springs his throbbing length free. The veins are consistent, prominent up his shaft to the angry red crown—9 inches begging to be inside you. Fresh precome trickles down his tip and he sighs at the bloated pain in his hefty balls. You arch your back, presenting yourself to his awaiting size. When he doesn’t enter you turn to him impatiently and he smirks. 

“Put it in” you whine. Wriothesley spreads your backside, and watches you clench around the ghost of him. He glazes himself with your slick, and moans from the feeling of your puffy lips cuddling his cock. “It’s not every day a fan gets to sleep with me. Be grateful.” he teases. He pumps through your squashed thighs, the head prodding your nub while he forces your chest flush with the bed. After he thoroughly coats himself, he nudges the bulbous tip to your entrance. 

Wriothesley sinks into your sex. You’re gripping him like a vice despite the searing soreness of your body accommodating the scale. The fevered sleeve nearly makes him crash to the hilt, but he stutters gradually to relieve your discomfort. He hits the base and shudders. You feel unbelievably stuffed, as if it’s squirming in your cervix. Then he starts at a savage pace. He’s using you like a flesh-light, balls smacking your overwhelmed tender nub with a carnal impulse. His moans spill uncontrollably as he watches your rippling ass and viscous webs blend together, clinging to his cock and forming a cloudy froth at the base. Your knuckles turn white on the sheets; you can’t think or feel anything that isn’t him, core surging with intense want. 

“Fuck, you’re so tight, gonna snap my dick off. Ah- gonna make sure you can’t walk t-tomorrow. Then- hah- then you won’t be able to find anyone who fucks you like this, who makes you come like this.” He’s rambling and stuttering, completely incoherent the closer he gets. He glances at the mirror, then at you. You feel your hair jerked back by his massive hand, and lock eyes with Wriothesley in his drunken haze. “Stop, it’s embarrassing!” you slur. You’re both sheened with sweat, disheveled bodies satiating the hunger in any way you can. 

“Shh, you hear that?” The squelching slam of passion echoes in the room, sopping down your leg through his pummeling thrusts. Your back bends unnaturally as though it were folded in half. “You’re so fucking hot, so needy for me.” His veins adorn your walls, you start to tear up from the mixture of pleasure and pain. He notices your tears and holds you up so that your back is flush with his chest. 

“It hurts?” he questions, stalling his movement. You feel him twitch. “No, feels s’good Wrio. More” you mewl. He chuckles, and gently wraps his hand around your throat before pumping again.  

“Too good? Am I the best you’ve ever had? Say it.” He moves faster, free hand rubbing your clit. Your knees buckle and eyes roll back to your skull, he takes in the scene of your convulsing figure in the mirror. “S’best I’ve ever had, please ‘m so close!” you rasp, matching the rhythm of his thrusts. He chases his high, panting animalistically in your ear.  

“Shit- look how desperate you are. Want me to come inside? Y-yea, I bet you fucking do”

“‘M coming!” you babble.

“Good. Make a mess.” he commands. Fire trails up your limbs, and you tighten before falling apart. Fluttering around him, taking him deeper while you come on his sack. Wriothesley pursues his sputtering hips, spurting thick globs that paint you white. He whimpers as you milk his spasming length dry and presses tired kisses along your shoulder blade. When he comes down from his apex, he turns you over on your back. It’s hard for him to not be proud of your boneless existence sprawled on his bed. You’re both breathing hard in silence, and he leaves for a couple minutes. You’re stunned when he returns with a damp rag to clean you up, and some dark substance in a mug.

You find the strength to sit up while he wipes your lower areas. “Where are my clothes?”

“...For what?”  he mumbles.

“To leave?” It seemed like common sense to you—boxers usually don’t go for long-term relationships, and so you assumed it to be a one-night stand. You dip over the edge of the bed and locate your skirt, but Wriothesely hops up and snatches it before you can. “I’ll put it in the wash. Relax.” 

“I didn’t know you were so hospitable. Do you do this for every girl?” you tease. He gets visibly upset, and shoves the cup from the dresser in your hands. “Don’t piss me off. Now, drink. I’ll order food.” 

Multicolored sunset flaking through the sheer curtains frames his stature while he’s on the phone. You sip the tea, it’s a vile grainy taste. For a moment you imagine what life could be like with him by your side—poor quality tea and an awful temper. In your pleasant aftermath, it doesn’t seem bad at all.

[makingqueerhistory]

Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals

William Wright

In 2002, a researcher for The Harvard Crimson came across a restricted archive labeled Secret Court Files, 1920. The mystery he uncovered involved a tragic scandal in which Harvard University secretly put a dozen students on trial for homosexuality and then systematically and persistently tried to ruin their lives. In May of 1920, Cyril Wilcox, a freshman suspended from Harvard, was found sprawled dead on his bed, his room filled with gas--a suicide. The note he left behind revealed his secret life as part of a circle of (cut young) homosexual students. The resulting witch hunt and the lives it cost remains one of the most shameful episodes in the history of America's premiere university. Supported by legendary Harvard President Lawrence Lowell, Harvard conducted its investigation in secrecy. Several students committed suicide; others had their lives destroyed by an ongoing effort on the part of Harvard to destroy their reputations. Harvard's Secret Court is a deeply moving indictment of the human toll of intolerance and the horrors of injustice that can result when a powerful institution loses its balance.

(Affiliate link above)

[nevesmose]

Nostraman Nature Sucks: An Attempted Lore Post

Ave dominus nox Night Lords fans. I thought I'd take some time to go through the various NL stories I have to hand and see what I could find out about the animals that lived on Nostramo. Might come in useful for something, who knows?

Sharks and Whales

As a child, on several coastal journeys with his father, he had witnessed the eyeless barrasal sharks that would group together to hunt the great whales of the open ocean. (Night Lords Trilogy)

His voice filters into something savage and predatory, as hungry as the eyeless white sharks of Nostramo’s blackest depths. (The Long Night)

Not a big surprise since they talk about them fairly often and have the Space Sharks as a successor chapter but Nostramo does have sharks. Pretty gnarly-sounding sharks if I'm honest.

I didn't know what "barrasal" meant, so I looked it up and only found one thread on r/40klore that had the same quote in it as above. Hmm.

Assuming it's not a typo or a more straightforward reference to something I'm just not getting, I'd venture a guess that barrasal, understood here to mean of or relating to "barras" like with "abyssal" could be connected to the French Revolutionary leader Paul Barras who is mostly remembered for supporting Napoleon's rise to power before being overthrown by him.

So maybe the older barrasal sharks will make use of younger ones as temporary hunting partners only to be inevitably betrayed and consumed by them. Sounds about right I think.

As for the whales, where do I even begin? I would imagine they're "whales" in name only like in Dishonored:

This does imply the possible existence of a whaling industry at some stage in Nostramo's history, though.

Crows

Jago reached into his pockets, offering a handful of breadcrumbs. Come, he said to the crows. Food for tonight. Flesh, flesh, flesh, they called back. He laughed as several of the black birds landed on his shoulders and outstretched arm. (Prince Of Crows)

‘Yes. I’ve seen them in books. Is a crow a type of bird?’ ‘Black of feather and dark of eye. It feeds on the bodies of the dead, and sings in a raw, croaking caw.’ (TLN)

Breaking news - legion that keeps referring to crows in shocking has crows on its homeworld scandal. "This is outrageous," said local Nostraman cutpurse and skin disease enthusiast Verxaglryn Quickstabber, "here we are trying to make a good name for Nostramo as a respectable hellhole, a place you'd be proud to exile your worst enemy to, and yet we're surrounded by some of the most intelligent and curious birds in existence. I was shanking someone in a back alley the other night and suddenly I saw a crow learning how to use rudimentary tools! Not on my watch, I said to the rapidly cooling body, and I threw my shiv at it. But it just flew away." At this point Mr Quickstabber was obliged to end the interview due to having been eviscerated by the Night Haunter.

I know their communication with Sevatar is happening in a dream but I really like the idea of the crows adapting to Nostramo by developing some kind of psychic hive mind that's also able to be understood by human psykers.

Crag Cougars

A beast of my home world. When next you see one of the Atramentar, look to their shoulder guards. The roaring lions on their pauldrons are what we called crag cougars on Nostramo. It was considered a mark of wealth for gang bosses to be able to leave the cities and hunt such creatures. (NLT)

Every single one of them is Scar from the Lion King, isn't it? An interesting hint about Nostramo's geography though, of which more later.

Rats

Groundcars whisked by, headlights brighter than deep-hive rats’ eyes, the occupants snug and safe behind armoured glass. (Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter)

No surprises here either. Where there's people there's rats after all.

Something with tusks?

The older Astartes grinned, wolf-like and keen, as the Atramentar either side of the Exalted’s throne growled through their tusked helms. (NLT)

This isn't that conclusive because a lot of Chaos Terminators have tusks no matter what legion they are, but Nostramo being Nostramo they probably belonged to a species of giant carnivorous mammoth that ate babies and sprayed acid from its trunk.

Cows? On My Sunless World?

‘They are still of standard human stock, and not to be mourned. What does it matter if the cattle fear the herdsman?’ hissed Krukesh the Pale. (KC:TNH)

This one's a real reach on my part as it's very likely just a turn of phrase, but I noticed it because wouldn't it be slightly more typical to use a sheep metaphor here? Plus it supports the existence of Nostraman cowboys/ranchers/vaqueros which is fun.

No bats?

His helmet bore a new, spread batwing crest in blatant imitation of Sevatar’s own. (A Safe and Shadowed Place)

A sole space was neat: a circle around an iron lectern fashioned in the form of a bat’s outflung wings, which carried a heavy book bound in human skin. (KC:TNH)

Although they appear a lot in the VIII legion's iconography and artwork, oddly enough I wasn't actually able to find a direct reference to Nostramo itself having bats. Let's cover my ass by saying this aspect might therefore have been brought in by the legion's Terran component instead.

Some Nostraman geography

The Hill Folk lived away from the cities, eking out an existence in the mountains. (NLT)

What's worse than living in a Nostraman city? Living on a Nostraman hill, apparently. This seems to just be an idea of ADB's that doesn't come up again but I've always found it quite interesting. Were the Hill Folk as scummy as the City Folk, just with more of a down-home Dukes of Hazzard vibe? Seems likely.

This also supports the idea of Nostramo not being completely urbanised like some Hive Worlds are. In my view its continents might have had a geographical layout a bit like Italy or Scotland where the cities are mainly on the flatter coasts with a more sparsely populated hilly/mountainous interior.

What else? (This part is just me making stuff up so feel free to ignore it. I'm not ADB, I'm not even ADB's hat.)

If the rest of Nostramo's marine life is anything like the sharks and whales then it's fucking terrifying. I would imagine, because it's funny, that a lot of Nostraman food features disgusting industrially-processed fish in some way or another. Like the food in Dishonored but even worse.

Is something wrong, dearest offworld husband? You haven't touched your stale bread, whalemeat and jellied eels.

Since all life on Nostramo seems to be comically carnivorous and aggressive, it would make sense in a 40K kind of way for there to be giant predatory penguins living at one or both of its poles. A bit like the monstrous blind albino penguins HP Lovecraft wrote about.

Last known infrared pict-capture of an early Nostraman settler attempting communication with a juvenile specimen of the native penguin species. There were no survivors.

[eclectiaa]

Note: Another piece that was posted on my old account. I've made a mid-year resolution to be more active and try to write one post a week. Wish me luck~!

OTOME HOLLYWOOD — Fem!Reader x Venti, Xiao, Childe, Zhongli, Kaeya, Diluc, Kazuha, Scaramouche, and Ayato

You’re a new manager at a talent agency. Inspired down this path after your next-door neighbor became a famous actor. You haven’t been able to interact with this big brother figure much due to his company’s restrictions. That’s partly why you’re motivated to help as many actors stay true to themselves as you can.

Who are the talents?

Venti is a haraguro actor and one of the firm’s top talents. He seems happy-go-lucky and universally liked. In reality, he’s got a ton of emotional issues that he pushes down through alcohol. You see this state early on when tasked with delivering something to his apartment that he left behind at work.

He totally drops the facade in front of you after that. In fact, he treats you pretty harshly.

His character arc involves a scandal about his alcoholism. He fights the rumors at first but eventually hits rock bottom. It’s only with your support that he has the courage to come clean at a press conference. He even gives rehab a shot. Essentially, you’re his rock.

In the epilogue, he becomes more honest with people. Thankfully, most of his fans rally behind him. He seems more relaxed. His attitude towards you even ends up becoming more tongue-in-cheek, though he’ll deny to the end that he’s totally head over heels for you. He’ll scare off anyone else that gets close though, so you’re stuck with him.

Xiao is a rising star who was scouted at an indie music festival. He’d just been helping out a friend by singing backup vocals in an alternative band. His true passion is music and he performs as an anonymous—always masked—underground rapper. Unfortunately, his manager thinks it’s “bad for his image” so he really keeps it on the down-low.

You see a lot of your childhood friend in him and try to help his musical talent be recognized.

His character arc involves him joining the music scene in earnest. His shitty manager eventually gets fired and the company decides to expand its specialties from acting to acting and music. It turns out his fans really love his ‘cool’ side too.

In the epilogue, he ‘slips up’ and mentions that he has someone he “really cares about” during a live interview. He doesn’t say it in so many words, but everyone can tell from his expression and tone that he means a significant other. Of course, he’s too oblivious to his own feelings. You realize that he means you because he mentions an activity that only you two do together. Of course, you think he means it platonically.

Until Kaeya mentions that “it must be love”. You and Xiao promptly stop functioning.

Childe is an actor with a playboy image. In a sense, this makes him Kazuha’s rival, so you’re quite weary with him from the beginning. He isn’t much of a playboy at all, but a misunderstanding—catching him in a compromising position with an actress—has you believing the rumors are true. In reality, the shitty manager currently assigned to him pushes this persona because he believes it makes Childe more marketable.

His character arc follows his frustration at people not taking him seriously as an actor. They only see him as a pretty face and he’s regularly assigned those roles. While it keeps him quite popular, he doesn’t feel fulfilled. You help him stand up to his manager. Rather, you stand up for him—giving him the warm fuzzies—and when his manager begins deriding you, Childe savagely tells them off.

This leads to a face-off between him and the company president, veteran actor Zhongli. They wager that Childe will audition for a role of his choosing. If he gets selected and does well, then he can rewrite his image. If he fails then he’ll stop complaining and let management have their way. He takes on a grittier role with some fight scenes. He started boxing in his youth and keeps up with it regularly. The new gig allows him to showcase his natural abilities.

Of course, he knocks it out of the park, even securing a best actor nomination. Though he doesn’t win this time, he’s more than honored his side of the bargain and is allowed more autonomy in choosing his roles. You’re assigned his new manager after his previous one is fired for trying to sabotage Childe’s efforts. In the epilogue, he realizes the need for a nuclear approach in confessing to you. You brush off his flirtations, still believing he’s like this with everyone. Naturally, in Childe fashion, it's either go big or go home. He delivers a sincere and up-front confession on live television. Zhongli and Kaeya are left with no small share of headaches, but of course, they approve. You’re a good match.

Who is in management?

Zhongli is the director of the company you work at. He started the company to help young actors in this harsh industry and, because he has a lot of clout, his business took off quite quickly. He never intended to stop acting, but work just kept piling up and it’s been quite a while since his last job. Leaving everything in the hands of the next generation worries him, as he fears they might not be ready and feels that it’s his responsibility. But he’s gotten so used to it that he thinks things are fine the way they are.

You meet him on your first day at the office when you go to the kitchen and find him at the table, sipping tea. You hum in appreciation at the rich aroma before you realise who exactly is sitting there and, when he lifts his head and your eyes lock, you freeze. 

Of course you know who he is. You’ve watched every single one of his movies, and he’s the main reason you chose this company to work at. He’s very stoic and elegant, and his penetrating stare makes you quite nervous. He just seems so hard to approach, as though he’s worlds away from you. So you just mumble a polite greeting and scurry away to the cupboards.

You fumble around the kitchen while you prepare your coffee, feeling his strong presence behind you, and you’re so distracted that you burn your hand. Hissing quietly, you go to the freezer to get an ice pack but, before you get there, someone grabs your hand gently. Zhongli looks straight into your eyes and tells you “Don’t” before dragging you to the sink to run water over your wound. He explains all the reasons why it’s better to simply apply cool water, but you can’t focus on his words because you’re too busy looking at him. He’s more beautiful in person than you ever thought possible and he’s just so close, and gentle, and he doesn’t seem to care that the cuffs of his suit are getting wet too.

After that, he starts waiting for you in the kitchen with a pot of tea for both of you and, before you realize it, that morning routine becomes the highlight of your day.

His character arc involves you helping him re-realize his passion for acting. You push him to do something for himself for a change and step back from his role at the company to reignite his career. His route unlocks after you play through all the other company members (and Kazuha’s) routes. On the replay, you have the option of being chosen as his manager and start going on movie sets and events with him. That’s when you see him interacting with Ningguang, a gorgeous actress with whom he co-stars in a movie. Intimidated by Ningguang, who you think is a much better fit for him, you start feeling inadequate by his side. Of course, there’s nothing actually between them, but you don’t realize this until the very end.

In the epilogue, Zhongli wins an award for best actor and, during his speech, he thanks you especially, looking at you softly while you melt at the table. When everyone is leaving, the paparazzi swarm both of you, asking questions as to what your relationship is. Zhongli ignores all of them and leads you to his limo, taking your hand and locking eyes with you—just like that first day—as he opens the door and inclines his head, saying “After you, my lady.”

You flush and climb in quickly with Zhongli close behind, the paparazzi going crazy with their camera flashes as you both leave.

Kaeya used to be Zhongli’s manager but is now the lead manager for the company and your direct boss. He’s an extrovert, and easy to get along with, but he also doesn’t seem to show his true self to many people, which gives him a mysterious air. Diluc is his stepbrother; they have a love-hate relationship where both of them care deeply for the other but would never admit it out loud. Kaeya loves to get on Diluc’s nerves and tease him, trying to make him break out of character. He does the same thing to you, flirting and teasing you all the time, but you don’t take him seriously because he’s that way to everyone. 

He’s the first one to welcome you to the company on your first day, showing you around to help you get acquainted. As you walk, you can’t help but notice how most of the female staff looks at him. But honestly, who can blame them? Kaeya is charming and, though he’s a bit of a joker, he’s quite considerate. He goes out of his way to check on you in your first weeks, giving you advice and even helping you deal with a nasty paparazzi that wouldn’t leave you alone. The way his arm wraps around your shoulders as he steers you away gives you a sense of comfort and safety, and you find yourself wondering what it would be like to be held in his arms. You dismiss the idea as quickly as it comes though, how could he ever be interested in you? Besides, he’s your boss; falling for him would be the perfect recipe for disaster. 

His arc involves him having to improve in order to become the new de-facto director when Zhongli goes back into acting, as well as helping him mend his relationship with Diluc. Kaeya picks up the slack left in Zhongli’s absence, but this increases his workload and you become his second in command, which comes as a huge surprise. You question his decision, but he says he trusts you, making your heart flutter. 

Working side by side, you start noticing how sometimes he looks at you when he thinks you’re not watching, and his casual touches become more frequent: brushing your hair out of your face when you come running after being late, sitting close to you as you both inspect a new contract, staying long hours in the office with you. You don’t get your hopes up though, he’s probably just joking, but you fear that he might discover how fast your heart beats whenever he comes close.

Kaeya, for his part, thinks that you have feelings for Kazuha—because he sees the way your face lights up whenever you talk about him—and doesn’t act on his feelings.

During all this time, you also get the chance to see Kaeya and Diluc together, and you find it hard to believe that two brothers can get along so badly. You see how much it affects Kaeya—though he tries to hide it—and from then on, you try to help by leaving them alone whenever you can and pushing Kaeya to be true to himself.

In the epilogue, Diluc gets tired of you two being so dumb and calls Kaeya self-sacrificing to a fault “when it really matters”. When Kaeya eventually finds out that you don’t have romantic feelings for Kazuha, he laughs and calls himself an idiot before confessing on the spot, catching you completely off-guard.

Diluc is a board member as well as the owner of a renowned winery. He starts working at the company after Kaeya calls him saying that he needs his help—a lie that Kaeya says in hopes to recover their relationship—and convinces him that it will be great publicity for his brand.

He looks like he’s always in a bad mood but, in reality, he just has a hard time dealing with his feelings. He used to be a bright boy, something that changed drastically with his father’s untimely death and being left as the sole heir of the Ragnvindr family. Because of this, the press is obsessed with publishing stories about him, and they are very disappointed every time he manages to successfully evade them. They don’t give up though and, because of the latest merger he has going on, he’s having a hard time with the way he’s being hounded. 

You meet him by accident one day when you’re going to work and bump into him a few blocks from there. He steadies you with firm hands on your arms, and you’re taken aback because you recall seeing him at the company—and also by how pretty he is. That’s when you hear a commotion behind you and see a few paparazzi’s approaching you quickly. Thinking he’s a new talent, and seeing his distressed face, you take his hand without thinking and rush towards the building.

“Are you ok?” is the first thing that comes out of your mouth when you’re both safe inside. You’re panting because of the effort, but he doesn’t have a single hair out of place. He asks why you did that and you just shrug, saying that it looked like he needed help. This takes him by surprise, he’s not used to people doing things without expecting something out of him, but your concern seems sincere. Realising that the press will probably camp outside the company from now on, waiting for him, he comes up with a plan and asks if you would become his liaison with the company while he lays low. When you tell him he should talk about that with his manager, he frowns and tells you who he really is, prompting your face to turn beet red.

His character arc involves helping him open up and reconnect with his emotions. After accepting his offer to work for him, you start meeting at various establishments that he owns and, between papers and coffee and yummy food, you get to know him and figure out the tiny changes in his moods. One of these establishments is a beautiful cafe at an estate, with tables set in a beautiful garden. He knows you like it, and you find it funny that you start meeting there more and more often. You just hope he didn’t realize how much you like to look at his hair when the sun shines from behind him.

You can tell he feels more comfortable around you. The constant frown on his face eases up whenever he sees you and you can’t help but wonder why it is that a small smile always grazes his lips whenever you smile. He even goes so far as to tell you a bit about his past, albeit in a way that tried to show he was over it. You can tell that he isn’t, though. 

Later on, he finds out that Kaeya lied to him about needing his help and they have a falling out. You know why Kaeya did that, and you try to explain it to Diluc. Unfortunately, that only makes everything worse, since Diluc thinks you’re taking Kaeya’s side, and therefore like him. It brings back memories from girls that dated him but ended up falling for his stepbrother because he acts nicer and seems easier to approach. Though Kaeya never dated girls that did Diluc dirty like that, and Diluc himself doesn’t care much for those types of people, he just doesn’t want that to be true for you. It hurts far more.

So he starts to avoid you.

Eventually, he and Kaeya make up and he finds out that there’s nothing between you two, but now he has no idea how to face you after treating you so coldly.

In the epilogue, Kaeya tricks Diluc into meeting at that special coffee shop. That’s when he bumps into you as you were delivering some papers at the estate. You’re both very awkward about it, and you curse Kaeya for telling you he would not be there. Not wanting to see Diluc being upset at you again, you nod in acknowledgement, push the folders into his hands, and dash out of the establishment.

Following after you, Diluc catches up in the garden and grabs you by the wrist to stop you. He has no idea what he wants to say, he just knows he doesn't want you to leave. So he starts by apologizing and telling you everything he values about you. Mostly professional things at first, but then he mentions how much he likes it when your twirl your hair between your fingers, or when you bite your lip when you’re focusing hard on something. He didn’t plan to say any of this, but he can’t stop himself and ends up accidentally confessing.

Who are the rivals?

Kazuha is your childhood friend—and a big brother figure, though only you think that way—who has a pristine image as an actor and works with a rival company. He was scouted at a shopping mall because of his good looks and mysterious presence, and he decided to give it a try so as to impress you. He’s very calm and nice on the outside but can be very harsh if something bad happens around you. He’s also a really good dancer—a skill that helped him land some big roles—, something that you know very well because he used to dance with you all the time when you were younger. That was a while ago, though. 

His arc follows his journey as he decides to finally act on his feelings for you, and he realizes how much he actually enjoys acting. During your years of friendship, he never said anything since you kept insisting on calling him big brother; though he held on to the hope that you would realize how good you could be for each other. You used to do everything together, after all.

Since he started working with this company though, the amount of time you spend together has reduced to practically zero. Even though he lives next door, you barely ever see his face anymore. He explained that his company’s restrictions are very strict, and they want to avoid any type of scandal that could ruin his image. Though he doesn’t say it, he’s also trying to protect you from the possible backlash from angry fans. And, just maybe, he thought you would finally realize your feelings for him if he put some distance between you two. Or, if everything else failed, he could find the time to forget about his own feelings.

But, after seeing you surrounded by other guys and interacting with other actors, he gets incredibly jealous. He especially dislikes Childe and the way he looks at you. He decides that maybe it’s time to push you a bit, since he’s not ready to let go yet, and starts getting bolder.

He starts meeting with you in secret, hiding from his pestering manager. You’re really happy about this at first, you got your friend back! And as you start to reconnect, you feel whole again. But, after a while, it starts to hurt how much he needs to hide you, or his cold demeanor whenever you’re in public. You have a huge fight when you confront him about this, claiming that you miss the old times with your big brother. Kazuha snaps at your words and, when you’re about to leave the room, he hugs you from behind. He can’t take it anymore; as he leans his head on your shoulder, he confesses that you were never a little sister to him.

In the epilogue, Kazuha takes you to the office and confronts his management about the rules, saying that he’ll be dating you from now on, no matter what they say.

Scaramouche is another actor from the rival company. He’s very competitive and has a mean guy image (not completely faked), but he’s still super popular since fans see him as the cool bad boy. Grumpy, and a bit prone to violence, he has no problem flipping the paparazzi off, which has resulted in more than a few front-page issues. Though, to no one’s surprise, this only helped increase his popularity. 

You meet him on set when you accompany Xiao on a movie they are both acting in. He thinks you’re there to serve him and asks you to get him drinks and food, no matter how many times you tell him you’re not his manager. He doesn’t care because “you’re getting stuff for that guy anyway—nods at Xiao who glares at him—, so you might as well get it for me”. You end up getting him a hot chocolate but, before giving it to him, you hold it at a distance and tell him that, next time he wants something, he can either ask his own manager or have the decency to at least ask nicely.

He just blinks, taking the drink in his hands with a dumbfounded expression, before watching you go. You’re the first one to stand up to him like that. People are usually too scared of him or falling over their own feet to please him. He got so used to it that he’s a bit spoiled now, and he’s impressed that you don’t take any of his shit.

His arc follows his journey to overcome his bad temper and anger issues. Working so closely with you, you help him realize his bad ways and, after a while, he starts trying because he wants you to see his good side as well. You think he only wants to be friends since he doesn’t seem to have many. On his part, he will never outright admit he wants to be close to you, since he’s mad at himself for enjoying this friendship with someone from a rival company. Even worse, his grumpy mood relaxes when he’s around you, something he tries to hide at all costs. But you can see through his aggressive front after you get to know him a bit more, and you start finding his attempts to hide this quite endearing.

He starts bringing you glasses of water when he notices you’re tired—pretending someone gave it to him and he doesn’t want it—or makes sure no one disturbs you when you’re nodding off while sitting on a chair. Usually by threatening every person that comes even a smidge close to you. He even defends you when you make a silly mistake and someone calls you incompetent, which has you melting inside. 

In the epilogue, on the last day of the shooting, he realizes he might not see you again, and he never even gave you his number. Scared of that possibility, he finds you in an empty corridor, grabs your hand and drags you into his trailer. Mostly because he prefers to have some privacy, but also he doesn’t want that emo looking guy to interrupt. He confesses his feelings for you there and, of course, you say yes.

Ayato is the new director of the rival company. He’s the type that always has a calm, warm smile on his face, and is renowned for his elegance and good manners. Surprisingly, he also has a silly side to him, and he loves playing pranks on his actors and friends. He can be very aggressive if his loved ones are treated poorly, and is the kind to deliver threats with a smile and win arguments using his smart brain rather than violence.

You meet him by accident one day when you are returning home and see Kazuha at his front door with a tall man, an expensive car parked next to them. You rush over to talk with your childhood friend who you haven’t seen in a while, but you’re surprised when this man gets in the way and asks you to please keep your distance. You tell him that’s your friend and you just want to talk to him, asking who does he think he is. Kazuha then clears his throat and introduces him as Kamisato Ayato, director of the company he works at. He explains that Ayato played a prank on him that didn’t end well and, though he wasn’t badly hurt or anything, Ayato offered to take him home personally.

When you find out he’s the director, you scold him for being so hard on Kazuha and setting all these ridiculous restrictions. Ayato tells you with a smile that if you’re Kazuha’s friend, then you should know how important his reputation is, and do what’s best for him. That’s a very thinly veiled warning if you ever heard one. Before you can stop yourself, you ignore Kazuha’s silent plea to stop and plow on, “So the best for your actors is to cut off all their ties?”

Ayato is taken aback by your way of seeing things, but you don’t give him a chance to say anything else as you glare both at him and Kazuha and storm inside your house.

His character arc involves helping him change the way his company works, allowing his actors to remain true to themselves. After that first meeting, he’s intrigued by you and your words and, a few days later, sends you a bouquet of flowers to the office with a note that says “I’m sorry I upset you the other day. I promise I want nothing but the best for the people under my care.”

You don’t believe him at first, but he keeps sending you flowers almost every day, with a different note each time, until he finally asks you out.

You refuse of course, but decide to pay him a visit at the office to ask him to stop sending you these ridiculous bouquets at your workplace. In there, you happen to see him with his little sister, overhearing her complaining about Ayato being such an overprotective brother. You decide to give him a chance to explain himself and that’s when you realise that he really is just trying to protect his company and loved ones from bad press, he’s just too overbearing to realise his methods are too much.

In the epilogue, Ayato goes to find you at your office, making a big show of bowing in reverence to you and kissing your knuckles. In front of all your co-workers. He vows then and there that he will not stop until he’s successfully stolen you to his side, seeing how much he needs your help. Kaeya, leaning on the door to his office, says that there’s no way anyone will allow that. Ayato just smiles, making your heart race at the promise hidden there.

[eretzyisrael]

by Jeremy England

The Jews do not venerate the image of a more-divine-than-usual human who achieved an abstract victory for all of humanity by dying horribly. And because we do not, we cannot accept the Western exhortation to be suicidally gentle with our enemies in order to receive a Christian burial on their “moral high ground.”

There are many things about the Jewish state, both as it currently is and as the Torah imagines it could be, that meet the loftiest ideals of the liberal, crypto-Christian West. Jews by and large love living in the liberal, secular West because our culture has great intuitive affection for freedom of speech and conscience, as well as the need for each unique individual to be given the freedom to discover his God-given purpose.

But as a reflection of the oneness of the God described therein, the Torah is obstinately balanced when it comes to simple principles. It insists on justice, but makes room for mercy. It cherishes human life, but acknowledges deadly violence can be correct. It sees all people as created in the image of God, but it commands the nation of Israel to play a unique priestly role, through example rather than through world-dominating force, in leading the world to greater knowledge and service of God.

Put into practice in 2024, this means that Israel must stop pretending it is a nation like any other, begging to be judged fairly by whatever standards the current hegemon has decreed we all agree upon. We need to look for standards from within our tradition to set a moral example for the whole world, while making it more practically possible to defend our homeland.

Instead of bragging about the extra danger our soldiers experience for the sake of sparing enemy noncombatants, we should reject the premise that we Jews bear any responsibility for protecting the human shields employed by our enemy.

Instead of threatening Jews with arrest for praying on the Temple Mount, we should take a hint from the “Al-Aqsa” moniker our attackers gave to their day of savage invasion and let kohanim up there on the hill to slaughter lambs for Passover.

And above all—given that land is nearly all that matters to this death-worshipping foe—instead of repeatedly withdrawing troops from areas we have just taken over so we can deny having unchristian territorial ambitions, we should conquer, annex, and resettle parts of Gaza so that Jews and friendly gentiles both can live there safely.

If our own, unsurpassably subtle ethical tradition guides us to these policies, then it is only our lingering ideological subjugation to the Western tradition that makes them seem scandalous. Like the Jew among nations, Israel constantly struggles with its half-successful attempt to blend in with the crowd and pretend to be a member like any other, and it is time to put an end to this paralyzing charade. We did not stick to our Law through 3,000 years of human civilization to continue national life as the perpetual defendant. It is our job to know that Law, to teach what we know—and, most of all, to live by it.

[bimbinisrevinis]

The Asiri #1 is a design document that more or less resembles a story (spoilers)

I know I don’t tend to review a lot of comic books – by which I mean, I don’t think to write comic reviews like I think of writing reviews for other stuff which I never write – but something about The Asiri #1 feels unusually compelling for me to address, possibly because I’ve had an interest in its creator’s YouNeek Studios’ whole mission statement for a while – an expanded superhero/fantasy fiction universe centered around African characters and inspired by African culture, spanning across centuries of history, something that I went actively looking for when I was hunting for any non-American or European made superheroes I could read. But it could also be that a lot of my impressions of it let me elaborate on some more general opinions and thoughts I have about things beyond itself like comics in general, fiction in general, etc.

In any case, I have to say that interested as I am in the overall goal of the studio’s output as a whole, unfortunately my impression of the book, at least as of #1 is that it’s rather lackluster, I might even go as far as to say it’s kind of bad, which is pretty disappointing. I don’t want to rag on it too much when it’s such an indie, underdog project, setting out on the pretty portentous mission of single-handedly carrying the torch for African and African-inspired superhero stories, so for this review I’ll be adopting a more constructive tone than the much more mean spirited way I would adopt for something I genuinely despise – and oh do I have fun being mean spirited about things I despise, but today I don’t feel so spiteful in my heart so let’s have an easier time for this one.

To summarize briefly, The Asiri is an afrofuturist book about the West African civilization of the same name, that develops highly sophisticated technology with the use of some type of techno-spiritual power called Inkra, and that eventually colonizes Mars, and we start the story at a point at which they have to defend it from an old enemy. The book centers around a group of ten heroes called The Ascended, which is your superhero team for this book; they each have their own powers, role in the group and generally things they’re “about”. That’s a bit deceptive as a premise, however, for what we’ll see the most of, at least in the first volume of this series, is a lot of politicking: the main characters are not just legendary heroes, they also comprise the ruling council of the Asiri society and because the book is set during a major political crisis, naturally there’s a lot of discussion about political strategy and scandal and so on.

My issues with this book already start with the premise. Not because of the political drama, mind you. In fact, in theory, I should be fully on-board with this book’s entire deal, because I actually love political drama, and I’ve seen it integrated well into superhero stories before. Rather, my grievance is that I have kind of ambiguous feelings about afrofuturism as a genre. In theory, the idea of exploring advanced technology in an African setting with such focus on the African aspect of it invites an opposition to, perhaps direct defiance of, popular socio-historical narratives surrounding Africa that aim to present it as technologically void, its people savages and simpletons who cannot really build anything sophisticated, simply scavenge and steal from their betters; it potentially questions also popular truisms around technology itself, especially the apparent belief there is in people’s minds and in sci-fi of some kind of manifest destiny for technology that is the inevitable shape for it to take through an inevitable progression, rather than shaped by the circumstances and needs of the people who develop it.

In practice, of course, the term can be and often is used to designate what is really just any sci-fi with black people in it, at which point the use of a separate category that sections off black characters and artists away from all the, presumably, “normal” sci-fi starts feeling a little condescending. Not only that, but laying it on thick enough that the civilization in question is super duper advanced like no other runs the risk of coming across as a little petulant and insecure. It can somewhat feel like you do agree with the general notion that black people are less “advanced” if the only way you can imagine them/us excelling at technology under is blatantly unrealistic circumstances. That’s merely an aside, however, and not actually the trouble I have with the genre. It’s more so my general problem with the “futurism” part of afrofuturism, because I don’t like sci-fi in general. I tend to find its fixation with technology boring at best and ideologically objectionable at worst. Aside from specific subgenres like cyberpunk, sci-fi as a whole tends to be very uncritical of the notion that technological advancement is always good and desirable, and capable of solving humanity’s problems; I’m an anti-civ; I don’t much care for any of that.

The other immediate concern I have with the book is the amount of characters, a problem easily illustrated by the cover of the book. This thing is absolutely crowded. Ten is a lot of characters for the readers to instantly take in and internalize as on equal footing with each other, which you have to assume you should do given how equalized they all are – they are more or less all lined up in just such a way that none of them stands out or at least seems like they’re supposed to stand out.

Consider for a moment that the characters on the very end of the line on both sides, king Kafan (left), and general Ankor (right) are the first ones to have a dialogue scene and be introduced in these character profile pages that open each chapter. The overall impression you get is that they will be more focused on than some of the others, but the cover gives you no such indication – at most, they are shown as taller than the rest, and that is simply because they are, physically, taller than the rest.

(Admittedly these look really sick.)

They also made the, while kind of cool, mostly misguided decision of having their normal selves looking up at their koraa forms (aka when they have their superpowers turned on) so while there are only ten characters on the cover, at first glance it appears to actually have twenty main characters. It doesn’t help that some of them don’t quite look like their activated equivalents when seen as normal and from behind. It also doesn’t help that the koraa form design, well, it looks pretty damn evil – when I see silver skin I tend to think of Bizarro Superman first and Captain Atom second – so you might instead assume that figures facing you are the antagonists of the story, which is also a pretty bad first impression.

Not only that, the visual design of the characters themselves is not sufficiently distinctive, and that’s almost entirely to blame on the coloring choices: even though their costumes appear to look different from each other from their back poses, the coloring has averaged out everything in such a way that it feels very minimal. It just looks like a sea of purple and yellow with very little to distinguish between shapes. And beyond that, their frontal poses display even less difference in overall design. There are quite literally two men wearing the same armor, and with the same haircut and beard style.

Compare and contrast with this cover of Justice League International, a very iconic one that’s been recreated and reused for trades about a dozen times so I can’t for the life of me find the original.

Despite being apparently blander, it does a better job than The Asiri #1 at conveying and distinguishing the characters in the team: first, by arranging them in a way where your eyes focus on only some of them and not all of them at the same time – Guy Gardner is smack dab in the middle and in front of the group, and is the only one saying something: you can tell he’s going to be more prominent than the other ones. Also particularly centered in this image are Blue Beetle and Batman, right behind Guy. The rest of the characters, most of which are less known, are surrounding them, not taking up as much space. Some are even partially cut off. There’s a much more natural flow of attention.

And then crucially, of course, the characters themselves look different enough. Now, don’t get me wrong, I would never be one to accuse comics of having a flourishing level of body or ethnic diversity – or any – but superheroes have thus far fared off pretty okay by having characters distinguishable at least in costume, which I think you can say this cover does a decent job at. All of the characters have designs which are simultaneously simple while still maintaining major marked differences: varying levels of face coverage, type of coverage, garment shape, and, of course, most of all, color. The characters each have a very consistent, very distinctive color scheme, which the colorist for the cover bothered to convey.

This pastiche of it made years later further reinforces the point. The most important characters are generally taking up a more privileged space on the page, and now there are more of them, with Guy seemingly remarking on it, as if to say that no, you don’t have to be on board for every single one of these nobodies right away, you can stand to focus on the ones you know. Which, incidentally, is a luxury that The Asiri #1 doesn’t share: all of its main characters are brand new to this book; the reader is not expected to be familiar with any of them. Which only makes it more important to distinguish them right away than for the average superhero book that utilizes preexisting characters.

I’m much belaboring the point of the cover here, and its because these art direction and design problems are present in the rest of the book as well. The first real scene of the book is an all out battle between our main characters and an opposing force we have yet to make sense of (the start of the story skips ahead).

Something about the way it’s presented feels very jarring, and it took me a while to identify that it’s because the coloring is so inadequate. It’s a clear, normal looking sunny day and the scene is made up of bright colors that convey no tone in particular, but especially not the tension supposed to be conveyed. It is full of yellow in everyone’s armor and weapons and the lighting, which gives it a weirdly upbeat look. It has pretty much the same palette as the next scene, which is a pretty lighthearted scene of a teacher giving a lecture to some very excited children.

It just doesn’t feel right. I feel like a scene like that, in comparison, would be more suited to a more red tint, as is very common to see in comic scenes depicting war or large-scale conflict – hey, it may be cliché, but it’s cliché for a reason.

(Although, try not to let it get to Teen Titans: The Culling levels of red, please.)

The lighting is also flat in general, which makes the characters and backgrounds themselves look bi-dimensional, and it clashes heavily with the many places in the art where there is texturing that doesn’t feel well integrated with the shapes they’re on top of. Gives it a little bit of a Chowder effect, except, well, static. It’s not like it never works, in some places the textures are integrated better than others, even if clearly through use of liquify tools and the like. I understand this is a bit of necessary corner cutting because hand drawing your textures and patterns so that they always fit the physical shape they’re applied to is very time consuming, and probably unfeasible given how prevalent complex patterned/textured fabric is in African clothing. It just works better in some places than others.

(Various levels of integration here.)

Furthermore, I feel the need to point out (perhaps a bit late for how long I spent focused on the negative aspects) how once the action pauses and the characters get talking, and we get a good look at their faces up close, it’s clear that their designs are actually quite distinctive, which is something very worthy of praise in a comic book.

(Even if it’s obvious for some of them what celebrity they’re faceclaiming.)

It may not have the most expert design principles in the industry for the costumes, but in terms of what the actual people look like, it far exceeds the standard set by the average superhero comic coming from the big two – one need only to see a panel of Batman and Superman together whenever a writer has the brilliant idea to have them interact outside of costume to feel like someone is pulling a prank on you because yes, the two main characters of an enormous universe made up of hundreds of superheroes and super-villains are two guys who happen to look the exact fucking same as each other.

Now that’s all well and good but what about the funny words that go in the funny books to accompany the funny pictures? What’s the story like? And that’s when I feel I have to be disappointed again. The story doesn’t get off to a good start, and it continues to kind of aggravate me in some ways after that too. For starters it does this thing that a lot of sci-fi does that really gets on my nerves and doesn’t help me warm up on it where it renames a normal thing from the real world to something different and probably stupid, like changing the name of “days” to “cycles” (super basic one to do, too, I feel like I’ve seen that replacement a hundred times over), and then it just tells you anyway what it is so there’s no real reason for why the name’s changed.

(Seriously what is even the point.)

What is also apparent from the get go about this book is that it will proceed to do a lot of exposition to me, and I guess this is a good time to mention that when I call something exposition, be assured that I mean it as a bad thing. because I have the fairly esoteric belief that exposition is not actually a real thing, and where it is, it is necessarily bad. Because what exposition is, wherever it is defined, is “conveying information” to the reader that they “need” to know.

(These children clearly already know all this information. This is the writer telling me information they feel I need to know.)

Now, I don’t make aspersions on what people are looking for when they read a comic book, but on my part when I sit down with the latest issue of Gotham City Sirens or what have you I know I’m not looking to get well informed, and I would hardly call it necessary either. Whenever I read a comic book I expect it to make me feel something – in fact, necessarily, I will be feeling many different things over the course of it – and maybe also make me think about something which will make me feel a certain way. And in essence everything in a comic book, in any story, for that matter, should have a purpose of giving me some kind of sensation, which will make me care about that aspect of the story.

(Somehow I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be emotionally invested in how their communicator thingies work.)

And this is a particularly large disparity I find because most of what I read, at least when it comes to novels, is realist and literary fiction, while most of the people who believe in what I will call “exposition theory” are fans of so-called speculative fiction: stories of which setting have certain aspects of its own world and how it works that the audience won’t be aware of because it’s not set in the real world, which they’re familiar with. But this disparity is not for the reason an SF/F reader might assume. The mistaken implication seems to be that if its set in the real world the reader will simply already know everything there is to know about the setting, which is of course, ridiculous: notoriously, nobody knows everything there is to know about the universe we live in.

Rather, realist fiction does not need any notion as ridiculous as exposition because it draws no distinction between what it is telling you because you “need” to know it to understand the story and what is actually the story. When a realist book narrates about the setting, about what the houses in the town look like, what bird species is flying by, what time of day it is, that is not “exposition”, it is the story. It is telling you these things assuming that you already care about them for their own sake because you are supposed to. If you don’t, that is not because the story is “expositing” about the setting, it is because its narration failed to be interesting. In Inés of my Soul, Inés doesn’t tell you about Pedro de Valdivía’s wife that he abandoned in Spain so that you’ll “understand” why her romantic entanglement with him is scandalous, or for that matter, all manner of colorful characters whose presence in the book is minimal, but whose impression on the narrative is meaningful and exciting; you’re supposed to care about their brief tenures on it for their own sake.

And I simply don’t believe SF/F has any excuse to treat itself any differently in that regard, because much like I don’t need Chinua Achebe to tell me about how trials work in igbo culture for any other type of infraction than the one he depicts happening in Things Fall Apart, which in turn he need not tell me about before it happens; so too does this book not need to tell me about how their spaceships work unless those specific mechanic details happen to matter for the characters at the time that it tells me about it. Because otherwise it doesn’t feel like they are telling me a story, it feels like they are relaying information that they feel I’ll “need to know for later”.

And that’s what a lot of reading this book feels like. Not like I’m being told a story, but that I’m being relayed information so that I can understand a story that might eventually happen later, and in a lot of ways it feels like it never does. Because some 100 odd pages into this 140 page juggernaut the characters still say things in a way that feels very little like they are living a story and very much like they are discussing something simply for the benefit of informing me about something. The impression that I get is that even when the characters are talking about themselves, about their backstories, their feelings and their relationships, they do so in an unnatural matter-of-factly manner such that I feel more that the writer is trying to inform me about them rather than let me know them.

(This feels more like it’s telling trivia about their marriage than characterizing either of them as the type of people who say stuff like that.)

Now a wise reader may recognize my argument here and think “isn’t that just a flamboyantly overdrawn way of saying the story fails at ‘show don’t tell’?”, and in a way it is indeed my own insufferable contrarianism that sours me on the use of the term, but I also have principled opposition to the “show don’t tell” cliché because I think its framing is backwards: it’s not that you should “add” emotion and a sense of something actually happening to the “information” you give your reader so you can make them care about it, it’s that if you’re seeing a story as information in any way in the first place you’re already going about it the wrong way. If you find whatever you’re telling interesting and exciting, you should just get on with it. If you are telling them something that isn’t interesting, and you just feel that it “needs” to be there because of something else that comes after, it should not be there.

(Although it is pretty ironic that they wrote this in.)

And this endless stream of information devoid of emotion, ironically, makes the story very confusing and hard to follow, because while I’m caught in the midst of trying to memorize what amounts to context-free trivia about an overwhelming amount of characters very quickly, I soon find myself realizing that I don’t actually understand what any of them is presently doing and why, or how exactly one scene follows from another. I can get the general gist of what the story is about and how the characters are involved in it, but the progression itself is difficult to ascertain, and there’s little sense of narrative tension (again, much information and little emotion) to make me feel like we’re going anywhere at all.

It’s only really around page 110 that I start feeling like the book is telling a story rather than relaying information. Characters finally start feeling and thinking things in the present for their own sakes, rather than retroactively for my benefit. And by then, I kind of feel like it’s too little too late to make me care about the majority of what it spent all those previous pages expositing about to me rather than telling me a story about.

I feel like there is somewhere here the hints of an actual story. There were a handful of scenes that worked, in the sense that they made me feel something; but overall the book feels less like a story and more like a design document for one. There are a lot of concepts I can imagine someone wanted to fit in a story, and a lot of character outlines, but it’s like they didn’t quite finish incorporating those into a story proper. They started doing it, but then some kind of natural disaster happened and they published under-construction steel beams of it instead. In which case, I guess I’ll see if I can channel my interior “old man stopping in the street to watch a construction site” and check back in come volume #2 to see if they managed to get some walls raised up in here.

[sonicasura]

In the TFA X Poppy Playtime AU, which sounds more likely?

A young Issac Sumdac was once an eager employee working at Pkaytime as one of its intern engineers. The Boogie Bot being one of his first creations. He was shocked though when he saw versions of the toy mascots being produced that appeared more animated given his team never developed that sort of A.I yet. Only to later find out the terrible truth, that to by pass the technology needed to make the toys more alive they simply stuffed the brains and bodies of people, children, into them. He avoided the Hour of Joy and once a millionaire with his own tech company he bought the building and attempted to tear it down. Only to for his men and machinery to go missing, proving how dangerous the place was. And how destroying it could just lead to the feral toys escaping. But is forced to go there hearing Meltdown went in and tries to right his mistakes of the past.

Or maybe Fanzone was an ex-employee who was a warehouse worker or even a junior security guard for the company trying to pay is way through the police academy. He never finds out the truth of the toys but figured they were a type of robot. He was there in the "Hour of Joy" and saw the horrors as the once friendly mascots went savage and killed his coworkers. He was able to escape along with leading a few others to safety...but not everyone. Which haunts him to the present day. And which leads to his hatred of machines, because he still believed that the toys were machine operated and it was a malfunction that led to their aggressive behavior. He wanted to return to the factory to help save more people the place was shutdown and quarentined by the factory owners. Stating it wasnt safe, something that didnt sit well with him even after years later. But when he receives the letter stating that the employees were "still there" he sees it as hope of finally being able to save those people and get to the bottom of that days tragedy. Only to find out the terrible truth.

I say the last scenario will not only be the most likely but have a bigger impact. We tend to not get much interactions when it comes to Fanzone especially on why he hates machines with a passion. I would add Isaac donating a few inventions to Playtime Co, the Build A Toy in particular, since it would be around the time he's trying to make a name for himself.

Sumdac does research after Fanzone manages to escape the Hour of Joy and notices some huge scandals that waved huge red flags. Yet neither could investigate so the mystery was left alone. That is until Fanzone heads back to the factory and Isaac asking the bots to help.

[radfemsiren]

my brain cells die any time i see kataang shippers say zutara is bad because it's "colonizer x colonized romance"... like firstly, the fire nation never colonized the water tribes, and secondly, zutara doesn't even fit that dynamic. in the colonizer romance, the colonized woman falls for the colonizing man because he's from a more "enlightened" society and the relationship will bring her benefits and save her from the "backwardness" of her own people. this metaphor serves as propaganda for how the colonizing nation is the masculine "superior" and must "take care" of the feminized colonized nation like in a heteronormative marriage.

in the case of atla, zuko learns that all the nations are equals and he becomes a traitor to his own country so he can help aang end the war. if zutara were to happen in the series, it would only be when zuko became an anti-colonist and redeemed himself. i can understand why some people might not like the idea of katara falling for the fire lord and becoming his queen - even though this choice would actually piss off the fire nation traditionalists way more since the royal family practised eugenics and only married other fire nation people from powerful clans or lineages to create powerful firebenders - but zutara is simply not a "colonizer x colonized romance" at all.

i also think it's interesting that people want to apply these real-life implications onto zutara but ignore that the creators only hated zutara because they didn't like the bad boy winning over the nice guy, and aang is based on BUDDHIST MONKS. like hello, monks can't ever get married or have any type of sexual contact whatsoever. a monk that is lustful is considered a corrupted and evil monk, and there's many sex scandals in buddhist countries because there's men who claim to be monks to gain women's trust only to sexually assault them.

Omg true, if anything it would be a major act of rebellion against fire nation supremacy for Zuko to reject all the fire nation traditions and marry Katara, who is the Chieftain’s daughter of the poorest nation of all. He had to continuously redeem himself to her and reject his nation over and over to finally join them, like it’s definitely not a white savior “I’m gonna save you from your savage inferior ways” cliche to me at all. It would be such a slap in the face to all the division that the fire nation enforced, and give so much political and economic power to the southern water tribe that even its sister tribe didn’t offer.

Also, who says she has be the fire lords queen too, maybe he would join her and rule from her tribe for half the year… making him equally the chief of the water tribe. That would be super interesting, to shift the political power and make the isolated southern water tribe the new activity center of the world 🤔

Also it being seen as romantic for Aang to reject his spiritual ascension and chakras for Katara… it felt like a bummer to me. Not as this big romance gesture but just another example of them being wrong for each other oof

[ragingphantom666]

DC Dimensions project plan: Justice Squad (Vol. 1)

This series is not an assured project. It is a concept that can still be changed or scrapped.

Synopsis

The town of Bucksville, Ohio is taken over by a malevolent entity. A.R.G.U.S. sends in a team of reformed villains to eliminate the threat. The morality of the team will be tested as they battle evil shadow beasts.

Characters

John Diggle: The A.R.G.U.S.-appointed sponsor and team leader of the Justice Squad. He is also an ally of the Green Arrow.

Sebastian Faust: An A.R.G.U.S. operative trained in magic and the sponsor of June Moone. His father is Felix Faust.

June Moone/Enchantress: An innocent graphic designer who became the host of the chaotic Enchantress. June struggles to gain control over her wicked other half. Sebastian Faust is her personal sponsor.

Cameron Mahkent/Icicle: A goofy cryokinetic criminal and son of the deceased original Icicle. He wants to be a better person and become a hero. He is friends with Superboy. His personal sponsor is Glacier.

Edward Nashton/Riddler: A private investigator and former Batman villain who has a compulsion to make and solve puzzles. His personal sponsor is the Justice League member The Puzzler.

Margaret Pye/Magpie: A thief with Attention Defecit Disorder. She is attracted to shiny objects. She is brought onto the team for her stealth skills. Her personal sponsor is Pied Piper.

Knockout: A New God from Apokolips and wife of Scandal Savage. She wants to return to her wife. Her personal sponsor is the Big Barda.

Eclipso: An ancient being from Gemworld. He is capable of great magic and corrupting people. He is trapped in a diamond called the "Heart of Darkness." He seeks to cause world-wide devastation.

Other Information

The story is meant to focus on June Moone and the Enchantress.

I made the team with help with someone called "Jules."

The team takes its name from the Future State team, but it is more about remption and a darker toned Justice League.

This team does not have a no kill rule.

John Diggle's role is meant to be a reference to his involvement in the episode "Suicide Squad" of the tv series Arrow.

[necarion]

The Female of the Species by Kipling is a really funny poem. In shortened form, it reads as a "Hell yeah women are awesome" song, and that's what you get from Leslie Fish in her song:

WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

But Kipling was actually writing to oppose women's suffrage because women can't be trusted to not act on their crazy instincts to protect their children. And more, all the important things like law and justice and faith are male things because the ladies have better things to do.

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

(Oh, the song is also racist with stuff about how the "squaws" were scarier than the warriors because they'd do all the nasty torture.)

Within the decade, Kipling had come around on the suffrage movement. In part because this poem is really funny, in that it (a) ignores basically the entire history of warfare. But also (b) it was written in 1911 and World War 1 happened within 3 years.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,— Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise. Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act. Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low, To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe. Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex! But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same; And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

I don't think there are many conflicts that make this passage dumber-seeming. At least World War 2 had an enormous moral weight to it (both good and evil). World War 1 was overwhelmingly based on the logic of alliances being pushed to a catastrophic "unmitigated act".

I think Kipling knew it aged badly...

The Leslie Fish song is great tho.

[muraski-yume]

1/22 Momotaro's Divine Warriors and Otsuka's Unholy Alliance

As I mentioned in my last post, Momotaro’s Divine Warriors is yet another rendition of Japan using it’s soft power to spread war propaganda.I actualy quite like this film (depite its obvious issues) but in the podcast I did about this film last semester, we highlighted a few core themes. The first being the repeated way in which subtle hints of the war effort are incorporated. For example, all of the children in the village are OVERJOYED and fascinated by the soldiers who return in the beginning. They all play fight and pretend to be soldiers and want eagerly to hear all about the fighting on the front. This like in Norakuro, softens the violence of the war and glorifies violence. Further, theres the subtle jab at the superiority of Japan in the school scene where the “wild animals” are unruly UP UNTIL they start singing the alphabet song. In this way their ’savageness” is tamed by Japan. Also when Momotaro is negotiating with the humans they are depicted with horns and made to come off as monsters. Overall, the story is cute but chock FULL of propaganda.

______________________________________________________________

The often heard term otaku often associated with Japanese media seems to have first appeared in the mid 1980s in a scandalous manga magazine and later went on to be the overall term describing a certain type of young man (with undesirable qualities) with “severe socialization problems”. This sort of shameful label later was seen in a more positive light after foreign approval of otaku and moe grew and both became supposedly representative of Japanese pop culture (something I would caution against believing too wholeheartedly).

The "aesthetic unification of Einstein and Disney under conditions of facsism" are said to be “the origin of Japanese manga and animation”. A notion I find quite curious considering Disney has assimilated Marvel, Pixar, and other such producers of competing content into their company. The art styles of Japan have historically been affected by the Soviet Union and Stalin’s push for social realism over constructivism. For Japan this manifested in certain 漫画家 like Tagawa abandoning avant-garde art styles from the past in favor of the more mass-oriented forms of art exhibited by Disney. In the 1930s when Disney became more and more prolific Japanese manga too soon became full of Mickey-esque characters aimed more towards younger audiences despite being acutely aware of the pirating of this style of characters. Disney had cracked the code so to speak on the construction of appealing characters that Japan went on to employ in animation as well.

[struggle-but-its-all-ocean-floor]

https://www.tumblr.com/struggle-but-its-all-ocean-floor/730187698504171520/hi-there-its-the-muggle-thanks-for-the?source=share

You explained it so very well here. I get jungkook's irritation by constantly getting babied by this big fandom (wish that could change) but he also has to understand that a part of the fandom has seen him grow from like 15-16 years to 26 years now so they do see him as a younger boy than other members. And the fandom also needs to understand that he's grown up and for someone that age it is frustrating when you hear it again and again. Idt the image is gonna change suddenly but hope people work on it (the fandom).

Tbh i never got the choreo for my time like i always think that it does not suit the lyrics of the songs. Good thing many don't know korean so when you hear the song with that music without knowing the lyrics it sounds a sexy song and not some deep meaning song.

Won't comment on seven and 3D cause that's not my cup of tea so yeah

I hope he does realises that there's better way to form the image he wants to form infact I'll say it will be just like how he wants if he actually releases songs like his other solo songs. I love all of his solo songs. He's a great artist, capable of alot of things. A seven one time is fine but a 3D in a row is mehhh. Those lyrics definitely won't give you the image you want it but your own songs like swy, my time, euphoria, decalcomania etc.

We honestly don't have a problem with fun loving songs but if you gonna throw "i wanna fk you" kind of lyrics every two sentence then....

And yes he does loves it when someone calls him cool and sexy. I have been noticing it since like two years now cause he's been mentioning that he wants to get compliment as cool from two years now.

Then there's jimin like you call him cute and he'll fold cutely and will act more like cutie pattootie.

Tbh, it's not just about him growing up in front of us (even if not in real time). Fandoms like this naturally have jealous and possessive fans, and some fans are less than mature about it. Him being babied is partially the result of him being the maknae, but there are other factors. If RM and Suga were the ones caught smoking it wouldn't be an issue, and a dating "scandal" wouldn't be as big of a deal, so it's always worse for Jungkook, but fans reacting badly to normal stuff is just part of being an idol. That's why Jungkook's plan to look more "mature" so fans see him that way is flawed. Suga has a "rougher" image so he can "get away" with more, but he's also less popular. The maknae line's considerable popularity over the hyung line's more than half the reason why things are always worse for them. It goes beyond having an innocent image.

The thing with Jimin, though, is that he's always been "cutie, sexy, lovely". His cuteness is also sexy. Jimin is the cutest, but his resting face is serious and mature. He's always been very thoughtful, flirty, sometimes savage, and headcanoned a Slytherin. Jimin was never babied like Jungkook. He likes being called cute and leans into it, but he knows fans are always losing it over him being sexy and calling him hot. His duality is well know and he isn't at all defined or limited by being the number 1 cutie - there's power in being cute and Jimin likes that power and uses it to his advantage (to tease and please the fans). It's also different with Jimin because in the beginning he acted a bit tough and manly, and shared how freeing it was to just be himself and drop the act. To him being cute and babied is funny and flattering, though when fans take it too far he sets them straight. It's different from Jungkook because he wasn't forced to rip his shirt off on stage as a 17 or 18 year old rookie like Jimin, who developed a reputation for being sexy...

I'm too tired for my reply to be coherent, but thanks for the ask!

[sclariis]

( david corenswet, cis-male, he/him ). welcome to westworld, LEO RONAN. you have been programmed to look like you are THIRTY-TWO years old, and to operate as a BARKEEP in the park. you have a bit of a reputation as the RUNAWAY, and are programmed to be INTELLIGENT and CUNNING, but also MANIPULATIVE and FLIGHTY. sometimes, people say you remind them of AMY MARCH (LITTLE WOMEN), SEBASTIEN LE LIVRE (THE OLD GUARD), and GORDO LIVINGSTONE (GREEN CREEK SERIES). if you had to describe yourself in a few words, it would be "TAKE ME TO THE LAKES WHERE ALL THE POETS WENT TO DIE, I DON’T BELONG. BUT MY BELOVED, NEITHER DO YOU". it is rumoured that you – ARE THE SINGULAR HEIR TO AN OILER’S FORTUNE, BUT RAN AWAY IN THE HOPES OF ESCAPING A TUMULTUOUS FAMILY BACKGROUND. HAVE BEEN HIDING IN SWEETWATER FOR YEARS. we hope you can entertain the guests! 

tw for intro: mentions of abuse, child neglect, and death

Leo was born to people that had no business having kids. His father was a man whose main motivations in life were money and power, and his mother was a vapid socialite who was only concerned with numbing whatever abuse was hurtled towards her with a gin martini and a couple of puffs of grass. They needed a son, and so they had a son... but whatever parental responsibilities that came with it, they've ignored.

By consequence, Leo grew up under the watchful eyes of several nannies, each lasting nothing more than a year before deciding that he was the devil's spawn. A brat seeking attention, too smart for his own good and unafraid to act on it.

They called him their Little Prince, the sole heir to their obscenely large and most definitely unethical oil business. "Blood money is still money, Leo. I advise you don't bite the hand that feeds you." His father would often remind him.

When Leo is twenty, a mine collapses on fourteen workers. His parents cover up the scandal by paying off the media and the local government. At dinner, his father and mother laugh over a suckling pig, shrugging their shoulders at the way that in this business, death is an inevitability.

He's engaged to a wealthy heiress at twenty five. As if it were a sign, another mine collapses. His father smacks him with the back of his hand when he talks back during dinner over another suckling pig, the gaudy ruby on his ring leaving a slice against his cheek... it doesn't sting. All he can think about are the following: He doesn't want to marry, his parents are evil human beings and he was standing on the bodies of men and women seemingly too unimportant for his parents to give a shit. In a savage display, he bites the hand. He bites it as hard as he can till he feels blood on the tip of his tongue.

He leaves that night with nothing but small bag stuffed to the brim with his mother's jewels that he's stolen, two books and the clothes on his back.

The middle is relatively uneventful. He jumps from town to town till he finally lands in Sweetwater. It's too far off the grid for his parents to find him, and its busy enough for him to blend into the walls, easily one of the least interesting things in town.

He knows his parents are still out there. Looking for him... but when that day comes, he'll be prepared. Don't bite the hand. His father had said... little do they know, Leo sharpens his canines just in case the opportunity arises.

[a-boros-named-seamus]

A Wolfsblood Moon-NaNoWriMo Day 1

Prologue

Deep in the forbidding and magic-forged range of mountains known as the World's Horns, there sits a broad, fertile valley known as Ahngtir.  Its lowland cities are lush with trade from the Moonsrest Sea and merchants passing between neighboring cities.

This story does not begin there.

Instead, we cast our gaze northward, to dark forests and windswept highlands when the wolves and winds howl in bone-chilling harmony and magic runs through society as thickly as mortar between bricks.

In these savage lands, two men whose names will echo for all of history are just beginning to write their sagas

Chapter 1

As I ran under leaf-laden boughs and the slowly growing pre-dawn light, I could feel the world shift around me.

The garish glows of night-colors faded from leaves and mushrooms as vibrant blooms started to unfurl.  Hoots and howls trailed off as the first strains of birdsong started up, and even the feel of wind through my fur changed ever so gradually.  Even the scenes shifted, the petrichor from the night's rain mingling with fragrant pollen and animal mush to paint me a picture of the world beyond the scant details of sight and sound.

To this I added my own scent and sound.  My paws thundered on the cool dirt and my snarls heralded the snap of bone as I ate a rabbit.  My scent sent the smaller animals that composed my breakfast running, and that made it all the sweeter when blood finally soaked my muzzle and still-warm meat slid down my gullet.

Once I sated myself, I took off on my patrol, using the blessings of my wolf's skin to search out any new dangers to the town and check up on known ones.  Grimfeather and her adorable gryfflets were sated, the game available in the valley precluding them from more sapient suppers.  The bandits lurking up in the old barrows were still behaving themselves after the last time we had to have a "Chat", even managing to avoid upsetting the treants.

There were whiffs of necromancy down at the battlefield graveyard along the Red Ford, though.  That was deeply concerning, especially considering the gnarled scar of magic upon the land there.  With that last check at the edge of the territory, I headed for home, the sun hanging low just above the horizon when I reached the gate, returning to my human flesh mid stride and grabbing my kilt from where i stashed it and wrapping the tartan cloth around myself so as not to scandalize the young maidens and bachelors.  I managed to time it just right, greeting the guards at the gate by name as the scent of almost-done pastries wafting down the street from the bakery.  By the time I reached it, the baker's lass was setting the pastries in the display, to be kept fresh and warm all day by the magic etched upon the glass.  

"Morning, Ingrid," I said as the bell on the door jingled

"Oh, Arthur!" Instead of the pleasant, lilting greeting she used for customers, she practically squeaked out my name in a voice several octaves higher than her usual, blushing and smoothing her dress.

I just smiled and nodded "Yes, it is I.  What's on the menu today?"

"Oh, it's all apple and pumpkin and cherry today," she said, pulling out a butcher's paper pouch, "I saved you a tart"

I took the pastry with a smile, bobbing my head and taking in the tart scent of the cherries, and then opened the paper and took a bite.  "This is delicious, Ingrid!  Tell your father thanks from me.  And thank you"

With that, I took my leave, whistling as I walked up the road to the manor at the center of town.  Like all structures in the Wolfswood, it was built for function first, with the details that displayed the wealth of its inhabitant coming in wards carved into the frame and lovingly made carvings on door frames and shutters rather than opulent carved marble or gold leaf. It felt the the whole town did.  Solid and old.

I let myself in the back way, grabbed my pack off of a peg by the door, and drew myself a bath in the washroom.  Runes at the joints of the old pipes drew water up from the well and heated it along the way.  Perfect for washing off the grime of the forest.  After washing and drying myself I dressed myself, pulling on my underthings and boots, then my tunic, and then pinning my kilt back on, making sure that everything sat right before walking down the wood paneled halls to the maproom.

Sitting behind the desk, draped in tartan in the same pattern as mine, save for the Ranger-Captain pin holding it in place was my mother, Ranger-Captain Brighid. Her knitting needles were clacking as she read over reports and wrote letters to be carried by raven to the smaller villages and thorpes in the area.

As I walked in and stood at parade rest she looked up and smiled "Good morning Arthur.  How was your patrol?"

I set half of the pastry i got from ingrid on her desk "The valley is calm, save for some trobling traces of necromancy over by the Red Ford," I said, fidgeting with my hands behind my back as my eyes slid across the room, across the books on the shelves, the basket of yarn, the magically updated map of the area, and my mother's cluttered-but-clean desk.

She understood, not demanding my eye contact, saying "Well that's no good.  We will have to put a watch on that area.  Any other trouble?"

"No, mum.  We'll have to keep an eye on the population of deer, but otherwise all is well," as I speak, she takes the tart and takes a bite, smiling at me as she swallows it.

"Good.  Make your reports, and then you're free for a few hours," she said, as amusement warmed her features, "I know that women hold no interest for you, but let that Ingrid lass down gently, otherwise you'll have to start buying the pastries you bring me every morning"

That gets a chuckle from me. "Of course, mum.  She knows, she's just nice."

The amusement then grows into mischief as she says "That is good.  Wouldn't want her to be disappointed when you and Cathair finally realize that you two are in love"

I have to take a moment to recover from choking on the water i was drinking out of my flask "Mother!" It comes out as a startled yelp  "He's just my friend!" I left the "closest" part out, since that would just encourage her "And, in any case, I'm not even looking for love right now," I say, trying to regain my composure.

Outside the maproom window, across the main square, there was a whoosh as the smith, Arden, brought the forge-fire to life with his magic, passed down from master to apprentice for centuries.  If Arden was up, it meant Cathair, his apprentice, was not far behind.

"Well, I will not keep you.  Go enjoy your morning, and we'll go take a look at the Red Ford this afternoon."

I gave my mother a smile and a nod, and turned, heading out of the room and then out to the square, thinking warmly about Cathair.

Chapter 2

As I stepped out into the square, i breathed in the warm air.  A relic of older days, it was encircled by a tall wall, with guardposts set atop and gates where the streets flowed out into town.  Within the wall's circumference were all the important services of the town.  The master smith, the post office, a tavern, the winter storehouses, a small library, the apothecary, a few shrines, and even a mage's tower all sat inside the walls.  There was another, stouter, wall around the rest of the town, of course, but all of the important buildings were gathered in the main square.  In times of war or calamity, the buildings in the main square could house the whole town, with a bit of difficulty.  The skills of Arden, and his necessity to keeping the rangers and guard well equipped, meant that he got pride of place directly across from the manor.  He usually preferred to prepare the forge by himself, and Cathair's skills were such that his abilities could be trusted not to slip.  Which meant that I could steal a good half hour of his time each morning.

Cathair was sitting on the porch, eating porridge and sipping at a new favorite kind of tea of ours that one of the traders brought up from down south, called coffee.  As always, i stopped to take the whole of him in, from his thick black hair and beard, to his piercing gold eyes contrasting his green skin, to his strong, tusked, jaw and muscular torso and across his powerful arms.  Even his clothes i fixed in my memory, a fusion of kilt and apron popular among smiths and other craftspeople over a long sleeved tunic, rolled up past his elbows, revealing hard won scars from his training as a smith.  Upon seeing me, those gold eyes lit up and a grin split his face under his tusks, mirrored on my own face.

"Arthur!" he called, sitting up and setting down his spoon.

I crossed the distance between myself and the porch in a few quick strides, grasping the forearm he offered me and saying "Cathair, it's good to talk to you!  I've missed having the chance the last few days!"

"Even if you hadn't been running all over hither and yon on four paws, I'd have been too busy with the forge to talk" he said, sitting back down and pouring me a cup of coffee.

"Well, that is how it goes.  It ended up being a lot of work for not much, but blazes if the evidence didn't have us all fooled."

"You're telling me.  Arden had me hammering out weapons and shields left and right only for it to end up being a teenager who misused a transformation spell scroll and ended up a wyvern"

I chuckle, taking a sip of my coffee after taking a moment to pull some of the heat out and toss it into the air, and say "Well, the armory can never be too well stocked.  One never knows what may lurk in the deep wilds."

Cathair nods, silent for a moment as he finishes his porridge.  "Well, I should go help Arden," he says as he gets up.

I get up too. "So soon?  Doesn’t he get ornery when you do that?"

"And?  He needs the help.  See you tomorrow for our day off?"

I felt my lips pulling into a wide grin. "Wouldn't miss it"

He then walks off, doing small, interesting, stretches to prepare for his day.

[royalprincess-stuff]

How Victoria's Secret got actually boring

《In this post I will be talking about what made Victoria's Secret less relevant and what can be done to make it better again》

We all know Victoria's Secret it was THE lingerie brand for several years because of the glamour and the sex appeal. The fashion shows used to be so fun and commercials too with supermodels like Adriana Lima and Alassandra Ambrosio. The whole Aesthetic was so attractive and was very relevant in the industry.

Victoria's secret started its runways in the 90s and gained popularity in the 2000s. The brand was the IT brand of the time and thanks to Tyra Banks.... She literally invented the victoria's secret angel attitude. Every year the show had the star attraction which was the very expensive fantasy bra....

Now talking about the downfall and scandals. Big brands attracts major scandals and VS was no exception. From using Native american heritage as a costume to Transphobic comments and to fix all these they kept making changes and losing their identity.

Hiring plus size models and trans models

I was personally soo happy to see a transmodel but hiring Barbara Palvin as a plus size model was stupid as fuck because VS never officially had plus size models before Barbara but one of tge most iconic VS angel Tyra Banks and Heidi Klum were bigger then Barbara.

Boring designs

VS had very sexy bras and they were known for it and that's a fact and deciding to change the aesthetic to Savage Fenty's aesthetic is the stupidest idea to make.

Killing the angels

Killing the angles and hiring "brand ambassadors" were another stupid idea as angels were the brand ambassadors but were called angels which kept them out of the crowd but then they went basic

what could be done

Getting their individuality back. Bring back the sexy aesthetic with plus size and trans models and the most important respecting the models as the chairperson.