#its getting so bad I’m being poetic

[plutoisaplanet0]

the sun is setting

my sister is leaving soon

„this world needs better buildings“

the sound of my dad moving our luggage

this constant tiredness

her hand in mine

the train is slowing down

people are moving, suffocating me

the smell of her sweater

I tell her to go

why did I do that?

[cassandralexxx]

There is something in looking at someone and seeing their pain. Seeing them try to be strong and cope in devastating ways. Thinking to yourself I hope they find peace but then realizing they are holding a mirror to who you are. It’s looking into a muddy puddle and seeing your own reflection. It’s thinking I am so sorry you are living like this, and realizing that you too are living in that way. It’s a twisted sort of kinship to both be lost.

[littlenahsstuff]

Princess-Posals

Bridget x Cheshire Cat!Reader

Synopsis: The first dance of your second year at Merlin’s Academy is approaching. You have yet to ask Bridget to go with you as more than just friends and are losing time fast.

@ludoesartandstuff this is for all of us girlies in love with Bridget!

Warnings: not much! You are going through it but like it’s not really angst. Not proofread.

1.8k words

~~~~~

Castle coming was around the corner. Y/n Cheshire, you, were preparing your princessprosal for Bridget. She had been your longtime crush and an even longer time friend. She was everything you wished you were and more. She was the sweetest, prettiest, most fun girl in all the realms. If you had one wish it was to be hers.

You had just one problem, managing to get the courage up to doing it was harder than you originally thought.

There was that time you wanted to just ask her but bailed because it wasn’t good enough for her.

Then that time when you prepared a song you would sing to her and then got sick.

There was that time you planned to bake her favorite dessert, unbirthday cake. But you lost track of time and burnt it too a crisp.

You were running out of options and time. What was worse was Ella knew of your whole debacle and was constantly teasing you about it.

This would be it, today was the day. You had to ask her. So you met up with her after first period. You had a love letter you wanted to personally deliver.

Just then Uliana and her gang of misfits came by, watching at you awkwardly stand there. You try hard to not make eye contact. It doesn’t help you though.

“Well what do we have here? Is the little kitty cat waiting for her owner? You’re pathetic. I have have a mind to return the favor for causing me so much trouble last year.” Uliana fakes you out, making you jump a little. It does not sound good. Then you see pink coming out of the corner of your eye.

“Let’s just say this wont be the last you see of us,” Uliana threatens before ripping the letter out of your hand and stuffing it into her pocket, “bye kitty witty.” She saunters away with her crew behind her and finally Bridget stands in front of you, a little worried by the shocked look on your face. So much for today being the day.

“Are you alright? I saw you talking to Uliana. You snap out of it with a forced smile.

“Oh, it’s nothing too bad, she just,” you fiddle with the hem of your top, “stole my homework. But it’s okay, I already had that class today so it’s been graded. 100!” You cheer while holding up jazz hands.

Bridget smiles softly, “Well yay! You’re lying though… why?” She squints her eyes.

“Okay, you got me! The homework was for next class and I now will most definitely am not getting a one hundred.” You cease the fidgeting, she’s always to good at noticing things, better to cut the self-sabotaging now.

She rubs your shoulders, “I’m sorry about that. Maybe we can bake something together later to make you feel better? Chuckle chocolate chipper chip cookies perhaps?” She wiggles her eyebrows making you giggle.

“I think I would like that,” you sigh in relief now you have an excuse to see her again. This time your plans will not be thwarted. But how? You’ve gone the poetic, musical, and tasty route, what else would be good enough for Bridget? You stand there staring at her again, getting lost in how beautiful her pink hair is, how white her teeth are despite the copious amounts of sweets she consumes and how perfect she smiles.

“Are you sure you’re okay Y/n?” She asks again. You nod. “I’m getting a little worried for you; you’ve been getting distracted more easily, letting Uliana pick on you when you usually would just turn invisible and run away, and you look a little tired every time we hang out. Which is a lot.”

You sigh, “It’s just… its- I… the dance is soon.” You end with really not wanting to elaborate. You really don’t want to let out anything else so you make the hard decision to skedaddle and turn invisible.

“Y/n Cheshire! You can’t runaway like that! I better see you after school!” She calls out, chuckling to herself despite the worry. She think she knows what’s going on now and she intends to help out.

You spent the rest of the school day tryna think of good ways to ask Bridget to go with you. You think you have it though.

Bridget had missed her home dearly, as did you. She had a passion for exotic tastes, her favorite being a rare wonderlandian truffle she left behind at her castle. She told you the day school started up again how devastated she was she forgot it. All you had to do was take an unauthorized trip to wonderland. Which would be laughably easy for you.

So you decided to slip out during your fourth period and left.

The woods were thick but you didn’t mind. You liked the outdoors. Before Bridget, trees were your best friends. You got close enough to the guards that you could see the sides of them from pretty far. You turn yourself invisible and slowly walk towards it.

Once close enough to them you pick up a rock and throw it the other direction. They whip around and start walking towards the sound it made. You start booking it towards the portal and make it, falling hard on the wonderland ground.

“Ouch” you mutter, turning visible. Thankfully wonderland doesn’t guard the portal. You get up, dusting yourself off. Then you head towards her castle which isn’t too far but you need to hurry if you want to make it to Bridget’s dorm in time.

You get into the castle by turning invisible once more and quickly find her room, thankfully easily. Her room is adorable with baby pinks everywhere and cookbooks galore. It’s like her dorm but even more her somehow. She has a recordplayer too. You remember listening to fun pop ballads with her.

You quickly find it in a box on her nightstand and put it in your pocket. You, still while invisible, leave and run back to the portal.

When you get back you realize you don’t know if you can stay invisible when you go through it. You take a deep breath and go in, feeling lightheaded but still managing to land on your feet.

“Hey!” A guard yells right next to you. Apperently the answer was no still.

You turn invisible and run even faster than when you ran to the portal. You manage to only trip once but lose them.

You are terribly out of breath because of the running but check the time and it reads that you are five minutes late! You gasp for air and again sprint to the school, managing to get there in an impressive 2 minutes from the edge of the woods. You knock on the door.

“Oh there you- are you okay? You don’t look very, um, good,” she awkwardly says, standing there with a cookbook in hand.

“Yeah I,” you inhale, “good. Just, can we maybe sit down for a second?” Your palms are a little sweaty and it’s not just cause of the running.

She grabs your hand and leads you to her bed. “Of course!” You sit next to one another.

“Thanks, sorry I’m late I had to… grab something.” You decide to go with that for now.

“It’s no problem, just maybe next time shoot me a text and not run a marathon.” She giggles. You smile. You nod and sit there in an admittedly awkward silence for a bit.

“Can I ask you something?” “Can I ask you something?” The both of you say at the same time. You both break down in giggles.

“Yeah, you go first,” you say, maybe you were stalling still.

“Uh, sure!” She surely looks insanely nervous which is kinda making you more nervous. “Well, even though last year was a little weird I loved castlecoming so much. Last year I wanted to do something but was too chicken and I’m gonna do it this year.” She pauses and you nod, rubbing her hands for support. She inhales, “Y/n Cheshire, would you be my date to castlecoming? Like not just as friends?” The wind is most certainly knocked out of you again and you kind of malfunction a bit.

“Y/n are you alright? If it’s a no that’s perfectly okay, you don’t have to feel like you have-“

“Yes! Oh my, Bridget that would make me the happiest in all of the realms! Can I- can I kiss you?” You ask, you feel your face warm. She doesn’t answer. But before you know it you feel your stomach explode with pixies and your heart leap out of your chest. Bridget’s soft pink lips touch yours and it has to be the best feeling in the world. You don’t mean to break the kiss but after a couple seconds you gasp.

“What what’s wrong?” Bridget says.

“No no no nothings wrong it’s just, I was planning to ask you too. I was gonna ask you like about two weeks ago but I chickened, and then that time I got sick I had planned a whole cheesy song out, I baked something for you and it got burnt another time, then I had written a poem for you but… but… that’s what Uliana stole today.” You chuckle awkwardly. You technically just admitted you lied to her.

“Wow… I I appreciate that you would do all those things but don’t worry, I don’t need anything big, just you. It is funny you were gonna ask though! I too was a little chicken recently. You are so sweet.” She says lovingly, her smile brighter than a thousand suns.

Then you dig in your pocket for the truffle and pull it out.

“I still managed to work something out. I went to wonderland to get that truffle so you could use it before it goes bad.” She grasps it out of your hand and looks at it in awe.

“So that’s why you were so out of breath! You seriously got this for me? You are- you’re just so amazing.” She pauses. “I know it’s soon but I feel in my heart that I love you, and I have loved you. I don’t know if it’s weird or not but I’ve loved you as a friend and it’s already become so much more. Thank you truly.“

“I love you too Bridget, have for a long time.” You answer. She grasps your collar and pulls you in for a deep kiss once more. This one lasts a lot longer. You both only break it for a second, where you two say I love you once more. The two of you laugh at the fact you said it at the same time. Bridget is truly the queen of your heart.

[cherievol6]

in love in italy

hey!!! long time no see…sorry i’ve been off the grid - i’ve been working loads. i just randomly wrote this (I was feeling very poetic after reading Sally Rooney lmfao) hope you enjoy!

being with harry in Italy brings on some intense feelings that you just need to confess.

warnings: very brief mentions of sex, other than that it’s absolutely heart wrenching fluff.

word count: ~1k

.

You’ve never felt like this before.

At least, not when you're in the middle of having sex with someone.

This wasn't just someone though, it was Harry.

Sweet and gentle Harry, whom had made everything feel a little bit lighter for you since the moment you met. Here he was, skin so close to yours it felt like he was trying to meld you both together like clay. His head was dipped into your shoulder, his breaths heaving but blissful. You felt like a pot of boiling sugar bubbling up to a gooey caramel and oozing into the bed below you. He made you feel as though one look from him or one kiss from him would make you shed every negative piece of your mind.

"You okay? You're awfully quiet after that." He half laughs, referring to the intense scene of love that was just displayed in the early hours of the morning, in a random villa in Italy. You’d woken up to get a glass of water and returned to bed to find Harry awake. A quick good night kiss turned into wandering hands and clothes being stripped to the floor. It wasn't quick, or impatient, the way you'd held eachother. It was intense, and thick and heavy — like there was something lingering for the two of you. You feel a few tears slip to yours ears and on to the pillows. Harry still hasn't noticed, gently stroking the leg around his waist. You scratch your fingers in his hair and let out a shaky breath.

You always found it hard to hold in your cries, since you were small. They swelled your chest like a balloon, and with a sharp gasp of breath the balloon pops and Harry's snapping his head up quickly and brushing your hair out of your face.

"Woah, woah. What's wrong?" His voice is panicked and you don't find yourself trying to avoid his gaze, which is strange. You don't feel upset, you feel overwhelmed. Harry always said it scared him how every time you looked at him it felt like you were reading his mind.

You wipe the sweat from your brow, the warm room making you feel flushed. Or was it this nagging urge to tell Harry something you’d kept to yourself for so long, out of fear of scaring him off so early in your relationship.

You smile, and he must think you look manic, grin growing the more you look at him, his constant over concern for you, like he couldn’t bear to think of anything bad happening to you.

“I feel good.” You say quietly, running your thumb over his mole next to his mouth.

“Yeah? That’s good.” He kisses you softly.

“Do you feel good?” He nods at your question without hesitation.

His eyes seem to gloss over akin to yours, and the words are literally behind your teeth when he says, “Always when I’m with you. You make me feel so safe. I can’t describe it-”

“I love you so much, Harry.” The tears are no longer tears, rather streams of saltiness that saturate your hair and Harry’s hands. He seems to deposit the last of the air in his lungs before he can speak again. Like your words winded him.

“You love me?” His voice is timid, and his hand is now shaking.

“You know that thing, where people paint in acrylic on a canvas, and it looks good, but kind of dull? A bit moody?” Harry nods, with a small smile creeping up his face. You always were one for the metaphor, “and then they paint it with that shimmery gloss and it makes the painting look so different. Like it’s brand new, and you’re finally seeing it in its best form? That’s how you make me feel. I wasn’t bad before, I just needed something…or someone to make me more vibrant. You do that for me. And I love you for it.”

He laughs, and the movement makes his tears fall out of his eyes and on to your cheeks. You are the most emotionally intelligent person he’s ever met in his life and he can’t believe that you’re in love with him.

“You always come up with the most beautiful metaphors...” he kisses you again, like staring at your face for too long brings on the urge to just devour you whole. “I genuinely think my entire life was created to coexist with yours, and just hear every piece of your mind that you’ll let me.”

You pull him down again and kiss him again. You were insatiable for his kisses, they were like oxygen for you. He’s still crying, and you’re still crying, and all you can hear around you is his heavy heartbeat and the owls in the trees around you. Your favourite place to be with Harry was in his Italian house. It felt like no one in the world existed or cared about the two of you when you were within these walls.

“I love you. I have done for months and I will do for a lifetime. Okay?” His brows are pinched together, in a sincere and reassuring way. Like he needs you to know that he’s not going anywhere.

“Okay.” You smile widely, until your cheeks hurt and your eyes wrinkle. “I love you.”

“I love you.” Now that it’s out in the air it feels like the only form of communication between you both in this moment. Harry rocks against your hips and kisses your neck, and you begin to breathe shallow. You whine when he connects your lips again.

“Show me how much you love me, H.”

.

[lilypadlys]

Haircuts make Dew uncomfortable.

A product of his element transition was that his hair got badly singed and most of the length had to be cut off. Dew loved his platinum blonde, practically white hair. Took immaculate care of it. Adored its body and how it rippled like water. And suddenly it was burnt and matted and gone. Then to add insult to injury, even after it grew back it became a harvest gold.

Dew hates it at first. No matter how much Aether and Mountain insist that his hair is prettier than ever, that it suits him so well, he hates it. At first, he wears it back and under hats and beanies, refusing to deal with it. Eventually it gets so bad though that he tries to bleach it. Unfortunately the bleach further trashes his already damaged hair and he has to get it cut short all over again.

His packmates know he needs help but they aren’t sure what to do. Compliments and affirmations are all well and good but they don't really help. Doesn’t fix it. He knows his packmates mean well but he can’t really take their words to heart.

Then one day, Cumulus asks Dew for his help with doing her hair. Says she’s trimming it to avoid split ends and could he help her with the back sections? He agrees and helps her out. He helps her straighten her hair so she can trim it, then helps her work in product afterwards to help it regain its curl. Then she asks if he would like her to do his.

He refuses immediately. His hair has just gotten back to a couple inches below shoulder length, still too short for his liking, and even an end trim seems like too much. She doesn’t take offense though, just nods and changes the subject; has him pick what scent of hair mask she should use next.

And then next time she does her hair, she has him help her decide how to style it; braids or in space buns. And the time after that if she should cut it all short for summer. He immediately gasps at the thought, and waxes poetic about how pretty her hair is until they’re both giggling. And then he regards his own tangled mane in the mirror.

He asks in a quiet voice if he can borrow her hair scissors. She agrees, handing them over and watching him carefully. He brings the scissors up to the ends of his hair, but he stops. Freezes. He can’t do it.

“Would you like me to help?” She asks gently.

He hesitates and then nods, passing the scissors back over. She gestures for him to sit on the edge of the tub and stands behind him.

“I’m just going to get the ends, alright? Just to help your hair be a bit less tangled. Is that okay?”

He nods, not trusting his voice.

She brushes through his hair gently, mindful of the tangles. Asks one more time if he’s okay with this. When he nods again she wraps a towel around him. She works as quickly as she can while still being careful to make sure everything is even. When she’s done, she sets the scissors aside and uses her air magic to sweep the cut ends of his hair away into the trashcan and out of sight. Then she brushes through his hair again and grabs the curling iron.

“Okay if I style it a little?”

“Sure.” Dew shrugs noncommittally.

An ironic perk of Dew’s hair now is that it’s a lot more fire resistant. Still Cumulus is careful not to turn the iron on too hot and risk burning herself. She uses it to add a slight wave to Dew’s hair before finally letting him look.

Dew gets up and shyly glances at himself in the mirror, eyes going wide once he does. Even though it’s not perfect, there’s still damaged ends left from lack of regular care, Dew has to admit that it looks a lot better. Cumulus had to take about three inches off but as he runs a hand through it and doesn’t get caught on a rats nest of tangled ends he sighs in relief. The slight wave has the corner of his mouth quirking up even as he begins to blink rapidly.

“Feel a little bit better?” Cumulus asks.

“Yeah. Thank you.”

They both ignore how Dew’s voice cracks a little. Cumulus definitely doesn’t notice that dampness around Dew’s eyes. She busies herself cleaning up while Dew turns away and rubs his eyes.

“If you’re up for it, I know what might really help. A nice deep shampooing and conditioning will go a long way towards helping maintain your hair. You can use my stuff and I’ll even help you wash if you want.”

Dew knows how protective over her hair products Cumulus is. The fact that she’s offering makes him smile. He nods.

“Thank you.”

Cumulus gets the both of them ensconced in the tub, Dew using his magic to keep the water steamy while Cumulus massages shampoo through his hair. The way her claws gently card over his scalp has him purring in no time despite the stress he’d been feeling. By the time she’s rinsing the conditioner, she practically has to hold him up so he doesn’t fall asleep right there in the bath. After, she helps him stand and wraps him in her fluffiest towel before wrapping a smaller towel around his head to dry his hair.

“Why don’t you get some comfy clothes and I’ll get a nest ready. Sounds good?”

“Uh huh.” Dew’s too worn out and sleepy to fuss about being taken care of.

He dutifully pads off to his room to change and Cumulus makes good on her promise and sets up a blanket and pillow nest. She’s just fluffing the last pillow when Dew returns in an oversized tee and sleep shorts, and mostly dry hair. Without complaint, he hops up on the bed and sinks into the blankets with a happy chirp. Cumulus finishes drying her own hair, changes into pajamas and joins him.

“Okay if I braid your hair? It’ll help with tangles and it’ll be wavy in the morning.”

“Kay.” He murmurs, already drifting off. She giggles and retrieves her brush from her nightstand. Dew is fast asleep before she even ties the braid off with a silk scrunchie.

[yazthebookish]

I loved all of what Sarah highlighted in her interview today and I'll elaborate a bit especially on the romance part:

In Maas’ fantasy worlds, love interests often exist as fated “mates,” with invisible strings between them that are powerful and often poetic. Readers can see the literary metaphors, like complementary powers between two characters. But other times, there are no metaphors, with their connection initially seeming random.

She's too attached to the mate trope and I like that she gives us different cases and scenarios for it, otherwise it'll be boring.

“Sometimes, I will write a scene with two characters that I’ve planned for them to get together, and then they have no …” She shakes her head slightly at me. “It’s like holding two dolls and being like, now kiss! And they won’t. … And then sometimes a different character will walk in and they will just” — she snaps.

I yelled at this part because it's as if she plucked the scene from Azriel's bonus chapter and used it as an example. Those parallels between Elain and Gwyn are intentional. It doesn't mean Elain is bad it's just their dynamic doesn't work as a couple and it was obvious to the author. I know she didn't specify who this was about but like, come on, who tried to kiss and which character showed up in a bonus chapter after that depressing scene and gave a glimmer of hope?

“It feels like magic in a way where, as much as I tried to plot out things years in advance, I let my characters guide a story. And they usually wind up with the people that they need to be with and who offer them the most growth and joy.”

I love this so much and allow me to speak about my favorite ship and its because the snippets we saw of Az and Gwyn together especially in the bonus chapter brought out a lighter version of Az. His scenes with Gwyn were light-hearted and the bonus chapter ends on a hopeful note for them. It's hard to deny that connection between them whether you theorize she's luring him or they're mates, those theories wouldn't exist if she had no ties to him (she's in his own chapter like come on).

I go the philosophical route with my next question: We’re talking about fate here, but at what point is a character the agent of their own fate? What happens if someone rejects their mate? (Listen, if I were Fae and I didn’t like my mate, whatever God chose for me is not my business.)

People are jumping the gun and assume this example is set to be Elucien but... we have Helion and Lady of Autumn likely being an example of a tragic rejected mates story (if you read ACOWAR and their history it's obvious they're mates). Maybe it's Mor and Eris and that's the secret that ties them to each other. We have other characters from other series too.

For a convincing mate rejection story in my opinion, it needs more than one book or it's a case that we see with side characters where we can see their history and the long-term implications of a rejected bond.

It's too easy of a story to have one person's central conflict be the words "no I reject you" and they're done. Again, this is not exclusive to ACOTAR but also her other series.

“That’s something I find to be very interesting,” she replies. “What if the forces that be put you with the wrong person? Or what if you just decide, eh, I’m not interested. … There’s a lot to explore within the concept of mates and your agency about it.

The concept of agency is something many readers in the fandom discussed especially when it comes to mating bonds and there were arguments on (would Rhys fell for Feyre if she wasn't his mate or would have Cassian fell for Nesta if she wasn't his mate). We know that some mates don't work out but stay together because their dynamic is unhealthy (Rhys's and Tamlin's parents). We got examples of a loveless mating bond already.

We also saw that Nesta didn't immediately accept the term "mate" because it would mean cutting off her last tether with humanity. It's not a matter of "you're my mate" "yes I'll be with you", the dynamic between the mated couple is important to explore.

“I’m not going to say if I am exploring it in future books or not,” she continues, “but it definitely offers a wealth of things to explore with this concept of freewill and what is true love. Is it something that’s destined? Or is it something that you make? Is it both?”

This part aligns with what I think about Elucien. We never had a mated pairing who knew they were mates but are not in love with each other. Every mated couple found out they're mates when they were already in love.

Can a destined love turn into true love? Or do you settle for a destined love without love being in the equation. Love wasn't in the equation for Rhys's parents, but love was the equation for Feysand and Nessian. Elucien was left unexplored for a reason and both Elain and Lucien view each other by label "mate", they didn't have a chance to get to know each other. So it's going to be very interesting to see them navigate their feelings for each other despite the mating bond.

I didn't expect her to elaborate a lot on this but I love that she did and I hope in future interviews she gives us more good bits about her writing and examples of the decisions she took for some characters and couples.

Didn't expect this post to be long but happy reading! I'm still reeling from HOFAS 🥲

[hoonvrs]

NOONA — 48: the ‘picnic’ date (+written 0.4k)

the last thing you expected to see when you opened your door was a soaked sunghoon holding a basket. 

before you could even get a word out he spoke, “it started raining half way here, now everything’s ruined.”

“quick come inside!” you leaned out for his arm, pulling him forwards inside the safety of your house away from the droplets, “can’t have you get sick on our first proper date.”

his dejection was evident in his posture, bangs covering half his face with his body slightly slouched. your surprised the basket is even still in his hands with how loosely he’s holding on to it.

you could see his t-shirt uncomfortably clinging onto his skin and his shorts starting to look ombre from the bottom being wet.

“doesn’t matter anyways, its all ruined.”

“look at me,” you cupped his face, forcing him to make eye contact, “nothings ruined okay.”

he huffed, looking everywhere else but at you, “yes it is. the rain is heavy and the park will be wet and i’m wet and-”

his words got caught in his throat, starting to sniffle as tears that lined his eyes start to fall as he tries to finish his sentence. arms coming up to wipe his tears with his sleeves whilst you stood there shocked.

you already knew sunghoon was a little sensitive and cried a lot, you just didn’t expect it now. 

“baby,” you sighed, pulling him into a hug, nuzzling into your neck letting his sobs freely spill out, “fuck the park, we can still have our picnic right here. as long as you’re with me nothing is ruined.”

“i didn’t know you could be sentimental.”

“shut up,” you slapped his shoulder, making him laugh, still trying to wipe his face, “come on, ill go steal some of won’s clothes for you.”

+

what was once your living room was now a makeshift ‘park’. the couch was pushed to one side with the coffee table on another to make as much space in the middle as possible, going as far as laying down a checkered blanket beneath all the food to really tie it all together.

soon enough, sunghoon came in wearing a white t-shirt and sweats that were a little short on the ankle but he’ll make do, “don’t you look cute.”

“why is jungwon so short, my ankle feels naked,” he slowly sat down beside you as you continued to set up taking pictures ever few seconds.

“genetics, too bad. i did a good job right? were basically in the park right now.”

you looked at sunghoon who was still silent, seeing him on the verge of tears again, “hey, no crying. you’ve done enough for both of you.”

“i just feel bad. i had everything planned and i checked the weather app i swear i-”

you leaned forward, silencing him with your lips on his. no one double blame you, he just looked so cute with his eyes a little puffy and cheeks flushed.

“you talk too much.”

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S. NOTES: THEY HAVE KISSEEDKEKWKW

SYNOPSIS: park sunghoon experienced love at first sight when he first laid eyes on his friends older sister. a series of sunghoon desperately trying to do anything in his power to get the girl and yang jungwon cockblocking him for funsies.

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[insanityclause]

“It must have been in about 1979, I was in New York on holiday. I was sitting up with a friend, and we were both stoned as owls.” Jane Wymark was retelling her brush with a piece of theatre history. She recalled the sound of a telephone cutting through the sour, rising smoke. Wymark answered. Distant and absurd on the other end of the line, a telegram message from her mother. “It said something like: ‘Wonderful job. Hamlet, please come home.’”

After several minutes of laughter, it occurred to Wymark that the call might not be a joke. “So I rung my mother up, and said ‘I’m really sorry if I’m waking you up in the middle of the night for no reason, but is this real?’ And she said, ‘Yes, come home right now, because they want you to play Ophelia.’”

Wymark was being parachuted into a production of Hamlet that was being talked about as among the best of the century. Derek Jacobi, a Shakespearean actor then in his forties and recently made famous by his star turn as the Roman emperor in the television series I, Claudius, was in the title role. In some quarters, Jacobi’s poetic, volatile performance was being talked about as the Hamlet of his generation.

A film of the production would be broadcast in America and viewed by more people at once than any in history. When The New York Times asked Jacobi how he felt knowing that a generation of viewers would come to consider his interpretation definitive, he replied: “That way lies madness.”

One night, Wymark recalled, the cast were taking their bows in the furnacelike auditorium. “By the time we got to the end of the show we were pouring sweat,” she said. “Well I wasn’t, because I’d been dead for a while, but Derek and the guy playing Laertes were just sopping. We’d done all the usual curtain calls and everything, and then Peter O’Toole comes wavering on to the stage.”

O’Toole, then almost 50 and skeletal-gaunt, was carrying in his hands a little red book. As the audience hushed he explained that the book was given to the actor who was considered the definitive Hamlet of his generation. When O’Toole had played the part in 1963, the actor Michael Redgrave had given him the book. Redgrave had been given it by someone else, a great actor of the previous generation, and now O’Toole was passing it on to Jacobi, who in turn could give it to whomever he pleased.

The notion that each generation has its definitive Hamlet is a critical will-o’-the-wisp that has dogged the play almost since it was written. The Edwardian essayist Max Beerbohm called Shakespeare’s most famous part “a hoop through which every eminent actor must, sooner or later, jump”, but only one actor in thousands gets to “give” his or her Hamlet in a professional production. “Everyone — great, good, bad or indifferent — wants to play Hamlet,” the actor Christopher Plummer once said.

Why? The question feels redundant. If you are someone who needs to perform, you are someone who needs to perform Hamlet. In Withnail and I, the 1987 cult comedy film about actors and their ambitions, the bloated, fey, lecherous character known as Uncle Monty has a short speech on the subject: “It is the most shattering experience of a young man’s life when, one morning, he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, ‘I will never play the Dane.’ When that moment comes, one’s ambition ceases.”

Earlier this year, I set out to find the red book.

As a trophy, a tradition, a secret succession, it seemed to embody some of the most romantic ideas about the part. I felt that in mapping its passage from player to player, I could trace a shadow history of the thing that has been driving the whole theatrical world for centuries: ambition.

This is what brought me to ask the retired Wymark about her encounter with the book. And this is how I eventually came to be standing outside a rambling, gabled cottage in north London, uncertain about whether to ring the bell until a vast Shakespearean sneeze told me I was at the right place. The door opened and I shook hands with a neat, elderly man who looked just like Derek Jacobi. The living room, decorated with antique furniture and hung with flower paintings, left an impression of a precisely chosen life. I said that I wanted to ask him about a red, leather-bound book, handed down from actor to actor, that had passed through his hands decades ago. I said he might be the oldest living actor to have held it in his hands. He furrowed an alpine brow and fixed his pale blue eyes on a tiny point just past my left eye. “Oh God,” he moaned, in an agony of remembrance. “It was a little copy of Hamlet . . . ”

Of course, there is no definitive Hamlet. This is true, and so obviously true that people have been saying it for hundreds of years. “There is no such thing as Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies.” This is true! Hamlet is sour, obedient, suicidal, sarcastic, self-indulgent, flip and outright murderous before the end of his second scene. Modern scholarship has been wincingly keen to stress the heterogeneity of possible responses. As I once heard a professor say in a university seminar, should we be speaking of Hamlets, rather than Hamlet?

Perhaps. But we should also be honest: that sucks and we hate it. We also can’t ignore the genealogy of great Hamlets that exists, stretching all the way back to Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s star performer and business partner, for whom the role was written. That the character and the play are both radically unstable and look totally different in different hands seems to have made us more eager to pinpoint a single actor’s performance as the one. Producers, theatre managers, actors and journalists have connived to reinforce that idea.

Hamlet does offer an actor a scope and centrality that no other part does. “It’s the great personality role in Shakespeare,” Jacobi explained when we were sitting down, his hands conducting the silence around him as he spoke. He had settled in a winged leopard-print armchair, like a portrait of himself. On the side table was an Olivier Award, a small bronze sculpture of the great Laurence Olivier himself, the man who won both Best Actor and Best Picture for his 1948 film of Hamlet, and then launched the National Theatre in 1963 with a production of the play. “You use much more of your own personality as Hamlet,” Jacobi said, “rather than becoming Hamlet by going out and acquiring things. . . Hamlet will look how the actor looks, sound how he sounds, move how he moves. You play yourself as Hamlet.”

Jacobi first came to prominence as a teenage Hamlet, in an eye-catchingly serious schoolboy production at the Edinburgh festival fringe. In his early twenties he joined the germinal National Theatre and played opposite O’Toole’s Hamlet as Laertes. In his forties, he was given the red book by O’Toole, filmed in the role and toured the world. He was sworn to revenge under sheets of pelting rain outside the real Elsinore castle in Denmark. He soliloquised and played mad by the Egyptian Sphinx as the sun set.

A particular challenge of playing the part, Jacobi told me, is delivering lines so famous they risk breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief. In his production, the second act began with Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy. Unusually, it was played as a speech delivered to Ophelia, rather than on an empty stage. In Sydney, at the end of the tour, Jacobi was waiting nervously in the wings. “I thought, ‘This is probably the most famous line in all drama. What if I forgot it? What if I went on and my mind went blank?’ And I went on, and I started . . . 

“To be, or not to be, that is the question/ Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or–

Or–

Or–

Or–”

Blinded to the astonishment of a thousand spectators by the force of the footlights, Jacobi realised he’d dried. Dried completely. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten the words. It was like he’d never known them. An entire minute of silence passed, until he was audibly given his line by Ophelia. Somehow, he got through the performance and the rest of the run. Afterwards, Jacobi didn’t go on stage again for two years. When I mentioned the incident, his eyes turned tight and hooded. He asked to talk about something else. Sensing my cue, I returned to the red book.

“Oh God. Rich!” he called into the next room. “Who did I give the book to?”

“You gave it to Ken Branagh,” called Richard Clifford, Jacobi’s partner, from offstage.

“Ken! I gave it to Ken,” said Jacobi. Then, calling back: “Who did Ken give the book to?”

“Tom Hiddleston!”

“Tom! He gave it to Tom.”

I asked how he had received the book himself and he went back into the trance of remembrance. “Now, I was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. And at the curtain call one night, Peter O’Toole came on to the stage with this book and gave it to me. And he had originally been given it by . . . Oh . . . ” He trailed off, unable to remember Redgrave.

“Oh!” cried Clifford from the kitchen.

“Oh!” cried Jacobi in the living room.

Johnston Forbes-Robertson. That was the name of the first owner of the red book. Forbes-Robertson was a legendary Victorian actor who played Hamlet into his sixties. The book itself was a Temple Shakespeare, a handsome reader’s edition of the play printed around the turn of the century and bound in red leather. He probably bought it in a West End bookshop, pacing around between rehearsals. Or so I’m told by Russell Jackson, an emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham. “It would have been instantly recognisable,” he told me. “You can hold it more or less in the palm of your hand.”

In 1996, Jackson was working as a script consultant on a film of Hamlet directed by Branagh, who was then in the middle of a hurtling, flame-tipped ascent to near-unprecedented eminence among Shakespearean actors. As a leading man who had run his own theatre company and could direct and star in internationally released film adaptations of the plays, there was no one to compare him to but Olivier. He was now at work on a princely four-hour fantasia, shot amid fake fallen snow at Blenheim Palace with himself in the starring role.

He had cast his old hero, Jacobi, as Hamlet’s murderous uncle Claudius. On his last day of shooting, after the traditional applause that follows a final take, Jacobi asked for silence. Jackson kept a diary at the time: “[Jacobi] holds up a red-bound copy of the play that successive actors have passed on to each other, with the condition that the recipient should give it in turn to the finest Hamlet of the next generation. It has come from Forbes-Robertson, a great Hamlet at the turn of the century, to Derek, via Henry Ainley, Michael Redgrave, Peter O’Toole and others. Now he gives it to Ken.”

Hamlet had been a pivotal document in Branagh’s life. As a teenager in 1977, he had seen Jacobi play the role at the New Theatre in Oxford. In his memoir, he remembers it as one of the moments that inspired him to become an actor. “I didn’t understand it at all, but I was amazed by the power of it because it seemed to be affecting my body. I got the shakes at times.”

Two years later, Branagh went to interview Jacobi, who was then playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. “I got a note from someone called Ken Branagh, saying, could he interview me for Rada’s magazine?” Jacobi told me, referring to the prestigious London acting school Branagh attended. “He was a personable young man. He asked good questions. As he left, he said: ‘I’m going to be playing Hamlet one day, and you’re going to be in it.’”

“Ken,” Jacobi added with a smile, “wasn’t slow in coming forward.”

It was no secret that Branagh had set his sights on matching, even reanimating, Olivier’s career. With his movie of Hamlet, he was threatening to run away with the crown. But while the film won plaudits from some critics, it made back only around a quarter of its budget, and Branagh was nominated only for best adapted screenplay at the Oscars, a curiously backhanded compliment for a Hamlet that advertised itself as the complete text.

Branagh held on to the book for more than 20 years, passing over several acclaimed Hamlets (David Tennant’s agonised spectre foremost among them) in that time. “I took special pains to make sure it was preserved,” said Branagh, who was reached with written questions via an agent and an aide during the shooting of his new film. “I felt the book was something rather treasured and private, and not something that you in any way crowed about. You were a temporary custodian.” In 2017, he finally handed the red book on to the actor sometimes thought of as his protégé, Hiddleston.

So there it was. Redgrave to O’Toole to Jacobi to Branagh to Hiddleston. But still, something wasn’t adding up. I began desperately ringing round old actors asking for snippets of information about the red book, and started reciting the list of names from Jackson’s diary entry: Forbes-Robertson, Ainley, Redgrave, O’Toole, Jacobi, among others. Every time I read the list, everyone said the same thing. Where the hell is Olivier?

Here is a story about Laurence Olivier. Once upon a time, in the early 1800s, there was a great Shakespearean actor called Edmund Kean. He was the Hamlet of the Romantics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that watching him was “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning”. Kean was also renowned for playing Shakespeare’s other great soliloquist, Richard III. As the hunchbacked villain, Kean would rage and swagger and strut about, swishing a great sword in his hand. That sword was passed to William Chippendale, a member of Kean’s company. Chippendale gave it to an actor called Henry Irving, who gave it to the great Ellen Terry who, we understand, gave it to her great nephew. His name was John Gielgud. Gielgud gave the sword to his contemporary, Olivier, telling him to pass it on to the great actor of the next generation. And Olivier kept it.

He is rumoured to have been buried with it. Certainly, the sword has not been seen since his death. (One of the last people to see it was Jacobi, who confirmed to me that Olivier still had it as a very old man.) Is Olivier really lying in his grave with no tongue between his teeth and Kean’s sword beside him? If he is, it feels like a little parable about the sharp, inward points of ambition. Here was a man who got everything and more from a life in the theatre. But he couldn’t bear to part with a prop sword.

The question of why Olivier never received the book becomes more pressing when you read the letters he received playing Hamlet from the Edwardian actor Henry Ainley, the book’s second owner. On opening night, January 5 1937, Ainley telegrammed Olivier in his dressing room: “THE READINESS IS ALL.” Later that night he wrote: “You, my sweet, are the Mecca . . . Pay no heed to the critics, they do not know. You are playing Hamlet; therefore you are a king [ . . . ] You rank, now among the great.”

Ainley’s hornily free-associating letters seem to imply a physical affair at times. “Larry darling, I have been tossing (now now) about at night thinking of you,” he writes in one of the letters, currently kept by the British Library.

“Well, you know what you did. I can’t walk [ . . . ] And the child has your eyes.” Yet it is Olivier’s fame that Ainley most obviously covets. “Soon you will be like [me],” he writes in another. “Your public, your following all gone, dear old boy! The harlequinade. We do not endure!” There is no mention in their correspondence of the red book. Whether Ainley had already given the book away, or felt compelled to hang on to it, or simply had forgotten it, remains a matter of speculation.

It’s not the only agonising gap in the archive. In 1963, an older Olivier cast Peter O’Toole in the production of Hamlet that would open the National Theatre. O’Toole had already played a wild, revelatory Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic in 1958, in which he famously climbed the proscenium arch mid-performance. It was an interpretation that harnessed the young actor’s modernity. “He’s a lean, lank, individualist Teddy Boy!” one reviewer enthused.

But in 1963, Olivier had other ideas. “It was very strange,” remembers Siân Phillips, O’Toole’s then wife, now aged 91. “Larry [Olivier] had talked him into this terrible costume. He looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy, with a Peter Pan collar and clean, beautifully cut dyed blond hair.”

Phillips thought Olivier seemed to want to trim the edges off her husband. “Larry had this new kind of concept of a very tidy Hamlet, which was the opposite of what [O’Toole] did best. But he had such regard for Larry, who was flattering him enormously. He just did everything asked of him.” Phillips had put her own starry career on hold to let O’Toole have the spotlight. She did his filing and kept track of gifts he had been given, making sure people were thanked, which was why she found it strange that she’d never heard of the red book.

Together, we wondered if the unhappy production had made it a sore point for her husband. “The thought did cross my mind once or twice that Olivier might be trying to sabotage him,” she said. “But how could he want to do that on the opening night of the National Theatre?” On the other end of the phone, I thought of Kean’s sword.

Perhaps this is harsh. Perhaps we can understand the desire to have and hold on to a physical token of fame, strength, adulation, applause, youth — the things that slip away from even the greatest artists. All performers live in fear of unemployment and redundancy, and even the successful ones are loved, fiercely and temporarily, for being someone they’re not. “Today kings, tomorrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing,” wrote William Hazlitt, the English essayist.

“British theatre has traditionally privileged innovation,” the Shakespearean scholar Michael Dobson told me. In France, he explained, you could see Phèdre performed with the same gestures, the same intonation, for hundreds of years. “The British are always inventing new things, like gas lighting and ways of doing ghosts with mirrors. It’s never the old, boring Hamlet your parents used to like. It’s always got this young, original, absolutely real actor in it, instead of those stylised old geezers.”

In which case, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories about great actors who fell from fashion. It was Burbage who first delivered Hamlet’s acting advice to the players: “O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

Until the modern day, actors didn’t play big roles just once or twice in their careers, in a long run of performances. They performed them frequently. Even in Shakespeare’s time, actors became associated with certain parts in the minds of spectators. Burbage died in March 1619, and the funeral baked meats were hardly cold when he was replaced by another actor, Joseph Taylor.

An unreliable but enticing story has it that Burbage taught Taylor, and Taylor taught the next great Hamlet, Thomas Betterton. Betterton was the Hamlet of Restoration theatre, among the first to play opposite women. Confronting his father’s ghost, Betterton’s Hamlet could “turn his colour”, as though his face had drained of blood with fright. Betterton made his face “pale as his neck cloth”.

Betterton died in 1710, immortality assured. Within a few decades his reputation had been all but vaporised by the greatest actor of the century, David Garrick. Garrick was almost a religion among theatregoers. “That young man never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival,” was the poet and critic Alexander Pope’s verdict. Garrick was both a shameless showman and pioneering realist. He played Hamlet in a mechanical fright wig that made his hair stand on end when activated.

Garrick was replaced by John Philip Kemble, a severe and statuesque Hamlet. In the early 19th century, Kemble was outmoded by Kean, whose ascendant star was quickly selling out theatres. “Places are secured at Drury Lane for Saturday, but so great is the rage for seeing Kean that only a third and fourth row could be got,” wrote Jane Austen, struggling to get seats. Out with the old. Next came Samuel Phelps, the actor-manager who first made a point of performing the original texts of Shakespeare’s plays. He was toppled by Henry Irving, a drawn and gothic actor. Irving was supposedly the inspiration for Dracula; his theatre manager was Bram Stoker.

Enter the melancholic, effeminate figure of Forbes-Robertson, the first owner of our red book. His Hamlet, first performed in 1897 and still being revived into his sixties, was in some ways the last definitive stage performance in this unofficial, highly debatable but surprisingly enduring tradition. “Nothing half so charming,” George Bernard Shaw wrote of his performance, “has been seen by this generation.” Orson Welles described one recording of Forbes-Robertson as the most beautiful Shakespearean verse-speaking he ever heard. You can still listen to it on YouTube, uploaded from an ancient LP.

“The next reference to the actor’s art,” creaks the old voice above the hiss of imperfectly transcribed sound, “is Hamlet’s advice to the players, written, obviously, by an actor who has complete command of his calling.” In a voice ponderous with time but still capable of lightness and precision, he begins the passage in which Hamlet gives notes to a theatrical troupe. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.”

Forbes-Robertson would have seen more clearly than many of his successors how rapidly the galaxy of theatrical ambition was expanding. He was the first great Hamlet to play the part on film, in a lumpy silent production in 1913. If that film looks stagey and stylised to modern eyes, then looking back at these nested revolutions in realism, it’s also obvious that old actors have always looked that way in the eyes of their successors. Naturalism is just the style each era brings with it.

Hamlet’s advice was itself part of this reach towards the endlessly receding goal of the real. To an Elizabethan audience, the travelling troupe with their heroic verse and stagey couplets would have seemed obviously to belong to a previous generation of players, one playwrights like Shakespeare, and plays such as Hamlet, were making redundant. Hamlet says to the players what the theatre is always saying: be young, be modern, be new.

You can’t ask too much of very famous actors. Basic professionalism demands that they don’t tell you anything too interesting. They live like criminals, travelling under pseudonyms and booking the front seat on aeroplanes. We abhor in their personal lives the basic human latitude we praise in their work. “I am myself indifferent honest yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me,” Hamlet says to Ophelia. “What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth?”

I had hundreds of questions for Hiddleston, the 43-year-old star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and current holder of the red book. Unfortunately, Hiddleston is not an easy man to reach. As the man who plays Loki in the Marvel series (global gross about $30bn), he has been watched at his craft by an unimaginable number of human eyes. He does his work in green-screen and widescreen settings that would also have been unimaginable to 90 per cent of the people named in this article. Where Burbage played Hamlet without an interval, Hiddleston’s fame is a postmodern mosaic, put together in franchise films with an average shot length of two seconds. Given that he commands multimillion-dollar fees for these acts of cinematic pointillism, you may imagine his time is precious. I was able to reach him by phone for 15 minutes during press week for Loki season 2’s Emmy campaign. “Good morning,” he said, dialling in from Los Angeles. “I mean, sorry, good evening.”

Hiddleston played Hamlet in a fundraiser production for Rada directed by Branagh in 2017. He told me how he had left drama school and joined Declan Donnellan’s Cheek by Jowl theatre company, standing out as Cassio in a somewhat legendary modern Othello, in which Ewan McGregor played Iago opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead. Branagh saw the production and persuaded Marvel studios to let him cast this relative unknown in Thor, which then grossed almost half a billion dollars. Afterwards, they sat down for lunch and Branagh suggested Hamlet. “And I said, ‘I would absolutely love to do it with you. What an honour.’”

The production played for three weeks in Rada’s tiny theatre, with tickets that were won by lottery. Among the critics, Michael Billington, Britain’s most decorated theatre writer, was one of the few to have got a seat. “If I had to pick out Hiddleston’s key quality, it would be his ability to combine a sweet sadness with an incandescent fury,” Billington wrote in his review. On Saturdays, Hiddleston remembered, there were gala performances for graduates and theatrical somebodies. “I think at the first one almost everybody with the last name ‘Attenborough’ in the UK was in attendance.”

On one of these evenings, a glass was clinked with a spoon. Jacobi began to speak, explaining something about a book that had passed from actor to actor. “And then Ken was at the microphone, explaining that the responsibility of the keeper of the book is that they pass it on to the next generation. And suddenly Ken said, ‘I’d like to present it to Tom.’”

We were 10 minutes into our 15. I looked at my list of questions — on frontispieces, annotations, signatures, printing quirks — about the red book. Hiddleston was in LA. The book was in London. He was not contractually obliged to talk to me, as he was to the other journalists who were waiting on iPhones all over the world. All that was sustaining this conversation was the actor’s private enthusiasm for the kind of acting he is rarely, if ever, able to do anymore.

Hiddleston began to talk at length. He said the gift of playing the part was to be presented with the most beautiful, profound poetry written in English about the question of being alive, of death, of the possibility of spiritual life after death.

An email arrived saying our time was up. “It has the effect of making me feel more alive,” Hiddleston was saying. “Learning and internalising those great soliloquies, and having to perform them, there is no escaping those big questions of what it means to be alive,” he went on, the minutes ticking by. “And actually I find it very reassuring to ask those questions. I find it repetitively reassuring to say those words. Because it actually makes your life mean something.”

[june1109]

Honeysuckle’s don’t cover the devils scent

[part 1/?]

Chrollo x Librarian!Fem!Reader

Description: Reader owns a Library in a small village on a tiny island. Chrollo is looking for a specific book to read. He goes to the library looking for the book on several occasions each time it was checked out on the upside (or is it?)he starts to take a liken to a certain librarian.

Backstory: Reader was a hunter but gave up on her dreams when she was 17 (She’s not a good fighter but does know a lot about nen) not wanting to waste the rest of her life she just decided to settle down and make memories in the village.

Warnings: !!!None so far just bad writing!!!

My fingers grazed over titles of books I knew by heart. I found the place the novel went and put the book about astronomy in its rightful place. I stood back up my oversized cardigan lifting from the floor. My feet sluggishly moved to the children’s section putting toys and coloring pages away until I heard the bell chime admittedly lighting my mood. A young stranger in an even stranger outfit.

(Change of POV)

There were finger puppets and pencils scattered on a tiny table. It piqued my interest but also worried me that this was a children’s library. A young woman approached me. Her hair [Unless you don’t have any :/] was (h/l) and a beautiful (h/c). She wore a big cardigan and pants that where too big and a little stained perhaps was paint or spilled food with a plain black top with pieces of white fur maybe a dogs but most likely a cat’s fur [he isn’t interested in her I just think that Chrollo would analyze everyone when he first meets them just to clarify].

“Hi, Can I help you with anything? I’m the librarian you can call me (Y/n). it’s a pleasure meeting you we don’t get a lot of visitors being the only village on a tiny unpopular island” She stuck her hand out it was littered with colorful bracelets and on the non dominant hand had additional doodles.I decided to accept the hand shake.

“My name is chrollo and I would like to check out a book called immortality is the Dilemma and savior of life.” [This is a book title I just made up but it’s basically about a vampire trying to escape the cage of immortality while a young man is hunting the vampire trying to gain mortality] I looked in her (E/c) reading them only to find nothing.

“Of course let me check if we have that for ya” (Y/n) walked behind the front desk entering the title.

“Oh shucks it looks like it’s checked out I’m so sorry, but would you like to stay for tea anyway?” I look down contemplating the offer of tea. I’m not busy and I have run out of tea and I am craving tea right now. I suppose it won’t be so bad.

“I don’t see why not” I sat down and a normal table unlike the tiny table across the library.

“What kind of tea would you like?” They probably don’t have many Judging by how small the town is.

“Anything is fine” I looked around the Libary more it was very small but not cramped. There was a kids section and they had computers. There was even a garden outside and a donation box. Oh how interesting humans are. Some are so generous well others are greedy and rotten to the core.

“Do you like milk and sugar in your tea?” Her voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

“I would like a little teaspoon or so of sugar and no milk please and thank you” I smile softly to (Y/n). She is quite interesting.

I watched as leaves left the trees almost poetically as I waited. “So Chrollo where are you from?

“I’m just from a small island” I smile gently watching her face for anything.

“Really? That’s nice” We sat there for around an hour and a half having a decent conversation before screaming children in dragon onesies came stumbling through the door. There trainers rub dirt onto the carpet before walking in. This is quite a lively place for a Libary.

“Oh sorry I’m gonna go take care of those little dragons.” She sat down her cup. Straightening her shirt as she walked to the loud children with a general warm smile on her face [Y’all have a face right? If not L to you ig]. It made my heart warm seeing such kindness.

A/N

This is more of a pilot [which is why it’s so short] to see if I should actually write a story and if I’m any good because it would be my first so I’ll continue if this gets likes or someone suggests me to continue [which probably won’t happen]

[toushindai]

totk spoilers but are we ACTUALLY meant to think it’s poetic or flattering or triumphant that Rauru was like “oh YEAH? Well in thousands of years this guy called Link is gonna kick your ass”

How much has he even heard about Link? He must have had at least one more conversation about him with Zelda because the Master Sword doesn’t come up in the Zelda and Sonia tear, and by the King’s Duty tear Rauru’s just like oh don’t worry, if we don’t finish Ganondorf off I’m sure your bf can handle him. As I’ve said before, his “We rely on your knight” line rubbed me the wrong way starting with its appearance in the trailer, and it really does not feel less entitled after watching said knight (and that legendary sword he carries) very very VERY nearly get one-shotted by Ganondorf at the beginning of the game. And Zelda knows this! What does she feel watching her Better Dad Substitute sacrifice himself and simultaneously sic the evil bad guy on Link—a siccing which explicitly shapes Ganondorf’s attitude towards Link at the beginning of the game? At what point did she have the emotion of “welp. I know why Ganondorf knew Link’s name now.” The musical blending of the LOZ theme/hero’s theme with Rauru’s theme seems to suggest that it’s not an emotion meant to be had at exactly that moment, but I cannot watch Rauru sneer “remember that name” without yelling HE DOESN’T NEED THAT INFORMATION at the screen.

I played through the GSI in Japanese recently and Rauru did seem a touch less entitled to Link than I’ve been reading him—mostly because of the formal, polite, outgroup-equal language he used with him—but I still can’t get over the extent to which Rauru heard about Link a few times and decided, sight unseen, that he was going to clean up Rauru’s mess. My man what made you think that. What gave you the right to decide that. And how frightening to be Zelda and watch Rauru pin all the world’s hope on her beloved knight who Ganondorf absolutely fucking wiped the floor with. We see this worry in her in the Master Sword in Time cutscene! To what extent can Zelda’s transformation and before that her petition to the other tribes of Hyrule for Link’s sake be understood as a forced action due to Rauru’s conviction that Link could do this no sweat? Almost entirely, I feel—but does the game know that?

I just. Isn't it intentional? Doesn't it have to be? The fact that Rauru already needs the correction, once, that he cannot and should not face the Demon King alone. Then his melodramatic claim that Link has got this on lock. Then Zelda being like 😬 not sure about this actually and going through the whole process of talking to the ancient sages + draconifying for the sake of the Master Sword. Because Rauru absolutely set Link up to fail and Zelda is the one making sure Link has the resources, including the support of others, he needs to succeed. And the game is so much about community, about not doing things on your own.

And yet the way the scene is scored and animated and the way all the other characters talk about Rauru's sacrifice seems to treat this as a a moment of culmination, of triumph. I am getting such mixed messages here.

Understand, I’m saying all of this with an aching fondness for this poor self-deluded hypocrite. And also teeth-grinding frustration. I think he deserves to feel suffocatingly humiliated when Link almost didn’t survive Ganondorf’s attack and I also have tremendous sympathy for the shame and terror that it might be far too late to correct his mistake that he must have felt as he waited for Link to wake up. Both of those things. Hopelessly lonely man who found people to love him and built himself into a role he was never adequate for. I wish the game looked at this a little more. I wish I could tell if the game intended this at all.

(This is not the most intelligently written post but I assure you I mean every word of it.)

[burins]

I wrote up half of my Eisners roundup back in May and then my arm crapped out profoundly. But here is the rest of my thoughts about all the comics and graphic novels I read this year, of which there were many! As usual particular faves are bolded.

JAN

Delicious in Dungeon v6-12

FEB

MAR

The Chromatic Fantasy - HA

I think that if you are following me you will probably like this book. Great stuff on gender and sex and religion in a deeply fun art style. (Best I can describe it is the really trippy bits of Alice in Wonderland.)

Gleem - Freddy Carasco

Fluid, delightful linework.

APR

A Guest in the House - E M Carroll

E M Carroll has been doing some of the best horror comics in the business for about a decade and this continues the streak. Twisty, turny psychological horror

MAY

Where I’m Coming From - Barbara Brandon-Croft

Collection of Brandon-Croft’s wonderful 90s newspaper strips about Black womanhood. 

Roaming - Jillian and Mariko Tamaki

Love letter to being messy and gay and young in the city.

Local Man v1-2 - Tim Seeley and Tony Fleecs

This is a fun little deconstruction of comics tropes. Inga, the love interest slash female lead, is the best part of the comic.

Danger and Other Unknown Risks - Ryan North and Erica Henderson

Great story, great characters, great art. What if you were in charge of preventing the second end of the world, and also your mentor figure was SO dubious, and also you had the world’s biggest, cutest dog?

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam - Thien Pham

First of a number of immigration memoirs nominated for the Eisners. The storytelling here is excellent; the art wasn’t my personal favorite.

In Limbo - Deb JJ Lee

I always have such a hard time judging memoir comics, but I think this walks a good line between gesturing at and directly portraying its fairly heavy subject matter, and the art is stunning.

Last on His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century - Adrian Matekja and Youssef Daoudi

Probably my favorite thing I read in this batch. Lyrical, poetic art that plays with paneling and pagination to incredible effect. Does not shy away from the everyday brutality of either boxing, racism, or Johnson’s personal life. 

Messenger: The Legend of Muhammad Ali - Marc Bernardin

I read this right after Last on His Feet and boy did it suffer for it. Unfortunately, this is just an entirely forgettable bio of Muhammad Ali. 

Sunshine - Jarrett J. Krosoczka

I wish I liked Krosoczka’s art. This did make me cry but it’s a memoir about working at a camp for kids with cancer, so it would be pretty hard for it NOT to.

Blackward - Lawrence Lindell

This would have been a perfectly serviceable 2010s-era webcomic. Not everything needs to be a book!

The Out Side: Trans & Nonbinary Comics

Graphic anthologies are deeply hit or miss for me but this one was extremely solid!

Frontera - Jaco -  Salcedo and Julio Anta

Excellent story about the violence of the border, deeply undercut (for me) by a very jarring ghost subplot. 

A First Time for Everything - Dan Santat

Sweet little story about a class trip abroad with glowing art. 

Shubeik Lubeik - Deena Mohamed

I'm so bummed I couldn't hear Mohamed speak at MICE because I LOVED this. Uses genies as a vehicle to explore the fault lines of class and politics in Egyptian society. 

A Boy Named Rose - Gaëlle Geniller

Lovely art but this was entirely nothing. Remember Teahouse? This is that but sfw and also without any narrative tension. 

Comics for Ukraine

Almost universally bad, with the exception of "Talking to a Hill."  I think sometimes the medium of superhero comics is not the one with which to tackle every issue, 

Parasocial -  Erica Henderson and Alex de Campi

Tense paneling, solid art, I didn't care for the ending of the story. 

Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? - Chris Oliveros

This relies almost entirely in first person accounts, which I like as a device for exploring who gets to claim historicity, but it means that the actual narrative is kind of incoherent. 

The Great Beyond - Léa Murawiec

My other favorite from this batch! This is a story about celebrity and fame and being remembered, but the art is some of the most fluid and expressive stuff I've seen in years and the creativity of the conceit keeps it from ever feeling run of the mill. 

Memento Mori - Tiitu Takalo

I am pretty down on illness memoirs, but I liked this more than I thought I would. 

Swan Songs - W. Maxwell Prince et al

This collection of stories about endings was going to be a winner for me and then the final comic was SO bad it soured the whole experience for me. 

Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story - Sarah Myer

This (like a lot of the comics in the teen category) did make me cry! The art is a little too scratchy for me at times- it's intentional, but not always deployed to best advantage. 

Phantom Road v1 - Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Hernández Walta

Is this basically Alice Isn't Dead with a guy as the driver? Well, yes, but it is good. Lemire always nails creeping dread and Hernández Walta's art is ominously flat in an excellent way. 

Black Cloak v1 - Kelly Thompson and Meredith McLaren

Compelling story undercut by webtoony art that's way too cute for the fantasy noir vibe of the narrative. 

My Girlfriend's Child v1 - Mamoru Aoi

It's always kind of wild to me to see a completely bog standard teenage pregnancy narrative get nominations like this and then I remember that most people making these nominations do not like, know a lot of people who were pregnant as teens. 

Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons - Frank Tieri and Inaki Miranda

This is simply not very good art or story. 

The Cull v1 - Kelly Thompson and Mattia de Iulis

The story here is really intriguing! I wish we had a little more time to get to know the characters before getting thrown into Plot but it's real solid. I don't always love this hyper realistic 3D rendering but it works for the story. 

The Summer Hikaru Died v1 - Mokumokuren

I could wish that the translator hadn't rendered all of the dialogue as weirdly southern but this is a really good gay rural horror. Came back wrong simply hits! 

Mabuhay! - Zachary Sterling

Cute! Didn't really slam me but I would have had a lot of fun with this as a kid. 

Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir - Pedro Martín

This was both lovely and deeply felt and also laugh out loud funny. 

Saving Sunshine - Saadia Faruqi and Shazleen Khan

Extremely sweet sibling story. 

Fire Power v1-4 - Robert Kirkman and Chris Samnee

The Good Asian v1-2 - Pornsak Pichetshote and Alexandre Tefenkgi

Eden II - Kenny Wroten

This has great moments and is also deeply irony poisoned. I would love to read a weird queer comic by someone who was not Online. Also I could not tell any of the characters apart, because they were all thin white-presenting people from fake Seattle. ALSO the speech bubbles were so clearly added in after the fact that it was often difficult to tell who was saying what. I'm not a purist about speech bubble rules or anything but I gotta be able to tell what order to read your dialogue!

Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy - Bill Griffith

The frame narrative is solid, but the best part of this was just the actual Nancy comics included within.

The Horizon v1 - JH

This is just apocalypse torture porn tbh. 

Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood - Sam Machado

Here's the thing. I think there are compelling arguments for animal rights. I would also like to see us put that same kind of energy towards ensuring full rights for people first. Also the art and writing here are simply not very good.

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons - Kelly Sue deConnick, Phil Jiminez, Gene Ha, and Nicola Scott

I wasn't sure I would love this because of my noted Picky Feelings about feminist Greek myths but I liked it more than I thought! The art is phenomenal.

Superman (2023) v1 - Joshua Williamson 

The annual is what was nominated, but the single issues are the actual stars of this trade. Williamson does a really solid job of situating Clark in community.

Wonder Woman (2023) v1 - Tom King

I find the story pretty grating (why does Diana need to be fighting the entire US government?)

Poison Ivy (2022) v1 - G Willow Wilson and Marcio Takara

YAY we love an ecoterrorist getting her due. Takara's art leans full Annihilation. 

My Picture Diary - Maki Fujiwara

This suffered in comparison to last year's alt-manga diary comics from a similar era, Talk to My Back, which was one of my favorite books of the year. Fujiwara's art is very stolid and pretty simplistic and while it works for the subject matter it wasn't my favorite.

River’s Edge - Kyoko Okazaki

This is SO messed up! We are right in the violence and emotional mess of teenagerhood. 

The Yakuza’s Bias v1 - Teki Yatsuda

This gets a little one note by the end of the collection but yakuza falls right into Kpop stan culture is such a funny premise that I didn't mind.

How to Love: A Guide to Feelings and Relationships for Everyone - Alex Norris

This is much cuter and more charming than I thought it'd be.

The Talk - Darrin Bell

Bell is best known for his political cartoons and this brings the same kind of incisive political wit to a longform piece while adding a great deal of empathy.

Transformers (2023) v1 - Daniel Warren Johnson

I am so sorry to DWJ who did his very very absolute best to make me care about Transformers. The art and writing are great I just don't go here. 

Kill Your Darlings - Ethan Parker and Griffin Sheridan

Pretty mid dark fairytale.

PeePee PooPoo - Caroline Cash

Diversity win this lesbian alt comic is just as annoying as the straight ones!

Superman: Lost - Christopher Priest and Carlo Pagulayan

Ugh. Superman: Lost was one of my favorite takes on Superman and Lois last year and I still think the first like… five issues are phenomenal. As soon as we get the weird infidelity/assault/pregnancy narrative I was out. 

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees - Patrick Horvath

I simply hate cutesy animal horror. 

The Devil’s Cut, edited by Will Dennis

I know I read this but I have no memory of it. My notes say I liked it, and I'm generally in support of DSTLRY and creator-owned comics as a concept.

Marvel Age #1000, edited by Tom Brevoort

Deeply masturbatory.

JUN

Deep Cuts - Kyle Higgins et al

I liked this so much it was my end of the year staff pick! It's hard to do comics that really capture the collaborative and improvisational feeling of a good jazz session but this anthology absolutely does.

Somna: A Bedtime Story - Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay

Tula Lotay's art is absolutely gorgeous but I was kind of bored by "what if a Puritan housewife was fucking the devil." 

Watership Down: The Graphic Novel - James Sturm

I think these rabbits are too cute to really capture the horror of Watership Down.

Delicates - Brenna Thummler

It's really difficult to tell a story about a kid who is bullying someone else and have it land sympathetically for both parties and Thummler manages it with an uncommon emotional depth.

Buzzing - Samuel Sattin and Rye Hickman

OOF this hit me right in the psych kid feelings. Very sweet and really captured the feeling of the complicated family dynamics that surround kids with mental illness.

#DRCL midnight children v1 - Shin’ichi Sakamoto

Insane choice to make Lucy Westenras a bishie.

Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise - Tradd Moore

Did not think I would ever be rooting for a Doctor Strange comic but this is the kind of psychedelic universe bending art I would love to see more of from his whole character premise!

Bea Wolf - Zach Weinersmith

Absolutely delightful adaptation of Beowulf for children. Weinersmith really captures the feeling of the old English language in a story about a bunch of little kids defending their treehouse.

HP Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth - Gou Tanabe

I don't feel qualified to examine the choice by a Japanese artist to adapt a story about Lovecraft's fear of Chinese and Pacific Islander genes entering Massachusetts. I haven't read much actual Lovecraft but did we all know it was that racist? I mean, I knew he was racist but my god.

The Monkey King v2 - Chaiko Tsai

EXCELLENT adaptation of Journey into the West! I couldn't get v1 in time for voting but the art and the pacing here are just so much fun.

It’s Jeff! - Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru

This is extremely cute but it is ultimately just a cute animal comic.

Earthdivers v1 - Stephen Graham Jones and Davide Gianfelice

I hope you don't need me to tell you Earthdivers is good. It's good.

Birds of Prey (2023) v1 - Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero

I was so dubious about this one that I ended my yuri zine piece talking about it. And then it was in fact really really good. The team dynamics are excellent here and the art is perfectly suited to it (except for one issue with a guest penciller where the art is execrable.)

Shazam! (2023) v1 - Mark Waid and Dan Mora

Waid and Mora are sort of the DC powerhouse couple at the moment and I know that at any minute Mora is gonna switch to only doing covers, which will make me very sad. This was way more fun than I expected to have with a Shazam comic but the kids here are delightful without being cutesy and Waid does a great job balancing Billy being a real character and also a believable hero.

Four Gathered on Christmas Eve - Eric Powell, Mike Mignola, Becky Cloonan, and James Harren

Becky Cloonan's was the story that was nominated in this but unfortunately I didn't really care for it. 

Spa - Erik Svetoft

This was hard for me to read because it is just body horror from start to finish. I think it runs a little long but as far as the horrors of capitalism and the tourism industry go it doesn't get much better than this.

JULY

The Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont Drawn by New England Cartoonists

Really, really good cartooning and storytelling. Vermont is not really what you think of as the front lines of immigration but it's a farming community!

Green Arrow (1988) v1-9 by Mike Grell and others

Honestly the highlight of these for me is that the scans on (website redacted) maintain the letters pages! Grell's Green Arrow tackles a lot of capital I issues with mixed results but I do enjoy seeing the attempt. And it comes off a lot better than Batman comics of a similar vintage that attempt the same thing.

Robin (2021) v1-3 - Joshua Williamson, Gleb Melnikov, and Roger Cruz

Honestly? Delightful. I love to see Damian come into himself and I love to see his cute little romance and I love to see him reading shoujo manga.

AUG

Are You Listening? - Tillie Walden

Tillie Walden always hits!

Hunter x Hunter v 1-13 - Yoshihiro Togashi

Sometimes you read 38 volumes of manga in two months after watching 130 episodes of the show and listening to hundreds of hours of podcast about it. And that's just what HxH does to you. It's normal, and fine.

The Yakuza’s Bias v2 - Teki Yatsuda

The bones of the premise are starting to show - I think this really would have been better as a single volume. Still very charming but probably not gonna pick up any third volume.

The Boy Wonder (as it came out) - Juni Ba 

BOY WONDER COMIC OF ALL TIME! Wonderful take on Damian wonderful art wonderful Al Ghuls.

SEPT

The Summer Hikaru Died v2 - Mokumokuren

Hunter x Hunter v13-38 - Yoshihiro Togashi

OCT

The Concierge At Hokkyoku Department Store, v1 - Tsuchika Nishimura

What if working retail was not a horror show but was instead deeply fulfilling for everyone involved? This can only happen in a world where the customers are animals. 

NOV

Iris: A Novel for Viewers - Lo Hartog van Banda and Thé Tjong-Khing

The gender of this is kind of crazy (derogatory) and it could not more clearly be from the 60s. I don't think I'd recommend it but I don't regret reading it as like, a historical document.

Space Mullet - Daniel Warren Johnson

DWJ really doesn't miss. This is a very classic grungy space noir in the vein of a Cowboy Bebop or an Expanse but I liked it quite a bit despite being made to feel sympathetic for a space Marine. 

DEC

Nightwing (1996) v1-3 - Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel

Flush! Those! Blood pressure! Meds! Is Nightwing 96 a good comic? Who can say. Babs is there and Dick Grayson is experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion deep in his #failgirl 20s so I'm having a great time. 

[mediumtires]

oh man oh MAN i’m still not over this i will never be over this it’s been so LONG. so long. and people were doubting his abilities his skill in the car his legacy and they were all wrong :) they were all wrong because today lewis hamilton won for the first time since jeddah 21, after 945 days, at his home gp and not because of a safety car or because other drivers crashed out but because he’s quite possibly the best driver on the grid when it comes to tyre management and understanding what a race needs, what the car needs, he’s adaptable and he knows exactly how to drive this fucking track and that’s what’s won him this and he deserves it so so so so much, more than anyone else on this grid, do not tell me otherwise. lewis winning silverstone one last time with mercedes, after they went winless last year, before he leaves for ferrari, BREAKING ALL THE RECORDS is the most fucking poetic thing one could possibly conjure up in their sick mind. it was fucking beautiful and healing because this man has gone WINLESS SINCE 2021 when he lost the championship in the worst possible fucking way a driver could lose a championship, a record breaking, unprecedented title that he should have had, that should have been his, and he had to wait NINE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE DAYS to be back on the top step of a podium DO YOU UNDERSTAND????? i fear you don’t. this man was starting to doubt his place in the sport, his skill, his talent, his own legacy, which is unmatched, which makes him the greatest driver of all time, he was questioning all of it because he kept losing out to his teammate and literally every other driver on the grid, because he was given a car that was not worthy of fucking wins or podiums or even at times points. do you understand what this means after winning seven titles, after merc went undefeated for so long, after he was at the top of the game? to then suddenly fall to the absolute back of the grid being unable to overtake A HAAS? having alonso go “this man only knows how to start from p1”? bro ITS BEEN YEARS. this shit has taken years off his life and my life and he worked so hard to be back up there. it’s fucking insane to think where they were at the beginning of the year or last year or 2022 (nowhere). he gave everything to this team, to this sport, to his career. this is literally all he has ever wanted to do, he has committed his entire life to this and for two years he was made to feel like he was Done and Washed and people were literally moving on from him, pundits weren’t even rating him for the season anymore. don’t you tell me this was the car or the tyres or the mclaren strategy. i don’t wanna hear it because i don’t care. this was lewis back in his element for the first time since 2021. they couldn’t have taken this win from him even if they had wanted to, those last 15 laps he was Locked The Fuck In. he wanted it so bad and he deserves it more than anyone else and i have been feeling absolutely everything about this the whole entire day because it was the perfect win on the perfect weekend even though i wish he didn’t have to wait 945 days for it. but man. let’s hope things are looking up from here. let’s hope merc get their shit together for the rest of the season. let’s hope lewis has only good races from here on and can see his legacy with merc out on a high. let’s hope he can show those motherfuckers. war is over man. war is finally fucking over.

[deathisararemercy]

Ties to The Past

Death x ghost/soulmate!Reader

“Wait…is it really you, old friend?” If you had any blood in your body, it would’ve run cold. There was no mistaking that voice. The wrinkled old spirit in front of you, the soul who was standing next to the lifeless body in the bed, the person Death had come to reap, was a former friend of yours from when you were alive, years and years ago.

A/N: Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday. After posting something nearly every day for about a week, it felt weird not doing so last night. However, I come bearing a 3k part two to this 2 am post, aka Red String. This story has shifted a bit, but I hope you all enjoy. I have more planned out for this AU. It shouldn't be more than five or six parts, and I'll hopefully finish it by the end of next week, if not the end of this week. In the meantime, this is a little reminder that my requests are open (guidelines in pinned)! Thank you for all the love on Red String!

Part One | Part Two |

“I’m sorry, mi fantasma. You can’t come with me on this one.”

Your eyes widened in shock before narrowing in suspicion. “Why not?” You floated over the wolf’s head, peering down at him. After what seemed like forever, you figured out how levitation worked, and it was now your favorite means of getting from place to place. Being a ghost had its perks, aside from the whole being dead thing.

Death, however, was not tolerating this at the moment. He batted you away with a grim expression on his face. “I can’t tell you.” Seeing your hurt expression, he sighed. “You won’t want to see this particular soul. They’ve done some…unpleasant things.”

You groaned, floating a bit further ahead of him as you gestured around you. “We’re in the middle of a small little seaside town,” you said incredulously. “What kind of ‘unpleasant things’ could this person have done?”

You had a point. The town the two of you walked (or floated) through was the epitome of an idyllic seaside life. The mid-afternoon air carried in from the sea was crisp and smelled faintly of brine. The red roofed houses were full of life and color. People, unaware of Death’s presence and certainly not of yours, called out to one another, selling wares, fruits, and fish, and children raced down to the seashore. Seeing the ocean’s horizon and the endless shades of blue filled you with excitement.

Slowly, you returned to the earth and walked alongside Death on the cobbled road, your red thread growing warmer at the physical proximity. “I’ve seen you work a ton of times before, Muerte. Good people, bad people. Old people, young people. I think I can handle another soul collection.”

“Don’t get cocky now,” he chuckled. He tugged on his hood to further obscure his face, though no one could see him at the moment. “I mean it, cordero,” he muttered. “When we arrive at the house, I want you to stay outside.”

You had died a long time ago. But when you did, your red soulmate thread appeared and connected you to Death. And not metaphorically or rhetorically or poetically or theoretically or in any other fancy way. Your soulmate was Death, straight up. Ever since he cut the silver cord connecting your soul to your physical body, you’ve traveled with the wolf and kept him company. Though he never said it aloud, you could tell he appreciated this, and that a small part of him needed it too.

Wolves are social creatures, you thought to yourself as Death changed the subject to a cat who was shot out of a cannon not too far from these shores. Death loved stories. His tail always wagged a bit whenever you told him a story about your life. Even after you thought you had run out of stories to tell, he always managed to dig up a memory of yours that you had thought you had completely forgotten. It amused and interested him to hear you talk about your life, and it kept you sane too. After all, it must have been…decades since you died. The fear of forgetting your life always haunted you, which was annoying because you were a ghost, and you were supposed to be the haunter and not the haunted.

At least if there was one person you knew you were haunting successfully, it was Death. Your red thread made sure the two of you were never too far from one another, but even without that thread, it would be practically impossible to separate you from his side. If being by his side and providing each other company as the world moved on and on and on was supposed to be your “happily ever after,” you weren’t going to complain.

But you were going to complain if he didn’t let you join him on this one little job. “Why don’t you think I can handle myself?” you asked him one last time. “Don’t you trust me?”

The wolf stopped suddenly. If you had a physical body, you would’ve walked straight into him. You stood in front of him now with a stern glare. The thread felt heavier than it usually did. An unreadable expression was on Death’s face. His eyes twitched a little as he spoke. “It’s not that I don’t trust you.”

“Alright then.”

“It’s that I’m worried for you.”

This wiped the glare off of your face. You faltered. “What?”

Muerte pointed up at the window of the large house you two stopped in front of. “Up there in that bedroom is the soul I have to collect. An elderly person who has lived a life full of popularity, wealth, and status and died peacefully in their sleep during a post-lunch nap.”

“Sounds…pretty nice,” you mumbled. A scowl crossed your face. “So what? You think I’m going to get hurt because I’m going to see a person who lived a full life? I’ve seen plenty before!”

“It’s not just that, mi fantasma,” continued Death slowly. “They did not live a truly full life. They’re alone right now. And no one will know that they’ve died for quite some time. Despite their riches and ranking, no one was truly ever close with them. At least, there is no one they hold close anymore.” He placed a paw on your shoulder. “I have the feeling that they might resist me while I try to do my job, and I don’t want you to have to see me get…” He paused, tilting his head a bit and chewing on the words. “Violent.”

Realization dawned on your face slowly, softening your features. “Oh.”

“Oh,” he nodded. The wolf sniffed the air a bit. “I have to go in now. Stay here, alright?” He gently tugged on the string, warmth filling your bodies. “I’ll be right back.”

He began to whistle his eerie little tune, and in a blink, he was gone. Your thread showed that he was already up in the bedroom. You sighed. You weren’t going to complain. You were going to listen and be a good little ghost and respect his wishes and stay outside.

But you were worried about him.

You had no doubt that Death could handle himself in a fight. He was tall and strong, and his reflexes were terrifyingly quick. Though you’ve seen him use his sickles to cut cords, you knew he could use them very well in a fight. He was an immortal being, for folk’s sake. No one escapes Death. But even so…

A chill went up your spine as you tried to lean casually against the wall of the house and fell through to the other side. You jolted upright, finding yourself in the living room of the house. You could hear quiet murmuring upstairs. Well, you were already inside. One small peek wouldn’t hurt would it?

Right?

There was a loud crash and your chest suddenly burst into pain. “Muerte!” You phased upwards through the floor and found yourself in the bedroom.

Death stood with his back to the wall, startling when he saw you. He didn’t look hurt, but his eyes were burning a violent scarlet.

You rushed to the wolf’s side, hands searching for injuries. “Muerte, are you alright?”

He tightly shut his scarlet eyes before shaking his head and opening them. They were a bit less red, but the intensity remained. “I’m fine. But that,” he said, pointing to the other side of the room, “That’s a problem.”

On the other side of the room was the phantom. They were still connected to their physical body by their silver cord, but their spectral form was fizzling in and out of existence in anger. Black and red, hazy and undefined, its aura was one of nothing but anger.

“Here’s what I think we should do,” Death began as he struck his sickles together. “We- what are you doing?” he sputtered as you left his side and walked up to the phantom.

It screeched and it hissed, and the air around it seemed to burn hot, a sensation you hadn’t truly felt since your death. Everything sounded like static, but you stared intently at where you hoped their face was.

“You’re dead, and there’s nothing you or he,” you added, gesturing towards the wolf, “can do about it.” You glanced at the spirit’s physical, lifeless body. Their wrinkled face was in a grimace. Shutting your eyes tight, you focused on being able to touch the body and shifted the face’s expression to one of peace.

The phantom was less agitated, letting out a small confused shriek. “You can’t go back to your body or the life you used to have. I know it hurts,” you added quietly, “Having to let go. Realizing you can’t wake back up. But that big wolf over there?” You gestured at Death, who stood silently behind you. “He’s a really nice guy. And he’s going to cut that cord of yours and send you off to the spirit world. You’re going to be alright.”

The phantom’s edges began to sharpen, becoming less blurry. It drew closer to you. Behind you, you could hear Death’s low growling. The red thread in your chest seemed to bunch up in a tight knot. You held your breath. And the intense air in the room was gone, and the phantom was no longer a faceless specter, but a spirit more akin to the body in the bed. In fact, that face looked very familiar.

“Is it really you, old friend?”

If you had any blood in your body, it would’ve run cold. There was no mistaking that voice. The wrinkled old spirit in front of you, the soul who was standing next to the lifeless body in the bed, the person Death had come to reap, was a former friend of yours from when you were alive, years and years ago. You had a falling out just before you died actually, if you remembered correctly.

“H-hi..” you said quietly. You offered a small wave.

They didn’t wave back. “You don’t look like you’ve aged a day since…”

“I decided to stick around the mortal plane for a while,” you said lightly, trying to lean back against the wall before realizing Death was behind you. You heard him quickly sheathe his sickles, and he caught you as you stumbled into his arms. But his hands were tight on your shoulders as he set you back up while you laughed nervously. He didn’t let go.

Your former friend blinked slowly. Oh, this was going just splendidly. You plastered a bigger grin on your face as you left Death’s grip and walked around the room jauntily. There were paintings all over the walls of different people with your old friend in golden frames. As you took a look around the room, you realized how lavishly it was decorated with bright cushions and heavy drapery, unusual for a seaside house. “Glad to see you lived a nice and full life! It looks like you had a lot of fun and are- were- erm, doing really well for yourself!”

“I did.”

“I’m kinda jealous, you know. I died pretty young,” you chuckled, enunciating the ‘t’s and wagging a finger.

You cast a glance at Death, who still stood in front of the spirit. His gaze was… questioning. Are you okay? he asked silently with a slight tilt of his head. The red string connecting the two of you tightened.

You shook yours slightly in response, but circled back to your old friend. “But I’m still hanging around and all that. I might not be alive but I feel alive getting to hang out with Muerte everyday.” Oh, what the hell. That was such a stupid thing to say.

The spirit raised an eyebrow. “You hang out with this guy? Isn’t he Death?”

The wolf rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m Death.” He drew his sickles again. “And I think it’s time for you to go.”

“Hold on, hold on. Why are you sticking around him?” Your friend’s brows furrowed. They took your hands in theirs. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Death stiffened as you let go of their hands. “Well, the funny thing is…he’s my soulmate.” You splayed your hands out awkwardly, letting the statement sink in.

The room was still for just a moment. “Your red string. Is connected. To Death?” The spirit said slowly. And then they burst out into laughter. They wheezed, clutching their sides as you stood awkwardly in front of Death. “You?” they laughed. “With Death? Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s some really messed up luck. Fate was not on your side.”

“I’m starting to remember why we had that falling out,” you said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, please. Relax. I just thought you were doomed to die alone without a soulmate. I mean, you remember all those people you’d talk to. You were so desperate to find your soulmate. And you end up dying and this guy is your soulmate? What, is he keeping you captive or something? Come on, let’s just get to the spirit world. Together! Then I can introduce you to all the famous people I met. Maybe one of them will really like you, who knows?

“This entire thing with Death was probably just a mistake. Who could ever love a big bad wolf like him?”

You were ready to punch a ghost in the face, but Death beat you to it. “It’s time for you to go,” the wolf growled, stalking forward.

The spirit raised their hands over their head as if that would stop Death himself. “W-wait!”

With one clean swipe, Death slashed their silver cord. The spirit was freed from their physical body. Death gave them no time to react. With an upwards motion, his sicles cut through the fabric of the universe. The light of the shimmering doorway to the spirit world blinded everyone in the room momentarily. But the light didn’t stop Death. Before the spirit began to process what was happening, he shoved them through the door before deftly grabbing the edges of the ripped seam and pulling it shut. He slashed the air with his sicles to clear the air.

It was all over in the matter of seconds.

He stood still, breathing heavily. His hands gripped his sickles tightly, shaking.

You could feel the string grow taut, and you hesitantly drew closer to the wolf. “They’re wrong, you know.”

He blinked, suddenly remembering you were there. He stepped towards the window, laughing as he looked outside. He refused to meet your eyes. “I know. But I’m Death. They don’t get under my skin. They can think whatever they want. They can’t escape me and they certainly can’t change who I am. I’m fine, really.”

“I hate to break it to you,” you said gently, “But I’m pretty sure you’re lying to yourself right now.”

“I’m not,” Death grumbled. He sheathed his sickles. Looking back at the body on the bed, he gently tucked it in before heading to the door. “Let’s get out of here.” He stomped out of the bedroom, leaving you to follow.

“Wait!”

You quickly ran out to follow him.

“Muerte!”

On the stairwell, his ears twitched a little. He turned to look at you, halfway out of the bedroom door. “¿Sí, mi fantasma? What is it?”

You opened and closed your mouth, trying to figure out what to say. You stepped forward, while pulling him closer by pulling on the red string. “Don’t believe a word they said. I chose to stay  in the mortal realm. I wanted to get to know you and I wanted to be there for you. All my life,” you choked out, “All my life, I looked for a soulmate. I met so many people with so many fascinating stories and lives. But even though I wasn’t alone, I still felt lonely.”

“Are you trying to say that you think I’m lonely?” Death teased.

“Yes!” you blurted out. “Yes, I think you’re lonely! But I don't want you to have to be lonely anymore! I don’t think you’re a big bad wolf! You’re- you’re a big good wolf! You’re strong and gentle and- I can’t believe I’m saying this- you are really attractive!”

What.

The.

Folk.

“Oh my fairy godmother.” Your hands flew to your face as you knelt to the ground, unable to process your outburst. “I want to die. Again.”

“I love you too.”

You looked up. “What?”

“I love you too.” Death looked down with a smirk. He bent down, elbows on his knees. His smirk softened to a smile as he placed a hand on your shoulder. “I know what you were trying to say. Thank you… I needed that.” He hesitated. And then he kissed your forehead, gentle and sweet.

The red thread seemed to come alive and your entire body felt like it was burning, but in the best way possible. Without thinking, you grabbed the string and tugged it down, leading Death to your lips. He didn’t object. And for however long that kiss lasted, you finally felt alive again. You could smell the dirt and seabrine in his fur, soft and cold under your hands. You felt the phantom sensations of your heart racing. He was tender and soft, though as you both pulled away, you could see a hungry look in his eyes, as if he were ready to devour you in an instant.

God, you wanted to kiss him again.

“We better get going,” you coughed, rising to your feet quickly.

Death followed suit. “Certainly.”

The two of you walked out of the house and into the street. Death didn’t put on his hood. But your hand did find its way into his. He gave it a small squeeze.

“I love you, Muerte.” You said quietly when you reached the edge of town. The two of you stopped. Dusk was quickly settling down over the seaside town. The two of you stood on the edge of the main road. He gave you a long look, red eyes cutting through the dark. “Do you believe we’re soulmates?”

“I do.”

He said this without hesitation or doubt. And by the look in his eyes, you knew he believed it.

==x==x==

“I must say though, I’m surprised you find me attractive. I didn’t think I’d be your type.”

“Please. I don’t want to die another time out of shame.”

[macaroni-and-pebbles]

Vessel angst

uhhhh extremely heavy tw for suicide. like. thats the whole idea. Graphic descriptions of how, but framed in a poetic way from ves’ pov. he does live but most of this is a ‘what-if’ scenario of what happens if he dies. So again, very heavy tw please don’t read if this bothers you in anyway

also please remember that suicide is never the answer. even when things get tough i can promise you that there are people willing to help you stand until you can walk on your own two feet again.

~~~~~~~~

It was getting bad again. Longs nights getting longer, every breath he took weighing him down like metal in his veins. Every word he spoke hurt his head, every movement he made burning him up from the inside. ‘Do they even like me?’ He would think, sitting at his desk as he stared at the pages and pages of scribbled ink. None of it meant much in the end. Words that chased themselves in circles like children on a playground. His whole being was ridden with guilt every second of everyday, silently screaming apologies for existing.

He had started giving away his things, he had no use for them anymore. Why would a corpse need any of it anyways? Nobody had really noticed anything was off yet, just thought he was being more generous than usual. Of course, his bandmates had seen a change, asking him occasionally if he was okay, or mentioning that he was more quiet than usual—had been avoiding them. But he brushed it off, saying that he was fine, he was just lost in thought.

One night it came to a point. Everyone was out of the house, doing who knows what. ‘Good,’ he thought. ‘Tonight will be the night, then.’ He left his room, headed for the kitchen. The lights in the house were off, he didn’t feel like turning them on though. Better to be hidden—a part of him still felt guilty for his future, selfishly taking the coward’s way out and leaving them to deal with the aftermath. But he just couldn’t do it anymore.

When he reached the kitchen he slowed, approaching the dining table first. He slid papers out of his pocket, four envelopes. One addressed to each of his bandmates—his partners—apologizing for what he had done and wishing them well, handing off his legacy. The last envelope addressed to his fans, telling them that he was grateful for their support and that he hoped they lived happily.

His next stop was the kitchen drawer. He pulled it open quietly, selecting his tool with care. He went back to the table then, sitting down at the end—his favorite spot. The blade was raised to his wrist, tip pressing in with ease. ‘Like cutting butter’ he mused to himself, a hollow humor that crumpled under the ever-growing guilt. It didn’t feel like much, sensation dampened under the heavy fog that had settled in his mind. Only a release, and a faint unknown feeling in his gut, as he watched the crimson spill from his skin.

It went up to his elbow when he withdrew to the other wrist, his grip shaky. The action was repeated, both arms feeling weighted now and a buzz lighting in the back of his mind. Then he lifted the knife one more time, to his neck now, ‘For good measure..’ he thought faintly, his voice drowned out by the loudening buzz. The tip dug in one more time, blood dripping down his skin in spindly trails that reminded him of rain.

Of rivers and oceans that swept him away now on their current, taking his weary soul beneath the water and drowning out anything he used to be. ‘I’m sorry.’ He thought suddenly, louder than the buzz or the crash of waves on the rocky coast. ‘I’m sorry.’ He dropped then, the knife falling with a clatter and his head thumping against the table.

He was dimly aware of panicked voices calling him, the slam of the door and hands pressing against his skin. It was over now though.

~

Vessel’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Did it work?’ He thought, sitting up in bed as his eyes scanned the room. Everything was drained of its color, hues of gray painting the room instead. There was a faint static in the back of his mind, a never-ending buzz, but not like the one that had taken him. Something more quiet.

He slid out of bed quietly, walking towards the living room. There were II and IV, sitting on the couch. They were next to each other, sides pressing together as II rubbed IV’s back and murmured indistinguishable words to him. “Hello?” Vessel said softly, expecting them to turn their heads and respond. But they stayed as they were. IV rested his head on II’s shoulder, staring blankly ahead while II closed his eyes.

Vessel frowned and continued on, searching now for III. As he passed the kitchen on his was he caught glimpse of the dining table. It was eerily clean, devoid of the usual chaos of items that adorned it. His letters were in the center, opened and laud out for all to see. His seat had been cleaned, although dark stains still lingered in the wood, a constant reminder of his actions.

He moved forward still, entering III’s room. And there was III. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his back to Vessel, and his body facing the window. Vessel approached, standing by him. In III’s hands was Vessel’s mask, splattered with tears that were spilling from III’s eyes. He was silent, his face grief-stricken and shocked as if unable to believe it.

That guilt grew in Vessel’s stomach, along with a gnawing feeling that burned the back of his throat. He turned to III’s desk, noticing the open computer. As he approached he saw his social medias open. Each one littered with millions of posts by his followers, grieving him and sending comforting words to his partners. Vessel stepped back, his eyes darting to III briefly before he exited, his feet carrying him quickly back to the kitchen.

There he was met with himself at the table, police scattered around, taking pictures of the scene and noting details. There were two officers with II and IV, talking to them—but the words were a distorted haze to him. “No…” Vessel muttered, eyes darting between himself the body and his partners quickly. “No no, please- I didn’t mean-”

He ran up, falling to his knees in an attempt to hug II and IV, but his body fell right through. “No no no, I- I didn’t mean for this to happen I-I didn’t…” He trailed off, faintly aware in the back his mind that there were tears rolling down his cheeks. “Please I didn’t mean to!” He shouted to the room, as if hoping someone would come and take him away from here, lead him back to life. He curled up in a ball on the floor, empty cries muted against the carpet. He wasn’t going back, was he?

~

Vessel woke with a start, his hands gripping onto anything close to him, anything within arm’s reach. Someone was crying, choked-off noises leaving their throat, distressed keens between harsh sobbing. It was warm where he was, soft and comforting. He was sorry. He was so sorry. He didn’t want to die.

Dimly he realized that those were his cries, realized that there were hands caressing him and voices soothing his pain. He kept crying, burying his face in a warm chest, a heartbeat that kept him tethered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He repeated between sobs, his voice raspy and broken. The voice just soothed him, hands running through his hair and arms holding him close. “I’ll never do it, I promise I’ll never do it again,” He said. He recognized the feeling now. Grief. For what is and what could’ve been, for the life he may have taken away from himself and the life that surrounds him now.

He didn’t want to die.

[theostrophywife]

*+:｡.｡ the riddle brothers being sleep token coded ｡.｡:+*

*+:｡.｡ MATTHEO ｡.｡:+*

you’re gonna tell me tmbte isn’t about mattheo?

my, my, those eyes like fire i’m a winged insect you’re a funeral pyre come now bite through these wires i’m a waking hell and the gods grow tired

and I don’t know what’s got its teeth in me, but i’m about to bite back in anger. no amount of self-sought fury will bring back the glory of innocence.

vessel wrote the summoning from mattheo's horny pov he told me so himself

you’ve got my body, flesh and bone. the sky above, the earth below. nothing to say and nowhere to go. a taste of the divine.

oh and my love, did I mistake you for a sign from god? or are you really here to cast me off? or maybe just to turn me on.

cause these days, I would be lying if I told you that I didn’t wish that I could be your man or maybe make a good girl bad.

don't even get me started on sugar !!!

do you wanna see how far it goes? do you wanna test me now, my love? you must be crazy if you think that I will give in so easily.

I know, I know, I am what I am. the mouth of the wolf, the eyes of the lamb. so darling, will you saturate?

*+:｡.｡ TOM ｡.｡:+*

ten year old me seeing thomas marvolo riddle appear in the chamber of secrets for the first time:

who made you like this? who encrypted your dark gospel in body language?

won’t you come and dance in the dark with me? show me what you are, I am desperate to know. nobody better than the perfect enemy. digital demons make the night feel heavenly.

I can offer you a blacklit paradise. diamonds in the trees, pentagrams in the night sky.

euclid is so tom fight me on this

yet in reverse, you are all my symmetry, a parallel I would lay my life on so if your wings won’t find you heaven, I will bring it down like an ancient bygone.

the whites of your eyes turn black in the low light in turning divine and we tangle endlessly like lovers entwined I know for the last time you will not be mine so give me the night.

the PAIN and ANGST it's giving tommy I fear

and we are exhausted by all this pretending, we just can’t resist the violence and you need the melody, I only need the silence.

somewhere the atoms stopped fusing. i’m still your favorite regret; you’re still my weapon of choosing.

yeah goodbye I don't even want to talk about this last line

I want to be forgiven. I want to choke up chunks of my own sins even if the sky cracks in the morning and the heavens just won’t open for me.

in conclusion, the riddles 🤝 sleep token = sexy self-loathing and slutty poetic lyricism

[autisticlancemcclain]

fic rec friday 6

welcome the the sixth fic rec friday! where, on friday, i rec five of my favourite fics.

1. Chapped Lips by Creatortan

Lance's lips were a distraction, sometimes. Keith just couldn't keep his eyes off of them.

i read this one and forget to bookmark it and it haunted my mind for WEEKS as i desperately tried to find it again. i went bonkers bc i wanted to reread it so bad, bc it is EXCELLENT. its fun and gay and the team as family dynamics are AMAZING, no team bashing here!! and as usual the pining was chefs kiss.

2. Mine by Anonymous [EXPLICIT, ABO]

How do Lance and Keith react when the other is kidnapped?

Keith goes feral. Lance becomes deadly.

yeah, yeah, i know. another omegaverse. absolutely feel free to avoid this one if it’s not ur thing, i know it’s not for everyone, but it was one of my first pieces of bamf unhinged lance and i refuse to be ashamed of liking it lmao. also i think it’s fair to say that this fic inspired my unhinged batshit lance fic, at least a little. give it a try if ur like me an abo is a guilty pleasure lmao

3. the way i love you by @taylortot

quiet moments in which keith and lance fall in love. and kiss a lot. post s7.

words cannot explain how much this series means to me. genuinely a series that is so poetically soft and loving that it makes tears well in your eyes. i started reading this series right when i turned 16, and idk it truly made something crack in fizzle in my brain, it made me realise how careful and choosing love is. i have read this series more times than i can count, definitely one of the top ten, and there are lines from this fic that i repeat to myself when i am looking for hope. i know it hasn’t been touched since 2020 but i will be watching it carefully and hoping for years to come. (my favourite, in the series, although it was hard to choose, is i want to kiss you there)

4. Read Label: Lance McClain’s Boyfriend by @bleusarcelle

“You know I’m not ashamed, right?” Lance meets his gaze sheepishly. “Like, I’m not ashamed of you, of us. Far from it, babe, I swear –”

“Lance,” Keith cuts in kindly, smiling warmly at the teen in his arms. “Believe me, I know but I do want to tell the world what you mean to me. I wanna start with our team, our family.”

“You should come with a warning,” Lance whispers, stroking Keith’s chin fondly as he drops his voice. “Caution: words that leave these lips may cause falling deeper in love. Thank you for shopping at Mullets4sales.com.”

Keith throws his head back as he shakes with laughter. Lance grins proudly at sound before he props himself on the bed and drops unceremoniously on top of his giggling boyfriend’s chest.

“But yeah, yes; let’s tell them after dinner.”

[Or the one where the team is on their way back home and stop on a planet where a pissy prince drugs Keith with a love potion and Lance has to endure watching his secret boyfriend being lovestruck on someone else that isn't him.]

bleusarcelle always has and always will be one of the core founders of this fandom fr. trust me when i tell u their work was THE work. i remember greedily reading every fic of theirs several time, and i still read several of them regularly. but i will always be a sucker for the secret relationship trope. and this one managed to have that trope with none of the team bashing or miscommunication garbage so it’s a banger from the get-go fr

5. When Moonlight Touches Us by @pmwrites-blog1

Branches scratched his cheeks as he ran through the woods. Out of breath and covered in mud, Lance eventually crawled back under the fence onto the school grounds. He stopped at the large fountain in the plaza, leaning heavily on it. He splashed his face to wake himself up.

It didn’t work. Keith was real.

-

Based on 214b's Gargoyle AU

THIS IS MY FAVOURITE VOLTRON FIC OF ALL TIME. i dont know why. i have no idea why ive latched onto this fic so specifcally, what about this fic just makes me want to reread it again and again, but if i could print this aand bind it and keep a hardcopy with me every day of my life i would. im obsessed with it. beauty and the beast who?? like this fic is everything to me. i cannot recommend it enough. im fully convinced this fic did something fundamental to my brain. nothing i write will ever be so dear to me as this fic and that’s literally okay. the stars aligned to make this fic possible. is it the fact that i know there’s pretzellus art for it and so the whole story was cemented into my brain? possibly. i truly do not know. but i am fully obsessed with this story and likely will be for infinity

that’s it for today!! i’ll see y’all back next friday for the next fic rec post!!!