#my birthing years are going to be slashed in half.

[welcome-home-official]

I hope my new nephew causes trouble for my sister once he's born. I'm tired of her having all the luck and good stuff after she's been such a terrible human being for the last several years.

She's a dog killer, she abused our other pets (the ONLY time our grandmother ever laid a hand on her was when she caught her abusing our aging dog) she lies to get people in trouble with the cops, stole tons of money, bullied our other sister, purposely tried to trigger meltdowns in me, left food out to rot overnight when she was told to put it away because she was mad she didn't get what she wanted, regularly ran away, forced our sister to come out to our grandparents or else she was going to (knowing damn well she could have gotten kicked out because we know that at least one grandparent is homophobic) and destroys things to be spiteful. I literally could go on and on about all the shit she's pulled.

Our grandma literally does not have a lot of mementos from the last several decades because my sister purposely pulled everything out of storage in the basement when she had to put the dogs down there when we had guests over and let them shred the shit out of all the photos and other things.

I'm fucking pissed that out of all of us she's had the best life so far. Still mom's favorite, never had to work for anything and now she's having a baby at 19 and even her first pregnancy is going extremely well (as in she's not even experiencing morning sickness or any of the drawbacks that aren't life threatening.)

[thetimesofindia]

As US shuts doors to global talent, India must open its own wider

America’s strength has long come from attracting the world’s brightest minds and backing them with deep pockets and bold research institutions. But in a stunning act of self-sabotage, President Donald Trump is dismantling that advantage—visa by visa, budget cut by budget cut. For India, this could be a turning point. For the US, it’s a slow-motion collapse of one of its greatest engines of innovation.Harvard University, long considered a global leader in education and research, has had its authority to enrol international students revoked. Over $2.7 billion in federal research funding has been frozen. MIT has cut back on graduate admissions and laid off research staff. The University of California system is suing to protect funding. Projects in cancer research, climate science, and quantum computing are being disrupted or shut down entirely. Although a federal judge has temporarily blocked the administration’s actions against Harvard, the chilling effect remains. The message to international students and researchers is clear: they are no longer welcome. And it’s not just about visas—this is about dismantling the infrastructure that made the US a science and technology superpower.

This decline is especially tragic given the historic accomplishments of American research institutions. Public investments in university science have given us not just medical miracles and digital revolutions, but entire industries. Funding for National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) helped spawn biotech, cleantech, and nanotech. DARPA grants for defence R&D gave us GPS and the early internet.

These are the roots of the US innovation economy. Undermining them is like ripping out the foundation of a skyscraper mid-construction.More than half of Silicon Valley’s startups had at least one immigrant founder. A third of those were Indian. My research at Duke, Harvard, and UC-Berkeley documented that Indian entrepreneurs have founded more Silicon Valley startups than immigrants from the UK, China, and Taiwan combined. These companies didn’t just create wealth—they created entire industries and hundreds of thousands of American jobs.That pipeline is now shutting down.

Years of restrictive immigration policies, chronic green card backlogs, and now open political hostility have driven away many of the world’s best minds. Enrolment by international students is in steep decline. Top-tier researchers are heading for friendlier shores.Now, Trump is gutting the very universities that have fuelled America’s innovation economy for generations. The same institutions that gave birth to Google, GPS, and gene editing are laying off faculty and cutting lab budgets. NIH and NSF grants—the lifeblood of American science—are being frozen or slashed. And students who once saw the US as the pinnacle of opportunity are looking elsewhere.The economic cost is massive. International students contribute over $40 billion annually to the US economy.

They pay full tuition, rent housing, buy food, and many go on to launch companies and file patents. Research funding supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across every state and underpins the industries of tomorrow.The strategic cost is even greater. America’s lead in artificial intelligence, biotech, and clean energy depends on its ability to attract and retain global talent. Undermining this system doesn’t just weaken universities—it threatens the US’s position in the global economy.And it’s not just the research funding that’s under attack—it’s the people who bring that research to life.

For decades, the US enjoyed the greatest free lunch in the history of education and entrepreneurship as the smartest students from India, China, and across the globe came to study here. They didn’t just learn—they stayed, built companies, and created jobs. Now, Indian students are rethinking whether the US is still the best place to study or build a future. With its increasingly uncertain immigration policies and declining openness, it is no longer the obvious first choice.India, in contrast, is becoming more capable of absorbing and advancing global talent. Its research institutions are demonstrating world-class capabilities. The country has produced affordable vaccines, pioneered frugal engineering, and launched space missions on a fraction of Nasa’s budget.

It has a growing startup ecosystem, access to global capital, and one vital asset China lacks: a democratic system that supports openness, debate, and collaboration.India is not yet ready to replace the US as a global research superpower—but it is well-positioned to inherit the talent and energy America is turning away. But seizing the opportunity will require more than goodwill. India will need to invest in its research infrastructure, improve its regulatory environment, and incentivise public-private collaboration. It will need to create pathways for Indian-origin scientists abroad to return—and for foreign researchers to come. Most importantly, it must treat research not as a luxury, but as a national priority.Trump could help make India great again.

[plum-petals]

I will, respectfully, disagree with you regarding dragons and signets.

We don't really talk with a lot of different people for them to discuss their family tree. But I think it's extremely likely that most of them would have a rider there somewhere in the past 3-4 generations. It was my understanding that the marked ones are the children of the rebellion leaders, the career army people, potentially with half their family tree in the service. Not some random baker/blacksmith children from tyrrendor.

The theories of the source of second signets have been floating around since FW and idk, the idea that codagh somehow powers 100+ signets and keeps quiet about it is a little bit ridiculous (unless he is a double agent which could be intriguing). Which is why I quite liked the in-universe explanation of relics being essentially a protective runes (also they look way more like a rune, with slashes and swirls and other geometric shapes, rather than the image of a dragon). Also the fact that dragons can straight up lie to basgiath or that tyrrendor is far enough away and largely independent for their birth records to be unreliable tracks for me. Humans are that arrogant and just don't have any idea that they are even being deceived.

Also imho this partially explains dwindling number of dragons ready to bond. Plenty of dragons willing to fight saw what the leadership did with the like-minded people and they are not allowed to tell people who doesn't already know. So they don't see much point in bonding. Unless they bond someone already in the know who is likely to be willing to do something about it. And dragons are loyal to their bonds and likely want to have their riders more powerful so the ones that had previous riders with descendants (in the rebellion) might try to choose them. And so there are these hundred willing dragons just sitting around for years waiting for their human to grow up.

(Also my personal conspiracy theory is that riders developing second signet or going insane is bullshit suppression technique that humans have probably already forgotten about. They go insane in a way that Jeremiah went insane, by developing a inntinnsic-adjacent signet. Mind signets are way more common (and not everyone has daddies in leadership) and the chances are doubled that at least one of the two will be some kind of mindfuckery. So humans retconed the knowledge because riders are all power hungry and will absolutely go for specific dragons for a chance of more power. Dragons go along because they don't want the raised chances of their riders being targeted and killed.)

Anyway. Sorry for the rant. You are allowed to have your own opinion of course. And explore any idea in your own fic, whichever seems more compelling to you. Like I wouldn't be upset at all if you go the relic way because I know that you will explain it in a way that will make sense. Just thought I'd share my opinion. I too think that most marked ones have second signets, just that the canon explanation makes more sense to me than some fics that I've seen exploring that. But I trust you to tackle that in an interesting way. Looking forward to have all that revealed. Xaden deserves some unconditional love and acceptance damn it! 🥹🥹🥹

God can you imagine xaden having to confess a third signet to Violet? That poor man 🥹

this was cool to read! i don't mind disagreement!!

i totally recognize your points which is why i added a disclaimer lol i haven't re-read IF at all so i'm leaving room for my theories to develop after i do! i might totally agree with you after, or i might have a more unhinged, third theory. who knows!

maybe we'll get an answer by book 4! i try not to take things at face value so when bodhi hit violet with the no, i don't have a second signet "just like xaden" i was like !!!! my spidey senses tingled

it just seems too perfect to me, especially when RY sets the stage of dragon riders being rare, even the candidates being the "best of the best" in navarre and most cadets not making it to graduation, let alone lives with families. maybe imogen or garrick will reveal dragon riding history and it'll connect the dots for me... i'm really not trying to go to heavily into it quite yet because it's not a hill i'm willing to die on haha most of my theories are just ~vibes~ and really wanting bodhi to have an interesting second signet because he deserves it

i've went back and forth over it in my mind for a long time but i'm still conflicted! we'll see what i think post-IF re-read (which i am sort of dreading but also very excited... my least favorite of the books having some of my favorite individual scenes is so evil)

i might come back to this ask when it's not 8am because i think there is a lot here! thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[crazydaymycrazyway]

So, I was trying to write the next chapter of my Trash of the Count's family fanfiction, and then I had to go through a few chapters to get things straight, and I had this question. So, I remember Eruhaben saying that dragons like, hatches from eggs. I mean, that's cool. I suppose they are oviparous or whatever. And the dragons power is like, proportional to the amount of time they spent in their egg. So Eruhaben spent like, 50 year (?), I don't remember the exact details, and Raon spent like, a thousand year (or was it a few thousands). Anyway, so dragons are like, beasts, if I remember correctly. Just, the strongest and like, on the top of the food chain. So, if I remember correctly, half bloods exist among beasts like whales (we have Paseton), dark elves (we have Alberu's mom) and then I remember reading about a dragon half blood too. So, anyway. My point is, a female dragons lays eggs. So, if a female dragon (an oviparous) and a human slash beast slash whatever other species (mammals, or some beasts can be oviparous I suppose, like the penguin(?) (I remember Archie mentioning them once) mates with the dragon is a male, the newborn will be hatching from the egg the female dragon laid. So if a male dragon mates with the female of another species, and if that other species turns out to be a mammal, let's say, human, then wouldn't the off spring be a half-dragon? So this half dragon wasn't in an egg, because, well, mammals can't lay eggs. So how do you like, measure the power of this dragon half-blood? I'm just curious, that's all. And like, the dragon that hatches put of the egg will be in the form of a dragon, but if it's born through parturition (the process of giving birth in a mammal), then what form would this child come out as? Would it be in a dragon form, because dragons like, dominate all and their genes might be dominating too? But then, wouldn't it be wierd, if the baby that comes out through the birth canal look like a dragon? Wouldn't it be too painful for the mother, especially with this wings and stuff? Or would the child be in the form of the mother? Or would this go the Targaryen way and the child would come out as a deformed thing (I doubt a dragon would mate with anybody if that was the case because as far as I understood, they are highly practical in these matters), or will they like, be born with both mothers and fathers features. I'm just curious here.

Sigh, what am I doing instead of studying for my exams.

[mariacallous]

The massive spending bill the House Republicans passed in the middle of the night on Thursday will have devastating consequences for people with kids — and the people who want to have them.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Trump-coined name given to the GOP’s budget, is a proposal that decimates what’s left of the safety net in order to give even more money to the richest people in America. The massive budget proposes $880 billion of cuts from federal spending in order to cover a whopping $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. Much of the money cut will come out of Medicaid, the government-funded health care program that covers low-income people, babies and the elderly. The bill still faces significant hurdles in the Senate, where Republicans seem skeptical of it.

But Republicans were celebratory after the House vote, praising the cuts as a way to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from Medicaid and touting the bill as a historic maneuver. “This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” Trump posted on Truth Social after the vote.

“The House has passed generational, truly nation-shaping legislation,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Thursday.

But once again, those hardest hit will be the most vulnerable, including a group the GOP claims to love: families.

“It’s the largest proposed cut to Medicaid in its 60-year history,” said Sarah Coombs, the director for health system transformation at the National Partnership for Women and Families, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting reproductive health and rights. “If this bill passes, the effects are so pervasive I think it will be significantly hard to come back from it.”

The Trump administration has spent a lot of time positioning itself as a government that promotes and supports babies and families. Back in February, President Donald Trump, who has used the cringe-inducing term “fertilization president” to describe his support for fertility treatments, issued an executive order to expand access to IVF. “My Administration recognizes the importance of family formation, and as a Nation, our public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children,” the order stated.

And in his first public speech as vice president, JD Vance proclaimed that he wanted more people to have children. “I want more babies in the United States of America,” he said at the March for Life, an anti-abortion rally held each year in Washington, D.C.

Trump advisor Elon Musk, who infamously has at least 14 children by multiple women, has claimed that the declining birth rate is “the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

But while the GOP won’t stop whining about the declining birth rate and how much they love babies, they sure are working hard to make it more difficult for people to start families.

Medicaid provides health insurance for 71 million low-income people across the country, in rural areas and cities alike. It covers 40% of all births, and more than half of births in rural areas. But the GOP’s proposal would effectively put its help out of reach for many Americans: The new bill slashes Medicaid by about $700 billion, and includes new, far stricter, work requirements that will kick millions of people off the program.

“A lot of the administration’s messaging around promoting childbearing is completely contradictory to what these Medicaid cuts are going to do,” said Amani Echols, the senior manager of maternal and infant health at the National Partnership for Women and Families.

[sturdy-nerdy-stitchery]

Help Secure Stable Housing for Schluter Family. Click link below.

https://gofund.me/116f91d8

❤️Please read! Please share! This is my BFF Bestie! who is asking for help!❤️

I know I don't use tumblr very much these days, and when I do, it's when I need something. This time, it's my best friend, and I REALLY need this to spread! My best friend is nearing an eviction notice (due to circumstances beyond their control) unless they can come up with $4,800USD to catch up and cover rent.❤️ I'm doing what I can, therefore...𝙈𝙮 𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙥 𝙞𝙨 25% 𝙤𝙛𝙛! 𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙙𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙧 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙜𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙙𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙡𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙂𝙁𝙈! Go get yourself some stitching!

(or donate at my Ko-Fi account at ko-fi.com/sturdynerdystitchery because there, you can get free patterns!)❤️

I have 3,200 followers. That's a wide audience. Those followers have dozens, if not thousands of followers. That's an even wider audience. People who have been in those shoes, can empathize, and can donate. Even if you can't donate, sharing is free and even THAT helps reach more people.

I've seen the community come together. I've seen other communities come together. Can we surpass that $4,800 goal? I sure hope so! 💰I've already done the first $100 donation...anyone want to match that?💰 We've all been, or know someone who has been, in those struggle shoes.

⭐TLDR: Husband's job started slashing everyone's pay by HALF, when they were already barely getting by. Sara found work, but it only pays minimum wage ($14.42) while she is doing her 6 weeks of training. Of which, she has one more month left. They are struggling so much, and now. Eviction notice. They have 2 kids, 2 dogs, and a kitty who just birthed kittens 2 weeks ago!

Please keep reading to hear the full story. Please!!! I don't want to lose my best friend! 😭😭😭 (plus, you'll get treated to kitten pictures)

This isn't a case of "Well, maybe they should have...." because those sentiments are NOT what is needed right now! Those sentiments DO NOT help! It's not a matter of giving up Starbucks. It's about a shitty employer who cares nothing for it's employees.

Donating, no matter how big or how small, makes a difference. Even if you can't donate, sharing is free, it helps reach a wider audience, and that in and of itself makes a difference.

I know that often, when a GoFundMe comes into a feed, it's less likely to get shared if you don't know the person. Well, I know this person. Sara, her husband David, and their 2 kids moved to Colorado a year ago. Along with their Golden Retriever, Mia, their Brindle pupper, Kelce, their kitty who just had 3 kittens. Aren't they cute!

We became friends over the summer. Since then, she has wormed her way into my heart and for the first time since WE moved to Colorado in 2019, I can gratefully say that I found a best friend BFF bestie who would be my ride or die, and vice versa.

She was living with her father in order to save up for their own place. She had to move out because it was a horribly abusive situation and she had to get her family away for their safety.

They found a house to rent, and have been there several months.

A few weeks after they moved in, they get notice that her husband's job is slashing everyone's pay in half. DoorDashing to make up the difference wasn't doing it. Countless job applications, and her husband is still struggling to find work.

She found work, however. They only pay minimum wage while she is doing her 6 weeks of training (Bullshit, I know). She still has 1 month to go.

They have a 2 year old and a 12 year old. The pets. Their everything.

That everything could be gone because we live in a society that treats people so unfairly. They might have to move back to Missouri.

She is waiting on the mail today. Waiting for that eviction notice, and it breaks my heart into a million pieces. I cried this morning. She is a good friend, a good mom, a good provider. Her husband is hard working, a stand up man. Work gave him the shit end of the stick.

She is panicking. She says she has never been more afraid in her life. She doesn't have to say it, but I know she feels broken, and defeated.

I refuse to lose my best friend to circumstances that she had no control over. Her husband is still looking for a new job. Even if she looked for a new job while currently working, and happened to find one...it still won't help cover what they need.

My heart is breaking.💔 So much. I know that some might think it selfish of me to use my social media for personal reasons, but this reason is important to me. This reason is my best friend.

So, pleeeeaaaaseee! even if it's only a dollar. Or even better, if someone is rolling in dough and can drop the entire $4,800!

[jhnanino08]

I recall lying on the sand as a kid and being amazed by the splendor of the sky and the birds soaring above it. Our house was near the seaside, and as it turned out, it became my refuge from the perpetual pressure. But the adults used to persuade me as a kid that millions of axes would come down on me and slash me to pieces. Obviously, I trusted them.

Gazing at myself, it has grown into half of my aloof memories of my youth, but presently, as I've gotten older, I see it was merely an embellished tale that many adults would impart to us in order for us to blossom into what they meant us to end up being.

This is the portrayal of an adult young man who was more deeply cherished by his maternal grandparents than by his birth parents. A story of a young man who was encouraged to conform to the standards set by society and who dreaded snapping pictures because he was skeptical that he seemed lovely in them. This youthful individual, who is progressively tracking down what they truly are, is a young adult who has ceased caring about how others see him.

Hey there. I'm Irish, and this is my way of welcoming you to my domain and getting to know me.

Age, 20. Occupation? I am still pursuing my academic degree in business administration. My SOGIE is cisgender male and at present resides in Antique, the realm where the mountains meet the sea. Currently, the inside of my chest is brimming with feelings, as are my thoughts on what I am going to compose next because it's been years, I suppose, since I hadn't created a blog.

I've recently grown more self-sufficient (due to my shift to college). It's been unbearable for me to be away from my family while looking out for myself. Fortunately, having become an enlightened and optimistic individual, I was aware of it all. I am fond of enjoying pieces of music that make me feel like the main protagonist, inventing scenes in my head in which I am the mastermind of my own personal drama. Taylor Swift is a top-notch musician, and Fearless is one of my indispensable recordings. In reality, my concert hall is my bathroom. I have the volume on my speakers switched up to 11 and shake to each and every note of the music. Genuinely savoring the present moment because I am the moment, and it is of no importance because I own it.

I cherish individuals. Growing up, I was fostered by a family of conservatives, and the wisdom they imparted in me has been with me all my life. In this vein, I radiate excellence in my academics. I had been playing badminton throughout fifth grade and had competed at the level of provincial competition. Unfortunately, I got merely a bronze medal. Being a wannabe photographer, I've constantly been collecting visuals since then, and the rush of adrenaline and pleasure it offers me exceeds anything I couldn't have imagined. I came across personally as adept at multitasking and had recently been enjoying online games such as Call of Duty as well as reading Manhwa, which is my ultimate guilty pleasure.

I've been accustomed to the affluent and underprivileged dimensions of my environment my whole life. I had no idea the manner in which to be affectionate (at least not until I met someone exceptional), which makes me plainly emotional. Yet on rare occasions, I enjoy wanting to fantasize about anything. Isn't it awful that I make up my own contexts in my imagination around the term "romantic"? If I were to tell my younger self just one statement, it would be, "I'm proud of getting you this far." At some point, I realized that I had little authority over my abilities. I am fond of sci-fi stories, and oftentimes I wonder, "What if a parallel universe exists?" To assume you've spent an agonizing existence here, in this Milky Way galaxy, elsewhere in the center of infinities and coincides for the better part of your life.

I anticipate I hadn't composed so dramatically, but I think that's it; there could be more later, or I don't know. Thank you for consuming your time to read this; it's good to be alive. Xoxo.

[readingwiththereids]

yanda! speaks: hi my loves! here’s the new chapter, it continues immediately after the last one. i’m trying really hard to keep up with my half-assed posting schedule but i might not be able to get you chapter 4 by tomorrow :( [i really think you’ll like it though!] don’t forget to like and reblog! lots of love and light 🤎

masterlist

night rain ; chapter 3

2022

The air stood still as both of them waited for the other to speak. Silence had never really been an issue for them before, or at least never awkward. Of course, there were those occasional stillnesses that swept over their apartment after a fight or the comfortable silence where they could simply just exist in one another’s presence. Surprisingly, those kinds of silences were actually when they felt closest.

This one however was not like that. This one sat its weight on their chests as they slowly realised the reason for it was the fact that they simply no longer knew what to say to one another. They no longer knew what the other was thinking at that moment. Sure, they had an idea but there was no way to accurately tie that knowledge from years ago to who they were now. The same but with different everything. Wounds, thoughts, hearts. While Camila’s heart had only become fuller following the birth of her daughter, Carmen’s only continued to be slashed at more and more.

“So, uh, how are you?” Carmy said, clearing his throat.

“I’m okay. How are- How is everything?” Cam replied awkwardly.

“Good, good.”

A pause.

“Listen Carm, I’m really sorry about Michael, he-”

“Was an addict. It’s fine, I’m fine.” he interrupted.

“Carmy.”

He took a deep breath and let out a sigh, staring down and picking at his nails. 

“It’s-I don’t know how to-” he tried to explain before giving up completely.

“That’s okay.” Camila smiled reassuringly, prompting him to finally look up at her as a smile began to tug at the corners of his mouth. “I really mi-”

Carmen had begun to speak before being interrupted by the sound of the front door opening.

“Hey, Carm. So, I couldn’t find my flat-head so I’m just gonna have to use your spatula again.” 

Fak’s voice instantly brought a smile to Camila’s face as she turned to look at him, having always had the best relationship with him out of all of the people in her and Carmen’s life together. The screwdriver in his hand dropped to the floor once he recognised the girl’s face in front of him before rushing to give her an excessively tight hug. 

“Cam! Oh my God, I missed you so much!” he practically squealed before pulling back and gasping. “Wait. Are you two back together?”

[Oh no no no, Fak-]

[Oh, I’m so happy for you!]

[Honey, no! Don’t-] 

[What do you mean “no”? Why’d you say it like that?]

[What do you mean “Why’d I say it like that”? I’m just trying to clear up his confusion, Carmen.] 

[Right.]

[“Right.”]

Carmy took a slight offence to Camila’s tone and mocking of his words but soon noticed the slight smirk sitting on her plump lips which was immediately reflected on his own, causing the two to erupt in soft chuckles as Neil’s eyes bounced excitedly between the pair because for a moment they felt like the old Cam&Carm that he’d dubbed his honorary parental figures.

“I should go, I have a meeting soon.” Camila smiled as she slowly shuffled towards the door.

“Oh right, we heard you’re up at La Fame now. Marketing right?” Carmen asked.

“Yeah, I mean you’d think it would be demanding but I have a scary amount of free time so I’m also working at that bakery in Logan Square at their pâtissier, part-time if you guys wanna pass by. Using that degree, you know.” she rambled before finally shouting a bye and racing out the door.

After she’d left, the two men simply stood for an embarrassingly long time, staring at the space that her figure once occupied.

“Man, she still smells like summer rain and pine needles.”

“Fak, what the hell is wrong with you?”

🏷️ list: @rexorangecouny @louderfortheback @janoskiansecondsofdirection @thatonedogwithablog

[ladyartemesia]

The Luna

◐ PART VII of THE ALPHA ◐

◐ Series Masterlist ◐

◐ Part I ◐ Part II ◐ Part III ◐ Part IV ◐ Part V ◐ Part VI ◐

Pairing: Alpha Werewolf Jimin x Omega Reader

Rating: Hard Mature 18+ (for this installment)

Warnings: this one is a little darker... implied violence, mentions of blood, ABO sexual dynamics including discussion of scenting, marking, mating, and claiming, sexual innuendo, discussion of violence relating to ritual combat, possessive behavior, injuries and discussion of injuries, discussions or ruts, (non-explicit) kidnapping and drugging, its not as bad as it sounds, but it is definitely a bit darker...

Word Count: 4200

Author’s Note: You have no idea what your support has meant to me. After getting the dreaded Covid it was awhile before I had the energy to work on this. Truly your asks and your messages and comments...they made me so happy. You made me believe that people wouldn’t forget about this story. I am so grateful you were able to wait. As always, my angels @ppersonna @xjoonchildx @untaemedqueen and @underthejoon were the best betas and the best friends anyone could ask for. My thanks to ALL of you for helping me bring this story to life! I don’t know what I would do without your daily encouragement and your daily support. You guys are the heartbeat of this story. 

———◐——— 

Fifteen Years Ago...

———◐——— 

“It can’t be-”

“Run for the elders! Quickly! 

“Red smoke rises from the Luna’s hearth!”

The red smoke was invented by the first wolf known to mate a witch. Legend has it that their bond lent him some of her magic and with it he created a mystical powder that unleashed bloody plumes like knife slashes in the clouds. 

It was a distress call. 

A wolf in danger or in need could throw the powder (usually into their fireplace) and the red smoke would rise - drawing others to their aid. 

No fire was needed and the strange shimmering clouds it produced could even be seen on a moonless night. 

“What happened? Where is the Luna?”

The chief elder was still out of breath, having charged over from his chambers to find Isa in hysterics. 

“She’s gone! Something scared her! It triggered a half-shift!”

His eyes widened in fear and alarm. 

“She’s too young to half-shift. The energy it would take-”

Isa broke into sobs again. 

The girl was only five years old. She and her wolf were too volatile to merge safely. The wolf would be frightened - it would run. 

Eventually the child might regain control, but she would have no way of knowing where she was or how she got there… 

And she would be weak. The effects of the shift were too much for a pup that age. 

The chief elder felt true terror grip his heart. 

“Call for the alphas - immediately!”

Although they were technically one of the oldest bloodlines in the village, Park Clan had only five families to its name - all betas. 

Except for one. 

Park Jimin was the first alpha ever born to the Parks and as such he became the head of his family on the day of his birth - officially the youngest clan leader in history. 

When the call for alphas spread through the village, nine year-old Jimin was roused from his bed to serve on behalf of his people. 

Clan alphas were required to report, regardless of their age. 

“I don’t have to tell any of you what is at stake. Our pack has been entrusted with the Luna’s bloodline. Her safety is our sacred commission.”

The woods were no place for a child. If fluctuating temperatures and possible starvation weren’t bad enough, there were wild bears, packless ferals, rogue witches, snakes, and worst of all-

Unblessed wolves—animals without a human heart. They were by far the most pressing danger to the little girl. 

“Surely young Park can remain at home for this,” Jeon Jinseok pressed. The boy was barely older than his grandson, Jungkook, and he was reluctant to endanger another pup needlessly. 

Some quiet murmurs of assent could be heard around the elder’s chambers, however the chief elder himself shook his head sadly. 

“I understand your concern… but the law is the law. Every clan alpha is sworn to such a task. He took an oath after his first transformation-”

“He was seven-”

“An oath is still an oath.”

All eyes turned to the gentle voice in the corner. The Park alpha looked impossibly small and soft. 

But his gaze burned with determination. 

“It is my right and duty to seek the Luna alongside all of you.” His round little jaw clenched stubbornly. “I’m not afraid.”

The sound of bones and sinew shifting filled the air as one by one the clan alphas fell to their wolf forms and took off into the forest. 

Until only a small silver wolf remained. 

The chief elder sighed. 

The boy would not undergo the Change for another six years. The mental link between his wolf and human forms was not yet complete. It was difficult for information to pass from one to the other. 

“You are the wolf force of Park Jimin.”

After a moment the wolf nodded.

“You were called here because the Luna has gone missing and you must find her if you can. Search the woods until your wolf force can endure no longer and then return. If you find the child, bring her home as soon as possible.”

The young wolf nodded again and then disappeared into the night. 

It was cold. 

The last thing you remembered was a loud noise. It was too close - you panicked-

Then there was heat and pain and running and now this-

Darkness and barren trees looming over you as far as your frightened eyes could see. 

“...Hello?”

Your hands were bleeding. Tears began to slide softly down your cheek as your lips trembled. 

“H-Hello?”

Jimin had never been allowed into the forest alone. A myriad of new shapes and odd smells assaulted his senses as he ran. 

He had only seen you a handful of times. 

Bright silver eyes with a smile that could set even the coldest heart into bloom. 

Now you needed him.

And he was going to save you. 

It was not a question or a matter of chance in his mind. He was meant to find you. It was as if a thread from his chest was bound to a thread from yours and his wolf knew to follow it without question or thought for its significance. 

I’m coming, little Luna. Hold on. 

Your nose was not yet fully developed, but the stench creeping through the air toward you was unmistakable. 

Unblessed. 

A soulless wolf. 

The last time you encountered it was after a hunt. Your father killed one who attacked him and he brought it home for you to scent. 

So you could recognize the smell of danger. 

Gradually two shining eyes emerged from the darkness, yet unlike the wolves of your village, these were dark and fathomless-

Hungry. 

You couldn’t tell much about its age or coloring, it was too thin - too dirty, but the bared teeth and steady progress closer signaled its intent clearly. 

“Please,” you whispered, as it crouched back on its hind legs, preparing to strike. 

Tears blurred your vision as you heard it leap forward. 

But the strike never came. 

Another wolf tackled it to the ground before it could reach you. The two of them tangled viciously in the moonlight; a terrifying mass of snarling and claws. 

The smaller fighter was already bleeding, but he clamped down on his opponent’s throat in the first hit and hung on to it even as the animal snapped and scratched brutally at his skin. 

Jimin could feel his strength beginning to fail him. The pain was excruciating, but he had to endure. If he let go, he was lost- 

You were lost.

So he held. 

And at last the soulless wolf collapsed on top of him. 

For a moment, all was quiet. 

Jimin felt the wounds over his hide begin to tug at the edge of his consciousness. Accelerated healing could only do so much... He was hurt badly. 

Then two small hands began to push at the unblessed corpse. Small huffs and heaves poured from you as you worked to free him from beneath his defeated foe. 

“Don’t be afraid, Silver,” you grunted, “Momma says the healing works best if you can get warm.” 

With one final heave you disposed of the beast as best you could, then moved to wrap your body around your injured champion. 

“I can help,” you whispered, letting the tears fall freely. His soft whimpers were the only reply you received as you snuggled in closer, running your hands gently over the soft fur. 

The young wolf’s eyes were already beginning to lose focus. 

“Please goddess,” you begged into the night. “Please save him.”

Then the two of you drifted into a heavy sleep. 

Jimin opened his eyes again just as the dawn broke. 

He was still in wolf form, but the pain of his injuries had lessened considerably. 

Either that or he was becoming numb. 

His eyes dropped to the figure curled up next to him and his heart stirred. You were so pale… and he could feel your small body shivering violently against his chest.

She will not last much longer...

It took nearly everything he had to stand to his feet and nudge you awake. 

“Will you bring me back, Silver?” you asked weakly. 

Jimin nodded and the two of you stumbled forward into the forest, trusting the vague recollections of his wolf instincts to lead you home. 

Isa was beside herself with worry. Wolves came and went throughout the night-

But there was still no sign of you. 

And the odds of a child surviving the woods alone with no heat and no protection were slim at best. 

Her hands shook as she gathered feed for the horses from the storeroom near the back of the house. She willed herself to complete the task - any task - in an effort to busy her mind and perhaps achieve a moment of respite. 

Her hand closed around the back door handle and she started forward - only to nearly lose her balance over something lying on the porch. 

The bucket of feed dropped from her grasp, sending kernels of grain in all directions. 

Two bodies lay in a heap at her feet, clutching one another desperately. The Luna and her silver wolf were covered in matted blood and dirt. 

But they were alive. 

Isa began to scream, drawing out the other two occupants of the house; her husband Roojin and his younger sister, a beta healer named Ryn. 

“Oh my goddess,” Ryn gasped, “that’s the Park alpha! I heard some of the elders saying that he hadn’t checked in last night!”

“Get them inside. If we don’t act quickly we could lose them.”

Roojin tried to lift you away from the wolf, but the action was enough to rouse you and you immediately began to kick and scream frantically. 

“No! I won’t leave him!” you sobbed, wrapping your body even tighter around the injured pup. “Silver, wake up! Please wake up!”

“Baby you need to let him go! We have to treat him!”

But you were frantic, refusing - violently - to be separated from your rescuer. 

Ryn was eventually forced to grab a syringe from her field kit to sedate you. 

Isa carried your limp body to the fireplace and began to peel off your wet clothes while Ryn and Roojin dealt with Jimin’s injuries in the kitchen. Blood dripped over the tabletop and puddled ominously on the floor while they worked. 

“It looks like he was attacked.” Ryn’s eyes began to water. “What a brave little boy.”

“How the hell did he survive this?”

“I don’t know, but without a healing touch he’ll die.” She ripped her gloves off and rolled up her sleeves. “Stand back.”

Twenty minutes later Isa and Roojin caught the young healer as her legs gave out from under her. She had poured the majority of her energy into restoring the young Park alpha - perhaps more than was strictly safe-

But he would survive and that was all that mattered. 

“I must contact the elders,” Isa murmured as she helped Ryn to a seat near the hearth. “In all the chaos I forgot to tell them that we found her.”

Roojin sighed, letting his eyes drift back to the table. 

“That pup brought her back, but I wonder if they’ll even believe it. I wouldn’t - not if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“No...” Ryn whispered from the chair. “You can’t tell them about the boy.”

“Why not? He’s the only reason she’s still alive. He deserves to be recognized.”

“You don’t understand,” she shook her head weakly. “His clan is nothing. They have no power - no other alphas. This will make him a target. The alpha pups will challenge him and the stronger clans will see him as a threat to their influence…”

She pulled herself upright and limped over to the table where the young wolf slept. 

“But he's just a child….and small for his age at that. He has no powerful clansmen to protect him from the ramifications of this.” 

Her hands clenched to fists. 

“When his human form returns, he won’t remember saving the Luna. We’ll take him to his mother’s home at nightfall - make it seem like he wandered back. He may garner some respect for surviving the woods, but then they’ll leave him alone… and he can go on living his life in peace.”

Ryn turned to face them both with a determined expression. 

“We owe him that.”

“Where is the silver wolf? Where have you taken him?”

As soon as the sedative wore off you reached for the boy once again, only to find that he was gone. 

“The silver wolf was hurt very badly, sweetheart. Your aunt carried him away to be treated.”

“I have to go with him! He needs me!”

“No, honey - you can’t-”

Isa pulled you into her arms and you collapsed into helpless sobs. The last twenty-four hours had finally caught up with you. 

You were too weak to fight back. 

“Luna… the silver wolf is in danger. Are you willing to keep him safe?”

You nodded fiercely, letting the flow of your tears soak through your mother’s sleeves. 

“Then you must never tell another soul that the silver wolf saved you. No one can know that he was with you in the forest.”

Your eyes narrowed in confusion. 

“But-”

“You will tell everyone that you found the way back alone. Do not mention the silver wolf.”

Isa lifted your chin till your eyes met hers. 

“Promise me, Luna.”

Your heart squeezed painfully in your chest as you thought of your champion. He had spared you from a gruesome fate and you did not even know his name. 

You wanted so desperately to thank him. 

Last night, you were so cold - so afraid - that you hadn’t said it...

Now you never could. 

So instead you would protect him - no matter what it cost. 

“I promise.”

———◐——— 

Today...

———◐———  

“I don’t like him.”

Jimin tilted his head slightly toward his best friend.

“Who?”

Taehyung took a long sip of water then moved his hand to cover his mouth. To an outside observer he would appear to be wiping excess liquid from his lips. 

“The senior envoy from the Iron Claw pack.” He shook his head. “Something about him is off. He’s ill at ease.”

All the major packs of the mountain nations dispatched representatives to greet and solidify their relations with the new Alpha. 

Any pack who failed to send a proper delegation risked a diplomatic incident. 

The first twenty-four hours held great significance when it came to the transfer of power. The official term for the tradition-packed period between the revelation of the Alpha and his ultimate reunion with the Luna was called “The King’s New Moon.”

The new moon was the darkest phase of the lunar cycle and the immediate separation from his mate was meant to be a test of the Alpha’s restraint and bearing. 

Jimin wanted to put his fist through a wall. 

He missed you. 

Fighting Namjoon was nothing compared to the torture of this bureaucratic circus.

As the day progressed he was extremely grateful to have Yoongi and Taehyung at his side. Yoongi agreed to act as interim Praetor while Namjoon recovered and he and Taehyung were quick to fill in any knowledge gaps Jimin had with regards to protocol. 

The first round of ceremonial greetings between packs dragged on more than an hour before the bell struck for a brief recess. In fact, until Taehyung’s rather strange pronouncement, nearly every moment played out with boring predictability.

Though there was one notable surprise. 

Apparently the Iron Claw pack had just undergone a change of leadership and was now under the command of a female alpha named Azira Kai. 

Authority in the Iron Claw pack was traditionally decided through combat, and Azira beat nearly thirty-five challengers to ascend as queen. 

Female alphas were extraordinarily rare. Jimin knew they existed, but Azira was the first one he’d ever heard of. 

Iron Claw’s senior envoy delivered the news himself at the start of the ceremony and personally conveyed the queen’s well wishes. 

Jimin eyed the representative in question speculatively from his corner of the table. At first glance the man seemed much like every other emissary gathered in the crowded hall to fulfil centuries old obligations. But Taehyung had always possessed a strange sense about people. 

His instincts could not be easily dismissed. 

“I will keep that in mind,” he whispered as he sent the young man a courteous nod.

The sun had already begun to set when a messenger from the chief elder’s chambers arrived at your door. At long last the ceremonial requirements were drawing to a close and soon the elder’s council would be sending you instructions.

However...‘soon’ could mean anything from twenty minutes to five hours. 

“You might as well rest while you can,” Jin teased with a salacious wiggle of his brows. “Who knows what strenuous activity you might find yourself involved in when they finally let that boy loose.”

You rolled your eyes, trying to pretend that your cheeks weren’t burning with embarrassment. 

“I will rest, but not for any reason you’re thinking.”

Truth be told, your nerves were a bit… frayed. 

A frustration was building within you and nothing seemed to satisfy it. You weren’t even sure what you were wanting, but you definitely wanted it. 

“Of course not,” your cousin chuckled as you gathered your gloves and wandered back to the bedroom. 

An hour later Jin’s boredom found him snuggled up on the couch near the fireplace reading over an old cookbook from your mother’s pantry.

“Heavens… no wonder Aunt Isa’s kimchi is so dry. This is a disgrace.”

Suddenly the front door began to shake and pound violently. Strange smells carried through the air and his eyes widened. 

Foreign wolves. 

He drew in a deep breath and immediately growled in frustration. 

Foreign alphas.

A small bowl of red powder sat on the mantle above the hearth. Jin just barely managed to toss it into the flames before the door splintered off its hinges. 

“Hello boys,” he drawled, unleashing a massive dose of pheromones while the knives strapped to his forearms slid smoothly to his hands. “What brings you here?”

“I just heard the strangest news,” Min Yoongi narrowed his eyes at the small scrap of paper passed to him by one of the council aides. 

“Oh?”

The next set of guild masters were making their way to Jimin at a snail’s pace. It would be several seconds before he needed to greet them. 

“One of the healers sent word that Namjoon has disappeared from his assigned recovery room.” He shook his head curiously. “Where do you suppose he’s gone?”

Jimin’s eyes widened. 

That mangy mutt. He’s probably bent Yunli over every surface of her brother’s house by now. Goddess above! He couldn’t hold out for six more days? 

“I’m sure I have no idea.”

I should have killed him. This is a disaster. He can barely walk, how does he expect to-

“The Miner’s Guild is honored to serve at the pleasure of the Alpha.”

Jimin nodded regally and forced up a pleasant smile. 

“The honor is entirely mine, Master Lee. I look forward to-”

A loud crash split the solemn hush of the room as a young member of the council guard burst through the heavy wooden doors. 

“Red smoke! Red smoke rises from the Luna’s hearth!”

Jimin felt his heart plummet into his stomach. 

Chaos erupted immediately. 

“Call for the guards!”

“We must notify the healers.”

“The messengers just spoke to her-”

“Is it an attack?”

“ENOUGH!”

The Alpha’s voice cut across the assembly with authoritative resonance. 

Every eye turned to him in expectation. 

But he could only think of you. 

“Jung, lock the building down. Take your clansmen and seal off every entrance.”

Murmurs began to stir through the hall as Hoseok directed his people toward the access points, but he ignored them. 

“Choi. Make for the healers. Have a dozen of them meet us there.”

Jimin was already heading for the door. The deadly length of his claws flashed ominously in the firelight. 

“Kim, Min, Jeon - with me.”

The three alphas in question fell in step behind him without a word. 

The scene at the Luna’s home was nightmarish. 

Jimin ran to your room immediately, but all he found was a broken window and the lingering scent of your fear. 

His wolf howled in anguish as he fell to his knees and screamed in rage. 

At the front of the house four badly beaten bodies lay strewn about the kitchen and living room area. Most of the furniture was destroyed and the scent of carnage soaked the air. 

“Jin!”

The omega stood at the center of the rubble. There was a nasty slash running up his right leg and another grievous wound near his ribs. 

But his arms were wrapped around a massive foriegn wolf with the thin blade of his favorite knife pressed against the intruders throat. 

“What happened here?” Yoongi gasped. “And that smell-” he moved his hand to cover his nose. 

“Pheromones,” Taehyung nearly gagged. 

His eyes fell to the corpses - examining their injuries with a critical gaze. 

“Jin, you dangerous bastard.”

The omega simply smiled and forced the prisoner onto his knees. 

“I don’t understand…” Jungkook shook his head. 

“He flooded them with omega pheromones... These four were unmated.” The Kim alpha let out a cold chuckle. “He triggered their ruts… and they killed each other over him.”

Jungkook’s eyes widened. 

Male omegas really were terrifying.

Taehyung’s eyes narrowed and he considered the scene. 

“None of this makes sense. The scent markers are clearly from the Iron Claw pack. They didn’t even bother to mask…”

Jungkook and Yoongi began to search the bodies for any hint of their motives or identity when Jimin returned from your room. His fury was palpable in the air around him. 

“Why would anyone kidnap a Luna?” he snarled. “The divine bloodline is sacred to all wolves. Who would be so reckless?”

Jin shook his head.

“I don’t know.” His knife twisted into the prisoner’s neck. “But he does.”

Jimin crouched down in front of the foreigner, fighting every urge in his soul to tear the mountains apart for his mate.  

“Where is she?”

The prisoner sneered.

“You may be a powerful Alpha, but you are not of my pack or my blood.  I’ll never tell you anything.”

“Oh,” Jimin’s eyes flashed with golden fire, “I think you will.” 

Heavy. 

That was how you felt. 

Your body was sore (like it had been tossed and carried a long distance) and your mind was out of focus (as if everything around you was moving either too quickly or too slowly - honestly you couldn’t quite tell).

You remembered being drugged; some sort of compound pressed against your nose and mouth.  

Glass from the window shattered onto your face…

Then unfamiliar scents and unfamiliar hands closed in on all sides. 

Too fast for you to react.

Too shocking for anyone to have predicted. 

Nothing like this had ever happened and there was no reason to believe it would. 

To harm a Luna was sacrilege. 

It was simply not done. 

What could drive men to such a course of action? 

You should be afraid; terrified even.  

But you weren’t.

Your eyes fluttered open to take your new surroundings. You could vaguely see the shape of seven or eight wolves - alphas by the smell of them-

And then you smiled. 

It wasn’t your usual impish grin or anything close to soft or inviting. 

It was a cold twist that crept over your lips as you watched your abductors set up their camp. 

After a moment, one of them noticed your strange expression. 

“Looks like the little Luna hit her head on the way here,” he called out to his comrades with an amused snort. “You should have been more careful with her, Mac.”

He shook his head and made his way over to where you were tied up. The young alpha reeked so heavily of sweat and self-importance, you almost gagged. 

“What’s got you so amused, Miss Luna?”

It was more of a taunt than a question, but your smile widened nonetheless. 

“My mate is going to kill you.” 

Shock flickered over his features for just a second before he threw his head back and laughed. 

“We’ll be long gone before your sweet little alpha even knows we’re here.” He gripped your chin between his fingers and you snarled. “We masked our scent as soon as we got you - and there isn’t a wolf alive that could track our crew through the woods.”

“You’re wrong,” you whispered. 

Jimin’s face flashed through your mind - followed immediately by another memory, buried deeply, but never forgotten—

of a frightened little girl and the silver wolf who braved the forest and fought a monster to save her. 

“He’ll come for me - no matter what precautions you’ve taken.” You leaned forward a bit, letting the conviction in your gaze blaze through to the depths of your captor’s soul. “And then - he’ll come for you.” 

If you are already in the taglist, then I will automatically tag you for the next part! If you would like to be added to the taglist, please let me know.

And also please tell me what you thought of this update! I am really excited to hear your thoughts! (I know it was kind of unexpected right?) Feedback really does fuel my writing and hearing from you means a lot to me! On days that its hard to write, I go back and I read your lovely words and it makes me want to keep going! I cannot overstate its value in my heart! 

[arbiterlexultionis]

Bruce Wayne’s True Colors

By: Clark Kent

Bruce Wayne. We’ve all heard the name. All heard the stories of his various escapades, diving into public fountains, buying out entire hotels whenever he feels like it to get away with his and his children’s misbehavior, spending more time out of the city he “Loves” then in it and inevitably getting an assortment of injuries in the process, the historical bills alone of which would bankrupt nearly every hard working American in this country. He’s had nine different “skiing accidents” in the last six months alone. While a bit clumsy, with a tendency to throw a bit more of his pocket change than most at charities, he nonetheless seems like the stereotypical greedy American billionaire, just one that is a bit more air-headed and kind then most. But is he really? I think not, and I have proof, in the form of a recorded conversation provided by none other than billionaire philanthropist Oliver Queen.

“All right Bruce, you’ve been lost in your head trying to plan for Something for weeks and clearly haven’t gotten very far. What’s going on? Do you need backup from the REDACTED?” Bruce waves his hand through air as if to show the possibility away.

“No, no, it’s nothing work related, a personal matter. I’ll be fine, I’m sure I’ll find a solution in time.”

“You’ll be fine? How many times have you said you’ll be fine on your own and then been very much not fine?”

“Less then the alternative.”

“Fair. I’m not letting this go though.” Bruce sits in a chair and lays back, one hand coming up to stroke his chin while his shoulders slumped in a near imperceptible sign of exhaustion.

“I have to much money.”

Oliver glances around the opulent mansion, swirling the glass of alcohol in his hand before shooting a look at the bottle of the stuff sitting on the table beside him. White text and an arrow pointing to it appear labeling the bottle as worth around fifteen thousand USD. “To much money, you say?”

“Hoarding money like a dragon is the past time of beast. Amassing wealth and doing absolutely nothing with it when innocent people can barely afford to eat, if they can at all, is immoral. I’ve been trying to get rid of all the money I don’t need to maintain my life style and watch over Gotham for decades. Decades Ollie. Every rich asshole in the country have been going on and on about how treating employees like actual human beings with mouths to feed and lives to live is unsustainable and unprofitable, so that was the first thing I tried. $75,000 a year is the absolute least anyone in Wayne Enterprises makes a year with a single exception, the benefits package is worth even more than that, paternity and maternity leave of a year with a twenty percent raise with every child birthed and reduced workload for however long they need after, an entire month of PTO for all employees. It should have slashed WE’s profits. Should have. It didn’t. Employees are working harder then ever, using there extra time and the company scholarships I set up to pursue higher education and learn more skills which make them more productive. So I decided to make WE more environmentally conscious, because that’s supposed to be to expensive to be profitable. Overhauled nearly the entire company, redesigned machinery, invested tens of millions into recycling technologies, renewable power sources, the whole nine yards. But apparently, using less power to do more, producing zero waste products and no pollution also results in extremely high efficiency and rising profits. I made my own annual salary as CEO 1 dollar a month and apparently word about it got around fast. Half the company’s HQ went on strike and when I rushed down to find out who managed to treat them poorly enough for a strike to be neccisary without me noticing I found out that their “demands” were for me to give myself a raise and take better care of myself. Apparently they thought it was “immoral” and “mildly disturbing” for me to be giving them 25 hour work weeks, high pay and good benefits while working 60 hours a week. I’d barely managed to negotiate them down to $150,000 a year when Clark just so happened to publish an article proving that when ever I go on vacation I’m just doing more work outside of Gotham or trying to get some charity work done without the media breathing down my neck. Days of compromise and negations, gone in an instant.

So, investing in WE doesn’t work. After that I decided to invest in Gotham itself. Hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, high quality apartments with cheap rents, buying up thousands of houses to rent at low rates and sell at cheap prices to drive down the cost of housing, modernizing and improving infrastructure related to water and electrify to be cheaper for end users and more resistant to rouge attacks. Anything and everything that I could throw money at and get my lobbying groups to make happen. But WE was the only company that wasn’t corrupt, incompetent and/or treating its employees like crap. So all that work and business went to WE. And I couldn’t just leave all those corrupt businesses to their own devices. And sometimes WE wasn’t involved in the industries that I needed work done in. I wound up adding entire devisions to the company. I founded 19 new businesses and became the owner of 37 more. And no matter what I do none of them will stop growing and becoming more profitable!

After that I started trying to just give money away, mostly through free college. For the first 5 years it was going great, I was losing money. Not enough to counteract all my other forms of income, but for the first time I was putting more money into something than I was getting out, and if I scaled it up enough it might just work. But after five years the first people that I put through college had been in the workforce for a year. And the system I set up to find jobs for them that wouldn’t result in them being treated poorly by employers or working for supervillains resulted in all of them working for me, where they would all have large amounts of disposable income to give back to the charity. Once they started getting their doctorates it was a lost cause, they were giving so much to the charity that any money that I put in would just sit there instead of bettering the lives of those in need, defeating the point of giving it away. I tried to tell them that they don’t have to, I’ll just find it all myself, but like a week later I caught Dick in a zoom meeting with half the highest donators trying to figure out how to make a trust fund with me as the trustee because I accidentally revealed that I had been the only one funding the project for years and it “wasn’t fair to put such a burden on a single man” and “will be absolutely hilarious to see the look on his face when he winds up with even more money again”.

I assembled an entire team to go through my taxes to make sure I was paying as much as I possibly could, but apparently my dad intentionally fucked up his taxes so he would pay even more than he was supposed to and I inherited his systems, so if the IRS ever dig into my finances they realize they owe me money! Enough to raise my net worth by several percent!

Nothing works! Every time I try and use my money to make the world a better place and help people I just wind up with more money!”

Over the course of his rant Bruce had risen to his feet and started pacing, become more and more exasperated and raising in volume, before finally whirling around to stare at Oliver clearly expecting some type of response or advice. The blond billionaire took a long sip of his drink. “Well that sucks, but good luck with it I guess.”

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

[the-daily-tizzy]

Men, like nations, think they’re eternal. What man in his 20s or 30s doesn’t believe, at least subconsciously, that he’ll live forever? In the springtime of youth, an endless summer beckons. As you pass 70, it’s harder to hide from reality. Nations also have seasons: Imagine a Roman of the 2nd century contemplating an empire that stretched from Britain to the Near East, thinking: This will endure forever.

Forever was about 500 years, give or take. France was pivotal in the 17th and 18th centuries; now the land of Charles Martel is on its way to becoming part of the Muslim ummah. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sun never set on the British empire; now Albion exists in perpetual twilight. Its 95-year-old sovereign is a fitting symbol for a nation in terminal decline. In the 1980s, Japan seemed poised to buy the world. Business schools taught Japanese management techniques. Today, its birth rate is so low and its population aging so rapidly that an industry has sprung up to remove the remains of elderly Japanese who die alone. I was born in 1942, almost at the midpoint of the 20th century – the American century. America’s prestige and influence were never greater. Thanks to the ‘Greatest Generation,’ we won a World War fought throughout most of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put the rising sun to bed. It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented prosperity. We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia and fought international terrorism. We rebuilt our enemies and lavished foreign aid on much of the world. We built skyscrapers and rockets to the moon. We conquered Polio and now COVID. We explored the mysteries of the Universe and the wonders of DNA…the blueprint of life. But where is the glory that once was Rome? America has moved from a relatively free economy to socialism – which has worked so well NOWHERE in the world. We’ve gone from a republican government guided by a constitution to a regime of revolving elites. We have less freedom with each passing year. Like a signpost to the coming reign of terror, the cancel culture is everywhere. We’ve traded the American Revolution for the Cultural Revolution. The pathetic creature in the White House is an empty vessel filled by his handlers. At the G-7 Summit, ‘Dr. Jill’ had to lead him like a child. In 1961, when we were young and vigorous, our leader was too. Now a feeble nation is technically led by the oldest man to ever serve in the presidency. We can’t defend our borders, our history (including monuments to past greatness), or our streets. Our cities have become anarchist playgrounds. We are a nation of dependents, mendicants, and misplaced charity. Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels. The president of the United States can’t even quote the beginning of the Declaration of Independence (‘You know — The Thing’) correctly. Ivy League graduates routinely fail history tests that 5th graders could pass a generation ago. Crime rates soar and we blame the 2nd Amendment and slash police budgets. Our culture is certifiably insane. Men who think they’re women. People who fight racism by seeking to convince members of one race that they’re inherently evil, and others that they are perpetual victims. A psychiatrist lecturing at Yale said she fantasizes about ‘unloading a revolver into the head of any white person.’ We slaughter the unborn in the name of freedom, while our birth rate dips lower year by year. Our national debt is so high that we can no longer even pretend that we will repay it one day. It’s a $28-trillion monument to our improvidence and refusal to confront reality. Our ‘entertainment’ is sadistic, nihilistic, and as enduring as a candy bar wrapper thrown in the trash. Our music is noise that spans the spectrum from annoying to repulsive. Patriotism is called insurrection, treason celebrated, and perversion sanctified. A man in blue gets less respect than a man in a dress. We’re asking soldiers to fight for a nation our leaders no longer believe in. How meekly most of us submitted to Fauci-ism (the regime of face masks, lockdowns, and hand sanitizers) shows the impending death of the American spirit. How do nations slip from greatness to obscurity? • Fighting endless wars they can’t or won’t win

• Accumulating massive debt far beyond their ability to repay

• Refusing to guard their borders, allowing the nation to be inundated by an alien horde

• Surrendering control of their cities to mob rule

• Allowing indoctrination of the young

• Moving from a republican form of government to an oligarchy

• Losing national identity

• Indulging indolence

• Abandoning faith and family – the bulwarks of social order. In America, every one of these symptoms is pronounced, indicating an advanced stage of the disease. Even if the cause seems hopeless, do we not have an obligation to those who sacrificed so much to give us what we had? I’m surrounded by ghosts urging me on:

• the Union soldiers who held Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg,

• the battered bastards of Bastogne,

• those who served in the cold hell of Korea,

• the guys who went to the jungles of Southeast Asia and came home to be reviled or neglected. This is the nation that took in my immigrant grandparents, whose uniform my father and most of my uncles wore in the Second World War. I don’t want to imagine a world without America, even though it becomes increasingly likely. During Britain’s darkest hour, when its professional army was trapped at Dunkirk and a German invasion seemed imminent, Churchill reminded his countrymen, ‘Nations that go down fighting rise again, and those that surrender tamely are finished.’ The same might be said of causes. If we let America slip through our fingers, if we lose without a fight, what will posterity say of us? While the prognosis is far from good, only God knows if America’s day in the sun is over.

~~~

from an uncredited Facebook page ||Author unknown

[blackkatmagic]

Hi Kat! I hope your doing better. My birthday is on the 29th and I was going to ask if you had a snip bit of It’s Not the Waking to share, but I do see that you probably need to be resting right now. So if nothing is readily available please ignore this request. Your health comes first. :)

Happy birth!!!

.

Something’s wrong, Cody thinks, and it sits like a stone in the pit of his stomach. Fox wouldn’t have ordered the troops off of Alderaan, wouldn’t have demanded that Cody wait for him the moment he got to the cruiser, unless something was wrong.

He doesn’t pace, doesn’t let himself give in to the rising tension that eats through his muscles as he watches Fox’s shuttle slide into the bay. Boil met them in the hangar, slid into place at Sinker’s right hand like it’s something that he’s trained for, and Sinker hadn’t protested. He’s on his comm, though his helmet is muted and Cody can't hear what he’s saying; he’s still talking to Doom, likely, and Cody almost wants to tell Doom to delay, to wait until Cody hears whatever Fox has to say in explanation, but—

Fox wouldn’t have given the order without reason. Cody knows that.

“Sir,” Sinker says quietly, though from the angle of his helmet Cody can tell his eyes are still on the shuttle as it settles. “Reports of trouble in the Stygeon System, Nuiri sector. Imperial holdouts refusing to acknowledge you. They're refusing to submit the records from the prison on Stygeon Prime.”

That was a Sep prison, back during the war, Cody thinks with a frown. Dooku used it for the prisoners he reallydidn’t want escaping. “Any clones inside?” he asks.

Sinker shakes his head. “Imperial officers only, as far as we can tell. If there are clones on the inside, they haven’t woken up yet.”

Woken up. Cody still doesn’t know any other term that they can use, but that one doesn’t fit. Doesn’t work, or imply the willing compliance, stripped of anything like opinion. As far as he’s been able to tell, all the clones are awake. Every last one of them, two years too late, with nothing but memories that aren’t nearly hazy enough and a fanatic sort of certainty that they’d all rather die than go back to sleep.

“Who’s closest?” he asks curtly.

There's a pause as Sinker relays the question, and then tips his head. “Commander Davijaan’s got a wing in the next system over, but Commander Jet has a cruiser that can make it there within two days.”

The familiar names make Cody close his eyes, his chest full of broken pieces. He’s looked, briefly, to see who’s survived this long, but—not thoroughly. Sometimes it’s easier not to know.

“Have Davijaan scout the system and see if he can get in. Jet should move to reinforce him. I want that prison broken open and all the holdouts taken into custody, if it’s possible. If not, just get rid of them.”

“Yes, sir,” Sinker answers, sliding back a step, and Boost takes his spot, practically shoulder to shoulder with Boil. If it was just up to Cody, he’d boot them both in the ass and tell them to stop hovering, but.

This isn't just about him. It’s all the clones. He needs to keep a hold of whatever fracturing bits of the Empire he can, because otherwise someone could step in, take power, who knows precisely what happened to them the first time. Someone who can recreateit, and no part of Cody can let that happen.

With a hiss, the ramp of Fox’s shuttle hits the deck, and almost immediately the squad starts to filter out. 91st, Cody thinks, and all of the old units have been scattered and mixed and broken, but—Neyo reclaimed these ones. And, indeed, it’s Neyo right behind them, armored and stiff and—

Shaken, Cody thinks with a jolt. It’s clear in the set of Neyo's shoulders, the fact that his arms are folded across his chest, nowhere near his blasters. It’s a vulnerable position, if there's an enemy, and there is.

He opens his mouth, takes a step, ready to call out, and then realizes with a lurching jolt like ice in his gut that Fox wasn’t the first one out.

“Neyo,” Cody says, a sharp crack across the bay, and Neyo turns his head, looks over. Pauses—

“Fox wants you to clear the bay,” he says. “Anyone you can send out, do it.”

Boost takes a short breath, grip tightening on his blaster. “With all due respect, sir,” he says. “There are already fewer people in here than I’d like.”

Neyo doesn’t snap, doesn’t waver. “Trust me, Sergeant,” he says. “You're not going to mind in about five minutes.”

A thread of dark, creeping suspicion twists through Cody's chest. “Vod—” he starts, halfway to a test, and Neyo snorts.

“I'm me,” he says, bitter humor with an edge of bite. “Udesii, vod.”

Calm down. Cody's about as calm as he’s going to get, and it’s not very. Still, between Fox and Neyo, odds are that this likely won't get them all killed outright, so he nods. “Boil, make the call,” he orders, and Boil shoots him a sideways look through the visor of his helmet but taps his comm. A moment later, there's an organized retreat of all the other clones in the bay, even the mechanics abandoning their work to retreat into the main part of the cruiser. Cody waits as they filter out, Neyo's squad following, and then raises a brow.

“Well?” he asks.

Neyo takes a breath that’s not quite steady. “Pull up your mask,” he says, and then calls back into the shuttle, “Clear!”

Cody raises a brow, but tugs his hood back up, the scarf into place. A bare moment later, there are boots on metal, Fox’s heavy stride, and an echo of lighter, almost entirely inaudible steps. When Fox appears at the top of the ramp, he’s not hanging onto the aide, doesn’t even have his blaster drawn. Surprised, Cody hesitates, but Fox looks at him for a long, long second and then says gruffly, but almost gently, “Come on.”

He’s not talking to Cody, that much is clear. And, a bare second later, the aide slides up next to Fox’s bulk, half-hidden behind him but obviously free of the binders. Fox glances back at him, apparently seeing something that Cody can't, because he reaches back, closes his fingers around the aide’s elbow. It’s not a punishing grip; Cody doesn’t have to move closer to be able to see that. Like his voice, it’s practically gentle, careful, and Cody can't even begin to fathom what changed in the space of a shuttle ride to convince Fox that this man isn't a threat.

“Fox,” he says, a little wary, because if the aide is an Inquisitor of some sort, if he’s controlling Fox—

“Emperor,” Fox says, and comes to a halt at the base of the ramp, several strides still between them. The aide is tense, dark gaze flickering from Cody to Fox and back, and beneath the edge of his coat Cody can just make out a fisted hand, clenched around something silver.

A weapon. Fox left him a weapon, Cody thinks, and raises his gaze to meet Fox’s eyes through the dark slash of his visor.

“Something you want to tell me, Fox?” he asks, flat, and Fox’s bark of laughter is almost enough to startle him.

“Yeah,” Fox says, a challenge, and draws the aide forward. Reaches for his other hand, and the aide looks as confused as Cody feels but he allows the manhandling without protest. Lets Fox pull his other hand up—

He’s holding a lightsaber, and Cody's breath leaves his lungs all at once.

“We didn’t kill all of them,” Fox says, ragged, and suddenly the angle of his body, ready to put himself between the aide and everyone else in the whole hangar, makes perfect sense. “Cody. We didn’t kill them all.”

[herald-divine-hell]

Avvar War-Paint

Summary: Jac spends some time with an Avvar woman, getting her face painted.

Warnings: Suggestive content, not suitable for those not older than 18+. MDI

~

Whitehands’ fingers gilded slowly and measured across Jac’s cheekbone, her sun-darkened face was ruddy from the torchlight, stripped with withering shadows. A tiny scarlet ember gleamed lost in the dark brown of her eyes, sprouting chips of gold. The cool white paint dripped long trickles down Jac’s cheeks, a keen edge from the heat roused by the cup of ale, half-empty. Another heat, burning like a furnace, roiled above her navel, an old desire whenever she had a pretty girl—or boy, for that matter—on her lap. 

Though settled on her lap, Whitehands was forced to look and reach up to brush the warpaint on the princess’ sharp, chiseled face. Her mother’s coloring she had, the russet copper that fell thick in heavy curls down her back, unbounded and tousled by Whitehand’s long pale fingers, and her pale skin, burnished scarlet from drunk’s blush. But she had her father’s features, his high and wide cheekbones, strong, square jaw, wide chin, and hooked nose. Perhaps the only softest allowed to her was her eyes, almond-shaped and long, with her father’s silvery-blue eyes, like the cold glowing heart of a winter’s moon; and her lips, full and often smiling. Scars slashed her face, a long one running from her check, angled diagonal along the curve of her jaw. Other tiny ones latticed her cheeks, one slashed across her brow. A handsome face, Whitehands said. The face of the kin of the Lady of the Skies and Korth the Mountain-Father. That had made Jac laugh, close it nearly was to the truth. Father is a mountain of a man, and mother has the blissful step of gliding across clouds when she wishes.

And like her father—and most of her kin—Jacqueline Trevelyan, Princess of the Frostbacks, Sword of the Realm, Shield of the Sacred Temple, was not a tiny woman. She was large, standing seven-foot-five, with broad shoulders, long limbs covered with corded muscles from years of training with bow, spear, lance, and sword. Years of work with the Avvar and the Dalish, as her father decreed her to do, had turned her long-fingered and wide palms thick with callouses, and she did always felt more comfortable in a doublet or long coat than she ever did in a dress. 

And naked, I supposed, she thought with a half smile. The night’s cold air flooded in from the smoke-hole set at the center of the thatched roof. Spills of gray moonlight soaked the air in silver, and the small fire burning in the small circular hearth beneath it gave a lazy orange-golden haze to the home. The icy mountain air traced long claws across her bare chest, across her broad back, biting like a lover. She wore nothing beside the heavy bear fur blanket wrapped around Whitehands’ full, wide hips and her own. But the warmth from Whitehands’ strong, layered softly with wobbles of flesh, thighs eased any coldness in her legs, and her breasts pressed nicely against Jac’s chest that the cold tumbled away her like a shrugged off cloak. The years and multiple child-births had turned Whitehands’ soft and full, but Jac thought she was still beautiful. True, she found most people beautiful, but there was something more in Whitehands’, in the way her breasts bounced when she rode Jac like a warrior-princess rode her dragon that made the princess herself insane with desire. 

“I know my teats are very fetching, but I need you to stop flickering your eyes down to look at them. It is making me distracted,” came the husky, quiet voice of the Avvar woman. Her long brown hair fell thick and straight down to the small of her back, and the rubbing hand Jac had laid on it shifted up to glide through the silky strands. 

The Princess hummed, her smile growing. “You bare them in front of me like that, and this painting is taking so long—it feels like I’m sitting for one of the portraits Aunt Josie has me go through whenever I visit. I have to look at something, no?” 

“Yet, I imagine this setting of yours is more agreeable, I think. Lift your hand up from my arse, Princess. Gods, you are insatiable—more than most Avvar I bed with.”

A coil of jealousy struck in Jac’s chest, but she kept her face softened with a smile. Her ears thundered with a ravaging song to claim the Avvar woman there, and Jac half-knew that she was trying to gauge her on, to do just that, just for Whitehands to turn the tables on her. She was her father’s daughter—she knew patience, and she will show her now. She may have learned from the Avvar, may be accepted by them just as her father, but she knew dignity still. Jac was no monster. Shame drowned her until that coil unlashed itself and fell shriveling to the very depths of her soul, lost by the heat of drink. That chilly shame tempered the lust within her well enough for Jac to remove her hand from its presence on Whitehands’ backside. But they returned on her hip, squeezed gently, reassuringly, and she bowed her head a little. 

That gave her a full sight of Whitehands’ ample cleavage, but Jac shook that away with a firm glare within herself. Red-purple marks covered her sun-darkened skin from the few hours ago when Jac’s lips laid upon them in conquest. A dozen marks cover her, and handprints as well, from where her strong, stony grip held her down as Jac took her from behind. Jac also knew that more than a dozen similar marks and nail scratches were scraped into her skin from Whitehands. She did not mind—she wore them proudly. 

Whitehands continued on her painting, a smirk verging onto a smile, stuffed full with malicious teasing, crowned her face. Every so often, her hands would dip away to the side, gathering new paint—this time black—and that would cause a subtle shift of her hips, back and fro, side to side, that roused a heavy growl at the back of her throat. 

After the seventh time, the desire overcame her, and Jac’s grip on her hands strengthened as she added the other hand to her waist. Her lips came crashing down onto those smiling ones, a breathless moan from the older Avvar woman arousing that growl again. For how long they kissed, Jac did not know, and in truth she did not care. The soft moans elicited by Whitehands was more than enough to count time, and she wanted to hear them more. 

She did not know when she had turned Whitehands onto her back, pressing her deep into the bed. Nor did she realize those soft, supple, and plump legs hiding powerful lithe muscles wrap tight about Jac’s waist. Jac pressed down against her with a growing need, kissing at her lips, pulling back to grasp some air, before diving down again. Cold paint soaked her arms where Whitehands had grasped her biceps, trickled along the back and sides of her neck when her hands grasped her cheeks and slipped beneath her thick copper curls to hold her lips down against hers. The sensation was oddly pleasant to her, she thought, a cool reflection to the heat swallowing her body, muddling her mind until all that she could think of was Whitehands beneath her, coming undone by her, by mouth and finger and magical spell she so adored. 

When Jac pulled away to catch breath, Whitehands stopped her with hands on her chest. “I’m…I’m not finished,” she said, puffing. A heavy blush burned her cheeks and down her neck so irresistibly that Jac bent down to begin layering kisses and tiny nibbles to her skin. 

“Let us have a break from me, my lovely lady. I think it is time for me to decorate you in paint.”

A near breathless laugh flooded out of Whitehands, and one of her hands that had halted her reached out to grasp her by the back of her neck. “You better paint it inside me, Princess.”

Jac grinned as she learned down, pressing kisses along her neck, across her breasts, between them where her heart laid. Whitehands’ heartbeat danced like a rapid river’s run. As she shifted further down, fingers gliding over her soft, plump stomach to between her legs, listening as Whitehands’ back arched ever so slightly and all the gathered air left her in a single gasp, Jac said, “I would not have that any other way.”

[thistlecatfics]

oh my gosh thank you! I do love my rarepairs <3 <3

to be self-indulgent, here are a few of my fics with super ultra rarepairs (that's my official term for ships with five or fewer fics on ao3 lol):

Icarus (Pansy/Millicent/Parvati, 20k)

A year after the war, Parvati runs into Pansy and Millicent at a club in Ibiza and finds herself embedded in their debauchery. None of it’s healthy, and it works until it doesn’t.

First Death/First Kiss (Moaning Myrtle/Merope Gaunt, 700 words)

In King's Cross, Merope stands before Myrtle asking, "Go on or stay?"

Only One Bed at the Three Broomsticks (Augusta Longbottom/Andromeda Black Tonks, 2k)

Andromeda drinks only one day a week, when she doesn't have Teddy to look after, because she is a responsible grandmother and certainly not an alcoholic. Getting too drunk to Apparate home is expected. The presence of Augusta is not.

the kind of radiance you only have at seventeen (Druella Rosier Black/Dorcas Meadowes, 300 words)

Druella gave birth to the cruel daughter, the false daughter, and the good daughter, and, while they grew up, she never did.

Lately She's Been Dressing for Revenge (Rita Skeeter/Marietta Edgecombe, 300 words)

Star columnist and undisputed Queen of the Quill, Rita Skeeter has an unexpectedly excellent New Year's Eve despite the lackluster service at the only half-decent gay bar in Diagon Alley.

And one slash rarepair (Sirius/Peter has fewer than 100 fics on ao3!) -

Alphard's Favourite (Sirius/Peter, past Sirius/Alphard, 5k)

Peter tries to find out why Sirius is so upset over Alphard’s inheritance. Then he tries to make sure Sirius doesn’t fall off the roof. Then he tries to ensure Remus doesn’t hear them.

HP Rec Fest 2024

day 13: a rare pair

rare pairs my beloved! I could go with so many ships and fics for today’s prompt. from my OTP Hardy to my comfort ship Rarry and my favourite triad Dronarry, there’s just so much to explore and I’ve done many rec lists dedicated to some niche corners of the fandom.

today I’d like to celebrate the brilliant To the Vagaries of the Young by secretsalex (E, 4.5k), a scorching Dralbus treat that somehow remains a bit under the radar. choosing this pwp was 100% a selfish act, not only it’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever read but it encapsulates everything I’m looking for in this ship - it’s vicious and decadent, toeing the dub-con line (I’d argue this one is more on the under-negotiated kink side) and written with such confidence and precision you get so much more than kinky smut. I love the old-school feel of “IDGAF self-indulgence” instead of going for a sanitized version of these characters. it feels so damn raw. this is truly an exhilarating read with bratty Albus and dom Draco making justice to the age gap and dirty talk tags. you’re welcome 😈

and since we’re on the rare pair topic I’d love to give a shoutout to the amazing @thistlecatfics and @consistentsquash for feeding me the good multishipper food in recent years. their fics and recs are incredibly diverse and high quality. thank you for promoting so many rare pairs, you’re a big inspiration for my blog!

for @hprecfest

[heather-ouo]

Not alone anymore pt 2 

Short! HoC! Fem! Reader x HoF! Kiana

Warning!: grammar problem, forward story, no proofread

Mixing with Apho

While Kiana has find another person that can stay with her for six years but you never know what happens next huh?

Things to remind

(Hs/c) - Horns colour

HoC - Herrscher of Creation

(H/c) - Hair colour

——————————————————————————————————

Part 1, part 3(end)

——————————————————————————————————

“ Hey Kiana-chan? ”

You looked at the white haired girl who hummed while dressing up the astronaut’s suit, two ghostly people one short one tall stand beside Kiana.

“ You do know Herrschers dont need that marshmallow suit right? ”  “ They dont? ”

(H/c) girl nodded while the ghostly sirin use ghost punches at the white haired girl, Fu Hua just standing there watching the scene.

“ THATS WHAT IM TRYING TO TELL YOUR FOR THE PAST EIGHT YEARS YOU VESSEL! EIGHT YEARS! ”

“ WELL SORRY ABOUT THAT YOU EVEN TRY TO KILL ME IN THE PAST! ”

.

. .

. . .

Y /n looked at the humanly Phoenix who is tired and dont want to take care of the mess.  

“ Are they always like this? ”

“ They are like this ever since i joined them. ”

A finger snap sound follows with small black orange portals appeared around the girls who is pulling out they weapons. 

* * CLINK! * *

Golden chains wosh out of the portals holding the duo separated them away from each other before the space ship slashed in half-

“ Now cut it out you two! ”

The duo looked at you with angry faces then back to their fight while you?

Honkai energy around the room start to get denser and denser as the amber glows from you eyes gets brighter.

————————————-

Damage report 

Flame tuna - fainted.   

HoV - dissolved. 

Humanly phoenix - backing away from you. 

HoC - pissed off while dragging Sirin and The tuna away from the space ship using Judah’s chains.

————————————-

“ Back to Herrschers lesson Kiana-chan can you repeat what I told you? ”

“ Us the Herrschers dont need the astronaut’s suit cause there a force-field around the moon? ”

“ . . . ”

You looked at Kiana with a slightly disappointed face, this does bring back some memories back she’s in St. Freya Academy Himeko-sensei…

“. . .”

Somehow you find that same depressing look on Kiana’s face… speaking of Thunder…

Aren’t HoT and HoF together??

How the living Honkai did she end up in here???

WHAT IS HoT DOING?!

You took a deep breath before lift Kiana’s chin up

“ Kiana have you every thought of going back where you came from?”

“ What…? Then what about the honkai i sealed with me? If i go back- ”

“ How about an offer? You and i switch roles, i stay where im supposed be which I failed to while you go back to live on earth to live your happily ever after. ”

“ But.. ”

Being an impatient person you are snapped you finger drag the girl with you while a portal appeared, you know the price when bring back the honkai sealer back: a honkai war will start but it’s worth it.

—————————————

Location: Lion’s Head bay  ( APHO )

—————————————

The moment the duo step out of the portal a golden round force-field appeared instantly wipe out the enemies that’s around.

“ Isn’t this the new herrscher’s birth force field why did this show up?”

“ I have never step into this world in my herrscher’s form that’s why, there’s never a present of me. ”

Kiana let a ohh then she took a look of your herrscher’s form Amber wings thats made of honkai, odd (hs/c) that craves around your head, weird shaped tail which is like a line, honkai infection lines on your hands and crack marks on your chin?? ( i need to pick a time to draw the outfit- feel free to image your HoC’s battlesuit) Same old amber eyes the white haired girl make her wonders what’s your real eyes color.

“ They should detect this by now. ”

“ Who? ”

“ Just wait Kiana-chan you will meet her soon so be prepare. ”

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Squad 1 & 2 pov 

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“ Bronya did you feel that? ”

The squad 1 leader turn to meet the light gray haired girl while the member of the squads were confused.

“ It feels like a new herrscher’s birth… but didn’t “ she ” sealed them up there? ”

“ Leader Mei what are you talking about? ”

. . .

. .

.

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Same old warning some story part don’t make sense.

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Part 1, part 3(end)

[vivacissimx]

lyanna stark, a drop of the wolf-blood, & the pragmatism underneath

the youngest we see lyanna (in my estimation), is this vision from bran

Now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches. The girl was the older and taller of the two. Arya! Bran thought eagerly, as he watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy. But that couldn't be right. If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords, the way that girl is beating him. She slashed the boy across his thigh, so hard that his leg went out from under him and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout. "You be quiet, stupid," the girl said, tossing her own branch aside. "It's just water. Do you want Old Nan to hear and run tell Father?" She knelt and pulled her brother from the pool

- Bran III, ADWD

but four books earlier, we see this quote from ned:

Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it

- Arya II, AGOT

so we know that that ned was close enough to lyanna to know that she enjoyed swordplay, close enough to know her desires and to know that rickard would never accept this (for whatever reason).

...but not close enough to be the one she practiced sworldplay with in secret. the picture this paints is telling. lyanna was explicitly banned from something, and chose to pursue it in a secret and harmless way, with someone she trusted.

but ned isn't privy to that information. whether because he wasn't around, or because lyanna thought he would disapprove, or because he just thought it was childish - either way, we see that lyanna is picky about who she trusts, bred out of having to be sneaky in achieving her goals under her strict father's nose. she even identifies old nan as a snitch (et tu brute?). clever kid.

lyanna has other hobbies, too. she loves flowers. she loves riding horses.

"You ride like a northman, milady," Harwin said when he'd drawn them to a halt. "Your aunt was the same. Lady Lyanna. But my father was master of horse, remember."

- Arya III, ASOS

[Brandon] loved to ride. His little sister took after him in that. A pair of centaurs, those two.

- The Turncloak, ADWD

Horses … [Domeric] was mad for horses, Lady Dustin will tell you. Not even Lord Rickard's daughter could outrace him, and that one was half a horse herself.

- Reek III, ADWD

worth mentioning, imo, that even though lyanna was an excellent rider, she couldn't beat domeric. this is paralelled with arya, who is great on horseback, but not faster than harwin the son of winterfell's master of horse. this isn't a case of 'not like other girls' syndrome, of mary sues who are magically the best there ever was. conversely, adversity doesn't scare either of them off - lyanna was clearly competitive, with domeric and likely with brandon before him, and it all added up to her being remembered as a fantastic horserider despite effectively leaving the north at 14.

so lyanna is determined. she's willful, to hear ned say it.

then, of course, we have this

"Robert will never keep to one bed," Lyanna had told him at Winterfell, on the night long ago when their father had promised her hand to the young Lord of Storm's End. "I hear he has gotten a child on some girl in the Vale." Ned had held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a good man and true who would love her with all his heart.

Lyanna had only smiled. "Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature."

- Eddard IX, AGOT

this seems fairly clear cut, but let's break down this conversation:

lyanna (told the news by the authoritative father; being approached by ned, the sibling who is best friends with the guy in question; thirteen years old): he will never keep to one bed. he has a bastard already, on a common girl he cannot marry which speaks to his character

ned: it isn't robert's actions that matter, it's his feelings. *crickets on lyanna's feelings*

now lyanna is thirteen. but she already recognizes that this is a losing battle. why? because she can't change robert?

no. because she cannot change the minds of rickard, or of ned.

there is no doubt in my mind that both these men loved her. but do they listen to her? clearly not.

lyanna doesn't bother to fight this fight she cannot win. she just smiles, realizing that rickard/ned are not going to hear her out on this, and gets the last word with "love does not change a man's nature."

this isn't the divide between lyanna and robert - this is the moment of divide between lyanna and ned. they're siblings who love each other, and love is sweet, but none of that changes that ned is on rickard and robert's side. it's a rough moment for a teenage girl. she was right earlier, she must realize - benjen is the brother she can trust.

so lyanna is determined, but she is pragmatic.

the next time we see lyanna, she's kicking ass at harrenhal.

[...]they heard a roar. “That’s my father’s man you’re kicking!” howled the she-wolf…

The she-wolf laid into the squires with a tourney sword, scattering them all. The crannogman was bruised and bloodied, so she took him back to her lair to clean his cuts and bind them up with linen.

- Bran II, ASOS

here is where lyanna really shines.

she has a moral code all her own, we already know this from her assessment of robert's child that differed from how catelyn views bastards disconnected from the home.

she dislikes bullies, which is fairly common (jaime hated bullies growing up, for example) but for some reason at this very moment, she also has a tourney sword in hand - why? well, because lyanna stark takes her opportunities when she has them. barred from swordplay? that's fine, dad, but when you're not looking is another story.

she doesn't go rushing in, nor does she ignore the scene. she watches long enough to see if howland can fight them off (he can't), giving her time to identify him as a crannogman - possibly even as a highborn crannogman. and then what does she do? she weighs her options, decides that she can probably beat the bullies, and does so. then she takes care of howland reed, picking him up like she picked benjen out of the water in bran's vision.

[T]here was to be a feast in Harrenhal, to mark the opening of the tourney, and the she-wolf insisted that the lad attend. He was of high birth, with as much right to a place on the bench as any other man.

- Bran II, ASOS

she claims his rights as a highborn lord to attend. he doesn't have clothes, nor does howland insist that he can go, but lyanna makes a reasoned argument that howland has every right to attend and that surely benjen can find him some clothes!

so lyanna is determined, pragmatic, and a problem-solver.

[T]he Knight of the Laughing Tree spoke in a booming voice through his helm, saying “Teach your squires honour, and that shall be ransom enough.” Once the defeated knights chastised their squires sharply, their horses and armour were returned.

- Bran II, ASOS

here, lyanna displays a trait that sets her apart. howland memorizes the face of his bullies. he wants to "revenge" himself on them. but lyanna does not go directly for the bullies, she challenges the lords to whom the bullies squire, and commands them to chastise their squires.

lyanna understands the chivalric system she lives in, and that she will not be listened to (how? her own father and brother don't listen to her!), so she figures out another way to get justice that plays on the very ideas of might & honor that exclude the weak. she is confident in her abilities (being experienced riding at rings), gathers up all the material she needs, and takes a calculated risk.

she manipulates the system, plainly. she plays the players at their own game and wins.

and she does it for a guy she met a few days ago.

lyanna is determined, pragmatic, a problem-solver, and ascribes to a moral code that is all her own, one that rejects societal hypocrisy.

You have a wildness in you, child. 'The wolf blood,' my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch.

- Arya II, AGOT

so how do we square this away? lyanna was wolf-blooded. she was wild. she was untameable.

or was she?

any girl/woman with half a personality gets described as "spirited" or "willful" or "stubborn" in asoiaf. it's a polite of saying "hard to control." we see several times that lyanna takes a measured approach to matters. she is brave, yes, but she is also thoughtful and chooses her battles with the information she has. when she is denied something for no reason beyond her gender and status, she finds a way to pursue her interests regardless.

but robert is something lyanna can't avoid. and that had to rankle her, the betrothal she is determined to avoid, but pragmatically cannot due to her family's insistence. the marriage that goes against her moral code (i'm sure lyanna noted that robert gladly volunteered to capture the KOTLT, regardless of what punishment might be given down by a deranged aerys).

[i'm going to skip over her relationship with rhaegar, because there isn't enough/any text to analyze that explicitly deals with their dynamic post-harrenhal. speculation isn't the point of this post. suffice to say she saw in him something she did not in her family or robert.]

then aerys burns her father and brother.

could rhaegar have stopped aerys once he made up his mind? we as readers know the answer is no. grrm says so much himself, that it was aerys who kicked off the war in this interview:

The Mad King was mad. He was paranoid and violent and he was abusing his power... [Robert's Rebellion] was triggered by[...]the execution of Ned’s father and brother, it was the thing that radicalized, as we would have said in the 60s, Ned and it put him in opposition to it. Robert was just rolling for a fight and it might affect that he’d lost his girlfriend.

the absolute power of kings is continuously critiqued in the series.

so how did lyanna react? of course she grieved deeply. even if she knew that she would likely not see her family again for several years at least, for them to die in such a terrible manner is horrifying.

but lyanna has been forged into pragmatism. she looked at the squires beating up howland and saw that the issue was not the bullies, but the corrupt, lazy lords they squired for.

why would she not be able to see that aerys's abuse of power was what had killed her own family? she's realistic and she's a moral actor and she understands the social system around her. whatever her opinion on feudal lordship before, abuse of power has now killed two people she loved. only extrapolation can say how she would react, but given that we see her in similar situations - it is safe to say that the she understands the removal of aerys from power is a necessity, and that a king who is ruled by his urges is unfit.

[lyanna doesn't have the highest opinion of robert, does she? would she think him fit to be a king? doubtful.]

however, she also wants her family to be safe - a family which is now going to include her unborn baby.

[Ned] could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black

- Eddard I, AGOT

the promise she solicited from ned is to care for baby jon, presumably.

more importantly, in this final conversation, lyanna is putting all her trust in ned.

this moment is a tragic one, but it is also a cathartic one. whatever has happened, and there is plenty of difficulty between ned and lya at this point, they are putting that to the side and affirming what matters most: their love and loyalty to one another, not in service to house stark, or to any king or cause, but to each other as lyanna and ned.

ned didn't listen before, but he promises her now. lyanna didn't confide in him before, but she does now. yes she's on her deathbed, but this is powerful anyway. it's a healing moment for them both, one lyanna held on for even though by all means she could have trusted the kingsguard to whisk baby jon away earlier and succumbed to the pain.

lyanna doesn't spend her last moments begging for forgiveness or explaining herself. she spends her last moments trying to solve the problem of jon's safety, of her son's life. even at the end, she is determined that he will live.

she dies fearless. she smiles, maybe the same way she smiled in winterfell when ned told her robert would be a good husband and she saw the love in ned's words but not the respect. a bittersweet smile, because jon will survive but she won't see it.

"She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean."

"I was with her when she died," Ned reminded the king. "She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father."

- Eddard I, AGOT

this is our actual introduction to lyanna, when robert and ned initially visit her in the crypts. given everything we know, it's so fitting - robert is displeased with her gravesite. he never got what he wanted (his manic pixie dream girl </3), and even in death he doesn't like her grave.

lyanna was never the person robert projected her to be. in her crypt, she's still defiant against him/what he symbolizes. her determination, her wishes, her home, they all shine through.

But there were others with faces he had never known in life, faces he had seen only in stone. The slim, sad girl who wore a crown of pale blue roses and a white gown spattered with gore could only be Lyanna. Her brother Brandon stood beside her, and their father Lord Rickard just behind.

- Theon V, ACOK

in the end, lyanna's close to her family (even by their side in theon's dreams). she's close to brandon, rickard, ned, old nan, everyone she ever knew growing up, and most importantly: to jon. it's a romantic ending for a minor character, a character grrm clearly cherished when he wrote.

the point of this post is that i want to leave behind the idea of lyanna stark as this harbinger of tragedy. the woman who ruined every man who looked into her eyes (robert, ned, rhaegar) and is now turned to stone. lyanna stark isn't written as a cautionary tale, as a romanticized medusa - instead, her memory lives on in a son who doesn't know her but still loves her, in how the people she knew remember her for what she actually loved, and even in lyanna mormont (a fitting namesake). there's defiance and meaning in that.

i could never say it better, so have hélène cixous's banger to round out my thoughts on lyanna:

You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.