#not in the ao3 tags though.

[jotasuis]

How I found out about trump getting shot

[sunnymainecoonx]

I know damn well I misunderstood the assignment but we roll, I'll understand it some day

It's killer and dust btw. If you couldn't tell. Which you probably couldn't.. forgor to say but shhh 🤫 Killers having a convo with himself..

..I kinda wanna change my url but idk to what

[tanoraqui]

In Which Space Orcs are Men

[AO3] A "what if humans are space orcs" take on Dagor Dagorath. (Aka the prophecied apocalypse of Middle Earth. Scifi story accessible to non-LotR nerds!)

Elves weren't really supposed to leave Earth. That's what they told us—the Elves, that is, told people thousands of years ago, when Elves could still be found here and there. When I was born, elves were nearly as much a fairy tale as they’d been on Ancient Earth.

Elves weren't supposed to leave Earth, the Elves said in the fairy tales, and in a few old scraps of records scattered around known space. They literally weren't made for it. They could only do it if they brought Earth with them—Arda they called it, leaves or dirt, water or a rare bubble of air, perfectly preserved in a white crystal. There are tons of tales about Elves losing their lifeline jewels—their hearts, their silimirs—and roping people into epic quests to get them back before they—the Elf—faded to nothingness. 

Even the jewels weren't enough, though. That's why there are also stories about Elves who fell in love with a person or a place and stayed there until they faded, or Elves who charmed someone into following them back to Fairyland on Earth...because whatever they said, Elves didn't really live on Earth. Humans have maintained their home planet as a monitored nature reserve since like the 40th century, open only to vetted research teams and serious Human religious pilgrimages. The most confirmed accounts of Elves that exist are of their ships appearing out of nowhere, with no trace of any tech that would enable it, at random, always-changing points within 100 miles or so of Earth.

Nobody ever came back from trying to follow Elves home. Mostly Elves tried to dissuade people from trying. But there are always crazy and curious people—and Elves usually attracted those, because any Elf who left the home they were "made" for was usually crazy and curious themselves. 

Those were the stories I grew up with. There was a cave near the orphans' creche which was supposed to be haunted by a faded Elf. I didn't really believe it—like I said, the last confirmed Elf was last seen like 5,000 years ago, and not even on my planet. People have met two dozen new sentient races since then. We've discovered that reincarnation is probably real (just functionally untrackable), prompting the Pan-Religious Reform Wars. The last person to see a live Elf was still traveling via natural wormholes—they literally didn't know that you could loop pi.

.

When the Human natal sun started to turn really red, it wasn’t that big a deal at first. It’s a very important, very sad event for any species, but it happens to everyone eventually. It happened to the Hectort just after we invented interstellar flight. There were some unusual gravatic waves around Earth’s Sol, but nothing worth noting to anyone who didn’t already care for personal reasons.

Then the Elves sent us a message.

The local Parks Service picked it up, of course. I bet the Humans meant to hush it up at first—though the Centaurian government still won’t admit anything—but someone leaked it immediately on the intergalactic net. It should’ve only been famous as a joke of a hoax, but…

It was basically just a metal box with rudimentary fire-thrusters soldered on the sides. It contained two things. The first was a recording/replaying device so antiquated that the only way they got it working is that it was already playing on loop, and didn’t stop until someone disconnected it from its power source.

The message was in Ancient Bouban, which some folklorist soon announced is the latest language an Elf could know, since the last known Elf went back to “Arda.” The voice somehow sounded melodic to every species with a concept of music, from the screeching Vesarians to the deep-sea sub-sonic Thinkers, even when translated through cheap, staticky speakers. And to most species, the speaker was audibly distraught.

They said,

This is the final message from the Firstborn of Eru to the Secondborn, and everyone else. The Battle of Battles has come, and we…are losing. If there are any who remember the ancient love and loyalty which bound our peoples, if there are any heirs remaining of Thargalax the Magnificent, of Nine-Fingered Frodo, of the noble Houses of Haleth, Hador and Beor—

The speaker drew a sharp breath, there.

—by great oaths and greater friendship I bid you now to raise your swords and ride to our aid. Ride as swiftly as you can!

We will hold for another year. We will, they said determinedly. After that, it is unlikely that…

Another, shakier breath. A smile forced into a voice which would rather weep.

Fëanáro and Nienna believe there is a way to destroy the Straight Road. If we must, if it comes to it, we will do so, and trap the First Enemy here in this dying world with us. Though I don’t know about—

Hair-aristocrat! a more distant, slightly less perfectly melodious voice called, in a language so dead that they needed computers to decode it. The walls are falling, we need to go!

If you never hear from us again, and no sudden discord arises among you, you will know we succeeded, the first speaker said quickly. If otherwise…I am sorry. Either way, I bid you all only, remember us! Oh beautiful flames, remember us, as we have ever remembered y— 

There was a sudden screech of tearing metal, a defiant, musical battle-cry, and a jarring silence. Then the message restarted.

And that wasn’t even the strangest thing in the box. The strangest thing was the recorder’s power source, which was powering the whole tiny rocket mechanism as well. It was an Elf-jewel right out of a fairy tale, a fist-sized, translucent not-quite-diamond—but instead of rock or water or a much-loved scrap of plant, the only thing it held was light.

...Kind of. It isn’t normal light. It arguably isn’t light at all, as we know it—scientists now think it’s technically some sort of plasmoid aether, except it only acts like a plasmoid aether about half the time. 

It has no detectable source within the jewel. It fully illuminates whatever space it’s in, no matter how big. Its visible radiation is a frequency, the scientists say, that matches a hyper-accelerated version of what the universe must’ve sounded like in the split second after the Big Bang.

It makes people remember things, when they see it in person or sometimes even across a holo. Some remember a similar light in a strange traveler’s eyes. Others, dreamily enchanted valleys where spring never faded, or tall castles, bright swords, and stern and glorious lords and ladies. And some of us got hit with a whole lifetime of memories in one go: an identical gem on the brow of a sober forest king, friends who slipped through trees like shadows save for their merry laughter, an impossibly beautiful gold-haired maiden dancing in a glittering cavern...

(And all the pain and loss that came with them.)

And some people just remember the sight of a distant star—in another world, in another lifetime.

Reincarnation was provable but untraceable…until now. 

The Thinker ambassador on Astrolax Station 5 was the first to kick up a fuss. Most Thinkers never leave their home planet, they're too huge and aquatic. But like I said, there's always crazy and curious people. The ambassador started bellowing the second che heard the message, without even seeing the light, because, "I know him! My Wisdom! We must send aid!" That made some news, and random other people shared their own, less dramatic revelations, and soon a compilation swept the net with timestamps showing that most of them were organically independent, not just jumping on the bandwagon….

Even that might've gotten written off intergalactically. The Thinkers are big in reincarnationist circles, on account of how they claim that deep in their planetary ocean they can hear echoes of their past lives. But being mostly planet-bound means they're not really influential on a big political level. Or it would've sparked another surge of the Reform Wars, and everybody would've remembered the rock, but not the recording. Or there would’ve been a fight over this potentially infinite energy source (though that is so last giga-annum)….

But first it was shown in person to the current Director of the Admiralty of the Astral Alliance, President of the X-ee Empire and Matron of the House of S,sh, Ch’ees/i’i S,sh. I was actually there—I was Captain of her ceremonial Alliance guards, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage my career after Zanzibus. Very ceremonial, considering the X-eee have laser-proof shells and pincers and I have, what, opposable thumbs? Vestigial tusks?

I wasn’t paying attention at first, too busy being suddenly assaulted by all my own memories. So I missed the President freezing mid-step and gasping (in X-eee), “Mother.” I also missed her rising alarm call of an attempt to speak Ancient Elvish without an Elvish tongue or lips.

I sure didn’t miss her snap back to X-eee for a sharp call to attention, and everything that followed: the call to arms! The rousing of the Alliance! A tour of the galaxy, to find anyone and everyone else in whom the Light could awaken ancient memories! And for the love of X'eeh, why had nobody figured out how to get back to Fairyland with this thing yet, and every warship in the quadrant?!

If I believed in the One Behind, or in any other creator god or gods—I'm not saying I do, but if I did, if there really is something out there all-powerful and all-kind—then it'd be because out of every soul in the entire universe, the probably one in the best position to act on the Elves' message turned out to have, from a past life, two parents and a much-loved twin still in Fairyland. Like, that's insane, right?

I stayed with the Director's ceremonial guards for the whole tour, actually more than ceremonial for once—it was the weirdest mission of my life, and I've been on a lot of weird missions. Or supposedly routine missions that got weird (and usually disastrous). My friends joke that I'm cursed. S,sh requisitioned an Inquiry-class ship, so the science boffins could study the Light and jewel along the way, and we started wormholing at weft speed, hitting a new planet every week. Sometimes every day. In each major spaceport and ground-city, S,sh stood with the jewel on the highest available point and gave a recruitment speech for going to save the Elves and fight the oldest enemy of all reality. 

Honestly, it seemed a little redundant? The Astral Alliance was made for this sort of rescue mission (and for escorting trade convoys). But I was...if not happy, then sure as hell more self-certain with my ancient memories restored, and most people who joined up seemed to agree. It was mostly people who remembered, when exposed to the Light, who joined—so before long, we had a whole tag-along trail of mostly civilian ships, trying to get up to Alliance Fleet standard on the road in less than a year.

Three different religious sects tried to kill S,sh for "profaning the mysteries." Five others tried to steal the jewel because we were apparently appropriating a holy object. The boffins announced that, bar the can't-prove-a-negative possibility, the evidently sourceless Light should be counted as an infinite energy source, and at least seven different groups, ruthless financiers and sustainability idealists, immediately tried to steal it for that. And I still don't know what the rival thief-queens of Likkiliani were about, except that I got tied up upside-down from a palmdar tree for two hours trying to stop one, the other paid me 700 cron then threw me off a cliff, and in the end they recognized each other from past lives and just made out on worldwide live-holo before joining our growing fleet. 

It turned out they were the Director's past life's great-grandparents, and a Canid pop princess was her niece. The Thinker ambassador was some sort of ancestor, too. Crazy extended family. 

Most people who remember just remember the sight of a star in the sky. A buddy of mine from Fleet Academy remembered looking up at it as a Human sailor. The historians—and you’d better bet we picked up some Earther historians on this mission as well!—say this jewel or one like it was probably astrologically conflated with the planet Venus by early Humans.

(The more time I spent around the jewel, the Silmaril, the more I remembered, of my first life and more. Lifetime after lifetime with bad luck dogging my steps, killing loved ones in my arms, destroying cities I was supposed to save… One restless, haunted night, I met a Rigilic in the cafeteria who’d been awake with some of the same nightmares, who’d been my dead older sister once.)

The tour was cut short when word came from the Earth system that there was a black hole growing in the center of their reddening sun. 

No, the sun wasn’t compressing into a black hole millennia ahead of schedule—one had just spontaneously manifested within it, like it’d teleported in. No, not literally—that was impossible. We were pretty sure. No, the sun wasn’t falling into it…somehow. Yet. The black hole was only 17 quectometers wide, but it was growing at an erratic but unceasing rate. If their best estimation of the pattern held, it would consume the sun 2 months before the Elves’ deadline, and the Earth 4 to 950 minutes later.

We pulled back to Earth—well, to the dwarf planet Eros, on the edges of Earth’s star system. That’s where the nearest shipyard of any note was, and we were gathering the whole Astral Alliance. This is exactly the sort of thing the Alliance is for. 

I was released back to ship duty. Zanzibus was still a black mark on my record, as was Jorab, and really everything on the AAS Endeavor…and that thing in third year of Fleet Academy… But no matter how bad my curse, I was an experienced captain and one of the best pilots in the Alliance. For this, we needed all the best.

The boffins had pretty quickly mastered limited manipulation of the Light, using modified aetheric resonators, and every day they came up with something new for us to test. They focused the Light into a laser cannon like no one has seen before. They laced it through plasma shields until a fully shielded ship glowed like a distant star. They managed to nearly replicate the Silmaril’s crystalline structure, so they could make “copies” that shone like the original for first a few hours; then, with refinement, a full week…

The one thing they couldn’t pin down with any real confidence was how to get to Fairyland. The frequency of the Light resonated with large bodies of Earther saltwater in a particular way, and models suggested that if the Light source moved horizontally along the water within a certain range of distance and velocity, the resonance would create a wormhole-like ripple in space—but wormhole-like, was the key word, and models suggested. The closest anyone had seen to that spatial distortion was in a logbook of dubious veracity from the Delta Quadrant, four hundred years ago. Alteia, my Academy buddy who’d been a Human sailor, took the Silmaril in an M-wing on a series of highly monitored test flights above the Atlantic Ocean, and space did repeatedly start to hollow in front of bom—so bo had to stop every time, rather than risk vanishing with our single, maybe-one-way ticket.

Then Earth’s moon stopped shining in the sky. Its albedo just dropped nearly to zero, from one night to the next. There was nothing wrong that anyone could figure out—nothing with the orbit, nothing with the surface rock, nothing with the artificial atmosphere. Inhabitants reported feeling colder by several degrees, but no measuring equipment recorded anything.

The black hole slightly off-center in the middle of Sol was now 844.9 zeptometers, and growing more steadily.

We didn’t have time to keep testing. We needed to raise our swords and make our ride, even if we only got one shot at it.

I was given command, for seniority, skill, and because I was the one who managed to talk S,sh out of leading the fleet herself. (If my lives had taught me anything, it was the importance of having someone, anyone, ready to be emergency backup.) Ironically, I was back on the Endeavor, with most of my old crew—though we got permission to rename the ship, in honor of the mission. A lot of people did. Alteia was now commanding the AAS Elendil on my right flank, star-friend in Ancient Elvish. That Canid pop princess had taken over a hospital ship and renamed it Rivendell. An Earth Park Ranger, of all things, remembered being my dad—briefly—and he was leading the Rangers plus my Rigilic drinking buddy on the EPSS Elfsheen. 

We weren’t sure if any ship but the one with the Silmaril would get through. The fleet numbered in the hundreds in battleships alone, not counting scouts and scuttlers. Twelve races had sent ships on top of their typical Alliance Fleet tithe, and S,sh had brought about half the full force of the X-ee Empire. We all just locked tractor beams and hoped. 

I was piloting as well as captaining, with the Silmaril between my forehorns. It was held in place by about a dozen wires and other connectors to the ship, like an old-timey pilot’s headset. We took off in orbit around Earth, as close as possible to the surface—not very close, in warships of Class S and higher, but within range of the oceanic resonance. A Likkilianian thief-queen stood at my shoulder, ready to advise if anything “Musical” started to happen.

Think about what you’re trying to get to, and why, the boffins had advised, so I did—bright-eyed kings and dancing maidens; lost friends, families, cities, planets and all. The jewel got warmer against my skin and shone brighter with every pulse of the engine, brighter than we should’ve been able to see through.

The silver-gold Light twisted and diffused as space did around us. But there was no familiar rippling wormhole boundary—instead, spacetime thinned to a curtain like driving rain, like Vesarian silver-glass.

A ghost appeared next to me. She looked like the oldest, grumpiest writing teacher at the crèche, though I knew that was only in my head.

“There you are,” she said, impatient and relieved like I’d been hiding in the sandbox again, rather than coming to class on time. Her sewing scissors went snip snip snip as she darted them around my body—and a chain on my soul faded into guiding threads.

Before she’d even disappeared again, I punched the engine and blasted through the silver-glass curtain.

Fairy tales said there’d be a peerlessly beautiful land on the other side, green with eternal spring, full of endless light and laughter. They said there’d be sunlit shores and shimmering waves, with welcoming docks for sea-ships, sky-ships and space-ships all…

We flew into the worst battlefield I’d ever seen, in any lifetime. It was more desperately vicious than Jerusalem V at the height of the Reform Wars, more ruined than Glaurung’s wake, more desolate than Zanzibus after the nuclears fell.

Either a massive supercontinent or a small moon had been shattered, leaving nothing but a roiling debris field. The brand-new meteoroids ranged from pebbles to rocks the size of a small space station, and included space-frozen corpses, forests, and what might have once been city blocks.

I gave the helm back to my Pilot Officer—zer had, I can admit, slightly better reflexes for dodging debris—and focused on captaining.

Most of the life signs were clinging to the larger rocks. There shouldn’t have been atmosphere for them, but walls of thunderstorm wrapped around every shard with even a single life sign—wind and water desperately hand in hand to safeguard the last of the Elves. The only thing visible through the impossible storms was the Light of a second Silmaril, on a meteoroid shaped like half a broken eggshell.

A corpse lay at the epicenter of the explosion—what might’ve been a corpse, if it wasn’t also shattered. The broken pieces of a massive stone humanoid, taller than my ship if it’d stood beside her, still bleeding lava so hot that it burned even in frozen space. Another titan knelt at the shards of its head, a figure of towering bark and leaves, wailing with grief even worse than the end of the world. 

A slimmer tree-woman stood with one hand on her shoulder, comforting, and the other wielding a skyscraper-sized club spiked with incandescent wildflowers. Guarding her sister’s heartbreak, she fended off a swarm of bat-sized monsters with wings of darkness and whips of flame. 

Bat-sized relative to the gods of Elves and ancient Humans. About the size of an M-wing, in flight.

Countless more of the bat-things flung themselves at the storm-bubbles, like carnivores chasing the prey hidden inside. They were fended off by an equal army of creatures with wings of light and swords of lightning, led by a towering figure who seemed to dance from one bloody battle to the next.

The biggest battle by far was the farthest away, over where the sun had been. In this dimension of stories over science, Sol was another woman-shape, smaller than the others but burning just as brightly as her star. Also just as blood-red. The light was centered on a fist she kept clenched at her chest, and instead of containing the black hole, the unseeable thing that it was here surrounded her, striking at her with a thousand hungry jaws and grasping legs, and she had only a one-handed whip of a solar flare to fend it off—

But she didn’t fight alone. A warrior tore at the Darkness’s spidery limbs with his fists, image on the cameras flickering impossibly between every hero I’d ever heard of. A snarling figure bit at it with jagged teeth, gored it with horns, shredded it with claws and talons, and generally made every ancient prey-instinct in me scream. And a queen with a crown of stars, a shield like the night sky and a sword like a streaking comet, stood dauntlessly at the sun-holder’s side. 

With all that, and with the speed of even her most exhausted strikes, I thought the sun-holder could probably have gotten away if she’d tried. But I knew how a person fought when they weren’t willing to leave a friend, and a smaller, silver figure lay at her feet, unmoving and drained of light.

But even the battle for the sun wasn’t what grabbed my eye. No—all my attention, all my guiding threads of fate and the quick temper that always used to get me in trouble, before (and sometimes after) I learned to leash it in an Alliance uniform— All of that took me straight to the fight happening orthogonal to the stone giant’s corpse.

It was another one-versus-many. Morgoth, the First Enemy of Elves and Men— Master of Lies, Maker of Chains, Sonofabitch Curser of Bloodlines—towered over even his fellow gods. His shape changed constantly, sickeningly, but it was always black-armored with eyes like dying stars that hated you personally. His maul dripped with lava and every other kind of blood.

He fought against three great gray figures who moved as one. The tallest wielded a star-studded scythe with swift, efficient strokes, and wore the dark gray of corpse-shrouds. The shortest shimmered with more colors than even a Stamotapadon could dream of, and his weapon shifted likewise. The third was the clear, clean gray of skies after rain or tears run dry, and fought with only a shield—and hit harder with it than either of her brothers.

Around their heads darted the only Elves on the battlefield, in small fliers more like sea-ships than aircraft. But they moved fluidly, pestering the Dark Lord like flies, pricking his skin and threatening his burning eyes.

Until Morgoth swung his maul with a roar of fury that traveled even though soundless space. My ship and heart both shuddered. The gray gods all staggered back, and the Elves fell from the no-longer-sky—all but their leader, more fire than flesh, who wore the third Silmaril. Morgoth caught him in one massive black hand and with sharp claws plucked the jewel away, as easily as a ripe berry from a tree—

“All power to fore-cannon and fire,” I ordered—and the jewel on my brow shone bright again as several stored months’ worth of infinite Silmaril-Light slammed into Morgoth’s chest with all the force that the best scientists in the Astral Alliance could engineer. 

He stumbled. He dropped both the jewel and the elf-king (who’d been trying to bite him). The Lady of Mercy tossed her shield to catch them, staying low and out of sight—though she needn’t have bothered. The so-called “Lord of All” had already found his next enemy.

“All ships, move forward and join shields,” I ordered, and met his burning stare though the viewscreen. “Then broadcast me on all external frequencies.”

The wires on my forehead shimmered as we shifted Light-flow to the shields—and to my right, so did the Elendil, and to my left, the Cosmian Blade, and all around us the Minas Tirith, the Elfsheen, the Muse, the Rivendell, the Heart of Zanzi, the Longbottom Leaf… They were still soaring out of the silvery distortion behind me, tractor- and Silmaril-towed: sleek Rigilic eels-of-prey and Centaurian cruisers full of Humans eager to fight for their homeworld, Betan mine-ships and Canid X-M-wings and my own Hectoan starlighters, a full third of the X-ee navy with their X-eee–shaped six-engine dreadnoughts, and hundreds more. 

“This is Captain Pel Cinia, once Túrin Turambar, of the Astral Alliance ship Gurthang,” I said. My words were broadcast from every ship on every frequency in every language that the people of Arda might know, as the Fleet assembled from forty-plus different worlds flew into position. Our Light-infused shields blazed and locked together, until we formed a seamless wall right in the Enemy’s face, with the Elves and their other allies safely behind us.

I’ve never felt more proud to recite the most cliché line in the Fleet:

“We got your distress call. We’re here to help.”

[vicartless-bowuigi-space-au]

“What are you scared of?”

Luigi felt the Star's unease fill his every being—a child shaking in a dark alley, crowding against a corner with no escape. And with a voice that stole Luigi's breath, the Star responded.

“Her.”

[philosophiums]

jjk atla au fic in the works!!!!

title: Like the Moon Haunts the Sun

@hinamie and i have been feverishly working hand in unsleeping hand on this, and, after extensive plotting and scene ideas volleyed between us, i have finally started writing. i am being consumed by this au firstly, if you haven't seen hina's concept art for the AU yet, find them here: main trio, gojo/choso/nanami, mahito/geto/yuta, yuji/sukuna/karucchi

i don't have a nice clean summary right now, BUT the non-spoiler-y gist is that it's going to follow yuji on his journey around the atla map, mastering the elements and taking on his role as the avatar. megumi, nobara, and yuji's owltiger, karucchi, will be with him every step of the way. and if he has to stop the nefarious plans of a certain corpse-possessing spirit, well... he'll do that, too.

we're pulling from both jjk and atla/lok canon and making something that's a pretty solid balance of both instead of strictly being jjk characters shoved into designated roles a la atla/lok. there will be some bends and some breaks in the way the atla world works, but canon is, after all, just a sandbox, and we came equipped with a shovel >:)

my goal is to write the fic in four parts (i'm aiming for like 50k words but who knows!), and i will start posting to ao3 once part one is done, just to give myself breathing room for chapter updates !!!

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

I AM NOW THE PROUD OWNER OF A 400-PAGE LONG BOOK OF ACADEMIC ANALYSIS ABOUT MDZS (both the novel and CQL, as well as the wider danmei sphere, internet authorship, fan reactions in both CN and non-CN spheres, and so many more interesting things – there are photos of the contents list below) >:DDDD

I only got it this afternoon so have only read the (quite long?) excerpt available online and pages I came across while flipping through, but everything I've read so far is really interesting and well-written. If you're interested, it's promoted on the blog of @pumpkinpaix, where there are also chapter spotlights with comments from authors of each paper/chapter about them and about MDZS in general (which is how I found out about it, one came up in tumblr's 'based on this tag you follow...' recommendation), as well as FAQs (including where to buy it, though I did link that at the start). Alternatively, all posts about it are in the tag #catching chen qing ling!

I really recommend it, especially if content about MDZS interests you! and I promise I haven't been told to advertise this it's just something so so cool... a collection of academic work about MY FAVOURITE BOOK... and I know people do follow me for meta/analysis so this might be the sort of thing people looking at this blog will be interested in..?

[senoleaf]

“Hmm,” he murmured, eyes squinting at the fluttering sheet in his hand, struggling to even discern the words in near absolute darkness. “No exact location, no actual date or time or anything. Guess we just gotta wing it as usual.”

— — —

from my Lost Silver/Door's Open (Strangled Red) centric fanfic "Golden Soul and Silver Heart"

(beware of the tags on ao3!)

[thenightwolf51]

[myokk]

Eloise is really, really bad at chess😐

(this is a scene from my fic & I typed it up here:)

"Milady, you cannot send him there! He will surely die a terrible death, and Murdoch is our finest knight!"

Eloise blinked her bleary eyes at the wizarding chess board, not really comprehending what the tiny pieces were yelling at her. The one that seemed to be doing the most talking was gesticulating wildly and jumping up and down, trying to get her attention. When she had taken the pieces out of the box Sebastian had lent her, they had immediately recognized her and started protesting, appealing to 'their benevolent lord's innate sense of goodness', but their protests fell on deaf ears. Eloise was positive that Sebastian took some sort of perverse pleasure at watching her lose at chess.

In the background, she could hear Ominis's laughter echoing through the Undercroft. His own pieces were quite happy at the moment, preening and occasionally sending rude gestures towards Eloise's, much to Sebastian's amusement. He was narrating their every action to Ominis, whose laughter was egging on his soldiers even more.

"Eloise," Sebastian said, propping his chin up by one hand (entirely too amused, infuriatingly so, why did he have to look so handsome when she was trying to be annoyed at him?), "maybe you should move the knight..." his other hand pointed to an empty space on the board, "...here."

This declaration caused an uproar. There were shouts of betrayal, tiny pieces gesticulating wildly to the carnage surrounding the board as they shouted in vain. She didn't see any other viable moves, so Eloise sighed and ordered the brave little Murdoch to where Sebastian had suggested. Chaos immediately ensued and Ominis's queen gleefully knocked his head off with a violent swing of her scepter. Eloise's pawns all doubled over, sobbing as their most valient knight fell, and her remaining bishop shook his tiny fist in outrage up at her.

After a few more minutes, much to Eloise's ashamed relief and the boys' disappointment, her pieces refused to move for either her or Sebastian. They solemnly collected the remains of their fallen comrades with as much dignity as they could muster and marched off the board and back into their box in a mourning parade of sorts.

Sebastian joined Ominis's pieces as they jeered the losing team off the board, causing Eloise to glare fiercely at him. "You were the one telling me what to do, and they're your pieces! Show some loyalty."

He shrunk away from the intensity of her gaze and held up his hands in protest. "I was suggesting the moves as a joke! After last week's fiasco, I didn't think you'd fall for it again."

Ominis was laughing so hard he was gasping for breath, and the two of them turned to watch him. Even through her irritation, Eloise couldn't help but smile at him - he was always so solemn and these bouts of mirth were few and far between. He managed to speak between bouts of laughter. "I...I couldn't...I couldn't believe it when you sent your bishops one by one into my trap! It was so obvious! And then...and then you..." Ominis dissolved into fits of laughter again and couldn't finish.

Eloise turned her angry glare to him. "We can't all be chess geniuses!"

"I've tried teaching you and you don't listen! For the next time, I'm only going to give you one piece of advice: don't listen to Sebastian." He chuckled once more to himself and then turned slightly to the board, addressing his men (and queen) and giving them a debriefing. He always did this after he won the matches; it was a strange sort of ritual that he seemed to look forward to.

[aroaceleovaldez]

reminder/tip, particularly for newer pjo fans: do not crosstag!

for those who don't know, crosstagging is tagging irrelevant tags on a post, usually popular tags to try and get more views on the post.

Tumblr doesn't work the same way instagram or tiktok or twitter does. Crosstagging is considered spam, and your blog will be flagged if you do this.

particularly in pjo fandom, crosstagging includes tagging characters that don't actually appear in the post, tagging books or series unrelated to the post (like tagging "TSATS" on a post not specifically about TSATS, or tagging HoO on a post about first series specifically, etc.), tagging "pjo fanfic" or "pjo headcanon" or similar on a post that, obviously, isn't that, and/or tagging irrelevant ships. More recently, this also includes tagging the show (PJO TV, etc) on posts that are completely irrelevant to the show.

This mostly only applies for original posts - Tags you put on reblogs only apply to your own blog's organizational system, and has no bearing on the original post itself. But it's really annoying to the original poster if you spam tags, because it will appear in their notifs. It's pointless to spam tags in reblogs for these reasons regardless, so it's best not to.

just remember: crosstagging is not allowed on tumblr, doesn't work that way here anyways, and is just generally rude. so don't do it.

[zelda-daily]

Announcement: GOAL!

Hi! So we finally made it to day 100 - the goal I set out to do from the start but had no idea if I could actually reach lol.

I made this blog in the middle of dealing with art block. I hadn't really been feeling inspired to draw or create much for about a year.

The longest I've ever lasted on a daily drawing challenge before this was day 3. Now that I've made it to day 100 and I'm finally starting to get ideas and inspiration again, I'm satisfied :]

This is NOT the end of the blog. Just a hiatus until the next art block, which (let's be real) will probably be sooner than later lol.

Thank you to everyone who's been following along so far. I really, genuinely appreciate all the tags and comments and familiar faces.

Until next time! <3

[sernik-krakowski]

Doodles drop. Made over the last 4 months

[imclou]

I'm YN. Moon's inlove with YN

Sun (hopefully) will hop in on the band wagon Ergo: I can marry enforcer DCA. (pls accept this silly, flawed logic lol)

ALSO THESE DESIGNS ARE MARVELOUS

Bahahaha i can't argue with that logic!

But yeah you're right Firelight Y/N is a blank slate you can project onto, they're you! :D

Also thank you omggg <3 <3 <3

[dilfmobius]

i took a break from suits because the only reason i was there in the first place was for how absolutely batshit insane harvey specter is when it comes to mike ross and once mike went to prison i kinda went okay i think the shows run its course for me byeeee

anyway i just started s6 and i'm happy to see harvey specter is still batshit insane for mike ross

[artificergorgug]

I wrote a 20k college years Fabian adopts his half sister fic feat. FabRiz qpr with FabMazey poly partners, Fig reconnecting with her friends, disabled/chronically in pain teacher Gorgug, nonbinary community leader Kristen, and what the system can do for you Adaine for those interested

[mars-wuz-herez]

“We did it Shadow! We saved everyone”

I turn to face the planet we just saved. It’s full of so much life. A memory plays in my head, where we would sit in front of a giant window and she would tell me about the beauty of earth. The wonders, the oceans, the life everything that made earth such a gorgeous planet. And after everything I saw, she wasn’t wrong. It truly was a beautiful planet.

If only she was here to see it.

My vision of the planet slowly blurs and I feel my eye lids getting heavy. So tired…

“Shadow!”

I feel arms quickly grab my waist.

“Shadow what’s wrong? Why is your super form fading?”

“My body…it can’t handle so much…”

My eyes are slowly closing. They are doing it before I even notice it. The grip around my waist tightens as I feel myself getting heavier and heavier.

“Hey hey hey stay with me. Everything is going to be okay. We’ll make it back please just hang on”

I force one eye open. I can see his super form is fading, his quills slowly turning back blue. He’s struggling.

We’re not going to make it.

He’s not going to make it

“Hedgehog…let go of me. You’re not going to make it carrying me”

“No! We’ll make it. I know we will just please hang on just for a little longer…”

I close my eyes and when I open them again. His quills are quickly fading back to his normal blue.

“Faker save yourself. Don’t die saving me. I’m not worth it and you know it”

“Don’t say that. Your life matters and if I have to die to save it then so be it. In the end I know it was worth it”

I smile at that. It’s nice to know that someone else cares about me. But I know what I must do.

“Sonic”

There are tears in those emerald eyes as he looks at me. I cup his cheek and wipe the tears going down his face. I pull him closer and our lips meet. The kiss is everything I imagined it to be and much more. I pull away.

“Forgive me…”

“What?”

I push myself off him and start falling. Fast. I hear him yelling, crying out my name. I’m sorry Sonic. But I won’t have anyone else die for me, not again. It’s selfish I know but I hope one day you’ll forgive me for doing this. My eyes shut and then it’s nothing but darkness……

“NO!”

I feel two arms wrap around me. I slightly open my eye to see Sonic. He’s hugging me and the last of his super form is fading away.

“I made a promise to you Shadow. You aren’t alone not this time. I’m staying with you until the very end”

I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. I close my eyes and all I can feel is the warmth of his hug. The darkness takes over and then everything goes black.

Part two!