#not really i just used the translate function on word

[raskies456]

learning python rn and nothing boosts your confidence like finding the bug while the person teaching you is coding live

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

i appreciated this study: "They Can't Read Very Well: A Study of the Reading Comprehension Skills Of English Majors At Two Midwestern Universities"

[ETA: if you are somehow finding your way here pls note some - not exhaustive!!!! - follow up notes in this reblog. sorry again i mixed up megalodons and megalosaurs]

essentially, a pair of professors set out to test their intuitive sense that students at the college level were struggling with complex text. they recruited 85 students, a mix of english majors and english education majors - so, theoretically, people focusing on literature, and people preparing to teach adolescents how to read literature - and had them read-while-summarizing the first seven paragraphs of dickens's bleak house (or as much as they made it through in the 20 minute session). they provided dictionaries and also said students could use their phones to look up whatever they wanted, including any unfamiliar words or references. they found that the majority of the students - 58%, or 49 out of the 85 students - functionally could not understand dickens at all, and only 5% - a mere 4 out of the 85 students - proved themselves proficient readers (leaving the remaining 38%, or 32 students, as what the study authors deemed "competent" students, most of whom could understand about half the literal meaning - pretty low bar for competence - although a few of whom, they note, did much better than the rest in this group if not quite well enough to be considered proficient).

what i really appreciated about this study was its qualitative descriptions of the challenges and reading behaviors of what the authors call "problematic readers" (that bottom 58%), which resonated strongly with my own experiences of students who struggle with reading. here's their blunt big picture overview of these 49 students:

The majority of these subjects could understand very little of Bleak House and did not have effective reading tactics. All had so much trouble comprehending concrete detail in consecutive clauses and phrases that they could not link the meaning of one sentence to the next. Although it was clear that these subjects did try to use various tactics while they read the passage, they were not able to use those tactics successfully. For example, 43 percent of the problematic readers tried to look up words they did not understand, but only five percent were able to look up the meaning of a word and place it back correctly into a sentence. The subjects frequently looked up a word they did not know, realized that they did not understand the sentence the word had come from, and skipped translating the sentence altogether.

the idea that they had so much trouble with every small piece of a text that they could not connect ideas on a sentence by sentence basis is very familiar to me from teaching and tutoring, as was the habit of thought seen in the example of the student who gloms on to the word "whiskers" in a sea of confusion and guesses incorrectly that a cat is present - struggling readers, in my experience, seem to use familiar nouns as stepping stones in a flood of overwhelm, hopping as best they can from one seemingly familiar image to the next. so was this observation, building off the example of a student who misses the fact that dickens is being figurative when he imagines a megalodon stalking the streets of london:

She first guesses that the dinosaur is just “bones” and then is stuck stating that the bones are “waddling, um, all up the hill” because she can see that Dickens has the dinosaur moving. Because she cannot logically tie the ideas together, she just leaves her interpretation as is and goes on to the next sentence. Like this subject, most of the problematic readers were not concerned if their literal translations of Bleak House were not coherent, so obvious logical errors never seemed to affect them. In fact, none of the readers in this category ever questioned their own interpretations of figures of speech, no matter how irrational the results. Worse, their inability to understand figurative language was constant, even though most of the subjects had spent at least two years in literature classes that discussed figures of speech. Some could correctly identify a figure of speech, and even explain its use in a sentence, but correct responses were inconsistent and haphazard. None of the problematic readers showed any evidence that they could read recursively or fix previous errors in comprehension. They would stick to their reading tactics even if they were unhappy with the results.

i have seen this repeatedly, too - actually i was particularly taken with how similar this is to the behavior of struggling readers at much younger ages - and would summarize the hypothesis i have forged over time as: struggling readers do not expect what they read to make sense. my hypothesis for why this is the case is that their reading deficits were not attended to or remediated adequately early enough, and so, in their formative years - the early to mid elementary grades - they spent a lot of time "reading" things that did not make sense to them - in fact they spent much more time doing this than they ever did reading things that did make sense to them - and so they did not internalize a meaningful subjective sense of what it feels like to actually read things.

like, i've said this before, but the year i taught third grade i had multiple students who told me they loved reading and then when i asked them about a book they were reading revealed that they had absolutely no idea what was going on - on a really basic literal level like "didn't know who said which lines of dialogue" and "couldn't identify which things or characters given pronouns referred to" - and were as best as i could tell sort of constructing their own story along the way using these little bits of things they thought they understood. that's what "reading" was, in their heads. and they were, in the curriculum/model that we used at the private school where i taught, receiving basically no support to clarify that that was not what reading was, nor any instruction that would actually help them with what they needed to do to improve (understand sentences) - and i realized over the course of that year that the master's program that had certified me in teaching elementary school had provided me with very little understanding of how to help these kids (with perhaps the sole exception of the class i took on communications disorders, not because these kids had communications disorders but because that was the only class where we ever talked, even briefly, about things like sentence structures that students may need instruction in and practice with to comprehend independently). when it comes to the literal, basic understanding of a text, the model of reading pedagogy i was taught has about 6 million little "tools" that all boil down to telling kids who functionally can't read to try harder to read. this is not productive, in my experience and opinion, for kids whose maximum effort persistently yields confusion. but things are so dysfunctional all the way up and down the ladder that you can be a senior in college majoring in english without anyone but a pair of professors with a strong work ethic noticing that you can't actually read.

couple other notes:

obviously it's a small study but i'm not sure i see a reason to believe these are particularly outlierish results (ACT scores - an imperfect metric but not a meritless one IMO for reading specifically, where the task mostly really is to read a set of texts written for the educated layperson and answer factual questions about them - were a little bit above the national average)

the study was published last year, but the research was conducted january to april 2015. so there's no pandemic influence, no AI issue - these are millennials who now would span roughly ages 28-32 (i guess it's possible one of the four first-year students was one of the very first members of gen z lol). if you're in your late 20s or early 30s, we are talking about people your age, and whatever the culprit is here, it was happening when you were in school.

i think some people might want to blame this on NCLB but i find this unconvincing for a variety of reasons. first of all, NCLB did not pass because everyone in 2001 agreed that education was super hunky-dory; in fact, the sold a story podcast outlines how an explicit goal of NCLB was to train teachers in systematic phonics instruction, because that was not the norm when NCLB was passed, and an unfortunate outcome was that phonics became politicized in ed world. second, anyone who understands anything about reading should need about ten minutes max to spend some time on standardized test prep and recognize that if your goal is truly to maximize scores... then the vast majority of your instructional time should be spent on improving actual reading skills because you actually can't meaningfully game these tests by "practicing main idea questions" (timothy shanahan addresses this briefly near the top of this post). so i find it very difficult to believe that any school that pivoted to multiple choice drill time in an attempt to boost reading scores was teaching reading effectively pre-NCLB, because no set of competent literacy professionals would think that would work even for the goal of raising test scores. third, NCLB mandated yearly testing in grades 3-8 but only one test year in high school; kansas set its reading and math test year in high school as tenth grade. so theoretically these kids all had two years of sweet sweet freedom from NCLB in which their teachers could have done whatever the fuck they wanted to teach these kids to actually read. the fact that they didn't suggests perhaps there were other problems afoot. fourth, and maybe most saliently for this particular study, the sample text was the first seven paragraphs of a novel - in other words, the exact kind of short incomplete text that NCLB allegedly demanded excessive time spent on. i'm not really sure what universe it makes sense in that students who can't read the first seven paragraphs of a novel would have become much better reader if everything else had been the same but they had been making completely wack associations based on nonsense guesses for all 300 pages instead. (if you read the study it's really clear that for problematic readers, things go off the rails immediately, in a way that a good program targeted at teaching mastery of text of 500 words or less would have done something about.)

all but 3 of the students reported A's and B's in their english classes and, again, 69% of them are juniors and seniors, so like... i mean idk kudos to these professors for being like "hold up can these kids actually read?" but clearly something is wack at the college level too [in 2015] if you can make your way through nearly an entire english major without being able to read the first seven paragraphs of a dickens novel. (once again i really do encourage you to look at the qualitative samples in the study, lest you think i am being uncharitable by summarizing understandable misunderstandings or areas of confusion that may resolve themselves with further exposure to the text as "can't read.") not to mention the fact that most students could not what they had learned in previous or current english classes and when asked to name british and american authors and/or works of the nineteenth century, roughly half the sample at each college could name at most one.

the authors of the study are struck by the fact that students who cannot parse the first 3 sentences of bleak house feel very confident about their ability to read the entire novel, and discover that this seeming disconnect is resolved by the fact that these students seem to conceptualize "reading" as "skimming and then reading sparknotes." i think it's really tempting to Kids These Days this phenomenon (although again these are people who in some cases have now been in the workforce for a decade) and categorize it as laziness or a lack of effort, but i think that there is, as i described above, a real and sincere confusion over what "reading" is in which this makes a certain logical sense because it's not like they have some store of actual reading experiences to compare it to. i also think it's pretty obvious looking at just how wildly severed from actual textual comprehension their readings are that these are not - or at least not entirely - students who could just work harder and master the entirety of bleak house all on their own. like i don't think you get from "charles dickens is describing a bunch of dinosaur bones actually walking the streets of london" to comfortably reading nineteenth century literature by just trying harder. i really just don't (and i say that acknowledging i personally have had students who like... were good readers if i was forcing them to work at it constantly... but i have also had students, including ones getting ready to enter college, who were clearly giving me everything they had and what they had was at the present moment insufficient). i think that speaks to a missing skillset that they don't know are missing, because they don't have any other experience of "reading" to compare it to.

just wanna highlight again that although they don't give the breakdown some of these students are not just english majors but english education majors a.k.a. the high school english teachers of tomorrow. some of them may be teaching high school english right now, in case anyone wishes to consider whether "maybe some high school english teachers can't read the first seven paragraphs of bleak house?" should be kept in mind when we discuss present-day educational ills.

[bigfatbreak]

Me thinks Clark didn't realize until now how bad the situation in Paris really is and might just interfere now.

Correct!

I don't know if I'll have the time to draw it, but essentially higher-powered supers are banned from entering France, in the very least the Paris area, because an akumatized superhero with more power than Ladybug or Chaton could lead to devastating results. Due to this, media outlets regarding Hawkmoth and that situation are throttled to specifically France, as no one wants Hawkmoth gaining allies through outside supervillains via the media. HM/Gabe hasn't caught onto that fact yet, since its something hush-hush between LB and the local government, but Marinette did publish a paper regarding a character profile of Hawkmoth and how current Akuma function, as well as a deep dive into how its effecting the Parisian population.

Chock full of primary sources, interviews, and even one on one dialogue with Chat Noir and Ladybug, naturally the study gained attention. It was meant for France, for the public to understand the current stakes and how now more than ever, people need to extend sympathy, patience, and understanding to each other, and how negativity is as healthy as positivity and must be nurtured and resolved with care. It was meant as a public notice - to not destroy one another or shut down, to instead have faith in one another and to work as a community, even if their faith in LB/CN was to waiver, that you can always trust your friends and family to help you in times of great tragedy and stress.

It was popularized both as a letter to the public, and as a research paper regarding Akumas; as a result, it was eventually translated and squeaked out under the French censors accidentally, as its spread was entirely minimal. However, it wasn't so minimal that it wouldn't eventually end up on the desk of a woman looking into Superhero news, aka, Lois Lane. It was a solid read, if not a bit garbled, since auto-translators were used instead of a real person, and it was passed to Clark to read.

The issue in France didn't seem so terrible from words on a page, and not only that, the League agreed that all in all, major supers needed to stay out of France for their own protection.

however, looking at the face of the girl that published the article speaks of a different story.

[scentofhydrangea]

for @vershautece, based off of this and a little of this 🩷 enjoy!

warnings luigi is a baby making machine! sahm themes, let’s just assume he never had back problems shhh, all italian is translated at the bottom, breeding, oral (both receiving), missionary + doggy, orgasm denial (?), rough sex, ass slapping (i don’t like the other word), reflection ;), half-assed proofread

a/n i am actually so sorry this is so late, i’ve been stacked today and then i scheduled this to post and it never did… ALSO THIS IS WAY LONGER THAN I ORIGINALLY INTENDED!!! and i’m sorry the smut is kinda vague i haven’t written actual smut in SOOOO long it’s embarrassing… i’m gonna be a hornball on your dash!

getting accepted to upenn was definitely in your top three most exhilarating moments of your life. with plans of majoring in art, you were over the moon to start your independent life at an ivy league school! you rarely let boys get in your way — enjoying life in the moment was a top quality of yours as an artist.

that was, until you met luigi. oh god, he’s so beautiful. you only picked up one digital class that you really didn’t even know the name of because you’d wanted to get into digital art and you thought it’d be fun to learn the functions. as soon as you saw him about two weeks into the course, you were swooning. unbeknownst to you, most other girls were also swooning.

you only had a few tight friends, but your kind personality was a trait everyone noticed about you as soon as you would approach. also how good you smelled. and your beautiful smile. and your full, happy cheeks when you laugh. really just everything — and you’d had no idea that boys in your courses would pine after you, too.

a few trusty years later, you and luigi were to be wed! babies came shortly after, and you had the most beautiful twin toddlers. after you’d been granted maternity leave from your job as a high school art teacher, you’d gotten a little too used to staying home and tending to the house, rather than scrambling every weekend to get everything done as well as take care of your husband and children.

you had a talk with luigi and determined that the money from his job would be enough to keep the family steady going as well as a few pieces you’d make and sell on ebay every now and again. almost as quickly as you could, you sent an email to the superintendent and principal of your school saying that you would unfortunately not be returning due to personal issues.

luigi had never asked you to be a sweet little tradwife for him, but he damn sure enjoyed it. today in particular, your three year olds’ daycare was closed so you were fortunate enough to leave them with their godparents. this was good for you, they’d likely ask to spend the night with their padrini*, so you can have tonight and tomorrow morning without a ‘bedtime’ for you and your children!

in the morning after dropping them off, you went back home to get cute and dolled up — you usually made breakfast wearing a silk pajama set that luigi bought for you last christmas. then you went to the grocery store and to the bank to deposit a check from a painting you sold for a little under $500. then back home to make a small lunch — you were planning to cook a big dinner — and then onto housework. you played music while you worked, and once beds were made you retreated back to your bedroom to tweak your hair and makeup for dinner.

you also made sure luigi knew not to come home before 5:45 because you wouldn’t be done with your dishes, and checked in on your kids to confirm they’d stay the night at their padrini’s house.

when luigi came home, just like out of a scene of a movie, he shouted from the front door: “tesoro, sono a casa!*” followed by the door closing and locking mechanically behind him. he strutted into the kitchen to see you putting plates together — exactly 6:00. he must have waited in the driveway to give you some extra time!

with a gentle hold of your waist and long kiss on your cheek, you suddenly felt much more comfortable; almost feeling safe that he was home. anxiety was sometimes a struggle when you’re home alone all day and your husband working half an hour away.

as you plated the food and brought the bread out of the oven, luigi went upstairs to change into something more casual. when he opened the bedroom door, he noticed you had left a precious little lingerie set laying on the bed, likely accidentally. his interest was certainly piqued! quirking an eyebrow and grinning a little to himself, he took a few minutes to change and mess with his hair a bit in the mirror.

luigi came down the stairs with happy haste.

“thank you for making this meal, babydoll, smells so good,” he compliments, kissing your cheek again.

your face burns excitedly. “thank you,” you kiss his lips a few short times.

over dinner, you chat about each other’s day and the children. he seems to be deep in thought for a moment, and when he notices you staring he speaks again.

“you think we should have another baby?” he asks cheekily.

you nearly choke and your heart rate runs rampant, looking as if you hadn’t had sex before. “do you want to?”

“would i ask if i didn’t want to?”

there’s a rush between your thighs almost immediately. you place your fork down onto your plate and stand up, but before you can walk off he’s up and scooping you into his strong arms. he cascades up the steps with you bridal style.

as soon as he steps into the bedroom, he places you down on the fuzzy chair in front of your vanity. a finger points to the lacy set laying on the neat bed.

“you wanna tell me what you got this out for?” he presses, kneeling down on the ground in front of you. luigi’s pretty lips pepper kisses on your ankles, lifting each one up slowly to remove your kitten heels. once each shoe is off, he places the now bare calf on his shoulder.

“please, lu…” you plead pathetically.

his eyebrows furrow upwards, looking at you with big eyes full of faux empathy. “please what? use your words, mio amore. dimmi cosa vuoi*.”

words are quick to fail you. your brain is blank, almost static. most times you have sex it’s quick and hushed because the twins are in the house.

he’s kissing up your legs again, attempting to get a rise out of you. once he gets to your thighs, you’re getting a little restless.

“taking too long,” you mumble, and he lifts his head to look you in the eye again — this time much more stern.

“what was that?”

“said you’re taking too long,” you repeat yourself louder, locking your gaze with his.

within a second, he’s snatched you up and thrown you onto the neat bed.

“you and your goddamn bed decorations. i never know why you put all these pillows on here when we’re just gonna throw them all off later,” he grumbles, clearly angry and clearing the throw pillows from the bed, tossing them to the floor.

luigi pushes your maxi skirt up and nearly tears your little cotton underwear off of you. his tongue darts between your warmth and his nose harshly rubs against your clit, catching you off guard and sending your spine into electric shock. your hands fly to grip his hair in one hand and the tightly made bedsheets in the other.

“y’taste so sweet, tesoro,” he groans against you, leaving open-mouthed kisses on your thighs before going back to devouring your sex.

he’s already working an easy orgasm or two from you. he pulls you from your stupor and unzips your dress, gingerly pulling it off of you — he knows how upset you got last time he accidentally ripped the hem of your dress.

his shirt is gone, his chin and parts of his cheeks are still wet, and removing his belt as quickly as he can. as soon as his pants drop, you grab the hem of his boxers and pull them down. every time you see his cock, it never fails to surprise you that the tip touches his fucking belly button.

you pop his throbbing pink tip into your mouth, giving it little kitten licks and short kisses. you work your way down, or as much as you can, using your hand to pump what you can’t fit in your mouth. you’re moaning and slobbering around his cock, vibrations from your voice sending chills up his spine and down into his arms. his hands find their way to the back of your head, carefully urging you to take more.

your throat is constricting and you retract from his cock, looking into his eyes for validation.

“you’re taking too long,” he mocks in a faux whiny voice. luigi pushes you back onto the bed by his shoulders and holds his heavy cock. he teases your folds, rubbing his hot tip through to spread your own spit and cum from him eating you out. slowly, he pushes in. he always waits a little for you to adjust to how big he is.

“fuck, m’so full…”

“you’re so tight, mio amore.”

his eyes are boring into yours and his hands press down onto your womb to see his own cock buried into you.

“gonna cum if you don’t breathe for a second and relax, holy fuck baby,” he reminds you with a deep, raspy tone.

you take a deep breath and mid-exhale he starts to pound into you with a feverish and eager alacrity, causing you to almost scream.

“mmmmy fucking god!” your voice shakes with each impactful thrust against your hips. one of his hands grips your waist and the other attaches to your boob, his head following shortly. his tongue laps around your peaked nipple rapidly.

then both hands are on your waist and he briefly pulls out to flip you onto your stomach and prop your ass up to his liking. he’s shoving his cock back into your soaked cunt and returns back to his relentless pace.

“gonna fuck a baby into you, bella ragazza, gonna get you nice and swollen with a pretty baby, hm? isn’t that right?” he pushes his hand down onto your lower back, arching you up higher for him. both of his big hands find your frizzed up curly bun and he snatches your head back.

“feels so fucking good, m’gonna cum, lu!”

“aht,” he slows down exponentially, “you’ll cum when i tell you to.”

your eyes roll to the back of your head with adoration and you swear your ovaries start jumping at the demand. he’s back to slamming into you and a hard hand comes down onto each ass cheek three or four times. he adds to the torture by holding your hair in one hand and moving his other arm around your hip to grind his palm on your clit.

“oh my god, i’m gonna fucking cum luigi…” you breathe out between a moan, a scream and a whisper.

“what’d i tell you?”

“to wait ‘til you tell me to cum!”

“do what i tell you, be a good girl and listen to me.”

your brain is numb and your head falls limp, his grip in your hair is the only thing holding your body close to his.

“you’re so fucking pretty, mio amore, can i take a picture?”

you just nod obediently, not really caring too much at this point. he reaches over to the bedside table where he put his phone before dinner and opens the camera, showing your mascara dripping down your face from tears you didn’t know were flowing and an agape mouth, moans slipping through with every motion.

“you see why i love fucking you s’much? hm? look at yourself while i fuck you, baby,” he’s shoving the phone into your hand to palm your clit again. you’re bucking your hips against each form of stimulation with your jaw wide open, breathing shakily.

“there you go, tesoro, y’wanna cum?” he taunts, to which you nod your head and moan a hearty ‘yes!’

his index and middle finger focus on your clit, circling the sensitive bundle of nerves as tightly as he can. your eyes go crossed, no longer paying any attention to the reflection in the camera. luigi’s hand drops from your hair, pushes your head down and arches your back up one more time. he pressed record on the camera and kept up with his cock bullying into your cervix over and over.

“go ahead and cum with me baby, take it like the good girl you are.”

when he gives you permission, almost like a stage cue, you totally let go. your cunt squeezes around him entirely and traps him in. his cock twitches rampantly inside you as he meets his release, watching your face through the camera that you’re gripping onto with your life.

it takes a few minutes to cool off after he lays down beside you, stopping the recording and kissing all over your face. “you did so good for me, baby. sei una brava ragazza*.”

you don’t even have it in you to respond, your chest heaving.

“you think that one will take? should we go for another round?”

this gets a breathless chortle from you. “can i catch my breath first? also, you messed my hair up.”

“so that’s a yes?” he asks, already burying his face into your chest and carefully pressing kisses to your hot skin.

🌺🩷💋

italian words and phrases:

padrini: godparents

tesoro: sweetheart

sono a casa: i’m home!

dimmi cosa vuoi: tell me what you want

sei una brava ragazza: you’re (such) a good girl

[chiiroptereh]

I've been thinking a lot about Euclydian biology lately, specifically in regards to pigmentation thanks to this awesome ask I got on a side blog, and wanted to illustrate some of the ideas I had. Super quick lazy sketches but hey, maybe some of you will dig this! Nerdy stuff under the cut, will make a bit more sense if you read the aforementioned post

Euclydians have a genetic predisposition towards a "resting" color (in Bill's case, yellow). The opposite of this state (full "flexing" of chromatophore-controlling muscles) is also predispositioned, which is what's seen in the threat display. This rapidly stimulates the individual's metabolism and gets their blood really pumping in preparation for conflict, but is also somewhat costly in terms of energy, so is typically only flashed rather than maintained as Bill does it

"Teeth-peeking" is the cute zoology term I came up with for when a Euclydian displays a couple teeth overtop their eye without fully switching into mouth-function, usually as a threat but sometimes a sort of stim when they're hungry

Communicative flashing ("Chromatic") has a few languages. The most primitive is Simplified Emotive which is a quick display of mood, while the most modern is Traditional Chromatic, wherein patterns of color serve as words. Words in Traditional Chromatic are not ciphers like they are in TBoB and there aren't always direct translations into English

There are a couple accepted ways for a naturally colorful Euclydian to signal an emotion or "syllable" that matches their color, typically either by a subtler change in value along the edges or by changing everything BUT the edges

It's probably worth noting that Chromatic of any variant is considered a secondary, uncommon language in modern Euclydian society. It's simply more efficient and easier for most to speak, though I think Simplified Emotive probably stems from the natural threat display and so it's more intuitive. It's not unheard of for someone's edges to flash "angry/surprised" (◼) for a second if you bump into them on the sidewalk

A memetic blush is a learned behaviour in which individuals appear to fluster by a reddish shift in color along the face, edges and vertices. This might just be something Bill (or hypothetically other Euclydians who come into contact with humans) does I'm not sure yet but it's cute so

Given the body needs to conserve more energy when fighting illness, it's not uncommon for chromatophore muscles to weaken or spasm in order to lessen metabolic strain, giving the individual a patchy look that often reveals the naturally white skin below the chromatophore layer

When rigor mortis occurs in a dead Euclydian, all the minute muscles in control of chromatophore dilation contract all at once, rendering the entire body white. Because of this, white is considered a bit of a grim color in Euclydian culture; you know emos are wearing all-white instead of all-black

Conversely, a perfect, non-tinted grey is a regal shade because it's seen as a sign of fitness and strength. Maintaining a neutral grey requires very precise control over one's chromatophores to get the balance right and hold it there

Euclydians are capable of training the muscles that control their chromatophores like any other, and as a result can change their resting color with enough discipline! They can also use this technique to give themselves markings. Haven't decided the cultural implications of this entirely, but I think the idea of someone training themselves to match their threat display so nobody can tell when they're angry, for example, is a cool idea. Possibilities!

[ducksido]

Hai! Evil evil Idia anon back😝😝😝 okay so Idia with a pommefiore reader, like a super duper pretty reader, on day someone tries to hit on reader in hallway (think pick up lines like « hey, are u wifi, cause I feel a connection ») and reader’s just staring at them with disgust, but here’s the catch, Idia has access to the school camera’s cause ofc he does and he can’t see readers face from the camera angle and he closed the cameras before finding out if reader accept the random hoollagins flirting, so later reader goes to idia’s dorm and idia’s all like « how’s ur new boyfriend » and being emo as hell, so reader has to comfort Idia and be like « ew I would never date that guy, ur the only Apple of my eye 😘 »

Yayayaayyaayayayay

(welcome back you menace [affectionate])

It was a normal day in NRC.

Translation: chaos in the form of enchanted books throwing themselves off shelves in the library, some Spelldrive brawl in the quad, and a tragic soul trying to hit on you in the hallway.

“Hey… are you Wi-Fi? ‘Cause I’m really feeling a connection.”

You blinked. Slowly. Once. Twice.

The Pomefiore aesthetic was about elegance and beauty, and right now you were channeling utter disgust with the poise of a queen.

“…No.”

You turned and walked off without another word, your heels clicking with purpose, while the guy stood frozen in awkwardness behind you.

Meanwhile— In the depths of Ignihyde dorm… (Idia's room)

“Wha—who the HELL is that?!” Idia hissed, eyes glowing as he squinted at the grainy hallway footage on his screen.

The camera angle was trash. Of course it was. All he could see was the back of your head, silky and shining as always, while some… normie had the audacity to stand that close to you.

His fingers flew over the keys, adjusting zoom, replaying footage, enhancing audio, muttering like a man possessed.

“Why would they use that line?! That’s not even tier 2 flirt material—who taught him this? A middle schooler??”

He leaned in, cheeks burning. “No no no—don’t tell me—are you smiling? Did you like that? No no no no—”

He slammed the “off” button on the cameras.

He couldn’t watch this.

Later…

You showed up at Ignihyde dorm like nothing happened, knocking lightly on the door to Idia’s room. You’d gotten used to his delays in answering—he needed to prep his courage like a mini boss encounter.

When the door finally slid open, Idia didn’t greet you. He just swiveled in his chair dramatically, wrapped in his hoodie, blanket, and angst.

“Oh. It’s you,” he mumbled, eyes glowing a dim blue. “Shouldn’t you be with your boyfriend right now?”

“…Huh?”

“That guy in the hallway,” he said darkly. “Wi-Fi boy. Smoothbrain McGee. I saw everything. On the cameras.”

Your face contorted into a scandalized grimace. “You mean that dude? The walking pickup line generator?”

He didn’t reply. He just turned back to his monitor, whispering, “It’s fine… I always knew it would happen. I’m not main character material… I’m like the NPC you befriend on side quests before you get a real romance arc—”

“Idia,” you said, flat. “Idia, look at me.”

“…No.”

“Look. At. Me.”

He finally peeked over his shoulder. You leaned in, arms crossed, expression deadpan.

“I would never date that guy. He looked like he got his lines from a cereal box. I was five seconds away from using my Dorm Uniform magic on him.”

“…For real?”

“For real real,” you said, then added with a smirk, “Besides… you’re the only Apple of my eye.”

Idia.exe has stopped functioning.

You swore you saw his soul leave his body and ascend like a pixelated ghost.

“I—I—wha—you’re the one saying pickup lines now?? Is this a reverse Uno??”

You reached out and gently tugged the edge of his hoodie. “You’re lucky I like nerdy reclusive geniuses with surveillance access and low self-esteem.”

He slumped forward with a strangled noise, hiding his red face in his blanket cocoon. “I’m never emotionally recovering from this…”

You giggled, pulling him into a hug despite his dramatic protesting flails.

“Next time you see something on camera, just ask me. I’ll remind you who’s the only person I want to ‘connect’ with.”

“…Can I record you saying that?” he muttered from inside the blanket.

You raised an eyebrow. “For what, your emotional support audio folder?”

“…Maybe.”

You kissed his forehead, and he immediately short-circuited again.

Bonus: Back at Pomefiore dorm, you told Rook the whole story.

He wept.

“Magnifique! The beauty of your loyalty—and your devastating rejection of such a weak pickup line! Truly, your heart belongs to the one who sees you even through camera static!”

“…Rook please stop narrating my love life.”

[rikkahonyaku]

Japan Housing Websites (part one)

Want to move to Japan? Me too! Lately I’ve seen a lot of Instagram pages dedicated to showing off cheap homes in Japan. These pages usually just link back to a Japanese real estate website, so I’d like to list some handy vocabulary to help you navigate the sites and find some houses on your own!

Note: This post was made with intermediate level Japanese learners in mind. It's meant to be a vocabulary list with visual examples, not an all-inclusive house buying guide. A complete list of vocab words can be found at the end of the post. For general website navigation, I’d recommend the RikaiChan / RikaiKun extensions which will display a translation of each word you mouse over.

What Websites?

I really like SUUMO, so that will be the site I use for the example pictures. But any website will have more or less the same words!

Navigating the Website

[ 1 ]　Creating an Account会員（かいいん）登録（とうろく）：Member Registration

[ 2 ]　Search探す（さがす）：Search / Find This word will come up a lot! The search function may also appear as... 検索（けんさく）：Search 物件（ぶっけん）検索：Property Search

Suumo has a nifty map on the front page. If you know the region you'd like to search in, you can choose it here.

[ 3 ]　Renting 借りる（かりる）：Rent (Borrow) 賃貸（ちんたい）：Lease / Rent

[ 4 ]　Purchasing買う（かう）：Buy

[ 5 ]　House Terminology If you've taken a Japanese class, you may have learned that the Japanese word for house is 家 or いえ. Unfortunately, this short and simple word isn't used much on real estate websites. The following terms are typically used instead.

一戸建て（いっこだて）：Detached Building A standalone house, as opposed to an apartment or condo.

新築（しんちく）一戸建て：New Buildings

中古（ちゅうこ）一戸建て：Old Buildings 中古 can mean "old", "used", or “secondhand”, none of which sound ideal, but all it means is that the house that has been lived in previously. This is where you find the cheap ones!

Finding Houses

Once you have the region and building type selected, you’ll see a new map you can use to select the prefecture. I'll highlight a few key search methods on this screen.

[ 1 ]　Search by Area（エリア）

Click on a prefecture to bring up a checklist of cities and districts. At the bottom of the list, you'll see two options: refining the search further or proceeding with the checked options.

「チェックした市区郡の町名を絞り込む」 "Narrow by town names of checked cities/wards/districts"

市区郡（しく��ん）："City Ward District" 町名（ちょうめい）：Town Name 絞り込む（しぼりこむ）：Narrow / Refine

「この条件で検索する」 "Search with these conditions"

条件（じょうけん）：Condition / Term

The orange number shows how many total properties were found with the checked selections. Click the blue search button if you want to jump straight to the houses without refining the search.

[ 2 ]　Search by Railway（沿線）or Station（駅）

Click on a prefecture to bring up a checklist of railways. At the bottom of the list, you'll see two options: refining the search further or proceeding with the checked options.

「チェックした沿線の駅を絞り込む」 "Narrow by stations of checked railways"

沿線（えんせん）：Railway / Track 駅（えき）：Station 絞り込む（しぼりこむ）：Narrow / Refine

「この条件で検索する」 "Search with these conditions"

条件（じょうけん）：Condition / Term

Once again, the orange number shows how many total properties were found with the checked selections. Click the blue search button if you want to jump straight to the houses without refining the search.

[ 3 ]　Search by Map（地図、ちず） Clicking here will open up a much more detailed map that you can scroll through! Definitely the easiest option, which is why I put it last. :)

The End.

Here's the complete vocab list for ease of viewing:

会員（かいいん）：Member 登録（とうろく）：Registration 探す（さがす）：Search / Find 検索（けんさく）：Search 物件（ぶっけん）検索：Property Search 借りる（かりる）：Rent (Borrow) 賃貸（ちんたい）：Lease / Rent 買う（かう）：Buy 一戸建て（いっこだて）：Detached Building 新築（しんちく）一戸建て：New Buildings 中古（ちゅうこ）一戸建て：Old Buildings 市区郡（しくぐん）："City Ward District" 町名（ちょうめい）：Town Name 沿線（えんせん）：Railway / Track 駅（えき）：Station 絞り込む（しぼりこむ）：Narrow / Refine 条件（じょうけん）：Condition / Term

[theastralsage]

Between Silence and Stillness

❤︎ tags and content: hurt/comfort, smut with feelings, mutual pining, zayne is in love, zayne x f!reader ❤︎ author note: reuploaded 🔞NSFW content - Minors DNI 🔞 Dividers: @/omi.resources ©2025 theastralsage do not repost, copy, translate, or modify

The air was thick with smoke and scorched ozone, the remnants of a Wanderer’s devastation lingering like the echo of a scream that refused to die, clinging to the collapsed buildings and shattered pavement as if the city itself had drawn a ragged breath and forgotten how to exhale. Sirens wailed in the distance, their sound fractured by the broken skyline, and the distant hiss of ruptured gas lines gave a rhythm to the silence, a heartbeat beneath the ruin.

You stumbled forward through the wreckage, the bite of gravel and broken glass beneath your boots barely registering over the dull throb pulsing at your temple. Dust clung to your lashes, to the blood that traced a slow, warm line down your cheek, and the gash above your brow blurred your vision in soft streaks of crimson—but you were upright, breathing, and conscious, which, in the aftermath of a Category-Three, felt like a miracle in itself.

And then, like some frozen current had torn through the heavy air and cleaved it in two, he appeared.

Zayne moved through the smoke with the kind of unrelenting purpose that turned heads and silenced rooms, his figure cutting clean against the gray haze like a scalpel through flesh—sharp, deliberate, and brimming with controlled fury. His gaze locked onto you the instant your form emerged from the rubble, and whatever thought he’d been having was erased in that moment, overwritten by something deeper and far more dangerous than concern.

You breathed his name like a half-prayer, half-exhale, the weight of survival catching up to you all at once. “Zayne.”

But he didn’t answer. He simply stared, motionless in the destruction, and for a beat too long, it was as if the battlefield around you ceased to exist—the firelight dimmed, the sirens faded, and the crackling remnants of chaos melted into silence beneath the force of that look.

One moment you were standing alone in the remnants of a collapsed corridor, and the next his hands were on your face, gloved fingers cupping your jaw with clinical precision that barely concealed the tremor just beneath his touch. He examined you like he didn’t trust his eyes—his thumbs brushing along the curve of your cheekbones to wipe away the blood that had begun to dry, his breath shallow and laced with something far more potent than adrenaline.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, though it sounded more like an accusation than a statement, his voice tight and low, the kind of tone he only used when something inside him was unraveling.

“It’s superficial,” you replied, or tried to, the words catching slightly as the pads of his fingers ghosted over the edge of your wound. “It looks worse than it is.”

But Zayne wasn’t listening. Not really. He was already cataloging each cut, each scrape, each place where your skin had come too close to destruction—and when his gaze dropped to the tear in your jacket, revealing the singed fabric beneath and the faint bruise blooming along your ribs, something subtle but unmistakable shifted in the set of his shoulders.

Without a word, he wrapped an arm around your waist, firm but careful, guiding you with a precision that left no room for protest.

“You’re coming with me,” he said, his voice quieter now, but no less commanding. “To the hospital.”

“I can go to HQ—”

“No.”

It was a single word, clipped and final, spoken in that tone of his that ended all further discussion before it could begin.

The journey back through the heart of Linkon was a blur, the city a smear of flickering lights and half-functioning infrastructure in your periphery, but you barely registered the passage of time, focused only on the subtle pressure of Zayne’s hand at your back, the way he moved like a blade honed too sharp to be touched. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Every clipped step down the sterile corridors of Akso, every passing glance from the staff that caught the edge of his expression and immediately looked away, said enough.

The moment his office door slid shut behind you with the soft hiss of sealed air, the world exhaled.

You stood in a space that mirrored him almost perfectly—modern, minimal, composed. The sleek surfaces gleamed under low lighting, chrome and dark wood softened only by the faint hum of the central systems that kept the temperature just shy of clinical. A wall of glass framed the city below, the storm-drenched skyline veiled in rain and the dim flicker of auxiliary power grids.

He said nothing as he motioned toward the long couch against the far wall, one clearly used more for medical examinations than relaxation, and began to gather supplies from a cabinet beside his desk. Antiseptic. Gauze. Suture strips. Every movement was exact, measured down to the angle of his wrists, but you could see it—the tension in his shoulders, the rigidity in his posture, the storm trapped behind the glass of his composure.

When he returned to you, he knelt without ceremony, one hand curling around your wrist to steady your arm while the other began to clean the wound at your temple. The antiseptic stung, but not as much as the silence.

“You didn’t follow protocol,” he said at last, voice low, not angry—but dangerous in its restraint.

“There was a child,” you answered, your own tone soft but firm. “Trapped under the east wing.”

“And what if you hadn’t made it out?” he asked, still focused on his work, though the set of his jaw betrayed him.

“Then I’d have gone down doing something that mattered.”

Zayne exhaled slowly through his nose, his grip on the gauze faltering for just a second before he steadied it again. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not?” you asked, trying—and failing—not to let your voice tremble. “Because it scares you?”

He didn’t answer. Not immediately. Instead, he set the gauze aside, his hand lingering on your cheek as he met your gaze—and for a moment, everything else receded.

Not the blood. Not the bruises. Not even the war outside the hospital walls.

Just that look. Unfiltered. Unmasked. Something raw flickered in his eyes—briefly, beautifully—and you recognized it for what it was.

Fear.

Not of you. Not of the danger you’d faced. But of losing you. He spoke your name then—quietly, carefully, like it tasted different on his tongue now. As if everything he’d been holding back was wrapped in just those two syllables.

“You could’ve died,” he whispered.

You hadn’t meant to raise your voice, not really, but something about the look in his eyes—the way he hovered so close yet refused to speak the truth—ignited something sharp in your chest, a flare of defiance that rose before you could smooth it over.

“I’m not reckless,” you said, quieter than a shout but no less firm, the edge of irritation threading through your words, not at him exactly, but at the way he seemed to fold you into some delicate category that had never suited you. “I knew what I was doing.”

Zayne didn’t respond, not immediately, his silence louder than most people's shouting, his hands still hovering near your skin like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to keep touching you or if he’d already crossed some invisible line. You could see it in the twitch of his jaw, in the way his gaze had dropped to the floor between you—as though looking at you too long might make something unravel in him that he wouldn’t be able to take back.

“I am not some fragile thing you need to rescue, Zayne,” you continued, stepping toward him, voice low but unflinching, the words drawn not from pride but from something deeper—something that had been sitting heavy on your chest for far too long. “I’ve trained for this. I’ve survived worse than this. I knew the risks, I assessed the situation, and I made a call—and if it were anyone else, you’d respect that.”

His eyes lifted then, the weight of them sudden and sharp, and the look he gave you was so full of restrained emotion it nearly stopped the breath in your throat. You weren’t sure what you expected—maybe a retort, maybe silence—but when he finally spoke, his voice was rough around the edges, like something too long kept beneath water had finally broken through the surface.

“It’s not the same.”

“Why?” you asked, quietly now. Not because the fight had gone out of you, but because something else had taken its place—something heavier, quieter, something that hurt a little to say out loud. “Because it was me?”

Zayne exhaled slowly, like the weight of your words had hit exactly where he’d hoped you wouldn’t aim, and when he turned away, it wasn’t avoidance—it was strategy, a feint, like if he gave himself just one more second, he might be able to gather the pieces of whatever composure he had left. He braced both hands on the edge of the desk behind him, head bowed slightly, shoulders taut beneath the fabric of his coat, and when he finally answered, the words were so quiet they barely carried across the space between you.

“Yes.”

Just that.

One word, but it broke something open.

“I know you’re capable,” he said, not looking at you now, because if he did, he might not be able to stop. “I know how skilled you are. I’ve read your reports, I’ve seen you in the field, I’ve watched you walk into situations most people wouldn’t dare touch and come out stronger. I trust you.”

He paused then, his knuckles white against the edge of the desk.

“But that doesn’t make me any less terrified.”

Your breath caught, your heart stuttering somewhere behind your ribs, and for a moment, the silence between you felt like it had its own gravity.

“I’m not built for this,” he went on, his voice quieter now, rougher around the edges, like it was costing him something just to say the words. “This… whatever this is between us. I’ve spent my entire life learning how to detach, how to stay focused, how to be precise. I don’t make mistakes. I don’t let my emotions interfere. But today—” He broke off, inhaling sharply. “Today, I saw that building fall and thought I might never see you again, and I realized that somewhere along the way, you stopped being just another person I was trying to protect.”

He turned toward you then, finally, and the look in his eyes—raw, open, unguarded—was something you’d never seen from him before. Not even in the quiet moments, not even in the way he sometimes lingered just a second too long after a conversation had ended.

“You do mean something to me,” he said, no flourish, no metaphor, just the plain and devastating truth of it laid bare. “You have for a long time. And I’ve tried—I’ve really tried—to keep that to myself, because I didn’t want it to compromise you, or me, or the work we do. But the moment I thought you were gone—”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to.

You stepped forward without thinking, closing the last few inches between you, and though he didn’t reach for you at first, he didn’t back away either. He just stood there, breathing you in like the silence between you had finally shattered, and all that was left was the truth of what had been building for far too long.

“Then stop pretending,” you whispered, not pleading, just honest. “Because I’m done pretending too.”

And then—very slowly, as if giving you one last chance to pull away—Zayne lifted his hand to your face again, and this time, when his fingers brushed over your cheek, there was nothing clinical in the touch.

Only heat. Only want. Only everything he’d finally stopped trying to bury.

***

His touch lingered against your cheek, and for a long, breathless moment, he didn’t move—didn’t lean in, didn’t pull you closer, didn’t cross that final line—but you could feel the tension radiating off him in waves, like something inside him was tearing loose at the seams, something he’d spent years reinforcing with steel and silence. His gaze flicked between your eyes, searching, almost hesitant, as if he still couldn’t believe you were here, that this moment was real, that it was allowed.

With every inch of emotion he had kept buried, every unsaid word, every glance that had lingered too long and every touch that had stopped just short of crossing the line. His lips brushed yours like a question at first—soft, almost reverent—testing, asking, offering, not demanding.

But when you answered—when you leaned in, tilted your head, parted your lips against his like the answer had been yes for months—his control shattered in a way that was quiet, but absolute.

Zayne kissed like a man who had held himself back too long, who had known the taste of denial far more intimately than desire, and now that he had you, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to stop. His hand slid into your hair, fingers curling at the nape of your neck with a pressure that bordered on possessive, and the other found your waist, pulling you flush against him with a low, almost involuntary sound caught somewhere in the back of his throat.

The heat between you bloomed slowly but fiercely, like a frostbitten surface thawing all at once under direct flame, and you could feel the shift in him—the unraveling of restraint, the sharp need held just beneath the surface, the way his mouth moved against yours with a precision that had nothing to do with technique and everything to do with wanting. Wanting you.

When his tongue slid past your lips—slow, deliberate, tasting like control just beginning to slip—it wasn’t a demand, but an inevitability, and you met him there with a hunger of your own, one you’d buried under professionalism, under friendship, under all the lines neither of you had dared cross until now.

You didn’t remember moving, but your back met the edge of his desk with a soft thud, and Zayne pressed into the space between your knees like he belonged there, like he’d always been meant to fit against you in that exact way, body to body, breath to breath. His coat was still half-buttoned, his tie loosened but not undone, and there was something unbearably hot in the contrast of his usual precision against the way his hands now gripped your thighs like he was barely holding himself together.

He pulled back just enough to look at you, his lips flushed, his breath uneven, and there was something dark and tender in his expression—something vulnerable.

“I should stop,” he murmured, voice hoarse and wrecked and so clearly full of want that it made your pulse stutter. “You’re still hurt. You should be resting. I should be—”

“Don’t,” you whispered, fingers curling into the front of his shirt, anchoring him there, needing him close in a way that had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with finally, finally being allowed to feel. “I don’t want you to stop.”

His breath hitched—sharp, quiet, and full of something he couldn’t hide anymore.

And then he kissed you again—deeper this time, with none of the hesitation, none of the careful restraint he’d worn like armor for so long. This kiss was heat and gravity and confession all at once, the culmination of too many moments where he'd looked at you like this, touched you like this, but always stopped short.

His mouth moved over yours like he was memorizing you—each kiss a little deeper, a little more unraveled, his fingers tightening at your waist like he needed to anchor himself or risk losing the last threads of control that held him together. You felt it in the way his body pressed closer, the faint tremor in his breath as your hand slid beneath the lapel of his coat, fingertips grazing the warm line of his collarbone through the thin fabric of his shirt.

When he pulled back, it was only far enough to look at you again—eyes dark and burning with something deeper than heat, something aching, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to fall to his knees or drag you back against him until there was no space left at all.

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he murmured, his voice little more than a rasp against your lips, and the way he said it—low, reverent, like a confession half-laced with regret—sent a shiver spiraling down your spine.

“I think I do,” you whispered back, your palm flattening over his chest, right where his heartbeat thundered beneath the neatly pressed fabric. “I just think you’re the one who’s been pretending it doesn’t matter.”

That broke something in him.

Zayne reached up, slow and deliberate, brushing your hair away from your face before his hand drifted lower—fingertips tracing the line of your jaw, the curve of your throat, down the slope of your shoulder until his thumb brushed over the bruised edge of your collarbone where the blast had caught you. He didn’t speak. Didn’t ask if it hurt. Just looked at you like every mark on your body was a testament to the fact that you were still here, and he would carry the weight of what could have been for the rest of his life if you hadn’t been.

Then he dropped to his knees. Not dramatically. Not suddenly.

Just—quietly. Like worship.

His hands slid over your thighs, spreading them apart with care as he settled between them, not as a man seeking pleasure but as someone reverent, desperate to see, to touch, to know that you were real and whole and still his to reach for. He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee, then another higher up, his hands trailing along the backs of your calves as if grounding himself in every inch of you.

When he looked up, the storm in his eyes had settled into something deeper, heavier—a kind of devotion that made your breath catch.

“I need you to tell me if I go too far,” he said, and though his voice was calm, it trembled with restraint, with a kind of honesty that was more intimate than anything else he’d touched. “Because if I start, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

You leaned down slightly, threading your fingers through his hair, tugging gently until his mouth met yours again—hot, open, hungry.

“Then don’t stop,” you breathed against him, and the shiver that passed through his body in response was almost violent.

But he didn’t rush. No—Zayne wasn’t built for frenzy. He was built for precision, for control, for the exquisite torment of taking his time. And now, with you beneath his hands and your words echoing in his mind, he was going to feel this—every inch, every gasp, every surrender—and make sure you felt it too.

He stood again, slow and fluid, and this time when he kissed you, there was no hesitation. His hands found the hem of your shirt, fingers sliding beneath the fabric, not tugging it away just yet, but mapping the heat of your skin like he wanted to memorize the shape of you before daring to bare it completely. When his mouth trailed down your neck, his tongue flicking lightly over the pulse beneath your jaw, you felt your knees weaken—not from shock, but from the overwhelming, maddening care he took with every movement.

He pulled back enough to murmur against your skin, his voice no longer ragged, but dark and velvety, controlled in a way that only made the tension coil tighter in your gut.

“Tell me what you need, and I’ll give you all of it.”

Zayne didn’t move quickly—he never did—but there was a new kind of gravity to the way his hands slid beneath the hem of your shirt, slow and deliberate, his eyes never leaving yours as if waiting for that single moment of hesitation, that flicker of uncertainty that would stop him in his tracks. But it didn’t come. You gave him nothing but breathless stillness, a trust that shimmered in your gaze and tightened in your throat as he began to lift the fabric upward, inch by inch.

His fingers brushed over bare skin as he went—knuckles grazing your ribs, the heel of his palm sliding up your stomach—and it wasn’t just undressing. It was unveiling. Like every inch of skin revealed beneath his touch was sacred, something he hadn’t dared imagine he’d ever be permitted to see, let alone claim.

The shirt cleared your shoulders, then your arms, and he let it fall behind you without looking away. His hands came back to rest against your waist, warm and steady, grounding you there against the edge of his desk like he was anchoring himself in the moment just as much as you.

Then—his mouth followed.

He dipped his head and pressed a kiss just below your collarbone, soft at first, almost tentative, and then another, slightly lower, lips brushing over bruised skin with something that felt like apology and promise all at once. His hands smoothed over your sides, thumbs tracing the line of your ribcage, his touch so gentle it made your whole body ache with the restraint of it. He could have taken more—gripped harder, pulled faster—but he didn’t. He wouldn’t.

Zayne worshipped.

He moved down your body in careful increments, kissing the curve of your breast, the space just beneath, the line where your skin dipped into your abdomen. With each movement, his mouth lingered a little longer, growing more emboldened, but never hurried. He wasn’t trying to coax a reaction out of you—he was absorbing you, like he needed the memory of your taste, your scent, the way your breath caught under his lips, to anchor himself against the chaos he so often lived within.

When his hands found the waistband of your pants, he paused—not for effect, not to tease, but because he was looking up at you again, his eyes dark and unreadable, searching your face as if to ask again: Are you sure? Can I have this? Can I have you?

And when you gave him that small nod, your hand threading into his hair in silent permission, his mouth curved—not quite into a smile, but something softer, something awed.

His fingers moved then, undoing the fastenings with the same precision you’d seen him use on an operating table—no fumbling, no urgency, just calm control made intimate. He knelt again as he slid the fabric down your hips, his mouth brushing along the exposed skin as it appeared, lips trailing over the crest of your hipbone, the sensitive skin just beside it, the place where your breath hitched and your fingers clenched a little tighter into the strands of his hair.

He peeled the last of your clothing from your legs with reverent care, pausing only to press a kiss to the inside of your thigh, then another higher up—closer now, not yet there, but near enough that your pulse stuttered under your skin. And when you stood before him, completely bare, body humming with anticipation and heat, Zayne didn’t rush to touch you again. He just looked.

And gods, the way he looked at you.

Like you were something celestial—something rare and luminous and his for the first time after years of telling himself he didn’t deserve to want it. There was no hunger in his expression, not yet. Only awe.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, so quietly it almost got lost beneath the sound of your breathing, but the weight of it settled low in your belly, deeper than anything he’d touched so far. With a kind of reverent finality, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to your hip, his hands curling gently around the backs of your thighs as he breathed you in—slow, unhurried, devoted.

“I’ve imagined this,” he murmured against your skin, voice rougher now, the edge of restraint starting to fray. “But it doesn’t come close.”

Zayne remained on his knees before you, hands cradling the backs of your thighs like you were something both sacred and fragile, something he was desperate to claim but terrified to break. His breath skimmed over your skin in slow, measured exhales, but the control in his expression had begun to shift—no longer absolute, no longer cold. There was warmth now, fire, barely banked, flickering just beneath the surface.

His mouth found your inner thigh again, lips parting just enough to press a kiss softer than breath, and then another, higher this time, his tongue flicking out to taste the heat of your skin. You felt it in your knees first—the weakness, the way the air seemed thinner here, in the center of his attention—and then in your gut, in the low, tightening ache that built with every kiss he laid along the insides of your thighs, closer and closer until the space between them was lit with anticipation.

But he didn’t rush. Of course he didn’t.

Zayne moved like a man savoring something he’d denied himself for far too long—kissing his way inward with reverent precision, letting his nose brush where your scent was strongest, his breath now ragged, shallow, no longer untouched by want.

And when his mouth finally found you—when his lips parted against your folds, his tongue sliding slow and deliberate through your heat—you swore you stopped breathing.

He groaned softly at the first taste of you, the sound low and guttural, and his hands tightened just slightly around your thighs, drawing you closer to his mouth with a reverence that bordered on desperate. His tongue moved with practiced care, circling your clit with maddening restraint before dipping lower, exploring, tasting, claiming you in long, slow strokes that left no part of you untouched.

It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t messy. It was methodical—Zayne—but laced with so much intensity that you couldn’t stay still beneath it.

He mapped you with his mouth like a man memorizing scripture, his lips sealing around the most sensitive part of you in soft pulses that had your hips arching toward him before you realized you were moving, a sound escaping your lips that barely resembled his name.

Your hands found his hair, tangling in it, pulling—not to guide him, not really, because he knew exactly what he was doing—but because you needed something to hold onto, something to ground you as your body began to tremble under the weight of the pressure he was building so expertly inside you.

When he groaned again, it vibrated through you, deep and devastating, and his hands slid higher, over your hips now, holding you there, mouth pressed fully to your core like he couldn’t get close enough, like he wanted to devour you.

You gasped his name, breath hitching, thighs beginning to shake, but he didn’t let up. If anything, he doubled down—tongue swirling, sucking, licking in precise, devastating patterns that had your spine arching and your breath breaking apart in his hands.

“Zayne—” you gasped, and gods, the way his name tasted on your tongue, the way he moaned into you when you said it—it only made it worse.

Or better. You weren’t sure anymore. Your thighs began to close around his head, overwhelmed by sensation, but he just gripped your hips tighter, dragging you impossibly closer as his mouth worked you open again and again, coaxing you to the edge with maddening control, keeping you there, circling your clit with just enough pressure to make you cry out, to make your legs tremble harder, to make your voice break.

“I—Zayne, please—” The words tumbled out before you could catch them, raw and pleading, so unlike your usual self it would’ve startled you if you weren’t already drowning in the pleasure of it. “I can’t—please, I need you, I need—”

That stopped him. He pulled back just enough to look up at you, mouth slick with your arousal, hair tousled where your hands had pulled at it, and the sight of him like that—on his knees, ruined for you, because of you—sent another shockwave through your body. His voice, when he spoke, was wrecked.

“I’ve wanted to hear you beg like that,” he murmured, dragging his hands slowly up your waist, rising to his feet in one sinuous, predatory motion that left your breath shallow and your body desperate. “But now that I have…”

He leaned in, mouth brushing against your ear, his voice low and full of hunger he could no longer hide.

“…I don’t think I can hold back anymore.”

He kissed you again, softer this time—no less hungry, but gentler now, as though something in your plea had snapped him out of the heat and reminded him of everything that had led to this moment. You weren’t just here in his office, bare and shaking with want; you were here after a near-death encounter, after pulling yourself from the rubble of a city half in ruin, after walking through smoke and blood and broken concrete to find him again.

And Zayne… he felt it.

You could see it in his eyes—how fiercely he wanted you, yes, but also how carefully he reached for you now, his hands warm and steady as they returned to your body like a man laying hands on something precious. He slid one hand behind your back, the other beneath your thighs, lifting you with effortless strength as though you weighed nothing at all, and he set you down on the edge of his desk with a gentleness that made your chest ache.

“You’re still hurt,” he murmured, the words rough around the edges, not because he doubted your desire but because he couldn’t bear the idea of causing you pain when all he wanted was to worship you. “I need you to tell me if anything feels wrong. If it’s too much, if you—”

You kissed him this time—slow, deep, silencing the storm of worry before it could take root.

“I want you,” you whispered, pressing your forehead to his, your breath mingling with his. “I need you. I’m okay. I swear.”

He took his time undressing himself—unbuttoning his shirt one piece at a time, sleeves rolled up with meticulous care as if revealing himself to you meant just as much as touching you. When his skin finally met yours—warm, solid, unyielding—it felt like something inside you had finally clicked into place.

He kissed you again, this time along the curve of your shoulder, then lower, down the center of your chest, lingering where bruises had bloomed, his lips moving with almost unbearable tenderness over every mark like he was apologizing for the world and every wound it had dared leave on your skin.

Then he pressed his forehead to your sternum, and stayed there for a moment, his breath shaky, his hands splayed against your hips.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he said softly. “And I don’t know how to come back from that.”

You ran your fingers through his hair, smoothing it back from his face, and tilted his chin until his gaze met yours. “You didn’t lose me,” you whispered. “I’m right here. Take me, Zayne. Please.”

And gods, the way he responded to that—like it undid something deep in his chest, like your permission healed something raw in him—was almost more intimate than anything else.

He lined himself up between your thighs, and even then, even as his body trembled and the tension rolled off him in waves, he didn’t move until your hands were on him, until your legs pulled him closer, until you looked him in the eye and let him in.

When he finally slid into you, it was slow—so slow—his breath catching in his throat like the feel of you was overwhelming, like it wrecked him more than any enemy ever could. He groaned low in his chest, a sound you felt more than heard, and his forehead dropped to yours as he pushed in fully, his hands bracing on either side of you to keep himself grounded.

“God,” he whispered, breath ragged, “you feel…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, just kissed you again, a soft, aching thing full of reverence and restraint, hips rolling gently as he began to move.

Every stroke was deep, steady, as though he wanted you to feel each inch of him, to memorize the shape of his devotion. His hands slid behind your back, holding you close with an unyielding tenderness, his thumbs brushing over your spine as if he was still checking for pain, still protecting even as he came undone inside you.

You moaned his name into his mouth, breath breaking, and the way he responded—his hips stuttering, a soft, desperate sound caught in his throat—made your whole body tighten around him.

“Zayne,” you gasped, fingers digging into his back, nails scraping over sweat-slick skin. “Please—don’t stop. Please.”

“I won’t,” he breathed, voice raw, lips trailing down your jaw as he rocked into you with devastating care. “Not until you fall apart for me. Not until you know exactly what you mean to me.”

And he kept going—slow, deep, loving—as the world outside that office slipped away, and all that remained was the rhythm of your bodies, the heat between you, and the soft, trembling truth of everything you’d both kept locked away… until now.

Zayne’s rhythm remained steady—controlled, reverent—as if every movement was a prayer pressed into your skin, an act of penance for the times he’d stood too far, looked too long, wanted too much and told himself he shouldn’t. His thrusts were deep and deliberate, angled with precision, hitting that tender, aching place inside you again and again until your body melted around him, until the words on your tongue dissolved into gasps and half-formed moans that only he had ever drawn from you.

He watched you like he was unraveling—like he couldn’t look away, couldn’t blink, couldn’t breathe without the sight of you falling apart beneath him. His lips grazed your cheekbone, your jaw, the hollow beneath your ear where he whispered your name like it was the only thing he remembered from a lifetime before this.

“Look at me,” he murmured, voice low and trembling as his hips rolled into yours again, and again. “Let me see you.”

And you did—you looked at him, really looked, and the emotion in his eyes wrecked you more than the slow, grinding pleasure building between your thighs. You saw the weight he’d carried, the terror of nearly losing you, the hunger that had lived beneath his skin for far too long. But beneath all of that—there was love.

Undeniable, quiet, crushing.

His hand found yours where it clutched his shoulder, fingers intertwining as he rocked into you deeper, harder now, but never losing that softness, that care, even as your cries grew more desperate, your legs tightening around his waist as if trying to draw him deeper still.

Your head fell back with a choked gasp, body trembling around him as the tension in your core coiled tighter, hotter, until it felt like the entire world had narrowed to the place where he moved inside you, the sounds he made, the way he touched you like he was afraid you might disappear if he let go.

“Zayne—” you breathed, voice breaking as your body began to shake beneath the mounting pressure. “I—I'm so close, I—please, don’t stop—”

He groaned against your skin, mouth pressing to your collarbone, and his thrusts grew just a little deeper, more insistent, his pace edging into something he could barely restrain, like your voice alone was enough to undo him.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’m right here. Let go for me.”

And with those words—low, tender, commanding—the world tipped sideways.

Your climax hit hard, sweeping through you like a tidal wave, unstoppable and consuming, your body clenching around him in rhythmic spasms as you cried out his name, nails digging into his back, stars bursting behind your eyes. Every nerve lit up under his touch, every muscle trembling as he held you through it, his arms tightening around you like he could shield you from even your own undoing.

He followed not long after, burying himself deep as he let out a broken, guttural sound against your neck, his body shuddering through the release with the kind of quiet intensity only Zayne could have—something not loud or rough, but devastating in how full of feeling it was.

For a long, beautiful moment, neither of you moved. Your breaths tangled. Your hearts pounded in sync. His forehead rested against yours, his fingers brushing lazy, trembling circles into your hip like he couldn’t stop touching you, not now, not after this.

And when he finally spoke, his voice was soft. Fragile.

“I love you.”

You pulled him close again—not because he needed to say it, but because it had been there all along, in every kiss, every sigh, every slow, careful thrust that felt like a vow stitched into your skin.

“I know,” you whispered back, lips brushing his. “I love you too.”

The silence that followed was not empty, but full—thick with unspoken things that didn’t need to be voiced just yet, with breathless warmth and the faint tremble of overworked limbs finally beginning to settle. Zayne didn’t move at first, still nestled between your thighs, forehead resting lightly against yours, his breath brushing your lips as he slowed his own heart alongside yours.

His arms remained around you, cradling your back and waist like you were still something fragile, even now, even after you’d taken everything he’d given you and asked for more.

“You okay?” he whispered, barely above a breath.

You nodded, dazed and glowing, a small smile curving your lips. “More than okay.”

He exhaled—long, quiet, like he’d been holding that breath in for longer than just the last few minutes. Then, with gentle hands, he lifted you slightly, his movements so careful you barely noticed you were being repositioned until your back met the cool surface of the desk again, this time cushioned by the coat he slipped off and laid beneath you.

His fingers brushed along your thigh, now slick and sensitive, and he paused.

“I’m going to clean you up,” he murmured, voice still that soft, steady murmur you’d come to recognize as Zayne’s version of intimacy. “I’ll be gentle.”

And he was. He moved with the same deliberate grace you’d seen him use in surgery, but now it wasn’t detached—it was personal, intimate, achingly tender. He dampened a soft cloth with warm water from the sink tucked in the corner of his office, and when he returned, he knelt between your legs again, his hands supporting your hips as he tended to you with reverence.

The cloth was warm against your skin, soothing, the kind of care that made your chest tighten—not because of discomfort, but because it was him. Zayne. The man who never let anyone see past the practiced calm. The one who barely allowed himself to feel, and yet here he was, cleaning between your thighs with infinite care, pressing a kiss to your knee when you flinched from the oversensitivity, whispering, “Almost done,” like it was more apology than reassurance.

He worked in silence, but his touch never left you—not once.

When he finished, he placed the cloth aside, his hands returning to your waist, thumbs brushing slow circles into your skin like he didn’t want the contact to end.

Then he looked up at you—really looked, like every layer of him had been stripped bare, and there was no mask left to hide behind.

“I don’t always know how to say things,” he admitted, his voice low and laced with something vulnerable, something raw. “I know I come off cold. Distant. Like I’m watching everything from a distance even when I’m right beside you.”

You reached for him, fingers curling lightly at the nape of his neck. “You don’t have to explain.”

“I do,” he said, gently. “Because I want you to know that just because I don’t say it all the time… doesn’t mean it isn’t there. You matter to me. So much more than I’ve let on.”

He shifted forward, resting his forehead against your bare stomach now, his arms wrapping around your hips like he was grounding himself in your warmth.

“I don’t show it the way others do,” he whispered, each word a quiet vow pressed to your skin. “But I will always protect you. Whether you’re right next to me or on the other side of the damn city. Whether you’re bleeding or standing strong. I’ll always be there. I need to be there.”

Your fingers threaded through his hair again, your voice soft but sure. “I know.”

And you did. Because this—his silence, his care, the way he kissed the bruises left behind by the world and still asked Are you okay? like it was the most important question—this was how Zayne loved. Quietly. Fiercely. Completely.

He lifted his head again, eyes searching yours. “You’re staying with me tonight.”

“Wasn’t planning on going anywhere,” you said with a tired smile.

He kissed you one more time, slow and deep, before gently gathering your clothes, helping you into his shirt instead of your own, wrapping you in fabric that smelled like him, that felt like him—warm, safe, steady.

And when he finally carried you to the small couch in the corner, settling you in his lap with a blanket tucked around both of you, he didn’t say another word.

He didn’t have to. His arms were around you. His heartbeat was steady beneath your cheek.

And you fell asleep to the quiet promise of his breath in your hair, the strength of his hold, and the certainty that whatever came next—he was yours.

And you were his.

[scariusaquarius]

rehab. 22.

Avenger! Bucky Barnes x Winter Soldier! Fem! Reader

Summary: While on a mission to find any more possible super soldiers that were a part of the Winter Soldier program, Steve and Bucky make a discovery in an abandoned HYDRA base that was cleared out a few years prior to their mission. They discover the Reader, a long-forgotten soldier that was still asleep within a functioning cryostasis pod; still awaiting orders. While Bucky isn't happy about it, he is put up to the challenge of helping to rehabilitate the soldier in Wakanda where she may be able to become a person again.

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A/n: hnnn like i said, hated the last chapter, so i'm hoping that this one is much better rip so sorry about that!! I really wasn't sure how I wanted last chapter to go smh. Also, if you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee! If you would prefer to read Rehab on Archive, you may do so right HERE!

This is an au where Bucky joined the avengers but still rehabilitated in Wakanda (sometime before Infinity War [canon divergent cause NOPE]). I am NOT fluent in Russian, so I did use google translate cause I couldn't find a good translator that I trusted. If anything is wrong, PLEASE let me know!! Also, I tried to list as many warnings as possible so you know what the story will contain as chapters are posted. Stay safe!

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Genre: Slowburn, Enemies to Lovers/Friends to Lovers, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Humor, Drama, Dark Content Rated: Explicit Warning: Angst, Dark Content: Graphic Depictions of Sexual Assault, Blood and Gore, Mentions of Manipulation, Kidnapping, Canon-Typical Violence, Body Horror, Nonconsensual Body Modification/Scarring, Emotional and Physical Abuse, Mentions of Murder, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts/Ideation, Graphic Depictions of Human Remains, Mentions of Sexual Coercion/Manipulation, Death, Misuse of Drugs/Forced Drugging, Self-Harm (Graphic Depictions and Mentions), Nightmares

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Author: ScariusAquarius

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rehab masterlist. chapter 18 / chapter 19 / chapter 20 / chapter 21

His mind was quiet. For the first time in a long time, Bucky Barnes' mind was quiet. Despite the fact that he knew Wanda had something do with the silence and there was a part of him that was actually enjoying the silence, there was another part of him that was angry.

Bucky didn't like not having control over his own mind and body.

While Wanda was purposefully keeping him calm, there was an untouched part of his mind that was extremely upset at the loss of control. To Bucky, it didn't feel any different than when he was trapped in his mind as the Winter Soldier during the moments he was present. When he was remembering.

His body was stiff as he sat near Rollins, and though Bucky wanted nothing more than to lunge and strangle the man, his body would not respond. It was like pushing against a wall, and no matter how much force he exerted and no matter how much he yelled in anger within his head, Bucky's body just wouldn't respond. Wanda was giving him a sympathetic look, stating softly to him within his mind.

"I'm sorry to do this, James, but we need Rollins alive."

It was strange to hear her voice in his mind though her lips never moved, and Bucky glanced at her, his eyebrow twitching with annoyance. Taking a leap, Bucky began to think.

"What makes you think I'm not in control of myself? You're just like everyone else...always believing that I'm going to revert back to who I was before."

He knew that he was being petty; his words accusatory and sharp with the intention of hurting, but Wanda didn't seem to react. The only inclination of any response was a subtle flash of shame that flickered within her glowing eyes before Wanda turned away from him.

"I do not think that for a second. We were all worried that you were going to breakdown at the revelation of the Winter Soldier having a part of Project Achilles."

The words made his chest cave in, and Bucky clenched his fingers. he hissed his thoughts, feeling as though he was back in a cage where control was an illusion; baring his teeth and tail between his legs as he became defensive.

"That's my choice to make. You don't get to choose how I feel."

His words seem to strike a cord in Wanda, and she glanced back at him, her gaze soft as she whispered.

"I know, and I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to hurt you."

Even through the twinges of betrayal that tickled at his mind; the anxiety and the anger at being forced to relinquish his control over his own mind and body, Bucky understood and knew that Wanda was being honest. He knew that Wanda just wanted to protect him, but Bucky couldn't turn a blind-eye to being made a prisoner in his own mind again.

"I didn't need your help. This is something that I have to live with...to take responsibility for. I did this to (Y/n)."

His fingers were clenching harder, the knuckles on his flesh-hand taut and shaking slightly. Bucky's muscles were tight and uncomfortable, and Wanda sighed slightly.

"Believe me, you will get your time with this vile man."

Bucky wanted to laugh. As if that was ever a question. Getting his alone time with Rollins wasn't just about what he had done to (Y/n)...it was about what Rollins had done to him as well. The hours of torture, of taunts...of watching as Rumlow took his time with him....smiling all the while.

Bucky could feel his fingers threading through his hair, pulling painfully and forcing his head up as lips brushed against his ear; hot and foreboding as the voice whispered promises of obedience and control. The sting was present; the burning the only thing that Bucky could comprehend as cruel taunts and encouragements echoed around the room. They were watching. Just standing and watching.

Why did they hate him? Why did they treat him like this? All the asset wanted was to please and perform well...to fulfill his duty as the Fist of HYDRA. Why did force him to his knees, pulling his hair, forcing his mouth open-

Bucky was suddenly jerked out of his memory, and his gaze flicked to Wanda, who looked horrified. Guilt flooded his body, shame and embarrassment making Bucky cower just the slightest as he attempted to apologize for what Wanda had just witnessed.

"I...I'm sorry."

"No, do not apologize...what they did to you...what they did to all of us...it will never truly leave. We may forget, but our bodies; our feelings...they will always remember. But they will never...ever...do that again as long as we are here with you, James."

Her reassurance didn't go unappreciated, but the damage had already been done. Bucky couldn't look at her; couldn't dare to see the expression that she wore upon her face. Bucky could feel control slipping back to him, the red glow over his body disappearing, and Bucky stood up, immediately leaving to find a quiet spot in the back of the quinjet. Sitting down by himself, he rested his head in his hands and could feel the tears coming to his eyes. As the emotional turmoil began to boil over, Bucky became lost in his thoughts.

No, this wasn't just about what Rollins did to (Y/n). While Bucky did care about the woman, there was still unspoken baggage that Bucky hadn't been able to work through since his time in Wakanda. There was no way to justify the cruel methods Brock Rumlow and his previous Handlers before him had enacted upon Bucky when he would fail, lash out, underperform, or when they just felt like it.

Yes, Bucky knew exactly what (Y/n) was going through...but the knowledge that even he had a hand in her inability to escape from HYDRA had Bucky in shambles.

She's got you to make sure that she doesn't fall back into that place.

But how can Bucky be there for her now and help her out of that familiar darkness when he helped put her there? All that talk of him having the only right to help was bullshit; nullified by his actions. Besides, when (Y/n) began to remember...why would she ever want his help then? When she remembered, Bucky was sure that she would curse him, hate him, make him remember that no matter what he did, HYDRA would always follow him.

You will always be HYDRA. Even if you escape, you will miss your time here. It will call you home whether you like it or not.

Bucky should have known. He should have known that he was connected to her somehow given the timeline. Bucky bit his lip, stifling his sobs as he held his hands up to his mouth, clenching his jaw so hard that he was sure he was going to break his teeth.

What did he not remember about her?

Bucky swallowed thickly, and when he was interrupted by Wanda informing him about their arrival back to Wakanda, he couldn't help but to look at the woman and beg her quietly.

"Please make me remember...what did I do? What did I do to her?"

Wanda's face fell, and she shook her head gently, responding quietly.

"I can't make you remember...that's not my place, and you know that."

Bucky knew he wasn't thinking rationally. He knew that his request wouldn't have been able to be honored, but it didn't make him any less upset. Bucky let his head fall into his hands again, and he whispered softly.

"What am I supposed to do now?"

Wanda pursed her lips, staring Bucky down before she came to stand near him, placing her hand against his shoulder and making him look up at her, his blue eyes red and puffy and nostrils flaring as his lip trembled.

"You face it. What's done is done, and though there is nothing that you can do to change the past, you can change the future. You are not that man anymore, James...and I think (Y/n) will understand that when the time comes. Just give it time. It is not going to be easy...but we are all here for you....for you both. Neither of you have to do this alone."

She then sighed and turned away, adding gently.

"The only thing that you can do is ensure that this never...ever happens again to anyone."

Her words were slightly vague, but Bucky could tell what she was trying to say. The woman stood up, her eyes glowing brighter before she stated.

"I didn't tell you this, but they're planning on moving Rollins to a secure part of the kingdom...and (Y/n) is upset about your absence."

Bucky was surprised, asking as his eyes fluttered just the slightest as he cleared the tears from his eyes.

"She's...upset that I left?"

"She wasn't told about the mission, so she was under the impression that you were retrieving Rollins to return her back to HYDRA. I think she needs to hear it from you that it wasn't the plan."

Bucky took a moment before he shook his head, stating quietly.

"I don't know if I can face her...not after knowing that I had a hand in this...in her."

Wanda was quiet before she comforted gently before turning to leave.

"You don't have to right now...but think about it."

Her exit was quiet; her feet never touching the ground, and Bucky, though feeling slightly better, still felt the bile sitting at the back of his throat. Wiping his eyes and face, Bucky took a calming deep breath before he stood and walked out of the quinjet. While he wasn't surprised to see Steve waiting for him, Bucky wasn't sure if he liked the furious look within his eyes.

Bucky's steps were slow and cautious, and Steve asked him, the anger within his eyes lessening just the slightest as he regarded his friend.

"How are you holding up?"

Bucky gave Steve an annoyed look, shrugging his shoulders.

"As good as I can with knowing that I helped with all of this."

Steve looked at Bucky with a sad yet guilty expression, and Bucky honed in on it immediately. Before he could ask what was going on, however, Steve informed him gently.

"I’ve been thinking… maybe it’s best if you take a step back from helping with (Y/n)'s rehabilitation program. Not because of what happened—but because I can see this is tearing you up, Buck"

There it was again. People trying to tell him how he should feel; trying to control his actions and what he needs to do. Bucky couldn't help but to become upset, giving Steve a glare.

"You think I can't handle it."

Steve was hesitant, shaking his head as he raised his hands in surrender.

"That's not what I'm saying, Bucky."

Bucky couldn't help but to snap, his voice raising just the slightest as he gestured wildly with his hand.

"That's what it sounds like. I have to face this, Steve. I have to face and deal with the fact that I helped put her in this position...that I killed her mom just like I killed Tony's parents...like I've killed everyone else."

Bucky took a breath, his hands trembling and chest tight as the guilt began to eat him alive.

"You know what sucks the most? Out of every single one that I remember...I can't remember her....what I did...what I always do."

Bucky began to walk away, and Steve turned to look at him wistfully and with exasperation. Calling Bucky's name, the man didn't even turn towards Steve, and Steve couldn't help but to sigh and place his hands on his hips. Natasha's voice made Steve turn to her, his gaze sad and upset.

"He's gonna need time, Steve. This wasn't great news for him to hear, you know."

Natasha was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed as she regarded Steve with an expressionless face; her eyes betraying her worry. Steve shook his head, crossing his arms and running a hand over his face.

"I know. I just...I wish he knew that he didn't have to go through this alone."

Natasha was quiet for a moment before she observed.

"You tend to want to insert yourself into his problems a lot. Even if you're coming from a good place, Steve, this is something that Bucky is going to have to do alone."

Steve looked conflicted, staring down at his feet for a few moments before Natasha pushed herself off of the wall to walk back inside, adding.

"Don't push him, Steve. You're just gonna make him runaway again...and he won't come back this time."

Once Steve was left by himself, his shoulders fell, and Steve became lost again; feeling as though his friend was falling through his fingers once again.

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STORY NOTES: The scene opens with Bucky's point of view. While Bucky knows that Wanda is controlling his emotions and mind and is appreciative of the silence, he also is very upset that she is doing this. Bucky makes the correlation between Wanda's mind control and being trapped in his own mind when he was the Winter Soldier. Wanda apologizes to Bucky for having to control him, and Bucky, being petty, snaps that Wanda is 'no better than everyone else' in believing that he would revert back the Winter Soldier at any given moment.

Despite his words having the intention to hurt her feelings, Wanda does not seem to react him. Instead, Wanda explains that everyone was worried about him having a breakdown because of the revelation of the Winter Soldier having a part of Project Achilles, and Bucky becomes distraught at the reminder. Bucky is firm that his feelings are his choice, but he understands that Wanda is just trying to help. Bucky further adds that this revelation is something that Bucky has to work through on his own.

Bucky begins to have a flashback about Rollins when he thinks of the man. He remembers how the man stood by and watched as Brock Rumlow sexually assaulted him for the fun of things, and Bucky is instantly horrified and ashamed when he realizes that Wanda is still able to see into his mind. Wanda, however, is understanding and reassures Bucky that HYDRA will never hurt him ever again. Bucky, however, is already spiraling. Sensing this, Wanda allows Bucky to have complete control, and Bucky immediately retreats to a quiet and empty part of the quinjet.

Bucky begins to cry, thinking about how he understands exactly what (Y/n) is going through and what we went through, but is struggling with the knowledge that he had helped HYDRA capture her before she was able to escape with Doris. Bucky suddenly remembers what Sam had told him about how (Y/n) had Bucky to make sure she 'doesn't fall back into that place,' and Bucky begins to question his authority on the ability to help her. He begins to think about the possibilities that would occur once (Y/n) finally remembers everything, and he is certain that (Y/n) will hate him.

He begins to relapse, thinking that he will never be escape HYDRA, and he struggles with the fact that he is unable to remember (Y/n) and when Wanda comes to inform him that the team has arrived back in Wakanda, Bucky begs Wanda to make him remember. Wanda, however, refuses and tells Bucky that he has to remember on his own. Bucky becomes frustrated, and Wanda adds that even though Bucky can't change the past, he can change the future. Moreover, (Y/n) has a better chance of understanding him instead of blaming him, and that neither of them are alone in this matter.

When Bucky doesn't respond, Wanda reveals that the Avengers are planning on taking Rollins to a secure part of the kingdom and that (Y/n) is upset that Bucky left for the mission. Bucky is surprised by this, and Wanda elaborates that (Y/n) wasn't told about the mission. She tells Bucky that (Y/n) is under the impression that Bucky found Rollins in order to give (Y/n) back to him, and that (Y/n) needs to hear it from Bucky that it was never the plan in the first place. Bucky refuses, stating that he isn't sure if he can face (Y/n), and Wanda reassures him that he doesn't have to, but to think about it.

After waiting a moment once Wanda leaves, Bucky finally leaves the quinjet to be greeted by Steve. Steve reveals that he thinks the best course of action is to take him off of (Y/n)'s rehabilitation program, and Bucky is offended. He accuses Steve of thinking that he can't handle it, and though Steve tries to disagree, Bucky is set in his opinion. Bucky reveals his frustration out of not being able to remember this particular incident, and Bucky walks away from Steve. Although Steve tries to call after him, Bucky ignores him, and Steve becomes upset. Natasha suddenly appears and tells Steve that he needs to give Bucky time to himself, and Steve replies that he doesn't want Bucky to do it alone.

Natasha reprimands Steve, telling him that he needs to stop trying to control Bucky, stop inserting himself where he can in Bucky's problems, and to stop pushing him. She tells him that Steve is going to make Bucky run away before she leaves back inside, leaving Steve by himself to begin thinking about his actions. End scene.

TRANSLATIONS:

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[nightcolorz]

“Armand was lying to Louis about how Marius used to pimp him out to his friends bcus he wanted him to feel bad for him” is perhaps the stupidest and most insane take in the amc iwtv fandom. It’s stupid bcus ik that the ppl saying this r only saying it from a delusional place of “I really don’t want amc iwtv to portray Marius as a bad person so I’m hoping that every instance we have so far of Marius doing bad things isn’t actually canon” and the people who believe this don’t actually think about it in the context of the plot and what a lie like that would mean, bcus if they did they’d realize that it makes no sense and they r delusional.

The craziest part of it is the “Armand is lying about this specifically to try to make Louis feel bad for him” aspect, bcus that implies that armand is 1: willing to vilify Marius (the most important person in his life who he continues to love and admire and hold in deep regard) to gain favor in his relationship with Louis (hot guy he just met) and 2: That Armand somehow needs to make up more bad things that happened to him bcus apparently being enslaved and raped as a child wasn’t enough and he had to throw in a random detail about his makers friends cuz otherwise Louis wouldn’t sympathize with him enough.

Yep that makes sense. Not even to mention how Armand explicitly softens the way he words the fact that Marius pimped him out in a way that makes Marius *look better* bcus he loves him and clearly based on performance context and actual dialogue isn’t looking to make Marius out to be a bad guy when talking about him to Louis. That is definitely the tone in which someone lying about being abused for attention would talk about their abuser! Also, the insinuation that Marius would not do this so it must be a manipulation of the truth is hilarious, bcus Marius sending Armand to have sex with house guests seems to me like a very clear adaption of his actions in the books where he sends Armand to go have sex with ppl at brothels to try to “flesh out his worldly experiences” or whatever. In an adaption where Armand is more explicitly and functionally Marius’s slave (and also a poc with less social privileges) it makes sense that marius making Armand have sex with other people for his warped reasons would translate to house guests instead of prostitutes. Marius does arguably so many more worse things in the books then tell Armand to have sex with his house guests so I don’t see how this is the line that can’t be crossed for some people. I don’t mind if anyone rlly likes Marius or stans him but nothing bothers me more then seeing huge mischaracterizations of my boy Armand so like in conclusion shut up.

[dedalvs]

it's fascinating to me how endlessly complicated High Valyrian seems to be when you answer questions about it. Is there any language in the world more or less at the same level of complexity?

It depends how you're thinking of complexity. All the languages of the world are equally complex. They have to be, because they all need to perform the same function, and they're all used by the same human brains living inside the same humans living human lives. I think English speakers (and hypothesize that, by extension, the same would be true of Chinese speakers, Hawaiian speakers, Vietnamese speakers, Swedish speakers) look at certain other languages and think of them as more complex in the meta sense because they are more morphologically complex.

By this, I mean in English, for a noun you need to know its singular and plural form—that's it. For a verb, you need to know its -s form, its -ed form, its -ing form, and, very rarely, its -en form. There is some irregularity in form for almost all of these (-ing appears to always be regular), but there aren't more forms, outside of "to be", which has a unique first person singular form.

And...that's it, really. We have adjectival comparison, I guess, but even that can be traded out for an expression (aside from "better" which can't be replaced easily by "more good", most comparatives can be replaced—e.g. you can say something is "more red" than something else even though you can also say it's "redder" than something else). There aren't many word form changes in English a user has to learn in order to be able to use those words in a sentence. The same is true of those languages I listed in the parenthetical phrase above.

Compare that to Spanish, where there are more word form changes for verbs in the present tense (indicative and subjunctive) than in the entirety of English. And that's just one tense for verbs! There's loads more that needs to be memorized; many more word form changes you need to know to be able to use words effectively in a sentence. And there are irregularities on top of that!

Is it the case, therefore, that Spanish is more complex than English?

Certainly, Spanish is more morphologically complex, but does that mean you can express more in Spanish than you can in English? Certainly not! So then what does it mean when we say Spanish is more morphologically complex than English? What's the upshot? What does it mean for the language user?

Perhaps it would help if we compare some Spanish verbs and their English translations:

hablabas "you were talking"

hablé "I spoke"

hable "you would speak"

The precise translation of these verbs will depend on context, but this is a fine example. These are all single words of Spanish. They're different forms that must be memorized, but they're single words. The English requires at least two words for each concept.

So which is more complex? On the one hand, you have fewer words but more forms. On the other, more words, and more words = bigger.

And that, essentially, is the crux of it.

Any time you have complexity baked into single words morphologically in one language, you'll find complexity in the form of multiword expressions in a less morphologically complex language. The meanings are always there(*), but they're expressed in different ways.

As English speakers, we're used to having to express things in multiword expressions, and a speaker of a given language will find their own language to be simple just because. We extend that to think of languages like ours as simpler than those that are different. But, in truth, it's six of one, half dozen of another. Furthermore, there's just as much complexity in languages with less morphological complexity. Consider the following expressions in American English:

I walked to the store. ✅

I walked to a store. ✅

I walked to store. ❌

That's pretty standard. English has articles and you need to use them, right?

I ate the dinner. ✅

I ate a dinner. ✅

I ate dinner. ✅

All those are okay. They don't mean the same thing—and, indeed, the first two have much more restricted contexts—but they're all okay. That's a little weird, isn't it?

Not as weird as this:

I made it by the hand. ❌

I made it by a hand. ❌

I made it by hand. ✅

The first two aren't just weird: they're yikes-a-doodle-do wrong. You might try to brush it aside and say that it's just an expression, and, sure, it is, but ask yourself this: how'd that expression come about in the first place? This one is actually from Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) and still works the same way in American English:

You kiss by the book. ✅

You kiss by a book. ❌

You kiss by book. ❌

And just for funsies:

He won by the nose. ❌

He won by a nose. ✅

He won by nose. ❌

You might think the way these shake has to do with what they stand for—that the semantics of the noun in question condition whether or not you can use articles—but consider the first one "store" and compare it to this one:

I walked to the Barnes & Noble. ✅

I walked to a Barnes & Noble. ✅

I walked to Barnes & Noble. ✅

Barnes & Noble is a store, but refer to it by title, and suddenly it's all okay.

Now, if your native language is English, ask yourself: when and how did you learn all of this? Did someone sit you down and tell you where to use which articles and where not to? I'm sure there was some level of instruction you got in elementary school (whether it was accurate or not), but how much of a difference do you think that made? Did you just not use articles before then? And even now, could you explain this? Do you even think about it? Or do you just do it—flawlelssly and effortlessly? Adult learners of English will tell you learning this stuff is a nightmare. Throw in phrasal verbs (pick up vs. pick out vs. pick on vs. pick up on vs. plain old pick) and suddenly English doesn't look too simple anymore.

Bringing this back to your question, when you look at High Valyrian, is there a natural language with an equal amount of morphological complexity? Sure. Maybe something like Latin. But understand that any language will be as complex—not more, not less: as. The only difference with High Valyrian, actually, is its vocabulary isn't as large (give me a couple decades), and it doesn't have nearly as many users as any natural languages. It's also being kept artificially small, in that the language is built up to fit a fictional reality, rather than being expanded to handle anything, the way modern languages are. But pick up any language and it will be equally complex.

(*) From above, it is not always the case that the same "meanings" will be in the equivalent translation of a given sentence. A good example is gender. If you say El río es largo in Spanish it means "The river is long" in English. Like, exactly that. There is no question that these two phrases are functionally equivalent. HOWEVER there is more information in the Spanish sentence. The words el, río and largo are all masculine gender. What does that mean? Nothing more than that they're not feminine. If you hear el in Spanish there are a limited number of words that can legally follow it. When you hear largo, you know that what it refers to has to be in the same class. The function of this is simply to enrich the signal. If you only hear "is large" in English from the previous sentence, you have no idea what noun is large. If you hear es largo in Spanish, you also don't know—but whatever that thing is, you know it has to be masculine. That means that if a Spanish speaker has to guess what es largo they were trivially have a better shot at guessing correctly than an English speaker guessing what "is large" (e.g. if an English speaker has a one in a million shot, a Spanish speaker has a one in 500,000 shot, because roughly half the nouns of Spanish are masculine and half feminine). This means, technically, there's more information in the Spanish sentence than the English sentence, and that information is not represented at all in the English sentence, and is, essentially, unrecoverable. But that "information" is more morphological in nature than semantic.

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

Do you have any specific idioms that you’ve come up with for Rohan?

Yes! I’ve got a huge mishmash of adages, idioms, little sayings and turns of phrase that I’ve made up over time for use among the Rohirrim. A bunch of them are in old posts, which I can’t locate because Tumblr’s search function is garbage, so here’s just a random helping from memory in all of the above categories:

“Crumbs will do when crumbs must do” (often shortened to just “crumbs will do”). Leftover from the famine of the Long Winter, it means “stop whining and make do with what’s available.”

“The proof is on the tongue.” This refers to the cultural tradition that the way to recognize whether a stranger is a friend or foe is to see if they can speak Rohirric, but it gained added nuance after the reign of Thengel, when he came back from Gondor speaking Sindarin and Westron all the time, which rubbed people back home the wrong way. Now it’s used as sort of a general expression about whether something or someone is genuinely of Rohan.

“Cirion didn’t win alone.” Based on Cirion coming to Eorl to ask for his assistance (which ultimately led to the Oath of Eorl and the founding of Rohan), it means “don’t be too proud to ask for help when you need it.”

“[Person] rides with their hands at their chest.” Proper riding posture has your hands at hip level, but amateurs often end up raising them higher to keep their balance (rather than making the correction in their seat as they should). Basically, this is one of the harshest insults you can fling at someone by insinuating that their horsemanship is bad.

“He’s going to hear Béma’s horn.” Referring to Oromë’s sounding of his great horn as he rode against the servants of Morgoth, it means that someone did something very stupid and now he’s going to face wrath for it.

“The glory of the grass is the glory of the field.” I stole a version of this from one of my favorite books, Matrix by Lauren Groff, but I think it’s perfect for a kingdom of plains and grasslands where collectivism is necessary for survival. One blade by itself is nothing, but a field has shape and substance and beauty. And if your field is not doing well, your personal glory as a single blade is still diminished even if your blade is thriving.

“[Person] has gone with Ácith.” Ácith is the Rohirric name for Béma’s wife. Flowers bloom in her wake, and so they believe that the appearance of simbelmynë on their graves means that she’s been there to escort the dead person on to their after life. So to “go with Ácith” means that someone has died.

I *also* really like thinking about unique words that would exist in Rohirric and not in other languages. I’m already on record as saying that I think they have DOZENS of words for “horse” that recognize different distinctions and nuances that no one else bothers with, but I’ve also speculated that they’ve got words like something that translates directly as “oath honor” and means the pride of having fulfilled your promises/commitments at great personal cost.

I totally LOVE this stuff and could sit around thinking about these all day every day, so if anyone else has examples that they want to throw out there, please do. I would LOVE to see them!

Check out part two here!

[weenwrites]

Can I have a cybertronian S/O with TFP Shockwave who’s really REALLY into weaponry and is really invested in his canon arm? Like, analysing and taking notes and asking questions about it, even manoeuvring it to look it up and down but carefully enough to not distract from his work (when he’s working at least)

[ Please do not repost, plagiarize, or use my writing for AI! Translating my work with proper credit is acceptable, but please ask first! ]

"Ooh, a vented barrel shroud—or perhaps that's a compensator?"

Y/N leaned over his shoulder here and there, observing the new device as they strode here and there to fetch all the necessary tools to assist him with the new upgrade.

Shockwave reached for the ammunition belt and and detached it from his arm, setting the end of the cord down on the table before he answered, "A fusion of the two devices, in order to ensure that my armament works to its fullest capacity with minimal interference due to recoil or muzzle movement."

"Both in one?" They repeated, passing him a tool as he held his hand out, before laying the rest out all over the table, "Given all your preexisting modifications, I feel like you're going to get less of a return with each new change to your hand gun."

"The law of diminishing returns indeed renders the percentage of the return into an infinitesimal value." He confirmed, attaching the device with ease before tilting it here and there to observe the weapon as a whole, "As such, any further efforts to improve the firearm would prove futile."

"Would? Let me guess, you've already made some ground-breaking discovery that will drastically improve its performance, haven't you?"

"Your hypothesis is a gross exaggeration, yet you are correct." He picked a device from the sea of tools in front of him, "I have engineered a device that will increase fuel efficiency and decrease the time spent reloading the gun, thus increasing the number of shots fired per round of ammo supplied by the ammunition belt."

"And you don't have to make any sacrifices for it? No switching out parts or anything?" They asked as he simply began to install the device without a hitch.

"No, it functions in conjunction with the rest of my modifications seamlessly." He held his hand out, and naturally they passed him the correct tool he needed.

"You have to make me a gun just like that one day. I won't accept anything less if you're planning on making me your official conjunx endurae somewhere in the future." They joked.

"You say that as though I would not give you the magnum opus of my work, that notion is illogical." He momentarily set his tool down and met their gaze, "As my equal, you will be given gifts naturally appropriate for someone of your caliber. Anything less would constitute as unacceptable."

"And here people say that you don't have a way with words!" Y/N smiled bashfully, "ah, they just can't understand your mind the way I do."

[thedwarrowscholar]

How would a dwarf introduce themselves? Among other dwarves and among outsiders? And if a dwarf does not know their parents? (I love everything you do - it genuinely blows me away you have managed to come up with all this)

Well met!

Firstly, thank you kindly for the warm words — it really means a lot. And thank you for your patience as this reply found its way up from the deeper layers of the archive — it would seem that some questions, like mithril, must lie hidden deep before they gleam in the light once more.

Now, on to your question!

The way a Dwarf introduces themselves is closely tied to both cultural tradition and situational context. Much like the careful forging of a axe, no element of their self-presentation is accidental — every name, title, and word is chosen with precision and purpose.

🪓 Among Fellow Dwarves:

In formal or ceremonial contexts, a Dwarf’s introduction typically follows a set pattern:

Outer-name, followed by patronymic (or multiples ones), title, and occasionally a clan or lineage reference.

For example:

“Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King under the Mountain” (he might even add “of Durin’s Folk.”)

Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson's film trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit

This is not just a matter of pride — it’s identity, legacy, and belonging, all in one breath. Among kin, especially those of status or in situations of importance (clan councils, oaths, or legal disputes), it would be customary — even expected — to name one’s line.

In more casual or familiar settings among fellow Dwarves, a shortened version may suffice:

“Balin, son of Fundin.”

But even then, omitting one’s parentage entirely would be considered odd — perhaps even impolite — unless there is a known reason.

Your inquiry also touches upon a fundamental aspect of Dwarven culture—the significance of ancestry and how it is conveyed in language.​

Usage of the "-ul" Suffix in Lineage:

In Khuzdul, the suffix "-ul" serves multiple functions, one of which is to denote lineage. This is exemplified in the inscription on Balin's tomb: "Balin Fundinul," which translates to "Balin, son of Fundin." The "-ul" suffix here signifies "son of," linking Balin directly to his father, Fundin.

Balin's Tomb as seen in LoTRO (the second line being "Fundinul")

It's noteworthy that while many Semitic languages distinguish between "son of" and "daughter of" through different terms (e.g., Hebrew uses "ben" for son and "bat" for daughter), Khuzdul employs the "-ul" suffix universally for both sons and daughters. This uniformity would align with the Dwarves' cultural emphasis on privacy and their protective nature regarding their kin, especially their women. By using a single suffix for both genders, Dwarves maintain a level of discretion about familial relationships, reflecting their secretive tendencies.

🌐 Among Outsiders:

Dwarves are famously reserved when it comes to personal matters, particularly outside their own kind. So among total outsiders, introductions tend to be far more restrained. One might share only the outer-name, or the outer-name and patronymic if some formality is required:

“Gimli, son of Glóin.”

And that, frankly, is more generosity than most strangers would earn. Unless they represent their clan at a meeting with outsiders, then the full formal lineage would no doubt be included.

It’s worth noting that while modern depictions have gifted Dwarves with a Scottish brogue and a certain loud-mouthed cheer, Tolkien’s Dwarves were anything but casual with such things. The inner-name, for instance — that sacred name given at birth and known only to the Dwarf and their closest kin — was never shared publicly, and certainly never used in an introduction. To do so would be to bare the soul.

❓And What of a Dwarf Without Known Parents?

Ah, now here lies a more delicate matter — though not a shameful one. Even without known parentage, a Dwarf’s worth is measured in more than blood alone. A Dwarf without known parentage — whether orphaned, fostered, or otherwise — might substitute a guild, mentor, or place of upbringing in place of a patronymic. It would still serve to root them in the stone of their making, so to speak.

For example:

“Narin, of Thorin’s Halls.” “Varni son of the Last Erebor Grand Mason.” “Lornis, raised by the Stonehewers of Steadmere.”

Alternatively, a Dwarf might take on an earned title or epithet in lieu of lineage — a practice often seen among warriors or craftsmen of note. These names reflect deeds rather than bloodlines:

“Walli the Hammerfast” “Brogni Stone-hand” “Hanni the Flame-tempered”

In such cases, identity is forged in action, not ancestry — still a source of pride, but of a different kind.

So, in summary:

Among wide kin, or when in formal situations, introductions are rich in family and clan context. Among everyday outsiders, they are brief, sometimes guarded. In the absence of known family, a Dwarf will root their identity in a guild, hall, profession, or earned name. Always with pride. Always with purpose.

Ever at your service, The Dwarrow Scholar

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

I know we have the circular Gallifreyan language, but do we have any pinyin like examples of Gallifreyan words? Also what language is primarily spoken by the populous since there’s several different types of Gallifreyan

What Gallifreyan words do we know?

We don't have very many. The problem is that Gallifreyan languages were never really designed for easy translation because, subtextually, many Gallifreyan words are impossible for humans to pronounce.

Gallifreyan languages are also layered, poetic, and sometimes have magical subtext that will literally rewrite your DNA. But! We do have a few written examples of Gallifreyan words like pinyin – aka, they give us Earth-based phonetic clues:

Arkytior – rose (Old High)

D'Arvit – a curse word, unspecified (likely Modern Low)

Gallifrey – they that walk in shadows (probably Ancient)

Gjara'vont – of darkest thought

Karn – winter (Old High)

Meyopapa – master

Mi'en Kalarash – blue fire (possibly Old High, could be metaphorically or ironically named)

Osuda – Fate (Ancient or Old)

Swowana – possibly snow

Tegorak – black mountain

Toclafane – a catch-all for bogeymen

Which Gallifreyan language is actually spoken?

The quick answer is Modern High Gallifreyan.

However, Gallifreyans don't just have one language—they have an entire linguistic caste system. Here's the basic family tree (Ancient, Neo, Sollifreyan are all theoretical):

📜 Old Gallifreyan

Old Low – Rooted in Ancient Gallifreyan phonics, it's the 'default' old Gallifreyan for general ye olde Gallifreyan chit-chat, packed with lots of swear words and probably lots of words for farming. ⤷Modern use: Unlikely anyone speaks it. Being Low, it's the language of the lower classes, so therefore, it is of no interest to Gallifreyan academics. 

Old High – Rooted in Ancient Gallifreyan phonics but far more complex, it's a language for the developing scientists and aristocracy of Gallifrey. It's attached to the Dark Times, so it holds coded powers. It is used in grimoires. If conjugated wrong, it could blow up a small moon. There are 10,000,000 letters in its alphabet and a lot of them look quite Greek. ⤷Modern use: Gallifreyan language experts at the top of their game probably know a fair amount. It's on the Time Academy syllabus as one of the more difficult subjects.

💬 Modern Gallifreyan

Modern Low – Related heavily to Old Low Gallifreyan, this would have developed alongside Modern High as the language of the lower classes, retaining its swear words and slang forms that the upper classes despise. It has however moved on to accommodate more mathematical principles and Time-related language and has 1,000,000 characters. ⤷Modern use: None of the elite in the Capitol would be interested in this, however, it's likely members of the lower classes living in the lowtown or as outsiders will know this language and use it fairly often.

Modern High – AKA the familiar 'circular Gallifreyan' (although it's been written in other forms, too). An incredibly secure language that's difficult for non-speakers to decode, and even the TARDIS has problems translating it for other species, which is why companions never see the TARDIS monitor in their native language. Posh, polite and functional, it's the one seen most regularly. ⤷Modern use: Spoken as the 'default' language of the Capitol in pre and during Time War Gallifrey.

🏫 So ...

We don't have much, but a few phonetic words exist. We also know that the most commonly spoken language is Modern High Gallifreyan—especially in the Capitol—although one day I'll tell you about the rest.

Related:

💬|🗣️👽Can humans/non-Gallifreyans learn to speak Gallifreyan?: How possible it would be to see a human speaking Gallifreyan.

💬|🗣️🤬Do Time Lords have their own curse words?: Taking you through all the bad words/phrases of Gallifrey.

💬|🗣️✍️How do Time Lords write coordinates?: How coordinates get written and work in TARDISes.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features:⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[caineinthecorner]

Language (The Demon Brothers)

★ Based on my language general hcs. Part 2 is here.

Hi. Today we have the demon brothers language hcs, brought to you by a single dumbass bilingual. :D

I include mentions of bilingual/multilingual MC, but I use the term MC and you interchangeably in the bullet points. It's the same thing who cares (you can also add whatever languages you think fit I am just going off vibes tbh)

★ Lucifer.

Since he was the strongest and highest ranked out of the brothers, his innate abilities were muddled the least.

This is to say that he remembers a lot from his innate knowledge as an angel, and can actually fare incredibly well on his own if you leave him in the human realm.

(the language he preferred back in his angel days was Archaic Latin, which is also Simeon's preferred language)

When Diavolo brought up the idea of the human exchange program he was like "(: ok" and binged human language for like two months straight like a total psychopath

He's like one of those fancy 10+ languages fluent polyglots (how)

Despite his fluency, it is rare to ever see him speak them. He has better things to do and prefers demon tongue.

Or if he does, the Loquar Ad Vos that was applied to you once you arrived in Devildom doesn't allow you to hear it.

You try to swear in your native language around him and oh boy it backfires

That is how you learn he's fluent in everything under the sun (exaggeration)

Frustrated, you grumble that you will learn demon tongue just to one up him

He takes it like a challenge. Enjoy reading a million books on the demonic language and having double the homework for your little joke.

(he gives you hard material to learn on purpose to see you fail. Enjoy hell buckoo. Double hell? Hell²)

You kept misspelling good morning in demon tongue as a demonic death threat and that somehow turned into an inside joke between the two of you.

He has to keep himself from chuckling whenever MC screws up words

Your accent is lovely though. Keep it up

★ Mammon.

Spanish and English.

Ok I actually can't justify myself further than "Mams would absolutely fucking go to Vegas" and the fact that USA has a large Latino population but hear me out

You cannot tell me that he would not watch telenovelas. Like. C'mon.

he has the vibes of a Spanish speaker is what I am saying

he was SO frustrated about having to learn human languages you have no idea

In fact he probably still struggles a bit and that makes him really mad

Why is it so complicated all of the sudden?! It wasn't complicated Before!

He unconsciously associates human languages with the trauma of the fall, and the stress and hurt and turbulent emotions it conveys

So learning new languages besides the two he knows is a touchy subject for him

(but like, he will learn MC's native language despite this. Whining to hell about it, but he will. Everything for MC)

You are actually very lucky that you have Loquar Ad Vos with you, bcs he actually switches from demon tongue to either English or Spanish mid sentence sometimes.

Not that you notice with your crusty translator (Loquar also works for human languages it supports), of course.

"Ayo can you [Spanish phrase], oh and give me a [English word], for a [spanglish nonsense]" <- Mammon's dumbass not functioning in trilingual

Also he has an accent but he's trying

The others are used to it so they don't question it anymore, but they deadass could not understand Mammon at some point because trilingual was not computing

It was frustrating to say the least

You two play charades with each other when the other forgets a word in your respective languages

"MC WHAT'S THE NAME OF THE ANIMAL FUCK THAT CHANGES HOME" "... Hermit crab?" "THATS THE BITCH"

★ Leviathan.

Japanese (very decent) and English (bad) are musts.

You cannot tell me for a second this fuck watches anime subbed OR dubbed. He's too weeb for that. He will watch the original dub version for the full emotional impact

He wanted to know what happens in the weeb world of the west (and internet discourse), so he learned English through shitty 2000s anime forums and Duolingo

Probably plays Duolingo competitively and/or cries if he loses his streak

His hearing and speaking English is okay, his writing is literally so so shit

Tried to learn a romantic language to be corny but failed miserably.

(He steered clear of languages his brothers know so he isn't self conscious)

It was probably Portuguese or something since Mammon kept talking about being good at figuring it out as a Spanish speaker (due to it being a romantic language)

The diacritical marks killed him on the spot

Meu português não é bom... (crying)

Victim of the you're* corrections

Runs his several-paragraphs-long rants about weeb stuff through Satan so the grammar is legit

Actually thinking about it would be absolutely fucking hilarious if he knew russian just for funsies. Yeah add Russian to the list

He sends you crusty Russian memes at unholy hours in the morning. Calls that bonding

Would absolutely swear in loud ass Russian while playing Valorant or smt

"ПИЗДЕЦ" "LEVI IT'S 2AM SHUT THE FUCK UP"

Ah + he knows Morse code (obviously). He was really excited when he discovered it and proceeded to obsess over it for like three weeks straight.

Although by the time he learned about it humans had already moved on from its wide-spead use at sea (post-1999), the Devildom Navy adapted Morse code for their own use as per Levi's command.

He teaches MC how to use Morse code (bashfully) and they send lil' messages to each other for fun

★ Satan.

He inherited a good chunk of Lucifer’s angel-knows-all-languages innate talents.

He doesn't have the angel knowledge of every language, of course, but he definitely has a really high count since birth; Unlike his brothers who had to relearn their languages of interest.

However, he can tell™ that the topic of languages is kinda taboo-y, as it signifies the traumatic fall he himself was not there to witness, and kept quiet about it.

The others (mostly) think he just learned languages in his free time.

He is the designated google translate person. When the other brothers need translations, they ask him.

He gets very frustrated when he has to translate something on the spot

Absolutely knows Chinese and Latin just to read fancy old human books and be a menace about it

He has a copy of the Art Of War in Chinese I will fight you on that

Actually he probably owns every important human book in its native language

Culprit of the you're* corrections

If he has to read another thesis-length essay abt weeb shit by leviathan he will actually lose his shit

You know the Voynich manuscript? He's probably trying to decode it for funsies.

If you and him (unfortunately) share a language, he will absolutely correct the living shit out of you when you speak it

Look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn't "erm ACtuAllY" MC. You can't.

His ass does not understand slang. At all. You tell him See You Later Alligator and he'll be like "tf you smoking ಠಿ⁠_⁠ಠ?"

★ Asmodeus.

French. And Korean. Maybe very mid English.

Ok so french is the language of lOVe and whatever + Korea is known for their heavy beauty-focused culture

I can see Asmo definitely picking up Korean just for makeup and self care brands purposes.

Like it is easier to browse for products he wants if he can actually browse the original places/websites himself

It's just more convenient and he's actually very good at language learning

+ Korean it is a "cutesy" language so it fits his vibe.

Like he absolutely would go "안녕 teehee (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)" to look disarming is what I am saying

He flirts to hell with Solomon in French. It is a language they both know and isn't supported by Loquar for translation so nobody can snoop their conversations

If you have the misfortune of knowing French I am so sorry for you bcs they are NASTY

Solomon is teaching him English. Asmo fakes being bad at it on purpose

★ Beelzebub.

He knows a decent amount of English.

What does he use it for? Order food. Obviously.

In fact everyone kinda assumes he just knows a few food orders and that's it but no he's actually very decent at English (borderline fluent)

He learned through clunky conversation with small restaurant owners

Beel actually makes a great effort to enunciate every word clearly, so he doesn't like speaking long sentences

"Would you like Salsa with that, sweetheart?" "... Yes," <- Beel has no fucking clue wtf salsa is but it tastes good so who is he to defy food gods (a nice Mexican grandma with a killer Pozole) whom have blessed him

I also think he would probably know some kind of sign language

Fingerspelling maybe, solely because it allows him to talk while having his mouth full or bcs his games are loud and he can't hear words very well

That and, like, the Devildom equivalent of sign language. DSL or something.

Look at him. Absolute sweetheart. He would absolutely want to include deaf or hard of hearing ppl.

★ Belphegor.

Ok so

I am going to be very fr with you

I believe Belphie would be the only monolingual (demon tongue "native") of the brothers

at most he would remember a few phrases of a few languages from back when he was an angel, but not any specifics

Like this dude has ZERO interest in human culture I cannot think he would sit down to (re)learn anything

he would fall asleep trying to learn human verbs actually

He only knows how to tell you to fuck off on 4 languages (/hj)

None which you speak. So that's kinda awkward

He doesn't know how to cast Loquar (nor has any interest in learning how)

Beel casts it for him if he needs it

He can and will deadass just remove the translator spell from you if you try to annoy/interact with him (except if Beel is who casts it on you).

(so Beel now also casts Loquar for you)

Begone >:(