#of course he means it in a sense of being free to pursue god rather than evil but you see the parallel still works

[sisterdivinium]

Finding "the meaning" to a show that could have had up to five or seven seasons but was cancelled after the second is somewhat like trying to understand a novel composed of seventy chapters by having read only twenty — there is a whole wealth of information which we do not possess that could alter our reading of any given element or of the entire thing in itself.

Still, there are always patterns that weave a story into a cohesive unit and they can help us to better grope in darkness towards comprehension. One such pattern in Warrior Nun appears to be how the consequences to mistakes, "sins" or evil deeds committed by characters manifest.

Basic storytelling usually requires characters to act on something so that complications or resolutions may arise from their choices and move the plot forwards. In Warrior Nun, many of these actions are quite tragic in nature: Suzanne's arrogance and pride lead to the death of her Mother Superion; Vincent's allegiance to the higher power he believed Adriel to be inspired him to kill Shannon; Ava's flight from the Cat's Cradle ends up damning Lilith as she is mortally wounded and taken away by a tarask... All of these events have negative outcomes and heavy repercussions on all characters directly or indirectly involved. Something changes permanently because of them, be it in the world around them or within the characters themselves.

And yet, it would seem that all of these dark deeds not only move the story forwards but might also have overall positive results. We would have had no protagonist without Ava — and she would arguably never have received the halo to begin with had she not been murdered. What's more, on a personal scale, the horrifying crime she suffers is, in the end, the very thing that allows her a second chance in life, a new life.

An act of outside evil permits Ava to grow and develop, shows her a path she would not otherwise have found. Without her own season in some sort of hell, Lilith would not have been able to advance towards other ways of being and understanding beyond her very strict limitations. Vincent and Suzanne would not have embarked on their own journeys of enlightenment without having caused the pain they are responsible for.

Beatrice might have been paying for someone else's mistakes, but she, too, is given the chance to grow into herself through it. The afflictions that torment these characters advance the overall plot, but they also advance them, as individuals, as long as they are willing to learn and keep going despite the calamities large and small that they are faced with. Beatrice keeps going after parental rejection, Mary keeps going after losing Shannon, Jillian keeps going after losing her son (in part through her own actions, adding insult to injury)... Trouble and the adaptation that follows it, if one is open enough to learn from the experience, motivates the characters, propels them forward, teaches them.

The problem of evil has occupied the minds of many a thinker throughout the ages, given how the very existence of it, evil, might call into question that of God (a good, omniscient, omnipotent one, anyway). A common way of justifying suffering (and also God), then, is by claiming, as Saint Augustine, that "God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist".

Now, it would be rather ridiculous to say of Warrior Nun that it follows in Leibniz's footsteps, also because this philosopher, expanding on the augustinian concept, attempted to defend the goodness of a real God with his "best of all possible worlds" while all we have is... Well, whatever/whoever Reya is.

But there seems to be an inclination towards some sort of optimism as a worldview nonetheless.

Betrayals reveal truth and grant knowledge (Vincent's culminates with the coming of Adriel, which allows us to know of the threat of a "Holy War" and thus prepare for it; Kristian's gives Jillian much needed insight, William's lights up the fuse for the fight to be taken more seriously...), crimes committed willingly or not open the way for Ava (Suzanne's killing of her Mother Superion causes the loss of the halo, which is transferred to Shannon, whose death opens the gates for Ava to walk through after being herself murdered by sister Frances)... The magnitude of these positive outcomes is perhaps not "balanced" when compared to the evil that brings them about, but there is still something to take out of the catastrophe.

However tragic the tones of a given event, the show itself appears to shun the predetermination that makes tragedy as a genre; if everything is connected, here it at least appears to not necessarily drag everyone into their horrible dooms.

What's more is that this lurking "optimism" matches really well with our own protagonist's personality.

And it makes perfect sense that Ava would do the best she could with whatever she is given.

Life for her, in the conditions she experienced after the accident, would have been unbearable without some sort of positive outlook on life. However deadpan, the joking and the "obscene gestures" and whatever other forms of goofing around beside Diego are a way of turning a portion of the situation in her own favour. Proverbial eggs have, after all, already been broken right and left — might as well make an omelette of whatever remains.

Humour is just another way of looking at the bright side of something, or, at the every least, of mitigating the utter horror it might bring. If the show allows for moments of lightness, if it lets us laugh, if it takes us through a perilous voyage which still bears ripe, succulent fruit instead of the rot of pessimism and its necessary contempt for humanity, it is because Ava herself sees things in this way. It isn't gratuitous or naïve in this case, but a true survival strategy, especially as it is confronted with the morbidity of Catholicism.

Here is a religion that soothes its faithful with the promise of reward in the afterlife — how else does one charge into battle against the unknown, risking one's own death along with that of one's sisters, without the balm of believing that we shall all meet again eventually, "in this life or the next"? How else does one come to terms with the ugliness and the pain of this existence if not by looking forward to a paradise perfect enough to make all trials and tribulations here worth it?

True nihilism would have annihilated Ava. Her present perspective is what avoided the abyss.

And there is nothing Panglossian to her attitude or what the show might imply by giving us her view on things. This isn't about "the best of all possible worlds", but of making the best of whatever situation we're in, of taking what we have and doing something with it, something good, something of ourselves. It isn't God making good out of evil, but our choices.

Killing innocent people and feeling no remorse will never be the best someone can aspire to do. Sister Frances, cardinal William, Adriel all learn this the hard way.

Those who do their best find that, somehow, they can move on from whatever it was that paralysed them. Ava, most of all, knows what it is to be stuck, frozen in place; she can never be the character who refuses to grow, even through pain, lest she condemns her spirit to the same fate her body is all too familiarised with. Those around her wise enough to let themselves be touched by her, by the dynamic power she carries, walk forth with her and live.

It says very little about "God" that Warrior Nun should adopt its heroine's views and seem "optimistic" as it progresses — but it speaks volumes about the values it presents for pondering, of the inspiration its protagonists provide, and of the multiple reasons why this is a story unlike most others.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Lucanis

As I've mentioned, I read a lot about Veilguard before I started playing. And one of the main issues a lot of people seemed to have was, "Lucanis is the weakest romance; nothing happens!" So I thought, particularly since I was saving Treviso this time around, I might as well do the Lucanis romance on my practice character, so that if it was somehow disappointing, at least I'd know and only have it on my "practice run", so to speak. It didn't have to be for any of my canon Rooks.

Maybe it's because I'm ace, maybe it's because I like a slow burn, I don't know. But I just had one of the first significant bits of the Lucanis romance and I have this and only this to say to the people who have been hating on the Lucanis romance:

YOU IMPATIENT MOTHERFUCKERS.

I keep comparing the Lucanis romance to the Zevran romance, partly because I figure it's happening a lot - after all, two Antivan Crows, sexy-sexy accent, troubled past, yadda yadda. But ... like ... they're kind of two sides of the same coin, rather than comparable individuals. Zevran is all about what pleasures he can eke out of a troubled life ... as long as there's no emotional connection involved. He'll hop into your bedroll at the slightest invitation, but he starts backing up when he starts realising he's catching feelings, because he doesn't think he deserves The Feels. Lucanis, meanwhile, doesn't believe he deserves any of it. His simple pleasures are simple precisely because, unlike Zevran, Lucanis was born to the Crow version of royalty. He isn't effectively a bonded serf the way Zevran was, so the finery doesn't mean quite the same thing as it did to Zevran. And as for emotional attachments ... well, because his family is the Crow version of royalty, that's where he was taught his sole emotional attachments should lie. Plus, for a Crow, any emotional attachment is a weakness for someone to exploit. As for pleasures of the flesh ... maybe he enjoyed those more before he was tortured for like a year and ended up saddled with a demon. He catches The Feels quietly, doesn't show them because the reasons above, and as for the sex? Well, if Spite takes over in unguarded moments, he's likely very afraid of Spite hurting someone. Not to mention if Spite takes over in an intimate moment, it's not Lucanis having that intimate moment anymore. Not only does that deny Lucanis the experience, it's equivalent to rape, because his partner would be consenting to sex with Lucanis, not with Spite.

Which I figure is exactly why Spite is so pissed off at this point. The most recent takeover was him yelling that Lucanis wasn't keeping up his end of the bargain because the bargain was "Break the chains. Be free. LIVE!" He's not pissed off that he's trapped in a mortal body; he's pissed off that Lucanis isn't living. When your primary pleasures are good food and better coffee, and your entire being is given to revenge and a do-or-die mission to take down multiple gods? I figure a demon probably wants a little more than that. If he senses (and he must do) that Lucanis wants Rook ... and Lucanis isn't pursuing that as ardently as Spite would prefer ... of course he's pissed off. The same way that every player who thinks the romance is weak is pissed off, I guess. Just ... more (ahehehehe) spiteful about it.

And, I mean, that's a matter of personal opinion. I get it. Some people want all the smooches and the endearments and the lovingly rendered sex scenes. There's nothing wrong with impatience, if you're talking about a story preference. My personal opinion is that sometimes, the slow burn launches a hundred thousand fanfics, each more interesting than the last. It's not the "THESE ARE THE STEAMIEST LOVE INTERESTS WE'VE EVER HAD!!!!!" that Bioware promised us, though, so I get the disappointment. Particularly since apparently none of the romances really qualify as all that steamy.

Though when Taash pins a Rook to the wall, says "Quick; think about us having sex", and sniffs their neck with that growl? I may be ace, but objectively, that's kind of hot if that's what you're into. And so is the "You like to walk a little too close to the edge..."

(Although, yes, I do kind of wish they'd actually got to kiss too. But sometimes unresolved sexual tension is good too. I feel bad for Lucanis, though. Like, he says, "I need to clear my head", and I start wondering whether the Lighthouse has cold showers.)

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

Subtext, by Calvin Klein

happy birthday @stinastar!!! I know it’s not the prompt you wanted, but I’ll write that too. :) Thank you so much for being awesome and so so sweet!

Legally Blonde au - modern - fluffy pre-getting together

depending on the comments I get on this, I might post a second part

tw: Geralt’s tragic backstory (foster care mention)

---

Geralt approached Jaskier slowly and kept his hands firmly in the pockets of his loose-fitting jeans. “What’s up-” he noticed the bunny ears poking up from Jaskier’s fluffy brown hair and added “-doc?”

The young law student looked up at Geralt through teary black lashes and let out another soft sniffle, his lips wobbling unattractively. Geralt hurried to drape his zip-up hoodie over Jaskier’s bare shoulders and take a seat on the wooden bench beside him. 

The worried teacher’s assistant rubbed his hands up and down Jaskier’s arms through the material, trying to warm him up a little better. “Why are you dressed as a Playboy bunny, sitting on a bench in the middle of the night in this terrible New England weather?”

“I made a terrible mistake in coming here.”

“What?”

Geralt had never heard Jaskier sound so utterly defeated. Usually the student was bright and bubbly, congenial to a fault even when he made mistakes or answered incorrectly during class discussions. The charming brunette seemed to pull bucket after bucket from a nearly endless well of positivity; until now, apparently. 

As he sat beside Geralt on the worn wooden bench, wearing the tight pink leotard and little wrist cuffs, practically glowing in the yellow-tinged lamplight, he seemed too ethereal to be real. Even as he shivered and sniffled, Jaskier looked too gorgeous to be human. Seeing him in such a distressed state was a little unnerving, like bumping into an old teacher outside of school or accidentally seeing your neighbors kissing through a window. It felt wrong. 

“I followed the love of my life to this stupid fucking university and now he’s going to marry some fancy, well-bred blonde woman like his parents wanted and I’m going to flunk out of these classes with nothing to show for my time here and my parents are going to-”

“Hey,” Geralt interrupted, taking one hand from his pocket to place on Jaskier’s trembling knee. “It’s going to be okay. Breathe, Jaskier.”

“Right. Breathing. Yeah.”

“Are you… okay?” 

Jaskier looked at him again and Geralt flinched away from the obvious hurt in his watery blue eyes. Of course he’s not okay, he’s sobbing alone on a cold bench in the middle of Halloween night. 

“Jaskier, I’m sorry. I’m not good with words but- Wait... are you saying you came to school because of a man?” 

“Y-Yeah. You could put it that way, I guess.”

Geralt yanked his hand away from the younger man’s knee and scooted backwards, away from the man he’d just been admiring. “Oh my god, that has to be the absolute stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You came all the way to Oxenfurt University’s prestigious and award-winning Law School to hunt down a husband?!”

Jaskier looks taken aback. Startled and bewildered and sad, like a much smaller child rather than an adult man with a degree and a half. “Are you mad at me!?”

“A little bit, yeah,” Geralt laughed humorlessly. He shook his head, swiping one hand over his face on his way to tuck in a stray strand of white hair. “I worked two jobs to get myself through college. I was doing full-time classes and pulling sixty hour weeks at the bar and the grocery store; I don’t think I’ve had a full night’s sleep since I graduated high school. I certainly don’t know the meaning of the word vacation anymore... and you came here to follow some- some guy that you liked?”

“We’d been together for three years before he suddenly dropped me to pursue a degree in fucking bitter looking women, to be completely fair. And I managed to get a good enough LSAT score to qualify for admittance, so it’s not like I’m totally incompetent.”

“No,” Geralt nodded, a small, genuine smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I guess that’s true.”

“No guessing involved,” Jaskier spat, tired and angry and flustered. “It is the truth, plain and simple. I deserve to be here and I will be successful.”

“Hmm.” 

“Well why are you here, then, Mr. Grouchy T.A.?”

“I grew up in foster care and let me tell you, from experience, that the system is shit. If I had been forced to remain a foster child for any longer than I was, I probably would have become a match-happy little delinquent like my youngest brother, Lambert. Luckily my third foster parent, Vesemir, adopted me legally and made me his son. He already had one adopted son, my older brother, Eskel, and after me there was Lambert.”

Jaskier took a moment to contemplate Geralt’s story, pulling the sweatshirt closer around his shoulders and burrowing down into the neckline in a way that sent butterflies swirling through Geralt’s stomach rather unexpectedly. Then the younger man smiled at him, pearly teeth glinting in the light of the streetlamp. “That’s… that’s a little sad and a little sweet. It makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“The sadness and the sweetness,” Jaskier repeated, grinning a little more shyly than before. Geralt wasn’t sure, since it was so dark and he was so skeptical, but it almost looked like Jaskier was blushing. “Like you. Sweet, kind, caring, but a little melancholy. Anyway, I should be getting back to my dorm. I need to study.”

“I want my sweatshirt back,” Geralt said, standing and offering Jaskier a hand up. He wobbled to his feet, still wearing a pair of dangerously high black stilettos. Geralt knew this outfit would haunt his dreams for the next few weeks and cursed Hugh Heffner’s lingering spirit. 

“If you’re lucky,” Jaskier replied, and click-click-clicked his way into the darkness. 

Geralt honestly wasn’t sure he’d mind if Jaskier decided to keep it… maybe someday he’d wear it to class. And didn’t the thought of that send something odd and new and terrifying swirling in Geralt’s gut.

---

“Where are we going, exactly?” Geralt asked, eyeing the giddy brunette before him. Jaskier batted his long eyelashes at the grumpy T.A. and gave his sweetest pout.

“You trust me, don’t you?”

“Hmm,” Geralt’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

“Well then don’t stop now!” 

The excitable young law student laced his fingers with Geralt’s and pulled him through the large glass doors and into the mall. When at last his eyes adjusted to the bright lights of the shopping center he asked: “What is this place?”

Jaskier grinned, taking a deep, dramatic breath. “A department store.”

Geralt rolled his eyes and took his own deep breath, his nose wrinkling in distaste. “What is that smell?”

“Love,” Jaskier replied.

“What!?”

“Love,” the student repeated, pointing at a sign with his free hand. It was large and pink and read LOVE, BY CHANEL in black block-letters. “There’s Love in the air.”

“Terrible joke, really,” Geralt teased. “But really, Jaskier, why are we here? You have plenty of clothes for court; I know because I’ve been in your closet and seen them firsthand.”

“We’re not here for me,” Jaskier elbowed his mentor and study partner gently in the side. Their hands were still interlaced in a way that made Geralt’s heart thunder dangerously against his ribs; love really was in the air, it seemed. Jaskier continued breezily, unaware of the older man’s roiling internal conflict. “I’m taking you shopping so that you have the proper outfit to wear when accepting Stregobor’s partnership offer.”

They had reached the men’s business section and the brunette released Geralt’s hand in order to dig through the racks of clothing. He was elbow deep in Calvin Klein and Kenneth Cole, hunting for jackets in Geralt’s size. “Jaskier, I can’t afford this kind of-”

“Hush,” Jaskier replied, waving his hand dismissively in his direction, letting it go limp at the wrist. “It’s a gift. No! Not a gift, a repayment.”

“I didn’t give you anything…” 

Jaskier looked up from the selection of suits he’d been inspecting and shot Geralt a dangerous glare. “You most certainly did give me something, Geralt Roger Eric du-Haute Bellegarde! You looked past my bubbliness and my pink blazer and my previous degree and treated me like a person. You supported me and encouraged me without asking for anything in return so this is what I’m giving you.”

Geralt took a step towards him and sneezed. “What is that smell?”

An attendant appeared as if from thin air, a little glass bottle clutched in her hand. “It’s Subtext, by Calvin Klein!”

“It’s not really my thing,” Geralt frowned, closing the distance between himeslf and Jaskier as he made his apologies, “But thank you, regardless.”

“Let me know if you gentlemen need anything!”

Geralt stepped close enough to feel the heat of Jaskier’s body, still not brave enough to initiate touch. “Thank you.”

“It’s not a problem,” Jaskier grinned again. 

Geralt considered the feelings that were stirring in his heart, driving through his veins, branching out through his mind so that all he could focus on was Jaskier... 

It might be a problem, he thought, allowing himself to enjoy the moment. But it can be dealt with another time. 

[askthewvba]

Hippo Island Culture 101 (Crash Course)

Everything you’d never think to ask! 🤪

First off! Hippo Island actually refers to multiple smaller islands surrounding a larger landmass. The King Hippo has one of these smaller islands all for islands all for himself while the larger island is occupied by his people and the other smaller islands are each used for their own special occasions.

🍍Characteristics

Hippoans are human beings. Despite their intimidating and foreign appearance (and lack of noses) they are just as human as the rest of the Punch Out cast with their own language, culture, history and struggles. Just to get that out of the way immediately! While it is commonly believed that King Hippo is kind of a kind, that's simply not the case!

The Hippoans do all just be Built Different! All Hippoans are heavy naturally, and the heavier you are the more healthy and desirable you’re seen in their society. Having especially chubby children or a chubby spouse signals to other Hippoans that you’re a generous person and they know whose hut to visit at dinner time! There are rare exceptions to this rule but big is the bar set and big is beautiful.

This weight does come at a price however. Hippoans are so heavy with all of their heft and dense bones that they are completely incapable of swimming. Hippoans will sink like a rock!!! This has lead to most of them being absolutely petrified of the sea. Traveling from island to island is fine because the water between the smaller islands is typically not enough to drown in and otherwise is only a short ride by boat away. Traveling any farther than the lands governed by King Hippo is out of the question, and King Hippo is seen as indisputably courageous for traveling to the Mainland regularly. If a Hippoan falls from the boat they must be rescued and pulled back aboard immediately or face certain death by drowning. There’s no recovering a sunken Hippoan. They will simply never be seen again.

The dark part of a Hippoan’s face actually isn’t a mask or facial marking, but rather a natural indent on their face! This indentation and their thick fleshy eyebrows are protection against the harsh sun on Hippo Island.

The skin of a Hippoan is thicker and more resilient than that of a non-Hippoan. It’ll bruise like any other and Hippoans will bleed like anyone else, though it tends to be just a bit harder to take them down with the usual means like sharp objects. They are built different and are built to take a ton of damage. That being said, their tummies are always a weakness without exception. Why this is as of yet unclear, but a blow to the stomach is so potent of an attack that when struck there a Hippoan is absolutely thrown for a loop. It’s like a complete system reset, going unconscious and often waking up disoriented and confused.

We also haven’t discovered why they evolved to not have noses, but it is suspected their sense of smell works like snakes. Rather than flicking out their tongues however it may be that they are smelling when breathing through their teeth.

🥥Names

Names don’t exist in the traditional sense on Hippo Island. Your name is typically your job, but even then there’s a bit more to it than that.

King Hippo was born Hippo Heir IV, as he was a potential heir to his father's throne along with at least five other siblings. When he dethroned his Father, who was then called King Hippo, his son took the title of King Hippo from him for himself.

Toddy is a nickname bestowed on him by King Hippo’s friend and personal translator, as it’s a name for Coconut Wine. This is a reference to the fact that his mother, King Hippo’s wife, was a brewer before she became Queen Hippo. Toddy would be known to his mother as “son” or “Coconut Son”, and had a collection of other names and titles over the years before he became generally known and accepted as Prince Hippo, most prominently “Coconut Servant”. Coconut in this case is used as an identifier to separate him from the other servants King Hippo used to have alongside Toddy. It was originally due to his haircut resembling a halved coconut.

Queen Hippo still prefers her ‘maiden title’ Coconut Brewer. To King Hippo she is Wife, to her he is Husband. Despite her elevated status she still goes to work as a Brewer every day, and it’s in being a Brewer that she’s nicknamed her children after her favorites fruits to ferment. Her son is Coconut Son, meanwhile…

Her daughters are Pineapple Daughters, Pineapple Princesses, and before King Hippo and Coconut Brewer got married they were known to the villagers as Shell Collectors. They are nicknamed Tepache and Neerah by King Hippo’s translator for convenience. The translator tried to nickname every Hippoan she’d ever met.

Other examples include the Ferryman, who simply goes by Ferryman along with a few other nicks, the Weavers (Elder Weaver, Loving Weaver, and Mischievous Weaver/also known as “Silkie”; three generations of Weavers), Lone Builder who is married to Loving Weaver, Boar Herder (“Tusk”), and Chicken Herder (“Drumstick”).

There are also unfavorable monikers for the less reputable villagers. Hippo Island is generally a peaceful, crime-free community, however there are a few outliers at any given time who serve as exceptions to this. The only noteworthy one who you may come to know is a hunter, formerly Ferocious Hunter, who is now widely known as “Bonehead”.

After losing his title of King Hippo, his father would go on to be known as “The Loathsome One”.

Related to names, “One” serves as a replacement pronoun for “I” and “me”.

King Hippo: Needs no introduction. He is simply This One. Used to refer to himself as ‘this hopeful one’ and ‘this victorious one’.

Toddy: This dutiful one.

Brewer: This hardy one. She too now has the credence to call herself This One.

🍌Jobs

Jobs are normally determined by the work already in the family, but there’s normally no shame in changing career paths. A Weaver Daughter could decide to be a Warrior. A Builder Son could decide to become a Craftsman or a Child Caregiver.

Brewer was originally a warrior in training during her youth, before deciding she wanted less to do with the battles and more to do with the merrymaking and celebration that comes afterwards. Toddy was a fire dancer for the better part of his teen years, but due to circumstances in his life decided he wanted to be a warrior.

Staying within your family’s line of work is a safe way to live since you’re surrounded by seasoned veterans of that skill set, but by no means are you limited to work within your bloodline. While everyone’s personality is different, most Hippoans are happy to teach.

Children of Hippo Island are usually given menial tasks, like collecting shells, to both prepare them for adult life and to educate them on the barter and trade system that Hippoans operate under by having them trade their trinkets with other children.

🌋Faith

The elements are Gods and Goddesses, plain and simple. The Volcano Gods must be appeased regularly and the Gods of the Deep must be respected and feared at all cost.

While all of their Gods command respect, each family tends to put higher value on different Gods in accordance to their job, and these families are at the forefront of all celebrations relating to these deities. The Ferryman, King Hippo and Toddy stand alone when celebrating the Gods of the Deep.

🏝Customs

This is a bit of a Work in Progress, but we do know their romantic customs. 🥰

Interest in one another is expressed through flower crowns and chains. There’s an entire color language when offering flowers with some signifying friendship, gratitude, or condolences. For simplicity’s sake we’ll focus on three such cases however.

Pink flowers are used when first pursuing another Hippoan that they fancy. It is the general color of a new love or infatuation.

Red flowers are a more passionate form of love and serve as making a much bolder statement. Typically you want to avoid these when you’re merely confessing your interest in another person, as red flowers are most commonly used in marriage proposals.

For extra points one may want to include their intended’s favorite flowers or flower of their favorite color to show consideration and a more genuine interest in who they are.

When offering the Infatuation Flowers, there’s not much fanfare involved. Simply get your loved one alone and ask if they’ll accept it. If yes, they’ll wear it on their head or around their neck. If you’re showing your feelings to a Hippoan and they reject you, they might just eat the flowers. A rude rejection will involve stomping on the flowers to snuff out the affections entirely.

Offering Proposal Flowers has a lot more symbolism, especially if, say, you’re King Hippo. When King Hippo proposed to his wife, he knelt before her and held his flowers for her up over his head. Slowly he lowered his head to bow to her until the crown fell from his head and rolled over towards her feet. Bowing is apart of every Hippoan proposal, but the Hippoan royalty exemplify it’s importance. Your intended is someone who you place above yourself, you humble yourself before them, and you sacrifice the symbol of your pride by allowing your crown to fall off. For commoners the practice is still meaningful, as it means you see your significant other as someone worthy of being royalty, as they are the only person other than your actual King/Queen who you would bow to.

Arranged Marriages used to be somewhat commonplace until some short time ago, when it was realized that matchmaking was a largely imperfect practice. It has always been preferred that either marriage occurred out of love, or when the arranged marriage elevated the family by means of having a relative become betrothed to Hippo Royalty. Nowadays marriages outside of love are met with scrutiny and discomfort and harems are completely out of the question. (Though that’s not to say our King Hippo hasn’t laid with a few Hippoan ladies before tying the knot with his wife… that just wasn’t their status in the hierarchy and wasn’t apart of their naming scheme.)

When Hippoans pass away, they are given a funeral similar to that of the Vikings, though without the fire. Hippoans don’t have the land and therefore the luxury of burying their dead, nor would they consider cremating them. Instead the dead are placed inside specially made boats, sealed inside with flowers and trinkets from the deceased’s family, and after a small service full of mournfully singing Hippoans, they are pushed out to sea to appease their ocean deities. Unlike the boats that serve the living on their journeys, these boats are designed to eventually capsize and sink.

Hippoans… don’t really have the capacity to speak in other foreign tongues. Not very clearly at least. King Hippo actually does speak some English if you listen closely, but even then it’s very difficult to fully understand.

Hippoans are called such for a reason. Their growls and deep bellows are reminiscent of a hippo, though their language and variants of it cover a wide range of other animals as well.

Child Hippoans typically sound like bear cubs whereas infants sound almost froglike. Some Hippoans have even been known to sound like elephants. Hippoan singing, as mentioned in a previous post, sounds like a mix of throat singing and a chorus of bull frogs.

There are words formed under all of these animalistic noises and these words can be learned, but few take the time. Until our King Hippo, the Hippoans were widely forgotten about by the rest of the world. Even now tourism to Hippo Island is very carefully limited by the King himself.

👑Becoming King

There’s a ton of Hippoan history being omitted here to spare time. What you need to know is that due to a change for the worse over time, in order to become King or Queen (or Sovereign depending on your identity) you would need to defeat the ruler of that time in a fight, one that strongly resembles boxing. Normally to postpone that from happening, the ruler would sire a multitude of children via a harem (or their spouse should they have one; our last King Hippo did not), and then those children would be trained to eventually do battle with one another for the right to take on their parent.

Upon meeting defeat the siblings would depart from the islands by boat, presumably to never be seen again. Same was the fate of The Loathsome One when his son dethroned him. As the new King he could have done away with the banishment tradition if he desired, but due to the damage callously caused by Loathsome (and the assumed loss of his family) it was decided he deserved no mercy. King Hippo would have executed him, but he wanted to herald in a new age for the Hippoan people that saw an end to violence and needless bloodshed.

[carriagelamp]

Weirdly enough, I often find myself reading less in the summer, since I have more time than I do during the rest of the year to do other things. Also artfight has been eating up more than a bit of my free time! But here’s a collection a graphic novels I sat around on the hammock reading, and some novels I finished up...

(Everyone go read All Systems Red, holy crow guys)

A Whale of the Wild

The “sequel” to A Wolf Called Wander, though it doesn’t actually connect to the previous novel except in the stylistic/thematic sense. A Whale of the Wild is very much a standalone novel. And a pretty decent one! Personally, I think I liked Wolf more, but this one was a pleasant, informative read, with just the right amount of crushing dread sprinkled in. It’s about a young orca called Vega who is learning to become a new wayfinder for her pod but who still has a lot to learn, especially in an ocean that is becoming increasingly hostile to orcas and the other sealife that live alongside humans. When a devastating earthquake hits, Vega and her little brother find themselves separated from their family, lost in a now horrifyingly unfamiliar environment, and fighting starvation as the salmon that sustain them become more and more unreliable. It’s a desperate fight for survival as they search for food and their missing family. This book is written for a middle grade level, and does a really good job of putting the current environmental crisis into an animal’s perspective while giving the readers something to hope for.

The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom

Every July I eagerly anticipate the next Adventure Zone graphic novel. This one is for their fourth arc, The Crystal Kingdom, in which Magnus, Taako, and Merle respond to a SOS from a floating laboratory that is gradually being consumed by crystals and which threatens the entire world should it fall into the ocean. Carey Pietsch’s art continues to be absolutely fantastic, so beautifully and hilariously expressive, and this one delivers some great Merle moments, lots of Carey Fangbattle, and, of course, Kravtiz. Kravitz, my beloved…

Anyway, I obviously always recommend these. If you’ve never gotten into The Adventure Zone, I totally recommend either trying these graphic novels — or even better, just go listen to the podcast because it really is both hilarious and creates a shockingly good and heart-wrenching story by the end.

All Systems Red

I’ve seen The Murderbot Diaries on my dash occasionally, and it always looked interesting, but a friend’s recommendation finally compelled me to read the first novella of the series. And holy shit y’all. Absolutely the best book I’ve read this month, it’s amazing. Mind-blowingly good. Also, if you’re like me and want a good audiobook, it’s a nice three-hour listen, very chill!

Anyway, All Systems Red is about a Security Unit, an artificially created being that’s part-organic part-mechanical and all-company-owned-and-controlled. However, self-named “Murderbot” has managed to hack into the system that suppresses its own will, and is now coasting along, doing the least amount of work its job requires not to be noticed, while preferring to spend all its time watching the hours and hours of soap operas it has downloaded into its brain. And it’s a tolerable if somewhat dull life, until the science team that it's currently rented to is attacked and the whole mission goes pear-shaped. Suddenly Murderbot has to scramble to keep its humans alive… while its humans scramble with the realization that their “SecUnit” isn’t actually a mindless robot like they had all believed...

This story is both gripping and hilariously funny. Murderbot has such a unique voice and perspective and it’s an absolute pleasure to follow its story. I reallly need to read the next book...

Asterix and the Banquet

A classic. I was startled when I realized I hadn’t actually read this Asterix story… but hell I’m not gonna complain, it lets me read one of the originals for the first time again! In this Asterix volume, the Indomitable Gauls and the Romans end up arranging a bet — the Romans intend to keep them under siege, trapped in their village, while Asterix is confident that he can easily evade them… and will prove it by going on a tour around all of Gaul, collecting iconic foods from each region in order to return and put on a fine banquet. So we get a fantastic adventure in which Asterix and Obelix run all over the country, pursued the whole way, while making cheerful stops at the various eateries along the way. Also the first book Dogmatix shows up in! All around, a wonderful read, fun like all the best Asterix comics are.

Beauty Pop v4

A less impressive graphic novel. The first Beauty Pop is one of my guilty pleasure manga because… it really is pretty stupid but in the best possible ways. I mean, the whole thing is framed around hairstyling battles, like a shojo sports manga without the sports. It’s bonkers. Unfortunately, the series does not really manage to hold up, and it really begins to feel repetitive and dragging as it continues… as a lot of series like this do. *shrug* Unsurprising but still kinda disappointing I suppose. The building three-way romantic tension is mildly interesting if for no other reason than the main character Does Not Notice and Does Not Care about any of it, which is amusing and refreshing.

FRNCK v5

Now this series only gets better and better as it goes. This is the first book of the second arc, and somehow the danger just seems to be ramping up and up and up. The cavefamily have lost their home… as well as Léonard and Gargouille. Heartbroken, shocked, and angry, Franck is the one who ends up shouldering the blame for their presumed deaths as the others mourn. Things only get worse when Franck finds himself separated from the family, and in the territory of another tribe, this one hostile and cannibalistic...

Haikyuu v5

I continue to read this series because it continues to be charming… though it is beginning to feel, maybe, just a little repetitive. Kind of an inevitability with sports manga. But so far it continues to be good enough to overcome that. I’m not sure what I can say about this series that I haven’t already, so I’ll simply say it continues to be one of the most impressive sports manga I’ve read, and the author does a fantastic job of creating engaging characters, fleshed out teams, and really compelling relationships. I do genuinely adore all the main members of Crows, along with a number of characters from the rival teams as well. And of course it has some kickass volleyball scenes that are just drawn so dramatically they can’t help but take your breath away a little.

M*A*S*H Goes To Maine

Meh. The original book of the series was actually quite good in my opinion. This one… considerably less so. The first part I enjoyed more, since it was about Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke, and Oliver Jones trying to set up the FinestKind Clinic and Fishmarket in Crabapple Cove (which… is just the best premise I could have ever asked for). However, the book spends most of its time describing the quirky lives and times of other people living in the area and I… just… don’t care. It was funny at times but… I just don’t care. I wanted to hear more about the main cast. Also I found this book felt more racist and misogynistic than the first which also put me off :/ Wouldn’t bother if I were you. Go read the first book instead, or better yet just watch the TV show which is an obvious banger.

My Heart’s in the Highlands

I have had this on my “currently reading” list for so long but I’m officially giving up. It’s a really good book in theory but my god I can’t get over the pacing.

It’s about Lady Jane, a woman studying medicine in Edinburgh in 1888, and who suddenly finds herself back in the Highlands in the 13th century. Lost and confused, Jane is now at the mercy Clan Donald’s hospitality while she tries to adjust to this new world and hunts for her broken time machine. Fortunately, this hospitality include a burgeoning friendship with a red-haired warrior woman, Ainslie nic Dòmhnaill, who opens Jane’s eyes to the way the world could be.

Listen. It drives me nuts. This book should be completely up my alley, it has everything I like — IT HAS ALL OF ITS HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES CITED AT THE BACK, LITTLE EXTRA DETAILS ABOUT EVERY CHAPTER. THAT’S MY SHIT RIGHT THERE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LIKE BEING ABLE TO GO OVER HISTORICAL DETAILS?? AND WELL RESEARCHED FOOTNOTES?? And yet it doesn’t. Fucking. Work for me. It has a kickass Scottish warrior lady as a love interest! It has a badass lady doctor! It has fish-out-of-water culture shock! But it also has a completely meandering plot, no sense of building tension, and a romance that just happens out of nowhere and feels completely unearned and uninteresting.

I would genuinely just rather read Outlander again, which I know has its own host of problems, but at least Outlander felt exciting and interesting and tense and funny. The romance built in fits and starts, it was complicated, and kept me interested. That book had me hooked (and has me hooked every time I reread it) whereas this book I’ve been sadly picking at for months like its a plate of overcooked spinach. This felt like an attempt at a queer, historically accurate knockoff which I would normally be super into but which just could not stick the landing.

Moomin on the Riviera

My first time actually reading anything from the Moomin canon. I have zero idea how to feel about it! It certainly is as feral as I’ve heard described! Overall, I think I enjoyed it but it sure made me feel strange emotions I didn’t know existed. I’m not even going to try to describe it. Read it if you want a batshit insane anti-capitalist comic.

Surviving the City

This was good in some areas, less good in others. It had a very interesting indigenous perspective on life in the modern city, the foster system, and The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women issue, which I’ve never seen handled in a book before. Something about the pacing did not completely click with me and I found myself getting easily distracted, but it’s definitely worth the read just to experience it and look at the issues it deals with through the characters’ (and author’s) eyes. It did give me a lot to think about and wrestle with, which is sometimes the best thing a book can give you.

Torchwood: Pack Animals

A really fun read, more so than I had ever expected! If you like Torchwood and want more stories about the team before everything goes to shit, this is perfect for that. It includes the entire cast, an interest mystery to be unravelled, lots of slavering monsters, Rhys being really wonderful and sweet (which I didn’t know I wanted until I read this book), and all the humour I expect from Torchwood. I had to send a lot of quotes to my long-suffering girlfriend who a) does not watch this show but b) needs to tolerate it because I find it too funny to keep to myself. It was good enough to make me go out another book of the series since this was the only one my library carried.

[usergreenpixel]

Frev prompts, Part 4! 🎉

21. The protagonist is a high school student with a knack for drawing comics but they’re also the favorite target of the bullies at school.

One day the bullying gets so bad that the protagonist is unable to cope with reality anymore and, as a means of escapism, writes themselves into their new comic about their favorite topic - The French Revolution. With their favorite pen they had inherited from their writer grandfather, no less.

However, what was supposed to be a harmless little self-insert quickly becomes a reality when the protagonist is magically transported into their comic book and now has to navigate their own story and finish it in order to return to the real world, as well as figure out the mysterious powers of the magical pen.

22. Despite the fact that the days when the Bastille used to be packed with prisoners are gone, a handful were still trapped inside its gloomy walls by the time the infamous prison was taken.

The protagonist is one of the few prisoners who are sentenced to imprisonment inside the Bastille until they and the rest of the prisoners are set free by the revolutionaries.

For the first time in a long while, the protagonist is free but not all is sunshine and butterflies because the revolution is only beginning to escalate and the protagonist has long forgotten how to function in the society outside the prison.

With no other options, the protagonist decides to try and rebuild their life from square one, all while the events of the revolution are unfolding in the city of Paris.

23. Two friends, the protagonists, were raised together by a noble family as adopted wards and used to be close as children, but drifted apart when one of the two went abroad to get a good education.

Nevertheless, the childhood friends find themselves reunited by a pure coincidence during a meeting in the Jacobin Club, which both of them joined mere days ago.

All seems well, until it becomes apparent that the protagonists don’t exactly see eye to eye when it comes to politics in France nor the methods of solving the multiple issues plaguing the country.

This new rift between the protagonists only widens as the revolution progresses and the Jacobin Club gets split into groups on the basis of shared political beliefs.

Will the two protagonists be able to restore the friendship they used to have or will their new differences prove that maybe friendship isn’t always as almighty as people say?

24. The protagonist is acutely aware of the multiple injustices of the French society but they are not too eager to change things personally, hoping that maybe the government will find a way to fix things.

The protagonist, meanwhile, would rather focus on keeping their small family business (a bookshop) afloat and renting out an apartment in the house to make ends meet.

Soon, however, the protagonist ends up getting roped into the events of the revolution regardless when they accidentally overhear their new tenant discuss his plans in a hushed tone with a few other people.

The protagonist has all the evidence that they had unwittingly rented out an apartment to a revolutionary and now they have the evidence to turn that rebellious youth from Blérancourt in along with his buddies.

At first, the best course of action seems fairly obvious. Just report them to the authorities and be done with it.

However, perhaps these youths are more than just stupid kids playing at freedom fighting and maybe they can actually help the country.

When faced with the dilemma of either ratting the young rebels out or joining their cause, the protagonist makes a choice that ends up changing their entire life.

25. The year is 1811. Located near Saint-Petersburg, The Imperial Lyceum is a place where boys from noble families of The Russian Empire live and study. Perhaps the most famous Lyceum of all, it was home to plenty of those who would become prominent in Russian society of the time.

This is where the protagonist, one David de Boudry, teaches French to these boys.

Monsieur de Boudry knows that most of his students are blissfully unaware of a certain secret of his and likes it that way. It is best if they don’t know that he happens to be a younger brother to Jean-Paul Marat himself but changed his last name to avoid the associations.

Keeping this particular tidbit of his biography secret used to be fairly easy, until his older brother, Jean-Paul Marat, appeared in David’s life again on a snowy and frosty January day.

Marat is inexplicably alive, but he is also half-frozen and extremely disheveled when he shows up, not to mention the fact that he arrives with his wife and a very young child in tow. They all need a place to hide from the authorities, and fast.

Being a loving brother, David de Boudry hides his family and is now determined to keep them safe for not even a new name can sever family ties.

But, having made this difficult choice, will Monsieur de Boudry be able to reconcile his love for his family and the devotion to his adoptive home country? And will Marat be able to keep his loved ones and himself safe from the agents of police who lurk nearby and are quite hellbent on proving that the man they are pursuing is indeed the infamous Jacobin?

26. The protagonist is a sophomore who became a member of a Drama Club during their freshman year of high school and they are quite happy to finally have a friend group where they belong. Here nobody judges them for their stutter, their crossdressing and their fear of dogs.The protagonist is even allowed to play roles that would be normally reserved for the opposite gender just so they have an excuse to crossdress.

The upcoming play about the French Revolution is no exception and the protagonist is quite overjoyed but also frustrated that something just doesn’t ring true whenever they read their lines. Frustrated, they sneak into a time machine built by their parents and transport themselves to Paris of 1794.

They soon see that the city is in chaos and rumors about a traitor who had supposedly escaped the guillotine and went on the run with his family spread like wildfire. Moreover, the protagonist soon finds themselves in a bit of a pickle because of their name and physical appearance.

Even a man whom the protagonist saves from a mob advises them not to reveal their name and to lay low as soon as the protagonist introduces themselves. The protagonist is naturally confused but they do want to stay alive and free.

In order to survive, the protagonist decides to do what actors do best - improvise. It’s not easy, of course, but the protagonist tries to stay optimistic.

They hope that they will make it. They know they will. Giving up is not an option. After all, a Desmoulins never gives up. Right?

27. The French Revolution is not an easy period in history. It should be fairly obvious why.

The country is drowning in chaos and the future is uncertain, no matter how hard The Committee of Public Safety tries to maintain at least some semblance of order.

Meanwhile, in the heart of Paris, lives our protagonist whose main concern was not the revolution, but rather the fact that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep their inn’s doors open.

And then, one day, the unthinkable happens. A guest is found murdered in their room. Naturally, all the other guests are now suspects, and so is the staff. A diverse bunch of people with their own agendas, secrets and ties to the victim has gathered in the inn.

Sensing that something isn’t right, the protagonist decides to become an amateur sleuth and get to the bottom of the situation.

A “whodunnit” murder mystery is about to take place in the inn and the protagonist is determined to solve it.

28. A few years passed after the betrayal of the Thermidorians. The Revolution is destroyed and all of the enemies of the new government are dead… Except for one.

The protagonist is a patient in a mental hospital on the outskirts of Paris. Here the treatment of the patients is becoming more and more humane than it used to be before. That being said, the living conditions still leave a lot to be desired. Moreover, the protagonist feels isolated and lonely due to their personal issues and the trauma that caused them to become basically imprisoned in the facility.

Luckily, the loneliness disappears when the protagonist secretly manages to befriend another patient, a mysterious young man who is kept in isolation from the rest of the people at the facility, is forced to wear a mask to hide his face and is treated far worse than the others.

Horrified by the extent of the abuse that their new friend has to endure, the protagonist teams up with him to escape to Avignon, where the protagonist’s relatives live.

Little do they know, their new friend and partner in crime is an outlaw and a Montagnard, the last of them all, so when the two finally escape the police quickly catch wind of the situation.

Can the duo get to Avignon and avoid recapture? Will this unlikely friendship help them heal from their respective trauma? And will the revolutionary’s plan to avenge his executed friends be successful?

29. (Crossover with Greek mythology) When Adrestia, a minor Greek goddess, is banished to Earth from Mount Olympus for causing too much trouble, she assumes a human disguise and travels to France of 1789, where great changes are just around the corner.

Finally finding herself in her own element once again, Adrestia (whose human name is Adrienne) decides that she has no right to miss all the fun and joins the forces of the revolution. She is a goddess of revolt and a daughter of Ares, after all.

One would think that having a goddess on your side will make fighting easier, but things are not that simple and the other gods don’t exactly take kindly to troublemakers who go against authority.

Nevertheless, Adrestia is more than willing to try and help her new allies to win in their fight for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

30. When the protagonists first meet up in real life, they’re ecstatic. After a few years of chatting on the Internet, the two French Revolution enthusiasts have finally met each other face to face and now they decide to set an old plan of theirs in motion.

The duo wants to perform a time travel spell invented by their witch ancestors and change the way the French Revolution ended. The spell is successfully cast, but in the process the warlocks run out of magic and are now forced to wait in the past until they are strong enough to cast the spell again to return home.

But hey, at least while they’re waiting they can do what they always wanted to do - prevent the Thermidorian Reaction, and they are going to try to do just that, even though preventing a coup d’état is far from easy, especially for two college kids from the future.

31. It’s 1815. Joseph Fouché is the Minister of Police but his days in office are numbered and he knows it.

What’s more, rumors spread about the incompetence of the police as nobody can catch the culprit behind a new string of murders. Fouché hopes that cracking the case would restore his reputation, but something isn’t right about these murders.

So far, every single victim was a participant of the Thermidorian Reaction and it simply cannot be a mere coincidence. This pattern makes Fouché fear for his life and his reputation, as in addition to the murders the sins that he and his allies had pinned on their enemies begin to resurface.

Fearing that he is next and that his own crimes are about to be exposed as well, Fouché becomes obsessed with catching this mysterious vigilante. He even has a prime suspect in mind, but he can neither track him down nor prove that it was him.

Meanwhile, the time Fouché has to rehabilitate the police force is running out. Soon he too might face the music at long last, as well as learn exactly why sparing one of your enemies while killing the rest is considered to be a classic mistake.

Will the vigilante get to Fouché? How much time does the Minister of Police actually have left before karma knocks on his door? And why does the youngest police inspector in history, who is Fouché’s beloved protégé, turn against his mentor?

32. When the protagonist decided to sneak into the Catacombs of Paris for “shits and giggles” with their buddies, the last thing they expected was a sudden time travel to a closet in an apartment of a prominent revolutionary, whose skull the protagonist was holding in their hands seconds ago.

Naturally, the protagonist gets caught by the housekeeper and promptly accused of breaking and entering at best, and an assasination attempt at worst. It doesn’t help that the protagonist has strange pills and a baseball bat on their person.

But when they’re about to get prosecuted, the inhabitant of that same apartment suddenly speaks up on their behalf and defends the protagonist, claiming that it was a mere misunderstanding. Later, that same revolutionary visits the protagonist, reveals that he knows about the existence of time travel and promises to help, as long as the protagonist goes along with his plan.

Despite suspecting that the revolutionary has an ulterior motive, the protagonist does want answers so they agree to play along...at least for a while.

33. After the Revolutionary War in America, the protagonist follows his friend and mentor, Marquis de Lafayette, to Paris as he is the only family the hero has at this point.

At first, when the French Revolution rolls around, the hero still stays by his mentor’s side, never questioning his opinions and decisions and admiring him as a hero.

But after the September Massacres reveal Lafayette’s...less heroic side the hero is utterly broken and disappointed that he trusted the wrong person yet again. This revelation prompts the hero to switch sides and become a double agent, working with the Jacobins while pretending that he is still loyal to Lafayette.

Is this the correct choice to make or will the hero’s naïveté and a simple desire to belong betray him once again?

34. Maximilien Robespierre finds himself in a difficult situation. Somehow, everyone who crosses his path keeps going missing, only to turn up brutally murdered.

Moreover, Robespierre keeps receiving notes with rather...stalkerish messages written by the culprit. The stress and the crippling paranoia are slowly taking a toll on his frail body and he collapses altogether after finding out that Camille Desmoulins and Antoine de Saint-Just got attacked as well.

Fortunately, Saint-Just and Desmoulins manage to survive the ordeal and decide that enough is enough. After a long recovery, the two men decide to set aside their differences and track down the mysterious stalker before other people close to Robespierre get hurt.

Who knows, perhaps this buddy cop-esque adventure will even help Saint-Just and Desmoulins resolve their rivalry once and for all, now that a mutual friend of theirs needs both of them.

35. An immigrant enrolls into a high school in the country where they live now, a country located on the other side of the planet, miles away from their homeland.

Isolated from the rest of the students, shunned for their Eastern European accent (feel free to pick the specific country) and their Socialist beliefs, the protagonist has very few friends and even they are imaginary - three French revolutionaries whom the protagonist admires the most.

However, things change when a classmate bonds with the protagonist over their fascination with the French Revolution and the two decide to team up and write a novel about their favorite topic, all while the three imaginary friends, who may or may not be something more than a simple product of imagination, are guiding these kids on their quest to rehabilitate the legacy of the revolution.

P. S. The Fouché tag has been graciously lent to me by @frevandrest , the tag’s inventor. This needs to become an official tag imo.

[tamorapierce]

Tammy's Spring 2020 Reading Recommendations For the Bored

Sooner or later the bookhounds among us are going to start joining my relentless song, from age five on up, of “I don’t have anything to read!!!!”

 I am here to help.  In this space, as I get to it (knowing, as my readers do, that I have no sense of deadline), I will be posting a constant set of collections of book titles by authors my team and I have read and will recommend in a wild variety of genres and for a wild variety of ages.  (And I’ll give a short hint as to the subject of the first book/series—if I did them all I’d never finish this.)  This last is for the many of you who are reading teen and adult books in grade and middle school, and those adult readers who are reading teen and kidlit. These people are for those who love books and don’t care who is supposed to be reading them.  

 Also, you may have to look far and wee, since we will be drawing upon not only recently published books but older ones that we have either read recently or that we read long ago and have re-read or have never forgotten.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you when the writing is archaic.  If you’re a true nutsy reader like the rest of us, you won’t care.

 -Tammy Pierce

                                                        *     *     *

Assume the book came out within the last 2 years unless I put LO next to the title, which means you have to check libraries and bookstores online and paper for copies.

 *     *     *

 Diana Wynne Jones  LO

A generation or two of fantasy writers, particularly those who love humor, bow to this woman as our goddess.  Not only was she out of her mind in a very British and manic way, but with her TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND she taught a number of us to ditch some ill-considered tropes of our genre.  If you write historic fantasy in particular, move heaven and earth to track this book down.  There’s a bonus: some of the entries will make you laugh till you cry.

           She is best known for her books for middle grade and teens, but they are enjoyable for all readers.  I cannot list them all here because my fingers will break (curse you, arthritis!), but these titles will give you a jumping-off point.  And remember, authors change with each book, so you won’t encounter the same author with each title as the author you read in the previous one!

           The Chrestomanci books, all in the same universe, in order of story,

                       not publication

Charmed Life  (1977) An innocent lad follows his plotting egotistical sister to live with England’s chief wizard

The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)

Conrad’s Fate (2005)

Witch Week (1982)

The Magicians of Caprona (1980)

Short stories

 The Dalemark Quartet begins with

The Spellcoats (1979)

3 sequels

 The Derkholm books are

Dark Lord of  (1998)

Year of the Griffin (2000)

  The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is standalone, but is a kind of offshoot of the Derkholm books.  You don’t have to have read the Derkholm books to get Tough Guide!

 There are other books and stories by Jones—I’ll let you find them on your own.

  Philip Pullman

To this day I am unable to call him anything but Mr. Pullman—that’s how much in awe of the man I am.  We’ve had dinner together, talked on the phone, talked at an event or two, done a conversation on audio with Christopher Paolini—it’s still Mr. Pullman to me.  (I was an assistant in a literary agency when I discovered his work, and I never recovered.) He is, in a word, brilliant, and his interests range through all kinds of areas, particularly history and religion.  I could have talked with him forever that night we had dinner, but the poor man had jet lag and I let him go to collapse.  It was one of the best exchanges of ideals, values, and books I’ve ever had.  

Read his work carefully, because what he discusses is never just the story on top.  No matter what he writes, he is making strong points about social justice, human nature, religion, and history without preaching.  He is one of the few male writers out there who can write female characters as people, not Something Different.  And you never know, with his work, where he will go next.

 The Ruby in the Smoke,

book 1,  the Sally Lockheart mysteries

Victorian mysteries with a female hero and male assistants,

           The Book of Dust and sequel,

first 2 books of The Secret Commonwealth

           His Dark Materials trilogy

                       The Golden Compass

                       2 other titles                

           THE COLLECTORS

           LYRA’S OXFORD

           THE WHITE MERCEDES

           FAIRY TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM

           I WAS A RAT!

           TWO CRAFTY CRIMINALS

           COUNT KARLSTEIN

           (I will stop here and let you find the rest. Most are available as Nook books.)

  Sharon Shinn

I discovered Sharon Shinn with JOVAH’S ANGEL, but a shortage of funds left me unable to pursue my interest (I am an economic disaster with libraries, so I buy rather than borrow) until, with a job and money to spend, I spotted THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET.  It is the story of a medieval-ish world and a small village where a baby was left with a childless couple.  She is raised as their daughter and discovers, as she grows, that her mother is an important, a Safekeeper, the person to whom a secret can be told, relieving the person who told it of the weight of guilt from it, to be carried by the Safekeeper until the owner either decides to tell or dies.  (And if they die without giving permission, the Safekeeper never reveal the secret.)  The baby who is adopted by this town’s safekeeper becomes the safekeeper in her turn.

           The next book is THE TRUTHTELLER’S TALE, about a girl who acquires the gift (??) of telling the truth, whether the person she tells it to wants to hear it or not. The third book is The Dream-maker’s Magic.  The three main characters now learn why they have been brought together over the course of the two earlier books, in what I thought was a satisfying, if unusual, conclusion.

           And there’s more!  I just did the two I love best!

             THE SAFEKEEPER’S SECRET (book 1, two sequels)

           ARCHANGEL (4 books)

           TWELVE HOUSES (5 books)

           ELEMENTAL BLESSINGS (4 books)        

SHIFTING CIRCLE (2 books)

           UNCOMMON ECHOES

           GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER

           GATEWAY

 Daniel Jose Older

 I was a Daniel Jose Older fan before I was sent DACTYL HILL SQUAD for a blurb (preodactyls in flight!  Of all sizes!  Confederate spies!  Thuggish bigot northerners!  The backlash of Gettysburg and the forced recruitment of blacks for the war effort! And strong, smart, fierce kids of various ages, sizes, colors, national heritage, and skills doing their best to help the war against the slaves, keep escaped slaves safe, duck the cruel managers of the homes and jails where they are being kept, find a half-decent meal, free other kids in trouble, learn who’s killing their friends, and help the dactyls!  That’s part of it, anyway!

Yeah, I loved it.  And there’s at least one new book, and once I’ve mowed though that, there are his older teen books, and his grownup mysteries, with their half-dead taxi driver who doubles as a part-time troubleshooter for the undead powers in his Bone Street Rhumba series.  {happy sigh}

  Edgar Allen Poe

Yes, some of these are reminders of why we ended up to be the readers we are and to nudge us to corrupt—I mean, “introduce”—­new readers to the glories that are our legacies.

­

THE COMPLETE TALES AND POEMS OF EDGAR ALLEN POE

           Here are the greats:

poems like “The Raven,” and “Annabelle Lee”

stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Telltale Heart,” and  ::shudder:: “The Pit and the Pendulum” (yes, a deep pit and a swinging pendulum topped with a razor-edged blade will be featured in this story).  

My dad would read these to us on dark and stormy nights when we lived near the Pacific ocean, when the fog came rolling in, softening every sound, when there were no cars driving by and no other sounds in our house but his deep voice and the crackle of the fire in the fireplace.  We would listen, soundless, as he wove the stories and poems around us and the foghorn sounded offshore.

           That’s the power of Poe.

  N. K. Jemisin

I think I began with Jemisin’s THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS, soon followed by its sequel THE BROKEN KINGDOMS.  The series ended with a third book, THE KINGDOM OF THE GODS.  She presented a rich and varied world from the aspects of people of different classes, showing the growth of societies and their formation.  I have a secret passion for society-building and social interaction, and whether or not a book is difficult to read (as Jemisin’s books are in spots because she refuses to insult a reader by talking down to them) is immaterial.  I want the world and I want the characters, and with her far-reaching mind and her respect for her characters she delivers each and every time.  I have read almost everything she’s written since that first trilogy: if I’ve missed something, it’s because I was in the middle of a deadline and on the road and somehow didn’t see it.  I’ll catch up!  This is just a sample:

           For readers of all sexes and adult reading skills

 The City They Became (pub’d April 2020)

 The Inheritance Trilogy:

           The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010

           2 book sequels

Novella: The Awakened Kingdom, 2014

                       Triptych: Shades in Shadow, 2015 (3 short stories) 

             The Dreamblood Duology:

           For readers of all sexes and adult reading skills

           The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010

                       Two sequels

 The Broken Earth series:

         The Fifth Season (August 2015)

                       Two book sequels

And there are plenty of short stories out there.  I may even have missed a book or twelve!

For those who prefer to hear my ramble in person, a video!

[shinidamachu]

yo asking someone to make a wish so half of their heritage is gone forever is fridge horror-level wtfness (thnx TV Tropes).

of course RT and Sunrise chose not to focus on it, and in mythology people do give up divinity or humanity for romantic reasons, but specifically in Inuyasha it was like ‘despite your demon half you can still live a good life’ as if he has some disease 🤨

like I get in history people have had to hide their heritage to survive war and avoid being shipped off to their death or lose their rights, but to ask someone to permanently discard half their heritage and presumably hide their origins until death is tragic as fuuuuuuuuuuu

It's not even that they chose not to focus on it, is that they deliberately portrayed it as this grand romantic gesture from Inuyasha’s part and for a part of the audience, it truly was. But then again, this backfired for people like me, because it only served to proof how desperate Inuyasha really was to fit in.

Poor guy was literally planning on using the jewel to become a full demon just the day before. Then, at Kikyo’s request, he agreed on doing the exact opposite with little to no deliberation other than “what will be made of you, Kikyo?” I can only assume he was afraid her feelings were conditional. That if he had said no, she would have called it quits.

Imagine the same situation, but this time Inuyasha has a support system to lean on. Prejudice against half demons are still a thing, however he has his parents, his friends, a place to belong. Would he still have said yes in order to live with Kikyo? I honestly doubt it.

You see, Inuyasha hates being human. Not in the sense of saying he hates it, but liking it in secret. He actively hates it. And I can’t stress enough that we don’t actually understand how rightfully entitled he is to hate it.

We know how a human body feels like, we’re used to have a human body. Inuyasha is only human once a month. The majority of time he is a half demon. That’s what he is used to. Even worse: put yourself in his shoes. If you were to lose half your strength, half your sight, half your hearing and speed every single New Moon, you'd curse that night too. 

Not to mention the sheer vulnerability of being emotionally and physically exposed, of not being able to protect yourself or the ones you care about and becoming a "burden” when he takes pride of being the (un)official guardian of the group. No wonder he felt so hopeless he made a point out of staying up all night. And this is what Kikyo was asking him to feel like every single day for the rest of his existence so their life together could be easier, with the aditional quicker of forever losing the features that marked him as his father’s son. You know, the man who died saving him and his mother.

Every single character that got close enough to find out about his night of weakness quickly became aware of how much he despises it. Now, we don’t know the exact duration of Inuyasha and Kikyo’s relationship, but here are our options: Kikyo didn’t know about the New Moon and that Inuyasha hated turning into human or she did know and decided to go for it anyway.

Considering that the latter option is straight up awful, I’ll just assume she simply didn’t know. What does this say about their relationship? If they were an item for a considerable period of time, how come she didn’t know about such a fundamental thing about him? Especially when people who weren’t even his love interest were aware of that fact pretty early on? What was it worth all that time together if they didn’t use it to have meaningful interactions and get to know one another? If Inuyasha was keeping secrets from her and if she wasn’t interested in learning them?

On the other hand, if their relationship was indeed short lived, that could justify the lack of knowledge, but a different issue raises: if they didn’t have time to collect basic information about each other, how am I supposed to believe in their love? How am I supposed to view the decision to erase his demonic side and live together as anything other than reckless, impulsive and thoughtless? How am I not supposed to see it as mutual convenience, a mean to an end? How am I not supposed to think they are acting out of lonileness and desire to fit in? How am I not supposed to think that if literally anyone else had given them the same options they would have taken it? 

A New Moon would have happened in at least one month, tops. That’s not love. That’s a thirty days affair. It could have grown into love, if given the chance, but the pairing seemed more interested in the life they ideolized for themselves than in each other.

I don’t think Kikyo meant it as an ultimatum or that she was disgusted by his demonic attributes. She wouldn’t have approached or kissed him as a half demon otherwise. But I think it’s hard to deny that she wasn’t necessarily fond of them either, since she jumped at the opportunity to get rid of them first chance she got, with no remorse whatsoever. As if it was a bonus. This allowed with the fact that the prejudice against half demons is an allegory for racism and that she used from false equivalence to make the point that both her and Inuyasha were in the same situation puts her in a bad light.

Inuyasha was isolated by people because of his heritage, something he couldn’t change without resorting to intrusive, traumatizing and permanent magic, which Kikyo herself suggested he did. Kikyo isolated herself. People loved her because of her status and she was a privileged woman in comparison. She could have dropped everything since she was unhappy living like that, but she spontaneously chose her duty and powers over love and an ordinary life. And as much as I disagree with her choices, I can at least respect and understand them. What I can’t do is feel sympathy for her when the consequences of said choices catch up with her.

The narrative doesn’t give this problem much focus, it treats it in a much more subtle way. For instance: the jewel only being destroyed by the right wish, paints wishing for Inuyasha to become human as wrong and selfish, with the potential to be catastrophic.

That being said, Inuyasha didn’t hate being a half demon, on the contrary. What he hated was being ostracized over it, so he decided to take matters on his own hands and, when he was free to choose between using the jewel to become a full demon or a human, he went the full demon route because he knew living as human would made him miserable. But the desire of being a full demon was a facade. What he so very clearly wanted, all along, was to be accepted the way he was. That’s why he had no trouble letting go of that goal to pursue the exact  opposite: there was no attachment to it. Full demon or human, he longed for a place to belong. If Kikyo was offering that to him, of course he would have taken it, even if becoming human was far from being the first choice.

Compare that with Inuyasha finally giving up from becoming a full demon, realizing he didn’t have to change at all, that he had a place to belong and people who loved him not despite of what he was but because of it, that he could be accepted as a half demon. Compare that with Inuyasha ending up with the girl that always encouraged him to be himself, with being comfortable enough around her to follow his instincts and embracing his canine mannerisms rather than shutting them down, which he didn’t quite did with Kikyo... The message is clear:

Kikyo should never, in any circumstance, have asked that of him. The implications of it were really bad and on paper it was a win-win situation for her because getting rid of the jewel to become an ordinary woman was something she already wanted. He was the one with the short end of the stick, sacrificing everything without the same level of compromising from her part.

And Inuyasha should never, in any circumstance, have accepted this deal. As his love interest, Kikyo should have been the very first persond advocating for him not to change. If the feelings they had for each other truly were love, then she should be the one helping him getting to terms with himself while he does the same for her, not legitimizing the absurd idea that a part of his essence was less worthy of existing than the other, that he should have be the one to change in order to fit in, rather than the people who oppressed him.

Thematically, even if subtle, the narrative did a decent job out of showing the audience how fucked up the whole thing actually was. What it failed to do was making Inuyasha and the others realizing how wrong it was and holding Kikyo accountable for her actions by making them talk about it.

Because God forbid Kikyo gets vocally told she was wrong (even though she often is) and God forbid Takahashi give Inukik the tiniest bit of substance and relationship development.

[bigskydreaming]

I don’t often muse upon PJO, but when I do, its random as hell. 

Anyway, tonight’s thought (singular, also: derogatory, as in very possibly a mistake) is about exploring aspects of the Greek gods that are extrapolations of like, what they’d be like in the modern world instead of just in terms of their ancient myths.....and how that might widen the scope of their demigod children and their powers.

Like take Hephaestus for instance. God of the forge and fire, of invention and artifice......now widen the scope on those things through the lens of the modern age.....might he also be considered the god of modern science, not just in terms of things like engineering and technology, but also physics, chemistry? Or would those things fall more under Athena’s purview......unless you separated them into finer divisions. Like, you could consider Athena’s overview of knowledge and wisdom to make her the goddess of science and higher learning or whatever in general........OR you could separate it like.....Hephaestus is the god of natural or physical sciences like physics and chemistry, and Athena is the goddess of not just wisdom and tactics but things like psychology, computer sciences, etc.

Or OR get Dionysus up in there too, and make it like Hephaestus is the god of chemistry, of chemical reactions and the like, Athena is the goddess of physics, of the most full and complete understanding of the physical universe via things like the unified field theory and its comprising forces of electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, etc, and then Dionysus the god of biology, hmmmm.....

Cuz imagine then, demigod children of Hephaestus, where instead of pyrokinesis, some get powers like transmuting elements.......oh man, the things you could do with that??? Not just lead into gold but they’d be terrors in battle because they could transmute the very air someone breathes into chlorine gas, blood into acid, flesh into stone. Or using that power defensively, making them able to keep guns from firing by dampening the chemical reaction that comes from igniting gunpowder, or just knocking someone out or putting them to sleep by just tanking their metabolic reactions. Mingling magic with modern know-how and creating their own version of truth serums by turning the water someone drinks into something akin to sodium pentathol when just brushing their fingers against someone’s glass, or rendering all drugs or toxins that might have been slipped into their drink null and void by transmuting them into harmless H20. 

(I know that Luke was mentioned briefly as being good at making potions aka alchemy due to being a son of Hermes, but frankly, transmutation as a mastery of the periodic table makes waaaaay more sense for Hephaestus’ kids, I’m just saying. And plus the Greeks didn’t so much consider Hermes an actual god of alchemy as they more just kinda viewed him as their god of all things miscellaneous and tended to lump anything they didn’t have particularly strong feelings about and/or a grasp of under his umbrella. Hermes was really just the patron god of being random as fuck and oh great gods of Olympus I have no idea what I want to do with my life, give me a sign. Hermes: poofs into existence on their shoulder and says SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED TO GO BE GAY AND DO CRIME YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, DIVINE MANDATE, LETS GOOOOOOO).

Give children of Athena more practical applications for being heirs to her wisdom, knowledge and strategic acumen by also giving her dominion in the modern age over humanity’s quest to better understand the universe we live in and all its rules, the ins and outs of the laws that govern reality itself.......thus Annabeth and others’ potential acumen for magic being here not the end result of them stepping on Hecate and her kids’ toes, but rather more a function of making them the embodiment of ‘magic is just sufficiently advanced technology’ as they - via an innate and heightened understanding of the very nature of the physical universe - find holes in the fabric of space and time that let them slip from Point A to Point B as easily as crossing the street, play tricks with gravity and relativity and things that leave others baffled and amazed and them just shrugging and being like its all in the wrist, dude, and also, the fact that our mom just GETS reality in a way that everyone else will still be playing catch-up to a thousand years from now.

Children of Dionysus (yes I know he barely has any shhh we’re not paying attention to the series we’re just musing on demigod powers here) who combine the godhood of grapes and revelry with loud music and laughter......the way music can help with plant growth, because music is essentially just VIBRATIONS and vibrations stimulate activity in plant cells in a variety of ways.....and thus similar to Mr. D’s tricks with controlling vines and rapidly growing plants, AND his ability to affect the psyches of others, which is described as inflicting or curing madness and I’m like ehhhh do we have to describe it thus though.....put all that in a pot, shake it, not stir, and abrakadabra, alakazam, other psychic pokemon random Psyduck shout-out and voila! ALL of that could be afixed to and made the end product of godly and demigodly control and manipulation of vibrations, cuz Dionysus is literally the god of just vibing in all its infinite forms.....and thus its all just about how vibrations affect plant life on a cellular level, how they can affect brain chemistry in a variety of ways, triggering a lot of the more primal centers/functions of the brain, etc. You kids are driving me crazy, he’d yell at his demigod kids, and they’re like umm wow, like ACK CHOO UGHLY, father, welcome to the 21st century, all we’re really doing is directly stimulating the prefrontal cortex of your cerebellum with our banging rock music, and its making you angy, what about it?

And speaking of actually, if we and by we I mean me cuz I am and its wheee, are theorizing about Athena’s brood getting to be all magical wunderkind whizkids with their scientific acumen and divine cheat-sheets for the physical universe, maybe Aphrodite and her kids could snatch up those psychology and psychiatry job titles instead. Love, desire, also things like obsession, hyper-fixation......is Cabin Mighty Aphrodite really just pheromone central or are its campers more like magical dopamine and serotonin factories just pumping out good vibes all around them, being like come hang out, its free brain juice. Like, imagine kids of Aphrodite who just by their mere presence could help the legions of ADHD demigods focus better, concentrate easier, get shit done because the goddess of passion and her children like....have the gift of helping people to more productively pursue their passions in ALL forms, not just the physical desires they hold for others but the passions they hold for arts and crafts and sports and y’know, saving the world on magical coming-of-age quests when their milkshakes bring all the monsters to the yard. 

And then Ares not just as a god of war and conflict, but of entropy....the tendency of the universe to trend towards disorder, randomness, uncertainty....the kind of things that so often incite or enflame conflict......but applied at large not just to interpersonal dynamics but to the world itself. With his children possessing demigod abilities that disrupt or weaken bonds, both in the form of emotional ties between allies and commitments towards various ideals or courses of action, but also the ability to PHYSICALLY weaken bonds, resulting in an enemy’s weapon falling apart at a touch, or increasing the instability or volatility of an object so it blows up akin to how Gambit of the X-Men’s powers work and can turn even playing cards into a weapon, etc, etc.

And don’t even get me started on Hermes! No, seriously, don’t. Mostly because I haven’t thought that one through yet and I got nothing. I mean I got some things but they are nebulous and have yet to spring forth fully formed from my head like Athena from the fuckhead of Zeus, that absolute fuckhead of legend and yore. In my defense though, I haven’t like, eaten any primordial goddesses of thought and memory, so.......like, idk, I’m taking the longer route here I guess.

[elentiyawhitethorn]

Sneaking Around | Chapter Four

The next day seemed to last forever. Ansel slept in, and Aelin took her own car to the office. Lunch was fun as usual, but she felt preoccupied. She hadn’t seen Rowan once without the others there, and she was honestly desperate for their date. It was rather embarrassing.

At 6:30, half an hour before Rowan was supposed to arrive and only a few minutes before Ansel left for the night shift at the bar, Aelin was freshly showered, hair dried, and picking out something to wear.

“Hey, Ansel. I know you need to leave soon, but red or blue?” she asked, holding up the two options. Aelin was still wearing a towel.

“Red, definitely,” she advised. “The color looks good on you, not to mention that dress is shorter.” Ansel winked.

Aelin rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Thanks, A.” She went back into her room and changed. Then she curled her hair and put on a light amount of makeup. She put on earrings to finish off the look and headed out into the kitchen. Yes, she’d cut it a little close, taking her time. But Aelin didn’t want to have enough time to get nervous. Ansel had left as soon as she helped Aelin pick a dress, and now there were a remaining five minutes to sit and stew.

Rowan has asked her on a date. You don’t ask someone you don’t like to go on a date with you. He liked her. Aelin was happy, but she also wasn’t going to be red and stuttering the whole time. She would play it cool if it was the last thing she did.

Just then, a light knocking sounded on the door. Holy gods. This was really happening.

Aelin stood, took a moment to straighten her velvety dress, then matched over to the door.

Rowan was wearing a suit, a nice one, too, not one of his work suits. He very nearly took her breath away.

He clearly felt the same; his eyes drifted across her face, taking in her appearance, then down. His gaze lingered on her partially exposed cleavage.

“See something you like?” Aelin asked sweetly, an innocent smile on her face.

His stare returned to her eyes. “Maybe I do.” The look of his smirk was purely predatory. It turned Aelin on more than anything.

“Careful, or we might not make it to dinner,” Aelin breathed.

“It’s a shame I haven’t eaten yet, or I might not want to,” was Rowan’s response. Then he offered her his arm. Aelin snorted, but placed her hand on it.

They took the elevator down in silence, but it was a companionable silence, not awkward at all.

In Rowan’s car, he said, “I haven’t heard a single insult from you yet. It’s got to be a new record.”

Aelin rolled her eyes. “Seeing as you’re taking me to dinner, I thought it best not to be impolite. If you have no objections, however, I could always come up with something.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

Aelin chuckled. “Well, I am the queen of insults.

“How true. I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of, though.”

“Oh, it definitely is. It comes in handy as a life skill.”

They talked and laughed the whole ride. Aelin was new to not hating Rowan, and the change had come about very suddenly, but she found she enjoyed his company.

They pulled up outside a small, but nice, restaurant in the middle of the city. Aelin had been here a couple of times before; she liked the homey style and good food.

Rowan escorted her inside, his warm hand on her lower back. Aelin wasn’t pleased when he removed it, but she supposed they had to sit down.

Aelin ordered the chicken and Rowan got tuna with a salad. Aelin sighed, saying, “First Elide, now you. Why do all of my friends like eating a bowl full of leaves?”

“Oh, we’re friends now, are we?” Rowan asked, amusement showing.

Aelin blushed only a little. “Well, whatever we are, I mean it. How exactly is salad appealing unless it’s drenched in ranch dressing?”

“Haven’t you heard of this thing called being healthy?”

“Haven’t you heard of this thing called chocolate?” Aelin responded.

Rowan laughed. “I don’t eat sugar.”

Aelin gasped. “You’re joking!” When he didn’t say anything, Aelin scowled at him. “Why the hell not? Are you ill or something?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I just don’t like sugar very much.”

Aelin was having trouble wrapping her mind around it. “But... it’s sugar.”

“Why do you look personally offended?” Rowan questioned.

“You. Don’t. Like. Sugar. Sugar is my life. How do you not like it?”

He smiled. “It’s your life? You do realize how ridiculous you sound, right?”

Aelin frowned. Before she could enlighten him on sugar’s necessity to life, their food arrived.

They ate quietly for the first few moments. Aelin was still processing Rowan’s offense against sugar.

“What about a Hershey’s bar?” Aelin finally asked. “Everybody likes those.”

Rowan chuckled. “Not everyone.”

“Snickers?”

“No.”

They went on like this for quite some time. Aelin refused to change the subject before she knew the extent of Rowan’s crimes against humanity.

She finally relented and the conversation went in other directions. Aelin knew that Rowan was smart, but he was wittier than she had given him credit for, and he could be funny, too. She’d never have guessed the man had a sense of humor.

Of course, he also felt the need to belittle her as much as humanly possible. She did exactly the same thing. Years of insults couldn’t be immediately disregarded, after all. It was only natural.

By the time she’d finished her food, Aelin had called Rowan an intrusive bastard, a cheeky son of a bitch, and a callous, good-for-nothing swine. She’d also learned where he grew up, what he did in his free time, and what his favorite pizza toppings were. It was a working progress.

-

Back in his car, Aelin pursued earlier’s topic. “I don’t know if I can let this go, Rowan. This is bad.”

“Tell me this isn’t about the sugar thing again.” When she didn’t, he sighed. “I’ve said it before, you are a very dramatic person.”

“I can’t help but feel put off. Who doesn’t like sugar?”

“You are completely loony.”

“Excuse me? You need to work on your manners.”

He glanced over at her, then looked back at the road. “You didn’t seem to mind my lack of propriety Friday night.”

Aelin refused to let a blush rise to her cheeks.

“Nothing to say to that? No snarky comment?” Rowan annoyingly asked her.

“Can it,” was all Aelin could think to say, her menacing scowl deepening.

Rowan chuckled. “Seems I’m not the only one with manner problems.”

Aelin was not going to be provoked. If he thought it would be this easy, he had another thing coming. Though her normally sharp-witted tongue was having trouble making a good comeback, so she kept her mouth shut. This was due to the fact that Rowan had dragged her thoughts back to Friday night. Damn him.

Aelin could almost feel his self-satisfied smile, but she refused to spare him a glance.

They pulled up at her apartment building and she got out of his car. “We have work tomorrow,” Aelin said when Rowan got out of the car as well.

“Ansel’s out; surely it wouldn’t be very gentlemanly not to walk you to your door,” replied Rowan.

Aelin rolled her eyes and walked in and to the elevator, Rowan behind her. She half-expected him to make a move when the doors closed, but he just stood there, pleasantly smiling at her. Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing to her. Aelin refused to make the first move.

The doors opened and Aelin stepped out first. She made sure to sway her hips a bit more than usual as she walked. When Aelin got her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door, Rowan still hadn’t done anything other than look charming. Asshole.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?” Aelin smiled sweetly. She knew she’d done exactly what he wanted, but she didn’t care if she lost this round. Aelin wanted his mouth.

His smile widened. “Well, if you insist.” Rowan used his finger to tilt her face up to his. His lips met hers, but it was no gentle goodnight kiss. It was full of tongue and teeth and passion. Clearly Rowan had been craving this a bit more than he let on. His hand drifted down to massage Aelin’s breast through her dress. She let out a moan, her fingers running through his hair. Rowan’s other hand trailed down her back then gripped her ass.

After another minute of absolute heaven, Aelin pulled away. “See you tomorrow,” she said, smiling. Then she turned the doorknob, took out her keys, and stepped inside.

“Goodnight, Aelin,” Rowan managed, though she was pleased to see he was panting. She was too.

She gave another smile, this one more of a smirk, and closed the door. Aelin then dropped her purse on the counter and walked into the bathroom. She took off her earrings, washed her face, and brushed her teeth. Then she went to her room. Stripping down to her underwear, she pulled on a large t-shirt and slumped into bed.

It was only just past 9:00, but that didn’t matter. There was no chance Aelin would be getting to sleep anytime soon. She could still feel his hands, his tongue. She’d never felt so invigorated, never felt so needy. All thoughts went out of her head when she saw him, and she couldn’t help but think of him when they were apart. Fuck. Aelin had it bad.

[skyrim-drabbles-n-stuff]

Miraak x Ldb: Baby (dragon) Fever

(Baby dragon this time)

Winter was not a forgiving season in your homeland. Everyone knows that even through the summer Skyrim was known for its delightful flurries. So to say that it was cold would be one hell of an understatement. However despite the atrocity of the elements, you were capable of making your proud homestead comfortable. A humble fire ignited by a mere mumble of “yol” and a bottle of spiced wine in your hand.

The only thing troubling you at this point was the fact that Miraak was due back home from foraging a little over an hour ago. Sure, he was definitely able to take care of himself. Gods he was anything but defenseless. Perhaps the source of your anxiety stemmed not from what could happen to him, but what would happen to something if it messed with him.

Thankfully before your mind could wonder too far your focus was snapped back to reality by the sound of a door opening, howling winds accompanying it before an abrupt stop. Eyes still gazing into the fire you grinned, you knew who it was. Even if you didn’t at first, you knew the pattern of footfalls and clinking of golden chains by heart, quickly giving away who it belonged to.

“I was just wondering where you were..” Was your breaking of the silence, a happiness you didn’t realize was missing taking over.

However when he didn’t answer, his large form languidly retreating to your shared quarters, the smile dropped rather quickly. He was grumpy naturally but it was unlike him to ignore you. If anything he’d annoy you to no end before ignoring you.

What could he possibly be mad about? Surely he heard you.

With an agitated huff you pursued him. Frustration growing with each step closer. Once you passed the doorway you were practically fuming. It was pitiful he could invoke such strong emotions so easily, but hey, you loved the bastard so if anyone was aloud to do this to you it should be him. Needless to say, you were still pissed.

If looks could kill, he’d likely have daggers sticking out his now bare back. His robes were full of rapidly melting snow and were now lying in a messy pile next to his boots. How’d he get undressed so quickly? It didn’t matter.

Crossing your arms over your chest you cleared your throat. “I was worried.” You gruffly sneered, brow furrowing.

When he didn’t answer again, only looking over to give you emerald hued side eye, you were about to blow up. How dare he stand at the foot of your bed, bare save for his pants, infuriating you beyond belief?

As though sensing your impending fury, he sighed, opening his mouth to speak. Before any words could form, a distinct “squeak” stopped him. Instantly his eyes were saucer sized, now perfectly fixated on you.

“What the hell?” You muttered, arms uncrossing before you took a few hurried steps to his side.

Nothing could’ve prepared you for what was previously hidden. Did you gasp? Yelp? You didn’t even know. For what reaction would be appropriate when there was a minuscule creature lying on your bed? What was one supposed to do when there was a...a..dragon?

Being Dragonborn didn’t mean you knew what to do in the presence of another dov. Kill was definitely a first instinct but...not now. Time itself seemed to heed as you took in the details of the creature before you.

It was..beautiful? Scales glimmering in the candlelight a shiny golden-cream color. It’s wide, curious eyes a kind amber hue. It was no bigger than a wolf pup, yet it stood as proudly as its tiny wings and legs would allow.

Whenever it’s eyes met yours is when they really lit up. From the tiny form erupted a strangely cute hissing chirp as it inspected you, it’s head tilting side to side.

“I think the little dovah likes you.” Finally, your lover’s deep accented voice spoke, a gentle expression on his face.

With no hesitation, one of his burly arms wrapped around your waist. His gaze however was still transfixed on the little creature, clearly amused as it approached you.

“Um..yeah, wait no. Miraak, where..?” “It’s no matter, this little one didn’t have a home. She wouldn’t survive on her own.” He mused, his free hand reaching towards the golden dragon to lovingly let the top of her little head. “It wouldn’t have been right to leave her, sahrohtaar practically forbade it.”

Maybe you’ve gone insane. That was plausible. You knew he was compassionate but you were sure that it was limited to you and yourself alone. Never in a million years would you have expected this. Besides..when did dragons mate? You were almost certain they were all male. Okay yeah, logically speaking that couldn’t have been so but you’ve never seen a female dragon. Save for yourself of course..but that didn’t really count right?

Following his arm up to his face you were even more so shocked. The look of love in his eyes was astonishing. It wasn’t the love he shown when he looked at you, but you could tell it was easily as significant, just not the same type. For a man who proclaimed hatred for dragons, this was earth shaking.

“I don’t know what to say...” you drawled, slowly grinning once again. You were terrified, weirded out and disturbed but..if it meant you could continue to see that gentle look in his eyes, all of it was worth it. “Does..does she have a name?” You asked, melting as his loving eyes met your own- the kindness in his smile enough to make you forget about the frozen fury raging outside the safety of your home.

He hummed tentatively at your question. A habit of his that let you know when he put great thought into something. “Yes..I was thinking, Briiviinhind.” He was proud and it was obvious.

“Brii..Beautiful..shine..hope? Not really a scary dragon name, but still proper. Three words of power.” Oh gods, you were slowly falling in love with the little thing. Maybe this was Akatosh’s punishment for your coupling with the First Dragonborn.

“It doesn’t have to be threatening love.” He playfully chided, practically purring whenever you fully embraced his side. It amazes you how he managed to stay so warm, it had to be the Atmoran blood. “Just has to be fitting and..her new mother has to approve of course.”

“Mother...?” Your eyes were now wide as well, lips apart as you processed. Maybe you were dragon enough after all, as much as he was at least. “So are you the father now?” The question came out oddly playful considering you were still feeling from shock.

“Well of course I am. Besides...” He paused, his smile widening to the point of exposing his scruff covered dimples as the baby dragon began its trek up his body in search for additional warmth. “Besides, i’ll need all the practice I can get.”

“Hmm..practice for what?” Now your interest was completely piqued.

“For when I end up putting a nestling of our own in your belly.” “WHAT??” To this he laughed, a lovely pink blush on the tip of his nose and a mischievous glimmer in his eyes as he winked.

Divines preserve you.

[wellfine]

Hey so I rambled for like a million words on Sanji’s and Zoro’s and a little bit of Luffy’s characterisation re: living for the sake of other people vs. yourself inspired by @eastdemons recent very good character analysis so I tucked it behind a read-more to spare you all

(WCI spoilers)

realised/remembered that Sanji as a child went seamlessly from being born to exist for the sake of others (his biological family), to wanting desperately to exist for the sake of others but being rejected and treated as though his very existence were a nuisance no matter how hard he tried, to finally finding a sort of unspoken crude acceptance with the Baratie and Zeff which was conditional (in his own mind) on him existing for their sake instead, that he finally had a target to project his rejected desire to be useful onto, to finally have a reason to exist and a tangible benefit he could point to - “if I weren’t here, then the Baratie wouldn’t run as smoothly, cook so nicely, defend itself so strongly”

and sure, tethering himself to that one floating restaurant meant he could never actually go out and achieve his own dreams but he was used to that, he had already accepted from childhood that his life never belonged to him, that he existed for the sake of others and self-sacrifice was naturally a part of that to the point he didn’t even consider it “sacrifice” any more but rather just the natural order of his birth. Like how you know to queue at the supermarket because that’s what your parents taught you. I don’t know if he ever even would’ve registered on a conscious level that that’s how he thought of himself? You could argue that a lot of the Straw Hats (maybe even all of them, in their own way) believe that sacrificing yourself is "natural” to do when your convictions are on the line, like Luffy’s acceptance of his fate at Loguetown, but Sanji’s is different. The Straw Hats might say, “it’s only natural to risk yourself for what you believe in,” but Sanji believes “it’s only natural that I would sacrifice myself for others.” The others all may have a sort of “put your money where your mouth is” attitude towards self-preservation (even Usopp and Nami), but moreso than any others I think Sanji says “no, the rest of you, sit down. None of you get to sacrifice yourselves, that’s foolish. Only I may die for the drama of it all”

So even at age 19 it’s not until Sanji meets the Straw Hats that he even considers the choice of living his life for himself, based on what he wants, and not what others want or need from him. Like obviously he cared about Zeff and the Baratie and he did genuinely want to see it succeed, but it wasn’t his life’s goal. He was trying to make it his life’s goal but you could see the look on his face when he talked about All Blue and traveling for his own sake. And then a bunch of smelly weird pirates crash into their restaurant and confront him with the idea that “hey, you know, your life belongs to you, and you actually have, you know, CHOICES you can make, and it’s okay for you to prioritise your own goals and live your life the way YOU want to”

You could argue that this is a recurring theme with all the Straw Hats - “personal freedom” is probably one of, if not the most prominent theme in One Piece - where most of the crew has felt like they’ve been held back from living the life they want to lead before joining the Straw Hats. Some were held back by external influences (Nami with the Arlong Pirates and Marines, Robin with the Marines again, Brook by Hogback), some by personal obstacles (Usopp’s struggles with his own cowardice, and fear of leaving the comfort of his seemingly safe village for the risk but allure of the sea). There were other members who were held back by a sense of social obligation, too - Chopper to Dr. Kureha and his memories of Hiluluk, Franky to Galley-La in general, the Franky Family, and his memories of Puffing Tom - but those were also slightly different. Chopper, who was still just a kid, all things considered, needed “permission” from his parental figure to leave home, and Franky, conversely, needed to be sure that his adoptive family-figures would be fine on their own. Sanji and Zeff obviously have a father-son relationship but Sanji didn’t need Zeff’s specific permission or approval, nor did he need reassurance that the Baratie would be okay without him - because he already KNEW he had both those things. Zeff is implied to have been trying to get Sanji to leave for a long time. What Sanji really needed was someone to tell him that he would be okay. That he could exist outside of the construct by which he defined his existence (his usefulness to Zeff and the Baratie). That this was a thing he was allowed to do. That God wouldn’t smite him where he stood if he dared to get out of bed in the morning for his own sake, and not someone else’s. And that came from meeting the Straw Hats - all of them, but Zoro a little bit more, and Luffy most of all.

Of course he still struggles with that even after joining the Straw Hats LMAO and the poor dude has a self-sacrificial streak longer than his legs. But now I’m gonna pivot into talking about how Zoro and Sanji contrast against each other in this exact regard

Of all the Straw Hats, Zoro (and I’m still not 100% up to date with the current Wano happenings so maybe we have more insight into why Zoro is the way he is but I still don’t think it could totally disrupt anything I’m about to say) is the person who is least able to identify with where Sanji is coming from but also somehow, the most?? Because Zoro is a paradox of both living fully and wholly for himself in the moment but also being someone who has dedicated his entire life to living out someone else’s dream. Like, yeah, it’s his dream, too, but it’s been made clear throughout the series that the force behind his terrifying drive is his oath to Kuina, not just his own desire to be the strongest swordsman.

But I’m not sure Zoro sees a distinction there? And I’m not sure it’s even relevant to make the distinction in the first place? Kuina has passed away, so Zoro’s own interpretation of what her dream would’ve been, how to fulfil it, and what their promise to each other means is, essentially, his own free will. Often times in fiction when you see a character living in another character’s memory they basically model themselves around what they think the other person would’ve done, but not Zoro. He doesn’t model his fighting style after Kuina’s (quite the opposite). He doesn’t train how he thinks she would’ve trained. He even went ahead and defined the parameters of their “dream” all on his own - defeating Mihawk (is that how Kuina would’ve defined “becoming the strongest swords[wo]man”?). He is, undeniably, living life however it naturally occurs to him and pursuing whatever he wants to pursue.

But Kuina is still also undeniably a fixture in his life. He still wields her sword (fingers crossed for Wano). He still thinks of her and is still driven by the bond and oath they shared when they were younger, and he still considers her father to be his mentor. He would say that he wants to become the strongest swordsman because it is his dream and also because he’s doing it for Kuina, and they would both be independently true.

And so all of this culminates into Zoro not understanding Sanji’s perspective one tiny little bit, lmao. You’d think he would because on the surface they both live for another person’s sake but when you get deeper into it they’re opposites, as is usually the way with those two. Sanji is someone who presents himself as a “lone wolf”, sort of - the strong, cool, independent “Mr. Prince” who is often separated from the other characters, working on his own. But he’s not. He defines his entire existence by his utility to others and the capacity for his sacrifice to them. That’s why he keeps TRYING to sacrifice himself for others even when it’s pretty unnecessary lmao. And Zoro is someone who readily claims to be living his life for the sake of another person, but then doesn’t give a second thought to how that person might have lived their life. He can live his own life while also living FOR someone else. That’s not a contradiction at all in his mind. Zoro has made it no secret that he would leave the Straw Hats if he had to in order to pursue his own dreams and I genuinely still think he would, as loyal as he is to Luffy (which, btw, Luffy would unequivocably support).

And so it’s why Sanji can’t understand why Zoro would fight against Mihawk knowing that he would lose, because in that moment Zoro was living blisteringly for his own sake and nothing else, because throwing yourself into a fight you KNOW you will lose simply because it’s what you WANT is the culmination of “living your own life”. To Sanji, that makes no sense, because Zoro could still live and be useful to others. Sanji completely understands dying to protect others and so thinks dying because of your own resolutions would be a “waste”. And it’s why Sanji left so easily in WCI, and why Zoro couldn’t/can’t understand that, because to Sanji it made sense in what he still believed to be true in his mind - that he ultimately only existed to be useful to others, and that his brief sojourn with the Straw Hats had been fun, but that leaving them would be inevitable, because it was too “selfish” on his part to dare to live life for himself and that the universe would correct itself eventually. He still thought that it was wrong of him to live his own life. He still, on some level, thought that his life belonged to someone else. And at least, like this, he could save the people he actually cared about (the Straw Hats) along the way, making the best of a foregone conclusion, in his mind. I genuinely think even after everything the SHs went through together it wasn’t until he saw Luffy still waiting for him that it finally clicked in Sanji’s mind that he was the sole owner of his own life and that he had a choice in what he dedicated it to.

Speaking of Luffy, I think he 100% lives his own life for himself only, even more than Zoro - he sacrifices himself for others, but only because he wants to because he personally likes those people, not because he thinks it’s the “right” thing to do - but I also think he deeply understands and appreciates Sanji’s mentality in a way that Zoro doesn’t/can’t. I think Luffy learned from Shanks that the way you act/the things you do have a broader impact on the world around you, and so living life “for yourself” is something you have to do mindfully and consciously of how that will affect other people. And I think he learned about the idea of being expected to live for the purpose of others from Sabo and Ace, and the subsequent rejection of that idea. So he fully embraces the notion of living your life for yourself only, but he does so being aware of the implications that has for the other people in your life.

I don’t know if this makes any sense or if it’s still coherent at this point I have written (checks) almost 2000 words about one piece and I’m a litte embarrassed but you know what I'm just gonna hit ‘publish’ without proof reading thanks for coming to my TED Talk i’m sorry if any of these paragraphs just stopped mid-sentence as I hopped to finish off some other sentence

[dikiyvter]

23 & 31? :eye: for either or both

Of course aid anything 4 u <3

Uncommon Questions [ accepting ]

23. How does envy manifest itself in them (they take what they want, they become resentful, etc)?

For Gio: Envy is... kind of a scale of ugliness for Gio, to be honest. First and foremost his envy is typically not something ugly; It's typically something that turns more into a hopeful longing other than any sort of truly resentful behavior. Just because he wants what someone else has doesn't mean that he needs to take it from them necessarily; the world is not a pie to be split among it's inhabitants. He views the world as an endless wealth, and if he wants something someone else has, all he has to do is work to get it himself. Ultimately his longing to be human and to take a quiet role in human society spawns from envy of the lives that humans lead.

... And then there's the far uglier envy. Gio is a rather childish individual who experiences emotions very strongly; In part this is subconscious acting, and in part it's genuine truth; He's really never been good at things regarding emotions primarily because he's never been taught a whole lot in regards to control of ones emotions or ways to manage them. He's a bit... emotionally stunted but more in the 'seems like an erratic mood swing-y mess because he feels very strongly' sense and less, you know, [gestures at Baal and Zhongli]. There is thus always a chance that when Gio becomes envious of something, his first reaction is that of intense resentment towards whoever it is that has what he doesn't- This is partially true even for his love of humanity. Even though he starts off with the thought of "this is beautiful" it was still interlaced with a lot of bitter resentment that he would never really have that; Coming to terms with his worldview is what got rid of that. But it's a bit harder to have a mentality of 'the world isn't a pie; someone having a bigger slice than me doesn't mean i can't have more if i want it' when its... say...

A person whom you love whose fallen for another or is having all of their time taken up by them.

For Riga: ...Riga gets a much shorter paragraph and for that I apologize, but I have a lot more thoughts regarding Gio on this subject considering that lil clowns got a lot of conflictions and nuance to ramble about. Riga, on the other hand, tends to be far more simplistic in the things he is feeling and how he is feeling them; though this isn't to say he feels any less strongly or erratically than Gio does.

Rigatello typically feels envy as a genuinely ugly awful emotion that typically results not just in resentment but in a very, very intense form of frustration. A major part of his character is that he is someone who wants very little, but the few things he does want are things he perceives more as needs; Case in point being he doesn't perceive wanting Gio to care about him as being a want, he sees it as a need, and when your needs are denied you become... what? Angry. Frustrated. Depressed. Envy turns him violent, because why should others have what's rightfully his? Why are others entitled to the few things he truly needs? Why is he not deserving of these things? There's a tangible cycle to a lot of Rigatellos emotions, and it's that he is confronted with something ( or someone ) he wants; He becomes reliant, he thinks he needs them ( using gio as an example; He cannot imagine who he is without Gio nearby. He cannot imagine himself in the hierarchy that is set between them both and Dottore without Gio there, because Gio has always been the one to provide a release of tension, even if the relationship the two of them shared was at times very far from healthy; The change of something he sees as being integral to his identity and his place in his little corner of society is something that throws him VERY badly; Rigatello is someone very afraid of any meaningful change because the fear of what comes next and that change leading to potential failure is one that haunts him ) ; They move away from him, and he panics, because he has very little and thus clings desperately to what few things he has; Cue the cycle of seeing that which he 'needs' with someone else, being angry, being frustrated, falling down the rabbit hole of wondering why he isn't worthy, arriving at depression, resparking that frustration, and... repeat.

A lot of his envy spawns almost purely from a place of this frustration-depression loop of wondering why he isn't good enough-- something that ties in heavily with the way he was 'raised', where threats of being scrapped were thrown freely, and any failure could potentially result in his literal destruction.

Wait this wound up being longer than Gios. Whoops.

31. Who are they the most glad to have met?

Okay here's where we ease into me being able to make coherent sentences again bc i'm not bound purely by my muses emotions <3

For Gio, It would be Venti, in more ways than one. First he had technically met Barbatos. The ideal Barbatos gifted to Mondstadt that rubbed off on the freshly-created and quite impressionable Gio; It was Mondstadt and their talk of freedom that lit the little fire that eventually turned into Gio pursuing his autonomy and humanity. Then was the archon; Barbatos gave his vision to him, and without that Gio never would have managed to escape Dottore, and if he didn't currently have it he wouldn't have been able to evade capture for this long. It also served as a constant reminder of Mondstadts ideals -- And not just that, but the special shape that the vision takes has always been a symbol that although Snezhnaya was his home-- Mondstadt was where he belonged. Then came Venti; Someone who made him feel welcomed in Mondstadt when he was initially very nervous about being there. He and Venti became dear friends ( possibly more ) and now that's someone he looks forward to every time he's on his way back to Mondstadt. The city truly feels like home to him now, and that's mostly because of Venti-- and even if his friend doesn't wish to be seen as Barbatos the archon, Gio cannot help the appreciation he feels for those previous actions, nor for the general ideals that Venti / Barbatos inhabit.

For Riga, that would be Lio, no contest. It.. it would take me ten years to explain all of Rigatellos feelings towards Lio there's so much shit at play they mesh so fucking well together their traumas and mentalities are such similar echoes, Lio is literally the only person in the world that Rigatello has felt genuine love and affection for and not in some way panicked and tried to burn the bridge before it could burn him; He feels genuinely safe and happy with Lio, and the fear that constantly haunts him is eased in their presence; He trusts not just Lio but himself, the fear he typically fears when he touches others is gone because they trust him so thoroughly that in the midst of their love it's hard to be afraid of himself. He feels for once that he can be something that protects instead of something that exclusively does damage; He feels cared for, wanted, loved, when all his life he's felt rejected and constantly on the brink of destruction. Where he once was told his wants and thoughts don't matter he has now found someone who cares very much for what he wants and what he thinks and FUCK I have a lot of thoughts about these two.

40. How sensitive are they to their own flaws?

Oh god, here's another thing I can't fully explain.

For Gio: Immensely. Gios current mentality is essentially that if he just closes his eyes and refuses to think about it then he doesn't have to deal with his flaws, and if anyone points them out he can just get mad about it and avoid them until he dies because he does. not. want. to. think. about. it. He HATES feeling bad, he hates feeling negatively about himself, he doesn't... know how to genuinely change things about himself; And I think that. That itself can be very much shown in how he treats the fact that he's not human? A person? Yes, he's a fully sentient person with his own thoughts and expressions and free will, a human? Not exactly. He's made out of metal and circuitry and artificial materials, and this is simply a factual statement, its not opinion; But he almost treats it like it is. He sees this idealized version of humanity that he wishes to be a part of but he cannot fathom how he can be apart of it if the core thing about himself isn't changed, but its NOT something he can change; Instead of accepting that, however, and still going on with his goal to pursue his autonomy and humanity despite this, Gio would... honestly rather stick his fingers in his ears and go "lalala" because he doesn't really have the toolset to mentally deal with the contradiction of "I want to be human but I can't". He perceives a need to change that isn't there, and instead of trying to address it he ignores it entirely in hopes that... it'll just stop being an issue that he needs to address with himself at some point. The same mentality applies to a lot of his flaws. Does he know hes being avoidant of his problems? Does he know that it's going to cause more issues in the future? He does. But he can't even address it with himself because it makes him feel bad, let alone with someone else who could actually provide him with skills that he needs to change his behaviors and mentality.

For Riga: Okay he genuinely gets a shorter paragraph this time because in short? Rigatello doesn't care. Admittedly he kind of wears his flaws on his sleeve. He's a "says it right on the tin" kind of guy most of the time, where he's typically mostly open about the less positive parts of himself-- If not exaggerating them as a means of keeping people away. There are of course the flaws that he hides due to them stemming from traumas, and his general desire to hide all things relating to his personal thoughts and feelings-- But this in and of itself could be perceived as a flaw, though one very unexplored considering Lio is his first close relationship with another person where he's been in any form open about his own thoughts and feelings, away from the influence of Dottore or the Fatui.

Rigatello does have... slightly less healthy perception of what counts as flaws in himself, though, such as having his own thoughts and emotions. He perceives his traumas as weakness, and weakness is a flaw, to him-- So too, then, are his traumas. He's not sensitive about this in the sense that Gio is where he's willfully ignoring something he's doing wrong; Riga doesn't... know that this isn't a good mentality. He.

Riga is kind of hard to explain this regard because of how severely impacted Rigatello is by the traumas hes endured, the people he was 'raised' by, and the current lifestyle that he leads. His emotional understanding is extremely limited and always has been, and I'm not entirely sure how to put it in coherent wording; Because typically when I try to talk about Riga and emotions it devolves into word vomit because his thoughts are just... nonsense screaming pain mush that he doesn't know how to cope with so he tells himself to toughen up, shoves it in the closet, and goes on with his day until he can lay down at night and have a meltdown--

E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?

Honestly? The general rule of thumb is that I don't typically write people that I myself would get along with, if only because I know way too much about my own characters and their flaws? When. I look at people that I get along with, its primarily people who are patient enough to deal with my memory issues and my general lets say... low iq, to be nice. They're mostly laid back people who don't give too much of a shit one way or the other, but are friendly and fun to talk to because they have interesting ideas to contribute to a conversation, give room for others to contribute, and don't mind a bit of chaos when things inevitably devolve.

When I look at the characters I write... They all have some sort of flaw that directly contradicts the core things I typically find in someone I get along well with?

Gio is someone who I think I could get along with for a while; But inevitably his flaws, his distress regarding those flaws, and his subsequent refusal to acknowledge them in any meaningful form would inevitably stress me out and it would start to get tiring.

Bluntly put Riga is scary and I feel like I'd be stressed out 24/7 that I'm going to irritate him... And his general mindset of emphasizing his own flaws to push people away would just make me angry and I'd probably wind up letting him isolate himself because, having once been someone who was very much that way, I no longer deal well with that degree of self-pitying behavior b/c it pisses me off.

Outside of this blog, Ku Shen and I could probably get along pretty well, but I think the issue is that he's a massive introvert who would go Weeks in-between texting, and I have the memory of a goldfish and i'd inevitably find myself in a position where i have a text from him that's been waiting for me to answer for the past week and I'm too nervous to reply because I feel awkward being like 'hi i have untreated adhd sorry', and then suddenly three months has passed and I just can never talk to this man again.

...I'm going to include my Morax on here as well even though it's blog isn't super active; Look I might actually be able to chill with Morax if only because we vibe in either 'i am listening to you ramble for 3 straight hours with occasional questions or commentary' or 'we have both been dead fucking silent for the past 3 hours' and these are both my ideal ways to exist in someone elses presence. Also I feel like it'd wanna do fun shit and likes going on walks or smth. 10/10 I think I could get along with Morax.

H) What trait do you admire most?

Ah fuck okay. Uh. For Gio... I admire his optimism and hope. I consider myself to be a generally hopeful person but I'm not typically the kind of like... ~ * direct action * ~ person, and Gio VERY MUCH IS in most regards. He's generally super fucking ambitious and if he WANTS something he will GET IT and you cannot STOP HIM and I just wish I had that level of

I. Dedication II. Energy III. Optimism in actually completing the goal

For Riga? I guess it would be his general tenacity and endurance. He goes through. A lot of shit. Constantly. And he just keeps trudging on forward without pause. He does what he needs to do, and if you get in the way of him and what he needs to get done, then he'll make you fucking regret it. Top tier shit 10/10 good for him.

[meirmakesstuff]

anon talking about the sarfatis again (and making them identifiably jewish in fantasy) -- divination magic exists in this world and is widely practiced; my understanding is that it's forbidden in judaism. 2J3O, but what kind of mixed or complicated attitudes would jewish characters in this world have towards it/how do i convey those? [1]

[2] my original idea was that their mother, when her eldest son expressed interest in divination as a field of study, sat him down and had a long conversation with him, and at the end concluded that as long as he honored god and used magic only to help people, she would accept it as his adult decision, and i'm wondering how this comes across to more observantly jewish people.

Hi Anon, sorry it took me so long to get back to this. Hopefully it’s still relevant. For other readers, this is a follow-up to this ask, which in turn is a follow-up to this one from a different writer also thinking through questions of Jewish representation in fantasy fiction. As always, standard 2J3O disclaimers apply.

That said, from my perspective what you’re describing is a pretty believable conversation for a family to have. While it’s extremely familiar for those conversations to be present in a modern Reform or even Conservative affiliated family, it’s also the sort of thing we see a lot in Jewish American history. Magic might not have been on the table, but questions where halacha (Jewish law, the code of Jewish practices) conflicts with parnassah (the ability to support yourself and your dependants) always have. There have always been shopkeepers who can’t afford to close on Saturdays, merchants or peddlers who can’t avoid eating meat, doctors who can’t turn their pagers off on Yom Kippur, and astronauts who have to make a call on what observance might even begin to look like in a place where the measurement of time, our fundamental guide, is fully arbitrary. 

I remember when Joe Lieberman, who described himself as observant rather than Orthodox, became the first ever Jewish vice presidential candidate in a major political party, when I was in high school. He was asked very pointedly whether he was willing to break shabbat in the event of an emergency or pressing official business, and had to assure the public that he would. The question of course is a product of the antisemitic assumption that Jews’ loyalty to their country is inevitably partial or divided, and only people with the kind of assumptions that prompted the question would be surprised by the answer: to Jews and those who know us well, it’s so obvious that we could easily have left it unsaid.

A question to ask yourself about this example is why either character believes divination specifically is forbidden. We aren’t given explanations in Torah for most mitzvot, especially the ones that warn us against the practices of other groups. The mother and son might have completely different assumptions about what the prohibition means, based on their different educations or life experiences. If the mother assumes the main goal is to prevent assimilation or idolatry, asking him to assure her that he will not adopt non-Jewish/non-monotheistic beliefs makes sense. If he assumes it’s for another reason--or refers to a different definition of divination--then he might have a reason for wanting to pursue that course of study that doesn’t perhaps satisfy his mother but does allow him to assure her that he’s not planning to abandon his Jewish identity. 

In our world, avoiding assimilation and avoiding avoda zara (engaging in non-Jewish worship) are the most common reasonings offered for the prohibition on fortune-telling (among those who feel it needs to be explained: for some people, to seek reasons for the mitzvot is to miss the point: we do the mitzvot because they are mitzvot, period). Personally, I avoid tarot and astrology primarily because I don’t find them interesting but also because I consider them avoda zara. To others*, it’s not a form of worship at all, but a fun psychological game or a way to think through their hopes. 

*I’m excluding in this analysis the people who engage with these practices because they misunderstand them as being a science, because they’re consciously engaging in non-Jewish spiritual practices, or to intentionally deceive others, and only considering people who consider themselves to be within the bounds of Jewish practice, regarding tarot as the spiritual practice of a different group. 

If I were sitting down with someone whose religious life I was part of shaping, and they told me they were interested in astrology, my questions about it would center on what they feel astrology does for them, what they believe that it is, and what they believe that mitzvot do for them, and what they believe that a mitzvah is. These are the kind of questions that a Christian teacher might feel they have “right” answers for,” but for Jews these are intensely personal questions that a Jew over the age of 13 must struggle with for themselves, and are almost guaranteed to disagree on. 

This is all a very long way of saying that I think the conversation you’re imagining between mother and son is incredibly realistic and valid. I get a little itchy when a Jewish character is more focused on the concept of “relationship with God” than “culturally appropriate actions” but some Jews really do think that way, and that could be another difference for them to talk about or for him to think about afterward: if she’s a very spiritual person whose way of thinking about her Jewishness involves an emotionally personified God figure, and he’s a practical sort whose spirituality comes from keeping his actions and motivations in line with Torah values, it’s no surprise that she would use language like “honor God” that he can easily agree to yet not find troubling or compelling himself.

Once again you’ve asked a really interesting question--let me know if I skipped or left out anything relevant, and to readers please feel free to chime in with your thoughts about how this scenario might unfold. 

[shotosprincess]

When he loves me — Iwa ♡︎ Oikawa

LISTEN TO: “ CLOUD 9 “ — BEACH BUNNY

ART: UNKNOWN ( i found it as a sticker on picsart since i couldnt find any good iwaoi screencaps so if yk who the artist is plspls lmk !! ty !! )

｡･:*:･-: ✧ :,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

pairing: iwa x oikawa

summary: iwa shyly plays oikawa a song he wrote on a whim ,, and years later ,, after they fell apart ,, oikawa attends one of iwa’s concerts and hears their song,, the song,, once more .

genre: angst + fluff !! <3 ugh i love oikawa my bby but i absolutely love him and iwa together sm too ajjdjjf

a/n: 3am writing for comfort innit (•̀ᴗ•́)و smhsmh it’s lowkey so dramatic ?? idk why i was feeling so melancholic ?? but i live for the yearning anyways lmao <//3

“ Hey...wanna...hear something I’ve been working on? “

Iwa’s voice shifted to one of a far softer tone, unusually uncertain of himself as he gripped the bedsheets beneath him in an anxious hold, turning away from Oikawa whilst a deep vermillion blush tainted his shy-stricken face.

The hazel-haired setter lifted his mouth into a gentle smile, skin mirroring a similar red to Iwa’s. His head lolled to the side, and Iwa swore he felt something flutter within him. The fist which he clutched the bedsheets within closed even further.

“ Sure, Iwa-chan! “

A hard gulp. Iwa swallowed his nerves down, fingers hovering over the strings of his freshly-purchased guitar, hesitant. Trembling, even.

Light wisps of brown swept just over Oikawa’s eyes as he put down the volleyball he had been mindlessly spinning, and covered Iwa’s hands with his own. He looked up with a reassuring grin, deepened-honey gaze colliding with one of the enchanting midnight sky.

“ It’s okay. It’s just me. But of course, you don’t have to play if you don’t wan— “

Iwa swats his hand away. “ Of course I wanna, dumbass! “ He barked.

With a frustrated huff, his fingers find a home amongst the sound as they begin to delicately strum the translucent strings. His eyes fell closed, lost in the music, albeit fairly cliche, as he wordlessly played the song which was most special to him.

For what reason it held such a cherished place in his heart, he did not know. Not truly, at least. Admittedly, he had written it purely on a whim, clutching onto the fleeting remnants of a foreign euphoric high. The crazed rush of fingers furiously clacking against the keyboard filled the silence of his room, lasting well into the evening. He had so much to say, so much to express, and yet it was only through the words appearing on the screen in which he could ever hope to communicate it.

He had never even planned on sharing it. After all, it was merely a crappy, rushed song put together purely by the rawness of an unknown emotion, and during ungodly hours of the night out of all times. It was nothing special, really.

To him, at least.

And yet in a hushed, timid tone, he began to sing:

“ I don’t wanna seem the way I do...but I’m confident when I’m with you... “

Oikawa’s lips parted in sheer awe. The delicate swirls of the instrumental blended flawlessly into the angelic quality of Iwa’s singing. His muscles tensed. He shook it away.

What the hell is this? Was he...nervous? No, no, it can’t be. This is Oikawa-fucking-Tooru we’re talking about!

He could do nothing but stare intently in a silent adoration as he allowed his heartbeat to meld with the smoothness of the melody, sweeping him out of Iwa-chan’s bedroom and into a whole other universe entirely. One where there exists no pain, no sadness, no fear. One where tears dried before they could even splatter upon the ground. One where everything was happy and perfect and...good.

—

IWA

Five years have passed, yet I miss him all the same. If anything, the ache has only grown to, somehow, prove itself increasingly unbearable over the time we’ve spent apart. My stare falls upon my guitar. Not the new one, which is this modern, flashy model with a bold red design, but my first-ever guitar, boasting its worn-out strings and dulled body. The hole in my heart digs itself impossibly deeper.

We had dated not long after that night—the night I played my song to him, and suddenly it became our song. We would whip it out like a handy party trick whenever we’d hangout with the rest of the team, and it was...nice to say the very least. Well, while it lasted, of course. Highschool love, teenage love, is constantly fleeting. Temporary. That was my philosophy at least, until Oikawa Tooru appeared and changed everything. I disregarded every sense of rationality, and all for the blissful rush of romance which he offered. The sneaking out, the small notes snuck into each other’s lockers, the way he draped his jacket over me when I got cold, the tender kisses shared in a darkened room.

I loved it. All of it. And when I lost him, I missed him too. All of him.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, though. After all, teenage love is but a transient feeling, is it not? I had to drill the reiteration of my old motto back into my head when we split, so that I may never allow myself to yield to the temptations of love, or at least the attractive promise of one, ever again. Eventually, we had to go our separate ways. He pursued volleyball, and I chased relentlessly after a different growing passion of mine, though honestly rather unexpected; music.

And now here I am. Sitting backstage at my own show, waiting patiently for my cue. My foot taps a random rhythm against the floor as I mentally debate with myself whether or not my choice for the opening song truly was the best option.

I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

He might be watching.

Fair, but would he even recognize me? Does he even remember me at all? I mean, it’s been so long...

I think he’d remember something as sentimental as the song you first played him. I mean, you were the first guy he ever dated.

Yeah, keyword: “ dated “. He’s probably moved on by now.

Shit, do you think he’s found someone new already? What if he brought them to the show?

Nah, nah. That’s highly unlikely. Impossible, even. The latter, that is. It’s not exactly that popular of a show.

Right, you’re right. So there’s nothing to worry about. Hakuna-fuckin-matata, right?

I suck in a sharp breath as the lights come on, laughing dryly.

Hakuna-fuckin-matata.

—

OIKAWA

My hands fiddle with one another as I push my way past the busy crowd to find a spot amongst the front row. A cheery girl with astonishingly-saturated red hair and an almoat-overwhelming brightness about her, greets me. I scoff, amused.

A fangirl, no doubt. Charming.

“ Oikawa! Ohmygoshohmygosh, Oikawa Tooru!! Hi!! I’m—I’m— “

I glance at the front row, which is only a few steps away, as her blubbered words start to blur together. I laugh.

“ A fan, right? Want my autograph or something? A picture, maybe? “

Her eyes light up vastly and she begins to bounce up and down with the same enthusiasm I’ve noticed to be common among practically all fangirls.

“ YES! Ohmygosh, yesyesyesYES!! “

My grin widens as I click my blue pen, which I carry around for autographs ( oh, the pains of being famous ), and hurriedly sign my name on her collared shirt. It was a fairly pretty garment, I’ll admit, but at this moment I didn’t really care, and I’m sure neither did she, judging by the way she squealed excitedly and took a spam of what had to be a million-and-one selfies with it.

I finally find a place among the jumping people at the front, taking in the atmosphere. The lights dim, and brighter white ones turn on in their place.

The show is about to start.

—

IWA

“ Hey, everyone. I— “ The mic whines with feedback. I wince, wrapping my free hand around it and trying again.

“ I’m—I’m opening with a song that’s very dear to me. I wrote it way back in highschool, but it’s always stuck with me, kinda like a safety net...of sorts. I uh, hope you enjoy. “

Shit, why am I being so damn awkward? I’ve never been this awkward before a show. Maybe it’s because of that damn opening song. Oh well. Too late to back out now.

Irritated, I push the thought away, wetting my lips as the drowning claps and whoops from the crowd cheer me on. My hand hovers just over the strings. It’s shaking. No matter. I close my eyes, and imagine him holding them. Him encompassing my hands within the warmth of his, just like he did all those years, which were now lost in the past. Him looking at me, him telling me it’s okay. Him.

I breathe all my nerves out.

Him.

And I begin to play.

The awkwardness melts away almost instantaneously as I pour every dripping ounce of my heart out into the song, the music swelling wildly with every emotion I had forced in for the dreariness of these five years. My eyes shoot open when the chorus hits. I feel like I’m king of the world.

I catch a familiar set of eyes. Richly brown. Deep.

Oh shit.

My breath hitches when I realize who they belong to; Him. His. He-

No, no, it couldn’t be. Could it?

It felt too real, as if I’ve somehow managed to reduce his very existence to nothing but romanticized self indulgent daydreams of what we once had, woven into the vast vagueness of song lyrics with a naïve hope of what could’ve been. And now here he was, at my concert of all places, for god knows what reason. The colourful lights fell upon his face in the most flattering manner, though admittedly I suppose anything would be flattering on him either way. But under this light especially, at my concert, he looked nothing short of perfect. Of lovely.

But of course he was. This was Oikawa-fucking-Tooru, after all.

The chorus hits with a sharp accent. I belt with all that I am, for the boy who took a rough sketch of a dream and made it reality, for the boy who found an unmatched sense of home among those of his highschool volleyball team, for the boy who wound up so foolishly falling in love with his best friend. For him, for my fans, but most of all, for me.

“ But when he loves me, I feel like I’m floating, when he calls me pretty, I feel like somebody— “

I maintain eye contact with him. It’s scary, burning holes into my tattered soul, which I had pieced together so carefully with cathartic lyrics scratched into the pages of creased notebooks. I’m secretly scared that his gaze will somehow break it all down again. But that’s when I finally understand; it’s him. This, this song, it’s about him. It’s always been about him. There will be no one else, could be no one else for me. That...sheer elation, the unfiltered emotion which sparked this song to begin with—I understood now. That was love. More specifically, love which my chest held for Oikawa. It’s as if I’ve been harshly disillusioned to see what I’d been unconsciously denying all these years, seeing him here. It’s always been Oikawa. How could I not have known? After all, I’m constantly recalling the day he held me in a tight embrace after one of our best matches, happy tears staining my damp jersey as he whispered in my ear the praise I’ve subconsciously always wished to hear.

“ You did good. “

Though it seems painfully mundane, simple to anyone else, it was...different, coming from his lips, hearing it in his voice. I took that compliment and kept it close to me for all eternity, immortalizing it within the varying notes of this song. I stare right back at him with a newfound fervour, an unknown intent, a epiphanic strength.

“ Even when we fade eventually to nothing, you will always be my favourite form of lovely. “

His eyes widen.

—

OIKAWA

My heart clenches as Iwa freely powers through the rest of the song. But during this moment, it feels as though it was created solely for us. As if the universe, as if fate itself had decided that despite the harshness of this world, and every little force fighting to keep us apart, this one moment, if anything, was ours. Truly ours. Our song, our moment. Ours. Time suspended itself indefinitely as the onyx hearth of his gaze finally met with mine. Unexpectedly enough, it stayed there.

And everything fell into place.

The song didn’t take me to a paradise without tears, or pain, or sorrow anymore. It took me to a place with Iwa in it. I realize now that...I want the tears. I want the pain. I want the grief. I want the good and the bad and the light and the dark, so long as I can have Iwa there with me through it all. I want him. All of him. I’ve want to love him enough to love his “ unglam “ moments and his admirable aspects all the same. I want to be there with him through every body-wrecking tear, every hearty laugh, and every glimmer of happiness. I want to be able to see the face he makes during a scary movie, to open an umbrella for him during the rain. I want to see the sunlight glow upon his cheek, I want to count the stars with him until I fall asleep. I want everything about him, for to me, he is everything. And it’s this song...this damned song which brought it all back.

It was ours. And I realize now...it was about...me. I mean, I’ll admit that I’ve always been a little more on the conceited side, but how could you deny it? It had to be. It had to. Had to. I wanted it to, at least. I wanted it to be about me so desperately, it sent a cold pain through my chest. A single, lonely tear falls down my cheek as the crowd around me erupts into a sea of laughter and off-tune singing from the audience.

What if it wasn’t? I mean, you guys broke up. You told him you moved on. Yes, it was a lie to lessen the pain, but he didn’t know that. What if it was about someone else completely and you’d just been an idiot this whole time? What if—

The concert comes to a close much faster than I thought it would, much faster than I would’ve ever wished for it to. I don’t know what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, but my legs move before I even have a chance to question them. I’ve always been one to think before acting, hence why I’m such a star on the court, but this time, my emotions seem to be taking over. I don’t know what’s come over me, what this unusual, hot feeling is. It’s exciting and intimidating all at once, and I hate it because I know what it must be. In a hot flash, I find myself standing at the door of Iwa’s changing room. How many bodyguards I must have recklessly shoved out of the way to get here in the blur of adrenaline, I don’t even want to begin to think about.

My hand freezes over the door. “ Iwa “ is engraved in bold gold letters with a deeply-etched star sticking out at the bottom. Taking a deep breath, I knock frantically.

“ I-Iwa-chan? It’s uh...it’s Oikawa. “

—

IWA

I pause in the midst of buttoning up my shirt. A solid three are left undone. But his voice...how could I ignore it? Ignore him? I haven’t heard his voice in what feels like eternity, but I’d be kidding myself if I had said I’d forgotten it. The constant yearning was always so irritating. Such a pain. At least it made for decent music, I mean, I’ve been booking shows. But alas, one problem before another.

“ O-Oikawa? “ I slowly pace to the doorknob as I twist it open.

Holy shit.

It is him after all. He hasn’t changed a bit. He remains the charming, handsome man I remember him to be, even after all this time has passed.

“ How’d you get—why are you here? “

“ Iwa, there’s...there’s just...there’s something I need to ask. “

“ Huh? “

“ That song...our song.... “

“ Shit, right! I, uh...sorry. I didn’t ask you about it because I honestly didn’t expect you to show up at all. It’s been what, five years? “ I stumble subtly over my words, rubbing the back of my neck.

He turns away sheepishly. Almost...longingly, even.

“ Yeah...it has. “

He clicks his tongue.

“ Who, uh...who was that song about? The curiosity’s been eating at me. “

A heat rises to my cheeks. A pause.

“ I—It—Ugh, fuck it. “

I’ve never been the best at talking directly to Oikawa, not since I realized that what I felt for him extended to something past the bounds of friendship. So I decided to do the only thing I knew to do in that moment—show him instead.

My lips crash against his as he slams the door behind him. The palpable tension between us is shattered immediately, and everything is faded out into insignificance. All that matters is the man in my arms, the man I’d been longing so desperately, so hopelessly for all this fucking time. I kiss him against the smoothness of the door, hands immediately trailing to his soft locks. I twirl and twine them as I see flashes, bright hues of heaven itself. His lips upon mine are the most perfect fit. His touch is painfully intoxicating, and I show him, wordlessly, with an unparalleled fervour—just who the song was about. He melts into it, matching my energy with a foreign sense of passion.

—

OIKAWA

“ Do you think...the universe is gonna try to separate us again? “ I ask softly, voice barely even a whisper. Tears wet my lashes at the very thought of being without him again. For those five years, though I was living my dream...it didn’t feel complete. Not without him. I blink them away aggressively, focusing on the night sky above us. My head is resting in his lap, and we’re simply...existing together beneath the curtain of darkened pools which hung above our twined bodies.

Iwa strokes my hair nonchalantly as he interlocks his fingers with mine. “ Of course. It always will. But we found each other didn’t we? And even after...even after this life has passed and we’re reduced to nothing but ash, I’m convinced we’ll meet again. One way or another. “

He tucks a straying tuft of hair from brushing my lashes.

“ Even then...even then you’ll still be my favourite form of lovely. Or whatever. “ He scoffs at his own over-poetic response, looking away with a tiny smirk.

“ Okay, Mr. Songwriter! “ I tease, nudging his side in a playful manner.

He rolls his eyes, bending down to kiss me once more.

For the first time in a long time, I feel complete. I’m on cloud 9.

[nite-shay]

His Hero Part 2 -Kirishima Eijiro x Reader

A/N: Angst? Slight panic/anxiety? Sex is mentioned but nothing graphic

Still getting used to the tagging thing. Soooo I’m just going to roll with it. 

Also, I’m sorry that this took so long. I work full time 50+ hours a week, and I may have been hooked on FF7R for the last few weeks (working on platinum). I love you, developers, for this game, but I reaaaaallly hate you for the final summon. Trying to keep it spoiler-free but for everyone else… you know who I’m talking about… 

Links: Part 1 , Part 2 ,

*********

"(Y/F/N)?" "Eijiro?"

Kirishima couldn't believe it. 

It was you. 

How did he not recognize you before now? 

Ok, granted when he pulled you from the debris, your face was covered in blood, and at the time, he was more concerned about your's and your son's safety then who you were. But still! 

God... you were still just as beautiful as before... 

Your brilliant (E/C) eyes, the lilt of your voice, haunted his dreams in the best possible way.

Looking at you now, though, after all these years, put the you in his fantasies to shame. You really hadn't changed much over the years, but the parts of you that did made Kirishima mentally kick himself for not pursuing you back then. 

"Huh? His name isn't Eijiro. Mommy, he's Red Riot!" The boy's head tilted slightly confused as he corrected you. Both of you jumped slightly at the boy's voice, bringing you back to your senses. Right now, he was Red Riot, not Kirishima Eijiro.  

"Oh.. uh... Of course, sweetie." You stroked your son's head before returning your gaze up to the hero. "M-my apologies, Eij- Red Riot. You… umm... look like someone I know…" Kirishima could only nod as he tried to regain his composure. He was in hero mode right now and needs to remain professional. But damn was it hard. He honestly wanted nothing more than to just talk to you, see how you were, get a rundown on your injuries, help you off the floor, and get you safely back to the hospital bed. Not in that order.

Your son, who seemed satisfied with your answer, then went into a spew about everything that happened, including how Red Riot had saved you. Your focus was now solely on your son. Kirishima could only watch as the more your son talked, the tighter you held him to your body. You kept him tightly pulled to you until he finally protested. "Mommy! You're squishing me!" 

"S-sorry sweetie" You lighten your hold before glancing up at the man in the doorway. The look you gave him confused him some. He expected anything then what he saw; relief, awkward, anxiety. But.... not fear. You looked over him with a fearful look in your eyes as you held your son close to you. Like you were trying to protect him. He's a hero, not a villain!  He would never ever hurt a woman or child for that matter! That fact that you even considered him a threat... hurt...

Why were you looking at him like that? What did he do wrong? What did he do to scare you? You shouldn't be scared. He was here to protect you, not hurt you. 

"You're safe now. I promise. We got the bad guys, and they'll be going away for a long time." He reassured you and gave you a soft smile while silently chanting to you, please don't be afraid of me. His instincts were telling him to walk over to you and show you he means no harm, but he kept his body firmly in place. If you were afraid of him from this distance, then there's no way he could approach you now. No, he needs to stay right here and let you process through your shock. You just in a villain attack! This wasn't just another Tuesday for you! The two of you just seemed to freeze in place while the rest of the occupants in the room moved freely about. 

"Please, ma'am, let's get you back in bed. We need to finish checking your vitals." The doctor intervened as he and his fellow staff readied you for the move. 

Thank God for the doctors and nurses in the room. It gave him something else to focus on. It also made him realize that you were injured still and he was hindering your treatment. He needs to leave. It was for the best. You didn't need a hero right now, you have your son and the doctors. 

"Sorry for the intrusion. I should get going. I'm glad to your ok (Y/-" He stopped himself. "Ma'am. Please take care of yourself, and I hope you have a speedy recovery." He watched as the doctor and nurse started to carefully help you up and back into the bed. 

"Awww… but… do you have to go?" (Y/S/N) broke away from you and made a beeline for the hero who stopped mid turn. 

"Yeah, sorry, little man."

"Ok…"  He kept his gaze fixed on the floor, but the hero could see small tears forming in the kid's eyes.

"Hey, no, tears now." He gave the kid a soft smile, patting him on the head. "It's a hero's job to help people, and there are a lot of people out there that need my help." The small sniffles pulled at the hero's heart. He couldn't leave the kid like this. He was his hero, after all, so he squatted down so that he was at least somewhat closer to the kid's height. "How about this. You want to be a hero one day, right?" He nodded, still looking down. "Well, what if I told you, you could start being a hero, right now?" 

"I can?" His head whipped up as their twin pairs of red eyes met. 

"Yeap! Wanta know how?" The boy nodded, his whole body shaking with excitement. "It's simple, all I need to do is to take really good care of your mom and be good for her. Do you think you could do that? Can you be her hero for me?"

"YES, SIR!" Those tears dried up instantly as he gave the hero the brightest smile he'd ever seen.

"Then it's settled for this day forward, you're going to be her hero!" He lightly ruffled up the kid's hair before giving him his trademark grin. "Well, I better get going. Take good care of her, ok?" The kid ran back over to your bed and watching over the doctors as they checked your vitals. 

"Thank you for saving us." Your voice was laced with pain and slightly strained as you locked eyes with the hero. This time you didn’t seem scared of him but, you seemed… sad…

Damn it. He needed to go...

He nodded, giving you a soft smile before taking his leave.

****

After a quick stop by the nurse's station to find out some information and drop off his visitor's pass, he made his way towards the hospital's exit. 

DAMN IT! 

He mentally kicked himself for bailing the way he did. He could have, no, he should have handled that better. He froze up, just like he did when he was younger. He figured out who you were... and instead of talking to you or helping you.. he ran away! It was so... unmanly! 

Should he go back? 

He thought about it for a few minutes but quickly shot that idea down.

One he's still in hero costume, and that might lead to some questions and two there were way too many people in the room, not to mention your child. 

What should he do? Maybe he should come back later after work? Would you even talk to him? What should he say? 

Hey, remember me? I'm the guy who just saved you! Oh, also, but do you remember that guy you slept with at your cousin's husband's party? Yeah, that was me too! Small world, huh?

Yeah... That wouldn't have been awkward.. at all...

Kirishima sulked as he made his way down the hall towards the exit, now completely lost in thought. Just as reached out to open the door, it was yanked open by a rather distressed blonde woman. Startled, he jumped to move but wasn't fast enough to avoid her plowing into him. Instinctively he reached out and grabbed her to keep her from falling backward. 

"Woah, you ok?" He asked, as his red eye's met a familiar set of blue ones. It was Melissa, Izku's wife. "Melissa?" She blinked a few times before she realized this person had used her given name.

"Eiji- Red Riot? What are you doing here?" She was shocked as she gently pushed herself off of him while he attempted to steady her. He reluctantly let her go but stayed close just in case. She was out of breath and trembling, no doubt, from a phone call about her injured relatives, cousins if he wasn't mistaken. He thought back to the kid, talking about his Aunt Missy. Ahh, Aunt Melissa. "I-I'm sorry. I have to go. There's been an emergency, and I have-"

"Easy. You're here about (Y/N) and (Y/S/N), right?" 

"I-I... umm... I'm sorry, how did you know that?" She was surprised by his question. 

"Don't worry, they're fine now." He reassured her before giving a quick rundown of what happened. After he was done, she let out a sigh of relief. 

"I... I can't thank you enough... If something happened to them... I don't know what I would have done... Thank you." She thanked him as she wiped a few tears from her eyes. "So… you got to meet (Y/S/N)?"

"Oh yeah! I stayed with him until (Y/N) woke up. He seems an awesome kid!"

"Yeah… he is..." Silence filled between the two of them. He could tell there was something else she wanted to say. Maybe ask? But for whatever reason, she was hesitating, and it made the hero uneasy. Did she know about him and (Y/N)? Had you told her? Of course, you told her you were family! Damn it. It's time to go. Now!

"So...umm... I'd better let you go. I'm sure little man will be happy to see you! They're on the second floor, right past the nurse's station. Room 248." He pointed behind himself before sides stepping out of her way.

"Oh. Yes. I should be going. Thank you again, Red Riot." She gave him a slight bow before hurrying past him, "Please be safe out there, and if you need anything, please feel free to call us."

"Thanks! Oh, and tell Izuku to call me later!" He bolted out the door. 

**********

"There ya are Red! I was starting to get worried about ya.” Fatgum grinned as he greeted him as he entered their large shared office. 

"Sorry, Fat! Got caught up and lost track of time, it won't happen again." Kirishima gave him a sheepish grin before taking a seat behind his computer. He needs to get the report for today's incidences done before he could leave for the day. He needed to work quickly, though, if he was going to make it out on time for his little meetup that was planned just a few minutes ago. On the way back from the hospital, Kirishima decided to take the long way back. The fresh air had done him good, but he still couldn't get you or your kid out of his head. He wanted... Kirishima didn't know what he wanted or why he felt the way he did... He just wanted. No needed to do something. Something to make up for the shitty day the two of you had and make up for the way he had acted. Now that he'd calmed down, he could tell it was just his anxiety getting to him. That all of your reactions were understandable, it was just him blowing it out of proportion. 

Now that his mind was clear and calm, he had an idea. An idea that would require the help of a mutual friend. 

"How they holdin up?" Fat gum asked while munching on some Takoyaki, breaking Kirishima from his thoughts. 

"They're going to be just fine. The kid's taking it like a champ, but his mom was pretty banged up. I overheard one of the doctors saying she'll be in there for a couple of days, but she should make a full recovery." Ok, maybe he was stretching the truth on that one. He didn't 'overheard' anything, more like he walked up the nurse at the kiosk and just asked them. While they couldn't give him any details by law, they did passively talk to another nurse saying how (Y/N) would be fine. 

"That's great to hear! You were awesome today! I had no idea you were so good with kids."

"Oh, Thanks!" He chuckled. "But I wouldn't say I'm good with kids. (Y/S/N) is a tough kid, and he was just scared. I know (Y/N) would have comforted him if she could, and I couldn't leave him like that.” 

"(Y/N)? (Y/S/N)? Ya know them?"

"Oh umm.. yeah... I met (Y/N) at a buddy's birthday a few years back."

"Really? Did she recognize you?" 

"Umm... yeah, she did." He continued typing, trying to drop the subject. Too bad for him, Fat Gum was feeling rather chatty today. 

"So, you going to go back later to visit?" 

"I-I uh…" Golden eyes watched him as he struggled to come up with an answer. "Well... she's had a long day, and you know I'm sure she doesn't want a whole lot of people up there all at once. I'll just text Izuku to see how she's doing." That sounded believable. Totally got this. "Plus, ya know, I don't want to make anything weird for her." He mumbled under his breath. 

How the hell do you approach someone you had a one night stand with years ago and just happen to see again? 

He debated on asking his partner but immediately shot that idea down. Fat would never let him live it down, plus, he just didn't seem like the kind of guy who had many one-night stands. (A/N: Do not take that the wrong way. It's not because of his size! He's just too damn nice, and my brain won't let me think otherwise. I love Fatgum. He is my favorite pro hero, and he could have anyone in the whole world!)

"Wait..why would it be weird for her?" He stopped mid-bite as he saw the redhead flinch at the question. 

Crap. He said too much. Fat Gum, the tender tank of Naniwa, typically came off as a hero who's more brawn than brains. But, after working with him for years, the sturdy hero knew to not be fooled by his appearance. Behind that big body and wide smile was a sharp mind.  A mind of a hero with years of experience working alongside some of the best detectives in the city. And with that experience came a particular set of skills that were invaluable observation skills. Though right now, Kirishima was cursing those skills along with his own big mouth. 

"I-I… ummm…. ya see... she..." He could feel his face start to flush as he racked his brain for an excuse that would hopefully throw his form mentor off.

"Wait…" A wide knowing grin spread across the larger hero's face, reminding Kirishima of the cat from Alice in Wonderland. "Do you know her, or do you know her?" 

"It was a one-time thing!" He stammered, trying to defend himself. Ok, so the implication was true, but still! He didn't have to say it like that!

"Ahhhh, so that's why you're hesitant to go back! Kirishima, you sly fox!" The man roared with laughter. Kirishima tried his best to quiet down his mentor, but that only made him louder as he started to mercilessly tease the younger hero. 

By the time Izuku texted him saying he was about to get off, Kirishima was sprinting out the door, his face as red as his hair. Fat Gum was relentless in questioning about the two of you. Fat Gum even made a point to follow him to the locker room to question him as he was changing! The redhead sighed. Now he knew how Amajiki felt when Fat found out about his and Mirio's first official date. It took 30 mins and a phone call to Mirio to coax poor Suneater out of the corner. (A/N: It wasn't anything bad! It was just praised on how proud he was and how cute of a couple they made! He’s a proud papa!)

After he was clear of the agency, he quickly fired off a text to Izuku while still walking, hoping the crisp night air would help cool his cheeks before he had to make his first stop. 

Kirishima to Izuku: Hey Bro, I'm on my way! 

Izuku to Kirishima: Ok. Just finishing up some paperwork. Sorry, I can't meet up with you for a long. Got to get over to the hospital.  

Kirishima to Izuku: All good, man. I'll make it fast. How are they anyway?

Izuku to Kirishima: They're doing good. The doctors are going to keep (Y/N) in the hospital for a few days to make sure she's ok. I'm taking (Y/S/N) home with me tonight. (Y/N) really needs some rest. Also he's bored and getting grumpy. Melissa is going to stay the night with her.  Izuku to Kirishima: Thank you again for saving them, BTW!!!!  T-T 

Kirishima to Izuku: No prob bro!! :D Kirishima to Izuku: I'm glad they're doing good. I'm almost there. Gotta make a quick stop. See ya in a few mins.

Just as he sent his reply, he made it to his first destination. With a quick adjustment to his black 'blasty' hat, he strolled into the store to make his purchase. 

********

A few blocks away.....

Izuku nervously fidgeted with his phone, checking his messages and the time for what had to be the fifth time in the last ten mins. The green-haired hero took a long deep breath as he tried to calm himself before he got here. Izuku hated this. Hated the feeling of lying, especially to a friend. 

Was it lying if he didn't know for sure? It was all speculation with no real evidence, after all. Anything he did have was just circumstantial at best, and that wasn't enough for him to do anything with. 

This needed to be handled very very carefully, but in the end, someone would get hurt. There's no way around it. How badly thought well that remains to be seen.

He wants to voice his theories to the parties involved, but... How? How should he approach this?

If he's wrong, then he risks hurting the relationship between his wife and his cousin. That was precisely the reason why he kept quiet for as long as he had. But it wasn't until Melissa started asking him questions about Kirishima that he finally voiced his own theories. After a lengthy discussion, you both agreed it wouldn't be worth the risk at that point. Neither one of them wanted to hurt you or your son. 

But… it looks like faith might have other plans. More things have come to light and can't be ignored.

*Ding* New message from Melissa.

Melissa to Izuku: Did he say what he wanted to meet about?

Izuku to Melissa: No. Only that he would be quick.  Izuku to Melissa: Did he say anything or act weird at the hospital?

Melissa to Izuku: No. He didn't seem to suspect anything.  Melissa to Izuku: Maybe we're wrong about this?

Izuku to Melissa: I don't know. Hopefully, but I don't think we are. Izuku to Melissa: Things just fit too well. Especially now, that (Y/S/N) manifested his quirk.

Izuku to Melissa: Has (Y/N) said anything?

Melissa to Izuku: Not about this. She seems pretty shaken up, though. She's had a pretty long day. Hopefully, I can get her to talk to me after you pick up (Y/S/N).  Melissa to Izuku: He said, 'Hi uncle Zuku!' and that he misses you and can't wait to hang out and show you his quirk. 

Izuku to Melissa: lol tell him I miss him too, and I'll see him soon. 

Izuku smiled as he thought about the small sharp tooth boy who reminded him eerily of the man walking his way. 

Izuku to Marissa: He's here. I'll let you know what happens. Love you.

Marissa to Izuku: Love you too.

******

"Hey, man! Long time to see!" Kirishima greeted his former high school classmate. Izuku returned his smile with one of his own as he put away his phone. He then turned to face his friend, now standing at his full height that almost rivaled Kirishima's 6'5" stature. Gone was the small built, stuttering teenager he was in high school. Before him now was the man who would no doubt be the next #1 hero. 

"Y-Yeah. It's been a while, hasn't it?" Ok, so maybe he did stutter some every now and then. Old habits are hard to break after all. "How have you been?"

"Been good, bro! I saw your last fight on the news this morning! It was amazing! How bout you?"

"Oh! Thanks! I've seen a good bit of articles on you as well. You and Fat Gum have really cleaned up your sections, and you moved up in the ranks!"

"Thanks!" He chuckled. "Still got a long way to go if I'm going to catch up, you guys those."

"You'll be up there in no time." They continued to catch up and started some small talk, but after a while, the air seemed to tense around the two heroes. Their chatting had dried up and now... Something just felt… off. Typically, he had no problem talking to Izuku, but tonight, he just seemed nervous. The green-haired man just looked like he had something he wanted to talk about, but... Just could seem to bring it up. 

Was it something he did? Maybe something he said? The redhead thought and he felt himself start to panic again.  

"So..umm... Listen. I'll make this fast, I know you got to go." He shifts slightly before handing over a medium-sized brown shopping bag to Izuku. "Could you umm… give this to (Y/S/N)? And could you give (Y/N) a message for me? It isn't anything bad, I promise!"

"S-sure, Kirishima." He took the bag from the redhead. "I trust you. So, umm... what's the message?"

"Can you...Can you... just let her know that I'm sorry if I made her feel uncomfortable earlier or if I scared her in any way." He let out a deep sigh. "I was just as shocked as she was; believe me, and I really hope she's doing ok and gets better soon." 

"Of course." Izuku looked stunned for a moment before giving the redhead a good look. His redheaded friend was clearly upset, and it made him want to spill his guts right then and there. "Kirishima. Listen..." He paused, "I'll give her the message, but... I have a question... if this isn't too personal... you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but I just want to know the truth. Did... Did something happen between you and (Y/N)?" He saw his friend's face go pale for a moment, so he quickly added, "It's fine if you did! Honestly!"

"Yeah... a while ago... We.. umm... Yeah..." The redhead's cheeks flushed as he looked away from his friend. "When did you..."

"I figured something happened between the two of you a while ago, but I wasn't completely sure until today when Melissa called about (Y/N)." He swallowed hard, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. "The two of you kind of disappeared at the same time during the party, and I didn't see either of you until the next day."  

"It just... sort of.... happened... I'm sorry I know that was really unmanly of me, especially since it was your birthday party plus she's your family. We... I was a little drunk, and I... we kind of hit it off.." His blush deepened. "Please don't be mad at me! I don't want this to come between us!"

"Kirishima, calm down! It's ok, really! I'm not upset with this, and I know Melissa wouldn't be either. You're both adults, and you're allowed to ya know... see 'each other'. " 

"Sorry for not telling you soon. We're... still bros, right?"

"Kirishima. I'm your friend, and I'll always be no matter what." Kirishima could feel the weight of his words."I know I said this before, but really thank you for saving them. I don't know what we would have done if something would have happened to them." Even as Izuku spoke, he felt his stomach twist in knots. Guilt. His guilt was eating at him. How could he call himself Kirishima friend when in reality, he was acting like anything but a friend. He can't keep this from him. He just can't. 

"I'm just glad I got there when I did." There was that silence again, but this time it was a comfortable one. "Oh! Also, can you... please ask her not to say anything about my identity? I'd like to keep mine under wraps." 

"She won't say anything, I promise. (Y/N) knows I'm a hero but doesn't know details. As for (Y/S/N)... well, he's big on heroes, but we decided it'd be best if he doesn't know about me until he's older."

"Thanks, man." 

"So, what did you get him anyways?" Izuku was curious as he looked in the bag.

"Oh! Well, see (Y/N) and (Y/S/N) were at the toy store when they were attacked. But I'm sure Melissa already filled out in on that… anyways! (Y/S/N) said they went there cause he was getting a new toy, but they got attacked before he could get it. I just… I don't know. He seems like a great kid, and he had a pretty shitty day…. Maybe these would make it at least a little bit better?" Kirishima scratched the back of his head sheepishly. Was he overstepping? Maybe this wasn't a good idea. His doubts gnawed at his mind as Izuku looked shocked at the purchase he made. There were all kinds of hero action figures! 

"These are a lot of toys…" 

"Well, I found the one he wanted, but then I was thinking, hey, he might want one of you too! Then I saw the Uravity and Ground Zero ones, and thought he might like those too!" He quickly explains. "I ummm.. may have gone overboard..."

"He's going to love 'em! He really loves heroes. Did you… did he tell you who his favorite hero is?"

"Oh, uhh… yeah…. He said it was Red Riot... Not sure why, though." Kirishima chuckled some, "Typically, I tend to scare kids his age. I'm sure he just said the cause of the attack..."

"Kirishima, please don't do that to yourself. I can promise you this, you were his hero before he went into that store. Trust me, I've seen his room.” He chuckled slightly before getting serious again. “You're an amazing hero, and (Y/S/N) sees that just like many others. You're his hero, and you always will be."

"Thanks, bro.." He let out a breath he wasn't even aware he was holding. "Well, I better let you get going. I've held you up long enough. Text me later, ok!" Kirishima turned to leave before his emotions got the better of him. It had been a helluva day, and he was ready to just chill out. 

"Ok. Take care!"

As soon as Kirishima was down the street and out of sight, Izuku took a deep breath and pulled out his phone. 

Izuku to Melissa: On my way.

Izuku to Melissa: You need to talk to (Y/N). There's no doubt in my mind that it's true. We can't keep this from him. 

Melissa to Izuku: I'll talk to her tonight.

Links: Part 1 , Part 2 ,

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