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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 26 days ago

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Cannibals [Chapter 9: Blue Jays and Red-Tailed Hawks]

A/N: Thank you so much for your patience! Life got hectic but I am back, besties. Only 1 chapter left!!! 🥳❤️💙🦇

Series summary: You are his sister, his lover, his betrothed despite everyone else’s protests; you have always belonged to Aemond and believe you always will. But on the night he returns from Storm’s End with horrifying news, the trajectories of your lives are irrevocably changed. Will the war of succession make your bond permanent, or destroy the twisted and fanatical love you share?

Chapter warnings: Language, mentions of sexual content (18+ readers only), blood and violence and warfare, character deaths, chaotic giant lizards.

Word count: 5.5k

💙 All my writing can be found HERE! ❤️

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He reaches for his game piece, the shadowcat, although it isn’t purple but only a plain, crudely-carved chunk of oak wood, a makeshift imitation of its twin back in the Red Keep, assuming that Rhaenyra hasn’t stumbled upon and destroyed it. Daeron has sculpted the beast himself; he used a dagger that Aemond gave him as a gift before he was sent away to Oldtown, its hilt embellished with dark blue stones the color of Tessarion’s scales. He has made dice and a board too, and the other four pieces, homely little animals, proxies of his long-lost siblings. Daeron wonders if they miss him as much as he has always missed them. None of them ever said that in their letters, not in words so explicit. Aegon never really wrote at all; instead, he would scrawl barely-legible postscripts at the bottom of other people’s letters: Don’t drink too much, Learn some High Valyrian, Try not to get anyone pregnant.

“I am always the shadowcat,” Daeron explains, grinning. He shows the talisman to his companions, four soldiers fighting in the Hightower army, his closest friends. Then he places it at the starting line he has etched into the board.

“Why do you get the best one?” says Anthony of House Ambrose.

Daeron blinks. This has never occurred to him before. “Is the shadowcat the best piece?”

“Obviously.”

“I don’t know,” teases Josiah of House Roxton of the Ring, scratching his beard. “That butterfly is mighty fearsome.”

Now they’re all laughing. “Then you shall have the butterfly,” Daeron proclaims, handing it to Josiah. “That was my gentle sister Helaena’s piece. And you will never be as good as her, not if you pray to the Seven for a thousand years.”

“No,” Josiah agrees somberly, bowing his head in the firelight. It is just after dusk, and even here in the south, even within the cloth walls of the tent, the metallic chill of winter is creeping into every room like a vermin, like a spider or a rat.

“And Anthony, because you are clever yet envious and ever-grasping, I bequeath you Aemond’s wolf.” Daeron drops it into his open, calloused palm.

“I hope he doesn’t come looking for it,” Anthony chuckles. “I’m quite skilled with the sword, but I would be loath to meet the prince in combat.”

“I don’t want the worm,” slurs Oliver of House Fossoway of Cider Hall. Oli is quite drunk.

“It’s a snake, you idiot,” Josiah says.

“And it’s yours, Oli.” Daeron gives the tiny wooden snake to him. Oli accepts it reluctantly. “The snake was Aegon’s piece.”

“Long live the king!” Oli bellows with sudden fervor, and raises his cup of ale. Everyone toasts to the king’s health.

“Wherever he may be,” Daeron says before draining his cup and sweeping his silver hair out of his eyes, blue like a Targaryen’s, large and expressive like Mother’s. He feels that Aegon is still alive somewhere. He believes that if his eldest brother was dead, he would know it in his bones; there would be invisible, unbearable wounds like the ones that opened up when Helaena and Dreamfyre fell from the sky, days before Daeron received a raven carrying the news.

“What about my game piece?” asks Laurence of House Redwyne of the Arbor. He is a bowman and a healer as well, adept at herbal remedies and stitching. He would have preferred to be a maester or a septon, but as his parents’ only son he was compelled to endure the life of a lord. A squire arrives, refills all the cups with ale, departs with a swift bow.

“You are a Redwyne, and so you shall have Red’s bat,” Daeron says, entrusting the inanimate beast to Laurence. They know who he is talking about; they have heard more fireside stories of Daeron’s siblings than they could count. “And you are nothing like her. You are pious and poised, and you have never made your parents blush with shame. My Mother would have loved to have you for a son.”

“I’ll take your place,” Laurence says mildly, smiling. “You can be my parents’ dashing warrior, and I can accompany Queen Alicent when she prays in the sept.”

Daeron rolls first. He reads the dice and moves his shadowcat forward seven spaces. His brow knits together with determination. “I’m not leaving my mother there.”

“What? In the city?” Anthony asks, startled but not opposed. He is not one to shy away from battle. He believes that is where men find glory, where they ascend from mortals to something more, legends, heroes, gods.

Josiah snickers. “Not going to wait for Prince Aemond’s permission, huh?”

“The people of King’s Landing are in rebellion,” Daeron says, firelight flickering on his face. “Rhaenyra is desperate, and she is grieving Jace’s death, and she has my mother, Jaehaera, and Maelor in her grasp. What if Rhaenyra flees the city on Syrax and evades punishment for her treason? What if she executes my family, or if they are killed somehow when mobs overrun the Red Keep? I will not wait idly. Tessarion and I will recapture King’s Landing for the Greens.”

Oli raises his cup of ale again. “And we will fight with you!”

All five men toast, drink deeply, resume the game. Daeron wins; he has always been lucky.

~~~~~~~~~~

You stumble upstairs together, you supporting Aegon’s weight as best you can, tripping on the stone steps as lightning flashes outside the windows. Rain pours in sheets, wind howls through the cracked walls of the castle, and for a moment you think you are back at Heart’s Home, and that at the top of the tower you will find Luca waiting for you, safe and without pain and grinning his toothless little smile at you over Jace’s shoulder. Then—through the wine, through the torchlight and the thunder—you remember, and you feel the loss of them all over again, and when your knees buckle on the staircase Aegon drags you to your feet. You can sense that Alys Rivers is following you both, sweeping near-silently in her mossy green gown, peering fixedly with those strange silvery eyes like mirrors, haunting doorways and corridors. When you look back you catch glimpses of her, deformed shadows with long white fingers like the skeleton of a bat.

“I’m not a man anymore,” Aegon is blubbering as he collapses into his bed. His half-unbuttoned shirt is damp with spilled cider; tears gleam on his disfigured face.

“Shh, yes you are,” you soothe, lying down beside him. You rest a palm on his chest, gnarled grotesque scar tissue the color of a flayed man. Hazily, you think of the Bolton soldiers who must have marched south with Cregan Stark, and you wonder if when they sharpen their knives they are thinking of Aegon, or Daeron, or Aemond, or Mother, or maybe even you.

“I used to be,” Aegon sobs. “Now I’m just a useless, mutilated, flaccid freak.”

You burrow into him, drunk and drowsy. “Whatever you are, I’m glad you’re still alive.”

Aegon slings a scarred arm over your shoulder. Your ribs throb, your skull aches. “I used to love whoring,” he says miserably.

“The sport is not lost to you entirely. A working cock is not required to satisfy a woman.”

He laughs. “No, I suppose you’re right.”

“Perhaps you will recover. Perhaps you will find new ways to experience pleasure.”

“Perhaps,” Aegon agrees in a soft murmur, and then he dozes off.

And as the room spirals around you and thunder booms outside, you are carried back to other times and places, fleeting visions like the windows you once peered through into Aemond’s mind. You are a child being shoved into a wooden trunk and entombed there. You are tapping your little red bat around the game board. You are under the arbor grown over with roses and thorns, sunlight bleeding through the leaves in golden trickles. You are watching blue jays flit through a blue sky and bathe in the water of the fountains. You are playing with Jaehaerys, Jaehaera, and Maelor, building fortresses of stones and sticks, collecting seashells with them on the beach. You are catching your bats when they soar in through the open window to land in your palms. You are watching Aemond ride back from hunting with one of his red-tailed hawks still perched on his glove. You are feeling your mattress shift beneath his weight, his hand on your thigh, his teeth on your neck; you hear a reverent whisper of High Valyrian. And then you hear the blistering shrieks of all the people he has killed, and you are reminded of Mother’s words about what you once shared with him: It’s strange, and violent, and obsessive and profane and…and…unnatural.

Was she right? She must have been. All it has led to is suffering.

If I had never loved Aemond, Luca and Jace would still be alive. If I had married some ordinary nobleman like Mother and Grandsire always wanted—his bloodline an inheritance from the Andals or the First Men, not the treacherous smoldering embers of Old Valyria—my children would be safe, and Helaena never would have tried to escape King’s Landing, and Aemond would have wed a Baratheon girl and perhaps accepted Lord Borros’ offer of dinner and rest that night in Storm’s End, and maybe Luke wouldn’t have been killed over Shipbreaker Bay, and there is a chance the war would never have happened at all.

But you didn’t listen to Mother and Grandsire, because you have never been tame, gentle, dutiful, ladylike. Jace saw this clearly; you were hungry.

You don’t fall sleep until dawn, and when you wake it is night again. The maids bring food, bread and butter and stew thick with fish and crab, but neither you or Aegon want it. You are marooned here together, not useful like Aemond or Daeron, not holy like Helaena, and the only remedy is cider that flows like molten gold, heat that burns in your throat like the fire of a dragon.

Now there is bleak grey midday light streaming in through the windows, and Aegon is screaming downstairs. You sit up, startled and bleary-eyed, your tangled silver hair strewn carelessly all around you. Alys is standing beside the bed. You yelp in alarm when you see her.

“A raven has arrived,” Alys says tonelessly. She has a red ribbon laced through her moon-white fingers and is toying with it.

“What? Why are you in here…?”

“I think it’s bad news.” Then she floats to the doorway and turns back to make sure you’re following, her hand with the ribbon resting on her rounded belly.

At the bottom of the staircase, Aegon is writhing on the stone floor, a piece of parchment—doubtlessly sent by one of his loyalists on the mainland, one of the very few who know where he is now, perhaps somebody at Rook’s Rest or Crackclaw Point—crumpled in his fist. Several maids are trying futilely to comfort him. You take the letter from Aegon so you can read it.

What is written there in black ink is a tale of triumph and ruin. Under the cover of darkness the Hightower army marched on King’s Landing, and the smallfolk rose up to join them when the soldiers breached the city walls, and the capital has been retaken by the Greens and Mother freed from her cell. Ulf the White was found drunk and senseless, and promptly murdered. Silverwing fled from the Dragonpit in the midst of the chaos. Daeron and Tessarion flew directly to the Red Keep and attacked Syrax where she had been kept in the courtyard, killing the dragon and thus destroying Rhaenyra’s chance to escape. The woman the Blacks call queen was captured and imprisoned, and the men of her council executed; but not before her bowmen shot Daeron through the chest and throat and he tumbled from the saddle and died alone, bleeding to death within the castle walls he once called home. Tessarion screeched in grief and would not leave his body, incinerating the archers when they dared to shoot at her next.

It’s in your pounding skull, a memory that fills your vision, harsh and luminous like lightning: Daeron as a child moving his little purple shadowcat around the board, how the rest of you packed up the game and never played again after he was sent to Oldtown.

“He was supposed to wait for Aemond,” Aegon is sobbing. “He wasn’t supposed to try to retake the city alone, he knew that, he was just a kid…”

You see Daeron falling from the sky, riddled with arrows and stained red with blood. You see Helaena and Dreamfyre plummeting down towards the beach where you once played with her children. And then you see Aemond plunging into the Gods Eye and being swallowed up by cold dark currents, sinking to the floor of the lake, dissolving into silt, disappearing from history.

I love him, you realize, an abrupt and agonizing laceration down to the bone. I might hate him, but I love him too. And hasn’t it always been that way?

You feel the heat of blood drawn on your cheek, taste the iron and copper of it on Aemond’s lips. Your skull aches, always on the left side.

“Why are we the ones still alive?!” Aegon wails at you. “You and me and Aemond were the monsters. But Helaena and Daeron, they were good, they were pure, they deserved to be here when the war is over!”

“It’s not over yet,” Alys says ominously.

“Go away, witch,” Aegon moans, covering his face with his hands. “Go away, go away, go away…”

Outside where soft rain is falling—you can see droplets on the windows and endless opaque fog—you hear the distant snarl of a dragon. And you have the overwhelming sensation that you are being called to.

Above the Gods Eye, the red and the blue, Alys had said. Aemond was blue…but who was red? Caraxes, Daemon, me?

The dragon growls again, not Sunfyre or Grey Ghost or Vermithor the Bronze Fury but the Cannibal, never ridden, never tamed, always hungry. Alys Rivers is holding something out to you. It is the red ribbon.

“He flies to his death,” she says levelly. “Unless you are there to catch him.”

Luca and Jace are gone. Helaena and Daeron are gone. Jaehaerys and Grandsire are gone. But I don’t have to lose Aemond too.

You take the ribbon and swiftly weave your hair into an untidy braid, then tie it off at the end with the strip of red. It is the first color besides black you have worn since you left Heart’s Home. Then you pad towards the castle entranceway in your bare feet.

Aegon is sniffling as the maids try to console him. He peers up at you from where he is still collapsed on the floor, a heap of marred skin and weak bones. “Where are you going?”

In answer, the Cannibal roars outside, immense and gravelly and malevolent.

Aegon says again, frantic now: “Red, where are you going?”

“To claim a dragon.”

“You can’t,” he says, stunned, petrified. “They all refused you.”

“I’m a different person now.”

“No!” he shouts as you turn to leave, lunging and wrapping his arms around your legs, trying to keep you here. “Please don’t go. Please stay. I don’t want to lose you too.”

Tenderly, you touch his tangled locks of silver hair, his mutilated cheek, his slumped shoulder. “If I don’t go, you might lose all of us.”

“It’s suicide. The Cannibal can’t be ridden.”

“But I know what he craves,” you say, and from across the room Alys smiles at you, her pale eyes glinting and her hands stroking the small globe of her belly. “And I want the same thing.”

You pull away from Aegon and escape into the mist, the rain, the cold wind and sea spray that burns in your lungs. He hobbles after you with his walking stick, pleading for you to stop, but he is too slow to catch up. Behind Aegon, Alys trails at a distance, meandering over the rocks. The magma trapped beneath the surface of the island flows like scorching blood through the arteries of the earth; the heat radiates up through the soles of your feet. The marrow glows hot and red in your bones.

You follow the Cannibal’s grunts and snarls and find him down by the water, a shore of jagged volcanic rocks and no sand, volcanic glass, fury hardened and cooled. But yours is still fresh. The Cannibal is feasting on the corpse of Grey Ghost. Gore hangs in crimson shreds from his craggy teeth; he has too many of them, they grow in rows like a shark’s. Frothing seawater laps at his claws. He raises his massive head—black scales and barbed spines, mindless primordial eyes green and luminous—and growls, steam rising from his flaring nostrils.

Fear strikes you, sharp and sudden. Your hands and knees are trembling.

“Let’s go back to the castle!” Aegon yells over the sounds of the sea and the gales of wind.

But you can’t stop now. The Cannibal called and you answered. And here, nineteen years late, you will have the dragon you were denied from birth.

You speak in High Valyrian as the wind gusts and rakes, your black mourning gown billowing, strands of silver hair ripped from your braid. “You hate your kind,” you say to the Cannibal, showing him the empty palms of your hand as you approach, cutting your bare feet on the rocks; and he watches you, eyes blazing, fangs revealed. “And I do too. I hate Rhaenyra for ordering the deaths of Helaena and Daeron and Grandsire. I hate Daemon for sending assassins into my home to murder Jaehaerys. I hate Aemond for killing Luca and Jace. And I hate myself for not being able to stop any of it.”

The Cannibal roars and his jaws open wide, revealing a gaping blood-red throat. From deep within him, lethal flames are building.

“I told you!” Aegon is shouting. “He can’t be tamed, get away from him! Red, come back, please don’t die, please!”

“I was weak!” you scream at the Cannibal in High Valyrian, stumbling over the rocks as you move closer. You bare your teeth at him like you did to Jace the night Rhaenyra took King’s Landing. “I was useless without you. I tried to forget my inheritance as a Targaryen, but it found me. It found me in the Vale, it found me as my son died in my arms. I cannot be gentle and toothless. I can only be the blood of the dragon.”

The Cannibal snaps his jaws shut and stills, his green eyes alight and fixed on you. Aegon and Alys say nothing; perhaps they are afraid to break the spell. You reach out and press your hand to the Cannibal’s muzzle; it comes away covered with Grey Ghost’s blood. You drag your tongue up the length of your palm and drink it. Dragon blood tastes like metal and smoke and the verdant rot of a swamp. The Cannibal growls from low in his enormous chest, but now his radiant eyes are curious.

“Help me kill Daemon and Caraxes,” you say as the wind howls and raindrops run in rivulets down your face. You place both hands on the Cannibal’s bloodied muzzle now. “You’ll kill your kind and I’ll kill mine. Together we will consume them. And I swear to you, my hatred burns every bit as hot as yours.”

You show the Cannibal, picturing it in your mind and knowing he can see: Aemond confessing that he murdered Luke, blood spurting when Jaehaerys was decapitated, Helaena and Dreamfyre crashing down to the beach outside the Red Keep, Jace lying dead in a crumbling stairwell, Luca’s blanket spotted with scarlet and his cries going silent, Daeron pierced with arrows, Aemond disintegrating in the depths of the Gods Eye if you cannot save him.

“I have all this hatred and no way to satisfy it. Let’s fly. Let’s devour.”

The Cannibal wears no saddle and never has. He is wild, and even now you will never own him. What you share will aways be a fight, a push and a pull like the tides, brutal and beloved, but isn’t that how you like it? You move to his side, wading in the shallow water on the shoreline, and hook your fingers around the spines that jut out of his thorax like thorns. His scales gleam like obsidian; he snorts tendrils of searing steam. He does nothing to help you, not stooping lower to the ground, not nudging you along with his snout as you’ve seen Sunfyre do for Aegon. The Cannibal only looks to Grey Ghost’s tattered corpse and takes another bite, crushing the ribcage between his jaws, ropes of gristle and deflated pink lungs gulped down.

Faintly, you hear Aegon say as he whirls to Alys: “Seven hells, I think it’s working.”

You heave yourself upwards and climb until you reach the Cannibal’s knobby spine, and nothing hurts, not your head or your ribs or the cuts on your feet or the scar that begins at your collarbone. As you are still searching for good spots to grab onto so you don’t slide off, crawling over the terrain of his back like stones, the Cannibal jolts forward and you scream when you nearly tumble head-first off of him and into the ocean. You grapple for purchase, eventually finding several large spines near his shoulder blades. You grip these thornlike appendages—your hands are too small to close around them completely—and now the Cannibal is diving into the Narrow Sea.

Aegon shouts something you can’t decipher, and then you are underwater and the world outside is muted. The ocean is ice cold and thrashing violently with the force of the Cannibal’s movement, and you hold on with your eyes squeezed shut, the currents wrenching you roughly, waiting for the dragon to resurface. But the Cannibal plunges deeper and pressure builds in your ears until it feels like they will rupture open and hemorrhage.

Is he trying to drown me??

You consider releasing his spines and paddling blindly for open air, but that would be a surrender. You would be unworthy. You would have no dragon. And the Cannibal would devour you like he did Grey Ghost.

You think in High Valyrian as loudly as you can: I will die here before I let go. I am not afraid of the afterlife. Half of my family is there already. Jace is rocking Luca in his arms, Helaena is placing ladybugs in his tiny wrinkled palms, Daeron is telling him that I’ll be home soon.

And then the Cannibal ascends, and through your eyelids you can tell there is light again, and he bursts through the surf and onto a rocky beach. He scrabbles over the ground, you lurching and blinking seawater from your eyes. The Cannibal’s black wings, ragged from battling other monsters, open like the wings of a raven or a bat. You peer down and the island is growing smaller and the wind is forceful, the ocean rippling under the gusts from the Cannibal’s wings.

You look over your shoulder, and for only a moment you glimpse Aegon standing on the shore and cheering, waving, whistling, and Alys watching with a smile. Then the Cannibal banks and carries you higher into the grey clouds. The air is frigid, and you can’t see anything through the fog, but you are grinning as the wind stings on your teeth. At last, you know what it is like to fly. Dreamfyre bonded to the gentle, Vermithor to the powerful and ambitious, but you were made for a different sort of beast. Your dragon is hateful. Your dragon is hungry.

The Cannibal circles back to Dragonstone, breaks through the sightless mist like a blade through flesh, and lands beside Aegon and Alys and snarls at them, gnashing his gore-stained fangs. Steam blasts from his nostrils and blows through their hair. Alys shrinks away from him, her hands cradling her belly protectively.

Aegon is laughing hysterically. “What now?” he says, marveling at the Cannibal, awed and horrified in equal measure. “All these years you thought there was something wrong with you. Thank the gods your egg never hatched.”

“Aemond is meeting Daemon in battle above the Gods Eye. That’s where I’m going.”

“Do you even know how to get there?!”

“It’s west of here. That’s a start.” But you see a mirage through the Cannibal’s ancient green eyes: a time years ago, decades, centuries, when he flew over the Riverlands and felt the foreign magic of the Old Gods, natural adversaries to Valyrians. He flew away from them then. He can find his way back now.

In High Valyrian, you think: Take me there and we will kill our own.

Yes, an ancient voice rumbles in your skull, wrathful black bottomless gluttony. Yes, yes.

~~~~~~~~~~

It gleams like a sapphire in the face of the earth, the Gods Eye as you descend through dense clouds that taste like metal when you breathe the winter sky into your lungs. You have flown through the night, and you both would be exhausted if not fueled by hatred the way wood feeds a fire.

The Cannibal shows you things through his archaic reptilian eyes—the Targaryens arriving on the doorstep of his lair after heeding Daenys the Dreamer’s vision of the Doom of Valyria, Aegon’s Conquest and Visenya’s scheming, Maegor the Cruel’s ashes being interred on the island where he was raised, the Old King Jaehaerys fleeing with Alysanne to Dragonstone so they could marry against the wishes of his advisors, Rhaenyra and Daemon’s wedding and happiness there before the war began, dragons coming and going, storms and eruptions and shipwrecks, claws and fangs and raw meat—and so you learn what it means to be a dragon. You show him your comparatively few memories in return, your momentary existence, and he begins to understand you too.

The dark skeletal remnants of Harrenhal, promised to Alys and the son she shares with Aemond, appear as the Cannibal flies lower. On the fields by the lakeshore, armies are clashing in battle; you see the banners of House Stark, House Lannister, and the dual factions of House Targaryen. High above the murky blue water, Vhagar and Caraxes are twisted in lethal combat, flames pouring from their jaws, claws scraping away scales.

Aemond, you think, and you wonder if he has already felt that you’re here.

The Cannibal glides with his vast, frayed wings over the Green soldiers, and you spot Criston among them, astride a galloping white horse and wielding a sword. He stares up as the Cannibal’s shadow falls over him, and he sees what you have brought with you, and he is so staggered he cannot look away. Men are pointing and shouting. The Northmen are pulling up their horses, their infantry bolting for the trees. In front of you are thousands of enemy combatants, anonymous and swarming like ants.

“Dracarys,” you whisper, and the Cannibal opens his jaws and spills a river of fire down on the Northman. Their banners burn, their horses scream and scatter, their men are cooked in their armor and stumble towards the water to extinguish themselves. You feel the Cannibal’s malevolent satisfaction. He feels your hatred turning lighter, anemic, easier to carry.

He swoops up into the sky where Vhagar and Caraxes are intertwined. Vhagar has the Blood Wyrm’s long, serpentine neck clenched between her fangs, but Caraxes is not dead yet; he has clawed through the scales of Vhagar’s belly and opened her, unspooled her, disemboweled her. Vhagar’s intestines cascade from her abdomen and tangle around her kicking feet. She is bleeding to death. She will fall soon.

Daemon knows there is no escape. He has Dark Sister in his fist and is preparing to jump from his saddle and deliver the deathblow to Aemond. You remember Daemon stalking you around the courtyard of the Red Keep with the same sword, twirling it in his hands and fantasizing about slitting your throat. The Cannibal understands this as if it is his own memory and unleashes crimson flames upon Caraxes. In his final seconds, Daemon turns and sees you, and the last thing he feels is not triumph but shock and heat and excruciating, incinerating pain, a fire that burns ruinously clean, leaving not even the bones.

Vhagar is dying. She releases Caraxes and the smoldering, broken dragon tumbles resistlessly into the lake. Aemond is calling your name. The Cannibal soars towards them, almost close enough now. Vhagar goes limp as she exsanguinates, her wings stop flapping, her colossal body spirals down towards the Gods Eye. Aemond unfastens his chains and leaps from the saddle. It is his only chance; if he hits the water with Vhagar, he will be knocked unconscious and drown, sink, vanish. His long hair is a ribbon of silver. His hands grasp for you and the Cannibal, catching nothing but empty air.

You reach for him as he falls and the wind rushes through your fingers, grey as steel and cold like the descending winter.

~~~~~~~~~~

A year ago, twilight in the garden of the Red Keep, the fountain trickling lazily as you perch on the edge with Blue Jay clinging to your forearm. High above, silver glints of constellations are burning through the indigo sky. On the ground, you kick pebbles around aimlessly with your bare feet. You avoid his gaze because you’re trying to pretend you’re teasing; you don’t want him to see how upset you are. “They’re going to make you marry a Baratheon girl.”

“No they aren’t.”

“Yes, Aemond, they are. I understand that. You don’t have to lie to me.”

“They’re going to try,” he purrs into your ear as he sits down beside you, petting Blue Jay with one lithe hand. “But I won’t do it. If Borros Baratheon needs a marriage to seal his alliance, then Daeron can wed his youngest daughter. I’ve already written to Daeron, and he agreed. He was willing, in fact. If it means he would be coming home to King’s Landing at last.”

“Lord Baratheon will want you,” you insist. “You are older. You are closer to the throne.”

“I’m very close to it,” Aemond agrees, kissing the apple of your cheek and then biting you there, the sharpness of his teeth, the pink warmth of bloodrush. Blue Jay swoops off into the dusk to devour the wheeling white specks of moths and lacewings.

“He will try to tempt you, he will offer you a beautiful bride.”

“Oh, yes, she will be beautiful,” Aemond murmurs, and when you strike at his chest he catches your wrists and yanks you in closer. “And she will be meek, and compliant, and ladylike in every way, and if she was mine she would lie down and spread her legs for me whenever I asked, because that is what is required of a dutiful wife. She will be devout…and decorous…and sinless…”

“Then marry her instead,” you hiss as you battle with him, fighting to get away, not wanting to win. Aemond drags you off the ledge of the fountain and into the cool shallow water. You splash as you struggle, your fingernails raking against his throat and the blind side of his face where he can’t see to defend himself, your long silver braid heavy and sodden, your blood-colored velvet gown drenched and clinging to you like muscles to bones.

“But the Baratheon girl wouldn’t be like me,” Aemond says, grabbing your jaw and forcing you to look at him, and while his hands are rough his voice is soft, almost like a whisper, almost like the prayers that Mother sighs in the sept, pleading for the gods to tame her children. The thrashing water goes still. Your heartbeat is slowing. You gaze into the crystalline blue of his eye and are trapped there like a sailor sinking to the bottom of the sea. “And she wouldn’t be like you either.”

You grin—relief, triumph, hunger—and Aemond kisses you, not like how a lord kisses a lady but how animals devour each other, fierce and biting, insatiable, unashamed.

Aemond says as he kneels in the water of the fountain, bats you named after him flapping overhead in a darkening sky: “I have to leave for Storm’s End at dawn. I won’t be gone long, I won’t sleep there even if I’m invited too. Wait up for me tomorrow night.”

“No,” you answer, taunting him; but you will.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen fanfiction #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen x y/n #hotd fic #hotd fanfic

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leighsartworks216 · 4 months ago

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All This And Heaven Too

Demon!Sylus x gn!Angel!Reader

Based on this post

Title from "All This And Heaven Too" by Florence and the Machine

This fic possessed me and would not let me go until I wrote it tonight (which is bad cuz I'm sick). Very very very vague spoilers for the end of Sylus's story

Also I'm not religious and I do not smoke but the vibes, y'all, I simply had to (I looked up a wikihow for smoking)

Warnings: heavy angst, angels + demons au, major character death, unhappy ending, hurt no comfort, blood, injury, crying, kissing, drugs + smoking, underage smoking, pet names, religious imagery + symbolism, swearing

Word Count: 2,557

Main Masterlist

Love and Deepspace Masterlist

AO3

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You sigh as you feel the oh so familiar sensation of a cigarette being shoved into your halo’s golden glow. There’s an inhale behind you, and the sensation is gone. Sure enough, when you turn around, the demon stands proudly, taking a long drag from his cigarette.

“Thanks, angel,” the demon, Sylus, purrs. The smoke blows into your face and you fan it away with your hand. He chuckles. “You haven’t changed one bit.”

“Well, it’s only been 3 centuries. How much was I supposed to change in that time?”

He studies you lazily, tilting his head and taking another drag. He settles down on a low stone wall, worn on the edges and covered in old paint. “Not interested in small talk today, angel?”

You cross your arms defensively over your chest. It’s been a long time since he’s seen you this on-edge around him. “I don’t know how you can think about anything else.” You look at the people passing by.

Teens in helmets and knee pads rolling past on boards or skates, others with no protective gear at all trying to pull off complicated flips and tricks. A couple sat under a curved wall, passing a blunt back and forth. Sylus had teased you relentlessly the first time he came across you in a place like this. Watching all these young souls take up vices so early in their lives, put their bodies on the line and break bones for a bit of fun. You didn’t notice the drugs and alcohol as much nowadays. You just saw the smiles.

“All of this will be gone in just a few days… Doesn’t that…” You glance at him. “Doesn’t that upset you?”

A kid walks up to Sylus, gesturing with his messily rolled up joint for a light. Sylus presses the end of his cigarette to the end without a word. The revolting stench of marijuana filled the air as the kid walked away. “Why should it?”

You glare at him and he chuckles.

“Oh, I’m sorry. What I meant to say was, ‘Heavens above, it’s a terrible tragedy! The horror of it all!’”

“I could smite you right now. One less demon for Hell’s army would be no loss to us.”

“But it would be to you.” He sighs, scanning the skatepark. A melancholy settles in his expression. “I suppose I will miss it. Humans know the best ways to have a good time.”

You hum. “I did always enjoy their weddings.”

“I was thinking something along the lines of lust, greed, and pride.”

“I know.”

You glance at the spot beside him. He holds the cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he takes off his leather jacket and lays it across the stone. You perch primly on it with a nod of thanks. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and holds it out to you. You stare at it with a grimace.

“This could be your last chance to try it,” he cajoles. “I promise you won’t get sent to Hell for a little thing like this.”

You glance at his face. Piercing red eyes stare at you, but you know he wouldn’t lie to you about something like this. Not anymore, anyway.

You begin to reach for it but he pulls it just out of your reach. He holds the butt end to your lips, but you look at him with that sweet little look of innocence, utterly helpless.

“Shall I demonstrate first?” He puts it between his lips, the corners curled up into a devilish grin. The ashes on the end trail a little further down the paper as he inhales the tobacco smoke. He takes it out of his mouth, pauses for a second, and blows it out, away from your face this time. He holds it back to your lips. “Don’t do too much. I want this to be a good experience for you.”

“Your temptations are hardly enticing,” you scold, but there’s no venom behind it. You carefully put your lips around the filter, where his were just seconds ago, and suck in. You can’t help watching his face as you do, searching for instructions through his expressions. He nods just slightly and you pull away, holding it in for a moment like he did, and exhaling.

He brings it back to his lips. “Well?”

You scowl as you try to get the taste out of your mouth. “How do you like that?”

“Oh, angel. People don’t like the taste - not really, anyway. It’s the chemicals that trick you into thinking you need it, pulling you to it over and over again.” He leans in. His eyes gleam. “Addiction.”

“Hmph. Should I try to find something pure for you to try now?”

He shakes his head. “I already know what the holy experience is like. I’m just fine not going back to it for a second.”

A drugged-up teenager with no protective gear goes down the old wooden half-pipe. It’s been in disrepair for years. The local governments don’t care at all about trying to keep anything here in good upkeep; they haven’t for decades. His wheel catches on a broken board and sends him flying. His body scrapes against splinters and bent nails, tearing at his clothing and flesh. To add insult to injury, his skateboard goes up the other side and comes right down on his head. You can tell even from a distance that he’s broken something. He lays there for a while, groaning.

Sylus isn’t surprised when an ambulance arrives a couple minutes later, despite nobody having called for their services.

“Do you know where you’ll be stationed?” you ask. You try to seem cool-headed about the thought of going into war, but there’s a waver in your voice that he catches as easily as recognizing a lie.

“Linkon City. On the frontlines.” He passes the nearly-gone cigarette back over when he sees your hands fidget restlessly with the hem of his jacket. “What about you?”

You take it from him with inexperienced fingers, but you don’t cough this time either as you take a slightly deeper draw from it. He could almost say he’s proud, if he ignored the omen of a smoking angel.

“The same for me.”

He takes the spent cigarette from you and puts it out against a spray painted yellow smile. “So I’ll see you there, then.”

You watch the ambulance pull away with the kid on a stretcher in the back.

Sylus stands up. It’s only when he gestures to his jacket that you follow, stepping away so he can retrieve it and put it on. It’s a hot summer day, but even dressed in all black and leather, he says it’s too cold. If Hell wins… you wonder if you’ll understand what he means, then.

“If we fight each other-”

“Why do you sound so upset about it, angel?”

You take a deep breath. Your golden eyes, blessed by the light of God, stare at him with a deep seriousness. “If we fight each other, we can’t hold back. You know that, right?”

He nods slowly. “I know.”

“I… I won’t hold back.”

He nods.

“Not even for you.”

He nods again. “I know, angel.”

You nod, settling that promise into your brain. Your frown hasn’t faltered at all.

“For what it’s worth…” Red eyes look at you with no waver in confidence, but that melancholy hasn’t faded yet. “Of all the angels I could have had the displeasure of knowing, I’m glad it was you.”

The city was a husk of its former self. Where once people walked to and fro, going to work or the movies or the arcade, demons and angels fought in a holy war. It was chaos at every turn. Armies donned in white and black, fighting tooth and nail to win.

You had your orders. They were easy to follow: kill any demon in sight. You prayed for God to end this war before it could begin. You prayed for the final days leading up to it for this to never come to pass. You prayed until someone ripped your hands apart and shoved a sword into them.

If your body functioned like a normal human’s, you would have been panting, gasping for air as you stole through a wrecked lobby and into a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by tall buildings. Your body would have ached from exhaustion, and you think a normal human would have fallen unconscious by now.

Your body does not function that way.

Your breaths are even as you turn in a slow circle, watching for any intruders. The fight rages on mere feet away, but in here you can almost forget.

A tree stands proudly in the center. Its branches overhand a small, tiered garden. Flowers decorate the wooden boxes, spilling out over the sides from care and dedication. You gently lift one of the hanging blossoms and bend down to smell it.

Something sharp touches your neck.

You’re frozen in place. Caught off guard, staring at the flower, memorizing it so that when the killing blow comes, it is the last thing you see. The last meaningful reminder of the humans’ blessed existence.

“Hello, angel.”

You turn your head so sharply you almost cut yourself on his blade. Relief and dread swell in you all at once, a miasma of discontent. Sylus grins at you as relaxed as ever and lowers the black sword to his side.

A hollow breeze swishes his hair across his forehead. The longer strands catch in his eye, but he doesn’t brush them away. The horns on his head are sharper, crueller than usual; as dark as the deepest pit of Hell.

The golden glow of your halo highlights the planes of his face.

“Don’t hold back, remember?” he says. “Don’t lose that conviction on me now.”

Your hand shakes as you tighten your grip on your sword. You raise it in front of you. The sharpened point raised to the heavens, a symbol of your devotion. You swallow. “I won’t.”

He mirrors your position, the end of his sword aimed for the hells below. His hands are steady. He nods. That damned grin widens on his face. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “I know, angel.”

Sylus attacks first. He has to. You’re paralyzed, unable to make the first offensive move. You defend instead, blocking and parrying his every move. The tree stands watch. A silent aegis to your battle.

He cuts your right cheek, and you jump away to collect yourself. The pain feels too real. How is this the natural end of the world? How can your God sit idly by and witness you crossing blades with the one creature across the Heavens, Hells and Earth whom you called friend? What merciful God would want this?

Blood drips slowly down your jaw from the small wound. Sylus paces around you like a wolf hunting wounded prey. You know he will destroy you.

You take a breath and raise your sword again. Your hand does not shake.

You strike first, reigniting the fight he lit.

It’s grueling. Neither of you dares to give in now. Hesitating would be to die. And not only did neither of you want to die, neither of you wanted to kill the other. It’s a battle built to be a stalemate. A war never meant to be won.

At least, you wish it was.

Both hands grab the hilt of your sword, holding it steady. Sylus grabs the blade.

He chuckles. It’s weak. Strained. His eyes match the blood pouring from his chest as he looks up at you. He falls to his knees. You follow.

“Well done, angel.” He wheezes, eyes squeezed shut in pain as he hunches over your blade. The sides dig into his hand, slicing his palm and fingers. “You… You won.”

All at once, the reality of the situation hits you.

“No…” You support your sword with one hand as you scramble on your knees to be closer. You grab his shoulder, sitting him up so you can see where you’ve impaled him. You let go of the sword to rest both hands on his chest on either side of the wound. “No, no, no, no, don’t- You can’t-”

Golden light shines in your hands, but black and red tendrils block your healing. You try harder, until the light blinds you, but the demonic powers within him refuse to relent. Sylus watches you with soft eyes and a grin.

“Angel,” he mumbles. You grunt in frustration as you press harder against the wound. His hand slides off the blade and covers yours. You’re panting from exertion as you finally meet his eyes. “I think… I think I wanna try somethin’ holy now… You got anything in mind?”

The glow fades. The darkness fades. You cradle the back of his head with a blood-soaked hand. It stains his hair. Your other hand grips his like a lifeline, squeezing blood from the cuts there. He doesn’t stop you.

“Something holy?” You search his face, wracking your brain for any ideas. “Okay… Okay, I can do that.”

You begin stroking his hair tenderly, scratching at his scalp, scraping sweat, blood and oil under your nails. He sighs, head resting heavily into your care. His eyes are half closed. He forces them to stay open.

You scoot yourself closer, until your knees are touching his. You lift his head up and bring your lips to his forehead. This close, you listen to every breath he takes. Every rasp and groan he exhales. You pull away reluctantly, ducking your head down so your forehead rests over your lingering kiss.

“How’s-” You clear your throat after your voice cracks. “How’s that?”

“Isn’t kissing… a sin…?”

You shake your head. “No, no, it’s not.”

He hums quietly. “You ever… kiss anyone… angel?”

You laugh despite yourself and shake your head again. “No, I haven’t.”

“Shall I… demonstrate…?”

“I’d like that.”

He abandons his sword on the ground beside him. It clatters against the carefully laid brick of the courtyard. His hand is agonizingly slow to find your cheek. His palm is cold. His thumb strokes the cut he gave you.

“C’mere… angel.”

You follow his weak guidance as he tilts your chin, pulling your lips to his. His lips barely move. You press against them a little harder.

His hand slips from your cheek, knuckles scraping over the bricks and jostling his sword. You pull away.

His eyes are hollow. Red irises staring into nothingness.

“Sylus…?” His head lolls in your hand when you try to adjust. “Sylus, please-” Your eyes fill with water. “Please, it’s not funny. I don’t need your tricks right now. Please-”

You let go of his wounded hand to hold his face with both hands. Blood from your touch stains his cheeks. Hot tears slip down your cheeks.

“Please, I- I can’t do this without you… I don’t want to do this without you…”

He doesn’t respond.

You press your forehead to his again, leaning over his body as gravity stakes its claim on him. Your tears land on his face, falling down his cheekbones and jaw as if he was the one crying, not you.

“Please… Please…” You kiss his cold lips. “Please…”

Nobody hears your prayers.

---

Tag List:

@the-golden-jhope @huen1ngk41 @armycaratlover

#fanfic #fanfiction #sylus #sylus x reader #love and deepspace sylus #lads sylus #lnds sylus #love and deepspace #love and deepspace x reader #lads #lads x reader #lnds #lnds x reader #gn reader #x gn reader #gender neutral reader #x gender neutral reader #angst

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notsorryiml8 · 2 months ago

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Shoutout to Naruto fans! Shoutout to Naruto as a manga/anime! And a special shoutout to Kakashi! And Team 7!

Why you may ask? If you click on the tumblr year in review banner, it ranks tumblr tags for the year. In the anime/manga category, Naruto came in 9/100! Why, you may or may not ask, is this so awesome? Well, because if you look at the results, you’ll see that almost (almost!) everything ranked higher is either still actively airing or recently ended (One Piece, JJK, Dungeon Meshi, MHA, etc…), so a lot could be said for recency bias, which is natural and expected. If it wasn’t that way, that would be newsworthy.

And that is why Naruto gets a shoutout! Manga/anime hasn’t actively aired/been produced in a decade and recently celebrated it’s 25th (yes, it’s been 1/4 of a CENTURY since Naruto originally aired) and is still 9/100!! That says a lot about its fan base. A LOT. Go Naruto fans!

As for Kakashi and Team 7, in the anime character chart, Kakashi was ranked 54/100, with Sasuke ranked 56th, Naruto, 63rd, and Sakura 79th. So, all of Team 7 made the top 100, with Kakashi placing highest out of any Naruto character. Sensei ranked higher than his team, even the main character, so that says a lot about him. Or shall I say, he was tagged more. And if you look at the rankings 90% of the other characters on the list are from anime that are currently airing or being produced or recently ended, which, again, is to be expected. Which means that Naruto characters have withstood the test of time. Go Kishimoto! As the ranking said, to paraphrase “you all created a lot of polls, wrote a lot of fic, made a lot of art!” And talked a lot about these things!

Anyway, just wanted to shout it out.

#naruto #Naruto appreciation #kakashi hatake #Kakashi #kakashi appreciation #team 7 naruto #team 7 appreciation #tumblr year in review

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jasmineandcedar · 4 months ago

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Get a grip

An Elriel one shot (Azriel’s POV).

(jump down to “keep reading” if you want to go straight to the one shot - mind the tags)

I see adoration, connection, and beautiful consent in how SJM has written Elain and Azriel’s relationship. We see how they narratively lift each other as characters, just like Nessian and Feysand. Azriel is Elain’s choice - her breaking free of the stifling expectations that have plagued her. With Elain's encouragement, we see self-sacrificing Azriel finally rest and able to fight his feelings of being unworthy of touch and romantic love.

On top of how they care for each other, there is also mutual lust - in the most beautiful slow-burn of the ACOTAR series (if you ask me).

Whilst I will always have a weakness for Elriel's quiet and gentle love, here’s a celebration of the sometimes misunderstood aspects of their developing romance - lust and desire. Inspired by Azriel's bonus chapter, it's my attempt at depicting how Azriel’s racing thoughts and desire for Elain might manifest at night, when only the Mother might witness him. It's also a celebration of Elain and the desirable things about her. A light-hearted vindication of the shadowsinger and the seer - whose only crime seems to be desiring each other, both sexually and romantically. (I love me a forbidden romance! 🤭)

I shall let them.

Warning: smut (sexual fantasies, jerking off), angst

(This is my first attempt at writing something even remotely smutty. It’s all in good fun!).

I wrote this thinking of it as a continuation of my one shot Wingspan (you’ll find it here, but you don’t need to read it to read this one).

_______

Azriel arrived at the House of Wind with hot frustration pulsing through his normally icy veins. Shadows swirled at his feet as he ran a hand through his windswept hair, tucked in his wings, and entered the lower levels of the House. With Nesta and Cassian already fast asleep, he hurried through the corridors towards his room. His steps were guided by muscle memory alone, his thoughts racing with images of Elain.

Since fate had cruelly decided they couldn’t have each other, the thought of her would have to do—for now.

And it would do.

Thoughts of her fingers grazing his. The jolt that went through his body as their eyes met. Her golden-brown hair falling in waves like a silken waterfall down her back. How the chilly night air painted her cheeks and nose in a lovely shade of pink. The gentle care with which she nurtured life into being in every garden she touched.

It was curious—how a single memory of her could satiate him more than sharing shallow corporeal pleasures with another had ever been able to. He hadn't seen the point in any of that in a long time, couldn’t fathom why he ever had, now that he could steal glances from Elain Archeron, secretly brush his fingers against hers, or simply watch her be.

The ache in his chest was rivalled only by the ache in his pants. As it were, he could only do something about one of those aches tonight. He fully intended to. He would take advantage of that ache currently throbbing in his pants until he was a throbbing mess in his bed. It was the only hope he had of getting any sleep.

He entered his room, grateful for the solitude of the late hour. Locking the door behind him, he only managed a few strides inside before he fell back against the stone wall, spreading his wings along the cool and smooth surface for some relief. He let his shadows—the ones that weren’t already asleep—seal his room off from any unwanted attention.

Then, he closed his eyes and let out a deep breath.

His lips parted as his fingers drifted to his waist, tugging at his shirt to undo the fasteners of his pants. His fingers were cold from his flight, and he shuddered as they grazed the sensitive skin of his lower abdomen. He leaned his head back against the wall and let out another deep breath before he bit his lower lip. Hard.

He inhaled.

Thoughts of her flashed through his mind—her delicate fingers twirling the string of her apron, the way she swept strands of golden-brown behind her ear as she knelt in the garden.

He exhaled.

Fuck me, he thought behind closed eyes, letting his head fall back against the wall again, a little harder than necessary.

Perhaps it was pathetic, the level of detail with which he had committed to memory even the most minute of encounters with her. He could live with that. Somehow, he didn’t mind it at all. Those minute encounters seemed to be what kept his heart pumping, after all. What he couldn’t live with was that raging ache that threatened to rip through his pants if he didn’t deal with it soon.

He groaned with relief as he finished unfastening his pants to grip his cock. He was painfully hard, to a degree only Elain Archeron could induce. He wrapped his fingers firmly around his length and let them glide over it.

"Elain Archeron," he sighed at the thought of her. To his shock, he heard himself almost giggle at the way her name slipped from his lips.

Then, because no one was there to witness the fearsome Spymaster, he whispered her name into the night one more time, as if to taste it. Despite his misery, he couldn’t help but smile at the sound of it. It was sweet like honey, the way her name took shape on his tongue—just like her gentle soul, which seemed to understand both the words he spoke and didn’t speak.

His grip around his cock tightened, hand wrapping around it much in the same way he was wrapped around Elain’s finger.

His heart had belonged to her and her alone since she had given him that headache powder—when she had made him feel genuine happiness for the first time since he didn’t know when. It had been hers since she chose to spend her first Solstice night with him, of all people, sharing her dreams for the gardens. Her eyes of molten chocolate had lit up and he had looked at her in awe, undisturbed, until dawn. He wasn’t even sure if he had blinked; he hadn't wanted to miss a single second of her elation. That night, she had taught him what joy felt like, and it had stunned him.

He wanted desperately to return to that night. To be able to look into her warm brown eyes without suspicion or accusation from anyone over what his heart desired. He wanted to go back and give her his heart again, just to make sure she knew it was hers.

But perhaps she had already wrapped his heart in her soft hands when she looked upon his brutalized ones and breathed the last word he would ever have associated with himself, regardless of how many times others spoke it of him.

Beautiful, she had breathed.

And he had believed her.

Yes, he was hers already.

The things he would do to not just be hers, but to call her mine.

The thought of it had him tightening his grip on his cock. Slowly and firmly, he let his fingers glide from the base of his length and stop just below the head. The pleasure of it all was excruciating. He had always thought the line between pleasure and pain was a rather fine one, a proclivity he now reaped the benefits of.

He groaned, his breathing growing heavier. He wanted desperately to bring himself over the edge, but he wasn’t done yet. Rolling his head back, he focused, exhaling deeply and feeling the muscles of his core contract. Then the ache in his chest mirrored the ache he gripped between his fingers as he stroked himself again, even harder, for good measure. He felt his body twitch at the impact.

That’s it, he thought to himself as he got himself closer to that blissful edge and forced himself to hover in that space where pleasure and pain intermingled.

If she would let him, he would grab hold of her and never let go. Yes. If she wanted it, he would hold onto her.

Hard.

With both hands.

From behind.

And fuck her slowly.

The thought alone nearly pushed him over the edge. That wouldn’t do—he wasn’t ready for this to end just yet. He shook his head, relaxed his grip on himself and let out another trembling breath.

What he could do to her from behind, though, should she want it… He would wrap those golden-brown waves around his fist like a belt and pull her up against him. He would tilt her beautiful face the way he wanted it—the way they both wanted it—just like he had done that second Solstice night, giving him perfect access to her lovely neck.

That neck of hers. He sighed desperately at the image that flashed before him. Of course, Elain had to have the most delectable neck in all of Prythian.

Unable to hold back, his grip around his length tightened again as he clenched his jaw, held his breath, and stroked himself fiercely to the thought of it.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

He let out his breath and forced himself to loosene his grip again.

That second Solstice night was etched on his mind like the tattoos etched on his upper body. He had been the luckiest bastard in all the realms combined when she had allowed his fingers to taint the velvety skin of her neck. No—when she had urged him to stroke the velvety skin of her neck, with the way she had leaned into him.

He groaned, his hand tightening reflexively at the memory, the implication of her actions that night almost bringing him to completion once again.

She had wanted it. Wanted him. He knew that now. And that small, precious truth was enough for him to keep battling those demons that told him otherwise.

“Get it together,” he panted, the muscles in his upper body once again contracting with each ragged breath. He resorted to dazedly letting his fingers glide in long motions along his length as he indulged in the memory of her.

It was a fruitless endeavour. He knew he would be frantically stroking himself again in a few moments anyway.

He was insatiable. And she was too lovely.

That neck.

He had let his thumb draw lazy circles on that flawless neck. No—there had been nothing lazy about it. His focus on her that night had been sharper than any duty had ever commanded his attention. And when that sweet, intoxicating scent of her arousal had reached his nostrils, he had almost fallen to his knees. An unusual urge almost anything Elain did seemed to inspire in him.

Azriel wasn’t one to kneel before anything or anyone. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He had done it once—that one time he had knelt before Elain when he rescued her from those Hybern scum. She was the exception to that rule.

No, kneeling before Elain was the rule.

He’d live his life by that rule if she would let him.

She could hold his gaze with those beautiful eyes that looked upon this miserable world with such fierce hope, and it was like a kick to the back of his knees. He would be on the floor begging already if he only let go of what was left of that restraint he hung onto for dear life whenever she was around.

Eyes closed, his shirt clinging to his hot skin, he leaned heavily against the wall and tilted his head to the side. His racing thoughts drifted back to her—to those soft waves of golden brown that would wrap so perfectly around his fist. The cool touch of the stone wall against his wings added to the sensation as he rolled his hips, letting his cock glide through his tight grip with slow, hard thrusts—just like he would fuck her if they ever got the chance.

How many thrusts would it take before she collapsed in his arms? He chuckled, low and dark. It didn’t matter much. As if one time would ever be enough. Since he was apparently known for being such a cruel bastard, he would show her all the ways he could make her come until it was her turn to beg for mercy. He smiled at the thought before he felt that sting in his chest return.

Skin to skin—that was where they belonged. Breathing the same air. With his hand tangled in her soft curls, he’d whisper praise in her ear, shower her soft skin with the equally soft kisses she deserved, her back pressed against his chest as he made love to her. He had a feeling she would like that just as much as he would. Maybe she would even treat him to a moan. The mere thought of her moans was like a fist around his cock.

He could certainly make her moan.

Oh, the ways in which he could make Elain moan. Perhaps he would even make a quest of it.

With his tongue, that’s how he would start. Her inner thigh. And, Mother save him, when he got between those inner thighs…

When he had Elain coming on his tongue.

When she wrapped those thighs around his face as he had her coming on his tongue.

He almost sobbed at the thought of it, fisting his cock ferociously, grip rough and brows furrowed as all thoughts of restraint shattered.

“Fuck it,” he panted.

Every muscle in his body tensed as he as he came with her name on his lips, his skin overheated and body quivering. His head tipped back against the wall, pleasure pulsing through him like the tremor that had rippled through his veins when she met his gaze earlier tonight. His lips parted and a low moan, followed by a string of curses, spilled out of him.

A few moments passed as he caught his breath, dazedly stroking himself through the last waves of pleasure before he finally opened his eyes. He looked around the room lazily. Then, realization dawned on him. He swore again, low and dirty, at the mess he had made.

His eyes fell upon the headache powder at his bedside table. Unused, as it would remain. He felt that familiar sting in his chest at the sight of it. He was left only with the empty feeling of her absence—unsure of how emptiness could feel so substantial. His chest tightened again at his own misery where he stood alone, his cock still in his hand, staring at the soiled floor.

“Pathetic,” he muttered at the thought of himself. He hadn’t even made it to the bed. That must be a new record. He would have to get that under control, should he ever get to spend a night with Elain.

He sighed deeply, turrning to look out the window across the room at the pitch-black tapestry that was the night sky. Just as the realization of his own misery had dawned on him, dawn would be emerging in a few hours, spreading soft pastels across the night sky. It reminded him of her—like everything seemed to do these days.

He thought of that dusty pink gown she often wore, the one that made her soft skin appear even softer. As if that were even possible. He wanted to rest his head against that softness and fall asleep.

Azriel had never yearned for arms to hold him. Not until Elain.

Something burned behind his eyelids. He knew it would crush him to dwell on it.

“Get a fucking grip,” he muttered to himself, even as his hand returned to once again grip his hardening length.

It would be a long night.

(I just want them to fall asleep in each other’s arms. Is that too much to ask? 😭)

#elriel #elriel fanfic

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fuji-sen · 9 months ago

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SAWuWa Headcanon pt. 3.ೃ࿔*:･

officially I shall be referring to the Self Aware Wuthering Waves au as SAWuWa, i saw someone use this tag so might as well for consistency 𖹭

Also asks are now open, I haven't set rules and guidelines, but if you have any requests please be about Wuthering Waves, I'm fixated on that, I'll try to accomodate other characters by researching them, I've only only been paying attention to Scar and Rover tbh-

anyways, as promised~

Rover-centric headcanons ⟡

angst edition!

ᯓ Now that we focused on scar, let's focus on the actual main character of wuthering waves!!

ᯓ Now everyone is certainly confused, enthusiastic, curious and in awe of the frequency that has been taking over the lands. But our Rover here isn't for the most part, especially at the beginning.

ᯓ sure you say the funniest, out of pocket and confusing things depending on what's happening, and your commentary brings some color to their life (if you're talkative) or how those clicky sounds bugs them or how the music in the background makes them hum along

butttt

ᯓ you were stuck in their head, at first, when they first woke up, disoriented, with no memories and in a place they didn't feel safe or familiar with! and then they stat hearing you! Any sane person would be totally afraid!

ᯓ When you first started to talk, they were wide-eyed and shock, base on your words, you could see what they could see, hear what they could!

ᯓ It was overwhelming, so much that they had to wonder if you were the true owner of this body, especially when they felt that someone was controlling their body. And when they first explained it to the people they first met (Yangyang and Chixia), they looked at them weirdly like they were a bit crazy, so they backtracked and joked a bit, saying it was probably just their imagination so they wouldn't leave them in the wilderness, alone.

ᯓ But now, now everyone in the world, even the TD can hear you through your frequency, and they weren't worried that they were a lunatic now since they could hear it too! but then people started to ask them "what do you hear?" "what are they saying?" "what kind of person are they?" they didn't think to ask them how they were feeling with having this voice in their head.

ᯓ Rover often felt more like a puppet, a tool, rather than their own person, it was bad enough having no memories, but now someone was sharing their (or maybe they weren't the owner of this body--???) body!

ᯓ and then there were that people that regarded them like an experiment! or something that they had to be cautious about, they were cautious of your voice, your frequency, and possible power, and since you were mainly attached to the Rover, their eyes turned to them.

ᯓ the students and professors at the school nearly experimented on them, interrogated them.

ᯓ and then there was Scar who was clearly stalking them to get to you

ᯓ have mercy on the Rover

ᯓ they are definitely praying that you get your own body in the future, preferably sooner than later.

Wrote and Edited on: May 25, 2024 🖌

No rewrites, no translations, no posting or copying the text and posting on here or any platforms please ( • ᴖ • ｡)

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kamaela · 1 month ago

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a year of fandom in recs

cutie pie @garagepaperback tagged me in a 2024 fandom wrap up post and so yeah, i'll hop on the sentimental train. i've been inspired by so many things this year and i shall do my best to honour them in the rambling list below!

having previously been an avid lurker, i've thoroughly enjoyed making friends with some truly inspiring people in this fandom. without a doubt this has been a bright, bright spot on my year and im so grateful! you're all so wonderful and i love you and hope you know that.

@kk1smet has been a source of joy and inspiration from the start. my first ever fic (Got Me Started) was inspired by their prompts, and then my first ever fest fic (Mirror, Me) was sparked by their stunning art. THEN they honoured me with my first ever fanart for my fic (To Be Punished). im so blessed to call them a friend!

i can draw a straight line from every single word i've posted on ao3 to the fanworks that inspired them. ive read/seen sooo many wonderful things this year and it's impossible for me to name them all. ive picked out a few below the cut that are directly responsible for lighting a fire in me so strong i had to write that shit down. if you haven't already, please give some of these fanworks a go, they're all top notch.

+ @yiiiiiiiikes25 wrote cruising altitude from the raven cycle fandom and it fucking rocked my world. i am telling you right now, i have never read anything like it. it is an absolute masterclass in craft. every single word is thoughtful and precise. i thought i knew what voice and diction and pov were and how they can be used to tell the story you want to tell but really, i had no idea. yikes has this way of pulling you so deeply into a characters pov that its honestly disorienting to come out of. i fell in love with these random boys from a fandom i'd never read nor cared for, and i keep going back. i don't care if you are drarry monogamous, if you want to experience some of the best this dumb hobby we're all addicted to has to offer, i implore you, go read cruising altitude. go. GO. and then go read the rest of yikes catalogue bc ofc they also do drarry impeccably.

+ @garagepaperback i read this heaven of mud and haven't been the same since. then i read javelin and ive been permanently altered once more. not only is garage directly responsible for exes becoming my all time favourite trope, but the way they explore the deep, long-lasting effects of trauma (in these and all your other fics) is second to none! its incredibly beautiful and impactful and has left such as lasting impression on me. and all that is wrapped up in some of the most poetic and stunning prose ive ever had the pleasure of reading?!?!! get out of here (but also please dont i value our friendship dearly)

+ @mintawasalreadytaken i read All I Want For Kwithmath and then i went on a tear and read most of their Dead Drarry: Do Not Eat series and honestly had the BEST TIME. they write some of the greatest toxic, kinky, fucked up drarry, but somehow make it so i really fucking care about these two idiots, and want the best for them?? minta is so good at hooking you right from the top and then pounding those hooks in deeper and deeper. the end result is that i now cradle toxic drarry in my hands and wont ever let them go (and sometimes I even try writing them)

+ @eleadore's as the plant that never blooms and everything i could ever want helped to shape and sand the edges of the drarry dynamic i love and want to write! el writes some of the hottest, most rewarding, prickly to tender drarry out here. pls run don't walk.

+ @faiell and i shared our drarry fic debuts on ao3 this year and their fic, Purple, absolutely blew me out of the water. it's expertly written, hot as fuck, contains the shifting power dynamics that are at the core of what i love about drarry, and has SUCH A satisfying ending. i was grinning and cackling for about 3-4 business days after reading. (also peep their tumblr to scream at their art) fai, i've said it before and ill say it again, i'll follow you into fire, i really will.

this post is getting far far too long but i cannot end it without also mentioning some (not exhaustive) of the STAND OUT creators i've had the pleasure of experiencing for the first time this year. i'll include a rec (all drarry unless stated otherwise) + whatever unhinged drivel i put in my bookmark for each but it goes without saying that the talent runs deep and id rec multiple creations from these guys if this post wasn't already novel length.

@citrusses' Our Objective Remains Unchanged: THE drarry muggle au. reread a 100x material

@oknowkiss' draco malfoy's substitute murder service: this made me laugh out loud at several points and its only 10k!!!! also draco is simply lovely, i love him so so so so very much i want to be his friend and just listen to him talk and be insane. this whole thing is thoroughly enjoyable.

@mono-chromia's Red Wine Supernova: everything about this is wonderful, the relationship development, the sex, the writing. you'll want draco to step on your face after reading.

@putridpommes' [ART] Step by step (NSFW): sub harry. draco stepping on face. neon and sweat. what more do you need.

Helenish's A Soft Spot For Lost Causes (draco/ron): trauma treated kinda unserious but still seriously. gorgeous dialogue.

wild (orphaned): Okay so the banter/dialogue is unmatched, the relationship development bw draco and harry is soooo realistic and so delicious. a study on learning about yourself what it means to forgive

corvuscrowned's An Emerald In The Sky: stretched and pulled taut by this story, perfect longing/pining/yearning, heartbreaking and beautiful

peu_a_peu's The Superfluous Man: utterly delightful, hilarious, i want to stay in the feeling this fic gave me forever and ever. never not thinking about flustered yet domestic draco, endless quotes. An mpreg?? WHAT?? it's peu.

@stratigraphywrites' Untouched: this is delicious!!!! the push and pull between draco and harry is expert. extremely extremely hot

@lemonlimelea's we'll start anew: yeah this is wayyyy stunning, gorg writing, long time span capturing all different facets of harry and draco's relationship

@hephaestiions' It's You: one of those ones that leaves you panting and scratching the walls, crying for more.

okay if you read all this, thank you i love you. happy new year!

No pressure tagging any of the above plus @dryrsheet @its-the-allure @phoenixortheflame @smehur. would love to read about your year in review!

#year wrapped #phew this was a lot #drarry #fanfiction #fanart #rec rec rec rec

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violetasteracademic · 27 days ago

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Yet again, a million years late but I cannot control when I must burrow in my hidey hole

2024 Fic Writer End of Year Roundup

Thank you for the tags, my beloved @rosanna-writer @foundress0fnothing @yourstarsmyscars

Answer and then tag three or more creators to keep the game going!

(If you're in my answers consider yourself tagged if you'd like to play!!)

1. How many words did you publish on AO3 in 2024?

This was my first year on AO3, and I posted 216,682 before the calendar year ended!

2. How many fics did you complete this year?

2, one longfic Golden Doe in a Valley of Shadow and a one shot, Before the Night Ends, made specifically for my beloved @theseersgarden and some beautiful Elriel art she had commissioned by Lulybot! (This one may technically not be finished... we shall see)

3. How many in progress or ongoing fics did you start this year?

Four in progress, all three parts of Velaris Memorial Hospital (which is kind of like one big intertwined Feysand, Nessian, and Elriel AU) and another long fic, A Court of Twisted Fate

4. What was your favorite thing you wrote?

Oh this is so hard. Everything I wrote was what I needed in the moment, so it's difficult to disentangle myself. But I do think Me, You and the Moon Part One and Two from A Court of Twisted Fate was one of my favorite experiences writing. Also some of my favorite things I wrote haven't been posted yet, so I can't share yet!

5. What piece was your most experimental or different from your usual style?

Absolutely Velaris Memorial Hospital. I have been writing third person limited fantasy and sci-fi for well over a decade, and have followed that in my fanfiction. Writing contemporary romance or modern AU in first person perspective was not something I ever imagined doing, but it has unlocked something in me. I am a huge contemporary romance reader, but writing has been an incredible new journey and I have so much newfound respect for first person perspective!

6. Did any fics surprise you - either while writing or their reception?

Again, Velaris Memorial Hospital. It is by far my smallest readership (which I expected, I am new to the Nessian and Feysand arena and of course there's a huge variety of ship and character preferences. Not everyone is a fan of all three brothers and all three sisters) but it has wound up by far being some of the most engaged and supportive readers, and I have been absolutely loving writing for it!

7. Do you have a fic you wrote and loved that went under the radar? (This is your sign to reblog/repost it!)

Hmmm it's a bit hard to say, I don't have have that many fics out and not a super good sense of this yet. I do think my Nessian fic, The Albatross has my lowest metrics overall. And writing for Nesta and Cassian has also unlocked something very deep and inspired within me. But VMH is an enormous project and kind of choose your own adventure, so I hope it gets some more love in the long run!

8. Who is an artist that inspired you?

Literally too many to count but I have to give the biggest shoutout to @elainemg97. Her artistry knows no bounds, and she is one of the best Elriel eggs out there. She is always kind and encourages positive fandom behavior, and is so encouraging and passionate about helping other artists grow and encouraging them on their journey! @stickyelectrons has such a beautiful eye for color, I just love what she manages (especially for Lucien) and I'm such a fan of @santkazoya and @tealeaves-and-rosepetals

9. Who is an author that inspired you?

Literally way way too many to count. @yourstarsmyscars, @rosanna-writer, @foundress0fnothing, @nikachansstuff, and citizenofvelaris are not only phenomenal writers but inspired beta readers and I feel so lucky to know them. @bloomingdarkgarden and @tealeaves-and-rosepetals are magic and pixie dust, truly phenomenal writers but also so available to support other writers and brainstorm and daydream with. I definitely have a lot more fic to read, I write much more often than I read so it leaves me pretty behind. But I'm sure I missed some and there are so many exceptional writers in this fandom!

Oh also, @tswaney17 has stepped away from fic writing but I'm SO excited for her journey repurposing I Do Bad Things With You into an original story for publishing!

10. Who is a new author you discovered?

See all of the above, but a special shoutout to @jasmineandcedar who writes such lovely short form pieces for Tumblr and did a Shakespeare inspired piece that had my jaw on the floor.

11. Did you do any collaborations? How did it start?

Before the Night Ends with @theseersgarden! It started just with @theseersgarden brainstorming ideas for a caption for an artwork in process, and trying to come up with a title/head canon/sweet moment to describe the scene. And then it spiraled into, wait a min... there's a whole ass fic here.

12. What accomplishments are you proudest of?

It has been really awesome to see how well received Golden Doe in a Valley of Shadow was. I try not to get too caught up in what fic is the most popular and whether or not I'm showing up on "best" lists, because art is subjective, and as I mentioned, I think some of my best work has had the smallest engagement. But Golden Doe in a Valley of Shadow was my first ever fic. I was a little baby on tumblr and thought maybe four or five people would read a few chapters. I had no idea it would take off in the way that it did, and it still stuns me to this day. Other than that, just writing consistently, and finding wonderful people who fill my cup and and are so supportive and encouraging.

13. What did you learn about writing or creating this year?

Fic writing is super different from original novel writing in a lot of ways, and I still feel like I'm getting my footing in a lot of ways. I find myself very often coming to my fellow writers being like- does this fly in fic culture? Am I overthinking this? But I think the heart of all creative writing is the same, which is trying to find the joy and a build a story that draws readers in and it's just a beautiful thing to invite people into the visions that take place in your mind, even if you are still learning and imperfect. Because you never know what will connect with someone. Also, shadows make great dildos.

14. Any advice you’d like to share with new or aspiring writers?

Don't be afraid of the work. Do not fear the muck. Lean into the trenches. I am a huge advocate for transparency in the writing process, and the writing world (fic especially) I think is extra guilty of uplifting the work that just flowed out of them and took no effort at all. Grabs face LISTEN TO ME. Your best work might be what you fought the hardest for. Your strongest scene might be the one that had you in a black pit of despair, extremely close to giving up. Writing is a craft. The only way to get better is to write, this is true. But many people write thousands and thousands of words and never improve, because of the notion that writing should be easy, that it can only happen when you are inspired and flowing and know what you are doing.

Do not fear the trenches. Do not shy away from the work. Not everything comes easily. That doesn't mean you are a bad writer or can't do it. DISPEL the ideas that writing should be easy or come naturally or not require deep effort and work.

15. What are your creative goals for 2025?

To focus back more on original work. I don't do well with working on more than one project at a time, and I really dug myself into it working on four stories at once. There is no room left for my novel writing, but I can't leave projects unfinished or they will weigh on me. Also continuing to figure out my place in fandom and sharing what I can while staying away from the things that drain me and take away my joy. OH and letting myself take more time. AO3 is an archive, the work will live on. Encouraging myself to be human and need rest and time away. It's so critical to detach from the need for a constant stream of validation, breathe, and focus on the work and your well being.

If you’re tagged in this, please consider yourself tagged for the game!

#will she ever get to one of these in a timely manner?#will she run away into the hills forever?#that's a secret I'll never tell #xo xo gossip girl #elriel fic writer #feysand fic writer #nessian fic writer #acotar fic writers

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lavender-tea-fling · 10 days ago

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Author ask tag

OH SHIT HELLO @sorrowsfallallaround AND @sunny374940 ! Thanks for thinking of me!

Let’s focus on something a little different, shall I?

What is the main lesson of your Story?

I think that if “Proven Guilty” had a lesson, it would be that people, while often well-intentioned, are imperfect and have human memories. Things shift and change through the lens of time, and sometimes things that seem obvious in hindsight are not so obvious at first.

What did you use as inspiration for your world building?

I LOVE crime dramas and spy fiction, specifically Columbo, Knives Out, Glass Onion, and Only Murders in the Building. Funnily enough, though, the main world building inspiration was probably good old fashioned Film Noir: the femme fatales, the high profile victims, and the wet cat ass detectives (except, due to the sheer lack of really pathetic female characters, mine is a chain-smoking caffeine addict who is surviving on spite alone).

What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? So you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, or help them grow as a person?

I guess my story sort of has two MCs: Detective Inspector Ethel Carter, and Dr. Julian Fox (the murder victim). The primary driving force is Ethel, who is trying (sometimes in vain) to find the truth despite the chaos and conflicting stories. At the heart of it, Julian wanted the same, and got killed for it.

Julian is, in many ways, who I wish I was: clever, unapologetic, and committed to the freedom of information and justice in the face of a corrupt government. I wrote them to be an inspiration, but there is something to be said for the fact that they don’t make it — something I fear deeply the more controlled information becomes.

Ethel is a bastard. I say that with love. She is who I see myself as now: tired, angry, but determined. She is also a cautionary tale: despite your best efforts, people can be dumb. They can lie without meaning to, forget major details and change their story without realizing. In the end, you may solve the murder, but there is a toll.

How many chapters is your story going to have?

It’s a play, actually! Two acts, six scenes. Runs about 90 minutes based on its debut. It has gone through edits since, though.

Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

It is original content! I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do with it beyond finishing up the little details and sending it to the copyright office. Maybe try to get it published? What do yall think?

When did you start writing?

Oh a LONG time ago. I think my first short story was when I was 5 or 6. It wasn’t good: I had no concept of age, so I assumed 16 was grown up enough to have a baby. Looking back, I wonder what my teacher thought.

My first work on ao3 was a BBC Sherlock fanfic I wrote back in 2019 (it is no longer connected to my account bc I got really embarrassed about it), and the rest is history!

Do you have any words of encouragement for fellow writers of Writeblr?

Sure do! @sorrowsfallallaround mentioned it in their post, but write what you want to read. Proven Guilty was born from a bunch of burned out techies talking about what we would want to see in a mystery. Also: imposter syndrome happens. It doesn’t mean it is correct, but it will suck regardless. Someday, you might look back on an old piece and cringe; but, someday, if you’re lucky, you will read an old piece and finally see the brilliance in your own work. You got this.

Tagging @the-font-bandit @themontess @woundedsoul12 and anyone else who wants in!

#original fiction #playwright #playwriting #tag game #writeblr

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theshadowsingersraven · 5 months ago

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this nyxlin drama lowkey reminds me of the time a zutara artist was run off tumblr because they drew aged up katara/zuko romantically, but I think it was actually angry kataang’s or e/riel’s -because they also drew gwynriel and e/riel’s were jealous- who were stirring up shit 😭

That would honestly make a lot of sense for how/why I didn't see many posts from them or overall in the Nyxlin tag when I was catching up on what happened. Pretty much every person (notably largely Elriels) who supported Elain Week's censorship got an insta-block from me if they weren't already. And I'm sure a decent amount of people blocked me from my stance on Elaingate, Rhys Week, and Nyxlin Week.

And good! You should block me. Seriously. Art has the right to be celebrated and appreciated, especially in the circumstances designed to do that for a specific character and dynamic! Character appreciation and celebration will never look the same to everyone, and just because it's not what you enjoy doesn't mean it stops being appreciative or celebratory. If you can't grasp that, you don't deserve access to my art anyway. You certainly don't deserve to be in my space, that's for damn sure. Kindly, get out.

Honestly, it kind of makes sense considering the overlap of canon rigidity, purity culture, and morality policing of fiction coming from sides of the fandom that generally can't accept criticism about their faves, or even things that go against what they want for their faves. They are terrified of creativity that doesn't give them what they want and it shows. It's the most Evangelical-ass shit ever, and it's fucking weird.

Like...for all intents and purposes, Nyx is an OC in any works that feature him. And I'd know, because I wrote an adult Nyx for my ongoing ACOTAR D&D campaign set 20 years after ACOSF. So yes, Nyx is twenty in my timeline, because it's writing and I can do what I want lol. I have no basis to write Nyx off of other than Rhys and Feyre. Which means...I'm still doing my own character-building to only less than I would for a completely new OC.

Let's compare, shall we?

Writing my OC Solara's backstory: Writing her parents from scratch ✔️ Writing her early childhood ✔️ Writing her trauma ✔️ Writing her adolescence and relationships ✔️ Writing her interests and adventures as she became an adult✔️ Writing her dynamic with her love interest and how she interacts with Prythian as a whole ✔️

Now obviously these are all at minimum influenced by/will be derivative of aspects of ACOTAR because, y'know, transformative works. But still, I made her.

Writing Nyx's backstory and how he is as a twenty-year-old adult: Writing his parents from scratch ❌ Writing his early childhood ✔️ Writing any trauma he might have ✔️ Writing his adolescence and relationships ✔️ Writing his interests and adventures as he became an adult ✔️ Writing his dynamic (collaboratively) with his love interest and how he interacts with Prythian as a whole ✔️

And this is a version of Nyx that I made. Yes, it's still influenced by canon, but if I put in 90% of the same effort to write him as an adult as I did a complete OC, we can acknowledge they're functionally the same.

It's not that people look at Baby!Nyx and instantly think he's perfect to be shipped with someone and there's something to be gleaned from canon about him in particular. We know nothing about Nyx as an individual. That applies to any Nyx ship.

The appeal, at least in my experience, to Nyx ships, including Nyxlin, is the dynamics at play around Nyx, i.e., his role as an eventual leader and powerful figure in the Night Court, the dynamics that affect Rhys and Feyre also extending to him, how the rest of Prythian/Illyria might view the first offspring of High Fae, Illyrian, and Made parents. It's about his circumstances, not him as a character because he is not a "character yet", he just exists!

People are just creative enough to consider those long-term effects on who he could become and how that interplays with other characters. I don't mean to be cruel, but genuinely, have these people never created an OC before? Have they never shipped anything outside of canon? Have they never read any fics featuring time travel, for example, as a plot point to get characters in the same era at the same time when otherwise the ship would not be able to happen? Are they that unfamiliar with making circumstances outside of SJM's canon to allow things to happen for fun?

Genuinely, the lack of creativity for all of us being in this for reading and writing is concerning.

Even just saying this and advocating for Nyxlin's right to be celebrated as well as Tamlin as a whole pretty much puts me in the position of having to tag this as pro-Tamlin. And I wouldn't even describe myself as anything other than Pro-Azriel and probably Pro-Nesta and Pro-Elain because I don't really dislike any characters. I'm equally as critical to all of them and if their good parts just sort of cancel out the bad or are only a bit outweighing one or the other...I don't actively dislike them, I'm just neutral about them.

But this fandom is so fucking polarized because of the toxicity and the Us v.s. Them, Morality Policing culture that's been festering, people can't even neutrally address something. People are harassed so quickly just for not understanding or being familiar with something, and then in the other court people do the harassing because they don't understand or aren't familiar with something the other party likes/dislikes. If don't utterly despise Tamlin, it's somehow considered supportive enough to qualify as "pro" to antis.

Too many people in this fanbase create this parasocial-adjacent attachment to these characters like they're real and have real feelings/boundaries that need to be protected. They are not! Characters can't be hurt by anything happening outside the narrative. Just because you personally do not like something/don't find it appealing or even find it discomforting does not mean it's morally objectionable. It's just not for you, and understanding that experiencing content not made for you is not an attack on you is kind of a necessary life skill.

This rant ended up way longer than I expected it to be, but anyway...y'all stay safe out there.

#anti e/riel #antielriel #anti elriel #anonymous #nyxlin #elaingate #pro tamlin #ic critical #acotar fandom critical #acotar #acotar fandom #fandom wank #rant #rant post #nyx acotar #nyx archeron

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chthonic-cassandra · 5 months ago

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what vampire musicals are there? asking bc of the tag meme you posted a few days(?) ago where you said it was pretty accurate aside from no vampire musicals... i know wildhorn dracula, but what else? (and which are good?)

Thank you for asking a question which allows me to indulge myself by recounting all this. The question of "good," however, is rather fraught, and I ask everyone to remember that these opinions are just my own.

The (probably) first, and the only one to achieve significant success, was Jim Steinman's Tanz der Vampire/Dance of the Vampires, first stage in 1997. Tanz was an adaptation of Roman Polanski's comedic vampire movie The Fearless Vampire Killers, and features "Total Eclipse of the Heart," a song Steinman always intended to be about vampires. Tonally, the musical veers wildly between the broad comedy of the source film and something approaching sincerity and the comedy sections have never really worked for me, but it's certainly the most musically sophisticated of the vampire musicals and at its best, like in the major ballad sung by the lead vampire character about the loves he has killed (here sung by original cast Steve Barton, and here by Drew Sarich, who is in all the major vampire musicals and who we shall have more to say about anon) it's spectacular gothy camp glory.

Tanz was incredibly popular in Austria, where it was first staged, and then throughout Europe and in Japan. However, when it was brought to Broadway it was drastically rewritten, partly at the behest of Michael Crawford, starring in the show and anxious about changes in his body and being compared to his career-making performance in Phantom of the Opera. The comedy was foregrounded and the show was constantly being rewritten, to the point that the actors didn't know how their parts might change performance to performance. I didn't see the Broadway production, but it is accounted by all to be a colossal failure. The show remains popular worldwide to this day, but has not received another major staging in North America.

Next comes the Frank Wildhorn Dracula the Muiscal, which I know you know about, but as it is vital to this narrative I must give some explanation. Wildhorn is a sort of mid-tier musical theater composer, known for melodrama and period pieces. After the popular (though not critical) success of his Jekyll & Hyde musical (1997 on Broadway) he co-wrote Dracula with lyricist Don Black, premiering on Broadway on 2004.

While I maintain that Dracula the Musical has been unjustly maligned by comparison with some other works of musical theater, it is admittedly a mess, and the Broadway production, which was, despite highly publicized special effects, shockingly static, did it no favors. It tries to do far too many things, combining sections of relatively close novel adaptation (Christopher Hampton's book is often quietly strong) with a messily shoehorned Dracula/Mina romance. The score is variable, ranging, even just in Dracula's material, from the rousing "Life After Life" as Dracula welcomes the transformed Lucy, to his cringe-inducing "The Longer I Live". (I still think almost all of the music and lyrics are better than those of Les Miserables but then again I think most things are better than the Les Miserables musical.) The Broadway production had a reasonably strong cast, including Melissa Errico as Mina and Kelli O'Hara as Lucy, but it failed nearly as badly as the American version of Tanz had, if not quite so dramatically.

Wildhorn subsequently brought DtM to Europe, where it enjoyed significantly more success, first in a stripped down modern production in St. Gallen starring Drew Sarich and then in Vienna where the role of Van Helsing was expanded for popular star Uwe Kröger. It's continued to be performed in Europe and Asia, and in some USA community theaters.

Next up was Elton John's Lestat in 2007. One would expect that this musical would have been wonderfully over-the-top glam rock, but somehow Lestat ended up being one of the most staid things I have ever seen. Filled with forgettable music (even if we all do want to see Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson doing "Embrace It". It was further brought down by a lackluster performance of the title character by Hugh Panaro, previously known for his mediocre (sorry Panaro fans!) turn in Phantom. It was enlivened slightly by Carolee Carmello as Gabrielle earning one of the show's only Tony nominations and Drew Sarich (there he is again!) playing a decidedly not book accurate but very entertaining Armand. It also involved a Buddhist monk Marius de Romanus, but I constantly question whether this was a fever dream of mine. Lestat was yet another failure on Broadway and, as far as I can tell, has had no real subsequent afterlife, though I've been wondering if that might change with the IwtV show (and Sam Reid's evident enjoyment of the musical!).

Those are the major vampire musicals, for what they are! But there are also some others which never got even this level of attention, including:

Two dueling French-language Dracula musicals with almost the exact same name, Dracula - L'amour plus fort que la mort and Dracula - Entre l'amour et la mort

A Nosferatu musical which is a strong contender for the worst lyrics I have ever heard but also entertains me

another mysterious Dracula musical made in the UK with songs of wildly varying qualities, but containing the only Mina hero ballad with which I am familiar

There are also edge cases like Bat Boy and Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I would not call vampire musicals but someone else might.

Anyway! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share some of the truly disproportionate amount of information I have about this topic in my head. I hope this brought some entertainment.

#finalgirlfall #musicals #dracula #vampires #vc reread

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melisnonstop · 5 months ago

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𝙱𝙴𝚃𝚆𝙴𝙴𝙽 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙻𝙸𝙽𝙴𝚂

↳ 📱𝚊 𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚖𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚊 𝚊𝚞 (1/)

TikTok video – Henry analyzes Brideshead Revisited

@SonnetAndSpice

(Henry appears on screen, seated in his usual cozy, softly lit corner, surrounded by bookshelves and a warm lamp. He’s cradling a cup of tea in his hands, and a slight, almost bashful smile touches his lips before he begins speaking)

Henry

"Right, hello again, everyone. Lovely to have you back on Pages from the Past.

Votes were cast and today, we’ll be diving into Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, a novel that’s as much about memory and nostalgia as it is about love—though not always in the ways you might expect.

(He lifts the book, lightly tapping the cover with his fingers, his expression thoughtful)

Henry

"Now, I’m aware Brideshead can be a bit... shall we say, contentious? Some readers find it utterly brilliant, while others think it’s a bit of a slog.

(He adjusts his position slightly, settling deeper into the chair, his tone warm and conversational)

Henry

"The story centres around Charles Ryder, who’s looking back on his life—particularly on his very close, rather complicated relationship with Sebastian Flyte.

“Now, here’s where things get interesting. Their relationship isn’t explicitly romantic, but there’s a depth to it, a profound intimacy that’s impossible to ignore."

(He leans in slightly, as if sharing something important, his tone gentle but assured)

Henry

"And bear in mind, Waugh wrote this in 1945. Back then, any kind of open depiction of queerness was, well, more or less impossible in mainstream literature.

“So Waugh uses subtext. He builds this beautiful tension between Charles and Sebastian—glances that linger just a fraction too long, silences heavy with things unsaid. It’s all so... understated, yet powerful."

(He pauses, letting the thought settle, a small, knowing smile on his face)

Henry

"It’s that subtlety I think people miss sometimes. It’s not about what’s on the surface, but what’s simmering underneath. And that’s where the real magic of the book lies."

(He shifts again, straightening slightly as he moves on to the novel’s setting)

Henry

"And then there’s Brideshead itself—the grand, crumbling estate that’s as much a character as any of the people in the story.

“It represents an England on the brink of change, a world that’s beginning to slip away.”

(Henry’s eyes brighten as he talks about the historical context, clearly passionate)

Henry

“The novel itself was written just after the Second World War, at a time when the British aristocracy was losing its footing. Waugh does this marvellous job of blending nostalgia with criticism.

“You can sense his own ambivalence—how he both romanticizes and criticizes the world he’s writing about.”

(He takes a slow sip of his tea, exuding a calm confidence, before continuing)

Henry

"But truly, what I love most is how relevant the themes still feel today—especially in a world where love and identity are often still met with resistance.

“It’s about love, identity, and that ache we all sometimes feel—for something, or someone, that’s just out of reach. There’s a universality to it.”

(He smiles, softer now, his voice lowering slightly as he reaches the end)

Henry

"So, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you think Charles and Sebastian were in love? Do you see yourself in the story? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to tag me in your own reviews. I’m really curious to see what Brideshead means to each of you."

(He glances at the camera, his expression warm and sincere)

Henry

"Until next time—happy reading, and cheers."

(He gives a small, elegant salute.)

↳ 📱

TikTok Stitch – Alex’s Response to Henry’s Video on Brideshead Revisited

@acd.chronicles

(The video opens with Alex walking around his apartment, his NYU hoodie slightly rumpled, sleeves pushed up. He passes through the kitchen, the faint clatter of a coffee mug in the background, but the focus remains clearly on him)

Alex

"Okay, I’ve seen this video pop up a few times now, and I guess it’s time I chime in.

 “Look, I get it—classic British lit, sweeping descriptions of old estates, all that jazz. But honestly, can we take a second to ask why we’re still putting these stories on a pedestal in 2024?

"Here’s my issue: it’s another story told through the lens of a privileged white guy, living in a crumbling mansion, having existential crises over, what, the loss of aristocratic power? The whole thing feels... outdated."

(He raises his hands in a ‘hear me out’ gesture)

Alex

"And before anyone comes at me for hating on the classics, it’s not about that. It’s about asking why these particular stories are still being prioritized in conversations about ‘great literature.’

“How many more books do we need that center on upper-class, white dudes reflecting on their lives of wealth and privilege, while we overlook stories by authors of color, queer voices, or people who don’t come from this very specific background?"

(He leans back slightly, crossing his arms, still keeping his tone respectful but firm)

Alex

"And here’s the thing—when we keep pushing these same narratives, we’re reinforcing the idea that these are the stories that matter. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather see BookTok blow up with books that highlight different perspectives.

“Give me more stories by authors of color, more queer writers who are upfront about their themes instead of burying them under layers of subtext from a time when you couldn’t even say the word ‘gay.’"

(He gives a small, almost apologetic smile, as if knowing he’s ruffled some feathers)

Alex

"I mean, I’m not saying the book’s trash or anything and I’m not saying this creator’s take is wrong—I get that he’s coming from a place of love for the book, and that’s cool.

“But for me, personally? I’m not gonna keep pretending like these old-school narratives are the best we’ve got, especially when there’s so much else out there that’s more relevant to what a lot of us are actually going through today."

(He sighs, looking directly into the camera, sincerity in his eyes)

Alex

"So yeah, that’s where I’m at. If Brideshead resonates with you, awesome, no shade at all. But if you’re like me, and you’re over these stories about rich white men lamenting their lost world, maybe it’s time we put these ‘classics’ on the shelf and made room for something new. Just a thought."

(He gives a small, knowing nod)

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