#smallish grains

[digdeepergravedigger09]

Kith kith

[elidelochans]

Crackships can have interactions and alot of them.

A crackship is a ship that is bizarre, hilarious or just simply put unlikely to become a pairing ever. So yes by that definition Rhysta would be considered a crackship because it's bizarre. It's out of a realm of possibility.

A rarepair is something that could have potential whether or not the characters have interactions. It's a pairing that by their personalities and dynamics could absolutely make sense if they were together. It's just not a pairing that most of the fandom ships. Sometimes, it could even be a canon ship, but that's insanely rare. As far as Neris, I really don't know because I don't follow that ship. I don't follow a lot of acotar stuff much these days. However, imo i believe it's still rare because unless you're a big stan of either character or the pairing itself, you don't really know about it.

The fact that people even call rhysta and neris crackships shows how this fandom knows nothing about fandom culture because what exactly about two het ships with plenty of canon interactions between them is a crackship to you 😭

[joelalorian]

Tides of Desire - Chapter Five: Red Sky in Morning

Pairing: Yacht Captain!Joel Miller x f!reader

Series Summary: TLOU no outbreak AU. Joel Miller is a luxury yacht captain running charters in the Caribbean. You join the crew as a deckhand and unexpectedly complicate Joel's peaceful existence. Basically the TLOU bunch on a Below Deck yacht.

Series warnings: 18+ MDNI, adventure, alcohol, injuries, fluff, angst, smut (eventual), slowish burn. Reader is a badass. Smallish age gap (reader is 32 or so, Joel is 40). Additional warnings will be posted with each chapter as needed. No use of y/n.

AN: Any knowledge I have about yachts comes solely from watching Below Deck. I have zero sea legs and could not possibly work on a yacht. Same goes for medical treatment. Take it all with a grain of salt ;) Feedback is always appreciated, but never demanded. Hope you enjoy!

Series masterlist

Chapter Five: Red Sky in Morning

Hunched over the weather radar on the bridge, Joel pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his dark rimmed glasses. A line of storms would be moving through the area later and it was already choppy in the marina. It wasn’t looking good for getting out on the open water for the first day of charter and that always made it harder on the interior crew – they would be responsible for keeping the guests entertained without being able to use the water toys.

With a heavy sigh, Joel turned away from the radar. There was nothing he could do about the weather. He was beginning to feel equally hopeless about the status of whatever this was with you. Things did not go how he hoped the other night and you stuck to your word in keeping a distance from him. That wasn’t what he wanted, at all, but he didn’t know how to get you to understand.

Romantic feelings were confusing and made him feel incredibly vulnerable, which he hated. That’s why he tended to avoid them.

“Hey, Dad,” Sarah chirped as she entered the bridge, peering at the weather radar. “It’s not looking good for today, huh?”

“No, baby girl, it doesn’t,” Joel replied, eyes softening at the sight of his daughter. She always brightened his day, and he loved working with her. “It’ll be up to your crew to keep them entertained until at least tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will clear up by then.”

Sarah nodded confidently, her left hand pulling a small spiral notepad from her pocket. “About that, I’ve come up with a couple ideas of what we could do with the guests today. The primary’s a renowned food critic, right? I was thinking Tess could host a cooking class with Talia as her sous chef since she has some culinary talent. The guests could pair up and create a Caribbean-style dish for their dinner. In the meantime, we could do a blind tasting where the guests have to guess exotic flavors and whatnot. What do you think?”

Feeling his chest swell with pride, Joel’s lips twitched into a broad smile. “That sounds great, honey. You think Tess will be into it?”

Beaming back at him, Sarah snapped her notepad shut. “Already checked, Tess is onboard. Said she’d love the challenge of doing something different for once.”

He laughed, no doubt she would. “Good. Thank you for taking the initiative here. I’m really proud of you, Sar. I think the guests will love it.” Joel pulled her in for a tight hug, the warmth of the embrace relieving some of the stress he’d been feeling. “The guests should be arriving soon. Go finish getting ready.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The primary guest was a quirky woman in her fifties named Donna, with short, dark hair going naturally gray and laugh lines ringing her bright green eyes. She wore chunky purple glasses with a chain attached like an old librarian. She was boisterous and friendly with a deep laugh, the kind of woman who made friends everywhere she went. Donna was accompanied by her husband of thirty years, a mild-mannered man named Doug who appeared to be her exact opposite in all ways, and two other couples who had been long-time friends of theirs.

From the moment they stepped onto the yacht, the guests were unbothered by the weather and took it in stride when Joel informed them the yacht would remain in the marina until the next day.

“The crew has some fun activities planned to keep you entertained, though,” he finished, hand stretched out to direct their attention toward Sarah.

“If you’ll follow me, I’ll give you a tour and show you to your rooms.” Sarah led them from the aft deck, explaining the layout of the yacht as she went.

Joel held Tommy back for a moment as you, Connor, and Ellie brought the luggage onboard once the guests were out of sight.

“Make sure your team is ready to assist interior with whatever they need, ok?”

“Of course, brother. We have their backs. Whoever isn’t tasked with helping inside will work on equipment maintenance in the lazarette,” Tommy explained. It was the perfect time to check the oil in the jet skis and tender along with any other fluid top-offs or changes on the equipment.

Joel patted his brother’s back with a solemn nod, his eyes tracking you as he turned to head for the bridge. You were looking down with a large piece of luggage in your arms and didn’t notice him. Jaw tensed, he ascended to the bridge deck with you occupying too much space in his mind.

“That’s the last of the luggage on, Tommy,” you called before heading for the guest cabins. Once the luggage was placed in the correct rooms, you headed toward the stern. Tommy reviewed his plan with you before the guests arrived, so you made your way to the lazarette beneath the aft deck.

“Hey Brit!” Tommy greeted you like he hadn’t seen you in a while when you stopped at his side in front of one of the jet skis. He’d recently taken to calling you Brit, instead of England, and it seemed to be catching on with the rest of the crew. “It’s short for British, get it?” he said the first time he used it. You heard that new nickname more than your real name now and it amused you.

“Hello Tommy,” you chuckled. “Where do you want to start?”

“Let’s check the oil first and see if anything needs to be topped off. We shouldn’t need to change it yet, but we will if we must,” Tommy explained. “It’s just going to be me and you. Ellie and Connor will be assisting the interior with anything they need.”

Perfectly content with that arrangement, you picked up the necessary tools to open one of the jet skis. You enjoyed the maintenance work even with the inherent messiness. You always wound up with oil under your fingernails no matter how careful you were, but you’d become a pro at washing it off after all the years spent helping your grandfather.

Pulling out his phone, Tommy played music while you set about your tasks. The pair of you worked well together, talking and teasing, singing off key to 90s rock the whole time. It was effortless, being yourself with Tommy, and you wondered why you couldn’t be falling for him instead of his brother. Tommy didn’t seem to have the same strict rules for himself that Joel did, and it would have been so much easier to be with him.

Unfortunately, the heart wanted what the heart wanted, and yours wanted a grumpy pain in the ass who made things more difficult than they needed to be.

Shaking yourself, you pushed away thoughts of Joel. You wasted enough time thinking about him, it was time to focus on something, anything else for a while. Steering clear of him physically was easier than you thought the past day and a half, but the emotional and mental distancing was proving far more difficult. The dreams that plagued you at night didn’t help, your subconscious incessantly teasing you with images of a life that you can’t have with Joel.

Picking up on your mood, Tommy did his best to distract you from your thoughts. You had no doubt that he already knew what happened and why you were down, knowing that Sarah or Tess, maybe even Joel himself, spoke to Tommy about it.

“’Kay, Brit. Let’s play a game,” he said while you were gathering the drip pan and some rags. The oil in one of the jet skis needed to be changed after all. It was time to get messy. “Chocolate or vanilla?”

“What kind of game is this?” you asked, perplexed.

“Just pick the one you prefer. It’s not that difficult.” Tommy laughed.

“Er, ok. Chocolate.”

Satisfied, Tommy continued with his unusual little game. “Coffee or tea?”

“Tea, obviously.” Your eyes rolled so hard it made you dizzy.

“Dogs or cats?”

“I like both.”

“You can only pick one, Brit. Them’s the rules.”

“Fine. Dogs.”

The game continued for some time, Tommy’s broad grin growing the more you got into it. It was a great distraction, and you were eternally grateful to him for it. The afternoon passed as the pair of you continued to work and chat until Sarah’s call came over the radio asking for additional help setting up for the cooking class.

“The primary requested that some of the crew participate too. They want to make it a contest to see who makes the best dish,” Sarah explained when the two of you joined her after washing up. “I’ve already assigned pairs.”

Sarah’s expression was a perfect mix of determination and guilt as she looked down at the clipboard in her hands. She was up to something, and you would bet this week’s tip on what it was.

“Tommy, I paired you with Ellie,” she began, turning to you with a thin, hopeful smile and upturned brows. “Brit, you’ll be with my Dad.”

“Sarah,” Tommy warned on your behalf before you could respond. He spent hours working hard to lighten your mood and didn’t want the effort to go to waste. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now, for obvious reasons.”

“It was the captain’s request, Uncle Tommy. Not much I could do,” Sarah explained with a shrug. Turning to you, she grabbed your hand in a soft grip. “I’m sorry. I think he’s trying to make things right between you two. Give him this chance?”

Just when you finally stop overthinking about him, he manages to reel you back in. Resigned to your fate, you nodded with a grimace. There wasn’t much you could do about it anyway.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Due to the rain, a series of small cooking stations with a larger table at the front, where Tess and Talia would do the demonstrating, were setup in the main salon. Fairy lights were strung along the walls and ceiling, bringing a starry night effect inside the boat to make up for the weather outside. The yacht was slightly bobbing in the water due to the wind.

“Welcome to Cooking with Tess and Talia!” Tess greeted as the guests, Emmy, Connor, Ellie, Joel, and Tommy settled in their stations. You were the last to arrive, leaving Joel concerned that you really didn’t want to work with him. Despite it only being a couple of days, he was desperate to make things right, to have you speaking to him again. He couldn’t let himself be with you yet, but he didn’t want to be without you either.

Yes, he was keenly aware of the emotional roller coaster he created and how affected you were by it, but he could do nothing to stop it.

“Thanks for agreeing to be my partner,” Joel murmured once you were at his side, lips quirking up in a lopsided smile. He let all his feelings and things he could not say shine through his eyes, hoping you could see it when he gazed at you.

“I couldn’t very well deny a request from the captain, could I?” you returned, tone dull to hide your nerves and the lingering hurt feelings.

Joel sighed wearily. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he needed to just leave you be. The pair of you did your best to focus on the instructions Tess gave, though the distraction of being so close physically yet so distant emotionally was difficult to manage.

“We are going to make pernil, a classic Puerto Rican dish using roast pork shoulder. We will start with the marinade for the pork shoulder. While the pork is marinading and roasting in the oven, we will make the rice and desert. In all, this will take a few hours, then we will have a tasting to judge whose turned out best. Ready?”

Tess spoke through the steps, laying out the ingredients for the marinade as Talia demonstrated the process. Within the first few steps, Ellie and Tommy were already laughing and knocking things off their table as they jostled for who would get to add the ingredients first. Cooking was clearly not their strength, but at least they were having fun. Donna, the primary, and her husband concentrated with intense focus on their preparations, talking each other through the steps as they measured out the spices for the marinade. It was clear that they spent a lot of time working together in the kitchen. The other guests appeared to be having fun, chatting quietly, and laughing when they messed something up.

Joel spoke to you in soft murmurs as the pair of you worked together. Cooking was not your jam he could tell, but Joel was well versed, influenced by so many years of friendship with Tess and being a single parent wanting to do right by Sarah. He handled the ingredients and utensils with quiet confidence. You took direction well, passing him the items as requested, holding the bowl steady as he mixed the marinade, and finally brushing the liquid over the pork shoulder.

As the only ones not participating, Sammy and Sarah gathered the pork shoulders to bring to the galley to continue marinading before going in the oven in an hour. They returned with fresh adult beverages for the guests and waters for the crew as Tess segued into the next steps of preparing the dish, instructing everyone in chopping onions and peppers to go into the yellow rice. Each station was equipped with a rice cooker rented from the provisions company.

“This is actually kind of fun,” you admitted out of nowhere as Joel guided you in how to properly chop the vegetables, his large, warm hand covering your own on the knife. His heart swelled at that admission. Maybe there was hope after all.

“It’s a great activity to do together,” Joel replied, voice rough with repressed feelings. Oh how he wanted you to know that he would love to do this with you in his kitchen back in Austin someday, but it was not the time to share those types of thoughts.

Over the next hour, Tommy and Ellie spilled all of their rice on the floor, knocking them completely out of the little competition. Their hysterical laughter left the rest of the competitors with little doubt that they were sad about that fact. Joel’s deep brown eyes watched you smile broadly at their hijinks, his own lips quirking up at the sight.

“I hope you two know you’re on cleaning duty after this!” Joel called to them, a hint of teasing in his tone.

You loosened up after that, chatting a little more with Joel about the food you were both preparing and anything else that came to mind. You both studiously avoided the topic of your feelings for each other. Joel was just happy that you were having fun and speaking to him. He hoped it lasted beyond this activity.

“Have you ever had flan before?” Joel asked as the dessert preparations began.

“No, I’m not a huge dessert person. I’ve heard it’s good though,” you replied.

“It really is. I’ve made it before at home.”

“So, you are a big dessert guy then? Making homemade desserts in the off-season?”

Joel smiled with a nod. “Guilty. I enjoy cooking, have ever since Sarah came along and gave me a reason to learn how to do it well.” He loved sharing this with you, both the cooking and the details about each other.

By the time the pernil was ready to eat, everyone was giddy with hunger. Conversation and teasing were boisterous as everyone moved between the stations to taste the dishes, noting the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences between them all. A vote was taken, and Tess announced the winner once everyone had eaten their fill.

“It was really close, but it looks like Donna and Doug are the winners! Joel and Brit were a close second, but that just means they were the first losers,” Tess teased while the guests cheered.

As the guests moved to the seating area in the main salon, the crew dispersed to start cleanup duties.

“Nice work, Cap,” you said, flashing Joel a small smile as you scurried away, headed to the galley with a pile of dirty dishes in your arms. After spending the past few hours so close to Joel, the yearning for him was overwhelming and you needed some time away from him, and everyone else. Dish duty in the galley would be perfect for that.

“Hey, wait! I, uh, was hoping we could…” And, once again, you were gone before he could finish a sentence. It was a habit of yours that he was beginning to seriously dislike.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was early, possibly pre-sunrise though it was hard to tell down on the crew deck, when Sarah ducked into your cabin and plopped her overly perky self on your bunk. “Morning sunshine!”

“Too loud. Take your noise and be gone, you witch!” you grumbled, burying your head beneath the covers.

The bunk above you creaked and Tess’ head peered over the edge, her long locks hanging down in waves. “Aww, come on, Brit. Let the girl have her fun.”

“I know what she’s trying to do, Tess and I want no part of it.” Your voice was muffled by the blanket, taking the edge off your tone.

“Oh, don’t be like that!” Sarah whined. “My dad seemed so happy last night. He loves to cook and it’s clear he enjoyed showing off his skills for you.”

“He’s obviously very good at it,” you admitted reluctantly, fingertips edging the blanket down a bit.

“Don’t I know it.” Sarah’s dark eyes, the ones that reminded you so much of her father’s, narrowed mischievously. “You know, you two were the actual winners last night.”

Brows furrowed; you pulled the blanket down to fully expose your face and stared at Sarah. “What are you talking about? Donna and Doug were the winners.”

“She’s right, Brit. Joel told me before the event to skew the results to make sure one of the guests won,” Tess admitted. “The primaries were actually second place.”

Hmmm, that certainly sounded like Joel. He was too humble.

“See, I told you he was worth the effort. You need to give him a chance.” Sarah’s voice was pleading, smile hopeful.

Sighing, you sat up and placed a hand on hers where it rested on your bed. “Sar, there’s no point when he won’t give me a chance. I’m not the problem here.”

“He’ll come around; I promise,” Sarah insisted. Tess nodded in agreement and the two women stared at you with insane smiles.

“Your eternal optimism is disturbing.” Falling back against your pillow, you pulled the blanket back over your head. “Don’t you two have work to do? I’m on late shift today, so I need a few more hours of sleep.”

Slipping in your earbuds, you tried your best to ignore thoughts of Joel as you drifted off to sleep once again. The weather had calmed overnight, and the yacht was already anchored at sea when you awoke a few hours later. After a quick breakfast, you arrived on deck to start your shift. The rest of the deck crew was already busy unloading the water toys and you jumped in to assist.

“Mornin’, sleeping beauty,” Tommy greeted you with a charming smile. “Can you help us put the jet skis in the water? Ellie’s on the davit controls today.”

“Hey Tommy,” you bumped his shoulder as you passed, smiling brightly in return. “Of course.”               

Connor was already by the davit, connecting the lines to ready the first jet ski. You checked the connections and patted him on the back. Pulling one of the support lines tight, Tommy gave a thumbs up and both you and Connor grabbed the remaining lines, pulling them taut.

“Ok, El! Take it away, slow!” Tommy called.

Ellie’s brow pinched in concentration, fingers working the controls to first lift the jet ski off the deck, then extend it over the rail and lower it towards the water. She had been practicing lately, working on controlling the davit with finesse rather than jerky movements and too much speed. The last thing Ellie wanted was to be responsible for damaging the yacht or any of its equipment, so she wanted to be proficient at using the davit.

Eyes darting between the jet ski and Ellie, strong grip keeping your line tight, you were impressed with the smoothness of movement from Ellie’s handling of the davit. The only jostling was from the wind rather than the davit itself. The first jet ski went down without issue and Connor jumped into the water to drive the jet ski to the swim platform and tie it off.

“Connor man, stay down there. The next one is coming in a minute,” Tommy called out. “No sense coming back up here with how smooth that one went.”

The three of you repeated the process with the second jet ski while Connor waited on the swim platform. It was a little less steady this time, but the jet ski landed smoothly on the water, bobbing along with the ripples. Once again, Connor jumped into the water to disconnect the davit lines. Before he could release the rear line, the wake of a passing boat jostled the jet ski. Connor didn’t see it coming and it threw off his balance, his right arm extending instinctively to steady himself against the yacht’s hull.

His wet hand gave way against the slick surface as another wave lifted the jet ski and Connor toppled off the machine. It happened so fast, you and Tommy watching from the deck, when the waves hit. You were already jumping over the rail, plummeting into the water when Connor’s head bounced off the hull.

The tender was already in the water, having been the first thing the deck team offloaded before you joined them on deck, and Tommy sprinted down to the swim platform to jump into the small boat as Ellie frantically called for help over the radio. When you surfaced, you were grateful you landed nearby and Connor was wearing a lifejacket as he bobbed face down in the turquoise water, the slamming of his head against the yacht having knocked him out cold. You reached him in seconds, turning him over so his face was no longer submerged. He wasn’t breathing.

The tender appeared at your side, Tommy reaching over to pull you both aboard. He shouted up to Ellie to get in the water and secure the jet ski while you started CPR, and he steered the tender back to the swim platform where Joel was waiting. By your estimate, Connor was face down in the water for no more than 30 seconds, if that, and his breathing resumed after a dozen chest compressions. However, he remained unconscious, and you checked Connor over, noting a gash on his forehead and a broken left forearm. Flattening your palm over the gash, you attempted to stem the flow of blood.

Sarah appeared on the swim platform and assisted her dad in tying off the tender while Tommy helped you delicately bring Connor onto the yacht. “Help is on the way, should be here in a few minutes,” Joel declared. “Is he breathing?”

You nodded, breathless from the adrenaline rush, and placed the clean rag Sammy rushed to hand you to Connor’s forehead. “He’s still unconscious and has a broken arm,” Tommy spoke for you, his comforting hand clutching your shoulder.

“Shit,” Joel swore, his voice immediately drowned by the sound of a siren as a rescue boat approached.

You stumbled back, sliding down to sit on the platform as the rescue team took over. You were soaked, hands covered in Connor’s blood, a chill wracking your body as the last dregs of adrenaline dispersed. You watched, wide-eyed, as Connor was transported to the rescue vessel. Once the vessel departed, Joel rushed over to you, bending down to meet your gaze.

“Are you okay?” He spoke your name softly, his hands running over your head, shoulders, and arms, checking for any injuries. Joel’s touch left a trail of searing heat on your skin. The shivering was uncontrollable, and you stuttered out a positive response indicating you were ok. “Thank fuck,” he breathed, pulling you into an uncharacteristic hug, his body warm and strong against yours. You clutched to him like a lifeline as he led you inside and down to the crew deck. Once in your cabin, he turned the shower on and let the water heat up.

“Can you manage by yourself? Or do you want me to get Sarah or Tess?”

“I-I can manage, just need to warm up.” Slipping into the bathroom, the door closing with a soft click, you shed your wet clothes and climbed into the shower, steam rising around you. The immediate relief from the warmth of the water left you groaning.

“I’m going to send Sarah down to keep an eye on you. She’ll call me if you need anything. I have to get back to the guests,” Joel called through the door, hesitation in his voice like he didn’t want to leave you.

“Ok. Thank you, Joel,” you called back, grateful for him in that moment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once Joel was certain that you were going to be alright, his heart rate finally settled. Checking in with the guests to let them know what happened was easier than he anticipated – they were understandably concerned about the crew, specifically Connor’s condition, having witnessed at least part of the incident. Donna insisted that they were content to lounge on the sundeck and relax in the hot tub for the day to let the crew settle their nerves after the traumatic events.

On his way to the bridge, Joel also checked in with Tommy and the rest of the crew to make sure they were ok. Emmy was the most concerned, having grown close to the young man over the past few weeks. Talia comforted her as Joel reiterated the importance of safety awareness and let them all have an extended break while the guests relaxed.

“Join me on the bridge?” he looked to Tommy as he turned to exit the main salon. The brothers walked in silence until they were on the bridge where they were quickly joined by Frank. “So, we’re down a man on the deck crew. Early report on Connor is that he won’t be returning with that broken arm. I’ll reach out to the staffing agency to get a new deckhand.”

Tommy nodded. “In the meantime, we’ll work with a three-person crew.” It wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last. He always made it work.

“I’m happy to lend a hand where needed, Tommy,” Frank added. “It’d be good to get my hands dirty again.”

“Well, that’s settled then. I need to make a couple calls. Keep an eye on the crew?” Frank and Tommy assured Joel they had everything under control and left the bridge as Joel called the agency.

“Hi Marcia, it’s Captain Joel on Radiance. Listen, I need a deckhand asap.” Pausing to listen to her response, he added, “Any experience level is fine at this point.” Marcia assured him she’d be back in touch within an hour and ended the call.

Feeling like things were back under his control again, Joel settled into the captain’s chair with a heavy sigh. What a fucking day. Between yesterday’s bad weather and the events of today, this charter seemed doomed from the start, but at least the guests were laid back. The vibration of his phone drew Joel from his maudlin thoughts to find a text from Sarah.

Brit is all set. She’s resting for a bit and will be back on deck in an hour. She’s such a bad ass!

The grin that spread across his lips was involuntary at the mere mention of you and how highly his daughter thought of you.

Thanks baby girl. You doing okay?

I’m fine, Dad. You okay?

It’s been a day already, but I’m good.

Love you.

Love you too baby girl.

The phone was still in his hand when it rang moments later. “Marcia, what’s the good word?” Joel stood from the chair, nervous energy making him need to move around. “That was quick work! He can start tomorrow, great! That’s one less thing to worry about.”

After discussing a few more details, Joel thanked Marcia for her help. They’d have a new deckhand onboard tomorrow morning. Perfect.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You were holed up on the bridge on overnight anchor watch, gaze hovering over the weather radar to keep an eye on the wind speed. The wind picked up again as the evening went on and Joel was concerned the anchor would drag, so you were dedicated to anchor watch as you were already scheduled for the late shift.

After the day’s events, you were content to sit on the quiet bridge while everyone else slept. Normally, you would bring a book or your earbuds and listen to some music to keep yourself entertained during the quiet hours, but tonight the silence was soothing. The night sky was clear, the sparkle of a thousand stars shining down around a half-moon making you feel like you could be anywhere in the world.

Only one thought attempted to distract you – Joel’s presence in the captain’s quarters right behind the bridge. He was in there, deep asleep, dreaming God knows what and all you could think about was what it would be like being in there with him.

The way he cared for you earlier, held you after Connor’s rescue, made you forget about your plan to steer clear of him for a while. It was a losing battle when he was right there.

Perhaps you should just resign yourself to pining over the man and leave it at that. No other potential solutions were working anyway.

At four o’clock in the morning, you heard the creak of a door followed by the heavy padding of bare feet on the floor. Turning your head to the side, Joel emerged from around the corner and your heart melted to a puddle at the sight of his bedhead. Despite being forty years old, he looked like a grumpy little boy with the sleepy frown marring his face, hair askew, pouty lips drawn in a wide yawn.

You couldn’t stop yourself beaming at him, now knowing what he looked like when first waking up. It was endearing as all hell.

Squinted eyes met yours in the darkness and the bridge brightened just from the smile in his gaze. Joel was just as happy to see you as you were to see him. This mutual pining thing was no joke.

“G’morning,” he mumbled, sliding in beside you at the small table along the wall behind the captain’s chair. “Everythin’ going good?”

“Mmhmm,” you hummed, basking in the press of his sleepy warmth against your right side. “Just peachy.”

“Hmm, good.” Joel tilted his head back against the wall, still half asleep and you wondered why he was even up.

“What are you doing up so early?”

His head lolled toward you, dark eyes shining in the low light emanating from the helm. “I could hear you thinking out here and just wanted to be near you… make sure you were ok.”

Your breath hitched as you stared at him, searching his eyes for confirmation of what you just heard. It was another crest on this never-ending roller coaster with Joel Miller. “I’m ok. Just lots to think about, you know?”

“I do,” his head bobbed. “I figured we could think about it together.”

TBC

[oscconfessions]

You know what? I'm just gonna say it. About 90% of II neg/crit is a crock full of shit. The 10% who actually criticize the show in a contrastive and nuanced way? Amazing. To die for. We love them around these parts. But this rant isn't about them. It's about the 90%. They anger me. It seems like they don't actually want to critique the show and just want to hate on it and the creators. I'll start off with some of the crit against certain characters like Bot and Cabby. OFC, it's 100% fine to dislike any character you want (/gen), but man I feel like some people just didn't understand the point of these characters. For example, I've seen a critique against Bot and Paintbrush that they're NB stereotypes for being "overly sensitive" when they literally aren't??? Paintbrush just has a strong temper (trust me, just because someone has a strong temper, it doesn't mean they're easily offended) and as for Bot, I have no idea where that critique even came from. Isn't it a bit hypocritical to say a character is a stereotype and then proceed to boil down their personality to a few simple traits. With Cabby, how she's been seen is a whole mess, but that transitions into drama with the creators. There was the whole ableism issue with II3 EP 14. Which, in hindsight, what happened in the actual wasn't that bad. Was the writing clumsy when it came to the Cabby stuff? Yes. Did it warrant a massive drama. Absolutely not. Especially with EP 15. The ableism thing doesn't even matter when watching it. Because it was addressed that Cabby shouldn't feel bad for using her aid. Another thing is that people don't actually treat the team, especially The Key Three as, well, humans. I've seen them be called "corporate cishet guys", which isn't even true in the slightest. First of all, they're not a corporation. They are literally a smallish indie team. And the "cishet" comment isn't even true in the slightest?? While I can't say if Adam and Brain are cishet or not, Justin is very openly gay man (I've heard that they're questioning his gender, but take that with a grain of salt). While it is good to critique and point out how they've failed with representation like with disabled people, people forget that a the worst of it happened when they were teens. In the 2000s. Representation isn't the way it is now. The crew and what they made are products of their time. And a quick note about EP 18 coming out during the Palestine Strike: what would delaying the episode even do? An episode coming out during a strike doesn't mean you suddenly can't talk about it. You can still talk about it even if the EP came out during the strike. And what about literally every single YT vid that came out during the Strike and didn't talk about it? Should those have been delayed as well? OFC not. Because a YouTube video doesn't effect the Strike. OFC, people should talk about it. But an II EP coming out while it happened affected nothing. Now, don't get me wrong, II isn't perfect and has plenty about it to critique. Because it was made by people. It's *going* to have stuff to critique. That doesn't mean stop giving it constructive criticism. But more people need to actually treat it like people made it. I'm SO sorry this turned out to be such a LONG and messy rant. I got angry (and I'm still a bit upset) and it sort of spiraled.

.

[quietpagan]

in the first episode of trollhunters we learn eli sees the fight in the canal to some extent. do you think he saw it in What Falls And What Grows? did he catch a glimpse of Alex too? iirc it says she's hidden from onlookers but what about when kanjigar is following her??

I don't have a super-deep answer to that pertaining to the plot of my story in particular right now. BUT I don't think that the people of Arcadia are as oblivious as the supernatural denizens seem to think or would like to believe. The city, for one, has features and buildings that don't really match up with the population size, such as the enormous high school and ridiculously huge museum. That thing belongs in New York, not a smallish-city like Arcadia. (And I'm aware that populating a city properly within the graphic confines and budget of a Netflix show would be unattainable but we're talking lore here, not pragmatics.)

We have to remember that in the book, there was an actual 'Milk Carton Epidemic' because of all of the kids who got eaten went missing. There's a huge community of trolls living under the city. I surmise that Arcadia used to be much more densely populated, but after so many children disappeared and weird things were happening, a lot of people moved away, and the ones who stayed take into account that things don't away add up.

Was Jim really the only one who noticed the Stalking flying around? Does nobody look out their window at night, or go to dinner late in the evening? Did nobody notice Bular walking into a residential neighborhood to peek into the Lake house's kitchen window? Goblins ate an entire truck without anybody seeing? And does NOBODY notice all of the weird shit that Nomura stuffs into that museum? There's an underground Changeling cult-house and a wizard base, too.

I posit that the Arcadians are used to things being a little strange in their lovely little city, and firmly choose to ignore it. Eli goes against the grain and actively tries to find out what it is, but he is the exception. Some homeless guy or early-morning jogger definitely noticed a big lumbering rock in glowy armor stumbling around and decided I Do Not See. At least one group of dudes coming back from the bar noticed Alex dragging along a sheet-covered Kanjigar toward the canal, and swiftly turned to walk down another street.

Arcadia draws weird folk for a reason, and the residents are very dedicated to Not Having A Clue. If you pretend you don't see it, it may pretend that it didn't see you, too.

[grimaussiewitch]

Bread names for limited life smp:

Grain

Sourdour-ity

Smallish-buns

TangoToast

Bread-escentmoon

PretzelSV

ZombieBagel

Goodtimeswithloaf

Ethoscone

BigBbap

Bdough-ble-rye

Inthelittlewheat

Scott S-crumpet

Skizzle-roll

[sohannabarberaesque]

Can you just imagine--

The Banana Splits "themselves" on a whitewater rafting trip?

Inch High, Private Eye, being in Gator's pocket while seeking out information in a campy-looking second-hand book shop, and at once crossing paths with a certain Velma Dinkley?

Snagglepuss ordering some tea, and it turns out being South African rooibos because of the somewhat peculiar (and decaffeinated) taste?

Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy joining Huckleberry Hound and his nephew Hector on some tenting-type camping trips, mainly out of the unlikely friendship and chemistry inherent among fellow Funtastic types to begin with?

The Hair Bear Bunch getting some rotisserie chicken breast on a whim for supper rather than fried chicken, and trying all the while not to wonder why they bought it to begin with (even fixing some long grain/wild rice blend as a side)?

Shag Rugg, during one of his diving sessions, finding two freshwater pearls in the same shell (even if they're the size of smallish peas)?

Magilla Gorilla consuming half a bunch of bananas over the course of an atypical weekend, eventually having to make quite the run to the toilet on Monday morning (with quite an empty feeling ensuing, followed by his having to drink two bottles of seltzer water)?

[raincitygirl76]

The crazy cat lady genre of classic portraiture. Speaking as live-in domestic staff to two pampered rescue felines, these paintings make me so happy.

Intellectually I know humans have always kept pets. Long before PetSmart, veterinarians, and pet health insurance, people found smallish cute animals and kept them around to cuddle and play with. But it’s nice to see the evidence in portraiture.

Even our hunter-gatherer ancestors kept pets. Although that was gradually domesticating wolves over thousands of years into dogs. And yes, they were used for hunting, but they were also pets. Cat domestication dates to the earliest Neolithic. Purely nomadic hunter-gatherers had no need for wild cats. But once humans started collecting extra grain and storing it for the winter, they were at least starting to be farmers. Granaries attracted rodents, who ate the grain humans had toiled to collect, and endangered their ability to survive the winter.

Enter wild cats. They were attracted to granaries because they were infested with rodents. And as obligate carnivores, they had zero interest in the stored grain themselves. They just wanted to eat the mice and rats who the first farmers had already figured out were a serious problem. It was a win-win situation for early farmers and for wild cats.

So you stop your dogs from chasing the cats off when you see them slinking towards the granaries. Once in a while a cat who’s slightly braver than the average wild creature around humans will slink close out of curiosity, and you throw it a few scraps of meat. It starts hanging around in a semi-regular basis, and later brings its kittens to teach them how to hunt in the granaries.

And thousands of years later, we have beautiful portraits of people with their beloved pet cats.

im not even joking rn this fucking painting made me start uncontrollably sobbing. Do you know how long it took to paint? How expensive it was? The cat was content for hours and so loved that the girl held him there and paid for him to be painted with her. Imagine having such a bond… imagine being so loved and loving so much back…

[mixotrophics]

food crops basics: cereals

cereals : cereals are the seeds of grasses (Poaceae). There are many many cereals of note: wheat, rice, and maize(corn) spring to mind ... chances are, you are a member of one (or more) cultures that have an ancient, deep relationship with one or more of those three cereals. There are also others like barley, millet, sorghum, and oats that are mega important in their own right, but those three are standouts for sure. There are also many plants which are farmed and used in a way similar to cereals, such as quinoa, but these are not grasses and so are "pseudo"cereals (just a different kind of plant than true cereals).

Generally, cereals are farmed for their grains which are smallish, hard, dry fruits, which are easy to store compared to other starchy plants like plantain, especially before refrigeration. Kept out the way of mice and wet, they'd last ... probably why humans liked hanging out with semiferal cats, which eventually became the domestic cats we have to this day.

Cereals are some of the crops we farm the most of, and also some of the crops we have been farming for as long as farming has been a thing that we do. Our relationship with cereals is truly ancient and is sometimes pointed to as a point in which hierarchical, ownership-based systems began(1) ... not 100% on that one tbh. Why not? Well it makes sense that farming cereals would require a different social organization than hunter-gathering, because of the work needed to cultivate, harvest, and process cereals, and also that the benefits of long-term storage can become an issue if you are having to carry that grain around with you as opposed to keeping it in a granary/silo building. However, these things do not require hierarchy, ownership, so on. Processing grains can be hard work, but made easy or even enjoyable as a community activity, sitting around with your friends and family grinding grain and gossiping, something people do with all sorts of activities including milling grain. We also see examples of cultures that cultivated cereals as staples that have other systems, such as domestic & kin-based systems where extended families work community to cultivate cereals(2). Look to maize in the Americas for many examples.

Maize itself is worth bringing up because there is, so much, here.

Maize is a domesticated descendant of wild teosinte, and really interesting stuff is done to unpick the patterns of maize domestication taking place 5000 to 9000 years ago. This includes looking at lakebeds to see pollen and phytolith presence (both vary by shape, and phytoliths are microscopic structures that persist after a plant decays), fossil records, and checking pottery and human remains for maize components(3). Regardless of how these understandings shift and change, the fact remains that these people over centuries cultivated teosinte into maize, carefully selecting the best cereals to propagate ...

look at this. This is a profound link to many folks' ancestors, and a way of extending hope forward, selective breeding for crops that are better and forming culture around this practice.

& much like the very people who formed this relationship with maize, the plant itself bears the wounds of colonization. It lays bare how much of a lie the "benefits" of Western civilization are ... none of this makes life better for humanity, it exists to make a select few people at the top of the pile very, very wealthy & powerful. & there is no limit to their greed. maize has become a menace in the hands of industrial agriculture and capitalist firms.

You may have seen the news about corn sweat, aka transpiration, where plants (like humans) excrete water which evaporates & carries heat away from the body. in sufficiently "sweaty" circumstances, it boosts humidity, in turn making sweat a less effective cooling strategy. The sheer scale of industrial corn agriculture, grown in monocultures without shade of trees, results in massive corn-sweating increasing the humidity and making it harder to cool down. & other than that. Generally, when monetary value is the metric through which things are measured & prioritized, things that sell well get prioritized over things that are good. Crops that look nice & taste sweet & are addictive & can be used for animal feed, biofuel, and ultraprocessed food become the crops to grow, pushing out others. Things like "having essential nutrients" fall by the wayside, leading to circumstances where people have sufficient caloric intake but insufficient nutrition(4). Maize is no exception here. In many cases, its cultivation is for use as corn syrup to cut costs in the production of sweet things (cheaper than sugar), or corn to bulk out flour, or corn to feed animals in CAFOs rather than allowing animals to graze naturally on plant matter we can't digest. An amazing plant with an ancient history beaten down into the fuel for a whole lot of problems and very few people getting very rich. We see the same with other cereals for certain, but maize is certainly a notable case.

not all more-recent cereal farming is fucked up & evil, though. Many many people continue traditional practices, and many experiment with mixing a range of knowledge to try and cultivate these important plants in a more sustainable way. For example, Alternate Wet and Dry Irrigation (AWDI) for rice farming is an iteration of rice-paddy farming where the paddies are allowed to intermittently dry out rather than be continuously flooded, reducing water demands and risk of contamination from polluted water(5). The staple status of these plants means that successful breeding for better nutrition can have a big impact, kind of like how contemporary furikake made a huge difference by adding nutritional bonuses to otherwise just plain rice. and while it makes "conventional" harvesting machinery less useable, cereals can of course be farmed in polycultures with other plants.

rice itself is similarly ancient and entangled in human history, with wild rice species and evidence of rice domestication spanning multiple continents. Wild rice is harvested by indigenous folks while domesticated rice is raised by many indigenous groups as well. The wild-domestic rice boundary is fuzzy, with wild rice being cultivated (it's "wild" rice in that it hasn't been through the incredibly long process of domestication), with wild rice being crossbred with domestic rice, with ancestral early-domestication rice being carried down multiple parallel domestication processes in different places, by different people(6). Rice has been used to make so, so much, and is the basis for an immense diversity of cultures.

fascinating stuff with a lot of history and a lot of hope.

So mentioned before that the dry nature of the grain made it viable for storage w/o technologies/processing moreso than other starches. but there are potentially other reasons that grains became So Important, since these plants can take a lot of effort to turn into food (ever seen how many steps it takes to turn wheat into bread?) after all.

here is a brief aside to the "drunken monkey" hypothesis of human evolution. Human evolution is of course a very. Hmm. subject at times. For example the similar-sounding "stoned ape" hypothesis which notes the overlap between ancestral human lineages and psilocybin mushrooms, and says that perhaps the reason we have such weird brains is we took a lot of shrooms and those brain-changes gave rise to Human Intellect (literally going "what drugs were you on when you came up with this lol" to the Entire Human Species). Despite name similarities, drunken monkey is different.

so you know how sometimes animals will eat fruit that's a bit rotten and they get drunk? Fruit-eating animals are somewhat known for this.

so humans are apes and we are thought to have descended from an arboreal ape living in the forests of Africa. many of our close sibling-species still live there, still living in the trees (chimps and bonobos). They are omnivores and frugivores, and humans are also omnivores with a lot of frugivore-vibes (teeth setup, loving sweets, being able to get scurvy with insufficient fruit+vegetable intake). being a frugivore makes sense when you live in the trees in a habitat that's close to the equator, where there isn't a wintertime with cold weather & short daylight hours that restrict plant growth and damage large, soft fruits. Sometimes, there isn't enough fruit, and so other foods are eaten instead (leaves, bugs, meat, so on).

of course, this fruit-based diet is a bit more troublesome moving away from the equator and living on the ground. The drunken monkey hypothesis points to our love of alcohol and our relatively-high ability to digest it as a suggestion that maybe, we could live on the ground in areas with poorer fruit conditions by eating fallen fruit on the ground, rotting, becoming alcoholic(7). Alcohol is a poison, but we can take a pretty big amount of it. It has a pungent smell as well and a lot of people find that smell nice. for a frugivore ape living on the ground, it would be really beneficial if we could eat rotten fruit off the ground, and also beneficial if we were attracted to the smell of rotting fruit and therefore able to find it more easily.

why am I talking about alcohol here? gestures vaguely at beer, sake, chicha morada, other grain alcohols ...

we've been brewing alcohol from grains for a really long time, with some thinking we figured out how to make beer before bread. Before we knew how to treat water, weak beer was a safer option than water, which I wouldn't be surprised affected us much like starting to cook meat -- wasting less energy on being sick and full of parasites, we have more energy for reproduction, invention, thinking (& brain size), art, music, so on ... as disastrous as alcohol can be, it's another ancient human Thing We Do and another way our lives & the lives of cereals are woven together.

humans & cereal grasses, the grains of Poaceae, we go way back and have shaped one another. These are ancient species-transcendent interrelationships fostered over centuries and centuries. these relationships and rituals are subjugated, much like so many humans, under an exploitative hierarchy meant to distill the variety of life and experience into a single unit measure, Monetary Value. Take a moment to say thanks to cereals, have some bread, flatbread, pasta, tortilla, rice, rice noodle, oats ... we are old friends and have been since before , gestures vaguely again, all of this bullshit.

… and I only talked about three cereals here. This only absolutely scrapes the surface of those three cereals as well. Again this is food crops basics and there is so much more, I absolutely encourage looking around and seeing what you can find yourself!

...

1 ) Nowak, M. Do We Finally Know What the Neolithic Is? Open Archaeology 2022, 8(1). 2 ) Storey, R., & Widmer, R. J. The Pre-Columbian Economy. Latin American Studies Association, 2001. 3 ) Bonzani, R. M., & Oyuela-Caycedo, A. The Gift of the Variation and Dispersion of Maize. In Histories of Maize, Academic Press, 2006. 4 ) Scharff, L. B., Saltenis, V. L. R., Jensen, P. E., Baekelandt, A., Burgess, A. J., Burow, M., Ceriotti, A., Cohan, J.-P., Geu-Flores, F., Halkier, B. A., Haslam, R. P., Inzé, D., Klein Lankhorst, R., Murchie, E. H., Napier, J. A., Nacry, P., Parry, M. A. J., Santino, A., Scarano, A., Sparvoli, F., Wilhelm, R., & Pribil, M. Prospects to improve the nutritional quality of crops. Food and Energy Security 2022, 11(1):e327. 5 ) Chapagain, T., & Riseman, A. Achieving More with Less Water: Alternate Wet and Dry Irrigation (AWDI) as an Alternative to the Conventional Water Management Practices in Rice Farming. Journal of Agricultural Science 2011, 3(3):3-13. 6 ) Sweeney, M., & McCouch, S. The Complex History of the Domestication of Rice. Annals of Botany 2007, 100(5):951–957. 7 ) Dudley, R., & Maro, A. Human Evolution and Dietary Ethanol. Nutrients 2021, 13(7):2419.

...

images: image of grains, Miquel Pujol on Wikimedia teosinte vs. maize, by T. Ryan Gregory, via Vassar's Real Archaeology Blog waxwing image taken from an Anchorage Daily News article

[env0]

israeli couscous is a real thing and it’s really called that, also sometimes called pearl couscous because it’s actually the size and shape of a smallish pearl, it is nothing like actual couscous. it’s just a pasta they made to substitute for rice. the naming is confusing and misleading, it’s not couscous at all :(

I might have had it once. It sounds vaguely familiar but honestly. Couscous is such a great grain. I grew up with it. But pasta balls sounds idk just so disappointing. I could see it work in some antipasta but thsts about it. Just give it a new name to better describe it

.also... Had me in the first half.

[laurkamkitchen]

A new collard wrap and a new chickpea salad recipe all rolled into one!

I made this in full using 4 large collard leaves and unfortunately skipping the herbs, as I didn't have any left. I used about half of a smallish red onion here, but I think that was entirely too much, as this was pretty red oniony.

The mashing was a bit more work than I thought it'd be, but this is overall a pretty simple recipe to quickly whip together.

I wouldn't say this was the best chickpea salad I've ever had, but I blame the lack of fresh herbs and the excessive red onion. I would absolutely make this again, to give it its due if nothing else. There's something I find deeply satisfying about chickpea salad in a collard wrap versus served any other way, so I am certainly keen to return to this at some point.

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

TW: Stalking and paranoia(?) Im mainly looking for someone to listen and stuff to without the whole "you're overreacting" stuff i keep being told but any advice/resources would be appreciated but not required. Apologizes for any spelling, words, or general mistakes, ive been suffering alot of issues related to motor skills lately and am in the dark with most info related to this currently.

To give some context, i live with my mother in a smallish town where most people tend to know each other's names and stuff. Well theres this guy that walks down our street, has been for longer then we've been here. And alsp its safe enough in our area that most are okay with leaving their doors unlocked during the days most of the time.

Which on its own is fine, like yeah he gave me such bad and dirty vibes the first/only time i talked to him to the point of almost burning my skin in a shower to get rid of it, but as of abouts early last year he has taken "an interest" in my mother. Which means, based on stories from our neighbor and our own experiences, he actively watches our house from a short lightly hidden distance leaving cigarette butts, walking into peoples homes and hanging out (in our case he actively tried to get into our house), and stealing mail.

We've tried to go to the police but they just tell us they cant do anything and that "its just walking jonny/donnie, he's harmless". No one but our neighbor takes us seriously cuz "he's harmless" i have mixed feelings cuz yeah he got some issues that are out of his control and please don't attack me if i say/phase anything wrong, im going off of what ive been told and am unable to do anything like research with my limited knowledge and such, but he to quote a different neighbor "has complications at birth and is stuck being mentally 13", which yeah that sucks and i sympathize with him, someone who is even if its just in the way described to me 13 years old would be able to know and learn that stalking someone for borderline 2 years isnt a normal or okay thing to do. His parents do nothing about this except send him somewhere for a week to please the police.

Im now deeply afraid to sleep in my own room because of this as he has started to hang out in the backyard at night and my room has huge windows viewing the backyard.

To sum this up before i go on too long, i have now developed a deep fear of my own room, being watched, and developed such bad paranoia i literally can't sleep. I constantly get told im overreacting as this man who has been stalking my mother, and in turn me, is apparently "harmless" and even if we were taken seriously they are unable (and with one cop, refuses) do anything since he was not physically hurt us or our animals. I do not fear for myself, but my mother and our dogs especially since he primarily sees them, as ive been unable to easily my house due to things regarding my new motor issues, and he has become more active with his stalking if that makes any sense

Hi anon,

I'm so sorry this has been happening. Your feelings about this are totally valid and this is not okay.

Unfortunately police can and do suck about helping victims, particularly victims of stalking. When I tried to report someone stalking me to the police, they refused to help me. I know very little about laws so take this with a grain of salt, but from what I do understand about reporting stalking to the police, is that they are more likely to help you if you gather what they constitute as evidence, which is mainly photos, videos, and audio recordings. While it may be legal for him to loiter on public property, it may be helpful to try to take a photo of or record him the next time he tries to violate your property.

I'm sorry to hear that other people have been minimizing this situation, as well as its effect on you. It's unacceptable to tolerate or normalize this kind of behavior. You are not overreacting.

If you can access or afford it, and if you don't already have one, I recommend looking into getting a therapist. A mental health professional could help address your paranoia and insomnia, as well as find some effective coping mechanisms for not only the situation but for yourself as well. You don't deserve to live in fear.

If anyone else has any comments or suggestions please feel free to add on. Otherwise hope I could help and please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

[neodafloof555]

We’re bad enough cleo wants to burn our house,

bad boy manner set in flames

We’re bad enough to be making bread bridge out

They say all roads are paved with grain

Ticking down ticking down

smallish beans remind us what we're baking for

we're baking for time

grian we're baking for time at bread bridge

Bad boys as Schuyler sisters

PleaS please please

Can you draw

Grammar go brr

IN THE GREATEST SERVER IN THE WORLD

[xarianazphel]

Sleep isn’t sleeping anymore

Summary: An old memory comes back after a bit of healing by @indraste-darktalon and makes its presence felt.

Timeframe: During the three years between Shadowlands and Dragonflight.

“LOOK OUT!” The scream came from somewhere close and he was moving without even thinking, covering the healers from the coming assault. Then a flash of green, searing pain, the cold snow..…and he was awake. He glanced around the room, his room, the weapon and armor stands coming into immediate view. He filled his lungs with a deep breath and rolled over, staring up at the ceiling for a moment before his head turned and he focused on the full potion that sat on his night stand. Indy had given him that to take for sleep, and last night he thought he would be okay, clearly he was wrong. He slowly threw the blankets off and sat up, swinging around to sit at the edge of the bed.

“Way to be stubborn you damn fool.”

Xarian rose and went towards the bathroom, moving straight to the sink and running the water. He stared at himself in the mirror, eyes bloodshot, hair and beard a mess. He looked terrible, which is how he felt. Even with the aid of the potions, he did not feel like he had truly slept well, or maybe it was more that being dragged back to Northrend repeatedly had just taken its toll on him. He closed his eyes and instantly saw another flash of green, his left side twitching as tingles ran along it. Cupping his hands, he dipped them in the running water and splashed his face several times, then finally looked at himself in the mirror again and shook his head.

When he finally exited the bathroom he glanced at the window, still dark. He let out a curse and ran a hand through his hair. Too early to work on anything outside, too awake to try and get anymore sleep by himself. Seemed that meant something inside but he had no idea what. He slowly made his way downstairs and over to the fireplace, prepping and lighting it. As the flames grew he got another flash of his dream, fire hitting him in the back. But not the orange and yellow fire that was dancing in the fireplace, no it was green and hurt a whole lot more. His hand covered his face, finger and thumb pressing at his temples until he was fully back in the present again as he leaned against the wall. Maybe the potion was in order..but not yet. He made sure the fire was building strong before moving to his work cabinet and digging. He grabs a small pack of leather wrapped tools and a smallish block of wood to go along with it, moving back to his table to sit. He unrolled the carving tools, running a hand lightly over the worn set and smiling as he thought back to past projects they had worked on together. He turns his attention to the block, turning it over several times as he tries to envision just what it was telling him it wanted to be. His head tilted when he finally got his idea then he turned back to pick out a knife. He lines up the blade with the grain of the wood and starts his cut, but the knife slips and slices his finger, causing him to drop both the block and knife.

“Of course…just ain’t my mornin’.” He says as he sighed heavily. Maybe that potion was in order after all. He closed his eyes, wrapping his other hand around the wound and a small flash of light filled his palm, healing magics closing the cut. He wasn’t the world's greatest healer but he knew enough to close a minor cut. Opening his hand he saw the streak of blood that was left behind, the only evidence that any cut had happened at all, and sighs. His eyes closed as another flash filled his head, this time of red streaked snow, causing him to wobble before slamming his fist down on the table. The potion was definitely called for. He pushed back from the table, leaving everything laid out, and turned back towards the stairs to make his way to his room. The fire would be fine and give his home a bit more warmth as he worked to forget the waking world.

He went back to his room and grabbed the potion, staring at it for several moments before pulling the stopper and gulping it down. He shook his head and a shiver ran down his spine but the sleep he would get was a worthy trade off for the taste of the potion. He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, waiting those few minutes it took for the potion to take effect, and when they did he just let himself fall back in the bed and stare at the ceiling.

“Least this time it’ll be blank sleep..” *He says as he slumps against the bed and closes his eyes, slowly drifting off to sleep.

[snatching-ishidates-wig]

Glossary of Ice Terms

ABLATION - The process through which snow, ice or water disperses.

ACCUMULATION - The process through which snow, ice or water is added to a given surface.

BERGY BIT - A smallish piece of floating ice generally submerged or half-submerged.

BRASH ICE - Floating ice in fragments of under two meters across.

CALVING - The breakaway action of ice chunks from seaborne ice bodies.

CREVASSE - Often hidden under snow bridges, crevasses are vertical splits in ice caps and glaciers.

FIRST YEAR ICE/FLOES - Ice which has grown, having formed on the sea surface, for up to 12 months and has reached a thickness between 30 cm. and 2 m.

FLOE - A piece of floating sea ice.

FRAZIL ICE - Fine ice plates suspended in seawater; a stage in the formation of young sea ice.

GLACIER - A mass of ice/snow moving under the influence of gravity.

GREASE ICE - A later stage than frazil ice in the formation of new sea ice.

GROWLER - An even smaller piece of floating ice than a bergy bit.

ICEBERG - Large pieces of ice in water which have usually broken off glaciers.

ICEBLINK - A bright glare patch on the underside of a cloud which is the reflection of ice areas in the sea below the cloud.

ICE CAP - A dome-shaped mass of ice covering land and being less than 50,000 sq. kms. in size.

ICE FOOT - A thin apron of ice attached to the coastline and not answering to tidal movement.

ICE FRONT - The cliff of ice that provides the seaward side of a land-based ice mass.

ICE ISLAND - A tabular iceberg which floats within and from the Arctic Ocean. From 30 to 50 meters thick and from a few thousand square meters to 500 square kilometers in extent.

ICE RIND - A shiny skin of new ice formed from grease ice or by direct freezing.

ICE RISE - Usually dome-shaped and found on an ice shelf. Beneath it and not visible will be a rock feature which spawned it.

ICE SHEET - A mass of ice more than 50,000 square kms. in size resting on land or sea or both.

ICE SHELF - A floating ice sheet, some of which may be temporarily aground.

LEAD - A break in floating ice.

NEW ICE - All types of newly formed sea ice including frazil, grease, nilas, shuga, rind and sludge.

NILAS - Various thicknesses of new and growing sludge ice. Can be up to 10 cm. thick and is prone to rafting. Usually gray in colour.

NUNATAK - The top of a mountain or rock stack which protrudes through an ice sheet.

PACK ICE - Any floating ice which is not attached more or less permanently to land.

POLYNYAS - Small patches of open water in an area of floating ice.

PRESSURE RIDGE - A wall of floating ice fragments forced upward under pressure.

RAFTING - The activity of one layer of ice riding over another.

RIME - A deposit of tiny grains of ice formed by the freezing of supercooled water droplets.

SASTRUGI - Abrupt wave-like ridges of hardened ice formed on a snow surface by wind. They usually run parallel to the direction of the prevailing wind.

SHUGA - An area of new, lumpy ice formed from sludge and grease ice.

SNOW BRIDGE - The area of snow forming a roof to a crevasse. Caused by drifting snow, a snow bridge often hides the presence of a crevasse.

WHITEOUT - The result of sunlight being diffused by reflection between an overcast sky and a snow surface. There is no perspective nor shadow.

Source: To The Ends of the Earth, the Transglobe Expedition - The First Pole-to-Pole Circumnavigation of the Globe. (By Sir Ranulph Fiennes)

[chaoticgearz]

Heavily insipred by @varividchicken 's DSMP!Yuu AU

We have:

Hermitcraft!Yuu AU

Hermit!Yuu

GTWS!Yuu

Wels!Yuu

Mumbo!Yuu

Grain Grian!Yuu

Stress!Yuu

Rendog!Yuu

Doc!Yuu

Cub!Yuu

Jevin!Yuu

Keralis!Yuu

Cleo!Yuu

Joe!Yuu

Zedaph!Yuu

Tango!Yuu

Impulse!Yuu

False!Yuu

Iskall!Yuu

Etho!Yuu

Bdubs!Yuu

Pearl!Yuu

Xisuma!Yuu

(And that's all for now. The list will be updated once I get the hang of writing the remaining Hermits)

And

Empires!Yuu AU

Empire!Yuu

Smallish!Yuu

Lizzie!Yuu

Cod Father!Yuu

Scott!Yuu

Sausage!Yuu

Gem!Yuu

Fwhip!Yuu

Farmer Queen!Yuu (Empire's Pearl)

(and that's all. Same excuse as the Hermit one. The list will be updated until then)

The concept of these two AUs remain the same; Any of these versions of Yuu entering Twisted Wonderland and going through it's entire storyline but with their own brand of chaos.

Feel free to send me some asks!