#so i wrote some backstory

[erinwantstowrite]

thinking so hard about the very shitty au i wrote when i was on wattpad where Lucy (fairy tail) met the guild as a kid but they had their memories wiped at the end of it and didn't remember her, so when she finally meets natsu again SHE remembers them but they don't remember her. also she was their enemy when they first met and when she ran away from her father it was because he tried to create one of the time travel gates but he had to sacrifice a celestial wizard to even try and get it operating. i think she had two older siblings in this au too? anyway i never posted it but it was so incredibly long and I can't get into my wattpad account anymore so it's gone forever so i can't even reread it and laugh at how badly written it was

[shalomniscient]

i just woke up, it’s 7am and i’m having thoughts about jingliu…

if there was one person on the luofu who knew jingliu the longest, it was you. not the high cloud quintet or the cloud knights, you. the daughter of jingliu’s master, and the stubborn sword champion’s personal healer. she entered your life as a gangly, hungry girl who could barely hold a sword in both hands—and now, she’s the greatest warrior the luofu has ever seen.

but more importantly, now, she’s your wife.

it seemed almost like an inevitability, that you’d fall for her. for all that she was your mother’s disciple, you didn’t see her much as children. jingliu would always be training, and you would always be studying. it was only after she became a member of the cloud knights, and you a member of the alchemy commission, that things would really start to blossom—like a lotus flower, bright and pure.

you were the only healer jingliu really trusted and even allowed to heal her. the warrior had a stubborn streak several miles wide, but perhaps it was the echo of your mother in you that had her obediently heeling to your treatments—a fact that always awed her fellow cloud knights, who teased her relentlessly about it. “whipped,” they’d say. jingliu would only grumble and grudgingly thank you, before leaving the clinic and decidedly and publicly putting every one of her squadmates on their asses during a sparring match.

but nonetheless, it is no one but jingliu who comforts you when teng xiao arrives at your door, a set of armor folded neatly in his arms, and a grim, apologetic look on his face. that night it is jingliu who sits by your side, letting you weep into her shoulder as she awkwardly and clumsily attempts to console you. grief burns through you like a wildfire, but jingliu is there, her presence soothing and cool like moonlight. you both fall asleep tangled in each other’s arms, finding that, if nothing else, there is comfort in shared loss.

the next morning, you ask her about it as you both still hold each other close. jingliu’s mouth opens and closes, struggling to choose the right words. “i swore to her that i’d protect you,” she answers. it makes you smile, just a little, even if grief still twists sharply in your heart.

“you’re protecting me by cuddling me?” you tease her, and her pale cheeks flush.

“that’s— i believed you might have needed—“ she stammers, and you cut her off by pressing closer against her cool body.

“i’m just teasing,” you whisper against her skin, arms tightening around her muscular form. as if to ground yourself, as if to assure yourself that she’s really here. “i appreciate it, jingliu. thank you.”

at your words, the warrior relaxes. her voice is barely higher than yours when she replies, tinged with a hint of tenderness. “of course.”

jingliu is different, after that. you guess that it’s because you are all she has left—much the same in how she is all you have left. there is a gentle awkwardness to her now, like someone who has never known how to be soft trying to learn for the first time. she sits patiently as she lets you fuss over her wounds, knowing that you need this, that you need to know she’s alright. she only looks away when you get a little too close, when she can feel the warmth of your breath on her skin, and she hopes you don’t notice (you do).

she comes to the house whenever she can, which feels just a little emptier without your mother’s commanding presence. she stands shoulder to shoulder next to you at the counter making dumplings, her rough, battle-scarred hands dwarfing your own more delicate ones—but she wraps the dumplings with finesse all the same. you eat them together, quietly, but the silence is comfortable. you know each other enough that words are unnecessary. these nights you can only ever fall asleep in her arms—and she can only ever fall asleep in yours. neither of you question it, but what is there to question anyway?

jingliu ends up being many of your firsts—including your first kiss. it happens on one of those nights, tangled in each other’s arms, with nothing but a sliver of moonlight to illuminate jingliu’s pale face. you feel her pulse jump under your touch, as your thumb traces the ridge of her cheekbones and your lips press gently against hers. kissing her is nothing grand, no fireworks or butterflies—just the quiet sense of finally coming home.

jingliu is your first time, too. her hands trail down your body with reverence, lips pressing kisses like prayers against your skin. she brings you to the edge of heaven with her fingers and her mouth until you lie boneless on the sheets. she kisses you while your essence is still smeared across her lips, and you eagerly return the favor.

jingliu is your first and only love. it’s the soft, quiet kind, more of a respite than a whirlwind in and of itself. a shelter where both of you can return to, when the world becomes too much. you’re there for each other at the lowest lows and the highest highs—jingliu attends the ceremony as you’re sworn in as the cauldron master of the alchemy commission, eyes trained only on you as you accept the honor. and you attend jingliu’s ascenscion ceremony for the title of sword champion, standing at the forefront of the crowd, a proud smile on your face. to jingliu, that is her true victory.

and yet, even as the sword champion, there are still things she fears—like telling you she loves you. it takes a grand amount of coaxing from her new friends—a blacksmith, a high elder, and a pilot, respectively—before she works up the courage. she whispers it against your neck one moonlit night, intertwined with you in the sheets. her voice trembles ever so slightly, her breath fanning unevenly against your skin, and she tenses when you laugh softly. but the tension bleeds out of her immediately when you say it back, and she slumps against you, as if the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders.

(baiheng and yingxing later force her to buy them drinks, and she does so, grudgingly. after all, they were right when they said there was no way you’d say anything other than ‘i love you too’. dan feng only attends for the free alcohol, but he is happy for her nonetheless.)

your marriage is a quiet affair—or as quiet as it can get, with baiheng and yingxing together on the guestlist. but it is perfect, to you and jingliu. the rings were crafted by yingxing, inlaid with stones baiheng discovered along the trailblaze. neither of you actually wear them on your fingers due to your jobs, but none other than dan feng gifts the both of you corded red rope to loop the rings through and wear as a necklace. it becomes your greatest treasure, even centuries down the line.

the next few months of your life are calm and routine—until jingliu returns home one day with a teenager, of all things. the boy has long, shaggy, white hair, and curious golden eyes. He reminds you of a cat.

“this is jing yuan,” jingliu introduces to you. “my disciple.”

the boy greets you politely, before jingliu sends him off to an empty room in your home for him to claim as his own. once the boy is out of sight, you turn to jingliu, quirking a brow.

“disciple?”

she nods. “yes. i believe he has potential.”

you only hum at her answer, stepping forward to fix her collar. she lets you fuss, as you always have, and then presses her lips against yours gently, her hands on your waist. “trust me,” she whispers, and you do.

jing yuan fits into your life more easily than you expected. a sharp-witted young man, quick with a blade but even quicker with his words. it isn’t long before you grow fond of him as well—in an almost parental sort of way. before you realise, you start fussing over him the way you fuss over jingliu. it seems you’re not the only one susceptible to jing yuan’s charm, since the newly formed high cloud quintet adore him just as much—baiheng, especially, is delighted to have another little brother figure besides yingxing. jingliu is no exception; the pride in her gaze as she watches jing yuan train is visible to anyone.

nowadays, your home feels fuller. it is no longer just you and hingliu making dumplings—another pair of hands, sometimes even another three appear to help. the dinner table is full more often than not, and there always seems to be more plates in the sink. sometimes you find purple fur on the floor, or the occasional jade-like scale in between your couch cushions. but joy, you learn, is fleeting. nnd no one ever notices it is here until it is gone, ripped from your hands before you can even blink.

jingliu is your first and only love. she is also your first and only heartbreak.

everything you’ve built with jingliu over the course of centuries crumbles in a matter of days. the battle against shuhu is vicious. you can barely even keep up against the constant stream of injured that flood the alchemy commission. you and your colleagues down energising pill after energising pill to stay on your feet and support the xianzhou forces. tet the news from the frontline would nonetheless bring you to your knees.

baiheng, dead. yingxing, cursed. dan feng, imprisoned. and worst of all—

jingliu, mara-struck.

the ten lords commission keep her under strict watch in a holding cell. you barely have the time to visit, what with the number of patients that demand your attention. jing yuan is the one who visits her, by his authority as the new arbiter general. he speaks to you when he can, updates you on her condition—but you’ve treated enough cases to know when something is bad, even if jing yuan tries to assuage you with purposefully vague wording.

she barely recognises you when you approach her. her beautiful ruby eyes are covered by a ragged, black cloth. thick, metal bindings encircle her wrists and restrain her arms behind her back. you call her name, quietly, gently, trying your hardest to stifle the tremble in your voice. sometimes, there is a flicker of recognition. most of the time, there is nothing.

you return to an empty house. it’s so, so cold, and your bed is far too big. you hold tightly to your ring, praying that jingliu be spared this fate. but the aeon does not listen.

because no more than a few months later, jingliu breaks free from her confinement, and rampages across the luofu. smoke chokes the air as ice and frigid wind sweeps across the epicenter that is jingliu. but instead of running away, you run towards her. the ice seems to part and melt before you as you run. you need to see her.

instead, all you witness is the majesty of the lightning lord, as he strikes down your beloved.

nothing remains of jingliu. they find no body, not even any remnants of armor or personal effects. after that, they strike her name from every record for her dishonor. all her achievements, her victories—erased. as if she never existed. you are forced to resign as cauldron master in shame, with your apprentice dan shu taking your place.

you feel… nothing. only a pervasive, parasitic emptiness spreading through your entire being. you spend your days in a bed in a guest room—you can’t bring yourself to set foot in the room you once shared with her. the kitchen lies deserted. you barely feel hunger or thirst, or any sort of sensation. and yet, you keep living. your cells respire and your lungs draw breath, and your heart still thumps in your chest—even as your soul rots and decays.

the only thing—or person, rather—that stirs you now somewhat is jing yuan. he has lost everyone too, this general who will always be that curious-eyed boy to you. you do your best to pick yourself up; if not for yourself, then for him.

(but jing yuan knows. he sees it in your eyes, the truth of the matter. the guilt that gnaws at you, that compels you to keep fussing over him.

you think that caring for him will help you atone for the way you failed jingliu. he wants to tell you that his master would’ve never thought such a thing. but he doesn’t, and lets you mother him all the same.

he needs this too.)

jing yuan appoints you as his personal healer, even as his advisors protest. they question your ability—after all, how could a good healer not even mend the one she loved most?

that moment is the first and last time you ever see jing yuan angry. it fades as quickly as it comes, however, and you are appointed as his personal healer nonetheless. you remain by his side for the next few centuries, watching as he grows more and more into the role of the general. the pain of your loss doesn’t heal—not fully, at least, but it scabs over.

still, you can’t help the ache in your chest when jing yuan approaches you one day, a young boy at his heels.

“this is my disciple, yanqing,” he introduces. the boy has flaxen hair, and expressive amber eyes. there’s a fire in them, a determination that you remember seeing in a pair of ruby ones. he greets you, politely and a little shyly.

it’s a painfully familiar scene, and the best you can manage is a wordless smile.

yanqing becomes another target of your fussing soon enough. he squirms when you check him over for injuries, insisting that he’s fine. the boy is incorrigibly stubborn. but in the end, he is still a boy. his enthusiasm, unmarred by grief and loss, brings a liveliness to your monotone life. you can’t help but sneak a few more extra strales into his pockets for swords when jing yuan isn’t looking.

(but he knows. jing yuan always knows.)

you are not happy, not truly, not without her, never without her, but for now you are content. the boys in your life give you reason enough to keep going.

yet your life turns upside down once more when the stellaron bursts on the luofu. jing yuan keeps you away from the whirlwind of conflict, assigning an elite squad of his knights to guard your house. it makes you curious, but the answer reveals itself to you only a few days after the crisis is resolved.

there, standing amidst the unconscious bodies of the cloud knights supposed to guard you, is none other than the ghost of your beloved.

she’s as beautiful as the day you lost her.

[featherlouise]

The day the Sun went cold

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[necrotic-nephilim]

I started in DC by reading fanfics, but as I began to read actual comics, I started to be unable to read the actual fanfic that got me into it in the first place because it's so out of character.

But there are still some stories that I love to read because I love the found family trope so much, even if it isn't really accurate to the source material.

As a comics purist (sometimes), are there tropes that you like enough that you'll still enjoy a fic even if it's not accurate to canon?

oh my god this is SUCH a fun question. bc while i started with the comics, there were certain characters and/or character dynamics where i was exposed to the fanon before the canon (just bc it's hard to read everything when you start out just to read some fanfic) and so i've definitely experienced the fanon to canon transition. (*especially* with Jason Todd. i had only read 80s/90s stuff where he was already dead or the New-52 bc that was on-going when i got into comics and man. the fanon misunderstandings i had about him before i got frustrated and sat down to read all his pre-Flashpoint stuff were absolutely bonkers.) and aside from that, whilst i tend to prefer canon over fanon, i'm not past giving fanon its flowers for occasionally having really interesting insights. occasionally. so some of my fanon "guilty pleasure" tropes would probably be

Morally Grey Tim Drake - this is one where if you try to back it up with canon, i *will* get salty about it. of everyone in the Batfam aside from maybe Bruce and Cass, Tim has the *most* black and white morals. often his internal conflicts are routed in such an inability to compromise his moral views and it can cause him to clash with other characters. he's *very* stiff and rigid in his beliefs and is *rare* to compromise in even the smallest ways. i mean, DC has repeatedly used Tim Drake of Tomorrow/Savior/Gun Batman!Tim for a reason. it's to demonstrate that of everyone, Tim *cannot* have his morals compromised. there's no grey area for him. he's zero or a hundred, so if he tips over the edge of "too far" he tips *all the way*, and doing so is one of his worst fears, how he could go "too far" if he let himself. a couple panels out of context from Red Robin (2009) (which was a grief spiral for Tim to begin with) don't change that. now that said. if it's done *right*, i sort of love Tim being morally grey in fanfic. it takes a specific flavor for me, and it's incredibly important to include that mental spiral along with it, of him struggling to justify it. i don't have any interest in "Tim Drake is loosy goosy with Bruce's morals and has the highest kill count and no one knows teehee" bc it doesn't play with the interesting parts of making Tim morally grey, which are fracturing his psyche. but all in all, i think it's fun to put Tim in a morally grey area and i will read it in fanfic and i enjoy writing it a lot

Joker Junior!Tim Drake - i've not written it on this account (yet) but on my main ao3 account one of my biggest fics surrounds this concept. this is one of those "well *technically* it's canon but only in a specific very divorced from the comics universe and would not work at all in the main timeline" so, i categorize it as fanon in that 95% of fics exploring the concept are not doing so within the Batman Beyond universe, but the main timeline. i just love it. I'll take any excuse to whump Tim, but this concept is so fun. psychologically breaking Tim will always be my favorite pastime. there are so many ways to explore the long-term effects this could have on him, how it could affect the Batfam. i'm not a fan of it being used as a "gotcha" to Jason or Babs' trauma with the Joker to paint Tim as the Ultimate Victim, but it is fun to see how their relationships would be affected by being mutual victims of him. (i have a vague JayTim idea where TIm fully retires from being Robin after being Joker Junior and killing the Joker, making Steph Robin for most of his typical Robin era and Jason still tracks him down out of curiosity bc he wants to know what happened and all. very underbaked but i've got thoughts.)

Renegade/Apprentice of Slade!Dick Grayson - this is another one where yes, this happened *sort of* in canon, but i highly doubt most people writing Renegate!Dick have read or are actually pulling from Nightwing: Renegade. it's just an exploration fo the concept fo Dick being Slade's apprentice and i will always eat it up in any capacity. whether Dick grows up with Slade from a young age, or chooses Slade for whatever reason later in life. it's not anything that works in canon bc it compromises Dick morally (similar to the above with Tim) and therefore will always come across incredibly fanon in most fics. but i can't say i don't enjoy it. it's fun to make Dick a little morally fucked up and see what you can make him under Slade's tutelage.

Jason & Damian Meeting in the League -there's no world where i believe this could work in the canon comics. (maybe in the Young Justice cartoon i suppose, but even then i think it's iffy) i would go as far to say it's wildly unrealistic. i don't see a world where Ra's would let Jason anywhere *near* Damian, bc Jason was Talia's pet project that he didn't approve of. that all said, there's something very interesting about how they *could've* met and them potentially bonding during that timeframe. them being somewhat brotherly during this time because Jason sees Bruce in Damian and sort of latches onto the kid and Damian is full of wonder hearing real stories about Batman and Robin, then that getting violently ripped away by Jason leaving the League is fun to me. it's fun how that could affect them within the Batfam and all. it's super fanon to me, but i do not care. i will eat it up

Bad Dad Clark Kent/Good Dad Lex Luthor - i will admit as a late, i've been less and less kind to this particular fanon bc of everything i've argued with people about, *this* one seems the most pervasive as misunderstood fanon. i don't mind when fanon exists, my gripe is when ppl try to claim it's canon. and the *arguments* i've had over this with people who can never seem to cite an actual comic are... frustrating. but that said, i think there is something fun to this strictly in fanon. the duality of who you expect to accept Kon and who you expect to hurt him being flipped is just sort of fun for the occasional guilty pleasure fic. it can make Kon's internal conflict a bit more interesting. the same goes for the Jon favoritism from Clark, it's not a canon thing (and i rlly wish ppl understood how complicated the timeline of Kon and Jon is and any distance from Clark toward Kon isn't malice, it's that Kon is from a timeline that Clark does not remember in the current canon so Clark just straight up doesn't know the poor kid.) but it's sort of fun to give Kon that complex of being overlooked and forgotten sometimes. making Kon just a *bit* more Luthor than Kent will *always* appeal to me in fanfic, especially if he *knows* it's wrong but craves approval from anyone who will give it.

Good Dad Bruce Wayne - i'll die on the hill Bruce is canonically a shitty father. maybe not to the extreme some people write him as, but he's not great at it. that said, i enjoy it in fanfiction. sometimes, i just want silly fluff or hurt/comfort where Bruce finally gets it right and manages to comfort whatever Batkid is in the fic. one of my favorite fics of all time is hinged on Bruce being a good dad, so i think it's just fun to explore how good the relationships *could* be, if Bruce was slightly less of an asshole. i usually prefer him as an asshole, but there are times i want low stakes nonsense.

Gotham Rogues Having Soft Spots for Robin(s) - just about every Rogue in Gotham has done something absolutely irredeemable, and most of them don't like or care about anyone in the Batfamily. but if there's a fic where one of the Robins inexplicably is sort of close with a Rogue and they have a cute silly relationship out of it? I'll eat it up i fear. Steph and the Riddler are besties? I'll believe it. Tim and Scarecrow get along pretty well? give me ten of these. Rogues protecting Robins just hits a spot. the unexpected nature of the relationship, as well as the fact they see each other regularly, can make a lot of good fodder.

[un-pearable]

as true as the jokes about “everyone wants to rewrite ninjago” are i feel like smthn people forget when complaining about the inconsistencies of the show is that…. it wasn’t planned? it’s not like most other animated shows lately - it didn’t start with a deeply fleshed out world or a meticulously designed pitch bible with grandiose plans for a long-term story or character arcs. the ninja don’t originally get their powers from heredity because they weren’t hereditary powers yet. the magic system doesn’t make sense bc they literally just made it up as they went! they go back and forth on stuff like whether non-elementals can learn spinjitzu bc it’s a collaborative piece of media made by people with vastly different levels of control over the story, the animation, the sets, etc. that varied over the course of the series. it’s totally understandable and exciting to see so many people reworking the early stuff with the lore and logic later seasons introduced but i personally feel that… if you’re doing that. you need to understand why the show is like that instead of writing it off as being bad and shitty. it was working with what it had. it’s only what it is now because of that awkward troubleshooting phase, not in spite of it

[aardvaark]

expanding on that post about sophie devereaux backstories, grift ones and real ones and the things in between:

a year or two after they meet, tara and sophie are somewhere near drunk in a hotel room after a con, high heels thrown against the wall, dresses unzipped and halfway off. tara asks for her Story. the Story. and maybe she wouldn’t have asked if she were sober or maybe tara is simply a little too bloody brave sometimes, a little too determined.

so sophie tells her about a father in the military, a mother who died young, a family that moved houses, towns, regions, countries, all the time growing up. about lying to impress kids at every new school. about desperately doing almost anything to fit in for the months or year she’d stay in that area. about sweet talking her way out of a few little crimes here and there, cash that she would certainly never steal from her rich friends’ parents’ wallets, some driving rules she broke when she was too young to even have a license, yet old enough for a cop to encourage her flirting. sophie tells tara that her father died when she was 19, and the grief had led to recklessness. she made a mistake on a too-ballsy grift. she would’ve gone to jail. instead, she faked her death (for the first of many times) and never looked back. it’s the only funeral of hers that she didn’t attend.

and then, tara told her an equally untrue Story in return.

when sophie is duchess charlotte prentiss, her husband william asks far too many questions about her past. of course, charlotte has a Story. all of her aliases have Stories, even the ones she only uses for a day - they all have birthdays, childhood pets, first kisses, people they love. so she tells him that her parents died in a car crash when she was 16 and instead of going into the foster system, the authorities figured she was old enough to become an emancipated minor. she tells him how it was difficult at times, incredible at others, and sad and exciting and embarrassing and bittersweet. she weaves a damn good tale about charlottes life, if she may say so herself - one that’s just painful enough for william to stop asking questions. it works perfectly. but when she tucks astrid into bed that night, and the little girl looks up at her with big round eyes and asks if ‘charlotte’ misses her mummy and daddy and says that she’s sad for ‘charlotte’ because she knows what it’s like to miss a mama… sophie freezes. there’s a lump in her throat and goosebumps on her skin. she blinks down the tears and recovers just enough to fake a smile and kiss astrid’s forehead as she leaves the room. lying has never hurt like this before. it takes all her strength to shut it down, shove the emotions in some tiny box in her head that she simply refuses to acknowledge. she decides, then, that she has to leave this house as soon as possible.

the charlotte Story is one of many that hardison finds. it’s inevitable, when he has to cover all their tracks so thoroughly, that hardison would stumble upon various old aliases. he only learns about the charlotte one from the job in england - there’s no links between her and sophie, but he destroys a decent amount of excess duchess charlotte prentiss information just in case, and then looks for any other mysterious women who happened to pop up or vanish around that time. he notices that there are some things that all of sophie’s aliases share: their parents are dead, they have no siblings, and their life changed dramatically somehow in their mid-to-late teens (usually with those parents’ deaths, or gaining an inheritance, or moving far away). he knows that these are all pretty standard, convenient details for a fake identity. but he wonders, sometimes. couldn’t she have made up dead siblings? estranged but alive parents? a dramatic event in her early childhood or in her twenties? he doesn’t know if the consistent parts mean anything. he doesn’t ask for her Story - not outright, at least. though for the first couple months of knowing her, he does sometimes enquire about little things here and there. did she grow up with sisters, what was her high school like - that sort of stuff. information is his thing, sue him! sometimes sophie just smiles. sometimes she answers, and he eventually learns that her truths, at least, are very much relative. when he decides that she is family - which is pretty early on, to be honest - he also decides not to ask anymore. he destroys old aliases when necessary, but he never reads more than he has to. he loves sophie and that is enough.

eliot never asks anything about her life. not even the innocent, casual, unthinking questions that sophie is used to from other people: where’d you grow up? did you ever have any pets? i always had to share a room with my sister, what about you? eliot clearly avoids asking her any of it. she’s somewhat surprised by that. sure, he’s polite, but he’s also suspicious both by nature and due to certain unfortunate experiences, so she sort of expected him to interrogate her when they first met.

one night, they’re the last two left at nate’s apartment. even nate had gone to bed and left them there, long given up on shooing his team out at appropriate times. sophie’s been drinking tea and flipping through a latvian phrase book to refresh her memory for tomorrow’s grift, and apparently that 90-minute-a-day sleep schedule allows for eliot to be doing one-handed push ups in the living room at this ungodly hour. too tired to retain any more information, sophie studies eliot instead. he’s a straightforward guy. she decides to be straightforward too. she breaks the silence of the apartment and simply asks - is he ever curious about her Story? eliot pauses a moment. looks her in the eye, quiet. doesn’t brush her off gruffly like she thought he might. instead, he asks if she’s ever curious about What He’s Done. that is answer enough for the both of them. they don’t talk for the rest of the night, each going back to their own activities, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable. on the contrary - the mutual understanding ends up solidifying their relationship.

nate isn’t always so intensely careful about his questions like eliot. well, actually, there were many times back in his insurance days that he very much did ask her questions on purpose. and of course, for five years, he asks after her real name. sophie generally thinks of it as a fun game. she smiles at his useless determination and teases him when he comes back from jail. after a while, though, she realizes that the questions about her Story mostly stopped when leverage formed, and stop completely once he proposed. nate never hears any version of her Story. she’s here now, and that’s all he needs or wants to know - just like how sophie is her real name in any way that matters.

the moment that sophie realizes this is the moment she stops caring about the real Story, the burden of the secret and the guilt and shame of keeping it from her newfound family. in that moment, she understands that what happened back then is just a small drop in the ocean, irrelevant to the life she’s built and come to love. she never tells them the story, and she never needs to.

[thornaelle]

A portrait of my Pathfinder character Sabella's current mental state. She's having A Time.

▸ Everything she thought she knew about her life was a lie. ▸ Her great-grandfather is not just dealing with a fiends, he is one. He's a Rakshasa, has probably been several of her ancestors through reincarnation or impersonation, and he wants her to come home and be a good little pawn, sorry, grand-daughter. He particularly wants her back now he knows she can change her form and hide that she's a tiefling. ▸ But she wasn't actually born visibly a tiefling! Her older brother Cesare was though, and that was deemed unacceptable because they needed a respectable face for the family heir and not one that openly advertised that they had been dealing with fiends. Their second born, however, could be safely kept out of sight until they could find a way to permanently hide her fiendish blood too. So their heritages were swapped via horrible transmutation magic involving a painting stretched over a frame of magically re-shaped ribs, which has been hanging in her bedroom most of her life :) ▸ Totally unrelatedly hahaha; She's missing a rib! Cesare is probably missing one too :) It's fine, it probably contributes to her ridiculous acrobatics modifier she's real bendy :) :) It's fine :) Or could that be the ancestry involving a creature know for having wierd joints? Certainly no-one's looking at the way she moves with new eyes at all hahahahaaa :) ▸ Her parents may have been trying to protect her all her life which meant pushing her away and making her want to leave. Real shitty way to discover your parents might not actually hate you, might in fact love and want you very much. ▸ AND her dad has "business dealings" with the Azarketi ambassador, of the kind that mean they light up when they're in the same room and her mother is really pissed off. Is your family life not complicated enough already, dad??? ▸ Everything is Fine. ▸ :) :) :|

She's quite looking forward to getting to go and hit things that are completely unrelated to her fucked up family. (I am having a great time. Sabella may be in the middle of a nervous breakdown.)

[sionisjaune]

brocedes stepford wife type marriage. could be het, or not

i love your fics btw!

Not really stepford wives but robot nico???

"I've updated his language model and increased his audio processing speed," says Lewis, gesturing at the cracked-open shell of electronics on the table. It doesn't really look like Nico now, but as soon as his circuits get stuffed back inside where they're supposed to be and his titanium ribs are snapped shut, he'll look just like the boy Lewis followed to MIT when he was eighteen years old. He's not nearly as smart, or as funny, or as insufferable, but he seems to charm his customers just the same.

"And what is your progress on removing the accent?" says Toto. "I understand modelling a convincing human voice can be difficult but--"

"Zero percent progress," says Lewis. "I'm not doing it, just like I'm not designing a fucking companionship mode, because he is a state of the art robotic assistant, and not a robot girlfriend."

"At the going price," says Toto, arms crossed, "you could double your revenue by adding a companionship mode."

"He can affect politeness. That's the best I'll do."

Toto throws his hands in the air. "Frankly, I don't understand your hang-ups about AI companionship. It's the done thing now, and your models are the best on the market. You could change the game, if you weren't so--"

"I said no," says Lewis.

Toto lifts an eyebrow. "I suppose your gifts are reserved just for you? Your prototype--" He points in the direction of other robot-Nico, the prototype Lewis is always tinkering with, sitting placidly on a rather avant-garde armchair in the corner of the lab. "--behaves awfully affectionately, don't you think?"

Lewis frowns, assessing proto-Nico's idle seat. The cycle of his breath is so natural Lewis could almost be fooled into thinking he was real, if he didn't feel the swell of pride in his chest at the fact that he made proto-Nico, made him almost as good as the real thing. "He's experimental. Not--not ready for the market."

Toto crosses his arms, assessing. "I'm sure."

[ceiling-karasu]

World Building continued: Backstory for the wars involving Flower Hill, Teikoku, and Usuhan Jiyeog, and subsequent occupations.

Apologies in advance for this being so long. I wanted to know how widespread Japanese weasels are in real life, and found something interesting I could use.

Japanese weasels originate from three areas of Japan, that being Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku.

Coincidentally, Japan famously has three Ceremonial Regalia in the form of a sword, magatama beads, and a mirror. These items are not seen by anyone other than the royal family and certain priests (images on the internet are recreations of what they could possibly look like, and those seen in public are symbolic stand-ins), but they symbolize the authority of the royal family.

Which allows me to make a backstory for my AU to help explain the wars and occupations, very loosely based off of events and locations in history, especially since animal biology limits certain events from happening.

In the past, there was an Emperor, who preferred for Teikoku to be in isolation. Under his rule, and of those before him, are smaller prefectures run by princes, lords, or other lessor royal families.

Contact with the United States Alliance and other nations led to a period of aggression and imperialism surrounding the empire of Teikoku, as they strove to fight against a stagnating economy that believed in its own superiority in the world, as well as a strict caste system preventing innovation.

Eventually, after some time, three princes are sent out to conquer the final few neighboring islands, so that may join the empire, and provide a larger force for when they make a move for the peninsula and the mainland.

The three princes are named after their prefectures, and the Emperor has given them each one of the Imperial Regalia as proof of their superiority.

The Sword

Honshu is the main island of Japan, and is also known as the dragonfly island. Teikoku will call it Tonbo, which refers to dragonflies, which are fierce and deadly creatures. As such, their Imperial Regalia is the sword, Yūki no ken (the sword of valor), and is based off of Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (Grass-Cutter). Tonbo is the main physical fighting force of Teikoku.

The Magatama Jewels

Kyushu is smaller than Honshu, but it had a lot of trade circuits around the ocean and the mountains. So I will make a prefecture named Kairo (Circuit), and have the area be responsible for trade and roads around the empire, as well as in the fighting forces. I would use the famous Magatama jewels (Benevolence) to symbolize their rule.

The Mirror

Shikoku means four provinces, and is the least populated area of the three areas. Shikoku also has a lot of temples (perhaps run by green pheasants, the national symbol of Japan), which draws in a lot of pilgrims. But they also maintain a lot of gateways to other prefectures. So maybe Genkan for entryway. They are responsible for planning and strategizing for the other two. They can have the Michi no kagami, mirror of the path to represent wisdom/truth, based on the Yata no Kagami.

VERY loosely taking inspiration from The Tale of the Heike, a collection of Japanese epic poetry with many translations and retelling (actually written down 200 years after said events supposedly happened), which says that the royal families that held these Regalia were defeated in a naval battle, and threw themselves and the treasures into the sea. Subsequent legends suggest that many search and diving parties have been led to recover the Regalia.

In my AU, I hold that the items were thrown into the sea, with the princes believing that they could return for them later even if they were captured, although they managed to escape. It was a complete disgrace for the Emperor, as without the Ceremonial Regalia, the legitimacy of the entire palace was thrown into question.

And then the box holding the Magatama washed up on the shores of the peninsula.

It is returned as a gesture of good will, but as no good deed goes unpunished, Teikoku believes that they must have taken the other Imperial Regalia for themselves, starting a land invasion. The small army is annihilated by farmers, fresh out of overthrowing their own monarchy, wielding guns, which Teikoku has never seen before.

Which results in a larger army being sent, which is also defeated and the princes captured and possibly executed by the hedgehog army in the north of the country. At this point, without the authority of the Ceremonial Regalia, and increasing economical desperation, the country is forced to undergo a reformation. While there is still an Emperor, he does not hold as much political power as he once did.

Teikoku left behind settlements of soldiers and colonists controlling the southern portion of the peninsula, which they name Usuhan Jiyeog, who take up ruler-ship and fish farming.

The hedgehogs use the proof of their power in defending their areas to take control of what they would name Flower Hill.

It is a strongly held belief that before they backed away from Usuhan Jiyeog, the Emperor promised that anyone who managed to retrieve the Ceremonial Regalia from Flower Hill would be reinstated as the next emperor, and be rewarded with power beyond their wildest dreams.

Did the other two, heavier, items, even wash up on the shores of the peninsula like the jewels, locked in an airtight box? Or did they sink to the bottom, as they were heavier? Who is to say...

But alongside the greed, desperation for power, and food production issues, the temptation of finding the supposedly stolen Imperial Regalia locked away in some distant stronghold is a good enough reason as any to attempt to occupy Flower Hill.

Now, I'm not about to retcon what I have already written and say that Commander Jogjebi wanted the sword and mirror, and Huinjogjebi is a weasel of science who would likely not be interested anyway. But claiming that Flower Hill stole precious items and symbols of their country in the past, and them not being able to disprove it, is enough of an excuse to make quite a few countries in the international courts turn a blind eye to the happenings surrounding Flower Hill.

Oil Production

I did figure out the oil and gas situation. I did go ahead and give the Jindo Empire a large amount of oil. The Venezuela country below the United States Alliance is now the República de Cultivos Oleaginosos, and is trying to prevent the wolves' country from occupying their regions.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the world's oil in my AU is being produced in this country.

While it used to be many different nations in the past, the leaders understood that their vast oil and gas reserves would result in large scale invasions, and agreed to band together into the Equatorial Allegiance.

[sysig]

The brainworms are winning, clearly (Patreon)

[ofj-art]

pocket sized

[lornteeleaf]

Commander Week: Day 1 Race

Iowey Lorn was human. Had been human, all her life. Growing-up-in-Divinity's-Reach human. Every-day-at-the-Shrine-of-the-Six human. Praying-to-Lyssa human.

Praying. For her mother to serve Lyssa well. For her to serve the godess well. For the gods to make her mother whole again, not sick by her own making. To not have to gather her mother up at the tavern tonight. For her mother to at least be able to walk still. Thats what she prayed for as a child.

For the other children to stop pointing at her and laughting. For her bones to stop hurting, her bones and the flesh around it and the skin. For the tears in her skin to fade, not be so deep red and purple anymore. For her shoulders to finally even out. For the other teens to stop calling her an Ettin, waiting for a second head to sprout.

Only some thing she prayed for came true.

The stretch marks faded, now only faintly blue and shimmering like expensive gossamer. It would take years for her bones to stop hurting eventually, and even far into adulthood she would feel the ghost of the well known pain, her body reminding her of their struggle. Her shoulders still hurt the most, even as they had come to the same hight.

The other teenagers and children stopped calling her an Ettin. They still called her a freak, but she got used to that as well. Iowey felt like a freak, when she stood 6 feet tall in her 16th year. She would grow another foot after. But in her 16th year it was, that her best friend, Jessica, blond and bright and ever by her side, came home from the Durmand Hall with a new book.

She meant well, not mocking Iowey, just wanting to help her find an answer, when she put the book down in front of her. »I found it today. Thought you might want to look at it.« her voice was kind and soft as always. As she went downstairs, taking on their shared shift at her fathers Tavern, Iowey opened up the flimsy paper backing of the book. 'A dissertation on the crossbreeding of humanoid species.' She flipped it shut. This could not be real. Just the possibilities that this title spawned into her mind made her stomach drop. With shaking hands she opened it again, and started reading. Just a few sentences each page, until she picked something up that sounded helpfull.

'The possibility of human and norn compatibility.'

She read further. The author thought it possible.

More and more of her mothers drunken rambling returned to her, long pushed away into dark corners of her mind. Giada Lorn hadn't had the best relationship to her godess, but she had always spoken fondly of her travel through the Shiverpeaks, trying to find even the farthest human settlements and bring Lyssas blessing to them. It had been Lyssa that send her there, through a dream. At least that was what she had slurred into Ioweys ear, more them once, recounting the one moment her godess had reached out directly. Only she had spared the details. When Iowey had dared to ask questions, Giada had gotten silent quickly and cold as ice.

Iowey knew little about her mothers travels. But she knew that she had been born somehwere north of Hoelbrack, over two years into Giadas travel and only few weeks before she returned to the human city.

Her father had never been a topic to speak of. The once she had asked, a bottle broke. She didn't dare ask a second time. But now, a thought crept into her mind. What of she was not just a freakish creature? What if her spine that was too long, her shoulders which were too broad, were simply too long and too broad for a human? What if they were a perfectly fine size for a Norn?

The author of the book in front of her not only thought it possible, they had proof. They mentioned subjects of their study, people like her, at home on the edges of the Siverpeaks, where human and Norn populations mixed. there was a list of attributes, higher strenght, higher tolerance for cold, difficulties in growth, the adverse shape of bodies. Difficulties in fertility too, though that was not of interest to Iowey.

She closed the book and showed it under her pillow. The others would still think her a freak. But she knew better now. Her feet were not too large anymore, as she ran down the creaky stairs to join Jessica behind the bar.

[lesbianraskolnikov]

i almost finished the first part heres my thought: theyre so mean to the little gay boy.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

long story short at some point in a few thousand words vaniah and anneka adopt a child unexpectedly. name ideas for her please??

[memento-morri-writes]

It's been well over a week now (maybe two??) but I'm still plugging away (ever-so-slowly) at this vignette about Zara and Rook. Zara's POV is a lot of fun to write, now that I have a better sense of her character. Writing this has really solidified in my mind the kind of person she is and how she acted when she was Rook's captain and mentor. She's very calm and collected in comparison to Rook, even when under a lot of stress.

Anyways, have a little snippet that I'm proud of from today, featuring the origins of the coin trick!

Pacing back and forth across her cabin floor, she rolled the coin back and forth over her knuckles again and again. The motion was easy, almost mindless, more muscle memory than real intent. The coin trick had been her favorite way to soothe her nerves for years now. She’d picked it up out of idle curiosity after watching a street performer dining in a tavern in Bon Largo, who had chatted with her for over an hour as she fretted about something mundane, never once dropping the coin from their fingers. The same performer had later tried to steal her coin purse and ended up with nothing but a new scar for their trouble, but Zara had learned two important things from the encounter: Not to trust a warm smile and a pretty face, and that keeping her hands moving kept her mind from dwelling too much on worrisome things.

one-time tagging @space-writes because they commented on my tags about Rook learning the coin trick from Zara in one of my other snippets from this piece.

[spacedace]

Okay, finished Death and the Maidens and uh, yeah. Everything I saw that said it was fucking terrible was right. Absolutely hated it. -10000/10.

There was exactly 3 things about all of that I liked:

The concept of Nyssa as Talia's older half sister that's been running around doing humanitarian efforts for centuries (and literally nothing else about her backstory because holy fucking shit what).

The single moment of Talia being happy and enjoying herself and briefly vulnerable and open about how she doesn't have many friends (could have truly been some great character moment stuff in something else)

Alfred's sass.

That's it. That was everything I enjoyed about that story line. What the absolute fuck did I just read?

Anyway, uh. I'm gonna take the 3 things I liked about the story, try to scrub the memory of literally everything else, and work out what I would have liked to see happen with Nyssa & Talia instead and figure out how to incorporate that into a fic.