#that’s crazy imagine being the town that they made up bumfuck for

[bright-and-burning]

also i’m realizing i should’ve made a diff priv twitter when i got Really into f1 bc now i am walking the fine line of being normal abt f1 to my . ~120 irls (including a few regular degular f1 fans) vs talking truly nonsense abt f1

in other news i saw a QT on a video of charles and his gf that was like. “i’m in bumfuck europe studying with greasy hair and she’s getting driven around monaco in a ferrari” and i burst out laughing bc my first thought was that they were calling all of europe bumfuck and my second thought was monaco… is in europe…

[lunartadpole]

When Eddie was younger, he loved exploring the woods.

It was an escape at first, from the school that didn't understand him, the assholes that tormented him, the wretched town that hated him. In the woods, it was quiet. Peaceful. He liked looking up into the trees, their branches arm-like stretching out to touch the skies. He liked dipping his feet in the river's crystal water, letting the fish swim past like an army. He liked listening to the birds sing their songs of joy. He liked climbing the mountain rocks, sitting atop them like a king on a throne. By the time he was 10, he had memorised every tree, rock and river the forest had to offer.

But his favourite place, by far, is the overgrown pavilion in the clearing. There's a pond there, lush with frogspawn, and rows upon rows of unkempt wild flowers. The small structure in the center of it is ivy covered. Eddie likes to lay on the grass and listen to the music of the woods, the winds, the birds, the pond, and just breathe. He goes there as often as possible. Because it's the only place he feels like he can truly be himself.

And because of the very handsome statue he's become enamoured with.

Eddie discovered him by accident; when he was 14 and had just discovered the clearing. The poor thing was covered in a blanket of moss inside the broken pavilion. Eddie spent all day scraping it off, determined to unveil what was hidden underneath, and he was not disappointed.

A man made of marble, carved intricate and delicate, sculptured like the Greek Gods themselves, frozen a sword in one hand and the other outstretched, reaching for something that has long disappeared. He took his time admiring the details in the stone. It's odd that something so exceptionally beautiful has just been abandoned in the woods of Bumfuck, Indianna, but Eddie doesn't question much. Not when he gets to look at the man's fine figure. He makes a point of visiting the clearing every day.

The years go by like that. Every day, come hell or high water, Eddie traverses through the woods to the clearing where he's met with the company of his marbled man. Sometimes, Eddie reaches out to touch him and gets disappointed when his fingertips are met with the cold, hard feeling of marble. The statue looks so soft, real, he forgets it's just stone. In the clearing, he sits for hours, talking. An onlooker might think him crazy, a boy talking to a statue, but there's something about the thing that makes Eddie feel like he's listening. Eddie swears he sees a ghost of a smile on that beautiful, pale face - that's when he knows it's time to go home.

He doesn't tell anyone of this little routine. Eddie tells himself it's because sparing himself the teasing he'll surely endure when his friends, or god forbid the kids, find out about his little - read; massive - crush on a statue. But the little voice buried deep in the back of his head revels in the fact that he has something to keep all to himself. Something that is undeniably his. It's a ritual, it's his, and it doesn't harm anyone. So who needs to know?

Then, one summer day in early July when Eddie is 20, things change. His small crush grew into the closest thing Eddie has ever felt to love and after years and years of pining, obsessing, over a piece of stone, he decides he can do it no more. So he takes his last steps into the clearing, his legs working on muscle memory as he makes his way inside the pavilion as he recites the speech he's been preparing this whole way in his head. He scoffs at how his heart sinks with each step. The statue's face is as pale and still as ever when Eddie faces it. Not for the first time he longs to run his fingers through its hair, imagining how soft it would feel on his fingertips had it been real.

"This is it," he begins, trying his best to keep his face stern. It feels like a breakup, he thinks and then he hates himself for thinking that. It's just stone! "Listen, these past few years have been great. Fantastic, actually. The best part of my life. But- I can't see you anymore. Because every time I lay eyes on you I fall deeper in love and I-" he laughs, cruel, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Jesus Christ, what am I saying? You're stone! You're not real!"

"Sometimes, I actually think you can hear me. Is that crazy? I come here and I tell you about me, and my life, and I pause after every sentence just incase you respond. You never do though, obviously." Eddie pauses, hopefully, like, if he wills it enough, this time he'll get a response.

The statue says nothing. Eddie huffs, a pathetic expulsion of air. "Maybe I am crazy."

The sun's setting and Eddie knows it's time for him to go. "Goodbye, my marble man." And still, he lingers. He finds himself wrapping his arms around the statue's neck, eyes glued to those perfect lips. Oh well, he thinks, he's been crazy all these years, what's one more moment of crazy?

It's silly but he didn't know what to expect when he pressed his lips against the statue's. Coldness? Stillness? Disappointed? Whatever it was, Eddie is sure it wasn't to have the kiss reciprocated. Nor would he have ever thought that an arm would wrap around his waist at the sounds of a sword clattering as it hit the ground.

Frightened, Eddie pulls back. He's met with the kindest pair of brown eyes, sparkling with joy, and the biggest smile he's ever seen. Eddie thinks he's about to pass out when the statue reaches out to gently caress his cheek and says, so very softly, "Don't go."

[thespiralgrimoire]

I. NEED. TO. LEARN. MORE. ABOUT. FERRO's. UNIVERSE. Like are you kidding me? Fuego and Leo pulled a coup and killed every non-vermillion??! that's, wow, that's rich!! What's the heck is wrong with /THAT/ timeline? What about Asta's story there? the elves? the devils? Fuego really killed everyone? including NOZEL? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!

OH MY GOD ANON YOU’VE MADE MY ENTIRE DAY

HONESTLY this AU is underdeveloped because of the way it came to fruition in the first place, so nothing would make me happier but to make it a collaborative fandom project but here’s everything I’ve got on it

Under a Read More because it might get lengthy

First, a disclaimer: This AU was born out of a dream. I had a dream about a plucky teenager participating in a Magic Knight’s exam that was designed more like The Hunger Games, and when I woke up, I said to myself, I gotta get in on that. So that’s why some of the details of this AU are a little fucky. Dream logic.

Now, the inciting event for this AU is twofold: First, Acier lives. SECOND, her sister, Kirsch and Mimosa’s mother, dies giving birth to Mimosa.

Sister’s death completely breaks down any bond between the Vermillions and the Silvas. It’s just. Messy. A lot of finger pointing, a lot of people not handling things well. Because while the Silvas were taught from a young age to bottle up their feelings, Vermillions tend to use their feelings as a weapon. And relations go south fast.

Acier has still been training Meoroleona. Nozel and Fuegoleon have still been rivals. But when this happens, everyone is forced to pick a side. Acier and Meoroleona don’t end their relationship on bad terms, but they do end it. Nozel and Fuegoleon’s relationship swiftly turns hostile. In hindsight, nobody is happy about the way things went down, but at this point there’s a No Man’s Land to civility that nobody is willing to cross, and nobody will cross it.

The Vermillions have the roughest time with this, but unlike the way the Silvas handled Noelle, nobody actually blames Mimosa for her mother’s death. They turn their grief into what they see as righteous fury and determine to turn this into a “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” situation. This takes different forms over the years, but what basically happens is that everyone internalizes these feelings so deeply that while they all grow stronger, they also sort of grow apart.

Fuegoleon and Meoroleona have a blowout that completely shakes House Vermillion, and when Meoroleona leaves, she vows to never come back. No one believes that she would actually stay away, what with how close Fuego and Meoro were as kids, but when she leaves, she leaves. They see her once a year TOPS, and it’s never for a happy reason.

Fuegoleon, who has let his anger completely isolate him from the rest of his family, throws himself into being the Crimson Lion King, and while he’s incredibly successful, he loses parts of himself along the way. His ambitions override his caring nature and his inclination to share his strengths with others, and he becomes cold and determined, with a methodical outlook on relationships.

Leopold doesn’t become so callous-- he wasn’t old enough to remember his aunt’s death, he just had to grow up in the aftermath of it --but he follows in his brother’s footsteps, and while he’s not as mean about the way he does it, he’s not afraid to make some harsh decisions if it means being the best.

Kirsch and Mimosa decide that the best way to deal with this is to keep their heads down. Kirsch is fiercely protective of his little sister, because even though nobody is blaming Mimosa, he can’t shake the feeling that she may still have a target on her back. This makes Mimosa jumpy and clingy, never really developing the confidence to be her own person. While she can’t really nail down a particular reason for it, she’s scared of Fuegoleon and doesn’t trust Leopold. She can’t help but wonder how her cousins in House Silva are doing, but knows that all hell would break loose if she actually sought them out, so she feels constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place; the living embodiment of a schism between the royal houses.

The Silvas, on the other hand, go the other direction. Acier is still here, and she’s not letting her family rip itself apart like it did in canon. She remains the captain of the Silver Eagles and well-respected. Her kids have an even easier ride to the top with her still there to pave the way. She misses Meoroleona terribly. She knows that none of this was fair to any of them, and losing her sister AND her star pupil is a lot to work through. She keeps thinking that eventually she’ll get a letter or a surprise visit from the Undefeated Lioness, but she never does.

Nozel is genuinely heartbroken to have lost his rival and best friend, and, consequently, be left in the dust when he can’t keep up with Fuegoleon’s ambition, but he’s still got his mother and three little siblings, so they become his whole life. Without Fuegoleon’s rivalry to spur him on, he becomes good but not great, and is content to coast. He’s a mama’s boy, and as long as his mother is satisfied, he’d rather read and organize missions than go on them. On the bright side, he doesn’t deal with 90% of the stress he deals with in the canon universe. He’s actually pretty happy most of the time.

Nebra ends up being the classic middle sibling. Her magic is nothing special, but she’s a Silva, so she can go with the flow and still come out looking a little better than everyone else. While Nozel would rather spend time with books and Solid and Noelle would rather spend time with each other, she’s a drifter; she can hang with any of her siblings, or her mother, but she’s no one’s first pick. It doesn’t really bother her all that much unless she feels genuinely left out, and Mom never forgets about her, so it’s all good.

Solid and Noelle are thick as thieves, and the Silver Eagles’ superstars. They bring out the worst of each other and have a great time doing it. They’re a dynamic duo on the battle field and harbor unfathomable chaotic energy off of it. Getting sucked into their gravitational pull is dangerous, so Nebra, Nozel, and Acier tread lightly, lest they get dragged into, or end up the victim of their shenanigans. Of all combinations of Silva duos, they are by far the closest. Totally ride or die. That doesn’t mean that they don’t drive each other absolutely batshit crazy, and have some HUGE blowouts that waterlog half the castle, but that’s what siblings do. The nice thing about having each other is that neither of them end up in their siblings’ or mother’s shadows. The not nice thing about that is that they’re just. Little shits. Imagine Noelle acting the way she does in the beginning of the series, but being sincere about it. Imagine Solid acting the way he does, except he’s never checking to see if he’s got his siblings’ approval. Now imagine them patting each other on the back for acting like that. Yikes.

Then Ferro comes along. He’s the result of Solid knocking up his unnamed noble girlfriend when he’s 16-17. Acier is PISSED. All the other Silvas are scandalized. Solid is in big trouble. Acier suspends him from the Silver Eagles while she does damage control. What she eventually ends up doing is paying the girl off, and when the baby is born, she takes him into House Silva to raise him in secret. Nobody outside House Silva ever knows about him. He is House Silva’s best kept secret. This is an important detail.

The coup comes together. Fuegoleon has been working on this plan for a long time. Years. Leopold is on board, because Leopold would follow him off a cliff. But he’s also scared shitless. This is a much bigger deal than stepping on a few comrades to rise through the ranks. He slips a little. Kirsch catches wind of the plan. He gets in Leo’s and Fuego’s ear to remind them, hey, we’re Vermillions, too. So we’re cool, right?

Yeah, they’re cool. All they have to do is help their cousins kill everyone whose last name isn’t Vermillion. Kirsch thinks this is a pretty good deal to save him and his sister. Mimosa will later have her doubts, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Meoroleona was invited, but never shows up.

We’re about at the beginning of the show when the coup begins. I don’t have a good reason that it goes off as smoothly as it does. But everyone in Houses Kira and Silva dies, except Acier and Ferro. Ferro, now two, manages to watch his entire family get bodied without getting a scratch on him, because no one anticipated him being there. Acier is only able to defend herself and him before sneaking away.

Acier and Ferro flee to the Forbidden Realm, to a little town in bumfuck nowhere, to hide. They are never discovered by the Vermillions.

Fuegoleon becomes the Clover King. As far as they can tell, the coup is 100% successful. But the thing about fire is that it’s super useful for making people really dead, but when people are dying in heaps and being burned to ash it’s kind of hard to count how many bodies you’ve got. They don’t realize that they’re one short. With no one to stand in their way, Fuegoleon crowns himself Clover King. He disbands the Silver Eagles, and within the next few years, will crown himself Wizard King. It actually becomes pretty easy after Julius nerfs himself, whoops.

Unfortunately, Fuegoleon is starting to unravel. He gained a LOT of enemies doing all this heinous shit, and he is not a beloved king. Leopold is now the head of the Crimson Lion Kings, and he’s reporting back a lot of hostility among the captains. Not that they didn’t expect that, but there’s no way to practice sleeping with one eye open. That’s not to mention that the people are scared and confused, and that doesn’t make for a peaceful kingdom.

Over the course of years, he puts greater and greater restrictions on magic. It starts as permits to use spells in public places and soon grows into a near-total ban on grimoires for anyone outside the magic knights. With absolute power, he can kick people out of the magic knights AND take their grimoires. These rules both ease and exacerbate his growing paranoia. Everyone is pissed, but effectively stripped of their power, there isn’t much they can do about it.

Meanwhile, Acier is raising her grandson as a peasant, but never forgets that they’re royals. She teaches Ferro all of their family history, even though they have to keep it a secret. That gets kind of tricky since Ferro has royal-level magic in the middle of a town of peasants, but, you know, who’s gonna call him on it?

When Ferro is ten, he get recruited by a mysterious hooded figure to train his magic in secret. 90% of his magic training happens in a location he is taken to by a spatial mage. He, along with about a dozen other kids, are trained by a small band of mages who claim to be the resistance. Their goal is simple: Train the next generation of mages to take out the king and restore order to the kingdom. Ferro thinks this is pretty cool, and the honor isn’t lost on him, but he’s mostly glad that he can learn to control his magic in a way that makes his grandmother proud.

By the time Ferro is 15, grimoire ceremonies have been almost completely outlawed, so it’s a big deal when the resistance throws their trainees a grimoire ceremony. Once they’ve received their grimoires, they begin the next leg of their journey: become magic knights.

The Magic Knights Entrance Exam has changed a LOT in the last 15 years. This exam is deadly. In many instances, the point is to kill or be killed. Magic knights are being trained as a military force first and foremost, and their most important feature must be that they take orders unblinkingly. This does not fly with Ferro. While he’s extremely qualified for the position in every other way, he’s too nice to let people die, let alone kill them. He fails the exam. However, some of the other kids he’s trained with make it in.

So he needs a new plan. Spurned on by his grandmother and his teachers through the resistance, he decides to travel the Clover Kingdom. In the midst of his travels, Acier dies. At 20 years old, he is now the last Silva.

This fact makes Ferro pretty fatalistic, and at this point he decides the only rational thing to do is to force an audience with King Fuegoleon. Surely this won’t end in disaster. Definitely won’t be his untimely end by flames.

--

So there are a lot of holes in this AU, because it sprang up around this one character I had a wild dream about. A few mores notes:

Noelle joined the Silver Eagles, if that wasn’t obvious

The Vermillion coup takes place 1-2 years after the start of the show, and I have no explanation for how those events could fit into this timeline. They would definitely look a LOT different, that’s for sure

My notes on this end where they do because at the point where Ferro breaks into the royal castle to force this audience with the king, he actually gets thrown out of this universe and into another. So I guess for all intents and purposes, the Silva line ends for good in this universe

I know exactly where Meoroleona is and what she’s doing

I don’t know where exactly Kirsch and Mimosa are and what they’re doing when they disappear

So that’s all I’ve got! This isn’t a super duper happy AU, and definitely not flattering for everyone, but I was forced to flesh it out because I was told, very emphatically, “Evil Vermillions sexy.” I don’t disagree.

[buttercup-blue]

I'm absolutely in love with how open you are about your experiences! Sorry if this is weird in anyway, but did you meet the Boston SD on SA or do you freestyle? He sounds amazing and it'd be great to know there's some good ones in the city cause I sure am only seeing scammers 😂 thanks!

Not weird at all! Yeah, I met him from SA in October of 2015. I started an account without really knowing what I was getting myself into, I was kind of at the end of my rope in life at the time. He was one of the first guys who messaged me on the site. We chatted for a day and then he asked me to get a quick drink before he flew back to Boston for the month.I didn't have time to go home after work to get cute, so I specifically remember sitting with my car parked in a neighborhood adding mascara on top of mascara and convincing myself I wasn't crazy. We met at a low key bar/pub. I sat down at the bar and braced myself for whatever was going to happen. He tapped me on the shoulder and took a seat next to me. I can have a full out conversation with a brick wall so I knew it couldn't be too bad. But he turned out to be really cute and nice. We had quite a candid conversation, he asked me about the site and I naively told him he's one of the first I talked to. He told me some nutso stories about the girls he's met which put me at ease because he had a sense of right and wrong and how these things work. We had two beers then he asked if I wanted to go on a walk. He said he had to fly out that night but he'd be back in a few weeks. He would let me know what day he'd be available and said he'd like to have an arrangement with me. In my head I had no fucking idea what that meant, but okay. We circled back around to my car, he pulled me in and I gave him a nice long kiss. He pushed $300 into my hand and closed the car door for me. After that he'd come to town about once a month and each time he'd just leave money in an envelope (like way more than I could ever imagine at the time) and I wouldn't look at it until I left. We'd usually have a drink at the bar, go upstairs, have sex, talk for about 30 minutes then he'd want to go back to his work so it was super low maintenance. I will say he's the first man to ever pop one of my toes in his mouth though 😂 After he made the full transition to Boston, he'd fly me up about once a month and put me up at the W for the weekend. He'd usually come by once, twice max. One time we actually had a threesome with another SB which was pretty cool in my opinion.We never made the express decision to part ways but we both got really busy and kind of lost interest in the idea. He told me he slowed down on the sugar front because his business is taking off (like massively) when we just chatted. Again, he was funny, smart and handsome. So why be on the site? He told me he just really loves young girls (like early twenties, nothing teen) because he worked his ass off so much in college he never had time to pursue the hot girls. At 39 and with a reputation to protect, he didn't want to be seen courting a 21 year old. So sugaring was excellent for him to keep things under wraps. He also has more money than he fucking knows what to do with so if that's his one vice so be it. He was a pretty simple man otherwise, he wore jeans and sweaters most times we met.Sorry for the rambling reply but I clearly love story telling. Long story short, it doesn't matter if you live in bumfuck Kansas or if you live in Boston. Finding a good SD is like playing Russian Roulette. It takes a lot of intuition and pure luck. I was just lucky he was my first and he showed me the way before I ended up with someone who would take advantage of my naivety. All of my SDs I have met off of SA, but that doesn't mean I haven't dealt with my fair share of douchebags. I think one of my strengths as a SB is that I am very easygoing and naturally pretty (i.e. No surgery, not heavily made up). That's why my SRs mimic real relationships because I come off as a real, sweet girl. I think that's why I generally receive a medium range for allowance/PPM. There's all kinds of SRs. There are girls who look like absolute dreams but come with the territory of being super high maintenance that not every SD wants to deal with. But they also pay out way higher, so there's no one way to approach sugaring. I would just play to whatever your strength is and hopefully POTs take notice of that special characteristic. I can see where the new crop of SBs find freestyling most effective. SA used to be a lot more serious, it wasn't so muddled. Maybe when I move to NYC I'll consider freestyling, but for now I've been fortunate enough to find really great guys. They're out there, try not to get discouraged xx