#there's really no non-concerning way to convey that information though

[tj-crochets]

Crafting update/life update: - managed to bake something! (spiced blondies! I did not take a picture before they were all eaten but they were really good) - Winter Soldier Bear is halfway done! - I've been doing, uh, not great. physically. I'm mostly okay now but it turns out being super stressed while recovering from corticosteroid withdrawal* (from my asthma flare up) combines super poorly with a new anxiety trigger*** and the end result is that I came extremely close to passing out last week****. I did not! But my crafting time and energy have been extremely limited lately because of health issues, and I don't know when that will change.

*I had to go on a short course of steroids** because I had a bad asthma flare up (because a plumbing issue in my house led to mold in the wall. Plumbing is fixed, wall is replaced, I'm all good asthma-wise now) **short courses of steroids, according to Every Doctor I've Ever Talked To, shouldn't cause withdrawal symptoms. Like, should not be possible. I get withdrawal symptoms every single time because of whatever the is wrong with my endocrine system ***got my first "go hide NOW" tornado warning and I gotta say I do not like it. Every thunderstorm makes me panic a bit now. Not great. ****it was not my normal POTS low blood pressure dizziness, it was a narrow pulse pressure issue. Which, again, doctors have told me shouldn't be happening, which is real useful to hear. (narrow pulse pressure is when the top number and the bottom number of your blood pressure are too close together, and it's Bad)

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

I love your translation posts, they give great context to some moments! I’ve seen chapter 348 translated with Toga’s confession as almost being narrated by Bakugou but I’ve also seen it translated as a more generic voice. Is there a correct version?

This is a complicated question, so let me put it this way: while there is less uncertainty in Japanese about who is narrating 348, that doesn't mean there is no uncertainty. In general, I think English audiences are responding with much more scrutiny to something that is not particularly notable in Japanese manga.

We don't have a lot of information about the narrator that refers to Izuku in the third-person. "Midoriya Izuku" is not how Izuku narrated the story when his internal voice was dominant, he always used first-person pronouns to tell "the story of how I became the greatest hero."

In the series, there are inner monologues that convey what the characters are thinking in the moment, and then there is "framing narration." Framing narration positions the story in the past tense, implying a future person is relaying this event with more knowledge about its conclusion than the audience has.

Inner monologues have distinct clarity both in visual cues (who is on-screen) and how they speak.

Ochako's inner monologue during 321 is indisputably Ochako; the opening words are placed over her image, and the Japanese audience is already familiar with the fact that Ochako calls Izuku "Deku-kun" and uses the personal pronoun watashi (私), so when she says "we," it's watashitachi (私たち), pluralizing her own pronoun. If this were Shouto's monologue, we would have had Midoriya and orera (俺ら) or oretachi (俺たち) instead. The audience would have understood the distinction, although the visual cue centering Ochako would feel a little odd, like Shouto is looking to her while thinking this.

Framing narration, of course, has little-to-no visual cuing, so we have to rely on speech patterns, and thus end up with subjective interpretation and predictions.

348's framing narrator uses kare (彼) to refer to Izuku as he. This is not a pronoun we have ever seen Katsuki use for him. Katsuki exclusively refers to Izuku in the third-person with aitsu or soitsu (あいつ or そいつ), both of which mean "that guy" in a rude way consistent with his typical speech pattern.

There is the possibility that the audience is supposed to be surprised by the use of "shitty nerd" following the pronoun kare, because the two contradict each other, and "shitty nerd" is put at the end of the sentence like a zinger. This might imply that, sometime in the future, Katsuki starts using kare for Izuku, and that really would be a shocking change, because it is extremely polite and non-confrontational compared to how he normally talks. I don't think that is what is going on, though, for the following reasons:

In manga, framing devices are not always explained or particularly thought of as noteworthy. Some series use a framing device at the beginning, and then completely abandon it by the end. Some series have very inconsistent framing devices, sometimes due to the intense workload of weekly chapter output and sometimes because the author just wants it that way, and they use the inconsistency as a way to be poetic, develop story themes, or conveniently convey information.

English language media, especially in recent years, has much more strict rules and expectations about framing devices. I don't think Japanese audiences are as concerned about who this narrator is because the expectations are different.

That said, from both a writing standpoint and the experience of the audience, Katsuki's words being brought up in the middle of a love confession is not meaningless. The literal identity of the narrator may not be that important in the end, but what the narrator conveys is absolutely still important.

There are a lot of ways you can interpret Katsuki's words being brought up here, but it is undeniably intentional. If he wanted the "nerd" meaning without connecting it to Katsuki, Horikoshi could have just called Izuku an otaku, since that term carries an implication of "indifferent or ignorant to human relationships" in Japan. If this were just about how oblivious Izuku is, he could have said that Izuku 空気を読めない (kuuki wo yomenai, can't read the room).

But he chose the words Katsuki alone uses for Izuku--words that were historically derogatory but, as their relationship has improved, could almost be read as friendly or affectionate.

I personally feel like it is foreshadowing, but we'll have to see how it shakes out!

[katrinafaire]

In 30+ years of writing, you do improve; here's some things I've learned.

When I first started actively writing stories -- we're talking single digits here, under the age of ten, as some of you may relate -- my initial goal was spelling things right and having a (mostly) cohesive, if simple, storyline.

Then, in some order I'm not sure of, were things like description, consistent character voices, character development, character driven plots, subplots, worldbuilding -- the list goes on, I'm sure we've all worked on some if not all of these things. (The beauty of writeblr, we're all here together despite different levels of experience.)

I feel like I've always written, but I didn't really sit down to write novella and eventually novel sized works until my late teens-early twenties. I had a lot going for me, because I'd been writing consistently over the years prior. But I had some... quirks. Here's a non-exhaustive list you may find of use:

I struggled with maintaining a clear POV -- who's perspective we were in, how to coherently jump between characters, how to balance that to the best benefit of the narrative... yeah, that was an issue. And I still have a bit of trouble with that now and then, though I'm worlds better.

Also, I hugely overused epithets, those descriptive terms instead of pronouns or names. (The tall man, the blonde woman, the sullen teenager -- you get the idea.) You see, I didn't understand how they worked. I used them mostly because I had a lot of big casts and was not fond of he said-he said-he said with three different he's and I felt like I was over using names.

As I began to hone my craft, it became clearer that these had their place -- but only where they were relevant, not as a replacement. For example, if the POV character doesn't know the name of another character, they will use epithets because that's all they have. Or you can use it to emphasize something:

"There's no way we can deliver the message in time!" Aaron said. The fastest man in the world just smiled; his time had come. "Watch me."

Presumably you already know the speedster's name, but even if you don't, the epithet delivers important information to the narrative; that is the perfect (though not only) time to use one.

There was a huge movement when I was just starting more serious writing and you have likely still seen these posts circulating: said is dead. And I took it as gospel. Now, first let me say I am still a huge fan of dialogue tags. Big fan of things like "whispered" and "sneered" -- things you can't easily convey simply with punctuation.

However.

Using them every line, or every other line, or every third line -- in short, frequently -- isn't good. And it's not because these things are inherently bad. The reason, as far as I'm concerned, is twofold. One, when you deviate from "said" then your audience immediately is drawn to this new dialogue tag, taking it as Important Information. Which is good! We want that when we put those in. But if you have too many in too short of time the brain just quits processing them as important, or worse, it keeps taking them out of the story.

Point two is directly related in that in that overuse of dialogue tags not only clogs up your dialogue, it also makes the dialogue tags less valuable. Imagine this if you will, that every dialogue tag is a colored font and "said" is just black. If you constantly use dialogue tags, do any of them stand out? Even if someone screamed in bright red, does it matter if you just had something in bright orange a line ago? Not really.

But if all you have is black on black on black and suddenly there's a bright red streak on the paper, it jars you! It makes you pay attention! And that's what you really want when you use dialogue tags, isn't it? So that's why I've tried to cut down on mine, and have beta readers specifically work with me on it.

There's also several punctuation and formatting things I've struggled with. Overusing italics, misplacing en dashes — and em dashes (look I even copy pasted the right ones instead of typing two en dashes --) — as well as a severe abuse of... ellipsis. I'm working on them to this day. I'm a dramatic wordsmith. Sometimes it helps for me to write it however I want the first time and then make a new draft, stripping the formatting and seeing with fresh eyes where it's needed.

There's other things, too (I have never done enough description, I'm working on it now) but this post is getting long and I've shared some main points that I feel others can benefit from my mistakes. Feel free to reblog with your own mistakes you've learned from or are working on!

[the-lincyclopedia]

There's something that has become glaringly obvious to me as a working-class disabled queer person whose parents are non-disabled, not queer, and significantly more financially well off than I am (and have had a significant amount of disposable income for my entire life). Namely: there is a slice of the population, my parents very much included, whose lives and concerns are so well represented in the mainstream media, both news media and fiction, that it has genuinely never occurred to them that there could be a massive problem (or many massive problems) that they're not hearing about.

This really crystallized for me when my sister was talking about a conversation she had with our (also very well-off, mansion-owning) aunt and uncle. My sister, who's a public school teacher, mentioned feeling overworked and underpaid, which is the most common complaint I can possibly think of among public school teachers, and my uncle apparently tried to insist that my sister must be the only teacher who felt this way, or at least in a small minority, because if this were a large-scale problem, he would have heard about it. He couldn't fathom there being a big problem in his metro area that hadn't come to his personal attention.

Likewise, my mom talked to me last fall about how her department's assistant at work was having trouble finding appropriate health care for her daughter because of the daughter's specific diagnoses and needs--everywhere the assistant called said they had a long wait list, but the daughter needed care urgently. My mom insisted to me that there must be places that were both affordable and let urgent cases jump the line, because those things should exist, so in my mom's mind, naturally they do exist.

It's really hard to convey to people who are this privileged that the media leaves out huge swathes of the population and many, many massive societal problems, and that "this isn't on my radar" and "this doesn't exist" are not in fact equivalent statements. I think, at least in some cases, it's worth naming that explicitly: "Each of us only knows a small subset of what's going on in the world, and I'm telling you that this problem is real even though you haven't heard much about it until now."

I'll add that I don't think this is primarily a conspiracy by Big Media to obscure what's going on in society, at least not all the time. I think a large part of the problem is that the people with the largest media reach are generally privileged in a lot of ways, and they associate with other privileged people, which means that the concerns of less-privileged groups tend not to be top-of-mind for them. Sure, there are also efforts by editors and owners of some news outlets to deliberately mislead the public or suppress certain information or perspectives, but a lot of it also comes down to limited perspectives being self-perpetuating even without intention.

And sometimes it's useful to name explicitly that it's possible for a thing to happen without a specific person hearing about it.

[goddess-in-heaven-and-hell]

The Best is yet to Come (ER) - Gwynriel One-Shot

The (long) story of how Azriel manages to deal with the mating bond snapping for him. 

word count: 9.6k

warnings: swearing, mention of trauma/depression, ANGST with some fluff in between 

“After we infiltrated the main house, Cat in the kitchen, myself as a worker in the stables, we managed to identify three main passageways used between the servants. The first one is accessed through a hidden door in the library,…”

Azriel fought hard battles with himself. The first against the urge to close his eyes, the second for his mind to remain somewhat focused. He had read that particular passage of the report about three times, still not remembering what was actually important. Both of his hands ran through his tousled locks in an attempt to wake himself up, to push his concentration just a little more.

But it was a battle he was destined to lose.

He knew he had been running himself ragged these past days, weeks even. But what was his health and sanity compared to the well-being of a whole court, of his family? Feyre and Rhys needed this information as quickly as possible in order to make some tough decisions – decisions that impacted the safety of everyone he loved. His heart squeezed together painfully, the thought of Gwyn or Cassian or Nesta hurt haunting him like a ghost, and forcing his attention back to the paper sprawled in front of him.

It was a testament to his slow mind that he only noticed Gwyn standing in front of him when she reached out her hand to grab his.

“Hey Azzy”, her voice was so soft it barely disrupted the previous quiet of the library. “May I help you with some of your work?”

Azriel’s bloodshot eyes found her in a heartbeat, taking in her nightgown, bare feet, and the little smile she gave him. Then his attention fixed on the dark circles under her eyes, contrasting harshly against her pale face. He hadn’t noticed her own exhaustion before now. What kind of a shit partner that made him, he didn’t even want to acknowledge. His brain simply added it to the never-ending list of things he was shit at.

His girl needed sleep, not to sort through reports with him until the morning. “No, thank you. Just go back to sleep, love.” He squeezed her hand with his, trying to convey to her that he was truly okay. Even though he had trouble recalling the last time he was.

Gwyn’s brows furrowed, her arms crossing in front of her body. Azriel sensed her resistance, and with it the draining argument they were going to have over this. Thankfully, his remaining non-fried brain cells were quick to counter.

“Actually, I’m going to head in with you. This can wait until tomorrow.”, he made a show of dismissing the papers into the drawer of his heavy desk, and stood to wrap Gwyn up in his arm. She just looked mildly surprised, swallowing down whatever comment she was about to make and wordlessly inched closer to him.

The couple made their way through the House of Wind, finding their shared bedroom even in the absolute darkness of the hallway. Azriel kissed Gwyn to sleep, gently caressing her sides and arms until her breathing evened out, and his Shadows reported that she was indeed completely asleep.

Centuries of stealth training came to aid as he pushed himself off the bed again, leaving his priestess to hopefully get a few hours of rest, while he dragged himself back to his desk.

He felt like shit. Not just in a physical sense, but also for the white lie he fed Gwyn. He knew she was concerned, and it flattered him, really. But she didn’t understand that he had to do this. He had to give their cause his all. Rhys trusted him with one of the most important areas of running a court, and he refused to disappoint him. Well, disappoint him more than he already did in the past.

So he slumped back into his seat, wings now resting on the cold floor beneath him, and pulled out the paper once more. If Gwyn woke up in the night to find him missing, he’d have to deal with that. If she slept through the night, he could claim he’s only been at work for a minute. That thought settled him enough to resume his work, even though his stomach turned to lead.

 Gwyn POV

The summer solstice celebration was everything she imagined and more.

The back garden of the High Lord’s and Lady’s house was nearly drowned in flowers of all kinds of colors, little fae lights illuminating the crowds and the food as the sun began to set on the longest day of the year. But the delicious fruit and pastries, the vibrant coloring and exhilarating music were nothing compared to the expression on the guest’s faces. Gwyn couldn’t get enough of their happiness, joy and relaxation lighting up even the grumpiest. Her own smile grew another fraction as she spotted Nesta and Cassian in the crowd, dancing and giving each other flirty winks.

She raised her glass in their direction, then drank to their health and safety.

A year ago, she would have been content with the quiet ritual the priestesses performed in the library to thank the Mother for another brilliant year. Now, she stood in the middle of a crowd, laughing and chatting and drinking with her friends – her family. She had come so far, growing into her own skin. And tonight was the night she wanted to take another step in reclaiming her body and mind.

The butterflies in her belly fluttered at the sheer thought, her gaze immediately seeking out her very own broody bat. The fluttering stopped abruptly when she finally spotted him.

He was standing in the corner of the party, underneath the shade of the apple tree. Even though night had only begun to fall these past minutes, his presence was already shielded in complete darkness. All guests made a wide detour around him, like he exuded some kind of poison and your happiness would completely wipe out if you stood in his proximity. His features were the only ones not lifted into a smile or a laugh.

Gwyn debated long and hard about whether to approach him now, even though the sight of him made her heart break. Usually, it led to either an argument, or him shutting off even more. And that was the last thing she could use now, hoping the two of them would end the night tangled in the sheets together. So she swallowed her worry, her need to be with her mate when he was being hard on himself, and resumed her walk around the garden. She trusted he would approach her when he was ready, so she waited.

Maybe it would be different if Azriel actually knew they were mates. It was a secret Gwyn kept for two years now, and with good reason. If he’d react cold and hurtful when she simply wanted him to open up to her, then she didn’t want to imagine the fight that insured when she revealed that particular connection to him. Azriel and mating bonds had a past that went deep, and any mention of it, Gwyn knew, would open it up into a bleeding wound.

So, she danced and chatted some more, the colors of the sky changing from their pure indigo to comforting black dotted with stars. Azriel still didn’t make a move towards her, so she decided to take action herself.

Just as she was about to take the first step in his direction, she noticed the female.

She was gorgeous, all long legs and shiny blond hair. And currently flashing her white teeth at her mate in a seductive smile. To his credit, he only looked mildly annoyed as her hand actually reached for his arm. And Gwyn waited, waited, waited for him to excuse himself. Or point in her direction in show of their relationship. Or to do something that was different than just standing there, letting it all happen as if he wasn’t even in his body.

Gwyn approached them, sliding her hand in his when she reached his side.

The laugh coming out of the female’s mouth died there, and she shot Gwyn a look that made her feel like a cockroach. Small, stupid, about to be stepped on. “Excuse me, we were just having a private conversation.” Her honeyed voice was laced with condescension.

Gwyn looked at Azriel and squeezed his hand simultaneously, trying to get him to wake up out of this stupor he seemed to be in. And it worked.

The Shadowsinger turned his head into the direction of the female, eyes raking over her as if he saw her for the first time. “I think what you meant to say was that you tried to come on to me. Consider the attempt failed.”

If Gwyn weren’t a bit riled up herself, she’d have flinched at his tone. The female had just tried to shoot her shot, and he spoke to her like he would to his enemies. Maybe it was the dull influence of the bond, him reacting like that.

The beautiful female paled slightly, fighting to keep the flirty smirk on her face. “But you’re not with anyone else. I waited to approach you the whole night. And when no one claimed you…”

Azriel shut her up by lifting his hand, his face unyielding and cold – so cold, Gwyn couldn’t take her eyes off him, mouth agape. His Shadows swirled around his shoulders, some lashing out towards the female. This was so different to the polite male she knew, someone who would have turned down flirts with a small but firm comment before walking away from the situation. This felt wrong.

“If I wanted company, I would have sought someone out. My girlfriend, for example.”, Azriel continued, finally acknowledging Gwyn. But at this moment, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be on his radar.

The blonde took a step back, raising her hands in front of her body as if to calm down a rabid animal. And to be fair, Azriel had that aura surrounding him. Like any wrong movement would make him explode.

“Apologies then, mylord. Lady.”, she quickly nodded to Gwyn and practically fled the scene. Undoubtedly glad she dodged a bullet.

Azriel let out a long-suffering sign. “Sorry you had to witness that.”

Gwyn just raised her eyebrows in return. “Well, it didn’t look like you were doing something about the situation yourself.” The Shadowsinger just nodded in agreement, squeezing her hand again before untangling it from his.

“Did you have to be so ruthless?”, Gwyn couldn’t help but ask. There might have been nothing inherently wrong with the words he used, but the way he spoke them still sent a shiver down her spine. And not a good one.

Azriel shot her an incredulous look, snorting. “Do you mean to tell me I should have encouraged her flirting?”

“No, of course not. And you know I didn’t mean it like that either.”, Gwyn fumbled for words, careful not to spook him by asking too deep questions, “There was just no need to look at her like you’d drag her to the dungeon.”

Now she was the center of his attention. Not in the way she usually was. His features still as hard and unyielding as marble, he fixed his stare on her. “There was. I know women like her. She’d have continued all night long if I wouldn’t have done that. I thought you’d be glad for it.”

Gwyn shook her head in defeat. “Of course I’m glad you turned her down. Just-“

How was she supposed to tell him that his little show there spooked her a little? Not for her own life and safety, never. But for the direction his mental health is headed to. He had always been closed off, a workaholic to a fault, and so damn hard on himself. However, he never let it show to outsiders, let them be the punching bag he directed his rage to.

Azriel’s gaze hardened, the look turning shrewd and calculating. “Are you having a problem with this, because you didn’t want her to know I had a girlfriend? That you are associated with me?”

The only thing keeping Gwyn from shaking some sense into her mate was the fact that she didn’t want to make a scene.

“Azriel.”, both of her hands cradled his face, her voice a desperate whisper, “I love being with you. I want everyone in the whole of Prythian knowing I belong to you, as you belong to me.”

His face softened a fraction at her words, but she could sense he didn’t completely believe them. His mind was an impenetrable wall, and each day it seemed to get bigger. Gwyn feared the day she wouldn’t be able to climb that wall anymore, loosing her mate behind a border of self-hate and aggression.

“I even-“, she lowered her voice once more, aware of the still crowded back garden they were in, “I even wanted to, you know, be a little more brave tonight than I usually am. So that I can be with you completely. I want to give you every single piece of myself, as broken and weak as it might be.”

Azriel’s stare finally crumbled, revealing the softened, loving face she usually saw. “There is no part of you that is broken, or weak. You are the strongest person I know. At least mentally – physically, you’re getting there.” The slight smile he granted her reawaked the butterflies in her stomach. There he was, her mate. “And I feel honored that you want to spend the night with me. That you keep choosing me, even though I have no idea why.”

Gwyn flushed a little, flashing him a flirty smile. “Well, I like the way you brood, it’s quite attractive. And the way you have communication issues, that’s what a girl looks for in a relationship.”

Azriel snorted, offering her his arm to lead them to towards the house. “I like that you’re able to decapitate someone with one swing of a sword, or probably even your hands if you wanted to. It’s a useful skill to have in a boyfriend.”

Gwyn reached up on her tiptoes to plant a little kiss on his cheek. “Oh, and the wingspan is helping your case a lot, too.”

Azriel’s head fell back as he released a groan. “Gwyneth!”

Said Gwyneth just giggled to herself, utterly happy to have him back. To be able to tease him without repercussions.  

“I can’t take you anywhere, defiant female.”, he mumbled, grinning to himself.

Gwyn hopped on the lowest stair leading up to the terrace of the house, Azriel remaining on the grass. “Says the male who stands in the corner at every party, making guests nearly trip over their own feet because you looked at them with you scary, scary expression.”

Azriel’s arms wrapped around her middle, pulling her flush against him. With their height difference cancelled out, their noses were nearly touching. Gwyn melted in his embrace, flinging her own arms around his shoulders.

“That scary, scary look of mine is keeping this court running, thank you very much.”, he said, but the priestess just rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Shadowsinger.”

He chuckled, every single shadow that before haunted his eyes vanishing, “Well, you were never one to be frightened by it, were you?”

“No, it didn’t impress me much.”, she answered cheekily. The truth was that she only ever saw a hero in him, and that opinion solidified after they got closer.

Azriel kissed her slowly, deeply. Probably just to wipe that insufferable expression off her face, but Gwyn took the opportunity nonetheless. She answered the movement of his lips with her own, letting him in to taste the strawberries and wine she had. The Shadowsinger had this special talent that made all your sorrows go away with just one brush of his soft mouth. Gwyn reveled in it, soaking up all the love he handed her. She’d gotten too little of it these past weeks.

When they parted, Azriel looked at her pensively. “I think you were never frightened because you are one of the few people who actually see me. Not just the spymaster, or the warrior, or-“, he stopped, eyes casting their gaze downwards, “the other occupations I usually hold. You saw me as a friend first. You deemed me worthy of being your friend, even though you already had an impressive collection of them.”

Gwyn smirked. Nesta and Emerie, even Cassian, were a force to behold. In addition to a couple of other priestesses she befriended through their training.

“And then”, Azriel continued, “you deemed me worthy enough to be your boyfriend. Which was the most shocking thing of them all. Thank you for loving me.”

Gwyn’s heart nearly burst at the seams. Words were difficult for Azriel, and the fact that he gave her so many now, even though something was clearly off with him, made her feel giddy and warm inside. She heard the bond between them sing, so loud and clear in her head she wondered why Azriel didn’t yet perceive its call.

“You are my partner.”, she said, her melodic voice laced with gentleness, “My equal. Of course I love you.”

Another kiss to his warm lips and the bond began to thrum to the beat of her heart. Louder and louder, with every second passing, with ever taste of his lips. For a moment, everything was perfect.

Then Azriel stopped moving against her, withdrawing from her mouth and body so abruptly it left her cold.

When she opened her eyes in question, he was already staring at her. And she knew by that look on his face, that he had realized.

“You are-“, he started, his voice hoarse. When she reached out her hand to him, he took another step back. He might as well have stepped on her heart, for it felt like her world was falling apart. She had expected resistance from him, she had to remind herself. She expected a little panic.

What she didn’t expect was his Shadows tightening around him, engulfing him in a storm of black. And then, he was gone.

And if that wasn’t answer enough for Gwyn, then the absolute silence that greeted her from the other side of the bond made his opinion crystal clear.  

--

Two days. Two days and not a whisper from Azriel.

Not in the townhouse, the House of Wind, or even Hewn City. Gwyn’s nerves were so frail she was certain to fall apart any second. In each and every shadow, she looked for him. With every sight of Illyrian wings, her heart squeezed together painfully. And the fact that he completely ignored his training duties made her worry to no end. Because his was loyal to a fault, not only to his High Lord, but also to the group of females that needed his instruction.

The bond yielded nothing. Now finally acknowledged from both sides, Gwyn felt its presence in her heart, a thread pulled taunt. Waiting for a decision. It made her want to weep, that instead of celebrating right now, she had to wonder if her other half was okay, or if he currently tried to find a way of ridding himself of her.

Another dinner passed, Nesta and Cassian equally worried after they found Gwyn at the party and she confided in them. Another night she spent alone in their room, her bedsheets smelling like cedar and Azriel. She crumbled that night, crying into his pillow, reaching for him with all her might and desperation. But he didn’t answer.

In the morning, as Gwyn tried to eat breakfast, she finally felt something. An awareness settled over her, and she knew he was about to land on the balcony a few seconds before he touched down. She rose from the chair, eyes transfixed on him, but froze midway.

Azriel strode through the door, taking a seat opposite Gwyn. She was always able to read him. Now, his face might as well have been a painting – unmoving and infuriatingly neutral.

She sank back down in her seat, untrusting of her legs.

“You knew.”, was the first thing he said. His tone so flat, no emotion, no slither of care conveyed with it.

Gwyn nodded. She couldn’t speak from the ball of cotton in her throat.

Azriel leaned back. “Interesting. So here I was, desperate for a bond – which, might I add, you very well knew – and you decided to keep me in the dark.”

A flicker of hurt flashed in his eyes, then it was gone. “Why?”

“Well”, Gwyn tried to order her thoughts, well aware of the importance of what she was about to say, “I knew before we fell in love. I didn’t want you to want me just because the Mother deemed us fit to be together. I wanted you to love me for me, not for a bond or what it promised. For a time, I didn’t know I could even be intimate with someone. It scared me.”

Azriel just continued to stare. And a second later, Gwyn wished he would have stayed so indifferent.

The Shadowsinger leaped from his chair, sending it flying back and breaking with the impact. His Shadows expanded along his wings, flaring with anger. And his face – Gods.

“You kept this a secret because it scared you? Because you thought if I loved you before the bond snapped, it would ensure we lived happily ever after?”, he exploded. Gwyn flinched at his voice and words, completely overwhelmed with the situation.

He let out a taunting laugh. “That’s why you said all those touching things to me. Because you thought we are well matched, since you had an unfair advantage going into this relationship. Well, let me tell you, Gwyn.”, Azriel leaned forward over the table, a position clearly meant to intimidate her. He never ever intentionally did that. “We are not. The past made it clear that you can’t handle me, and you never will.”

His last words yanked her back into her body, and she stood as well, straightening up to her full and impressive height. “You will not tell me what I can and can’t handle, Azriel. And if the past made something clear, it is that I’m willing to work for this relationship. For you, for me. Because I love you.”

Azriel snorted, a cruel smile twisting his lips until he became so utterly unattractive to her it was shocking. “You only think you love me. If you hadn’t known about the bond, you’d have cowered in a corner with everyone else. You trusted I wouldn’t hurt my mate, bond acknowledged or not.”

Gwyn had wanted nothing more than hearing him say it, addressing her with the word mate. But the way he spat it at her – she nearly vomited all over the floor.

“Even now, you haven’t seen all sides of me. Only the ones I wanted you to see. You thought you could be with the male I present to the world. But what will happen to brave little Gwynnie if I take her to Hewn City?”, he started walking now, rounding the corner of the table. “Will you still love me when you see me cutting off limbs, when I flay my suspect’s flesh, when they piss themselves at the sight of me? And when you realize I like it?”

Gwyn was sure her heart had stopped beating in her chest. Yet, she stood her ground when the Shadowsinger came to a stop before her, caressing her cheek with mocking gentleness. “Will you love me then? Maybe you could if you thought they deserved it. But what of our relationship?”

He leaned forward, brushing his mouth against her ear. Gwyn never wanted to recoil from him until that moment. “What happens when you learn how I like to fuck? And how you’ll never be able to satisfy that side of me?”

A tear started rolling now.

So, this was him. This was the demon people were afraid of. Gwyn began to understand.

“How could you?”, she whispered, never breaking eye contact. She’d not give him that satisfaction, not now. Throwing the fact that he tortured people in her face was one thing, taking the most vulnerable part of her and stomping on it with his feet was another.

“How could I what?”, his voice remained hard, “Remind you of what I am? Burst your little bubble? Better now than later, Gwyn.”

He stepped away, making way for the balcony again. Gwyn didn’t think about stopping him. If she were honest, she wanted him gone.

“Who the hell decided we’re evenly matched?”, he ground out, his words addressed to the Gods and the nail to her coffin. As he took to the skies once more, she wished she could carve out her heart, or what remained of it, just to stop feeling.

--

After she cried, slept, cried some more, talked to Nesta and Emerie, and unleashed herself in training, she felt better. Not good, but better.

Gwyn never thought he’d have the ability to hurt her so badly. As someone who was always attuned to her needs, always had his hand ready to help her, always was so gentle with her, she thought he’d have stopped as soon as he saw the tears rolling. But he hadn’t stopped, and that told Gwyn that there was something fundamentally wrong with her mate. So wrong, that he was only half to blame for the spiteful words he threw at her.

The urge to hurt him in return transformed into the urge to see him safely cradled in her arms.

But the silence from him and the bond continued after that breakfast. Gwyn didn’t know where he slept, if he was working, if he sought the company of other females in his rage. She had reached out to Rhysand at some point, at least confirming that he was alive and showed up to the town house for short periods. Only to give and receive updates, nothing more. And no, he hadn’t spoken to Elain, was the other information the High Lord offered her.

She felt close to being single again, if it weren’t for the hole that took up space inside her chest.

Gwyn managed to push through, not slacking in her work or in training. It was the only thing anchoring her to the real world by this point. One morning after two hours of rigorous sword fighting, Cassian took her aside. He was careful to let all the other priestess clear the training ring, Nesta and Emerie included.

“Are you sleeping, Gwyn? Eating?”, he asked without much preamble. His caring eyes ran up and down her body, trying to assess her health.

To be completely honest, Gwyn hadn’t done either of those things the past days. Because eating and sleeping left too much room for thoughts. And currently, her thoughts were enough to make her want to curl up into a ball and never leave the library again.

“I haven’t gotten around to it.”, she answered truthfully, too tired to make up lies and pretenses.

Cassian only nodded, a flash of anger clouding his face. Not at her, she realized, but at her mate.

“Then I regret to inform you that you are banned from training for the foreseeable future. At least until you can handle a sword with a clear head.”

Gwyn let out a sign. She had expected that much, especially after she nearly swung at Emerie this morning, too slow to realize her friend had moved position.

“I understand.”

With one blissful distraction gone, she feared the next day. Feared the poison her mind will be trying to feed her.

“If I knew where he went, I’d tell you in a heartbeat. I hope you know that, Gwyn.”, Cassian signed, looking up to the sky as if it would summon the Shadowsinger out of thin air. “Maybe we should tell Rhys to just bind him to the house the next time he sets foot into it.”

“No. I don’t want to force this. He needs to be ready on his own time. Otherwise it’ll go nowhere.”

Cassian nodded his understanding. “That had always been my mistake when we had a fallout. Rushing it.” His eyes didn’t leave her as he added, voice thick with emotion. “I know I shouldn’t say this, but right now, he doesn’t deserve you. The male he turned into is truly no match for you. Maybe he realized that.”

Gwyn had to squeeze her eyes together to fight the onslaught of tears threatening to fall at his words. “But the male I got to know these past two years, he was. I’m just not sure what happened to him. Or how to help him.”

“Maybe that’s the issue. He needs to help himself before he can face you again.”

The priestess contemplated his words, saw the truth in them. It didn’t make the fact that he was gone easier to accept.

She wordlessly reached her arms out for him. Cassian pulled her into a tight hug without missing a beat. The comfort he offered her was more than enough to make her break again, and she cried in his arms, cried like she lost her mate forever. The warlord held her through it, and when her tears subsided, he flashed her a small grin.

“If I see you working or training by yourself today, I’ll personally speak to Clotho. We need our Gwyn to be healthy. And that’s what you owe to yourself too, to not let your progress be dampened by a stupid male.”

“If he returns, I’ll tell him you called him that.”, Gwyn’s answering smile was nearly heartfelt.

“When, not ‘if’.”, was all he replied before spreading his wings, about to take flight, “and he knows he’s stupid himself, why else do you think he keeps his distance.”

 Rhys POV

Rhysand felt confident in saying that he knew his brother.

After all, they spend nearly every year of their long, immortal lives together. He knew Azriel’s tells and quirks by heart, even though he didn’t have many. He stood by his side through good and truly awful times, always ready to reach out a hand should he want it. He rarely did, only relying on his own instincts, and those of his shadows. Rhysand was certain the worst his brother looked was right after he joined them in the war camp as children, and during the first war.

Those two instances were nothing compared to the sight of Azriel now.

The Shadowsinger strode through the door of his office, reports in hand ready to drop them off as quickly as possible before vanishing again to Mother-knows-where. And the High Lord had to stop himself from flinching in his face when he took him in.

For lack of better description, Azriel looked dead. Like a walking, barely talking corpse. His previously gold-brown skin had turned nearly ashen, eyes bloodshot and void of any emotion. His leathers were clearly the same ones he had worn yesterday, and the day before that. And if Lord Devlon could see the way his wings dragged on the floor, he’d undoubtedly get a beating.

And Azriel would undoubtedly take it, like he took all the dangerous and borderline suicidal missions. With the air of someone who thought he deserved nothing more.

“Here, the summarized reports on Autumn and on Koshei.”, Azriel’s voice had gone rough with disuse. He placed the papers on Rhy’s desk, then stepping back to await another command.

Rhysand contemplated to force him into a vacation. But knowing Azriel, he’d take it as another insult. Standing by idly as he beat himself up had never been easy, and especially not now. “Have you seen your mother this week?”, he asked instead.

Azriel clearly turned suspicious by the abrupt change of topic. “No. Do you have anything more you need me to do?”

Rhys shook his head, levelling his eyes at Azriel’s. The will and sheer recklessness in them had always shocked the High Lord. And right now, he was worried that Azriel would purposefully hurt himself if he wasn’t given another task.

“You’ll receive my orders as soon as you saw your mother.”, he spoke slowly, letting it sink in.

The Shadowsinger raised his brows. “And why would I do that?”

“So she can talk some sense into you. Or beat it into you, whatever works.”, he shot back. Azriel had always reacted worse to coddling than to anger.

His brother snorted, his eyes flicking to the ceiling. “And why exactly do I need that?”

“Because I don’t want you destroying yourself, or Gwyn.”

Her name acted like an arrow to his chest. Azriel stumbled back, his aloof façade falling bit by bit, shadows tightening around him.

“I know you want to punish yourself. But take a step back and see that your behavior punishes others, too.”, Rhysand said carefully.

“I needed to do it.”, was all his brother replied, as cryptic and absent as never before. As he turned to leave the office, Rhysand prayed it wasn’t the last time he saw his brother alive.

 Azriel POV

Azriel flew. That’s what he’d been doing after the solstice party, after the confrontation with Gwyn, and it was all he would be doing for the rest of his life. It wasn’t exactly fun, more so a way to flee. He’ll never forgive himself for what he said to her, and he hoped she won’t do either.

That had been the plan, after all. To hurt her so badly, she’ll run and never turn back. Because what would await her with the bond acknowledged or even consummated might be the death of her. And Gwyn slowly withering and dying to keep their relationship going, to keep him in check, was the one thing in his miserable life that he couldn’t possibly take.

He flew for hours. Not feeling the cold or the fatigue creeping through his tired muscles. Maybe, if he did it long enough, that cold would settle in his heart, numbing it enough to live with the fact that he pushed her away. His closest friend, fiercest competition, the only true love he ever had. His mate.

His wings carried him all the way back home, working exclusively on muscle memory.

As soon as he landed in the blooming garden, bees and birds filling it with life, the front door banged open. And on the threshold stood his mother.

“Gods above, what happened to you?”, she greeted him, her usually melodic voice laced with concern and the slight edge of suspicion.

Azriel was at loss for words, just standing amidst the colorful plants like a thunderstorm about to rip them out by the root. “I have a mate.”

Malia’s nostrils flared the second the words left his mouth, confirming them as the truth. The scent of the bond was another factor driving him insane.

His mother gaped at him, took in his sickly skin, the exhaustion radiating off his body, and wordlessly gestured for him to come inside. She sat him down in the kitchen, busing herself with brewing some tea. Azriel knew it was her way of collecting her thoughts. If he were a better male, he’d do that as well instead of immediately lashing out. When her hands were no longer occupied, she sat before him.

“She rejected you, I assume.”, her words held no reproach, only the sadness of a mother who had to witness her boy breaking in front of her very eyes.

Azriel shook his head, not trusting his voice. His mother had that effect on him – she saw right through him until he couldn’t help but be vulnerable. Only one other person held that power over him. His body fought back a physical reaction at the mere thought of her.

“You rejected her because of your love for Gwyn?”, she guessed again, brows furrowing in confusion.

The Shadowsinger supported his arms on the table, letting his head fall between his hands. “It’s her. She is my mate. Gwyn.”

His mother sat back, eyes never leaving him. “Azriel, this is not the moment to let me ferret every piece of information out of you! If Gwyn is your mate, why are you currently not celebrating?”

He almost forgot what it felt like to cry. The last time he did it was when Rhys let himself be captured and bound under the mountain. Now, his hot tears burned a rivulet down his cheeks. If he let the single image of embracing and kissing his mate take root in him, he’d shatter.

He wasn’t celebrating because his mind didn’t let him.

“I-“, he started, failing to find appropriate words to describe the onslaught of feelings inside of him. He never expected anyone to support his decision, yet he yearned for understanding from his mother. “She knew for two years. And when the bond snapped for me on solstice, I panicked. I love her, and every single day I spent with her made me feel it more clearly. She was free to go anytime, and that thought calmed me. But-“, he stopped again, wiping the tears away and running his hands through his hair, “But then I got angry. Angry at the Mother, for shackling her to me like that. For ripping away her option out. I said some hurtful – devastating – things to her in my rage.”

At some point his mother had stood, rounding the table to sit closer beside him, her hand grasping his forearm in support. “You did it on purpose. To make her reject you.”

“Yes.”, he pressed his lips together.

“Why?”

Azriel took at deep breath. “Because Gwyn is everything. She is a Goddess, all the good in the world. She is bravery and strength and kindness. And I am fucking bastard. Who the hell decided we’re evenly matched? If we are to be mated, it will be the death of her. I will be the death of her.”

His mother went quiet for a bit, letting his words sink in, together with the excruciating pain that laced them. He hoped she’d understand. Or at least attempt to.

She didn’t.

“Stupid boy.”, gone was the concern in her voice, her face. Now he was again 12 years old and about to get a tongue lashing. “Stupid, blind boy.”  

Malia stood, her chair scraping back on the wooden floor. His mother was one to pace when she felt agitated. Agitation was a mild word for what she felt currently.

“Azriel. I have been begging you to take up counselling for centuries. What happened to you as a boy, and after under the past High Lord’s command, was enough trauma to damage 10 people, let alone one single male.”, her own eyes were filling with tears now. Regret and shame, he knew, for not finding a way to rescue him from her master. He shook his head at her words, trying to wordlessly soothe these feelings within her.

“Do you realize that you finally got what you always wanted? A headstrong, witted, understanding female that chose to be by your side. And you damaged the relationship beyond repair just because you felt the bond between you two? Because you think you are unworthy of her? That was not for you to decide!”, she scolded, each admission a stab to his gut. “The girl is not your counsellor, nor is she a punching bag you can throw your emotions at.”

She rubbed her forehead with her delicate fingers. It had been a few centuries since he was the reason for her headache. “The issue is that you both look at the same person with two completely different sets of eyes. Gwyn sees you how the rest of your family and friends see you: as a brave, smart, loyal male who carries a lot of pain with him. But that was never the problem, not for your brothers, for me or for Gwyn. You, on the other hand”, she stifled a sob, “I can’t comprehend the way you see yourself. You are so far gone in your own head that no one will ever share the opinion you have of yourself.”

He wanted to believe her so desperately. His heart yearned for the love she claimed everyone felt for him. But it wasn’t true. She said these things because she’s his mother.

Azriel just nodded, unsure of what to say.

Malia fell quiet for a while too, thinking and analyzing the situation further. Azriel only sat and stared. He felt nothing anymore. Finally.

“You need to speak to Gwyn”, she finally muttered, “not just to clear things up for her, but for your own health too.” The Shadowsinger had know how painful a strained bond could be. He’d endure it for her. He’d happily die if she finally decided to reject it.

“Go. And explain yourself as best as you can. Pray to the Mother she’ll hear you. Truly hear you. Listen to her opinion, then make a decision.”, Malia finally said, “Not many great things happened when you let only yourself be in charge of your life.”

 Gwyn POV

Two weeks had passed since she last saw him. The pain she felt by now wasn’t only the dull throb of her heart, no. Every cell of her body rebelled, screamed at her to find him, kiss him and tell him that everything was going to be okay. Gwyn took to taking ice-cold baths in the evening, cooling down her heated blood and numbing the sensations she just couldn’t control.

Tucked into bed, a romance novel in her hand, she pretended to read before falling into a fitful sleep. Nesta had asked her this morning what the book was about, Gwyn couldn’t recall.

As she turned another page, she cut her finger on the paper with the tremor that went through her. She felt him, felt the bond vibrate with his presence. He was in the house.

Right as she put the book down, a knock sounded at her door.

“May I come in?”

Tears started flowing at the first word he uttered. She croaked out a quiet ‘yes’, then he stepped inside.

Gwyn’s eyes widened at the sight of him, temporarily forgetting her own misery. He was practically a corpse, looking just as bad as she felt. But shame and hurt shone bright in his face as he took a tentative step in her direction.

The priestess leaped from the bed, crossing the space of the room in just a heartbeat, and enveloped him in her arms. Her body molded itself to his so tightly she couldn’t tell where she began and he ended. All she knew was his arms wrapping around her too, then his wings. The bond between them thrummed with the attention, and for a second, everything felt right. If she could pretend what he said never happened, she’d be happy. But the hurtful words he had thrown at her weighted heavy.

She untangled herself from him first, needing the physical distance to regain clarity. She wanted him back, that much was clear. But she also needed an explanation. And it better be a good one.

Gwyn sank on the edge of the bed, suddenly shy. How do you bridge the abyss that had opened up between them? She was saved from an answer by Azriel.

“I’ve come to talk to you. To make this right.”, he stumbled over the words in a manner she’d never seen from him before. When he struggled to continue after that, he began reaching in the pockets of his trousers.

She watched with rapt attention and slight confusion as he pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

“Since-“, he started, unfolding the paper with shaky hands, “since I’m shit at opening up in a conversation and I don’t trust myself with the importance of this, I have written down my thoughts. Is that okay?”

Gwyn narrowed her eyes. “I don’t want to read it. I need you to say it.”

The Shadowsinger was quick to nod. “Of course. This is just in case I mess up.”

Her heart squeezed together as she motioned at him to start. He looked so lost, so anxious that she wanted nothing more than hug him close again.

“My love,” he began reading, “when I found out we are mates, my first feeling was shock. Mostly because I hadn’t noticed during all this time we were together, but also because I didn’t believe it to be true. I apologize for winnowing away at that moment, for leaving you in this vulnerable position. My thoughts began to spiral and it became clear to me within minutes that I didn’t want you to acknowledge or accept the bond.”

He swallowed hard. Gwyn continued to stare at him. So that part was true. He didn’t want her to be his mate. The priestess thought she’d known heartbreak, but it had been nothing compared to what she felt now. Her lungs started seizing with effort to keep her breathing.

“I didn’t want you to accept it because then you’d have been shackled to me for your whole life. You’d have to deal with a male who constantly disappoints, who is too detached, too angry, too burdened with the past to ever be a good mate to you. I felt like I was about to kill you. Not intentionally, but with every one of my bad habits, after every return from a mission or visit to Hewn City, your soul would have yielded yet another piece to me. Because I know you’d try to help, to keep my mind out of the gutter.”

His voice quivered, as he continued reading. “I love you. I love you with all my heart. But I abhor myself. And that was all I saw when I met you again here. When I said-“, he stopped to collect himself, but didn’t shy away from the ugly truth, “I said that you couldn’t handle my occupation, the dark side of me that people are afraid of, but don’t really know. Until I die there won’t be a minute I’m not loathing myself for these words, for being the reason for your tears.”

“I know now that I had no business trying to manipulate you into rejecting me. It wasn’t my place to keep such an immeasurable decision from you. I apologize for that too.”

“The pain you must have felt these past days and weeks makes me feel even more ashamed about how I handled this situation. I thought I acted in your best interest, but it was really just my own ego protecting me from the prospect of letting you see the issues I carry around. I hope this explained my anger and confusion. I am so sorry.”

He had finished, discarding the wrinkled piece of paper on the small coffee table beside him. Then he kneeled before Gwyn’s legs, repeating. “I’m sorry, Gwyn. I know I don’t deserve you. Not now, and not before I fucked this up so badly. But please know that I never stopped loving you. My heart and soul belonged to you since you sliced the ribbon in training. Do with them as you wish.”

He bowed his head before her, his wings drooping to the floor on either side. Beaten, defeated and –

And hers.

Gwyn wiped away the silent tears that escaped her during his explanation, placing both hands on either side of his face. She forced his gaze upwards, forced him to hold hers. Now was not the moment to shy away anymore.

“Thank you for that, Azzy.”, her voice trembled almost as bad as her fingers, “I forgive you for panicking. I forgive you for disappearing on me.” She leaned forwards slowly, giving him time to move back should he want it, and pressed a chaste kiss on his lips. “I’m not sure yet if I can forgive your words.”

Azriel nodded his head, lips pressed together to keep his own emotions at bay.

“I love you too, Az. And not only because of this cauldron-damned bond, but because you have always been my hero. You impress me daily with you sharp mind, with your persistence, patience, and loyalty. You make me laugh, you challenge me to be better, you make me feel things I’d long forgotten.”

“I would have never rejected the bond.”, her voice grew firmer as his eyes flickered with disbelief, “You could have thrown anything at me, I would have never rejected you. I would have fought for this relationship, because I know you, the true you. And the male you showed up as these last weeks wasn’t him.”

The Shadowsinger nodded again, pain etching itself in every corner of his face. “It had gotten worse for a time, the chaos in my mind. Only with you it would sometimes lighten. But never for long.”

Gwyn’s thumbs stroked up and down his cheeks in a soothing manner. “I knew something was off, yet I didn’t do anything. I failed you in that regard. As did your brothers.”

“You did all you could. This is something I have to deal with myself. Speaking to me about my mood wouldn’t have led to anything other than an argument.”, he signed. “I took up counselling.”

Gwyn’s brows shot up, her fingers stopping their soothing movement. She had nagged him to try talking to a professional for some time, yet he always refused, claiming his busy schedule for not wanting to go. “Why?”

“So I could be a better brother, a better spymaster, not letting my emotions get the better of me. So I could be a better boyfriend, if you’ll still have me.”, he explained, flushing a little beneath his gaunt and pale cheeks. “The writing-down was a strategy my counsellor said I could use. I know it’s stupid. But better than hurting you again.”

Gwyn smiled. The first smile in what felt like forever. “It’s not. I’m glad you are doing this. But please also do it for yourself, not just so you can be of better service to others. You already are a great brother and uncle, you are brilliant at your job. You are so valued and loved beyond the position you hold.”

Azriel swallowed again. “Thank you.” After a short beat of silence, he added, “Will you still have me as your boyfriend? I’m not going to blame you if you wouldn’t.”

Gwyn waited to reply. It wasn’t like she had to actually think about her answer. She just needed a bit more groveling from him. “No.”

The Shadowsinger went still. Completely and utterly still beneath her fingers. Resignation began to settle in his eyes, and Gwyn decided to finally release him from his misery. “But I’ll have you as my mate.”

--

Three years later

Gwyn straightened the already perfect lengths of fabric around her skirt. Nervous was an understatement for what she felt, but it was still nothing compared to the love that radiated off her. Her face had started hurting from the permanent smile it wore. And yet, when she looked at herself for one last time in the mirror, it grew another fraction.

That’s what getting married to Azriel will do to you.

They had decided for a ‘first look’ before they went to the chapel together. It fit the couple perfectly, since they have always been private. Azriel’s first look at her should be exclusively for him.

Gwyn patted down the stairs to the living room of the town house, waiting for her soon-to-be husband.

They had come a long way since the moment their bond snapped for him. They remained boyfriend-girlfriend for a while after, not wanting to rush into a mating bond when both of them couldn’t yet give 100% to their partner. Azriel went to counselling twice a week, squeezing in more sessions when he knew he’d be gone for a week or two. He had worked hard – for himself, for her and his family – and he continued to put in the work. The six filled out journals he kept in his bedside table were testament to his consistency and will, his bravery in confronting his trauma. Gwyn was incredibly proud of him, and she told him so whenever he’d hear it.

The mating bond between them wasn’t yet consummated however. Gwyn still struggled with the frenzy aspect it brought with it, even though they were now well versed in each other’s bodies. But they had nothing but time.

“Gwyn!”, Nesta’s voice pulled her back to reality, “I bring you your husband.” She sounded ridiculously excited.

“Thank you Nes, I couldn’t possibly have found her without you.”, another amused voice chimed in. Gwyn’s body reacted to it immediately, goosebumps travelling up her spine.

Nesta snorted. “You needed this escort, admit it or not. Cassian said you barely managed to tie your own tie this morning.”

“My love, I hope you know you are marrying into a family full of busybodies.”, Azriel addressed her, still hidden from view behind the corner. Gwyn grinned, not only at their bickering, but at the prospect of officially belonging to his family in a few hours. Or rather, he in hers. Azriel Berdara just had such a nice ring to it, they couldn’t resist.

“This busybody is taking off now. Have fun – but not too much fun, please actually make it to the ceremony.”, her best friend warned, then clicked the door shut behind her.

The house filled with silence. Gwyn reveled in it, soaking up all the excitement.

“May I see you?”, his voice was already husky with emotion. Rhysand had joked the night before that Azriel will be the one to cry buckets during and after the ceremony, while they needed to contain Gwyn to keep her from bouncing off the walls with energy.

Gwyn positioned herself next to the fireplace, glancing on last time at her beautiful, simple white gown. Then she gave her okay.

Azriel rounded the corner to step into the living room, and Gwyn was sure none of them was breathing for an alarming amount of time. He looked stunning, handsome in the way a nice suit made you handsome. But the warmth and love radiating off him put him on a different level. Gwyn resisted the urge to pinch herself at the thought that he was to be hers. Married for now, mated for later.

Azriel himself mirrored her expression, eyes filling with tears as he took her in.

“Like what you see, Shadowsinger?”, her voice was meant to be teasing, but it came out softer than anticipated. Wanting his approval, she realized.

Azriel swallowed hard, crossing the room until he stood right in front of her. His scarred hand caressed her cheek, eyes wide in wonder. He took in her half-up, half-down arranged hair with little pearls braided in, her light glowing make-up, and lastly, the delicate lace covering her shoulders.

“I had thought about what kind of compliment I was going to give you in this moment, but I have forgotten all of them.”

Gwyn smiled. “I’ll give you some time till the end of the day. But then I want compliments to rival the greatest poets in history.” Azriel chuckled, reaching for her hands to intertwine them with his. “You look perfect Shadowsinger.”

Gwyn could swear he actually blushed a little. So she went on, ever the partner to enjoy his squirming. “You look like mine.”

“That’s because I am.”, he simply replied. And now they stood their like idiots, grinning at each other with pink blooming on both their faces.

Gwyn reached up on her tiptoes, kissing her Shadowsinger for what felt like the first time. The butterflies in her tummy exploded at the taste of his lips. The bond between them sang and glowed, knowing how far they’ve come. Azriel reciprocated the kiss with a tenderness that rivalled hers, slowly gliding his tongue against her until she opened up for him.

The priestess was just about to forget the warning Nesta threw at them as Azriel pulled back, her lip-gloss smeared across his mouth.

“I know I say this all the time and I feel like I need stronger words for the feeling I’m trying to express – but, I love you.”, he said softly.

“Oh, I know Shadowsinger.”, she giggled, “But I’m still going to need proof of that.”

Azriel raised a brow, fighting to keep his own smile off his lips. “And how will I prove it?”

“I’ve got some ideas,” Gwyn mused, “First, you’ll go with me to the chapel to swear this apparent undying love for me forever. After that you are going to dance with me throughout the whole celebration, and then…” Her eyes sparkled with mirth. “Then you’ll do everything and anything I ask of you for the rest of the night.”

He simply lifted on of her hands up to his mouth and pressed a kiss to it. A kiss that promised exactly what she’d asked from him. “Forever at your service, priestess.”

Azriel pulled her forward, holding his arm out for her to take. Gwyn placed her own hands on his offered arm, feeling the strength hidden underneath the pristine suit. Ready to get married. They walked all the way to the chapel together, arms linked, steps aligned like only two people who are attuned to each other can. The best part was that this was only the beginning.

[twiceasfrustrating]

Hello.

May I request Rook ? Thank you.

- 🪰

Rating: General Audiences  Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen Fandom: Twisted Wonderland  Relationships: Epel Felmier & Rook Hunt & Vil Schoenheit Characters: Epel Felmier, Rook Hunt, Vil Schoenheit Additional Tags: fluff Summary: Pomefiore takes a trip to a museum to appreciate some fine art. Epel, however, doesn't understand how this stuff can be considered "art". Rook decides to do his thing and praise the understated beauty to help Epel understand. A/N: You gave me too much freedom, Mi Love. Now you get two gay dads trying to raise their problem child to appreciate artwork. Also, I know you speak French and that makes me fear what you will think as you read this hot mess. lol

"C'est magnifique, non?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea what you just said, but it sure is… something." Epel shook his head, unsure of what exactly to say about the work of art – if you could really call it that – in front of him.

"Something it indeed is," Rook gushed in his usual manner that both overwhelmed Epel and made him slightly uncomfortable. "Such vibrant colors conveying the range of human emotions in such a concise and elegant form. It truly makes one feel humbled."

"It's a buncha squares."

There was no other way to describe what Epel was seeing other than that. It was a single canvas with a small yellow square inside of a black square of nearly the same size inside of a larger white square inside of a red square that filled the entire outer edge.

Epel looked at the piece of art in confuzzlement. "I was making the same thing with a box of crayons when I was a sprout."

"Your scribbles weren't valued in the millions." Vil finally interjected, tired of listening to Rook trying to educate a stubborn child who refused to hear the actual praise.

Vil wore his blonde hair back in a messy bun. His eyes were covered by slim framed sunglasses that obscured his eyes and there was a flora silk scarf around his neck to try and hide some of his other recognizable features from public view. Although, it was hard not to recognize his distinct frame and build even under his attempt to obfuscate it under clothing.

A slight frown crossed Epel’s face. "I'm just saying it doesn't take that much talent to make some squares. It ain- isn't the same as those other pictures with all the details."

"They're called landscapes," Vil informed him, "and they are quite beautiful and require a keen eye to make."

"Mais cela a sa propre beauté!" Rook beamed. "One can appreciate the fine work that goes into capturing the experience of the human eye and the grandiosity of such a sight; there is a reason humans never grow tired of seeing the sun rise and set. This price is beautiful in its own way though.

"It captures what the eyes cannot. It tries to materialize the emotions of man into a single, finite, unchanging image. It tells an incroyable story with only one shape and four colors. There are no brush strokes to give away that it was made by hand, the squares are perfectly centered, it was made without any sketching or planning on the canvas. It's as if it was made by something otherworldly, but we know that's not possible because the artist's name is attached to the piece. We know that un beastman made this with only their hands. Does that dissonance not stir something inside of you, Monsieur Pommette?"

Epel stared at Rook with concern.

Vil stood back and listened to Rook's analysis of the piece until the end before he spoke. "It's not wrong to appreciate a landscape. They are a classic form of art and require an eye for fine detail. It's also not wrong to say that a work of art isn't meant for you. However," Vil snapped, "I will not allow the skill, practice, and hard work that goes into creating artwork like this as well. The artist is not less talented and puts in no less effort than any other and such efforts should be recognized even when we do not like the end results."

"Ah, Roi du Poison, I knew you would understand." Rook smiled from ear to ear. "Do you see the beauty in this artwork now, Monsieur Pommette?"

"Suuuure," Epel said hesitantly. 

Then he went quiet.

He didn't understand what either of them was saying, but he also didn't want to hear them lecture him any more than necessary – which was not at all. All he wanted was to get through this strange experience as quickly as possible.

[rmd-writes]

I posted 5,160 times in 2022

That's 5,160 more posts than 2021!

456 posts created (9%)

4,704 posts reblogged (91%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@stereopticons

@maxbegone

@paper-storm

@welcometololaland

@treluna4

I tagged 3,297 of my posts in 2022

Only 36% of my posts had no tags

#tarlos - 271 posts

#rmd writes - 188 posts

#911ls - 183 posts

#schitt's creek - 170 posts

#rmd answers - 126 posts

#rafael silva - 111 posts

#david x patrick - 87 posts

#i love them - 86 posts

#tarlos fic rec - 82 posts

#tarlos fic - 80 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#you just know in that second gif that he’s been talking and is like ‘oh no now i have to say this and it’s not going to go down well’

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Let’s Get Physical

… when he occasionally catches Green Eyes rolling his eyes at Carlos taking photos or looking away with a smirk that leaves him wondering if he’s overdoing it with the gym posts.

Perhaps not though, given the frequency with which tkstrand1 appears in his viewers list; a familiar face with a soft-looking mouth smiling around a lollipop in the profile picture.

—

The gym AU in which Carlos makes use of the gifts he’s been given to catch the eye of a certain green-eyed gym patron.

In which I spiralled, an AU was born and much time was spent looking at gym pics on @rafaelsilvasource for ✨science✨

Massive thanks to @celeritas2997 for the coding help on this one!

Also, a warning: there are Instagram posts embedded in this fic, do with that information what you will.

Read on ao3

77 notes - Posted October 25, 2022

#4

Can I request: 24. just really needed a hug sort of hug

It’d been a busy shift and TK was glad for it. Carlos and his dad had both suggested he take the day off, but he wanted to work, to stay busy, to not have to think.

Nancy and Tommy had started the shift casting surreptitious glances at him, no doubt having been reminded of the date by Carlos and his dad respectively. TK could tell they both wanted to say something but didn’t know if he wanted to hear anything they might say. Nancy had settled for shoving his shoulder lightly and ruffling his hair. Tommy had gently laid a hand on his arm but the alarm had sounded for a medical call before she could say anything and that was that. They worked non-stop for the next twelve hours, and barely had time to stop and eat, let alone have awkward conversations.

Now though, TK is about to walk through the door of the loft and the weight of the day is starting to settle on his shoulders, mixing with his general exhaustion, draining him.

As he steps through the door, he can smell cookies baking in the oven and see the boxes of what he thinks is dim sum on the kitchen counter. And there, leaning against the console table waiting for him, is Carlos.

Despite his weariness, despite his grief, seeing Carlos smiling at him still makes his stomach swoop, even after all these years.

“Hey babe.” His voice is soft, gentle. There’s a question in his greeting and somehow those two words convey so many things to TK: hi and what do you need and how can I make you feel better and I love you.

“Baby.” TK looks at Carlos, at his big brown eyes full of concern and love and has to look away from the force of them. He drops his bag on the floor and without really thinking about it, goes to Carlos, always drawn to him as if there’s some magnetic force pulling them together.

Carlos’ arms are warm and solid around him, one hand cradling them back of his neck, fingers scratching at the base of his skull. Carlos presses a kiss to his temple, his jaw then ducks his head to kiss his favourite spot on TK’s neck.

They don’t speak. TK just clutches at Carlos’ shoulders and lets himself be held and feels the tension leech away the longer they stay pressed together. Carlos has him tucked securely against his body as he strokes TK’s hair. He’s saying something, but TK can’t really hear the words, he just knows from the cadence of Carlos’ voice and the way he holds him that whatever he’s saying is soothing and full of love.

Later, they’ll part and Carlos will ask him if he wants to eat first or whether he’d prefer to just lay down. Later, Carlos will tell TK that he’s baked Gwyn’s cookies and they’ll sit and eat them with ice cream and laughter as TK tells stories about her from his childhood. Later, TK will lead Carlos wordlessly to the shower and ask his husband to help him forget, and Carlos will skillfully, wonderfully, take him apart until there’s no room in his mind for anything but pleasure.

But right now, TK really needs a hug and he’s not ready to let go.

Send me a soft prompt and a pairing

90 notes - Posted October 29, 2022

#3

Tarlos + holding hands across the table 💙

TK can’t help but think about another time he’d sat across from his partner in a fancy restaurant and how far he’s come since then. Looking back, he can’t believe he ever thought that Alex was his soulmate.

Of course, he didn’t know Carlos then. He didn’t know what it was like to be loved unconditionally by someone who chose to do so, by someone who makes the conscious decision to love him each and every day. He didn’t know what it was to be loved by someone who loved all of him – not inconsiderable flaws and all.

He knows now though.

Carlos tells him that he’s loved in a thousand different ways every day. He tells him in the way that he cooks him breakfast and makes his coffee, and in the way that he pushes TK to call Cooper when he knows that he can’t give him what he needs in that moment. He tells him when he asks Tia Lucy to make TK’s favourite foods for Sunday lunch and endures the good-natured teasing from his cousins when TK can’t keep his hands off him. He tells him in the gentle kisses he presses to TK’s forehead when he has to leave for a shift while TK is sleeping. He tells him in the not so gentle way he fucks TK into the mattress and in the way he gives up control to let TK take him apart with his fingers and follows them with his tongue. He tells him by never letting them leave for their respective shifts without saying “be safe, I love you” because time has shown them that anything can happen and where TK is concerned, the improbable is far more probable than it should be.

“Babe? Where’d you go?” Carlos asks, running his fingers across TK’s wrist before taking his hand.

TK looks at their hands linked on the table, the contrast of Carlos’ brown skin against his, golden ring glinting in the candle light.

“I’m right here,” TK says, smiling softly. “With my husband.”

90 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

#2

Would you write 2 & 3 together for the soft prompts? Tarlos obviously 🥺 (either one is also fine)

Sorry these are taking me so long to get to! But if you’ve sent me one, I promise I will write something for your prompt 💕

2. Sleeping in & 3. Forehead kisses

TK silences his alarm as quickly as he can and rolls back over on his pillow, tucking his hands underneath his cheek as he takes in the sight of his still-sleeping husband.

There’s pale, early morning light filtering in through the windows, casting a gentle glow over Carlos’ skin. His curls are stark against the white pillow, the light making his ridiculous lashes cast shadows onto his cheekbones. It takes all of TK’s self-control not to kiss his lips, slack with sleep but soft and inviting. Carlos rolled onto his stomach in the time it took TK to find his phone and turn off the alarm, as if he’d chased TK across the bed in his sleep when he’d moved from his place tucked against Carlos’ side.

TK forces himself to leave the bed, before the sight of Carlos’ back – broad planes of smooth brown skin, over hard lines of muscle, still dappled with purple marks in the distinctive shape of TK’s mouth, bare except for the white sheet that barely covers the curve of his ass – drives him to call in sick in favour of spending another day in bed with Carlos.

He’s envious that their rosters mean that Carlos has managed to swing an extra day off after their honeymoon, and a little sad that he has to leave his husband in bed while he goes off on a 24-hour shift. TK’s not sure how he’s going to cope with being away from Carlos for that long, not after ten glorious days of just the two of them, uninterrupted.

Still, he gets ready for work as quietly as he can, if only because Nancy will be insufferable if he calls in sick when she’d picked them up from the airport last night and therefore knows that he’s most definitely not sick at all. Lovesick maybe.

As TK passes their bedroom before he leaves, he pauses and smiles. Carlos has migrated onto TK’s pillow. He steps into the room and sees that the crease across the top of Carlos’ nose has appeared, his mouth pouting a little as if he’d tried to find TK in his sleep and was unhappy to find him gone. TK leans over and presses a kiss to Carlos’ forehead, and another to the crease, feeling it smooth under the gentle pressure of his lips, the way it always does.

“I love you,” he whispers, running a hand lightly over Carlos’ curls.

Carlos’ lips curl upwards a little at the corners, into a hint of a smile in response and TK forces himself to walk away, holding onto the ring that sits on the chain around his neck and the promise that it holds.

99 notes - Posted November 17, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

what, like it’s hard?

The prequel to to the victor, the spoils aka the firstprince lawyer AU with a twist; featuring insurmountable rivalry, questionable decision making and more than a little tension. 

 After Henry stole the Atkins case from Alex, there’s no way Alex can ever forgive him. Ever. Henry is enemy no. 1, persona non grata. There’s absolutely no way that Henry and his quiet smiles, with his almost offensive politeness and his stupid accent and his stupid perfect hair can make up for this.

Or can he? —

lawyer au | multichap | E | 11/11 chapters

updating on Wednesdays and Sundays

Read on Ao3

PS. if you are allergic to wips, I get it - I am too. EDIT: The final chapter is half-written! I’ve written 10.5/11 chapters and the other two are one is outlined and just waiting for me to type the words. Rest assured this will be finished!

UPDATE 9/10/22: I’ve finished writing the fic!! It’s now complete 😊

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 |Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11

UPDATE 22/10: Now complete!!

you can find the playlist ifyoustay made for this fic here:

186 notes - Posted September 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[groundlevelcliff]

Point of view (making it harder than it has to be)

Learning RPG Maker MV is going well - as well as one can judge that when they're on the third 10-minute tutorial video - but the thing that struck me once I ran the thing was how small every tile and character is.

That doesn't pose a problem in and of itself, but the player character in this project is a housecat. Since cats are tiny in relation to their surroundings, I had already intended to double the size of each tile. At this point I'd have to blow up each non-player sprite by four just to get the scale right! I'm already going for a pixelated look, but scaling to that degree is excessive - not to mention that it'd make placing even a single item a multi-tile ordeal. What I'll likely do is double each person-sized sprite, then find a plugin to double the zoom level from there.

That's a minor concern, though. What really bothers me isn't the size - it's the perspective.

The perceived size of a sprite is going to carry the tone far more than the actual height and width would. I could quintuple the size of the entire game, but if it's all in top-down view, the player is still stuck looking at the top of everyone's dome. They're going to feel bigger than both the character and the scene, which is antithetical to what I'm trying to convey.

The 3/4ths view is MV's default - not because of anything inherent to the engine, but because every innate sprite resource is drawn in that perspective (as are most user-made resources). It's something we're all used to seeing by now, so we usually ignore the implication that the viewer's watching things happen from the sky. Since most people interpret this view as the "normal" perspective, though, I worry it would struggle in communicating situations where the player character themselves is smaller than the average person.

Side view...just feels flat to me. I don't think anything scary has ever happened in side view.

If I want the player to really feel too small for their surroundings, the only other option I can see is to put the camera in between those two views - something approaching a 1:2 perspective. But I had no idea just how hard it is to find examples! Just about every pixel art tutorial focuses on 3/4 view, side view, or isometric. Isometric actually is pretty close to a 1:2 ratio, but the viewpoint is always at an angle! It's made up of diamonds more than it is squares, and even if that's something MV is capable of handling, I really don't want to mess with all that.

I realized today, though, that working from zero like this is going to get me so wrapped up in theory and research that it's going to be half a year before I ever put tile to map. Why not do a case study of other games?

Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite!

This is a weird pick, but this Game Boy Color title informed about 80% of my taste in games (the other 20% was Fallout: New Vegas.) Just a straight-up adventure game. No combat. Just puzzles. It's clearly inspired by point-and-click adventure games without any of the clunky UI weirdness of other genre titles ported to console (COUGH, Maniac Mansion for the NES). I really could talk about this game all day if I don't rein it in, though, so I'm going to focus purely on the visual design.

Hamsters are about three inches tall, which means everything in the environment has to be HUGE in comparison. This is way more dramatic than what I'm planning, but looking at an extreme example may make it easier to see what makes it tick.

Here's what's interesting: the perspective in this game is all over the place.

Locations are divided into chunks that I'd say are roughly twice the size of the GBC's screen. What's funny is that the perspective often changes from one chunk to another.

The environments are often in plain old 3/4 view - like in this first screen of Sunflower Market - while the characters are in profile. They don't feel conflicting...though the scene kind of breaks apart if you stare at that bicycle for too long.

But then you get scenes like the very next room - the characters, floor, left wall, and cardboard boxes (including the "alley" between them) all seem to be at a closer angle, with only the slide being somewhat off.

Look at the left wall and where it meets the floor - it's angled towards the horizon because it's in perspective. But in the previous screen, the angle of the newspaper stacks and the little curb behind the sick hamster are completely straight, because they're purely being seen from a top-down perspective.

The produce shelves are in 3/4 and straight:

But the outside of the fridge is in perspective again:

There's also this screen, which is fun despite the front and back shelves disagreeing on where the vanishing point is:

So the artists couldn't decide what view to use either! But one thing you notice when looking at all the screens together is how every single one includes something that reinforces how small you are and how big the world is. The newspapers, the strawberries, the tape on the cardboard box. The fridge door's handle peeking from the top of the screen places it far lower than it should be in relation to Hamtaro, but it was included for readability; if it wasn't there we might mistake it for a building or weird wall.

Let's leave the market and look at this classroom "cafe" from Sunflower Elementary:

You access this tabletop by climbing up a broom handle (bottom right). The artist could've just colored the floor and wall and called it a day, but they made the conscious decision to have the foot of the life-sized skeleton model visible in the corner. You can examine this model when on the ground floor, and it's enormous. What point is there to include it, other than to emphasize how this grade school child's desk is a staggering height for the player?

Little Nightmares

Maybe it would've made more sense to start with this one? Well, whatever.

I knew I'd have more luck finding write-ups and dissections on this game than an obscure licensed title from 2002, and I wasn't disappointed. In an article published on Game Developer (formerly Gamasutra), Chris Priestman writes "The world that you travel through in Little Nightmares is clearly built for people who are much bigger than Six and so travelling through it is both unwelcoming and challenging. To enhance that, shapes and bodies are exaggerated and bloated, stretched into surreal and sometimes horrific forms."

And he hit the nail on the head! I've actually been playing with the perspective of the cat's owner specifically, tweaking the angle and exaggerating the proportions of his body to make it seem like he's looming over the world around him. But there's a fine, fine line between "mild fish-eye lens effect" and "this guy's straight up drawn in the wrong angle." There's also a drastic difference between pixel art and Little Nightmares' 2.5 D space, but seeing the latter successfully convey that feeling just makes me more determined to make it work.

Focusing on the environment itself, it's not that the player doesn't fit in their surroundings - it's that they're entirely, completely engulfed by them. A good few rooms wouldn't feel unusual in another game with a human-sized character, but open stretches of floor feel yawning and insurmountable. And it's not actually all due to size! Speed plays an enormous role. Six is small, but unlike the lumbering giants of Shadow of the Colossus or RPGs where everyone has the same walking speed, she's also not very fast. In fact, Little Nightmares' giant enemies are pretty spry!

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

Let's not look at this one for perspective tips, okay?

Stuart Little 3: Big Photo Adventure

Sure, why not? I didn't think 3d sandbox games were worth looking at since there's no real shot composition and you can, y'know, just make the models bigger, but I like this shot. Placing the camera just a couple inches off the ground stretches out the stage more than I expected.

In any case, I've got a lot of playing around to do before I find something that clicks, but I think I've got more direction than I did before.

[spikewriter]

Saw this via a group I’m in. As the the Author’s Guild is not a union, these clauses can only be suggestions, but they are, for the most part good ones. Remember, these are only for those books which are being published with publisher. If you’re self-publishing, you’re not dealing with contracts, though you may find yourself subjected to scrutiny based on what becomes an accepted practice. The suggested clauses (and my comments) are as follows:

Clause Relating to Authors’ Use of AI

Author shall not be required to use generative AI or to work from AI-generated text. Authors shall disclose to Publisher if any AI-generated text is included in the submitted manuscript, and may not include more than [5%] AI-generated text.

Generally, this is a good idea, though I’m pretty certain that most folks aren’t going to track exactly how much they use. And we use more of this than you might think. Use ProWriting Aid to help edit? Grammarly? AutoCrit? You’re using “AI”-driven programs, which means your words are being touched by AI. But I think we can take it to mean the creation of the words, not the editing thereof. By the way, for a 70,000 word book, that’s 3,500 words. What this means is you, as the writer, are saying that you didn’t just push a button and let the computer do the work. This, by the way, doesn’t necessarily include disclosing that you might have used SudoWrite or ChatGPT or Claude to help create your outline when the words of the story are yours.

The other interesting part is the idea that the author is not required to work from AI-generated text. That would likely come into play with work for hire, because there have been anecdotal stories coming out of the WGA Strike with an executive telling a writer they don’t need a writing room; they just need the program and a guy to “fix it up.” For which they likely wouldn’t want to pay more than minimum, and then they’d probably like to find a way to cut that if they could.

Audio Book Clause (For Use With Audiobook Grants)

With respect to any audiobook created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not permit or cause the Work to be narrated by artificial intelligence technologies or other non-human narrator, without Author’s prior and express written consent.

This is a good one. I have a book, non-fiction, for which I’ve used AI narration because it would not be financially viable for me to have this as an audiobook otherwise. Non-fiction can work with good AI because there’s less of a performance aspect. You’re not necessarily trying to convey depth of emotion along with the information. I’m working on seeing if I can get my pair of short stories to a state where Google’s AI narration will produce an acceptable product. It’s…interesting. I’m really not certain I’m going to get there any time soon. (The joys of being a recovering actor. I know when it sounds bad or is falling far short of the mark.)

Again, that non-fiction book is self-published, so the decision to use AI for audio was entirely in my hands. As was spending time editing the files so things flowed and pronunciations were correct. No, a publisher shouldn’t be able to just say, “Oh, we did an audio version of your book. You’ll love it! It’s AI!”

Translation Clause (For Use With Grants of Translation Rights)

With respect to any translations created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not translate or permit or cause the Work to be translated into another language with artificial intelligence technologies or other non-human translator, without Author’s prior and express written consent. For purposes of clarification, a human translator may use artificial intelligence technologies as a tool to assist in the translation, provided that the translation substantially comprises human creation and the human translator has control over, and reviews and approves, each word in the translation.

Dear lord, yes. Over the past few years, I’ve gotten hooked on Chinese Dramas, and no words strike fear into the heart more than “auto translated subtitles.” They are invariably bad because literal translation doesn’t take into account idioms or cultural differences. Plus, some words are contextual. Mandarin has different characters for “he” and “she”. However, both are pronounced the same, so an auto translate will refer to “him” when a woman is being discussed. I’ve stopped watching more than one thing because the machine-translated subtitles are illegible word salad.

Cover Design Clause (For Book Contracts)

Publisher agrees not to use AI-generated images, artwork, design, and other visual elements for the book cover or interior artwork without Author’s prior express approval. For purposes of clarification, a human designer may use artificial intelligence technologies as a tool to assist in the creation of artwork for the Work, provided that the human artist has control over the final artwork and the artwork substantially comprises human creation.

The idea is good, but I had to snicker, because I running complete for years from authors I know is that they have no control over their covers. You might be asked to fill out a questionnaire, but that’s a courtesy, not a guarantee. If you’ve reached a certain level, then you might be able to get this put in, but a newbie author? Probably not.

I am glad that they said a designer may use something such as Midjourney as part of the creation, because I’m seeing some designers who are becoming very good at framing a prompt to get an item that they then put into a composite with other elements. You need a certain type of weird box or object, so you get AI to generate just that item, doing variations until you get what you want, then composite that item into the rest of the image. The work is still being done by the human designer, merging various elements to make something new and original. But some of those elements may now come from AI.

Overall these are good things. They’re sensible requests and conditions. I’ve seen too many “it’s all just plagiarism and stealing from others” stick your head in the sand posts, including some folks demanding lists of those who are using AI so “readers know not to buy from these psuedowriters.” The tech is here, and it’s going to be used. It’s already being used. What I hope is that suggestions like this with help start making distinctions between those who are using these programs as tools to assist in the creative process, and those who are gleefully proclaiming they can do it “all” with just the single touch of a button. (And who very often had a course they can sell you on how they did it.)

[astrologyartandcinema]

Mercury Pluto Aspects

Taken from the Late, Great and disabled Astro Arena, not my original work but impossible to find on the web these days. If anyone knows if the former owner of the Astro Arena blog has a Tumblr or link I can give credit to please DM or comment. I haven't been able to access their writing in many years and any information on where to access it would be appreciated.

I wish to look in detail at the Mercury – Pluto combination, which in keeping with allapplications of Pluto evinces a range of difficult effects, most especially because until the behaviour is recognised and reconciled it creates a compulsion, which will be especially uncomfortable for the subject. Inevitably this difficulty and discomfort will affect important relationships too and ultimately – as with any Plutonic contact – the aspect must be transformed to prevent it becoming ultimately destructive. Aspects to Pluto from any of the personal planets are profoundly problematical, but as ever, the first and most effective step on the path to cure must be to recognise the behaviours and take responsibility for them. Owning up to our Plutonic compulsions, shining light upon them – uncomfortable though it may be – is often powerfully effective in transforming them: indeed, in many cases an “instant cure” is entirely possible.

Mercury Pluto, in keeping with other applications of Lord Hades deals with hidden, sinister and subtle aspects of communication and of course the mental processes that underpin them. Indeed, the entire arena of interpersonal communications is fraught for Mercury – Pluto, usually because of an early childhood that is characterised by difficulty, cruelty or power-games in communication matters. We shall explore these causal themes in the ensuing discussion, but first I would like to examine some of the specific effects.

Mercury Pluto is the aspectual manifestation of Mercury in Scorpio, which is renowned for being either verbose or rather monosyllabic. This implies nothing about the underlying mindset or facility for language or mental processing, but only the willingness or unwillingness to reveal the self. This is reflected perfectly by the aspects between Mercury and Pluto, most especially with the conjunction and to a lesser extent the easy aspects there is a loquacious response to the contact: these people talk, often exhaustively although without necessarily revealing much of substance about themselves. Conversely, those with hard aspects are not likely to give too much away, or at the very least – while they may talk freely – they are never comfortable talking about themselves in a way that is particularly incisive or revealing. In either case it boils down to a profound fear of communication and a sense that somehow words can cause pain and lasting damage. With the easy aspects there is not the same urgent sense of danger, but nevertheless there is a need to control the conversation which is engendered by the same mindset as the individual with the hard aspects. Often the Pluto conjunct Mercury person will talk exhaustively and exhaustingly, and the ‘listener’ will often walk away feeling tired and somewhat overwhelmed by the experience. In any case, the process of communicating, with easy aspects or hard, is uncomfortable for both parties involved in the dialogue.

It should be remembered that any aspect between Mercury and Pluto will evince one or other of these effects. For my own part I am extremely familiar with Mercury – Pluto as I have Mercury in Scorpio, peregrine and semi-square, contraparallel and in mutual reception with Pluto, I can speak from experience as to its effects.

With the hard aspects especially, the sense of difficulty with communication creates an observer rather than a participator. Here is somebody who is aware of every subtle nuance of communication and is typically deeply distrustful of words. Usually it will be found that Mercury – Pluto grew up in an environment where truth was taboo, and one or both parents will have been the murky wellspring from which this skewed sense of things was first experienced. It is also possible that an older brother or sister was the cause of the problem or some difficult secret in connection with that sibling or one that haunted and tainted the family environment in some way might be found to be in evidence. On a fairly simplistic level, the Mercury Pluto child will have learned early on that words were not to be trusted at face value. The resentful and controlling mother who would tell her child: “of course I love you darling, more than anything in the world” while evincing no genuine or believable warmth is one good example of this effect. There is then a dichotomy here, between words and more subtle forms of non-verbal communication that have poisoned the child’s perceptions. Body language, ever a reliable indicator of true feelings, is therefore valued much more highly than any simple verbal statement, but this again is fraught with difficulty. The Mercury – Pluto person is formed in such away that they are innately suspicious of any communication: this is very often sensed by others, who feel that they are “on the spot” somehow, and their body language will betray their discomfort which will in turn set off the ultra-sensitive radar of Mercury – Pluto. This can create a cycle of suspicion, distrust and interrogation that is especially exhausting within close relationships later in life.

Therefore, the Mercury – Pluto type is often handicapped in life by being too perceptive and it is through this mechanism of not being able to take things at face value and exhausting oneself and others by continually investigating the most subtle of interactions that the damage is done.

The child learned to do things this way because of the unreliability of close family communications. Language may have been used to damaging effect by a parent or sibling, secrets were kept and wielded almost politically within the early home environment and this actually characterises very neatly the quality of this combination for the afflicted. Words cannot ever mean what they say, there is usually a hidden agenda, an ulterior motive, a secret being kept: indeed this is exactly the case in the childhood home, but the problem is that the child grows up and takes this same understanding out into the world and applies it indiscriminately to every relationship in the whole of life from then on.

But there is a more profound realisation here too. It is not actually so much what is said that concerns Mercury – Pluto, but indeed what is  not said. This creates an anxiety about communication that is really very disturbing: this is why the native talks so much (in the conjunction or easy aspect), not because they have anything much to say, but because they are terrified of the silence and what it might mean. The child will no doubt have been controlled with lack of communication as much as the use of ugly, brutal or cruel language. A parent or sibling may have ostracised or ignored the child as a means of creating an emotional anxiety, or made vague, open-ended threats which would have created a sense of foreboding and impending anguish all with the express purpose of eliciting control.

There is too a legacy of damaging secrets in the early home which would have reinforced this sense of anguish, very often there are half-brothers or sisters who are kept secret or in some other way separate from the rest of the family. There may also have been other secrets relating to siblings which, when revealed created anxiety in the native: I have seen cases where a more favoured sibling is secretly given money or some other treat or benefit by a parent unbeknown to the Mercury Pluto child and when this is learned the assurances by the parent that they love their children equally become hollow and suspect.

At its best, and transformed, Mercury Pluto makes an excellent researcher and psychologist. Able to delve into the deeper and more innate realities of interaction they can often see cause where others cannot; they see the subtle motivations that are in fact pre-cognitive, and in a very real sense they do not need the words to arrive at an understanding. In fact, the Mercury – Pluto person can often be frustrated at the depth of their understanding because words are ultimately a rather blunt instrument when trying to convey the profundity of their insight and this creates another signature of the contact of course: Mercury Pluto despises the superficial and capricious. Intense and insightful, but with a need to avoid obsessing, Mercury Pluto is a natural researcher and student of human nature and motivation, they make excellent counsellors and – once the aspect is transformed – powerful and persuasive communicators who are able to see into the heart of any matter.

[therealvagabird]

I’ve been thinking about disabilities on the tabletop for some time now. Given, there are certain systems that accommodate for this, but I’m only really familiar with D&D 5E, and that also seems to be the most popular system currently running.

So here’s Part 1 of (hopefully) a series of homebrew rules to let you play disabled characters in 5E. This first bit includes stat reduction effects for all your core stats - reflecting what it would be like for your character to have cripplingly low Strength, or Intelligence, or Constitution, etc. I tried to design these rules to have some level of trade-offs, and make the roleplaying experience more interesting rather than just more difficult, but make no mistake, these are still disabilities.

Stat Reduction Defects

To represent permanent debilitating disabilities of the body, one or more of these defects may be taken at character creation to add additional mechanical depth to your roleplaying experience. Each defect comes in three levels of severity. Only one level of any given defect may be chosen, but multiple defects across stats may also be taken. For example: a character may not take level 1 Wisdom deficiency AND level 3 Wisdom deficiency, but may take level 1 Wisdom deficiency, and a level 2 Dexterity deficiency.

CONSTITUTION

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Constitution score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You are of a poorer constitution compared to most. You do not suffer hurts well, and are prone to sickness, but you are not wholly crippled.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Constitution score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Withering. Whenever you would gain a level of exhaustion, you gain one additional level of exhaustion as well.

You are afflicted with a wasting illness for which no healer could find a cure. In addition to the normal pains that result from such a low constitution, even doing normal tasks weighs upon you, and you struggle persistently with simply living your life.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Constitution score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Withering. Whenever you would gain a level of exhaustion, you gain one additional level of exhaustion as well.

Major disability: Frailty. Your poor health has affected your overall physical ability. You have disadvantage on all Athletics and Acrobatics checks.

Grace: Caution. Your delicate nature has made you hyper-aware of potential dangers. You may add your proficiency bonus to Perception rolls. This effect may stack with other bonuses to your Perception. You also gain advantage on Investigation checks to detect potentially poisonous substances.

You would be described as “sickly” at your halest. Due to your affliction you are highly susceptible to all physiological damage. In some ways it’s a miracle you’ve lived this long. The fact that you’ve made it so far shows that you have an attentive mind and personality.

STRENGTH

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Strength score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You are weaker than average and are not suited for hard labor. Martial pursuits are likely out of the question for you.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Strength score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Weak. When prone, you must use all of your movement for your round if you wish to stand up again.

Beyond simple lack of strength, you are weak by all adult standards for your race. Even doing conventional tasks is taxing for you.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Strength score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Weak. When prone, you must use all of your movement for your round if you wish to stand up again.

Major disability: Crippled. Your body struggles to even support itself. You have disadvantage on Acrobatics rolls, and your base movement speed is reduced by 10.

Grace: Unthreatening. Your thin and frail appearance puts most people at ease, as they assume you are no great threat. You have advantage on Persuasion and Deception checks when trying to convince others you are not a threat to them.

Your bones and muscles wither as if you are starving, and even the weight of your own frame can be too much at times. While those who value strength would look down on you, at the very least you give off an unthreatening aura.

DEXTERITY

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Dexterity score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Fine details are not your strong suit. Simple tasks or things which do not involve so much precision are more your pace.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Dexterity score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Lame. Your base movement speed is reduced by 10.

Your poor dexterity has manifested as an overall lack of agility. Due to some illness in your joints even walking can be a fitful struggle.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Dexterity score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Lame. Your base movement speed is reduced by 10.

Major disability: Palsy. Make all tool use checks at disadvantage, otherwise using tools takes twice as long.

Grace: Blunt. You are inured to rough terrain, since all terrain seems rough to you as it is. You are unimpeded by all non-magical Difficult Terrain, including crowded urban areas.

You are afflicted with a palsy which makes precision work near impossible without significant effort, and your every motion is only half in your control. “Clumsy” would be a generous term. However, if you put your mind to it there is nothing stopping you from engaging in more straightforward tasks.

INTELLIGENCE

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Intelligence score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You are less intelligent than average, but besides being mocked for a dullard you are not overly handicapped.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Intelligence score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Unlearned. You cannot read or write the script for any languages you speak.

Your mind does not function with the vigor that it should. This has rendered you unable to comprehend the written word and put you at a severe disadvantage in life.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Intelligence score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Unlearned. You cannot read or write the script for any languages you speak.

Major disability: Slow Minded. You have disadvantage on any Intelligence check to recall information.

Grace: Pity. Many people are predisposed to take pity on you and grant you assistance in matters requiring a sharp wit. Commoners may offer you work, though not always good work, while upper-class individuals may give you charity more readily. Scholars and other learned folk may find you irritating, however.

Your mind is handicapped by some manner of defect. You have immense trouble learning and retaining information and would likely be called “simple” by most members of polite society. However this has had the benefit of some people being more forthcoming with charity out of a sense of pity.

WISDOM

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Wisdom score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You lack a little something most people seem to have. Call it a sheltered upbringing, a slowness of the mind, or something else, but it’s expressed in a marked absence of wisdom.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Wisdom score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Phobia. You must roll or choose a Phobia from the following table. When exposed to the Trigger of that Phobia you must succeed on a Fear (Wis) saving throw or become Frightened. Once Frightened you can re-roll to break Fear once per round in combat. If out of combat your comrades must aid you in overcoming your anxieties. Your Trigger will not activate again until you have taken a short or long rest.

Your mind is frail. In addition to lacking many of the insights and experiences other people seem to pick up naturally, you’re easily Frightened and maladjusted to the wide world.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Wisdom score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Phobia. You must roll or choose a Phobia from the following table. When exposed to the Trigger of that Phobia you must succeed on a Fear (Wis) saving throw or become Frightened. Once Frightened you can re-roll to break Fear once per round in combat. If out of combat your comrades must aid you in overcoming your anxieties. Your Trigger will not activate again until you have taken a short or long rest.

Major disability: Disconnected. Your inability to read the world around you has impacted your ability to connect to other people as well. You have disadvantage on Deception and Persuasion checks concerning creatures with the Humanoid type.

Grace: Oblivious. You have advantage against being Charmed, and on Insight rolls against being Deceived by Humanoid creatures.

Some might call you slow, but your issue isn’t one of intelligence. Things simply don’t make sense to you, and you drift on in life unable to fully take in the world around you or the people in it. Your strange disconnect from others has some upsides – while it is hard for you to convey your thoughts to others, and are as perceptive as a stone, you can sometimes see through the illusions of the world that others take for granted, given that you are unburdened by the veil of how things are “supposed” to be.

Wisdom Phobia Table (d20)

If you have taken the Phobia trait you must either roll for a result on this table or choose a Phobia at will. Meeting the Trigger of this Phobia will require you to make a DC-15 Fear (Wisdom) saving throw or become Frightened. Once Frightened you can re-roll to break Fear once per round in combat. If out of combat your comrades must aid you in overcoming your anxieties. Your Trigger will not activate again until you have taken a short or long rest.

CHARISMA

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Charisma score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You are a rather unsavory sort, either due to some deformity, or simply a bad personality. Most people will not appreciate your company.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Charisma score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Repulsive. You are either deformed or off-putting in some way that makes people want to avoid you. When attempting to enter conversation with a Humanoid creature, roll on the Repulsive Reactions table to determine the result.

There is something wrong with your demeanor. Perhaps your appearance is unnaturally hideous, or you emanate an unsettling feeling. You’ve had to find new ways to adapt to a world that despises you.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Charisma score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Repulsive. You are either deformed or off-putting in some way that makes people want to avoid you. When attempting to enter conversation with a Humanoid creature, roll on the Repulsive Reactions table to determine the result.

Major disability: Shunned. Your inability to connect with others has left your interpersonal skills lacking in more ways than one. You have disadvantage on Insight checks against Humanoid creatures, as well as disadvantage on Animal Handling checks.

Grace: Discarded. You are so hideous most people will go out of their way to avoid you, even to the point where you might use this to your advantage. You have advantage on Stealth and Intimidation checks against Humanoid creatures.

You are a monster – or at least most people seem to think so. Whether by virtue of your disgusting appearance or some black pall that accompanies you, no decent folk want your company. However there are certain ways a savvy individual might leverage such disdain to their advantage.

Repulsive Reactions Table (d20)

If you possess the Repulsive trait, you must roll on this table before you enter into conversation with any Humanoid creature. Make a Charisma check and determine the outcome based on the reactions table. Individuals with whom you are personally acquainted or who are obliged to interact with you, such as party members, friends, and most shopkeepers, clerks, and clerics do not trigger a roll.

[esmeraldablazingsky]

I’ve finally hit my limit on the number of bad takes on the Lan parents I can see before I have to lay out all the reasons I disagree, so hello, I’m Blazie, and in this essay I will justify my visceral dislike of the assumption that Qingheng-jun married/imprisoned/had sex with Lan-furen against her will.

    Warning for mentions of rape (in context of Interpretations I Really Hate) and a very, VERY long post below the cut.

    Before I start going off about the finer points of all this, I want to make sure people are on the same page regarding what we actually know about what went down with Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen. What I say is based off the EXR translation of MDZS, for the sake of clarity, and although I don’t think the exact wording should be too important, feel free to let me know if you think I’ve missed an important bit of nuance or something (the whole story is in Chapter 64.)

    The story we get is told by Lan Xichen, and it goes like this: a young Qingheng-jun falls in love at first sight with Lan-furen, who doesn’t return his feelings, and at some point kills one of Qingheng-jun’s teachers over unspecified “grievances.” Although he’s understandably very upset over the murder, Qingheng-jun sneaks Lan-furen back to Cloud Recesses and officially marries her in order to announce to his clan that anyone who wants to hurt her has to go through him.

After that, he locks Lan-furen in one house and himself in another as a form of repentance. Wei Wuxian speculates that this was because “he could neither forgive the one who killed his teacher nor watch the death of the woman who he loved. He could only marry her to protect her life and force himself not to see her.” 

    A central detail of this story that I think people don’t give the import it deserves is that aside from marrying and protecting her, Qingheng-jun’s other option was to let Lan-furen be executed by his clan. His purpose in marrying her wasn’t just for kicks/out of a possessive sort of love, it was so she wouldn’t straight up die. How she felt about this arrangement isn’t stated, but I’ll get into that in a bit. In addition to that, Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen live separately, which was apparently purposeful on Qingheng-jun’s part, and runs counter to the interpretation that he intended to take sexual advantage of Lan-furen.

Though there aren’t many concrete details in Lan Xichen’s retelling, he does specifically inform Wei Wuxian that his mother never complained about remaining in her house. What exactly this signifies is unclear— whether she was simply putting on a brave face for her sons, or whether she was in fact at all content with the situation— but it at the very least serves to further muddy the waters on how she and Qingheng-jun felt about all this. 

Beyond what Lan Xichen and Wei Wuxian are saying out loud, there’s also quite a bit of subtext in this scene, especially in light of later events and revelations, like Lan Xichen’s confession for Lan Wangji at Guanyin Temple. 

So what is Lan Xichen trying to convey with all this? There’s a lot of memes about this scene, most of which err too far on the side of Himbo Airhead Lan Xichen for my liking, but one that I do find amusing emphasizes how Lan Xichen draws parallels between Wangxian and the story of his parents (Lan Xichen: [flute solo] please use your one brain cell to connect the dots.) If Wei Wuxian hadn’t completely lost his memory of Lan Wangji defending him against his own clan elders, one would assume that Lan Xichen’s story would have had a much better chance of hitting home. 

In hindsight and side by side, the parallels are much clearer— Qingheng-jun, “ignoring the objections from his clan… told everyone in the clan that she would be his wife for the rest of his life, that whoever wanted to harm her would have to pass through him first.” Similarly, according to Lan Xichen in Chapter 99, “for [Wei Wuxian,] not only did WangJi talk back to him, he even met with his sword the cultivators from the GusuLan Sect. He heavily injured all thirty-three of the seniors we asked to come.”

In that context, it makes a lot less sense to interpret Qingheng-jun as an aggressor towards Lan-furen, as in Lan Wangji’s case, the narrative clearly establishes that his actions are to secure Wei Wuxian’s safety. The action of Taking Someone Back To Cloud Recesses is— okay, actually, it’s a little more nuanced than I took into account when I started writing that sentence, so let me go a little deeper into Lan Wangji’s actions and how they relate to his father’s, story-wise. 

My intent is not to dive into the terrifying underworld of novel-versus-drama discourse, but simply put, Novel!Lan Wangji as he is written isn’t exactly the poster child for clear consent. (I’m going to entirely leave off the extra chapters for the sake of everyone’s sanity, so I’m just talking about the main body of the novel here.)

He means well, and I’m sure we can agree that he does actually love and want the best for Wei Wuxian, but his lack of communication on this point means that he accidentally gives Wei Wuxian the impression that he wants to imprison and/or punish him in Cloud Recesses at least twice off the top of my head (pre-timeskip, as we know, and post-timeskip immediately after Dafan Mountain when he actually drags Wei Wuxian back to his room.) 

That all likely has something to do with MXTX’s narrative kinks and regular kinks and all that, and can absolutely be taken with many grains of salt. However, these events establish how easy it is to misinterpret the action of Taking Someone Back To Gusu as an attempt to imprison rather than protect them (much to Lan Wangji’s chagrin.)

Failing to communicate his purpose to Wei Wuxian doesn’t mean that Lan Wangji actually had any intent of hurting or caging him— that was just a misinterpretation on Wei Wuxian’s part, and we, as the audience, find that out in due time— but as written in the novel, it can be really uncomfortable to read. Because of that, many people choose to accept CQL canon regarding Lan Wangji’s more possessive actions or mix characterization from different adaptations, which, to be clear, I completely understand and respect. 

However, Qingheng-jun doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt as often, which I frankly find baffling, because nowhere in the text does it state that Lan-furen objected to being taken back to Cloud Recesses, while even Wei Wuxian clearly objected the first few times. In fact, while we’re on this note, I’ll take it a step farther— I find it baffling that people seem to default to an unsympathetic view of Qingheng-jun, because nowhere in the text does it state that he overruled Lan-furen’s wishes in any way. The text doesn’t clarify a lot of things, actually, and that is part of the point. 

The narrators of MDZS are, in many situations, highly unreliable. This is, presumably, very purposeful! MDZS can easily be read as a sharp criticism of reputation and mass judgment and the concept of condemning people without knowing their motives! And I don’t want to sound mean, but guys… did any of us learn anything from that? Here, I’m going to put it in meme format for a second to convey what I mean. 

MDZS: It’s easy to condemn someone as a villain if you don’t know their story or the reasons behind their actions

MDZS: Anyway, here’s a character whose story and reasons behind his actions you know nothing about

Some Parts Of This Fandom: Ah, a villain 

    Memes aside, here’s what I want to point out. It’s entirely possible to assume Qingheng-jun was a bad person who disregarded a woman’s wishes in marrying and confining her when all you have is Lan Xichen’s (actually very neutral, thank you Lan Xichen for being an eminently reasonable and concerned-with-evidence character) account of what happened. It would also be at least that easy to assume Wei Wuxian was just an evil necromancer if he hadn’t un-died and brought his own story to light, or even to believe that Lan Wangji had somehow tamed Wei Wuxian into submission and being a respectable cultivator if you were an average citizen of Fantasy Ancient China with nothing but rumors to operate on. 

    The thing about Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen’s story, then, is that there is nobody left alive who knows the full tale. Nobody knows what they thought about anything, really. Nobody even knows why Lan-furen killed Qingheng-jun’s teacher. Wei Wuxian asks why, and Lan Xichen can’t tell him, but I think the best answer would be something along the lines of I don’t know, Wei Wuxian, why did you kill people? Your guess on the motivations of your own thinly disguised narrative parallel are as good as anyone’s. 

    So, while it’s not technically impossible to assign darker motives to Qingheng-jun, the cautionary tale of MDZS seems to warn against that exact assumption. 

    I’ve refrained from getting too salty on a personal level thus far, but now that I’ve said a lot of the more logical and story-based points of my argument, I will say that at least some of my annoyance with the interpretation of Qingheng-jun as a possessive rapist and Lan-furen as his victim stems from the fact that I just think it’s straight up boring. Where’s the nuance? Aren’t you tired of reducing these characters to the flattest possible versions of themselves? Don’t you just want to add a little flavor? 

    In a slightly more serious phrasing of that criticism, I find that making Lan-furen a helpless prisoner strips her of whatever agency she might otherwise have. To be fair, she’s more or less a non-character in keeping with the general state of the MDZS universe, but making her a damsel in distress only consigns her more deeply to hapless, milquetoast innocence. 

    It’s perfectly valid to enjoy ladies who have done nothing wrong, ever, in their lives, but like… Qin Su is right there, if that’s your ball game. There’s also really no need to make Qingheng-jun someone who doesn’t respect women. Isn’t Jin Guangshan enough for at least one universe? 

    Anyway, ultimately, you do you. I don’t like arguing on the internet, and will just ignore things I don’t agree with (or write an 1800 word vaguepost) like a mature human being. I’m just saying, if it’s a cut and dry tale of imprisonment and assault you’re looking for… you probably don’t want to turn to a woman who committed a murder and a man who loved her enough to forfeit everything to keep her safe. 

[shortace]

The Adventures of Gloop and Angry Hamster in the Dimension of Fire Unfamiliar Environment with a Kid Who’s Going To Get Fired

Gloop was pretty smart for a goldfish. It came, he thought, of spending too much time in close proximity to Myles Fowl. That alone, however, would have done nothing; it took the intermediary efforts of the trans-species polyglot Beckett for anything Myles said to make any sense to Gloop. 

Angry Hamster wasn’t very smart, even for a sculpture made of shredded IQ tests held together with saliva. He was too busy being angry because he couldn’t figure out which number came next after 37, 34, 31, 28. Gloop could have told him the answer was 25, of course, and Myles would have informed him that IQ tests really only measure how good you are at standardised tests but his was 170 thank you very much. But Angry Hamster never thought to ask. He wasn’t that smart. 

Dolphin was a dolphin, and exactly as smart as a dolphin.

The sun shone, and a light breeze played with the tips of the waves. No record survives concerning the nature of the game, but possibly Tic-Tac-Toe. What we do know is that the ocean won. The ocean always does.

But Dolphin, leaping and frolicking, cared nothing for the breeze, or the sunshine, or the Tic-Tac-Toe. Her only concern was to have no concerns. And she was remarkably good at it. 

The low hum of a far-off boat reached Dolphin's ears, but she paid it no mind. It wasn't her concern.

Inside Villa Eco, young Myles Fowl was trying to comfort his twin brother Beckett. He wasn’t very good at it, as he often failed to grasp that emotions do not respond to logic.

'She's a wild animal, Beck,' he said again. 'She does wild things.'

'But she said she'd be there!' Beckett insisted. 'Dolphins don't break promises, brother.'

'Your sample size is one,' Myles pointed out, Beckett having only ever met one dolphin, and Myles remained unconvinced that actual communication had taken place, making ‘met’ seem the wrong word for the encounter. 'That is insufficient data to draw a conclusion regarding the reliability of the species.'

'I just know she's in trouble.'

Myles thought that 'just knowing' was poor research methodology, but he just sighed. 'We'll wait for her again tomorrow. Now come on, it's lunch time, and we need energy for our growing brains.'

Gloop, in his bowl, let out a nervous 'Gloop.' He hadn't understood all of the twins' conversation, but he could tell that Beckett was worried and it had something to do with his new dolphin friend. Even though dolphins were mammals, not fish, somewhere deep inside all aquatic creatures was a sympathy with all the rest, and like Beckett, he hoped that Dolphin was okay.

Dolphin was not okay. 

Off the coast of Dalkey Island, a fishing boat loitered. The pilot was sleeping off a bout of food poisoning - which, frankly, served him right for many of his illegal and immoral practices. On deck was a single underpaid, unqualified, and underage employee. Not for him a certificate in aquaculture, nor one in first-aid aboard ship. Moby Dick, though, he had read several times: quite an achievement for any adult, let alone a fifteen year old. The boy did his best to make up for his shortcomings with pure enthusiasm, and had, a few moments earlier, cast out a line with a complete lack of precision and the wrong bait. This wouldn’t normally be much of a problem, as tuna fish aren’t known for being overly fussy, but in this case Dolphin happened to be having a wonderful time just off the stern of the boat, and she wasn’t fussy either. 

The bait was disappointing, tasting stale and dull, and it had something hard and sharp inside it. It hurt Dolphin’s mouth. This would not stand. What sort of ocean gods would provide food like this? Dolphin raised her voice in complaint. 

Sound travels faster in water than it does through the air, so it wasn’t long before Dolphin’s podmates heard her whistles and clicks. Roughly translated, she had said: ‘This fish is bad and it hurts my mouth; send me the manager.’ Her podmates laughed and mocked her, a series of clicks that traveled all the way to the shores of Dalkey Island, where Beckett stood listening. 

Gloop’s laps of the fishbowl slowed slightly as he devoted more energy to his brain. Dolphin was in trouble, and NANNI wouldn’t let Myles and Beckett put to sea. Gloop was going to have to solve this problem on his own. It was a bit harder than figuring out what came next after 37, 34, 31, 28, but not for nothing was he the smartest goldfish in Ireland and perhaps the world. He would have to enlist some help.  

‘Brother mine, what are you putting in the fish tank?’ Myles asked wearily. He had written multiple treatises on the biology and psychology of twins, and perhaps his most important conclusion was that love and exasperation could, and generally did, co-exist. His second most important conclusion was that doubling the calorific intake of one twin could not sustain the other; Beckett had simply bulked up while Myles’ stomach rumbled miserably. He would not be repeating that experiment.

‘It’s a scaled-down version of your water filtration system, attached to a swimming suit,’ Beckett said proudly. ‘Gloop is going to sea, and he needs fresh water.’ 

‘There is only one Gloop, and two filtration systems,’ Myles pointed out.

Beckett held aloft the second unit. ‘This one’s for Angry Hamster. Look, NANNI fixed it to make air for him!’

‘Beck, Angry Hamster can’t swim.’ 

‘Gloop will help him. He told me.’ 

‘Is this about your dolphin friend?’ 

‘Yes, Myles; Gloop and Angry Hamster are going to rescue her!’ Beckett beamed. ‘NANNI has no joooo-ris-tic-shun over them!’ 

Myles had been playing vocabulary lists to his brother while he slept, hoping he might learn subliminally; he was pleased that it seemed to be working, but less pleased about this plan. ‘That is true,’ he acknowledged, ‘but Angry Hamster is made of paper and saliva. He will disintegrate in water.’ 

Beckett demonstrated the watertight suit he had had NANNI design for him. It was monogrammed with a cursive AH on each side. ‘Angry Hamster wants to go.’

Myles sighed. ‘Very well, brother. How are they going to get into the ocean?’ 

‘I will flush them down the toilet,’ Beckett proclaimed.

Beck!’ 

‘Kidding, brother!’ Beckett laughed at his brother’s shocked expression. ‘I will carry them to the beach and throw them in. Gently.’ Despite his boisterous nature, Beckett had a deep empathy and was perfectly capable of being gentle if circumstances required. Myles imagined that introducing two very different non-sea creatures equipped with untested suits into a marine environment counted as circumstances that required it. 

Beckett was as good as his word, and Gloop and Angry Hamster safely - if nervously - entered the waves from the Fowl’s private beach. To Myles, Beckett seemed to be making a series of very strange noises, but Gloop and Angry Hamster each heard ‘Fishing boat, southeast! Good luck!’ 

Being small creatures in a big and strange new world, Gloop and Angry Hamster did not swim particularly fast. They did their small best, though, with Gloop encouraging his papery friend. Angry Hamster got along in a sort of wriggly doggy-paddle, and NANNI’s suits withstood the challenge. Both animals were kept safe and breathing in their own special ways. 

In a matter of hours they had caught up with the fishing boat. Angry Hamster was exhausted, and if the boat’s pilot had not been unwell, he would never have made it. If our heroes understood the concept of food poisoning, they would be very glad for it. The boat remained idle. Angry Hamster was able to cling to the side with one claw, even though it was hard to grip through the material of his suit, and hold up Gloop with another, allowing them both to rest. 

As they rested, Gloop and Angry Hamster heard a voice above them. Angry Hamster could make nothing of it, but Gloop caught the drift of it. If either of them had a full comprehension of English, what they heard would have been something like this: ‘I don’t think this is a tuna fish. It doesn’t look tuna-y. I think it’s a dolphin. I’m going to be fired. I’m in so much trouble. What do I do? What would Ishmael do?’ all the accompaniment of pacing footsteps and heavy breathing.

Gloop caught ‘dolphin’ several times, as well as ‘fired’. He knew two meanings of the word fire: one was hot and burny, and the other was fast and deadly. Neither sounded good for Dolphin. He tried to convey his concern to Angry Hamster, but the fragmented analogy question on the hamster’s back was itchy and he couldn’t scratch it through NANNI’s suit. This, combined with hunger and exhaustion, was making him very angry. He let out a wild screech and clawed his way frantically up the side of the boat and onto the deck. 

The pacing, muttering boy stopped pacing and muttering at the sight of a wet-suited paper-mache hamster climbing on board. He began to wonder if food poisoning was contagious, and if hallucinations were a common symptom. Angry Hamster took advantage of the hesitation to launch himself at the boy’s face, screeching. What he was trying to say was ‘For the love of all the gods, scratch my back!’ But what the boy heard was tantamount to ‘I’m going to claw your face off!’

Gloop knew he had to act fast. High jump is not commonly practiced among small domestic fish, but with determination and a rudimentary understanding of geometry, much can be accomplished even by the smallest of animals. He swam away from the boat to give himself a run-up - or rather, a swim-up - and followed Angry Hamster’s lead in launching himself on deck. 

The poor boy fainted on the spot. 

To one side of the deck lay Dolphin, tangled in fishing lines and nets, flopping weakly. Dolphins can survive several hours out of the water, if it isn’t too hot or dry, and Gloop was relieved to see that, although she was clearly tired and uncomfortable, Dolphin was unhurt and should make a full recovery. But first they had to get her back into the water, which meant getting her out of those nets. 

Gloop knew who had the perfect teeth to gnaw through fishing lines. What he didn’t know was how to convey that instruction to Angry Hamster, who was currently scuttling around the deck looking for something he could scratch his back against - and whose teeth were still enclosed in NANNI’s watertight suit. Angry Hamster finally found a scratching post in the form of a tackle box. It had a sharp corner which dug in through the suit and hit the sweet spot perfectly. Angry Hamster was, briefly, less angry as he scratched. But his suit was meant to withstand water pressure, not tackle boxes. It ripped open, and Angry Hamster wriggled his way out of it. On some level he understood that this was undesirable, and he turned to look apologetically at Gloop.

But Gloop was overjoyed now that Angry Hamster’s teeth were free. He mimed chewing, gnawing, and pointed with a fin at the nets surrounding Dolphin. Chewing comes naturally to hamsters, so Angry Hamster understood immediately, and abandoned his tackle box. It was the work of moments to chew through the lines holding Dolphin on deck. Before she let herself slide back into the ocean, Dolphin took a moment to slap the recovering fisher boy with a fin. 

‘Hey!’ he protested weakly, but she was already gone.

‘There, brother.’ Myles and Beckett stood on the beach on Dalkey Island, looking out to the southeast. Myles had just spotted Dolphin scything through the waves towards them. ‘I told you she would be okay.’

‘And I told you Gloop and Angry Hamster would save her.’ Beckett handed the binoculars to his twin, to let him see the small goldfish swimming furiously beside the dolphin, and the slightly mushy hamster riding on her back. 

THE END (probably)

[jacksgreysays]

Could/should/did prompt Shikako in bnha?

it could have gone like this:

"How does your quirk work?" the girl at the bar asks. She's far too young to be at a bar, but no one can make her leave.

... which is alarming considering this is also the headquarters for the League of Villains and she very much is not part of said league.

Not that Kurogiri isn't trying to fix that. "If you join us, I'll tell you," he says mildly, sliding a drink over to her. Non-alcoholic, of course.

"Hm, I'd rather not," she responds equally mild, casual as she drinks the beverage, unafraid.

Kurogiri shrugs and continues his work. Just because he's trying to recruit her, doesn't mean he's going to be pushy about it. And anyway, he'll just ask her again tomorrow, same as yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

"Were you able to find your... Gelel, was it?" he asks conversationally. He's considering cooking something, a proper meal and not just snack food, something high in nutrition.

The girl sighs, staring off forlornly into the distance. After a moment of silence, she says quietly, "No."

Maybe a stew? Something filling and comforting?

"I... I don't think I'll meet Gelel again."

Frazzled for some reason, Kurogiri slides an entire jar of cherries to her.

She looks up at him confused before opening it and sliding both the jar and the lid back.

He blinks and is grateful that his expressions are near impossible to parse. "So what are your plans now?" Kurogiri asks, hoping that is less of a land mine.

The girl shrugs, fiddles with the end of her braid, "I'm not entirely sure. I wasn't really planning on being here long term."

He looks around, a quick glance upstairs, assessing, "Do you have a place to stay?"

She shoots him a wry smile, "I'm still not joining your league."

"It's not my league," he corrects her.

She rolls her eyes. "The league you are a part of," she amends.

Kurogiri shrugs, acquiesces. He considers what living necessities a normal person who isn't an undead entity made of fog and shadows might have. "Do you have anyone who could help? Friends? Family?"

At this, the girl's expression shutters again, and Kurogiri curses himself internally. After another silent moment of contemplation, she meets his eyes. Her face as inscrutable as his lack of one.

"Something like that."

---

it should have gone like this:

It's different this time, Shikako thinks, wider and far more unpredictable. Impossibly overwhelming. At least there is the semblance of morality--good versus evil, heroes against villains--but that doesn't really hide the truth of it:

Once more, Shikako finds herself born into a world of child soldiers.

Damn it.

But she thinks she can keep herself out of it. Her family aren't heroes, though they do make devices and gadgets that help heroes with their jobs. There isn't an oncoming apocalyptic disaster on the horizon--or, at least, not that she knows of. She can live her life in relative peace, stay out of the thick of things. She wants to thrive in this world of powers without prophecies, relearn to love invention without the desperation that had pushed her before.

Although if she happens to create things that are helpful to heroes that's not really getting herself involved, that's just contributing to society and also following in her new parents' footsteps. And everyone knows that UA's Support Department is the best in the country, it only makes sense to apply for that school.

And, yes, she may have gone a little over the top during the test but, really, they were robots and where else would she have the opportunity to test her limits (or lack thereof) without fear of bystander casualties? And, what, was she not supposed to help out her fellow test takers when they needed it? That's just common decency.

Honestly, she has no idea how she ended up in the Hero Department's Class 1-A.

She also does not understand why Principle Nezu won't let her transfer into the Support Department--obviously, she'll do the most good there. She has a portfolio to prove it!

... Although that just backfires on her because instead of getting transferred, she just gets an additional period added to the end of her daily schedule where she and Mei Hatsume--who maybe lives in the Development Studio--unintentionally compete for most volatile inventions under the exhausted supervision of Power Loader. And she still has to deal with the even more volatile personalities in the Hero class with Aizawa-sensei's frankly bizarre teaching style.

If she weren't who she was--if she didn't remember--she probably wouldn't be able to balance things as well as she does. Although she doesn't really connect with her classmates as much as she probably should, hasn't really fallen into a group the same way others have. The occasional exchanges she has with Dark Shadow has made them friends of a sort, she thinks, though maybe not. Except for minor conversations over homework or the weather, she doesn't really talk to anyone in Class 1-A.

Of course, this changes after they are attacked in the USJ. Asui helps her out in the Flood Zone when Shikako is taken by surprise--teleported into water, not her best moment--and together with Midoriya they regroup with some of their other classmates only to find Aizawa-sensei in the middle of being brutally murdered.

And something within her snaps:

Because this isn't her home and these aren't her teammates and she doesn't really want to be a Hero, not really, but... Rule Number One.

Maybe its not so different after all.

---

but it actually went like this:

When the students of UA move into the newly built Heights Alliance en masse, each class finds a fun addition to their ranks.

"Three in your case," the girl with the braid says to the collective curiosity of Class 1-A. "Apparently your class is... special," she says it with an almost diplomatic smile, but from the unimpressed expressions on her compatriots' faces it's not exactly a compliment.

Iida, ever the dutiful class representative, is the first to respond. "Isn't it too late in the year for you to transfer to UA? And while the dorms are capable of housing additional students, I don't believe our classroom will be able to do the same. Though that is not to say that you are unwelcome, rather, that we would not want you to feel unaccommodated."

The other girl, the one with purple hair and a scowl, scoffs, "You've already met us, we're Agents. We're not joining your class. Why would we want to be Hero students?" With her expression and crossed arms, she could not convey more disgust with the very idea if she had spat on the floor.

Some of class bristle at the insult, Bakugou audibly snarls, but when the last Agent, a boy with black hair, slants a disapproving glance in her direction she looks away, chastised.

Quick to clarify, the first Agent says, "We'll be living with you in the dorms, but we'll continue our educations separately. For you, UA has become a boarding school. For us, we'll commute to our respective schools. But thank you for your concern." 

"But if you're not students, then why are you here?" asks Kaminari, practically emanating confusion.

The male Agent, with a somehow even more disapproving expression, sighs. "Your teacher should have been the one to tell you."

"Your principle, along with building the Heights Alliance, has acquired the services of our Agency as another deterrent to Villains," explains the friendly Agent. "Most of the buildings have only Agent assigned, but given your class history you get the three of us. I'm Agent Bat," she introduces herself with an almost awkward little wave.

"Agent Hawk," says the boy, nodding in greeting.

The purple haired girl, arms still crossed, rolls her eyes, "Possum."

"Possum and I will be on the second floor, Hawk will be on the fourth floor. If you have any information or suspicians of Villain incursions and activities you can come to any of us. We also have a trained medic in 1-B's dorm, Agent Slug, she'll probably introduce herself later today. Otherwise you can just pretend like we're not here," Agent Bat says.

"So you're just going to be... watching us?" asks Ashido.

Agent Bat shakes her head. "No, no, just consider us as neighbors. When it comes to Villains, your concerns are our concerns."

His already minimal patience worn thin, Bakugou finally explodes, "We don't need any fucking babysitters!"

While most of his classmates wouldn't phrase it the same, the sentiment is shared amongst them. They've survived so much already--random interlopers trying to take control just grates on them.

"Well it's not your choice, now is it?" Agent Possum shoots back, ready and raring to match Bakugou's irritation with her own. "We're Agents and this is our mission. If you want to be pissy about it, it doesn't matter. Although if you're going to act like a brat, no wonder your principle thinks you need babysitters."

"We're not actually your babysitters," Agent Hawk clarifies, tone apathetic. "We're not here to protect you."

"The dorms and your sensei are your security. We're not your bodyguards." Agent Bat continues with an almost sheepish shrug that fails to mitigate the coldness of her words, "You're our bait."

~

A/N: I realize this ask box event is essentially tripling the amount of effort required for each prompt... I mean, I’m still enjoying it. But like... far more challenging than I thought it would be going into it.

Anyway, the “actually happened” section is based off of my fic built on a hill (light the fire)

For the Could/Should/Actually Fic Ask Box Event!

[snipehuntpotatosack]

Unofficial Commentary on the text tagged [Chronic Metaphor] – A Servo-Subsystem Research Program Summary in Four Cantos; with Addendum re site visit

Initial apologetics (if the term is applicable and/or recognized) are due concerning the graphic or “pronunciatory” form in which the material herein discussed was/is presented, even tho the unit(s) generating said material were not at any time under my direct or indirect personal control. Yes, I identify myself as a “person” in the oldest and most trivial sense in addressing you herein, and the form I use will continue to be the prosiest, fussiest and most boringly irritating of proses. As for why precisely a psychoneurotic pseudopoet with a rusty valve stuck open seems to have generated an idiosyncratic 255-line precis of the non-results of an actual very official, time-consuming, and quite expensive archeologic-epistemic study in astrocognitive phenomena in a species of volatile vers libre rather than the usual lethal academic sludge-speak: as part of one of the cyclical waves of good-heartedness affecting managerial disposition toward the treatment of the “semi-sentient,” a random selection of report writers were encouraged to experiment with other linguistic models which might more effectively package complex/banal-seeming information so as to attract more network attention, this being regarded as an a priori goal for some reason…It is not clear whether the composers of the CM text had any particular literary models in mind (and I can assure everyone that no ‘machine’ time has been spent on investigating this uninteresting question); I think it more likely that the inspired creator(s) attempted to place breaks similar to physical speech rhythms – as in the incantations of Druidical sages gone cybermad – into whatever data it occurred to them to convey (partly suggested by the fact that the “speaker-units” under study imitate the rhythms, the rushes and caesuras, of persons talking – while of course making no sense whatsoever).

 Regardless of the semi-bizarre form in which the summary report has been assembled, and even taking into account its various semi-snide sidelights on the assumptions, motivations or delusions of participants in this and other official research ventures, having been called upon unofficially to comment on its usefulness at this stage in our reckoning with what we have encountered, I can only add the following:

I have nothing further to add.

Whatever follows should not be expected to modify our overall evaluation of the project or of any potential for further expenditure or non-expenditure; it represents only my particular, that is personal, inclination to fill in some background details regarding this overall puzzling, unsatisfyingly incomplete area of inquiry. (As intimated in a particular line of Canto C, “breadth” without “depth” of information can be particularly irksome to the curious mind, though whether my extra depths may lead anywhere is doubtful.)

Standard trans-galactic probe techniques did in fact encounter (and retrieve detailed information in a wide range of sensory and mathematical categories), at a date not too far from the beginning of our current technocratic era, with a nearly perfectly planar solid object consisting entirely as far as we know of the element Carbon, in the form graphite, at a location which remains constant though classified. Its planar quality is “nearly” perfect, of course, since the sheet does possess some top-to-bottom thickness – exactly 256 molecules. Otherwise, no limit to its extent has yet been found, by any sensing or calculational means possible, in any direction. (We can, of course, access its “other side”, by approaching from the other direction). The object is thus referred as “finite but boundless,” in the sense that before contact is made with the planar surface, there is no graphite; once contact is made, there is.

 This description would seem to imply that the plane slices the megaverse in half; and so it would, except for its orientation in Riemann space. You will appreciate that this point cannot be expanded on using semantic language.

 The entire “population” of the plane is a transfinite (that is the word, as per Canto A , – and there’s no other; we simply cannot know how many) set of black carbon nano-fiber cubical audio speakers, of an extremely basic design, with one smallish vibrating sound-producing diaphragm each. Forgive me if I slip into homey jargon – each one is about knee high, and they sit there about one-and-a-half arm’s length from each other in a very exact pointillist array, all facing in the exact same direction, if there was a way to define that direction, which there isn’t. Tomography indicates a small disk at the interior base may be their power source, though what activates and deactivates (or uses up) this power source is beyond our ken. In addition, a small white light of the simplest construction on top of the cube lights up with modest wattage when the speaker-unit operates, and goes out afterward.

 Yes, of course we’ve tried to sample the graphite. Of course we’ve tried to disassemble a speaker and microanalyze its parts, in situ or, if it could be arranged, at another location. They cannot be picked up, moved, pierced, bent, melted, dinged, crushed, drilled, lasered, or physically affected in any way. This although they are quite physically real; you can trace its contour through your glove, and if you bang your knee against one of the corners (through the leg of your e-suit) it will raise a lump. It cannot be detached from the surface of the plane by the application through torsion of a force sufficient to propel an object free of the gravity of galactic center. No, we have not attempted to destroy any smaller or larger part of the plane and its population using the most fearsome destructive tools known; logical analysis could not project any conceivable gain in information through this procedure.

 And yes, as the lumpiness of my description indicates, I have been personally to Site F, as the wags call it (short for many possible terms). Only once. Continued data collection of any sort of data anyone or anything could ever dream up obviously continues via automatic installations on site; budgetary questions only arise  concerning whether to continue analyzing this Leviathan of unappealing input as it grows dusty in our virtual ledgers. As for the considerable resources entailed in dispatching any more eyewitnesses to F, in corpore, I suspect the only reason this is not now completely ruled out is a kind of inchoate, cosmic superstition – having never successfully peered into the mind of function f, if any such thing exists, we can’t stop peeking sideways to see what it might do next; and we certainly wouldn’t want it to feel slighted in the meantime.

  Approaching F from a series of eccentric hyperbolics, one’s first impression is of a dimly pearlescent Cupid’s bow, of the radius of a gnat, then an inchworm, then perhaps a comb jelly, performing rather silly flips and inverted rotations in the blackness as your perspective gyrates round that of the approach trajectory. When very close indeed, the sense of a gargantuan flat dance floor – picked out in midnight streaks not by F itself but by our own, stationary illuminators – grows alarmingly, and then vanishes completely as one comes to rest – on an array of cubes, rather than the actual floor, which makes no difference. (An odd sensation, being deposited on a perfectly flat plane – it immediately popped into my head that our own technology approaches nothing similar.)

It is simple to make shoe-soles that love graphite. The environment of F is pure, dead-vacuum, intergalactic space, with a floor to walk on. Unfortunately, the floor is studded with solid shin-busters whose regular spacing will not spare one without considerable practice, so travel groups are collectively lighted from above. There is not much of a walk to reach the Activated Area, no matter when you go, since one can land anywhere; but tourists are given about fifteen minutes approach time to allow the pupils to adjust.

 You are advancing on foot into the maw of trillion-diamond Tiara City, the scintillating illusion building intricately to past fifty, sixty degrees above the horizon even tho every individual photon originates mere centimeters from the surface. The walls and webs of light are thickly constructed to the sides of you and behind you, and seem to be narrowing and crowning upward ahead – the parabolic arch now spanning well more than a billion active electrified entities of unknown origin and purpose. Two hours walk, three, and the illusory multidimensional effect has worn thin as you near the focus; adjusted retina now perceive a flat broad white light everywhere, neither intense nor interrupted, utterly transparent, and yielding a perspective at once completely repetitive and monstrously surreal, as the twinkling cubes march in serried ranks to the horizon.

 Then, your automated guide introduces the next phase of your learning experience. Your earphones, which have been shut completely till now, are slowly – over a period of many minutes – exposed to what is really filling the air around you, reaching and remaining at a level approximating eight percent of the true volume level –

 Did I say the AIR?

 Indeed Madam or Sir, without which there would be no way to hear, record, analyze the Speech of the speaker cubes. In fact, when Site F was first discovered, millions upon millions of active speaker-units were gabbling away freely – as evidenced clearly by the tremblings and agitations of their sound-producing diaphragms - and producing no sound at all in the vacuum of space.

Nor did they, until our researchers filled the surrounding space with ambient gases appropriate to the operation of the speaker units in producing phonemic sound. Verbal sound. Innumerable combinations of gases with and without particulate additives have been tried for this purpose, but only one maximizes F-Site speaker performance: the exact proportions of nitrogen and oxygen found on what our dear dead ancestors were pleased to call home.

Our poetic prologue omitted this as a mere technical detail; the notion that indestructible space-born units would be sent on an eternal mission, i.e. to talk – and not only not given anyone to talk to, but no way to be heard if there was –

did not interest our core analytic cadres compared to the potential or hypothetical mathematics of the mother-ship f function.

.

So now, fellow voyager, we have reached the final revelation, laid bare to our senses. As hovering tanks emit invisible atmospheres toward all and sundry, we finally hear the Star Speech of the mysterious Speakers. They talk, and talk, and talk, in every direction.

As far as anyone can understand, it means nothing at all….

except for one small detail.

There is one other thing about their conversation, which the Poem did not mention.

 They don’t just talk. They whisper, they moan. They bellow, they proclaim in profound orotund baritones. They shriek like the demons of Macbeth’s blasted heath. They burble, grovel, compliment, snarl, sob, ululate, snicker, mimic, plead, project, perorate, bloviate, gargle, snivel, boast, wheedle, insinuate, denounce, exaggerate, hype, summon, denounce, deceive, chatter, natter, blather, yammer, wail, mourn, elegize, mesmerize, scandalize, ingratiate, stutter, sputter, mew, whinge, neigh, hector, harp, emote, ejaculate, envision, exclaim, erupt, elucidate, yowl, yak, jape, jest, jabber, greet, grandiloquize, chisel, charm, chuckle, chitter, crow, brag, argue, segue, toast, threaten, ameliorate, pray, parry, aver, avow, acclaim, attest, affirm, achoo, agree, account, accept, accredit, auction, authorize, augur, theorize, temporize, tantalize, tongue, tang, teeng, tong, and tan two tonsils for every top ticket in town

And there’s one other thing we know. Not from ourselves, because we’d have to die first. But from the machines, who can stay there long, long after we’d wink out.

 If you just stand there, and wait until all the quintillions around you have had their say, they all wink out, night falls; and The Perfectly Clear Light, and then The Trillion Diamond Tiara City, and then The Pearly Cupid’s Bow, move on, on, on into the Inky Way, talking, talking forever

[vore-scientist]

Demanding

[FLUFFY Safe, soft, willing, GT, non-romantic non-sexual M/f vore, fantasy setting. No additional warnings]

Proper Title Demanding: Yonah in Terra-Syor

Ok a little explanation is needed for this: IT'S NOT PART OF THE NORMAL MYSTIC WOODS. IT'S AN AU+ CROSSOVER SILLINESS

Been talking with @vixen525 (dA, tumblr) and we’ve been talking about fun crossovers with our worlds/characters and this came out of that! 

To set you up: Yonah, for whatever reason it’s not important for this story, got transported to the dimension/world of TerraSyor (which belongs to @vixen525 ), but in the process suffered memory loss (bc I wanted to be cliche as fuck and it makes things so much fun!!!). Giants in TerraSyor are called Syors or Syorians which are two subspecies. Check their dA for more information. They are a LOT larger than Yonah. But anyways. That’s kinda the set up, other things you need to know are explained in the story. 

---

Like last time we find ourselves in the office of the King of the Giants (who is away on a diplomatic mission) on the giant desk which had a smaller human sized desk on the upper right hand corner. Only this time it is night, or rather early evening. Though in this northern region, the sun had gone down over an hour ago; the Chief Political Advisor is sitting at her desk with mage lights hanging around her.

With King Connor away, Naomi tended to bury herself in her work. Because her best friend, the aforementioned King, is not there and while she misses him she has a lot of work to catch up on! King Connor tends to let it pile up. Often by keeping her from being able to do it thanks to his favorite way to enjoy her company. So while she missed her friend, she was not about to let this opportunity go to waste!

She would stay up for days to finish the paperwork! She had done so before even against the orders of the castle’s human physician for her to maintain a proper sleep schedule. As if she could sleep without Connor! And she was reluctant to ask one of the castle staff for assistance. Once or twice she’d gone to Lana, but the former Queen and interim King wasn’t someone Naomi liked to bother much even if she was available. Always more than happy to help, extremely sweet, but a little overbearing.

Thankfully her new guard was there to get her proper rest every night! Well. He tried. One all nighter he was willing to allow; he would force her to sleep should she try two in a row.

Tonight was such a night, however it would prove to be much more interesting.

Grunting as he glanced at his pocket watch tick into later evening he stood up and feeling a bit playful he reduced himself from 23.5ft to 7.5ft tall. Even at his full size he was more than small enough to sit comfortably on Connor's desk. Naomi didn’t notice him walking up until he was pulling the politician from her chair. She protested and held onto the desk and Yonah pretended to let her be strong enough to hold herself there.

“No! I need to finish reviewing this trade negotiation!” she sounded serious but there was a hint of playfulness.

“You can review it in the morning, you were up all last night! I know you miss Connor, that’s why I’m here!”

“I’m your boss, you’re paid to protect me!”

“I’m not technically paid and apparently I need to protect you from yourself. Also I need to sleep too! How can I protect you if I’m exhausted” He had tried to sleep last night, Naomi in his arms, powered by caffeine and hyper fixation, and armed with her portable desk, she did not waiver.

And he did manage to nap a few times. Not for more than an hour total. He was disinclined to sleep while she worked for several reasons. Mostly her safety even if this was the most secure room in the palace. Assassins had still gotten in before! And because once he woke up buried in paper. He was sure he’d inhaled a page at some point. Such suspicions were confirmed a moment later when Naomi got mad at him for it. And for his snoring.

So no more sleeping on the job!

Finally Yonah yanked her away from her desk, and ripped the paper from her hand. “I’ll give you one chance to change into PJs or you’re going down as is!” He grinned.

She had not changed clothes in almost 36 hours… she sighed and agreed. Plus she needed a shower, even if it would be made pointless soon after. Very soon in fact, as they both put on PJs after drying off but before heading to Connor’s bedroom, which they both lived in. No this is not weird.

Now, with both in their PJs, and teeth brushed, it was time! Yonah had returned to his normal size a while ago and he picked up the human and locked her dark and sleep deprived eyes onto his own. Before he lowered her from eye level and shoved her into his mouth.

Now, Naomi was never enthusiastic to be eaten, at least, not by Yonah. Not by anyone but Connor really. It kinda sucked, a lot. Being swallowed was the worst part. Yonah, being almost five times shorter than Connor, could barely fit a human torso in his mouth and Naomi’s sides sometimes got bruised against his teeth, and even though it was a short trip down it always felt like she might be squeezed to death. But that wasn’t why she was so unhappy.

Yonah noticed her hesitation but didn’t say anything as he swallowed her down as quickly as he could, and then promptly made his way to Connor’s chambers. Maybe the motion of his gate would lull his passenger. It was a fair distance even for Yonah, at 23.5ft, navigating a Castle meant for much larger giants. But the wash chamber was nearby to make it more convenient for Naomi. Soon he was in the bedroom and making his way to his own bed that was tucked into a corner of the room. It was a four poster with a canopy, and curtains, which gave it a feel of a box or a container, or cage… which wasn’t a bad thing, in fact it kinda felt familiar but he was sure he’d never been caged in such a way.

Yet sleep did not come. Specifically Naomi couldn’t sleep. As he climbed into his bed he felt Naomi shift. So much so it was clear she hadn’t woken due to his movements. Normally such little hints of struggle lulled him, but he could sense her restlessness and with him being in charge of her wellbeing, his worry chased away any lulling effect.

“Something wrong Naomi?” He sat at the side of his bed, feet on the ground, and pressed a hand to his belly, pleasantly full with the small human woman. She didn’t seem to appreciate this.

“It’s nothing!” She kicked, knowing it didn’t hurt him but he still grunted for her edification.

“That’s a lie, you need to tell me,” he rubbed at her.

He heard her sniff.

“This is. So different from when Connor eats me… it’s so confining!!” though her tone carried an air of falsehood.

“Do… you want me to spit you up? Will you sleep if I hold you in my arms?” Yonah knew full well that Naomi was from a tropical kingdom, used to warm humid nights, and was so accustomed to sleeping in Connor’s stomach that the cool dry air of the giant’s castle made it hard for her to fall asleep.

“I just miss Connor!” She finally wailed softly. Oh. This wasn’t a problem he could fix, and he was about to suggest he cast a reversal of his reduction so that he was closer to Connor’s size, if only briefly. But The problem wasn’t his size, the problem was he wasn’t Connor, so it was unlikely to help.

Yonah still held his stomach, he could feel her shaking as she cried under his hand. There wasn’t anything he could do.

Then his keen ears picked up a new sound and he stiffened. Naomi was too preoccupied to notice at first. Until he poked at his stomach, and with that poke was able to convey an air of novel concern.

“Wha-”

“I hear something-”

“Surely not an assassin, Connor’s not even-”

Shhhh - he pressed his hand forcefully down, feeling her squish in frustration. The sound was distant and small, he needed her to be silent. As emotional Naomi was, she knew that this took precedence. In fact she was a bit worried. What if it was a an assassin, or a slayer! Technically any slayer after Connor is also an assassin given his status as King.

“Yonah if you eat an assassin without spitting me up-”

“The fuck!? That’s horrid, and please, quiet-” he said at a whisper. It was probably the lack of sleep combined with missing Connor that had her so delirious that she even thought he would make her sit in his stomach if he caught someone. Now that he was thinking about it too and it made him a bit sick to his stomach. But he forced such images away to focus on the sound.

“Oh!” he said as he realized what it was. It wasn’t one he heard very often. “That’s the human door!”

Naomi sat up, curious but not without some concern. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure, and it sounds a bit frantic”

“I doubt it’s trouble... “

They sat there for another minute.

“Still knocking” Yonah reported.

Naomi shifted like she was thinking. Then Yonah heard the door unlock, open, and then the quick steps of bare feet across the stone floor, headed right for him! Him and Naomi! Quickly he put on his glasses, withdrew the curtains, and peered into the darkness.

The figure passed through a section of the floor that had a spot of moonlight shining down from a window and Yonah startled but chuckled as he saw the plump female form.

“It’s Dani!” he said.

He thought that would make Naomi relax but the way she flopped over she wasn’t relieved as much as suspicious.

And her suspicions were confirmed when Dani climbed right into the bed and dropped what a moment ago had been a human sized book, now the correct size for him, into his lap with a THUP. Yonah anticipated the next sentences out of her mouth as, hands on her hips, she glared at him with fierce confidence.

“Eat me! Read to me!”

Yonah was acutely aware that his hand was STILL over his stomach, and Naomi had gone still, but he wasn’t worried about that. While he loathed to turn Dani down, his stomach was already occupied. This wasn’t really up to him.

Having also gotten little sleep his first emotion was annoyance, then anger. But no. He wouldn't lash out. Instead hesmiled kindly down at Dani, scooping her up in his free hand and kissing her chubby cheek, stroking the back of her head. Then he rubbed at his stomach and looked down, Dani looking as well.

“Only if Naomi says it’s ok”

Even in the dark He could see Dani’s face get red.

“I- didn’t realize-” she flicked her eyes back to Yonah’s which in the darkness glowed softly. “I’m having trouble sleeping, so I thought- even if you don't eat me…”

Naomi sighed with her entire body. Seemed like Yonah’s services were in high demand tonight. Still. The idea of Yonah eating Dani along with her… The chamber that was his stomach was so small that Naomi filled up most of the space already. Yonah said he could do it, eat more than one person, but was now the time for him to prove it? As a test she stretched out the space a bit. With her massaging it graciously gave way, not as much as she would have liked, but better than nothing. Another sigh, and then she deflated.

“Misery loves company, she can’t make it worse!”

Yonah grimaced, he wasn’t so sure about that. But then looked back at Dani who was snuggling into his arm, smiling softly. She hadn’t heard Naomi’s reply. Though now with Naomi’s permission, Yonah couldn’t see himself not eating Dani. One person in his belly was pretty great. But two? Wonderful. Delightful. The ideal amount of stuffed for a perfect and well deserved night’s rest. So he jostled his arm and Dani looked up at him.

“Naomi said it was alright” he kissed her cheek again, this time sticking out the tip of his tongue to get a brief taste, for soon he would get the full experience.

Dani’s eyes lit up, “Really! Then what are you waiting for?”

The light chuckle that came from Yonah shook Naomi who couldn’t help but giggle as Yonah said “Nothing, I’m just not feeling rude enough tonight to not warn Naomi that she’s about to have company.” He pressed fingers into his stomach to make sure she was listening. Since she could hear him speak, his statement to Dani was all the warning she needed.

He held Dani up to his mouth and opened his jaws wide, placing his tongue over his teeth so she could crawl in. There was more flavor on Dani tonight, she must have used some new bath salts. Yonah had recently caught onto Dani’s attempts to find a combination of salts that would be nearly irresistible to him, but since the magic flavors of the salts were designed for Syorians, there hadn’t been much success. He still held her in his mouth for longer than he had done Naomi, enjoying the new and interesting flavor that complimented her natural one.

There wasn't much space with her halfway in his mouth but he could still move his tongue enough to make Dani squirm a bit, laugh a bit. Until he tipped his head back, and he pushed her in a little further as gravity helped slide her to his throat and he took a swallow. While he liked to take his time with this too, as the stretching was painful but in a good way, his airway was completely cut off, he had to continue to swallow. Slowly but steadily. Naomi was also scrambling a bit, probably to make room. That felt nice. When he took a deep breath as her body slipped past his collar and allowed him to breath he could feel the pressure in his chest.

“Hey!” he heard Dani yelp and his own breath caught! As he felt something he hadn’t in a while.

Her hands had only left the esophagus, her head not even breaching into the chamber, when strong hands took her wrists and pulled her in. While their safety charms produced light, they had both set them to be dim in anticipation of sleeping, but not pitch black just yet, they needed to get settled in some semblance of comfort in the confined space.

“Hi Naomi!” Dani said as she tried to get off of the woman of much higher authority. That mostly failed but at least she wasn’t on top of Naomi anymore. More laying across.

This wasn’t the first time they’d done this, but it had only been a once or twice before. So adjusting to being so squished wasn’t very quick. They had to move around a lot to experiment with different positions. Yonah hummed small vibrations as they made their various attempts, and his constant poking and pressing at them did not help, but neither did they tell him to stop.

Oh it was a great day, or night, when he got to eat two people! And two of his favorite people in this world. Friends always tasted better. And every shove was a small burst of joy for him as he sat, completely content.

Finally the movement stopped but yonah didn’t notice until one of them, probably Dani, did her best to kick his insides.

“The book, Yonah? You’re not getting this full belly for free you know!” that was Dani, and Naomi laughed.

“Naomi needs to sleep, Dani!”

He felt the women shift a bit and had a hushed discussion that he couldn’t hear well enough.

“I’ll fall asleep faster if you read! Your voice is very soothing.” That statement was accompanied by stroking against his insides.

Placing all of his pillows behind him so he was sitting up for maximum comfort, he picked up the book. There was a bookmark in it but disregarded it. This was Warrior Mages: Into the Feywild, the first story from a series he’d not read before. Of course being from another world (not to mention his loss of memory from the interdimensional travel), he hadn’t read most book series. This one in particular he’d wanted to read, on Dani’s recommendation. Sneaky little human!

The effect wasn’t immediate but it was much quicker than he’d have bet on, as he could soon hear light snores coming from his midsection. He’d barely made it a second chapter in, and while he’d been hooked he was also on the verge of passing out. Keeping his voice low he told Dani this, laying a hand lightly over his stomach. She only responded with some strokes from the other side of his flesh. Still awake but not about to insist he keep reading.

Very carefully and very slowly he adjusted his position and pillows so that he was laying down. The weight of the humans settling in his gut, he kept his hand over the spot, using his other to pull up a thin blanket.

Apparently the night's adventures were not over however, as only 2 hours later the door burst open with the King’s early, loud, dead of night return. Yonah thanked the gods the didn’t think to shout for his friend. But the crash of the door and the approaching thunderous footsteps were just as infuriating.

Taking note that Naomi was not as her desk, Connor made a beeline for the small bed in the corner, dropped to his knees, leaned down, and drew the curtains without warning, though he was met with the angry, tired gaze of his little, doll sized guard who was sitting up, clearly stuffed with the king’s favorite treat. A little too stuffed if Connor was inclined to notice, but he was not. Yonah’s mane of jet black curly hair was also in the most amusing state, which Connor did notice but didn’t care about.

His eyes were wide, pupils dilated, and he had a massive fanged grin on his face like a child looking at both a pet rabbit and a piece of chocolate cake.

“Spit her up!” he said without any more pretense. His voice devoid of consideration for the time of night.

Yonah put his hands defensively over his stomach, “Welcome back, Your Majesty.” The two humans in his belly waking up slower than he, but upon Yonah’s words Naomi called out as well.

“Connor’s back! Let me out!!”

The pointed ears of the king flicked to catch the voice of his friend and favorite snack.

Normally he’d obey a direct order from The King. Without question he would follow identical orders from the King and his second in command. But he was sleep deprived, no mood to deal with a demanding royal, and more so no mood to give up his treats! So delightfully full. He deserved this. The King could fucking wait.

“No.” he growled, making his eyes glow.

Connor blinked in surprise. A bit confused and taken aback at this blatant disrespect for his authority.

“What do you mean, no?” He narrowed his eyes surely his guard wasn’t disobeying him!

“What do you mean, no!!” Naomi’s voice rang out. Dani stayed silent, not really her place to intervene.

Connor’s ears flicked back and forth, switching between showing frustration and staying locked on Naomi’s voice.

“Yonah if you dont spit her up, I’ll-”

Yonah glared “Do what!? Fire me? Punish me? If you do, I hope you Have fun finding another guard, You had such great luck before.”

Connor’s hand had started to reach for him but stopped at Yonah’s threat. He knew Yonah wouldn’t really quit. But he finally noticed the bags under yonah’s eyes as the fire and sleep deprived fueled angry otherworldly half-giant continued to glare at him. Then pulled the curtains closed before the king could respond. The bed chamber was brightly lit now but the curtains, though translucent, were designed to keep most light out.

A smile crept onto Yonah’s face as he heard Connor continue to grumble yet stood up and walked away. He lay back down and fell asleep quickly as Naomi continued to complain while Dani regretted her choice of bed for the night.

[FIN]

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