#this lady has been ready and raring to go for literal decades

[classicdaisycalico]

As a supplement to my previous post, it's also really cool to note that it isn't just Mario who's having a grand old time in this adventure.

Everyone else in this roster of characters is having the time of their lives, too!

[dreadwhoop]

Reviewing the All Elite Wrestling personnel 2024 Edition (Part 1) -

PUSH -

We'll start with a new talent in AEW who has a lot of upsides and little requirement to believe as a top female in the division. The match between her and Jamie Hayter should be protected as a huge clash of power vs power with a time-limit draw followed by another one to emphasise the league these two ladies are in - it's not a difficult formula to focus when you have fans willing to buy into it. Kamille should be heavily protected and whilst it is easy to compare her to Wardlow the truth is at one point Wardlow was the most important guy in this company. Anyone can be the guy of AEW but it'll be better if Kamille can distance herself from the most expensive waste of money AEW has burned this year - especially if they paint it as Kamille's only protecting her because she can be comfortable as 2nd best whilst Kamille goes for No.1. If Kamille can even wrestle the guys then I could see her becoming the first ever female TNT champion - I mean weaker people than Kamille have held it. Make her demolish every former female AEW champion and you'll have new fans.

Congratulations to the only veteran who gets it - Christian Cage is a rare talent these days. He can stay relevant without having to schedule like he's in his 20s or 30s. He's 50 now. He did the time, the work, the many many matches. He's been to the top. He deserves all the credit for being healthy and smart about his choices in wrestling. His 4th decade in the business and he doesn't look or sound washed up. He's turned Chicken-s*** into Chicken-salad with Killswitch and Nick Wayne. He's a literal miracle worker for AEW. When he eventually decides to hang it up I hope to all the powers one can believe in he gets to be Head Booker for AEW.

Far be it for me to support a lot of Tony Khan's originality given much of it is born from his desire to play out an e-fed in real life, but if there's one cardinal rule about a promotion is you pick an original talent, you strap a rocket to them, and you see if it works. Goldberg was WCW's decision and it ultimately became the defining part of its success and failure. The trouble with Hologram is he has absolutely no promo skills and his look doesn't distinguish himself from many other smaller high flyers including the recent Ricochet. All he can rely upon is being protected in an undefeated winstreak but long as he keeps it, stays healthy, and wrestles enough, people will remain interested. Never forget there was a time a guy like Eddie Kingston was red hot despite the fact he lost all the time, looks like a living tin of beans, and didn't wrestle to impress - personality can go a long way. If Hologram could be built up from the backs of others praising him it'll circumvent his problem.

It seems every year I'm almost ready to finally give Kris Statlander her fair dues and yet something happens to deny it - simple fact is Willow is a better Kris Statlander. Throughout the year she has been a cornerstone of the women's division and if it doesn't have her rewarded by the end of next year with a world title run then Tony Khan doesn't understand wrestling. As mentioned above, Kamille and Jamie Hayter are the big money but so is Willow's involvement in the title hunt. The women's division is far more impressive than it is being allowed to showcase and stacked with excellent talent given how many established talent have not been mentioned. Willow could be plugged into participating in any match with any top talent and thrive.

All but confirms the Don Callis Family is Team Taz 2.0 - a litany of great talent all around and with 'The Protostar' Kyle Fletcher the growth is immense. If he stops trying to be a high-flyer and focus on being a power wrestler, mixing it up with a more complete moveset, bulk his body up, you could envision him as a modern-day He-Man! I mean Triple H! I am not kidding - his biggest challenge is to be his own big-time player rather than let others mould him. He has an improved look, his promos are getting more serious and intense, he's got the size and aptitude to get better, and there's no downside other than the general hang-ups of AEW wanting certain types of wrestlers. Build around him in a way AEW doesn't build around guys - if anything make him the counter-wrestler to AEW's cliche style and you'll have a genuine future star.

Bless her for perseverance. It would of been easy to have given up on her during her time in the Dark Order, the Jericho Appreciation Society, being associated with Jack Perry, or her shoulder injury burdening her growth. So much stood in her way and yet she's still standing despite it all. It hasn't run her off or made her look less capable and to survive this long deserves some reward since she's now tenured enough to be taken seriously - she has a superstar look, no doubt, and her wrestling has certainly gone up a notch. She just needs to somehow figure out the promo skills and she'll easily be the woman to replace Mercedes as TBS Champion (or maybe if they ever do a Tag division with the ladies finally have Tay Melo join in). I think everyone is naturally rooting for her success since she's been an underdog for so long.

AEW is running out of known homegrown talent to make better over burrowing established talent to ruin. Thankfully they have an incredible prospect who has been tearing it up against the likes of Ethan Page, Shawn Spears, likely to be managed by the great MVP, and looks to be destined to be the next big star of the promo-wait what do you mean he's not in AEW? Hold on…checking notes…oh sorry I had this dream where Trick left and AEW treated talent by the merits of their ability and thought Ethan Page had stayed and anyways AEW is making so many belts I must of forgot NXT isn't a better RoH in every way…ironic given how NXT was just RoH for a time. My bad.

Not my favourite at all and personally felt he would flounder but color me corrected he has something weirdly unique. In many ways I could echo what I said about Willow, inserting him into any match with a male talent, and he'll do well. Juice is due for a push and was part of last year's match of the year. This year he's returned and has not been given enough screentime to elevate him to a level of serious contendership beyond supporting titles. A singles run may be in the future for him if he remains focused. Underrated promo, look, and overall wrestler.

The irony is there are moments I had him in the GET RID OF catagory for some of the most ridiculous bridge burnings I've ever seen to other companies but if there's one person I can compare him to in terms of franchise player in AEW it is Darby Allin. I think Ospreay is going to work extra hard to prove AEW is not just a one-trick pony in terms of appeal but if he wants to keep up with his own ambition he'll need to work smarter too. He'll need to ultimately be the catalyst of showcasing other talent too and not be relied upon to be the only top talent in 2025 as the roster ages. If he can lead a new generation by scheduling and pacing his routine, adding less predictability to it, maybe he'll end up being an egoless Shawn Michaels. Time will tell.

Not as a wrestler though he didn't embaress himself after a 13-year layoff. No the value is in his voice and verbal wit. Commentary is yet another place aging badly and needs better talent but the one not to replace is McGuinness. There's not much else to say since he speaks for himself - unless you're put off by the accent there's no downside to his continued success in the commentary box. A wealth of knowledge too and a true student of the game. You know - the complete opposite of Excalibur.

There are many unsung heroes of AEW and referees are often overlooked until their careers are over or at the very least winding down. For me I notice - credit where credit is due - this is the one referee who has not been pigeonholed into certain matchtypes nor becomes insufferable due to personal antics - a steady success over many matches. He also is quick to step in and protect talent fars I recall. AEW desperately needs professionalism in all areas not just the talent everyone focuses upon.

[realityhelixcreates]

The Morel of the Story chapter 7: Flammulina Filiformis

The Riddlers missions often contain many branches.

?~?~?~?~?

“So, you're doing fairly well with that one.” Shimmer teased later on.

“So you say. But you already know I always do what I set out to.” he said arrogantly.

“Oh, is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”

He stared down out of the side of his eye.

“I'm older than you. And it's not like that. I'm curious about her.”

“That's one way of putting it!”

“Selinda.”

“Oh, lighten up!” Shimmer nudged him hard in the ribs. “I've seen you have fun before; you don't need to pretend to be serious all the time.”

Edward rubbed his ribs, wondering if he should confide in her the work he was doing right now, the research into the mysterious Task Force X. The real reason he was here, what he'd been sent to retrieve.

His orders had not been to secrecy, and Shimmer had been his partner in the past. He hadn't worked with her in some time though. She might not be the best fit for this particular job.

“I hear you picked up some meta powers since I last saw you.” he remarked.

She glanced down at her hands.

“Yeah. It was a pretty bad time actually, and I can't do anything with them right now, but I can change things into other things.”

“Oh, transmutation?”

“Sure. If there's a big word for something, trust you to know it.”

“Trust me indeed.”

“Well, you know, if I ever get this collar off, maybe I can turn you into a stud, and you'll have better luck with the girls. Or the guys. Not judging.”

Edward frowned.

“Okay first of all,” he complained. “Any desire another person has for me comes from qualities I already possess, so write that down. Second of all...I don't think that's what she really wants from a partner anyway.”

Shimmer grinned.

“So you do like her!”

“I never said that!” he protested. “What does it matter to you, anyway?”

She shrugged.

“It's fun to tease you. You always react like a snarky teenager. I thought it was part of some bit you were committed to.”

Edward always found it a bit of a shock when someone saw through him like that. Selinda had never seemed stupid, but she hadn't seemed all that smart either. When they had worked together, she had been efficient, but quiet, guarded. Willing to do whatever it was she was told to do, and no more.

But Selinda and her brother had been part of a high control, criminal cult for almost a decade. And when she got out, she began working for a literal dictator. While both the cult leader and the dictator were important figures in the Light, she had only been doing their bidding. She hadn't come to it of her own choice, like he had.

Maybe, in these brief moments where she was under the control of neither, she felt she could be more playful with her peers. Still, if she were ever freed, she would likely just go straight back to Bialya and her queen. No, he couldn't talk to her about his mission. Her loyalty was to a person, not to the Light. Best to just let her think whatever she wanted.

“Well, I won't confirm or deny that. Perhaps I am fond of her. And why not? She's new, and I wonder about her story.”

“Also, she hasn't made fun of you for being a colossal nerd yet.”

“Also that.”

“Welp, it's time to fold towels. See you around, nerd.”

Shimmer stepped into the ladies laundry, and he stepped into the mens, ready to rack up a few more hours of 'good behavior'.

Digger Harkness passed him a small component, which he hid by twisting it up into a hair tie under his mullet. People really didn't understand the utility of hair, or how curating a carefully maintained hairstyle that others found silly could be a distraction. After all, if it was just vanity, it couldn't possibly be used for anything else, could it?

People who thought they knew the reasons for something rarely looked into alternative reasons.

Just a few more pieces, and he'd have what he needed.

Digger and Hartley stayed with him at dinner, quietly discussing what little of Task Force X they had managed to learn. The slivers of information did nothing to whet Edward's curiosity, but Digger did manage to confirm that it had something to do with the prison doctors.

“Got heaps of 'em fightin' for a squiz at me!” Digger exclaimed. “Now, I know I'm top shelf boys, but I never had this many people proddin' the bod.”

“Do you know what they want?” Edward asked. “You're not injured. You don't seem sick.”

“Nah nah, dag, it ain't that.” Digger said, much more quietly than before. “It's physicals. Sussin' out me strength, me reflexes, me overall heartiness. They tested me for the meta gene, even.”

Hartley pursed his lips. “That seems suspect. Why would they do that? What does it matter to them if you have the gene or not? The recent obsession with that gene smacks of eugenics to me.”

“Eh, a little eugenics could be beneficial, if you think on a more galactic scale.” Edward said offhandedly. Both of his tablemates stared in disbelieving consternation.

“What?” he demanded, defensive. “I'm not proposing that we mass murder or sterilize anybody! I just think that anyone who has the gene in a state that it can be awakened, should. On that galactic scale, our species is woefully underdeveloped and helpless. You saw what happened with the Reach! What happens when the next aliens attempt invasion? Do we rely on extraterrestrial refugees and flying space cops forever? Humanity has to step up, and defend ourselves.”

“Yes, but...” Hartly said carefully. “Even if you personally aren't proposing genetic cleansing, can you be so sure the leaders won't? I say this only because the first time one of them does, all three of us are on the chopping block. I'm physically disabled. You have obsessive tendencies that make you a liability the very instant you stop being controllable. And he's Australian.”

“Too right.” Digger grumbled. “ 'Sides, I tested neggie anyway. Looks like I'm a freak on purpose. Anyway, one of the docs mentioned Task Force X, but the others shushed him up right quick. Them docs has somethin' to do with it, and it ain't about health care. Mebbie I'll push 'em on it next time they comes around.”

The three of them continued speculating through dinner, Digger raising his voice in obnoxious 'Australian charm' every time a guard strolled by. Too many of the guards took Digger at face value as well, and the man knew how to leverage the stereotype. Edward was reasonably certain he might be able to worm some further information out of the doctors, if he were casual enough about it.

Less than a week later, Digger Harkness was gone, as if he'd never been there.

[angelicspaceprince]

NSFW Alphabet Heisenberg Headcanons

For obvious reasons, this contains smut and is for 18+ only readers. Again, I’m posting only my headcanons onto tumblr, both can be found on my AO3

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

Very grabby, has a tendency to be a little softer. Loves a good cuddle after sex, definitely praises you constantly. He loves to wash you down with a cloth, wiping away all of the cum, the sweat, the blood, the tears, as he murmurs soft words of praise and encouragement, pressing a small kiss here and there as he does so.

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

I’m not entirely sure if Heisenberg would like any part of his body - it's just a vessel to him I believe. I think his favourite part of himself would be his discount magneto powers because that gives him the ability to create so many new tools to play with when it comes to having sex with you, some even on the spot.

For you, he loves your hands. He sees them as soft and gentle and he loves the feel of them in his work-worn, rough hands as he pushes you down into the bed, or them cupping his face as you pepper his face with kisses, telling him what a good boy he’s being for you, or when their wrapped around his dick as you jerk him off in a way that has him melting against your back and rolling his hips up into your palm.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

He loves cumming inside or on you, there is no way in hell he’d ever wear a condom. It’s a marking thing, he needs to make sure you know that you’re his. He doesn’t have a preference for where he cums, just as long as it’s somewhere on you. If you spit and not swallow, he thinks it’s a waste of his seed and gets huffy about it - he’d much rather see it across your face than down the sink.

He cums a lot and it’s ungodly thick as well.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He’s fucked a lycan, been fucked by a lycan, and he fucking loved it. Was tempted to fuck a soldat but that was a little too much for him.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing? )

I’d say pretty experience, if anything, he fucks the girls at the village mostly to spite and in an attempt piss off Miranda. He’d mellowed out about a decade before you met him, but definitely he’s had the time to gain quite a lot of experience.

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

Lotus, or any position where you’re on top of him. He enjoys grinding up into you and watching you come undone on top of him, but also means it's easier for him to grab at different parts of you - this goes for eating out too, he loves it when you sit on his face and ride him to completion. Loves mating press too, when he’s feeling particularly primal.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

By ‘goofy’ for H, I more think of sadomasochism or teasing you when you cum so hard you can’t see straight. I think he’d crack a few jokes here and there to make you laugh and you’d definitely have fun but for the most part, I think he’s more all about getting you riled up until you’re a trembling, begging mess.

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

He is a hairy, hairy man who doesn’t give a shit about his grooming - he would have a thick and large amount of pubes that are wiry just like his beard. If you asked, he’d probably tame it down a little, but if you don’t care, it wouldn’t even cross his mind.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

Only after leaving the village will he 100% let his guard down to be intimate during sex I think. There would be a lot of praise and stuff whilst you’re at the village, but it doesn’t really become too intimate until after everything has washed over. I fully believe the first time he says ‘I love you’ was in German and whilst you two were having possibly the most intimate round of sex you’d ever had in your life the first night after your escape from the village. After sex is usually where he’s the most intimate - where he will murmur softly against your skin about how good you are to him and how he adores you and can’t believe that you’re in his life.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

I feel like he’d jack off quite frequently before you were around and even then, it probably doesn’t change much once you’re there. If he has no time for sex with you and it’s literally just an urge to deal with so he can concentrate on his work? Then yeah, he’ll pull out his dick and stroke himself off as he continues to work without a care in the world. It’s just to clear his mind so he can focus on the task at hand, to him it's no different than eating or sleeping. Just something he has to do to get by.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

It’d be a lot easier to list the kinks he doesn’t have - shit, vomit and death. Beyond that, anything else is on the tables. His favourites would definitely include pred/prey, bondage, overstim, bloodplay, watersports, knife play, choking, cumplay/breeding kink, cockwarming, exhibitionism/voyeurism and marking/biting. He does have a preference for an active and willing partner, that being said CNC is also something he would enjoy as long as it was clear that both parties wanted it prior to the scene being played out.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

Loves fucking at his desk - cockwarming especially. Loves cockwarming during inappropriate times too, like during family meetings. Or fucking you at Lady D’s house, edging you on and reminding you not to make a sound whilst making it impossible for you not to moan or scream his name. Anywhere and everywhere is an option for Heisenberg, but the riskier it is, the more he seems to love it.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Literally, anything and everything. A breeze hitting him the right way will get him horny. You could be walking past in sweatpants and a baggy jumper and he will want you bent over the bench with his dick railing into you. It doesn’t take much, the man ain’t fussy.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Killing someone during sex would be a big turn off. Involving any talk of Miranda or Lady D would also be off limits.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

Doesn’t really have a preference. Is a master at getting you off with his mouth and will gladly spend hours dedicated to mapping you out and causing you to cum again and again with his just tongue. By the time he’s finished with you, you won’t be able to walk and you definitely will have a number of bruises and bite marks against your thighs as well as a pretty decent beard burn going on. His favourite thing to do once he’s pulled away is to put his cold hands against your thighs specifically where his beard burn is, just to feel you squirm and attempt to kick him away.

Receiving - he loves throat fucking you, or having you kneel under his workbench, tied up nice and tight, with his dick resting heavy on your tongue as he works, occasionally reaching down to stroke your hair, scratch at your scalp or fucking his hips up into you so you don’t get too cozy down there. Your jaw and throat always aches afterwards and he loves hearing how hoarse he’s made your voice - he will always have a drink waiting for you afterwards, but first he needs to hear how well he’s fucked your voice out.

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

It’ll depend on the mood - definitely after leaving the village there is more of an opportunity for Heisenberg to reach a more romantic, slow and sensual pace (although it definitely happened whilst in the village, it was just rare as often Heisenberg used sex as a stress release as well as a way to feel like he’s achieved something or made someone proud), but his more natural pace will always be fast, deep and on the rougher side.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

Good way to scratch an itch and was, for a good portion at the beginning of your relationship, the only way you’d have sex as the only reason you were having sex was to scratch an itch or for stress relief. As time went on, things changed and although ‘proper’ sex and longer sessions became the norm (especially because he loved to dedicate the time to map out every inch of your body and see exactly what makes you tick), he still loves a good quickie during the day.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

He will try anything once, after all it’s how you figure out if you like something or not! In terms of risks, if it's a risk of getting caught, he is more than happy to take it. If it's a risk to your safety? Not on his life.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

It doesn’t take long for Heisenberg to recover - unless you’re having a quickie, you best be ready for multiple rounds. Even if he can’t get it up, he will plaster his mouth between your thighs until your voice is hoarse and you’re squirming and weakly tugging at his hair in a vain attempt to pull him away. He loves feeling your strength pull away with each orgasm, seeing how weak and tired you become because of him. He’d never go too fair without prior warning, and if you safe-word out he will pull away instantly and be straight into aftercare mode. As for how long he lasts…..it really does depend on the situation, but if you have enough time and are in an environment where he feels safe, who knows how long he’d last. You have sat in his lap, cock buried deep inside of you for the entirety of many a family meeting, having to hide the fact that he was hard and throbbing inside of you. So, you know for a fact, he can last that long under stressful situations.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

He’d make his own and have a little collection. He’d definitely think of something whilst working on his metal army, make it and instantly turn to find you to test them out. If it’s something a bit more intense, he’ll test it on himself first before seeking you out.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He loves to tease you and keep you on edge of your first orgasm, making it out that he’s close to making you scream only to pull back and watch you pout, beg or even scream in frustration. His favourite place to tease you, though, is in a place where you can’t protest or beg, where you need to be silent or keep whatever you’re doing a secret. That’s definitely when the worst of his teasing will come out.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

It will depend on the situation (see wild card for submissive!H), but usually? He wants to drink in the sounds he has you make - he’s all short grunt and growls and soft murmurs of praise against your skin and dark promises that merge seamlessly with general dirty talk with small groans and moans peppered throughout. If he’s had an awful day, however? He’s much louder, much more aggressive. He needs to fuck his emotions out - and this is definately when his pred/prey kink comes into full swing. He will chase you throughout the village, throughout his factory, wherever he can, and is nothing but growls and snarls, every sound coming from his throat animalistic. He also bites a lot more too, claiming you as his, and it’s the only time that his sounds are muffled slightly.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

If you get him worked up enough if you get the chance to dom him (he will sub for a selected few), he will always end up babbling out his begs in German. If you ask nice enough, he may order you around in German or Romanian, but the only time it naturally comes out is when he’s so far gone into subspace, so needy and desperate, that it’s just natural for him to speak his first language. In general, if you get him to sub for you, he will not shut the fuck up - all moans and whimpers and broken groans, small promises to be good for you if you would just touch him already . Bratty sub for sure, definitely into pet play. Will only ever be able to handle a gentle dom for obvious reasons, and has a major, major, major praise kink, both giving and receiving but get this boy into subspace and praise him and just watch him whine and squirm and ask for more. If he’s misbehaving at home and you jokingly say ‘behave pup’, he will get flustered so quickly.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

Body wise, he is quite muscular but has a nice layer of fat to soften things out - it actually surprises you how strong he is from brute strength alone because he definitely doesn’t look it at first glance.

Cock wise - he’s more thick than he is long, average length but with a good amount of girth that has you feeling that stretch for hours afterwards.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

I’d say pretty high, but he is also good at distracting himself from it? During his tenure at the village, he’s so focused on escaping that it looks like his sex drive is low to normal. But the moment you get out of the village? Have your own place where it’s safe and no one is there to stop you? All bets are off, he cannot keep his hands off of you. Half of it is catching up for lost time, half of it is just the fact that the man is permanently horny.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

When domming: He doesn’t fall asleep often, but he will doze or rest his eyes for a second and enjoy the afterglow. He won’t leave to go back to work until you’ve fully conked out though, unless something desperately pressing comes up and he has to go. He’d rather spend this small amount of quality time with you and making sure you’re okay before leaving you alone and even when he does leave when you’re asleep, he has his eyes on his monitor with a live feed of you sleeping, just in case something goes wrong and you need him.

After subbing: He usually passes out pretty quickly. Subbing takes a lot more energy out of him than domming does, so once he’s cleaned up and has received his dose of praise and love, he usually falls asleep with his head in your lap, on your tummy or on your chest. He can’t wake up alone after a sub scene, even the very idea of it freaks him out, so you better make sure you have something to do as he naps because once he’s out, he’s asleep for hours.

[aquafaith]

My lengthy, angry ACOSF rant review.

Spoilers, TW for mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

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.

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I loved ACOTAR. I still love ACOTAR. I always will love ACOTAR. But every book afterwards made me give up more and more. ACOMAF romanticized an abusive relationship and assassinated characters for the author's convenience. ACOWAR was a bunch of boring and inconsequential death scares. ACOFAS was all-round dreadful. And each book kept shitting on and pushing away Lucien for no reason.

I'd like to preface this by saying I hated Nesta too. I hated the way she treated Feyre in ACOTAR especially, and I wasn't even too excited for this book because I wasn't that keen on Nesta as a character.

Nesta's POV and her backstory changed my perspective. It does not excuse her actions. All Nesta stans can hold these characters accountable for what they do - trauma is a reason, not an excuse. I, and many others, sided with Nesta because of the way she's treated by everyone else in this book. Also, if you're going to hate Nesta for not teaching Feyre how to read and letting her hunt at fourteen, (which I did, and are very valid things to hate), AT LEAST hold Elain accountable too.

This book. This fucking book.

Shall we start with the intervention? Feyre on her little power trip thinks that her boyfriend that hates Nesta and Nesta hates back, Nesta's ex-best friend, and her possible mate who she never talks to should be at this stupid fucking intervention??? Excuse me???

Remember in ACOMAF when Feyre wouldn't shut up about how rich Rhysand is? Feyre literally has four or five houses and is always talking about how much jewelry and lingerie she can afford because Rhysand is so rich??? Well, Nesta has a few shots. So you know what Feyre does? Humiliates Nesta at this "intervention", TEARS DOWN HER HOME, and forces her to go to the Illyrian training camp.

That was the god awful premise for this book.

Did you think Elain wasn't there because she was against the "intervention"? Nope! She was packing Nesta's belongings without permission.

Remember in ACOMAF when it's made a big fucking deal that locking up a traumatised woman is extremely damaging? Well, when Nesta decides she doesn't want to be in Illyria, Feyre locks her in the House of Wind. Nesta can't fly, so her only way of leaving is down the TEN THOUSAND STEPS, that Feyre KNOWS Nesta isn't capable of climbing.

Feyre's pregnant. In ACOFAS she randomly decided that she wanted a baby to remember Rhysand by if he dies. Which doesn't make any sense because they made that stupid fucking death pact in ACOWAR. It's just SJM superimposing her pregnancy onto her early 20's protagonist. Ignoring the fact that Feyre isn't ready for a baby and Rhysand CERTAINLY isn't, and with a war just ended and another looming and so much trauma and a DEATH PACT are all such horrible circumstances to bring a child into, Feyre is already pregnant. Remember when SJM made a big deal about Fae babies being so hard to conceive, and Feyre said in ACOFAS they wouldn't have to worry for a long time because it can take years to conceive your first Fae child? Well it's been no more than 3 or 4 months and Feyre's already pregnant. Yep.

Also the birth will kill her. Because of course it will. Rhysand KNEW this, and still agreed to try for a baby.

There's no solution. Abortions don't exist for some stupid reason, and a C section would apparently kill Feyre?

(Wasn't this book supposed to be about Nessian?)

In ACOWAR, Cassian was on the battlefield with his entrails around his knees. Someone had to literally hold his guts in for him, and he's fine, but you're telling me a C section would kill Feyre?

Don't worry, this is just setting up the AWFUL ending to this book.

ACOSF amounts to Nesta being gaslit into believing her abusers are right. Her friends and family slut shame her and shame her for her lifestyle constantly. Cassian says it took him decades to work through some of his trauma, and he tried to drink and fuck it away too, but suddenly when Nesta does so it's heinous? Nesta's barely twenty five and she's expected to cope better than these ancient immortals.

Hell, didn't SJM write ACOMAF? Nobody expected Feyre to pick herself up so quickly. The IC (excluding Rhysand) respected her boundaries for the most part and understood when it was grief, trauma, and turmoil that made her angry, sad, want to be left alone, etc. But that's all forgotten here.

Amren also compares Nesta to the people in, and says she belongs in, The Court of Nightmares. You know, the murderers, abusers and rapists? This innocent woman who had a few shots and a bit of sex is on par with them, apparently!

The sex scenes.

SJM is scared to say vagina so she says sex.

She says seed to mean semen.

Apparently the word cunt turns SJM on. I just found Cassian saying that kinda cringe because I'm Bri'ish so the word cunt really isn't a big deal.

Back to the baby killing Feyre, because this is definitely what we all wanted from this book as indicated by the change in covers and format and title... Rhysand decides not to tell Feyre. He tells her friends and family, and tells them not to tell her.

SJM loves sweeping Rhysand's abuse from the first book under the rug and claiming it's always about Feyre's choice... where is that here, MAAS? WHERE IS IT?

Anyway, when Nesta rightfully decides to tell Feyre (although it is kind of out of spite), Rhysand threatens to kill Nesta.

And I believed him. With the way he treats his """mAtE tHaT hE lOvEs sO mUcH""" and all the people he's mindlessly killed before, do you really think he wouldn't kill the person who gave Feyre an inch of autonomy?

So what does Cassian do? His lover who he cares deeply about and suspects is his mate has received a death threat from tHe mOsT pOwErFuL hIgH lORd iN hIsToRy.

Cassian simply gets Nesta out of the court.

EXCUSE ME?

He doesn't breathe ONE word to Rhysand about this. This Illyrian WARRIOR who fought with his GUTS HANGING OUT didn't dare step up to the hIGh lOrD who he considers his brother and sparrs and fights with all the time?

Cassian literally does nothing.

Was it not Rhysand himself who said Mated males are dangerous? Can kill anyone who looks at their mate? Can be dangerous simply leaving the house? Rhys and Feyre both pull the Mate card to justify their bad actions on the other's behalf... and Cassian just tried to get Nesta out of the court?

Also, this High King bullshit.

I swear to fucking god, if SJM DARES to make this abusive, power-tripping, mOsT pOwErFuL hIgH lOrD eVEr, husband-insert of hers hIgH kInG, I will fight her in the street.

My beloved Lucien is in this book. Only for him to be used and shat on.

I really liked it when he calmed Cassian down with just a look though. Yes please fox man.

Helion is also in this book. Nothing to do with Lucien.

Eris is also in this book. ERIS. Lucien's eldest brother. The same one who abused him for years, but according to SJM he's slightly better, because at least he didn't agree to kill Lucien's lover. He betrayed his daddy that one time, therefore Eris is good. Y'know, the same Eris who abused Mor? Left her laying on the Autumn Court border with a nail in her womb? Well SJM is going back on her own canon to redeem yet ANOTHER abusive male, while continuing to demonize Tamlin for things he only happened to do when SJM decided the villain from the first book was sexy.

Nesta and Cassian are Mates.

Remember when Mates were supposed to be a rare and sacred thing? Now SJM dishes them out like Oprah.

I don't want these characters to be mates. I want to see them slowly fall in love. But SJM is incapable of writing that so she forces them together with the mAtInG bOnD. That's literally the only basis for most of these relationships, Feysand especially.

The only relationship where the bond would make sense is between Helion and The Lady of Autumn. Who still isn't named. But I will die on the hill that they're mates, I can feel it between them.

I wanted someone to die in this book. I predicted that it would either be Helion or Tarquin, but Tarquin isn't even in this one.

And the ending.

SJM can't write a decent climax, so she kills both Feyre and Rhysand for the second time. Yep.

The baby is being born which stupidly kills Feyre, and thankfully takes Rhysand with them.

Nesta decides to save them. Bad choice. But she decides to save them! Because she's so powerful and she ATE THE CONTENTS OF THE CAULDRON and she's CONNECTED TO THE MOTHER.

Do you know what happens.

Nesta loses her powers.

NESTA.

LOSES.

HER.

POWERS.

The powers we've hardly seen, the powers that were briefly mentioned and used ONCE in ACOWAR, then we saw like two flashes of in this book? They're GONE now. GONE SO NESTA CAN SAVE HER ABUSIVE SISTER AND ABUSIVE HUSBAND WHO ABUSES THEM BOTH.

Nesta is just an Amren now. They both fought for their powers, and had to give them up to save people who didn't deserve it. Now they're anticlimactically trapped in powerless bodies.

Also, and I can't BELIEVE I didn't originally include this - do you know what else Nesta TRADED HER POWERS FOR?

Illyrian anatomy so she can carry Cassian's baby one day.

EXCUSE ME?

I am so fucking SICK TO DEATH of the narrative that every woman needs a man and children to be happy. SJM clearly loves this because she's literally only keeping Amren and Nesta alive now to be sex objects to their partners and nothing else seeing as their POWERS WERE RIPPED AWAY FROM THEM, and now NESTA TRADED THOSE POWERS TO HAVE A BABY SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW SHE WANTS? Nesta does NOT strike me as a motherly type. She's the wine aunt, she and Cassian are the couple that go on holiday a lot and and babysit their nieces and nephews, but nope. Nesta HAS to have children.

The Feysand baby is called Nyx. That's just so underwhelming, you go from these huge, multiple syllable names like Amarantha and Morrigan and Lucien to Nyx? I get it's supposed to be unique but it's not even meaningful. It's just more shit-flavoured icing on the hAHa nIgHt uWu cake. I prefer Renesmée.

Nesta is wrong somehow. She says she's sorry as she's saving them. FOR WHAT? For being a little rude to Feyre as all sisters are? And rightfully hating your sister's abuser?

Oh yeah, remember in ACOWAR when Nesta took care of a comatose, starving Elain for months? Elain is randomly okay now because she takes care of her mental health the stereotypical way of baking cakes, and not drinking and fucking, which she shames Netsa for.

Remember the slut shaming, demeaning comments that the whole iNnEr cIrClE made about Nesta? They all expect apologies from her. For some reason.

Nesta has done nothing wrong. She coped with her trauma and minded her business in her own ways, and she's expected to apologise to the people who control and emotionally abuse her.

Nothing that any of these characters did to Nesta is right. Nesta wasn't okay at the end, this wasn't Nesta's healing story. This is Nesta being shamed and degraded until she submits.

Oh I can't believe I forgot to write this in my first draft of this review, do you know how Nesta "overcomes" her grief about her Father's death and her conflicting feelings about him and his life and her guilt? When she visits his grave for the first time, she takes Nyx.

NYX.

She holds NYX up to the grave and talks about how it's his grandson.

GO AWAY YOU STUPID DEMON BABY THIS IS NOT YOUR BOOK.

Speaking of, it's revealed that Nesta was abused by her mother and grandmother in this book? Something we were all looking forward to is seeing more of the Archeron's mother seeing as Feyre was so young when she died, but... nope. She gets a few vague mentions, and this newly revealed abuse is entirely glossed over. Nesta was also actively groomed by an older man at 14. But SJM glosses over this because of course she does.

Finally, the bonus chapters.

My edition came with a bonus chapter from Feyre's POV. It was pointless and I hated it.

There's another bonus chapter from Azriel's POV. Once I'd finished this book, he was one of the few characters I still harboured a shred of respect for.

Then I read his bonus chapter.

This exists to purely objectify Elain.

Whether you ship Elain with Azriel, or Lucien, or neither, this chapter is disgusting. He thinks about her coming on his tounge, and other things simply just to please him.

He then dares to suggest that "the Cauldron picked wrong" in choosing Lucien as Elain's mate?

No Azriel, SJM picked RIGHT in not giving each Archeron sister a bAt bOy.

Rhysand does the only right thing he's ever done by telling Azriel to stay away from Elain, but then he has to ruin it by clarifying that it's only so they can manipulate and use Lucien more.

Oh, and Azriel wants to kill Lucien.

Need I remind you that Lucien respects Azriel? Lucien is another victim of the Night Court's needless, baseless torment, and Azriel is no exception.

Lucien stays well out of Elain's way because she makes it clear that she's not interested in a mate, but Azriel wants to kill him simply for being her mate.

Lucien has done nothing. And I mean literally NOTHING to warrant any of this treatment. From the bAt bOyS, from Feyre, from his family, from SJM, from the deluded part of this fandom that think he's done wrong. NOTHING.

All I liked about this book was the Lucien scenes (which is a given), ((although I hated the way everyone talks about him behind his back)), Nesta's relationship with the house, Emerie and Gwyn, the evidence that Gwynriel is endgame and subsequently Elucien, and the book love. Everything else was horrible. Oh, and Nesta hates Rhysand. I love that for her, because everyone else bows at his feet.

Oh yeah, when Nesta DARES suggest that Rhysand is an "arrogant, preening asshole" which I think is a compliment, Cassian can't take Rhys' cock out of his mouth for one second, and has to get mad at her for having an opinion. Don't even get me started on Azriel in that scene.

If each book after ACOTAR made me slowly give up, this book made me give up altogether. I cannot go on to support this victim-blaming, abuse-forgiving, misogynistic series. I've given up on SJM, and the only characters I care about anyone are Lucien, Nesta, Helion, and Tarquin. I'll continue to read this series to see if SJM redeems herself, but I'll be downloading them for free. I'm not giving this piece of shit any more of my money.

I hope we don't get the Lucien book. I don't want her to slaughter my fox in the way she slaughtered LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE.

Thanks for listening.

Edit: I put the review on Goodreads!

[maxwell-grant]

What’s the difference between a pulp hero and a super hero?

There is a common sentiment when discussing pulp heroes, when compared to superheroes, that positions the two as if they were separate by entire eras, with pulp heroes being as distinct from the superheroes as the dinosaurs are to mankind. But then again, the dinosaurs never really went away, did they? 

Oh sure, they endured a great extinction, they downsized and ceded their thrones to the tiny little rats that scurried in their shadow, who then grew to become just as big, and then even bigger, but they never went away. They simply adapted into new forms and formed new ecosystems. We call them birds now.

The gap between Superman and The Shadow is merely 6 years, hardly much of a generation. There are those that argue that the Marvel and DC universes still have pulp heroes, that Batman is (or was) one, that characters like The Question and Moon Knight carry on the tradition. We have characters like Hellboy, Grendel, Tom Strong and Zack Overkill as original, modern examples of pulp characters, strongly identified as such. Venture Bros had in 2016 the best modern take on the Green Hornet. Lavender Jack is still going strong. So the idea that pulp heroes are defined solely by being old and outdated isn’t exactly true, when clearly there’s still enough gas in the tank centuries later for stories with them to be told.

Is there any meaningful distinction between pulp heroes and superheroes? If not, can we identify one?

Costume is definitely a big part of it, as Grant Morrison famously argued in his own summation. Of what he considers the big difference between the two: 

“What makes the superhero more current is the performance aspect. That's what The Shadow and those other guys don't really have. Their costumes are not bright, and they don't have their initials on their chest, and everything isn't out front and popping like the superheroes. I think we can relate to that about them because in the world we live in, everyone has a constant need to be a star. I think superheroes are keyed into that parallelism. They're performers. They're rock stars, and they always have been.

And he’s right, to an extent. It’s definitely tied into the central differences between The Shadow and Batman, as I’ve elaborated. While The Shadow was far, far from the only type of pulp hero, the superhero’s costume has long been defined as THE thing that sets it apart from every other type of fictional character. At least, when it comes to American superheroes. 

Because the “criteria” for superheroes is nowhere near as set in stone as some would like to believe. Our basic definition of superheroes is based around comparisons and contrasts to Superman and Batman, and how they fit into what we call “the superhero genre”. The existence of a superhero genre is, in and of itself, debatable, and any working definition for superheroes is inevitably going to have too many exceptions. 

Superheroes are not defined by settings, like cowboys or spacemen, or their profession, like detectives. They can’t be defined by superpowers (Batman), a mission statement, having secret identities (Fantastic Four, Tony Stark), being good people, or good at their jobs. The costume, the closest there is to a true, defining convention, still has a considerable share of exceptions like Jack Knight’s Starman, a great deal of the X-Men who do not wear uniforms, or most superheroes created outside the US. The most basic definition of superhero is of comic book characters with iconic costumes and enhanced abilities who fight villains in shared superhero universes, but even that falls short of exceptions by including characters who are not superheroes (John Constantine and other Vertigo characters, Jonah Hex, the Punisher). Some people would call Goku or Harry Potter or Lucky Luke or Monica’s Gang superheroes, Donald Duck has literally been one. “Character with a distinctive design and unusual talents who fights evil” includes virtually every fictional hero that’s ever achieved a modicum of popularity in a visual medium.

Even telling stories with super characters doesn’t mean you’re going to be writing a superhero story (Joker). Superheroes are not defined by settings and genres, but they can inhabit just about any of them you can imagine. Horror, westerns, gritty crime drama, historical reconstruction, romance, space adventure, war stories, surrealism stories. As Morrison put it, they aren’t so much a genre as they are “a special chilli pepper-like ingredient designed to energize other genres”, part of the reason why they colonized the entire blockbuster landscape.

Aviation became a thing in the war years, so they started producing en masse aviation pulps as a subgenre. Zeppelins became popular, so they had a short-lived zeppelin subgenre. Celebrities starred in their own magazines. The American pulps were different from the German pulps, or the Italian pulps, or the Canadian pulps. In China, wuxia arose at a similar time period and with similar themes and distribution. In Brazil, we have “folhetos”, short, poetic, extremely cheap prose often written about romantic heroes and “cangaçeiros”, the closest local equivalent to the American cowboys. In Japan, “light novels” began life as pulp fiction, distributed in exactly the same format and literally sold as such. Pulp fiction has long outlived any and all attempts to define it as 30s literary fiction only.

Likewise, “pulp” and “pulp heroes” are terms employed very, very loosely. Characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage arrived quite late in the history of pulp fiction. You had characters like Jimmie Dale, Bulldog Drummond, Tarzan, Conan, a billion non-descript trenchcoat guys, and before those the likes of Nick Carter and Sexton Blake, dime novel detectives who made the jump to pulp. You had your hero pulps, villain pulps, adventure pulps, romance pulps, horror pulps, weird menace pulps. Science fiction, planetary romance, roman-era adventures, lost race adventures, anything that publishers could sell was turned into pulp stories starring, what else, pulp heroes. 

How do you make sense of it all?

The main difference to consider is the mediums they were made for. 

Pulp heroes were made for literature, superheroes were made for comic books.

Superheroes NEED to pop out visually, to have bold and flashy and striking designs, because comic books are visual stories first and foremost, who live and die on having attractive, catching character designs and the promise of an entertaining story with them. Pulp heroes, in turn, can often just be ordinary dudes and dudettes and anything in between in trenchcoats or evening wear or furry underwear, or masters of disguise rarely identifiable, because the only thing that needs to visually striking at first glance in a pulp magazine is the cover, so your imagination can get ready to do the rest. Smoking guns, bloody daggers, a romantic embrace, monsters hunched over ladies in peril, incendiary escapes. The characters can look like and be literally anything.

Comic books are a sequential art form where art and writing come together to tell a story, and every illustration must serve the story and vice-versa. It needs to give you an incentive to keep being visually invested in whatever’s going on. Pulp literature stays dead on the page unless animated by your expectations; you may have the illusion of submitting to an experience, but really it’s you expending your imagination to otherwise inert signals. You have to provide the colors and flashy sequences and great meaning yourself, and as a trade, you get much more text to work with in novels than you do in comic books, where the dialogue and narration are fundamentally secondary to the visual, whether it’s a superhero punching stars or a monster covered in blood.

Each art form has its strengths and weaknesses, of course, which are only accentuated when each tries to be of a different kind. There's been pulp heroes that tried making the jump to comics, and comic heroes that made the jump to literature. There’s good, even great examples, of both, but even at their best, there's always some incongruity, because that's not the medium these characters were made for. 

Superheroes are characters defined by being extraordinary. The pulp heroes are too, in many cases, distinguished from their literary antecessors because they were too uncanny and weird, a middleground between the folklore/fairy tale heroes and the grounded detective and adventure characters such as Sherlock, and the later far out superheroes. But they don’t necessarily have to be extraordinary. Sometimes they can very well just be completely ordinary characters, caught in bizarre circumstances and managing them as best they can, or simply using skills available to anyone who puts in effort to do good. Often enough the extraordinary comes in the form of a bizarre villain, or a tangled conspiracy, a monster from outside the world, a unique time period. The extraordinary is there, but it doesn’t have to be in the hero. 

That is, I’d argue, the other big fundamental difference between the two. "Superhero” is a name we use to define a type of character who fits an extraordinary mold, a Super Hero. It’s a genre, it can be every genre, it’s a shared universe and a stand-alone epic. There are guidelines, structures at work here. Grids, page count, illustrators. The Big Two and their domain over the concept. Academic usage of the term, standards that rule the “genre”, when it is defined as a genre. Malleable and overpowering and adaptable and timeless as the superhero may be, it’s still bound by a certain set of rules and trends.

The term “pulp hero” is a term that we use to label just about any character that happens to star in something we recognize as “pulp fiction”, even if it isn’t literally written in pulp, even if it’s decades later. It’s a “metaphor with no brakes in it”. Superheroes can be pulp heroes. The most powerless, unlucky, homeless bum can be a pulp hero, there were entire subgenres of pulp stories based on homeless protagonists or talltale stories told in bars. The cruelest villain can be a pulp hero. Boris Karloff about to stab you with a knife named Ike IS a pulp hero, and so is a space slug on a warpath (look up what happened when Lovecraft and R.E Howard collaborated).

As much as I may dislike the idea of pulp heroes largely only existing in the shadow of superheroes nowadays...that is kinda appropriate, isn’t it? Of course they are going to live and make their homes in the place where the sun doesn’t shine. Where Superman and co would never go to. 

Of course the 90s reboots of these characters failed. Because they tried turning these characters into superheroes, and they are not superheroes. They can visit those world, but they don’t belong in them, or anywhere else. They live in places where the light doesn’t touch, worlds much bigger and darker and more vast than you’d ever think at first glance, worlds that we still haven’t fully discovered (over 38% of American pulps no longer exist, 14% survive in less than five scattered copies, to say nothing of all pulps and pulp heroes outside of America). Not lesser, not gone, despite having every reason to. Just different, reborn time and time again. The shadow opposites.

In short: One is represented by Superman. The other is represented by The Shadow. There are worlds far beyond those two, but when you think of the concepts, those are the ones that things always seem to come back to.

[blooeyedtroll]

Home on the Range

Rated PG-13ish Lolz. For occasional cussing and maybe innuendos(?). Lolz. This can also be read on Ao3. Feel free to read it there if you prefer.

More art scattered though out this fic, hope you like it!

Hello friend! Welcome!  

This is a One shot fic that takes place in mine & @messybitch802 ​‘s : 

Efflorescence AU. 

This is the beginning of our tale, I hope you enjoy.

This is in Hickory’s POV. I thought this would be a fun way to introduce Bloo and Messy. It also seemed fitting since Hickory will play a larger part as our tale unfolds.

However, I’d like to think this could be enjoyed as a fun one-shot Hickory & Dickory fic as well. This fandom needs more Yodel Brothers content!

Big thanks to @jade-green-butterfly ​ and her random ask that kicked my butt in gear, giving me the inspiration to finally start writing:

Anyway, let’s get to it. Enjoy!:

HOME ON THE RANGE

"Rock Trolls... no doubt about that.”

The rugged, orange haired Troll put down his hammer and stepped away from the task at hand. Fence work could wait. This needed his immediate attention.  Around this time of day he'd expect to see, at most, a tumbleweed passing by the entrance to the Ranch. Maybe. Nobody ever came out this way. Not since he'd been here anyway. At a good clip, it was about an hour trek away from Lonesome Flats. Which suited his needs perfectly.

The perfect place to lay low and still blend in.

"Bist du sicher?" whispered a muffled voice behind him.

"Of course I am. Now hush, I'm gonna check it out. Stay in character. An’ be ready, just in case."

The orange haired Troll patted the front of his jeans, freeing them of a satisfying amount of dust from the day’s hard work and checked his reflection in a nearby trough. Grinning as he placed a straw of wheat that was kept in the brim of his hat; between his teeth.

Perfection.

Who would guess otherwise, that the reflection in that water, was anything but a genuine Country Troll?

It took a lot of work shopping, trial and error, but he did it.

Well, they did it. The four legged, rugged, handsome, Country Troll was in actuality...two Trolls.

Two brothers to be precise.

Yodel Trolls by the names of Hickory and Dickory. 

The last Yodel Trolls by their accounts, and they happened to be the best damn team of Bounty Hunters and Mercenaries in all of Trolldom.

For good reason.

The best tool to their disposal was their ability to blend in. So much so, it was only until it was “too late” for their marks, by the time their true colors were revealed. And this disguise has been their best yet.

Hickory, though the youngest brother, was the much taller of the two. So he was the face to this particular get-up. Making Dickory to be left with the tail end. Literally. Understandably, this was not ideal for him. 

And he definitely made it well known on many occasions how he felt about having to play a literal “horse’s ass”.

But by gum, was he the best ass you could ask for.

At this point, Dickory had mastered the art of synchronizing with Hickory's movements, in such a way, it was now practically impossible to spot anything amiss. It was as if they shared one mind while under the guise of this centaur-esk being.

And while Dickory was fairly sour about the whole situation, Hickory found himself more and more, fond of living day to day as a Country Troll. Very much so to his brother’s shagrin. The look, the music, the lifestyle...everything.

It had been two months now since the brothers found themselves here, in Country Music territory. However, last anyone on the outside had heard about them, was that they had "yodelled so hard, an avalanche fell on them"...or something? Which was just what they wanted. For the time being anyway.

The brothers had struck a deal with their last mark. 

For his freedom, he was to spread said rumor, so the Yodelers could lay low for a while.

Queen Barb, of the Hard Rock Trolls, was no stranger to the two brothers. As a matter of fact, she was one of their most frequent clients for the past few years. Which suited them just fine. Well, almost. The last few jobs they did for the young Queen, left a bitter taste in Hickory's mouth. Not so much for the tasks she asked of them, but because of something she said and what he saw on their last few visits to Volcano Rock City. Maps. Marked up. Plans of some sort. Hanging everywhere. The young ruler, looking the most tired he'd ever seen her, yet looking as if ready to burst from being too tightly wound, at any moment.

"Hopefully next time I see you dudes, one way or another, we'll all be singing to a different tune. It's gonna be so Rad."

Whatever was going on, both Yodelers agreed that it was definitely not worth getting caught up in. They could just feel it. Deep down. They were hired to track Trolls down and do what needed to do, to get by.

Both of them could be shady characters at times, but they had decent moral compasses to live by. So they told themselves.

That's why the presence of Rock Trolls at this moment made Hickory's blood run cold. Could it be possible somehow, some way, they had been found out? That whatever Queen Barb was up to, she was looking for them? What is it that she’d need them for anyway?

No. Their plan worked perfectly. Blend in as a Country Troll, lay low for a while, only do the occasional "job" when the opportunity presented itself, just until the Queen of Rock cooled her head or went through with... whatever she is planning.

Not a soul knew about Hickory and Dickory being here.

Well.

Unless you counted, July.

Miss July, the owner of the Ranch. A rather interesting Troll.

A Pop-Country Troll. The only mixed genre Troll around these parts. Unlike her four legged, centaur, Country loving neighbors; she walked on two legs... well, hooves. Her appearance could be compared to a more "Satyr" like build, with a perfect blend of both genres in her appearance. The bright colors of a Pop Troll, but the sturdy build of that of a Country Troll.

A Tough, stern older lady-Troll, with a heart of gold.

Running this place all on her own, while tending to her extremely elderly parents.

That's one of the reasons he never expected any visitors here. Nobody in town wanted anything to do with Miss July or her family. Didn't much like associating with “their kind” if they could help it. Though you'd never hear them say it in polite conversation. But that suited Miss July just fine. That's how she liked it. Ever since Miss July and her folks suffered a terrible loss to their family, decades ago, she rarely went into town if she could help it.

Which on one such occasion, is when she stumbled upon the Yodelers, in their first attempts at putting together their  “Country Persona”.

They had been camping not too far from her Ranch and the Town, when she found them both, struggling to even walk in time together, in a pair of poorly made four legged pants.

July took their word as Gospel. That they were just fulfilling a lifelong dream of wanting to, in some way, be a Country Troll. So she offered them a place to stay and to show them the ropes on what it meant to be a Country Troll. If they agreed to work for her at her family’s Ranch.

"Until you feel you can stand on yer own four hooves!' She teased.

It could be easily wagered that July being an outcast in her own community, could be a factor of sympathy she felt towards them, making her wanting to help any way she could, and possibly what made her not judgmental in the least. That, and as tough as she put herself on as, she was sweet as apple pie, through and through.

Which did make Hickory especially, feel guilty about not being more upfront with her. As much as he could be anyhow.

Especially so, when the occasional “job opportunity" presented itself around Lonesome Flats during the Yodelers free time. Turns out, there were plenty of Trolls who had a bone to pick with others, or needed matters settled around these parts. Not to mention, crooks-a-plenty to turn in.

But both brothers always repented.  By being very diligent working for Miss July on the Ranch. Anything she needed done, got done. It was the least they could do for what she had done for them for these last two months. So the last thing needed was for anything to get ugly around here.

As Hickory approached closer and closer, he could feel his brother tensing up.

"Easy.” He whispered under his breath, smirking, patting behind him in attempts to calm his hotheaded companion. While still maintaining a nonchalant and calm demeanor.

Having spent a fair amount of time in Volcano Rock City for past jobs, and even on several occasions for other clients; needing to spend time incognito as Rock Trolls, it was fairly easy to recognize them from afar.

Upon closer inspection, it did come across as rather curious to see them wearing Country attire. They couldn't be trying to blend in, could they?

No. Not by the way these two held themselves.  

One Troll in various shades of blue in appearance, the other in peculiar shades of green from toe to tip. Both faces, still covered by wide brimmed hats. The blue Troll's demeanor was nervous right from the jump. Their green companion, holding them by the hand, grounding them. As if to keep them from sprinting away at a moment's notice. Both looking tired from the trek they must have taken from town to get to the Ranch property and from the sun's unforgiving afternoon rays.

Nothing but what seemed to be electric guitars and simple backpacks on their backs. However, these were definitely the most impressive guitars Hickory had seen in all his life.

The blue Troll’s, from what he could make out, was sage in color and looked as if it was made of some large critter's battered wing. Almost bat or reptilian in nature. The green Troll’s guitar, an imposing, venomous violet, crafted by what could only could be guessed as being once the claw and stinger of some scorpion-type critter. One he certainly wouldn't want to tango with. 

Lackeys of Queen Barb’s? No... couldn't be.

"Nobody knows we're here"

"We've been so careful."

He repeated over and over to himself. Almost mantra-like. He really had no reason to be this paranoid he kept reminding himself.

“Who are the most feared Bounty Hunters and Mercenaries in all Trolldom?”

“The Yodel brothers. That's who.” He smirked at that last thought. Puffing his broad chest a bit more, in response to his inner pep-talk.

And no Troll, no matter now--

"H--Howdy!" The blue Troll, clearing their voice, shakily called out.

"Right fine day, isn't it?"

The traveler seemed to ease into the drawl like putting on an old pair of comfy shoes, and with each word, their confidence seemed to boost. Stepping forward from their green companion, they removed their wide brim hat and gandered up at Hickory, with a small smile that damn near made his heart leap through his throat. In a good way?

That was...unexpected.

His usual quick witted mind and tongue, on the spot turned into a train that just left the station.

Those eyes. Absolutely pierced him right through. Large, inquisitive, pale, cerulean eyes. Staring right at him under dark lashes, and surrounded by a cascade of cobalt freckles.

The closest shade of color he could compare those eyes to were a color he hadn't thought of in ages. Snow. Snow that as a Trolling he played in. Usually when you found yourself making forts or laying in heeps that came up so high, you would look, and you'd catch the glimmering sunlight, shining through it. A shade of blue that just melted you to the core and drew out a smile, without you being the wiser.

"Right fine.”  he responded. Recovering from his wandering mind.

No time to be side tracked by an adorable, freckled, blue-eyed Troll. With sweet, curvy features, who has solid looking muscles that look they could easily crush--

"How can I help you? You folks seem a bit far away from home. Don't get a lot of Rock Trolls around these parts.”

Thank goodness his voice seemed to be the one on track; at the task at hand.

“Oi! What’s that supposed to mean?”

The green Troll stepped forward, hotly, removing their own hat, as to glare directly at him. Sizing him up. Only a tad taller, but much more lithe in figure to their companion. Definitely much more fierce. Not just in attitude, but in appearance. Their eyes, deep as sapphires. Teeth, the bottom row protruding two large tusk-like lower canines. Ears, pointed back and just as sharp as their claws, which he found himself one the other end of, being pointed at. Just as he felt his hair prickle, preparing himself for what was bound to happen next, the tension was immediately neutralized.

"It's okay Mess” The blue Troll cooed, calming the green one.

"Sorry to just come on over uninvited, but uh, does a Troll named July still live here?"

"You mean Miss July? Sure does. Why, if You don't mind my askin’?"

"Well you see, she's my... can--can I please talk to her? If she's around here today?”

A good long pause washed over the three.

Hickory could feel the trepidation radiating from Dickory behind him as he swished "their tail' in annoyance. Normally, if this was any other situation, it'd be too bad for these two. He'd send them right on their way, or worse if it came to it. They seemed capable. They had guitars, they were Rock Trolls. Random Rock Trolls, showing up, asking for not himself or his brother, but Miss July. Out of all the Country Trolls in Lonesome Flats.

But the waves of anxiety radiating from this freckled Troll were massive; and when their friend wasn't staring daggers at his direction, they were gazing so tenderly and sympathetically at them. These weren't agents of Queen Barbs. These seemed like folks on a sad mission of delivering news, or something of the like. They looked as though this was the last place they would ever want to be.

Dickory always insisted that Hickory was too quick to let his heart think first before his head when it came to their line of work. He didn't see it that way though. Hickory thought himself a good judge of character. Hell, that's why they found themselves in this situation now. Tipping his hat in a friendly manner, he smiled at the two.

"Well, why dontcha follow me then. I'm sure Miss July is making lunch right about now. You folks are just in time. Name's Hickory"

"Messy." replied the green.

The blue Troll remained silent.

"Adorabull got yer tongue cutie?" he teased

Those freckled cheeks lit up in seconds, a flushed lavender. Too cute.

"Somethin' like that' They smiled sheepishly.

All the while, as Hickory walked with the two up to the main building on the property, they stuck to idle chit-chat. About the weather or the nearby town. They passed by many of the fences that housed just some of Miss July's critters. As well as a few stables, paddocks, a decent sized workshed, and the small house the Yodelers had been staying in since they arrived here. It was once they passed that particular building, the blue Rocker stopped in their tracks momentarily. Just staring. Almost trance-like. They only moved again once Messy had firmly grabbed their hand and they followed.

Finally, they reached the main building's porch. The family home. Without any prompting, the two travelers waited at the bottom steps of the porch. Hickory nodded, thinking that might be best. He walked up to the open door. The wafting aroma of today's lunch filling his nostrils. Chili with sweet rolls? If he wasn't mistaken, he could smell fresh squeezed lemonade too. Knowing better to barge in while she was in the Kitchen...

"Pardon me, Miss July?" he called out.

"Dammit Hic, I told ya once, I'll tell ya again. Lunch is on when I ring the damn bell, that's when it’s good and ready!"

Hickory couldn't help but chuckle. That July was a firecracker.

"It's got nothin' to do with that Miss. You see, You've got yourself some visitors."

"For the last time Hic, just call me Jul--"

July emerged from the doorway, holding in each hand a glass of lemonade with mint garnish. No doubt as something to appease the Yodelers until lunch was done. As soon as her eyes met the two travelers, she stopped dead in her tracks. Glaring at them something fierce.

"These two are the visitors I was talkin' about."

"Rock Trolls, huh? Here? Whaddya want?"

The blue traveler, clearing their throat, voice cracking; they smiled, eyes glazed and sparkling with unshed tears. Staring at July as if a secret wish had been granted.

"Aunty Ju-Ju? It's m-me. It's Bloo. I'm home."

Bloo? That Bloo? Could it really be? Hickory didn't need to dwell on that too long though. July suddenly yelped out loud, in such a way that it startled absolutely everyone. Including herself apparently because those glasses in her hands dropped and shattered to bits.

"You couldn't be-- w-what kind of game are ya playin’ at?!"

July at a loss for words. This was serious. There she stood, knees buckling, lip quivering, tail thrashing. Unable to look away from the Troll in front of them at the end of her porch. A look of torment across their face.

Slowly, the freckled Troll smiled sadly, and reached behind their back for their instrument. Hickory acted quickly, putting himself between the two. Staring intently at the Rocker. They stared back, as they slowly brought the instrument forward.

"Please. Let me play?"

Hickory's nostrils flared, biting down hard on the straw in his mouth. How was he so stupid? Well, he wouldn't be fooled this time.

*~strum~*

Though the guitar was imposing and electric, with a stroke of their hand, it played a long, twangy, unmistakable, Country cord.

Silence.

Laying a hand on Hickory's shower, July gently moved him aside, her attention almost trance-like on the player. Waiting.

As if they understood, they shifted and picked up their guitar in earnest. Strumming again, but to a much more upbeat melody. Much more upbeat than most Country music Hickory had heard around town that he grew to enjoy. This sounded more... Pop? Much more like something he'd hear July singing on a day she was in a particularly good mood. Or something July’s elderly mother, the Pop Troll of the family might hum.

That's when they began to sing along, starting off slowly and gaining strength with each note. A large smile on their face as tears cascaded down their round cheeks. As if putting on the show of their lives. It was raw, and beautiful.

"She loves rock ‘n’ roll,

they said it's demons’ tongue,

She thinks they're too old.

They think she's too young,

And the battle lines are clearly drawn.”

“She's a wild one,

with an angel's face,

She's a lovely Troll in a state of grace,

When she was three years old on her daddy's knee,

He said you can be anythin’ you wanna be.

She's a wild one.

Runnin' free."

“She has future plans,

and dreams at night,

they tell her life is hard,

she smiles, sayin’ “that’s alright”, yeah!”

“She’s a wild one,

With an angel’s face,

She’s a lovely Troll in a state of grace,

When she was three years old on her daddy’s knee,

He said you can be anythin’ you wanna be.

She’s a wild one.

Runnin’ free.”

"She's a wild one”~~

"~~Runnin' free.”  July finished and sobbed the last line.

"That was the song I wrote for your Mama... all them years ago..My Bloo. My little ‘Bloo-Jay’ came home!"

Hickory stood fully aside now, allowing the two to embrace, for what he now had realized had been the first time in more than two decades. An embrace that both warmed and broke your heart, all at the same time. This was July's pride and joy. Her niece. Bloo, the only child of July's older sister June.

June and July were extremely close sisters. Best friends even.

June was a very free spirited Troll who fancied herself a part-time singer at one of the local bars in town. On one of these trips to town, she met a traveling Rock Troll by the name of Ziggy. Busking for food and drink. Let's just say, it didn't take long at all until wedding bells were ringing and Ziggy was part of the happy family here on the Ranch. The couple waited a while before having a Trolling. The two were busy enjoying married life, Ziggy took June traveling, fulfilling her dreams of seeing life outside Lonesome Flats. And wherever they went, they were singing up a storm. When they returned home to settle down, at any bar or club, or bingo hall that would have them, they continued singing their hearts out. Occasionally even dragging July along. The three of them became inseparable. Especially after Bloo was born. The townsfolk even seemed to warm up to the entire, oddball family. It was all turning up roses for the family finally, after what felt like ages of trying to live in harmony. But it all came to a crushing end. 

Shortly after Bloo turned five years old, a serious, contagious illness spread throughout Lonesome Flats. Most folks who caught it, eventually recovered, but there were eight fatalities in the end. June was one of them. The family was torn to pieces by June’s passing. Ziggy just wasn't the same Troll after. A year passed and just as they thought things might slowly start looking up, Ziggy and Bloo were gone.

Apparently he had packed himself and Bloo up one night, and just left without a word. July knew he had family back home in Volcano Rock City, and figured that is where he would take Bloo to raise them. But July dared not go there. For good reason. A Pop-Country Troll, travel to Volcano Rock City?  Demand her niece back from a heartbroken father? While leaving her extremely elderly parents to fend for themselves? No. July would be turned away or torn to pieces. King Thrash at the time was feared for good reason in those days and most Trolls feared Rock Trolls the most out of all the other Tribes.

July and her folks basically moved on by learning to mourn the loss of June, Bloo, and Ziggy. They never expected to ever see Bloo or Ziggy again. Yet here Bloo was. Embracing their aunt, while Hickory and Messy looked on fondly. His smile grew wider as he realized how overjoyed July's folks: Clay and May, would be to see their grand-baby again. Something they thought they'd never live to see.

He could see it now that he got a better look at Bloo, as they were bombarded with kisses and hugs, that they did share a little resemblance to their Pop-Country Aunt. Though without a doubt, they took after their father Ziggy the most. No wonder Bloo wasn't easily recognizable at first glance, they looked so different in comparison to how they looked back then as a Trolling.

Who would have thought that he'd meet the Troll who's childhood pictures adorned the home he and his brother were staying in? Which happened to be Bloo's Old family home on the Ranch. The same house they had stopped to stare at on their way to the main house.

"Small world we live in!” He barked with laughter.

"Welcome home Miss Bloo, glad to meetcha." And he meant it, whole heartedly.

"Glad to be home again.”

END.

(Song used was Faith Hill’s ‘Wild One’. Tweaked for this story)

[cuntess-carmilla]

I'm sorry, but as someone who belongs to and participates in an actual subculture, I can't take (Western?) fandom seriously.

I'm not saying alt subcultures are perfect by any means. I'm a goth and I could write and maybe have written whole essays on the bullshit within it, but even with all the racism, misogyny, performative liberalism and such (which are also present in fandom lol), there's just no comparison.

Alternative subcultures, as Problematic as they can be, are ALL about creating something new. I mean, not NEW new, we all come from somewhere, take inspiration, goth came directly from British punk, and pretty much none of the alt subcultures that were started since the 20th century would exist without Black culture, BUT... Guys, the goth subculture equivalent of fanfiction is a song cover.

Sure, lots of goth bands have released covers in order to get popular. Bauhaus themselves did it and they're one of the OG bands, but unless you're a tribute band (which literally only get as famous as they're able to be exact copies of the band they're imitating), no band considers themselves a real band if they haven't at least written original songs, most don't feel like a real one until they release studio recordings or play some live shows. Even those covers they make to get their names around get the eye roll if they don't add anything new and genuinely theirs to it.

Goths who're not musicians ourselves, first of all, don't think we're on Monica Richards' or Peter Murphy's level just because we sing THEIR songs half decently in the shower, like fanfic freaks (normal people who do fanfic excempt) who think their poorly written multichapter slowburn copycat romance is on the same level as Dante's Inferno or Paradise Lost.

Second, even if we're not musicians, we expect of each other to do something. Something original. I mean, people whose LOOKS are carbon copies of some other goth, famous or not, get eye rolled too, you know? This past decade things were a little different in that regard thanks to posers and Capitalism™, but other than that, we actually take offense when someone else copies the individual elements OF OUR FUCKING LOOKS that we cultivated to differentiate ourselves from other goths.

That's why DIY is so big in our subculture, why most of us practice SOME sort of creative hobby (music, writing, painting, clothes making, DJing, design, sculpting, etc) even if we suck at them. At least we try to do something that is completely ours rather than just redrawing a Victoria Francés illustration, changing the color of a dress, and publishing it as ours.

Shit, even our "elders" have no comparison. Fandom "elders" are rarely older than in their 40s, and most of the time they're fucking creeps who dedicate their lives to fictional characters decades younger than them and interact with younger fans in very inappropriate ways. There's asshole elder goths too, but our subculture generates so much genuine personal passion and sense of community, that we don't even consider it a YOUTH subculture anymore.

Our elders are ACTUALLY old. I'm talking people who were there since it started in the late 70s/early 80s as teens or early 20-somethings and are STILL goths. There's goths in their 60s nearing their 70s. And the reason we look up to them isn't just that they're weirdo predatory adults who intimidate or groom us into worshipping them. We look up to them because they've gathered knowledge through up to 4 decades of experience. They saw Bauhaus live before they broke up, they were in a tiny local band that opened for a bigger iconic one so they met them PERSONALLY, they keep relics from decades past, they witnessed our history.

Most importantly, they fought tooth and nail for our subculture to keep thriving not by being self-entitled weirdos pressuring others into validating their everything online, but by archiving ancient zines, keeping recordings of obscure bands who only played one live show before disbanding, passing on their knowledge to younger goths in person or online. They put their own money not into the pockets of big media corporations that don't need to make more billions than they already make, but into the pockets of struggling artists, bars, nightclubs, independent fashion designers, and their communities as a whole. That's why we respect them.

And ykw? I think that's the reason most fandom weirdos don't stick to fandoms for a long time, except for a few who cling to one or two but keep the rest rotating, and why most fandom "elders" aren't older than 40.

A show or movie series ends at some point and most creatives don't stretch them for decades on. Obviously they try to milk them as much as they can but if a story ended then it's over and there's only so much of the same repetitive fanfiction you can consume before you burn out and have nothing left to get your hands on. There's no community, yet you identify with a piece of media at the same level as you do your idk, college majors, star sign and shit.

You don't see me identifying as a Requiem in White fan on my description, I identify as a goth because I'm identifying with a history, a community I've interacted with in person, an ever growing body of new and old art and music, and wear my personal version of the uniform which I didn't buy ready to wear, but is the result of an effort of slowly building a wardrobe since 2007, that I've had to experiment with, play with, and each have their own personal stories attached to it. I mean, I remember EXACTLY what I was wearing when some Evangelical ladies sprinkled holy water on me in early 2008 and I still own those clothes, jewelry and shoes lol.

Fandom identity is, to me, only based on capitalist consumerism as identity and yeah, capitalism has clawed at my subculture especially during the 2010s, but it exists outside of that and it's so much more than buying shit, over-streaming songs to inflate an artist's performance, or taking something someone else created, slapping one sticker on it and calling it ours. My subculture can ACTUALLY politically organize, as can others (punk most notably), you know? Including organizing in rejection to the capitalist fast fashion that almost wrecked us this past decade.

All subcultures have some level of ideology attached to them (for better or for worse, sadly), and it's ideology most of us are passionate about. Goths have always been notorious for androgyny, and all forms of gender defiance are normalized and encouraged. A lot of us pay our respects to our punk roots of anti-capitalism. We don't believe in forced unhealthy positivity, we're less afraid of taboos, we appreciate eccentricity and oddity many times as an active choice against established norms, we find solace and home in what general society finds creepy or threatening...

What similar thing does fandom have beyond campaigning for Johnlock to hold hands or going to pride with some creepy yaoi sign? You guys aren't even good at fighting real bigotry within your spaces unless you're personally affected by them.

It's laughable tbh. I can't take fandom seriously at all, and I don't get how so many people can treat something so empty as if it was sacred.

[imaginethebeautifulworld]

i would kill for some fail bros headcanons

[Hey, Anon! I'm kind of passionate about these three, so I'm giving you a heads up that this one is kind of long. Hope you enjoy~]

From a “nation” standpoint, England is the eldest of the three. He recognized his spark of sovereignty when King Ecgberht ascended to the throne of Wessex in 802, who would later go on to claim Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Essex as part of his kingdom; Ecgberht is often regarded as the “first king of England.”

For Denmark, his sovereignty came with the crowning of King Harald Bluetooth around 950, who completed the goal of unifying the region into a single state. Before that point, Denmark existed more or less as a smattering of small communities led predominantly by local chieftains.

Prussia didn’t fully recognize his sovereignty or nationhood until around 997, when the Aesti- Old Prussians- slayed  Adalbert of Prague, a missionary who had been sent by Polans to try to convert the “heathens” to Christianity. It was only one of many attempts to conquer the Prussians, but with Adalbert earning a martyrdom, and such a blatant show of sedulous autonomy, the first spark of nationalism truly ignited.

Not that much of this mattered in regards to their friendship though. 

Through the Saxons, Arthur and Gilbert had been friends since the 700s at least, and Arthur and Mathius had known each other for even longer, the Jutes having first made an appearance on the Isles around late 400, when Arthur was still part of Rome’s territories. Mati and Gil were practically next door neighbors; I wouldn’t be surprised if Germania had pretty much raised them together.

Despite a lot of shifting borders and conflicts of interest- like Denmark ruling England from 1013-1042, or how Denmark lost both Holstein and Scleswig to Prussia in 1864, and England and Prussia’s on-again, off-again alliance- they’ve remained fast, firm friends for centuries.

Truth be told, I think Mati was the one to get Artie so addicted to sailing, most likely dragging him on a few coastal raids back in the day.

Hamburg is one of their favorite meeting places. Initially, it was more convenient for Gil and Artie, as it was one of the central cities in the Hanseatic League, but the real draw came with the 1500s, when there were over 500 breweries for them to sample. These days, it’s more nostalgia that keeps drawing them back.

Actually, this is part of a tradition that still stands to date; with some rare exceptions (like this one tavern on Bornholm that’s been serving the same Brennivin recipe for the past 463 years), they rarely go to the same pub, distillery, or brewery twice. There are just so many of them.

These three try to meet up at least one weekend a month, if not more. Gil has it a lot easier working out his schedule these days, for obvious reasons, so normally he will crash with either Mati or Artie and the other will show up when they can.

Friday nights are usually their “drink nights,” and they’ll usually bicker for a good hour about which pub or club they want to try; all of these nerds had lists ready of venues they had looked up in advance. They also spend another hour or so bickering about which of them has the best beer.

When they’re together, they completely shrug off their more responsible images- Arthur in particular seems almost a 180 degree shift in personality. Around most nations, he tries to keep that prim and proper persona, but… Mathius and Gilbert are not most nations.

These three have crusaded to the Holy Lands together, harassed most of Northern Europe together, even spent a few precious months pretending to be humans and traveling the world together. They’ve sworn blood oaths under scarlet skies, literally sewn each other back together on occasion.

They really share most everything with one another- from matters of the heart to political problems to those dark desires they really can’t tell anyone else about- knowing that anything shared among them will never be discussed outside of their circle.

Usually, they don’t let themselves get drunk. But really- They don’t need alcohol to become total hooligans. Mathius is naturally high energy, and with Gilbert’s simmering competitiveness and Arthur’s pride keeping him from ever backing down from a challenge…

The shenanigans these three get up to can range from pranking Mati and Artie’s former colonies to strip karaoke to sometimes, quite literally, painting the town, and then some.

They have a few reprimands for breaking and entering, and perhaps there were one or two cases of arson, or a few protests that got a tad chaotic… 

Despite having more than enough beds for each of them, they usually end up falling asleep in a giant heap.

Arthur is loath to ever actually admit how safe he feels knowing the other two are there to watch his back, though Mathius is always very open about actually expressing the exact same sentiment.

Gilbert is usually the last one to drift off and always the first to wake up; he mastered some killer hangover remedies a few decades ago, and while he knows the others are perfectly capable of making breakfast without burning the house down, it’s his way of showing how much he cares.

Sometime after they’ve nursed the remnants of their hangovers, they usually go shopping for food together, all of them chipping in on a big dinner for that night.

Said shopping trips go about as well as you’d expect: Artie usually pretends he has no idea who Gil and Mati are as they piggyback through the aisles, Arthur and Mathius bicker constantly about the proper ways to eat eel (which always traumatizes Gilbert), and Prussia constantly is making bad puns with England about the different brand names, much to Denmark’s irritation because he can’t quite keep up. 

Just fucking getting to the store was a quest on its on; buying themselves actual food before getting kicked out is another challenge entirely.

They absolutely are down for cultural and music fests, theatre, boating, or even just reading together.

They totally do LARPing together, and try to attend either ConQuest or Drachenfest each summer.

There is often an attempt to play football when they have an hour or so to kill, though it typically ends up as a brawl with two of them (usually Mati and Gil) starting a giant game of keep away against the other (usually Artie). They’ve lost count of how many grass stains they gained in the process.

They’re each hella supportive of the others’ interests, and often you can find them laying on the grass or a roof somewhere having long-winded discussions about the arts, literature, science, philosophy, and on one particularly snowy night in 1989- what happens when they die. 

In fact, the only two people Gil ever really confides in about his fears are Artie and Mati. With Ludbug, he just can’t risk the thought of hurting him or burdening him, and with Fran and Toni, he’s scared they’ll- He can’t always handle how open those two are with their worry for him.

He knows that Mathius and Arthur won’t pity him, per say. Bleeding hearts the three of them, but they know when, and when not, to show it.

Arthur and Mathius made it their goal through the entirety of the 1990s to make sure Gilbert understood just how damn important he was to them, stealing him away as often as they could get away with, doing everything from a sailing trip around the Orkneys (and annoying Alisdair to no end) to camping in Scharbeutz for two weeks straight to trying (and horribly failing) to form a band around ‘94. 

The band didn’t work out mostly because they all have different music tastes- Artie fell deep into the punk scene and never climbed back out, Gil’s taste falls somewhere between heavy and folk rock, and Mati is very passionate about symphonic and alternative rock. Also, meeting up for practices as frequently as they needed was nigh on impossible. Still, sometimes they do get together just to jam for a bit.

Mati and Gil are the only two people actually allowed to call Arthur by “Iggy" and not get a black eye.

They love playing board games with each other, everything from Cards Against Humanity to Crazy Cat Lady to Risk. They tend to avoid the latter however as they all get rather… intense with their gameplay.

Really though, all they need is a deck of cards and they’ll easily get invested into a game of Slap Jack or Go Fish.

I am willing to bet they swapped parenting tips through the ages, each of them freaking out because "holy fuck I am not qualified for this!"

They have several dozen inside jokes at this point, the kind that if one says anything they all eventually will succumb to tears of laughter.

No one else really makes Arthur laugh as quickly as those two, no one else really sees Mathius as pensive and philosophical, and no one else really sees Gilbert completely letting his guard down.

With each other, they are, have been, and always will be Arthur, Mathius, and Gilbert.

They trust each other unconditionally, and know that, no matter the politics, they’ll always be there to support one another, no matter how silly the shenanigans or serious the situation may be.

[This was so long, omg. Thanks for the ask, Lovely!

If anyone is interested in any sources for further reading on their own, let me know! I got quite a lot of this from textbooks, articles, and encyclopedias ^_^; ]

[coconutjelly]

Inspiration

Ohgodohgodohgodohgod.....I did a thing.

I haven’t written published fanfiction in like a decade. Side note - when did we stop having to give disclaimers? I feel like I’m cheating, somehow?

Not the point. I published on AO3. It’s just a cute little oneshot I’ve been sitting on for a while, and it’s live, and if anyone would like to read before I dive headfirst into my Geraskier K*nk Bingo card, it’s below the cut, or on AO3.

Now, if you’ll all excuse me...I’m gonna go sit in the corner with my anxiety tummy ache.

Rating: General Audiences Additional Tags: Inspired by a The Amazing Devil Song, Song: The Horror and the Wild (The Amazing Devil), Friendship, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Gen or Pre-Slash Summary:

Geralt doesn’t always know what inspires a particular piece of Jaskier’s music.

Some, of course, are obvious.

After another fight about Jaskier joining during a hunt leads to a new composition. Inspired by The Horror and The Wild, by The Amazing Devil.

Geralt doesn’t always know what inspires a particular piece of Jaskier’s music.

Some, of course, are obvious - ballads of Geralt’s own history, never more than half accurate, or odes to whichever fair lady had stolen Jaskier’s heart that month. He sings just as much of heartbreak, which would make sense, given how often he takes a new lover, except that he rarely seems torn up at the end of an affair.

Others though, are more abstract. Last season’s ballad about the frozen beast of the winter wastelands being bested by a golden sun, for example. For a man who hated the cold, Jaskier wrote a lot about snow and winter - probably, Geralt figured, because he hated the real thing so much, he wanted to romanticize it. 

Songs that don’t tell a story at all, with solemn lyrics of an ancient wood and wistful dreams of empty beaches, Geralt assumes those are poetic metaphors for...something. He never examines those close enough to puzzle it out; he gets enough wordplay from prophecies and sorcerers.

It seems that the young bardling is always composing something, and it doesn’t always result in a literal interpretation of events, or even of the world around him. Which brings them to this moment - Jaskier holding his pack, looking furious as Geralt mounts Roach, armed for battle.

“And just what am I supposed to do?” he rages.

“Make a stew. I’ll be hungry after the hunt. And be ready to run if it goes bad.”

“I will not!” 

“You will stay with the camp, and that is final.”

“You-you brute! You are not my keeper, Geralt of Rivia!”

“And yet, I keep you alive.”

“Oh, haha, save a man’s life a handful of times, and suddenly he can’t take care of himself.”

“You know that isn’t true,” Geralt sighs.

Jaskier softens visibly, looking touched. “You really mean that?”

Geralt grunts wordlessly, then, “You couldn’t take care of yourself before I found you.”

The discordant shriek of indignation that leaps out of Jaskier at that would ordinarily be enough to make him smile, but he’s too tired of having this same argument over and over. 

“You, my muse and wonder, would deny me inspiration?”

“You’ve written nothing yet from the last hunt you joined.”

“That,” Jaskier grits icily, “is not the point. I can’t control when the music speaks to me.”

Geralt is utterly done with this conversation. “Maybe you just can’t hear it,” he snipes, guiding Roach around at a canter in the direction the alderman had indicated. He shouts back over his shoulder, “Have you tried talking less?”

He tries not to hear the insults that Jaskier throws at him as he disappears between the trees.

-

It’s dark by the time Geralt returns with the head of his bounty, and he’s guided back to their campsite in part by the aroma of stew and in part by a melody unlike anything he's heard.

When he glimpses the bard at the edge of the clearing, Jaskier is playing his lute in a way Geralt has never before witnessed. He plays as though he must punish the elven-made instrument for a mortal offense, alternating between plucking the strings and slapping the flat of the wood like a drum. His notebook is open beside him, and Geralt can see a large smear of ink where Jaskier hadn’t let it dry before turning the page.

“Planning to murder another lute?” he asks casually.

Jaskier’s gaze slices to him with a vitriol that indicates the lute is not the victim he has in mind. 

“I’m writing a song about what an arse you are,” he spits.

“Won’t do much for the public image, will it?” he quips.

Geralt swears he can hear Jaskier rolling his eyes. “I’m an artist for a reason, a wordsmith of the highest caliber. The meaning will be hidden in metaphor and imagery.”

“So only you will know it means I’m an arse?”

Jaskier grumbles something that isn’t quite words but still manages to convey an unpleasant meaning.

“Would you kindly let me work out my emotions in my own way?” He turns away from Geralt, which unfortunately is also away from the fire. After a few moments, he turns back to his only light source and continues strumming, drumming, and scribbling. 

As Jaskier works, Geralt silently removes and cleans his armor and ensures his bedroll is prepared, before sitting in front of the fire to find steaming stew already waiting for him. He grunts his thanks as he takes his portion. He can feel the tension in the air, can smell the sullen rage still simmering in his companion. He has nothing constructive to say on the matter though, so he decides to let Jaskier speak when he’s ready. As anticipated, it doesn’t take long.

“I’m sorry for calling you a brute,” Jaskier says quietly. “And an arse.”

Geralt lifts an eyebrow. “And a pox-riddled horsefucker?” 

The bard at least has the good manners to wince and look abashed. “Heard that, did you?”

“Hm.”

“I’m sorry.”

Geralt shrugs, going back to his stew. “You say a lot of things you don’t mean.” He lets the silence fall, guessing correctly that Jaskier is not done expressing himself, and knowing that he will speak again when he is ready.

“I’ve always been hungry for adventure. That’s why I’ve been with you, to be free,” he says sulkily. “But you treat me like a child who can’t manage himself out in the woods. You flit about the Continent as you please, yet tell me I oughtn’t do the same.”

“I don’t flit; I’m not a bird,” Geralt huffs. He sets his elbows on his knees, looking contemplatively into the fire. 

Jaskier leans over to clasp a hand on the back of his neck, pressing their foreheads together, a gesture Geralt mirrors. It is a greeting of Witchers, and one Geralt taught him. It is the only intimacy they allow themselves, the only grounding touch on the Path. Jaskier stares him firmly in the eye as he says, “I am a man grown, Geralt. I know the dangers I’m facing.”

Geralt sighs, grinding his teeth and trying to keep in the words that might make Jaskier understand; the words that might finally send him away. Instead, he curls his fingers through the fine hairs at the base of Jaskier’s neck and presses his mouth to the young man’s forehead. It’s too harsh to call it a kiss. It isn’t passionate, nor is it chaste, but it is fiercely emotional and filled with frustration and concern.

He pulls back, still gripping Jaskier’s nape, and is both pleased and frightened to see the wide-eyed expression the unexpected gesture has earned. “I’ve walked the Path for five of your lifetimes,” he reminds the bardling. “You are a child, in this. Most humans would see what I see only in their nightmares. The Path is a parade of horrors.”

“I’m not afraid,” Jaskier whispers hoarsely. “I know I’m safe with you.”

Well that’s...that’s a new concept, entirely, and one for Geralt to Think About Later, but it’s exactly the point he’s been trying to make. “I can’t always do my job and protect you at the same time. Some hunts, I can’t afford the distraction. If I have to make a choice in an instant to protect you or to stop a beast from hurting more innocents…” He shakes his head, disgusted with himself.

“I know you’ll always protect the innocents first,” Jaskier assures him. “You’re a Witcher, it’s what you--”

But, “No, I won’t. Not if it’s you or them. Nor if it’s you or me.”

Geralt finally releases the other man, who weaves a bit on the spot, chewing his lower lip. "What if I learned to fight, to protect myself? You could teach me."

That does earn a frustrated chuckle. “You are a bold thing, I’ll give you that. Get some rest, little one. We make for the alderman at daybreak."

They bank down the fire and settle into their bedrolls after that. Geralt prepares to meditate, too exposed here in the woods to risk full sleep. 

“I’ll keep asking, you know,” Jaskier says into the dark. 

Geralt isn't sure if he means learning to fight or coming on a hunt. Either way, "Maybe in a few years, once you’ve got more of the wild in you.”

-

Jaskier’s new song debuts as a hit. The tavern’s patrons are all on their feet, stamping and clapping, roused by the passion and feral energy of the newest piece. As he predicted, not one member of the audience seems to realize it’s about Geralt being an arse. 

Geralt is positioned with the best view of the room, as always, so Jaskier has the best possible vantage point to stare him directly in the eye while singing some of the more pointed lyrics of the number.

He finally sees a spark of recognition in Geralt’s eye the third time through the chorus, and knows the message has at least been partially received.

He’s called up for no fewer than three encores before he is allowed to return to his seat across from Geralt and the cold ale he gratefully accepts from the stoic man.

“Your review?” he prompts, thirst sated. “Three words or less.”

Geralt tries to glare, but feels a bit of a smirk steal onto his cheek. “Old man?” he chides.

“Well, you know…” Jaskier looks down into his ale, then back up through his eyelashes in a way that Geralt knows he knows usually gets him forgiven. “Artistic license.”

Geralt doesn’t always know what inspires a particular piece of Jaskier’s music.

Some, of course, are obvious.

[bidaubadeadieu]

Ten Favorite Fictional Characters

I was tagged by @skullhaver​ who chose some rlly choice people. We love so many of the same characters, for so many of the same reasons, but for the sake of fun, I’ll try to pick ones that don’t overlap theirs, or pick some characters off of the beaten path. I find this prompt a little tricky because I tend to fall in love more with worlds than characters. Sunless Skies and Dark Souls jump out to me as worlds that I really like but with no characters that I was really able to latch onto.

1. Rose Quartz, Steven Universe I love Rose Quartz’s selfishness. She spends the whole show kind of oblivious to the way she’s hurting people, although I think she is good of heart and intention. I think her deep empathy for other people manifests as this weird projection where by getting what she wants she genuinely thinks she’s helping others, and has no understanding that other people may not benefit from this. I like the way the narrative slowly reveals more about her, and it was a really exciting mystery to uncover, and to go, like Steven, from kind of revering her, to kind of resenting her, to kind of finding a middle path and acknowledging her complexity. Honorable mention goes to Stevonnie, also from Steven Universe, who is some great nonbinary rep.

2. Satine, Moulin Rouge! When I was in high school, I might have put Satine’s love interest, Christian, on this list, but thanks to gender discovery, I have been able to radically shift the way that I interpret romantic pursuit and seduction. I don’t think this was the intention of the writers, but I think there is ambiguity to be had in Satine’s character. Christian is charming, and the duke is rapey and awful, so I think the audience is supposed to feel that it’s obvious that she will fall for Christian, and of course her appeals to the Duke are only for show, but yet the only thing we know about Satine’s past is she has had a lifelong struggle for security, and I think the choice she is making is a real one. In my read of her character, Satine is like, actually so distant from her own emotional needs that she is not ready to fall in love, and I think she could find Christian’s in-touchness with his aesthetic ideals perturbing and alienating.

3. Karin, Naruto: Shippuden I have to love Karin because no one else will. She is not a good character; the writers make her fawn over Sasuke like 5 years after they should have realized that trope was dumb and juvenile, they gave her a shitty biting-linked power purely to titillate the audience as fanservice, and she gets treated like a punching bag. She’s like literally Naruto’s fucking cousin and they’ve never talked in canon. She represents every missed opportunity that show ever had, and is a perfect example of the way that misogyny hurts worldbuilding. In the New Era, she is kind and gentle with Sarada. Gay aunt vibes. Honorable mention goes to Orochimaru (Boruto only, when he’s in dad-mode) as questionable nonbinary rep, and honorable mentions go to to the rest of the Akatsuki for being absolute freaks, great villain writing, and finally honorable mention goes to Rock Lee for inspiring in me a certain kind of motivation and drive when I need it.

4. Iroh, Avatar: the Last Airbender Legit what is there not to love about this guy? His comic relief holds up after a decade, his wise and compassionate guidance helped foster one of the greatest redemption arcs of all time, and his physical prowess makes from some extremely well-choreographed fights. He really has the range.

5. Clare, The Nightingale (2019) This movie is far more violent than I usually enjoy, but there’s something about Clare’s descent into madness that was done really well. So many people talk these days about “feral women” but like, Clare, she’s feral, in the worst and ugliest ways. Her vengeance is completely justified, and its a rare story that while watching it I find myself thinking “yeah. i want her to commit murder. she deserves it :)” This is Rosemary’s Baby if Rosemary was a Tasmanian tiger.

6. April May, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (2018) I bet you didn’t know this, but I like shitty, selfish women with hubris. I think they’re good characters. At least April, by virtue of being a protagonist, gets a serious growth arc the the second book, which none of the other characters above are afforded because their writers didn’t take them serious enough.

7. The Biologist, Annihilation (2014) Hey, I bet you didn’t know this, but I resonate with cold women making difficult decisions in survival situations. She is savvy and mostly self-aware, but still struggles with being out of her depth, and I resonate with the the way she is somewhat alienated from her past and her regrets.

8. Zaroff, The Most Dangerous Game (1924) It’s silly, and oversincere, and tropey, but I love the vintage horror of a lawful evil guy who hunts humans for sport. I like his weird period-appropriate racism. I like his faux-sophistication and worldliness. I find him oddly realistic. See also: my love for the Akatsuki, mentioned above.

9. Konata, Lucky Star I haven’t watched this show in over a decade, and I don’t want to, I am positive that it won’t hold up and it’ll be major cringe, but the fact of the matter is that Konata’s personality of gamer grrl, small-titty (because it’s fkn anime so that’s a personality I guess) innuendo-ridden persona despite deep naivete, it all left an indelible impact on my psyche. For better or for worse.

10. Viren, The Dragon Prince We love a power-hungry villain who is like, low-key a freak! We love somebody who sacrifices their humanity to get what they want! I love the way that Viren lies to his son, I love the way he and King Harrow were definitely gay for one another, I love the way that he takes advice from a magic caterpillar that lives in his hear. Honorable mention for Aunt Amaya, who is just wonderful, and we love the lady knight tropes she’s bringing

I will tag: @kit-kaboodle @theclockistickingwrite @fairy-creed @wymanthewalrus @soldier-author-batman @colcoction and you know, anybody else who wants in on the fun

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Aaand now it’s time for episode 6 of The Witcher! Rare Species is the title and it’s intriguing, are we going to learn more about witchers?

Anyway, let’s do this. F.lux off, luminosity on, earbuds, clean glasses, and we’re ready. Nobody cares about that but whatever.

We start directly with Jaskier which is always welcome.

Geralt’s employers for the case think he’s dead by now and take Geralt’s stuff... but some strangers just show up and help out. Stranger dude introduces himself and I immediately forget his name and don’t try to learn it. Now he’s Suspiciously Helpful Guy, for short Beard Guy. The ladies with him are gorgeous.

This is about a dragon!!! That’s super exciting. Hope the dragon looks cool.

Jaskier also thinks the ladies are gorgeous. He probably thinks everyone is gorgeous but still, mood.

The reward for killing the dragon is huge, because it’s about the reputation of a king. Makes sense. Suspiciously Helpful Guy isn’t suspicious after all, he just wants the lord title and whatnot and wants Geralt on his team because Geralt is like the Cristiano Ronaldo of monster hunters, and that makes sense.

Beard Guy doesn’t want the reward for itself, but wants a last adventure before he gets too old to do anything exciting, apparently. He tries to appeal to Geralt emotionally, but Geralt is still unconvinced. Aaaand now we get what convinces him to join. The world is small :)

So welcome to Deadly Gishwhes.

Yennefer is there as a fancy escort to Pompous Knight. I think they haven’t started yet and she is already Done with him.

Meanwhile-not-meanwhile Ciri is walking right into Fake Mousesack’s trap...

Deadly Gishwhes for now is a camping trip. Isn’t this fun! Geralt is convinced that the most dangerous thing on the mountain isn’t the dragon, but Yennefer... we’ll see. I mean, definitely.

Dinner is an awkward affair until it gets a more intimate affair, then it’s cute. I’m afraid these nice people won’t survive this.

Dara suspects Fake Mousesack, but Ciri doesn’t...

Meanwhile Yennefer has been sleeping and has lost her escort. Oops.

Oh, he’s been found. Double oops.

The dwarves suggest a shortcut, our team accepts, but we’re gonna have some Yennefer-Geralt drama first.

And of course Yennefer is meaning to use the dragon to get her uterus back.

Geralt says she’d definitely made a bad mother and, well, is he wrong. Apparently it’s customary to make witches and witchers sterile, and he acknowledges that their lifestyle isn’t suited for children. Which I can’t really disagree with... if you really want a child, you can adopt one after deliberation, and not risk to produce a child accidentally that will be thrown into a very unstable environment. I get where Yennefer is coming from, though--it’s not really about a child, it’s about reclaiming the possibility of a choice that was taken from her. I think it’s more about having a part of herself taken away, and maybe she’s been rationalizing her feelings as wanting to be able to have a child, but I think it’s about the integrity and wholeness of her body, of getting back something of herself she got robbed of (even if she chose it at the moment--but it was a choice dictated by the desperation of fixing what had caused her a lifetime of abuse, suffering and self-loathing).

I love how this thing is all leading to Geralt becoming a mama duck.

(Yeah, I don’t know how this story will progress exactly, but I am assuming the plot is going to be about Geralt becoming a mama duck until proven otherwise. I mean, this episode is yelling at us that Ciri is going to become his adopted daughter, we just got hammered with a reminder that she’s tied to him by destiny and Geralt is now babbling about the fact that it’s not a good idea for him to have a child. But for some reason I expect Geralt to go through the story being imprinted on by every orphan or lost soul he meets, like baby ducklings with mama duck.)

(I can’t really think of Geralt as a father but I can only think of him as a mother, does that make sense? I’ve watched too much Supernatural.)

AAAAAAH he’s “thought about this--often”. He’s thought about children and parenthood. Excuse me, I needed that heart, who gave you the right.

Oh my god, he’s been avoiding the surprise because he knows he���s supposed to parent the child, and does not want to subject the child to the life he leads!! I am having feelings!! He does not want a child to go through what he goes through!! He’s literally been tormented by the idea that destiny wants to give him a child but he doesn’t want the child to suffer through the horror and pain of his life!! Wasn’t one (1) show with these themes enough, did I have to add another??

Well, now Yennefer is going to be bitter that she’s been trying to get a child for decades and this dude stumbled into magical adoption just like that.

Also love how Geralt is like “why do I start babbling like an idiot when I’m near you”. It’s called being neurodivergent Geralt. I know this isn’t the take I was supposed to get from the scene but I’ll go with it. It makes sense okay?

Ciri catches Fake Mousesack, and They(TM) get fed up with the whole thing... Ciri is savage af.

The shortcut is terrifying and Jaskier is being perfectly reasonable thank you very much.

Nooo Beard Guy!!! Goergous Ladies!!!! I mean, I expected it, but still. :’(

Oh bby he’s trying to console Geralt and also working out his own pain.

The directors have a favorite angle to shoot Geralt, uh.

Yennefer has made a Tardis Tent. And they have an emotional (emotionally mature, at least for they standards?) moments. They suffer a bit from a-man-and-a-woman-share-a-pencil-syndrome, but that’s just how the show has been working so far, it’s a lot about negative space, so I’m giving them a pass.

Me the other day, as a joke: the horse is the fantasyland equivalent of the Impala. This episode: if he wasn’t a hunter witcher he’d work with cars horses. *deep inhale* Okay.

Ah. Her dream is to be important to someone, yes. A child of her own would be a sure way of achieving that.

Alright, this scene was sweet. They lil stupid faces when they wake up together. They’re dumbasses but cute.

And Ciri is caught. This guy is either feeding her some fat lies or not, let’s see. He speaks destiny stuff so he probably believes what he’s saying. The camping party was talking about the religious zealotry of Nifgaard peeps. He’s probably the religious righteous type, which is the most dangerous type.

OH! Now this is intriguing! It’s Them(TM). And yes, he believes the prophecy stuff, and the shapeshifter thinks he’s insane. Yep.

Yennefer cheats at track and field.

I have a theory about the dragon, let’s see.

Ho ho ho! This is great, the ladies are alive, Suspicious Guy was not what he appeared uh.

I was right, the dragon was a she and had a baby. That was my theory. Yennefer was after it for motherhood reasons... but the real motherhood was the dragon she was after all along.

Suspicious Guy was indeed a gold dragon, the rarest, the ones with the very peculiar mutation... of course. I should have expected it. He hired the only person who’d empathize with dragons and could protect the baby dragon. 

Mama Duck Geralt Foreshadowing Abounds!!

Sorry guys, Team Protect Baby Dragon are the most badass people around.

Dracarys.

Ah, I’m so happy about how this episode went. Sorry for poor dragon mama, but the rest was 👌🏼

Dara is done with white people bullshit, which we can’t blame him for.

And now it’s time for draa~ama! They break up. I mean, I knew I’d happen because they’re dumbasses and just at the beginning of their character development arc. I want them to be each other’s weird ex that somehow is always involved accidentally in everything the other does.

Dragon Dude is like, forget heterosexuality, embrace your true nature as a Mama Duck.

Well, dumping your frustrations on Jaskier doesn’t seem fair. Aw, that’s so sad. Yennefer and Geralt speak the same emotional language, but Jaskier is a lil dumpling.

Fringilla boosts Creepy Religious Dude’s self-esteem. They have a Mission!

And we’ll see how it goes in the next installment...

This episode was really good. Yep.

[fabulouspatsystone]

It’s a date

Something I blurted out for the @xfficchallenges challenge: fic is medice (3) ‘Mulder tries to convince Scully to go on a date’

It’s ringing.„Scully“.

His heart is pounding in his chest and he can hear the blood rushing through his veins. He’s done this a millions times in the last seven years…calling her, hearing her answer the phone, always a little annoyed by the vespertine disturbance.

“Hey Scully, it’s me”. This is different, this is new, this is not just a ‘let’s talk about a case, the day, literally anything…’ kind of call.

“Hey, what’s up?”. There is no real reason for him to call her on a Saturday night with no open case and no open intend to ‘hang out’ as they were doing the last few months.

“What are you doing tonight?”. He shouldn’t have led with that question…that’s the booty call question and a booty call is not what he is looking for. Damn…

“Not much, I was just doing my laundry. You wanna come over?” No, this is not the direction he was going for. “If you bring take-out and a GOOD movie, I may let you in.” He can picture her smirk over the phone. Tempting, but he is a man on a mission and not ready to abandon said mission.

“Let’s go on date!”. It’s out, he released the unthinkable proposal into the void between Alexandria and Georgetown. Silence…

“Why?”. Of course, she’s questioning him. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy, he overstepped her comfort zone, stretching the silent rules of their agreement on partnership and after-work-activities.

“Because I don’t want take-out, I want to take you out. To dinner!”. His confidence is an airplane on the verge of crashing into a mountain. He wants to knock his head on a wall, disappear, rewind to two minutes ago and stop himself from making the call. He blew it.

“Ok”. What? “That sounds nice.” Straightening himself and trying to get back on track, he clears his throat. “Cool.” Cool? What the hell? “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

So, this is new. They’ve been eating out together a lot over the years but not like this. Not with the label of ‘date’ on it. She’s standing there for a few minutes by the phone, wondering. He wants something. Something big. Something she wouldn’t be willing to do unless he’s charming her into it. But he usually doesn’t make that big of an effort to convince her. So what is going on? She muses while taking her closet apart for something to wear. It’s a warm summer night with 80 degrees outside so she decides to wear the black dress, the one from the opening night of Wayne Federman’s insufferable movie a few weeks ago, with black heels. Maybe he is just being nice, trying to make her feel more appreciated on the path of their relationship from professional to personal. Or maybe he just wants something…

It’s knocking.

“Hi”. “Hi”. Ok, that went well. She looks amazing. And that dress…he remembers peeling that from her body only a few weeks ago. They only used the privilege of an FBI credit card for room service and the rest of the night went down in a haze of champagne and scattered clothes.

“Where are we going?”. “I made reservations in that little French place three blocks down you were talking about the other day.” He made that reservation weeks ago but didn’t have the guts to ask her out until it was nearly too late. Bold move, but he’s here now and she’s there and they are going on an actual date. “Oh, alright. I’ve always wanted to try this place.” Solid start. 

It’s agony.

They can’t seem to find themselves. The place is horribly stiff, the food is good but comes in a million small courses. It feels like time has stopped moving and not in a good way. Why can’t they lose nine minutes or even better, ninety minutes and be done with it? How could they have passed hours and hours driving in no time and not find a single thing to talk about now? She never believed this was possible but she’s having the worst date of her life…with Mulder. As the waitress asks if they wanted to have a look at the deserts, they nearly screamed “No, thank you!” in unison. Ok, at least they are on the same page. When they are finally leaving he looks nervous and sad, his eyes mirror his disappointment and unfulfilled expectations.

“Let’s walk for bit.” She cannot leave it like that, she cannot let this evening end drowned in awkwardness. After a few minutes walking side by side silently, she either has to throw herself in front of the next car passing them or…”What the fuck was that?” She used the f-word. She never uses the f-word but desperate time call for desperate measures.  He releases a breath he’s been holding for what felt like eternity. “I don’t know, Scully. But I sure as hell do not wanna do this ever again…”. “Charming”. “No, I didn’t…I mean that didn’t come out right. What I was trying to say…”. “It’s alright, Mulder. I get it.”

It’s surprising.

She just stops and points to an Irish Pub across the street. “Let’s go in, can’t be worse than the French place, right?” Oh this rare Scully smile partnered with one raised eyebrow asking ‘Are we gonna do this or what?’…he is physically and emotionally unable to resist. “You really wanna go in there?” He’s still a little startled by her course of action, he thought she just wanted to go home. Boy, was he wrong. “Listen Mulder, I’m not going home without a decent drink and a conversation that doesn’t want to make me pull my hair out.” Nice! “Come on!” She pulls him towards the tiny brown door and into the room. It’s loud, crowded and dark. They enter into the depth of people, Irish music and the smell of spilled beer and manage to secure two seats at the rear part of the bar. “How’s it goin’ there?” the barkeeper yells over the noise. “Better soon. Two Bushmills 10 years and two beers please.” “Coming up, lady.” Steve, as they will learn later, smiles and starts fixing their drinks. Alright, she is not kidding around, he thinks to himself. “So honoring your heritage tonight, are you?” She grins and picks up her whisky. “Sláinte!”

It’s fun again.

They’re talking, really talking. About anything. They tell each other stories from their past, they reminisce about old movies and tv shows, they create the perfect hangover snacks (for later use), they fight about whether female or male vampires have the best chance of survival through adaption (how they got there? No one of them would be able to recall the next day). She feels light and happy. It’s pure joy to be around him like this, no imminent danger except for maybe falling of the stool, no sad late night in a greasy diner in the middle of nowhere, no twisted case with too many lose ends, just two people having a fun night out. She missed this and she is so glad to have it with him right here in this shady old Irish pub.

A good amount of whisky and an infinite number of beers later, they sit quiet for a second as Mulder slurs: “Scully…(break for emphasis or finding words)…I’m kinda glad I didn’t go to college with you, I wouldn’t have survived.” She chuckles. “What do you think would have happened if we never met?” “You would probably be dead by now anyway, Mulder.” She giggles as he’s making a face. “And I would have a lot less irritating memories to process…and a lot less good ones to remember.” She’s is genuinely glad they met each other and she wants him to know.

“Guys, I’m really glad you two met too because you are adorable but I’m afraid I’m gonna have to close down now. Sorry.” She pouts as she’s turning to face the barkeeper. “Steve, you’re breaking my heart. What time is it?” “It’s two ma’am.” “Oh fuck, you’re so right to throw us out, Steve!”

She hops down her stool in a less than graceful way and feels her legs wobble underneath her as they are finding their way out of the bar.

It’s home.

Walking a few steps, she knows she’s not going to and does not want to make it home in those heels. She peels her shoes off her feet and nearly throws them at him. “Here, hold that for me.” As she walks on barefoot he stands there for a second, mumbling a confused “ok…” into the night.

Their walk home, it’s really only a few blocks, takes forever since they are slow as hell, stopping to laugh or to argue. At about half of the way she stops a group of young man and asks for a cigarette. He watches her smoke with pleasure. “Uh Scullly, I didn’t know you still smoked.” “I don’t! Just once in a decade…” That’s a lie but who cares…

Their journey ends in front of her building. “Thank you, Mulder.” She takes his face into her hands and kisses him.

[glorybcrn]

hihi everybody !! i’m kelly ( eighteen , she/her , mst ) and uh h ... i haven’t been in the roleplaying game for a hot minute but i’m really excited to be here n get back into it ! this is my garbage son gabriel who is technically an old muse ?? ngl i’ve dragged this poor binch to hell n back so if this intro kinda funky ... that why ....... also i may or may not be running on 3 hrs of sleep jfifjnck

◟ * ◊ ─ jason bateman + cismale + he/him » * believe it or not gabriel dombrova is working for the lothario family. they are forty seven years of age and are known to usually spend their time around city hall. the mayor, who has been a part of the alliance for sixteen years, has been living in victoria for forty seven years. the people closest to them describe the bisexual + capricorn to be driven and astute as well as reserved and unforgiving » 

background

— born and raised in victoria, despite not being a founding family, gabriel’s family still had relatively deep roots within the city; it was said that his great grandfather had moved here from massachusetts looking for the american dream. the patriarchal dombrova came from humble beginnings, building the family business ( a local inn ) from the ground up and over the decades it only got bigger and bigger until it had turned into the respectable hotel that it is known as today and now has multiple locations across the state of florida. naturally, his father inherited this business and his mother, on the other hand, is your typical southern belle, moved here from a small town in texas. she was a corporate lawyer ( it’s how she met gabriel’s father ) but since becoming a mother she really has had no interests in any other occupation other than trophy wife and socialite.

— to say that gabriel’s parents were old school would be putting it lightly. basically, both of his parents were deeply religious republicans and were very aware of their image as a family. they were harsh parents, extremely controlling when it came to their children’s lives but at the same time were also really emotionally absent. to this day they still believe that it was all in the name of tough love but obviously it was just emotional abuse. his father was especially hard on gabriel, he was a strong believer in physical discipline and thought gabriel to be too “soft”. he was always berating him, punishing him for petty offences, and pretty much just fostering your typical environment of toxic masculinity. though he never laid a hand on gabriel’s sister as she was what he called, “a lady” and his “pride and joy.”

— but gabriel was a good kid, he was obedient aside from stupid mistakes that kids are bound to make. he was your typical golden boy, a jack of all trades of sorts. not exceptionally good at one thing, but averagely good at a multitude of things. he was a quick learner and dedicated, anything he took a crack at, he eventually excelled in. throughout high school, he mostly kept to himself, choosing to focus on his education and after graduating valedictorian, he went to harvard where he earned his business degree. the plan was to come back to victoria, work for his father, and make his way up until he was ready to inherit the business himself.

— but while away at university, he met abigail. it was your typical whirlwind of a first love where it felt like it was just the two of you against the world. with her, gabriel experienced a sense of normalcy and sincere, unconditional love. for someone who severely lacked both up until then, maybe it wasn’t so crazy that the two decided to marry as soon as they graduated. together, they moved back to victoria to start their lives. to an outsider, gabriel’s life had seemingly always been perfect, envy-worthy. with a renowned and respected family, a successful business, the perfect wife, and now, a baby on the way too, it’s no wonder he’d been chosen by the lothario’s to be their candidate as mayor.

— his connection with the alliance started out small; the hotel business had been in a rough spot for a couple of years and out of nowhere, they seemed to have just come in at the right time, saving the day. he could be on their payroll all for the price of a few, teensy favours. favours such as his hotel being used as refuge for some of their men, a place of business when needed, and gabriel refusing to be a failure, especially in his father’s eyes, easily succumbed to their offer. 

— of course, gabriel’s family has no idea about the real root of his sudden interest in politics, much less how the family business has managed to be so successful still despite his now even busier schedule. and as a result, his relationship with his wife and children have deteriorated over the years. it began as a defense mechanism, intentionally distancing himself from his loved ones as a way to protect them. and while his children maybe the one last soft spot gabriel has left, his sudden absence as a father has definitely put a strain on his relationship with them. however his relationship with his wife seemed to suffer even more, things between the two of them are definitely not how they once used to be. they’re cold to one another and see each other more so as strangers rather than husband and wife. unfortunately, a divorce doesn’t exactly fit into the white picket-fence image gabriel had so carefully curated over the years. 

personality

— after decades of playing different facades, gabriel’s definitely lost a sense of his true self, or maybe it’s just fully gone. he used to be this really compassionate and benevolent person who always prioritized family over anything. it’s why ( at least this is what he tells himself ) he initially risked getting into business with the alliance in the first place, but now, he really only pretends to be those things to get the people to like him. he can be incredibly charming when he wants to be but it’s all just so .. hollow ? if that makes sense. like, nowadays there’s rarely an ounce of honesty or sincerity in him. he’s just so consumed with being a part of the alliance, it’s all he really knows at this point.

— extremely driven and cunning, if there’s something gabriel wants, he’ll get it. even as a child, he was an over achiever and so he’s known to always come through when it’s requested of him. he’s not exactly evil .. ? but he is loyal to the lotharios. i think there’s a small part of him that hates them, hates himself, and hates what he’s doing but idk he kinda just tells that it to shut up lmao. having had to learn it as a child, he’s very good at compartmentalizing which is probably why he can play all these different roles so well without going insane dnkjds

— really reserved, tries ( and succeeds ) to put out this strait-laced and conservative image. has the ability to remain calm in any sort of situation and twist things to his advantage. like honestly ?? gabriel is probably a pr manager’s wet dream .. he just comes across as this very charming and kind man, he’s the type of politician that’ll say hi to your baby and sign its head idk

but ugh idk it’s hard to explain gabriel’s personality since he’s such an emotional mess, i would just end up rambling about the same thing over and over again if i tried to keep going so i’m gonna .. stop right now.

connections

— personal assistant ?? someone incredibly organized and competent. this plot can range from really basic like .. yeah book my doctor’s appointment thnx to someone he’s actually pretty close to ? maybe he doesn’t even realize it, idk. like we can literally do wtvr w this, so !

— other members of the alliance, could be just someone he’s acquainted with or knows well and works pretty close with.

— if you have any muses involved with politics or managing ? his campaign manager or just anyone who worked on his campaign. like w the personal assistant we can .. go basic or brazy w this.

— love interests ? doesn’t have to be ~romantic~ per se .. but idk like affairs ig ?? cause .. gabe’s not perfect, rip. but he is careful so it wldn’t be like .. smth messy or if it was he’d prob make certain measurements after. idk what that means exactly dnjsnsdjk just tryna not get caught uk … or even something as small as flirtationships !

ok these all suck bc gabe is….. emotionally dead inside cnjdsnksnjd but ! obv tht can change per circumstance n whatever so pls .. feel free to mssg me whenever if u have any ideas !!

[onemustalwaysbecarefulofbooks]

ACOFAS Ramblings

This is gonna be super long-winded. I have a LOT to say. Buckle in, folk 

I have so many feelings on this novella I really don’t even know where to begin. I was really really excited for it and since actually reading it am now left kind of floundering in a weird range of emotions that cover every side of the spectrum. I’ll say it now: I had a lot of issues with it. This “review” (if it can even be called a review) is probably going to come across as really negative and for that I apologize. I don’t LIKE shitting all over books. I am 100% NOT on board with hating, over-analyzing, and criticizing an author/series just because it’s popular. But if there’s one thing I can say about Sarah J. Maas, it’s that she has the surefire knack for turning me from a level-headed logical adult reader to a rabid crazed homicidal lunatic. It happens every time and yet every time I’m still taken by surprise by it each time.

Those of you who follow me or have read any of my reviews before know that I have some pretty mixed feelings on the ACOTAR series. I was one of the (apparently very few) people who loved ACOTAR. I eagerly awaited the second book, only to be left completely shocked and reeling after seeing the direction the story had so abruptly taken. Most of this stems from the way Tamlin’s character was handled and treated demonized by the fandom. I have a whole long rant that goes in-depth about all that. I’ll leave it here. If you don’t feel like going into all of it, I’ll do my best to sum it up: The overwhelming beating-over-the-head message we had forced onto us every 5 seconds that certain characters were perfect and others were abusive neanderthals was obnoxious and unfair to me. I have SO many feelings on that, I’m not going to get into all of it here. If you want to know, read that post ^. But anyway, this colored my judgement on the series as a whole for a long time. Once I had gotten over the initial shock, I went back and re-read both ACOTAR and ACOMAF leading up the release of ACOWAR. I was able to enjoy them 1000x more and even though I didn’t agree with a lot of the things that were going down, I had accepted that they were happening and was holding out for redemption.

At the same time, though. . .I could totally understand how everyone went so bananas over the series??? Whenever I hear it described as crack, I have to pause and reflect on just how accurate that statement really is. It IS an amazing story, Sarah DOES write amazing characters, so many of the things that happen reduce me to a hysterical emotional mess. And yet, if I really stop and think about it, it’s like Ok wait. . .I actually have some major problems with all of this, like some seriously problematic things are at play here and yet I can’t stop reading and being obsessed with it?? Literal book crack, I tell you.

So once I had made peace the best I could with the series up to that point, I was READY for ACOWAR. I was pumped. And I ended up loving it!!! I was so pleasantly surprised on how things went down. Were there things that I still disagreed with, and wished I could shout from the rooftop to the general fandom? You bet there were. But overall I was so impressed with most of the characters and so much enjoying the direction their stories were going that I found it to be a truly satisfying ending that left me eagerly looking forward to what was to come. I was PUMPED for this novella.

And. . .

I had some issues. You bet I did. I understand this is just a novella and not meant to rival what a full blown novel is like in any way. It’s supposed to be a bridge, in a sense, for further growth for the characters. But this just seemed like a step BACK for so many of them that it made me frustrated.

We may as well just start with the Tamlin thing and get it out of the way, because everyone knows I’m going to rant about it. I am filled with so much rage on behalf of his character, it’s not even funny anymore. I am APPALLED at the way he is treated by everyone, Rhys in particular. All of these people saying he’s “not worthy” of forgiveness. . .I can’t. I literally can’t. The hypocrisy here is so strong I can smell it from another dimension. When I think of how many people in Sarah’s books the narrative has set up for us to forgive, despite the ACTUAL horrible things they’ve done (Jurian--seduced Amarantha’s sister into giving up information, then slowly brutally tortured her to death, the Archeron father--sat by knowing that despite being handicapped, he was leading his children down the path of starvation and death by doing nothing whatsoever to help their situation, Manon--spent decades and decades brutally murdering people (I don’t care if you make the argument that this is her grandmother’s fault for ruining her--I fucking love Manon, she’s one of my favorite characters, but it doesn’t change the fact that she has a lot of blood on her hands, and still did all she’s accused of), even fucking ERIS now apparently has some mysterious redemption-maybe thing going on) I just want to scream. What unforgivable crime is Tamlin guilty of??????? Misunderstanding Feyre? Being delusional? Being immature and talking inappropriate shit in front of other people??

Tamlin NEVER tells Feyre she is “not allowed” or “not worthy” to be a High Lady. NO ONE in Prythian has High Ladies! Feyre tells him she DOESN’T want to be one and he’s like “Don’t worry babe, that’s cool, they’re not really a thing anyway”. Unimpressive? No doubt. But if you’re going to shit all over Tamlin for this reason, then you’d better start doing it to every other High Lord too, given how utterly shocked they are when Feyre and Rhys show up to that High Lords meeting in ACOWAR and announce that Feyre is High Lady. You’d better start saying it about Kallias too, who clearly respects, trusts, and adores Viviane, but has not made her his High Lady.  It is literally treated as something Rhys and Feyre made up.

Tamlin has to watch Rhys basically strip Feyre, paint her body with all kinds of weird tattoo art, and drug her into oblivion night after night Under the Mountain. Don’t tell me none of you were a little skeeved by this in ACOTAR. Don’t tell me there wasn’t ONE of you that wasn’t like Wow, this guy is a fucking creep. I’m NOT saying Rhys IS a fucking creep, he is far from it.  I’m merely saying it’s not far-fetched at all for someone to think that about him after witnessing that, BECAUSE HE IS ACTING LIKE A FUCKING CREEP. Yes yes yes, we all now understand WHY he did it but guess what?? Tamlin doesn’t! BECAUSE NO ONE FUCKING COMMUNICATES WITH EACH OTHER IN THIS SERIES!!!! (Oh believe me, this is something I’m about to make a fucking point of in a little bit). Tamlin thinks Amarantha’s boyfriend, the guy who treats Feyre this way, has tricked her into residing in his court that no one has ever seen or been to, but Amarantha supposedly modeled her own after. DELUSIONAL DELUSIONAL DELUSIONAL!!! The fact that he couldn’t see how badly Feyre was suffering shows how poorly suited they are for each other. On top of that, we’re told in ACOWAR that finding a mate in the romantic sense that Feyre and Rhys have is rare. Mating bonds can be as simple as the matching of the most productive DNA. Tamlin AND Rhys’s parents were mates who were “wrong” for each other. Rhys gives a whole speech to Feyre about how sometimes the males who were mated to a female feel that they are “entitled” to her and will fight the male she has chosen for herself to the death. While I personally believe this was only added in to bring about drama to the Elain-Lucien-Azriel mess, if it’s something we’re actually sticking to, it certainly sheds a new light on the way Tamlin reacted in Hybern at the end of ACOMAF, where he was snarling at Rhys that he didn’t give a shit if he was Feyre’s mate. Again: DE. LOU. SION. AL. But being a delusional dumb ass is NOT the same thing as being a controlling entitled psychopath. Tamlin, the dumb motherfucker that he is, has no idea that Rhys has even been good to Feyre in any way. Feyre does not say, “We’re in love” and he responds with “I don’t give a shit”. THAT would be as bad as everyone is acting like it is.

The two things I absolutely will give the Tamlin criticizers are: him finally locking her up in the manor and his appalling and completely out-of-line behavior at the High Lords meeting. There’s no good explanation for him shutting her in the manor, other than the fact that he let his own PTSD, fear, and rage get the best of him and control his actions. It was WRONG and he 100% owes her an actual apology for it. I completely understand Feyre harboring bad feelings towards him for that. And then the High Lords meeting. . .come on, dude. It was embarrassing af. I get that he was hurt and pissed and embarrassed, but coming in there and trash talking them, bringing up their former sex life. . .no. It was way out-of-line.

The rest of it, though. . .Rhys keeps harping on and on about how badly Tamlin “hurt” Feyre. I’m sure I’ll get enough hate mail to wrap around the circumference of the world for this, but. . .how? What did he REALLY do that is so unworthy of forgiveness? Wanted her to wear fancy dresses and be an accessory as he ruled the Spring Court? Have his babies? Buried his head in the sand and wasn’t able to cope with her PTSD because he was knee-deep in issues of his own? Locking her up in the manor, fine. I’m 100% with you on that. But like. . .I’d just like to say. In ACOTAR, Rhys deliberately pushed on a bone protruding from Feyre’s arm to get her to cooperate him and agree to agreeing with him. Not only is he completely forgiven for it, it is never brought up again once in the entire series. If that’s going to be brushed aside and ignored, we REALLY can’t forgive Tamlin for making a really poor decision? No one is denying what he did was wrong, least of all me. But my God. You can’t even say that he sided with Hybern and fucked everyone over to get her back. He made it very clear in ACOWAR that he did this purely to gain assistance in (what he believed was) rescuing her, and then planned to take Hybern down from the inside. Do not tell me Rhys wouldn't do the same thing for her. Rhys DID do the same thing for his family and the entire city of Velaris. Rhys did horrible things to protect the people he loved. Imagine how Clare Beddor’s family would feel towards him, and what he subjected her to in the name of protecting Feyre. I know Rhys took all her pain away from her in the moment of the actual torturing but in the case of the point I’m making, that is so not the point. She was still kidnapped from her home and undoubtedly terrified beyond belief. She was still degraded and humiliated in front of strangers who meant her harm. Her family still lost a daughter. Do I blame Rhys for it? No. He took a really awful situation and did what he could to do the best for his loved ones. The world isn’t black and white, sometimes people are forced to choose between a bad choice or a even worse choice. He gets the benefit of the doubt, but Tamlin never does. Anyway, all of these things. . .wanting to mold her into something she’s not, consuming himself in his own head rather than making an effort to dig deeper with her, to me just sounds like two people who aren’t well suited for each other. I’d really like to think that had these people communicated like actual adults, it all most likely could have been peacefully resolved without all this bullshit and drama. Feyre and Tamlin DESPERATELY need to sit down and have an actual conversation, WITHOUT RHYS PRESENT.

So yeah. To see JURIAN, who literally intentionally seduced a woman and then brutally tortured her to death, now apparently be Not So Bad After All and hanging out in the Lucien friend gang but see Tamlin being scorned and mocked and completely dismissed for any sort of redemption is blood boiling to me.

“But--peace. We had peace within our sights.

I could rip him apart after we attained it.”

“Low. It was a low blow. I  had everything--everything I’d wished for, dreamed of, begged the stars to give me.

He had nothing. Had been given everything and squandered it. He didn’t deserve my pity, my sympathy.

No, Tamlin deserved what he’d brought on himself, this husk of a life.

He deserved every empty room, every snarl of thorns, every meal he had to hunt for himself.”

“You deserve everything that has befallen you. You deserve this pathetic, empty house, your ravaged lands. I don’t care if you offered that kernel of life to save me, I don’t care if you still love my mate. I don’t care that you saved her from Hybern, or a thousand enemies before that. I hope you live the rest of your miserable life alone here. It’s a far more satisfying end than slaughtering you.”

Congratulations, Rhys. All this I hear about the Honorable, Self-Sacrificing, Most Powerful High Lord in Prythian’s history, and you’ve managed to make me see you as nothing more than a Grade A Dick.

HOW you can bring yourself to be that cruel to someone that is in the level of disparity that he is in is beyond me. Unless he’s a straight up rapist or murderer, I do not believe he deserves this one bit. Feyre “survived” him. . .I have never heard a more overdramatic statement in my life. Feyre survived her severe PTSD. Tamlin was not the cause of this. He did nothing to help it, which is a pretty dick move and definitely not the way you want to treat someone you claim to love, but he is not where her issues were stemming from. Tamlin was severely misguided but his intentions were good. I know no one on the face of the Earth wants to hear that, but is the literal truth. He owes some major apologies and could benefit from some serious self-reflection but Rhys is treating him like he shackled Feyre in a dungeon and beat and raped her repeatedly.

Basically, Rhysand needs to Chill The Fuck Out about many things, and I’ll touch more on this later.

What’s very conflicting for me right now is the direction Sarah’s trying to lead us in. A big thing that I’ve been an advocate of lately is that a character’s thoughts, opinions, and beliefs do NOT mean the author holds those same thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. When people criticize a character’s actions for being problematic, I try to consider the fact that maybe it was intentional of the author to write them this way. Maybe they’re not trying to make them this pillar of morality, maybe they’re just being a character that, at the end of the day, is just that: a character. A form of entertainment. The confliction I’m here is that the narrative has been incredibly biased towards Rhys and Feyre since the first page of ACOMAF. Pretty much every single thing up to this point has been presented as whatever they think, say, and do is what everyone is cheering for. So like. . .does Sarah herself actually feel this way about Tamlin? Or is she just giving us what she truly thinks Rhys and Feyre are feeling about Tamlin at this point, whether that’s right or wrong? I’d truly like to hope for the latter but I honestly can’t tell. Some people are theorizing that this was intentional, to make Rhys seem not quite so saintly and perfect. . .to give him true flaws and an ugly side, to make him more realistic. But I can’t even really find satisfaction in this until I know for sure. All I know is, we haven’t seen the last of him yet. I still think that random girl they rescued from the Hybern camp with Elain is his mate, Briar. (“I spoke to Vairan, Prince of Adriata,” I said, lingering on the other side of the table,the rack of antlers like a briar of thorns between us). Briar Rose, Court of Thorns and Roses, Sleeping Beauty, blah blah blah. I’d bet money on it. At this point, I’d need to see a hardcore turn around in his character and the way he’s treated by the fandom to be satisfied.

Another character I’m pretty appalled at the treatment of is Lucien. Feyre’s attitude towards him in this really pissed me off.

“Interesting.”

His golden eye whirred. “What is.” (OMFG STOP WITH THE QUESTIONS WITHOUT QUESTION MARKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Not feeling very festive at all, I said sharply, “That you now feel more comfortable with humans than with High Fae. If you ask me--”

“I’m not.”

“It seems like you’ve decided to fall in with two people without homes of their own as well.”

Yo Feyre, who had a hand in making it so that he has no home?! Honestly, keep your preachy shit to yourself.

“And what, exactly, does this Band of Exiles plan to do? Host events? Organize party-planning committees?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go. You ruined any chance I have of going back to Spring. Not to Tamlin, but to the court beyond his house. Everyone either still believes the lies you spun or they believe me complicit in your deceit. And as for here. . .I can’t stand to be in the same room as her for more than two minutes. I can’t stand to be in this court and have your mate pay for the very clothes on my back.”

Feyre acknowledges that she holds part of the blame for the position he’s in, for the rift she helped create between him and Tamlin. But she “didn’t feel quite guilty enough to warrant apologizing for it. Not yet. Possibly not ever”. Like for God’s sake, is there no end in punishment for some of these people????? It’s like the narrative has decided that there are just some people who’s pain and problems don’t matter (and apparently Jurian, the torturer and murderer, is not one of them). Lucien was a doormat to Tamlin and didn’t step up to help Feyre when she needed someone. But Feyre’s Holier Than Thou attitude towards him is getting old. Lucien has, in my eyes, more than made up for anything Feyre could still be upset about towards him. In some ways, you could argue that he was a victim of Tamlin just as much as she was! He clearly felt super indebted to him because of how Tamlin took him in after he had been exiled from the Autumn Court. He got his eyeball clawed out delivering a message for Tamlin. He was held Under the Mountain and was inches away from being brutally killed (remember Feyre’s second task?). He endured Calanmai in Tamlin’s place. And then he finally decides what he believes in and stands for, and leaves the Spring Court with her. He defends her against his brothers and then finds himself in a foreign court among people he always heard were violent and untrustworthy. He’s viewed as an outsider but he does his best to do what he can for the cause against Hybern. He has no true home, no family that cares about him, no true place in the world. He’s clearly struggling with the mating bond, but respects Elain, gives her her space, and doesn’t try and force himself on her. Not to mention he was the only one who was dropping truth bombs in this entire damned thing: “Your mate should have known better than to kick a downed male”.

And as far as the whole mating bond thing with them even goes. . .aadskflsdjfsjkdslk. If I had one ounce of sense, I would FORCE myself to not care about the situation. I would make myself believe I didn’t have any sort of preference, and that Elain could end up with either him or Azriel and it wouldn't make a difference for me. I know how SJM operates and it has come back to bite me in the ass one too many times. But of course, being a complete masochist, I have set myself up for stress and strife as an Elucien shipper. Not exactly warm and fuzzy feels from these two in this installment. I’m fine though, I’m not mad. It’s true, Elain doesn’t really owe him anything just because they’re mates (perhaps this was the mindset Tamlin had when he first heard Rhys was Feyre’s mate when he believed Feyre still loved him??? Ever occur to anyone???) and if she doesn’t want to be with him that way, of course she doesn’t have to. She’s cold to him, but I think that’s because he’s an obvious physical reminder of the permanence of her Fae life, which she’s obviously still struggling with. She clearly has some issues of her own to work through still, and this isn’t what she needs right now. I’m sure we’ll be dragged through all kinds of shit before we can come to a resolution.

Another HUGE topic of debate right now is Nesta. It’s what I’ve seen people talking about the most. Again, my emotions are a giant clusterfuck regarding this right now because I am so conflicted. This is going to sound ridiculous, but I pretty much agree with everything everyone’s saying on both sides of the argument apart from one thing. I completely disagree with those who are saying that her behavior right now is out of character. This is what I was fully expecting after ACOMAF. I was fully prepared to see her in this state in ACOWAR. Given the deep inner rage we often her about her having, the circumstances under which she became Fae, and all the other shit going on, I figured we had a long and ugly road ahead of us in ACOWAR. When we finally saw her again and found that she wasn’t in this state, I was pleasantly surprised. She clearly had some issues (the whole bathtub thing was heartbreaking) but overall, she was a much more pleasant character to read about than she ever had been before. She was treating Feyre better, she was taking action toward solving problems that affected her, rather than making others do it out of spite, she had some nice moments with Cassian. I found myself warming to her a lot. This one started and it was just immediately a night and day difference. Initially, my question was. . .why now? I didn’t mean that to sound sarcastic or shity, I was really wondering. Now I’m thinking the delay of the onslaught of all this is due to a few things: the fact that she really was this messed up over the whole thing the whole time but was just powering through it because Elain was suffering, the violence she was exposed to in the war, and the complicated feelings she now probably has towards their father.

I have super complicated feelings about Nesta, I always have. I know a lot of people really love her as a character but I find myself hovering somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Point blank: She was awful to Feyre in their human life. And I’m not even talking about “letting” Feyre take on all the responsibility of providing for all of them and do all the hunting. That’s something that really gets me irritated. Just because Nesta was 3 years older than Feyre does not mean that she should be held to the same standard that Feyre’s parent should have been. It was that FATHER’S job to provide for his CHILDREN. Nesta was just as much a victim in that situation as Feyre was. They were all still children when they were going through that shit. . .why should Nesta be expected to figure out how to take care of all of them any more than Feyre had to? It was heartbreaking that that was placed on her shoulders. I don’t blame Nesta for that. What I DO blame her for is how utterly cruel and awful she treated Feyre on a day-to-day basis. When I went back and re-read ACOTAR last year, I was SHOCKED at how blatantly terrible she is to Feyre, I had forgotten how bad it was. For the first part of that book, every thought of self-doubt, unworthiness, or self-hatred Feyre thinks to herself is spoken internally in Nesta’s voice. I’m not exaggerating when I say that--she literally says she hears it in Nesta’s voice. She’s just honestly horrendous overall.

Nesta rose and declared: “I need a new pair of boots.”

I kept quiet, knowing better than to get in the middle of one of their arguments, but I glanced at Nesta’s stil-shiny pair by the door. Beside hers, my too-small boots were falling apart at the seams, held together by only fraying laces.

I looked up in time to see Nesta crinkle her nose with a sniff. She picked at my cloak. “You stink like a pig covered in it’s own filth. Can’t you at least try to pretend that you’re not an ignorant peasant?

I didn’t let the sting and ache show. I’d been too young to learn more than the basics of manners and reading and writing when our family had fallen into misfortune and she’d never let me forget it.

Nesta’s nostrils delicately flared. “There’s nothing you can do. Clare Beddor told me this afternoon that Tomas is going to propose to me any day now. And then I’ll never have to eat these scraps again.” She added with a small smile, “At least I don’t have to resort to rutting in the hay with Isaac Hale like an animal.”

“What do you know?” Nesta breathed. “You’re just a half-wild beast with the nerve to bark orders at all hours of the day and night. Keep it up and someday--someday, Feyre, you’ll have no one left to remember you or to care that you ever existed.”

I don’t really care if you have rage issues or whatever. I don’t really care if you have all this pent up aggression towards your father and are embarrassed that you suck at hunting and can’t provide for the family the way Feyre can. You can still recognize that she has a talent you don’t, and be pleasant, kind, and decent to her instead of looking for ways to unnecessarily insult her. That’s where my issue stems from. The thing I keep seeing brought up (lbr, by Rhys) is that she let her 14 year old sister go off in the woods and didn’t do anything to help. But I’m just like Uhhh forget all that, just tell me why you gotta be such an awful bitch to Feyre?! Now really, I think I know why. Sarah has said herself in interviews that Nesta and Elain were two characters that started out as really one dimensional and surprised her with the direction their characters ended up going and the huge part they ended up playing. I honestly think that at the time she published ACOTAR, she hadn’t made these decisions yet. Nesta is just too awful. Yeah she goes and tries to hunt her down after Tamlin takes her, but she’s so wretched in the beginning that I have to think this was when SJM was simply trying to portray the two wicked sisters thing (which was a thing in the original Beauty and the Beast fairytale).

So yeah, I really REALLY don’t like the person she was at the beginning of the series. All throughout ACOMAF and ACOWAR I would find myself hopping on board the Nesta Is Awesome Train and then come to a screeching halt when I remembered this. She feels so deeply. . .so she tears Feyre down and makes her feel like shit? And yet I’m still pretty invested in her as a character? I don’t even know. I liked the direction her character seemed to be heading, especially after ACOWAR so I was on board for a healing/redemption thing.

Now, did I like where her character’s story was going in this one? Fuck no!!!! Of course not!! Who would?! It was downright unpleasant and draining to read about. Her behavior was destructive and tedious and painful to witness. Maybe I was just getting frustrated because I’m NOT a fan of over-drawn out angst. Like. . .we all know she’s gonna end up a scarred but healed, stronger person like Feyre and live Happily Ever After with Cassian. @thoughtsontomes puts it best in her ACOWAR review video when she says, All we’re hearing is “I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care about any of you!!!! I hate you all, F*** YOU!” when it’s like, “. . . .you don’t though. Like stop. No one really believes you. So just . . stop”. Everyone’s flipping out about the apparent slut-shaming, but that’s not how I saw it. What she’s doing isn’t healthy, in any sense of the word. I saw an objection more towards her motives than the number of men she was entertaining. Sleeping with that high number of strangers when you’re in such a bad place like that has the potential to cause even more lasting damage. So I’m not surprised most of them were like “Um wtf are you doing??”.

The fact that she’s spending through Feyre and Rhys’s money without doing a single thing to earn it was also gross. When she was like “I’ll come to your Solstice thing if you give me three months of rent” I was just like

And then Oh yeah HAHA I’m so dumping all these ridiculous bar charges onto Feyre cuz she won’t ever NOT pay it HAHAHAHA 

Look. I get it. She’s suffering. She’s going through some MAJOR shit right now, rivaling (if not worse than) what Feyre went through after ACOTAR. She’s not going through it the same way Feyre did, not at all. Feyre’s manifested itself in hopelessness and despondence, which made it easy for our hearts to bleed for her. Nesta’s is all manifesting in seriously self-destructive behavior. She was unpleasant before she started going through this, she’s unbearable now. This is raw and realistic, but it’s not fun to read about. So I get what people are saying who are feeling annoyed by her story arc.

On the other hand, as I said, SHE IS SUFFERING. Like A LOT. So while I can find myself getting frustrated by having to watch her go through this, a part of me wonders how everyone in the Inner Circle can just dismiss the deep trauma she’s clearly going through. I COMPLETELY agree with everyone who is saying that the way Nesta is being treated by all of them is essentially the same way Tamlin was treating Feyre, which the fandom jumped all over. What did everyone say Tamlin did? Witnessed someone he supposedly cared about wither away into nothingness and didn’t do much of anything about it? Yep, check. At least with him I could say that he was dealing with his own form of PTSD at the time and the relationship fell apart because they couldn’t give each other what the other needed. With these guys it’s like. . .you completely villainize Tamlin for doing this to Feyre, but yet you turn right around and do it to someone else, because her trauma is expressed in a different and more hostile, destructive way than Feyre’s was. And what is Rhys’s justification for that? He can’t forgive Nesta for how she treated Feyre.

One of the main criticisms I see against Tamlin is that he smothered Feyre. He never gave her room to breathe, to be her own person and do her own thing. The only thing that mattered was preserving her and her precious delicate self. I’m just gonna call it like I see it, I’m seeing pretty close to the same thing with Rhys now.

He needs to Chill The Fuck Out. People are going to hurt Feyre. People are going to insult Feyre. People are going to do things that inconvenience, put-out, and piss off Feyre. He has to learn to find some chill with this.

The whole “Elain is Elain” justification for why he has no issues with her but does with Nesta is the most BULLSHIT thing I have EVER read. Um I’m sorry, what?????? Elain is Elain (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean--if I were Elain I’d actually feel pretty insulted by that. I did the same as Nesta but apparently I’m some ditzy simpleton who didn’t realize what she was doing and shouldn’t be held to the same standards as everyone else?) but Nesta has an Illyrian heart so she should have known better?!? Like I don’t even know where to begin. Elain did the exact same thing you are claiming you’re so upset with Nesta with: let Feyre go off and do the hunting on her own at a young age. Did Elain do a single thing to stop this? No. They literally did the exact same thing. So let’s be real here, Rhys. What you meant by this was: Elain is nice to Feyre and Nesta wasn’t/isn’t. That’s the issue you have here. It’s not that bullshit about Nesta having an Illyrian heart or whatever, it’s that she’s mean to your precious Feyre and you can’t tolerate that. Don’t believe me? He literally says it in the book:

“You can still barely talk to Nesta,” I said. “Yet Elain you can talk to nicely.”

“Elain is Elain.”

“If you blame one, you have to blame the other.”

“No, I don’t. Elain is Elain,” he repeated. “Nesta is. . .she’s Illyrian. I mean that as a compliment, but she’s an Illyrian at heart. So there is no excuse for her behavior.”

“She more than made up for it last summer, Rhys.”

“I cannot forgive anyone who made you suffer.”

Like if he’s really mad at her for being a bitch to Feyre, say you’re mad at her for being a bitch to Feyre!!!!!!! But again, it’s this whole “Should that be my Solstice gift to you? Forgiving Nesta for letting her fourteen year-old sister go into into those woods?” instead of “I really have issues with how ungrateful she acted towards you and how nasty she was in general”. Like, come on, Rhys. I also think Nesta was downright horrible and awful to Feyre in their human life, but like Feyre says, LET’S MOVE ON. She’s clearly let go of it after seeing Nesta working towards making up for it. You can not walk around snarling and hissing and threatening disembowelment to anyone who hurts Feyre’s feelings. You can’t forgive anyone who made her suffer? You’re in for a very long (immortally long) life of negativity and hostility then. Put your Big Boy Pants on and let Feyre handle the situation between her and her sister. If she’s cool with it, be cool with it. Think whatever you want to yourself, vent about it to other people, but quit being this way to Nesta in front of Feyre.

The whole sneak peek at the end was cringey between the two of them also. I can handle Rhys interrupting her and snarling at her to sit down. It wasn’t sweet and nice but let’s be real, she NEEDED someone to get in her face and make her listen at that point. No, for me it was the fact that it made Nesta so afraid to be near him and that kind of power, and when Rhys scented that fear, “one side of his mouth curled up in a cruel smile.”

Yo, if Tamlin had been the one in this scene instead of Rhys, he would be CRU. CI. FIED. I was EXTREMELY glad to see Feyre basically tell him to stfu and put him in his place. Like WTF Rhys. Is this deliberate on SJM’s part? Is this her attempt to “humanize” Rhys and give him flaws, since he basically didn’t have any before??? If so, I appreciate the effort, but maybe give him some that don’t make him like a controlling psychopath (because that title’s reserved for Tamlin and Tamlin only, amirite?! If this were Tamlin, it would be all about his need to control a situation.)

UGH, and Rhys and Feyre talking about Lucien coming for Solstice and him telling Feyre he could “stomach him”.

“I can let go of the taunts”. What taunts?????? Are you for real??? Hate to break it to you Rhys, but are you forgetting the fact that in ACOTAR you showed up to the manor and taunted Lucien about the female he loved being murdered in front of him????? YES, I KNOW HE WAS DOING THIS DELIBERATELY AND DIDN’T REALLY MEAN ANY OF IT AND WOULD NEVER SAY IT IN REAL LIFE. But Lucien had no way of knowing this until very very recently. Here’s the 497th thing that enrages me in this series: the Inner Circle getting shitty towards people for treating Rhys like a bad guy. Like. I’m sorry. I understand it’s frustrating and heartbreaking to see him be viewed and spoken about this way, but this was by his own doing. He literally WANTED people to think this about him. It was his way of protecting Velaris. You can not expect a complete 360 degree turn overnight. Did it happen this way with Feyre?!?!? NO!!!! You have to give people a chance to really get to see and know him before this can happen.

“And the fact that he still harbors some hope of one day reuniting with Tamlin.” Oh yeah, how DARE HE want to reconcile the destroyed friendship he has with the one person who was there for him when his family murdered the woman he loved and kicked him out of his home. How DARE he try and be sympathetic towards Tamlin and want to try and work things out and make them better for both of them. How DARE he want to be able to go back and live in the place that’s become his home. Stfu Rhys.

“But I cannot let go of how he treated you after Under the Mountain.”

“I can. I’ve forgiven him for that.”

“Well, you’ll forgive me if I can’t.” Icy rage darkened the stars in those violet eyes.

I’d like to take everybody back to ACOMAF and this passage that sent everyone screaming from the rooftops, ready with their pitchforks and knives to castrate someone:

“I don’t give a shit if she’s your mate. I don’t give a shit if you think you’re entitled to her. She is mine--and one day, I am going to repay every bit of pain she felt, every bit of suffering and despair. One day, perhaps when she decides she wants to end you, I’ll be happy to oblige her.”

Nothing further needs to be said about THAT.

I said I was going to make a point of the communication issues later on, so here it is: so many of the problems/underlying tension in this series would be solved if people actually communicated with each other like rational adults. I understand that a book with no conflict is boring and stupid, but I’ve just read so many series where the conflict is happening OUTSIDE of the characters, and we see how they have to deal with it. I mean like, it is really really bad in here. No one communicates issues with each other. Feyre doesn’t communicate with Tamlin. Tamlin doesn’t communicate with Feyre. Mor doesn’t communicate with Azriel. Azriel doesn’t communicate with Mor. Cassian doesn’t communicate with Nesta. Nesta doesn’t communicate with anyone. The only ones who seem to consistently have open honest communication with each other are Rhys and Feyre which honestly, at this point, why am I not surprised. Feyre and Tamlin suffer from an abominable lack of communication. Everyone shits all over him for not doing anything to help her after Under the Mountain. But sometimes you have to tell people what you want. I don’t necessarily feel like Feyre expected him to read her mind but at no point does she sit down with him and give it to him straight how it really is with her: I’m struggling and I’m struggling hard. With the way things are going, ______________ is going to happen. What I need from you right now is ____________. Either we can try and work on it together, or I’ll have to find something else that works for me. It’s pretty widely accepted that Tamlin developed some PTSD of his own after ACOTAR and his behavior in ACOMAF is stemming from it. Fine, whatever. But nowhere does he sit Feyre down and lay it all out for her: I’ve been dealing with violent horrible shit all my life. You are the first good thing to happen to me in years. Having to watch you go through that and being powerless to do anything broke me in ways I didn’t know I could be broken. I feel so guilty and awful that you went through that in the name of love for me that I feel like I owe it to you now to keep you as physically safe as possible. If I’m coming across too strong, we can work it out together. (I’m still holding out that this conversation will happen). Mor never tells Azriel she doesn’t love him romantically. I’m not even talking about her sexual preference to females. I’m just really confused why she couldn’t just be like, “You’re a really great guy, but I don’t see you that way. I’m not attracted to you, you’re like my brother”, just like you would any other guy you don’t want to date. Her preference for females doesn’t even need to be brought into it. Az never confronts Mor and is like “When are we going to stop playing this pining game, like it’s been 500 years. These are my feelings for you, do you reciprocate, or don’t you?” (I know Rhys claimed it’s because he feels unworthy of her, but how long were they going to let this go on for? It’s been 500 years). Cassian, I will admit, does finally begin to be one of the first to drop the bullshitting around and have an open and frank conversation with Nesta. It doesn’t go anywhere, but I’ll at least give him credit for trying. Nesta opens up to no one, not even Elain. I get that this is literally part of who she is as a character so I’ll give her that. Some people are literally just like that. But no one can deny that it would be healthy for her to get her feelings out at this point. I mean seriously, the list of issues is endless. Feyre doesn’t give Tamlin a real explanation behind why she left. She doesn’t tell him she’s happy with Rhys and he’s treating her well. They don’t tell anyone (at first) that Rhys’s whole thing with Amarantha was an act and he’s really an honorable noble person. Tamlin doesn’t tell Feyre the real reason he supposedly sided with Hybern and what he was planning to do. Instead, all these people let all these issues sit and stew and stew until they boil over into some big, ugly, dramatic thing. I’m hoping that in this next part of the series, we’ll see some resolvement with all this. These conversations that need to happen will happen. Because until then, it’s frustrating.

The only other thing I wanted to touch on was the baby thing. I’m not really surprised at all about it. Honestly, since the moment I heard Sarah was pregnant, I figured it was only a matter of time before we saw something pregnancy related pop up in one of the series. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am a HUGE HUGE sucker for domestic things like this. I want to see the whole married with babies epilogue with a big pretty bow on top. Normally any time something baby related is brought up, I’m like UH YES PLZ anytime now would be fine (as long as the characters are in a strong committed relationship with no serious factors affecting it). But when Feyre said she wanted to wait, I totally understood. They are immortal, they have YEARS for this to happen. I liked them falling into their new role as High Lord and Lady, taking their time to slowly but surely recover the best they could from their ordeal, and enjoy each other for a while (because in the grand scheme of things as far as fae go, they’ve barely been together for any time at all). To hear it so soon WAS unexpected, but like I said, also totally not at the same time. I really really thought the reason they were calling Nesta to the New Feysand Palace in the sneak peek chapter was to tell her Feyre was pregnant (you know it’ll happen in the new series). Let’s all pray hard for their future kid though, because while every other child always has the awful possibility of losing a parent and being raised by one, theirs would automatically be an orphan. Their “when one of us dies, the other will” pact/bond was the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.

I swear to God, every time Rhys called her “mate” when he was speaking to her, I read him totally speaking in an Australian accent. It really made me LOL.

You know what DIDN’T?!

“Watch how I fuck you, Feyre.”

One last thing really quickly. . .what is up with this world building? Reading ACOTAR, I got a very clear sense of a high fantasy/medieval-y world. Then ACOMAF opens with Feyre puking into a toilet. I was like Huh?! Toilets? Ooookkay. Then throughout ACOMAF, Feyre is mentioned many times wearing things like leggings, sweaters, and boots. There is a leather sofa in the Chapter 55 Mountain Cabin. Like what else is in there?? A plasma flat screen??

I feel like I just did nothing but spew negativity for the past million years and I DON’T LIKE IT. I’ll say it again: I take no pleasure in feeling any of these things. I am not about hating on an author or series just because it’s become popular. Like I said, CRACK. I definitely feel all these things pretty strongly, but at the same time, I am very much in love with the series. I’m attached to the characters, I’m sucked into the story. I want everyone to be happy. I know you may not believe it, but there ARE things I enjoyed about this novella. A few of them are:

The background information we got about Cassian’s mother and how she is the main motivator in pretty much everything he does. Break my heart :(

The description of the Winter Solstice in the Winter Court. Seriously, it sounded so glorious I had to pause reading for a second and dwell on how badly I wanted to be there for it.

Amren having issues with peeing :D

Amren in general and the bluntness with which she calls people on their shit (“Don’t take her to the wine--take her to the food. I can see her bony ass even through that dress.”)

Feyre helping the children of the Night Court heal their trauma through art.

I think that’s basically it. I’m sorry most of this sounded so negative, but it was all pretty much word vomit. I had so many feelings built up that I just had to get them all out and I feel a lot better now. Do we have a release date for the next one? Like I said: BOOK. CRACK.

[forsakenoathkeeper]

Diabolik Idols

Mun!Sora: This is exactly what it sounds like, except like hardly any of these are actual idols by definition but I don’t give a fuck.

♥ Shuu Sakamaki

Shuu has been raised for the theater, ever since he was old enough to pick up an instrument and almost every waking moment of his life. His mother ensured it. He’s arguably the most famous violinist this side of the world, with a talent for piano and chello, as well; but, his secret is that he has no care for any of it - the fame, the glamour, the money. He didn’t choose this life. It was forced upon him. His passion for music may be strong, but he could care less of the opinions of the masses.

IF YOU PICK HIM: Shuu definitely does not think you’re worth his time. In fact, he thinks you’re a talentless loser; however, just like everything else, your apprenticeship is forced upon him. He doesn’t want to admit it, but, with time, your presence rekindles the passion he possesses for music. You, unlike the others, feel the emotions he puts into his music. Of course, he doesn’t intend to admit this to you. Maybe, you’ll uncover the dark secrets of his melancholy.

♥ Reiji Sakamaki

All Reiji ever wanted was to play music for a crowd, and to hear their cheers of joy and thundering applause. But, his mother never allowed him a chance to shine. Rather, he was forced to be Shuu’s manager, to guide him along, ensure he made it to performances on time, and that all his shows were completely booked. He’s good at it, good enough to make everyone believe he wants nothing more. After more than a decade of keeping his passion a secret, he’s become sorrowfully accustomed to living in the shadows of his brother.

IF YOU PICK HIM: When you pick Reiji, you expect a very simple apprenticeship; he’s going to teach you how to be a manager. He’s a very diligent teacher, albeit a rude one. He teaches you the basics, of course; but, he also teaches you things you never considered - knowledge that will guarantee your success. Then, one night, you accidentally stumble upon him playing a hand crafted chello. His performance is breathtaking, unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Maybe, you, and only you, can help him step into the spotlight for the first time.

♥ Ayato Sakamaki

If you asked Ayato Sakamaki why he decided to give up basketball to pursue an idol career... Well, frankly, he just felt like it. He’s got the looks, the voice, and the dedication... not to mention quite the god complex. Girls can’t help but throw themselves at his feet; yet, none of it is good enough for him. He has money, fame, and all he could ever want, right at his fingertips. There’s something missing, but he has no idea what it is.

IF YOU PICK HIM: Ayato is certain that what he’s missing is an award, something to bring him to the next level; so, why not the King of Idol’s award? Of course, that means he needs a queen. Well, you’ll just have to do, even though you’re a flat chested moron. Every waking moment is spent preparing for the contest. The two of you need to be in flawless harmony, even if he finds your singing quite detestable... or, so he claims. As the days go on and the competition grows closer, you can’t help but wonder if his insistence is still only for the contest.

♥ Kanato Sakamaki

The world doesn’t know Kanato Sakamaki. They know Kana, leader of the lolita fashion world, gothic pop icon... and a girl. Kanato is the spitting image of his mother, except for the fact that he’s a boy. His mother was a legendary fashion icon for the majority of her life, but never had a daughter to follow in her footsteps. Kanato, however, eager to please her, was willing to live a double life, only allowed to be himself when the curtains closed.

IF YOU PICK HIM: When you pick Kana, you’re definitely not expecting her secret... until you accidentally expose it to the world. Kanato absolutely loaths you, and even contemplates hiring a hitman. Unfortunately, his mother disapproves of this idea. Your temporary partnership was supposed to sky rocket his fame, not completely annihilate it... that is, until Kanato realizes that your mistake has freed him from the constricting shackles of a fake existance. Together, you help him realize he can still be Kana... but he can also be himself.

♥ Laito Sakamaki

A well known pianist, who specializes in slow, romantic songs, and also sings whilst he plays, Laito’s music is a favorite in five star restaurants and elegant clubs. His performances are known to be breathtaking, accompanied with fresh roses and dancers. As he might say, “I may not be an actor; but, I am one for... dramatics.” His infamous reputation is that he never goes home alone: a playboy, by day and by night, who’s captured many’a’hearts. Even those who don’t know his name know his work or have heard his voice.

IF YOU PICK HIM: Laito doesn’t take apprentices. He doesn’t have time to teach someone the ways of the piano. But, as a fellow pianist and singer, Laito sees you more as competition, or a means to an end. That alone is the reason he agrees to do some duets with you. But, he finds himself unable to refuse you time and time again. There’s a loneliness to him, ever present in his eyes, that you simply can’t look past. Beyond the glamour, his frequent attempts to woo you, and playful flirting, you see something more... so much more.

♥ Subaru Sakamaki

If you called him an idol, he would scoff at you in disgust. That annoying blonde dude in the pink is an idol. Subaru plays guitar and sings rock and metal, and is the founder and core of White Rose. He doesn’t dance or throw flowers to the crowd. All of his songs are of his own making, originals birthed from his experiences, his suffering, his passions. They’re hardcore, angsty, and occasionally emotional and heartfelt. Yet, Subaru is cold, distant, and definitely not the kind to associate with his fans, or other musicians. He has the reputation for being an unobtainable bad boy.

IF YOU PICK HIM: He definitely does not want to do a duet with you; his manager can kiss his ass. But, if he doesn’t, he’ll lose his record deal. Fuck. Subaru agrees... quite unwillingly, and somehow manages to drag himself to practice. He doesn’t care for the way you sing, or so he says. Your guitar skills are mediocre at best, or so he says. You obviously don’t understand the meaning behind his lyrics... Or, maybe you do, and he just hasn’t noticed yet.

♥ Ruki Mukami

There is no jazz club this side of the world that doesn’t play Ruki’s music on a regular basis. He’s almost a legend, able to capture smooth blues and even the rolling, almost rock’n’roll aspects of jazz. He’s also a favorite in casinos. However, Ruki rarely performs live. He’s a busy man with a reputation to uphold. But, spending little time in the spotlight has greatly diminished his fame. He’s ready to make a comeback... a proper one.

IF YOU PICK HIM: You’re a means to an end, something Ruki makes very clear when he agrees to partner up with you. You’re a very talented jazz singer, though you’re nowhere near Ruki’s level. He likes that, actually; it means you won’t outshine him. But, somewhere along then way, Ruki finds himself not caring when you do outshine him. He flinches away when you accidentally touch him, and loath you calling him anything other than Mr. Mukami. But, you can’t help but wonder what he’s hiding behind those mahogany eyes.

♥ Kou Mukami

He’s been famous his entire life, beginning as a child actor in plays and dabbling in small television roles. Now, he’s an idol, in every sense of the word: music, dancing, fashion, you name it. He’s also self-proclaimed best friend to the lead singer and guitarist of White Rose, though the silver-haired boy denies it. Kou is well adjusted to this life: fame, fortune, money, and literally crawling with women. However, deep down, it doesn’t matter to him, at all. It’s a means to an end, and something to keep himself entertained.

IF YOU PICK HIM: To the outside world, Kou is flirtatious and sweet, generous, even. When you choose him, you’re partnered up for a modeling campaign that’ll involve ads, live dance routines, and even a fabricated romance. “Love sells, kitten,” as he put it. Kou is demanding, with high expectations. He expects you to always look your best, especially if you want to be famous by the end of it. But, at some point, the attention he gives you, the fake dates, and the extravagant romantic gestures, doesn’t seem to be just for the camera anymore.

♥ Yuma Mukami

Since when does one of the world’s best mixed martial arts champions become a musician on the side? Well, it all started when he agreed to sing at one of Ruki’s jazz clubs. The rest is history. Yuma doesn’t consider himself famous; but, he’s a favorite at local clubs and elite bars. He doesn’t really care for it, though. It’s simply something more carefree to do between championships and training. Besides, it’s an easy way to meet ladies who don’t expect him to stick around.

IF YOU PICK HIM: You expected to be Ruki’s associate; yet, somehow, you ended up as Yuma’s... slave. Well, that’s an exaggeration, honestly. But, you expected to get a chance to perform, to play, to sing, not be stuck scheduling and assisting this guy. You stick around, however, hoping the opportunity will come around. Yuma sees your longing for the stage, but expects you to prove your worth it before he’ll give it to you.

♥ Azusa Mukami

Azusa started small, playing his ukulele and ocarina at dive bars and the corners of popular tourist attractions. He got the opportunity to play on the radio and was picked up by a talent agency. One year later, Azusa is making record deals and modeling for boho clothing lines. He’s known for being humble, always wearing T-shirts that show off scars from the days when he was homeless, a past that he keeps well hidden, from everyone, including his agent.

IF YOU PICK HIM: It was actually Azusa’s vocal coach that put him up to this. A duet that would finally get him on the top charts and introduce you into the spotlight... if only it were that simple. He’s never written a duet before, and your presence only seems to make it worse. You’re just likely everybody else - you couldn’t possibly understand his music... It’s not just about the duet anymore, but proving to Azusa that you’re not like everyone else.