#true blue paladin

[makowo]

Umbra's redesign for the Traldos campaign's soft reboot <3 what trying to bargain for your friends' livelihood with the Raven Queen behind their backs does to an mf

[lincolndjarin]

Best Kept Secret ☆

A MANDALORIAN SERIES MASTERLIST

[ COMPLETED ]

✩ a bodyguard!din x princess!reader fic ✩

series summary :

Married off to a prince on a planet that you hate? New husband doesn't know you, and doesn't want to know you? New husband gifts you a personal Mandalorian body guard as a wedding present? Mandalorian is a wiseass who won't leave you alone? Lucky you.

18+ mdni

do you like kitschy, campy romance novels? if you're reading this, I hope so.

behind the scenes & chapter notes + other extras (spoilers) :

chapters 1-5

chapter 6-15

spotify playlists

Lysa & Elaine information

the bks screen adaption

bks q&a

bks what if's

reader is generally not described past being picked up a few times, and having hair long enough to be put up

✩ chapters containing smut!

chapter one : honeymoon (6.7k words)

[ Absurd.

That is the only word that comes to mind as you stare at yourself in the mirror. “His favorite color is blue.” ]

chapter two : silent treatment (7.4k words)

[ Something is wrong. You bolt up from the pile of blankets that you call a bed and your eyes dart around the closet as you furrow your brow trying to discern why you feel so much different. ]

✩ chapter three : the smitten paladin (4.6k words)

[ You’re starting to think the planet isn’t the reason you’re so hot all the time.

You had woken up this morning feeling a bit better than you thought you’d be, your stomach is full of butterflies but you're still standing and considering the night you had you’re gonna take that as a win. ]

chapter four : sarad'ika (6.8k words)

[ Sarad'ika. 

You won’t forget it this time, you can’t. So you write it in your book, just under Mando’s favorite color you write the two little words that have been keeping you up at night. ]

✩ chapter five : lunar interlude : just a man (5.0k words)

[ Absurd.

It’s absurd how much the job pays. Din’s not even sure he should take it at this point because it’s too good to be true. ]

✩ chapter six : torment (5.1k words)

[ Okay, maybe you didn’t think this through. 

You didn’t think he’d actually come in and now suddenly the door is shut and you’re alone with him. ]

✩ chapter seven : just friends (3.1k words)

[ Maker it feels like it’s been an hour and you’re both just laying here. He was just inside of you; it shouldn't be so hard to find something to talk about at this point. ]

chapter eight : solar markets (5.3k words)

[ It’s nice to wake up excited again. 

You wish you could say that it happened more often but hopefully it will from now on. It’s going to be your first time leaving the castle grounds since you got here. ]

✩ chapter nine : shuk'la rules (5.6k words)

[ You need sex.

Normally you would be satisfied for quite some time after getting off but for some reason with Mando it was different. But it’s only been two days and you need more. ]

✩ chapter ten : lunar interlude : briikase gote'tuur (4.1k words)

[ He’s grateful for the break from you, even if brief. 

That’s not to say that he doesn’t enjoy every moment he gets to be in your presence but the more time he spends with you the harder it gets to remember that this isn’t real. ]

chapter eleven : he loves me not (4.6k words)

[ Something is wrong. 

All day it’s been wrong. 

He’s different. Distant. ]

chapter twelve : pretend (4.4k words )

[ Two days.

That’s what you’re willing to give yourself. Two days to get over it. One to get it all out of your system and one to pull yourself together. ]

chapter thirteen : lunar interlude : vercopa (3.5k words)

[ He did it.

He did exactly what he knew he needed to do.

So why does he feel worse than ever? ]

chapter fourteen : condemned (4.9k words)

[ You’re having trouble sleeping. 

You have no problem falling asleep, it’s mostly staying asleep. There’s a million different things that consume your thoughts and everytime you drift into unconsciousness you find yourself jolting awake, barely able to stay asleep for more than an hour at a time. ]

chapter fifteen : two tea parties (5.4k words)

[ “What did you do to her?”

Her voice breaks through his sleepy haze as he sits up properly. 

“Excuse me?” ]

chapter sixteen : absolution (4.6k words)

[ There’s a visceral sense of dread when you wake up, for several reasons. 

The glaring obvious culprit of your discomfort would be the fact that today’s your husband's birthday. ]

chapter seventeen : the apostate’s cabin (3.5k words)

[ Just Din. 

It’s sinking in as you walk in silence, holding his hand tightly as he pulls you towards his home. ]

chapter eighteen : portrait of a man (5.4k words)

[ It’s deliciously warm when you wake. You can feel his heartbeat and you can feel the soft traces of sunlight dancing along your back. You stretch in his arms slightly but freeze up as you feel him nuzzle his chin into your hair, planting a kiss against your hairline. ]

✩ chapter nineteen : reverence (7.3k words)

[ You really want to. 

You couldn’t possibly want to more than you currently do. 

It’s actually a bit mean. That he’s left you here in this state. ]

✩ chapter twenty : like real people do (8.4k words)

[ Mando and Din. 

All you can think about right now is how there must be two of them. 

You’re playing with his curls. ]

✩ chapter twenty one : te mirci't (9.0k words)

[ “It means I love you.” 

You aren’t entirely sure how long you stare at him, looking rather silly with your jaw practically on the floor. ]

✩ chapter twenty two : it’s you that i lie with (11.3k words)

[ Naboo has several trading ports. 

You could get him on a cargo ship. That would be the most inconspicuous form of transport. It would help if he was willing to ditch his armor. ]

✩ chapter twenty three : lunar markets (15.0k words)

[ Sneaking out of the castle gets easier every time you do it. 

It only takes a few minutes and you’re walking outside towards the forest trail, Din’s hand in yours, still giddy. ]

✩ chapter twenty four : lunar interlude : riduur (7.8k words)

[ He doesn’t deserve this.

How could he possibly be deserving of you? Yet somehow you make him feel as if he is. With your soft touch and the way your eyes get just a little bigger when you see him. ]

✩ chapter twenty five : wedding bells (11.7k words)

[ Four days of Leo. 

You were upset that Din was leaving you but you got over it rather quickly with the promise of his hasty return. ]

chapter twenty six : crucifixion (12.7k words)

[ “My room is too big.” 

He bursts into genuine peals of laughter and you gently smack his arm.

“Don’t laugh, it’s a serious issue! My room is enormous.” ]

chapter twenty seven : the apostate (6.0k words)

[ Silence.

That’s all there is in his brain. 

It’s hard enough as is for him to hear. It doesn’t help when he’s been beaten half to death. ]

✩ chapter twenty eight : a place for us (8.4k words)

[ You’d spent the better half of the day trying to get on top of him. 

Every time you managed to get close he’d simply set you down on the nearest surface with a kiss on the cheek and go back to doing whatever he was working on. ]

chapter twenty nine : the best kept secret (epilogue) (6.1k words)

[ The morning sun is warm against your face, you bask in it, unmoving and only half awake until you feel a tiny hand slapping your cheek. The illusion of tranquility is immediately shattered as you softly laugh. ]

[arc-misadventures]

You're A Holy Paladin?!

Ren: Prepare to die foul demon!

: Oh? A group of adventures here to slay me? Well, many have tried, none have survived. Now, come noble adventure! I am Willow, the Demon of the Ember Snow. Now prepare to die!

Ren: Prepare to meet your dark gods in the afterlife vile demon! Let's do this, Jaune!

Jaune: ...

Ren: ...

Jaune: ...

Ren: J-Jaune...?

Jaune: Hmmm?

Ren: Oh no... Gods not again, Jaune!

Jaune: What?

Ren: Oh, please don't tell me you want to... to sleep with a demon!

Willow: S-Sleep with...? A-Are you talking about me?!

Jaune: And, if I did?

Ren: She's a demon!

Jaune: A very voluptuous, thic, and hot demon.

Willow: T-Thic?!

Ren: She's a monster!

Jaune: Ren, it's been weeks, you should know what my type is.

Ren: Monsters?!

Jaune: Sexy monsters~!

Willow: Sexy~?

Ren: Jaune, you're a holy paladin! She's a demon! You're supposed to kill demons! Why are you thinking about having sex with this thing?!

Jaune: Ren, I am a Holy Paladin of the Summer Maiden. A Goddess of Fertility!

Willow: A paladin of the Fertility Goddess?! Are they... Are they as good as they say they are~?

Jaune: You should know that I am basically a bard in plate armour!

Ren: That's not a fair comparison! You know I have no experiences with bards!

Jaune: What?! You've met bards before, we've been on missions with one before!

Ren: Neptune does not count!

Jaune: That is a valid point!

Ren: Besides, where does this mad desire to sleep with every humanoid, feminine monster you come across!

Jaune: My mother!

Willow: Y-Your mother?

Ren: What does that have to do with anything?!

Jaune: My mother wants lots of grandchildren!

Ren: What?

Jaune: Oh, my father is a human, and my mother is a succubus.

Ren: A succubus?!

Willow: A male child born from a succubus...?! It's difficult for a succubus to conceive a child... and a male child is only born one of ten thousand succubus children! But... are the rumors about succubus male children true~?

Jaune: That's right! My mother is a succubus! So as a result I have a over active sex drive! So, I will seduce whatever beautiful monsters that comes my way!

Ren: Really?!

Jaune: Yeah! So I'm going to smash the sexy demon!

Willow: Uhh... Noble paladin... W-Would you like to go back to my place? W-We can... have discussions about you a succ...?! Discuss you being a, Paladin of the Summer Maiden...?

Jaune: I'd like that, My Lady~!

Willow: Wonderful~!

Ren: Ahh... Ah?!

Ren: W-W-What the fuck?!

///

Okay, I'm borrowing aspects from each story. But, they're still not connect to one another as in the woman, Jaune's smashing!

As I've said before. It is very, very easy finding white haired anime girls with silver/blue eyes in general.

Kina weird honestly.

[blackmoonowl]

Paladin Danse dating headcanons

Assuming it takes place after Blind Betrayal.

These are just random headcanons I wrote down in no specific order.

Say goodbye to going anywhere on your own. If he can he's coming with you. To keep you safe, mostly. He can't bear the idea of losing you. You're all he has left in the world, without you he feels he has no purpose.

Very protective, would give up his own life to save yours without questioning. You're the one person in his life who truly saw him as a person, not as a soldier of abomination.

A bit awkward when it comes to physical affection at first. If you hug or kiss him out of the blue he'd go completely stiff, a distinct look of surprise on his face. Make sure to build it up with him, show him it's okay to touch and be affectionate back, he'll get into it at his own pace.

Keeps things neat with military precision. This man doesn't leave messes in your house, everything is neatly put away in designated spots. He doesn't like it when you leave things strewn around either.

Needs your reassurance. He found out his entire life was a lie, and you're pretty much the only person he can rely on nowadays. His entire identity was ripped away from him, as was his purpose in the Brotherhood.

Sometimes he starts to overthink about how much of his life was real, and how much was programmed in. A dark, erratic part of him wonders if you're real sometimes. That he'll wake up one day and realize you were a false memory.

Doesn't full realize it when he gets jealous. He knows that you talking too much with other men makes him deeply uncomfortable, but it takes him a bit to understand why he feels that way. He'll straight up question you about your encounter, and his true feelings quickly become obvious.

As for you, you don't have much to be jealous about. Half of the time he doesn't understand someone is hitting on him, the other half he does but he's just not interested at all. It's like flirting with a brick wall.

Slowly opens up to the idea of ghouls and synths if you want him to. He doesn't like them, but seeing them around your settlement makes him a little more tolerant.

Gets upset if he sees the Prydwen or Brotherhood soldiers in the distance, especially in the beginning. It puts upsets him for a while, and he might shut down and give you the cold shoulder. Give him some space and then comfort him, he slowly gets over it though.

Actually likes holding you once he's comfortable. He won't do it in front of anyone, but in private he is putty in your hands. He'll stand or lay wherever and however you want if that means he gets to hold you close to him.

To add to that, he's a very light sleeper. If you pry yourself out of his grasp to do something, he wakes up almost immediately. It's like he's on constant alert.

Sometimes he wonders what it's like to have a family, but he's never brought it up. Part of him fears his nature as a synth means he won't be able to have a son or daughter to protect. But he can get behind it just being the two of you.

Scary dog privileges, especially in his power armor. It's a great intimidation factor. People generally don't try to mess with you with a strong, stoic ex Brotherhood Paladin looming over your shoulder.

[khywren]

「 Oathbreaker 」

summary: Her brazen defiance of his allegations and her insistence on proving her piety has angered Astarion in a way he can't quite put into words, but he knows that the way she rejects what he knows so intimately to be true in service of her own self-preservation is maddening and incompatible with reality.

“You vex me.”

━ ◆ ━

Or, Paladin Tav's insistence on helping everyone the party comes across irritates Astarion to no end. He decides to test the limits of her virtue.

pairing: Astarion/f!Reader rating: 18+ MDNI status: complete tags/warnings: oral (female receiving), vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, blood drinking, shameless smut, hate sex/angry sex, rough sex, dirty talk, biting, brief mentions of past trauma/abuse, reader insert word count: 4.7k spoiler warning: minor spoilers for astarion's past through act 1.

a/n: cross-posted as always from AO3.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ◆ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It’s nearing dusk when the party decides to stop and make camp for the evening on the edge of the forest that they’ve just spent the last several days trudging through tirelessly. As they emerge wearily from the trees, Tav is the first to spot the small stone building at the crest of a small hill and can barely contain her excitement as she recognizes the colors adorning its walls.

“I can’t believe there’s a temple of Tyr all the way out here,” she says, finding a sudden surge of newfound strength as she bounds towards the foot of the hill. Her exhausted party follows after an exchange of disgruntled looks, lest there be some sort of ambush waiting for them inside.

As endearing as she often is, Tav is nothing if not recklessly optimistic.

The temple is thankfully deserted, and they all take a quick look inside before most of them excuse themselves to make camp. Tav, however, lingers after the others have left. As a paladin who has dedicated herself to Tyr, she is thankful to have found a place to stop and offer her prayers – and hopefully receive some blessings for the long journey ahead of them.

As the heavy oak doors swing shut, Tav suspects that she is alone, but a small noise alerts her and she turns to see Astarion not too far away, watching her carefully.

She’s surprised he’s still here.

“I didn't take you for a religious man, Astarion,” Tav says. She approaches the altar in the center of the temple, draped with the familiar blue and gold colors that represent Tyr and his followers. Overhead, twin banners frame a marble statue of Tyr himself, the fabric emblazoned with the golden hammer and scales that signify his creed of law and justice.

She bows her head in reverence, her hands clasped together in front of her.

“I'm not,” Astarion says blandly, making his way lazily throughout the open hall. “Call it mere... curiosity. But go on, don't let me distract you.”

He waves his hand dismissively, but Tav pauses what she's doing anyway and beckons him towards her.

“Would you... like me to show you how to pray?” she asks him. “You could do with a little positive influence.” The smile she offers him is kind.

“Tempting,” Astarion says, placing his index finger on his chin and pretending to consider the offer. “But I'll pass. You've already got the market cornered, I'm afraid.”

It's clear he has no intentions pf humoring her, and she heaves a heavy sigh.

“It wouldn't hurt you, you know - to be a little kinder,” she admonishes. “You can't solve all your problems with a dagger.”

His eyes gleam playfully as a graceful smirk slides effortlessly across his face. “That's what the short bow is for, darling.”

It's all Tav can do not to glare at him. She settles instead for a less enthusiastic scowl, her face full of disappointment.

“Must you always be so frustrating?”

“I prefer the term ‘pragmatic,’” Astarion quips back, not missing a beat. “It's all part of my charm.”

“Look,” Tav says evenly, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. “All I'm saying is that maybe if you acted a little more heroic every once in a while, you'd realize that people are far more receptive to kindness than violence.”

Astarion huffs and rolls his eyes. “Those who claim to be heroes are either fools or martyrs,” he says simply. There is no inclination that he's being insincere with his words.

“This world is full of nothing but cruelty, and those who take advantage of that fact will always use that power to bring the weak to heel.”

It's a simple fact of life that has been ingrained into Astarion in the most painful way for the last two hundred years of his life. It is, perhaps, the greatest truth that he knows.

Tav's naive valor has always been one of her most exhausting traits, Astarion thinks grimly.

Tav, meanwhile, expresses her indignation as she turns sharply on her heel to face him, brows knit and her lips drawn tight.

“You're wrong, Astarion,” she says sternly. “There are plenty of good people out there, people like me, who –”

Astarion interrupts her retort with a mocking scoff and stalks closer to her, the soft sound of his boots across the stonework the only sound he makes. He levels a glance at her, and when she meets his eyes she find them full of menace.

“People like you?” he parrots back. “You don't seriously expect me to believe that you risk your life for every wretched soul who stumbles across your path purely out of the goodness of your heart.”

Tav has never seen him this upset before. She can practically feel the anger radiating off of him now, his whole body tense, his hands balled into fists at his sides. 

She isn't sure what to make of it and doesn't have the time to consider why this, of all things, seems so personal to him before Astarion suddenly relaxes his posture, as if he's trying to regain his composure.

Astarion narrows his eyes and regards her silently, and she feels as though he's staring right through her. The tadpole in her head squirms suddenly, and she has the inkling that he's considering trying to pry his way into her innermost thoughts to drag the truth from her if she will not freely give it to him.

Then as quickly as it came, the sensation fades, and Tav's mind steadies, though the exchange has set her on edge.

“You have something to gain, just like everyone else,” Astarion concludes. “The only difference,” he says with a wry smile, “is that you're hiding behind righteous selflessness. I, on the other hand, have no such compunction.”

Tav considers his words carefully, the accusation that she is only helping other people because it somehow benefits her own sense of self-worth cutting her to the bone.

She's angry because she knows there is some truth to what he's saying, but she won't give him the satisfaction.

“No,” she bites out, “I help people because it's the right thing to do. I swore an oath to defend those who can't defend themselves. That alone is reward enough.”

Astarion seems to sense her deception and seizes on it. The smirk on his face is nothing if not wicked as he leans in close, his brows arched.

“Really?” he says. “Then I have to wonder, how long did it take for you to become so blindly obedient that you no longer allow yourself to act on your own self interests?”

His voice lowers an octave, and when he speaks again it sends a cold shiver down her spine.

“No matter how much you'd like to do otherwise?”

He could almost laugh at the irony of his words if the reality wasn’t so tragic. The obedience he sees in her, a sick, twisted reflection of his relationship with Cazador, is enough to make him seethe with rage. The only difference is that Tav had a choice - she chose to surrender her autonomy when he never had that luxury.

Tav rounds on him now, her face hot with anger.

“That's not true! Just because I choose to follow Tyr's teachings doesn't mean that I don't have free will. I'm not a slave.”

Astarion bristles as the word leaves her mouth.

She doesn't know, she couldn't know, but it doesn't make her words any less destructive.

He's towing over her now, his expression dark. When she tips her chin up to look at him, Tav flinches at the scorned look on his face. In the back of her mind, a voice tells her to run, but she reasons with herself that Astarion, as prickly as he can be, would never hurt her.

Instead, she steels herself and gathers the courage to stare him down.

“You're wrong,” she repeats again.

“Then prove me wrong,” he snarls. “Do one thing, just one, that you want to do just for the sake of doing it. Not because you think it will win the favor of some pathetic god who probably doesn't even care that you exist.”

Tav ignores the casual dismissal of her beliefs and does something that surprises even Astarion. Fisting her hand in his doublet, she grabs Astarion firmly and tugs him forward, crashing their lips together in an awkward, clumsy kiss.

His lips are cold to the touch, a detail that she had not anticipated, and she considers pulling away. After all, her point has been made, has it not?

The kiss feels liberating, in a way. Astarion had been shamelessly flirting with her since the first night they made camp, and despite her repeatedly rebuffing his advances, it was never because she hadn't found him suitable to her tastes.

But Astarion's hand is immediately behind her back, holding her firmly against him and preventing her from escaping. He presses his mouth against her as tongue glides across her lower lip, a growl rumbling low in his throat.

When Tav parts her lips to suck in a breath, Astarion plunges his tongue into her mouth, tasting her with a hungry fervor. The hand on her back crushes her against his body, and she kisses him back, gasping breathlessly as she feels the sudden prick of his fangs.

Astarion's grip on Tav's thighs is possessive as he hoists her up onto the altar, scattering the unlit candles and other trinkets in his way. The sharp edge of the stone bites into her skin, granting her a moment of clarity. She realizes his intentions as Astarion fumbles impatiently with the leather straps of her armor, tugging at the buckles on her waist.

“Astarion,” she says, placing a tentative hand on his shoulder, “we shouldn't – it's not proper – not here.” She casts her eyes up to the statue of Tyr that looms over them, its cold marble eyes watching them in silent judgement.

“And why not, love?” Astarion says smoothly, freeing the last buckles of Tav's cuirass and casting it hastily aside. It hits the floor with a muffled thud, and his fingers quickly turn to the buttons of her undershirt.

“I can think of no better place for you to give yourself up as an offering.” 

When Astarion cranes his neck to look at Tav through half-lidded eyes, he flashes her a sly smile, his fangs bared.

“I will enjoy corrupting you,” he croons softly. “I do so hope Tyr will be watching as you come apart for me.”

The way he says it sends a tendril of searing heat directly to her core, and she feels herself growing desperate and needy. The slick arousal between her legs betrays any remaining reluctance she had left, and she gives up trying to talk him out of taking her in such a sacred place.

Astarion tugs fervently at the buttons on Tav's shirt, but he's not making progress fast enough. In a bout of frustration, he balls his fists up in the fabric and callously wrenches it open, scattering the remaining buttons as the shirt tears beneath his hands.

Tav makes a short noise of protest for her ruined shirt, but Astarion silences her with another punishing kiss and pushes himself between her open thighs.

After shrugging out of his doublet, Astarion makes quick work of Tav's shirt and her underclothes, which swiftly join the unceremonious pile with Tav's discarded leathers.

Her brazen defiance of his allegations and her insistence on proving her piety has angered Astarion in a way he can't quite put into words, but he knows that the way she rejects what he knows so intimately to be true in service of her own self-preservation is maddening and incompatible with reality.

Too many times Cazador had taken advantage of Astarion. Too many times he had tortured and used him for his own personal gain, and not once did anyone reach out to intervene. 

Not once did anyone save him from his suffering. Not until the mind flayers snatched him right out from under Cazador's clutches and implanted the godsdamned parasite in his brain.

“You vex me,” mutters bitterly, brows furrowed.

Tav regards him curiously, her expression questioning, but she says nothing.

When Astarion presses his face into the crook of her neck and his lips find her pulse point, Tav hitches a breath and her body moves of its own accord, her back arching into him as though it craves the contact. The cold from his pallid skin seeps into her body, and when his hand trails up her torso before finally cupping her bare breast, she lets out the moan she's been holding back since he first returned her kiss.

Astarion grins triumphantly against Tav's neck and presses his fangs into the soft, smooth skin above her carotid artery. 

She's no better than the rest of them. Defiant as she is, she's succumbed to him like so many others before her.

There is no true good in this world, he reminds himself. Only those who take advantage and those who allow themselves to become their prey.

The hand on Tav's breast squeezes roughly as his fingers find her nipple; when he pinches the tender bud, Tav cries out beneath him, writhing in pleasure. She grasps at him feebly, one hand tangling in his hair as the other finds purchase in his tunic.

“Tell me,” he muses, “why did you let me have your blood that night?”

“I - what?”

Tav wills herself to focus on his question, eventually realizing that he's talking about the night he had tried to bite her when everyone else was sleeping. He had asked so sweetly to let him drink her blood, she remembers. Of course, she hadn't been able to say no to him.

“Was it pity?” Astarion sneers. “Did you see me as yet another one of your little charity cases?” His tone is scathing and dripping with venom. 

Tav sees no point in lying to him any longer, not when he already knows the truth. 

“You said you needed it,” she responds flatly. “I was only trying to help.”

“How predictable,” he scoffs. “I don't need your pity.”

With his free hand, Astarion grips Tav firmly by the chin and forces her head to the side, baring the full column of her throat to him. She anticipates his bite before it happens, and when his teeth sink into her neck it feels like ice being injected into her veins.

Tav moans pitifully as Astarion's tongue laps over her skin to encourage the flow of her blood, and she can hear him swallow greedily as it surges into his mouth.

A thin rivulet of blood trickles from the corner of his mouth and Tav feels a few crimson droplets pepper her chest, causing her to shudder as they grow cold on her skin.

Desperate for something more substantial to cling to, Tav throws her arms around Astarion's body, digging her nails into his back and dragging them across his shirt, hard enough to leave marks even through his tunic. 

Astarion groans at the sensation but does not stop her.

He drinks greedily from her veins, gorging himself on her blood, feeling the warmth flooding through his body. The taste is just as he remembered, so sweet and agonizingly addictive.

It requires a great effort for Astarion to pry his mouth away from Tav’s neck. When he finally wills himself to pull back, she looks up at him through dark, unsteady eyes, her lips parted to allow her shallow, panting breaths.

He draws his thumb over his mouth and gathers any remaining traces of blood before running his tongue across it, savoring every last drop.

“Exquisite,” he breathes. “But now… I have to wonder if the rest of your sinful little body is as delectable as your blood.”

Tav moves without hesitation, unlacing her boots and kicking them off. Astarion’s hands are already at her waist, tugging at her pants and underwear. She lifts her hips just enough for him to yank them down around her ankles, where they fall forgotten to the floor.

When Astarion kneels before the altar, she lets him spread her legs even farther apart, wide enough to bare her body to him. She’s already trembling with anticipation, and she can tell by the pleased noise he makes that he’s noticed how wet she is before he’s even touched her.

“Look at you, sweet thing,” Astarion purrs. “Look how eager you are to have me. You want it, don't you? My mouth on you, tasting you, savoring every last bit of your needy little cunt?”

He drawls out the last few words in a low, possessive tone, and Tav struggles not to whimper.

“Oh gods...” she croaks. “Yes, Astarion. Yes.”

When Tav feels his mouth on the inside of her thigh, she bucks her hips, frustrated by the way he’s purposefully stalling before giving her what she wants.

“Please,” she whines, reaching to grab his hair and push him where she needs him most. Astarion avoids her grasping hands and snatches her wrists in his hand, holding her firmly.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he tuts. “Patience.”

Astarion slowly drags his lips across her thigh as he continues to tease her, occasionally nipping her sensitive skin as he continues his torturous path. When she’s all but certain she’s going to explode, he finally gives in, releasing her wrists as his tongue slides through her slick folds and flicks against her aching clit.

“Fuck, Astarion –!”

Tav keens against him as her body ignites under his mouth, her nerves alight with arousal as he sets to work at pleasuring her, his lips and his tongue bringing her almost immediately to the edge of orgasm. He clearly knows what he’s doing, and she whimpers incoherently, gathering her hands in the blue and gold drapery still strewn across the altar.

Astarion slowly drags his tongue across the slick heat of her core, grazing her entrance. When she feels his tongue probe inside of her, her back arches sharply, and he splays his hands across her waist to keep her from moving.

“Stay still,” he hisses, digging his fingers into her hips.

When Tav appears to comply with his demands, Astarion returns his attention to her clit, using the flat of his tongue to press into her and swirls the tip in practiced, lazy circles. Before long, he presses two fingers inside of her, stretching her open with slow, languid thrusts.

Damn him for being so good at this, Tav thinks sourly, tipping her head back and indulging in the feel of him against and inside her. She knows she’s already lost whatever moral advantage she had over him, and she realizes with only a little shame that she can’t even be bothered to care anymore.

Maybe he was right. Maybe restricting herself this entire time had been nothing but folly. She doesn’t want to interrogate what that means for… well, everything moving forward.

So instead, she focuses on Astarion as he sends wave after wave of pleasure cresting over her, pulling her closer and closer to the edge. She can feel her orgasm building, and as he curls his fingers inside of her, Tav feels her legs begin to shake and prepares herself to give into him completely and let herself go.

The whimper she makes when he suddenly pulls away from her and leaves her gasping and desperate is nothing short of obscene. Astarion rises to his feet, and she searches his face for an explanation, her pupils blown wide as she tries to focus on his face.

“Why –?”

“Not yet,” Astarion answers her bluntly. “I'm not yet through with you.”

He flips Tav unceremoniously onto her stomach and grabs her around the waist, yanking her back so that her legs hang over the side of the altar far enough for her feet to find purchase on the floor. She can hear him behind her as he slips his tunic over his head and unlaces his trousers, the soft leather gliding quietly over his body as he sheds the last of his clothes.

His cock springs free and Tav feels its heavy weight against the swell of her ass as he slides behind her, trailing a single icy finger down the curve of her spine.

“Fuck you,” she grits out through clenched teeth, shifting to make herself more comfortable.

“Ahh,” Astarion says, an amused lilt to his voice as he laughs quietly. “So the little pup has a bite after all. That's good.”

He lifts one of her legs onto the altar to give him better access to her body and spreads her slick folds apart with his fingertips. Tav feels him guide the blunt head of his cock to her entrance, and she groans in frustration, pushing her hips back into him impatiently.

“Astarion... gods, just fuck me already.”

“So impatient,” he scolds her, his fingers digging into her thigh. “But very well. As you wish.”

He slams into her in a single thrust, and Tav moans loudly at the sudden intrusion, his cock stretching her wide as what was initially a sharp pain melts away into pure pleasure. He’s already so deep inside her, and she can feel his cock twitch as he adjusts to her tight, wet heat.

Astarion wastes no time setting a punishing pace, fucking into her hard and fast, coaxing a string of filthy noises from her with every thrust of his hips.

He pins her effortlessly to the altar, one hand secured around her waist and the other pressed between her shoulder blades. The obscene, wet slap of their bodies coming together echoes loudly in Tav’s ears, and she buries her face into the altar in a vain attempt to muffle her cries.

“You're taking my cock so well, pet,” Astarion groans. “What must Tyr think of you now, laid out as you are and moaning like a common whore?”

 Tav shoots a scathing glance at him over her shoulder, her teeth bared in a snarl.

“Gods, do you ever stop talking?” she mutters. “You're the last person who should be lecturing me about morality.”

“Hmm, have I struck a nerve?” Astarion asks. “My sincerest apologies.”

His tone is nothing but derisive, and Tav feels her anger rising yet again.

“Asshole.”

Astarion responds by smacking her ass roughly with the flat of his palm, leaving a bright red mark on her skin. The sting and the heat that accompanies it makes her bite her lip, even as she yelps in pain. But she holds her tongue, nevertheless, lest he repeat the punishment.

“And such a mouthy little thing you are. If I had known how feisty you were,” Astarion says, “I would have done this so much sooner.”

His hips continue their relentless pace, snapping into her with enough force to push her across the altar, and several times Astarion grabs her by the hips and pull her back again so that he has enough leverage to fuck her as deeply as he wants to.

Her body feels so incomprehensibly good, and as Astarion continues to pound into her, he feels the tension in his body start to dissipate. If only Tav could see the state she’s in now, so thoroughly disheveled and at his mercy. It gives him endless satisfaction to know that even she can be ruined in such a manner despite all her noble claims of virtue.

Presently Astarion tangles his fingers in Tav’s hair and tugs her body upright, so her back is flush against his chest. She braces herself against the altar with splayed palms, struggling to hold herself up as her aching limbs threaten to give out beneath her.

Astarion can sense her failing strength and wraps an arm around her body as he adjusts himself inside of her, thrusting up into her as he holds her firmly, his hand pressed against the base of her throat. With his spare hand, he brushes the hair away from her shoulder and slots his mouth over her skin once more, sinking his teeth into her tender skin.

Tav cries out weakly as Astarion finds himself indulging in her blood for the second time that evening, pacing himself so that he doesn’t take too much from her. He’s already had more than his fill, and yet he still wants more – he needs more. The sweat on her skin mingles with the heady taste of her blood, and he feels positively intoxicated on her, unable to deny himself the pleasures of her body.

Despite her outbursts, Astarion feels that he should reward her for being so good for him, and he slowly slides his free hand down the length of her stomach, his fingers finding her clit as he teases her back towards sweet, blissful oblivion.

“Fuck, you look so good beneath me,” he groans. “As righteous as you claim to be, darling, you will come on my cock all the same.”

“A-Astarion...” Tav moans, each syllable of his name punctuated by the thrusts of his cock inside her.

“Louder,” he commands, his fingers busy with pleasuring her as he places deceptively affectionate kisses across her shoulder blades, sending a jolt of indescribable pleasure directly through her.

“Let Tyr hear you. Let them all hear you.”

“Astarion...!” Tav rasps out his name, more audibly than her last attempt, her throat raw.

“Almost, love,” he croons.

His fingers swipe across her clit now in just the right way, and his cock hits her sweet spot with one particularly deep thrust inside her.

“Astarion!”

She cries his name with every ounce of energy she has left, begging him to grant her the release she needs. At last she finds it, her entire body shaking as she comes hard for him, her body clenching tightly around his cock.

Astarion keeps up his frantic pace as Tav comes undone around him, his fingers once again gripping her hips with a force that she knows will leave bruises behind. He buries his face in her neck once again, inhaling the scent of her blood as he rides out his own orgasm, his cock pulsing as he empties himself inside of her.

Tav can feel him growing soft after a few moments, and he pulls out of her, leaving her to slump to her knees against the altar, her chest heaving as she pants heavily.

Astarion gathers the drapery on the altar and uses it to clean himself off; Tav scowls indignantly at him but he ignores her, long past the point of continuing their disagreement. He dresses silently, almost too casually, as if nothing of note had just transpired between them. With one last smoothing of his clothes, he runs his hand through his hair to style his trademark curls back into place, his face a perfect mask of indifference.

“That was… rather enlightening,” Astarion says flicking Tav a teasing glance as she gathers up her clothes and begins to make herself decent. “Perhaps I’ll turn to religion after all.” “You are absolutely incorrigible,” Tav responds with a grimace.

“Undoubtedly,” Astarion smirks, “but that certainly didn’t stop you from enjoying me, did it?”

He dismisses her angry huff with a wave of his hand and turns to leave as Tav rises to her feet and begins to dress herself. Her undershirt is in tatters, but she dons it anyway, hoping her leathers will hide the evidence of her shame when she returns to camp.

She tends to the mess they’ve made of Tyr’s altar with hurried hands – the less time she has to spend here, the worse she thinks she’ll feel about the whole ordeal.

When the pair of them rejoin the rest of the party, the group is none the wiser, too caught up in setting up their own tents and getting ready for bed. She can feel Astarion’s eyes watching her from across the camp as she does the same, and her tadpole wriggles behind her eye as Astarion reaches across the psionic bond that links their minds together.

“Sleep well, darling,” his voice echoes in her mind, smug and self-satisfied. “Try not to miss me too much.”

[torveiglyart]

I debated a long time on whether his right or left leg should go, but I thought losing his left leg would be ‘symbolic’ of him slowly being distanced from the rest of the team in seasons 5 and 6. The exact opposite limb as shiro, the left side motif for Hunk and Pidge, and the lack of change on his right for Keith. During the later seasons, it kinda hurt to see him only every confiding in Allura, who’s attention was split from Lotor, and the mice, who are known snitches. I didn’t want to cut the right, as that would symbolize his loss of Blue and… his loss of Blue. It felt redundant to the red bayard. Actually, let’s talk about the red bayard for a moment.

As I see it, there are two pivotal reasons as to why Lance got a new form for his bayard: The Altean Broadsword.

The first reason is his character growth. Lance is the ‘class clown’ character of the paladins, but that persona is not as viable in a war as it is in a classroom. Lance has had to mature very quickly due to the circumstances surrounding his requirements as a paladin. The Altean Broadsword is a symbol of both his maturity as a person and his maturity into the solider role. Zarkon was the only other paladin known to have more than one form for his bayard, and held a strong connection to the Black Lion. Lance’s ability to have not just the basic rifle, but a sniper rifle and a sword shows his connection to Red, and possibly his nature as a blue paladin: flexibility. His bayard forms allow short to mid to long range that the other paladins don’t have. His ability to listen, adapt, connect, and support is reflected in his bayard.

The second is less happy. The Altean Broadsword could be a reflection of Shiro/Kuron’s need for Keith as the right hand of Voltron, and how Lance has been Keith’s ‘replacement’ multiple times. Lance was Keith’s red paladin before he was Shiro’s, and the two of them had to adjust how they view each other in Lance’s new role. Since Shiro was the clone, there could have definitely been great reluctance to treat Lance as the red paladin and right hand, but rather as another subordinate. This reluctance would have stemmed from how the Empire, and specifically Haggar, views the roles of each paladin, and how the other paladins were ‘subordinate’ to Black Paladin Zarkon. With Allura’s bayard being a whip, Lance’s original semi-long to mid range of combat was covered for the season 1-2 team set up in Blue. With Lance being in Red, a swordsman was missing on the team, and that role defaulted to Lance. He once again was a replacement for Keith, like back in the Galaxy Garrison. Keith leaves, and Lance fills in. This reasoning definitely does not help Lance’s declining mental strength when it comes to being respected by the team and feeling like a seventh wheel.

Overall, I do not think that these reasons are mutually exclusive to one another. I think both are true to varying degrees. Lance had a very complicated character growth arc that was overshadowed by Lotor, Shiro’s return, and the mess that is season 8. That’s not to say the other things weren’t important, and there were others (Hunk) that DEFINITELY deserved more attention, but there were things that could have been worked on. Lance manages, throughout the show, to be a parallel character to, well, everyone. A competitive pilot like Keith, caring and trusting like Hunk, inquisitive and quick thinking like Pidge, supportive and motivational like Shiro, and opinionated and just like Allura. But what does that leave him as?

I really went on a rant there but would love to hear other people’s thoughts about this. Yes, both the leg and what I wrote. You can also request art! I mainly do Voltron art but I do have experience with other fandoms (The Owl House, My Hero Academia, Star Wars, She-Ra, etc.), and would love to fulfill some asks.

[pawpunkao3]

Yknow what since we're doing discourse on Irredeemable Teens I wanna share with yall some thoughts on Penelope Everpetal

Penelope is a wild magic sorcerer. It seems so random. With a name like Everpetal, wouldn't you expect her to have something more elegant, like divine soul sorcery? Storm sorcery, like her best friend Sam? Hell, even draconic sorcery has a certain villainous finesse to it, especially considering that she's working with a dragon. But instead, she gets wild magic. The subclass that new players get told to avoid because half of its features nerf your character. The subclass that has a 0.1% chance of killing you and everyone in a 20ft radius every time you cast a spell.

People like to joke that sorcerers don't work for their magic---I mean, they call the sorcery teacher "just a guy who hangs out with students and talks about how cool their powers are". But that's ignoring the other side of magic---not power, but control. While wizards and bards fought to learn to cast even basic spells, Penelope struggled to reel in her magic. It was a battle that nobody saw, and when she lost it, it would end up humiliating at best, and devastating at worst. Combine that with the fact that she seems spoiled and entitled---maybe the type of person to believe being born with magic made her better than other casters---and it's easy to see the conflict. Her sorcery should have made her glamorous, desirable. Instead, it only burdened her.

Maybe that's why Kalvaxus picked her as his future prom queen.

I imagine he found her in her freshman year. She'd had a surge in class and grown a big beard of blue feathers---not cute. Not pretty. Humiliating. So there she was, behind the school, sobbing and tearing them out in big bloody fistfuls and muttering about how she was going to kill everyone who ever laughed at her because she was the best most powerful sorceress ever, and, well. Kalvaxus normally wouldn't care about some idiot student being sad, but something about her fury intrigued him. It seemed...exploitable.

So he blew a puff of smoke her way and made her sneeze the rest of the feathers out. Told her she was right---she WAS better for being a sorceress, and it wasn't fair that people made fun of her for something she couldn't control. Penelope wouldn't have noticed the contradiction. She was only fourteen, and more than a little dehydrated. All she wanted was for someone to hear her problems and not laugh, and he did just that.

And so Vice Principal Goldenhoard became her special friend (don't tell mom and dad---they wouldn't understand that he really was just her friend, you know SOME teachers would be using her confidence for nefarious purposes. Not him, though. Never him). If she had a bad surge and Sam was busy, he would even let her eat lunch in his office. He made a confession: he wasn't a dragonborn. He was a true dragon, kept in this form by a wicked curse. She agreed that Aguefort was evil for trapping him. He should be principal, really. Maybe (when he suggested it) he should even rule the world.

As Penelope grew older, she and Kalvaxus made an agreement---she would help him rise to power, and he would make sure nobody mocked her and her friends ever again. He introduced her to some new friends---one of the paladin students, a party girl from Hudol, a warlock with a cool car. She started campaigning for prom queen. But there was one little thing: for the plan to work, he needed sacrifices. Nobody important---that stuck-up nerd from the library, the cringy horse girl who made everyone so embarrassed (she forgot how bad it felt to be in her place whenever she surged), a bossy jock. Kalvaxus had her pick out the next one---an annoying activist type, someone nobody really liked, someone who she might even be able to convince to give up her life for the "greater good". Kalvaxus was so proud. They took that brash cleric without a hitch, but it was harder to get her to budge on her best friend. Suddenly her good friend Kalvaxus turned scary---she couldn't back out now. She'd already helped kidnap five girls. Did she want him to turn her in? Besides, when she was queen, everyone would want to be her friend. Who is she to question him when he tells her to sacrifice this one?

Penelope didn't protest when Kalvaxus picked a random freshman as the last sacrifice. She'd already done the worst thing anyone could do.

By the time the Bad Kids charged into that gym, she was too far gone. She'd steeped too long in Kalvaxus's lies for the stain to come out. She genuinely believed that being herself gave her the right to be queen. She'd sacrificed so much for it, after all. Maybe eventually she realized she wasn't going to win. But hey, she came this far. Might as well go down swinging.

[autisticlancemcclain]

Their room reeks so strongly of peppermint that it makes Keith’s eyes sting. He blinks it away, slipping into the room as quickly as he can, minimizing the amount of light bleeding into the hallway. The lump of covers on their bed trembles slightly, and Keith’s heart breaks at the sight of it. He sets a glass of ice water on the bedside table, slipping out of his clothes in favour of a softer t-shirt and pyjama pants. He picks the cup back up and turns to the blanket lump, gently peeling the covers off his husband’s face. It’s wet, covered in tears, and his eyes are squeezed shut, fingers pressed deeply against them in an attempt to ease the pressure.

“Sit up,” he requests gently. Lance doesn’t move immediately, and Keith doesn’t push, gently stroking his forehead and untangling his hair. Lance leans in to the touch, relishing the cold of his fingers.

“It hurts,” he croaks, after several minutes. Finally he takes his hand away from his face, cracking open his bleary brown eyes.

Keith sighs. “I know, baby. But the water will help.”

“Okay.”

Keith squeezes his shoulder, then quickly crawls onto the mattress behind him, leaning against the headboard and helping Lance pull himself up so he’s leaning upright onto Keith’s chest. The change in altitude, however minuscule, make his breath hitch, and seconds later Keith feels something wet drip onto his arms, hears it drop steadily onto the duvet.

He winces. This one is…bad. He’s reminded, painfully, of the first time he ever witnessed Lance have an episode, hunched over a toilet bowl and shaking so bad Keith had been convinced he was seizing. The then-Blue Paladin had begged him, in between gags and heaves, not to tell anyone. Keith, who had only really known him for six months, six months of near-constant arguing broken up only by rare moments of true teamwork, who had barely considered them friends, had already been halfway out the door, Coran’s name on his tongue.

Keith had been scared shitless. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he knew enough to know that it was serious, that Lance was in real danger. His mind flashed to poisoning from a backstabbing ally, alien sickness a human immune system couldn’t fight off. A million different worst-case scenarios had rushed through his head, making Keith want to throw up himself.

But the terror in Lance’s eyes had scared him a thousand times more than whatever was wrong with him. So he had swallowed his fear, then, and kept his mouth shut, placing a tentative hand on Lance’s back as he vomited and carefully watched the door.

He doesn’t have to watch the door, anymore. There’s no more hiding.

But the fear has never left him.

“The meds aren’t doing anything,” Lance rasps. He’s drained the entire glass of water in seconds, body desperate for something to replenish all the sweat and tears and shaking effort of fighting off something that isn’t there.

“How long?”

“Third time.”

Keith tightens his arms around Lance’s waist, eyes closing in resigned disappointment. Third time — the meds have been ineffective for three consecutive attacks. It doesn’t work.

Fuck. They’d been hopeful about this one.

“We’ll talk to Coran.”

It had taken a year of Keith desperately trying to keep Lance’s secret — from the ‘real grown-ups’, as Lance called them — before they’d been caught. Usually Lance’s migraines were pretty predictable, warning signs obvious enough in advance that they could either find something to prevent it or get Lance somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed.

But once they couldn’t manage it.

Neither of them could have predicted the bright, flashing lights of the planet the team was visiting. Nor did they know how badly that was going to hit Lance. One second he was fine, upright, laughing with Hunk, and then next the lights were flashing in and out like an ambulance and Lance’s eyes were rolling back into his head. He had come back as fast as he’d passed out, before he even hit the ground, but there was no mistaking the way he looked like someone had just taken a mallet to his skull, the way his palms were pressed, digging, into his eyes, the way he was obviously and clearly in pain.

Migraine has never been a large enough word.

Lance groans quietly. “I don’t — not right now.” He pushes himself forward slightly and then carefully spins around, so he’s no longer leaning against Keith but leaning into him, head buried into his neck. Keith moves his arms until he’s adjusted, then wraps them back around his waist, resting his head on top of Lance’s and just holding him, covering him, letting him know he’s there. “You know what he’s going to make me do.”

The team had wanted to push Lance into a pod immediately. Keith had been yelled at by five seperate people at the same time when he’d stood in between them and Lance, protective hand on his arm, and refused to move.

That’s when he thinks things clicked for the two of them, he thinks. Not when he found out for the first time, not when he promised to keep quiet, not when Lance stood by him and Black’s choice, not in the countless other times they’d fought and won together. But the time Keith had stood between him and their friends, the people who wanted them to be safe, and said without saying the words I am on your side. I will be on your side, even if I don’t agree, even if it’s the wrong one.

“It’ll help,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to Lance’s temple. “I know it won’t make it go away, but you won’t feel it while it works it’s way. And who knows? Maybe this time it will fix something.”

“I doubt it.”

It hadn’t then, either. Lance had eventually agreed, battered, to a pod (“I can’t do it, Keith, I can’t, I’ll get stuck in there and suffocate and won’t even be awake to try and save myself —” “I’ll keep watch.” “What?” “The entire time. As long as it takes. I’ll stay awake and make sure you come out. I swear it, Lance.”), staying in cryosleep as the migraine worked it’s way through his body and the rest of them puzzled over his brain scans. They had even contacted the Olkari, the leading scientists in medicine besides the Alteans themselves, but no one in space is familiar enough with the human brain to find any miracles. And besides, from all angles, everything looked normal. Healthy, even, besides the pain. But obviously there was something wrong.

“That’s okay. We’ll just…sit here for a bit.” He knows that he should try to get Lance into a pod sooner rather than later. He can’t really sleep when he’s like this, so he’s just suffering, head pounding and nausea twisting his stomach, pain wrapped around his nerves. At least when he’s in the pod he’s in stasis. His migraines aren’t usually this bad — he can usually handle low lighting, can usually swallow the pain enough to smile and work and interact with the team; hell, usually the painkillers work — but when they are this bad, there are no other options. When they’re this bad, nothing does anything; not the water or an ice pack or the dark room or rest or peppermint or anything. (The peppermint always comes out, though, because Lance says it smells like healing. It smells like the times it /does/ work, smells like when he puts it on and the pain goes away. Keith will take burning eyes for that.)

For a while, the team put all their downtime into trying to figure out what they could do to fix things. Lance went through brain scans when he wasn’t hurting, when he was, when he was only hurting a little. He had so much blood drawn that he became anaemic again. Different ideas were tossed around and disproven three days later. He cycled through meds. The only thing that everyone could agree on, something that Lance already knew, was that the migraines started after the Sendak incident. Brain damage, of some kind. Once, carefully and kindly, Coran suggested that the pain might be psychosomatic. Keith and Shiro refused to talk to him for days, both remembering years of doctor’s visits that almost always ended with Well, Mr. Shirogane, have you considered that your problems may be more mental than physical?

It had been Lance’s scolding as much as Coran’s guilty face that had to two of them fixing things. Psychosomatic or not, Lance had reasoned, there’s something wrong, and what it is doesn’t really matter so long as it can be treated.

But it couldn’t. Be treated, that is. So long as it appears that Lance’s brain is just…attacking itself, sending off rapid fire pain signals for no reason, he just has to live with the constant pain of it, and the dread of the pod, the one fear Lance has never been able to fight off.

“I’ll watch,” Keith murmurs, lips pressed to Lance’s hair. He tightens his hold as Lance shudders.

He always has. It’s been eight years, in space, and Lance has been forced to enter a pod more times than he can count, for hours on end. But Keith has always stood there. He has always stood guard, watching the pod until he is bleary eyed, because he made a promise and he intends to keep it.

“Okay.” Lance exhales, long and slow. “As long as you’re with me, okay.”

“Always.”

[art-story-by-deroko]

"Awoken memories"

-If you have a problem with me...

...then spit it out, man.

It relates to this post. My “Afterthoughts” AU has two endings. This is from the “bad one”.

Since Bon is Buddhist monk he probably believes in reincarnation.

Imagine if maybe... A century after he passed away Rin meets a young exwire one day who looks, acts and sounds like his Bon.

I tried to show something like rebranded True Cross Academy uniform. The arrows on "reincarnated Ryuji's" shoulder is a special version for "exorcist cadets". The blue arrow represents that, the orange represents main Aria course and his class. In this timeline exorcist are wildly known and even considered a prestige position in life. Even after a couple centuries demons are rampant and fighting for Assiah freedom is a nonstop job. At this point Rin is the Paladin of True Cross Order for at least the last 60 years. They even gave him even more special title:

"Echo"

Rin also leads Myodha's sect since the day of Ryuji's passing.

It's not like he is responsible for everything there but the sect is under his explicit protection as a part of his family. Because they are. He is a highest Elder amongst their people. He is responsible for big decisions and changes in organisation. Also the sect grown big enough to be considered a daughter branch of True Cross Order. Pretty much even gaining autonomy and independence while being Order's Allies.

So Ryuji's reincarnation is actually from that branch since it's a large Buddhist organisation with connections amongst families.

Rin doesn't know them all personally sometimes so he was not aware of his existence.

Some cadets are invited to True Cross Academy from that branch too. His name is Ryugo (龍吾: dragon; me, I. As if screaming about his past life). And he is from a distant village down south of Japan.

Also Rin was not aware of Ryugo's existence but the young man actually was. Rin is his hero and he admires their "Highest Elder" to the moon and back for everything he has done for the sect and the world. He also wants to be his apprentice. And he WILL succeed in his pursuit. But Rin will accept him on his secon year after many attempts to keep distance from someone who was his Ryuji but not him at the same time. Exorcist training is now 3 year course as any other faculties.

Also, Ryugo did fall for Rin the first day he arrived at Academy.

Mephisto lost a lot of his powers during war. So every 10 years Rin would perform a flashy ritual on the first day before the sudents to renew a powerful barrier around True Cross town. (Many exorcists wannabes enroll in Academy a couple weeks earlier to train and preform in that “show” and help to solidify a stable barrier. Ryugo was one of these wannabes)

He fell hard. It was a mix of his admiration and unexplainable feelings he held since the day he saw him in person. (Perhaps these are remains of Ryuji's will and a wish to find Rin in his next life to be with him again. Too bad he didn't have time to say it out loud on his deathbed while he looked in Rin's teary eyes with his last breath)

[askagamedev]

Shouldn't Overwatch also have the same problem then in regards to visual clarity? I'm sure if you were to give people Juno and Brigitte people would struggle telling what their role is probably confusing Brigitte as a Tank given she has a shield just like Reinhardt. Only Baptiste has said cross on his outfit which if he didn't people might confuse him from DPS since he carries a healing grenade launcher. Yet the only character design problem ive seen people talk about is Venture.

While this is true, it's a very different situation. Overwatch is an old game, it's been running for eight years now. When Overwatch launched, there wasn't anywhere near the kind of well-established competition that there is today. When Overwatch launched, there was no Apex Legends, Paladins, Deadlock, Quake Champions, or Valorant. Further, Overwatch's launch cast was designed with incredible visual clarity - nearly every character had a silhouette and visual design that both made them distinct and conveyed their style of gameplay. There's a pair of business terms for this kind of thing - Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean.

A Blue Ocean is mostly unexplored and pristine - you're entering a market that's mostly untouched and there isn't much competition. This favors the first-mover advantage - the first ones there have more time to experiment, set things up, and learn from their mistakes. The customers/players in that market don't have anywhere else to go if they want their gameplay, so you can afford to make mistakes, iterate, and improve. Since there aren't many other games to switch to, the players will likely stick with what they are already familiar with.

A Red Ocean is a saturated market, where the waters have been dyed red with the blood of all of the dead or dying competition. There's already a lot of competition, meaning that any new product must stand out significantly from its peers or it will soon die from lack of audience. In a Red Ocean, the initial launch is much more important because you never get a second chance at that first impression. Further, audience retention is also super important because of how much competition there is - a new product might be able to draw some attention just from the novelty, but novelty wears off quick and most of the players already know the genre and the other games available. If the new game doesn't serve their needs immediately, the players won't give it the time to improve - they'll just go to one of the competitors that already does serve their needs.

We can't really compare the two games in a vacuum, we must compare the full environment that the games launched in. Overwatch had the added benefit of significantly less competition in its Blue Ocean, meaning that the playerbase really didn't have anywhere else to go while they waited for Overwatch to improve things. Concord was unable to grab attention immediately in a Red Ocean, meaning any potential audience quickly dispersed themselves among the large number of competitors already out there.

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[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #10: The Order of the Stick

Pages read: 9/25/2003 – 4/4/2006 (books 1&2; 301 full page strips)

Reason for selection: D&D is really important to nerd culture (and online culture since 3e), and this is probably the most popular and longrunning D&D webcomic, to this day loved, followed and theorized on by a large fanbase.

Current status: Ongoing with no set schedule, averaging twice monthly updates. Creator Rich Burlew says the current book will be the last, but fans predict the arc will not end until 2031 or later.

Content warnings: frequent misogyny, sexualization of female characters, equating sex and gender, occasional transphobia, sexual humor, occasional jokes about sexual assault and harassment, one joke about slavery, extreme amounts of cartoon violence

Overall thoughts:

I am definitely the target audience for Order of the Stick. As a long time D&D player who also enjoys hearing about games I didn’t play in and likes webcomics as a medium, it’s not surprising that I fell in love with this very quickly, because I’m the exact type of person it’s being written for. As such, it’s hard to analyze whether it’s easy for non-D&D players to get into.

D&D references appear in the majority of strips, typically to 3.5e – the edition released shortly before the comic’s debut, which almost entirely dictates the characters’ abilities and the rules of the world they live in. Most references are still relevant to more recent editions, and the comic riffs on random encounters, initiative order, attacks of opportunity, momentary in-game retcons after remembering an extra feature or skill bonus after the fact, timeskips during travel, rogues stealing from party members leading to intraparty conflict, the ‘all PCs have dead parents’ backstory stereotype, and especially alignment.

The entirety of book two, ‘No Cure for the Paladin Blues’ (so named because it features a paladin dressed in blue), explores alignment in more depth than the occasional jokes surrounding the other topics. Roy, an honorable leader who has sworn an oath but isn’t a paladin by class, and Miko, who is a true paladin and follows her order’s rules to the letter, come to blows over the meaning of ‘good’ and ‘lawful’, whether intent or outcome determine a person’s alignment, and what it means to live in a world where alignment is objective, codified, and detectable. These are ideas that later D&D editions will also question, but not as efficiently as secondary character Celia, a sylph defense lawyer, does in a literal courtroom scene in comic 282.

The D&D references range from these blatant ones, to the more subtle. To zoom in on a moment I loved, strip 214 features a moment where Miko – a party ally, who would be controlled by the DM in a real game – goes against the party’s planned stealth ambush and barges into an ogre camp to confront the leader. This would be really bad D&D etiquette in most games, as a DM would be taking agency away from the players, not allowing them to even attempt a plan they’d worked hard on. But it works well as comic writing, because it characterizes Miko and sets up a new three-way conflict between her, the party, and the ogres.

Establishing characterization is much easier with D&D ability scores and spell lists to lean back on, but Burlew has never made official character sheets for the party to allow the story to come first. Instead, Burlew uses common player character archetypes – a respectable human fighter/party leader avenging his father, a Scottish dwarf cleric who likes ale and can’t roll stealth, an androgynous elf mage who prefers learning about the limits of arcane potential to social interaction, an annoying, pretty, constantly singing and talking when he shouldn’t bard (who surprised me by being dumb instead of horny), a treasure-obsessed crackshot rogue, and a chaos gremlin. XP and level up mechanics provide an easy, in universe reason for characters developing new powers.

I found most characters quickly likeable, except for the chaos gremlin – halfling ranger Belkar is the party’s evil member, generally played for comic relief. However, as the overarching plot is introduced as early as strip 13, and other characters are given two dimensions and ethical beliefs within the first hundred strips, Belkar’s being loved by the party of relatively decent people despite his selfish, violent and amoral actions (stated outright in strip 285) feels out of place and unearned to me. His misogyny and sexual harassment of female characters, also played for laughs, really contributes to this – it’s hard to overlook, especially as it’s reflected by the author.

Burlew falls into common pitfalls when writing female characters – for example, a woman only being taken seriously when she is competent and can out-perform the men, a man needing to experience being treated like a woman in order to respect one, and regularly referring to women as ‘bitches’, ‘whores’, and ‘chicks’. In 2015, Burlew said that he has few regrets about his early work, but that they include ‘[u]nintentional sexism and/or insensitivity to gender issues. Doing my best to fix it going forward.’ This acknowledgement is important to my decision to keep reading.

[Note on next paragraph, added later: I have now been informed that Vaarsuvius is canonically genderqueer, confirmed later in the comic! huge win for representation and on Burlew incorporating reader feedback & thanks to the anon who let me know!!]

Against all odds, the wizard of unspecified gender Vaarsuvius is actually written fairly well. The ambiguity is often treated as a joke, and minor characters will sometimes assume their gender one way or the other – but the other main characters don’t know and are okay with not knowing. They’re respectful and don’t question it when Vaarsuvius doesn’t use the gendered dungeon toilets, and while Vaarsuvius shares a room with female party member Haley at inns while the men all share a second room, strip 225 makes it clear that this is because Haley and V are good friends, not because they share a gender. (As a sidenote, Haley and V’s sweet and unlikely friendship is my favorite dynamic in the comic).

Artistically, the characters are drawn as stick figures (as represented by the comic’s title) with clean lines and bright colors in strips that are typically one A4 page. The first OOTS book was printed in February 2005, with further books released after each major story arc, so Burlew has written the bulk of this comic knowing that it will be collected in print. Likely, this influences the decision to mostly stick to the A4 style, and rarely include oddly shaped strips, animation, hyperlinks, hover text, or other web-specific elements. Important story beats and milestones do see extra-long strips, with the 200th strip covering a long-foreshadowed battle four times as long as a regular strip – with white space indicating the page breaks. Strips may play with panel order while keeping the A4 format, such as comic 242, which uses arrows to indicate that panels should be read vertically, not horizontally.

Character designs are extremely recognizable from the first strip, and the art style gets slowly more complex – while the stick figures remain, backgrounds grow more detailed and shading is introduced over time. With the early strips, the art in print books is (allegedly) an improvement over the web versions, an incentive to buy print copies when the full archive is available for free online.

Most characters speak in white speech bubbles with black text, but there are exceptions – core villain Xykon the lich has black speech bubbles with white text, creatures of pure light have yellow speech bubbles, sylpha and ghosts have blue, and a bastion of lawful good order has red. Lowered opacity speech bubbles with dashed outlines indicate whispering, and (in a more questionable choice) bold lower case speech indicates a character has low intelligence. The different colors are effective at making characters from other planes feel truly alien, and the importance of the speech bubbles reflects the wordiness of the comic – the text is small, speech bubbles are often paragraphs, and even zoomed into 150% I ended up with a bad screen headache after a couple hours’ reading, which makes an archive binge much harder.

OOTS has a reputation for beginning as humorous and becoming more serious and story driven in its third and fourth books. I haven’t reached those yet so can’t compare, but I already find that while jokes are frequent, the story takes precedence when necessary – and like other comics I’ve read, even Burlew seems surprised at how quickly the strip becomes something beyond its original intentions, letting a character say ‘Wow. That’s a lot more planning than I thought this strip had’ as early as strip 60. However, he also says that having the characters leave the dungeon and take on a bigger quest in strip 122 was partly because he ‘was leaving a lot of good jokes on the table by never having them go to town or on a wilderness adventure’, so the ‘plot driven’ and ‘joke focused’ drives are coexisting then. I’m really excited to see how the tone and story develop over the next thousand strips. :D

Relevance to Homestuck:

As best I can tell, there’s no official connection, though there is fanbase overlap. I’ve said before that Homestuck is a precursor to actual play podcasts, and plan to write more about that someday. In its case, Andrew Hussie clearly acts as DM with the command-submitting readers acting as players; D&D mechanics aren’t used, but the dynamic is spot on.

In Order of the Stick, the characters referencing movies, modern slang, current events and 21st century professions is extremely reminiscent of real D&D play, as this sort of humor is common to both regular D&D groups and actual play shows like Acquisitions Incorporated and The Adventure Zone. A pair of lawyers sent by ‘the spooky wizard who lives by the coast’ are introduced in strip 32 and become recurring characters, a reference to Wizards of the Coast, the real world company who owns D&D. The same is true of characters mentioning exposition, sidequests, plotlines, character mirrors, and other concepts that D&D players know about, and therefore put into their characters’ mouths in games.

OOTS characters feel like they have players and the strip captures the experience of the gaming table really well, but readers don’t have much influence, and Burlew is taking on all roles. This is true even when they contradict, like in strip 21, where the character’s actions of killing a chimera go against the DM’s plans to have him be a recurring villain.

Like Homestuck, OOTS begins as a fairly small scale story – taking place in a single dungeon – but expands within a couple of years to include threats not just to the world, but to the very fabric of reality. In a couple of very minor parallels, both feature the dunce cap (HS 746/OOTS 14), the 8 ball (HS 804/OOTS 127), and a plot important meteor (HS 196/OOTS 134). Meteors seem like a surprisingly common feature of webcomics, actually, and I wonder if this was a big part of 2000s culture that I don’t remember. OOTS has a minor character, Banjo the Clown God of Puppets, who appears in several strips including 80 (regular Banjo) and 85 (as the eldritch Banjulhu). His mysterious and unsettling appearances are reminiscent of Lil Cal, and his tentacles of Rose’s eldritch doll. I could also discuss Kickstarters here but I think I’ll save that for a few years down the line.

Scholar Gabriel Romaguera wrote his master’s thesis and part of his PhD thesis on Order of the Stick. I’ve read his master’s thesis in full and really enjoyed his analysis, which is far more comprehensive than my own (though as a sidenote, I do genuinely hope to write a master’s thesis on Homestuck someday). He’s only one scholar, but a lot of his analysis links up with the limited Homestuck analysis I’ve read. Romaguera discusses serial vs archival reading, web vs print versions, and whether the OOTS books can be considered a webcomic.

‘Some of the material is only relevant when read within twenty four hours of the original publication... Readers are supposed to wait for new installments, read them, go over to the forums, reread them to make sure th+at no detail was left unnoticed, speculate what would happen, and continue to wait until the new issue is published and then the cycle continues. This process makes for a deeper connection to the narrative and to the characters as years go by.’ (Romaguera, p.138)

This argument is presented uncritically and unproductively, just as it has been by many Homestuck analysts. While it’s technically true for any serial work, it becomes more true when participation in an active fan community of theorizers, proofreaders, lorekeepers and fanwork producers is seen as critical to understanding the work. From some time browsing the forums, this is definitely true of both OOTS and Homestuck moreso than other webcomics. (It’s also the attitude that made my lab scientist brain go ‘okay, cool theory, but have you tested that experimentally?’) Romaguera goes on to say that ongoing webcomics could be taught in classrooms when teaching students about serial narratives as ‘[t]he serial reading experience is often taught in hindsight and with nostalgia that suggests that current readers have missed out on the original text as it was intended to be read.’ (p.151) I agree and I love this idea more than words can say.

‘This effectively makes OOTS an ongoing trans-media narrative, wherein some parts of the narrative are exclusive to one medium, and some parts are exclusive to the another one [sic]. Readers go through the process of piecing these parts together to make this third text and thus fully attain the narrative. Still, this practice only goes on until Burlew publishes the final book and all of the narrative is collected in one authoritative text.’ (Romaguera, p.139-40)

In most webcomics (including Homestuck), print editions are supplementary, collector’s content. With OOTS, it seems like both the author and fans give the print editions a lot of importance. Once OOTS is no longer serialized, it does seem likely that the print editions, which include entire books of bonus material not found online, will be seen as fully definitive. Similarly, I would call The Unofficial Homestuck Collection the definitive edition of Homestuck, due to its functional flash player, wealth of supplemental content, and options for reading spoiler free. Ultimately, both these works have transcended their original websites in a way few webcomics have.

Continue reading? I think this is my favorite webcomic I’ve read for this subproject so far. I usually would’ve read 2009 strips for a comparison, but didn’t, because I want to experience the story linearly without spoilers. I could get totally obsessed with this. I want to make D&D character sheets for the beta kids.

[ethereance]

𝒮𝓉𝒶𝓎 𝒮𝒶𝒻𝑒

Allura thinks of him—the boy she met so long ago and yet not so much, time a deceptive thing—and remembers the arms she fell into, unfamiliar at the time, as were those ears—strange, utterly so—and she thinks of pickup lines, how there must have been an entire part of his brain dedicated to them with often they fell from his lips.

She thinks of agitation, nights spent wondering if these paladins really could achieve what her father set out to, bringing peace to the universe, when most were immature, the blue one especially, so close in age, and worlds apart with everything else.

She thinks of Lance, of everything that he was back then, the face he wore—obnoxious, carefree—and wonders just when this feeling entered her heart, when mild distaste gave way to admiration and affection, something childish and spirited creeping there as if she had time to find someone to fancy, a teenager in a school, and not the soldier princess she is, caught in a war that is more than her own wants.

Wonders when his presence became one she sought out, dear to her this teammate, this friend, this confidant, this Lance who has become everything that fondness can provide.

Wonders when it became something she might call love, so strong in Allura’s heart she cannot deny it, not when it is so obvious now, every beat so clamorous she’s sure everyone can hear it, her feelings stuck on a loudspeaker. Love—she has that in abundance with him, glad to have Lance in her life, to have people like the paladins, to be family where she had lost it. But there’s something different with him, an intensity to it, one that invites risk, in jumping into open space for a life that isn’t your own. Allura has sacrificed, has done so, but the loss of him brought her a terror not even she can quite express, his life something else, cherished in a way that plants buds in her heart.

She wonders, but there is nothing to pinpoint, nothing at all. Just a gradual descent. Allura did not trip and fall as when Lotor had ensnared her with his charms, but walked, walked and oh—how blissful that walk had been, to look around and realise that she wanted him as her destination, hands entwined in a union as one. Because this is Lance, and there is something so genuine to him, his loyalty and kindness such strengths in a universe battered and bruised, and what a gift it is to see that, to experience that, his support a pillar she can lean upon. Allura sees greatness there, and wishes, not for the first time, there could be a way for her father to see him, to realise that that spark is continued in him, a pilot of the same lion who tries and tries and tries to do what’s right.

Allura loves him, values him, adores him, but there is no place for that daydream, not here in the thick of bloodshed. Not now when Earth is hanging in the balance, when Lance could lose the very home that she had lost. Not now when they have a mission.

It comes first.

But maybe theirs is a future that could be fought for, maybe one quintant if what the mice said still holds true there will be time for them, and that dream in her heart can come true. Peace, with him. It sounds delightful.

So—

“I wanted to say, stay safe out there,” she says up to him, face aflame, and hopes with everything in her heart he does.

[lincolndjarin]

Best Kept Secret

chapter three : the smitten paladin (RE-UPLOAD)

ao3 link ✿ series masterlist ✩ main masterlist ✧

pairing : bodyguard!Din Djarin x afab!princess!reader

rating : 18+ mdni

word count : 4.6k

summary : reader does some reading

warnings, etc. : language, sexual fantasy, masturbation

A/N : i had to change accounts so this is a re-upload of my ongoing fic bks!!

You’re starting to think the planet isn’t the reason you’re so hot all the time.

You had woken up this morning feeling a bit better than you thought you’d be, your stomach is full of butterflies but you're still standing and considering the night you had you’re gonna take that as a win. Elaine and Lysa both seemed to sense that you were back in slightly better spirits and Lysa doesn’t bother to ask as she fetches you a dress that isn’t blue. You want to protest when she emerges from the closet with a simple green gown but you bite your tongue. Maybe he’ll like it. 

You don’t care. Why should you care? Why the hell are you already sweating? Nothing has changed. He did one nice thing for you, so you forgive him. But you still don’t care. 

Well… you care enough to ask them to leave your hair down, which they do. And you care enough to ask them to leave your face alone. (Save for some thin golden eyeliner.) You dismiss the girls with a thank you and give yourself just a moment alone. 

You’re going to have a normal day. Not a great day, and not a good day. Just a normal day. You are going to go to the library today and you’re going to read. And you are going to talk to the Mandalorian. You are going to patch things up. Oh gods, what if he doesn’t want to patch things up? What if he thinks you’re just some unstable, bellyaching princess? Stop caring what he thinks. Normal day. Just go out there before he comes in here. 

You take the book he had given you and you tuck it under your arm as you go out to greet him. As expected, he is there, just outside the door, and as expected he doesn’t speak first, so you do it instead. 

“Good morning, Mando.” 

He takes his time, observing your mood, his visor trained on you. You suddenly feel feverish. 

“Morning, princess.” His voice is careful, almost like he’s testing the waters. You don’t know how to tell him you aren’t mad anymore, or that you’re okay now. You’re pretty sure both are true. So you just head towards the library.  

“Come on sparkles.” Is all you say as you start walking. The silence isn’t necessarily comfortable but at least it feels bearable. Once there you settle into your familiar positions, you, seated in the reading nook, him, pulling up a chair across from you. You hopelessly want to say something but you don’t want to come off as desperate, and honestly you’re so anxious at this point you’re worried you’ll throw up if you try to speak. So you take out the book, making sure he can see the cover. Hoping he takes it as a peace offering, you pick it up from chapter two, where you’d left off after last night. And that is how you stay for several hours.

You read, flipping through the chapters of what ends up being a pretty corny book. It’s a predictable tale of forbidden love, the daughter of a blacksmith falling in love with a knight, blah blah blah, a little dull but entertaining enough to keep your attention for the most part. So much so that you’re able to completely forget that your every move is being watched. 

Almost. 

Because you get to chapter six, and suddenly, the book is… raunchier than you expected it to be. 

And it’s sweltering in the library out of nowhere and you’re pretty sure you can’t blame Naboo this time. 

You’re hyper aware of him now. 

That he’s watching you. Well he’s always watching you, always has been, but now you can’t stop thinking about it because you’re sitting here, reading porn, and he’s sitting there, watching you. 

You should close the book, take a break, get some water. 

But you don’t. 

Because suddenly the book is kind of good. For some reason you’re suddenly engrossed by the story of Oskar and Dorthea. That’s what you tell yourself. That you are captivated by the storytelling, not the way Oskar’s large hands are currently clutching Dorthea’s heaving bosom. You wonder if Oskar is wearing gloves when he does it. You should stop reading. 

You can’t do this. 

But… you have been neglecting certain urges of yours since arriving on Naboo. And now it’s been over three weeks and to say that you’re pent up would be putting it lightly. 

So what’s the harm in reading something a little risqué? It’s not like you’re doing anything wrong, after all life as a newlywed wasn't exactly going the way you thought it would, so maybe this would help relieve a little bit of the stress that you’re very obviously suffering from at this point. So you allow yourself to read on, and everything is fine until she starts taking off his armor, because you can see a certain armor wearing nuisance sitting just over the top of your book. You start imagining it before you can stop yourself and the all too familiar heat washes over you.

This is the part where you remind yourself to stop.

Or… 

You could indulge, just this once. There’s nothing wrong with that, an innocent little fantasy. It will help you enjoy your book more if you imagine the characters more clearly. And it’s so easy after that, to imagine Oskar the paladin in Beskar, funnily enough he really does remind you of Mando. He’s sarcastic and he’s witty but he is also rather gentle with the blacksmith's daughter when he needs to be. 

He’s also quite rough with her when he needs to be. 

You can’t help but wonder if Mando is similar to Oskar in that regard as well. 

Okay you definitely can’t do this.

Unless of course you’re thinking about Oskar. There’s nothing wrong with that. He isn’t real. You can fantasize about him and it would be perfectly acceptable. You should do that instead. Fantasize about the not real character in your book and not on the very real Mandalorian sitting several feet away from you. 

Just for a minute. Just to help relieve some of the tension that has been building in your body for weeks now. This is the smart and healthy thing to do, lest it spiral completely out of control. This is a good thing, this will dissipate the fog that has been clouding your judgment. 

So you think about Oskar. Just Oskar. Stare at the pages of your book and think about Oskar. Tall, dark, and handsome Oskar.

He’s probably downright barbaric with it. Probably takes what he wants, he’s such a jackass. You bet he gives it just as hard as he takes it though, that overconfident prick probably loves it when you just fall to pieces for him. 

Not you.

Dorthea. 

Not him.

Oskar.

Think about Oskar. 

Is he vocal? He’s always so quiet but when he does talk it’s like he can’t shut up. You get the sense that he likes feeling smarter than you. Or whoever it is you’re imaging in this scenario. He’d probably be just as rude in the bedroom. Just absolutely wreck you and then call you sweet names and his words would be kind and warm but he would use that condescending tone he uses when he knows he’s winning, and he’s always winning. You hate that he’s always winning, maybe you should come up with some rehearsed comebacks. Or would that be lame? He’d probably see right through that.

Oskar. You’re thinking about Oskar. 

For Makers sake think about Oskar.

Oskar probably doesn’t have the patience to undo Dorthea’s complicated dresses. He probably just rips them right off of her, Oskar probably doesn’t even take the time to remove his helmet. For no reason in particular. He probably leaves it on, too consumed by his feral, untamed, need to ravage her. To devour her entirely with his hands, his stupid, pointlessly, gloved hands. He might lift the helmet enough just to bite the fingertips of the gloves to rip them off as swiftly as possible. Or maybe he’d let you- Dorthea , sink her teeth into them, make her remove them. 

It’s unbearably hot now, and people sweat when they get hot.

That’s what you tell yourself when you feel a wetness pooling in a place you cannot think about right now lest you tear your dress off right here in front of him in the library to deal with it. 

He could push you up against the shelves, no one ever comes in here. He could bend you over the reading nook you were currently sitting atop, or you could just join him in that chair, stare down into his visor and let him know who’s in charge. 

Because you hate him. Obviously.

You want to be in charge because you know he’d detest that. You want to watch him melt in your hands, beg you for more. That’s the only reason. To see him reduced to nothing but a man, not this statue of steel and wit that he is constantly portraying. Just a man, you want to be the one thing on this entire stupid planet that makes him nothing but a man.

You definitely aren’t thinking about Oskar right now. 

This doesn’t mean anything. 

Stars, what has gotten into you today? You need to get laid. That’s gotta be it. Back on Hoth you were a princess without a husband, it was easy to find boys in your colony who would happily bed you whenever you desired. But not here, here you have a husband who won’t bed you, (thank the gods.) and an unbearable bodyguard who you can’t even see the face of so Maker why can’t you stop thinking about him. You could go to the market in the city, probably find a vibrator or something pretty easily. But you’re the princess of a very respected royal family now, you can’t exactly go strolling into a sex shop in broad daylight. And then of course there’s the Mando of it all. You can’t help but wonder what his reaction to that would be, would he follow you into that kind of establishment? He’d have to, right? He’s followed you everywhere else. What would he think if he saw you buying yourself a toy to keep you company? He has to know at this point that Kodo isn’t exactly satisfying your needs. He has to understand that you have needs, most people have needs. Does Mando have needs?

Does he ever think about your needs when he’s satisfying his?

Don’t. 

You have to say it to yourself now. 

Your face is surely bright red at this point, you consider if that’s something he likes. Does he like how easily riled up you are? How flustered you get at just the thought of him? Okay you were certainly overindulging at this point. You had to stop, there has to be a line and that line certainly is imagining what he might find attractive.

“Why don’t you try sounding it out.” He catches you off guard, unmoving as he speaks. 

“What?” Maker, are you panting? Pull yourself together woman. 

“I assume you’re stuck on a word, you’ve been on that page for nearly 15 minutes. Try sounding it out.”

Usually this behavior from him is the perfect thing to stop any untoward thoughts. Why isn’t it working? Why do you suddenly wanna shut him up in a completely different way?

“You’re a funny guy, have you considered being a comedian or do you just really like being a glorified babysitter?” 

“I really like being a glorified babysitter.” He leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. You loathe him. 

“Lucky you.” 

“Lucky me.” 

At least things are okay between you two. Things seem okay. This is normal. There’s a relief to be found in knowing that your relationship, (albeit antagonistic) seems to be repaired. That is until he of course has to ruin it by opening his mouth. 

“How’s the book?”

Great.

“It’s good. Thank you for returning it to me…” 

“Of course.” You hope he’ll drop it but it’s him so of course he doesn’t. “What’s it about?” You can hear the faux innocence practically dripping through the modulator. There’s no way he’s actually doing this. 

“I don’t think you’d like it.” 

“Why not? You have no idea what I like.”

Okay this has gone from inappropriate to downright intimate. What's his end goal here? You know that he can’t seriously be doing this. Maybe he’s playing some sort of game with you? Maybe he’s playing a game of chicken, if that’s the case then you certainly aren’t going to lose, and let him win? Hell no. 

“It might be a little too intense for you.” You raise a single eyebrow, his move.

“Oh really? How so?” He leans back in the chair now. For Makers sake does he have to spread his legs so obscenely wide. 

“Isn’t there some kind of Mandalorian vow of celibacy?” You have no idea but you plaster a naive look on your face. 

“Nothing in the creed about that, princess.” How does he make the word princess sound so vulgar? Why is there a rush of molten heat through your veins when you find out he isn’t celibate. 

This doesn’t mean anything. 

“Oh? But I thought you weren’t allowed to take the armor off?” This shouldn’t make you perspire as much as you are. You aren’t doing anything wrong, you’re having a conversation, it’s not like you’re cheating on your husband by having a conversation. 

“Just the helmet.” You knew that, of course, but it’s still a shame. You’d love to give his mouth something to do other than taunt you. 

You need to get out of this library. 

“Oh.” Great quick thinking. Real impressive comeback you moron. 

“So?”

“So…?” 

“The book, what’s it about?” 

Of course he isn’t going to drop this. You should lie, this conversation can escalate very quickly if you’re not careful and considering how close you are to sticking your hand up your dress right here in front of him, you better be careful. 

“It’s a cute little love story about a girl and a knight.” 

He hums softly like he’s considering something while you consider lobbing the book at his head. 

“Sounds charming.” Not a good sign that you can hear the derisive tone through the modulator already. “So what are you stuck on?”

Your eyes meet the page you’d left open while you were daydreaming, you manage to keep a straight face but you’re not exactly sure how you’re gonna ad-lib your way out of this seeing as Dorthea is currently bent over a hay bale in the stables and Oskar is currently “thrusting his pulsing member into her damp maidenhood.” Maker, this book is garbage. 

You know what, why not push back? He always manages to tease you into silence or reduce you to a stuttering blushing mess, so why not grab at this chance to get the upper hand? He’s not the only one who can catch people off guard. 

“I wasn’t really stuck on anything… I suppose I was just trying to figure out how he fits it all in there?” You hold out the book at arms length and turn it ninety degrees. It isn’t a picture book but you still think it’s a bit funny to furrow your brow and pretend. 

It works, he’s silent. Too silent, you worry you’ve gone too far again but after a few beats the modulator crackles to life once more.

“Didn’t realize the book had pictures, I must have missed them.” He crosses his arms and tilts his head ever so slightly. 

Dank farrik. Why couldn’t you go one conversation without him dropping some ridiculous bomb that makes you look like an idiot, it’s like he’s dedicating his days to outsmarting you rather than protecting you. More importantly, you need to address the bantha in the room.

“You read this?” You don’t bother hiding the disbelief on your face, he already knows he’s got you so what's the point. 

“You’re not the only one who’s bored, princess, when you’re alone, I’m alone with you. One of the many perks of silently standing behind you all the time. Someone had to go clean up the books you dropped, thought I’d give one of them a read.” You can’t believe this.

“So you’ve read The Smitten Paladin? ” The confusion muddling your brain right now is downright overwhelming, worst of all is now you can’t stop thinking about him reading the filth you’ve been enjoying. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell you how it ends.”

Maker, you want to chuck the book at him so bad right now, but you know it won’t stop his smug tone that fills the air between you. You need to get out, you need to be in your chambers and far, far away from the obnoxious, egotistical, self-righteous Mandalorian. So you stand up and close the book and start walking, of course he’s fluid in the way he matches you, almost like he anticipated your departure.

“Good. I wouldn’t want you to spoil the happy ending.” Is all you can mutter out as you make haste towards your chambers, refusing to look at him the entire way. 

This doesn’t mean anything. ✩

You cannot lock your door fast enough. You don’t bother turning on any lamps, you just collapse down on the edge of the bed and hike your dress up, no sense in wasting half an hour trying to get it off, not when there are far more important matters to attend to regarding getting off.  

You waste no time shoving your hand down the front of you underwear, you’ve never been so thankful for all of the layers in your gowns because you’re soaked through your panties, you’re fingers are small and nimble so you easily swipe two digits through your folds, scooping up a bit of your wetness, back already arching as you just say fuck it and bury both fingers into your cunt. 

The shaky sigh that leaves your lips is downright pornographic. Three weeks of pent up frustration all crashing down on you now as you bring your other hand up to cover your mouth, you start grinding against your palm, haphazardly doing everything in your power to put some friction against your swollen clit. Your hand can’t muffle your moans entirely as you curl your fingers against that spot that makes you sob into your wrist, you bite down onto the meat of your palm just below your thumb but you can’t stop the noises that slip from you as you curl your fingers a bit faster, thrusting them in and out of your drenched hole. 

You wish your fingers were thicker, there’s barely any stretch with how small yours are, you can hit all the spots you need to push yourself towards that delectable edge but you can’t help but crave a little more. You don’t even bother trying to stop the inevitable, you’re too far gone at this point. Might as well let your mind wander to what it needs to to finish the job.

After all, it doesn’t mean anything. 

How long does he wait outside your door before dismissing himself? With his helmet’s capabilities he could certainly hear what’s going on in here, is he out there right now? Eavesdropping as you fuck your own hand. Is he straining against his flight suit as he stands on the other side of that wall. Acting like he’s there to defend you when in reality he just wants to listen in, give himself to think about later. Or is he just palming himself through his trousers, not wanting to wait. 

Realistically he went back to his own chambers the moment you closed the door. 

You might be giving yourself a little too much credit but it’s your fantasy so you get to think whatever you need to get you there. Like why is the helmet kind of hot now? Was it always hot or are you just really horny right now? There’s just something so erotic about not being able to see his face, not being able to read his emotions behind the steel facade he puts up. He’s got so many utilities and attachments, it must be hard to get through all the layers. Might be nice if he left most of it on, took off just enough to get the job done. Does he have cuffs? If he’s an ex-bounty hunter he probably has cuffs. You know he has a blaster and a bunch of other weapons you don’t fully understand, you kind of wish someone would ambush you just so you could see him in action. Honestly he’s so terrifying to most people you’re pretty sure you might go your entire life without being attacked. He definitely has cuffs. He could storm in right now, cuff your hands above your head and finish what you started.

His fingers would probably work better than yours. You rock your hips down against your hand now as you can feel yourself slipping just the tiniest bit closer to that edge. You haven’t seen his hands but you can imagine. Even without the gloves just one of his fingers was probably as thick as the two you were working in and out of yourself currently. 

Maker, with the gloves on he would probably have to work to get just one finger inside you. 

You cum embarrassingly fast at the thought. It actually catches you off guard as you grind your palm against your clit just so and you’re seeing stars, soaking your already drenched panties as you withdraw your hand and collapse in a heap onto the bed, wiping your fingers off on the sheets. (You don’t sleep in this bed anyway so who cares.) 

You decide it’s best to ignore anything you thought about in your sex-crazed state. You can’t be held accountable for anything you think of to get yourself across the finish line, you aren’t yourself in those circumstances. 

It doesn’t mean anything.

It can’t mean anything. 

Minds wander, people think of all sorts of things when they’re blinded by lust. Hell, back home you’d once thought about a medical droid to get you there.

So it doesn’t matter.

And it certainly doesn’t mean anything, you were pent up, you see him all the time, now that you’ve taken care of it, it won’t happen again.

Now that you’ve taken care of that you’re sure you’ll be back to normal, no more day dreaming about unattainable men who you despise. You close your eyes for a few minutes. Chest heaving as you struggle to fully recover from your hasty orgasm. 

You give yourself some time to just lay like that, eyes closed, trying to steady your breath, you probably shouldn’t sleep, you haven’t gone to dinner yet but after such a shamefully swift and powerful climax you're positively drained. (Literally and figuratively.) So it won’t kill you to close your eyes for a few minutes. 

You don’t know how much time passes but before you even know what’s happening you're standing in front of the mirror, hair disheveled. 

You can’t get your dress off, can’t twist your arms behind you to reach the corset laces. You don’t want to wake Elaine or Lysa, you aren’t sure how late it is but you just can’t seem to unlace the bodice by yourself, you’re considering just sleeping in the infernal thing at this point. In your struggle you don’t hear the door open but you watch in the mirror as a familiar silver figure envelops you. How long had he been out there? What the hell was he doing here at this time of night?

“You look like you need a little help there princess.” The familiar crackle of the modulator consumes your senses, watching in the reflection of the mirror you can see the slow and deliberate removal of his gloves as he undoes your bodice, with a practiced agility. Everything is fuzzy. You want so badly to drink in every part of him that he is willing to give to you but it’s almost too much for your brain to comprehend right now. He takes his time with it, like he’s drawing it out. Tenderly pulling every string loose until you can slip out of the gown with ease. 

You let it fall to the ground. 

He stares at you in your reflection, his large bare hands wrap themselves around your exposed midriff as you’re left only in your undergarments for his eyes to devour. He’s so leisurely about it, not wanting to miss an inch. His fingertips dance across the bare skin of your stomach, it takes every ounce of restraint in you to not arch yourself back against him, you can’t stand the way he makes you want to throw your dignity to the wind. With the two of you facing the mirror like this you can see everything. His thumb begins to stroke the lace of your bra ever so slightly while his other hand skims against your sternum. His touches were so light that if you weren’t having a physical reaction to them you wouldn’t even be truly sure he was touching you at all. 

“Did you wear that pretty dress for me, princess?” Maker, you must have died and gone to heaven. His voice, his stupid voice. His stupid gravely voice that left you weak in the knees no matter how often you heard it. “You looked so good, I knew you’d wear green today, so eager to please me…” The baritone of it goes straight to your core, and speaking of straight to your core, his left hand is traveling downwards ever so gradually. “Tell me what it is you want.” 

You suppose this is it, moment of truth. He wants to hear what you have to say. You could tell him to fuck off, right here, right now. And honestly you’re positive he would leave if you told him to. You’re married, unhappily. But that doesn’t make this okay. Nothing could make this okay. Except for the way his hands clamp down on your waist just hard enough to make you whine but not hard enough to bruise. Well, that’s enough to cloud your judgment enough to make this okay. 

“Tell me.” His palms begin to knead the soft flesh of your abdomen and you swear the sensation of that alone has him groaning and rutting against you from behind. 

This view is obscene, watching him grope you. It’s a real spectacle he’s making, holding you up on your shaky knees in front of the floor length mirror so you can see everything he’s doing to your body. 

“Use your words, princess. Speak up.” You didn’t think his voice could get more husky; he's practically growling. It’s a good thing he’s supporting you slightly because his words make your knees buckle. 

Oh he loves this, loves having you so unraveled by him that you can’t even tell him what you so desperately need from him. You can feel just how much he loves this against your lower back right now.

“I want to hear you say it, sarad'ika. ” And that’s all it takes to break your resolve. Those two words you couldn’t remember no matter how hard you tried, trickling out of his modulator and you’re willing to surrender to the feelings you’ve been fighting for longer than you’d like to admit. So you say it, you admit it out loud for the first time. You admit it to yourself for the first time. 

“You. I want you. ”

And you wake up. Still in your dress, still laying on the edge of your bed, still alone. 

Fuck.

Well, that might mean something.

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[linkemon]

It's gonna be alright (Keith Kogane x Reader)

Friendly reminder that English is not my first language. You can check my Masterlists both in English and Polish here. Consider supporting me on Ko-fi. You can also check out my commissions if you’re interested.

Other oneshots can be found here.

ᴋᴇɪᴛʜ ᴛʀɪᴇꜱ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴏᴘᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ꜱʜɪʀᴏ'ꜱ ᴅɪꜱᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇ. ɪᴛ ɪꜱ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴏɴ ᴋɴᴏᴡʟᴇᴅɢᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴄᴏᴏᴋɪᴇꜱ ʜᴇʟᴘ. ᴏʀ ᴀᴛ ʟᴇᴀꜱᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ'ꜱ ᴡʜᴀᴛ [ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ] ꜱᴀʏꜱ…

ᴀᴅᴅɪᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ ɪɴꜰᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: 1. ᴏɴᴇꜱʜᴏᴛ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴀɪɴꜱ ꜱᴘᴏɪʟᴇʀꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ᴇᴀʀʟʏ ꜱᴇᴀꜱᴏɴꜱ.

It was the final stretch.

I snuck out again. Doing it in the evening would mean that someone would probably catch me but at night it's much easier. If the rest of the team saw me now, I'd probably get scolded but I couldn't help myself. Hunk finally baked some edible cookies!

I grabbed a plate from the nearest shelf and helped myself to a generous amount, then rearranged the cookies that had fallen out of formation back into a pyramid. This way, no one noticed when one or two floors disappeared.

As a medical student, or rather a former student, because on Earth I've probably already been kicked out of school, I always tell my team to eat healthily. I am quite aware of the effects of overeating at night and too many sweets but everyone has smaller or larger deviations. Mine gradually started to increase after Hunk got a new recipe for blueberry cookies.

When we tasted them for the first time, I was skeptical because of their blue color. We chose Coran as the tester because no one else wanted to poison themselves. However, it turned out that we had avoided failure. They tasted like cocoa.

Since then, Hunk has been baking them almost all the time and I've been stealing them on the sly. It quickly turned out that paladins had a habit of getting up often in the middle of the night. At first I ate in the living room and almost got caught when Pidge walked by. However, I managed to find a solution. My place for a snack was the rather narrow roof, which was accessed through a window on the top floor of the castle. Perhaps someone would be able to spot me during the day but at night it was virtually impossible.

I headed there too, thinking only that in a moment I would inhale that cocoa scent again. I crossed the hall, opened the window, and then placed the plate on the tiny windowsill. I had both legs out and was just about to start eating when it turned out I wasn't alone.

Keith was now sitting in my usual seat with wide eyes. He looked ready to jump but visibly relaxed when he saw it was just me.

Well, great.

So I did the only right thing that could be done in such a situation.

— Cookie?

— Excuse me? — He asked.

— I asked if you wanted a cookie. — I sat down and offered him a plate. — Just don't betray to others because I won't have a life.

He ate it, then reached for another one.

We never got along very well, partly because we didn't know each other before I joined the team. It's true that I didn't argue with him like Lance but he had such a heavy personality that I preferred spending time with Hunk or Allura. He always seemed quite cold to me but I admired his skills and courage because he certainly had plenty of that.

The silence was quite uncomfortable, so I decided to break it.

— Nice sky.

No response from Mr. Silent.

It was beautiful. A shade of navy blue completely different than the one on Earth. Constellations unlike any I've seen. Everything was different here. The thought always brought a momentary feeling of nostalgia and longing for my family but I was used to it by now. It hasn't wanted to leave me since I got here.

— Sooo... you came to think? — I said with my mouth full.

— You could say that — he muttered.

What an elaborate statement.

— I came to eat without anyone noticing. I glanced at him. — But it didn't work out as you can see. — What are you thinking about?

I didn't receive any response.

Keith started to stand up but I grabbed his sleeve.

— It's a bit inelegant of you to leave me in the middle of a conversation now.

If this could even be called a conversation...

— Something will attack me here at night when it smells food if I stay alone. — I stuffed the cookie into myself with my free hand. — If you want, we can sit in silence — I added.

I saw his hesitation but he finally sat back down after the last sentence.

I wanted to keep my word, I really wanted to. The problem, however, was the talkativeness. Everyone around me knew perfectly well that I was loud and ubiquitous. I also had trouble keeping my mouth shut. Keith and I were basically opposites, which was one of the reasons we had limited contact.

In short, I could be irritating. No wonder I couldn't last more than a few minutes.

— If you don't want to say what you're thinking, don't say it — I started. — But if you change your mind, you know  — I stabbed him in the arm — you can vent.

— Do I look like someone who wants to talk?

No, you look like an irritated bastard.

— No but you look like someone who needs it. You know, as a pseudo-doctor on this team, I also have to take care of your mental health. I think it's just as important as physical one.

His expression softened slightly. He was clearly wondering whether he should share with me what was on his mind.

The silence grew.

This is how my career as a psychologist dies prematurely.

I actually could have given up but I felt like I wanted to help. Kind of like when I was quite little and put plasters on literally all the kids in my neighbourhood who had bad knees. This feeling turned into a passion — the desire to professionally care for others. I didn't have the opportunity to graduate because I was in the middle of another galaxy but I did my best. I tried to use everything I had at hand to help those who were saving planets and races that we had never known about before.

— It's about my leadership — he began, so quietly that I could barely hear him. — I feel bad about it. Everyone is counting on me, they want me to give them orders but I have the impression that whatever I do, wherever I step, will be wrong. I'm not even sure how to get along with you. After I came back to the team, everyone looks at me differently. I'm not like Shiro. My only hope is to find him and bring him back but I don't even know where to start looking for him.

I'm out of cookies.

— It's obvious — I felt his eyes on me — that you're not Shiro. I'm sure we'll find him but it will take some time. You shouldn't try to replace him because each of you is different — I started. — It'll take you a while to get used to your new role but you're on the right track. Maybe try spending some time with the team? We haven't known each other for very long but I'm not blind. Some people really miss you, Keith. Don't run away from them, try to talk to them, eat some cookies and everything will be fine. — I stood up, took my plate and headed to the window.

It's gonna be alright — the cliché I may have tried to say to myself a lot too but what choice did I have? What else could I tell him?

— [Reader]?

— Hmmm? — I stuck my head out.

— Thank you.

— No problem but it was Hunk who baked them — I said, smiling to myself and then started walking down the dark corridor.

Keith will make a good leader but I might still make a good doctor when I get back to Earth. I should just cut down on the cookies...

[theology101]

Galicaea murdered Cassandra and Sol murdered Ankarna - which is why Kipperlilly Did That

We learned in Revelations and Revivifications (Episode 11 of Season 2) that it was her Clerics from Fallinel who murdered Cassandra. That's just straight up a fact. Now, we don't know exactly what her role in this is but, "As Above, So Below." If Galicaea's top priests are making this move, then Galicaea was down with it.

I've heard a lot of people refer to the wolf aspect as if it was some 'real' version of the faith that's been corrupted. It isn't, it's an Older aspect and its one that Tracker and Co. love a lot more but both of them are a result of worship.

We learned about this 'Last Great Sylvan War' around 900 years ago about the proper way to worship Cassandra. While the High Elves who settled it went with "Erase the goddess - to understand mystery is a heresy," I'm guessing they also heavily influenced the Wood Elf/Non-High Elf variant of Galicaea into being more in line with their version. Obviously a remnant survived in folk religion like with Tracker and other Werewolf communities, her revival reveals that prior to her, there hasn't been any serious challange to Falinel statement.

I think that then Sol started marching North. Gallicaea had claimed Night as hers and hers alone, by deceiving their shy and naive sister and then went to finish the job with Ankarna. But her? No way they could convince Ankarna to kill herself, especially now that her sister was 'dead' (Cassandra technically managed to live via the Quasi-Reality inside of Sylvaire, Kristen more redefined her and allowed her to be alive outside of the Nightmare Forest).

So I think that the Human Priests of Highcourt and the Elves of Fallinel agreed to wipe them out. Sol's paladins burnt their way up the coast and conquered it - we know that the land of Elmville is native Halfling territory, but right next to it is the Mountains of Chaos which was, in my opinion, their true target. Sol wanted the aspects like Conviction, Fire, Rage, Etc. while he gave Helio Summer.

Meanwhile, Ankarna? Her turning Infernal wasn't something done to her, it was something she/her priests did. Why would they do that? Because they're being invaded. The Giants probably took on a more leadership based roll compared to the far less capable to defend themselves Halflings, Goblins, Aaracockra, arguably even Orcs. Turning more and more evil, brutal, and extreme is a result of her being back further and further into a corner. It was a defense of the other races and for her own life.

I think that, while adventuring in the Mountains of Chaos for Spring Break, the Rat Grinders found out about Ankarna's priests and believers being wiped out, maybe one of her ancinet and long forgotten temples. That was it and it would have been it, if Kipperlilly didn't learn about Cassandra. I think her sheer, burning jealousy made her want, above anything else, to bring back a Goddess herself.

And her solution was going to be Lucy Frostblade. And for about two weeks, Ankarna was brought back with Lucy being her sole worshipper. And this is what I think happened next: sweet, kind, Lucy Frostblade's Ankarna wouldn't be the warlike aspect. She'd be like how she was before the Humans and Elves attacked, a kind and loving goddess.

Except there's a problem. There's another worshipper - just one.

Jace Stardiamond, draining power from the corpse of the long dead war goddess.

So, he and Kipperlilly somehow get in contact (my money is through Oisin secretly being a sorceror the whole time and just Acing wizard classes with 0 effort) and together they agree there's only one solution - kill Lucy Frostblade so their version of Ankarna can remain. The High Five Heroes kill Lucy and all begin worhsipping Ankarna (all under the influence of Devil's Honey.) Kipperlilly, Oisin and Mary Anne are all in on it (symbolized by their Blue backgrounds) but Ivy and Rueben refuse to go along with the murder but, since they're not in the way, they're able to be devil's honeyed into not knowing (Symbolized by their red background).

Ivy's weird reaction to Fig? She always 'knew' that Lucy was alive - she's not important to the plan anyways, so she doesn't need to be included. Some random lie is fed to Ivy to explain why Lucy isn't recognized as 'dead.' Reuben though? Kipperlilly can still use Reuben - use him to proselytize and spread the word of Ankarna - so not only does he need to be aware of the details around Lucy's death and all the Ankarna stuff, he also can't know the Ratgrinders killed her. He clearly still thinks highly of her - I think that vomitting the 'blood' in his dream was Fig breaking the Devil's Honey barrier in his mind.

Which is why, as Gertie told us, Kipperlilly ordered two bottles RIGHT after break. They need to keep him in line with the plan.

Jace changed the records in the school so that Yolanda never realized that she switched gods from Ruvina, and used his own spells to fuck with the name and hidden it (clearly there's a difference between the rune on the paper, which no one could read, and the translated version in Fallinel which has been sat for a thousand plus years), and did the same to the body. Yolanda, trusting him as Vice Principal, tells him about her fears, he goes with her into the woods and then instantly kills her in the clearing.

The plan is to take Ankarna from the Dead/Undead form (but now conscious thanks to their efforts) back to being actually alive via a Cleric believing in her.

Of course, in the mean time they need a Cleric. Make him expendable, but still useful. Make the cleric be a Priest of Helio or Sol so that they can kill him, immediately planeshift into Heaven behind him, eliminate his soul and then Oisin and Kipperlilly sneak into the office and bring back the Goddess. In fact, I bet they're gonna fling Buddy Dawn's soul into the void and using the death of a cleric of Helio, Ankarna will return. Killing Buddy was the act of Conquest they needed.

Rueben is obviously in doubt, trying to get help from his Uncle (skipping Forest Animal Murdering and asking for a ride home?), but I think Oisin is in it for the power. Mary Anne is a Kobold, and I think Oisin's Grandma is the dragon her tribe is sworn to so she just follows him around.

I don't think any part of Jace Stardiamond's section of the plan, the bit about the return of Ankarna, has anything to do with Kipperlilly running for preisdent or their quest against the bad kids. Killing Buddy in the Last Stand was just a conveint series of events but as Brennan said in the adventuring party - it looked like killing Buddy was already on the table. That wasn't a freak out move, it was on the agenda, she just wasn't there yet.

For the Presidency, unlike the Ankarna plot where only Oisin and Stardiamond are conspirators, all the Rat Grinders are in on it because they all seem to have personal beef. Except for Oisin and Mary Anne, who seem to be fine with the Bad Kids as a whole, just still on Kipperlilly's team for the race.

For that, Kipperlilly frames the Loams for embezzling, pocketing the money, and then using Ankarna's nightmare king form to kill the Loams when it looked like she was being to thoroughly looked at. Now she has money for both Schemes and the Campaign. Stardiamond tells Reuben to move Frostfaire to the Thistlepsing Tree (just to fuck with the ground and, if I had to guess, be the reason why Gorgug has been getting angrier and angrier as the season's gone on. Specifically, he seemed to really 'Get Mad!' when fighting Grix).

Kipperlilly knows about Buddy's grandpa so after Yolanda gets killed by Jace, Kipperlilly tells Buddy to ask his grandpa to apply while Jace puts the question to Mazey (a decision he should've made himself, to be honest). Bobby's here just to get Kristen expelled, and when they they decided to take the last stand, she grabbed a Rage Shard, strapped it on an arrow, and aimed it at the proctor.

I think that, as the ultimate 'fuck the bad kids' move, the Proctor would go angry and huge and the party would be forced to kill him. Not only does he die, but they were the ones who killed him which would MURDER their grade. I would guess.

But Kristen saw her, and could prove that another student directly interfered with the test (via undergoing a zone of truth). So instead, Kipperlilly indirectly interferes and puts the 'lets kill Buddy' part of the Main Plan into effect. Probably would have happened anyways (they're in a pocket dimension alone, great time to kill a man tbh)

[deareverlasting]

Paladin of Voltron AU - which lions do you think the gang would wield? so far ive got... ashlyn as the black paladin - the black lion typically looks for a natural leader, someone who won't hesitate to make hard decisions and brings people together, someone who will stand their ground. ash fits these traits in a lot of ways, shown in how she took charge to keep them safe in the phantom dimension from the very start and continues to give her all in protecting everybody and getting them out.

tyler as the red paladin - the red lion tends to choose those that push their limits, stubborn and prideful, sometimes even aggressive. her paladins are usually the most likely to act on their own and react on impulse, the right hand of the black lion.

tyler is shown to be stubborn and hot-headed most of the time, and while he doesn't tend to stray from the plan- he does voice his opinions very loudly when he thinks there are any flaws in ashlyns plans. and as a duo, i think tyler would make a pretty great right hand to rely on for ashlyn once they've gotten to know each other and warm up.

aiden as the blue paladin - was sort of tough to place, he was fighting real hard for the red lion but ultimately i put him with blue. if we go into a soft dive for blue, you can tell she likes paladins that are open, willing to follow along and adapt, and humorous. while aiden isnt the first to start a group therapy circle, he isn't outright against it either, he just is never quite given the chance to really open up about his own past. but he does follow right along after ash, ready to move whenever a situation changes out of their favor and is no stranger to trying to keep the mood light.

logan as the green paladin - i think green looks for a curious mind of sorts, someone who looks at a puzzle with sheer determination instead of blinking and turning right around. logan is smart, that much is obvious, but he is also the one who figured out most of what they know of the phantom dimension. he was scared yes, but he still figured out so much despite his fear, he felt more than to leave it well enough alone.

and ben as the yellow paladin - yellow is the hufflepuff of the lions i think, it isn't too picky about who pilots it, but they do look for someone reliable in almost any situation. someone stable, almost predictable in a way? the foundation of a group. ben shows this in many ways, one particular moment that comes to mind is at the arcade when things started getting sticky with logan. he was the very first to get up and start throwing hands because that's his friend and he won't watch him go through the same thing he did.

and finally, taylor as allura - this girl was fighting teeth and nail for blue lion but i caved in because aiden and tyler as the dynamic blue/red duo could NOT be missed. i do have this little idea that the twins would be half altaen bastards who were seperated at birth. i think this could also pose conflict when they try to make alliances with other planets because she isn't true royalty. + for a bit of angst throw in their dad saving her when the planet was destroyed. EDIT: another idea for the twins, they were seperated when the planet was destroyed, and when they were about to be put into a cyropod and everything, maybe tylers launched on accident and landed on earth? he wakes up with zero memories of who he was but enrolls into the space garrison because he for some reason knows so much about space and the need to go up there because something is missing but he doesn't know what.

honorable mentions! ashlyn as the red paladin (i thought it could be a sort of keith and shiro situation where she doesn't want it but she ends up with black anyway, i just don't know who would be in shiro's stead, mike?) aiden as the red paladin taylor as the blue paladin and aiden as allura (think about the potential ash and aiden could have here, PLEASE! just switch the flirting dynamic lance always coming on allura but with aiden jokingly flirting with ashlyn all the time) i ultimately chose these pairings because everyone ends up where i want them to be..sort of, except for ashlyn. aiden would eventually become the red paladin, taylor as blue, and i was trying to work out ashlyn going from red to black, but again, i don't know who she would be replacing. to make this work i was thinking maybe the twins were both woken up from their slumber by the team, both fully altaen.