#verse | common bride

[mxthbladed]

@holyfurnace said: Royalty AU - Marriage Law - every royal must marry a commoner chosen by the advisor to keep the bloodlines clean (for Emily and Vaggie) Arranged Marriage Prompts

Of anyone that could've been chosen for the marriage law, she was the last person she could've thought of as being chosen. Yet, here was the royal guard, standing at her parents' door, asking for her to come with them as Princess Emily's chosen bride. As she was taken away, Agata glanced back to see her siblings at the window of their little cottage.

Once in the carriage and on the way to the castle, her heart was pounding. A woman in the carriage started to talk to her but Agata's thoughts were racing and she could only really listen, rather than speak in turn. As the woman said, when they arrived, Agata was immediately taken to a bath and scrubbed before being dressed in a beautiful gown, her hair being drawn up into an elegant bun. Once she was presentable, Agata was guided to the throne room and instructed to bow before Emily.

"Your highness, we have brought forth your bride from the village."

Agata's gaze raised hesitantly from the ground, glancing up to catch a proper look at Emily.

[borgialucrezia]

"She must have been truly remarkable and exceedingly beautiful. […] However, Giulia is not like Vannozza, a humble lover. She does not dwell in the shadows like her predecessor. She hails from a different background, a different upbringing. She is connected to the noblest and most influential families in the city. Therefore, she aspires to play a significant role in papal Rome. And she succeeds. She is the most admired and respected woman; she proudly displays her love, showcasing it publicly during ceremonies, receptions, and even at church. And she will flaunt it even more prominently within the very walls of the apostolic palace when Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia ascends to the papal throne. At that time, she will achieve great triumphs at the court of Alexander VI and will gleefully laugh when the satirical verses of the common people and irreverent ambassadors dub her 'the bride of Christ.'" — Gustavo Sacerdote, Cesare Borgia: His Life, His Family (1950)

[sideysvault]

𓍼ོ Ad Astra Per Aspera 𓍼ོ (PT. 1)

Consummation

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x fem!reader

wc: 2,200k

Tags: [sfw] Arranged marriage, mature themes, angst, coldness, enemies to lovers, eventual fluff and smut.

Full Series masterlist here. read part two.

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“Are you disappointed with the results of the arrangement?” Still not very well versed on the frail subtleties needed for a cordial marriage, the woman frowned. It if sounded sincere, she might have answered honestly. Because even her, when she was a child, had dreamt of romantic affections, great tales of familial love, mutual servitude and joy. 

But the Prince’s voice told a tale of practiced self deprecation. She wasn’t yet sure if it was to appear disarmingly inadequate, easier to ignore, or if it was to appease the King’s fragile ego. Either way, acting was not one of the Prince’s best qualities. Underneath all the loathing, layed a poorly covered,  insidious egotism. He felt pride in fulfilling his inglorious role, pride of being an outcast, he clearly thought of himself as above it all: superstitions of the weak minded, sentimentality, the passionate side of politics. She could already feel herself getting sick of it all. 

“Forgive me, Your Grace, but you must not go beyond the walls of the Red Keep often” Although she knew he did, as the stories of the sad little boy he turned to when attending the brothel could be heard from the mouth of the King himself. “The Gods are rarely in the mood for protection, and so common men are never left whole. The queerest thing about your appearance is not your limb eye, but rather your ghostly hair” with a smirk forming without her being able to avoid it, she quickly added “A haunting omen, perhaps.” 

Aemond hated the petulant smile that appeared on his wife’s lips. He hated seeing her biting teeth, and her self proclaimed waking martyrdom. And the wisdomless lectures? A sickening symptom of barbarian vanity. The Prince felt scandalized. He considered himself a sensible person, able to rationalize the marital arrangement, a paragon of respectability and patience. Her attitude had a way of putting it all on a thin veil. 

She felt troubled by the marriage, yes, but at night, when she could see the maidens avoid the wing of the castle where the King rested, when the Maestres ran around with mysterious teas, she felt the urge to get on her knees and thank the lords for granting her the repressed brother. Boring, tedious, and insolently over confident. But much more honorable. 

They had to consummate the marriage, of course. That was a problem that was increasingly harder to ignore. He had been kind enough to not force it upon her, and the Princess had heard stories of insemination without touch. When the bride was to be young of age, the husband —If he was respectable enough to have a soul—would set his seed on a vase of sorts, which would be introduced into the girl manually, by a maiden of choice. She heard it was rarely successful, but protective parents could demand the practice. 

She was too old for those considerations, but what was one to do? 

Prince Aemond was handsome, painfully so. If you ignored his impatience for the incompetence of his brother, or for his mother's hidden sentimentalism, his horror towards failure, the frowns he gave at any suggestion of true romantic felicity, and the egomaniac tendencies, he could look quite handsome. 

During courtship, he completely ignored his wife to be, but that is to be expected in political betrothal. Back then, he slightly frightened the Princess, but not nearly enough as everyone assumes he should have. 

The residents of Kings Landing often find him rather physically odd. Why is that? If, after all, he looks like a proper Targaryen Prince, even with one functioning eye. His childhood wound could not deny his straight silver hair, or the blue in his calculating eyes. His features were delicate, sharp, and firm, with an obnoxious royal quality. And if she knew no better, she would be excited at the prospect of consummation. 

Now the Princess’s dreams did not consist of domestic life —Although, she naturally still felt the urge, on rare occasions— But of going beyond the realms of her condition. A mind that kept itself occupied with thoughts of what may have become of her with less social opposition and more personal stimulus. Dreaming of being born a man, of being a scholar, a Maestre, to finally visit The Citadel.

Another recurring hope was that even in between the most interrelated webs of inherited resentments and southeastern superstitions one may find peace and harmony. To make the Red Keep a home worth living in. But all of these desires seemed to be equally improbable, and she had begun to come to terms with the fact that the burning desire of childhood may never go away, but it must be ignored in order to survive. 

Learning to her was similar to a  holy grace, far more powerful than any priest or God. A beautiful distraction. That’s how she had fallen into the hands of a false religious conversion. The teachings of the Seven had no real impact or meaning to her, but it was the closest, most respectable way of learning about the world around her. 

The marital chambers were spotless, in an almost obsessive manner. It went far beyond the traditional efficiency of cleaning servants. It had been done by his own hand, and everything had a designated place. And at the beginning, it had been nerve wrecking. The constant worry of leaving everything in its place, of being too messy with her presence, with her own belongings, in her own chambers. 

The only thing that demanded attention in the sad sterile room was the extensive library. It filled the space with character of its own, the books rebelling against their masters' particularities and demanding a disorderly presence of their own right. His private library exploited the fragility of her wife’s curious mind and predisposition for literature. 

After years of spiritual resignation, it was like a breeze of fresh air. She would be the first to admit the only sin she had committed against her husband —Besides being a republican, which was a shameful secret of hers—: To sneak and  borrow books from his private delectable collection. A stupid, brash decision. Especially considering Aemond's serious disposition and angsty, hostile character. But the Princess couldn't help herself when she saw the chambers unattended. Rationalizing the invasion of privacy, because they were now married, for better or for worse, those books were inside their marital chambers. 

Prince Aemond knew of his wife’s intrusion, of course. When she came back to return the innocent theft, she realized with horror that he had left a single stone where the book she had taken was. Feeling partially offended by the gesture, she had returned the volume to its place and accommodated the fatal stone on the left side of his bureau, near the candle. 

It became a routine. The wife would take a book from his collection, and he would place the rock marking the missing spot. Whenever she finished her reading, she was to accommodate the stone at the left of the candle in his bureau. A childish game, perhaps. But it was the most similar thing they had to a sense of cordiality and shared duality. Everything else remained as sterile as before, when either party tried to approach the other, they were quickly reminded of how repelled they felt towards the others flaws, perceived or not. 

It did exhaust her a good deal, the uncertainty of the marriage. Having to be sly and poise about how she managed herself, or to be met with heavy words of disapproval. Targaryen folk, seemingly closer to Gods than to men, were not to be played with, even if you were a wife to one of them.

Another cause of exhaustion and hysteria was one much more primal. She dreaded the day he finally came to claim his bride's virtue. It was not about discomfort with marital relations, but rather a feeling of vulnerability. Having to be at his mercy, his whim, it was the fact that she had to wait until the night his patient character faltered. 

There was also the matter of Larys Strong, of course. The King was like a brute, too focused on his next rush to have any sense of planning or concerned for the politics of consummation. The Dowager Queen was the one who pushed his limits when needed, and she seemingly had Larys Strong at his mercy, or the other way around, of that, the Princess was not entirely sure yet. 

Sir Strong loved not the Gods or the Crown but himself and the thrill of keeping people hostage by the bondage of secrets. He enjoyed parading around the corners, lurking, observing. He liked the authority that the Crown granted him, the preposterous work of secrecy. He translated the King’s rule into language that sounded vaguely religious, vaguely patriotic. Only to whisper it to the ears of maidens and servants. 

It may have been paranoia, but the Princess could have sworn that  the maidens took special care into looking for any red spots on the marital sheets. The Dowager Queen had been paying more attention to her, with that stern frown of hers. Real or imagined, it was dangerous to wait this long. 

Tired of the whole ordeal, she decided that the occurrence was unavoidable, and at a reasonable cost of her sexual condition if anything, she could end the anxiety and the whispered chastity by taking some kind of agency and doing the first step.

The Princess soaked in rose water the scented brazil wood chips her mother had prepared her with. Using them to brightly paint her cheeks,  nipples, and lips with an irresistible shade of contrast, and leaving her hair messy, determined to look desirable enough for it to be done tonight. 

If the Prince was surprised to see her laying in bed, naked, when he walked into the chambers, he did not show proof of it on his face. The husband quickly took off his clothes, as well. He looked tired, even under the dim, warm yellow lights of the room. She smiled upon the view, a signal of relief, upon anything else. For the first time in weeks, her husband did not seem troubled and upset, only tired. The consummation might end quickly and without any fuss. 

As soon as he laid on the sheets, she got up from the side of the bed that corresponded to her, and straddled the Prince. She wasn’t sure of what he may like, but she figured this was the safest and less degrading way to go about the night. She felt her nipples harden against the cold nightly wind, and she could also feel her husband's length hardened underneath her. Without any regard for her feelings, her core began to leak in anticipation. In that moment, she thanked the Gods for a handsome husband, and she thanked them for making him a contemporary in age. This wasn’t going to be as difficult as she initially thought. 

For a moment, his eye seemed to shine with something similar to the spark of lust. Just for a moment. 

It was gone almost as soon as she had noticed it. And with a soft but recognizably firm move, he got her off him. 

“There is no use for it. We don’t carry the duty to fulfill the royal lineage” The Prince sounded cold, and spoke in a manner similar to how one explains a simple concept to a child. It scandalized her. Had he had no consideration at all for her safety? Was he blind to the watchful eyes of the maids? Was he not a man, or is it that you were insufficient in his eyes? 

And if the offense wasn’t enough to hurt the Princess, he unknowingly added another striking statement, just for good measure “They are also an emotional lability. One that mustn’t be created recklessly taken in times of war”

Her heart seemed to sink in the depths of her stomach. The humiliation, sparked by anger washed over her head and burned her cheeks with an unbearable warmt. Without saying a word —and trying to contain the tears that this robbery of agency had caused— she left the marital chambers. 

Another brash, emotionally driven decision. A misjudgment, letting go of the calculating measure of taking care of what the court might think. The Princess needed a break from the claustrophobic room, from its cleaning, from her Husband’s cold offenses. How can he speak of children so callously? She had thought of her husband as a devout family member. Even the monster they had for the King loved his children. The Princess wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of forming a family in an arranged marriage, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that her husband was rejecting her lineage and the single act of agency that she was truly permitted:The possibility of making happiness of her own, of raising her own. Feeling rudely rejected, and more lonely than ever before, she compulsively walked into the messy physis of the garden. Tears fell on her cheeks, and went down into her neck, she had no family, no friend, no kin to confide into. For the first time since her arrival, she felt the honesty of her situation falling from her tears.

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Notes: Omg the first part of the first long form series that i have ever conceived 😭😭 if anyone is interested in proofreading or if you see any mistakes please let me know! English is not my first language and I always make so many mistakes. Take care of one another!

— Sidey xxo

[em-writes-stuff-sometimes]

gevivys (beauty) │ Chapter 5: Resolve

terms of endearment ‘verse: see my Masterlist for the correct series order!

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 │Chapter 9 │Chapter 10 (COMPLETE!)

Synopsis: Daemon returns to King's Landing after ten years in exile, intent on rekindling his affair with Rhaenyra. He wasn't expecting you - the revelation changes everything.

Hello, all! I know, it’s so soon! But this one is a cobbled-together piece of stuff you’ve already seen, just padded out a bit more. I figured I might as well push it on out now, so here ya go! Featuring Jason Lannister for the very first time, to finally bring all this shit together a bit more cohesively. As always, thank you to my boobear @ewanmitchellcrumbs​ for reading though this and reassuring me it isn’t total shite!

TRIGGERS: incest, purity culture, age gap, general Daemon grottiness, allusions to non-consensual sexual situations.

According to most, Daemon Targaryen is a man in possession of little capacity for feeling beyond what is required to partake in lechery and barbarism. He knows himself; his disparagers are not entirely wrong. Except for one important, essential truth—he would die for his family. He loves his family.

Love, as he understands it, is what he has always felt when looking upon his brother, upon Rhaenyra. No matter the strife that has torn him from his kin time and time again, he can freely acknowledge that such sentiments will remain everlasting.

A kicked hound is one most loyal, he thinks with no small degree of bitterness. Or perhaps the meanest hound is more loyal. Either way, I am the hound—and my master, the king.

Love is what has wrenched harsh and twisting in his heart whenever he laid eyes on you, a toddling girl-child eternally eager for the cossetting attentions of your uncle, your kepa—and he had always been kepa, never Viserys, no, your father had never received an honour beyond being called ‘papa’ like any common pauper—now a stranger in so many ways.

The garden and the morning repast had served to ignite the wellspring of all his wildest desires, delivering to him seemingly all he had ever wanted in a prospective bride—young and beautiful, obedient and good-tempered, Valyrian of colouring and of status. But you had seemed smaller than your younger self, trapped in a prison of your own making, hidden beneath layers and layers of chaste courtesy and painstaking banality. And then, accompanying you to the Dragonpit had given him a curious glimpse into the power you kept hidden, the ancient strength of your lineage slipping through the cracks in your genteel veneer.

Regal. Arcane. These are the words that had come to mind watching you interact with your mount, none other than the famed Cannibal himself. Something of the majesty of the Conqueror lay within you, waiting for the necessary spark to kindle the flame. Your exchange with Athfiezar—your silent fearlessness, your devotion to your savage beast, your unassuming poise—reminds him that, for all your equally meek and mild-mannered nature, you are still Targaryen. You are still his sweetling.

It is this that elicits a consuming curiosity to know more.

You are an interesting puzzle, a strange contradiction, one whose buttermilk skin and pert teats and spit-shine lips should herald as a welcome to sample the delights hidden by the fabric of your darling little gowns. Yet, you act not as a silly young thing learning of her sway over men—teasing with fluttering lashes and bit lip and lilting tone as Rhaenyra had—but as a docile girl disinclined to press the limits of propriety as all maidens do. You ride the most savage dragon in the known world, and yet there is no such quality in you that echoes your mount’s disposition; instead, a loveliness that is near to cloying, pure and unadulterated and surely too good to be true. You are a fucking princess, and yet you are perfectly content to fade into the periphery, drawing little notice to yourself and seeking none from those around you, not even your own blood. A scholar, quick-witted and erudite, but somehow still so sweetly unknowing of the depravities that rule the minds of men who lay eyes on you.

You fascinate him. And his newfound realisation does not lessen his temptation to fuck you—to ply you with praise and charm and no small hint of avuncular affection (the reminder of your shared blood thrills him to the bone as always) so that, over time, you might be swayed to give your maidenhead to him—but, rather, that it results in a metamorphosis, a muddling, his longing mingling the base needs of the flesh with a rekindling of his fondness for you.

Which is why he cannot stand the presence of Jason Lannister.

“Why are you entertaining this farce?” Daemon asks, fists clenched at his sides. “A pompous fuck like him has no business anywhere near her.”

“Whatever is the problem, brother?” Viserys says distractedly, hunching over his miniature of Old Valyria and studying the replica of the Targaryen manse on the outskirts with intent. “Jason Lannister is Lord Paramount of the Westerlands. By any standard, I would think he is the best contender for her hand.”

That fucking model of his. Daemon resists the urge to smash the king’s stone city into rubble, though doing so might grant him the attentiveness he is sorely lacking from the man. “Are you not hearing me? He’s an arrogant cunt. He’d bore her in a sennight, let alone whatever hellish span of time an entire marriage would last.”

Viserys hums noncommittally. “She will make do”—he waves Daemon off—“as all noblewomen must when their fathers command them to marry. That is her lot in life. Besides, Lord Jason is one of the wealthiest men in the realm, and I am told he is rather pleasing to a lady’s eye. She could do worse than he.”

His brother’s remark is a fair one—of the trio, Jason is the preferable choice. And what a fucking miserable choice it would be.

He rolls his eyes. This is going nowhere. “And Tyrell? Your idiot son? Are they the ‘worse’ you speak of?”

Between that foppish peacock, his spiteful little twit of a nephew and the prancing lion, the latter just barely scrapes by as the best of the bunch.

“Enough, Daemon.” The king sighs, finally deigning to look up from his pile of rock. “These are the suitors she herself has chosen. I care not for the particulars, only that the girl should be wed before her eighteenth name day. Each of them possesses some quality I am sure she finds worthwhile…” At that, he pauses, brow furrowing. He squints up at Daemon. “What is your interest in the matter, anyway? It has naught to do with you.”

Shit. Daemon makes an evasive comment—something about sullying the purity of their noble lineage—and departs as quickly as he can, eager to escape the risk of Viserys’s suspicion falling on him. It would not do for the man to suspect his intentions toward yet another of his daughters.

He does not intend to seek you and the lord out, truly, but it nonetheless does not surprise him to realise that, upon freeing himself from the wrathful spiral of his own musings, his feet have taken him to the very same garden where he had first laid eyes upon you again after so many years, where you are now enduring the attentions of the insufferable Lannister patriarch. On this occasion, Cole is nowhere to be seen, and the entry is instead guarded by one of the Cargyll twins.

Daemon spies you on the path just inside, a careful distance placed between you and Jason. Though he cannot make out your expression from his vantage point, he observes well enough the flourishing bow the lord proffers in your direction, the polite curtsey you extend in return, his smug prancing step as he leaves your company. He sees the manner in which your shoulders droop, your head bowing as you turn to wander past the great tree and out of sight. My poor girl.

And then his view is blocked by a garish wash of red and gold.

“Prince Daemon,” Jason says with a haughty simper. With a curt nod, Daemon wordlessly returns the salutation. His lack of warmth is noticed. The Lannister lord hesitates for a moment before returning to his condescending civilities, forcing a relaxed stance. “I was most glad to hear of your return.”

He doubts that. There is little love lost between him and the lord. Jerking his chin toward the garden, he asks, “Leaving so soon, are we? I had thought the entire afternoon was devoted to this little outing.”

Jason chuckles awkwardly. “Well.” He scratches his beard. “The princess has another engagement to attend to. Something about a tutor.”

Thank the gods for that Lysan fellow. They had never met, but Daemon is certain he’d like the man well enough.

“Doesn’t concern you?” he asks, scarcely bothering to conceal the scepticism from his tone. At the confusion on Lannister’s face, he clarifies. “That she’d rather spend time with her tutor than with you?”

“Why would it, my prince?” is the answer, self-assured as ever. “He is old, and frail. Best for her to spend as much time with him as she can before she leaves for Lannisport.”

That genuinely irritates him, and not simply the notion of you being shipped off to the lurid monstrosity that is Casterly Rock. Even he knows that your meetings with your tutor are less obligations and more gatherings of friendship—your spirit would surely crumble if you were denied your dearest companion after being coerced to marry.

Daemon suppresses a sneer. “Your confidence is… admirable.” If misplaced, he wants to add.

“There is little competition to be found,” Jason says with a toss of the head. His tawny hair rustles in the gentle breeze, giving him the appearance of the sigil his house has claimed. Fucking ridiculous. Then, the man has the audacity to clap a palm against his arm. “Never fear—I shall take utmost care of her. She’ll want for nothing as my lady wife.”

He shrugs off the over-familiarity, stepping out of reach. “For a time, perhaps. And in a decade? Two? A princess of the realm has no business playing nursemaid to her husband in his dotage.”

He is older than I, he thinks. And if she is truly considering him above the others, then…

“I might be the eldest of her suitors, yes,” the man says, a tense smile disguising his offense poorly. “But I have a rather substantial inheritance, unlike the Prince Aegon, and my constitution is more… pleasing than the Lord Tyrell, I’m sure.” His mouth curves into a knowing smirk at that, leaving Daemon with no uncertainty as to what he really means. That little— “I would not dismiss Jason Lannister from the competition just yet. She will choose me. I suggest you accustom yourself to reality, Prince Daemon.”

He grunts dismissively, incensed. There is no reply he can give in this moment that won’t incite the Lannisters to break faith with House Targaryen; and so, he chooses to remove himself from the odious man’s presence entirely, stalking past with nary a word of farewell.

You sit where your younger half-sister had a scarce moon’s turn ago, eyes fixed toward your lap, turning an ornament about with your small fingers. As he nears, the lion salient glimmers in the sun, gold against gold in dazzling vulgarity. Of course, he’d gifted her something with his own fucking sigil on it. What a worthless bequest.

When he calls your name, you hardly react. Your gaze flickers up to him for a mere moment before falling once more, resuming your surveyance of the item in your grasp. There is a pensive expression lingering in your frown, the crease in your brow. It tells him all he needs to know of your true feelings for the Lannister lord, regardless of the man’s own delusions.

“Why—you look positively miserable, sweetling,” he says, settling himself beside you. You glance up at him again, sullen pout puffing out your lower lip. Though your disposition is so downtrodden, it is tempting to press his thumb to that lip, to push inside and feel the wet warmth of your tongue pulse against his flesh in a coquettish tease. “Not enjoying being courted? The gifts, the attention, the romance…”

You take the bait beautifully. Starting at his reference to the pendant in your hold, your nostrils flare exasperatedly. “No. No. I—I just—” You stop, shaking your head. “Never mind.”

“Go on,” he cajoles gently, lowly. “Tell Uncle Daemon.”

It is all the encouragement you need. “There is little romance to be found in this—this charade.” You sigh, eyes fixed on some minute detail past his head. He’s struck by the melancholy in your voice. “These men—Lord Jason, Lord Denys, Aegon—they do not want me. They want an idea of me. A Targaryen bride with pale hair and Valyrian blood. One who will give them children they shall make little effort to raise, a silent doll to clasp onto and show off at feasts and balls… as though possessing me is somehow meaningful. They do not—they do not see me.”

It’s here your voice cuts off strangely. He wishes it hadn’t, for he finds himself enthralled by the mournful monologue that paints a picture of the loneliest girl in King’s Landing. There is something yearning and haunted in that saccharine stare of hers, he thinks. A babe with her arms held out, wailing at the world as it leaves her abandoned in the crib. It’s an eerie echo of a conversation that took place a decade prior, though the lead role lacks the infantile petulance of the previous star.

He finds himself retracing those steps almost without realising.

“Idīnnon dēmalio syt verdilla mērī issa. Dīnakson toliot, gaoso gaomagon kostas.” He is testing, prodding, waiting for what might result from his efforts. Marriage is only a political arrangement. Once you are wed, you can do as you like.

The words make your cheeks flush fetchingly and your brow wrinkle once more, glancing back at him apprehensively. Pretty pink girl with a pretty pink blush; how far down does it spread? You swallow—pause—look away, wrestling with a thought. You peep back up at him.

“Se skorverdon jessivo aōt kesrȳsi jiōrtas?” you ask with surprising cynicism. You exhale loudly, staring at some fixed point in the distance. “Ābrazȳri buttā, riñar daor, mērpāves… Tolī jaelan.”

And how much joy did this bring you? you say. A wife you hated, no children, loneliness… I want more. The quiet longing in your voice is palpable.

He grimaces at the mention of his bronze bitch—he’d rather not know how widespread the knowledge of the circumstances around her… accident… had been in the wake of his departure.

“What is it you want, then?” he asks, switching back to the Common Tongue, the corner of his mouth already contorting in anticipation of the naïve response. True love, a happily ever after… We don’t get to have happy endings, he thinks to himself.

“I want someone who loves me,” you say, pressing on crossly at the huff of laughter that escapes him. “I never said I would love him!”

The pessimistic elucidation takes him aback. Again, it is not exactly what he had been expecting. Full of surprises today. He tips his head consideringly at you, inviting you to continue.

You hesitate for a moment.

“I… They say my father loved my mother. I believe it, but—” You swallow, the corners of your mouth turning down as you mull over your words. “They say he had a choice when baby Baelon was born. That he could cut her open to get the babe out, but that it would mean her certain death.”

Gods above. Where in the seven hells had you learned that piece of information? Viserys had kept the circumstances of Aemma’s death under tight wraps, never even deigning to mention it to his own brother. It was pure happenstance that one of the maids he enjoyed fucking at the time had been present on the unfortunate day.

Your eyes glisten as you speak, limpid pools of lilac glowing like fire in the light. “I do not think I could ever choose my own life over my child’s—but they say he did not even ask her, that he just… held her down while they—How could I ever trust a man to raise the babe I bore him if he would be willing to butcher his own wife in her childbed?”

He watches as you clench your eyes tight, set your jaw and exhale a few shuddery breaths. When they blink open, they are no longer so tear-bright. Daemon suddenly admires you for it, for the way you so ruthlessly suppress weakness. He wonders how often you’ve been made to force back your pain for the good of your family.

“What happened to your mother was a terrible tragedy, sweetling.” He reaches forward to finally grip your small, pale hand in his. It is cold and dwarfed entirely by his own. “But you cannot live in fear forever.”

You make to pull your hand away. He closes his grip tighter upon it, coercing you to look up at him properly.

“When hope is gone, what choice left is there but fear?” It is a whisper, carried on the breeze, and the thinly veiled misery pains him in the chest, right in his heart.

I thought that beating thing was black and dead by now, he thinks to himself.

You shake your head, smile. The picture of the melancholy maiden fades from view as you affect an appearance of energy once more, gentle and muted as it is. “I know my father loved my mother, and so love is no guarantee of loyalty. But it would be helpful, I think.”

“You see love and loyalty as intertwined, then?” he cannot help but ask. He is intrigued by this rare showing of spirit, of vitality, a resurrection of his baby niece from long ago. It is you, finally—his little girl, only now you possess the curves of a gold-gilded whore and the thousand-year gaze of an ancient, arcane being.

“Do you not?” Your head is tilted like an inquisitive bird’s, artlessly assessing. “You cannot have one without the other. Loyalty without love makes for an easy traitor, and love without loyalty makes for an unhappy marriage.”

He laughs again at the latter part of your pronouncement. A sweet, trusting little filly waiting to be broken in.

“There are many ways to love someone, princess.” He ogles you shamelessly, savouring the affectation of outraged bewilderment painting your countenance. “I imagine you’ll find few of them in the marriage bed.”

He waits for you to question him—to ask him what he means, to ask him to explain, to teach you, show you—but instead, you pull back, taking all the warmth from his palm with you.

“I dislike your implication, Uncle,” you say stiffly, returning your hand to your lap and nestling it between your thighs to retain the heat.

Fuck.

He backtracks raising his hands in a jesting show of defeat. “I meant nothing by it, gevivys.”

Beauty. It is an apt title. An underwhelming one, even. Surely there is little else more beautiful than the sight you make here, now, a rich blush spreading along the unblemished expanse of your chest—regrettably enclosed by pale damask just above the protrusion of your tits—the planes of your throat, not quite travelling up to decorate your cheeks.

You sigh. “You never do.”

Daemon lets the conversation lull, deciding to instead look upon the little revelation before him. You are an interesting puzzle, one whose decorum in the face of his gentle compulsion—that same persuasion he had so often utilised to get fetching girls to strip bare for him and show off their equally-as-fetching cunts—had instead left him lacking. The body of a slut and the mind of a scholar, all wrapped up in wide eyes and honey-sweet words and wild hair the shade of Old Valyria. Of home.

A wild thought seizes him. If he leans forward, he could do it. He could grip you by the back of the neck and pull you to him, press his lips to yours and coax you past your panic and fear and into a hot, sweeping rhythm, a push and pull of tongue and teeth that would set you both alight. And from there, how simple would it be to murmur pretty praise as he lowers you down, raises your skirts up, cleaves you open until your blood wets his cock with the proof of his claim, incontestable, not even by the king himself? The deed would be messy, perhaps distressing and no doubt painful, but it would solve several issues at once. He would be free to do as he likes with his lascivious desires after you are made to wed him, and you would be free from your pitiful suitors and given a husband worthy of you. In time, the hurt and shock and fright would fade, he knows it.

He could. He could. He—

The spell is broken. Your attention is diverted by the yells of a dark-haired boy as he bowls his way to you, throwing himself across your lap with a cry of your name. Daemon tries not to glare at young Lucerys as he tries to roughhouse with you. Having somewhat learned the schedules of his family, it baffles him somewhat that the child is not at his daily lessons. Should Laenor not have him now?

The thought must conjure the man himself, the Velaryon scion appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Laenor’s expression is forbidding as he strides over to you and his son, silver locs swinging with the velocity of each step. With his glare affixed to his face, he reaches a hand down to you in silent command, staring daggers at Daemon all the while.

What the hells is his problem?

You take hold of your goodbrother, bewildered, and allow him to tug you gently from the bench beside Daemon. Lucerys slides from beside you with a rustle, easily revolving around to dart toward the grass. You are already grabbing at the boy’s wrist to stop him running off.

Daemon watches Laenor attempt to rearrange his countenance into something less violent. “Would you take Luke off to the training yards, sister?”

A look of vague incomprehension crosses your face at the question. At least she senses the oddity, too, he acknowledges.

Laenor’s head turns down to where he sits, and it is then that it dawns on him that his nephew-by-marriage has very possibly been watching him stare at his baby niece’s tits for longer than he can claim plausible deniability of.

Ah, shit. The darting, mistrustful gaze suddenly makes sense.

“Of course, Laenor,” you say sweetly, biddably.

Daemon cannot help but wonder what else you might comply with if gently persuaded. He glances up at you from where he sits, smirking as you turn to him.

“It seems we must part for now, sweetling,” he tells you. He ignores Laenor’s grimace from behind you.

“It does.” You shift lightly. It is clear to see that there is something about your shared conversation that has unnerved you. The notion sends a trail of perverse excitement through him. He wonders what other reactions he might prompt out of you with gentle teasing. “I—thank you, Uncle. For listening.”

The words are honest, free of artifice. It is surprisingly warming to hear. When you make to depart, he calls you back.

“What—no goodbye kiss for your beloved uncle this time?” he asks, hoping he’ll bait you into action. He determinedly disregards Laenor’s huff, eyes trained on you as you swallow with trepidation before quickly making the short few steps back to him.

Your knee settles on the seat beside him, clearly meant to be no more than a brief resting place so that you may carry out his implicit request and leave—if not for the way in which your skirts gather around your leg in a manner assured to result in your toppling over should you attempt to rise without fixing them. Daemon turns his head to yours as you free yourself from the tangle. Up close, closer than he would ever dare get usually, he can see each lash that frames your eyes, the hairs that sprout from your brows, the slick cherry bloom of your mouth—a whisper-sweet gather of plump, plush fruit he wants, needs, to take a bite from.

Would you let me, little girl? he wonders.

You gasp, a short little breath of surprise, and lurch away lightly at the closeness. A brave little thing, you return to him, pressing those precious petal-soft lips to the skin of his cheek. Your covered breasts press involuntarily against his arm.

Fucking hells.

“Sȳz bantis, kepus.” Good evening, Uncle, you say in that light little accent of yours, an unintended provocation of his basest yearnings.

With that, you bundle the boy up in your capable little hands and make for your destination, the Cargyll knight falling into formation behind you.

“Care to explain—well, all of that?” Laenor asks.

Oh—yes. Daemon pushes himself from his seat, deliberately stalling while he thinks of a response that isn’t what the fuck how the fuck when the fuck and why.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he says idly, slyly, glancing over at him.

“No!” His goodnephew leans forward into his space. He is taken aback by the vehemence in his tone, uncharacteristic of the bumbling, affable man. “You don’t get to do this to her. Not this one. Not this time.”

“Whatever do you think I plan to do to her?” Daemon laughs, wondering at the answer himself.

Whatever would she let me do to her?

Laenor sighs, steps back.

“Look.” He nudges him to walk alongside as they make for the garden’s entry. “She’s not one of your whores, Daemon. She’s just a girl. She’s not the type to play your twisted little games, so leave her be—please.”

He is warmed by the defence of your goodbrother, an admission of familiarity and care that is sure to have flourished since the man’s entrance into the family some years ago.

“What makes you think I have any intention of—how did you put it—playing games with her?” If he were a little less honest with himself, he would be affronted by the manner in which Laenor has jumped straight to an accusation. But Lord Flea Bottom’s reputation is inescapable, even after so many years. “Perhaps my objective is pure and wholesome.”

“Right.” Laenor snorts, shaking his head as he folds his hands behind his back. “You’re far more likely to fall in with her horde of suitors than to believably claim familial interest.”

True. And yet… why not? He’s conceived all manner of plots to satiate his wants, from drunken fumbles in the dark to his half-baked impulse from but a moment ago. Unlike his previous conquests, though, he doubts the need will dissipate after a single fuck. You are too important to him—his precious girl turned darkest desire, the only woman he could ever deign to carry on his line with.

Viserys has been pressuring him to seek out a bride. He mightn’t be happy with the prospect of his brother asking for his daughter’s hand, exactly, but there is surely no debate that he is the best contender. Not Jason. Not Denys. Not fucking Aegon. Daemon. And, well, if the asking should go poorly—how simple would it be to whisk you away to Dragonstone, to speak the vows and seal the deed before it can be undone? There is no risk this time, no Iron Throne to lose, no treaty or agreement that cannot be broken…

He can see it now. Your sweet little face peering up at him, marked with his blood, lip dripping red with the pledge of entangling your souls together in savage Valyrian custom. Your pretty little eyes wide with maidenly shock as he breaches your untried cunt, tight and pulsing and hotwetwarm, binding you to him irrevocably. The slow waddling of your gait as you round with child, his child, his sweetest babe bringing forth life of her own, belly ripe with seed and leaking his spend—

“Laenor,” he says slowly, eyes glinting as his lips upturn in a wide grin, “I do believe you have the best ideas.”

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[dwellordream]

“Young women have always been for sale. In the fifth century bc, Herodotus describes the practice of selling Babylonian daughters at a yearly auction in his Histories. He wrote:

They used to collect all the young women who were old enough to be married and take the whole lot of them all at once to a certain place. A crowd of men would form a circle around them there. An auctioneer would get each of the women to stand up one by one, and he would put her up for sale. He used to start with the most attractive girl there, and then, once she had fetched a good price and been bought, he would go on to auction the next most attractive one. They were being sold to be wives, not slaves. All the well-off Babylonian men who wanted wives would outbid one another to buy the good-looking young women, while the commoners who wanted wives and were not interested in good looks used to end up with some money as well as the less attractive women.

The Babylonian men paid a bride price, but some of their money would come back to them because the young women were given dowries, which their husbands would administer even if they could not raid it. This exchange seems odd but was not so unusual in the classical world, where women served to cement together two male-controlled families. If a married daughter died without children, her money would go back to her family, which removed any incentive to harm her.

At the time, virginity was not always necessary to a girl’s successful marriage—the Lydians prostituted their daughters to raise money for their dowries. Because of the dangers of childbirth and high rate of early mortality in ancient Greece, it was common for wealthy relatives to provide not just their daughters but also their poor relations with dowries. Athenian law even required that the State dower poor women of just passable attractiveness; teeth were all that were required. Because Athens was under constant threat from its rivals, it depended on its young women to provide it with a constant stream of new soldiers.

Classical literature is filled with accounts of creative daughter disposal. In some memorable verses of The Odyssey, the father of Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, then thought to be a widow, urges her to marry the suitor with the most gifts. Greek fathers took care not to raise more daughters than they could dower. Outright infanticide was abhorrent to ancient Greeks, but they did practice “exposure,” wherein parents intentionally left unwanted infants exposed to the elements. They believed that the gods could choose to save the abandoned children, thereby eliminating their agency while achieving their aims. Husbands were not permitted to run through their wives’ dowries but neither could the wife.

A Greek woman’s dowry yielded about 18 percent per year, and if the couple got divorced, either party could request the dowry. It was returned to a woman’s guardian or, in certain cases, kept by the husband, who paid 18 percent interest to his former wife’s guardian for her support. The wealthier the family, the more likely it was that a marriage would take place between two young first cousins. Such marriages keep money in one family and tended to correlate with periods of cultural instability, when power was held by a few important families. Cousin marriage was particularly popular among the higher echelons in Elizabethan England, the Antebellum South, and in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain.

Greek girls who died in childhood were mourned specifically because they did not fulfill their destiny as wives and mothers. Their epitaphs make reference to their failure to marry, and the girls were quickly writ into myth. Like Persephone before them, they were considered married to Hades and dwelled, as wraiths, in the underworld.

In the Roman period, women did not fare better. Catullus sums up the Roman attitude toward marriage, writing, “If, when [a young woman] is ripe for marriage, she enters into wedlock, she is ever dearer to her husband and less hateful to her parents.”

The middle class continued to sell their daughters at regional markets throughout most European countries during the Middle Ages. For the upper middle classes, the social stasis of the period made marrying an heiress one of the only means to improve one’s social status, and it was nearly impossible to do without deception. The middle classes began to consult marriage brokers—a growing cottage industry in Europe—who would help them plot their rise, reconstruct their family histories, then help them relocate in order to achieve success in another part of the country. If a woman did marry up, she would find that she had much less control over both her body and her daily life—where she walked and even what she ate—than she had in a middle-class environment. In the upper classes, the legitimacy of heirs continued to be of primary importance, and as such women’s movements were intensely regulated.

Women were progressively more visible during the Renaissance. Increased trade created a new culture of conspicuous consumption, propped up by merchants and explorers who transported new goods through Genoa and Venice, Zanzibar and Constantinople, outward to European capitals and the known world. Newly available luxury goods made life easier and more enjoyable—tobacco, tea, coffee, silks, and spices facilitated a culture of male comfort in which wives and daughters played an important though entirely passive role. In ancient Greece and Rome women were kept mostly in the home, but during the Renaissance men put their velvet-swaddled wives and daughters on display, trotting them out in public, where they would often sit separately, saying little if anything but fulfilling a necessary decorative function. A woman’s beauty, or wealth, was most of all a statement about the social status of her presiding male, be he husband, father, or brother.

For much of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, sumptuary laws on food and goods defined and limited social space. By legislating who could obtain specific fabrics, foods, drink, and other luxuries, governments prevented servants and the middle classes from masquerading as aristocrats by denying them access to the materials necessary to appear richer than they were. Pre-Reformation Europeans were just beginning to let go of feudal social organization.

Though more people now lived in cities, family patriarchs had long made decisions for their large clans and were not interested in giving up a privilege that had served them so well. Daughters were married to create important and lasting connections between families. Those who could not be married off in a way that would benefit the clan were often forced into nunneries. For a noble family, sending a daughter to a convent or forcing her into spinsterhood was far preferable to tainting a family line by permitting her to marry beneath her station.

This system of dispensing with daughters worked peaceably for hundreds of years, until Henry VIII came to need a son and heir. When his attempts to have his first marriage, which had produced no sons, annulled by the pope failed, Henry charged ecclesiastical and secular legal scholars in England with finding a way to divorce his consort Catherine and marry his pregnant mistress Anne Boleyn. Their solution was divorce and breaking away from the Catholic Church. Henry began the violent dissolution of Catholic monasteries in 1536. It lasted for four years, during which the crown plundered church lands, sold them off to rich allies, and used the surplus cash to wage dubious wars in France. For wealthy young women, newly Anglican, there was an additional change, perhaps the single most significant social change women would see until suffrage. Their safe haven—the convent—was now gone.

The absence of nunneries sent numerous marriageable aristocratic young women into circulation. When once they would have been in the country, awaiting the marriages arranged for them, or preparing to enter a convent, these young girls were now brought to court, which is where they were most likely to find husbands. By the time Henry’s daughter Elizabeth I began her reign in 1558, the atmosphere surrounding marriage had a new urgency.

Elizabeth’s rule began in religious chaos after her predecessor, her half sister Mary, violently restored Roman Catholicism to England. Elizabeth spent the better part of her first years on the throne fighting for her father’s Protestantism in an effort to fend off those who wished to depose her. Her legitimacy was questioned with every decision she made, and she understood that her courtiers were her key to maintaining the throne. She tightened her control over the aristocracy by reducing its size to a new low. She stripped disloyal aristocrats of their titles or made it known they were not welcome at court.

It was against this tumultuous backdrop that Elizabeth, in an effort to form beneficial social and political alliances, began having young ladies ceremonially presented to her at court. These presentations were small affairs and limited to the daughters of Elizabeth’s most important courtiers. They took place in the queen’s “withdrawing room,” a private room, but located next to larger public rooms, where she could go with a smaller party. The girls were led from a public stateroom into the smaller adjoining room at Hampton Court palace, so that other courtiers would know who was being favored.

At the more private ceremony of presentation, the young girls curtsied to the queen. The young girls had a vivid experience of being watched and assessed, enhanced by the fact that of the roughly 1,500 people in regular attendance at court, only fifty were women. These presentations came to be referred to as “drawing rooms,” and they engendered a curious experience that blended ostentatious display with the familial and private, a mix that would continue to characterize the debutante ritual for its duration

Many of the presented young women served her as attendants and became intermediaries between Elizabeth and the wider circle of her court. They helped Elizabeth to exert control over the nobility by creating an elegant buffer between the monarch and her courtiers. In order to present a petition to the queen, one first gave it to a lady-in-waiting, along with a fee that the lady in question would determine based on her closeness with the queen. Elizabeth encouraged her ladies to charge exorbitantly for this service—not so much because they’d have some independence, but so they would have enough money to be able to gamble with her.

She also regularly rejected petitions based on their lack of generosity toward her ladies. The queen could also be capricious—Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting could not marry of their own volition. Elizabeth Vernon spent a week in prison (with her new husband the Earl of Southampton) for marrying without the queen’s permission. Lettice Knollys was banished permanently for marrying Elizabeth’s favorite courtier, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. When Elizabeth discovered that another lady-in-waiting, Mary Shelton, was secretly married, she attacked her and broke her finger.

Elizabeth’s social standards and rituals persisted after her death, with queens taking over control of drawing rooms and social presentations even when there was a king on the throne. Elizabethan presentations-at-court served a very clear political purpose. Though they bore little resemblance to the feverish social theater that characterized the fully developed debutante ritual of the nineteenth century, these court presentations provided the foundation for modern debutante culture and served, too, as its myth of origin.

They show the important link between society and politics, a symbiotic relationship that only deepened as the ritual became institutionalized and spread outward to all corners of the British Empire. Elizabeth’s backroom maneuvers—quick conferences with her ladies or political advisers—provided the precedent for the many political meetings that took place at debutante parties in later centuries, and emphasized the soft power of social settings, which were controlled by women who understood that the way to power was not always hard work or even fortunate birth, but judicious conversation next to a sloshing punch bowl or quivering trifle.

The Stuart monarchs who followed Elizabeth continued the tradition of the drawing room (“with” was dropped from “withdrawing room” in the late seventeenth century), which retained its function as a matchmaking tool. Elizabeth’s successor, James I, arranged the marriage of his favorite courtier, the charming spendthrift James Hay, to Honoria Denny by granting Honoria’s reluctant father a title and royal patent. While these high-level marriages took strategy, marriage law remained chaotic. There was no legislation that defined marriage, and there were no protections for women after they were married. Rather, the absence of law meant that women might be forced into marriage by their fathers, married by capture, or tricked into marriage.

The age of consent to marriage was twelve for women and fourteen for men, and contracts were often made during the “unripe years.” It was a particularly dangerous time to be an heiress. During these years women could inherit property. Inheritance law was not clear on whether her property would become her husband’s upon marriage. Without knowing if they could control their property, many women resisted marriage.

Restrictive regulations for daughters intensified after they were wives, especially if they were considered to have broken proper codes of behavior. If a wife were to be convicted of adultery, she would lose her dowry or marriage portion and her husband could make a good case that she could punitively lose her property as well. There was no comparable financial forfeiture for adulterous men, and courts habitually disbelieved women who tried to defend themselves against claims of adultery. It is not difficult to explain widespread female acquiescence.”

- Kristen Richardson, “Marriage (Market Price).”

[sisterofsomeone]

Till Death Do Us Part

Chapter 1/10

Chapter 2

Summary: On a wedding day in Baldur’s Gate, a marriage is sealed with a sanctified bond. A powerful magic that allows your minds to meld and cannot ever be undone. It is also required to share your darkest secret for the bond to be bestowed. There is a common myth passed around that once, a very long time ago, a woman was tricked into marriage by a demon of sorts and only found out when they wed. Every wedding at that moment the room falls silent, waiting for another scream, another myth making secret to be revealed. You just never thought you would be witness to it.

Series Warnings: Wonwoo x fem!reader, slight Seokmin x fem!reader (because I can't help myself), established relationship/situationship, angst, fluff, swearing, drinking, smoking, there are references to end game BG3 and spoilers for the whole game so please proceed with caution! smut MDNI 18+, unprotected sex, pet names (baby girl, pretty girl, princess), oral sex (male and female receiving), breeding kink, slight daddy kink, size kink, reader has a vagina that gets described as a pussy/cunt, slight dub-con for a second then clear consent, (more will be added as the series goes on!)

Word count: 3.5K

Author's note: Hello again! I was originally going to write this as a oneshot, but I just kept writing and writing and felt that I really wanted to try and flesh this world out. So, it's becoming a series! I cannot promise regular updates as I am in my final year of university, and start back up at my graduate job in september, but I am really enjoying writing this so I'm aiming for at least once a month, but maybe more. I do also have another series in the works which I want to post soon as well, so keep on the lookout for that one! I’ve never written anything like this before so bear with me if it’s not very good! Please enjoy, I really do hope this is entertaining for you, and have a wonderful day/afternoon/evening! Lots of love, Caitlin <3

This is a work of fiction and in no way is meant to represent the actions, ideals, or attitude of the idol Jeon Wonwoo.

Baldur’s Gate. The jewel of the Sword Coast. Granted, you never knew there was supposedly a dragon sleeping under the city before the invasion, but still. A wonderful place to live. Life here was easier for someone like you, the eldest daughter of the Apothecary Merchant. Father had spent most of the money he made to dress you in the finest of clothes, hire chefs to teach you to make the finest of meals, and ensure you were surrounded by the best trained ladies in waiting possible. Status meant everything to him, and you knew you had to marry up to please him. Being the eldest of three girls, you were schooled in house making, cooking, mathematics, business, politics- anything and everything that would endear you to one of the knowledgeable and wealthy bachelors your father was hoping to wed you to. Your younger sisters however were afforded the luxury to follow their throws of passion and learn dance, music, or geography to teach and travel. You didn’t much care for home making, your fascination with the foul words in other languages usually left your tutor giggling after you begged her to teach you them. You were smart, quick with numbers and well versed in politics and business. It was something your father loved about you. The daughter that would lift them even higher in status. You were his political pawn.

You were with your mathematics tutor when she burst through the door. Your mother, her face flushed, chest rising and falling rapidly with her heavy breaths.

“The- The King wants you to attend the ball.” She spoke. “The ball for the princes to choose their brides. He has called for you specifically.”

“Oh?” You didn’t so much as look away from your work, still toying away with the problems in front of you.

“Yes! Oh Gods girl, what are we to do with you?” Your tutor excused himself as your mother swanned towards the large windows. She was as dramatic a woman as you had ever met, and you loved her for it. Turning to face you, her dress billowed, and it struck you yet again how beautiful she was. You knew she used to be the catch; the young daughter of a cattle farmer swept into the Sword Coast by her wild fancies and taking Baldur’s Gate by storm. She married your father in a rather quickly arranged match, both being only 21 and your bump already starting to show through her clothes. She had always held a special place in your life, and the closeness in age only solidified your bond.

“You’re to help me avoid it. You know I want nothing to do with the royal family.” You raised an eyebrow, smirk playing on your lips as you turned another page in your book.

“It’s such a shame. You should go, if not for yourself but for me. It says and family and you know how much your sisters and I would love it!” Her fingers danced across the edge of the paper, twirling the red silk ribbon that used to hold the envelope closed as she read and reread the words.

“You know, there must be a specific reason they invited you. I heard only four girls and their families were invited specifically by name.” He voiced wavered, tone light, eyes meeting yours with that twinkle you knew meant trouble. Sometimes it felt like you were the parent in this.

“Will I need a new dress?” With that she squealed and swept you into her arms.

“Oh darling! You are going to love this!” Untangling her arms from around you she ran from the room and to the staircase.

“Girls! Darling! Come downstairs, your sister has an announcement!”

It was dark outside when you were finally allowed to rest. Your mother had dragged you and your sisters around every tailor in the city, eventually settling on a beautiful, glittered gown from the Facemaker’s that made it look like you were dripping in starlight. Your sisters marvelled at you, them seemingly more excited for your prospects than you were. As you stood before the full-length mirror, watching the way light danced across the dress you caught your own breath. You stood tall, the shimmering fabric laying against your body as if made solely for you. Your face now seemingly had the allure you always attributed to your mother, the colour of your eyes mirroring her own beautiful hue. It was the first time you felt a fraction as beautiful as her. That’s why you let your mother buy the dress, but you’d never tell her that.

The evening was warm as you took a book from the library and made your way to the balcony. Lighting the lamp on the table you slipped yourself onto the velvet covered seat and pulled the small blanket around your legs, hiking them up to your chest. It was here you sat, absorbed in the words of scholars until a small cough caught your attention. This was routine at this point, so you put your book down and pulled yourself from the seat, dangling a hand over the railing in front of you before leaning your head over. The man clasped your hand and smiled up at you.

It had all been an accident, you meeting Seokmin and Wonwoo. You weren’t supposed to be walking unescorted to Sorcerers’ Sundries, well technically you weren’t supposed to be walking there at all, but what Father didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. You had stopped but for a moment to watch the magic show at the front entrance when you felt a hand dip into your pockets. You grasped their wrist and turned, only to be met with a small child.

“I’m-I’m so sorry miss, please let me go.” The tiny tiefling looked terrified, eyes wide and lower lip trembling. Immediately you dropped your guard, gaze softening and grip on their arm loosening.

“Child, no need to be scared I won’t call the Fists. But let’s not go picking anymore pockets hm?” They nodded, thanking you as they scurried away. Thats when you heard the laughter. Two tall men, eyes dark and trained directly on you and the scurrying child.

“What are you two laughing at huh?” The slightly broader one cocked an eyebrow at you, and the other pointed behind you. There you saw the scared tiefling, not so scared anymore as them and their friend – who you hadn’t noticed until now – were poking their tongues out at you as they waved a purse above their heads.

“That’s mine!” You shouted as they hurried off, tails wagging and giggles filling the dark streets.

“You fell for that hook line and sinker.” One of the hooded men let a plume of smoke escape his lips and curled them into a smile. “Are you new here or something?”

“No, no. Look at her, she’s a sheltered little princess I bet.” The other said, closing the distance between you and him. You finally got a good look at him. Dark eyes, golden tanned skin, a smile spread across his face that lit a fire in your stomach. He leaned down, face now only inches from yours. “Such a sheltered little princess, aren’t you?” There was an earthiness to him, a woody smell that danced under a zesty citrus. This was no commoner’s perfume.

“Who are you?”

Wonwoo’s eyes shone from below you on the balcony, that same smile lighting that spark deep in your soul. He was intelligent, worldly, but most of all, he was kind. He climbed up the balcony as usual, pulling you into his embrace and kissing you. It was hot, fiery and passionate. It always felt like he was swallowing you whole, devouring every part of you. He pushed you backwards, lowering you into the plush of the loveseat as his body covered your own. His mouth never left yours, tongue playing against your bottom lip as you gave him entrance. He moaned, fingers running through your hair and pulling, revealing the length of your neck to him. He kissed down it, careful not to leave any marks as he did so.

“My beautiful girl, my pretty girl.” His lips left a searing trail down to your chest, his hands trailing down your sides, bunching up your dress to reach your core.

“Wonwoo, baby, we can’t. Not tonight.” It was almost useless, his lips never stopped working against your neck, teeth nipping at your pulse point. “Wonwoo, baby.” A whine left him that had a throb course through your body and set that flame burning.

“Don’t tell me to stop baby please.” He kissed you again, hands never stopping their assault on you. “Please don’t tell me I can’t play with my pretty girl’s pretty pussy.” His eyes darkened, teeth bit down harder, and you could almost feel the punctures from his canines.

“This pretty pussy has been invited to the King’s ball. This pretty pussy might have just been sold off by her ever-scheming father.” He stalled at this, hands stopping their assault and mouth leaving your skin.

“What?” His eyes were trained on yours as you swallowed thickly.

“We got the invitation today. Gods know how he did it. But he did.” Wonwoo moved off you, settling into the space beside you.

“Are you happy? With the idea I mean?” You let out a short laugh, cold and harsh.

“Happy? Why would I be happy? No one has ever seen them, been allowed near them, and what? I’m supposed to marry one of them. Be used as breeding stock. Finally put all this stupid training to use.” He laughed softly from beside you.

“You think this is funny? My life being sold off to the highest bidder and you laugh?”

“No! No, it’s not like that I promise.” His arms were around you again, pulling you into his chest. “I think there’s more to this than you know. Go to the party. You might be pleasantly surprised that’s all.” His lips were on yours again. “And no matter what happens, I’ll never let anyone else touch you the way I do.”

The morning broke through your curtains and the man beside you stirred. His chest was warm beneath your cheek as you kissed the arm draped around you.

“Darling, you must go before we get caught. Again.” He groaned, rolling the pair of you over, trapping you beneath him. That smile was back, softly lit by the warm glow of the sun pouring in through the windows. “Wonwoo, baby please.” His lips were soft against yours, pouring love into you like there was no tomorrow. His fingertips danced across your skin, raising goosebumps in their wake. He rolled his hips into you, want evident at the broken gasp that left his lips. “Wonwoo baby.” You moaned out, fingers moving to his shoulder blades. He rolled his hips again, the slickness of your cunt allowing for him to rock smoothly and bump his cockhead into your clit. “Wonwoo, we can’t.” But your body gives you away, the roll of your hips as you shake beneath him has him lining up instantly.

“Princess, say no right now and I won’t do it. But say yes and I’ll give you a baby. I’ll fuck you so full it has no option but to stick. You’ll be mine.” Your lips chased his as you nodded frantically against him.

“Yes Wonwoo, yes yes yes.” He pushed in, cock stretching you as you raked your nails down his back. His thrusts were deep, angling his hips to hit that spot inside of you.

“My princess wants a baby yeah? Wants me to fuck her full?” He growled into your ear, hips smashing into yours.

“Please, wanna make you a daddy.” You purred back. His hand snaked between your bodies, fingers rubbing circle after circle into your swollen clit as you arched up into him. He never stopped kissing you, never stopped whispering praise into your mouth as you came around him.

“Please Wonwoo, want you to fill me up. Please.” You dug your nails into his skin, drawing a hiss from him. He’s panting, sweat lining his forehead as he thrust into you again and again, bringing you to orgasm over and over until you couldn't take it anymore. He pushes you over the edge again and again, having you crying his name into his mouth over and over as you beg for him to finish in you, mark you as his.

But he doesn’t. He pulls out as he always does and finishes onto your thigh. It’s over then, the light shifting to a cold blue as the sun shifts behind a cloud. He moves away from you, gathering his clothes and dressing.

“When will I see you again?” He pauses, eyes meeting your own.

“You won’t see me like this for a while. At least, not this version of me.” You don’t know what that means, but he doesn’t give you any time to ask as he kisses you again so softly. His hand caresses your face, thumb rubbing your cheek as a tear falls from his face and onto yours. “But you will see me again, I promise.” As he pulls away, he places a final kiss on your forehead before stepping back towards your balcony. You let him go like you always do, but not without that horrible hole ripping through your chest.

The night of the ball drew closer, and there was no sign of Wonwoo or his brother. You were alone. The lessons ramped up, your father wanting there to be no chance of failure. You were his pawn, and he was so ready to make that final check. Your mother tried to get through the walls you put up, your sisters gushed every day about how lucky you were, how you were going to have the life of your dreams. But you weren’t. You wouldn’t be with Wonwoo. Wouldn’t be able to kiss him again, wouldn’t be able to hold him. You’d never be able to make him a dad.

“Your invitation madam?” Your mother was positively glowing with excitement, your sisters each hanging off one of your arms, you suspect to stop you from running. Your mother presents the invitation, and the guard cocks an eyebrow. “Please, this way for special guests.” You were escorted towards a separate entrance, a large pair of white wooden doors beset by giant boars on each side. The doors were parted for you, and the entrance was the most beautiful you’d ever seen. You were ushered inside, your sisters gasping and pointing at the artwork lining the walls. But your eyes were drawn to the three other girls.

“They’re your competition child.” Your father pulled you aside from your sisters and scanned you from head to toe. “But you’ve got a brain to best all of them. Be smart, be strong. Be the girl I raised you to be.” You glanced back over to them. Each one you knew to be a member of one of the aristocracies, as you were. You vaguely remember having a run in with the half-elf, but if she remembered you, she gave nothing away in the cold gaze she returned.

“If everyone is now here?” A voice sounded from the stairs above you. Your eyes followed where it was coming from, and the woman you saw standing there was the most beautiful you had ever seen. Dark eyes, with even darker hair cascading down her back that held soft curls that bounced as she began to walk towards you all. You had never seen this woman before, but something pulled at you from your stomach as if you recognised her.

“You are all chosen specifically by the princes themselves. My sister's sons wouldn’t allow for our intervention, so feel very lucky. Some of you would never have made it this far.” Her eyes fell on you at this, and your father bristled beside you. “Now, if you’ll follow me.” She sauntered towards the large doors across the marbled floors. You moved to follow the queen's sister, silently cursing yourself for not recognising her as your legs pulled you along before your brain could think of a reason to turn and run. She demanded that the girls line up, manhandling you all into a line with you left on the end. Your families were to follow along behind, and not say a word.

There was a commotion behind the doors, music filled whatever room you were about to be ushered into and laughter and conversations could barely be heard through these giant doors. You tried to smooth out the non-existent wrinkles of your dress, hands moving on their own as you chewed on your bottom lip.

There was a moment of silence before the doors swung open, and an even longer moment of silence when all the eyes in the ballroom fell upon you. Your gaze flitted from person to person, not a single face you couldn’t put a name to. Families with daughters much better suited for this match burned holes into your skull from jealousy. You were standing there, with the whole world at your fingertips and their daughter wasn’t.

You were ushered down the steps before you, the sea of people parting as the four of you made your ways forward. Your eyes were on the floor as you had been instructed to do so, never for a second daring to look upon the men sitting at the other end of the ballroom.

“This is the half-elf Carmae of the Boat Merchant.” You were right about recognising her then.

“This is the high elf Dauphine of the Gold Merchant.” You heard her light steps, the small “Hello sirs.” that sounded so beautiful falling from her lips as she greeted the men.

“This is the wood elf Avalynne of the Cloth Merchant.” You were next.

“This is the human Y/n of the Apothecary Merchant.” You stepped forward, curtseying as you were taught, eyes moving up to acknowledge the men before you.

“Hello sirs-“ Those eyes. That smile. Wonwoo sat before you, hand rested on his chin as he surveyed you. You felt a churning in your stomach as you let your eyes fall upon Seokmin beside him. His soft curls sat upon his head as he smiled ever so softly at you.

“We can now begin.” The music started up again as the crowd of people swallowed you up. Your sisters beamed at you as people swarmed you. They wanted to know where you got your dress “The Facemaker.” You politely replied. Who did your hair? “My mother wanted to.” You smiled at them. You were pulled from conversation to conversation. Every family wanted a piece of you. But your mind was back on Wonwoo. Your heart calling out to him across the floor.

His eyes followed you, dark and cold like you’d never seen them before.

“Wonwoo, calm down. She’s yours I’m not going to take her.” Seokmin leant over to his older brother, giggling slightly at the older man’s demeanour.

“I know you’re not. But they might.” He followed his brother’s gaze to the men being introduced to you by their fathers. “It seems like being the prince’s chosen gives a girl a certain…” His eyes scanned the crowd of men now surrounding you. Your father ever so keen to get you introduced to as many of them as possible. You were trying to be amicable, that soft smile on your face hiding the discomfort you felt. The burn of jealousy coursed through his veins as he watched you laugh and smile at these fools. If only they knew what he’d done to you, the noises he could pull from you with just his tongue or fingers. The way you beg him to cum in you, the tears in your eyes as he fucks you through another orgasm. You’d be too much for those idiots, they couldn’t make you feel how he did. Couldn’t make your body react the way he did.

“The princes will now have their first dance with each of the chosen.” Wonwoo and Seokmin stood, and the floor was cleared again. You finally found yourself walking back towards the man who held your heart in his hands and smiled. Wonwoo noticed that it finally reached your eyes.

“It is lovely to meet you Y/n.” He placed a soft kiss against the back of your hand.

“It is my honour sir.” You smiled even wider this time as he drew you closer as the music began.

“I hope you’re a good dancer.” He flashed you that dazzling smile once more as the music began up again.

“I hope you are too sir.” You felt the flush creep up your cheeks as the two of you started to dance. Your eyes glued to his as he led you across the floor, his never once leaving yours. You finally got what he meant that morning. While this was a surprise, you’d help him play the part for as long as it took to get your Wonwoo back.

[tgrailwar-zero]

Servant Matrix: SUZUKA GOZEN

Class: Assassin True Name: Suzuka Gozen

Gender: Female

Alignment: Neutral-Evil

Height/Weight: 164cm (including the fox ears) / 51kg

Source: Suzuka-no-Soushi, Tamura Sandai-ki, and others

Region: Japan

ENDURANCE GAUGE: [X/X/X/X]

MANA CHARGES: [ X / X / X / X / X / X ]

COMMAND SPELLS: [ ------ ]

A heavenly demon that begets evil unto evil.

Legend says that she's the daughter of the Demon King of the Fourth Heaven, sent unto humanity in order to spread chaos, corrupt mankind, and turn Japan into a country of evil. For whatever reason, she didn't drive Japan into evil as her father ordered and instead romped around the country appealing to her own desires.

A thief. An oni. A celestial maiden.

The legendary bandit chief and warrior of the Suzuka Mountains, Tate Eboshi. The legendary demon sent to ravage Japan, Suzuka Gongen. The legendary celestial maiden and slayer of great demons, Suzuka Gozen. Someone who has worn many names and faces as time has passed on and her name was passed through the lips of the people.

While not a Saber, she still has her swords-- the Sanmyou-no-Ken (Daitouren, Shoutouren, and Kenmyouren). Some say that these blades were hers to begin with, others claim that she stole them from her (false) husband Otakemaru in order to weaken him so that her partner Sakanoue-no-Tamuramaro could slay him, though some also say that she slew Otakemaru herself. A woman of conflicting legends, who has experienced her own share of trage--

"But like, that's totally not important! I'm a JK now! And a super cute one at that! Hey, Master, do you have LINE? Omigosh, you should totally add me~!"

…She says these things with a very convincing smile, though the earnestness behind them is very difficult to ascertain. Apparently, she's just your average girl that you'd see and meet anywhere. Bubbly, stunning, and always sporting a smile that could melt even the coldest of hearts.

Still, it's best to remember that she's a brutal, demon-blooded, thievi--

"Oh, and aren't these fox ears, like, super adorbs? And my tail is so fluffy! I wear it much better than a certain jackal-faced courtesan, don't I? Come on, give them a feel! Ahaha, are you blushing~?"

…Right. 'Super adorbs'. And that's that. Would one even dare to ask what she's even doing on and around the Solar Cell?

"I mean, that's not like, important or anything? So, nope~♡"

Alright then.

Strength: D

Endurance: D

Agility: A

Mana: A

Luck: B

NP: EX

SKILLS:

Presence Concealment (JK) (A+) - The skill was originally 'Presence Concealment (Bride)', but was changed to match her current sensibilities. Hides one's presence as a Servant. Suitable for spying. It is possible to disappear completely and become almost impossible to be detected, even against a Servant's perception. However, efficiency will decrease once preparations to attack are taken.

A skill made devastating with her Mystic Eyes. A unique variation where even if she isn't actively hiding, her nature as a killer is difficult to discern. One could see her sharpening her sword, ask her outright 'are you planning to kill me?', and she'd reply 'Omigosh, do I look like someone who kills people?' with a look of deep offense. After all, JK's aren't usually killers.

...By the time you reached the conclusion of 'I guess not…' your head would already be effortlessly removed from your body.

Magic Resistance (C) - Cancel spells with a chant below three verses. Even if targeted by greater magecraft and Greater Rituals, it is difficult for them to be affected.

Riding (B) - Talent for riding. Can ride most vehicles, but not Phantasmal Species.

Mystic Eyes (Papiyas) (B→A+) - Charm males through eye contact, making them madly in love with Suzuka Gozen. While common legend asserts her as the daughter of the Demon King of the Fourth Heaven, a lack of information on said Demon King and her original legend being heavily based in oral tradition has led some to believe that she was the daughter of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, and it simply got corrupted over time. While Suzuka insists her father is the Demon King of the Fourth Heaven, some aspects of the latter have mixed in, giving her traits related to the Demon King of Desire- Mara.

Her Mystic Eyes are supercharged. While it can be somewhat avoided with Magic Resistance, since its usage is limited to charm, it can’t be help that one will find her lovely. Suzuka usually keeps the glamour of her mystic eyes turned down, so when she uses them at full power its rank is increased to A+. Even when turned down, one can't help but find her immensely charming.

Divinity (A-A+) - Determines the divinity attribute of that body. As the daughter of the Demon King of the Fourth Heaven, Suzuka Gozen has high Divine Spirit aptitude. Furthermore, with the use of certain skills, rank can gain a +.

Divine Power (B Rank) - A fragment of a god’s power. She can freely move objects around at will. However due to manifesting as Servant, it suffered a Rank down and she can only move items that belong to her, most notably her swords.

NOBLE PHANTASM: Otakemaru's Bane

A Noble Phantasm centered around deception and betrayal. Her core as an Assassin.

A Noble Phantasm innocuously presented as a near undetectable passive ability. Subtle magic energy emanating as a 'weakening aura'. Rather than directly facing an opponent, Suzuka Gozen puts herself in a situation where she's considered an ally. The longer she is in the presence of the target of the Noble Phantasm, things such as conceptual defenses begin to weaken in effectiveness, and weaknesses are gradually revealed to her until she finds the right time to strike.

And like Otakemaru, they always fall.

NOBLE PHANTASM: Love Blast - Demonic Sun-Shower

The Noble Phantasm derived of the blade 'Daitouren' (Greater Communion). Daitouren is the blade that she most often uses, and tends to favor on most occasions.

With the proper preparations and chants, Suzuka can unleash a shower of blades, up to 250 swords. The accuracy is not always the most precise, but she possesses skills and Noble Phantasms that can turn an aimless barrage of blades into a deadly rain of mystical steel.

NOBLE PHANTASM: Blessing of Wisdom

The Noble Phantasm derived of the blade 'Shoutouren' (Lesser Communion'). The blade forged by the Bodhisattva Manjushri, when drawn, grants the user immense wisdom. Strikes become more precise, battlefield awareness increases,

While Suzuka Gozen is an adept fighter, the Blessing of Wisdom drastically increases her intelligence regarding all things… including the way she conducts herself. As thus, she is very insistent about not using this Noble Phantasm.

"Like, it's just not the sort of thing a JK should be using, y'know?"

She says casually, without elaborating further.

NOBLE PHANTASM: Trichiliocosm

Sanzendaisensekai.

The Noble Phantasm derived of the blade 'Kenmyouren' (Divine Manifestation).

The details of this Noble Phantasm are sealed. However, this Noble Phantasm is why Tamamo-no-Mae considered her as the potential 'backup brain of the Solar Cell', allowing Suzuka Gozen a level of processing power that eclipses anything Tamamo could even dream of using.

However, the great power promised with it can come with a heavy price, Suzuka Gozen seals this Noble Phantasm, and most likely would have to be forced to use it with a Command Spell.

[darkrpfinders]

hello. 25+ seeking 21+ to do a mxftm ocxoc thread, with me as the cis m. please heed, this will include dead dove 🕊️⚰️, such as breeding kink, potential dub/noncon, forced feminization, though my muse is a strict gay man, so any detrans will be used for humiliation only.

are you seeking to abuse your tboys? make his life succumb to the whims of a wealthy, very particular freak? be treated as a princess and a common whore? look no further.

i present a man with no worldly concerns, a man who is charismatic, persuasive, and manipulative. a kind farce in the face of vulnerable, pitiful yc. big fan of power dynamics, if it means an apocalypse world where yc owes mc, a normal modern verse where yc has spent too much to salvage and mc comes to collect, a fantasy modern verse where mc is a king and yc is his (unwilling) bride, is entirely up to us.

i ask that your character be over 25, not a brat or subby. premade ocs are preferred but not required. extremely slow writer but ooc chatter is a thing. i will not rush you for replies so please do not rush me. i will not ghost you, if i am uninterested i will say so. expect a reply weekly or so. discord only writer, no tupper, average about 600 words. 🌘 let's brainstorm together.

.

[prpfz]

hello. 25+ seeking 21+ to do a mxftm ocxoc thread, with me as the cis m. please heed, this will include dead dove 🕊️⚰️, such as breeding kink, potential dub/noncon, forced feminization, though my muse is a strict gay man, so any detrans will be used for humiliation only.

are you seeking to abuse your tboys? make his life succumb to the whims of a wealthy, very particular freak? be treated as a princess and a common whore? look no further.

i present a man with no worldly concerns, a man who is charismatic, persuasive, and manipulative. a kind farce in the face of vulnerable, pitiful yc. big fan of power dynamics, if it means an apocalypse world where yc owes mc, a normal modern verse where yc has spent too much to salvage and mc comes to collect, a fantasy modern verse where mc is a king and yc is his (unwilling) bride, is entirely up to us.

i ask that your character be over 25, not a brat or subby. premade ocs are preferred but not required. extremely slow writer but ooc chatter is a thing. i will not rush you for replies so please do not rush me. i will not ghost you, if i am uninterested i will say so. expect a reply weekly or so. discord only writer, no tupper, average about 600 words. 🌘 let's brainstorm together.

Leave a like, and anon will get back to you!

[oasismaking]

𓂃₊𖤓 GENSHIN IMPACT . . . THAT DANCING CIRCLE EMBODIED EVERYTHING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE   ☼.⋆｡ life has always been the end, while it is wisdom that shall be the means

▍ note:  this verse is focused on my personal interpretation and worldbuilding, found in traevaler and yuanshn, which are canon-divergent in some areas. 

the story is the same: abbas al-asim marries, in a celebration with more pomp and circumstance than sumeru has ever been witness to in its long existence. it’s an auspicious arrangement; nafeesa farid is all a man could ask for in a bride. she is a beauty with no equal, a worthy bride for a powerful merchant family. her line is that of renowned scholars—akademiya professors, viziers. her father was the general mahamatra before he renounced his position. she, herself, is a terrifyingly wise woman, as famous as she was controversial amongst her fellow rtawahists for her theories.

that was why i married your mother, abbas tells his son. any woman could have charmed her way into his heart with wealth and beauty and cleverness. only nafeesa farid could have turned her red eyes to the star-mottled skies, bared her teeth in laughter that was as cruel as it was sonorous, and asked if he wanted her to find his death amongst the stars.

kalim does not learn to find death in the stars, though it is his constant companion. he is the prized jewel of the asim family, and abbas and nafeesa shower their only son in more gifts than one child will ever have use for. nafeesa teaches him to read the constellations and find his way home, to know the stars by their names and their stories and the shapes they make across the night sky. his father teaches him how to haggle, how to charm, how to smile at a room of people and leave them wondering who was the master and who the puppet. they give him evergreen gardens; mechanical companions that serve tea and play chess with him; cedarwood music boxes with troupes of tiny dancers. every year that he turns older is met with ecstatic celebration. any other child would have grown spoiled and conceited amongst such wealth, but kalim only turns sweeter with time, always one to smile at the servants who serve him and ask them of their wellbeing, always one to give thanks and blessings to his parents for raising him, always one to offer his food and clothing and toys to the less fortunate.

in truth, it’s not wealth, but love that he deeply desires. the comfort of knowing he is earnestly cared for. an adoration no material comforts can ever hope to replicate. he hides his worries behind his cheerful nature. after all, isn’t all he’s given proof that he is in his parents’ hearts? and if not, the fact that they keep giving him things must mean that they are trying their best.

it is this sweetness, perhaps, that makes the asims forget: not everyone is as kind as their beloved son.

he’s still too young to fully grasp the weight of such cruelty when one of his father’s business partners declares him an obstacle. such a pampered boy could never be a good leader. if only abbas turned his attention to his business, to his fellow merchants, instead of the foolish notion of training a child to take his place. it’s a pity, but what is to be done about it? there’s nothing for it, no choice. the boy has to go.

for a time, it becomes common throughout teyvat for children to just... disappear. they slip out of bed to play at night, they run away from their tutors to explore the streets, they’re lured away with promises of candy and gifts. the next day, their families search high and low for them, calling their names out until their voices grow hoarse. a merchant’s son, an aristocrat’s daughter, the child of a baker, an actress’s only son, a wealthy family’s heir. they’re mourned by their loved ones, but not long after, people stop asking after them. it’s a tragic, but inevitable occurrence. what else is to be done, except accept it, and hope their soul can find rest?

kalim’s parents do not accept it. they look for him everywhere, through the whole of sumeru and the neighboring regions. they call in favors, they hire mercenaries, they pay whatever price they must. they search and search and search and search, but it’s of no use. it is as if the earth has opened its mouth and swallowed him up, leaving nothing behind.

it’s almost a year later that their son returns to them. kalim arrives at their door haggard, hair permanently bleached of all its color, a vision held in his trembling grip. and yet, he still smiles when he sees them. he’s a miracle child, one of the few who has come back. but it’s apparent that the boy who has returned is not the one who left. kalim still wears his smile like a mask, and beneath its surface lies a sadness his parents cannot seem to soothe, no matter what they try. he refuses to speak about where he went, or how he got back. his kindness seems less sincere, more a desperate bid to please. they try to return to the life they had before. kalim continues his education, even taking astronomy lessons with his mother at her behest. abbas and nafeesa watch their son intently, fearing the day that he will disappear once more, and this time, he won’t come back home. kalim tries his best to be the child they want. he laughs and dances and entertains everyone around him, using his hydro vision to dazzle his audience. it’s not enough to satisfy his parents, though, who still grieve for the child they lost. and kalim can’t help but feel like he’s failing them, somehow. that maybe the boy they want is someone different, someone better, and kalim, as he is, will never be able to make up for the son they truly deserved.

sometimes he finds himself staring off into the distance, or sitting alone, lost in thought. something has changed, and there is a restless energy in his chest that he can’t put a name to. it calls to him when he brushes his fingers across the surface of the water, when he lies down on the grass and presses his ear to the ground. the distant hum of a melody that sounds both familiar and strange. an ancient heartbeat thrumming beneath his skin.

when kalim was younger, nafeesa would sit him on her lap and tell him about the nature of things in teyvat: the gods, the aranara, the seven elements. the ley lines, carrying with them the flow of elemental energy that connects the world. great veins that flowed underneath the earth. and, though their connection had grown faint and difficult to sense, the ley lines still sang, and their voices were the most beautiful, soothing music a person could hear.

listen, his mother would whisper. the world is always speaking, and so too, is the earth. she has much to say, and you need only listen.

so he listened. when his parents were away, or the nights when he couldn’t sleep, kalim would lie outside and close his eyes, and focus on the faint call of the ley lines beneath his home, pulsing and thrumming with an energy all their own. when he was pushed into the akademiya and he went without protest, hoping to please his father, he heard the ley lines called out to him from within the earth. and when he left the akademiya, his blood singing and his heart in his throat as he ran to the forest watchers in hopes that they would believe his claims that a withering zone was expanding across the forest much quicker than anyone had predicted, the ley lines seemed to laugh and cry in joyous triumph, and sing him a song so loud and sweet, he could still hear it in his ears when he finally came home.

presently, kalim has abandoned his studies and joined the varana—tighnari hopes to eventually convince him to go back—using his connection to the ley lines in their research. he refuses to explain how he seems so aware of the state of the forest and the earth around them, no matter how many times they ask him, and has comfortably settled into his role as the group’s oddball. at least, until dottore arrives in sumeru.

☼.⋆｡ VERSE NOTES

kalim was kidnapped by the fatui as a young child and subjected to similar experiments like the ones collei would go through years later. he's now connected to teyvat's ley lines and can sense elemental energy clearly.. should anything serious ever happen to the ley lines, kalim will also suffer. he hopes to stop the effects of the withering long enough to find a way to break the connection.

in possession of a hydro catalyst. moderately skilled in hydromancy beyond his vision, and uses it as a tool when he wants to read the stars.

he says he's forgotten or surpressed the events of his captivity, but he actually remembers every detail with absolute clarity. as a totally unrelated point, kalim learned how to manage a fatui skirmisher's rifle.

during his first run in the akademiya ( sort of, kind of, not quite but by parents ) kalim belonged to amurta, at his father's gentle insistence, and to his mother's dismay. when he returns years later in hopes that it will help his research, he joins spantamad instead.

kalim refuses the call to adveture for as long as he can, leaving jamil to have his main character moment with the traveler. once dottore rears his head in sumeru, he joins in.

gets along well with his fellow vanara, but isn't really close with them. that changes once he meets cyno, who informally introduces him to tighnari and collei. kalim and collei develop an odd bond as survivors of dottore's experiments.

[serpentface]

Operas and War Farces

Red Leerya, a famous courtesan and actor in the citystate of Wardin, displaying two theatre traditions now common in the Wardi Empire. 

The shogokurza opera "The Sundering of the Askosi Bride", a mythological drama regarding a princess who is betrothed to an ogre king.

Shogokurza opera (literally "Vipers Winding Dance", referring to the sea of that name) originated from prior operatic traditions of the former East Burri Empire, and retains many ancestral traits not common to other contemporary Wardi theatre (notably the traditional all-male casts, flowing dance style and energetic percussive background music.)

The operas follow a 4 act structure and traditionally contain a chorus that functions as an omniscient narrator that guide the story along. Actors wear makeup designed to enhance expressiveness of the eyes and lips while still not being highly exaggerated (unlike fully painted faces that characterize most natively Wardi theatre traditions). Actors are usually elaborately dressed in flowing material that accentuates their movements.

These operas span a variety of subject matters, but are most often historical or mythological dramas and tragedies, with most ending in at least one tragic death. Romances and comedies occur, but are more rare. Each opera revolves around a cast of archetypal character roles (the hero, the lady, the trickster, the monster, the elder- and variants within).

Leerya is an akoshos, meaning a performer who specializes in the roles of women in the opera, considered beautiful and highly adept at movement and mannerisms deemed 'female'. This term is also slang for a minority social role of those deemed men and/or eunuchs who wear women's dress in daily life for non-religious reasons, and are assumed to be passive partners in sex with men (this varies in actuality). Akoshos use the language's masculine pronoun and titles (hence 'he'). Not all akoshos actors are akoshos in daily life, but Leerya is both.

-----

The war farce of King Dirvel Tygerstread, recounting the failed invasion of Godsmouth by the aforementioned Royal Dain king.

War farces (Jkomachi) originated from ancient ethnic Wardi traditions and gained mass practice and greater diversity in the contemporary Wardi Empire. These plays are satirical treatments of past or present wars, characterized by scathing mockery of political enemies or infamous figures in Wardi history, embodied in the character role of the Bucbuc Mache ("great-great general" (double repetition of an adjective is a tonal indicator of sarcasm in the Wardi language)). 

Historically, these plays were considered more 'highbrow' and could be characterized nigh-universally as propaganda designed to depict enemies of Wardin (or its individual city-states) as monstrous and bufoonish and spur xenophobic sentiment. As time went on, war farces became seen as a more 'lowbrow' form of entertainment for commoners. This development effectively democratized these plays and allowed greater contribution by minorities and non-citizens, and many contemporary war farces openly mock Wardi politicians and warlords (though the full spectrum still exists).

War farces combine vocal performance, music, dance, and acrobatics. There is typically little or no singing, and dialogue is spoken in verse in an antiquated and formal dialogue. They are characterized by expressive makeup that exaggerates facial expressions, high-energy physical performances, and often slapstick elements.

These satires are now generally regarded as a low form of theater due to the bawdy and crude humor and clownish antics that often define the Bucbuc Mache role, and a significant association with prostitution (brothels are some of the most common sites of performance). As such, it is uncommon for esteemed courtesans such as Lemnha to perform in war farces.

---

Red Leerya is a significant exception. He came into success through his Bucbuc Mache portrayal of the king Dirvel Tygerstread, an infamous Dain king who led a failed invasion of Godsmouth a century prior. He is an extremely popular figure for war farces as he is near-ubiquitously hated, even by the people of the Tygerstread kingdom itself (though many contemporary plays use him as a stand-in for the squabbling kings of the North Finns, an unrelated royal Dain people considered enemies of Wardin).

Leerya was originally a common sex worker who would frequently perform in plays, as is custom. His natural red hair and talent for highly expressive performances and comedic timing gave him great renown in the Dirvel Tygerstread role, becoming locally famous after a particularly riveting act where he managed to successfully integrate a belligerent drunk spectator into the performance and deftly play off the dramatic interruption (there was a fight). He was found this way by Maman Otto, who paid off his contract and trained him to become a lemnha. While he now largely performs more 'highbrow' art for wealthy clients, he revisits the role every so often.

[mrfeenysmustache]

The Moon Turns the Tide

Chapter 6

For @crescent-dreams SessKag Fest day 6 prompt- school. And now I’m all caught up!

Summary: After a stroke of bad fortune, Kagome’s life is uprooted. She is moved into an unfamiliar community where she expects life will be very different- and much more miserable- than she’d hoped. But luck, as she’s learned, can turn on a dime.

Also read on: AO3

——————————————————-

“Were you able to finish your reading, Miss Higurashi? Or did I shatter your concentration too thoroughly?”

“Truthfully I wasn’t really reading it when you came in. And once you left I realized it was a detailed account of how to build ancient farming equipment used by beetle yokai from a distant island and I confess I gave it up all together. I took a walk in the gardens instead.”

“Ah yes, Lady Akamine keeps her gardens well manicured all throughout the year, and I believe she has some rather rare blooms planted in the westernmost corner.”

“Does she? I didn’t make it over there today! I’ll have to try tomorrow, if the weather permits.”

“Allow me to escort you. I am well versed on several of the exotic plants in that corner, if you should like to hear about them.”

“Oh I would!”

Every jaw at the table hung open after Sesshomaru and Kagome’s brief but friendly exchange, a million thoughts, questions and assumptions zipping between each shocked skull.

But turning back to the delightful braised quail on her plate, Kagome ignored them all with a secretive smile.

—————————

“Time for Mr. Taisho’s Flower School?” She asked, taking Sesshomaru’s offered arm.

He narrowed his eyes and she giggled, scrunching up her nose as he stuck his in the air.

“Do not make light of the quality education you are about to receive.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Taisho, it won’t happen again.” Her voice quivered with an ill restrained laugh, and he sniffed, his nose going higher in the air.

“See that it does not.”

Her body thrummed in excitement as he led her leisurely through the garden in a direction She hadn’t taken yet, and he pointed out several new species of plant she’d never seen before. They hadn’t even arrived to the promised corner and already she was filled to the brim with all sorts of information about a wide variety of plants, herbs, trees and flowers.

It wasn’t even a subject she would normally find quite so thrilling, even if she did have a great love of nature, but getting to hear so much of Sesshomaru’s voice at once felt special, like she was being treated to something not many had earned.

“Around this corner you’ll see-“

“Oh!”

Unwrapping her arm from around his, Kagome dashed forward to the large, deep green bush, burying her nose in the lush, oversized blooms.

They smelled sweet, as she’d hoped, but that wasn’t what was truly special about them.

“They match your eyes!” She cried, grinning as she looked between him and the shocking gold petals. “It’s a perfect match.”

“Hn. These flowers are named for my kind, in fact.” He said, softly running the pad of one finger on a velvety petal. “A yokai plant my own mother grows in her gardens. A Lunar Rose.”

“Lunar Rose. You would expect it to be silver with a name like that. Does that mean your moon marking is common for Silver Inu?”

“No. There is only one line of us. This flower was cultivated by my great, great, great grandfather for his bride.”

“How romantic.” She whispered, gently touching one of the blooms, her mind drifting off to a love so strong it birthed an entirely new species of flower, and how her oaths in life seemed to veer away from such a love.

“Perhaps.” Sesshomaru replied, picking one of the smaller flowers and placing it behind Kagome’s ear. She blushed at the soft, distant look in his eye as he took her in. “It suits you.”

“The dinner bell is rung!” Their chaperone said, and silently, Sesshomaru offered his arm and led her back to the house.

———————

Mr. Taisho’s flower school commenced every day between lunch and dinner.

And when they finally made it through the extensive gardens, they walked through worn forest trails where he pointed out native mountain species.

“It’s too bad we can’t go visit my home estate in the countryside. I could tell you all sorts of things about the plants that grow there. Mama always kept a nice garden. Not near as big as this one, of course.”

“I do not often have reason to go as far as the countryside, but I would not be averse to visiting next time I am there.”

“Oh, that’s kind of you… but… we don’t have the house anymore. We moved permanently to the city.” She replied sadly, not even allowing herself to consider the implications Sesshomaru Taisho coming to visit her or all the fun, whimsical daydreams such as thought would cause.

Thankfully, Sesshomaru was a man of tact, and he did not probe.

“Goodbyes are often difficult.” He said, steering her in one direction as the path forked. “Even goodbyes to things such as houses. We are often not aware of how much of ourselves come from the places we were raised.”

“That’s very true. I’ve had several people tell me the don’t understand why I would miss the country when I’ve been given a chance to live in the city. But places like this,” she said, gesturing around the wild forest brimming with the sounds of life, “I love places like this so much more. I know the city is exciting and new but… I like the familiar just fine.”

“I understand.” He responded, and the lapsed into silence, their chaperone calling them back for mealtime.

——————-

“So, sweet Kagome,” Lady Akamine purred, and Kagome braced herself. “What sort of husband were you looking for in that dusty, over crowded city?”

’A rich one,’ she thought, but she bit her tongue on that remark. Truthfully she was tired of talking of her time in the city, especially at dinner with so many people around. It had been a nightmare from start to finish, one she would have to return to sooner than she’d ever be ready.

”A kind one, I suppose.”

”Kind? Is that all?”

“One who’s nice to talk to, of course, and who I enjoy spending time with. But, truthfully, I know how these things often go and… I can really only hope for someone who isn’t cruel.”

”Do you not dream of falling in love, little one?” She asked, part disappointed in her answer, part saddened by it.

”Love isn’t something I have the luxury of dreaming about, Lady Akamine. I reckon most women don’t.”

”Indeed they don’t, my pretty one,” she replied, that dangerous edge of plotting and planning once more sharpening her voice. “Indeed they don’t. But some do.”

——————

“We’re going to have a ball!” Lady Akamine announced just as the first course of their meal had been placed in front of them.

“What?!” Kagome cried, dropping her fork onto her plate with an ill mannered clatter.

“Yes dear, a ball! Isn’t that wonderful? It’s been far too long since we’ve had one in these parts and I just thought, what with the new friends we’ve made, what better way to celebrate than to put on our finest and dance the night away!”

“But, I came here to escape the balls!” If she was any lest shocked and alarmed, she would have been horrified at herself. She was being entirely ungrateful toward their most generous host, but the only thing she could think of was trying to bumble her way through stiff, awkward dances, and in front of Mr. Taisho, no less.

“You came here to escape city balls, my darling Kagome. But we are not in the city, are we?”

“You’re right!”

The balls back home had always been riotous fun, dancing and laughing with lifelong friends until her feet simply could not keep her upright any longer. The mountain community was similar in the way everyone was connected to everyone.

She peeked over at Sesshomaru, who hadn’t shown any significant reaction.

‘Oh yes… he doesn’t like dancing.’

She slumped a little in disappointment. They’d been getting along so well since they’d made friends in the library, and she’d come to look forward to his company every single day.

If he didn’t dance, would he even attend?

“And my darling dear Sesshomaru can show you how we mountain folk like to dance, can’t you?!”

His jaw tightened, and he shot Lady Akamine a look that could only described as venomous.

Kagome gulped as she looked between them, but the Cat Lady merely grinned, smug and serene.

[the-goya-jerker]

What are your favorite movies? Any recommendations?

ALWAYS.

I love film. I love TV shows. I love to watch things.

I'll try to group these up. But they're below a cut because this will get long.

Oh, also, I recommend checking out the Does the Dog Die and/or Unconsenting Media page for movies on here. These check for common triggers for the first, and specific sexual content in the second. Both are quite thorough, and Unconsenting Media always needs more contributers.

Please, if you have triggers of any kind, curate your experiences, advocate for yourself. These sites can really help you.

If you like straight up horror:

The VVitch is an absolute favorite, I'm an absolute sucker for historical accuracy.

The Sudbury Devil is of a similar vein. It's weird! Don't get me wrong! The quality isn't the best, but I did like it!

St. Maud is another one, very religious and very creative.

I like the original Wickerman, but I don't really see it as horror... That guy was a dick and a cop.

The Wind is fun, I didn't like the ending much, but I'm really into atmospheric horror. There's a fun game based on it. (Even if I find the creator's other works a little... suspicious, ideologically.)

Bride of Reanimator has a special place in my heart.

V/H/S '94 is a recent watch of mine. Not every piece in it is good, and the framing device is weak, but I liked it for what it was nevertheless. Big youtube short films/ARG vibes.

Go watch Portrait of God on youtube. It's scary, eerie, and it made my stomach churn a bit.

Crimson Peak is also very very good. Very gothic, but I'm grouping it here for how violence is presented.

If you like things with horror elements that are more gothic than straight up horror:

Interview with the Vampire is a big favorite of mine. I love the books, the show, and especially the movie.

Donnie Darko is fun, very philosophical, a little weird, but I've loved it since I was young.

Ex Machina is interesting to me, I find it enjoyable, even though I have criticisms of how it handles some things.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is lovely. It captures the feeling of a stage play while also using the unique capabilities of film to propel itself into something uniquely good.

The Green Knight on the other hand is not a faithful adaptation. But it has something new to say and do, and I love what it does.

Poor Things deserves every big of hype it gets. If you haven't seen it, it's Frankenstein but with delightfully surreal worldbuilding. The world feels like a painting. Also it's very good as a feminist piece, in my opinion. If a bit singular.

The Love Witch is beautiful, and fascinating to me. I have a special fascination with wicca and neo-pagan movements though, as well as witchcraft and folk-magic.

For things entirely unrelated to horror:

Hedwig and the Angry Inch restructured my brain.

Technically HBO's Angels in America is a mini-series. Watch it like a movie if you can though. I watched it that way for a film class and it's closer to the original play that way.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a very fun spy romp. Listen, just watch it and turn off your brain.

The John Wick movies, while "basic" are a beautiful ballet of violence and action. I do like the mythological elements as well.

The Harder They Fall fucks severely. It's a western centered on an entirely black main cast.

Mama Mia, need I say more.

I do not consider Renfield horror, but god if it isn't fun.

Dungeons and Dragons, sometimes you need a good, well made, movie that's kinda a little stupid.

Barbie Princess and the Pauper isn't good, but I like it.

Spider-verse. Like the whole series. I have a special attachment to these. They're utterly beautiful.

Cats. Is it good? NO!! But you should watch it anyway. Let the awful CGI melt into your brain, let it consume you and just watch. (Someone wants me to say you should watch the movie of the stage production instead)

Watch The Invitation. Go in blind. I'm begging you. Just give it a shot. Don't look up anything.

[volterran-wine]

| 20 questions for fic writers

Thank you very much for tagging me @agirllovespancakes . And apologies for this being exceptionally late!

To not clutter everyone's feeds terribly I have put everything below the 'keep reading'. Do take a look if you want to read my ramblings as well as getting to know my brain a little more intimately.

I even discuss some of my other fandoms and expose myself as somewhat of a shipper.

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

Currently I have nine works up on Archive of Our Own

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

37,793 words and counting, now my word count on this blog however... I dread thinking about it.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently I have only ever written for Twilight, though I have outlines and ideas for other fandoms. Among others;

Hunger Games

Final Fantasy VII

Pokemon

Lord Of The Rings

4. Top 5 fics by kudos

The Hands of Time (98)

I Gave You My Heart (62)

Equinox (45)

Snowfall (39)

If These Walls Could Talk (34)

5. Do you respond to comments?

... I am absolutely atrocious at replying on AO3, while on tumblr I have been slightly better at keeping up with feedback. I greatly appreciate every comment however.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

It has to be "Didyme's Demise". The short story details how she has faith in her dear brother, and does not even see her murder come.

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

... I do not understand this concept. Though I guess "I Gave You My Heart" has a bittersweet ending.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I do not believe I have received direct hatred towards anything I have ever posted or written.

9. Do you write smut?

Yes, though I have crossed more into the... emotional/romantic sphere than the hardcore smut genre.

10. Craziest crossover?

... No crossovers so far.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I have experienced people pilfering my edits and graphics, but never any of my written work. That is something I am thankful for.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I am not against the practice as long as credit is given.

13. Have you co-written a fic before?

Never! Though I really wish to do a collaboration at some point. Though, a little thing I am finishing up has a lot of influence from a dear friend; with one of their own OC's making an appearance. A blending of verses if you may.

14. All time favorite ship?

I have never been a huge shipper within fandom spaces, nor do I have a one true pairing (do we still use OTP?) I will throw down over. Most of the time I find myself shipping characters with comfort, happiness and mental stability these days. Instead of one ship I will give a little list of ships I have read about the last decade and a half, exposing some of my previous and current fandoms...

Carlisle/Aro (Twilight)

Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

Haruhi/Kyoya (OHSHC)

Rufus Shinra/Tseng (Final Fantasy VII)

Clarke Griffin/Lexa (The 100)

Yuri Katsuki/Victor Nikiforov (Yuri On Ice)

Chise Hatori/Elias Ainsworth (The Ancient Magus' Bride)

Oikawa Toru/Happiness&Success (Haikyu!!)

Also, someone recently dragged me into JJK, and I think anyone in the know understand why I cannot look away from the absolute tragedy that is Geto and Gojo, wether it be platonic or something more.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will

There is a work hidden in my vault that was begun while I was friends with someone. Now, this friendship has since turned sour, and because of that I do not know if it will see the light of day. It is Twilight related but it is centred around The Romanians.

16. What are your writing strengths?

The most common compliment I receive is "Beautiful", and seeing as though beauty is in the eye of the beholder I am inclined to say my strength is different for different people.

Personally I believe I have quite a good vocabulary, as well as being good with my metaphors.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Fast paced action rarely works well with my borderline purple prose, which is why some of my works sometimes feel very different in my opinion. The New Moon rewrite has a lot more action instead of introspection and feelings, that is a challenge for me.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language

If you do decide to add dialogue in another language; confer with someone who speaks said language if you are able to. Or, at the very least, do a lot of research so it does not sound off or out of character. The few times I have used Greek I have asked people who are native speakers for help!

Personally I think it can add a nice touch as long as it is not overdone.

19. First fandom you wrote for

Twilight! While I have been a part of fandom spaces ever since I was 12/13 this is the first time I created any sort of content for others to enjoy.

20. Favorite fic you've written

Of the ones that have been finished and published it has to be "He Loves Power, A Terrible Love". That piece will forever have my heart, and whenever i feel discouraged about my writing I return to it. It reminds me that my writing is in fact not half bad. Though I do believe a fanfic in the works called "As Above, So Below" will knock it down from its throne.

That one will have people showing up outside my house with pitchforks.

No pressure tagging

Anyone who feels inclined to join in on the fun!

[bitter-limelight]

Hello. So uh. I recently read The Vampire Armand, I've read a bunch of books after that, but there's this one thing in it I haven't been able to get out of my head and need to talk to someone about.

There's this one scene, before Armand becomes a vamp and he's with Marius. And Marius wants him to study or whatever, and Armand doesn't want that, and Marius like wips him. And it's described in great detail and Armand both dislikes it but also seems to enjoy it on some level.

And oh my god, it's obviously (BD)SM, right? And I don't think I've ever before read actual kink in an actual book. It was soo good.

And I felt so strongly that like this is written knowing that this is BDSM. It's written as someone intimately familiar with how impact play feels. And it made me feel seen.

And I also want to know if others also felt so strongly about this scene. If people thought about it like this when the book came out.

Anyway, thanks for being a target of my rant.

Hello!

You're in good company; many of us have a similair reaction to this scene and for good reason. Anne Rice wrote...a lot of kink. I haven't read her Sleeping Beauty books myself, or her Witching Hour books, but I know enough about what's in them, plus having read almost all of TVC, to know it's obvious that Anne is a kinky mofo at least on the page. And that's a good thing! Because books and art are a safe way to explore even the most taboo aspects of kink and sexuality.

Imo, Marius and Armand go through the dance of a recognizable romance novel BDSM or D/s dynamic. What I mean by this is a power exchange relationship run through the filter of a fantasy love story. People who was well versed in real life BDSM know all about consent, safe words, SSC, all that, but when it comes to fiction, we have a space where we can bend and play with those rules.

Marius is master, this is certain. He purchased Amadeo, he literally bought him. IRL we know this isn't an aspect of real BDSM but it plays well to represent the power imbalance on the page, same as Harlequin romance novels with Fabio on the cover as the pillaging Viking bringing back an unwilling war bride. This variety of forced marriage/relationship is a very old and common trope.

And we see that Amadeo takes to it well. He loves Marius. He welcomes the love Marius gives him. He loves him even as he's being disciplined. And that includes being whipped and punished. Punishment is a common aspect of a PE relationship, and this mirrors that concept in, again, the fantasy romance unfolding on the page. Antis like to point out that Amadeo isn't consenting to this and he's a victim, but once again that's why I'm reiterating that this is a *fantasy romance*, a historical one at that, and our real world ideas of what proper consent looks like don't apply here. This book is written for adults as an escapist fantasy, a rescue fantasy, just like people have been reading for decades.

As somebody who is in a type of PE relationship, who has always desired such a dynamic and who has been reading about practice and the community for 15+ years, I'm with you. M/A speaks to me, and it's kinky elements are a feature, not a bug.

INb4 someone tells me I'm promoting abuse, throws around the P word, insinuates I'm toxic and don't know what I'm talking about.

[apostateoverrubies]

Okay so I recently became aware of a tactic that queerphobic people tend to use when debating on LGBTQ+ rights thanks to a Muslim I've been debating with.

They'll ask for our stance on pedophilia since if we're advocating for the rights of queer identities, we have to accept pedophiles as well.

They want to back you into a corner and make you think that queerness and pedophilia are intertwined when that isn't the case.

If that were the case, then only queer people would be attracted to kids but there are also plenty of heterosexual people like that too.

Just because they want to weasel their way into our community doesn't mean we accept them.

Now, it's time for me to go into why a Muslim has no place to criticize LGBTQ+ community for pedophilia acceptance.

I'm doing this because the whole reason this debate is happening is because of one of my earlier posts where I called out certain religious folks for supposedly being against pedophilia while being part of groups that supported it.

I will say I should've worded that post better and be clear about which specific religious groups are guilty of this. But otherwise, my point still stands.

Anyways, back to Islam.

I think many ex Muslims and hopefully other ex religious people out there know about Aisha.

For those of you who don't, Aisha is Muhammad's child bride. They married when she was only six and their relationship was consummated when she was 9.

She was his favorite wife.

So already this is a bad look. How can you say we're the ones promoting pedophilia when your own prophet married a little girl?

But that's not the only case of it, though it is definitely a very infamous one.

What I want to focus on though is verse 65:4. The general focus of the 65 is divorce, thus the title "Surah At-Talaq".

In 65:4, it goes into the waiting period women and girls have until they are either "honorably retained" or "honorably separated." For those going through menopause and even those who have not menstruated, their period is three months.

Sure, one could argue that it could apply to women who are simply unable to menstruate. But if that were the case, we wouldn't be seeing child marriage in the Quran at all.

And like I said, it wasn't just Muhammad who married an underaged girl.

Umar would go on to marry Umm Kuthum while she had supposedly had not yet reached puberty. (But from what I've heard, not every Muslim acknowledges this marriage.)

Urwah ibn Zubayr had also apparently married off his daughter while she was still very young.

Not to mention, child marriage was widespread in Muslim countries. It's only becoming less common place because of "westernization and man-made laws", though this is according to an Islamis source.

And even with all that aside, AFAB Muslims even before puberty are sexualized through strict dress codes to supposedly protect their purity. Though what really is going on here is that young girls are seen as inherently sexual in their eyes, and instead of protecting them from creeps, it's on the girls to "remain pure."

So yeah, next time you think about calling out queer people for pedophilia acceptance, check your own religion first.