#when they get up to...whatever

[softquietsteadylove]

I’m here to say I’m happy you’re back and hopefully feeling better! I have a little prompt, nothing extensive but I’m missing TMTL au lately and would love to see some sweet family time 🥹

"Happy Valentine Mum!"

"Thank you, Darling," Thena laughed, receiving her ever-growing-six-year-old in her arms and accepting his loving embrace. She nuzzled his temple, kissing as he laughed. "How was your valentine's day?"

"We made cards!" Druig exclaimed far too loudly for the front hall of their little house. He held out a red heart, cut with jagged edged scissors to give it a pointy edge.

"That's," Thena paused, examining the glittery glue dripping from it, "lovely."

"This is all the blood," Druig pointed out. "'Cuz yer heart's beatin' in your body, so it'd be gross when you pull it out."

Thena smiled at the cute and grotesque gesture. Unfortunately, it was very 'Druig' of him to think of something like that. "That's very thoughtful of you, Darling. Did you exchange cards with your friends?"

Druig nodded dutifully, although the only friend he really held any fondness for was Makkari. "Everyone gave out cards. Some of 'em had candy!"

Thena was very aware that the tradition was to attach a cheap piece of sweet confection to each equally cheap card. She hadn't particularly wanted to participate in that tradition, and when she asked Druig if that was okay his only response was that he just wanted the candy for himself anyway.

"Did you eat it all already?"

"No, Mum," her sweet little angel replied, shining his big blue eyes at her. Thena just stared at him. He sighed, "I ate half of 'em. But I shared with Kari!"

She supposed she could be thankful that he had been honest with her. He relaxed his posture as she smoothed down his hair, "that's very nice that you shared with her, Darling. Did you make her a card?"

Druig nodded again. He had indeed made a card just for his best - and in many ways only - friend, unlike the garbage he had given everyone else out of obligation (his mother's words, not his!). "I drew a cheetah, and it said 'you're even faster than this!' on it!"

Thena pressed a kiss to the top of Druig's head before standing again, "that's lovely, Darling."

"I made one for Miss Ajak too," he continued as she helped him out of his laced up boots. "But I didn't know what to say so I just wrote 'Valentine' on it."

"I'm sure she'll think that's very sweet," Thena assured him.

"Kari made you one too!"

Thena blinked as the card was shoved in her face. Luckily it wasn't as sharply pointed as her son's. It was also a violent shade of red, but at least it wasn't dripping with viscera.

Her student had drawn some butterflies around the edges, and then a picture of a little ballerina with dark braids, and a taller ballerina with yellow hair. A charming couple of arrows pointed out who was whom, in case Thena needed help identifying them. Her eyes watered.

"You like it?"

Thena sniffled, kissing Druig's forehead, "tell her I absolutely love it, Darling. I'll put it right up next to yours above my desk, hm?"

"'Kay," Druig shrugged, no longer concerned with it. "Mister Dad has something for you too."

And with that, Druig was more interested with the promise of the living room and probably turning on the tv before he was told not to.

Thena tilted her head as Gil finally came through the front door as well, shuffling in with a bundle of something behind his back. "Oh, he does, does he?"

"I told him to come in first, help warm you up," he chuckled, letting her lean against his chest as she got up on her toes to kiss him. "Hey."

"Hey," she greeted, although it came out as more of a sigh. She stepped back, letting him in away from the door. "How were classes?"

"Well, valentine's isn't really a day when you get things done," he chuckled, fidgeting and kicking off his shoes. "Too much chocolate, too many questions. You mostly make crafts, and cards, and try to discourage asking where babies come from."

"I see," Thena pressed her lips together to try and resist laughing. She kept trying to see what was behind him, but he was holding it up high enough to that his broad shoulders did quite a fine job of keeping it from her. "Gil?"

"Okay, okay," he chuckled, leaning in for one more kiss before pulling out a full bouquet of roses, varying in colour from sheer white to pink to deep red. "Uh, I didn't know if you would really want to do anything, but-"

Thena swiped the flowers from him, burying her nose in their scent. It wasn't that she was a huge flowers lover, nor did she dislike them. But she couldn't remember a time when she received a bouquet that wasn't for work purposes.

"Okay, good to know," Gil smiled, putting his hand on her shoulder as she admired them. "Happy valentine's, Angel."

Thena happily leaned in to let him kiss her cheek, still starry eyed from receiving her gift. "Gil, they're beautiful!"

"Second only to you," the charmer corrected as he pried one of her hands away from them.

"Don't tell me you had these with you all day," she blinked at the idea of him trying to navigate the teacher's lounge with them.

"No, I scheduled a pickup for them this afternoon, but I ordered them basically at the start of february," he laughed, pulling her down the front hall and out of the view of the living room. "In case you did want to do something...I wanted it to be special."

Thena melted into the kiss as he held both her cheeks to tip her head just so. She held the flowers out, unwilling to let them get squished as Gil held her waist against him. She moaned quietly, savouring the real, proper kiss stolen even while Druig was in the house.

"So?" Gil pulled away with eager eyes, "how'd I do?"

"It's by far the best gift I've gotten for this particular occasion," she stated factually before burying her nose in her roses again.

"Sorry hon, but that's not a very high bar," Gil snorted, moving back to his work satchel. "And there's more where those came from, but that'll be for, uh, tonight."

Thena buried her blushing in the flowers as well. "I could have asked Ajak to have the kids over."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Gil whispered, "it's a school night anyway. We'll keep it lowkey."

Thena nodded, accepting another little kiss.

"Besides," he winked at her, "I got you another present. I don't know what you were thinking of."

"Hush," she attempted to chide her very jovial partner as he moved into the living room. She followed immediately scooping the tv remote out of Druig's hands.

"Hey!" he whined.

"One hour, and if it's now then it's not before bed," she dictated firmly.

"Yes, Mum," Druig grumbled obediently, although he made himself completely dead weight in Gil's grasp as he was moved from off the floor - as close to the tv as he could get - to the couch with them.

"Come on, buddy, don't you wanna tell Mum about what we did today?" Gil attempted to encourage the boy to sociallise just a little.

"You're gonna tell her anyway," Druig shrugged, in both a humorous and precocious statement. He looked down at his outstretched feet, with his socks with sharks on the bottoms. "Did you give Mum the butterflies?"

"Butterflies?" Thena asked with a faint frown.

Gil shook his head, assuring her that no winged insects would be part of her gift. "Uh, what butterflies, kiddo?"

"You said you were gettin' something for Mum. I thought it'd be butterflies," Druig elaborated, but not to the betterment of either adult's understanding. He looked up at Gil. "Mum once told Miss Ajak that you gave her butterflies--I thought you were gonna get s'more."

Gil looked up at Thena, who closed her eyes and looked up at the ceiling as the embarrassment washed over her. Not that Gil didn't know that in a general sense, but she didn't need such a clear example to be given.

Gil just chuckled, "not this time, buddy. I was getting flowers for Mum."

"Okay," Druig shrugged, looking at his mother now. "What's for dinner?"

She smiled down at her son, preferring that over looking her lover in the eye after that particular fact was revealed. "Delivery."

"Pizza?!"

Thena just sighed and nodded, Druig already holding out a grabby little paw for her phone to select what he liked. She looked up at Gil sheepishly, "my gift to you was that I wouldn't do the cooking, but you wouldn't have to either."

"Sounds good to me," he grinned, leaning over to kiss her above Druig's head. Although when he pulled away, he stayed closely hovering, "I give you butterflies, huh?"

Thena huffed, looking away as her embarrassment worsened.

"For what it's worth," he scooched closer, jostling Druig slightly between them just so he could wrap his arm around her shoulders, "you give me butterflies, too."

[fairsweetlonging]

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

[hinamie]

sympathy for cain

[greyias]

Oh look, it seems everyone has been opted into the unfortunate "experiment" now. For everyone who has been blissfully using the old UI up until now, welcome to hell :)

Do you not like hell? Do you want to leave and crawl back up into the sunlight of the old UI? Well, have I got a link for you! A beautiful tumblr user (who is not me) has gone and fixed things beautifully for you already: https://github.com/enchanted-sword/dashboard-unfucker

You will need to have Tampermonkey installed on your browser of choice, and once that's done, just go to the github link above, and peruse the readme to install. And voila! You have your old dash back!

The authors of XKit Rewritten said during the experiments that at the time, since this was an "experiment" they weren't going to implement anything to revert to the old UI (although who knows if they'll do it now). And the dashboard unfucker has worked beautifully enough for me to where I genuinely couldn't tell if they had ended the experiment or not.

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

[right to left]

STILL thinking about drunk chess actually

stupid as hell bonus:

[breesperez139]

Dc x Dp Prompt #6

“I’m a twin”, Damian said one night. He could feel the narrowed eyes of his family drilling holes on his back in disbelief. Not that he could blame them. Damian had never so much as implied being raised with a companion, much less a sibling.

“I had a brother”. Damian paused to recollect himself. He had not said his brother’s name out loud in over 8 years.

“His name was… Danyal”. Damian hated the way his voice wavered, but he could not help it. Danyal was everything to him, his other half. Their heart beat as one and when one heart stopped beating, the other one died with it. At least until his family put his heart on metaphorical life support without ever realizing.

“Where is he now?” His father asked, voice filled with knowing grief and a hint of betrayal. It had in fact been 6 years since Damian first showed up on his doorstep.

“Up there”. All eyes shifted towards the specific star he was pointing to. “Right before he died, he promised me he’d guide me from the stars. Unfortunately, the stars are not visible in Gotham, so my brother is unable to be of much help unless I leave the city.��

“Your brother is Polaris, the North Star?” Tim questioned warily, most likely in attempts to not offend him. Damian was aware of how stupid it sounded, but Danyal had promised, and his brother never broke his promises.

��Yes. Danyal is with the stars now, just as he always wanted”

[heartorbit]

happy halloween! 🎃🐈‍⬛👻🐇

[machinerot]

[introspectivememories]

was it casual when i sat in your lap in public? was it casual when i said "recently my heart is crying because you're leaving"? was it casual when we decided how your last name would fit with mine? ("yuki tsunoda-gasly" / "no tsunoda, only gasly" / "yuki gasly?") was it casual when we sang adele's "someone like you" together at your going away party? was it casual when i knew it was you just by touching your ass? was it casual when i knew it was you by smell alone? was it casual when "will you miss me?" / "for 2-3 minutes maybe" / "i'll take that. even if it's just 2-3 minutes, i'll take that"? was it casual when that bus was completely empty and we still sat right next to each other, all the way in the back? was it casual when i picked you up multiple times so you could dunk a basketball? was it casual when i begged to come over to your house multiple time and then you finally let me and we cooked fried rice together? was it casual when we played christmas twister together and i said "your big eggplant is touching my ass"? was it casual when we were pressed up against each other on a scooter going two miles per hour? was it casual when-

[wardingshout]

apple season

[anneapocalypse]

So, just curious how many writers and creators will have to be forcibly outed by relentless harassment before we acknowledge that "This queer characters was written by a cishet person and that's why they're bad" is not good criticism.

[umblrspectrum]

i got lazy in the second panel

[drrav3nb]

AYO EDEBIRI as Sydney Adamu WILL POULTER as Luca THE BEAR SEASON 3 | Episode 10 - Forever

Are you close? Yeah. Kind of best friends and kind of lost touch, so. It's nice to reconnect. Yeah, especially when it literally is like a best friend that you saw every day of your life and you kinda went through this sort of battle together.

Bonus:

[hinamie]

every so often i have to relearn how to draw yuuji or he starts fighting me

[trauma-bot]

patron saint of never growing old