#wish there was a hall of fame feature for this game

[zombiepedia]

I BEAT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my team was primarina, skeledirge, meowscarada, meowstic, raichu, and excadrill

[tactician]

leaving alola behind him, reides the kingdra headed for generation 8 of the pokemon games in his quest for more ribbons! gen8 of these games feature the galar region (via pokemon sword and shield) as well as the sinnoh region (via pokemon brilliant diamond and shining pearl)! this leap to gen8 was super alarming, as my beloved kingdra moved from the 3ds to the current nintendo console - namely, the nintendo switch! it's crazy to think about how this whole journey began on my copy of emerald version, slotted into my pleasantly clunky brick of a grey ds.

reides' journey through the generations has been filled with its highs and its lows, but once he arrived safely in pokemon home, it meant that i could be a bit flexible with my approach to the ribbons available in swsh and bdsp! (it also meant bidding farewell to my shoddy photos of my (3)ds screen for these posts... they will be missed...)

anyway, before i get into the story of reides' gen8 journey, i gotta do my customary shoutout to all the other parts of his ribbon master quest. it's really easy this time around, as i finally put together an index for these posts on my personal site! you can find it here! that page also has a lot of information about the challenge itself, along with some helpful resources if you'd like to take it on. as always, you can also peek in my ribbon master tag on this blog, too.

if you're all caught up with the story so far, it's time to get started on a brand new chapter.

transferring reides into my copy of pokemon shield was a really emotional experience. kingdra looks absolutely gorgeous on the switch, and i was blown away by how awesome the shiny form looks, too. this moment on the beach at sunset - with a galarian slowpoke and a kingler lurking close by - felt pretty cinematic. it was also really nice to see my trainer character again! i absolutely love all of the different fashion items available in swsh. immediately, i knew that i had to make my ribbon mastery team a big ol' pot of curry for all of their hard work thus far.

we also played together while we camped out. i was really glad that i was already in shield's post-game, as it saved a whole lot of time on this ribbon master journey AND meant that i'd have tons of toys for my pokemon at my disposal.

after goofing around for hours, i finally decided to take on the first ribbon available in galar. this ribbon was the galar champion ribbon, which your pokemon receive upon entering the galarian hall of fame. i ended up needing to play through the galarian star tournament first, though, as i had procrastinated on doing that for the longest time... so reides ended up taking part in a few more battles than one would think!

it was absolutely awesome to see dynamax in action with reides! it made me wish that kingdra got a gigantamax form, but i guess that would be a bit too amazing for anyone to handle, huh? while taking on this ribbon, i also realized just how much i missed the vibes of the gym challenge in the galar region. the wide stadiums, the cheering crowds, the MUSIC... all of it is so incredibly top-tier and it really got me pumped up! not to mention seeing the absolutely INCREDIBLE cast in action. shoutout to everyone but especially piers. all hail the reigning king of the pokemon punks.

anyway, reides was eventually able to sweep his way to victory in both the galarian star tournament as well as the league battles. he joined the hall of fame and got the galar champion ribbon!

with that handled, it was time to take on galar's battle tower. according to most, this battle tower is an absolute cake-walk, as you can dynamax while most of your opponents (barring leon) can't. it was just a matter of buckling down and spending the time required to amass your wins. as a result, i ended up abandoning the tried and true durant strat and instead took the og trio of albatross, origin and reides, himself, along for the ride.

hilariously enough, i ran into ONE road-block in this tower in the form of a shedinja which i could literally not attack. i had NO moves that could get past its guard... sobs. but another nice thing about the galarian battle tower is that it isn't streak-dependent, instead swapping over to a system relying on ranking up or ranking down. so i brushed off this shedinja encounter without letting it get to me all that much, haha! i also taught albatross shadow ball... just in case.

ribbons also got a bit of an upgrade in the switch games of pokemon. no longer limited to just being pretty graphics on the ribbon screen, you can now equip one ribbon on your pokemon and give it a little title every time you send it out in battle. i equipped the ribbon that reides got for mastering all of the contests in omega ruby, which granted him the title of 'shining star'!

it was so nice to see it every time i sent him out, but i can definitely see myself swapping between all the various titles at reides' disposal!

my climb to the master ball rank was fairy uneventful, though i really understood this child's plight. it's how i felt many times while in various battle towers during this ribbon master journey.

eventually, i made it through the rank itself and got to the final battle against leon. though i had faced him at the end of each rank prior to this moment, it still felt very intense to encounter him knowing that this was my very last battle tower match for the forseeable future. also, his battle tower outfit is SO DRIPPY. love him so much.

not gonna lie, it was pretty funny seeing him say something so inspiring while looking so sad (and the snowscape from one of dynamax-form reides' attacks really added to it). leon is an absolutely amazing character and one of my fav champions ever, though, so i was thrilled that he got to be the final match in my battle tower saga!

even though the swsh battle tower was WAY easier than the others that i faced, i was still so happy to be done with it. my goodness. i really went from ignoring the battle towers in the series to gaining streaks of ~50 in each and every one... it's kind of unreal. reides truly earned the title of 'tower master'!

upon getting the tower master ribbon, we were done with galar. i was sure to make my pokemon team some more curry before they set off for sinnoh! but i honestly wasn't too torn up about leaving galar, as pokemon home lets us shift pokemon between the switch games however we'd like. after so many one-way transfers out of prior generations, it felt kind of surreal - and was also a huge relief.

this cute curry wasn't the only treat that got eaten, either! i made some pokemon cookies in Real Life to celebrate, as well. i used cookie cutters from the official pokemon store to make these pikachu and munchlax cookies!

i then set my sights on the remake of diamond version... pokemon: brilliant diamond!

the last time reides visited sinnoh, he did so via my childhood copy of diamond version. as i wrote in my post about the gen4 part of reides' journey, this copy of the game was already in the post-game, so i didn't have to play through any of diamond's plot whatsoever when he arrived. however... for this sinnoh visit, i actually didn't have a post-game available! despite owning brilliant diamond since the day it released, i had barely played it. (fun fact: in my first run of the game, i ran into a shiny bidoof on my very first night playing it. i ended up transferring all of the pokemon in it - bidoof included - to pokemon home and restarting it, though, as i was toying with the idea of doing a shiny starter hunt... and then i simply never touched it. so i guess restarting it was actually a waste of time. weeps.) i knew that i'd need to play through its plot to get the ribbon that reides needed, so... you know what that meant.

it was time for a whole other adventure to begin.

i decided to keep reides in the pc for the storyline part of this playthrough. i wanted to raise a team of pokemon from the sinnoh region, and i knew that reides' status as a fully ev and iv trained pokemon at level 100 meant that he would absolutely STEAMROLL the plot. we still went on walks together very often though, and he had his pal hammer the garchomp in the pc for company! (i usually raise a garchomp for my sinnoh teams, as it's one of my fav pokemon in the sinnoh region, but i decided to try to resist this time around and limit myself to pokemon that i had never raised before!)

i absolutely loved my brilliant diamond playthrough. the art direction is a point of contention in the pokemon fandom, but i'm a big fan of it! it seems like people either love it or hate it, and, thankfully, i'm definitely in the 'love' camp! the chibi style is endlessly charming, and the environments were just gorgeous. something about the lighting in brilliant diamond is just SUPER pleasing to me, and re-visiting sinnoh like this allowed me to really appreciate it. since my diamond file was in the post-game, i guess needing to play through this one in its entirety actually kinda worked out in my favour, huh?

i was super delighted to see that the ribbons screen is absolutely gorgeous in this game, too! i really like the status screen featured in bdsp. it's so nice and colourful.

this simple little screenshot is also really important to me. you see, when i was a kid, i got diamond version as a gift from a family friend. he'd gone abroad and generously brought back it back as a present for me. back then, the country that i live in didn't get pokemon games in a timely manner at all (we'd get them in video game stores months after they released in the u.s.), and i actually had no idea that diamond version even existed. (not knowing that a new pkmn generation dropped was a recurring experience in my childhood, LOL.) so playing this game for the first time made for a really magical experience. i have a very, very clear memory of playing it for hours and hours on the night that i started it up... until i could barely keep my eyes open. i trained my team a whole lot and was exploring this route right outside of jubilife, and i thought that the small island on the water was very pretty. i saved there for the night, imagining my trainer setting up a little camp for herself and her pokemon... and now, every time i'm on that route, i can't help but smile at the memory. so you can imagine just how happy i was to take a photo with reides there, with the updated graphics and everything!

furthermore, on the course of my sinnoh journey, i ran into lots of old friends... including none other than riley!

thanks to the way he helped me out in the gen4 battle tower, riley is a really special character to me now. so i was really happy to see him and play through iron island with him! after thwarting team galactic, he surprised me with a little gift.

i actually wasn't planning on raising a riolu - much less a lucario - on my main team AT ALL... but, upon receiving this egg from riley, i knew i had to. as silly as it may sound, i thought it would be a great nod to our time in the battle tower all those generations ago! and so, on that note, here is the storyline team that i journeyed through sinnoh with, and who helped reides get to where he needed to be:

as you can see, there's a bit of a theme going on with their nicknames! i decided to name each member of my brilliant diamond team after in-universe berries. i thought it'd be cute!

anyway, the berry bunch and i had a fantastic time exploring sinnoh. days passed, and, eventually, we faced what i believe to be the most difficult league in any of the pokemon games... including the most daunting champion battle ever.

cynthia lived up to her status as the most skilled champion in the pkmn franchise thus far. we had a battle for the ages, knocking 5 of each other's pokemon out. i actually almost lost to her - she had me completely backed into a corner. but my team pulled through, as kelpsy the glaceon MIRACULOUSLY toughed out an attack that should have knocked him out (via the affection system - namely, if your pokemon really loves you, they can occasionally 'survive' attacks that'd knock them out with 1hp instead) and managed to land a single ice beam on her garchomp. this clutched out the win, and my team was added to the sinnoh hall of fame.

now that i had access to the post-game, i could focus on reides once more. to get his ribbon in brilliant diamond, we'd have to foray into the brilliant contest scene.

brilliant contests are a calibre above the typical condition contests and are linked to all of your contest stats rather than just one. you actually don't gain access to this category unless you've achieved a master rank win in all of the solo-stat categories. luckily, ribbons from oras are recognized in bdsp, so reides didn't have to prove his worth to the judges and could instead get right to competing in the brilliant contests.

in addition to this category, bdsp also introduced some new contest mechanics, too. your final contest score can be split into three parts: 'visual', 'dance', and 'move'. these all seem pretty self-explanatory; the visual part is linked to your pokemon's contest condition/sheen, the dance part is linked to how well you perform in the rhythm game, and the move is linked to your timing in executing the one contest move that you're allowed to take in with you during the contests. but the visual part actually has an element of added complexity in bdsp, as it also involves a new mechanic of placing stickers on your pokemon's pokeball so that cool effects play when you send them out. (this feature was also in the gen4 sinnoh games, albeit not incorporated into those games' contests.)

the effects which these stickers play have a direct impact on your pokemon's visual score. however, for brilliant contests, normal stickers don't really cut it. instead, people recommend grinding out champion stickers (from taking on cynthia's rematch team post-heatran plotline) and showstopper stickers (from beating the other master rank contests) in order to get a decent appeal score. since reides didn't need to take on the master rank contests, i didn't have any of those - and i wasn't all too interested in grinding for more. i figured that grinding out champion stickers would work out better, since they give more points in the visual portion of the contest, anyway.

before starting that grind, i decided to give the brilliant master contest a try with nothing but the base-game stickers. given reides' perfect contest stats from omega ruby, i wondered if his contest skills would be enough to scrape through and secure a win.

as it turned out...

...they were not. people are NOT exaggerating when they talk about the difficulty of the brilliant master rank contest!! i was pretty shocked that my lovely kingdra was getting absolutely terrible visual ratings. (LIKE, LOOK AT HIM!! LOOK AT HIM!!!!!!! HE'S SO CUTE!!!!!!! AND PERFECT!!! AND SWEET, TOO!!!!!!!!) anyway, my outrage aside, it turns out that using those two types of stickers to boost your pokemon's visual rating is pretty much a necessity. the rhythm game portion of it is also not to be underestimated and typically requires a bit of practice. luckily, i'm fairly decent at rhythm games, but i knew that i would have to get those stickers from cynthia after all. i played through the pre-requisite bit of the post-game - catching heatran in a premier ball! - and made my way back to the league. with my storyline team vibing in the pc and my ribbon mastery team ready to FIGHT, i got settled and began grinding out the battles.

initially, i intended to get 20 champion stickers on the ball so as to fill it up entirely with them. after getting 8 stickers in one night, though, i was kind of worn down and decided to give the contest another try. i also taught giga impact to reides, as it's SUPER good in the bdsp contests (your pokemon gains a big boost to its score when you use it while you have a positive 'jam' score in the dance game) and can be easily bought in the veilstone department store. i was delighted to see that my protag's mother - johanna - was there for this contest, as well as gym leader fantina. both johanna and fantina are great at contests in-universe, so i was excited at the prospect of at least succeeding on this contest round, even if reides didn't manage to clutch out the win.

...however, by some miracle, reides managed to do just that!! not only did i finally manage to succeed in the brilliant master rank contest, but reides also secured the win. at this point, it was, like, 4 in the morning for me. i was absolutely astounded; i actually wondered if i was somehow hallucinating. the twinkling star ribbon was the one and only ribbon that i needed in brilliant diamond, and after so much work to get to this point...

...it was finally granted to reides!!!

upon recieving this ribbon, reides acquired all of the ribbons that he needs in order to be a ribbon master... save for ONE. one (1) single ribbon stands in his way... and that ribbon is the one that's granted to a pokemon for emerging victorious in a master ball ranked online battle. now, i can technically get this ribbon by putting reides back in pokemon shield and trying to climb the ladder in gen8... but, as you likely know, the current gen (as of me writing this post) is gen9. that means that the gen8 battle servers are... well...

empty.

okay, no. they're not entirely empty. but people have stories of waiting for hours to get into one single match, and i'm not sure if i want to put myself through that unless i absolutely must. and i might just have to, as kingdra hasn't been officially announced as part of the generation 9 pokedex... however, with indigo disk on the horizon (3 more days!!!), i figured i'd wait to see if kingdra would be included in its national dex before subjecting myself to gen8's very delayed match-making times. if it isn't, i'll just devote another post to my competitive climb in lieu of a gen9 one. (tbh, i'm considering making a totally seperate blog post for my very first foray in the vgc realm regardless - but we'll see how it goes!)

either way, i really, really enjoyed my time with reides in gen8. it has been so awesome to see him in games that i can play with the most up-to-date nintendo console, and kingdra's models across the switch games have just been so incredibly snazzy. i said this at the start of the post, but it truly is crazy to see just how far my little shiny horsea from emerald version has journeyed. i love reides so very much and i couldn't possibly be more proud of him!!!

so let's keep our fingers crossed that reides will be allowed into gen9 so that he can explore the paldea, kitakami, and unova regions! thanks again for cheering him on, and i'm looking forward to writing another update soon!!! that update may very well include reides finally achieving full ribbon master status at long last, so i'm already excited for it! :D

[fangedjustice]

[ Garden ] - Need to get away from the thick of the party for a moment? Step outside of the dance hall, where Garreg Mach's own vaunted gardens await, gracefully decorated to take on new life for the duration of the evening.

“Does this silence offer you protection?” His approach is quiet but not soundless, simply as impermanent as the waifs that the knight once warned him of- though as his voice and words suggest, hardly dangerous. “Or is it merely a respite before the ball finds its way back to you?”

He stops a distance away, one gloved hand upon the monastery’s famed flowers- ones that he had once seen daily. “But I merely tease. I don’t believe we’ve ever had a chance to exchange names- so why don’t we exchange our bells while we are at it?”

Though the sounds of the party could still be made out, they weren't enough to conceal the approach of another -- whether the man was trying to be covert or not, Lloyd couldn't entirely tell. He had an air about him, a being living among others but apart. If he wished to go unnoticed, Lloyd had no doubts that this man could do a stand up job of concealing himself from the observations of others.

But, for all that he might not be in his prime any longer, the White Wolf wasn't one to be caught off guard so easily.

He chuckles at the phrase, hazel eyes ghosting over pale features framed by ebony. "It would seem not, if you've found me here," Lloyd responds, a quirk at the edge of his mouth as he shifts away from carefully tended to bushes and trees to give the other man his full attention.

"You are, once again, not incorrect. I enjoy the gatherings of people, but I'm afraid I have little endurance for it," he shrugs, boots idly avoiding making much noise against the garden path as he teases at shortening the distance maintained between them.

He will not approach if the other wishes him not to, and it is like the curious brush of something wild against something civilized. A wolf at the forest edge, a man tip-toeing the city limits. If the energy shifted just enough the wrong way, the spell could be broken like the still surface of a lake to the crash of a rock.

"I take it you don't have much in you for it either, if you've come out here?" he muses, a hand coming up to roll a bell between the rough pads of his fingers. "Aye, I can give you that. Can't say they suit me well, but they do have a lovely sound, wouldn't you say?" And with that, he carefully removes one bell from his brooch, the little trinket clinking like glass in his palm as he offers it out in exchange.

"If it's my name you're after, perhaps you'd like a hand at playing hunter? A game between...," he trails off, a gesture of his hand between them, "Whatever you'd like to call this. Some things can be given easily." He pops the bell in his palm up into the air, letting it's clear notes sing, before catching it once more. "But others are more satisfying to discover with some effort, hm?"

[halloffamezine]

✨Questions from our Interest Check✨

Q: What are the guidelines on how artistic contributors are allowed to draw the Champions? (Ex: ORAS vs RSE Steven, a completely original Iris design?)

A: Contributors are allowed to use whatever designs they want for the Champions, whether picking their favorite in-game look for a Champion that has had redesigns or taking artistic liberties with the character. We simply ask that if you decide to use your own interpretation of a Champion, the design isn’t harmful in any way.

Q: Are contributors allowed to showcase Pokemon Masters EX outfits, or is the focus on the core series games?

A: We love the alts the Champions get in Masters as much as DeNA! You’ll absolutely be allowed to showcase their alternative costumes should you wish.

Q: Will the anime be included? What about the manga?

A: As of now, we’ve elected to keep the focus of the zine on the games. The portrayal of the Champions can vary quite widely between sources, so focusing on the game is a way to keep the zine more consistent in content.

Q: Blue is my blorbo and I love that stupidhead very much <3

A: me but with steven honestly -mod cirrus

Q: What exactly are the shipping restrictions?

A: Shipping content is not allowed, period. Even if it’s a very minor background element of your creation, it’s still prohibited. This is to ensure everyone, regardless of shipping preferences or lack thereof, can enjoy the hard work our team produces. This is a zine dedicated to showing our love for the Champions, and not a debate on who Cynthia should hook up with.

Q: Where is the zine shipping from?

A: We’re going to be shipping from the United States! Some countries may not be accepting packages from the United States due to current world events, so be mindful of any potential shipping restrictions.

Q: Will there be merchandise stretch goals?

A: Yes! We’re also committing to featuring ALL of our merch artists: if a piece of merchandise they make does not meet the required sales goal, we will still produce the contribution in a different way so their piece still gets to be featured in a physical capacity.

Q: Will Ash be featured?

A: Due to the zine’s focus on the games and other Pokemon anime zines running at a similar time frame to Hall of Fame, Ash will not be featured in the zine.

Q: Will there be intern mod positions?

A: We may include intern mod positions!

Q: What is a spot artist?

A: A Spot Artist works with a writer and makes small illustrations to go alongside written works in the zine! For example, a spot artist for a Diantha fic would collaborate with the writer and create a small piece of art of her that accompanies the fic. Spot Artists will not be assigned in this zine, but rather be a volunteer-basis extra an artist (whether Page Artist or Merch Artist!) can take on alongside their main assignment.

Q: Drink water fam

A: don’t worry we recruited a water type champion for this exact reason

[liaromancewriter]

Book 1 Fics

🌼 (Fluff) | 🌵 (Angst) | 💋 (NSFW) | 🎭 (Angsty Fluff) | 🔖 (Series) | 🎨 (Text & Pic Fic) | 🎪 (Prose + Text & Pic Fic) | Ⓜ (Mature)

Pre Series

The Intern 🌵Ⓜ Ethan Ramsey has landed a residency at Boston’s famed Edenbrook Hospital, but not everything is going as expected. 

Kindred Spirits 🎭 Alan Ramsey is wary of his son’s medical hero, but one meeting is all it takes to change everything. 

Kismet 🌵 Ethan walks into a bar, and everything changes with one look.

Study Woes 🎨 Cassie studies for her Step 3 exams before starting residency.

The Doctor Is Almost In 🎨 It’s the week before intern year and Cassie explores her new home.

Intern Year

First Impressions 🌼 A reimagining of the first day at Edenbrook and first impressions for both Ethan and Cassie Valentine.

Only a Crush 🌼 Was it just a crush or the start of something more?

First Day Jitters 🎨 Cassie Valentine’s first day at Edenbrook isn’t going as planned. Luckily her twin brother is there to lift her spirits.

First Day 🌼 Sienna begins her residency at Edenbrook.

Happiness is… 🌵 The sound of laughter from across the room captures his attention and makes him wish for something he can’t have. 

Lullaby 🌵 While caring for Baby Hudson in the neonatal ICU, Ethan Ramsey can’t help but reflect on the past and provide comfort to someone who needs it. 

Delaying the Inevitable 🌼 A retelling of the diamond scene from book 1 when Ethan and MC are in the private box at the baseball game…from Ethan’s perspective.

Coffee 🎨  For these new interns, caffeine is the only way to survive a long shift. 

Neurochemical Responses 🎨  Retelling of key parts of book 1, chap 6 through text messages and social media posts. Three different perspectives. 

Unfortunate Misadventures 🌼 Ethan Ramsey had seen people do stupid things before, but none quite like this.

Miracles 🌼 A chance encounter with Ethan brings an expected revelation for Cassie.

Doubts 🎭 Harsh words from a patient has Cassie questioning her abilities as a doctor. 

Becoming Sienna 🎭 Sienna Trinh had always wanted to be a doctor, to help people. But are the realities of becoming Dr. Sienna Trinh more than she can handle? 

Halloween Memories 🎨 It’s Halloween during intern year and the gang is working. So, Cassie shares her most memorable costumes on Pictagram to pass the time.

The Haunting of Edenbrook 🌼 It’s All Hallow’s Eve, and something wicked lingers in the air of Edenbrook Hospital’s hallowed halls.

Double the Fun 🎨 Cassie spends her day off with a quick trip home and a day out with her twin brother, Max. 

Thankful 🎨 Cassie spends her first Thanksgiving in Boston working a double shift, but finds small moments to be grateful for. 

Project Christmas Wish 🌼 Cassie Valentine celebrates her first Christmas in a new city and finds that even a grinch has his weakness. 

So Over It 🎭 Cassie meets Ethan’s plus one and makes a long overdue decision. 

Not Over It 🎪 When Cassie decides to date other people, Ethan has to pretend he’s not affected.

It Happened One Miami Night 🔖 A work trip to Miami means finally accepting that some risks are worth taking. Or are they?

Out of Control 🌵 Ethan’s having doubts about inviting Cassie to join him for a conference in Miami.  

SOS – a text fic 🎨 When Cassie has an emergency, there’s only one person to talk her off the ledge. Text fic featuring my favorite twins.  

Words We Never Say 🌵 After the events in Miami, Cassie and Ethan are determined to get their relationship back to a professional footing. If only their hearts would cooperate. 

Dolphin Adventures 🎨 Cassie shows Kyra that life is worth fighting for while Sienna finds comfort from the unlikeliest of sources. 

Roll With It 🎭 Cassie is determined to pretend she and Ethan are nothing more than Attending and Intern after his confession in the lab. Fate has other plans. 

The Unexpected Valentine 🌼 The interns celebrate their first Valentine’s Day in Boston, and it’s full of surprises. 

Falling in Love 🌵  Cassie knows protecting her heart from Ethan is a lost cause.

A Week to Forget 🎪 Between Ethan leaving and a friend’s betrayal, Cassie Valentine is moments away from giving up. Rewrite of Book 1, chap 13 & 14 with a focus on Cassie’s emotional state.

Operation Fight Back 🎨 With her medical license on the line, Cassie Valentine is determined to fight for what – and who – she believes in. 

Passing Time 🌼 It’s a long drive to Naveen’s cabin, giving Cassie to reflect on recent events. 

Never Let Go 🌵 After spending one last night together, Cassie and Ethan know that their relationship must revert to that of intern and attending. But they don’t know how to let go. 

Waiting for Dr. Ramsey 🌼 What if Ethan and Cassie decide to give their relationship a chance after the ethics hearing?

Labyrinth🌼 All it takes is one moment and a single glance to fall into the promise of always. 

Come Back to Me 🎪 When Ethan is seconded to a medical mission to tackle an outbreak in the Amazon, Cassie wonders if absence will make the heart grow fonder or cause a reset?

Counting the Minutes 🎭 Before Ethan leaves for a WHO mission in the Amazon, Cassie is determined to spend every last minute together. Set during timeline of Come Back to Me.

Beautiful Day 🎭 When Kyra feels sorry for herself, a friend changes her perspective.

Rock On 🌼 Sienna and Cassie meet an international rock star. Cross-over with Platinum; feat. Raleigh Carrera

Zodiac Fun 🎨 Cassie is all about love that’s written in the stars.

Stop The Clock 🎪 After almost six weeks without word from Ethan, Cassie needs her family more than anything. 

Secret’s Out 🌼 When everyone at Edenbrook finds out Cassie’s identity, she realizes who her true friends her. Set during timeline of Come Back to Me. 

Heart First 🌼 After a heart to heart in the beer garden, Cassie and Ethan head to his apartment to continue their reunion.

[gameshorizon]

Best adventure games to Play in 2023

From futuristic cities and interstellar travels to mystical ruins and ancient civilizations, adventure games offer unique landscapes that can transport you to somewhere else entirely. These games usually rely on players’ wit, puzzle-solving abilities, and reflexes. 

With graphics more powerful than ever, new mechanics that change your perception of reality, and new trends in storytelling, these console and PC games are sure to quench your thirst for imaginative adventures. In this post, we will explore some of the best adventure games that you can play in 2023. 

Stray

Based in a cyberpunk-esque future city inhabited by robots, Stray offers you a chance to play as a cute and cuddly red tabby cat. You are tasked with exploring the walled-in city, armed with curiosity (however it doesn’t kill you in the game) about the ‘outside’. The graphic, soundtrack, and quite frankly the entire ambience of this adventure game is surreal. 

Since you are playing as a cat, there are a very limited amount of actions, like purring to get NPC attention, jumping across ledges and rooftops, that you can perform. The game offers very little direction, making the journey of exploration compelling as well as, at times, difficult. However, completing or just exploring the walled futuristic city is extremely rewarding as you wander around looking for clues through abandoned houses, chat up with poor robots, and collect journal entries to progress in the game. 

It Takes Two

It Takes Two is one of those cozy and heartfelt adventure games that you wish to never stop playing. Reimagining the entire concept of split-screen and couch co-op, the game takes you on a journey of a small child, trying to rekindle the love between his exasperated parents, on a brink of divorce. 

The game is specifically designed to be played with a partner or a friend and it conveys simple yet universal principles of love, heartbreak, wonder, and reconciliation. It Takes Two offers an engaging gameplay experience, filled with cute puzzles, platforming levels, and a wide number of mini-games. 

The Last of Us (Part I & Part II)

Commonly hailed as one of the best adventure games of our times, The Last of Us series offers the complete package. The series features a heart-wrenching, emotional, and richly detailed story of lost connections and new friendships. 

The gameplay offers a smooth combination of emotional cutscenes that provide powerful motivation, stealth-based survival levels that make you hold your breath, out-of-the-world ethereal soundtrack by one of the greatest composers of our time, engaging action sequences, and masterfully composed environments. The Last of Us Part I has received a prestigious Video Game Hall of Fame award in 2023 and has been adapted into a TV series by HBO.

Death Stranding

From the visionary director Hideo Kojima of the immensely popular Metal Gear series, Death Stranding is truly a one-of-a-kind adventure game. Blending a hauntingly morose story with large patches of post-apocalyptic Earth, this title features the story of a deliveryman and his mission to reconnect the stranded American colonies. 

The gameplay is long and at times excruciating, focusing on traversing long patches of empty land, surviving through tortuous weather conditions and locking horns with unfavorable geography. While the game received mixed reception in 2019 and not a lot of players found the game engaging, a large number of reviews were glowingly positive and as a result, a Director’s Cut was released two years later. 

While it’s currently available on PS4 & PS5 as well as Windows PC, the MacOS version of Death Stranding Director’s Cut is scheduled to release in the near future. 

Legend of Zelda (Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom)

Nintendo completely changed the meaning of open world games with the last two Zelda games. Breath of the Wild was the first game ever that truly unleashed the potential of freedom afforded by open world games. Breath of the Wild (2017) and Tears of the Kingdom (2023) easily top the list of adventure games, as they do not restrict the players to playing in a certain way. Every problem you encounter in these games can be solved by a large number of ways. You can engage in battles - with enemies and bosses small and large, spend countless hours exploring the massive map of Hyrule. 

The map has grown almost three times larger in Tears of the Kingdom, with more quests and areas to explore in skies as well as underground. As Link, you can interact with almost everything in the game’s world, go anywhere at any time, climb any mountain and swim any river (assuming you have enough stamina). The sheer possibility of endless try-and-see combinations makes these games unique and offer every player an opportunity to complete any task according to their own wishes. 

[sportyconnect]

The National Basketball Association (NBA) logo, featuring a player dribbling a basketball, has become an enduring symbol in professional sports. During my childhood, I often pondered the player's identity portrayed in the iconic image. Was it a real NBA player? And if so, who was that basketball player who became immortalized as the silhouette in the logo? As it turns out, the image depicted a real player, the legendary Jerry West, a revered figure in the world of basketball, and a member of the esteemed Basketball Hall of Fame. Let us delve into the story behind how Jerry West came to be known as "The Logo." Seeking a Fresh Image In 1969, NBA Commissioner J. Walter Kennedy sought to breathe new life into the league's brand. With the company expanding to encompass 14 teams, revitalization was ripe. However, two years prior, the NBA had started feeling the heat from a budding competitor—the American Basketball Association (ABA). To rejuvenate the NBA's image, Kennedy turned to Alan Siegel, a seasoned expert in branding professional sports leagues. A year earlier, Siegel had left his mark by designing the iconic logo for Major League Baseball (MLB). Siegel, a close friend of sportswriter Dick Schaap from the Sporting News, approached him with a request to peruse the magazine's vast photo collection in search of inspiration. During his exploration, Siegel's attention was captured by a particular image featuring the prominent player Jerry West skillfully dribbling the ball. The idea resonated deeply with him. In an interview, Siegel expressed his fascination with the image, stating, "I was drawn to it because of its pleasing verticality, the player's graceful lean while dribbling... it conveyed a sense of subtle motion." While Siegel had contemplated using photos of other basketball superstars such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, and John Havlicek, he ultimately decided to go with the captivating photograph of West. Once Siegel decided, his team meticulously traced the image's outline and embedded it within the NBA shield, giving birth to the iconic logo we recognize today. Unveiling the Identity of the Logo While it is widely known among basketball enthusiasts and insiders that the logo does depict Jerry West, the NBA has never officially acknowledged him as the face behind their emblem. When Siegel presented the design, he neither explicitly stated that it was West in the image nor denied it during discussions. So, why was the league reluctant to acknowledge the West as representing their "new look"? One major factor lies in the league's objective at the time, establishing a standardized rather individualized identity for the NBA. Basketball is the epitome of a team sport, and during the 1960s, the concept of one-on-one or isolation-style play was largely foreign—the league aimed to promote the collective nature of the game rather than highlighting any specific individual. Jerry West: "I wish they would change it." Adding another layer to the story, it is intriguing that West was never officially informed about the logo until its release. Even then, he wasn't entirely sure if it was indeed him depicted in the picture. West and Siegel had limited interaction throughout the years, with only a few brief introductions. Siegel observed that West's attitude towards him was less than amicable. In April 2017, Jerry West made an appearance on The Jump, a famous NBA show on ESPN, where he expressed his perspective on the matter, surprising fans with his response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG_L9Uc9xJY "I don't know, I don't like to do anything to call attention to myself, and when people say that, it's just not who I am, period. If they would want to change it, I wish they would. In many ways, I wish they would." Alternative Options for the NBA Logo When asked if West had any suggestions for a replacement, he had one player in mind: Michael Jordan.

"He's been the greatest player I've ever seen. And I'm probably a harsh judge of talent, in the sense that I admire players that are really good defensive players and really good offensive players... And he made his teams win." Alan Siegel, the designer behind the logo, has been frequently asked about his opinion on updating and changing the NBA logo. His response has consistently been a resounding "NO." "It's a really elegant, powerful presentation of basketball. It's challenging from a graphic standpoint to create something as visually impactful in a static image like this. It needs to convey tension, movement, and grace. It's not easy. I don't believe they should change it. Having worked on numerous sports symbols, I can say it's a difficult task. You can't overcrowd the design with too many elements. It needs to be simple, powerful, and dynamic. The current logo possesses all these elements." FAQs This section will answer some common questions about the NBA logo and explain why it has remained unchanged for so long. Who was the NBA Logo before Jerry West?The NBA logo has always been associated with Jerry West. The designer, Alan Siegel, based the logo on a photograph of Jerry West dribbling the ball. Since its creation in 1969, the logo has featured Jerry West's silhouette.Was Michael Jordan ever the NBA Logo?No, Michael Jordan has never been the official NBA logo. Although Jordan is widely recognized and admired as one of the greatest basketball players ever, Jerry West's silhouette has always represented the NBA logo.Why is Kobe Bryant, not the NBA Logo?Following the tragic passing of Kobe Bryant, there was a movement among players and fans to change the NBA logo to honor him. However, the NBA has not made any official changes to the logo. The league's stance is that the logo is not meant to be associated with any specific player but represents the spirit of the game itself.Will the NBA ever change its logo?Currently, it is doubtful that the NBA will change its logo. The league has expressed contentment with the original logo for many years and considers it iconic. Changing the logo would require a significant rebranding effort and a departure from the longstanding symbol representing the league. Conclusion The story behind the NBA logo and the player it represents adds to the history and intrigue of the league's early years. While there have been discussions about updating the logo, it is hoped by many that it remains unchanged. The logo symbolizes the NBA's growth and success since its introduction in 1971. While the league has other priorities and concerns, it remains committed to honoring its past and celebrating the pioneers and the current stars who have contributed to the NBA's prominence. The image of Jerry West's silhouette on the league shield captures the essence of this vision, representing a blend of the past and present in the ever-evolving game of basketball.

[natromanxoff]

The Times - September 2, 2006

Credits to Louise Belle and Queencuttings.com

‘We thought he’d go on for ever’

To the world Freddie Mercury was Queen’s flamboyant frontman but how does his mother remember him? Tim Teeman finds out

To the world Freddie Mercury was Queen’s flamboyant frontman but how does his mother remember him? Tim Teeman finds out

Jer and Bomi Bulsara went to most of Freddie Mercury's concerts. But not Live Aid, on July 13, 1985, when their son, quite literally, rocked the world. "It was such a huge event it would have been too complicated," Jer recalls. "So we watched it on television. I was so proud. My husband turned to me and said, 'Our boy's done it.'"

It's hard to square Mercury's clamorous, strutting stage presence with the small, immaculately kept house on the outskirts of Nottingham where Jer now lives. It is called "Fredmira", combining the names of her two children, Freddie and Kashmira. With its plumped cushions, chiming carriage clock and neutral decor, it's not the kind of place you expect a rock god's mother to inhabit.

Yet here he is, her much-loved and missed Freddie, in a series of stills from his videos, looking matinee-idolish handsome. (With her full lips and wide smile, the diminutive Jer looks a lot like her son.) In the corner there is a statuette commemorating his accession into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A painting he did when he was 14 of two horses, one black, the other white, hangs on the wall.

Mercury's life was a game of contrasts. He was a cartoonish, megashowman, belting out anthems such as Radio Ga Ga and, most famously, Bohemian Rhapsody. But he was also fiercely private and softly spoken. He had huge, insane parties (featuring, so one rumour goes, dwarves serving cocaine) yet if he was in the UK he would visit his mum once a week for his favourite meal (dhansak) and talk about "normal family things". He told New Musical Express in 1974 that he was as "gay as a daffodil" but that information slipped from public view. He was an old-school celebrity who wilfully shrouded himself in mystery.

Then on November 23, 1991, Mercury issued this statement: "Following the enormous conjecture in the press over the last two weeks, I wish to confirm that I have been tested HIV positive and have Aids. I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me. However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with my doctors and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease. My privacy has always been very special to me and I am famous for my lack of interviews. Please understand this policy will it continue."

The next day Mercury died of bronchial pneumonia resulting from Aids. He would have turned 60 on Tuesday and the occasion is being marked by a number of events: a tribute day in Montreux, where he had a home and where a bronze statue of him stands, an exhibition of photographs in London, and an ITV documentary examining his life and his legacy. Like her son, Jer rarely gives interviews, but she is keen for him "to be remembered and celebrated". She grips a tissue throughout our conversation. With her is Roger Cooke, Kashmira's husband.

Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar. The family lived in a flat overlooking the sea, "a comfortable life", Jer, 83, says. As a young boy Farrokh was very happy and loved music, she says: folk, opera, classical. He would throw parties. At 8, […]

[Photo caption: Freddie Mercury at Wembley, scene of his band's greatest triumph]

[…] they sent him to boarding school in India. "I cried when we left him but he just mingled with the other boys," Jer recalls. There he adopted the name Freddie (the boys used to adopt "English" Christian names) and formed a band, the Hectics.

Her son wasn't a rebel, Jer insists in her quiet precise way, "but he always wanted to be a showman". In 1964 there was a revolution in Zanzibar and the family came to England, settling in Feltham, West London. "Freddie was so excited: 'England's the place we ought to go, Mum.' But it was very hard." Bomi got a job as a cashier, Jer as an assistant at Marks & Spencer.

Freddie went to art school. "I said, 'What are you going to do, son?' and he said he didn't know. I remember him filling out application forms for jobs and saying, 'I hope I don't get it.'" Watching Elvis Presley on TV, he vowed: "I'm going to be like him one day." He hung out on the music scene, changing his surname to Mercury after his ruling astrological planet.

Queen were formed in the early 1970s. Jer remembers going to their first gig. "Brian May's mum and I would ask each other, 'Are they going to make it?' That night I thought, 'Yes'," although after her son became famous she carried on working in M&S for some time.

Did she mind Mercury's outrageous stage persona? "It's what a performer has to do to please the audience," she says. The parties? The hedonism? "As a parent you worry but you have to let your child get on with their life." Roger suddenly says: "Freddie kept his life in compartments: the job, social circle, us. He didn't mix them much." Jer says: "He always respected his family and loved us so much."

Did she know he was gay? Did he […]

"I'm completely panto compared with his voice and him as an entertainer. His voice was like a machinegun. It hit everything perfectly" Robbie Williams

"He had theatricality, he was larger than life, new, fresh, cool. This is a god that walks as man" Mike Myers

"The difference between Freddie and almost all the other rock stars was he was selling the voice" Montserrat Caballé

"Freddie, if you're out there and you want to choose any artist to channel your work, please give me an album, or at least a middle eight" Robbie Williams

From Freddie Mercury: A Kind of Magic, ITV One, details right

[…] come out to her?

"No." She grips the tissue, wells up, looks down. "That area's too sensitive," Roger says, and adds that Mercury never came out to his family.

But later, more relaxed, Jer says Freddie wouldn't have minded people finding out that he was gay, that he didn't care what people thought of him. But he cared enough not to say it openly? "At that time. Society was different then," says Jer. "Nowadays it's all so open isn't it?" Jer thinks that had he been alive today, Mercury, too, would have become more open.

Roger thinks that Mercury may have worried that coming out would affect record sales, though he was naturally private. "His attitude was 'My life is my business.' The distinction was that he was private, not shy."

"He didn't want to upset us," Jer says. "I don't think it was aimed at the family," Roger says. "He liked to have people in different sets."

"When he came home he was just 'Freddie'," Jer says. He was down to earth, Roger adds. "When I think of Freddie I think of that Eagles song, Life's Been Good: 'It's tough to handle/This fortune and fame/Everybody's so different/I haven't changed.'”

What about his illness? In his book Mercury and Me, Jim Hutton, Mercury's partner for the last six years of his life, says that Mercury tested positive in 1987. Jer, again visibly very upset, looks into nowhere.

Roger says: "He didn't tell anybody in the family. We gradually became aware he had an illness but we had no idea what it was or how serious it was. Then in August 1990 Kash and I saw a mark on his foot. It was Kaposi's sarcoma [a malignant tumour of the connective tissue often associated with Aids].

"Kash asked what it was, whether it was getting better. Freddie said: 'You have to understand that what I have is terminal. I'm going to die.' That was it. He didn't say it was Aids. It didn't register immediately. We were driving home and I put a cassette on, and of all the things it was him singing Who Wants to Live Forever? That suddenly brought home the significance of what he had said."

How would he have felt about the criticism that he could have done more good had he come out and been open about his Aids diagnosis?

"He would have thought, 'F *** 'em, it's none of their business," says Roger. "It was only Jim Beach, his manager, who convinced him to release that statement." Jer says quietly: "He wanted the world and his fans to know the truth."

Mercury once told his mother that he might retire and paint. "We just laughed and told him we wouldn't let him. We thought he would go on for ever." The last time Roger saw him he spoke about "normal things, certainly not the illness". He stared into the water of the pond of his Japanese garden. Jer says quietly the last time she saw her son was "very emotional, very hard. He asked, 'Are you all right? Did any of the media worry you?' We said: 'Don't worry about us dear'. He was so ill and still he was being so caring."

There were many tabloid stories after his death, including the charge he had hidden his Indian background. "But Freddie wasn't Indian," says Roger. "He was Parsee. The Parsees settled in India and were gradually absorbed into its culture in much the same way as Jews were absorbed into other cultures and countries. In fact, the Parsees were known as the Jews India." But he never spoke about it? "For Freddie the past was the past. He only wanted to talk about the future," says Roger.

Mercury's songs come on the radio which is "sometimes emotional" for Jer. Her favourite is Somebody to Love. Hearing his soft spoken voice is harder as it's more "him". Bomi died three years ago, which "left a big hole", but Jer keeps busy and has grown used to being recognised in the street and supermarket. The other day one man said to her: "It's good to see you looking so well."

She has gone through what every parent shouldn't — outliving their own child — and she remains as immensely protective of him as he was of her. One thing that keeps her going, she says, are the letters she gets from people (addressed to "Freddie Mercury's mother, Nottingham") saying what his songs have meant to them. Had he been alive now, she thinks he would have composed rock operas. In an interview he once said that he wanted to go to Hell, rather than Heaven: "Think of the interesting people you're going to meet down there."

Jer is still gripping the tissue as I leave, but she is far from tragic or bereft. She laughs merrily as we imagine how Mercury would have celebrated his 60th (probably debauchedly). It's a long way from Zanzibar to Nottingham but, like her late, life-loving son, Jer Bulsara has relished the incredible journey.

Freddie Mercury: Lover of Life, Singer of Songs, Sony Ericsson Proud Central, 5 Buckingham Street, London, WC2 (020-7428 4949; www. proud.co.uk), Sep 8-Nov 17; Freddie Mercury: A Kind of Magic, Sept 12, ITV1, 9.45pm

[Photo caption: Above: Jer Bulsara at home in Nottingham, and with her son

Below: the many faces of Freddie, the ultimate rock showman]

[ilikefandom]

A Midnight Waltz

Request: So I saw your one-shots about Sev, Can I request some fluff Snape x reader. BTW I love your writing skills and your one-shots <3 <3

Requested By: Anon

Genre: Fluff

Synopsis: (Y/n) arrives at Hogwarts the same year as Umbridge. After Dumbledore spills the beans about Sev and her relationship, they take to the halls near the Ravenclaw dorm.

Pairing(s): Severus Snape x Fem Reader

Warning: None

When the train arrived at the station, all of the Hogwarts students began to scramble on. September the first, traveling day, was exciting for all students and the Golden Trio was no different. Their fifth year at Hogwarts was about to start and Hermione was already seated on the train, a large text book on her lap. 

Harry and Ron sat across from her having a thumb war, something that Harry had taught Ron while at 12 Grimmauld Place. The train was going to leave any minute and they could see parents waving at their children. Hermione closed her book and put it back into her trunk. 

As Ron was pinning Harry’s thumb a slight knock on the compartment door made the teenagers jump. A pretty, young woman gave a smile and waved at them. Hermione opened the door after she regained her senses. 

“Hello,” she said, “Might I come in? Everywhere else is full.”

“Absolutely.” Hermione said. “Are you in seventh year?”

“No, I’m a new teacher. My name is (Y/n), what are yours?” (Y/n) shook Hermione’s hand and took the seat next to her.

“It’s nice to meet you Professor (Y/n), I’m Hermione Granger.” Hermione kicked Harry’s leg.

“I’m Harry Potter.”

“Ron Weasley.”

“Well it’s nice to meet all of you! Are any of you in Ancient Runes?” (Y/n) asked her smile widening.

Harry, a bit taken aback by her disregard of his fame, gave her a huge smile. 

“Hermione is.” Ron explained, Hermione shooting him an evil glare.

“That is excellent Ms. Granger, and I assume all of you are taking potions.” (Y/n) nodded her head. “As it is mandatory.”

“Professor Snape is the worst.” Harry said looking out the window as the train shifted and began to move towards Hogwarts.

“And why is that?” (Y/n) asked, her features growing cold, frosting over her optimism.

“He gives way too much homework and is always picking on students who mess up.” Ron spat as he picked at a fraying hem on his jumper. 

“Oh I see,” (Y/n)’s sunshine came through the cloudiness of the sour look she had given Harry. “Should I leave you to yourselves? There is probably a teachers compartment somewhere.”

“That was rude!” Hermione said, crossing her arms and looking at her friends. “She could be Snape’s sister for all you know!”

“She’s too pretty to be related to him!” Ron scoffed.

Harry looked at the teacher in front of him. “I’m sorry professor, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Mr. Potter you didn’t offend me. I didn’t realize that Severus made you that uncomfortable.”

“Professor did you go to Hogwarts?”

“Yes Mr. Potter. I was a (Y/h) and prefect.” She looked around, as if checking for bugs, “I was in the same year as Regulus.”

Harry looked at her in shock, “Are you an Order member?”

Ron and Hermione stopped bickering to look at the professor with wide eyes. “Harry!” Hermione gasped

“Yes, Mr. Potter I am.” (Y/n) smiled. “So is my husband. The order is a much larger organization than you think.”

“What does your husband do?” Ron asked curiosity, winning over his better judgement.

“He’s a Hogwarts professor as well.”

“What does he teach?” Hermione asked, and (Y/n) winked at her.

“That’s for me to know and you not to find out. Now that I’ve played this game of twenty questions with you, I’d better disapparate, trains make me motion sick.” (Y/n) took out her wand and made her way to the door. “It has been nice getting to know all of you.”

With that, she spun and, with a small crack, disappeared into thin air.

Harry smiled at his friends. This would be an interesting year.

“If she’s going to be teaching Ancient Runes, who do you think will be taking on the Defense Against the Dark Arts banner?” Harry asked, looking at his two friends.

 “Can’t be worse than last year.” Ron said, continuing to pick at the loose thread. “A death eater in disguise,”

 Hermione gave a chuckle and the train chugged forward to their school.

When the Hogwarts express pulled up to the station and the students disembarked, the group of Gryffindors exited the carriage began to walk toward the thestral coaches.

The feast was about to begin. The tables were lined with newly sorted students and the chatter grew quiet as Dumbledore stood. 

“Good evening children, now we have three changes in staffing this year. I am pleased to welcome back Professor Grubbly-Plank who will be taking Care of Magical Creatures, while Professor Hagrid is on temporary leave.” Professor Dumbledore nodded at the older woman.

“We also wish to welcome our new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Professor Delores Umbridge. And I’m sure you will all join me in wishing the Professor good luck. Finally…” Dubledore, continued until he was interrupted by a fake throat clearing.

Everyone turned to face the woman clad in pink sitting near the end of the table. She than made her way to the front of the room. 

“Thank you, headmaster.” She began, “For those kind works welcome, and how lovely to see all of your bright happy faces smiling up at me. I’m sure that we’re all going to be very good friends.”

Nobody was smiling at her and (Y/n) wondered if this was going to be Umbridge’s schtick all year. The other woman continued, “The Ministry of Magic has always considered the education of young witches and wizards to be of vital importance, although each headmaster has brought something new to this historic school.”

Dumbledore looked just as annoyed with her as the rest of the school. 

“Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged. Let us preserve what must be preserved, perfect what can be perfected and prune practices that ought to be prohibited.” Umbridge, obviously did not or could not read the room because the only person interested in her speech was Filch.

“Thank you Professor Umbridge. Now, as I was saying,” Dumbledore continued, “we must welcome our new Ancient Runes teacher, Hogwarts Alumni, Professor (Y/n) Snape.”

(Y/n) stood and smiled at the Golden Trio, winking at Ron who looked at her in shock.

“She is married to Professor Severus Snape, and I would advise that you treat all three of the new professors with the utmost respect.”

After the feast was over (Y/n) and Severus made their way back to the teacher dorms. “I love you.” She said, filling the silence with her sweet smile.

“And I love you, my dear.” Severus replied, taking her hand in his. 

“How long has it been since we last waltzed?” (Y/n) asked her brooding husband, quoting one of her favorite characters.

Severus smiled at her, “Hours.” 

He took her hand and, in the dark hallway, they began to sway to music that only the two of them could hear. 

As the students made their way to their dorms, any and all Ravenclaws who went up one hallway too soon saw the bat and his bride, gliding over the floor, they only saw each other. The shadows that spread across the wizarding world could not touch their light. The war that lay in front of them could not frighten two adults so in love as them.

Author’s note: Some diolouge taken from the OOtP movie. Please send in requests. I hope all of you lovely readers enjoy.

[rinkrats]

I love how in a gifset full of Sid’s pretty face... you have a a gif of just his gunky hat in all its disgusting glory 😂 God, he’s so gross and yet I love him WHY IS HE THIS WAY 👏🏽

IT IS THE GROTTIEST 😭 here are a few cap-related stories in its honour:

1. Sidney Crosby is an extremely superstitious player. Every little detail, every element that could make a difference in the outcome of a match, you can be sure he saw it.

“His superstitions could be exhausting,” said Oceanic coach Doris Labonte. “The place where we went to eat the last time we visited a certain city, the chair I was sitting on, the tie I was wearing. I don’t think he really believed it, but it was his way of having fun, of relaxing. The worst was his famous Nordiques cap. It was dirty, wrecked, but he kept putting it on and we kept winning. At one point, we hid it. We haven’t done that often. When he’s angry, he’s angry!”

-Superstitious and generous, Dec 2006

2. A couple of things are settled for Crosby for next season.

He plans to live with the family of team co-owner and retired Hall of Fame player Mario Lemieux for a third season.

“You won't have to ask me next year," Crosby said. "I'll commit now and say I'll be back at Mario's.”

Crosby also will have a new Penguins cap, replacing the sweat-stained black one he kept at his locker stall all season out of superstition and that yesterday had this message taped to it:

“Please wash me. I can't stand this anymore. -Hat”

-Crosby played on broken foot, April 22 2007

3. It’s a regular Penguins hat… The difference, though, is this particular model has "BRYCE" stitched on one side, and "MAKE-A-WISH" on the other. The hat looked to be black at one point, but through constant wear, it's faded and now features blondish-brown sweat stains.

The hat was a present from 10-year-old Bryce Cunningham. Cunningham was supposed to bowl with Crosby at a team-sponsored charity bowling event... but Crosby had to skip the event due to a case of strep throat.

Bryce was doubly disappointed because he also had a present for Crosby. It's a fan's right to criticize a player for how he performs on the ice, but that's not what bothered Bryce.

Don Cunningham told NHL.com his son's interests were a bit more esoteric: “We happened to notice on some of the interviews that Sid was doing after the games, and my son said, ‘Look at that hat, it's terrible; a guy with all his money, why wouldn't he get a new hat?’ I said I don't know.”

Don said the decision was made to get Crosby a new hat. When Crosby couldn't attend the event, Don said he approached Dan Potash, a reporter for FSN Pittsburgh, and asked if he would give the hat to Crosby the next night in Toronto.

“Usually I just have a hat a year kind of thing and stick with it,” Crosby told NHL.com. “I had been wearing one a lot until two months before the season ended, then he gave me this one and said the other one was a little too dirty, so I switched it up. We started to win some games and it worked out pretty good.”

-Crosby offers a lift of the lid to Cunningham, April 27 2009

[lvrexe]

Wild Ride | Shiranui

Wild Ride Chapter 1 - Shiranui Chp 2/Chp 3 [both are yet to be written] First three chapters will be published on Tumblr, but the rest will be posted on my AO3 which you can find here.

General Fic Info Rating; Explicit Category; M/M Ship(s); Hatake Kakashi/Shiranui Genma, Sarutobi Asuma/Shiranui Genma, Hatake Kakashi/Sarutobi Asuma Genre: Romance, Angst, Tags: Smut with plot, Poly Relationships, Friends with Benefits, Eventual Romance, Alternative Universe, Semi-Modern AU, Anal sex, Explicit Content, Misinterpreted Relationships, Misunderstandings, Drinking, Alcoholism

Semi-Modern AU - Many aspects of the canon universe are still present (Shinobi Organization System, Jutsu, Missions, Chunin Exams, etc) but take a lighter mood and aren’t as prominent. Technology is advanced and modernized, such as; phones, computers, internet, tvs, video games, etc. Peaceful AU - The Third Shinobi War still occurred but many, such as Uchiha Obito and Nohara Rin, still survived to tell the tale. The Uchiha clan were never massacred and neither of the Uchiha brothers left the Village.

Chapter Info; Word Count: ~5.7k Content Warnings: Drinking, One night stand, Hangover, Oral sex, Hand job, Friends with Benefits, bit of an oral fixation

s/n; There’s a reference to an anime I once watched in here, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt.

+ last scene includes NSFW

The faint sound of his phone buzzing is what stirred Shiranui Genma awake, that, and the bright sun beaming him in his face. A shiver shot up his spine as cold, morning air brushed against his single exposed leg. He tucked his calf back under the blanket, which alerted him to the stinging pain between his cheeks.

Buzz… Buzz…

Genma groaned as his phone vibrated. His hand swung over to the end table, tapping around to find his phone. When he couldn’t feel it, he peeled his eyes open and a groan left his lips as the room he was in wasn’t his own. He tossed himself onto his back, keeping his hips turned onto their side, and ran his hands down his face. ‘Dammit… And I promised Hayate I wouldn’t...’ he thought to himself.

His phone quit buzzing and fell silent, leaving him in the quiet room. He sighed and rubbed his temples, trying to stop his splitting hangover headache as he tried to remember the night before.

Genma had gone out with his Jounin colleagues for a night of drinking; a way of celebrating Uchiha Obito’s promotion to Jounin. It didn’t phase him that he had a shift in the morning, he told himself he wasn’t going to get too drunk. Heh, and look how that turned out. He let out a groan as he pried at his own mind for answers. From his memory, he remembered… Ebisu, Might Gai, Umino Iruka (Technically, Iruka wasn’t a Jounin, but he still grew up close with the group), Sarutobi Asuma, Yuhi Kurenai, Nohara Rin, and Hatake Kakashi.

As he thought back to the night before, he cursed to himself for keeping his head upwards as his partner attacked his neck after roughly pushing him against the wall. The two hardly seemed to get through the door. He remembered the touch as he viciously undressed the person then. He definitely didn’t remember any tits.

The next thing he remembered was him on his knees, lips dragging up and down his partner’s cock as he bobbed his head. He still didn’t get a look at who it was. But it definitely wasn’t Kurenai or Rin.

So it wasn’t Kurenai or Rin and it wasn’t Obito or Asuma, he knew that for certain. Sure, Genma enjoyed a good hook-up here and there but he knew damn well that people in loving relationships were a no-go. So that left him with Ebisu, Gai, Iruka and Kakashi. Genma’s face visibly cringed and held back a gag before he immediately chucked Gai out of the list. He thought about Ebisu for a moment before kicking him off the list as well.

That left him with the last two on the list; Iruka or Kakashi.

Genma shivered and he held his wrist, resisting the urge to palm himself as he relished in the memories of the previous night. Fuck, Iruka or Kakashi were good, whoever it was. He just hated how every memory he had of the experience failed to give him any sort of indicator of whoever it was. Not like he wasn’t going to find out soon anyway.

He bit his bottom lip as his hips humped up into his hand; he caved in. His brunette bangs fell to the sides of his face as he raised his lower body upwards, his mouth drew open, heavy breaths leaving his lips as he felt his cock harden beneath his boxers. But as he melted into the pleasure, his phone started up again, buzzing and vibrating, effectively ruining the moment for him.

Scoffing, he relaxed himself and turned onto his side to look around for his phone. On the floor, his clothes were scattered across the room but his pants were the closest to the bed. His phone’s bright screen shone through the fabric of his pants pocket and he tugged out his phone. Checking the caller ID, he uttered a “fuck” under his breath. Shizune. Reluctantly, he hit answer and brought the phone up to his ear. “‘Ello?” he croaked out.

“Genma! Where are you?” Shizune screeched through the phone, causing Genma to pull his head away momentarily.

“You’re rather loud this morning,” he grumbled.

“Answer me! You’re supposed to be here by now! Do you know what time it is?” God, if she kept shouting in his ear, his headache was bound to come back; not like it had dissipated. He checked the time listed in the top corner of his phone. 8:34 AM. Dammit, half an hour late. He pushed himself up and rested his back against the pillows. “I am.... Helping the elderly at a nursing home…”

Shizune immediately scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, Genma! You were out drinking again,” she lectured. He could hear her sigh before her attention was likely drawn elsewhere when someone in the background raised their voice. “Ack! I’m coming, Lady Tsunade!... Get your butt back over here already, Genma!”

“I will, I will…” he groaned as he rubbed his forehead. “Cover for me, please?”

“Cover for you, how? What am I supposed to tell Tsunade?” “I… Uh, got kidnapped?”

“Oh, har, har… I’ll tell her you’re running late. And that’s it.”

Genma heard a click on her end and the call ended. He sighed and tossed his phone on the nearby end table. His umber brown eyes caught wind of a familiar book hanging on the edge of the table; Icha Icha Paradise. Ah, so he managed to bed the famed Copy Nin, Kakashi. And if on cue;

“So you’re awake.”

Standing at the door frame of the bedroom was Kakashi, messy silver hair looking more like a rat's nest than actual hair, a loose white tank top that hardly did anything to hide much, and of course, his classic mask that clung to his face to hide his features. In his hand was a glass of water. Genma made no effort in hiding the fact he was eyeing Kakashi up and down. He chuckled and purred, eating up the eye candy. Kakashi pushed himself off the door frame and placed the cup onto the table, “Glad you’re enjoying the view.”

“Wish I could’ve seen more of it last night, y’know,” A cocky reply, but not necessarily a fib. He would’ve loved to see Kakashi’s features, even if it were from a drunken one night stand. The brunette grabbed the glass and sipped on the water. He let out a sigh and rubbed the side of his head. He gulped down the water and placed the glass down as Kakashi wandered over and sat himself down at the edge of the bed. “Heh, sorry, you know how finicky I get about that…”

Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled, brows curving to express a light-hearted nervous expression. He turned his head to Genma. “You’re not in too much pain, are you?” he questioned. “I did what I could with the whole aftercare thing… Tried getting you dressed as well, I think.”

Curious, the brunette Jounin lifted the sheets. A smile tugged at his lips and a quick laugh erupted from him. He was only in his boxers. When he reached down and tucked the waistband around his thumb, he noticed something. “These are inside out, Kakashi,” he stated with a cackle.

“Never said I did it well…” the silver-haired shinobi chuckled. He rested his arms on his knees. “You got a shift soon?”

“Late for one…” Genma clarified, “... Can I use your shower?” He took a glance down at his inverted undergarments. “... And snag some underwear?”

“I’ve only got large, so I hope they’ll fit,” Kakashi replied as he pushed himself up. “As for my shower, I don’t have much in there, but feel free to use it.” He opened one of the drawers in his dresser and tossed over a pair of his briefs onto the bed as Genma climbed out of the bed.

“They’ll fit,” Genma replied as he gathered his clothes from the floor. He tossed his pants, his shirt and his jacket onto the bed along with the briefs. He caught the towel tossed towards him. Kakashi headed towards the door, before stopping and turning to the other Jounin, “Shower’s just down the hall, at the end.”

Genma found the shower fairly easily; there weren’t many rooms in Kakashi’s house. He tossed the white towel onto the hanger and peeled off his briefs before stepping into the tub. Turning the knob, he held his hand under the stream of water until he found the right temperature before tugging up the diverter. His back flinched when it was splashed with water from the shower head above. The shower fully woke him up and he spent a good minute or two just soaking in the warm water, he rested his arm against the wall, letting the water drench his hair as he thought about the night before. He just slept with the Hatake Kakashi, the famed Copy Nin and the ideal example of an elite shinobi; the best of the best.

A low chuckle pried its way out of his lips. ‘Now that’s a tale to tell…’ he thought to himself. Remembering the night, his cock twitched in response. Fuck, he was not that caught up on the encounter that it got him hard this quickly. Regardless, Genma reached down to the sex between his legs; he’d indulge in his fantasies for a moment. His hand wrapped firmly around his base and he pumped his hand down to the tip, letting out a shaky breath as he did so.

His hand continued to stroke his length, pleasing his hard-on. An aroused huff left his lips as he leaned against the wall, resting his forehead on his forearm, eyes focused on the shaft in his free hand.

Genma bit into his bottom lip, raising his head upwards, water splashing on his throat now, as his motions increased. A low groan rumbled in his throat and his eyes squeezed shut as he chased his release. He humped his hips, a familiar tingling sensation pooling deep down. He groaned out as cum shot out of his tip, splattering onto the pearly white bottom of the tub.

The water diluted his fluids before the two liquids were sucked down the drain. Genma panted out as he calmed himself down. He stared down at the floor of the tub, his body ached for more and he nearly caved to his urges. But he shook his head and reached out to the knob, shifting the warm water to freezing cold. He shivered as his mind was shocked into snapping out of it’s groggy state.

Genma knew what awaited him behind the doors of the Hokage’s Residence; a lecture from Shizune, pestering from Kotetsu or Izumo (if they weren’t on gate duty), questions from Hayate, and finally, a reprimanding from Lady Tsunade. Running his hands down his clothes, he made his attempt at smoothing out the wrinkles in his clothes.

He sighed and shook his head before he sucked in a breath and entered the bright scarlet building. As expected, both Izumo and Kotetsu sat in the lobby-esque room. Kamizuki Izumo was the first to raise his head from the desk he was stationed at. “Running late today, Genma?” he shot out his first question.

The exhausted Jounin let out a low grumble as he walked over to Izumo and Kotetsu’s desk. “You could say that…” he murmured under his breath, teeth clamping down on the senbon between his lips.

“‘Say that’, huh?” Izumo huffed out, handing over a clipboard used for signing in, “You act like you’ve been a no-show for an hour now.” “Hey, where were you?” Hagane Kotetsu piped up, popping one of his eyes open.

“Home,” Genma answered with a lie. It left Kotetsu raising a brow with a mischievous grin. Uh oh. “Really?” Kotetsu swung up to sit up straight, his attention now fully grabbed by the conversation. He rested his arms on the end of the table, “Hayate told me he went and checked on you.”

Shit.

“Must’ve not heard him,” the brunette responded as he grabbed a pen from the pen holder tucked into the corner of the desk. He scribbled his name on the sign-in sheet.

“Huh, odd,” Kotetsu hummed, “‘Cos he only left to pick you up after your call with Shizune.” If Kotetsu kept on pestering and prying, Genma would be in jail for seven cases of assault soon.

“Was already out,” he was popping out lies left and right, and he knew Kotetsu knew that his tales were fabricated. But he supposed that was the dynamic of their limited friendship. One prying, the other lying.

“Well, Hayate sure came in way earlier than you—” “Kotetsu, that’s enough,” Izumo spat as he took the clipboard away from Genma. “Ignore him, Genma… Go get to the Hokage’s office, Lady Tsunade’s waiting for you. Best not keep her waiting.”

Genma quickly took his leave from the two Chunin and headed down the hallway. He passed and greeted a few other shinobi, making brief conversations, checking up on them just as his mother raised him to. He turned onto the stairs but as he was about to reach the top floor, he stopped in his tracks as he spotted the back of his close friend, Gekko Hayate.

He sighed in defeat, no way he was avoiding his friend now, and took that final step, bringing himself to the top floor. Of course, the ninja in front of Hayate pointed him out and the sickly Jounin turned around. His dark brown eyes were well-sunken in, his skin dreadfully pale, dark hair rough and damaged; his illness was taking a toll on him, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to identify that. “Oh, finally, there you are,” he said. He turned his head to the other shinobi and dismissed him before heading over to Genma. “You want to tell me what happened to you?”

Genma groaned. “Did you need to check on me?” he shot back.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to drink,” the other murmured. “Shizune and I both had to cover for your ass, you know…”

“Sorry, sorry… I got carried away, I know…” he grumbled as the two made their way down the curved hall to the Hokage’s office.

“So who was it this time?” Hayate inquired, his interest piqued. “Must’ve been someone good if they kept you late for an hour rather than the usual half hour.”

The taller of the two laughed before he pondered whether or not he should spill the beans on his night with Kakashi. Kakashi probably wouldn’t like others knowing of his sex life… He didn’t strike Genma as the type to brag of his encounters and experiences in the sex department— if he bragged about anything at all. “Can’t tell you,” Genma eventually replied.

A hiss through Hayate’s clenched teeth. “That bad?”

“Oh no, he was amazing,” Genma informed. “Just don’t think he’d want me to disclose our night.”

“What? You worried I’d gossip? Do I look like a 14-year-old girl to you?”

“No, I think you look like a character from a Tim Burton movie,” Genma was quick to shoot back, earning him a shove in the arm from Hayate.

“Rude.”

“Come in,” Tsunade’s voice called out from behind the closed door.

Genma sucked in a breath and let out a heavy sigh. He opened the Hokage’s door and entered the office, Lady Tsunade sat behind her large desk, papers scattered across the top while her tawny brown eyes remained focused on her computer screen, scrolling through something.

“Lord Fifth,” Genma greeted, grabbing Tsunade’s attention.

Tsunade shifted her eyes to him before turning her body to fully face him. “Genma.” Oh that wasn’t a good tone. “You’re late.”

“My apologies, Hokage,” he murmured out, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “I got wrapped up in something…”

The blonde woman cocked an eyebrow but she turned her head to her computer, deciding against prying. She clicked around on her computer, bringing up some files, specifically the files about the up-coming Chunin Exams. She scrolled down and found the blank proctor spot for the finals. Normally, Hayate would be taking this spot, however, his illness interfered. Genma had held the finals before and based on the Third Hokage’s report, he did well. Not that there was much to report on. He was one of few recommended for the position.

“As you probably know, the first Chunin Exams of the year are around the corner,” she spoke up finally. She rested her elbows on her desk and rested her chin on her intertwined hands. “The first and second stages already have their proctors,” she explained, “The finals, however, lack a proctor.”

“Hayate can’t operate?” Genma piped up.

Tsunade only nodded. “Given Hayate’s illness and it’s sudden increase in progression, he won’t be able to perform optimally during the Exams,” she stated briefly. She sighed and furrowed her brows, averting her gaze downwards. She closed her eyes for a moment, dwelling in a feeling of guilt. She opened them once again, eyes strict and firm, she gazed back up at the brunette Jounin. “There’s been a few recommendations, but I feel like you’d be the best pick for the proctor.”

Genma bit down onto the end of his senbon. He pursed his lips and let out a heavy breath through his nostrils. He sighed and nodded. “I see,” he hummed. He glanced back at the door where Hayate had dropped him off. “I get it…”

“You don’t have any qualms about this?” she questioned.

He shook his head. “Not at all,” he affirmed, “I’d be glad to proctor the exams.”

“You know that as a proctor, you now take part in determining which participants are promoted to the rank of Chunin,” Tsunade reminded with an explanation he had heard once before, “And you must remain unbiased to the shinobi and kunoichi of Konoha. Genin from other villages will be attending the exams and unless this exam is lacklustre, I do expect more than just one or two being promoted.”

“Understood, Lord Hokage,” Genma replied sharply. He had heard of this speech before, almost every proctor had heard it when given the position. He knew the job, his new position and the sudden boost of significance to his decisions the position brought.

“Lady Tsunade,” he piped up. She raised her head. “Who exactly are the other two proctors?” he inquired.

Tsunade turned her head to the screen of her monitor. “Hm, well it’s Nara Shikamaru and Yamashiro Aoba,” she listed off the two proctors. “Shikamaru is already ironing out some of the details for the first exam, while Aoba is working out his plans for the second exam.”

Shikamaru and Aoba, huh? Genma made a mental note to check in on the two. Then again, it wasn’t exactly necessary, the Finals were always the same no matter what the previous exams were.

“I’d also like you to inform some of the teams,” Tsunade requested. “Get the news spreading among the leaders.”

“Don’t you want to bring them here?” he questioned. “Unfortunately, I’ve got a few meetings… It’d be a hassle for me to squeeze in another.”

Genma groaned. “So, no patrol around the residence?”

“No, I’d suggest you get going. You’re already running late as it is,” Tsunade instructed.

The brunette Jounin made no more complaints, not even a little comment, before he nodded and headed out of the office.

“Naruto, what are you doing?!” Haruno Sakura pestered, angrily pointing towards her dimwitted teammate.

“Whaddya mean ‘what am I doing’?” Uzumaki Naruto shot back. “I’m doing just as Kakashi-sensei said!”

Sakura whacked the back of the blonde boy, gritting her teeth. “You idiot! No, you’re not! Here, watch me again and pay attention, Naruto.”

Leaning against a tree, arms crossed, Kakashi let out a sigh as he watched his two students struggle to pin down a technique he taught— well, Sakura had already gotten it down and mastered it, it was Naruto who had yet to execute it. He rubbed his forehead for a moment, eyebrows frowned, and dipped his head, tearing his attention away from the two Genin. Discerning a familiar chakra approaching behind him, he quickly turned around and waited for the Jounin to land.

“Kakashi.”

Genma dropped onto the ground swiftly. He stood up straight and walked forward, resting on the tree across from Kakashi’s. “Training your squad?” He spoke leisurely, making for small talk.

“New chakra technique… Naruto needs it.” The silver-haired shinobi made a quick glance over at the teenage couple as Sakura desperately tried to aid Naruto. “What do you need? Thought you had a patrol shift around the Hokage building.”

Genma let out a groan and rubbed the back of his neck, flicking the senbon to the other corner of his lips, teeth nibbling on the end in his mouth. “Nah, I got a new job,” he murmured.

“Which is?”

“I’m the proctor of the Chunin Exam finals,” he announced. He stuffed his hands into his pants pockets as he gazed out towards the training Genin out on the field. “Lord Fifth specifically asked me to inform the genin squads of Konoha of the upcoming Exams…”

Kakashi let out a hum as he pondered whether or not his squad was ready. His eyes flicked over to Sakura; she was fine, still needed some tuning but her training with the Fifth Hokage proved to be rewarding, she had a devastating blow to her punches and her medical Ninjutsu was nigh on perfect. His absent student, Uchiha Sasuke, had perfected the Chidori and his combat effectiveness. His skill with his sharingan, while Kakashi couldn’t help in that department despite having been gifted one, was honed in, thanks to the help of his older brother.

His eyes drifted over towards Naruto. He observed the blonde’s strained but concentrated expression as he pushed himself off from the ground. Naruto was still learning the Rasengan and whatever other Jutsu Jiraiya had started teaching him. Naruto was who Kakashi was worried about.

“...Kakashi?”

The elite Jounin snapped out of his daze. He chuckled and waved his hand softly. “Sorry, sorry…” he murmured. He sighed and crossed his arms. “I’ll end up talking to them, see if they’re ready for another Chunin Exam.”

“Speaking of your students,” Genma piped up. “Where’s the third?... Sasuke?”

“Ah, him. He’s already mastered the technique. I decided against keeping him from training with Itachi just because Naruto struggles to get it down,” he replied.

Genma only hummed in response, kicking his leg up, resting his foot against the trunk of the tree. He kept his head turned to the two Genin training on the field. As Sakura lectured and Naruto snapped back, the specialized Jounin couldn’t help but quietly chuckle at himself. Memories of his own Genin years flooded his mind. It was a mere three years compared to Team 7’s five years, but his years were still packed with fond memories; it was hard not to have some eventful memories when Might Gai was your assigned teammate. Pair that with Ebisu's stern personality and insistence to do everything by the books, Genma was often the bystander to a lot of spectacles between Gai and Ebisu.

Another laugh danced from him as he remembered all the antics he was dragged into by his two teammates; their fights, Ebisu’s not-so-hidden pervertedness, Gai’s determination to defeat Kakashi in quite literally anything, Gai using Ebisu and him as essentially training dummies. That was before any of them were promoted and all took their own paths; Ebisu went off to be assigned to the Third Hokage’s honorable grandson; Gai went to train a different squad, similar to Kakashi; and Genma? He ended up specializing in Hokage protection.

“I know that look.” Genma tore his eyes away from Naruto and Sakura upon hearing Kakashi’s words. “What’s on your mind, Genma?”

“Just reminiscing,” the brunette admitted. “Sometimes it seems like it was only yesterday we were their rank, acting without a damn care in the world.”

Kakashi only nodded in agreement. “Yeah…” he muttered under his breath. He pushed himself up off the tree. His eyes scanned over Genma’s body, images of Genma’s body flickered in his mind. He shivered at the thought of having the brunette beneath him again. “Genma.”

“Huh? What’s up?”

Nervously, the silver-haired shinobi chuckled. “If you’re not busy, stop by my house later.”

Genma cocked his brow up, a smirk tugged at his lips. He lifted off the tree and tilted his head. “Oh?” His interest was piqued. He stepped forward. “Alright, I’ll bite then… Eight sound good?”

Kakashi quickly nodded. He gulped down his nervousness and resisted the urge to run his hands up the brunette’s slim body. “Yea-yeah, of course.”

The older Jounin only chuckled. “Don’t fret, Kakashi… You were enjoyable, like hell I’m turning that down,” he assured. He pulled away and hummed. “I’ll bring a bottle to calm your nerves, don’t worry.”

With that, Genma turned on his heels to head off, waving goodbye to the silver-haired Jounin.

Kakashi wasn’t sure what he was doing giving into his urges earlier, he never usually thought with his dick. No matter the situation, he was always thinking with his head. He cursed himself, but he also praised himself for shooting his shot. And with someone like Genma too. He had to admit, the brunette just awoke something within him. It wasn’t certain how long the attraction had lasted but it definitely became noticeable in recent years the more the two hung out with each other.

A knock at the door disrupted his thoughts and Kakashi pulled himself up off his couch. He opened his front door to Genma, a bottle of whiskey in his hand, two shot glasses dangerously stacked onto the cap of said bottle. Genma wore a grin on his face, his senbon clenched firmly between his teeth. “Hey there, ‘Kashi,” he greeted, “You gon’ let me in or…?”

Kakashi cleared his throat and stepped to the side, inviting the brunette in. “You brought whiskey?” he asked an obvious question.

Genma laughed. “Of course,” he replied with the obvious answer as he plopped down on the couch. As he popped the bottle open, he took his time in observing Kakashi’s house in full.

It was a small house nuzzled between two larger buildings, so it didn’t come as a shock that Kakashi had little space in his living room; a large glass door that led to his backyard, the left wall beside it rested the couch Genma sat on, on the right was a wall-mounted TV with a shelf of all Kakashi’s books beneath it; the middle was a simple coffee table with miscellaneous items scattered across the top.

Kakashi sat himself down next to Genma as the brunette poured them both shots. He accepted the drink Genma offered him and watched as the other downed his shot instantly. He watched as Genma curled his lips in momentarily before he spat out his senbon, the thin metal needle clattering onto his table. Fuck. The way Genma moved his lips, how they’d look during his cocky smirks, all of it lit a flame deep down inside Kakashi. “This whiskey…” he brought up.

“Don’t worry,” the other said, “It’s weak whiskey.”

Accepting that, he shifted himself to the side. He tugged down his mask when his back was fully turned to Genma. He tilted his head back and downed the shot. Lifting his mask back up, he turned and watched as his old classmate poured another for himself before offering the bottle to him. He waved off the offer and slid his glass back onto the table. “I’m fine, Genma,” he assured.

“Alright, bottle’s here if you ever want more,” Genma replied as he drank down another shot.

“So… You’re the new proctor for the Chunin Exams?” He was quick to pull up a topic for small talk.

“Mhm,” the brunette quickly confirmed. “Apparently, I was one of the slim few who were recommended.” He turned his head to Kakashi. “But you seriously didn’t bring me here to just chat, did you?”

“No— but I just—” While Kakashi fumbled over his words, Genma shifted off his own cushion and kicked himself over Kakashi’s lap, resting his legs on each side of the other’s thighs. The white-haired Jounin sputtered as Genma sat firmly on his lap, his hands on his shoulders. “Oh.”

“You get flustered so easily for someone who reads porn on the daily,” Genma chuckled as he rocked his hips into Kakashi’s. “Hell, you probably watch a shit ton too, don’t you?”

“I—… Wow,” he murmured as his hands landed on the older’s hips, fingers dangerously close to groping those firm cheeks.

The brunette laughed and his hands slid up Kakashi’s neck, his jawline, his cheeks before his index and middle fingers hooked around the edge of his black mask. “Relax, ‘Kakashi,” he purred, “Let’s get this mask off, shall we?”

Kakashi’s hands were gripping Genma’s wrists in an instant, causing Genma to flinch momentarily. He sighed and slowly pulled Genma’s hands off his mask. Averting his eyes, letting go of Genma as the brunette’s hands found themselves back on his shoulders. “Sorry, Genma…” he murmured under his breath.

Genma pursed his lips, a little annoyed but he respected the other’s wishes. “Alright,” he replied.

Switching up his plans, the brunette slid off Kakashi’s lap and knelt on the hardwood floors. Realizing his intentions, Kakashi shifted his hips closer to the edge of the couch, spreading his legs. Genma’s hands trailed over his thighs, fingers drawing circles into his pants. He could only shiver in response. His zipper was undone and he lifted his hips as his pants were yanked down to his ankles.

Genma was quick to lick his lips upon seeing an erection hiding behind some black boxers. His hand reached forward and palmed the obvious bulge, a breathy groan escaping Kakashi. He chuckled and smirked as he continued on caressing Kakashi’s clothed cock. Watching the silver-haired shinobi’s reactions only egged on Genma. He felt Kakashi twitch and harden under his touch.

“Genma,” Kakashi grunted, “If you don’t start sucking, I’m going to burst.”

A teasing laugh erupted from Genma’s lips and he complied with Kakashi’s desperate wishes. His fingers hooked around the waistband of the undergarments and like the pants, he tugged them down. His chocolate brown eyes stared at the erect dick that shot up upon being freed. “You’re packing some length there…” he purred out a compliment. Kakashi only let out a nervous chuckle in reply.

Genma’s hand wrapped around the base and his tongue swiped across the tip. He dragged his tongue down the side, leaving a strip of his saliva down the sensitive flesh. His tongue licked around the tip, lapping up any pre. He pumped his hand up to the tip before tugging back down, spreading his saliva down the shaft.

Kakashi uttered curses under his breath before his hand reached over to the top of Genma’s head, tugging out the knot of his hitai-ate. He tugged off the navy blue headband and chucked it to the side, the metal clattering against the wooden floor. His fingers dove in, tangling themselves in Genma’s locks of brown hair. He tugged the other closer to the tip of his leaking cock. “I told you just suck,” he demanded in a timid tone, though, it only sounded like a squeaky request.

Genma rolled his eyes but he wasn’t going to deny or complain. He kissed the reddened tip before his tongue swirled around the tip. Through his thick eyelashes, his eyes locked with Kakashi’s as his lips wrapped around the cock. He pushed the length down his mouth, his tongue cupping the underside of the erect cock.

Kakashi groaned out as Genma’s wet warmth enveloped his length, resting his head on the back of the couch. His hand tugged at Genma’s hair, pushing him down his shaft. “Fuck…” he murmured out.

His eyes focused on Genma as the brunette dipped his head up and down, saliva coating his shaft. Specifically, his eyes watched Genma’s lips; he watched how they firmly wrapped around his length, how they dirtied themselves with saliva each time he bobbed his head, dragging up and down his throbbing cock. His cock twitched inside the mouth of Genma just from staring at his lips working.

Genma’s cheeks hollowed out as he sucked, his tongue cupping the underside of his dick, fingers wrapped around the base. If he could, he’d be smirking as Kakashi sung him whispered praises as he guided his mouth down the thick cock, the tip pushing against the back of his throat.

“Shit… Just like that…” Kakashi uttered. His hand continued to tug Genma down his shaft, deep-throating the other. He groaned out in pleasure as he rocked his hips upwards, earning some gagging sounds from Genma. He hesitated for a moment but Genma picking up his pace led Kakashi to continue on.

Heavy pants and lewd slurping noises filled the living room, Kakashi occasionally moaning out loudly as he reached his release. His grip tightened around Genma’s locks of hair as he shoved the brunette’s head down, thrusting his cock down his throat.

With a muffled moan, Genma squeezed his eyes tight as thick ropes of cum shot deep into his throat. As Kakashi relaxed, he pulled his head back, slipping the cock out of his mouth. He swallowed down the salty white liquid before smirking. His rosy pink lips were drenched with saliva, eyes hazy with lust as he gazed up at Kakashi. A chuckle escaped him and he licked his lips. He leaned in and slapped the cock against his cheek, splashing saliva against his face, thin strings kept him connected to the cock whenever he pulled it away before they snapped and disappeared. “You’re still a bit hard…” he commented.

“I… Urm, bedroom?” Kakashi squeaked out as Genma continued to play with his cock like some kid’s toy.

Genma kissed the sloppy tip and nodded. “Bedroom,” he affirmed.

[hailing-stars]

@febuwhump day 9: buried alive 

BURIED ALIVE

“So, while we’re just hanging out in the bathroom,” says Tony. Peter’s head hangs over the toilet, and he shuts his eyes tight, willing Tony to stop talking. “I thought we could chat.”

“Maybe that can wait,” says Peter, dryly, and miserably. “Until, I dunno, I’m done puking my guts out.”

“It’s waited long enough. Besides, you never call me back, and you won’t talk to your aunt.”

OR

Peter's guilt over a recent run in with Mysterio literally makes him sick.

BURIED ALIVE flashes in neon letters across the screen, the techno theme music plays, and Peter’s eyes glaze over. He’s officially entered The Zone, and there’s no pulling him out of it until his character dies or he achieves the highest honor, a score enormous enough to knock MQB off the hall of fame.

His hand clutches the joystick, and his fingers glide across the buttons, and he can feel Ned staring at him, but it doesn’t distract him from the current mission.

It doesn’t help him, either.

This game ends exactly the same way every game before it had, on level five, when he’s only points away from taking first place away from MQB.

He sighs, and reaches a hand in his pocket, searching for more tokens but finding it empty.

“Shit,” says Peter. “I’m out of tokens.”

“Again?” asks Ned. “How many times have you played this? Exactly?”

“I dunno, not that much.”

Ned doesn’t look like he believes him. He looks worried, and Peter tries to shove the annoyance he feels deep, deep down.

He wishes people would stop looking at him that way. Like he’s just one fall away from breaking and shattering in a way that’d leave his pieces uneven and unfit to be put back together the correct way, the uniquely Peter-way.

“Maybe we should do something else,” says Ned. “Go to a movie, or pick up that limited edition Star Wars set?”

It’s tempting, and Peter wants to go, wants to be anyplace but this arcade, going to war with himself over a some stupid high score on some arcade machine. An environment without all the flashing lights, screaming children, and annoying game music would be a nice change in pace, but he can’t.

He has to stay. Until he’s won. Until he wipes that name off the charts and replaces it with his own.

“I need more tokens,” says Peter, as a way of answer. He hopes the way his voice sounds like a zombie will go ignored.

He walks past Ned, and heads towards the token machine, dodging running, shouting kids on his way. He fumbles around with his wallet, until he finds the credit card Tony had given him for emergencies. Not for the first time, he swipes it at the token machine and receives a hundred new chances to defeat his enemy.

If that isn’t an emergency, Peter doesn’t know what’s supposed to make that list.

When he turns, he comes face to face with Ned.

“Dude,” he says. “Maybe you should take a break. Have you even eaten dinner yet?”

His stomach growls at the mention of food, and his eyes automatically drift towards the restaurant installed into the arcade. He supposes Ned has a point. He can afford to stop his gaming long enough to scarf down some pizza.

“Yeah, okay, good idea.”

Relief washes through Ned’s features, and Peter’s stabbed with guilt. It attacks him from all angles.

He’s guilty for worrying his friends, and his family, and guilty because he doesn’t know how to stop. He’s guilty of the wave of crime overtaking Queens now that Spider-Man has abandoned it, in favor of standing still at an arcade game.

Guilty for that thing he doesn’t allow himself to think about.

Most of all, he’s guilty, because instead of working towards wiping away the current charts on BURIED ALIVE, he’s sitting at a table eating pizza, wasting time.

*

Drops of sweat trickle down his forehead, and a shiver runs through his body.

And he tries ignoring it, the way his stomach is heavy, and cramping, and the way his body is just begging him to take a seat, close his eyes, or more pressing, run to the bathroom and shove his head in a toilet.

But he doesn’t, because he can’t. Because he’s just so damn close.

When game over flashes across the screen, he slams his fist down. He considers what might happen if he didn’t hold back his strength, if he just destroyed the machine right then and there.

“Peter?”

He stared at the screen., refusing to look away.

“You’re not looking so great, kid.” Tony’s hand comes up from behind him, and presses down on his sweaty forehead. “Yep, that’s a fever.”

“Mr. Stark,” says Peter. “What are you doing here?”

“Ned called me,” he tells him. “He was really worried, and so am I.”

Tony wipes the sweat off his hand and into the insides of his suit jacket.

It’s the first time in awhile Peter takes his eyes away from the screen, and the room blurs. All the flashing, neon lights merge together. All the kids, teens, parents combine into one collective shout that threatens to make his ears bleed. The arcade tilts, and the knot in his stomach is pulled tighter.

“I need to get outta here,” says Peter, a shake in his voice.

“Then come on,” says Tony.

He grabs him by the arm, and leads him through the jungle of prize hungry children, beeping game machines, and parents trying to ignore it all.

Fresh, cold air hits Peter’s face when they step outside the door, and he breaths it in, then he bends over and pukes in the on the sidewalk while strangers watch in disgust, while Tony rubs his back, and while the paparazzi snaps photos of Iron Man comforting some poor, sick kid.

*

“So, while we’re just hanging out in the bathroom,” says Tony. Peter’s head hangs over the toilet, and he shuts his eyes tight, willing Tony to stop talking. “I thought we could chat.”

“Maybe that can wait,” says Peter, dryly, and miserably. “Until, I dunno, I’m done puking my guts out.”

“It’s waited long enough. Besides, you never call me back, and you won’t talk to your aunt.”

It just figures. That there’s so avoiding it now. That there’s not even a proper distraction to keep him from the things he’s not trying to think about.

That day comes back to him and hits him with full force, as if were angry Peter had been suppressing it.

His memories are pulled backwards to Mysterio’s twisted game. That dull, grey day the fishbowl guy taunted him with a devastating choice, save May fall from a skyscraper, or save a stranger from suffocating six feet under the earth.

His failure flashes across his mind.

He’d thought he could save both, but he’d still made the decision to go after May first. Once she was safe on the ground, he had bolted to the burial site, only to dig up a man who was already dead.

He’s selfish, and he’s sad. All this bad will stirs his stomach enough to force his head back in the toilet to throw up some more.

Tony rubs his back until he’s finished with his gagging. He puts the toilet lid down, and flushes, and he leans against the toilet, weak and wanting the pain in his stomach to ease so he can sleep and not exist for awhile.

So he can continue avoiding the conversation Tony keeps trying to force him to have.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” says Tony. “That fucking psychopath created that situation to fuck with your head.”

“But I’m Spider-Man,” says Peter. “I should’ve been able to deal with it, without - someone dying.”

“Can’t save them all, kid. No matter how hard you try.”

It’s as if Tony’s words bounce off him. He hears them, but he doesn’t. They don’t sink in. He won’t allow them to, and it’s as if Tony hadn’t spoken at all.

“Suppose I deserve this,” says Peter. “Feeling this way.”

He isn’t sure if he means the stomach cramps, or the guilt, or both, but the alarm that flashes across Tony’s face only makes the stabbing pains worse.

“You only deserve good things, Pete,” he says. “I don’t know how to convince you to believe it.”

*

When he opens his eyes the next morning, his stomach is peaceful, but his memories are hazy. They exist, just vaguely.

And it’s better that way, really. Puking and crying on the bathroom floor while Tony held him and told him it would be okay weren’t exactly his finest hours. Peak teenage embarrassment that he hopes will go forgotten, or at least unmentioned, in future conversation.

He’s ready to crawl and hide under the covers when the guest room door creaks open, but he stays visible when he sees it’s just his Aunt May walking through the doorway, carrying crackers and a mini bottle of Sprite.

“I hear you had a rough night,” she tells him. She puts the sick people snacks on the nightstand. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better.”

May’s face folds into disbelief, and Peter releases a breath, realizing there’s no avoiding it anymore. Not after last night.

“I’m sorry, May.”

“About what?”

“About Mysterio.”

She sits on his bed, and takes his hand. “From what Tony’s told me, you’re tired of hearing it, but I’m going to stress again that that wasn’t your fault and you will not accept responsibility for what some demented man cooked up in his free time, okay?”

“But May -”

“If someone asked me to choose between my own life and somebody else’s,” she starts. “You know I would choose theirs. We’re Parkers, and that’s what we do, for better or for worse, but if someone forced me to choose between a stranger’s life and yours? Peter, that’s not even a choice, it’s an instinct.”

“But May I should’ve -”

She squeezes his hand, and cuts him off, a second time. “You have to let this go. You weren’t being selfish, and you did everything you could’ve done. It’s not your fault. You didn’t kill anybody.”

Her tone leaves no room for argument, so he doesn’t try. He lets her hug him, and even hugs her back. He even feels a little lighter now that he’s been ordered to move on.

*

Tony’s idea of helping is to throw money at it. He goes to the arcade and pays them a ridiculously large sum of money for the BURIED ALIVE game machine.

It’s sitting in the workshop when Peter arrives for their lab hours, along with giant hammers and other tools of destruction.

“I think they do this in therapy,” says Tony. “Something about getting it all out. Healthy destruction. All that.”

“They let you break things in therapy?” asks Peter, apprehensively taking the hammer from Tony.

He’s gotta admit, he’s warming up to the idea of letting Tony pay for a therapist, even if he knows he only said it for that very reason.

“Sure,” says Tony. “Why not?”

Peter stares at the game. The thing he’d been using to distract himself from his misery. The thing he’d become obsessed with as a way to relive the past, take some control. Of course, getting the highest score would’ve never brought back the man Mysterio killed, but obsessions weren’t exactly rational.

“I have a better idea,” says Peter.

They spent the next few hours taking the game apart, piece by piece, and then, and until late in the night, they use the parts to build a new, better game. Something that Ned has to come over and help them program. Something with a less morbid topic.

And Peter starts to think better, feel better.

There’s something cathartic about taking apart the horrible things and turning them into something new. It’s a breath of fresh air. It’s a sense of hope, for himself, that eventually he’ll be able to take May and Tony’s reassuring words and believe them.

[busterkeatonfanfic]

Chapter 9

Buster hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and stared up with admiration at the 120-foot crane. Having been delivered to the set in multiple pieces by a fleet of huge trucks, the workmen had just finished putting it together. “Beautiful, ain’t she?”

At his side, Joe grimaced. “Did you have to?”

“ ‘Course I did,” said Buster. “How else are we going to lift the hospital off me in the cyclone sequence?”

“I just didn’t expect it … it’s so big, you know?”

“Damn right it is.”

“How much did it cost?” “How much did it cost? Really?” Buster said, feeling like Joe had just stuck a pin in his mood and popped it. “It cost what it cost.”

Joe rubbed the back of his neck as he looked up at the crane. “I just wish you’d said something first. Harry’s worried about going over budget.”

“Tell him he can blow it out his ass,” said Buster. “I’m getting damn sick of Harry. Didn’t we all sit down and agree a cyclone was just fine?” He bit his tongue and didn’t say ‘I told you so,’ because if they’d stuck to the original plan, there wouldn’t have been a crane. He wasn’t sure how much the cyclone had run them so far, but it was already over $20,000.

“Yeah, I guess we did. Just try to—” said Joe. “Well don’t go overboard, is what I’m getting at.”

Buster, who had already handsomely paid to go overboard, kept his silence again. “Sure.”

They took a street car to K Street. The sidewalks were still busy when they arrived at the Senator theater around 6:30, everyone parading around in their Saturday night finery. She felt good about the ensemble she’d chosen, a short-sleeved dusty peach cotton dress with a mauve straw cloche hat and silk stockings. Inside, the Senator was cool. She’d been to a picture there only once before, but it was enough to make her fall in love with the place, which had been built just two years prior and was new like everything on the West coast was new. It was adorned in velvet drapes and jardinières heaped with fresh chrysanthemums, plush wall-to-wall carpeting, and fringed lamps, but her favorite feature was the painted dome and the enormous multi-tiered chandelier hanging from its center.

As she and the Kimbles took their seats in the balcony, she looked to the box seats on either side of the theater, half-expecting to see Buster in one, but she didn’t. Maybe he was in the crowd, but there was only so much gawking she could do before attracting attention. She saw him in person nearly every day now, but always at a distance and always when he was busy in front of or behind the camera. River Junction had been a bustle of workmen and noise in the mornings as they rebuilt sets for the cyclone and put together the biggest crane she’d seen in her life. Bert allowed her to take breaks a couple times a day to watch the filming. Even though she was behind the scenes now and could see everything, from the cluster of noisy cameras to the even noisier rain machines, the sight of Buster falling into a puddle up to his waist or being blown off his feet by a gust of wind was still a laugh. On Thursday, she’d been called upon to place an order for five large loaves of bread from a bakery, but they were spirited off to an unknown part of the set and their purpose remained a mystery. 

Her brief acquaintance with Buster seemed to have come to an end and she wasn’t inclined to press it any further, having made an ass of herself the first day in his dressing room and then later after the party at the blind tiger. It was enough that he knew her name. She’d begun hoping that the company would keep her on when they wrapped filming and packed up for Hollywood in a few weeks. The more she stuck around, the more people would know her face, and the more people knew her face, the greater her chances were of being recognized by a studio.

She shared Joe and Maggie’s jumbo box of Junior Mints as the lights went down and the opening short started. An organ in an arched box with pillars provided accompaniment. 

When the opening credits of Buster’s feature began, Nelly’s pulse quickened a little bit. It was surreal when he finally appeared on the screen, walking beneath an umbrella with his mother in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin; she’d gotten used to him as a flesh-and-blood person. She now knew how his production company made that rain and that there were cameras in front of him tracking his every step. She also knew that the person inside the truck driving down the street in the background was an extra. Nevertheless, the scene still looked believable, and pretty soon she was sucked into the story like the rest of the audience.

Buster played a brainy college freshman without a lick of athletic ability, which happened to be the only thing his girl cared about. He spent most of the picture trying out for sports to impress her and failing miserably. Buster often took two or three-hour lunches to play baseball with his production team, so Nelly couldn’t quite buy that he didn’t understand the rules of the game and couldn’t hit a ball to save his life.

As the movie wore on, she became aware—and it gave her an unpleasant sensation, like an itch—that he was better-looking than she remembered. It embarrassed her somewhat to see him in his skimpy track outfit. In one scene where he sat on the sidelines, the shorts rode up so high she could see where his tan ended and his natural skin tone, considerably paler, began. She was almost glad when the movie ended. The last few seconds had been queer, besides. The scene of Buster and his girl walking out of the chapel after being married had melted into a scene of them sitting at home while their children played in the background, then one of them in old age, before concluding with a shot of two headstones.

The organ died away and the lights went up. 

“What on earth did that ending mean?” said Maggie, with a look on her face.

“I don’t know,” said Nelly, but it had given her a bad taste. Judging by the expressions on their neighbors’ faces, they weren’t alone in their confusion. Even in Shakespeare’s time, everyone knew that you ended a comedy with a marriage. To do otherwise was to let your audience down. The abrupt, morbid ending brought her back to reality and reminded her that the real Buster was not to be confused with his handsome, whimsical on-screen counterpart.

Joe was the only one who seemed to find the ending funny and tried explaining it as they made their way up the balcony and down the stairs. Nelly was busy searching the exiting crowd for Buster’s face and only half listened. They made it out onto the sidewalk before she accepted she wasn’t going to see him that night. 

Maggie proposed getting hamburgers before they went home and Joe and Nelly agreed. They found a diner on L Street and sat in a booth with a checkered red-and-white tablecloth.

“So what’s he really like?” Maggie said, after their food arrived and they were tucking into burgers and coleslaw. She was a heavier girl, pretty, with auburn hair and freckles on her nose. Her claim to fame was that her maternal grandfather had been one of the original inhabitants of Sacramento when it was first incorporated. She’d asked Nelly the question before, but Nelly didn’t mind answering it again. Buster had rubbed off some fifteen minutes of fame onto her and there was no sense in not using them. Of course, she hadn’t told them that he was her savior the night of the party; in her untruthful retelling, Bert had played that role. They did know, however, that he had invited her to be an extra and that she’d baked him cookies after his accident with the baseball.

“Not much like that,” said Nelly. She looked up and scanned the faces in the other booths as if one might belong to Buster, but they didn’t. “He smiles in real life, but you know that, I’ve said that before. He can be very solemn. He’s not boyish like he is in pictures. I think he’s a kind person, mostly.” She was almost surprised to hear herself say it, but it was a conclusion she’d come to in spite of how he’d appalled her at their first meeting. He’d been a gentleman through and through when he rescued her at the party and took her back to his hotel room, and she couldn’t help but alter her opinion because of it. “He keeps a lot to himself and sticks to his own pals. And he’s very funny, just as funny as his movies.”

“He’s a real athlete too,” Joe said. “He can’t hide that.”

Nelly agreed. “Yes, he plays a lot of baseball with his team.”

“I liked the picture anyway. The gags were funny,” said Joe.

“It was alright,” Nelly said.  

Maggie added, “I’m still not keen on that ending.”

“No,” said Nelly. 

They ate their burgers and the conversation moved to the Senators game (everything was called Senator here since Sacramento was the capital) and how, according to Joe at least, the team hadn’t been the same since Brick Eldred (whoever he was) left. It was getting late by the time they left the diner, and they took a taxi back to 22nd Street, Nelly and Maggie deciding that they’d forgo the dance hall for the evening. 

Nelly had almost forgotten about Buster by the time she crawled into bed around eleven. She tried to drift off by boring herself with thoughts of baseball. Her father and uncle liked the White Sox, but she’d never really understood or cared for the game. Her only memory of the game she’d been taken to as a little girl was of eating hot dogs and popcorn and wandering the stands with Ruthie. Although she couldn’t say why, fantasies of men had not been satisfying since the incident with Tommy, not even her go-to of John Barrymore. The idea that a man might take up baseball or another sport he was abysmal at in order to win the love of a girl seemed laughable now that she thought about it, but Buster had done it—and more—in College. He’d even rescued the girl from his rival who was trying to ruin her reputation.

Her eyes shot open. She hadn’t thought of it until now, but Buster had rescued her that night at the blind tiger. Of course, he hadn’t done it out of a sense of love and there was no reading into the coincidence since the picture had been shot long before she’d met Tommy or Buster, but it struck her regardless. Maybe Buster’s pictures did reveal something of his character. As she puzzled over it, her thoughts got hazier and hazier, until finally she dropped off to sleep.

Note: Bonus update this week. I think you all deserve it after current events! Also, do admire this screengrab where Buster’s tan ends and his normal skin color begins. 

[the-homicidediaries]

Chris Benoit

Guys.

I am so excited to talk about this.

Not because of the context, but because this is one of the reasons I love wrestling so much; there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes that people have NO CLUE about.

There have been several professional wrestlers who have killed people or been killed themselves and the rabbit hole goes deep.

(Rey Mysterio accidentally killed a man on live tv and they still have the video up on YouTube.)

(Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka murdered his girlfriend in May of 1983. Who is Jimmy Snuka? Jimmy Snuka was related to The Rock, Rikishi, and The Uso’s.)

THERE ARE SO MANY MORE THO.

But today, I want to talk about the Daddy of them all, Chris Benoit.

Chris Benoit’s crimes are so heinous and unforgivable Vince McMahon has swept his name under the rug and removed him from The Hall of Fame.

Benoit’s crimes also changed the dynamic of professional wrestling forever.

Chris Benoit was born in Montreal, Quebec to Michael and Margaret Benoit on May 21, 1967. He and his family resided in Edmonton, Alberta, however.

During Benoit’s childhood, he idolized Tom “Dynamite Kid” Billington (a British wrestler who competed in the 1980’s and had ongoing feuds with Hart) and Bret “Hitman” Hart (a Canadian-American wrestler and a member of the notorious Hart Family. He is a personal fave of mine as well).

When Benoit was 12 years old, he attended a local wrestling event where both Dynamite Kid and Hart were competing and he knew right then and there that he was destined to become a wrestler.

He trained in The Hart Family “dungeon” and was coached by none other than Stu Hart (Bret and Owen Hart’s father. If you don’t know Owen Hart, you should google him as well because he died under bizarre circumstances on live tv as well.)

When Benoit fought in the ring, he channeled both Dynamite Kid and Hart, even adopting Hart’s signature move, “Sharpshooter” as his finishing move.

Chris began wrestling in 1985 in Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling promotion. He was quickly recognized as a force to be reckoned with and received his first title, the Stampede British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Championship, on March 18, 1988.

(This dude has a very extensive history or wrestling in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, World Champion Wrestling, Extreme Champion Wrestling, and World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment, but I just.. I cain’t get into all that, please forgive me. Haha! We are talking 22 years here! So I am humbly skipping to his family life.)

-Okay, so. I would love for this to be a romantic love story for the ages and the deaths resulted in crimes of passion, but that didn’t happen. At. All. Not at all.

You’ll see soon why this was all brushed under the rug.-

Benoit was married twice.

His first wife, Martina, and he had two children David (who is a wrestler as well) and Megan. By 1997, their marriage had broken down and Benoit and Martina decided it was best to end it.

Benoit began living with his girlfriend, Nancy Sullivan, who was the girlfriend of Benoit’s frequent opponent, Kevin Sullivan.

(It started off as an on-screen relationship for views and it led to a real-life affair. Many people joke that Kevin Sullivan booked his own divorce.)

On February 25, 2000, Benoit and Nancy’s son, Daniel, was born.

On November 23, 2000, Benoit and Nancy were married.

This 👏🏼 was 👏🏼 not 👏🏼 a 👏🏼 good 👏🏼 marriage.

In 2003, Nancy filed for divorce from Benoit, saying he would break and throw furniture and was cruel to her. She later dropped the suit as well as the restraining order she had set against him.

Benoit became good friends with fellow wrestler Eddie Guerrero, (a beloved and incredible wrestler, one of my dad’s faves), following a match in Japan, when Benoit kicked Guerrero in the head and knocked him out cold. This started a friendship that lasted even after Guerrero's death in late 2005, in which Benoit had written diary entries to him just ten days after his passing.

(I’m only mentioning this because Guerrero’s death has been rumored to be one of the reasons Benoit did what he did.)

Here’s where it gets gory.

So we know Benoit and Nancy did not have a good marriage, but things seemed to be okay because she dropped all the charges against him.

Benoit and Nancy were living in Fayetteville, GA, with 7 year old Daniel.

On June 25, 2007, police entered the Benoit home after Benoit’s WWE employers requested a welfare check after Benoit missed weekend events without notice.

(Benoit was actually scheduled to win another title during these weekend events.)

Upon arriving at his Georgia home, authorities found Nancy wrapped in a towel. She had died from asphyxiation.

Their son was also found, also dead, apparently strangled. Benoit placed a Bible next to each of their bodies.

Benoit’s body was the most disturbing to be found. The wrestler was hanged on a lat pulldown machine, with a Bible lying on the weight machine beside him. There were also allegedly 10 empty beer cans and an empty bottle of wine.

Autopsies concluded the murders and suicide took place over the course of three days.

On Friday, June 22, Chris Benoit killed his wife Nancy in an upstairs bedroom. Her limbs were bound, and her body was wrapped in a towel. A copy of the bible was left by her body. Injuries indicated that Benoit had pressed a knee into her back while pulling on a cord around her neck, causing strangulation. Officials said that there were no signs of immediate struggle. Toxicologists did find alcohol in her system, but they were unable to determine if she had been drinking prior to her death or if it was a product of decomposition.

Daniel was suffocated and killed in his bedroom, and a copy of the bible was left by his body. Daniel had internal injuries to the throat area, showing no bruises. Daniel's exact time of death is unknown. The reports determined Daniel was sedated with Xanax and likely unconscious when he was killed. Daniel's body had also just started to show signs of decomposition but was not as far along as his mother's body, so they were able to determine he was murdered after his mother.

(It was later alleged that Daniel had Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disorder that is characterized by mild to moderate intellectual disability. Physical features may include a long and narrow face, large ears, flexible fingers, and large testicles. About a third of those affected have features of autism such as problems with social interactions and delayed speech. Males are affected more than females. Daniel also had needle marks in his arm and it’s alleged that these were the result of growth hormones given to him because Benoit and his family considered him to be undersized.)

Chris Benoit committed suicide by hanging. Benoit used a weight machine cord to hang himself by creating a noose from the end of the cord on a pull-down machine from which the bar had been removed. Benoit released the weights, causing his strangulation. Benoit was found hanging from the pulley cable.

(On a podcast called The Talk is Jericho in 2016, Nancy’s sister Sandra Toffoloni divulged some more information. She said Benoit’s internet search history showed he had searched “the quickest and easiest way to break a neck”. Benoit had a towel wrapped around his neck when he committed suicide and his neck was broken instantly.)

A suicide note was not discovered, but a note written in one of the bibles Benoit had said, “I’m preparing to leave this Earth.”

A few possible motives I’ve seen people mention have included:

•CTE - Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head injuries. Symptoms do not typically begin until years after the injuries and can include behavioral problems, mood problems, and problems with thinking. During his autopsy, it was concluded that Benoit did suffer from CTE after wrestling for so many years. (Back when they threw people from tops of cages, hit each other over the head with chairs and ladders, etc.) Autopsy experts say Benoit’s brain was so severely damaged that it resembled a 85 year old Alzheimer’s patient.

•Nancy’s abuse and filing for divorce - In February 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Benoit was having an affair with a female WWE wrestler and Nancy found out. It was also speculated they argued over life insurance policies.

•Benoit’s alcohol abuse - Benoit abused steroids, but many people believe it was his alcohol abuse that led to these horrific murders. Many of Benoit’s colleagues attested he would drink more when problems with Nancy occurred.

•Eddie Guerrero’s death - Benoit and Guerrero and Benoit were very close. When it came out that Guerrero has died in his hotel room in November of 2005, Benoit was devastated. WWE held a televised memorial for Guerrero and when Benoit was giving his testimony, he broke down in front of the camera. Some of Benoit’s colleagues say, “he was never the same” after Guerrero’s death.

But at the expense of sounding completely heartless, (mind you, I’ve been suicidal myself), why didn’t he just commit suicide?

Why did he have to murder his wife and seven year old son? If we go with the CTE theory, it makes sense because he was not thinking rationally.

I wish Nancy had had the strength to leave him when she tried.

The night after Benoit’s body was found, WWE Raw had a televised memorial for him and his family with Vince McMahon standing in the middle of the ring breaking the news and a video montage.

No one knew he was the one who had killed his family.

When it was later revealed that Benoit had committed these crimes the episode was removed and WWE made the decision to remove nearly all mention of Benoit from their website, future publications, video games, merchandise, DVD/Blu-Rays, and future events.

Like I said.. swept him under the rug.

Benoit is now the “He Who Shall Not Be Named” of professional wrestling.

In ending this, I’d like to quote Stone Cold Steve Austin now.

“Well first and foremost, what I think about Chris Benoit is that guy was one of the most nicest guys I ever met in my life. He’s one of the most talented, hard working cats I’d ever seen in the squared circle. Anybody who knew Chris would tell you those exact two things. That guy loved the damn wrestling business, he was born to be a wrestler and was absolutely phenomenal. Drawing a lot of his influence from The Dynamite Kid, he blazed a path as the Pegasus Kid and his legacy as The Crippler Chris Benoit was just one hellacious career.

“One night, Chris ended up killing his wife and his kid. That is an act so terrible and horrible I can’t even comprehend or guess as to what happened in that house. That will always overshadow any accomplishment Chris had in the ring. He’ll never be in the Hall of Fame, it will just never happen. His career will speak for itself but his record as a human being, his first and foremost, and those actions will never be forgotten. That’s my feelings on that, we don’t even need to talk about the Hall of Fame. Speaking for myself, Chris Benoit as the person I knew, loved him. Chris Benoit as a wrestler, loved him. Chris Benoit as the person who did what he did, unforgivable. Bottom line.” – via NoDQ.com.

Pictured below are Chris and Nancy Benoit, their son Daniel, and their home in Fayetteville, Georgia.

[vesperlionheart]

For haha’s - Darklina

There is blood throughout the halls of the Keramzin orphanage, it stains the stones and clings to the walls and dries on the hands of Alina Starkov. She tastes something bitter deep in her throat but swallows it down as she moves through the orphanage, searching for more of the bodies left inside. She steps over the bloated form of a dirty man in hides, slashed open and killed the old fashioned way. She passes more of his companions but doesn’t care for any of them until she finds her children. 

She buries her babies with reverence and then burns the rest in a pit without a second thought.

 When Mal doesn’t come back she drinks. 

When the new month comes she prays. 

When the season ends without sight or sound of him, she leaves. 

Nikolai Lantsov watched nervously as another dark ritual finished filling out the color in an old monster’s features. Aleksander Morozova was just as handsome and devilishly fit in features as he had been on the day he died, if not better since he was actually, not dead. It was unnerving to watch what felt like for the thousandth time, a dark miracle perverting nature-but weren't Girsha like that to begin with? Who else lived for 500 years and looked like a university chap?

“You’re very pretty,” Nikolai admitted, not ashamed of the truth. 

The darkling was adjusting his gloves, tugging them down over his hands until his knuckles stood out, but he paused to glance up through his lashes and spare the boy king a withering, unimpressed look. “I know.” 

“Don’t let me stroke your ego, I’m properly sloshed so I’m sure it's only the intoxication that’s talking.” 

Nikolai gestured to the glass in his hand before knocking it back for the last dregs of amber colored courage. He hated every damned step to this never ending ritual on account of how annoying and bothersome it was, not how terrifying each peak into the land of death was. But worse than all of that was the demon inside of him that refused to stay down. Nearly a year later and it was getting worse. 

“You’ll need your wits about you for what comes next.”

“You’ve been so helpful,” Nikolai scoffed, “with letting me know the summation of all this planning, you know. It would have been terrible if you only told me one damned step at a time and kept me hanging in blind suspicion for months.”

“Sarcasm does not become you, puppy prince.” 

Nikolai glared with a smile. “Good thing I only speak the truth then.”

“You must now summon someone for me.” 

“Of course I must. Who is it this time?” A painter to capture your likeness in oils? A seamstress to dress you in silks? A palace chef who could-

“Alina Starkov.” 

The name caused a physical pain in Nikolai’s chest as every longing and snuffed out desire snapped back into place, like an overextended rubber band that had been stretched too far. It hurt to hear that name, but he didn’t mind this sort of pain.

“The sun summoner died. She’s not someone I can so easily summon for your royal darkness, even if I did raise your ass from the grave.” He was impressed with himself for how calm he came across. “You’ll have to adapt.” 

The darkling, beautiful and cold, did not respond at first, or give any indication that he had heard and understood the king’s words, but he twisted the leather of his gloves around his wrist, almost like a nervous habit. Eventually, he opened his mouth to speak. “I did not ask for the sun summoner, I asked for Alina Starkov, and nothing less will be sufficient in helping me subjugate the monster within you, little hound.” 

“Sturmhond.”

“I did not stutter,” The Darkling scoffed. “As I do not miss the hint of desperation in your voice, the way it shakes your eyes when you watch my revival though it may sicken you. Your hands are dirty with more than one type of darkness but they must be blackened further if you wish to have control over your own fragment of hell.” 

“I don’t want to control it, I want to kill it and no matter how desperately I want that I can’t bring back the dead for you-ckee!” 

Nikolai’s words were choked out as a leather glove wrapped around his throat and pulled him up off the ground.He grabbed at the wrist and kicked until he was shoved against the wall and left to sag back onto his feet. 

“Do not make the mistake of lying to me,” the darkling hissed. “I know she isn’t dead, I went first into the long night and she did not follow. She lives and she resides in your country, so summon her to your palace, summon her for me.”

Back on his feet again Nikolai rubbed at his neck, suspecting it to bruise for how roughly it had been gripped. “You also know that her powers left her, don’t you? Even if I could, you’d be asking for a farm girl.” 

“I won’t explain myself to you, there is no reason to. I care not for her power or her fame or her status as a saint, I simply request Alina Starkov. Do what you can to find the farm girl with no powers. I know it is within your abilities.” 

Nikolai turned away and reached to pour himself another drink, but found barely enough for a half glass in the decanter. It wasn’t enough for him so it was clearly not enough to share.

“I wasn’t trying to deceive you when I told you she’s dead. To the best of my knowledge that’s the truth. She retired to obscurity with the tracker and together they set up an orphanage. We maintained some limited contact over the years but when my letters went unanswered I sent someone to seek her out.”

The Darkling’s silence was as good as a question so Nikolai continued.

“The orphanage was bloody and empty.” Nikolai sipped his drink and tried to pretend his heart wasn’t bleeding in his chest as he relieved the pain from that day. “Locals explained a band of extremists passed through, upset at their adoption of suspected grisha children. There were graves and a pit discovered on site but nothing else. Sightings of the tracker, Mal, led my spies to conclude she...she was one of the graves.”

“But it was not confirmed,” the Darkling clarified. “You did not dig up her bones to see for yourself if one of the mounds was hers. You only assumed and you assumed wrong. She did not die.”

Nikolai dared to hope and it hurt like thorns in his heart. “How could you say something like that so confidently? Up until a month ago you didn’t have flesh. What do you know?”

“Nothing so humble connects her and I. If she were to be gone from this world I would know it, yet I feel her still. Alina Starkov lives and I need her.”

 The darkling looked down at his hand, at the center of his palm and it was almost as if there was something there he was transfixed by. The harsh edges of his expression softened and emotion made his slate gray eyes a little lighter. The darkling swallowed and the harsh lines to his features returned in time for him to fix the blond with a withering stare.

 “She lives. Find her.”

No one had ever accused Alina Starkov of being a gabler, but playing cards with the Three Babas might have been the riskiest thing she did on an impulse. It would have been less dangerous to play cards with a devil, because at least with a devil you know what you're wagering. 

There was something disconcerting about waking up one morning only to realize there was no vision left for you; no epic battle plans, to cunning exploits, nothing planned out to accommodate the travesty destiny had raised you to rally against. She didn’t even have a villain to set herself up against. The world wasn’t perfect, but the fold was no longer an issue and Alina found herself without purpose. Her children were gone, her would-be husband lost to his whims, and the powers that gave her such grand meaning were only a memory.

And that all mde her wander. 

A little older, a little broader, a little wiser, she traveled on foot or by cart when the neighbors of her country were kind enough to spare her the room. She ended up somewhere in the backwoods, somewhere rural enough to have a single village center like it was some big deal and enough work for a girl with rough hands to apply herself to. 

The town felt safe enough and that made her wonder, so when she asked the neighbors they told her about the three babas who watched over the town and kept it a little separate from the rest of the world with its problems and its wars. 

That question must have been invitation enough because Alina found herself invited to a game of four way trick on the edge of town under the leaning roof of a wood cutter’s cottage.  Three older woman,each dressed in varying colors and patterns, head covering shawls, and wooden shoes, were there when Alina arrived like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

“Take a seat.”

“Sit a while.”

“Play a spell.” 

Sitting down opposite the three felt like being back in front of Baghra, standing in the shadow of a mountain more ancient than memory itself. Yet with Baghra there was never this exact sense of wrongness. Reality never felt off in this way with the Darkling’s mother. 

“You were expecting me?” Alina asked, touching the felt edged cards in front of her without reaching for them. Their texture was so worn and soft she assumed they had been played for decades. When was the last time she played cards? Did she know the rules to this game?

“Saw you coming is more like it,” the baba to Alina’s right croaked. Her head shawl was bright red with swirls of autumn blooms in shades of gold and yellow. Compared to the fabric her skin was withered and pale. 

“Take your hand,” the baba directly across from Alina instructed, sounding crankier than her counterparts. Her eyes were unseeing, sagged over with wrinkled flesh and her babushka was a vivid green with emerald threads stirling through the lighter fabric to illustrate buds and grass fields in full health. The headscarf stayed pinned in place with the help of a white crane pin.

“I’m not sure I know how to play,” Alina admitted before looking at her cards. Her hands were on the table but she was still licking her lips nervously, wishing for something stronger to throw back down her throat. Her head was fuzzy with too much clarity. 

“You will,” the last grandmother calmly corrected, looking up through her silver lashes from underneath a headscarf of brilliant blue, brighter than the sky and deeper than the oceans. Her smile was deceptively sweet, too thin, and too light. She sounded impossibly young for her physical appearance. “Pick up and play with us.” 

“What’s the game called?” Alina asked, picking up her cards. 

They were just as soft on the underside where the painted pictures stared back at her. It looked more like a tapo deck, a truth telling card series where wise women and elders would tell stories out of the pictures and even predict fates. Plenty of people used such a deck for idle games, but the stories were always the things that seemed to hold the most magic.

“Trick,” the grandmother in red said.

“Trap,” the grandmother in green corrected.

“Take,” the grandmother in blue giggled. 

Alina looked over her cards again. “I’m not willing to wager anything on my first game before even learning the rules.”

“Your time is value enough, my dear one,” the baba in blue cooed. “Let us teach you and show you the way.”

“I’ll admit to being a little lost,” Alina said, watching as the first two babas put down cards on the table then drew from the deck. 

The first card had a trio of children running through a field and the scrawling script said it was called: Innocence. The second card was of a woman hanging a curtain over her window, looking back over her shoulder to a bed where a lover waited. The script above said it was called: deception. When inverted it looked like the woman was pulling the curtain down the other name for it was: revelation.

“Being lost is the first step to being found.” The third grandmother hummed before laying down a card with the picture of a son standing in front of his father and grandfather, each holding a sword from a different era. It read: inheritance. 

Alina looked down at her cards and when she inhaled a sensation settled into the back of her throat, like the taste of a thick milk tea with burnt cloves, she swallowed it down before she could realize what it was. Her fingers stilled atop a card before she played it: Turmoil. 

Only with the card down atop the table did she recognize the taste on her tongue: Merzost. It was enough to lift the haze of suggestion she had been operating under and it was like waking up from a dream that didn’t make sense. But Alina didn’t panic. When she looked up again she could tell the grandmother in green knew what had happened. 

“You’re all witches, aren’t you?” 

“What a crude thing to say,” the blue one teased. 

“Was I wrong?” she dared.

“I like her,” the one in red admitted, looking at the one in green. “I told you I would. It only took one round.”

The grandmother in red huffed then called out, “Trick,” before gathering up all the cards played in that round and putting them on Alina’s side; her winnings. 

The next few cards were played in silence. Silence, Infatuation, Betrayal. Alina put down the last card, aware of what this round signified. Her card was of a hunter carrying home a far elk. The title was: Bounty. 

“Trap,” the one in green cheered as another layer of enchantment lifted. It felt so different from her small science, but also not. Alina was in more control of her senses and her thoughts, but that only lead to near panicking. 

“Why do you have me here and what could you want with me when I’m an empty vessel in your eyes?” She asked the old women as each drew a new card from the deck. 

“Then let’s skip a little ahead and show you,” the one in green said before laying down the first card for play. The one in blue gathered the previous set and put them next to Alina’s wrist. 

The cards were dealt: Conflict, Victory, Peace.

Alina swallowed down her disgust and played the last card, the only card she could: Slaughter.

“Take,” the one in red called out, flicking her wrist so the cards were turned over and fell into a neat pile in front of Alina. Atop them all was the picture of a butcher with his gutted lamb. He held  cleaver but Alina saw a hand sickle and felt it between her fingers.

“Why,” she whispered, tasting Merzost again as something heavier settled amongst them. 

“Because,” the first baba said while playing her last card. It was a child crying in between the trees. The title said: Lost.

“But also,” the grandmother in red played her last card: Anointed. 

“And yet,” the last grandmother played her card of a boy looking back over his shoulder at a back littered with scars and wounds: Scarred. Between them the old woman seemed to speak without words. 

Alina glanced down at her last card and sneered at the picture, not believing in it: Tyrant. The painting was of a beautiful woman with long black hair and eyes as green as raw Malachite. Atop her head was a crown of green stones and at her feet were the people, bowed so low they were curled figures in the corners of the card’s picture. 

“I’m not.”

“Not as you are, no,” the one in blue gently corrected before touching the card to push it back towards Alina. “But we’d like to see this now.”

“You’ve had your stab at peace, little lamb,” the one in red chuckled. 

“As you have with the small sciences,” the woman in red said, now no longer a crone but a beautiful woman with a face full of fire. Alina dropped her face to the table, averting her gaze as heat roared across her back. 

“An age of saints has passed, now let us deal with angels,”  the woman in green cooed, her long black hair spilling over the table. She stood but Alina didn’t see it, her eyes were squeezed tight. Her left fist went cold and she felt snow and ice on it. 

“What a fun game,” the beauty in blue cooed, picking up the snow kissed corners of her cape. 

When the world was quiet again Alina dared lift her gaze. 

The table was empty and her hands were bleeding. Into each palm a mark had been cut and colored with black magic. Her veins were thick with dark colors as she swayed in her seat. 

The story isn’t done, let's have our fun. Lets see a new book, a different chapter in this wondrous dream. 

Alina came down with a fever and survived on the good graces of the villagers who turned oddly devoted to the saint with no powers. That didn’t seem to matter to them one bit and she was all the more confused because of it. No one she spoke to had any more information about the three grandmothers, only that Alina was favored and welcomed in all their homes. 

A month later she still had no more answers but plenty of questions when a rider came to visit. He questioned the first villager with a portate, seemingly expecting nothing until Alina walked out of the miller’s hut. 

The rider dropped the portrait and Alina saw her face, colored and youthful with the same delicate features from years ago. 

“I’ll need a horse,” Alina said to whoever was nearest. “It seems this story isn’t done with me yet.”  

[mylittleredgirl]

trekathon: disco 1x04

“the butcher’s knife cares not for the lamb’s cry”:

okay

remember how in the last post i was like “context is for kings” is a title for the star trek hall of fame

“the butcher’s knife cares not for the lamb’s cry” is the opposite. banished. no joke, i stopped watching discovery when it aired the first time around for like a month because i saw that title and went “actually i am a fragile soul and i do not want to see what’s behind a door labeled the butcher’s knife cares not for the lamb’s cry.” 

which is a shame because that was a month of my life in which i did not know that michael made friends with a tardigrade the size of a small car.

EvilWatch 2255:

michael gets invited to lorca’s chamber of horrors, which features the deadliest weapons in the galaxy and what may or may not be a cardassian vole vivisected on a table

“i study war,” he explains, which -- in my experience -- is exactly what one can expect an angry white man to say when they show you the functioning arsenal they keep in their garage

i love knowing that lorca is a long-suffering mirror universe transplant because his frustration at discovery’s lack of battle-readiness makes sense in context -- he’s a military-minded captain trying to helm a science ship in a bloody war -- but it’s hilarious when you realize he’s looking around at these meek science softies like “i have seen ALL of you murder AT LEAST one person with your bare hands can you PLEASE up your game a little”

meanwhile, klingons:

i remember being surprised to learn that voq and l’rell had a love affair, so i’m keeping an eye on it this time

that’s definitely the most sexually charged removal of a dilithium processor i’ve ever seen so i buy it

i don’t know what kind of awards we should be giving these actors for creating such vibrant performances in another language under 90 pounds of latex and contacts that fill their entire eyes but uhhhh i’m fucking impressed

i recall people being WILDLY upset about the exo-cannibalism thing as non-canon, as though klingons in all series do not regularly exchange recipes for eating the hearts of their enemies

that said? toss a dollar in the tip jar of whichever writer went “you know what, this should probably be one of those tell-don’t-show narrative beats”

michael burnham must suffer:

her shoving the package under the bed and walking away as soon as she hears “last will and testament” is unfortunately the most relatable thing

petition for michael to lovingly install that magical telescope in her ready room in season 4 🔭😍 

i’m fascinated by michael and saru’s conversation when they seem to agree that she was dismissive of him (she calls herself “selfish”) on the shenzhou. i wish we’d gotten to see more of that in flashbacks so we can better appreciate how she’s grown over the series.

“you will fit in very well with captain lorca” is a lot to say when lorca has just played the audio of dying children screaming for their dying parents over the entire comm system to shame one dude

but nnngggg it’s so INTERESTING how lorca chose these mirror images of the deranged people he knew and tries to enhance the darkest parts of them.

other characters:

lines for owo!! hugh is here! 

we really should not have been surprised that detmer eventually has a nervous breakdown

honestly i love paul’s prickliness in a way i didn’t the first time around. he just wants to talk to his mushrooms and not to people, ok.

admiral cornwell is somehow already exhausted

saru like u USE me?? for my GANGLIA????

we hardly knew ye: “lorca thought you and i would make a good team,” landry says, and i can only assume that in the mirror universe their team dynamics work better than michael as the screaming voice of reason while landry tries to bum-rush an unstoppable living tank and then dies about it.

an ongoing list of ~It’s Not Canon~ things i have chosen to ignore:

“the nature of humanity is just that every so often someone accidentally invents holographic communications again” (see also: those three episodes of deep space nine; the 32nd century)

other moments of delight:

landry saying “weps are double-hot” to announce that tactical is on-line is amazing and i will now imagine tuvok saying that every time janeway asks him to ready phasers

michael getting slurped at by the tardigrade

free-range tardigrade in the spore garden!!