#he put it there even though everyone else used Jade’s powers to have their houses move from their planets to Can Town

[offkilterkeys]

i imagine you have a vault of unreleased content that you don't get around to posting for relatable reasons. if you do i humbly ask that you grace me with something. anything! close your eyes and pick a file? let fate decide. if you made it i'll like it, that's the point anyway

I’ve posted some panels or pieces of these but never the entire sequence on here I don’t think, so but this is one of the only substantial things I’d say I’ve kept in a vault.

I feel like compared to my newer stuff these look super rough, but they were really good practice.

These have pesterlogs that go with them but this post is already huge so eh. This was set to occur a couple hours after Caliborn’s masterpiece, so Roxy and Dirk are talking about Halquius’s heroic sacrifice/death. Davepeta and Dirk continue that line of conversation, while Roxy is pulled into an argument about self control as I bum everyone out by reminding them that Jasprose never actual stopped being an alcoholic.

#homestuck #rose lalonde #roxy lalonde #jasprosesprite^2 #davepetasprite #dirk strider #and Roxy was gonna bring it up cause she think he’s being weird for doing that #This was mostly just me messing around with the sprite^2s and fleshing them out #Also expanding upon Jasprose and Rose’s relationship cause I think it could be sooooo silly #anyway the last Jasprose panel intentionally looks like the scene in trickster mode where Dirk scolds Roxy for getting Drunk #Jasprose is all “you just hate me cause I remind you of mom #and Rose is like “No I hate you because you’re literally a worse #less articulate #horrifically selfish #version of me!” #Dirk asks Davepeta if they want a hug #cause of the whole brother/moirail death #and to both of their surprise they say no #that’s why they fist bump #The Lalonde’s conversation is left on a cliffhanger while Dirk dips out in order to do some soul searching #also the sprites not glowing anymore was a conscious decision #it’s meant to imply that now that they’re out of the medium they’re slowly losing their game construct-ness #also also Dirk’s house being in the middle of the ocean was a conscious decision #he put it there even though everyone else used Jade’s powers to have their houses move from their planets to Can Town #Roxy brings it up before they’re interrupted #anyway sorry for using this ask as an excuse to share old content I am just always brainrotting

[princessasmosprincess]

Charmed, I'm Sure

Chapter 3

Summary: No human has ever avoided Asmodeus's charm. Except for you.

Pairing: Asmodeus x GN Reader/MC

Genre: Drama, angst

Warnings: None in this chapter, suggestive content and alcohol use in previous chapters.

***

The light to Lucifer’s study was still on when Solomon dragged Asmodeus back to the House of Lamentation. They would have to use stealth magic to get inside, not that Lucifer wouldn't figure it out eventually, but it would buy them some time to get Asmo to his room before he noticed.

Solomon quickly disarmed the locking spell Lucifer had put on the door and he and Asmo went inside and up the stairs. Classical music could be heard faintly beyond the door of Lucifer’s study as they tiptoed past, human world classical music, to be precise. But Solomon could also hear light snoring which meant Lucifer had probably fallen asleep working. That was good. He didn't think Asmo could protect him from Lucifer’s fury in this state, and he’d never needed to fight a demon that strong using only his magic. He had no desire to test it out now.

Asmo had been quiet during the walk home, and that was very unlike him. You could hardly get the demon to stop talking most of the time. Solomon had given him his space. Asmo’s eyes were already red and puffy from crying when they got to his room, but he had sobered up a little. Almost automatically, he walked over to his massive closet and slipped out of his clothes and into a purple satin robe. He sat on the bed and stared at himself, unmoving, in the full length mirror that covered an entire wall of his bedroom.

“When I was in the Celestial Realm everyone loved me, I didn't even have to try. And I loved everyone. Lucifer may have been favored by Father but I was favored almost everyone else.” Asmo said, finally breaking his silence. “And then after we fell and my demon powers developed, people didn't just love me, they worshiped me.”

Solomon tossed Asmo a bottle of micellar water and a cloth to remove the smeared eyeliner and glitter that was streaked across his face, which again, he managed to make look good. Then Solomon went to the mini cosmetics fridge Asmo kept under his vanity and removed a chilled jade roller, night cream, and a sheet mask. He knew Asmo would never forgive himself if he didn't do the bare minimum of his multi-step skincare routine before going to bed.

“Thank you,” Asmo said quietly as Solomon handed him the items.

“You’re welcome,” Solomon sat down in the pink cushioned desk chair that was rarely used for doing schoolwork.

Asmo continued his train of thought from before, “I’ve lived under Lucifer’s shadow my whole life but if everyone else adored me, it was ok.”

Solomon didn't know what to say so he stayed silent. He thought about the exchange student. He would need to get to the bottom of this. There was a chance Asmo had panicked and missed some sort of enchanted object on the exchange student’s person. Even if they couldn't do magic themself, there was still the possibility they could be in possession of an item that blocked a demon’s powers. A normal human alone would not be able to resist the influence of one of the rulers of the Devildom. It just wasn't possible.

“Have I ever told you what it feels like to charm someone?” Asmo asked.

Solomon shook his head.

“It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world!” A smile lit his tear stained face. “I look at a person and it’s like there's a string around their heart. I can reach out and pull that string towards me; I can feel their desires, jealousies, the things they hold dear. If I want I can mold those things to look like me.”

The concept reminded Solomon a little of the ‘red string of fate’, something he’d been wanting to research for some time now. From what he knew of the red string, though, it couldn't be manipulated in the way Asmo described his charm.

“Mc…” Asmo said. “They just stared at me. It was like I was looking at one of my brothers. You know, I can’t charm them," That wasn’t exactly true. His powers could, on occasion, work on his brothers but it was hardly worth the effort now. He had cute little brother privileges. "But I know they love me because they tell me. With MC, I felt nothing.” The memory was unsettling, Asmo shivered a little.

“It shouldn't matter, right?” he said. “I’m being foolish. I can have anyone I want, so why am I hung up on this one person?” Tears started to fall again. Asmo curled up on the bed and cocooned himself in the blankets.

“I suppose it’s hard to let go of something you’ve always had,” said Solomon.

The pile of blankets twitched as Asmo nodded.

When he didn't speak again, Solomon took that as his cue to leave. It was late anyway, and tomorrow was officially the first day of the exchange program and a new term at RAD. He would need a good night’s sleep to be in peak performance as the famous Witty Sorcerer. He made a mental note to have Barbatos send over some hangover relief tea to Asmo’s room in the morning.

With one final look back, Solomon spread his arms wide and cast a comfort spell on Asmo’s room. The scent of lavender, ocean waves crashing, gentle piano music, drinking hot chocolate by a crackling fire; all things that were imbued in the spell. The room felt just a little bit lighter when he left, although he thought he could still hear Asmo’s soft sniffling as he closed the door behind him.

Solomon used the back stairs to avoid passing Lucifer’s study again. The kitchen light was on when he got to the first floor and someone was rustling around inside. He would bet all the years he had left that it was Beelzebub. It wouldn't necessarily be dangerous to be caught by Beel, he was a gentle giant for the most part, and had an even temper as long as he was well-fed. It would definitely be awkward to be caught by him, though.

As he crept through the hallway, sticking to the shadows, a certain door caught his eye.

The guest room.

That would be where the exchange student was staying. Solomon stood silently outside the guest room door and listened. In all likelihood they would be asleep and Solomon would have to continue his investigation in the morning at RAD.

Just as he was about to leave, he heard it. Crying. Heaving sobs that someone was trying, and failing, to keep quiet.

Solomon’s brow furrowed. He was given a choice to join the exchange program; judging by the crying coming from the room, apparently you had not. You sounded so pitiful.

Solomon stood there and listened a little while longer. At least two people in the House of Lamentation would be crying themselves to sleep tonight. Two people who had been ripped away from the things they were accustomed to. He pressed his hand to the door and repeated the same spell he’d used in Asmo’s room. It was the least Solomon could do to offer them what little comfort he could give.

***

Cross-posted on AO3

#obey me #omswd #charmed i'm sure #asmo obey me #asmodeus obey me #solomon obey me #asmodeus x gn reader #asmodeus x gn mc #asmo x gn reader #asmo x gn mc #asmodeus x reader #asmodeus x mc #asmo x reader #asmo x mc

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

fuck I still haven't done the rewrite of the Mutant Town AU that I specifically came off hiatus to write, like the Plant Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts were written to prep this au and I just got wildly distracted so uhhhh

yeah the concept is in the link but the gist is that the people and town becoming mutated by constant ectoplasmic contamination, we all know and love this concept right but I'm gonna expand on it

this is a direct result of the portal being opened, but they aren't getting infected from the portal, the issue is that creating a permanent opening into the ghost zone has weakened the veil between their worlds and Amity Park and the Ghost Zone sort of slip in and out of each other constantly

and because ectoplasm responds strongly to emotions (poltergeists being made from atmospheric emotions for example) it all tends to converge very heavily at the school full of hormonal teenagers

so Casper High becomes its own god damn cryptid, the teachers get so jaded about opening the door to a classroom and finding just a whole ass ghost zone on the other side that they just put a sign on the door telling kids to go to a different room, lockers swap contents with other lockers so kids have started putting their names on the inside so they know who's stuff they've just found

this also means the kids get super affected, like super affected, literally, they all get ghost powers, some are just physical mutations, some are just super abilities, or a general increase in natural ability, like a member of the track team getting super speed

it takes a while for Danny and co. to figure this out, Sam and Tucker should have been warning signs as they've spent the most time around ghosts and the ghost zone, but that's why the Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts are important

they have powers, but they thought they came exclusively from outside sources, they had no idea that their abilities were also strengthened and influenced by being highly contaminated by ectoplasm, which is why when one day Mikey sneezes and green acid shoots out of his nose and melts his desk, everyone is a little bit startled

the teachers have long since started using ghost detectors after the time Paulina spent a whole week overshadowed by Kitty, so Mikey gets a check over and other than the usual atmospheric reading Lancer gets nothing especially strong from him

there have been concerns about the gradually increasing ectoplasmic content in the air messing with ghost detector results, the devices have to be recalibrated constantly, so Lancer asks the one and only son of the local ghost hunters in the room if he has some other way to check

Danny's parents make him keep a few protective items in his schoolbag, so he tries some gear on him to see if anything comes flying out, but nothing does, Danny isn't too surprised seeing as he couldn't sense a ghost in the room anyway, but it definitely makes things a little concerning

even if it were a repeat of the Spectra incident and he wasn't being overshadowed, the Fenton's tech would have still gotten rid of whatever was causing this if it were an external influence

Mikey is sent home for the day and his parents are told to keep an eye on him

and then the next week, Star drops a pen off her desk and a strand of her hair whips out to grab it, she's also checked for ghost influence and sent home

a few weeks after that it happens again, a kid on the basketball team makes a leap to the net and stays in the air, they have to call in the cheerleaders to climb on top of each other to reach him and pull him down

Danny has been trying to figure out what's happening from the first moment with Mikey, and his parents have also been getting calls from worried parents who want to know if they can fix whatever's happening to their kids

over the next couple of months, every kid in the school has some kind of ability or mutation, Dash heals whoever he touches, which he discovers after punching Nathan in the face and curing his acne, Paulina turns invisible, which freaks her out at first until she realises it's great for eavesdropping, Wes can conjure fire (because I desperately needed him to have a polarising ability to Danny), Kwan becomes empathic and can feel and influence people's emotions

Valerie also had an early mutation that she didn't know about, when Technus gave her a new suit, her body pretty much just absorbed it as a part of her, Technus had not intended this to happen, and was pretty peeved about it, Valerie found out that she had stolen control over the suit when Technus had a big rant about it during a fight, and she put the pieces together once other kids started developing abilities

this whole thing causes a ton of chaos as kids are struggling to control what they can do, so Danny has to step in and help them out, he often has to run off to change into Phantom in order to protect everyone from an ability that's gone haywire, he ends up pretty much running ghost power training courses after school to help them control themselves

he's also gotten stuck in situations where he's had to step in and help someone without having the time to change forms, meaning he has to make up a cover story about having developed his own powers way before everyone else since he's been living on top of a portal for years, he only tells people about his ice powers

Jazz has always had a tendency to be able to reign in her emotions and keep a cool head, (the only ones who can really push her buttons are Danny and sometimes her parents, at school around other kids who look up to her she's often very in control) meaning she doesn't draw ectoplasm to herself all that much, and though Danny uses the excuse of having lived on top of a ghost portal to explain why he's already so familiar with using his power, it's actually not even remotely true, because the Fentons use specialised air purifiers to keep the atmospheric ectoplasm at a manageable level, the Fenton house ironically has the least atmospheric contamination compared to the rest of the town, that's how Maddie and Jack have had limited mutation to themselves (though they aren't wholly free, they've mostly just gotten physically stronger and tougher)

so even though Jazz develops her power a little earlier than everyone else's, it's not that far ahead, and she actually doesn't even realise she already has one until half the school has developed theirs

Jazz has the power to slow time in a little bubble around herself, she'd been using it without realising while studying, having gotten through hours of work in half that time, she always thought it was just her losing track of time or she was just getting faster at reading, she also spends a lot of time counselling other students and trying to help them sort out their problems, and they'd often comment that they felt like they'd been talking for so much longer than they had, again she just chalked it up to losing track of time

a lot of students had wondered why Danny developed a power early and Jazz hadn't, until someone walked in on Jazz helping a girl through a panic attack in the bathroom, and found them both talking extremely fast, a lot of her friends realised in hindsight that she'd been doing that unwittingly for quite a while, nobody had noticed because she always talked to people privately, so nobody outside her little time bubble had seen it happen

Sam and Tucker come clean about their abilities too, but they also don't give the full rundown, still keeping some things close to the chest to avoid standing out from everyone else

then there's the teachers

adults typically have a better time regulating emotions than teenagers, meaning much like Jazz they aren't drawing as much ectoplasm toward themselves, but this doesn't exempt them from developing something after a while, especially with the heightened stress of managing a school full of volatile super kids

Mr Lancer discovers that he can create shields, after an incident where he jumps in front of some students to protect them from another power gone awry

Tetslaff ends up with a sonic ability, able to project her voice like a megaphone (yes this is a Coach Boomer from Sky High reference don't @ me), Principal Ishiyama develops a physical mutation, growing to twice her size, she likes that she can tower over the students while delivering speeches, but she doesn't like having to stoop through doors all the time, she has the one to her office resized, along with her chair and desk

so as you can imagine, the town ends up erupting into chaos, a lot of kids very much misuse their abilities, Danny does his best as Phantom to teach people to be responsible, but sometimes he has to resort to literally kicking their asses to get them to straighten up

but for the most part, a ton of kids were already looking up to him, and are generally pretty happy to follow his example, especially the more popular kids, it's generally considered not very cool to get your ass kicked by Phantom, so weirdly enough a lot of kids get peer pressured into not causing any real damage or injury with their powers

this doesn't mean they don't absolutely misuse them, they're just more subtle about it

until a ghost shows up, a lot of the kids are more than happy to let loose to protect themselves and their friends, and Phantom for the most part is happy to let them, with some supervision of course, he still has to make sure nobody gets too hurt (including the ghosts)

the entire debacle makes Danny's life simultaneously a whole lot easier AND so much more fucking stressful

#lula's aus #mutant town au #danny phantom #you have no idea how hard it was to find the links to the other posts #tumblr's search system was fucking me around so much

[lovee-infected]

This idea just hit me like a train. How would twst boys react to WAP from Cardi B?? 😂😂😂

I'm trying to ignore the fact that I might've never discovered WAP without this request...🗿

Warning(s): What should I even tag as the warning idkk ckcjxjsjsjdjdjck- Mentions of WAP's lyrics, mentions of nsfw, Warning for Idia's part bc I think it went a bit too far-

Riddle Rosehearts

Heard of this song named WAP being trending between students -> Searched it up -> Riddle:... Riddle: *Turns off his phone*

Bans WAP from the whole Heartslabyul afterwards, and every student found listening to it will have to face Riddle's: "NOOOOOOO- NO WAP IN THIS HOUSEHOLD - GO TO HORNY JAIL OFF WITH YOUR HEADS YOU UNWORTHY CREATURES- "

Trey Clover

Searches: "What does WAP mean?" before wards and after reading the search results he decides that he doesn't really need to listen to the song itself anymore.

He just clears his browsing history and returns to baking cakes. Nothing has happened, he knows nothing.

Cater Diamond

He is the guy making those "Night raven college react to WAP!!" videos on magicam. His reaction videos get over 100k views and people from all over the Twisted Wonderland start following this dork for them.

Who cares about the WAP itself? As long as he can gain followers over these videos he doesn't care how the song is supposed to be.

But at last Riddle discovers his videos by finding other dorms' students laughing over them and forces him to take them down💀 Man, Riddle really did ruin his once-in-a-life time chance for becoming popular.

Ace Trappola and Deuce Spade

Riddle has banned WAP Heartslabyul so they're going to illegally listen to it. It was Ace's fault though, Deuce is innocent.

Ace searchs up the music video, Deuce just sees the thumbnail and tells Ace that he doesn't think that this is going to be a good idea but Ace cuts him off by asking him not to be such a chicken-

Though they had to stop because Deuce was all shaky and embarrassed after just 20 seconds :"Stop this-STOP THIS- I CAN'T DO THIS- WE'RE STILL TOO YOUNG" and Ace had to stop to shut Deuce because they could've gotten caught at any second because of his unholy screams.

[a few minutes later...]

Deuce: It was saying DOORS in this house

Ace: Bruh what the- we both know it was saying Wh*res.

Deuce: Y-you dirty minded bastard!! It was clearly saying doors in this house!

Ace: Why the hell would they say doors in this house!??? It was wh*res!

Deuce: Doors!

Ace: WH*RES

Deuce: DOORS

Ace: WH*RES

Deuce: DOOOOORRRSSSSSSSSS

Leona Kingscholar

See he might be a jerk but he hasn't yet gotten to the level of appreciating this way of presenting women in songs-

He's just going to pretend that WAP doesn't exist,but most of the Savanaclaw on the other hand are going wild because with WAP, now he can't even take a peaceful nap without WAP being looped in his brain.

Ruggie Bucchi

WAP isn't beyond his power, he's handled stronger songs.✨ He'd regularly rap WAP in public when he's feeling like it.

Now he goes around to recommend WAP to naïve students and taint their virginity by making them listen to WAP without knowing what it is-

Jack Howl

Catches Ace and Deuce listening to WAP and ends up listening to it because of them. He doesn't knpw what to say...

He isn't mad, just disappointed. Disappointed parent noises. Out of all these students, why should he best buddies which these two?

Time to drag Ace and Deuce to a corner and give them a long speech on why young men their age need to be focusing on mastering skills and achieving success through these golden years instead of violating rules and tainting their pure minds.

"Trappola-kun, Spade-kun, you've greatly disappointed me. You need to be more mindful of your actions as fellow freshmen of night raven college. Is this how the future's great magicians are going to be? How do you think your parents would feel about this new habit of yours? Have you thought of how despicable women are being presented through such songs? Are you going to support such a taboo message toward ladies?"

And Ace and Deuce end up having to listen to him and think of their bad actions for the rest of the day...

Azul Ashengrotto

[Before listening to WAP]: He hears of this WAP song being super trending between students. What might it secret be? What kind of magic would make a simple song so hecking popular? He has to find out.

Azul thinks that by learning WAP's ways, he might be able to produce songs that are even better for mostrolounge and even start his very own music company! But before that he needs to listen to wap itself...

[After listening to WAP]: ...He discovers what kind of magic is making it so popular, but decides that it'd be better for him take a step back from the world of music for now. Yes, he's traumatized

Floyd Leech

"Hey hey koooeeebiii chaaannnn have you seen my new dance~?" ah yes, he's got the WAP dance and he's proud of it. These are the time when he's genuinely thankful for getting to have human legs.

But the WAP dance isn't his only target, he realizes that Jamil doesn't seem to want Kalim to know anything about WAP, but thankfully, Floyd is going to be kind enough to bless the young Kalim with his wealthy knowledge on WAP. ✨

Jade Leech

"My...my...that was savage," Jade is amazed, it's quite wonderful how these fragile creatures can go from Micheal Jackson's smooth criminal to WAP in a matter of years.

He's still having trouble keeping up with latest human trends and popular songs but, he's slowly liking humans a lot more than before. These creatures have already reached the level to make put p*rn in music, impressive.

Kalim Al Asim

He hears students whispering about an epic song named WAP during the classes, and of course he'd be intrigued!

He looks up the song but Jamil has already blocked his access to any sources that he might find WAP in, yet Floyd was kind enough to lend Kalim his phone to let him listen to this masterpiece. Later on, Floyd tells him about the WAP dance and bam, Kalim is addicted.

"Everyone watch me! I've got the WAP!"

Poor Jamil doesn't know which is worse, having Kalim signing it loudly in the dorm or watching him showing off his skills in that WAP dance in public. It's time for Jamil to go on a long, long trip and never come back until Kalim graduates from this school.

Jamil Viper

Listens to WAP once, is going to spend the rest of his life pretending that he has never heard or watched it. The most ironic part about it is how he watches the music video instead of just listening to the song and...the snakes. Good lord the snakes- He isn't sure if he likes snakes anymore.

The snakes part seriously traumatizes him but not like Kalim does when he asks Jamil to learn him the WAP dance. And heck no Jamil isn't going to learn him how to dance like a wh*re. At this point, he decides to deny WAP's whole existence.

Kalim: At least tell me what a WAP is!

Jamil:

Jamil: Worship and prayer.

Vil Schoenheit

Hasn't listened to WAP and refuses to do so. He's got standards.

Rook Hunt

"Bravo!!! These Mademoiselles have taken the art of music to a whole nother level! Beaute! 100 points! 💯" (...what else did you expect him to say?)

Just as always, no one can really tell if Rook really liked it or not but from the way he acts he seems to be... intrigued. Apparently WAP starts to get too famous in school and Rook would always be the first one to find out if a student is secretly listening to WAP in public, so he doesn't mind popping up and reminding the students not to listen to such a potentially stimulating song so carelessly: "Monsieur (x), it's adorable to see you appreciating such a glorious piece of art in this lovely day, but I don't think that all of these students staring at us right now are yet prepared for such a beauty,"

Epel Felmier

He just asked Ace for some music that'll make him sound more badass and Ace gave him the WAP:

Epel listening to WAP be like:😳😶😨😕😭

His face is redder than a tomato after the first 30 seconds of WAP, but Ace tells him that he'd be the bravest human being ever if he takes the urge to listen to this in front of teachers.

Tries to dance to WAP and make a video with it to upload on magicam, but Vil catches him in the middle of process.💀💀💀 The video turned out pretty good though. It looks just like a mother (Ehm- Vil) getting into her child's room (Epel-) and finding them doing some crazy shit.

Idia Shroud

He's the silent and seemingly shy dude who's listening to WAP in the highest volume under those head phones during classes.

Divus Crewel: CaF2(s) + Br2(ℓ) → CaBr2(s) + F2(g)...

Inside Idia's headphones: " ~ Wh*res in this house~ there some wh*res in this house~ there some wh*res in this house~ there some wh*res in this house~"

Bonus: He once forgets to connect his headphones to his tablet before playing WAP:

[Wap is being played at max volume inside Trein's class]

Idia: *Thinks that the sound is coming from his head phones*

The classroom: "Beat it up, n*gga, catch a charge

Extra large and extra hard

Put this p**sy right in your face

Swipe your nose like a credit card"

Trein: 😳

Students: 😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳

Crowley about to jump down: 🤭

Idia still not realizing what the hell is going on: 'Lucy lucy baby~ hihihi- wait- why they all staring at me now...? Did they hear me internally flirt with Lucius?'

No need to say what happened to Idia after this...

Ortho Shroud

No WAP for him. You may find him reacting to "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" if you're interested.🗿

Malleus Draconia

Thank goodness he just finds the censored version of WAP... Listens to the whole song, but doesn't understand most of the lyrics. The "Put this cookie right in your face" part confuses him the most, he doesn't get it. Why would you put a cookie in your face? Is this something humans usually to do with their desserts? Like, would they put ice cream in their faces too?

Virgin dragon keeps on asking people, including Lilia, to tell him what it means to put a cookie in one's face, yet no one seems to give him any proper answers ):

Perhaps human music just isn't his thing, he's getting back to sad violin noises which he listens to when he isn't invited.

Lilia Vanrouge

WAP go brrrrrrr. Our sassy grandpa is legit in love with this piece of gold and all of the humans for achieving such a glory. The beat is superb and the lyrics are: Delicious, motivational and creatively written.

Even better, WAP has an unofficial but smexy dance too. Old man Lilia is never too old for performing a sexy physically challenging dance.

You can now hear savage rock sounds combined with WAP playing in the background coming from his room when he's vibing in the afternoon.

(I can totally see him wearing a neko maiden costume while dancing to WAP and you can't tell me otherwise)

Silver

Finds WAP in papa Lilia's playlist...

Silver:

Silver:

Sebek Zigvolt

Sweet mother of love Sebek feels like listening to WAP has taken his virginity away-

He is a good boy, no, he once was a good boy. He's no longer the worthy man he used to be now that this unholy song has tainted his soul.

Legit feels guilty and and sinful after WAP, so you can find him praying for forgiveness to that Malleus portrait in his room every night.

"Oh young master forgive my thoughtless deeds, I beg for your mercy upon me now that I've sinned..."

Dire Crowley

Not saying that a drag Queen Crowley dancing to WAP would be a thing, but a drag Queen Crowley dancing to WAP would be a thing- Everyone bow down to the Headmaster, the most gracious of them all 😩😩😩👌🏻

Please, don't blame him. Birby is under too much of pressure after the very recent overblot cases and he needs a way to let go of the stress😔😔😔

Sam

Is illegally selling copies of the WAP because most of the dorms had blocked access to this song for the students...

"Helloooooo little demons I've got the WAP! In stuck now-"

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #malleus draconia #vil schoenheit #idia shroud #Jamil Viper #kalim al asim #Azul Ashengrotto #jade leech #Floyd Leech #leona kingscholar #riddle rosehearts #Deuce spade #rook hunt #Dire Crowley

[the-sound-of-her-wings]

I Am Not Starfire, And That's Okay

I recently read I Am Not Starfire and I had lots of thoughts, which are under the cut. It is spoiler-heavy and an analysis of the main character, who I find to be a charming, flawed, and incredibly human character.

Mandy is a fascinating character and a great look at a teenage girl who feels ostracized by the people around her and who feels disconnected from her parent. Mandy is by no means flawless, and that's what makes her very interesting. It also makes her relatable.

Mandy starts by talking about how she's noticeably different from her mom, being the "Anti-Starfire". She's a regular kid, can't fly, and doesn't own a swimsuit, while her mom is a superhero, can fly, and always wears bikinis.

On page 11 she mentions "her mom hasn't liked how I looked since I was twelve. She wears less than a yard of fabric every day, yet somehow, I'm the one who's dressing weird". While I understand people who call this slut-shaming, and I'm inclined to agree, but I think it's a little more nuanced than that. The next page reads, "My friend Lincoln convinced me this is the cultural divide that happens between family generations born in different countries or universes. His parents were born in Vietnam." This tells me that the authors intended to point out the difference in dress more as another difference between Starfire and Mandy, and less as a reason to blatantly slut-shame Starfire. I think there's absolutely a conversation to be had about why the authors decided to use this language instead of conveying the point differently. I also think it speaks to how Starfire has more or less been sexualized from inception, and how people look down upon her character because of that. In the context of this book, though, it's one of Mandy's character flaws that I think fits her both as a character and reflects what I've seen from actual teenage girls. Our society coaches us to view women who dress a certain way as less than women who don't and unlearning that takes time and effort. I don't think this comment about her mom should have been put in there by the authors, but I do think it fits in with the values American society in particular teaches about women.

Page 15, 16, and 17 all point to a far more complicated state of existence than Mandy points out within the first few pages. For one thing, Mandy has to deal with people who love her mother and only want to use her to get information about her mom and the other teen titans. This is shown by the "Titan groupies" who ask her to tell Starfire what they say about her. Another thing she has to deal with is the expectation to be a superhero and have powers like her mom, and the questions about who her dad might be. She gains her first real friend, Lincoln, because he tells the people asking about her parentage that they are assholes.

It is revealed that Mandy has a crush on Claire after she gets assigned a group project with her. Mandy is in denial over the crush. She thinks about the fact she's meeting Mandy at the end of the day throughout the rest of the school day, causing her to explode something in Chemistry Class. I find this to be highly relatable and gives her character a softer side to the edginess she desperately tries to portray herself as.

While talking about the project with Claire, it is revealed that Mandy ran out of her SATs and didn't complete them. While Mandy tries to paint this as a cool badass moment, the way the comic artist portrays the scene makes me think Mandy had an anxiety attack. Mandy didn't run out of her SAT because she's some kind of alternative badass who doesn't need to take them. Mandy ran out because she got overwhelmed by the sounds of people chewing and the pressure of the test. While she frames it differently, it's clear to me that Mandy is avoiding taking the SAT again because she doesn't want that to happen again.

When Claire invites her to hang out with her friends, Mandy gets treated like she isn't there, or as some kind of unwanted outsider. The topics they discuss seem to be specifically made to make Mandy uncomfortable, like mentioning how stretchy jeans are only made for fat people, and asking if aliens don't go to college. Jaded by this, Mandy makes up that aliens actually have to go through this huge blood right and battle to the death, but tells Claire's two friends she was joking before leaving. This tells me that Mandy deflects her pain by using humor to cope and has no issue clowning on people who are trying to belittle her for being an alien.

Starfire tries to bring up going to college after this, and Mandy just flees to her room. She hasn't told her mom she didn't take the SAT yet or that she isn't going to college. She feels distant from her mom, which is explained further through a montage of birthdays where she never got her powers. Her mom expects a lot from her, and Mandy thinks Starfire is disappointed about her lack of powers.

Later, Mandy invites Claire over to her house to complete the project they are working on. The Titans are still there when Claire arrives, but she seems to ignore them, as they leave shortly after. Mandy and Claire bond as they continue the project. Mandy reveals to the reader that she's never had a girlfriend, except for one time at sleep-away camp where she kind of dated a girl for four weeks. She didn't tell her who her mom was because she was tired of living in the shadow of a superhero. But the relationship ended because Mandy had lied about who her mom was, and the girl she was dating didn't understand why she would lie. I think this really shows just how much Mandy actually wants to be a normal girl like everyone else, to the extent that she'd lie about who her mom was. Her edgy demeanor at school and around town where her mom is known to be her mom is a defense mechanism to having lived under the shadow of a superhero her entire life.

When it's revealed that Claire took a photo with the Titans at Mandy's house, Mandy is understandable heartbroken, and furious. She thought she had been making a real connection with Claire, but this photo makes her think she's been used, again. Claire seems genuinely baffled by Mandy's reaction to this, thinking little of it. But to Mandy, it is a breach of trust from someone she thought cared about her. I think her angry reaction to Claire makes sense because of this, even if it might have been disproportionate to the offense.

On top of this, Starfire has discovered that Mandy walked out of the SAT and doesn't plan to go to college. After a heated conversation, she runs away, but her mom finds her. And then Blackfire finds her. Turns out the fake story she told Claire's friends earlier in the story was actually true, even though Mandy didn't know it.

Since Claire actually cares about Mandy, she tracks down Lincoln who explains to her why Mandy reacted badly, and that she should probably apologize for taking the photo. Claire also admits that one of the friends from earlier, Deb, actually dared her to take the photo. Claire is a good person at heart, but this action shows that she can still be influenced to do something that would hurt another person. And while she might not have known it would hurt Mandy, Deb probably did.

Starfire and Blackfire fight since Mandy has no powers, but Starfire gets injured causing Mandy to realize just how much she loves and cares about her mom, even though they don't see eye to eye on most things. This finally unlocks her powers, as she's let go of most of the resentment she's held against her mom. She even gets asked for an autograph by someone in the audience after the battle.

The story ends with Mandy training her powers, studying for the SAT, and reconciling with Claire, sharing a kiss, and becoming girlfriends.

I've seen a lot of discourse that frames Mandy as being "not like other girls". I don't believe this framing actually fits Mandy very well. The only girl Mandy ever says she is not like explicitly is her mom. She is the only woman she compares herself too, and the only person who she seems to have a lot of resentment for, aside from people who use her to get to Starfire. Additionally, Mandy falls for someone who is what a stereotypical, normal popular girl is often portrayed as. She's preppy, wears makeup, gets good grades, has friends, and runs a fairly popular Instagram account. If Mandy was extremely into the "Not like other girls" rhetoric, she would've made fun of Claire for all those things. Instead, she admires her for them. Mandy is fat, has acne/freckles, dresses goth, and wears a nose ring. If this is the reason people are identifying her as a "Not like other girls" girl, then they don't understand that trope. Simply dressing differently from your peers, being fat, and hating your mom does not make her the "not like other girls" trope. It actually makes her like other, real-life girls who dress and act similarly, because that's who they are, not because they somehow think they are better than other women.

I'd also make the argument that, fundamentally, Mandy IS different from other girls on the account of having a superhero mother and potentially a superhero father. Her life is completely altered by Starfire's existence as her mom and is likely only relatable to the children of other superheroes and celebrities. She is not like other girls because of her mom, and that still doesn't make her someone who falls in line with the conception of being "not like other girls".

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope others do too. I read Mandy as a flawed character who was trying to figure out how to exist outside the Shadow of her mom- and eventually succeeds, by learning to embrace her mom. I would've preferred if Mandy had a slightly darker skin tone, as her features seem black-coded to me and Starfire is also often black-coded. Otherwise, I do think this was one of the best DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults I've read, alongside Teen Titans: Beast Boy and Teen Titans: Raven.

#i am not starfire #mandy koriand'r #mandy anders #i am not starfire spoilers #starfire

[inkandpen22]

Shared Minds and Shared Souls (7/?)

Pairing: Spike x Female!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, mention of past trauma, fluff 

Word Count: 1.8k

Part Summary: Y/N is doing everything in her power to get back to normal and recover. However, when Dawn goes missing, she’s stuck having to ask the one person she knows can help (though she hates to admit it). 

Masterlist

Sitting on the floor of the living room, I place each healing crystal ranging from rose quartz to jade neatly in a circle around me. The strong scents of peppermint and lavender fill my senses as the oils radiate from my anointed hands. These elements will help me heal both physically and mentally. It will be a tedious process, but I hope that I’ll eventually be as strong and powerful as I was previously. Closing my eyes, I do my best to focus and internalize my thoughts. Every part of healing is internalized. I have to channel the healing power from these elements and transfer them to myself.

As I sit in silence meditating, I start to hear a faint buzzing sound. This is good, it means the spell is working. I’ll have to do this each day for a certain amount of time until I feel recovered.

The front door creaks open, distracting me for a second. I return my attention back to my task. If I slip, I’ll have to start over. Besides, it’s probably just Dawn getting home from school. She insisted on walking home today and I didn’t put up a fight. The girl has been through enough already and could use some space to breathe.

“Dawn?”

I hear Joyce traveling down the stairs to greet her youngest in the foyer.

“No, it’s me,” Buffy replies.

My eyes snap open and the crystals that were floatings around me fall to the wood floor with scattered thuds.

“But where’s Dawn?! Is she with you?!” Joyce rushes out, already panicked.

“She isn’t home yet?!” Buffy questions.

“No!” Joyce frets.

I gather my belongings together and set them aside, no healing today for me. It’s alright, I can survive another day all off-balanced, what else is new. I join Joyce and Buffy in the foyer, reaching for my jacket on the hook. The two of them turn to me.

“Where are you going?” Buffy questions.

“Going to go find Dawn,” I explain plainly, slipping on my leather jacket.

“But you’re still recovering,” Joyce ever so kindly reminds me.

Someone has to go find Dawn and these two are just standing here going back and forth.

“Someone has to do it,” I remark, sounding unintentionally snarky.

“Use a tracking spell!” Buffy suggests as if I haven’t already thought of that.

“I’m too weak. My intuition, along with everything else, is all out of wack,” I grumble, annoyed with my useless state.

“Then I’m coming with,” Buffy declares, already setting down her things from school.

“Peachy,” I mutter, already heading out the door. “You take the north side of town and I’ll take the south,” I instruct Buffy on the way to my car. “Call Willow to have her be on the lookout. I’ll check in with Xander and Anya, Dawnie may have gone over there.”

Buffy grabs my forearm, stopping me on the sidewalk in front of her house. “Why didn’t you pick her up from school today?!”

I raise my brows at her, the audacity of this girl. Is she seriously trying to accuse me of something? Who was the one who saved Dawnie’s ass last week and nearly lost my mind because of it?

I pull my keys out of my pocket and unlock my car with a snicker. “Don’t start with me, Buffy,” I warn her with a dismissive grin. “Let’s just find your sister.”

She releases my wrist and I jog to the driver’s side of my car. Climbing in, I immediately turn on my radio, blasting alternative rock. Buffy runs down the sidewalk, heading north. Geez, I was right. The sooner I can get out of this town and save everyone’s ass, the better.

___________________________________

As the sun starts setting, I’m running out of places to check. Xander and Anya haven’t seen Dawn all day. The achy feeling in my gut is growing with each passing minute. Dammit, why didn’t I just pick her up from school?! I slap my hands against the wheel of my car, screaming at the top of my lungs. If Dawn is fucking hurt, it’s going to be my fault and everything is already my fault! First, I go and get my head scrambled like damn eggs by Glory. Then, I fuck things up with Spike which were already pretty fucked up already now that I think about it. Finally, it’s my fault that Dawn is missing!

Wait, Spike! He’s the last person I feel like seeing right now, but he might be able to help! After the other day, when he said what he did and Buffy came in, he ran off. He never came back. Oh screw it! Ignoring the laws of the road entirely, I do an illegal U-turn in the middle of the road, whipping back in the direction of the cemetery. I guess I’m making a late visit to Bleach Head.

_____________________________________

Without invitation, I barge into Spike’s crypt. I’ve never actually been here before, never having the pleasure of a visit. However, Buffy’s told me a million times about it, so it wasn’t hard to find.

“Spike!” I shout for the peroxide crazed vampy. “Dawn’s missing, I need-”

I halt, my eyes land on Spike and Dawn sitting across from one another on a casket vault. What the actual hell? Spike’s eyes nearly pop out of his head as I slowly approach the duo.

“Y/N!” Dawnie squeals with excitement. “Spike was just telling me the most intense story!”

My eyes remain on Spikes as I stand beside my young cousin. “Is that so? What about?”

“Oh it was nothing,” Spike is quick to hurry along with the conversation.

“It’s so suspenseful!” Dawn gushes.

“I don’t think Y/N cares to-”

She interrupts Spike, continuing to ramble. My attention fades as I look to Spike for some real answers. I haven’t seen him in a few days. He looks like shit. Well, he’s still gorgeous, but a little... well... undead. Spike nervously avoids my gaze, his eyes flickering between me and Dawn.

“Hey Dawn,” I interrupt her chatter calmly.

She hums, perking up.

“Could you wait for me outside? Your mom and Buffy are losing their shit and I need to get you home,” I explain, finally breaking free of Spike’s gaze to focus on Dawn.

“Oh great! So Buffy is just going to hell at me when I get home?!” She fusses with a whine.

“I’m not the one who decided to visit the cemetery on the way home with calling to let me know first,” I smirk at her with a knowing look.

She hops down from the vault with a huff and slings her back over her shoulder. “At least it was you who found me and not Buffy I guess,” she grumbles.

Abruptly, she grabs my arm in a panic. Why is everyone doing that today? Do I have a sign on my forehead that says ‘please grab me! I love to be touched!

“You’re not going to tell her where I was are you?!” She rushes out.

“You think I want Buffy yelling at me all night?” I sass, looking at her like she has three heads. “No way, you were at Janice’s, deal?”

“Deal,” she smiles and heads to the door. “Bye Spike!”

“Later Nibblet,” he hollers back before directing his attention to me.

“Go wait in the car!” I command. “No running off!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she repeats monotony, shutting the crypt door behind her.

Spike fiddles his rings, his head hanging low. I lean against the vault, crossing my arms over my chest. There’s a painful silence between us. Since the moment we met, there was never silence. When he thought I was Glory, we spoke. Even when we were fighting and arguing there was discussion. I’m unsure of what to say, but I’m certain I hate the silence.

“You’re... you’re very good with her,” he compliments quietly. “Nibblet.”

I swallow hard, finding myself wishing he would just look at me. Instead, he continues to avoid my eyes as he pulls himself a cigarette. I watch quietly as he lights it and takes a smoke.

“You are too,” I return the compliment in a whisper, lacking confidence.

His head slowly rises with surprise written on his features. Evidently, he didn’t expect me to exchange pleasantries. He forgets I’m not my cousin. I didn’t come here to yell at him or be bitter about everything. I’ve seen his memories, I’ve seen the cards he’s been dealt, and I understand. Why would I want to add to that mix? He’s been through enough and has caused enough suffering as it is.

Hesitantly, I approach Spike steadily. He sits uncharacteristically still with his sea-blue eyes locked on me. Slowly, I raise my hand reaching out for his cheek as my eyes search every aspect of his face. He cowers away slightly, avoiding contact for my sake. When I don’t flinch or show any signs of fear of the action, he relaxes. His brows scrunch together in faint confusion. I hover my fingers over my cheekbone, unable to actually touch him. The limitation frustrating me to high heaven. All I want to do is to touch him, feel him, yet I can’t.

My eyes glance back to his, his exquisite sea glass blue eyes. They flicker between my eyes and my lips. Compelled by him, I lean forward at a cautious pace bringing my lips closer to his. Spike hesitates, searching my eyes worriedly for any sign of second thoughts. Considering my hindered and weak state, I can’t blame him. It’s the only way we can touch and I need to touch him. He places his hand on my jacket covered arm, squeezing it gently. Then, he completes the remaining distance between us, pressing his lips to mine.

Closing my eyes, I see bright flashes of white and silver light. They’re bright like fireworks illuminating a dark sky and I feel an immense charge coursing through my body. Pressing my palm to Spike’s chest, I guide him back to rest against the vault. He complies, gripping my waist as I climb on top of him. No different than a rushing wave, it travels through my blood like a golden stream of life. I haven’t had this much energy in me since before Glory’s attack. My weak state is squashed and becomes a distant memory. As if I’m drinking from the Fountain of Youth, I can’t get enough. I lean into the sensation, deepening the kiss, craving more. I surrender to the glorious essence that consumes my body and soul. I let myself go and a jolt shocks me, causing me to break away. Sitting up, I catch my breath.

“Y/N!" Spike shouts my name beneath me.

I snap my head down, meeting his wide-eyed gaze.

"Your eyes,” he gasps, prompting himself up on one arm and holding me with his other. "They're... they're bright blue! Almost white even! Like bolts of lighting are circling in them!"

I blink rapidly and glance down at my hands. Strays of electricity travel between my fingers at random. I feel their charge and warmth. I snicker lightly, the overwhelming sensation makes me feel like I'm floating on a cloud. I've never felt so high and powerful in life. I could part the whole damn Pacific if I wanted to! God, this feels great!

_________________________________

Masterlist

Tags: @it-was-all-a-beautiful-dream​ @hexmancia​

#spikexreader #spike x buffy #spuffy #spike fanfic #spike #buffy s5 #buffy summers #buffy #buffy the vampire slayer #buffy the vampire slayer imagine #btvs imagine #sirius black imagine #btvs fanfic #fanfic

[yukiwrites]

Behavior, Making the Difference

Thank you for the support as always, @xpegasusuniverse! This one was so fun to write, I hope you like it! I love exploring all of these different interactions!

Summary: Ricken, Lysithea and Hayato banded together due to their similar circumstances in their home world. They were now good classmates, who shared the same woes even in another world like Askr: why are they being looked down on, just because they were young?

Commission info HERE and HERE!

__________________________

The amount of Heroes being summoned in Askr grew day by day. The castle alloted to house the Order of Heroes had enough space for them all, yes, but there were some areas that a few groups of like-minded Heroes claimed for themselves.

For example, the western training grounds was now CHOP’s exclusive meeting spot. The eastern forest? Home to Heroes who would rather stay away from people to focus on calming their raging power. There was also a meadow past the southern garden, almost touching the outer wall, where the dragon-shifters liked to gather.

In the same manner, the central library was used as a classroom and gathering spot for the mages. It was big enough that classes could be taken on the second floor while others could quietly do their personal research on the first floor without one being a disturbance to the other.

Every other day, more experienced mages ministered classes on the second floor in favor of the apprentice mages. Merric’s was a particularly popular class due to how Young Merric also participated and asked many questions to his older self, which would extend the lecture for hours upon hours.

After class had finally ended, many of the students had stiff necks and sore legs for sitting up for so long. Be that as it may, one of the most eager students, Ricken, observed how Merric and his younger version interacted. On top of that, he noticed how younger Merric received different treatment whenever he went despite being the very same person who was just at the helm of the class.

Sure, the years of experience made a whole lot of difference, but younger Merric was in no way lacking in comparison to any other mage!

“Maybe it’s just ‘cause Merric’s tall.” Ricken grumbled to his deskmates, Lysithea and Hayato, as he looked up to his intentionally large hat.

Lysithea revised her notes calmly, resting her head on one hand. “At this point in time, young Merric has much more experience than Professor Merric had when he was that age. He’ll grow into a much stronger mage if he keeps up with this hunger for knowledge.”

Hayato nodded beside Lysithea, yawning loudly while he stretched his stiff muscles. “I do not know if it was due to the special summoning or if something different happened in his home world, but this young Merric has outstanding innate magical energy. It’s even larger than Professor Merric’s.”

“See? That’s what I’m saying. He’s much stronger than a lot of the adults, but he’s still treated like he’s not that capable because he’s young. They’re treating him like a little kid in favor of his older self!” Ricken protested with puffy cheeks.

“I do understand the hierarchy that comes with the territory of being a mage, so it’s not like I agree completely with you,” Lysithea pinched in, lifting her gaze to the red-haired young boy, “but I don’t disagree completely, either. They could treat him with the deserved respect of someone who holds that much power.”

“Though the man himself doesn’t seem to mind, unfortunately.” Hayato sat back down after cracking his neck a few times. “He sucks it all up, as though he himself feels unworthy of respect.”

“I suppose seeing how much you’ve grown can do that to people,” Lysithea mused, then mumbled so only herself could hear, “I’d be jealous if I wasn’t in such a hurry.”

Ricken’s cheeks only inflated more and more. Seeing people just like him, full of potential and stacking on accomplishments, being treated as less than they deserved made his blood boil. It reminded him of the constant ‘are-you-alright’s and ‘someone-your-age-should-rest-now’s he received on a daily basis.

“He shouldn’t be treated that way!” Ricken exclaimed, raising both fists up. “It’s the same everywhere! Back home, Chrom and everybody else treated me like a little, helpless kid and never saw how much I could do.”

Hayato crossed his arms, bobbing his head to the sides. “Just blow something in their vicinity; that will shut them up.”

“But I don’t want them to fear me! I want them to respect me! Besides, that’d probably just make them tell me I’m still too reckless for the battlefield.” Ricken’s shoulders dropped as he saw the exact scene being played in his mind, word by word.

“... Ah, you’re part of a specialized task force, right?” Hayato momentarily forgot that although the other two shared the same amount of potential and suffered from being berated by their ages, they weren’t the heirs of their tribes. He could get away with a lot of stuff because the heir was usually the strongest one, but that wasn’t the case with Ricken, who was simply one soldier amidst many.

Ricken sat back down, deflated. “Yeah, and there’s this other boy who got in after I did but no one treats him like they treat me! He’s only older than me by a few months, but everyone already sees him as a man and they never hold him back on doing stuff.”

Lysithea immediately remembered Petra, the princess of another country who studied with her under Byleth. They were both the SAME age, but no one treated Petra like a little kid. “... Is it the height?” She mumbled, though both of them heard it loud and clear.

… Oh.

It was the height.

Ricken took off his hat, then glanced up as though to remember how tall Donnel was compared to him.

… After a moment, he realized Donny was at least a head taller than himself.

“This is ridiculous!” However, Hayato was the one who slammed the table. He, too, was conscious of his height. “Bring it on, I’ll zap him with my magic and we’ll see-”

“Wait, wait, wait! I don’t wanna hurt my allies!” Ricken pulled on Hayato’s sleeve. “Besides, he’s not a mage, he’s- uh, I don’t know what he does exactly, but he’s a villager. Everyone trains with him and gives him tips and puts him on the frontlines without question… It’s unfair! I can hold my own, too!”

“That does seem like special treatment,” Lysithea nodded. “It’s unfair, but that only means that you have to overwhelm everyone with your effort. Study a lot and show them how good you can be to shut them all up.”

“Yeah... It’s my dream to be able to fight side-by-side with Chrom, but it’s not something for the far future. I can do it NOW, but they just don’t acknowledge me! It’s driving me nuts.”

Before the other two could reply, the sound of steps going up the stairs to the second floor interrupted them, which was unusual. It was an unspoken rule to use sound-muffling magic while walking around the library; not to mention that the second floor was commonly used for classes, so there shouldn’t be anyone going up at that moment, as the next class would only happen after dinner.

“C’monnn, up we go, Donny!” A familiar, peppy voice echoed. Soon, the blonde pigtails could be seen before the princess’ body: It was Lissa, Chrom’s sister and princess of Ylisse.

“W-wait, wait, Miss Lissa! I reckon we shouldn’ta be ‘ere now! Aren’t them egghead folks studyin’?” Being pulled by Lissa, Donnel held the pot on his head to hide his face, whispering in an attempt to be quiet.

“Nope, class was over a while ago, so now it’s Professor Lissa time! Take your seat, Donny, and let your big sister here teach you stuff!” She pulled out a monocle from her sleeve and a presentation stick from the other, pointing at the blank blackboard. “Now, todaaay we’ll learn about… Cloud formations!”

Apologetic, Donnel glanced around as he scratched the back of his neck, meeting Ricken’s, Hayato’s and Lysithea’s eyes as he sat down. He bowed to them before turning back to Lissa’s long winded explanation about Stratus clouds.

Lysithea’s expression turned cold as her optimal studying space had been breached. “Aren’t they from your world, Ricken? Don’t they know how this is a place of learning and not of fooling around?”

“Ah, um, yeah. He’s the boy I was talking about, too, but…”

“You said people don’t treat him like a kid, though? But look, even that young princess is making sure to even call him ‘little brother’...” Hayato commented, glancing between Ricken and the other two.

“I’m surprised, too. I only see people praising him and telling him to go to the frontlines more often. Princess Lissa can be annoy-erm, difficult to deal with, especially if you’re younger than her…” Ricken spoke with a jaded voice, as though he had experienced all of that first hand (he did). “I didn’t know Donny also went through that.”

Hayato cracked his fingers. “He doesn’t seem to be much older, just like you said.”

“Yup, I can only imagine they treat him differently because he wields a weapon, not magic. They might think I’m weaker than others just ‘cause I don’t have muscl-”

“That’s ridiculous.” Lysithea interrupted. “Mages are one of the most terrifying pieces of the battlefield. No one has any right to look down on a mage just because they’re more fragile than their weaponized peers.”

As both boys nodded, Ricken clutched his hands. “Yeah, but that’s the only conclusion I can come to, honestly. What IS the difference between us if not that? We’re basically the same age! I refuse to believe it’s because I’m- I… I’m s-shorter than him!”

As the three of them discussed, Donnel raised his hand to ask Lissa a question. “But ‘scuse me, ma’am, it’s the Nimbus kinda cloud tha’s the rainy one! Folks called ‘em that ‘cause no matter how fast you saw ‘em, they’d catch up with ya and wet all your laundry, that it would!”

“Weh? What? No! It’s the Cumulus one, I’m sure of it!” Lissa was bewildered for a moment before stomping her foot stubbornly. “I’m the older one here, so I know best, okay?”

Donnel scratched his head awkwardly. “B-b-buh… But the Cumulus kinda cloud’s the one’s looks likea’ tree, ain’t it? Mighty tasty-looking too, like a pretty treat I saw in one offa those fancy towns we gon ‘bout.”

“Nghhh!” Lissa shook with embarrassment and mortification. That wasn’t the first NOR the second time Donnel corrected her during her ‘classes’. She was the older sister here, darn it all!

In between the three mages, the princess and the villager boy, none of them could truly fathom the reason why people treated Donnel differently, despite their close ages. In other circumstances, perhaps, Lissa would be sitting at the table alongside Ricken, Hayato and Lysithea. However, since that was not the case, the group was fated to observe the duo.

If they had just a little more self-awareness, they might have realized that the simple and obvious reason was only one’s behavior and humility.

But perhaps, they were all still too young to realize...

#fire emblem heroes #lysithea fire emblem #ricken fire emblem #hayato fire emblem #donnel fire emblem #my writings #feh #yuki's commissions

[miraculouscontent]

Ask Explo--

...you know what, you’re right. Name change effective immediately.

Askplosion #10:

(unrelated to everything by the way but I DEMAND THE ANON WHO MENTIONED “REMARRIED EMPRESS” A WHILE BACK COME FORTH AND ANSWER FOR THEIR CRIMES. IT’S SO GOOD BUT IT’S UNFINISHED AND I’M HOOKED, HOW DARE YOU)

Asks responding to previous posts:

It’s okay! I figured that was what it was but it’s been so loooong.

Ah, wow.

Um, that’s definitely not a part 2; I think that’s more like a four-parter/five-parter or something.

Sorry! No can do!

That’s totally fair!

I think the reason I so quickly agreed with it is like--

I’ve been watching the Inuyasha sequel and it’s not like I don’t think the narrative’s apparent punching bag Moroha (who is fourteen years old) shouldn’t be punished when she does something wrong/sneaky/manipulative, but they punish her as if she’s Miroku (who was eighteen years old).

Basically, I want the punishment to take the age into account, or at least only affect Marinette on a more personal level and not be “Heart Hunter” where they take totally understandable feelings of heartache (remember, it wouldn’t have mattered which miraculous she took because Hawk Moth got the Miracle Box and Fu regardless; even beyond her emotions, I feel like she chose the best option available to her considering which temps she knew the location of) and then punish her for them by memory wiping Fu and taking away all of her temps and giving Hawk Moth the grimoire translation.

Yes!! I really wanted to respond to this one, thank you! (It’s this one and then there was another one talking about Luka and Adrien, then talked to me about how I refer to Luka as “soft” but not in a bad way; I unfortunately don’t remember the whole thing.)

Ahaha, and yeah, I feel you. Anti-salters are a very strange conundrum I still haven’t figured out; like, I get not liking salt, but...

I mean, when I don’t like certain content, I just blacklist it. If I end up seeing it anyway due to cross-tagging or a lack of tagging, then I just blacklist the person themself. You won’t see me going after people for that very reason; I only see what people send/ask me if it’s content I don’t like.

I’m glad you’ve found some peace in this blog! Hopefully it continues to be that way for you in the future!

(and yay, a fellow INTJ!!)

New Asks:

There are female writers? ;P I just assumed they were all locked in a closet until the male ones were like, “okay, pretend to help us here, we need one female writer to claim girl power.”

As for Ladybug all like, “Cute, isn’t she?” I think it was rhetorical (she could also be messing with him but “Glaciator” tells us that she didn’t know he crushed on her so who knows). The writers do this thing where Marinette is all panic-y and occasionally self-conscious as herself, but then as Ladybug, she suddenly gets a bit of an ego. I think it’s meant to be there in order to make Chat Noir look less... idk, “obnoxious” when he starts boosting his own ego; trying to balance the two by giving them both big heads, so to speak.

Honestly, I feel like Adrien needs less screen time. :|

Even when he’s not on-screen, characters are usually talking about him, or you see his face in Marinette’s room/somewhere in Paris. I’m become so jaded by the guy that I don’t even think it’d matter if they remade the series and gave it a “totally good and interesting Adrien.” That’s how badly the show has made him out for me; “Adrien Agreste” the character is just... sigh, I’m so done with him.

And yeah, this whole idea about, “Marinette is [x], we need more AAAAAADRIEN!” comes off really bad, lol, especially when Adrien has very little going for him.

(this ask ends off like there should be a part 2 but there isn’t one in my inbox, so sorry if there’s meant to be something else!)

The exact lyrics according to the wiki:

My wish for a cat who's in love, with our own Ladybug. Is that he'll get what he's always wanted! She doesn't know she loves him, only sees Adrien, But Christmas miracles always happen!

Yeah, especially nowadays, those lines bothers me. Not only does it imply “true selves,” but that it’s Chat who should be getting what he always wanted and Ladybug is the one with a problem.

Like, excuse me?

Probably Stormy Weather, even in the first episode. Ladybug and Chat Noir couldn’t even touch her until they arrived on top of the TV station.

+ With all those effects and shots, it made it feel more action-y than typical episodes.

Marinette, Aurore, Luka, Anarka, Jagged...

basically any name that I haven’t really heard before (”Luka” makes me think of Vocaloid but the Luka there was female), or a name that relates a lot to the character (like “Aurore” for “aurora” since she loves weather things).

dfjbghfkdgfdgnjfdg this anon really like, “I NEED ANSWERS!!!”

It’s as if these characters hit 18 or something and just grow overnight, I swear. I’m hypothetically fine with some more variety in character height (it’s not like the show tries to be realistic, after all), but maybe don’t give us official heights if they’re gonna be this weird/inaccurate.

Especially when they change it just for the sake of a shot anyway. If you watch “Simon Says” when Ladybug and Adrien stand next to each other while looking at the picture of Adrien’s mother, the very next close-up has an obvious difference in their heights from what you just saw.

They’re 3D models!!! This shouldn’t happen!

I... honestly never thought of the “less threatening” thing! Dang!

And yeah, Marinette isn’t helpless or incompetent, but because of the Adrien crush, it makes her that way at times since she’s always falling on him and--

...ugh, actually, yeah, don’t wanna think about those implications. Hard pass.

Gross.

I’m not familiar with that one, though Astruc deletes his tweets all the time (there was one tweet where he confirmed that Luka was poor and it only exists in screenshots now because it didn’t get archived and he deleted it almost like he realized that he was pointing out the blatant classism in the show, oops).

Yeah though, I haven’t seen anything like what you’re describing. Sorry!

It’s okay! Sorry for having you clarify but him choosing and Marinette deciding to never give it back are very different things.

I don’t recall Chat Noir having much purpose in the final fight (in terms of both contributing and actual fighting; I know Cataclysm broke the object to release the akuma but was it needed?) so Marinette might either go cat-less or get a temp. Plagg could also be helpful in his own right because he’s small and blends in with the night, so he could hypothetically sneak up on the bad guy.

Afterwards, there’d need to be a new cat, but Adrien would also have to reconsider his actions and really think about what happened. I could also see Plagg going to Adrien’s house, half to apologize for giving the idea to Adrien that Adrien leave without telling Ladybug, but also half to call him out for giving up without consulting anyone. Adrien is a lot of conflicting things (see Adrien’s passivity compared to Chat Noir’s recklessness) so he’d have to find a middle ground within himself.

Marinette might carry Plagg around in her purse for a while and let Plagg have a say in who he goes to. Plagg might grieve for a bit over not having Adrien around (even if Adrien was flawed, Plagg didn’t ask for any of this so Marinette is doing her best here).

O-oh.

That’s always the rough patch with “endgame ships.”  Once it’s obvious to the audience that they’re endgame, no more effort needs to be put into them.

The other thing too is how Kagami, for example, is friends with Marinette. Even once Adrimi sinks, she’ll presumably stay friends with her. Luka, meanwhile, is Juleka’s brother.

They have lives outside of their love interests. Adrien is so into Ladybug that he doesn’t have that; I mean, Nino is Adrien’s best friend like once in a blue moon.

The entire class is just watching an episode and then calling on raised hands to answer what was wrong with what they just watched.

“Everything?”

“I mean, yes, but I’m sorry, you have to be more specific to get credit.”

I think Aeon herself is fine. It’s mostly just her transformed and that transformed name that I have a problem with (she doesn’t even look uncanny so I don’t get it). I heard there was something wrong with the name “Aeon” but searching the name doesn’t give me anything I would qualify as such so I have no idea. I just wish she was given a little less “I’m programmed to--” (makes her seem less sentient) and more “[anything that doesn’t have to do with pushing the love square]” because I feel like they might’ve done the latter to make her more “likable”? I think fans of anything usually like the “matchmaker” character provided it’s for a ship they like. Also strange that they make her a robot but Max and Markov don’t extensively interact with her, but that’s a nitpick and not a criticism of her character.

...I’m rambling, my bad lol.

(Ohhh, she was supposed to be a mummy? Like, foreshadowing her “dying”?? That went right over my head but I guess that’d be where the name Uncanny Valley came from? No clue.)

Best case scenario is probably the middle or the end of Season 4.

And yeah, it really doesn’t matter to me what they do with the love square. Marinette had gone through too much suffering and the show goes out of its way to show how much stress Marinette is being put under (and also keeping Luka away during episodes like “Gamer 2.0″ even when it makes sense for them to be there, as if trying to make sure Marinette doesn’t have enough moments with him to forget Adrien).

Like, ah, yes, I totally believe that Marinette is in a position where she can make reasonable decisions about her love life while all circles of her life are on fire.

If the Sonic movie of all things can have an interracial couple, there’s no reason why this show can’t, just saying.

And, even with Marinette, she’s white-passing (according to what basically everyone says, I’m really awful about recognizing race so this isn’t my field; I wasn’t aware that Ondine was Asian, for example).

Does Nadja count? Manon’s dark-skinned (I’m still not over the fact that all the kids in this show are dark-skinned; it’s not like it’s a problem from a representation standpoint - though all the kids are also all generically bratty/whiny so there’s that - but the percentages in this show are weird) while Nadja is really light-skinned, meaning either a dark-skinned husband or Manon is adopted.

Though I guess the problem then is that we don’t know, so there’s no established couple there.

Non-Miraculous Asks:

w-who gave you the right to say such things????

Uhhhh, that might be too broad of a question, I’m sorry!

I know this isn’t satisfactory, but I will say that my favorite genre is Fantasy/Romance (it’s why I adore Red Shoes so much; by the way, an anon asked for my opinion on that a while back and I will get to it! I’d need to watch it again to get screenshots) and my least favorite is probably Tragedy/Horror.

I don’t think I’ve watched enough to really be able to say? I’ve kind of been all over but I’ve never fully gone through any of them outside of Miraculous. I’ve seen bits of Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Star VS the Forces of Evil (don’t know if that counts), and I meant to watch Yuki Yuna is a Hero but never got around to it. I saw the entirety of Puella Magi Madoka Magica but you guys know how I feel about that one.

Maybe Cardcaptor Sakura by default then? It was definitely not perfect but I liked some of the character dynamics (I also have a clipcut of it - basically where I go through a series/movie and cut out parts I don’t like so it’s only good stuff - so I’m cheating a little) and the male love interest was a tsundere type that I actually ended up liking, which is really rare.

!!! That sounds sweet~ I know Sailor Moon is popular so I’ll definitely take your word for it on that one.

I would also accept a “reincarnated”/”destined lovers” trope if maybe the ship themselves are the one who set it up in the first place. I have a Lukanette AU, for example, where they basically got together and then prayed to the shrine of the renewal god that they’d “always be together,” which ended up allowing them to reincarnate over and over (as if they set up their own soulmate AU ;P) and continuously find each other.

Though I guess that’s not technically a “meant to be trope,” but still, it’s a form of it but where it was totally consensual on both sides.

Also, I finally thought of a show that ended with the ship I wanted: Gargoyles. I didn’t see the entire series, mind you, but I saw most of it and Goliath and Elisa were just... quality, I adored them.

+ With Beauty and the Beast being my favorite Disney movie, they fit right in with my tastes.

I forget that AangToph (I think the “official” name for the ship is Taang, but don’t quote me on that) exists sometimes, maybe because I’ve never shipped Aang with anyone; I’ve got no problems with the ship though.

Ugh, and this is what I mean when I talk about people who set up these reasons behind people shipping something based on what they saw a few people do. It’s like, “you only ship Adrimi/Lukanette to spite Adrienette!!”

Meanwhile, me having shipped all three at one point and then dropped off the love square.

Also, me shipping Zutara has nothing to do with it being dark/edgy because I’ve never seen it that way (intriguing, sure but dark and edgy? lol) and also avoid dark/edgy ships like the plague.

I still laugh at people who are like, “you can’t ship it because it’s not endgaaaaame!” as if shows can dictate how and why I enjoy something. Like sure, if you want to let a show/movie spoonfeed you how you’re supposed to feel, then by all means, go ahead.

I suppose people may be theoretically happier that way, but it doesn’t make for an analytic mind.

I legitimately thought that “AssClass” must’ve been the actual name for something until it registered with me what it actually meant.

And eh, I guess it depends on the comparison and how accurate the comparison actually is? Like, comparing Puella Magic Madoka Magica to Miraculous... they’re not really close at all, but comparing... idk, Bunnyx to Homura or the concept behind “backfiring wishes”... maybe?

-

(note that the rest of this post is more Puella Magi Madoka Magica salt so you can stop reading here if you’re not interested in that; I’m not sure if this is all the same anon but I don’t mind letting people vent so I let them go off~)

why can’t we just have nice things

I agree, and I give a little eyeroll every time it’s like, “oh, this person had [miraculous]”

+ even just in general, I feel weird about any show that mentions/implies that real world famous people are [x] or [y] in their show. It breaks my immersion; real world locations are one thing but when it’s specific people (unless they’re made up characters like Santa Claus) or games just--break me.

I also don’t know what to think when there aren’t magical boys but you have these magical girls in this frilly outfits/skirts. The demographic is girls so I presume the reason must be like, “you can look pretty and still beat people up” (;P) but having so many magical girl shows without a hint of a magical boy makes me suspicious that it’s for fanservice. Sailor Moon has Tuxedo Mask but I also don’t know what that guy did outside of the meme of him doing nothing so I’ve got no clue.

(edit: I should correct myself that I’m not talking about Sailor Moon specifically; I don’t know magical girls that well, though I do know there are ones clearly intended for fanservice (you could say that for anything, to be fair, but still). It’s just that I see things like super short skirts or very “questionable” shots and I’m just like, “hm”)

Hmmm, good question. I feel like there has to be a lot but I’m also the type who doesn’t watch a lot of TV lol. I’m just familiar with cliches and tropes and such.

The reason I try not to use “ism”s of any kind is mostly because it’s too broad. Like, you know how the English language only has one way of saying, “I love you,” but other languages like Spanish have multiple?

It’s like that, and sometimes I think it’s too easy to throw those words out there. A “small” (possibly completely unintentional/misunderstood) offense is sexism, and then a “large” offense is called the exact same thing. I’d rather go into why something is sexist than just call it that, y’know? The only exception I make is “classism” because I feel like that’s not as... I dunno, divisive?

Anyway, for that same reason, I can’t answer firmly that, “Madoka Magica is sexist.” I will however say that it makes me uncomfortable with how the show makes out the girls being emotional because they’re young and female and then proceeds to make their life a living hell before they’re old enough to properly answer to it (I know that’s the point but that kind of makes it worse?). It doesn’t help with how all the girls have different personalities, so it’s not like you have only “crybaby girls” who are being taken advantage of; it’s basically like... all girls.

Not helped is the fact that their soul gem not only deteriorates naturally, but it can also do so faster if the girl falls into despair, which then turns them into a monster (and I know it’s kind of like an akuma thing, but the fact that it’s only girls is... I dunno, it comes off wrong?). It seems cheap that the soul gem deteriorates no matter what so it constantly needs fed even if the girl is consistently happy.

I would probably opt for the show being centered more around Kyubey being new to this or something - like, magical girls are a new thing - and then have Kyubey being surprised because they presumed that the soul gem would deteriorate naturally since “emotions are powerful but destructive to the person having them,” but then all the girls team up and help each other work out their problems. Maybe the reason magical girls are usually alone isn’t even because of the grief seed (I think that’s what it’s called?) thing not being able to be shared, but because Kyubey intentionally separates magical girls so they can’t do what the main group is doing, but Madoka is so into the idea that, “We shouldn’t have to be alone,” and so she’s constantly pulling all the girls together, which keeps them healthy.

Maybe Homura’s backstory could be that Madoka originally was more sheepish and more afraid to put herself out there, especially since she was a magical girl (who are encouraged to go it alone), which is why their soul gems were both deteriorating; they were friends but kept more of a distance, or maybe they were a team but that’s all they were. Then Madoka gives Homura the last grief seed to save her and that’s what inspires Homura and makes her see Madoka as something more than a teammate, which is why Homura actively tries to save Madoka specifically (which then encourages Madoka to want to keep everyone together as friends).

In the case that Kyubey doesn’t separate them out of concern of fRiEnDsHiP, but for another reason altogether, and then it’s ultimately their own downfall when they allow the girls to hang out and realize that it’s doing a lot of good for them.

“cute and innocent”

That was exactly it. It’s on Kyubey’s trivia section on the Puella Magi Madoka Magica Wiki.

Before the anime's first dark plot twist aired, head writer Gen Urobuchi said on his Twitter account that the "Kyu" in Kyubey's name comes from the English word "cute". This was a lie meant to further mislead fans into thinking that Madoka Magica is an innocent happy show. In a later episode, it was revealed that "Kyubey" is, in fact, short for "incubator".

In my personal opinion, a spoiled plot can’t be “ruined” if it’s a good plot. If you told me that Kagome was trapped in the Modern era for three years and then decided to stay with Inuyasha at the end of Inuyasha, it wouldn’t/shouldn’t decrease the value when I finally see it for myself because it’s good. That’s not to say that everything should just be spoiled right out of the gate, but it’s saying that maybe your plot isn’t good if you have to rely on shock value to make it work??

I FEEL THAT “ASSIGNING IT TO THE WHOLE GENDER” THING SO BAD. It just adds to my “the girls all have varying personalities so it’s not like Kyubey’s only after emotional crybabies or anything” salt.

I have no idea about any of the stuff about the writers so I can’t confirm or deny them. I will very much agree on the target audience thing though, especially with the whole “keeping the dark plot a secret” because really? Who is this for then? Like, the first two and a half episodes are for one demographic and then the others are--???

I dunno. Me personally, I just like feel good stories. I do like some good conflict and drama (for context, Remarried Empress is basically a webtoon that gives you things to feel salty about and then makes its own salt fic as its plot, allowing for endless streams of feels and catharsis, so I’m definitely not against drama), but there are other times where I just want to feel good watching something.

I feel like the show expects the characters to be selfless/perfect and then punishes them even though it’s their writing that’s causing them to act out. I can’t really talking about “out-of-character” but sometimes it’s just obvious where “we did this because we needed a plot/conflict.”

Like, hello? We don’t need the main characters screwing up; why can’t we just have some feel good thing where they take the day for themselves (seriously, imagine a Miraculous episode where Chat Noir actually tells Ladybug to take a couple days for herself, like maybe someone else gets the earrings for a few days as a temp while Marinette gets to breathe; IMAGINE IT). Not everything needs to be high-stakes to be interesting and you need those calmer moments so that the action-packed ones feel more intense.

SAYAKA DESERVES BETTER.

I feel like the magical girl genre as a whole can be way more complex than it’s made out to be. I think people hear the word “magical girl” and think “cute girls in short skirts talk about girl problems and fight evil with the power of friendship and accessories.”

Ugh, just the mention of Rebellion makes me sigh internally.

Congrats on working on your own magical girl story! I hope it goes well for you!

I know it’s not technically a magical girl show, but there was also Totally Spies that Astruc worked on to some degree (I think there was some characters who were based on/a loose reference to the mains from that show but I don’t remember exactly).

The thing about the female characters suffering is that they could make for good lessons on positively directing one’s emotions (like Usagi from Sailor Moon, for example, maybe having a problem with taking her anger out on her friends, but learns that she can save that rage for the bad guys; “Gamer 2.0″ from Miraculous could’ve done that, honestly, by having Ladybug absolutely WRECK all of her gaming opponents in “violent” (cartoon violence obviously) fashion). It’s just a shame that it’s not taken advantage of.

Sayaka??? Selfish???????

*does not compute*

(Also, I wasn’t tired of them, don’t worry! It was a little overwhelming in my inbox but it’s me who’s allowing all the asks to flow in so the blame isn’t on you lol.)

I’m not sure where this obsession came from with, “you have to be selfless and you’re not allowed to use your powers for yourself.” It’s like the world’s going to end if a character leaves to go Self-Care or something. I think what happened is that shows got this idea that promoting only the giving of others is great and it’s not important to take time for yourself (even with “Gamer 2.0,” it was still Marinette playing games with everyone else, and they treated her dedication and seriousness like a bad thing when she literally did not have time to waste and they didn’t give a reason why it was good for her to take a break, only that she should).

This usually leads to the “demonization” of characters who sport a lot of self-confidence or any sort of ego. It works on both sides; Marinette is a punching bag because of her anxiety and occasional lack of confidence, but if she had an ego as Ladybug, there are parts of the fandom who deem her “obnoxious” (i.e: “Reflekdoll”). There’s a delicate balance between “be confident” and “be humble” and it’s a tightrope act.

#((Yes! This strategy works for not losing asks.)) #((In other news--)) #((I gotta test out this new microphone so I wanna do a ''Voiced Askplosion'' where I record my answers instead of writing them)) #((Anyone who sends me a 🎤 alongside their asks will get a voiced response next time!)) #((I probably can't answer everything but you know how it is~)) #(((i swear that someone is going to do it just to see if they can get me to swear when I read out their asks))) #((or... like--)) #((''ok i don't actually have a question'')) #((''but plz say the words 'adrien and marinette are meant to be' because i want to hear how much u struggle to say it'')) #category: salt #other: non ml talk #category: ramble #character: Marinette Dupain Cheng #category: fandom #episode: Evillustrator #character: Chat Noir #character: Ladybug #character: Adrien Agreste #character: Stormy Weather #category: me myself and i #category: staff #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Marinette Dupain Cheng #character: Aeon #character: Uncanny Valley #relationship: love square #MC's Renders #render: persona

[thatringboy]

All of my other TWST HCs

Because my Twisted Wonderland Headcanons have been my most popular posts, here I am giving the mob what they want! An almost complete list of Headcanons I have about every character and house!

This is by far my longest post and it took me three days to type, so I hope you guys get a laugh out of it!

WARNING: THESE ARE MY PERSONAL OPINIONS ABOUT EACH CHARACTER. IF YOU DON’T AGREE WITH ONE, PLEASE DON’T ATTACK ME OR OTHERS WHO SUPPORT MY HCS. JUST DON’T BE A DICK.

Heartslabyul

The word “Queen” is gender neutral

Frequently allows students from other houses to study with them

Recently expanded into two buildings dedicated just for dorms to house all of the students

Actually lots of words are gender neutral

Riddle

Does rebellious things with Trey sometimes

Actually struggled with gender for a while because of his mother and responds to all pronouns (he/she/they), but identifies as male

Sometimes uses the label “Androgynous Male”

Is attracted to Trey, but he can’t tell if it’s because of his childhood or because he genuinely likes his Vice DH

Has Tea Time TM with Vil

Abolished gender roles in NRC despite it being an all guys school

During Summer Vacation he wears jean shorts and mint green tank tops with red flip flops

Has a pet crab that is red and named “Queen” despite Riddle not knowing Queen’s gender

Queen is the mascot for Heartslabyul despite being a sea creature

We stan Queen the Crab in this house.

Trey

Enjoys breaking the rules with Riddle, even if it’s not very often

He dyed his hair green as a joke with Cater during his first year, but decided to keep it 

Has fallen for Riddle. Hard.

But between his dignity, his position and him not knowing if Riddle likes men, he won’t say anything that could ruin the friendship

Rook found out by accident and actually helps Trey try to work up the courage to ask Riddle out, but Trey always backs down

Invented a type of Tea that soaks clover leaves and it tastes like vanilla mixed with mint

Cater

#SELFIE

Not really a drama queen, but will egg on fights for views

Sometimes his clones will develop different accents and that’s how you tell them apart

Has a pansexual flag in his room

Spends more time partying in Scarabia than in Heartslabyul

Is close friends with Kalim and actually crushed on him for a bit, but got over it once he noticed the way he looks at Jamil

Actually gives good relationship advice

Deuce

Was Bi-Curious during his Pre-NRC days and actually tried to put it behind him like everything else

However, like, everyone at NRC is some flavor of gay

So he gave up on his internalized homophobia and now lives his full authentic life!

Still uses the labels Bi-Curious and Questioning and often goes to Cater for advice

But his buddies love and support him no matter what

Is a huge feminist

Cater fully believes that Deuce likes Ace, but he actually doesn’t

Deuce admits when men are attractive, no matter if it makes them uncomfortable or not

Didn’t go over well with Jack

But the two are cool now

Ace

Probably one of the straightest guys you’ll ever meet besides Rook

Actually learned what the different teas smell like so that he never messed up again

Enjoys his fights with Grim, even if Grim is a little shit

Like seriously Grim is a little flying rat shit turd fuck but that’s just my opinion

Almost never learns from his mistakes and always pays the price

Chaotic Good.

Loves going on adventures with the Prefect and Grim!

Has never gone back to the Mostro Lounge without Jack or the Prefect

Also got really into Mermaid culture and regularly goes back to the Atlantica Memorial Museum to talk with that one guard

Has memorized the script from the Little Mermaid

Can sing You Pour, Unfortunate Soul in a perfect baritone vibrato despite his high voice

Also takes singing lessons from Azul, but only if someone else is in the room with them

Savanaclaw

Throws pool parties regularly

Octavinelle is almost always invited

Magift between the two houses is insane

Leona

Raging Bisexual, need I say more?

Goes to great lengths to find loopholes and just be lazy

Also goes to great lengths to help Ruggie

Hates his brother, but loves Cheka and his sister-in-law

Can’t properly digest seafood, but eats in in front of Azul and the Leech twins just to be a bitch

Is kinda clingy

Even if he doesn’t want to, he goes to all of the Savanaclaw vs Octavinelle vs Pomfiore karaoke battles

Can’t sing for shit, but likes to watch Ruggie and Jack duet and destroy everyone

Constantly reminds Malleus about the time they swapped robes

Actually swaps clothing with Malleus quite often on purpose to see how they feel

Ruggie

A good singer

But kinda self conscious about it??

Also a Raging Bisexual

Play flirts a lot with Leona, even though they don’t like one another like that

Is FtM Transgender, fully transitioned, and wears his scarf to cover the fact that he doesn’t have much chest hair and his scars

Only Leona and Crowley know

Gets a little dysphoria because his voice is still so high and because he’s shorter than everyone in Savanaclaw, but takes one look at Riddle, Lila and Ace and forgets about it

Jack suspects, but the two make a killer duo during karaoke!

Jack

Is straight, but won’t get in your face about it

Actually learned how to become a fast swimmer just to flex on Jade and Floyd

Has memorized almost all of Heartslabyul’s rules just because he didn’t want to be disrespectful

Arm wrestles with Floyd often

Helps out in the Mostro Lounge pretty often when he’s bored

His karaoke skills are out of this world!

Also has memorized the layout for Ramshackle Dorm just so he wouldn’t get lost in there

Tsundere? Maybe.....

Knows something’s different about Ruggie, but can’t figure it out

Respects privacy like crazy

Just a cool guy to be around

Octavinelle

Hosts the karaoke battles

Now pays their employees in the Mostro Lounge

Gives free singing lessons

Azul

Choir Gay TM

Aromantic Homosexual

Constantly has Boss Bitch by Doja Cat in his head

Actually has shit handwriting and it made his Golden Contracts all the much more powerful

His handwriting is beautiful underwater, though

When he’s feeling lazy, Azul transforms into his Merman form and uses his 8 extra arms to do things for him

Has a single picture from his childhood that he has not edited (or tried to edit)

It’s of him, Jade and Floyd graduating Junior High

All three of them are linking arms and smiling brightly

It sits on his nightstand in a golden frame

Gives most of the singing lessons

But doesn’t participate in the karaoke battles

“I’ll join if Leona joins.”

Petty about the karaoke

Jade

Once swapped clothing styles with Floyd for an entire day and was just chaotic towards everyone

Does this more often now just to relieve stress

Only the Prefect could ever tell them apart

Not even Azul knew they had swapped

Is Pansexual and liked Azul during Junior High, but got over it once they started at NRC

Can scare someone so badly that they tell the truth regardless of Jade using his magic

50 students were asked who they’d rather have to fight, 42 of them said “Floyd all the way! No way am I fighting Jade!”

Was actually popular in Junior High, but turned down opportunities to be more popular to spend time with Floyd and Azul

Can cuss in 8 languages

Floyd

When he swapped clothing with Jade, he actually enjoyed being calm and responsible

Loves to do things like that for Jade

Raging Homosexual, need I say more?

His Bakugou impression is on point

There are several videos of him just standing at the end of a dark hallway laughing and whispering “Die, Deku!”

Also really likes Volleyball despite being on the Basketball team

Takes Bean Day a lot farther than it needs to be

Flirts with Riddle a lot, knowing it upsets Trey

But doesn’t know that Trey actually likes Riddle

Has sea related nicknames for everyone

Scarabia

Everyone has to help take care of Snake

Monthly competitions where Kalim hands out free vacations

The competitions involve taking care of Snake

Who is Snake? You’ll see.

Kalim

When he learned what Pansexual was, he went around Scarabia clapping pans together to come out

Cater was the one who explained it to him

Loves to party and flirt with Jamil, but can be serious if needed

Sometimes holds group therapy for his dorm residents

But also PARTY 24/7 IF IT HAS ALCOHOL WE CHUGGIN’ TONIGHT!

PARTY ROCKERS IN THE HOUSE TONIGHT

Named his magic carpet “Jamil Jr.”

Flexes on Azul with Jamil Jr.

Is open about his attraction to Jamil, but also respects Jamil’s personal space

He and Lila sneak out at night to mess with people

Jamil

Has a pet snake that he never named

Just calls the snake “Snake”.

When Jamil’s busy, other residents take turns taking care of Snake

There is an entire chore chart and half of the chores involve Snake

Snake isn’t even the dorm mascot, he’s just Jamil’s pet

Tsundere TM

The only reason he doesn’t accept Kalim’s professions of love is because of his family obligations to serve the Al-Asim family

Takes family and traditions very seriously

Internalized homophobia? Maybe....

Petty as well

Has poured sand into people’s shoes and hidden scorpions in beds

Pomfiore

Usually wins the karaoke battles

Unless Ruggie + Jack join

Make up tips

Vil

I’ve said most of my HCs about him

But I’ll retype them

Wine Mom TM

Musical Theatre Gay TM

Tea Time TM

Fashion Police TM

NRC James Charles

But also respective of people’s sexualities

Has poured water into people’s makeup

Has attempted to give Rook a make over, but Rook is more acrobatic then he looks

Has never actually sung in public

Likes to keep people guessing over his singing voice

Has a cherry apple tree in the school garden that he spends time every day taking care of

Runs NRC’s GSA

Rook

Heterosexual TM

Wears Doc Martens sandals with beige cargo shorts and white polo shirts when not in uniform

Can be seen back-flipping away in this outfit while Vil chases him around the dorm

Is allergic to strawberries

Epel’s bodyguard

Throws rotten fruit at people and calls it a prank

His bangs were by accident

But decided to keep them

Pretends to hunt, but can’t shoot for shit

However does go on fishing trips

Has to have some Heterosexual Hobbies TM

Epel

Is an actual Prince

Like owns land

Everyone in the dorm protects him

Is actually like Honey Senpai

Will put you in your place.

Like fr is a top.

Despite being so small

I don’t know what his sexuality would be

Probably Bisexual

Can lower is voice a lot if needed

Ignihyde

There’s magic inside of the dorm that turns all fire blue, but the fire turns back to normal once outside the dorm

Doesn’t apply to Ortho’s hair, though

Has the most LGBT residents - even more than Pomfiore surprisingly

Actually, not surprising - have you seen Disney’s Hades????

Iida

Cat-sits for Professer Trein

Everyone believes he can set his hair on fire, but he actually can’t

His hair is naturally that fire-y color

Loves to prank people, but never in person

Social Anxiety? Personified.

Before he rebuilt Ortho, Iida had a robot he controlled from his room that went to class for him

The robot was named “Meg”

Now he just uses his screens

Owns a crop top that has a cat face on it that Ortho made for him

Actually wears it a lot, but nobody ever sees below his shoulders on his screens

Oh yeah, also constantly questioning his sexuality

Currently likes guys, but that might just be because he goes to an all-guys school

Ortho

Has tons of cat plushies in his room despite not needing to sleep

Also has a mini library in his room, but he memorized all of the books

Burns things with his hair

Also sews a lot

Spills tea about the dorm residents with Trey, Jamil and Lilia

Has a couple pictures from before he became a robot, but doesn’t remember taking them

Has a bulletin board where he hangs pictures of his friends and family

Actually takes photography classes from Cater

Doesn’t focus on sexuality, so he just goes with “Queer”

People assume he’s scared of water because of his fire hair, but he loves playing in pools

Once cosplayed as Alphonse Elric and Iida was Edward from FML

Has pictures of that as well

Diasomnia

Basically one big family

Even more-so than other dorms like Ignihyde

Has a vault of hard liquor that has been sitting there for centuries

Malleus

Responds to Tsunotaro

Smuggles hard liquor into Scarabia despite not being a drinker

Has a YouTube account where he visits old buildings

Floyd ruined his Ramshackle Dorm video by standing at the end of a hallway and laughing

Can turn into a Dragon

His horns aren’t sensitive

Lilia once hung Christmas lights from them and Malleus didn’t notice for the entire day

Sometimes Lilia jumps and pulls on Malleus’ horns when he’s being dumb

Polysexual, but leans towards men

When he looks surprised by something - he genuinely is surprised, not faking it for someone else

Doesn’t believe in hiding emotions

Is actually like 300 years old, but was frozen for a good amount of it

Also immortal and is stuck at being physically 18

Damn Fairy magic

Oh and he didn’t mind wearing Leona’s ceremonial robes that one time

They were comfy

Enjoys swapping clothes with Leona a lot

Also had a crown made of thorns that is uncomfortable to wear

He burned it, but hasn’t told anyone yet

Takes the term “mom friend” to another level

Just ask Silver

Lilia

Only calls Malleus “old man” to be a prick

Is like 500 years old

Has gone through high school many times

Can undo stitches in people’s clothing without them knowing until their clothing falls apart

Asexual Homoromantic

“Who needs sex when you can be a bitch?” - Lilia Vanrouge, 2020

Is Malleus’ royal advisor

Spills tea like crazy

Has catfished people

Is the cool dad

Sebek

Is a Malleus fanboy???

He named his horse Draco

I don’t have many Headcanons about Sebek actually

Probably drinks tea with Riddle sometimes

Oh and definitely a bottom

Is he Bi? Poly? Pan? No one knows

But he’s a power bottom

Silver

Doesn’t have a last name because he was raised by Lilia and Malleus

Is indebted to Malleus because of this

and Lilia too, but like I said, Lilia is the cool dad

(he is actually indebted to Malleus in canon, but idk if it’s for this reason or not)

just let him have two platonically gay dads that go to school with him

Once in a Diasomnia/Savanaclaw sleepover, he and Leona passed out on each other’s shoulders while Ruggie and Lilia took photos

The photos haven’t been seen in a while, but are still around somewhere

Actually has several photos of him falling asleep with his head in Lilia’s lap

His bed stretches across his entire wall, forming a bench almost

Owns a suit of armor

It has a sword

He can use the sword if needed

Can he just get a nap????

Because of his relationship with Malleus, seeing fireflies calms him down

Is this guy wholesome? Yes.

Is he a Bisexual top? Also yes.

Can’t make everything wholesome

Holy fuck my fingers hate me. If you managed to read this far, I hope you enjoyed my headcanons for Twisted Wonderland students and houses! I don’t know enough about the teachers to make headcanons for each them, but I do have one for the staff:

Sam and Dire Crowley

Married

This is the only reason Sam runs the school store

Sam is not qualified for anything else

But Dire loves him too much to fire him

Forget the wholesomeness between the Dorm heads and their Vices

This is the most wholesome pair

Okay seriously - I need to stop making these headcanons it’s midnight at my house. I’ve spent probably close to 13 hours (give or take with a lot of breaks) writing these down and doing research on characters just so that my headcanons don’t seem completely out of the blue. Also, don’t be afraid to post your own headcanons, even if canon doesn’t always support them. That’s the thing about fictional characters - they’re open to interpretation!

And now to the long list of tags....

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland headcanons #twisted wonderland ships #riddle rosehearts #trey clover #cater diamond #deuce spades #ace trappola #leona kingscholar #ruggie bucchi #jack howl #azul ashengrotto #jade leech #floyd leech #kalim al-asim #jamil viper #vil schoenheit #rook hunt #epel felmier #iida shroud #ortho shroud #malleus draconia #lilia vanrouge #twisted wonderland silver #sebek zigvolt #dire crowley #twisted wonderland sam #this took me way too long #send help

[bread-elf]

Slice of Life

The future is always unpredictable. The battle to fix the Shadowlands continued on, dreaded events happening that could change the entire fabrication of reality. But even so, life continued to tick on for the living, and there was no helping it. The Glaivefall children continued to grow, and with the world of Azeroth becoming slightly more stable since the shattering of the sky, Jiroki decided to return her family back to their home in the Jade Forest. The hippogryphs back at home were expecting new hatchlings, the health of her sister Estal’anar continued to improve with the help of their family as well as their dear friend Moon’s family who lived on the property, and the Glaivefall establishment continued to grow with some unpredictable circumstances.

How could someone so magnificently gorgeous simply exist without care and not notice of all eyes on him? The way Sharpen Jadescythe’s muscles flexed each time he raised the axe with one hand, only to bring it down and split the piece of wood with far too much ease, a light sheen on his coral colored skin as in his other hand he held his precious kitten named Pocky. Like a glorious sunset along a jungle beach, his body glistened like some god of the untamed wild, dipped in honey and kissed by blushing Elune herself. Words written by him himself, Jiroki having once peeked at his secret writings of his romantic fantasies. Yet the fool failed to see the many eyes watching him as he cut wood for the cooking fire. Anorah’lah watched from the window inside the house, peering carefully while her own new kitten rolled at her feet while clinging to her shoe, but the child didn’t care. Since meeting Sharpen for the first time in the Outlands, Jiroki’s daughter had become infatuated with the man, even shy most times. The child had formed her first love. “Dear oh dear…” As much as Jiroki felt happy for Sharpen being around more often, it certainly raised some complications, given her own very personal relationship with the man. Little Taldreath sat on the carpet in the living room with his play blocks, enjoying making a tower and knocking the blocks over. Jiroki herself had something on the stove as she started making a stock, but came over to see two of her children. But as Anorah didn’t notice her presence and continued to stare at the one she admired, Jiroki found herself peering out the window too. Sharpen wasn’t the only one outside. Jiroki’s other son, Vaeren, played outside with his Cousin Andorus, and Andorus’ friend Jaxon. Whereas Vaeren had only just reached the age of four, Andorus and Jaxon were much older. Andorus has the same white sheen of hair as his mother Moon, amber eyes glowing brightly and brotherly towards the smaller Kaldorei. Jaxon, a human boy with a mess of red hair, didn’t seem to mind playing with the small child as long as Andorus did. They all played with new toys received from last Winter’s Veil, toy swords and shields from their father’s. Jiroki knew Vaeren didn’t much enjoy how to properly handle a sword, but Andorus and Jaxon always played Knight with one another, and that was more than enough reason for Vaeren to pretend he enjoyed sword play just to spend time with the older boys. Though Sharpen wasn’t too far off from them, he was not the one watching them. Instead Moon herself is. But that doesn’t appear to be the case as the elven woman lounges on a lawn chair, wearing summer clothes and a wide brim hat to shield her eyes from the sun. A lemonade in hand, though the children were playing she kept casting her gaze to the burly man chopping up wood, a little grin on her lips as she watches the man’s fluid motions as he not only chops the wood with ease, but also tenderly dotes on the kitten close to his chest. “That whore.” Jiroki leers at her best friend from the window. Thankfully Anorah didn’t know anything in Common, but the words slipped out regardless. But her sights are distracted as she sees movement, glancing away and seeing her eldest daughter Merli with her other aunt. Estal’anar has come a long way from how she used to be. Once frail, mentally unstable, constantly confided in her own space, after some time of healing and nurture she blossomed to be close to the person Jiroki once knew her to be. The ordeals of her past still haunted her, wary of just about everyone that isn’t family. Even now, she kept her head down, walking beside Merli as they carried baskets of vegetables from their gardens to bring to Moon’s house to share. Yet Jiroki couldn’t help noticing that even she was casting glances towards Sharpen! Merli was much more obvious, just staring blatantly towards the man. So distracted as to even trip on a small rock, tumbling forward as her basket of produce flings about everywhere, causing others to look at her in surprise. “He’s pretty popular, isn’t he?” Aztook the demon hunter’s voice hums happily besides Jiroki’s ear, having snuck up on her while she spied on her growing family. Jiroki jumps and yelps, causing the kitten on the ground to be startled as well, but Anorah remains fixated on watching her crush from afar. “I told you not to sneak up on me like that!” Quickly putting up a front, Jiroki lightly swats at Aztook’s arm before moving away, deciding now is as good a time as any to wash some dishes. But Aztook follows on along, stalking his favorite prey with a cheshire grin, eyes missing but aware of every single little movement of hers with his demonic gaze. “Riiight, right, my mistake. It’s just, I couldn’t help but notice you staring at him so much…” A hand touches her shoulder, his hand more leathery than calloused, and claw like nails gently drag along her shoulder and down her arm. He’s testing her, trying to rile a reaction out of her, his favorite pastime. “And?” Jiroki tries to remain unphased, but her brow is furrowing, pursing her lips as she tries to focus. But he has such a powerful presence when he wants to, and it overwhelms her senses. “I actually have eyes, unlike you. I like to make use of them.” “Oh gee! Am I missing out? Maybe I should find some spare eyes to use… Is that also why your daughter has been staring at him for nearly the last hour? I could have sworn you two were having one of those like-mother-like-daughter moments.” That makes her whirl out, leering at her husband with a shocked expression. “Excuse me?! Are you trying to mock me?! … Wait, has she really?” Now glancing towards her daughter, surely it couldn’t have been that long. “It feels like an hour but, well, maybe ten minutes.” Aztook keeps on that mischievous grin of his. “You always pull my heart strings when you’re quick to the offense.” “Ugh.” Jiroki rolls her eyes, but she knew this song and dance. Raising a brow at the man, she starts to reach up to lace her arms around his neck. “I’d much rather pull your heartstrings in a normal way. I bet if I wasn’t mean to you at the beginning you wouldn’t even be paying attention to me right now.” “And what, leave you to carry someone else’s offspring?” His sightless gaze remains fixated on her face, but his hands move to her hips, thumbs lightly caressing the sides of her baby bump of their next child. “I think not! No one could be a Mr. Glaivefall better than me! Well- besides your father… Was he a sort of ‘Mr. Glaivefall’ man? Or was that what your father’s father was called? Or maybe your brother likes to go by Mr. Glaivefall, so it would be confusing if I also called myself Mr. Glaivefall-” “Just shut up.” Jiroki snickers, grinning from ear to ear at her mate’s antics. Aztook’s smile gets more gentle, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers. “I want those pretty eyes on me too.” He says, the fel green orbs focused intently on hers. “Don’t you remember? I have eyes on the back of my head. I always have my eyes on you.” “Wait- really?” He pulls back, looking shocked, taking her own flirt too seriously. “Since when? You didn’t do anything when I ate your rice cake yesterday!” “That was YOU?!” Baby number five is on the way!

#stories

[cartoonfangirl1218]

Winner’s Curse Ch. 22

“Please please come in quickly,” the honorable wizard Yen Sid urged Uma, barely muffling his own coughs from the dusty air of Judge Frollo’s “house.” Quite ironically or perhaps more telling, Judge Frollo’s abode was the basement of a brothel. A cruel twist of temptation or perhaps a house of convenience since it was no secret that Frollo indulged in his hypocritical desires while preaching at his imaginary pulpit during the day.

But Uma wasn’t here to hear how she was destined for hell. It was night, the perfect time to meet the rest of the Anti-Villain Club while Frollo was away.

It felt like the situation was getting more dire the more time past. Amplified by the restlessness Uma felt because they weren’t getting anything done!

Sometimes Uma wanted to give in to her temptation to just dump the Auradonians for themselves. They didn’t really offer her any information or skills that she needed. Plus, they were slow at best. Uncaring and disobedient at worse, far more concerned with their own problems and feelings. They didn’t know how to work with a team or for a cause other than themselves.

Such royal behavior. Must be nice to put your moods first when your need for food, shelter and safety were never in question.

So it was a breath of fresh air to meet with the Anti Villains. Though they did not give her the assuring efficiency of her pirate crew, they were still Vks, her people. And she would need all the allies she could get if they were to stop the Coven.

Yen Sid gestured to the faded rug with, of course, an image of a man bleeding and crucified while a red devilish monster stabbed at his torso with a pitchfork.

Frollo’s erstwhile, rebellious daughter, Claudine took the head of the rug with Diego De’Vil and Yzla on both sides of her. Harold, Jason, Hadie, Big Murph, Hermie Bing, Eddie Balthazar, Celia and a blonde girl that Uma didn’t recognize rounded out the rest of the circle. Uma took place across from Claudine and Yen Sid stood by, pacing around.

“What news can you give us?” Yen Sid asked, starting the meeting abruptly.

Uma hadn’t noticed when Yen Sid signalled to her from the alleyways but the elder wizard looked even older. He was hunched over, not from age but like there was an invisible yoke on his shoulders. His face was riddled with new lines of wrinkles, stress and fatigue. And he was pale. So pale.

Uma had seen that sort of sickly paleness before. The sheen of sweat from a non-existent flu. He looked like death. The Isle after 20 years was starting to take its toll.

Though Uma had no personal attachment to the wizard nor did she care for his method of teaching goodness so Vks would be accepted in Auradon, when they should be accepted because they like any other person should have a home without abuse or poverty, she respected what he was trying to do. He didn’t see them all as one mass of worthless deviants to be scorned and ignored. He could have stayed in Auradon, doing nothing like all the rest of the so-called good guys, but he didn’t.

And this place was slowly killing him.

This place was going to be the death of all them if Uma’s revolution didn’t work.

Uma cracked her neck, inhaled and began to brief them, even though her report didn’t offer much encouragement that their plans were going to be successful.

“Our communications link with King Ben no longer works thanks to the Isle’s crappy service. However, we were able to inform him that the invasion is taking place in less than a week before we were cut off.” “Circe is officially on our side and will assist Yen Sid on more complex, powerful spells against Nerissa and the others.”

“The rest of the Coven-” “Believes.. Well actually tolerates the idea that you and Calix are still loyal. Lala still is on their side but Jade thinks she can convince her to switch again. Zevon and Ginny are lost causes. But you are going to round up your crew, and Harriet’s crew for extra manpower.” Yzla interrupted, and shrugged at Uma’s glare, “Jade told me.” “Ah yes.” Uma pursed her lips, shaking it off to not act too ruffled. She had been aware that Yzla and Jade were close but she didn’t particularly like that they were discussing things without her. That’s how plans got overturned. And people were overthrown.

Uma pushed that thought away as too paranoid. After all, they were all here for the same thing. Escape, not power.

“Yes, so you already know that. I do believe we will be able to persuade the rest of the Isle on our side.” “Wait the rest of the Isle. Like you mean some other kids right? Or the Hun gang. Not not the whole Isle?” Eddie asked. “I meant the rest of the Isle. The adult henchmen. The orphaned kids. The Huns, the mercenaries, the prostitutes. Anyone and everyone who has no power or big villain names.” The rest of the club looked at turns confused, intrigued and disbelieving at her.

“They are like us. They gain nothing from the Coven gaining more power. They get everything if they helped the revolution. No more oppressors. And a promise from King Ben to take all of us off the Isle to better housing, new jobs and actual food. A better life.”

“Whether Mal likes it or not.” Uma added internally. That had been the one thing she managed to speak to King Ben about, and surprisingluy he agreed wholeheartedly. He had seemed horrified when she described the living conditions that children dealt with. The way teens had turned to violence among other things to survive their abusive parents. He didn’t think he’d be able to convince Auradon should be abolished completely. Big villains would probably stay indefinitely. But he was welcome to her suggestions for programs to hep Vks.

“That’s why I need your input. King Ben is putting me in charge of VK Integration Programs and I want to know what we need.” “Uh, that’s nice. A truly Christian thing to do,” Claudine sneered saracastically, she had always been the most doubting of anyone having good intentions what with who she had for a father, “But shouldn’t we get out of here before we plan any VK Integration Programs?”

“This is part of how we are going to persuade the rest of the Isle to help us,” Uma smoothly bridged the two disparting ideas, “We need solid plans with how, what, when. Something solid and real that people can imagine and believe in. When the other Vks and adults hear of these programs, these programs that are as real as when King Ben invited the Core Four, they will be willing to fight for their chance to get in. They will rise up against the Coven so that they could be free.”

Claudine and Diego still looked suspicious, but Jason, Harold, and Big Murph practically had stars in their eyes. Hermie was smiling shyly and Hadie was tapping his chin thoughtfully. He was the first to pitch in.

“I think there should be something for the victims of Hans and Lars.” Everyone turned to look at him which caused the spiky-blue haired teen to flush and clam up. , Uma nodded empathetically, “Continue.” “Well, I mean-uh.Well we all had it bad. But Prince Hans is another level of bad. I went there once with dad for one of Staylan’s parties and I lurked around and man, that dude is nuts. He has photos of his “harem” all “sexy bruised” and stuff. And Lars…”

Uma narrowed her eyes. She didn’t need Hadie to elaborate on Lars. Gil had already told her everything she needed to know about the icy sadist. It was a term that was generally thrown around for an island full of villains with bloodlust, but Gil described the sickeningly calm way Lars acted. How Lars almost described it in seductive terms the way a whip would constrict a person’s throat until the breath left them. The calculating gaze he’d watch the ones he picked as “lovers.” Apparently a sadism that he picked up from his dad.

“Yeah, everyone knows Drizella is his favorite. Poor Dizzy.” Eddie shook his head.

Dizzy had always been left alone with her grandmother, Lady Tremine, but Uma had always assumed that Drizella, like almost all the parents on the Isle, was neglectful and uncaring. She hadn’t thought that Drizella may have been dealing with her own things.

And why wouldn’t she? That was Gil’s mother had to go through everyday with being Gaston’s unfavorite. While Uma was more concerned with the kids on the Isle, she could see now that some adults may need help too.

“Great. Center for sadist victims. What else have we got?”

“Do we have to go to school if we go to Auradon? I just don’t think I need it. My band is doing pretty well and I bet those royal dorks never heard music like mine.” Diego mock-shredded on his guitar

Uma cocked her head. She got his point. She didn’t think there was anything Auradon Prep had that could teach her anything useful. Like smizing as she heard from Celia Faciliar’s letters from Freddie. Plus there were some teens near adulthood like Harriet who probably wouldn’t want to be forced into classes when they could get jobs. Same with adults who never learned to read in their lives and still didnt want to.

“I’ll talk about it with King Ben. What else?” Uma said.

“Food that isn’t covered with flies. Fresh food, not trash.” Hermie said.

“Uh that’s just a given. None of their food is rotten.” Celia told the lithe brunette before Uma could clarify that good food comes with the territory.

Several ideas were thrown around, but the main ones came down to food, homes away from the possible revenge of their parents and others, and none of the Goodness 101 that Celia heard Freddie taking.

“Great. Now the important thing is that you spread the word of these programs to the other. You have to make people want this badly enough that they will fight. Act like its their only chance because it is. From there, I will send my crew to organize them to key points and learn some better and dirtier fight tactics.” Uma announced.

The rest of the Club nodded somberly at the announcement. There was not much emotion from Uma’s command. No relief, excitement or even nervousness. Just a numb sort of nod that they understood. But the words, “This is your only chance,” clearly rang in their heads.

It was now or never.

Everyone slowly got up to leave, thinking their own thoughts except the blonde who slipped to walk next to Uma, expertly slinking through the alleyways.

“Hi, um, I know we haven’t met before but um.. I’m Cosette.” The literally dirty blonde introduced in a fake high voice, clearly highlighting her nervousness, “I’m Gaston’s daughter. Gil’s half sister? You know Gil right? I mean, of course you do. I’ve seen him and everyone knows he hangs with you. I’m sorry I’m babbling. It’s just this is all so new-”

Uma stopped walking so she could give her her full attention. Yes, now that she stopped to actually look at Cosette, she could see a bit of the resemblance. The blonde hair, the high forehead and cheekbones. She looked older, maybe Harriet’s age, though her ample chest peeking from her corset gave the impression of a woman in her 20s. Unlike Gil, she didn’t have the usually confused look in her eyes. Just scared.

That look heightened Uma’s protective instincts. The helpless usually did that, as unvillainous as that was, plus the Gil resemblance.

“Why haven’t I heard of you before?” Uma asked skeptically even though she was pretty sure Cosette was honest.

“Um I’m a girl. Dad wouldn’t acknowledge me. Actually he tried to throw me away and try again which is why Mom left and… it seemed safer to avoid him. But- but I heard from Celia about this Anti-Villain Club when I went in for a reading, and Celia said you’d come so I thought I’d ask you. You know, for permission.” Uma thought. The story was realistic enough. But there was too much to do right now to focus on a family reunion. Unless…

“I will. You have my word. But first, how good would you say your fighting and/or spying skills?”

#uma #celia facilier #hermie bing #eddie balathazar #winner’s curse #yen sid #cosette legume #hadie #claudine frollo #big murph #diego de’vil #yzla #jason #harold #anti villain club #my fanfic #my fanfiction #disney descendants #chapter twenty two

[popanalysis99]

The Rampant Toxic Masculinity in The Society (and do the perfect male characters exist?)

The Society was one of the most talked about series on Netflix before it got abruptly cancelled in 2020 due to COVID concerns. But one of the downer parts of the series was that how the female characters were shown to be complex while most of the male characters were shown to be two-dimensional if not, really really horrible. So let’s take a look at how each of the male characters were portrayed (except for Grizz, Sam, Gordie and Will because they subverted the toxic masculinity in the series so I am counting them out).

Campbell Eliot:

Campbell Eliot is first introduced as a typical bad boy character who doesn’t want to follow the rules (Think J.D. from Heathers). Though we see a lot of red flags about him in the first episode, like when we see him try to shoot Cassandra and kick his deaf brother Sam out of his house, calling him a really offensive name. And then he ends up having Elle all to himself. But later in the episode 4, Sam exposes him to be a psychopath with no remorse at all while Campbell drowns Elle, but Allie thinks it’s bullcrap and decides to free him. It proves to be a mistake at the end (which we will come to later). Campbell basically represents every abuser in real life and deconstructs the bad boy archetype we’ve seen in the media. Whatever he does isn’t romanticised for entertainment and it shows he is the ankle-biting, menopause-aching and cockroach-crawling worst.

Harry Bingham:

Harry is introduced as a popular rich kid, but all of that gets changed after he and others get shifted to New Ham. He is jealous of Cassandra and doesn’t agree with her methods at all and wishes that someone would shut her up. Unfortunately his wishes come true when Greg Dewey, a rampant psycho kills Cassandra, which drives Harry into guilt and eventually causes him to suffer from depression and isolate himself from others. Campbell takes advantage of this and uses Harry as his puppet for his reign of terror.

The Guard (Especially Clark and Jason):

Clark and Jason start off as typical dumb jocks in the series. They seem to want to play football and nothing else. Then when they end up in New Ham, they end up forming a police force known as the Guard (how there were no female jocks that could’ve been part of the guard, I’ll never understand.) At first they try to do the right thing and follow the rules of the Mayor (Cassandra and then Allie), but slowly and slowly they end up getting drunk with power and start abusing their prisoners. This even gets worse when Allie rejects their idea of joining the election to become the mayor and they join Campbell’s coup just out of spite against her. What is so realistic is that they even represent the police brutality that is rampant in some countries.

How these men ruined the ending?

What makes the ending worse is the fact that Allie, a woman leader and Will, a young black man were imprisoned by a psychopathic tyrant, a spoilt rich white kid and a group of angry young white men acting as the police. What makes this ending so controversial is the fact that this is taking place at the same time as the Me Too movement where the powerful people like Campbell are being exposed for their abuse against women and police brutality (like The Guard’s in New Ham) is getting exposed and protested against by everyone. And since the series got cancelled, we might never get a redemption to this controversial cliffhanger filled with abusive men taking power away from a female protagonist.

Breaking Stereotypes of Masculinity

While The Society failed most of it’s male characters, these days there are more nuanced portrayals of a lot of male characters on TV who have broken stereotypes of what men should be.

Elliot Alderson in Mr. Robot is the most popular example. He is a non-stereotypical male character who embodies all kinds of tropes that is usually applied to strong female characters such as the Broken Bird, The Independent Woman and the Gorgeous but Vengeful Female Vigilante who preys on abusive men such as perverts, cheaters, rapists, pedophiles etc. He is shown to be really sensitive and emotional but it doesn’t make him weak. He is even put through so much physical, emotional and mental trauma throughout the series, but he shows time and time again that he is strong and he is a true survivor. He even says that it’s his love and care for others that drives him to save the world.

Marty Deeks from NCIS: Los Angeles depicts the “Manic Pixie Dream Boy”, the role that is usually applied to female characters who try to lift a brooding male character from their despair. But the trope is gender flipped between Kensi and Deeks. Like every MPDG, Deeks also has the quirkiness, free spiritedness and vivaciousness and bursts into Kensi’s life when he first meets her. When he first meets Kensi, he makes it his goal to lift her from her brooding and jaded world and make her happy. And unlike the other MPDGs, he is even shown to have his own story. He also has his own struggles and flaws and is shown to battle with them from time to time, but still stays positive through all of it.

Din Djarin from The Mandalorian starts off as a tough bounty hunter, but after meeting Grogu, the jedi child, he becomes more soft and responsible with him and makes it his point to be protective of him. He isn’t afraid to show his feelings from time to time and to soften up a bit.

Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad is first seen as a manly small time gangster who teaches Walter White to roughen up. But as the series progresses, he is shown to be more sensitive and has more morals while Walter progresses down a very sociopathic path. His strength and weakness is that he cares a lot for a lot of people and loves a lot, which is what makes him human.

#the society #analysis #series analysis #miscellenous #mr robot #mr. robot #ncis: los angeles #breaking bad #the mandalorian #toxic masculinity

[princessasmosprincess]

Charmed, I'm Sure

Chapter 3 First Chapter|Previous Chapter|Next Chapter|

***

Summary: No human has ever avoided Asmodeus's charm. Except for you.

Pairing: Asmodeus x GN Reader/MC

Genre: Drama, angst

Warnings: None in this chapter, suggestive content and alcohol use in previous chapters.

***

The light to Lucifer’s study was still on when Solomon dragged Asmodeus back to the House of Lamentation. They would have to use stealth magic to get inside, not that Lucifer wouldn't figure it out eventually, but it would buy them some time to get Asmo to his room before he noticed.

Solomon quickly disarmed the locking spell Lucifer had put on the door and he and Asmo went inside and up the stairs. Classical music could be heard faintly beyond the door of Lucifer’s study as they tiptoed past, human world classical music, to be precise. But Solomon could also hear light snoring which meant Lucifer had probably fallen asleep working. That was good. He didn't think Asmo could protect him from Lucifer’s fury in this state, and he’d never needed to fight a demon that strong using only his magic. He had no desire to test it out now.

Asmo had been quiet during the walk home, and that was very unlike him. You could hardly get the demon to stop talking most of the time. Solomon had given him his space. Asmo’s eyes were already red and puffy from crying when they got to his room, but he had sobered up a little. Almost automatically, he walked over to his massive closet and slipped out of his clothes and into a purple satin robe. He sat on the bed and stared at himself, unmoving, in the full length mirror that covered an entire wall of his bedroom.

“When I was in the Celestial Realm everyone loved me, I didn't even have to try. And I loved everyone. Lucifer may have been favored by Father but I was favored almost everyone else.” Asmo said, finally breaking his silence. “And then after we fell and my demon powers developed, people didn't just love me, they worshiped me.”

Solomon tossed Asmo a bottle of micellar water and a cloth to remove the smeared eyeliner and glitter that was streaked across his face, which again, he managed to make look good. Then Solomon went to the mini cosmetics fridge Asmo kept under his vanity and removed a chilled jade roller, night cream, and a sheet mask. He knew Asmo would never forgive himself if he didn't do the bare minimum of his multi-step skincare routine before going to bed.

“Thank you,” Asmo said quietly as Solomon handed him the items.

“You’re welcome,” Solomon sat down in the pink cushioned desk chair that was rarely used for doing schoolwork.

Asmo continued his train of thought from before, “I’ve lived under Lucifer’s shadow my whole life but if everyone else adored me, it was ok.”

Solomon didn't know what to say so he stayed silent. He thought about the exchange student. He would need to get to the bottom of this. There was a chance Asmo had panicked and missed some sort of enchanted object on the exchange student’s person. Even if they couldn't do magic themself, there was still the possibility they could be in possession of an item that blocked a demon’s powers. A normal human alone would not be able to resist the influence of one of the rulers of the Devildom. It just wasn't possible.

“Have I ever told you what it feels like to charm someone?” Asmo asked.

Solomon shook his head.

“It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world!” A smile lit his tear stained face. “I look at a person and it’s like there's a string around their heart. I can reach out and pull that string towards me; I can feel their desires, jealousies, the things they hold dear. If I want I can mold those things to look like me.”

The concept reminded Solomon a little of the ‘red string of fate’, something he’d been wanting to research for some time now. From what he knew of the red string, though, it couldn't be manipulated in the way Asmo described his charm.

“Mc…” Asmo said. “They just stared at me. It was like I was looking at one of my brothers. You know, I can’t charm them," That wasn’t exactly true. His powers could, on occasion, work on his brothers but it was hardly worth the effort now. He had cute little brother privileges. "But I know they love me because they tell me. With MC, I felt nothing.” The memory was unsettling, Asmo shivered a little.

“It shouldn't matter, right?” he said. “I’m being foolish. I can have anyone I want, so why am I hung up on this one person?” Tears started to fall again. Asmo curled up on the bed and cocooned himself in the blankets.

“I suppose it’s hard to let go of something you’ve always had,” said Solomon.

The pile of blankets twitched as Asmo nodded.

When he didn't speak again, Solomon took that as his cue to leave. It was late anyway, and tomorrow was officially the first day of the exchange program and a new term at RAD. He would need a good night’s sleep to be in peak performance as the famous Witty Sorcerer. He made a mental note to have Barbatos send over some hangover relief tea to Asmo’s room in the morning.

With one final look back, Solomon spread his arms wide and cast a comfort spell on Asmo’s room. The scent of lavender, ocean waves crashing, gentle piano music, drinking hot chocolate by a crackling fire; all things that were imbued in the spell. The room felt just a little bit lighter when he left, although he thought he could still hear Asmo’s soft sniffling as he closed the door behind him.

Solomon used the back stairs to avoid passing Lucifer’s study again. The kitchen light was on when he got to the first floor and someone was rustling around inside. He would bet all the years he had left that it was Beelzebub. It wouldn't necessarily be dangerous to be caught by Beel, he was a gentle giant for the most part, and had an even temper as long as he was well-fed. It would definitely be awkward to be caught by him, though.

As he crept through the hallway, sticking to the shadows, a certain door caught his eye.

The guest room.

That would be where the exchange student was staying. Solomon stood silently outside the guest room door and listened. In all likelihood they would be asleep and Solomon would have to continue his investigation in the morning at RAD.

Just as he was about to leave, he heard it. Crying. Heaving sobs that someone was trying, and failing, to keep quiet.

Solomon’s brow furrowed. He was given a choice to join the exchange program; judging by the crying coming from the room, apparently you had not. You sounded so pitiful.

Solomon stood there and listened a little while longer. At least two people in the House of Lamentation would be crying themselves to sleep tonight. Two people who had been ripped away from the things they were accustomed to. He pressed his hand to the door and repeated the same spell he’d used in Asmo’s room. It was the least Solomon could do to offer them what little comfort he could give.

***

Cross-posted on AO3

#this chapter was so challenging to write #i love how i was planning on writing a scene or two and now it's developing into a full fic ㅜㅜ #asmodeus x reader #asmo #obey me asmodeus x reader #asmodeus obey me #asmo x gn mc #asmo x reader #asmodeus x gn reader #asmodeus x gn mc #obey me #obey me shall we date #shall we date #shall we date asmodeus #obey me fanfic #fanfic #Solomon #obey me solomon #shall we date solomon

[twitchesandstitches]

(Commission for @alt-hammer of a fantasy AU where Jade, a talented alchemist, has greated a boob expansion potion and refines it, gradually getting more enormously buxom as she and Dave get closer together.

This is set in, broadly, the same continuity as the godess terezi commission; some liberties were taken so, where there are differences, assume them to take place in their own micro continuities.)

----------

The town was an old one, near a vast forest that lay in the shadow of a temple consecrated to one of the old gods: the teal dragon goddess of mentality, rumored by some to be incarnate in the modern age. The era of magic and gods, though, was long behind them, and simply reverse engineering even a tiny shred of its power was a game-changer, especially for such a minor town.

Jade Harley, alchemist and adventurer, thought she had just about worked it out.

Okay, she thought, peering at a list of ingredients. Body expansion and modification. It used to be so much more common, in the old days. Did I figure it out?

I think I did.

She poured over the ingredient list, checking things off, and she was so busy in her work that she heard the bell over the door go ‘ding’.

“Yo-hoy, Jade?” Came the voice of Dave Strider, her best friend, with big quotation marks around the ‘friend’ bit. She smiled and stood up. Jade was a tall woman… a very tall woman, even bigger than some trolls, which was unusual for a human. She had a curvy frame, packed with power, and lately she had been thinking: not curvy enough.

And then, she’d heard stories about the old days. Ancients who had transformed their bodies in impossible ways, with nothing but their knowledge of magic. And she’d thought; if they did it, why not me?

Dave was waiting there. He was not a particularly tall man, or broad; he had the sort of wiry, vaguely feminine look that was quite popular these days, and paired well against Jade’s more voluptuous frame. She just looked big, especially next to him. Nevertheless, when he stood up, it was with a real sense of genuine strength and power that belied his seemingly frail look.

“You sure you wanna do this whole… thing?”

Jade indicated her chest. It was pretty ample, and again, especially for a human. But Jade had thought about records from the old days, that described people changing themselves to be… bigger. More buxom. And she had thought; if they’d done it, why not her? What was the missing keys to that kind of power?

Besides thousands of years of magical knowledge and infrastructure, she admitted. But they’d been learning, and she thought she might have rediscovered the key.

Jade wanted bigger boobs. She wanted really big boobs. It was a pretty silly thing to want, she would be the first to admit, but when she thought of herself, of the shape that Jade Harley ought to have, it was with boobs so big that they’d have to reshape the doorways when she left the house; pathway-clearing plows of a bustline, big and bouncy boobs so massive you could sit on them.

Or even bigger than that!

The default assumption that most men would have, in helping such a task, would be ‘yes please!’. Dave was surprisingly ambivalent; she had no doubt he’d be pleased by the results, but the actual experimenting was going to be an issue.

He worried a lot. About her in particular.

“I'm sure!” Jade put her hands on her hips. “I just… oh, I’ve been spending years on this, and I’m so close! I can practically taste it!”

“Right, right, cool. Passion project, I get that.” Dave patted her on the shoulder, the gesture completely reflective. He probably didn’t realize how intimate it felt.

Probably? Jade pondered that, for a while.

“Well, I got a map.” Dave laid it on a table; now they were free to plan, since no one came in after these hours. On the map was a chart of the most magically potent parts of the forest outside the town, where the most magically powerful ingredients… and monsters… were likely to be found. “I think these are the places we should start looking.”

“Right!”

For hours, they planned it out. The kinds of things they would need to hunt up, of course. The gear they would need to harvest things effectively, and explore the forest.

And the monsters they were likely to face, the mindless beasts generated by raw magical energies and attacking anything they perceived as intruders. Dave faltered a bit at the thought; not in fear, but he was looking at Jade as if thinking too hard about her getting struck by some beast’s claws.

He swallowed. “You sure you wanna do this? For… to get bigger boobs?”

Jade grinned. When you put it like that, the whole thing sounded silly, and she really didn’t mind that at all.

“Absolutely!” She insisted.

------

After that, Dave came in regularly, when he could.

At least once a week, in his official capacity as a courier. As much as possible when he was off work, or just playing schemes to pretend to be doing things on the clock, goofing off at her work place and racking up paid hours when deliveries slowed instead of doing paperwork. She was pretty sure that he definitely was not allowed to do that; his boss, Mister Slick, was a stickler for the letter of the rules for everyone if not himself, and he in turn answered to the chief courier, the Mendicant.

Jade had to consider that. She didn’t know the chief courier personally, but everyone knew of her; she was married to the mayor, who was something of a gremlin with a chip on his shoulder but a pretty relaxed attitude. The chief courier was a lot more strict, and probably wouldn’t approve of Dave doing that, so of course Jade kept the whole thing secret.

Dave had been scouting out the places they were going to hunt down; slaying a few monsters, scrounging up what he could for Jade to examine. It all worked out for her; monster flesh and bone, fungi and moss and roots all growing in places absolutely drenched in magic… it served her purposes perfectly.

She made her potions; not testing them on herself yet, though Jade tended towards the belief that a TRUE alchemist used themselves as a test subject before anyone else, but that was for a product proven to have the effect she wanted. Until then, she’d taken to quietly giving the uncertain batches to the cattle that grazed just outside her home, pouring it into their food when no one was looking. The cows, she was pleased to see, wound up moving unsteadily with obscenely massive udders so stuffed that they were propped up by them, and the consistency in it satisfied her.

Putting in magically charged milk, she determined, seemed to help. She imagined herself with such massive, swinging breasts and trilled with delight.

And they would need to go to magical places to find ingredients to make into potions; plants, fungi and the parts of monsters, all rich with magical energies. Alchemy was, as she explained it to Dave, the art of melting down magically potent substances and infusing them with arcane ‘aspects’ to effectively make liquid, drinkable spells. The trick was finding things powerful enough to infuse the solution, and for that…

Well, to the old forest, they’d both go.

-------

The days came and went. Experiments went by. Batches, failed and otherwise, were tested; the cows grew bigger and bigger, so much so that Zahhak dairy farming family found something of a glut of their product, and Jade jotted down their boasting or complaints under a list of things to bear in mind for the future batches.

Dave came and went. When he could reasonably swing it, playing off his ingredient hunts for Jade as part of his job; she paid him, at least, which generally satisfied Mister Slick, according to Dave. Jade did see the chief courier, glistening in the sun like a polished ivory statue, studying her shop as if looking for signs of slacking off, and she quietly told Dave the next time she saw him (complete with him bringing several baskets of mushrooms, roots and the occasional monster part) that they would have to probably save this for his free time.

So, in the end, they went together.

Deeper into the forest, where anyone had ever gone. Under the shadow of the ancient temple of the dragon goddess, where its primordial magic seeped into the trees, turning them and the crawling moss into living, teal crystals…

And where the monsters dwelled.

-------

And one day, they came back from there. Both of them bloodied, battered; panting with exhaustion and still trembling; with terror, at least for Jade, tinged with exhilaration. “That was amazing!” Jade said as they stumbled into her shop, her chest heaving and her travel robes hanging over her front like a mobile tent.

Dave put his sword down and flopped down onto a cot Jade kept around, in case he wanted to take a nap whenever he dropped by. “I warned ya, Jade. I warned you about the imps.”

Jade sat down on a chair, and it creaked under her considerable weight. She was simply too thick for most furniture; the legs were bending ominously, as she rocked back giggling to herself in a mix of post-adventure shock and genuine excitement. “The way they came out of nowhere! And the way you just cut them! Swoosh! Slash! That was so cool!”

“Am a little bit concerned with how easy you’re dealing with this.” Dave sat up. “You blasting them was pretty cool…”

Jade turned around. There was a lot of bouncing, possibly on purpose, and green spirals of magical energy swished around her. She’d cast so much magical energy that it was leaking out of, rising out with relatively small gestures, and it make her tingle all over; crackling like her blood was lightning and a sun beating in her chest-

She grabbed Dave and spun him right around, off his seat, and he squealed as she pulled him close to her in a tight not-quite-hug. She was too caught up in the exhilaration to realize it. “Let’s do that again!”

“Ye?” Dave said, lying on the floor now, red-faced and apparently losing the will to move on his own.

Jade was too full of vigor and excitement to stop now. She took one of the bundles of ingredients, plants and fungi and the harvested monster parts they’d been able to secure, and took them up to her work station.

Dave had time to recover, sitting up and recentering himself and not thinking constantly about the feeling of Jade’s body against his own (at least that’s what he would insist, later) as Jade took the things the ingredients they had found and prepared them for distilling. She chopped with knives, she crushed with a motorized pestle, and repeated this until she had a number of small chunks and fine dust. She placed that into a large flask she placed under a burner, but the flames she produced from it were a bright green.

It didn’t burn the chopped and crushed plants, meat and mushrooms. Instead it softened them, until they started dripping through a grate at the bottom of the flash. That became a fluid, propelled onwards through a series of tubes. There, other solutions and mystical fluids were dribbled into it; things to add in mystical formulas and spell-aspects, amplifying other aspects of the potion… negating the flavors and aspects of the substances they originally had been, purifying it into something completely divorced from its origins.

It eventually flowed, much thicker now, into a beaker. Jade poured a hint of something that looked a lot like milk, her magic flowing into it, supercharging it. A bit of milk to give it the right aspect for what she wanted. And a little bit of amplification, mixing with the raw power of the other ingredients...

And under the heat of the magical flame, which burned away solid matter and left behind only magical essence made fluid, Jade waited for it to finish.

She grew quiet, and intense. Dave, recovered by now, had long since learned to pick up on her moods and he knew she was getting very excited.

“I thought you didn’t use spells,” Dave said, to break the silence. “What was with all that… fwoosh?” He wiggled his hands, in the manner of the green fire he remembered Jade shooting all over the place.

“Fwoosh?” Jade said, absently.

“You were shooting attack spells and stuff.”

“Oh! I mean. I know how to do that kind of magic. Not so much in my job, but I know about the theory of magic in general. I couldn’t do alchemy right if I didn’t.”

“And the fire stuff?”

Jade giggled. “I always did wanna put that into practice!”

“Wait, you mean you’ve never fought until today?”

Jade, a woman who had turned a small part of the forest into a crater and probably infuriated the local spirits, looked bashful. “Did it show?!”

“...No. Not really.”

“Huh. Good to hear!” Jade suddenly shut off the flame, stirring it a few times; despite the constant heat, there was no sign that it was particularly hot. “This batch is done!”

Dave stood up. “You sure? I’d thought there’d be… more sparkles.”

“I might put something like that in a consumer batch; people expect sparkles, you know. But this is the testing phase!” Jade examined the potion, studying it. Her magical senses, and eye for detail, picked out things Dave couldn’t possibly have made out. Apparently satisfied, she put it up to her lips and started to tilt it up.

“Whoa!” Dave staggered forward, his stoic exterior cracking just this bit. “Is that safe?! Shouldn’t you test it on, i dunno, the cows?!” He gestured towards a herd visible right through the window, where the shop brushed up against a pasture (as the Zahhaks, as one of the older families, had the authority to simply build their homes into grassy places for the cattle to feed). A cow looked right through the window, hindquarters lifted right off the ground by an obscenely stuffed udder.

Jade lowered the flask, just for a moment. She briefly gave the cow a solemn look, her eyes wide and impatience seething from her; she looked at the cow with an expression all but screamed, to Dave: I want that.

She made a ‘tsk’ing noise, wiggling a finger scoldingly at Dave. “Oh, I’m sick of letting them have all the good stuff! I want that for me!” She grinned, wildly, and Dave knew that there was nothing he could do, short of slapping it out of her hand, to stop her, and he thought that it would be wrong to do that.

“If you’re sure…” Dave said, clearly dubious.

“I’ve never been MORE sure.”

And Jade tilted the potion up, and drained it in a single, powerful swig.

Dave winced, but didn’t argue.

She smiled, though, as her stomach briefly glowed green, the potion taking effect. “It’s nice that you worry, though.” She patted his hand, still upraised in protest, and impulsively, she kissed it.

His hand felt so warm against her lips; a heat flashed there, against her teeth and tongue, and down her neck. It lingered there in her chest, mixing with the magical energies and transformative vibes now swirling inside her. It felt so fine; a gentle euphoria rose inside her, and she couldn’t help but smile through an intense blush.

Green light swirled around her, and especially over her chest. On her breasts, swirling around them and outlining them, supercharging them with magical energies speaking of more and BIGGER, but brightest of all was her heart.

Dave felt the magic flowing from her, before any changes actually happened, and he took a step back; a little awed at what he felt flowing inside her, and maybe stunned by the kiss.

Later, he contemplated how and why he sensed anything. He wasn’t trained in magic; he knew the martial applications, the tricks to make yourself stronger and faster with the spiritual energy inside a person, or the energy around you, but he didn’t know how to use magic itself. Jade’s work was a mystery to him, and he was quietly impressed with people who did know how to bend magic more directly. The actual mechanics of how it was supposed to work was all a bit beyond him.

Nonetheless he felt it, right then. Right there.

Maybe, he theorized later, he’d learned to sense magical energy somewhere, in all the training to harness it. Flex a muscle hard enough, you learned to get a feel for when it was straining. A similar principle could apply, right?

In any case, he stumbled back, more and more, as Jade started to get bigger.

He was far from the only one to notice it, though; there were many people who’d worked out how to manipulate magic all over the town, or those who benefitted from thep precious and rare remaining bits of lore from older days. And some who were something else altogether.

Even people who didn’t live in town felt Jade growing: the professional spellcasters, the priestly high classes, and the hedge-mages learning it all on their own. Even those completely untutored, but sensitive to magic all the same, felt it. And those who knew their stuff felt it happen in intimate detail, like Miss Roxy Lalonde, probably the best student of magical theory in town, and she perked up at the sudden flare from Jade’s shop.

Karkat Vantas, living outside town in the old and long-abandoned manor, felt something even as he slept. His fiance, Terezi Pyrope, sat up and silently eased him back to sleep as she looked up. Her eyes were blind and felt very old, just like the ancient statues in the very temple Jade had walked in the shadows of. There were murals there… that looked just like Terezi Pyrope; as if those ancient sculptors had modeled them after her.

She tilted her head up, head craning and focusing right at the precise location of Jade.

She grinned. “Interesting~!” She said aloud, already making up her mind to pay Jade a visit as soon as she could.

People, intrigued or afraid or obnoxiously curious, gravitated towards Jade’s shop. The market outside her place broke up, the people in it drifting over to see what was going on. So, quite apart from Dave, Jade had an audience.

And in the shop itself, there was no blast of magic. No eye-searing pyrotechnics, as might be associated with a surge of magic so strong it made the cattle outside bounce and gush away in shock, or made Jade squeal with a mixed noise of joy and shock; she staggered back, as if her limbs suddenly were sapped of their strength, or something new flooding it and pushing out the old energy to make way for something fresh, strong and wild…

She gritted her teeth. They seemed longer, sharper; she took a step forward, and her legs kept shaking. No, wait. IT took a moment for Dave to realize, but they weren’t shaking.

They were getting wider.

Jade’s thighs slowly grew, leg muscles gradually bulking up and expanding outwards, a thick and appealing sheath of fat covering them. Not growing much past the knees, making them look surprisingly small past the thighs.

Her hips swayed and wiggled; first Jade just moved in an unconscious groove, and then it was a pattern of growth, and her hips expanded outwards in a smooth swell. Several inches added themselves on, and then about an extra foot of hip growth, to both sides. Jade stumbled as her thighs grew so big their sides were mashing together, and then made an embarrassed noise as her butt suddenly surged out, so bubbly and round that it was making the hem of her skirts rise up!

Her chest was still glowing, the focal point of all this. She dipped forward as they felt very heavy, her hands instinctively cupping her breasts. They wobbled at her touch, all on their own with indifference to gravity, and swelled. Jade made a squeaking noise of surprise, and then it melted into delight; waves of pleasure flooded into her from her chest. Oh! It had felt good, growing like this with her test batches, but nothing like this!

A cup size fluxed out, and then another, pushing at the fabric of her robes. Two more swelled out, pushing her palms down to support them, and they flowed out over her hands. They kept growing; bigger and bigger! The weight of them, rising with each sudden bouncy surge, was making Jade lean forwards, her breasts rising outwards. More than extra cup sizes, now, her breasts were almost doubled from what they’d been.

The magic surged and amplified her body, adding more mass, more flesh, more everything. Her breasts kept expanding, growing outwards, so heavy that she was bent nearly double, her robes straining out and pulling up from the weight. “Yyyeah!” Jade cheered, the delight coursing through her.

And the magic was slowly expended, totally absorbed and transmuted into more Jade. She breathed out as the growth slowed, a couple more inches adding on with each breath, and then it stopped altogether.

The sensation of power and pleasure alike faded from her. Dave gaped as she stood up to her full, imposing height; her breasts were huge, and Jade’s fingers gently traced their expansive outlines, the fabric stretched and almost translucent against her skin now.

Down, down her hands went, feeling her breasts. Much bigger than anticipated. She heard a distinctive sloshing noise, too, when she jiggled enough. Down, all the way past… goodness! Past her ribs, and then when she found the bottom of her breasts, they lay near her navel.

Almost two and a high feet high was each breast, she guessed. She shifted upright, and felt a very pleasurable bounce. Slung out by at least three feet, two, perhaps four!

She breathed in, hissing it out through a grin that was a little bit manic, and she said “Ohh, yes, this is definitely a success.” Now, she panted heavily. “Ooh…” She breathed in and out again, her newly expanded assets heaving with such weight she felt dragged forward. It felt like so much of her was in front of her now… it felt good. “That’s… that’s a fun sensation….”

Impulsively, Jade took Dave’s hand, her fingers squeezing gently around his palm. She smiled just a bit impishly, sharp teeth glinting behind her lips, and she felt Dave’s pulse quicken. His expression didn’t change, not one bit. Not a single muscle even twitched, and his expression was like stone. And Jade knew about stone, and a little bit about geology, and she knew enough that there was always a lot going on beneath mountains that looked all calm and steady, but on the inside?

They were exploding. And Dave could keep his face steady, but he couldn’t do much of anything about the hot blush coloring his cheeks.

Jade leaned in close and gave him a soft, brief kiss on the cheek.

Her breasts, so recently swelled by her potions, pressed against his chest. His body was thin but so firm, so strong; the ideal surface for her bustline to squsih against, and press out, the pulse of her heartbeat passing into his body. Against the plane of his chest, her own chest squashed deep, and she thought in a wild and romantic suddenness that it was like pressing her heart against his own.

She felt their breath twin, for a moment, and then his own stopped. She exhaled, gusting it against his chin, and she kissed him again in the cheek, in the same spot.

And finally Jade pulled away. Her breasts, bouncing freely in their sub-par restraint, wobbled heavily as she moved back, and it was completely on purpose.

Dave’s shades were slipping. The red glow beneath them was nearly visible. “Holy shit,” he said simply.

She realized he was staring, and she grinned, a little sheepishly and a little smugly. Pride welled up in her, at a job well done.

“Hey, I’m freaked out too, but watch the goddamn language,” a laconic voice said from the window.

Both Dave and Jade whirled around; towards the window.

Where what had to be at least a good third of the town was ogling her, and her new ‘features’.

The speaker was Dirk Strider; looking very much like a somewhat older version of Dave, a bit broader overall, his arms crossed over the window. Behind him was the Chief Courier, her porcelain-white shell glittering in the sunlight; she looked, as much as her face could be seen beneath the concealing uniforms she favored, a mix of amused and intrigued. Most people there seemed to have the same vibe.

Terezi was there too, looming over everyone else there, a big dragon-like troll with wings furled around her like a cape, and now she was grinning knowingly.

Jade instinctively covered herself, eyes wide, and she hurriedly thought: ‘What do I do!? What am I supposed to say?! Oh gosh they’re all looking at me!”

And then she thought: ‘Wait.

‘Isn’t this an opportunity?’

She stamped down the embarrassment and frustration at being watched, and declared, with a cheery tone, gesturing at herself, “So! Who might be interested in purchasing the next batch of my beauty elixirs, that’ll give you a body like this!?’

Her mortified feelings felt a bit dimmer at the glee of all the hands shooting straight up.

------

A couple weeks passed, after that.

There was a lot to do: adjust to her new body (oh, how doors were starting to be a problem! And clothes! She had to get them made special, or they’d pinch), going back with Dave to get the ingredients, preparing the next batches of potion for the rush of demand she was suddenly being met with…

Between the constant brewing, hunting down the ingredients from the most magically potent parts of the forests, needing to negotiate with the tailors, and all that, Jade had hardly any time with Dave.

That was a little sad, actually.

--------

But, as fortune would have it, he dropped in not long after that; he didn’t get to witness Jade testing more of her potions on herself, once she was satisfied with consistently bigger growth, and without Dave, she suspected her growth was being slowed. Warm feelings had something to do with it, she was sure.

“Dave!” Jade said, rushing over to him, nearly knocked over a couple people who were milling around her shop. Her breasts alone knocked a few people out of the way, and others quickly moved aside to get out of the way before they were bowled over.

Dave started to speak, but all the wind went right out of him as Jade lifted him clear off the ground, into a powerful and happy hug. “It’s been way too long!” Jade said happily, to some happy but muffled noises from Dave. He was pinned between her boobs, so it wasn’t surprising.

The other people in the shop awkwardly looked away, or giggled, or thought wistfully of envious thoughts for Dave’s position. Jane Crocker, a long-time friend of Jade’s, grinned at the pair, her own table slightly shifting weight from the pressure her potion-expanded breasts put on it; fully one side of it was covered by them, and she’d discreetly adjusted her coat to prevent any wardrobe malfunctions.

“Jade, help, need to breathe,” Dave managed to get out.

“Oops! Sorry!” Jade said. She dropped Dave, with a sheepish smile.

A voice cleared itself from behind her.

Jade turned around; the shop was fairly crowded now. But it had been, ever since she’d brought out her new line of potions. People had come to her all the time in any case; for potions of fertility or physical enhancement to strength and resistance, or giving big claws or aesthetic features like that; the occasional transformation for more height, or shrinking themselves a little bit. The healing potions had been quite popular, too. But her shop wasn’t built to have as many people as it did now waiting around, especially when after taking the potions they tended to hang around for a while, adjusting to their new bodies. Results still varied; some people got only a modest boost, while others grew as big as Jade had after months of careful experimenting and gradual growth (at least up to the first line of her bust enhancement potions, anyway). Jade remembered the kiss to Dave, and the warm feelings in her heart, and how much stronger the magic had felt then.

She was considering advertising them as best with mushy feelings.

The point was, Jade wasn’t very good at picking people out in the shop, since it wasn’t something she’d had to deal with until now. But now she realized that someone had come in with Jade.

Terezi Pyrope grinned; nearly twice as big as even Jade herself, looming over even the tallest people in town, she was a giantess among them, her body scaled in a way no troll normally was. A thick tail curled around her, and a great pair of wings flapped just enough to ensure that people steered clear of her. Jade found herself unconsciously ogling her; Terezi was big, enormously stacked on a scale equal to Jade herself, but somehow she felt… even bigger. The boobs were proportionately about the same as her own, but Terezi herself was so big that Jade could have used her breasts as exercise balls… or even cots!

Karkat was there, as he usually was; it was very rare to see one of them without the other. He hovered around her like an attendant, or a priest from old stories when the gods had walked the world, their clerics in tow. Jade had her own theories about that, given the sheer power radiating from Terezi…

But that was a thought for another time. Now she smiled. “You here on a professional level, or is this a friend visit?”

“A bit of both,” Terezi said. “You, uh, doing okay. You’ve been… going through some changes.”

Jade glanced down, and she felt aware of the eyes of others right on her expanded cleavage. She didn’t mind and laughed, privately cheering at all the attention on her hard work, with a great feeling of pride and confidence. “You could say that! But it was all on purpose so I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about, you know.”

Terezi chuckled. “Yeah, I figured. See? And Karkat was all worried about it!”

Karkat scoffed. “Someone had to. And Dave wanted someone to say something!”

“Dude, noooo….” DAve said meekly.

Jade turned towards him, head tilted. “Oh? Was someone concerned?” She grinned.

“...Maybe.”

“Oh, you should just hear what he says all the time,” Karkat said loftily, with the air of someone dropping a relationship rock right into a crowded social event. “It’s mortifying.”

Jade giggled. “Oh? I hope you’re saying nice things about me!”

Dave looked about ready to melt. “I dunno what they're talking about,” he said, trying to find refuge in denial.

“It’s so sappy,” Terezi said in a stage whisper.

“Aw!” Jade kissed Dave on the cheek, right in front of everyone. He made a precious ‘Hr-RK!’ noise that made her giggle again.

Terezi giggled as Dave awkwardly shuffled away, finding a desk and trying to recover his dignity. “But, seriously. I was wanting to buy a couple of these potions, maybe.”

That was a surprise to Jade; as the thrill of teasing Dave faded, she looked up and saw just more of Terezi’s massive, vision-filling bustline. They were so big already! As big as her own! “You don’t think you’ve got enough already…?” Jade asked, cautiously.

Terezi snorted. “You can always go bigger. And that’s kinda funny, coming from someone who’s still sampling her own goods.”

“Hmph. I don’t know what THAT means.” Jade tried to cross her arms over her chest but her breasts had gotten too big for her to do so easily. And true to Terezi’s words, they were in fact bigger than they had been during the initial growth, during the public event that had gotten all this attention. They were starting to tip closer to her waistline; it wasn’t too MUCH bigger, a product of Jade carefully watering down the samples as she kept experimenting on herself, and downplayed by her heavy work robes, but it was still a fair point. At least half a foot outwards, if not too much deeper.

“Well, I dunno. Let’s give you a baseline to outdo, hrm?” Terezi grinned. “Say, how much ARE these potions?”

Jade listed a number. It was a comfortable price that wasn’t too expensive, but didn’t diminish the effort it took to get the resources to make them; she viewed peddling them as a public service, in some ways. Terezi tossed some coins her way, and Jade handed her one of the bubbling flasks.

Terezi immediately popped the cork off. “Oooh,” Karkat said, eyes wide and amazed, realizing what she meant. Terezi lolled her massive tongue out and picked up the flask with her tongue, popping it into her mouth and draining the whole elixir down her throat in a single, heavy draught. Her thick tongue probed the flask, looking for every drop.

“You might wanna get closer to Terezi,” Jade quietly told Karkat. “It, uh, helps the change.”

Karkat hugged Terezi’s thigh, his arms squeezing deep into her ample flesh. “What do you mean-” He started to say.

“Eep!” Terezi exclaimed, magic radiating from her body, tinged with that special flavor of affection; her hand drifted right towards Karkat, and Jade knew that was just the right thing. “That’s the key!’ she thought. ‘That’s how to get big!’

And perhaps just to prove her point, Terezi grew. A little bit taller, but not much; a few inches, maybe. Just as well, given she was already a giant. Her hips swelled out, packing on a few extra inches; perhaps a finger span wider on both sides, and she was already so massively curvy that there might have not been that much to grow. Her clothes creaked heavily, especially as her big butt filled out even more, a few people behind her making awed noises at the wealth of butt they must have seen pushing up from the fabric enclosure. Her tail swelled, getting a little rounder, a little bit more like an eel’s tail…

Her breasts, though, erupted. In a single fluid motion, they swelled outwards, fluxing out like a cup being filled with water. They billowed, the teardrop shape growing more pronounced; from her gut, down to her waist. Her breasts expanded, and sideways too, swelling out so much that Terezi’s broad shoulders couldn’t even be seen. Most of her formidable body shape, in fact, was obscured; just her big hips, her huge thighs, the tail and wings, and those massive boobs.

Fabric tore. Her gut forced her boobs apart as it settled down, her stomach rising through the cleavage, and her shirt started to fray under the impact.

It was the quickest growth, and a particularly dramatic one; it was over almost immediately, and Jade gawked when she just had to acknowledge the reality of Terezi’s bustiness.

“Hah!” Terezi thrust her breasts out, openly delighted. “Beat that!”

Jade huffed. “Oh, I will!”

Karkat goggled. “Okay oh wow that is BIG.

From the side, Terezi’s breasts stuck out at least several additional feet; she probably couldn’t gather them up even if she stuck her arms out and pulled as much of her boobs in as possible. And given how big she was, they were big enough to use as exercise balls, or to sleep with. And from Karkat’s size… they must have looked so massive.

Terezi was probably thinking about that. Still smiling, she picked up Karkat, ignoring his usual token protests at being manhandled, and stuffed him right into her cleavage. His head popped out, expression suddenly completely calm, and then she pushed him down, completely contained.

Her face looked so peaceful. “Ooh yeah. That’s the stuff.” She grinned at Dave and Jade, gawking at her. “Hope this gives you ideas, Jade. Buh-bye!” With that, she walked off, Karkat encased in her cleavage.

Dave watched her go. Even her back was hypnotic, butt swelling up like a pair of wagons attached to her. “Sure did a number on her,” he said weekly. “What do you think she meant by that, anyway?”

“I dunno,” Jade lied. She thought about being so big she could do that to Dave.. stuffing him so close to her…

Her shirt felt tighter. Her breasts wobbled all on their own, and suddenly surged  a few sizes bigger. Dave saw the growth. “Did-did you just grow? Without taking any potion?!”

“Ooh, that’s… new!” She wasn’t really thinking about it, though. She was still watching Terezi strut off, all sexy and big.

“You’re not worried? Huh. Neat, I guess.”

She wasn’t really listening, either. Privately, Jade felt a surge of… envy, she supposed. Not that wasn’t quite it. It wasn’t that she wanted what Terezi had now.

She wanted more than what Terezi had now; it was like a competition, in some way. Terezi had outdone her, for now. But… her eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t let herself stay outdone!

She glanced up at Terezi’s mammoth body, where Karkat peacefully resting between her breasts, and she thought that maybe she DID envy Terezi having a boyfriend she could fit into her boobs. She then looked at Dave with an appraising look that made him feel strangely snuggly.

------

It had been quite some time since Chahut and Konyyl had been in town. The pair of them spent a great deal of time traveling abroad, to the other scattered townships and city-states, trading where they could and gathering things to sell back home. To be honest, and they’d had to correct others on this point (Konyyl irritably, and Chahut with a gentleness belying the terrible violence she could perform), they didn’t do the actual trading. They were hired muscle, protecting the merchants from bandits, overly strict travel policies, and sometimes shaking down someone trying to weasel out of paying on a deal.

They enjoyed their work; the traveling, and the hitting things. Still, while they’d been very well paid for what they did, staying on constant work wasn’t as appealing as the thought of going home until the next trade season rolled around.

Chahut was a very tall woman, even among trolls, who were generally bigger than humans or carapacians. Konyyl was a big woman too, and the two of them had similar thick-set body types; Konyyl with more obvious musculature, but given that Chahut was nearly twice her size, she looked bigger in every way. The two of them normally had no trouble clearing the way, with size and dark charisma and sheer force of ‘don’t mess with me’.

‘Normally’ being the keyword.

“I don’t, uh, recall everyone being this big,” Konyyl said as they walked past a crowd. She stood head and shoulders over most others, her own head somewhere around Chahut’s elbow, but that wasn’t the kind of big she was concerned about. Two carapacians, a few trolls and a human tottering behind them all went past them, diverting around them like water around a stone, and each of them had breasts as big as prize-winning pumpkins; the smallest had breasts as big as their heads, and the largest… their torsos, and some of their stomachs, couldn’t even be seen behind a wall of cleavage.

In fact, just about everyone they saw was sporting a bustline that dwarfed the pair of them. Konyyl crossed her muscular arms over her chest self-consciously. It was making her feel… small.

“Me neither,” Chahut said eventually. She sounded diffident, calm. But then… was she? Her voice had a slight tone of uncertainty. She glanced down at herself. Chahut wasn’t exactly a proud beauty, and Konyyl supposed that Chahut had never regarded her amplitude as anything except a minor facet of her physical form, but still. This was concerning.

“Something must have happened while we were gone,” Konyyl said, looking very off-balanced. “Some kind of weird magical event… maybe a weather thing, loaded up with magic?”

“A boob-storm?” Chahut’s tone dripped with amusement. “Now there’s a weird image.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Like to see you explain what’s going on here!”

Chahut turned. Their latest employer was hurrying over to them, and she noticed something else that way. “A potion that makes boobs bigger got real popular, maybe?”

“Well, maybe.”

“Look, little beefy.” Chahut pointed, and Konyyl turned. Down that way, there was a small advert board; freshly painted, from the smell. It displayed a grinning Jade Harley (a familiar figure to the both of them, though they didn’t know her closely, but everyone bought from Jade; they’d spent a lot of time at her shop, taking deliveries for a trading run), her face squeezed into a corner. The rest of it was taken up by her breasts, flooding over the entire billboard; absurdly massive, they were, extending out by at least five feet! The style of the ad was fairly cutesy, as fit her tastes in artwork, but they looked big enough to dip to her thighs, so big she could sleep on them.

ON the ad, between the art-drawn Jade, there was a bottled potion. “Want a bustline like mine? Come down to Jade’s Alchemical Esoterica for all your bust expansion needs!” the ad’s text said, in a cheery green font.

“Konyyl! Chahut!” said their employer, a human, and pointed at the ad. “Did you see!?”

“Kind of hard not to,” Konyyl quipped. Chahut nodded gravely.

“Not that! I mean… whoa, that’s a hell of an eyecatcher… but no! I mean, Jade’s shop is that way! Have you seen her yet!?”

“No?” Konyyl tilted her head. “Why?”

“I just… look, I gotta get a group together. We’ll need to find a demonstrator, and a caravan equipped to transport potion goods… gods, we’ll make so much money! But, ah!” The human fretted, trying to balance too many things at once in the mind, and thrust two large pouches heavy with coinage at them. “Here! So I don’t forget! Your pay for this trip. I gotta go, just… you might wanna drop in at Jade’s?”

And then, the human ran off, so full of excitement that there was a little bit of hopping and dancing. The two troll women watched him go. “Well,” Konyyl said. “I don’t have anything else going on. Azdaja’s got a while before he meets up with me. What about you?”

“Eh, same here. Not the bit about Azdaja,” Chahut replied, with a wry tusk-filled grin. “Let’s check it out, eh?”

The two of them followed the path to Jade’s shop. As they went, they were struck that navigating the marketplace was a more tricky affair than they remembered it being; almost every woman there was obscenely buxom, occupying at least a couple of feet in front of them with enough boobage to produce scandals in some of the more prim places they’d been. Both trolls moved very carefully to avoid bumping into someone’s breasts, and considering how much of that there was, it was very hard going.

It seemed demand for whatever Jade was selling was dropping; there weren’t that many people there, though all of them tended towards the same buxom frame. The few exceptions were doing their best to fix that; as they entered, they heard Jade’s cheery voice: “And try to drain it down in a single gulp! It won’t do any good to save some for later, it’ll transform you just the same. Be sure to drink lots of water and have plenty of food, you’re gonna be hungry!”

There was Jade, standing in her shop, her back turned to the entrance. Konyyl and Chahut were momentarily stunned. Jade looked so… thick. Even more than she used to be, even more than Konyyl! (Though at least, Konyyl reflected, Jade didn’t quite have the muscle.) A fairly slim dress as vibrantly green as her namesake jewel, clinging tightly to a body that seemed to be a waterfall of slowly expanding curves; a broad and huggable torso, an expanding waistline straining the limits of a dress, with hips so broad that it must have been hard to get through a doorway. At least a couple feet across!

Her butt, plump and round enough that a very small caparacian could have sat on it with room to kick up their legs, waggled back and forth as she spoke. Quite a lot of her big, unbelievably wide thighs must have been taken up with that butt. Konyyl felt her mouth go a bit dry, just at the sight of it. Even Chahut seemed impressed.

Though she did seem to have other things on her mind. “What’s that she’s got in front of her?” She wondered, squinting.

“Not sure,” Konyyl said. Two objects spread out in front of Jade from their angle, taking up a lot of space directly in front of her. She shrugged. “Let’s go in and get some answers.” They both stepped in, the bell atop the door ringing. A few people saw them and greeted them; at the door, sitting on a chair and off-duty, was Dave, waving to the both of them.]

“Sup,” He said pleasantly. “Try not to let her mow ya down.”

He sounded like he was talking from experience. He grinned a little saying it, so it wasn't a bad experience, either. Konyyl didn’t get a chance to ask about it; Jade had started turning around when she heard the doorbell, and the prospective potion buyer had already left with their purchase, and both Konyyl and Chahut stopped cold, mouths open and thoughts empty, when they saw Jade from the front.

The advertisement had not exaggerated, in the slightest. Completely obscuring the front of Jade’s body was the biggest… widest… roundest…

Konyyl’s brain shut down, a little bit. Jade approached. The shutting down got worse. There was just so much… bouncing. And that dress! The cleavage deep enough for her to sink into! Over four feet deep! Cut down to the belly, rounder and firmer, and it was making her look so curvy, just like a fertility icon of the Dragon Goddess…

(Distantly, Terezi had a vague feeling that someone was referring to her, or at least her true nature. She shrugged and got on with what she was doing, which was beating Karkat in a game of strategy despite not even knowing the rules.)

It had been a while since Terezi’s big transformation. Jade had taken her challenge to heart; she’d been growing periodically on her own, but she’d boosted the effects with regular intakes of potion, and spending lots of time with Dave, whenever possible, and the effects were definitely knocking the two trolls about.

Even Chahut was completely lost for words. Well, most words. She managed to get out: “...Hi, Jade?”

“WHAT THE HECK,” Konyyl demanded. She flung her beefy arms out, gesturing at Jade. “We leave for like a few months and you’re all… all… everyone is all…” She inhaled. She let it out with a cry of “Big! WHY.”

Jade swept both trolls, taller than her, into a powerful hug. The both of them, by no means frail, made squeaking noises as Jade’s surprising strength shoved the remaining air right out, or perhaps that was the full weight of her monstrously huge boobs shoving into them. From throat to Jade’s legs they spanned her body, probably weighing more than she did. It had to be her own enormous strength that prevented them from being a physical hindrance, or some kind of wacky magic?

Jade parted from them, the pair still stunned. “So!” She said, a flirty tone in her words. Dave watched, grinning expectantly. “How do I look~?”

“You look… good,” Konyyl said weakly.

“Big,” Chahut agreed, and it was so very surreal to see her look so shaken.

Jade grinned. “You guys haven’t been in town a while. I bet everyone’s looking a little bigger than they used to, eh?”

Konyyl made the connection; the advertisement, Jade’s potions, Jade’s own size… “Was it… did you do a magic thing?”

Jade pulled out a basketful of potions that could have fit into her cleavage with ease. Given that she did a little twirl before bringing it out, it was entirely possible she’d been hiding it in her cleavage for such a dramatic moment. “I might have come up with a potion that does some boob embiggening, yeah!” She grinned wickedly, dangling one in front of them. Both women stared at it, sense of intrigue naked on their expressions. “What do you think? Might you be interested?”

“I might,” Chahut said.

Konyyl tugged out her coin purse. “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY, SEDUCTRESS!”

Jade giggled and passed their purchases as Chahut and Konyyl got a couple each. “Be sure to take them when you’re with someone that you’re close to, or at least makes you feel happy. Like a friend, or something romantic.” She looked at Dave for a moment, across the shop, and absently tapped a massive breast, as if to say ‘he is responsible for this’. “It, um. Seems to help make bigger growth.”

Chahut and Konyyl glanced at him, and then Jade. Chahut made a heart-shape with her fingers. Konyyl said, “You and him…? Is that a thing?”

Jade fluished. “Well, I dunno. Um.” Her confidence, so recently ironclad and as abundant as her bustline, faltered. “It might be?”

The two women chuckled at that, with the tone of someone who had suspected it was a thing for quite a while, and left. Well, Jade thought, People were going to assume it was a thing, the way they liked to talk!

She didn’t really mind the thought, though.

It felt… official.

-------

And then, a few weeks onward, and word spread: even faster and wider than Jade’s bustline, or the average growth rate in town. Word of Jade’s marvelous bust-enhancing potions, and the increases many people had reported in their physical strength.

Caravans had already left, loaded up with bust potion, to peddle them to distant lands. Already, people who’d heard of it from travelers bearing incredibly massive breasts had come there, and left with potions and mighty busts of their own. And they’d told people, who came and told others when they got back…

And word had spread, of this town with its genius alchemist who’d captured a little bit of the past and its faculty for body modification elixirs for fun and profit.

Now, people were coming to town every day, caravans of them, traders zeroing in on the town, and not just for the potion, but for the other goods the town offered.

So, feeling rather dazed, Jade found herself being handed a big trophy, and a hearty handshake from the mayor.

A small, impish figure (so similar to the imps that lurked outside town, in fact, that Jade felt bad when her excursions required fighting them), his black shell glistening in the light like a little playing piece in the kind of games Terezi liked to play. Jade felt enormously self conscious and smiled awkwardly as what must have been a good portion of the town sat expectedly in the auditorium, listening to his speech. Or what bits they could understand; the Mayor spoke exclusively in the private language of the carapacian people, and the Chief Courier translated hurriedly, as best she could. Judging from her winces and split-second word swaps, the Mayor’s actual words were probably fairly profane and coarse at best.

“...And so, for your breakthrough in aesthetic transfigurations bringing such trade to us, we have prospered as we never have before!” The chief courier said. “Food, valuable minerals, magical substances of every kind, and livestock are flooding in, and we are doing better than we ever had!’”

“I didn’t mean to start an economic revolution,” Jade said meekly. “I just thought people would find my invention cool…”

“Well, we’re getting filthy stinking rich,’” the courier said, her expression implying this was the nice translation. “‘So all’s good! In my book! Now, go on, take your… um… yeah, I can’t translate that.” The mayor scowled at her, and waved a hand at Jade.

Jade took the award, a heavy gold thing that would look very nice on a necklace, though it’d probably sink into her cleavage. “Oh, very well… thank you so much! I’m glad to be of service!”

She bowed to the enriched crowd as they applauded, but she tried not to bow too much. Her boobs had continued to grow and grow, and her experiments had finally died down a little in efficacy; regardless of what she put in them, she was only getting a little bit of growth, and she figured she had reached the peak of what her potion could reasonably do, for the present. Her breasts had reached the biggest size she could manage for now.

But what a size it was! Most of Jade’s body mass was now in her breasts, she wasn’t any skinnier or less thick (indeed, her hips had continued to grow, so much so that doorways were too skinny for her now; four feet across, and counting, with a butt sticking three feet out and just the right shape for Dave to sit on it), but if her weight was to be counted, so much of it was in her breasts that she thought of them as the core of herself now.

She wasn’t sure of the actual weight. The scales kept busting. But they were so large that their bottoms dipped down, down, all the way past her knees! Each breast was four feet height, and over eight feet across, obscuring almost her entire body when seen from a front, a size proportionately equaled by no one. The weight of them moving, when she did, was so divine; she felt such pleasure at every bounce and wiggle, a micro-burst of euphoria whenever it surged forward and dragged her along with it.

She glanced at the crowd; she saw Terezi, looming over it, grinning and wiggling her claws at her, and Karkat on her head like an excitable crown, mirroring her friendly gesture. Near them was Chahut and Konyyl, their own breasts as big as the most abundantly fertile gourds; at least down to the naval, and she felt proud in making such big and beautiful women even larger.

Again she thought: No one is as big as me! She felt proud, and more than the award she held, her own body felt like a testament to her willingness to experiment.

She glanced at Dave. He’d helped. Not just the stuff he’d gathered; just being there for her, and the feelings he brought out in her. That was part of it, she was sure. Every time she’d started to grow really big, he’d been there, making her feel big. A feeling in her heart, expanding out and her body growing to match…

It was wonderfully, obnoxiously sappy. She had to love it.

The Mayor followed her gaze, and misunderstanding her thoughts, spoke at length. “The mayor would like to thank Mister Dave Strider for his tireless efforts in helping Miss Harley… despite it being on work hours,” The chief courier added in a stern tone. The mayor nudged her as if to say ‘get on with it!’. “Oh, right. Anyway. Please step up to the podium?”

“What?” Dave stepped over, looking surprised. “What? Oh, come on. This is all Jade!”

“I couldn’t have done it without your help,” Jade said sincerely, gazing down at him, eyes half-lidded and warm.

He flustered in the light. “Don’t be sappy, come onnnn….”

“I mean it!” She thought of a way to convince him that, yes, she really was saying it to be honest, and a wild idea came in front of her. In front of all these people, though? Part of her qualed at the thought…

But another part of her, proud and reveling in having such a massive, buxom bustline, retorted: ‘If we’re gonna be shy now, what’s even the point of having such magnificent boobs!?”

Jade thus leaned forward, her breasts clearing the floor, and encircling Dave’s whole body; he was caught up in boob-age, enwrapped and captured, and he managed a squeak of alarm as Jade tilted her body up, bouncing him even deeper into her cleavage, his whole body imprisoned and his face closer to her own-

And she moved her face to his own, and kissed him firm, softly, right on the mouth.

Lip to lip, the kiss deepened, like a promise she hadn’t realized she’d made

Dave initially didn’t respond, in his shock. And then, to her delight, he deepened the kiss on his own, sincere and honest as she knew he really was afraid to be. She didn’t think about it being in front of so many people, but later she thought: this was the best way to do it. To prove she was serious, showing it on her big moment.

The mayor, blushing, said something like “oh my!” The chief courier goggled for a moment, and she glanced at the mayor, and considered buying a few potions from Jade later, on the quiet.

“What’s going on?!” Terezi asked impatiently, her senses not able to compensate for her blindness this once.

“Dave and Jade are hooking up, I think,” Karkat said laconically on her head. “She’s doing the kinda thing to him that you like to do to me.”

“Boob sandwich?!”

“Yep.”

“Hah! I knew she’d do that!”

Chahut whistled, very much impressed. Konyyl nudged Azdaja by boob-bumping him; as it was, he’d been sitting down in front of her, his horns and height just right for her to rest her new bustline on top of his head. “This give you any ideas, eh?” She asked, grinning wildly.

“Yeah but I think you beat me to them,” He replied calmly.

The kiss kept going on, as the audience took it in. Dave and Jade, together? The overall vibe was less surprise, or shock or scandal (the town being a fairly amiable place, after all), and more ‘oh so that finally happened’. Not surprising, given the general opinion of the pair.

“All right, all right!” The chief courier said, shushing the smooching pair. “That’s enough! On your own time, you two!”

Jade allowed her breasts to settle, and down Dave went. He gracefully slid through her cleavage and back onto the floor, and awkwardly stepped away. He remembered the heat of her body, blushing intensely. He rarely showed clear emotion, or expressed himself too openly…

But now, he was smiling.

Dirk and Hal, in the crowd, both cracked their own smiles at the sight. “There ya go, little bro,” Dirk said softly.

“You owe me money now,” Hal said gleefully. “And here you bet it’d be another half-year before they hooked up!”

Dirk rolled his eyes and passed the construct some coins. “It was a safe bet. Took them this long to hook up!”

The ceremony ended soon enough, after that. People filed out, one after another, some of them pausing to congratulate Jade again. Others went to congratulate Dave.

But soon enough, the two of them were alone. Dave had some trouble marshalling his thoughts, the feeling of Jade’s warmth everywhere around him so beguiling that it was easier to just lose himself in the memory, not in the now....

He did his best, though. “Hey, Jade?” Dave asked.

Jade, thinking about the lovely feeling of Dave’s whole body in her cleavage, pinned and safe there, his heart beating into her whole-breast pulse, made a soft murmuring sound. “Mm?”

“What do you think about, eh… going on a walk or something. When things quiet down, I mean.”

She smiled sweetly. “I’d like that.” She leaned to the side and kissed him again.

It was the kind of kiss a lover gives.

#commissions #twitchy!homestuck #twitchy!dave strider #twitchy!jade harley #my writing #fics #queued

[ibijau]

How would nhs react to a deage teenager!lxc after canon or lxc knew nhs as a student and next time he see nhs is a aldult.

this... kinda got out of hand wow. Thanks for the prompt!! it was a lot of fun!

Of course Nie Huaisang, like everyone else, knows that Lan Xichen has entered seclusion and won’t see anyone. After what happened, the shock of being lied to and manipulated for years culminating in nearly killing the person he thought was his last true friend left... If he’s honest, Nie Huaisang too finds isolation tempting, but sadly it isn’t part of Qinghe Nie’s culture the way it is in Gusu Lan, and so he must power through.

Still, Lan Xichen’s seclusion feels like a technicality that doesn’t concern him. After everything, when Nie Huaisang comes to the Cloud Recesses for business, he decides to take the chance to visit the man who tried to be his friend, in spite of everything Nie Huaisang is, everything he pretended to be. They have much to talk about. It is selfish of Nie Huaisang, but he misses Lan Xichen. Besides, the jade token that Lan Xichen gave him years ago is still active, so surely it must mean that a visit from him isn't entirely unexpected. Nie Huaisang heard that Jin Guangyao's token was rendered inert after the slight scandal in Carp Tower. Apparently, he's still a step higher than that. It's a comforting feeling.

And so, once his business with Lan Qiren is dealt with, Nie Huaisang doesn't go to the room prepared for him and his retinue. Instead he heads for the Hanshi. The path is familiar, Nie Huaisang doesn't have to pay attention as his feet carry him to his brother's sworn brother's house. A mix of fear and anticipation make him walk slower and faster in turn. In front of the Hanshi's door, Nie Huaisang pauses for a moment. It might be presomptuous of him to be here, after the way things went at the temple. Lan Xichen seemed broken then, in a way even the horrors of the Sunshot campaign hadn't managed. To come here like this, unnanounced... but they both need this, Nie Huaisang decides. He owes Lan Xichen an explanation, and hopefully Lan Xichen will apologise as well for his own failures. They both could have done better, but this might be a chance for a clean start.

It would be nice if they could be friends, for real this time. No pretences, no Jin Guangyao, just the two of them getting along, openly and honestly.

Nie Huaisang knocks on the door.

Unexpectedly fast, he can hear footsteps on the other side, and the door opens before he fully has time to steel himself for the confrontation.

“Oh, you're not Uncle,” the young man who opened says. (but is he a man? He can't be more than sixteen or seventeen). “I did think it was still early.”

Nie Huaisang stares, and refuses to believe what he's seeing. The boy in front of him isn't much taller than him, though he will certainly continue growing in the coming years. He is elegant and calm, but still youthful, still with a touch of uncertainty that grows more pronounced the longer Nie Huaisang gapes at him.

“Do I know you?” the boy asks at last. “You seem familiar but... ah! Did uncle send you?”

“Not exactly. I'm Nie Huaisang. I'm... you are...”

The boy presses a hand against his mouth as he laughs.

“Nie Huaisang? You mean, Mingjue's little brother? Oh, you've grown quite a bit!”

That's not exactly true. In fact, coming from anyone else, Nie Huaisang would take that as a lie at best, a mocking attack at worst. But this boy... if this boy is who he seems to be, if his mind fits his appearance, he would remember Nie Huaisang a good deal shorter.

“Er-ge... I mean, Lan Xichen? Is that you?”

The boy drops his hand and nods with an apologetic smile.

“I'm not really supposed to talk about it,” he explains. “I'm not even supposed to let anyone see me until we find a solution, but... oh, if it's Nie er-gongzi, it's fine. But please, come in. I'm really not supposed to have visitors.”

Entranced, Nie Huaisang can only obey and follows this too young Lan Xichen into the Hanshi. The house hasn't changed much since his last visit, many months before. The only difference is its inhabitant, smiling brightly, as if he doesn't have a care in the world. Nie Huaisang doesn't think he had seen such a sincere smile on Lan Xichen's face since the Sunshot Campaign.

“Would you like some tea?” Lan Xichen asks, ever the perfect host. “I was going to make some for myself, so it's really no bother.”

“I... yes, certainly.”

“Please, sit down, Nie er-gongzi. Nie-xiong? What should I call you? I can remember calling you Huaisang, but I wouldn't want to disrespect you, so...”

“You still call me by my name,” Nie Huaisang assures him, which isn't a lie. It was still true last time they met. He isn't sure if it would still be true, had he faced a full grown man instead of a boy, but there's little point in debating this now. “I don't mind if you continue doing so. It would be very awkward for me if you tried to treat me as an elder.”

Lan Xichen smiles again, and puts some water to boil. Without waiting to be invited, Nie Huaisang sits at the table. It could almost feel like nothing has changed, as long as he doesn't look too closely at the person preparing their tea.

“Dare I ask what happen to you, Lan Xichen?”

“Please, just... just Xichen? Or are you this formal with me now?” Lan Xichen asks, shooting him a worried look.

“I've never been one for formality,” Nie Huaisang replies. “Are you avoiding my question, Xichen?”

Again, the boy laughs. Nie Huaisang suddenly realises that just like his smiles, Lan Xichen's laughters hadn't been so free in years. He had never thought to miss that, but he does now.

Once the water is hot, Lan Xichen pours it in a teapot which he brings to the table, sitting down at last while the leaves infuse.

“I wish I could tell you what happened, Huaisang,” he confesses with mild embarrassment. “But I simply do not know. Uncle think it is an accident of some sort. He told me that certain regrettable events had made me unwell. He won't tell me more than that.”

There are dozens of unspoken questions in Lan Xichen's eyes, all of which Nie Huaisang pretends he cannot notice. Instead he checks the teapot and serves tea for both of them.

“It must be quite upsetting to you,” Nie Huaisang says. “What's the most recent thing you remember?”

“Some new guest disciples had just arrived a few days ago. Very prestigious ones this year, since there were the sons of Sect Leader Jin and Sect Leader Jiang... and you were returning as well, of course. It was promising to be an interesting year. One of the guests had already gotten in trouble and duelled my brother. I tried asking, but Uncle wouldn't tell me what became of that boy. His name was Wei Wuxian, do you perhaps remember him?”

Nie Huaisang snorts, most inelegantly, and hesitates how much he can tell on that matter. In the end, he decides the latest piece of gossip that reached him can be shared safely.

“Lan Wangji recently married him.”

He hopes, perhaps a little cruelly, to shock Lan Xichen, or at least to surprise him. Instead, the boy beams.

“I knew that Wangji liked him!” he exclaims, before pressing a hand to his mouth as he realises how loud he was. “Sorry for this. Oh, but I'm so glad! It's so rare for Wangji to take a shine to someone... I'm so happy for him!”

Nie Huaisang tries to smile, and fails. He remembers how upset Lan Xichen was over his brother's choice in the years that followed Wei Wuxian's death, his resentment that he still couldn't shake in that temple after Wei Wuxian finally opened his eyes to Lan Wangji's feelings.

He had never realised how bitter Lan Xichen had become. He did not let him consume him, not the way Nie Huaisang had, but... it's odd to think they might have been similar in that respect.

“Huaisang, if I may ask... since you seem well informed on my family, would you tell me what happened to me?” Lan Xichen asks, fidgeting with his cup of tea. “As I've told you, Uncle won't say a thing but... you say we still call each other by name, after this long, and you came to see me uninvited. Am I right to assume we must be friends?”

There's something so hopeful to that boy's voice, as if it would really make him happy to hear they are close. They weren't back then, not especially. Nie Huaisang admired his brother's friend, but found Lan Xichen too serious to really pay him attention, especially when there were people like Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng to play with instead. He had no idea how Lan Xichen saw him at that time, but apparently he had a better opinion of Nie Huaisang than expected.

It should be flattering.

It is not.

Nie Huaisang looks at that hopeful boy, one whose father is in seclusion but still alive, whose brother has poor taste in men but no scars on his back yet, who is too serious for his age but doesn't bear the burden of running a sect before his time, who hasn't yet felt the horrors of wars, of watching both of his friends die before his eyes, viciously killing each other. Most of what happened to Lan Xichen isn't his fault, but Nie Huaisang still feels guilty.

It is unbearable to see Lan Xichen so innocent.

“I'm not sure I'm the right person to tell you,” Nie Huaisang mumbles, avoiding Lan Xichen's eyes. “It was... a lot happened. It might be best to leave it at that.”

“But you do know,” Lan Xichen insists. “Uncle says he doesn't know the details anyway, that he cannot tell me something he's not certain of. But you know.”

“And I'm glad you don't. What happened... if you can live without remembering, without being told about it, perhaps it's for the best.”

This, at last, bring a crack into Lan Xichen's warmth. Nie Huaisang hates himself for it when he sees the slight frown on the boy's face, hates that this is an expression that he's far more used to seeing on Lan Xichen's face.

“Is it really that bad, Huaisang?”

“I don't know what you're imagining but... it's at least as bad as that, and possibly worse.”

Lan Xichen's frown deepen.

“I see. Then... at least it confirms something I've suspected.”

“Which is?”

“This was not an accident,” Lan Xichen states, gesturing at himself. “I think I did this on purpose. I... The man I become, is he a coward then?”

Something squeezes in Nie Huaisang's chest, so tight and painful that it nearly makes him sick. He quickly shakes his head and, without thinking, reaches for Lan Xichen's hands.

“You are a brave man,” he promises. “You made mistakes, but only because you are kind and certain people took advantage. You are a good man, you tried your best to be fair, even when we all lied to you, and...”

“We?” Lan Xichen notes, pulling his hands away. “Did you lie to me as well, Huaisang?”

The pain in his voice is... they've gone through that once already at the temple. Nie Huaisang cannot do it again. The first time was hard when Lan Xichen knew already how cruel the world can be, but to do this again, to bear with this again and explain to this kind, innocent boy that he consistently put his trust in all the worst people is...

It was a mistake to come here.

“I have to go,” Nie Huaisang mutters, rising on unsteady feet.

“So you did lie,” Lan Xichen whispers, looking up at him, disappointment clear in his eyes. “Are... are we even friends, then?”

Nie Huaisang turns away.

“I had come to ask you the same question,” he confesses. “I wanted to know if it was too much to ask, after what I did to you. I'll never get my answer now, but perhaps it's for the best. You... you really grew into a good man, Lan Xichen. Out of all of us, I think you're the one who turned out best. But sometimes, being good isn't enough. Not when there are men like me around.”

“But you used to be good as well,” Lan Xichen retorts, his tone nearly whiny, like a child's. And why not? He's not so far from childhood still, no matter how much he tries to act like an adult. “You always were so nice, Huaisang. You always made me smile when we talked, you were always so honest! Why would you have started lying to me?”

The idea that he ever was honest is hilarious, so Nie Huaisang starts crying.

“There's no real reason,” he says, and that's a lie too, but at this point what's a little more? “People are never as good as you think they are, Xichen, especially when life get a little tough. I'm sorry I wasn't the friend you deserved. I really wanted to be, but sometimes... sometimes it's not enough to want it.”

Having said his piece, Nie Huaisang walks to the door, cursing himself for coming to the Hanshi, for giving in to curiosity when he saw this boy, for not leaving him to his fate. He is almost out when Lan Xichen speaks again.

“Do you really think we can't be friends then?” he asks, so young and eager and lost. It is awful to remember there was a time when Lan Xichen had the freedom of not needed to appear confident at all times, when he could hesitate, when he could be unsure.

“I think you can find better friends than me,” Nie Huaisang sighs, pretending it doesn't come as a sob. “Goodbye, Xichen, or farewell maybe. I don't think I'll be coming here again, not unless you get back to normal someday and invite me yourself.”

“I see. I'll hold you to that, Huaisang.”

Nie Huaisang laughs, or sobs, or both. If Lan Xichen ever gets back to the man he was before this incident, it's unlikely he will want anything to do with the traitor who tried to turn him into a murderer. It was stupid, really, to think that they might get a second chance.

Without another word, Nie Huaisang leaves the Hanshi and heads for the guest quarters, desperately trying to calm his tears.

It was a mistake to come here.

But of course, Nie Huaisang has always been good at making mistakes.

#nie huaisang #lan xichen #mo dao zu shi #xisang #kinda I mean it can definitely read as gen but also y'all know me at this point right? #jau writes #ok and now I shall sleep #Anonymous

[unicyclehippo]

If you're still taking prompts, then... verklempt with a touch of marcid, as a found family comfort fic for poor Beau after that last episode (she needs it).

verklempt - completely and utterly overcome with emotion // marcid - incredibly exhausted

//

Caleb

//

The woman who walks out of that house is not his Beauregard. If not for his familiarity with transmutation, he might suspect that someone else had been put in her place; the imposter has copied her flawlessly—wears her face, her skin—but she does not know how to be their Beauregard.

Their Beauregard has eyes like needles, sharp and shining, that pin people open to examine their insides, cobalt eyes. These blank eyes, these clouded-over eyes, are wrong.

Their Beauregard moves like a cat. Not like Frumpkin, whose form sometimes shifts and moves to fit the world—he is real and unreal and his smoking steps reflect it. Beauregard moves like one of the great striped cats, the kings of the southern forests; Caleb had seen one, once, in his days at the Academy and it is the only way he knows how to conceptualise of Beauregard’s distinctive physicality. She is forceful and graceful all at once; she slinks and steps and climbs with power in her movements. There is a confidence to her that is all physical—all of her power, all of her presence, contained. Concrete. The imposter cannot begin to understand this. Her hands are wrong. They hang heavy at her sides like an inept simulacrum, like gloves filled with some unsuitable material— with ice, with lead. They lurch in pendulum swings from the shoulders, out of time. She does not stride or strut. She stumbles over a hunk of raised rock. When she braces against Caleb, who steps quickly to her side, her fingers claw at the proffered arm so she doesn’t meet mud.

Her skin is cold and wet from the misting downpour.

Enough, Caleb thinks. Tugs her to stop, halt.

She doesn’t argue with him and it’s all wrong, wrong, wrong.

Blue eyes drift to his face, unseeing, glazed. He sees the faintest stir behind them of recognition and she looks down to their joined hands.

‘Your hands are cold,’ he says softly.

There is no hiding that they have stopped from the watchful others, but he doesn’t have to let them hear. Beau is a private person and they have learned more of her history in the last two days, last hour, than ever; he will not let anyone take more from her, not even the knowledge that her hands are cold.

‘No,’ she denies. ‘’m all—hot.’ Rubs her other hand over the back of her neck as she has been doing all day. The skin is red, raw with scratching, but from what he can see it is hot from friction alone.

He makes a sound of disagreement. Pulls his gloves from the pocket of his coat and works the first onto the hand he still holds. It is hard because she is not being helpful, like pulling a glove onto a statue, but finally it is more or less on and he rubs the hand between both of his own in that rough way that calls heat back into extremities.

She shivers. Blinks, surprised by the way another shiver shakes through her.

He coaxes her second hand into the other glove. ‘There. Wunderbar.’

Beau curls her fingers into fists, slightly cushioned by the gloves that are only a little threadbare. ‘You don’t need ‘em?’ she asks, the thought making her reach off and fiddle with the cuffs.

Caleb lays his hands over hers. Squeezes. ‘Nein, it is fine, I can summon flames. Keep them.’

He cannot help but wonder—as she struggles past the exhaustion to think, to figure if he needs them more, eyes narrowing into an approximation of shrewd, prying—how many things Beau has been given. A slap across the face, is the first he knows of. A jade necklace with no apparent defences, supposedly to keep her safe. Anything else? Fire boils in his belly, threatens to burn through his veins, his entire self—threatens to send the rain that hits him steaming, hissing away from his too-warm skin—as her tear-stained cheeks crinkle into a very small smile.

‘Thanks, Caleb.’

He lets his hand settle on her shoulder when they set out again, fond, letting her feel the weight of his presence at her side.

//

Nott

//

She waits until they’ve purchased beds for the night in the inn, waits until Beau and Jester have gone upstairs to their room, before she follows. Waits until Beau has excused herself, stepped into the washroom, before letting herself in and setting the little jade rabbit on Beau’s bedside.

‘You steal that?’

Nott screams and spins, crossbow drawn. Beau doesn’t even flinch; her eyes are focused on the statuette, over Nott’s shoulder.

‘Beau! Steal? Little old me?’ she hedges awkwardly until she realises she isn’t seeing upset on Beau’s face, or annoyance. Strange, given that is Beau’s go-to expression, but... ‘Ah—yes. I didn’t like the way he spoke to you, so,’ Nott flutters her fingers in a There you go sort of motion. Her eyes narrow, gleaming with interest at the way Beau’s expression shifts.

‘He’s—complicated,’ she says finally.

Nott isn’t sure if what she has, what this goblin body has, are hackles, but if they were they’d be raised by Beau’s tone: quiet, borderline defeated. Worse—understanding.

‘He’s an asshole.’

Beau smiles crookedly. ‘So am I. So was I.’

‘You were a kid,’ Nott snarls. Holds her hands up in surrender when Beau’s eyes snap sideways, staring at her finally instead of that damn statuette. ‘Sorry, sorry, not my place, sorry.’

‘No. It’s not.’

‘Right. Well.’ Nott whistles faintly through her crooked teeth.

‘I nearly broke that,’ Beau tells her, eyes sliding back to the statue. ‘When I was - I dunno. Ten? Ten, I think. I was running in the house and slipped. Slammed into the table,’ she says, and doesn’t seem to notice the way her hand lifts to rub at the long-healed scar above her eyebrow. ‘It fell off. Hit the carpet. There’s - ah - a little chip missing on the back,’ she tells Nott, who doesn’t bother checking. The corner of Beau’s lips twitch up into an expression Nott wouldn’t in a hundred years call a smile. ‘He picked that up first.’

‘Beau...’ The girl sighs. Nott puts her crossbow away. She hadn’t realised it was still out, the weight so comforting in her hands. Now they’re empty, they itch with the need to take something, work with something. She threads her long, bad fingers together. ‘Thank you for coming here. I know you did it for me and—thank you.’

Beau jerks her head in a nod. Nott has nothing more to say, knows it isn’t the right time to mention how much she thinks Beau’s dad is a dickhead, knows very little of what she says will be taken seriously by Beau. So instead, she says to her friend,

‘It sounded cool. Your plan for the wine. I’m sorry he didn’t listen to you.’ Nott eases forward, toward Beau standing interposed between the bed and the door. She stops beside her, pats the girl fondly on the hip. Leaves her hand there as she looks up into Beau’s suddenly blank face. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re with us.’

‘Okay,’ Beau rasps, not meeting her eyes.

Nott pats her side again. ‘Sleep well, Beau. You need your rest if we’re off to fuck up a hag in the morning.’

//

Fjord and Yasha

//

‘At least we know now,’ he says low to Yasha as they follow Beau out from the inn. ‘If we ever want her to be less sneaky, just...’

‘Confront her with her past?’

‘Yeah.’ Fjord grimaces. ‘Not really funny, huh?’

Yasha eyes the slow figure ahead of them, her meandering path. She would think Beau were drunk, if she hadn’t been watching her carefully since they left that place. A half cup of wine would have no effect like this on the well-practised monk.

‘No.’

The pair follow Beau through the mud-slopped streets. For a short while, she stands at the base of the switch-back roads up to the Rainbow Vineyards and Yasha is prepared to return to the inn and fetch everyone, in case Beau has it in her mind to revisit the house—what they would do, she isn’t sure. Stop her? Perhaps. Help her? Definitely. But Beau doesn’t head up; she turns away and wanders back up the path. Fjord and Yasha step aside to get out of her way and she walks right past them, unseeing.

‘Still raining,’ Fjord says to Yasha.

Her chest tightens around mixed pain and love. For Beau, who is hurting. And for Fjord, who will muster a bad lie to protect his best friend.

‘Ah. Yes,’ she agrees, lying too. ‘I think I feel it.’ She holds her hand out, palm up to the sky. Wipes imaginary droplets off against her cloak.

They follow Beau to the other end of the town, to the southern gates. She walks out of them, staggers to a stop by a low cliff where she sits. Throws her legs over the edge and grasps at small rocks, tosses them down the embankment into the burning pools there.

Fjord sits to one side of her.

Yasha sits on the other.

Neither of them speak, until eventually Beau swears. Scrubs at her cheeks.

‘Fuck—when—hey guys,’ she says, voice thick. She reworks it into something sharper. ‘Are you following me?’

Yasha looks to Fjord over her head, nervous. Perhaps she shouldn’t be here, she has caused enough hurt,

‘A-yup,’ Fjord tells Beau, a hint of his old swaggering accent in the word.

‘How long?’

‘Good long while.’

Beau stares at him, mouth working but no sound coming out. She jerks her head to Yasha, who smiles. Jerks her head to the pools, which burble and burn away.

‘Didn’t notice.’

‘No, we know.’ Fjord leans heavy against her shoulder. ‘It’s alright.’

‘Should’ve noticed.’

‘You don’t have to be —‘ Yasha hesitates, suddenly nervous under the way Beau looks at her. Like a piece of flint waiting to spark. Like a woman who is hurting. ‘We wanted to...make sure you are safe. We didn’t...wish to intrude.’

‘Did you at least hide?’

‘Nope.’ Fjord pops the sound of the p with relish. ‘You walked right past us.’ Holds a hand up to his face, exaggerating—though not by much—how close they had been and Beau had not seen them.

‘Fuck.’

The word punches out of her along with e last of her energy. Yasha catches her as she sags, leans her fully against Fjord who wraps an arm around her shoulders.

‘He’s a cute fuckin’ kid, huh?’ she mumbles.

‘Sure is. Looks like you.’

‘I was a little monster.’ Beau knocks her head on his shoulder. Drops a hand to the side, fingers hooking onto Yasha’s bracer.

‘Naw,’ Fjord says, so so softly. ‘I reckon you were just fine.’

They sit with her as her facade breaks again, no energy to maintain it, and she cries. There’s little left in her to cry out so when she’s empty of tears, she almost crumples in on herself and bit by bit she slips from this state into unconsciousness.

‘Yasha? Little help?’ Fjord asks, holding Beau awkwardly back from the edge of the low cliff.

Yasha stands. Scoops the smaller woman into her arms. Adjusts her with Fjord’s help so her head leans peacefully on Yasha’s shoulder, Fjord’s cloak a cushion. They head back to the inn, Beau lulled by the rolling step, cradled safely in her friend’s arms.

The inn is dark, the stairways barely lit by lantern light. Yasha carries her up the stairs—laughs softly at Fjord’s low whistle.

‘You’re not tired at all? You carried her all the way across town—she’s small but she’s not exactly light!’

‘She’s fine,’ Yasha shrugs. Her muscles are warm from exertion but it isn’t something that strains or hurts. ‘Would you—the door?’

‘Huh? Oh, sure, yes.’

He cracks the bedroom door. They creep in, not wanting to wake Jester. Jester, who sleeps turned toward Beau’s bed, who looks as though she had drifted off in the middle of staring at the empty sheets.

Yasha holds Beau as Fjord pulls down the sheets; lowers her onto the mattress and helps Fjord work at the laces of muddied boots. Easing them off, Fjord takes them, holds them in his hand. Watches Yasha’s hands carefully—not from any suspicion but from a deep, worried care—as she draws the blanket up to around Beau’s shoulders.

‘Sleep well, Beau,’ Fjord says with all the reverence of a prayer.

Yasha wonders if he is aware of the faint green glow around his free hand as he rests it on Beau’s shoulder. The frown that grips her brows tight loosens a fraction. Eases.

//

Caduceus

//

Caduceus trusts Fjord and Yasha to track her down in the night.

His job is not like theirs. Their duty is to protect her, to keep her from going too far, to bring her home. His is — he’s reluctant to say harder, he has no doubt there was some careful work to bringing her home, but it is one thing to catch the wild horse and another to tame it. So he’s heard. He’s never tamed a horse himself, nor does the analogy sit well with regards to Beauregard. Except, that is, a wild horse is skittish to the reaching hand and he cannot stop thinking about a younger Beauregard, already young, who has been struck by her father. Caduceus doesn’t consider himself an educated man but there are some things he knows to the core of himself, and this is one of those things: Beauregard has been starved of those necessary things, like the withered and pitiful garden within the estate. If she is not healthy, if she does not bloom brightly and prettily as expected, it is not the plants fault but the gardeners.

That is to say, he thinks, and rolls a mouthful of floral tea over his tongue, she deserves more. Better.

Which brings him to his duty, and his eyes lift from the handsome grain work in this simple tables to the stairs where a barefooted girl, hair half-fallen from its topknot, hurries down.

‘Morning, Beau.’

She looks marginally better. Reflexes far improved from the night before. He had been tempted to check for signs of undeath, with her moving like the animated dead, skin as cold.

‘Cad,’ she grunts.

The skin beneath her eyes is puffy and dark, from crying and from a lack of sleep. He had heard Fjord and Yasha return late last night, perhaps even early into morning, so she can’t have slept for more than—three? Four hours at most.

‘You haven’t slept enough.’

She grunts. ‘Seen my boots?’

‘Yes.’ He drinks from his cup. Flares his nostrils to take in the scent as the movement stirs, hits the notes of the drop of honey he had added. After last night, he needs the boost, the sweetness.

‘Where?’

He just smiles, no intent whatsoever to say. ‘Tea?’ He has rarely seen anyone who needs a cup more than she does now; she desperately needs it, needs a moment to relax from holding herself so tense, gingerly, like she has been turned inside out and back again and she’s scared it’ll happen again.

Beau doesn’t seem to agree. Squints are him, a not unfamiliar squint, the one she gets when she’s reading books in unfamiliar script. Like she is figuring him out. Lips pressed flat, not quite a scowl.

Caduceus thinks about telling her that he isn’t a book, can’t be read like one, when she nods, frown clearing.

‘Fjord’s got ‘em. Great. Thanks.’

‘What?’

Beau salutes. Backs up the stairs.

‘How did you—‘ he begins to ask, brows crawling higher in his forehead like fat, confused pink caterpillars, but she has already disappeared, taking the steps two at a time.

He listens as the door to the room he was sharing with Fjord creaks open. A moment, and then it creaks closed again. The loose floorboard at the top of the steps squeals and Beau returns, boots in hand, and takes a seat at the table with him turned in the seat so she can pull the boots on. Wipes a rough palm over the sole of her foot, brushing off dust and dirt.

‘He polished them,’ she grunts. Shakes her head. ‘Sap.’

‘He cares for you.’

There—a small shift, like a contraption winched tight, Beau’s shoulders creaking closer together, tighter, tense.

‘He just hates mess. Seen him at the Xhorhaus? Washes his room out. Scrubs the kitchen top to bottom.’

‘Mm.’

‘You must like that.’

‘He reorganises the cupboards,’ Cad tells her, watches as the comment surprises a smile out of her.

‘Caduceus,’ she says, teases, ‘is that a complaint?’

‘Everyone has flaws. Neatness isn’t too bad of one.’

Boots on, obviously feeling a little more put together, more herself, Beau leans back in her chair with an arm slung over the back of it. Her smile is crooked, a half-summoned thing. ‘Yeah, he’s alright,’ she allows.

‘He’s marvellous.’ There—an easy shift into what he needs to talk to her about. ‘As are you.’

She rolls her eyes hard.

‘We’re all looking after you in our own ways.’

‘Found a way to help me, have you? Am I easy like the rest of them?’

‘No. I don’t think you have ever been easy.’ He watches her flinch truly this time and hums, realises his misstep. ‘That—was not meant to be an insult.’

‘’s fine, dude. Whatever. You’re not wrong.’

Caduceus’s duty is care; his duty is helping people to move on, to grieve and leave their grief, to transfer it into something that can be borne more easily. It was easier when he had no interest in the grief himself, but he loves this woman and somehow it has made him clumsy.

‘There are great works that are done,’ Caduceus says to her. ‘Art and other acts of creation, great gardens. They aren’t easy.’ Beau frowns. ‘But they are marvellous.’

Beau clicks her tongue, shakes her head. She isn’t ready to talk, or hear more of the regard he has for her, that they all have for her, so he stops.

‘Tea?’

Beau sighs. ‘Sure. Why not.’

He smiles as warmly as he can manage. ‘I have two options.’ He pulls them from his pack, smells them to make sure. Sets them before her. ‘This one,’ he shows her, puts it to one side, ‘will clear your mind. Help wake you up. And this,’ he sets it to the other side and if it is much closer to her, well, it isn’t as though he is trying to be subtle, ‘will help you go back to sleep.’

‘I don’t think—I’m not going back to sleep, dude.’

She doesn’t push the offering away. Stares down at it with tired, tired eyes.

He waits. Won’t make this decision for her. Figures, from what he can gather, she’s had enough of people trying to make decisions for a whole lifetime.

‘Would—will you make me a cup of this?’ she asks, quietly, looking a little shameful as she points to the clear-head tea. ‘I’m sorry—I know you think I should—but I can’t. Not right now.’

He hums. ‘Perhaps tonight. You’ll sleep very well after it,’ he offers. Is rewarded with a look of relief, of thanks.

‘Sounds good. Yeah.’ Then, after a moment, ‘’preciate it, man.’

He keeps to that promise. Drinks a pot of tea with her that morning that, he thinks, has a lot to do with the good decisions they make that morning. Tea helps with that. Sitting quietly with a friend helps with that. And that evening, after a very very long day, he finds her before she can offer to take first watch and sits her at the end of his bedroll and sets up his tea station right there. Pours enough of the leaves into the water to make a single cup. He takes care to prepare it the way he always does, when he has the time—it isn’t prayer, isn’t a ritual of the kind he makes to worship the Mother, but a ritual of another kind, as old and as profound in some ways. The ritual of care, of providing, of effort. The ritual of making something especially for the one person who will appreciate it, need it the most. Not the exclusion of others, but attention to one person alone.

‘Here,’ he says, words buzzing like beetles in his chest. It always feels a little foreign, a little strange, to speak. He hadn’t spoken for a long, long time before his friends had collected him from the Grove and sometimes the words are hard. The gestures—the making, the healing—are harder for people to misconstrue. He picks up the cup by the brim, sets it in her cupped palms.

Sits beside her as she sips.

‘Long day.’ Beau grimaces. The tea is bitter, but that isn’t why she grimaces. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assures. ‘Jester will forgive you.’

‘She wants me to—slow down. Relax. I can’t relax, Cad, even on a good fucking day.’

‘Hmm.’

Beau snorts. ‘Helpful.’

She drinks a little more.

The air is clean and clear within the dome, pleasant after the hours of walking in this strange place that smells so heavily of metals and gases. Caleb tells them all that it is minerals and sulphur, the waters like pools of acid from the chemicals. To Caduceus, it is as if the earth itself here is dying and decomposing, petrifying even as she bloats. It’s strange and as fascinating as it is upsetting, and from moment to moment Caduceus shifts on whether this is natural or not.

Beau sits there on his bedroll and there she stays, cup beginning to tip out of numb fingers, head lolling.

‘Oop,’ Caduceus says, reaches over to catch Beau at the small of her back, spread his hand wide there as she sags and drops into sleep like a fish tossed onto land—that is, surprising to the fish, who struggles briefly, eyes wide, before landing with the dull sound of flesh on stone. ‘Whoops.’

‘Gods, Cad, what the hell—did you brain her?’ Fjord asks, alerting Caleb too, who looks up from his place in the centre of the dome where he has chosen to read.

‘No, no, she’ll be just fine. Sleep through the night, hopefully.’

Fjord grunts. Looks fondly at Beau. Then laughs. ‘She’s already snoring. Dibs on the other side of the dome.’

Caleb looks amused, obediently shifts his things from where Fjord points. He looks tired too, Caduceus notes and briefly regrets that he had only made the one cup. And that he had done so in front of Caleb. He’ll never get the wizard to drink this brew now.

//

Jester

//

It is a long day punctuated by the strange, sudden greys that colour the flora here—flowers and vines and trees shrivelled and withered and turned to living stone, the thrum of life present but dulled to the point where Caduceus is hard put to feel it. Jester leaves him to tend to the plants and figure them out. She doesn’t know an awful lot about plants and her time is better spent, she figures, at Beau’s side.

They’re miles from the Lionett estate and everyone within it but still Beau walks like she’s expecting an attack at any moment, snaps at useless discussion, and walks too fast for any of them to keep up until Jester snags her. Holds her hand hard enough that the girl can’t shrug her off. It makes Beau more restless, Jester can see that, the way she’s straining to get ahead, to get to whatever awaits them, to figure this out and find answers finally, and Jester understands, really, she does!

‘It’s just that it’s dangerous if we can’t keep up with you, Beau, and what if you get into some kind of trouble and we’re too far to hear you, or don’t pick the same path, or just can’t get there in time?’

‘I can look after myself, Jes,’

‘Obviously, obviously,’ Jester agrees hurriedly. ‘You’re really strong and smart, Beau, we know that, but you don’t have to look out for yourself when you have all of us, and—‘ Jester hesitates, not sure Beau can take hearing about how very, very tired she looks.

‘I am feeling very tired, myself,’ Caleb says, not to Beau because the others are all pretending not to see the way Jester has more or less grappled Beau into standing still for just a second so she can talk her into making camp and staying with them. Jester shoots him a glare; she knows he can lie more convincingly than that, and they are supposed to be convincing Beau. But he must know some way of talking to her to get her attention because Jester feels the lightning thrum of tension running through Beau’s cord-tight muscles fade the smallest bit. Feels shoulders drop an inch. Hears her reluctant scoff, almost a laugh.

‘Fine. Fine.’ Beau brings her hand up finally to return the hug—grapple—and pat Jester’s back. ‘You can let me go now, I’m not gonna bolt,’ she tells Jester, who wishes very much she could see Beau’s face and what that amount of fondness would look like. Hearing it is enough—sweet like caramel, warm and featherlight like smoke around her.

Jester pulls back slowly. Affects a suspicious squint and doesn’t let go. Not just yet. ‘Promise?’ she teases.

It’s doubly sweet to see how reluctantly the smile comes, how Beau has to rearrange her whole face to accommodate it.

‘Promise.’

Jester squeezes her. Releases her, hugging hands gliding down to Beau’s, squeezing those too. She leaves a trail of healing behind her, because Beau’s dad might have said run from the things in the woods but Beau had decided not to.

Beau hooks her pinkie around Jester’s. Holds it for a moment, says again—‘Promise’—before she begins to pace the campsite, bothering Fjord and distracting Caleb who just wants to set up the dome. He sends raven-Frumpkin to busy Beau, leads her on a chase around the clearing and up to the branches of a nearly spruce—the low branches, when Caleb sees the way Jester glares at him.

‘Hey Caleb. Caleb.’

‘Ja, Beaure—Beau.’

‘Ha! Beau-Beau,’ Nott repeats. ‘Cute.’

‘Call me that again and I’ll happily help with the first part of your resurrection,’ Beau promises. Nott hisses in through her teeth; after a moment, Beau clears her throat. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, no, say how you really feel.’

‘I said I’m sorry!’

‘Alright, I think everyone could do with a minute apart. Beau—‘ Cad says, bends over her, hand on her shoulder. ‘You promised I could make you tea.’

Jester can see the way she wants to snap at him too, send him away. Sees the moment Beau gives in and lets Cad lead her to his bedroll on the edge of the dome, talk quietly with him as he brews a bitter smelling tea that makes Jester’s nose itch when she passes by later. She misses the exact moment when Beau passes out but turns when she hears her crumple, cries out when she sees Beau sprawled there and hurries back into the dome.

‘Caduceus!’

‘She’s fine,’ he tells her. Fjord nods like he’s just asked the exact same thing. ‘She’s fine, just sleeping.’

‘You knocked her out?’

A hint of nerves crawls over Caduceus’s face. ‘I—helped her sleep.’

‘Ooh, she’s going to be so mad when she wakes up,’ Jester whispers, not sure if she should be mad on Beau’s behalf or relieved.

‘Ah.’ Caduceus scratches at his hair, the point where one lock of hair is turning white. ‘Well.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.’

‘Aw, I really appreciate that. Thank you, Jester.’

Jester pats his arm. Moves Caleb’s things—who clicks his tongue and sighs—so she can lay out hers next to Cad’s bed, taken over by the fully snoring Beau.

Curled up beside her, Jester smells the faint scent of Cad’s sleeping mat—sweat and earth and growing things like sweet grass, and the bitter tang of crushed beetles. And below it, shuffling closer, she smells what she knows now is the smell of Kamordah, though she knew it first as Beau—the tang of metal and the bite of something ever so faintly sour, even as it balances against the flowery smell of jasmine. She wonders as she drifts off whether it is something that sunk into Beau and refused to shift, or if the other girl just happened to gravitate toward soaps that smelled similar. She’ll have to ask.

//

Beau wakes later, when the fire has burned down to embers and the last watch—Yasha and Nott—have slunk off to patrol just beyond the treeline. Jester wakes to the sensation of gentle, careful fingers on her tail, unwrapping it from where it is snuggly curled around Beau’s ankle. Beau’s pant leg had lifted an inch or two, bunching higher around her calf, and Jester’s tail had taken advantage, seeking out the warmth of the human’s skin and double wrapping there where the cloth has moved to reveal skin.

‘Jes, geez,’ Beau mutters to herself, struggling to get free. ‘Help a girl out,’ she hisses though not loud enough to wake Jester, if she had not been already well on her way to waking. With a sigh, and a grumble, Beau tickles Jester’s tail with blunt nails, enough to make the muscles twitch and jump and slacken. Quicker than anything else, Beau slips her foot free with a quiet sound of victory.

She staggers to her feet, hand going to her head, smacks dry lips. ‘God, Caduceus, what was in that fucking tea,’ she mutters, picking her way over curled sleeping forms.

Jester eases up onto her elbows; most of her believes Beau isn’t silly enough to make a break for it—she has left everything, including her goggles. A small part of Jester that has zero sense and only concerns itself with keeping her friend right at her side where she can see her and soothe her and protect her worries. Pushes her to sit upright.

Across the dome, Jester sees Caleb rouse as Beau crosses the threshold of the hut.

‘Hmm,’ he says.

‘I think she’s going to pee,’ Jester whispers. Brings his eyes suddenly to Jester, searching in the dark. He settles on what he thinks is Jester—pretty close for being in near complete dark, the canopy thick overhead—and nods slowly.

‘I can’t leave,’ he tells her. ‘The hut will drop.’

Jester stands. Pats his shoulder as she passes to follow Beau out. She waits just beyond the boundary of the hut, seeing how Beau has only gone a short way from them, and waves a little when Beau returns, picking her careful path across the stone-and-grass clearing.

Beau’s steps falter and then pick up. When she gets closer, Jester can see a crooked, easy smile on her face and silently thanks Caduceus for knocking Beau out.

‘I’m fine,’ Beau insists when she’s close enough to be heard. ‘You—everyone doesn’t have to worry about me.’

Jester tilts her head up to return the smile, twice as sweet. ‘I’d like to see you try and stop us.’

Beau snorts.

‘Sleeping okay?’

‘Yeah. Whatever Cad gave me was a helluva knock out.’

‘Oh, you knew?’

‘Sort of. He told me it’d help,’ Beau explains, and seems mindlessly to accept the hand Jester holds out for her as they make their way back inside. ‘I didn’t think he meant it’d knock me on my ass in two seconds flat but,’ she shrugs.

‘And everything...else?’ Jester winces, hearing the obvious sidestep in the question. Beau’s eyes cut sideways to her; somehow, they still hold nothing in them but sleepy fondness.

‘You mean with my dad.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s—‘ Beau shrugs. Tilts her head hard to the side in an effort to crack her neck, release a little of the tension that has built up so much in her shoulders, spine.

‘Here, let me,’ Jester offers. Pats Beau down onto the bedroll once more and sits behind her, knees pressing into the soft of Beau’s hips. It’s nice with how incredibly cut Beau is that she still has that padding on her hips, the soft layer. Jester knows it’s to protect those vital organs but she also knows that things can be more than one thing at a time, so the softness can be protective and incredibly sweet all at once.

Jester moves closer, knees pressing dimples into it, thumbs brushing and then pressing into it as well. She is rewarded with a low grunt of pleasure as Beau realises what she intends, and the other girl lets her head fall forward on her neck, opening up her back for Jester to work. She rubs and massages until some of the knots at least feel looser, less incredibly tense, and finally as she reaches the top of Beau’s back she rubs her fingers soothingly over the jade tattoo where Beau has been pressing and rubbing and pinching the skin all day.

Beau hums, the sound vibrating into Jester’s knees and hand.

‘Better?’

‘Mm. Much.’

‘Good.’

Jester drags her hands down Beau’s back, rubbing gently now with none of the pressure of a massage. She leans forward to rest her forehead against Beau’s shoulder blade. Sighs.

‘Tired?’ Beau asks.

‘Yeah.’

Beau reaches back. Scritches blunt nails lightly on Jester’s scalp, around those itchy parts of her horns. ‘Go on, go back to sleep,’ she urges.

‘Are you?’ Beau is silent for a long moment. ‘Beau?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll sleep,’

‘Beau.’

‘I promise. I just—want to go over that weird ass prophecy thing again. God, he’s such a schmuck, having a fucking prophecy from a witch.’

Jester grunts unhappily. Wraps her arms around Beau from behind so she can’t reach out for her notebook. ‘In the morning, Beau.’

‘We’ll wanna head out straight away—‘

‘In the morning,’ she says again, no room for disobedience in her tone.

Beau tries anyway. ‘Just a minute—‘

‘I’m staying up for as long as you do,’ Jester tells her, changing tracks. Her accent thickens with a yawn. ��I’m really sleepy, Beau,’ she wheedles. ‘I promise we can look at it in the morning—Cad will make us breakfast and Fjord won’t be really awake until the sun comes up, you know that. Please?’ She yawns a second time for good measure, doesn’t realise until she’s halfway through it that it’s real. She rubs her head sleepily over the sharp bone of Beau’s shoulder. Knocks her forehead against it.

The girl sighs for a long moment, all the breath pushing out of her lungs. ‘Fine. Fine.’ She can’t help but laugh when Jester nuzzles against her shoulder, giggles at Beau’s reluctant acquiescence. ‘You’re lucky you’re cute.’

She lets Jester bear her down to the ground just as they are, Jester still hugging her, and collapses with a little huff. Wriggles around until she’s comfortable, enough to make Jester release her. Beau turns on her side to face her, hand pillowed under her cheek.

‘Beau?’ Jester’s eyes trace her profile, illuminated by the faint glow of the dome.

‘Mm.’

‘Are you scared?’

Beau’s breath slows, the only sign that she had heard. Finally, she says, ‘A bit. Yeah.’ And when Jester’s cool fingers sneak under her blanket to find Beau’s, Beau holds her hand. And they sleep.

#cr tag #tagging my stories #prompt fill