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hornyhornyhimbos · 1 year

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"Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy" ~ S. Harrington

Summary: Reader strikes up a conversation with Steve, who unbeknownst to her, is the best bull rider in all of Indiana. When the two strike up a conversation, it turns out this cowboy has plans for Reader.

Pairing: Bull Rider!Steve Harrington x AFAB!Reader

Word Count: 5,353

Content Warning: MINORS DNI (18+ content) PROTECTED piv sex, cowgirl AND missionary activities hehehe, maybe dubcon bc they were lowkey under the influence, one night stand, oral f!receiving, fingering f!receiving, overstimulation, multiple orgasms for reader, explicit language, steve def has a power kink, alcohol consumption, blasphemy toward the Greek Gods (sorry), nicknames (sweetheart, princess, baby; cowboy, god), maybe modern!au idrk, lmk if i missed anything!

Extra Notes: mayhaps i am a wh0re

Based On: some thots™️ that me and Georgia had (also slightly inspired by this reel i watched recently)

Originally Written: 03/12/2023 through 03/14/2023

Beta Read By: @dungeons-are-too-cold (literal bestie, love u so much for working on this fic with me)

stranger things masterlist can be found here!

hornyhornyhimbos ask box can be found here!

The air smelled of freshly poured booze and a hundred sweaty bodies as you walked into "The Lucky Shot."

You spotted the bar across the giant room, marveling at the glimmering and flashing of the lights as you made your way through the crowd. Your heart pounded in time with the country song that blared through the speakers.

You weren't really sure what possessed you to go to a random bar in a strange city during the middle of your work trip. Maybe it was your constant craving for a difference in your somewhat boring career. Maybe it was the secret wanderlust that often sat in the back of your mind. Maybe it was just because you wanted a really good margarita. Whatever the case, you sure as hell weren't regretting your decision when your eyes locked on him.

He was beautiful, the kind of beautiful only talked about in Greek mythology. From the brown strands that perfectly framed his chiseled face, to the hazel that swirled around his pupils, to the beige Stetson that sat upon his head, everything about this man was simply beautiful. If Apollo wore a cowboy hat, you were sure this would be him.

Your stomach did a somersault when you sat down on the only stool left, which conveniently happened to be next to this country god.

A couple moments later, your cocktail arrived, and you caught another glimpse of the room as you started drinking. Your eyes darted toward the dance floor, and when you spotted the mechanical bull on one side of the room, you felt mesmerized by it. Specifically, the thought of him on top of it. His hips swaying to the loud music, one hand holding onto his hat. There was no way it wouldn't be the prettiest sight imaginable.

"It's all in the hips, you know."

You turned to face the voice. It was thick like molasses, the perfect mixture of sweet and rough to your ears. "What?" you asked, your eyebrows furrowed together as you finally made eye contact with him.

"It's all in the hips," he repeated, pointing his chin toward the mechanical bull.

You fidgeted with your straw, positive that if you didn't keep your hands preoccupied, you'd tear his clothes off right there. "Uh-huh," you simply said, unsure if you could get anything else out.

"Really. You just have to know how to… angle them correctly."

Your mind raced with dirty thoughts at the emphasis he'd used. You managed to take a sip of your drink, trying your hardest to wash them away. "You seem pretty certain."

One of his eyebrows cocked upward almost as if to confirm your statement. "That, I am, ma'am," he said with a nod and a tip of his hat towards you.

"Hmm," you hummed, taking a long swig of your cocktail in hopes of wetting down the dryness of your throat. "Alright, Tom? Dick? Harry?"

"Steve," he clarified. No other name would do this cowboy justice.

"Steve," you repeated, and the word felt like honey to your lips, "why don't you show me?"

His arms crossed tightly in front of his chest, the tee shirt that covered his skin becoming extra taut. "What's in it for me?"

You shrugged, sipping down the last of your drink. "I suppose… whatever you want, cowboy."

"Hmm," he hummed, taking the last swig of his beer. "How 'bout this? If you can stay on longer, you get my number. If I stay on longer, I get yours."

You scoffed, your tongue darting out to lick your lips. "You're lucky you're cute," you chirped. "OK, cowboy, you're on."

He stood first, holding out a hand to help you down from the barstool. "After you, pretty lady."

You felt a rush of blood shoot through your body as he led you to the bull, and you'd be lying if you said you weren’t anxious.

"Ladies first," he smiled, lifting you up onto the mechanical bull. His hands felt rough and big on your hips, and you nearly fell off the bull before it even started up.

The operator counted you down from three, but even that wasn't enough to brace you. You held onto the handle for dear life, moving your pelvis to the best of your ability. What felt like an eternity later, you fell onto the blue mat, your heart nearly falling through the floor as you landed.

"Five seconds," he said with your back still flat on the cushiony floor. "Impressive."

He held out his hand once again, and you gladly took it. Suddenly, you were pulled up close to him. His eyes shot through you and it was then that you noticed the musky scent of his cologne. You had to collect yourself for a moment, excusing the clear sexual tension for pure competition."Let's see you do better, cowboy."

He slung his leg over the machine, gripping the handle and lifting his left hand into the air. You couldn't help but notice how thick the muscles on his biceps were. Get it together, you thought, but he just looked so natural on the bull. Like he belonged up there. You couldn't help the feeling that settled in your chest.

"Sound me off!" he shouted over the crowd.

You and the operator counted down in sync, and his hips practically assaulted the bull as the machine started up again. You were mesmerized by the movements. Now you definitely weren't regretting taking him up on his offer.

His hips twisted against the fake saddle, and you could just barely see the outline of his cock behind his giant belt buckle and those tight jeans. You watched the way he winded on the bull, wishing it was you he was humping like that.

Even as he fell off the bull, he looked beautiful. He landed flat on his back, letting out a triumphant, "WOOOOOP!" followed by a chuckle. "I believe I hit twenty seconds."

"No fucking way," you argued, turning toward the bull operator, who just answered with a confirming nod.

"How'd you do that?" you challenged.

"I told you, it's all in the hips, sweetheart."

Your arms crossed defensively, your eyes narrowing in on him. You chose to ignore the pleasant feeling building in your stomach with his new nickname for you. "Do you hustle all the women around here for their phone number?"

He folded his arms in front of his broad chest, almost mocking your stance. A stupid, taunting smile was plastered across his face too. "Hey, it's not on me if you don't know you're talking to Indiana's bull riding state champ."

Your mouth fell open in pure shock at his words. If any one person was made for that career, you thought, it would be him.

His eyebrows raised. "You seem surprised."

You gulped down the lump of disbelief in the back of your throat. "A little."

"Should've just read my belt buckle, sweetheart."

You had to fight the urge to look down at his crotch, which was unsurprisingly not the first time you'd had to fight that urge. It had definitely been one hell of a night so far.

"Go on," he instructed. "You know as well as I do that you're curious."

You exhaled a deep breath you'd been holding, eyes locked on the giant buckle as you forced them not to wander lower. Pain is temporary, victory lasts forever, it read, with the date of the championship engraved below.

You had to force yourself to meet his gaze again. "So what do they call you?"

"The Hawk," he replied nonchalantly. "What about you? What do they call you, sweetheart?"

"Y/N," you answered, not even trying to force your mouth closed. He spoke, and you answered, and somehow, you didn't care in the slightest.

You shook your thoughts away, willing yourself to focus on what had just gone down. "You know what? Not important," you blurted, shaking your head. "I want a rematch, Mr. The Hawk," you mocked.

You looped your arms in front of you once again. You wanted to challenge this man to anything you could find. Eventually your eyes landed on the dartboard. Jackpot.

After all, if Steve could hide the fact that he was a professional bull rider, you could hide the fact that you'd been playing darts with your father since you were old enough to hold one. "Darts."

He smirked, walking toward the dartboard. "Alright, sweetheart, you name the stakes this time."

"Fine," you rebutted with a smirk of your own, "whoever gets closer to the bullseye gets to ask the other a question. If they don't wanna answer, they have to take a shot."

He seemed pleased, giving you a crooked smile. "How 'bout this? We each get a Jack and Coke and take a nice big swig of it every time we don't answer."

Your eyebrows ruffled in confusion. "Why does it matter what we drink?"

He leaned in close to your ear, his breath hot on your skin. "I want you as close to sober as possible if things go in the direction I'm hoping for."

Your airway felt tight as you processed his words. You felt lightheaded when you answered, "Understandable."

He shot you another smile before heading back to the bar for a couple drinks. Your legs wobbled as you gathered the darts. You watched his hips sway in time to the music while he waited for the drinks, and all but drooled over the way his ass looked in those tight blue jeans. And I thought the front looked good, you smirked internally.

Soon enough, he came back with the drinks, placing them on the table next to the darts. "Two Jack and Cokes," he confirmed. "Like I said earlier, ladies first."

You tossed the dart, landing almost directly in the middle of the board. He threw next, landing a little above where yours was.

Your mind raced, carefully considering every question you could ever ask him. Truth be told, you wanted to keep winning, not only for the sake of being better than him at something, but also because you wanted to find out every little detail you could about this Country Apollo.

"Hmmm. How long have you been riding bulls?"

"Since freshman year of college," he explained. "I rode horses a lot of the time while I was growing up, did the whole bucking bronco thing, so I thought I'd test the waters. See if it was something for me. Guess it was, all things considered." He gestured to the belt again, almost like a taunt, but your eyes stayed on his, cold and steely.

You threw again, the dart sticking to the single area, prompting you to groan at how bad your aim suddenly was. It had to be the drawl of his voice distracting you.

His dart stuck in the single area as well, slightly closer to the middle of the board. "I believe that makes it my turn."

You nodded. "That it does, cowboy."

"What's your story? You here for business or pleasure?"

You planned on answering anyway, but still took a small sip of the cocktail to wet your lips. "This city? Business. This bar? Pleasure."

About a half hour passed of you spitting questions back and forth. Your drinks were both about halfway finished, mostly from sipping. You had both been pretty bold with your answers, and questions for that matter.

Your arm felt tired from all the dart throwing, and if you had to be honest, the more you found out about him, the more you wanted to jump his bones. "Alright, I don't know about you, but I'm about ready to get out of this place."

He chuckled at the hint of eagerness in your voice. "Me too."

"I say we throw one last dart."

His expression read one of confusion and curiosity. "What're the stakes this time, sweetheart?"

A rush of heat pooled in your stomach as you carefully thought about how to word your answer. Confidence came over you as you finally figured out what you wanted. "OK, cowboy. If you win, I take you back to my place," you started, stealing the Stetson right off his head and placing it on your own, "But if I win, and I will, you take me back to yours."

His tongue darted out to wet his lips, eyes dark as he said, "Well, princess, I think someone needs to remind you of the cowboy hat rule."

You nearly snorted. "What the hell is that?" Your heart fluttered at the nickname, secretly hoping he'd continue using it.

"You wear the hat," he said, taking his hat back, "you ride the cowboy it belongs to."

Your thighs closed together as discreetly as possible while you picked up the darts. You placed one in his hand, your fingers shaky as you released it.

Even in your desperate state, you managed to toss the dart at the board, the dart sticking almost directly in the middle of the bullseye. "Hmm, lucky shot."

Steve's face was one of confidence, even when he threw the dart and it landed in the single area. "Huh," he said plainly, "Guess we're going back to my place."

You were quite positive he'd fucked up on purpose, but chose to ignore for the sake of not staying in your bleak, boring hotel room again.

The ride to his place was absolute hell. His hand on your thigh, his muscles tight in the flannel he'd thrown on, the sultry country music playing quietly on his radio.

The comments Steve made the whole way certainly didn't help you either. He was "sweetheart" this and "princess" that, and he certainly didn't shy away from telling you every little thing he wanted to do to you, making sure you were still okay every once in a while. He even offered to drive you back to your hotel at any point, but you reassured him you wanted this. Probably even more than he did. Hell, if the vehicle hadn't been moving, you would've taken him right there in the front seat of his truck.

From the moment he unlocked the door, he couldn't keep his hands off you. His fingertips slipped through your belt loops immediately upon entering his house. He barely succeeded in kicking the front door closed behind him as his lips met your neck.

"Aren't you gonna give me a tour?" you teased, your hands slipping into his back pockets. Damn, the fit was tight.

He snickered into your shoulder. The vibration was absolutely intoxicating against your skin. "Well, this is the living room. And I fully plan on laying you back on that couch before the night is over."

You easily kicked off your sneakers, Steve letting out an aggravated groan as he remembered his boots. "But first I'm gonna have to sit on it to take off these goddamn boots of mine," he complained, plopping onto the couch in frustration.

You giggled as he started to pry one of them off. "I don't know," you sang. "Next time, you could just leave 'em on. It's kinda sexy."

His head shook in disbelief. "You keep saying things like that and you're gonna be the damn death of me, sweetheart."

You sat down on his lap, your ass winding down on his leg as your lips made contact with his. He struggled to hold you up and take his boot off at the same time. He decided on putting his focus solely on you, choosing to worry about his boots later.

You clutched his shoulders, maneuvering him to lie back on the couch. Your hips ground onto his thigh, and you let out a whimper against his lips. The friction was absolute heaven to your cunt, feeling your heat make contact with his even fully clothed.

His hands clung to your waist, guiding you along the fabric of his jeans. "Mmm," he hummed against your lips, "You're so good at this."

You let out an amused huff, moving from his lips to his jaw. You placed a hard kiss on the stubble. "Bet you're even better. You should teach me sometime. How to angle my hips correctly, that is."

His head fell back in pleasure. A soft moan fell from his lips, and you felt quite proud of the way he was falling apart beneath you.

His grip tightened on your hips as he pulled the two of you up from the couch. You whimpered in protest, but he just said, "Gotta finish the rest of the tour, princess."

He finished kicking his boot off before heading toward the next room. His lips made contact with your skin again as he began leading you through the rest of the house. His fingers returned to your belt hoops, tugging you ever so close. "This is the kitchen. Definitely planning on bending you over that table while we wait for breakfast to finish cooking in the morning."

He led you down the hall, stopping in front of the bathroom. "Gonna pound you against those tiles after we get done in my favorite room of the house," he said, cocking his head towards the shower.

Finally, he ushered you into the bedroom. His hands parted from your waist to flick on the lamp. "And this is my favorite room. The bedroom. The room where you're gonna ride me into the sunset. Or sunrise, all things considered."

His room was quite different from what you'd imagined. He had white walls, which you were sure would only enhance the sunlight in the morning when you woke up beside him. His white bedsheets and deep brown quilt looked so welcoming that you wouldn't even fight if he asked you to stay for the rest of your trip. Maybe even the rest of your life if he wanted.

Your stomach fluttered with pure want as he tossed off his flannel, followed by his shirt. All you could do was stand and watch him strip. His abs were nothing short of glorious, glowing in the pale bedroom light. You wanted to leave scratches and bites and bruises down them. You wanted to memorize every divot and ridge of his body.

His lips met yours again, and his hands were back on your body. They roamed down your torso, meeting the hem of your shirt. "Can I take this off?"

"Uh-huh," you breathed out, trying your hardest not to moan already.

His face fell teasingly. "Aw, you're gonna have to do better than that, sweetheart."

Your cunt clenched around nothing at his dominance. "Yes, Stevie. You can do whatever you want to me tonight."

His hips bucked into yours when you called him Stevie, persuading you to add it to your vocabulary for the night. He lifted the shirt from your body, his eyes going glassy as they fell on your boobs. "I'll take you up on that offer, princess."

His hand moved to his hat, tossing it onto the bed lightly. You took a second to admire his curls and waves, sure that you would get lost in them if he allowed you to. As he laid back on the bed, he held your hips and guided you to straddle his waist. With a soft movement of his fingers, he undid the clasp of your bra and slid it agonizingly slow off your body. His mouth made contact with one of your tits while he occupied the other with one of his coarse hands.

Your hands grasped at his jeans but struggled to undo the giant buckle. He chuckled, eliciting a mewl from you as the vibration rumbled against your body. He lifted your hips out of the way before undoing his jeans and kicking them off, his mouth not leaving yours. After finally getting out of his own pants, he moved onto yours.

He flipped the two of you over, your back arching away from the mattress. He sucked on your nipple as he slowly helped you out of your jeans and underwear. You kicked them away, nearly shivering as you heard them hit the floor. As his hands led you further up the bed, your head crashed into his pillows. They smelled like him and it made you smile.

"Ah-ah," he tutted as he moved down your body towards the foot of the bed. His lips met your mound for a second, leaving a soft kiss right above where you needed him most. "Don't get too comfortable laying down. You'll only be like this until I'm satisfied, yeah?"

"Y-Yeah," you answered, your nipples feeling neglected since he parted from them. You let your own hands wander towards your breasts, giving your nipples a tug, still desperate for friction there. Pure shock exploded in your body though as his lips met your thigh, inching toward your entrance.

Your hands flew to his hair on instinct, tugging on the soft strands as he licked a stripe up your cunt. "Stevie," you sighed, your grip tightening.

His mouth moved up to your clit, suckling on your sensitive bud. "Mmm," he praised against you, letting you know he was tasting the most delicious thing on the planet. The rumble of his voice egged your orgasm on and your legs began to shake already.

He left a trail of kitten licks from your clit to your hole, his tongue thrusting in the exact rhythm you needed it. Your legs tightened around him, and you found yourself struggling not to push him away.

"Hey," he stopped you, pulling your legs apart with his rough hands. "You remember what my belt says?"

You looked down at him between your legs to refocus yourself, meeting his beautiful eyes. Your senses were in absolute overdrive at his words. "Pain is t-temporary, victory lasts f-forever."

"I want that to be your mantra tonight, because I've still got a while with you yet."

You moaned pornographically as he met your core again, and this time his mouth was accompanied by his fingers. "Oh, god."

His lips parted from you, his fingers still working fast at your hole. "What was that? Couldn't hear you."

"Oh, my god." Your head fell back and eyes rolled as the digits brushed against your g-spot.

"That's right, princess," he said, licking another line up your puffy cunt. "I'm your god tonight."

Your first orgasm of the night rushed through your body, your essence gushing on his tongue. Apollo had nothing on this man, you were sure of it.

He didn't give up though and continued sucking hard on your clit. Your body convulsed at the stimulation. Your hands clung to his hair, struggling to push him away. "Oh, god, Steve!"

He removed his lips for a split second. "You tell me to stop and I’ll stop," he said, his tone of genuine concern.

"No, god, please don't stop!" you cried out. Your grip was becoming even tighter on his hair.

"Then I need you to remember the words, baby." His mouth absolutely assaulted your pussy, but you were sure you didn't want anything else at that moment.

"Pain is temporary, victory lasts forever," you repeated, your feet digging into his shoulders where they dangled. "Pain is temporary, victory lasts forever."

You could tell that hearing the phrase fall from your lips was affecting him just as much as he was affecting you. You watched his hips roll against the mattress below, desperately searching for any friction he could find. Still, he was dedicated to pulling one more orgasm out of you with just his mouth and hands.

He stayed like that until you came again, and a string of profanities was all you could manage to say. "Fuckfuckfuck," you muttered, your walls pulsing around his tongue.

"Oh, god, please!" you begged, his mouth licking up every last bit of your taste.

His mouth moved up to yours as he hovered above your body, and to say that your taste on his tongue was anything less than sexy would've been a lie. "I think I got you good and loosened up for me, princess. You ready for the fun part?"

You mewled, your hips bucking at nothing as your hands met his skin. One of your hands slipped into his boxers, and already you could tell that he was big.

He hovered over you, his legs straddling your hips, as he reached toward the nightstand. You had only just realized how long his limbs were. He pulled out a condom and slipped it into your hand. "OK," he instructed, "Go ahead. Open it."

You eagerly complied with his simple command. He made quick work of pulling his boxers off and tossing them into the pile with the rest of the discarded clothing as you made an effort to tear open the foil. Your mouth watered at the sight of him, thinking about what it must be like to take all of him down your throat. He was just so big, and you knew one taste would be all it took to have you utterly addicted.

As he settled above you again, you finally pulled the rubber out of the packet. "Now put it on me," he demanded.

Before you managed to inch forward and take him between your lips, he moved your hands to his cock, helping you roll the rubber on. I guess I’ll just have to wait until morning, you thought to yourself.

Rolling the condom onto his length was definitely not an easy task. Between the thickness of his dick and the shakiness of your hands, it seemed impossible. After what felt like an eternity, you finally managed to get it on him, completely captivated at the way his length felt in your palms. You gave it a few experimental strokes and the groans you dragged from his lips were beautiful.

While you finished up with the condom, Steve reached into the nightstand again, grabbing a bottle of lube. He squeezed some onto his fingers, slipping them inside you once more. You moaned loud enough that it echoed off his walls and a chuckle fell from his lips. "You think that feels good. Just wait for what I've got planned for you."

He moved to lie flat beside you, squeezing a couple drops of lube onto your fingers. "Lube me up?" he asked.

There was no way you could ever say no to that. Your hand met his dick, massaging the liquid down the shaft. A groan tumbled from his lips, and you wanted to play it on repeat for the rest of your life.

He grabbed your waist and pulled you on top again, forcing you to face him. His hands squeezed at your love handles as he cooed, "Come here, baby."

Your mouth felt like it had been sewn shut as he guided you into his lap. He grabbed the previously abandoned Stetson, now setting it on your head and looking you over like he could absolutely devour you. "Go ahead, cowgirl. Giddy up."

You keened as you sunk down onto him, barely getting the tip inside you before your head fell back. "Oh, my god."

"That's it, princess, you got it," he cooed, lowering you down his length. You whined as he slowly reached the hilt, his cock surely hitting your cervix.

His hands carried you, rocking your hips in the perfect rhythm he needed. His mouth fell into an open 'o' as you rutted against him. "Just like that."

His cock was made for splitting you open, you were convinced. The only word for the sensual, blissful feeling he brought you was heaven. You'd died and gone to heaven, and this was Apollo you were looking at.

He pounded into you, but the stimulation was becoming just too much. Your body felt heavy as your movements stilled, leaving Steve to do all the work.

The thrusts of his hips slowed as he noticed the absolutely exhausted expression on your face. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"Too much," you pouted. "Feel worn out."

His hands moved up to your cheeks before pulling you down for a long kiss. He smelled of sweat and what was left of his cologne, and the aroma did nothing to aid your senses.

"Do you need to stop? It's fine if you do, Promise," he reassured you. "I put you through a lot, huh, sweetheart?"

You shook your head. "Uh-uh. Jus' need a little help. Please?"

He pulled away, pushing some stray hairs behind your ear. "Want me to take care of the rest, baby?"

You managed to nod before he flipped you both over, a whimper falling from your lips at the friction. His hips resumed their previous tempo, his eyes screwing shut as you involuntarily squeezed around him. You smiled up at him from your new position. You were happy to keep going but even happier that you didn't have to hold yourself up any longer. Steve had it, had you.

"You poor little thing," he taunted after one particularly rough thrust. "Needed me to take the reins for you, huh?"

Your head bobbed in something close to the answer he was looking for. Your hands fell above your head, and Steve moved to hold them both in one of his large palms.

"Should've known you wouldn't last long," he teased, fucking into you harder. Your eyes nearly rolled into the back of your head from the stimulation. "Considering that sad bull riding attempt."

His lips met yours again as he continued pounding into your core. He controlled the kiss too, his lips rough against your trembling mouth. His tongue searched your mouth, giving you everything you didn't know you needed.

He moved from your lips to your ear, leaving a ghost of a kiss on the lobe. "Just needed Stevie to take over for a bit, yeah?"

"Mhm," you murmured, willing your hips to roll toward his once more. You tried so hard, but this time, you were sure you didn't have the strength left in you. You nipped at his neck, your way of letting him know you were still with him.

"Shhh, you're OK, princess," Steve cooed, "I got you."

His next statement was quite the juxtaposition from his previously quiet voice. This time, his voice was rough, and he couldn't help himself from babbling out, "Shit, I'm close!"

Eager to help him finish, you tried to meet his movements with a couple sloppy thrusts of your own. After all, you were supposed to be riding him. You felt bad for not holding up on your end of the cowboy hat rule. However, Steve moved a hand to your hips to still your movements. He left a distracting bite on your collarbone before kissing over the spot. "Told you I'd take care of the rest, baby. I promise I've got you, but you just gotta trust me.”

You managed to nod again, and your body jerked as you fell apart beneath him. "Oh, Stevie," you gasped. "Thank you."

"Oh, you feel so good," he rasped, his cock twitching inside of you. "Shiiiiittt!" Chasing down his own pleasure, his hips canted as he guided yours, desperately riding out both of your highs.

He fell limp on top of you, and his now softening cock left you feeling full and thankful. You still weren't sure what possessed you to go to a random bar in a strange city in the middle of your work trip, but you definitely weren't regretting it when this god of a man had been there seemingly waiting just for you.

He flipped the two of you over one last time, his hands settling on the small of your back as you rested on top of him.

"I guess the song was right," he sighed. His chest rose and fell in a heavy rhythm as he pecked your scalp, his fingers drawing soft circles on your skin.

"Hmm?" you managed to hum against his pec, his torso warm and inviting.

He left another soft kiss on your head. The feeling of his lips was to die for. "You really should save a horse and ride a cowboy."

OK I KNOW I DON'T USUALLY LEAVE LIL MESSAGES LIKE THIS ON THIS BLOG BUT THERE'S NO WAY I CAN'T THIS TIME

This fic... yawl. Me and Georgia stayed up til 5 am two nights in a row editing this for y'all. When I tell y'all... this might be my favorite fic I've ever written!!! Gosh, this was so much fun and I wish I could experience writing it all over again, even if it has only been like 3 days.

Again, huge thank you to Georgia for working this fic to its fullest potential. I am so obsessed with how this turned out and I am so thankful you helped me with it!!

-> taglist: @dungeons-are-too-cold @rupsmorge @writer-in-theory @esoltis280 @liberhoe

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vellichor-of-the-solivagant · 7 months

Text

How to Plant Snapdragons (pt. 3)

Task Force 141 + König + Keegan x Female Criminal!Reader (except Captain Price, because he'll be like a father to the bunch and König and Keegan won't appear until later on in the story)

CHAPTER SUMMARY: You tell Ghost, Gaz, and Soap why you were in prison.

You are currently reading Chapter 3. Here is Chapter 2 and the Masterlist!

CONTENT WARNING: Strong Language WORD COUNT: 3k

A hand slammed on the table across you, and Kyle's booming voice echoed in the dining hall. "I've heard of the news!"

You sat with Johnny, while the Lieutenant was on the other side, where Gaz had also pulled himself a seat. You had your usual bright and smiley face that could rival the sun. You seemed as though you had just successfully run away from the base, skipping on some puddles.

You faced Gaz and smirked, knowing that your glorious feat had traveled the speed of light across this realm of gunpowder and tanks.

There weren't many people in the place, considering it was late afternoon, but it already seemed night because of the dark sky. You had changed clothes and eaten a portion of food before your superiors got to find you after you managed to slip away from them again. There were only a handful of soldiers scattered in the hall—considering it was a couple of hours past lunch—chatting their free time away and keeping their ears and eyes sharp for gossip. Gossip meant you.

You kept your legs crossed the entire time, in an attempt to hide the monitor. Every time it beeped and lighted up, you couldn't help but cringe. You hated being the center of attention and this thing that technically screams, 'Hey, keep your eyes on me, I might drive a tank into the base, uwu! Or I’m going to steal a bird and go HASTA LA VISTA BITCHES AND BROS AND NON-BINARY HOES IMMA GO HELICOPTER HELICOPTER!’ made it worse.

Except you didn’t know shit how to drive those things.

(That can’t stop you)

"Heard you got four combos," Kyle said, leaning over the table. "Two critical hits on each ball, eh?"

Ghost made a face under his mask, rolling his eyes. "Fuckin' hell."

"Aye, and a knock-out for his dignity," Soap shook his head with a couple of clicks of his tongue. "Poor guy vomited in the gym after the bloody massacre of his future children."

You giggled at his comment and shifted your gaze back down to the sheets of paper you had finally stolen. If it can be called that because the Lt. and Soap were staring at you the entire time you snatched them, along with a pen for fuck's sake in Price's office, before bouncing.

"I was planning on teaching the kid a lesson but . . . what the fuck are you—" Johnny glanced over his shoulder, wide eyes darting around the canteen before setting them back on the papers you focused on. You were drawing a bunch of nude dudes, not even hesitating to add nipples and balls and dicks—why were they so big, though? "Why are ya drawing that?!" He yelled in a whisper, his large hands covering your paper.

Both Ghost and Gaz peered over the gaps between his fingers and looked away the moment they saw someone else's balls. Then, Gaz quickly put his hand over the rest of your drawings his fellow Sergeant couldn't cover as a soldier passed by your table.

"Anatomy?" You waved a hand, raised a brow, and shook your head as though he didn't get something so obvious. "Renaissance art?"

Soap frowned at you. "I'm pretty sure Renaissance paintings don't have this much nudity, and they surely weren't holdin’ one another's cocks and lookin’ like they’re enjoying it!”

"Well, yes and no, sir." You tried to push their hands away but fuck those muscles staying like fucking statues. "Wanna know why nudity was common during that era? It is to revive Roman and Greek art, which focuses on the human body and nature. And they believe that without any clothing, they can see the purest form of the human body."

"That still doesn't explain that they're fucking holding—"

"Shush!" You put a hand over Kyle's face. "They're feeling each other's pureness, Gaz. They're feeling each other."

"The fuck—"

You slapped your other hand over Soap's mouth, gazing intently at him. "It's called an art style, Soap. An art style. A preference.”

"Well, other than ya have a peculiar preference, your drawings are well mint," Ghost claimed as he carefully took one of your drawings under Kyle’s hand and closely took in the details of the person you drew. The shadows and shades on the man’s visage made it seem like it was a photograph of a marble statue, which made him feel as though he was standing before it. You flawlessly captured the feelings and emotions—a life that he didn’t know would be possible with a pen.

He put it down and slid it back to you. “What did ya take in college?”

You brought your hands down from the sergeants’ faces and picked up the pen. “I majored in Civil Engineering." You spun the pen between your fingers and looked down at your drawing with a small smile.

You had traveled around, jumping from one country to another after you graduated. Met several interesting people, learned unforgettable and valuable things, and got into trouble with them. But that was what made your life colorful, painting over sceneries you had witnessed, covered in red. That, until you caught a bald eagle’s eye while he was on the hunt.

Also, what the fuck is ‘well mint’?

"And what got a bloody engineering student in prison?” Kyle questioned in a low voice. “Can’t be the one I heard around.”

Ghost glanced at him with a frown, while Soap glared at him, shaking his head as a warning, and Gaz in response, made an ‘o’ with his mouth, nodding.

“I blew up the university because the Dean said if the campus caught fire, she would let everyone pass,” You said, which made their heads whip in your direction in an instant, while you started to sketch on a clean sheet. “I was desperate for a good grade, but I didn’t know the Dean would be in her office as the fire spread.”

Johnny gaped at you in disbelief. “Bloody hell, for a grade?”

Gaz raised a brow. “Seriously?”

You snorted. “No.”

Both the sergeants made a face, whereas Ghost let out a low scoff.

“But I have truly always cared for grades,” you started again, “even though they say high grades aren’t everything and they are just numbers, I used to think they were everything. Then, whenever I see people partying around in clubs, I begin to get jealous of them because they seem free like they don’t have anything to worry about.” You glanced at them and found they were listening attentively, so you continued. “One night, I said screw this shit and went in a club.”

“Well, sometimes, ya just have to let loose, you know?” Soap said, leaning back against the chair. “We also go to the pub once in a while to drink.”

“And all hell breaks loose,” Ghost claimed, eyeing Soap knowingly.

Your brows raised. Oh?

“Shut up, Lt.” He glared at him, pouting a bit, which Ghost ignored. Then, Soap put his elbow on the table and propped his chin on his palm, then turned his head to you. “So, ya went to the club?”

“Yeah, met a couple of guys,” you copied his actions, “seduced those couple of guys.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Had a sloppy make-out in the bathroom.”

“Damn, aren’t ya fast?” Gaz asked, smiling.

You turned to him. “Went to the hotel . . . and drunk their blood.”

Soap straightened up in a blink. “Awa' an’ bile yer heid. I thought it was real this time!”

“Oh, damn it.” Gaz slapped the table.

You laughed, throwing your head back in amusement.

Ghost crossed his arms, tilting his head a bit. “You have your way with stories, don’t you?”

“I’m an avid fan of fiction. Either I write it or read it. It’s a way for me to escape reality.” You tapped on one of your sketches. “And if I can’t read or write it, I draw it. Although, sometimes, it also stresses me out when I can’t get things right.” You sighed, furrowing your brows lightly.

They stared at you for a moment, then shared glances, silently deciding it was believable enough, considering your request for books to Laswell and your eagerness to draw.

“Alright, what’s next?” Gaz spoke, motioning a hand. “You found a doll that turned out to be alive and a killing machine.”

You grinned, placing your pen down and riding along his joke. “Preyed on a bunch of children, led them in a sewer with candies and balloons.”

“Isn’t that Chucky and It?” Johnny asked, raising a brow.

“Didn’t expect you famous gentlemen would know those movies.” You nodded in acknowledgment and pointed at him. “Well, your turn.”

“A doll ya found in the basement of yer new house turned out to be possessed,” Soap fired, pointing back at me. “Why is it always dolls, though?”

You shrugged.

“Scared of dolls, Soap?” Gaz wiggled his brows with a teasing smile.

His fellow sergeant rolled his eyes. “The fuck I would be.”

Then, the three of you faced Ghost, who had remained silent and still on his chair. His eyes went back and forth between you three before he sighed. “Ya killed people with a chainsaw.”

You three nodded at him and you commented, “Classic.” Before you could say another word, you noticed Simon finishing something out of his pockets, a phone that you oh-so wanted to still just so you could read some fanfictions on the net. Soap and Gaz followed his actions.

At this rate, you were just going to make your own fanfiction to keep your sanity.

“Come on.” Soap nudged at you and stood up, making the chair creak.

The fun finally lasted and seemed something that you dreaded to do came sooner than expected.

You gathered and rolled your drawings carefully, and stuck the ballpen onto your bun, before following them out of the chow hall.

Laswell’s voice echoed from the laptop on Captain Price’s table, and you and the 141 stood in front of it, listening to the intel she had gathered. The map of Brazil appeared on the screen, making you raise a brow as it zoomed onto the mountains, which were covered in houses instead of nature.

“Supposedly our target, Fabrício, is in his base in Rio de Janeiro, we’ll finally be able to know his deals with Hassan.” Price crossed his arms and glanced at the rest of the group. “However, there’ll be mostly likely civilians around the area, so we have to watch our fire.”

“Rio de Janeiro . . .” You mumbled and put your fingers under your chin, which caught their attention. You faced the Captain, who had a questioning look at you. “Uh,” you raised a hand as though you were going to answer a teacher’s question, “may I say a humble suggestion?”

He nodded. “Speak.”

You gulped. “I may know some things about Rio that could bring us advantages."

Ghost fully turned his body at you. “What’re ya getting at?”

“During this time of the year, Rio holds their famous Carnival for a week every night until dawn. Millions of people go there, so their streets will be mostly empty or people will be in their houses. Yet at the same time, if you wander around at night in their streets, you’ll get targeted by criminals.” You pointed at the image of your target, a man with short curly hair and dark skin. “If that guy deals with international transactions, he’ll be most likely a boss of the local outlaws and militia or protected by them. So, at times of major events like this, eyes will be off them and they’ll be able to move freely.” You brought your hand down. “But so can we.”

Price’s brows furrowed a bit and he looked at the map on the screen. “That’s . . . good thinking.” He tapped on the pad of the laptop and said, “Laswell, I’d like to—”

“Damn, lassie, how’d you know that?” Johnny questioned, a grin appearing on his lips as he put his arm around your shoulders again.

Meanwhile, Price proceeded to discuss the changes in the mission with Kate.

“I’m pretty interested in Rio because of the Carnival, yeah, and the statue of Christ the Redeemer and their beaches.” You crossed your arms to stop yourself from wrapping your arms around him as well and take the chance to squeeze his chest, biceps, and cakes. “Also, they are famous for being good at football and beach volleyball. I used to play some sports during my school days and they’re one of those.”

“Well,” Gaz also dropped his arm around you, but on your lower back, making you gulp, “aren’t you talented, miss? Wouldn’t be surprised if you're pretty famous on your campus.”

You sighed. “Don’t call me ‘miss’, and no, I’m not famous. I like solitude to be honest."

Soap pulled you a bit closer. “Ah, like the Lieutenant until he shows off his skills, aye?”

“I am not a show-off.” Ghost glared at you three. “Also, there are several disadvantages to your strategy.”

“Yessir.” You nodded and the sergeants let go of you. You raised three of your fingers. “The target is in their home ground, they know the place like the back of their hand and the difference between our numbers."

"And that's exactly why we have a backup,” Price declared in a serious voice, followed by beeps coming from the laptop which caught your attention, and General Shepherd’s profile popped out, meaning he was listening to the discussion or might be watching you without seeing him.

You pursed your lips, running your tongue through the light cracks, but kept your eyes strained on the screen. You put your hands behind you, squeezing them as hard as you could. You couldn’t miss any detail about the mission that might endanger the 141.

“We will have two teams to corner Fabrício in his base, front and back,” Laswell began once again, bright lines lighting up alleyways on the map, leading up to the mountains of houses. The first profiles to appear in bright boxes were Ghost and Soap. “Bravo team will go through this street.” Then, the Captain, Gaz, and finally, yours, appeared on the screen following a green line. “And the Alpha team will go this way.”

You let out a silent sigh in relief, yet at the same time in disappointment. You’d like to enjoy the calmness of the Captain and Gaz, and their light jokes, but you also wanted to go ape shit with Soap and make dad jokes along the way with Ghost. But what irked you more was the picture of you they used—with the eyebags and pimples. Couldn’t they put a better one for fuck’s sake?

Then, a familiar American’s profile came into view, along with several men in one box, making you frown and yell thousands of curses in your head. “Once we have Fabricio, the Shadow Company will help subdue the militia, and Nikolai will go around in helo for exfil.” As soon as Kate finished explaining, she and the General popped out in a split screen.

“Most importantly, we want Fabrício alive for interrogation,” Shepherd concluded, serious eyes darting at the 141, then settled on you. “And how are you?”

It was hard to put on pants with the monitor on. The food wasn’t any better than in prison. People thought you were a threat to be burned alive if you did something wrong before them. People thought you were a piece of meat. A dog to tame. A whore for trying to become close with the 141. A woman who knew nothing but play around.

Yet you smiled at him, despite all the thoughts that rushed to your mind. Curses that you wanted to scream at him. “Still trying to get used to things around here, sir.” You squeezed your hands, nails digging into your skin.

Gaz glanced at you and noticed your stiffness. He kept his face expressionless, seeing how you looked, and slowly, his eyes made their way to your hands.

Meanwhile, Ghost walked and sauntered behind Price's desk, keeping his eyes on the back of the laptop.

“Really?” He leaned back in his chair, head tilting to the side. “I thought you easily adapt to different environments. Has Laswell spoiled you?”

Fuck him.

“I did not do such a thing, General,” Laswell was quick to retort, a sigh escaping her lips.

She, in fact, did. But that was a story for other times.

You forced out a laugh, flowing along her lie. “If she had, she would have given me a phone, sir.”

Shepherd nodded in acknowledgment. “Very well. I hope 141 is treating you well?”

You opened your mouth to answer, but Soap was faster to speak. “Of course, sir. Now we know one of the reasons why ye pulled her out of prison.” He put a hand on your shoulder, a bright grin appearing on his handsome face, yet you kept your eyes on the bald eagle. “She’s a fun one.”

You clenched your hands harder and planted your nails deeper. Motherfucking hell, Soap, don’t call me fun.

As though spiders crawled down your skin, you shivered.

With Soap's hand still on your shoulder, he felt you shudder.

Shepherd smiled, something that you didn't expect to see. "I see. But I did not put her in the 141 so you could have some fun."

"Ah, yes sir," Soap removed his hand from you and felt a twitch under his eye, "I'm just saying that—"

"She's a criminal, Sergeant Mactavish. The only reason she's out is because she'll be able to help 141. She's a tool you can use, and she knows that herself. So, make sure she continues being good and obedient." With that, his voice went static and soon faded, his picture disappearing from the laptop's screen.

"We will discuss the mission again later on," Laswell quickly filled the silence. "Take care, all of you."

"Thank you, Kate," Price said, turning the laptop in his direction.

"Anytime."

The Captain shut the laptop closed.

Chapter 4 is here!

You can also read the series on AO3 here!

Taglist: @yyiikes, @the-faceless-bride, @sae1kie

Note: Hope you guys like this Chap and don't forget to comment because I eat them when I have a bad day! Also, I've been thinking about this, would you guys like the one and only Keegan P. Russ as one of our men here?

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lilislegacy · 7 days

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Positive Percabeth imagines :))) (though ngl this is mostly about their daughters but still)

I imagine that Percy and Annabeth will have twin daughters, and they’ll choose names based off their loved ones. One daughter is named Zoe Elizabeth, after Zoe the Hunter, and Rachel Elizabeth Dare. The second daughter is named Natalie Grace, after Annabeth’s aunt Natalie (and also bc as einherjars Magnus and Alex will never be able to have kids so it’s also for Magnus’ sake) and Grace bc it’s the last name of both Thalia and Jason obviously but it’s a way to honor Jason especially. Natalie Grace is nicknamed Tali, pronounced Tah-lee, and I’ve always pronounced Thalia as Tah-lee-uh, so that way they’re honoring her too. Zoe has dark brown hair and grey-blue eyes, and Tali has dirty blonde hair and blue-green eyes.

Percy and Annabeth lived in New Rome for several years after finishing college, and they both helped create sacred temples and statues and groves and places for all the gods, as Percy started, Jason expanded, and Apollo basically vowed to complete. Annabeth of course did most of the brainstorming and research and building stuff, but Percy was actually the one who would ask various gods and be like “okay Nereus. These are some ideas we have to honor you. Can you tell me which you like best?” And then that god would send him a dream giving varying amounts of detail and instruction as to what exactly they wanted. So the twins, Zoe and Tali, were raised in New Rome for their first several years.

Meanwhile at Camp Half-Blood, they have expanded to have cabins for legacies, and they also started an academy, called Olympus Heights Academy. As more demigods were claimed and now legacies too, it made sense to start a school. When Tali and Zoe are eight, their parents decide to move back to Camp Half-Blood and become teachers. Annabeth predictably tries to teach too many classes at first but eventually settles on just teaching a couple classes, probably Ancient Greek history and language bc we know she taught Percy and also close combat with a knife. Percy teaches swords fighting obviously.

Tali and Zoe are at this point beginning to learn their abilities. Both of them can breathe underwater. Zoe can control water, ocean water most easily but with some degree of control over fresh water. She is an expert in close combat fighting. She is skilled in strategy and has an affinity for the arts. She is a natural sailor. Natalie can communicate with horses and their cousins. She has siren powers, similar to charmspeak, but water based and music/voice linked. She is an expert at swords fighting. She is skilled in craftsmanship and strategy and has an affinity for academics. She is a natural sailor.

You noticed the siren powers? I headcanon that Sally is a third generation legacy of Venus, and Percy didn’t really get anything from Venus except good looks, extra ability to learn Latin, and extra meddling in his love life, but Tali did. I saw someone make a post about, what if daughters of Poseidon could sometimes get siren like abilities? I loved that idea, and had to include that in one of the twins. Normally a second generation legacy of Poseidon wouldn’t ever have siren abilities, but bc of the distant relation to Venus, Tali did get that ability.

The twins will of course go on their own death defying quests and adventures. Percy and Annabeth will happily be living in Camp Half-Blood, visiting Sally and the rest of the Jackson-Blofis family as much as they can.

Oh I also have another funny idea. I actually woke up one morning earlier this week daydreaming about it. Percy and Annabeth, after college, are trying to plan their wedding. But they keep getting into fights about small random things. And this is so out of character for them. Eventually Annabeth realizes that this is Hera meddling and at first she’s furious but eventually tries to reason with Hera. Hera eventually gives specific instructions on something that she wants to be created at Camp Half-Blood to honor her. I’m not entirely sure what it is yet, but whatever it is, it’s gonna be nearly impossible to create. But Annabeth has to do it if she wants to get married to Percy. So she struggles for months with this building project, finally it’s nearly done. Then Hera says that she will allow them to marry, but they have to be married nearby whatever it is that Annabeth had to create, and their marriage will be dedicated to Hera and will act as the way to consecrate the sacred building thing to Hera. So now Chiron has to allow demigods to get married at Camp Half-Blood, allow the queen of the gods to officiate it, and he can’t keep their mortal family from the wedding! So now there are mortals in Camp Half-Blood. But it all goes well, but now a tradition has begun of campers wanting to get married by Hera’s sacred thing, and now Chiron has to deal with weddings and mortal families and he’s seriously annoyed at Hera but he can’t show it bc she’s the queen of the gods.

Hope you like these headcanons!!! :)))

~wolfyboi

thanks for the ask wolfyboi!

awww, these are all so fun and cute! i love thinking about their future and their kids! it just being me so much joy. they deserve to be happy more than anyone. i do hate hera so the thought of them having to dedicate their marriage to her makes me a little queasy, but the idea of chiron having to deal with a ton of people getting married at the camp made me giggle

this put a smile on my face. thank you!! ❤️❤️

#i love you guys #pjo #answered

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physalian · 25 days

Text

The Fantasy Language Translation Matrix

Whether you intend to write your own full-blown lexicon with different verb tenses and formal vs informal language, need unique words for spellwork, or just need new names for all your foreign places, behold… the Physalian patented Fantasy Language Translation Matrix.

(I kid. I have no idea if I’m the first to come up with this)

**Disclaimer!** After rolling out your fresh new vocab off the word assembly line, make sure you google it and that it doesn’t already exist and mean something you don’t intend.

Step 1: Pick your Derivative

You can make it sound completely foreign and like total gibberish, but I find it easier for you and other people to read if they have some real-world reference to compare it to, and so they have a clue for which pronunciation rules to rely on. For example: I did not know who René Descartes was my freshman year of high school. His last name was in my algebra book, and I, thinking he was Greek like so many other ancient mathematicians, pronounced his name as if he were Greek “Des-kart-ees.” I got made fun of.

Spare your readers the humiliation.

So say I want a vaguely… Russian/Latin/Italian influence. As opposed to French. Cool. That’s my starting point.

Step 2: Reorder the most common letters from English to your new language

In English, the average use of the standard alphabet by letter in order is this:

Ignore your vowels for a second. I don’t use charts like this on the regular, I use the Wheel of Fortune method and focus on RSTLNE, then go from there. I also want to make sure this isn’t a complete 1:1 ratio so it’s not super obvious I’m just juggling letters around, so I’ll knock out some “duplicate” letters and swap out singular letters for specific sounds.

The goal of this isn’t to stare at two existing language matrices and perfectly match them up, it’s to take the most common sounds and letters in English and make them new, common sounds in your new language, to sound more uniform and like you have a real etymology.

And I end up with this:

This might look a little confusing on how I got from A to Z so the basics:

All my vowels remain in the same place, they just get juggled around so I don’t end up with 8 consonants next to each other and word garbage

My “duplicate” letters are combined so I have more room for the new sounds, like c/k, f/ph/gh, h/wh, s/z. The new sounds then get the spare letters I had left over

Common english suffixes get reduced down so the pattern isn’t as obvious

If you want to include accent marks, this is your chance

I wanted to really emphasize the long “e” and long “i” sounds, so those got extra attention

Step 3: Translating

Oftentimes this is not perfect, or you end up with a word that just doesn’t fit the rest of your new vocabulary, because English is the bastard lovechild of German, Latin, Danish, and French.

I start with English, usually, but if the English word is too short or too long, I translate it first into another language, like Spanish, and go from there. Like “bus” vs “autobus”.

Using your matrix, go one by one. Let’s use a word like “letter”.

English: L-E-T-T-E-R

New: T-A-C-C-A-Z

Step 4: Polishing

So now I have my new word: “Taccaz”

Which is serviceable. I can throw an accent on either A or fiddle with the Z. I can start with “carta” instead and end up with “kizci”. The matrix is just a starting point. It’s designed to streamline the process when I’m otherwise feeling uncreative and in a rush, and it moves very quickly when I need to come up with full phrases and sentences that someone would actually say.

Step 5: Full sentences

This is only if you’re really digging deep and not coming up with the occasional fantasy curse word or new name for your fantasy land/realm/noun etc.

For this you’re going to need lots of tables. I based mine off romance languages because I know Spanish and romance languages make sense. This is where you decide how many pronouns, if any, you’re going to use, how the infinitive changes based on past, present, or future tense, how many nouns the word references, etc.

This is… a lot. Way more than you’d ever need for your manuscript. Ever. But I did it just for my own sake. Does it get long? Yes. Does it get tedious? Yes. The point here is to have little pre-manufactured word bytes you can plug and play with, with as little mental effort as possible so you can save it for the rest of your work.

I also came up with very common words already conjugated, like “to be” so I can just glance and type without having to remember to take “is” and go through the process over and over again.

Which means that I can take an entire sentence and translate it to my new language in about two minutes.

English: The payoff is worth it, this is so satisfying. New, roughly: Nu kioyb ela fyzip ne, iski ela valo nicenbalaev.

Of course, you can keep tinkering until you get something that’s easier on the eyes (I’ve been working with this language for years so I can read it pretty well), but not all languages are smooth and pretty and simple.

To be frank: Most readers will just gloss over this stuff anyway, but it shows that you put in the effort and it enhances the lore and the immersion when you do this. At least in the written medium. You can’t ignore it if this is meant to be in a screenplay.

Is this what a language professor would do or recommend? Probably not, I have no idea. Does it work? Yes. I have a fully functioning grammatical system where any input can give me a legible output.

To make this yourself, just change the order of the letters around, adjust your shortcuts, and come up with your own common sounds for those last two rows. The conjugation matrix is where you can really make it distinct, assuming you are basing yours off a romance language, which you don't have to.

—

And there you have it!

Don’t forget to vote in the dialogue poll before it closes!

#writing resources #writing advice #writing tips #writing tools #writing a book #writing #writeblr #fantasy #sci fi #fictional language #language #world building

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bloodynosesarejustlikeroses · 1 year

Text

𝐌𝐲 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐫

✦; ꒰Dick Grayson ✗ Reader꒱ ;;✦ ↴

✎ . . . Summary ⊹≫ The human world was unknown to you, so wonderful, exciting, and terrifying at the same time. So many things to discover, to learn, it may sound intimidating for a young amazon like you, luckily, you got your own "Steve Trevor" to accompany you in the battle... Or something like that...

➬ Word count ⸼ ೃ ⊹ 5,722 words.

;; "Warnings" ¡! ❞ . Mention of wounds.

⿻ – ❝ Notes〻*ೃ༄. Hello, to the anon who requested this, you didn’t specify which deity, so I chose to use as a base the Greek Goddess "Nike" (Yes, like the brand). Nike was the goddess of speed, strength, and victory. She could grant humans the strength and speed needed to be victorious in any task they undertook.

ೃೀ꒲Ko-fi !¡ ⌇ ⁺ ◦ If you enjoy my writing and would like to support me feel free to leave me a tip on my Ko-fi. It's something I will always remember and be grateful for, I assure you.

(English is my second language, so if something sounds out of place or is misspelled, please let me know).

— This is the last one. — You said as you tied up the last of the thieves.

The team had been assigned to stop a bank robbery, not the kind of mission the team was used to, but a crime was a crime.

— We must secure the perimeter to make sure there are no more of them. — Aqualad said, ready to give another order but was interrupted by a certain red-haired boy.

— I suggest going in duos to make it quicker. — Kid Flash suggested clearly wanting to get somewhere. — Me with Aqualad, Superboy with M'gann, Artemis with Zatanna… — Dick knew where this was going. — And last but not least Robin with Wonder Girl.

The whole team looked at Aqualad, waiting for confirmation, he simply nodded and as quickly as he did they all split up, leaving you alone with the Boy Wonder. The two of you walked side by side in comfortable silence.

— Happy Harbor is really beautiful. — You said as you watched the locals walking through the streets of the area.

— Yeah… — Robin looked at you for a while, your eyes gazing with wonder at every little thing that crossed your path. — Really beautiful. — He said, although he wasn't talking about Happy Harbor.

You turned your head towards him, catching his gaze with yours, a small blush came to your cheeks as you smiled shyly, the atmosphere felt more intimate than usual, maybe because it was just the two of you, or maybe because walking so quietly through the streets beside him made it feel like a date. But the romantic atmosphere was quickly disturbed by a sound coming from Dick that was unfamiliar to you.

The sound made you get a little nervous. — What’s that? — You examined Richard with your eyes up and down with some curiosity trying to find the source of that annoying beeping sound.

— Oh, I’m sorry, it’s my phone, I always turn it off on every mission, I must have forgotten it this time. — Robin pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and ignored the incoming call, ending the ringing.

— Phone? — You asked as you carefully stood next to him and looked at the small device in his hands. — What is a phone?

— Well, it's a smart device mainly designed to facilitate communication, but you can do a lot of things with one of these. — Robin smiled at you without you noticing, warmed by your curiosity.

— We don't have those on Themyscira. So what exactly can that do?

— Well, you can send and receive messages, call people who are miles away from you, record videos, and… Take pictures… — A quick thought crossed Dick's mind. — Let me show you one of the things it can do. — Carefully one of Robin's arms wrapped around your waist pulling you close to him, he selected the camera on his cell phone and positioned it in the air to capture the image of the two of you. — Smile! — You followed Dick's movements, smiled shyly at the camera, and in an eyeblink, the image of the two of you was captured on the device. — See? — You took the phone in your hands, watching in amazement as the scene was captured on the screen.

— Wow, so this little magic box can keep moments as if it was a painting, amazing! — You said completely thrilled.

— It's not magic, it's technology. — Dick answered, looking at you with softness because of your innocence.

You remained frozen for a couple of seconds, staring at the photo with a smile, not realizing how close your body was to Dick's.

— There is still so much of the human world that I don't know, and so much to discover, it's exciting, but scary at the same time. — Your smile did not disappear, your eyes traced every detail of the photo.

— I know, but the team will help you. — Your eyes left the cell phone screen, and you turned your head, facing Dick, it was then that you realized how close he was to you, and your heart skipped a beat in your chest. — I will help you. — One of Robin's hands moved to gently hold yours, a sweet smile lying on his face.

— You're like… — You thought for a moment, remembering the time Diana, your mentor, told you how she met Steve Trevor, the person who support her in her struggle and guided her through the man's world. — A Steve Trevor. — You said more to yourself than to him.

— A what? — Dick asked somewhat confused by your words.

— Oh, never mind. — You shook your head slightly embarrassed.

A short giggle leaked through Dick's lips, he couldn't help but find you adorable. The space between you two seemed to decrease with every second without you even noticing it. Despite the short time you had been with the team Dick's presence was endearing to you, and he felt the same way. He could spend hours and hours at your side listening to you talk about the wonders (as you called them) of the human world, although for him the only wonder was you.

Unfortunately, the romantic atmosphere that had enveloped the two of you was instantly shattered by Kid Flash's voice on the telepathic link. — Nothing here! — Both had become so immersed in each other that you had completely forgotten that you were still on a mission.

You recovered your posture and pulled away from Dick. The mission was your priority and you couldn't let your guard down like that.

— Nothing here either. — You said quietly to the rest of your teammates through the telepathic link.

The entire perimeter seemed to be secured, so the mission was completed.

— Let's go back to the base, Black Canary should be waiting for us for today's training. — This time it was Kaldur's authoritative voice that was heard over the link.

— Understood. — The entire team replied.

Even though you agreed to return to the base your shoulders drooped, as much as you wanted to deny it you would have liked to be alone with Dick a little longer, and the Boy Wonder felt the same way. You turned to look at him hiding your wish to stay alone with him for more time.

— Shall we go? — You asked turning around to go back.

Robin hesitated for a moment, thinking of some valid excuse to continue being just the two of you even if it was only for a couple more minutes. — Wait! — He rushed as an idea crossed his mind, positioning himself in front of you and cutting you off. — Why don't we go another way? — A smirk came to Dick's lips.

— Another way? — You asked curiously, although you were dying to accept his invitation.

Dick focused his attention on his forearm for a moment, pressing a couple of buttons on the holographic keyboard that had unfolded in the air. The sound of an engine approaching you in the distance made you become alert, a motorcycle approached you and stopped just a couple of feet away, it was Dick's motorcycle.

The Boy Wonder moved to his vehicle and climbed in without any effort, he then turned to you with a beautiful smile on his face. — So, what do you say? — A smile that hid perfectly the little nervousness he felt at the possibility of your rejection.

You reciprocated his smile, but you didn't give him an answer, the movement of your body spoke for itself, you walked over and took a seat behind him, your arms wrapped around his torso and your chin rested on his shoulder. Dick's body tensed for a second at your touch, but it was easy for him to get used to the feel of your body so close to his.

A smile spread across Dick's face, once he made sure you were well secured he drove off, the pace of the motorcycle wasn't too slow but it wasn't too fast either, it was simply perfect, and it allowed you to quietly enjoy the streets of Happy Harbor, the peaceful atmosphere seemed to be contagious to all the people there, you felt the sun rays hitting against your skin producing a pleasant feeling of warmth all over your body.

You closed your eyes, enjoying the humid wind hitting the skin of your face and letting your head rest on Dick's shoulder, this was one of the few quiet moments you had since you joined the team, and you were glad it was at his side.

[•••]

— Look who finally showed up. — Black Canary looked at you with her arms crossed over her chest, her face remained stoic, wanting to show dissatisfaction at your unpunctuality. Though deep down she couldn't help but feel tenderness for the "young love" (as she called it) that seemed to be developing between the two of you. All eyes were on you and the Boy Wonder; you were both so comfortable with each other that without you noticing it, the motorcycle ride was extended a little longer than it needed to be. — Since you were the last to arrive, you will be paired up for today's training.

The rest of the team looked at you both with knowing smiles on their faces.

— Well, it looks like you're lucky today. — You rolled your eyes, a smile spread across your face at Dick's confidence. — So, what is today's training? — Everyone's attention quickly shifted to Black Canary in anticipation of what they would face in today's training.

— Simple and easy, fighting in pairs. — Everyone looked around, looking at their possible opponents, Superboy and Aqualad were a group, Miss Martian and Artemis were together, and last but not least, Zatanna and Kid Flash. — Today's confrontations may not be completely fair in terms of power or skill, but your fights will not always be, yet you must learn to compensate your weaknesses with communication and teamwork. — Suddenly an aura of friendly competitiveness was felt in the room, training sessions like this were always a source of excitement among the team. — Let's get started.

The first match was between Miss Martian and Artemis against Kid Flash and Zatanna, it lasted what seemed to be an eternity for them and only a couple of minutes for you and the rest of the team who watched the whole battle expectantly, it was a pretty equal and exciting fight, to say the least, but once proclaimed the winner of that match the next match began.

Dick and you against Kaldur and Conner, you couldn't deny it, facing them was exciting and intimidating at the same time, both were formidable enemies, and Superboy's strength was something that could not be denied, he could even appear to be invincible to some people, but the team knew that Conner's impulsiveness was perhaps his greatest weakness, if he faced an enemy that was able to analyze all his movements he would probably lose, unfortunately, he was teamed with Aqualad, and he perfectly covered Conner's weak point. Undoubtedly Kaldur was one of the team members with more battle experience, and while Conner had strength and brutality, Kaldur had strategy and agility; fortunately, you and Dick had nothing to envy from them, despite your nervousness you were confident in your skills, and in your partner.

— Are both teams ready? — Black Canary looked at you, and you nodded, as did your other three teammates. — Perfect, then... Begin!

You watched your enemies, thinking to take Conner and leave Aqualad for Robin, but before you could take the lead Kaldur rushed at you releasing strike after strike, his attacks were precise and fast, but yours were too, you as an Amazon had nothing to fear from an Atlantean, it was an equal fight; although you couldn't say the same about Robin and Superboy, despite the great intelligence and agility of the Boy Wonder he was no match for the clone of Superman or at least not physically.

The fight went on far longer than would have been expected, and neither team seemed close to being defeated, you turned your attention away from your opponent so you could visualize Robin for a moment, the Boy Wonder was starting to look tired, and who wouldn't be having to keep up with a Kryptonian, or well, in this case, a half Kryptonian. Dick's chest was rising and falling quickly as a result of his agitated breathing. Even if it was a simple training fight you didn't want to lose, not when you could win.

Conner seemed to have cornered Dick, the poor acrobat lacked the energy to continue the fight, and Superboy could see it, he raised his arm ready to deliver the last strike; Robin remained motionless for a second, thinking about how to get out of that situation, although his body could not take any more, his chest was moving violently trying to recover some air, and when he thought his legs would fail a huge wave of energy ran through him from head to toe, from the inside to the outside; it was electrifying, exciting. Dick never believed that people could be reborn, but if he did, he was sure that's how it would feel.

All tiredness was completely eliminated from his body, he felt full of energy, he felt determined, he felt alive. His limbs moved on their own, following the wave of energy that pushed them, even he was unaware of the speed with which he moved and in a matter of seconds Superboy was no longer facing him, instead, the Kryptonean had hit the ground a few feet away.

Multiple gasps of surprise echoed in the room, it was like for a moment time stopped, even Kladur who was totally focused on his fight seemed to have been completely stunned; Dick came to his senses, and like his companions, he remained motionless for a moment without understanding what was happening, until the realization hit him, it had been him, he had knocked Conner to the ground with a single punch.

Silence settled in the training room, Conner sat up again, rubbing his cheek where he had been hit, totally stunned.— How the hell did you do that?! — He wasn't upset, just surprised, more like shocked.

— I… — Dick tried to answer the question, but he was as speechless as everyone else. — I don’t know… — Silence reigned once again, everyone looked around for answers as if they would appear out of nowhere.

— It was me... — You confessed in the middle of the silence, earning the stares of everyone in the room. You shrank in your place, feeling judged by everyone's attention.

— What do you mean? — Black Canary asked curious about how you could be responsible for what happened.

— I… — You cleared your throat, trying to ignore the nervousness that had settled in you. — It is, one of my skills, I can grant the strength and speed necessary to guarantee victory to those I consider worthy.

With that clarification the tension in the place seemed to dissipate completely, instead, now everyone seemed curious and amazed by your abilities.

— I didn't know the Amazons could do that. — Aqualad stated.

— They can't, let's just say it's one of my unique skills I got it from my mother, but still, I should have mentioned it before I used it, sorry. — You looked at Dick with embarrassment, trying to apologize.

— Hey it's okay, don't worry. — Robin gave you a small comforting smile, it was certainly an… Interesting experience.

— Your mother? — Black Canary went ahead and asked.

— Yes, the Amazons know her as Nike, goddess of victory. — You replied with a bit of pride.

— Oh, like the brand? — Wally said with a smile.

— The brand? — Your head moved slightly and your brow furrowed, you hadn't been around men long enough to know what the red-haired boy was talking about.

— Yeah, you know, Nike, “Just do it” — Wally hinted, believing you would know what he meant, but you had no idea.

— Well, I think the training has been enough for today. — Black Canary announced, ending today's training.

Shortly the team started to leave the place.

— So… — Dick's voice echoed behind you, you turned and smiled at the sight of your favorite Boy Wonder. — You said you could use your powers on those you considered worthy, does that mean you think I'm worthy? — Your cheeks tinged slightly pink, but your smile didn't disappear.

— I do, I think you are worthy. — Your eyes didn't leave his, the warmth you felt in your body when you were with him had returned.

Neither of you said anything else after that, you smiled for the last time and walked away leaving a smiling Dick watching your figure fade away through Mount Justice.

— Well… — The black-haired boy turned around, only to see his red-haired best friend standing there, watching him with a sly grin. — When will you ask her out? — Wally asked.

— What? — Dick asked, one of his eyebrows raised.

— Oh come on, since she arrived you haven't stopped flirting. — Wally annoyed replied.

— Well yeah but, what's the rush? It's not like she’s going to disappear. — Dick shrugged, usually, Richard didn't wait long to act when it came to girls, but for once in his life, he wanted to take it easy, he knew that male company wasn't something you were used to, but he wanted to make sure he prioritized your comfort, he didn't want to rush things.

— Dude, just look at her. She's cute, she's charismatic, she's smart. — The redhead number every one of your qualities. — God, if you weren't my friend I'd already be trying my luck right now, and if you don't, someone else will. — Wally shrugged his shoulders, thinking he had made his point clearly enough, and decided to leave the place.

Dick stood there, thinking seriously about his friend's words. Maybe, for once, Wally was right.

[•••]

— Sector 5-D clear. — You said through the telepathic link waiting for your next order.

The Justice League had detected suspicious activity in a location on the edge of Metropolis, the place turned out to be a bodega of extraordinary size divided into sections; and although it would have been much quicker and easier to go through the place individually, Kaldur decided to separate the team in pairs believing that this would be the best thing to do in case of any confrontation. You looked over your shoulder, and glanced at your duo for this mission, the Boy Wonder simply nodded confirming that you should continue moving along this path.

Your footsteps were quiet and firm, ready for almost any probability that presented itself. You kept alert to the environment, every sound, every movement.

You stood firm, a huge shiver ran through your body, you stopped for a moment, and expelled some air through your mouth seeing how it could be distinguished in the air; you frowned confused, realizing that the temperature seemed to have dropped considerably despite only having advanced a small distance.

— I don't remember any other sector getting so cold, do you? — You asked Robin, turning your body to face him hoping for an answer that would corroborate the temperature change.

— No, something must be causing it. — The Boy Wonder answered checking the holographic screen displayed from his armband trying to find the cause of the temperature change.

You opened your lips to say something else, but your senses snapped in a second, and a high-pitched sound reached your ears alerting you about the danger. — Watch out! — You grabbed the shield from your back, and moved, positioning yourself in front of Dick, digging your feet into the ground, bending your knees, and ready for impact. A projectile collided with the metal of your shield, the place filled with fog preventing you from seeing your enemy.

You felt the temperature drop even more and saw the frost starting to cover the walls of the building. Robin left his place behind you and positioned himself next to you, waiting for anything. Slowly the fog dissipated, revealing your rival in this mission.

— Icicle Jr... — Robin whispered, staring at your adversary who stood proudly with a smug smile on his face.

— That’s right Boy Wonder I… — Jr. seemed to be about to start his monologue, however, his eyes were taken away by your presence, although you had heard of him you hadn't had the opportunity to encounter him until now, and apparently, he had never had the pleasure of hearing from you, but you seemed to be able to captivate him with a single glance. — Hey… — He greeted you in a flirtatious tone, forgetting that his goal was defeating you and your teammate.

— We hadn't met, had we? No, I would remember a face as pretty as yours. — You raised an eyebrow, intrigued by his sudden change of attitude. His arrogant features had softened for you.

You cleared your throat, trying to hide the little reddish hue that wanted to grow on your cheeks, although it was questionable, it took you by surprise to be called pretty by the enemy. — No, we haven't. — You replied.

— Conner should have told me that there was a new hottie on the team. — He winked at you, waiting to get a reaction from you.

— Agh, enough. It's time for you to go back to prison. — Robin stepped in. Holding up one of his birdarangs.

— Well, if she's the one taking me to prison I wouldn't mind going back a million times. — The cocky grin returned to his face.

A new wave of strikes from him started, however this time he didn't seem to be interested in hurting you, he just seemed to want to provoke you, on the other hand, the attacks directed toward Robin were more aggressive.

You focused on dodging his attacks, making your way to him, knowing that Dick would be fine on his own, the cold enveloped your body and the ice on the ground made it difficult to move, you dropped your shield, seeking to focus the strength of your two hands on your sword.

You raised your sword once you were only inches away from him, the steel melted into the ice on his arm, and you dug your feet into the ground trying to maintain your stance despite how difficult it was because of the icy floor.

You fought, neither of you wanted to lose, yet Icicle Jr. wasn't using his full strength, and neither were you. — Wow, you look even prettier from this close. — A little shiver ran through your body at the compliment. — I’m Icicle Jr by the way, but you can call me Cameron. — You pulled away from him retracting your sword satisfied with having pierced the thick layer of ice on his arm.

You caught your breath and looked at him for a moment without letting your guard down. — Wonder Girl. — You introduced yourself, proud of the title you had earned with blood, sweat, and tears.

Cameron seemed surprised, his guard was left vulnerable for a moment and it was obvious that the Boy Wonder wouldn't let this opportunity slip away. He rushed towards his target, managing to connect a kick directly to his jaw, Icicle Jr fell back stunned by the attack, Robin threw a birdarang in his direction, the smoke from the explosion prevented you from seeing your enemy for a moment, but before the smoke dissipated an aggressive blast of ice shot out brushing your side, however, your teammate did not have the same luck.

Dick's back collided with the wall, his limbs wrapped in the ice causing a groan to echo through the walls.

— Robin! — You shouted, stunned for a moment. You turned to Icicle Jr. This time decided to use all your strength.

Although it would be ideal to help your teammate it wasn't a good idea to just back away from the enemy.

You swing your sword in front of you without taking your eyes off Cameron, despite your intimidating aura Icicle Jr simply seemed to enjoy the sight. You rushed at him, your strikes were quick and sharp, but you had to admit that Icicle Jr's defense wasn't all that bad. You felt a little nervous inside, Cameron's gaze piercing you from top to bottom.

Being watched so closely made you anxious, the tingling of nervousness distracted you from the fight, your strikes were no longer sharp and your movements were no longer quick; Cameron saw this and took advantage of it. Your sword was stuck again in the ice of his arm, but this time you were not fast enough, Cameron took his chance, the ice began to expand until it reached your wrists compromising your position; You panicked, maybe in other circumstances it would have been completely easy to break free, but the anxiety stopped you from thinking clearly.

— You have such beautiful eyes, doll. — His frosty breath collided against your skin, slowly your gaze raised only to realize how close your face was to Icicle Jr's.

You turned your face away in disgust, and again pulled back trying to shatter the ice that held you captive, but your attempts seemed to be useless, and Cameron seemed to be getting closer and closer; a ringing noise echoed in your head, none of your thoughts seemed to give you a solution to the situation and your body seemed to not answer; you could feel Icicle Jr's cold eyes visualizing you like you were a mere piece of meat, his icy breath pierced the exposed skin of your face getting closer and closer.

— Oh, don't be so shy doll. — His icy breath made its way to your ears, your face twisted in disgust. Even though you couldn't see his face you could imagine the shameless grin on his face.

Slowly the ice was beginning to crack, but not the ice that held you, and perhaps you would have realized that if the situation had been different. — That's enough! — The voice echoed through the place like a growl, it was authoritative and threatening enough to startle you.

Everything happened so fast that even for you it was difficult to process, in just a moment your body was pulled forward roughly, you put resistance digging your feet strongly into the ground, taking the opportunity to pull your sword once again, this time successfully breaking the ice and freeing yourself; a small whimper left your lips, your sword slipped between your fingers that were completely purple like the rest of your arm, only now that you had freed yourself you realized the pain that palpitated over your two upper limbs.

You didn't even bother to try to understand what was happening, the pain was stabbing and the shock was inevitable, your eyes managed to make out a figure moving closer to you, you tried to focus on his face. — Robin. — You whispered with relief.

— I'm sorry it took me so long to free myself from the ice. — The guilt was evident in his voice. — Let me see your arms. — His words were soft, his concern was obvious.

Even with your mind spinning you moved your arms towards him, you felt the leather of his gloves against your skin, making a small whimper leak from your lips, it was not something you couldn't handle, but the pain was there.

— Let me bandage you. — His voice was barely a whisper, yet his words were authoritative, treating your wounds was not up for discussion.

You nodded, too exhausted to refuse, your breathing slowly returned to normal, your mind was getting calmer and slowly things became clear, and you certainly couldn't help but feel ashamed of your poor performance in battle, Robin had finished the job for you, Icicle Jr's body lay unconscious on the ground, handcuffed and blindfolded, it didn't look like he was going to wake up any time soon.

Your disappointment seemed to be evident, or at least it was to Dick, under his mask his eyes remained focused on bandaging your arms, but he couldn't help but look back at your face here and there, his mind wondering to itself what was going through your head at that moment, but Dick knew you, he could read your eyes like a book, and right now he could only read helplessness and regret, two feelings he got to know very well when he was younger.

— You did a good job, don't let that mortify you. — His voice was almost audible, and although you valued his words you found no comfort in them.

— I was paralyzed. — You replied. — If you hadn't been here I would have compromised the mission. — You said, perhaps too harshly, but for you, it was true.

— But you didn't. — Dick's eyes finally focused on you, your arms were now completely bandaged. — And you gave me enough strength to win the fight. — Your expression quickly changed from sternness to confusion.

— I didn't use my powers on you. — Was the only thing you could say.

— I know, but your presence is enough to give me the strength to win. — The smile that appeared on your face was inevitable as well as the warmth that reached your cheeks, and for Robin, it was inevitable not to smile with satisfaction at your reaction.

— Thank you. — You mumbled knowing he would hear you. You wouldn't say it out loud, but his attention and concern were something you enjoyed. — We should keep moving. — You turned away from him, only then realizing how close he was to you.

Richard watched your figure carefully, following your every move; you bent down to the ground, took your shield and placed it on your back, walked a couple of steps, and took your sword again, your grip on the handle was weak, your wounds still fresh, but your determination seemed to have returned, while Dick's seemed to be fading; you turned your back to him, ready to continue with the mission.

Dick's chest heaved with impatience, since that training Wally's words had not stopped running through his mind because he knew it was true; as he also knew that this was not the best moment, but despite his serene and calculating personality he was still a teenager, and could not avoid moments of impulsiveness like these where his emotions clouded his reason.

— Wait! — His words were faster than his thoughts. And his impulsiveness disappeared as soon as your eyes stopped on him, as hard as it was to happen, Robin was speechless.

You moved closer to him, your mind forgetting about the mission as you focused on him, finding his presence comforting, you remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

— Well... I don't know how to say this. — One of Robin's gloved hands moved to the back of his neck. Your eyebrows furrowed, it seemed so unusual to see Dick this way, hesitant and doubtful. — But, I really like you. — A shy smile showed on his face as he looked at you expectantly.

You smiled innocently, believing he simply meant that he liked you in a friendly way, and even though your heart yearned for more, you appreciated the fact that he "liked you." You approached him, that dazzling signature smile of yours shining on your lips, making his heart beat faster than it already did.

You took his hands in yours as if your previous actions weren't enough to increase his nervousness. — Oh Robin, I feel the same way. — You said. Robin's eyes lit up under his mask and his smile simply spread. — You are a great friend, and an excellent teammate, it would be impossible not to like you.

Dick's smile faded completely from his lips, and his eyebrows drooped in sadness. — That's not what I meant... — The disappointment was more than clear in Dick's voice, yet he decided to go ahead with his confession. — I have romantic feelings for you. — His grip on your hands weakened with each of his words.

And suddenly everything around you stopped, and those words repeated in your head "Romantic feelings", what did you know about romance? Nothing. You were still young, and while it was true that at your age most young people already knew the feeling of love you did not. You had grown up in Themyscira, and for as long as you could remember the most important thing for you being there was your training, and you understood that you knew that your powers required control and training, but having trained from such a young age had robbed you of many opportunities. To live your childhood like any other child your age, to make friends, to explore the world, to develop your preferences, and to experience love.

The only thing you knew about love was the little your mentor had told you of her own experience. About the time years ago when she met the one she considered the love of her life, Steve Trevor. How they met, how he taught her about the world of humankind, how they fought a war together, and finally, how they fell in love; Diana told you everything, how she realized about her feelings, how her heart used to beat fast when she was near him, the trust and peace that his presence gave her, the feeling of wanting to protect him from danger.

And you knew, that what your mentor had felt for Steve Trevor was what you were feeling for Dick Grayson.

— I feel the same way... — You repeated, but this time the tone of your voice was different, softer and gentler, but confident, there was no uncertainty in your words.

You felt Robin's hands squeeze yours, not enough to hurt you, but enough for you to feel the warmth of his gloves through the bandage. Dick was clinging to his hopes, and his heart was beating fast in his chest, even though you were an open book, he found you hard to decipher at times, but he realized there was nothing to decipher at that moment, he just had to trust your words, as he always had.

His smile returned to his face, while yours only got bigger. — So… — Robin gathered the courage to speak again. — Are you free after this mission? — He asked, his trademark mischievous smile on his lips, and his usual confidence seemed to have returned to him.

Your chest jiggled with a peculiar feeling you weren't familiar with, but it didn't bother you, after all, you had gotten your own Steve Trevor... No, something even better, you had gotten your own Dick Grayson.

#dick grayson x reader #young justice x reader #dick grayson x you #dick grayson x y/n #dc x reader #young justice x you #dc comics #young justice #robin x y/n #robin x reader #dick grayson #robin #young justice one shots #young justice dick grayson

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jurakan · 5 months

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I got a weird prompting to ask for a fun fact about someone who came up with a whole system of writing and then just disappeared. Odd, I know.

Well, you came to the right place, friendo! Today You Learned about Sequoyah.

[I had hoped to do this around Thanksgiving, or for Indigenous Peoples Month, but no one asked for it then so better late than never!]

Okay, maybe you have heard of the man. But if not, here ya go: Sequoyah was a Cherokee man born in Tennessee around the year 1770. When he grew up, his day job was actually being a silversmith, trading with trappers and merchants that came through Cherokee territory. He was pretty darn good at it too, and signed off on all of his work.

Something he noticed, though, was that the Europeans who went through had a written language, and that it was helpful for recording information and talking to people far away. That’s handy, Sequoyah thought. We should have our own written language. Because at that point, Cherokee didn’t have a written language. So, apparently, this man decided to just… make one up.

I say “make one up” as if he came up with it on the spot without thought. No, that’s not what happened. In 1809, Sequoyah began to study English, Greek, and Hebrew, and developed a written system for the Cherokee language. Each symbol represents a syllable, rather than a letter like in the English writing system, leading to a total of over 80 symbols for the alphabet.

Everyone thought he was crazy, but I want to be clear: he did it. This man, a silversmith by trade, created a written language system that within twenty years of its creation became the official written language of the Cherokee Nation.

That’s insane, guys! Where is this guy’s biopic? If you lived in a place with heavy Cherokee history, like the Carolinas, chances are you’ve heard of him–the NC Museum has a small exhibit on him in their section on Cherokee history, and we covered him in school in an article/essay/non-fiction story (I don’t know what we call those things) called “Sequoyah and the Riddle of the Talking Leaves”, but it’s nuts to me that he’s not a more famous figure in American history, considering this.

Sequoyah actually taught the language to his daughter Ayokeh first, so that he could prove that it worked and made sense. Then he spent a ton of time traveling through Cherokee territory to get people to see its usefulness and learn it. Apparently, it worked.

So the US government thought this was awesome and gave Sequoyah a mansion to live in, right? [/sarcasm] No, you can probably guess from the timeline what happened. He went to Washington D.C. to protest and argue with other Native American leaders against the Indian Removal laws the government was enacting, but wasn’t successful, leading to the Trail of Tears. His interactions with other nations led him to decide to try to create another system of writing for all indigenous Americans to use. I don’t think it ever got completed, but someone with more knowledge on the subject can probably tell you more.

He died in Mexico, on an expedition based on the rumor that some Cherokee had gone there–the reunification of the Cherokee people was a big deal to him, after all.

We think he died there, anyway.

See, we don’t actually know where his body is. Officially, he died in 1845 of a lung infection; we don’t know where his body is. The Cherokee funded an expedition to find his grave in the 20th century, but while they found a grave in Coahuila, Mexico, they aren’t sure if it’s his. In 2011, a newspaper argued that actually he wasn’t buried, his skeleton was found in 1903 in a cave in Oklahoma.

I found this out by seeing that he’s listed on Wikipedia’s “List of People Who Disappeared” (which I do not recommend reading if you are sitting alone in a house at night).

Well, he’s still an important national figure. He’s got some recognition–his statue is in the US Capitol, he’s got a sculpture in front of the Cherokee Museum in North Carolina, and! Along with several figures from world cultures credited with inventing/teaching writing, he’s on the doors of the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress.

YMMV may vary on whether or not it’s good that he’s on there with a bunch of mythological figures.

#Sequoyah #Cherokee #Today You Learned #Fun Fact Friday #US history #language

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phoenixyfriend · 1 year

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50 Romance Prompts Ask Meme

From my 141 prompts (plus links) post

A mix of normal/standard AUs and a few Funky Ones. Send one or more characters and a prompt, and maybe you'll get a drabble!

Reminder: You send prompts to people in the ask box, not through replies.

ROMANTIC

Met at the Gym

Niche Academic Field AU

Food-based Small Business Owner and their New Regular

Author and Editor

Mystery Author and Serial Killer

Cosplayer and Creator of the series they're cosplaying from (author, actor, whatever)

Made out while in costume at a Halloween Party

Renaissance Playwright/Artist/Artisan/Creator and their Wealthy Patron

One Night Stand but the next morning you learn it's your CEO's kid

Bodyguard AU

Whoops I accidentally became a Sugar Baby

Whoops I accidentally fell in love with the sex worker I've been involved with (OnlyFans, exotic dancer, full-service, whatever)

Rich person pretends to be poor, secures a date with actual working-class person

Celebrity Romance

Con Artist and the person who saw through their grift

We each don't speak the other's language, but we both speak Klingon or Ancient Greek or Latin or something so we're making do

Sexy Repairman

Hot Single Parent and babysitter/nanny

Pilot and Flight Attendant

Model and Designer

Accidental Pregnancy

Fake Dating

Fake Married

Marriage of Convenience

Green Card Marriage

Arranged Marriage

Age Difference Marriage

Mistaken for Cheating

Casanova in Love

Only One Bed

The Perfect Student/Citizen and the one with a motorcycle and tattoos and piercings (and a heart of gold)

"My parents are out of town, you up?"

Just saw an ex at an event, started making out with the hottest person in arm's reach and now we're dating?

There's a ghost here and I'm going to date it

Assassins after the same target

Regency Romance

Late Victorian Dueling Detectives

Silent film stars

Alien and astronaut

Magical/Mundane

Reincarnation AU

Soulmate AU: Matching Marks

Soulmate AU: First Words

Soulmate AU: Timers

Vampire and Hunter

Demon and Angel

Eldritch Being and the person they are being SO normal about

Omegaverse, but it's not Alpha Male/Omega Male

Hallmark Film AU

Disney Princess Film AU

And the other sections of the 141 Prompts list:

26 Family Prompts

37 Platonic/Gen Prompts

28 Setting Prompts

#phoenix posts #prompts #prompts list #romance prompts

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takeachillpillshawty · 10 months

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British Riddle this, British Riddle that.

Have you all considered Cockney Accent Trey?!

Here. Me. OUT.

I feel like Trey would have a Cockney accent, but he toned it down a bit when talking to other people outside of Queendom of Roses.

I can just imagine during a unhappy birthday party Trey is just running his mouth off, Riddle nodding and agreeing with him. Ace and Duece adding their tid bits in and Cater has no fucking Idea what either of them are saying, especially Trey. Ace can understand him clearly, either is dad or older brother has a Cockney accent same thing with Duece. ( I think ace would have a Cockney accent, but not as thick as Trey's he probably learned it from his dad or Brother. It's not thick but you could hear it in his voice.)

I don't know if Savannah claw boys would have accents.... Maybe Leona or Ruggie...

Bronx or transatlantic Floyd. Please, I can't be the only one. I can HEAR IT in his dialogue. Oh and Italian accent Azul, and I know I get it. Azul the mob boss of his dorm having an Italian accent?

I pick accents for some characters based of four things, if it's a character with animal features( merfolk, beastmen), a character based of a mythological creature ( faes) or where the Disney movie they were based off takes place, and finally by their names.

And seeing that it's confirmed by Disney that the little mermaid took place in Italy or near a location of Italy.. I think it would kinda fit Azul.

And I think the last dorms are dead give aways the last two are if you know your mythology.

Let's knock this one away completely, we all know. Everyone knows that Kalim and Jamil are Arabic, from the way they are named to the culture. ( and I believe that the scalding sands may follow their own version of the casting system... Based on in game dialogue.) Do I believe that they would have Arabic accents? I could hear it especially with Jamil.

Now for the Pomefiore boys. We already know Rook is French and Epel has a southern country accent.

But Vil is German. Are you going to look him dead in his attractive face and think he ISN'T German?! Look at his last name! I'm pretty sure you won't find some random Joe with the last name Schoenhiet and not think he is German. And a fun detail that Jamil and Vil have is that in their respective language their names mean "beautiful". Jamil means beautiful in Arabic and Schoenhiet means beautiful in German.

It would be very cool to hear Vil speak with a slight German accent when the English dub releases.

Now onto my boys.

It's a dead give away as well with this one, they're Greek. Idia is based of Hades from the Disney movie. And ortho....Ortho is just here for the vibes.... I haven't played book 6, and maybe they make a reference to a Greek mythology.... Who knows.

And finally... The last ones.... Diasomnia.

Now I had to do a bit of research on this.....and had two options, German or French. And like one of the points I brought up is looking at the characters names and location. The two characters were Lilia and Sebek (fun fact Sebek, is an alternate form of Sobek an Egyptian crocodile-headed god.)

While digging into their names I found out that in lilia's name the "Van" in his name is German, more commonly used for royalty. It fits him being affiliated with the Royal family in Briar Valley. And for Sebek, well instead Sebek I had to work with Sobek a surname name used in what? German. And so we know that Briar Valley is most likely the Twst equivalent to Germany...or something ( take with a grain of salt)

And the one nail to finish this coffin.... Fae, the species they were based off, is tied to many folklore some being French....and German. And with all that points I made, I have to give this ones to the German side. And I think hearing Sebek shout " WAKA-SAMA!" in a thick German accent is scary and hilarious.

( and please be reminded that most of these are some headcannons I made about some of the characters due to the culture behind their characters. Some of this information is no way cannon to the story of Twst, and If the English dub comes out and the characters don't sound like what they are headcannoned to be don't harass the voice actors. )

Thank you for reading!

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland shitpost #azul ashengrotto #heartslabyul #jamil viper #kalim al asim #floyd leech #riddle rosehearts #deuce spade

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theprophetizaiah · 4 months

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Achilles Come Down | Chapter 1: Pain As a Motive

Summary: Crowley believes Aziraphale died in the bookshop fire. Now, he's sending the armies of hell to avenge him. Based loosely on the story of Achilles and Patroclus.

Warning: None for this chapter! (Aside from some foul language)

Word count: 1.5k (this chapter)

All chapters should be available here! (I haven't written on Tumblr in many moons please forgive me)

To read on AO3, check out my work here!

Crowley burned in the hell he imagined he’d always belonged in. Ashes rained from the heavens. Burning paper engulfed his senses. Black smoke burned in his eyes. He breathed in his dead lover. Misery. Misery for the rest of eternity.

“Somebody killed my best friend!” he was somewhere between a yell and a sob. “Bastards!” Between fury and agony.

They spent the last 6,000 years toeing the line between best friends and lovers. Dining at the Ritz, feeding ducks, saving each other from mortal peril, you know, as friends do. Crowley would know him in any lifetime. From the weight of his step, the smell of his hair, the sound of his breath (it would skip and stutter when he had thought of something clever). The air around Aziraphale was always heavy, but not in the manner of suffocation. Rather, his aura was a heavy wool blanket. Warm, grounded, homey. The closest thing Crowley ever really had to a home.

Before the apocalypse, Crowley recalled their drunken ramblings. Amidst the whiffs of red wine, he remembered how he smelled. Like earl grey, oak, and bourbon: something his barber suggested. He also always smelled a bit like paper. It made the burning around Crowley all the more unbearable. Anthony J. Crowley, fallen angel and Duke of Hell, reeling over the doing of a foreigner’s god. Certainly not the one he knew, or maybe exactly the one he knew.

He laid in the flames, thinking through his new reality. This was a rare moment of clarity for the distraught demon. Who killed him: heaven or hell? Either reality had some sense to it. Heaven could, and would, excommunicate him for working with a demon. Permanent discorporation, or banishment to hell. Hell would kill him just for the sake of it. Just to say they did. Racking his brain, he realized Hell was unfortunately, his best chance of finding Aziraphale, or at least what became of him. Crowley slowly creeped up from the ashen ground. He was unsure how much time had passed, but it seemed that the flames had slowed. In mere moments, he stared between the two escalators. He chose downward. As the escalator carried him into the dank, dark corridors, his anguish gnawed at him, clawing its war from the inside out. He allows a single tear, and immediately wipes it away. Only the damned cry in hell.

Crowley had stopped fighting for hell decades ago. In the presence of his angel, he saw no reason for it. He saw no reason to fill the world with more violence. The humans were better at that anyway. After his bout in Edinborough, he was promptly tortured for the next several decades. Crowley never saw the face of Satan, but he would give it an ethereal, firm uppercut the second he had the chance. He lost faith in his leadership, in the art of mass scale temptation. He preferred the gentle temptation of his beloved. Of asking him out to breakfast, bringing him wine, planting seeds of heavenly doubt in his mind. He thought often about the Greek myth of the origin of love. They were alone together at the edge of the universe, a body of eight limbs, four eyes, and a flutter of feathers. Whoever Crowley was, it was a product of the angel. Whoever Aziraphale was, it was Crowley’s collateral. And beautifully so, their symbiosis carried on through the centuries. The demon had the fight pulled out of him the way the angel unshelved his books. Carefully and with gentle hands.

But now that he was gone, this was war. If he had nothing, he would still have Aziraphale, but if he didn’t have his angel, he had nothing. His fury craved battle, to make them hurt the same way he did. His wrath could summon the very same fire that had surrounded him in the hours prior. If his beloved really was gone, then he would destroy the heaven that took him.

Crowley barely managed his way through the crowds of demons slowly but surely trudging their way through the crowded corridors of hell. After passing the rest of the high offices he comes to the door of the one and only Beelzebub. For a moment, he questions if he should even knock, let alone open the door. He wonders if any of this is worth it in the first place. What if his Angel didn't care whatsoever about him? What if he didn’t need saving, or worse, he was already long gone? But in reality, he knew that wasn't the case. He’d be damned, more than he is already, if he let Aziraphale die knowing that he could have prevented it. Crowley gulps and burst open the door of Beelzebub's office. Demons were typically not known for their politeness. Inside, he sees Beelzebub sitting upon their throne, legs crossed fancifully, almost as if they were expecting him. Crowley's stomach turns at this realization.

“How's it going up there?” Beelzebub asks. Crowley puts on his best front and looks Beelzebub dead in the eyes and lies:

“Fantastic,” he says. “The Antichrist is mere moments from inciting the Apocalypse.”

Beelzebub smirks. “Wonderful. Great job.”

Crowley shudders ever so slightly. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for him to feel a profound discomfort. He again looks to Beelzebub, “did you capture the angel? Is he here?”

Beelzebub looks confused. “What do you mean capture the angel?”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley starts. “The other angel that has worked in my same jurisdiction for six thousand years. Did you capture him?”

Beelzebub purses their lips, seemingly scanning their memory. Alas, still confused. “No… Why would you assume that? Why would we let him in here?” They began to look vaguely suspicious of their colleague.

Crowley pulled something out of his ass. “I saw that the Bookshop was on fire,” he blurted out. “I could have only imagined that it was demonic intervention.” Beelzebub chuckled.

“It's not always hellfire,” Crowley stifles a laugh, just enough for Beelzebub to think it's genuine. Beelzebub speaks up once more. “Yeah, I don't know about the angel. We don't have ‘im here.” Crowley takes a moment and a step back. He decides to tell the best lie that he's ever told, aside from the fact that he was not madly, disgustingly in love with a forbidden fruit.

“I want that slimy bastard gone forever,” Crowley spits. “I want that fussy dumbarse to not be anywhere near God's green Earth.”

“Well, I know that much… What are you suggesting?”

Crowley laughs disingenuously, but trying desperately to seem genuine. “I think we need to raid heaven.”

Beelzebub looks puzzled. “But why do we need to raid the heavens if we have already conquered the Earth, Crowley?” they said. “Why would we postpone destroying Earth to fight this war first?”

“That’s exactly it… they’ll never see it coming,” Crowley says. “We can start with the archangels: Gabriel, Michael, Uriel… There will be no one left to lead their army in such short order. Then we let the Earth burn, and winning their holy war will be easier than dropping the antichrist at the convent.”

His voice grows raspy. Crowley takes a deep breath. “It'll let them know once and for all that their God means nothing.” Crowley sits down in front of Beelzebub. They seem a bit more intrigued. Crowley describes a plot more ambitious than any of his plans to date: to invade the heavens. To crusade his lover’s workplace by summoning a demonic army, comprised of hundreds of damned souls. He plans to force them through the Gates of Heaven to slaughter any angels in their sight. Beelzebub loved this concept, and was almost surprised Crowley came up with it. But, he did dream up the Spanish Inquisition, after all (or so they thought).

“Honestly, why not?” Beelzebub smirks. “If we're all going to be separated for the rest of time anyway, this would be a fun way to go out. If they want us to fight this war, we ought to do it our way. Hell fights dirty.” As the flies buzzed among their crown, they grinned the way a child would when they had come up with the perfect prank. Except this wasn’t a prank. It was the end of the world. Of Crowley’s, at least.

Beelzebub grimaced. Crowley laughed. “Well, I'll go talk about it with head office, and we'll get it sorted. I want it done by the end of the day today. That sound alright?” Beelzebub nodded in excitement. Crowley seems giddy with anticipation but not in the way that you would imagine. The anxiety pulsed through his veins. He was setting into motion the divine war days earlier than was planned, all for a fussy angel he drank wine with one too many times. But at the same time, he knew this was his reality. Crowley couldn’t pretend he didn’t love him anymore. Not when he could be dead. If heaven wanted a war, they were going to get it, god dammit.

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wearepansies · 7 months

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Just comment and I will put out a part two-

PJO MUSIC ARTIST AU:

Percy;

-His artist name is Black Jackson. (BLACKJACKson?? Get it??? He named himself after blackjack kind of???? Ok I’ll see myself out-)

-Because he was born in Manhattan, out of poverty, he never had much, so he’s pretty much the most down to earth celebrity ever(think Adam Sandler kind of? But more fashionable)

-Advocates a lot for people with learning disabilities, and domestic violence victims.

-He mostly writes inside the genres rock and alternative.

-His first big break was with his original album, “feelyng bleu”

-While we’re on that, all of his songs and albums are spelled wrong. At first it was a mistake, but Percy slowly just made it his own thing. Made him feel a lot better about his dyslexia.

- Is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet.

-He’s also a socially awkward, insecure mess though.

- He starts every concert of his off by thanking his Mother, and asking whether “ his audience is ready to fuck themselves up tonight??”

-Absolute bicon

-Has clips of his funny exchanges with interviewers all over YouTube

Annabeth;

-Just uses her actual name.

-She doesn’t see the point in trying to make a career under a fake name. Nah. She wants people SCREAMING her name from the audience.

-Contrary to that wish though, she’s not actually famous.

-It’s more like…a hobby she does for fun, but also dreams about turning into a career.

-In reality though, she’s an architecture student who really just needs money to fix the damn sink.

- She actually knew Percy WAY before he became famous, since they were eleven actually.

-Annabeths music is more like…alternative folk.

-She uses all sorts of architecture metaphors and terms in her music.

-She doesn’t sing about buildings though. She talks about all sorts of social class problems she thinks are important. The figurative, poetic architecture language she uses is just her musical signature(and a fun way to be nerdy).

-She has a decent amount of followers.

- Is rather cold when you meet her, but is secretly just a softie.

- Is the artist who makes songs based off books and posts them on TikTok (sorry not sorry)

-She also has a podcast that’s unfortunately more popular than her nonexistent music career lol.

- She wears lots of academic looking clothes, but also has lots of flow-y looking tops, and lots of chique Greek outfits because she loves embracing her culture.

- Is friends with everyone from the famous band “Ride or Die” (Beckendorf, Silena, Clarisse, Connor, Travis, and Katie)

Grover;

-Goes by the music name “Child of the W1ld”

-He’s not really a famous music artist honestly? More like a TikTok celebrity.

-He’s famous for his pan flute and ocarina covers of different songs.

-His most popular, aka the one that made him famous, was Celine Dion’s “my heart will go on”

-Posts all sorts of TikTok’s of him playing his instruments in random places lmao

-Is the most cottage core hipster to ever cottage core.

- He and Percy are besties! They support each other whenever they can, advertise, do videos, and just chill out and hang.

- They’re such opposites aesthetically though. People were actually so shocked when they first saw them together lmao.

- Whenever Percy uploads a new album or song, he’ll make a cover of it.

-Not only because he loves his best friend, but also because it’s challenging.

-Wears an alarming amount of skirts, and pants that go halfway to his calves.

#music au #percy pjo #annabeth percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #fandom #percy jackson #pjo fandom #headcanons #annabeth chase #grover underwood

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leahnardo-da-veggie · 14 days

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Linguistics post!!

I'm sure it'll come as a surprise to everyone, but just about all my fantasy short stories take place in the same universe (it was inexplicably named Triworld by my younger self, and I haven't seen fit to change it since) across different times! I've been cultivating the little universe since I was 6, and it's basically become a sprawling mess.

Nonetheless, I want to set the lore down in stone, once and for all. And where better to start than with the linguistics?

Now, in modern Triworld, there are 4 main languages. They're generally divided by species, though there is some geopolitical leakage.

Trade-tongue (occasionally known as humani, Lingua Franca of everywhere except the Cescere/Syvniko)

Spirit/Fae (more commonly known as Cescereli)

Angelic/Demonic/Sirenic (generally called Angelic)

Ghoulish (also used by the nearly extinct shifters)

Trade-tongue:

You can operate on the assumption that Trade-tongue will be considered the default. The Humans, and to a lesser extent, the elves, use it exclusively. It is a mish-mash of a variety of different languages, from the days when different tribes worshipped different gods, with a great deal of influence from the now-archaic Elvish tongue. To a non-native speaker it will have a rolling cadence, with rounded words than the a spirit or ghoul would be comfortable with.

Interestingly, it contains some Greek/Latin prefixes in it, as seen by the countries Luxatia and Nyctomachia. (As a writer, it's because younger me loved her fancy language and never saw what a pain it would be for older me. The lore reason is that a Wanderer found his/her way into Triworld and messed up human linguistics in the process)

Cescereli:

Oh dear. Where do I even begin? This is by far the most detailed of my languages, and I would go so far as to call it a conlang. It operates on a character based format, similar to Chinese, and any depictions of Cescereli in my writing will be limited to phonetic transcriptions until I work out how to input made-up symbols into my writing.

Sentence structure is fairly variable, given that it has dozens of dialects, and some linguists have (very hesitantly) suggested that the linguistic drift might be so great that they ought to be considered several languages. The spirits, being a very United people, cannot and will never accept that, and the Fae's pidgin of trade-tongue and Cescereli is remarkably faithful to what is known as the Imperial dialect.

Cescereli uses a great deal of compound words, with each character being seperated by a ' or a -, or nothing at all, depending on the type of character in use. Something that would incorporate all three might be Cescere'nari-ilra, which is what spirits use to refer to mountain elves.

Directly translated, it would mean Our (ces) Mountain (Cere) Long-eared (nari, also a term used to refer to donkeys and rabbits) Mortals (ilra, with ilre being the immortal version). As you can tell, it is my darling. I could write its own post about it, and about the spirits in general)

Now, the elves, being geographically close to the spirit Capital, share quite a bit of vocabulary with the spirits, so spirits often find themselves shocked to hear Cescereli within trade-tongue. Spirits are fiercely protective of their language and insist on speaking it amongst themselves. Any being that wishes to work amongst spirits, or to a lesser extent, Far, has to have at least some modicum of Cescereli proficiency.

To a non-native speaker, it sounds like a teakettle hissing. This has been the source of rage for many spirits.

Angelic:

A dot-based language, it has the greatest tonal variation of any tongue on Triworld. Angelic requires the speaker to transverse as far as three octaves across a single sentence, leading it to be known as song-tongue colloquially.

Few species have the vocal chords to actually pronounce the words, with sirens, angels, demons, and spirits (who refuse to speak it due to an ancient rivalry with the sirens) being the only ones truly able to speak it fluently. The remaining species, when trying to learn Angelic, use a variant known as Lesser Enochian (another remnant of a long-gone Wanderer), which has far less warbling.

It is known as the most beautiful language in existence, and sirens take great pleasure in reciting Angelic poetry to honoured guests. Demons, on the other hand, delight in their dialect, Infernal (which has its own set of sub-dialects), as a method of mocking those without sufficiently high ranges of hearing to catch their words. Angels prefer pretending they do not have to share their language with two other species, and insist their dialect is the only 'true' one.

Ghoulish:

As languages go, Ghoulish is a mess. It has a basis of shifter-speak, with a dash of Cescereli, some elven, a remarkable amount of Goddish, vampiric to taste, and what might actually be the original human tongue, or perhaps ancient ghoulish.

It came of the Lich-Queen of Ceredell (yes, you do note the Cescereli Cere being mixed with the trade-tongue Dell) wanting to cut her ties to humanity. As a tribute to the people who visited her coronation (I'm currently writing this story up now, so spoiler alert for the Lich-Queen!), she named her capital after the spirits, made shifter-tongue the national language, devoted a quarter of every mortal city to the Gods, industrialised the blood-substitute industry for the vampires, and offered free and safe immigration for all the above species.

The result was... This. Ghoulish growls and snaps and whistles and bounces of the walls like it's high on booze-berry. It technically uses the trade-tongue alphabet, but with each letter having indentations and inflections, it might as well be its own language.

Well, that's about it! I'm sorry to anyone who made it this far, that's 5 minutes of your life that you're not getting back. I could talk endlessly on my world building, but I try to obey the principle of Show, not Tell. Next up, Geography!!!

#wordbuilding #writeblr #my writing #writing #creative writing #writerscommunity #writing community #fantasy #spilled ink #writer stuff #conlang #fictional language #Me when I write articles about my writing instead of actually finishing my 50 wips #Triworld

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linkspooky · 2 years

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THE TRAGIC DEATH OF BAKUGO

Hamartia, also called the tragic flaw, (Harmartia from the Greek hamartien, “to err”) is an inherent defect or shortcoming in the hero of a tragedy, who is in other respects a superior being favored by fortune. Aristotle inroduced the term casually in poetics, in describing the tragic hero as a man of noble rank and nature whose misfortune is not brought about by villainy but by some “error of judgement”. Most importantyly, the hero’s suffering and it’s far-reaching reverberations are far out of proprotion with his flaw. An element of cosmic collusion among the hero’s flaw, chance, necessaity, and other external forces is essential to bring about the tragic catastrophe [x].

I start out with the lecture because, this week’s chapter, and the dramatic turn of events where it looked like the heroes had the advantage for most of this fight so far, only to have those advantages undone in a catastrophic turn of events, follows this idea of Hamartia. Just to be clear, I don’t think Horikoshi is specfically referencing Aristotle or anything like that. I just think the way the story is structure d right now is heavily reminiscent of it, the mistakes of the heroes are what brought about this current tragic turn of events. The events of this chapter are essentially the mistakes the heroes made so far going into the valley, catching up with them and benefitting the villains side of the fight. I’ll explain under the cut.

This is a list of all the mistakes and oversights, the heroes made so far, and just to be clear this isn’t really about whether I think personally the heroes are good or bad people. Hamartia is an intentionally written flaw in a hero character, that the plot is supposed to challenge, the hero rises or falls based on this flaw.

Peter Parker AKA Spiderman AKA the greatest superhero of all time (this isn’t an opinion it’s just objective fact fight me) is a character written around the central flaw of responsibility, in his origin story, because of him acting irresponsibly and wanting to selfishly use his new superhuman abilities for his own gain, he lets a robber go right by him, and as a tragic consequence his uncle is shot by that same robber and as he lies dying in his arm he tells Peter “with great power comes great responsibility.” This isn’t a moral judgement on the characters, but rather the flaw their arc resolves around and how there are consequences like Uncle Ben being shot when they don’t work on said flaws.

Tragic Mistake # 1: Escalating rather than Talking

Before the fight even begins, we’re introduced to a conflict that’s unique to the kids, that they’re starting to think of the villains as more than just people to be stopped and put down. Uraraka remembers that Toga cried when she felt rejected like a person would, Shoto wonders what kind of food Toya likes and considers sitting him down for family dinner, Deku says he can’t ignore the little boy inside of Shigaraki. They are considering the idea that their might be another way of dealing with the villains, but they are all also still using the language of “stop” rather than “save.”

If the central question of MHA is what makes a true hero, a hero who “wins” or a hero who “saves”, the adult heroes especially Hawks, Endeavor and Jeanist are all firmly on the side of “win” and so fixed that it doesn’t even seem to be a question, whereas the kids are sitting on the fence but they’re still using langauge like “stop” Touya, rather than “saving.”

Whether or not you think the villains deserve to be saved, further escalating the conflict instead of trying to seek out alternative means to deal with the villains is a conflict for pure strategic reasons. The reason it’s a strategic mistake is because the heroes already tried this in the war arc, they amassed every single force they had for a pre-emptive strike, to put the villains on the defensive. The language of the War Arc was even that if they didn’t stop the villains here, they probably will not have enough forces afterwards afterwards to keep fighting them. That’s the exact language AFO uses in this chapter when analyzing the situation, both the mass retirement of heroes, and also the losses in the War Arc, have made it so a full frontal assault against the villains and essentially going to war with them is no longer viable.

Like, let’s set the matter of forcing the 1-A kids to essentially fight on the front lines because they simply don’t have the numbers with the retirement of professional heroes to the side for now. This is just the situation of the heroes going into the fight, they didn’t have the numbers they had in the War Arc, and so going into this fight they tried once again with a pre-emptive strike, and a divide and conquer strategy to make use of their lack of numbers. However, they are essentially trying to do the war arc again with less numbers, and less preparation.

And the War Arc strategy did not even work in the first place. Despite Hawks having months of perparation, the complete element of surprise, Shigaraki, Toga, Dabi, Spinner all got away. Despite the execution of Twice, Toga still has Twice’s blood and Sad Man’s Parade is an option once more. Despite Hawks’ spying, Gigantoamachia got out. Hawks didn’t see the Touya reveal coming.

Basically what AFO is saying in this chapter is the Heroes had a situation where they had the villains scattered and fighting on the defensive, and they failed to finish them off this time. Now, they are trying to exact same strategy over again with less numbers, and that advantage of surprise and preperation gone. The heroes can’t afford to keep escalating the conflict and trying to put down the villains by overpowering, simply because it’s not strategically viable.

I’m going to quote Class 1-A kids to essentially seal the point I’m trying to make about the turn of the tides of battle in this chapter.

[Class 1-A Kids] like after this development, with Bakugo down, Shigarki still putting up a fight when the heroes essentially have him in a cage designed to neutralize all of his powers, Dabi back up, AFO at least partially healed even when Hawks’ strategy of breaking his mask completely successful and Endeavor hitting him with his strongest prominence burn, and also Toga still has Sad Man’s Parade in reserve as a surprise and hasn’t used it yet, then what exactly can the heroes do to turn the table at this point?

Either Deku showing up to the Shigaraki battle will somehow fix everything by being so overpowered, or you know, the heroes will have to try a different strategy. As Class 1akids says. The idea of saving the villains has been floated for 100+ chapters, the villains have now gone from Shigaraki a leader they were extremely loyal to, to AFO a leader who is mostly using them as pawns in his conflict, and Shigaraki himself is in need of saving, as Spinner has said over and over again he’s continuing the fight for Shigaraki’s sake to save him, not for AFO. There are several characters who could be turned against AFO if given reason to by the heroes, and also it gives the Villains a chance to work to undo at least some of the damage they did.

Mistake #2 PISSING TOGA OFF

So essentially the War Arc right now is focused on what are five individual fights, Toga vs Uraraka, everyone else Important vs Shigaraki, Shoto, Iida and Endeavor’s sidekicks vs. Touya, Hawks and Endeavor vs. AFO, and then the riots led by spinner and the heteromorphs. The last has gotten the least focus so I’m going to break the other four fights down in order. Toga is interesting because we have probably gotten the least focus on her fight, we didn’t even cut to her this chapter, and yet Toga is essentially the jenga brick that got pulled out of the tower in the heroes strategy.

The heroes decision to bet everything on Deku being able to take down Shigaraki with the support of everyone backing him up, was pulled out of the jenga tower when Toga grabbed him and dragged him out of the portal when Danger Sense didn’t trigger.

Interestingly enough, Toga not triggering Danger Sense did not have to be the disadvantage it turned out to be. As I said, there are clear mistakes and missed opportunities that he heroes mistake in each major battle. Fourth even says, that the reason Toga didn’t trigger the danger sense is because she doesn’t hurt people out of hatred.

Ignoring the Yandere aspects of Toga going “Deku, please be my boyfriend”, there is a lot of emotional complexity to Toga’s basic statement that she wants to become more like the people she loves. The entire time Toga a high schooler herself has been fascinated by the UA kids, especially Deku and Uraraka and wondering what the difference between them and herself is. Toga’s entire character revolves around the idea that she was labeled as a deviant the moment her quirk manifested and shunned, and yet she desires acceptance for who she is, especially after repressing herself to such an extreme extent to try to be “normal” and “good” lead to what was essentially a psyhotic break and a violent incident.

Shigaraki and Touya are perhaps the most self destructive of all the LOV characters, while Toga is someone who has questioned whether the heroes will ever come save her, or if what she really wants is acceptance rather than just destroying things.

Toga is the one questioning if things have to be a life or death battle between them, and Izuku and Ochaco both have the opportunity to show Toga there are other ways, and then they don’t.

Toga’s trajectory as a character is pretty clear, when people reject her, she rejects them back even harder. If you try violence on her, she will get violent back, and so Ochaco and Deku both pick the option of choosing to just defeat her in a physical battle is just a bad choice in general, because Toga is essentially sitting on a bomb. She has the nuke codes here. The biggest advantage of the fight is going to be when Toga uses sad man’s parade, so either Ochaco just defets her in a physical battle before Toga has the chance to use it (but if this happens then why does Horikoshi devote several chapters in a long running plot thread to bring up the possibility that Toga will create another Sad Man’s Parade, and also give Toga the ability to copy the abilities of people whose blood she drinks in the first place if not to make this happen), or Toga is talked down or even persuaded to turn against AFO.

But as for Uraraka herself, what is her tragic and central flaw in this scenario that she cannot overcome. It is essentially Uraraka who is the most empathic of the hero characters, and the one who is so sensitive that she can notice the struggles on other people’s faces and gave a big speech on how the heroes are essentially humans and they need help too. She even flashes back to Toga’s crying face in that speech, it’s a deliberate showing that Toga is being left out of this speech. If the heroes are still human, and need to be helped like any other human beings, then villains as the other side of the coin are just as human as the heroes. Yet Uraraka still fails to reconcile Toga with that idea, Toga is given the impression that Uraraka still doesn’t see her as a real person and that pushes Toga into more extreme forms of violence.

So anyway, what Ochaco and Deku essentially needed to do here was not poke the bear, and not only did they poke it, they shot it, threatened its cubs, and also the bear has rabies.

MISTAKE # 3 ENJI TODOROKI NOT FACING DABI

So yes, everyone and their mother has pointed out that Shoto has a better chance of actually reaching Dabi and empathizing him because they faced such similiar abused and lived experiences. And yes, apaprently it was Shoto’s idea himself to face Dabi alone while Enji handled AFO. I think since then, the plot has pointed out several times that Enji choosing to run away from Toya and not face him again, is him not improving on his central flaw as a character, and was the wrong choice in this situation.

If Shoto facing Dabi alone was the right choice, then Shoto using his best move against Dabi, his speech about everything he’s learned from his friends, and also his begging his brother to stop, would have stopped the fight there, but even after Shoto leverages all of that....

Dabi just gets back up and demands to see Endeavor again.

So, I think Dabi needs to face Endeavor. But like, to prove my point with actual in text citations. Number one, if Shoto’s objective is to get Toya to come home (something he has implied but not vocalized) and Enji’s intention is to take responsbility for Toya and the damage they did to this family, they both went into this fight with the wrong head. The conflict with Dabi is also another iteration of the central conflict of the story, what makes heroes “winning” or “saving.” We see another repeat of the language of Shoto’s objective of “stop” Toya, rather than saving him. This might not be Shoto’s intentions, deep down he might want to just bring his brother home, but we don’t see him vocalize that.

Enji himself, is the emblem of the hero who always prioritizes victory over saving others. Dabi is the shadow to Enji’s flaws as as hero meant to call out that flaws. To simplify the complex Todoroki drama in one central flaw, it’s established to us in the Touya flashback chapters. Like, for Toya himself, what is the origin as a conflict. He has a hero as a father, and he has a father who only cares about the world of heroes, and the potential his children have to be heroes to surpass all might. Enji even before he started to physically abuse Shoto, withdrew entirely from Toya, Natsuo and Fuyumi’s lives when they were no longer potential candidates for his dream to surpass All Might.

Enji’s central flaw as a character is that he chooses being a hero, over being a father and his responsibilities to his family ever single time. The only reason he had a family in the first place was to create a child who could carry on his dream as a hero, but Enji is given several opportunities to just give that up when he sees the way it’s hurting his family, and he just never does he always doubles down every single time choosing his ambitions and heroics over his children.

Enji is a hero at the expense of everything else, even atonement Enji who is supposedly facing the things he did to his family, does so as a hero first before anything else, and it’s shown in the choices he makes during the battle.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Toya shouting “Look at me” his entire childhood, and Dabi repeating “Look at me” makes it pretty clear with what he wants. If that’s not obvious enough, AFO helpfully points it out for the audience.

Hawks’ justification for the choice to just, not have Enji face Dabi is that he wouldn’t be able to objectively face Toya and fight him like any other villain. Once again we have the language, Enji couldn’t “FIGHT AND BEAT” Toya.

Hawks’ thinking is pure strategy, using Endeavor as their biggest fighter with Hawks’ support, they pound everything they have against AFO to take him out of the fight as quickly as possible since he has effectively taken leadership of the villain’s forces, and while he still is their muscles he’s also essentially a glass cannon due to requiring life support with all the injuries All Might left on his body.

It is a sound strategy, that is if it had worked. Even with AFO taunting Enji and shaking him up, we basically see everything in the fight go completely the way Hawks envisioned, they smash his mask, and not only that but Enji uses his strongest fire on AFO. However, as I said Enji in doing this has ignored his central flaw, putting his duty as a hero over his duty to his family. Yeah, he says that, after this he will watch Toya, but hasn’t anyone ever told Enji, the most basic rule of storytelling is show don’t tell. So anyway, everything works out exactly the way Hawks wanted... and then AFO just gets back up.

We see a similiar result in the fight against Toya. I think Enji’s mistakes are much clearer than Shoto’s in this situation, because like it’s not really Shoto’s fault that Enji destroyed his family he’s a victim in this too. However, to briefly touch upon why Shoto alone isn’t enough to Toya, and why he didn’t reach Toya.

Well, to put it simply he didn’t really reach out much in the first place. Dabi is created by his family not seeing him. Shoto chooses not the path of relating to his brother, but by beating him down with his strongest move, putting a stop to him above all else.

If anything I think shoto is a little bit mixed about what he wants going into this fight, and it is in Shoto’s character to being in two minds about things (he is quite literally split down the middle, fire and ice, mother and father, family and heroics, etc. etc.) Is his big brother a villain to be stopped, or someone suffering in need of saving, and I think (I use I think because honestly I’m not sure what to make of Shoto’s character here entirely and where he plays in on this it’s less clean cut than what Enji needs to do. Shoto hears Dabii out for the reason why he ddin’t come back home so he did try talking, but he also like, doesn’t make the leap that Dabi didn’t become a villain in a vaccum.)

So Shoto hasn’t made up his mind, whether Dabi should be dealt with as a villain, or as his brother and fellow abuse victim, and his choice is to simply try overpowering him. I’d say this analysis is supported by the way Shoto fails to take down Toya, by not seeing Toya and underestimating him. By underestimating Toya, he forgot that Toya is someone who spent years honing his quirk on his own, so Toya essentially copies Shoto’s move and Shoto doesn’t see it coming. Failure to see his brother therefore, leads to Shoto making a strategic oversight and Dabi gets back up stronger. The tragic flaw then for both Shoto and Enji is acting as heroes first, and treating the conflict as another hero villain conflict when it’s not, Dabi isn’t just a villain, he’s Toya Todoroki, he’s there brother and son and the person their family failed and let die the first time who is at risk of just dying all over again.

MISTAKE #4 SHIGARAKI IS A VIDEO GAME BOSS FIGHT

So, to quickly recap. The heroes have tried several times already, to take Shigaraki out. They got him in the tube and stopped his heart when he was only halfway through the surgery, and Shigaraki got back up.

The heroes amassed every single one of their best members against him, with the decay quirk mostly deactivated, and his body incomplete and therefore breaking down on him. Deku completely lost his mind and went full violence, activating his quirk in his desperation. Shigaraki was burned by Endeavor, had his quirk neutralized by Eraserhead, was pummeled by Deku into oblivion, was tied up by Jeanist, and then... he got back up. Not only that but when Deku and Shigaraki are together in the vestiges, it’s pointed out that the more the heroes fight against Shigaraki, the more his hatred increases, and more he fuses with AFO. The more Shigaraki hates, the more it eats away at Shigarki, the more the lines between him and AFO blur.

It’s also been said by Shigaraki several times, the more the heroes reject him, the more that Shigaraki will reject him back, his desire to destroy comes from the fact that he knows society has absolutely no place for him. The american hero shoots a missile at Shigaraki, and... he gets back up.

Definition of insanity, trying the same thing over and over again, and all that. Basically, two long running threads have been established by Shigarki, that the more he is hated, the more he will be hated in return, grow more violent, lash out wildly, and the more control AFO has over him. However, no matter how much AFO tries to possess him, a small part of Tenko remains, there is a crying child inside of Shigaraki.

If Shigaraki is beyond saving and needs to be put down, why not only the continued showing of Tenko inside of Shigaraki as a child trapped in horrifying imagery of hundreds and hundreds of hands he can’t escape from, but also people like AFO and Deku both insisting that some small part of the childhood victim remains inside of Shigaraki.

Why is AFO so concerned about the fact that Shigaraki is resisting him in some small ways, if the heroes are not capable of reaching Shigaraki? Why is he suddenly worried about the loss of his total and complete hold of Shigaraki right now. Why suggest that there is a fission within Shigarki, if it’s not possible for Shigarakito break free of AFO’s control?

Onto the fight itself, even without Deku there we are shown not only the trap that the heroes laid against Shigaraki by building an entire arena to neutralize Shigarki’s decay ability, and also copying the erasure quirk to keep it focused on Shigaraki the entire time working, but even without Deku there, the heroes being able to work together and pull off several combo teamwork attacks. Rumi and Bakugo getting close and landing several hits in spite of the mutant hands,the big three of UA landing their three way combo attack that consists of a giant chimera hybrid that shoots lasers. Even without Deku, everything is pretty much working, so why does Shigarki not go down? Two answers, once again the strategy going in was wrong. It’s even mentioned several time, just building a giant arena to contain Shigaraki and trying to unite everyone to destroy him like he’s a video game boss, is the wrong-headed strategy.

Most of all because they literally already tried that. They had the entirety of the strongest heroes unite their forces against Shigaraki in the war arc... and he got back up again.

However, my second reason, to show the central flaw, the Hamartia of Bakugo in this scenario I want to ask the question, why didn’t Deku show up to this battle in the first place?

I mean physically we know why he’s not there, he got dragged into the wrong portal, and now he’s flying making his way there. However, thematically why is Bakugo essentially fighting alone against AFO, and what does that represent in story.

By viewing Shigaraki as just a video game boss to be defeated, all of the heroes here, but especially Bakugo are choosing winning rather than saving. Yes, I do think that winning is still important to being a hero, because without winning Deku will just break his own body over and over again trying to save others.

But Deku is the emblematic hero who wants to save everyone. His entire character revolves around the concept of having an overwhelming desire to save that doesn’t follow any logic. Deku saves people without thinking like it’s an urge inside of him. So of course, Deku is absent from a fight where the main strategy is to win against Shigaraki no matter what. Deku is not ther,e and Bakugo leads the fight.

Bakugo is not only the one who has always prioritized winning, he has also always worshipped All Might as the perfect symbol of victory.

Shigaraki even calls attention to this fact, when delivering his one-sided beatdown.

Bakugo worships All-Might’s triumphs, but without Midoriya there to balance him out, Bakugo only thinks about winning and overpowering the enemy. Bakugo’s only focus is victory, and he himself leverages absolutely everything he has against Shigaraki, his biggest move, and it doesn’t work...

Whether you believe Bakugo’s death is going to be permanent or not, there’s also something truly tragic, about the fact that Bakugo even after his full power not being eough to fight Shigaraki, getting back up and trying again, and practically unlocking a new ability in his quirk. He pushes himself to extremes taking down Shigaraki, then pushed himself even further, and even started to threaten Shigaraki all on his own. And then, his heart literally just gives out on him.

Bakugo gives absolutely everything he has fighting on his own, to achieve the perfect victory against the villains with zero casualties on their side, and he becomes the first casualty himself.

B/c Bakugo’s philosophy of winning, is only half of the philosophy. Bakugo needs Deku not because he needs a strong quirk or because Deku is stronger than him, but because both of their philosophies when brought together balance each other out enough. It’s not winning, or saving, it’s winning and saving. There is no saving without winning, and there is no winning without saving. If there’s anything to be learned from Deku’s solo arc, is that Deku focused too much on the saving aspect of being a hero, at the expense of himself and taking care of himself, and it’s Bakugo who shows up and not only convinces Deku to come home and accept people’s help and stop sacrificing himself, Bakugo even apologizes to Deku for bullying him all these years in an effort to get him to value himself more.

Midoriya needs to learn Bakugo’s self-assured image of victory, to be able to save people without feeling the need to sacrifice himself over and over again. However, Bakugo himself hasn’t learned to balance Midoriya’s philosophy with his own. Bakugo even goes halfway to acknowledging that he needs to do things more Midoriya’s way.

Saving people is how we win. Save by winning, and win by saving. While trying to tell Deku he needs to take care of himself and accept their help, he also accepts Deku’s ideals for the first time, Deku’s method of being a hero is just as valid as him but what they need is to work together.

So the problem with Bakugo fighting alone in this, isn’t that he’ll never be as strong as Deku, or that he’s like Deku’s supporting character or something, but they haven’t reached a true compromise on their ideals. Saving people is how they win, but Bakugo doesn’t even consider saving Shigaraki the way Deku has, and he instead rushes in guns blazing, and leverages everything he has into winning against a villain.

Not only is Bakugo’s sudden death, emblematic of his flaw that he hasn’t learned to compromise his ideals between him and Deku, to become a hero who surpasses All Might bey winning and saving. Bakugo’s flaw has always been the focus on winning above all else, his own fears of inferiority to Deku and his fear that his beliefs don’t make him a good enough hero which causes him to push himself too far (like maybe I don’t know, charging straight at the villain when he’s already injured in order to prove himself) and only seeing half of what made All Might the greatest hero. I mean even on a tactical front, Shigaraki even asks, why was Bakugo, a long range hero who shoots explosions at people... running in and turning things into a close ranged fight? When trying to blow Shigaraki doesn’t work, it leaves Bakugo open to be physically brutalized, and all the injuries that cause his heart to give out in the first place, are a direct result of Bakugo just... charging straight in and trying to win by overpowering Shigaraki.

However, Bakugo’s death is also emblematic of the tragic flaws of the heroes as well. By prioritizing winning over everything else, they’ve inadvertantly caused Bakugo’s death. Shigaraki said at the beginning of the fight he no longer thinks Eraserhead is cool.

What caused Shigaraki to admire Eraserhead in the first place, was his actions of prioritizing the student’s safety above everything else, and fighting on the front lines himself. However, Eraserhead is no longer doing that, and Shigaraki voices the reason for his disappointment this chapter.

The decision to win at the expense of everything else, for the heroes, and for Bakugo, causes Bakugo himself to put way too much responsibility on his shoulders when he’s just one person, and instead of stepping out of the fight and hanging back when he was too injured to continue, he pushed himself too far and his body gave out on him. The Heroes strategy overall of prioritizing winning against the villains over all else, and refusing to try any other strategy other than overpowering him, causes them to put kids on the front line.

Bakugo’s death, almost works perfectly as an example of a tragic flaw causing a hero to fall. Literally in this case, because Bakugo is a hero, who has quite tragically, fallen in the middle of combat. Whether or not Bakugo can come back, or even he heroes can come back from this as a whole, it will require to heroes to battle against and overcome all the flaws I’ve pointed out in the previous sections of this post. Because that is essentailly what makes the heroes journey, a hero struggling against their flaws until they overcome them.

#shigaraki tomura #bakugo katsuki #toya todoroki #shoto todoroki #enji todoroki #himiko toga #uraraka ochako #afo #hawks #takami keigo #Dabi #mha #lov meta #mha spoilers #mha 363 #my hero academia 363 #mha 363 spoilers

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sacred-stanning · 1 month

Text

Chapter 9 Part 5: Lute and Vanessa <3

To start us off, Lute gets rid of this last reinforcement. After this, we can finally start moving up to the chests and Tana above, and to the boss room entrance down and to the right.

Franz gets the Luna mage.

I mentioned Luna's bad hit rates and 0 might before, but here we can see just how dire it is. 28 is awful hit, and since all the attack comes from the user's magic stat with no added might from the tome itself, it isn't even that dangerous in a low-level enemy's hands. Even if this guy actually did hit and crit Franz, he still wouldn't kill him.

I start to move Vanessa forward, and...Oh! What's this? A support conversation?

...with Lute???

So, some of you may have been able to guess from the very tiny and subtle clues I've dropped here and there, but I absolutely love Lute, so I'm actually going to look at this support a bit.

It starts off with Vanessa saying, "Ah, you're...Lute, right?"

I remember at least a couple of other Lute supports start off with the other person not being sure of what her name is. It's consistent enough a factor that we can guess that Lute doesn't really socialize a whole lot with people in the army. It's not surprising given her personality and her obsessive interest in specific things.

After introducing herself, Vanessa introduces her pegasus, Titania.

At which point, Vanessa has stumbled on one of Lute's interests: creatures.

So Lute proceeds to monopolize the conversation and info dump on Vanessa.

She starts by talking about the different names for pegasus. This part in Japanese involves her not only using the katakana, foreign-derived word "pegasus", but also two kanji-based words, "sky horse" and "has wings horse".

Kind of like how we often use Latin or Greek based words in English when we want to sound fancy, or for technical terms (due to the history of Europe's obsession with the Greeks and Romans often being viewed as the "initiators of European civilization") in Japanese there is a tendency for words made up of combined Chinese characters to sound more stiff, or like technical terms. In many cases, this is because these are literal loan words that Japanese educated people adopted into their language, sometimes a couple hundred-thousand years ago when China was viewed as a center of culture and learning.

I think a good example could be the word she uses for "sky horse". The two characters are jammed together, and usually in those cases, the "Chinese" reading is used, which is true here too, "Tenma". (Like I mentioned above, the "Chinese" reading is based on the pronunciation of the characters that some Japanese guy got from the Asian mainland at some point in history. Many kanji have multiple readings like this since there are many different Chinese languages in different areas of what's now China, languages also change over time, and of course, Japanese phonology is radically different from any Chinese phonology, so the pronunciations are more like approximations of how some group of Chinese people read the character at some point in time. If you look in a detailed kanji dictionary, it will often tell you the Chinese dynasty/ies in power at the time the character's reading(s) was/were adopted into Japanese.)

If this word were using "Japanese" readings of the characters, it would probably be "Sora no uma". Just based on feels, "Tenma" sounds a bit fancier and stiffer, whereas "Sora no uma" sounds very straightforward because the words "sora" (sky) and "uma" (horse) are used in everyday conversation, whereas the parts of "Tenma", "ten" and "ma" are not used on their own usually.

I explain all of this because it's interesting how it's coincidently very similar to something we can see in English too. Take a word like "autograph". It's two Greek words, "self" and "write" jammed together. These words aren't used on their own usually. (I mean, maybe this is a bad example since these two parts both are used on their own, but that's only because "auto" can be short for "automobile", and "graph" can also mean a table or chart. What I really mean is, we don't use "graph" as the word "write" in English on its own. No one says, "Please graph your name on this line here.") But these parts are frequently used to express meaning as parts of words.

Imagine how "self write" (both Germanic words) would sound in place of "autograph"? It sounds very basic, almost too straightforward. This same thing that we do in English all the time with Latin/Greek/Norman based words is similar to what they do in Japanese with the distinction between words with an "original Japanese" origin versus a "Chinese" origin.

In English, germanic words often sound straightforward and basic. In Japanese, Japanese origin words often sound more straightforward. In the same way, in English, words made up of Latin/Greek/Norman French parts often sound more educated or technical. And in Japanese, that's often the case for words made up of combined kanji using the "Chinese" readings.

----END INFO DUMP---

At any rate, now that I've info dumped at you, you may see why I like Lute so much.

Lute goes on to explain to Vanessa (who rides a pegasus literally every single day) how they fly by kicking the air, not by flapping their wings, and that their wings are used more for gliding.

To which Vanessa kindly responds that, yes, it would be really hard to ride them if they flapped their wings all the time.

She responds like this instead of, you know, getting all prickly about this random girl lecturing her about the animal she knows better than any other.

God bless you, Vanessa. You're a saint.

Lute also continues to talk about the origin of the word "pegasus" and its connections to "springs" and "oceans", and basically, go look at Wikipedia if you want to see the rest of what she said. :)

Vanessa continues to be an absolute sweety and says, "Thank you for the very clear introduction. I'm glad we're allies."

And then Lute says, "I look forward to working with you, Titania!"

Vanessa: "I'm Vanessa!"

Like a lot of people, I've jumped on the Dungeon Meshi bandwagon recently, and it's hard not to get flavors of Laius from Lute.

At any rate, the original reason I moved Vanessa there was to block the soldier from hitting Lute, and Vanessa does an admirable job of that during enemy phase.

I also discover that there is another guy with a sleep staff in the throne room. He misses Vanessa though.

You can see how low his hit is on her, with her good res.

It's this guy, here.

I start sending people up to deal with the enemies around the chests and Tana. I leave Vanessa in range of the mercenary, and Ephraim in range of the armor, though it later on turns out that that guy doesn't move.

Next time: More reinforcements, more sleep staff nonsense, and maybe we'll finally save Tana

#fire emblem #sacred stones #fire emblem the sacred stones #fe8 #ファイアエンブレム #聖魔の光石 #dunmeshi #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #japanese #japanese language #fire emblem lute #fire emblem vanessa

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