#across the corona-verse

[midnight-raven]

Spider-Mirabel: Across the Spider Verse

One year after becoming the Spider-Gal, and teaching Antonio about his powers, Mirabel Madrigal is launched across the multiverse on a grand adventure of a lifetime.

On her journey, Mirabel meets dozens of alternate versions of Spider heroes, even members of her family.

The Webslinger/Camilo Madrigal

An alternate version of Mirabel's theater-loving cousin who was bitten by a radioactive spider.

Spider-Lady/Isabela Madrigal

An alternate version of Mirabel's older sister, who holds the mantle of a Spider-Madrigal.

Spider-Woman/Luisa Madrigal

The multiversal doppelgänger of Mirabel's other sister; The Invincible Spider-Woman.

Scarlet Spider/Dolores Madrigal

A Spider-Madrigal who had the ability to sense and hear danger from over a mile away.

… along with several more (sorry, bad at coming up with super names)

Spider-Man/Hiro Hamada

A new young spider vigilante from San Fransokyo. A robotics student that picked up the mantle of Spider-Man after his older brother's death.

The NightCrawler/Hiccup Haddock

A college student skilled in engineering, who is best friends with the spider that bit him. With the help of his special ‘friend’ Hiccup watches over the people of Berk from the shadows.

Spider-Woman/Rapunzel Corona

A talented young artist with long, indestructible hair. While using her hair to protect people, Rapunzel also tried to uncover the origin of her magic hair.

The Arachnid Archer/Merida DunBroch

A trained athlete that is known as the greatest archer in the city of DunBroch. With her bow and arrow, Merida dedicated herself to protecting her city, and her family.

Frost Spider/Jack Frost

A young hockey player with a past that he cannot remember. His heroics caused Jack to be offered a role in a team of heroes called ‘The Guardians.’

Ghost-Spider & Lady Web/Elsa and Anna Arendelle

The Spider Sisters, both bitten by the same spider and both determined to protect their city and each other, while uncovering the mystery behind their parents' deaths.

Spider-Man/Tadashi Hamada

An alternate version of Hiro's older brother from another dimension, where the brothers' roles are switched.

La Telaraña/Miguel Rivera

A young musician who discovers the spider that gave him powers could be linked to a deep family mystery. The disappearance of Héctor Rivera, and his connection to genetic scientist Ernesto De La Cruz.

Spider-Man/Varian Rudiger

A young alchemist from an alternate reality of Rapunzel's dimension, teamed up with other talented super teens; Hugo, Nuru, and Yong.

Spider Byte/Coraline Jones

A curious young girl that was bitten by a strange spider hidden in the walls of her new house, and is being hunted by the original creator of that spider.

Water-Spider/Moana Waialiki

A skilled young surfer with the powers of a spider, who protects her home with the help of her super strong brother, Maui.

The Arach-Kid/Walter Beckett

A young mutant that is part of a secret agency, and partners with the top spy, Lance Sterling. With his powers, Walter is determined to make a difference in the world.

Water Dragon/Raya

A trained fighter whose genetics were altered by a spider. Raya uses her powers to make her city the home her father always envisioned.

#Encanto #Spider-Mirabel: Across the Spider-Verse #Adventures of the Spider-Madrigals #Encanto AU #Spider-Man AU #Across the SpiderVerse AU #Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons #Mirabel Madrigal #Antonio Madrigal #Camilo Madrigal #Isabela Madrigal #Luisa Madrigal #Dolores Madrigal #Hiro Hamada #Hiccup Haddock #Rapunzel Corona #Merida DunBroch #Jack Frost #Elsa #Anna #Tadashi Hamada #Miguel Rivera #Varian #Coraline Jones #Moana #Walter Beckett #Raya #Varian and the Seven Kingdoms

[acrossthecoronaverse]

#b&w #yosemite tunnel view #yosemite california #yosemite waterfalls #yosemite national park #across the corona verse

[racefortheironthrone]

BOE, the Messenger(s), and the Trillionaires

Introduction

I’ve been doing a re-read of the Locked Tomb - although technically it’s a re-listen, because I like the audiobooks - and I stumbled across a particular passage that hadn’t stuck in my memory before that made me rethink my understanding of the origin of Blood of Eden. Ever since Harrow the Ninth and especially since Nona the Ninth, there’s been this common interpretation that the BOE are descendants of the trillionaires who abandoned Earth and that’s why John is at war with them. I’m not so sure that’s true any more. 

Here’s why. In Nona, when the whole business with Crown/Corona infiltrating the barracks kicks off, there’s an interesting exchange between Camilla and We Suffer about the Oversight Committee that includes this statement:

“Hect, what you must understand about Blood of Eden is that we own things in common, we share responsibilities and resources in common. She could have moved these resources at will...but I must make one move at a time. And above all, I must place the safety of...Blood of Eden’s continuity...even above the mission.” (Emphasis mine.)

This took me aback somewhat, because the emphasis on militant communal ownership doesn’t really fit with the idea of “descendants of trillionaires.” I suppose one could say that it’s been ten thousand years, cultures change and drift over time...except that, as I’ll get into later, the BOE seems very very insistent on cultural preservation, so it would be a bit out-of-character if they changed that stance on this one particular issue. 

And that’s what made me think: what if the BOE aren’t the descendants of the trillionaires? What if they’re the descendants of the non-trillionaires on the FTL ships?

East of Eden: A Theory About What Happened After the FTL Ships Jumped

So here’s the question that’s been percolating in my mind: once you’re out in space, why keep listening to the trillionaires, especially about the vital question of who owns the precious resources brought from Eden and who gets to decide happens next? There would probably be some residual cultural deference to the visionary disruptors, but the traditional answers of property law backed up by the state or men with guns paid to enforce the orders of the capitalists kind of break down when you consider that:

In John’s chapters (and verses) in Nona, we get an account of what happened leading up to and during the Resurrection: according to John, the trillionaires pulled a con job on the planet with their FTL ships, pretending that a fleet of twelve ships, each carrying a few thousand people (made up of “hand-picked guys” and “two hundred nominated people”), was merely the first wave of a planetary evacuation. As Mercymorn and others worked out, there were no future waves, no plan to come back and pick up more, the trillionaires had liquidated their cash and financial assets in favor of buying up material resources they’d need in space, and everyone else was being left for dead.

These twelve ships (possibly minus one, it’s not clear whether John managed to destroy the one he grabbed before it jumped) and the 20-odd thousand people on them must be the ancestors of exo-humanity as it exists in the myriadic year. But we know that of those 20-odd thousand people, only a “half-dozen” were the trillionaires. Everyone else was staff they’d selected to do the work of planetary colonization, plus a tiny group of people chosen by the governments of Earth Eden. 

other than 200 randos who are likely to be recruited from the ranks of elected officials and upper management bureaucracy rather than Special Forces, the forces of the state are not only light-years away but also just got eaten by John Gaius.

it’s a bit harder to pull off the Jay Gould method when you’ve turned all of your cash into raw materials, there’s nowhere to spend cash in space, and it doesn’t take long for men with guns in that scenario to decide that the resources belong to them actually, because they have the guns. 

While we know that some form of a market economy exists on New Rho and the other exo-planets, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an oligarchical ruling class based on ownership of capital. Rather, we see a state of anarchy where there is no hegemonic entity but duelling centers of power. This suggests to me that the trillionaires’ power did not last very long after human settlement outside the solar system, possibly due to a (potentially bloodless) revolution in which the only surviving members of humanity just decided not to listen to six old (white) men and took their shit in order to survive.

In that scenario, I could see it being the case that the collective memory of communal ownership of property in the midst of a crisis could linger among a certain sub-population and provide the origin for this aspect of BOE’s internal culture. 

So where did BOE come from?

Well, in large part it emerged as an organic response to John Gaius’ imperialist campaign against exo-humanity. As I noted elsewhere, John’s revenge against those who abandoned Earth in her hour of need is essentially a re-enactment of colonialism - the Cohort shows up with their overwhelming military might, forces the local population into subjugation with unequal treaties, imposes its language and customs, destroys the natural environment in a drive for short-term resource extraction, and then forces people into an endless cycle of being resettled on reservations over and over again - which makes a certain sick sense, in that it’s probably the worst thing that a Kiwi of Maori heritage could think of doing to their enemies. 

He even goes to the extent of modelling the Cohort uniforms on 19th century British Army uniforms with the colors reversed, and coming up with his own gloss on the Christianity that was imposed on indigenous populations in the name of “civilizing” them. This campaign is only mystifying to outside observers like Augustine and Coronabeth because they don’t have the cultural context to know what John’s up to (in no small part because he’s used his necromantic powers and political position in order to suppress all knowledge of that context). 

And thus, it’s not that surprising that John’s imperialism provoked anti-colonial resistance: when his Empire made contact with exo-humanity, to the extent that anyone still remembered him, it was as the horrific necromantic cult leader who murdered the ten billion and destroyed Eden, and now he’s come to finish the job in the name of collective punishment for the sins of six dead men, and by the way he’s bringing death and the defilement of the dead and the destruction of everything you’ve ever built with him. There probably have been dozens and hundreds of resistance movements - some local, some planetary, some multi-planetary - that rose up and got crushed over thousands of years. 

So what makes BOE different from all other resistance movements?

The Messenger(s)

I want to go back a few thousand years and talk about what happened when the FTL ships managed to escape the solar system. While interplanetary colonization would always be an incredibly stressful experience even without a revolution, the fact that all of this was happening in the wake of John nuking Earth and killing the ten billion, then devouring the solar system, and their narrow escape from his wrothful grasp would have added an entirely different level of terror to the event - but also a new sense of responsibility. 

Because - regardless of whether people on the FTL ships knew about the trillionaires’ supposed plan to abandon humanity on Earth or believed John’s accusations - they were now the sole survivors of humanity, the carriers of all culture and history. The ao3 author Griselda_Gimpel has a really good series of fics imagining the development of exo-humanity from the FTL ships onwards, and in one scene they mention the enormous sense of cultural loss that people on those ships would have felt when they realized that the internet was gone forever. 

And this got me thinking: what if some nerds on those ships had that kind of profound reaction and decided to preserve as much of Earth’s heritage as possible? How would you do that with limited access to computer storage and humanity potentially scattering across multiple planets, and knowledge being lost forever with the march of time as the original settler generation died off and was replaced by new generations born outside the solar system? I think the answer is:

Oral tradition. See, one of the things that fans of the series have been talking about for a while is the implications of the myriadic duration of the Empire, what that would have done to language and culture in the Nine Houses and among BOE, how is it that people can still be speaking the same language or reading the same writing as from the time of the Resurrection, let alone remember memes and cultural references from the 21st century? This is a fair reaction from a Western perspective - after all, ten thousand years ago would be roughly 8000 BCE or smack dab in the Early Neolithic. Surely it would have been impossible for the memory of Earth to have survived that long. 

But, as people have said, Tamsyn Muir is writing a very Kiwi series. And one of the things that is very distinctive about the culture of Aotearoa is the oral traditions of the Maori and Pasifika cultures more generally. While Maori oral histories go back to the 13th century CE when Aotearoa was settled, Australian Aboriginal oral tradition goes back as far as potentially 30,000-40,000 years. Oral tradition is not perfectly reliable, it undergoes drift and change over time, it can experience loss and disruption (from colonization, for example), but it can endure across millennia. 

My theory is that these nerds on the FTL ships or their descendants dedicated themselves to the mission of cultural preservation through oral tradition, and thus the Messengers were born. And at some point, the Messengers met up with Blood of Eden and explained that John Gaius’ colonial campaign wasn’t just an unjustified act of aggression and imperialism, but an act of cultural genocide stretching back 10,000 years:

“I charge you with...the utter disintegration of institutions political and social, languages, cultures, religions, all niceties and personal liberties of the nations, by use of-”

“...they’re dead words--a human chain reaching back ten thousand years...how did they feel?” (Harrow the Ninth)

Somewhere around this point, then, BOE took as its mission the preservation of the Messengers, which is why they are given BOE bodyguards, why discharging a weapon in their presence is grounds for execution, and why they are both deeply respected and honored by BOE but kept away from sensitive missions and not necessarily kept in the loop on critical intel. 

Why AIM is “They”

This part of my theory suggested an explanation for why AIM is called “they” by Blood of Eden, and why Palamedes Sextus sensed a necromantic implant when they “stumbled” into AIM at the school. We know that the Sixth House has been in contact with Blood of Eden for a very long time, and that Cassiopeia was not only responsible for the Sixth’s “break clause” but also was BOE’s “Source Gram.”

My theory is that Cassiopeia and the Sixth, being a bunch of librarian nerds obsessed with the preservation of cultural knowledge, would never have been entirely comfortable with taking John Gaius’ word for what happened during the Resurrection and what life was like on pre-Resurrection Earth. The natural place to look for an alternate source of documentation would be exo-humanity, and I think she/they went looking clandestinely and came across the Messengers and BOE. Somehow, they avoided killing each other and came to a modus vivendi.

I think part of this modus vivendi was an offer by Cassiopeia/the Sixth to provide the Messengers with an improved means of preserving their oral tradition: namely, a necromantic implant that would preserve the ghosts of dead Messengers and let them communicate with their successors, ensuring that the oral tradition could be passed down perfectly from generation to generation. After all, not only are the Sixth House spirit magicians, but they are specialist psychometricians who know better than anyone else how to pull information about and from the past from material objects, and it was Doctor Sex who gave Palamedes the idea for preserving revenant spirits after death by giving them a physical anchor. 

Hence, AIM is they because they are a collective “human chain” of all the Messengers who came before them - they have the voices of hundreds of cultural preservations in their heads, telling them of all that was lost with the fall of Eden. No wonder they want to play school teacher and be “she” for a while. 

Conclusion

TLDR: BOE aren’t trillionaires, they’re commie terrorists with a fetish for cultural preservation. So I guess this makes the whole war a case of leftist infighting, considered in the long run?

#the locked tomb #blood of eden #boe #aim #the messenger #the angel #ntn #ntn spoilers #nona the ninth #pash #our lady of the passion #the sixth house #cassiopeia #tlt

[djmaximusgodj]

Djing at @highhorseoc Saturday night! 21+ for entry! Come hang out with us and have some fun. #foundationroomanaheim #downtownfullerton #downtownlongbeach #dtf #djdexterous #DJMaximus #HighHorseOC #HighHorseSalon #matador #partyrockindjs #drinkspecials #matadorwednesdays #fullerton #orangecounty #getyourdrinkon #partypeople #coronas #country #jagermeister #dosequisxx #coorslight #fireballs #margaritas #margaritatime #anaheim #fullertoncollege #cypresscollege #goldenwestcollege #orangecoastcollege #SantaAnaCollege

#SoundCloud

[600shekels]

2 Chronicles 3: 1-4. "The Nucleus."

Solomon Builds the Temple

3 Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah[a] the Jebusite, the place provided by David. 2 He began building on the second day of the second month in the fourth year of his reign.

Mount Moriah is the "High Place of the Myrrh of Yah." Myrrh is the most bittersweet of balsams, giving it a unique, not unappealing quality.

To finally audience with God and find David, "persistence of unrelenting beauty" in His Presence is indeed like the fragrance or taste of myrrh. He is this burnt organge color of fire, He is its corona and He is within it, and as the verse says, is Araunah the Jebusite, a "Large tree under which all is underfoot".

There is only one way to describe the experience, except to ask creation "How is this [being] possible?"

The only answer one can hope for is to remember it, such is the nature of the Supernatural Being whose floridian reign exists by means well beyond us but He Himself is never far away.

This is the bittersweetness, to be near and to be far at the same time. If God is to be known all presumptions about this must be challenged:

3 The foundation Solomon laid for building the temple of God was sixty cubits long and twenty cubits wide[b] (using the cubit of the old standard). 

4 The portico at the front of the temple was twenty cubits[c] long across the width of the building and twenty[d] cubits high.

The foundation of the temple is defined by how the space it takes up which means it must displace anti-space. In order to become and remain a sentient species we must displace what is undefined with what is recognizable in its manifest form using words, letters, concepts, and memorize them.

If no one ever told you how to read, write, or reason, what do you think would happen if you passed an apple tree and saw an apple hanging from the branch, and you had no language or frame of reference with it? This would be very confusing at best.

The same is true about God, the host and the phenomenal universe. We need an object which is displacing space, and we need to know what it is using language in order to displace the space in our minds.

To realize this must be done using scripture if we are to acquaint with God is called the Foundation of the Rock of the Temple.

To use measurements called cubits, "increments of human personal space" or human scale is to acknowledge there is only so much we can do as human beings in the process of fully fathoming God.

20 cubits refers to the amount of time and space one man needs to transcend the Second Day, which is the realization of the significance of these words:

8 And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

The portico is the miracle of the coincidence that God and man would meet via the construction of the Temple and eventually become endeared to each other within its nucleus on the interior.

The God of Israel is quite simply the most fascinating living thing one could ever encounter. We are so lucky to have Him. Wouldn't it serve the purposes of Justice and Grace if we were to invite Him to try to feel the same way about us?

More about the Nucleus is explained in the sections that are forthcoming.

[fatesdesign-archive]

“Do you ever feel like....” she sighed, looking out across the kingdom from the balcony the two princesses stood on. The night air blew a cool breeze, it ruffled their hair in the silence. “I don’t know. Maybe this is selfish, but... do you ever feel like you’re not doing enough for your home, even though you’re doing everything you can possibly think of to keep it safe? To protect it?” Anna didn’t know what made her ask. Maybe the party had been too much, the celebrations of summer gotten the better of her. How could she relax and dance when it felt like there was so much to be done for ARENDELLE? ::MEEP sorry I just couldn’t resist I felt the strong desire to send an ask! Kept the verse ambiguous so you could choose where you wanted to be in the verses hehe

Unprompted <3 || @spareisms

It would never get old, the huge difference between her tower window, and the view from a castle's balcony. At night Arendelle still had some life in it, the lanterns around the streets lighting up the gentle villages. She looked down into the courtyard and garden, eyes spotting Eugene doing what he done best, keeping a group of people entertained with his stories, a soft smile on her face before turning to see Anna who looked less than relaxed. Of course this was a holiday for Rapunzel, somewhere she could let her hair down a little, but Anna was still queen, still running a kingdom.

Rapunzel listened, giving Anna time to explain herself fully before she nudged her gently with her shoulder. "Your kingdom is wonderful Anna, you should be very proud" she spoke, green eyes turned to focus completely on her now. "I have only had a couple experiences running Corona when my parents had a break, and it was the most stressful weekend of my whole life" Rapunzel laughed, though the memory was painful, having to deny a friend of help for the sake of the kingdom. She didn't know how well she could ever run Corona if the time came, but there was one thing she did know; there was no way she could do it without Eugene by her side.

"I have learned that no matter how hard you try, there's always going to issues. You solve one thing, and then there's another to figure out. Whether its a visitor, the weather, or poverty" she hummed, knowing there was a lot of things on her list that she was working through. Her mother had already started on the orphanages thanks to Eugene's input, the idea of apprenticeship jobs for the kids had made a difference. "You're doing a great job, you and Kristoff, Arendelle will protect themselves thanks to being ruled by the kindest queen who can't relax at her own party".

#;ic #verse; happily ever after #spareisms #awaah thank you!! #anna pls chill

[mariaswrittenwork]

#across the coronaverse #across the corona-verse #road trip #green soil #arches #green soil arches #arches national park #travel

[bathedinobscurity]

VARIAN | VERSE SET 1

v1 | pre canon

Anything taking place prior to the events of Tangled the Series.

v2 | amber footprints mark his steps

Anything taking place during the canon events of Tangled the Series, from s1 all the way up to s3.

v3 | corona’s royal engineer

Anything taking place after the events of Tangled the Series, but prior to Varian setting off on his journey across the seven kingdoms.

v4 | across the seven kingdoms

Anything taking place during the seven kingdoms AU.

v5 | home at last

Anything taking place after the seven kingdoms AU.

#ooc | muse stuff #varian | verses #varian v1 | pre canon #varian v2 | amber footprints mark his steps #varian v3 | corona's royal engineer #varian v4 | across the seven kingdoms #varian v5 | home at last

[fletchphoenix]

Starlight

Heya - quick thing because my girlfriend has been begging me for months to write something and, since we've almost been together for three years, thought I'd so something nice.

Enjoy and I hope you're all having a great day <3

-------------------

Varian huffed as he laid out a blanket and sat down on it in the clearing, dew still desperately clinging to the grass beneath him as he let himself lie down. A lantern with a flickering flame sat beside his head on the fabric - he offered to take first watch, with everyone else presumably asleep behind him. He thought he’d take the opportunity to do a bit of stargazing in his brief moments of serenity - though he did love the others, he really did, he still appreciated his time alone. It gave him time to think. The sky was clear tonight as well, so it was the optimum time to attempt to identify the stars that Rapunzel and especially Nuru would tell him about. It was fascinating how they could be used to navigate to certain places, like if you followed the North Star you could eventually find Corona, the sky acting as a compass to those well versed in the constellations. He could almost pick out certain ones - Ursa Major and Minor, Draco, Aquila and Cygnus, though he wasn’t too sure without guidance from Nuru, but he was sure he was at the very least improving.

“Having fun there?” A voice sounded from behind him, and Varian could almost hear the smugness in Hugo’s tone, the alchemist leaning his head back and frowning at the smirking face of the blond. Hugo. “I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d grace you with my presence. You’re welcome.” The blond stepped over the lantern before unceremoniously dropping himself onto the blanket and laying back to look at the stars. “Finally putting the knowledge bestowed upon you by Nuru to good use?”

Varian rolled his eyes, running a hand through his hair before laying back again on the blanket. “Yes, actually. If you took the time to listen to Nuru every once in a while, you’d find what she says interesting. And Yong as well.” He huffed and focused his mind on identifying the constellations once again - was that Libra he could see? It was difficult to stay on task with the blond beside him now, the shuffling providing an undesired distraction.

“Easy for you to say, hairstripe. We’ve only got the Dark Kingdom then the Iron kingdom left. It's a bit late to pick up new skills.” The blond spoke, the slightest hint of sadness evident in his tone. Ah. Right. Varian had forgotten about that. The end of their journey - they all had somewhere to go, after all. They all had homes and families…well, except Hugo, he supposed. From what information the blond had given about his past (which, by the way, was extremely scarce), Varian assumed that he was an orphan, raised on the streets of the Iron Kingdom with no home or family other than Olivia. Did he even have a home to go back to? Did he have anything waiting for him when he returned? Did he have anyone?

“What’s your endgame?”

He wasn’t sure why he’d even asked it, his eyes shifting to glance at the taller boy beside him with a little frown on his face. Varian knew he’d have to ask eventually, though he wasn't sure why now - laying in the grass and glancing at the sky and all its stars, constellations dancing across the sky. A lantern sat between them, illuminating the blond’s face as Varian studied his expression. Sure, everyone had a goal; he wanted to find out what happened to his mother and maybe even meet her (or at least finish what she had started), Nuru wanted the solution to the meteors plaguing her kingdom, Yong wanted to improve his knowledge on alchemy and prove himself to his family (Varian understood that feeling all too well), yet Hugo…well, he hadn’t really given a reason.

It was a common thread with the other to remain, as he put it, ‘elusive and mysterious’, yet after a few months, you’d expect him to open up a little, but he never did. The blond kept his cards close to his chest, allowing the odd moment of vulnerability and even then it was fleeting - what was he so afraid of? Even now, Hugo shuffled uncomfortably, his hand rising to adjust his glasses before linking his hands and resting them underneath his head, providing no answer and just…ignoring Varian. He wasn’t sure what to say that would make Hugo trust him, but they’d been traveling together for months now. Varian huffed, glancing over at Ruddiger, the raccoon giving only a shrug in response. Very helpful, thought Varian, as he dragged his eyes back to the night sky. “Sorry, I don’t even know why I asked.” He began, rising to his feet.

“I don’t have one.” Hugo finally replied, turning his head to finally look at Varian, emerald green eyes almost shimmering in the soft light of the lantern. “I uh…never thought about it I guess. I wanted to know about the library and what was in it, but other than that, I have no reason to do anything else. I might go back to the Iron Kingdom with my knowledge and work my way up to one of the higher rings, who knows.” A little sigh escapes his lips, his eyes returning to the stars and the sky above them. “I had no plans.” A long pause settled between them, followed by nervous laughter escaping from the blond. “Sorry to bring down the mood, Goggles-.”

There it was. An odd moment of vulnerability mostly reserved for Varian, and only ever fleeting. He’d seen it with Yong a few times - Hugo making sure he was okay after a firework went off before returning to him nonchalance and generally bored demeanor, and even with Nuru a few times when he’d caught them talking about their homes and hopes, almost a sibling-like bond between them. And with him, when Hugo finally let his guard down and let himself feel. Let himself finally talk to someone and let himself be heard…Varian would never say it, but it was an honor to him. He would miss that. He would miss all of them. He would miss Hugo.

“You should come back to Corona with me.” He blurted out, his face flushing as the blond turned his head, an eyebrow quirked up and a confused smile on his face as Varian stammered and stuttered to find the right words. “Wait-I mean like-like we could be uh…Co-royal engineers. That is…if you have nowhere else to be. I just…enjoy your company and you’d be a great fit in Corona and I think we work really well together. We-we make a good team and…and it would be stupid to leave that behind. Y’know?” He finished, sucking in a deep breath before exhaling deeply and raising a hand to his face. “Sorry.” he apologised.

“Co-royal engineers, huh?” Hugo whispered under his breath, just barely audible, though Varian could see the little smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth as he contemplated the idea in his head. The alchemist could almost hear the gears and cogs turning in his head, watching a million different thoughts run through the blond’s head. “Sounds very prestigious for a guy like me, but if you insist, Hairstripe. After all, I get that charm, good looks and intelligence like mine is very hard to come by.” He chuckled, a laugh escaping as Varian punched his arm - no malice behind it. “But…yeah, that sounds good. Thanks for the offer.” Hugo smiled at the other, and Varian swore he could see the faintest hint of a blush on the other’s cheeks.

“Well it’s settled then. You…come stay with me in Corona. Yeah. Uh-well anyway, you should probably go to sleep. We’ve um…got a long day tomorrow.” Varian laughed nervously, a flush on his cheeks as Hugo rose to his feet and stepped closer and closer. Oh god, he was so close he could see all his freckles and the slightly brown tones of his eyes, even in the dim light of the flickering lantern flame. The blond leant down ever so slightly, pressing a gentle kiss to his cheek, warmth immediately spreading over the expanse of his cheek and all over his face before Hugo backed away with a smirk and turned on his heel.

“Sweet dreams, Goggles.” He called out, Varian watching Hugo slip away into his tent before raising a hand to his cheek and letting out a breathless chuckle as his eyes kept flicking between the other’s tent and the lantern in front of him. Well, as unexpected as it was, it wasn’t unwelcome, something blooming in Varian’s chest that made his head feel fuzzy and his heart feel warm. Whatever was going on with Hugo tonight, he wasn’t complaining. And if he walked a little closer to the other the next day or gave him a bit more attention than usual, Hugo never said anything, only acted like his usual, egotistical self. But it was welcome, and although he would miss Yong and Nuru more than anything, he was still happy that he’d have someone back home who understood him. He couldn’t wait.

#varian tangled #tangled varian #vat7k #varigo #varian and the seven kingdoms #hugo tangled #tangled hugo #varian x hugo #its literally been like a year #im sorry ive been doing things

[brawltogethernow]

@mirrorfalls​ submitted: Came across this while searching for James Bond’s scrambled-eggs recipe (long story). Your thoughts?

~~

But did you find James Bond’s scrambled eggs recipe?

In this article, Scocca laments his inability to find accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable to read with his young son, while also demonstrating a mysterious aversion to looking at DC and Marvel’s lines of comics for children, which is where the accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable for reading with young children are. He wants his elementary schooler to be able to safely have the run of all superhero media so he doesn’t have to touch the yucky baby books.

This is not an industry-wide crisis. This is just one dude who got paid to write an article where he accidentally exposed one of his personal hangups.

The child headed toward the trade paperbacks of Marvel and D.C. superhero titles on the side wall […] a few steps in front of me. […] Is he with you? a clerk asked me. I said he was. You know, the clerk said, we have a kids’ section. The clerk gestured backward, at a few shelves near the entrance. I said, Thanks, we know and tried throwing in a little shrug, as the kid kept going.

You can’t just turn a seven-year-old child loose in a comic-book store to look at the superhero comic books. […] My seven-year-old really wanted to see that last Avengers movie […] that is, he wished it were a movie he could see, but he understood that it was, instead, a movie designed to scare and sadden him—a movie actively hostile to people like him.

They have a children’s section. Because comics are a medium suitable for stories for everybody, and they are sold in comic book shops, which have sections, like bookstores. You can use this organization to find books that you know in advance are suitable for children. What goes in that category is determined by industry professionals. This area will be bigger the bigger the shop is. These comics are not lower quality that titles from the main lines. They are actually slightly better-written on average.

Your local comic book shop has considerately wrapped Empowered in a plastic bag, so your child will not be drawn in by a colorful superhero and accidentally read a graphic scene. If you think your kid might find a memoir about internment camps upsetting, it is your job to notice them picking up They Called Us Enemy and read the blurb on the back before you let them have it. This comic adults are meant to read is in a comic book shop because that is where comics are sold. Not every public place is supposed to be Disneyland.

Movies have ratings systems. If you do not want your child to watch a PG-13 movie, you will find that most superhero cartoons are for children. They are about the same characters. Some are quite good! I really enjoyed Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Your child may like Avengers Assemble. At least I think that’s right. I’m always mixing those titles around.

This is a deeply weird bias for Scocca to casually demonstrate, because he identifies in the article that real childishness is striving for empty maturity.

He compares an old comic,

[…]a 1966 Spider-Man comic in which Spider-Man meets, fights, and defeats the Rhino; participates in a running argument between John Jameson and J. Jonah Jameson about his heroism; buys a motorcycle; breaks up with his first girlfriend, Betty Brant; flirts with Gwen Stacy; and reluctantly agrees to let Aunt May take him to meet her friend Mrs. Watson’s niece, Mary Jane.

and a new comic,

[…]a 21st century comic book in which Thor, brooding in a Katrina-destroyed New Orleans, beats up Iron Man. He also yells at Iron Man a lot about some incomprehensibly convoluted set of grievances, including involuntary cloning, that he believes Iron Man perpetrated against him while he was dead(?), and then summons some other Norse god from the beyond somehow for reasons having something to do with real estate. I think. Where the 1966 comic is zippy and fun and complete, the whole contemporary one is muddled and lugubrious and seems to constitute a tiny piece of a seemingly endless plot arc—simultaneously apocalyptic and inert.

and concludes that the edgier comic is actually less mature. This is true. (This is not news about mediocre comics.)

It also has nothing to do with either comic being child-friendly, the article’s nominal thesis, except in the sense that ASM #41 (yes, I eyeballed that from that summary, yes I am just showing off now) is better written, making it more everyone-friendly. It also has practically more space dedicated to word balloons than art and is about a college student juggling girl problems and a part-time job with a tyrannical boss. But the immature one, as Scocca points out, is dour.

These are both teenagery issues, separated only by quality. It’s true that lots of new comics published by the big 2 are bad in the specific way Scocca describes here, taking themselves too seriously and hauled down by associated stories instead of buoyed by them. Some are not! Some titles from these companies’ main continuities are zippy, contained, and child friendly. Give your child The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Or if you like vintage comics so much better, why don’t you…buy some?

The books on the kid’s rack are good and fun and totally suitable for parents to read with their children without wanting to scoop their eyeballs out. Scocca cites the Batman ‘66 comics as the brightly colored, tightly written all ages solution to his problem about sharing superhero stories with his son. My local comic shop stores this title in the kid’s section. I am glad that Scocca’s does not, as he seems to have a peculiar aversion to looking for comics to read with his son there.

Scocca cites Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a superhero movie he could watch with his kids. (I was surprised when this line made it sound like he has several. I don’t want to assume the other one isn’t in this article because they’re a girl, but I very much am assuming that.) Great! Go to the kid’s section and look for Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. It’s a fun, zippy title directly inspired by ITSV where Miles, Gwen, and Peter superhero together. It’s much more tightly written than most of the various Spider-Verse comics, which are ambitiously messy ubercrossovers. You may not want to give those to children because they include murder and so on, but also you just have the choice between the two as an adult reader deciding how much continuity you want to deal with. Adventures is one of the only titles I would buy on sight before corona. The kid comic rack is a reliable place to take a break from How Comics Get Sometimes regardless of how old you are.

This article makes me feel quarrelsome. Maybe it’s that it doesn’t seem like exploration of a single idea so much as a loosely grouped bundle of things to kvetch about. Maybe it’s that the experience of getting into superheroes that Scocca describes experiencing, projects his seven-year-old son will experience, and from which he extrapolates a metaphorical microcosm of the history of the genre is completely alien to me.

Comic books [and] comic-book movies—are […] trapped in their imagined audience’s own awful passage from childhood to adolescence. A seven-year-old has a clean […] appreciation of superheroes. They like hero comics because the comics have heroes: bold, strong, vividly colored good guys to fight off the bad guys and make the world safe.

But seven-year-olds stop being seven. […] They become 13-year-olds, defensively trying to learn how to develop tastes about tastes.

The 13-year-old wants many things from comics, but the overarching one is that they want to prove that they’re not some seven-year-old baby anymore. They want gloomy heroes, miserable heroes, heroes who would make a seven-year-old feel bad. (Also boobs. They want boobs.)

Not because of the boobs line, although that does illicit an eyeroll that this gloomy thinkpiece is fretting over preserving the superhero experience of little boys who resemble the little boy the writer was while casually dismissing everyone else. I was one of those unlikable little seven-year-olds with a college reading level and the impression that maintaining it was the crux of my worth. I only read Books - distinguished media you could club someone with. I have a formative memory of pausing, enraptured, in front of a poster for Spider-Man 3, preparing to say that it looked pretty cool, and being beaten to the punch by my mother making a disparaging comment about how the movie was trash. It wasn’t out yet, but it was a superhero movie. That meant it was for loud, brainless children.

That was the total of my childhood experience with superheroes, excluding being the unwilling audience to incessant renditions of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that left me wondering why in god’s name Batman’s sidekick was named Robin. I certainly never visited a comic book shop. I got into TvTropes, which got me into webcomics, which got me following David Willis, who got me into Ask Chris at ComicsAlliance, which led to me rewarding myself for studying like a demon for the AP tests with three volumes of Waid’s Daredevil, pitched as a return to the character being colorful and swashbuckling. I was seven…teen.

This is of the same thread as Scocca’s point that immaturity is running from childish things. It leaves me baffled that he doesn’t follow that maturity is embracing them.

I will disclose here that while I think it was dumb I had to overcome my upbringing’s deeply embedded shame associated with enjoying arbitrarily defined lowbrow media and children being childish, I think it’s fine that I was allowed largely unchecked access to technically age-inappropriate content. In my limited experience, content small children are too young for is also content they’re too young to understand, so it kind of just bounces off of them, and what actually ends up terrorizing them is unpredictable collages of impressions that strike out at them from content deemed perfectly child-friendly. I would not forbid a seven-year-old I was in charge of from seeing an MCU movie unless I had a reason to believe that specific child would not take it well. These are emotionally low-stakes bubblegum films. It will probably be easier to socialize with other kids if they have seen them.

But then, when I picture being in charge of a hypothetical child, I usually imagine this being the case because they are related to me, and the pupal stage in my family strongly resembles Wednesday Addams. ALL children love death and violence, though, right?? This isn’t a joke point. I know it looks like a joke point.

The MCU thing seems especially weird in light of the article’s particular focus on Spider-Man, which is the kiddie line of the MCU, even if they refused to waver from their usual formula enough to get a lower rating. Though I am more inclined to describe it as “preying on the young” than “child-friendly”.

(MCU movies are increasingly dubious propaganda, but I would not judge them in front of a child who wanted to watch them for that reason, just in case this led to them partaking of them without me the second they were old enough to and then they grew up to run a blog about them while our relationship suffered because they didn’t feel like it was safe to talk to me about their interests…Mom.)

I tried to overcome the philosophy of letting anyone read anything while compiling this handful of mostly-newish superhero recs for the road that anyone can read. (Handily, I have been in spitting distance of being hired as a comic shop clerk enough to have thought about it before):

For actual children:

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man (the new one is reminiscent of ITSV, the old one is more like 616) any DC/Archie crossover, Archie’s Superteens The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (for bookish children who think they’re too good for comics and adults afraid of the kid’s section) Teen Titans Go (even if you hate the show) Superman Smashes the Klan

For teens:

Ms. Marvel Young Avengers (volume 2) Unbelievable Gwenpool Batman: Gotham Adventures Teen Titans Go (the tie-in comic based off the old show was also called this)

Here are a bunch of relevant C. S. Lewis quotes.

#me every time i read a comic book article by a rag not exclusively about comic books: i know more than you. #marvel #spidey #DCU #MCU critical #mirrorfalls #asks answered #submission #unearthed this and bashed it out in one sitting ... i have not been working on it since you sent it last year XD

[midnight-raven]

I just came back from watching the Spiderverse, I LOVE IT❤️ I laughed, I've cried, and now I feel empty cause I want to know what happens next😖

And so I remembered your post of TB4 + Hiro Spiderman AU

And I realized that we didn't get TB4 canon event.

In my personal opinion it be...

For Hiccup, it be his father Stoick

For Merida, it be her father Fergus (this idea came from the Once Upon a Time LA series)

For Rapunzel, two characters in mind from the Tangled the series, either her Aunt Willow or her best friend Cassandra

For Jack, it be Sandy , but we could also add characters from the book, like Nightlight and Katherine

What do you think?

OMG! I was the same first time I watched ATSV! WHY ARE THEY MAKING US WAIT?!?!?!

So I decided to fill the void with AUs while I wait.

Oh boy, yes, Canon Events. They’re bound to happen, aren’t day.

For Hiro, it would be Tadashi, this dimensions original spider-man.

For Hiccup, I agree that Stoick would be a canon event, being both an important figure in Hiccups life and a police captain.

(Y’know, technically Tadashi and Stoick are already canon events!)

For Merida, oof, Stoick would make a good choice at the hands of Mor’du. And imagine, the grief can either bring Merida and Eleanor closer together, or drive them further apart.

Rapunzel, hard choices there. I love the idea of Aunt Willow, Or what about the Captain? Cassandra’s father? That can lead Cassandra down her dark path to becoming Rapunzels enemy.

And Jack. I’ve read a little about Nightlight, and was planning on him being Jacks father but Jacks amnesia made him forget his Dad. Could that be a Canon Event?

Thank you for the ask Anon 😊 Hope you have a good day.

#Anonymous Ask #Answered Ask #Across the Spider-Verse Au #Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons #The Big Four #Hiro Hamada #Big Hero 6 #Hiccup Haddock #Merida DunBroch #Rapunzel Corona #Jack Frost

[acrossthecoronaverse]

#across the corona verse #yosemite falls #yosemite national park #yosemite #yosemite california #california parks

[djmaximusgodj]

Djing at @matadorcantina Friday night! Top 40, Hip Hop, and Spanish Vibe. Come hang out with us and have some fun. #foundationroomanaheim #downtownfullerton #downtownlongbeach #dtf #djdexterous #DJMaximus #matador #partyrockindjs #drinkspecials #matadorwednesdays #fullerton #orangecounty #getyourdrinkon #partypeople #coronas #hiphop #reggaeton #jagermeister #dosequisxx #coorslight #fireballs #margaritas #margaritatime #anaheim #fullertoncollege #cypresscollege #goldenwestcollege #orangecoastcollege #SantaAnaCollege

Djing at @matadorcantina Friday night! Top 40, Hip Hop, and Spanish Vibe. Come hang out with us and have some fun. #foundationroomanaheim #downtownfullerton #downtownlongbeach #dtf #djdexterous #DJMaximus #matador #partyrockindjs #drinkspecials #matadorwednesdays #fullerton #orangecounty #getyourdrinkon #partypeople #coronas #hiphop #reggaeton #jagermeister #dosequisxx #coorslight #fireballs #margaritas #margaritatime #anaheim #fullertoncollege #cypresscollege #goldenwestcollege #orangecoastcollege #SantaAnaCollege

[valdomarxxx]

Trying something a little different today for @whataboutthebard. Another tale. Another life, one that was lived by other people*. On the subject of sex pollen. Consent is freely given. A grand total of 3k words. Rated M/E. Enjoy, my darlings.

~

There is a shining golden band around Oswald’s finger. This is a recent development, and everywhere he goes people ask him about it. He wishes they wouldn’t. He should be happy, he knows; should be full of that fizzing, new-love excitement.

But he feels nothing. It had been a suggestion, paired with gentle pushing from his mother and significantly less gentle pushing from his father. He should have said no, he knows. He’s a bard, for fuck’s sake, he should have followed his truth or his desire or whatever the fuck it is artistic types are supposed to do.

But he didn’t say no. He said yes, because all he could think of was what the alternative might be. A life lived in solitude, forever. He’ll never have what he wants - who he wants - and perhaps it might not be so bad. Perhaps a loveless life shackled to another will be better than a loveless life alone.

The band squeezes his finger, cutting off the circulation.

It is Belleteyn eve. This should be the night for celebrating love. He’s horribly aware of this; and horribly aware that his fiance is elsewhere this evening. He should be more upset about that than he is. He wants to be alone.

He wants to be with him. Larkspur, they call him. It’s what he calls himself, having shrugged off the name his parents burdened him with when he was born.

Usually, Belleteyn is celebrated with bonfires and dancing and singing, mingling with crowds. Tonight, a party of perhaps a dozen artists have snuck from the city walls towards the forest a few miles beyond. They say that magic happens on Belleteyn night, and while there are a few cynics amongst their numbers, it promises to be a wonderful evening.

Larkspur leads the way - he’s well-versed in magic, he claims, thanks to his travels up and down the Continent.

“Who knows what could happen?” He trills, looking over his shoulder at the group. “Anything could happen.”

His gaze lands on Oswald. Often, that gaze is mocking or antagonistic. A threat. A challenge. Today, it’s like a question. Oswald doesn’t have time to probe before he’s looking away again with a laugh - a floating, melodic noise that makes Oswald’s skin tingle.

He nervously fingers at the band around his finger. His fiance has never met Larkspur. She would hate him. She would really hate him, not just in the way Oswald pretends to.

He’s struck with the sudden urge to tear away the maddening ring and hurl it into the Pontar.

But he doesn’t, of course.

The forest beyond the city is wide and dark and sprawling. Oswald cannot help but feel nervous as they step between the trees, looking for seasonal chaos. He sniffs cynically at Larkspur’s assertions that anything could happen; he is sure he knows what will happen. Drinking and laughing and singing. He has already picked out the couples in the group that he is sure will sneak away for more traditional Belleteyn celebrations, and he is not amongst them.

They are seated on fallen trees, passing around a bottle of mead, when there is a hand on Oswald’s shoulder. He looks up. It’s Larkspur, eyes shining in the low light of their tiny bonfire.

“Come with me,” he says.

Oswald sniffs. “You’re going to lead me into the forest to murder me,” he says. “To be rid of the competition before next week’s contest.”

Larkspur grins, his teeth shining. “You know me so well,” he says. He turns away. “Are you coming or not?”

Oswald passes the bottle to their nearest friend. He stands. “I want it known,” he says, “that I want a dignified death.”

“Noted.”

The forest is dense enough that the chattering of their group fades away eerily quickly. It is dark - yet not too dark - and the odd silence is oppressive. It seems they can both feel it, and slip easily into bickering to fill the quiet.

“Perhaps you intend to do away with me,” Larkspur teases. “It would be easier to kill me than win by your own merit.”

“You invited me out here,” Oswald spits, pushing past him and taking the lead. “Unless I tricked you into that, too?”

“Perhaps you did. I would not put it past you. You used some psychological trick on me to lure me here.”

“Hmm.”

“You surely have nothing to fear,” Larkspur says, “only last week you said I had no talent. Does that not make you confident that you will win?”

“I will win,” Oswald says, pushing aside a branch and pausing to allow Larkspur to follow before letting go, “and on my own merit, not because I eliminated the competition. Besides,” he edges through the trees, “I didn’t say that you were untalented, just that you were— oh.”

He stands in a clearing perhaps a few meters wide, the leaves and debris beneath their feet giving way to soft, springy moss in an unnaturally bright green. The trees here are green, too, covered in sprawling vines, the leaves shimmering. It smells of honey and syrup, of living things. Larkspur bumps into him from behind, equally enraptured.

Surrounding the edge of the clearing - bursting from the vines and hanging from the boughs and even sprouting from the moss - are hundreds of enormous flowers.

For all the world, they could be enormous daffodils, although Oswald has never seen daffodils in these colours. They glow, like sunlight is seeping from them, the air around them shimmering with heat. The one closest to him is a vibrant cerise, the corona darker and the petals fading to a pearlescent blush. He reaches out, desperate to feel it, to see if it's as warm and soft as it looks.

It is. It feels alive beneath his fingertips, and as he brushes his hand across the petals the flower shudders, as if responding to him. Little motes of pollen shake on the tip of the stamen like water droplets dangling from a rooftop.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” He breathes, keeping his voice low.

“No,” says Larkspur, taking a step towards the one closest to him, the petals an iridescent green colour. “Never. They’re…” he reaches out too, stroking the corona with a single finger. “They’re incredible.”

There’s a breeze, carrying with it the smell of sap and applewood. The precariously clinging pollen shivers, then gets caught on the wind, dancing like dandelion seeds. A speck of it lands on Oswald’s doublet, staining the baby-blue silk yellow.

He brushes it away with a little sniff. He feels warm, like his clothes are suddenly too tight, suddenly aware of all the places the silk and satin touches his body. There’s a minute noise beside him, and he turns - Larkspur is staring at him. His eyes are wide, his pupils huge and round and black.

“Are you all right?” Oswald says. “You look… different.”

There’s a florid flush spreading up Larkspur’s cheeks. His chest, neatly framed in the vee of his unbuttoned chemise, is equally pink.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he says. “I—”

He doesn’t get to finish that sentence. The wind picks up - unusually turbulent for the season - and the flowers around them shake and they’re both suddenly caught in a cascade of pollen, the dusty clumps raining down on them like sweet-smelling snow. Oswald sneezes as it flutters around him, sticking in his hair and tickling his nose. When finally the wind stops, they’re both coated in a fine yellow powder.

It tingles in every place it touches his skin. He feels…

He feels hot all over. Like the fever he contracted when he was a boy, but different. Better. The fever made him feel shuddery and sick, but this… this makes him feel like his skin is lit up, like he’s made of fireworks, the butterflies in his stomach transformed into birds. He can smell the pollen on him, sweet and heady. He can sense Larkspur standing beside him in a way he couldn’t before. He can feel the space he takes up, sense him moving as if through the vibrations in the air.

Oswald looks back at him, his brown hair turned golden. His lips are parted. His tongue - pink and probing - licks at his lips, taking some of the yellow flecks with it. Oswald is struck with the desperate need to taste; to taste him and the flowers, all at once.

They both step forwards together, brightly-painted mirror images of each other. Oswald is no stranger to desire - certainly no stranger to desire for this man - but now it's heightened. The feeling he’s been able to repress for a long and painful decade is now unstoppable. Holding it back would be like trying to stop a tidal wave with his own body: it would batter him, drown him, drag him along regardless.

Larkspur says something. It might be Oswald’s name. He’s too lost in the way his lips move to hear the word.

He forces himself to focus, despite it all. There’s a look of recognition on Larkspur’s face.

“I know what this is,” he mutters, lifting his hands to examine the pollen. Each word sounds like it takes a considerable effort to say. “Eric told me about them last Belleteyn. We were near fae country, and he said…” his eyes go a little unfocused. “What did he say? It only blooms this time of year. It’s powerful. Magical. He told me to avoid it, that I shouldn’t touch it, because the pollen…” he blinks, and Oswald realises there’s dust in his eyelashes, too, clinging like absurd tears. “The pollen is a— a—” he snaps his fingers, frowning. “It’s an aphrodisiac. I told him he was being stupid. I said—”

He looks up. Something shifts in his expression. “I said…” he trails off, unsure.

“Lark…” Oswald says. It’s barely more than a whisper, an exhale.

And then they’re kissing. He doesn’t know how it happens - one moment they’re staring at each other, and the next they’re locked together in a desperate embrace. They’ve kissed before, of course, but this is different. Larkspur sucks at Oswald’s lip, his hands tangling in his hair, and Oswald melts into him, like they’re one person instead of two.

It feels like it could last forever, until Larkspur makes a strangled noise and pulls away, throwing himself backwards, colliding with one of the flower-covered trees. His lips are red.

“We can’t—” he gasps, hand scrambling at his chest. “It’s not right, not like this. It’s not real.”

Oswald’s fingers tingle. “It feels real.”

“But it’s not. I cannot—” Larkspur closes his eyes, pressing his hands over them, taking a deep breath. “It’s not right. I will not—” a short, choking breath, “—I will not take advantage of you because of some stupid fucking flowers.”

“How are you taking advantage?” Oswald shoots back, the tingling growing into an ache, into a burn. “Tell me how.”

“You don’t want me. It’s the fucking pollen. You don’t want me.”

“Yes I do—”

“Don’t say that!” Larkspur is shouting. Pollen falls, dislodged by his yells.

The tingling, rushing, scorching feeling twists around something else in Oswald’s chest - something hard and rusted over. Something he’s forced shut for too long.

“I’ve wanted you for years,” he says, and he’s shouting too, “Of course I have!”

“You’re engaged!”

“Unhappily!”

Silence descends. It’s the first time Oswald has said that out loud. No one was supposed to know. No one was ever supposed to know.

“What?”

He tries to swallow it back, but something has taken over his tongue, and he can’t. “I do not want it,” he says in a rush. “I do not— I tried— but I don’t…”

“You don’t love her?”

Oswald shakes his head.

“You… you want me?”

He nods.

“You want me, or you just want to fuck me?”

His boldness sends a heat to Oswald’s belly, stirring his prick, quickening his pulse.

“I…” He finally regains control of his tongue. “I just want to fuck you.”

[Liar.]

Oswald steps forward. Larkspur is pressed against the tree, but he could flee if he wanted to. He could step aside. He could push him away; they both know he’s stronger. When their chests are pressed together, he sighs. Oswald can smell him: mead and spice and lingering magic.

Larkspur moves first. It isn’t as torrid as before, and he kisses slowly, cautiously, his lips pillow-soft and moist. Oswald lets him into his mouth, sliding his eyes shut, allowing himself to be moved, making himself pliable.

They’re on the ground. The moss is spongy beneath them, soft as a featherbed. Larkspur leans over him, his knees to either side of his hips, and tugs away Oswald’s doublet. He’s moving faster now, and the seams tug, but Oswald doesn’t care about the stitches and the silk when Larkspur is looking at him like that - like he’s going to eat him alive. The doublet is thrown aside, between the darkness of the trees, where it—

[Vanishes. Forever. I never found it again]

—melds into the shadows on the ground beyond the clearing.

Oswald cannot bear it. He surges up, pushing Larkspur back so they’re face to face, tearing his doublet up and away. He doesn’t even pause before he gets to work on the thin undershirt beneath, pulling it over his head and tossing that away too so he can finally touch.

Larkspur’s hairy skin is hot as coals, sheened with sweat. Oswald brushes a thumb over one of his nipples, and he gasps and bucks against him. He pulls his own chemise away too, so he can better feel Larkspur’s skin against his own, so they can touch in all the places he’s desperate for them to touch. Larkspur strokes his hands down Oswald’s arms, tickling in the bend of his elbows, leaning forwards to press open kisses to his forearms and wrists.

When he gets to his hands, he pauses. Larkspur is still straddling him, and he twists their fingers together. He tugs Oswald’s left hand closer, never breaking eye contact.

He sucks his finger into his mouth, slowly. Oswald can feel his tongue pressing against the underside of the digit, wet and unbearably warm. He slides further, taking Oswald’s finger fully into his mouth, until his teeth chink against the gold.

When he pulls back, the ring is gone. He grins, and it’s shining delicately and obscenely between his teeth. He spits it to the ground, where it lands on the moss with a soft thump.

[I remember the argument about that. I lost it, I say. In the woods. I don’t remember how. She asks if we fucked. I cannot find it in me to lie. She ends it. I laugh.]

Oswald leans back. Larkspur follows. The pollen sticks to their sweaty skin like paint, smearing in sunshine streaks across their chests. When Larkspur kisses him, from his lips to his jaw and down his chest to his stomach, he rises again with gold daubing his mouth like a smirking god. When they kiss, it blurs between them. It tastes like spring.

He wants to know how Larkspur tastes, too. All of him. As they kiss, he twists around, spinning their twined bodies so Larkspur is pressed to the moss beneath him, hair splayed and eyes wide. He grins up at him. He laughs, and it’s like music.

Oswald kisses all of him he can reach. His fingers desperately scramble at the waistband of his awful burgundy breeches - the ones he hates - and soon he’s pulling them away. Larkspur is magnificent. Oswald is a poet, he should know the words for this, he should put it to song and sing about him until the sun sets for the last time… but right now all he can think is how much he wants.

When he takes Larkspur in his mouth for the first time, he swears into the sacred space, his hands gripping in Oswald’s hair.

[Did you know you bruised my scalp? I didn’t care. I didn’t tell you, either.]

Osworld works him till he’s a panting wreck, till he’s close and begging, then he stops - rises - slides kisses up his skin. Larkspur gasps into the kiss, slipping his hand between them, finding himself blocked by the fabric of Oswald’s breeches.

“Get rid of these,” he pants. It’s the first thing he’s said in half an hour. Oswald does as he’s told, for once.

When they’re both naked, sprawled on the verdant forest floor, there is a moment of stillness. They’re absurdly coated in pollen, hair in tangles, eyes dark. There is a bruise forming on Larkspur’s neck in the shape of Oswald’s teeth.

“Fuck,” Oswald breathes.

“Yeah.” Larkspur agrees.

Oswald takes him in for a moment, despite the tickling urge in his hands to reach out and finish what they've started. He may never get to do this again.

[I will never get to do this again.]

“You look sad,” Larkspur says, suddenly breaking him from his thoughts.

“I’m not sad,” he says.

[LIAR!]

Larkspur tugs him down. “You think too much,” he chuckles. “You’ll make your wrinkles worse.”

He kisses him soft. He kisses him hard, reaching down between them again, taking them both in his hand. Oswald buries his face in Larkspur’s neck, tonguing at his skin, taking short, laboured breaths as he draws them both out.

It’s hands. Mouths. Fingers slick with spit. They kiss until they cannot breathe any more. They crest together, like the sun rising, as pollen scatters in the air, catching on the wind of their words.

“Fuck, Jaskier Larkspur—”

“Valdo Oswald—”

Afterwards, they lay sprawled on the ground. The flowers still glow, casting them in their warm, comfortable light. They’re in the middle of the forest - full of monsters and dangers that Larkspur can ramble about for hours - yet they’re safe, here. Nothing can reach them in the clearing. This is Belleteyn, after all.

The magic really is powerful, just as Eric had warned Larkspur last year. Even as they lie curled together, regaining their breath,Oswald can feel the urge creeping back up his chest, the press of Larkspur’s naked body against him thrilling him again. He can fill his sensitive cock stirring in interest once more.

“Lark—”

It’s all he manages to say before he’s being kissed again.

Belleteyn night is long, and full of secrets. This is one they can keep. The next morning, they emerge, rumpled and marked in yellow streaks. Their friends ask where they’ve been, when they find them early that afternoon. They peer at each other, but keep their mouths shut.

Next Belleteyn, Oswald is on the coast, and Larkspur is travelling with his— with Eric. The flowers in the woods fade. Oswald wonders every year if they’re still there. He never goes back to check.

#what about the bard #sex pollen #*This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons #living or dead #or actual events #is purely coincidental. #it is a good job i wrote this #before i opened this second bottle #dont you all agree

[erazonpo3]

hey look ma i made a map (not to scale please and thank you)

This is something I had fun playing around with on Inkarnate and it’s still liable to change in some ways but I’m generally happy with it! The idea was to make a map that extends beyond Corona to include all sorts of named regions from disney properties (and some of my own), but also be compliant with TTS (for the most part. I’m not responsible for in-universe incongruences for one thing). 

Side note: I made a Spreadsheet with all of the named Disney kingdoms that appear in extended media (like books and comics n stuff) so that I could nab them and cry ‘it’s canon whatever mom’ but more so I didn’t have to come up with names. You’re welcome to peruse it and use it as a resource too! it’s all disney props

To go into a bit more detail; 

Canon stuff

A majority of the map is me trying to keep the S2 journey in mind, with stops like Lumbard’s Pass and the Forest of No Return being necessitated by mountain ridges etc that would make detours around them a huge pain in the ass. For instance, it’s faster to reach the spire from Corona by flying over Kresten Loch, so the spire needs to be positioned in a way that it would be a straight line from Corona but requires a trip through the FoNR by foot. 

In Freebird Rapunzel mentions the “cliffs of Koto” so I took that for them being either in Koto or adjacent to it. Then in King Pascal Eugene mentions the black rock path leads them to the water/ocean, so that necessitated this huge bight in the land where they can then get knocked off-course to Terapi Island. More mountains because why in the hell would they go through Lumbard’s Pass + The Great Tree if there was easy access any other way? And yeah they could go by ocean but I figure the caravan just isn’t meant for open sea travel for very long, and shipping a caravan across a long voyage is a steep price even for a Princess. 

I know this does make travel between Koto and Blavenia virtually impossible but whatever. There probably are plenty of travel paths but most of them require mules and you don’t take a caravan. Anyway then they reach Skoteníyi which is what I’ve named the Dark Kingdom (It’s based on a headcanon I won’t get into now), and then of course Rapunzel + co minus Cass fly back to Corona via hot air balloon. 

The obvious thing here is that technically the distance between Corona and the Dark Kingdom isn’t particularly far, but the terrain is awful to travel by foot/wagon which is why the S2 journey takes as long as it does. Extra notes are that Lost Lagoon lists Yultadore, Dionda and Antipe as kingdoms that lie on Corona’s border so I squeezed them in where I could. 

My touches to the map

Points where I’ve put my personal spin on things is largely in the geography of all the regions surrounding the S2 journey and how those mountain ranges might affect/inform the geopolitics etc. I put in some big mountains encircling Corona which makes the wall a very strong strategic piece of defensive infrastructure, which only makes sense if Yultadore + Bayangor + Dionda were historically its rivals. 

Bayangor has since allied itself with Corona but maybe doesn’t get as much help as it would like. As you’ll see in my 2nd pic of the map I’ve outlined the 7 Kingdom Alliance as per the named kingdoms in Beginnings, and notable exceptions to this alliance are Yultadore + Vakretta and Equis. So Yultadore + Vakretta get to be historic rivals of Corona, and Equis gets left out because nobody likes King Trevor. (I definitely wanted to have Equis on a peninsula that’s landlocked entirely by Corona to say that yeah, this kingdom does have sovereignty but only because Corona lets it exist and they all know it). 

The 7 Kingdom Alliance in this verse is necessitated, I imagine, by how god damn terrible travel is through the northern half of this region and if Corona (one of the strongest trade regions by dint of connecting the north to the south) wants to make a trade pact with you in return for some political pressure, then you’re sure as hell going to take it. Another fun tidbit is that the Dark Kingdom is so far across the continent from Corona and so difficult to reach it sort of does make sense why Corona just. Forgot about it. 

(Note also that while a lot of the land in Skoteiníyi is infertile, there are edges on the border that are free for the taking by its border friends. Have fun with that, Edmund.) Refugees probably headed south to Yuwabe and Zaria as less hostile/difficult regions and spread from there, which is why Adira and Hector can be found wandering the southern half of the continent in the CTA AU. 

I’ve also spoken about the region of Eltaire-Sère before as the region in which Ilione lives, and I’ve settled on it being in Dionda- which now places Dionda as Corona’s south-eastern rival. As you can see there’s mountains almost completely encircling the region so it’s nearly impossible to stage military battles there so it just gets passed back and forth in treaties, and as of current TTS the region belongs to Corona even though it’s actually outside the wall and looks like it should belong to Dionda. Culturally, the region is a pretty strong blend of both Corona and Dionda (probably leaning more towards Diondan) so Lio gets two for one. 

Cassandra’s (first) journey

I’ve mapped out Cass’ journey in blue and it’s not really set in stone because I care less about the where of where she’s going and more about what’s happening there, but nevertheless I wanted it to be visually distinct from the S2 journey which is why she travels south before making a stop at Terapi Isle (hello Lady Caine funny seeing you here) and finally catching up with Alphecca in her homeland of Vakretta. It’s also worth mentioning here that one of the upsides to being a Lich in this verse as opposed to a ghost is that there’s no limits on where Alphecca can physically travel, and she spends a lot of time wandering around which is why Cass first runs into her in Jeojin/Yirov.  

I haven’t figured out as much on the geography of the southern section of the continent because unlike the S2 journey I can do whatever the hell I want with it, so I have full creative control but also I don’t have any markers like “Cass HAS to pass through here so make a detour impossible”. Nevertheless I like that the southern part of the continent is largely flat; compared to the northern half travelling is a breeze, which means the timeline is simply up to however long I want Cassandra to spend in one place. 

I figure in her 2nd journey she heads up north towards our dear friends in Arendelle as she travels around Sídiros (Iron Kingdom) in what coincides with Varian’s journey, but I haven’t really figured out what that’d look like yet. 

Varian 7K stuff

Timeline-wise Varian’s journey doesn’t start until Cassandra gets back from her 1st journey. Nevertheless I’ve mapped it out because I like being able to visualise it, and it lets me work in the 7 Trial Kingdoms into the map and worldbuilding. 

Jeojin is the “Fire Kingdom”, Dovena is the “Water Kingdom”, and Ardhyewa is the Air Kingdom. I didn’t want Cass and Varian’s journey to completely overlap, but Cass does visit Jeojin on her way out of Dionda and she hits up Ardhyewa to give Nuru + Ara a cameo. Torres is actually one of the named disney properties but I figured it’d make a perfect “Earth Kingdom”. Varian then travels through Yuwabe to hit the Dark Kingdom and then Sídiros as the “Iron Kingdom”, and the outline never mentions how the hell they get back to Corona from there so I figure they probably double back to the Dark Kingdom in which an air balloon is waiting for them. Idk it’s not my problem. 

A fun fact is that Varian’s journey intersects with Cass’ 2nd journey in the Iron Kingdom/Sídiros, in Solanales- if you’re familiar, Solanales is where the Countess Violante rules. Cue Cass trying her damn hardest to shuffle these kids THE HELL out of dodge. Countess Violante is also one of Donella’s biggest rivals in terms of her crusade against the IK aristocracy, so Cass + Donella work together in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation, which is of course hilarious when Varian assumes Cass has turned evil again because she’s working with 'the bad guy’ of his journey. 

He thinks she’s evil again and she’s like do you want Violante to commit a genocide hello??? funny stuff

Conclusion

so anyway thats it i love talking geopolitics

#cta au #uuuuh idk how else to tag this

[ladyorlandodream]

Agentha Fältskog interview - English translation

In September, Agnetha Fältskog of ABBA agreed to grant Swedish radio presenter Carolina Norén an interview for the classic Swedish chart show ”Svensktoppen” on Swedish Public Service radio. The interview was broadcast September 19.

Carolina Norén: ”Don't Shut Me Down” by ABBA – and with me on the phone I have Agnetha Fältskog. Hello, Agnetha!

Agnetha Fältskog: Hello, Carolina!

C: And, of course, congratulations to entering the top of the chart, Agnetha!

A: Wow, what a surprise! That was amazing, really fun.

C: Let's just say that I wasn't that surprised, and neither was the rest of the world. However, ABBA.s last number one here on Svensktoppen was actually ”Waterloo”, back in 1974!

A: Was it that long ago? Well, there you go. It was about time, then.

C: It was about time! Exactly.

A: I'd like to take the opportunity to tell you how happy, grateful and moved everyone in the group is by the enormous reception. It feels very nice and warm inside.

C: I'm thinking, the first time you received a call like this from ”Svensktoppen”, and I don't know if you remember this, Ulf Elfving was calling. It was in 1968, you were 17 years old and ”Jag var så kär” (I Was So in Love), had reached number three.

A: Yeah, it's been quite a few years, ha ha.

C: What has Svensktoppen meant to you over the years?

A: It means a great deal. We're so used to charts, and have enormous success in several countries, but ”Svensktoppen” – it's our native country and the audience we have back here, and it obviously means a lot. We're very moved by the reception everywhere. I remember that first interview with Ulf, I was very nervous, and almost couldn't believe that I'd entered Svensktoppen, it's something you don't forget. This was also an enormous surprise, because you can never really know how it will turn out. One is never sure that something is going to be successful, and one is glad when it happens.

C: I was actually thinking about that a bit: I know that you love spending time in the studio working, and so on, but was there any point while working on this new material where you started to feel doubt or fear: what if it doesn't work?

A: Yes, we said that in the beginning: a long time had passed since we recorded, and you can never be sure that the voice is going to hold up – was it going to sound old? However, we heard pretty immediately – from both Frida's voice and mine – that it sounded more or less as it did back then. However, you may have to make another kind of effort, and give more, or how to put it, of your ability to tell a story, to empathise with the song. I always used to do that, but it's a lot more now that one has lived an entire life. You put more emotion into it.

C: I was thinking, whose idea was it to do this – who was the driving force behind the comeback?.I mean out of you? From the fans' point of view, it's always been a given.

A: Yes ... Well, one thing lead to another, somehow. We felt that we wanted to do a few new songs for the avatar project that will open in May next year, in London. So we said ”let's do a few songs and see how they turn out, how it sounds. One thing led to another with a few more songs, and then Benny kind of said ”why not make an entire album?”. Yes, and that's how it happened, and since we enjoy working in the studio, it's fantastically fun to be able to create and such.

C: Yes, and you have said that it's sometimes easy to ”tempt” you into doing things if they sound like fun.

A: Yes, that's true.

C: So you weren't hard to convince, when it came to doing this?

A: No, I don't think any of us were. Not doing this. The avatar project, I had to give it a think, since it meant a lot of work, as it were, on stage. Because I'm not a stage personality in that respect, but I can convey more feelings in the songs.

CN: Indeed. The rumours around this comeback started back in 2018. We got to know the song titles, and it feels like these two songs that we have heard, have been underway for a while. Have you polished the songs over the years? What has happened since we first heard of them in 2018?

A: Well, we have been at it. At first we worked on the avatars throughout February...let's see, was it the year before last? No, it was last year. We had just finished working with that, when the Corona situation appeared. Then, after a while, we started recording these songs and it's continued like that.

C: When the songs were released a little over two weeks ago, fans gathered around the world simultaneously. Björn and Benny participated in the live stream and you and Frida were part of the edited program. Björn and Benny said that you were following the broadcast from a distance. How did it feel watching it?

A: It was actually enormous. I've been watching our fans a little, when they're listening to the songs, and they're actually crying. It's quite enormous what a reach it had all around across countries. It's almost hard to take it in, actually.

C: I was present at Gröna Lund (in Stockholm), where fans had been invited, and there were many fans from other countries. I can really attest that emotions were enormously strong. It was, you know, almost sacred. Just like you said, they cried and were deeply moved. One thing many of them said, at least the ones I talked to, was that they missed you – ”the girls”, they said: Agnetha and Annifrid.

A: Yes.

C: Do you know when you will get together next time?

A: I don't really dare to say. We're a bit older now, and have our minor ailments, ha ha. But we struggle on. But I don't dare to say, because it's a bit uncertain. At the moment we feel happy that we got this together, and let's hope everything goes well in London, at the premiere over there.

C: Right, in May next year. The avatars. Incredibly cool, actually.

A: Right.

C: You touched upon the thing about the voice, whether it would hold up. When you released your solo album in 2013, you mentioned in an interview that you'd had the same worry, and had taken singing lessons – which turned out to be one lesson. How was it this time, Agnetha? Did it end up being any singing lessons?

A: Haha. No, it didn't. One knows this, that it has to do with support from the stomach, that you shouldn't ruin...so it doesn't become too much for the throat. Instead, you find support in the belly, and it just fits so well, once you're in the studio. You just, ”wow, it holds up!”. One has different … I like to sit down when I sing. Frida usually stands up. It varies a lot, how you feel that you get the power.

C: You are the one doing the main vocals – at least most of them – on the single ”Don't Shut Me Down”. I should add that ”I Still Have Faith in You” is also in the chart, at number four.

A: Yes, how fun!

C: How does it work when you divide it between the two of you? Do you choose your favourites, or is it directed by the respecive voice registers? Do tell.

A: Yes. It's probably the guys who are in charge of that. We get some lyrics, get to listen a bit, and try a little. It's also happened that one has felt ”this one I'd like to do”. There are no fights about anything. We try it out, but it's usually the guys, I think, who already know who is supposed to sing what. We're also part of each others'... Even if one of us sings the solo verses, we're always join together for the choruses, for the most part.

A: You have also a background as a songwriter, and ran your solo career in the beginning. These days, Björn and Benny usually end up talking about the project. How much are you able to go in a change things, or feel ”that doesn't work, let's try this”.

A: Back in the day it happen pretty regularly, but these days it doesn't. I can come up with a lot of ideas: ”could we add some finesse at this point in the song?” I'm also pretty good at harmonies, but the guys handle most of it. We do as they say, and it turns out well.

C: Another thing when one talks about ABBA and ABBA's music, your songs have been quite associated with you as people over the years. The most obvious example may be ”The Winner Takes it All”, which is about divorce. How about today – what do the songs say about you as people, and artists today?

A: It's probably mostly in the lyrics, and you should probably let Björn answer. One can read one thing or another into composers', songwriters' or lyricists' work, and of course you add a bit of ”it's about him, or me”. But it's general, how to say, relationships. Because it's often about love.

C: The two most recent songs, maybe a little more general. Now that we are talking about love, I've go to ask you: you have said that you're are a romantic person, Agnetha.

A: Yes, I am.

C: And you like romantic music.Will there be more romance on the album? More love?

A: Haha! Well, it's very varied. I can't say much about it now, but it's very varied. I can tell you this much: if you like these two songs, you will probably like the entire album. I do think so.

C: Right. That's good. I feel I need to scratch the surface a little more. What we have heard is a timeless ABBA sound. Can one imagine that it will continue with that sound as well?

A: What do you mean, on the CD?

C: Yes, on the album.

A: Ah, yes. It's very much the ABBA sound. We're not trying to sound different or letting ourselves be affected by other, current things, so to speak. We're trying to keep ... It becomes what it becomes – and it becomes very ABBA when Frida and I get together in the studio. It's almost like a marriage between our voices, and almost hard to tell them apart at times.

C: Now, I know that a lot of people are looking forward to the concert in London in May next year. First, there's the album, in November. The one we were talking about. We mentioned the avatars. What went through your head the first time you heard of the idea?

A: Haha. Well, yes, none of us probably really knew what to expect, but we've worked with it a lot, so you grew into it, eventually. We stand there, doing these songs, with– I don't know how many cameras and people. And then, somehow, it was technologically transferred, in some way that we don't even understand, to other people that are going to be on stage as us – but it's still us, haha! I can't really explain it, it's so hard, but there's a lot of technology and lights involved. But it felt great to do in the end. Because it was so different. Also, there was a vibe, one felt that ”maybe it's the last thing we do”. Same thing with this album.

C: Ooh, you can't say that, ha ha! We want more!

A: You can cut that out.

C: Jonas and I will cut that out! Solo album in 2013. I can reveal to you, here and now, that in the summer of 213, ”Dance Your Pain Away” was the only thing I listened to.

A: I see! That's nice.

C: I know it inside out, but I won't sing it!

A: Yeah, that was cool, actually.

C: Is there anything in the pipeline solo – another solo album from you, Agnetha?

A: Not at the moment, no. I think, and I feel, that I've done a lot now. So I can't promise you that. We have got to find joy in what we have, and all that awaits.

CN: Indeed. May I also add that I was very happy when I heard that you would be with us and share. Because I've learned that you are somewhat restrictive when it comes to doing interviews. What do you think, are there further public appearance from you ahead?

A: Not really. But, as you say, I've never really retired that way, but I am restrictive, and I feel that a lot of things are being written, and have been written, about us. We agreed to do, and have done, so many interviews. There's a risk that you ruin it by talking too much. You want keep a little something to yourself. Something private.

C: Agnetha, we respect that, and we are very happy here at Svensktoppen, and, I would imagine, that the listeners who haven't perhaps fainted from the surprise, and have stayed with us, are happy that you could join us. Once again, huge, huge congratulations to topping the chart.

A: Thank you. I also want to send greetings from the rest of the group. I know that they are all very happy about this. It means a lot to us.

C: Wonderful. I hope we can talk again. I almost get shivers suddenly doing the presentation here. So I say: new number one: ABBA and ”Don't Shut Me Down”. Thank you very much, Agnetha.

A: Thanks so much to you, too!

English translation by Anders Lundquist

#abba #agnetha fältskog #agnetha #agnetha abba #abba voyage #don't shut me down #i still have faith in you