#big sky: deadly trials

[justjensenanddean]

Jensen Ackles as Beau Arlen BIG SKY: Deadly Trails (2023) | 3.11 – “Super Foxes”

#Jensen Ackles #JensEnedit #JensenAcklesEdit #Beau Arlen #BeauArlenEdit #Jensen's profile #Big Sky #Big Sky: Deadly Trials #Big Sky 3x11 #Super Foxes #My Edits

[neteyamshoney]

Similarities

(This was kinda, very loosely, inspired by the song My Ex's Bestfriend by MGK)

Hey y'all. I had this idea in my head for awhile and I'm currently drafting a Neteyam x OC AU but I just had to get this out. After I'm done with that one, I'll expand on this one-shot. For now, enjoy a little fluff with my favorite blue giant :) Gif is also not mine. (I'm working on making pretty pics for the AU pic if anyone has tips to get those super cute ones I see on here lol)

Neteyam Sully x f!OC

Warnings: tooth rotting fluff

Ever since he could remember, Lo’ak had known his older brother to be everything he was not.

Brave. Strong. Intelligent. Accurate. Deadly. The perfect son.

They were so different. Day and night.

Though he loved to give him shit for it, Lo’ak understood the pressure his brother was under. Being the perfect heir to the clan, always having eyes on his every move, sounded like literal hell for the second son. He was secretly so glad that Neteyam was the oldest and not himself. He couldn’t imagine the mental stress that kind of pressure would put on him. How Neteyam didn’t have the urge to runaway from home and never return was a mystery to him.

It was only natural for Neteyam to focus solely on his duties as the perfect warrior and heir. It was all he had ever known, as soon as he was crawling (which of course was months before the average baby because of fucking course he was even advanced as a literal infant). As soon as the light lit up their world, Neteyam would be out - sharpening his knife, tuning his bow, practicing his hand to hand combat - before Lo’ak even rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The poor thing didn’t even have a social life outside of training with the other boys their age. There was no room for him to have any free time, even less to mingle with the young women of their age in their clan. 

It was painfully obvious that the girls of their clan favored Neteyam over his baby brother. The way the girls their age would huddle together, giggling with a hushed voice as the brothers would pass them at first was an ego boost, definitely. It became glaringly obvious that they were casting their love-struck eyes at his older brother, and while disgruntled at first, he could understand. However, his big brother was too busy living up to their father’s expectations to find love, much less a crush.

So, when Lo’ak was sitting next to Tsireya, listening to Roxto explain how to spear fish underwater, he noticed how Neteyam’s amber eyes glanced passed the Metkayina boy and his back straightened up. It wouldn’t have been odd, until Neteyam’s face softened into an expression he didn’t think he’d ever see on his no-nonsense brother. An expression he’d seen on his father whenever their mother would walk into his line of sight.

Love-struck.

With wide eyes, Lo’ak whipped his head to the side, following his brother’s line of vision without shame of being caught. Subtlety was not in his vocabulary and he wasn’t about to start now. The others around them, surprised by his sudden movement, followed suit.

Almost twenty feet away, there was the subject of Neteyam’s distraction. Staring right back at the oldest Sully boy with a bashful smile as she walked with a few of the other girls of her clan.

Yana.

Ao’nung was the first to recover from the shock of the new information, his blue eyes narrowed dangerously at the forest prince. “No fucking way. Not Yana. Pick another girl.”

Tsireya smacked the back of his head, glaring. “Stop using the sky language to curse. And Yana passed her trials. She is older than you, and can decide who she wants.”

Neteyam didn’t bother replying, probably not even listening as his eyes still trailed after the older girl. Bright eyes wandered down her back, hypnotized at how her long spiral curls swayed in time with the swing of her hip. She glanced back to him once more, wiggling her fingers with a wink that nearly sent his heart into cardiac arrest.

Lo’ak snapped him out of it, tugging on his arm band with a teasing glint in his eye. “Really? Tsireya’s older cousin?”

He had to hand it to Neteyam though, he sure knew how to pick a crush. Yana was arguably the most beautiful girl in the clan, second to Tsireya in Lo’ak’s personal opinion. They had met her family last night during the communal celebration. Ironically, it was in celebration to reward the newest members of the clan passing their trials; Yana being one of four. She was now recognized in the clan as an adult - the dark ink of a fresh tribal tattoo wrapping around her shoulder the first indication of her new status. There were many young men in the clan that had showered her in attention last night, but she had stayed close to the Sully family after being introduced by her parents.

Too wrapped up in Tsireya, Lo’ak hadn’t even paid his brother any attention last night. Seeing how love-sick he looked as Yana disappeared from view, he was slightly glad he didn’t witness anything that might’ve corrupted his innocent mind.

Kiri giggled to his side, “You’d better hurry and finish your trials, Neteyam.”

The chuckles around them made the topic of conversation duck his head, hiding the heating of his face by looking at the soft sand beneath them. It was common knowledge that only those who were seen as adults in the clans could pick a mate, and they didn’t need to voice it for him to understand the innuendo.

They poked fun at him for a few minutes until a shadow fell over Ao’nung. “You don’t mind if I steal the mighty warrior for a while, do you, little cousin?”

Yana grinned at the surprised faces of the younger teens, and felt her smile widen at Ao’nung’s pout. Her baby cousin was too protective for his own good. She placed a hand over his damp braids, feeling him relax slightly. “I promise to bring him back before dinner, hm?”

While the others had turned their attention to the newcomer, Lo’ak took this time to examine his brother. How his eyes light up when she first spoke, braids swishing around his head as he turned to give her his undivided attention. The look in his gaze was as if this girl had put the sun in the sky herself. As if no one around him mattered when she was near. The two love-brids made eye contact and Yana held out her hand.

Neteyam didn’t even hesitate to stand, sliding his larger hand into hers so the shorter Na’vi could pull him any which way she desired. Which was apparently somewhere only the two of them were going. They didn’t even bother with a wave goodbye.

As if in sync with each other, Lo’ak and Kiri made identical gagging noises. Neteyam was so whipped, it was downright nauseating.

Tsireya nudged him, laughing at the Sully’s immature reactions before trying to get them all to focus back on task at hand. A soft teal hand on his upper arm was all she needed to get his attention and those dimples made his heart do flips. He felt those sparkling blue eyes take all of his focus, not even bothering to stop himself as he smiled at her.

Maybe he and Neteyam weren’t that different after all.

#neteyam #neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan #neteyam sully #neteyam x oc #loak sully #atwow imagines #neteyam fluff #don't know what else to tag #I'm new to Tumblr sorry #didn't spell check

[write-and-buried]

Postcards

Part 1

Joel Miller x OFC

(credit for banner idea to @fuckyeahdindjarin)

Summary; You need to get the fuck out of Boston.

Warnings; descriptions of injury and personal wound care, hopelessness and angst - for a full list of warnings for this fic, please go here

Author's Note; I am *so* excited for this fic. I love these characters with all my heart and soul. I wouldn't be here and wouldn't be able to post it without the unending support of some very incredible people whose talent far outweighs my own, so massive thank you to Vic ❤️, @astroboots @jazzelsaur @the-ginger-hedge-witch @radiowallet & @frannyzooey for supporting, beta-reading and listening to me bitch and moan and whine and whinge for months on end about these two.

series masterlist | main masterlist

Sometimes, I’m amazed by how little time it took for nature to take the world back. It’s as if all she was waiting for was a reason to reset. The way she wanted to be, shredding her human skin and blooming anew. The fresh green grass, the flowers, the dandelions freed from pavement. No feet left to stamp them down.

I wonder if this is why. If there’s a reason, and if this could possibly be it.

You’d tell me it’s foolish to wonder. But I still do.

Sparrow.

*

The blood blooms red on your ankle. It seeps into the fabric of your jeans, a creeping stain that crawls up your calf, the frazzled edges of the denim taking on a new colour as you jam yourself tighter against the wall. Your teeth are digging into your palm, biting back a scream of pain that echoes in the hollow chamber of your chest.

You peel it from your skin, slamming a fist into the wall as you see the bone beneath the torn tissue. There is no alcohol in your pockets, there’s nothing to clean the wound with as it bleeds sticky red beneath you. It’s dark here, quiet except for the skittering of rats, flowing over the overflowing garbage.

You’re between a wall and a dumpster, covered in refuse and stink, listening for the thumping boots that have been chasing you, missing you as you ducked your head and ran, feeling the breeze of a wasted bullet pass your ear.

You didn’t think they’d execute you. Not without a farcical trial, some showcase to give the public, something for them to live for, to wake up another day. Watch your brains splatter on the pavement, a lively splash of colour against the backdrop of the apocalypse. You can twist just enough to access your pockets, dig your skinny fingers into the one with your medical kit.

You’ve got enough to seal the wound, stop the rancid mess from dripping into it, wrap it with strips of cloth and hope that can stop the bleeding. It’s enough for now, but without cleaning it, without stitching it, without some penicillin and a shot of decent whiskey, it will get infected. A different kind of infection, but deadly all the same.

The rats crawl across your shoulders as the sun dips below the horizon, you pray they aren’t hungry enough to bite. Everything is hungry here. 

Forcing deep breaths as if oxygen were food; you shove your hands deeper into your jacket. You feel the bundle against your breastbone, the thick cardstock hidden beneath the layers of fabric, stitched into a false pocket made real. It’s the only thing that fills you, that satisfies the hunger.

You count your breaths to pass the time. You can roughly scrape together how long it’s been, the pattern of stars across the clouded sky giving you an impression of the passage of time as your head goes fuzzy. It could be exhaustion; it could be blood loss. Your breaths come in the same pattern as the blood you feel still seeping from your ankle. Slow and sticky hot. Your fingers are cold, your neck sweating.

You fall asleep.

Fits and starts of consciousness, the same dream coming in staccato rhythm. Its been with you longer than the hollow of your chest, longer than the silvery scars on your wrist, longer than the misery that follows you like a shadow, a ghost. Pudgy toes in too big pyjamas. Loud banging, fireworks, James’s hands over your ears, hands on your shoulders, lifting and screaming, the jostling run. A shout, your father’s, a scream, your mother’s, fingernails ripping the skin of your forearm, James’s. It’s far too dark in the truck.

You wake with a start, sunlight weak in the fog of morning.

You need to get the fuck out of Boston.

They’re all over your apartment. Standing out the front of the building, handguns held loosely in their grip as they joke back and forth at their easy posting. You can’t go back there. You’re not losing much; a blanket that isn’t too scratchy, an extra shirt with more holes, a trickle of water from a rusted tap that’s sometimes warm and always discoloured. You hide in an alleyway, pulling your hood over your hair. They’d still recognise you; you’re covered in blood.

It takes you all day to get there, weaving through alleyways and waiting in dark corners as they pass by you. There’s a sweet stink of rot and human misery and it comforts you, smelling oddly of home as you hope it’s not your flesh rotting away. You shoulder the door open, feeling the bright sparks of pain skitter up your leg. You’re breathing is erratic now, you can taste copper on your teeth as you struggle through the black market.

It's a hollowed-out school, twists of hallways and wide rooms. There’s faded bright coloured paintings, still pinned to the walls. They’ve made fires near open windows, belching black smoke into the afternoon. It’s close to the industrial section, it’s an open secret.

Meryl’s room is in the back, the old principal’s office, hollowed out hallowed ground as she deals drugs to those in need. Everyone is in need. Morphine to penicillin, to heroin and meth, the little bags of pills given out on trade. She makes her own moonshine to sell on the side. She’s the oldest person you remember knowing. You shuffle down the hallway, past the clothed-up windows of a makeshift brothel, the rooms full of mattresses, some housing the sick, the dying, the waiting to die.

“Idiot bird,” she says, seeing your blood-stained form in her doorway. “I warned you.”

She had. There were rumours for weeks that this was the current gamble, that others had been snatched up to swing for the exact same thing. It was amazing how you could see bodies swinging in the daylight when others were clawing at the gates.

It was a group of them. Six or seven, huddled around a trashcan fire in the early evening, haunted eyes and too-big clothing. Scabby little kids asking every passer by if they could spare something, spare anything. A little kindness in a world that forgot how to give it. They’re ashy little grubby fingers looked worn to the bone as they reached for you.

You were cocky. Stupid and reckless. The fresh stack hidden under your coat made your neck sweat, carrying this many was dangerous, and you were eager to get rid of them, to give them away and make more. 

The pleasure was in the making. The creation, finding the charcoal, sharpening the tip of metal to a fine point. Soaking the cardstock, the pretty pictures fading into the obscurity their subjects lived in.

Nobody scavenged for postcards. Just outside the fences, where you were still safe, but you could tell yourself you weren’t really. Where you could get a little shot of adrenaline to brighten up your misery and browse the racks of bright colours and dusty edges. You could take them all at once, but you’d lose your reason to come back.

“Wish you were here”

Everyone wished they were somewhere else. The lies on the front of them, the lack of space to write any true feelings, to tell the truth in anything other than a bland platitude and a whispered wish. You could coat them in candy, roll them in sugar and make the words sweeter, twist a lie into something palatable, something easier to swallow with sticky blood-soaked fingers.

The first step is soaking them. Just around the edges, enough to separate the laminated photo from the cardstock. Sliding a piece of thin wood scrap in between the plastic photo, lifting gently to not tear it. You can discard the photo when you’re done, laying the cardstock on a flat surface to dry. The rare days of sunlight help.

Then it’s trimming them, slicing off the edges and rounding them until they’re the perfect size. You use a rubber band and the charcoal for the border, making them look like the printed ration cards. Then the writing, black script, with the stamp of Boston’s Quarantine Zone in a careful hand. They take you hours, sips of water and nibbles of food to keep your hand steady.

You have a stack of them by the end, a few restless nights with a scratchy blanket around your shoulders to make enough for a years’ worth of ration cards. The first one you did was for fun. It’s lonely on your own, the only people roughly your own age in the military, or passed out in Meryl’s school of hardest knocks. It was something to keep your hands occupied, something to keep your mind active, stop the slow creep of loneliness from atrophying your limbs.

You tried them first. Your fingers trembled under your heavy jacket when you passed them to the woman with a pinched smile. She gave you your rations, without question, stamping and discarding the now useless card. You walked away with bottles of water, a bag of rice and a wry smile.

You could have turned it into an empire. Traded them for drugs or comfort. But it was easier to give them away; give them to skinny little teenagers who dug through bins with clothing worn through the knees. It’s enough, for a family to get enough flour to bake a small cake, stick a match in the centre and sing happy birthday, a haunting melody of a dead life.

You figured it had a few months. But a few months turned into a year, and people came to you now. They came with blankets and offerings, an altar at your feet to worship at as you turned all their offers down. Their bellies screaming for food was offering enough. You kept under the radar, or so you figured.

The signs didn’t deter you, though you wondered where they scrapped the fresh metal. Counterfeiting is theft. Theft is an offence punishable by death. As if hunger wasn’t also. They kept you all right on the brink of starving, worrying so much about your next meal means you don’t have to worry about what is outside the gates. They kept you safe by keeping you lean – by keeping you scrappy and hungry and desperate for the hand that feeds you. Those cards are your way of showing teeth.

You kept up with it, reducing your supply just enough to stay below the radar. Meryl warned you, the last stack you gave her she grabbed your wrist, gripped it tight enough to feel the bones shift beneath the skin.

“They’re using the kids, little sparrow”

You didn’t listen. It didn’t cross your mind as you saw the group of them, preteens barely hitting puberty, knobby knees and hollow eyes crowded around a trash can. They pulled you in, the low voices and flat tone, no happiness or laughter. Sometimes the ration guards have hard candy, sugar rolled together that you can trade for a card, a treat.

You didn’t notice. The youngest one scrambling away with half a grin as you pulled them from your pocket, slipping them into a sweaty palm. The boots came next, a thundering stomp and a shout as they ran to you, grabbing at you with armoured hands. They grabbed your hair, your throat, your shoulders, crushing your windpipe as they yanked you forward, into the middle of the street. There was a shout, a sentence of death as one with ragged fingernails grabbed you by the neck.

You had managed to slip them, your overcoat in their fingers as you slipped free, running from them with a throat burning fire. They shot at you, more than once. One clipped the pavement, skittering sparks. Another tore through your ankle, as you stumbled with a blood splatter. You didn’t feel it after that, running and twisting as their heavy armoured bodies tried to follow. You jammed yourself into a corner, into a crack in between a dumpster and the wall, a place only a ghost could fit.

“What do you need, birdie?” Meryl asks, a hint of scraggy kindness in her tone. She’s missing three fingers on her left hand, her teeth are brown and loose. She smells like rubbing alcohol, she deals drugs and hides a gun in the old principal’s desk. She’s the closest thing you’ve had to a friend in almost a decade.

“Medicine.” you manage, sliding against the wall as the pain takes your knees out. She brings you a phial, a needle, a bottle of moonshine and an almost clean rag. She smokes a hand rolled cigarette as you clean yourself up on her floor, shoot the antibiotics into your exposed arm.

“Can I sleep here?” you ask, the pain turning into an aching dull throb as your head tilts back into the wall. You’re exhausted, every day you’re exhausted. And now you’re on the run. Meryl nods, sipping her moonshine from a jar as she tosses you a blanket. She has enough pity for you, a ghost curled in the corner as the pain of being alive slowly rocks you to sleep.

*

Dear Mom,

It was an event when I skinned my knee. Falling off my bike because I was too grown up for training wheels, and too proud to admit I was scared. James got to me first, holding my hand as he shouted for you both. You kissed my forehead as Dad sprayed the scrape with something that stung. The band aid had mermaids on it. You called me brave and gave me an ice cream.

Am I still brave now?

Sparrow

*

His apartment smells like gunpowder. It smells like the munitions he smuggles, the stink of crime seeping into the wood and settling there. There’s a bed in the corner he doesn’t use. He sleeps on the couch instead, daring the nightmare to come and claim him, sink him under as if he can take another path, make another choice, make a better choice, wake up somewhere else.

His shower is never warm. Lukewarm and dribbling over his shoulders as he tries to scrub the guilt from his skin. He wonders if he scrubs deep enough, he’ll hit bone. Robert and Tess are waiting for him. He turns away from the scars in the mirror, the backpack waiting at the door.

He passes fresh gallows in the middle of town. They smell like pine and rust. He thinks about the woman. 

He was standing in the yawning mouth of the alleyway - caught between not wanting to get blackout drunk with Robert and not wanting to face the nightmares - staring at a group of preteens. Paid to entrap criminals, as if he didn’t get paid for the same thing by the same hands, money slipping from crime to justice and back again.

The woman was a scrap of a thing, skinny limbs and drowning in clothing, hair pulled up into a bun, flying all around her face. A baby bird - fragile and moulting - those same haunted eyes he recognises from the mirror. One of the guards Robert liked to trade with grabbed her, dragged her into the street. He felt a peculiar flex in his limbs as they crush her throat with ease.

She slipped them. She slipped through the only crack available to her, shedding her coat like a second skin. They scrambled for their guns, clumsy and uncoordinated. They aren’t used to their citizens fighting back. They missed her, once and twice until they didn’t, a starburst of red on the pavement that exploded in garish colour as she kept running.

She was able to keep running.

The woman’s probably dead by now. Joel feels the sun on his face as he wonders about the baby bird he watched freefall from the nest. He wonders if her corpse has been stamped into the pavement yet.

Robert makes promises he can’t keep. He promises enough to get them ravenous: crates of weapons he doesn’t have access to, guns nobody has seen in years. Every time. Tess finds and every time, Joel delivers, and Robert makes more promises; and there’s never an out, never a break, never a breath that doesn’t feel stolen.

It smells like fresh pine here. He wonders if the boxes are for bullets or bodies. Probably both. Behind a gate he has no right to enter, they sit in a sweltering room made of tin, a roof on four unsteady beams. A hint of his old life peeks through as he reminds himself how to reinforce it.

Tess stops Robert short of promising the moon. There’s already too much on the table as they pay half upfront and promise the other half on delivery. She’s furious with him as they leave, the sweltering door shutting as he’s left in muggy darkness. Joel stays quiet, thinking of reinforced beams and supports, nail guns that always smacked his hip when he was crawling across the support beams, the merry jangle of rivets and hammers as they swung from a belt he picked out with Sarah, compromising on dark leather instead of magenta.

“We take em up on their offer Tessy! That’s how we do it.”

“And give them what in exchange?” Tess sounds exasperated, interested, tired.

“All they want is the list, just a list of residents, it’s harmless.”

“It’s not harmless.” Tess mutters, throwing Joel a look as she remembers.

They traded a truck full of semi-automatics for a list like that once. Pine boxes full of untouched weaponry they traded for food and clothing and extra provisions. They lived like kings for a week, gorging on good whiskey and real coffee and bread that didn’t taste like cardboard.

The screams came in the night. Too many to be a raid on undesirables. It was a mass kidnapping. They threw them in a truck, Joel watching from a grubby window with his pistol held in a loose grip. He met Tess at the gates, her eyes wide and clouded with fear as they snuck through the gates, affixing gas masks as they squeezed through a rusted hole in the sewer, coming through to see the brake lights disappearing in the distance.

It took three days to find them, a favour to Bill he’d yet to repay for a vehicle, a shotgun. It was an abandoned office building, the top layers crumbling into nothingness. Yawning open with their beams exposed, a decomposing ribcage into the sky. They weren’t dead, that was the smallest mercy. Chained by their feet in the rotting bathrooms, iron and metal around the bones of their ankles.

Some kind of religious cult. They popped up by the hundreds in the aftermath, poor fuckers who had lost too much and twisted hope into daggers, staked their agony into the ground and prayed for an end to their suffering by inflicting it on others. They got the guns from others they had killed, traded them for more names, more blood to spill in some kind of offering to a god that only they believed in.

It was a brutal extraction. Blood and no mercy, snapping necks and choking until they were bathed in dirt and flecks of blood. Tess and Joel piled that same list of names back into a family SUV, their knees shaking together as they said nothing, the hollow haunted, hunted look right back in their eyes.

Joel sees them around sometimes, their shuffling gait, the ghosts still trailing them in the daylight.

Toast can’t ever be bread again.

There’s another group now, a team of them out in Colarado. They write in careful script, code that smugglers use, offering a giant bounty of weapons and food in exchange for an up to date list of residents of the Boston Quarantine Zone, and nothing else. It makes his teeth itch, his hair prickling at the base of his neck as he wonders what they want them for.

“We-elllll, I promised them Tessy. We have the time though, one of us could go down to look at em, take a trip to Colorado and see what they want it for, scope them out.”

“Waste of time” Joel said, his voice low as he watched Robert pace like a caged tiger. He pushed past him as he left, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from their bounty as he did.

The woman’s blood is still on the pavement. It’s dried and flaking and flying away in the soft spring breeze. He sips from his bottle as he stands over the puddle, pouring one out for the dead baby bird. Nobody talks to him, nobody looks his way. 

Everyone wants to be somewhere else.

*

It’s always too dark in the truck.

You wake on Meryl’s floor with a jolt. Everything hurts, but functions. Your ankle makes its presence known as you stand, shaky legs and hunger ripping through your belly as you stand still enough for the light-headedness to pass. Meryl is asleep in her chair, mouth yawning open as you twist, encouraging blood flow to your aching limbs.

“I have to get out of here” you mutter, untying and retying your hair, straightening your clothing as you brush the bundle in your jacket pocket. You’d give your last ration card for a warm shower.

“Ach. Baby bird, where would you fly?” Meryl sniffs, rousing from sleep with a clumsy hand, reaching for a rolled cigarette.

The truck is too dark, the screams are too loud, the lights too bright as you feel your chest crack open, feel every ounce of safety and comfort bleed into the brake lights of your past.

“Denver” you mutter, leaving your last stack of ration cards on her desk as you leave, slipping a jar of moonshine into your pocket. She gives you a smile made of bared rotting teeth.

They always tell you how good you have it. Every checkpoint you’ve ever entered, every roll of your fingerprint against a register, every key to a shithole apartment, some with floorboards missing, burned for heat. You were safe from the worst of it. But you weren’t safe now. Your description is under the thievery signs; height, weight, hair colour, eye colour. They even have a reward for you; they want you alive, just so they can make a show of killing you.

There’s wire cutters in one of your pockets, a stack of palettes you can hide behind as you clip away at the fence, avoiding the checkpoint for the bureaucratic headquarters. They trade with one another, you know it. You’ve seen the stamps on empty boxes. One of their trucks, armoured and full of more food you have eaten in your lifetime, driven cross country.

It will be easy enough, you think, to climb into the back of one of them and slip between the cargo and wait, sneak into another quarantine zone, pretend you’ve always been there. Start over in another place as if you had a place to begin with.

There’s a tin shed for storage with overgrown scrubby grass behind it that covers you easily. There are gaps in it, filtering a bit of light through. You can hear the snippets of conversations from right here, their talks about how they spend their off hours, how they go to Meryl’s and spend their pay checks on moonshine and sex and drugs.

Night falls, and you sleep in the grass, taking up less space in the earth than you can ever remember taking. The gravel is hard under your back, and you spend your night wondering where all the insects are. Nothing bothers you here, there’s nobody left.

Boots wake you in the morning, with a woman’s voice yelling at someone who tries to reason with her. You hear a fight, the sound of air expelling as a cough as he tries to explain. The hawking spit landing on the floor as they yank the door open, you hear three of them, a third with heavy footsteps, silent as he shuts the door behind them. 

You can hear them from the cracks in the walls, the argument continuing as you stand up to listen. They’re the most interesting thing you’ve heard for over a day, pressing your ear to the hot tin as the argument continues. It’s something about weapons, and promises, and one of them leaving to go somewhere.

“Joel can go” The whiny man’s voice says.

“How?” The woman shouts back “We don’t have any favours left”

“Bill…” He starts

“Bill’s gonna put a round in our head if we go anywhere near his property again, that was the last word he spoke to us, so explain to me how that works?”

“On foot then. A few weeks, living off the land, like a little holiday”

They argue a little longer, before the whiny man claims he’s going to take a piss, let them think over his proposal. The woman talks as the tin door scrapes, your ear vibrating as it presses to the side of the wall. 

You don’t hear him come up behind you, his hand is a vice around your throat.

Joel stands when he hears the scuffle, a scream that brings boots of guards coming towards their little tin outpost. There’s a grunt, Robert’s, a loud smack and the sound of a falling body. The dragging of feet and screaming as there’s more kicking. It’s quick, the fight, before the door bursts open, Robert shoving a small body in through the light.

The fragile little bird. One with fully formed talons apparently. Robert’s lip is bleeding, his eye already swelling as he holds his ribs. The little bird scrambles, trying to duck under Robert’s arm as she throws out another fist. Her lips are pulled in a snarl, anger as she favours her right leg, the left still injured.

The guards show up not long after, the somehow still living bird fighting and clawing as Joel watches, studying the form currently fighting like they have something to live for. Robert shoves her to the ground. She wipes her own bloody lip, then spits on the ground as she sees the guards.

“Caught me a thief” Robert says, laughing as he steps into line with the armoured guards, already pulling guns.

“I’m leaving” she says, hoisting herself up on her elbows as she keeps her eyes trained on the guns half raised to point at her.

“Bounty on your head girlie” Robert laughs, coughing at the end as he winces.

Joel feels a tug at the corner of his lip. You loosed a tooth, winded him in the struggle. Robert fights dirty, Joel knows, he taught him how. Whatever you did caught him by surprise, took him off guard, as much as your inexplicable life in front of him has.

“No jacket to slip from this time” The guard says, cocking his gun.

You tilt your face as they aim the gun at you. Jutting your chin out as they aim at your face.

“I want out anyway. I’m looking to hitch a ride to Denver – that’s all. You’ll never see me again”

You don’t sound afraid, there’s no tremble in your voice, despite them standing over you, ready to execute you and drag your hollow-boned corpse to the town square, an example ready made in your sallow rigid skin.

Your eyes flick to the woman, then to him. He’s broad, his shoulders wide and set, a furrow seemingly permanent in his brow, dirt on his cheeks, and scruff on his jaw. He’s studying you, his eyes flicking over your limbs, as if he’s assessing you, taking you whole rather than the sum of your parts.

His arms are crossed, sleeves pushed over his elbows as the muscles flex under tanned skin. He seems to seethe, the heat in his eyes travelling through his body as his limbs lock in place. You want to ask him for help. The sum of your life weighs your tongue so that you can’t speak. He breaks your gaze, looking at the guard with a shaking gun locked between your eyes.

You watch him shake his head.

“I owe this bitch a bullet Joel”

Joel. His name is Joel.

He stands in front of you, two steps to cross the sweltering room and block you with his bulk. His shadow engulfs you, casts you in darkness as he reaches for the guards gun. He moves slowly, a snake in scrub grass as he grabs the wrist of the guard. It takes a moment before you hear the bones crack, the yelp of pain as he drops the gun on the ground.

You get dirt under your nails as you grab for it, the whiny voiced one kicks it free before you can get fingers on it. He steps on them, making you yank back, more pain rolling up your arm, matching your throbbing ankle. You’re sure its bleeding under its dressing. You can feel bile in your throat as you see him smile down at you.

The man named Joel shoves the guard backwards, he goes flying as if attached to a rope, landing on the gravel dirt with a groan of pain. He starts towards him, scrambling to his feet, for a fight. He stops dead when Joel takes a step forward, his fist clenching at his side.

“Joel, man, come on… she has a bounty on her head. Will pay the bills for a few weeks at least”

Joel’s fist connects with the whiny man’s face. You see a tooth catch the sunlight as it looses from his mouth, a spray of blood arcing in the light as he crumbles like a puppet with cut strings. The light surrounds him like a halo as he turns, his hair flecking grey and chestnut in the sunlight.

He reaches out a hand to you. When you take it, its calloused and strong and warm.

#joel miller #joel miller x ofc #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us #tlou #pedro pascal character fanfiction #pedro pascal characters

[ae-neon]

Reading Throne of Glass (10-12)

Disclaimer

Nitpicky but that's just how I enjoy most media. I'm still giving the story a fair chance. Except the racist Nehemia plotline.

Chapter 10

Red marble, its white veins illuminated in the light of the sun, which slowly vanished as the opaque glass doors groaned shut. Chandeliers and torches hung all around. Her eyes darted from one side of the large, crowded chamber to the next. There were no windows, just a wall of glass looking out into nothing but sky. No escape, save for the door behind her. To her left, a fireplace occupied most of the wall, (...) It was monstrous, shaped like a roaring, fanged mouth, a blazing fire burning within. There was something greenish about the flame, something that made her spine straighten.

Ate up UtM in two paragraphs, that's crazy.

Also the green light is definitely something magic right? Celaena seeing it from outside the castle also now has me convinced the fucking castle is seethrough and I hate it.

Celaena every time she sees Chaol: there he is, I could kill him right now if I really wanted to

Celaena every time she sees Dorian: somehow he's gotten more beautiful. His outfit is on point. His hair is perfect.

Okay the king is evil but he's also up by like, a thousand points? Conquered the continent in less than 20 years, banned magic and then literally got rid of it, lives in a glass castle and has the sword Nothung??? Who's doing it like him? Nobody.

Nothung or Notung, also called Gram or Balmung, is a magical sword from Norse Mythology. It is often depicted with a dragon on it - including here in tog. It is used to slay the dragon, Fafnir. In Adventure Time, it belongs to the legendary hero, Billy.

Celaena is the only woman in the competition. Boring but unsurprising. She's in a fancy dress so most people don't even realise she's one of the competitors.

Instead of immediately thinking to use them underestimating her to her advantage, she's insulted that no one takes note of her. This is the opposite of smart and cohesive character writing. The assassin wants to be the centre of attention. Sure, Jan.

Also, I don't think sjm quite understands the concepts of king's champion and assassin.

The king's champion is a public figure who is basically recognised as having the authority of the king. They would usually be a lord, a knight or a warrior priest - they have to be a great swordsman as they will essentially fight on the king's behalf.

An assassin is usually a non-combatant. They don't engage in much hand to hand or sword fighting. They often kill in non-violent ways. In the case they have a well known alias or persona it's a bogeyman tactic - it's to instill the fear in the target and trust in the client of an inescapable, almost unpredictable death.

Even if people know the name Celaena Sardothien, they shouldn't know what she looks like or where she is.

A flicker of shame sparked within her. What was “Champion” but a dressed-up name for murderer? That's literally what you do tho? That's what we've been made sure to know you take pride in being the best at??

The moderately handsome competitor will get a name, a story and maybe become an ally. The big scary man will be the evil villain. I would say it's childish but SJM still writes characters this way as a grown woman

SJM has a problem with removing the tension from her own narrative. The premise of this book is that Celaena competes in a deadly competition against ruthless murderers and all the while the evil king is lurking. So why drag out the competition to last 13 weeks????

The same was true for Amarantha giving Feyre a month between each trial. It makes the villains look not only less threatening but down right stupid to house, feed AND TRAIN their own enemies?????

If the king was smart he'd pick out 3 psychopaths in his own army and put them in charge of creating a death squad. They'd be more ruthless and more loyal than some criminal picked by one of your overly ambitious subjects.

Is it just me? Is my brain too evil? Is the answer not obvious?

This scene - the king addressing his courtiers and their handpicked champions - does a good job of showing how (besides the point I just brought up) serious and stern and scary the king is. Everyone from murderers to his own nobles flinches and cowers.

Everyone except Dorian. This scene does an even better job at setting up how smart Dorian is. He waits until he knows his father is about 90% through then interrupts and sees himself out. It's a dangerous but brilliant play.

All at once Dorian is reminding all his father's ambitious courtiers that he is above them - he can do what they cannot.

And through the same action he's actually reinforcing his father's favour: the king is reminded Dorian isn't a coward or a follower, he has the iron and will to go against the raging current - he is the only one who could take up the throne and not be crushed by it.

Very well done.

Then outside, he's instantly back to cheerful and snarky. Love him.

Back to them being stupid. Why wait until now to pull out the alias??? Celaena was bailed out, travelled for weeks, came to the castle and even signed on a piece of paper using the name CELAENA SARDOTHIEN.

“To everyone in this castle,” Dorian said, “your name is Lillian Gordaina. Your mother is dead and your father is a wealthy merchant from Bellhaven. You are the sole heir to his fortune. However, you have a dark secret: you spend your nights as a jewel thief. I met you this summer after you tried to rob me while I was vacationing in Bellhaven, and I saw your potential then. But your father discovered your nightly fun, and removed you from the lure of the city to a town near Endovier. When my father decided to have this competition, I journeyed to find you, and brought you here as my Champion. You can fill in the gaps yourself.”

Celaena's third identity has a more fleshed out backstory than Feyre Archeron

She raised her brows. “Really? A jewel thief?” idk if sjm thinks she's funny for pointing out the nonsense in her own plot or what. Cause I'm not gonna brush past this just cause it's brought up in the book. Why the fuck would a jewel thief be in the competition to become king's champion?? That's somehow worse than assassin

Kaltain!!! She would have ended Ianthe and Mor and Amren. I wanna see her and Nesta go back and forth, a verbal duel please. On a good day - a day when sjm is consistent - I don't think she could take Elain.

...I do hope we’ll see more of each other, Lady Lillian,” she said, watching her with a keenness that would make any assassin proud. “We must be friends, you and I.”

Kaltain is already soooo interesting. Her, Lucien and Nesta need to have a passive aggressive dinner.

She glared. “I hate women like that. They’re so desperate for the attention of men that they’d willingly betray and harm members of their own sex. And we claim men cannot think with their brains! At least men are direct about it.”

When you hate pickme's so much you horseshoe around back to also being a misogynistic pickme. Also you're describing a certain someone who puts a man and other men above her own sisters it's crazy

So glad that Celaena, who is actually a monarch, and Chaol, who is a lord from a slaver kingdom, bonded over how Kaltain is evil for being a rich girl with servants

You'll get training...but the competition begins tomorrow? No one knows how things naturally progress??

Chapter 11

She didn’t care that she had only a few months to beat the other Champions—she needed sleep. see, you killed the sense of urgency for the characters and the readers

Again, the king is training and arming the criminals in his own home. This could not be stupider.

I can forgive the dumb shit Celaena does like complaining about clothes because her thoughts make it obvious she is a little scared and worried about the competition.

Cain walks up to her to chat shit, she gets mad and thinks it would have been easy to grab his neck and slam his head into the floor. He's huge, I don't think that would have been easy at all actually.

Celaena and Chaol's sword practice is pretty good. I like that Chaol was the one to catch her off guard with a trick.

Don't get why the competitors train within view of each other though, knowledge is the first weapon of war.

Chaol is up 10 points, I like him. I'm pretty biased because this training scene made me think of Cassian and Feyre and what I could have had

Chapter 12

Theodus Brullo. Weapons Master of 30 years, trained Chaol. Characters like these just existing show how lazy sjm is in acotar.

At least 6 of the competitors were kicked out of the King's army. Why are they alive? Make them a squad or kill them.

Nox Owen. Moderately handsome guy that's been smiling at Celaena.

...and then there were the two shackled murderers. As his name suggested, Bill Chastain, the Eye Eater, ate the eyes of his victims. He looked surprisingly plain, with mousy brown hair, tan skin, and average height, though Celaena had trouble not staring at his scar-flecked mouth. The other murderer was Ned Clement, who’d gone for three years under the name Scythe, for the weapon he’d used to torture and hack apart temple priestesses. It was a wonder they hadn’t executed either man, though from their tanned skin, she guessed they’d spent the years since their captures toiling under the sun in Calaculla, the southern sister labor camp to Endovier.

In acotar the prison is called the Prison and the guy who carves with bone is called the Bone Carver

They weren’t even in the Assassins Guild—not that Arobynn Hamel would ever allow them in. Membership required years of training and a more-than-impressive track record. While these four might be skilled, they lacked the refinement that Arobynn favored in his followers. She’d have to keep an eye on them, but at least they weren’t the Silent Assassins from the windswept dunes of the Red Desert.

I wanna read about them, I hope Arobynn is as cool as he's building up to be. That means not falling for stupid shit, it better be actually difficult to take him down

Brullo is making the competitors do a fitness run. I'd fail immediately. Send me home

“If I have to call myself a jewel thief again—” Chaol raised his brows. “You’ll do what, exactly?” “Do you know how insulting it is to pretend to be some nobody thief from a small city in Fenharrow?” He stared her down, quiet for a moment. “Are you that arrogant?” She bristled, but he went on. “It was foolish to spar with you just now. I’ll admit that I hadn’t realized you’d be that good. Thankfully, no one noticed. And do you want to know why, Lillian?” He took a step closer, his voice lowering. “Because you’re some pretty little girl. Because you’re a nobody jewel thief from a small city in Fenharrow...

This was wildly attractive, don't ask me why. Chaol is up another 5 points.

His advice to her is smart. Play the middle ground for the long run so no one sees you as an immediate threat or an easy target.

Cain gotta be on magic steroids. I'm calling it rn.

I like that sjm realistically depicts the limits of the human body. The run is doable but it takes a lot out of Celaena and she has to throw up in the woods afterwards while seeing stars. Her years of training is the only thing that got her through it.

It's a shame that sjm didn't continue to get better as an author.

----

Overall still enjoying the read. There's pitfalls and potholes here and there but I can feel sjm putting an effort into this story that has unfortunately become rare these days not just for her but for fantasy romance as a whole. Of course it's also mostly her influence that caused this decline.

I genuinely like these 3 characters soooo much. I peaked ahead and I know Nehemia shows up next chapter so I'm excited to read that tomorrow.

Dorian is my favourite in terms of character potential but I can definitely see why Celaena falls for Chaol.

Celaena herself is really so fleshed out that even her worst traits don't bother me because I can see where they come from. She does a lot of active dissociating from her real feelings by focusing on shallow likes and dislikes in her immediate situation

#ae read #throne of glass #sjm critical #anti sjm #anti tog #just in case #ae read throne of glass

[sarahcaskett]

Big Sky: Deadly Trials

3x10 “A Thin Layer of Rock” (Winter Finale)

Beau Arlen & Jenny Hoyt

Air date: December 7,2022

#Big Sky #Big Sky Deadly Trails #A Thin Layer Of Rock #Beau Arlen #Jenny Hoyt #Such a sweet scene #I love these characters so damn much #Jensen Ackles #Katheryn Winnick

[ahlulhaditht]

True Dreams of the Believers - in Sha Allāh

Use of nuclear weapons during war

Hiroshima Below straight after the USA dropped the atomic bomb

Muhammad M. is a dā'ī from Bilād al-Maghrib (Morocco) who calls to Kitāb wa Sunnah and warns against religious innovations and Shirk (associating partners with Allāh).

He is also a well respected mu'abbir (dream interpreter) according to Qur'an wa Sunnah. He is often criticised harshly by others who do not Interpret dreams according to Qur'an wa Sunnah, which make up the vast majority of mu'abbirīn (interpreters) today. A small minority interpret dreams as the Salaf as-Salih (pious predecessors) did. Muhammad M. quotes Ibn al-Qayyim رحمه الله and other illustrious predecessors when explaining the principles behind his interpretation, and corrected others who do not understand the principles, or lack in knowledge of Hadīth for example.

About 7 months ago, he interpreted a dream about a nuclear explosion.

The brother from Misr - Egypt sent the text of the dream to Muhammad M. asking for it's ta'bīr (interpretation). His uncle's son dreamt that they were both praying in the Masjid Salatul Tarawīh.

He came out before finishing his prayers and saw the sky was all white. He asked the others can you see what am seeing ? Everyone was taking pictures of the strange sight with their smartphones. The rest of us came out and we started walking when we heard a sound coming from the sky that was like a ring. It was so loud the whole earth was shaking because of the strength of this ringing sound. I said in the dream <ashhadu Lā Ilāha illā LLAH wa ashhadu Anna Muhammad I rasūl LLAH<

In the dream my uncle's son bent his knees and looked scared.

Muhammad M. believes this dream is not a symbols dream but a dream that is mostly Interpreted as it comes - على ظاهرها- 'alā dhāhirihā.

And Allāh knows best.

Muhammad M. thinks here the white sky is not a symbol for something else. The sky that we can see in the pictures showing the Hiroshima Nagasaki nuclear episode was white. People who have read about the stories related to Hiroshima and Nagasaki will know that the sky was white.

Muhammad M. says you need to read what Kumamoto wrote about what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki... He was one of the ones who was saved from this deadly disaster. He says he saw a very big white cloud in the sky at the time, and he did not know about what had happened. He used to live far from Hiroshima and Nagasaki yet he saw a very strange cloud in the sky. The following day he went to see for himself what was coming from Hiroshima Nagasaki and he found everyone had died.

We ask Allah for protection from this every great trial but it would seem that another nuclear disaster is on its way from this dream, believes Muhammad M. He refrains from giving an interpretation of the rest of the dream.

Personally a friend of mine asked me to get her dream interpreted. She is a trusted sister who tried her best to follow Qur'an wa Sunnah according to the understanding of As-Salaf as-Sālih and I know her to be truthful. She also has a similar dream although it has one more piece of information. More to come in the coming posts in Sha Allāh.

A sister walking in the streets in very hot weather around Dhuhr time, in Bilād al-Maghrib, Dhul-Qi'dah 1444.

#ahlulhadith #ahlulsunnah #quran&sunnah

[yostresswritinggirl]

100 Followers Special

(And how to participate) you don't need to be a follower to vote ack

~yostresswritinggirl

Hello AGAIN, with your back to back followers special! Exiled here, very tired, as I just closed the requests box for our 50 followers special. I asked for some recommendations and no one helped me so this is what I came up with!

Granted, it's nothing that special, I literally just dumped my notes into this so—

Please make sure to follow the guidelines and read this thoroughly to properly participate!

1. You will be given a long list of fic prompts specific to a character that I've come up with for weeks on end, please don't steal, as I will remove them after this event is done!

2. Voting! You now have the power to influence my writing schedule haha- what you need to do: is to pick three prompts from the list and send it to me; either through reblog tag, a reply, or in my ask box (not anon so we can count fairly, will not publish these answers tho so worry not)! Not in messages tho! It should be in this format:

1. Character - prompt or prompt title

2. Character - prompt or prompt title

3. Character - prompt or prompt title

example:

1. Albedo - Citrinitas

2. Zhongli - Braid

3. Xingqui - Author!Reader

The top three most voted prompt and character will be the next fics I'll publish after I'm done with the current reqs. Speaking of: Voting ends when I finish the current reqs. You'll know it's done once the counter in my blog desc reaches 12/12.

3. In addition to the three prompts, you also get to add your own prompt to it! My prompts list does not include ALL the characters that's why I wanted to give you this option too! Add a fourth number and specify a character, a prompt/idea, and the format of the fic! Format it this way:

4. Character - Prompt/Idea (Format)

4. Kaeya - What's under that eyepatch? (Scenario)

After I pooled the answers, I'll randomly pick between the bonus answers and write them last! So give it your best shot!

4. Tags-list! I thought this would be necessary for this kind of a whim special, so if you wanna be tagged, just put Tag Me! at the end of your vote. Please make sure that you're actually able to be tagged because I just tried and some users are not in my orbit huhu, look here

5. If a pocket watch/series prompt gets chosen, I will only post the first chapter, not the whole damn fic pls. Have mercy,,,

I will post a counter of the top three in my blog description and will be updated as frequently as possible. Any questions, please direct to this post or my dms <3

Without further ado, here is your choice list!

Xingqui - "My liege, would you care to accompany me on my reading break? I've picked up a romance novel and it reminded me of us."

-> Author!Reader: You met Xingqui at Wanwen Bookhouse when delivering a batch of your newly-published book. But as a ghost writer, no one knew it was you that authored such books. Safe to say it was cute watching the noble bookworm fanboy about you in front of you. [FLUFF] [FIC]

-> Headcanons with a reader older than Xingqui who's a close family friend of the Feiyun Commerce Guild. Fascinated after meeting you in a party, the noble boy aspires to become the best man for you despite the difference, promising to be the best suitable partner for you in the future. [FLUFF] [HEADCANON SCENARIO]

Childe - "Hey there, comrade! What a coincidence that we had a break at the same time, care to accompany me for a walk? I promise I won’t lead you to a fight haha... hey, don’t look at me like that!”

-> Antinomy -  The 10th Harbinger (You) and the little shit they had to mentor (Childe), this fic enumerates the trials of the 11th before he became a Harbinger under your care. From strangers to mentor to friends to love- Childe made a grave mistake, now you’re once again strangers. [FLANGST] [ONESHOT]

Albedo - "Ah, it's you. I've heard of fleeting rumors that you've been pestering a certain someone just to see me. Next time, just come directly to me, I wouldn't mind the assertiveness."

-> Refer to these three as well: Albedo Fic Ideas [FLUFF/FLANGST/FLANGST] [ONESHOT/ONESHOT/SERIES]

-> “You’re Enough”: A year into being the new Chief Alchemist of Mond, Albedo finds himself holed up in his room in the dead of night, haunted as he continuously comes out empty on his research to bring his master back, feeling inadequate. So you reminded him of what he’s capable of. [FLUFF?] [ONESHOT INSPIRED BY You Are Enough - Sleeping At Last]

-> Under the Artificial Sky: Michaelangelo Scenario focused on Albedo’s sketching aspect. Grand Master Varka and Acting Grand Master Jean figured Albedo needed a break and a change of scenery, and sent him off under the guise of a commission in Liyue. What he didn’t expect was another artist from Fontaine accompanying him in this big project.(Albedo and Reader are tasked to paint the new Jade Chamber within 7 days) [FLUFF] [SERIES - 7 CHAPTERS]

-> Albedo SMUT: I had this idea while laying wide awake at 3 AM. The alchemist had been trying all remedies to shake off the stress and fatigue in his system and they all seemed to fail, no amount of sketching or discoveries can pull him away from it. So when you offered a solution he hasn’t heard, he’d jump at it immediately. “You know, some people say having intercourse with someone is a good stress-reliever.” “Intercourse? If it’s true, then please, I wish to have intercourse with you.” “Wha- wait Albedo, do you not know what that is? It’s only done between lovers!” “Convenient, I love you, anything else?” (Two virgin dumbasses do the thing to relieve stress) [SMUT] [ONESHOT]

Xiao - “I’ve taken care of every threat around this area, you can relax now, I made sure of that.”

-> What is it with you and Qingxin flowers? The Traveler had once heard of Xiao’s affinity for Qingxin flowers, and they’re flying companion boldly asked this lingering question to the adepti himself. His pupils dilate and sharpen before Paimon could finish her sentence. (An origin story about his favorite flower, and his favorite person) [SLIGHT FLANGST] [ONESHOT]

-> Just how harmful is adeptal energy to normal humans? You both found out in the worst way possible: silently, deadly. (Slight spoiler: you fucking die) [ANGST] [ONESHOT]

-> Nightmares Taste Horrible: He’s seen that look in your eyes and the ancient soul within it; you’ve lived long ago, and the only thing your soul carried now was the nightmares of a macabre timeline. Was it him or was it demons that brought you that fear? No matter, he’ll protect you even from yourself. (eating the nightmare of a dead soul reincarnated to you) [FLANGST?] [ONESHOT]

-> Go for the throat: The seal that marked you had made it all too late for him to remedy. Bleeding eyes, growing fangs, it’s just another demon to vanquish just like he’s done for centuries. What makes it different was it was sealed in you. (Inspired from Melanie Martinez’s song uhu) [ANGST] [ONESHOT]

Zhongli - “Mortals are capable creatures that evolve and adapt for means of survival, but they advance in ways that changes the world around them. This retirement, may be harder to me than it is to them.”

 -> “In human history, there’s a certain noble and powerful connotation to rulers who braid their hair.” Convince to braid his hair using some historical braid trivia; that long hair behind his back should not be ignored for any longer. [PURE FLUFF] [DRABBLE]

-> History has its eyes on you: A traveling theatre hailing from the land of entertainment finds its way to Liyue for their last caravan. A certain Geo Vision man seems to resonate with your newest script: fighting and protecting your land, building up its nation, before being forced to let go of it. He resonates maybe a little too much. (Musical!Reader with heavy references to Hamilton hehe) [FLUFF] [ONESHOT]

Venti - "Can you hear the symphonies of the wind as it sings to you? That's me, guiding you and protecting you! Whenever you hear it, know that you're safe and sound under my protection!"

-> the one the bard once loved: like actual bard, you are the archer or smth, loved by Venti and Barbatos. Yandere!Barbatos undertones, very unhealthy relationship. This hurts the kokoro. [PURE ANGST] [ONESHOT]

-> The Caravan: (related to the Zhongli and Musical!Reader up there) Your caravan stops at Mondstadt for a whole week before it reaches its final destination. This new fanfare pulled in a peculiar bard who now wants to tag along for the fun of it. "I have no more responsibilities in this free land!" Just what kind of responsibilities does a broke bard have in the first place? [FLUFF] [ONESHOT/HEADCANON]

Diluc - "You look weary, and you still managed to pull yourself here. Here, a fresh and cold glass, on the house. A relieved smile should be enough payment."

-> Abandoned by The Altar: A timeline oriented story focused on your once perfect childhood relationship as Diluc's bride to be, soon becoming estranged after the death of his father and his neglect. You only wish now that he looks at you the same way he did when you heard you were supposed to be together forever when you were young. [FLANFF] (The ending gets better pls; Inspired by Still Into You - Paramore) [ONESHOT]

-> There are No Laws Against Homelessness in Mondstadt: My favorite title out of all of this ahahhaa- who says adventurers can't be broke? You're the living embodiment of that. (Good boi Diluc with a broke ass reader) [FLUFF] (Warning: homelessness) [ONESHOT]

Scaramouche - "Let's go already, the sun is setting and we're nowhere near our destination. If you wanted to linger just to spend more time with me, I would have indulged you behind closed doors anyways."

-> Scaramouche Finally Does the Fandango: Have you ever wondered how Scaramouche is like working with other people? His first assignment was to accompany you in your main region and he sees you in your natural habitat, entranced. [I dunno how to tag this, NORMAL?] [ONESHOT/SHORT]

-> Skincare bitch, how I headcanon Scaramouche as someone actually conscious and always tending to their skin. Look at that smooth skin, cute cheeks, let me pinch, eyeliner glory— In which case, that hat has more purpose than being a frisbee. (May or may not include reader. (based from a reblog convo with chels-void) [GOOD VIBES] [HEADCANONS]

-> Once Supreme: Before Scaramouche, there was someone else higher than him. Before Balladeer there was just a young man fighting for his beliefs and her Majesty. Before Mondstadt, his smile wasn't just for deception. "Someday, someone would take advantage of that smile, Scaramouche. It's not appropriate in this work environment." The day you break a man. (Harbinger!Reader again, and lots of HCs for Scaramouche, same format as Antinomy) [I also do not know how to call this, eventual ANGST] [ONESHOT]

Kaeya - "What are you doing out here in the dead of night? Citizens like you should be cozied up in bed and leaving the patrols to us Knights. Come, I'll accompany you back home."

-> Honey Whiskey: A mysterious band of dancers from Sumeru visits Mondstadt and its taverns to offer a night of alluring dances. What was supposed to be a night of drinking for Kaeya and his troops ended up becoming a tipsy surprise mission when the main dancer steps down from the stage— and ignores him?! How scandalous! (Slightly suggestive themes/You're a bad guy) [COOL?] [ONESHOT] [slightly inspired by song with the same name]

General:

-> A Musical!Reader but with a scenario with every other character, most probably headcanons master post.

-> Genshin Food prompts: From that one post, I ended up making a whole storyline of oneshots related to their special dishes. Oneshots connected to a bigger picture. By impulse you've ended up leaving your normal life behind to pursue your cooking career, starting from Mondstadt, to learn all the cuisines to establish the first ever international restaurant. With the implications of magic and peculiar customers, your simple dream turns into a harder goal. [GOOD SHIT] [SERIES] [CANON-COMPLIANT]

-> God of Time!Reader that hails from Fontaine. Do you wish to know more about their origins and their purpose in this world? [CANON-COMPLIANT] [HEADCANONS] (General since it deals with all the characters/interactions)

▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱

Tagslist-for-my-thirsty-homies:

#genshin impact #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact x reader #exile.circlet #exile.flower #albedo x reader #genshin impact albedo #genshin impact headcanons #genshin impact oneshots #genshin impact diluc #diluc x reader #genshin impact zhongli #zhongli x reader #genshin impact venti #venti x reader #genshin impact kaeya #kaeya x reader #genshin impact xingqui #xingqui x reader #genshin impact childe #childe x reader #genshin impact scaramouche #scaramouche x reader #genshin impact xiao #xiao x reader #followers special

[rockislandadultreads]

Feminist Fiction: book recommendations

Madam by Phoebe Wynne

For 150 years, high above rocky Scottish cliffs, Caldonbrae Hall has sat untouched, a beacon of excellence in an old ancestral castle. A boarding school for girls, it promises that the young women lucky enough to be admitted will emerge “resilient and ready to serve society.” Into its illustrious midst steps Rose Christie: a 26-year-old Classics teacher, Caldonbrae’s new head of the department, and the first hire for the school in over a decade. At first, Rose is overwhelmed to be invited into this institution, whose prestige is unrivaled. But she quickly discovers that behind the school’s elitist veneer lies an impenetrable, starkly traditional culture that she struggles to reconcile with her modernist beliefs—not to mention her commitment to educating “girls for the future.” It also doesn’t take long for Rose to suspect that there’s more to the secret circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of her predecessor—a woman whose ghost lingers everywhere—than anyone is willing to let on. In her search for this mysterious former teacher, Rose instead uncovers the darkness that beats at the heart of Caldonbrae, forcing her to confront the true extent of the school’s nefarious purpose, and her own role in perpetuating it. A darkly feminist tale pitched against a haunting backdrop, and populated by an electrifying cast of heroines, Madam will keep readers engrossed until the breathtaking conclusion.

I'll Take You There by Wally Lamb

I’ll Take You There centers on Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater. One evening, while setting up a film in the projectionist booth, he’s confronted by the ghost of Lois Weber, a trailblazing motion picture director from Hollywood’s silent film era. Lois invites Felix to revisit—and in some cases relive—scenes from his past as they are projected onto the cinema’s big screen. In these magical movies, the medium of film becomes the lens for Felix to reflect on the women who profoundly impacted his life. There’s his daughter Aliza, a Gen Y writer for New York Magazine who is trying to align her post-modern feminist beliefs with her lofty career ambitions; his sister, Frances, with whom he once shared a complicated bond of kindness and cruelty; and Verna, a fiery would-be contender for the 1951 Miss Rheingold competition, a beauty contest sponsored by a Brooklyn-based beer manufacturer that became a marketing phenomenon for two decades. At first unnerved by these ethereal apparitions, Felix comes to look forward to his encounters with Lois, who is later joined by the spirits of other celluloid muses. Against the backdrop of a kaleidoscopic convergence of politics and pop culture, family secrets, and Hollywood iconography, Felix gains an enlightened understanding of the pressures and trials of the women closest to him, and of the feminine ideals and feminist realities that all women, of every era, must face.

Strike Me Down by Mindy Mejia

Nora Trier catches thieves. As a forensic accountant and partner in her downtown Minneapolis firm, she’s unearthed millions in every corner of the world. She prides herself on her independence, the most essential currency of accounting, until her firm is hired by Strike. An anti-corporate, feminist athletic empire, Strike is owned by Logan Russo, a brash and legendary kickboxer, and her marketing genius husband, Gregg Abbott. They’re about to host a major kickboxing tournament with twenty million dollars in prize money, and the chance for the champion to become the new face of the company. Gregg suspects his wife already has a new face in mind—a young trainer named Aaden, for whom Logan feels an unexpected connection. Days before the tournament begins, it’s discovered that the prize money is missing. Gregg hires Nora’s firm to find both the thief and the money but Nora has a secret connection to Strike that threatens her independence. Her partner pressures her into taking the case anyway, hinting he has information about Strike that could change the course of the investigation in a shocking and deadly way.

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has laid the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world. But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men? A haunting, riveting debut about the capacity for violence and the potency of female desire, The Water Cure both devastates and astonishes as it reflects our own world back at us.

#fiction #historical fiction #feminism #feminist #feminist books #adult fiction #to read #book recs #booklr #tbr #reading list #book list #library #reading recommendations #recommended reading #womens fiction

[tribbetherium]

The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment

Ain't No Passing Craze: The Great Ecatorian Desert

The continent of Ecatoria is a lush, warm tropical region, fed and nourished by rainfall from the South Ecatorian Sea. But not all of it is drizzled with a constant supply of precipitation: west of the mid-Ecatorian mountain ranges lies an expanse of land shielded from storms and moisture, and thus is dry and arid: the Great Ecatorian Desert, the largest desert on HP-02017 in the Late Rodentocene.

It is a hot afternoon in the Ecatorian Desert, and Alpha shines scorchingly overhead. On the western horizon Beta slowly begins to set, as the two suns are now separated by half a day: the coming of spring. But while elsewhere on Ecatoria spring would be mild and rainy, here in the Ecatorian Desert the climate is scorching in the day and chilling in the night: and despite this conditions some specialized organisms are able to eke out an existence in this inhospitable land.

A dark shadow glides overhead: a predatory ratbat, scouring from the skies above for any small creature down below. Though a rodent, this flying hunter is akin to a hawk, having adapted tremendously keen eyesight to home in on any movement down below on ground level. Down below, there is nothing but an expanse of sand and dry grass for miles, punctuated only by occasional towering plants, somewhat resembling cacti but in truth are highly-derived grass. Even the plants of this seeded world have begun evolving to fit new niches, not merely a green background in a planet of animals, but themselves competitors in the evolutionary race.

The ratbat-of-prey spots movement down below and circles around to zero in on its target. However, it quickly breaks off the hunt and soars off in search for another, easier meal: its rejected quarry is far too big to tackle. A desert-dwelling descendant of the cavybaras, it is nearly the size of its ancestor and simply too large for the ratbat to carry off, and so the predator wisely departs, while the lumbering beast below briefly watches the departing figure in curiosity, gives a huffing snort of confusion, and then proceeds on its way.

The creature in question is a direct descendant of the cavybaras, that has evolved modified extensions of its lower incisors that grow outward of its mouth, forming tusks which it uses in digging for food and for self-defense. Known as the desert bumbaa (Scrofacricetus hakunae), it is one of the several species of the genus Scrofacricetus, with its other cousins having adapted to different biomes, such as the forest bumbaa (S. matatai) and the plains bumbaa (S. porcius), which thrive in other regions of Ecatoria. The desert bumbaa differes from its cousins by its larger ears and thinner, sparser coat, which helps it lose heat in the arid climate.

The desert bumbaa is an omnivore, feeding mostly on tough shrubs and cacti-analogues in the desert. However, it also greatly relishes insects, many of which nest in burrows or underneath rocks and logs, and so the bumbaa puts its tusks to great use to dig up an abundance of bugs, overturning driftwood and uprooting plants to get at its prize. And its messy eating habits attract the attention of another desert dweller, the banded meerca (Paramustelamys timonii), a small, insectivorous ferrat that has developed a bizarre, and mutualistic, relationship with the bumbaa.

While fond of feasting on bugs, the desert bumbaa itself is plagued by insects of a nastier kind: wingless, bloodsucking flies that have converged with ticks and fleas as external parasites of mammalian hosts. These bugs cause the bumbaa great discomfort, but that is when the meerca comes to the rescue: an avid insectivore, it not only feeds upon the escaping leftovers of bumbaas while they raid insect nests, but also plucks the pests off the bumbaa's thick hide, offering them relief. The bumbaas have learned to tolerate and even welcome their presence, actively seeking them out and laying down to be groomed from parasites, while the meercas follow bumbaas around to be led to insect nests which the bumbaas then dig up, allowing the tiny meercas to share access to a buffet of bugs otherwise out of their reach.

Another benefit the meercas gain from the company of their lumbering companion is protection from predators: and indeed, there is a specialized predator prowling this dessicated wasteland: the dwarf hamyena (Microcutamys minimus). Smaller than many of its other relatives across Ecatoria but no less a deadly hunter, this badger-sized predator is descended from the hammibals of ten million years prior, and specializes on small rodents- including meercas. However, a full-grown bumbaa is too much for them to handle, their sharp tusks potentially being wielded with lethal force: as such, as long as the bumbaas are around, the meercas are safe from their small but fearsome enemy.

Other rodents also thrive in the Ecatorian Desert: furbils and jerryboas, ever present throughout the planet in all their diversity, exist in numerous forms throughout the desert landscape, feeding on insects, seeds and cactus-analogues, which they chew through their tough outer skin to reach the water-rich tissues inside. Their large ears and long tails act as heat sinks to lose excess heat, while their pale fur reflects heat and camouflages them in the light-colored sandy soil.

These tiny rodents, in turn, form a major part of the diet of the desert's primary aerial hunter, the masked batzzard (Nyctaquilus aridus). With a wingspan of about four feet, this desert ratbat circles the daytime sky, seeking out small prey such as jerryboas, furbils and meercas, which it swoops down onto, pounces on with its wing claws, and dispatches with a bite from its sharp, stabbing incisors. Hooked talons on its forelimbs ensure that prey is unable to easily escape, attacking its targets with an unusual hunting strike partly like a hawk, and partly like a cat. While live bumbaas are far too big to deal with, dead ones certainly aren't off the menu, and groups of batzzards may occasionally congregate at a carcass, where, due to their normally solitary lifestyle, nearly all their social interaction takes place, such as courtship, mating and dominance posturing.

Even in this harsh, dry landscape, life on HP-02017 has found a way. A wide, diverse collection of life thrives in this barren wilderness, despite its challenges --competing, coexisting, and even cooperating with one another, to overcome the harsh and unforgiving trials of life in the Great Ecatorian Desert.

▪▪▪▪▪▪▪

#speculative evolution #speculative biology #spec evo #speculative zoology #hamster's paradise

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #21- Situations in Which it is Appropriate to Stab Your Roommate

You know what’s generally considered bad for your health?

Getting fingers stuck into your brain meat.

Tailgate reveals himself to be immune to Tyrest’s “fall down on the floor” signal, because his hearing’s gone to complete shit due to Cybercrosis. Tailgate then turns off the “fall down on the floor” signal, allowing everyone back up. Tyrest dislikes this turn of events every much- so much so, in fact, he’s turned into a Nazgûl out of sheer rage.

Rodimus, feeling a bit bolstered by the fact that he’s gotten his hands on one of the massive guns the Legislators dropped, tries to talk a big game at Tyrest, before being reminded that a lot of their party is still at risk of dying, by way of their souls cheese-wizzing out of their heads.

Tyrest, now using Tailgate as a hostage, tells everyone to back off so he can go hang out with the Guiding Hand, otherwise he’s gonna poke holes in Cyclonus’ morality pet. Tailgate screams for Rodimus to fire, finally revealing that he’s been dying this whole time. Rodimus has a weird moment where the plot overrides his knowledge of his situation as a character, as he claims shooting them both is unnecessary, as it looks like someone’s already working on it.

Not sure how he saw the gun and not the man it was being held by. And Minimus has some fucking explaining to do.

Outside, Star Saber is yelling about everyone being unworthy of God’s grace, save for himself, because Real Bastard Hours are 24-fucking-7 with him around. Cyclonus decides that he’s going to deal with the stress of not being able to find his dying roommate through violence, and agrees to a religiously-inclined sword fight.

Star Saber has a good start, sucker-punching Cyclonus in the chin, holier-than-thou as he goes. Cyclonus turns the tables however, when he uses his remaining helmet horn to gouge one of Star Saber’s eyes out, revealing his fashion statement to be a deadly weapon in its own right.

Then we get a taste of Cyclonus’ personal brand of faith.

That’s a mighty high opinion of Tailgate you got there, pal. Quite the jump from “I think you’re pathetic.”

Unfortunately, having this little character moment gives Star Saber enough time to warp the hell away from Cyclonus’ Nazgûlian wrath.

Back with Zombie Bullshit Part 3, we get some friggin’ answers.

Minimus looks super tiny here, but remember that he’s still at least ten feet tall. This is not a man you can invite inside your house for a tea party.

After Minimus’ head got crushed, he had to Alien chest-burst his tiniest self out, which allowed him to grab that gun that’s as big as he is and shoot Tyrest in half. Rodimus has to be reminded again that people are still dying, including Brainstorm, which is weird, because he made it seem like he was forged a few issues back. Perceptor runs off to try and parse the Killswitch, and Pharma offers to help, striking a weirdly sultry pose as he does. Everyone ignores him, because that’s just what happens when you become evil and cut your old coworker in half hotdog-style- you get ignored.

Off in the corner, Swerve is talking to Tailgate about the fact that he didn’t tell anyone he was dying, then makes a joke about his impending demise, because Swerve has a lot of trouble handling serious situations. No one has helped him pop his nose back into place, either. This entire team is just falling apart.

Skids stares blankly at Ratchet and First Aid as they check to make sure all the cold-constructed ‘bots are still dying- they are- then remembers that he’s supposed to be watching Pharma.

Prowl only hires the best, clearly.

Skids runs for the portal, with First Aid right on his tail because there’s a gotdang score to settle, and also Rung for some reason. They find Pharma chilling in the tunnel, completely unable to get through to the other side, not because he’s guilty, but because there’s a forcefield in place.

Of course, because Tyrest was an engineer, and you can always find a running theme with everyone’s work, Rung theorizes that the forcefield is working with Aequitas rules, and actually can sense guilt- not of the legal sense, but of the personal variety.

Which sort of implies some unfortunate things about the Aequitas trials as a whole.

Skids starts sinking through, whereas Rung is hitting a wall. Rung, the hell you got to feel guilty about? What sort of horrors have you inflicted upon the world, you skinny creamsicle of a man?

Skids, people are dying. Can your personal nirvana not wait until after this galactic-scale crisis is resolved?

While Skids fucks off into the portal, First Aid’s taking care of Pharma, as Rung watches and has a Nam flashback to issue #6 in the distance.

Sometimes I wonder if First Aid is somehow aware of how Eugenesis went for him, and that’s why he’s so aggressive all the time in MTMTE.

With his revenge exacted, First Aid finally has that breakdown that’s been a long time coming.

You know what we haven’t had in a while? Gratuitous religious imagery.

“They call it the Eugenesis Code. Has something to do with intellectual property, I dunno.”

So this move they’re about to pull might kill Rodimus, and is for-sure going to annihilate the half of the Matrix they have. Bummer. Perceptor goes to finish setting up, leaving Rodimus and Minimus alone to discuss that thing Getaway brought up about Ultra Magnus luring the Lost Light to Luna 1.

Over on the floor, Tyrest isn’t dead, because of course he isn’t, and enacts the homophone game with Swerve and Tailgate as he relays an order to the Legislators.

Outside, all the Legislators stop whaling on Whirl with their swords and start parroting prime numbers at the sky.

Back with Rodimus and Minimus, it’s revealed that Magnus/Minimus/Miniminimus DID lure the Lost Light to the moon, but it was to have Tyrest yell at Rodimus for being a crappy captain. He didn’t know that Tyrest had gone completely bonkers.

The worst part is that Minimus doesn’t know the half of all the bullshit Rodimus has pulled since the end of the war.

No wonder Rodimus was so upset before the funeral- Overlord was partially his fault.

Prowl, prior to the Lost Light’s launch, had wormed his way into Rodimus’ brain, convincing him that an Autobot Phase Sixer was absolutely necessary for the safety of everyone. He, along with Drift, Brainstorm, the Duobots, and eventually Chromedome, assisted in what culminated in one hell of a bad day.

Rodimus would really prefer if this whole space-crucifixion didn’t kill him, because he’s feeling like he’s got a lot to make up for. Which, yeah. I’m guessing all of Tripodeca’s friends are going to be mighty sore about this whole thing once it comes to light.

And that’s a series wrap on Rodimus!

We get a brief intermission, as we find out where exactly Skids got to. It’s… somewhere. Not even he’s sure. He tries to ask for directions, but it would seem there’s a language barrier.

It really speaks volumes to Skids’ sense of self-confidence, that he’d see a giant ball of technicolor light and decide he’s gonna go try to talk to it.

Back at the current crisis at hand, Rodimus screams some more, the Matrix shatters alongside any hopes of finding the Knights of Cybertron, and Ratchet has himself a little smile, because that did the trick.

The reason we aren’t seeing Crankcase in this set of panels is because his head wound was also spewing oil, and he looks super nasty right now. Well, nastier than any of the Scavengers usually are on a day to day basis. They regularly drink corpse juice, they can’t NOT be nasty.

Unfortunately, we aren’t out of the woods yet, as that whole Legislator thing still needs to be taken care of. They pour into the room, throwing Swerve along with the steel door, as he shrieks in terror.

Back outside, Cyclonus and Whirl are having a little breather up on the edge of the smelting pool, since all the Legislators they were fighting went inside. Whirl, who is looking just awful, brings up that little deal he cooked up in issue #19, where Cyclonus would stop trying to murder him if they got through this fight. It’s important to remember that verbal contracts aren’t binding, and that Cyclonus didn’t agree to anything.

And that’s a series wrap on Whirl!

Actually, no, Cyclonus was just daydreaming. He agrees to put the past behind them, then shoots off to go find Tailgate.

Back in Legislator City, things are getting dicey, as Rung screams for Skids to come back, because if nothing else, he knows he can depend on Skids when the chips are down.

Skids, playing to Rung’s expectations, vaults over Pharma’s headless body out of the portal, and starts kicking ass. In the background, some creepy tentacle nonsense pulls Pharma through the portal. This, surely, will never come up again, nor will it be a major plot point down the road.

Because Tyrest decided he was going to play fast and loose with the law, Minimus has no idea what “one one” is meant to refer to. Tailgate decides that cram school did serve a purpose after all, and books it towards that massive computer off in the corner. After a bit of combing through the index, he finds what he’s looking for and makes a few choice edits to the Autobot Code. The Legislators freeze in place, and Tailgate reveals that he’s just completely voided a section of the law.

Just off panel, Minimus barely contains the urge to pop Tailgate’s cubic little head off of his neck. Not that he’d have much time to do it anyway.

Smash cut to the next day, where Tailgate’s laid out in a dark room, Cyclonus sitting by his side. Chromedome is also there for some reason. Rung is nowhere to be seen, despite him likely being a better fit for this situation than the guy whose husband died less than a week ago. Chromedome leaves, because this is a very intimate moment between these two guys who are roommates.

Tailgate, who has developed an honest-to-god “guy-who-is-going-to-die-by-the-end-of-the-movie” cough, tells Cyclonus that he made him something, and it’s waiting in their room for him. I’m going to guess it’s a macaroni art picture of the two of them fighting a dragon.

Tailgate has literal minutes to live, and Cyclonus just sits there, Nazgûling with grief, until Tailgate decides that NOW is the time to reveal his hand.

…Well, there’s the answer to the Babygate question.

Tailgate’s come to the conclusion that all his wanting to be important and a hero was a bit misguided, because as it turns out, it kind of sucks when it’s your final act in the world of the living. He really would have preferred to do just about anything else with his last days, even if it had been just chilling in his room with Cyclonus.

Tailgate asked Cyclonus off-panel to do him a solid and kill him before the Cybercrosis did, a plea which Cyclonus couldn’t agree to. Then he gets a call, and the tension of the scene is somewhat ruined by some goofy-ass cinematic parallels.

Where the hell is Tailgate, that Cyclonus has to book it down the hall to make it to the medibay? That isn’t clear, but what is is that Tailgate has the rottenest luck in the world; they figured out a cure for Cybercrosis, but his case is too advanced for treatment to be effective.

Cyclonus thinks that this is a major bummer, but thanks Ratchet for trying anyway. Whirl tries to talk to him, and he better watch out, before that little deal he made gets thrown out the friggin’ window.

Tailgate hits the final two minutes, as Cyclonus returns, sword in hand.

And that’s a series wrap on Tailgate!

…That was almost a sincere one, you know. Tailgate was supposed to die here, in an earlier draft of the story. He didn’t, because Roberts realized it would completely nerf Cyclonus’ character development. I can’t even begin to imagine who Cyclonus would have been if both the Rewind/Chromedome thing hadn’t gone over well, AND Tailgate got offed.

Later on, Ultra Magnus is back in action, Minimus Ambus having redonned the armor to reassume his position as S.I.C. of the Lost Light. He discusses the changes that have come about as a result of their time on Luna 1 with Rodimus, who’s pretty bummed about the whole situation. A quick rundown of all the nonsense that happened:

The mystical portal to the Guiding Hand no longer works

Hot Spot faded out and won’t come back on

Ambulon is dead

First Aid is very sad about Ambulon being dead

The ship is falling apart

The only person who seems to have had any sort of a positive experience is Brainstorm.

…James, did you put that baby inside that robot?

Anyway, so yeah. Luna 1 sucks butt. One star, would rate zero if I could, I don’t care if it has sweet rocket thrusters strapped to the back of it and is super mysterious, and might potentially be an idea pulled from the delightfully earnest Children of a Lesser Matrix.

Later on, Magnus makes his rounds, stopping by Cyclonus and Tailgate’s room to check the vibe. Turns out that stabbing sick people is considered medicine on Cybertron, at least when you’re using a Great Sword to do it.

Whirl had the awesome idea to slap Cyclonus’ weird spark energy into Tailgate’s frail body, so it could kickstart his heart and give him enough time to actually get treated for Cybercrosis.

Ultra Magnus is impressed, and perhaps a bit concerned with how easily Cyclonus was willing to risk dying so that Tailgate could potentially live. So much so, in fact, that Cyclonus gets an achivement- he’s finally collected enough good karma to be allowed to have friends!

Looking mighty fresh-faced there, Cyclonus. And is that a new horn? Someone’s got a plastic surgeon on speed-dial.

No, this is actually the gift that Tailgate made him, the one he was working on in Hoist’s workshop back in issue #15, just before the Overlord attack. The one we never got to actually see, probably because it would be very easy to tell what it was and who it was for if we had. The set up for our slowburn romance has to be just so, no shortcuts allowed.

#transformers #jro #jro punches me in the face #mtmte #remain in light #issue 21 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing

[justjensenanddean]

Jensen Ackles as Beau Arlen BIG SKY: Deadly Trails (2023) | 3.11 – “Super Foxes”

#Jensen Ackles #JensEnedit #JensenAcklesEdit #Beau Arlen #BeauArlenEdit #Big Sky #Big Sky: Deadly Trials #Big Sky 3x11 #Super Foxes #My Edits

[fae-fucker]

Zenith: Chapter 68-71

Chapter 68

Andi remembers how Kalee gave her a tour of her home and bragged about how she’d be ruling the place someday. Andi asks why her and not her brother.

Oh, Androma. Kalee had laughed then, tossing her head back in that glorious, carefree way that made everyone around her want to come closer. You and I both know that a woman can rule better than any man ever could. And I’ll look twice as good doing it, too.

Shinsay, voices muffled as their heads are stuck up each other’s asses: This is definitely, 100%, one whole, bona fide, authentic, organic, home-grown feminism that we just put in our book.

Also ... take a look at that weak-ass description that’s supposed to show us how good and cool Kalee is. When she laughs (in a way that tbh have you ever laughed? be real with me now), people want to ... come closer? 

Wow! That’s like saying ... when I scratch my face, people want to call their mom. When I brush my hair, people may spontaneously feel the need to take a slightly deeper breath.

Talk about low standards. Hey fellas, you ever see someone laugh and just kinda sorta want to approach them but not really? Yeah, that’s the stuff.

Andi thinks about how Kalee would’ve been a better ruler than her dad, who doesn’t even bother coming down to meet his tortured son because that’s how incompetent and evil and heartless he is. I mean, Andi doesn’t know that Valen is the result of rape, but still. Idk if I’m on board with how the book demonizes the hell out of the General but tried to make whatsherface sympathetic. And by “I don’t know if I am” I mean “I’m definitely not what the fuck is wrong with these people.”

Dex tries to make some conversation and Andi says that nobody befriended Kalee, that only super duper special people were CHOSEN by her to become her friends.

I’m ... not sure how this is supposed to be better. In fact, I’d say it’s worse?

“Kalee chose the people she wished to let into her life. I was honored that she allowed me to be assigned to her.”

“Honored?” Dex asked, raising a bruised brow. “Or damned?”

“I’ll let you know after we talk to the general,” Andi said.

I’m gonna fiking piss. “I’ll tell you whether this important life event was honor or damnation, but like, later, after we have this appointment, ok?” Why is this so funny. Have I fully lost my marbles?

Andi foreshadows some escape tunnels that are hidden all around the estate so Dex has a logical way to save them at the end of the book. I’m sure there is a more elegant way of setting that up, but I can’t be bothered to find one, so let’s call it acceptable and move on.

They arrive at their destination and Andi notices that Alfie seems bummed out. She muses that he’s “capable of far more complex thinking than she’d originally guessed,” which, DOY, but ok, and then thinks about how he’s saved her crew and remembered Gilly’s Marketable Space Pet, which implies he has some “understanding of feelings and attachments.”

That hamster wheel do be spinnin’.

The “head Spectre” comes out to meet them and ...

It took everything in her to speak as the truth struck her.

“Dad?”

DUN DUN DUUUN, it’s Andi’s dad! Also, “the truth struck her?” What truth? That it’s your dad? Was that in doubt? Did you really need a moment to connect the dots, to realize this is your dad? Was there a moment where you saw this man, who is your dad, and thought that this wasn’t your dad, only for the truth to strike and OH SHIT THAT’S MY DAD!! WOW HOLD YOUR HORSES EVERYONE I NEED TIME TO PROCESS THAT THIS IS INDEED MY DAD.

Tbh if you strapped knives to a roomba it’d have more charisma and presence as the protagonist than Andi. And let’s be real, more intelligence.

Yet another chapter ends on a pointless cliffhanger only for the scene to continue exactly where it left off!

You’re just full of surprises, Shinsay.

Chapter 69 (nice)

Andi recaps everything that she’s gone through after the Kalee crash up to the fight with the big alien dude who got deus ex machina-d by Alfie and how she nearly kissed Dex, which gets written as extra special, just so she can make this point:

But this...her father, as General Cortas’s head Spectre?

This might actually kill her.

And aside from how generically melodramatic it is, I can’t help but recall this, from chapter 7:

The man in front of her was a victim of her foolishness. Beside her was the man who’d rejected her love.

The two of them, together? It was nearly enough to shatter Andi.

Andi has the same reaction as I do when in a room with multiple men. Except in her case I think it’s supposed to be deep and personal.

Anyway, self-plagiarism aside, Andi thinks about how her dad was always there for her but then one day wasn’t when he didn’t support her on her trial and how conflicted she feels about him, both wanting to demand justice but also wanting comfort. This is actually quite touching and feels very grounded and realistic.

General Cortas rubs it in that Andi’s dad, “Comander Racella”, has been very loyal and hardworking since he was promoted after Andi’s trial. Andi hopes that her father actually hates the general and was forced to work for him as some sort of punishment for what happened with their daughters.

The general says the situation on Adhira has been taken care of, and when Andi asks whether Xen Ptera attacked because of Valen and her crew’s presence on Adhira, the general says that’s classified. For reasons? Idk. Seems pretty obvious to me, or maybe he just doesn’t know?

Dex tries to yap but Cortas flexes his big dick and reminds Dex that he’s a Guardian now, and Dex is too much of a baby to risk his regained status so he shuts up. This is all spelled out for us by Andi’s inner monologue, because we’re idiots.

The general claims the Xen Pteran forces have been wiped out, saying how it’s probably all they had since there’s few able-bodied and willing people to recruit for war after their planet got fucked, and when Andi presses him for why the attack happened now and on Adhira, he says:

“War never really ends, Androma. The desire for revenge is often too strong to forget.”

“War never ends ... But me and my crew totes ended that war just now. They don’t have any more soldiers so this war is over.” Makes sense, sir. 

Cortas says that queen Alara is safe and will be at the Peace Summit, which Andi immediately tells him to cancel because it would be the perfect opportunity for another attack. Cortas replies by saying that Arcardius is impenetrable and that the day the Olen System successfully invades will be the day “stars fall from the sky” which is a very poetic and not at all natural way to say something like this, so it’s there for ... idk dramatic irony? He also reminds her that the Summit is important because it celebrates the peace after the war and the unity between the systems and I’m here like ... for a guy who says war never ends, you sure seem happy to celebrate a war ending and don’t believe one is going on right now. But I guess these characters just exist to spout meaningless yet deep-sounding nonsense at each other.

Dex reminds the general that they’ve done their end of the deal, at which point the general conveniently decides to prolong it out of nowhere and essentially forces Andi and Dex to be Valen’s bodyguards at the Peace Summit by holding Andi’s crew and ship and Dex’s money and status hostage. Thanks for ensuring the main characters are there for the climax, sir! Appreciated!

Dex and Andi leave in a huff.

Chapter 70

We’re in Lira’s POV as she reminisces about her childhood with Lon while he’s recovering from his near-death-experience.

So she sat by [Lon’s] side for endless hours, until the warm clutches of sleep stole her away.

She dreams about flying on an “Adhiran darowak” but then DUN DUN DUUUN Adhira below turns into Xen Ptera and it’s horrible!

“No,” Lira gasped. Her heart began to crack. Fissures spread through it, reaching cold fingers through every valve until Lira felt darkness stealing her away.

So the editor just left that in, huh? Just let Shinsay use the exact same wording in less than 200 words? Must’ve been stolen away by the editing fairy for editing crimes while reading this.

Lira is woken up by Alara, who got here so fucking fast she must be part-Sonic on her father’s side. You’d think a planetary leader would have more to do after a sudden and deadly attack on her home planet, but I guess Adhirans are so chill they’ll just let their leader fuck off to take care of her angsty teenage niece instead.

Lira says that she’ll do anything to make up for bringing Valen to Adhira, to which Alara says that the only thing Lira will do is “follow her heart,” which is sweet of her to say but also really convenient and makes this whole decision easier for her.

I mean, it’s nice that Alara is so supportive, but 1) narratively, it removes the conflict that was introduced only a few chapters ago 2) it makes Alara seem like she’s only there to be the supportive cool aunt and the Good Queen, without any expectations or wants of her own. Like, wasn’t the pressure from Alara something that gave Lira actual conflict? Idk. Seems too easy, is what I’m saying.

Lira didn’t let go of her aunt until the tears dried up. Until they sat down on either side of Lon’s bedside, held his hands and spoke of happier times. The beauty of a family that could come together, broken, and still find a way to become something whole.

You’re one step away from “Ohana means family” over here, Shinsay. Stop spelling shit out. WE. GET. IT. Also, whose narration is this? We’ve mostly stuck to third person limited, so ... is Lira thinking this? Is she thinking this shit while it’s happening? About her own family and situation? What the fuck?

Shinsay couldn’t keep their suspiciously sticky fingers out of their own writing and let it breathe so it comes out looking like God’s mistake.

Anyway, Lon wakes up and Alara tells him what went down on Adhira.

Chapter 71

We’re back with Andi, who just got out of a bath and is bitterly admiring her “private quarters” when she’s interrupted by DUN DUN her dad! He’s been waiting for her!

It’s all very tense. Before they can really start talking, though, we get a flashback. No, really. This whole tense reunion between father and daughter is interrupted by a lengthy flashback brought on by Andi watching her dad and Remembering.

Because Shinsay.

It’s a flashback to Andi in a cell, the day before she was supposed to be executed. Her dad tells her that her mother is "not well” and we find out his name is Oren. As they’re saying their tearful goodbyes, Oren slips Andi a key and tells her “Bay Seven. Tomorrow at dawn.” 

The flashback ends with Andi’s cell standing empty the next morning.

Very cool and all that.

Back in the now, Andi rightfully chews her dad out for being a cowardly little bitch and throwing his teenage daughter under the bus for the sake of status. Something he freely admits to doing. He says he and her mother had to struggle to rebuild their reputation after she ruined it, and that he believes his daughter died with Kalee and that whoever he saved in the cell was already the Bloody Baroness even if she didn’t know it yet. Then he fucks off.

It’s all extremely silly. It would’ve been heartbreaking in any better book, but instead, it just feels like it’s tacked on for the sake of adding even more angst to Androma’s character. In fact, she’s not even upset at this. Instead she just carves some more tallies into her swords, dances some more with the dead, and then sneaks out.

No really, it’s written like a list.

She waited for the tears to come. But they never did.

Instead she sat alone, adding more tallies to her swords. Dancing with the dead inside her head.

Why is this so funny! I think it’s because both the tally-carving and the ghost-dancing is supposed to be these deep and haunted things she does that’s given a fair amount of weight and focus, but then it’s just written out like this like it’s just some generic routine shit she does like brushing her teeth or wiping her ass.

Yup, there she goes, doing her generic angsty shit one after the other. Emotional whiplash glossed over for the sake of moving the plot along. She’s in such a bad mental state that we simply MUST ignore it and move on.

Also, I want to highlight how convenient it is for Shinsay to already have Andi suspect and previously coming to terms with how her parents don’t love her before this confrontation. Like, we see her father save her tearfully, yet Andi has almost no hope that he still loves her. Or, she does, but when it’s squashed, she just ... accepts it? Because hey, she already processed that trauma years before! Makes it easy!

Wouldn’t it make it more impactful if all these years, she’s hoped that she has a home to come back to? That her father’s final act of saving her meant they love her still and want her to come back? And now she finds out that they never even mourned her loss? Wouldn’t that be heart-wrenching? And also add to the idea that Andi wants to return to Arcardia, both because it’s her home planet but also because that’s where her parents are? Instead we’re led to believe Andi wants to return, but when she does, she hates it here, she knows nobody wants her here, and she wants to leave immediately.

I seriously question the inclusion of this subplot and these characters. It adds nothing, changes nothing, and is just there to make Andi more angsty, which she already is, so ... why is this here lmao?

Shinsay really went “let’s squander all our potentially interesting ideas and concepts for the sake of more cheap angst and making our protag a cool emotionless badass who don’t care for no thing.”

#eff reads: zenith

[dragonrajafanfiction]

The Trial

Part 6 of the Wedding Series! Enjoy! :)

Manstein’s reading of their names and rank gave Johann pause. Surely she understood that he wasn’t as high of a dragonblood purity as he let on. Mingfei Lu outstripped him in power over and over again. Yet, even when given a clear choice, she’d chosen him.

He knew deep down he wasn’t truly A-rank. His mother wasn’t a hybrid and there was only so much a high ranking male hybrid could contribute. Looking into her golden eyes within the palanquin, he couldn’t help but feel a bit unworthy.

That lingering lack of self-confidence was picked up immediately by Caesar the day before. He didn’t have the blind bravado of his rival. But one thing Caesar always told him: Sometimes, dragonblood purity didn’t matter.

The gear department crazies were the ones arranging this test. They gleefully rubbed their hands together behind a table with five laptops shining in their faces. They weren’t supposed to put him in any sort of deadly peril. But as they looked at him with cruel smiles, he lifted Murasame from its sheath with his thumb.

A holographic dragon typically rested atop the fountain in the center of the plaza but it had been disabled for maintenance. When it reappeared, the crowd gasped in shock as it leaped from where it was usually perched and landed hard in front of Carli’s palanquin and seized the box in its massive claw. Carli screeched from inside.

Johann closed the distance between them, cutting into the beast’s hindfoot. The monster whipped its tail and caught Johann as he jumped away sending him rolling.

Anjou roared from somewhere in the crowd. “YOU LUNATICS! I’M GOING TO BURY YOU IN THE ICE CELLAR!”

The dragon turned back to its quarry and bit down. The walls of the palanquin crunched under the pressure.

Johann got up and rushed at it again, teeth bared, eyes glowing with fury. The creature’s eyes reflected his angry expression like a mirror. The dragon moved its head away from Johann’s attack and dropped the box, sending Carli crashing to the ground.

It retreated, backing into the spectators who screamed, scattered and scrambled away in their fancy dresses and suits. Johann, oblivious to the chaos, pressed his advantage, his sword making bright arcs in the air. Now that he’d forced it away from Carli, he could glance back. Mingfei and Finger were helping her out of the palanquin. She was unhurt.

He turned back to the dragon and barely dodged its snapping jaws. He cut across the beast’s cheek in an effort to get at its throat but just missed. He leaped away again, and landed, eyes forward, shoulders rising and falling, breath fogging the air. The monster was too big to get at the heart. There were only two other vulnerable areas for a quick kill: severing the spinal cord behind the head or slicing its throat just under its jaw.

The dragon lowered its head, claws digging into the pavement. It’s nostrils flared, sucking in the frigid Chicago air. Johann’s eyes widened. He turned to run.

A blast of wind pursued him, turning the pavement, benches and street lamps into ice blocks. Johann circled around and darted in, intent on ending this fight quickly. The creature lifted its tail and swept it behind him, to keep him from retreating, coiled its neck into an S-shape, and aimed its ice breath at him. Johann ran to the tail and vaulted on top of it. 

Out of instinct, or in this case, programming, the dragon lashed its tail and sent Johann Chu flying straight up into the air. The A-rank hybrid twisted in mid-flight and plummeted downward sword tip first, aiming for the skull between the eyes.

Murasame pierced the dragon's head with a devastating crunch. The force of the impact sent a fountain of blood upward into the sky. The Dragon howled and gave its head a violent shaking. Johann couldn’t keep his grip and was thrown. His gold eyes flicked behind him for a safe place to land. There was nothing but concrete paved walkway below him!  

A ringing in his ears and a sudden realization widened his eyes.

A burst of intense flame spiraled out from him seconds before he was to land, slowing his descent. The Restriction had been lifted just in time!

He landed on his feet, staggering backwards from the remaining momentum. He drew the second sword, Child, and rushed back to where the dragon hologram lay dying next to the ruined Palanquin. Covered in fake blood and smelling of smoke, Johann approached the corpse and grabbed Murasame by the hilt. As he removed it, the dragon hologram vanished into a haze.

Carli stood there in her red dress, gazing at him. She raised her red veil from over her face to reveal her brilliant smile.

Manstein staggered forward, remembering himself. “Does anyone desire to challenge Chu Zihang for her hand?” He screeched, hair and glasses askew. “If so, too bad! This wedding has gone far enough!”

Carli lifted her skirt to run to him, embracing him around his neck. She pulled away and looked into his eyes a moment. 

He leaned forward, tilting up her head to kiss her. He laughed, a low quiet chuckle.

#Johann Chu #Dragon Raja #Fanfiction #Writing

[sarahcaskett]

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My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Jensen Ackles’ Diet Is ALL About Balance *Take Notes* | Eat Like | Men’s Health

July 20, 2022

19 notes - Posted July 28, 2022

#4

Big Sky: Deadly Trials

3x10 “A Thin Layer of Rock” (Winter Finale)

Beau Arlen & Jenny Hoyt

Air date: December 7,2022

20 notes - Posted December 15, 2022

#3

See the full post

30 notes - Posted December 22, 2022

#2

Big Sky: Deadly Trails

Beau Arlen

3x09 “Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire”

36 notes - Posted December 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Jensen Ackles 

Thanks to the lucky fan who shared this Photo-Op on Saturday July 30, 2022 in Toronto.

414 notes - Posted August 11, 2022

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[secret-engima]

In Fangs and Feathers, what are everyone else's reactions to meeting Xanxus, and vice versa? Are any other reincarnations going to pop up?

In GENERAL reactions are shock (the king has another son?), horror (he’s so VIOLENT AND RUDE), and incredulity (why does Noctis LIKE this guy???). Some more specific ones would be-

-Cor. Cor and Xanxus DO NOT get along for the longest time. It’s like introducing two cats very, very improperly. They tolerate each other at best. Cor thinks Xanxus is violent, uncontrolled, reckless, and selfish. Xanxus thinks Cor is a very, very dangerous man playing at being more calm and in control than he is and that triggers bad memories of Nono’s guardians and their trickery.

-These two will eventually come to a more stable neutrality toward each other after Xanxus stops acting like he’s going to stab Regis at any moment (ie when Xanxus realizes that Regis genuinely does love his illegitimate son and has all the snake-like qualities of a sad fluffy dog) and after many very bloody sparring matches that leave them both exhausted and in need of an elixir.

-Ignis is straight up horrified. He knows Noctis attracts strange people (look at Crowe) and forgives the dangerous ones (look at the various assassins that Noctis has converted) but .... but THIS is Noctis’s brother? Regis’s other son and Titus’s nephew? He’s so .... ANGRY. He walks around like he’s about to commit murder at any given second and yet Noctis ADORES him. It’s only the fact that Ignis can see Xanxus adores Noctis in return that keeps Ignis from trying to poison Xanxus’s tea or something.

-Xanxus, for his part, actually likes Ignis? He’s a Bby Inverted Sun who is clearly very protective and loyal to his Sky. Very smart for his age, and smart enough to be both wary and willing to throw the rule book out the window in favor of protecting Noctis (or better yet, using the rulebook to tangle someone up and trip them legally down the nearest elevator shaft). Ignis knows Xanxus is dangerous and is prepared to fight him to the death the moment Xanxus proves a threat to Noctis. Xanxus approves. He knows Ignis won’t WIN, but he approves. Finally Small Trash gains an Element that isn’t useless or suicidal and hasn’t tried to murder him beforehand.

-Xanxus’s arrival is before Gladio’s Nicked Lung incident (we’ll all just assume Xanxus was out on a Hunt or something when that happened k?) but he’s always ... been neutral toward Gladio. Neutral leaning toward negative. The kid is a brat. Arrogant brat that takes pride in his duty while also being scornful of the bby Sky in his care and THAT makes Xanxus dislike him. BUT, he’s also a kid and kids can change. Plus this is Small Trash’s Storm, he is fully expecting some kind of violent Incident to happen to turn the kid’s attitude around. This does not mean Xanxus won’t join Crowe in kicking the pants off Gladio after he gets back and hears about the Nicked Lung Incident OR from holding it over Gladio’s head for years after but it does mean he won’t outright try to kill Gladio because he knows this is ... how Tsuna-Noct always courts his Elements.

-Gladio thinks Xanxus is SCARY, but also admires him. He ... almost wishes he could be Xanxus’s Shield instead of Noctis’s at first (until the Incident) and thinks Xanxus is a “real man” for always being on the move and ready to fight and get things done. But he also dislikes Xanxus to an extent because Xanxus tends to ignore him or call him Trash instead of his name so....

-After Xanxus hears of the Nicked Lung Incident, Gladio upgrades his opinion of Xanxus from “scary but kinda cool” to “UTTERLY TERRIFYING DO NOT ENGAGE ABORT ABORT ABORT” and also becomes glad he is NOT Xanxus’s Shield because Xanxus is a feral mass of instincts, magic, and wrath tied together in the rough shape of a prince.

-Clarus always knew Regis’s reckless youth would come back to bite. He just ... didn’t expect it to be QUITE this bad. Or violent. Or magically powerful. Or CUNNING because this boy has never touched the political scene before yet he maneuvers through it with the careless abandon that only comes from knowing EXACTLY what all the rules and dangers are and just not giving a flying tonberry.

-He is ready for YEARS for Xanxus to either turn on Regis or turn on Noctis. Or both. Especially after Xanxus’s Shield shows up (more on him later). It ... takes him a long time to accept that yes, Xanxus is loyal and loving, he’s just a feral Cor turned up to 11 all the time and age is not going to make him Chill like it did Cor.

-Xanxus equates Clarus to Nono’s favorite Guardian. Specifically the one that abused Xanxus as a kid and continued to belittle him and treat him as a mad dog for the rest of his life. For obvious reasons, even if this first impression is incorrect, it sours Xanxus’s view of Clarus for years. They come to a silent non-aggression agreement for Regis’s and Noctis’s sake eventually, but not without much glaring (on both parts), snarling (on Xanxus’s part), swearing (on Xanxus’s part), and veiled comments (on Clarus’s part). Once Xanxus is wayyyyyyy older and has been around long enough, their antagonism mellows into something of a snarky frenemies thing, but it takes a while.

-Prompto thought Xanxus was terrifying for all of the ten minutes it took Xanxus to walk in glaring and then let himself get bowled over by a happy Noctis. Seeing the man lying on the floor complaining about “Small Trash get a diet you’re heavy” while absently petting Noctis’s hair went a long way to turn Xanxus from “nigh-eldritch demon” to “really grumpy cat” in Prompto’s brain. It helps that Prompto is the sweetest thing on the planet and even Xanxus doesn’t have the heart to be mean around him (plus Prom is a kid, the most kid-like of all Noctis’s friends, and Xanxus has always had a soft spot from brats as long as they weren’t threats to his Elements or the Vongola).

-Xanxus takes one look at Prompto and goes “ah. Bby Inverted Cloud. Abused bby Cloud. I will protecc.” then hides it under fifty billion layers of Gruff that fools everyone but Noctis, Prompto, and Xanxus’s own Shield.

-Is secretly ECSTATIC when Prompto shows a talent/interest in firearms and proceeds to gleefully train Prompto up to Varia Quality in them. Needless to say, Prompto is now the deadliest thing on the planet (Xanxus is more deadly, but Prompto looks like a cinnamon roll and thus is always underestimated, making him more deadly in the long run).

-The glaives are terrified. Captain’s nephew is powerful, is the King’s oops baby, AND has the general temperament of a rabid Coeurl stabbed to a chainsaw.

-Check that, all the glaives are terrified except for Tredd and Nyx. Tredd loves to antagonize despite the bruises it leaves him and Nyx wants to be friends because HUMAN COEURL. Lib and Luche are a Despair.

-Everyone is a Fear (even Nyx) the day they realize that Xanxus is Titus’s choice for Captain replacement. Which explains why Xanxus signed up the day after he turned 18 despite hating the military but STILL.

-Xanxus ... secretly loves the Glaives. These absolute morons are like his Varia but slightly less psychotic and loud. They are also his Uncle’s People so they must be protected (even if protection comes in the form of chasing them around the training ground shooting at them until they learn to dodge properly NYX). Tredd is a pest, but what do you expect of Storms, and Nyx is a blast because he can actually keep up with Xanxus’s crazy and is usually up for 90% of it. Xanxus’s favorite is actually Lib because Long-suffering Braincell Cloud but shhhh Xanxus isn’t supposed to play favorites with his future troops.

...

-To answer your last question ... yes there will be more reincarnations, but I haven’t decided which ones yet? I know that most of Tsuna’s guardians are NOT present because that makes the cast too big and risks overthrowing the Chocobro dynamic. I also have no plans to bring in any of the Arcobaleno so far and most of the Varia are also not present because I wanna focus on Xanxus and the glaives but.... There IS one member I’ve decided to bring. XDD

-Xanxus spends the three month trial run being kept secret from the world just in case he decides he hates Regis. Obviously he doesn’t, because Regis is the Best Dad™ and that means AFTER that, Regis has to man up and hold a press conference on the existence of his eldest son (who there are rumors about because even the best can’t keep Xanxus completely off the radar).

-Literally one week after the press conference where Regis did his speech and then was surprised when Xanxus actually PLAYED NICE for the camera (ie: didn’t cuss everyone out and only used the word trash ten times, even if he did scowl the entire time and ignore any questions aimed his way), all of Insomnia is thrown into a panic because someone just kamikaze ran a gunship at the Wall and used the diversion to slip through the opening that had been made to let in the weekly trucker convoy of foodstuffs and whatever. Naturally all the Crownsguard and Kingsglaive are up in arms to find the infiltrator that punched the border patrol in the nose and then disappeared into the back alleys.

-Another week goes by with no sign of the infiltrator until he once again rigs a diversion in the form of a truly astronomical amount of firecrackers set off at 4 AM right next to Crownsguard HQ. In the chaos of responding to the “gunfire”, the Nif infiltrator proceeds to careen his way through Citadel security, avoiding capture or death through truly insane shenanigans that make Crowe’s invasion years earlier look like a kitten run.

-Xanxus disobeys orders to stay in his room to instead go hunting for the Trash daring to invade his new home and, being Varia quality, successfully finds the infiltrator before anyone else does in the gardens. Xanxus pulls out a pistol, intending to shoot the Trash through his kneecaps because no doubt the king will want to interrogate him, when the Nif teenager, who has to BARELY be enlistment age and probably only four months out of Imperial boot camp, whirls around and CUTS THE BULLETS with his sword. Which promptly shatters.

-“VOI!” The teen yowls loud enough to shake the leaves of the trees and maybe a few window panes and Xanxus freezes. The teen drops his useless sword hilt on the ground and bares his teeth at Xanxus, green eyes glittering with fury and white-blond, waist length hair left to fly every which way in the breeze (noble’s kid then, no way he’d escape regulation haircuts if he wasn’t from some high noble’s spawn), “You! Get over here and let me stab you!”

-Xanxus holsters his pistol and stalks forward without a word. The teen gets nervous the closer Xanxus gets, Xanxus’s magic flaring around them to box them in with a Shield spell. Once he’s nose to nose with the teen, he reaches out with his magic, poking and prodding angrily at the soul in front of him. The teen doesn’t flinch, just glares with something feral and desperate in his eyes, something manic and NEEDY that reaches out and catches at Xanxus’s burning magic without fear.

-Xanxus takes a breath and its shaky, “Squalo?”

-The Niflheim teenage officer bursts into tears even though he’s trying not to, cussing Xanxus out in between his sobs because Xanxus DIED and he LEFT THEM and HOW COULD YOU YOU IDIOT TRASH BOSS.

-Because they are alone, and because this is his Rain that he thought was forever lost, Xanxus pulls Squalo into a hug that was almost spine breaking and shakes as he pours his magic into the gaping hole in his Shark’s soul.

-The Kingsglaive find them in the garden an hour later, no tears in sight (but eyes suspiciously red) yelling at each other and wrestling like long lost playmates on the ground. Titus, who is used to assessing his nephew’s condition via magic sensing, picks out the vibrate bond of magic between them and groans. “Xanxus, HE’S A NIF. HE’S LITERALLY THE ENEMY.”

-Xanxus hauls the boy (who’s birth certificate would tell you is Tempestas Highwind) to his feet and then pulls him protectively behind him with a snarl of, “Back off, Shark Trash is mine.” When Regis and Clarus, just arriving on the scene and already getting flashbacks to Crowe, make faint noises of protest, he grins and declares-

-“Shark Trash is my Shield, and if any of you have a problem with that you can put it where the sun don’t shine.”

-And Regis wonders what kind of horrible person he was in a previous life to deserve this. Son. Son pls, son he is AN OFFICER OF THE ENEMY FORCES YOU CAN’T MAKE HIM A SHIELD.

-Tempestas/Squalo, loud enough to shake window panes, “VOI I DEFECT FROM THE EMPIRE.”

-Titus just ... groans. Because he knows that look in his nephew’s eyes, that’s both Xanxus’s innate stubbornness AND Lucis Caelum possessiveness. The only way they’re getting rid of this Nif kid is by prying him from Xanxus’s cold dead hands.

-Also fun fact, YES, Squalo is related to Aranea. He is her older brother by a year and YES this is going to lead to the sibling spat to end all spats when she learns her brother uP AND DEFECTED TO LUCIS for seemingly no reason. Tho honestly she’s not surprised, because Tempestas has always vocally hated the empire.

#SE asks #shadowdragongem asks #Secret Engima Rambles #Fangs and Feathers verse #squalo #xanxus

[snarkythewoecrow]

Silver Tipped Wings and Black Feathers

By: Snarkymuch

Part 13 of the Broken Wing Verse.

Summary: Peter sees Steve and Bucky while patrolling, and he comes back to talk to them the next day as Peter. Peter realizes they all have more in common than he originally thought.

Read on AO3

Peter’s senior year was going well, and he’d been dividing his time between studying at home and going to the lake house to hang out with Tony, Pepper, and Morgan. It hadn’t left much time for Spider-Man, so this weekend Peter planned to stay in the city and do some good, swinging around and helping the little guy. It would be nice to get back to his roots. 

Big fat snowflakes fell lazily from the overcast sky, melting on the pavement as soon as they hit. It was still early winter, not even Christmas yet, so the snow wasn’t likely to stick. It was chilly, though, and Peter had to turn on the heater in his suit, as the cold air seeped through the thin fabric. 

“Karen, is there anything else going on since I’m here?” 

He was sitting on a fire escape in Brooklyn, feet swinging back and forth, having left his usual patrol area when Karen had said police were engaged in a standoff at a bodega nearby. Thankfully, once Peter had arrived, he was able to sneak in the back and web up the criminals. It was all over in a matter of minutes, and the police even thanked him for the help. He still expected people to shy away from him since the world knew Spider-man was a raven, but it was always nice when people proved him wrong. 

“There’s nothing on the police bands, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t find someone to help.”

“Thanks, Karen. I take a swing through the streets and see what I can find. Maybe I can stop a grand theft bicycle.”

“Excellent plan, Peter.” Karen’s voice almost sounded teasing. “Maybe this time you can do it without getting tangled in your webs.”

“Haha. I see Mr. Stark didn’t skimp on the sass.”

Peter grabbed the railing and pulled himself to his feet, then dove from the platform, shooting out a web just in time to swing down to the street, skimming over the tops of cars. Even with the snow, it was busy. New York always was. It wasn’t like the quiet upstate town Tony had moved to. 

Peter made his way to Brooklyn Heights, nearly falling when he saw the familiar face of Steve Rogers walking down one of the brownstones' steps. At his side was someone Peter had only met once before, during the airport battle. The Winter Soldier. His golden, metal-tipped wings and were unmistakable. Just the sight of them sent a shiver down Peter’s spine. They were dangerous. Peter knew the man could use them as a weapon, sharp metal cutting through the air when he spun, ready to slice flesh. Between his altered wings and his metal arm, the Winter Soldier was not to be underestimated. He could do a lot of damage.

But then, as Peter stopped on the edge of a building to watch the pair, he didn’t look dangerous at all. His shoulders were up, and his head ducked. His hair fell around his face like a shield. Steve kept a hand on his back, shielding him from the outside world as they walked. Peter followed on the rooftops, watching them closely. He still wasn’t sure what they were doing living in Brooklyn. For some reason, Peter thought they would be somewhere more official. It seemed strange to see them so domestic. 

Peter followed the pair all the way to Prospect Park, and in that time, he watched how people shied away from them and stared at the Winter Soldier’s deadly wings. His trial had been on the news; his crimes had been laid bare for the world to judge. His wings were recognizable, even if his face wasn’t. Due to the metal tips that had been grafted on, it was said he couldn’t hide his wings. Peter felt a pang of sympathy. That couldn’t be easy. 

Peter was a curious creature, something May always said would get him in trouble, and he found himself planning out a visit to see Steve and the Winter Soldier in his head. He could make it work. Maybe he could linger on the street and casually bump into them. Steve would remember him, wouldn’t he? 

He wasn’t even sure why he wanted to meet them. Perhaps it was how people stared at the Winter Soldier that made Peter want to reach out. He knew a thing or two about people looking at you in fear. 

Leaving them to stroll the park, Peter headed back towards Queens and thought up a plan. 

The next day, Peter still didn’t have a plan, but when did that ever stop him? He took a quick shower and threw on some clothes, going to the kitchen to grab a snack before he left. May was in the kitchen, sipping her coffee as she looked at her phone. 

Her eyes lifted from the screen when he walked in. “Hey, kiddo, you’re up and dressed early. Heading anywhere special?”

Peter opened the cupboard, grabbing the box of pop-tarts and taking a package out. He opened it with his teeth, tossing the wrapper and taking a bite. He answered about the mouthful of pastry. “Not really. Well, kinda. I’m not sure.”

“That’s very… vague, and that’s never a good thing with you. Does this have anything to do with Spider-man?”

Peter swallowed, wiping the crumbs off his mouth with the back of his hand. “Uh, no? I guess not really.”

“Peter, what’s going on? The last time I saw you dressed and willingly leaving your room before noon on a Sunday, you called me from jail later that day.”

“That’s not fair. I wasn’t arrested, not really. It was just a little light protesting anyway.”

May took a sip of her coffee, raising her brows. Setting her cup back on the table, she curled her hands around the mug and leveled her gaze on him. 

Peter sighed. “It’s nothing bad, but I guess it might not be well thought out?”

“Is that a question?”

Peter scrunched his nose. “I’m going to Brooklyn to see Captain America and the Winter Soldier.”

May’s eyes went wide. “Well, that’s something, but I got to ask Peter. You told me what Mr. Perfect said about your wings last time you met, and I can’t say I want you around him.”

“We worked it out, mostly. And it’s not really him I want to see. It’s Bucky, well, the Winter Soldier. You know, I don’t really know what to call him?”

May sighed, shaking her head. “I’m sure Mr. Barnes would be fine, It’s always nice to be polite, but I got to know why you are meeting them.  Do they know you’re coming?”

Peter frowned, nibbling on his pop tart. “Eh, not really. I just saw them yesterday when I was patrolling, and Mr. Barnes looked so sad. People avoided him, and I just… I know what that’s like. He looked like he could use a friend.”

“It’s not your job to fix everyone.”

“I know, but I can’t just pretend I didn’t see them. I want to say hi.”

“Mr. Stark might not like this plan of yours.”

Peter winced. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m not telling him.”

“Okay, Peter, but promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t want to see you hurt.” 

With a loose plan to go loiter around where Steve and Bucky were living, Peter headed to Brooklyn. Since he wasn’t in his suit, it took him a little longer, having to take the crowded subway. 

He made his way to the posh neighborhood, standing on the corner near Steve’s building, watching. He didn’t have to wait too long. Across the street, walking toward the brownstone, was Steve, canvas grocery bags in his hands. He jaywalked across the street, and Peter kicked himself into action. He jogged down the sidewalk to intercept him. 

Steve’s sharp eyes caught Peter quickly, his brow furrowing as he recognized him. Then he smiled, nodding his head to Peter. 

Peter returned the smile and waved awkwardly in his direction. He walked up to meet Steve by the steps of the building. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what to say. His reasoning for wanting to see him seemed weak. He bit his lip, trying to think of something to say.

Thankfully, Steve saved him from making things weird. 

“Hey, Peter, right?” Steve asked, adjusting his hold on the bags. 

“Yeah, um, we met at the tower. You probably remember my wings more than me.”

Steve frowned a little. “I’m sorry about how we met. I really put my foot in my mouth. It was disrespectful of me.” He shook his head. “Would you like to come in? I’m about to make some lunch unless you would rather not. I understand given how we met.”

Peter smiled. “It’s fine. I told you then. I forgive you, and yeah, I can eat. If you don’t mind feeding me. I’m not picky, so whatever you make is fine.”

Steve nodded, a crooked smile on his face. He nodded toward the steps. “Live right here, so we don’t need to go far. Follow me up. Oh, uh, I should say.” He paused, looking a little nervous. “My friend, well, he’s more than that, but um, he lives with me, and his wings.” He stopped, biting his lip. “You probably heard of him as the Winter soldier, but he goes by Bucky.”

Peter tried to look surprised, like he hadn’t stalked them the day before. “Oh, that’s fine. I’ve, uh, seen the news, but I’m not scared. I think I know more than most what it’s like to have people judge you on sight.”

Steve pressed his lips together but nodded. “Come on, he’ll be happy to meet you.”

“He doesn’t—he’s not like you were, right? Does he have problems with ravens?”

Steve’s face softened. “No, I don’t think he does. He’s not the type to judge people by their wings. I guess it’s just me who’s that stupid.”

Peter followed Steve inside, stepping aside once he was inside so Steve could lock the door. 

“Buck, I’m home, and I brought company, so you better be wearing pants.”

Peter’s eyebrows went up. “Does he usually not?”

Steve chuckled, leading the way down the hall into the kitchen. “More often than you’d think. I don’t think he even wore pants for Thanksgiving dinner. He basted the turkey wearing an apron and his boxers.”

Peter laughed. “That’s, um, really different. I would probably be the same, though, but I live with my aunt, and I don’t think she’d like it.”

Steve set the bags down on the table and started unpacking them. He loaded his arms with yogurts and walked over to the fridge. Peter ran toward it, opening the door for him. Steve smiled and thanked him. Peter went to the table and started passing things to Steve to put away. It didn’t take long for them to put everything away. 

Steve got out some lunch meat, lettuce, tomato, and mayo from the fridge, setting it all on the counter. He called over his shoulder for Peter to grab the bread from the top of the fridge. Peter grabbed it and tossed it to Steve.

“So, Peter, what brought you to the neighborhood?”

“Oh, I was out for a walk.”

“You live near here?” Steve asked.

“I’m from Queens, actually.”

Steve hummed. “How are things with you and Tony? I hear he had a little girl.”

“Yeah, her name’s Morgan. She’s pretty great. I guess you could say I’m like her brother. It’s kinda weird. I was always an only child, you know, but I wouldn’t change having her in my life for the world.”

“I was an only child, too. My mother raised me.”

Peter leaned against the counter. “I only have my aunt.”

“I bet she’s a strong woman to raise such a good kid.”

“Yeah,” Peter breathed. “She’s pretty great.”

He watched as Steve finished assembling the sandwiches, then looked to the doorway when his sharp hearing caught the sound of footsteps approaching from the hall. People couldn’t stop his eyes from going a little wide at seeing the famed Winter Soldier in red flannel pants, a tank, and fuzzy slippers. His hair was sticking up a little like he had just woken up. His eyes narrowed when he saw Peter and his head tilted to the side like a confused puppy. 

“Steve, why is there a teenager in the kitchen?”

Steve turned, mayo covered knife in his hand, threatening to drip on the floor. “Oh, this is Peter. Peter, meet Bucky, my sometimes better half.”

That only seemed to confuse Bucky more. “But why, Steve?”

“He’s a friend of Tony’s?”

Bucky’s eyes flicked between Peter and Steve. “You don’t sound sure.”

Steve sighed. “He’s not a threat, Buck. You can trust him. He’s like a son to Tony.”

That made Peter jerk back a little. He wondered if Tony had said those words? Not that they weren’t true. Tony and Peter were close, really close, but it stirred something in Peter’s chest to think of Tony referring to him that way. It made it more real somehow. 

“Yeah, right.” Bucky grabbed a stool and sat, his metal-tipped wings clinking on the tile floor. “That doesn’t really clear anything up, but okay. Did you put extra tomato on my sandwich?”

Steve just rolled his eyes and turned back to their lunch. Peter tried not to be obvious about it, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking at Bucky’s wings now that he was so close. The metal feathers that were grafted on looked razor-sharp. He made himself tear his gaze away from he got looking, turning instead to Steve and accepting his plate from him. 

“Go grab a seat, kid. Bucky doesn’t bite.”

Peter hesitated for a second, and Bucky seemed to notice, looking uncomfortable. Peter immediately felt terrible. The last thing he wanted to do was make Bucky feel bad about his wings. 

“I ain’t gonna hurt you, kid. I’d hide them, but well, that doesn’t work for me anymore.”

Peter shook his head. “I’m not scared of your wings. They’re actually really neat.”

Bucky raised a brow as he shook his head. “Neat, huh? Can’t say I’ve heard that one yet.”

Peter shrugged, taking a seat across from Bucky. “I, uh, don’t like to judge people because I don’t like it when people judge me. I know what it’s like to have people be scared of you.”

Bucky scoffed, while Steve frowned, chewing a bit of his sandwich. 

“He probably understands more than most, Buck,” Steve said after he swallowed.

“I don’t see how some kid could know a thing about what it’s like to have people rather jump into traffic than cross your path.”

Peter dropped his gaze, chewing his lip. When he looked up, Bucky was deconstructing his sandwich, mayo on his fingers. “I know because—”

“You don’t have to say, Peter. You don’t owe us anything.”

Peter frowned, considering his words. “Yeah, I know, but I don’t want to hide anymore. I’m tired of it. When Morgan was born, I knew I had to be better for her, a role model.” He glanced at Bucky and then stood, making both men look at him. Reaching into himself, he braced himself and then let his wings fall onto his back. The plumage rustled at being released. A stray black feather drifted to the floor. “So, yeah, I’m a raven.”

Bucky’s eyes widened for a second, and then his expression sobered. “I guess you do know.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” His wings twitched as he shuffled his feet. Deciding to leave his wings out, he sat back down and picked up his sandwich. He could feel Bucky’s eyes on him. Peter wondered what he was thinking. He knew Steve had said Bucky was understanding and not one to judge, but saying and doing were two different things. 

Peter flicked his gaze up from his sandwich to see Bucky and Steve in a silent conversation. Steve’s mouth twitched, and so did his eyebrow, while Bucky’s head tilted to the side like saying, “Really, Steve.”

Peter dropped his eyes back to his plate and chewed his food. His stomach felt knotted, and his hunger was gone. Setting his sandwich back on his plate, Peter cleared his throat and glanced at Steve. “I can go.”

Steve’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “What? No. It’s fine. You’re fine, Peter, really.”

“Then why the…” He waved his finger between them. “You were making faces.”

“It’s not about you, not really,” said Bucky. “I was just surprised Stevie here took it so well.”

“Oh, yeah.” Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “He, um, didn’t really. He saw my wings before, at the tower. That’s how we met.”

“You don’t need to beat around the bush. The way I reacted was despicable. I had no excuse, especially after seeing how people treated Bucky.”

Peter shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Bucky sighed, sitting his hands on the table, mayo clinging to his fingers from where he’d peeled the tomatoes off, even though Peter was pretty sure he had asked for extras. “Don’t be too hard on the punk. He can be a little slow, but for the record, I wouldn’t ever judge you, kid. I think your wings are pretty neat myself.”

Peter huffed a laugh. “Yeah, I’m starting to think that, too.”

Bucky smiled, picking up a piece of lettuce and popping it in his mouth. “The way I see it, kid. People like me and you, we got to stick together.”

“I think what Bucky’s saying is, if you ever need a friend, someone who understands, you know where we live.”

Bucky licked his finger. “Yeah, just maybe don’t tell, Stark.”

Peter didn’t know all the details of what happened, but he did know from the news that the Winter Soldier had killed Tony’s parents. Peter didn’t know if Tony had forgiven him or not, but he found himself agreeing with Bucky. Maybe it would be best not to mention it. 

“Can I ask you something?” Peter said, scrunching up his nose as he looked at the disaster that was Bucky’s plate. Bucky raised his brows. “Um, what did the sandwich ever do to you?”

“I’ve been asking myself that since we were kids. My ma hit him with a spoon the first time she saw him do it.”

Bucky huffed. “The shit I put up with.”

Peter laughed. Maybe he should have been a little scared, sitting at the same table as the former Winter Soldier, but Peter didn’t see a dangerous assassin, a deadly arm, or razor-sharp wings. He saw a guy who picked apart his sandwich and laughed with his friends. He saw a man that didn’t judge him for being a raven, and that meant something to him. 

Peter thought that if Tony saw this side of Bucky, maybe he would forgive him. He wasn’t scary like this. He was human. It might not be easy, but Peter decided then that he would try to mend the rift between Bucky and Tony. It was the right thing to do. 

XXX

Peter rang the doorbell and waited for Bucky or Steve to answer. It had been two weeks since he’d first come over for sandwiches with them. After lunch the first day, Peter had programmed his number into Bucky’s phone before he left. He hadn’t expected to hear from him again soon, but a few days later, he had called Peter to check on him. 

Today Peter was stopping for a purely selfish reason. He had a report due for AP History on World War Two and the Commandos, and who better than Steve and Bucky to help him write it. 

Bucky opened the door, thankfully wearing pants, and let him in. They went to the living room and sat on the couch. Setting his bag on the coffee, he pulled out his notebook. 

“Is Steve here, too?” Peter asked, digging for a pen. Once he found one, he set up his phone to record. 

Bucky turned, shouting over his shoulder. “Hey, punk, your presence is requested, and bring snacks. I’m hungry. I think there’s a box of those burnt Cheez-it things on the counter.”

“Burnt Cheez-its?” Peter asked.

“Extra toasty or some shit. They’re addicting as fuck.”

“Language, Bucky. He’s a minor,” Steve called from the kitchen. 

Bucky rolled his eyes, and Peter laughed. 

“So, where do you want to start?” Bucky asked as Steve walked in with the crackers, taking a seat in the chair.

“From the beginning, I guess. Tell me what it was really like.”

Steve passed the box to Bucky. “It was nothing like I ever imagined, but maybe I should start with how I got there. It began with a man named Abraham Erskine.”

Peter listened, recording on his phone and taking notes as Steve and Bucky recounted their time in the war. Four hours and a box of Cheez-its later, Peter had a pile of notes, and the three of them were laughing over stories of the Commandos. 

No one mentioned when Peter showed his wings as he got up to get a drink, and Peter stopped noticing the sound of Bucky’s clinking when he moved. He was starting to see that people were complex, and maybe no one ever had it easy. Tony struggled with what was left of his wings, Bucky’s had been changed into weapons, and Peter’s were considered a bad omen, but they were all marks of strength in their own way. If only the rest of the world could see it that way, too.   

#Peter parker #spiderman #wingfic #MCU #snark writes