My birthday was a couple days ago, and I got to see my bio dad for the first time in a while. He surprised me with the fact that I have a little half-sister, whom I've never met and who was adopted about two years back.
So, I wondered if any situations in BB mimic this or have a theme of "secret siblings" or "secret family"?
Sorry if this is a weird ask; this blog is honestly just such a cool little place and I love the way you approach the subject matter and take the flawed misogynistic foundation of the WC books and make them so much better (JUSTICE FOR BUMBLE!!!). I've also learned a lot about healthy and unhealthy relationships here and am really glad for your deep dives on Squilf and Bramble.
Thanks, Bones!
Not weird at all! I really like exploring all the little nooks and crannies of complicated familial dynamics. I think one of the untapped strengths of WC (that the writers seem to be unaware of) is how their MASSIVE cast allows them to present all sorts of unique dynamics. So I like to pick up on it, since they don't.
For secret siblings...
I'm pretty heavily leaning towards Ambermoon being adopted by Wildfur, as a surrogacy. Something feels correct about it. Especially since Icecloud is getting retooled into a post-Battle of the True Eclipse birth, and a major supporting character in AVoS-era stories as a friend of Alderheart.
Thinking about it, I should zoom in and expand this. Maybe have Icecloud, somehow, acquire forbidden knowledge that would invalidate the Queen’s Rights and he (transman) struggles with if he's going to use it to expose his parents as an excuse to help Ambermoon.
(Especially since Ambermoon and Icecloud are basically nothing alike. Amber is independent, bold, and vain. Ice is jessie pinkman big-hearted, disorganized, and deceptively meek if you look past his "chill" demeanor)
But that's wip-- there's also Breezepelt and the Three, who are going to have an actual friendship. In particular I can't unsee Breeze and Lion having a deep one. I know I commit the Cardinal Sin of borderline himbo-ifying Lionblaze in BB, but I can't help it.
Hollyleaf ended up nabbing a bunch of his most violent roles to make her villainous descent smoother narratively, so BB!Lionblaze's story ends up being more focused on Ashfur's abuse, comic relief with cats in other Clans (something that the very serious Jay and Holly have a hard time providing), and the emotional fallout of the big reveal and Bramblestar's turn on them. Breezepelt slots neatly into that.
They were friends. Lionblaze's whole life came down around the reveal, everyone looking at him and his siblings differently, like they're suddenly something terrible. Why can't we find a silver lining, Breezepelt? Why can't we call ourselves brothers if the whole world is going to do it anyway? So much is changing, but THIS doesn't have to, we will take their weapon and turn it to armor, my ally, my friend, my brother.
(and when Breezepelt is lashing out at the three because of the Dark Forest's influence, Lionblaze is there, taking the blows and trying not to give in to the impulse to send him flying with a single paw)
There's also Harespring and Kestrelflight of WindClan and Owlclaw of ShadowClan. All of them are from a single litter between Whitewater and Mudclaw. She was going to raise the three of them alone as ShadowClan cats, but when the sire was smote, Whitewater felt they were cursed.
She was able to give the oldest two to their bio-uncle, Torear, but the weather was so bad that day and the runt was so sickly and small that it surely would have killed him. I don't think Owlclaw ever finds out why his mother always treated him with suspicion, but it did mess him up horribly.
Over in BB!DOTC, Thunder Storm is getting more half-siblings earlier. Clear Sky and Falling Feather had two daughters-- Pale Sky and Tiger Sky.
I want to explore the way that the various stages of Clear Sky's life acted on his kids. How any little curiosity Thunder Storm had about the life he might have had if he wasn't abandoned is crushed by seeing kittens who weren't. How Clear's favoritism of his oldest child set the trio against each other from the start. How this idea of "love" is toxic yet intoxicating.
It feels good to be the golden child. The power it gives you over his sycophants is satisfying. To know you, and you alone, have what someone else craves. Problem is, that's conditional, and it's cruel.
What Thunder Storm learns from his time with his biodad is that Clear Sky is not his father at all. He's taught him exactly what he DOESN'T want to be. There may be similarities-- in temperament, in physical prowess (though BB!Thunder is three-legged, he's still ripped), in taste and senses. But Thunder Storm's father is Shaded Flower.
(BB!Gray Wing died in the first book, rescuing Shaded Flower from being trampled by a horse. Xey're a patron of wisdom, Shaded Moss is taking the role of fatherhood to Thunder)
His sister is Rainswept Flower. His mom is Bright Storm. If there was a bond he could have had with Tiger Sky and Pale Sky, it dies simply and cruelly on the knife they used to cut each other out.
Pale might have wanted to mend it, she was the gentler one. But she dies in the First Battle along with her mother. Tiger Sky is too stubborn to accept any help, should Thunderstar offer it, and Thunderstar isn't in the business of begging for others to like him.
Naturally I'm lowkey obsessed with them lmao. I need to make a BB!DOTC overviewww
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in order to get to the heart
marriage of convenience, on occasion, is not so convenient.
♡ — jumin x original female character. small amounts of canon compliant jumin x reader, but mostly canon divergent (jumin is unhappily married prior to the start of the game). 1600 words. title from heartlines by florence + the machine.
They just say anything to each other these days.
“This façade drains me beyond comprehension,” Jumin confesses the minute he walks through the door. His fingers loop into the knot of his tie and pull it looser around his neck.
“So you say,” murmured half into a cushion tucked up to a woman’s chest as she types on her phone. “It’s not for our benefit though, is it?”
On some level, this is always how it was going to be for Jumin, he thinks. In a marriage stripped to its fragile bones. A sacrificial lamb for the sake of the corporation, for mutual social and financial gain.
He leans down to untie his shoes.
It would be untrue to say there weren’t veiled attempts, in the beginning, to love. When that didn’t work there were attempts to like. None successful, of course. Lately it’s becoming more difficult to believe this arrangement is better than any alternative. Between the two of them there is a lot of nothing.
The woman remains quiet—focused—but nods easily against the woven fabric she’s leaning into when Jumin asks, “Do you not get tired of coming home from work to find me occupying your space?”
He knows that in public they look good together. He knows that their careers slot together effortlessly. Despite what the media may suggest, however, they are human. Jumin included. The way he feels nothing for her does not match the way she feels nothing for him. The way she yells that he is robotic does not match the way he stoically calls her irresponsible.
They do not sleep together, or eat together, or do any of the romantic things Jumin wishes he hadn’t let himself privately indulge in the idea of. And it’s not that she’s not nice—she’s intelligent and beautiful and kind, when it suits her. Perfect on paper until she wasn’t. When she laughs with her chest Jumin can almost imagine a world where she smiles at him like she does others and it makes his heart weak. Part of him wishes, truly, that that was the case. In reality it feels like nothing.
It could be worse, he tells himself—repeats it like a mantra.
Concealed beneath it is fear. You could be like him. You could repeat his mistakes.
She throws her phone haphazardly onto the sofa beside her and looks up to where Jumin is standing in the doorway. He’s mostly backlit from the light in the hall, the lamp beside his wife barely grazing his features but lighting up hers in all the wrong ways. The orange glow casts unpleasant shadows over places she’s usually pretty. He should have the bulb changed to something less harsh.
“Not much we can do if you don’t want the press to kick up a huge fuss, sweetie,” she says.
The pet names are a jest he has learned to tune out.
“Will they not make a fuss over our divorce in three years’ time nonetheless?” Jumin asks. It’s hypothetical, of course. They will.
“Maybe we’ll have grown on each other by then.” Her tone is disinterested; feels almost mocking. Her phone chimes to let her know her driver is outside. “I’m going out. Shall I take my card or yours?”
“It makes little difference to me.” Jumin looks at his watch. It’s almost 10pm but he doesn’t ask where she’s going. A bar, perhaps.
“Could you adjust my necklace?”
She holds her hair up messily, and he does.
“Let me know if you need anything,” he tells her, then briefly wonders if she’ll meet someone tonight and sleep with them. He pictures her naked beneath a stranger. It feels like nothing.
She takes her own card and squeezes his bicep softly as she walks by him on the way out. She shuts the door more forcefully than is ever really necessary.
At some point Jumin suggests she move out of their—his—apartment and into the one directly below; just recently made vacant. He probably would have suggested it earlier had the apartment been available earlier, but their district of Seoul tends to be under high demand.
“I thought we agreed it was a bad idea to live separately,” she says. It’s a statement, not a question. They had done exactly that.
Jumin hums, tired. Tired from his trip and tired from trying and at some point, it seems, he has lost an indistinguishable part of himself to her for good.
“We did. Although I would say that that was long enough ago now for us both to have become quite aware that we do not do particularly well sharing the same space for considerable periods of time.”
“You’re gone a lot anyway. The place is big enough for us to avoid each other if needed, and I like it here.”
She exhales sharply; amused.
Jumin has no idea why until she adds, “More so when you’re not around, to be fair.” And that explains it, just about.
“Stay here when I am travelling if you must,” he tells her. Somewhere along the way his suggestion has morphed into more of an instruction.
“Fine. Don’t tell your father, though. Or mine.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
They buy it outright in her name, the cost split fifty-fifty. Jumin tells her to keep it all when she sells it later. She tells him she won’t.
They argue tonight, as usual, about who will be chauffeuring them to a company gala. They had agreed that Jumin’s driver would take them only for her to assert for the hundredth time at the last minute that she doesn’t trust him, though she has not legitimately spoken to him more than once and he has been working for Jumin’s family longer than she has been alive.
It’ll cause a stir if the two of them show up separately so they end up in her car, as usual. Jumin apologises to Driver Kim via text for requesting him when he wasn’t needed on the way there, and they arrive late.
The venue reminds Jumin of the last RFA party. His wife had not attended despite her invitation, so it is not proper grounds for conversation. However, when they are out like this they are a happy couple like the legal drabble says, so he says it anyway—if just to appear interested in her.
“I’m sure this is nicer than your friends’ charity get togethers,” she replies lightheartedly, and they are called over by her father before Jumin can retaliate.
The façade stays firm for the remainder of the event. Jumin can easily distinguish her fake laugh from her real one, and he can tell when she forgets who he is for a moment and touches him a little more tenderly than either of them really mean.
They are silent on the drive home. They are silent in the elevator, until it stops one floor below Jumin’s penthouse. “Goodnight,” he says. “Sleep well.”
“You don’t have to say that, you know,” she counters, and smiles softly as the doors slide shut between them. “Not when it’s just me.”
Elizabeth the 3rd is snoring softly when he unlocks his door, and it is the only sound he can hear. He basks in the bliss of having nobody around when he is already so mentally exhausted, and takes out his phone to see it’s just after midnight and Yoosung has opened a chat room.
He enters it, multitasking as he changes his clothes and brushes his teeth. His cat patters into the room and jumps up beside him when he perches on the edge of his bed. She smells frustratingly like perfume and something oddly like guilt threatens Jumin with a dull blade.
Wait!! says Luciel. Think someone entered the chat room.
Jumin checks. There is a name on his screen he doesn’t recognise.
Odd.
Who are you? Identify yourself.
“Jumin. It’s me,” your voice is soft and bubbly; maybe a little nervous but still pleasant on his ears. An intriguing introduction. He almost finds himself chuckling.
Jumin moves the phone from his ear and glances down at your name again, just to be certain he’s not imagining things, then focuses in on the plainness of the wall in front of him.
“I hope you realise blurting out ‘It’s me’ is not a proper way to identify yourself to the person on the other end of the line.”
He had hesitated briefly before telling you he is married. Now he has known you for five days and whatever he’s feeling is somehow, ridiculously, already far greater than any emotion he has ever felt towards his wife.
He invites her out for dinner at their usual restaurant the following evening, and she tells him if he has something to discuss with her she would rather keep it simple. As an alternative he invites her to the penthouse and opens a bottle of wine he knows she likes. When she arrives her hair is tied up experimentally and she is wearing a new shade of lipstick. She surprises him when she actually accepts his offer to pour her a glass.
“I am going to talk with my father,” Jumin says, and she knows what he means. It’s only later that he will find out she had already brought it up with hers. “For what it’s worth, however, I apologise that it ended up like this.”
“Me too,” she agrees. Jumin notices the light catch a glassiness in her eyes as she continues, “If I could have loved you, I would have.”
She stays for a few hours and it is the most sincere time they have spent together in three years.
That night, Zen has a dream.
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Linktober Day 9
Deity
*sneezes after downing coffee* Well irl stuff got in the way so I'm way behind my original schedule for these and for Linktober but here we go with another arguably short one, fuelled purely by self indulgence, headcanons, spite against my linguist essays that kept me from keeping to schedule, severe sleep deprivation, a shout out to the Ender Lilies soundtrack and Majora's Mask soundtrack, and Nintendo for not clarifying anything about the lore so I'm snatching what I can and making it my own lol. Look, when you fíxate so much on details the Zelda team doesn't elaborate on you have to fill in the gaps with what you can.
As always can be read as romantic or platonic, technically in a LU context but not explicitly in it by itself.
The Lord of the Mountain liked hearing people sing.
In a way, it wasn’t a surprise, Hylia and the Golden Three each had their ballads and symphonies and minuets, each splendid and with cuts of their divinity in it, Farore was fond of lightning and forest alive minuets, and you could swear Farosh sparked just a bit brighter when one would him the beginnings of the Minuet of the Forest near their spring, Din was fond of boleros, fiery and alive and howling with the echo of flame touching earth that made a shine run through Dinraal’s scales, Nayru, in contrast, was much fonder of blizzard and river quiet serenades, the songs of contemplation at first snow ringing clear when Naydra curled around it’s spring, content to be free of Malice.
And of course Hylia had her ballads and lullabies, perfectly fitting to her display of divinity, of honey days and vast bird like wings, of ambered summers to come and to pass and dazzling solar storms of starlight and sunlight sparking through the human form of her descendants and heroes. So in a way, you weren’t surprised at all that the Lord of the Mountain – Satori, with a familiar touch of londsleite divinity, the hunt of the woodland beasts and diamondscar adoration for the Hero of the Wilds, similar in glory to the Light Spirits petrichor and vermeil fondness for the Hero of the Twilight – liked to listen to people sing. What you were surprised was how it attempted to follow along, it’s head across your lap the second you sat down in the clearing, a gentle hum on back of it’s throat, an owl’s cry and a cicada’s humming and faintly, chirring purring as presses it’s faces into your hands, a gentle request for petting.
It was adorable, even with the faint notes of the chill of clear spring water on winter and the livewire feeling of magic, like holding your hand too close to a flame but not quite touching it.
A low chuckle brushes against the back of your mind, a feeling like biting on ice, the prowl of a wild beast and the build up of lightning and light used to create his blade, the amused affection of a warrior reconvening with their brother in arms, you think you see the bone ivory of the Deity’s hair on the side of your vision, though you know he’s not physically there, ‘He likes you.’
You hum, gently patting behind it’s ears, pushing through the chill, gracefully not mentioning the burning with a smile at the mythic being’s faint chirring, birdsong and the wind through cherry blossoms that sparkle like rose quartz, “Well I quite like him too, I can see where it’s gentleness comes from.”
The ghost of a touch over your hair, the caress of lightning striking over your skin and the hair on the back of your neck pricking up and the crisp cold of winter, the chill of the ending and the flame of a new dawn, of new days, the phantom of magnolias and spring water on your tongue. The fragrance of pine, daffodils and blood soaked lilies on ashen fields on your senses, gentle and careful, marking but not claiming, ‘Only because it’s you, beloved. It’s not something easily given.’
You sigh, shakily composing yourself, you let yourself relax into the phantom sensation. Of hopes and dreams and healed suffering, of the divinity of hunt turned into protection and lightning given form, of tangled timelines and crystalized memories, “I know. It does not change my opinion, either way.”
To be the subject of a god’s care and regard was dangerous, after all. For the human and the deity in question, you know the stories from your world well, of the effects of Hylia on First and Sky, of Twilight and the personification of the Twilight Realm and the spirits of his land, of Wild and clawing from death’s embrace into that of the wilderness.
Knew how the fact the Fierce Deity’s mere proximity causing pain on those who changed him into hunting for hunt’s sake into protection for the sake of someone else cut deeper than even the ever encroaching entropy all beings must one day face. It was no wonder the Song of Healing was his creation, to want to ease the burden.
You gladly grant him some peace, in turn, even if it wasn’t much. It’s the least you can do, for always having his ways of watching over your heroes.
“Join me? We can make a duet.”
You feel more than see him shift, ephemeral, fleeting, gentle against the edges of your existence, as foreign to Hyrule as your own, sparking over your spine as you feel ozone and rust on your teeth. Satori is humming again to match the rumble of thunder in the man’s voice, the heralding of songs of war and elegies for the dead, ‘Of course, though I’m afraid I do not know many songs, besides…’
“It’s alright,”, you smile faintly, there’s a white ocarina in his hands, as he leans, a spectre against your side, “I’ll teach you some of my own, though you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t remember all the lyrics.”
‘It would be my honor to learn.’
You think he smiles, from the fluttering of something ancient and long forgotten against your side.
You sing to Satori and the Chain, a small respite of familiar and forgotten tunes, the Lord of the Mountain hums along. The Fierce Deity’s song cutting through any nightmares that may ail your heroes for another night.
When the dawn of a new day comes, the feeling of divinity against your skin feels just a bit more obvious, sinking into every crack of your being like a shroud, falling over your boys like a veil, reflecting the breath of eternity over Hyrule.
(First gives you a look that’s half exasperation, half understanding. Sky pointedly sticks to your side as Time looks you over, markings deep with vibrant color. You shrug with a helpless smile as you feel the lightest brushes of Hylia’s fond days of gold and starlit summers days against the Lord of the Mountains warm, luminous affection and the Fierce Deity’s smug, but content lonsdaleite smile.)
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