#sidenote: ​did you know that that was the original purpose of this blog?

[wilds-ponytail]

looking at all the original posts in my drafts across all my blogs and i talk a lot in the tags huh

#its just Bonus Content™ for those who actually stick around to read them #like. i post incorrect quotes a lot #sidenote: ​did you know that that was the original purpose of this blog? #and sometimes i put a little extra in the tags #and honestly idk if anyone *actually* sees it #but i like having it there anyway #so yeah to anyone here rn still reading: i love you and *high five*

[alovelyburn]

Rambles about the Conviction Arc Part 12

So we’ve arrived at last at the end of the Conviction Arc, and thus the return of Griffith.

...yep nothing else to say, getting right to it.

Rambles about the Conviction Arc Part 12

1. I like the way Miura set up the reveal as we basically follow Guts’ experience with it, watching Griffith’s reappearance in this kind of overwhelming way. You’re also seeing him a bit through Guts’ eyes, which makes what he says about Griffith later (in V22) pretty interesting, too. Because however you slice it....

This really isn’t Griffith appearing as he did in the past. I mean not to say he doesn’t look like the same person but people even remark that he’s dialed up from before. He’s an idealized version of his original appearance. It’s telling that, to Guts, there is no difference.

As a sidenote, I realize that he’s twisted that way largely to keep the D out of the camera’s eye but it sure is a choice, it just ends up looking like he wants to show off his butt. Anyway!

I feel like I’m not showing this moment the proper reverence. But most of what I have  to say about Guts’ first sighting of Griffith is really more appropriate for the leadin to the Hill of Swords.

The funny thing is, this isn’t any different than the way Guts always reacted to him. From the first time Griffith grabbed his face to here - its the same expression every time. The way he automatically and instinctively loses his drive to attack is... telling?

“All who were there forgot to breathe and were enthralled. And they sensed intuitively that the one they desired had come.”

I’m very curious about Griffith’s... otherworldly charisma? The way the Apostles automatically capitulate to him is one thing, but some people also feel that intense pull, like say Mule. At the same time, it’s obvious that he isn’t constantly exuding mind-control pheromones or anything because he does get into arguments with nobles and the people with him when he confronted Ganishka were still terrified of the Apostles. Even here we’re about two pages from the Kushans deciding to attack and capture him, for all the good it did them, so I guess I’m wondering what makes it turn on and off – does he do it purposefully? Is it a call to those who will ultimately be fated to play an important role in his life/mission? Does he aim it? Inquiring minds want to know.

And what is it that is making them intuit that he is their chosen one?

2. There’s been some discussion of this bit on my blog in... I don’t know the past few months? I know it is often read as Guts being angered and then called back to himself by Casca reigniting his humanity or something... but I’ll be honest, I’m pretty sure it’s Casca reacting to Griffith because she recognizes the infant in him, and Guts being pulled back by the pain of having her reach for Griffith.

Because okay I say this kind of offhand sometimes but one day I’ll actually have to write about why I say it... IMO Guts has long been afraid that Casca and Griffith were really the “meant to be” and he’s just in the way. I believe that this is some of the reason for that whole side plot with Guts trying to get Casca and Griffith together, but it’s also the reason for things like Casca accidentally slipping to Guts that she’s still into Griffith during the rescue – things like that. I mean, from a character perspective it’s done because its how she’s feeling but narratively the purpose it serves is to ignite that doubt in him. I think for him to feel like Casca is still trying to run to Griffith, especially after the Eclipse and the rape, is extremely difficult for him – and it informs a lot of his reaction to her reaction to Griffith for example during the Hill of Swords scene as well.

And if you look at his expression, it’s not... well. In my opinionation, that is the face of a man being punched in the gut by unpleasant emotions, not the face of a man being saved from himself.

Just like its reflected in his reaction here – her reaction is the same here as in the above page – she’s not calling to Guts at all,  she’s reaching for Griffith, trying to go to him, just like she is in the following pages where Guts has to hold her back and looks... pained about it. But his reaction is in itself quite nuanced because

Despite the rage he’s trying to hold onto, and despite the need to uh, save Casca from herself I guess...

when he looks at Griffith, his reaction remains the same. He’s still enthralled, still dazzled.

And one thing that’s worth mentioning about Griffith is that thus far his eyes have remained closed, which aids in the illusion that he remains the same as he was before, both to Guts and to the reader... right up until the final page of the chapter...

When we are immediately reminded that he is no longer human by those inhuman eyes. Of course it also serves as the moment when Griffith stares back at Guts, thus setting the stage for his decision to drop in on Guts in a few chapters because it was too crowded for them to chat here (O_o).

...as a sort of side note, I don’t really love this picture of Griffith – he doesn’t really look... like Griffith so much as he resembles a deer... actually I think it’s mostly that his jaw is so pointy because Griffith always had a kind of wider, cherubic face. But I do think it is very effective and kicking the reader in the gut (lol) and being like, this isn’t the Griffith you knew. Because he doesn’t look “normal” or even human.

Obviously, the other major thing happening here, aside from Griffith’s return, is...

The march of the Kushans that will define Griffith’s part of the story for the next 14ish volumes.

3. Also Farnese’s reaction to this is pretty interesting as well. Griffith is her religion’s messiah or whatever, so it’s kind of... INTERESTING? That she never seems to react to that – although in fairness I’m not quite sure offhand whether she knows that for certain.

It’s also kind of funny how everyone’s worried about Guts and Casca and then just...

Miura didn’t even feel the need to really show you how he escapes, it’s just like... it’s Guts, of course he’s fine.

The way Casca clings to him is a bit sad considering how their relationship falls apart later. It never really does recover until she gets her mind back (well, not even then).

4. This is the kind of thing that makes me suspect that Guts will truly manage to break free of fate at some point. It’s hard to say really, but I do think it at least reiterates that idea – good and bad both come to people regardless of their actions or their morality. Still, it’s their choice to fight on, or to give up and die.

In a kind of sense that’s the difference between Guts and Griffith, but in the latter case Griffith wasn’t really given the option to keep fighting, due to the way fate wrapped itself around his throat.

I love the recurring motif of the flowers being released to indicate, I guess, resignation and grief – Griffith releasing the flowers from the wagon during the rescue, Guts and Chichi’s flower and of course this, which I think.... is significant both for the acknowledgement of the behelit apostle’s pain and as an expression of Luca’s basic character.

...you can be, come back to us Luca. Uh.

5. This little bit is important because it does raise the question that is... batted around for the next 20 volumes. Guts is more than capable of protecting anyone (at least until he has to fight Griffith to do it, but that’s not his fault), but his ability to involve himself with people personally is by no means developed, especially since he regressed after the Eclipse. So I appreciate Luca coming into drop an incoming Important Question, but at the same time...

I just can’t get over how weird it is for people to consider Guts and Casca to be potential lovers given how Casca’s mind is. It’s so weird, I don’t get it? You could say she means be with in a supportive sense or just in the sense of not abandoning her, but she obviously considers Guts and Casca to be a couple, you know? I ... ???

6. I do try not to dig too hard into Miura’s actual real life situation but given that he did talk about how much his problematic childhood affected the story and his father’s conversion from an abuser into a religious extremist, I think it’s interesting the way he kind of......

...portrays Farnese’s faith as something she clung to in order to fight back the darkness. And the way those demons still squirmed around inside of her even though she used her “faith,” or rather her clinging to that thing, to hold back the darkness both inside and outside and within herself. I feel like her motivations get retconned slightly when we meet her family, although we’ll see if I still think that when I get to that story.

And here it is again – the way people who live in fear cling to others, and the light that Guts carries with him even when he doesn’t see it himself, which is much of the time. I was thinking about why it is that Farnese decides to follow Guts – I think her leaving the Holy See is almost inevitable at this point – she has discovered that her belief was never really belief, it was a coping mechanism. But what makes her decide to follow Guts instead?

I think she is trying to face her fears. Because she equates the darkness in the night that she was so terrified of to the things she’s seen in these past weeks – the monsters, the demons, the jelly spirits. She’s perceiving them as being made, literally or figuratively, of the same thing as the darkness that she cowered away from as a little girl.

So now, forced to look at her own fear,  she wants to walk through it. To face it. And to do that it makes sense, doesn’t it, to follow Guts... the man who walks into that darkness, never flinching, and holds the light.

And her feelings for Guts begin to parallel Casca’s feelings for Griffith – starting from being saved, having her life and the rules she knows upended, and then envisioning him as her miracle.

And isn’t it interesting how even the smallest characters have their own struggles, their own problems and pain.

Now, it’s time to finish off Nina’s story before we go off for the evening...

7. I mean, it goes without saying I think that I don’t think Joachim has anything to apologize for. I’m not saying I’m in favor of persecuting pagans at all, but those particular pagans just... I can’t get past the cannibalism, lmao. Who wouldn’t freak out?

That said, since I’ve gotten into the habit of drawing parallels and trying to explain how I see those things... fitting together and the implications in those parallels, let’s talk about Nina and Guts. I said a few rambles ago that Guts left the Hawks so that he wouldn’t become a Nina – someone who clings to Griffith and feeds off his light without being able to sustain himself. In Guts’ case, it wasn’t really something he had to do, because he already had a light of his own – he never really disappeared into the Hawks or depended on Griffith the way the others did. In fact you could suggest that in a lot of ways Griffith depended on him instead. That said...

I think this is a pretty decent sum of one reason Guts didn’t say goodbye.

I mean there are other things involved, right. Like I’m sure he didn’t think anyone would care that much since he didn’t understand his own value – not as a soldier (which wasn’t as necessary anymore) but as a person. But... I do think if he had gone to Griffith and tried to explain himself or tell him that he was going, he wouldn’t have been able to actually leave. More pointedly, though...

That’s really the Nina version of Guts’ reasoning isn’t it? Guts decides to leave so that he doesn’t keep staring up at Griffith from this subordinate and dependent position (that he perceives himself to be in) not because he wants to escape Griffith or whatever but because he has the hope that one day they’ll meet again and he’ll be able to look Griffith in the eye instead of staring up at him.

Nina isn’t actually like Guts at all obviously, like she’s a big coward and passive and obsessed with survival. ...well, Guts is a little obsessed with survival too, but anyway...  much like Luca and Griffith aren’t generally similar but you still have an overlap in the relationship she has with say Nina and the relationship Grififth has with the Hawks... there is this overlap. This repeating idea that even if you love someone, as long as you’re depending on them in some way you can’t really come to your full “strength” so to speak. In Nina’s case I do think she needed to get away if she wanted to find her own strength... because otherwise she would have kept hiding behind Luca and resenting her for it. I think it is, for Nina, a beautiful ending and despite my general dislike for her character, it does make me want to see her turn up in Falconia so we can see how she is and whether she’s survived until now... given that she’s... dying.

And this does come up a few times either in direct character-to-character relationships, as with Nina and Guts, or with say a more abstract dependency as with say Farnese and the Holy See. In all cases, the character who pulls away is strengthened by that decision.

This is one of the reasons I always balk at the idea that Guts leaving the Hawks was necessarily a bad thing for him. Obviously it had catastrophic consequences for Griffith, but I will maintain to my dying day that the Guts who returns is meant to be perceived as stronger, more at peace with himself, and more confident. And I don’t think something harming Griffith while empowering Guts is a contradiction or at odds with their portrayal in the story – if anything I’d say that it suits their yin-yang/two sides of the same soul thing, because when one is on top the other generally isn’t - Griffith rises as a mercenary while Guts wanders miserable and aimless, then rises through society while Guts spirals because of the Promrose speech. Guts goes off on his own and gathers physical and mental strength while Griffith falls from grace and is destroyed in the dungeon. Griffith ascends as Femto while Guts is dragged into metaphorical hell. It’s part of the dance they have within the narrative that they’re rarely in the same place at the same time.

...but I do think abandoning someone you love without notice is a dick move and I think that whether you’re talking about Nina and Luca or Guts and Griffith. I mean honestly leave a note. Send Joachim back to tell her if you cant face it yourself. Don’t put Luca, who marched into hostile territory and risked her life for you, Nina, in a position where she might feel like she has to spend the next several days scouring the countryside for you while you’re off having dinner with your new bf, it’s a dick move gdi, a dick move.

...so....

I like the Conviction Arc a lot, though it isn’t my favorite.

...that comment sent me on a death spiral of trying to decide in what order I like the arcs, but anyway, Conviction has a lot to say about fear and coping mechanisms and the way leadership works, and how it feels to be the leader, or the one being led. I always love the way Berserk handles the sheer humanity of people – their weaknesses and their strengths. And it draws these parallels and comparisons between characters who don’t have much in common besides a certain thing – the experience of being surrounded by people who look to you for salvation as seen in Luca, Mozgus and Griffith, or the experience of clinging to something to hold back your fear as with Farnese and Nina. The drive to leave behind something you don’t really want to lose in the hopes that when you find it again, it will be better than when you left it... even though you know it’ll hurt the person you care about most, as with Guts and Nina.

I don’t know. It’s a lot of human commonality and it reminds you that everyone has the same problems and pains regardless of their circumstances or how strong or weak or cool or uncool they might be.  And that’s something worth saying.

Of course, now we move to the next phase...

Millennium Falcon incoming soon.

But not next time. Next time there’s a mini-sidetrip. The time after next, though. Yes.

#berserk #berserk meta #rambles about berserk #ariel talks about berserk

[themeasureofasim]

I posted 156 times in 2022

126 posts created (81%)

30 posts reblogged (19%)

I tagged 156 of my posts in 2022

#sims 2 gameplay - 41 posts

#everlasting uberhood - 41 posts

#sims 2 download - 40 posts

#ask - 33 posts

#sims 2 default - 32 posts

#household:singles - 29 posts

#la fiesta tech - 29 posts

#anon - 22 posts

#reblog - 20 posts

#default:clothes - 19 posts

Longest Tag: 100 characters

#also friendly reminder that if you can handle texture work i'm open to collab with overlay packages!

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I’ve shared two EM defaults at GoS! Credit goes to Trapping, @saphyriasims​, @deedee-sims​ and @memento-sims​.

124 notes - Posted October 21, 2022

#4

The great @vegan-kaktus​ made an awesome default replacement for the handheld game with a Nintendo Switch, which I love! I’ve made three two-tone recolours of it, for more variety, based on real joy-con controllers.

That’s it! The default replacement and CEP-extra linked above are required but not included, please read the original post carefully and download the required files if you want these recolours to show up in your game. These are compatible with Cyjon’s buyable electronics in case you’re interested.

Download SFS | Dropbox

128 notes - Posted December 11, 2022

#3

I made these as a present for @itsdiamondeyesuniverse​​​, but she said you all should have them as well 😊. They’re 25 textures by NELL, pasted on this mesh. If you haven’t used accessory stockings before, please read this post. This will work only with clothes that use Maxis naked legs and have higher than ankle shoes. There’s more info on the post linked before, and there you can find also a list of clothes that work with this acc. You can also check the tag on this blog for stockings-friendly stuff. This is for AF and TF, everyday only, no morphs, and includes a new mannequin-box (located in the dressers category for 45$). Mesh by Diamond Eyes is included, but you don’t need it if you already have the one we shared before.

Download SFS | Dropbox

Credit goes to @nell-le​ (thank you Elena for your generous policy!) for the textures; DEU for the stockings mesh; and @deedee-sims​ and DEU (again) for the mannequin mesh. I was too lazy to make a swatch this time but I’ve uploaded my edit of the textures here, in case you want to take a look or use them for clothing-making purposes (pssst @rudhira​ 🤭).

We’ve also decided to upload the mesh edits Diamond Eyes made of two of my favourite skirts (Amaryll’s Wrap Skirts with Pixicat Docs by @yandereplumsim​, second skirt on the first preview, and Io’s Flipper Skirt with Lace Up Boots, third skirt on the second preview) to be stockings-friendly! These are just the meshes, you’ll need to download the recolours from the links above.

Download stockings-friendly skirts: SFS | Dropbox

Enjoy! And as always, let me know if you have any problems.

135 notes - Posted January 30, 2022

#2

Another weird overlay box no one asked for! This time with prosthetic arms and legs in a cybor-like style. For teens to elders, both genders, including supernaturals. Textures are from this servo default by @criquette-was-here, edited by @episims and @andrevasims. Arms come in two flavours: brand new and worn out. There are no “worn out” legs, because the textures were too difficult to adjust to the sims’ bodies. And sadly, prosthetic legs will look weird on elder females (as shown here), because their ankles’ mapping is really cursed (sorry about that).

These overlays have very high priority and layer, meaning they should go over any other overlay (explained here). The overlay box is a set of wrenches from this set by Sandy (*cough* also found here for free *cough*), located in Misc/Dressers for 22§.

Download SFS | Dropbox

Credit goes to Criquette, Andreva and Epi. As usual, I only did the copy-pasting in SimPE 😁

Sidenote: If you prefer shiny textures, I recommend trying this overlay box by ja-viera. You can see the arm texture here.

249 notes - Posted July 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Another overlay box, this time with navel piercings! This is something I’ve made for @cobycobsy2k​. Ten colours, for TF-EF. I got the textures from here, but after being resized to 7 pixels wide they’re barely recognizable anymore. You can see a close-up here.

The box is a piercing display I’ve stolen from @deedee-sims​, found in Misc/Dressers for 23§. I tried to make it placeable on counters but kept getting “bad gosub tree number” errors. Sorry about that. At least you can use it with OMSPs!

That’s it. Enjoy, and let me know if you have any problems! Thanks to @cobycobsy2k​ and @coriel-muroz​ for their feedback and encouragement 🥰

Download (SFS) | Dropbox

301 notes - Posted April 15, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #i spend 8 hours a day working and 3 hours commuting so not bad i think!

[snelbz]

The Ranch {2}

An A Court of Thorns and Roses, Nesta x Cassian, Modern AU, fanfiction.

Collaboration: @throne-of-ashes-and-beauty​ x @tacmc​

Summary: Nesta had spent years in Paris, living her dream and drowning in riches as a gourmet chef, capturing the hearts of the city and its people. But, after her father passes away unexpectedly and leaves his cozy, countryside B&B to his oldest daughter, Nesta is moving back home to the tiny town of Velaris, where the ranch, her sisters, and her father’s unfulfilled dream, awaits.

Sidenote: Being posted between two blogs, it is too chaotic to keep up with a tags list, so all chapters will be tagged with “#TheRanchNessian” & “#SharaCollab”.

A/N: This story has been in the works for so long and we have poured hours and hours into it. There have been weekends where we did nothing but write (and drink wine) all day long, because this story just flowed out of us (and, of course, the wine flowed in). We say it all the time, but writing together is our favorite thing to do. This is our first full length fic together and I can’t believe we’re finally sharing it with y’all. As always, let us know what you think and a reminder that Tara and I will be going back and forth posting chapters, so look for chapter 3 on her blog soon!

The Ranch Masterlist

Cassian had been up for hours, but felt as if he’d blinked and it was nine in the morning. He’d woken up at four and while he was making coffee, he looked out the window and watched a young calf grazing in the field. He took a sip of his coffee, and headed towards the fridge to start cooking breakfast and-.

His coffee was forgotten on the counter and his boots and shirt were on in seconds.

If there were cattle up this far onto the property, it could only mean two things. The fence was down somewhere (or worse - cut again) and it had been all night.

He saddled Lyria and rode for what felt like miles before he found the section of fencing that had been, once again, cut clean through.

He cursed as he dismounted, carefully investigating the area. The box powering the fence had been shut down and all three of the conductive wires shredded through. Cassian sighed as he walked through the opening and looked down into the field where the cattle grazed.

There were six cows of varying sizes below.

“Damn it,” he breathed and headed back toward his cabin.

First things first, he had to fix the fence. It would do him no good to catch the missing herd, just for them to get loose again. Then he’d bring Beau down with him to herd them back into their pasture.

After repairing the fence and locating the herd, he found himself by the main house. And once again, that little red sports car was parked in front of her.

With a sigh, Cassian opened the back door and went inside. She was, once again, in the kitchen, but this time she was cleaning. The lemony scent of all-purpose cleaner hit Cassian as he shut the door behind him, more loudly than he should have. 

She peeked over her shoulder, observing him. “Nice to see you fully dressed yourself before gracing me today.”

Cassian chuckled. “Disappointed?”

She just shook her head, going back to cleaning the countertops. “Not at all.”

“Pity,” Cassian mumbled, pulling out a chair from the kitchen table and taking a seat, watching her every move. “Shirt can come off, again, just say the word.” 

“When you speak,” Nesta began, opening one of the top drawers and emptying its unnecessary contents into the garbage, “do you find yourself as annoying as I do?”

Cassian just grinned. “Look, I’ll leave you alone in a minute. Just thought you’d like to be updated on what’s been happening this morning. Also, do you drive from here to the house you’re staying in every time? Because...it’s really not that far. It’s perfectly walkable. Or, are you just afraid of getting your shoes dirty?”

Nesta stopped what she was doing and turned to face him, leaning back against the counter. “First of all, you’re an asshole, but I’m sure that’s not news to you. Secondly, did something happen this morning?”

Cassian watched her for a moment as he tied his hair back. “Some fencing had been cut along the far east pasture line.”

Nesta blinked. “Okay…”

“You don’t know what that means, do you?” he asked, humored. “You lived here for eighteen years before you left, did you not?”

Nesta’s eyes narrowed. “I assume you’re going to tell me, considering you like to hear yourself talk so much.”

“It means, sweetheart, that someone purposefully came onto our land and cut our electric fence, in hopes something would happen to those animals.”

Nesta asked, “You fixed it though?”

“Yes, but I-.”

“Great. Here’s the thing, Cassian,” she turned and continued cleaning. “As you’ve so kindly pointed out, I don’t know the first thing about ranch work. I also don’t care to. So as long as you keep the ranch running smoothly, I don’t need to know everything that goes on.”

Cassian was staring, but unlike yesterday, it wasn’t at the way her ass filled out the jean shorts she wore. It was in shock. “You don’t want to know what’s going on with the ranch?”

“Secondly,” she continued, not acknowledging he’d even spoken, “in regards to our land, I decided to take a look at the property boundaries. I’d like to add another building.”

“Another building? Nesta, there’s barely enough land for the cattle as it is.”

Ignoring him again, she pressed on. “While I was looking for them, the deeds for all three houses fell into my lap. You said you knew my father for a long time, right, Cassian? So surely you’d know how bad his procrastination was.”

His heart dropped into his stomach.

No, there was no way she was about to say what he thought she was.

“Why don’t you check that envelope on the table?”

Cassian reached for it with trembling fingers. When he opened it, he saw that it was the deed to his house, yes, but the bottom line, the line where the original owner’s name belonged…

It was blank.

“Looks like he never got around to going and getting it notarized,” Nesta said, pulling another drawer open. She found silverware inside, her mother’s priceless silver set from their wedding. It was tarnished and bent. She pulled it out and set it to the side, to clean it later on.

Cassian slowly folded up the letter and tossed it onto the table. “So, what? You’re going to kick me out of my house?”

“It’s my house,” Nesta clarified.

Cassian pushed back his chair with such force that Nesta almost flinched. “Let me see his will.”

Nesta turned to face him, meeting his eyes for the first time since he’d opened the envelope. “What?”

“I want to know exactly what he left to you. Shit, I’ll call his fucking lawyer. I’ve lived in that house for eight years, Nesta, taking care of this land like it's my land. You get rid of me, this whole operation goes to shit.” He was fuming, barely able to think clearly. His hands were shaking as he shoved them into his pockets. 

She, however, was the epitome of calm. “I didn’t say I was getting rid of you.”

Cassian’s jaw clenched. 

“I expect you, if you want, of course, to continue working here. Elain says you’re great at what you do and I trust her judgement. But, I do expect you to respect me as your boss, just like you did my father. You will do as I say, and no more meaningless flirtations.”

Cassian scoffed, loudly and humorlessly. “You think a little too highly of yourself, Sweetheart.”

“I will sign the log cabin to you and allow you to continue your and my father’s agreement if you agree to my terms,” she continued, as if manipulating him pleased her. “I want another building on the property, and I want you to build it.”

Cassian blinked, his anger turning back into shock. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

She fished around in a box before pulling out a small polishing rag. She went to work on the silverware. “You said you would do anything that needs to be done.”

“I’m a rancher, Nesta. And a handyman, at best,” he gestured around the kitchen. “I fixed your air conditioning, and I can do other things like that, but I can’t build an entire damn house.”

“Stable,” was all Nesta said.

“Excuse you?”

“A stable. I want a stable closer to the house.”

Cassian was stunned. “You...want a new stable?”

“Yes, the barn and stables down by the round pen are falling apart. I don’t think the horses are safe in there.”

“And you care because..?” He didn’t mean to sound like an ass, but everything he’d learn in the past eight years completely contradicted what she was telling him.

“Just because I didn’t care to learn how to ranch doesn’t mean I don’t love my horses.”

He blinked at her and he hesitated, but spoke. “I can...try. But like I said, I’ve never built anything like that before.”

She set the polishing cloth down and the one fork she’d been meticulously polishing during their entire conversation. “That’s fine. I’ve- I’ve never run a B&B before but here we are.”

“Have you been down to the old stables?” He asked, not accusingly, but curious. “Do you even know how many horses we have?”

“We had nine when I left,” she said, looking out the window. “And they were all fairly young. Theoretically, they could all still be alive. How many?”

“Eight. Sold one, lost one, and had one just appear out of nowhere.” He couldn’t read her tone. Couldn’t tell why she was asking.

“Who was sold?”

Cassian tread carefully, watching her. He stood and got a coffee mug from the cabinet, pouring a cup from the steaming pot on the counter. He took a drink and leaned back against the cabinet. “About three years ago, a girl and her parents stayed the night on the way to a rodeo in Cheyenne. She was a barrel racer and her horse was getting too old. She saw Hue out in the pasture and asked if she could ride her. They paid us cash before they left and Hue is a world champion barrel horse now.”

Nesta nodded, remembering exactly what she’d looked like, why Feyre had given her the name. Nesta had never been a fan of Paint horses, but it was no question that Feyre fell in love. “And the one who died?”

Cassian hesitated again and this time Nesta looked up. His hazel eyes were sad. “He was a great horse, Nes.”

Nesta looked away and tried to blink the tears away.

Phoenix.

“What happened?” she asked, nudging the fork with her finger.

“He just started to colic one day, we’re not exactly sure.” He crossed one booted foot in front of the other. “A day or two after the colic started, we had the doc come out and he said he was completely blocked. If we didn’t get him moving and get that block to pass, we were gonna lose him.” Cassian bumped his heel against the toe of his boot. His spurs jangled as he did. “He never got back to his feet. I’m sorry, Nesta.”

She sniffled and nodded, but refused to look up at him. “You should, uh, go do whatever it is you do now. I’ll talk to you in a bit. I’ll have lunch ready at 1:00, if you’re hungry.” She began to head towards the doorway leading to the living room.

He reached for her wrist. “Nesta, it’s-.”

“Leave,” she said, snatching her arm back. It was firm, but it wasn’t unkind, showing Cassian just how broken up over the news she was. Even more so when she added, “Please.”

She kept walking and was out of his sight as soon as she turned the corner into the living room.

He sighed, rubbing his hands down his face.

Today was nothing like he planned.

____________________________

Nesta spent her day working. After Cassian brought his unpleasant news, and she’d asked him to leave her alone, she didn’t see him. He made himself scarce for the remainder of the afternoon, and she no longer cared what he spent it doing, knowing full well he would make himself useful around the ranch.

Elain was right, he was a great rancher. 

It was why she was allowing him to keep his house on the land. He was right. If he were to leave, the entire ranch would go to complete shit. 

Phoenix lingered in the back of her mind all day, no matter how much she tried not to think about him. 

She finished polishing her mother’s fine silverware, pissed the entire time that her father had treated them like meaningless pieces of plastic. After that, she finished cleaning out the kitchen and was busy in the living room when Elain texted her.

Still on for tonight? We were thinking we could go to the old corner bar.

Nesta sighed. She wanted so desperately to say no, but Elain had missed her, and she had missed Elain. Besides, she’d given Nesta an entire house full of free furniture.

I’ll be there. What time?

8?

Ok. 

Nesta looked at the time. It was just after six. She could certainly use a shower. She hadn’t taken one since she’d arrived the morning before. Her water wasn’t turned on in her little house, but she was too stubborn to ask Cassian where the main was.

Especially after what had happened that morning.

She was tempted to text Elain and ask if she had invited him to dinner, but didn’t want it to seem like she cared.

Because she didn’t. 

Not one bit.

So instead, she bundled everything she would need to get ready into her suitcase and tossed it in her backseat, slamming the door a little harder than she probably needed to.

She mumbled something about ‘not wanting to get her shoes dirty’ as she climbed into the driver seat and started the car, heading up to the main house. She headed into the house and started up the stairs, heading for her old bathroom on the second floor. But she paused and smirked, turning and heading back down the hall, towards the master suite, which took up the bulk of the second floor.

As she walked through the house, she swore she heard the floor creaking upstairs, but knew how much noise this house made while she was growing up. She could only imagine how much it would creak in the middle of the night now.

As she took a quick shower, she pondered the idea of turning the B&B into a haunted mansion type of deal, because there was no way anyone was going to be able to sleep here if the house made as much noise at night as it did during the day. Ultimately, she knew she’d have to get someone out to check the foundation of the house and probably redo the floors at some point.

As she turned the water off and pondered all that she would have to do to fix this place up, she was thankful for her notoriety and success in the world of all things culinary. When she’d gotten the call about her father’s death, she’d been in Paris, talking to young culinary students how to properly chop for the different methods of cutting. His funeral had been planned so quickly that there was no time for her to even request to go. A few weeks later, when she’d received a call from his lawyer, telling her that he’d left her his dream, his baby, there was no question of what she needed to do.

Her three restaurants in Rome, New York, and Paris were all on the market in less than three days. Forty-five minutes later, she sold them to a single buyer for eighteen million dollars.

She’d sold her brand, her craft, everything.

She was thankful, because now she had the funds to do what she needed to save this place.

Stepping out of the shower, Nesta wrapped a towel around her wet body. She ran one through her dripping hair and combed through it. She yawned and checked her phone, finding it wasn’t even seven yet. If Nesta had any hope of staying awake after her long day of cleaning, she’d need to start drinking copious amounts of caffeine now.

She decided coffee didn’t sound half bad and decided to make a pot while she got ready.

Passing by the front door, she locked it, just in case somebody decided he wanted to visit again. She continued into the kitchen and put a pot on to brew.

There was something peaceful about a pot of coffee brewing. Nesta loved the little noises the machine made as it made her a pot of delicious energy filled goodness. 

As it did its job, Nesta turned to head back down the hall and up the stairs to the master bathroom. She was excited to meet Elain’s man. She had heard a lot about Azriel throughout the last few years, and Nesta wanted to meet this guy for herself.

The man that stole her sister's sweet, beautiful heart.

She wondered if Elain had asked Feyre and if so, if Feyre would show up.

Nesta wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

Nesta didn’t care if she didn’t.

Either way, Nesta had to admit that a night out would do her good. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had gone out or done anything for herself, other than work.

As the air conditioner kicked on, she was hit with a sudden chill and regretted only wearing a towel. She’d brought her outfit for the evening and didn’t want to put it on until she was ready to leave, but the clothes she’d worn earlier today were sweaty and gross.

She’d found her mother’s old clothes in one of the closets upstairs earlier and wondered if the floral robe she used to wear was there as well. Tightening her towel, she headed upstairs and was passing by the bathroom when the door opened up.

Nesta screamed and jumped backwards, Cassian stepping back similarly. He almost slipped on the damp tile but kept his footing.

As her breathing returned to normal, Nesta asked, “What in the hell are you doing here? You said you lived in the log cabin!”

“I do, but I got bucked off one of the mares and was covered in mud and shit.” He crossed his arms over his tattooed chest. “Why aren’t you down in your fancy, new house?”

She put her hands on her hips, standing her ground. “My water is off and someone hasn’t told me where the main shutoff is so I can turn it back on.”

Cassian lifted a brow. “Someone hasn’t asked.”

Nesta shook her head. “Get out. I have to get ready.”

Cassian made a show of his eyes grazing over her body, covered in only a towel. She had to force herself to not do the same to him. She was perfectly aware of the small, blue cotton towel that covered only a small portion of his massive frame. She was perfectly aware of how low that towel hung on his hips.

“Can I get dressed first?” He asked, voice quiet as his eyes met hers, once more.

The minute they did, she couldn’t look away. “If you must.”

He looked like he wanted to say something else, especially when his tongue peeked out to wet his bottom lip. But instead, he silently closed the door between them, and Nesta released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

She continued down to the study in the hall and to the closet where she’d found her mother’s clothes. It only took her a few seconds of searching before she found the thin, soft, blue and white fabric.

It felt just like she’d remembered.

Nesta dropped her towel and, after shaking it out, put the robe on, thankful that her father had been such an emotional sap and couldn’t get rid of anything of her mother’s.

Nesta’s mother was a beautiful woman, but Elain was shaped most like her. Her chest and hips were not nearly as full as Nesta’s, which made the short, modest robe her mother had worn around the house nearly obscene on Nesta. Nevertheless, she wore it, loving the feel of it on her skin.

She walked back down the stairs with her towel draped over her arm, finding the bathroom door open and the room empty, steam still fogging the mirror, and turned toward the kitchen to get her coffee. She found him already in there and she hesitated, but continued in.

“Nice robe,” he said, peering over his mug.

“Gotta date?” She shot back, eyeing his clean jeans and button down shirt. His feet were bare.

Cassian chuckled. “Not quite. Your sister asked me to dinner with her and Az.”

Nesta froze, just as she was about to start pouring her coffee.

“Judging from your reaction, I assume you’ll be there, too.”

Nesta sighed, continuing to pour her coffee before taking a sip. “You’d assume correctly.”

Cassian smiled - true and genuine. “Let me drive you. Save gas.”

Nesta didn’t reply. “Tell me about Azriel.”

Cassian's brows shot up. “What?”

“Tell me about him. Elain is sure he’s the one, so I want to know everything.”

Cassian slowly sat his mug down and ran a hand through his damp hair. “He’s a great guy. Caring. Loves Elain more than I ever thought he’d love anyone. We’ve known each other since we were kids. I’m surprised you don’t remember him from high school.”

Nesta’s gaze shot to his. “What?”

Cassian's brows rose. “He went to high school with us.”

With us. Nesta hesitated, and Cassian definitely noticed.

“Ah, I knew you didn’t remember. Doesn’t surprise me. Your nose was always stuck in a book. Everyone thought you were a complete bitch, by the way.”

Nesta sat down her mug with far too much force on the countertop. “You don’t know what the hell you're talking about.”

“Am I wrong?” Cassian asked, chuckling.

Nesta practically growled, “About which part?”

“Any of it.” He took a drink of his coffee.

Nesta was quiet for a few seconds, knowing she couldn’t contradict any of what he’d said.

No, she didn’t remember him.

Yes, her nose was always in a book.

Yes, she was a complete bitch.

Dropping the subject for another time, she instead asked, “What does he do?”

Cassian rolled his eyes. “Why can’t you ask Elain or Az these things at dinner?”

“Because I want prior knowledge going in. She mentioned something about a dealership last night? But also tractors?”

“New tractor dealership opened in town. He’s a mechanic there. He used to work for a local business, but they had to shut it down last year. You’ll come to find that most local businesses around here aren’t making it anymore,” he said.

Nesta looked around. She knew the B&B had been struggling for years, but her father had never given up on it.

“Well, I guess I’ll get ready, if you’ll excuse me,” Nesta said, taking her mug and walking toward the hallway.

“No more questions?” Cassian asked, and when Nesta looked over her shoulder she found him watching her walk away.

“Is he good to my sister?” Nesta asked.

She was surprised to see his eyes soften when he said, “Very.”

Nesta turned without another word and headed back to the master bedroom to finish getting ready.

A half hour later, her hair and makeup were done and she was shimmying herself into a tight pair of jeans, a black tank top, and a pair of tennis shoes. Cassian was still sitting at the kitchen table, scrolling through his phone.

“I can drive myself, you know,” she muttered, putting her empty mug in the sink.

When she turned back around, his phone was ignored, all his attention was on her. A moment passed and he cleared his throat. “I realize that, but it’s never a bad idea to have a designated driver when you’re going to a bar.”

Nesta raised a brow. “You don’t drink?”

Cassian's grin widened. “I can just hold my alcohol.”

“And I can’t?” Nesta scoffed.

Cassian shrugged. “I don’t know, can you?”

Nesta took a minute to think about it. “Fine. There’s no point in both of us driving. Since I mean, we live together. Not together! But- Shit.” She sighed. “But we’re taking my car.”

He chuckled, but she could see the grin he was hiding, and got to his feet. “Like hell we are.”

They bickered the whole way to the door, which took longer than one would have expected. Nesta telling him she wasn’t riding in a dirty, beat up, old pickup and Cassian telling her to get the stick out of her ass and not worry about a little dirt.

As they stepped out onto the front porch, Nesta locking the door and hiding the key, she said, “These shoes were two hundred dollars, I’m not putting them anywhere near cow shit.”

Cassian just stared at her. “You own a cattle ranch.” Nesta hated it when he used logic and was going to tell him as much when he continued on and headed down the porch stairs. “And they’re just as likely to get dirty at the bar as they are out here. Now come on, this isn’t up for discussion. I can’t even fit in your tiny car.” He opened the passenger door and waited for him.

But Nesta was staring. Mouth open, not blinking, full on staring. “What is that?”

Cassian sighed. “It’s my truck, now get in, let’s go. It’s been a long ass day and I want a beer.”

This was not the truck Nesta was expecting to find out front. This definitely wasn’t the truck she’d seen him driving around the property. No, that truck had been on this property for as long as she could remember.

Nesta, stunned into silence, did as she was told. He had to help her up into the cab, and the second his hands were on her, she felt like the air had been pulled from her lungs.

“You okay?” Cassian asked, waiting as she turned her legs out of the way of the door.

Nesta nodded and he closed the door, heading to the driver’s side. She shook her head a couple times, trying to clear the fog in her head that always seemed to cloud her thoughts to when she was around him.

He started the truck, which was much quieter than Nesta was expecting and they were on their way.

It was quiet the first few minutes, only quiet music playing through the radio. Cassian kept time with the songs in multiple ways. Sometimes, he would brush his fingers along his jeans, almost like he was playing guitar. Sometimes, he’d tap the beat out with his non-driving foot. But mostly, he drummed on the steering wheel, often with his thumbs but occasionally, his whole hands.

Nesta just stared out the window. Finally, she turned to him and asked, “I’m sorry, if this comes off as rude, but how exactly were you able to buy this truck?” Cassian opened his mouth to reply but Nesta charged on. “Cause this is a very, very nice, very, very new truck.”

Cassian looked offended. “Definitely came off as rude.” Nesta rolled her eyes. “I-”

“I’m just kidding, relax,” Cassian said, laughing. “We just met, you can’t know all my secrets.” 

“Oh my god,” Nesta began, staring at him from the passenger seat. “It’s illegal, isn’t it? You’re a hit man, aren’t you? Or a thief, oh my-”

“I can promise you I don’t break the law,” Cassian promised, then winked. “Often.” 

Nesta shook her head. “You’re an interesting man.”

Cassian laughed. “Yeah, so are you. But, you know, a woman. By the way, we need to get you a pair of boots.”

Nesta looked down at her sneakers. “What’s wrong with these?”

“First of all, who the hell spends two hundred dollars on a pair of tennis shoes?” Cassian asked, then went on without giving her a chance to answer. “Secondly, must I continuously remind you that you now own a ranch?”

“I can be a ranch owner in my nice shoes.”

Cassian smiled as he turned into the parking lot of the bar. “But why the hell would you want to?”

She looked across the truck to his giant feet. He still wore his dusty boots. “Maybe you’re the one that needs new shoes. How long have you had those? They’re practically falling apart.” 

“We’re not talking about me here, okay? We’re talking about you.” He hopped out of the truck before Nesta could respond and as quick as a flash, he was opening her door for her and helping her down from the cab. “And I’m pretty sure as soon as we go inside, you’ll see that I’m not exactly in the minority here, sweetheart.”

When he put her feet down on the ground, he kept his arms around her for a second and Nesta groaned in disgust and pushed back against his chest.

His rock hard, muscled chest.

He stepped back and as Nesta looked up into his hazel eyes, she tried not to think about the two times she’s seen him without his shirt, and the one with almost nothing. She cleared her throat and looked away. She started heading for the door and said, “So, heads up this could be...rough.”

Cassian caught up, sliding his hands in his pockets, after locking the truck behind them. “Okay?”

“I’m sure Elain invited Feyre, though I don’t know if she’ll come.” Nesta paused, realizing just how much anxiety she was feeling on walking through those peeling double doors. “She hates confrontation just as much as I do.”

Cassian was confused. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t she come?”

Nesta sighed, stopping before they got too close to the doors. “Feyre and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms, okay? She’s never forgiven me for leaving when mom died and I’ve never exactly given her a reason to, but… Gods, I just couldn’t stay here anymore.”

“It’s going to be fine,” Cassian said, leaning against the brick wall. “Rhys will be here, and I’m sure he can calm her down.”

“Who’s Rhys?” Nesta asked, glancing over at him.

His eyebrows nearly shot into his hairline. “Her fiancé…”

“Her fiancé?” Nesta rubbed her temples. “I need a drink.”

She felt calloused hands wrap around her wrists and they were pulled from her head. Cass dropped her hands at her sides and said “It’s a good thing we’re at a bar then because I think I can help with that.” Despite herself, Nesta laughed. “Come on, boss. Let’s go.”

Her nose wrinkled as they started walking into the bar together. “Oh, don’t call me that. I don’t like it.”

Cassian snorted. “You sure? I would’ve thought the subservient inferior thing would do it for you.”

Nesta threw her head back and laughed, the sound so rich and beautiful, it stunned Cassian into silence for a moment.

“Cassian!”

His head whipped to the side, toward the bartender who’d called his name. “What’s up, Luce?”

He pointed toward the far corner of the bar. “In the back, corner booth. You want the usual?”

Cassian glanced down at Nesta. She asked, “What’s the usual?”

He smirked. “Guess you’ll have to find out.”

She didn’t miss a beat before she tilted her head and said, “Make mine a double.”

Cassian’s eyebrows raised again and he said, “Okay. I’ll see you at the table.”

“Okay.” Nesta walked towards the back corner that the bartender, Lucien, she recalled his name being, letting her hips sway a little more than she typically would. But this banter, this back and forth with Cassian... It made her feel...different.

It had been far too long since she’d been with a man. Far too long since she’d found release in anything but her hand or some form of plastic. And even though he annoyed her to no end, even though he pushed her buttons and made her insane, Nesta found herself wondering just how far she could push him.

She was thinking about how good he’d looked wearing nothing but jeans and those dirty boots when someone stepped in her path. “Excuse me, if I could just-.” Nesta paused, realizing that she was looking into her own eyes. “Feyre?

A decade had done her baby sister well. She had grown up, that was for sure, a woman now, not the awkward teenager Nesta had left behind.

Feyre didn’t say anything, didn’t smile or even react to her eldest sister saying her name. Instead, she pulled back her hand.

Next thing Nesta knew, her face was screaming in sharp, searing pain. Strong arms wrapped around her and turned her away from her sister’s rage but her voice seemed to be farther away, too. Granted, the entire bar went silent at the sound of skin on skin, and when Nesta looked up, tears welling in her left eye, she found Cassian looking down at her. “You okay?”

She nodded, pressing her hand to her already swelling cheek. She could hear another hushed male voice calming Feyre down but couldn’t find the courage to look away from Cassian’s hazel eyes.

Cassian let her go and turned his back to her. His voice was light as he said, “A simple hello would have been good, Feyre.”

Nesta watched over his shoulder.

Feyre was storming away, and all that stood in her place was a man who Nesta assumed was Rhys. 

He looked uncomfortable, rubbing the back of his neck. “She, uh, needs a minute.”

Meanwhile, at the table in the corner, Elain looked horrified. She was sitting, hands over her mouth, as a man wearing a black hoodie and a baggy beanie whispered into her ear. 

Nesta was mortified.

Even as the people around her moved on, resuming their conversations and whatever else, Nesta knew her face had turned a deep shade of red - and not just where Feyre had slapped her. 

“This was a mistake,” she whispered, backing away. “Take me back to the ranch.”

Cassian turned to meet her gaze and Rhys followed Feyre into the hallway where the restrooms were, both of them disappearing. 

“Stay a while,” Cassian said, voice low. 

“After that?” Nesta laughed, palm still pressed against her cheek. “Fuck, no. Take me back.”

“Not before you have a drink.”

Nesta’s embarrassment was quickly turning into anger. “Take. Me. Back.”

Cassian paid her no mind. Instead, he went around her and spoke in hushed tones to Lucien. The bartender nodded, poured two shots and placed them beside what Cassian had previously ordered - the usual. 

Before Cassian could even say a word, Nesta had two shots down and was sipping on a tall glass of whiskey. 

Cassian watched with what looked like amazement. “Slow d-”

“Tell me to slow down and you’re the next person in this bar getting slapped,” Nesta snapped, sitting on a barstool. 

Cassian took a seat next to her. “Yes, ma’am.” 

“I can’t believe she fucking slapped me,” Nesta said, quietly, head already beginning to feel light. She didn’t drink much, just a glass of wine from time to time. She spent too much time working to drink. “I knew she wouldn’t be exactly pleased to see me, but…”

“When she comes back, I’m sure she’ll apologize,” Cassian promised, putting his own glass to his lips. 

“I don’t want an apology,” Nesta said.

Cassian shook his head. “I know we’ve just met, but you are one stubborn woman.”

Nesta was so focused on her drink that she didn’t notice Elain coming toward her. It wasn’t until her arms were thrown around Nesta’s neck that she put her glass down on the bar.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said, obviously trying to pretend like their family drama hadn’t just been the bar’s entertainment. “This is Azriel.”

Nesta smiled, taking in his dark apparel. “You don’t look like someone that would work on tractors.” A laugh sputtered from her lips.

Cassian looked from her, to her glass, then to Elain. “She wasn’t kidding. She really can’t hold her liquor.” 

Azriel just smiled, gently. “Not the first time I’ve heard. Elain’s told me a lot about you.”

Nesta leaned closer to him when she whispered, “And Cassian has told me a lot about you.”

“Oh no,” Azriel chuckled, looking to Cassian. “All good things I hope?”

Cassian shrugged. “Keep hoping.”

About that time, a door slammed on the other half of the bar. The four of them turned to see Feyre storm from the bathroom, grab her purse from the booth and walk out the front door. She didn’t so much as spare a glance at their direction.

“Oof,” Azriel breathed, watching the door slowly close behind Feyre’s retreating figure. He then glanced over to see Rhysand leaving the bathroom, rubbing his hands over his face in exasperation. “Bigger oof.”

Rhy looked at the table and found it empty, but glanced over and found their group looking towards him. He made his way through the crowd until he joined them.

As he approached, a shot glass appeared next to Azriel’s arm and he handed it to Rhys after throwing a grateful look to Lucien. Rhys tossed it back and let out a sharp breath. He pointed at Cass, Az and Elain with each word he said. “Not one of you assholes could at least warn me that she was coming?”

Nesta understood his frustrations, but the alcohol in her had her too far gone to care. “What? How am I the bad guy here?”

Elain looked sympathetically at Nesta as she said, “If we did, Feyre wouldn’t have come and you know it.”

“Wow,” Nesta said, cutting off whatever Rhysand was about to say in response. “You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

“Well, Feyre’s pissed now, so...” Rhysand sighed, then truly looked at Nesta. 

Nesta couldn’t tell what he was thinking and, thanks to the alcohol, she really didn’t care. “Look, you hurry after her and tell her that I love her. Okay? Then...you can come back and get me another drink. Bartender!”

“Okay,” Cassian said, looking over his shoulder to shake his head at Lucien. “I think you-.” When Cassian looked back to Nesta, she had finished off his drink. “Seriously?”

“Also, who the fuck does Feyre think she is? I mean...she isn’t perfect, either. She hates me, so what? She’s not the only one that ha-ha-hates me. I hate me. I had to get out. I had to leave, okay? I had to go. It’s-it’s-it’s not my fault she doesn’t understand that.” Nesta was pointing to where Feyre had disappeared through the double doors, into the night. “I had to leave. I had to.”

Elain looked up to Azriel with sorrow-filled brown eyes. 

Nesta snorted. “Cassian.” She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close to her. “Get the red-haired man to give me another glass of the usual.” 

All of Rhysand’s frustration seemed to have faded as he watched Nesta allow the alcohol to consume her. “Look, I’ll talk to Feyre, okay? Maybe we can get together...soon…”

Nesta shrugged. “She won’t listen. She’s almost as stubborn as me. You know, people have always said we both take after our mo-.” Nesta froze, unable to get the word out. She cleared her throat, picking up the glass behind her that had just been refilled. “Our mom.”

With that, she downed its contents. 

Cassian handed her a glass of water and stepped in front of her and she sipped it. He leaned down so he was eye level with her. “You okay?” She nodded. “You gonna get sick?” She shook her head no. “Good.”

He took the now half empty glass of water and set it back on the bar, before unceremoniously tossing Nesta over his shoulder. He grabbed her clutch where it was sitting on the bar and waved it at his family. “Glad we could do this, can’t wait to get everyone back together again.”

“Put. Me. Down!” Each word Nesta hollered was punctuated by a swift hit to his lower back. Or was it his ass? She couldn’t tell, nor did she care.

“Lucien, I’ll get you next time, okay?”

Cassian didn’t even need to look back over his shoulder to see his friend close out his tab at a zero balance and wrote his name on the long IOU list.

He pushed through the open doors and Nesta was still fighting him as he carried her towards the truck. “Put me down, you brute!”

“Nope, I’m doing you like you asked first. Taking you back to the ranch.” He readjusted his grip on her and his left hand planted firmly on her ass.

She gasped. “You did that on purpose.”

Cassian chuckled. “Made you stop fighting me.”

He unlocked the passenger door and dropped her on the truck bench. He tossed her clutch inside before shutting the door and walking to the driver’s side. As he was getting inside, Nesta locked eyes with Feyre, who was sitting on the bed of a black truck, parked a few spaces away. 

Waiting for Rhysand, no doubt.

But Rhysand was not the reason that Feyre’s cheeks were red and blotchy, her eyes swollen. 

Nesta quickly looked away as Cassian backed out of their parking spot and found the main road. 

“That was fun,” Cassian observed. 

Nesta looked over at him, watched as he kept one hand on the wheel and rested the other on the gear shift. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, revealing tattoos along his forearms. 

“Do they have meaning?” Nesta asked, surprised at how quiet her voice had become.

Cassian glanced at her, brow raised, before realizing she was looking at his tattoos. “Some of them, yeah.”

“Let me guess, you’re not going to tell me because I can’t know all your secrets?” She asked, repeating the excuse he had told her so many times throughout the last forty-eight hours.

Cassian huffed a laugh, biting on his bottom lip. “Look at you, already knowing what I’m going to say.”

Nesta laughed, under her breath, as she looked at the road in front of them. There had been a time when Nesta had loved Velaris, had loved all it had to offer. She rested her head against the window and admired the starlight. 

“What about you?” Nesta asked, refusing to look his way. “Do you think I’m a bitch?”

“I think you’re….” He weighed a few words in his head, deciding which one fit best. “Difficult.”

“Difficult?” Nesta laughed. “You make me sound like a misbehaving child!”

“Well…” Cassian said, taking a sharp breath between his teeth.

“Shut up!” Nesta cried, laughing again, covering her face with her hands.

The truck stopped and settled as Cassian put it into park. A calloused finger gently pried one of her hands from her face. “Are you okay?”

Nesta knew he wasn’t asking her about her alcohol tolerance level this time. She pulled her hand away, which had still been resting on her throbbing cheek, and pressed her fingers into the tender skin. She nodded.

“I’m sorry that happened. I really am.”

She looked over at him, his voice much closer than she expected. She didn’t recognize the surroundings around her. “Where are we?”

“Outside my place. I knew the freezer was out at the main house and didn’t know what you had in yours. I know I’ve got a bag of peas inside I was gonna grab and-.”

Nesta was unbuckling her seatbelt and sliding out of the cab.

“I was just gonna grab them and take you back up to the main house,” Cassian said, killing the engine and hopping out behind her.

“I want to see it,” Nesta said, walking toward the porch. “I’ve always thought it was cute.” She stepped in something slimy and looked down. “Are you kidding me?!”

Cassian walked over to where she was standing and laughed. He laughed harder than he had in months and said, “Now do you believe we should get you some boots?” Nesta didn’t say a word, she just scraped what she could off into the grass around her. Cassian made his way up the steps of the cabin and said, “Besides, that wasn’t from a horse. That was from Beau.”

Nesta asked, “Who’s Beau?” right as Cassian opened the door.

A Blue Heeler pup, no older than six months came tearing out the door.

Nesta instantly forgot about her shoes as the pup jumped up on her legs. 

Cassian whistled. “Down, Beau.”

“It’s okay,” Nesta laughed, scratching behind his ears. “He’s sweet.”

Beau wagged his tail, knowing full well he was showing off and his cuteness was being accepted. The pup trotted around Nesta as she crossed the threshold into the small cabin.

Cassian tossed his keys on a side table, next to a recliner in the main room. “I’m training him to help me around the ranch.” 

Nesta raised a brow as Beau hurried out the front door. “Yeah? How’s that going?”

Cassian closed the screen door as he watched Beau chasing his tail at the bottom of the steps. “Not great so far.” 

Nesta laughed, stepping up beside him. “Thanks for driving me tonight. Even if you hauling me out of the bar was completely unnecessary….I would have done something I’d regret if I stayed.”

Cassian glanced sideways at her before turning to face her, head on. “Starting to sober up, are you?”

Nesta snorted. “I’m fine. My head is just a little...light.”

“Ah,” Cassian grinned. “The light phase.”

Nesta rolled her eyes, realizing how close they were standing to one another before taking a step back.

“So,” Cassian said, running his fingers through his hair. “You’re inside. What do you think?”

It was simple. Clean.

There was a woven blanket tossed over the recliner in the living room, but that, a soft leather couch, the side table, and the television sitting on top of a little table, were all that were in there. There was no table in the kitchen, but a refrigerator, a microwave, and an oven. 

“It’s nice,” she said, quietly.

Cassian laughed. “I’m not sure I believe you. Take a seat.”

He nodded toward the recliner and Nesta obeyed as Cassian went into the kitchen and opened the freezer, pulling out a sealed bag of frozen peas.

Nesta had made herself comfortable by the time he reached her and placed the bag gently over her cheek. “I know it was shitty what she did, but Feyre has one hell of a slap.” 

Nesta nudged him in the shin with her foot.

He chuckled and made his way back towards the kitchen. Nesta took a minute to lean back and close her eyes. She heard the opening and closing of a few cupboards and some ice cubes tinkling in glasses. She heard tiny hard pieces of food getting poured into a bowl. She heard his boots, heavy on the wood floor, as he made his way to the door and whistled once. The dog was inside in a matter of seconds and chowing down on his dinner. And then she heard a thud near her head.

Her eyes flew open as she looked over where the noise came from.

“I don’t think I can handle another usual,” she admitted, sheepishly.

He chuckled, leaning against the counter top bar. “I can promise you’ll like that better than the one at the bar. Try it.”

Nesta hesitantly picked it up and sniffed. It smelled sweet. “What is it?”

“Try it, sweetheart, and then I’ll tell you.” He took a large drink from his own glass, which seemed to be the same thing she was drinking. She watched him for a minute, eyes narrowed. “What?” He laughed, chewing on an ice cube.

She looked from him to the drink and back. “Waiting to make sure you aren’t about drop dead from whatever poison you were trying to sneak to me.”

Cassian began to laugh. No, not only laugh. He began to howl. He was laughing so hard, Beau began to howl along with him. Nesta’s eyes were huge by the time he calmed down and could speak to her.

“Just try it, damn it,” he said, before helping himself to more of his own. 

Nesta took a small, hesitant sip. The cool liquid was definitely sweeter than the usual at the bar.

“Maple bourbon,” Cassian muttered, finishing his glass and setting it on the table before sitting on the floor across from the recliner. 

Nesta took another sip. “It’s good.”

“I know,” Cassian said, smiling up at her.

They watched each other for a moment, and Nesta soon became uncomfortable at his gaze. Not because she feared him, but because she didn’t fear him at all. 

“I’m sorry about this morning. I was unfair to you.”

Cassian’s brows rose. “You’re just saying that because you’re drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk.”

“Neither am I,” he said, but his voice had grown significantly softer. 

Their eyes still remained connected to one another’s. 

Nesta swore she could hear his deep, unsteady breaths, as she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “I should probably go.”

She looked over and couldn’t read the expression on his face. She set the bag down, giving him her attention. “Or...you could stay and have another drink with me.” Nesta opened her mouth to explain why that was a bad idea but he held up a finger and began again. “Not because I’m trying to get in your pants, but because I think it’ll be easier for us to open up this way. No holds barred, yeah? No secrets, for the most part, just two coworkers getting to know each other.”

Nesta watched him, waited, and asked, “For the most part?”

Cassian smiled, a wicked grin, and said, “See, that’s where the drinking comes in. You don’t have to answer, but then you have to drink.”

She blinked at him. “So we’re playing ‘Twenty Questions’?”

Cassian stood, taking her glass with a huff, and saying, “Well, now it doesn’t sound as cool, does it?”

Nesta giggled, actually giggled, as he filled their glasses back to the top and gave Nesta a straw. He reached out to hand it back to her, but took it back at the last minute. She flinched and looked up at him. “No half ass girly sips,” he said, hazel eyes sparkling. “It better count.”

She snatched the glass from him and he laughed, sitting back down against the wall. He whistled once and instantly Beau was there against his side.

Nesta’s eyebrows were raised. “I’m impressed,” she said, not hiding her amusement.

He rubbed the pup’s side lovingly. “He’s a good one, that’s for sure.” He pulled his boots off one at a time and tossed them by the door, each with a loud thud. Once he’d finally settled in, he waved to her. “Ladies first.”

Nesta took a minute to think about it. “How old are you?”

Cassian blinked. “That’s the worst question, ever.”

Nesta threw her hands in the air. “Well, I thought I’d start with something simple.”

Cassian laughed, leaning his head back. “Alright. Twenty-seven.”

“Me too,” Nesta said.

“I know. We were in the same graduating class.”

Nesta cursed. She kept forgetting they went to the same high school. 

“Your turn,” she urged.

“Hmmmm,” he said, pretending to think a lot harder than he actually was. “Are you happy to be back on the ranch?”

For a split second, Nesta thought about taking a drink, but she came to the conclusion that the question really wasn’t all that bad. “Kinda.”

“That’s it?” he laughed. “Kinda?”

“You didn’t say I had to give extensive answers,” she laughed.

Cassian shook his head. “Well, now I am. New rule.”

“You can’t just add rules.”

“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” he said, leaning back on his hands as Beau nestled himself in Cassian’s lap.

Nesta pursed her lips, rethinking that drink, but decided to attempt to explain herself. “The only reason I haven’t wanted to be here is because of the memories. And I’m really hoping that I can…make new memories to replace the bad ones.”

In the end, she did take a drink, but out of fortification, not punishment. Cassian saw that and accepted her answer, not wanting to push her. She blew a quick breath out before asking, “You said you’d been working for my dad for eight years, yeah?” Cassian nodded, even though that clearly couldn’t have just been the question. “What did you do the year between graduation and starting here?”

“Tried my hand at the professional rodeo circuit.” Cassian didn’t miss a beat.

It took Nesta back. “Really? What’d you do? Bull riding?”

“Hell no,” Cassian laughed. “I wasn’t that stupid. Well, no, I was that stupid. I was just too big. You gotta be little to ride bulls. No, I was a team roper.”

“Wow.” Nesta was watching Cassian with her head tilted, almost looking at him in a new light. “Header or heeler?”

“Header,” he replied, pretending to throw the rope at the horns. “Rhys was my heeler. We were good. Won every PRCA Jr. rodeo event in our areas. So we figured it’d be nothing to make that jump up with the big dogs.” He chuckled. “We were so wrong.” He took a quick sip before saying, “The day we got back into town I ran into your dad down at Tractor Supply. Told me he needed a ranch hand to help out since Elain had college every day and Feyre was still in high school.” Cassian chuckled. “He actually hired both of us on at first, me and Rhys. He only lasted about three months though.” He began to laugh again.

“What? Why?” Nesta couldn’t imagine her father firing anyone, much less someone she had gone to school with.

“That was when he caught him sneaking out of Feyre’s window at two in the morning.”

Nesta’s eyes grew wide before she began to howl. “Oh my god. Elain forgot to mention that in our texts throughout the years.”

Cassian laughed, gripping his glass tighter. “It was hilarious. I let your dad know I was on his side, and I proved that by picking on Rhysand every chance I got.”

“Wow,” Nesta breathed, laughter fading. “And you’ve been here ever since?”

“That’s an extra question,” he said. “Unfair.”

Nesta rolled her eyes. “Fine. Go.”

Cassian’s eyes softened as he met her gaze. “Elain said you were a chef. Did you like it? Was it hard to leave?”

Nesta tilted her head. “That’s two questions.”

“Pretend it’s one,” Cassian said.

Nesta looked at him for a minute before taking a long, slow drink. What could she have said? Yes, I loved it. It was my dream. I was young, incredibly successful, and rich as hell. I left because I felt guilty for the death of my parents.

Cassian nodded, watching her. “Fair enough.”

Nesta cleared her throat before abruptly asking, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Cassian’s amused smile returned.

Nesta shrugged. “I’ve seen you near-nude twice now, it’s a question, as your boss, I thought I should ask.”

Cassian’s smile grew as he shook his head. “No, I don’t. Not a lot of time for one. Haven’t really been looking. What about you? Someone overseas you were seeing?”

Nesta looked down at Beau, who was snoring quietly. “Is that your next question?”

Cassian sighed. “I suppose so.”

Nesta shook her head. “No. I worked too much. I haven’t been on a date in...shit. A few years?”

“Years?” Cassian said, eyes wide. “Hell, woman. You couldn’t take one night off from your busy schedule in years?”

She simply shrugged. “No.”

Cassian took a drink, watching her. “When’s the last time someone took care of you, sweetheart?”

As the words left his lips, Nesta was feeling hot and cold all over, all at the same time. And she didn’t think it was just from her drink. “It’s not your turn,” she breathed.

He swallowed hard and nodded, chuckling. “Go on, then.”

She took another drink of her own, before she asked, “How did you afford that truck out there.”

Cassian didn’t even try to look like he contemplated answering as he put the glass to his lips and drank deeply. “But I promise it’s not illegal,” he added with a chuckle. Nesta could hear the slight slur to his words, making the bit of drawl heavier than normal. “Do you really not remember me from high school?”

Nesta felt her shoulders sag. “No, I- I don’t. I’m sorry. But don’t feel bad,” she quickly added. “I sort of blocked everyone out and don’t remember anyone. So at least I don’t remember you, instead of remembering you for a bad reason.”

Cassian nodded, amused. “Well, I remember you.”

Her cheeks burned. “It’s my turn to ask a question.”

“I can’t talk in between questions?” He laughed.

Nesta shook her head. “Nope, that’s my rule.”

Cassian took a sip from his glass. “Rules were made to be broken, you know.”

Nesta couldn’t stop her smile. “What do your tattoos mean?”

Cassian rolled up his sleeves even further and examined the ink. “A lot of things.”

“Bad answer,” Nesta said, slipping off her shoes and bringing her feet up beneath her in the chair.

Cassian nodded. “Then I guess I’ll drink.” He raised his glass before bringing it to his mouth. 

“And here I thought we were playing this game to get to know each other,” Nesta laughed.

“Can’t give you-“

“All your secrets,” Nesta finished. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Do you have any tattoos?” He asked.

“What?” She laughed. “So you can know mine but I can’t know yours?”

His eyes lit up. They were glazed, but so excited. “So you do. What are they?”

Nesta took a sip, but because she was copping out, but because as the night went on, as the ice melted into the sweet bourbon, she loved the taste of it. “It’s just one,” she said, standing. She began to unbutton her pants and she heard Cassian swallow harshly. She looked up at him. “Down boy,” she chuckled. “It’s on my hip. I can’t exactly show with my pants all the way on.”

He cleared his throat and stood, refilling his glass. When he came back to the threadbare living room, Nesta had the left side of her jeans pulled down, exposing her hip bone. As he looked at it, Nesta explained, “It’s a dandelion. To remind myself that everyone, even I deserve a second chance, even though you might have to endure some harsh winds.”

When she looked away from her tattoo, she caught sight of the way his jeans seemed to be a bit more tight than they were before. Letting her eyes travel up his body, she saw the  way his body was rigid, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. His eyes, that woody hazel that she kept losing herself in, it was almost completely gone, his pupils blown out. “Your turn,” he breathed, and as his breath fanned across her face, she realized how closely they stood together.

Nesta’s breathing hitched as her entire body felt weightless.

His words from before replayed in her mind. When’s the last time someone took care of you, sweetheart?

“If given the chance,” she began, voice hushed, “would you fuck me?”

The question, asked in no more than a whisper, lingered in the quiet cabin.

Cassian said nothing as those deep, hazel eyes bore into her own. And then, he took a long, slow drink, before setting down his glass on the table beside her chair.

Breaking his gaze from hers, he went down the short hallway and disappeared into the back bedroom.

Nesta stared after him. She probably should have been embarrassed, but the alcohol coursing through her system told her not to be.

Instead, jeans still unbuttoned, she took an unbalanced step toward the front door, then another.

It wasn’t until she heard quick, heavy footsteps coming back her way that she turned around and was met with Cassian’s lips crashing into her own.

#the ranch nessian #shara collab #tacmc toab tag team #toab tacmc collab #throne of ashes and beauty #tacmc #throne of ashes and beauty x tacmc collab #nessian #nesta archeron #cassian #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acosf #a court of silver flames

[polandspringz]

Director’s Cut of My Fic “I’d Rather Be Dry” Part 2 (Chapter 3)

Chapter 3 was probably the most painful chapter of a fic I’ve ever had to write, and not because I was sad writing the sad scenes. No, this fic was physically painful to write because it took 3 days and I was struggling to sit down and write it the entire time because even though I had the whole thing planned out, I just felt like I was dragging through it and eventually had to change some things to speed it up a bit. Still, it ended up being the longest chapter because I had to tie up so many loose ends! Luckily for me, my beta-reader @primal-shitposts​ read it through for me again, so I didn’t have to suffer again!!! If you want to support not only me but my beta-reader who makes sure my fic lacks grammar errors (and also gives you this great commentary on these types of posts), please go to their art blog @primal-interstellar​ and give their artwork some love!!! They deserve it after slogging through this mess of a fic for a game they don’t even play.

Since there are a lot of funny quotes from this proof-read, I’ll post them all under read more. Beta-reader (Primal) is in pink. If you see blue text, that’s me typing stuff in frantically before she skipped to the next line:

I actually originally wrote the opening scene with Satan in a lot more detail. It dropped us in the present where he was in the office, and Diavolo and everyone was just looking on as he slowly ran out of energy. But, I got about 3 pages in and realized it was dragging and so I cut it and swapped it for a flashback on the walk home.

While I intended for this to be a much more dramatic anime scene of Satan just silent as he ran out of steam and could barely move his arms save for slapping the guy, I love this interpretation.

I CAN’T EXPLAIN WHY BUT THIS WAS THE FUNNIEST COMMENT IN THE DOCUMENT. NOTHING TOPPED THIS. I DON’T UNDERSTAND BUT IT’S SO OUT OF LEFT FIELD IT HAD ME DYING

Primal knows about Lucifer birthing Satan because the moment I started playing the game I made her watch a crack video with me that mentioned it. Although I know she likes Leviathan cause sea monsters, I’m convinced Satan might be one of her favorites. On a side note, writing dialogue for Satan is very hard because he is very proper but when he snaps, I always feel unsure of whether it sounds believable or just like a string of curses that a twelve year old would think sounds cool. 😎 I do like the father/son dynamic Lucifer and Satan hint at though (and from what I hear the new lessons might be adding on to that? oWO)

I honestly don’t know how the demons who attacked MC aren’t dead yet. They’re basically disfigured and then Satan just doubled the damage and then tripled it in the council room this chapter. Somehow they’re not dead though! I wonder what MC will have to say about their punishment...

QUICK, SOMEONE DRAW SATAN WITH THE CRAFTING TABLE STARING AT THE DOOR WHILE THE EQUATIONS FLY BY HIS HEAD

I did choose the “yes” option when Beel asked to eat me in the animal event. It was not because of vore though, but I do make many vore jokes. I could imagine MC being forced to explain vore to Lucifer (or all the brothers) after making a joke and them being confused. Writing Beel’s breakdown this chapter wasn’t initially planned, and it was sort of what really started to make writing this fic slow down because as you might notice throughout the fic, I suddenly felt the need to give every brother an equal amount of screen time which sort of led to me RUNNING OUT OF VERBS for how to make each breakdown unique.

Okay, so the next part. I was actively seeing the comments as they popped up, but there was a delay with the comment box on the side appearing before the actual comments in the text. So, I saw this:

And had two seconds to go “Oh no” before this was added:

From here on it was chaos.

Listen, the boys are idiots. They’re all concerned, Mammon just doesn’t want MC to get upset again. In reality, this sort of dialogue stemmed more from me still lingering on the original idea of the fic. The original concept of this fic (when it was just a one-shot) was MC still getting attacked by a demon in the locker-room showers (for their soul) but because I was originally thinking about a female reader, I knew that it could have more of an undertone for sexual assault. I actually first discussed the fic idea with Primal months back when I first got into Obey Me, because I wanted to write a snippet of each brother helping MC after the event (it wasn’t going to be extreme, I was thinking more accidental scratches during the scuffle closer to the chest and such and maybe the assailants having more dialogue demeaning MC for being around the 7 brothers all the time) but I realized I didn’t have much experience with that and it would make writing scenes that I thought about (such as Asmo wanting to give MC a bath as aftercare) difficult as I could see someone after an attack like that not wanting to be in a bathroom with someone else or be vulnerable to them. I ended up playing with that idea in my previous Mammon fic with more different comfort aspects and touching on that kind of assault briefly, so this fic ended up just being focused on the brothers’ being upset over what happened to MC.

As much as writing Satan’s angry dialogue is a pain, I have fun making him talk with a more formal tone, it’s closer to how I normally talk, and prefer to write my characters talking. I have no problem writing contractions or more casual speech, but for one of my fantasy stories, where I’m writing in English but trying to differentiate different languages through italics or just whether they use certain contractions or not, I tend to really stress the characters that use absolutely zero and more complicated synonyms. 

I DON’T KNOW WHY BUT IT WOULD BE HILARIOUS IF MC JUST ASKED FOR SOUP OUT OF THE BLUE I’M IMAGINING ASMO BEING LIKE “BITCH I TOOK ALL THIS TIME DEBATING OVER HOT OR COLD TEA AND NOW YOU’RE SAYING YOU’RE FINE WITH HOT SOUP???”

I know the shower idea may have been really corny or cringey. I know a lot of people write things like the water in Devildom as being much hotter (cause their near hell and their demons! It makes sense, also I think Asmo might have mentioned in a text chat he would make the water cooler for MC? But I could be wrong) but I imagine their is some demons who aren’t powerful enough to handle a lot of the settings. Of course though, our demon bros are 7 of the highest demons in Devildom, so they’re immune.

*Slaps this comment* Congrats, Primal. You just summarized the entire chapter.

I find Leviachan to be such a funny nickname, mainly because writing any dialogue for Levi makes me cringe because while I was a VERY big weeaboo in elementary and middle school, I was so lucky I never hit his stage of acting like an otaku. While it’s charming, having to type him in more modern fic is even more painful because it’s like “oh god he actually goes into the real world and talks like this). Sidenote, I always mispronounce Levi’s name when I’m talking about him, mainly because I have to remember so many anime characters where their name is pronounced Lee-Vai or I just think of the brand of jeans (fashion major brain). So, whenever I’m talking out loud about him to someone, I have to stop and be like, “Levi... Leviachan...Leviathan...” because that “a” sound corrects my brain to how it’s supposed to be.

*throws confetti again* Believe I felt the pain of this fic dragging through every boy going back on their character development I had given them but I felt it was only fair that each of them got time with MC. As the tag on archive says, “everybody gets time to shine with MC”. (I really just want to write Barbatos’ scene for chapter 4 though)

This scene was hard to write because I wanted Levi to get closure on the scene with MC, but I couldn’t have him straight up kabedon them because then he would be cornering them and I thought that would be too much like what MC went through in the shower. Although I didn’t write anyone in explicitly summarizing what happened to MC, and Levi saw the least of it, I think he’s seen enough series depicting it to know that cornering them would be bad, but he still wants to show that he loves them and cares about them. Also, when I was writing this, I remember just going through a counter of who got the most smooches in chapter 3. Originally only Mammon was going to get 2, putting him in the lead above everyone who got 1, but then I felt back for giving Levi the least screen time and just gave him 3.

Honestly, chapter 3 really took a turn for a more intimate chapter??? Especially with Asmo’s one-on-one scene with MC, it was all downhill from there. I have noticed with quarantine, my writing has become more focused on touch (if you read any of my Balance:Unlimited fics or even my Mammon fic, you would definitely die if you tried to do a drinking game with the number of times someone TOUCHES the other gently). It’s just an unfortunate projection issue that comes with writing.

And here is complete chaos. I had blocked this game from my memory and then I was forced to remember it right here. 

Removing these meme images from the fic text will be tedious, and painful. But, I am preserving them here. (I type up these directors’ cuts before publishing the final version of the fic, so I don’t lose the comments)

I’m not even at lesson 16 yet, but based on all the spoilers I read, watched, and scene for research purposes, I’m pretty sure it was more of a-

This is what writing 11k+ words for one chapter worth it. The final read through I get to enjoy things like this.

I wish Belphie was 7′2″. 😳 I like Beel but Belphie is one of my favs. Ironically enough he was the one who skipped this fic. (I’ll make it up to you one day, Belphie fans.... will we ever know what they talked about and what made Belphie cry? Personally, I think it’s like the iceberg effect Hemingway talked about, and says more under the surface... it’s totally not because I got burned out, lolololol.... 🤭)

I WAS ACCIDENTALLY FEEDING DIALUCI STANS but again, if you’ve read my Mammon fic, you probably know my true thoughts on Diavolo and Lucifer’s relationship. This fic is so MC focused, I wasn’t intending to write it in so much, Diavolo was just supposed to order Lucifer to go home, that’s it. But, I got rejuvenated when I hit Lucifer’s scene, because I knew it was the homestretch for the chapter! I really played up a Hamilton reference accidentally, having the “Go home” line repeated, because it just felt like the vibe the scene was getting at. I am hoping to explore Diavolo and Lucifer’s relationship more in my modern au fic, Siberia.

I hate tumblr because if I attach a link in the initial post, this won’t appear in the tag, but Primal’s comment here made me think of this art I saw of Lucifer and Satan the other day by ObsessiveAlice (I don’t want to tag them because they’ll be so confused by this long unrelated post! But I’ll put the link to their art in the notes/replies on this post, so check them out!!!)

I know it wasn’t the most romantic kiss but again I WAS RUNNING OUT OF WAYS TO MAKE THE BROTHERS HAVE UNIQUE SCENES SO I GOT DESPERATE.

And that’s the end!!! Again, if you liked the fic, more than giving me a like or reblog, please go check out Primal’s wonderful artwork @primal-interstellar​ !!! She does a lot of great oc work and it needs more recognition!!! Almost all of my fics would never get posted without her help, so please, please, please show her support! (She has an animatic she just made which I will also link in the replies!!! Please give that love too!!!)

Anyway, if you made it to the end, I don’t know if you got a laugh out of this, but I hope you enjoyed the fic commentary somewhat! I was going to post chapter 3+4 at the same time like I did the prior chapters, but chapter 3 took so long I had to just lay on my floor for 3 hours earlier today to take a break from it, lol. Luckily, I’m very excited for chapter 4, so it shouldn’t take as long!!! 

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me mc #obey me masters #writing #my writing #fanfic #fic #obey me fic #directors cut

[pr-ay-the-gay-away]

Anon who requested I not post your ask but answer you with an emoji, here is your emoji lols 🍆

Oh boy, did I have to sift through that blog.

They’ve posted more in the month of July than they have for every other month of 2019 combined. Their posts in July are pretty much all exclusively about Shonmila PR. They are pushing an ‘industry insider’ angle to expose the PR, but did nothing of the kind back for Shon’s PR with Hailey. Why? Well probably because Shonmila BLEW UP IN THEIR FACE IMMEDIATELY and they had to roll out damage-control.

They’re reinforcing the Ewmila narrative and they support Ew. Wait, didn’t we point out this trend before? And didn’t we smell this trend coming from a mile away, like right at the very beginning of Señorita getting released? In fact, didn’t we just recently theorize that Shon’s team may have struck up a deal to take over the contract with Ew for the remaining 6 months of what we originally assumed to be a 2yr contract between Camila and Ew? This blog’s current brand of ‘exposing Shonmila as PR’ combined with their utter willingness to push the narrative that Ewmila was real is just another red flag for contradictory astro behavior - you can’t do ‘exposing’ posts about how PR photo ops are conducted in relation to Shonmila and then turn a complete blind eye to how it was the same with Ewmila. You ain’t slick.

(Aside: even if this person was 100% legit and I knew them IRL to be totally legit, I would still think they’re an idiot because they publicly support Ew, who we have proven time and time again to be a fraudulent fuckwit of a misogynystic scam artist who is undeserving of anyone’s time and attention let alone their money. Y’all know I have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to Ew and that includes his fans and apologists, which by extension includes Shon’s astros/street teamers who are pushing Ew, and all the astro/street team Camilizers who pushed Ew in the past too)

And the real kicker: this blog is strictly staying out of any speculation on Shon’s sexuality - playing the “it’s none of our business” card. Sorry, it’s more like “none of our business... unless it might be about straight rumors” because they will legitimately entertain anon asks from people claiming that their female friend had sex with Shon - LMFAO I CAN’T 🤣

So in conclusion

This astro blog is trying to do damage control to protect Shon’s professional straight-boy image. They’re not too precious about shitting on literally everyone else to do it, including Camila and EVEN Shon’s male friends (let’s be real, Shon’s male friends are part of his gay posse - his team would love to put across that his friends are shitty straight fuckbois and that’s exactly what they’re trying to put across. Well OOPS Shon’s friends are gay). This blog will seriously shit on everyone except for Ew, which is just... I can’t- I just can’t. But as pointed out before, this all falls in line with management-backed PR narratives that they’ve been trying to push since the beginning of time:

reinforce fake leaked texts problematic Camila-narrative? Check

reinforce Camila vs OT4 fake feud narrative? Check

reinforce Straightmila by reinforcing Ewmila narrative? Check

promote and support Ew? This honestly comes across as such an unnecessary angle but is probably required of them as part of the continued contract with Ew, and by doing so it also lends to the (flimsy AF) Straightmila narrative, so check

reinforce Straight Shon narrative? Check - although they do it through omission. They don’t entertain speculation about his sexuality that is unless it’s ‘hot inside goss from anons who have female friends who say they had wild sex with Shon’ ROFL sure Jan.

Sidenote: This blog is answering a lot of asks, but cross-referencing it against other metrics I would look at for how actively they’re being engaged with by followers, I’d say the number of asks they answer is disproportionate to other forms of follower engagement. Especially how many of those asks are “my dad’s podiatrist’s third cousin was at that hotel/works for Shon’s brand endorsement and they told me this goss” so am I saying that this blog is probably sending themselves asks to answer? Yes. Yes I am.

To a casual reader, this blog is mildly entertaining if you’re looking for slightly petty drama (which some people are attracted to) but honestly why subscribe to that? EL told us to stay away from accounts pushing fandom drama because playing into it is what management wants. And honestly, this is a known tactic:

And I’m not just saying that because of this astro’s angle of trying to protect Shon, prop up Ew, and take potshots at Camila - but also within our own CS fandom spaces, when people try to push comments protecting Camila but taking potshots at Shon, it’s really the same kinda deal. And I have no doubt in my mind that the anons submitting asks to CS blogs going “Shon is <insert insulting derogatory shit> because he’s a racist transphobe” are astros, and it’s the same angle as this astro Shon blog reinforcing the “problematic Camila” fake leaked texts narrative.

No doubt, the person posting to this blog may very well be connected to the industry, but not in any way that benefits those of us who refuse to pay entry to the circus. They’re still pushing narratives, even if they choose to do it by calling out Shonmila as PR. It’s sleight of hand tricks - distract you by calling out the fact that Shonmila is PR (as if we don’t have eyes and brains to know that without having to be told by an ‘industry insider’ FUCKING LOLS) whilst they pull out the same tired old bullshit narratives out of their ass. ‘Exposing’ Camilizer and OT4 blogs used this tactic back in 2016/2017 too. Mix a spoonful of truth (”Yes, Camren WAS real”) in with the rest of the lies (”but they hate each other ever since Camila stabbed the rest of the girls in the back”). A spoonful of sugar helps the bullshit go down.

“STOP doing their game! Management just reaches their goals because you are so manipulatible. They use your immaturity and favouritism "against" you. Do not give Laurenizers, Camilizers, any nizer and fake OT4 stans the attention they've been seeking (DONT try to clap back, just report and block them straight forward)! They don't like 5H, they don't want the group's happiness nor their faves' happiness, they're seeking their own (hint: some of them exist to this only purpose, intentionaly...). They will try to disturb the peace in the fandom, don't give them what they want, please!” - EL, 8 Dec 2016

Don’t pay attention to blogs that haphazardly reinforce fake narratives that we’ve already debunked time and time again. This is honestly their PR’s biggest downfall. They keep on insisting on trying to push the fake narratives of the past, and with the internet making everything just that little bit more permanent to look up (if we’ve documented it) it’s just so much easier to blow their house of cards over each and every time.

CS have seen it all. Moving along now

#astroturfers gonna lay their astroturf #shon astros are pushing ew and ewmila now #what absurd fuckery #imma block that account now #ask #anon

[fictile]

   ---  ❝  headcanon.

aight so this is about to address the whole “Enkidu had sex for seven days” thing and more accurately explain why exactly my Enkidu is asexual.  to start this off, yes, I know the original myth  (  read it, owned it, analyzed it, tada  )  and there is a big discrepancy between the myth variation of Enkidu  &&  Shamhat and the fate variation.  for the purposes of this blog and this headcanon due to the context of Enkidu’s appearance, I use the fate version.

Enkidu is a clay beast.  Literally this isn’t even an argument they were a big glob of mud that roamed the woods  [  from fate/ strange fake  ]  and they existed entirely off the magic of the earth.  they did not have the wants and/or needs of a human  !!  and they did not understand love and/or sex let alone the wants for such the way a human does.  Enkidu was happy to just exist.

when Shamhat first approached Enkidu, they fell in love with her beauty  ---  not her, her beauty.  this is where we start to diverge from the myth as mythological Enkidu is already “a man” in the sense they looked human they just acted wild.  for fate, Enkidu was an actual beast and looked nothing human.  rather than wishing to sleep with Shamhat fate Enkidu wished to replicate what they looked on at with awe  [  literally they just thought she was pretty  ].  after a week together, Enkidu looked more human  [  like that’s it that's what happened  ]  and lost most of their divinity along the way.  they spent a week studying Shamhat and molding themselves to model her appearance  ---  it took Enkidu a week to figure out what a human body was I don’t think that sex was on the table or even a thought for them  (  unlike mythos Enkidu who it is stated shared a bed for part of that week with Shamhat; also how do you learn an entire culture from a week of sex is beyond me but I digress  ---  sidenote can we address the differences between modern sexual beliefs  &&  Sumerian ones cause that plays a big part  ).  Enkidu’s form is also exceedingly androgynous due to their lack of understanding.  they’re clay, they’re a weapon  (  a tool  )  and the form was simply taken so they could understand humanity by walking among it.

fate Enkidu is  ??  someone I cannot imagine ever having any sexual desire  &&  to say they spent a week having sex with Shamhat straight up ignores the fact she was teaching them of humanity, of its people.  she taught them of civilization and language and religion.  Enkidu learned, through her, what society was and how best to act.  because of her, they were able to take on a human shape.  if nothing else Enkidu wouldn’t know what a dick is because they had never seen one before so uuuuh...  but anyway moral of the story is based on what I have seen and read Enkidu is an asexual clay  &&  on this blog Shamhat will be treated as a revered teacher not the girl Enkidu hooked up with for a week.

#╰ *．headcanons. #waves my asexual enkidu flag #i mean this is my own interpretation you do you but sfdhkgsdfgjf #pls respect this on this blog weeps

[cyborg-squid]

Ramblings #14

Ramblings #14: What works with Forgotten Realms and what doesn’t

Preface: I’m not an expert on DnD or the Forgotten Realms, I just really like them a lot, and I haven’t read much FR fiction beyond The Legend of Drizzt (finished book 6) and Brimstone Angels (finished book 4).

So, this weekend I was wondering about making my own homebrew DnD setting and went about trying to figure out how. One consistent problem i ran into was trying to think of how to accommodate some of the DnD races into it, both the playable and the monstrous. I know you’re allowed to do what you want in your homebrew world, but probably players would want to play as ones they know or find appealing. And if I didn’t include them, there would be disappointment. And then I realized what I was doing, with the help of a blog post I saw talking about creating homebrew worlds. What I was doing wasn’t making my own world, I was just trying to do my own take on Forgotten Realms. And that’s not what I wanted to do. 

So then I did some research on the Forgotten Realms and watched some really interesting lore videos. It honestly seems like there’s a world-shattering event happening every 20 seconds in the Realms. And a lot of the stuff is to accommodate changes to various editions and that sort of thing. But there is still a lot of cool information there, but players of normal DnD games probably aren’t going to find it. Most of these world shattering events were things that happened in a lot of the Forgotten Realms books or the various video games. And as far as creating a cool world where a bunch of different fantasy authors can tell their own amazing stories about knights and wizards, heroes and villains, gods and devils, and more, it works really well. While confusing as hell sometimes, it seems (from my somewhat inexperienced viewpoint) like it all fits together. That’s something that really works with the Forgotten Realms.

But most players, unless you’re someone who reads a lot of the Forgotten Realms fiction (like me) or someone who spends time looking on the wiki (like my friend Corey), you probably won’t know a lot of this stuff. And at least I feel, others may not feel this way, that to play in this world I have to know a lot about this world. That’s kinda why I got into the Forgotten Realms books (that, and the fact that the Dark Elf Trilogy was on a list of top 50 fantasy books, alongside some of my other favorite authors). There’s also the fact of all the edition changes, the big one being with how different 4th edition was. (Sidenote: 4th edition wasn’t my favorite and, as a game system, I’m a big fan of 5e, but 4th edition wasn’t as bad as everyone says. It had some really interesting classes, shaman being one of my favorites, and it’s where i first saw Tieflings, Dragonborn, and Goliaths.) When I was reading the books, I couldn’t tell when they changed edition. Hell, I thought Brimstone Angels started in 5th editions, with it’s focus on factions and ritual magic, but it turns out it started during 4th. People also end up having problems with how certain DnD races are portrayed, mainly drow and orcs. I used to say that their societies are the ones that are evil because they’re controlled by evil gods and their purpose is to create a good story about players of those races rebelling against those societies and stereotypes. In the Legend of Drizzt and Brimstone Angels, that works incredibly well! (Sidenote: Wish I had known that Brimstone Angels was more political intrigue focused rather than fantasy adventure style when I started it, that kinda threw me for a loop.) But some players, don’t want that, they might just want a race that looks appealing, interesting, or they just might like the stats. Or they might take issue with the fact that some races are designated as evil, and while I don’t entirely agree with that, I can see where they’re coming from. And with the interconnectedness of all the Forgotten Realms fiction, it can be a bit of a pickle to try and think and find out where the player characters fit into all of it. Plus, maybe you want to learn more about something mentioned during a session, but the stuff you find on the wiki is contradictory to what the DM said. While obviously what the DM says goes, it can kinda mess with the illusion that you’re playing in the actual Forgotten Realms. 

And, while I’m no expert on the history of Forgotten Realms, I believe it started as one guys homebrew world and DnD picked it for its official campaign setting and eventually writers started writing fiction in it and that’s what made the world and changed the world. Since it was moved out of a homebrew setting, it stopped being created by players and started being created by writers. And that’s where the problem is. As a setting for stories, both book and video game, the Forgotten Realms work very well and I really like it. But as a setting for players to run a DnD campaign, it is too caught up in itself, and while it might have room for player origins, it doesn’t leave much room for players stories. Now, while varying in quality, DnD’s published in the Forgotten Realms work relatively well, because it is a story designed in the world but is ultimately about your characters and their choices. But if you’re looking for a long-term setting to play a custom campaign in, you might want to look elsewhere or make your own.

#dnd #Dungeons and Dragons #D&D #my posts #ramblings #i worked very hard on this so im gonna tag it with #best post

[ruleandruinrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, KAITLIN!

You have been accepted for the role of ANTON LANTSOV with a faceclaim change to Reece King. Admin Bree: Choosing Anton’s player was probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make as an admin, and for that reason alone, I’d like to congratulate the three of you for writing such brilliant applications. Each of you captured him in your own unique way, and it took me hours to decide which I liked best, because each of your portrayals brought something wonderful to the table. But I’m incredibly confident in my decision to offer him to you, Kaitlin, because your application was stunning in more ways than one. His dialogue in your samples, your headcanons—all of it was so incredibly him, so much that I don’t doubt for a second your ability to portray our beloved Crown Prince. Beautiful work! You have 24 HOURS to send in your account. Also, remember to look at the CHECKLIST. Welcome to Ravka!

OUT OF CHARACTER

ALIAS:  Kaitlin.

PREFERRED PRONOUNS:  She / her.

AGE:  20.

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL:  I am more or less available all of the time. I’m currently in the middle of hunting for a new job, but it will be part time so I’ll still be around all the time. Obviously muse wavers and fluctuates and such, but I’d say around a 7 out of 10.  As a quick sidenote: I do have to say that the first two weeks of the group I’m probably going to be a bit busy. Opening weekend we are celebrating my mom’s 50th birthday by going into the city for a night so I may or may not be on at all during that time. It depends on how busy we are that night. Then a week after opening I’m going to Italy on a family vacation with my Dad and Stepmom and siblings etc. During that time  I’ll be around at night for sure, but not likely at all during the day! 

CURRENT/PAST ACCOUNTS:  My only current active muse is Adeline Calore.

Also… please don’t hate me for how long this is.. I got really carried away… Love way too strong. Yikes. 

IN CHARACTER

DESIRED CHARACTER:  Crown Prince of Ravka, Anton Matvei Lantsov.

WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS CHARACTER?  By Saints I wish I could make this short and sweet, but it feels like there’s just about a million things about Anton that are screaming my name. 

I really really really wish that I could say something like “his was the first teaser that I read and I’ve been hooked on him ever since,” but in truth it took much longer for the Fox Prince to sink his canines in and really hook me. When the group was first coming out and posting things to the teaser blog and such, I knew I would be crazy chaotic busy pretty much from the time of your guys opening (As in like, when you started posting teasers. I’ve been busy so long I’m about ready to start crying, but this app has been surprisingly stress-relieving.) until about two weeks after your first acceptances: I’d resolved myself against applying for that reason. 

But like all deliciously attractive roleplays, I couldn’t help but keep my eye on the group, take a peek at the main every so often to see how things were going. I wasn’t paying close attention, and originally my gaze fell to Anastasia (partially because Ashley Moore is the love of my life, as she should be everyones, and partially because I am quite partial to princesses). I had no real plan to apply… and then I read Anton’s bio, in an attempt to learn everything I could about Ana, and fuck was I done for. 

Just like that, he had wormed his way into my heart. All I wanted to do was spread my volcra wings and start screeching because holy shit was I in love. I had 12 million other things to be doing every single day and yet, I’d be driving in my car to pick my sister up from a friend’s house and Anton fucking Lantsov would start running through my mind. (Coincidentally, I have a feeling he has this affect on a lot of people, not just me.) I’m thinking about things that he might say, how he might react if someone slighted him – is he the sort who would cut off a man’s hand because he questioned his authority as a war general (answer: maybe, possibly probably) or would he tear him down using a combination of carefully chosen words (answer: maybe, probably, he’d do both)? For a while, to be perfectly honest, I struggled a lot with finding his voice. It’s not that I couldn’t figure out why he says the things that he does, or even why he acts the way that he does because I think that I figured that out pretty early on. (At least, in my opinion. I hate when people make declarations about characters as though they know them better than the admins and so if I sound like that…. just, kick me. Seriously.) I legitimately mean, his voice – the things that he says, the words that are so carefully crafted on his lips. A big part of this is likely the fact that I am not particularly charming, and that’s legitimately the core of Anton’s persona; he is a charmer through and through, able to mold himself into any situation to make people like him. I, on the other hand, am a potato who doesn’t even like talking on the phone because it relies so much on words and that is a lot of pressure on a very small thing. But honestly I was obsessed and couldn’t stop thinking about him. Little devil snaked his way into my heart, the same way he snakes his way into everyone else’s.

What first drew me to Anton was, honestly, just the first line of his biography. I am a genuine sucker for royalty, especially the glorious and the tragic – of which Anton is both. He is legitimately everything that the crown could ever want from a prince, which makes it all the more confusing as to how exactly he got to where he is. It’s not exactly that he’s ambiguous, because his goals and motivations come to me with crystal-clear clarity: he wants better for Ravka, and that’s the be-all, end-all of it. It’s a lot like the quote by Nikolai in S&S: “I’m a prince, Alina. I can’t afford to be myself.” This is what I’m trying to get at, in essence, but it goes even further beyond this in Anton’s case. It’s not so much that he can’t afford to be himself, but rather that who is he is defined by his nation, what his people need from him. Who he is, therefore, is whoever his people need him to be. Ravka is everything to Anton, and he would never compromise his nation or his people for the sake of a single person, including himself. 

Anton may not have been born for the throne, but he is absolutely made for it. Anton, for all intents and purposes and for the sake of understanding him, strikes me as a sort of conglomeration of many of the male Greek deities. He has the wit of Ares and he has the savvy of Apollo, a boy as equally loved by the son as he is scorched by it – he has simultaneously gained everything and lost everything with his ascension to crown prince, his love his family his friends, it’s all been pulled away from him for the sake of the crown. He doesn’t complain, but he’s still been put on a pedestal he never expected to be put on. He’d grown accustomed to the battleground, allowed the gaze of war to settle into his skin alongside muted war-crys. He was a soldier though and through, racing towards victories on the horizon, a blade in his elder brother’s palm used to cut down Ravka’s enemies. 

But then Zeus crept in, making way for the true king Anton could become. Suddenly war and ruin were not all that he need know; he could know what it felt to hold a crown atop his head, to hold lightning in his hands and command where it might strike instead of being the strike. He was right to get involved with the war effort, was right to believe that war was entwined with his fate, but he had it wrong. He’s not the boy born for bloodshed, not the boy born to carry out the wars, but the one born to stop them, the boy born to bring peace to a nation that has too long been under siege by a darkness none of them knew how to fight. Or maybe the wars will kill him. Who knows. 

Honestly? I’d be crazy to not want to explore a character with that kind of weight on their shoulders, wouldn’t I? 

WHAT FUTURE PLOT IDEAS DID YOU HAVE IN MIND? 

LANTSOV MEN DIDN’T DIE: Anton, the word-lover, Anton, the wordsmith. I would love for Anton – who always had a quick remark to make before words could even enter his opponents thoughts – to be at a loss for words, for ideas. Perhaps it comes because he finds himself suddenly on not only uncharted, but also uneven ground, a place where not even his wide comfort zone can reach. Anton is brilliant, but there’s always someone out there smarter, someone just that touch more clever, and maybe they’ll put him into a position where he is in over his head. I think this is the kind of situation that would be really great for his character development; he is a selfless prince, to be sure, but he is also a vain prince, and to see him knocked off the pedestal he’s been put on, or even just knocked a rung or two down the ladder would be really fascinating. After all, the world around him is fast changing and he’s just have to learn how to run faster, talk quicker, be that much smarter. It’d be interesting to see someone pull ahead, even if only for a moment. Lantsov men, after all, are gods walking – but even gods can be killed, can be outsmarted. Just ask Ivan. 

E’YA STA REZKU: I am become a blade. In this case not in the hand’s of the Sun Summoner, but in the hands of Ravka, of his home, of his nation, of his people.  Da Vinci (my light, my life, my idol) wrote this thing: “every whole is greater than the part.” As much as I hate to so obviously take inspiration from Nikolai, I can’t help it in this case. Ravka is Anton’s first love. Therefore, to be perfectly honest, all I want is to see Anton come to grips with the fact that he will legitimately, finally, one day be at the helm of this nation. Anton, sun-haloed, war-torn, hungry Anton Lantsov is to find himself wholly consumed by his nation, and I’m wondering if he’s truly as cut out for it as he believes himself to be. He does, after all, have his weaknesses – his pride, his preference for alliances rather than relationships; when everything is skin deep it’s easy for him to betray, but just as easy for him to be betrayed. Anyways, this is kind of already in the midst of happening, but I’m really excited for Anton to morph from General into Crown Prince.

BLOOD IS THICKER: I don’t actually know if I really want this to happen or not because Anton will be in for a world of pain if it does, but I would love for it to be revealed that he is in fact a bastard. I’ve been talking about it a lot recently in various Skype chats, and I have a feeling it’s because I’m a sucker for angst, but can you imagine the pain that fact would put Anton in? He’s lived his entire life under the burden of whispers and doubts, but those he could handle; he could do it because Anton is a Great Man™ in the traditional sense of the word great in that he is pretty much designed to bring about revolution, to bring about an end to the nation’s suffering. He is a god through and through, with equal parts capability for mercy and ruthlessness when it comes to the good of his nation, and he knows it. He didn’t always, but as the people allowed him to be more volk than sobachka, he began to see himself for what he was. To have it revealed that he is in fact a bastard, that he cannot and will never again wear the crown, would be to rip the very fabric of Anton’s soul from his chest. I don’t think he would know who he is if the crown was ripped from his head, it’s too big a part of the destiny he sees for himself now. It would be a fascinating thing to have happen, and a fascinating thing for me to get to explore, but honestly I’d be very worried about his mental state if this came to fruition. 

THE SPARE SEEKS AN HEIR: The most obvious and most discussed thus far would have to be Anton finding himself a wife, considering it’s an act as future king of Ravka that will help to define his reign over the people. Who he chooses to have by his side while he rules will reflect back on him a great deal, and I would really like for it to be someone that he doesn’t necessarily expect to fall in love with. I feel like a lot of people at court tip-toe around him, or at least they should because he’s going to be the king for Saint’s sake. He is a king of the people as much as a king can be, but he is still going to be a king, is still a god walking among mere men. Probably because of that fact, there’s a kind of attitude that I want to see from Anton’s future wife, someone that isn’t afraid to call him out for being a douche – charming as that douchery may be. I also think that a kind of defiance would be something that Anton would greatly appreciate. After all, he spent his life as the spare, the prince that no one needed but they got anyways. He was someone that people needed to respect, and he commanded that from them, but he was never going to be king and he got used to that part of his life – that possibility of comfort, of familiarity, of casualness. As future king, he probably lost a lot of those casual relationship that brought easy smiles to his cheeks and was left with so much distance. I want Anton to find someone not only unafraid of that distance, but who crosses it with confidence and ease. 

GOT YOUR SIX: I would really like to see Anton training a second, and farther beyond this, Anton involved in the war efforts in general. This might be something that develops in Anton’s past, in the sense that it’s a position / relationship that already exists that just isn’t written in his bio is this makes sense. Anton with his soldier friends, joking around as they all lose themselves to the drink around him, tossing back glass after glass of kvas, their lives pressed into the dirt and destruction all around them. I feel like there’s no really an established relationship for Anton that involves the war brigade, and given that’s such an integral part of the man he became, I’d love to get to explore it more. 

WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO HAVE YOUR CHARACTER DIE?  I want to be really cool and say yes, no problem, but I have a feeling if I was accepted I would cry and be really protective over my little bastard king and cry even more if you killed him. I’d probably let it happen anyways though, you know, for the Angst™ 

IN DEPTH

IN CHARACTER PARA SAMPLE(S): The sample(s) may be as long or as short as you see fit. It must be in third person and in-character.

REASON IS NOT AUTOMATIC. – I really just wanted a glimpse into how Anton handles the men in his army. I had intended originally to write about the kindness he shows them, but since I wrote a headcanon about how he treats the good men (remembers their names, their lives, remembers they are people and not just blades in his collection), I thought it might be interesting to see how he handles the ones who are in the war for the blood, not the loyalty.  

 “We’ll probably be able to catch a few more of them lurking around in the woods, then we can have some more fun with them. Damn Fjerdans, always thinking they can take what’s not theirs, what’s ours.” There’s a pause, a silence a bit too harsh to be stagnant, as though the speaker was looking forward to the other man’s answer to his next question. “You take any alive?”

“Yeah,“ the other man says, and the tone of disappointment caught in his throat makes Anton sick to his stomach. These were his men, not the Fjerdans who ridiculously thought Grisha to be witches, or men from Ketterdam entwined with the drug industry; his men, and he thought they would be better than this. It’s a bitter reality for him to swallow. “One of them actually surrendered,” the man says, his words crisp on the cold night’s air. Anton cannot see the voice that it belongs to, but somehow he knows they are not someone to make a friend out of. “Rest of the company was around though, so I had to turn him over.”

“We aren’t taking the live ones to prison are we? We don’t need any more damn mouths to feed. I’m hungry enough most night as is.”

“Nah, just the ones who seem like they might know what their men were doing crossing into Ravkan territory. Think Popov, that new interrogator, is in with one of ‘em now. I know the live one I caught is going to be executed once the interrogator is done with him, but what I wouldn’t give to kill the Fjerdan myself.”

“Well, at least Popov gets to have some fun tonight.”

His voice is distinct when he begins – slow, deliberate, regal, in the most patronizing of ways. Men like this must be kept in line. “Now, boys,” the Prince begins, removing himself from the shadows of the tent to expose himself to these bloodthirsty wolves, calling them boys so as to make them remember that as much as he build himself into friendship with his merry men, they will forever and always be below him. And in this moment, disappointed in the cruelty of man, he needs all the status he can get. “I would say have you been paying attention, but it’s clear you haven’t. I sent out stealth parties into the trees not half an hour ago so that they might ambush the remaining Fjerdan invaders as the moon rises. Worry not; we will take and protect that which is ours and march home with any spoils. Or did you doubt your leaders?”

It’s casual, the insinuation of treason, of insubordination, of treachery. It’s the most powerful weapon against men who dare to let thoughts of such nature to take hold in their minds – the notion that it makes them weak, that it makes them lesser. (Wonderful, how the pride of men can be used so easily against them.) It often pulls men like this back, dragging them from the edge of the dark abyss and into his own arms -- where he may use them as he pleases.

Anton is never certain how he should feel about such men, the wolves of Ravka made into human flesh, but he doesn’t dwell on the thought, instead choosing to turn away from these devils in tattered clothing. It’s been almost a year to the day since Anton has stepped his foot in the Grand Palace, in his home. Tomorrow will be the year mark, and he finds more and more often that he itches for the palace, for the ability to stride through the halls, no longer sobachka but volk, no longer a weak-hearted little boy but a man as sharp as volcra talons.

Becoming a god had come at a lofty price.

( What he doesn’t say, cannot admit, is not so much that he fears he is beginning to forget; beginning to forget the sound of Anastasia laughing, the way his father’s voice curls around consonants – sharply, as though every word must be a knife to cut down his enemies – or the way Darya tended to favor certain words over others.

This? This separation? He is afraid to admit that he does not mind.

Foolish for him to have thought it would ruin him. )

Anton sits at his desk, scrawling word after word, letter after letter, pouring his mind into the pieces of parchment bound in leather.

I told Ivan this morning of the terrors, the absolute horrors, that the Shu invaders used against me and my men. There have been rumors for years about the technology they have been developing, and I fear I’ve witnessed those beginning to come to fruition.

Yet still, he doesn’t listen to me when I try and tell him my designs. I don’t understand how a mind so built for war, for weaponry could be so opposed to hearing about the developments that another thinks they could make. Dawn begins to breaks along the snow-covered horizon and he is off, walking away from me in the middle of my words, his mind too distracted by the battle his is about to wage to see the bigger picture: Ravka is going to fail .

I fear what he is going to do to our nation by keeping it as he has always known it. Ivan is no fool, but is he a king either? We need him to be. Ravka needs him to be, more so now than ever.

Every morning he wakes to desire of the most unholy sort: treason. The second son, greater than none. Funny, truly, how desperation can drive one to greatness. Nothing, however, could be done about fate, about birth order. He way be a god, but the second tier was the only level he’d be able to call home.

Anton doesn’t hear when his brother enters the room, barely notices that Ivan has entered unannounced and unwanted to come and stand at Anton’s shoulder as he hunches over the desk before him. But then his elder brother is leaning over and he can feel the breath – warm and hot, unwelcome – touching the bare space between his hairline and the top of his shirt and suddenly the journal is being slammed closed as he shoves away from his chair.

He recognized it as Ivan before he even saw him with his own eyes, even before his brother began to speak. He would know Ivan anywhere, though he may pretend not to. All he can hope is that he hadn’t read any of what has been put to paper.

“Saints, boy. You’d think I’d just held a knife to your throat the way you jump.”

Boy – the slight cuts Anton more than he’d care to admit. (Instead he’d just blather on about it in his diary later.) At first he shrinks away from the casual reprimand, knowing with sharp clarity what the small word insinuates -- he’d used the same method only minutes before. Anton, of course, had learned his tactics from the best.

“Don’t you think I know my nation well enough to know best how to handle it?” Ah -- so he had read it.

“Brother, of course I know you’re worried about what lies beyond our borders; we all are. But don’t you see? The Shu to the South and Fjerdans to the North? And right between lies our nation – while great, vulnerable; we sit cut off from our trade routes along the Western borders. All it will take to overcome us is an army strong enough, technology that we in our wildest dreams have not been able to craft. I will not allow them to take what is ours and call it their own.” Anton is alive now, caught up in the feeling of greatness, of the divinity that Ivan himself had shown him existed in Lantsov blood.

“Ivan, If the Shu decide to attack us, and I mean really attack us, we will lose. The Shu are expanding their army and I’ve seen their weaponry; if they decided to come together with Kerch to attack us by land and sea, well, even the Grisha won’t be able to protect us from that kind of machinery. Our neighbors want to expand their borders and swallow Ravka whole. We cannot continue to be a nation divided. If you would just allow -- ”

“It’s very romantic and all how you wish to save the world, but I think we both know it takes a man like me to actually do it. People respond to strength and strength alone, young brother, not reason; and while I must credit your mind with the cleverness it is due, it has nothing on the Ravkan army’s brute force.”

Sometimes he wonders about his brother; Ivan the great, Ivan the Terrible. Is he unable or perhaps just unwilling to understand that fear is a temporary solution? After all, is it more difficult to learn how to be cruel, or to learn how to be soft? Anton was beginning to think the gods knew not of humanity, knew not the workings of a human’s mind. He was beginning to think that it was a good thing he’d been forced to remain half-boy for so long, that being a god meant he would forget how to bleed.

And so long as he remembers what it is to bleed, he will remember to protect that humanity his brother had seemingly lost.

OTHER GIRLS WERE FAINT STARS. – A bit of a timeline, this sample more or less shows the rise and fall of Darya and Anton’s relationship, at least the ways in which I imagine it.

 The truth of the matter is this: Anton Lantsov would do anything for that which he loved. He’d written it once in his journal before:

Love for me is different, I think. People say that love feels like home, but it’s not. It’s like a religion. It’s so much bigger than a building where I can be myself – It’s terrifying. It’s a black night and a single burning star. It’s building them a city and calling it Church. It’s taking all of human history and bending it to their will. Forget the ending, I will build them a story anew.

He finds her in the gardens, and in spite of himself, he grins from ear-to-ear at the sight of her. He thinks it’s her back (It’s always the back with him – the way a person’s spine curves and the ridges where their shoulder blades end, the little dip between the two. He quite enjoys mapping out those places, and he does so with as much vigor as he puts into his campaigns.) that truly gives her away, the dark cascade of hair that falls over her shoulders and grazes the spot where fabric covers spine. The set of those shoulders really should have acted as a warning sign, but even if it did he chose to ignore it. (Anton, of course, does nothing without choosing to do so.)

“Miss Voronov, are you enjoying the evening?”

He almost laughs when she whips around, her face a delicious shade of red. He’d always loved the sight of a flush in a person’s cheeks – spoke to wonderful things happening below the surface, inside of a person’s mind. Perhaps she, too, was thinking of their midnight rendezvous under the influence of a tad too much champagne. He knew she was a dangerous game to play; he’d go back to war soon (too soon, really) and to dance with his emotions now would be to play with fire -- but, then, when had love or war ever been fair?

“We should probably pretend it didn’t happen,” she begins, moving quickly beyond pleasantries to address (or rather – not address, seeing as she seemed to want to forget) the kiss he’d shared with her the night before. His lips stayed in place, a smile commanding its hold as a hearty laugh rolled its way through his chest.

“Pretend what didn’t happen, you taking advantage of me or kicking me out after you did it?”

“I did not take advantage!” She sounds taken aback, and it’s all Anton can do to hear the gasp of air in her throat and not press his mouth to hers again. Instead he clicks his tongue in disapproval, his head shaking in mock innocence, though the warmth in his eyes is a dead give away for the fondness that’s settled across his skin. And he knows she can see it for she’s clearly holding back laughter, small chuckles escaping her with each word. Each sound tastes like cherry wine. It’s sweet in a quiet sort of manner, gentle but assured – as though she laughs like that every day, as though he makes her laugh like that every day, as though she may just allow him to stay by her side from now until eternity just to keep her laughing like that. He makes it his gospel.

“Oh, I was drunk and extremely handsome.” His head tilts to the side as he pauses, looking at her with obvious endearment. “You took advantage.” (What better way to show affection than with humor, no? His brothers always told him otherwise, but he finds this woman’s laugh intoxicating – he’d worship at the altar of that sound if only she’d let him.)

“I think extremely handsome is being overly generous.” The corners of his mouth tilt down in mock distress. He knows that she will come around, that she is pretending for the sake of honor, or perhaps self-protection; he can see it in the tilt of her mouth, the repressed grin.

“Oh no, last night I was wearing my good shirt, the deep blue colored one. Compliments my complexion quite nicely. Last night I was extremely handsome. You took advantage.”

“I did no -- ”

“Would you care to take advantage again, say tomorrow evening?” he says, interrupting her. He’d probably pay for that later.

“Your Highness – ”

“Please Darya, call me Anton.” He uses her given name, and he can feel the weight of it on his tongue like Atlas bearing the world, can feel it on his tongue like intimacy made concrete. The set of her mouth is what makes him smile again, the determined way in which she forces it into a straight line.

“Your Highness,” she says again. Determined little star; he could already feel his gravity shifting, anchoring him to her instead of the grass beneath their feet. “-- don’t you take anything seriously?” She knows the answer to this is yes, that he takes everything seriously, devotes himself completely to everything his nation needs, but it’s not what he says.

“I find life tends to get rather dull that way.” Sailors always tell tall tales of mermaids luring men to their deaths beneath the waves, dragged down to the shadowy depths; he thinks he’s found his siren call.

She pauses, shaking her head, but the smile he’s been trying to coax out of her is finally beginning to show, the walls beginning to crumble as he so desperately wished they would. “You really ought to stop looking at me like that,” she says.

“Like what?”

“Oh, I think that you know what.”

And he does know what, because he looks at her like he finally understands the Apparat’s preaching, like she is the moon and he a lone wolf desperate for a response. He looks at her like she’s the sun, and he’d gladly raze his wings to ash if she’d only asked him to come near.

It could be daunting, he supposes, but Anton had never walked away from a challenge before. He wasn’t about to start now.

He had been right: love and war were certainly not fair. They were vicious opponents, each as demanding as the other, both entwined together like the strings of fate. He tells himself that he is not at all bitter, that the war is where he belongs; it’s easier when she isn’t so near.

He is throwing rocks at her window and to be fair, he knows it’s all entirely absurd, but he can’t help the smile that colors his cheeks rose. Too long had he been ruled by sulfur and gunfire, by glory and victory. Too long had he been away from peace, and Darya was nothing if not solace against broken bones and battlegrounds.

He told himself that he wouldn’t do this, that the first stop he made when he returned from war wouldn’t be her, but the moment he was alone his body had taken over his mind and carried him here, for he’d missed her more than he could ever put into words. It was unbearable, really, to even think her name –  Darya Voronov, Darya Voronov, Darya Voronov, Darya Voronov, it took over everything if he let it seep in – when she wasn’t near. Thoughts of her made him tremble with it: humanity.

It terrified him.

(Perhaps it’s why he needs the jurda: to tame his heart, to strengthen his hands.)

There’s a certain euphoria he feels whenever she is near, and even the simple sight of her leaned over that balcony edge is enough to make his heart ache in ways he never imagined that it could, in ways he hopes will never fade. Her gaze meets his (truly, it hasn’t been that long but it’s been far, far too long) and suddenly everything else pales in comparison to her eyes, all the other beauty in the world pale stars in comparison to her full moon. For a moment his breath hitches in his chest and he counts one --  two -- three -- before he can breathe again.

“Anton, what are you doing out there! Someone may hear you!”  She half-whispers her words, chiding, but the smile that winds its way onto her cheeks is a dead give away, her tell. He knows she is as happy to have him home as he is to see her once again. Seeing her standing there, the delicate weight of her lifted onto toes so that she might lean over the railing, makes him smile crookedly. (Really, what other sort of smile can a boy with fifty faces have?) He’s unsurprised at her delight, remembering that with every letter he sent her, she sent one back with equal fervor: come home, she would write. I miss you, too, he would send back.

“Well, you know how I feel about taking risks,” he replies with a smile to match her own blossoming one. Like calls to like, he would suppose.

“Don’t you know what my father would do to you if he caught you out there? What your father would do?”

It doesn’t matter to him what her father would do, what anyone would do. The only reason he hides her is for her benefit, for her own safety. She deserved so much better than to be put under scrutiny, under the watchful eye of every other woman at court who may have thought to seek out the hand of a prince; Darya was already an outsider at court, despite the efforts of Ana to make people see otherwise. She was not from a high house, did not come from money, no, far from it. He loved her, and as he does all the things he loves, he protects her whatever the cost, even if that means he needs to hide her from the rest of the world.  

Hearing her speak he realizes that it’s true what they say about distance, about separation. The first thing to go from your memory is the voice, and hearing Darya’s now, fluttering along the gentle breeze, it sounds something like church bells, the notes of a choir’s hymn at sunset.

He feels grounded, anchored to her. A disciple at his knees before the saints.  

His eyes are alight with mischief when he finally replies. “Make me marry you, perhaps?”

A dangerous game to play, indeed.

Anton barely thinks twice about being called to his father’s study. He’s almost grown accustomed to the man now, barely registers anymore that the man standing before him is twice the god that Anton will ever be, that his father is the titan who taught him how to shed the sobachka pelt Ravka had put on his shoulders. He knocks -- a succinct rap rap on the mahogany door frame -- before entering, passing through the entryway to Olympus only when his father’s voice calls out come in.

“Darya Voronov?” Ivan had never been one for playing games, and tonight was no different. If Darya was Anton’s own personalized version of an addiction, then his father was buzzkill incarnate. He crosses his arms over his broad chest, and Anton immediately feels smaller; he almost crumples in on himself with the weight of his father’s gaze. Please, father, he wants to beg. Let’s not do this.

He keeps his gaze apathetic, the guarded prince guarding his heart; he cannot afford to give too much away. The king stands (Do kings ever truly sit, even when they are planted on their thrones? When they are always so high above all others?) and waits for an answer from the spare, but for a moment Anton finds himself absent a quip to allay the situation, absent a tongue. The bonds between father and son, no matter the complexity, no matter the darkness, no matter the questions (Are you proud of me? Do you love me? Do you love my mother? Am I hers?) are unshakeable though, and as cleverly as Anton my try to shed the weight of his father’s gaze, may try to escape the imploring eyes, gods do not know the meaning of the word no.

Anton should have known better than to think he could hide her from a man who saw the bigger picture like it was marked out for him on the floor in dotted lines. “I know all, my boy.”

Anton wants to laugh it off, to pretend like his father is being absurd. He knows his words are thin, that his father has eyes even in the statues that decorate the Grand Palace, that nowhere is safe, but he lies anyways.

“Father, I never pegged you as the type to listen to petty gossip.” He pretends not to feel the way his heart has begun to beat more quickly between his ribcages, growing so large with every pump of blood that it surely is on the verge of explosion. The young prince should really know better by now than to try and lie to a man who could lie for a living. (Old habits die hard, I suppose.) “Do you pay all such rumors credence, or do you consider me a special case?”

His father is shaking his head then and he is looking straight through Anton as though there is a shining star buried in his chest setting his every secret aflame, bright and burning for all the world to see. And maybe there is something buried there, a piece of Darya stuck like a burr on his heart, his body drowning with the gravity of it. He wouldn’t be surprised.

“You’re a skilled liar, Anton, but not skilled enough.”

Gods don’t care for weakness, and love is surely one.

She hates it when he smokes, but to be fair, he only does it when he’s away from her, like when she is around his need for vice is sated. Without her Anton is a burning pyre, and when there’s smoke the pipe is too tempting not to give into. Coming back to the palace he finds it difficult to quit, and standing beside the lake makes him nostalgic for the ocean -- his hands needs a distraction or they may just begin that insufferable flexing that happens whenever he wants something he cannot have.

“You know, once of these days they’re going to tell you jurda can kill you,” she says, her voice suddenly breaking through the night, just as flame is approaching pipe. How quickly he smiles; he needed a distraction, and Darya was be a much more appealing addiction to indulge himself in. Dangerous, the intellectual part of his brain days, for they are in public and much to his own chagrin, Darya is a well-kept secret.

Delicious, the wolf says.  

“You think you know what it’s going to feel like, but this” he says, a general of war suddenly gentle in the hands of his flower, gesturing clumsily at the empty space between their two bodies. “This is nothing l could have predicted. I don’t know why anybody bothers with drugs when they could just fall in love.”

There are a million words on the tip of his liquor-lacquered tongue. My throat, mine. You left stars in my heart and now I claim this space between your ribs as mine, mine, mine. I am in your heart and it is paradise; I am in your light and it keeps streaming into me. “Never leave me,” he says instead. His head is shaking, a mind caught in incredulity. How had she claimed him so? A man who was everything, reduced to a man in love, a man at his knees?

“Is that what you’re afraid of?” She says it like a joke, like it’s nothing, but Anton knows better.

His lips brush hers and it tastes suspiciously of wildflowers.

“Who says I’m afraid of anything?”

You get to be the King. This isn’t the way he thought it would feel. For a momen\ it felt like magic, but now it feels like getting stabbed to death. You get magic gloves! You’re all cotton candy pink and glowing! He feels strangely trapped, like a princess in her tower or the dragon stuck in the dungeons.

She finds him in the gardens. and while there is no longer a tear in his eye, salt has clung onto the peach fuzz that covers his cheeks. The faded tears tighten his skin, just as the noose he’d placed around his own neck so many years ago had finally grown taut; just as he’d always wanted. The gravity lines that had once held him spinning in her orbit had been severed, and he hung precariously from the hands of the Ravkan people. His fate belong to them now, not her.

If he was going to put the noose around his own neck, he supposes he should at least do it right.

“Anton,” she calls when she is only a few feet away. Here he’d been thinking they wouldn’t even say goodbye, wouldn’t submit themselves to the pain of such an endeavor. But then again, he’d always been the dramatic sort, and much as he wanted to save himself from the war of love, he knows that a wound left to fester would surely kill, that neither one will be able to move on without the safety of a clean cut.

He didn’t do it on purpose (or maybe he did, he can’t be sure), but everything about him is stark sobering; his clothes are crisp and free of blemish the same way his face remains smooth, unburdened. He had to make it look easy, had to make it as pure and unblemished by the loss of his brother as possible. It will be easier this way, he thinks, and maybe he’s right. (He usually is.)

“My dear Darya – ” he begins without thinking, something he thinks he’s never done.

“Please don’t call me that – yours, as though I ever will be.”

His eyes cast themselves towards hers and it’s not exactly painful; perhaps nostalgic would be a better word. She looks like a morning glories unfurling at down, she looks like home. It’s instinctual, the way his hand nearly floats away from his side to stroke her cheek; he’d just washed them recently, and he knew she’d be able to smell the lemon on them. It’s all he can do to not surge forward, to wrap her in his arms to keep her safe and tucked away from the pain and darkness now threatening to take over.

Instead he breathes, and flexes his hand once, twice, three times over. He knows she deserves something better than this, better than the role of dirty secret. Doesn’t change the turning in his abdomen at the thought of her lips on his.

He wants to apologize for all of the things that he ever said to her, wants to take it all back. What good is it doing either of them now? When they’ve known happiness, pure and unbridled love, only to have it ripped away by something as heavy as blood? Sorry about taking your heart and making myself a home there, sorry about walking with you through the gardens under a black sky alight with bright stars. I’m sorry that I built a cathedral at your feet, and I’m sorry for the sacrilege I’m about to commit. Sorry about the casket I’ve already buried our love in.

Sorry about ruining everything before even saying it aloud.

Is this what destruction looks like? Or maybe it’s something else, something like construction. Maybe it takes clumsy hearts at twilight to realize that what was underneath the floorboard was what he was destined for, that the perfunctory kiss goodbye he plants on her rosebud mouth was something he should have been prepared for all along.

It’s love or it isn’t; does it matter anymore? It does. Of course it does.

“Our nation needs strength, Darya. No matter the cost.” He doesn’t say it aloud, not exactly, but he knows her to be clever enough to hear the words he cannot say: the cost is you, the cost is you, the cost is you.  

He would pay it time and time again, and he wouldn’t think twice.

“I know, my love. I know.”

He turns away from her then and there’s the same unmistakable set of his shoulders, the one he learned from his brother, from his father. It’s the stance of a Lantsov. It’s the stance not of a boy turned men, but of a man turned god.

The truth of the matter is this: Anton Lantsov loves Ravka, and he’d do anything to protect it.

CHARACTER HEADCANONS: 

MY HEART ON YOUR SLEEVE: Anton is always giving away his heart in the form of material objects. With his men, the ones who did right by him, by a man not just their general but their friend, he would give them little trinkets that he had invented that would make their lives easier – an especially powerful telescope that would allow men to see an enemy approaching from further distances, a jacket made from the same material as his own kefta, a seemingly simple pair of gloves that have metal in the knuckles so any hand to hand combat would be just that much more dangerous, and so on and so forth. It’s not necessary by any means, but it adds to his charms, makes him more friend than other, makes him more human if people are able to carry little pieces of his mind around in their pockets. Similarly, he lavishes his lovers with gifts. There haven’t been too many, and besides Darya they were all frivolous teenage trysts, but each and every single one of them found themselves adorned with jewels. Darya, of course, was always telling him that she didn’t need it, but that never stopped him. He can’t seem to help it, the ways in which he loves to inject himself into other people, to don his peers with little bits of himself – perhaps it’s a way of claiming ownership, of claiming power, but it’s also something that gives him pride; to see people wear and use the things he has given them, it lets him know that they appreciate what he does for them, and he loves to be appreciated. 

HEAD ON, HEART OFF: For the greater good, he tells himself. I think it probably scares him a little bit, how easily he was able to walk away from Darya. There’s a great many nuances to this situation, but at the end of the day I don’t think that, once he knew of his brothers death and what that entailed for his own future, he ever thought twice about keeping Darya in his life. He’s far too smart to ever truly believe that Darya could be his queen, and so he let her go without a second thought. Part of it was for her own sake; if he held onto her until he found himself a wife, then he would be doing her not only a great dishonesty, but also a great disservice. He knows that she deserves far better than to be the king’s mistress. And he thinks about her, often – sometimes it’s late at night, when there’s no one there to distract his thoughts from the image of her sprawled across his silk bed sheets, and sometimes it’s when he hears something funny or something beautiful; she is who he wants to share those moments with. But still, he left her like it was nothing, like it was easy, because that’s what his kingdom needed, what the crown demanded. It scares him how quickly the man he wanted to become has vanished, a crown prince left to fill his shining shoes. 

BATHE IN STARLIGHT: I am dead convinced that Anton has an unshakeable love for all things that live above his head: the birds that live in the trees, the trees themselves that grow so big and tall and will outlive him by millennia, but most important the sky, and what is beyond that. The galaxies and the cosmos fascinate him, and he is constantly staring up at them, clambering his way onto the roofs of buildings in an attempt to get closer to them. What secrets do they hold, those floating little balls of light? He can see them there, flickering in the sky above – they’re the only absolute constant in his life. Out on the Vy, or making camp near one of the Tula Valley’s many abandoned farms, even lost in the vast otherness of Tsibeya, the stars remained the same, guiding him through the darkness and to safety. 

EXTRAS: 

I do have a mockblog, which I’ve linked in this whole sentence! As per usual, I think it’s probably more helpful for me than it will be for you, but it’s there. :) I’ve also made Anton a pinterest board! 

Some extra things, a number of which are just more headcanons:

a playlist that i made for anton… here’s hoping you have spotify. it’s more or less instrumental songs that made me think of him, but there’s a couple of lyric songs in there as well. 

i forced myself not to make a darya & anton playlist, but listen to moondust by jaymes young and try to tell me it doesn’t make you cry. i’ll wait. 

birthdate: december 31st: capricorn. This sign is, above all else, ambitious. And while I don’t think that Anton necessarily lusted after the crown when he was the second son, he absolutely fought tooth and nail to make sure he was not only well-liked, but well respected. He rose through use of his own merit and skill to the title of General, and he did it because he’s patient. He’s resourceful. He gets what he wants. Capricorn’s other common traits tend to serve their ambition in that they are usually quite disciplined and quite intuitive; I think this lend nicely to the notion that Anton is very good at reading people – their wishes, their desires, they all come easily and quickly to him, allowing him to be whoever the person needs him to be. Capricorns often are very good with their words, which fits with his ability to but charm people and put them in their place, with his ability to bring nations to their knees with a twist of his tongue rather than his wrist. 

gender identity: cisgender; he/him. Anton’s entire life he was bred for war, for the life of a general. He was taught to keep his hair cropped short, his posture straight, and his muscles coiled tightly. He was taught walk like a man. This is why I’d suspect he’s never considered what life would be like if he were able to separate himself from his gender, from the constriction of the pronouns he’d been given at birth. The phrase be a man was so wound in with his identity that I doubt he could have ever given much thought to abandoning that which he was born into. 

sexuality: heteroperformative, but likely unopposed to the idea of sex with any and all genders, and more than likely has tumbled with his fair share of people of varying genders. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think he’s given a terrible amount of thought to his sexuality, always just assuming that he would have to marry some noble girl regardless of his own choices. The fact that he found and loved Darya wasn’t something that happened every day in Ravkan court, and I don’t think he was expecting it at all. Sure he’s the second born son and so his marriage wouldn’t have been nearly as important as any one made by Ivan, but Saints forbid Anton end up marrying anyone other than a well-mannered lady capable of matching his own level of wit and sophistication. No, Anton’s own personal willingness to cross all of those boundaries never mattered because he knew that in the long run he likely wouldn’t be marrying for love. 

hogwarts house: In my heart of hearts I love Gryffindor so much and was honestly trying to figure out a way to justify putting Anton in Gryffindor, but I just couldn’t manage it. I think he’s very probably in Slytherin given his pension for ambition and bringing armies to heel, but I think the sorting hat may think twice about not putting him in Ravenclaw. 

books: It’s not surprising that someone with an ability to connect to a vast array of people is then able to connect across a different field: the page. For as long as Anton can remember he’s always loved books, and the worlds that different stories can create. Before the spare was the heir, he was generally free to spend his days as he pleased. Prior to his introduction to the battalions, Anton could pretty much always be found in the library and anyone who walks into Anton’s personal quarters int he palace likely could have mistaken the room for a second one. His room is practically littered with stacks of different books, some of them historical and some simply novels to be read for pleasure. They cover every surface – piles on the floor beneath his desk and on the chair in the corner of his room. Books on his nightstand and at the foot of his bed. All of varying lengths and topics and age. His favorites always turn out to be about historical leaders, sometimes monarchs sometimes dictators sometimes usurpers. Men and women of great power and prestige who did great or ( sometimes and ) terrible things for their nations. Sometimes he pretends he’s not, but he’s always taking mental notes of what those Greats did that made them the ruler that they were. Even before he had the crown Anton was ready for it. 

languages: As the great wordsmith that Anton is, it makes sense that he would make sure he could be as such in as many languages as he could get his hands on. While out at sea, there is little else to do on passages than read a book, or perhaps practice a bit of swordplay (not that he really needs much help in that department). So read he would, plowing through books on Kerch and Shu Han, devouring the language and attempting to form the sounds on his tongue even without the aid of a native speaker. But eventually a vague understanding wasn’t enough, and he pestered each speaker of foreign languages that he could find into showing him to to move his mouth, where to put his tongue exactly behind his teeth. He loves words, and the more the merrier.

mars: For the longest time he couldn’t justify with himself getting a dog, unable to reconcile his want with the amount of time he would spend away from the creature. When his brother died, when he was made Crown Prince, he found himself spending more time at the palace than he had since he was a teenager, and he found a true friend in the small Golden Retriever puppy that he acquired. His father had said Get a Great Dane if you really must have a pet, but Anton loved the unbridled loyalty that came with his Golden, and he wouldn’t trade Mars for anything. The puppy now follows him everywhere, and he grows bigger and bigger every day. Mars, he finds, is very good at listening to his secrets. 

sailing: Anton, beyond a shadow of a doubt, loves the sea. There were a great many things that kept him from it while he was growing up ( namely The Unsea ) but even the darkness couldn’t hold Anton back from the place he was meant to be. Being out on the water was as close a thing to religion as Anton has ever felt, despite the preachings of the Apparat that he alway had to sit through while growing up. The language of the Saints had never resonated in his mind until he witnessed what it was to feel the wind kissing his skin, salt getting caught up in his too-long eyelashes. There’s something so liberating about being out on the water, an emotion that comes only when the land begins to fade from vision. In my head it was the first thing that was truly, incandescently Anton’s. He was the Second Born battle-savvy son, but Ivan was ruthless in battle in a way that made Anton’s pension for clever tricks instead of brute force not only less popular with his father, but it made the battlefield less his. Maybe that’s a selfish thought, but being at sea was the first thing that he was really, really good at that his elder brother hadn’t already claimed – the almost rhythmic slapping of the hull and the crooning of seagulls, the rigging creaking as it tightens around the pins.  **As a sidenote, I did come up with this headcanon prior to reading the Grisha trilogy – it is entirely possible that I was projecting my own love for the sea onto Anton, but I think it fits beautifully with his instiably curious, restless mind – but I am really really pleased that it aligned with Nikolai’s character because I love him and I just think that King of the Sea Anton is a beautiful Anton. 

good men: This one ties in kind of closely with my “HEART ON YOUR SLEEVE” headcanon, but I wanted to expand on that one just a little bit more down here. I think that Anton is the kind of General that remembers every single soldier that he served with, and even many of the ones that he was only commander to. He is just that kind of man, the one who cares about people far more than they very well may care about him. He asks men he hasn’t seen in three years how their lives have changed, remembering that one man’s wife was pregnant when they first met and so will ask if he ended up with a spitfire who can’t sleep through the night or not, will ask about anything he can remember from his past with them and the people love it, and it’s why not a single person out there questions the fact the the prince is the general – they know he wasn’t just given the title for the sake of the title. Anton damn well earned it. 

drinking: As a dastardly teenager with a face far too beautiful for it to be any good for Ravka’s women, kvas was more than likely one of Anton’s very best friends, as it would have been for any other young teenage boy. But I don’t think Anton drinks anymore, at least not really, and I think this is probably a fairly recent development. Obviously champagne and the occasional glass of kvas is necessary in the life a royal – for entertaining guests who prefer brandy to warm the hearts rather than the talk of alliances, or for wooing a woman into bed with the sultry glance above the rim of his glass – but I don’t think that he really drinks to excess. He’s too focused on Ravka and making it the kingdom he believes it can be: grand and powerful. He wouldn’t risk any modicum of control for the sake of waking up nauseous and bleary-eyed – no matter how attractive the prospect of liquor may seem in the moment. WIP.

grisha: Anton acts all holier than thou sometimes (read: all the time) but it’s more or less a facade to entertain while still commanding respect, and his emotions about the Grisha are not any different to how he feels about other citizens of Ravka: they deserve protection. As a child, his vision was tainted by the glasses of prejudice, but as soon as he began coming into his own, as soon as he began traveling through Ravka, he stopped seeing abomination and began to see allies, to see the human beneath the Small Science. It mattered not to Anton the fact that Stasya Belov could command air particles; he wanted to go for a tumble with her in shadowy corners just the same way Darya Voronov made his abdomen tighten. He saw beyond the prejudices he had been taught, and that newfound vision has stuck with him – and he’s determined to carry it not only through Ravka, but into Kerch and Shu Han and past the Fjerdan borders. He has a vision for the world, and it’s colored in acceptance. 

charms: I find the fact that Anton is extraordinarily charming quite fascinating if I’m being perfectly honest, because every persona that he dons is as genuine as the last – a feat not easily accomplished. The Grisha have odinakovost and etovost, that strange ability of theirs to call to the small sciences, but Anton has something equally as powerful: that ability to see into a person’s soul and know exactly what they need from him, who he must be to gain their trust. He’s a golden kind of charming, the kind of boy who lights up a person’s world, the kind of boy who creates warmth wherever he goes. Sometimes it makes a hearth, sometimes it burns men to the ground – it depends on what will serve him best. 

knives: Anton has always been skilled with knives. Anton, to be fair, tends to be good at everything that he puts his mind to. 

letters: Every single time he was away from the palace (and, to be sure, it was a great many times, for many months at a time) he sent letters back to his two favorite ladies: Anastasia and Darya. When he first began going to war, it was only to his sweet Ana that he would send mail to regularly, but as soon as Darya came into his life he was hooked on her, drowning in an all-encompassing love, and he’d pour and pour and pour himself into the pages he sent to her until there was nothing left to pour. More often than not he would press a flower he found near camp and include it in the letters he sent; even when he was away he wanted to give people a tiny little piece of himself, even if that piece was only a bit of where he was in the world at the time of mailing.

jurda: He smokes the root from a pipe, but only when he’s away from the palace (read: only when he’s away from Darya.) He tried chewing it, like all soldiers do, but he found the feeling it left in his mouth uncomfortable, and quickly moved onto using the pipe instead. It’s not quite that he needs a vice, but more so that it’s the only thing he’s found that can sate his appetite, that can calm the wolf every time he gets agitated. It’s strange, perhaps, but Anton needs no aid in finding energy as many who chew jurda do, but rather that thoughts of Darya often used to distract his energy from where it needed to be. The smoke focused him, smothered the want to make way for the war. 

prayer: Good sailors. Good soldiers. Let the sea carry them to safe harbor, and may the Saints receive them on a brighter shore. Anton repeats the Sailor’s Prayer to himself after every single battle, whether the men he’s lost have been sea-lovers or not. Sailing is as close a thing to religion as he has ever truly believed in and he can’t quite shake himself of the habit. Sometimes it’s a simple Saints receive them and sometimes it’s the entire prayer, but either way the sea is always with him. 

CONNECTIONS – These are, of course, player approval contingent, but I tried to keep them mostly Anton-sided to avoid potential variations in interpretation! I know that there’s a lot of these, and so that some of them may need tweaking, but given Anton’s status, he knows a great many people and I wanted to really explore his thoughts about Ravkan court given it runs his life. 

ivan – Fascinating, isn’t it, the bonds between brothers? If manipulation were a two-sided coin, then Anton and Ivan would be on opposing sides: Ivan, the physical, Anton, the mental. Where one was all fists, the other relied on wits. Where neither was overly tender or merciful, one knew what the words meant where the other pretended the words didn’t exist. How do you live with yourself? Anton occasionally thought to ask, though he knew what his elder brother would respond with: a haughty laugh, an innately valorous twist of his mouth (everything Ivan did was fraught with grandeur, with glory, with darkness). By always being the last man standing. Little did he know.  

viktor – He is Viktor fucking Lantsov, a harbinger of the kind of darkness that he saw in his elder brother’s soul as well. The two, it would seem, are cut from the same cloth, and for that reason there’s a terror that fills Anton’s mind every time he thinks about the youngest brother – the same terror he once felt when he stood in Ivan’s presence. If Anton’s destiny was always to be the crown, then Viktor’s was always to be the spare; for that reason he is filled with wounds and they are leaking gasoline, leaving Anton to navigate the precipice between comrade and competition, weapon and wary. It has never been easy, loving his brother, especially when he knows that Viktor’s fury knows no bounds, his anger raging with a kind of frenzy even the strongest hurricane couldn’t stomp out. He has already incurred his brother’s wrath, and he has no desire to incur his fury. Only the tides will tell him what he will do next, and even those he’s not sure he can rely on.

anastasia – His printsessa. God he loves Ana; he loves Ana so much that sometimes it hurts, so much that he makes her think of bringing knife to rope so that he might cut himself from the Lantsov noose around his neck, away from the kingdom. But that’s all he does: think. He will never take action to mend the fragile broken thing that now rests between them, will never put blood above country. Like all half-gods, Anton had come to accept this tragedy – it shocks him every single day how easily this acceptance came to him. There was no blackhole of sleepless night where he mourned the loss of sister and brother, of lover or friend. There are few people that Anton will openly admit to having loved in his life, who have seen him in the most vulnerable of places, and while Ana is one of those special few, he is no longer the sweet little sobachka he once was. With crown came kingdom, and that needs to be more important than any love, even family.

tatiana – Fuck if he doesn’t absolutely loathe the time he must spend at his cousins side, though he would never admit to his dislike aloud. As close to the edge as she pushes him (and, to be sure, Cronos’s cool embrace often sounds more appealing than listening to Tati screech on about this or that – but, hey, we don’t choose our family) he would extinguish any star that dared to threaten her, the same as he would for Ana or Viktor, despite the distance and coldness between all of them.

darya – He would give anything is this world to make Darya happy, anything but himself. There is no easy way from Earth to the stars, and if Anton’s blood calls to the sea beneath the hull of his ship, then the fabric of Darya’s soul is made of stardust. He once thought that this would never be the way of it, with his heart abandoned on her sleeve, his ability to love suddenly gone, but now he sees the truth for what it is: this is his destiny, no matter the steps it took for him to get here. He loves (he would desperately like to believe it to be loved, but he isn’t in the habit of lying to himself) Darya, and he knows that he always will. The fox that he once was will love her until the sun rises in the west and the sea turns to sand beneath his feet, but the volk that he has become, the volk that was always lying in wait beneath his skin, will never allow himself to feel for her what he once did. To do so would be to put himself above his country, and Ravka deserves better than a king who cannot abandon the boy he once was for the GOD they need. 

the darkling – Anton sees him for exactly what he is: a plague made flesh. It’s not a warm thought, neither is Anton filled with the kind of warmth others at court are when the Darkling enters a room. Pain makes noise, and despite all the pain he causes, the Darkling is silent as the moon. Anton can’t very well trust a man who feels nothing can he?

gemma – He thinks about marrying her more and more often, and not for any frivolous reason such as love. He sees her not for her beauty and not even for her brains, but for what the people see in her: hope. If Iskra is his hope for a better future for himself, then Gemma is his hope for his nation. He sees in her illuminated cities, at the very center of her is a well to satiate the thirst his people have been suffering under for centuries. It’s not fair, but what is fairness anymore? When the fate of a nation is not just in your hands, but in your blood, in your bones, you cannot turn away: Anton will ask everything from her, and he will do it without a second thought. Here is my hand. Here is my throat. Here is anything you want, even the marrow from my bones if you ask it. He doesn’t believe in religion, but he would build one to her if that’s what she needs. The nation needs her and just as he would give himself to his people, he will do anything she asks if she’ll just be his ally, his hallelujah.

iskra – She flinches, and he would be disappointed. He thinks her beyond something as trivial as fear. Perhaps it’s strange, or perhaps unfair, the way he holds her up, places her so high above all of the others. He mounts her on a pedestal as though she is one of Donatello’s masterpieces and Saints help the soul who dares to call her anything but a marvel. He plucked her from the masses, just another bastard in a crowd, an Etherealki whose fate he could see from the moment his night-darkened eyes fell upon her face, and he helped to turn her into something glorious. When he found her, she was already a sight to behold: a dragon to set fire to each of his enemies, a warrior in soft skin. She was a bastard who had left everything she had ever known to start a new life someplace foreign. Even then he knew that she was something meant to be spoken of in legends, a girl turned woman, turned blade. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And like a phoenix, she rose from the ashes of her former life, and Anton made for himself a home at the hearth of her. Like calls to like. He sees in her both what he fears and what he dreams of – a bastard who has created a life still worth something, a bastard who rises above what others seek to drag them down for. I rise. I rise. I rise. “Nadeyus moya,” he calls her when no one can hear. My hope.

inessa & feliks – He compares them both is Iskra, and time and time again he is disappointed in them. It’s not fair, not in the slightest; it’s like comparing kings to gods, of which Iskra is certainly one. Inessa is remarkable, to be sure, but she is a snake in snakes’ skin, a girl whose veins seem forged from gasoline not unlike his brothers – just waiting to be set aflame. Feliks comes from an equally, though differently, violent background, and it’s not that he doesn’t trust the guards with his siblings lives (he does, cautiously, as he does all other things), but he worries about the darkness that seems to color their lives, worries that it will follow them from past and into the present. Too many have wound up dead in both of their pasts for Anton to truly trust them, no matter how often and thoroughly they prove themselves capable. 

arisha – Arisha is… a force to be reckoned with, to be sure. She’s a clever sort, the kind of wolf that would dare to challenge his status as alpha is he left her with an opening to do so. He thinks she would have done well with his brother, both creatures of equal part gods and terror. She’s a good actress, with the kind of poker face that most men would sacrifice entire nations just to crack, but Anton holds a stack of cards that she can’t even begin too imagine, with plays that she’s never seen before. (Or so he thinks; tragic, Anton is, remember?) And while the minx makes him uncomfortable, while he makes sure to never turn his back in her direction for fear she may slip a knife between his ribs – to be fair, he makes every effort to never turn his back on anyone – he listens to what she has to say about the kingdom as intently as his mother does, as his father does. Until she proves herself an enemy he will continue to treat her as ally, but he waits with bated breath for the moment she will show her true colors. 

oyun – There are so many vipers in Ravkan court; Oyun Kir-naran is one of those many, and she makes no apologies for it. Anton finds he can respect that, despite the soft-edges she paints herself with. She speaks with a tongue like velvet, like the sun’s rays filtering in with dawn, and it sounds like lust, tastes like intimacy, and it’s all on purpose. Saints know Anton sees through it because he does the same thing: play on people, use their tells to be the kind of person they spill their secrets to. Oyun is exactly the kind of person he needs to be wary of, just as he is who she needs to worry about – each wants to bring the other’s nation to it’s knees, and if he could he’d say Scurry back to Shu Han, Oyun, his voice collected and his face unreadable. You can’t win here. As it is he bows his head respectfully and smiles. Let the games play on. Gods do not bend their knees to wolves in sheepskin.

ANYTHING ELSE?

And FINALLY I have approximately 12 million favorites, but the book I’ve probably read the most times is Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, just because it’s filled with book-lovers and I am nothing if not one of those! Thank you for reading my app & can’t wait to keep a weathered eye on this group even if I’m not accepted. ♡

#accepted: anton #raraccepted

[voleuxe]

FIVE THINGS TAG

TAGGED BY STOLEN FROM; at least three people on my dash

5 THINGS YOU’LL FIND IN MY BAG ;

Pens

Notebook

More pens

Chapstick

At least one(1) strange and/or random item that will make you question everything you know about me

5 THINGS IN MY BEDROOM;

Various collections of polished rock, glassware, and shells.

A really neat corner shelf that a man at my parents’ previous church made for us out of re purposed barn wood.

A bunch of little electric tea lights (mostly inside fairy jars but also just, around.)

Stuffed animals everywhere even though there’s a whole bunch who are still in storage :’(

Assorted journals, sketchpads, binders, notebooks, etc. full of?? Who knows, I’m cluttered.

5 THINGS I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO WITH MY LIFE ;

Publish a story in some form of media (ideally, a book or originally scripted movie.)

Be a mermaid (which is ... in more production than I ever thought it would be tbh. Summer job, here i come)

???

Not be sad 

5 THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY ;

Movies.

Fuzzy pajama pants.

Sea shells & polished rock & glassware & feathers & candles. And shiny things. Lost things. I’m basically a literal magpie, I like things. Smol treasures. Grabby hands.

The Spring Sprite from Fantasia 2000 has always made me really happy and I don’t know why but I do know she’s why I dyed my hair green that one time and might dye it green again when it gets back to being long. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, (boop boop.) I used to watch it so much that our tape copy of Fantasia 2000 was warped towards the end and it warbled so bad. (Which, as a sidenote, was hilarious.)

Animals in general, but more specifically, I really love my dog and she makes me happy.

5 THINGS I’M CURRENTLY INTO ;

Colorguard. It’s been like three(?) years since I did any spinning but boy howdy do I miss it. 

Film/movies/whatever you want to call it. I like movies, I’m all about the movies. Story telling mediums in general, but movies specifically.

Can I say “Kingdom Hearts” or is that too, like, specific??

Applying for colleges??? (just the one, actually, but we’ll see where it goes from there.)

And my old pal, writing, who has never given up on me.

5 THINGS ON MY TO-DO LIST ;

 Finish designing my friend’s tattoo for her Valentines gift (because I love & appreciate her lots and it’s already been 9ever since she asked me.)

Drafts drafts drafts, wherever I have any.

Revise that meta post I wrote last night, because I don’t like the way I worded pretty much the whole thing.

Maybe post a starter or two?

Cookies. We bought Valentines Day cookies and I’ve been told I have to make them because apparently on one else in my house understands how not to over-bake cookies.

5 THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT ME ;

I dropped out of high school (well, got a GED instead of finishing. Don’t do that. Stay in school, kids.) ((That’s a joke if it’s not a good thing for you absolutely get tf out of there and get a GED it’s literally the same thing as a diploma in the eyes of virtually any college you might have plans to attend I promise. Nobody will think any less of you for having a GED. High school is hell, you’re okay.))

I haven’t had my hair be its natural color since about the seventh/eighth grade and I’m honestly not sure what it would look like if I let it grow out without dying over it. 

My most popular/”successful” blog I’ve ever run was for Caspian from The Chronicles of Narnia. He had just over 300 followers and I was doing like, twenty 500 word+ replies every couple of days and I high key feel bad about abandoning/deleting that blog without any real warning and if I thought I was capable I would pick him back up but I don’t think I’ll ever actually do it tbh.. ((the email for Lu’s blog is actually one I intended to use for a reboot of Cas, but you can see how that panned out.))

Low key have a Ben Barnes obsession (he’s so pretty to  look at and also a gifted actor?? Ben Barns in more things 2k17. I’m excited for Netflix’s Punisher series mostly because of Ben Barnes. He’s my favorite adorable idiot since like 2008 when Prince Caspian came out and I was like “that’s a pretty boy.”)

I may or may not be considering a Monty Python and the Holy Grail tattoo for my father you can’t prove anything. Probably something in the effect of the Coconut Debate™ . Not sure yet.

TAGGING ; @eruditioned @saltate  and tbh that’s it right now because I stole the thing but feel free to say I tagged you so I can get nosy and read your answers if you steal it from me >:)

#( unarmed / ooc. ) #''are you suggesting coconuts migrate?!'' #it's not a question of where it /grips/ it

[myentertainmentthoughts]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - General Thoughts & Review

Upon getting out of the theater after watching The Last Jedi, I just can’t NOT write down my thoughts and feelings, as this movie definitely gave me quite a lot of both. So here we go! Ranty rant on my often defunct blog!

So, it’s pretty much impossible for me to give my true thoughts on this movie without going into more detail about its finer points, given that I have so many mixed feelings about both The Last Jedi’s strengths and weaknesses. But for a general review minus spoilers, what are my thoughts? This movie was extremely entertaining - a great watch, and definitely a fresh take on the Star Wars franchise. A solid 7.5/10. The extra points being docked off for the fact that as great of a watch as it was, it is certainly a pretty flawed movie, and one that divides the fandom heavily (and I can definitely see why).

But let’s first talk about the good things.

Based on this movie alone, I can say with certainty that Rian Johnson is indeed a fantastic director and has a great sense of using his shots to convey story meaningfully. I really felt like this movie was freakin’ BEAUTIFUL, and I would highly suggest it as a first rate choice for film studies and whatnot. I can’t praise the cinematography and general visual direction of this movie enough. We’ll get that aspect out of the way - I think it’s pretty much a 10/10 there.

As for the “tribute” points, I also think he does a great job of doing some old Star Wars film throwbacks without being quite so literal. This is by far my heaviest criticism of the first new SW sequel - The Force Awakens was so heavy handed in trying to please the fandom. The first three films are undoubtedly the most beloved, and while some tribute and throwback being done absolutely makes sense when considering this, The Force Awakens went too shot-for-shot, plot point for plot point, and re-featuring old character moments/history. It was overkill. It was a New Hope 2.0 remake, just swap some of the characters. Whereas The Last Jedi does a great job of paying tribute to the older films and characters, but retains its sense of originality. It builds very successfully onto the older established characters in terms of adding to their personality and development. Which I must seriously applaud this movie for - that’s a pretty damn hard thing to do with characters as beloved and iconic as the older Star Wars staples like Luke, and Leia.

And I finally add that the originality and flavor of this movie is really its strongest point as a whole. Yes, the tribute thing was done well, but in general what I appreciate most about this movie is that it felt like a brand new, and fresh take on the Star Wars mythos and world. Yes - it’s far from being a perfect movie, but I must say that it is a great follow up from The Force Awakens. It’s the movie that this franchise needed at this point in time. In terms of how the movie handles the characters, the tone, the shooting, the action sequences, and the general approach to Star Wars - it just feels…well, for lack of a better word, FRESH. And that - if nothing else - is for sure a very valuable thing that The Last Jedi has brought to Star Wars. For a huge universe as deep, diverse, and expansive as Star Wars - to have something that feels so new within the films is to be lauded without a doubt.

So overall - these are the highest points of this film. Well - in addition to the fact that it’s very, very, entertaining. I mean, hot damn! There are some COOOOOOL battle/fight/action sequences. It doesn’t disappoint in that category either. So all that awesome stuff about it being said, stated, and put aside. Where did this movie fall flat? I’d say my biggest criticism of The Last Jedi has everything to do with editing. The run time of this film was 2 hours and 30 minutes. 

Granted, I understand that it’s Star Wars, and isn’t more content always a good thing? But being a 2 hour 30 minute movie does say a lot about just how much story is packed into this thing, and a lot of that story (IMHO) really, really didn’t need to be told. You know that saying, less is more? Yeah - this is the case with The Last Jedi, and the whole movie definitely felt bloated. Some of the plot straight up didn’t make sense - and where it didn’t make sense - I look back on it and realize that those nonsensical plot moments weren’t even necessary to the overall arc of the movie. They could have been cut out entirely, and the movie would not only be shorter, more concise, and MADE more sense but would’ve probably been a much stronger story as a whole. (Basically, I’m referring to the entire plot point of going onto Canto Bight. I will ramble about that one in more detail and more specifically in a future write up, but anyone who has seen the movie will know exactly what I’m talking about.)

But the long and short of it (Ha-ha. Loooong and short of it - get it?) issss - the movie would’ve benefitted greatly from some slashing. This is really the worst problem of all of the prequel movies that are so widely hated from everyone. George Lucas went into way too much detail about his universe and completely forgot that the first trilogy was compelling for its classic and iconic hero’s adventure storytelling. (No one cares about your damn trade federation politics George. -_-) And this is where The Last Jedi gets hurt too.

These sorts of detailed tangential storylines - while helping develop some of the characters - did nothing for the overall plot of the movie, and only achieved in making it feel super dragged out. And you should never feel like watching Star Wars is a chore. By the end of the movie - I’m not gonna lie - it actually does feel a bit like that. Thank god the movie was generally entertaining and had some GREAT action sequences to break it up because, otherwise these pacing and plot issues honestly had the potential to kind of ruin the entire movie. (Also I realize that me complaining about this long and dragged out movie is ironic given that I’m writing the world’s longest and most dragged out review of said movie. I have some self awareness but I’m too much of a nerd to not ramble on, HAHA.)

Alright moving on - my other main gripe with this movie is a nitpick one, but one that I think other people had issues with too. The humorous, “cutesy” moments. Granted - I loved that Johnson wasn’t afraid to explore more humor and light-heartedness with Star Wars. And the original trilogy had plenty of funny and cute moments just as purposely injected into them too. I just felt like at some points, it got to be too much. Sort of like a pastry that a chef felt like he/she had to put that last little teaspoon of sugar in, and made it taste overly sweet when it could’ve been perfect with just a tiny bit less. This was probably most pronounced with the porgs - the adorable little creatures living on Luke’s island that were obviously put in for marketing and merchandising purposes (Let’s not kid ourselves Disney. *eyeroll*).

(^Snoke’s true identity. Never fails to crack me up. :P)

But in general, the little humorous bits that were sprinkled into this movie, fun as they were, did kind of take me out of it JUST enough that I felt it was too much. Sometimes it felt (for lack of a better term) hokey. And just not…Star Wars. Star Wars isn’t supposed to be hokey. (Maybe except for Jar Jar. Not exactly a good or well-loved part of the series.) Maybe it’s a bit prudish and not open minded enough to feel like Star Wars can’t be light hearted in that way, but pushing the boundaries like that did feel out of place for this particular universe, and ultimately it took me out of the story enough to be a problem.

All in all, I will be the first to admit that this movie had its fair share of both ups, and definite downs. But does it deserve the harsh criticism from the hardcore Star Wars fans who are apparently requesting for Episode 8 to be deleted from canon? Far from it for anyone who is able to emotionally detach themselves away from their own expectations of what they think a Star Wars film should be, to recognize that this movie was ultimately well-executed and had enough redeeming qualities to be thoroughly enjoyed by the average movie goer. And as far as I am concerned, it’s a very solid entry into the Star Wars fiction.

I have so much more specific detail that I would love to get into because apparently Star Wars is one of those things that I have to really search my feelings for (Hehehe. Get it? Heh.....heh.........ahhh). But there you go! My general review for those of you who don’t like to listen to a crazy person ramble on and on about every little specific plot point in this new movie. (Sidenote: THAT crazy recap is to be posted on this blog next, for any fellow fanatics who are interested.) To be continued...*CUE JOHN WILLIAMS END CREDIT STAR WARS NUMBER*