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cissyenthusiast010155 · 10 months

Note

Poly!Larissa x Morticia x Reader with the shapeshifting and all, if you don’t want to do it just let me know cause I know some of the request can make people feel uncomfortable.

😊

Hey hey hey anon! I am absolutely comfortable with writing this 🥰 Thank you for requesting it! Had some inspiration from one of @prettyprettyprettybaby ‘s posts on this one. Hope you Enjoy 💞

Some Fun… ~Poly!Morissa xFem Reader

Mommy… Master List

Requests & Prompt-List

Warnings: NSFW, 18+!!!, smut, threesome, semi-public sex, pet names, praise kink, shapeshifted d!ck, g!p fucking, eating out, implied exhibitionist kink…?, implied future smut, etc.

Enjoy (;

You weren’t one to usually got to restaurants and such especially not alone, but tonight you had spontaneously decided to go wine and dine yourself.

That’s how you ended up in this high end Italian place, known for their wine. So with a glass of red wine in your hand and having already eaten, you were spending your night away in this fancy place.

The bell of the door rang, indicating someone had walked in. You turned your head slightly to see who walked in, and your jaw nearly dropped to the floor. In walked a tall, blonde goddess accompanied by another less tall, raven haired goddess.

They say a few table away from you but you had a direct cross view. They only ordered salads and then went straight to wine. Your eyes kept fluttering to them. You tried to stop staring, but you were finding it extremely difficult…

A little while later, the women began to get up to leave. A part of you was saddened that they were leaving your presence. But you were even more stunned when instead of going to the exit, the women started to approach you. The raven haired woman took a seat across from you, and the blonde stole a chair from another table to sit adjacent to both of you.

“Um… hi…?” You stuttered, your gaze flickering back and forth from woman to woman in a frenzy.

“We understand that this is not customary, but you see, we saw you staring, Darling, and we thought we might come introduce ourselves…” the blonde spoke with the most sinfully delicious British accent ever.

You gulped and nodded with a strong blush.

“I’m Morticia and this is my partner, Larissa, and we’re in an open relationship…” the raven haired goddess spoke with a sultry tone.

“Oh…?” You chocked out, setting your wine down.

“And we thought from your lingering gaze, Darling, that you might be interested…” Larissa purred.

Your mouth went dry and your breath hitched. Then both women got up. Your eyes frantically looked back and forth. Then Larissa leaned down to the shell of your ear.

“Meet us in the bathroom in 10 minutes if that is indeed the case…” she husked.

~~~

Those was the longest fucking 10 minutes do your life. You stared at the clock intently, and as soon as the clock hit minute 10, you scurried to the women’s restroom. There was only one stall and so you knocked.

“It’s me…” you spoke in a hushed tone.

The door swung open and a creamy, strong hand pulled you in, closing and locking the door behind you. You were slammed against the bathroom door, the raven haired woman’s lips smashing against yours. You moaned into the kiss with need. The blonde was leaning against the door, drinking in the show unfolding before her. At one point, you both pull away breathless from the heated kiss.

“I want to feel her…” Larissa lustfully husked, taking Morticia’s place and trapping you flush against the door.

You gasped as your hips instinctually started grinding against her now very apparent bulge.

“Want to feel your walls fluttering around me, Darling…” Larissa groaned.

You bit your lip and nodded eagerly.

“Please please…” you chanted.

The both of you stripped down to your bras quickly. Morticia helping the blonde with the zipper of her dress and you currying to removed your pants and knickers. With the final throw to the side of Larissa’s knickers, your eyes widened as you got a full look at the woman’s hardened cock. Your needy eyes fluttered back up to the blonde.

Larissa didn’t even take the time to shoot you a teasing quip about your lingering gaze. No, she tapped her sides, indicating for you to jump up, where your legs straddled her waist and she held you against the wall while lining her veiny cock up with your throbbing cunt. She slipped into your heat with ease, causing a throaty moan to escape from your lips.

“God yesssss—” you hissed, Larissa’s dick filling you up in a deliciously overwhelming way.

Morticia was right next to both of you, now teasing her own cunt, moaning at the sight of the two of you. With the pressure of you being pressed between the blonde and the wall, Larissa began thrusting into you.

“Harder, faster Larissa please…” you whimpered, dying of her slow, torturous pace.

Larissa smirked at your plea, looking over to Morticia who was grinning like a Cheshire Cat and nodding eagerly.

“Alright, but you’ll have to stay quiet, Darling…” she breathily purred, “Can you do that…?”

You bit your lip and nodded eagerly.

“Words, Sweet girl…” Morticia warily purred.

Your eyes widened and your breath hitched.

“Yes yes, I can take it please—!!” You whimpered.

At this, Larissa’s lips crashed into yours, before she was pounding into you relentlessly. She pulled away from the kiss only to start marking your neck and shoulders. But you couldn’t keep quiet… Whimpers, moans, and mewls escaped your lips, as the blonde pounded into you without mercy. Morticia hushed you and her hand snaked up to your mouth, covering your helpless moans up tightly.

“Gotta be quiet, sweet girl…” she hummed.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.

Oh Shit—!!

You began panicking. But the two women were ahead of you. And the blonde didn’t stop pounding into you. Your screams were muffled by the raven haired woman’s hand.

“Shhhhh, we’re not going to stop for a mere stranger, hmmm Mon Amour…?” She purred.

Larissa chuckled darkly, “Oh no, not gonna stop until we’ve filled our pet up with my cum, so deep she’ll be having my baby…”

You let out a particular leud moan now, the idea of being caught along with being bred.

“I can feel your walls clenching harder and harder, Darling…” Larissa groans.

“Oh my, does being caught turn out pretty, little pet on…?” Morticia taunts, her eyes blackened fully with lust.

You nod vigorously, nuzzling your head in the blonde’s shoulder to muffle your screams. All of this being enough to send you over the edge unexpectedly. You came with a violent spasm and many muffled cries. And Larissa was quick to climax after you, filling you up all the way. Morticia followed right after that, riding out her high on her own fingers.

From there, Larissa slid out of you, catching you as your legs buckled. You looked around and found the raven haired woman was sitting on the counter with her legs spread out wide.

“Be a Good pet and eat me out…” Morticia purred.

“Yes Ma’am…” you panted.

You nodded vigorously and crawled over to the raven haired goddess, placing your hands of her creamy thighs and diffing your tongue deep inside her soaked pussy. The woman’s hand snuck it’s way into your hair, pushing you further into her cunt. You worked Morticia up to the edge quickly and with skill. And she came with a leud groan, which Larissa quickly silenced by smashing her lips to Morticia’s. You happily lapped up all of the raven haired goddesses juices, before meeting your own lips with hers.

The three of you were a panting mess as you hurriedly cleaned up in order to let the next person have the bathroom. You said your goodbyes, Morticia taking one last heated kiss from your lips and Larissa pecking each of your cheeks lovingly.

Then the two women left first. And you followed out after five minutes. When you went back to your table, you found that your bill had been paid and that Larissa had left her business card with her number and a note that read,

Don’t be afraid to call, Darling <33

~~~

Larissa Weems Masterlist

Morticia Addams Masterlist

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chocfrog-enjoyer · 9 months

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TRELAWNEY ISN’T A FRAUD!

So as we “know” or so we believed Trelawney was a total liar. Well allow me to show you that she was in fact not at all. Most of the times we know of at least, because she did have a habit of talking big about small things which I’m not counting here.

So first let’s ignore the 2 obvious prophecies and the times she would tell about the Lavenders rabbit dying or Hermione dropping the class as those could be blamed on chance. Sybill does have a sort of “inner eye” but sadly the way she tells the information accompanied by her usual “mysterious” style makes them pretty unbelievable.

But after some analysis allow me to show you this post. This is all I could think about for now in the case of her divinations.

Let’s first analyze the subject of Divination itself. As quoted:

“ Professor Trelawney delicately rearranged her shawl and continued, 'So you may have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field..

[…]

‘Many witches and wizards, talented though they are in the area of loud bangs and smells and sudden disappearings, are yet unable to penetrate the veiled mysteries of the future,’ “

Divination is a strong emotional subject. Mainly based on feelings, interpretation and beliefs. Small glimpses of probable future yet to be interpreted to ones mind.

That’s why it is indeed one of the hardest subjects as it is impossible to understand by reading. In divination you have to rely on your instincts and feelings when using “future-telling” methods.

So let’s get to the actual interesting parts.

“ ... the doors of the Great Hall opened again. It was Professor Trelawney, gliding towards them as though on wheels. She had put on a green sequined dress in honour of the occasion, making her look more than ever like a glittering, oversize dragonfly.

‘Sybill, this is a pleasant surprise!' said

Dumbledore, standing up.

'I have been crystal-gazing, Headmaster,' said Professor Trelawney, in her mistiest, most faraway voice, and to my astonishment, I saw myself abandoning my solitary luncheon and coming to join you. Who am I to refuse the prompting of fate? I at once hastened from my tower, and I do beg you to forgive my lateness..'

‘Certainly, certainly,' said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling. 'Let me draw you up a chair -'

[...]

Professor Trelawney, however, did not sit down; her enormous eyes had been roving around the table, and she suddenly uttered a kind of soft scream.

'I dare not, Headmaster! If I join the table, we shall be thirteen! Nothing could be more unlucky! Never forget that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die!' “

[ HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban ]

This doesn’t seem important does it? Especially that when Harry and Ron stood up nothing happened. Oh just another one of Trelawneys pointless ramblings. It is in fact not! Just look:

This is an assumption as I don’t think it was ever confirmed but it’s reasonable enough that I find it true.

We were given a list of all the people sitting at the moment. Dumbledore, McGonagal, Snape, Sprout, Flitwick, Filch, 3 other students and of course Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Or at least it might seem like that…

We know that this was the time that Crookshanks was after Scabbers. It is said in this exact same chapter that Scabbers was constantly staying in Ron’s pocket. The thing is that Scabbers is not a rat. And so if he was present at the moment there were already 13 people sitting at the table!

But what’s so special about it, nothing happened to Harry or Ron anyway? Well that is because they weren’t the ones who stood up first at that moment.

“ ‘Sybill, this is a pleasant surprise!' said Dumbledore, standing up. “

Everything checks out. Out of all the people present at the table ( counting Scabbers/Wormtail ) Dumbledore was the first one to die

But as I said this is just a very probable assumption. The next one isn’t.

Remember that time on Order of Phoenix when Molly and Sirius had an argument?

“ ‘He's not your son,’ said Sirius quietly.

‘He's as good as,’ said Mrs Weasley fiercely. ‘Who else has he got?’

‘He's got me!’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Weasley, her lip curling, ‘the thing is, it's been rather difficult for you to look after him while you've been locked up in Azkaban, hasn't it?’

Sirius started to rise from his chair.

‘Molly, you're not the only person at this table who cares about Harry,’ said Lupin sharply. ‘Sirius, sit down.’ “

There were also 13 people sitting at a table at that moment. Sirius was the first one to stand up and he was the first one to die.

That’s what I got with the 13’s for now but If I missed a prediction like this I’d love to see someone who has found it.

Continuing to the Goblet of Fire:

“ 'I was saying, my dear, that you were clearly born under the baleful influence of Saturn,' said Professor Trelawney, a faint note of resentment in her voice at the fact that he had obviously not been hanging on her words.

"Born under -what, sorry?' said Harry.

"Saturn, dear, the planet Saturn!' said

Professor Trelawney, sounding definitely irritated that he wasn't riveted by this news. 'I was saying that Saturn was surely in a position of power in the heavens at the moment of your birth. Your dark hair... your mean stature... tragic losses so young in life... I think I am right in saying, my dear, that you were born in mid-winter?'

"No,' said Harry, 'I was born in July.' “

[ HP and the Goblet of Fire ]

When I was younger and I read this scene it made me laugh. But when re-re-re-…re-reading it as I am much older it made me think. Trelawney isn’t wrong here. The problem is she doesn’t sense this in Harry.

What is this person talking about you might think? Allow me to elaborate. As we already agreed Divination is no clear-answers and easy interpretations. So Sybill thought that what she sensed was about Harry, while in fact it wasn’t!

‘[…] Your dark hair... your mean stature... tragic losses so young in life... I think I am right in saying, my dear, that you were born in mid-winter?’

Let’s think who else fits that description.

It is no one else than Tom Marvolo Riddle. Dark Hair, mean stature, and a tragic loss ( mother dying shortly after birth ) young in life. But most importantly Tom Riddle was born on 31st December. Mid winter.

And as we later know Harry is a Horcrux of Lord Voldemort aka Tom. Harry has part of Voldemorts soul inside him and that’s why Trelawney thought it was Harry.

“ ‘Harry proceeded through deserted corridors, though he had to step hastily behind a statue when Professor Trelawney appeared round a corner, muttering to herself as she shuffled a pack of dirty-looking playing cards, reading them as she walked.

‘Two of spades: conflict,' she

murmured, as she passed the place where Harry crouched, hidden. 'Seven of spades: an ill omen. Ten of spades: violence. Knave of spades: a dark young man, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the questioner -'.

She stopped dead, right on the other side of Harry's statue.

‘Well, that can't be right,' she said, annoyed, and Harry heard her reshuffling vigorously as she set off again, leaving nothing but a whiff of cooking sherry behind her. “

[ HP and the Half Blood Prince ]

This is the book where Sybill is a bit unstable due to her previous trouble with Umbridge, the current state where there are 2 Divination teachers and Dumbledore kind of avoids meeting with her.

For me the quote above talks about Malfoy. She’s getting hints, but at her state she can’t interpret them well enough.

Why Malfoy? Well at that time Malfoy was trying to kill Dumbledore remember? He was a Death Eater. A dark troubled young man. The rest of this talks about the events that Malfoy causes in attempts to get rid of the headmaster.

“ ‘If Dumbledore chooses to ignore the warnings the cards show -

Her bony hand closed suddenly around

Harry's wrist.

‘Again and again, no matter how Ilay them out -

And she pulled a card dramatically from underneath her shawls.

"-the lightning-struck tower,' she whispered. Calamity. Disaster. Coming nearer all the time…’ “

Well taking out a disaster where did Dumbledore die in the end? On top of the astronomy tower. Lighting-struck tower

“ A JET of GREEN LIGHT hits Dumbledore squarely in the chest. For a second he

hangs, suspended upon the ramparts, and then... the night swallows him.

Bellatrix raises her wand to the sky and a DEAFENING BLAST shakes the castle, masking Harry’s cry. The CLOUDS EXPLODE with GRIM LIGHT, mutating into a SKULL. “

And for the end here’s a lil drawing I made of Sybill:

#harry potter #hp #hp fandom #analysts #analysis #hp analysis #trelawney #harry potter analysis #sybille trelawney #hp art #hp artwork #chibi

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ina-nis · 1 year

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These are the kinds of posts that give me some hope (and somewhat more confirmation that what I’m dealing with is, indeed, AvPD). I feel like this could’ve been written by me.

“Not feeling socially fulfilled from socializing”

I haven't been diagnosed with AvPD, but I see myself on the "spectrum." A few months ago, I was in a bad place and I would say I had full-blown symptoms of AvPD. But I've made a lot of progress since then and am probably in the realm of "normal."

But one thing has been bothering me. I feel like even though I'm willing to spend time with friends. I just don't really feel like I enjoy it? It's like I'm expecting something... more? I think part of it is that as an avoidant person, I often feel like this person from the outside looking in at this world with so many beautiful human connections.

I believe, this is basically what Avoidant Personality Disorder “remission” would look like from a medical standpoint: you overcome anxiety, build social skills, are able to socialize semi-normally, your self-esteem isn’t in the gutter, you’re able to stand your ground, etc.

So... if you’re not avoiding as much anymore, and you can socialize, then what’s the problem? Why isn’t that successful? Why things don’t feel like true improvement?

Being able to socialize doesn’t translate into forming connections.

Forming connections don’t translate into “success” because it’s very likely those are superficial connections.

Superficial connections can become deeper ones, sure, but deeper connections usually happen off the bat, because you “click” with someone else, you have chemistry right away. They can be built, but they’re almost always found. You see each other eye-to-eye, and are able to state where you are and what you need.

An avoidant who is able to socialize might start forming lots of superficial connections, and that becomes more and more frustrating - those people are unavailable, right? You expect more, but they can only give you so much. They might be peers, and have lots of things in common with you, but some deeper connection is lacking...

As one of the replies in that post correctly points out: it’s not a matter of high expectations, but one of wanting to connect on a deeper level with people.

But this is hard because deeper connections require people to be able to be vulnerable with each other, to be able to open up, to impose their boundaries without fear of reprisal, to state their needs and find compromises... that’s a lot and most people are not emotionally prepared, or they might not have the emotional maturity or insight.

You may have found it yourself, but it’s likely most people don’t really do that kind of inner work, introspection pays off but it’s mostly too troublesome and painful, “ignorance is bliss” that saying goes. This is why they’re satisfied with “superficial” relationships - it might not even be superficial for them.

How to form deep connections with people in a society that prioritizes (and even romanticizes) convenience and usability even regarding interpersonal relationships?

Where some concepts started being seen in another light, with other meanings: commitment is undesirable because it can lead to co-dependency; being firm in your boundaries makes you difficult and inflexible, and can be toxic and hurt others; stating your needs is almost the same as emotional manipulation; you can never show anger and disapproval without it being abusive; you cannot demand clear communication from your friends and partners; love is all you need to make a relationship work; if someone doesn’t have any friends/partners it’s because of something they did/are; being alone isn’t that bad because you can do self-care; being independent and self-controlled is good and exemplary; etc...

The list is exhaustive and I really wish I were making this stuff up, but I’m not. These are things I have seen and heard online and offline and it all boils down to a push for individualization, eroding sense of community, and social relationship dynamics being medicalized to exhaustion.

Everything is disordered and every person you meet is fighting their own battles. But you have to mask and pretend everything is fine.

So you’re supposed to go through people and relationships like napkins. Take what you can while you can, and discard the rest. Have many relationships to meet all your needs - so you won’t have to discuss about your needs at all, and so on...

This is how it’s designed to “work”.

#avpd #avoidance #avoidant #avoidant personality disorder #inanis post

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thewhitefluffyhat · 2 years

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Day Three

[This is the fourth part of a collected liveblog/analysis of Nona the Ninth! See here for the other parts.]

In this section, the pieces start falling into place as more familiar faces finally show up!

Chapter 11

-p134 I’m amused at how Muir predicted just how much the fandom would obsess over the Pool Scene that we wouldn’t mind repeated clumsy re-enactments of it to tear apart for more specific details haha. Gideon and Harrow’s arms were where and where, you say?

On the other hand, the link to a beloved scene almost makes me think this is a feint - that it’s not the scene from GtN, but something else entirely. I can’t imagine what, though. John sealing away Alecto? The water being liquid rather than ice means it can’t be Harrow seeing Alecto for the first time or anything like that.

-p134 lmao Nona specifically saying the feelings in the Pool Scene were not sexy. *raises eyebrow at piles and piles of post-Pool Scene explicit fic*

Although honestly, Nona’s was always my interpretation of that scene - I’ve read a few of those fics, but they’re not really my cup of tea. In canon, there were so many new and conflicting and difficult emotions going on in that scene for both characters that it always feels jarring to transition it to straightforward horniness. I could see it happening later, perhaps. But not then.

-p135 So Muir wasn’t kidding in that interview about Nona wanting to talk about things that make her horny!

Nona finding flowers sexy is yet another one of those things that makes zero sense as Gideon or Harrow, but all the sense if you assume she’s Alecto/Earth. From a planet’s perspective, the shampoo ad is just another giant picture of sex organs, after all! Why wouldn’t it be extremely sexy?

[Later me: Given that Nona is indeed Alecto/Earth, I hope someone somewhere writes a fic of Nona getting off to like… watching bees pollinate flowers or other utterly nonhuman reproductive methods. Nature and sex are weird! Run with it! XD]

-p135 If Nona does end up being Gideon or Harrow, I imagine the fandom is going to spend a lot of time analyzing this scene of Nona insisting she has a deep need to know what Pal finds sexy.

After all, we did know Gideon was jealous of Pal/Harrow… plenty of ways to take that.

-p138 Oh. Hot Sauce has burns. Hot Sauce has burns and goes to the cages. She can’t be a necro because Herald madness, but hm. Hmhm. She has something to do with them.

Also, on the subject of the cages - my take on the implications here is that Pyrrha went to the cages not to rescue the people, but for info gathering and possibly to shoot them to give them quick deaths.

-p139 And now we’ve got a conversation about Pyrrha’s type. Which we kind of already knew from Wake’s notes! Woman likes to live dangerously, apparently.

-p139 I continue to enjoy how this series describes very pale white skin tones. (See also: descriptions of Ianthe and Cytherea.) I have that skin tone myself, and I hate how it’s usually romanticized and seen as the pinnacle of beauty. In reality, it is seriously gross!

Ooh, and Nona saying she doesn’t like redheads when Gideon is one… very hm. Even if Nona was very much not thinking about Gideon in her reply here, because Gideon has darker skin!

-p140 Welp, I see we’re going to have a bunch of nurse!Cam and nurse!Dulcie art and fanfic now given Pal’s answer…

I’m amused at how Nona immediately assumes Cam lied and not that she didn’t know. Which, tbf, is my read of it too.

-p140 Okay, Nona wishing she had someone else to eat food for her is both very #relatable and also something that I’ve seen in a few Gideon and Harrow fics!

-p140 end - WELP THEN

Chapter 12

-Describing Crown’s golden hair - oh. OH. Ha, how did I not figure it out before? She’s Coronabeth, isn’t she? Charismatic and beautiful and committed to BOE’s cause.

Judith isn’t We Suffer, is she? Or more likely, “The Captain” from the guest list?

p144 Yup, “The Captain” is Judith!

-p148 Ah, our first look at true BOE! Apparently, they’re really into the mask aesthetic,

Which is an interesting choice isn’t it? Usually it’s the evil empire and their Stormtrooper-esque grunts who wear the humanity and empathy-removing masks!

Of course, the coronavirus pandemic also puts another meaning/implication on the table…

-p148 Ha! We get Corona’s full BOE name! No obvious other languages in the middle, so I’m not sure where the component pieces begin and end. Looking forward to seeing analysis of it on tumblr.

-The term Ctesiphon for the BOE cells has come up several times. Another thing I’ll have to read analysis of to understand the reference.

-p149 Oh boy, writing a character (We Suffer) with an accent can be… tricky… to pull off respectfully. Is We Suffer’s just a generic accent, or is the awkward grammar meant to be similar to another real language?

-p150 Heh, a good bit of humanizing here. Despite the mask and the voice changer, this BOE bodyguard is still spoiling for a fight.

-p153 As Ianthe coined “Harry,” Corona coined “Millie.” The twins really do think alike in some ways…

-p153 So Corona is bi! *briefly considers the shippable male characters in this series* yeah no, that’s still not happening

-p154 As I thought, Varun is the BOE name for the RB. Ooh, and later we get the BOE names (codenames?) for the Lyctors too!

If I ever do make that giant character names spreadsheet, should I add a column for these names… hm… probably...

-p156 Ooh, so Cytherea was working with BOE! Good to have that confirmed. It was speculated, but unclear how much she was working with Augustine and Mercymorn or BOE.

But yeah, seems like her deal on Canaan House was personal revenge, not a BOE plot in any way

-You know I’ve been assuming zombies = necros, but I think it might be closer to just anyone from the Nine Houses? Since they were all resurrected, after all.

-p159 Ah, so Juno Zeta is part of the hostage sixteen. Expected, but that continues to make the situation even more fraught.

Chapter 13

-p162 “Our Lady of the Passion” aka Pash was the bodyguard, and Nona knew her name all along. Huh. Also, nepotism? Is she related to We Suffer or Unjust Hope, or even Wake?

-p163 Yup, we’re visiting Judith. Who is probably completely Herald-mad at this point. Man, poor girl cannot catch a break, can she?

-p165 Hmhm! Is that the RB speaking through Judith to Nona? I’m pretty sure it is! Which suggests the other RBs are probably sapient too…

-p171 Heh, of course the RB wouldn’t speak in a human tongue. And of course, Nona understands anyway!

Chapter 14

-p174 That’s pretty much confirming Jodybeth is canon, isn’t it! (Now if only they would both stop being idiots…)

At the same time wiping out Corona x Cam. (And Corona x Harrow, but does anyone ship that on its own?) Sad trombone.

-p175 I wonder who Corona was reminded of here? Perhaps more of Ianthe, but perhaps Gideon? Harrow? Someone else? >p177 Ah, I think here she’s reminded of Gideon, and previously it was Harrow.

-p177 Hm, what does Corona think Nona is? I’m imagining it’s that she’s Harrow as a full Lyctor, but that also doesn’t seem quite right….

Chapter 15

-p184 Born in the Morning is a he and his name is in a different language, I’m guessing? Because Nona doesn’t realize when she translates, so she seems to have said it in the wrong language at first here.

[Later me: It will turn out that Born in the Morning really does have ties to BOE, but if Nona is translating without realizing it, then do all names sound like that to her? Maybe Honesty is actually, idk, Veronica or Kurt or something like that, and Nona just autotranslates it to be the root meaning.]

-p184 Seems like Hot Sauce is in a group that’s even more anti-necro than BOE. Perhaps one of the anarchist factions briefly mentioned?

-p185 Ohh, was Hot Sauce an original inhabitant of the planet? And her brothers died fighting the Cohort invasion. (The explosive bodies is a specifically Fourth trick, iirc.)

Man, the subtle tragedy of the 14 year olds in this series both being soldiers on the opposite sides of a genocidal war. If Hot Sauce ever met Isaac or Jeannemary, they would literally kill each other, and not in a funny way at all…

-p186 Hm, what is the Secret that Nona has? Have we been shown this yet

Yeah I don’t think we’re supposed to know the Secret. A clinic and organ markets - does Nona think her heart or brain will give out?

John 8:1

-p189 It was pretty obvious that if the “present” of the dream was ever reality, it was Alecto and John post-perfect lyctorhood. But if there were any doubt, John is now described to have the weird, inhuman eyes.

-p189 There’s a Mars installation and still Flat Earthers exist. Of course.

-p190 I have a feeling this section, with the references to YouTube and streaming, may be one of the aspects of these books that ages the quickest.

-p191 So Alfred was a hedge fund manager in a past life. Some cavs do deserve Lyctorhood lol.

-p193 We’re doing a lot to make John sympathetic here. My called shot in my HtN thoughts was that if John ends up “redeemed” or portrayed too sympathetically, it will cause a lot of furor within the fandom (based on my experiences in another fandom). *grimace intensifies*

[Later me: I shouldn’t have worried, this was one bullet NtN dodged! Even with these earlier sections, John is still the Worst!]

-Also, everyone was so sure necromancy came from John killing the ten billion, but it really seems like it didn’t? Unless all of John’s story is a convenient lie… And we do know that John lies…

Chapter 16

-Come to think of it, I’m surprised “necromancer” is a banned word for Nona. Pal called it “superstition.” But that’s what they’re called in the Nine Houses??

-p197 And now we see the House propaganda tactics. Apparently they have videos and projector tech too!

-p198 Noodle was bred to have an “arboreal” pair of legs? Wild. But at least the extra legs don’t seem to be hurting him, unlike poor pugs who were bred to barely be able to breathe.

-p203 When you’re in, you’re in. Given the mention of Hokey Pokey, this was almost certainly Nona remembering John teaching Alecto. No one on the Ninth would reference that lol.

-As a reader, of course I want to see more worldbuilding of the House overtures, but in-character - the contrivances to get Nona to go to the broadcast seem a bit awkward and forced.

-p205 Huh. So House projector tech involves silvery hexagons that light up. No idea what’s going on there, if it’s meant to evoke any real tech at all.

-I’m 50/50 on whether this is genuine overtures or as the people suspect, just getting a big crowd to kill them all. Actually going up to angry people and thinking that showing a nice, happy movie would help does seem like John being his funny doofus self - but underneath the “just some guy”-isms, John’s empire is also a terrifyingly functional fascist war machine, so it’s always hard to predict which way he will swing…

-...The unrehearsed and snippy nature of the speaker of the broadcast initially makes me think Mercy. But Mercy is dead. Ianthe, then?

-p207 Brown hair, but very pale skin, hm? Oh, and the blue-brown eyes are a giveaway. Did Ianthe get Babs’s hair color because of her dip in the River at the end of HtN?

Outside chance that this is Babs somehow (if Ianthe didn’t survive the trip back from the River at all?), though in theory he should have Ianthe’s eyes if that were the case.

-p207 New Rho! We finally have a name for this planet they’re on!

-208 Ah. So this is an ultimatum directed at Corona and the rest, isn’t it. But mostly Corona I suspect.

-Prince Ianthe Naberius the First, eh? Seems like some level of Ianthe-Babs fusion went down... now that is something I wasn’t expecting!

Also, Saint of Awe? Hmhm, I’ve seen that as a possible title for Ianthe in fics before! Did someone leak ARC details, or just a good guess?

-p209 Oh, so THAT’S where Gideon’s body went!

Is… is she even alive at all, or just being puppeted by Ianthe’s necromancy?

And hey! Now we have a name for Divine Highness Gideon! “Crown Prince Kiriona Gaia” huh.

Also looks like I was right that the dream girl was Gideon.

Also also, I guess Gideon’s body was the precious thing that was lost in the attack mentioned way earlier!

-p210 Okay yeah Gideon’s still a corpse. Is anyone inhabiting the corpse?

-”Anyway!” Ianthe is still hilariously casual at these official proclamations, you’d think she wasn’t raised from birth to become a political leader. :P

-pfff OF COURSE this would end in a “is this still on?” joke. OF COURSE

-p216 I haven’t done much speculating about Angel (Aim?). But with the driver speaking good House - could they be another runaway House member? Even a Lyctor, perhaps?

-p218 Oh dear, Pyrrha is missing! But it’s Pyrrha, she can take care of herself, at least… right? Right??

-Huh, another John dream? Did Nona faint?

John 19:18

-p220 Ulysses and Titania were Fourth, weren’t they? Some historical rhyming going on with the Fourth representatives always being seen as kids compared to the others.

-p222-223 Ah, and as long predicted, here’s the disappeared trillionaires who abandoned the Earth. And presumably, John is still searching for them.

But it wasn’t even clear if the FTL travel would work. Maybe they all just phased out into a planet and died. And this whole quest for revenge is meaningless.

But then, where did BOE and the human population on other planets come from, if not from the trillionaires? So who/what is John searching for?

Or was Augustine wrong about the searching part? Maybe this is more of a [uh, FFXIV spoilers I guess?] Dragonsong War situation. Just an endless meat grinder of vengeance where the continuing suffering is the entire point.

Day Four >>

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #ntn spoilers #tlt analysis #my ramblings #my tlt stuff #read more #thoughts on ntn

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lifeasatargetedindividual · 10 months

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Never Give Up. If I could make that statement the title of this post, I would.

Even in the midst of learning the case for us T.I.'s has been dismissed by the judge, my faith and confidence remains, especially as my heart goes out to Ana Toledo, who has given it her all to fight for us, and not only for us T.I.'s but also for every American out there. She is a very strong, courageous woman. I can only imagine the frustration she must feel, but I know the fight within her is stronger than any frustration; she will never give up. She has already mentioned that she is now in the process of appealing, so the case is far from over.

Of course as soon as I received the news, the V2K Crew, as I now call them, hyped up with the whole, smirky-toned, "We told you freedom wasn't coming. Now BE QUIET!" LOL. They don't get it, they really don't. They do so much to me, I fear no one and nothing. They made me this way. None of my enemies, not even the government itself, gives a real reason to fear or even respect them so why should I? What can you do to me that hasnt already been done? A week ago they were playing with my heartbeat, making it give an offbeat which would in turn make me a bit lightheaded. After they realized that wasn't enough to terrify me, they haven't done again since, although now they might since I just mentioned it 🙄

Anyhow, on the one hand, now I understand why the opposing side has been so confident, well, mostly arrogant, giving off the attitude they feel they have nothing to worry about. They probably already knew they had the judge in the palms of their hands. Reading the article, I'M given the impression the judge was coerced into ruling on the side of our enemies and didn't mind violating procedure to do it. You can tell, she's trying to rid herself of this case, as well as it make it difficult for us for the next judge. Perhaps I'm wrong, but ruling with prejudice gives the idea you're giving the other side more of the advantage when it goes to the court of appeals. With this in mind, again, it's clear the government is fighting to keep their cointelpro and MK-Ultra operations hidden, as well as keep us T.I.'s as their unwilling victims of torture. Nevertheless, the news did not alter my faith nor my confidence. One way or another, this is all going to end and the government WILL be entirely exposed in a way they can no longer lie or deny. It's obvious their goal is to buy or pressure any and everyone of authority to their side so they can keep doing what they want. Their days, however, are numbered. They will be exposed and they will be forced to stop tormenting us. If it were indeed easy to see if my name was on the list, I would've been done so so I could fight myself to have it taken off as it's obvious to everyone watching, I do little to NOTHING in my everyday life besides work and spend time with family. No friends I can trust, so you will rarely ever catch me hanging out anywhere with a group unless it's my intermediate family, as they are not involved in gangstalking. The point is, our enemies are purposely making this difficult for the rest of us. We have no clear way of knowing if our names are on the list, and that's the way they want it, so they can keep doing what they wanna do against us. Even now as I type this, the attacks against me, which have surprisingly been mild today, are already increasing. Still, I refuse to give up. Matter of fact, now more than ever I REFUSE to be silenced. My enemies do and say whatever they wanna say or do against me every single day. Even on the rare occasion I try to give into their demands, they still give me their asses to kiss. So what's the point, government? What is the point? I don't do what you say, you attack me, I do what you say, you STILL attack me! So tell ya what: I'm going right back to doing exactly what I want to do whether anyone likes it or not. They can have the entire neighborhood come outside and start screaming for me to shut up; not gonna happen, I will not remain quiet for you to feel less guilty on the inside about what you are doing to me. Besides, it's past time to start living instead of just surviving. Live each day as if it's my last.

#gangstalking #organized stalking #targetedindividual #organized harassment #voice to skull harassment #government corruption #T.I. Lawsuit update #directed energy attacks

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flightless-rising · 3 years

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Made a new Flight Rising iceberg and also wrote an explanation.. man, this took way longer than it should have.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy :D

Iceberg explanation

( If there are any mistakes please let me know and I’ll edit this asap. Also, English isn't my first language so please forgive me for any grammatical errors)

EDIT 28/06: Added some new info! Thanks to everyone who tagged and responded with new stuff to add, I really appreciate it!

The Sky

Naomi

Back in the day, whenever you bought or sold something on the auction house a message would show up in your inbox confirming the transaction. These messages were sent by one of the dragon couriers: Pearl, Spitfire or Edgar.

On January 2016, a strange glitch occurred that replaced the images and names of couriers with the ones of a female fae named “Naomi”.

It goes deeper than that, though: if you looked up her name in the user search menu, a clan would pop up with over 15 million dragons.

It was quickly discovered that all exalted dragons had somehow become part of her clan. Naomi herself apparently didn’t exist, and clicking on her page redirected to an error page. This was later fixed and the original Naomi page can be now visited.

What exactly caused this glitch is still a mystery and today Naomi is still a well-known piece of Flight Rising history.

Missing Tidelord

In the official lore, the deity of the water flight disappeared in early 2018, as described in the short story “Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow”.

In the follow up story (Mixed Elements) posted in April of the next year it is confirmed that the Tidelord is still missing, but alive. This coincides with the fact that the Tidelord account hasn’t made any forum posts aside from festival announcements.

Emperors

Emperors are a type of unobtainable dragon that are formed when several Imperial corpses are left in close proximity to each other, which then fuse forming a multi-headed chimera.

Emperors are described in the lore as having an animal-like behavior and destroying everything in sight. They are extremely difficult to kill, which is the reason why in-universe Imperials have such strange burial rites.

An emperor named Luminax is first described in the Raising a Family short story, and their sprite can be seen walking around on the world map.

The Surface

Old color wheel

Originally, there were only 67 available colors for dragons. On June 8th 2016, 110 more colors were added, meaning that currently there are a total of 177 colors available.

When making a custom progenitor dragon, it is only possible to choose among the 67 original colors because it would be otherwise unfair for those who made their account before the new colors were added.

Imperial breed scrolls

Imperial breed change scrolls are one of, if not the most, rare type of item on the site. They were given only to those who pledged 30 dollars or more on the original Flight Rising kickstarter.

At the time, this was the only way of obtaining an Imperial dragon, which meant that the breed as a whole was pretty valuable. Now that Imperials are abundant this is no longer the case, but First generation Imperials are still extremely sought and probably the most expensive type of dragon on the site.

There were also other items that were only given to Kickstarted backers, namely Skycats, Bonefiend, Golden Idol and Cogfrog familiars, and those are also pretty much impossible to obtain.

Baldwin breed change

When Baldwin was introduced in 2015 he was originally a Pearlcatcher. On September 14th of 2016 however his site art started to gradually change, until his transformation was completed five days later.

In-universe, Baldwin started to change after a lightning strike hit his cauldron during an experiment, which made him slowly mutate into the breed we now know as Bogsneaks.

Trans Fiona

When Fiona was added as a trading post dragon people speculated that she was trans, because the female pose for Skydancers only displays two antennae, while the male one has four.

Since Fiona has four antennae in her site art, many wondered whether it was an oversight or actually intended. Aequorin later confirmed in a forum thread that Fiona is indeed trans.

Boolean

Speaking of rare items, the Boolean familiar was only given to a handful of Flight rising beta testers and as such is extremely rare and valuable.

Plaguebringer coli team

On the Plaguebringer’s page she is listed as being part of a coliseum team.

As of now we have no clue as to why this is, and even more strangely she is the only deity that does this.

Boston & Hope

This story is a bit complicated. I’ve scoured the forums in search of info but it seems like there are still some pieces missing. I’ll try my best to explain anyway.

So, for a long while the Lightweaver was the only deity that had other dragons aside from herself in her lair: these dragons were a Spiral named Boston and a Tundra named Hope. Strangely, they were both Earth dragons and apparently have been there since the beginning (?). When asked why (this happened back when deities would interact on the forums) the Lightweaver responded that they were having a dinner party together.

In August 2014 during a pretty heated dominance battle between Shadow and Light Boston and Hope disappeared from the Lightweaver’s lair.

The Shadowbinder now had them, and both their elements were alsochanged to Shadow. The two deities acknowledged this and changed their broadcast messages accordingly.

If I had to guess this was some kind of inside joke that the admins had, although some people got angry that the Shadowbinder now had both Hope and Boston. Some time later(?) Boston was returned to the Lightweaver and for some reason his element was changed to wind.

I don’t have any more info on the matter but if some of you do I would appreciate it if you tell me.

Shallow Waters

Eyepocalypse

On June 8th 2018 eye type variants were introduced. This update was pretty controversial for a bunch of reasons, and the topic is still discussed today. The majority of people(?) seemed to be upset by the fact the “best” eye types (primarily goat, primal and multi-gaze) could only be displayed on dragons that were born with them, and the fact that every dragon born prior to the update couldn’t have these eye types at all displeased a lot of users.

Another problem was the fact that most of the non-special eye types (i.e the only ones that could be applied to already existing dragons using a vial of Scattersight) were not clearly visible on the grand majority of adult dragons.

A smaller(?) complaint was that two of the primal eye types, Shadow and Plague, were seen as kind of disturbing by some people.

Three years later staff attempted to fix this issue by adding Eye type vials for every available eye type. This resulted in a market crash for special eye typed dragons, as now these eye types could be applied to any dragon. The value of Scattersights also tanked, and the people bought them and hadn’t used them yet lost money as now they were infinitely less useful.

EDIT 28/06: Goat isn’t actually obtainable via breeding, faceted is. Bad mistake on my part.

Also, Scattersights were given away freely by Galore on Flight Rising’s fifth anniversary in 2018 and could not be bought afterwards. I admit that I thought people could be able to buy Scattersights due to how upset people were that the value went down, but whatever.

Courier Breed

The courier dragons (Edgar, Spitfire, and Pearl) are part of an exclusive dragon breed that is currently unobtainable. Even though their eye color still reflects the flight they were born in, in-universe they are considered to be “neutral” and they are granted free access to all domains. This raises the question as to which deity created them, as every other dragon breed (Bogsneaks being the only exception) has been created by one of The Eleven.

Multiaccounting

According to the site’s terms of service, no one is allowed to have more than one account. This is pretty standard for pet sites, as having multiple accounts grants unfair advantages and can mess up the site economy. This doesn’t completely stop people for having more than one account, and the practice as a whole is called “Multiaccounting” or “having multis”.

Some people only do this to have multiple clans or reboot their account without deleting their old one. They mostly do no harm but it is reasonable that the site wouldn’t allow this because of how easy it is exploit.

The real harm of multis comes from a practice called “funneling” which is when someone creates multiple accounts only for the purpose of giving items to their main account. This practice violates the game’s rules and can result in a ban. Funneling is not limited to multiaccounting though, and having an account only to feed another is against the site’s rules whether or not the account in question belongs to another person or not.

Some people fear of being banned for multiaccounting even if they haven’t done so, especially if they share a computer with other people.

Purble

“he purble” is probably among the most famous Flight Rising memes.

In 2016(?) a rant was submitted to the original Dramarising blog by a very angry user that wanted to buy an XXX Purple Ridgeback back when triples were pretty expensive, but got beat by someone else.

I’m not going to copy paste it here because in my opinion it’s one of the funniest Flight Rising related posts ever and I don’t want to spoil the experience of reading it for the first time. You can find it pretty easily by searching it up.

Tert Picking

This is something that refaced recently, even though I’ve seen people talking about this for a while. Some people vividly remember being able to pick their custom progenitor’s tertiary color, even though the developers have made it clear that such thing would be impossible. This is without a doubt just one of those weird situations where a lot of people somehow remember the same thing wrong.

Still, it’s fascinating just how many people claim to remember doing picking their tert.

Swiftwings

Swiftwings were a dragon breed that was scrapped in development. The design was rejected because it didn’t fit the 2 arms 2 legs 2 wings format that every dragon design had to follow before the introduction of ancient breeds.

The reason for this rule is that otherwise it would mess up apparel placement. Although the concept was scrapped, echoes of the design were scattered throughout the site: for example, the empty dragon slots that were present prior to 2019 had the silhouette of a Swiftwings dragon. They are also mentioned in the April Fool’s update of 2018.

“Real” Lore dragons

Most people don’t know that some of the dragons featured on the lore stories are actually real, and you can visit their pages. This is the case for Tetra, Cracklinne, Velya, Liefa, Garote and Mirth, which are currently chilling in Aequorin’s lair.

All of the other dragons in the developers’ lairs are not canon and are used to test bugs and features on the site.

The Middle ground

True deity names

When the site first started the deities used to have actual names instead of titles. Some of these names were based off of the site founders’s usernames on other sites.

The names are the following:

Amogayvhi - Gladekeeper Xhaztol - Arcanist Rhenik - Tidelord Akiri - Flamecaller Thrage - Stormcatcher Undel - Shadowbinder Jhortanas - Plaguebringer Ghurab - Windsinger Artaios - Earthshaker Rhiow – Lightweaver

As you can tell, Xhaztol, Akiri, Thrage and Undel are the usernames of some of the admins of the site, and the flight they are a part of corresponds with the previous name of their deity.

No leg coatls

On January 16, 2015 an iconic thread was posted in the flight rising discussion forum, which displayed a photoshopped image of a coatl with its legs removed. Quickly the thread devolved into a general photoshop thread were people took official site art of dragons and modified it.

The thread was eventually locked due to spam and quote pyramids, but spiritual successors of the original “phoatlshop” thread still exist today.

Dress slot unlocking

A thing that a surprising amount of people don’t know is the fact that when buy an additional apparel slot, the slot opens for every dragon in your lair and not just the one you bought it on.

This is something I also discovered very recently and it’s kind of funny that so many people that have been on the site for very long don’t know this.

Clanbound scatterscrolls

I think the wiki explains it best, so I’ll just copy paste this here:

“Tri-Color Scatterscrolls suffered from an issue where they would only scatter a random range from colors 1-47 (white through sunshine) rather than 1-67 (white through rose). They have been fixed and are now functioning correctly with a random range within the 67 color set. The affected timeframe was from August 15th, 2013 until September 22nd, 2013. The admins allowed users who were unsatisfied with their bugged Tri-Color Scatterscrolls to receive the same amount of them back in the form of Clanbound Scatterscrolls to try scattering their own dragons again with the full color range.”

Beta Mirrors

Ever wondered why they’re called Mirrors?

According to Undel, the main artist of Flight Rising, mirrors originally were supposed to have every part of their body “mirrored”, meaning they had two sets of eyes, two pairs of wings, two tails, and so on.

This design ended up being too cluttered and looked weird shrunken down. The name was kept the same, even though the only mirrored part of the design are the eyes.

Dragons are evil

If you read the “Beastclans on the rise” lore bit, the dragons come across as… very evil, stealing territory from the beastclans when they have been living on Sornieth way longer than the dragons have and killing them for loot.

Furthermore, in the Bounty of the Elements lore bit the Beastclan rebellion guided by Talona is seen by the dragons as unreasonable and wrong even when in canon Beastclans are framed as the innocent party.

The Depths

Scroll of Divorce

In the alpha stage dragons were supposed to be monogamous and could only breed with the dragon they were “paired” with. To break their bond you had to use an item called “Scroll of Divorce” which even featured broken marriage rings in the art.

If I had to guess, this item and the concept as a whole were scrapped because the idea of dragons having “weddings” and needing to divorce before breeding with another dragon felt kind of weird, especially in a game targeted towards teens.

First Festival

The first Holiday festival in Flight rising history was the 2013 Brightshine Jubilee. The items that were available for this festival only are incredibly rare, particularily the Light Sprite which is one of the most valuable items on the site. Apart from that and the fact that the skincent contest only had 6 winners, not much is notable about it.

Offsite drama

Flight Rising has had its fair share of drama both on and off site, but due to the fact that it’s against the site’s rule to discuss user drama on the forums most of the notable drama happened off site (mainly tumblr).

Egg rot

Egg rot was a very early mechanic that was pretty quickly removed from the site. If you forgot to incubate your eggs, they would “rot” and no longer hatch.

It’s the reason why in the nesting grounds the text reads “Eggs healthy” and also the reason why on the stats section of the Account settings it says “Eggs discarded”. The mechanic was removed because it heavily punished casual players and the frequent downtimes of the site meant that even if someone logged in every day they could still have their eggs die.

Also, the images of egg rot look extremely cursed.

Pablo

From what I could gather, Pablo is a dragon which became somewhat popular after user “Desmondtiny” wrote a very long and detailed backstory of them being the Arcanist’s lost boyfriend.

I’m pretty sure it gues deeper than that but I couldn’t find any further information. As usual, if you know something more let me know.

Latest News

On November 12, 2014, a glitch(?) occurred that let anyone post in the Announcements thread. Anything that was posted went directly to the front page, which resulted in quite a bit of chaos.

This was fixed only half an hour later, but the screenshots people have from that time are extremely funny.

Lameforger

On the 2014 Flameforger’s festival announcement Undel accidentally misspelled “Flameforger” as “Lameforger”, which prompted the official account of the Flamecaller to respond aggressively. Lameforger is still jokingly used by users, even after the typo was fixed.

Festival of one (1)

On the first day of the 2014 Greenskeeper Gathering a glitch occurred which switched the site banner for the Starfall celebration banner instead of the Greenskeeper one.

It didn’t end there, in the coliseum Magical shards dropped instead of Bladed Flatleaves, even though skin chests dropped as normal(?).

The weirdest thing about it all was Joxar’s Space inventory, which didn’t display any items at all and had glitched dialogue.

The event was nicknamed by the fanbase “Festival of 1” and even the deity’s official accounts acknowledged the incident.

Vape Juice

As far as I know the original forum thread as been lost, but the vape juice fiasco will always remain cemented in Flight Rising History.

A company called Vape Daugz was making vape juice with Flight Rising dragons plastered on their packaging, completely violating the site’s policy.

The company’s site still exists, and browsing through their products I found that the products that previously had Flight Rising dragons on them still exist, but now feature completely different packaging.

I have no idea whether they changed the packaging spontaneously or staff did something about it.

I think there’s a potentially interesting story buried down there, but we’ll likely never the truth behind the Flight Rising vape juice.

The Abyss

Humans

There’s been some speculation over the years as to whether or not humans are canon in the Flight Rising universe. Some people believe that the “Mages” of the second age in the official lore are actually humans, but we can’t be sure because they are depicted with long robes that cover their whole bodies.

The idea of humans existing in canon has spawned a couple of memes, most infamously Thomas.

Plague healers

Again, I think the wiki explains this one better:

“According to Aequorin, Plague healers are an interesting bunch because rather than administer treatments that counter illness, they use a mixture of magic and contagion that stress the affected dragon further, allowing them to reach a stronger, healed, and resistant state faster than other elements. Plague healers will treat physical injuries with sutures, bandages, and braces, but they won't clean the wounds or apply ointments."

Akitla

As described in the original thread, Akitla was a dragon that user “qunii” saw on the front page, but noticed that she wasn’t accompanied by the username of the person owning them.

After clicking on her, an error page loaded. It was discovered that putting her color combination or ID in the search bar would result in an error page. This was later fixed, and both Akitla and her mate were now displayed as being exalted to the Arcanist. T

here are some theories as to what happened to the Akitla’s user, some think that she belonged to a deleted account, others that it was the result of an incomplete account creation.

As with a lot of things on this iceberg, it will likely remain a mystery forever.

Arcane sprite book

“what is the arcane sprite reading??” is probably one of the oldest still active threads on the forums.

On September 25, 2013 user “Kaadashi” started a joke thread were they wondered what exactly is the arcane sprite reading, and playfully suggested that it could be erotic fanfiction. People went crazy of course, and started to wonder what kind of juicy secrets were hidden within the pages of that book.

I don’t want to say too much because I really don’t want to spoil the experience of reading through this very cursed tread.

Sunshine

Sunshine is one of the most… interesting lairs on the site, and certainly one of the most well-known.

They(?) have a lair (almost) completely full of triple basic sunshine dragons, most of which are Tundras. So far they have collected about 320 triple hundred Sunshine dragons, almost all of which are also named “Sunshine”. They’re not all the same, some of them have apparel, some of them are gened and some have unique art and descriptions.

They’re dedicated and I respect that.

EDIT 28/06: Apparently some people seem to think that the sunshine-dedicated lair is based on a meme concerning the announcement of the color wheel expansion, which became so discussed that the itself site broke. The two things are unrelated however, as the Sunshine lair has been around for much longer.

The announcement of the color wheel expansion was cryptic, with only a few post showing off differently colored coatls and then 3 pages of reserved posts, with no explanation whatsoever.

Simple Farmer

Another very famous thread is the “I am but a simple farmer” thread started by user “someKindOfGenius”. It’s not really about anything specific, it’s just a rather silly thread were people photoshop flight rising dragons onto various crops.

Still, this thread is iconic so I had to include it.

Dragon Deaths

Way back in 2014 former flight rising programmer Thrage revealed on a forum thread that way back before the beta, dragons could actually starve to death if left unfed.

Yep.

Obviously they had to remove this mechanic because it would have been extremely harsh to casual players and make people frustrated with the game.

Zalvador

User “manojalpa” became fairly well-known for the extremely dark lore they(?) had written for their Clan, it was so dark in fact that every single one of their dragon’s bios had to moved to their tumblr where they couldn’t be easily seen by the site’s mainly underage usebase.

Their lore centered around their progen dragon, a tundra named Zalvador, which behaved and had the same powers as a flight rising user: buying dragons off of the action house, having “breeding projects”, exalting dragons, etc.

These things seem pretty normal when done by a player, but when taking them as actual real things that happen in universe… yeah, it was way too morbid for the site.

The Pit

Black linen neck wraps

For some weird reason, the apparel piece “Black linen neck wrap” when put on a male pose Coatl wraps around the dragon’s throat instead of it’s neck. It’s kind of subtle and hard to see, but if you compare it with the female pose the difference is clear. This is probably just an art error, although it’s weird that it hasn’t been fixed yet, since linen wraps are a very old piece of apparel.

Another weird thing about linen wraps in general is that the wing wraps just sort of… go through the membrane? This is not possible. These dragons are in pain.

Icewarden ears

Another very remarkably popular thread is the Icewarden ears thread.

In 2014 user “Llanai” simply makes note of the fact that the Icewarden has teeny tiny ears.

As we have come to expect from these threads, it quickly devolved into nonsense.

Forbidden Snapper lore

Snappers used to have a way different lore section that was changed because it deemed too similar to the lore of another petsite.

This is what the original section read:

"Snapper dragons do not sleep, but exist in a constant state of reverie. They receive and catalogue all experiences and stories told within their dreams. This persistent state of awakened dreaming awards them the longest memory of any dragon species. They are living encyclopedias, and any dragon who is seeking difficult-to-obtain information will have the most luck unearthing it from a Snapper clan - provided they have the patience for it. If you want two dozen quick answers, talk to a spiral. If you want a fully developed answer, camp out around a Snapper. These dreamers move at their own pace, which varies from dragon to dragon. For some, the awakened dream can prove to be more interesting than their surroundings. This leads to a focus upon the dream, and the waking world as filtered background noise. Interacting with these sleepwalkers can be a trying and repetitive task. Other Snappers may be fairly lucid, with a focus upon their surroundings and the constant hum of the dream pushed aside."

Bee movie script

I’ve seen this story around the forums a few times but I’ve never been able to learn the details.

From what I’ve heard someone copy pasted the entire bee movie script into their clan bio in a drop down text format, which completely broke the page for anyone who visited it. This was fixed, apparently, although I have no clue as to who this user is.

EDIT 28/06: Zeus

Zeus is an XXX gold g1 permababy imperial that used to belong to user "happywing".

Their account is now locked because Zeus was created with the use of a duplication glitch on an imperial breed change scroll, which is obviously not allowed (although I've heard some people say that the dragon was hacked in altogether). Before the account was locked, people speculated that Zeus was the most valuable dragon on the site, because an XXX g1 imperial is impossibly rare.

Wegg shaming

On July 2017 user “Dreamnorn” made a thread were they(?) claimed to have a dream where everything was the same except people used the term “wegged” when two dragons would lay only one egg in a nest.

Ex. Aw man! I’ve been wegged again! = Aw man! I bred two dragons and they only had one egg!

The dream ended up being prophetic, as the term catched on and people started to use it unironically.

The practice of “Wegg shaming” I think refers to the trend of people posting pictures of the dragons that “wegged” them in order to “shame” them.

Plague nest skull

The site art of the plague nest features an unique dragon skull that doesn’t match with any currently existing dragon breed or creature: It appears to have two sets of eyes, like a mirror, but also long and curled horns.

It’s probably just for decoration and it likely doesn’t have any significance whatsoever, but personally I believe it would be pretty cool if when they eventually release plague ancient it at least somewhat resembled this skull.

EDIT 28/06: On second thought, the skull doesn’t seem to have two pairs of eyes, It just has the generic shape of a carnivore.

Rock bottom

CAPTAINPLANET

…this is CAPTAINPLANET. Somehow, user “Decres”' managed to overlay a Fae skin on top of a Tundra, creating this horrifyingly fascinating abomination.

I have no idea how she did this, and she seems pretty adamant to tell.

EDIT 28/06: People have pointed out that this skin overlay glitch was actually somewhat common (although I still haven't found another dragon like CAPTAINPLANET). What you had to do was breed change a dragon while attaching a skin to them in another tab.

This glitch has been patched and such thing is no longer possible.

Lair 46264

A cursed lair.

Dreams

I’ve seen a lot of people, both on forums and on Tumblr, sharing dreams they had about Flight Rising.

A lot of people dream of just being on the site, while occasionally weird things happen.

I’ve read of people who dreamed the distribution of a new breed, buying an exclusive item, a new Fiona feat or Swipp trade, or just browsing the forums.

The most common type of Flight rising-associated dream I’ve seen however is being caught multiaccounting and having their account banned.

I’m no psychoanalyst, but I think it’s pretty clear that these nightmares stem from the paranoia of being banned from their beloved petsite instead of showing any actual intention of doing the “crime” in question.

Anyways, I think it’s fascinating how so many people dream about this site, and it reminds me of the dreams people claimed to have about Mario 64 where completely new levels were added or a scary monster appeared.

Dragon Slime

Dragon Slime was an infamous thread which was supposed to be start off point for an ARG.

It was deleted because it was considered too “spammy” and also because ARGs are banned from the forums. The thread has been lost, unfortunately.

EDIT 28/06: Thanks to @randompurple-fr for providing screenshots of the dragon slime tutorial! You can find them here

Cucumber

Cucumber is the only dragon ever to have been exalted with a skin, which is something that should not be possible. This raises some questions as to what exactly did the person that exalted them do to achieve this, but we have no way of knowing who Cucumber belonged to.

EDIT 28/06: Actually, we do know who used to Cucumber belonged to! Its owner was Osiem: an official flight rising artist. I couldn’t find the thread where they(?) acknowledged the glitch though, if someone has it please let me know!

#flight rising #fr #flight rising meme #iceberg meme

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therealvinelle · 3 years

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Vinelle (and muffin since I know they'll see this too~!), I don't know if you guys have made a post ranking the Twilight books and why (including Bree and L&D if applicable) but I'd love to hear your opinions! (also if you could rank the Twi movies from least worst to most worst and why that'd be awesome too! 030 hi key love your rants on the movies and would love to hear y'alls thoughts more on them)-Sw

You’ve caught us out, anon.

And thanks to you, we spent last night watching Breaking Dawn Part 2 so we could rank it. @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin hadn’t seen it at all, while I half-remembered it from years ago. A terrible time was had because that movie was unwatchably bad.

Since this ask was sent jointly, our answer was co-written.

So, without further ado, movies first:

1. Twilight

This is a bad movie, but it’s recognizably a movie. The scenes are connected, there are things it did well, and we could tell you what the plot is. The awkwardness, for instance, is very well done. The weaknesses are glaring, the main one being that the film never sells us on the characters of Bella and Edward, nor on their relationship, relying instead on the audience knowing they’re in love because- well, they’re in love.

Diving deeper into Edward and Bella, there’s an understandable explanation for this. Edward of the books is terrifying, and I don’t think there’s a translation to screen that could have kept the romantic atmosphere surrounding him that we see from Bella’s point of view.

Bella can listen to Edward eating Biology and how he explains that it means how much he loves her and not blink. An actual audience hearing that dialogue will have second thoughts.

Right out of the gate, Twilight has a very difficult task: Salvage Edward Cullen while still producing a somewhat recognizable character who will take the same actions (or near the same actions) that Edward Cullen did in the book.

In the effort to make Edward palatable but save some of his original character he loses his more terrifying lines (as well as his hilarious ego) but becomes weird, awkward, and vaguely creepy. Edward Cullen of the films is that weird, friendless guy in your high school who you feel kind of bad for but don’t want to eat lunch with.

Bella faces a similar transformation. Bella’s insecurity is completely removed (or else the screenwriters somehow failed to notice it). As a result, we get this strange antisocial girl who is too cool for school because she’s a stuck up bitch.

Between Edward, this creepy guy who sits next to her in Biology, and Bella, this girl who enters school too good for everyone else, we see no reason why they would ever be interested in one another.

In an attempt to make these characters likeable they made them both unlikeable and boring. The film series as a whole never recovers from this (indeed, the quest to make Edward look good keeps leading to stranger and stranger places).

It also forgets to explain why the Cullens live among humans, they’re attending high school… because. It’s a movie that explained to us all those terrible 2010 era memes and “still a better love story than Twilight”. And frankly, those memes were great, better than the movie. Case in point.

Everything is weirdly blue, which is atmospheric but also makes everything and everyone washed out. Everyone is super pale, so you have Mike looking just as vampire-y as Edward. However, it’s recognizably a movie. It introduces the characters, recognizes that the audience needs to be informed of things that are important to the plot, and most scenes are in some way connected to the plot. This is more than can be said for the other films, which is why it lands the top slot.

2. Eclipse

Eclipse earns its second place by process of elimination. The remaining three were worse. Eclipse also features Edward being cuckolded mercilessly, which is hilarious. Oh, and Victoria playing Riley, that was another beautiful scene.

Apart from that it’s just a deeply boring, borderline unwatchable movie.

Special shoutouts go to:

The opening scene of Riley getting turned, a ridiculous and poorly executed scene that served no purpose for the movie whatsoever.

Rosalie dropping her backstory without any context, Bella walks up to her and Rosalie launches into this horrific story for no particular reason. Both her and Jasper’s backstories could have been cut, as they served no purpose to the story and felt really thrown in there.

The many, many redundant scenes. The Victoria chase that ends with the Cullens and Quileutes squabbling could have been cut entirely. So too could the Seattle subplot with the newborns and Bree.

It’s a movie that isn’t about anything in particular, so it throws subplot spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. It dutifully regurgitates the Jacob/Bella/Edward love triangle while also trying to convey that Bella’s about to lose her mortality, while also trying to introduce suspense and excitement with the newborns. It fails to execute either of these, and it also fails to tie them together.

3. New Moon

The movie that wanted to skip itself.

This movie had two jobs, show that Bella is depressed when Edward leaves and convince the audience of Bella and Jacob’s strong friendship. And apart the rotating shots and the occasional Stewart voiceover, the former becomes one of those “just stay with us on this one, guys” failures, and the second is failed on every level. Jake and Bella are much closer at the beginning of this movie than they were in canon, and a montage of Bella hanging out with her buddy is just that, it’s a montage of Bella hanging out with her buddy. It speaks volumes that Stewart’s voiceover has to remind us she’s depressed and Jacob is helping her heal, because there’s no indicator on screen that this is happening.

This, in turn, makes Bella/Jake as weak and unconvincing as Bella/Edward was in the previous movie. We just have to take on faith that these people are important to each other because that’s what we’re told.

There’s also the wolves, who are completely butchered. In the books, there’s this great mystery with bears in the woods, there’s Bella wondering why Laurent ran off, there’s build-up, then when we find out what’s actually been happening it’s a satisfying explanation, all the pieces come together really nicely. This is not the case in the movie. Meeting the pack is just weird in this context, because we never wondered who they were. Bella is randomly invited to breakfast, we meet Emily with the scarred face who won’t ever have a line again, and that’s it, these characters don’t become important to the movie in any way. It’s a pointless scene that could have been cut, much like so many other scenes in these movies.

Apart from that, the Volturi scene from the books is butchered so I hardly recognize it, and Alice, Carlisle, and Edward’s characters are assassinated to an impressive degree considering they were barely in the movie.

It was hard to watch.

It lands third place because somehow, Breaking Dawn was worse.

4. Breaking Dawn Part Two

I’ll just list the positives: the intro was very pretty and promised a better movie. It was also long, which we appreciated because it took away from the movie’s runtime. (This is not at all an exaggeration, a lot of the time watching all five movies was spent looking at the remaining runtime and groaning.) The Tommy Wiseau sex scene in the sex cabin was uncomfortable, but the fact that it would have fit perfectly in The Room made it funny. The Romanians were genuinely, unironically, great, because of all of Carlisle’s trashy friends, these were the only ones the movie didn’t try to convince us weren’t trashy.

This movie ranks above Breaking Dawn Part One because of the things listed above.

Apart from that, something all of these movies, but especially the last four, suffer from is that they don’t have plots so much as they have a check list of things to put in the movie before they can call it a wrap. This movie is the worst offender of that, and it’s made worse by the film’s expectation that the people are fans who already know what’s happening, and therefore don’t need anything explained. I’ll explain what we mean by that.

We get Bella waking up a vampire, and absolutely nothing is explained. If you don’t know what happened in the last movie then fuck you. Bella then goes hunting, we get the hiker, we get the mountain lion, she goes back to meet Renesmée, finds out Jake imprinted on her daughter, we get the sex cabin, the handwrestling with Emmett. The Charlie problem is introduced (poorly), only to be solved a scene later with emotional payoff that had absolutely no buildup. All of these things, and the rest of the movie as well for that matter, feels like we’re just crossing items off a list.

Since the audience is expected to already know the story, the story only bothers to explain about half of what’s happening, if half. Who’s the lady living with Charlie? If you don’t know, don’t worry because it’s not important anyway. When did Kate and Garrett fall in love? If you don’t care, that's understandable, because they’ve barely interacted in the movie. Who are the Amazonian women? Do they have names? Don’t worry about it. Did Alistair actually leave, if so did that have an impact? Well, Bella stared at a window for a few seconds.

Every so often the characters will start quoting the books, and it’ll be completely out of place because these movies veered off course long ago. Carlisle references his great friendship with Aro, a friendship that was only briefly mentioned at the beginning of the second movie. Aro randomly starts talking about how scary human technology is.

All of these scenes feel like Marcus is telling the story, he’s just listing events waiting for the story to be over, and forgets a lot of pertinent details because he doesn’t care enough to remember them. There’s no effort to tie these scenes together, no effort to build up to anything.

There’s also one significant failure, and this is a failure shared by all five films, but it affects the plot (I use the term “plot” loosely) of this movie which is why it gets a special shoutout here. Vampires in these movies look human. The fact that Bella has to ask Edward is Gianna the secretary is human says it all, because in the books you know instantly, there’s not even a question. This makes the Charlie subplot ridiculous, because Bella looks and acts the same as ever. She had a trashy makeover, maybe, but she’s still Bella. Watching her get human acting classes after we watched her act perfectly human is just silly. Now, we’re all for suspension of belief, but this movie just pencil drew a moustache on her and the audience is supposed to go “My god, Bella, I didn’t recognize you!”

We then get to the atrocious fight scene, which was somehow worse than I remembered. It was also oddly long for a giant fake out. This scene took significant run time and it turns out to have 0 effect on the plot. And when we get back to the real world, the tonal shift is extreme. You can’t go from Jane being choked, dragged across the snow and face eaten by a wolf to her standing around chilling. We could have skipped it entirely, just had Alice touch Aro’s hand, and he goes “Ah, I see, cheerio.”

The end credits were pretty funny, “here are these random characters with bit parts in previous movies, isn’t this nostalgic?”. Nice try, movie. The fact this came after an extended clip show of the great romance of Edward and Bella, through blurry montage images that failed to be convincing in their original films let alone this one, just made it even more hilarious. Hope you didn’t completely ruin the director’s career, though honestly you should a bit.

5. Breaking Dawn Part One

As you can probably tell by the above entries, the fact that this is the worst one is really saying something. All the movies were hard to watch, but this one required pure strength of will to power through.

The big issue is that Breaking Dawn shouldn’t have been split in the first place. However, it was, and that meant that we got a movie that was almost entirely filler. (Followed, somehow, by a movie that was also largely filler.)

We get everybody preparing for the wedding. What do Mike and Jessica think of Bella and Edward getting married? What’s that, you don’t care? Well, now you know anyway. We get the full wedding, as in the whole fucking thing, including the afterparty. We get Bella and Edward traveling to their island, and there’s filler in the filler where they go clubbing in Rio. We then get every minute detail of the wedding night followed by every minute detail of the honeymoon.

There’s fanservice, and then there’s this. This was live action fanfiction.

NOTHING that in any way is relevant to the story happens, the closest we get is Irina looking stoned. Too bad the Denali’ refusal to help out in Eclipse was cut from the last movie, in fact I’m not sure they were mentioned at all previously in these movies (I think maybe Edward had a one-line reference in Twilight?) so this means nothing to people who haven’t read the books.

We then get to the pregnancy arc, which could have been Rosemary’s Baby but is instead as outrageously boring as the first half of the movie was. The director must have realized as much, because he gives us Jacob’s alpha plot that should have been cut from the movie (yes, I know it was in the books, but the thing about adaptations is that things have to go. For the record, I think Meyer should have cut it too). That subplot was straight out of an anime, by the way. Jacob claiming his ancestral rights as alpha while listing off his titles and the soaring music, was… every shounen anime, ever. Complete with the shitty voice acting.

It was a soul-crushingly boring movie.

Something that screws over the last four movies is that they were made to feed the fangirls, and generate revenue because the producers knew the fans were coming to watch the books they liked come to life, so they just had to throw scenes from the books and into the movies and let the magic happen. This is a terrible way to adapt something.

Special shoutout too to having to watch Taylor Lautner run around shirtless in four out of five movies. That was very uncomfortable and none of us needed that in our lives, Lautner included.

Super special shoutout to the fact that we disagree with nearly all the casting.

And this isn’t the post for that, but all of the characters were butchered. Some more than others, and some more insidiously than others. It’s the big things, like Carlisle’s character being turned on its head since he thinks all vampires are damned, exactly the opposite of what he thinks in the books, and the little things, like Jasper and Bella being buddies who bicker fondly in New Moon.

Then the books:

1. Midnight Sun

HANDS DOWN. This is easily our favorite thing to come out of the entire Twilight franchise.

Edward is every kind of crazy at the same time, all the time, and it makes every single sentence packed with delirious entertainment. Reading this book is having a stroke, a psychotic episode, and watching five different true crime shows all at once. We adore every letter of it. (That’s no exaggeration, we even laughed about Edward capitalizing “Son” when Carlisle refers to him as “son” in conversation.)

The book was more than we’d dared to hope for, one of those rare books that makes you go “This was written just for me.”

2. Twilight

The one that started it all.

Vampires are wonderfully creepy. Things like Bella staring at Carlisle acting like the mundane town doctor shortly after learning just how old he is, Alice explaining how vampires kill all, and the uncanny valley perfection of the Cullens all add to the otherness of these vampires, and the general atmosphere of the book.

The love story is convincing. Edward seen through the eyes of Bella is wonderful, the red flags are there but if it weren’t for the books that followed we wouldn’t have decried the ship the way we do.

3. Eclipse

Breaking Dawn is the more interesting book, but Eclipse has less things we outright don’t like. We get to know all the characters better, Edward and Bella are their usual beautiful selves, and it’s overall peak Twilight.

4. Breaking Dawn

Would have ranked much higher, we like what it did. Without it we wouldn’t be in this fandom now, as it brought so much amazing content. The baby plot is fine by us, Carlisle’s friends are great, the Volturi confrontation is a beautiful, if bleak culmination of preventable events. There’s a lot of great stuff in this book.

Unfortunately, and there’s just no diplomatic way to put this, so I’ll just come out with it: there’s too much Jacob.

He no longer had a reason to be in the story, given the way Eclipse ended he had every reason not to be in it. In spite of that we get an entire third of the book from his point of view, and then damned if he’s not shoehorned into the last third as well. He added absolutely nothing to the story, he was just there taking up space and being possessive of a toddler. His POV section was tough to get through, and his presence in book three was just painful. He should have been cut.

5. New Moon

This was the book we had to power through. There are some very good things in it, most notably the Volturi scene, but the Muffin and I enjoy Twilight for the vampires, and that makes Laurent and Hallucination!Edward the highlights of the part of the book where Edward is gone.

There’s also the fact that Jacob isn’t a very compelling character. He has to carry the book now that the Cullens aren’t doing it, and he simply isn’t up for it.

Yes, we’re aware that these books are ranked according to how much Jacob is in them. We don’t even hate him, not at all, it’s just that he’s boring.

(That being said, the books at their worst are better than the movies at their best. Jacob narrating his perfect playdate with Renesmée would still be preferable to… I’m trying to think of a good scene from the movies. Hm, nevermind.)

As for The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and Life and Death, only I have read Bree Tanner and I don’t remember it well enough to give a proper assessment. I was bored with the OCs, though, bored to tears, throughout that book I was itching for Victoria and the Cullens. We have not read Life and Death, but we’re offended by its existence so it ranks bottom.

#books vs. movies #twilight movies #twilight books #the twilight saga #twilight renaissance #twilight meta #twilight #movie review #twilight review #i'm using all the tags tonight #the carnivorous muffin #thecarnivorousmuffinmeta #Anonymous #ask #long post

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

Text

I’ve got several asks about BJYX supertopic’s recent battle for the top CP ranking. I’ve meant to answer them the way they’re asked, but the answer gets long. Dear Anons ~ please forgive me for splitting the answers into multiple posts!

As with everything I’ve said about CPs, they’re mostly my limited observations—unlike history and news, it’s impossible to find articles about any of this that pass journalistic standards. Therefore, please consider the following to be my personal impressions and ramblings, and as usual, everyone please feel free to point out mistakes and add your own thoughts!

Everyone probably knows already, but the new drama that has brought waves to the Weibo’s CP ranking list is Word of Honour (山河令, which I will abbreviate to WoH), and the CP pairing is known as Lang Lang Ding (浪浪釘, LLD). I haven’t watched this drama yet but as a Wuxia (and slash) fan, it is on my to-watch list. Nonetheless, I’ve been watching the developments surrounding the popularity of the drama and the CPs, and I think I can make the posts long enough just with these observations alone. (I’m incredibly long winded :D )

For the CP competition, I think it’s important to point this out: the LLD supertopic is a mixed character-CP and real-person-CP supertopic, unlike the YiZhan supertopics (BJYX, ZSWW, LSFY) that are real-person-CP only. This means comparing LLD and the YiZhan supertopics is really … comparing apples and oranges, especially when WoH is still airing (and therefore providing fresh candies for the character CP with every new episode). I therefore wish this kind of popularity competition doesn’t take root in the international fandom; it’s … a bit silly to me, really. It makes little sense.

That said, however, I understand why c-turtles are fighting so hard for the #1 CP spot. C-ent (as is true with many other aspects in the country), numbers and ranking are everything. That 20(?), 40(?) minutes during which BJYX supertopic fell to #2 the first time already made “news” headlines that claimed that WoH had surpassed The Untamed (TU)—an even stranger comparison, if one thinks about it. BJYX, technically speaking, doesn’t have anything to do with TU. It’s a GG/DD real person CP.

But it doesn’t matter—numbers are numbers, and they talk to c-ent watchers, the commercial interests looking for their most promising future investments. The perceived power of c-turtles hinges on them and by power, I mean both fan power and spending power, which are almost synonymous terms in c-ent. Many of you have probably seen those charts that rank the popularity of c-ent entertainers by how much goods, in monetary value, they’re able to sell. How much do the c-turtles contribute to these monetary values? Are they, as a collection of fans, worth keeping, worth wooing?

The notion that only the fan’s spending power means something may cause unease in many i-turtles—and it is, indeed, a very cold-hearted assessment, as it implies that fans are little more than living wallets to be emptied. My observations have been that such a notion doesn’t bother c-turtles for the most part and, IMHO, they’re being realistic for their sociopolitical environment. They also respond to this notion accordingly—while it is difficult to tease out the exact percentage of turtles among Gg and Dd’s active fans (fans that make major purchases goods and merchandises), c-turtles have previously demonstrated their ability to contribute a substantial fraction (in the 10s of percent) of money spent on Gg and Dd. As these splits are only very occasionally visible to the public, the CP ranking likely serves as a constant reminder of c-turtles enormous fan/spending power — without which, Gg and Dd’s popularity will also take a hit.

In that sense, c-turtles are fighting for their right-to-exist. Remember when I talked about the “traditional” thinking that CPFs < solos, and that one CPF = one (loyal) solo lost? This means c-turtles must be able to demonstrate their ability to offer something that the solos cannot, and more importantly, that their offer will not come in any other name. If c-turtles proved last year that they wouldn’t change their name to solos, then this year they’re set to prove they’ll not change their name to LLDs or other CPFs.

If the latter sounds a bit like a battlecry, it may be exactly that. Ever since the announcements of the long line of upcoming Dangai’s, ample inflammatory posts have been made on the platform to get c-turtles to “defect” to the new dramas, or predict that as soon as another pair of random, beautiful men start to throw candies on screen, c-turtles will promptly forget about Gg and Dd and join the fun. The latter, especially, can be quite insulting to read, as one can imagine. However, with c-turtles being a loosely connected group of millions, despite their apparent firm stance that they shall stay turtle, their underlying nerves that these “insults” may turn out to be true can also be felt — the worry that c-turtledom will haemorrhage when the next popular Dangai with enticing M/M CPs (character or real person) come along.

WoH, as the first drama that fits the criteria, is therefore a test— a test that many c-turtles likely view they must pass with flying colours to prove their point, to stand with their heads held high among those who do not care about BJYXSZD (not necessarily solos—many solos, BTW, have actually helped the turtles out this time); to show that turtles are not only every bit as loyal as other Gg and Dd fans, they’re not so … cheap as to take any random “industrial saccharine” (工業糖精; referring to ZQSG-free candies created solely to lure in fans) and walk away.

The reform of the BJYX supertopic (which now allows candy analysis and explains the sudden appearance of many old candies), the flood of BTS videos from almost every Zhan Jie previously involved with the YiZhan CPs, the temporary retaking of the top 3 CP spots by BJYX+ZSWW+LSFY ... can therefore be viewed as a rally of c-turtles. The message is: we’re not going anywhere. We’ve got enough candies that no other (M/M) CPs can hope to match in quantity, in quality.

(And the parade is indeed impressive.) (The reform also didn’t come out of thin air; there have been discussions about the supertopic’s candy sharing rules before.)

Some c-turtles have rightfully been concerned about how such a parade of candies can affect Gg and Dd. They point out that some candies should still remain 閱後即焚 (“burn after reading”, instant return to hiding after release like certain BTS videos); that at some point, c-turtles have to let go of their obsession of staying on top of the CP rankings. TU is already almost 2 years old, and being a little lower on the CP ranking list will take the heat off the YiZhan fandoms in the long run, incite less outside forces trying to fan the flames between the shrimps and the motors and the turtles.

The rules and guidelines of c-turtledom therefore remain a work in progress, and c-turtles, the millions of them, are still learning as they go.

Personally, I have faith in what will come. I also haven’t been too concerned about the candy parade, because most information is already out there for those who’re determined to find them — on Bilibili, Douyin, Zhihu etc. I spent some time talking about the Gg Assistant fic not with the goal of eliciting pain or panic, but rather, as a demonstration of why it has been the tradition of CPFs—not only the turtles—to play things very cautiously, with 閱後即焚 and 圈地自萌 (“to play within the circle”; ie, keep all information and candies within CPFs) being the default rules even after removing the “queer factor” from the discussion. Real person CPs have fate as one of their writers and so, unlike character CPs, their candies can have unintended, unpredictable consequences. As the YiZhan fandoms have now grown big enough that their candies can no longer be realistically well-contained, it may not be such a bad idea for especially the sensitive candies to return under the “jurisdiction” of the BJYX supertopic, so to speak. c-turtles can then gain better control of their comes-and-goes. Their narratives.

(CPN below.)

About narratives. @rainbowsky have previously written a thoughtful piece on the possible reasons the YiZhan fandoms have been allowed to thrive, and I’d like to add the following hypothesis—it may be a way to take pre-emptive control of the Gg/Dd narrative in preparation for the scenario where their relationship is exposed without their consent. Some i-turtles, I think, may have already gained a sense of how ruthless, cruel and above all, quick the c-ent rumour mill can be. If Gg and Dd get outed by a third party, chances are they won’t have time at all to create a fresh narrative, and the one that come out of the rumour mill will likely be … very ugly, containing every worst misconception people have against homosexual relationships. Whereas now, c-turtles already have a narrative at hand—the canon-fanon that, while c-turtles may not agree on every detail, is largely agreed upon on the important milestones. The supporting materials are also ready: the videos, the images, the voice and arrow guides on them.

For me, another interesting question is whether this c-turtle rally and parade of candies are truly necessary in the end.

I’m curious about what will happen to the LLD supertopic when WoH completes its airing. There’s really no precedence for this kind of a mixed character + real person M/M CP supertopic setup — the history of Dangai is short, of popular Dangai’s, even shorter.

Guardian (鎮魂), the first successful Dangai aired exactly a year before TU (in the summer of 2018), never had a dedicated CP supertopic (please holler if I got this wrong! I know there’re Guardian fans here ~ hello! *waves*). Discussions of Guardian’s CPs were found within the drama’s supertopic (剧版镇魂); the real-person-CP also never had its own name; its discussions were hidden under the character CP (巍瀾) tag.

Then came TU. Its real person CP (BJYX) split away from its character CP (WangXian) long before the airing for the drama—the birthdate of the BJYX supertopic was 2018/04/28 (TU’s airing date: 2019/06/27).

After TU, two Dangai dramas have already aired before WoH that seemed to have largely passed the attention of i-fandom: The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (成化十四年) and Winter Begonia (鬢邊不是海棠紅). Winter Begonia, in particular, was well received. Their character CPs never really took off, however, being conceived and perceived as more brotherhood than romance. Age also played a factor for Winter Begonia—Yun Zheng (尹正), known to many turtles as Dd’s motorcycle buddy, is 34, and Huang Xiaoming (黃曉明) is 43. The associated real person CPs also never became popular as a result; Huang Xiaoming’s famous marriage to a beautiful actress also meant that a real person CP was likely to be off the table for Winter Begonia from the start.

The best reference I can think of then, when it comes to speculating the fate of LLD, is therefore the fates of the CP supertopics of 2020’s summer hit, Love and Redemption (琉璃). I’ve talked about its character CP before; essentially, just days after the drama was done airing, the (het) character CP (初遇夫婦) was broken up and in a manner largely criticised as unnecessarily cruel to CP fans. Its supertopic closed immediately afterwards. The supertopic for the real-person-CP (冰橙汁) got to live, however, and is still active today.

The commercial forces behind WoH will likely break the character CP as soon as the drama is done airing; popular het and non-het character CPs in the recent years have gone through similar fates. What does this mean to LLD then? Does it mean the supertopic will be shutdown, since the drama itself already has its own supertopic? But what will happen then to its real-person CP, which has been incorporated within the LLD supertopic? Will the real-person CP be broken at the same time as the character CP to allow for immediate “purification” of real person CP fans into solo fans, to avoid future “headaches” like BYYX—a bound between the actors that cannot be severed—or 227 that, in the eyes of many passerbys, remains an issue of solo vs cpfs?

Only time will tell, and I very sincerely hope it’ll get a happy ending. Fans are made to love, and it saddens me every time to see them being severed from their loves, or pitted against each other especially when it’s clear it’s the social media platforms, the commercial interests behind the scenes — not just the production/media companies but the YXHs, the water armies — who will reap the benefits in the end. Personally, I feel no joy in seeing anyone’s favourites getting torn down, even if they aren’t my own. Gg and Dd’s safety — and the safety of every upstanding, hardworking c-ent entertainer like them — doesn’t hinge so much on their CP or solo or drama ranking, but whether their fans can refrain from bringing their conflicts into the public eye, from “occupying social resources”—ie, deflecting the public’s attention from the “core socialist values” the government intends it to focus on.

Fandom is big enough for us all.

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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lunarrin · 4 years

Text

Twisted Wonderland Theory! May have future spoilers so please skip this post if you don’t want to risk getting spoiled.

I accidentally posted this before it was finished before, that’s why this might seem like a repeated post, whoops sorry. Edit: Also I tumblr keeps on messing up the format and making me edit it again ;-;

Anyways, It seems like a bunch of people are interested in learning more about this theory circulating among JPN twisted wonderland fans so here I am to display the possible evidence/hints. I had to use google translate to look at some of their claims and although it’s easy to just confirm on your own the claims I have to admit I couldn’t list some of their claims simply because I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Please keep in mind this is only a speculation and has no in-game proof or foreshadowing that I’ve seen at the very least proving it, so take it with a grain of salt. Now, onto the theory!

The Ace Betrayal Theory

This theory concerns our beloved Ace Trappola and concerning “coincidences” that point to Ace possible betraying us in the future. If you would like to look at the twitter posts yourself, search up エース裏切り説し on twitter.

So first of all, the first thing that may point at things being not what they seem, or at least that something is wrong is the Heartslabyul dorm main characters. There are 5 main characters from the Heartslabyul dorm and in terms of cards it seems a bit odd that there is no sign of a joker within the dorm, of course you could chalk it up to Riddle being the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland so he doesn’t count as a “Heart”. With the “heart” suit being represented by Ace and Riddle, is it possible one of them could also represent the joker? In this case, when I say “joker” I don’t mean they’re gonna be like “surprise I’m actually a joker not a heart suit!” I more so mean that one of them will like a wild card. Given that Riddle already had his episode, and Ace’s status proven by the twisted wonderland opening to be a main character, could we say that Ace could be the “joker” of the dorm in a way? The wild card? Of course this point is based on perspective, if you exclude Riddle from being counted as a “Heart” suit then the dorm is fine, but if you count him as someone representing the “Heart” suit then the repetition seems odd.

There is one main concerning part of this theory that surely would be difficult to pass of as mere coincidence, and it’s Ace’s last name, “Trappola”.

In Italian is means “trap/pitfall(a possible danger)".

And Ace is the only dorm member to not have his suit somewhere in his last name, instead he has Trappola, a Venetian trick-taking card game where the Ace is the most powerful card. (Funny enough, it seems like the Deuce is the second most powerful in terms of points alone) And it’s no news to anyone who’s read Ace’s profile that he enjoys card games doesn’t he? What’s a trick-taking card game? It’s a tile based game where each round is called a “trick” and in Trappola, your goal is to take/win the trick. Funny thing is, in Trappola specifically, it seems like the player is awarded bonus points for taking a trick(s) with a Deuce.

There is also another trick-taking, or more so, trick-avoiding game called “Hearts” where you try to have the least amount of points by the end of the game. You get points by wining hearts in tricks in which the amount of points lost depends on the the specific card, with the ace of hearts giving the most points (something you do not want). A fan interpreted this in terms of twisted wonderland to be another pointer for Ace betraying the group just as the Ace of hearts in the game in a way betrays you because it gives you the most points, I personally feel like this is a stretch? But I listed it anyways in case you wanted to know.

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that the Red Queen and Jack of Hearts are from Alice through the Looking Glass and not Alice in Wonderland so the next point does not hold as much ground anymore, but I’ll leave it here anyways

Then there is Ace's similarity or possible link to a character within Alice in Wonderland, being the Jack/Knave of Hearts, who betrays the Red Queen (whom he was previous lovers with, and in general close to the Red Queen). Both Ace and Jack(or the Knave of hearts) have a heart on or around their left eye (our right). Both Jack and Ace steal a tart from the Red Queen (Queen of Hearts (Riddle) in Ace's case). Next, Both betray the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts respectively at one point (Jack tries to kill the Red Queen while Ace tries to take Riddle’s dorm leader position).Off topic coincidence, there is an otome game where the Jack of Hearts is named "Ace". Now this point’s coincidences seem difficult to be just “coincidences” but at the same time you could also say that Ace’s role as the Jack of Hearts has already ended since he has already had his failed attempt at overthrowing Riddle. The concerning part of this link though is that the Jack of hearts tried to kill the person they were at least it seemed to be very close to and at least loyal to (when in actually he hated her) while Ace himself wasn't very close to Riddle at that point, but who is Ace close to and loyal(?) to? MC and the gang ;-; But still take this possibility as a grain of salt.

Of course, we know Ace’s name isn’t Jack, or at least, hopefully he doesn’t pull a “Ace is not my true name at all! Instead I’m also named Jack/Knave!”. But he does have a older brother who once went to the same school, could it be that Ace’s brother is named Jack/Knave? We don’t know much about his brother besides it seems like he was rather relevant as he led a parade that is shown in a picture in one of the halls of the school and that he’s good at card tricks. And similiar to how the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts are different, the Knave of hearts and the Red knight could also be different, with the Knave of Hearts and the Red knight being Ace’s brother and him. Still, we need more info to see how relevant Ace’s brother is in all of this.

Next we have the Twisted Wonderland Opening Movie, which has proven to spoil/hint at plot lines before with Azul as the opening movie teases Azul’s overblot form as well as his child self photos. Now in the opening a fan has noted that every character so far that has been seen alone (besides the part where they have the character’s names and dorms, this part (because Kalim appears and the dorm leaders have to be alone)

Every character that has appeared alone or a bit during the opening so far has overbloted, Jamil, Leona, (and we can guess Malleus and Idia will overblot). While every other character has been introduced with someone alongside them, for example, Epel only appears with Rook, Floyd only appears with Jade, Jack only appears with Ruggie, and the Diasomnia group(minus Malleus) only appear with each other. But who else appears by them self? Our boy Ace.

And Deuce who the OP proves alongside Ace has the same amount of relevance is introduced alongside Cater and Trey

Now for Ace to overblot, it probably means he’s gonna do something villainous like I don’t know, betray the group?

Now here’s the thing, does Ace’s character/personality have the potential to be evil/betray us? Yes, 100 times yes. This is the man who went up to us in the prologue and acted all nice and everything explaining the Great Seven, only to laugh (maniacally?) at our misery and ignorance claiming to have only visited us to mess with us and essentially mock us. If Deuce is the person who could and would (if you pissed him off) physically beat you to death, then Ace is the person to psychologically and emotionally torment/manipulate you, oh and verbal abuse too, he’s good at that. One thing I personally find very concerning about Ace is his hobby of card tricks, like aren’t you guys based off of cards? Are you trying to tell me Ace is good at manipulating/messing with people?

Like we’ve seen Ace be good at acting and lying on two separate occasions in the story, one with us in the beginning, two with the guard at the underwater museum. In his personal stories, for example in the ‘A Kouhai This Honest’ story, Trey comments on how Ace did indeed have ulterior motives to helping Trey besides just wanting a cherry pie as Ace was trying to fish possible test questions out from Trey. This is their conversation:

Ace: “To collect information, I’m carrying all this heavy stuff~ Beside, Trey-senpai you too… You knew from the beginning I wouldn’t carry all this stuff for a pie with lots of cherry on it “

Trey: “ You… could it be you were lying about liking cherries too?”

Ace: “ That’s the truth. I learnt that from my big brother. “When you’re lying mix a bit of truth in it” he said”

And with the ‘Tch, I Got Found Out’ personal story he tries to take the profit all for himself:

Ruggie: “ But anyway, isn’t it fine in the end? It wraps up without sensei knowing so your mark doesn’t get affected Anyway, I’m also… wait, Ace-kun!? Where are you going with that bag? That’s the mandragoras to be sold to the ghosts. Don’t just take it like that!”

Ace: “ Tch, I got found out. I thought I could sneak off with it while you two aren’t looking at me ”

Ruggie: “ You were planning to slip out and take the pay all for yourself huh? What an impudent first year”

Jamil: “ When I thought you were being all meek…You sure are bold”

Ace: ”Hehe, I’ll take that as a praise, senpais ♪ “

It clear to see Ace at times schemes for his own benefit, whether that is taking advantage of his senpais or other people, Ace will lie and pretend to be innocent while carrying out his ulterior motives. Funny how his big brother taught him that.

On another note, Ace has the uncanny ability of being able to copy what he sees, from his brother’s card tricks, to how to speak hedgehog from seeing Rook just say the phrase once, from quickly learning how to extract um, something from mandragoras and doing it very efficiently. Perhaps will his unique magic be a copy magic, maybe copying the unique magic of others? If so, that sounds like an ability that could build up blot fast if he uses it willy-nilly. (it also sounds OP)

All in all, it seems like Ace really does have the potential to be the villain at one point (even though almost all of them are villains lol).

One more thing pointing to a possible Ace betrayal in the future is kinda a stretch in my opinion, but I will list it anyways because it’s coincidences are a bit unnerving. It has to do with birth month flowers and the Dahlia, a flower which can symbolise “Warning someone about a potential betrayal” and Dahlia is the birth flower of August, what month comes right after August? September, the birth month of both Ace and Jamil. Guess what? Jamil betrayed Kalim in the story.

Well, that’s it for the evidence at least I found people using for the Ace betrayal theory, some of it is a stretch and some of it’s is concerning if it was a mere “coincidence”. I hope you enjoyed reading this, regardless if in the end you believe in this theory or not. I personally love this theory because I love the thought of Ace getting more development in the future, also the fan art people make for this theory is great. For example, the twitter account @GPs_ac has a piece of fan art of the ace betrayal theory and it’s great.

Also If Ace does betray us, I want to see Deuce beat him into the ground ahahaha... (I still love you Ace but I will be hurt if you do betray us, this is why I stan Deuce lol)

Turns out MC can’t trust anyone but Deuce, because Grim is probably gonna overblot and Ace might betray.

Also, fun fact. The Ace of Spades symbolises death

Haha very funny Disney, making our lovable no braincells duo represent death

Anyways feel free to comment your thoughts on the theory!

#twisted wonderland #ace trappola #twst ace #twst #twisted wonderland spoiler #twisted wonderland spoilers #twisted wonderland theories #twisted wonderland theory

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rebrandedbard · 3 years

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A little drabble exchange for @theamazingbard that accidentally became more of a ficlet. Threw in a little hispanic nursery rhyme since I don’t know if we have them in english for making pain go away. I tried googling but it was unhelpful.

TW: Descriptions of blood, drinking it, gross stuff like that. Canon-typical wounds. References to drinking and inebriation.

WC: 2617

Lips Black as the Rose

Featuring highervampire!Jaskier as he tries to figure himself out after being turned. A bit of spice in there. Am I picking and choosing parts of the lore as I see fit? Yes. Is it very sexy of me to do so? One hundred percent. Will I beta this before posting? Oh absolutely not, you know the drill. ‘No beta, we die like men and get our shit wrecked in the comments’ is my go-to Ao3 tag for a reason.

Under no circumstances would Jaskier ever cause harm to another living thing, but the world did not reciprocate that exact philosophy. He’d been chased and held at the business end of many a sword, dagger, lance, and—on several unfortunately memorable occasions—a startling variety of available flatware. Things were rougher after meeting Geralt and having his usual human pursuers overshadowed by the threat of monsters.

Where once a spoon in the hands of a rabid duke would seem a most threatening opponent, Jaskier now found himself on the run from a more literal array of rabid beasts, and he could quote the running speeds the prove that having an extra pair of legs did indeed give certain monsters a leg up, so to speak, on the competition. But then, having no legs at all could prove a better advantage, and such creatures as those often had the additional advantage of long, venomous teeth.

Suffice to say, it was a difficult thing to be a lover in a world of fighters. Particularly when one falls into the company of another presumed lover, only to discover that their invitation to dinner was, in truth, an invitation to be dinner.

A vampire. Young, wine drunk, and foolish, Jaskier allowed himself to be led into the vampire’s den. It had been many years ago, he no longer remembered the details. He only remembered a sharp pain on his shoulder, followed by a woozy numbness, and he awoke in a strange bed, in an inn he did not check into, with his reflection missing from the mirror. He’d run away from home shortly after, fearing a bloodlust that was never to come.

It was a strange thing, being a vampire. After months of research, Jaskier came to no conclusions as to what it meant to be one exactly. He experimented with the content of old myths, touching silver very cautiously, taking delicate bites of foods prepared with garlic. He could cross a river just as well as any man. All in all, there was not much wrong with him, and he wondered what all the fuss was about. Well, there was a bit of fuss in that he could no longer be sure of his appearance, and he’d become more vain than ever, relying on the opinions of others to assure him that he looked presentable. This was a particular bother where Geralt was concerned, for he rarely paid compliments—if ever—and was not inclined to offer opinions concerning such trifling things as fashion or appearances.

Jaskier felt sure that Geralt would have noticed right away, but when their paths crossed again, Geralt seemed entirely ignorant of Jaskier’s dramatic change in biology. Running his tongue over his teeth, he could find no fangs. People complimented him on his eyes, still cooing over how bright and blue they were; and he’d been so afraid they’d turned a ghastly red as in the stories. From what he could tell, he appeared human. He had no violent urges to drain the blood from red-cheeked virgins, nor had he transformed into a bat and flown into the night. Sunlight only burned his skin as much as it had before, though it might have been harder on his eyes. He found himself squinting more in the afternoon, and it was unpleasant hot at times.

All in all, he was relatively normal.

“Such beauty ought to be preserved evermore.” That was what the vampire had told him that night. A great favor, immortality, but he wished he might have been offered a list of instructions to go with it. Figuring things out on his own was exasperating. And though he was not quite compelled to drink blood, there were times when he was … drawn. By curiosity.

When Geralt returned from a hunt, his flesh torn and body bleeding, Jaskier found it challenging to tend his wounds. Many times, he’d almost given into temptation. It did not help that he’d wanted to know the taste of Geralt’s skin long before the transformation. Now, there was an intoxicating layer to the fantasy, and the smell of Geralt’s blood made him hazy, like the bouquet of a strong wine. Or more realistically, the cloud of bitter vodka. If it had been a particularly nasty fight, Jaskier was sure he could taste Geralt’s blood by the smell alone, so powerful it made his nose wrinkle. He could get drunk on the fumes, and it was not always so pleasant.

He never dared try. There were too many things to consider. For a start, there was no telling what the blood of a witcher would do to him—and that was before factoring potions into the equation. Having never fed of blood, Jaskier did not know how his instincts would react, and he was sure he had some animal instinct to him now. He might drain Geralt dry in a matter of minutes, or the taste of blood might make him go insane and start tearing at his surroundings like a mad beast! Or, simplest and frightening of all, Geralt might kill him. So Jaskier kept his secret, never giving in to his curiosity.

But one day, he’d slipped.

“Fuck,” Geralt grunted. He clenched his hand and a sharp smell pervaded the air. In sharpening his sword, his hand had slipped. He’d cut the meat of his palm, just above his wrist.

Jaskier was up at once, Geralt’s bag in hand, ready to wrap the wound. He was very quick these days in getting things bundled up as soon as possible. Once the wounds were wrapped, the smell was not as pronounced. He fished out a strip of cloth and had it round Geralt’s hand in a matter of moments, working efficiently with good practice.

Geralt smiled ruefully. “A clean wound, at least. Should stitch itself up by morning.” He chuckled and inspected the wound, his eyes flicking over to Jaskier. “Haven’t done that since I was a child sharpening my first dagger,” he said.

“Did you cut yourself often in training?” Jaskier asked.

“No, not so often. We didn’t waste wrappings on such small scrapes either.”

There was a distracting shadow of red seeping through the cloth. Jaskier scoffed. “So you let it bleed into the open air, did you?”

“We were less inclined to coddle than humans.”

“Coddle?” Jaskier said, raising an offended hand to his chest. “My dear, a dressing is hardly evidence of coddling. If I wished to coddle you, I’d kiss it better and sing a little chant.”

Geralt presented his hand to Jaskier, smirking humorously. “Then do it. I’ve never heard of humans having such power as to kiss wounds better. Would save me a lot of trouble.”

“Erm … ” Jaskier flushed, considering the proffered wound. He nearly made a joke about lacking such power, being no longer human, but he bit it back. To cover his hesitation, he took Geralt’s hand and gently sang the rhyme his nurse used to calm him after a scraped elbow or knee. His tongue rolled musically as he rubbed the dressing carefully. “Sana sana colita de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana.” Then he bent his head down to kiss the place.

“I don’t see what frogs’ tails have to do with my hand,” Geralt joked.

But Jaskier did not hear him. Instead, he felt oddly fixed in place, a metallic tang on the tip of his tongue. He opened his mouth slightly, closed it, and licked at his bottom lip to chase the memory of the taste. As he did, his tongue scraped the end of a long, pointed tooth. He stumbled back unsteadily, muttered his excuses, and fled to the safety of his bedroll across camp. There he sat, writing nonsense in his notebook as though struck by sudden inspiration.

He’d tasted Geralt’s blood. And now he wanted more.

The next few hunts were blessedly without injury. Jaskier found he was able to breathe again. It twisted his gut whenever Geralt went off to fulfill a contract, and his conscience was at odds with this new obsession. He wanted Geralt to come back whole and unharmed. But he wanted some cut, some smallest scrape upon which to lathe his tongue. When he thought of it, he felt a stirring in his gums, and touching the place, he found the fangs had grown in again. It took concentration to hide them again. He took to smiling with his mouth closed after the first incident, and he developed a habit of biting his lips.

When they came to a larger town, Jaskier went straight to the butcher. To quell his growing need, he bought fresh meat, sneaking a sip from the blood dish beneath the draining sheep’s carcass while the butcher’s back was turned. It had the strangest effect on him. Within minutes of leaving the butcher’s shop, he felt light-headed. He felt drunk, in short, and he wobbled his way to the inn, a giggle in his throat.

For dinner, he asked the potmaid to send the loin to the cook and surprised Geralt with it: a small treat to celebrate his recent hunting success. In truth, he wanted nothing to do with it, festering in the shame of his lie. The loin had merely been an excuse: something to keep the butcher busy while he drank his curiosity like some writhing leech dredged up from the water.

It made him drunk. He made note of it in his book and swore that would be the end of things. This odd affair made it easy to forget, his stomach turning in guilt and disgust at the thought of repeating the act. He was fine and healthy without blood, therefore there was no need to partake. He could go the rest of his life perfectly happy never drinking another drop. Until the day it fell from Geralt’s lip.

Jaskier stared at it from across the room. Geralt had just returned from a fight, his eyes and blood black with potion. His armour was scratched up, covered in foulness from monsters unknown, but he was alive and whole, hardly bruised. Jaskier tried to focus on the smell of the guts dripping from his armour. It was still as disgusting as ever, even with vampiric senses to influence his opinion. The wretched blood was still unappetizing. But above it, he smelled a strange scent: sweet, a touch of iron. And there, shining on Geralt’s lip, the wet glisten of blood.

He swallowed hard as Geralt wiped the cut on the back of his hand. The blood smudged along his chin, all the more enticing. His knuckles turned white on the sheet of his bed as he held himself in place. Ordinarily, he would be up on his feet to help coax Geralt out of his armour by now, but he did not trust himself to be so close.

Geralt shed his shoulder pads, looking at Jaskier from the corner of his eye. “It’s a bit slippery,” he said. He inclined his head, beckoning Jaskier over. That was their way. They did not ask things from one another. It was simple routine, and the brief lapse was something awkward to acknowledge.

What excuses could he provide? Jaskier stood on trembling legs and made his way, biting his own lip to hide the fangs he felt beginning to grow. His fingers were clumsy as he fumbled with the clasps, far too close to Geralt’s face. His breath caught, watching a bead of dark blood roll down his lip, over his chin. His lip was stained black.

Geralt had always had nice lips, Jaskier felt. He was always reminded torturously of this fact when he helped Geralt out of his armour. How could one undress such a man without indulging in the fantasy of what came after, even a little? But oh, it was a dangerous line of thought. Now he was bewitched by his senses, his focus single-mindedly drawn to that point on Geralt’s lip. To kiss him now, to lick the blood from his lip—it would be divine. He felt his heart beat faster at the prospect, his hands stalling to unbuckle Geralt’s breastplate as he stared. Just one taste. One kiss was all he wanted.

A hand pressed against his chest, stopping him short. Jaskier startled out of his unconscious reverie and looked at Geralt in horror. He hadn’t—! Had he? His attention flicked between Geralt’s eyes and his lip, and to his relief, the blood remained untouched.

“Not just now,” Geralt said, voice rumbling in his chest. “The potions might paralyze you—at least for a day. Anything lesser would die from a drink of it. It turns my blood to poison.”

Jaskier blinked, edging back. “I … don’t understand your meaning,” he feigned.

Geralt followed him, stepping forward. He raised a hand, caressing Jaskier’s cheek gently. “I know,” he said. “You’re not the best at keeping secrets. I noticed some time ago you stopped aging, and there’s no shadow at your feet, even on the brightest afternoon.”

He swiped his thumb over Jaskier’s bottom lip. Jaskier gasped, his lips parting, and Geralt pushed in. Then, his thumb was pushing Jaskier’s top lip away, revealing a glistening fang. He nodded, satisfied, and stepped back once more.

“You’re a vampire,” Geralt said. “And not a common one either. My medallion doesn’t react to you at all.” He chuckled and added, “As if you could be common by any measure.”

Jaskier turned away, picking up one of Geralt’s shoulder pads. He clutched it to his chest, whether for protection or for comfort he could not say. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was afraid to tell you … afraid what you might say. What you … might do.”

A warm hand smoothed down his arm comfortingly. There was a teasing quality to Geralt’s voice when he spoke. A hand wrapped around Jaskier’s waist, making him nearly jump in surprise.

“In regards to what: the knowledge that you’re a vampire, or the knowledge that you want to kiss me?” Geralt asked, words hot against Jaskier’s neck.

Jaskier shivered, the adrenaline of his fear quickly turning to something sweeter. “Both,” he sighed. He closed his eyes, trying to focus, to understand Geralt’s intent.

“You cannot drink of me tonight,” Geralt whispered, “but I can satisfy that other hunger, if you only have the discipline to keep your teeth to yourself.”

“What are you saying, Geralt?” The way Geralt’s hand slipped lower and lower down his front, Jaskier thought he knew. Even so …

Geralt chuckled, nose pressing to the back of Jaskier’s neck. “I’m saying I’m tired of the way you look at me like a man starving and refuse to do something about it. It’s gotten worse. It was bad enough before, waiting for you to make your move, but since your turning, it’s insufferable. I feel like the centerpiece of a banquet, waiting to be devoured.”

“You said I couldn’t kiss you,” Jaskier said, breath coming up short as he felt himself pressed back against a firm chest, a second hand coming up to tug at the edge of his chemise. “I have no discipline whatsoever. And you know that.”

“Well then.”

Jaskier dropped the plate of armour as he was pushed backward. He fell, his knees caught by the edge of the bed. Arms caged him on either side, and above him. Geralt smiled, a drop of blood falling onto the sheets below. He pressed his thumb to Jaskier’s mouth once more, something ravenous in his eyes.

“Well then,” he repeated. “Looks like I’ll have to devour you instead.”

#my fic #drabbles #witcher #the witcher #geraskier #geralt #jaskier #vampire!jaskier #highervampire!jaskier #showing off a bit of my culture there with the little rhyme #mexican / irish blended household baby!#sadly though I learned the rhyme from spanish classes instead of from my family lmao #such is life #lips black as the rose fic #persie's tag #I TOLD you I'd leave things unfulfilled #suffer

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aswithasunbeam · 3 years

Link

December 1814

“Hush, darling,” Eliza whispered. “It’s all right.”

Angelica curled up further on the bed beside Eliza with a soft whimper. At least she was resting, finally, after hours of panic about invisible demons reaching out from the walls to take her away. Eliza had had to push the bed away from the walls before she’d been able to convince her daughter to lie down.

Eliza closed her eyes, the press of the day weighing on her already. Servants were bustling through the halls just outside the door, heaving trunks from little Eliza and Phil’s rooms. They were all bound for New York at first light tomorrow to celebrate Johnny’s wedding to his dear Maria. A joyous occasion to be sure, especially as she anticipated having their children together for the first time in years: William was meant to be coming down from West Point, and Alex and Jamie had secured time away from their posts, as well. Joyous, yes, even as it hurt that so much of her family wouldn’t be there, with Angelica and Peggy both gone, her parents, and Philip…. She swallowed around a lump in her throat at the thought of her eldest.

Her younger daughter shrieked suddenly from down the hall. “Give it back! Now!”

“I’m using it!” Phil yelled back.

“It’s mine!”

Eliza sighed, easing herself from Angelica’s bed to go see what all the fuss was about. Phil and little Eliza were engaged in an all out tug of war over a bit of ribbon in the hallway between their rooms. She watched silently for a moment, frowning, her arms crossed, waiting for them to notice her displeasure.

Phil noticed her first and abruptly let go of the ribbon. Little Eliza stumbled backwards, landing hard on her bottom. She yelped, glared up at her brother, and aimed a swift kick at his ankles.

“What are you two doing?” she demanded.

“She started it,” Phil said, jumping hastily out of the line of fire.

“He stole my best ribbon and he was using it to hang toy soldiers out the window.”

“I was going to give it back.”

“It’s got dirt all over it and you got it all wrinkled.” She held the ribbon up to show her mother. “See? I wanted to wear it to Johnny’s wedding.”

Phil stuck his tongue out at his sister. When she noticed, she aimed another kick at his ankles. He jumped back again, shouting, “Stop it!”

“What is all the yelling about?” Alexander asked as he slowly wheeled himself around the corner, to their collective surprise.

Despite the gathering dark outside the hall window, she was shocked to see him home; she’d hardly seen hide nor hair of him in the past days as they prepared to leave for their extended trip home. Both the children went quiet at his unexpected arrival, and little Eliza bounced up to her feet.

“Sorry Papa,” they both mumbled quickly.

“We seem to be having quite the disagreement over a bit of ribbon,” Eliza supplied when they failed to offer further explanation.

Alexander looked at her with a hint of a smile. “Want me to send them to help dig out the new latrine by the camp? That’s what I do with the men who mouth off. Very effective punishment.”

They both paled considerably, sending her matching pleading looks.

She made a show of considering for a long beat before smiling as well. “I think we can give them one more chance before we put them to hard labor.”

“We’ll be good,” Phil promised solemnly.

“I expect so.” Alexander tilted his head to the side to dismiss them. “Off you go. Stop making your mother’s life difficult.”

If only he’d take his own advice, she thought fondly.

They scampered off down the hall, both giving their father an affectionate peck on the cheek as they passed. He shook his head as he watched them go, then looked back at her, the laugh lines in his cheeks creasing. “Imps.”

“Well, we did complain the house was too quiet without them,” Eliza said. Indeed, when Alexander had sent them off to stay with family over the summer for their safety, the house had felt empty without their constant bickering and antics. She paced over to him and leaned down to kiss him, as well. “It’s good to have you home finally. You missed dinner again.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry I haven’t been much help getting ready for our trip. I’ve been in endless meetings. When I at one point raised the concern about the endless meetings, one of Jemmy’s secretaries quite unironically asked if I would like him to schedule a meeting to discuss it.”

She laughed.

He grinned at her, but his eyes turned serious when he glanced towards the door to Angelica’s room. “How’s Geli today?”

Eliza sobered as she, too, glanced back at her daughter’s door. “She’s been having a bad day.”

He sighed. “She’s been having a lot of bad days, lately. I heard her whimpering and muttering when I got home late last night. She was wide awake when I peeked in at her. I doubt she got much rest.”

Eliza hardly needed reminding, having been up much of the night with her. “She’s resting now, finally.”

“That’s something, I suppose.”

His hands fidgeted on the wheels of his chair. She watched him a moment, sensing he had something else to tell her. The expression twisting his face usually signaled some sort of indigestion. When he failed to say anything more, she asked, “What is it?”

“Well,” he started, his hand going up to scratch at his neck uncomfortably.

Anxiety started to build up at his continued reluctance to speak. “If you say you can’t come to New York for your own son’s wedding—”

“No, no, it’s not that.” He sighed, resting his hands on the wheels of his chair once more, as though contemplating an escape even as he spoke. “It’s just, I need to meet with some people before I leave. And the only time they would both be available was tonight. So, I may have suggested they stop by the house before we leave. They’re on their way over now, actually. For tea.”

She felt her own expression twisting to match his, heartburn flaring in her chest as a suspicion about his guest list occurred to her. “Who?”

“Burr,” he said.

“Burr,” she repeated, disbelief in her tone even though that’s exactly the name she’d expected to hear. “You expect me to serve tea to Aaron Burr?”

“Well,” he started again.

“You promised me. You promised, when you suggested him for his position, that I wouldn’t need to be alone with him.”

“I said not just the three of us.” He fidgeted in his chair again, clearly not relishing delivering his next bit of news. “Someone else is coming, too.”

He seemed somehow more reluctant to tell her the next guest. How could it possibly get worse? “Who else?”

He gritted his teeth, hesitating again before saying, “Monroe.”

A wave of cold fury washed over her. “Monroe!”

“Shh,” he hushed, pointing towards Angelica’s room behind them.

Her nostrils flared as she forced a deep breath, jerking her head to indicate he should follow her down the hall before moving around him towards his office. He liked to praise her as an endless fountain of love and patience, she thought, but much as she might try, she simply wasn’t. Her nerves were already frayed from sleepless nights and managing ornery children and overseeing the packing and planning for their journey. Now he wanted her to cap off her night by serving tea to two of the most loathsome men on earth.

He rolled in to the office behind her, and she snapped the door closed.

“No,” she said firmly.

“Eliza—”

“No, Alexander. No. You ask too much, sometimes.”

He smiled softly, highlighting the dimples in his cheeks, and reached out for her hand. “You’d send me into the viper’s nest without my trusty mongoose for protection?”

“You can’t charm your way out of this,” she hissed.

“Betsey,” he sighed, expression turning serious. “It can’t be helped.”

“They’re not welcome here. Not in my home. Neither of them.”

“You know I try to keep them away as much as possible. I know how you feel.”

“Do you? Because sometimes, the way you act, especially around Burr—”

“I understand. I do. But I need to see them before I go. It’s important.”

“What’s so important?”

“Campbell submitted his budget, just before he conveniently resigned to see to his health. He estimated an appropriation of $25 million would be needed, which is far, far beyond the expected tax revenue of $11 million, and all that’s before factoring in the cost of rebuilding the capital.”

She sank into the chair near his desk, sensing a lengthy conversation. “Go on.”

“Then there’s this…this treasonous…convention.” She could hear the quotes around the last word as he spit it out. “Otis has called a meeting of Federalists all across New England to propose a radical change in our national compact. Because what we need in the middle of a war, apparently, is a new constitutional convention intent on gutting the Federal government.”

“Were you invited?”

He snorted. “As if I’d stoop to attending such a farcical proceeding.”

She smiled a little. She knew he’d have gloried in attending, monopolizing the conversation until his voice went hoarse telling them exactly why they were all idiots and cowards, had he been given the opportunity. “So no?”

He shot her a glare, but then smirked, caught red-handed by her knowing look. “I think they knew what my answer would be.”

She threaded her fingers between his. “I know how stressed you are about the war and fate of the country, sweetheart. But I don’t see what a meeting with those two—” she paused, hunting for a word, and, finding none, continued with only the empty space to define them, “—helps accomplish.”

“Monroe is acting Secretary of War, and, with Campbell gone, probably acting Secretary of the Treasury as well at this point. I need him to call on Congress to establish a new national bank, which in turn will help fund additional men. At least 100,000 to start.”

“And I’m sure he’ll take your direction with great enthusiasm.”

“Not with enthusiasm, perhaps, but he’ll take my direction, once I explain the need.”

“And Burr?”

“The Hartford Convention needs to be minimized. We need a shot of patriotism in that part of the country, a call to arms to rally flagging spirits. Since the Northern theater quieted, they’ve been shouldering the financial burden with none of the chance for glory. Meanwhile, the enemy is starting to gather with an eye towards New Orleans. If we can start mustering troops in New England, threaten an invasion of Canada, we might be able to press England into peace and herd New England back into the fold at the same time.”

“And you want Burr to head the effort,” she said, intuiting his plan now. Once Monroe agreed to call upon Congress to fund new troops, Burr would ride north to start mustering a force to take on Canada again.

“Exactly.” His eyes bore into hers. “And it needs to happen now. Immediately. Congress can’t be frightened into cutting back on the army, or we’ll be a British colony again by New Year’s.”

She squeezed his hand.

“So?” he pressed.

She held his gaze. “I suppose I’ll let them in when they knock. I won’t agree to more than that.”

He leaned over in his chair to catch her lips. “That’s all I need from you.”

That she managed to bring in the tea service without pouring the scalding water over either of their two unwanted guests ought to have qualified her sainthood, in her opinion. She didn’t stay in the room with them, didn’t even mutter a greeting. She did stay near the door, however, listening, while Alexander laid out his plan. She couldn’t quite bring herself to abandon him, even when he’d invited the viper’s nest upon himself.

“I wasn’t a particular supporter of your bank the first time around, Mr. Hamilton,” Monroe said. “Why should I call on Congress to re-charter it now?”

“How else are you going to pay for more troops, Mr. Secretary?”

Monroe answered in a measured tone. “We’re mere weeks away from a peace treaty, according to my intelligence in Ghent. Once that’s signed, there won’t be a need for more troops. We can cut back, limit spending to match our more limited revenue stream temporarily, until imports duties return to their pre-war levels.”

“You don’t think the British are also gathering intelligence?” Burr asked. “They’ll be watchfully waiting for our new budget proposals. If we’re seen dismantling the army before the war is over, why would they ever agree to a peace deal? Might as well take us for their own again.”

Monroe scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’ve practically already signed. And I think we’ve proven far too troublesome to bother with as a colony again.”

“Too troublesome thirty years ago,” Burr pointed out. “And we were lucrative. If we can’t mount a solid defense, no reason not to give it another try.”

Alexander added, “You need to get the dissent in New England under control. And you need funding. Even without the additional expense of more troops, rebuilding the capital will be an expensive endeavor. You need to do this.”

“I don’t like the bank,” Monroe said sourly.

Alexander laughter bitterly. “It’s me you don’t like, Mr. Secretary. And that’s quite all right. I assure you the feeling is mutual. But you have to do this. Don’t make me go over your head to Jemmy to force you into action. It will only waste time.”

There was a long silence, tension palpable. “Fine. I’ll propose re-chartering the bank and adding funding for more troops. But I can’t promise it will pass.”

“Oh, I think you’ll find the votes, Mr. Secretary,” Alexander insisted. “Necessity is a great motivator.”

Sensing the meeting was coming to a close, Eliza moved to summon the servants to bring the hats and coats. She didn’t want them lingering in the front room any longer than necessary. In the moments she’d stepped away, however, something must have happened, because she suddenly heard raised voices coming from the office. She hurried back, opening the door to the office to find Burr standing in between Monroe and Alexander.

Monroe was all but shouting, “You think just because you’ve blinded Jemmy with nostalgic appeals to a long-dead friendship that you can always have your way, just as you did with Washington. I’ll not be so easily taken in, Mr. Hamilton, I promise you that.”

Burr placed a hand on Monroe’s shoulder, trying to ease him away from Alexander.

Alexander looked blithely unconcerned, all but smirking at Monroe as he said, “I’ll remind you there is no guaranteed succession in this country, Mr. Monroe, however many hats you acquire during this administration. I wouldn’t be so assured of victory in the next election, if I were you.”

Color rose in Monroe’s face as he pushed around Burr, holding a finger out in Alexander’s direction. “Enjoy your influence while you have it. Your days are numbered.”

“That’s quite enough,” Eliza said, voice deadly quiet, fury taking wing in her chest at the implied threat.

Monroe spun around to face her. “Mrs. Hamilton—”

“You have nothing to say to me, Mr. Monroe.”

“I apologize for raising my voice,” he continued, bowing his head slightly.

“No. No. If you mean to offer anything other than a full and sincere apology, not only for the unforgivable words you just uttered, but also for all the slanders and stories you circulated against my husband in the past, I have no interest in hearing it.”

Monroe frowned. “If you mean…the business with the Reynolds papers was hardly my doing. Your husband—”

“What my husband did was a matter we have long since settled between us. But that the rest of the world was involved was very much your doing. He has earned my forgiveness. You’ve never even bothered to ask it.”

“Mrs. Hamilton—”

“And you now have the…the gall to come into my home, drink my refreshments, and then threaten the person I hold dearest in the world. Please leave, Mr. Monroe. Now.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Burr patted at his shoulder, encouraging him forward. Just before Burr himself stepped out, though, he glanced back at her husband. “You’re a real pain in the ass, Ham. You know that?”

“So I’ve been told.” Alexander had the nerve to look fond as he addressed Burr.

“Out,” she insisted.

Burr at least had the decency to avert his eyes as he passed her, collecting their coats and urging Monroe out the front door without another word.

When the door had closed, she looked back at Alexander, still sitting in the middle of the room. He gave her plaintive look. “I’m so sorry, Betsey. I didn’t mean for things to get so out of hand. Or for you to be pulled into the middle of it.”

She pointed in the direction the two men had just disappeared, her hand shaking slightly from rush of rage and fear that coursed through her. “That man is never, ever setting foot in my home again.”

“Of course. Never again.”

Promises, promises—how he could make them. Her heart was still beating in her throat. He rolled forward and took her hand, placing a kiss to the back of her fingers.

She softened as she looked back at him, calming somewhat with his easy agreement and solid feeling of his hand in hers. The reason for his insistence on the meeting in the first place re-occurred to her, and she felt a niggle of concern despite herself. “Do you think he’ll still put forward the proposal to Congress?”

“Yes.” He sounded completely confident. “He doesn’t have a choice. Jemmy will back me if it comes to a contest, and he knows it. I just don’t want to lose time on the argument when every minute counts. We’re too close, balanced on the edge of a precipice. I’ll not let our experiment fail over pigheadedness and pride.”

She considered the exchanged she’d walked in on again, eyes locked on her husband. “You said that to him, didn’t you? You goaded him into shouting at you.”

He gave her a sheepish smile. “I do so enjoy winding him up with impotent rage.”

She wanted to be angry with him, but amusement was quickly outpacing the sensation. Damn him, his charm, and his sweet smile, she thought. She let out a breathy laugh, shaking her head at him. Relief washed over his face.

“I really didn’t mean to drag you into it, though, my dearest.” He kissed her hand again, looking more relaxed. “Though I confess I enjoyed watching you kick him to the curb. My darling mongoose.”

His darling mongoose, indeed, she huffed internally.

#hamilton fanfic #alexander hamilton #eliza hamilton #hamliza #life hereafter

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timetroublingtrickster · 3 years

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Tech Trick(s)

Right after watching the 3rd Loki Episode I was about to come here and post:

If that hasn´t all been a ruse I´m going to RIOT!

Now I´m at the point where I´m absolutely unwilling to believe Loki would get recklessly drunk (excuse me “very full”) during an apocalypse and neglectfully destroy their only option of escape and I´m more occupied with the question just WHEN and HOW Loki Laufeyson took over!

I´m inclined to believe that at least (A) the broken TemPad was an illusion that Loki showed Sylvie Laufeydottir. Why? > To get information about Sylvie & gain influence on the overall situation Getting them “fake” stranded puts Loki in a position where he can have a conversation with her, judge her character, try to find out what her plans are and probably get her on his side or make her think he is on hers. Not only would he have time to work his “silver tongue” and get to know her and/or get to her with his conversation skills but additionally the way Sylvie would act within a possibly deadly apocalypse scenario surely would tell Loki a lot about her. > To maybe portray himself as a bit more naive than he is? Having a party with the people in the train would then have been part of setting the broken TemPad illusion up. “I just sat on it and it broke” would probably be hard to believe, but it also paints Loki in a certain light. Sylvie calls Loki a “clown”, “not a serious man”. This kind of hedonistic Loki is someone whom you would need to keep an eye on or else his irresponsibility could cause you trouble but this kind of “clown” is not someone from whom you would expect some serious scheming and plans. I think Loki might be in the midst of trying to portray himself as someone Sylvie might underestimate. [On a Sidenote: This would fit well with how they talk about plans in the episode. Sylvie is obviously invested in her “years in the making” plan, a comment Loki seems to wave aside a bit, just saying yes to placate her. Later Sylvie informs Loki that his getting in the train plan “wasn't even a plan.” and that “Plans have multiple steps.” This again paints Loki as simpler than he is. There´s more plan talk but I leave it at that.] This would however still mean that they are dependent on the power source of the Ark (which I´m reluctant to believe see below) hence why I am having the suspicion that the “Trick” started earlier and (B) the TemPad was never truly “outta juice”

“You don't know how to Recharge it.” “Of course I do. You're not the only tech savvy Loki.” I´m inclined to take his word there. Although he played it as masking his lack of knowledge, I do think that he actually might be tech savvy here. My current headcanon is that Loki, aside from beating time, actually has watched those TVA propaganda training videos and absorbed all the information. Knowing what he is dealing with and how things work surely must be a key to whatever ambition he is following. You got to know how things work to mess them up, you have to see the order to unravel it and create chaos.

I´m betting Loki knows about the limits and capabilities of the TemPad and that one that seemingly needs recharging buys him some time with Sylvie and opportunities. Maybe Loki truly drained the TemPad of the energy to hand Sylvie a device that actually was not working, so she couldn´t see any trickery. Maybe he pulls out some battery device last minute, has had temporarily held the energy though some magic and has already put it back in a concealed TemPad. Or there was magic at play and the whole uncharged device was faked. Wouldn´t Sylvie have noticed any magical tampering? Thor needed to throw things at “Loki” to reveal his magic. While Sylvie didn´t touch the broken remnants of the TemPad she held the “outta juice” one and she could have more insight as magic user but the episode established that they both are not necessarily entirely familiar with each other´s magic. >> It´s difficult to say just how much Sylvie know´s about Loki´s skills, but she does recognize them as not unremarkable and not something she can just act against. This seems to be proven by her action of not trying to just take the TemPad from Loki. >> Loki´s familiarity with Sylvie´s skills is a bit trickier. When the first explosion hits he asks “Is that one of your powers?“, maybe genuinely wondering, maybe not. Mostly this episode is about one particular skill: Enchantment is not among the faves Loki lists to the TVA in his lecture mode. (On a side note: The “But you already knew that” (1x2) is so clever in that moment, it´s played as humble, as Loki coming out of lecture mode and “realizing” this, but it also tells us that he didn´t reveal any new information to the TVA or didn´t clarify any complex matter for them. Technically they should know everything anyway but I´m wondering if the show will show us something up Loki´s sleeves that they didn´t.) But later he remarks: “Enchantment is a clever trick. Cowardly, a bit amateurish, but clever” (1x2) It seems he is implying that he´s well versed in it but above it. However in 1x3 Loki asks how Sylvie´s Enchantment works. Which does not necessarily mean he is not familiar and skilled in Enchantement himself, but he might indeed not quite know just how Sylvie in particular works with it. When Sylvie tries to enchant him, Loki points that out and says it won´t work, not because of him being a “magician” but because his “mind is too strong.” (1) Later he brings the power up again (2), not straight up asking how it works, but going for a more unassuming question of where she learned it. “So, where'd you learn to do the... You know, the... Whatever it is?“ He shows himself impressed that she´s an autodidact. Then he shifts to “how it works” and offers a quite simple thought “You just go into their minds and project some sort of illusion?“ The topic is dropped after Sylvie offers to just show him by enchanting him. Later Loki tries another angle (3) he again is offering a faulty (!) presumption of how the Enchantment works. “Here's an idea. What if you enchanted me and you could walk for both of us? Or I take a nap in my subconscious, and then you could just wake me when we arrive.“ Sylvie points out that his is in fact not how it works. After some remarks about “tactical advantage” she actually starts to explain to Loki! To which Loki says “And you call me a magician.“ again putting himself in the position of the lesser skilled one in this area. And I do think this might have been calculated and on purpose? I´m kind of talking myself into believing that Loki might know quite well how Enchantment works & I´m super surprised that Sylvie with all that inquiry about her skill never said something like: “Why would you want to know more about a cowardly, amateurish thing?!” Mirroring Lokis words from 1x2.

Moreover I´m wondering if there was an additional motive of “actually” trying their luck with the Ark. “Never had us on it” Loki says, implying they could change things and make the escape vessel leave. Which could have an element of caring about the people? Loki couldn´t act in Pompei, maybe he can here. Loki laments the fate of the woman that shot at them. “A pity the old woman chose to die, don't you think?” Then again he might just bring that up to gauge Sylvies reaction to it. He also made no attempt to help or ask her to come along. Then again that might not be a sign of not caring, but recognizing someone made their choice and respecting it. Going for the Ark could also have an element of gauging his influence on the course of time? Pompei is long past for this Loki, this scenario is not and there is no TVA currently present. So far Loki already “uncovered a huge hole” in TVA security (1x2) and he knows that the TVA is pruning divergent paths, but he is also in the midst of seeing that they aren´t infallible and this might be a chance to just test things a bit. Maybe he has an interest in seeing if he (now) can have an impact in “hijacking the ark and making sure it gets off this moon”. Maybe it´s also to see how the TVA would deal with these new variant survivors and if they are currently even capable to do so. This could be a moment to reassure himself that his actions have an impact and an opportunity to find out more about how the TVA works.

I do not think Loki would rely on hijacking the ark as a plan to get them to safety? If it is true that he does not know about this apocalypse, which is just given how many there are, likely, then the information Sylvie gave him is just not nearly enough to make a call like that. The Ark could have been stopped from leaving due to so many reasons and plenty far beyond their control and influence. Just like it happened. That would be an irresponsibly risky move. [Loki s1ep03 “Lamentis”] What do you think?

#loki laufeyson #sylvie laufeydottir #lokiedit #loki series #loki meta #loki s1ep3 lamentis #mine meta text #mine loki series #magic

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here4theheartbreak · 2 years

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All I Want for Christmas Ch.8 (Final) - A Christmas Miracle(ksj+pjm)

AO3 Link Here!

Relationships: Jimin x Seokjin Genre: angst, fluff, smut Rating: Explicit Chapter Word Count: ~3.8k

All Fic Tags: Angst, Fluff, Smut, Holidays, Small Towns, Homophobia, Angst with a Happy Endings, Past Relationships, Bullying, Attempted Infidelity, Homophobic Slurs, Bad Parenting, Discussion of Divorce, Rough, Face-Fucking, Dirty Talk, Spanking, Bottom!Jin, Top!Jimin, Happy Ending

Summary: Seokjin returns to his small hometown after a decade, hoping for a Hallmark holiday romance. He learns he didn’t have to go so far from home for it.

A/N: Sorry for the lack of a header image on these chapters; Tumblr has decided to rename itself Karen and get a shitty dye job - it will only let the post appear in tags if I don’t have an image.

A/N 2: This fic is also written for @thebtswritersclub December Project - it was an ornament style project in which a particular word needed to be used in both the title and the fic itself; my word was “Christmas”.

Jin woke early on Christmas morning, laughing a little to himself when he realized it was snowing lightly. How cliché – a Christmas dusting in a tiny little town. Hallmark movie material indeed. He headed into the kitchen, pecking his mother’s cheek and nodding to his father.

“When do we head in to start?” He asked, leaning on the counter as he sipped the coffee Jihae offered.

“Probably about an hour. Honestly, you don’t really need to come until later. A lot of what I’ll be doing is just running around and picking up finished things from others. I won’t need help until we start really setting up the area in the park.”

Every year the town did a Christmas tree lighting in the park. Prior to the lighting, there was always a large tent set up, filled with goodies and gifts, treats, and other things from the town, a community gift exchange, as it were.

“Well, then give me a list of folks to gather stuff from,” Jin suggested. “You know the ones that won’t kick me out on sight, and it’ll still shorten your running around.”

She sighed, brows furrowed. “You were never so helpful as a child.”

Jin grinned. “Took me a few years. I’ve gotta make up for giving you all those grey hairs.”

She gasped, swatting Jin in the belly as he laughed.

In the end, Jin did win, earning a list of shops and addresses that he was supposed to go gather items from. With only one car they decided to split the lists by blocks, so each of them could finish all the gathering in a certain block area before moving on, to make it less difficult to carry things.

The air was cold enough that Jin could see his breath, but not biting. The snow had stopped for the moment, but the clouds looked ready to open for another dusting at any moment. Jin moved steadily through the list, taking a few moments to chat politely with those that wanted to, but keeping a good pace. He knew from past experience that the tent always took a while to set up, even after gathering all the items.

First block, second, third – the two knocked them out easily. The car was getting full, but Jin figured they could manage the last few without too much difficulty. He was rounding the corner to head to the craft store when he heard his name being called.

Jin stopped, turning to search for the voice.

“Hey, Kim Seokjin!”

Much to Jin’s surprise, Eunyoung was hurrying across the street. His chest clenched at the sight of her, remembering how they’d left things. He tucked away the list and smiled as she approached, trying to remain neutral.

“Eunyoung. How’ve you been?”

She nodded and smiled, but it faded quickly into a frown and she shook her head. “Not great.”

Jin’s neutral smile drooped. “I’m sorry… Jaeho…”

She nodded.

“Look, Eunyoung, I know you want me to stay away, but I just wanted to apologize. I didn’t—”

Eunyoung grimaced and went forward. She slammed into Jin hard, hugging him tightly and silencing him mid-sentence.

“I—” He hugged back after a moment, confused, but happy that she opted for a hug instead of a slap, at the very least.

She stepped back after a moment. “I was a bitch.”

“What?”

“When you told me about Jaeho. I lashed out and it wasn’t fair to you. I was being a bitch because I was hurt.”

“No… Eunyoung, you had every right.”

“No, I didn’t. My choices were my own. Blaming you for them… That isn’t right. You were always there for me. And I was upset when you left, I felt abandoned. But honestly… Thinking on it, even if you had offered to take me, I wouldn’t have said yes. It would’ve made no difference. I was cruel to take out my anger on you.”

Jin smiled weakly. He reached up, stroking her cheek. “Apology accepted. But really, I get it. I should have reached out more, again, tried harder. I’m sorry we lost touch, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I wish I could’ve been. Even if you don’t blame me, I know my actions did influence this all.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But it doesn’t really matter. You kept yourself safe. You did what you had to. Hating you over that is as cruel as any of the times Jaeho beat on you.”

Jin sighed. “What are you going to do? About him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I confronted him. About the situation. About what he did. He tried to start drama at the factory over it.”

Jin chuckled. “I know, my dad came home and went after me for it.”

“I’m sorry,” she grimaced. “I shouldn’t have said anything…”

“No. God, no. Don’t ever apologize for that. Eunyoung, you have a right to speak up, you have a voice. Never stay silent when someone’s hurting you.”

“I want to leave him,” she admitted. “He’s not good to the kids and he’s barely tolerable for me. Lately I’ve been finding every excuse I can to stay out on Mr. Oh’s farm with my father… I told him about what Jaeho did. Of course he didn’t believe me.” She rolled her eyes. “Assumed you started it.”

Jin snorted. “Not surprised.”

“Me neither.” She sighed heavily. “But if I leave…” She drifted off.

“What about going back to school?” Jin offered. “You always loved math, what about an accounting degree, or something that you can put to use right away in a lot of jobs?”

“I have no money saved. And if I do leave him…” She shrugged. “I don’t know that I’d win much besides my clothes and my kids.”

“The house is yours, isn’t it?”

“Sure, but it’s my father’s, technically. And he’s not going to side with me.”

“There’s scholarships, loans that you can take out. It’s what I did.”

“I’m a bit old, aren’t I?”

“Not even close, I have a friend six years older than us who’s just starting school.”

“The kids?”

“There’s plenty of great programs in the city,” Jin said. “Online school for you, after school programs for the kids. I’m not telling you to divorce him, or to move to the city, but I’m just throwing suggestions.”

Eunyoung smiled softly, shaking her head. “I hate it.”

“Hate what?”

“This. Us. If things had been different… If we’d been… Compatible. I could’ve ended up with a sweet guy like you… Instead I settled for Jae.”

“Dating or not, Eunyoung…” Jin took her hands. “I’m not gonna run off again.”

“Oh, sure, you’re gonna leave your job and come here to live?”

Jin chuckled. “No, I’m going home in a few days. But what I mean… Is coming here was good for me. I fixed a lot that I’d left bad, and I learned some new things. I don’t see myself staying away too long.”

“Yeah? Only eight years instead of ten?”

Jin chuckled. “I’m planning on coming back this summer actually. A short visit. To pick up Jinki and Daeun’s kid.”

“Why?” She asked, her brows furrowing.

Jin shrugged. “Kid loves dance. My company does a camp for kids, it’s a month in the summer, sort of a music camp. I’m gonna sponsor their kiddo this year. So I have to come up and get them, and drop them off after. And who knows, maybe I’ll come up more often.”

Eunyoung chuckled. “You having a preteen for a whole month?”

“Why is everyone shocked by that?” Jin asked, exasperated. She laughed this time, shaking her head.

“I think it sounds cute. It’ll be fun.”

“I hope so. But what I’m saying is… I’ll be here more often. And when I’m not here… You have my number. If you need someone to talk to, I’m a call or a text away. If you need a place to crash in the city, I am more than happy to help. My apartment is small and if you choose to come while their kiddo’s there I can’t guarantee you’ll have much room, but,” he chuckled, “my door’s always open. And if you do decide to leave Jaeho… I can help you find a good lawyer, get what you deserve. I can work to help you get set up elsewhere too. Another town, the city… We can figure it out.”

Eunyoung’s expression softened as Jin spoke. She nodded, a small smile curving her mouth. “Even after I was so mean… You’d do all that?”

“I don’t think you were mean,” Jin said. “You were hurting. There was a wound that was ten years old that I ripped open this month, and then I dropped a bomb on your lap. You were upset, and you were hurt, and you reacted. It hurt, but… I’m not mad over it, and I understand it. And even if you were being mean… I love you, Eunyoung. I always have. Maybe not in the way that everyone wished, but… I care deeply for you. I want you happy and safe.”

She nodded, her chin wrinkling a little. Jin could see her eyes glazing a bit and knew she was trying not to cry.

He leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Don’t cry, it’s Christmas,” he said softly.

“Careful, someone’s gonna assume I’m having an affair with the city boy,” she teased.

“Oh yes, as if my inability to get an erection for a girl isn’t already printed in the town archives,” Jin joked, grinning when she laughed.

“What are you doing now?” Jin asked.

“I was looking for you. I went to your house but your Dad said you were in town helping your Mom with the event.”

“Yeah, gotta get the rest of the stuff. Wanna join me for a bit?”

Eunyoung chewed her lip, glancing around. “Can’t hurt,” she said. “My kids are with their grandpa until the event, then we’ll all come.”

“Where’s Jae?” Jin asked carefully. They began walking toward the craft shop.

“At home, I’d guess.” She chuckled. “I haven’t seen him for a few days… And I don’t particularly want to.”

“Probably for the best,” Jin admitted. He knocked on the door of the shop and waited, waving at the owner when she peeked out of the window.

The two worked together to get the last of Jin’s list done. As they placed the final box in the car, Eunyoung sighed. “I should go back, hang out with my kiddos and Dad for a while.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” Jin said.

“Yeah. Call me before you leave, okay? I wanna say bye.”

Jin nodded. He hugged Eunyoung tightly. “Thank you for finding me. For talking to me.” He said softly.

“I couldn’t leave things like that. It wasn’t fair.”

“Keep me posted too. On what you decide with Jae. No matter what, I’ll do what I can to help.”

“I appreciate that.” She leaned up, pecking Jin on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, Jin.”

“Same to you, Eunyoung.”

He watched her walk away before heading down the street to find his mother and help her.

Jin worked the rest of the afternoon helping his mother set up the tent. There were a few other townsfolk that popped in to help, but the mother and son duo managed most of it, finishing just in time for folks to start showing up. The sun began to set without Jin noticing; he was too busy helping folks as he could and organizing the tent as the groups came and went. Though the town was small, this event was the largest of the winter, and near everyone came to it, so it felt like a lot.

Jinki’s family came by toward evening, and Jin earned another hug from Jia. She held out her arms. “Like it?” She asked, showing off her coat. It was a light pink puffer jacket with a rich purple faux fur hood.

“It looks warm,” Jin said. “It suits you.” She beamed.

“Dad got it for me for Christmas.”

Jin met Jinki’s gaze and smirked. “I wonder if he had some help.”

“Dad’s secret,” Jinki joked.

Jia pulled at Jin until he leaned down a bit. “I told them last night,” she whispered. “About starting… Puberty. We’re moving my appointment up a little… I think we’ll start medicine in January.”

Jin grinned. “Excellent. I hope it goes smoothly.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Keep me updated.”

“I will.”

“Merry Christmas, kiddo.”

She grinned and headed off, waving to a boy across the park before rushing over to him. Daeun hugged Jin tightly. “In case we don’t see you before you go. Thank you, we’ll keep in touch.”

“Of course.” He kissed her cheek. He squeezed Jinki’s hand when he extended it.

“Thank you,” Jinki said. “I’m glad you’re back in our lives.”

“So am I,” Jin agreed honestly. He watched them walk off for a moment before his attention was taken by Mr. Ahn, who’d come by to ask a question.

The crowded thinned out to the point that Jin was able to combine the remaining items on to one table as the sun fully dropped. The moonlight glinting off the snow gave a soft glow to everything, and the streetlights cast even more. The residents were beginning to gather around the tree, soft Christmas music playing through some speakers that had been set up around it.

Jin circled around the table, scanning the darkened area for his parents.

“Hey city stranger.”

The voice hit like a bucket of ice water. Jin froze. He stared straight ahead, almost afraid to turn around. He could have been imagining it, he supposed… He’d been busy all day, hadn’t eaten much… But he could feel someone staring.

Jin turned around slowly. It was no hallucination. Jimin stood a few feet away. He was wearing an expensive looking peacoat and black jeans tucked into boots. His hair was covered with a warm winter hat, and his hands were tucked into his pockets. Cheeks ruddy with the cold, Jin could see his breath escaping in little puffs through his slightly parted lips.

Jin set his jaw, the pain of the week prior ripping his through his stomach once more.

Jimin smiled, but it faded when Jin didn’t react. “I fucked up,” Jimin said softly, just loud enough for Jin to hear.

Jin remained silent. He tucked his own hands into his coat pockets.

Jimin looked down. He sighed, his shoulders rising and falling. He looked back up at Jin. “I’m sorry I ran.”

Jin clenched his teeth. “Fine. Apology accepted.” He turned on his heel, heading toward the crowd. He heard crunching snow and Jimin’s hand wrapped around his arm, yanking him back. Jin wrenched his arm free and spun around, much closer to Jimin than he thought. “What do you want?” He hissed.

Jimin flinched, looking up at him. “I want to explain.”

“You already did. In your letter.”

“No. I—” Jimin sighed. “I thought I did. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was a coward. I was scared of hurting you, and I—”

“You weren’t scared of hurting me,” Jin hissed. “If you had been you would’ve told me to my face the problem, instead of leaving me a note and scurrying back to the city with your tail between your legs. You were protecting yourself.”

“Fine.” Jimin nodded. “That’s fair. And I thought I was. I’ve never done… Relationships. I’ve never been asked to. So when you did I—I froze. I figured I wasn’t capable of it. So I freaked and I ran.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Still doesn’t explain why you came back. You got what you wanted already.”

Jimin blinked, a startled pain crossing his features momentarily. “What I wanted? What do you think… What do you think I wanted, Jin?”

“You got the contracts. You got a piece of ass. Everything a young city professional needs to be happy.”

Jimin winced again, looking down. “Also a fair accusation. But it’s not true.” He sighed. “Please, let me talk… You can be mad, but… Please hear me out.”

Jin nodded, crossing his arms.

“I did go back to the city planning to try and forget about you. I thought it was what was right. What worked. You and I were in different places. You wanted long term and a calm happiness and I’m… Just so much. A big ball of chaos. I… I don’t do calm or stable, and I never have. I didn’t think it was for me. But this past week, I… Every day I spent most of the day thinking about you. But not just… You. About what you’d said. About how that could feel. I’d go to sleep imagining what it’d be like to wake up next to the same person every day. Come home and go on dates with just one person, telling stories and remembering important events and birthdays and…” He sighed softly. “I’ve never had that, and I didn’t think I wanted it. When I thought about it that night, it scared me. But as it kept… Sitting in my mind I started to long for it. And I started to long for you. I didn’t realize how… Fucking head over heels I am for you, or how fast it happened.”

Jimin sniffled. He pulled a hand from his pocket and wiped the corner of his eye, blinking quickly. “I knew I’d fucked up. About halfway through the week. I knew it, and I… I wanted to text or call. But I knew that I’d hurt you. So I tried to stay away. But it’s just… Eating me up inside and I needed to see you again. I needed to tell you I was wrong, and I’m sorry for what I did.”

Jimin met Jin’s gaze, his eyes wet. Jin felt his heart clench a little, his expression softening a bit. He was still upset, but Jimin was being genuine. That meant something, at least.

“I don’t expect you to agree to try dating me seriously again. I know I may have lost that gift and I wouldn’t blame you at all. But I… I’m hoping that I can earn your trust and forgiveness and that… Maybe we can at least be friends.”

Jin sighed. He didn’t know exactly how to answer. Jimin’s words tossed in his mind like a small tidal wave, warring with the pain of the letter and the hurt he’d felt over the week.

“They’re going to light the tree soon,” Jin said softly. “Come watch it with me.”

He set his hand on Jimin’s shoulder and guided him over toward the crowd. They stood at the back of it, close enough to see, but not close enough to be easily overheard.

Jin could feel Jimin staring at him as they stood side by side. He remained silent though, and for that Jin was grateful. He needed some time to process and to think. His heart was screaming one thing, his mind was screaming another. Two warring sides, and he wasn’t sure which one to follow.

Finally, he looked at Jimin. “You hurt me a lot. What you did.”

Jimin nodded.

“I wish you’d just talked to me. Let me know how you were feeling. I could have talked it through with you, and we could have decided to take it slower, or maybe to just be friends… If you’d talked, it would have saved both of us from this week’s heartache.”

Jimin nodded again, closing his eyes.

“I fell hard for you too, Jimin. Harder than I have for anyone in a very long time. When I let you have sex with me, it wasn’t a casual whim, I… I did feel something.”

“Do you still?” Jimin whispered, meeting his gaze.

“I—” Jin froze. Jimin’s shoulders sank.

“Or is it just pain now?” He whispered.

“There’s hurt,” Jin agreed. “But… I can’t say I don’t… It’d be a lie. I do still feel something for you. I wouldn’t be so hurt if I didn’t. I’m scared you’ll hurt me again.”

“I understand. I can say I won’t but… We both know it’s easy to say things and do something else.”

“It is.” Jin nodded. “And it’s easy to make mistakes. Sometimes big ones, some small… We all fuck up. It’s how we grow. You learned that a boring, stable life might not be so bad after all.”

Jimin smiled softly and nodded. “It sounds nice, actually,” he confessed, looking down.

“People grow and change… If this trip has taught me anything it’s that. So holding a grudge for a mistake that someone’s learned from is… Unfair, I think.”

Jimin looked over again. “Does that mean… You’ll give me another chance?”

Jin pursed his lips a moment. “We’ll take it slow. I don’t expect a marriage license and a shared apartment in the first week. Dates… Some nights together. Some days hanging out… Stability and… Dating with the intent of long term, if it works. That’s a good place to start.”

Jimin’s mouth curved upward into a tentative smile.

Suddenly, the park was lit with a rainbow of lights. Jin looked up, seeing the large tree decorated with baubles and strings of light, shining brightly. He smiled softly. “That’s so much more beautiful than I remember.” He whispered.

“It’s stunning,” Jimin agreed. “I’m glad I got to see it… This stuff doesn’t happen in the city.”

Jin looked at Jimin, reaching over and taking his hand. He twined their fingers together. Jimin’s face was lit up by the lights of the tree, and the chatter of the townsfolk was growing as they milled around it. It wouldn’t be long before they were noticed.

“A good place to start?” Jin said again, leaving it a question. Jimin nodded.

“I think that’s an excellent place to start.”

Jin smiled softly. “I’m sorry we fought,” he said.

“Me too. I’ll work harder to talk to you… I won’t run.”

“Please don’t,” Jin whispered. He touched Jimin’s cheek gently. “Just trust me, okay? We can get through things.”

Jimin smiled softly. “I trust you.”

Their lips met tentatively at first, but deepened naturally. Jin pulled Jimin a little closer, wrapping an arm around his middle as they kissed under the Christmas lights.

It wasn’t exactly the Hallmark romance that he’d gone to his hometown wishing for. There was no reformed school bully or magically handsome classmate. But there was a big city businessman, stuck in a small town for the holidays with lessons to be learned about love. No, it wasn’t a cliché trope. It was better. He won the heart of the handsome stranger… And learned that he already had everything else he needed, right at home.

#thebtswritersclub #networkbangtan #bangtanarmynet #jinmin #jimin x seokjin #seokjin x jimin #mywriting

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shinydelirium · 3 years

Text

Kiro’s Rumors and Secrets: Discarded Light (Season 2 Chapters 6-9) Translation [CN]

***SPOILERS*** THIS POST CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS FOR CONTENT NOT YET RELEASED ON EN SERVER!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!***

So I lied when I said I was gonna translate and post Kiro’s Season 2 chapter 12, lol. But rest assured, it will be next. Just wanted to include this R&S after translating chapter 8-9 to provide some more insight into Kiro’s character from an outsider’s perspective. Although it’s also a pathetic excuse to delay the chapter 12 translation cuz I know it’s gonna hurt just as much as the first time I read it T_T

Anyways, enjoy~

This “superstar” is always beyond everyone’s expectations.

[Chapter 1]

The giant, reinforced concrete extends high into the sky, and the spotlessly wiped glass reflects the neon and dilapidated crescent moon in the distance.

Ah Liu perched on the top of the building, aiming at the silent building opposite him.

Soon, the 8 o’clock bell and a sound in his earphones rang at the same time.

“It’s time to start.”

Ah Liu tightened the rope harness, confirmed the safety of the landing point, and jumped down into the bottomless abyss between the two buildings.

Ah Liu is a bartender, a kind of superficial meaning.

Although he is indeed employed by the owner of Mondlicht bar, his work is not just about bartending and wiping glasses.

“A guest will come in the afternoon, and you will be in charge of collecting it.”

In the bar, the man behind the counter hummed a small tune and placed the wine glasses on the shelf as usual, attached to the task at hand without raising his head.

Ah Liu nodded and when he got up, he heard the man add another sentence.

“This time it’s a long-term big deal. The employer’s status is a bit special, so be more cautious.”

Ah Liu has done many assignments, but the boss reminded him as if this is first time.

This means that the employer is really not good at talking.

The owner threw a report from the counter. Ah Liu took it and looked up in surprise after a few glances.

“What is this person?”

The owner knew what he was thinking, and smiled amusingly.

“When you see him, you will know how kind and compassionate my reminder is.”

Ah Liu put the file on the table suspiciously. The knife in his hand gave off a silver light, feeling a bit funny.

The man on the file has brilliant blonde hair and his blue eyes seem to reflect a clear lake along with a pure smile.

Even Ah Liu, who doesn’t know the entertainment industry at all, knows the person in the photo.

Kiro, the most sought-after superstar of the Inverted Smile Film and Television Company.

His smile appeared on the electronic screens in the streets and alleys as well as on the packaging bags of the new potato chips in the convenience store, making it difficult to miss for anyone who passed by.

Why would such a person who stands at the top, shining and dazzling, pay a big price for a piece of information?

Ah Liu glanced at the file. The paper listed the employer’s request and the price.

The price is irresistible, and the request is worthy of this astronomical price that is suffixed with many zeros.

“The work content of other people has already been arranged, so please prepare.”

Ah Liu made a rough estimate of the time and energy required to take this big arrangement, and then thought about his fortune, and neatly put the file into his pocket.

“It seems that for a long time, we have to work for this Mr. Kiro.”

Soon the appointed time arrives.

When the door of the bar was pushed open, Ah Liu involuntarily glances over.

The person who came in wore a black hat and was dressed up very simply. He walked straight to the bar, threw an envelope to the owner, and then reached out and took off the hat, revealing his golden hair.

“As agreed before.”

He said the words briefly, as if he didn’t want to say more.

If he hadn’t already known his identity, Ah Liu felt that the star’s temperament at the moment was more suitable for this bar than him.

The owner nodded, put away the envelope, and raised his chin towards Ah Liu.

Ah Liu leaned against the bar, turned the knife in his right hand, raised his eyebrows at the guest in front of him and said hello.

In fact, generally speaking, the attitude towards guests should be a little more polite, but Ah Liu was inexplicably teasing. Perhaps because of the other person, or perhaps he was just curious about the true appearance of the superstar hidden under his handsome face.

However, Kiro’s expression was plain and straightforward.

“My request, you should know everything.”

It was completely different from the reaction he expected. Ah Liu pulled back his shoulders and put away his knife.

“Almost. Although it’s a bit tricky, it can be done.”

It was probably the first time Kiro saw someone who dared to speak so directly. He raised his eyes and reminded him not to be serious.

“Think carefully, don’t accept the task so quickly.”

“We are in this business, and we have to do it to the end after receiving the customer’s order. Although this task is not my responsibility alone, but since it’s within the scope of my work, I will definitely do it for you.”

Ah Liu was frank and extended his hand towards Kiro.

“I will follow you in the future.”

Probably out of respect, Kiro held the hand that was stretched out, but that’s all. He didn’t seem to want any contact other than trading with the person in front of him.

“How it’s done, I will tell you later.”

After he said this, he didn’t stay any longer, so he turned and left the bar.

“Why did you find this star? He’s a bit different from what I thought.”

Ah Liu turned around, tapped his index finger on the table, making a clicking sound.

The owner slowly handed him a glass of wine and smiled meaningfully.

“He’s really not any ordinary star.”

“As for what kind of person, you will know soon enough.”

[Chapter 2]

Ah Liu is a practitioner with a sense of professional ethics.

Although he found it very difficult to understand the employer’s, Kiro’s, request, he paid enough for Ah Liu to add ingredients to the menu shamelessly. While eating instant noodles, he made preparations very rigorously.

When Ah Liu completed all the preparations, Kiro also came as scheduled, with a laptop computer.

Ah Liu didn’t think Kiro could help him with his work, but half an hour later, his impression of Kiro was completely overturned.

Kiro asked for some relevant information, then turned on the computer with familiarity, tapping the keyboard quickly with his fingers.

Soon, lines of complex codes flashed across the screen like some kind of fluorescent green tide with special beauty.

Ah Liu stared at Kiro’s movements dumbfounded and couldn’t help but utter a hometown dialect.

“Yo, how are you so good?”

Ah Liu knows that when employers choose a place like theirs, it means that they need to deliver a little more or less of their own secrets and trust.

But….it’s already hard being a star right now, do you have to have to work part-time on the side too?

The security system on the screen was easily hacked, and the red warning turned into a green traffic sign. Kiro stopped typing until he locked a certain area on the outskirts of Loveland City.

“Found it.”

He stretched his waist and habitually reached near the computer as if looking for something to drink.

When he didn’t feel anything he gave a soft “huh”. His extended hand stiffened for a second, and then quickly retracted it, speaking nonchalantly.

“I have locked a few addresses that appear to have logged in to the server, but the specific locations need to confirmed.”

“How is it on your end?”

Although shocked by Kiro’s hacking skills, Ah Liu did not forget his work, and pointed to the surveillance screen in front of him.

“The monitoring software is installed, but there is no movement yet.”

“I suggest waiting for another two or three days to take a look.”

Kiro nodded, put away the computer, put on his hat and mask, and left quietly.

Ah Liu stood up, moved his shoulders and inadvertently walked towards the window.

Next to a vending machine on the corner downstairs, Kiro, wearing a black hood, was bending over to drop coins and soon a bottle of green soda rolled out.

He was a little far away, but Ah Liu still saw the drink clearly.

The green apple flavor is very high in sugar, and young girls are unwilling to buy it, so they are always not able to be sold.

Kiro finished drinking in one breath. His eyes raised slightly, showing a satisfied look. He threw the plastic bottle into the trash can briskly, then turned and left.

Ah Liu once again became curious about Kiro.

[Chapter 3]

He didn’t meet Kiro again until a long time later.

During this period, Kiro did not take the initiative to contact Ah Liu, and he has been diligently monitoring the marked area while waiting for Kiro’s news.

The days of waiting were a bit boring. It wasn’t until one time, on the convenience store TV news that Ah Liu learned that Kiro was involved in a “wounding incident” and revealed his identity as an Evolver.

Ah Liu slurped the instant noodles. On TV, Kiro looked directly at the camera and generously admitted his hidden identity.

He swallowed the instant noodles, wondering what he was doing.

Although he didn’t have much contact with Kiro, he knew very well—this person would not be so reckless and willful, and that he might have his own reasons behind this incident.

After that, a while later, Kiro’s company also underwent some trouble, and he himself claimed to retreat for creation purposes.

In the silence, Ah Liu disassembled and reassembled the pistol bought from the black market in the dark. The screen beside the pistol showed clues that he finally tracked down.

Hunter game.

It’s time to contact his employer, he thought.

In the dark, the cheerful and broad bells rang—

The so-called hunter game, even though Ah Liu never heard of it before, Kiro specifically called him to investigate since it was also related to what they had checked before. Naturally, Ah Liu concentrated all his time and energy into it.

When following Kiro’s clues, he slowly became more aware that there was a behemoth showing his minions in the darkness.

But it paid off, and finally someone bit the hook that had been cast before.

Ah Liu stuffed a pistol into his waist, holding his cell phone, and dialed Kiro.

The phone picked up after a few rings.

“What’s up?”

“I found a building where the other party had been active. I’m going to explore it tonight. If I’m lucky, I might find something.”

Kiro on the other end paused for a moment, inhaled and quickly stopped talking.

It seemed that Kiro was not the only person on the phone. Ah Liu vaguely heard another person speaking to Kiro and his voice rose naturally.

“Savin, I’m really not stealing snacks. If you don’t believe me, then come and see for yourself.”

“Hey—wait, come back later. Now I’m bitter. As soon as you interrupted, the melody of my new song is gone.

“I never told anyone that you hid my three boxes of snacks and two refrigerators of carbonated drinks. So inhumane….”

The voice gradually became quieter, and it was probably the person named “Savin” who finally left Kiro alone.

Ah Liu felt that Kiro was really weird.

Obviously, he has the warmth of light that ordinary people can’t touch, but he had to turn around and go to the darkness.

He wanted to ask why, but held back.

Employers have their own secrets to some extent. Keeping to their duties and not asking too much is the best way to stay out of this circle.

After a while, Kiro’s calm voice came from the phone again.

“Send me the address and I’ll find you.”

“I’m fine by myself. You don’t trust me when I say this?”

Ah Liu felt that Kiro didn’t trust his capability. He repeatedly emphasized that his business potential was very good. His performance ranking has been ranked first.

But Kiro still insisted on working with him and Ah Liu couldn’t help but send Kiro the location of the building.

[Chapter 4]

Under the endless night sky, Ah Liu received Kiro’s signal.

He stood up and flung himself into the opposite building with the help of the rope. After he rolled into the room and came to a stop, Ah Liu suddenly held his breath.

There were no clues left as expected. The whole room was empty. The huge glass windows were opened and the cold moonlight showed the man’s brilliant blond hair and the timed explosive device in front of him.

“Was it successful?”

“It seems that someone expected this visit and left us a gift.”

Kiro’s expression was very calm but when Ah Liu saw the detonator under his feet, he couldn’t help sucking in a cold breath.

Kiro seemed to be indifferent, tapping quickly with both hands on the computer and laughed coolly.

“Although the internal structure is complicated, it is still flawed…”

“How long will it take?”

‘Five minutes.”

Ah Liu glanced at the time displayed on the screen and the countdown just reached five minutes.

“The risk is too great.”

Ah Liu crouched down, took out a wire from the portable tool bag beside him and gently inserted it into the bomb.

“Leave it to me, it will be done in a minute.”

He specializes in surgery. Ah Liu is best at disassembling and reassembling various complicated equipment. He moves cautiously.

Kiro didn’t say anything, he stopped hacking and switched to another interface.

There is nothing in this world that can come and go without a trace. No one can be completely invisible.

The ability of top hackers is to dig out some seemingly and completely irrelevant content from the vast data stream, and continue to piece together and combine them until they restore the trajectory of something generated, assembled, grown, and disbanded.

Every day, the flood of information carries everyone’s joy, anger, and sorrow, surging through the city and no one can stay out of the matter.

The people who had been in this room carefully avoided all information channels, but it was precisely this carelessness that allowed Kiro to find their exact address.

The computer snapped shut and Kiro briefly breathed out. At this time, Ah Liu also successfully analyzed the data of the detonator and shut it down perfectly.

“It’s done.”

Ah Liu stood up and looked at Kiro.

“What are you going to do with this thing? Take it away or keep it here?

“Since they gave such a ‘big gift’, how about a ‘return gift’?”

Kiro turned and walked towards the door hidden in the dark. Ah Liu picked up the device that had turned into a pile of scraps on the ground, and walked to catch up with Kiro.

After coming out of the building, Ah Liu stopped when he passed a small alley.

“Hold up.”

He shouted to Kiro and dropped a few coins into a battered vending machine.

With two crisp ‘plops’, accompanied by mechanical electronic sounds, two cyan bottles of carbonated drinks were held by Ah Liu.

He handed Kiro a bottle but didn’t move to take it. His voice was a little cold.

“I don’t like being spied on by others.”

Ah Liu laughed a few times, trying to pat Kiro’s shoulder, but was subtly averted. He didn’t feel embarrassed, so he touched his head instead.

“Shouldn’t a celebrity be used to being watched by others?”

Probably when he was immersed in darkness, no one would exactly associate him with the dazzling star on stage.

Kiro froze for a moment, then took the carbonated drink from Ah Liu’s hand.

“By the way, when the device was dismantled, how could you be sure that I could do it? Weren’t you afraid we would all be blown up?”

The person in front of him showed a slight smile. Although it was shallow, it was indeed Kiro’s smile.

At this moment, he seemed to be covered with light and shadow, and the sun and moon were equally magnificent.

“It was just a gamble.”

“It turned out that I was right.”

He finished his drink in one breath and walked around the corner with his hands in his pockets.

Ah Liu suddenly felt that Kiro was very interesting. If he worked with him, he would probably gain a lot of things that he hadn’t encountered before.

Thrilling enough, but also exciting.

For men, true friends should be like this.

In the bottom of his heart, he listed Kiro as a friend who had already had a “friend for life and death”, so he shouted to him.

“I’ll study the internal structure of the device when I go back. I’ll tell you the results but it will take several days.”

The person in the distance did not answer and disappeared into the depths of the night.

[Chapter 5]

It took a lot of effort to crack the device, and several days had passed by the time Ah Liu got all the analytical data.

Kiro sent the other party’s real server address. Following this clue and the special materials of the installation, Ah Liu has been busy for a long time. He also managed to get a sense of the so-called “Hunter Game” in his mind.

At this moment, perhaps somewhere in this world, a silent survival game is being staged.

Although he is used to fighting and killing, the nature of the incident is completely different. He feels it is necessary to tell Kiro immediately.

But the phone call couldn’t get through.

After waiting for a while at Mondlicht, Ah Liu got up and decided to go directly to Kiro.

One minute late, one more minute for risk of exposure.

However, Kiro had a deal with him, and the less people knew, the better. Instead of alerting the security guard, Ah Liu walked to the gate of the backyard with his waist bent.

The security system of the gate is complicated and difficult to understand.

When Ah Liu was scratching his head to study how to crack it, he suddenly heard Kiro’s voice.

He was sitting cross-legged in the yard with a mobile phone, a golden retriever in front of him.

Not knowing what the person on the other end said, Kiro spoke briskly, with a smile that could not be contained:

“Wait for me to show you the mushrooms I’ve grown these days! This one on top of my head is new!”

“I wrote a song at home these last few days and I will send it to you when I make the demo.”

“When the ban is lifted in a few days, I must have a big meal!”

“Do you have anything you want to eat?”

……

He naturally exudes the aura of a “little sun”. The grand light not only comes from Kiro, but it also seems to come from the person on the other end of the phone.

It turned out to be so, Ah Liu suddenly realized.

He has always wondered why Kiro had so many contradictory points, but the bright star walks in the dark, intersecting with people of his identity.

Now he found the answer.

Because even the stars that live above the clouds have a future that they want to gaze at and protect forever.

Suddenly, there was a shattering sound—

Ah Liu looked forward immediately. He didn’t know what was said on the phone. Kiro stood up instantly, holding the phone tightly, his eyes were full of fear and anger.

Next to him was a glass that has been broken into pieces.

This was the first time Ah Liu saw this look on Kiro’s face.

He seemed to have noticed something and without hesitation, he pushed aside the branches of the tree and walked straight out.

Since seeing Kiro’s first side, Ah Liu has not been accurate in all of Kiro’s predictions. But this time, he confidently wants to try again and he has a hunch that he will not be wrong.

And that is—

Kiro is a person worthy of his trust.

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