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justanagenderperson · 1 year

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Ok ok ok so the cringe be real in my head but this has been playing over and over in my daydreams so hear me out- (also sorry I haven't posted in a bit, school's been kicking my ass 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭) Also this is really self indulgent- anyway I'm a sucker for platonic yanderes.

Implied FTM Reader but you can imagine the reader's gender as whatever you'd like, Also I believe in older sibling demi boy supremacy 😎😎😎😎

TW:YANDERES, KIDNAPPING, Reader is like 17 so all platonic between the characters and Reader, S I B L I N G S 😱 (scary warning⁉️), Agent 47xyour OLDER siblingxDiana Burnwood (She seriously needs more love), death (this is Hitman)

Okaaaaayy so imagine you like to info dump about your favorite game which is *drum roooollll* HITMAN!!!! :D

Of course, your older sibling (who is secretly a yandere for you and totally has nothing to do with the disappearance of your school bullies who picked on you relentlessly after they found you were trans) vehemently listens because why wouldn't he? They cut up apples for you so you won't starve due to forgetting to feed yourself due to focusing on one of your latest hyper fixations,

Helps you with your homework, and he even lets you vent to them whenever you're stressed or overwhelmed due to school (How they wish they could take all of your problems away, lock you away from the world where all you'd have to worry about is breathing, and he nearly does but then something happens.)

You and your dear sibling get sucked into a mysterious portal that appeared out of nowhere. Now due to plot reasons, the two of you are separated because it's never that simple, and have no way back home.

However also due to plot reasons your older sibling is integrated into the CIA as a handler and gets Agent 47 and Agent Sparrow (Diana Burnwood, also we stan the Agent Burnwood AU) and over the months they build a special kind of bond even though they've never met and have no knowledge of each other's names.

However one faithful winter night it happens.

Diana and 47 not wanting to take any chances begin to stalk their handler to see if he truly is trustworthy or not and in that they begin to fall for them. Everything about them is magnificent. Their corse lips, their kind personality, their height. Absolutely everything was perfect about him.

And then they realize something. It's dangerous for him to be out by himself. They're vulnerable they could be kidnapped or worse! So the two agents take the modt logical course of action and kidnap their handler out of pure paranoia.

Of course, your older sibling is very resistant the first few...weeks (yeah he doesn't last long :::::::::::/) and won't even eat the food they've given them. Of course, the agents resort to force-feeding and apparently feeding tubes are great for that but are kinda uncomfortable.

Either way, once he realizes that the two captors aren't going to hurt them he starts taking advantage of the situation (47 and Diana know but don't say anything) as in gaining more freedom and privileges by giving out affection like there's no tomorrow.

This fairs well with the agents (because they're big simps) and eventually they even let your older sibling garden. Your older sibling now getting everything he wants grows a little complacent but a big part of him is restless and there's only one solution.

You. Meanwhile, you're given a normal 9 to 5 job, and while you see 47 once every few months you make sure to adamantly avoid him whenever he does stop by for his occasional ham and cheese sandwich after a long day of gathering intel and taking down a target with said intel.

Of course he doesn't know that you know and you'd like to keep it that way. But you know these types of things nothing ever goes the reader's way.

Now there are a few ways you can meet up with your older sibling and hence 47 and Diana.

The first one being the most simplest and less complex.

The bell rings as new customers arrive. You put on your best, "I'm-totally-not-sleep-deprived" smile and greeted them, "Hi and welcome to Tony's Deli! What can I get you guys?" Then you had the misfortune of opening your eyes and see your manic older sibling standing there with an equally manic grin on his face.

You see last time you two were in the same room you'd had an argument. A big one at that on how you weren't a baby that needed protection, "Hey Y/n time for you to clock out!" Your coworker oh so helpfully yelled from the back. You let out a sigh and clock out before going outside to meet your ecstatic sibling and his mysterious friends in a very shady alleyway.

Little did you know that'd be the last anyone would ever see of you.

You hear the bell ring indicating that new customers have arrived. You give your best fake smile as one could for being underpaid and overworked. You see you were severely understaffed and the lunch rush had just come to a close. So naturally you just wanted to go home.

You sharply intake a breath, "Hi welcome to Tony's Deli! What can I ge-" You're cut off as a person cuts in front of the newly arrived customers who you never got a good chance to look at, "I ordered a HOT cup of coffee." Your smile widens, 'So today was gonna be one of those days huh?' You think as you open your mouth to speak,

"Sir, I don't mean to be rude but there were other people bef-" You're cut off yet again, "THEY DON'T MATTER!!!" The man is practically screaming now. For the next five minutes, he throws what you can only identify as an adult temper tantrum about how he obviously ordered a hot cup of coffee even though the receipt said he ordered "warm".

Yep, for some reason Tony's Deli also sold beverages. It was truly ahead of its time (Definitely not sarcasm). Of course this only added to the amount of entitled customers that would demand refunds. So a very tired manager coming over and security escorting out the man later you were now officially ready to quit right there on the spot.

But you pulled through and the next batch of customers came in, sure you'd lost the other customers who had the convenient timing of coming in when the stranger had decided to throw a hissy fit but it meant less work for you so, score. It was pretty uneventful except for one order the back had gotten wrong but no one had come to complain which made you feel bad but whatever.

In the end, you clock out with no problem and head to the grocery store. Of course, your dumbass somehow gets lost and ends up in the clothes store since it's a really big mall (a mansion even). So you do what any normal sane, tired, almost adult would do.

You curl into a ball on the bench and try not to cry. This only works partially as you spend the next few minutes on the cusp of a breakdown, "Are you okay?" A voice calls out holding at least some form of sympathy.

You wipe your eyes before raising your head slightly to meet the stranger's gaze. The person's eyes widen at your face and through the tears you think you recognize them but you can't really be sure.

"Y/n...?" Wait. How the actual hell do they know your name!? The mystery person's hand slowly comes up presumably to pet your head. You scoot away from their touch as you blink away the tears. The droplets of water roll down your face. Now you can see a bit more clearly and lo and behold it's B/n.

"B/n...?" You quietly respond trying not to pay attention to the two people beside him that look awfully familiar. The months of being apart from your family member cause you to break down instantly. You don't even remember why you were mad. You just throw your arms around him and have a good sob.

Anyway, after they buy what they came for you're brought home, sorry not your home, THEIR home and 47 along with Diana warm up very quickly to you seeing you as their child.

Anyway, that's all like I said the cringe is real inside my head bc I like self indulgent things. Might write a part 2????? I definitely got too silly 💀

#yandere #agent 47 #diana burnwood #hitman 3 #diana burnwood agent au #diana burnwood & reader #agent 47 & reader #platonic #siblings are a cw in themselves #ftm reader #cw means content warning #siblings are sometimes scary 😨

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 3 years

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We Were Something, Don’t You Think So? [Chapter 2: The Middle Of Nowhere]

You are a Russian Grand Duchess in a time of revolution. Ben Hardy is a British government official tasked with smuggling you across Europe. You hate each other.

This is a work of fiction loosely inspired by the events of the Russian Revolution (1917-1923) and the downfall of the Romanov family. Many creative liberties were taken. No offense is meant to any actual people. Thank you for reading! :)

Song inspiration: “the 1” by Taylor Swift.

Chapter warnings: Lots of shouting, if you never learned about the Russian Revolution then here's your mini crash course, references to historical stuff like violence and disease, Kroshka the mule emerges as the only emotionally stable character.

Word count: 4.1k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

Taglist: @imtheinvisiblequeen @okilover02 @adrenaline-roulette @youngpastafanmug @m-1234 @tensecondvacation @deacyblues @haileymorelikestupid @rogerfuckintaylor @yourlocalmusicalprostitute @im-an-adult-ish @someforeigntragedy @mo-whore

I wake up feeling harder, as if sleeping on the ground with all its stones and cool indifference has taught my spine to straighten, to endure. This is a welcome revelation. I will need to be resilient, for my family and for myself. I also wake determined to set things right with my rescuer. I am a perfectly charming person, Mother and Papa have always said so; I’m not painfully shy like Olga, or aloof like Tati, or rather dull like Maria, and I certainly don’t run around putting frogs in people’s shoes like Anastasia. I make for excellent company. Surely Ben will realize this and we will become inseparable travel companions.

Outside in the overcast brisk morning air, Ben is already busy tacking the mule. He glances over and tosses me an apple. It bounces out of my floundering hands and rolls off into the woods. This is not an auspicious start to the day.

“You’ll still have to eat that,” Ben says. “There’s no extra food. I was only able to ask for as much as I could justify needing myself.”

“Right.” I go fetch the apple—rummaging around in leaves and sticks and shrubs—and take a bite, even though it’s bruised and definitely tastes like dirt. I beam at Ben triumphantly. I am tough! I am daring! I am enchanting! I can pull my own weight on this journey!

Ben doesn’t seem to notice. He pats the mule’s thick brown neck and smiles fondly at her. “How are we feeling this morning, Kroshka? Hmm? Who’s a lovely mule? Who’s going to take us all the way to the Trans-Siberian Railroad without even one measly word of complaint? That’s right, you are! Yes you are!” He lands a smacking kiss on the velvety grey fur of her muzzle.

I attempt polite conversation; more than that, I endeavor to learn about my dashing yet evasive rescuer. “So, tell me Ben, have you worked for Sir Buchanan long?”

“Four years,” Ben replies curtly.

“And you are…” I think of his notebook. “A…writer of some sort for him…?”

“I’m his press attaché.”

“Ah.” I recognize the French word for ‘attach,’ but not its meaning in the context of employment with an ambassador. “I can’t say I know what that entails.”

“I handle Sir Buchanan’s relations with the Russian newspapers. Drafting statements and briefing him on local opinions and the like. And since his health has declined, I find myself delivering some of his particularly confidential correspondence.”

“Oh, I see. And he could spare you for this mission? It seems like a burden that would be better carried by a man with military or exploratory experience.”

“My Russian is passable. And I can tolerate rougher conditions than most.” He points to a pile of clothes he’s laid out on a tree stump. “Those are for you. There’s a stream out that way.” He flicks a thumb towards the east. “Get ready however you need to, but be prepared to leave in fifteen minutes.”

I examine the clothing: plain and practical undergarments, a heavy wool sweater, stockings, boots, and something unexpected. I hold them up with clammy hands. “These are…” I swallow noisily. “Trousers.”

“Yes. They’re travel attire. Comfortable and easy to maneuver in if we need to move quickly.”

“I’ve never worn trousers before.”

“I thought you were amenable to a…a…what did you call it? An adventure. A grand adventure.” He says this melodramatically, like there’s some humor in it. Like he’s mocking me.

“I suppose I am,” I mutter, still scrutinizing the trousers.

“Fifteen minutes,” Ben reminds me sternly. Then he begins to disassemble the tent.

I trudge off through the woods until I find the stream. I clean myself with ice-cold water, drink it down until my teeth ache, change out of my nightgown and into these strange new clothes—Trousers! Mother would lock me in church for a month!—and gaze up into the cloudy, pastel blue sky that peeks between the fingers of the trees. It is very still here, and cold, and deathly quiet. I try to remember the last time I was truly alone, without Mother or Papa or my siblings or servants or guards within shouting distance. There is none that I can remember; perhaps there is none at all. Out here in the Siberian wilderness I feel unmoored from civilization, diminutive, vulnerable, peculiarly inconsequential. I decide I don’t like being alone. By the time I return to our campsite, Ben is ready and waiting beside the loaded cart. His right hand is resting on a clunky metal monster with ‘Olivetti’ written on it.

“I’m a press attaché,” he says with a mischievous grin. “And you’re a typist.”

“A what?”

“You work for Sir Buchanan’s office as a typist. That’s our story, anyway. You came along to assist me during my audience with the former tsar, and now we’re traveling back to Sir Buchanan’s headquarters in Saint Petersburg. So if anyone happens to ask, that’s what you are to tell them. Oh, and you’re British. Your English sounds clean enough.”

“Alright,” I reply, still gaping at the metal monster like a black box with gnashing fangs. “But what is that?”

Ben’s jaw falls open. “You don’t…?” Then he rubs his forehead, sighing deeply. “Jesus Christ. You’ve never used a typewriter. Of course you haven’t. Great. Fantastic.”

“We always write by hand. My penmanship is flawless, Mother saw to that.” She’s still battling with Anastasia, but that’s a war that may go on as long as the one between the sun and the moon.

“Okay. Okay. This works out, actually. Because I’m not going to entertain you all day. So here is your assignment.” Ben slaps the back of what he tells me is a typewriter, and then waves for me to come closer. He reaches into the pocket of his coat and produces a British passport. Every line is filled out except for the name. He slides the paper into the machine and makes some bewildering adjustments. “So, you insert the paper, set the carriage—that’s this roller-type piece here—and type.” He taps forcefully on the keys until two words appear in the blank reserved for the passport holder’s name: Lana Brinkley.

“That’s me?” I ask doubtfully.

Ben smirks, amused. “That’s you.”

“So you could have given me a better name if you wanted to!”

“But then how would you learn humility?” He removes the fraudulent passport, shakes the paper until it dries, folds it into a neat little square, and slips it back into his coat pocket. “If you’re typing a longer message, the typewriter will ding when you’ve reached the end of each line. Then you use the lever to move the paper down, reset the carriage, and resume typing.”

I nod, but without much confidence. This seems complicated.

“You said you wanted a carriage,” Ben teases.

“Yes, one with magnificent draft horses and velvet seats and preferably no less than two servants. Not…whatever that is.”

“Well, if you’re going to pass for a typist, I’m afraid you must learn to type.” He finds me a stack of blank paper in his collection of bags and trunks, and then climbs into the front of the cart as I get into the back. The trousers, I hate to admit to myself, do make it easier to move around, although I’m not sure I approve of how much they accentuate the shape of my body. The thought of Ben looking at me in them gives me a plunging sort of feeling that is half-mortification and half-thrill…not that he has exhibited any interest at all. “Before we go any farther, do you have anything with you that I don’t know about?”

He means things like the heirlooms I have squirreled away in the large steamer trunk: the jewels sewn into my dress, the photograph. I can sense that he wouldn’t want me to have them, although I’m not sure why. In any case, I have no intention of giving them up. The jewels are the only thing of value that I have to trade if we find ourselves in a desperate situation. The photograph is the only string left that connects me back to my family, my home. “No,” I reply primly.

“Good.” He whistles at the mule and she tugs us through the trees and out onto the dirt road that leads, eventually, to the train station. As we ride joltingly along, the creaky cart wheels bumping over every rock and mound and muddy trough, I practice my typing: very slowly at first, and with only my index fingers. I read aloud as I go, gradually picking up speed.

“There once was a German princess born in the Duchy of Hesse. She was very beautiful but very shy. She had a wonderful talent for playing piano, but would run and hide if anyone asked her to perform in public. One day, when she was attending the wedding of her sister, the princess met a prince from a distant kingdom. They were only children, but they instantly knew they had found true love. They snuck off together and carved their names into a window pane. Over the years, each conspired to marry the other. They refused many suitors and wrote each other hundreds of letters. His family did not approve of the princess’s religion and lack of charisma; her family did not approve of the prince’s distant and troubled nation. But at last it became apparent to all that no earthly forces could keep the couple apart. Ten years after their first meeting, the prince and princess were finally married. And they lived joyously and peacefully in each other’s service for the rest of their days.”

Ben lights one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. The smoke doesn’t bother me; on the contrary, it reminds me of Papa smoking his pipe in his study, in the garden, as he read to us by the fireplace, as he danced with Mother in ballrooms back when she could still dance. It reminds me of home. “I’m not sure if you’ll ever give Shakespeare a run for his money, but I’ll admit I’m marginally entertained.”

I smile to myself, sentimental warmth rising in my face. “It’s Papa and Mother’s story.”

“Huh. I didn’t know your people were allowed to marry for love.”

By ‘your people,’ he seems to mean royalty, and there is some derision in his deep voice. “Well, surely duty must come first. But when love can accompany it, that’s a happy coincidence.”

“And what if duty compels you to marry a man who is, say, cruel? Or dreadfully boring? Or in love with another woman? Or who closely resembles a mole-rat?”

I resume my typing with a new exercise. For each letter of the alphabet, I type a French word that begins with it. “I don’t think that sort of thing happens very often.”

“But if it did.”

I shrug, not especially enjoying this topic of discussion. “Then duty comes first, as I said. But I believe most royal couples are perfectly content. At least nine out of every ten.”

“That many!” Ben marvels sarcastically. “Have you ever considered that your own personal experience, as pleasant as it may be, could be coloring your perception of how the world works?”

I ignore him and continue my typing. Attaché for A, bisou for B, croissant for C, doux for D…

After a moment, Ben says: “You aren’t going to regale me with another fairytale? I’m devastated.”

“I’m busy practicing my French now. Please don’t intrude.”

“You speak French as well as Russian and English?” He sounds impressed; for a split second anyway, just long enough for me to catch it like a firefly in my fist.

“And Italian, and Latin. And I’ve just started on Japanese.”

“But no German? That seems like it would be an easier beast to slay.”

“I’ve always purposefully avoided learning it, even though Mother’s family is German. I never envisioned myself marrying a German. I figured Maria could take that bullet. She doesn’t care, she’d marry anyone who could give her a castle and ten babies and a bulldog or two. I would say she was a milkmaid in a past life, but Mother’s heart would stop dead if she thought I subscribed to reincarnation.”

“Not fond of Germans?” Ben asks. “Well, who can blame you. Half the world isn’t fond of them at the moment.”

“I suppose they weren’t so awful before the Great War. But they’re rather boorish, aren’t they? They always sound like they’re angry. Like someone just stole their horse and they’re screaming at them from the front porch to come back or else.” I smile dreamily as I type. “I’ve always fancied the thought of marrying a prince from a glamorous, romantic kingdom. Maybe Italy or Greece. There has even been talk of me marrying Uncle George’s eldest son David. He’s rather beguiling. Tall and slim. Clear blue eyes like a lake. And he’s going to be the king of the British Empire one day, you know. We could holiday together in beautiful, sunny colonies like the Bahamas.”

“You’re still as important as all that? Important enough to make a marriage of that political significance, I mean.” Ben glances back at me and lifts one thick, dark, inquisitive eyebrow. “Seeing as your family doesn’t have a kingdom anymore.”

This is an insensitive thing for him to say. I frown down at the typewriter. “A wife almost always assumes the kingdom of her husband, so why should she require her own? She needs only sound breeding and a suitable temperament. And besides, we might yet return one day.”

Ben twists all the way around to stare at me, the reigns falling out of his hands. Fortunately, the mule seems to know her own way around. “I’m sorry, what?”

“It has been a brutal few years. The Great War, the supply shortages, the bad harvests…the people are frustrated, and understandably so. They lashed out blindly, at those who didn’t deserve it, at us. But the dust will clear. And when it does, I think the Russian people will come to their senses and realize that they want us back. That they need us.”

“Are you insane?” Ben snaps. “Are you utterly brainless? What’s floating around in that skull besides fiction and languages you’ll never use once you’re married off to some prince who only sees you as a broodmare?”

“How dare you! You can’t speak to me like this—!”

“For years, for a bloody decade, Sir Buchanan warned your father about what was coming. He tried to get him to moderate his views, to give the people more voice in government, to stop murdering them when they protested. And when none of that worked and the end was apparent, Sir Buchanan tried to convince your father to abdicate long before he did. Don’t you understand?! None of this needed to happen! Your family could have fled to Britain years ago, before the animosity against your father spread like wildfire across the globe, and Russia could have established their own parliament like Britain’s and negotiated a peace treaty to stay out of the war and none of us would be here now if not for your father’s selfish, pointless obstinacy—!”

“My father is a good man,” I choke out as hot, furious tears burn in my eyes.

“And he was a terrible ruler!” Ben shoots back like artillery. “He ordered protesters to be butchered, he sent untrained boys to die in some other country’s war, he clung to the throne for no one’s benefit but his own—”

“And what about my benefit?” I demand, still weeping, feeling monstrously like a child. “What about my mother’s and my sisters’ and Alexei’s? He must have feared for our futures if we were dethroned and left without any resources, any security, anyplace to call home—”

“He did you no favors,” Ben says harshly. “Half the country—the country that you obviously have not even a rudimentary understanding of—are moderates scrambling to secure the Provisional Government and disentangle themselves from the war while still somehow preserving their dignity and that of the millions of dead soldiers Russia has already laid on the altar. The other half are trying to instigate a wholesale communist revolution. There is no one, no one, who wants the tsar back. And you better pray to God that the communists don’t manage to seize power before King George gets your family out, or your father just might be guillotined on the steps of Saint Basil’s Cathedral.”

I bolt to my feet unsteadily, grip the side of the lurching cart, and leap out onto the dirt road.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Ben shouts after me.

I take off sprinting down the road, the wind whipping my face, sobbing as I run beneath the shadows of trees until my lungs are columns of flames and my legs feel wobbly and boneless. I can hear the pounding of the mule’s hooves approaching, the hurtling of wooden wheels, the slapping of leather reins. I am forced to slow to a vigorous march as my body betrays me, wheezing and aching and as ineffectual as a woman is so often assumed to be. The salacious trousers have come in handy once again. Who would have guessed.

Ben pulls up alongside me, reining in the mule to match my pace. “Hey! Get back in the cart!”

“I’ll walk the rest of the way to the railroad station.”

“It’s 200 more kilometers!”

“See you there.”

Now Ben jumps out of the cart. The mule, perplexed but not rattled, comes to a halt and waits in the middle of the road with her long ears angled in opposite directions. Ben rushes in front of me and leans down until we’re at eye-level, breathing heavily. I can smell smoke on him, and something else too: maybe cologne, maybe soap, maybe aftershave, maybe just the scent of a man in his prime. His lips are pink and full and soft-looking, I notice, as if for the first time. His cheeks are irritated and red from the wind; the ruthlessness of the climate here doesn’t agree with him. It is the only way in which I am stronger than he is. His green eyes are wide and blazing. “Get. In. The. Cart.”

“No,” I whisper, tears all over my face.

“You can’t just run off like that,” he pleads, less angry now. “Where are you going to go? There’s nothing out here except trees and…I don’t know…probably bears and wolves and maybe even Siberian tigers. You can’t get ripped apart by wild animals. Don’t you want to make it to London? To argue for your family’s liberation? They could find no fiercer advocate than you, of that I am convinced.”

“How would you possibly protect me from a bear?”

Ben unbuttons his coat and pulls up his white wool sweater to show me a pistol tucked into the holster clipped to his belt. “Just in case,” he says, smirking crookedly, lowering his sweater again. “Now I am keeping no secrets from you, and you are harboring none from me. We’re even.”

I nod, sniffling, thinking of my jewels and photograph hidden in the steamer trunk. My words are so strained I can barely hear them myself, my hands are trembling; hell, I’m trembling all over. The possibility is unimaginable. “Do you really think they’re going to kill Papa?”

Ben sighs, shaking his head. “No, I don’t,” he replies gently. “I think the Provisional Government will be able to keep the communists in check for now. I think they will leap at the opportunity to ship the former tsar off to Britain without the potential controversy of a trial and execution. And I also think we should get back in the cart and keep moving now.”

“I’m sorry your boss gave you this assignment and now you have to risk your life for a family that you evidently hate,” I lash out like a cornered animal, hissing and brandishing its glinting claws. “For a grand duchess that you hate. This must be an awful inconvenience for you.”

“It’s rather more complicated than that,” Ben says. “There’s some opportunity in it as well.”

Of course: his leather-bound notebook full of observations, his scrawled recollections to one day build into a famed article about our journey. An article full of what he truly thinks about me. I feel suddenly, violently nauseous. I feel horrified.

What happened to the grand adventure that I imagined? Where did it go?

And all at once, I can’t even remember how I pictured this journey unfolding; I can’t conjure up some rose-colored vision of me and Ben falling into an effortless friendship, flirting lightly and innocently, discovering new corners of the earth together, parting ways in London as lifelong confidants. Now I can only see Papa as he murmurs folktales older than Christianity with candlelight dancing on his smiling face, as he chases me and my sisters around the gardens with outstretched arms and sparkling eyes, as he carries Alexei from one room to the next when my brother’s joints are inflamed and excruciating and useless, as he never unburdens his mind to his wife or children but spends long afternoons chopping wood as the sun sinks into the west and the lines in his pale face grow deeper.

He couldn’t be responsible for bloodshed, for mercilessness. He’s not that kind of man. He’s never been that kind of man.

“We really should keep moving,” Ben prompts.

“Fine,” I fling back as I shove by him. I mop my tears away with the sleeve of my wool sweater, climb into the back of the wooden cart, and sit as far as I can from Ben with my bent knees hugged to my chest. I stare silently off into the forest as the mule drags us towards the Trans-Siberian Railroad, towards Moscow and Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea and London, towards the conclusion of this tenuous partnership and the redemption of my family. I am looking forward to soon never having to see Benjamin Hardy again, and yet I’m also not; and this is a difficult paradox to put into words of any language.

We don’t stop until it’s almost dusk. Ben hops down from the cart, leads the mule off the road by her bridle (and gives her an encouraging scratch on the forelock when she hesitates), and begins to set up camp in a small clearing encircled by heaps of frost grass. Dinner is loaves of bread again—even more tough and dry than yesterday—and metallic-tasting water from canteens. Dessert is a hand-rolled cigarette for Ben and a handful of honeyberries I found in the bushes for me. And when Ben grapples with the tent, I come over to help him with it just to prove I can.

Ben builds a fire, and we sit wordlessly on opposite sides of it with the reflections of flames in our eyes. Ben jots down today’s thoughts in his notebook, every so often glancing off into nowhere and tapping his chin thoughtfully with the end of his pen, biting his full lower lip absentmindedly as he sifts through the ocean of word in his head to fish out the right one. Meanwhile, I read my copy of Tarzan of the Apes. I stumble across a few English terms I don’t know—quixotic, cartography, constellations, ruminate—but I don’t ask Ben about them.

After a long time, when the moon and stars have emerged bright and ancient in the night sky, Ben closes his notebook and watches me. At first I ignore him. And then, eventually, I can’t anymore.

“What?” I ask irritably, keeping my place in Tarzan of the Apes with my pinky finger, which is nearly numb from the cold.

Ben’s words are calm, restrained, painstakingly chosen. Firelight is fierce and bloody on his face. “I had two infant brothers die of pneumonia, a perfectly preventable illness had they had access to good doctors and proper nutrition and a warm dry home, which they did not. I had a sister die in childbirth because there was no midwife available to attend to her. I have had friends come home from the war with limbs or half their faces missing, a fate which I myself am spared only because of my employment with Sir Buchanan. You have no idea what the world has been through while you were off playing board games and reading novels in greenhouses and lounging on lakeshores with your idyllic little family. You have no idea what life is like for the rest of us. And perhaps that’s not your fault, and it is unjust of me to resent you for it, and I must learn to temper this wrath I’ve been carrying around in my chest since childhood. But it’s still true.”

He stands, clutching his notebook with hands that are red from the savage Siberian wind, and vanishes into the tent.

#ben hardy fic #ben hardy x reader #borhap cast fic

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ramblings-of-a-mad-cat · 3 years

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You know I was thinking Of doing a a CYOA that Will function as a type Of Rewrite for Hogwarts Mystery, where The options actually matters More than just giving You extra dialogue.

I'm maybe too ambitious but I Actually Thought Of Relationship Stats (Merula's Relationship being The most difficult to level up to her harsh Personality) and how that would unblock options about The Relationship you hace with The Character, Like just to put an example If You're a total asshole to Ben un The case Of old Ben he would be scared to talk to You and New Ben would bring your past actions to him just to tell you “I'm not that scared Little kid anymore and I don't Fear you” even If MC tries to apologize he would brush it off “You already put me Through All Of This, Is too late for apologizing”

ALSO, if You act distant to Rowan that would be The way They distance from You but Like If you're a Good friend to Them There's no need to distance

ALSO from The customizable options, I was thinking about The whole at Hogwarts could be a type Of test to determine MC's Personality, like The results Of The Personality test from Mystery Dungeon just that It Actually matters for What Options are available and how MC Would act when You're not controlling Them also when it comes to Choose Their House The Houses that Will be available to Choose would be according The Personality assigned to MC

ALSO! trans options, So even If MC is a trans boy/Girl the portraits would Let Them in on their respective dormitories, If MC Is NB or Genderfluid The dormitories Will be randomly Choose, You can Choose Your Pronouns, also if MC Is a Hufflepuff and gets along well with Penny, She Will give Them Potions to deal with dysphoria.

(Going under the cut because I ramble on.)

Dude, I would love it so much if the choices made more of a difference. As much as this always pains me in games, it’s something that I normally go easy on the developers for. Because to tell a linear story, the choices can’t matter. And every difference choice we can make has to be programmed into the game. So I can understand why it might be difficult and time-consuming, I can even understand that it would limit their capacity to tell the story or make things confusing. But damn if I don’t still want it anyway! Having choices makes a video game skyrocket for me, but once the wool is off my eyes, once I notice that they don’t actually make a difference...the thrill is lost and the whole concept just feels cheap.

I love the concept of how the way you treat characters could affect the way they see you and be brought up later. To an extent, this is true in the canon game, but barely. If you say one thing, it will get repeated back to you in bold text later on. But it won’t really make a difference. “New” Ben seems to think you saw his old self as a burden, no matter what choices you made, and there’s nothing you can say to convince him otherwise. The only time choices like these have felt as though they truly mattered in hindsight, was bringing Rowan to the train station or not doing do. Speaking of Rowan...yeah, I’m with you. The whole concept of having a friend that you grow apart from? That’s realistic and I’m here for it! But why...why Rowan, when they were marked for death all along? It’s just not fair.

Creating a personality for your MC would be rather neat! Especially since they are a speaking character, and have lines in every scene. Sure, the choices you input can impact their nature to a degree...but in general, the mild-mannered “everyman” type of personality that they have in general scenes, is their default mood no matter what you do. Since MC talks for us, since they aren’t a silent protagonist, I think it would have been pretty cool if we got to select between five or six different personality “types” that would have their own dialogue sets. Would be a lot more work to program of course, but I think it would be worth it. Same goes for a more immersive overhaul of the Sorting. Though I don’t mind what we got. Restarting your save file used to be such a pain, and involve jumping through so many hoops...that having the Sorting be a quiz or a mini-game would be pretty annoying if you didn’t get the House you want.

Penny. Brewing potions. For MC. To help them. With dysphoria. My good friend you have opened up such a magnificent floodgate of trans headcanons and I shall drown happily in them. Magic is a wonderful thing, and we know human transfiguration is possible. Transfiguring your body to match your gender could totally be done! I also tend to believe that despite the archaic jinx on the dormitories, there are ways around it. Luca isn’t a boy, so they can go into the Girl’s Dormitories. I interpret Rowan as being gender-fluid, so perhaps they can go in on a Girl Day, if that makes sense. If someone was bi-gendered, I feel like a girl trying to enter the dormitory would overrule that a boy was trying to enter at the same time, if that makes sense. Feels the most inclusive. Not that it really matters for the game, since Dormitories don’t play enough of a role for this to come up.

#Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery #HPHM Jacob's Sibling #Ramblings

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lgbtqiahistoricalromance · 4 years

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Finishing Out Summer 2020 TBR List! - Updated 7/31

Starting back in March, I was adding novel after novel for purposes of reading during social distancing and Summer 2020. I’m hoping you all found some great reads, even if you haven’t been able to read them all. *Here is another batch to round out Summer 2020, and I’m thrilled by the selection that includes sapphic, trans MCs, and more eras and locations than any list to date.

Leather and Lace by Rebel Carter (Good Sky series #5) - May 20th - sapphic

Mary Sophia James came to Gold Sky, Montana to find a husband at the insistence of her overbearing mother. Striking out in spectacular fashion after setting her eye on Julian Baptiste, her options are dwindling, and time is running out. She needs to find a man to marry before her condition becomes…obvious. Her mother’s prejudices and sharp tongue aren’t helping matters and Mary, to her shame, hasn’t behaved much better. But all her plans are derailed when she spots the most beautiful person she’s ever seen across the town square. Alex Pierce is strong, intriguing, looks stunning in a pair of trousers…and a woman.

Gold Sky is accepting of all types of love, and that between women is no different. Still, Alex didn’t expect to be so floored by the sight of the firey haired, yet fragile looking young woman. Mary needs to be married and Alex has a solution. Because in Gold Sky, Montana there are many ways to be married…and not all of them include a man.

Leather and Lace is a 35k word novella set at the same time as the events of book 2, Hearth and Home. It includes a passionate and romantic f/f love in a town where diversity, and love, reign supreme.

Note : Leather and Lace has a bit of mail-order, arranged married, kind of secret baby with some foreced proximity sprinkled on top!

The Sugared Game by KJ Charles (The Will Darling Adventures #2) - August 26th

It’s been two months since Will Darling saw Kim Secretan, and he doesn’t expect to see him again. What do a rough and ready soldier-turned-bookseller and a disgraced, shady aristocrat have to do with each other anyway? But when Will encounters a face from the past in a disreputable nightclub, Kim turns up, as shifty, unreliable, and irresistible as ever. And before Will knows it, he’s been dragged back into Kim’s shadowy world of secrets, criminal conspiracies, and underhand dealings. This time, though, things are underhanded even by Kim standards. This time, the danger is too close to home. And if Will and Kim can’t find common ground against unseen enemies, they risk losing everything.

The Revolutionary and the Rogue by Blake Ferre - August 24th

Perrin deVesey knows pain. As a member of Crimson Rose, a secret club for men who love men, he’s taken the vow “to stand and shield.” Standing together during these perilous times is the only thing keeping their necks from the guillotine. Now their leader is using the club to rescue wrongly accused traitors. After losing a past lover to an unjust execution, the decision to support this treasonous cause is easy…until a devastatingly handsome Committee Officer complicates Perrin’s whole world. Officer Henri Chevalier hates aristocrats. But the man he finds while investigating Crimson Rose is more than just wealthy and fancily clothed. He’s a rogue that could take him to the heart of the uprising and stop it before it starts. His plan to get close to Perrin and steal his secrets backfires, though, when Henri finds himself falling for the damned aristo and his dangerous smile. His heart is even more conflicted as he learns the truth behind their cause…and the truth his own people have been hiding. Together they must make the choice—to stand and shield at any cost—and their love might be the deadliest weapon in all of France.

Healing Lance by MD Grimm (A Warrior’s Redemption #1)- July 28th

A baby’s laughter. A mind uncaged. Lance is known as Scourge, the warrior in the black armor, the dog of the warlord Ulfr Blackwolf. He was just a boy when Ulfr found him and molded him into the perfect weapon. He slaughters and pillages on command, merciless and numb, devoid of emotions. Then a baby girl laughs at him during a raid. And everything changes. When Gust, a talented healer, is out deer hunting and stumbles across a magnificent horse bearing a mortally wounded rider, he has no idea that his life is about to change forever. Gust applies all his skills to his patient, determined to save the rider’s life, and is rewarded when the man opens his eyes. As friendship, and more, bloom between warrior and healer, so does the danger over the horizon. Ulfr has not forgotten, and Lance must take his first steps on the long road to redemption.

The rest of the series is either out this Summer or finishes in Sept!

Unhallowed: A Novel of Widdershins (Rath & Rune Book #1) by Jordan L Hawk - July 17th

Monsters. Murder. Librarians. Librarian Sebastian Rath is the only one who believes his friend Kelly O’Neil disappeared due to foul play. But without any clues or outside assistance, there’s nothing he can do to prove it. When bookbinder Vesper Rune is hired to fill the vacancy left by O’Neil, he receives an ominous letter warning him to leave. After he saves Sebastian from a pair of threatening men, the two decide to join forces and get to the truth about what happened to O’Neil. But Vesper is hiding secrets of his own, ones he doesn’t dare let anyone learn. Secrets that grow ever more dangerous as his desire for Sebastian deepens. Because Kelly O’Neil was murdered. And if Sebastian and Ves don’t act quickly enough, they’ll be the next to die.

My Heart’s in the Highlands by Amy Hoff - July 17th - sapphic - time travel

The year is 1888. Brilliant and beautiful, Lady Jane Crichton has fought the constraints of her Victorian Edinburgh upbringing to become one of the first women to attend university for medicine. Denied a degree because of her gender, she decides to marry a closeted gay man, providing him with political and social cover and herself with the time and money to pursue her scientific interests—one of which is a time machine. Jane’s machine works…but not exactly as she expected, and soon she has crash-landed in the 13th-century Scottish Highlands. There she is rescued by a wild, red-haired warrior woman, Ainslie nic Dòmhnaill, next in line to the chiefship of the great Clan Donald, the rulers of the Sea Kingdom of the Isles. Despite the constant threat of attacks from enemy clans, harsh winters and a touch of homesickness, Jane finds herself bewitched by this land, this time and this magnificent woman. The rough and warlike Ainslie also feels the magic and revels in a passion and love neither she nor Jane had ever imagined. But Jane is hiding a dangerous secret—one that threatens to tragically transform their Highland fairy tale.

Kinship and Kindness by Kara Jorgensen (A Paranormal Society Romance #1) - releases July 29th -trans MC

Bennett Reynard needs one thing: to speak to the Rougarou about starting a union for shifters in New York City before the delegation arrives. When his dirigible finally lands in Louisiana, he finds the Rougarou is gone and in his stead is his handsome son, Theo, who seems to care for everyone but himself. Hoping he can still petition the Rougarou, Bennett stays only to find he is growing dangerously close to Theo Bisclavret. Theo Bisclavret thought he had finally come to terms with never being able to take his father’s place as the Rougarou, but with his father stuck in England and a delegation of werewolves arriving in town, Theo’s quiet life is thrown into chaos as he and his sister take over his duties. Assuming his father’s place has salted old wounds, but when a stranger arrives offering to help, Theo knows he can’t say no, even if Mr. Reynard makes him long for things he had sworn off years ago. As rivals arrive to challenge Theo for power and destroy the life Bennett has built, they know they must face their greatest fears or risk losing all they have fought for. With secrets threatening to topple their worlds, can Theo and Bennett let down their walls before it’s too late?

More under the cut...!!!!

My Highland Laird: Sci-Regency Book #5 by JL Langley - releases August 10th

Bannon Thompson, talented artist and youngest son of the Duke of Eversleigh, is hastily shipped off after his latest indiscretion. After crashing on rural Skye, leaving him and his valet the sole survivors of a diplomatic mission, Bannon must navigate the complexities of a primitive clan society and take up a role he never wanted: helping a sexy Highlander ensure the safety of both their planets.

Laird Ciaran MacKay wants nothing more than to keep his clan safe from the off-world intruders who killed his father. Suspecting complicity among his own people, he has no choice but to trust outsiders from a spaceship crash—and he can’t seem to fight his attraction to the stubborn redhead. Drawn to the handsome laird, Bannon risks a bold affair. But there is more at stake than reputations as they find two lost Regelens and uncover the Intergalactic Navy’s plot.

Artful Deception by Jackson Marsh (The Clearwater Myseries Book #5)

“Deception. The lie that tells the truth."

A damaged painting tempts Lord Clearwater to a final battle with his arch-enemy, and it's not a summons he can ignore.

Archer must free his homicidal brother from incarceration and reinstate him to the title. He will be left humiliated and penniless, but free to live his life with Silas with no threat of exposure. The alternative is death.

Drawing inspiration from a work of art, Clearwater manipulates a series of illusions to stay one step ahead of the endgame. While James, Tom and Silas race to solve clues and reach Archer before the fatal deadline, the assassin, Dorjan, remains hot on his heels ready to kill.

The sixth book in The Clearwater Mysteries series brings back popular characters from previous adventures in a fast-paced, twisting mystery that can have only one of two possible endings.

Or perhaps one of three. After all, deception is the lie that tells the truth.

Ten or Fifteen Miles by BL Maxwell - May 27th

Tim Latham had only been riding for the Pony Express for a week before he has to show the new guy the trail. Being raised on a farm in the Sacramento area, the Pony Express gave him an opportunity to see more of the country beyond his family’s little plot of land. He loves everything about the job: the adventure, the scenery, and the speed. Racing the wind on the back of a horse was as close to perfect as he could imagine.

Jeremiah Rollins grew up in San Francisco under the shadow of his father's successful shipping business. But Jeremiah craves the adventure he reads about in the dime novels he can’t get enough of. On a whim, and despite his father’s disapproval, he signs up for the Pony Express and leaves his old life behind for the steep, rocky trails that cross the Sierra Nevada. Both men are excited to begin their journey on their first ride together to Nevada Territory. They set out, making their way from station to station, racing as fast as their horses can carry them, and their friendship grows every mile. They both wanted adventure, but they may end up getting more than they dreamed of. Every ten or fifteen miles brings new experiences, and new feelings that grow with each mile they pass.

People Like Us by Ruby Moone (Winsford Green #2) - July 21st

Arthur Fitch clawed his way out of the violence and poverty of the slums of London to become a valet to the aristocracy. His ambition to secure a higher position led him to a disastrous appointment with a cold, brutal man, and when things come to a head, Arthur is forced to flee into a snowstorm to find safety. Joseph Wilkinson is the Winsford Green blacksmith. He has a good life, good friends, owns a thriving business, but at the end of the day when he goes home, loneliness consumes him. When he stumbles upon a small man determinedly trudging through the snowstorm, he invites him into his home to shelter. Arthur Fitch is older, smart-mouthed, and as prickly as hell. But, as Joe peels back the layers, he discovers a warm, funny, vulnerable man whose tastes in the bedchamber leave Joe gasping and desperate for more. Trouble is, having found the real Arthur Fitch, how can he convince him that life in a small town can be infinitely better than working for an Earl? That love really is possible for people like them? Particularly when Arthur’s past catches up with him in horrifying fashion.

Seaworthy bu KL Noone (Character Bleed Book #1) - August 1st - bisexual MC - contemporary, but with a lot of historical touches

An epic motion picture! A gay Napoleonic War love story! Ballrooms and battles at sea! Romantic happy endings on the silver screen! And a film that’ll change everything for its stars ... Jason Mirelli can’t play adrenaline-fueled action heroes forever. He’s getting older, plus the action star parts have grown a little thinner since he came out as bisexual. This role could finally let him be seen as a serious dramatic actor, and he needs it to go well -- for his career, and because he’s fallen in love with the story and the chance to tell it. The first problem? He’ll be playing a ship’s captain ... and he hasn’t exactly mentioned his fear of water. The second problem? His co-star: award-winning, overly talkative, annoyingly adorable -- and openly gay – box office idol Colby Kent. Colby’s always loved the novel this film’s based on, and he leapt at the chance to adapt it, now that he has the money and reputation to make it happen. But scars and secrets from his past make filming a love story difficult ... until Jason takes his hand and wakes up all his buried desires. Jason could be everything Colby’s ever wanted: generous and kind, a fantastic partner on set, not to mention those heroic muscles. But Colby just can’t take that chance ... or can he? As their characters fall in love and fight a war, Colby and Jason find themselves falling, too ... and facing the return of their own past demons. But together they just might win ... and write their own love story.

The Engineer (Magic & Steam Book #1) by CS Poe - May 28th

1881—Special Agent Gillian Hamilton is a magic caster with the Federal Bureau of Magic and Steam. He’s sent to Shallow Grave, Arizona, to arrest a madman engineer known as Tinkerer, who’s responsible for blowing up half of Baltimore. Gillian has handled some of the worst criminals in the Bureau’s history, so this assignment shouldn’t be a problem. But even he’s taken aback by a run-in with the country’s most infamous outlaw, Gunner the Deadly. Gunner is also stalking Shallow Grave in search of Tinkerer, who will stop at nothing to take control of the town’s silver mines. Neither Gillian nor Gunner are willing to let Tinkerer hurt more innocent people, so they agree to a very temporary partnership. If facing illegal magic, Gatling gun contraptions, and a wild engineer in America’s frontier wasn’t enough trouble for a city boy, Gillian must also come to terms with the reality that he’s rather fond of his partner. But even if they live through this adventure, Gillian fears there’s no chance for love between a special agent and outlaw. Based on the short story, “Gunner the Deadly.” Entirely revised, newly expanded, and Book One in the exciting new steampunk series, Magic & Steam.

Pirate’s Promise (Pirate’s of Port Royal Book #1) by Jules Radcliffe - May 12th - the rest of the series is also out this Summer!

Press-ganged as a boy, Job Wright must learn how to live as a free man.

For years Job has been a captive, treated as a servant—and sometimes more—by a crooked merchant crew. Until the day his ship is attacked by pirates. English pirates, no less, and Brethren of the Coast, a brotherhood of free men who owe allegiance to no one but themselves. Job thinks he's been rescued at last, but he's badly mistaken. As an Englishman aboard a Spanish ship, the Brethren believe he's a traitor and an enemy. But just when pirate justice is about to be delivered, Garrett Dubh intervenes. He both saves Job's life and recruits him to the pirate ship Audacious.

Surrounded by a fearsome crew, Job finds protection under Garrett's wing. He's ready to do anything for the handsome pirate—things he'd never willingly do for another man. But Garrett ignores Job's shy overtures. He believes Job is too traumatised by his past. Too young to know what he wants. And nothing Job says will change his mind.

To show Garrett he can take care of himself, Job leaves the safety of the Audacious. He joins the most ruthless Brethren crew in the Caribbean, led by the enigmatic and cruel Rusé.

But in the French pirate haven of Tortuga, thoughtless actions can have fatal consequences, something Job is about to discover. And this time, Garrett isn't there to save him.

Chasing a Legacy by D. A Ravenscroft - May 2020

Against the tense political backdrop of the Second French Empire, siblings Camille and Marianne find themselves wrestling with personal demons both past and present. As Camille strives to keep family secrets buried and unveil a plot against them, Marianne becomes involved with the handsome Baron Auclair and his mysterious younger sister. Little do the siblings know that soon their very different lives will come crashing together…

The sequel to a sequel! In this follow up to the unofficial Les Mis sequel ‘Chasing a Ghost’, we follow Enjolras and Grantaire’s children, Camille and Marianne, through dangers untold and family strife. Set in 1866, towards the end of the Second Empire, this story has murder, mystery, romance, drama, comedy, and a pet lion. And yes, it’s very, very queer.

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/d-a-ravenscroft/chasing-a-legacy/paperback/product-y58wrq.html

Two Rogues Make a Right by Cat Sebastian (Seducing the Sedgwicks Book #3) - June 23rd

Will Sedgwick can’t believe that after months of searching for his oldest friend, Martin Easterbrook is found hiding in an attic like a gothic nightmare. Intent on nursing Martin back to health, Will kindly kidnaps him and takes him to the countryside to recover, well away from the world. Martin doesn’t much care where he is or even how he got there. He’s much more concerned that the man he’s loved his entire life is currently waiting on him hand and foot, feeding him soup and making him tea. Martin knows he’s a lost cause, one he doesn’t want Will to waste his life on. As a lifetime of love transforms into a tender passion both men always desired but neither expected, can they envision a life free from the restrictions of the past, a life with each other?

Best Laid Plaids by Ella Stainton (Kilty Pleasures #1)- August 31st

In 1920s Scotland, even ghosts wear plaid.

Welcome to a sexy, spooky new paranormal historical series from debut author Ella Stainton.

Scotland, 1928

Dr. Ainsley Graham is cultivating a reputation as an eccentric.

Two years ago, he catastrophically ended his academic career by publicly claiming to talk to ghosts. When Joachim Cockburn, a WWI veteran studying the power of delusional thinking, arrives at his door, Ainsley quickly catalogues him as yet another tiresome Englishman determined to mock his life’s work.

But Joachim is tenacious and openhearted, and Ainsley’s intrigued despite himself. He agrees to motor his handsome new friend around to Scotland’s most unmistakable hauntings. If he can convince Joachim, Ainsley might be able to win back his good name and then some. He knows he’s not crazy—he just needs someone else to know it, too.

Joachim is one thesis away from realizing his dream of becoming a psychology professor, and he’s not going to let anyone stop him, not even an enchanting ginger with a penchant for tartan and lewd jokes. But as the two travel across Scotland’s lovely—and definitely, definitely haunted—landscape, Joachim’s resolve starts to melt. And he’s beginning to think that an empty teaching post without the charming Dr. Graham would make a very poor consolation prize indeed…

The Gentleman’s Thief by Isobel Starling (Resurrectionist Book #2)

Tuesday 28th December 1897. Mr. Benedict Hannan, the owner of Hannan’s Auction House in Fitzrovia, London, receives an unexpected visitor at his Bloomsbury home. The man on his stoop sends Benedict’s heart into a flutter, and on inviting the mysterious stranger into his house, he is inviting mystery, adventure, and volcanic desire.

Sebastian Cavell—master thief, gives the impression he has sought out Benedict for the sake of business, but the kind of business Sebastian has in mind has nothing to do with making money!

Cavell has been tasked with finding the whereabouts of a missing German aristocrat. With Benedict’s society connections, Sebastian gains access to his Gentleman’s Club and to men whose behavior is not so gentlemanly!

Benedict is pulled into the circle of a dangerous secret society and he not only learns the truth about the mysterious Sebastian Cavell, but learns the truth about himself and all he truly desires.

The Curse of the Mummy’s Heart by Julia Talbot - June 30th

Something is rising in the desert sand, and between two adventurous men.

Famous 1920s Hollywood actor Douglas Fitzhugh and his brother Donnie are headed for Egypt on a classic monster movie quest. Their mysterious benefactor, a man they call Grant, has sent them to find a stranded archaeologist, and all they have to go on is a handwritten journal. That's just the kind of adventure Douglas loves, and he never passes up the chance to get away from his studio-driven life.

Charles Angeloff is also on his way to Egypt with a special object his father has asked him to return to the tomb he ripped it from. Charles is just out of university, and when he meets Douglas, he falls hard for Douglas' charm and his worldly ways.

As they travel, more men of adventure join them: a cowboy, a rich seminary student, and a librarian. When they're all together, it's like magic happens, and the men all realize they're on a mission to stop the horror that stirs beneath the desert sands, even as that creature sets its sights on Charles. Will Douglas and Charles lose each other just when they've found what they both think is the man they want to be with forever?

Starcrossed: A Paranormal Historical Romance (Magic in Manhattan #2) by Allie Therin - May 18th

When everything they’ve built is threatened, only their bond remains… 1925 New York Psychometric Rory Brodigan’s life hasn’t been the same since the day he met Arthur Kenzie. Arthur’s continued quest to contain supernatural relics that pose a threat to the world has captured Rory’s imagination—and his heart. But Arthur’s upper-class upbringing still leaves Rory worried that he’ll never measure up, especially when Arthur’s aristocratic ex arrives in New York. For Arthur, there’s only Rory. But keeping the man he’s fallen for safe is another matter altogether. When a group of ruthless paranormals throw the city into chaos, the two men’s strained relationship leaves Rory vulnerable to a monster from Arthur’s past. With dark forces determined to tear them apart, Rory and Arthur will have to draw on every last bit of magic up their sleeves. And in the end, it’s the connection they’ve formed without magic that will be tested like never before.

Another Chance For Love by Ellie Thomas - July 4th

Former British Army Lieutenant Adam Merryweather survived the Western Front of WWI and has slowly recovered from his injuries. But can he heal from a broken heart? Torn between family duty and personal happiness, he sacrificed his love for Alf and has never ceased to regret it in the two years since the war ended. Adam is slowly putting his empty life back together, working for the family firm in the city centre of Bristol and trying to stop his mother’s meddling to find him the perfect socially acceptable bride. When he happens to meet Alf out of the blue, Adam is determined to try again. But convincing Alf to give him another chance may be too much to hope for. Can a chance meeting bring them back together? Or has Adam lost another chance for love forever?

The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite - July 28th - sapphic

When Agatha Griffin finds a colony of bees in her warehouse, it’s the not-so-perfect ending to a not-so-perfect week. Busy trying to keep her printing business afloat amidst rising taxes and the suppression of radical printers like her son, the last thing the widow wants is to be the victim of a thousand bees. But when a beautiful beekeeper arrives to take care of the pests, Agatha may be in danger of being stung by something far more dangerous…

Penelope Flood exists between two worlds in her small seaside town, the society of rich landowners and the tradesfolk. Soon, tensions boil over when the formerly exiled Queen arrives on England’s shores—and when Penelope’s long-absent husband returns to Melliton, she once again finds herself torn, between her burgeoning love for Agatha and her loyalty to the man who once gave her refuge.

As Penelope finally discovers her true place, Agatha must learn to accept the changing world in front of her. But will these longing hearts settle for a safe but stale existence or will they learn to fight for the future they most desire?

*If more come to my attention after this is posted, they will be added!!!

#lgbt romance #historical romance #sapphic #trans romance #f/f romance #m/m romance #books

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melodiouswhite · 5 years

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J&H/Tam Lin crossover or How To Steal A Fae’s Boyfriend

(A/N: Due to popular demand, I have given into the temptation of writing a crossover of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a well-known Scottish folk tale. And it’s a modern AU, because I can. So here you go, I hope you like it! :D

tw: sexual coersion and abuse. Also, Utterson is a trans guy and I probably didn’t get that right)

Gabriel had heard the stories, of course he had.

Of course he had heard the warning, that he shouldn't go there without bringing a cloak or ring as a token, lest something entirely else would be taken from him.

But being a young man in the 21st century, he had thought it was just old folk tales.

Who the hell took a green cloak or a ring to a forest, just for the purpose of leaving it there?

And so he had thought nothing of it, when he had gone into the woods of Carterhaugh without bringing either.

It was his property, after all. His family had acquired the surrounding lands and given the woods to him.

So here he was, walking through the woods with nothing but a book, a pocketknife (you never knew) and his smartphone, when he saw something odd: a saddled white steed was grassing at a well, generally minding her own business. But where was her owner?

Hesitantly, he stepped closer to the horse.

She wasn't disturbed by his presence and stood completely still, when he gently petted her and examined the saddle and bridal. Such a magnificent creature.

But the saddle and bridal looked so elaborate and fancy, they couldn't be from anywhere nearby. Actually, he had never seen anything like it.

Strange, he thought and decided to walk further into the woods. Perhaps he could find the person the steed belonged to.

But when he looked around, it was already dusk.

Huh. Had he really been here for that long?

He changed his mind and turned to go home.

After walking for a few minutes, he stumbled over a path where wild roses grew.

That wasn't here before …

Normally Gabriel wasn't the rose type of guy.

But never before had he seen anything like this. They were so ineffably beautiful, bright and radiant, that he had to take a closer look.

One particularly caught his eye; a white double-headed rose.

This one would be beautiful in my home, he thought, pulled out his pocketknife and carefully cut it off the bush.

But before he could tug it into his jacket, someone cleared their throat behind him.

He gasped in shock and whirled around.

There stood an otherworldly handsome young man dressed in green.

He was tall, well-built, broad-shouldered, had wheat blond hair and chocolate brown eyes. His skin was paler than his own, but not too much, just that perfect, healthy and rosy complexion.

The young man was frowning.

“What are you doing here in Carterhaugh?”, he asked in the most gorgeous voice Gabriel had ever heard. “Why do you cut off the roses? Haven't you heard the stories?”

The black-haired man could only blush and stutter.

After a while, the blond seemed to grow impatient. “Can you articulate yourself, please? I would like an explanation as to why you strolled in here like you own the place.”

Now Gabriel finally pulled himself together.

“Actually, I do own the place. My parents bought the land and gave the woods to me”, he informed the other man calmly. “And therefore, I don't see why I should need your permission to be here.”

The handsome stranger shrugged indifferently. “Really now. Well, I regret to inform you, that this is my realm and the laws of this world mean little to me. Now, did you know the story or no?”

“You mean the story of Tam Lin? Yes, but I assumed that, if they were true, he would be straight. And I'm not a girl.”

The blond shook his head and laughed (the loveliest laugh Gabriel had ever heard, but that wasn't the point): “As you can see, I'm very real. And I don't care about what your sex is.”

This was just surreal.

He was talking to a folk tale character, who turned out to be – waaaaaiiiitaminute!

“Okay, hold it! Just to make this clear: I just stepped into a magical forest, you're Tam Lin and because I didn't bring a ring or a green cloak – whatever you need them for – I won't get out of here, before you get something else from me?!”

“Pretty much.”

Normally, the black-haired man would've thought this was just a sick joke.

But the person in front of him obviously wasn't of this world. The entire forest wasn't normal and the roses definitely weren't. It was so plain that even a sceptic like him had to acknowledge it. So in other words, he was trapped in some kind of magical forest with someone who wouldn't let him go, unless-

The stranger, seeming to sense his discomfort, spoke up, “Listen, Gabriel John Utterson-”

He knows my name?!

“-how about you give me your smartphone instead? Then you come back tomorrow with a ring or cloak to get it back? I believe, that you thought it was just old tales, but this is still a faerie forest. I can't let you go without a tribute of some kind. And the phone is the second most precious thing you have, after your innocence.”

“How do you know about smartphones anyway?”

The blond shrugged. “You'd be surprised at how up to date the Fae are. Makes it easier for them to mess with humans these days.”

“Oh, okay. And I really can't get out of here without leaving anything?”

“Well, you can try, but this forest is enchanted, so you'd just keep running in circles.”

Gabriel thought for a moment.

It was nice of the ghost/elf/faerie/whatever he was to try and accommodate him.

But there was something about that guy that awakened something in him.

“You know what? Screw it. Off with your clothes, you virginity-stealing creep! Chop-chop, I don't have all night!”

“W-wait, what?!”

“You heard me!”, he snapped and began to undress. “Now hurry up. I'm a gay, frustrated 23-years-old, you're hot and I don't like the folks around here!”

“Okay, this is unexpected. No one has ever actually-”

“Well, it's about time then, isn't it?”, Gabriel snapped and threw away his shirt, “Now what part of 'I don't have all night' did you not understand? I'm a lawyer, I have to go to work early tomorrow!”

Tam Lin – or whatever that man's name was – chuckled and began to take off his own clothes.

“Why, if I didn't know better, I'd think you came here because of the legend.”

“If I had known that this forest actually was haunted by a sexy ghost, I would have!”

Tam Lin snorted: “You wouldn't be the first. But …”

Gabriel felt his cheeks heat up, when the blond's chocolate brown eyes wandered up and down his body. And he felt a little uncomfortable, when they lingered on the chest binder he was still wearing.

“You're the loveliest person I've ever met.”

“R-really? So you don't mind that I'm-?”

“Did I call you by your dead name?”, the blond replied and shook his head. “No. If you identify as a man, you're a man. Whether your biology corresponds with that or not doesn't matter.”

Gabriel felt a lump in his throat and swallowed it.

“This is fine”, he whispered hoarsely, took off the binder and lay down.

“Certainly is”, Tam Lin agreed and followed.

Gabriel shuddered, when the other let his hands wander over his tanned skin.

“You really are quite handsome”, the blond murmured.

The black-haired man smiled and dared to steal a kiss.

…

“Wow”, Gabriel breathed, when they were done and getting dressed. “This was wonderful! If that's what I get for coming here without a token, I should do it more often. Uhm …” he blushed awkwardly. “… You wouldn't mind, right?”

“I …” To his surprise Tam Lin also blushed. “I would love to see you again”, he admitted quietly and took his hand.

…

When Gabriel went home, he felt like he was walking on air.

Never in his life had he been so happy and he wondered, if this could be love.

Later, as he lay in bed and the flowers were in vases, he thought about what had happened today.

He fell asleep smiling and remembering what the elven knight had said, when they had parted.

“You're the only rose that still grows fairer after being plucked.”

How theatrical …

…

When he returned to the enchanted glen, Tam Lin was waiting for him.

After spending an hour of passion, they sat beside each other at the well and talked, while the white steed was grassing nearby.

He went home with another bouquet of flowers and feeling just as blissful as the first time.

In the following weeks, he continued to see the mysterious blond.

He found himself falling for him more and more.

But then things became problematic.

First off, Tam Lin listened with interest, when Gabriel talked about himself. But he became oddly cagey, when the black-haired man asked him to talk about himself too.

Why was the blond so secretive?

Worse, his father and grandmother had noticed that something was up and now they wouldn't leave him alone about who “the lucky guy” was. But how was he supposed to tell them that he was sleeping with a mysterious elf from a haunted forest? Not to mention, when he knew next to nothing about him?

What was their relationship status anyway? Were they dating? Or was he just a fling to the other man?

Damn, he didn't like how uncertain everything was!

And to add insult to injury, he hadn't thought about using contraceptive measures and guess what, he was pregnant! How could he have been so careless?! Now he was carrying a child he wasn't ready for!

He cursed his own stupidity and desperately hoped, that no one would find out.

…

Of course he wasn't that lucky.

It was Sunday, 31st October, when his father found out.

To Mr. Utterson's credit, he didn't freak out as much as Gabriel had feared. Instead he just took a deep breath and demanded to know who was responsible for this.

That made Gabriel really angry. “The only one who's responsible for this baby is me! Oh, and my boyfriend who lives in the woods.”

“What?!”

After an argument, he persuaded his father not to press charges.

(“I'm going to call a lawyer!” - “Dad, I am that lawyer!” - “Oh. Right.”)

But now he was upset and needed to be somewhere else. So he ran back to Carterhaugh and somehow ended up in the enchanted glen, as usual. There he crawled behind a rose bush and cried.

This was just too much.

He was a pregnant man, who wasn't prepared to care for a child, the entire situation was just so muddled and he didn't know what to do!

Although … there was an emergency exit, he suddenly realised.

He had been sleeping with Tam Lin for about two months, so he could be no further on than that.

It wasn't too late for a safe abortion …

“Wait, please.”

He jumped, when Tam Lin appeared before him.

“Gabriel”, the blond said gently and crouched down before him, “I know that you're desperate and overwhelmed, but please consider; it's my child just as much as it's yours.”

“You can say that so easily”, he sobbed, “You're not the one carrying the baby! You could just as well run off and pretend that you never knocked up some unfortunate human, while I'd be stuck with a child I wasn't ready for! You can go off to faerie land and do whatever elves or faeries do, but I can't work as a lawyer and take care of a baby all by myself! And what will I say, when they ask me who the father is? That it's some elf bloke from an enchanted forest, who will never be with me, because I'm just some insignificant human, who will grow old and die?!”

The blond looked beyond hurt. “Is that what you think of me?”, he asked in disbelief, “Do you really think that I would be so heartless and irresponsible?!”

“I don't know!”, Gabriel wailed. “I don't know anything about you! Not even your real name! You can't convince me that Tam Lin is actually your name! I'm pregnant and the father is a man I know nothing about, because he never bothered to tell me anything about himself!”

Tam Lin was silent for a while. But he looked so sad, that the black-haired man almost regretted snapping at him. Almost. Gabriel was in the right and they both knew it.

“You're right”, the blond finally sighed. “I should have been more open. But I chose to be a coward instead and kept my mouth shut, because I feared that you would be disgusted and want nothing more to do with me.”

Gabriel stared at him. “What gave you that idea?”

The blond sat down next to him. “You will understand, once I have told you my story.

First you need to know that I'm not actually an elf or faerie, like you thought. I'm human like you. I'm not even the first Tam Lin to haunt these woods. Although that should be clear, because the legend is older than I.

My real name is – was – Henry Jekyll. I was a medical student and my lifestyle was … well, not exactly proper. When my parents found out that I had slept with both men and women, they threw me out. I needed a while to find a steady place to live and it happened to be the farm you live on now. Then WWI happened, I was sent off to France and returned to Scotland as a shell shocked* war veteran.

One year after the war ended, I was taking a stroll through the woods and decided, that climbing that oak over there would be a good idea (don't ask). And wouldn't you know it, I fell off and right into the arms of the Queen of the Fae, who took me to the kingdom under the hill, where the Fae live. He (and yes, the Queen is a he) made me his consort and named me after the real Tam Lin, to loosen my ties to the human world. Do you see the ring on my finger? It's a magical chain. As long as I belong to him, it won't come off.

You know, Gabriel, most people have a completely wrong image of faeries. They're not like those cute tiny pixies from children's books. Even the more benevolent Fae are dangerous and the ones I live with aren't benevolent. They are Unseelies**, mischievous at best and outright evil at worst. They assault humans and make them suffer for their entertainment. And if they like one, they steal them away and keep them as slaves for all eternity. Mostly children, because they're purer and easier to lure.”

“But the Queen of the Fae is one of the nicer ones, right?”, Gabriel asked hopefully.

Tam Lin – no, Henry Jekyll – stared at him.

Then he broke into a horrible cackle: “One of the nicer ones?! Him! I've been there for a century and I never met a faerie worse than him! He has hundreds of child slaves and abuses them to his heart's content – that is, if he had a heart! One day we went on a walk and there was a big puddle. Of course he didn't want to get his robes dirty. And do you know what he did?! He ordered a 9-year-old boy to lay down and make a bridge, and then he just walked over him! And he was going to do it again, when we went back on the same path. But I lay down and had him walk over me instead. Then I called him out and he would have struck me, if the Queen Dowager hadn't stepped in. She's one of the less malevolent Unseelies and the only one he respects.”

Gabriel gasped in horror. “That's awful”, he whispered. “Oh my god!”

Henry sighed and continued: “Yeah. Well, I guess he was somewhat impressed, because he stopped with the child trampling altogether. The upside is that I can use my privileges to try to be a good influence on him. I try my best to be kind to him, because … well, there must be a reason why he is like that. But he never lets me forget that I'm just a toy to him. And do you know what the sickest part of this is? I like it. The way he smirks at me, talks to me, touches me, makes me melt like butter. When I share his bed, he bites me, scratches me, bruises me and whispers hurtful things into my ear and I can't get enough of it.

At first I thought that he had bewitched me. But when I confronted him, he laughed and said that it wasn't necessary, I'm just that corrupted. I didn't want to believe it, but the Fae don't lie, not even the evil ones. That's their one redeeming quality.”

Gabriel felt his heart ache and touched the other's cheek. “I'm sure, it's not true”, he tried to comfort him, “He just said that to hurt you. I've seen that kind of people, they know how to take away people's sense of self-worth.”

Henry just lowered his head. “It doesn't matter. After being there for a hundred years, I'm starting to forget who I was. The Queen Dowager told me that I can be saved, as long as I preserve my humanity by remembering who I am. But there are so many things I want to forget and the more faerie-like I become, the more power the Queen holds over me.

Anyway, I had come to terms with spending eternity as his slave. But then I found out, that the Fae have some sort of obligation. Every seven years on Halloween, they pay a tithe to hell. Of course they won't sacrifice one of their own, if they have humans to use instead. This year I'll be the sacrifice. When I found out, I didn't even care, because hell can't be much worse than my life so far. But then … then I met you.”

The blond smiled at him so tenderly, that he felt his heart flutter and his stomach went fuzzy (and not from nausea).

“I've never met someone like you before. You walked into my life and it was as if the sun was rising for me. Suddenly I had someone waiting for me here and something to look forward to. You made me feel warm, at peace and most of all … you made me feel loved.”

His smile faded. “That's why I was afraid of telling you the truth. That the man you have slept with – the father of your child – is the whore of a psychopathic Fae Queen and will be sacrificed to hell tonight. Can you still look me in the eyes and say that you're not disgusted?”

Gabriel cupped his face and looked him dead in the eyes.

“I'm not disgusted. Why would I be? No one deserves this kind of life. And how could I not want to have anything to do with you? I never knew that I needed someone else in my life, until I met you. You make me happier than I've ever been. What you just told me changes nothing about this. Actually, it just makes me want you more. I will keep our child, but only if I can have you too. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, make you feel happy, safe and loved. I love you, Henry Jekyll.”

He was surprised at how easily those words came out of his mouth.

But it was the honest truth.

Henry stared at him. Then he burst into tears and hugged him tightly.

…

“We have to figure something out quickly”, Gabriel spoke up, when they both had calmed down enough. “You will not be sacrificed to hell tonight! There must be a way to prevent this!”

The blond thought for a moment. “Hmm … now that I think about it, there is a way for you to win me.”

Gabriel's sky blue eyes filled with determination. “Tell me.”

“Alright”, Henry said seriously, “Listen closely …”

…

After a short trip home, he had come back to wait for the faerie procession.

Now he was hidden between the bushes, wearing a green coat he had borrowed from his father.

He was incredibly tense.

When was it finally midnight?

Couldn't the procession show up already?

Well, at least it wasn't raining.

At last green lights appeared at the end of the path and grew bigger.

The procession had arrived.

Finally!

He crept behind a bush and got into position.

Figures came into view.

In the front a small, dark-haired faerie with a crown, riding a black horse.

The next was a yellow-haired faerie on a brown horse.

But he ignored them and concentrated on the man riding the white steed.

Without a moment's hesitation, he grabbed him by the arm and yanked him out of the saddle.

The two riders before him whirled around, when Henry yelped in shock.

When the dark-haired faerie saw, that Gabriel was holding the blond in his arms, he screeched in outrage: “HOW DARE YOU TAKE WHAT'S MINE!!!”

And promptly transformed the man in Gabriel's arms into a lizard.

Then a snake.

Then a bear.

Then a lion.

But all the while Gabriel remembered what Henry had told him:

“As I'm the father of your child, there will be no way for me to harm you. So whatever they turn me into, don't let go. You have nothing to fear.”

So he didn't let go, not even when the Queen of the Fae turned his lover into a chunk of red-hot iron. It was only when the Queen turned him into a blazing flame, that he promptly dumped him into a conveniently located well nearby.

Now Henry emerged from the water as himself, but naked and now obviously a normal human. Gabriel quickly bundled him up in his coat and hugged him protectively. The blond stuck out his hands and tested, if he could take the ring off. It slipped from his finger effortlessly.

The Queen, seeing that he held no more power over him, shrieked in fury and … wait, was that anguish?

But then the yellow-haired faerie with the ice-blue eyes – probably the Queen Dowager – put a hand on his shoulder from behind and said something in a language Gabriel didn't understand.

The dark-haired faerie took a deep breath and composed himself. Then he smiled grotesquely.

“Congratulations!”, he purred sardonically and his glowing acid green eyes were full of hatred. “You caught yourself one stately groom! Curse you, Gabriel John Utterson! May you suffer a horrible death! My fairest companion, taken away by a mere mortal man in a girl's body! And you!”, he turned to Henry, “If I had seen this night coming, I would have turned your eyeballs into wood!”

Henry glared at him and responded by throwing the ring at him.

The Queen of the Fae caught it and stared at the blond. For a second, his hateful, angry grimace slipped and Gabriel caught sight of something that looked suspiciously like grief.

The dark-haired faerie gave off one last terrible shriek and glared at the black-haired man.

“This is your fault! But do enjoy dealing with his issues and the bastard he put in you and think of me, when you gaze into his lovely brown eyes!”

Gabriel tightened his protective hug and snarled: “With all due respect, your Majesty, you're an arsehole and you brought this upon yourself! You abducted Henry and coerced him into becoming your sex slave, he owes you nothing!!!”

The Queen responded with a “Tsk!”, then turned his back on them and returned to continue the procession.

It was only after the figures were out of sight, that the two men relaxed.

Henry took the other's hand and kissed each finger. “My hero. My saviour. I am yours.”

Gabriel grinned. “Let's go home, you damsel in distress. It's cold and you're still wet and half naked. The next months will be busy. We're going to be parents and you'll need legal papers.”

“I know – wait, did you just call me a damsel in distress?!”

---

*shell shock - an old word for PTSD, used esp. for the war traumata of WWI soldiers

**Unseelie - “Unhallowed/Unholy”, a Northern/Middle English word for dark, malevolent faeries

#The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #tam lin #fairy tales #Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #Dr. Jekyll #henry jekyll #Mr. Hyde #edward hyde #utterson #Mr Utterson #Gabriel John Utterson #jekyllxutterson #oc

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pokemonruby · 6 years

Note

mikleo & steven stone & N ??

mikleo:

Sexuality Headcanon: bisexual Gender Headcanon: nonbinary! all of the seraphim are like… honestlyA ship I have with said character: SORMIK SORMIK SORMIKA BROTP I have with said character: mikleo + edna & the rest of the cast tbh. he has a good relationship with everyone. A NOTP I have with said character: anyone besides sorey… like tbh it just doesn’t work A random headcanon: this headcanon of mine was actually confirmed in tales of the rays but… i always thought it’d be hilarious if him, a water seraph, could not swim. terns out he can’t! General Opinion over said character: well… mikleo is the character i most relate to on a personal level; our personalities, interests, and even experiences are very similar… almost hauntingly so. needless to say, i’ve projected myself a lot onto him!

steven stone:

Sexuality Headcanon: he’s just …. gay harold Gender Headcanon: you’ll have to pry trans man steven out of my cold, dead hands A ship I have with said character: i’d like to take a moment and appreciate gamefreak for giving us the irreproachable, magnificent ship that is originshipping. thank you. thank yo A BROTP I have with said character: steven + the elite four… they’re all bros and you know it. also him and brawly? i keep forgetting they have a cute friendship ingame. the prep/jock representation we all deserve.A NOTP I have with said character: the fandom is good for the most part except for those select few who pair a 25 and 10 year old together and think it’s justifiable. what is wrong with some of you. talking about hoennchampionshipping btw it’s disgusting A random headcanon: this is more so an originshipping headcanon but i have like a million of them so bear with me. anyways, the ring steven proposed to wallace with was not only handcrafted–but fished from the depths of an otherwise dangerous cave… but he thought the gemstone reflected wallace’s beauty to much to simply give up on. anyways steven is a romantic sap and the world’s greatest husband General Opinion over said character: beautiful rock nerd who deserves the entire world (and wallace). 100000/10. another character that i relate a lot to in fact.

Sexuality Headcanon: honestly? i feel like n wouldn’t put a label on his sexuality but i assure you, he’s the farthest thing from straight. he’s learned better than to mimic the ugly abomination that is his fatherGender Headcanon: another thing he wouldn’t put a label on, probably. though, i can say he’d likely be somewhere in the nonbinary category. A ship I have with said character: there is not a single pairing with him that i actually like. i ship him with myself and that’s it, nothing else is acceptable A BROTP I have with said character: n + the bw/bw2 protagonists… he’s like a brotherly figure tbh. A NOTP I have with said character: i sound like a broken record at this point but… @ fandom please stop pairing adults with children. i’m looking at you, isshushipping/ferriswheelshipping A random headcanon: this is more like a theory but… i’m actually very fond of the whole idea that n is actually a zoroark, or that his zoroark at least likes to impersonate him sometimes. it’s an interesting concept! General Opinion over said character: my first video game boyfriend and is still my boyfriend to this date. i love him so much and i want him to be happy and safe from ghetsis’s greasy hands

#ask #thank you!!!!#as you can tell i'm very attached to pokemon characters

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synoddiane · 6 years

Text

The Will to Battle thoughts, not quite in order:

Mitsubishi is the only Hive that hasn't classified this book. Very interesting.

I love unreliable narrators, so it's fun to get a less-censored look at Mycroft's mental state. I wonder how this will change the first two books next time I reread them.

Filibusters are a pretty useful device for exposition, especially when what you want to exposit about is legal codes.

I'd assumed the First Law would be explicitly about not evangelizing. Having that instead be a long-established corollary of a "don't risk excesssive death and suffering" law rings true, and is a good reminder that now that we know the text of these Laws, we still don't know all that much about what they mean in practice.

I don't buy "Let a hot athlete murder people" and "Let a mysterious god remake the earth" becoming the new Overton-Window-approved points on the political spectrum that easily, but I have to admit they make for some interesting options.

I didn't feel like the awe people constantly had for Achilles was really earned. He just doesn't do very much in this book, aside from things like training Servicers that aren't visible to the general public. I'm not convinced by his jeeps.

Felix Faust remains my favorite Hive leader. He always seems to be having fun. And he takes time to show people pictures of sharks eating bananas, when he knows it's what they need.

I still want to know a lot more about Gordian, and what being in it was like before it became Brillist.

J.E.D.D.'s refusal to take the Adult Competency Exam might be due to some quirk of wording making it an unacceptable oath for him, or maybe he just plain doesn't consider himself to be a competent adult.

Nice touch hiding trans girl Carlyle Foster's Blacklaw status from the dramatis personae. I feel bad for her but I'm glad she got a nice dress.

Of course J.E.D.D. Mason would get a suit made out of fancy Griffincloth, which can display anything, and set it to always be pure black.

I get that Minor status doesn't really match what we think of minors being, but still, isn't being able to make them Familiares pretty creepy?

The dialogue where Kohaku Mardi berates Mycroft for not helping at the Censor's office is good. Mycroft talking to people who aren't there is good in general. The way he's been talking with the reader all along counts.

MASON's offer of amnesty to the Sanctum violators (a skilled executioner if they surrender, instead of killing them personally; the name of the one who returns the Oath to live on as a curse, instead of being entirely removed from human records) is exactly the kind of magnificent generosity I like to see from them. Also, "Never since humanity learned to bake clay into brick and raised the walls of Uruk..."

There was a dialogue where it took me a bit to figure out whether the Voltaire speaking was Voltaire Seldon or the historical one. I'm pretty sure that was intentional.

I don't believe Prospero's claim that no Humanists were unlikely to make substantial achievements.

I cried at Mycroft's apparent death at the end. 9A's sense of loss was very moving, especially because [it reminded me of Jack's death.] (Diane's draft left this sentence incomplete, but the intended end was obvious. -Ed.)

Speaking of 9A, I'm surprised by how much of the narrator voice so far has been theirs. It makes sense. Given how busy Mycroft's been during the period that he's been writing, the editor contributions must have been extremely substantial. Before, I'd only thought of 9A as someone who went in and added tentative Latin translations after the book was done.

I wonder what the standards are like for Anonymous succession. It seems like it would have to require a well justified identification, so that you aren't turning it over to whoever's first to send you a random guess. Probably any slightly plausible celebrity gets a stream of messages from guessers anyway. (And anyone who's actually plausible would hold out for thorough reasoning, neither confirming nor denying beyond that.)

I was not expecting characters to quote Korn lyrics.

#terra ignota #terra ignota spoilers #the will to battle #spoilers

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shipburner · 7 years

Text

The Final Testament of Dr. Mortimer Beale

I was really glad that luck worked out that I would leave for the North on my birthday; it didn’t feel right for this event to be without mythic significance. Part of me wants to wax lyrical about it being a rebirthday – my first birthday since I came out as trans, the day I picked a name, the day I kill off the last male self-insert OC I ever really made, lots of straws out there for the grasping – but to be honest, Fallen London wasn’t really part of Genderquest 2k17: Battle for Gendikar. The community I’ve found through FL has been endlessly supportive of that quest, but Dr. Beale wasn’t related to that.

Dr. Beale was just a man who wanted to explore the secrets of the Neath, and got suckered into Seeking because it was the biggest secret of them all. The fandom commitment to not revealing what lies beyond the High Gate truly makes me proud, and I feel honored to join the ranks of those who have gone North. This, I think, is why I’m trapping Dr. Beale in the North forever – the secrets. Fallen London is a universe full of endlessly inventive mythology, full of surprises and secrets around every corner. The initial weirdness of daily life in a subterranean realm was what drew me into the Neath, but the secrets were what kept me there, and why I persisted with Dr. Beale’s quest. I have seen what is beyond the High Gate, and it is – well. It is beautiful. I can tell you that much. Beyond that? Let there be some mysteries yet in the world.

So, without further ado, I present the final testament of Dr. Mortimer Beale, presenting not only some of the information about him I never really got to display in the game, but also his thoughts on Seeking the Name.

Today, the 5th of August, 1895, I, Dr. Mortimer Beale, do set out my final testament, to be borne back to London in the handicles of my beloved Ooth-Nargai. It did not always understand me, towards the end, but its love for me was always constant, and mine for it. What we shared was real, but all too brief. It has informed me, on our voyage, that I am to have something like a child, as such things are reckoned among the Axiles. It has chosen the name Celephaïs for the child, but it will append “Beale” to it, out of devotion, out of memory. Its habitual reticence was, I think, a blessing this time. It hurts. Lord in Heaven, does it hurt. But had I known ere now, I might have dithered. I might have tried to fool myself that I could have stopped, turned back – but it was always too late. And what kind of a father would I be to them? What child could grow up happy with a father who saved his life and then threw it away a second time? Oh, I would be present temporally, yes, but not in spirit. Half my flesh, half my mind, half my immortal soul (if such a thing is real) is gone … I have been ink’d and wick’d, made a candle of myself entire. I wear my own severed head as a hat. Better a dead man for a father than a monstrosity. Ooth-Nargai will remember me well to little Celephaïs, and read my books to them, and more than that, I do not ask, in truth. So, let the news be the spark of hope I bring with me to the King of Ways, the spark I bring with me beyond the Avid Horizon, rather than cause for suffering.

As I write this, in the warm captain’s cabin of my magnificent pleasure-yacht, I look out over the cold black zee – North, past the Pale Wastes, past Whither. I might have come here earlier, with the Dilmun Club; now, I come mad with strange hunger. My crew (if they were ever really here) wish to turn back now – they are the sensible ones. The lights of London are a distant memory. It is strange, to know what one will never see again. It is strange, to still be surrounded by so much comfort as one goes to meet one’s doom. It is quiet. Lacre falls softly around me. Christmastide in August. Serene. Ooth-Nargai dozes by my side. We enjoyed a pleasant supper – our last together. Fresh fish and fresh bread and fresh greens and fresh water, and, now, hot cocoa, as we nestle beneath the blankets. This may be the last time I am ever comfortable, with food and fire and family, typewriter on my lap. I relish it. I have given up much, but this I will not. Not for a few more hours, while life remains to me.

Let me speak of that life I now end.

I was born – on this very day, in fact – in the year 1866 in Liverpool, back on the Surface, where the sun still shines. My father, Ramon Quejana y Panindagat, was a sailor from the Spanish East Indies, who brought his bride Margarita Karunungan y Enriquez to England and settled there to raise a family. I was christened Manolo Maria, a name I have not used in the Neath, which deception has caused me a curious amount of guilt – but there are no deceptions in the North, so let my Christian name be known. Ramon managed before both my parents’ unfortunate death in 1888 to produce an inheritance large enough for me to drink away but too small for me to actually use, which is precisely what I did. I spent a dissolute six years thereafter, and arrived, at the age of twenty-eight, to the point of having no future foreseeable, no past worth thinking about, and the brink before me. It was at this point that I had a thought:

“Wasn’t there … that thing. The … the thingy. With … the bats. And … the city. The … the London. I’m … why the … why the b____r not. Can’t be worse’n this. Who … who needs the sun, anyways. Y-yeah. Never did nothin’ fer me, th’ b_____d. I’ll … I’ll ----ing do it. ---- the sun.”

I used the last of my meagre savings to buy a ticket on the Travertine Spiral, and my drunken stupour bore me into a fight, which bore me directly into the arms of the constabulary. I was no stranger to the gaol-house, but here in the Neath, made for some odd reason to wear a mask, in a prison hanging from the roof, filled with far more hardened criminals than I, stern-faced guards who ate candles when they thought no-one was looking, and a disturbing subclass of people who shoveled horrible things into their mouths, carved burning sigils into the walls, and yelled about “The Number” and “The Name”, I gathered all of my courage and upon the spot vowed never to touch the bottle again. My vow was tested, but never broken; water is of a more salubrious aspect down here, and my inclination to share my small beer allotment with the other prisoners won me a few friends.

I intended to serve my time peaceably, but as it soon transpired that my one month’s hard labor for drunk and disorderly had been confused with my neighbor’s twenty years incarcerated, I decided that one more small crime could not hurt. I purloined a chisel from the works and loosened a bar at my window, and leaped out onto a passing dirigible.

I landed on my feet in Ladybones Road, pawned the jewel I had kept secret for emergencies, and charmed a soft-hearted widow into giving me an attic room. I was asked to provide a name and invented the name “Dr. Mortimer Beale” on the spot, for no reason other than that it sounded marginally respectable and that it was not a name at all similar to Prisoner Manolo Quejana y Karunungan. A sordid rag was willing to take me on as an enquirer, and I set to exploring the mysteries of the Neath, of both moral and natural philosophy.

To chronicle my deeds in their entirety would be tedious. I was a person of some importance; nay, an extraordinary mind! The name Dr. Mortimer Beale was immortal in Horizon Glyphs, written into hearts and minds, feared, and steeped in shadow. I was a singular character; my philosophy, my artistry, my skill at arms, my underworld faction were all my own. I was touched by fingerwork (clay and mirrors and laughing serpents), walked the fallen cities (Erech, Amarna, Hopelchén, and Karakorum), approached the gates of the Garden (of Eden? Of Stone, the Mountain of Light? Are they the same?), and saw through the eyes of Icarus (Icarus returning/longs for the deep places). I dreamt, in honey and in sleep, of the burial of the dead, of a game of chess, of the fire sermon, of death by water, of what the thunder said, of someone there (perhaps), and other things besides – beautiful vistas represented fumblingly in my writing.

Long have I loved lists, and I allow that this “testament” is mostly composed thereof, but I cannot help but list the things that affected me, that stood out to me – the beauty and wonder of my Neathly home, even though I dwelt here little beyond a year. I still remember first coming to the Echo Bazaar, to Merrigans Exchange, and marvelling at something so simple as a shard of glim or a nodule of deep amber.

I was ambitious, once: I sought out my heart’s desire, toiling tirelessly to play the Marvellous, a card game in which I could wager it all – learning the intrigues of the Church and of Hell, of two star-crossed lovers older than I had ever imagined, and, most poignantly, of one Tristram Bagley, a mad musician who tried to write with the Correspondence, the language of stars. I have talked with a priest who trades in faces and a prince of devils hanging in a bottle. I bought a hotel suite from Gilgamesh and saw the face of Enkidu in the street every day. I can state in truth that I performed Bagley’s opera, the Bell and the Candle, for Her Enduring Majesty herself, and it was extremely glorious and surpassingly erotic. (I miss when I could muster such bombast.) A Master of the Bazaar itself gave me a hat.

I have – no, I had – friends in every corner of Fallen London. The criminal underworld, the Rubbery Men, and libertine men and scarlet women were dearest to my heart, but most knew and loved me – and two people loved me on Her Enduring Majesty’s throne itself! I was a Young Stag, and, I think, I helped some wastrels put their wealth to positive good – and a member of the Dilmun Club as well, and sought for immortality as far as I could. I progressed from journalism, to authorship, to the study of the Correspondence – the hot breath of stars, that is their language. I toyed with the Red Science – it has faded from my flesh, but it allowed me to meet my beloved Ooth-Nargai, for which I am eternally grateful. I pursued cruel and unusual zoology with a Bishop and a Wings-of-Thunder Bat; I discovered the Cave of the Nadir with a Firebrand and a Missionary, where all the laws are broken. I followed a spymistress’ cruel missions, and found her repentance; I governed Port Carnelian for two terms. My salon, Dr. Beale’s House of Arguing, was a haven of learned and respectful discourse, as was my newspaper, the House of Arguing Weekly Newsletter. I started my own Department of the Correspondence at the University, and embarked on expeditions of scientific discovery.

Yet one discovery escaped me, that I had heard about throughout my entire tenure in the Neath – Mr. Eaten’s Name. I had heard of it, but did not know what it signified. (I know now – a Master of the Bazaar was betrayed for tarrying with Amarna, taken to its end by its former ally. It was stabbed, and eaten, and drowned, and given to the lacre. It fades, faster each year, but it still is not forgotten. Not yet. A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely.)

And thus, I started on the Seeking Road. I heard a voice, echoing from the well each night. In the still hours before dawn, in the wicker of a candle-flame, there is a voice. I did what it says. I do not regret it.

I flirted with disaster, slipping into horror, and learnt of the alphabet of scars. Beneath a strange sign I set out on the road, and as I slurped down the secrets, drowning in wine, boiling with hunger and breathing darkness, I approached the brink. I learned the Number at Christmastide – on the ninth day, Mr. Sacks stopped at my window, clad in salt and fox-fur; I took a memory of lost Axile, but heard an echo in so doing, and with it a trace of sadness, like the frost which silvers the night. The light on the edge of sleep was his. He was Mr. Candles. He will not be again. And, in a dream of dark waters, acquired the first of my weeping scars, off to go dancing with damnation. Candle-eyed, I watched the road unfold before me; knife-hearted, I steeled myself for what needed doing; edge-pledged, the road narrowed for me; corpse-given, I set my path for grief; marsh-mired, I trembled as the first step began to open; north-looking, I learnt of the body and the Number. Charred and mourned I became, drinking the thick corn beer of the Third City, stabbing out my life with knives of black glass, twice scoring the flesh and twice stabbing straight to the heart, and once drowning myself in the obsidian-lined well. And thus I learnt of the mind and the Number, and seven times I prepared betrayals, New Newgate becoming a comforting embrace.

The path to this place was not hard – I used the hollowness of cats to carve out a hollow in my belly to be filled. (Cats are friendly; I leave cats and catkind behind. That is another loss.) The ace of hungers was but raw meat and roast chestnuts drove the engine. I used the couriers’ notes, two of bats, to lessen the menace, folding ever in two. Then I moved to the worse – three of roses – the scrawl of the Correspondence in the bloody-ivy, tearing and eating, the thorns biting my mouth, a tango like that of the Musical Mathematician. I studiously avoided the four of eyes, still valuing myself too highly to be thought of as a monster. The five of lights filled me with wax and fire, but tallow is fat, and I thought the shock and pain worth it.

O but what of that place – the sky, the sky, the deepless blooming black – I began to stain my immortal soul. I had regained it from the devils, and now – I was confirmed a Catholic, back on the surface, and it hurt, the pain not physical, not mental, but spiritual. I was told the soul was immortal. (In the Neath, I learnt that may not have been the case.) In my dissolution, I had not attended a Mass or confessed my sins in so long a time. But still, it hurt. One seeks the Lord in hardship, does one not? (I attended services at a chapel in the North, yes, but I also attended a good and Godly mass, ere I departed, in the hopes that it would lave whatever I had left of my soul before I departed. Let this narrative be my confession. I hope it works. I doubt it will.) With brilliant souls I lured the cat. It stalked through my dreams – I turned to the bottle, sipped laudanum, breaking my solemn vow. Only the poppy juice would give my dreams the necessary dullness. More and more did I require it. Once with the cat alone, six times with a spirifer friend.

Now things began to hurt. The six of pearls – my great-grandfather was a dentist – I ate the teeth of others, crunching like corn, and I ate my own teeth, to gnaw ceaselessly. The seven of words that I answered, and made of myself of a pie – the Curve and the Lost Light – no more – flense-gifted I was, and the scales fell from my eyes. Seven was the number, seven false saints, seven scars of wax. I found five poor souls to listen to me, and two sleek black cats who’d seen the bloody-ivy in the Palace. The stench of betrayal filled my nostrils. Secrets burned. I lit a candle for the scar and the smirch, The Smirch; I tore the bombazine for the hook and the bait, The Hook; I took a ring for the scent and the turn, The Impetus; I took permission for the stone and the eyes, The Compass of Souls; I smashed a lens for the ink and the ink, The Ember; I whispered to the night for the web, o the web, The Webs; I made a bonfire of souls for the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, The Sun and the Saint. I had the wax, and the wick, and the flint, and the tinder, and the season.

And I had St. Arthur’s candle, the first of seven. Knife-known I was, and the knave of regrets, calling “Restitution!” for the Drowned Man. Crossroads-bound I became, and pearls beyond price were the price, and my sanity, and memories of light. Among masques and mysteries and midnights, I gave up my fate, engaged in crypticisms, and was asked why. I said I must. I realize, now, that that was a lie. I told it to myself, hiding from the truth – that I chose to do this. I do not know now why I did not revel in this truth: that it was always an option, as was all my love of secrets. This was something I chose to do, for love. “In matters of the Bazaar,” they say, “look to love.” It is not love of Mr. Eaten, or not entirely – it is love for the Seeking Road. Love for secrets, love for the stories of betrayal and revenge, love with the concept of my own self-destruction in pursuit of secrets. It is odd, this new awareness: I doubt I would have pursued it were it less horrible.

It was worth it. St. Beau’s candle, the crossroads-candle, I now owned, and crossroads-cursed, I sought for restitution further, that I could grieve. With the knight of feasts, I set a place for Mr. Eaten, red as wounds, red as riots … and my hunger was settled, or went deeper. I sought a well, in the Forgotten Quarter, and gave up a work of genius, telling my stories to the well. St. Cerise’s candle I had, and I was as proud of myself as hoped. At the brink of the lower mysteries, I researched my incunabula, and, initiate, with Gods’ Editors, sought out the lower archives of the College of St. Cyriac.

From the book of Matthew (if that was even his name) slightly revised, chapter 25, verse 42 – “For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, for I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.” It was Mr. Eaten’s Calling Card, and the Isle awaited. I grew hungrier, hungrier, until the grief came upon me, until at long last I could light a candle in his memory, to ask what is forgotten?

And then I paused. I took a breath. I learnt that I could not take much with me, and so I devoted myself not to wasting the chiefest of my treasures, but to ensconce myself in the heights of the Bazaar itself, ensuring housing, if not for myself, then for those I left behind. Once again I had to inveigle myself into the tales of the Bazaar, to grow more Notable in its eyes, that I might blaze bright enough in defiance. And in that time new stories broke upon the shore – subtle shifts in the airs of London, promising greater change. I enjoyed the company of friends. Another Election was held, and I campaigned for an Implacable Detective. She lost to a boor called Antonio Feducci, whose libertarian ways mock the mechanisms of state, and who I am glad to leave behind. That ate my time. But I was still resolved, and, finally, when I had accomplished what was needful, I sold most of my worldly goods, and slept with the calling card crumpled in my fist, and took to the oars.

On Winking Isle, I prepared. I set aside jewels and riches, gave up my intrigues, rejected wine and song. No map knew the place I went; I had no more sweet memories, no more bitter. I knew nothing of Stone’s light. My chiefest treasures were gone. I told the wind my stories, forgot Axile, unpicked the warp, unpicked the weft, let the messages fall by the road’s edge. No more secrets. I saw the Sun beneath the Sea?. I paced the well. Isle-walker, tower-watcher, light-eater, well-weeper, libation-giver, shatter-fated, star-seared, I became.

I left the Isle – if I was ever really there – and rested briefly in London, until a little man knocked on my door, and I ate my exceptional entry, entire. It was a freedom to no longer strive to burn. I gained no candle – I gained St. Destin’s Candle, which does not yet exist. I asked a new question – Who is Salt? – and bent again to the oars. I walked the Isle again, knowing its two dozen paces intimately. I was red as sunsets, as desire, as betrayal, as the waters, as remembrance, as roses, as science – and then became black, black as paper, as ink, as time, as knives.

I groaned, and stretched, and left the Isle again – if I was ever really there – and sought her out, in the place where hearts go. I made a decision, after long deliberation, with a woman sloughed-off like a snakeskin – I wiped free my skin-bound memories, and profession, and acclaim, and destiny, and ability to have any of those things again. Perhaps I lie still in the Cave of the Nadir, flesh falling from my bones and bones growing over my eyes, and walk the Neath in a dream, writing this for no-one as I moulder in a sad fantasy. If that is true, what must Ooth-Nargai think? Does it wait for the return of a husband? Of a fellow-parent? Of a sad man who forgot his name and life to find out those of another? – but no, I cannot dwell on this. I will merely state that while I gave up power and wealth and fame and future light as air, I let fate bend itself around me ere I give up friends or home. I do not miss what I gave up to gain St. Erzulie’s Candle, where I became black as stars.

Again, the Isle. Welcome, welcome was I ere I left, and climbed into a yacht instead of a rowboat to sail over a real sea. I (we, we must I say, for a lady comes with me) went north, to where light and colour leached from the Zee, and I attended services at the Chapel of Lights. I learnt of the descents and ascents and betrayals, and gained St. Forthigan’s Candle. Then so long did I pace the well, cleansed, cleansed was I, and then I left the Isle behind for good. I forged secrets as in earlier days to find the rarest books to trade for the lady’s Hollow Heart, and I steamed South. I rowed, I rowed, I rowed (or did we?). I met with Nicator in that hollow stair, refused soup, asked my question, and woke. I attended in service of St. Gawain. And there, in the Chapel of Lights, was I damned. I offered myself – removed my head – made of myself a candle, entire. I gathered strange supplies for one last journey – prepared – embarked.

You may be horrified, dear reader, of what this journey has contained. I know I am. You may wish – I know I do – that my story had been a longer and a better one. There are so many stories I left unfinished, friendships I failed to forge, things I could have yet done.

But my story led me here, to this frozen gate. I will not turn back now. I will knock, and ask my question – and who knows, what then.

Yet lest you think I have acted entirely selfishly – which would be a fair assessment – lest you think that all my study of natural philosophy, no matter how outlandish, neither produced nor will produce any good – which would, so far, seem to be the case – lest you think that I chased dreams until I was devoured by a nightmare – which would be wholly true – I offer this last, feeble act.

I closed Dr. Beale’s House of Arguing, my salon.

In its place I have erected an orphanage, the Quejana Home for Parentally Deficient Youths. I entrust Ooth-Nargai with its management; I have every confidence that it will be a loving home. Even if my scholarship is wrong, or unremembered, or of no use, I will at least have given children a home.

That’s enough, right?

There were times when I wanted to rule. There were times when I wanted to better the lot of all thinking creatures. There were times when I wanted simply to teach.

We do not always get what we want.

We can still try, right?

There are so many ways I could end this. I will not cheapen it by trying to add a justification, nor an exhortation to keep one’s chin up. I will only offer a jumble of misremembered sentiments, and let you choose the one you think most fitting.

That’s fair, right?

Cry no more, shapeling, cry no more / Men were deceivers ever / One foot on sea, one foot on shore / To good things constant never. /

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

A reckoning shall not be postponed indefinitely.

What is Mr. Eaten’s name? That’s the best ----ing question, anybody ever asked.

Kiss your dad, square on the lips.

Good night, Fallen London, good night.

Ooth-Nargai. Celephaïs. I love you.

– Manolo Maria Quejana y Karunungan, the erstwhile Dr. Mortimer Beale

#mort writes #fanfiction #fallen london #mortimer beale #seeking mr. eaten's name

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