I had a dream I was a poor tinker man. I came to town and saw a beautiful girl in a red dress and desperately wanted to marry her. So I went to a fortune teller to see if I could make her mine.
The fortune teller said the fortune fell under “pig” and wrote in delicate calligraphy a poem that there was a chance to make her mine but if I failed, I’d be dead before morning.
I went and presented a gift of salt pork to her family and ended up grievously insulting her father by having bought the pork of his rival to present to him. He was influential in town and people began to mutter that I was a no good scoundrel, a trader in black market goods.
Desperately I returned to the fortune teller who wrote out a poem under the word “rat” that told without her brother here to protect her she’d be tarred with my poor name, she’d go to marry a very poor man and live a wretched life.
And then the scene changed. She walked on my arm through the market, we were happily shopping for wedding dresses and food. I watched while she tried on different ones, picking a lovely red dress.
Then someone came through the market and whispered her brothers name. He was coming. Fear struck my heart and I began trying to hurry her. We needed to get married right away, right away. We couldn’t wait. She was confused and reluctant. She didn’t want to hurry our special day.
Then her brother strode into the market and declared that I’d tried to have him killed. I begged them to reconsider, it had been someone else. But my bride to be pulled from my person the fortune tellers poems.
I had bound them together with magic, taking only the parts I wanted. I would marry her and live a happy life if her brother wasn’t around. But I couldn’t do anything about the death, and now it hung over both of us, me and her.
And then the dream changed. I was the girl watching them drag away the tinker. And I walked to the fortune teller and held up the paper and said, “This is his fortune, not mine. He didn’t want me as a person, just a prize to be won. What is my fortune?”
And the fortune teller smiled and wrote mine under “rabbit” and it said that if I could find a new mate before dawn we would live a happy life together.
And all the women who had been faceless in the background the whole time stepped forward to help me. My mother, the dress seller, my sister, my best friend, we all looked for a new person to marry. But all the men in town were old, or married already.
Then I turned and looked to my best friend who was holding my hand and desperately trying to save me and I said, “Will you marry me?” And her face lit up and we kissed and ran off to the local preacher with the other women as witnesses. And we stole the tinkers horse and cart and rode away from that town to start our new life together.
concept. gracerocky soulmate au (romantic or platonic you decide) where once you're like. idk at the start of the chain of events that leads you to your soulmate you begin to have prophetic dreams about the moment you make physical contact with them for the first time.
after grace moves onto the aircraft carrier he begins to have a recurring nightmare where he is surrounded by red flashing lights, immobilised and unable to breathe, when a giant spider creature crawls out of the darkness and drags him away. and then he wakes up
i know that when a book describes dragons picking up their riders they probably mean scruffing them by the neck in their mouths like a kitten, but i always imagine something like this
the funny thing about BloodyMary is that, if you’re Simon (religious and sent to die in a blood ocean) and then you wake up clean and well rested in a clean and bright medical room, and some beautiful blond guy walks in (maybe covered in sparkling Eridian jewelry) and smiles and introduces himself as Grace, “I’ve died and this is an angel” is actually a very reasonable conclusion to reach, in that context.
increasingly interested in the fact that Susie is the stock rpg protagonist growing with the power of friendship and defying fate, and we're playing as the party member who does the inevitable third act betrayal instead
"average person pirates 3 pieces of copyrighted media per day" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person pirates 0 copyrighted media per day. Piracy Eva, who lives on a boat & pirates the entire internet, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Twice, Ryland Grace is faced with the same pivotal decision: to save himself, or to save an entire planet.
The first time:
He is surrounded by white (bravery) and is wearing yellow (cowardice)
The world is telling him to be brave, but he can’t, not yet, because he is a coward.
He has lost his identity and autonomy
The decision is already made (he must die)
He is all alone (he doesn’t have the bravery gene)
The second time:
He is surrounded by yellow (cowardice) and is wearing white (bravery)
He is in the middle of his namesake: a field of rye. The field is the yellow of cowardice; that is who he was, but he can’t be that, not anymore, because he is brave.
You know who you are. You’ll do great.
The decision is already made (Rocky must live)
Rocky’s ball is beside him (he has found someone to be brave for)
Something New (~1700 words, Mal/Ben, shameless fluff content because I don’t care what Disney says, I’m writing a better wedding for these kids)
✨
“Hey, Mal.” Ben says. “Look at me for a sec?”
Mal turns. There’s a faint breeze blowing through the pines, and the air moving over the water of the enchanted lake smells fresh and sweet, despite the late-summer heat that’s making Mal’s hair fall limp and sweaty against the back of her neck. “Yeah?”
Ben’s smiling at her, that sweet one that makes his cheek dimple and his eyes go all bright and happy. He’d been sitting on one of the rocks by the lake, but slides off so that he’s kneeling instead, still staring up at Mal with that sweet look on his face. “Will you marry me?”
What.
“I--” Mal stutters. “Yes?”
“Really?”
Mal’s heart is pounding like she’s running from a dragon. From Mother. No need to sugar coat it when there’s nobody but herself to hear. “I think so,” she tries again, breath stuttering. “I mean, yes. I do want to marry you.”
Oh, gods above. Mal does want to marry him, and it’s terrifying. She’s never wanted to marry anyone before, and she’s thinking about it too much now, and oh, Evie is going to absolutely flip when she hears this. “What the fuck.” Mal says. As Ben scoops up her hand and kisses it. There’s no new ring in his hand, but he kisses the seal, the one that Mal’s been wearing since that first day where she choose this new life, when she chose to be good.
“I love you,” Ben says. “And I want to marry you.”
“And I love you.” Mal says back, automatically. “Why do I feel like I’m being completely blindsided by this?”
Ben shrugs. He’s still down on his knees, and the sunlight filtering through the trees is turning his hair all golden. He’s so earnest about these things. Mal loves him, whatever the hell that means.
“I couldn’t tell you that,” Ben says, leaning into Mal’s leg a little bit. “I wasn’t trying to be subtle, you know. The whole, like, cute place out here, making time to actually get a proper date instead of just crashing after class, and I did literally ask you how you felt about marriage the other week.”
“I thought it was a hypothetical.” Mal says, almost automatically. “I thought you were asking for, like, some kind of vague time in the future, not now.”
“Do you want me to take it back?” Ben asks, looking a bit taken-aback himself. “I can ask you later, or never, if that’s what you want.”
“No!” Mal exclaims, and makes a grabby motion at her fiance, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Ben’s got a very kissable sort of face, so it only makes sense for Mal to kiss him a little bit.
“Okay.” Ben says, but it comes out sort of like ‘Ookey’ because of the way Mal is sort of holding on to his face. “Not taking it back then.”
“I think I’m gonna need a hot second to process this.” Mal says, once she’s pulled back from kissing the daylights out of her prince, what the fuck. “Are we like-- what does this even mean?”
Ben buries his grin in Mal’s cheek, as is right. “Well, when two people love each other very much--”
“Shut up! Are we like, is this it?” Mal asks, tipping over into something a little bit hysterical. “Do you have some kind of royal bling hidden somewhere you’ve been waiting to pass on until now?”
Ben kisses her again, just a little bit. “Well, I do sort of have to do this publicly at some point,” he says, voice low like he’s at least sorry about it. “It’s a whole tradition, and my parents will get really mad if I don’t, and you know the whole deal. I was going to give you the ring then.”
“I want fair warning before you make me have emotions in public,” Mal says, quick as anything. She’s crying a little bit, oh gods. “And the council will get mad, you mean. Your parents accept me for who I am now.”
Ben kisses the tears that are sliding down Mal’s cheek. “Yeah. My parents want me to be happy, and you make me really happy, so. The council was still hoping that I’d get married to one of the Auradon Prep princesses, but well, you saw how well that was working out.”
Mal snorts through her tears. “You like a bit of rough, huh princling?”
“I like you.” Ben says, oh-so-earnestly. Oh, she’s going to cry again. Ben must notice the way that Mal’s face is going warm and blotchy pink with the emotion, because he pulls back sort of abruptly to put his hands on her shoulders instead, moving his thumbs gently along the tense muscles there. “Is that too much? I shouldn’t say I like you?”
“I-- I don’t know,” Mal stutters. She feels sort of sick, but in a good way. A stomach-flipping, butterflies way. “I feel sort of like I’m going to-- I think I’m having an emotion?”
“Does it hurt?” Ben asks, grinning.
Mal smacks him gently with the palm of her hand, and leaves it there, cupping his sweet face. “Yeah! It does. What’re you gonna do now, huh? You’re making fun of me, and I’m hurt. You can’t say something like that to your girlfriend. That’s not Auradon-approved.”
Ben’s grin only gets wider. “Ah, but I’m not saying it to my girlfriend!” he says, approaching unbearable levels of disgusting joy. “You said yes! You’re my fiancee now.”
Mal has to laugh, and even if it comes out a little hysterical sounding it’s better than nothing. “Evie says it doesn’t count until there’s a ring on it, and I don’t see any ring yet, princeling. Gotta get me that bling and then you can be mean to me all you want.”
“I do have a ring, you know,” Ben says, leaning into Mal’s touch. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see it yet.”
Mal’s not sure what exactly to do with that one. Sure, she’s got some different traditions around relationships, but it’s hard to miss any wedding traditions from back home when none of the villains she knew even got married unless it was to publicly announce an alliance, and even then those marriages were usually short lived and an excuse for a night of indecency and public innuendo. Nobody but sidekicks got married for love on the isle, and while gangs might have exchanged some sort of trinket to make sure they were marked as running together, the bracelets and tattoos didn’t have the same sort of sentimental value as proper wedding jewelry.
Unless.
“Oh. Until you do it publicly?” Mal realizes. She’s been the one to put more emphasis on doing things the ‘right’ way, and even after some of the revelations that came with her somewhat public meltdown last year, she’s still got some hangups about doing things the way that Auradon society would have them done. Evie would have some psychoanalysis about it , that’s for sure.
Whatever. It’s fun to figure out how to blend in to proper high Auradon society, especially now that she knows there’s no pressure from Ben to do so. As long as she’s not actively insulting people or trying to stir up too much trouble, he doesn’t care what kind of lowkey, simmering dissent she’s stirring up against his father. It’s like blending in anywhere else, really. All it takes is a little practice and some bending of the rules, and now that she’s got a good enough handle on what boundaries can be pushed, it’s almost like a game and not like a terrifying unknowable pit of anxiety that’s consuming her bones from the inside out.
Yeah.
“Yeah,” Ben agrees. “I thought you’d want to have something left of the surprise for when I do it publicly, but you can look at it once we get back if you don’t wanna wait.”
“Yeah? Is it in the back of your sock drawer too?” Mal asks, teasing now that she’s got her mind under her again.
Ben goes a bit pink about the cheeks. “Maybe,” he says. “So what? It’s not like anybody’s looking there.”
“Knowing you, you’re keeping some kind of historical relic in the back of your drawers, huh?” Mal asks, sweeping her fingers through her fiance’s hair. Fiance. It’s not sort of a nice sound to it, actually.
“No.” Ben says, immediately. “It’s not a relic. Not for you, Mal Bertha, first of her name, first of the VKs to come over to Auradon. You deserve something that’s all your own.”
“I’m not--” Mal starts.
Ben cuts her off. “You are. You’re the first Mal, and that’s what matters. Your mom might not have given you a full name, but you made one for yourself. That’s what we’re about, aren’t we? We’re the ones in charge of our own destinies, not some stuffy adults who are still living in the past.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you crying?” Ben asks, because he’s awful sometimes and wants Mal to talk about her emotions.
Ugh. Dragons don’t cry. “Not yet, asshole.” Mal gets out, around the weird feeling in her throat, and okay, yeah, the tears that are threatening to slip out.
“Do you want me to stop being nice to you? I can smack you if that would help.” Ben offers unhelpfully, still grinning a little bit. What a dork.
Mal lets out a choked sort of laugh, and leans back to offer her cheek, tears and sweat and all. “Yeah, actually. Just gimme a good whack, okay? I’m sure that’ll go over great with the others.”
“We can say you drove into a branch.” Ben says, and presses a kiss to her cheek instead.
“Oh geez, don’t even remind me,” Mal says, wincing a bit at the memory. She’s still getting the hang of the whole moped thing, and narrow forrest trails don’t make for the easiest learning experience. “I think I still have pine needles in my teeth.”
Ben kisses her again. “Sorry.”
“No you’re not.” Mal reminds him.
“I’m not!” Ben says gleefully, and hugs Mal so hard she can feel her ribs protest a little bit. “I’m going to marry you.”
“Dork.” Mal says, ruffling his hair.
“Yeah.” Ben agrees, and pulls on the sweaty end of her ponytail in something like retaliation.
“You wanted to make this official, beastie boy?” Mal says, teasing but also so deadly serious that she can feel her heartbeat all the way in her fingertips.
“Yeah,” Ben breathes. “Yes, Mal.”
“What’s more official than a little true love’s kiss, huh?” Mal breathes, and kisses him.
truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
i do find the rules around clothes fascinating because of how made up it all is. we invented the idea of covering our bodies from the elements because we lack fur like other mammals and then made up all these rules around it and now people will unironically tell you "men cant wear skirts its unnatural" girl none of this is natural. we are born naked and made up the rest as we went along. hope this helps.
