Today, in the series of things I want:
A Kylux AU based on the new Netflix series “Bonding”.
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸

Discoholic 🪩
Misplaced Lens Cap

if i look back, i am lost
Keni
noise dept.
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Claire Keane

⁂

★

ellievsbear
One Nice Bug Per Day
YOU ARE THE REASON

titsay

pixel skylines
tumblr dot com

izzy's playlists!
h

blake kathryn

oozey mess
seen from Singapore

seen from Venezuela
seen from Canada

seen from Türkiye
seen from United States

seen from United States
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seen from United States

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seen from Canada
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seen from Norway
@mirrirr
Today, in the series of things I want:
A Kylux AU based on the new Netflix series “Bonding”.
a hypothetical d&d party
The bard is mute.
It’s not the first thing people notice about her, usually. The first thing is generally that she’s young, and female, and lovely–the first thing people notice about their entire party is that they’re all young, and female, and lovely, and that’s gotten more than one would-be thief or mugger in far over their head when they haven’t noticed the the paladin’s hammer or the ranger’s axe. It comes up rather quickly though, often enough. Whoever heard of a bard who can’t sing?
She plays a lute, mostly, or a lap-harp made of shell and sinew, string instruments she can pluck while she smiles in secret and watches everyone around her. She dances quick, except when she’s tired, when she’s scared, when she forgets to remember the feet at the ends of her legs.
She doesn’t tell her story to strangers, but enough of the other girls have learned to sign by now, and it’s easy enough to sketch out the outlines of the old bargain: the voice, the prince, the witch, the thousand shards of glass she walked upon on her way up the beach, the look in her sea-green eyes when they travel too near water. The thousand shards of glass she walked upon when she left the palace, and turned back towards the sea to throw herself upon the rocks, and then made her way up the road inland, and kept walking.
.
The warlock is beautiful and mild and self-effacing and shy, is tidy and generous and charming. She’s small with herself in exactly the right way to shout abuse to the half of her party who knows how to recognize that same look in the mirror in the morning. The bird on her shoulder is too small, too bright, too sweet for a real warlock’s familiar. The knife at her belt is sharp enough for anything that needs doing, though, cooking or otherwise.
Her fae patron visits sometimes, in the quiet hours between dusk and midnight, a sweetly old godmother made of moonlight and shadow. She’s kind to the whole lot of them in her own chaotic way, free-handed with transmutations and illusions that break halfway through the evening, for better or worse. She once spent three hours around their campfire drinking brandy and gossipping outrageously about the Feywild and teasing the wizard into fits of laughter.
She’s never told the story of how she met the warlock’s mother, or what debt was owed there, and the warlock doesn’t know herself. It was never meant to be a debt paid in power and violence and the deft will-sapping enchantments the warlock weaves now, but, well. The prince wasn’t meant to be cruel, the warlock says. The palace was meant to be warmer than the fireplace cinders in her stepmother’s house. The faerie was meant to be saving her from her lot, not throwing her into something worse. The power’s an apology of sorts.
.
The wizard is awkward and joyful and nervous. She has no fear of heights or small places, which just stands to be expected, she says, after all those years in that little tower, and she’s got no skill at lying or even edging around the truth at all, which is why she isn’t in the tower any more in the first place. She says too much or too little or the wrong thing entirely, always, but the most well-socialized member of the whole party is the ranger who walks around with a dire wolf at her hip, or maybe their mute bard, so who are any of them to judge.
There was nothing to do in that tower but read, and brush her hair, and sort through the witch’s endless stockpile of dried herbs and potions ingredients, and watch out the window as woodcutters and hunters and princes rode by, and dream. The reading was more interesting than the dreaming, most of the time, and the witch didn’t mind it as much when she talked about it. She never bothered to actually use any of the magic in the witch’s books until the thing with the prince and the haircut and the desert, which she’s told them all about in all the detail they could ever ask for, but most of the girls get uncomfortable when she starts talking about princes. It’s a little easier if she just starts rambling about conjuration and abjuration and illusion theory, about the 400-year-old history of a city that doesn’t exist any more, about the proper grammatical structure of Celestial, until maybe one of the quiet ones finally answers back.
Her hair is too short. She keeps an illusion up over it whenever she can, while it grows back slowly, tickling the side of her face and the back of her neck and leaving her head too light and unbalanced.
.
The ranger doesn’t care about princes, which makes one of them at least. Then again, the ranger doesn’t trust anyone, really, prince or no, not wolves or monsters or the men who kill them. She more or less trusts the rest of them by now, mostly, when the wind blows in the right direction.
She wears bright red in the middle of the woods and it shouldn’t help her slip into the shadows half as easily as it does, but most beasts can’t see color and red’s just another shade of gray if the light’s low enough. She never uses her axe against trees. She doesn’t need to. She can find a path through any brush without it. She picks flowers when she finds them, and tucks them into the other girls’ hair.
Her wolf’s mother killed the man who taught her to use the axe, and the man who taught her to use the axe killed that wolf’s mate before that, and the mate had an old woman’s blood on his teeth when it happened. The ranger’s blade found the wolf’s mother’s throat. The ranger’s mother sent her out into the woods in the first place. It’s not as though anywhere is really safe, cottage or forest, axe or teeth. One of these days maybe her wolf will turn and go for her in return, and maybe one of these days her axe will be faster and maybe it won’t. In the mean time, there’s flowers and berries and pastries and enough game to keep everyone sated, for a little while.
.
The paladin’s hair is raven black and her skin is chalky as a corpse. She’s not undead, mostly. The undead are her job. She knows that much.
She was sweet, once (they were all sweet, once) but apples are bitter now and so is she, and there’s judgment to lay out in the world. Her grip on her warhammer’s all wrong–she holds it like a mining hammer, but it hits as hard as it needs to. Her armor’s all dwarven make, and her shield’s black and red and white like snow.
She was sweet once, and frightened, and when she says it quietly around the campfire in the night when none of them can quite make out the glimmer of understanding on each others’ faces, everyone still nods. She took a bite of poison and somebody left her a full year in a glass coffin of Gentle Repose, dangling on the edge of the Raven Queen’s domain while all the other newly-arrived dead passed by and faded away. She woke up to somebody’s lips and hands and skin on her lips and her hands and her skin. She doesn’t like princes. She doesn’t like necromancers.
She likes sunlight, and summer, and colors that aren’t black and white and red. She likes the way the bard grins when she whirls into a dance, and the look in the warlock’s eye when she sets her feet to say no, and the wizard’s laughter on high with a Fly spell, and the ranger’s gentle fingers braiding flowers into everything she can touch.
The archer is all flame-haired and brown cloak, bear-skin pelt over one shoulder. She knows the way of the woods, where the ancient ruins lie, how deep to dig and when to walk away. When she shoots, her whole body goes taut as the string, her anger quick to snap and let fly. Her arrows never miss. Never.
She was young once, had a mother and a father, brothers and a clan. But families turn on each other and little girls are expected to grow into silent women who give their bodies to whatever man claims them. There was a witch and a potion and the others have lived their own version of this part of the story, so they pass the wineskin to wipe the phantom taste of tart from her mouth. When the war came – death is never satisfied with a happy ending – the fire burned the last of her illusions as towers crumbled and boys she thought were friends became men who killed without remorse.
Will-o-the-wisps cling to the hem of her cloak and, on some nights when the moon is bright, they light the party’s way, ringing their campsite and casting shadows as tall as stones.
The fighter’s armor is light, his sword curved with a single-edged blade, silk-wrapped pommel always at hand. His eyes are hooded, haunted by death and blood and battle. He’s long ago quit praying to his family’s gods; there’s no great dragon to save him, no ancestors to offer advice.
No one asks his story and he doesn’t volunteer more than a name that’s not his birth one. They know, can see the scars when he bathes in the river, can hear the nightmares that leave him sweating and awake in the odd hours of the night. No one presses him; he’s saved all their lives multiple times with his quick thinking, impromptu plan, his ability to be what he needs to in order to get the job done. What else do they need to know?
So he travels with them, little empty cage on his belt loop, lotus flower comb tucked in his pouch, and a dragon tattoo on his arm. Sometimes he hums old songs about sow’s ears, silk purses, coursing rivers, and the dark side of the moon. And he’s the first to engage their enemies, every time.
They claim the sorceress gains her power from some ancient, draconic source. All white hair and skin, all blue eyes and ice - its easy to see the hardened stare of a silver dragon in her eyes. She wears light armour of dragon scale and unleashes halestroms of ice and snow.
She walks with her shoulders taught. She speaks with the grace of a Courtier. She pushes herself to the breaking point anytime she can - those closest to her wonder if this is in some sort of act of self-harm.
Not that she would be the first among them to harm herself.
“Close” was a relative term, as well. She never spoke of her emotions. She never spoke of her past. There is a sense of restlessness in her cold demeanor. A sense of a violent river churning just beneath a sheet of ice.
She hates herself, but she hates her powers more. Late into the night, when the last of the campfire’s embers dwindle, she allows herself just a moment of rest. She lets the facade fall. Her eyes are haunted, and the grief she feels is unbearable. But then comes the guilt. And then the anger.
She cannot undo what she’s done, she finds no relief from her sister’s ghost. But the battlefield… that’s somewhat cathartic.
-
The monk comes from power, and in a twist of bitter irony, was given none at all. She shares the archer-druid’s history of being pawned off to men, though she did once dream of romance.
She was to be married off to a friend of her father’s, a man twice her age with eyes that lingered far too long and a snake- tongue that whispered threats. She instead fell in love with a street rat who promised to marry her.
She was young and in love. She believed him. But when her “honour” was gone, he vanished into the night. She was abandoned to marry an old man who controlled what she did, what she could wear, who expected a servant to be at his beck and call.
She was no servant. She fled riches for rags, seeking asylum in the desert. She found it in the monastery that lived within the tiger cave, and discovered her own power.
The only one she trusts is the tiger that shadows her. Impulsive, blunt, and brash - the monk lets no man treat her like a prize to be won.
-
The cleric knows many things.
It would seem infinite knowledge is at her finger tips, her bag filled with books and little else. The one thing she didn’t learn from leather-bound pages is to never make deals with monsters.
She traded her soul for anothers. She walked the halls of a mansion-turned-prison with a volatile, violent beast. She found her faith in the library, the one place where something lived that was more fearsome than her captor.
It takes a certain mental fortitude to escape a cursed beast. It takes even more to stand on even ground with Illsensine. Her experience both makes her a master manipulator, and impossible to fool.
She is master at things she’s never practiced. She has inexplicable sight into things that once were. She even knows the crevasses in the minds of others.
She knows knowledge is power. And she knows many dark and terrible things.
i’m just… so tired of reading posts complaining about problems that only exist because people won’t read romance novels… it is a huge genre there are books about werewolf dukes, there are books about black revolutionary war soldiers, there are books about south asian doms who care about enthusiastic consent, there are books about shape-shifting cowboys who turn into bears, there are books about lady scientists learning how to trust that their boundaries will be respected, there are books about alien barbarian warriors, there are books about genies, there are books about women of color in victorian london, there are books about polyamorous earls, there are fake marriages and marriages of convenience and basically every fanfic trope that people lose it for exists as a book with original characters but some of the same people who complain about how books no longer satisfy them turn a blind eye to a whole genre because it never occurs to them to read a ~bodice-ripper~ when they could read romantic fanfic of a more respectable genre instead
look, if you:
don’t wanna read about two people falling in love and fuckin’
just wanna read more about some specific characters
good news! this post is not about you. here are some posts i have seen with great regularity on this site:
no one who writes original fiction is capable of writing good sex
no one who writes original fiction understands tropes
original fiction doesn’t understand kinks
too many books are about high-stakes things and not enough books focus on character development and interaction
all of which is blatantly and on the face of it absurd to anyone who reads a lot of romance and which is what this post is about. it downplays and devalues the good work being done, especially by marginalized authors, in the romance space. authors should get paid! authors should get rewarded for originality! if you read a shitty romance novel once, i don’t care! so have i! i’ve read a lot of shitty books in a lot of perfectly good genres. if you can spend three hours sifting through pairing tags on ao3 to find the one fic that doesn’t suck, you can look through ebook previews to find something that looks good.
‘books are expensive’ is almost a compelling argument, except that romances and mysteries are two genres where ebooks go on sale for $1-2 with startling regularity. my bookbub emails regularly get ebook boxed sets with tons of different books by different authors going on sale for a buck, which is a great way to find new authors. most authors have newsletters where they let you know about sales and send out freebies. and if your library has overdrive, you can request books. you don’t have to just… see they don’t have it and give up.
anyway, here’s books:
will i ever stop recommending courtney milan’s brothers sinister series? literally never. if you prefer contemporary and don’t mind first person there’s also the cyclone series. if your local library does not have at least one courtney milan book i will be shocked. don’t worry about it if they’re not the first in a series. you can read it out of order. that’s how romance novels work. lots of her books also go on sale for the low price of free on the regular, especially the novellas.
alisha rai’s forbidden hearts series also rules.it’s got starcrossed lovers, it’s got feuding families, it’s got hatefucking, what more could you want
alyssa cole has never written anything bad in her entire life, i’m pretty sure. you want historicals? you want contemporary? contemporary but there’s still sexy dukes? post-apocalyptic? pick your poison, enjoy.
i just read this one recently and now i need to read all the other cat sebastian books i’ve acquired over the years because whenever a book is a dollar and looks like this i buy it immediately (it’s literally a dollar right now). this graphic was very helpful and i wish more authors had ones like it. it’s 2019, bring back web banners for link pages.
i discovered six de los reyes when courtney milan recced beginner’s guide: love and other chemical reactions and i’m really interested to read more of her books. also it made me realize i’d never read a book that took place in the philippines before? no one fucks in this but it’s really cute and sweet and involves a hyper-logical lady scientist, an artist/barista/bad boy, a coffee shop, and Making Out For Entirely Scientific Reasons.
bound with honor is the only book i’ve read from the regency reimagined series. the reimagining seems to be that it’s very bisexual and polyamorous and everyone fucks a lot and also there’s bondage. i am cool with this. i actually bought the whole series at some point?? i… should read these.
i haven’t gotten around to reading tess bowery’s treading the boards series (i have bought so many books) (i was not kidding about the one dollar sales) but i’ve got high hopes because look at them
kj charles is… prolific. and another author whose books i haven’t gotten around to despite owning a lot of them. i actually just bought that one on the right, just now, because i saw that it was a dollar when taking this screenshot.
Total number of school shootings in European countries since 1988.
i’d like everyone to know that as an american highschooler i stared at this map in shock for a good 10 minutes. i didn’t know that other countries didn’t have school shootings. i thought it was normal to not feel safe
wait what
0??
shocking what happens when a country has actual goddamn gun control, innit?
— ariana dancu
Can anyone rec me good Kylux fic? Stuff that was published in the last year or so? I was distracted by other fandoms, so the last time I really read Kylux was when Holly’s CWU-verse was still a WIP. I’d like to get back on the horse again. :)
No angst or ABO-like stuff please. Other than that anything goes - any rating, canon/AU, either can top etc.
Fun read from today
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/heres-what-its-like-to-identify-as-asexual
"I want people to understand that asexual people are simply that — people."
Many of the interviewees are also aro-spec, and there is quite the variation of aces interviewed. This is a nice read and I just want to let y'all know that it is possible to be heard on a large public platform.
look. look at this beautiful sword meme. i’m going to cry
@petermorwood
I saw and reblogged this one a while back, but it’s always worth repeating, and this time I’m adding a bit of background info comparing common fantasy sword features to the Real Thing (with pictures, of course.)
Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.
Here are Celtic bronze swords…
…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…
… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…
Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.
Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…
…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.
This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…
…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.
A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.
I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).
A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.
The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.
Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.
Again, the clue is the centre-line.
Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.
Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.
There’s no doubt about this one either.
The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.
However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.
Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…
…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…
There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.
These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.
NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.
The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.
So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.
Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…
Just a very flexible one…
If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…
Tumblr flagged one of my Skyrim posts... what’s forbidden, man boobs or a female head on a male body? Lol... (It was of when I tried the sex change - I made a female character & changed them to male.)
Aquaman (2018) dir. James Wan
“I attempted the removal ritual once but I was too afraid to die.”
Original Sin – season 3, episode 12
Shadowhunters Very Minor Characters Series [11/?]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Harry Shum Jr is perfection.
Green Curry’s eyes, as if able to split the soul, reveal the demon and evil inside.
Ok Elex if you say so
Went to see Captain Marvel. Liked it.
Now I’m just waiting to see all the Kylux fics where Millicent is a Flerken. :D
Happiness Will Come To You.
when tho
When You Least Expect It. Probably Late March
reblog for happiness to come for you in late march!
I reblogged this last year and I hung out with blink-182 backstage on March 30. Reblogging again because it worked the first time.
honestly, last year one of the best days of my life happened in late March
Ok. But the level of gay in Captain America: The Winter Soldier continues to astound me.
Like, not only do Steve and Bucky have a phrase like a wedding vow that they say to each other, which gets introduced to the audience in the context of Bucky asking Steve to move in with him, and that later is so emotionally impactful that it breaks through 70 years of brain washing and Bucky remembers it before he remembers his own name. Not only does Steve apparently spend his free time hanging out in his own exhibit in the Smithsonian, staring longingly at old photos and videos of Bucky. Not only does the issue of Steve’s love life get repeatedly raised in the set up before Bucky comes back. Not only do Steve and Bucky’s interactions fit really neatly into a lot of epic romance tropes. Not only is Steve literally willing to die rather than hurt Bucky more than he’s already been hurt, even though as far as he knows Bucky has shown no signs of recognizing him.
But also on top of all that, there’s the whole “shared life experience” discussion (not “similar” - shared!!!) which could only refer to Bucky, which takes place shortly before the Winter Soldier’s true identity is revealed. I mean, it could hardly have been more obvious if they were like:
Steve: Believe it or not, it’s hard to find someone with shared life experience.
Natasha: Yeah. That makes sense. Where on earth are you going to find someone who lived through your childhood in Brooklyn and the war right along side you but who also understands what it’s like to get the serum and be frozen? I mean, I just have no idea who could possibly fit that description. Why don’t we ask that dude over there with the mask and the metal arm? Maybe he can help.
I would also like to submit that the song that plays literally seconds before Steve first encounters the Winter Soldier:
Kiss me once, then kiss me twice Then kiss me once again It’s been a long, long time Haven’t felt like this, my dear Since I can’t remember when It’s been a long, long time You’ll never know how many dreams I’ve dreamed about you Or just how empty they all seemed without you So kiss me once, then kiss me twice Then kiss me once again It’s been a long, long time
I mean, I’m sure the only reunion song they could pull from the 1940s has explicitly romantic text. It’s only the 40s, I’m sure no other material was written about people coming back after prolonged absence.
Also, Steve’s apartment is in the heart of Dupont Circle, DC’s traditional gayborhood. He’s surrounded by queer bars, bookstores, and sex shops. They could have chosen anywhere in DC, but they chose Dupont. It’s literally first on the list of the best DC neighborhoods for LGBT people:
And it’s still not enough for Marvel to just make it explicitly canon