A young single mom who is helplessly in love with books... don’t think me old, I’m 20.
260 posts
- You can’t do this forever, my king. Your knees will give out, or maybe your arms will. Or perhaps you’ll look above yourself and notice the sky cracking from where you’re holding it. - What would you have me do? Stop? - A break, perhaps. For just a moment, just a breath. - Convince me. - How? - Lie to me.
I know this cracking marble floor I’ve heard this sighing wind I knew this husk when it was vibrant and alive
The 2:33AM point I made to my sister well she’s halfway across the US on a trip.
You can make me choose between the classic.
Choose between the CW hotties.
Hell even make me choose between the my Apocalypse Boys.
Make me choose between three Kings.
once a king or queen of narnia, always a king or queen of narnia. may your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.
because I just re-read Prince Caspian and remembered how completely different it is to the movie, and because it says Aslan is good but not safe and I think so is Narnia and, as they become part of the fabric of it, so are the Pevensies
“You may find Narnia a more savage place than you remember.”
Trumpkin has never heard a silence so loud as this that follows his warning. The children glance at each other, crowding the air with a language he isn’t hearing. His skin prickles with it. He turns away from them, drawing his knife to begin skinning the wild bear.
Only a moment later, the smaller, darker boy is drawing his own knife and dropping to his knees. Trumpkin looks at him sidelong, uncertain.
“I’m a fair butcher,” King Edmund tells him mildly, and he plunges his arms in up to the elbows.
~
This is the story Trumpkin knows.
That once, Narnia was held in the grip of a terrible Winter brought upon it by a tyrant Witch, that four children were called by Aslan the Great Lion out of their own land to cast her down, and when they had done so the Lion crowned them himself at the shining castle of Cair Paravel, where the ruins now lie on the sea. That they governed so wisely and well that the folk of Narnia knew nothing of evil or hardship. That all was joy, when the trees danced and the animals spoke.
That the first of them held with equal steadiness the sceptre and the sword, that to him was given the crown above crowns, that every sovereign before or since stood but palely in the shadow of his glory. That the second of them surpassed all other beauties, that she was soft of hand and soft of heart. That the third of them had learned such wisdom on the path of darkness that his counsel was worth more than rubies, and the tongue in his mouth was as silver as his crown. That the fourth of them was the darling of the land, that laughter and lightness were her constant companions, that to see her smile was to be blessed.
In front of him now, the fourth is drying her eyes with dirty sleeves, and the third curses as he picks blood from under his fingernails, and the second scowls, tugging at her long hair, all straggly with salty air and sweat, and the first of them is building a thin fire with trembling hands, silent.
~
“Don’t say much, eh, that brother of yours?”
He is walking alongside Queen Lucy the Valiant, who is all of nine years old, wearing a grin and a dagger. They are following the tall one, whose steps are sure and make no sound.
“Well, of course not. He has to be careful what he says.”
“Don’t we all?”
He is chuckling, but she isn’t. Her face is young and pale and flecked with sunlight that shifts like a glamour. There are moments when her teeth look too big for her mouth, when her eyes sit strangely, as though she has stolen them from another. Sometimes she is difficult to look at.
“Not like Peter does. When he speaks…”
Smiling, she spreads her arms wide, embracing the still trees and sleeping waters, the sky above them and the earth below.
“Narnia listens.”
They trudge on, and Trumpkin watches King Peter watching the clouds. He has never been so far as Narnia’s northern border, where the sky lies heavy and indomitable on the bleak, open land. He does not know what it would mean to be crowned for the blue mountains and distant thunder of the cold, still North; the terrible immensity of it. The carvings on the walls of Aslan’s How are flat and dead, fading under the dust of uncountable years. They do not show these things, and they do not show the High King’s lion-gold hair or his clear, calm predator’s eyes, or how at dusk in enemy lands it was once whispered that behind closed lips, his teeth were fangs and his breath smelled of iron.
The little girl skips ahead to catch her brother’s hand. The trees shiver around them, remembering the rhythm of her steps on the earth, the way she’d danced, mad and barefoot, her shrieking laughter in the night. The echo of it has hung in their leaves for a thousand years. Trumpkin sees them stirring, shakes his head, cannot help wondering if her voice, too, is threaded with this deep magic. It’s here in the very presence of these four living ghosts, in their fingertips and their footprints and the corners of their eyes. And though Trumpkin has never been a believer until now, he has heard enough to know that magic is not always sweet.
Behind him, the older girl is humming a tune that Trumpkin doesn’t quite recognise, though it catches in his ears like something familiar. There are no histories written of Queen Susan and the sly sirens, of how she would step from the sea like a drowned woman with her clinging hair, her deep-hued lips, to sing the music she had learned. The histories that remain crown her to the rich south, where the crops grow and the flowers open their delicate hearts for the indifferent eyes of the sun. As Trumpkin turns to look, pulled by that hypnotic song, she snaps a bloom from a bush of wild roses to slide into her hair.
She has not seen him glancing back, but the other one, the younger boy, has. Under his dark eyes, Trumpkin feels as pinned as if he were at the point of a dagger. Though they are far from the wild woods of the west, this is still King Edmund’s realm: the forest with all its shadows and its green secrets, laid bare when winter’s frozen hands come to strip them away. But now it is high summer and the leaves are thick, cloaking the woods in their mystery, and Trumpkin cannot see what is behind the boy-king’s sharp smile.
~
Time is long and wearing, and this is the story the Old Narnians have forgotten.
That Susan’s soft fingers had stung under the tautness of her bowstring, the first time she’d pulled it back to kill. That Peter had wept beside the corpse of the wolf. That Aslan’s maw had been red and sticky, dripping thick ropes of blood, and that the Witch had been beautiful, in her cold way.
~
“I have been told – I have learned about the Golden Age,” Caspian tells them later, shaky and fervent. “The legend. Of what Narnia was when you ruled it. It must seem like a sparse, savage place, compared with the one you knew.”
They watch him silently. Peter, whose eyes are bright and blank as a clear sky, and Susan with her full, unsmiling lips are already their own statues. After a moment, Edmund’s harsh laughter fills the darkness, and Lucy pinches him with fingers as sharp as any faery’s.
That night, Caspian puts the Horn where he cannot see it before he tries to sleep.
Decided to make a slightly more inclusive version of this meme. Lets keep the list going though.
I will never be able to explain the extent of my undying love for Annabeth Chase
me finishing a fanfiction at 3am: thank you, next
me, sitting on the santa claus’ lap: i want a million dollar!
santa claus: ho ho ho! want another thing!
me: i want all my ships to be canon!
santa claus: i’m signing the check for a million dollar.
Dakota: So, Percy, how are you and Annabeth doing?
Percy: Oh. We're no longer dating. Annabeth's my ex-lover now.
Dakota:
Annabeth: Percy! I told you to stop saying that!
Annabeth: *clears throat* Hi, I'm Percy's spouse.
rick riordan made a lot of bad decisions but the worst of them may well have been thinking that percy would actually forget his and annabeth’s one month anniversary.......ok boomer
Percy Jackson died.
He was old enough, he supposed, older than so many of his friends he’d watched die, but not really old. Old enough he was tired, and suddenly finding himself in the lobby he recognized from when he was twelve years old was disconcerting but not particularly surprising.
After all, he was a half-blood, and being a half-blood often got you killed in very nasty ways.
But still.
Percy Jackson died.
Charon remembered him.
“Drown in any bathtubs recently?” he asked dryly, but he waved Percy’s apologies for not having a coin to offer him. “You paid me for passage once and it clearly didn’t stick.”
So Percy Jackson died, and he crossed the River Styx on the ferry, and this time, when he arrived in the Underworld, Cerberus was completely visible.
Last time he came to the Underworld to see Hades, he’d entered the fast-moving line and stepped into the fields of Asphodel. This time, he waited in line to see the judges.
He’d saved the world more than once, they’d better give him something better than eternal stasis.
“Percy Jackson.” Daedalus greeted him warmly, arms full of blueprints and a full toolbelt wrapped around his waist. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Before Percy could respond, he was pushed to the front of the line and was standing in front of three men he had a feeling he should recognize but he didn’t. He didn’t have to speak at all, the three judges talked to each other while flipping through papers Percy couldn’t read, and without actually acknowledging him at all, the one in the middle hit a green button and Percy found himself on the inside of the gated community he’d only seen from the outside.
Percy Jackson died and was sent to Elysium. For a little while, it held his attention. Pretty much anything he wanted, he could have. Blue Coke, straight out of the bottle, better than the blue Coke at Camp Half-Blood. Pizza just like the pizza from his favorite place to go with his mom. Infinite activities, everything he’d ever wanted to do but hadn’t been able to when he was alive. Skydiving, cliff jumping, he got to pilot a plane.
He got to see old friends. Beckendorf and Selena Beauregard, who’d found each other and were happy again. Demigods who’d died in the second Titan war who wanted to hear from him how it had ended, to know what really happened. Heroes who died in the second giant war who wanted to know everything about Camp Jupiter and all of their friends who’d outlived them. Hunters who’d died in battles he hadn’t even known about while he was still alive.
But Percy Jackson was the son of Poseidon, lord of the sea. He didn’t like being contained in one place, and even if Elysium was a paradise for heroes, it wasn’t the same as being alive.
So Percy Jackson died, and Percy Jackson was sent to Elysium, and Percy Jackson chose to be reborn.
Zak Mason was born to a single mom.
He was an ordinary baby, almost. He was born with blue eyes, but they turned brown. He laughed and cried and pooped and spat up. He started preschool with a choppy haircut he gave to himself, and loved sitting on his mom’s lap to listen to Dr. Seuss books and watching anything fast-moving and colorful on TV.
When he was six, Zak’s basketball team won against all of the other first grade teams in their town, and a big picture of his gap-toothed smile holding the trophy he’d helped win with his first three-point shot held the place of honor on the fridge for almost a year.
Sometimes, Zak Mason had nightmares he didn’t understand. Of burning pain covering his entire body, of monsters and shifting Earth and bottomless pits, of faces he didn’t recognize twisted in pain or looking down at him as he fell, of flashing swords and screams and bursts of arrows whistling towards an enemy he couldn’t quite make out. He woke up and forgot the nightmares quickly, but they always left him almost wistful for something he couldn’t quite remember, even with how terrifying they were.
Keep reading
Okay can I just say something here?
As most of you I’m sure are aware, fandoms (esp on tumblr/in fanfiction) can sometimes blow partially-canon traits really out of proportion and venture over into the realm of the fanon, occasionally really, really far, all the while still claiming these verging-on-the-edge-of-ooc characteristics are canon as hell. The massive chain culture we’ve got going isn’t helping this much (think memes. how long do they take to spread. bout ten minutes). So a couple of people say ‘this character behaves in such-and-such a way’, and boom. Suddenly this is accepted as hard truth the world over. One such trait has been bugging me lately, because I’ve noticed basically everyone assigns it to Draco Malfoy and it’s in almost EVERY DRACO-CENTRIC OR INCLUSIVE FIC. Namely, that he is always cool and collected. Suave. Let me just make something very clear right now.
Draco. Malfoy. Is. Not. Suave.
He is not the personification of the verb ‘smooth’. He is not a graceful statue. He is not void of emotion. He is not continually charming and always in possession of his head, he is DEFINITELY not immune to getting flustered, and he’s not freaking unshakable. Soooo many fics portray Draco as this intimidating, almost godlike marble creature who is forever stoic/coy/unaffected in the face of discomfort. And I get where this is coming from. Yes, Draco is good at shutting down his conscience and feelings of guilt or compassion, yes he is mean, and yes he is a snooty aristocrat with a superiority complex. But this does not mean that he’s incapable of feeling or reacting to touchy situations. In fact, throughout the entire series, one of his most noticeable traits is that he does react to touchy situations, very strongly. Exhibit A:
‘This is very easy,’ Malfoy drawled, loud enough for Harry to hear him. ‘I knew it must have been, if Potter could do it… I bet you’re not dangerous at all, are you?’ he said to the Hippogriff. ‘Are you, you great ugly brute?’ It happened in a flash of steely talons, Malfoy let out a high-pitched scream… … ‘Im dying!’ Malfoy yelled, as the class panicked. ‘I’m dying, look at me, it’s killed me!’
I know, this is pre-war Malfoy, but he’s painted as pretty put-together during a lot of Hogwarts era fics as well so I think including this is necessary. Guys, Draco was the biggest drama queen on the planet. It was not hard at all to ruffle his feathers. This child was only cocky when he was completely in control of the situation; any shifting of the playing field and he would either be fuming mad, whining about tattling to his daddy, or running terrified. Fear is a very big element of his character, and that does not ever change, not even in the later books when he drops the theatrics. Draco is not good at handling things during the action, in the here and now. He prefers to work with strategy, to be distanced from what’s going on, so when he’s actually put in a fight-or-flight situation, his natural instinct is always flight. Remember, he is a Slytherin, not a Gryffindor. Self-preservation trumps bravery every time.
He’s certainly not any more collected during the war than he is in his school days. In fact, if anything, it gets worse, as basically all of his swagger disappears and he is little more than a distraught wreck. This kid had panic attacks, he cried in the bathroom to a ghost because he was so scared, he was guilty and traumatized and you cannot tell me that a terrified, messed up kid like that was suave. His attempts at making jabs at the trio all through the sixth year are notably feeble, he’s clearly not good at keeping up a composed appearance at all times as he is described continually as looking pale and sickly and nervous, with “dark shadows under his eyes and a distinctly greyish tinge to his skin”, and when the time comes for him to kill Dumbledore, he’s outright shaking- every word out of his mouth and every action he makes on that tower are positively screaming ‘I DON’T WANT THIS PLEASE HELP ME’.
Now, I’m not saying he isn’t able to act smug in his post-OotP years. He is, and he can still be threatening and cruel as well. But he isn’t aloof. He isn’t a mountain. Draco Malfoy has a very wide range of emotions, he is not made of steel. In Exhibit B, you can see just how ‘calm and cold’ he is when the trio is brought to Malfoy Manor:
‘Well, Draco?’ said Lucius Malfoy. He sounded avid. ‘Is it? Is it Harry Potter?’ ‘I can’t - I can’t be sure,’ said Draco. He was keeping his distance from Greyback, and seemed as scared of looking at Harry as Harry was of looking at him. … Harry saw Draco’s face up close, now, right beside his father’s. They were extraordinarily alike, except that while his father looked beside himself with excitement, Draco’s expression was full of reluctance, even fear.’
Oh, yeah. The kid’s unreadable.
People, level-headedness during tough situations is NOT a canonical aspect of Draco’s personality. The rest of the time, sure, but not when he’s scared. This behavior isn’t exclusive to the war, either- in every part of his life that we get to see in the books, which is basically his entire growing-up years, he panics when things are looking bad for him. And anyone who says he would get all his old arrogance and snark back after the war ended is being ridiculous, because there is no way that’s the case. After all he suffered, after the shaking of his views and the torture he was forced to use on others and the realization that he was not better than the people they were fighting against, that in fact, he was probably far less than them (which we aren’t explicitly given but HAS TO HAVE HAPPENED after all he saw and considering he didn’t uphold his old pureblood views as an adult and that his entire family just quit fighting for Voldemort during the Battle of Hogwarts; he was only in it for his parents by then, and obviously once they forfeited their side he would have too. He did NOT support Voldemort by the end of the series, and probably saw he was wrong far before this), every last dreg of confidence would’ve been drained from him. Post-war Draco would’ve been a shadow of himself, constantly tortured by guilt and regret and the mark on his arm. Not debonair and in love with himself. Not a playboy (honestly where did this trope even come from the only girl who ever paid him any attention was his fangirl Pansy and apparently his wife). That massive section of his life where he was under Voldemort’s control was not a phase that he could’ve just glossed over. It shaped him. He was broken during that war. And he was never as lordly and impenetrable as he most likely aspired to be in an emulation of Lucius to begin with.
So can we all just stop pretending that Draco Malfoy is unflappable and impervious to emotion please? Because he’s not. He’s really not.
And if you guys know any other Fanfiction sites plz let me know!
What is the problem with Wattpad? Just a question, since I think it’s great, lots of good fanfiction writers if you just look right. I see things on here where people are like- You Know You’re Desperate When You Turn To Wattpad.
I absolutely love Wattpad, the same as I love Tumblr. But, that’s just my opinion! Have fun!