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Best bangtan bomb ever

Ficlet: Untitled

So apparently my brain’s solution to ‘I have two sets of fic I should be working on and I don’t know which one to work on first,’ is 'start a new universe in my head.’ So. Er. Here, have a (fantasy, though that’s not explicitly delved into in this) AU, with F!France/England, F!France<-F!Canada->England. F!Canada is Madeline, and F!France is Marianne. I just randomly snagged vaguely relevant placenames out of history. …This would be a whole lot less angsty if it wasn’t from Madeline’s point of view. ;;;

It takes three weeks after her arrival from Gallia for The Lady Madeline Williams, the sole child and only remaining family of the Duke of Vesperia, Lord Matthew Williams, to realise she is totally, hopelessly and irrevocably in love with the heir to the throne of the kingdom of Wessex, His Royal Highness, Prince Arthur.

It is not lust – or, at the very least, not lust alone; Arthur is handsome, Madeline knows none will honestly deny that, but it is in an almost peculiar way. He has his family’s fairness and green eyes – and with them he had inherited a dark set of formidable eyebrows, half-hidden under a forever-mussed fringe, and a tendency to burn rather than tan under the summer sun. He is slim – but set next to other men it seems almost to the point of skinny – and though he is a mage, and people whisper he is fae-touched, his hands are not as lily-soft as the old tales say they should be. No, Arthur’s hands are calloused from both sword and bow, the man apparently being more skilled with the latter, though Madeline has not seen the prince display his talents for either. The flex of his thighs and arse is beautifully distracting when he is upon a horse – but he flares a violent red when he notices himself being watched, suddenly self-conscious, sharp-tongued and curling up into defensiveness.

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What is the most devastatingly beautiful thing you have ever read?

This passage from Carson McCullers’ The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. *sigh*

How about you?

For the YoI anniversary, and for @lazulisong who has had a hellish week, I present to you: Yuuri Katsuki trying on a sample costume without realizing it’s totally backless all the way past the waist.  He takes a picture and sends it to Phichit as a joke - idk, do you think this is regulation? - but because Phichit is the best bro anyone could ask for, he immediately texts back You need that.

Phichit is not swayed by the fact that Yuuri would never be able to wear this in competition without a deduction. Get it for an ice show, he replies. I can’t buy this just for an ice show, Yuuri says. Victor would buy him a costume just for an ice show. Victor would buy him a costume just to cook dinner in if it was flattering enough. But Victor is away and Yuuri is shopping alone, so his frugal upbringing is winning out. Okay, then, Phichit says, punctuating the text with an eyebrows kaomoji. Just think of (eyebrows) what else (eyebrows eyebrows) you might use it for (eyebrows all the way down.) And this is how Yuuri stepped to the rink side at the second annual Victor and Friends ice show, wrapped in Victor’s longest coat (stolen that morning under the guise of the rink feeling chillier than usual), and let it slide off his shoulders before blithely handing it to Victor, smiling, and taking the ice, letting Victor take a long look at the slope of his back as he waves to the crowd. “How’re you doing, darling,” Chris murmurs to Victor halfway through Yuuri’s routine. The show doesn’t end for another hour, Victor wants to keen to the heavens. He takes the next of several deep breaths through his nose instead. 

þ!

A feature of English which I think is stupid,

If we’re carrying on with this game,

Is how we abolished the thorn and replaced it,

With two letters that meant the same.

The þ was a letter, amazing, astounding,

Perfect in every respect,

Representing the ‘th’ sound and shortening words,

The one thing it didn’t expect;

One day T and H went and burgled its meaning,

And then, thanks to the printing press,

Its symbol mutated and morphed into Y,

Which is pointless, I must confess.

Þoughtlessly, the þ was forgotten,

Þreatened as the language evolved,

Þankful for þose who knew of old English,

A topic where it was involved.

It only survived in Modern Icelandic,

In English it’s treated with scorn,

And as barely anyone knows it exists,

Please try to remember the thorn.

Letters from Kids to God

Please, don’t worry so much. Because in the end, none of us have very long on this Earth. Life is fleeting. And if you’re ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky when the stars are strung across the velvety night. And when a shooting star streaks through the blackness, turning night into day… make a wish and think of me. Make your life spectacular. I know I did.”

Jack (via wordsthat-speak)

I think it’s important to realize you can miss something, but not want it back.

Paulo Coelho (via wordsthat-speak)

After every game, my former teammates kept asking me why Kagami-kun could jump so high. Kise-kun wondered if there was a trick to it that he could copy. Midorima-kun thought it was special training. Akashi-kun asked which higher power we bribed to get the ability, and what pentagram we used to summon it. I won’t even repeat what Aomine-kun said, because it was too stupid, even compared to Akashi-kun. The truth is, Kagami-kun gets a huge elevation bonus from his moral high ground, an advantage the Generation of Miracles will never, ever have.

Kuroko Tetsuya (via incorrectknb)