Teasing can be frustrating, but it will all be worth it in the end - right?

There was no good way to say it: sorry about your surprise sex swap and your nonconsensual werewolf bite also rearranged your butt plumbing and congratulations, I've probably destroyed your sex life forever were not exactly Hallmark sentiments.

I feel pretty strongly that the second half of Naruto diverted all the momentum of the first half, where what I wanted to see was what would happen if it speeded up instead. This arc is an AU of canon, in which Kakashi dealt with Sasuke differently after the first fight with Itachi and Sasuke never left Konoha. Changes spiral off from that point. This is also the arc where I change all the things that truly made me tear my hair in canon, such as the carbon copy generations, the sidelining of the women, the apotheosis of Naruto as a solitary hero, and Itachi turning out to not be a villain. So none of that happens. There is, however, Sakura/Sasuke/Naruto goodness. Also featuring a dash of Kakashi/Iruka and a side arc about Hinata and the Hyuuga clan that somehow shoehorned its way in while I was innocently contemplating ninja sociology.

He keeps the aqun-asala powder in a jar on his dressing table. Every three months he spoons some of it into a mug and mixes it into the water with his finger. It's supposed to be tasteless, but when he swallows it down it lingers on his tongue, affects the taste of anything else he eats for the next couple days, mutes everything. He gets a kick outta eating spicy shit all lackadaisically and offering it to people, and acting surprised when it burns their mouths. (When he explains it to Sera, after she's stopped crying and threatening to stab him with one of his own horns, she thinks it's hilarious — tries to talk him into letting her have enough to prank people, actually. He knows exactly how much is left in the jar though, and he's not sure he's ever gonna get more... so she has to make do with sitting next to him and watching.) "So it keeps you from losing it, huh?" she asks, glaring down into her empty flagon like she doesn't know where the beer got off to. "No squishy pffff—" she puffs up her cheeks and sets the flagon down, curving her hands into a circle and then moving them apart, "—for the qunari pokers?"

Dragon's fire is not so easily extinguished; when Zuko rediscovers a lost firebending technique, shifting flames can shift the world...

Everyone has their own theories about how Jiang Cheng, of all unlikely people, got the opportunity to become a god. They're all wrong. It started with a kind act - and a story.

Nie Huaisang rather liked their Neighbors. He was aware that that was widely viewed as being a little bit odd of him, but it wasn’t any more odd than his general distaste for training his saber – though combined with his passion for pretty things, fans and clothing and paintings and birds, more than one person had not-so-subtly implied that they thought Nie Huaisang might be a changeling. (They only ever implied it once – Nie Mingjue seemed to have an extra sense for finding out when people were being cruel to his brother, and no hesitation whatsoever about beating the living daylights out of them when he did.)

There has always been a divide between the sect and the clan. The clan flows through the male line, heritage and paternity, but it is the wife who comes from outside that rules the sect - a measure, Lan Xichen thought, put in place to prevent war between the sects. Who would want to risk antagonizing someone who might end up running your sect some day? And then Nie Mingjue's father died.

During his time rebuilding the Jiang sect and the Lotus Pier from the ground up, Jiang Cheng meets a lot of people. Some of them he keeps. (5+1 Jiang Cheng adopting stray cultivators after the Sunshot Campaign)

Shang Qinghua goes to take a self-indulgent peek at his baby protagonist son and gets a kick to the shrivelled heart for his troubles. He gave up on changing the story years ago! Yet he finds himself helping his protagonist son's adoptive mother anyway. Just this one change won't matter too much, right? One little change leads to more. Shang Qinghua never meant to care, but he becomes invested in making sure that his new family survives the looming plot. With the changes to the world cascading around him, with his position as a traitor pulling him between his sect and a certain ice demon, and with the protagonist growing up so quickly, how is one displaced author meant to ensure that everything turns out all right? A Pre-Canon to Canon Divergence story.

Prompt: We keep hearing little bits about the Nie bros dad, but what about their moms?

Edgar has wanted to be a member of the Choir since he first learned of its existence, and he finds himself inducted into its ranks in the most unusual of ceremonies.

“What kind of pleasure do you want to offer the Lover?” Sid asks. People usually want sex, of course, but not always – Sid’s had supplicants who just wanted to make out, or cuddle, or flirt… and one memorable supplicant who wanted to give him a massage, which was awesome. She confessed to Sid afterward that she’d gone in intending to have sex, but “when I saw those muscles, I was like, damn, I need to get my hands all over that!”

And then Furiosa has a Citadel. Not just a Citadel, but all the people inside it - the Wretched, the War Boys, the Milk Mothers, the Wives, the two remaining Vuvalini… and Immortan Joe's men. That last group are first in her thoughts. The threat there is most obvious.

The first time Nicke sees a mature pair of player wings in person—not pre-downs, not rookie wings, but a full wingspan—it's the April before the draft, and he's in a dressing room in Latvia, trying not to be star-struck by his own teammates. Or: The NHL gives you wings.

Not even two days later, Fox revised his opinion. This wasn’t a disaster. This was a Grade-A, first order, fresh off the hot plate fuckfest. Fox’s day had gone something like this: lay in bed. Get up. Knock back some of the sludge in the mess masquerading as caf. Go through forms. Fill out forms. Bust open a closet in which the Senators for Uyter and Kinyen had both managed to get “stuck” in. Go through more forms. Fill out more forms. Get called up to the Senate dome to tell a Senator that no, the Guard did not address noise complaints. Find that the stack of datapads on his desk had somehow tripled over the last two hours. Despair at the state of his inbox. Etcetera, etcetera. And then.

Normally, she wouldn’t be here—there was flimsiwork to be done, wounded to visit, and loved ones to write letters to explaining the deaths of their sisters, but after she had limped onto the transport that was bound off the battlefield and back to the Endurance, Ponds, also one of the last off the field, laying eyes on her for the first time in days after they’d separated for the battle, had taken one look at her and firmly told her that she needed a break. Mace hadn’t had the energy to argue—Ponds, when convinced of something, was quietly stubborn to the end. So Mace had gone through a list of places she could quietly retreat to on Coruscant that weren’t close enough to the Temple for anyone to recognize her out of Jedi robes, and had ended up picking the Moonlight on a half remembered memory. Series

The Republic sends a combat photographer to be attached to the 212th until further notice, citing the need for a morale boost. The clones make up a fake clone, citing the absolute fact that it is very funny. Somehow, these two things save the galaxy.

It’s funny, Robin notes as she sits on the deck of the Thousand Sunny, book in hand, That the people who are called Demon, Monster, Devil aboard this ship of dreams are not the true Monsters. No, she thinks, watching her crew as they spend the day on the deck of the Sunny, Not monsters at all. - Or: The East Blue has a different nickname to those in the Grand Line, and those who hail it as home have a few... unique traits.

Cody keeps a list of miraculous things he comes across amidst the mundane.