#I considered just putting a literal Venus flytrap but I thought it might be a little too on the nose lol

[the-storyteller78]

Ok, I know the Circe Saga has been out for like forever and now the Thunder Saga is out and wreaking havoc on our collective emotional and mental health, but I just like drawing Circe. She looks friend-shaped. 10/10 would take a seat. (Also I just realized that she has a similar color scheme to Megara, which was not intentional but I’m not entirely unhappy about it)

[slightly-nerdy-rambles]

Robstar Week Day 1: Flower Power (Prompt: Floral Arrangements)

Welcome, everyone, to this year's rendition of Robstar Week! This year was a bit of an odd one for me, because a recent move, an associated new job (actually an internship, but it's still a 40 hour workweek), and some seriously bad luck with my computer right around the time the prompts came out meant I got a bit of a late start. We're here now, though, and while I may not have had much of a chance to make any really long fics, I think these still came out well!

Writing this first oneshot reminded me of my late grandfather, who would regularly get little bouquets of flowers for my grandmother just because. It was a really simple and sweet kind of gesture, but that doesn't mean that certain socially-awkward superheroes who are still new to this whole dating thing can't be awkward about such gestures, ahaha.

Flower Power

It was official: Robin was the biggest cheeseball in the Titans Network.

Okay, so that was probably an exaggeration. Maybe. There weren't a lot of couples in the Network at the moment, he was pretty sure, but it was also an organization that included Kid Flash.

Besides, he told himself as he pushed open the door to the florist's shop, the bouquet of flowers thing had technically been Star's idea. It was an odd sort of sticking point for him that way back when they'd been stuck on that blasted planet, when he had convinced himself that the only reason she was mad at him for denying his feelings for her was because she had taken the word "girlfriend" too literally, she had corrected his error in part by mentioning "bountiful floral arrangements."

Well, if she wanted bountiful floral arrangements, who was he to say no? It was too late for Valentine's Day, and they wouldn't have an anniversary for a while considering they had just gotten together a little over a week ago, but that didn't mean he couldn't treat his new girlfriend to something nice. Right?

(No, really; was this normal? He was pretty new to this dating thing and still felt like he had no idea what he was doing.)

All these thoughts swirling through his head screeched to a halt when he realized everyone in the shop had gone silent and turned to stare at him. Most of them just looked vaguely baffled to see one of the Titans here, but one or two of them were grinning.

Great. Robin blamed Tokyo for this.

Unsure how else to handle the sudden attention, he approached the nearest display as casually as he could and started looking over the arrangements. There were several, of course, all artfully and colorfully put together in ways that he was sure he didn't have the experience to properly appreciate.

They were also pretty expensive, now that he looked at them.

"How can I help you?"

Robin considered it a small victory that he suppressed any instinct to jump at the sudden question. He turned to see a florist eyeing him calmly with an expectant but professional smile.

"Umm…" He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced back at the display case. "Yeah, I'm just looking for a little something nice to get for… someone special." He was definitely blushing at this point, he could tell.

The florist nodded. "All right. What you're looking at now are usually for special centerpieces; if you want a more personal bouquet, I think it would be best to start with the flowers you want and we can put something together from there. What does, ah, your special someone like?"

Robin had to hand it to the guy, he really was a professional. He was already starting to relax a little.

That… was an excellent question though. What flowers did Starfire like? Did she even have any favorites?

It might have helped if he knew anything about Tamaranean flowers. Unfortunately, his knowledge of plant life on that planet was pretty much limited to the fact that at least some of it bit back. Would she appreciate a Venus flytrap? Could he even get one of those here?

"Uhh… I don't know, exactly," he eventually admitted. "I know she likes the color purple."

Just then, a thought occurred to him. "Oh! Do you have cherry blossoms? Or, I dunno, anything like those?" That seemed like something that would be meaningful for both of them no matter what she thought of the flowers themselves, and while he had no idea if they'd be here or still in season, even something similar would be a nice gesture.

The florist smiled again and waved him further into the shop. "Let's see what we have."

Robin followed the man with renewed confidence. Yeah, he could do this. He could get a nice little bouquet of flowers for his girlfriend and it didn't have to be weird at all!

He didn't pay attention to the little tinkling of the doorway bell behind him until the excited murmurs started. Great. More gossipy fans.

"Oh! Um, is this a bad time?"

Robin froze at the sound of that exceptionally familiar voice. He spun around to see Starfire standing just through the doorway, clutching some sort of list written in her loopy handwriting and at the top of which he was pretty sure he spotted his own name. She was staring right back at him now, and had a furious blush on her face that he was certain he was starting to match.

…Yeah. The two of them were definitely the biggest cheeseballs in the Titans Network.

[someobscurereference]

HORROR TROPE OPINION TIME!! what are your thoughts on: werewolves, dopplegangers, body horror, haunted houses?

Horror tropes!! You love to see it!!! (Also, obvious TW for all the stuff I link below. I'm discussing horror here.)

Werewolves: "When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it."

But also, just like. The heavy knowledge that you are a beast in sheep's clothing. There Is Something Wrong With You. Looking at your mom or your sister or your boyfriend and thinking about the blood on your teeth. The blood on their teeth. The copper between you. The dead meat in your garden.

Werewolves are very funny and can be done in super funny ways, but when it's Serious wolf time? Like full on running in the woods, heart pounding in your ears in fear, knowing there's only seconds before its you on your back in the cold dirt and your friend's teeth at your throat? Both of you standing on a knife's edge and you can fall either way? That's good.

Also don't even get me started on the metaphors for Werewolfism and The Other and what it means to identify with The Beast.

Doppelgangers: Doppelgangers! A thing that looks like you but isn't! I think this is a very good horror trope, but my earlier introduction to it was always from the perspective of the doppelganger??? Like. The copy looking at the body of the original person and thinking "that wasn't me but we were the same and now I've killed the original but I Feel like the original but who knows what the truth is; one of us is dead and it isn't me but who was that person, did they deserve more, could we both have lived, who is this stranger with my face could we have been the same once or if not who was I before--"

I'm rambling because it's hard to put into words but I think Doppelganger horror can work very well, but it overlaps a lot with the meaning of Identity and Who Gets To Live; Can We Both Live and other intrinsic questions that are interesting but hard to answer sometimes, depending on the story. I'm always very interested in the Doppelganger's POV more so than the original person's.

But also, like. The movies The Thing and Us are popular for obvious reasons, lol. So I think this is a trope that can be done well from either POV, but I also think it can be harder to pull off than your standard ghost story in a way too, depending on what you're trying to do with it.

Body Horror: This one is a little tough to answer because I think the many types of body horror can vary so much? I said before that I don't enjoy the Saw franchise or really Final Destination because they do a lot of gore and body horror that I find very gratuitous, and I don't care for that or appreciate that at all. I don't care for body horror that's just blood and gore for no reason. But also, I think being a werewolf counts as body horror in some genres, and I like that a lot.

I think I did a lot of body horror with my "that girl is a monster" series. Like, "this is a creature that mimics humans and was maybe or maybe not human at one time and now they're the rotting corpse equivalent to a venus flytrap" is a concept of body horror that I like! And that's just one of many examples of how you could with it! TMA (although again I've never finished it) did a lot of good body horror stuff in that regard too, and that was cool. (Like Jane Prentiss? The concept of "aw shit it's that bug woman again" that was a little funny in conception bc Jon didn't believe in shit until suddenly it wasn't funny and the characters were being chased by the horrific bug woman? That was good!)

I don't think body horror has to necessarily be visually dark or gory to be horrific either! Like I would consider this art to be body horror, technically. It's not really meant to be horrific in its intention, I think, but like! Growth as a literal growth! You have intrinsically changed "for the better" and also it's painful and you have tree limbs in your lungs! That's body horror!

(But also, just to be clear, this bloody art of a scene from RE7 is for sure up my alley too. So straight gore body horror is fine for me so long as the style is cool or something is being said here. If you're doing just Saw stuff, I'm not interested, but this beating heart with flowers and this art of Henry Fire Emblem being gored up by some crows are good examples of body horror I enjoy)

So tl;dr I do like body horror, but if you're not an artist with an aesthetic I love, I'm skipping your gore scenes and going straight to the monster transformation

Haunted Houses: This is. The ultimate trope for me. A haunted house. A haunted person. A haunting.

I feel like this one is hard to answer for me, so just know that 1. I love haunted houses and hauntings very much, 2. I think The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor are two types of Very Different haunting stories and I view both of them as Very Good in different ways, and 3. here are some links that I like that might help you identify how I feel about hauntings in other ways

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