#This isn't just about poetry though. That's just the way I feel I can express myself most authentically

[callingcxrd]

I know people mean well and this is something I don't blame them for but I am getting so tired of hearing that Oh, your struggles make you special! Thinking differently means you'll change the world! Like maybe I don't want to be some miraculous idolised Other any more than I would want to be some demonised freak to you all maybe I just want actually understood

[reverieblondie]

I really like the shy s/o headcanons you did. If I can, I’d like to request hcs of Haarlep, Gale, Halsin, & Astarion (& anyone else you might feel like adding) w/ a s/o that’s almost always cool and collected (sort of like a kuudere).

Thanks! 💜

So I am unsure If I didn't go cool enough or if I went to Kuudere for this request, but I really enjoyed writing it so I hope you enjoy reading it! Last Bullet point is NSFW!

Gale

Gale isn't exactly sure how to explain why his heart stirs when he sees you, it just does. You could be reading quietly by the campfire or cutting down enemies, but he always has the same thought when he sees you: Elegance. Your stoic demeanor and how you carry yourself with such grace have been swirling in his brain since your first meeting. You could be covered in any amount of filth but you will still have that keen look in your eye and speak in such an articulated fashion that to him it sounds like poetry, though you know it's not. Posed and a cool tone always the same, Gale finds a certain comfort from being around you. It's kinda nice he's always close by. Sure, he can be a dork, but Gale feels things so deeply, a thing you wish you could relate more to. Though with Gale you find that a part of you is becoming softer, it's mainly directed towards him but it's an improvement. Gale admires you and you think he deserves to be as equally admired and you don’t mind being that person for him. It only will lead to him falling for you more. 

You and Gale were enjoying a moment together in his tent. It had become something like a ritual that at the end of the day as everyone settled into their tents Gale would read aloud a book to you or anyone else who wanted to join. Tonight, however, his tent only had one guest, you. As Gale read his eyes flicked up toward where you were sitting beside him listening intently. You two had found yourselves in the position before on other nights, but tonight was different. You were quiet and so close, in fact from how close he could smell the subtle sweetness that laces itself to your skin. Always so elegant, even now with your hair slightly disheveled from the day. Sitting so patiently for him to continue reading. Gently, Gale brushes the hair back, his fingers grazing you so delicately. Looking at the text you see his smile as he slightly leans in, you follow his lead without a second thought. Forgetting all about the story and relishing in the passionate kiss. You were both happy nobody joined you two for the story that night. 

Gale is always showing you his appreciation in any way he can. Making dinner for you and the rest of the camp. Reading to you and recommending books. Teaching you what he knows about magic, turns out he's a great teacher. You just want to be able to show your appreciation to him, you can just kiss him or go to his tent later and show him what he means to you ,but you want to work on expressing yourself. You were helping him prepare dinner for everyone, as he cooked and would look over at you he would have that same sweet smile on his face. It’s time to express yourself and dig deep. “Do you know how much you mean to me? You are wonderful, and…I’m happy to be yours.” Hours later Gale was still giddy from the sudden phrase. 

Though you try to express your love for Gale through words like he so often does, sometimes words just lack the way you truly feel for him. That's how you two often end up in this situation. Gale with a fist full of your hair bites his lip as he watches you through lidded eyes. He's cummed twice now but you're still down there sucking and licking on him, overstimulating him for more. Though he's completely flushed, you're still looking up at him with those keen eyes as cool as always. On the inside your body is a flame of want, but you know how much he loves your elegant lips wrapped around him. Don’t worry it's your turn after he gives you one more…

Haarlep

You drive them crazy…You're so calm and collected at all times, despite their teasing and taunting you never give anything away. Harrlep wants you to break, they are desperate to be the cause and are very open about telling you this. But you always keep your cool demeanor. It's become a game for them, to be the one to have your resolve tremble down to lust. You on the other hand find their want oddly amusing. Typically games like this don’t interest you but the amount of time Haarlep devotes to you, the way their hungry eyes rake over you does make something in you stir…Maybe one day you will let their game progress, but it will be on your terms, for now, they will have to be pleased with your smiles as you leave them hanging. The chase makes it all the better. 

They had grown tired of the game as they watched you ramage around the House of Hope looking for whatever artifact you needed this time on your adventure. Haarleps fiery eyes watched as you were browsing around not even turning to share a glance with them. Haarlep had tried it all, whispering filth in your ear, running their tail up and down your back, hells they even tried ignoring you back but nothing worked in making you want them. Now here you are alone with them and still nothing. Their irritation grew till they finally cracked. Grabbing your arm Haarlep spun you around to grab your chin “I don’t take kindly to be ignored.” they growled right before they brought their lips to yours and kissed you. The kiss was raw and passionate, their heated lips made you feel like you caught an instant fever. Haarlep had to hold your weight as your limbs turned to jelly. A sudden rush in your lower stomach was tempting you with depraved thoughts of more. They tasted like the finest wine you could indulge in forever if you wanted to. As they broke the kiss and looked at you expectantly for any kind of reaction; hate, want, anything to tell them you felt anything at all. Haarleps eyes widened at what they saw and their lips spread to a delighted smile. Your eyes doe like in a breathless expression with the tinting of red to your cheeks. You were blushing because of them. 

After defending Raphael Haarlep was free to do whatever they wanted and what did they decide to do? Join you on your adventures, though the relationship between you two was never defined exactly you knew that deep down you were theirs, your soul be damned. Haarlep was always waiting for you and though they would play it off as just for fun you saw the way their eyes would soften when you emerged to your room. Though, sometimes you felt like Haarlep was putting on a show for you at times. You want them to be comfortable and not have to perform for you. “No games Haarlep…Can I please just hold you?” When you first asked this Haarlep seemed confused by the idea of cuddling, but as they laid their head against your chest to have you then softly you wrapped your arms around them. Haarlep lays there in your arms silent, the only noises are the soft sounds of your breathing and the thrumming of your heart. This intimacy…stirs something within them…

Haarlep is always the one to take the lead in your relationship, you figured they liked the feeling of control. But after they made a teasing comment about you needing to be more aggressive with what you want, you took it to heart, and they were so happy you did. They were getting drunk off it, your moans leaving your swollen lips as they held your wrist in their warm hands. You bounce up and down on them, taking them in so deeply. You're delicious as you tighten around their cock so close to coming undone but holding back. Your eyes are watching Haarlep so intently, it's strange they rarely ever get raddled during sex but with how you are looking right now they might be the ones to come undone first this time…

Halsin

You're different compared to others he has encountered. Halsin is so used to people becoming nervous or giddy when he is around, some disdain him, many are eager to befriend him, and then there are others wanting to bed him. But you? You never give anything away to how you might feel…well that was the case till he figured you out. It was a simple praise, he thought nothing much of it as he told you how good you were. The way your cheeks glowed red as your eyes stayed to his…it was a slight crack to your shield and he wanted more, he wanted to watch you blush and be the reason for it, he wanted you to feel better and have all the praise you deserved. Halsin would praise you every day just so he could witness your flustered features. Halsin figured out how to get past your shields and despite this usually being something to mortify you, it was instead a welcomed change. It's odd feeling vulnerable to another person but Halsin is a gentle soul, he will treat you tenderly.

Halsin had invited you out on one of his typical hikes through nature as the others visited the nearby town. Halsin being a druid preferred nature to make him more relaxed and you preferred being around Halsin so it was a win-win situation. Halsins soothing voice and calm dementor always put you at ease, though today as you walk closely to his towering figure something deep within you stirs. You come to an abrupt stop and he follows looking down at you curiously. His hazel eyes took you in then smiled softly, it made your heart skip and you finally knew what was happening to you. “I think I want to kiss you.” You say bluntly. Halsin looks at you surprised then smirks, “You think, or you know?” You stare at him, not breaking your gaze, “I know I do.” Halsin opens his arms out to embrace you, “Then come here.” His voice purrs. You place your hands on his wide chest and let him take the lead. The kiss was slow and intimate and tasted like honey.

Halisn is a giver, he is always bringing you gifts like flowers, fresh ingredients, rare stones, and his favorite showering you in praise till your cool dementor falters and you blush like an idiot. You want to do something for him, give him something that you know he would enjoy. After much consideration and time, you had the perfect gift. You approached him very casually with it hidden behind your back. Halsin, not being a fool, knew something was up when you were already blushing and he hadn’t praised you yet. When you finally revealed it he felt his heart squeeze. A poorly made wooden duck, “You make it look so easy…” you say simply and he can’t help but laugh, the rest of the day he told you how to properly make a wood carving. It's now become your favorite bonding time.  

Lovers in the past have always been so ravenous when it came to intimacy with him. Scratching, Biting, just being rough in general. You, however, treat him as if he were made of glass, blushing softly, cooing, and caressing him tenderly. Halsin has seen you in a fight, you are forced to be reckoned with, but in the intimacy in his arms, you are blushing and sweet. You speak every honeyed praise that comes to your mind as he goes down on your drinking in your release. Your voice in pleasure is becoming his favorite song these days. 

Rolan

When he first laid eyes on you he immediately thought you were one the coolest people he’s ever seen. It was right after a fight, your teammates were cheering and hollering as you all came into the grove, and you walked in the background watching your ragtag group. Then your eyes met his. You didn’t wave, or smile, you just simply gave a nod towards him. Cal and Lia swear they have never seen Rolan blush so much, of course, he denied it, but on the inside his heart was racing. After that day he found himself wanting to have you think he was as impressive. Lucky for him you did find him impressive, not only because he was a talented wizard but because he was an ambitious dreamer. You admired all he did for his family and found yourself lightening up every time you got to talk to him. His rich voice always made your head fill with stars despite your cool outside. As a couple you and Rolan are almost inseparable, you're always there to be his calming present and he brings an extra spark to your life. He might think you're the cool one, but in your eyes it's him.   

Rolan had done what Cal and Lia deemed impossible, he managed to ask you out on a date finally and was successful. A sunset stroll through the city was the plan and it was going well. Rolan was putting on his best confident demeanor as you listened to him intently, your bright eyes watching him carefully. Gods, how he loved your eyes, hair, body, and lips. Rolan felt his palms getting sweaty as he kept glancing at you. Each time his eyes landed on your perfectly kissable lips. He wanted so badly to just grab you and kiss your lips, stealing a taste for him to hold onto forever. Though his stuttering and nerves were getting in the way of that, he wanted you to think he was cool and collected, a perfect match for you. He can’t just grab you and kiss you!  Tail swishing around irritatedly, he is chastising himself to get a grip on his emotions and to stop staring at you so desperately. Then feels his collar being pulled and suddenly your lips are on his. All of Rolans resolve leaves as he grabs your hips and deepens the kiss to one of desperate hunger. Backing you up to the closeted ally he wraps his tail around your leg as his tongue pushes into your mouth finally tasting you. Breaking from the kiss to catch your breath Rolan accidentally lets a whimper slip from his throat. “You…kissed me, why?” You shrug, “I figured you wanted to considering how you kept staring at my lips.” Rolan groans, “You must find me pathetic…” you touch your hand to his cheek and kiss his lips again, “No, I think you're just passionate. Makes me want to be more like you.” Rolan felt the blush creeping to his ears, it was the best date. 

Rolan worked so hard it was something you both admired about him but it also made you worried for him. He just worked so hard to provide for his family. You wish you could do something for him to help, but pulling him away from his desk is often an impossible task. He was in his study for what might have been hours now. Entering his study you saw him scribbling away, it wasn’t until you cleared your throat that he looked up. In your hands a tray of his favorite meal he had mentioned his adoptive mother making for him Cal and Lia as kids. He was a bit shocked you remembered him talking about the dish. Placing the tray down you cooed at him to take a break. And as he smelt the food he found that he was incredibly hungry. As he ate you undid his hair and scratched your nails on his scalp. Lending down you told him to join you for a bath and he of course couldn’t deny you.  

He just couldn’t help himself anymore, watching you handle everything effortlessly, always acting so cool…he needed you, now… His buckle was gently knocking against the shelf, your head leaning back against him as his breathy whines rang in your ear. Hard thrust drives his cock deeper and deeper, the tip nudging against your sweet spot. Then he brings his tail in and your cool demeanor melts away and you're a moaning crying mess. Rolan brings his hand to cover your cries…His hot breath pants in the shell of your ear, “Keep it down…The customers will hear you…” Nothing makes him feel more confident than feeling you come undone… 

Wyll

If Wyll had to pick anyone to follow blindly into a fight it would be you. You're smart and tactful, you keep a level head despite anything. Wyll sees you as the perfect definition of a leader and he would follow you to the hells if you needed it. Though if anyone asked you the same question you would answer that Wyll makes the better leader with his kind-hearted nature and determination. Despite you being quiet you find that with Wyll it doesn't matter, he can carry the conversion easily for the two of you and it wouldn’t even get awkward. You two just enjoy being around each other, you bring out the best in each other. With Wyll you are more gentle and he helps you see the world in a less harsh perspective. with him by your side you find yourself understanding and experiencing more emotions you didn't think you ever would. With you around Wyll finds fulfillment, if someone like you sees him as someone you want to be with maybe he is not as worthless as he once thought. You two are each other's perfect complement.

After a time of getting to know one another and being each other's closest confidants, Wyll knew it was time to take the relationship in a more serious direction. Wyll Imagined your first kiss would be underneath a canopy of stars. Alone so he could share all his feelings for you that he hoped you would reciprocate. Everything changed though when you took that arrow to your shoulder, mere inches away from your heart. Shadowheart had patched you up and now Wyll was here devotedly at your side listening to you chastise yourself for being careless and already planning a counterattack on the enemy camp. Reaching out carefully Wyll grabbed your hand to bring your attention to his gentle face. “Today I thought I would have lost you. In our adventures, I know there will be times when one of us will get hurt, maybe even killed. Please let me show you the depths of my affection before I am ever able to.” “How will-” “May I kiss you?” surprised you and gave a nod, with your permission Wyll gently dipped down to your still body and kissed your lips softly. His lips were as soft as you imagined they would be. 

Wyll from the moment you meet him you always think of him as the most self-sacrificing and selfless person you have ever met. He would give the shirt off his back for a stranger if need be. But after watching him long enough you noticed how he carried heavy loads and pushed himself so thin, and when he thought no one was looking he would wince and rub his neck. He needs to be shown how to treat himself better. In his tent he was resting his sore muscles when you walked in, a bottle of fine-smelling oil in your hand. “What-” but you are quick to cut him off “You have been neglecting yourself, let me rub this into your skin. Halsin says it's good for healing, now shirt off.” his cheeks warm, that same matter-of-fact nature he adores. The rest of the night was spent gently massaging all the knots and aching pain from his muscles…and talks of your futures after this adventure. the plan? You two staying together…

Your skin was so hot against his lips, every sweet whisper from his lips made your once stone-like body shake. The party's leader, always so composed, until underneath him… “You look perfect, here…and here…” As Wyll mumbles his praises he kisses every one of your scars tenderly, worshiping you in a way you didn't know you needed. Words die in your throat as he goes lower and lower till his lips are wrapping around your sex and you feel his tongue licking against you sloppy…Is this what it's like being worshiped by another? 

Astarion

When first meeting Astarion he was not so impressed by your cool and collected demeanor. Everyone at the camp had their quirks and then there was you, like a perfect impenetrable wall. Of course, He thought you had something to hide and was determined to get to the bottom of it. First getting through your walls was a challenge, he tried flirting and intimidation tactics but found that they didn’t make you stir in the slightest. (when in fact you know you would go to your tent after those conversions holding your hand to your chest like your heart was going to explode, but he didn’t need to know that.) It wasn’t until he stopped his facade and was more honest that you started to open up as well. Over time as he found out who you were and you found out more about him the two of you became fiercely protective of one another. Definitely a stranger to friends to lovers situation. In fact, on your first date you didn’t even realize it was a date till he told you. You were odd and not always easy to understand but for the first time in a long time he wanted to have real intimacy with someone and you wanted to let down your protective walls. 

You had gotten to him today with your bluntness, of course, he played the whole thing off like he didn’t care but inside he did and it was eating away at him not knowing why. It's late, the time of night that no creatures stir, well only one kind of creature does…his kind. You're asleep on your bedroll by the fire as per usual. You always sleep next to its warmth, Astarion figures that's what you crave like most creatures, warmth; something his cold body could never provide to you. Astarion shakes the thought, why would he even think of holding you? He doesn't even like you. Your damned aloofness pisses him off to no end. But as he is about to leave your slumbering side, you reach out and touch him. Your heated skin warms his icicle-like fingers, he half expected you to wake and recoil, but you didn’t you seemed to be eased by it. Your plump lips parted slightly as you dream. Slowly leaning down he keeps his crimson eyes on your face, completely unaware of the danger you are in. This is where he bites your neck and drains you of your blood like the monster he is. But instead, he brings his cold lips to your warm ones and kisses you. After a moment he comes back to his senses and pulls away. As he looks down at you now there is just the slightest curl of a smile to your lips. Sweet dreams he supposes.  

Astarion, usually so charismatic and open to say anything he wanted, had seemed to be rather reserved lately. Now you are usually one to never notice these changes in people but when it comes to Astarion you couldn’t help but notice those subtle shifts. It was late, but you knew he would be up, you went into the tent he had been reading and immediately started to put on his cocky dementor when he saw you but you just ignored it and sat next to him. “So why do I get the pleasure of such a late night visit darling?” looking through his short stack of books you pick one that seems the most interesting to you, open it then speak, “You have seemed off, so this is me being here for you. I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, and I will leave if you would like.” you turn to look into his eyes “but spending time with you always makes me feel better so I am trying to do that for you.” Astarion seemed shocked but the confession for a moment before he gave you that rare soft smile. The night was spent in silence with you reading and he laid his head in your lap. Your warmth was exactly what he needed, but he wasn't ready to confess that yet.    

“Bite me…” Astarion looks down at you, your neck exposed and flushed, the slightest sheen of sweat causing you to glisten in the candlelight. He feels his gums itch above his fangs…he wants to feed from you…but would you think him a monster after? Insecurities and anxieties swirl in his mind. You two had just started getting intimate with one another…would this turn out to be too much for you, for him…Then a soft touch to his pale skin brings him back, “Star…Only if you're comfortable, but know I trust you. I just…I want to give you everything I can.” Your words are so calm, so confident in him, he loves it, feeling so safe with you. Leaning down slowly he Kisses your neck before sinking his teeth in. Your body tenses for a moment before you're lulling into the saccharine of pleasure. Breaking away he licks your running blood from your neck as he looks down at you. Please know…that he loves you, endlessly.

[wiliowisp]

Sebastian Sallow Headcanons | Pt.2

Part one | Part two | Part three

What Sebastian is like in a romantic relationship:

➻ he has a jealous and possessive streak, for sure, but he's working on it. it comes from a place of trauma and insecurity rather than any malice, and he practices letting his SO be close to people who aren't him.

➻ that doesn't mean it doesn't come out though; especially regarding people like leander, who seem more than happy to be intimately familiar with his lover.

➻ another expression of this is in protectiveness. in any dangerous situation, his priority is the safety of his SO. even if they are more than capable of defending themselves, he would much rather take the hits than have them be in harm's way.

➻ his primary love language is acts of service. he will happily do anything you ask of him and them some. 'i noticed you didn't have breakfast so i bought you some fruit.' 'you need help with your homework? say no more.' 'i picked up a book that can help with that subject you're struggling with.' and more.

➻ that being said, he's clingy. after his parent's death, physical affection was really only for him and anne. now that he has an SO, all he wants is to touch them. in class, his hands are wrapped around them or his leg is pressed up against them. when studying, he'll lean on them or have his head in their lap while reading. if they cuddle him, he'll melt.

➻ he's constantly fighting the urge to kiss his SO. he loves making out, but understands that 24 hours of the day can't be dedicated to it; he also knows himself enough that once he starts, its difficult for him to stop. when they do kiss, it gets passionate—quick. he simply can't get enough of the feeling, like a balloon in his chest, and wants them closer and closer.

➻ he gets devoted, very fast. sebastian isn't a man who does things half-way. within the first few months of courting, he's thinking about marriage. of course, he understands that they're still in school and can't come on too quick, but he's made his mind up before they've even graduated.

➻ he loves sharing good conversation with his SO. topics like deep dives into the origin of magic, or the possibilities of time travel. he's an avid reader so loves dissecting fiction books or poetry; if his SO can meet him halfway and listen to his rambles, he's in love.

➻ dates with sebastian are always very understated. he's not one for big shows of affection and more for practicing love every day. a date can be something as simple as an afternoon walk, or reading a book together. to him, spending time together is the most important aspect, the rest is just ruffles and feathers.

➻ post graduation, proposal is at the forefront of his mind. sebastian is no gentlemen, but concerning marriage he's dedicated to doing it right. he get's anne's approval first—without it, a proposal simply won't happen. then, he gets the approval from his SO's parents or guardians. he wants everything to be perfect, and for once goes above and beyond to make sure his lover knows they're the one.

(i'll probably be doing NSFW headcanons next, so keep an eye out for that hehe)

[christinesficrecs]

Hi Christine, I know this is a long shot but long story short - lost my saves file a while ago and cannot find many of most favourite fics, I have countless quotes saved from them. I am sharing some with you in hopes people recognise the fics they're from if you post this. I will love you forever.

Derek’s first kiss in four years tastes like fresh-squeezed orange juice and makes his stomach flip like the drop in a rollercoaster. Stiles holds him close like he’s thanking him.

About the summer he spent in Ireland because there were pictures of his mom posed in various tourist sites at Dublin and Dingle and the Giant’s Causeway--places that he wanted to experience personally since he never got to ask her first-hand.

Derek looked at him for a moment, and wow, okay, this was why people wrote songs about love and painted pictures and wrote poetry, because he was pretty sure that he was falling in love with Derek Hale if only because of the guy's beautiful eyes and earnest expressions and his everything. God.

In some ways Stiles has done a lot of growing up since then, but a part of him thinks he’ll always be that scrawny, ridiculous kid at heart, whose greatest joys in life were Froot Loops, cheesy disco tunes, and masturbation.

Stiles gets back from his year abroad in Hungary with more muscles and the first of his tattoos, a knotted rope that runs the length of his spine.

Hey, Derek, can you do me a solid? Nothing serious, just, you know, screw my brains out, that’s all.

He meets Stiles’ gaze from where he's leaning against the back wall, his eyes catching glints of light amid the shadows. Certain people are just meant to live under the open sky.

Whatever he says afterwards, whatever happens between them, there will always be this, the long late afternoon with the sun skidding red in the west, and he will always know what Stiles looked like the first time someone filled him up to the hilt. There are no acrobatics. Nothing fancy happens. Derek feels like the ocean breaking helplessly on the shore, the tide rising, spilling him over.

there’s something about the shape of him, the way he’s huge and solid and beautiful and always thirty seconds away from admitting total defeat that rubs Stiles raw and tender.

“People are so exhausting,” he murmurs, and Stiles is glad to know it: that he isn’t people, that he counts as a kind of between places, maybe even as home.

Updating with the ones that magv1 found. Thank you!!!

Hot Single Dad Derek Hale by WhoNatural | 13.3K | Explicit

Wherein Derek is a Hot Single Dad, possibly with a little case of martyrdom, and Stiles is the newest client at his publishing house who really just wants to make him happy. Preferably while they're both naked.

^^^^^ #1 & 2

But Then What... by Stoney | 24.3K | Explicit

Senior year is almost over, and all Stiles needs to do is keep his head down to survive. A teacher calls in a favor, leaving him stuck tutoring Derek Hale, one of the most popular jocks in school and a member of a group of douchecanoes who have bullied Stiles for years. He's someone Stiles totally hates. Totally. Like, doesn't like him even a little bit. DEFINITELY isn't attracted to him.

Except that is a total lie. Fuck his life, seriously.

^^^^^ #3

My Life is not a Horror Movie, Derek by DiscontentedWinter | 38.9K | Explicit

Stiles keeps dreaming of people in robes with knives. With chanting. In Latin. And he mentioned the knives, right? That can't be good.

^^^^^ #4

i need your sway by thatworldinverted | 11.1K | Explicit

Stiles always figured it would be Scott who saw him through his first heat. They pinky-swore on it, in fact, when they were eleven and newly-presented. There haven’t exactly been an abundance of offers between then and now.

What there is now, though, is the pack, and pack takes care of each other.

^^^^^ #6

Sucker Love by whiskey_in_tea | 17.9K | Explicit

Kate sits up and narrows her eyes at him. “Page 72,” she says. “Why I Plan to Wait, by Stiles Stilinski.”

The spread is hilariously cliched: a full page picture of a pale, pretty boy with a wide-eyed blonde girl walking on the beach, the two of them holding hands and staring into the waves, probably thinking wistfully of the sex they aren’t having. Derek skims the text briefly. “Speaking up about the importance of virginity!” he exclaims. “Reclaiming chastity a a masculine virtue. Our friend Stiles sure is brave.”

“See, I was thinking he might make an interesting challenge,” Kate says lazily. “And he’s surprisingly attractive, don’t you think? Such long fingers. And that mouth.”

^^^^^ #8

[kerakeriza]

Damian Wayne: The Romantic

ever since damian's inception, he's always had a soft spot for romance, true love, and happy families. in particular, he always wanted his mother and father to make amends and come together to form a happy home, a cohesive unit.

let's talk about it!

(batman v1 #658, written by grant morrison, damian's creator)

as you can see, we get the first inkling of his inclination towards romance with this moment. yes, i know... talia's character was ruined the very moment morrison touched her. it's not as if she wasn't a romantic herself, though.

(batman v1 #240, written by dennis o'neil, talia's creator)

in fact, even bruce was a romantic back then.

(batman v1 #257, written by dennis o'neil)

seriously, how romantic is that? absolute poetry.

it only makes sense, then, that damian ended up the way he did. let's explore that a bit more, shall we?

(batman annual v1 #26, written by peter milligan)

you'll notice that in his earliest appearances, damian's speech patterns were much more... casual. they weren't yet elevated to the levels of a spoiled prince. his message remains, though. if his grandfather loved this woman, why didn't he simply give her a happily ever after? spoken like a true romantic, damian...

(robin v4 #169, written by peter milligan)

in this case, of course, damian is referring to familial love - but it still speaks to his heart. it's a sort of... "love will conquer all" mentality, and it drives him. it's embedded into his character already, and this is only the resurrection of ra's al ghul arc.

...there is more evidence of damian being a sucker for romance in battle for the cowl, but we can all agree to just skip over that, yeah? let's move on to his run as robin.

(batman: streets of gotham v1 #3, written by paul dini)

damian isn't very subtle, but he also isn't very open about wanting romance for *himself.* he obviously does want it for himself - but he's not going to just up and admit it. hence the "what's it to you?"

(batman and robin v1, #4, written by grant morrison)

damian oh-so enjoys the affectionate attention of women. again, he puts up an attitude about it, but it's all to disguise his inner enjoyment of it all.

(detective comics annual v1 #11, written by fabian nicieza)

when faced with an enemy attempting to seduce him, damian is very much *against* being taken advantage of. unlike the woman playfully calling him adorable, this is an actual threat. not only that, but note his exact words - "won't -- feel that way -- yet --"

this is not how he wants it to go. he doesn't want to feel unsafe, in the arms of a dangerous predator. when it does happen - which he expects it to, someday - it won't be anything like this. the only other way for it to be, though... is soft. warm. romantic. most of all, he wants to pursue it when he's *ready* for it. he'll express himself in the little ways, such as asking if katana is single, but he won't make any big moves. he's just a kid, but he's also just not that kind of person.

he's wise enough about romance to understand that he's just not ready for this *yet.*

(you'll notice a distinct departure in how he handles the issue of his own romantic life from here on out...)

(batman and robin v1 #12, written by grant morrison)

this is another instance of familial love rather than romantic love, however... it is also another instance of damian wearing his heart on his sleeve. he just wants to be loved for who he is, it's another piece of his very, very loving mentality. he is a sensitive soul, deep down.

(batgirl v3 #5, written by bryan q miller)

stephanie calls damian out for looking at her chest - of course, he denies it. (he can't have stephanie thinking he's some lecher.) naturally, he denies it by insulting her. that's just about how it usually goes for these two.

(batgirl v3 #6, written by bryan q miller)

at this point, damian has gotten good at using a good bit of teasing to repress his crushes. there's a real air of jealousy in how much he *emphasized* the word "boyfriend."

(batgirl v3 #6, written by bryan q miller)

even dick and barbara seem to agree that robin and batgirl of today mirror the robin and batgirl of yesterday. (if you'll recall, dick absolutely had a huge crush on barbara. it's kind of the whole reason they became a thing after a while.) dick already knows about damian's interest in older women... and given his own interest in older women, i doubt he cares that much - as long as it's just an unrequited crush from damian. (i'm sure dick wouldn't be okay with it if stephanie accepted the affections of an underage boy, even if that boy is damian.)

(world's finest, v4 #4, written by sterling gates)

as you can see, the teasing continues for a while.

(red robin v1 #12, written by chris yost)

damian once again can't behave himself around stephanie, but this time, he's even more forwardly mocking her appearance. well, mostly just her chest, but still. i fear that he knows older women are out of the question, so the best he can do is tease them. it's not as if that sort of flirting isn't being modeled for him on the daily by every vigilante in gotham. he was so much more pure of heart before he met the bats...

(red robin v1 #12, written by chris yost)

at this time, this might've been the *first* time that damian has ever actually given a... compliment? to tim. it's definitely the first time he's congratulated him. what can he say? he loves a little romance, even when it comes to the person he hates most. it probably helps that the engagement isn't to a woman he has a crush on himself.

(superman/batman v1 #77, written by joshua williamson)

as was the case with stephanie, with kara, damian also resorts to teasing - it's a bit less obvious if he truly has a crush on her, but if dick is on his case about it... he's usually right, that's all.

(batman and robin v1 #18, written by paul cornell)

this gives a bit more insight into why damian now chooses to repress his romantic side (and instead resorts to teasing those he has a crush on). of course, he knew his own parents' relationship was complicated... but nothing quite like this. he's had to bare witness to just how fake his father's affections can be towards other women, and he aches at the mere thought of becoming anything like that. he'd rather not date at all then *pretend* to like someone.

he'd much rather pretend *not* to like someone to protect everyone involved from the chaos that their own feelings may bring. he knows it all too well now, what indulging in your emotions can do to people. but his loving heart never left him. he tried hardening it, that's all... but if he truly didn't care about romance anymore, he wouldn't see such an issue with bruce's playboy ways. he's an advocate of true love - not whatever the hell that is.

...i hope that helped to illuminate the ways in which damian explores romance and affection (in many forms)! after ingratiating himself to gotham city, damian found himself repressing his crushes more and more, likely due to the environment surrounding him. the other vigilantes all tangle themselves into knots, and it seems that damian would personally rather avoid coming to terms with his own affections, especially when he knows they'll lead absolutely nowhere. as much as he likes to pretend that he's older than he really is, he's not an idiot. he knows what he isn't ready for, even if he really wants it someday. even if the concept of true love pervades his very mindset. it's something he really, really wants... for his parents, and for himself... someday. when he feels ready for it - ready to accept that it may cause trouble, just as it did for his parents, and for the countless villains he faces on a day-to-day basis. he'll overcome it all when he's ready.

[saintsenara]

Wait why are you not a fan of Snape and Hermione?? 2 nerds who care a socially awkward amount about the things they care about nerding out together at levels of romance people who can be chill and normal about things can’t comprehend?? It’s not one of my fav ships but I can definitely see it!

I headcanon that Snape picks on Hermione being a muggle raised know it all thirsty to prove and lacking self awareness because he was one himself when he arrived at school and James and Sirius picked on him for it! It’s like that you’re most repulsed by the things you’re self conscious of in yourself thing to me. Or maybe a him trying to live out being the “cool” one in that dynamic thing

But when she’s a grown woman and more self possessed like he became too I feel like that same energy ness has potential for love!

Hermione is famously respectful and compassionate enough towards all beings to be more understanding than say Lily Evans of his prickly tender ego if he had another m word style outburst and such a people pleaser she’d keep coming back for more snark as long as he peppered it with the odd encouraging compliment

And I feel like a Snape in reciprocated love could absolutely veer into inventing beautiful and helpful spells to impress his lover or sending “made me think of u 😘” notes with verses of elaborate obscure poetry territory that would be frankly the level of literary and academic courtship our Herms deserves 😌

Is it cause they’d both be the highly strung worrier one and they both need someone to ground them? Or maybe too pessimistic together and one of them needs to be the cheerful one?

anon, i genuinely love this for you - i'm always thrilled to get people explaining their love for ships in the ol' inbox, especially when they're ships i don't instinctively vibe with, and i have been won round to stranger premises than this by a passionate defence of why two characters should kiss.

where i still think snamione isn't clicking for me, however, is that the way you describe both snape and hermione here doesn't align in any significant way with what i personally think would be interesting to explore about either character in a relationship and have them still feel meaningfully like their canon selves.

[i will say, though - because i always think it's worth reiterating my fandom commitment towards being neither a cop nor a priest - that i literally don't give a shit about either the age gap or the student-teacher dynamic. i know that's an objection to pairings like snarry and snamione which lots of people do express. but i will never be one of them.]

the primary reason that i don't vibe with many of the more... sapiosexual hermione ships [by which i mean not only snamione but tomione] is that they hang on the idea that hermione's intellect expresses itself in a way we never actually see in canon.

or, the idea that snape and hermione are intellectually compatible [and that they would enjoy hanging out being nerdy about stuff] is just... not true.

throughout the seven-book canon, the way that hermione shows herself to be clever is that she displays an excellent memory and an enormous capacity to rote-learn. her intelligence is overwhelmingly demonstrated - both in the classroom and during the trio's year on the run - by her being able to regurgitate swathes of information, very usually verbatim from the source she got it from.

she is clearly able to use this ability to retain information to understand the theoretical component of magic in a way neither harry nor ron ever manage, and she is able to use this understanding of theory to work out how to perform spells which are ahead of her expected level on the hogwarts curriculum.

and this is intelligence - and i want to be very clear that i'm not trying to suggest that hermione shouldn't be thought of as intellectual, or that her academic achievements should be devalued. but it isn't the way snape's intelligence manifests itself.

because hermione is never shown - at any point in canon - to be a particularly creative or experimental thinker.

she places an enormous intellectual trust in disciplinary authority - teachers and textbooks - and is frequently rattled when these are revealed to be partial or incorrect, as we see in her shock at hogwarts: a history not mentioning house elves or her anger at harry getting better results by following the modified instructions in the prince's textbook [despite knowing nothing about the theory underpinning them] than she does with the "official" ones.

she also regards the gatekeeping of inquiry which disciplinary boundaries enforce to be a positive thing and she never displays any inclination to step beyond them. she dislikes the spells in the prince's textbook because they aren't ministry-approved - and i must say that i think the idea that she'd be won over by a man creating spells for her is wishful thinking...

she is immediately mistrustful of anything she can't find something she regards as an empirical source for - notice, for example, that she only comes round to the idea that prophecies might be real once she encounters them in the ministry of magic.

even when we see her using magic on her own terms - the jinx she uses on marietta edgecombe, for example; or the protean charm on the da coins - the magic she's using is sophisticated, and is being applied in a way which wouldn't be classroom-sanctioned, but it's not magic which is being used in a way which is removed from the spell's original purpose. the protean charm on the da coins is impressive because it's a flawless execution of newt-level magic by a sixteen-year-old. it's not impressive because hermione is using it in a strange, experimental, or radical way.

[in contrast, the dark mark - which harry notes the coins mimic - is clearly a spell voldemort himself invents.]

snape, on the other hand, is an experimenter. he's someone who clearly sees magic as a creative force which he has every right to shape as he sees fit by adaptation and invention. and he's someone who evidently rejects the logic of disciplinary gatekeeping - one tension in his relationship with dumbledore prior to half-blood prince is that snape evidently retains an enormous intellectual interest in the dark arts [which, as he tells us, are an area of magic which is feared precisely because they can't be neatly contained within disciplinary boxes - they are ever-changing, unfixed, mutating...]

and it's these conflicting views of what magic is and how it should be used and thought about which is the cause of the intellectual incompatibility we see between snape and hermione in canon.

he is unequivocally in the wrong for his dismissive classroom manner towards her - because he is an adult and she is a child. but he isn't wrong in principle that hermione just repeating what she's read in the textbook and refusing to synthesise her knowledge [she always goes massively over word limits! she never gives answers in class in her own words!] isn't actually a demonstration that she understands the material. [and therefore something a good teacher would guide her through conquering... snape having no interest in doing this is his own fault.]

and - from a snamione-specific perspective - it's all the evidence snape needs that, actually, they're not going to enjoy hanging out chatting about academic pursuits. hermione values knowledge like a dragon hoards treasure. snape wants to take that treasure, melt it down, and turn it into new and weird things.

once again, i don't think this a flaw in either of their characters - it's just something which is. and i don't think it's an insurmountable obstacle to writing snamione, because i believe any ship is possible if an author has enough nerve. but it's an aspect of both characters' canon personalities [and hermione's above all] which never seems to make it into snamione fics - all of which, as far as i've encountered them, are beholden to an idea of hermione's approach to academia which is considerably more flexible than we actually see in the books.

of your other points, i'm not particularly convinced by the idea that snape sees his younger self in the teenage hermione. this isn't just for the reasons outlined above - hermione isn't trying to prove herself in the same way he was, which was by creating and experimenting in a bid to be noticed and considered impressive - but also because of the massive gulf in their respective class backgrounds.

hermione is really posh - and, while she's obviously subjected to discrimination at hogwarts on account of her blood-status, she also comes from a family with both the financial resources and the cultural language to make her familiar with the vibe of the elite muggle boarding schools hogwarts is a pastiche of.

the teen snape - in contrast - stands out from his cohort in that he is visually identifiable as working-class [which does appear to be genuinely unusual at hogwarts]. his class background is something which clearly drove a lot of the marauders' bullying of him [i'm sorry to the girlies who think james and sirius targeted him out of some righteous desire to stamp out his prejudice - it was because he was poor and uncouth] and which he still has a chip on his shoulder about as an adult.

this - again - is not an insurmountable barrier to a snamione relationship [as it's not a barrier to thousands of real-world partnerships and friendships]. but it is something an author needs to grapple with if they want to make the pairing - at least, in my opinion - seem plausible. but the standard vibe seems to be that snape would be comfortable in the grangers' home fairly quickly, and that he'd be delighted to have hermione swanning around offering suggestions for how they could do up spinner's end... instead of him resenting this as the unwelcome meddling of people who've never had to worry for money.

i'm also not particularly convinced by the idea that hermione would get over being called a mudblood - especially by an adult man. while i think it's completely plausible that she'd handle this differently than lily [although lily's reaction is entirely justified - and i don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater of contextualising the teenage snape and the motivating factors behind his decisions by pretending that cutting off your friend because he called you a slur is a petty, ill-thought-out, or unreasonable move], i don't think that her reaction would be automatically forgiving.

hermione is compassionate towards kreacher when he calls her a mudblood because kreacher is a slave, whose prejudicial views are inextricably bound up in the magic used to oppress him [i.e. that if he received an order to use the term, or to refuse to serve a muggleborn food, from his masters, he would have to punish himself violently if he disobeyed it]. she is not - quite rightly! - compassionate towards someone like draco malfoy when he calls her one, since he is a free person with full agency to choose not to do this.

could she forgive him - or snape - for using the term? sure! absolutely! but i don't think it's a given - and i also think she'd expect a demonstration of how sorry snape was which wouldn't necessarily align with how he'd think he'd demonstrated his regret.

i do agree that - as you say - hermione is a people-pleaser, and she definitely has a far greater tolerance for being treated cruelly by people she wants to impress [especially authority figures - including snape himself] than either harry or ron. and i think this has the potential to introduce an extremely thorny dynamic into a snamione fic - in which the power dynamic inherent in the age gap [which, to reiterate, i think is completely fine for an author to enjoy] is compounded by hermione being unwilling to anger or contradict snape [which is a vibe - as i've said in answer to an ask about harmony - we also see in her relationship with harry... it's also obviously exactly how snape's relationship with dumbledore works.]

on a couple of the more minor characterisation notes, i'm afraid that the idea of snape as a great romantic has never hit for me. it seems really bound up in the way alan rickman portrayed him in the films, which i've always found a bit toothless. i also don't like the trope of "actually snape's really hot" which seems to always accompany it - ugly, odd men to get to bone too!

[what he would be - i think - is a magpie. get ready to be handed odd stones and bits of leaves on dates.]

i also think they're highly-strung in ways which differ enough to mean they'd just annoy each other. hermione is highly-strung in that she flusters easily and is very poor under pressure, but she's actually pretty emotionally stable [and i'd dispute that she's a pessimist - this is a girl who thinks that she's successfully eradicating slavery at hogwarts by knitting hats; she's pretty robust, funny, cheerful, and idealistic]. snape is highly-strung in that he has a hair-trigger temper and is very emotionally volatile, but he's obviously an extraordinarily good liar, very quick on his feet, and very good under pressure. he'd think she panicked too much [and over insignificant things he didn't care about], she'd think he tanked the vibe of a date by taking offence at someone breathing too loudly.

where are they similar? well, they have a shared self-serving streak [hermione is appalled by behaviour from harry and ron she considers perfectly moral when she does it]; capacity for cruelty; tendency towards secrecy; tendency towards pettiness and pleasure in the misfortune of others; loathing of flying a broom; cutting sense of humour; stubbornness; resilience; clear dislike of slumming it in nature; love of puzzles; and a weakness for red hair.

i think you could make it work on the grounds that they'd probably have the time of their lives being haters together - especially, i feel, about rita skeeter.

and - y'know - because love is weird.

[ghosttotheparty]

exhibit a (detective mongomery)

ao3 more songwriter!eddie can be found here more songwriting/poetry; mildly nsfw bc eddie is eddie

***

Jeff has a theory.

Gareth agrees with the theory, though he's less confident about it, and Ian disagrees, though he's expressed that there's a chance Jeff may be right.

The theory is that Eddie fucking Munson has a boyfriend.

And Jeff has evidence.

EXHIBIT A: THE RING

Jeff notices that one of Eddie's rings is missing one day.

Granted, it's not the most concrete of evidence, because Eddie is Eddie, so Jeff assumes that he forgot it. Dropped it between his bed and his bedside table and just couldn't be assed to fish it out or to move his furniture. Maybe he was fidgeting with it in the car and dropped it to the ground and forgot about it by the time he got to Gareth's.

So he doesn't say anything.

But the next time he sees him, he isn't wearing it again.

So maybe he dropped it in a crack in a porch and couldn't reach it.

But if that were the case, Jeff feels like Eddie would have complained about it by now. Eddie once proclaimed that bitching is one of his favorite hobbies, along with getting stoned and sucking dick (at the same time or not, which he clarified after Ian questioned it), and the last time he misplaced a ring, he wouldn't shut up about it for three days until Wayne found it in the laundry basket. But maybe Eddie is just maturing. (Hah.)

They're in Jeff's living room, bantering and fucking around, the music from Jeff's record player low so they can hear each other, and as Eddie is watching Gareth and Ian bicker like he's watching a tennis match (not that he'd ever watch a tennis match), looking back and forth and back and forth, Jeff sees him reach for his ring finger, fingers poised to twist it around the way he usually does. The ring isn't there, obviously, and Eddie glances down like he's forgotten, and then a brief smile flashes across his face for a moment before he looks up and shouts that Ian is right, and Gareth, shut the fuck up.

And Jeff wonders.

EXHIBIT B: THE BASKETBALL

Eddie and Wayne live in a new apartment in town. (New being relative. It's a little run-down, with creaky floors and squeaky doors, but it's new to them.) Eddie's room is smaller than it was in the trailer, but Wayne has his own room in the apartment now, with an actual bed instead of a pull-out sofa.

Eddie's room is practically the same. Messy and covered in posters and tapestries and cut-out photos from magazines. His desk is covered in D&D pamphlets and character sheets, messy sketches of characters that he started and forgot about, uncapped pens and markers that must be dry by now. There are clothes covering the floor, hiding the fuzzy rug, and the blankets of his bed are always cast aside, almost falling off the bed because apparently Eddie throws them aside in the morning (or afternoon, depending on the day).

Eddie is searching for the weed he was supposed to bring to Ian's, and Jeff is waiting, leaning against the doorframe, watching as he rummages through some drawers.

"I swear I have it."

"I believe you," Jeff says dryly. "There's gotta be weed in here somewhere." Eddie shoots him a look, sticking out his tongue. He keeps rambling, I thought I fucking put it in here, I don't know how I get all these drawers confused, there aren't even that many, Jesus Christ, and Jeff looks around the room. There's a new poster of Bowie on the wall near his window. Jeff eyes it. It's not really Eddie's style, but Jeff's heard Eddie talk about how hot he is.

He looks at his blankets as Eddie rummages through another drawer. His bed wasn't raised when they were in the trailer, but he has a new bedframe, and now he has boxes and bags and a pizza box and... Is that a basketball?

Jeff looks at Eddie, who has his back to him, groaning as he tosses things aside onto the floor, and he steps to the side, tilting his head to see the orange ball that's partially hidden by a striped blanket that's falling off the bed. Jeff raises an eyebrow.

Eddie Munson has never voluntarily played a sport in his life. Jeff knows it. Gareth and Ian know it. The queen of England knows it. There is no reason for there to be a basketball in his bedroom. Unless it's someone else's. Someone he hasn't mentioned to them.

"Got it!"

Eddie stands, holding up the baggie triumphantly, grinning as he turns to Jeff.

"You really to stop losing illicit substances."

"'S fine," Eddie says, swaying to turn off the light. Jeff glances at the basketball one more time before following him out of the room.

"You're gonna get in trouble one of these days."

"Nah," Eddie says easily, still grinning, and he turns to face Jeff, walking backwards and spreading his arms like a challenge. "I'm immune, baby."

Jeff rolls his eyes, fighting a smile.

"What have I said about calling me baby?"

"Oh my god, it's a general term, I'm not calling you baby, it's just--"

EXHIBIT C: THE EXCUSES

"I forgot I need to help Wayne sort out some boxes before he leaves for work," Eddie says, swinging his guitar over his back. He's still a little out of breath, his hair falling from where it's tied up, exposing the scar around his neck. He won't talk about it. They don't ask. "I'll see you guys later."

"You guys aren't done unpacking?" Gareth asks before he guzzles some water.

"You know Wayne," Eddie says. "He'd put off unpacking for five more years if I didn't volunteer to help."

He's cheerful, going around and smacking loud kisses to their cheeks. Ian grins when he gets to him. He's always liked the affection that Eddie gives out so freely.

"Have you noticed he's been doing that a lot lately?" Ian asks as Eddie's van is pulling out of Gareth's driveway. Eddie rolls his window down and flips them the bird. They do it back. He cackles.

"God, yes," Jeff says, grateful he's not the only one.

"Doing what?" Gareth asks.

"'I have to help Wayne unpack,'" Ian repeats. "'I said I'd help old man Cooper fix his A/C. Henderson needs a ride to an appointment. Little Sinclair is going to the salon and her mom can't take her.'"

Gareth stares at him.

"How can you remember that all word for word but you don't remember when my birthday is?"

"...July--"

"No."

"Fuck. I don't know, my brain's weird. Anyway, he's been doing it a lot lately."

"Yeah," Jeff says, smiling after watching the interaction. (Gareth's birthday is in June.) "I mean, it's not like it's every time we hang out, so I'm not, like, offended or anything, but it's more often than he used to."

Gareth pauses as he spins his drumsticks, holding the door open for them to go inside.

"Do you think it has to do with... everything?"

Everything is code for Eddie going missing and being framed for three murders.

"I don't know," Jeff sighs, swinging open the fridge and finding a bottle of soda before he passes it to Ian. "He seems to have actual stuff to do, like with Erica and Dustin, but if he is lying, I mean... He's gotta have a reason to, right?"

Ian cracks open the soda, leaning against the counter.

"And if it has to do with everything, then, like... I don't know. I don't wanna, like. Pry."

"Yeah," Gareth says.

Jeff agrees. Eddie's been keeping quiet about the whole thing ever since he got discharged from the hospital. He's lost his memory, doesn't remember a lot of what happened, but they've seen him get lost in space, seen him breathe so shallowly it barely looks like he's breathing at all. These episodes (Jeff doesn't know what else to call them) sometimes last a few minutes. The first one was after they played Master of Puppets together for the first time. Eddie had learned it himself on guitar, but when they played it all together in Gareth's garage, he played for about fifteen seconds before he stopped abruptly, his eyes wide and trained on some spot on the ground. It scared the shit out of all of them.

He snapped out of it after a minute, blinking and startling and looking around at them gathered around them, and he was suddenly pale and shivering and holding his side like he had a cramp from running, and when they worriedly asked what happened, he just said in a rough voice I don't really like that song. He left after Jeff forced a bottle of water into his hands.

He's covered in scars. He has a skin graft on his chest, and when they asked about it, about what the fuck is going on? he just shrugged and said, "You know how much I paid for that zombie head?" in reference to the tattoo that's mostly covered in scar tissue now.

He doesn't want to tell. So they don't ask.

"Do you guys think..." Jeff hesitates, sipping his own soda, hopping up on the counter next to where Ian is leaning. "Do you guys think he might be seeing someone?"

They blink at him.

"Why the fuck would we think he might be seeing someone?" Ian asks, almost smiling.

"He..." Jeff hesitates again, realising how dumb the ring and basketball seem. Eddie loses shit. Maybe he forgot. Lucas plays basketball, and Jeff knows he and Eddie are pretty close now. Maybe he just convinced Eddie to help him practice. "I don't know."

But Gareth is nodding, staring at the ground, frowning.

"No, I can see that."

"You can?" Ian says.

"I mean, he's probably not, but it kinda makes sense. He's been ditching more lately, he's all smiley all the time. Et cetera."

"I don't know," Ian says, grimacing, but Jeff nods.

"He's smiling so much," he says, pointing at Gareth with his bottle. "Especially, like, in the past few weeks."

"Right?"

"Maybe he's just recovering," Ian says.

Oh.

Gareth and Jeff look at each other, wincing.

"Maybe."

"Maybe."

EXHIBIT D: THE HUMMING

Jeff leans back in his desk chair, lifting his legs up onto his desk, pulling his comic book closer to his face. He should probably get his eyes checked.

Eddie is laying upside down on Jeff's bed, his head hanging off as he draws in a notebook. (Jeff's never understood how he does it; his head hanging off the edge of the bed, holding up a notebook in front of his face, drawing without a care in the world.) It's quiet.

Jeff flips the page of his comic book, careful not to bend the pages, but as he's looking at the first panel, he hears the distinct, low rumble of Eddie's voice. He looks up, thinking for a split second that Eddie is speaking to him, but he's just humming. He does that a lot. He doesn't even notice himself doing it.

Jeff looks back at the comic book, listening, but he pauses again, looking up at the wall in front of himself as he furrows his brows, listening closer until he recognizes the song. He doesn't know the name of it, but he's pretty sure it's by Tears for Fears.

Tears for fucking fears.

Jeff looks at Eddie, who's still drawing, the notebook wavering as he looks at it, and after another minute, he moves, rolling over and shifting to lay on his stomach, setting the notebook down in front of himself. His brows are furrowed in focus, lips pouting a little bit, but he doesn't stop humming, and Jeff narrows his eyes.

He doesn't know anyone that listens to Tears for Fears. Maybe Dustin, but Eddie would probably, definitely tell him to shut it off because he has a musical superiority complex. (Jeff has no idea what Lucas listens to, and Mike probably listens to the same stuff as Eddie. Ian and Gareth both like rock and metal, and Erica probably listens to Cyndi Lauper or something.)

But here Eddie is, about a minute into a Tears for Fears song that Jeff can't even name, humming softly, happily to himself.

And Jeff wonders who the fuck Eddie is allowing to listen to, is tolerating listening to, Tears for Fears in Eddie's presence. And often enough that Eddie apparently knows the words.

It happens again the next week while they're all at Gareth's house, sitting in the kitchen and helping Gareth's mom make dinner. Jeff is peeling carrots, passing them to Eddie to chop, and Mrs Emerson's radio is playing, sitting on the windowsill. It's just on some Top 40s type station, which Eddie tolerates for Mrs Emerson because she tolerates their band practice in her garage.

The song fades out and there's a moment of quiet static, accompanied by Eddie's knife on the cutting board, the smooth sounds of the peeler, the clinking of the dishes that Gareth is putting away, the clicking of the stove turning on as Ian follows Mrs Emerson's directions. The next song starts, and Jeff passes the naked carrot to Eddie, pushing the peels to the side where he's collecting them to give to Gareth's dog.

He pauses the peeling when he hears Eddie's low hum, under his breath, and he stares at the carrot, listening before he slowly turns to look at him. He's just chopping the carrots, as easily as he always does, scooping them onto the knife and pouring them into the salad bowl next to him, humming and humming.

His voice is lower than the singer's voice, and it harmonizes nicely, but Jeff doesn't know what to think.

He glances over his shoulder across the kitchen, catching Ian's eye as he's mixing something in a bowl, also frozen and staring at Eddie.

Toto? Ian mouths at Jeff, looking more confused than he's ever looked, and Jeff shrugs, wide-eyed. Gareth leans up next to Ian, staring at Eddie's back intently before he looks at Jeff and mouths What the fuck?

Jeff shrugs again.

They don't say anything.

Eddie never notices that he's humming.

Jeff can't stop thinking about it, about what kind of person Eddie would listen to pop music for. He has a boyfriend. There's no way it can be anyone else.

EXHIBIT E: THE SONG LYRICS

Eddie is the main songwriter of the band. They all trust him with it all, and add their own bits and pieces when they play all together, like a drum solo for Gareth, and his lyrics changed a bit when he came back after everything.

His words were more intense, less literal. One lyric sings about the sky turning red, and the silhouettes of monsters. One song was called Batshit, about demon bats with steak knife tails. One sings about a girl with curly hair and a sawed-off shotgun, and another girl with vodka bottles and a lighter.

Save the world, save my life, Get your guns, I'll get my knife. Cut the shit, ignore the scythe And blow that shit to pieces

He sings about carnivorous flowers and flickering lights, about floating girls and broken bones, about blood-stained ceilings and sneakers and a bottomless lake.

Oh, it's a nightmare I'm living God, the world's flipped inside out There's spiders in my veins I feed them coffee and self-doubt

And then after a while, the vibes shift. He still sings about it all, about the fantasy, nightmarish world that comes up time and time again, but then he shows up with lyrics about a boy.

A boy. No one by name, or by description, almost just the idea of a boy rather than an actual one. When they ask who the lyrics are about, he gives them a Who knows? shrug, and Jeff's suspicions might as well be confirmed.

Some are sexual, very Eddie-esque, about lungs filled with smoke and mouths filled with cock, about the taste of sin on his tongue and hair tangled in rings. About being roughed up and cuffed up, the bite of metal around wrists, about being watched and known. Something about if they knew what we knew, they wouldn't care at all.

Others are sweeter, which just confirms Jeff's suspicions even more. Some sing about soft hair and sparkly eyes, about going stargazing by staring at his skin.

Kiss me 'til I'm flushed all red I wanna be your favorite color, baby

Eddie smiles while they go through the lyrics all together, his cheeks pink, but they still don't say anything.

EXHIBIT F: THE HICKEY

"Afternoon, fellas," Eddie says brightly, hopping into the room, dropping his bag on the ground next to where Ian is sitting and headbutting him affectionately. Ian beams. "How we doing?"

They talk as he gets sorted, finding his place on Gareth's bed between Ian and Gareth, laying on his back so his head is hanging over the edge, upside down, his hair falling. It almost touches the ground. He laughs at something Gareth says, but Jeff doesn't hear it, because from where he's sitting he has the perfect view of Eddie's neck.

Hence he has the perfect view of the purplish-red bruise above the collar of his t-shirt, and Jeff finally can't stop himself.

"Eddie."

"Hm?"

He turns his head to look at him, and the second their eyes meet, Jeff knows he knows. Eddie's eyes widen, and he slowly reaches to his shirt collar, pulling it up (down?) so it covers the bruise.

"Is there something you want to share with us?"

"...No?"

"What's going on?" Gareth asks, watching them.

"Eddie has a hickey."

"Jeff!"

"You wore a loose t-shirt, did you think we weren't gonna see it?"

Eddie just groans obnoxiously, throwing his arms up to cover his face, and Jeff grins when he sees how red he is. Ian laughs, reaching out to poke at his legs, ignoring the way Eddie is kicking at him.

"Eddie-e-e," Gareth sings. "Who is it?"

"It's no one, fuck off."

"Edmund. Edward. Eduardo."

"Oh my god."

He pushes himself to sit up, avoiding their eyes, and he sits at the edge of the bed, turning a little to make sure Jeff can see him too.

"Okay," he says, huffing. "I..."

"Who is it?" Gareth prompts. Jeff is beaming. He loves being right.

"I can't... I can't give you a name, he's not... out." Eddie's looking down at his lap.

"Okay," Gareth says, still waiting. "Is he your boyfriend?"

"...Yeah."

"Is he the reason you listen to Toto and shit now?" Jeff says, and Eddie looks up at him, his hair flying.

"I don't listen to Toto and shit," he says defensively. "He listens to Toto and shit and I allow it because I love him--"

Ian and Gareth let out identical shouts, and Jeff's eyes and grin widen. Eddie turns redder, rolling his eyes to the ceiling and covering his face.

"You love him?" Gareth says loudly, reaching out to rustle his hair. "Love?"

"Shut up," Eddie groans, but he's starting to smile under his hands as they all laugh.

"Why?" Ian asks.

"Why do I love him?"

"Yeah."

Eddie sighs heavily, rolling over the edge of the bed and falling to the ground with a heavy thud that makes them laugh again. He lies on his back, laying starfished on the ground and looking at the ceiling, eyes wide and dreamy.

"He's just... He's so great. He's beautiful. Fucking gorgeous. And funny as hell, even though he doesn't even try to be. And he's... kind. Like really, genuinely kind, and-- and selfless. He loves his friends, he'd do anything for them." He pauses, his smile faltering for a moment, tilting his head. "He makes me feel safe."

They're all quiet. Eddie hasn't gushed about any of his crushes in ages, not since Steve Harrington graduated. (And, God, wasn't that a time. Eddie was bitter about it, about how much he liked him, but every time someone brought him up, Eddie would turn into a blushing, smiling mess. Embarrassing.)

"Was he involved in everything?" Ian asks softly, and Eddie swallows, blinking at the ceiling, his face going a little blank. That happens every time it comes up. Everything. He'll zone out or look distant, and his voice will become a little empty in a way that makes Jeff feel sick.

"Yeah," Eddie says, blinking again. He takes a deep breath, and he looks like he's trying to stay there, in his body. "He's... He's the reason I'm alive."

They're quiet.

"Shit," Gareth says succinctly.

"Yeah."

"He's good to you?" Jeff asks.

Eddie sighs, smiling again.

"He's so good to me. He listens to me talk nonstop about D&D and shit even though he doesn't know anything about it, and he asks me questions, and he shows me stuff that he likes and he always looks so excited that I just... Like. Can't help but like it too."

"Is the basketball his?"

Eddie lifts his head, squinting at him.

"You saw that?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, it's his."

"Did you give him your ring?"

"Jesus, are you a fucking detective?"

Jeff grins. Eddie lays his head back down.

"Yeah, I gave it to him."

"Wait," Gareth says, leaning over the edge of the bed, looking at Eddie. "I didn't see the hickey, lemme see."

"Absolutely not."

"Lemme see-e-e..."

----------------------------------------------------------

It's Friday night at the Hideout. They've been getting bigger crowds since Eddie's charges were dropped, metalheads and weirdos coming from across the state to see Eddie Munson live on stage, with his wild hair and scarred neck.

They're nearing the end of their setlist, pausing to drink water, grinning and laughing across the stage. Eddie is having a blast. He hasn't stopped beaming, even as he sings about hell and a house on fire. Jeff wonders if his face is sore from smiling.

The next song is called Midas. Jeff assumes it's about Eddie's boyfriend. It's heavy, bold and screamy. It makes Eddie's voice rough, but he doesn't seem to care at all.

Would you let me kneel at your feet and press my lips to your ring? Would it bring you a spark of joy? Will your smile make the clouds sing?

Jeff looks into the crowd, squinting in the blinding fluorescent lights, and he feels fucking alive here, like the music is coursing through his veins, like every shout from the crowd is rejuvenating him. His eyes scan the front row, looking at the girls with dark makeup and the boys will long hair, at the leather jackets and denim vests and pins that flash under the lights and-- Is that Steve fucking Harrington?

Jeff almost falters, but he looks away from the boy, keeps playing, pretends he isn't there, but he can't help but look back by the next verse, his propped up as he plays. It sure looks like Harrington, complete with the floppy hair, but there's no way Steve Harrington is in the front row of a metal show, wearing a battle vest and smiling. The lights are flashing, running over the crowd like water, and Jeff can't see clearly, and it can't be.

My man with his holy touch Won't you turn my heart to gold? Press your hands into my chest My heart is yours to hold

Eddie's voice is breaking, and Jeff glances at him, curious if he's seen the Steve look-alike in the front row, the Steve look-alike that seems to be beaming up at him, wide-eyed, but Eddie's eyes are squeezed shut as he sings and strums his guitar.

Take my hand baby, make me yours My beautiful king Midas They'll tell us gold's a sin, but They can't stop what's inside us

Jeff's ears are ringing when it's all over, when they get off the stage to talk with some people. (It feels weird to call them fans. They aren't fans, Corroded Coffin isn't big enough to have fans.) Some people that work at the Hideout are moving the equipment, taking the drums and guitars and amps, and Jeff is sitting at the edge of the stage, talking with a girl that sat toward the back of the bar. She's holding a beer bottle, and she has a beautiful smile, but even as she talks to him, he can't help but realise that Eddie is nowhere in sight.

So he excuses himself politely, slipping past her and finding his way backstage, looking around until he opens a door, and Eddie has his back to the wall, holding a boy against himself. A boy with bare, scar-covered arms, wearing a denim vest, with floppy brown hair that's twisted around Eddie's fingers as Eddie groans loudly because the boy is slipping a leg between Eddie's, and it's nearly filthy, the sounds they're making, because they're licking into each other's mouths, groaning and whining and murmuring and Jeff can't look away.

"Fuck, Stevie," Eddie chokes as the boy buries his face in Eddie's neck, and--

"Oh my god."

Eddie and Steve part with startled shouts, detaching and stumbling as they both flush red and look at Jeff with wide eyes.

"Jeff, why?" Eddie says loudly, breathing hard.

"Uh." He blinks. "You're the one making out in a public place."

"Oh, Jesus." Eddie bends over, taking a deep breath, groaning. Steve is staring at Jeff, wide-eyed and terrified, and Jeff takes a moment to take him in. He's wearing eyeliner, smudged and dark around his eyes (sparkly eyes), and his hair is touselled, longer than it was in high school. He's wearing a black shirt under the battle best, and oh, that's Eddie's vest. His jeans are light blue and fitted, and his hands are shaking, and he has the same scar around his neck that Eddie has. Jeff's body is consumed with curiosity and confusion, but it doesn't matter, because Steve is shaking, and Eddie is taking his hand, squeezing.

"Jeff, can you keep your mouth shut about this?" Eddie asks, his eyes imploring, begging, and Jeff nods.

"I saw nothing," he says. "I don't even know where I am, I was just trying to find the bathroom."

Steve cracks a smile, and he's totally Eddie's type.

"Oh," Jeff says, blinking. "King Midas."

Steve's cheeks flush with color again, and Jeff says, "Oh, right, sorry," before he turns on his heal and walks out.

"Where'd you go?" Ian asks when he gets out to Eddie's van.

"Bathroom."

"Where's Eddie?"

"No idea, I couldn't find him. Dumbass probably got lost."

He's always been good at lying.

Eddie comes out after another ten minutes, looking a little touseled but no more so than he does after most gigs. He apologizes, and jokes that he got lost, and Gareth and Ian laugh. Eddie hops in the front seat, asks if they want to go to his place for drinks, and they all say yes. As they're headed to his apartment, crossing the parking lot, Eddie lingers back and speaks quietly to Jeff.

"He's, uhm. Gonna meet us at my place."

"I thought you guys were keeping this quiet."

"We are, mostly, he just... His best friend knows about us. And you know--"

"Sorry about that, by the way."

"No, it's..." Eddie shakes his head. "Not your fault, we were fully making out in a public place, we just, uhm."

"Were worked up," Jeff finished for him, and in the light of the streetlights above them, Eddie flushes red.

"...Yeah."

Jeff snickers and pokes at him.

"So he wants to... meet the guys?"

"Yeah. I talk about you a lot, so he said he trusts you guys if I do, and I do, so."

Jeff nods, smiling.

"He's pretty cool."

"He's a prep, Jeff, he's adorable."

"I cannot believe your type is normies."

"Shut up."

When Steve shows up, he lets himself in. He has a key.

"Hi."

Ian and Gareth both look up at him from where they're sitting on the sofa, glancing him up and down, recognizing him, questioning him, wondering.

"Hi?"

"So, uhm..." Eddie goes to stand next to Steve, his eyes shining at him like he's asking something silently, and Steve nods a little bit, taking a breath. "Ian, Gareth, Jeff. Steve." He gestures to all of them, and Steve waves awkwardly. Jeff sees Eddie's ring on his finger.

"Hi," Ian and Gareth say again. Jeff lifts his chin up at him, smiling when their eyes meet.

"Uh." Eddie pauses, gesturing to Steve again. "...Boyfriend."

Ian and Gareth both blink, and Jeff grins, watching the gears turn in their head.

"Oh," Ian says. "Cool."

Gareth stares for a second before,

"I cannot believe you got with your high school crush after high school."

Steve beams.

He ends up going to Eddie's room and coming back in Eddie's clothes, in a sweater and some sweatpants, and they sit on the floor together as the guys ask them questions. They skirt their way around some of them, without even glancing at each other to figure out what the other will say, It's like they're perfectly in tune with each other. Eddie plays with Steve's fingers while they all talk.

Jeff can tell that Ian and Gareth are also surprised but are keeping it under wraps. Surprised that King Steve is the boy Eddie was talking about when he described his boyfriend's kindness, selflessness, bravery, when he said He makes me feel safe, but even now it's obvious that it's true. Eddie leans up against him and holds his arm, gazes at him and kisses his shoulder for no reason. He's in love.

Jeff tells Eddie later all the clues he gave without meaning, and he realises the Bowie poster was a clue after hearing Steve humming Heroes. Oh well. He was still right.

[txttletale]

bundletober #13: blazing hymn

alright i've fallen behind on bundletober (the series of blog posts where i review and talk about a ttrpg i got in a bundle every day) and am hoping to make up the difference by putting out two entries today. this is the first one, and i'm looking at the mecha-piloting, synthetic-armour wearing, blaspheming-against-God-and-his-angels game blazing hymn by peach garden games.

now sadly this game is not a lyric/blackout poetry game about rewriting church hymns to be about gay sex. someone should make that btw. no it's just about wearing highly advanced battlesuits powered by the song of your heart to kill aliens with weapons of pure energy. which is about as cool.

first off, the layout of this game is unique and stylish. there are hexagons everywhere:

the game puts sparse splashes of dreamy pastel colours amid a constantly shifting set of black and white hexagons. it gives the book a visual identity that is at once both visually distinct and also changing massively from page to page. it's a really cool way to mix things up and keep you wanting to turn the page if just to keep seeing what the next one even looks like.

what's the game about? simple. angels have come to earth to destroy it badly. with the power of song, young people can power specially designed battlesuits, called Hymnals, that when not activated collapse down into crystal necklaces. it's a pretty anime concept--the game is pretty open about being inspired by Evangelion and Symphogear, neither of which i've actually seen--but it's cool as hell. the aesthetics of the layout really help bring the aesthetics of the game itself, of technology and ethereal mysticism merged into one thing, to life.

the game uses a pretty simple three-stat system where you build dice pools with a state relevant to an action and can get a full success, mixed success, or failure, depending on what you roll. your characters have two resources, Health, which is what it sounds like, and Gain, which is essentially magical power. because you can swap Health for Gain and Gain for Health at a 1-1 ratio with no restrictions, i'm not really sure why they're separate things--seems like a missed opportunity to not only simplify the mechanics but also create a strong mechanical narrative element by making Gain the only thing that keeps you going--once your song is silenced, you're out.

to create a character, you pick from one of six unit classes--here's where i'd describe the six classes, but honestly, they don't quite feel distinct enough. a lot of the powers you can pick for each hymnal class feel very similar, or are outright overlapping in a lot of cases. this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the descriptions of the hymnals, while trying to clarify their combat roles, all end up seeming to repeat themselves or say contradictory things. i think some direct ties between those descriptions and their mechanics would have helped--i'd find it a lot easier to remember that, for example, the 05 Xyston type "brutal in combat" if that flavour text was followed by a direct reference to one or more of its abilities. they do all have pretty different stats--which, in a game with a very simple and elegant combat system, means i'm confident they play very differently once you hit the table. but just looking at them, as a prospective player, i struggle to tell the difference.

i don't have that problem with the next character creation mechanic, though, which is choosing the songs you sing to power your hymnal. each song, as well as a thematically appropriate set of stat boosts, also prompts a pair of revealing character questions. they're the kind of mechanic that i want to get my hands on because they make it fun to create characters, giving real mechanical expression to the emotional fundamentals of who they are.

the combat system itself seems really, really good. it's astoundingly simple--you're encouraged to use a map, but there's no fiddly grid or distance tracking, just the ability to move between being Close, Near, or Far from an enemy. it keeps the numbers low to keep it getting silly and doesn't bother with any of the unecessary bookkeeping and fiddliness that plagues TTRPG combat as a whole. no initiative, no separate turns--there's a 'player' turn and a GM turn, and during the GM turn the GM picks from enemy's listed actions until they've done two for each player. players can use their abilities on the GM turn, and the game encourages the GM to take enemy actions that wil lforce them to--so nobody's ever standing around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the whole table to rotate back to them, and having a lot of enemies doesn't mean the players listen to the GM talk for fifteen minutes.

there's two unique mechanics that i think are very interesting-- Civilians and Condemnation. Civilians are--well, exactly what they sound like. on their turn, players can use an action to evacutate up to 5 of them. this extremely small and simple mechanic is fucking genius. so many games tell you they're about saving innocent people, but yet the only mechanical verbs you have to interact with anyone are violent ones. as elaine scarry says in the body in pain:

so in a way i think blazing hymn puts its money where its mouth is in a way very few combat rpgs with emancipatory or heroic aspirations bother. angels are said to attack populated areas--you're sent to preserve life as well as destroy the enemy. it makes the game feel fundamentally different, like despite the questionable ethics of hymnals (after all, they only work on young people, who then have to be sent into deadly combat situations) there is something heroic you can do.

the second cool mechanic is condemnation, a reality-warping toxin that angels use to destroy the places they're sent to. this rocks because it adds a ticking timer to the battlefield, a passive threat that forces the player characters to be proactive. if condemnation gets too high, not only is the fight going to get harder, but civilians are going to die en masse. it's a great piece of game design that gives the GM a great lever to pull for pacing and urgency.

i also really like that one of the steps of the GM turn is to 'change the situation', whether that means something happens in the narrative or something on the map changes (a train arriving is the example the book gives) or more angels attack. in general, one of my biggest complaitns about d&d is that unless a DM takes it upon themselves to design additional mechanics and encounters outside of anything the game actually gives them, combat inevitably turns into two lines of people hitting each other with sticks until one of them dies. i love dynamic, progressing combat, combat where the stakes change moment to moment. and blazing hymn delivers.

anything else? oh yeah, the angel designs are cool as fuck.

god damn. anyway despite a few minor issues with the hymnals themselves, the core of blazing hymnal is fucking good, a nice tight and razor-sharp combat system wrapped up in pulsing pastel crystalline aesthetics. if you like cool anime fights and like having the rules to back it up but hate complexity, crunch, and tedium, this might be the perfect game for you. it's certainly given me a lot of cool design ideas to take foreward into my own projects.

blazing hymn is available for purchase as a digital download through itch.io

[dapg-otmebytheballs]

SAY THE PARASOCIAL THING SAY IT

Aksjfhk okay

This got super long but basically I was thinking about that post about Phil being more open in his boundaries and I think he actually always has been! More under the cut

I think Phil has actually always been more self-assured in his interactions with the audience and I have some idea(?) of why that is. Phil has been around forever on YouTube, he is kind of a performer in a very classical way. You can see this in like how he carries himself in his liveshows, using very basic tenets of performance that we're taught like face the audience always and fill up any lulls in the conversation. There is always a screen between the creator and the audience, of course there is. But the culture we see now of internet celebrities and their audiences having very little boundaries because of how accessible creators have become to audiences wasn't as prominent back then. You understood as a creator that your audience will make whatever they want of what you're saying and you can't account for any bad faith readers. Phil always came across to me as someone who knew how much he wanted to put out there and was self assured in it. He doesn't feel the need to clarify stuff, and likewise engages with fandom in a similar good faith. What goes on in his life and what informs his thoughts, beyond what he shares, is none of our business, that was an understood thing and he's left it at that. And what fandom talks about, how we interpret stuff, how we do our parasocial shit is also not meant to be more than a performance, it isn't supposed to Say Something Serious about the creators, which is also understood. And though of course audience interactions started getting wildly out of hand some years after Phil started posting, he still is a product of a time where that wasn't how things are meant to be and he maintains that distance with ease. Thinking about stuff like draw Phil naked where he engaged with it in good humour, or how he didn't mind having sponsorships and clickbait titles because there's an implicit understanding that this is All A Performance so he doesn't have to try and "act authentic". There's a confidence he has in his role as an entertainer, and that informs how he interacts with us. (also I had expressed this all much better earlier but Tumblr ate it up so now I have to type it again sorry if this reads weird ;-;)

On the other hand, Dan seems to worry about all that stuff a Lot More. (And I was apprehensive about saying this so I thank anon here for allowing me to say my parasocial shit XD) And the thing is, the reason I notice that is Because I am literally like Dan about that stuff when interacting with an audience (I did some videos as well yeah, but also when I've organised events that I had to host, or presented poetry somewhere, etc etc) where I constantly feel the need to qualify everything I say and do very worried I'll come off as being maliciously bad, or even perceived as being a certain way or having a certain tone when I don't. I find it in rather positive ways with Dan too (like correcting language in old videos or pulling them off when there's something in there that aged badly or could be seen in bad taste). But other times I see reflected in him my own tendency to overcompensate (self referencing how he is making Easy-Content a la 'some shit a youtuber would do', making sure he doesn't come across as having the wrong political opinions by stressing on his principles when something like that comes up 'don't settle for neoliberalism' ((also he is totally correct and I actually do love those clarifications just fyi)) )

You can see this play out so well that time when Phil accidentally says 'cockies' instead of 'cookies' and Dan makes a 'cut that out' motion and Phil just laughs about it and corrects himself and Dan goes "Are you keeping that in??"

There's probably a lot of factors to why they have those particular styles of interacting, and really there's merit to both. Phil knows where the boundaries are and ever since him just speaking random shit hasn't had the extra issue of possibly outing Dan before he's ready, Phil has just gotten even more open with how he speaks, but I truly think he doesn't care as much what we think about him. It's like, what's going on in his life is none of our business and what we're making out of our parasocial relationship with him is none of his business, which is a great way of approaching being a creator and unfortunately something that is becoming less and less of an option as the culture shifts completely with generations that have been within this internet creator culture since they were born.

Dan having entered the scene later on when this kind of culture had started (plus of course his own issues that did Not help the situation) means that it made sense for him to approach us with that bit of hesitancy and that he continues to do so. I know I have that hesitancy about how I word things because I've also seen people be taken out of context and treated in really bad faith and that is a completely understandable thing to take into consideration.

But yeah Phil being the "quiet one" has never really meant that he is less certain/more shy to me, personally, I think he is an incredibly professional entertainer is the thing and I love love love that about him because he's of a dying species in the current climate.

[ebongawk]

talk chrissy to me + 1, 12, 21

Why do you like or dislike this character?

the best and worst parts about Chrissy are how little we get of her. like we get very few facts about her: she's a cheerleader, she's dating the head of the basketball team, she has an eating disorder, she's terrified of her mother, and she isn't afraid to bite when she feels cornered. outside of that, she's sort of a blank canvas. from what little we're able to scrape of her personality, we see how easy it is for her to don a mask, we see how kind and trusting she can be, and we see that she's not afraid to admit when she's wrong (if maybe she's slightly ashamed). I love Chrissy because I see so much of my younger self, so much of every teenage girl in her who gets told that they're not good enough, no matter how hard they try. she tries her best to do everything right, and I just want to make that enough in the end for her.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

what isn't a headcanon I have for her? gosh. I think that she likes to read, that her and Eddie bond over books. I think that, once out from beneath her mother's perfectly prim thumb, she becomes a bit of a collector and hoarder. I think that she develops a deep love for creative outlets and teaches herself how to knit, or starts writing poetry, or both (Eddie ends up with about seventy-three of her trial scarves). I think she stops attending church once she realizes she's not required to, because religion feels as oppressive as her life did before she found her freedom.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

the worst part is writing Chrissy's abuse, so let's just brush that out of the way. there are only so many ways I can talk about how much her mom sucks, and I s2g, I've Pavlov'd myself into absolutely despising Laura Cunningham even though we know so little about her. My favorite thing allowing Chrissy to explore her emotions. the glimpses of her we get are so subdued and drawn, like she doesn't allow herself to truly express what she feels. I like that I am able to give her that opportunity, that I can build a world for her within which she is allowed to be a normal, average girl who thinks and feels instead of the perfect doll everyone seems to expect her to be.

character ask meme!

[inventors-fair]

Exquisite Choice: Modal Flavor Winners ~

Our long-delayed winners from last week are @bread-into-toast, @izzet-always-r-versus-u, and @partytimesdeluxe!

@bread-into-toast — Oba's Overreach

[Art desc: the dryads comprising Trostani purify glistening oil, destroy Phyrexian metal, and rescue oil-covered plants respectively. One of them, however, scowls pensively as well: "I'm not doing enough." It's Oba. Knife-like flowers appear around her. Sneak the MKM symbol in somewhere.

Setting: Ravnica shortly after Phyrexian invasion, just before MKM kicks off.

Mood: something's coming.]

I just deleted a couple sentences about how this card isn't exactly what I was looking for for this contest because I'm realizing now that you may have struck a meta vein that's aggravatingly exquisite. Maybe. Rereading the story, there are a number of things that make sense. Correct me if I'm wrong: is this card in part depicting the healing process of Mat'Selesnya following the Phyrexian invasion? It would make sense—dismantling the artifacts, cleansing the enchantments, recurring the landscape, preparing defenses. If so, the name feels more like the portent rather than what the card itself wants to do, and I'm on the fence about that? But looking at your art description that seems to be the case with the action.

If that is true, then my interpretation of this card is that there's only so much that the dryads are willing/able to do. Two options means that one dryad is being left in the lurch—that being Oba, hence the expression that you're describing. Each option doesn't have a specific flavor, but by casting this card, you the player are inherently cutting off the full options from the power of the dryads and exacerbating Oba's feelings of frustration. Again, if that is the case, then you've both subverted and exceeded expectations for sure. And if I'm just overreaching in my interpretation, then too bad. I don't even know what to say, honestly—I was thinking so much about modes equalling choices that I didn't think about what it would look like with this kind of storytelling.

@izzet-always-r-versus-u — Time Uncertain

There's a certain melancholy to this card that I appreciate. It's an abstract card for certain, and I think it was a fairly bold choice to have that abstraction applied to the emotional and esoteric nature of time as it applies on the battlefield. Talking from a mechanical standpoint before I get into the poetry, obviously it's a pretty great rare. Tasigur is the first card that comes to mind with the first mode, but the fact that it would be next to impossible to see that last card (barring a hella long game) puts added pressure there. And of course, having an ostensible extra draw that can be recycled is great as well.

In terms of poetics, though, you've introduced a long-term concept of tension to these bullet points' relationship. If you don't have two differently named cards in the graveyard, you'll have to take the advantage. That's still really great, but then what if the card you get into your hand isn't the one you wanted? Is it worth throwing away later? Maybe there's a graveyard strategy, but we all know, the best laid plans and etc. One choice will always affect the other and be at the mercy of an opponent's choice even if your own choices are trying to affect that. As a card, Time Uncertain is a commander-y draft-y above-decent enchantment. As a little piece of art, I enjoy it immensely.

@partytimesdeluxe — Dream Snare

Sometimes the simplest thing hit in the best ways. The dream state is a strange place to be, and if your opponents are trapped in a dream, the best thing to do is use dream logic. There's no massive story being told here but there doesn't have to be, because the situation and the flavor hit in just the right ways. I appreciated the explanation in part because there doesn't have to be a lot of lead-in. That's just how dream logic works—you get frozen in place, your physical abilities are suddenly weakened, and/or phantasms come and go. You're the controller of the dream and the master of the illusory realm. It's neat!

What's also great about this card is how it works in various parts of the turn. Precombat tapping prevents the attacker (or taps a potential blocker for your next turn), in-combat attacking numbs a creature's impact, and then bouncing a spell can happen at any time. This isn't a first-turn pick for sure, that's reserved for bombs, but in terms of interactive spells it's pretty phenomenal. It's not playing into any space that a rare would play; it's still far on the high end of uncommon assistance. Powerful, flavorful, simple. Love the blending of modes—it's just what the doctor ordered.

We're comin', promise. @abelzumi

[butch-reidentified]

There are many great things about being a woman. Woman have a lot more value than just being weaker men, which is what the media of today seems to be telling us to be, with a few exceptions. But we've actually got something unique and important to offer the world that men do not have, and we can do things that they cannot do or would do very badly.

Femininity is the ability to create nurture life, at least in the vast majority of cases. Femininity exists in the first place to be able to grow something and care for it until it becomes beautiful. This expresses itself in a multitude of ways and not just with women, unless of course you're talking about childbirth. But apart from that femininity is not exclusively a female thing, though there is a heavy correlation.

Before I move onto the next bit of what I want to say, I want to define the word desecration. Desecration is the act of depriving something of its sacred character or the disrespectful contemptuous or destructive treatment of that which is held to be sacred.

The desecration of motherhood and femininity that is common place today is disgusting. It's like the world is spitting at the vulnerability that motherhood and femininity require, calling it weak and silly.

Vulnerability is not the same as weakness. It requires immense courage to be vulnerable because it is terrifying.

Woman are naturally more vulnerable than men for obvious reasons. Sometimes woman have to willingly make themselves vulnerable in a way that men never have to do. Pregnancy would be one of those times, but not the only time.

Vulnerability can be incredibly powerful, it doesn't just require courage to do, it can also be powerful in of itself. It can completely take the wind out of someone's sails in a way approaching them combatively may not have done, and you have to be brave in the first place because you're accepting you might get hurt and just having faith that you won't be.

You can't nurture something without being vulnerable because nurturing requires openness which requires which requires vulnerability which requires courage. It's not weakness because weakness is cowardice. Weakness is useless, vulnerability is not useless, it's necessary, that makes it not weak. The ability to nurture something is valuable, because without it there would be no life without it.

Growing something requires subtlety and intuition, you can't just go hammering at it. That would be silly, which is why femininity is better suited to those purposes.

The ability to create and nurture life is so important because there would be no life without it. Beauty is life and life is beautiful.

Medicine, law, business and engineering. These are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life, but poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. Isn't beauty just life celebrating itself?

You shouldn't feel weak or lesser because you feel you're naturally feminine, and you do not have to become masculine in order to be valuable or worthy or strong. If you don't fit into the masculine idea of strength or success or power, that does not make you lesser.

If you can grow and sustain life and care for things, that is valuable and important and you must treasure it. Being feminine doesn't mean you have to keep your head down and be meek and sweet and let people walk all over you.

Womanhood generally involves a lot of blood and pain even if or before you give birth, and none of that is weakness. Growing things is panful and requires sacrifice and strength as much as softness. You'll grow something weak if you're not strong and you don't have some grit about you. You can't grow a strong upright tree on earth that crumbles

this better be one of those anons that gets spammed to a bunch of ppl bc i don't see how this remotely applies to me or anything I've said on here.

also. what are you even saying? this is all over the place

[galraluver]

pls do 4 galrans of ur choice writing a loveletter!

Sure thing 🥰 I intend on making this as cute as possible 💕😊

_________________________________________

~ Thace ~

~ Thace is a little bit of a hopeless romantic like Ulaz, but unlike Ulaz he's not always the best at expressing his romantic interest for you

~ He loves you more than life itself, so he decides to attempt writing a love letter as a way to confess those feelings for you

~ While he writes the love letter Thace lets the words come from his heart, just as he would have done if he was confessing his feelings for you in person

~ He had only one chance to write a love letter to you and he wanted to do it right, he ended up obsessing over it for nearly a week

~ He felt that writing a love letter shouldn't have taken so long to write, and yet by the time he perfected it he was still hesitant to give it to you

~ Ulaz has to give Thace a pep talk before he leaves the envelope containing his love letter to you in front of your door

~ In the end, you reciprocate his feelings and within a week the two of you become a romantic couple

_____

~ Ulaz ~

~ Ulaz is a hopeless romantic and a complete sweetheart even though he acts stoic and a bit distant when others are around, but when it comes to you, his true love, he wants you to know how much he truly loves you

~ One of the most romantic things a person can do at the beginning of a relationship is write a love letter to their true love, so that's exactly what he does

~ The two of you can't be together all the time yet because of his position amongst the Blades, so writing love letters are his way of being intimate with you whenever he's away

~ Obviously there's no mail service in space, so he has Keith deliver the letters to you

~ He writes down how he feels about you in the most personal, sincere, meaningful way possible that will have you swooning as soon as you read the letter

~ While Ulaz writes the letter he writes poetically from his heart and re-reads each sentence after he finishes writing them to make sure there's no grammar mistakes and that nothing sounds cringey

~ Writing a love letter is the most heartfelt way one can express their feelings for someone they love deeply

~ Ulaz knows that you'll absolutely love the love letters he wrote for you

~ And you do; they're the most romantic thing you've ever read and you do your best to write love letters in response

~ Until you and Ulaz are permanently reunited with each other, you both send each other love letters that you both save for momentum

_____

~ Ezor ~

~ Honesty, Ezor could just tell you that she likes you since your bedroom is right across the hallway from hers aboard Lotor's main ship, but she wants to do something really cute and she decides to write a love letter to you

~ Of course, she takes her time to write it to make sure it sounds sincere, genuine and very loving

~ Ezor isn't really good with poetry and ends up asking Lotor for advice because she's not necessarily the best at long declarations of love

~ Lotor helps her out because she's one of his oldest friends and he wants to see you and her end up as a couple

~ Ezor doesn't have as much patience as her teammates, she really likes you and she just wants to tell you

~ She ends up confessing her feelings for you in the love letter just to get it over with

~ It would crush her if you didn't reciprocate her feelings, at least with the love letter she wouldn't have to face that rejection in person

~ In the end, after you find the love letter in front of your bedroom door, you seek Ezor out and the two of you end up together as a romantic couple

_____

~ Ladnok ~

~ Since Ladnok is a high ranking commander in the galra empire she has the privilege to take anyone as a romantic partner, even a servant

~ Ladnok likes you more than anyone and she thinks the two of you would be a good match for each other, and she can tell that you have a slight crush on her, so her way of letting you know that she's interested is by writing love letters to you

~ Writing a love letter to someone is a very serious thing; Ladnok takes her time to write the first one since she wants you to know how she feels about you, but at the same time she doesn't want to come on too strongly

~ Ladnok makes sure to include how much she truly values you as a person rather than a servant, the last thing she wants is to accidentally make you think that she's taunting you

~ Usually interspecies relationships are looked down upon in the empire, although since both you and Ladnok are women it's more accepted

~ Honesty, Ladnok felt a little nervous when she wrote the letter because she was expressing her feelings for you on paper, she just wanted you to know how much she liked you

~ Once the letter is complete and perfect Ladnok gives the letter to you personally

~ After you read the letter you swoon, and it isn't long before you accept her offer to court you

[thana-topsy]

I love your TES magic headcanons!! Do you have any thoughts about the Thuum? I'm curious about how 'bend will' would feel to the person it was being cast on. I imagine it depends a lot on the intent/mindset of the caster.

Also, what do you think was the deal with the mind control thing that Miraak had going on in Solstheim?

I live for well written TES worldbuilding/lore, the official stuff we're given simply isn't enough. :)

Wow! This ask got SO buried and I totally meant to answer it sooner! My apologies. I got caught up in the thinky thinks over my own headcanons on the Thu'um and then my brain wandered off into the great wild unknown.

As with all TES lore meta, I really enjoy approaching it from an in-world view as opposed from an omniscient, definitive "this is the way it is" view. So I'm going to use this as a writing prompt and allows some of my Dragonborns to answer with their opinions:

---

Aerik: "Well, I'm not sure if it's because I've got Nord blood or because I grew up in Skyrim, but the Thu'um is as much a part of my culture as poetry and song. It's another form of expression, albeit a bit more expressive and, uh, explosive than just belting out The Age of Aggression. Though I guess it depends on the tavern you're in... Anyways, it's just another form of language at the end of the day. Sure, it was a language that was never meant to be used by mortals. But, as history will attest, us mortals love to stick our noses into places they don't belong. We not only learned the Thu'um, but learned how to create our own Shouts never before used by dragons. How great is that? "But as far as Bend Will goes, I've only ever used it on dragons. But I have been robbed of my own free will before, and it's not an experience I'm looking to repeat. Not even on other people. I'll keep my opinions of Miraak to myself for the time being, but desperate men do desperate things. And when those men have a tremendous amount of unchecked power, those 'things' can end up hurting a lot of people."

Elanwe: "All language is a form of creation! The Thu'um is no different. There was a time that we spoke spells out loud in order to cast them, before we refined and reshaped the way we commune with our connections to Magnus. To speak is to create. The Thu'um presents this concept in a very literal form. "I have yet to encounter a Shout that can bend the Will of others, though I have no doubt that it exists. I would hesitate to use it, unless absolutely necessary. Dark magic, that. To control the mind of another. I imagine it would feel like being a prisoner in your own body. Perhaps a bit like when your arm goes numb from sleeping on it. Only walking and talking. Brr... unsettling."

[This Dragonborn wishes to remain anonymous, as they have yet to be revealed]: Well, hmm. I'll be honest, I haven't been able to do much research into the Thu'um yet. And Nordic customs are a bit... beyond me. But I can describe what it feels like, I suppose. When I encounter new words. It's like remembering something you forgot, but you don't remember when you learned it. Like a very, very distant memory. Maybe I'm explaining this terribly. It's like you know you know the word, and you have this deep understanding of what it means. Without ever having learned it. Wow, this makes no sense. I'm so sorry. I'm... gonna go."

[seththemountain]

Poetry and Mental Health: A Chaotic Connection

Introduction

Over my four years of writing poetry, I've noticed an intriguging connection between the poems I write and my mental health. In some ways, poetry has helped me see my experiences from a whole new perspective, but in others, I've stayed stagnant as an artist and human. I have three key pieces that detail the connection between the poems I write, and my mental health.

Expressing Yourself Through Poetry Could Be a Great Way to Cope

Through my poems, I can release my pain in a manner that isn't self-destructive, and I can also comfort those who struggle to express themselves. I fear too many people seek self destructive behavior as a way to "free" themselves from the pain. In truth, self destruction is chosen because it's allure is more appealing than the discomfort of facing your issues head on. When I write my poems, I feel that I am staring the abyss in the eye and analyzing its every cell. My analysis, and how I express it creatively in my verses establishes a connection between myself and my audience. One poem I shared with an old friend was called "Walked Out". It talked about the internal struggle of someone knowing they have to leave a relationship but feeling too attached to their lover to do so. The friend felt very connected to the poem and even shared it with their estranged ex-partner. The friend felt that the indecision expressed in the poem was similar to the indecision of going back to their ex. Though Poetry can be a way to healthily cope with your issues, that alone will not prevent you from sliding into self-destruction. You only need to look at examples such as Lord Byron, Charles Bukowski, or Edgar Allen Poe to see how self-destruction can haunt an artist.

Poetry Can Help You Discover More About Your Identity and The Roots Of Your Issues

I've been further able to understand the deeper psychology of my issues and what makes me, me. Through writing poetry, I've discovered how pecuilar I really am and I've embraced it. I've recently taken up to dressing in more tie-dye and even some alternative style. This is contrast to the usual dressy button downs I've worn before. Poetry has freed me from thinking and acting too conservatively. Poetry has also helped me to see the causes of my struggles with love. I've shared my poem Amelia several times at open mic's. After reading this poem to so many, I've realized that I tend to desire love that is passionate and burns bright, but is destructive and snuffed out quickly. 

Poetry Without Change Isn't Enough

If no intentional steps are taken to improve your mindset or lifestyle, the poems you write about your struggles will just grow said struggles. Just like any other way that you can express your issues, if you don't take action steps, those expressions are self-defeating. I was stuck on one woman for a long time. She was the first true love that I felt. She and I had an awful falling out, and I was very embittered for a long time. I wrote two whole poetry books, mostly inspired by the heartache I felt. It took two years, intentional empathy toward her situation, and a complete reset of my mindset toward dating to completely heal. 

[hanako-san]

It's tsukasa really a psychopath?

Tsukasa is not a psychopath! Okay, he has moments where he might look like that and he isn't. Tsukasa is just too OP, that's all. There's something about Tsukasa, and it's no wonder he may seem that way, but he's actually a good boy still trying to fulfill his beloved older brother's desires.

He has experienced many deaths, 3 in total?

Sacrifice for Amane

Burning in the red house

Killed by Amane

and there is still that humanity in him and the desire to fulfill Amane's wishes, which he is trying to achieve, as he said. Tsukasa is like Amane, he will do anything to fulfill his goal and will not back down. It's obvious they are twins and different, but they have some things in common, like this. Tsukasa also grants the wishes of nene, who wants to know more about Amane. He still does it.

She went to the past through the door in "everywhere and nowhere" where Tsukasa sent her. He didn't want to get rid of her, but to show a piece of Amane's past.

I absolutely don't think Tsukasa is a psychopath, he's a cutie pie.

He is a caring younger brother who wants the best for his older brother and if he promises something, he promises it. The situation with nene is a perfect example, he is a bit extreme, no wonder he is a supernatural person and there is a 'weak god' inside him, but this boy is still there. His only flaw is his rejection of Amane's feelings!! Stubborn little guy!!! Tsukasa also is trustworthy.

Tsukasa is more than just 'scary', he has a lot of depth, pain, love and care in him.

And honestly, I used to hate Tsukasa analyzing Tsukasa which helped me see the good in him.

AR showed that it's not worth to belive the first impression and quick to judge..

Meaning: Amane was supposed to 'hate Tsukasa and put him lower than nene' but it turned out otherwise. Amane's words to Tsukasa that he loves him are pure 'poetry' Amane chose such beautiful words to say that he loves him most in the world and that he is his most important person whom he wants to protect. Tsukasa was supposed to have a 'grudge' towards Amane when he reminded him of his death, but it turns out that he has no grudge and wants to die again for Amane.

Amane and Tsukasa are supposed to hate each other, but the truth is that they love each other so much and both want to protect each other.

Tsukasa is really something more, but have to see that - he won't show his emotions, he will hide them under a fake smile. Same as Amane. Both of them will not express their emotions, they just hide them, and if they show them, it is rare and depends on the situation. They are not expressive. You need to analyze them, look deeper than, for example, nene, who is really expressive in her behavior and does not hide them, which is why she is so easy to understand. But it's different with twins, you really have to want to understand and analyze them. They are both complex characters

That's why the twins are the best in the entire series.

Tsukasa is not a psychopath! It's supposed to look like this, but it actually doesn't. From his curious behavior, can also understand that this thing in him gave him a chance to grow up, his brain is still a 4-year-old kid and he will remain that way. He'll be a 13-year-old ghost with a 4-year-old brain. This cannot be missed or avoided. This curious stuff of his belongs to his original 4-year-old self.

Sure, his methods to satisfy his curiosity are extreme, but Tsukasa is a very smart boy who knows that as a supernatural, nothing limits him and he can afford more than when he 'lived'.

To me, Tsukasa is not a psychopath.

I think I went a little too far….. But I hope it doesn't bother you. I love Tsukasa too, but much less. I love analyzing and talking about the twins separately and together, they are truly amazing. Even though I went a bit too far(i think), I hope you like my answer.

Thanks for the ask!