#at least from what’s coherent

[probablygayattorneys]

So, I have this fun little thing called ‘catastrophic insomnia’ which means even if I do all the things you’re supposed to do, I put my phone away seven hours before bed, I do yoga, I do nothing in my bedroom except sleep… I will still not sleep well, if at all. It’s not my fault, it’s just the way my body was made, which means I get access to the good stuff in order to sleep, and a fun thing about some controlled substances, at least the ones I take, is that there is a real clear moment where the it goes from “it’s kicking in” to “I have no memory of this the next morning.”

Yesterday was one of those days while I was DMing a friend. See if you can catch where the heel turn was.

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[embv]

I think everyone’s subscribing to the “Helena Infiltration Theory” WAYY too quickly. I kinda feel like a lot of the oddities in the way she was acting could be chalked up to something else, and defaulting to “that’s not Helly” feels a lot like… I don’t know, like brushing off character flaws by saying, “No, [X] is possessed! That’s not actually them!”

I’d probably buy into it a bit more if she didn’t have that moment in the halls with Mark where she fervently said, “We’re not the same, actually. Us and the outies, we’re not.”

There are reasons why Helly would want to lie about her identity, and chief among them is the fact that she hates her outie—desperately wants to place distance between them, desperately wants to convince herself that the person she saw wasn’t her.

But there are compelling reasons for both angles, and I can’t say that I won’t be scanning future episodes for hints to either prove or disprove this, so… cheers, 🥂.

[marypsue]

Something about The Lost Boys, a deeply, deliberately queer movie all about vampires (so necessarily obsessed with blood transfer/exchange), where being attracted to the wrong person, taking risks around them, taking their tainted blood into your body, will change your life irrevocably and doom you to death, coming out in 1987, and saying that the real source of the majority of the problems caused by sharing tainted blood is a respectable middle-aged middle-class white man obsessed with power, heteronormativity, and the replication and eternal enshrinement of the nuclear family structure, and that the only way to survive and cure the infection is to destroy him...whoooo.

[ganondoodle]

okay i typed this in a reply but i need to say this more detailed here too, the way totk dealt with horses (and stables) is bad and worse than botw imo (yes i can rant about that too, these weird choices are in every little spot in totk, its almost impressive)

in a game that lets you build cars and stupid flying maschines, towers that shoot you into the stratosphere AND teleporting points all over the place, the chance is already low that you use a horse- though i would be one of them bc i love horses and hate building and didnt find it fun at all-

(also i almost never used any parts i had with me bc you cant put them back and your dumb vehicles despawn as soon as you dont look at them- also a negative thing about that system that reinforces the feeling of actually using it being more punishing than rewarding with the added bonus of the good ol saving your health potions forever problem)

-and something i DID like was that you can have more horses and the ... one.. new color (the lil spots but only AFTER you do that one quest in the spy post)

the stable points seemed like a neat idea, but like so many things, are utterly cheatable, imo the system should have only given you a point when you visit a new stable, so you actually have to go around and visit them all

(also .. add new stables, like mini ones or sth that dont offer beds- you dont need that anyway- so you have more places in which you can get them ... why did they remove some of them anyway, shouldn there be MORE now that the land is supposedly healing/being repaired? especially the one next to the big canyon, its so empty there it would have the perfect place for sth like a new settlement or a big boss arena but no its more empty than it was before, why?? and then putting yet another repeating annoying quest there in that weirld empty place?? i just dont get it)

letting you farm points by sleeping at a stable or bringing in a horse gives you LESS incentive to actually go around the world bc you can just farm it there

(and if that was done so youd 'discover' the malanya talks to you in your sleep 'secret' ... that is literally told to you, and if its bc you dont want to force players to go around and find every stable to get all those rewards ... why do you have 140 or whatver caves then with the majority of them being the literal same thing over and over ... to make people actually use the sleeping thing there? .. why, who uses that anyway, and farming points by sleeping there .. what the hell does that add? AND THEN the stupid sleep over tickets, probably the most nothign reward ever, dont count?? i dont think i ever used one- it just all doesnt make any sense, everything plays against each other)

the upgrading system for your horse is .. once again, a neat idea horribly executed, you have to go find malanya to upgrade them, and similarly stupidly like the fairies, they only tell you what food you need for what upgrade when you are there .. or when you are sleeping in the special tm bed at a stable, randomly, one food, bc the quantity changes too

which is just so ??????????? let me go and do a quest that rewards you with a lil booklet in which you can look up what an upgrade costs, or let the stables have that, either as a list or in the menu when selecting a horse or something?? (also why the hell is malanya in a different spot anyway, like, it feels like a modder just plopped them over there, their og spot is just empty now - except for yet again a stupid filler quest for .. another big horse and a yaaaaaaaaays crystal shrine quest- ... the spot is even still called spring of the horse god .... its so stupid, just like the fairy shuffling around, like you really couldnt think of a better way to reuse that concept other than to ... move it to a different spot in the same map and map level???? and not change anything in their og spot except idk, put a hole in the map ... for one of them like .. its like they moved them around last minute just to have the semblance of things being 'changed' with no regard what makes a change actually feel like one and what just feels like, pick up thing, click on random spot on map, drop thing- its like that for the fairies and shrines too, its so dumb and .. feels disrepectful to botw and how much thought seemed to have went into these spots that were clearly built about those things)

and like it couldnt get WORSE, they cut off the paths that horses follow automatically with one of those miasma buttholes (sorry its just a hole cut into the map, it doesnt even look like miasma burst through, it just .. cut out) a monster camp (that RESPAWNS, i thought those camps you clear with a quest would stay clear, but that would make sense, so of course it respawns and you can do the frame rate killer quest over and over yippieee) or otherwise like, with a big rock or a broken bridge-

and there is NO WAY to create a new path or fix or move anything in a game ABOUT BUILDING supposedly, like you needed more reasons to never use a horse????? i liked jsut hopping on and letting them follow a path and chill looking at the landscape, you cant do this here, and you cant even excuse it with 'its bc of the theme' as in, stuff is destroyed bc calamity 1.5 or whatever bc nothing in the game makes it feel like theres anything actually at stake, but the real crime is to make it not be fixable. WHY??? link moves entire buildings with ease but cant move one freaking rock that fell into a river?????? you swing around logs like a club but cant fix a bridge so your horse can get over it??????????????????????????????

[fisheito]

blade, superspeed superstar investigative extraordinaire (flinging entire men around since , uh, Saia)

[astranauticus]

i don't have the screenshots on hand because this is just a thought i needed to let out after being woken up by my buildings fire alarm at 7am (i am in shambles, thanks for asking) but back at the start of canto 7 i was trying to figure out what in the Fuck hong lu meant by don quixote being 'the most lucid' of the sinners and eventually my read was that she's the one who's most clear on what she wants because hong lu brought up how her eyes are sparkling and the two times dante notes someone's eyes sparkling in that episode (?) were when don talks about saving all the people in la manchaland and when charon says she wants to eat candy at an amusement park, and also this would very nicely mirror the bit in the final sancho fight when dante ruminates about how so far they've been trying to help the sinners out of their issues by figuring out what they want and then promising it to them but with sancho she doesn't want anything because everything she's wanted as don quixote was part of that dream that she's now woken up from (especially with dulcinae talking at length about the difference between sancho and don's eyes)

but like..... there's one other thing about eyes that dante notices in that early episode

so i'm wondering if this is an idea that's gonna come back in canto 8, that dante's old tricks aren't going to work here either because hong lu just doesn't really want anything for himself when he's been living his whole life surrendering (hah) himself to being used by other people for their own goals

[gomzdrawfr]

We are getting words in as I wrestle with my brain

this mtf (points at myself) loves stars and galaxy imageries

also random thought, does any fic writers do the thing when writing from art like this? xD I always like to pick things I've noticed from the piece itself, putting it in bullet points and then expand my ideas from there then try to connect them to paragraphs

[theinfinitedivides]

this tag under the smash or pass LDPDL poll........................... God in heaven give me strength. hold me back God pls i'm about to prove my title as LDPDL defender

[daisywords]

"just focus on book 1 without mapping out the entire trilogy" I need you to understand how much I cannot do that

[yourqueenb]

As a continuation of this ask that I responded to, all the things I mentioned are just parts of the overall issue I have with Blades…. which is that, in the grand scheme of things, I feel like MC is simply a plot device for the other characters rather than a fully developed character who has a fully developed and satisfying arc herself. It’s clear that Nia’s is the story the writers really wanted to tell considering how intertwined her characterization/development and the overall world building are. They basically even admitted as much.

So my question is why not just make her the MC if that’s really what you wanted on the not so down low? They still could’ve incorporated the skill mechanic. Why create a whole player character just to have us running to solve everyone else’s problems/support them while acting like everything that happens to us exists inside of a vacuum in the meantime? So far, all we’ve really been doing in this book is reporting where the group needs to go, telling them what to do, having heart to hearts with them when they need help moving to the next stage of their development, and then being spoonfed information through the lore tablets, which are apparently more for the players’ benefit than MC’s since they barely affect how we respond in game anyway. I’m fine with being the leader or the glue that holds everyone together, but to me it’s unsatisfying that that’s all we are as the main character.

We somehow become more competent due to the skill mechanic but no less clueless at the same time. We have all this terrible shit happen to us, but are only offered a few lines’ description of how that’s affected us. And then the rest of the attention goes to setting up the light vs. shadow conflict and our friends, who get to have personal and compelling conflicts of their own. I mean I feel like MC is more of an emotional support animal to them than an actual person with dreams, feelings, and a (minimal) background. Imo the only character who’s getting shafted almost as much as us is Imtura.

And all of this might make it sound like I hate Blades, but it’s quite the contrary actually. It’s still one of my favorite series and has a lot of fun moments and lovable characters. But I think at this point, its flaws have become too large for me to ignore. So that’s still affecting my enjoyment a bit and probably the reason why I’m so upset with how certain things are being handled. Of course I’m aware that Blades isn’t the only book that has some of these issues though. I think it’s just a little more disappointing because I expected more

[taraxippos]

I've got big opinions on dream sequences in writing. Which is mostly that they really shouldn't be there like 90% of the time because they grind the narrative to a halt, but I think they CAN have value. It's just that they tend to be executed in a way that's kind of pointless.

It's mostly that a lot of writers have the sequences be literal 1:1 depictions of the character's anxieties or feelings, or otherwise the absolute most on the nose symbolism possible. And it's not like dreams are NEVER like that, but why bother stopping the narrative to include a full sequence that essentially just repeats information the reader already knows?

If it's established that Character A is scared that Character B will get murdered by Jeff the Killer, and then A has an entire dream sequence of B getting Jeff the Killed and A wakes up sweating like 'Noooooooooo I do not want that to happen noooooo' it's jsut like. Yeah I knew that already?

[trainingdummyrabbit]

. putting polaris in the same room as wolfe. just to see what they become

OUGH. oouuhhh hhmmm.. thats certainly something t chew on... from my best understanding atm of polaris, they change their appearance+demeanor to most appeal to one's desires-- in an effort to keep them close, i believe..? atleast, this is what my digging about provides me with..

ok so. this very much does shift with time so theres a couple fronts to tackle with This Thang. cause like.

for a majority of wolfes earlier life, her actual singular desire is. To Be Left The Fuck Alone. like yeah, she's incredibly outwardly abrasive and has spent a Lot of her life having Just An Absolutely Terrible Time, but none of that really manifests itself as any genuine want to Retaliate in any way. of her own volition, at least-- she has to be under a Lot of strain to actually genuinely lash out at someone. which is to say, If It Sucks, she WILL Hit Da Bricks. she wants to minimize energy cost as much as possible.

she didnt have a lot of drive. a simple 'get in and get out' is quite literally the most she can ask of . literally anything. so to be placed next to someone who Wants to get her to stay, to forge a connection; its. gonna suck. even if she Did have any prior connections to pull on (which she might, but im not sure. were not really sure.) theres a high chance it actually repels her. she hates reminders like that-- she wants to move the hell on already. (i cant help but wonder why. even With a potential 'what if you got another chance?' implication, the aversion still stands. what do you mean by this.)

but then, of course, this Starkly changes with the introduction of rose. after that? it is comedically easy djhfgdj

not only is there an Actual Physical person that she pretty much just Blindly Trusts, but she also starts having Actual Wants past 'dont talk to me' and 'let me mind my own fucking business.' its tenuous, but she Does start more openly caring about the safety of other people, even if she doesnt really particularly know them. but that's a much more slow, kind of mild thing. the easiest (albeit less thorough) way is to present as someone who genuinely needs help- especially if theyre particularly young. its more distant, but she Will try to help.

and then theres the fucking. Situation. with rose. of course she'd be highly on edge about the entire ordeal (thats just how she Is,) but its not a terribly difficult part to play on the surface level because. well. yeah. she misses her. she Wants for things to just suddenly be okay, it was fine, and they all make it out okay. and if rose says its okay, then its probably okay, because why would rose lie to her?

but then theres the Problems. see, i havent exactly pinned down the precise Details of what happens, but its been like that from the very start. in an attempt to keep wolfe from being pulled into a self-destructive spiral, yet another monster they just Have to put down because As Sad As It Is, There's No Other Option; (and also keep the same thing from happening to anyone else too, i guess,) she finds a way to take that role for Herself-- a self-induced loss of control with the goal of 1) exposing just a Bit more of what exactly was Causing everything, and 2) keeping wolfe from doing the exact same thing for Her. an act that she knows full well she almost certainly wont come back from. and well. she didnt. and on some level, this was the intent.

which Means. if that's the angle polaris decides to go for, they Will have to deal with the fallout of "what was that why did you do that why didnt you tell me anything why would you do that why didnt you let me do anything why did you do that what is wrong with you???"

so um have fun with that one, i guess.

[sskk-manifesto]

--

[arundolyn]

ohhhh my fucking god nobody needs to like know any of this medical tmi but it is literally 11 pm and if im kept up one minute longer when i just laid down trying to go to sleep by my mother YELLING REPEATEDLY that she needs to pee. im going to actually go insane. she got a catheter in. Yesterday. it is working. she won't listen to anyone when they tell her that this is the case. help me jesus. im sure if a nurse comes to check on her tomorrow they'll probably get the same response. my brain will simply explode

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

Mirror

Rating: Mature

Content Warnings: Mild adult content, Blood Drinking, Mentions of Violence/Gore, Implied/Referenced Past Abuse

Majexatli always set up their tent a little farther away from the center of camp than the others, something Halsin did as well. Astarion chalked it up to some druidic strangeness, no doubt if he asked either of them they could blather on about nature. Majexatli hardly ever used their tent, though, most nights they simply took a bedroll or wildshaped into a wolf and curled up somewhere on the ground. It’s part of why he had tried to go for their blood in the first place, they were sleeping unguarded, unprotected by a tent, just out of sight of the others. He had meant to try and hunt for some animal to drain, but they had been right there.

The Shadow Cursed lands didn’t have the animals, or even living people, not enough to keep Astarion fed. And Majexatli had given near blanket permission to feed off them ever since the first time... It was foolish really, stupid, for some supposedly wise and experienced Druid to be so careless. Astarion doubted they had meant it, instead feeding himself on wild animals and occasional enemies unless they approached him. But after two days in these cursed lands, Astarion could feel hunger gnawing at him. 

Majexatli had excused themselves to their tent hours ago, they were most likely already asleep, and there was certainly no way he could feed on them while they were asleep. At first, he had tried, when they gave him permission, not to rouse them and just take a sip while they slept, it seemed the best way forward, the least intrusive. But they were vigilant enough that even sleeping he couldn’t even approach their tent without them waking and having their quarterstaff in hand or a dagger at his throat. 

Maybe there was a chance tomorrow they would come across some animals, or at least something that wasn’t undead. Maybe—

He approached their tent with a sigh, not bothering to soften his footsteps. 

Surprisingly, he didn’t find himself being seized by a hold person or crushed into the ground by an owlbear, even as he reached the edge of their tent. The entrance flap was open, a faint flicker of warm candlelight casting shadows across the floor.

Astarion had never seen the inside of their tent before, he realized as he looked inside. The ground was covered in a simple rough canvas, though half of the floor was taken up by various furs. A small log was on one side, covered in moss and small flowers, a lyre propped up against it, neatly folded hide armor laid atop it, next to a shallow woven basket currently filled with some of the plants and mushrooms Majexatli always went out of their way to collect. Their backpack along with various satchels lay half unpacked strewn across the floor nearby.

Atop the furs and sitting at a pair of low wooden tables, was Majexatli. The table in front of them was cluttered with papers and books and maps, quills and ink, a lantern with cracked glass whose candle was burning low. To their side the other table was covered in jars, vials, alembics, a mortar and pestle, from one of the tent’s supports was strung bundle after bundle of herbs left to dry.

Majexatli was shirtless, something Astarion had never seen. They always wandered about camp in either their armor or modest camp clothes, always disappeared off into the woods to bathe rather than doing so in the river at the edge of damp.  While Astarion thought better than to stare, not wanting to invoke Majexatli’s ire, the scars were impossible to miss even with only a glance. 

Thick, deep, jagged gouges—claw marks, clearly—reaching from their waist on the right all the way up over their left shoulder. They took up most of their chest, even the gentle swell of pecs was interrupted, split, twisted. The dark shadows cast by the candlelight only exaggerated the lines on their face, the silver streaks in their hair, the depth of the scars on their chest, the way what few ridges survived were twisted and pulled taut.

He made a point to look away, clearing his throat. 

It was impossible to know what his current standing with them was. The two of them had never been on great terms. Oh, he hated their naive heroism. They weren’t quite like Wyll, bright-eyed and woefully disillusioned, Majexatli was older, seemed tired, jaded. At first, Astarion thought surely they would see his side, yet they instead would derail the entire party to help anyone. It seemed likely they hate him in return, they had no problem grating on his nerves, criticizing his sensible ideas, grimacing at his cruelty. Though for whatever reason, they let him drink their blood, stupidly offered to help fight Cazador, asked him questions about himself same as they did to the others, heard him out each time he tried to explain to them the idiocracy of their altruism. 

Hells, he had tried to hook up with them—surely that’s what they wanted, he thought. Nearly every time he fed on them the two of them seemed to play a strange game of chicken, waiting to see who would be the first to break, who would give into arousal first. He wanted to hold out, but Majexatli seemed immovable, keeping their hands firmly by their side when he fed. 

Once he let his hands wander slightly, just enough to be plausibly an accident, brushing his hand over the front of their chest where their nipple would be, where he now saw there was nothing but scars and twisted muscles. He had tasted the fear in their veins before he felt them tense, though they didn’t push him off, even as their claws dug into the bedroll beneath them. They didn’t stop him, they could have, they were twice his size at least, they could probably deadlift Halsin and barely break a sweat. They could stop him, but they didn’t. 

The confusion had soured his appetite. 

Sometimes in the evenings, when Astarion tried to trance, he remembered the first time, when he had gone too far, drank too much. They had turned into a bear, tossed him off, and pinned him down before he could even blink. He vividly remembered the feeling of them straddling his waist when they came out of wildshape, pressed against him he could feel their arousal, even with their blood loss, their face radiating heat, eyes lidded, mouth so close to his. Even though moments ago he had been faced with the snarling maw, the bared teeth of a beast that could crack his ribcage open even if he had armor, Astarion was already half hard. He knew his face would have been flushed red, lips stained with Majexatli’s blood—the first blood he had ever drank from a person, sweet and rich and intoxicating. Oh, it would have been so easy for them to grind down, for their sharp teeth to dig into his lip, to slide hands under clothing—

But, no, Majexatli had apologized, rolled off him, and laid back on their bedroll in silence, going back to sleep. They went on the next morning to give him that blanket permission to drink their blood, clearly wanting more, only to never so much as let their hands touch him anywhere other than a shoulder. And then at the tiefling party, when he finally broke and offered a night of passion, of whatever carnal pleasure they wanted to take from him, they hadn’t jumped at Astarion’s offer. No, they had paused, given him a tentative “maybe” and ultimately went to bed alone—

“Blood?” 

Majexatli’s voice cut through his thoughts, snapping him out of his reverie. Looking back at them he froze for a moment as he saw that they hadn’t covered up. They had set down the book in front of them on the table but otherwise hadn’t moved. Their quarterstaff still lay by their bedroll, favored dagger nowhere in sight. It seemed wrong.

“I can come back later if—“

“It’s fine, I’ve just been doing some reading,” They looked up at him, studying his face for a moment, “I can put on something if you prefer…?”

Their face was unreadable, it always was, they had to make it difficult. Astarion forced a flirtatious smile.

“Oh, I couldn’t care less, darling, I just don’t want you to decide to skin me afterward for seeing this,”

He hoped he sounded charismatic, nonchalant, not like a starving man, nor someone hopelessly out of his depth in whatever mental lanceboard Majexatli was playing at. Majexatli in turn studied his face, no doubt considering their next play.

“Alright,” They said eventually, “How do you want me?”

A calculated move, perhaps they wanted him to beg, to lay bare how desperate he was, how much he relied on them. But… something about it unsettled Astarion, something in their gaze, something in their eyes reflecting back at him, something he didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know the shape of.

If it was another time, someone else, maybe he would sprawl himself across their bedroll languidly, batting his eyes and loosening his shirt enough for it to slip off a shoulder in an act he knew by rote to entice them to his side. But…

“You can stay just as you are if you like, I wouldn’t want to interrupt your reading,”

Majexatli almost seemed caught off guard, almost, the faintest raise of eyebrows, the slightest pause before nodding. They pulled their braid over their right shoulder—it didn’t have its usual ribbon, the sight felt like something forbidden—exposing the left side of their neck where he already had marked them. Two small pale scars, not fully healed, among a sea of freckles.

By the time Astarion had removed his shoes and come to settle behind them, Majexatli had picked up their book again. They jumped every so slightly as he put a hand on their shoulder, impossible to tell if it was from the touch itself or the coldness of Astarion’s skin—Astarion didn’t feel cold himself, but pressing against their back, feeling the warmth they radiating gods he couldn’t help but shiver, lean in closer to them.

Majexatli inhaled sharply as he sank his fangs into them, tilting their head further to the side for him and he could taste the spark of pleasure, the racing of their heart. Astarion hadn’t drank of many people, so it’s not as though he had enough experience to judge how their blood tasted in comparison to others, but he honestly couldn’t imagine anyone tasting as good as Majexatli. Their blood was rich, slightly sweet yet complex, flavor mingling with the earthy scent of the herbs they worked with, filling him with a fiery warmth that pooled in his belly.

It was a struggle to not lose himself, to not drink until he felt truly full, until the weight in his stomach was drowned in blood. Astarion wanted to be sated but also wanted them to shove him off, pin him down, press their sharp teeth to his flesh and draw blood in payback. 

Instead, he pulled away as soon as he felt the sharp hunger in himself dull, drinking just enough to buy himself another day or two.

Still buzzing from even a small drink of their blood, without thinking, he rested his cheek on their shoulder, let a hand wander slightly. Astarion hadn’t realized he had put a hand on their waist until he felt them stiffen slightly as he felt ridges give way to deep scarred flesh. He swallowed, warmth quickly fading as reality once again settled in.

He pulled away without a word, focusing on straightening his clothes, composing himself as he stood. Looking down at Majexatli, he saw them wince, their fingers lingering over the scars on their waist, where Astarion’s had been moments before.

“Do they hurt?”

It seemed neutral, casual enough. Majexatli wasn’t one for conversation, not like this usually, but he wanted to do something about the tense silence and couldn’t help his curiosity.

“Not always, they’re pretty old,” Majexatli shrugged, “They’re mainly just annoying,”

Astarion opened his mouth to say something, but he felt his tadpole squirm behind his eyes, images flashing in his mind faster than he could fully comprehend.

The face of a young half-elf, fair skin, a kind face, smiling standing by their side in a verdant landscape, warmth and adoration blooming in their chest, consciously snuffing out lingering doubts while hindsight has their skin crawling—

Curling up in a bedroll in the dark, a mantra repeating in their head He can make me great. He loves me. I just need to do what he says. I can have a home. He wants to help me. He’s a good person. I won’t have to be alone.

Looking down and seeing their own chest torn open, intestines spilling out onto the dirt, blood bubbling in their throat, looking behind to where he had been only to find no one, unable to breathe in, I’m going to die alone—

The connection broke as quickly as it had been made, Astarion nearly fell over from the shock of it all.

“Sorry,” Majexatli said eventually, breaking the silence, “My mind’s been a bit scattered lately,”

“It’s quite alright,”

Astarion hesitated for a moment as he stood, unsure whether he should leave, if he should say something more, do something.

“He’s married now,”

It was Majexatli who spoke, though their eyes remained on the book in their lap. The same page open as had been when he first entered the tent.

“Pardon?”

“I assume you saw all that,” Majexatli gestured vaguely, finally glancing up and meeting his eyes, “He’s married now. Has children, even. A beautiful family, I’m sure. Makes sense, it’s been 20 years. I haven’t been back since. Word is he’ll make archdruid one day, his friends are highly respected as well, always have been,”

Astarion opened his mouth to say something. What should he even say? Perhaps a joke, a jab at their character, it’s what they both always did. He couldn’t bring himself to, though, not then. He knew what they were saying, the meaning beneath those words, He’s doing fine despite what he did, I’ve spent my life suffering because of him, but he lives happily and comfortably.

Maybe if Majexatli’s eyes didn’t look so tired and distant and familiar he would climb into their lap, bask in their warmth. He would drag his teeth across their neck, lap at the fresh wound on their neck, try to pull a moan from their lips, get them to melt under his touch, make them forget whatever memories plagued their mind. He would ride them into oblivion until their nerves were screaming from overstimulation and see what their blood tasted like as they came apart.

Maybe they would let him. Would he, if the roles were reversed? The thought felt sour.

“Good night, darling,”

The soft sincerity in his voice startled even him.

“My tent’s always open for you,”

And the lanceboard game reset, though the pieces unsteady; the masks were back on, though cracked. Perhaps the routine was the closest thing to comfort that either of them allowed.