#but this is a trend I've noticed

[journey-to-the-attic]

"am i really that old?" lucifer wonders on the train later

(you've probably seen them already but references taken from this post + the original tweet)

-> the follow-up

[shininas-ideals]

Woah Soukoku??? With a late Twitter trend???

[seventh-district]

Midnight Hour

With the warm haze of sleep fading from you, your brow furrows as your right hand presses lightly against his lower abdomen, your thumb sweeping up and down in a small attempt at a comforting motion. You quietly call for his attention, voice still thick with sleep.

“Star? Is everything okay?”

His typically silent breath suddenly hitches, and his head angles down to face you. Now that he’s turned toward the light, you catch the way his eyes shine, and the way the light reflects off of what you quickly realize are tear tracks, running down his cheeks.

You awake in the middle of the night to find your lover in tears.

Pairing: Astarion x Reader

Word Count: 3,139

Content Warnings: [crying (obviously)] [non-specific mentions of Astarion's past trauma] [this fic was written by someone who hasn't actually played the game and that might show in the details/the lack thereof]

Blinking your tired eyes open, you squint at the light of the crackling fire in front of you. Closing them again, you let out a soft sigh as you try to guess at the current time. Given that you woke on your own, you’re assuming it’s likely close to, but not quite, time for you to take over tonight’s watch shift.

Your group has fallen into a routine where you pair off into teams of two, and a different team keeps watch each night. Tonight’s turn belongs to you and Astarion, and he’s taken the first half of the shift as usual. You usually, ironically, sleep your best on the nights that he keeps watch, in spite of only getting half the amount of sleep as you do on the nights another team has the job.

You suppose you can credit the fact that, at the end of the day, Astarion is a creature of the night. Something about knowing he has the upper hand when it comes to any unwanted nighttime visitors your group may encounter is… reassuring. To you, as well as to the others in the group, loathe as some of them may be to admit it. That is, once they all felt confident in his promises to not make a surprise midnight snack of them, at least.

Tonight is a bit of an exception, though, and you’re not quite sure what woke you early this time. You typically sleep soundly until he gently coaxes you awake, nails combing through your hair, voice soft and apologetic in your ear. He’s always somewhat reluctant to wake you, but he does so nonetheless, having learned his lesson after the first time he made the executive decision to let you sleep the whole night through. His arguments of “You really looked like you could use the rest.” and “What’s one sleepless night? I can sleep when I’m dead.” didn’t hold much water in the face of the way he dragged ass through the entire next day.

In “the spirit of fairness” and “proving that he can stick to an agreement,” he never tried to take the whole shift by himself again. It definitely didn’t have anything to do with how guilty he felt when he heard the disappointment in your tone when you awoke that first morning and discovered he hadn’t stuck to the plan. Definitely.

Laying there in the quiet, you try and fail to pinpoint what feels different about tonight. You don’t hear any strange noises, nothing feels unusual, and blinking your eyes open again you raise your head a bit to look around the fire. The rest of the group are circled around the other sides of the heat source, sleeping soundly. You figure that you’re probably just getting used to this routine by now, and your body simply woke up around your usual shift change time on its own.

Still, that doesn’t explain the vague, unplaceable feeling that something is just… off.

You let out a sigh that turns into a yawn as you stretch and roll away from the fire onto your back. Letting your head roll further to the left, your eyes land on the familiar sight of your lover’s back as he sits in his usual position beside you, diligently watching your six.

He’s taken to placing his bedroll right next to yours, insisting that you lie between the fire and himself. You couldn’t really argue with his point that he can’t feel the cold anyways, so there’s no need for him to be the one next to the fire. Nor could you argue with the benefits of having him as a line of defense between you and whatever lurks beyond the reach of the firelight.

The feeling of security and protection that he provides you with is still relatively foreign to you, and a soft smile blooms on your face at the warm feeling it brings. Your smile then falls a bit as you remember the silent question you ask yourself on the regular, of whether or not you provide him with the same.

You roll the rest of the way to your left, and shuffle further toward him, closing what remains of the small gap he’d placed between the two of you. Lying halfway on your bedroll and halfway on his, you curl your body around his seated form, bringing your right arm up and gently placing a hand on the right side of his waist. He flinches slightly, and if this were earlier on in your relationship, you’d retract your hand. He’s long since informed you though that his reaction to unexpected touch is simply involuntary, and as long as it’s you, you’ve no need to pull away.

You recall the quiet, restrained desperation in his voice when he first explained it to you, all but begging you not to pull away. He can’t control the way his body reacts to touch, given that before you, he couldn’t recall the last time being touched meant anything other than pain. In spite of that though, he wants it. He wants you. That’s obvious in the way that he, without fail, immediately relaxes under your gentle touch once his mind and body process that it’s coming from you. The way he’s come to not only relax, but to lean into it. Lean into you.

You’d never push past his boundaries, never in a million years, but he’s made it quite clear after about a thousand of your quiet requests for consent at every minor touch, that he’s entirely welcoming of your non-sexual physical affections. Getting the man to verbally admit that he actually enjoys cuddling with you, without the truth being concealed beneath a heavy layer of playful banter and practiced, honeyed words didn’t come easy, but he came around to it in his own time.

So, you don’t pull back, instead following through with the motion and slowly snaking your arm around his waist. You press your front against his lower back and curl around to rest your left cheek atop his left thigh. You can’t help but notice that he doesn’t relax into you in the way he usually does, and your head turns to the right a bit, struggling to get a half-decent look at his face as you’re both turned away from the fire light.

He remains tense, still, and unresponsive to your movements, gaze seemingly locked dead ahead of him, staring out into the dark forest.

With the warm haze of sleep fading from you, your brow furrows as your right hand presses lightly against his lower abdomen, your thumb sweeping up and down in a small attempt at a comforting motion. You quietly call for his attention, voice still thick with sleep.

“Star? Is everything okay?”

His typically silent breath suddenly hitches, and his head angles down to face you. Now that he’s turned toward the light, you catch the way his eyes shine, and the way the light reflects off of what you quickly realize are tear tracks, running down his cheeks. He’s actively crying, tears dripping from his chin, and now with his head tilted down at you they take a different path, running down to converge and fall from the tip of his nose.

You nearly bolt upright in your shock, quickly unwrapping yourself from him and clambering around on all fours until you’re sat down in front of him, your hands gripping tightly to your upper thighs in worry. His wide-eyed gaze followed your every movement, and even now that you’re sat still in front of him, his eyes still dart around, frantically scanning you, for what, you don’t know.

“What- what’s going on?”

You keep your voice as quiet as you reasonably can in spite of your shock and concern, not eager to wake your companions and have everyone witness… whatever this is.

He doesn’t respond, looking just about as lost as you feel, shaking his head in silence as more tears fall. It’s one hell of a sight, and it suddenly hits you that this is the first time you’ve ever seen him cry.

Unsure of what to do and what even caused this, you resist the urge to wrap him in a hug, not wanting to overstep in this unfamiliar territory. Instead, you glance back over your shoulder and once again see and hear nothing of note before trying another question.

“Is there a threat? Did you see something that scared you, honey?”

He takes a long moment to answer, seeming unsure, before eventually settling on another shake of his head. His lack of confidence in his answer isn’t the most reassuring thing at the moment, but given that you aren’t detecting any danger either, you decide to believe that he really didn’t see any threat. At least, not here. Not right now, in the present moment, in front of him. He seems about halfway here and halfway gone, and if your growing suspicions are correct, he’s probably been sat here lost in the dark corners of his mind for a while now, given the state he’s in.

You catch movement to Astarion’s right side and watch as Karlach raises up from her prior position sprawled out face-down on her bedroll, propping herself up with her forearms beneath her. Her expression of concern is too aware and her eyes are too awake for her to have just now woken up, and you quickly gather that she’s probably been awake and laying there long enough to have heard your questions and Astarion’s lack of any verbal response. She doesn’t say anything though, and doesn’t move, just letting the situation unfold and keeping a watchful eye on the darkness behind you.

Relaxing slightly at the knowledge that someone else is awake and helping to keep watch now, your focus shifts back to Astarion, who’s gaze has moved to his lap, tears still falling fast. It’s almost unsettling, the way he cries. There’s no sound, no movement, his breathing is hardly even affected, nothing more than the occasional shaky breath to give away any sign of struggle at all. You don’t have to guess why it’s like this, given what he’s told you about his past. You’re sadly certain that he learned to cry like this ages ago. Silent and still, sat alone in the dark so no one would notice.

You don’t want to think about the sorts of punishments he’s endured as a result of showing such pain and emotion, but your mind pulls from what experiences he’s shared and offers up a few anyways, making you begin to feel sick.

Leaning down and trying to catch his gaze, you ask another question.

“Astarion, are you with me right now?”

He blinks, more tears spill, and his lips finally part as he responds to you with a strained whisper.

“I’m trying to be…”

You smile in spite of your current emotions and the general mood of the situation, doing your best to be something positive, something gentle, something safe for him to focus on.

“There you are…”

You say it to yourself as much as to him, relieved to finally hear his voice, as laced with pain as it sounds. You hold out your hand near where his lie balled into fists in his lap, offering him contact without forcing it on him.

“I want you to keep trying, okay? Do your best to come back into the present with me. You can take my hand, if you’d like?”

He stares down at your offered hand for a long moment before shakily unballing one of his fists. He hesitates, fingers trembling, before reaching out and placing his hand in yours. His skin is even colder than usual and slightly damp to the touch, and you couldn’t be less put off, or give less of a fuck about the messy state of him right now, or ever, if you’re being honest. You just want to help him, however you can.

You curl your warm fingers around his palm, wanting to pull him into a hug so badly but restraining yourself, letting him call the shots.

“You’re okay now, Star. You’re safe right now, here with me. We’re safe.”

He’s quiet for another long moment as he shuts his eyes tight, taking in your words. His other fist unfurls, and his body trembles almost imperceptibly.

“I… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

Your heart breaks.

“Honey, you have nothing to apologize for. Nothing at all, I promise you.”

He shakes his head in disagreement, his voice an insistent whisper.

“I shouldn’t be doing this.”

Your shoulders drop from where they’d been tensely held up, body slumping with a silent sigh as you watch him still try to hold this wall up between the two of you. You’d made it past a number of his walls already, but this one… this one you’ve yet to be granted access behind.

“It’s okay to cry, you know?”

Another shake of his head, this time with far more force behind it, almost vehement.

“No.”

You soften your voice, insisting.

“Yes. It is. You can cry now, Astarion. No one’s gonna hurt you. No one’s gonna judge you. I swear on my life, that’s the truth.”

His breaths become more labored, uneven and shaking.

“You aren’t his anymore. The old rules don’t apply. You can let it out, now. No one, and I mean no one, is going to punish you for it.”

His eyes pinch closed and his head shakes hard side to side, like he’s fighting his own mind, and his hand opens and closes like it wants to grab onto something. He then moves, wrapping his free hand around your arm and suddenly you’re being pulled toward him, desperately, insistently.

You follow the motion as he continues to tug at you, first leaning forward and propping yourself up with your other hand on the ground as he continues to pull you closer. You quickly gather what he wants as he lets go of your hand in favor of latching onto your other arm, pulling you upward, choking back tears all the while.

You raise up on your knees and his hands move once again to hook beneath your arms as you allow yourself to be pulled up onto his lap with physical strength you keep forgetting he possesses. Hooking your legs around his waist, you wrap your arms around his shoulders and pull him into you. His arms wrap tightly around your waist and he buries his face into the fabric of your shirt at the collar, muffling the soft sound of his crying which has now turned to full-blown sobs.

He’s still shockingly quiet in spite of it all, and you imagine it’s a mixture of being unable to let go of what’s ingrained into him, and not wanting to alert the entire camp to his current breakdown.

Your thumbs stroke up and down in place on his back, not wanting to let go of your hold on him but still wanting to give him some sort of comforting motion to focus on. Besides, you figure petting across the entire expanse of his scarred back might do the opposite of calming him down, so you refrain and keep your arms wrapped firmly around him. Turning your head down toward his, you whisper to him in between soft kisses to his temple.

“That’s it, love. Let it out.”

“You’re safe now, Astarion, I swear.”

“There’s nothing wrong with this.”

“I’m so proud of you.”

“You have every right to cry. No one ever should’ve taken that away from you.”

He grips you even tighter as you shower him with painfully unfamiliar affection and acceptance, comfort unlike anything he’s ever felt before in his horribly long life. His forehead presses against your right shoulder as his crying slows, trying to ground himself and catch his breath. You make a point of holding him securely against you, breathing slow and deep to give him an example to follow.

You catch movement in your periphery and glance over at Karlach as she quietly sits up and makes a series of silent lip movements and hand gestures that you don’t entirely grasp. You work them out to mean that she’s gonna take over watch for the rest of the night, and you can rest with Astarion. You send her a grateful look and mouth a “thank you,” to which she waves you off with what you think you read as a silent “don’t mention it” on her lips.

After a short while spent focused on slowing down his breath and bringing him fully out of his memories and back here with you, you whisper quiet words in his ear.

“Your work is done, Astarion. You can rest now.”

You mean it in both possible interpretations of the words, and he seems to understand that, his body finally relaxing against yours for the first time tonight.

“You wanna lie down with me, love?”

He seems like he almost nods, but stops himself, whispering back in an exhausted voice, scratchy and thick from crying.

“Someone has to keep watch.”

You hesitate to inform him that Karlach has already taken over that role for tonight, sure that he’d get no sleep at all if he knew she’d witnessed this. You know you’re gonna be awake watching over him for the rest of the night anyways, so instead, you offer a compromise.

“I can hold you and keep watch at the same time, love. Just… let me sit and you can lay against me.”

He gives the suggestion a moment of thought before nodding his head, reluctantly loosening his hold on you. You maneuver the both of you carefully so as to avoid allowing his tired eyes to catch sight of your obviously awake companion sitting behind him.

It isn’t much of a task considering his eyes are halfway closed already, his only remaining focus locked on you. You settle down at the head of his bedroll, guiding him to lie down and bringing his head to rest in the center of your lap.

Your hands take turns gently combing fingers through his white curls, and you feel his tense shoulders begin to relax at the feeling. You bring a thumb down and gently stroke over the lines creasing his brow, quietly encouraging him to release the tension he likely doesn’t realize he’s holding. You watch him pull in a deep, albeit still slightly unsteady breath, and you can practically feel the relief that washes over him when he exhales.

Words aren’t necessary between the two of you at this point, not in this moment, but you offer him a few anyways, hoping they’ll resonate in his tired mind as he slips into sleep.

“You’re safe here, Star. Rest easy.”

A/N: Like I said in the CWs, I haven't played the game for myself (yet!) so I only know what I've seen in the hours of (mostly Astarion-focused) scenes I've watched on YT. As a result, this might have read a bit funny if I've gotten certain details wrong. For instance- I have no idea how resting at the camp actually goes, whether or not someone keeps watch all night, etc. Also I'm not sure if Astarion even needs to actually sleep or if he meditates/falls into a trance and just calls it sleep, but for the sake of simplicity, (and me being clueless,) when I say he falls into sleep just assume he's doing whatever he'd normally do to rest. On a different note- this little fic was inspired by a combination of two things. The lovely art and additional commentary on this post, by @velnna , and also by me listening to Midnight Hour by Sierra Eagleson on loop for like, an hour, and daydreaming up this specific scene before proceeding to write it out. It is a beautiful song that is now the title and theme-song for this fic, and I encourage you to go give it a listen if you haven't heard it already. Header Image Source: x

[necrotic-nephilim]

this is not a ship post, but something that frustrates me a lot in fanon concerning Jason Todd that attempts to soften Jason's return to Gotham for the sake of found family domesticity or easy hurt/comfort or just sliding him into the Batfam sooner, is they all seem to fundamentally misunderstand Jason.

because there seem to be a lot of fandom popular concepts of Jason coming home much sooner and just not having his whole Under The Red Hood arc. which in theory is fine and i can see the want to simplify canon to make room for your lighthearted more fluff-leaning concepts. but in everyone without fail, the way they address the clown-shaped elephant in the room is by having some throwaway line that "oh Jason quietly kills the Joker and moves on".

when the Joker being dead or alive is not the *point*. if by some chance accident, the Joker had died prior to Jason's return, whether by ridiculous freak accident, getting whacked by a fellow villain, hell even someone actually doing so to avenge Jason, it *would not* satiate Jason's anger. because Jason's end goal in UtRH is not to simply kill the Joker: it is to make *Bruce* kill the Joker. Jason's anger is directed to the idea that to Jason, if Bruce truly loved Jason, he would've killed the Joker. that is love, for Jason. compromising your personal values for love and not letting someone go unavenged. when Jason was Robin, almost every angry or misguided thing he did was born of love. he wanted to kill/hurt Two-Face because he believed Dent killed his father. he was so angry at Felipe because an innocent woman was dead due to that man's actions. he wanted to save his mother in a situation he knew he shouldn't be in because he loved her. his anger, his violence, it is driven by love and feelings of righting wrongs. that is how he thinks wrongs *should* be righted. that is how you avenge and *love* someone.

because so long as Jason's return to Gotham doesn't end in Bruce killing the Joker (which, it never will bc Bruce is Bruce), Jason will never forgive Bruce. you cannot wave away the layers of hurt and complicated trauma by killing Joker offscreen. because Jason will still be angry that Bruce didn't avenge him. in his eyes, that means Bruce did not love him enough. he was not truly loved by Bruce the way he loved Bruce. bc Bruce was Jason's whole *world*. prior to being taken in, Dick and Tim, they had support systems. they had loved ones. they knew what stability and healthy family love looked like. Jason *didn't*. and that's not to say that Catherine Todd did not love him with her whole heart and thus he loved her, but it certainly wasn't a stable and safe support system for Jason to grow up in. Bruce was Jason's first real sense of a stable, healthy life. and so of course Jason poured everything into Bruce and loved Bruce so devoutly. Bruce was his world. like he says, if it had been Bruce, Jason would've stopped at nothing.

so his betrayal is rooted in that he was not avenged, not that Joker is alive. so long as the Joker does not die by Bruce's hands, it will never be enough for Jason. (in this era, at least.) notably, this is also why i don't think it would change a thing if Jason knew the whole "oh Bruce wanted to kill the Joker but Superman stopped him" tidbit that fanon has really latched onto as a way to pacify Jason's anger toward Bruce. Jason knowing that wouldn't change a thing, in my opinion. because Jason knows Bruce. and a tenant of Bruce's character is that he grapples with murder *every day*. the whole point is how *easy* it would be for him. he is a human weapon, trained by killers, trained to be deadly. he is the greatest strategist to exist. he knows he could kill someone and get away with it. *no* trace, no proof, nothing. and he knows he *wants* to. wants to kill the Joker, Joe Chill, anyone who's hurt him that viscerally.

but he *doesn't*. that's the point. Bruce wakes up every day with that question on his mind, and every day the answer is the same. Bruce's morality is not a decision he made in an alleyway when his parents died, it's a decision he continues to make every day and he *must* continue to make in order to remain who he is. Jason is quite familiar with the fact that Bruce grapples with this daily. i do not think it surprised nor fazed Jason to know that Bruce did *consider* killing the Joker. that he wanted to. maybe even planned to. but a consideration, a want, a plan, is just a thought. it's nothing substantial, and substance is everything to Jason. at the end of the day, Bruce didn't. he was talked down by *Clark* of all people with an excuse of diplomatic immunity, as if Jason and Bruce don't both know that Bruce could've *easily* found a way to make it look like an accident or some other loophole. because he's Batman. there's always a loophole. he always finds a way when he actually intends to. but he never actually intended to kill the Joker. so he didn't. and Jason would know that there was never an intent. it's an interesting piece of fodder to add to the nuance of Jason and Bruce, but honestly, i think it'd make Jason angrier to have that excuse thrown in his face. as if Bruce hasn't beaten Clark half a dozen times by now. it's a flimsy nonsense excuse that Jason would rip to shreds.

so while yes, i understand the wish for easy lighthearted fanfic that doesn't have to deal with the nuances of canon, i think that Jason's character will always be so deeply robbed and altered if you try to fix his thirst for vengeance with an off-page killing of Joker at Jason's hands. it was never the point. the point was that -in his own eyes- he wasn't loved enough for Bruce to make an acception. he realized that not even his *death* would come before Bruce's Mission. Jason truly believed that Bruce loved him and held him as the most important thing in the world, and now he has proof that Bruce didn't. because the Mission mattered more.

i'm not saying i have a solution to this conundrum if you're attempting to solve it for fanfic/fanon, nor am i even saying it's a bad thing it exists. i just think it becoming overwhelmingly common has led to misunderstandings surrounding Jason's motivations and feelings about this arc and it's an unsatisfying solution that only seeks to pacify Jason's rage and his trauma responses for the sake of found family-ification.

[screamingcrows]

Back at it with not 50-word shitposts. I need to learn moderation. Dottore x gn reader, soft and established relationship. 400 words of word vomit.

"You're writing again," the words had slipped your tongue before thought could intervene.

Zandik's hand froze for a moment, stretching the letter a little further than necessary and disrupting the orderly chaos that already inhabited the page. As always, he bore no mask in your shared space, leaving nothing between you and the dark garnets now seeking out every secret you held.

"I am always writing."

His sneer caught you unaware for but a moment until you saw the look in his eyes.

'I have to. I have to write it all down, there's too much in my head. If I don't have it as something tangible I'll forget and it'll all be gone. Wasted'

It had taken years of observation before you were finally able to distinguish what he wanted everyone to see and what was true. For all his obsession with laying bare the truth, he guarded his secrets fiercely.

"That's the notebook I gave you," you knew better than jump to conclusions with him, instead schooling your expression and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"They are private matters."

A smile tugged at your lips, the feeling of his soft cerulean locks tickling your skin. He'd grown so much more used to being touched with care, actively seeking it out even if his pride would never see an admission pass his tongue.

"Private matters best discussed with yourself?"

Time had been a scarce resource as of late. More often than not, Dottore would return in the dead of night, barely waking you with the dip of the mattress. Likewise, Zandik would rouse and leave before your eyes had opened, nothing left but a fleeting feeling and the swiftly cooling sheets.

The light thud as he closed the book had your thoughts returning to the present, to the way his crooked fingers trailed along the leather, his shoulders sagging as if fate rested there alone.

"Perhaps not, but easiest," his voice had lost all previous bite, soft words accompanying the hand that gently took yours.

Chapped lips pressed against soft skin, lingering for a moment before he released it. No words had to pass, not anymore. It took only a moment of thought and a light tug at his shoulders before he stood, joints cracking in protest from how long he'd been hunched over in that chair.

Sleep did not come early that night, instead, you spent hours wrapped up between his legs, back against his chest as he told you everything that had been cluttered in his mind of late. Neither of you could've wished for more.

[pyromance]

he's always just making that face

[burr-ell]

I'll preface this by saying that I don't by any means begrudge anyone their own personal headcanons or interpretations, but I kinda have to get it off my chest that I'm personally not very comfortable with significant deviations from canon character design on CR, and I really tend to side-eye people who have declared their fanart to be "better".

And sure, some of that is because i'm a cranky old bastard. But some of that is that I also have an animation degree and have studied character design. Creators generally give artists a fair amount of input as to how they want their designs to connote the characters' personalities—not just in terms of clothing or hairstyle, but in the overall shape of the silhouettes and body structures. And in the case of CR in particular, that's coming from a place of much closer familiarity with the characters because the creator is actually going to be embodying them for a fairly long period of time, so when the fan response is heavy deviation from that, I think it can feed into some unhealthy fanon perceptions and projections.

Like, for example, it's not so much that I think fanartists are "disrespecting the creators" or whatever when they keep giving Imogen a sweet little round face and big hips/breasts and cute circular glasses, but I've also studied shape language in art. You're communicating something when you design her this way; if a character's silhouette has a lot of circles, visually that connotes being friendly, sweet, and cute. The person who first suggested drawing her with glasses explicitly said they thought it would look cute—and no shade to them! They can like whatever they want!

But canonically, Imogen is a woman in her 20s who's been dealing with unanswered questions, abandonment, loneliness, and sheer exhaustion from trying to hold back and control powers that she never asked for—and who simultaneously uses those powers even when it isn't necessary if she thinks it'll help her achieve a goal or prove a point. She isn't unfriendly, and she wants to do the right thing, but she's also someone who's consciously chosen to keep to herself for most of her life, and yet simultaneously she's quite adept at persuading and deceiving people. I think we're meant to pick up that sense of world-weariness and cynicism from her angular facial features and thin frame. That's...kind of just how character design works.

I think the trend of disregarding the official art and giving her softer features has had an impact on the perception of Imogen as a character. I see a lot of views of her that really remove a lot of her agency, treating her like she's only ever been a victim of circumstance who's never put a foot wrong. Some fans got pushback for pointing out that it really wasn't cool for Imogen to openly contemplate whether or not the Ruby Vanguard might be right in front of three people who were killed by Otohan, insisting that imogen was just dealing with a lot right then. And yes, she was, but that doesn't mean that the way she was dealing with it doesn't say something about her as a character. I don't know if I'd call it coddling, necessarily (even though perhaps there are some very coddling takes I just haven't seen), but there seems to be some resistance, in some circles, to the idea that Imogen isn't a put-upon martyr. And in those same circles, round friendly-looking glasses-wearing Imogen abounds, to the point of editing the official art itself to "fix it".

Truth be told I'd be willing to bet that the rounder cuter Imogen actually came about because of the initial impression of her, given how much fanon at the start of c3 revolved around poor baby Imogen with her scary nightmares needing the wiser, worldlier Laudna to comfort her and kiss it better, but those visuals also proliferated rather quickly and well beyond past the point where that fanon was feasible anymore, and I think both aspects of that fanon ended up informing each other. It's not lost on me that the rounder and cuter-looking Imogen performs the literal function of sanding down her harder edges.

And like I said, I'm not here to be needlessly negative toward what other people want to do. If you want to draw the characters differently to their official art, I don't think either the cast or the artist are especially offended by it. But I personally dislike it, in part because I think some of these trends are a way for fans to claim a certain amount of ownership over the characters, whether they intend it or not. And the ultimate outcome of that is that when creators inevitably assert their ownership over a deeply personal story in a way that fans don't like, the backlash is much stronger than it reasonably should be, which is something I think the CR fandom has seen often enough not to continue doing as often as it does.

[butahumbleguest]

Anyone got show/book recs featuring a cagey guy that mostly wears suits? Does a lot of planning and/or scheming? Crime preferred but not required

[boredgrace23-gracepotts]

SPYDAD,,, could I request some spydad angst

Scout was better off fatherless.

Ooc Spy, but I didn't want to do the typical "Scout dies and Spy is sad" bit

[malk1ns]

november 7 2024 @ hurricanes, 5-1 loss

not a lot to say about this game, sheesh. i WAS told that geno spent a lot of time during breaks in play yapping with kris, there was at least once instance where he was skating around ignoring the world and sid wouldn't stop staring at him, AND during warmups they were basically skating on top of each other in the corners by the net. but. not a lot to work with here, score some goals guys!!!!

so with the absolute bones they gave us to work with....we're taking a soulbond universe break and incorporating one of the asks i got when i requested quick-hit smut prompts last week. almost ALL of them were mustache-related, and there were two specific ones i want to revisit later, but for today....

Zhenya absolutely loathes playing in Carolina.

He hates playing the Hurricanes sort of as a general rule; every win against them for the last few seasons feels like more blind luck than an actual earned victory, and Jordy ran through his 2009 Stanley Cup goodwill years ago. But playing in Carolina, with their stupid slushy ice and the ice-cold visitor’s locker room and whatever the fuck a storm surge is, has to be near the top of Zhenya’s least favorite away-game experiences.

And add in the talent discrepancy in their two teams this year? Zhenya isn’t having a good time.

When the horn blares for another goal against, Zhenya winces and squeezes his stick. He knew what he was getting himself into; he and Sid had talked about it extensively over the summer, whenever Zhenya called to check in on how the slow grind of Sid’s extension was going. 

They weren’t going to be a good team this year. If they got into the playoffs, it would be by an unexpected run of luck and health, and there is not a single matchup in the league they’d be favored in even if they get that far. Sid and Zhenya’s job now, essentially, is to work with their young guys, help them develop and insulate them from the worst of the attentions of the opposing teams, and keep pushing for personal milestones.

Zhenya knows that. He’s accepted it, in theory. That doesn’t make blown leads and blowout losses any easier to bear in the moment.

“Hey,” Sid says, leaning toward him. Zhenya instinctively bends down, putting his ear close to Sid’s mouth as Sid holds his glove up just in case the cameras are on them.

Just in case. The cameras are always on them, especially since they’re playing on a line for now. At least that’s working out well, and Zhenya has someone next to him on the bench to nudge when someone fucks up spectacularly.

“Don’t look so crabby,” Sid continues, garbled through his mouthguard. “Keep a happy face for the rest of the game and I’ll make it worth your while tomorrow before the game.”

Zhenya stills, turning his head. Sid’s face is very close, and when he catches Zhenya’s eye he deliberately licks his lips. His mustache makes his jaw look sharp, and his eyes are intent on Zhenya’s face.

“Lunch with Tanger,” Zhenya says, watching Sid’s mouth as Sid draws away from him and drops his hand.

“Cancel,” Sid says casually, like it’s hardly even a consideration.

He’s right. Tanger bitches at Zhenya as they skate around during the next commercial break, but not seriously enough for Zhenya to actually feel bad. They both like the sushi place better for dinner anyway.

Sid and Zhenya go right to sleep when they get to the hotel in DC. As sanguine as they both are about the state of their team these days, a loss that bad is still deflating, and neither of them are even up for their usual debrief as they get ready for bed.

Sid does chivvy Zhenya into the shower, though. They both rinsed off after the game, but rink showers are always suspect, and the hot spray as Zhenya massages shampoo into Sid’s scalp is soothing.

Sid is thorough when he soaps Zhenya off, which makes him flush. Sid only winks at him, though, then busies himself with drying off and getting into his pajamas.

It takes a while for Zhenya to drift off, but eventually the visions of flubbed passes and blocked shots fade, and he falls into sleep to the sound of Sid’s gentle snores.

When he wakes up, it’s not to his alarm.

“C’mon,” Sid says, shoving at Zhenya’s side once Zhenya’s blinked himself to consciousness. “Get off me and get on your stomach.”

It takes Zhenya a second, but once the English penetrates and translates itself, he moves quickly, rolling off where he’d been practically plastering Sid into the mattress all night and spreading out, grabbing a pillow and turning his head to the side.

Sid’s stretched out next to him, eyes flickering over Zhenya’s body, and Zhenya preens, arching his back a little to draw Sid’s eyes down. He’d put in a lot of work over the summer to get his skating back to where he wanted it to be, and it shows in his back and ass, something Sid has been loudly appreciative of since they came back for camp.

“You want it bad,” Sid mutters, and Zhenya would roll his eyes at Sid’s lame dirty talk, but he does want it, so instead he just spreads his legs and shifts, rubbing his hardening dick against the soft sheets.

“Sid,” he says impatiently, and that gets Sid moving down the mattress, settling himself between Zhenya’s legs.

His grip on Zhenya’s ass is firm, and Zhenya clenches, feeling Sid’s fingers dig into his muscles in response. 

The first scrape of Sid’s facial hair against Zhenya’s hole gets him gasping into his pillow.

Zhenya can’t grow facial hair, not really. He dutifully went along with the stupid playoff beard tradition during the back-to-backs, but otherwise any stubble he ends up with is incidental, borne of laziness and skin too sensitive to shave clean on any given day. He doesn’t grow it well anyway, so there’s never been much of a point.

Sid used to not grow very good facial hair either. Zhenya’s life was perhaps more peaceful back then.

The thing with the mustache is it hurts. Sid’s facial hair is bristly and coarse, and it rubs Zhenya raw when they kiss. He’d had a rash all over his groin after they won the cup in 2009 and Sid blew him back behind Mario’s pool house during the party; Flower noticed the next day and brought it up to make fun of them for years. It’s uncomfortable to deal with in gear, even with the ointments and lotions they keep trying, and it stings under the hot water.

Zhenya loves it, though.

Sid’s tongue on his hole is warm and wet and good, but it’s the scratch of his mustache around Zhenya’s rim that makes him cry out and squirm. Sid’s good with his mouth, just as good as all the fans in Philly used to jeer at him and then some, and Zhenya loves when Sid eats him out any day of the year, but in November the added sensation makes him come so fast it would be embarrassing if it didn’t feel so good.

And because Sid is a possessive freak, he likes how Zhenya winces after, the way he shifts in discomfort on the bench and walks funny to avoid friction. He likes marking Zhenya up, likes knowing that Zhenya can still feel him days later.

With the way he’s gripping Zhenya’s ass to hold him open, Zhenya won’t be surprised if he has bruises to go along with the beard burn.

Sid leans back and spits on Zhenya’s hole, loud and wet and filthy in the morning quiet of the room, and Zhenya flinches, hides his face and groans as his dick twitches where it’s trapped between his body and the bed.

“Messy,” Sid says approvingly before he gets his face back into Zhenya’s ass. He pulls on Zhenya’s hips, and Zhenya obligingly cants them back, tensing his thighs to lift his lower back and give Sid the angle he’s looking for.

The burn in his muscles, the scrape of Sid’s mustache, Sid’s tongue in his ass, all of it is sensory overload, and Zhenya barely has to sneak a hand down under himself and squeeze the head of his dick before he’s coming, shoving his ass back into Sid’s face and riding his tongue through his orgasm.

He whines when Sid pulls away, tries to turn onto his back to get at Sid��s dick, but Sid smacks his ass once, so Zhenya stays put, keeps his back arched, and listens as Sid jerks himself off.

“I’m gonna…” Sid trails off, and Zhenya startles when Sid presses down on his back, pushing him flat to the mattress. “Squeeze, baby,” he says, one hand between Zhenya’s shoulder blades as he pushes his dick between Zhenya’s cheeks with the other. “I want it tight.”

Zhenya complies, clenching as Sid thrusts, breath hitching whenever the head of Sid’s dick catches against his rim. Even with all of Sid’s spit it’s a shade too dry, and the friction against his sensitive skin is bordering on unpleasant, but it makes something in Zhenya’s stomach squirm with desire.

When Sid comes, he presses the head of his dick just barely into Zhenya’s hole, grunting as he just-barely thrusts, enough to stretch but not actually penetrate. Zhenya wishes he would, wishes Sid would force his way into Zhenya’s body and come inside him, but it’s a game day, so he holds still instead of humping back onto Sid’s dick.

“Fuuuuck,” Sid groans finally, pulling back and spreading Zhenya’s cheeks wide. Zhenya turns his face into the pillow, sure that his entire back must be flushing red as Sid inspects his work. “Pretty,” he says approvingly, thumbing over where his come is dripping from Zhenya’s hole. “You’re gonna be hurtin’ later, bud.”

Zhenya sighs explosively into his pillow, reaching back and smacking at Sid’s thigh. “Get lotion,” he orders, and Sid laughs at him, clambering off the mattress.

He’s humming smugly to himself as he pokes through their toiletries. Zhenya would roll his eyes, but, well.

Sid’s touch is gentle now, rubbing the cooling ointment over Zhenya’s hole and everywhere his mustache rubbed Zhenya raw. Zhenya drifts a little under Sid’s ministrations, and he’s practically asleep again when Sid drops a kiss on the nape of his neck and curls up next to him.

“Alarm?” Zhenya mutters as Sid slings an arm and a leg over him.

“We’ve got forty-five minutes.” Sid says, voice already sliding to drowsiness. “Go back to sleep. We gotta play better tonight.”

Zhenya’s going to be sore later, but he’s never let that stop him from playing better when Sid asks him to. He’s got a good feeling about tonight’s game.

[thesoftboiledegg]

[platoapproved]

just to get it off my chest because it's on my mind today (and none of this is a criticism of literally anyone, i am speaking extremely broadly here):

for iwtv, i enjoy fan speculation about future possibilities and when people incorporate knowledge from the books into their reading of the series. i do this myself all the time. but i do wish sometimes that people wouldn't get so invested in stuff that's not actually present in the text that they speak as if it's canon and anything ELSE would be a divergence.

like if in later seasons it turns out daniel and armand had more interactions between san francisco and dubai, that's cool! but seeing it be the assumed default, in fanfiction and in fan discussion, is weird to me, i'm not going to lie. it's a possibility amongst many, but there is no textual basis for it yet.

which is the opposite of course to everyone deciding that the 18th century lesmand stuff, that is actually present in the show, and the truth of which is never in any way brought under suspicion, is all... false? i know it's the unreliable narrator show. but there is no other part of iwtv where if i made a gifset of a scene from the television show we all watched and enjoyed, half the comments would be giving an opinion on whether or not it happened. yes, it's different from how it happened in the books, but like.... so is.... everything else? because it's an adaptation that's making changes?

i don't think this is evil or insidious or a problem even. they're all blorbos on tumblr none of this is that serious. i'm just saying that for me, personally, it's weird.

[ikeep-forgetting-mypass]

(forgot where the post is so i'm just puttin it here)

the tragedy of Billford is that they could have worked. Like, genuinely, they could have loved each other! ....If only Bill wasn't the fucking worst!

people know that, in canon, a Bill Cipher who'd actually come to terms that he's a terrible person and ruined the only relationship that ever truly warmed him by being said terrible person, is a Bill that would never come to fruition. That ford getting away from Bill and finding his place in the family deserves to be able to move on completely.

That's why 'Bill getting sent to the pines as therapy' is so interesting!

Both of them, especially Bill, have fundamentally changed. and that opens up so many interactions between them and creates a sort of dynamic thats like:

'We were frankly in a very terrible relationship, but now that we have grown and changed and (I) have a support system that will break us apart immediately if we begin to hurt each other, and you genuinely want to be better, maybe this time we can be happy.'

that I have frankly never seen before in media.

Edit/add on:

They're the epitome of 'maybe in another life..' they're tragic, doomed, toxic yaoi who could have loved each other but ultimately couldn't because, for all of Bill's unpredictability, he is incapable of changing who he is!

After all, why should he? Born a monster, a freak, he destroyed his own home, his parents, what else can he be? Even though it sabotages his friendships (the henchmaniacs & the oracle) and ruins his relationship with Ford, the only one he's ever felt truly understood by, he can't see himself and therefore is unable to act as anything but a monster even as it leads to his downfall.

[the-way-astray]

alright everybody can we please stop tagging me/talking about me in the notes of pro keefe/sokeefe posts. i know strieefe has made it so that it's really funny to talk about how much i love him and how much i'm in denial when i say negative things about him under those posts (and that's all in good fun and not the problem), but we have to think about the fact that the ops are just trying to make a positive post and probably don't want a keefe hater in their notes /srs

[blacktabbygames]

I've never understood when people complain about an ending being predictable, as if that's strictly a bad thing.

Not every story is supposed to be a guessing game, and often the most powerful endings work because you know they're coming, and the tragedy is watching them unfold with that knowledge.

[coconuttyglittersmurf]