#fuck that's interesting to call him 'morally neutral'

[everlastiingiimmortals]

give me a Jing Yuan fueled by spite. give me a Jing Yuan whose words absolutely drip with venomous sarcasm. give me a Jing Yuan who speaks with fangs bared. give me a Jing Yuan who looks down at you like he just might be considering how to best rip into your throat and tear it out. give me a Jing Yuan so fucking angry the static in the air causes metal to spark.

Jing Yuan is so good and so generous and so kind, give me a Jing Yuan that shows more of his negative aspects bc ohhhhh my god he is so done with everything I think he deserves to snap a little I want a scary Jing Yuan I want a bitter Jing Yuan do u get me

[angelyuji]

yandere headcanons :0

across the spiderverse characters: peter b parker, miles, gwen, miguel, hobie, pavitr

warnings: the usual yandere stuff (kidnapping, manipulation, stalking)

(imagine miles, gwen, pavitr like college age) (gender neutral reader)

peter b

literally so in love with you

he’s not the type to sit and stalk you from a far, but he’s also not straight up kidnapping you

he’ll watch you, find out your interests, find your social media, everything he needs to figure out how to be your perfect lover <3

he becomes your friend and integrates himself into your life

if you like him, he has no reason to separate you from your family or friends becuz he’s the perfect boyfriend. no one has anything negative to say abt him

if you don’t… he’ll do anything to make you like him.

convince you your whole family is evil and he’s the only one really looking out for you

he’s awkward and sweet and kind and so funny and it’s hard not to believe him

wants the American dream life: white picket fence, house in the suburbs, marriage, kids

that’s his dream for the both of you and he doesn’t really care if you don’t have the same dream

“you’re my dream, (y/n). everything i do, it’s always been for you.”

miles (aged up!)

miles is similar to peter b but like also not

very stalker but like without knowing, he’d pass your place over and over during his patrols around the city without realizing

he’d never kidnap you or do anything reallyyy morally wrong

howeverrr he’s absolutely in love with you, so like small little things

stalking, stealing small things from you, finding out the shampoos or different things you use or eat.

he feels closer to you, knowing he knows you better than anyone else.

after a long time, he’ll work up the courage to talk to you (“accidently” bumping into you at a coffee shop or a place you visit frequently) miles (albeit awkward) is a charmer, so you’re instantly smitten.

plus! he loves all the things you do, so you’re a match made in heaven :)

“hey, (y/n)! we meet again!”

gwen (aged up!)

gwen doesn’t try to interact with you much

she’s definitely afraid of putting you in danger or losing you just because you got close

she’ll watch over you and protect you from danger tbh like

for example, sayyy someone was harassing you at work and/or school, you’d probably successfully get that off your ass or at least they leave you alone for the day, butttt gwen would not feel satisfied.

gwen would find where they live and absolutely beat the living shit out of them

seeing someone bother you makes her vision go red like

basically your guardian angel

she would never bother you really just protecting you from afar

you’ll never notice tbh

unless some big bad guy found out that ghost-spider has been following around a random civilian…

well then, she’ll have to keep you safe

she’ll keep you safe in her apartment, whether you want to be there or not.

“every single thing i do, i do it to keep you safe.”

miguel (won’t be writing in spanish cause i don’t know spanish srry guys) (but he def calls you cute nicknames in spanish)

HEHHEHEHEE (my bad im just literally in love)

gwen but like 10000000 times more intense

the moment he lays eyes on you, babes you’re FUCKED

he’s snatching you up

however! the first thing he’ll check is if you’re super important to the “safety” of the timeline

no offense but ur not at all important saurrr FREE GAMEE

he’s definitely kidnapping you and keeping you hostage at HQ

he doesn’t bother with the whole stalking thing or becoming friends or anything like that

he doesn’t care if you don’t want to come with him, your opinions do not matter to him at all

he believes that he’s your protector, that everything that he’s doing is for your own good

you don’t know what’s best for yourself, only miguel knows what’s best for you (at least that’s what he thinks)

his only goal is to keep you with him, he wants a family and he believes that with you… he can achieve his dreams

if you’re a part of the Spider Society, Miguel can’t really do anything to you without other people noticing or disrupting the timeline

but yk… it’s better to be a rando from whatever universe to have miguel’s attention (but that’s just my opinion i suppose)

“you are mine. you will never leave me.”

hobie (will not be writing his british accent sorry im bad at accents)

i love him he’s so funny

you’ve been friends for a long time, he was in a band with you before he quit

he doesn’t really stay in one place for long

he’s a lot like a mix of gwen and miles

he believes keeping you safe is by staying close to you, but he also watches over you when you’re alone

he falls for you because of how positive you are, you never talk badly about anyone, but you’re always down to do anything.

you always join him for every protest, at his every show

he flirts with you constantly, loving how you blush away at the attention

constantly giving you attention and love, but a little manipulative about it at the same time

he never wants to kidnap you or keep you hostage, it’s against everything he stands for

he knows that if you didn’t like him, you’d never be by his side

so he believes that keeping you free is what keeps you near him

“we’re free birds, (y/n). with you by my side, we’re unstoppable.”

pavitr (aged up!) (this is gonna be very non-yandere tbh) (ILOVEHIM)

my little cutie pie i love him

i can’t really imagine being a yandere type character but he would be similar in miles and hobie

no kidnapping or stealing tho

slight stalking, just watching over you all the time, making sure you’re safe

he’s my little cutie pie moroenfakds

he’s flirty and funny

you’d be classmates when you meet him

you’d click very quickly tbh he’s just so easy to get along with

he’s absolutely terrified of your parents, very respectful tho so your parents love him

very passionate about how much he likes you, would quite literally shout it from the rooftops (and he does every day)

ugh i love him

"you're my world, (y/n). i love you so much."

[utilitycaster]

Hi! Because I genuinely do love your take on things and every time I read through them, a new perspective that I had never even considered before makes itself known to me. So, I wanted to ask! Since Twitter (unsurprisingly) already got its hands on this discussion:

What are your feelings on the Mighty Nein being the ones to handle the Weave Mind over Bells Hells? Because for me, I always sort of knew that BH were going to be the ones to defeat Ludinus no matter what. It’s what they’ve been building up for.

However, some people say the M9 aren’t deserving of handling the Weave Mind because that was an antagonist made specifically for the Bells Hells. So, I was interested in seeing your thoughts about this (strange) discussion.

Hi anon, thanks!

I think it's great to have the Nein go after the Weave Mind, and I think, like most takes from the Twitter CR fandom, this is fucking stupid.

Given that Matt is the DM, and he's like "hey, I'm going to have a Trusted NPC call in the Mighty Nein to deal with the Weave Mind" I think the argument that the Weave Mind was made specifically for Bells Hells is not, in fact, true. The Weave Mind is an antagonist who was introduced with Bells Hells' campaign, rather like how Ludinus Da'leth is an antagonist who was introduced with the Mighty Nein's campaign and who has been the nemesis of Beau and Caleb in particular, and yet Bells Hells will be going after him in this scenario (and, to be clear, I think this is fine; I've expected Bells Hells to face off against Ludinus in the end).

I would be interested in understanding if the motivation here is "I wish the Nein were going after Ludinus and Bells Hells were going after the Weave Mind" which I think is far less interesting given that Ludinus has been such a consistent enemy of Bells Hells as well but at least I can puzzle out a not terribly intelligent but consistent sort of logic in it; or if this is a "I wish the past two parties weren't involved in this campaign at all" argument in which case, far too late for that; or if this is someone who specifically doesn't like the Mighty Nein throwing yet another tiresome and embarrassing temper tantrum on Twitter. But my opinion doesn't change; I think it's far more satisfying to see Bells Hells take on Ludinus than the Weave Mind, whom half of them haven't even met.

More generally, the idea of "doesn't deserve to fight the Weave Mind" is stupid on another level. I understand why people talk about which actual play character they wish to get the final blow on a particular enemy, even though dice will ultimately decide this. When it lines up - Vax with Thordak, Yasha with Obann - it's immensely satisfying. But you do not need to be the most wronged person to make meaning of a How Do You Want To Do This (FCG and Otohan being an obvious case here). Technically, the Volition deserves to fight the Weave Mind more! Half of Bells Hells hasn't even encountered the Weave Mind in any capacity! Braius and Dorian haven't been to the moon! Sometimes, you're fighting because it's part of, for example, a three-pronged plan that needs three separate simultaneous strike forces. Bells Hells can't do all three at once despite having claims to each of the targets unless they split up. Would you rather the parties split up in a mix of each? Because I'm not opposed per se but that could get pretty confusing all around. And if we're going to step out of the Watsonian argument that in-world, they can't do all three at once, see my next paragraph to address the Doylist "but Matt didn't need to set it up this way" one.

I am on the record as loathing the whole "it's their table and you can't criticize it because it's their game" bullshit. You can do so. You can do so even if there are very good reasons for their choices. You're always entitled to your own opinion and as long as you're not harassing people, it is morally neutral to say "this piece of fiction/art/whatever didn't do it for me," end of sentence. With that said. It's fine if people wish Campaign 3, like Campaigns 1 and 2, were more exclusively focused on one party's adventures rather than the all-hands-on-deck story that it is. But it is that story, and pretending this wasn't the result of a number of intentional choices by Matt and the cast and various collaborators is profoundly stupid at this point. I had my complaints as well, early on, but the time to get over this was episode 1, when Orym and Fearne and Dorian and Bertrand showed up with their ties to EXU and C1. Or it was episode 6, when Laudna revealed her connection to Delilah. Or episode 35, when that connection to Keyleth was leveraged. Or episode 50, when Beau and Caleb appeared; or Episode 51, when multiple past PCs were present at the solstice; or Episode 66, when we further met with Keyleth; or Episode 86, when Sending came back on and both Caleb and Jester spoke to the party; or Episode 92, when we cut back to the Crown Keepers; or Episode 94, when Essek showed up; or Episode 99, when Downfall began. If you're still holding on hope now in the endgame, I think it's too late. That's not the campaign this is, and it never was, and you can wish that you had something more self-contained like Campaign 1 or 2 but with Bells Hells, but that's all it is - a wish, unfulfilled.

[ravel-puzzlewell]

Hi! Do you mind elaborating on what you meant by "tiefling politics" on that wotr vs bg3 post? Just curious, ignore if you want

its about the fact that bg3 has a lot of tiefling characters, somehow more than wotr, and huge theme of like hells and connections to demons\devils and somehow manages to say absolutely nothing interesting about it.

in wotr we have examination of tieflings fitting into human society, ostracization and (literal) demonization of them, where even if some of them would want to help in war against hell, they are scared (frex, group of tieflings thieves you save which you can ask to help u and they are like are u kidding me, crusaders will torch us). woljif in particular is a deconstruction of selfish chaotic neutral tielfling rogue archetype, his story both exploring how both he was pushed into being a criminal bc he had no other options, but also interplay with how he then himself tends to dismiss his own agency in being able to decide for himself and choose better, forever excusing himself with "well this is a crappy hand dealt to me", his survivalist attitude of everyone for themselves vs desire for community, how when given a smidge of stability and access to decision making in council, he tries to awkwardly, but eagerly advocate for societal improvement for all tieflings, and this is one of his most sincere moments - and gets laughed at immediately, etc etc. and speaking of community, v interesting intersection between "good" and "bad" marginalized groups of mongrels vs tieflings, with Lann being self-righteous about both his moral superiority and how mongrels "have it worse", while ignoring that mongrels - and he himself specifically - are mistreated literally bc they are mistaken for tieflings.

btw if anyone wants me to talk more about mongrels vs tieflings thing, hit me up, i think there was a interesting stuff, even if not properly dramatized

meanwhile in bg3 being tiefling largely means nothing? like the refugees would sometimes like drop a line out loud about how tieflings should stick together bc humans won't help them, but like that's it. the refugees could literally be humans running from war or blue cat ppl from avatar running from capitalism and nothing in the plot or characters would need to be changed. tieflings is just cosmetics for them, like idk its cool to have colorful NPCs with fire eyes and sexy horns. And even companions wise, you know I love Karlach and tried to romance her, but being tiefling is just looks for her, its not meaningful. It doesn't matter for her backstory, she could have been a strong human from poor background who was sold out to idk, underdark. like it sucked bc she was forced to do violence and everyne was an asshole and she couldn't see sun, but otherwise it being Blood War specifically doesn't come into play. and like. Blood War has famously huge effects on ppl with hell heritage! I'm not saying she should have been Valen Shadowbreath with entire plotline about struggling with blood war calling, but like. idk, something?

my point is that tieflings and hell has a lot of lore and like, FLAVOUR in this setting, which were not explored at all. these are just ppl with horns and generic Bad Place.

and then like. devil essentialism. bg3 has central motive of how evil races are not ontologically evil, but like, devils are. sdfghjk. apparentely mind flayers can fight actual mind control if they are V Special, but all devils/demons are evil with no exceptions. karlach was in hell for 10 years and never met a single sympathetic devil. the closest one he had mocks IS Evil when we meet her in game. and I actually liked Raphael (transition could've saved her), but there is nothing particularily interesting about him, he's also straighforwardly evil. this severely limits how interesting interactions with hell are. in wotr there is a wide range from reformed succubus to most evil sadists, with every shade in between, which allows for complex stories, like that that fucked up love between that betrayer dwarf and demoness who seduced him. she's legit evil, but she also has actual twisted affection for him, and he knows she uses him, but he was pushed too far by humans and chooses her anyway. this background story is honestly has more depth than wyll's and mizora relationship, where shes just evil and he's straighforwardly martyr. when mizora offered to have fun wink wink, i immediately knew she's gonna Evil It. and she did. and she didn't even get anything out of it! it was just staining your soul to be evil:3 like ok, but boring tbh.

and like yeah war with hell is central plot of wotr, obviously it has a lot more to say and explore about it, but like. bg3 didn't HAVE to have to include so many tieflings and have us follow their stories through all acts. it didn't have to include hell in "no race essentialism" game if it didn't want to talk about it. it chose to, and when game has big chuncks of content about smth connected by a theme, i expect it to say smth about it? anything interesting? eh.

btw, this is not to say i think wotr's writing is perfect, far from it, i can talk for ages of my problems with that game's writing, but this initial phrase was from shitposts specifically comparng things in wotr to bg3, so

[verai-marcel]

Rough and Tumble (BG3 Fanfic, Astarion x GN!Reader / Halsin x GN!Reader, 18+)

Of course. Of course it was bound to happen. Me? Write smut for a new fandom? You knew I couldn't stay away.

Summary: You thought Astarion had rejected you, so you went elsewhere for pleasure. Turns out, you just hadn’t piqued his interest yet.

Author’s Notes: Have I beaten the game? No, when I wrote this fic, I was barely in the middle of Act 2. Am I romancing either Astarion or Halsin in my save file? Nope, I went for Gale. Am I making shit up about these characters just because I want to get railed by both? Fuck yes, absolutely. Buckle in for some wild, made-up characterization, all because I want to write super horny fanfic. (And because certain people have bullied me into writing this…) For the timeline, this takes place during the tiefling party in Act I, but forget the real timeline of character romances and just play along. Also, if you’re not familiar with my writing, I try to be as vague as possible about reader description in my gender neutral fics so that anyone can enjoy them. However, I do have a size kink in this one, so imagine you’re a smaller hero this time around. 

Tags: gender neutral reader, halsin x reader, size kink, rough sex, doggy style, gentle dom, some after care, astarion x reader, humiliation, degradation, name calling, sloppy seconds, cock gagging

Word Count: 4,545

AO3 Link is here, sweetheart.

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

“It’s not you, you understand, it’s me.” A pause. “I have standards.”

Having been shut down so brutally, you shrugged and walked away, unwilling to partake in any further conversation with the infuriatingly attractive vampire.

It’s not like you even said anything about sleeping with him. He just kept talking, like he does, as if he didn’t want to listen to you. You wondered why you had let him bite you the first time, and the second, and the third time. You cursed your weakness to his not-so-subtle glances. 

He’d look over at you, his lips twitching as if he was stopping himself from saying something. So you would ask if he was hungry. And he’d give you this look. ‘No no, I’m fine,’ he’d say, looking away and frowning, making it apparent that he was not fine. You, in your infinite dumbassery, would immediately cave in and offer up your neck. Was it your need to take care of anyone you took under your wing? Was it your stupid bleeding heart?

You knew your little motley crew only shared one thing in common: a need to get the tadpole out of your skulls. But if anything brought people together, it was facing a common obstacle.

Except that not everyone shared your need to do the greater good. You had been making a name for yourself as an honorable mercenary, taking only the jobs that aligned with your sense of morality. Not everyone liked that, especially with the number of assassins that had been sent after you. But that was before you were taken captive aboard the mind flayer ship. Wrong place, wrong time.

Nothing you could do about that now. Face forward and carry on, that has always been your way. There was no reason to change that.

You found yourself walking towards Halsin, standing tall on the outskirts of the camp. He was quietly enjoying himself, a mug in his large hand. He called out your name gently as you approached.

“You do not look as cheerful as I expected on a night like this,” he said, his eyes roving over your face. “What is the matter?”

You sighed. “It’s nothing.”

“It must be something if it is making you frown so.” He stepped closer and put a hand on your shoulder. “Come, let us walk for a bit. Nature will bring perspective.”

You followed him quietly away from camp, away from the crowd and into the forest. Soon, only the peaceful sound of the trees rustling in the wind and insects chirping into the night surrounded you, the party far away. Halsin’s hand wandered from your shoulder to your back, his thumb rubbing slow circles. It was a soothing feeling, and you leaned into him, grateful for his warmth, even if you didn’t need it on this balmy summer night.

“I don’t know what goes on in his head,” you blather suddenly. “I thought he was coming onto me, but then he wasn’t, and while I was trying to figure out what he wanted, he said I was below his standards…”

You hadn't realized that you had stopped walking until you felt Halsin’s touch on your temples, gently massaging your headache away.

“Sounds like he didn’t know what to do with a gift like you,” he said casually.

Your eyes darted up to meet his. You were surprised, but pleasantly so, by the veneration in his gaze. A slight shift, and he was closer to you than he had ever come, the heat from his body radiating like a warm campfire. Cozy and safe, you had a sudden urge to lay your head on his chest and cuddle up to the big druid.

His fingers slowly traced the curve of your ears. “If there is anything, anything at all, that I can do for you, I will gladly do so.”

I want you to crush me—

You shook your head. “I’m alright. I just needed… this.” Leaning your head against his chest, you took a deep breath. He smelled of the forest, of the earth, of nature itself. Your nose twitched. There was a hint of something more, something primal in his scent that stirred you.

Halsin called out your name again. You looked up, and he looked at you with concern this time.

“I’m alright,” you repeated. You thought back to what he said. “What do you mean, didn’t know what to do with me?”

He smiled. “Perhaps he is flustered. Internally, of course. Gods forbid he show it. So he pushed you away once he felt conflicted.”

“Conflicted about what?”

“About manipulating you, of course.”

You frowned.

Halsin touched the two most recent little scars on your neck. Astarion had a tendency to bite a different spot every time, to prevent permanent scarring, he had said.

“I’m not…” you trailed off. Yes, you knew he had manipulated you into letting him bite you the first and second time. The third time… part of you had wanted it too. That time, he had snuck into your bedroll, holding you from behind. You could feel his fangs skim across the skin of your shoulder before he bit into the soft flesh behind your clavicle. His hand was wrapped around your mouth, stifling your groan as he fed, and much to your shame, you had felt the beginning of pleasure warming your lower body. You broke away from him before he could finish, turning back to him to apologize. But he was already getting up, walking away without a single word. You had caught him giving you one last look, a regretful frown, and you had assumed that he lamented having his meal cut short.

“Alright, maybe he is a little manipulative," you conceded. "But I know that."

"And yet you keep giving into him," Halsin said, without any judgment. 

You hung your head. "Yes."

Halsin tipped your chin with two fingers until you were looking up at him. His smile was understanding and tender. "It's alright to care for someone and give into their needs, as long as you take care of your own as well."

You blinked. "But I want…" Trailing off, your cheeks warmed with embarrassment. Like it or not, you had been thrust into the role of the unwilling leader of this ragtag band. What you needed didn’t exactly align with what the team needed from you. What the others needed you to be was a commander, controlling the situation ahead of you.

But what you wanted, needed, was someone to command you, just for a little while, so you didn’t have to constantly think three steps ahead. You looked up at Halsin and felt a sense of trust. He was older, wiser, and most importantly, willing.

"Go on," he coaxed. 

Swallowing, you pushed down your fear and spoke your true desires. "I want to let someone else be in control, just for a little while. I want…" You paused, taking a deep breath, drawing in the courage to continue. "I need to be fucked. Not made love to, not a gentle roll in the sack. I need something… more."

Looking up, you saw a desirous glow in Halsin's gaze. He considered your vague request for a moment before giving you a soft smile. "Is this something you'd like me to do for you?" 

You thought of the large druid holding you down, his hands around your wrists beside your head as he fucked you from behind like a wild animal, growling into your ear. His voice rumbled through your body. Take all of me, little one. Give me your pleasure until it overwhelms your luscious body. 

You blinked and the mental image vanished, but not the desire. "Yes," you answered breathlessly. "Please."

Halsin gently stroked your cheek. “Of course.” He leaned in, nuzzling your temple with his nose. He softly whispered, “if I get too rough, say ‘honey wine’, and I’ll stop.” He pulled away to look you in the eyes. “Understand?”

“Yes sir,” you said.

He gave you one last tender smile before he straightened his stance and took a step back. “Good,” he said in his arch druid voice, powerful, commanding. “Now, strip for me.”

You swallowed and began to take off all of your clothes at a languid pace, letting him enjoy the moment as each article of clothing came off your body. He circled around you, a small smile on his lips as his eyes roved up and down your body.

As you finally stepped out of your underwear and kicked it aside, you felt strangely free. Anyone could walk up and find you two. Yet he was fully clothed, while you were naked to the elements.

And it felt good.

Halsin placed his fingers on your belly and walked around you, his touch leaving a warm trail along your skin. When he was behind you, he stopped. His hand splayed across your lower abdomen and pulled you close.

You gasped at the feeling of his bulge against your bare ass. His leather breeches rubbed against your skin. His chest, though covered in his druid clothes, was warm and comforting. And because he towered over you, he could easily kiss the top of your head.

Taking one of your hands with his free one, he brought your fingers to his lips and kissed them. 

“Show me how you pleasure yourself,” he said, letting go of your hand. He kept you tight against his chest.

With your hands, you began to touch yourself how you liked, teasing yourself at first before pleasuring yourself, harder and faster, until you were panting, your head lolling back against his shoulder. Your knees were beginning to wobble, and you grabbed his thigh for support. Gods, he was like a tree trunk, thick and solid. Your moans were growing louder, and you covered your own mouth in shame as you continued to touch yourself. Your hand was slick from your arousal, the wet sounds echoing around you. Just a little more…

“Stop.”

You whined, but did as he bade.

He suddenly let you go, and you nearly fell to your knees if not for him grabbing your arm and keeping you upright. You could hear him undoing the laces of his breeches.

Then you felt him rest his shaft against the curve of your ass. He pulled on your hand and wrapped it around him, smearing the slick from your palm.

“That’s it. Stroke me.” His voice had taken on a deeper timbre. The voice of command.

You did as he said, running your hand up and down his cock. It was hot, hard as iron, yet felt like velvet to the touch. And so girthy as well. You could not wait to take him inside of you.

So focused on pleasuring him, you barely noticed when he began to prepare you, one finger slicked up and sliding in and out of you. He added a second, and a third, all the while caressing your body with his other hand, his lips never far from your skin. You stroked him faster, gripped him harder, but he touched your wrist and slowed you down. 

“Patience, little one,” he murmured. “Don’t end this before we begin.”

You nodded. 

“Good.” He placed a hand on your back and gently bent you over. “Hands behind your back. Grip your forearms.”

You did so, and he grabbed your arms like the reins of a horse. He pulled his fingers from you, and you whimpered, but soon they were replaced by the tip of his cock.

Halsin grunted, and his hips shot forward, filling you full of him in one hard stroke.

Before you could scream, his hand was over your mouth. 

“You don’t want everyone knowing how well you submit, do you?” he asked.

You shook your head.

“Good. I’m going to let go of your mouth now. But stay quiet.” He gripped your arms with both hands now and began to move his hips. The first few strokes were slow and steady as he gauged how well you were opening up to his invasion. Then he sped up, dominating you with his strength, his hips slapping against your ass.

You couldn’t help yourself, you moaned and whimpered with each thrust.

“Can’t stay quiet, can you?” he gritted out, slowing his pistoning. Pulling out of you, he waved his hand and a soft bed of moss appeared on the ground. “On your hands and knees.”

As soon as you fell into position, he climbed over you, his chest against your back, one arm wrapped around your shoulder. He stuffed his cock inside of you once more with a deep growl, almost… bear-like?

You turned your head to look back at him.

His eyes were glowing a fiery yellow, a feral snarl on his face. 

“Halsin,” you whispered in awe, lust, tinged with a bit of fear.

He picked up on it immediately, the caring elf that he was. He took a breath, and the glow in his eyes began to fade.

“No, no!” you panicked, grabbing onto him and clutching at him like he was a life preserver in an icy cold ocean. You didn’t want him to go easy on you, didn’t want him to simmer down just because you were a little bit shocked. You wanted all of him, all that he could give. “Take me, please!”

The glow stopped fading. “Take you, little one?”

“Yes, please,” you begged. “Please.”

His only response was a low growl as his eyes glowed once more and his hips moved in a measured rhythm, his pace steadily increasing until you could barely draw a breath between each stroke.

“Such a good little lover,” he murmured. His lips caressed the shell of your ear as he rutted into you, the dichotomy of his soft moans to his hard thrusts making you lose yourself to this heavenly euphoria. The fevered trance of being fucked without having to think about anything at all was so freeing. You devolved into a mass of writhing and moaning, unable to control your volume any longer. The coil of desire within you was growing tighter, wound up with every thrust, every low, beastly grunt that Halsin gave.

You felt your hands and arms buckle, and you sank your chest into the soft moss beneath you, your ass still up in the air. The cool vegetation against your skin contrasted with the heat from the druid pounding into you from behind.

“Touch yourself,” he commanded. “Finish what you started before.”

Gleefully you reached down and stroked yourself eagerly, your body tensing as the ecstasy built higher and higher. You clenched around Halsin’s thick cock, and he rumbled with satisfaction. He sped up, driving himself into your body with wild abandon.

Your climax ran through you like lightning. One moment, you were at the top of the mountain. The next, you were free falling, pleasure guiding your wings as you soared with rapture. You spasmed below the large man, crying out into his arm. He held you tighter as he fucked you through your orgasm until your knees gave way and you collapsed onto the ground.

You felt like a blissful ooze, boneless and relaxed, but Halsin was speeding up, his breath hitching, his moans becoming deeper, more… animalistic.

“Do you want my seed within you?” he asked in nearly a growl.

“Fuck yes,” you breathed, excited by the prospect. “Give me every last drop.”

He roared and pinned you to the ground, his hips jerking against your backside as he poured his essence into you. With one last push, he stayed inside of you for as long as he could, keeping part of his weight off you with one arm so he didn’t crush you. But the warmth, the comfort of his body felt so very nice. Like he was shielding you from the rest of the world for just this one moment, and you desperately needed it.

Halsin groaned, and he pulled away from you. Turning over, you looked to see him holding his arms, taking a deep breath.

“Halsin?”

“It’s alright. When my blood runs hot, my wildform… is harder to control.” He backed away. “I need to run around for a bit, until I’ve calmed down.” He looked up at you. “But I will wait until you are ready to return.”

You smiled. He was kind, thinking that you, an adventurer in your own right, savior of the grove, needed a guard. But it was sweet of him to be so considerate. “I’ll be alright.” You reached up and touched his arm. “Go, run wild. I’ll see you back in camp.”

You watched as Halsin transformed. No matter how many times you saw his bear form, it always took your breath away. The power, the pure might behind that fur. You had seen him tear goblins limb from limb with that power. But right now, he gently nuzzled your face before bounding away, his mighty roar echoing in the night. He exuded elation as he loped into the forest, and you couldn’t help but chuckle. It was cute.

Walking back to your pile of clothes, you leaned over to pick them up. Just as your hand gripped the fabric, you sensed something, or someone, in the trees. You let go of your clothes and grabbed a pebble nearby. With effortless speed, you flung the pebble into a nearby tree.

“Ouch. What was that for?”

“Get down here, Astarion.”

The pale elf gracefully leapt down from the tree and casually sauntered towards you. The only thing giving away his nonchalant look was the fact that the front of his pants looked a bit stretched.

He gave you a withering look as his gaze wandered up and down your naked body. He paid particular attention to the trail of Halsin’s seed dripping down your thighs.

“I never took you to be so… docile,” he said, a sly smirk on his lips. “Who knew you had it in you.”

You crossed your arms. “Had what in me?”

“Well, another man’s seed, for one.” He chuckled at his own comment. “But I was more impressed by your… willingness… to submit.”

His eyes flashed with a beguiling look and he stepped closer. Standing your ground, you ignored the flush of heat in your nether region as you stared back at him defiantly, until he was face to face with you. Damn his height, forcing you to tilt your head up.

“You should have told me what you needed, darling,” he purred. “I would have indulged you… for a price.”

You glared at him.

“Come now, don’t be offended. You’ve already given yourself to me for free. It would be gauche of me not to return the favor.”

Blood. He wanted to feed. The small puncture marks on your neck pulsed. And so did lower parts of you. But your annoyance with him made its way to your mouth first.

“I thought you had standards, Astarion.”

“Oh, but I do. However, I don’t mind lowering them for a little fun.”

You seethed for a moment. “Did it occur to you that maybe you’re below my standards?”

His eyes widened a bit at your vicious banter. Then he smiled knowingly and your stomach dropped. You knew from his look that he had something on you. He leaned in until his lips were a mere breath away from yours. “You think I didn’t notice the scent of your arousal the last time I bit you?”

You swallowed. Shit, he knew.

His eyes glanced down at his last bite mark. “You’ve already proven yourself to be my little fang slut. Why don’t you become my whore as well? I’ll pay for my meal with your pleasure.”

You should have been offended. Insulted. Outraged.

However, your body, relaxed after having been thoroughly fucked, betrayed you in the worst way. You flushed with carnal heat, your eyes dilated, and your breath hitched. And Astarion picked up on every last iota of your reaction.

“Well, looks like your body is much more honest,” he said in a low voice. His eyes glanced down at your lips for a moment before meeting your gaze. His lips grazed yours, so light that you barely felt it.

“Kneel.” His command, in a voice so low that you felt it as a rumble from his lips to yours.

You obeyed immediately, your eyes remaining locked with his.

He patted your head condescendingly. “Good little pet,” he purred. With one hand, he deftly freed himself from his pants.

As you began to lean forward, he tutted at you. “Stay still.”

You froze.

He smirked, a little bit of fang showing as he placed his hand on your head and tilted it up slightly. “Give me your hand,” he commanded, holding out his.

You put your smaller hand in his, and he placed it at the base of his cock. It grew slightly from your touch.

“Open your mouth,” he said softly. When you did so, he guided your head to him until you had engulfed him.

“Now you may move,” he said magnanimously, and you began to pleasure him as best as you could with your limited knowledge. Your eyes went up to his for a moment before you closed them, savoring the feeling of him growing larger and harder in your mouth.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes shot open again and you looked up at him. He gazed at you fondly, similar to how one would look at a beloved pet.

Then he shoved his cock down your throat.

You gagged and tried to push away, but the hand holding your head in place would not budge. Your eyes watered and you began to choke a bit.

“Relax your throat, darling. Breathe through your nose.”

You did as he said, and began to feel a bit better, but it was still difficult, controlling your gag reflex. Soon he released you, and you coughed, bringing your hand to your throat.

“Not ready for that, I suppose,” he said as he caressed your head and looked down at you, appraising you with one long look. His eyes lingered between your legs and his nostrils flared. You turned your head away, knowing that he could smell how aroused you were, and felt a bit of shame well up in your chest.

He held his hand out to you, as if to help you stand. You didn’t question why he wanted you to do so, you just took his hand and stood, somewhat shakily.

Leisurely, he circled around you until he was behind you. His hand went up to your throat, gently stroking it up and down, slowly, a whisper of a caress punctuated by moments of pressure in your most vulnerable points. He stepped forward, his chest to your back, and took a deep breath at your neck. He let his lips linger on your skin where your blood, sped up by his touch, lay closest to the skin.

“I can feel your pulse against my lips,” he murmured against your neck. “For some reason, I keep coming back to you.” His other hand caressed your bare backside for a moment before you felt him nudging himself between your legs. He pushed slightly, spreading you open. Your body accepted him easily, as if it was waiting for him.

“My filthy little pet,” he teased. “Any normal being would be resting by now.” He slid further inside of you, making you gasp. “But you’re anything but normal, are you?”

You wanted to snap back at him, but then he gripped your hip, anchoring you in place as he pushed himself into you, all the way to the hilt. Your voice cracked, your comeback dying on your lips. You could only let out a wordless cry of surrender.

Astarion’s dark chuckle filled your ears. “Who would have guessed?” He pulled his hips back, leaving only the head inside, just to tease you. “The hero of the grove.”

He slammed back into you, chasing away your breath once more. “You’re just a deviant, aren’t you?” His words were punctuated by his thrusts, reducing you to nothing more than a quivering mess, slave to his touch. 

Your mind began to blank, and though the logical part of you screamed to keep your wits about you, another part of you screamed back: you were tired. You just wanted to be. And the pleasure he was giving you, despite his cruel words, or perhaps, because of them, was overwhelmingly good.

The grip on your throat tightened just a bit. Not enough to hurt, but enough to let you know that he was in command. He could end you with one snap. You were foolish to let him have you in such a compromising position.

The light scrap of his fangs on your skin made you gasp, your heart rate skyrocketing. Instinctively, your body knew he was a predator, and you were his prey. His tongue flicked out to lick your pulse. He trapped your arms behind your back, his arm looped at your elbows, forcing you to arch your back.

“How will your blood taste, tinged with ecstasy, I wonder,” he mused, his voice deeper than you’d ever heard him. He gripped your jaw and forced you to look up at him, His eyes, scarlet like the blood moon and twice as hypnotizing, were dilated with need. 

“Come for me, pet.”

You had no choice. You simply did as he wanted, moving your hips shamelessly, sinking down on his cock over and over until you began to feel your climax spinning towards you.

Just as that blissful tide came rising up within you, a sharp pain came down on your neck. Your brain, addled with so many things, couldn’t handle it. The sting melted into the euphoria until you couldn’t tell one from the other. 

“Astarion!” you cried, whether to beg for mercy or to beg for more, you weren’t sure.

His hips slammed into you harder and you felt him empty himself inside of you, just as he moaned against your neck.

You felt yourself falling, and wondered if it was you, or the afterglow.

Slowly, too slowly, you realized it was your body, and you braced for impact.

But it never came.

With a surprising amount of strength, Astarion held you, carefully letting you sit down on the ground. He knelt down with you, and without thinking, you leaned your head against his shoulder.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

He froze for a moment before awkwardly patting your back.

That was… strangely not like him, you thought. Looking up at him, you were met with a curious expression on his face. 

“Astarion?”

He blinked, and the expression was gone, replaced by his usual rakish smirk. You felt a little sad that he had put his mask back on.

“Darling. We’ll have to try that again sometime,” he said, licking the corner of his lips to catch the last drop of your blood.

You cocked your head. “Was… was it that good?”

“I’m not sure,” he said mischievously. “I’ll need another…taste… to find out.”

You closed your eyes and smiled. You knew what he meant.

I’d like to do this again.

“Any time,” you replied.

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

End Notes: Throughout my writing this, I ended up doing a tiny bit of research (and by research, I mean I looked up the sex scenes on pornhub), so I hope this was at least somewhat hot for some of you. Thanks for reading!

[pizzapasta23045]

I know that this is me being high-key delusional because this is in no way intended subtext or whatever but I find this line particularly interesting.

Diluc likes grape juice and i get this is like, Kaeya is basically calling him a child or whatever but like. The patience line.

Diluc wants his justice immediately, that's like, a thing for him. He would rather be alone forever than spend a day in an organization whose morals bother him.

He's impatient about justice. And that's not a bad thing, it's neutral.

But Kaeya, on the other hand, really embodies the 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' thing. He stays in the knights, because he knows that the best way to get revenge for Crepus is from the inside.

And he's right, to some extent. He does help get the bad guy punished. Diluc's rampage, his quest for revenge, it fails.

Like, he kills a bunch of fatui, gets banned from Sneznaya but like... That's it. He just fights and fights alone and the fatui keep coming because of course they do! What do you think will happen? A single man destroys an entire paramilitary organization by himself?

Fuck no!

Kaeya's more pragmatic about it. He's patient. And in his patience, he reaps results Diluc never will.

Just like grapejuice ferments into wine if you wait a bit, Kaeya's overcomplicated plans ferment into something bigger that Diluc may never achieve.

[munsons-maiden]

Yes selling ketamine to a vulnerable teenager is bad but Eddie is a worse person for the way he treated Lucas and encouraged Lucas' friends to act.

Even if you hate jocks and hate sports and hate parties and whatever.... it's pretty obvious Lucas didn't have friends outside of Hellfire Club and the fact Eddie scheduled the campaign final specifically on the night of the championship game (he wouldve known the exact date, there wouldve been posters and announcements for months prior and hes not stupid) had to have been on purpose. And if he was trying to make Lucas choose a side? That's fucked up. Let a kid have a hobby outside your realm of interests you gatekeeping prick.

If by chance he genuinely didn't know the date? He could've postponed. People postpone D&D campaigns all the fucking time and it's not like Eddie had a job so he had to worry about scheduling issues. It's clear why you can't just move the date of a championship basketball game for 7 nerds to play a boardgame. No, he did this on purpose. To weed out the jocks in his nerd club. To ostracise Lucas specifically.The way Eddie interacts with Mike and Dustin shows he knows the people in Hellfire Club. He would've known who Lucas is. He wouldve known he loves D&D as much as the rest of them but because he also has a different interest that Eddie dislikes (not even for a moral reason but just because its popular), he's forced out. A group supposedly for outsiders is excluding one of their own for *checks notes* being an outsider? It's fucked up and just plain mean.

And Lucas will never forget that none of his friends NOT A SINGLE ONE went to the championship game that he won.

What say you, Kiki The Maiden?

Okay first of all, a disclaimer: I disagree with about everything you said. I love analyzing things, and everyone has different headcanons and interpretations, but the writers took great efforts to canonically exclude these arguments. I mean if it were like you said, I'd agree, but it canonically isn’t. I rewatched the key scenes for this reply and transcribed the relevant dialogues for the following analysis. Again, this isn't meant to be rude - you asked about my honest opinion, I'm giving it.

1.”Eddie selling ketamine to a vulnerable teenager”:

The scenes:

Eddie bumps into Chrissy in the woods, sees her obvious distress and asks whether she's okay, obviously concerned. From the context, it's obvious Chrissy initiated the deal and made him come to the woods because that's how most drug deals work and Eddie himself is obviously surprised that Chrissy asked for this deal.

They sit down, Eddie takes off his leather jacket and denim vest, his "shield" against the world as the costume designer Amy L. Forsythe calls it, thereby taking off his guard like he did in the D&D sequence. He canonically makes himself less intimidating because since people think he's mean and scary because he's a metalhead who plays D&D and deals drugs, and he wants Chrissy to see she doesn't have to be scared.

Chrissy asks how the deal works, Eddie explains it. His tone is neutral, the little quip about "and for obvious reasons...no receipts" meant to set her a bit at ease by making a little joke. He then proceeds to ask her whether his conditions - 20 dollars for the half - are okay, giving her control over the situation.

Chrissy stays jumpy and distressed. Eddie relates it to himself, takes the drugs away, out of her line of vision, avoids eye contact as he tells her "we don't have to do this. Just say the word and I'll walk away." He's defensive that she sees him as a danger because that's obviously how most people conceive him and it hurts. And since he doesn't want to pressure her into anything, he offers her a way out - no consequences, no questions asked; he puts Chrissy in charge again. He moves to go to show her he means it - and he does mean it, what he sees is that Chrissy obviously doesn't want him there from his POV - until Chrissy says: "No, it's not that. I don't want you to go."

That's where Eddie realizes she isn't scared of him, and does what she asked him to: he stays. He tries to build a connection, a common ground to talk about and set her at ease. He does. He yeets himself off the bench, making her laugh AND giving her more physical space. He's a little self-deprecating in a charming, sweet way (the yeeting off the bench and rolling on the ground, "we actually got a crowd of about five...drunks") and they get along well. Whether you ship them or not doesn't matter: they both are at ease with each other and laugh together, both sides have their guards down and the interaction is genuine and void of any ulterior motives, as the Duffers as well as Grace and Joe confirmed in various interviews.

Eddie offers Chrissy a 25% discount, which reaffirms he's not interested in the money. I mean, yes, he deals because he needs the money, but he wants those deals to be consentual and in Chrissy's case, he likes her. Again, no matter whether you ship them or not, he wants to be nice, no ulterior motives.

Chrissy asks him "do you have anything maybe...stronger?"

Eddie reacts shocked/surprised.

Chrissy is smiling very hard when she steps out of the van and follows Eddie into the trailer, which implies she didn’t seem nervous on the way or anything like that. (she only starts to get nervous/panic when she starts hearing Vecna’s clock - and even then, she doesn’t try to escape the trailer, but she tries to get to Eddie)

At the trailer, Eddie stars searching for the ketamine, which implies - as well as his "no, no, no, I got it. Somewhere." - that he doesn't often sell other things than weed. His confusion as to where he placed the ketamine is genuine.

Chrissy dies. Another thing: even while Chrissy is in her trance, Eddie respects her boundaries. He stays a few feet away, dancing, snapping, clapping to wake her up and only when she doesn't and he realizes she's in actual danger from something, he crosses into her personal space to grab her shoulders and as a last resort pat her cheeks to wake her up. If we compare the whole scene with that of Eddie and Steve in the UD, we can see the glaring contrast: Eddie sways in and out of Steve's personal space.

Ketamine isn’t classified as a hard drug, btw; its risk of causing addiction/dependency is as high or low as that of weed, and the risk of a deadly overdose is so low there’s not even a statistic for it.

Yes, Eddie sells ketamine to a vulnerable teenager (bear in mind that Chrissy is canonically 18 and Eddie is 20, there is no power imbalance, they're both seniors) - but he doesn't know Chrissy is vulnerable. We, the audience, know it, because we see Chrissy's POV, her ed, and we see her getting targeted by Vecna and we even get a glimpse at the abuse she suffers through her mother.

Eddie, from his POV sees: Chrissy Cunningham, the Queen of Hawkins High, from a good middle class/upper middle class family, the most popular girl of school, on top of the hierarchy. He doesn't know she even has struggles. We see the picture Chrissy paints for everyone is a perfect one (the little kiss she blows Jason at the Pep Rally symbolizes that). For all he knows, Chrissy is the Queen of Hawkins High who wants to be a bit rebellious before her graduation in one and a half months, the good girl being nervous about her first drug deal, or she’s simply having a bad day. The last time they canonically interacted was in middle school, and Eddie doesn’t know her. He doesn’t know how she usually acts or how to tell that she’s vulnerable.

Chrissy asks him to do the deal in the woods, Chrissy is the one who tells him she doesn't want him to go vehemently enough to make sure she means it, and Chrissy is the one who asks him for something stronger than weed (he never offers it!). Chrissy is initiating things, and she's her own autonomous person capable - at least from Eddie's POV - of making her own decisions, having her own agenda; she’s not some helpless little vulnerable girl. She’s a senior, just like Eddie. Stop vilifying Eddie in this situation. It wasn’t a good thing to do, it’s a flaw, but he never had ill intentions or ulterior motives and he had no way to know that Chrissy was vulnerable.

And selling drugs is what he does. It's a flaw, and one that makes him a complex character. He's a person, and sometimes people do stupid things. It be like that.

2.Eddie not postponing the campaign:

I'll sum up all four scenes relevant for this because again, what we see in canon and what is obviously canonically implied are the facts.

The Pep Rally: At the pep rally, during Jason's speech, we find out that the Hawkins tigers won the game "last night" which means that they're in the championship finale "tonight". Dustin and Mike react shocked that the championship game is "tonight", and Max explains "they call it a tournament. you win one game, you go on and so on until only one team is left." It's canon that they only knew 24 hours beforehand that the championship game would take place because they only won the final game to enable it the night prior.

Walking back from the rally, Lucas tells Dustin and Mike to "just talk to Eddie", which they both at first refuse, instead trying to coerce Lucas into not attending the championship game but the end of the D&D campaign, a campaign which has gone on for the "past semester" as Dustin points out, "we need you." To which Mike adds, "Yes, and the Tigers don't. You've been on the bench all year."

Lucas tells them that the point isn't only the game but "I'm getting good with these guys. I'll be in the popular crowd, and then you guys will be, too. Mike: "Has is ever occured to you that we don't want to be popular?" Lucas: "So you wanna be stuck with the nerds and freaks for three more years?" Dustin: "We are nerds and freaks." Lucas: "But maybe we don't have to be. Look, I'm tired of being bullied. I'm tired of girls laughing at us, I'm tired of feeling like a loser. We came to high school wanting things to be different, right?" - Dustin and Mike nod. Lucas: "So now we have that chance. I skip tonight, that's all out the window. So I'm asking you guys, as a friend, talk to Eddie. Get him to move Hellfire. Come to my game. Please."

The cafeteria scene begins with Eddie reading out the article linking D&D to satanism, sodomy, suicide and murder, poking fun of it before launching into the table speech during which he shows and states that he's tired and defensive and angry at his hobby being not only labelled as "less" than band, science, parties or basketball, but as evil, once again painting him as mean and scary, a freak "because we like to play a fantasy game."

When Dustin asks Eddie to postpone the campaign in the cafeteria, ALL the rest of Hellfire protests before Eddie yells "STOP" so he can speak and say he won't postpone, telling them to find a sub for Lucas.

Those are the relevant scenes. Now, on to your comments:

Even if you hate jocks and hate sports and hate parties and whatever....

he resents them for kicking him down, for having hobbies which are deemed good while his own, absolutely harmless hobby, is called less and even dangerous. The resentment of someone who got bullied and still gets bullied and scorned upon all his life simply because he dresses differently and his hobby is different. We see what those little pricks in season 1 did to Mike and Dustin and Will for being nerds and playing D&D - we all know for Eddie, it hasn't been any different. He jusged people the same way he gets judged and doesn't realize it, which, yes, is a character flaw, and one he very quickly strips after his encounter with Erica who, rightly so, absolutely roasted him to which he realized he didn't act nice and did the shitty thing people were doing to him and owned it and did better, genuinely welcoming him to Hellfire even though he just got roasted and insulted ("long-haired freak", the name freak something Jason calls him and which in the cafeteria scene is revealed to be a very sore spot for him) by her in front of his friends. Flawed? Yes. Learning and doing better? Yes.

it's pretty obvious Lucas didn't have friends outside of Hellfire Club

Canonically wrong. It's not obvious. It might have been if he and Eddie were close, but they aren't (later a bit more on that but bear with me.) The canon facts:

1.The costume design already shows Lucas, at the start of ST4, belongs more to the jocks than the nerds: he wears his basketball attire while Dustin and Mike wear the Hellfire Club shirts. It's the game of the pap rally where everyone wears their club's outfits (the Cheerleaders, the Jocks, the Nerds) so it's not the common outfit but it already separates Lucas from the rest of Hellfire/his friends Mike and Dustin.

2.Lucas is sitting with the basketball players.

It is canonically implied, in two instances, that Lucas started sitting with them regularly, leaving Mike and Dustin to sit alone with each other even before they joined Hellfire/met Eddie. a) in the cafeteria scene when Eddie remembers the moment he invited Dustin and Mike into Hellfire: "You were sitting on that table right there, looking like...looking like TWO little lost sheep" and b) in the scene where Dustin tells Max that Eddie has to be innocent: "When we got to High School, Lucas made all his sports friends. Mike and me? I mean no one was nice to us. No one except Eddie." -> Lucas had started leaving Mike and Dustin behind for the jocks long before Eddie invited them to Hellfire. Implying that Eddie as Hellfire's leader invited Lucas, who was already starting to join the crowd of jocks Eddie dislikes, into Hellfire despite him becoming one of the jocks.

3. Lucas canonically never hangs with Hellfire and Dustin and Mike because the jocks didn't know Lucas was friends with Eddie or anyone in Hellfire. They didn't even know he was friends with Dustin and Mike.

At Benny's when Jason rallies his mob:

When the mob shows up at Corroded Coffin's band practice:

Lucas: "Hellfire isn't a cult. It's just a D&D club. D&D? Dungeons and dragons? It's like a...it's like a game. It's fantasy."

Andy Warren: "And how exactly do you know all of that, Sinclair?"

Lucas: "Uh...well. It's my sister. Yeah. She's like...she's like a total nerd."

DISCLAIMER: Lucas lies here because he wants to find out what the jocks plan, not because he means it. He's a double agent already if you will, I'm only quoting this because obviously the jocks don't know Lucas is in Hellfire or even affiliated with any of its members, canonically implying that Lucas takes care not to be seen with anyone in Hellfire at school. When Jason attacks Garreth and forces him to tell him where Eddie is and Gareth says "Dustin Henderson" there's no indication that the jocks know Lucas is even friends with Dustin, else, they'd have asked Lucas about him.

Gareth: "Lucas? What are you doing with those douchebags?"

Jason: "You know these freaks, Sinclair?"

Lucas: "Uh. They know my sister. They tried to recruit me to their club, cult."

Lucas has friends outside of Hellfire, and he chose them, and it's canonically implied that he doesn't even hang around with Mike, Dustin or the rest of Hellfire during school. His reasons are totally relatable, I'm just saying your point is canonically wrong.

Eddie scheduled the campaign final specifically on the night of the championship game (he wouldve known the exact date, there wouldve been posters and announcements for months prior and hes not stupid) had to have been on purpose.

As per the dialogue in the episode with Max, Mike and Dustin didn't know, and Eddie had no way of knowing since he wasn't at the pep rally where it was said. There can't have been announcements etc because as I said, it's canon that nobody knew until 24 hours prior that the championship game would take place that night. If anybody had known that the game might take place at that date, it would have been Lucas, but since Mike and Dustin didn't know, I don't think Lucas thought about telling them, if he even knew. Canon is only that Mike, Dustin, Eddie and the rest of Hellfire didn't know because the whole school didn't know until 24 hours earlier.

And if he was trying to make Lucas choose a side?

Eddie never threatened to kick anybody out of Hellfire and as we got to know him in the later episodes, he never would have. It was about ONE night, the finale of the campaign, not generally about being part of Hellfire. Plus, Eddie never put Lucas to the test to see which side he'd choose, and he never even implied that he would've kicked Lucas out of Hellfire. It was about one single night. Again, petty and definitely selfish - but there was no ulterior motive, no mind games or power play going on.

That's fucked up. Let a kid have a hobby outside your realm of interests you gatekeeping prick.

Everything in canon implies that it wasn't Eddie's intention. He didn't know the date. He learned that day in the cafeteria. There were loads of equipment for the game and the setting - candles, chalices, all that stuff, and since Hellfire shares the room with the theater club (which is canon by the scenes and the lightning etc. that it's the theatre room) it means he needed to book the room to make sure it was free, meaning that it took work and time to organize everything so the campaign could take place. It never once is even implied that Eddie tried to gatekeep - and from everything we know, the one time when he did try to gatekeep D&D with Erica, he realized the mistake and stopped gatekeeping immediately, holding no ill will.

If by chance he genuinely didn't know the date?

He didn't know the date, that's canon, as I pointed out.

He could've postponed. People postpone D&D campaigns all the fucking time and it's not like Eddie had a job so he had to worry about scheduling issues. It's clear why you can't just move the date of a championship basketball game for 7 nerds to play a boardgame. No, he did this on purpose.

Eddie is the leader of Hellfire, but he's not the only one calling the shots.

The three others - Gareth, Jeff and Freak#3 as he's called in the credits - protested VERY loudly and vehemently as soon as Dustin asked to postpone, before Eddie even got to react. Eddie called them to stop protesting, and it was evident that out of 7 people (Eddie, Lucas, Mike, Dustin, Gareth, Jeff, Freak#3), 3 had already made it clear that they were firmly against postponing, Mike and Dustin wanted to postpone, and Lucas - who wanted to postpone - didn't even go to the trouble to show Eddie the courtesy of asking him himself whether he could postpone the game. Yes, Eddie is Hellfire's leader and DM, but it was 3 against 2 without Eddie and Lucas and 4 against 3 with them, a clear democratic decision not to postpone.

Part of Hellfire are Dustin and Mike who never, not once, asked him to postpone because they wanted to be at the championship game to support Lucas, but because Lucas couldn't be there because of the game. Eddie never knew it was important, Mike and Dustin never voiced that they wanted to support Lucas at the basketball game because they didn't want to and they made it clear with Lucas, only being swayed briefly. It's easy to point at Eddie and say "he didn't want to postpone, we had no choice!" when Eddie didn't even know Mike and Dustin wanted to go to the basketball game (which, again, they didn't make clear was something they wanted).

Had they told Eddie they wouldn't make it to Hellfire alongside Lucas, because they wanted to support him, Eddie and the rest of Hellfire would have had no choice but to postpone, with three missing players. Dustin and Mike had a choice here, and they chose against Lucas.

About the 7 nerds...yes, Eddie doesn't have a job. But what about the other three, Gareth and Jeff and Freak#3? We don't know whether they had jobs, other scheduling issues. You tend to forget that Hellfire isn't just Eddie, but 5, (without Dustin and Mike 3) other people who are included in scheduling decisions. It doesn't work this way that the DM is calling the shots and everyone else follows - no club works like this, except when it's a cult.

To weed out the jocks in his nerd club. To ostracise Lucas specifically. The way Eddie interacts with Mike and Dustin shows he knows the people in Hellfire Club. He would've known who Lucas is. He wouldve known he loves D&D as much as the rest of them but because he also has a different interest that Eddie dislikes (not even for a moral reason but just because its popular), he's forced out.

No, he wouldn't have, because Eddie wasn't close to Lucas, canonically, he didn't know him outside of the D&D games where you play and don't talk a lot about anything outside of the game. It's already been established that at school, Lucas was with the jocks, never with Eddie or Hellfire because else the jocks would have remembered seeing one of their own with one of the "freaks". And Lucas left before Mike and Dustin joined Hellfire, which implies Eddie never ostracized anyone, he never was responsible for Mike and Dustin growing apart from Lucas. They simply had different interests, like teenagers do. People grow apart, interests change. Lucas (and Mike) didn't show much interest in D&D in ST3 - that was Will's whole storyline! - and it is in no way implied that Lucas is sad to miss the campaign (he's sad that Mike and Dustin would miss his game, not that he wouldn't be able to play D&D, judging by the entire dialogue) or that he still loves playing D&D as much as he did. We don't know how he was during the campaigns when there were no jocks around to criticize Lucas and Lucas was free to be himself at Hellfire, but since Lucas never stayed Eddie and the rest of Hellfire during school, while Mike and Dustin did because Lucas was with the jocks and they didn't want to be with the jocks, it's canon that Lucas and Eddie weren't close, and maybe not even friends before the events of ST4. Another proof: Lucas at first actually believes Eddie killed Chrissy (which is relatable since everyone not knowing Eddie, Max included, came to that first conclusion until learning of Vecna and getting to know Eddie):

Again, relatable and Max showed the same reaction but Dustin knew Eddie didn't do it because Dustin was very close to Eddie, much closer than Lucas was.

Lucas: "You guys know he (Eddie) killed Chrissy, right?"

Dustin: "That's bullshit. Eddie tried to save Chrissy."

Lucas: "Then why do all the cops say he did?"

Not once was it implied that Eddie didn't want to postpone because he didn't like Lucas having other interests. It was, however, implied in several instances that it was the moment a whole semester-long campaign had been leading to.

A group supposedly for outsiders is excluding one of their own for *checks notes* being an outsider? It's fucked up and just plain mean.

It would have been, would it have been the case, yes. Canonically, it isn't the case, and Lucas is no outsider. He is an insider with the jocks (Jason: "I should've never let you in." - Lucas:"I shouldn't have knocked."), albeit within the circle of jocks, he's an outsider. We don’t know whether Eddie knows that.

And might I remind you that Eddie's last breath, the last moments of his life after sacrificing himself "for a town that hated him", were spent to make Dustin promise he would look out after all the lost little sheepies because he couldn't anymore? Yes, he did gatekeep (with Erica, not Lucas) but he had a lot of character growth during the series regarding his us-vs-them perspective (with Chrissy not being mean and scary, with Erica being a D&D nerd despite being an eleven-years-old girl, with Steve not being a douche, with Nancy Wheeler having guns, plural, in her bedroom) - but Eddie did never intentionally ostracize anyone. His entire character was written to embody exactly the opposite in the narrative: someone who founded a club for those who'd been ostracised from the rest of high school hierarchy. That was a canon core of Eddie's character and narrative.

That was the canon. Here's my opinion, based on those canon facts and implications I listed:

It was a fucked up situation for ALL of them, and that it went the way it did is their fault, all together, and I'm sorry for all of them that it went this way.

Lucas' POV is relatable: he's tired of being bullied and sticking with Jason and the jocks is his ticket out, and he genuinely believes sticking with the jocks to become part of the popular crowd will benefit Mike and Dustin as well, in the long run, to not being bullied anymore. He never has any ill intent towards anyone.

Mike and Dustin's POV is less relatable than Lucas', in my opinion: They want to play D&D instead of watching the basketball game they're absolutely not interested in even if it's their best friend on the bench and maybe even playing (nobody could have known he'd be playing, he only was because another player was injured, but Mike’s jab at Lucas being a benchwarmer is mean) - they wanted the old times back, they wanted to play D&D alongside Lucas but they chose to play without him instead of supporting him. Eddie never threatened to kick anybody out of Hellfire and as we got to know him in the later episodes, he never would have. It was about ONE night, the finale of the campaign, not generally about being part of Hellfire - they could have opted to support Lucas and Eddie would have needed to postpone. They didn't.

Eddie's POV: He doesn't know Lucas as well as he knows Dustin and Mike because Lucas never spends any time with him outside of the campaigns outside of school. Lucas doesn't even ask Eddie himself to postpone, which, in my opinion, is a bit rude. There has been a lot of work involved for Eddie, preparations for the setting as well as planning of the campaign since he's the DM. By not asking him himself, Lucas didn't show Eddie it was important to him that he could partake in the campaign so no, Eddie didn't know it was important to Lucas, who was sitting with the jocks while he let Mike and Dustin do the talking so he wouldn't be seen with Eddie and the other "freaks and nerds" as Lucas called them. Eddie was petty, yes, but he didn't have any ill intent either, neither towards Lucas nor towards Dustin and Mike - he simply wanted to play D&D and didn't know it was important to postpone because the only explanation Mike and Dustin gave was "we need Lucas as a player", to which the obvious solution was "get a sub". Plus, Eddie never put Lucas to the test to see which side he'd choose, and he never even implied that he would've kicked Lucas out of Hellfire. It was about one single night. Again, a bit petty and definitely selfish and a flaw - but there was no ulterior motive, no mind games or power play going on.

I'm not saying Eddie doesn't have flaws: he has, and that's important because they make him relatable. He acted selfish and ignorant because it was about basketball, and he did gatekeep with Erica until he realized he was and corrected the mistake immediately without being childish about it. Yes, he judges people prematurely and stacks them in neat little boxes just like they do him, and he learns it later on and stops doing it because he’s self-aware. Yes, he was stupid to sell Chrissy ketamine. But canonically, none of these things happened with ulterior motives or ill intent, and the narrative and writers went out of their way to show that because else, they would have failed to depict Eddie as the lovable character he was meant to be.

[paragonrobits]

its suddenly occured to me that as soon as Simon Petrikov makes an official return as feeling like a member of the main AT cast in his own right, Jake is no longer present. It's still unclear how much of it is Jake having retired prior to his death, or if he was already dead by the events of Obsidian, but it feels like Simon has taken up the role Jake originally occupies.

Essentially when you look at Simon's events in Obsidian and the apparent role he seems to have among the bigger Finn-PB-Marceline-Simon party and group dynamic, he shares a LOT of surprisingly similar traits with Jake:

EXPERIENCED PARTY MEMBER: Jake isn't the oldest member of the group by any stretch, but the other characters TREAT him like he is; he's generally considered to have the most life experience, and he is often treated as being the wisest one. How much of this is objectively true is up for debate and a question for how much of it is just character viewpoints coming in, but Simon definitely has the most life experience. It's arguably one of his more defining traits, since having so much of it against his will is one aspect of the crown. Simon is also a pretty dang smart and emotionally intelligent person, though he doesn't acknowledge it.

THE DAD GUY: In the sense of 'being an older guy that the other characters talk to for advice and reassurance that can be relied upon to solve problems'. Jake isn't precisely a father to Finn in particular by any means, but he IS an older brother who can sometimes come off as having raised Finn, and he is definitely a dad. (Admittedly only for... well, a day because the Pups age weird, and it clearly bothers him, but it still counts.) As for Simon, him being a Dad is probably the thing that most hammered down his characterization and redefined him to such a colossal extent that Simon Petrikov overnight went from being the tragic origin of the Ice King to 'HOLY FUCKING SHIT HE WAS MARCELINE'S REAL DAD!!!!!', with all the implications of his character since. Simon is a dad, and his role as a dad underpins so much of what he seems to value and want more than anything else.

HYPER COMPETENT IN SPECIFIC FIELDS THAT FEEL MORE MUNDANE THAN THE OTHERS: Finn hits things and does Dungeon Adventure stuff. Princess Bubblegum is practically a text book mad scientist alight with the maddening light of GENIUS ITSELF. Marceline, interestingly, comes off very heavily as a parallel to Finn and Jake as a combo package, but the thing that characterizes Jake and by extension Simon for this argument is that they don't do the fancy stuff the other characters do. Jake hits stuff with his magic powers, but in practice he's a pretty blunt force person who doesn't do much of anything outside that, and Simon is notable in that he comes off as being kind of a useless weenie who THINKS he's a useless weenie... until the call of danger comes, and he abruptly shifts into overdrive and almost effortlessly solves the problems he faces without hesitation or any self preservation. In Obsidian he arranges a big calvary team completely on his own, off screen and without prompting, and in Fionna And Cake we see more of this. Simon THINKS he's useless while Jake doesn't care, but both of them are startlingly hyper competent in the narrow field of 'its kinda boring compared to the others but they do it'.

MORAL AMBIGUITY: This is probably the most potentially contentious one, but bear with me. Jake has an established history as a thief and general Dude Doing Crimes, and its not particularly clear if he stopped because he regretted it or just because he became more responsible for Finn. He doesn't SEEM like he regrets it in the slightest, either. Throughout the series it's a running theme that while Jake is generally wiser he's also way more prone to saying messed up stuff or suggesting iffy things for comedic purpose or just on a whim; taken seriously, it can feel like Jake is straight up Chaotic Neutral without much interest in the ethics he does, just about caring about specific people and not much else besides that.

Now let's look at Simon. The current fandom vibe is 'academic weenie with a bubble butt that screams in danger a lot', and this IS technically true, but its not the whole story. Ice King WAS a villain, and genuinely the most recurring threat throughout the series, and while that was part of the crown, the other wearers show it doesn't come out of nowhere. The potential to be Ice King, the callous and destructive brute force, is part of Simon in a whole 'there's two people in the mirror, the one you see and the one you DON'T want to see' kind of way. But during the course of Fionna And Cake we see Simon abducting someone he hates to use them as a magical battery and when they die from it he's more upset about losing his chance and not that someone DIED, when he watches a parallel version of himself wither away he brushes it off as 'oh they were a bad Simon'. It's not implausible Simon did some... STUFF back in the days of the post-war world to ensure he and more importantly Marceline survived. He has a history of revealing that underneath his weenie exterior, he's a solid mass of cold metal that's like biting on tin foil.

All in all, it feels that as Jake has implicitly left the narrative, Simon has been neatly dropped into fulfilling roughly the same role Jake originally did to the rest of the group, or at least that Jake's general narrative purpose of 'does more wacky things for giggles' has been generally split between Finn and Marceline, while Simon has taken on some of his Experienced Family Member and Moral Ambiguity bits.

[walder-138]

PICREW + ALIGNMENT TEST (tagged by @josephseedismyfather)

Thank you for the tag!

Picrew: https://picrew.me/share?cd=brz4HjOP8k

ALIGNMENT: https://easydamus.com/alignment.html

ANNIKA VORONOVA (pre-Bell + Nuke ending)

CHAOTIC EVIL, “DESTORYER”

“A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him.

Chaotic evil is sometimes called "demonic" because demons are the epitome of chaotic evil.

Chaotic evil beings believe their alignment is the best because it combines self-interest and pure freedom.

Chaotic evil is the most dangerous alignment because it represents the destruction not only of beauty and life but also of the order on which beauty and life depend.”

OZ CLANCY

Chaotic Neutral, "Free Spirit"

“A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn't strive to protect others' freedom. He avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy. To do so, he would have to be motivated either by good (and a desire to liberate others) or evil (and a desire to make those different from himself suffer). A chaotic neutral character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally random. He is not as likely to jump off a bridge as to cross it.”

DR. ABBEY FOSTER

Neutral Good,"Benefactor"

“A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them.

Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order.

Neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.”

NIKOLAI “WIDOW” VORONOV

Lawful Evil, "Dominator"

(FUCK FORGOT TO CHANGE THE BACKGROUND. Oh well, I accidentally made him pan now)

“A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to rule, but is willing to serve. He condemns others not according to their actions but according to race, religion, homeland, or social rank. He is loath to break laws or promises.

This reluctance comes partly from his nature and partly because he depends on order to protect himself from those who oppose him on moral grounds. Some lawful evil villains have particular taboos, such as not killing in cold blood (but having underlings do it) or not letting children come to harm (if it can be helped). They imagine that these compunctions put them above unprincipled villains.

Some lawful evil people and creatures commit themselves to evil with a zeal like that of a crusader committed to good. Beyond being willing to hurt others for their own ends, they take pleasure in spreading evil as an end unto itself. They may also see doing evil as part of a duty to an evil deity or master.

Lawful evil is sometimes called "diabolical," because devils are the epitome of lawful evil.

Lawful evil creatures consider their alignment to be the best because it combines honor with a dedicated self-interest.

Lawful evil is the most dangerous alignment because it represents methodical, intentional, and frequently successful evil.”

GUINEVERE FOSTER (1950s)

Lawful Neutral, "Judge"

A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her. Order and organization are paramount to her. She may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or she may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government.

Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot.

Lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment when it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.

Tagging: @imagoddamnonionmason @iamcautiouslyoptimistic @eccentrcks @alypink @cloudofbutterflies92 (Sorry if you were already tagged!)

[bumblingbabooshka]

hi it's me coming back with my bi-monthly little guy bullshit. rewatched meld with the besties for the yaoi of it all and was sitting there like there's something really funny (negative to neutral connotation) about (some) of the other maquis members being interviewed about suder in the ep & b'elanna being like "yeah he was just some guy ig we all did what we had to do lol" and chakotay being like "he was a fucking freak animal. unsettling little thing" . MEAN TO HIM?

I don't perceive Chakotay as being unfairly cruel in his talking about Suder? Chakotay isn't a violent person and though being in the Maquis required violence he didn't relish in it so he viewed Suder's (admitted) bloodlust to be disturbing. To Chakotay, fighting and killing was necessary but not something he wanted to do - very different from Suder who seems to not really care about the Maquis' mission (He only references the Maquis to call Tuvok a traitor and say he doesn't like Starfleet, giving me the impression that he joined just to be in an environment where violence could be used without it standing out rather than actually caring about the Maquis' mission). If anything Chakotay is demonstrating an interesting perceptiveness and willingness to extend olive branches to those he doesn't necessarily like/agree with in this moment. B'Elanna seems to have noticed (or been told of) Suder's penchant for violence, saying "He did what he had to do a little too well." but Chakotay has obviously had multiple personal moments with Suder where he encountered Suder's bloodlust firsthand. He states that these encounters (multiple) scared him and made him think of Suder as a potentially dangerous individual. Despite this, he still neglects to put this on Suder's record because he doesn't want to cause unnecessary hardship for Suder or any member of his crew which he already knows will likely be looked down on and distrusted by the Starfleet members of Voyager as "a bunch of criminals". It could be argued that his encounters with Suder constitute more than a "bad feeling" as it seems he saw evidence of the man being excessively violent and felt threatened himself but Chakotay still hesitates to label Suder as a bad or dangerous person in his crew evaluations. That's interesting! I don't feel that's something any other character on VOY would have done! It also feeds into something I wish was highlighted more about Chakotay which is his willingness to give people who he doesn't like or agree with second chances. He seems like he'd be the most able on the command team to sympathize with people who others dismiss as lost causes or 'bad' and I wonder if part of that comes from his father who never gave up on him even when Chakotay continually pushed him away. It reminds me of how he was willing to lay down his life for that Kazon kid even though he was rude and tried to kill him and Chakotay obviously didn't agree with his values - and that doesn't mean Chakotay is a pushover or naive, just willing to give people chances. Even his friendship with Janeway is something that's only possible because he's willing to listen to others and try to see things from their point of view. Janeway is able to do this to a Starfleet extent but you can bet that if she, say, ended up on a Maquis ship - she wouldn't be integrating herself into that crew's way of thinking. She'd be trying to get them onto her side because she's a person who thinks (sometimes implicitly) that she is Correct. She's much more 'aggressive' or black-and-white in her morality than Chakotay. Which again doesn't mean that Chakotay doesn't stand for anything or is wholly passive (he does and isn't, as we see in episodes like Maneuvers) but that he's just more open-minded and not as certain that he has all the answers. Anyway! I hope this was a good response. I'm sorry if you were making a joke and I responded too earnestly to it - that happens sometimes v_v

[forcebookish]

I saw someone say that “Boston has done nothing wrong!”

And I’m like. He sexually harassed/assaulted Top MULTIPLE times??? It could not be more black and white. Top said. I do not want to have sex with you. I am not interested. LIKE YOU CANT GET CLEARER THAN THAT.

But Boston continued. Even though he KNEW Top was dating someone else and not interested in him. Which ended in him coercing Top, under false pretenses, to have sex with him. Boston knew he was lying about Ray and Mew sleeping together. There’s no way he didn’t know Mew has never been into Ray.

Oh does it not count because you don’t find Top likable? Sorry. I wasn’t aware that assault doesn’t count if the person isn’t nice enough.

And that’s not even getting into how he knowingly played with Nick’s feelings and led him on even though he had no intention of seriously dating him. Like that is text in the show. Boston says. Maybe in the future we’ll date. Even though, at that point he doesn’t intend to date Nick. He just likes hooking up with him.

Like. None of this makes the terrible things that have happened to Boston okay. But like. Those terrible things also don’t excuse what he has done. Like. It’s unacceptable that he was recorded without his consent while having sex. And then it was shown to so many people. That’s horrific. And that is a crime. But it doesn’t mean that anything he’s done before or after is absolved.

Like it absolutely enrages me that even if you think the car sex was completely consensual. Boston still groped and harassed Top multiple times. Like. That is sexual assault. That is sexual harassment.

Boston is certainly and interesting character. And Neo is really showing his range as an actor in making me sometimes feel sorry for a character who has done horrible things. Like he’s shown that Boston has many layers.

But he still hasn’t even had to apologize for what he did to Top. And the fact that I see people act like Boston is somehow completely innocent in all this makes my blood boil. I’m sorry for ranting but my god.

don't apologize, you're completely right, anon! the other day i got in an argument with someone who kept bringing up stuff that they just... disliked about top? and when i told them that was all irrelevant, that all that matters is that boston was told to stop and didn't, they called me a jerk!!! it's fucking unreal the lengths this fandom will go to justify sexual assault.

this is kind of the thing with this fandom, they don't really understand what it means to be "morally gray" or even morality in general. they think that what is "immoral" about boston is his promiscuity (something that, if you don't subscribe to an abrahamic religion/puritanical society, is in fact morally neutral - if we go by the "sex is immoral" doctrine taught in those contexts then gay sex is never moral - which, you know, based on how homophobic BL fandom can be, AND PARTICULARLY THIS FANDOM I SEE YOU TIKTOKERS ACCUSING TOPCHEUM OF FUCKING I SEE YOU, it wouldn't surprise me if that's a part of it), when it's the ASSAULT, it's the NOT TAKING NO FOR AN ANSWER.

boston is a bad person, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have, like you said, layers. not everything about someone has to be bad for them to be a bad person - and you can still feel sorry for them when undeserved shit happens to them. but this fandom can't seem to wrap their heads around that. for some reason, despite this show being "messy," when someone actually messes up they're evil and when someone does something deliberately hurtful to another human being it's either ERASED FROM THEIR MEMORIES or justified in a way that makes them completely blameless or even something good (and not story-good like how i feel about sand LOSING HIS SHIT and destroying his phone to steal the audio and fuck with ray's head/ruin top's life; i mean, people thinking that ray exposed top AT MEW'S BIRTHDAY PARTY out of the goodness of his heart lmao).

it's sooooooo frustrating, anon >:(

[nyxx-nth]

Gavin time 🥳

Okay so. I’m gonna preface this with saying sometimes I like to make him Awful Terrible No Good Very Bad, but this is gonna be about my actual main interpretation of him which is a bit morally grey and very troubled but he really ain’t a bad guy.

N E WAYS

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. He is a criminal he steals, he robs banks or whateva 🙄

He smokes a lot of weed cuz he’s chill like that 😐

He is very cut off from the family. He receives no financial support from them whatsoever—he’s practically disowned. He’s next to never invited to any family events but sometimes he shows up uninvited just to ruin them as sorta a “fuck you” to his family

He lives in a shitty apartment that smells like weed and cigarettes 24/7

The person in his family he’s closest to is his older sister, Jenny.

Following that is actually Toast. They had a very strained relationship but (even though Gavin would never admit it) they both still care for each other, and eventually they patched things up. They aren’t super close by any means and they definitely butt heads a lot over things, but they keep in contact and, at the end of the day, are there for the other to rely on when it comes down to it.

He has trust issues and abandonment issues 🥳

He’s a generally pretty selfish person, but he can also be selfless when he chooses. Tbh, he’s more selfless than other people peg him to be. Still nowhere near as selfless as someone like Toast tho, lmao

He’s very brash and abrasive, cold and distant. He builds up walls to keep others out. He’s also just a bit of an asshole LMAO

He’s very physically fit and very good in a fight. The kind of guy you definitely want on your side. He also isn’t above playing dirty.

He’s bisexual and demiromantic… if you even care 🙄

He has a lot of experience sexually but not much with actual committed relationships—primarily because he doesn’t let anyone get close enough to reach that point and sees any relationships (only has agreed upon casual ones) he has as temporary. If the other party seems like they’re getting too invested, or if he’s getting bored of it, he cuts it off.

He can be a very very flirty guy. He doesn’t like commitment, but he sure does like getting laid 🙄 awful man, hate him (/j)

Ghost and him butt heads a lot, just like he does with his brother. The reason for this is actually because they have a lot similarities, and those similarities have a tendency to clash. Really they’re both fairly neutral towards each other, but Ghost definitely has more dislike for Gavin than Gavin does for him. I have so much more I can say about them but I’ll leave that for a Ghavin post some other day probably LMAO

He’s very neutral about Colon and Spooker. There have DEFINITELY been some “do I even know you 🤨” moments because he genuinely forgets them since he doesn’t give a fuck 😭

Jimmy and him have a sort of… “alliance” (if it can even be called that). It’s mostly just,,, Jimmy doesn’t kill Gavin, and Gavin helps him out when he needs/wants something. SOMETIMES Jimmy miiiiight return the favor and do something for Gavin, but this is incredibly uncommon. It really just comes down to it being in Gavin’s best interest to keep Jimmy out of trouble so he doesn’t have to do more dangerous or difficult things to keep the alliance in place, lest Jimmy decide to get rid of him. Maybe one day I’ll do a Javin post about the different possible interpretations I have for their ship (none of them are happy).

He ends up getting Toast in trouble from impersonating him because he’s a stupid inconsiderate asshole that does dangerous and illegal shit 🙄

[mortemoppetere]

TIMING: current LOCATION: a not-so-abandoned apartment PARTIES: @apaininyourneck & @mortemoppetere SUMMARY: emilio tracks a vampire to an abandoned apartment and finds owen there as well. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

His fingers twitched around the stake, grip tight enough to make his knuckles ache. Things had been… rough lately. Between the shit with Aesil and the fiasco with the Good Neighbors, Emilio was on edge. His skin itched, his throat was dry, he felt more paranoid than usual in a way that was saying something. There was another shoe hanging over his head, waiting to drop. There would be consequences for all of it, he thought; for surviving the demon when he was probably meant to die to it, for freeing some of the prisoners in the Good Neighbors’ cells and not freeing others. Things were going to get bad; he had to be ready for that.

Right now, it meant tracking down one of those escaped prisoners. This one had been on the kill list, had escaped when the vampire Vic spared decided to open the floodgates and let everyone have a taste at freedom. Already, the escaped prisoner had continued its work from before its capture. There were three dead girls who matched its old MO, and Emilio wanted to ensure there wouldn’t be a fourth.

The vampire was easy enough to track. Despite its capture, it didn’t seem interested in covering its tracks. Emilio had traced it to an apartment tonight, a place where it seemed to be staying; it wasn’t one the vampire paid for of course. From what Emilio could tell, the unit was meant to be empty. It’d be empty again soon, if he had anything to say about it. He made his way towards the door, stake at the ready. It’d be quick, he told himself; he’d be back home in time for lunch.

—

It wasn’t just the proximity of a fanged piece of shit that was currently making Owen’s skin crawl, his insides twist. He was no more than a fucking messenger boy at this point and it burned, something hot and searing that lived between shame and rage as he handed a vampire an envelope instead of mutilating their smarmy face. “And if I don’t feel like taking orders?” the vampire had the audacity to ask, misreading the situation as if a single crumb of control belonged to him. 

Owen sniffed, stepping closer as he stared down this pathetic creature - he didn’t know details about this one but the apartment that was obviously being squatted in, the cocky expression, the dried blood on the clothes; Owen had dealt with dozens like him before. They all disintegrated the same, no matter how much they truly thought they were the scariest thing to go bump in the night. “Then I get the pleasure of tearing you apart limb by limb until I get bored and finally dust you.” 

The self assured expression wavered for a fraction of a second and oh, how he longed to make good on that threat right now. His bones ached with it, called out for the dull pain that came with breaking someone’s face. But the vampire backed down like a fucking coward, shifting back a step and averting his gaze from Owen’s piercing stare and the slayer’s jaw reached a new level of tension. “Yeah, that’s what I fucking–” The front door was swinging open and wasn’t that just the cherry on the top of this cake made of absolute shit. 

“We really need to stop meeting like this,” Owen greeted, expression fixed into one of neutrality by the time he met Emilio Cortez’s gaze. Of course he was here, presumably to feed his little morality complex by taking out the vamp Owen was now subtly shielding with his body. There hadn’t been even a remote possibility that Rosel was interested in some do-gooder vampire and Emilio’s presence only confirmed as much - whoever had just agreed to follow whatever that envelope contained (under threat of some serious physical harm) was enough of a piece of shit to land on Cortez’s hit list. 

His hand found the hilt of a knife safely tucked in the back of his waistband, not bothering to even try hiding the motion since Emilio’s paranoid eyes would have picked up on it anyway. “Finders keepers, Cortez. Get yourself another vampire.” 

—

Of all the people he’d expected to find when swinging open the door to the shitty, run-down apartment, Owen wasn’t among them. Emilio had known that the other slayer was back in town and unfortunately not dead, as he’d assumed him to be, but he’d thought the world might grant him a little bit of a reprieve before he actually had to see the guy again. He should have known better, really; the world was rarely interested in granting Emilio any kind of grace.

It was harder to decipher what Owen was doing here, though. The easy bet would be, of course, that he was here for the same reason Emilio was, but the vampire he’d come to dust was in one piece and didn’t seem particularly put off by Owen’s presence. Owen didn’t strike Emilio as the type to attempt to earn someone’s trust before killing them — why would he? It wasn’t as if this vampire had any information to be shared. It had just escaped imprisonment, so it wasn’t exactly the best ‘eyes on the street’ to have on file. And… shielding it from Emilio? That made even less sense.

The detective’s eyes darted between the two figures trying to put the pieces together, but… He was missing a lot of information. Wherever Owen had been over the last few months was probably knowledge necessary for solving this particular mystery, and Emilio knew that wasn’t something that would be willingly shared with him. Whatever Owen was up to, he was going to have to figure it out on his own.

But right now, he just needed to kill a guy.

Owen’s hand went for a weapon, and Emilio’s tightened on his stake. It wasn’t the best weapon for fighting someone with a beating heart, but it was sharp enough to stab someone with even if it wouldn’t turn them to dust and he didn’t want to waste time trading it for a knife when it might give Owen an upper hand. Besides, he was still going to have to kill the vampire, anyway. The stake was the only thing that could do that and give him something to wield against Owen. “Yeah? And what is it, exactly, that you’re doing with this vampire? Doesn’t look like you’re killing it. You having trouble finding conversation? Have to talk to corpses now?” It was easy to fall back into the kind of insults that would make a slayer’s skin crawl, even if Emilio himself was no longer bothered by the concept of befriending the undead. He didn’t think Owen knew about his less lively friends; most of their disagreements had come from a more personal place than that. There was always a chance Rhett had told him about Emilio pulling Ariadne from his van, but it was a risk Emilio would take for the opportunity to be petty. 

“Hate to break up the party here, but I’m not leaving until somebody’s dead. Could be you. Could be him. Either way, I walk away happy.”

—

As things stood, Owen hadn’t been impaled with a stake yet. He couldn’t imagine it was very pleasant - well, could do more than imagine seeing as he didn’t always go straight for the kill and in those cases, the vampires hadn’t seemed thrilled about the sharpened wood being forced through skin and muscle. Emilio’s expression showed just how willing he was to give Owen that experience if need be. So he brought his own knife into view, flipping it once as Emilio, predictably, started to ask questions. “Yeah, you got it. Here for the riveting conversation,” he shot back, words dripping with sarcasm, muscles continuing to tense in anticipation. 

He’d known this was going to be an issue the second that limping nuisance appeared in the doorway but had hoped against hope that just maybe, Emilio wasn’t in the mood to be stubborn and petty. But of course he was stubborn and petty and Owen remembered why hope was for children and fucking imbeciles. Fuck, this was so not the evening for this. A fleeting thought of weakness, simply letting Cortez have this dumb fuck of a vampire, lie his way out. Only she would know, somehow she would fucking know that Owen had fucked up, and that wasn’t even taking into account the ‘letting Emilio have something he wanted’ part of this thought. No, they were definitely doing this the hard way. 

“Fuck, you’re annoying,” Owen barked out and it was almost a laugh but he was too fed up to even properly feign humor. “The sex was not good enough to be worth all of this,” he added, letting the dry words settle for only a fraction of a second before his knife was sailing through the air in Emilio’s direction. Owen didn’t have any misconception that the blade would actually find its intended target, only serving as a distraction so he could shove back the undead fuck responsible for this situation. Coupled with Owen’s freezing glare, the vampire got the hint, scrabbling for purchase on the floor as it bolted for the closest room. 

—-

The knife was hardly an unexpected thing, and Owen’s irritating theatrics as he flipped it were similarly anticipated. Maybe he should have been a little more concerned about it, all things considered. Emilio had been raised to trust that other hunters were allies, that even those who were rough around the edges wouldn’t kill one of their own. He knew better than that now, of course, though he wasn’t sure if the teachings had been wrong or if he’d simply surrendered any kinship he might have had with other people like him. He thought of the ranger Andy killed, the one he’d helped her bury. He thought of Parker, of the way his knife had sliced cleanly through bone and tendon to separate his finger from his hand. He thought of releasing Ariadne from Rhett’s van. He thought of Owen, too, pressing a hand against his injured shoulder and spitting vitriol about his worth. At this point, Emilio wondered if he’d had more trouble with hunters than he had with the undead, and it was a jarring thought. He wondered what it said of him, what it made him. How long before he’d have to find something else to call himself?

He knew Owen wouldn’t hesitate to use that knife. He was fairly certain Owen wouldn’t hesitate to use that knife to kill him, though some part of him wondered if the other slayer might still aim to maim instead. Most hunters had a code against killing other hunters, but Emilio was no longer sure it applied to him. Regardless, the knife was no real surprise. What was surprising was the way it seemed intended not just to threaten Emilio, but to protect the vampire. This wasn’t Owen childishly insisting that he get the kill; this was Owen trying to prevent there from being a kill to begin with. It was notable if only because it was so unlike any behavior Owen had exhibited in the time Emilio had known him.

The knife came flying at him and, having known it was an inevitable thing, Emilio spun to avoid it. There was no stopping the way his bad leg ached with the sudden movement, but it was far less than it might have been had he not been expecting it. Less expected was the way Owen’s first priority wasn’t to follow up on the attack, but to usher the vampire to a safer location. None of the pieces seemed to fit together quite right, but this was a puzzle Emilio would have to wait to solve. Right now, he had better things to worry about. “You were shit in bed, anyway,” he replied, moving towards both Owen and the vampire with the stake at the ready. He probably had a second, maybe two before Owen armed himself again; it was an advantage he’d use fully and without hesitation.

—

Maybe he was projecting, imagining himself in Emilio’s situation and watching a slayer actively keep a vampire from harm, but Owen swore he could see - scratch that, fucking hear the gears in the other slayer’s head turning. Even if he had expected judgment from Emilio, which he didn’t seeing as the man was apparently developing quite the soft spot for the monstrous and wicked, Owen wouldn’t have cared much about said judgment. No, the problem was that the man was a curious and stubborn nuisance and Owen sparing a vampire was… irregular. Emilio would want to poke and prod at it and right now, the last thing he needed was a hunter poking and prodding into his shit. Not while he still had no fucking clue just how much of Rosel’s threats were a bluff. 

If they weren’t a bluff, Owen had to wonder whether Emilio was part of this ‘list of people that go down’ Rosel had apparently compiled. Not that Owen cared. Just… wouldn’t that be an ironically poetic way for the slayer to go, fucked over by his own curiosity and bitterness.

Emilio could move deceivingly fast and Owen only had enough time to turn and block the incoming attack, not eager to let that stake find any purchase. The first time they’d clashed, Emilio had been at a clear physical disadvantage. Second time, the unspoken promise of mutually assured destruction had prevented a brawl but now? Owen wasn’t under the misconception that Emilio couldn’t be deadly so as much as he liked the idea of getting to break something, he was also fond of getting out of this alive. 

Momentarily safe from the irony of getting staked, Owen went for the legs, making a move on the good one even if it might be exactly what Emilio would expect. He just needed a few extra seconds, manage to break away from the close contact to slip a hand into his jacket, pulling out a fresh blade, one larger than the one he’d previously thrown. Did he want to kill Emilio? Maybe a part of him did but underneath all of the frustration and whatever had been between them before it morphed into something bitter and ugly, Owen knew there was a chance of the other slayer being useful at some point. That was the only reason he would hold back. Well, that and the already thinning hunter population in Wicked’s Rest for… reasons. 

“We each get in one good hit and then you walk away before I break your good leg?”

—

Everybody always went for the legs. It wasn’t a bad move, really; it made sense to target a person’s weakest points, and Emilio’s injury to his left leg and the way his right had to compensate for its useless partner made both limbs a frequent target. The left leg was an easy target and damaging the right would leave him at a pretty stark disadvantage. So he could hardly blame Owen for going for it right away. Had Emilio been up against someone with a similar ailment, he would have gone for the legs, too.

It did make the move pretty predictable, however. 

Emilio was able to twist out of the way quickly enough, making a grab for Owen’s wrists in the same motion. He wasn’t stupid enough to assume that the other slayer didn’t have something sharp hidden away in his jacket, and while he was confident in his ability to avoid being stabbed — he was actually pretty good at that, most of the time — he had the biggest advantage for as long as he could make sure that he was armed and Owen wasn’t. And he liked having the biggest advantage possible. It made him feel more secure, less on edge. Owen was good enough at throwing him off his game without that; the last thing Emilio wanted was to give the other slayer a chance to do it with more ease.

He let out a sharp laugh, bitter and humorless. “You’re stupider than you look if you think I’m walking away without getting what I came for, pendejo,” he replied lowly, moving to snake his good leg around Owen’s ankle to try to throw him off balance. He figured if he could knock the guy on his ass, it would at least give him time to stake the vampire in the next room before it got away. He might still have to fight Owen afterwards, but he’d likely have already succeeded in pissing the guy off, and that was a victory all its own. “How about I stake your asshole friend, then toss you out the window? I like that idea better.” 

—

Before things had gotten so royally fucked again, a part of Owen would have enjoyed this - the challenge, the push of a fight with someone equal. Maybe a part of him still did, his veins still burned with adrenaline that, after years of honing, he thought of as a positive. But now, where it had once been a release and in some ways an escape, it was a goddamn necessity and that did manage to suck most of the pleasure out of it. At least it wasn’t the soup of complicated shit that came with slicing the throat of some helpless fuck of a hunter that never saw it coming. 

His fingertips brushed the hilt of the knife while Emilio’s dug into the skin of his wrist, it would leave a dashing bruise and maybe even a fracture if Owen would have let him. Trying to wrench his arm free would have put him at a disadvantage, probably only furthered the odds of something breaking or bending the wrong way, so Owen gave up on trying for the knife for now. Instead, he shifted his arm, long fingers wrapping around Emilio’s wrist in turn. Mutually assured destruction. 

“Who do you think your brother would be rooting for?” he hissed in response, aware that he didn’t know what had transpired since that night in the woods all those months ago but knew it was a sore spot all the same. Emilio didn’t know that out of the two of them, the scales had recently shifted on who had done more wretched things against their heritage. Didn’t matter. If Emilio was going to try for cheap shots like hooking his ankle, Owen felt he was entitled to them, too. 

Even so, he did let Emilio throw him off balance, grabbing for the man’s other wrist as well to ensure they would both hit the ground - pulling and pushing to make sure he didn’t land at a disadvantage. An attempt to get Emilio away, for just a second to arm himself. Protecting someone in a fight led to bullshit like this, giving up a weapon and getting fucked over. He’d done it once for the hunter he was currently trying to knock the fuck out and that time had pissed Owen off severely - but doing it because he was forced to? It inspired a new kind of rage, the kind that had him bailing on trying to get a weapon in lieu of simply getting a fucking hit in. 

—

In a lot of ways, fighting Owen was similar to the sparring matches he’d often had with his siblings. People trained to fight the same thing often learned similar styles, after all, considering that was what was the most effective in their craft. Even the knowledge in the back of his mind that losing this fight might leave him bleeding out on the dirty floor of this half-abandoned apartment wasn’t something that hadn’t been present back in Mexico, when it was Rosa or Edgar or Victor he was up against. Emilio had more than a few scars that had come from a familiar hand holding a blade, after all. His mother had always believed in high stakes, even when a fight was only meant to help further training. 

Owen’s fingers wrapped around Emilio’s wrist just as Emilio’s had wrapped around his, making it impossible to twist the other slayer’s arm without fucking up his own, too. It was a good move, and less predictable than the attempt to take out his legs. Bringing up Rhett was less of a surprise. Like his bad leg, his brother was an obvious weak point. Owen might not have known the full story, but he’d seen Emilio in the woods that day, must have recognized the way he’d flinched. He tried not to think about the way he’d felt in the back of his brother’s van, seated beside a corpse. That was exactly what Owen wanted, and Emilio had no desire to give the other slayer what he was after.

“Aw, did you think you and him were friends? I doubt he even remembers your name. You don’t leave much of an impression.” He wasn’t sure it would bother Owen, the idea that his alliance with Rhett had come to be out of convenience. It was frustrating — Owen’s weak points seemed less obvious than his own. No bad leg, no estranged brother. The only thing Emilio had on Owen was that vampire in the other room and, if all went well, that would be dust by the time he finished here. It’d put him right back to square one. Square one was his least favorite place to be.

Other than the floor, perhaps. He managed to knock Owen off his feet, but the other slayer was able to drag Emilio down with him. Maybe with two good legs, Emilio could have stayed upright, but as it was? He found himself sprawled out, momentarily disoriented as his knee flared up in brief protest. It was a heartbeat, maybe two, but that was a goddamn eternity in a fight like this one. Owen had a knife in his pocket, and this would definitely give him time to retrieve it. Emilio kicked out at him, trying to disorient as he twisted his body. He’d managed to maintain his hold on the stake, and he drove it towards Owen now, desperate for some kind of an advantage.

—

Annoyingly, it had been much harder to get a proper rise out of Emilio after that first time, when whatever mutual understanding they’d had - trust was pushing it - was broken. Once the other slayer had come to expect harsh words from Owen, he seemed much more capable of steeling himself. That night with Rhett had been the exception, a messy mix of death and brotherly disappointment. A downside to only having surface level discussions between fucks - Owen could read a few things from Emilio but without all the ‘whys’, it was that much harder to really hit him where it hurt now that he’d lost the element of surprise. At least this lack of knowledge went both ways, for now. 

“Fuck friendship, I was useful.” And he’d obviously made an impression if Emilio’s reaction to this sudden return to town was anything to go off. 

But, uncharacteristically, Owen didn’t feel much like talking as things continued to escalate. His mind was fogging over with pure anger at this point - the gnawing feeling of a vampire still being here and alive, this nosy motherfucker having caught a whiff of what was going on, the fact that none of this shit was of his own volition. Perhaps that was the only advantage Emilio currently had, the fact that Owen wasn’t enjoying this fight but rather, was enraged by it. It definitely seemed like an advantage when, instead of sensibly reaching for a weapon, Owen just lunged. 

An arm wrapped around the leg desperately hoping to make contact, locking it into place as he finally got to drive his fist into the man’s obnoxious face. Which all in all didn’t sound like a disadvantageous position until one took into account the wooden stake lodged into his side, something Owen didn’t properly register until knuckles met bone again and the weapon shifted deeper, daring him to ignore its presence. Gritting his teeth, he increased the pressure on the knee still caught in the lock of his arm to an uncomfortable tension, maybe not as threatening as the way he was currently being impaled but joints were pretty important. 

—

I was useful, Owen said, and it only stung because of the implication that Emilio wasn’t. It was hard, even now, to think of Rhett without it burning, to hear his brother’s name without flames rising in his chest and setting fire to his throat. There was so much buried there, a graveyard of corpses refusing to rot. With Rhett, he was fourteen years old again. He was a kid mad at the world because his brother was no longer in it, latching on to the closest thing he could find to Victor’s steady hand. Owen was useful to Rhett, and Emilio hadn’t been. Owen was what a hunter was supposed to be, what Emilio used to be, and Rhett’s alliance with him had made Emilio wonder, for a moment, if that was the only thing his brother wanted him around for. 

He forced the thought away, because it wasn’t. He hadn’t been useful in that factory, and Rhett had been willing to die for him, anyway. And maybe there was a part of him that didn’t know how to feel about his brother anymore, maybe there was a part of him that would always be sitting with Ophelia in the living room of an apartment that felt haunted with people still living and staring at Rhett’s handwriting spinning lies on a page, but he thought it still mattered. He thought it still meant something.

So he did what he did best, and he fashioned his voice into a weapon. He scoffed, he rolled his eyes. “Not very useful now, are you? Not to anybody but the vampire you’re fighting for in the other room.” Whatever was going on here, he thought that that was Owen’s current weak point. Poke it enough, and there’d be a reaction. And a reaction was all Emilio was after.

He wasn’t entirely disappointed when Owen lunged, because that was a reaction all its own. Where Owen typically preferred more taunting, he sprung into action instead. It was closer to a move Emilio would have made than what the other slayer was prone to, and it felt like some kind of victory even as Owen’s arm locked his leg into place painfully and a fist found his face.

He grunted as knuckles made contact, but grinned in spite of it. Owen’s fist wasn’t the only thing that landed properly, after all; Emilio’s stake found resistance that meant it had found itself a home, too, and he gripped it with a vicious strength. Another punch shifted it, and he held fast. He didn’t want to lose his weapon, even if he was losing it in Owen’s side.

The pressure in his knee increased uncomfortably. If it didn’t let up, the joint would dislocate and leave him in a tough spot to navigate. He knew that. The best move, strategically, would be to release the stake and focus his attention on removing Owen’s grip from around his leg instead. But Emilio struggled to make the best move when fights got personal. It was the kind of thing that got him into trouble more often than not, the kind of thing that saw him engaging in pointless struggles that were better left alone. His pettiness outweighed his self preservation, sometimes. Most of the time, really. 

Gritting his teeth, he tilted his head back to look Owen in the eye as he twisted the stake, driving it in a little deeper.

—

There had always been a decent balance between reckless and calculated when it came to the way Owen fought. He’d take chances but never ones that were all instinct and no thought. That was the headspace he usually wanted his opponent in, not the other way around yet here he was, a creature of rage and action, no thought in sight. The combination of fighting to save a vampire and Cortez had proved a lethal one - not in the literal sense but that was still a possibility if Owen let that stake sink in any deeper. 

Emilio’s grin, despite the blood now staining the man’s teeth, wasn’t helping. 

He wanted to break his knee, his face, hollow out his chest cavity but in the deep, dark confines of his twisted mind, Owen knew that none of those wants were specific to Emilio, not really. It wouldn’t be all that satisfying, not as much as dusting the vampire in the other room and nowhere close to how good it would feel to break every bone in Rosel’s body before maybe, maybe giving her the peace of real death. All that aside, it was still Emilio’s joint precariously braced in his grip and Emilio currently pushing a piece of wood that had killed countless vampires further into Owen’s midriff. 

With something resembling a growl, Owen finally relented, twisting his body and making a grab for the stake to prevent it from slipping even further and reaching something important. The move didn’t allow for him to dislocate Emilio’s precious knee joint, only allowed him to jostle it just enough so that the pain allowed for Owen to slip away. Even if there was no one to push the stake in further, the sudden movements weren’t much better as pain radiated throughout his abdomen, stealing his breath for a good few seconds. There wasn’t much else to do but yank the damn thing out and not even his burning anger could assist Owen in getting back to his feet right away. At least he was fully ready to use the blood covered stake against Emilio when he counterattacked except… oh, of course he was going straight for the vampire. 

An attempt to move, even knowing that he wouldn’t catch up in time, had warm blood bubbling from the hollowed out wound and Owen was quick to press the heel of his hand onto it, suppressing a gasp of pain. So maybe Emilio had managed to dig that thing a bit deeper than previously expected. Fuck. 

—

Owen’s grip on his knee was tight and unrelenting, and it would be a good move to let go of the stake in order to do something about it. A more strategic fighter might have done so, might have twisted out of Owen’s grip and sacrificed the stake in the process, but Emilio wasn’t thinking entirely straight. His focus remained entirely on the stake gripped in his hand, on twisting it deeper into Owen’s flesh. A little farther, and he’d do real damage. He wasn’t certain whether or not he wanted to, and he hated himself for that uncertainty. Hadn’t he been willing to kill Parker for making Teddy afraid? Hadn’t he helped Andy bury a hunter in the ground for shooting Alex? Part of him wondered what was different about Owen but, on some level, he already knew the answer: Owen’s greatest crime against him had taken place in an apartment not unlike this one, with sharp words and a hand pressing into an aching shoulder. Parker hurt Teddy, that ranger in that unmarked grave hurt Alex, but Owen hurt Emilio, and that mattered less. That would always matter less.

So he didn’t think he’d kill Owen if he didn’t have to, and he thought that probably made him a coward. He thought Owen had proven, more than once now, his willingness to hurt people, even if he hadn’t yet hurt anyone Emilio loved. If Owen were undead, Emilio would have killed him already. He would have aimed that stake into his heart, would have removed his head from his body. But Owen was a hunter, was a slayer, and that made things complicated. That always made things complicated.

He grunted as the pressure in his knee increased briefly before disappearing, the sudden lack of it disorienting enough to allow Owen to twist out of his grip as his knee ached and ebbed back into something more resembling equilibrium. It ached more than usual — there’d definitely be a bruise there — but the joint was still in place and the pain was familiar. He was able to get to his feet, albeit slowly and painfully. And, with Owen distracted by the stake still sticking out of his abdomen, Emilio was able to stumble back towards the bedroom to do what he’d come here to do. He had another stake in hand already, quick to pull it from his pocket now that his other one was preoccupied with the task of soaking Owen’s blood into its wood. 

Owen made a grab for him as he passed, but it was a useless thing. Even slowed by the pain in his knee, Emilio was quicker than the other slayer with the blood bubbling from his open wound. He paid Owen little mind as he passed, scarcely sparing a glance in the man’s direction. It would piss Owen off to be ignored, he thought; that was a good thing. 

Chest heaving, Emilio slammed against the bedroom door. The hinges cracked, the door flying open to reveal… an empty room and an open window. The vampire had clearly taken advantage of the slayers’ scuffle to escape, and Emilio let out a furious exhale, frustrated despite the victory that was Owen lying bleeding in the floor. He’d track the vampire down later, he decided. He’d find it when Owen wasn’t around, and maybe he’d take it slow. Maybe he’d take it out piece by piece until it told him why Owen was willing to take a damn stake to the side just to keep it from getting dusted. 

Pocketing the stake, Emilio turned back towards the living room with a scowl. His limp was more prominent than usual despite his attempts to hide it as he moved back into the living room, aiming a kick for the stab wound in Owen’s side. “Could kill you here,” he said lowly, pretending they didn’t both know he wouldn’t. “But I think it’s more fun to let you stew in it. Next time I see your friend, I’m turning it into dust. Better go ahead and pick up a broom.”

—

To anyone who knew him, however superficially, it probably wasn’t a surprise that the thought of losing stung much worse than any injury, current or past. Emilio hobbling past him without a second glance, it wasn’t just salt in the metaphorical wound but ground up glass and battery acid. Owen knew that Emilio knew and that, too, was a real bitch. On top of all of it, protecting a vampire, raising Cortez’s suspicion and getting stabbed was all about to be for nought as the door flew off its hinges. Only…

Amidst the anger and stab wound, Owen hadn’t exactly been focusing on whether or not he could still sense the vampire. Emilio’s furious exhale registered around the same time as the complete lack of discomfort crawling up his spine. So they’d both lost. It wasn’t the preferred scenario but it still beat Emilio leaving here with an overblown sense of victory. 

It was odd, watching the other slayer drag their useless leg back into the main room, knowing full well that despite all his big talk, Emilio wouldn’t kill him. Not like this. Maybe in the heat of the moment, in self defense or to protect someone else but slicing his throat now? Owen wasn’t even remotely worried. Not that he would have been worried even if Emilio was feeling murderous - even with an active hemorrhage, Owen wouldn’t have admitted defeat until the last second. 

Shifting to avoid a direct hit to the hole in his abdomen did hurt like a bitch, though. 

And so Emilio pretended that he was making an active choice not to pull out a weapon and Owen pretended the other man didn’t currently have the higher ground. At the distinct sound of one healthy leg and one worse for wear walking off, Owen found himself laughing through gritted teeth despite the way it forced more blood to gush past the pressure of his palm. “See you soon, Cortez,” he called after the other, voice echoing through the rundown apartment. A few more moments to stew in the absolute shit that this scenario was, then he’d attempt to find something to cauterize this damn wound. Probably while fantasizing about driving the blood soaked stake in his hand back into its owner at a later date. 

[thebestestbat]

finished operation nemesis!

some thoughts (i should have written notes while reading smh)

he fucked up one of the guy's ages! just a couple pages apart! either this or it was written with a confusing timeline. editor help... it was just by one year though

before reading this i had no idea how enver or djemal died (djemal also assassinated by an armenian, enver killed by soviets)

something else i had no idea was that armenian collaboraters were also murdered/assassinated by armenians after the war. i guess i didn't think about how there had to have been those, other than like the ones high high up in the govt

the british government potentially having given information to the ARF to aid in talat's assassination is crazy to me.

this book takes a stance about german complicity in the armenian genocide which is that they were complicit. i know also that a lot of the written record we have on the genocide was written by german officials who objected to what they saw.

bogosian says that in his family the ARF was like, too radical, and this is interesting to me because growing up for me it was like the normal thing. i did grow up in a different generation than him, and also my parents/grandparents are from different places than his i think. so could be different factors contributing to this

i am now very interested in ASALA and other things... i only know enough to be familiar with the name. i want to read books on this topic more

overall there was a clear stance that operation nemesis and the assassination of the people deemed by the ARF directly responsible for ordering the genocide = morally ok; later and further terrorism by armenian nationalists = morally not ok. NOW IM NOT SAYING THAT THIS IS WRONG.

it honestly is in line with my personal emotional reaction. but the book doesn't discuss WHY. so it just feels like this was bogosian's personal emotional reaction and he wrote it down.

he says that ASALA and groups like it took inspiration from operation nemesis, but in the last chapter i dont think he ever calls operation nemesis a terrorist organization. but why would it not be? bc it got info from the british maybe? bc the german courts let tehlirian go?

"The Nemesis fedayeen did not see themselves as terrorists." -> "That does not make what Operation Nemesis did legal." -> "Yet the men and women of Operation Nemesis did what governments could not. They were appealing to a higher, final justice."

^ doesn't quite do it for me!

imo you can't say that they're not terrorists because 1. they didn't see themselves as terrorists and 2. you don't see them as terrorists.

to make clear my own stance, i think terrorist is like a neutral statement like its a factual thing if you are or aren't.

good book though!

[berylcups]

Heres Calamari with their real anatomy. I'm still struggling whether to put them in team Bucci or the Hitman team 😭 Based on the profile and image what vibes do they give off? Good or bad??? I've put a shorten (but still long AF) profile down below

Name: Katrin Kocteau

Allias (if applicable): Calamari 

Namesake: The Cocteau Twins 

Nicknames: Callie, Kat, Kit Kat, Gattina, Stella, Luna, Starlight, Sole, Carina, Cara, tesoro, bella, bambina, Sourpuss, Kitten 

(usually used sarcastically): Comrade, ,little sister,Sunshine, Moody boobs, Boobs McKenzie, Sourpuss

Nicknames for others: 

🩸Lulu, Schatz, Rubin

Big brother, comrade (gelato and calamari jokingly call each other comrades due to both being oppressed by the Soviet Union )

🤐Abba,Diamant ,gloomy fuck/blues, Leo, piss monger, 

Löwe,, honigbiene, liebling, Kuschelbär, Bärchen, Schatzi, Engel, süße,

(Used in a joking/sarcastic way) Arschloch,  Sonnenschein, Eselhengst, Dummkopf 

Age: 25

Birthday: July 12th

AMAB/AFAB/Intersex: AFAB

Gender Identity: Agender; They/Them sometimes she/her…doesn’t correct strangers out of exhaustion 

Height: 5’3 160cm

Weight: 175lbs

Handness: Left

Type of Voice: soft, monotone, flat, they speak very softly with a Berlin accent. You have to listen very hard to understand them due to how softly they speak. It will go from soft valley to booming peaks when agitated enough. 

Eyesight:. 20/40

Hometown: West Berlin, Germany 

Current Residency: Napoli, Italy 

Moral Alignment: 

🩸 evil neutral 

🤐 lawful good

MBTI Personality Type (Optional): INFJ-T

Medical & Dental Health: 

Dental-  vitamin deficiencies in childhood causing weak teeth, many fillings and crowns 

Physical- Chronic tension headaches, vitamin deficiency (vitamin D and Calcium)

Mental health: 

 PTSD, ADHD inattentive type, Major Depression, generalized anxiety disorder w/ panic attacks 

Phobias: Claustrophobic- caves and tunnels specifically 

Phonophobia- HATES loud noises and others talking too loudly

Astraphobia- related to phonophobia 

Germaphobic - fears gastrointestinal illnesses the most 

Socialphobic- is on edge around crowds and people they don’t know too well. Very reserved and secretive 

Arachnophobia - self explanatory 

Fears cursed numbers (4,13, 666)- acts a bit more covert towards it than Mista-(ex add 1 more or less spoonful of sugar to their coffee to avoid 4)

Scars/burns/birthmarks/tattoos: self inflicted cuts and scars on arms and thighs due to poor coping mechanisms 

Awards & Education: 

General Education Diploma, Majoring in Forensic Science in University,

Excelled in foreign languages(Italian and Russian) and art class

Past Experience: 

Calamari is cynical, bitter, a perfectionist, and never allows themself to be vulnerable. Any mistake they make they severely punish themself with. They lash out at themself because they believe they deserve it. Their forearms and thighs are full of scars and self inflicted cuts. They show Themself no mercy so they sure as hell aren't showing it to any of their targets. They're not your typical sadomasochist, not a masochist because they enjoy it. They don't enjoy it at all, but they believe they truly deserve it. 

They always had a strong interest in the paranormal and true crime. they dedicated their education to their forensic career. They always fixed themself to the smallest details rather than the bigger picture. Small details that are often overlooked could derail the entire case and justice for the victims could be lost. Their resolve shines the brightest when they dedicate everything they have to speak for the dead. 

The corruption in the justice system and bribery infecting all the way down to their forensic team made them lose the spark and desire they had for their work. There’s nothing they could have done anyway since it was them vs the majority and they needed every lira to help pay off their exs gambling debt. 

Calamari takes extra work to help pay off his debt only to find out that he was cheating on them and then kills him out of a crime of passion. Now Calamari is left with a body and heaping amounts of gambling debt that isn't theirs. They join Passione to seek protection and to pay off their debt. 

Sexual History (for characters 18+ ONLY): 

Teo, Her ex partner

Currently:

🩸Illuso

🤐 Abbacchio 

Thoughts on love: 

They’ll swear up and down that love is worthless and a waste of time. They’ll say they never felt better by themself now that her ex Teo is gone, but they’re lying to hide the loneliness. They hate kids but are very domestic and secretly want a partner to take care of physically and emotionally. They are very touch and love starved and needs the perfect partner to give them hope in humanity again even if they only learn to trust 1 person.

It takes a long time to develop a crush due to their sexuality and trust issues. They subconsciously become more mellow and obedient around the one they develops a crush on. They’ll always listen to abbacchio’s orders. They’re no brown noser but they try to be as obedient as possible. They’re secretly very submissive. 

They’re only submissive to Illuso in private and only when he’s being nice. 90% of the time They’ll ignore him or berate him if he teases them. They don’t take being teased/bullied lightly. They avoid him and act tough around him because they don't want their weakness known or the fact that they would like someone that cruel…as if they aren't cruel themself-they won’t admit it-they’re a hypocrite and that their actions mirror his. The only difference is Calamari is only cruel to their targets and enemies. They give their teammates mutual respect until they do something to ignite their ire. 

Sexual and/or Romantic Identity:  Demisexual, Panromantic

People they like: 

“I don’t like people.  Nobody can be trusted.”

Calamari keeps people at arm's length but they’re not completely cold. They warm up to others after they prove they are trustworthy enough. 

To tell if they like you is them allowing you to be near them. Letting you sit next to them , letting you hug them (briefly), or playing with their hair. They will also joke with you, or make dry remarks. Best friends will be allowed in their room, play video games with them, and they’ll share secrets about her past and spill tea about others. You tell them a secret as a best friend and they’ll take that secret to their grave. Once you become their best friend/and or partner they’re loyal for life so don’t betray that trust like their ex did. 

🤐 Bucciarati, Abbacchio, Fugo are the ones who they trust and respect the most. 

They won’t show it but they like giorno, narancia, mista, and Trish too. They took a little longer for them to warm up to. They will send sarcastic remarks and jokes their way as their own way of showing friendship. 

🩸 they’re very hard to read, it even takes Risotto a split second to figure out what they’re feeling with their stone cold resting bitch face and monotone voice. They don’t hang around after meetings, so the only one who’s able to get a glimpse on how they feel is Nosey Illuso or Formaggio by spying on them. 

They like Risotto and prosciutto but is heavily intimidated by them. They warm up to Pesci  the quickest- Object stand users stick together.Sorbet and Gelato essentially adopted them from the moment they met, they’re friendly but they have fun making Calamari uncomfortable with the PDA. They slowly warm up to Illuso and Formaggio. Somehow they are able to find common ground with them… I wonder why- it’s almost like they can read their mind. They’re fine with Ghiaccio as long as he isn’t yelling so it’s very rare for them to enjoy his presence. Melone just disgusts them, but they put up with him for the sake of the team. 

People they hate: 

They’re known to hold some strong grudges. It took forever for them to forgive Mista for taking their slice of strawberry cake. They especially can’t stand children and babies because of the noise. Also isn’t a fan of yappy dog breeds. 

They hate anyone who gets in the way of their goals or inconveniences them. They hate their ex  due to the turmoil they dealt with because of him and hates themself for allowing them to step on them for so long.

They hate the boss because he’s an inconvenience to their livelihood and just life itself. 

🩸 Nothing pisses them off more than a bunch of bootlickers getting in the way of them and the team getting the boss’s daughter to find out his identity. The holier than thou attitudes of Giorno and Bucciarati make them hellbent on wanting to set their enjoyment of humiliation aside and give them severe curb stomping. 

🤐It wouldn’t really be considered “hate” but Giorno annoys them. They thinks he’s too naive and preachy …absolutely not because They’re jealous of his natural born talent or anything, don't be ridiculous. They’re a million times more polite about it than abbacchio is. They just groan or ignore him or cuts him off with “you’re too young to understand” or “you wouldn’t get it…” “*groans*whaaaat? I’m busy…go brown nose Bucciarati instead kid.”

They didn’t care much for Trish believing her to be nothing more than an ungrateful spoiled brat. They both grew up so differently that it was hard to bond at 1st. Thankfully neither of them are that stubborn to try to understand each other. 

Dreams for the future:  

A peaceful life with her perfect partner. A cozy home in either Austria or Sicily with many pets and an art studio. They crave normalcy and freedom of expression.

Relationships(name a person that they have a connection to and what their relationship is like[friend, enemy, Ex, current lover, family , etc.]): 

Teo- Ex 

🤐Abbacchio-Current partner

Bucciarati- Confidant & Leader

Fugo- Good Friend

Narancia-Good Friend

Mista- Good Friend

Giorno- Friend

Trish- Friend

🩸Illuso- Current Partner

Formaggio- Good friend

Pesci- Good friend

Prosciutto- Mentor & Callies Secret not so secret crush

Risotto- Leader

Sorbet- Good Friend & parental figure

Gelato-Good friend & parental figure

Ghiaccio- tolerable friend in small doses

Melone- Tolerates- wishes they didn’t know him

Quotes (what do they say often? What’s their life’s motto?): 

“How about you go play in traffic?”

“”Kiss concrete douche!”

“Eat asphalt!”

"Everyone shut up I'm doing _______!"

views on life “There are 3 rules in life that must always be followed: 

1. If you’re going to do it right- do it right the 1st time.

2. Always be punctual. If you’re early you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. 

And 3. Be self reliant. Never burden others. If you have a problem- fix it. Don’t know how? learn.  This is the true way of life.”

“ Do you wanna  X? Because that’s how you X.”They say this phrase a lot when someone is doing something stupid or if they had enough of someone and are threatening them. 

🤐“Do you wanna walk all the way to Pompeii? Because that’s how you do that if you keep trying to turn down my music smartass. YES it needs to be that loud. I’m trying not to fall asleep at the wheel. If it bothers you so much, you and Giorno take the wheel, I’m laying in the back and taking a nap. Don’t fuck up and crash the car or my geist will haunt you panna.”

“Were you even listening to a word I was saying? Sigh… you’re such a disappointment, why do I bother with you?..”

Disregarding a mista conspiracy theory/ghiaccio rant “There’s literally not enough adderall in the world for me to listen to whatever bullshit you're word-vomiting out..”

Taunting illuso back🩸“Make you a sandwich ? How about you earn it 1st. make yourself useful and shine my boots till I can see my reflection in them. Then mayyybe I’ll even think about it.”

🩸Receiving a hit “Who’s funeral am I facilitating?”

🩸“Halt die Schnauze! Would it kill you to not scream like a verdammt banshee every 5 minutes?!”

🩸Defending their stand” Why would my stand need to be strong when it doesn’t have to? I let gravity do all the work for me and I don’t have to break a sweat. I can move anywhere I want, and don’t have to worry about anyone reaching me. It can throw you around like a lousy rag doll and you’ll be helpless to do anything about it. I don’t need to be strong to take your sorry ass down. I may need protection now and then but I’m still the queen on the chessboard. I can go and attack from ANYWHERE”

🩸Apprehensive about betrayal“I’m used to living frugally. I don’t see how 20 million lira is too little to live off of. I don’t think it’s worth going against the boss for more. We don’t know who he is or what he’s capable of.”

🩸Expressing denial and hiding their feelings “Love? Absolutely disgusting. It’s a useless feeling and only sets you up for failure. There’s nothing worse than being tied down with dead weight who will either cheat or become bored of me or I’ll be bored of them. Material goods bring me just as much happiness as an annoying man/woman ever could. I buy a new pair of boots or a handbag, get tired of them- go set them aside in my closet, and buy new ones. Wash, rinse, repeat. Your life is much less difficult when you think with your brain instead of your heart… or your balls if we’re being realistic.”

Hobbies;

Painting, Drawing, Playing Video games, clothes & shoe shopping, make up, petting cats, napping, and eating

Habits: 

Is secretly superstitious. Avoids numbers that they hate, won’t open umbrellas inside, walking under ladders etc… The only exception to their superstitions is black cats. 

🩸Man spreads on the couch out of pure passive aggressiveness since there’s never any room for them to sit

They have a soft spot for black cats and their cats Depeche and Muse are their pride and joy. They greeted them with open arms completely ignoring their teammates all together thinking they were excited to see them when they got back.

 🩸They have a kangaroo pouch to hold them in when she’s working around the base/hideout….

🩸They love traumatizing teammates by tricking them into showing them shock sites and laugh maliciously at their reaction. 

🩸They has a very dark sense of humor so it usually plays off well with sadistic or edgy teammates. 

.They try to hide their smiles and giggles by covering their mouth. This habit slowly ceases once they feels more comfortable around others. 

Calamari hides their red face when they’re aroused or embarrassed .

They sigh and huff a lot when they’re irritated. 

They enjoy coming up with unusual torture/interrogation methods. They held a bamboo skewer up to someone’s eye, threatening to turn their eye into a kabob and lobotomise them. 

They aren’t able to physically defend themself in hand to hand combat so they are well equipped with spiked knuckles and a stun gun strong enough to take down a bear.

Quirks/Unique personality traits:

They won’t look anyone in the eye or call anyone by name directly unless they’re very close with the person. 

Doesn’t announce when they’re here or when they leave. They just walk right in without saying a single hello or I’m back/here. 

In the very beginning they spoke a lot like an NPC with very short to 1-2 worded answers. Once they became more comfortable with their team they said more than 2 words.

Pet peeves:

Talking over or interrupting them while talking 

People acting smarter than they really are 

Excessive noise (barking dogs, talking too loud, yelling , crying children, Ghiaccio , etc)

Gratuitous PDA 

Not obeying rules (excluding missions) 

Being late 

WAKING THEM UP

Invading their personal space 

Moving their things- they have them specifically where they want them

ILLUSO

Having wet hair and clothes (sensory issues )

People whispering (they’re paranoid) 

[avelera]

Between the completed Good Guy and completed Super Evil Dark Urge run in BG3, plus a couple additional campaigns I began but haven’t finished just so I could bounce around earlier parts of the game, I’ve definitely hit enough of a saturation point with BG3 that the addiction level of wanting to play it over and over has eased up. There’s really no quest calling to me or anything, and just the thought of starting over and doing like, the fucking Grove quests again makes me feel tired.

… and yet, of ALL the things I miss enough to consider going back, it’s the fucking GALE ROMANCE.

THE GALE ROMANCE.

The one I only settled for on my first playthrough because I hadn’t built up enough relationship with Karlach OR Astarion. to romance them like I originally planned! GALE, who I only picked because I thought, “Might as well, at least he’s interested.”!!!

(Cut for some spoilers)

But goddammit if I don’t miss that nerd. Even my entire evil campaign, where I friendmanced Astarion and ended up with Minthara, was more than a little bit of an evil angst run for Gale because I was so fascinated to see how far an evil character could push him into committing heinous atrocities without him leaving. I had 100% approval by the end! My sweet, stupid, brilliant wizard, who it turns out will bend his morals into a pretzel if you promise him the Crown and tell him how all his darkest ambitions are so valid, he will eat out of the palm of your hand.

I don’t even blame him for it! It just makes me sad because he’s been so isolated it makes perfect sense and I was convinced he was bending his brain into a pretzel to justify that the short term atrocities were fine because once he had the Crown he could do good with it (only to end up totally enthralled just like everyone else when my Dark Urge fulfilled Bhaal’s plot, urgghh). The Wizard’s folly, choosing power over common fucking sense, using that big brain to justify himself into knots. Minthara clocked him 100% correctly when she said wizards neutralize themselves either by being so powerful they’re taken out immediately as a threat on the battlefield, or blowing themselves up in pursuit of forbidden knowledge. And Gale was locked in a half-exploded state. Jfc.

Anyway, of all things, I miss Gale, way back from my first run. My two remaining unfinished campaigns are an Astarion and Karlach romance, respectively. I cannot handle starting another I just can’t.

… but maybe I could go back to an earlier save in my first save…. 🤔

(No, Ave, NO! Let it go! Let the obsession pass!! Arrgghhh…)