#idk how canon that actually is bc again ive only read a few issues of robin93 however. i do think it would add a rlly impactful umph to red

[iron-sides]

ENOUGH of tim drake has poor self esteem fic!!! give me tim drake has totally overestimated his own importance fic!!! no more "i cant tell anyone theres something wrong because they wont care" only "i cant tell anyone anythings wrong because batman will start killing people".

its about equally wrong imo in terms of characterization but its way funner and hilarious To Me. and more accurate in terms of he does actually have a very firm understanding that he cannot under any circumstances die or be maimed because batman would NOT react well its just that that moreso shows itself as extreme caution rather than hiding injuries

[radiantmists]

more pjo/rqg crossover thoughts

so i can’t turn my brain off once it’s started and i realized thinking more about this that rqg has a very good mechanic for true crossovers in that it contains several characters getting yote by a planar shift, which... they could end up anywhere!

(fair warning: i havent read the apollo books, and ive only read the last couple seven-demigods books once, so i’m mostly basing this on the first PJO series bc i remember them)

so: sasha and grizzop emerge in the PJO universe, probably still in nero’s palace, which in our world has sunk into a hillside and from what i can tell is a) partially tourable, b) an active excavation site. and c) partially unsafe, which as far as I can  tell translates to it being infested with monsters in the PJO world. plus its in rome so like. very dangerous. 

this means they get into a fight fairly immediately, at which point a few issues rear their head:

the mist affects sasha. she’s probably more resistant to it than the average mortal, and can see things when theyre pointed out to her with enough insistence, but it is absolutely interfering with her perceptions.

the (ambient) mist does not affect grizzop. they dont realize this right away, but it’s because he pings it as a monster. 

sasha isn’t quite sure why he starts firing on the lost-looking people wandering around this weird buried palace; grizzop feels like at this point sasha ought to know a zombie when she sees one. she gets with the program when they start attacking and don’t go down with a stab to the kidneys, though.

one thing grizzop does realize fairly quickly, to some only marginally well-managed panic: artemis is weird here. probably he thinks at first that this is what azu and ed were talking about: he can feel something when he prays, she’s not gone and after a hot second of delay she does bless his aim, but he can’t channel positive energy to just blast the zombies, and his armor isn’t glowing. there’s something wrong. 

but they win the fight, barely; sasha’s not in good shape, and grizzop can’t heal her, which is becoming a pattern and he doesn’t care for this shit at all. 

they find their way out of the palace, and start to notice that (nearly) all of the people around are humans, but they don’t dwell on it, partly because theyre also in the future and partly because no one seems to be remarking at grizzop, which means there must be other goblins around and just not that many here right now. grizzop is especially willing to accept this because he sees a (fairly small) number of monsters around.

theyre much more concerned about the fact that theyre very much not in kansas anymore. theyre looking for a place to buy healing potions, at  which point some kind stranger approaches sasha and asks if she wants an ambulance/directions to a hospital. she reluctantly accepts directions; the aphrodite and artemis temple hospitals weren’t bad, but this is rome and she’s concerned. but it also becomes  clear that this person thinks that grizzop is her child. they’re mildly alarmed when he gets upset and cusses them out about this, but... clearly these tourists are going through it. is sasha sure she doesn’t want an ambulance? it’s a ways to walk, especially with a toddler to manage... (she’s sure)

there’s no magical healing at the hospital; sasha tells grizzop that magic just doesn’t seem to work in rome, but he points that the sun works wherever  they are, and most of it doesn’t seem that monster-infested, so... unclear.

they sneak out of the emergency room before sasha has to give any personal information, and wander around rome for at least a day, trying to figure out what’s going on. grizzop prays a lot, and he has a dream akin to percy’s more symbological ones: he encounters a beautiful doe that he knows is artemis in an unfamiliar forest, but she’s standoffish. he asks what he’s done wrong, but she doesn’t answer; she leads him to some wild place outside rome-- probably Lake Nemi, close to a temple of Diana-- where Grizzop sees some hunters from a distance, and then the dream ends.

so the next day grizzop drags them out there-- maybe someone points them there, it seems to be a tourist attraction of sorts and i just remembered that grizzop has pretty shit survival skills. and they go off into the woods and get a bit lost, and then theyre found by the hunters.

it turns out artemis has sent thalia a dream to come there, but was... light on information, so the hunters aren’t sure what to expect. i think probably sasha and grizzop are arguing when the hunters find them, and they see this situation and think: likely recruit is being harassed by monster, except when they go to ‘help,’ sasha takes grizzop’s side. 

i’m not sure how this would go on, or even when exactly pjo canon it would be set, but it would involve a lot of the hunters (and maybe artemis) wanting to recruit sasha, her being uncomfortable with this, but not wanting to leave grizzop. grizzop, meanwhile, is absolutely fascinated with this group of women who actually get to hunt with the goddess, and have immortality until they find something worth giving their life for, and yet they’re all suspicious of him-- which he’s used to from humans, but he’s rarely met something he wanted this much and being rejected hurts. artemis herself is probably a bit thrown at being worshipped again, because the hunters and demigods certainly revere her but i feel like it doesn’t have the same flavor of faith that grizzop would have? 

they also want to get back; maybe trying to figure out how to do this takes them to camp half-blood and the oracle, where they meet the core pjo cast? idk if they’d be able to get back, though, i can’t think of a mechanic for it in the pjo universe? much to think about...

[lassieposting]

Romance head canon ❤️ in all the fan fiction I read its Valkyrie initiating the relationship/kiss👄 , her flirting. I read this piece and it was like from ghastly POV and he picked up on the way skul 💀look at her. Want some head canons of skulls POV. 👀

oho do i have some shit for you

seriously anon i think this might be the longest fucking post ive ever made

the way i read the books, skul starts to realise he’s in the process of falling for val when she’s 17-18. which is dodgy in some parts of the world, and idk where you’re from anon, but in my country the age of consent is 16 so i’m cool with interpreting it like that

the first instances of like, gentle flirting, from him are in death bringer and kotw. 

1. “You’re late.” 

“I’m beautiful.”

“You’re always beautiful.”

“I’m always late, too.”

skulduggery is from the 1600s, and flirting back then was not as obvious as it is today. this is roughly the time where he starts complimenting her regularly on her appearance. “you’re always beautiful” is a pretty safe compliment to give any girl, especially a girl like val who’s fairly vain and aware that she’s beautiful. i think here he’s kind of. testing the water? like not openly flirting with her, but more seeing whether she’s receptive to that kind of comment coming from him? whether he should bother to keep them coming? because if she’d responded here with an immediate awkward or disgust reaction, or if she’d kind of gone “that’s a little weird, skulduggery” i bet you none of the other semi-flirty stuff in the books would’ve gone down. he would’ve backed off, immediately

but she doesn’t. she just accepts it - we don’t get a physical reaction from her, but he keeps the compliments coming so there was probably some vaguely positive physical cue, i.e. she smiled at him or something, and says, “I’m always late, too.” The ‘too’ acknowledging that she knows she’s always beautiful. Thank you. Which let’s be real, is a response to half-flirty compliments that he’s probably used to from china. She’s not told him to fuck off, so that’s a positive.

And then he’s treated her to a gorgeous dress. 

2. “The dress was long and slinky, strapless, silk and chiffon. Her shoes were gorgeous”

I’m sorry, but if you see someone as a surrogate child, you don’t buy them a sexy dress. You just don’t, it’s inappropriate and wrong. And yeah, you might buy a dress like that for your platonic friend if you know that’s your friend’s style, but val isn’t a regular dress-wearer. so chances are, he bought her something he’d like to see her in, and hoped she’d like it. It’s not mentioned in the book, but it’s also possible he had to actually buy her underwear at this point. “Long, slinky, strapless” dresses usually require panties that don’t leave underwear lines, and strapless bras. Since val isn’t a regular wearer of slinky clothing or dresses, chances are she doesn’t actually own any suitable underwear for this dress. So either she went without, which would’ve been kind of uncomfortable for her during the whole nonsense with melancholia that went down at the requiem ball, or skulduggery bought her underwear to wear with the dress. 

how does he even know what size she is? either he asked ghastly, or he paid a lot of attention to that naked reflection. 

“I thought I’d spoil you,” he says. We know skulduggery spends a lot of money on the important woman in his life. China says he used to bring her priceless books and artifacts which would’ve cost him an arm and a leg, and it’s probably safe to say he bought her outfits, too, while they were together. He doesn’t seem to spend his money on people who don’t matter to him (as much). You don’t see him splashing out to get tanith a set of protective clothes, and he doesn’t so much as take elsie through the burger king drive-thru. Yet, I googled how much it costs to remodel a house and the answers I’m getting are all in like the £40,000 to £75,000 bracket, which might be out, but since I know nothing about house renovation, I’m gonna run with that. So he spent over £40,000 on doing up his house so val could essentially live there and spend more time with him. You don’t spend that kind of money on someone you’re not planning on having there long-term. 

He also implies that he would’ve gone to Ghastly to get val’s requiem ball dress if he hadn’t been so busy. ghastly’s clothes are implied to be expensive. it’s one thing for skul to buy val protective clothes - she’s his responsibility, and he wants to keep her safe, it’s an understandable expense. but splashing out just to buy her a fuckin expensive dress tailor-made by ghastly just to spoil her? dude got feelings

i mean let’s also take into account that that was what dudes did in ye olde days, right? they were the primary source of income. in 1600-whatever, the girl would’ve moved in with the guy, put her own touch on the home, and it would’ve been her husband’s responsibility to “keep” her; to pay for her clothes, her food, her entertainment, etc

What’s val done in the past few years?

“Moved into” skul’s house - not full-time, but it’s implied she spends a lot of time there, put her own touch on it via having it entirely fucking remodeled to suit her, what with having the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom put in, and spent a whole lot of skul’s money. he spoils her. in exchange, she makes his house into a home - probably just by being there, bc lets face it this is val and she’s no domestic goddess. but it mimics, i like to think, the way he would’ve treated his wife. money no object to make her happy

if you look at it like this, he’s basically treating her as though they’re in a relationship already. i doubt he’s actually taking that seriously and deluding himself that they’re a thing, but again, he’s testing it out. how does she react to him treating her like this? does she have issues with it? is she comfortable? and she’s totally chill with it, so another positive

There’s also this:

3. “Now she had her own bedroom, there was a bathroom with a huge shower and a kitchen with a fully-stocked fridge.”

So not only did he refurbish for her, but he refurbished with quality. Which, yeah, it’s skulduggery, he’s got expensive tastes, but tbh i think he let her pick out everything. which means she picked all this expensive shit that looks great but cost him a mint and he doesn’t care, bc this is how he shows affection

4. “sometimes she wondered how much money she’d cost him with her insistence on refurbishment”

So refurbishing was val’s idea. The fact that she wanted skul’s house changed for her probably came across as like. not flirty, exactly? but to him, she’s saying that she wants to spend more time here. more time with him. she wants his home to be her home. he probably saw that as encouragement, tbh, he was so happy about it? 

then in kotw, we have this:

5. “Remember that sorcerer who went missing?”

Valkyrie raised her head off the pillow even as she woke. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, then she recognised the house on Cemetery Road…

“Patrick Xebec,” Skulduggery said, standing in the morning sunlight that streamed in through the window.

he’s. in her room. while she’s asleep. at this point, they have no boundaries. skulduggery would’ve been raised that to come into a young lady’s room while she is abed is just. not done. the only woman it would’ve been appropriate for him to do that with would be his wife, or a lover - women he’d essentially share a room with anyway (don’t quote me on this, but i think a lot of couples in his era had separate bedrooms as standard? and then just slept together when they wanted to? because a lot of marriages were out of convenience and not love?). but im pretty sure there’s also another scene of him doing it again - coming into her room before she’s up and waking her up by talking at her - so either he’s just utterly lost his sense of propriety over the years or he’s so comfortable with her and she with him that they no longer have that boundary

6. “She took a quick shower, dressed, and Skulduggery had a bowl of cereal waiting for her when she emerged.”

so not only is he a-ok with coming into her room while she’s still in it, they’ve also got into a morning routine with each other. he makes her breakfast. it’s wonderfully domestic, a little gesture of affection in his very understated way. skulduggery is an over-the-top personality who doesn’t do emotions very well, and val has no subtlety. he’s treating her like he’d treat his significant other, but because he hasn’t actually smacked her in the face with a brick stamped with “I LIKE YOU” in big letters, she’s not picking up what he’s throwing out there

it’s also worth mentioning that like. in death bringer and kotw, he starts touching her a lot more. hugging her, or letting her hug him. that scene where he pushes her up against a wall and kinda feels her up to check if she was shot, even though she’s wearing protective clothes and so he knows none of the bullets would’ve hurt her. that bit in kotw(?) where she gets stuck in the hole and he has to pull her out. it’s pointed out on the skulduggery forums in the valdug thread that if you pull someone out by their underarms, like he tries to, you’re gonna touch boob. you just are. it’d be shockingly difficult not to. and again, no negative reaction from her, not even an awkward joke

again, for the most part of skul’s life, male-female physical contact was very limited. he didnt touch her very often for the first half of the series, and i think that had a lot to do with the fact that in his mind, it would’ve been inappropriate. touching is something you do with the girl you’re courting. so like, he’ll hug her if she needs to be hugged, or comfort her if she needs it or whatever, but there’s no casual touching. but in the last four books, he touches her an awful lot. because he is kinda courting her

kotw i think is the point where skul stops dodging around on the edge of flirting, and starts actually flirting. and tries to let her know he’s got feelings for her, because he’s a whole lot less subtle in this book. there’s this whole exchange: 

7. “It’s just, if you were feeling somehow…unattractive…”

“Sorry?”

“I don’t mean unattractive,” he said quickly. “I mean, if you were thinking that maybe you’ll always be alone -”

“You think I’ll always be alone?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

We know that when skulduggery was alive, he had a stutter. this isn’t a stutter, but he’s definitely nervous, and you can tell? i can count the number of times skulduggery was visibly nervous in the books on one hand. he’s a very confident, very self-assured man. but this is the first time he’s kind of made it obvious to val that he likes her. this is him kind of going, i’m an available romantic prospect, valkyrie. but she doesn’t let him get it out, she won’t let him finish. he phrases it wrong and loses his chance.

8. “I was only trying to be sensitive.”

she’s hurt him. she won’t let him talk, won’t let him tell her how he feels. she “doesn’t need him sensitive”. she’s kind of. pretty much completely dismissed that he’s also a person with feelings, and she’s hurt him.

9. “you can’t run from your feelings!”

“i can walk from them.”

he doesn’t deny that there are feelings to walk from. by now he’s picked up that valkyrie is dense as a fucking wall, so the flirting is getting a little bit more obvious. and even though she just hurt him, and he’s now kinda pissed at her as a result, he still acknowledges that he has feelings

and then, in lsodm, we get this absolute fucking gem

10 “tight trousers don’t count.”

he’s given up, everyone. this is outright flirting, it even sounds flirty on the audiobook, he knows he’s not fucking getting anywhere and now he’s just not even bothering to be subtle

and then, going totally outside of canon, i like to think that the Big Reveal is essentially skulduggery says something even more obvious than the tight trousers comment, and val kind of pauses and goes, “are you flirting with me?” and skulduggery is just like

HAVE BEEN FOR THREE YEARS NOW BUT THANKS FOR NOTICING

[spirit-shroud]

so i made this post like. yesterday? two?? days ago? i dont actually remember but! i plotted out a ml fanfic while i’ve been working on my tabletop moonlighter junk and ive come to a few different conclusions about how Will might be in a few situations (read: the version i made up of him in my head that has literally 0 track to canon bc canon does not describe Will at all [as far as im aware, i havent finished the fifth door stuff / started ng+ yet + the wiki is abysmally empty and also not updated to the latest patch. im also not sure if any ml fanfic already exists??? but i also havent looked BUT ANYWAY]) 

like. idk to me the Ideal Hero-Merchant Will of Rynoka™ falls into that like. ‘rough around the edges but still good’ dumb jock category. like. hes probably like, nice within reason, maybe far too casual with everyone. playfully rude to friends who are equally playfully rude back. has a general idea of when it’s a good time to stop / be more formal / handle An Issue but also like. generally misses stuff when it comes to socializing? maybe has a tendency to be a little too into the ‘lightly roasting people to show appreciation’ gig?

on top of that, i feel like he can be p easily assigned traits like ‘one track minded’ / overconfident just bc like. that’s what we can see through gameplay and everything, like, thats just How Things Are. like yeah he has to run the shop and everything but that’s just a side quest on his way to doing more dumb things and pushing himself too hard >:c

so if you combine a jock that has like, maybe five braincells total, four of which are focused entirely on slicing through rocky monsters with a comically large sword, that one last cell clinging to not being a gross goblin who lives in the dungeons and only comes out to restock potions, you get like. a small mess of a human who is trying far too hard. like. you’re already like, mayor of rynoka through sheer capitalism power my dude please take a nap it’s been three weeks, 

(side note: does anyone in rynoka like. sleep? if the entirety of your night is spent in dungeons, and the vast majority of your day is trying to run a shop to fuel your addiction to, again, crawling dungeons, like. when do you sleep? bathe? eat?? socialize??? do anything?? like. not even zenon like... vanishes at any point. hes either awake chillin by a fire or wandering around town. ) 

and on a more fanfic-y/shippy note i think he’d be like. the absolute furthest thing from affectionate at all. like. a datemate is just a bro who also happens to like. live in his house sometimes and hold hands with him. like ykno that tweet thats like ‘i have a whole baby with someone but we dont have an anniversary / never formally started dating’? thats like. the whole thing here. that’s how i’d imagine that’d go down w this dude. not even due to like being emotionally distant or not invested in the relationship or anything it’s just the General Vibe™. like you live together and have like A Thing and one of you stops saying ‘no homo’ and its just like ‘well i guess this is real now  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ‘

also he radiates the vibes of someone who’d like. finger guns on reflex to pretty much any situation gone loosely awry. i am not sure how that came about, or why i associate that with him, but i reflexively finger gun all the time so he does that also.  

all of this kinda rolls back around to the like. two ways to draw him post i made a little while ago, in which his two modes are Total Hoarder Goblin™ and sweet white haired anime boy™. i think that’d be a p solid thing to reflect in any like, idealized version of him lol 

like at the end of the day it’s pretty much just like. making an oc that just so happens to inhabit an existing character’s body, but also he like.... doesn’t have a personality outside from Player Vessel™ and i will noT STAND FOR IT he’s MY BOY

EDIT // he doesn’t really have like. an age anywhere that i know of but i think he’s like. 19-25ish. he’s baby

thinkin abt what kind of character Will is considering the only thing we ultimately know about him in canon is that he’s an idiot