#idk if i like the ending oops

[fiveminuterice]

my shining star, when will he come home :(

[meamiki]

my friend and i have this ongoing bit on stream where we are going to shave the king bald...... yeah........

((there are actually two ongoing bits with the king. but i do not think anyone wants me to illustrate the second one. including myself. perhaps i am a coward and that is okay. i will not be elaborating at this time. SAFSADASDAS))

[dailyloopdeloop]

DAY 71: shy

[xuxudio]

sometimes you gotta give the coolest most badass character you know a really silly trait

[pizzaqueen]

Suck and Blow

Written for the prompt ‘suck’ for @steddiemicrofic

480 words / rated T / another first kiss

Someone yells, “Let’s play suck and blow,” and someone else titters, saying, “I didn’t know it was that kind of party,” and Steve finds himself jostled into a circle. A girl with a shaved head is on his left and Eddie’s to his right.

“Uh…” Steve’s eyes dart between the girl and Eddie. “Isn’t this game meant to be boy girl boy girl?”

“Aw, Robin,” Robin’s cool new gay college friend says, “your token heterosexual is so cute,” and everyone laughs and it’s not like he’s being mean, but his words sit uneasily. Tangle in Steve’s chest in a way he can only describe as wrong.

Robin must take his squirming as discomfort at playing the game because she catches his eye from across the circle, mouthing, “You don’t have to play,” but he waves her off.

Steve Harrington is no party pooper.

The card is passed from person to person, sucking and blowing in turn, lips pressed together, the charade of a kiss. The girl with the shaved head smells faintly of weed and her hand is hot on Steve’s neck as she passes the card to him. She winks as they part and then Steve turns to Eddie.

Electricity crackles between them, inexplicable and confusing, but maybe not new. Definitely not bad, which is more confusing, and Steve is thinking about that, and how Eddie’s eyes are pretty in this light, not the game, and, at the last second, the card falls. Their lips brush and the electricity shoots through Steve, gathering in his lips, fizzing in his blood.

And it’s… Oh, it’s…

Eddie jerks back and grabs the card from the floor, barely looking at Steve as he says, “Guess I forgot to suck,” before turning to the guy next to him. Everyone laughs again, and the game goes on, but Steve’s lips don’t stop tingling.

Later, when the party is winding down, Steve finds Eddie smoking out on the balcony, leaning on the rail. Steve steps up beside him. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Steve produces a card from the back pocket of his jeans. “Do over?”

Eddie eyes the card for a moment, then shakes his head. “It’s fine, man, we can forget all about it.” The end of his cigarette glows brightly as he inhales, smoke drifting up into the night as he breathes out again. “No big deal.”

“Right, yeah…” The card gets tucked back into Steve’s pocket with a sigh. “No big deal.” Except… Taking a chance, Steve adds, “Or maybe we don’t need the card?” Because he’s pretty sure he knows why his lips haven’t stopped tingling since he almost kissed Eddie earlier.

Moonlight dances in Eddie’s wide eyes as he looks over Steve’s face. Then, seemingly satisfied, he crushes his cigarette and slowly nods. “Yeah. Maybe we don’t.”

Steve smiles and leans in, heart beating fast as he closes the distance between them.

[vanityangel]

"This is not what I wanted, but this is what my family needed." SOLO "I GOT NEXT" SIKOA

[biblically-accurate-dca]

super disorganized sketch page because i do what i want

[scumbagjaeger]

Rating: 18+ mdni!

Whatever you do, do not imagine Porco realizing he has a breeding kink after inheriting the Jaw Titan (but in an angsty way)

Imagine knowing the Warriors, being friends with Reiner and the others but Porco always hating you for some reason? Like the constant bickering between you two, nothing you say will ever be right in his eyes, etc. You're friends with them all but you're vocal about how heartbreaking their line of work is. Thirteen year lifespan? Porco's adamant that it's their duty to protect and serve Marley, and that it's their legacy to do so, but their abandoning their families and giving up the chance to have families of their own? He just thinks your selfish for putting your own needs before your country.

After Fort Slava, Porco and the other Warriors return, now Porco has inherited the Jaw Titan and there's is a power and honor that he has, but he does feel the weight of his choice as well, and sometimes it keeps him up at night when he thinks about the clock that has started counting down in his mind? And about what you had said about legacy?

Sometime during the first battle in Liberio, Porco is in his titan form and he spots you rushing into a building that's too close to the fighting for his comfort, and he feels an overpowering urge to scream, to emerge from his titan and pull you out of there himself, before you get hurt. But then you're quickly running out, holding a child in your arms? He watches you bring the crying infant to the mother and father. They envelop you with open arms and are crying too, thanking you for saving their child, just moments before the house you were in gets crushed as the battle continues. He thinks about that at night too, how you risked your life to save another. He also can't get the imagine of you holding that child so close to your chest. He remembers you smiling as you discussed your desire for a child someday, and rather shamefully he can feel his chest tighten, a familiar pool of heat forming in his abdomen as he lets his thoughts wander.

Days later, you're with the Warriors again, still fazed with how close you were the warfare and the brutality of it all, and Porco can't even look at you because he's realizing now how close he got to losing you? But you're not even his, what is he talking about. He excuses himself from dinner as soon as you set your plate down next to him, and he can feel your gaze on him as he heads to his room.

Not too long after, there's a knock on his door and it's you, and it's like a dam has opened up. He unleashes everything onto you. How stupid are you, you could have gotten yourself killed, what is he supposed to do with himself if you're gone. It slips out before he can even think about it, but you're holding him, trying to calm him down because somewhere during his meltdown at you he's begun to cry, but he can't help himself from grabbing your jaw and bringing your lips to meet his.

When he feels your hands make their way through his hair, he wastes no time leading you to his bed, not breaking the kiss for a second until you are both panting for air, your back pressed against the cool sheets on his bed and he's already undoing the buttons on your shirt. He's not thinking straight, too delirious and drunk on you to even remove it entirely, so he undoes as many buttons as he can manage before dipping his hand under your shirt and letting the other hand tug down your pants.

Do not think about how messy and sporadic he would be desperately clinging to you as he ruts you into the mattress, biting and leaving marks up and down your body that he wants to stay forever. He wants to stay in your forever, buried deep inside you as your legs are wrapped around him, eyes rolled back and you're letting the prettiest sounds escape your lips.

The request probably falls out of his mouth before he can even process it, all in one go, can-I-cum-in-you and he can hardly contain himself as he hears you whine back yes, please, Porco, cum inside me.

Do not imagine him letting out a whimper when he cums, letting his head fall in the crook of your neck as he shakes, trying to fill you up as much as possible. Not long afterwards he feels your walls tighten around him as you climax and he continues to thrust into you, helping you ride out your orgasm while feeding his own arousal once more.

He'd beg you to let him fuck you once more, just to fill you up further with his cum, and to make sure he's put a baby in you. His logic is already out the window but his hands find their way to your jaw and he kisses you so gently as he begs to breed you. His body shakes at the idea and he rambles, half out of his mind in post sex haze and delirium as he babbles about putting a baby in you, his baby, making you his and giving you that child that you so desperately want.

And you let him fuck you again, bringing another orgasm out of the both of you that makes him ache. If you feel your neck start to moisten, the cloth of your shirt dampening as he cries into it, you never say anything. You rub his back and kiss his hair as he fucks into you with the last of his strength, even staying buried in you for a moment after.

After he finally pulls out, he stays in between your legs, resting on top of you, holding you so close it's almost like he's melting into you. He might even snake a hand down and coax his cum back into you as it seeps down your thighs.

Do not think about the type of pillow talk you have with Porco afterwards, where he tells you that you should leave Liberio and find somewhere safer. He promises that he'll find you, no matter where you go, and that maybe you two can even run away together. He'll promise that you'll never work another day in your life and that he'll keep you safe, always.

Whatever you do, do not think about the quiet voice that fills the room as Porco looks up at you and asks, "if it's a boy, d'you think we can name him after Marcel?", and do not think about how his eyes light up when you agree. And do not think about waking up as he's preparing to leave in the morning, promising to be there, but then he's not. Do not think about Reiner looking at you with dread as you ask him where Porco is after the next battle in Liberio. Do not imagine waking up alone the days to come.

[hiphopcherrrypop]

my thoughts on buddy daddies finale ✌😁

[mintyimperiatrix]

so wild theory time but what if the Master is Omega's son

ok hear me out because that sounds insane but i think it kinda works? cause first off we know now thanks to the Timeless Children that the Doctor is the daughter of the Other(/Tecteun). the Other is a scientist and explorer and while their morality's differ to the extreme the Doctor does, on the surface level, adopt these traits from them.

we also know that the Doctor, in their first childhood, had a friend on Gallifrey. a friend with no name. a friend who... accidentally killed her during a fight. i know i'm not the first to say that the kid on the cliff is the Master but it's a good starting point

so then we get to Omega, someone who was friends with the other two Founders and yet easily the one who's life we know the least about, at least from before he was chucked into a black hole. he wasn't an explorer like Tecteun, he was an engineer. he wanted to build his own things, be famous for his achievements and use them to obtain godlike power but when his usefulness ended he was thrown aside by Rassilon. does any this sound familiar?

All of those traits are shared by the Master.

lets cut to the End of Time real quick. the Master builds a device to bring Gallifrey back into the universe, allowing the next 'ascension' to take place (before the Doctor broke the machine) but when his moment of glory was about to come Rassilon, like Omega before him, threw him aside. obviously this is all pretty circumstantial and doesn't actually prove anything but then there's this exchange earlier in the episode

"Two Children of Gallifrey" could just be a poetic way to refer to two random Time Lords. except we know it doesn't, because the Doctor isn't a random Time Lord and even if the average Time Lord doesn't know that the Matrix Does. so if the Doctor is the daughter of one of the Founders then she is (almost) literally a 'Child of Gallifrey'. take the same idea and apply it to the Master and logic dictates he would be the child of either Rassilon or Omega

i think the most interesting part happens after that though, when the Time Lord dude refers to them as 'the Enmity of Ages' (which would be an amazing name for a band just saying) and Rassilon immediately knows that this means the Doctor and the Master. the only time we've seen him meet either of those characters before is in passing during the Five Doctors. it's easy to infer that he'd know the Doctor from their role Time War but the Master? he didn't fight in the war, he mostly refused to work with the Time Lords during the War and then hid himself as Professor Yana when it got too much so why would Rassilon, who has only seen the Master once when he was tied up on the floor in the body of a Trakenite, know that the Master was the other half of the Enmity of Ages?

you Could say he learnt of the Master's reputation during the Time War but i frankly don't think he'd care about that? so to me at least it feels like the best explanation would be that he's met the Master before, way back when he was first President. and the reason he's so disgusted by the Master, the reason he finds it amusing that the Doctor's 'final act' is the murder of Gallifrey is because he knows who these two are. he is staring at the children of his fellow Founders, realistically these two are the only people in the universe he might consider a threat to his power or his status, and much like he did with their parents he tries to use both of them before casting them aside but just like before they both come out the other end alive

also saying the Enmity of Ages to me infers a greater conflict than just that of two normal Time Lords. from any single character it would be just a dramatic phrase but this is directly from the Matrix itself, which knows all of Time Lord history, so they are a Big Deal

but now we skip to everyone's favourite episode: The Timeless Children (genuinely one of my favourite finales it gets such a bad wrap). we learn the Doctor has unlimited regenerations, or at least had unlimited regenerations at some point because whether they still do or not is kinda up to interpretation. it was the Doctor's biology which allowed the Time Lords to unlock the power of regeneration, however the Other limited the number of regenerations to 12 lives when giving it to the rest of the population. i think Tecteun's presence in Flux implies that she never limited her own regenerations and you could probably say the same to Rassilon's, with that being his secret of immortality.

now in the episode the Master claims that Tecteun took the ultimate sacrifice by testing the raw ability on herself, but suppose she didn't. suppose she had another test subject first. suppose she promised one of her friends that his son, the best friend of her own child, could become the first Time Lord to receive the gift of infinite life. suppose then that Omega, wanting glory for himself and for his son, agreed to this and allowed Tecteun test her discovery on the boy, who was then granted an endless cycle of regenerations to match his friend's. from there Tecteun, now knowing the ability would work, put into herself, into Rassilon and into Omega before limiting it to a dozen lives per person and spreading it out among the population.

it's a lot of inference i'll admit but it would add a good few extra layers to these lines:

and this of course opens the door to the possibility that other character's we've met of cryptic origin with seemingly impossible knowledge but too dark a morality to be the Doctor could be the Master instead. characters like Lee Clayton or Gat (obviously not both at once) could be an early version of the Master. maybe Magus and Hazel from the Forgotten Lives books are also past versions of the Master. hell if you want to go wild maybe even the War Chief is the Master from before they had their memory wiped (but thats very unlikely)

also as i was finding the right screenshots and clips for this post i found these as well...

the way the Master refers to the Founders as 'our parents' (Tecteun and Omega being referred to as separate parents, as a Thoschei shipper i'm not touching the sibling theory with a forty foot pole) does make me wonder if he found out about his own past too but didn't tell the Doctor, not wanting to admit that he was the reason for the Doctor's first regeneration, the reason for Tecteun's torture and experimentation on her and the reason she could safely discover the ability for herself

so yeah who's to say that the Master isn't Omega's child who, like Tecteun's child, was captured by the Time Lords, regressed into a child, restricted to only 12 regenerations and robbed of all their memories. maybe he isn't any of that though. i mean maybe he is just a whiny crybaby who wants to be as important as his best friend. maybe he was the Timeless Child and the Doctor was the kid who pushed her. maybe he's actually Rassilon's child instead. who knows? not me!

[pearl-kite]

So I came to the realization today that I am not going to get anymore work on this trunk done this year. I still need to finish stripping the paper inside and redoing that, but it's just. Not happening until spring. With that realization, I decided it's time to finally bring it back inside, put all the junk on my floor that used to be in it back in it, and guys

It looks good.

This is going to be a summary post of the project, so let's go back and remember what I started with. Back in, like, 2015 or something, I bought this dome-top steamer trunk at a missionary shop for $65

Yeah. Rough. But underneath that paint it was sturdy, and the only thing missing was the lock and the right-side hasp. While I lived overseas this sat in my parents' house, and when I got back I kept meaning to do something while storing all of my yarn and cat food in it. When I finally got my own space (almost a year ago now!) with my own garage, I finally decided: it was time.

Heads up, this is a long post under the cut.

Did a lot of research online, grew to hate how generative AI has even permeated niche topics like how to refinish a vintage steamer trunk, WHY is there generative AI for that, PLEASE stop, went to Lowe's and bought some supplies (I used Citristrip for the paint stripping, it worked VERY easily), and started stripping that hideous brown* away.

Almost instantly I could tell how good it could be. The tin looked amazing, and for most of the stripping process I wondered why on earth someone would cover it with any color. It took multiple layers of stripping, and I got better at it over time.

I did also start to see some oxidation issues with the tin that made the purpose behind the paint job a little more understandable.

One side was particularly bad, but I will never forgive the decision to paint the entire thing one single color.

At first, the flat metal seemed okay, but the longer I worked on stripping, the longer it was exposed to air, the rustier it started to get. I had already planned on coating it, and I ended up getting some Rust-Oleum Rust Reformer spray paint. Instead of removing the rust, it bonds to the oxide and stops the process from continuing. It also happens to leave it a nice matte black that didn't need additional painting. I taped everything off, then sprayed.

Then it was time for the tin. I looked for ideas, and the best one I found was Rub'n'Buff. It's not so much a paint as a pigmented wax, with the idea that you can buff it to a higher shine. As I was stripping paint, I found a spot under one of the slats that the painter missed, and the original tin had been painted a gold color, so I used that to decide on color. I decided on Grecian gold, though I used the antique gold as a kind of base to make sure the Grecian stretched far enough.

I originally started applying it with some craft foam brushes, but they didn't really want to work for me, so I ended up buying a pack of makeup sponges, the little disposable wedge ones, and the finer texture worked much better. I had to trim them down pretty frequently, because the wax would build up and stop applying as nicely, but there were more than enough in the pack to finish the job.

The coverage is amazing for this stuff. This side was the worst of them, and one layer of the stuff was almost perfect. The Grecian gold was almost a bit runnier, though, and ended up needing a second layer to cover some patches that were almost too thin, thus the other underneath.

This tin is so pretty though. I still kind of regret that it needed it; the places that weren't oxidized were so bright in a way that the Rub'n'Buff had no hope of emulating. There are some places you can still buy the embossed tin for rehabing trunks like this, but I haven't found one with a pattern quite like this, and this one is so much nicer than the ones I've seen. I'm very glad that it was all intact except for where the lock goes.

After the tin came the slats. I knew from sites like Brettun's Village that I wanted to use tung oil, so I had bought what I thought was tung oil. Turns out Minwax gets to call their tung oil finish that even though there's. No... tung oil. in it. ? So uh, if you want actual tung oil, do NOT listen to Minwax, they're lying, I don't understand why it's allowed. It still looks nice enough, but quite annoying.

Speaking of Brettun's Village, they not only do their own restorations AND provide a guide, they have a very extensive supply of recently furbished and original parts. They happened to have a nearly identical hasp to the one that was missing (so nearly identical I only noticed after my dad pointed it out) and an old lock also similar to my original, made in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

The next step was to tackle the inside. Instead of just adding more paper on top (like the last people did, so now there are two layers, one of which hides some original stickers ;3;), I decided to try to scrape that out, and I've found some structural issues that the metal and slats outside have held together and kept hidden.

The top split in the wood is an actual crack on the front that needs fixing. The middle split is just the gap between the planks. The bottom is also a crack, but not as extensive as the top one.

So the final steps, when I get the motivation again come spring, is to finish getting as much of the paper off as I can. Then my dad is going to help me use some bondo to hold the cracks, and I'll find a removable wallpaper I like. Then I can sort out what I'm going to do with the lock. That top split runs right through where the lock should go - you can see some of the wood filler we already put in from where the original was ripped out - so we can't try to put anything there or it'll crack worse.

But I brought it in today!

It looks so good, I glance over and get to feel so satisfied; I did that.

*I don't like to call any color hideous, because a lot of the time it really depends on the context, and it's an okay brown. But for THIS? It was probably the worst brown they could have picked. Mixed with the orange of the paint stripper it looked like I was scraping diarrhea.

[megantronusprime]

y'all ever think about the 10 years engie spent as a roughneck in the oilpatch? because I do.

Like, do you think he was trying to break away from the family legacy of becoming a mercenary? that maybe that boy in the picture, trying his father's goggles wanted nothing more than to be an engineer just like his daddy - even had a natural knack for it too, said his dad, just like him and his father before him - and was too young to see clearly the toll it took on him and his family? do you think that, as he got older, he would begin to recognize the extremes his father and grandfather went to for their work, obsessing over it, even experimenting on their own bodies. do you think he came across his mother crying at the kitchen table late one night, unable to recognize the loving man she married who now never came home and obsessed over his work, and decided right then and there that he wasn't going to be that man to his family? that he was going to forge his own path - be his own man, and break free from the Conagher family curse?

so, maybe, at the age of 18, he began working as a roughneck in the oilfields of west Texas. It was hard manual labour, long days spent on drilling rigs with the Texas sun beating down on him, but it was good money, and though some of his coworkers were rough most of them were good enough guys and he along with most of 'em. and hey, sometimes maybe there were even on-the-spot practical problems to be solved - issues with the drill that in a fast-paced environment like that couldn't wait for a proper tech to come around and solve? and in those moments, engie would step in and fix the issue quickly, working without hesitation, like it was second nature to him. And maybe his coworkers would always remark upon his natural aptitude? ("you're in the wrong line of work, Dell.") Maybe he would shrug it off, say it weren't nothin' - just hung around his father a lot growin' up and learned a thing or two - but deep inside, he hoped for more of those opportunities to fix things, and maybe those little moments of on-the-spot fixes were the very things he looked forward to most. And maybe, even as he gained a reputation for being a mr. fix-it amongst his coworkers, given odd things outside of work to tinker on, it wasn't enough. maybe slowly, over the years, with each thing he worked on, the flames of his intellectual curiosity were stoked more and more, until eventually, he went back home and visited his mom, during his week off. And, late one night, against his better judgement, he went into his father's workshop - untouched, everything covered in a layer of dust (he hadn't been home in years). he knew he shouldn't. He could feel the gnawing at him, the voice demanding him to give in to his intellectual curiosity and follow in his father's footsteps getting louder. He had been trying to fight it, but he finally reached his breaking point and went into his father's blueprints. that was what tipped him over the edge. He spent the whole night, locked away in his father's workshop, poring over each design, his mind racing with ideas of how he could make it better. He couldn't stand it anymore, he needed more. When the sun came back up again, Dell informed his mother that after 10 years, he was quitting his job and enrolling for university. and although he was certain that he would not become the same man his father and grandfather was, as sure as he would be an engineer, but do it differently and not succumb to the family curse. And although his mother smiled, ever gentle and encouraging of her son, coffee mug in hand, there was a sadness in her eyes. Because she knew that Dell always had the same tenacity and obsessive intellectual curiosity his father has. And if Dell was going to do this, there was no moderation. He was going to fling himself into it completely, lose sleep, lose focus of everything else. And she was right.

...

OR maybe he always knew he was going to be an engineer and was like, "well, I'm going to do a whole lot of schooling, so what's the best way to save up for tuition? oh yeah! work in the oilfield for a few years :)" lol

[unma]

My theory is that you've had (or currently have) a big thing for roleplaying, perhaps directly related to your aptitudes as a writer.

I feel like someone just sniped me through a buncha buildings and windows and still hit a head shot. How could you tell? I haven't actively roleplayed in at least a couple of years—not because I don't want to, tbh, I would if I could actually get back into it again—so I'm surprised anyone could tell. I still have a bunch of my proudest rp posts saved (it was mostly crp), and I was into it for at least 3 years or so.

It's definitely related to my aptitude as a writer though. Having to respond so often to some of the most detailed crp posts where you would and often did get technicality'd into oblivion (and would do the same back) definitely made me care a lot about the details, and I'm not gonna lie I do still draw on that still when describing combat sometimes. Getting technicality'd into oblivion doesn't sound too fun, but I assure you it was (once you got used to it anyway), and that community was definitely my closest set of online friends for a good bit.

[quirinah]

misc sixth year month drawings

[blae-kitta]

More pics below!

Considering the amount of photos I put in, I think I'll put them in separate post progress pics of my boy (found here!). It feels so nice to finally have him finished; he ended up taking two whole semesters to finish, mostly because there were multiple things I redid on him and finicky small bits and bobs (the fucking EARRINGS and why yes, they ARE movable!) plus, generally being really busy with uni and part time work on top of this and working on other hobbies because why have one and actually finish projects on a decent timeline. Don't ask me how long this took because I don't want to think about that; there were certainly a few days where I spent most of it working on him (while watching one piece of course), not to mention all the odd hours I spent on the evening to late night also working on him. I think I was just starting thriller bark when I started him and now am near the end of dressrosa... Which is a good number of episodes later. Labour of love and all that. Nevertheless, here he is!

[stergeon]

Hi, Stergeon! I really love your Edeleth novels, and your amusing brainworm ideas have brought so much joy to me. I heard that you’ve only completed the CF and haven’t played 3Hopes yet? (If I’m mistaken, I apologize) I’m curious about your thoughts on Edeleth in the SS route and in 3Hopes! Which one do you think would be more compelling? (Personally, I lean toward 3Hopes—I just love seeing how a mercenary earns the emperor’s favor. It leaves so much room for imagination!)

hi anon thank you for your message!! so glad you enjoy my stuff <3 it means a lot to hear it!!!

i've played CF and verdant wind myself and watched playthroughs of AM and SS, although i haven't played cindered shadows or any of 3hopes :0( i have read recaps of the routes in Hopes though, and i'm planning to actually play through it soon. i want to meet this "shez" cat...

i'm putting the rest of this under a cut because i got Too Excited and wrote an essay, but given what i know of 3hopes, my short answer is: edeleth in 3hopes has so much to offer in terms of romance and kiss potential. edeleth in SS is a tragedy, and the angst-lover in me is obsessed with it.

ok, to elaborate,

the big thing is that in 3hopes, edeleth actually stands a chance of getting off the ground romantically.* they'd have an easier time of it, too (compared to CF, anyway), given there's less baggage between them in hopes' timeline: byleth was never edelgard's professor, eliminating the teacher-student dynamic; without a five-year timeskip, edelgard is mentally in a better place, less hardened by grief and loneliness and long, hard years of war. they could actually have something close to healthy relationship development. god i want that for them. i think it would be neat to explore how the differences in their dynamic affect how they grow, too. how does byleth handle the dissonance of her contractually-focused mercenary mindset vs. edelgard's focus on personal agency, while she's still actively a mercenary? how does edelgard go from being purely enamored with byleth's skill to appreciating who she is as a person? can she figure out how to do that for herself, too? do they make each other worse by enabling each other's propensity to allow themselves to be used as weapons, or can they overcome that and grow together?

the slow burn... the building of trust... i'm here for it. then add in crest resonance—the idea that they are drawn together by their very blood, the red thread of fate... ohhhh. juicy. delicious. as a gluttonous dyke who wants to see them girls kiss and have nice lives: sign me up.

* this is all assuming you get the “good ending” where you recruit byleth. otherwise, uh. good luck.

hmm. i might have to start this game, like, this week.

as for SS, i have. a lot of thoughts lmao. as far as i'm concerned, fe3h is a story about agency and choice, about how the decisions we make can shape the world.

given that, silver snow is a tragedy. it is a cavalcade of hubris and grief and squandered potential, of might-have- and should-have-beens. it is a veritable feast of angst and it makes me fucking insane. that route (and specifically, the edeleth aspects of it) got me so messed up that i had to go write The Victors; The Vestiges about it.

shameless plug aside,

i know it's not fair to deal in comparisons rather than letting the routes stand on their own, but what i find so compelling about SS is the contrast with CF. in my opinion, CF is the best route for byleth as a character because it's the only route in the game where she has any autonomy. sure, byleth picks a house at the start of the game, but it's not like it was a real choice: she had to choose one of them, having just met those kids, like, That Day, and it's not like she could say "no thanks" and go on her merry way. in SS/CF, byleth gets presented with an actual decision: she can follow orders like she's been doing her entire life, or defy orders and blaze her own path by standing with edelgard, knowing full well what the consequences will be. it’s her first real, fully informed choice where she gets to be the arbiter of her own fate.

at the end of CF, byleth's agency/personhood is cemented when her crest stone breaks and she severs her connection to the control of others, becoming fully "human." in SS, she has that agency within her grasp and yet she succumbs to her fatal flaw: she goes along with what she's told to do once again, just like she's always done.

does byleth want to kill edelgard? does she want to become archbishop? does she want to rule over fodlan, effectively alone? what does byleth think or feel about any of this? we'll never know. she won't know, either, because she's never made a choice for herself to affect the path of her own life. she follows jeralt, then she follows rhea, then she follows whatever seteth tells her to do. edelgard offers her the out, the chance to be her own person, and she says no.

ugh. tragic hamartia. i love it. i hate it. it hurts real good.

and all that's just focusing on byleth. we haven't even gotten into talking about edelgard in that route. holy crap, how she suffers. it is her loneliest route, where even those in her house have abandoned her, and all her worst fears have come to pass. in the months edelgard spends at garreg mach, she gets a taste of friendship, of solidarity, of trust, and in byleth, she also gets the chance to be known—to confide in someone else, to reveal what's beneath her armor, to get to be a kid and a friend and a person. and that terrifies her. in her dialogue and supports, she tiptoes around anytime she might reveal something of her true self, guarded and yet so badly wanting to let someone else in. in spite of herself, she starts to do that with byleth, fearing all along that she's making a mistake, that she's misplacing her trust, that she's compromising her mission and betraying those she's sworn to avenge by allowing herself any modicum of innocence and individuality, by re-opening her heart to allow others inside again.

and then when byleth sides with rhea in the holy tomb, all of those fears are proven true. instead of finding solidarity and choosing a path together, they both become set in their ways, serving the purposes for which they were designed, missing out on the chance to ever be anything more.

when byleth kills edelgard, she kills her last chance at true human connection, succumbing to fate, forever limited to being only what she was made to be and not who she could be. a weapon, a shell for another's soul, inheritor of another's destiny. a god without agency, with unchecked power and the contractual mindset of a mercenary. how sad. how lonely. how terrifying.

i've focused a lot on byleth in discussing this because she's the one whose perspective we follow in SS and the only one who's left at the end of it all. edelgard's path is consistent, doomed as it is. byleth is the one who's left at the end of it all, knowing what could have been different and that the decision was entirely hers. and, if you subscribe to byleth being immortal like other nabateans, she gets to carry that with her forever. she continues the cycle rhea began after sothis was killed, with edelgard at the epicenter of her grief.

yeah, i'm working a bit of a bad-faith angle by acting like byleth is completely incapable of seizing agency for herself without external help, as though she can't self-actualize, or like she can't want to choose the church over edelgard. but... frankly, we don't have any evidence to the contrary. we don't get many of her thoughts on things outside of her limited dialogue options in SS, like when she's asked if she is willing to take up rhea's mantle and become archbishop. she gives a lot of "..." answers and guarded looks, utterly noncommittal, in line with how she was at the very beginning of the story. she doesn't grow. she doesn't change. she simply falls into this role without raising her voice one way or another. and i think it's very telling that the one true, story-changing choice we're presented with results in her either embracing her own humanity, or her draconic/nabatean side.

at risk of getting further off-track, i'll wrap by saying that for me, the appeal of edeleth is in how they complement each other and make each other grow. edelgard strives for freedom and personal agency, and she introduces those concepts to byleth—"choice" simply wasn't a thing in byleth's world before edelgard offered her the chance to forge her own path. byleth, meanwhile, shows edelgard that it's possible to be more than what you're made for—that you can be a weapon and a person, that you can grow and change, that opening your heart doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your dreams. edelgard's hypocrisy is crippling in all other routes: she limits herself to her path while fighting for everyone else's freedom. in CF, edelgard shows byleth a different way forward, and byleth makes sure edelgard gives herself that chance, too.

that's love, babey. that's romance. getting to be your whole self, to find your whole self, to share yourself with someone else, your strengths and your weaknesses, your light and darkness, and have them accept you anyway. to accept those things about yourself, if only because they do, because they can see the light where you can't. to help someone else do all those same things, and to do them together, no matter what comes your way. to help each other be all you can be and achieve your dreams and ambitions and shit. that's hot!!!!!

in silver snow, we see byleth and edelgard come so close to that, occasionally even catching glimpses of the future they could build together if only they were in each other's lives. but they swerve away at the last second, and they haunt each other for the rest of their lives.

you get what i'm saying? like, this graph is sexy to me:

but this graph is also sooooo sexy:

fucking hell i love them girls.

ok i got really rambley BUT: that's the gist of my silver snow thoughts lol. AM is diet SS but worse because dimitri and i would need another post and a half to complain about that. VW slid right off my brain even though i played through the whole dang route. as far as i'm concerned, it's all about CF and SS, and particularly about how they intersect (or don't). once i get 3hopes and play through scarlet blaze i'm sure you'll see me consumed with Them Girls Fever again with all kinds of new feelings about 'em.