#if you made it this far in reading

[caker-baker]

Due Diligence

The lights were sickeningly bright, even from behind the curtains.

The hero’s PR manager snapped her fingers in front of their face. “Hey. Hey. Pull it together.”

“I don’t do these.” They felt their heart in their ears, beating rapidly. “I don’t do meetings, the questions, I can’t, please don’t make me–”

“Hero.” Their manager’s voice left very little room for sympathy. “I know. But this is what happens when you get popular, they look to you for information.”

“Popular?” The hero repeated, the sweat on the back of their neck turning cold. “I’m not a celebrity! If I do this, I’m going to screw it up, and it’s like you said, I need to maintain a reputation.”

“Yeah, well, strong and silent isn’t working for the general public anymore.” She looked down at her tablet. “You have ten minutes to get whatever this is together. I’ll get you some water or something, just–” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “fix this.”

The hero had thought they wanted to be alone. They thought so terribly wrong.

They could feel themself begin to struggle for breath, and reached desperately behind for the wall, arms shaking as they slid down.

Press conferences, they asked for no press conferences, and there was an agreement. They would save the day, they would leave the scene. Strong and silent type, sturdy and dependable.

But the minute they opened their mouth out there, they would stutter, they would say something they’re not supposed to, they would mess it up, they knew they would.

Reputation could make or break, and with the hero’s public speaking ability, it would break.

People would stop looking to them for help, would start thinking of them as awful and horrible when all they wanted to do help. Quickly, quietly, just help.

“What a mess.” A voice spoke from the dark.

Though their arms still lacked a sense of firmness, they managed to pull themselves back up.

“Good, very good.” The voice said. “You were compressing yourself, making it harder to get air.”

“You.” The hero managed.

“Me.” The villain grinned, approaching them slowly.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re still tensing your muscles.” Their arms shot out, placing their hands on the hero’s shoulders. “Relax these.”

“Why?” The hero shoved them off. “So you can fight me while I’m vulnerable?”

“No, so you can go out there and speak without losing your head. Do you want that?”

The hero’s jaw tensed, a sign that they didn’t want to hear anything the villain had to say, but they nodded nonetheless.

“Then listen. Unclench your jaw, take a deep breath in, now hold it, very good.” The villain once again placed their hands on the hero’s shoulders. “Breathe out, keep the pattern. You need to relax the shoulders, your back will do the same subsequently. Hey, the breathing pattern, keep it. Yeah? There we are.”

With one final steady breath out, the hero’s arms firm again and their stance solid, they wrapped their hands around the villain’s wrists, and removed their hold on their shoulders.

“I need to return you to the authorities.”

“Mm, no, you need to focus on what you’ll be saying to the swarms of reporters. Believe me, they’ll be asking bait pieces. Just remember that there’s no shame in taking your time to answer the question. They’ll think of you as thoughtful, and that’ll help with the strong and silent thing you have going on right now.”

Stepping back, the hero did a once over.

“Oddly sound advice. Why?”

The villain also took a step back, glancing to the hallway where the manager had disappeared to.

“I did want to shake things up a bit. Scare you, scare the public, but it looks like she,” The villain nodded towards the hallway. “got the scaring you part down. Expertly done, if I may add.”

“But the public?” The hero crossed their arms, eyes blazing. “Still want to try something?”

“Oh, relax. Don’t get yourself worked up. Seriously.”

The hero said nothing, continuing to scrutinize the villain, waiting for them to strike.

A strike never came.

“I appreciate your due diligence.” The villain admitted quietly. “And the people in this city like to tear people like you and I apart-”

“We aren’t the same-”

“But they don’t always think so. I appreciate your due diligence. I…appreciate that it’s tough work. I don’t want to see them turn that, or you, into something perverse.”

The hero raised a brow, then snapped to attention, as did villain.

Quick clicking heels, their expectant manager coming back.

“Breathing pattern, if you need it again, lean back and keep away from the mics. Time to consider an answer is good, and if you can throw in a thoughtful pose during that time, you might end up on the cover of a glam magazine, or get yourselves some very loyal fans who’ll fawn over your looks.”

“My look-?”

“I’ll be watching from the comfort of my home. Break a leg, Hero. Due diligence.”

The villain melted back into the small slips of darkness the studio allowed, very good at that trick apparently, something the hero would have to take note of in the future.

“Okay.” Their manager’s voice cut across the hero’s thoughts. “This is good, this is better.”

Handing them a bottle of water and a rag, she made a motion across her forehead.

“Dab off the sweat. You ready?”

“Strong, silent, and sturdy doesn’t work for the public anymore?” Looking back to where the villain was, the hero nodded. “Then let’s see what does.”

Due diligence.

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[cutiesigh]

❤️🖤🩷

Wuthering Waves has taken over all of my free time recently, so here's a sketch of Scar!Ren I originally shared in da 14DWY Discord!!

[katsu28]

home is wherever you are

pairing: charles leclerc x reader

summary: secretly falling in love with your best friend is tough. secretly falling in love with your best friend who also happens to be your roommate is even less than ideal. the solution? move out! (hint: it isn’t a very good one.) (5k)

warnings: angst with a happy ending, a smidge of google translated french lol

a/n: CHARLES LECLERC!!! CHARLES LECLERC!!!!LECLERC!!! LECLERAUGHCOUGHCOUGH

“I still cannot believe you’re abandoning me.” 

Charles shoved another box of your things into the boot of your car rather huffily, as if to reiterate just how unhappy he was. 

“I’m not abandoning you, I’m moving out of your apartment.” You sighed, rolling your eyes playfully at him. You passed him the last box off the ground, wiping your hands off on your shorts before propping them on your hips. 

“That is quite literally the same thing.” He mirrored your stance in total seriousness, frown unwavering. “And it’s not my apartment, it’s yours now too. Your home.” 

You’d been living with Charles for a while now, having been suddenly evicted from your own place three, almost four years ago. With nowhere else to go, you’d turned to your best friend, and Charles had welcomed you with open arms, giving you a home when you’d needed it most. 

There were many good things about living with Charles—he liked to cook (which boded well with you, seeing as you were no master chef yourself. Except for when he’d gone through a questionable phase of combining cuisines that did not go well together.), he was respectful of set boundaries and agreed upon rules. You had the same taste in shows and movies, which made for little fighting when it came to deciding on what to watch. 

But most notably, he loved to play the piano. It was a hobby he’d picked up during long days spent staying at home, and he was good at it too. An electronic keyboard when he’d first started out, just to see if it was something he was serious about, but as he zoomed through the basics with ease, he’d splurged on a gorgeous white piano that stood proudly in the living room. 

Soon enough, it wasn’t unusual for the apartment to be full of music, beautiful songs of Charles’ own composing. 

He played whenever he had the feeling. Whenever he had something on his mind, whenever he was bored, anything, he’d spend hours at the piano, playing, playing, playing. Some might’ve called it annoying, but not you. You found it rather soothing. 

It had very quickly become a habit of yours to fall asleep listening to Charles play. Something about it seemed to always relax you just enough to the point where you could pretty much fall asleep anywhere if he was at the bench. 

Your favorite spot was on the sofa with a big blanket, watching him get lost in the notes until you drifted off. More often than not, you could rarely get a good night’s sleep without Charles’ accompaniment—your very own version of white noise. 

But truth be told, this past year of living together with Charles had been trickier than the first couple. You couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment things began to change, but something had definitely shifted between you. 

You’d been trying to write it off just the two of you being very close, but you’d been dancing on the line of close friends and more than friends for a long time. Falling asleep together cuddled on the sofa, lingering touches whilst you were in the same room and in passing, hugs that lasted a little too long to be considered normal. 

The more your feelings for Charles grew, the more worried you became. Worried about what, you weren’t exactly sure. All you knew was you didn’t want to lose the longest and best friendship you’d ever had because you went and fell in love.

“I know. But I think it’s well past time I get out of your hair and try being on my own for once.” You said softly, stepping in to fold yourself into Charles’ arms. 

Most of that was true. You did feel like you needed to live by yourself for a chance, to see what it was like to be fully independent in your adult life. You’d moved in with Charles when you were twenty two, and you were twenty five now. It was time for you to venture out on your own. 

But the uncertainty of falling in love with your best friend was definitely also a contributing factor. 

He made a displeased sound at your words, but tucked you under his chin nonetheless. “I don’t want you to get out of my hair. My hair likes it with you here.” 

“I live fifteen minutes away, Cha. I’m not moving across the country. You and your hair can come over anytime.” You scoffed, giving him a gentle poke in the ribs. “And I’ll come over here all the time too, you know that.” 

“Fine, fine. I don’t know what I am supposed to do with your empty room now, but I’ll figure it out. Maybe I will take up scrapbooking. Knitting. Needlepoint, maybe. Turn it into a craft room.” 

“Maybe you can turn it into a music room. Move the keyboard in there, your piano.” 

“Ah, bien entendu, my piano. How will you ever fall asleep without my sweet, sweet melodies?” 

“I think I will manage just fine.” You chuckled. 

Charles held you at arms’ length, dark brows furrowing as he scowled. “What I’m hearing is you don’t love me anymore.” 

Oh, if only he knew. 

You smiled instead, patting his cheek good-naturedly. “Come on, you drama queen. I want to move in before the sun goes down.” 

Charles went full protection mode the second all your belongings had made it safely inside the apartment, intently checking every lock, window, door hinge, cabinet—not an inch of the apartment went uninspected by him. When he seemed fairly satisfied with his safety checks, he returned to where you were unpacking kitchen items over by the oven.

“Everything up to your standards?” You asked, pulling out a stack of plates wrapped in brown paper. Charles shuffled over, easing them out of your hands and unwrapping them to help put them up in the cabinet. “No one is going to break in through my window tonight?”

“Don’t even joke about that.” He grumbled, chucking the balled up paper at you gently. “Everything I checked is fine. You will be safe here.” 

Food was simple when it came time for dinner—takeout on the floor of your living room, because you hadn’t had the time to go shopping for a coffee table yet. Or a dining room table. Or even chairs, really. All you had were some pillows and an overturned cardboard box to put the food on. 

Charles had insisted on helping you furnish the whole place before you moved in but you’d declined, saying that you wanted to get a feel for the place before filling it with everything. The last time it would be this empty would be the day you moved out. 

He seemed a little quiet the rest of the night, but you didn’t press it until after dinner, whilst he was helping you with the washing up. Well, helping was a strong word. 

“You’ve been drying that plate for ages now.” You observed, tilting your head at him thoughtfully. Charles inhaled sharply, shaking his head like he’d been snapped out of a stupor. He glanced down at the completely dry plate, then back up at you blankly. “What’re you thinking about?” 

“You’re really going to be gone.”

“You say that like I told you I’ve only got days to live. I won’t be gone, Cha. I’ll be around.” You chuckled, flicking dish soap bubbles in his direction. Charles responded by flinging his towel at you, cracking a smile. You liked it when he smiled, hated it when he frowned. He was still unfairly attractive, but it wasn’t Charles’ scowl that made you fall in love with him. 

“We can spend the day together anytime, you can come over whenever you want, and if it makes you feel any better, I will give you your very own key.” 

That seemed to put him a little more in higher spirits. 

 “What will you ever do without me?” He wondered out loud, feigning a thoughtful expression. 

“Probably clean up a lot less. Be able to take a shower without running out of hot water halfway through. Oh! Have a bottle of shampoo last more than a month because someone—not naming names, of course, won’t use it because they’ve run out of theirs. Not have to fight for—” 

“Alright, alright, I get it!” Charles huffed, grabbing you by the shoulders and promptly shoving your face into his chest to stop you from talking. 

You grinned against the softness of his hoodie. “Shall I go on?” 

“No, no you shouldn’t.” His hold on you loosened, but you stayed right where you were, wrapping your arms around his torso. “Just admit it. You’ll miss me.” 

“I will miss you.” You said softly, pressing your cheek into the crook of his neck. If there was something Charles was unbelievably good at (besides literally anything he’d ever tried), it was giving the best hugs. Something about them made you feel safe, like nothing and nobody could ever hurt you as long as you were in his arms. 

“You already know how much I’m going to miss having you around.” 

“Yeah, I am pretty great.” 

A laugh rumbled through his chest. “You are.” 

“You’ve been the best roommate I could’ve asked for. Thank you for everything.” Your words were muffled between the two of you, and you were glad for it, because he didn’t seem to notice the waver in your tone. But he did squeeze you a little tighter, so maybe he did hear you. “I love you, Cha.” 

Charles’ voice seemed to waver just a bit too. “I love you too.” 

“Okay, okay, you really need to leave. Go before I change my mind and make you stay.” You blurted, pushing him away playfully. It was better than letting him see you get emotional. 

“Is that a promise?” 

“No, it’s a threat. Go home. I will see you soon.” You gave his hand one last squeeze, nodding reassuringly to rid him of the crease between his brows. “Don’t worry about me. Go, get some rest.” 

It was only then that he seemed satisfied enough to leave, but even then, he cast another backwards glance towards you on his way down the hall, as if he was waiting for you to beckon him back. You just smiled as best you could. 

You’d get over it. You had to. There was still a lot you needed to get done before you called it a night. 

It wasn’t until you were getting ready to go to bed that you started to feel lonely. You and Charles had your respective bedtime routines, but they always intertwined. 

You never liked being the one to turn off all the lights in the apartment because the switch was at the end of the hallway opposite from your bedrooms, so he knew to do it because you hated running back through the darkness after flipping the switch. 

He always filled a glass with water for late night sipping, but never remembered to actually bring it to his room until he was already in bed, so you always grabbed it for him so he wouldn’t have to make the trek back out the kitchen.  

The bathroom counter was where you’d find each other the most, terrible jokes and funny stories told muffled through toothpaste bubbles, even though you could’ve just waited until you were finished to tell each other. You’d flick water at him as you washed your face because he took up too much space at the sink, he’d turn off the tap in retaliation, things like that. 

Sometimes Charles would stay up later playing video games with his friends, or take some extra time to practice piano, so you wouldn’t get to do your well oiled machine routine, but he’d always take the extra second to pop into your room to say goodnight when he heard you bustling around, even if he was in the middle of something. 

The times you fell asleep on the sofa to Charles’ playing the piano, he’d camp out at the other end of the sofa for the night, or at the very least made sure you were covered with a blanket if he went to sleep in his own room. 

It was something you’d grown accustomed to over the years, oftentimes the well-needed end to a not so great day. Charles never failed to put a smile on your face, even with something as small and mundane as a bedtime routine. 

But there was none of that as you ran through your routine this time. 

You didn’t hear him shuffling around over in the other room, the muffled sounds of his shouts as he played his games, and most of all, you didn’t hear him and his piano. 

Because there was no Charles. Of course there wasn’t. You were in this new place that you hadn’t had quite nearly enough of a chance to get used to yet, alone, and it was finally settling in. 

Suddenly moving out and away from him seemed like the worst decision in the world. 

You knew it was only the first night. You had to give yourself a chance to reacclimate, and that would take time. So you inhaled a deep breath, trying to get as comfy as you could for a long, probably sleepless night ahead. 

It was nearing four in the morning when you finally decided to give up and call Charles. Part of you thought he might not even pick up the phone, because he was probably asleep. Any sane person would be sleeping right now. 

Much to your surprise, he answered on the second ring. 

“Why are you awake?” You asked, maybe a bit harshly. 

“Um, you are the one who called me? Why are you awake?” He replied, groggy voice still teasing. His accent always grew thicker when he was sleepy. You thought it was adorable. “You cannot sleep, can you?” 

“...No.” Your voice grew smaller. You felt embarrassed at the fact that you couldn’t even make it one full night without Charles around. “I just…I wanted to hear your voice, I guess. I miss you already, Cha.” 

Charles fell silent for a few moments, the only sound on his side of the line being his gentle exhales. “I miss you too. Do you want me to come over? I can stay the night, if you want.” 

“No. No, you don’t need to do that.” You said softly. “Can you just talk to me?” 

This was also something that had become somewhat of a ritual when either of you couldn’t sleep. 

You’d tiptoe into each other’s rooms quiet as a mouse, slipping into bed beside the other. Charles always stirred when he felt the bed dip under your weight, half asleep but still reaching out to pull you against his chest like it was second nature. On the occasions when he came into your room, you’d feel him tuck himself close to you, nosing against any part of you he could find with a content sigh. 

There was no rhyme or reason to the things you’d talk about in those moments, but eventually, somehow, you’d both end up asleep, usually fairly quickly. Maybe it was the extra added comfort of each other that helped, you could never tell. 

It wasn’t unusual to wake up a jumble of limbs tangled together, and neither of you ever addressed it either. Just went on with your business as usual, never talking about it because it was just something you did. To help each other sleep, of course. 

Another thing that really blurred the line between friends and more. 

Charles hummed a noncommittal sound, soft and fond like he always was around you. “I’ll do you one better. How about I play some music for you?” 

“Yes, please. Thank you.” You sighed, relieved. He knew what you needed without you even having to ask. 

You heard him get up, footsteps padding along until there was a thud and some shuffling coming from Charles’ side. A few warm up scales in and you were already feeling a little less anxious, letting yourself get comfortable. 

“Any requests from the audience?” 

“Been working on anything new?” You yawned, nuzzling a little deeper back into your pillow. 

“I have, actually. It’s still—fuck, how do you say it…a work in progress?”

“Anything you play is perfect.”

“You flatter me.” He snorted. “Alright, here goes nothing.”  

He began to play. You knew jack shit about music, so there wasn’t much you could think of to describe how it sounded, but you could describe how it felt. You could almost feel the emotion pouring from his playing, even through the scratchy quality of the speaker. 

It felt like something you’d hear in the background of a movie montage, lilting and delicate and warm notes swirling together to create a bright melody, and you couldn’t help but let your mind wander. 

Memories of good times with Charles flashed through your head—all the long days and even longer nights you’d spent together because you thrived in each other’s company, cooking together, binging Netflix shows until you both passed out on the sofa. 

Hushed laughing during dinners at fancy restaurants that Charles could get into by flashing his name, soft conversations accompanied with expensive food and even more expensive wine. 

Day trips up the coast with the top down on the car, pushing the speed limit just to feel an ounce of the freedom that it could give you. Walking through Monte Carlo on late night gelato runs, switching flavors because you both enjoyed each other’s choice more than your own. 

Most of all, you thought of the love you felt for Charles, ever since you’d first met him. You’d never been one to believe in the concept of soulmates, but fuck, it was so easy to think of him as yours. Never had you felt as much for someone as you did for him. 

God, why were you even thinking of those things? 

It would never happen. Any love that Charles had for you would be strictly platonic, limited to however much one could love their best friend. 

Surely he’d drawn inspiration from something else when he’d composed the beautiful piece. You weren’t sure if you wanted to know. 

Soon enough, you’d drifted off like you always did when Charles played, coincidentally right before he came to a lingering stop. 

Had you been awake, you would’ve heard him say that the beautiful piece had been inspired by you. Instead you were fast asleep, still none the wiser to anything. Maybe it was a good thing. You might not have believed it if you’d heard him. 

-------

Charles was on your doorstep first thing in the morning, coffee and pastries in hand when you opened the door for him. 

“Hello, good morning, your savior is here. And with breakfast!” He chirped, coming to just enough of a halt for you to slide an arm around his shoulders in a hug and grab one of the drinks out of the tray before he swept past you.

Bright morning sunlight poured into the open area, washing the whole place aglow. A warm breeze floated in through the ajar window, rattling the shutters only slightly, and you could hear the all too familiar sounds of the city in the morning coming from the streets below. It was a gorgeous picture of peace; one of the apartment���s many fun quirks that convinced you to go for it in the first place. 

The only thing that might’ve rivaled the beauty of the moment was Charles standing at the window, leaning against the sill drinking his coffee while the breeze ruffled his hair. His back was to you as he checked out the view, but even the mere image of him here was nice. 

You sipped your own coffee, smiling to yourself when you realized Charles remembered exactly how you took it. You didn’t even need to look inside the bag to know they were your favorite pastries from the bakery down the street from your former apartment that both you and Charles loved. He was always thoughtful like that. Things like remembering your favorite foods and drinks, and going out of his way to get them as a little pick-me-up. 

It seemed wrong to ruin the moment, but you felt like you had to say something. 

“I’m sorry for waking you up last night.” You sighed, taking a cross-legged seat on a pillow. 

Charles turned away from the window, shaking his head quickly. He took a seat on the floor next to you, long legs stretching out towards your crossed ones to nudge a sneaker against your socked foot. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, I’m glad you called me.” 

“Right, but it’s kind of pathetic, isn’t it? First time on my own and I didn’t even last a whole night.” 

“Not pathetic.” He insisted, entirely firm in his words. He set his cup down as if it could strengthen his point. “It is a change, definitely. You can’t expect yourself to get used to such a big change immediately. It takes time, you know.” 

You messed with the lid of your cup, picking at the plastic with a scowl. “I know. But I can’t always come running to you whenever I need help. It’s not fair to you to have to keep rescuing me every time I need saving.” 

“Okay…” He trailed off, stretching out the last syllable in confusion. “I feel this is about something more than just last night. We can talk about it, if you would like?”

“I don’t know what it is.” You huffed. “I thought I was ready to be on my own, but maybe I’m not. Maybe I don’t know I’m doing and I’ll never figure it out, and—” 

“Whoa, whoa, slow down. Where is this all coming from?” 

“I don’t know,” You repeated, bordering on a whine. “But what I do know is that I can’t always keep relying on you for everything. It’s not good for me, or for you.” 

“You know, you could always just move back home if you’re truly not ready to do things on your own.” Charles offered, taking a casual sip of his own drink.

Home. He said it so casually, like home was with him instead of this new place you’d chosen to make yours. In a way, Charles was your home. Safety, comfort, love—all the things that made something home, you felt with him. 

That was the problem. You didn’t feel right relying on him for all those things, not without him being aware of how you actually felt about him. It seemed like too much of a burden to put on a friend, even one as perfect as Charles. 

His eyes met yours over the rim and he shrugged. “I still don’t know why you were so insistent on moving out in the first place.” 

You sighed, again. There weren’t many ways you could make yourself any clearer. Other than telling Charles one of the real reasons why you had to leave, which again, was more of a last resort (hopefully not at all) type of thing. “It was time—” 

“It was time for you to venture out on your own, yes, I know. But it doesn’t seem to be working out so well right now, does it not?” The last sentence seemed to slip out of Charles’ mouth before he knew what he was saying, because his mouth snapped shut right afterward. “I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I don’t want to argue.” 

But what had been done was done, what had been said was out there for you to know. Your coffee suddenly left a bitter taste in your mouth, and the traffic from outside became glaringly loud. The once peaceful atmosphere had been shattered now that you knew Charles’ true thoughts on it all. 

You stood up, letting your feet take you across the room from him. “No. Tell me more, Charles. Tell me how you really feel.” 

His nose wrinkled at the use of his full name. You never called him Charles unless you were upset with him, which wasn’t that often. Even hearing it come out of your own mouth seemed foreign. 

That seemed to change his reaction, because he stood too instead, doubling down on his words. “Okay. Yes, that is how I feel about you leaving. You barely even talked to me about it, and the next thing I knew, you were packing all your things into boxes! I didn’t understand where this—this sudden desire to leave came from. I still don’t.”

“You don’t have to understand it. It’s already done.” 

“Did I—did I do something wrong?”

You almost faltered. Almost.

“Did you ever think maybe me wanting to leave had nothing to do with you?” 

“Honestly? No. It feels like it has everything to do with me. It feels like you moved out because you didn’t want to be around me anymore!” Charles exclaimed. “And I have kept my mouth shut, I’ve been trying to be supportive of your decision, but I think I have a right to know. Am I why you wanted to leave so badly?” 

“That’s…part of it.” You admitted. Charles froze, brows flying up towards his hairline. “But not because of anything you did. Not because of the reason you’re thinking of.” 

“I don’t really see any other explanation. And I am sorry, but that is a shit excuse. I would’ve thought that you of all people would tell me the truth.” He didn’t sound angry, just disappointed and a little hurt. Somehow that felt worse. You’d rather him be mad at you than hurt by you. 

“I didn’t want to move out.” You said firmly. 

“Then why did you?” 

“I had to! I—I couldn’t live there anymore.” 

“But why?” He sounded desperate, begging for you to clue him in to any reason, anything at all that would help him understand. And god, as scared as you were of changing things by telling Charles how you really felt about him, you were infinitely more scared of losing him for good if you didn’t. 

“Because I’m fucking in love with you, Charles!” You blurted, finally. “I couldn’t live with you any longer, keeping this huge secret all the time, because it truly made me feel like I was about to explode. I just couldn’t do it anymore—pretend like everything was alright when every time I looked at you, all I could think about was how I felt about you! How much I felt for you.” Your voice rose with every word, emotion lacing your tone. 

You could feel the tears burning your eyes, threatening to fall no matter how much you willed them not to. “I just thought, maybe if we lived apart, if we didn’t see each other all the time, maybe those feelings would go away.” 

Charles blinked at you slowly. He scrubbed a hand over his cheek, across his mouth, letting it disappear into the neckline of his hoodie as he continued the motion near his jaw. Still, he said nothing. You weren’t sure if it was a good sign or a bad one, but still you continued. 

“So no, it wasn’t because of anything you did. Or maybe it was, for making it so fucking easy to fall in love with you. I don’t know. I’m sorry if I made you feel like you couldn’t say anything to me, but I’m not sorry for making the decision on my own. It was for the best.”

There it was, out there in the open at last. It felt like a proverbial weight lifted off your shoulders, but at the same time like a thousand rocks sinking to the bottom of your stomach, because he wasn’t saying anything. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was how you’d fuck up the best friendship you’d ever had. 

Charles was silent for the longest time before he replied, and when he did, his voice was quieter than you’d ever heard it before. It felt unnerving. “You could’ve just told me.” 

“Told you?” You had to fight the urge to let out a bitter, watery laugh. “Telling your best friend you’ve fallen in love with him isn’t just something you mention at the bathroom sink one night.” 

“It is, if he feels the same way about you.” 

A coldness crept down your neck, shooting through your veins like you’d just had a bucket of ice cold water dumped over your head. 

“No you’re not—you don't...you can't.” You whispered, disbelieving.

Charles’ brows furrowed in confusion. “What, do you want me to prove it?” 

You couldn’t give him an answer even if you wanted to. You weren’t sure if you could trust yourself to say a damn word, just in case this was all a dream and you'd wake up any second, still alone, still without him there.

He must’ve taken your silence as a yes to his question, because he crossed the room in three strides, took your face in firm hands, and he kissed you. 

Despite your utter shock, you managed to kiss him back clumsily, fingers curling into his hoodie tightly. Charles kissed you like he was afraid to let you go, like you’d slip through his fingers if he wasn’t careful enough.

A guiding hand curled around the back of your neck, angling your head so he could deepen the kiss, but only for a few seconds before he broke away, panting. His forehead stayed pressed against yours, soulful green eyes boring into your own in total seriousness.

“Do you believe me now?” 

“Maybe.” You breathed, letting your nose bump against his gently. This was not a dream. Charles was real and here and one hell of a kisser (just as you suspected).

“I am in love with you.” He murmured, stroking his thumb over your cheek fondly. “I have been for a long time. And I never thought you would feel the same way.” 

“I love you, Cha.” You were suddenly brought back to last night, when you’d uttered the same words to him. Only this time, they had a whole different meaning to them. 

This time, you knew Charles loved you in the same way you loved him.

follow @katsu-library to be notified when i post new fics :)

[shroomerr]

Finally, my design for Mysterion!! this boy gave me so much heartache in the process of making this but its ok its all worth it for him <3

I also couldn't choose between the version with hair or without hair, so here's the one without under the cut (+ my initial drafts for his design):

[taikin4]

the seeds 🛐

[qiornono]

PLEASE PLS PLS read in memoriam by alice winn this book changed my freaking life!!!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Danse Macabre

[Commission]

[bibuckaroo]

i need to talk about this because this is very important to me:

yes, khun is down bad for bam and we KNOW that, but we need to start appreciating the fact that bam is down bad for him too and he’s just as embarrassing about it, like, this is not one sided, guys. the only difference is that bam always has a lot of shit going on, while khun always only deals with bam related problems.

but examples of bam being down bad:

• always singles khun out in a group, he’s the first person he sees and unless someone else interacts with him, he continues to only focus on khun, to the point that endorsi herself talks about this more than once, because she’s jealous that bam isn’t paying attention to her.

• while bam doesn’t like seeing any of his friends hurt, he usually doesn’t stop them from joining fights if they insist on it, he’ll just do his best to protect them. but here’s the thing: if he can help it, he doesn’t even let khun join a fight in a physical way and when khun looks like he’s going to leave his post in his lighthouse, bam explicitly tells him not to do that because it’s too dangerous, because to him khun belongs in the safety of his lighthouses, strategizing and protecting their friends.

• at the end of the day, the person bam is going to open to will always be khun. this is explicitly made aware when he bids both endorsi and yuri good night (two people who are his close friends and he’s known for years, and could’ve open up to at anytime) because they said they were going to rest, but when khun tried to do the same, he stopped him and asked if he could speak to him about the master key. very important!!! bam also wants to be the person khun opens up to, but every time he manages to ask him something personal, they get interrupted (looking at you, endorsi).

• bam actually stated it himself that khun ‘is his most precious friend’ when talking about why he was protecting ran, in terms of him being khun’s brother. enough said about it, khun is already on a whole other level to anybody else, and how insane it is that he’s willing to lay down his life for ran because he knows it would upset khun if anything happened to him?

• RACHEL HERSELF POINTED OUT THAT KHUN IS BAM’S PRIORITY!!! when she asked bam why he was giving her a fair chance in terms of getting the thorn fragment, literally her first assumption was because she had saved khun’s life.

• i also feel that is important to point out that while bam may not want khun in the direct line of danger, there is no one he trusts more than khun, because he knows that at the end of the day he can take care of himself, he just wishes he wasn’t put into a position where he had to. like in the sweetfish situation, he had a choice of where to go and he chose to go to hoaquin because he knew khun was with the sweetfish and he trusted khun to have a plan, even though he was worried.

• lastly, i need to mention this because i have never seen nobody talk about that: bam tries to hold on to the image of himself from the test floor in his interactions with khun a lot. after his time as jue viole grace, every time we see him interacting with other characters we see him serious and determined but rarely smiling, even with his old friends, but with khun i noticed a lot of instances that he does the closed eyed smile to reassure that everything was fine and while a part of me wants to believe that the only reason this happens is because khun just brings out this side of him, i also believe that is because (at least in a subconscious level) he believes that is the version of himself khun grew to care for (since we know bam segregates his personality, since his sworn enemy is the version of himself that is jue viole grace) and if he’s not that version anymore, will khun still care for him? (welp, this just got really angsty).

to end all of this: basically, i feel like we talk a lot about khun and his obsession with bam (affectionate) but we don’t talk enough about bam’s with him because his moments are always more subtle and usually get lost in everything else that’s happening on bam’s life.

and i noticed that we, in the khunbam fandom, tend to be able to read khun better (he truly is easier to read) than bam, but now this post makes me want to do a character study on bam.

[journey-to-the-attic]

uh oh

[old-skyguy]

The silly stupid alien show about ghosts that steal your cock and balls just pulled the most gut wrenching, poignant shit possible and portrayed it so artistically and meaningfully what is even life.

This was MASTERFULLY done. The visual and environmental storytelling, the subtle foreshadowing, and inject those motifs into my fucking BLOOD.

Ho. Ly shit. Good fucking lord.

[hippolotamus]

I’m thinking about how Tommy just visibly relaxes when Buck assures him the kiss was ok. How he got all flirty and ‘came in a car today so I actually have to worry about traffic’. The whole finger guns and Call Eddie thing with his adorable nose scrunch.

So cut to the moment he closes the door and is standing in the hallway (while Buck is all smiley faced/shocked Pikachu just inside). I just imagine Tommy sagging against the wall and like letting his head fall back and his eyes close. And he’s thinking to himself *holy fuck. that’s a Thing that just happened. I just kissed that beautiful guy.* And maybe he makes this hysterical little breathy laugh about that because the whole thing could have gone massively sideways. He could have ruined things with Eddie’s Best Friend and Chris’s idol.

He takes the steps 2 at a time down to his car because he has this extra spring in his step and feels lighter than air and life is Good™️ Even shitty crosstown traffic isn’t enough to sour his mood. When he gets to Harbor, Lucy and his team tease him, asking if he got lucky before shift and he just rolls with it, ignoring them pressing for details.

Later, after a few calls and they have a little downtime, it finally really hits him. He decided to shoot his shot and he kissed Evan.

Now, Tommy is an experienced guy and this isn’t exactly new territory. But. Tommy of 10+ years ago… Tommy working under Gerrard and the macho bravado BS of the LAFD, Tommy who had to listen to all the horrible ignorant comments when DOMA was passed, Tommy who didn’t know yet what Right was supposed to feel like and didn’t get what all those RomComs were trying to sell — he’s proud of himself. Because he didn’t think this would ever happen. He didn’t think this — living open and free and loving how he wanted — was even a possibility for him. But it is. It’s his life and he gets to have it. He huffs out a wet chuckle, glad no one’s really paying attention to his epiphany.

And jfc he can’t fucking wait until Saturday.

[fatehbaz]

patience being tested. being forced by a bizarre unfortunate situation to adhere to university requirement technicality by taking this simple basic elementary "introduction to environmental history" class.

this class is from facilitators/program which do, like, "history of the American frontier" or "history of fishing and hunting" and still basically subscribe to that old-school twentieth-century idealization and celebration of characters like Teddy Roosevelt and reverence for a mythical arc-of-history-bent-towards-justice narrative of the often-clumsy but ultimately-benevolent US federal government and its mission to "save nature" through the miracle of "sustained yield," while heroic federal land management agencies and "heritage" institutions lead to way, staffed by exceptional individuals (appeals to nostalgia for the frontier and an imagined landscape of the American West; ego-stroking appeals to flattering self-image that center the environmentalist or academic). where they invoke, y'know, ideas like "ecology is important because don't you enjoy cross-country skiing in The Woods with your niece and nephew? don't you like hunting and fishing?" which makes it feel like a time capsule of appeals and discourses from the 1970s. and it invokes concept of "untouched wilderness" (while eliding scale of historical Indigenous environmental relationships and current ongoing colonial violence/extractivism). but just ever-so-slightly updated with a little bit of chic twenty-first-century flair like a superficial land acknowledgement or a reference to "labor histories" or "history from below," which is extra aggravating when the old ideologies/institutions are still in power but they're muddying the water and diluting the language/frameworks (it's been strange, watching words like "multispecies" and "Anthropocene" over the years slowly but surely show-up on the posters, fliers, course descriptions, by now even appearing adjacent to the agri-business and resource extraction feeder programs, like a recuperation or appropriation.) even from a humanities angle, it's still, they're talking at me like "You probably didn't know this, but environmental history is actually pretty entangled with political and social events. In fact, we can synthesize sources and glean environmental info from wacky places like workers' rolls in factories, ship's logs, and poetry from the era." and i'm nodding like YEP.

the first homework assignment is respond to this: "Define and describe 'the Anthropocene'. Do you think 'the Anthropocene' is a useful concept? Why or why not?" Respond in 300 words.

so for fun, right now in class, going to see how fast i can pull up discussion of Anthropocene-as-concept solely from my old posts on this microblogging site.

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ok, found some

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I think that the danger in any universal narrative or epoch or principle is exactly that it can itself become a colonizing force. [...] I’m suspicious of the Anthropocene as concept for the very reason that it subsumes so many peoples, nations, histories, geographies, political orders. For that reason, I think ideas like the Anthropocene can be a useful short-hand for a cluster of tangible things going on with the Earth at the moment, but we have to be very careful about how fluid and dynamic ideas become concretized into hegemonic principles in the hands of researchers, policymakers, and politicians. There’s so much diversity in histories and experiences and environmental realities even between relatively linked geographies here in Canada [...]. Imagine what happens when we try to do that on a global scale - and a lot of euro-western Anthropocene, climate change and resilience research risks doing that - eliding local specificities and appropriating knowledge to serve a broader euro-western narrative without attending to the inherent colonial and imperial realities of science and policy processes, or even attending to the ways that colonial capitalist expansion has created these environmental crises to begin with. While we, as a collective humanity, are struggling with the realities of the Anthropocene, it is dangerous to erase the specific histories, power-relations, political orders that created the crisis to begin with. So, I’m glad that a robust critique of the Anthropocene as a concept is emerging.

Text by: Words of Zoe Todd, as interviewed and transcribed by Caroline Picard. “The Future is Elastic (But it Depends): An Interview with Zoe Todd.” 23 August 2016.

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The Great Acceleration is the latest in a series of human-driven planetary changes that constitute what a rising chorus of scientists, social scientists, and humanists have labeled the Anthropocene - a new Age of Humans. [...] But what the Anthropocene label masks, and what the litany of graphs documenting the Great Acceleration hide, is a history of racial oppression and violence, along with wealth inequality, that has built and sustained engines of economic growth and consumption over the last four centuries. [...] The plantation, Sidney Mintz long ago observed, was a “synthesis of field and factory,” an agro-industrial system of enterprise [...]. Plantation legacies, along with accompanying strategies of survival and resistance, dwell in the racialized geographies of the United States’ and Brazil’s prison systems. They surface in the inequitable toxic burdens experienced by impoverished communities of color in places like Cancer Alley, an industrial corridor of petrochemical plants running along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, where cotton was once king. And they appear in patterns of foreign direct investment and debt servitude that structure many land deals in the Caribbean, Brazil, and sub-Saharan Africa [...]. [C]limatologists and global change scientists from the University of London, propose instead 1610 as a date for the golden spike of the Anthropocene. The date marked a detectable global dip in carbon dioxide concentrations, precipitated, they argue, by the death of nearly 50 million indigenous human inhabitants [...]. The degradation of soils in the tobacco and cotton-growing regions in the American South, or in the sugarcane growing fields of many Caribbean islands, for example, was a consequence of an economic and social system that inflicted violence upon the land and the people enslaved to work it. Such violent histories are not so readily evident in genealogies that date the Anthropocene’s emergence to the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago, the onset of Europe’s industrial revolution circa 1800, or the Trinity nuclear test of 1945. Sugarcane plantations were already prevalent throughout the Mediterranean basin during the late middle ages. But it was during the early modern era, and specifically in the Caribbean, where the intersection of emerging proto-capitalist economic models based on migratory forced labor (first indentured servitude, and later slavery), intensive land usage, globalized commerce, and colonial regimes sustained on the basis of relentless racialized violence, gave rise to the transformative models of plantations that reshaped the lives and livelihoods of human and non-human beings on a planetary scale. [...] We might, following the lead of science studies scholar Donna Haraway and anthropologist Anna Tsing, more aptly designate this era the Plantationocene. [...] It is also an invitation to see, in the words of geographer Laura Pulido, “the Anthropocene as a racial process,” one that has and will continue to produce “racially uneven vulnerability and death." [...] And how have such material transformations sustained global flows of knowledge and capital that continue to reproduce the plantation in enduring ways?

Text by: Sophie Sapp Moore, Monique Allewaert, Pablo F. Gomez, and Gregg Mitman. "Plantation Legacies." Edge Effects. 22 January 2019. Updated 15 May 2021. [Bold emphasis added by me.]

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Geologists and other scientists will fight over [the definition of the beginning start-date of the Anthropocene] in scientific language, seeking traces of carbon dioxide that index the worst offenses of European empire which rent and violated the flesh, bodies, and governance structures of Indigenous and other sovereign peoples in the name of gold, lumber, trade, land, and power. [...] The stories we tell about the origins of the Anthropocene implicate how we understand the relations we have with our surrounds. In other words, the naming of the Anthropocene epoch and its start date have implications not just for how we understand the world, but this understanding will have material consequences, consequences that affect body and land.

Text by: Heather Davis and Zoe Todd. On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME An International Journal for Critical Geographies. December 2017. [Bold emphasis added by me.]

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From Aime and Suzanne Cesaire, C. L. R. James, Claudia Jones, Eduoard Glissant, through Sylvia Wynter, Christina Sharpe, and so many others, critical anticolonial and race theory has been written from the specific histories that marked the Black Atlantic. [...] Glissant also reminds us, secondly, of how cunning the absorptive powers of [...] liberal capitalism are - how quickly specific relations are remade as relations-erasing universal abstractions. [...] This absorptive, relations-erasing universalism is especially apparent in some contemporary discourses of […] liberalism and climate collapse - what some call the Anthropocene - especially those that anchor the crisis in a general Human calamity which, as Sylvia Wynter has noted, is merely the name of an overdetermined and specific [White] European man. […] [T]he condition of creating this new common European world was the destruction of a multitude of existing black and brown worlds. The tsunami of colonialism was not seen as affecting humanity, but [...] these specific people. They were specific - what happened to them may have been necessary, regrettable, intentional, accidental - but it is always them. It is only when these ancestral histories became present for some, for those who had long benefitted from the dispossession [...], that suddenly the problem is all of us, as human catastrophe.

Text by: Elizabeth Povinelli. “The Ancestral Present of Oceanic Illusions: Connected and Differentiated in Late Toxic Liberalism.” e-flux Journal Issue #112. October 2020.

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The narrative arc [of White "liberal humanism"] [...] is often told as a kind of European coming-of-age story. […] The Anthropocene discourse follows the same coming-of-age [...] script, searching for a material origin story that would explain the newly identified trajectory of the Anthropos […]. Sylvia Wynter, W.E.B. DuBois, and Achille Mbembe all showed how that genealogy of [White subjecthood] was [...] articulated through sixteenth- through nineteenth-century [historiographies and discourses] in the context of colonialism, [...] as well as forming the material praxis of their rearrangement (through mining, ecological rearrangements and extractions, and forms of geologic displacements such as plantations, dams, fertilizers, crops, and introduction of “alien” animals). […] As Wynter (2000) commented, “The degradation of concrete humans, that was/is the price of empire, of the kind of [Eurocentric epistemology] that underlies it” (154).

Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. “The Inhumanities.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Volume 11, Issue 3. November 2020.

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As Yarimar Bonilla suggests in regard to post-Irma-and-Maria Puerto Rico, “vulnerability is not simply a product of natural conditions; it is a political state and a colonial condition.” Many in the Caribbean therefore speak about the coloniality of disaster, and the unnaturalness of these “natural” disasters [...]. Others describe this temporality by shifting [...] toward an idea of the Plantationocene [...]. As Moore and her colleagues write, “Plantation worlds, both past and present, offer a powerful reminder that environmental problems cannot be decoupled from histories of colonialism, capitalism, and racism that have made some human beings more vulnerable [...].” [W]e see that contemporary uneven socioecologies associated with the rise of the industrial world ["the Anthropocene"] are based [...] also on the racialized denial and foreshortening of life for the sacrificial majority of black, brown, and Indigenous people and their relegation to the “sacrifice zones” of extractive industry. [...] [A]ny appropriate response to the contemporary climate emergency must first appreciate its foundations in the past history of the violent, coercive, transatlantic system of plantation slavery; in the present global uneven development, antiblackness, and border regimes that shape human vulnerability [...] that continues to influence who has access to resources, safety, and preferable ecologies [...] and who will be relegated to the “plantation archipelagoes” (as Sylvia Wynter called them) [...].

Text by: Mimi Sheller. “Thinking Beyond Coloniality: Toward Radical Caribbean Futures.” Small Axe (2021), 25 (2 (65)), pages 169-170. Published 1 July 2021. [Bold emphasis added by me.]

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Indigenous genocide and removal from land and enslavement are prerequisites for power becoming operationalized in premodernity [...]; it was/is a means to operationalize extraction (therefore race should be considered as foundational rather than as periphery to the production of those structures and of global space). [...] Wynter suggests that we […] consider 1452 as the beginning of the New World, as African slaves are put to work on the first plantations on the Portuguese island of Madeira, initiating the “sugar-slave” complex - a massive replantation of ecologies and forced relocation of people […]. Wynter argues that the invention of the figure of Man in 1492 as the Portuguese [and Spanish] travel to the Americas instigates at the same time “a refiguring of humanness” in the idea of race. [...] The natal moment of the 1800 Industrial Revolution, […] [apparently] locates Anthropocene origination in […] the "new" metabolisms of technology and matter enabled by the combination of fossil fuels, new engines, and the world as market. […] The racialization of epistemologies of life and nonlife is important to note here […]. While [this industrialization in the nineteenth century] […] undoubtedly transformed the atmosphere with […] coal, the creation of another kind of weather had already established its salient forms in the mine and on the plantation. Paying attention to the prehistory of capital and its bodily labor, both within coal cultures and on plantations that literally put “sugar in the bowl” (as Nina Simone sings) […]. The new modes of material accumulation and production in the Industrial Revolution are relational to and dependent on their preproductive forms in slavery […]. In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners for their lost "property"] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain and its colonial enterprises and empire. [...] A significant proportion of funds were invested in the railway system connecting London and Birmingham (home of cotton production and […] manufacturing for plantations), Cambridge and Oxford, and Wales and the Midlands (for coal). Insurance companies flourished [...]. The slave-sugar-coal nexus both substantially enriched Britain and made it possible for it to transition into a colonial industrialized power […]. The slave trade […] fashioned the economic conditions (and institutions, such as the insurance and finance industries) for industrialization.

Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019. [Bold emphasis added by me.]

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[skyshipper]

HAPPY STAR WARS DAY! MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

[slitsfordan]

DanandPhilCrafts + Fucked Up Queer Devotion + Christian Homophobia: An Essay

We’ve all been talking about the willingness of Dan and Phil to perform the ritual, we’ve all been talking about the intimacy of carving out your lover’s heart, but I have not heard anyone talk about the fucked up side of Dan and Phil’s (fictional) relationship with each other, and with Him, so here goes.

On the craft channel, Dan and Phil act overwhelmingly positive, like satanic children’s show hosts, but this is clearly a farce. We see them drop their smiles quite a few times during the crafting- most notably in Glitter Faces when Dan’s craft turns out wrong, and when Phil cuts Dan’s hand. “Don’t cry, craft” is directed towards the audience, but it seems Dan and Phil are following their own advice. Cults, after all, prey on vulnerable people. While they do seem scared of doing the ritual, and their involvement with Him, they are, however, definitely willing. In

The blood on Dan after he kills Phil is interesting; The handprint on his shirt isn’t a sign of a struggle, but rather Phil just grabbing his shirt- that’s pretty intimate, honestly. The blood on his face could’ve been caused by a bunch of things: blood splatter he wiped at? wiping at his face (eyes?) with a bloody hand? or Phil holding his face? (I like the third option) The blood on his nose might totally have been accidental, and just a thing that happened, but it could also be an allusion to the cat whiskers, in the spirit of bringing things back to the beginning and whatnot.

After the ritual is complete, there’s the obvious tarot symbolism. @freckliedan has a great post about this, but I’ve got more to add, so bear with me. Yes, Dan and Phil are framed as the lovers, but that’s not all. While the sexual deviance associated with the devil card has clear connections to queerness, it’s main association is usually unhealthy relationships and dependence. From this, and the obvious devotion displayed in the video, the craft versions of Dan and Phil are implied to be unhealthily dependent on each other, and devoted to the point of obsession. While the relationship certainly isn’t abusive, this obsession just isn’t healthy.

Furthering the unhealthy relationship idea is when Phil calls Dan “Sampson”. In the Bible or whatever (I’m not Christian sue me) Sampson topples these pillars, killing both himself and his enemies, which has a clear parallel to Dan’s stacked ingredients falling over, but the use of “folly” is interesting, and suggests a further connection. Sampson had married a prostitute, and she sold him out, basically, leading to his enslavement and later death. In this story, this is the clearest and most obvious act of folly by Sampson: marrying someone who he shouldn’t have, someone who it was taboo for him to be with. Connected to Dan and Phil, it suggests that their relationship is dangerous due to the social taboo, but it’s also implied that Phil will betray Dan. Perhaps we’ll see that in a 5th crafts installment, or perhaps it’s simply a commentary on being in a relationship with someone considered unacceptable.

Speaking of unhealthy relationships, that’s sure what they’ve got with Him! Leading up to the ritual, Dan and Phil are shown to be scared of Him, even though they call Him their friend. Dan’s head shake when Phil says “crafting has improved my life in numerous ways” is very telling. At the end, Dan’s shoulders tense at His first footstep, however, when He actually touches Dan, he doesn’t seem scared at all- forgive me for this next point, but from the way he kinda leans into the touch and tilts his head back, it seems more like he’s going for “turned on” rather than “scared”.

“Okay, cool” you say, “but what does it mean?” Well, Dan and Phil’s relationship in this series is not just about homoerotic undertones- this is an allegory for toxic queer sexual relationships. Why would they make something about toxic relationships when they’re in a healthy relationship? With the toxicity, and the power imbalances, and the satanism, Dan and Phil’s (fictional) relationship is a representation of Christian fears of queerness, and the supposed immoral/corrupting/anti-Christian effects of being in a queer relationship. The fear Dan and Phil show throughout the series is representative of internalized homophobia. They’re scared to align themselves with Him because it means accepting their own queerness. Dan shows more fear than Phil throughout the series (like after his glitter face turns out to be a pentacle) which parallels his real world internalized homophobia that he’s experienced. By holding hands with the devil (or baphomet?) standing behind them, Dan and Phil have embodied every conservative fear about queerness, but have come out on top. Through their YouTube channel, we get to do the same.