#ik it's not romancy REALLY but ;-;

[tasteofyourblood]

[kirkwallguy]

astarion haters i understand you so deeply as a solas hater. however im kind of endeared by his beautiful faggy nature

[nc-vb]

𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞

I just wanted to write something so we could touch his lil hip windows, ok... just once...

pairing -> sampo x gn!reader

warnings -> sfw, no pronouns or names used (reader is called "chief" by the kids), description of frostbite (skin type-inclusive), non-sexual intimacy & non-sexual nudity.

notes -> love me a big n beefy dummy with hip windows. also if anyone’s familiar with salvatore ferragamo’s cologne collection, yeah, this is how i imagine Sampo smells. soooo good. also, frostbite really sucks, so pls always dress according to the weather! (advice i give in the middle of Canadian summer…) -> for most skin types, frostbite will make it turn purplish, so i’ve left things ambiguous as best as i can ;-;

wc -> 4.6k

There’s only so much time in a day you’d ever allot towards thumb-twiddling and pooch-screwing. With all your responsibilities pulling each of your limbs in all different directions at all times of the day, you’d already overextended yourself far past what the definition of “comfortability” supplied— taking breaks? Out of the question. You’d been lucky enough to fit in even five minutes to eat a proper meal or two each day, leaving you little else room to be able to drop the ball.

Life in Belobog already made sure for you that being comfortable was the last item on your daily itinerary to address. Being reliable, being helpful, and supplying for those either less fortunate or less able than yourself, is what has always mattered. And doing so on a timely basis has always been important to you. Natasha’s patients, nor the miners you’d been a ward for, couldn’t afford to wait. And since taking up the mantle, you’d always managed to make good on any promises made, making this the very first time you’d ever been tardy. Five minutes is acceptable. Even a half an hour. But two hours late for your delivery? It certainly isn’t your fault. And anyone who knows you well enough would find only concern for such a change in character.

“… g-gatekeeping c-c-conman… d-damn it.” You dip your chin further into your scarf and blow, the hot air warming your chest for but a moment. “C-Could’ve taken me with him this time, but n-no… Gotta play b-both sides… m-make me wait in the c-cold like this…”

You tell yourself you should’ve known better at least every other time you’re left waiting for him out front your shack of a home— somehow, it’s even colder on the inside, like being incapsulated by one of the ice needles decorating the outskirts of Belobog, and so, you wait for him on your stoop, clad in the thickest clothing within your possession and blowing temporary heat into your bare palms.

It isn’t like Sampo Koski to not show up late to a party, or a meeting, or a goods exchange, probably even to use the bathroom— really, expecting anything different of him so late in your acquaintanceship is no more unintelligent than believing he’d go cold turkey and abandon his usual backhanded underhandedness for tactics a little more honest. Then again, the man still owes you nearly three thousand Shield from almost a month ago, and has almost every excuse in the book prepared in order to stall in paying it back…

He’s always late. He’s never not been late. But he’s never been this late.

Beneath your chilled bones and deep within your chest, something pulses with worry. Worry? I’m worried?

Maybe. Maybe because, with all his usual fooling around done up in the Overworld, he’d finally gotten caught by those Silvermane Guards— a great cause for your concern considering this would mean losing your intermediary between Belobog’s attic and its basement; having Sampo take care of your shipments lifted a massive weight off your back while you managed your other responsibilities, and in exchange, his debts owed to you slowly knocked themselves away. This would be bad news for sure, losing such a valuable partner. But somewhere along the line, things blurred, and eventually, it was no longer just business that you spoke of with him.

A funny joke or two he’d heard while up in the Overworld that he couldn’t not share with you. An incident he’d missed that was too entertaining not to share with him. A new treat you’d made for the kids of Hook’s adventure squad that’d been devoured in seconds, and the fact that you’d managed to save a couple for him to try.

Despite how easily insufferable he could be, he’d become a friend, one you found yourself silently fretting over, even after his return. And losing your friend is not the business agreement you’d made with him.

Or is it more than friendship…

The longer you sit in the cold, the more glaringly obvious the possibility of this actually having happened, is. He’s usually quite cautious, a grand coward if you’d ever known one; protecting his own hide has always been priority number one. So, you know he can run away just fine; you know those regular old Silvermane Guards wouldn’t be able to get him on their own, so was it Gepard? Or that Bronya woman? Sure, Sampo’s strong, himself, but against either of those two?

Your stomach clenches at the thought.

What if the half-hearted promise of being careful was the last thing you’d heard from him, after all? What if you’d never get a chance to have his infectious enthusiasm rub off on you, or never again hear about a business venture gone hilariously wrong? No more little bags of your favourite Overworld bonbons brought back as a souvenir, the ones the two of you would share together before the fire, and fight over when it came time for who got to have the last of the best kind?

“Sampo…” You pull your knees a little tighter into your chest, lips tucked into them and trembling into a frown.

Inhaling deeply, you release the breath just as fast, appearing as a white cloud before your lips. The frost that normally seeps through the border between Belobog’s two worlds is bitter enough, but on either end, all its people suffered from the unavoidably devastating chill contained within its atmosphere during the more wintery months. It says a lot considering it’s practically winter all the time, only less so in certain regions. But no one would be spared by it, and no amount of extra layering could possibly quell it— this, you learned quite quickly as a child.

Before Belobog’s Supreme Guardian made the decision to split apart the world into two hemispheres, your family had been prominent figures of Belobog society, known of in equal regard by those in the Overworld and those in the Underworld. Even after the Fragmentum managed to take the lives of those in your family —sparing you, for no easily explainable reason — you swore to honour them and the people of Belobog through provisional access.

When an entrance was found not too long after the segregation process began, additional supply trading reopened past what the Overworld provided— unliveable quantities of food and medical supplies that had innocents suffering. Despite your, at the time, young age, you’d realized that if you hadn’t survived the Fragmentum attack, this trade opportunity might not have been possible. “There’s power in a name,” Sampo once told you. “That’s why I’ve never lied when asked about mine!”

Now, you huff out a laugh at the memory of you asking if he’d been sure it wasn’t actually his ego, and pause upon recognizing how off-course your thoughts had gotten. Your point is, back when life was more comfortable and of less ache and agony, you could afford to fuel your fireplace, and there was no shortage of warmth. The arms of your family that would hold you were hot to the touch from having stood only a couple of feet from flickering flames; blankets were whole and left unpatched and thereby let no cold in— things are different now. With the last of your available firewood, your makeshift campfire stopped burning about an hour ago, and your last blanket, barely left in one piece, absorbed too much chill in the air and barely served well enough as a cushion beneath your frozen rear, you’ve been sitting for far too long, waiting for someone who might not even be coming back…

“… tired,” you mumble to yourself. You can feel yourself slipping, not just along the blanket, but into what your brain manages to suspect is hypothermia. “Sampo…”

Before your body completely gives out on you and your eyes shut all the way, you hear fast-moving scuffling coming from behind you — footsteps — that reaches you in time to catch you by your shoulders.

You jolt, from the contact, and from the pain the contact brings— like you’d been pricked by a handful of Natasha’s syringes, or like being electrocuted, all in one concentrated area. A sound no less like a yowl of a cat escapes you, and your glossed-over eyes widen as far as your face’s frozen muscles allow.

“I’m… really late this time… aren’t I,” a familiar voice realizes, tone unquestioning of his words. He doesn’t have to be in your vision to know whose voice it is, but he graces you anyway, leaning over and around your shoulder so that him and his head of violet hair take up almost ninety percent of it.

You’re stiff. If not for the cold freezing your frown in place, you don’t think you could muster a glare for him otherwise. Stare lidded and eyebrows furrowed; cold-paled, downturned, chapped lips spread thin into a line so taut, a split of red forms down the middle of them. His own lips part, his grimace deepening.

“Bit,” you answer, and the blanket wrapped around your shoulders falls away, your fingers finally too burnt to hold it up any longer. Beneath it, you’d been wearing a thick, woollen sweater, with two other layers under it, and two pairs of pants. Your scarf hadn’t nearly been as thick as your sweater, nor did it really do its job of keeping your neck warm, and your winter socks had been worn out from use for almost two seasons now. You suppose that’s what happens when you become your last priority.

Sampo winces when his gaze falls on the fingers poking out from the sleeves of your sweater. Purpling, ashy skin, particularly on the backs of your hands— he watches you struggle to unclench them, to try to straighten them out, only for your skin to pale from a lack of blood flow. Instantly, Sampo is down on a knee, his own chilled hands coming up to stop you from making yours worse.

“Easy there, pal,” he says, a nervous chuckle slipping past cheshired lips. “I think you have frostbite.”

“Prob’ly,” you murmur. “Hurts to move.”

His swallowing is harsh, eyes filling quickly with guilt the longer he stares down at you. Several times, he has to shake himself from his stupor after deciding to tend to you. It startles him to be able to feel the chill through both his gloves and your sweater, and both absentmindedly and instinctively begins rubbing from the tops of your shoulder and down to your elbows.

You bite out a gasp, one of pain when it finally sinks in that maybe, you’ve been outside for even longer than you should’ve been, and raise your hands to grab his, but even this sends a pain rippling from the tips of your fingers and into your wrists—

“Ouch, S-Sampo… Hurts.”

“Huh? It hurts? What hurts?” And he rubs your one arm once more. “This?”

“M-Mhm,” and you knock his touch away with your shoulder. He sighs, sounding almost nervous or aggravated, and drags his fingers through his bangs.

“If I stand you up, do you think you’ll have the energy to stay on your feet?”

You hum, but it isn’t a positive noise.

“Then are you okay with me carrying you? It’s probably gonna hurt again. Not like we’ve got much of a choice here, though…”

“Carry me,” you say. “Carry me to Nat’s. Don’t worry… about the pain.”

“You got it.”

Somehow you thought you’d be more frustrated. You definitely are frustrated, but for now, you find yourself blaming your lack of an explosive response on the fact that you’re numb nearly from head to toe. If you still have any ears, you wouldn’t know it since you can’t feel them. You aren’t even able to smell your favourite of Sampo’s cologne he always wears, even with him being as close to him as you are after being rewrapped in your blanket and swept up into his arms. Even your hearing is slightly dulled; you swear you can hear humming, as faint as it is, and you can’t pinpoint where it comes from— with no one else around, you easily suspect Sampo as the artist. You shouldn’t have such drastic symptoms for your senses.

“What time is it?” you finally remember to ask, albeit in a croak, your throat suddenly dried out.

“Ah, well, it was around two when I got back, and that was a half an hour ago, so… a little after two-thirty?”

You manage to sigh without making a sound.

“Thought I was outside for two hours,” you start. “I think it’s… been four hours.”

Being mostly numb, you can only tell Sampo holds you a little tighter, a little closer to him as he walks because the skin on your back prickles.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Looking up, you see his own eyes cast forward down the cobbled road— avoidance. More guilt? “I’m not trying to make an excuse, but something did happen to make me late. It wasn’t just me this time, haha…”

Another of the blurred lines. A long while ago, Sampo stopped lying to you. A funny little declaration from “business partner to business partner” until “no longer lying” turned into secret-sharing and line-crossing honest— you’d wish he’d dial it back sometimes with how honest he could be. Even now, as he tells you it wasn’t entirely his fault why he’d left you waiting out in the cold, in spite of your pain and frustration, you give him the benefit of the little doubt you held onto.

“… tell me about it later,” you say, voice only just slightly higher than a whisper. “… ‘m so cold.”

Sampo is warm. Well, warmer than you. You don’t recall there ever being a time before now that the two of you have been so close, but he radiates heat like hot coals. There’s no doubt that he’s feeling cold, himself, wearing his half-sleeved jacket and a shirt that exposes his sides so easily to the elements. But he feels warm to you; you can feel it through even your blanket as you shiver.

“Don’t you worry; Sampo’s gonna get you warm and toasty in no time.”

The rest of the walk to Natasha’s clinic is completed in silence. With you living so far away from the displaced residents of the Underworld to maintain the safety of your supplies, it’s a walk that makes avoiding curious eyes impossible, and especially those of the children who recognize you upon reaching your destination in Boulder Town.

“Ah, h-hey, kiddos!” Sampo’s greeting is shaky, and for the briefest of moments, so is he. “What’s goin’ on?”

Wary of him from your past warnings from when you and he had just been acquainted a couple of years back, they regard him with the same disdain you once did— with little Julian at the helm, they stand before the steps to Natasha’s clinic with their arms crossed and eyebrows downturned, barring his path.

“Where are you taking the chief!?” Julian demands, craning his neck to glare up at Sampo, who only blinks back.

“The… chief?”

“Chief of sweets,” you answer. “I make them sweets a lot.”

“Gotcha… Well, I’m bringing the chief to see the good doctor! We’re feeling a little under the weather, see?”

“Look how much the chief is shaking!” one of the other children exclaim. Sampo nods quickly, and attempts to shuffle up the stairs.

“That’s right! Waiting out in the cold for a long time will do that! So will you let me through?”

Julian huffs at him. “Fine! But I’m telling Boss Hook about this, and she won’t be happy about it.” Without another word or a moment of hesitation, Julian runs off, his friends in tow toward the Great Mine.

Sampo sighs, carting you up the rest of the steps in his arms before pausing.

“I gotta set you down for a sec, okay?” You nod, your body jittering in his firm hold when your feet finally touch the ground. Still cradled by his one arm and balancing you against his hip, he shoves open the door to the clinic and helps you inside by lifting you past the threshold and into his arms once more.

It’s already even warmer now, your muddled brain manages to conjure; you can’t help yourself when you snuggle back into his chest. Sampo looks to you, lips pursed, and pale cheeks reddened, before shouting away from you for Natasha. Off to the side, the door to the second floor infirmary opens, and Natasha appears, slightly breathless.

“Sampo?” she says, glancing between the two of you. “What’s with all the shouting?”

“Sorry, Nat— bit of an emergency,” he says, nodding down at you, the “emergency” in question. A single-toned note escapes you in greeting; you’d been winded after the sudden moving around you’d just done. “You got a bed?”

“I-I do, right upstairs; first to the right—” He’s quick to pass her, and even faster in climbing the staircase. Over his arm, you see Natasha following after him, her skirt hiked up half-past her calves in an attempt to keep up.

But really, you’ve never seen Sampo Koski move this fast unless he’d been running away.

You’re jostled once more, and in feeling your body separating from Sampo’s, you brace yourself for the pain that eventually comes from being lowered onto one of the clinic’s cots. Like falling dominoes, the blanket on the cot rubs into yours, which rubs into your sweater and other under layers and into your skin.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

Sampo’s muttering doesn’t go unnoticed by Natasha. For as long as she’s known him, she can’t recall a time that he’s ever behaved so… docile? In the stress of the moment, she’s not quite sure if that’s the right word to use for him, so it would have to do for now.

“So, would either of you care to tell me what’s happened, then?” she says, and pulls on a pair of dark gloves.

“I’m pretty sure it’s frostbite,” Sampo says, awhile helping to unravel your blanket off of you for her. “You were out in the cold for hours…”

Natasha gasps. “In this weather? At this temperature?”

“They’d been waiting for me, but then that happened!” he spits out, panicked. “It wasn’t my fault!” In her flurry of grabbing clean towelettes, she manages to shoot him a look of frustration.

“You did a good thing by saving those kids, Sampo, but you can’t forget your other priorities.”

“I… I didn’t!” he tries swearing. “They helped me out, so I couldn’t just leave them like that! Ahh, I’m so sorry…”

Natasha sighs, placing the collected cloths next to you on the bed. “Apologizing isn’t going to help us here, so while I get these clothes off, can you go heat up a basin of water?” He nods, almost too enthusiastically.

“A hot basin of water, got it!”

“A warm basin.”

“A warm basin of water, r-right—“

He toddles off, rounding the bed from your right and crossing the clinic with a flat bucket in hand. A deep sigh from you has Natasha glancing back at you.

“I’d apologize for him, but I’m sure you already know just how aggressive he’ll be in making it up to you once you’re better.”

Your nodding shifts the pillow beneath your head.

“He… wouldn’t have been late for no reason,” you reason. “I should’ve just come here when I realized… he wouldn’t be on time.”

“Yes, you should have.”

You clear your throat a little. “Respectfully… I don’t need a lecture about it, Nat.”

“Good.” She turns around completely and begins helping to remove your three upper layers. “You’ve lived here long enough to know the consequences of being outside in this weather— if not because of Sampo, it would be because of someone else.”

“O-Old habits die hard,” you grumble, hissing as she decides to be quick in sliding off the lower two pieces of clothing, leaving your chest exposed.

“… it definitely looks like the beginning of stage three frostbite,” Natasha says, agreeing with Sampo’s earlier prognosis. “Any longer waiting out there, you might’ve needed surgery.”

“Surgery,” you repeat. “Sounds painful.”

“It is. Especially since we’re out of the usual anesthetic.”

You neglect to tell her that you likely have hypothermia, but without announcing it, she’s already assumed this just by just your symptoms— shivering, drowsiness, the pure exhaustion reflected in your lidded gaze; in the stress of the moment, she still manages to find amusement in the way your eyelids struggle to raise when Sampo returns with the basin.

“Is this good?” Sampo asks, head inclined toward Natasha. “Is it too warm?”

“It’s good,” Nat nods, having stuck a finger in to test it. She gestures at an empty tabletop. “Go ahead and put it there.”

“Sure, okay—” Sampo pauses, eyes wide with his gaze focused to the corners, at you. Slowly does his head twist toward you, lips parting until his jaw drops, and, like earlier when he’d been running around in the cold with you, his cheeks burn with rouge. Oh, right. My clothes are gone.

Natasha’s own eyes widen in realization. She’s quick to drop your clothes to the side and step towards Sampo, and even quicker to begin shoving him out of your presence.

“H-Hey, Nat! Hold — hold on a second!”

“You can wait outside, okay?” she tells him, her voice sickeningly sweet with the tone she only ever uses when needing to be firm.

“Hey, okay, okay! I won’t look! Just—” you hear him sigh from the other side of the partition. “Just let me wait here, on the other side, alright? Please?”

“… ’t’s fine, Nat,” you pant out, your once calm heart now startled into a steady rhythm. At any rate, apparently having Sampo see you half nude on a medical cot works as a warming tool. “H-He can wait there…”

Nat relents with a sigh, with Sampo groaning in relief from the other side of the partition. You take a breath of your own, unheard over the sound of something metal dragging across the floor of the clinic— another partition.

“Just in case,” she adds.

Besides any general noises you’d often heard from within the clinic before, and the gentle of sloshing of the towelettes being rung out after being dipped into the water in the basin, there’s silence between the three of you. Natasha’s brow is is slightly furled when she carefully lays the cloths along your cold-burnt skin— like your fingers, purpling had started stretching out across it, and in more exposed areas, you’d even begun to blister. Bringing your surface temperature back up safely and slowly is the goal, she’d told you. Upon covering your chest, she clears her throat. “Sampo.”

There’s a slight squeak from the other side of the wall. “I-I wasn’t looking?!”

“Whether you were or weren’t, I need you to now. Come back in here, please.”

“Huh? W-Why?”

“I need you to handle the rest of this for me while I go look for some medicine.” She looks to you with a frown. “You aren’t feeling it now because your body is in shock, but you’ll be in a lot of pain when your temperature returns to normal. You’ll want to be asleep when it finally does.”

“Oh… okay.” The partition creaks, and Sampo slips between the two, careful not to let any other prying eyes see you. You peer down past your feet at him. “Hi.”

“… h-hi.”

Gently still, Natasha pats an unaffected part of your arm. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Take your time,” you say. “’s’not like I’m going anywhere.”

Her smile is soft; you watch her go, listening to the click of her heels until they disappear through the same doorway as earlier.

Surprisingly, Sampo is already to work— his regular gloves pulled off and shoved haphazardly into one of his pockets, he dons a pair of the clinic’s medical ones that, despite being an average size, manages to squeeze his hands almost uncomfortably so.

“You… don’t have to wear those,” you tell him. “Just Nat’s habit. You’re only putting towels on me.”

He looks down at his hands, lips pursed and his cheeks still pink. You manage a dry laugh at his expense.

“Or are you suddenly feeling self-conscious,” you muse, thinking back to earlier. “Not like anyone saw you half-naked.”

Sampo huffs at you. “J-Jeez…”

This time, you smile at him. “Is it nerves? Or guilt? Don’t feel guilty. You… you saved some kids?”

“… yeah,” he mumbles, and tears off the ill-fitting gloves to throw in the trash. “Had to help them out after they saved me. You know me,” he sings half-heartedly. “I never leave a debt unpaid…”

“Sampo, I-I’m not mad at you,” you swear. You watch him avert his gaze and pick up a towel. “Sampo. I’m just glad you’re safe.”

His eyes widen before he turns back to you. “Huh?”

“That whole time… I was worried you were hurt… or caught. Four hours is… a long time. But I was happy when you finally showed up. I was so cold that… I couldn’t tell you this… And now, I’m so sleepy that I… I just hope that what I’m saying makes sense.”

Those blurred lines… are really getting a lot clearer now, you sluggishly realize, the longer you stare up at him. His own concern for you… the way he looks at you when he does… It can’t be strictly because of his “never leave a debt unpaid” policy he just reminded you of. He’s never looked at Natasha like this, nor any of his other customers or clients.

You suddenly chuckle to yourself. “I’m not drugged up on Nat’s medicine yet, so before I take it… let me say this.” He swallows. “Your debt to me… is clear,” and his eyes widen, “as long as you stop being so reckless… and as long as we can keep helping each other… and if you can… stay with me more. Even if you’re late… I always want to see you. Always… okay?”

The towel slips from his hands. You watch him inhale, his chest seemingly puffing up with the trapped air, and drop the towel.

“W-Was… Is th-that a…? Was that…?”

“Mm… a confession,” you finish. “Yeah. It was. Been simmering on it for a while now, I think. Is that okay?”

Hand on his hip, he finally exhales, flossing through his bangs with his fingers again.

“I-I mean… yeah!” You hold in another laugh at how high his voice had broken to. “Totally fine.” He grabs another towel and throws it in the slightly steaming basin.

Sliding it from the bed, you reach out your hand for him.

“Sampo,” you call, urging him to take it. When he doesn’t, and returns his attention to the water, you reach out a little further, and instead reach for his exposed skin beneath his coat. A small yelp of surprise escapes him the second you trail your finger along his hip, and instinctively, he goes to grab your wrist to stop you until spotting how dark the flesh of your fingers has become from the cold.

“H-Hey!” he hisses lowly, face quick to become splotched with rose.

“… you’re still cold, too.”

“Sampo…”

The man jumps at Natasha’s return, careful to turn on the spot when your hand had still been resting on his one hip, even minutes later and at your insistence at warming him up.

“I at least did one, it’s not my fault!!”

© nc-vb 2023 please don’t repost! reblogs & comments are always appreciated.

[leslieseveride]

absolutely gutted that we're most likely not going to get this scene from the book or something similar. 😔

[weirdcat1213]

[wildfairies]

i don't understand the urge to write hate think pieces about video game characters/their writing on here like at all

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

i'm kind of amazed how most of the stardew marriage candidates just want you to be their manic pixie dream whatever by agreeing with everything they like and plying them with compliments or praise or whatever (which is fine but a bit. Much) but for shane his romance is just you being there for him while he figures his own shit out... dunno why i never wanted to romance him before he's so good

[minthara]

idk. the dichotomy what ppl say about wylls romance vs my own experience with it. it was def the romance that clicked most with me and i enjoyed most, and i remember even thinking "wow so MUCH and such GOOD content!". but i also went into it from minthara's romance (and astarion's which sadly didn't click with me as much) lol.

[nyehilismwriting]

it's so unfair of you (/j) to put the really good nash scenes in ch 4 behind the rivalry route because i love them so much its hard to make my operative be angry to them but the tension is just so juicy (and um. well. the kiss.!). will we miss out on more nash romance stuff if we dont go down the antagonistic route with them?

as I've said before, the rivalmance and friendmance are paced differently - there will be different content for each one, but it doesn't mean they're going to be unbalanced! I've been sharing rivalmance bits because that's what I'm writing at the moment, and when I get to the friendmance I'm sure I'll do the same :)

[llycaons]

something else I really liked about that fic was hualian's trouble in paradise...their getting-together was so smooth and their relationship was so easy and drama-free in the book that they've never really weathered any serious conflict as a couple. even the stuff that SHOULD have been an issue, like hc not telling him the truth about who he was, or the statues (which EYE still find creepy!), just wasn't. because xl didn't mind it. and while romances do not have to be realistic, that made ME so frustrated to read it, and is a large part of why the romance was so uninteresting to me and why it felt so generic and immature. but a relationship that lives off faith and endless worship and one-sided devotion really isn't sustainable! like yeah obviously xl loves hc too and looks after him and all but I can see serious serious cracks in that relationship appearing eventually when they disagree on something and the expectation arises in their minds that their relationship is without conflict, and the expectation that hc puts on himself to be perfect pressures them both to deny or avoid conflict

which is why I really enjoy wangxian as a contrast, especially the cql version, because their relationship was full of conflict literally from the beginning. and we see them manage that and still become close and develop a strong relationship and trust each other even while disagreeing about extremely significant aspects of their lives, and even when wwx had to hide things about himself and lwj handled it, honestly quite poorly. they loved each other and clearly wanted to be close even when they each felt their decisions had to pull them in different directions...and that simultaneous strength of principle (neutral) and commitment to each other is actually what makes them such a strong unit postres and postcanon. because they've already been through it together. they're both extremely strong-willed people who have independently made the choices they needed to to be there with each other. well, lwj made the choice to be with wwx after many years of failing to do so, and wwx did what he was always going to do. but that strength of spirit is really matched in both of them imo

in the book lwj leaving his somewhat emotionally and mentally devastated brother and sect for three months IS a little. hm. but like in the show, he doesn't do that either, he stays with them because they need him. and ik people don't like lwj making that choice and I wish they'd been able to get together sooner too, but that decision - and wwx's tearful but willing departure - doesn't communicate lack of love to me, not after all that, it communicates maturity. which is another reason I think their postres relationship is going to be quite stable even though it's taken 20 years and it's both of their first relationships. like...they just know each other so well. zhijis! they're middle-aged men who are also best friends, so compare that to h/l too...god unless you count the 800 years of being obsessed which I really don't

wx didn't always handle conflict well what with lwj being judgemental (bc it was all he knew) and wwx being mean (as a defense mechanism) or (in the drama esp) communicate super openly w each other, and in the novel all of their issues vanish bafflingly quickly as soon as the confession comes, but in the drama they really do seem like people whose feelings for each other have withstood the test of time and war and violence and manipulation and cruelty and judgement and conflicting opinions, and they've grown so much as people both together and apart...like I have little interest in any postcanon wx conflict. some can be interesting, because everyone is flawed and no relationship is going to be conflict-free. and there's definitely still stuff to work through and complicated family situations to manage and opposing priorities to deal with, but it doesn't feel like a codependent and obsessive mess ready to implode like hualian does.

[pentaghast]

cute boy alert! cute boy alert!

[frnkiebby]

https://x.com/joetricking/status/1786041186869739883?s=46

kinda laughing over this but also im like probably a part-time listener of FOB so i know damn near NOTHING regarding petekey. like my FOB knowledge is limited to knowing that pete wentz is the bassist and patrick stump is the vocalist and having like maybe 10 songs in my itunes.~🎃

[mydemonsdrivealimo]

"mj why is bryce so blatantly queer in your hc???" BECAUSE THATS HOW HE IS !!!!!!! whether or not he's w jensen (a man) he is still fucking queer????

saying he's queer is not enough. let him be queer. let him dress queer. let him go to queer events. being w a woman does not make him less queer. even if he is w a woman in a straight presenting relationship, IT IS STILL A QUEER RELATIONSHIP. BC HE IS QUEER. THATS THE ONLY CRITERIA FOR HAVING A QUEER RELATIONSHIP.

he is "so" queer in my hc bc he is a queer person. not bc he's w a man. but bc he is a queer person.

[spicyicymeloncat]

Okay here’s another controversial “Green family take” tell me if I’m wrong.

“People who hate Harumi and Lloyd family dynamic ignore that Lloyd and Morro also shouldn’t have a family dynamic, when Morro did the exact same thing”

Because besties I agree I honestly think green cousins doesn’t make much sense either since yknow Morro and the whole possession thing, but at the same time if you look at canon, they just aren’t the same thing and yknow I need people to actually stop looking at Harumi as the girl version of Morro and the only reason we hate her is because she’s a girl.

Because she’s not.

Like yes I agree there’s definitely a lot of bias towards Morro, if he was woman he would be demonised to hell and back but since he’s man then he is adored, and vice versa with Harumi and sexism fucking sucks.

But Harumi and Morro are different guys. Harumi is portrayed as worse in canon in Lloyd’s eyes. Yeah Lloyd got possessed by Morro and that’s obviously bad tm but other than what people assume possession entails, Lloyd was never as shaken as he was with Harumi.

In s5, we never saw Lloyd be conflicted about the possession thing. He had no fear of Morro. We have no reason to believe that a ghost possession feels worse than being a sleep and maybe having a vague awareness of what’s going on. He barely mentions Morro after s5. And I will say I think this is a writing flaw, obviously it would’ve been cooler if Morro actually had some kind of impact on the ninja, but regardless this is the canon. Lloyd hates Morro but he’s not traumatised yknow. It’s not to the point that Harumi got to.

I feel like getting possessed should be worse than getting lied to, but Harumi did on top of it, start a cult in his name, Kill actual Characters (the royal family and Hutchins) and then kidnap Lloyd and his mother and his uncle and then resurrect his father removing vital parts of his father’s mind/personality/emotional cognitive abilities etc. on top of that she also nearly killed the ninja and wu (which Lloyd believed she did).

Somehow she was much more dangerous than Morro was, she was a much more successful villain.

Additionally I would say Morro has more of an excuse to be seen as family, even if I I’m less of a green cousins fan. Because Morro and Wu actually have a father son relationship, in which Wu was actually responsible over Morro. They had a normal albeit imperfect dynamic before Morro left. Regardless of Lloyd and Morro’s interactions, that dynamic was still present even in the very end.

It doesn’t mean and Lloyd and Morro have to be buddies, just because there’s a family connection doesn’t mean shit (this is the show of found family have we learned nothing? Blood connections don’t matter, only friendship).

But like in comparison to Harumi and Garmadon’s absolute parody of a relationship, where Harumi turns to the man who doesn’t remember what love is and asks him to be her father (at this point neither of them know what “father” even means), Morro does have a family dynamic and Harumi does not.

So in response to the original quote, Morro has a much more solid claim to any kind of family dynamic bc his relation to Wu is much more family esq, and also he was bad yeah, but the show portrays Harumi as worse especially in Lloyd’s opinion.

I just don’t like the argument that Morro and Harumi have done the same things, when the severity is definitely different imo and they aren’t just copies of each other. Imo it’s an oversimplification to reduce their characters down to each other.

[squooshit]

he really does look like gerard in this.

[gootrude]

imo both answers make sense in different ways, i could see her crush on akio as genuine feelings being used against her or as comphet + being overwhelmed/anxious around him and interpreting that as feelings (also she is being groomed to like him it's very calculated on his end). the only wrong answer here is straight utena