#is the mood and the level of intensity we need to continuously surpass lest they come across as just bros

[thecutestmancardoorhookhand]

New AU just dropped: Regency dreamling but it's less Jane Austen inspired aristocracy drama and more laughing gas fueled Romanticism at the Pneumatic Institution shenanigans

It started out as "I think Hob would have a flair for the theatrical and be a fun teacher" and "At some point Hob must have dabbled in science", which added up to "Hob would have loved hanging out with Davy, guy was famously Theatrical and very for spreading science knowledge" to "didn't he repeatedly refuse to die at the pneumatic institution even?" to "never forgetti this was the romantic chemist who was chums pals buddies bros with the romantic poets" to "Wait! kubla khan was written in a dream" (and admittedly, here a break was taken to look at the camera like i was in the office at the line "beware! beware! his flashing eyes, his floating hair!" near the end of the poem before Coleridge got interrupted by some mystery dude in the waking) to "Coleridge was one of the people who frequented the institution to get high on nitrous" to "Well what if they meet out of schedule completely on accident then"

And now we're 100+ pages deep in research over the brief but extremely passionate love affair that Chemistry and Literature had before tragically parting ways. Because sure, I do not need to be 100% historically accurate and pinpoint the exact date at which Hob freshly out of the slave trade and now active in the abolitionist movement might have met a Thomas Beddoes who was campaigning to stop the anti-freedom of speech "gagging bills", but every time a thought like "Nitrous oxide seems right up Delirium's alley, maybe she should be involved in this fic" i end up finding out that Davy hallucinated a young girl every 10 years since discovering the gas and I am compelled to pull even more from reality. Like finding out that Davy used to do dramatic storytelling at the White Hart Inn of his town when he was a teen (and in case you're curious from what we know of his lectures and letters it would not be unreasonable to picture him jumping off a chair to amuse his audience, or selling his soul for the boon of storytelling either.)

Expect me to never actually finish this, partly because all this pneumatic institution lore comes with the territory of being a chemistry clown that has to try and concentrate on non-creative work, and partly because now we're outlining "okay but what if lake district house. What's the 1810s equivalent of 'bruh.' for when the Corinthian finds Dream being moved by Frankenstein" instead of actually writing the original plan of "Hob does a science!" or the version it evolved into of "you know what's better than whatever the everloving fuck was going on in the pneumatic institution of bristol in late october 1799? Well that same mess, with all the nitrous inhaling and all the unconfirmed love affairs But add a particularly melancholy Dream of the Endless (recently reminded of his status as a father and as an entity who should not fall seriously in love with mortals) meddling and possibly casually sleeping his way into inspiring the first wave of absolute messy bitches we call romantic movement, a Dream of the Endless who immediately picks up his meeting with now-no-longer-a-slave-trader-but-a-prototype-NHS-research-assistant Hob Gadling from where they left off (that is to say: with intense eyefucking)"