#keep writing paragraphs

[halteinfachmaldeinefresse]

i wanna thank everybody, who is analyzing the shit out of, tv-shows, films, charackters, relationships etc... bc lord knows my autistic ass could never pick up, on all the emotions, expressions, clues and what fuck is going on behind that facade & unspoken words. it really helps my brain prozess&think, thank uu 🥺

[psychotic-nonsense]

"I'm sorry."

It's the first thing Steve says after everything.

After getting Vecna Cursed. After nearly dying. After a hallucination of Eddie saved him. After running through a looped forest. After finding sanctuary in Steve's memory of that Starcourt bathroom. After Eddie reveals himself as Eddie.

It's the only thing he can think of. It's not big enough to fit everything, but it's the only thing that fits in his mouth.

"Don't be."

Maybe that's the only thing Eddie can think of too. The only thing Eddie can bear to say.

Because don't be can't stop Steve's eyes from watering when he sees the vest in his closet. Don't be can't stop Steve's feet from dragging him to the cemetery every evening to clean Eddie's graffiti-covered tombstone. Don't be can't stop Steve from sitting beside Wayne and listening to him talk about the Eddie he remembers. Don't be can't stop Eddie's body from showing up in Steve's dreams, nor Eddie's corpse from his nightmares. Don't be couldn't keep the pain away enough, didn't stop Vecna from latching onto it while Steve was walking alone in the woods.

Don't be isn't enough for what Steve wants to hear. But even stuck here waiting, hoping, for someone to get Steve out, there just isn't enough time.

"I miss you."

"...Why?"

Eddie says it back so quickly, so quietly, like it's just unfathomable to him. Maybe it is, considering their last memories. But their eyes meet and he looks just as sad, just as longing, as Steve.

"You were my friend."

Steve can't help but say it like that. Like they were friends for years instead of days. Like Eddie was that important to him in their final moments. Like his heart really aches for Eddie every second of the apocalypse.

Can't help but say it like he means it.

"I wish we could've had more time..."

Steve's voice cracks a little there as he turns away, hiding. It's all he wants. It's all Vecna used to entice him with. It's all that's keeping him going, to finally fulfill the last request Eddie made. It's all he has left to feel close to Eddie.

The Eddie that's sitting right next to him, silent, his sight weighing on Steve's skin. Conscious and aware and the real Eddie. Trapped in Vecna's head as a backup power source, yet who still risked everything to come save Steve. Who Steve will never see again because killing Vecna means killing Eddie for good, and his heart doesn't want it, is begging for another solution...

But for once, his broken head overpowers his shattered heart.

"Maybe we did."

Eddie takes Steve's hand. Meets Steve's surprised look with his own small smile of hope. They're both suddenly tearing up, eyes glistening with life in this gray stall.

"Maybe in another world, we got a second first chance. A first second chance. Maybe even a third, or fourth. Maybe in a different life, we had everything we wanted. Because you, Steve Harrington, are too good for me to be doomed to meet just once."

And for a moment, Steve sees it. Feels it. Versions of them connected through the universe.

Little kids playing in the lake. One with bruised skin and shaved hair, loud but unfathomably lonely. One with a bruised heart and soft eyes, timid but stubbornly hopeful.

A rockstar with glittering chains, center stage in the spotlight. A set of eyes in the crowd or behind the curtain, watching only him.

A werewolf and a vampire, two cryptids of horror, meeting in the dead of a full moon night to feel safe with the only other one who understands.

A future where they won, where the only death was the one that mattered. A process of healing and learning, coming home to a family every single day.

A world without pain, without their hell, where two high schoolers found freedom from their shackles and company in each other. Hiding away together in the dark corners of the town.

Steve even sees other versions of them. Versions that he knows were originally never supposed to meet, yet forces so much greater than them pulled them together.

A metalhead drug dealer, constantly getting into trouble with one nail-bat-weilding cop.

A criminal's fugitive nature leading him to a rugged trailer park, and the dangerous owner within one such home.

An eccentric king in an old coliseum, always choosing one particular warrior as his champion.

A young programmer being pulled away from his work by sobs above his apartment, running upstairs to check on the law student that recently moved in.

Two actors, finding an easy friendship in the months of filming one season of a show that would change their lives.

In that moment, Steve's overwhelmed by the closeness he suddenly feels with the soul beside him. Falling into tears, he pulls Eddie into a tight hug, holding him so so close to convey everything he can't say. Feeling Eddie hold him back, hearing everything Eddie can't say in return.

Familiar music comes on outside the stall. Robin's voice calls out to him, telling him to come home.

And when he does leave, Steve hopes that someone out there will understand that he never can. Because here in Eddie's arms is the only place that will ever truly feel like home.

"Thank you... for everything, Eddie."

Thank you, Steve. For everything and more..."

--------------------

- List of AUs, in order, after, "Versions of them connected through the universe": Childhood Friends / Rockstar!Eddie / Werewolf!Steve & Vampire!Eddie / Eddie Survives / No Upside Down & High School

- List of Multiverse Steddie AUs, in order, after, "...yet forces so much greater than them pulled them together": Eddie x Gator / Baron x Michael / Geta x Sean / Keys x Eric / Quinn and Keery

[ohbo-ohno]

blatantly inspired by tlou but currently thinking about a zombie apocalypse au where reader is lost and alone, no one to help her and no clue where to go, and she stumbles into this random trap in the forest, ends up in a pit in the ground. she just sits down there feeling sorry for herself cause she thinks there’s no way she’ll ever survive now that she’s trapped with no way out :(

and then here comes ghost, checking to see what set off one of his traps and he sees a pretty little thing, teary and dirt-covered. she’s clearly helpless without him, and he might be a little heartless but he’s not just gonna leave her down there to starve. so he helps her out and takes her back to his base <3

[gossippool]

i was gonna make a personal poolverine headcanons list because other people were doing it too but i realised my fics already have most of them so. here are some of my headcanons in fic snippet form. some contradict with others and some i don't even think are necessarily true but it's fun to experiment

people have said this before but logan fights wade because he sees himself in him (or because he realises that he actually doesn't and he hates that)

wade knows about and feels the (emotional and psychological) effects of all his other variant selves (and everything else if he tries)

logan's heightened senses gives him synesthesia

logan doesn't actually like violence/fighting/blood during sex or like ever. it's just an unhealthy addiction that started from him killing all those people that he snuffed with alcohol but revived with wade, and a way to take his anger out on (someone like) himself

with regard to wade's chronic pain slight p pressure on his skin hurts more and in a worse way than sharp pains like getting stabbed

[antisocialxconstruct]

the deep and profound betrayal when you're writing cruising along feeling so inspired and motivated only to suddenly get your knees knocked out from under you by one (1) specific paragraph

[feroluce]

For me, as much as I adore the theme of travel companions, henghill is more of a "someday" thing in that regard. I love Boothill being a weird loner Galaxy Ranger rather than a Nameless- man is undomesticated and belongs sleeping in the cargo holds of supply ships, threatening silence out of anyone that tries to report him. Let him be wild and free!!

I would LOVE it if Boothill just hitched a short ride off Asdana to whatever the Express' next destination is, though!

Like maybe the Express decides to stick around Penacony for a while, the same way they do other destinations, and Boothill is there anyway to investigate Oswaldo Schneider. It's rare to find a planet where the IPC is present, but doesn't actually have a lot of power; he can't pass this opportunity up!

And in that time, he sees a lot of Dan Heng.

Boothill gets text messages asking him to the quieter parts of the Dreamscape (he threatened and made a scene - it's called standing up for your rights, Dan Heng was given a room with a Dreampool by The Family for helping root out The Order) or mostly to the Express, where Dan Heng curiously asks him about Paths, about aeons and Emanators, The Rangers, all the worlds he's seen and places he's been.

Boothill isn't really surprised the first time they spend an entire night talking and discussing- after all, they'd chattered a lot that first day they met at the bar in the Reverie! But in talking so much, of course the topic of home comes up.

Dan Heng asks about Boothill’s homeworld.

Boothill tells Dan Heng it's gone now, and changes the subject.

Boothill asks about Dan Heng's past, before the Astral Express and the Nameless.

Dan Heng freezes up and closes off, and changes the subject.

In yet another moment of tacit understanding, neither of them ask again.

But this continues, all throughout their stint in Penacony, finding each other and seeking the other out for no reason other than good company. Dan Heng adds ridiculous amounts of data to the archives that Boothill dictates to him. They both know he could get that information elsewhere if he really wanted. Boothill finds he's kinda happy he doesn't.

And Boothill is someone who's hard to keep up with. He knows he is, and he has no problem with it. It's part of what makes him excel as a Galaxy Ranger. But there's something fun about how Dan Heng just rolls with it, and so effortlessly! Boothill finds something shady going on, grabs a guy who was preying on people, and has this dude held up by the collar with his feet swinging while he cackles right in his face, when Dan Heng shows up.

Boothill says they're just having a friendly chat. He makes zero effort to hide what he's actually doing. Boothill's new friend pleads for Dan Heng to help him, please! This guy's crazy!

Dan Heng materializes his spear.

The guy apologizes even harder, tells them he won't do anything shady ever again, promise, promise! Boothill's jabbers at him and shakes him around some more before Dan Heng taps the pole of his spear against the covered metal of Boothill's leg and tells him come on, he's already scared the man witless, they have a date to keep. Boothill drops the guy and watches him scurry off like a cockroach.

"So, now it's a date, huh?"

"...Come on, let's go."

They go to the Dreamflux Reef after that, because Boothill just so happened to totally by coincidence find that shady guy's wallet (read: robbed him blind) and he wants that money to go back to the native Penaconians before anyone else. Dan Heng follows, and stuffs all of the man's credits into the tip jar of the bar they go to.

And even when the Express embarks anew from Asdana (with Boothill hidden away in some corner or compartment, because the IPC finally got pissed enough to start looking for him under The Family's noses skzikske) this continues. The next planet is difficult to get to because of Stellaron activity; so they have to fly manually part of the way instead of warping. Boothill doesn't get his own room since he's only hitching a ride, but Pom-Pom graciously allows him to sleep on a couch-

("Thank ya, Fluffy. No hard feelings about before, right?" "You're lucky my other passengers like you. And no shoes on the couches!!")

-in one of the cars. And it becomes normal commonplace to find Boothill telling stories, and Dan Heng rapidly writing them all down, at obscene hours in the parlor car while Himeko and Welt ask if either of them even slept.

Boothill teaches Dan Heng all about his favorite drinks and liquor in general, how to aim and shoot a gun, how to hunt and track prey. Dan Heng teaches Boothill about a lot of the teachings of Lan and The Hunt from the Xianzhou, what it's like there, some of the culture, some of the fables and old tales.

Boothill still leaves when it's time to go. He's still got things to do and people to kill, after all.

But it never feels like he's very far. The archives are full of him, even if he's never mentioned by name. The article on the Galaxy Rangers is several times longer than it was before. There's new data on multiple planets and worlds.

There's one that's still just a header and title. Boothill doesn't know about it yet. Dan Heng hopes he can fill the page on Aeragan-Epharshel someday and show it to him.

And even if he doesn't stay, he does return. Boothill breaks in stops by any time he happens to be nearby. He's used to traveling without much rest, and only takes what he can easily carry on him- nothing that can slow him down or hinder him. He can't put a bullet between Oswaldo Schneider's eyes if he gets himself killed over something as stupid as being weighed down in a fight, after all.

Dan Heng is similarly sparse. He still sleeps in the archives, with nothing but his futon and old suitcase to mark the space as his.

But there's an old wooden guitar carefully propped in the corner, just waiting for its owner's return.

[itsdefinitely]

i wanna know more about the jerries/jeris

do you want to know the most horrific thing about them?

the lords did nothing to make them the way they are.

yes, the jerry jr was turned into the axeman because of the witchwood, which does what it does because of the lords, but everything leading up to that is just human nature. i see the "girl jeri is nibbly" or "they were influenced by a lord to do the thngs they do" and i need people to understand that that's just. not true. they're just like that. they were taught to be like that by their parents and, more accurately, their church. it's horrifyingly accurate how religion has shaped them into non-functional human beings, who would rather potentially lose their child to the many, many dangers of the literal woods than admit that they had sex outside of marriage.

it's only because it's hatchetfield that jerry jr grew the way he did. there was no lord's intervention in their decision to keep the baby, or to drop out of school to care for him, or to keep him seperated from any other people, or to revolve their lives around the idea that they'd committed a sin and needed to pay by pushing celibacy rather than. i don't know. properly raising their child. it was the way they were taught. the toxic pushing of overexaggerated christian ideals is what molded them. can you imagine being in their place? being a scared teenager and knowing that if you told any of the people you care about most your secret that they would shun you and disown you?

the only people they felt any kind of safe around were each other; of course they're going to be codependent. and even then, they're disgusted by each other for leading them to sin. they're stuck together unwillingly, because without the other, they're alone.

[eddiegettingshot]

the thing about buck and eddie being "ready" to date is that i think it's being approached as, like, they need to have moved on from all their traumas and they shouldn't be making mistakes anymore and they should be completely at peace with themselves or whatever. except they're never gonna be in that magical perfect place where they don't hurt each other and they're never sad. the actual reason why they're not "ready" to be together is that they haven't been able to address the unhealed parts of themselves that show up specifically in their existing relationship.

eddie has no boundaries with buck and not a lot of self-esteem. he loves buck to his own detriment because he's willing to shoulder the blame for stuff that isn't his fault - he did the same with shannon. he still has very particular ideas about what a relationship should be like and so he can trust buck implicitly with his son and his underbelly but he still wouldn't be able to put words to what that means for them or change his expectations accordingly, in part because he's just... never... been with anyone freely. he doesn't know how to ask for what he wants and he won't let himself have it. buck can say "she really sees me" to his face and he'll just hang on to it for months instead of saying anything.

buck is so chaotic in his head that his complete lack of emotional coherence ripples out to affect the people closest to him. he literally doesn't know how to self-reflect, doesn't know how to communicate or what to communicate, and still doesn't think before he acts. we saw what this translates to in his friendship with eddie in 7x04. he also still hasn't begun to touch his own perceived inadequacy or the insecurity that runs so deep - including and especially in his relationship with eddie, apparently - that it completely unhinges him to believe that he's being left behind, even if that's not true.

as it stands, buck WILL NOT be able to be transparent with eddie about the things he's feeling, and eddie WILL internalize buck's issues on reflex. the problem isn't that they'd hurt each other, because of course they would! it's that they're not in a place to even begin to approach that hurt in a healthy or reasonable way. as always: buck needs to be on his own and self-reflect for a while, and eddie needs to go out and explore and let go of his preconceived ideas of the world, and they both need to go to therapy and also talk to each other. that's all they need to be "ready." and if we're talking about in canon, this could theoretically happen as quickly as eddie's ptsd arc. lmao

[daz4i]

i think this is the most genuine emotion we've seen from nikolai ever. and the fact he seems unsure about how he's feeling, how it's seemingly contradicting, imo works really well with his character

he's all about saying things that contradict each other and imo, there is always some truth to both sides of what he says

so. here. i think some part of him was happy to be free of his only bond... but then it got overtaken with the part of him that realizes this bond wasn't. like. as constricting as he first thought

it seems that at the end of it all he somehow even WANTED to get that bond running deeper. imo, it was to feed both sides of him - the side that wants to be free can't actually prove his free will if they weren't that close in the first place, they barely interacted before, it's almost like killing any other person. on the other hand, he also genuinely likes fyodor and wants to be closer bc well. he is "perfectly sane". he is, underneath it all, still a person deep down, as much as he might hate that.

when fyodor threatens to take him out in the future he doesn't seem scared, but he also doesn't seem particularly excited i think? (or maybe that's just how he expresses his genuine, non-performative excitement, who knows.) at the same time, he also doesn't seem to want to kill him now, to follow him, like he's keeping it for that new game he was just promised

but then fyodor dies. and he won't get a chance to play it. and in a way, that takes from his freedom too, isn't it? his freedom to choose how his bond with fyodor will be. in a way, fyodor dying took away from his free will.

i truly believe nikolai is. maybe not selfish but certainly self-centered or self-serving enough to be sad over, and forgive me for this analogy, his toy getting broken. I'm certain he's also genuinely sad about his only friend dying, and so gruesomely too, but i wouldn't be surprised if at his core this is what makes him this sad. and i think that also leads to his conflicting emotions about fyodor's death

i also think that thing dazai pointed out about fyodor's lack of trust plays a part in nikolai's grief here. to him, fyodor is the only one who understood him, the only one who made him feel seen, and as far as we know the only person who was important to him. but he probably knew the feeling wasn't mutual. still, this was the nail in the coffin, confirming fyodor never saw him as a friend as well, not even as an ally.

i don't have an actual conclusion here, just speculation on nikolai's internal turmoil and how he might feel now. i really hope (and expect) we will see him again, and i wonder if this event will change anything about him.

i speculated in the past that his eye cover is a symbol of his bond with fyodor. and today, he took it off after fyodor died. i wonder, if the next time we see nikolai, he will still wear it or not (or possibly wear a new one). i guess we'll see!

[sofarsofastmp3]

thanks hanif. cool and normal as always!

i ALSO wish more people talked about the moments that build up to a potential brawl as intimacy.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what is your favorite thing about charles and your favorite thing about erik? separately, as in what you like most about their characters :]

a devious question this one is, my friend!!! it's hard enough for me to explain my thoughts cohesively, but having to pick ONE thing i particularly love is difficult. with characters like charles and erik, theres been so much done with their characters over the decades and so they have so many components to them that make them so interesting and fun to observe. BUT I TRY FOR YOU TODAY. under the cut i kinda ramble and the size of this text box makin me anxious

i think if i were to be simple and broad, what i enjoy most about charles is his determination to help others, even if he isn't really thanked and/or if people don't even like him. ofc, this isn't to say he hasn't done wrong- to be honest, the fact he does wrong/questionable things at times is another aspect of him i really enjoy, maybe because- broadly speaking- he's meant to be altruistic (intent vs outcome and all that). i don't know if that's super exciting to most people, but it is for me

as for erik, my reason for liking him is easier to explain tbh. To Be Simple And Broad, his progression from villain to antihero over the decades has been fun to observe (as much as i have so far anyhow) and analyze. i think to be a bit more specific, him using his rage and pain as justifications for his villainous actions is definitely what compels me the most: hurt people hurt and the sort, an idea i've always found interesting (something something vicious cycles and the like). yet now, he recognizes this wasn't really. A Just Thing To Do and is beginning to change that, which i enjoy

[oifaaa]

Here ya go!!! How you really feel about Tim

https://www.reddit.com/r/batman/s/foifAlCJn8

I've been thinking over this for a few days but ultimately I don't think I agree mostly the wording just seems off claiming tims the heroic robin bc he became robin to help bruce which implies the others became robin for none heroic reasons

[m1d-45]

i gobbled and devoured the post imposter things. scrumptious!! but what if poor little xiao man feels guilty for hunting or scarring us in the hunt? and please don’t feel obligated to answer, i know you’re busy

burden to bear

word count: 2.7k

-> warnings: spoilers for liyue archon quest, canon typical violence…. minor body horror? blood mention.

-> gn reader (you/yours)

taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yum1x || @esthelily || @turningfrogsgay

< masterlist >

during the hunt itself, xiao is driven by a need to prove himself, pushing past his instinct and the way his karma flares around the one on the throne. he sees it as a way to redeem himself, to finally scrape some of the sin off his hands. it’s a way to prove himself, and one he takes eagerly.

it’s not correct to say he’s blinded by faith, but it’s not exactly wrong either. he definitely feels, subconsciously, that something’s… off, maybe, about his god. perhaps it’s the way his vision always seems to flutter and flare, or the ice in his veins when the command to hunt is given. he feels uneasy, unsettled, finding himself rolling his shoulders and wondering if he needed to add more stretches into his routines. and yet, despite the tension in his shoulders and the twist in his stomach, he kneels, bowing his head with a swear of fealty that goes unanswered.

unacknowledged.

perhaps he had delivered it wrong?

he doesn’t think much of it, quickly dissolving from the throne room and appearing besides the statue of the seven on the west edge of liyue. looking out over jueyun karst, he knows it’s a bit fruitless to start his search there due to the vicinity to the other adepti, but the spires there are tall, filled with wiry bushes and crags of rock that are easier to hide in than may seem at first glance.

he draws his pole arm, spinning it once over his hand before tapping the end to the stone beneath him. he’s not sure why he’s so nervous—is it the fact that this is technically the first order he’s been given? is it the idea of slaughtering somebody so identical to his creator that it nearly fooled morax, who’s been alive longer than he could fathom?

or is it simply the prospect of failure?

xiao grits his teeth and steps off the edge of the floating stone, halting his fall with anemo at nearly the last possible moment.

his feelings meant nothing. orders were given, and he had to follow them.

why else was he there, if he couldn’t?

it takes him longer than he expected to find you. he’s almost impressed, really, that you managed to evade his searching eyes, that you dodged not only him but the other adepti as well, all without taking refuge in any villages or otherwise civilized areas due to the orders the millelith put out. you hid well, he could attest to that, and though he was the one to find you, it was only on accident.

he was clearing out a group of hilichurls north of the inn. he was surprised so many had settled so close to the statue of the seven, as hilichurls usually avoided concentrated elemental energy, but didn’t think too hard about it. he simply unhooked his mask from his belt, noticing the difference in strength between these hilichurls and the average, and teleported into the middle of the camp.

the first thing he heard was a spotter’s cry. the second was the mitachurls’—archons, there were three—roar as they hefted their weapons. the final one was the intricate chanting of the abyss, but not any incantation he recognized.

he kept himself half in smoke as he danced around the edge of the camp, taking out the archers while he tried to find the abyss mage. he could catch glimpses of hydro bubbles through the walls of the hut, but the steps were covered in frost-

he barely ducked under the swing of a mitachurl’s axe, slashing his spear along its side as he slipped away, darting across the path of one charging with a large stone shield. it clipped his shoulder despite his efforts, pain spiking down his arm, but he didn’t pay attention to the injurh. normally he wouldn’t be this distracted, but two abyss mages and three mitachurls in one camp could only spell bad news. the best he could likely do was to leave and grab back-up, but who? the millelith were busy, morax and the adepti were on their own search…

xiao quickly climbed onto the roof of the hut, jamming his spear between two of the logs to keep grip on the woven roofing. the grass was damp, squishing uber this feet, likely from whatever hydro magic the mage was busy with within it. it likely wasn’t the smartest idea to stand on the roof, but this area of liyue was mostly plains, with little cover from the charging mitachurls. he needed a moment, if only a short one, to hash out a plan to deal with the camp.

the three mitachurls were standing besides the hut, two with shields and one with a crackling axe, electro dancing along the blade. xiao shifted, pivoting around the peak of the hut to move away from that one, the grass roof squishing below his feet.

the mitachurl’s ear twitched.

he shoved himself off the roof just as the mitachurl slammed the flat of its blade onto the roof, the whole shack shaking. electricity swarmed across the waterlogged roofing, reaching the opposite edge just as xiao dropped off it, landing between the other two mitachurls. they didn’t charge, nor attack, their motivations only made clear when the hiss of cryo froze out the lingering moisture in the air in front of him, effectively boxing him in.

the abyss mage swayed in its circle, staff glowing a sharp blue from within its bubble of frost.

“leave, adeptus,” it hissed, waving its staff in a circle. “you have no place here.”

xiao didn’t reply, instead picking apart his options. he couldn’t do significant damage to the shield mitachurls without utilizing his burst to destroy their shields, but that didn’t cover the mage at all… and he was still wet from the roof, so the mage would be able to freeze him within the time he had drawn in enough anemo energy to wield his mask with any level of efficiency…

he flexed his hand around his polearm. how had he gotten into this situation? his only options were to get lucky or teleport away, but even the latter of those relied on the first.

luck. how useless was he, to rely on luck-?

“‘adeptus’?”

the abyss mage startled at the voice, the cryo it had been swirling dissipating. both he and it turned to the side, to the entrance to the hut, where a figure could be seen just beyond the mitachurl.

his first instinct was that it was his god, and he briefly relaxed under the knowledge that he’d get out of this in mostly one piece.

his second was to recognize the torn clothing and dirt-smeared skin, and realize that you could never be his god.

xiao’s eyes narrowed, his spear twisting towards you faster than the distracted mage could react. you, his target, the one he had been seeking out, were hiding behind the abyss. he should have expected it, in truth, figured out the one known for going against the rules of nature would side with the most unnatural force, but that was not for now.

not now, when he was launched forward by the power of anemo, his spear driving him forward, barely skimming the mitachurl in favor of his true target: you.

your eyes barely had the chance to dart in his direction.

xiao was, in truth, not the first one to see you.

many villagers had glimpsed you running around the outskirts of their villages, plucking apples and sunsettias off trees and taking mint from their gardens and leaving bundles of sweet flowers behind instead. they’d seen you, face half-covered in a poor mask made of scraps, your clothes that of the haphazard stitches of the hilichurls, which helped you blend into teyvat a bit more at the price of comfort. many had seen you and assumed you were a run of the mill thief, perhaps one taking advantage of the current hunt since the millelith were occupied. they wryly called you clever, warning the traveling merchants about you, the one they glimpsed at inane hours of night.

he wasn’t the first to see you, by far. he was, however, the first to recognize you.

he was the first to lay eyes upon your form and realize the truth, to realize that the blood seeping into your clothes was the color of stars and galaxies, to recognize that your heart beat blue.

the argument could be made that the hilichurls were the first, or perhaps the mages that had taken you in and brought you food, but it was not them that gathered you into their arms and whisked you away in a flash of teal, uncaring of the spike of cryo that drove into their side at the last minute. the hilichurls did not walk with frosted-over limbs, the abyss did not cry with a throat full of ice, calling for assistance in undoing their own crime.

xiao couldn’t decide whether it was lucky or not that baizhu was in the pharmacy, speaking with herbalist gui over the front desk. on one hand, it was best to have the most experienced healer in liyue at your side, but on the other..

“adeptus xiao, what is-…..”

confusion, then anger, then realization, all flashing over his face in an instant before he tilted his head and walked quickly to a back room, xiao following.

he busied himself with picking the ice off his body and clothes, ignoring the shake of his hands and the stench of blood in the room. the mage had pulled you from the point of his spear, but he still hit the side of your stomach, and he could tell it was messy.

knocks sounded at the door but baizhu turned them away sharply, only allowing qiqi to pass him a bowl of lotus seeds. he was focused, changsheng slithering off his shoulders to grab supplies as needed. time seemed to slow to a crawl, like xiao had entered a domain without an exit, filled with the iron smell of blood and the never ending chips of ice he peeled from his skin. it left behind stinging wounds and red marks, but he couldn’t find it in him to care.

what was his brief moment of injury compared to a scar upon his god?

the moment that baizhu had stopped, all but collapsing into a chair and wiping off his hands with a tired call of ‘it’s done. the foundation will be okay.’ xiao had stood and left, biting his tongue through the protests of both his own body and the doctor.

he’d given changsheng his confession, but he did not wish to stick around and hear his verdict.

weeks later, morax came and visited him at the inn, carrying with him a plate of almond tofu and an apology. xiao leaned against the furthest edge of the balcony, curled around the plate, staying as far as he could from the one with your aura imprinted upon him.

he felt it, when zhongli had first come up the stairs. the shock, then the warmth, the all-encompassing comfort that soothed the pain from the bruising on his shoulder. he felt it, and knew that he did not deserve it.

“it’s not your fault,” zhongli insisted, baritone words colored with unreturned sympathy. “the fake… had fooled us all. even me. i cannot hold your actions against you when i myself would have done the same.”

and maybe that was true. maybe he would have drawn his own weapon, pierced your skin himself, acting on the orders of one who dared to take the place of the divine, but that was irrelevant.

xiao was the one who had hurt you. and it was entirely his fault.

almond tofu, his favorite dish, tasted bitter and sour on his tongue, almost akin to the pain medication that zhongli had made him drink after noticing how cautious he was with his injured arm. he’d made him take the first dose in front of him and swear to take the rest, with a long monologue about taking care of himself tacked on afterwards, but it was for nothing. aside from the first night he had it, xiao hadn’t touched the bottle. it sat on his nightstand, beside a bed he hardly used, taunting him when he returned earlier than usual.

he could take it. there was nothing stopping him from doing so, and he probably should if he wanted to return to his duties quicker. but every time he picked up the glass, thumb tracing over the engravings as he undid the top, he hesitated.

he could take it. he probably should. but did he deserve to?

you were still recovering, possibly still bedridden weeks later. your blood still stained his spear, dripping down to his palms, pale and scarred skin marked further with the blue and purple swirls of his sin. you were still in pain, still healing from a spear to your side, and he was here, reaching for medicine for a sore shoulder?

(it was worse than that. bone had knocked against bone, bruising beneath where muscle could reach. it ached even when he sat as still as possible, dragging him out of every attempt to meditate. the dark purple splotches stretched beyond his clothing, reaching across his back and up his neck, making nearly any action flare the wound. it was far beyond an over-exerted muscle or a particularly tiring day, and yet even the worst nights of his pain were staved off by the memory of having to wash blue off his blade. even as the latch on the bottle was undone, the lip pressed to his, he could never bring himself to drink it)

(even the small droplet of it on the rim, tasting of qingxin extract and violet grass, threatened to make him sick. how dare he?)

yes, it would likely only get him into more trouble were he found out, but he was careful not to be. whenever the wind brought him the heavy presence of geo, zhongli’s familiar footsteps climbing the stairs, he snatched the bottle and emptied it into the stone carving on the balcony, letting the medicine soak into the soil beneath it. it splashed when he was sloppy, the deep purple medicine appearing blue on the stone, sparking a memory that weighed harder on the pit in his stomach.

even as he handed the bottle over to zhongli, his jaw clenched from the strain on his shoulder. the action was stiff, jerky, but evidently smooth enough that it had passed his assessment.

zhongli tucked the bottle away, surprisingly not drawing out a new one.

“i am proud of you, and of the progress you have made,” he said, golden eyes softening in the light of dusk. “well done, xiao.”

how strange, he thought, watching him leave, that the very action that made his vision swim with unshed tears was one that was praised.

he wouldn’t complain, of course. he never would. this pain was his to bear, just as the burden of your bloodshed was his to shoulder. he was well aware his pain could never take back yours—though he wished, desperately, that he could move your injury to him. he wanted to be able to take on the physical reminder of his defect, to take the hit of his own spear to spare you from his lapse in judgement. he would take it, take ten times the pain you endured, if only it meant that your skin was free of his scars.

it would be an honor to assist the divine, even at the price of his own life.

[purple-phesh-and-cheps]

trying to write my fic and i 'm struggling so much to find the motivation 😭

i keep getting distracted

it 's only 1.6 k words so far aghhh

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

wither rose alliance........gneder

i assume this is in reference to the transgender/appearence headcanons post so thank you for your service anon gender you will get. for all of them, even. you will get it under the cut however because empires has so many members to discuss and they're all getting a good two paragraphs worth of thoughts.

ok so first things first just wanna establish the rules we're working with here, cause i think about this a lot. for humans (so the entire wra, joey, joel, and pix), we're living in a sort of medieval era in terms of science for trans folks, though not medieval attitudes. this is not to say there’s no transphobia or anything, cause like, there is and there isn’t. i’m not gonna be discussing anyone experiencing really aggressive transphobia here, but i’m still gonna be discussing gender norms and worries and passing and stuff, y’know? it’s a much more modern attitude towards gender than medieval times, that’s for sure, but it’s not a perfect world cause i like to project. but generally they don't have like, hormone therapy or anything like that. for the non humans, each race has varying approaches to gender, so i'll touch on them when i get to them.

starting with the humans!

fwhip

fwhip uses strictly he/him pronouns and is a trans man. he's the shortest member of the wither rose alliance, not because he's actually particularly short, but because the rest of them are all 6' or taller. depending on how i'm feeling for the day, he's somewhere between 5'6" and 5'9", but he's also constantly wearing shoes with subtle lifts in them, so most of the emperors are under the impression he's about two inches taller than he is. he's also the skinniest of the wra due to being just slightly malnourished (a thing i could get into but i will not do that here).

fwhip realized he was trans when he was in his mid-late teens, around 15-16, and spent no real amount of time in the closet. this was also around the time fwhip was beginning to be abruptly trained to be the emperor of the grimlands after gem ran away, so he didn't have great control over his gender presentation until he became emperor. at that point, fwhip chopped his hair off and began to present significantly more masculine, binding (i am giving them binders, for no reason other than i want to), speaking in a lower register, and defaulting to more bulky/form concealing clothes. this is partially because of the gender, but also because of the aforementioned "kinda small and malnourished looking in comparison to most of the people he hangs out with" so it is also in an attempt to look more intimidating.

gem

gem uses she/her pronouns and is a trans woman. gem is the tallest of the wra, standing somewhere around 6'2"-6'3". she is similarly lanky to fwhip (as she also is a bit malnourished, again for reasons i could but won't get into), with most of her being legs, but she gets a bit more muscle as the series goes on and she starts training more in martial fighting alongside magic. she also has a tooth gap, and is very pale and freckles easily.

gem leans pretty heavily into feminine presentation, skirts and very long hair and chest padding and all that, as she is much more used to the gender presentation of the grimlands, moreso than any other empire. gem realized she was trans not long before she ran away, and had slowly begun to come out of the closet when she decided to run away (that and the wizard thing are not related to her being trans, no more than they are related to her being alive, y'know?) the crystal cliffs has only ever known her as a woman, and she greatly prefers it as such. generally, the roseblings are the members of the wra who care the most about passing. gem also got her name from her late mother.

pearl

pearl uses she/her pronouns with most people, but if she likes you enough you might get he/him privileges, and is transfem. her gender is probably most adequately summed up as lesbian. pearl is about 6' even, and she's very muscular, with broad shoulders she's a huge fan of. she's built like someone who fights regularly, but also like someone who's been doing farm work since she could walk. powerful bones and muscles.

she has long hair, with an undercut, in order to make keeping it out of her face easier and to keep her cool in the heat. other than the long hair, she doesn't tend to lean wildly feminine in her presentation. she wears dresses pretty frequently, but it is simply not practical to do most of the work she does in a dress, so her closet's about a 50/50 split. she also doesn't do any of the cosmetic stuff (including shaving super frequently, but she also doesn't grow much facial hair naturally, just some stubble) and doesn't wear a bra. simply not her thing! also, pearl is her birth name, her parents were going for cool and gender neutral and then she became transgender.

sausage

sausage uses he/any, in the way that he knows exactly how he looks and presents and that most people will default to gendering him as male because of the way he looks, carries himself, dresses, etc. and he doesn't really care enough to correct them. their gender would probably most accurately described as genderqueer, but the better descriptor for both his gender and sexuality is bear.

as you might've guessed sausage is FAT and STRONG and HAIRY. she has very dark and thick hair literally everywhere, including a very thick beard. he's the middle of the road in terms of height for the wra, either the same height as pearl or a hair shorter but it evens out when they're in shoes. and i'm saying it again because i truly cannot stress it enough- sausage is fat and has a lot of muscle mass. that custom sword was a great sword those things are fucking heavy.

joey

joey is a trans man who uses he/him pronouns. he stands around 5'9" (the lucky bastard) and is very twink-ish. just generally very lithe but in an actually well fed way this time. he doesn't wear a binder because he doesn't really feel the need for one, and also he's in the jungle hanging out with solely animals all the time anyways. who even cares. joey kind of naturally passes well but he truly doesn't care about it at all outside of keeping his hair short, and even that's more a practicality thing than anything else.

joey has been locked into his gender ever since he was very young, and most of the people he grew up with only ever knew him as a man. he also absolutely abandoned those people and moved away, but this is also the only way the other emperors have ever known him to be, so. joey generally doesn't put a lot of thought into his gender outside of "i am a man", and frankly, good for him. also yes i'm implying he's just walking around tits out all the time and YKNOW WHAT. good for him. fuck it who cares.

joel

joel uses any pronouns, though he usually defaults to he/him, she/her, and whatever neopronouns you want forever. joel is the shortest of the human emperors, standing around 5’5” (sometimes shorter depending on how i’m feeling), and he only accuses his friends of transphobia when they make fun of him about it sometimes. ze is a very compact person, fitting a surprising amount of muscle into a (comparatively) small frame. joel is definitely wider than ve is long, y’know? also joel’s a butch lesbian argue with the wall if you think otherwise.

joel, despite being human, doesn’t quite have the usual human conception of gender. she's been on her own for a very long time, as her parents passed away when she was very young. he’s been a wanderer for most of his life, never really settling down long enough to get entirely mixed into the culture of any given place. the only human empire that joel spent any significant amount of time in as a kid was pixandria, which already had a laxer approach to gender than most of the other human empires (i’ll get into it), and most of joel’s childhood was spent in various small settlements or caravans that had a ton of non-humans in them anyways. this results in a joel who doesn’t really have a grasp on “traditional” human views of gender, and who doesn’t really care to learn. like, if you asked, he’s probably going to tell you he’s a man, or maybe transmasc if you really press, but it’s not a label that xe particularly cares about.

pix

pix uses they/he pronouns and is agender. they’re one of the tallest human emperors, standing somewhere around 6’2”-6’4”. gem’s usually still taller than them in heels, but they’re probably around the same height if neither of them has shoes on. pix is strong, i’m thinking like an mma fighter build. you can’t really see the muscle under all those flowy desert fabrics, but if you get into a fight you’ll know it’s there.

pixandria, due to being so far away from most of the other human empires, has a lot of more notable cultural differences. one of these things is their approach to gender, which has always been a lot more lax in regards to people who aren’t really a man or a woman. as a result, pix has been agender basically his entire life. as a side effect of this and being the oldest of the emperors, he was also inadvertently gender awakenings for a lot of them when they first met for diplomatic reasons. and sexuality awakenings for some, because they’re also so pretty. they’ve got very beautiful tan skin and hair that falls somewhere between their shoulders and mid back, depending on the time of year, and a bit of facial hair and they are just peak gender.

and now for the non humans!

lizzie:

lizzie uses she/they pronouns and is probably most accurately described as transfem, but labels get weird in this section. she’s about 5’7”-5’8” when in her human form, and then solidly 10’ in her ocean queen form. they’ve got broad shoulders as well, and is pretty much the definition of a swimmer’s build. she presents very femininely solely for the joy of it- flowy dresses and spiny skirts are so fun!

lizzie and jimmy are not the only fish people in this world, but they’re the only ones who are Like That, but they do both have experience with the fish folk that is reflected in their views on gender. due to becoming an amnesiac after crawling out of the water, a teenaged lizzie was taken in by some of those aforementioned fish folk who integrated her into some of the land dwelling fish cultures before she struck out on her own. fish folk do not have anything even approximating the human concept of gender. some fish can change sex depending on what their environment needs, like, let’s be real with ourselves here. the fish folk are aware of the concept, obviously, they interact with humans all the time, but most of them don’t do that and never have. lizzie, as such, has no concept of gender either. she uses she/they pronouns because she sound nice next to her name and just Feel Right for them as a person. they don’t have the gender attachment to these pronouns in the way a human would, but an attachment is absolutely there, and it feels very weird and strange for her to be referred to with any pronouns outside of she/they.

jimmy:

jimmy uses he/they/se pronouns and is a trans man. i know jimmy didn’t get the same ocean orb transformation lizzie got, but i’m letting him be at least a bit different on either side of getting his memories back. when he’s at his most human, jimmy’s about 5’6”, when he’s at his most fish, he’s about 6’7”. yes se gains literally a foot of height, it pisses off everyone in seas immediate vicinity. jimmy is very gangly and even after living on land for years, not super used to walking like a person, and it shows. he and lizzie are also two of the palest emperors, as they both are deep sea fish who are not meant for the amount of sun they get.

partially due to having integrated into land dwelling society when they were younger and partially due to the codlands being right on the border of mythland (and having a lot more shared culture than most human and non human empires would usually have), jimmy has a much more human understanding of gender than lizzie. hence the fact that he identifies as a trans man- when they crawled out of the ocean, people called them a girl, and jimmy found that to be not right, so here we are. the cod folk have different concepts of what being a certain gender means than humans, since they’re incorporating the idea of gender into a culture that didn’t originally have anything even close, but they have still picked up the gender thing more over time, y’know? jimmy’s more open to fucking with sear gender due to being a biologically different species from everyone sea grew up with, so yes, sear a man, but only in the ways that matter to sear, not everyone else (codfather vs codboy is partially a gender thing for jimmy. trust me. this is the voice of a person who thinks about this jimmy clip everyday.)

katherine:

katherine uses she/fae pronouns and is a trans woman. she’s 5’4”-5’5”, and has a very lithe and lightweight build so that her wings can actually support her body. those things are so small her bones have simply GOT to be light as hell. she has very long hair, coming to around her butt, that she spends a whole lot of effort on perfectly maintaining. fae presents very femininely, less out of a desire to pass and more because that’s just how fairies present in general, regardless of gender.

fairies have a concept of gender, though there’s a lot more nuance to it than human gender, with it being a wide spectrum rather than a binary. (obviously i am aware gender is not binary i am literally nonbinary but you know what i mean here). the fairies have just wildly different social hierarchies and systems going on, so their views on gender are a lot more complicated and tied into that. because fairies are also so tuned into magic, they’ve also got the closest we can get to medically transitioning in this universe. y’know the shrine that the wizard has in stardew valley that allows you to change your name, appearance, and gender, and nobody will ever comment on it and they’ll act like you’ve been like that the whole time? yeah that’s basically what katherine did as well. fae’s got her own gender she presents as to the fairies, but it has a similar sort of effect on non-fairies as well. no one remembers faer name before fae was katherine, for example, and she likes it that way!

shrub:

shrub uses he/she pronouns and is non binary. this is one of the most important ones on this list to me, to the point that i forget it's not canon and think people are misgendering shrub sometimes by accident, lol. shrub is the smallest of the cast by far, at 4'3", and is short and stocky. she is also fat btw. important for you to know this. his hair is quite short, mostly because he hates putting in more than the absolute basic amounts of work to keep it maintained. as such it never gets to be more than a bob. similarly, he defaults to shorts and pretty simple shirts because it's the easiest things to wear and run around in.

the closest things gnomes have to a gender binary comes in the form of pronouns. they don't have gendered pronouns like we do, but they do have different pronouns that are specifically used to signal what type of job the person in question holds. this means they have a ton of them, as you might expect, though there's obviously not one for every individual job, but rather groups. this also means that depending on the locale you're in or the dialect you're speaking in, what jobs correspond to what pronouns can vary a bit, for fun and profit. shrub is kind of aware of the human concept of gender, but her closest friends on empires are a fairy and a man who doesn't super care about all that, so the grasp she has on it is slim. as such, he doesn't lean particularly into any given presentation of gender, and defaults to he and she pronouns when asked because he likes the mouthfeel of them, honestly.

scott:

scott uses he/they pronouns and is nonbinary (though this is another one where the labels are weird). scott is tall for the emperors, at about 6'7", but actually pretty short for an elf. he is all limb, with very long arms and legs, and they're on the skinnier side. they also have the light bones thing i mentioned with katherine, but their wings are much more adequately sized, so it's not as intense. scott tends towards more masculine gender presentation, but in the ways elves are usually masculine in fantasy media. it's a very pretty and flowy masculinity that also sometimes includes skirts if you're scott, but only sometimes. also his hair is naturally blue. elves just have weird as hell hair colors (xornoth's hair is naturally magenta, for example).

elves simply live too long and are too generally disinterested in human matters to have human concepts of gender. that's a human problem, not theirs. due to scott's status as a diplomat and prince/king of rivendell, however, he's been engrossed in human life and culture his entire life, so he's very aware of the concept. this is doubly true for him specifically because every other emperor in his generation is also trans, and because the closet human empire to him growing up was the grimlands, which has the closest equivalent to real life strict gender roles. scott is well aware of the fact that he doesn't really have the same understanding of gender as his human friends, but he really wanted to fit in as a kid so he just started grabbing at things that they heard about from various humans they interacted with frequently. thankfully for him he gravitated towards nonbinary as a label very quickly, and he and they pronouns were just what everyone was calling him when he went places, and it didn't feel wrong, so, sure, why not?

(i'm not giving xornoth a whole paragraph due to the.... craziness, but xornoth is also nonbinary and uses he/they/it. when it was human, it defaulted to a more masculine presentation, such as growing facial hair, and never really going for skirts in the way scott does.)

[romanceyourdemons]

the thing about my fic is i want the different pov sections to be more or less balanced, but lestat talks SO much fucking more than tyler durden. i just burned 1000 words saying what tyler durden got through in fifty. because of course lestat has to express and justify his opinions on all the decor first