#less than secret

[egophiliac]

*shaky thumbs up* I just finished ch5...... y-you were not kidding about it being a heavy one.....

:)

(how's that going so far, Mal)

[fungi-maestro]

Happy tdov to fat trans people. 🏳️‍⚧️ Biggest thing that helped me as a trans kid was seeing older fat trans people. There were a lot of really irritating "advice" posts going around early in my time on the internet with a lot of misinformation in them, but one that I constantly saw (in addition to people claiming you should wear your pants rediculously low or only wear button ups) were posts saying you had to lose weight to transition. Can confidently confirm that is completely untrue. 👍

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

can you see the stars in your dreams (and do they have a lot to say about me) - Part 1

Or: a secret Admirer AU

Less than a month into the school year, and Steve’s already making use of the library. If Mrs. Click could see him now, she’d be proud–until she caught sight of the blank notebook page in front of him and the lack of textbooks on the table. 

He feels stupid; he’s hunched over his notebook, trying to make his thoughts transfer onto the page in any coherent form. But, he’s not like Eddie with his impassioned speeches and clever English papers.

Words flow through Eddie in fully-formed, concrete ideas. For Steve, it’s more of a drip. Each word has to be scaffolded onto the previous one with blood, sweat, and tears. Even then, it’s never quite right. Too abrupt, never what he was actually trying to say.

He’s just never been good with words.

By the time he gives up, there’s more crossed out than left written, so he gets a clean page of paper and transcribes it as best he can. He’s left with:

       Your hair is pretty. Do you use conditioner?

Steve tears it from his notebook and lays it flat atop his table in the library, smoothing out any crinkles in the page. It feels like the start to something, sure, but there’s more blank space on the page than words. By a lot.

He leans back over his work, adds a little wonky heart in his blue pen and signs the whole thing—

       ❤ your secret admirer

—the way all the girls who leave notes in his locker do. Their notes are usually on pretty paper, written in sparkly gel pen that smells like strawberries. The i’s are sometimes dotted with little hearts he’ll never admit to finding cute. And there’s envelopes involved, and usually more than eleven measly words.

His looks like something Eddie’ll toss out before opening, mistaking it for trash.

Steve grimaces. How do girls do this? Do they all take some sort of class on how to write pretty letters on pretty enough paper that boys will fall in love with them? Is that what they teach in Home Ec? He should have never let Tommy mock him into switching to shop class.

Should he ask a girl?

Under no conditions will he ever ask Carol. She’d have far too many uncomfortable questions and tell the whole school all of his embarrassing answers. He’d be run out of town within days, Carol holding the sharpest pitchfork.

Steve leans back in his chair with a groan too loud for the library and fists his hands to rub tired eyes.

“Are you okay?” Steve jerks, sending his pen and paper careening to the ground in his attempt to cover the compromising words upon the page. “Oh, sorry!”

Steve watches, horrified, as Chrissy Cunningham bends down to pick his supplies up off the carpet before he’s had time to scramble out of his chair. She’s in her cheer uniform, white zip-up Hawkins hoodie covering her arms. She looks perfect and preppy and just like all the girls who’ve ever left a note in his locker.

She’d be able to write something that Eddie would want to read.

“Steve?” Chrissy’s hovering over him, lips pursed, eyes big and worried. “Are you okay?”

“Shit, sorry,” he replies. She’s got his note clutched to her chest. He curls his fingers against the urge to reach out for it—that’ll just draw her attention, and that’s the last thing Steve wants right now. “Just got lost in my head.”

“Anything I can help with?”

He knows what she’s going to do before it happens. Chrissy’s sweet—if there’s a way to help, she’ll want to. So, she holds out the paper and begins to read, probably expecting an assignment she can tutor him on, and there they are: Steve’s damning words written in still-wet blue ink.

Her brow furrows as she takes an obscene amount of time mouthing out the words before she looks back up to meet his eyes. “Did someone give this to you?”

Her eyes are still big, but they look sad now, like just the thought of someone receiving the note he’d slaved over is enough to distress her. Unable to help himself, Steve snatches it from her hands and crumples it into a ball, damning words hidden in his fist.

Chrissy gasps at his abrupt movement and takes a halting step away.

“I wrote it,” he mutters, no longer able to meet her eyes.

She’s silent for long enough that he’d think she left, except the library’s quiet, and he hasn’t heard her take a step. He stares at the grains of the wood in the table, empty hand rubbing against the smudged top as he waits for her to do something.

“Are you…” she starts, trailing off for a moment before picking her thought back up, “…picking on someone?”

Steve clenches his fist tighter, note crinkling beyond repair beneath his nails as he mutters, “no.”

Chrissy’s quiet again. Steve doesn’t dare to look up, even as he hears the chair across from him pull out, the sound of her weight settling into the wood. The table’s just so interesting. Nothing has ever been as intriguing as the little chip out of its edge, the ring on the wood where someone had let their drink condensate against all the library’s rules.

“Who’s this for?” Chrissy’s voice is soft now, like he’s some sort of horse, prone to bolting when spooked. “Steve?”

Steve looks up. Her eyes aren’t sad anymore; they’re piercing.

He’s always liked Chrissy. She’s the nicest girl in the school, until someone does something she doesn’t like. Then, it’s all disappointed eyes, and pouty lips. It’s like disappointing his Mom, but worse, because his Mom’s never around to stare balefully at him.

The point is, Chrissy’s nice. She’s not like Carol. If he told her, there would be no lynch mob, or fleeing Hawkins in the dead of the night with nothing but the clothes on his back. Probably. Maybe.

Steve tries to smooth out the page, and scowls down at it when the wrinkles refuse to disappear. It’s even worse now, words made illegible by the deep creases his fingers have pressed into the paper. There’s no way Eddie’d ever want a note like this.

So, he says, “Munson,” looking up to try to watch his meaning land on her face.

It doesn’t. Her foreheads all scrunched up as she looks down at the note. Only then does Steve realize he’s caressing the wonky little heart. He pulls his hand back, curling his fingers in so she can’t see the smudge of blue on his pointer finger.

“And you aren’t making fun of him?”

Steve can feel his shoulders drooping. He wants to disappear into the floor, melt into the carpet and become one with all the other mysterious stains upon it. “No.”

“Oh,” Chrissy replies, drawn out and low as she peers down at the crinkled note with a confused frown. But something must click because she straightens, eyes wide beneath her bangs. “Oh!”

It’s loud enough that they both reflexively flinch. But, when no librarians come skulking around any corners, Chrissy turns back to him, gaze uncomfortably intent. Steve wonders, somewhat horrified by the turn his life has taken, if he’s about to get hate-crimed by a cheerleader half his size.

But Chrissy’s nice—always has been, always will be. So, she bites her lip and looks furtively around like she’s only just realized this is a conversation that shouldn’t have any witnesses. “But you like him?” she whispers.

Steve leans forward, matching her energy and pitch as he replies, “yeah,” quiet enough that it’s barely a breath. Chrissy smiles at him, warm and small, just like her hand as she reaches across the table to put it over his and squeeze comfortingly.

The note sits, damningly soiled beneath their linked hands, wrinkled, and smudged, and barely-legible handwriting. The weight that’d lifted with Chrissy’s smile sinks back into his gut.

“But it doesn’t matter,” Steve says, letting go of her hand so he can pull the note closer to himself. “I’m no good at this stuff.”

Steve crinkles the note back up. It’s unsalvageable—a stupid idea executed badly.

He’s in the middle of stuffing it into the pocket of his jeans to keep his keys company until he can toss it out in the comfort of his home when Chrissy says, “maybe I can help?” voice lilting up, like it’s a question.

Steve meets her eyes, hand still half-shoved in his pocket. She’s all earnest now, the way she usually is when there isn’t a sad boy infecting her with his own ineptitude. Eyes shining with conviction, bangs curling sweetly around her face. She’s no Carol, that’s for sure.

“How?” he asks, and when she smiles, it looks a bit like hope.

***

 “I can help you write a better letter,” Chrissy starts. He perks up like a dog the moment its owner gets home. “If you do something for me.”

She feels like scum when he curls back into himself, gaze forlorn.

When she’d caught sight of the note he’d spent what seemed like a full hour pouring over, this isn’t what she’d been expecting. And when she’d finally made out his chicken scratch scrawl, she’d been sure Steve was picking on someone, no matter how unlike him it would have been. But then his shoulders had curled in, and his ears had turned red, and his voice had gone all soft and squishy when he’d said Eddie Munson’s name.

And she’d just wanted to fix it.

So, even as he asks, “what?” all sad and droopy again, she knows she’s going to help him, no matter what he says.

“Date me,” she asserts. It’s only as Steve blinks stupidly at her that she realizes how that came out of her mouth. “No, wait, not really!”

Her hands are waving around wildly and she can feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. In contrast, Steve seems to come back into himself, shoulders shoring up as he smirks across at her with his signature raised brow. The one he’d used while leaning on Nancy Wheeler’s locker last year, or holding her books as they walked to class, and all the other assortment of stereotypical boyfriend activities.

He’d worn it all the time, like it was part of the uniform. 

“I just meant, we could fake it?” His right eyebrow raises to meet his left, forehead scrunching up with his incredulity. “It’s just, Jason and I broke up? And he won’t leave me alone.”

It takes all her strength to keep meeting his eyes as the seconds tick away. But then Steve nods, swings his letterman jacket off, and tosses it across at her. Unprepared for his sudden movement, it hits her in the face and drops into her lap.

“There you go, sweetheart,” he says with a cheesy wink that somehow manages to feel more genuine than any of his actual flirting techniques. “Gotta sell it somehow.”

“What a romantic,” she replies, deadpan, but she pulls his jacket on anyway, something that feels an awful lot like relief steadying her heart rate as she smooths down the too-long sleeves.

Jason’s going to freak out. But after that, maybe he’ll stop calling her house, and trying to put his arm around her at lunch, and trying to pick her up for school every morning. She’d do almost anything to get it into his thick skull that she’s not interested.

So, here she is, hashing out the details of a secret admirer letter from Steve Harrington to Eddie Munson, of all the unlikely pairings.

“What’s wrong with what I wrote?” Steve whines, running his fingers through his hair until it’s all mussed up and falling into his face.

Chrissy snorts. “It sounds like you’re telling him his hair is frizzy and dry.”

“I said it was pretty!” He throws his hands in the air before crossing them and pouting his lower lip out.

Chrissy can’t help but laugh. She’s always liked Steve. He’s nicer than most of his friends, and he’s easy to talk to. But this is a side she’s never seen of him. She’s not sure anyone has; can’t imagine Carol or Tommy seeing him put his whole heart into something and not tearing it to shreds.

“Do you use conditioner?” she asks, throwing finger quotations around it as she reads it off the crumpled page.

Steve’s blushing again, cheeks all blotchy and red, rather unbecoming for the shoo-in for this year’s prom king. “Well, I thought you said you’d help!” he says, a little too loud for the library.

So, that’s how she ends up spending the next hour painfully turning Steve’s earnest thoughts into words on the pretty baby blue paper she’d carefully removed from the back of her daily planner.

In the end, they’re left with this:

       Eddie –

       I wish I could say this to your face, but I’ve never been good with words, and you’d probably think it was a joke.

       I can’t even get myself to talk to you, you’re so distracting.

       I like how pretty your hair is. How do you get your curls so shiny? I want to run my fingers through them.

       I hope this note brightens up your day. You deserve all the smiles you can get.

       Yours,

       Your Secret Admirer

It’s not what she would write, but still, it’s leagues better than what he’d started with. She slides it across to Steve, and he smiles down at it. He reaches his hand out, fingers almost brushing the page before he pulls his hand back, curling his fingers into a fist.

“What if someone sees me?” he asks, voice so quiet she can barely hear him even in the resounding silence of the library.

They’d managed not to talk about it, the dangers of Steve liking a boy. But it’d been present in the hesitancy by which he shared each of his thoughts, looking up at her like each remark would be the last straw before she recoils in disgust.

If someone finds out that Steve has a crush on a boy, it won’t take long until he’s getting beat up between classes or heckled straight out of school. Heck, even with all the rumors floating around about him, Eddie might be the one to throw the first punch.

“Do you want me to deliver it for you?” she asks.

“You’d do that?” he asks back, because apparently no one ever taught him not to answer a question with a question. “For me?”

“What else are fake girlfriends for?” she asks because they’re all questions now, no answers to be had between the pair of them.

Steve laughs, all tension leaving his shoulders as he throws his head back with amusement, eyes downright twinkling as he beams across at her.

“You’re the best, Chrissy,” Steve says, smiling even brighter as she replies, “I know.”

She leaves school that night after pushing Steve Harrington’s love note through the slats of Eddie’s locker, Steve’s letterman jacket keeping her warm from the cold.

This might be the best relationship she’s ever had, fake or not. Eat your heart out, Jason Carver.

PART 2

Welcome to my new AU! This will be posted in 21 parts. It is complete, so there will be a new update each morning until it's all posted. I've elected not to do a tag list, but it will be added to my pinned post each day as well. If that's not your speed, it will be added to Ao3 once it's all been posted here.

Special shoutout to @queenie-ofthe-void for not only their usual fabulous beta work, but also both the original idea and the writing of some of the secret admirer letters. You not only make me a better writer, but this work literally would not exist without you. <3<3

Title of the fic from the song Eyes in the Sun by Florist

[preyofolympus]

Bernard: I always saw him as like a kind of funny little man.

Tim, trying to contain himself but Bernard loving the Red Hood is pushing his limits: he’s a fucking criminal Bernard.

[absolutebl]

top 10 sexiest moments in bl for you personally?

Only 10?

Okay some of these are screen caps tumblr as blocked so Imma name a few up top I can't show you, but there will be images as well, you just have to read on.

My Top Sexiest BL Moments of All Time

No specific order, way more than 10. Not sorry.

Eternal Yesterday - "whoa" scene

kiss x kiss x kiss: Perfect Scandal - "sweet senpai"

My Beautiful Man - the bloody finger

My Personal Weatherman - the shirt!

Old Fashion Cupcake - finger bite

Unknown - "you don't know my dreams"

Some More - you can kiss me, hyung

A First Love Story - pervert

Kiseki Dear to Me, this scene:

Love is Science - in the hotel closet

Okay,

THAILAND

2 Moons Ambassador - coitus interuptus

Ghost Host, Ghost House - THE LEG THIRST

I Feel You Linger in the Air - the OIL scene, holy fucking heck

KP - you know which one:

Love in Translation - that DAMN convenience store scene

Oh My Sunshine Night - that DAMN shower scene

Why R U? - THAT DAMN SAUNA SCENE

Secret Crush on You - the chain fence

The Sign - yeah most of it, the fantasies, but also that first sex scene

This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans - this distance shot

Y-Destiny ToruFirst - Dai si

(source)

This post dated mid 2024 not responsible for amazing hotness that comes after.

Any of these surprise you? Probably not.

[haunted-xander]

I do think he feels bad but also it's... complicated

[creative-robot]

I know The Founders Cut, generally, is the edited scrubbed over version of genloss from Showfall in-universe (as well as a not-8-hour-long-three-stream-binge-night whenever we want to watch it again) but something that struck me as odd and I haven’t seen anyone mention yet, is this warning

It shows up right at the junction where the third act starts, where it appears the Hero is breaking free of Showfall thanks to Hetch. But here’s the thing, while a LOT less than the previous acts the audience still played a significant role in this act, even when really only given two audience interaction choices. Which makes me wonder, how real is this warning, and who is it for? Obviously the audience involved knows what happens past this point, but the audience is also implied to be an integral part of the Social Experiments, which is part of why things start to tweak out when the Founder removes them in the Founder Cut as the Generation Loss generation loses.

My first thought, was that obviously this is another bait and switch, a way to draw the audiences attention, seeing something that’s secret, something that’s not “meant for them”, which is a tactic I could see Showfall using in universe to keep people’s attention and add an air of mystery to their shows.

But

Showfall is doing all their experiments and these shows with a LOT of help from their censors to show it off, displaying a fun silly show that is definitely not uber fucked up and that is 100% just slime don’t worry about it, it’s kid friendly if it’s green! And I don’t think they’d want to bet all their cards on this one experiment doing well enough to their audience to not question the sudden shift in tone that follows this warning. Which makes me wonder.

They did their test, they did their experiment, and the evidence of this last act? I think it was a one time run, they don’t want anyone seeing this, it isn’t for the audience. Act three is specifically to both test and play with their Hero, Hetch’s new lines add a level to this, never once does he call the Hero by their name, just refers to Ranboo as their Role, and he’s not exactly. Nice? About literally any of Ranboos concerns, which wouldn’t really seem conductive to making an audience trust him, especially with his monologue at the end. Ranboo has escaped before, possibly right before act 1 started, they tightened the security on his mask to be unremovably part of them, Hetch doesn’t like the Hero but they’re a fan favorite so he can’t just get rid of them.

Act three is the cumulation of Ranboo being punished for things they don’t remember, for daring to break free from Showfalls control, this is Hetch taking the Hero and essentially majorly fucking and manipulating them to take his frustration out on a fan favorite they can’t otherwise get rid of or give a smaller role like Slimecicle. which is exemplified by the fact that we now know Charlie most likely was never able to actually able to fully snap out of the control, that even in act three in panic and confusion there was at least still a part of him being influenced by Showfall.

So the first two acts are the usual show, they have their posters, they have Squiggles to introduce them, they have goofs and silliness and only a couple slip ups that’re quickly dealt with, the usual rose tinted curtains. Act three?

Do not watch the following material

[thecranewivesrpf]

"if there's rank there's top and bottom, there's only two of us and your name is actually top so that makes me bottom" skizz what the actual fuck

[chayannesegg]

might be worth noting that tubbo got lore today because he made it canon he warped back from the boat.

i think this was confusing bc he wasn't sure initially how to play it (he is not a lore guy by trade we all know this), and waffled back and forth with it (with fun bits like "it's tuesday" or "it's a time rift"), but he definitely did make it canon.

he has the story: the boat didn't leave, he had his warpstone. he knew they would just steal him back, like they did the first time.

he has the reason: he desperately needed to see sunny before he left; couldn't sit idly by

and he made it clear that's what he wants to have happened. he told his chat to stop "-rp point"-ing him about it multiple times bc he's trying to make it canon (and told fit the same when he came back post-ghost bit).

he also asked sunny's admin whether she wanted their interactions to be filler or canon and she chose canon

plus he had a canon interaction with forever explaining it and asking him to watch over his daughter

and he and sunny built things and interacted with each other based specifically off the info he was kidnapped, that he will have to go, and that they both knew it was coming

so while you may have to ignore or recontextualize some of the goofier interactions when he initially came back (phil/etoiles/fit stuff esp), tubbo did come back, the code attack did happen, it's already been fit into the lore, and i don't doubt sunny is going to tell fit about it this week!!

[jimmyspades]

"To figure out a character, I try to look for something that's not in the screenplay—a little secret they carry around with them. Sometimes it's allowed to show itself, sometimes it isn't, yet it's always there.

"Robert Downey Jr. and I both decided that our two guys had been lovers at one point. It wasn't referred to at all, but that was the one choice made in that film that I ended up being pleased with, because it informed everything that happened. There's a certain understanding between two people who've been lovers that's not there in two people who haven't." James Spader on LESS THAN ZERO (1987), Interview Magazine, 1993

[sikenpilled]

my multiverse is all of these books which are canonically set in the same universe

[princeloww]

tell me and i will make part 2

UPDATE: part 2

[dropoutfailure]

are aro/ace people more prone to like incest ships

because it's such a grey area... like. yknow. it's not supposed to ever be sexual or romantic between ppl who are related. it's supposed to be platonic and familial. but when it is romantic/sexual the platonic/familial part doesn't go anywhere, it's still there.

like, they'll always be father and son even if they're having their little incest affair. if they weren't, they'd be fundamentally completely different people with a different relationship.

and b...because demisexual means attraction towards people you already know. so. family. most people have family if they're not close to anyone else.

[tswwwit]

I re-read the one shot of Bill going home after walking in on someone having a raunchy dream about Dipper, and now my mind is thinking what would happen if Bill decided dipper wouldn't last a single day in his shoes (ie reading people's minds all day), so they make a bet to see if Dipper can last 24 hours with a mind reading spell, only for Dipper to realize just how many people are thinking weird things about him

That's an interesting premise! And you just know Dipper's going to think it's all great and fascinating - right up until he doesn't.

[wizardlyghost]

[mayasaura]

Actually. Looking at the chronology. The last time Gideon and Harrow talked alone before the pool scene, Gideon accused Harrow of being a jealous creep for telling her to stay away from Dulcinea.

A whole lot of stupifying things happened in between, but really, it wouldn't be surprising if her first panicked reaction to Harrow disrobing was to think Harrow was making a move on her. Relationship definitely hurtling toward something.