#my brain made me do it

[suzypfonne]

Crowley is stretched out across the sofa, in the little sitting area at the back of the bookshop. There's a book opened over his eyes, blocking out the blinding lights from above. His sunglasses are folded on the small, wine-glass-littered table beside him. The bell over the bookshop door tinkles.

Without moving, Crowley flatly calls to the intruder, "Shop's closed. We don't have what you're looking for, and we wouldn't sell it to you even if we did."

"Crowley?" a small, familiar voice speaks tentatively into the librichor-drenched room.

The former demon bolts upright, the book falling to the floor, landing miraculously, undamaged. Crowley stares harshly at the beige shape standing in the shadow of the entry way.

"Crowley..." the angel's voice is shaking. All of him is, he fidgets absentmindedly with his ring. He clears his throat and begins, "We've known each other a long time. We've been on this planet, a long time..."

"Don't mock me, Aziraphale!"

The angel takes a step forward into the light, and continues, "I could always rely on you. You could always rely on me." He's sobbing.

Crowley stands suddenly and strides quickly across the shop, stopping a few feet short of the angel. "Stop it! You can't do this, Aziraphale! You can't just show up and throw my own words back at me!"

"We're a team, a pair, a set. Matching bookends. And while we have spent our existence pretending that we aren't. I would like to spend..." his voice cracks remembering how utterly broken Crowley had looked the last time he saw him, eyes brimming with uncried tears.

"I can't do this again. I can't hide. I won't! We can't keep doing this... fucking... ineffable dance. It's insane. I'm going insane, Aziraphale. "

Haltingly, Aziraphale resumes, "I would like to spend... whatever life we have left... together. Being an us..." he trails off as he searches Crowley's face, hoping against hope that he's not too late.

Crowley's angry, bowed posture softens. "What?"

"I love you, Crowley. Please, however you'll have me. Boyfriends. Husbands. Wives. Any of them. All of them."

"Aziraphale... Angel...I..."

In the silence that follows, Aziraphale steps closer and closer, narrowing the gap between them. "I love you. In a way that humankind scarcely has the words to describe. Oh, dear boy, I could spend millennia trying and never quite get it right."

"I love you, too, angel. I tried to say it, before. You already had one foot out the door. I-I never thought I'd see you again. I never hoped to hear those words."

"Oh Crowley. My Crowley. How I've missed you. Please, do it again?"

"Do what again?"

"Kiss me? Darling, please, again and again and..." and the angel's lips are stopped with a kiss. A proper kiss.

[eastgaysian]

[hallucinateonpaperspines]

NEW FIC

The child of my RDR2 brain rot and Ashlyn Moore what-ifs has been born!

Truly, this is a union worthy of April Fools.

If you're interested in a little pure gremlin chaotic hijinks in the Wild West, give it a try. This mishmash can only end well (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)

[walkerrenee]

sometimes i randomly remember how insane maggie stiefvater was for making ronan lynch—a man that can create reality—a man of god, when he himself is a god of a man. then to take this man and have him be not only in love with, but a literal soulmate of a man named adam. parrish. adam parrish. who, mind you, lives above ronan's very own place of worship. and is the namesake of the first of mankind that the bible says god made from the literal dust of the ground (adam parrish: comes from nothing, hair "dusty" in color) and appoints him to care for the garden of eden (adam parrish: sacrifices himself to ronan's sentient forest). then has adam viewing ronan as a god and ronan saying "maybe he dreamt (created)" adam???? like who just fucking writes that and goes about their life?

[hinamie]

spiraling

[curlytsunamiart]

a confrontation between miquella and messmer in the shadow keep throne room

[yhwcomeback]

I know people be hating on this fit, BUT THE RACER VIBES???? Listen.

[lotus-pear]

mourning black and the death of ideals

[anna-scribbles]

adrien tell ur mom to leave me alone !

[bixels]

Just gonna have to wait and see, right? Just wait and see! Just gotta wait and see! Who knows, we'll just have to wait and see! It's anybody's guess, we'll just have to wait and see! The future is exciting, we just gotta wait and see!

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[reunitedinterlude]

june 13, 2019

happy 5 years to basically i'm gay <3

[egophiliac]

C'MON TO THE THEATER!

I love these guys so much. forget NRC, I want to attend their terrible disaster school for disaster children that might actually be plastered on top of the smoking remains of an actively sinking ship. I may or may not actually learn anything, but I will have the time of my life.

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time — I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[zondearts]

More More doves

[hinamie]

siren!megumi concept sheet i whipped up in a single-minded fever state fr @uriekukistan