#posts that make you see my url and go Of course they would say that

[sonknuxadow]

Anyway not prompted by anything at all but i think sonic knuckles and shadow are a really funny trio that they should do more with

[amourane]

kick in the right direction

pairing: football player!seungcheol x mascot!reader

genre: fluff, university au

w/c: 0.9k

summary: seungcheol is the star football player in your university but he becomes a bumbling mess in front of you.

warnings: none, you do get hit by a ball though

a/n: i have decided to start writing fics for seventeen too because i just love them way way too much <3 also disclaimer this post used to be under my old url httphannie <3

Seungcheol doesn’t know what to say. He usually has an explanation for his actions. There doesn’t seem to be anything coming to his mind when he sees you on the ground. The problem with being the star player on the football team was the amount of trust his coach put on him. As well as the thought that they needed to win every game, that wasn’t a problem though because Choi Seungcheol was a beast when he was in game mode. His aim was the best on the whole team, he’d never missed a goal. 

Obviously today was an off day.

“You’re staring, Cheol.” Jeonghan gives him a hearty slap on the back. “You really like our school mascot don’t you?” All Seungcheol can do is nod, watching as Seungkwan helps you up.

He really wants to go over and say sorry for nearly knocking you out with his kick but he can’t. Not because he doesn’t want to but because he simply can’t. It’s stupid really. Choi Seungcheol, star player of the football team, can’t say two words when he’s faced with you. He’s tried speaking to you. Once after a game, not the best choice because he’d become so nervous he spilt his water bottle all over you. Even after you told him it was fine he was still stuttering his words. Another time he’d managed to catch you walking down the hallway. The moment you smiled and said ‘hi’ his mind blanked. No words could come out of his mouth and he stood there gaping like a goldfish.

Talking to girls was easy for Seungcheol. He could give them a smile and they’d be fawning all over him. You were different. There isn’t one time he’s had a full conversation with you with nothing embarrassing happening. He’d stumble over his words or nothing would come out of his mouth. The only thing that kept him from giving up was the fact you would grin every time he came up to you and he didn’t like giving up.

“Of course I like her!” Seungcheol runs a hand through his hair. “I just don't know what to do?”

“You could ask her out.”

“I can’t!” 

His friend arches an eyebrow, clearly puzzled. "What do you mean you can't ask her out? Like you're scared, or you don't know how to, because those two are completely different things." Jeonghan's tone is gentle but probing, urging Seungcheol to confront the root of his hesitation.

“That’s not it. I’ve got everything planned out. I know what to say and I know where I want to bring her to. There’s a whole plan in my notebook, it’s coloured in and everything!”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Seungcheol fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “Whenever I go up to her to ask her out my throat closes and I can’t find the right words. Or when I try to even write my confession, my hand freezes and no letters can be written. It’s even worse because I manage to make a fool of myself whenever I’m in front of her!” He kicks the football away.

Jeonghan sighs, staring at Seungcheol as he aimed a perfect kick to the goal. The boy was completely enamoured by you. Practically the whole school knew about his crush on you. Everyone was just waiting for the day the both of you would come in hand in hand. 

//

“Y/n, oh my god! Are you okay?” Seungkwan was shaking you by your shoulders. You rub your head. That football was really hard. Who knew air could hurt you? “How many fingers am I holding up?” He waves three fingers around and your eyes struggle to adjust to his trembling hand.

“Calm down. I just got hit in the head, I don’t have a concussion or anything.” You just know there’s going to be a huge bump on your forehead tomorrow. “It’s partly Stuart’s fault.” You pat the dragon costume you had on. The fuzzy green body was heavy and the long swishy tail at the back was quite annoying to lug around.

"Why are you blaming our mascot? Stuart did nothing wrong," Seungkwan interjects, shooting a pointed glare at Seungcheol. "Star player my ass." He mutters under his breath, clearly unimpressed.

“Hey, don’t blame him. I’m sure it was an accident.” You give Seungcheol a little smile and an ‘okay’ sign to tell him everything was fine. 

“I can’t believe you like that dumbass, he can’t string two sentences together when he’s in front of you.” Seungkwan helps you up, handing you Stuart’s head. You dust off the dirt on your costume. 

What was there not to like about Choi Seungcheol? He was popular, athletic, smart and talented in everything. Not to mention he was the literal definition of eye candy. There hadn’t been many occasions where you two had met. He’d always stutter helplessly or his cheeks would resemble a fire truck, which was very endearing. It was quite funny seeing him stumble over his words whenever he tried to ask you out.

“Why don’t you just ask him out? You already know he likes you, not that he makes it the most obvious thing in the world.” 

“But isn't it just the cutest thing when he tries to ask me out but he’s a stuttering blushing mess?” You giggle when you catch sight of the pout Seungcheol has on his face. “I hope he asks me out soon though, I can’t wait to finally go on a date with him.” 

The smile you shoot at Seungcheol has him tripping over his feet, face planting into the ground. Suppressing your laughter behind your hand, you watch as he hurriedly picks himself up, only to see his teammates rolling on the floor with amusement.

“How long are you even willing to wait?”

“As long as it takes.”

[hiveswap]

Summary of The Cat of The Year poll atrocities of 2023/2024

I'm sure that most people on this side of tumblr have seen the Jellie vs. Nefarious Anglerfish poll going around with like 60k votes at this point, and I'd really like clear up some of what happened since I was around for the whole thing.

Url blocked out for op's privacy. They have already left but don't look for it if you haven't seen it/don't harrass them if you already have.

1. The previous round (preparation)

I discovered the poll in its previous round, needless to say she beat Jort's ass severely. This was around the 3rd of january, meaning that this round finished before jellie's passing with only about 7k votes. Op did add their own piece of propaganda from their main:

...which was FINE. (except for stuff we'll see later) Of course running a poll while biased isn't ideal but I for one didn't even know they were the op until much later. I also added my own piece in a separate thread, and they didn't interact with it at all. There was no drama.

2. The Finale

Jellie unfortunately passed away right before the starting of this poll, which was the catalyst for what happened next. Op did exactly as last time and added a slightly more mean spirited encouragement to vote for the other contestant. This is the point where I believe that i fucked up personally.

I added this thinkpiece accusing op of associating all mcyters with Dream (who we all hate for the record) despite them not alluding to him at all. This is because tumblr has a history of disimissing all mcyters as... everything that dream was been accused of. Op did allude to not caring for mcyt. but they didn't say what i accused them of. This is important to point out because this reblog of mine is still being spread. Jellie was in the lead at the time, but not by the time i woke up next morning.

I won't be including anyone else's additions because I don't want to put blame on any specific person. Just felt like clearing up mine.

3. The Fuckening

Some time later op made this post to their personal blog:

which is insanely shitty because, as other people have pointed out, the "lame ass youtube cat" didn't die to inconvinience op or ruin their fun, and people would have probably voted for her anyway because jelly is universally beloved in the mcyt community. This isn't anti democratic. This post was added to the poll with a caption saying op should not be running this poll, and it took off. Op later went on to say that this was a joke:

This apology was not taken well by people, (including me) because "you were not meant to see it" isn't an apology and they still very much made fun of someone's pet dying. Safe to say this did not make the drama stop and only added fuel to the flame. I believe this was the point where the conversation of mcyt fans being unjustly sent hate to was reignited.

We should discuss that! it's a real thing that happens often and is equal to childish bullying. However, in this case, OP was the only one getting sent hate to my knowledge. The notes were mostly saturated by mcyt fans, and even now i can only find one or two hateful stance towards us under the whole 20k notes post.

4. Conclusions

Op posted a second apology to the catoftheyear blog to try and calm people down (i believe this is comprehensive and a lot better than the previous one) The blog was deactivated shortly after, so i only have my phone screenshots of it that i also added to the poll itself at some point:

(Edit) Here's proof that op did not write the justification they got criticised for, from the notes of the original poll:

This apology didn't get seen, or get accepted by enough people, so op made this statement on their personal:

Needless to say I am deeply dissapointed (and guilty) that it's come to this. Yes, op said tasteless things that made us all angry, but telling a human being to commit suicide is worse than being insensitive about a stranger's pet dying. Even after I posted about the blog being decatived i had someone come into my notes to wish that "they never find happiness" i mean wtf. This isn't like shipping where we can do whatever without the content creator's input. this is fucking harrowing and i can't imagine how i'd feel if this was done in my/my pet's name especially after losing them as recently as a week ago.

I hope no one from hermitcraft who is on here (let alone scar holy shit) learns about this like they did with previous lighthearted tournaments. If you truly respect the creators you claim to be a fan of as people, you do not tell people to kill themselves over them. And finally, let Jellie fucking rest, guys. she had a long, good life. I hope op can come back and also avoids behaving like this if they ever wish to do so. I'm angrier at mcytblr, though.

[daughter-of-sapph0]

one thing about tumblr that I don't see anyone talk about even with all the discussion about horrible changes is what happens when someone blocks you.

how it used to be is that you could still go to their profile, and would be able to report them or block them back. but you couldn't see any of their posts. and if one of their posts did happen to show up on your dash through reblogs, you couldn't like or reblog it. of course, it wouldn't tell you any of this. it would just give an error message or load indefinitely pretending like something was happening, rather than just saying "hey this person has you blocked, so you can't interact with them"

now it's a lot worse. idk when it was, but some change made it so now you can't even click on their blog at all.

now you might say "what's the big deal? why would anyone even want to go to a blog that had you blocked if you already couldn't see any of their posts in the first place?" and while true, there was at least something you could do on that blank blog. blocking them back and reporting them.

here's how it worked in the past. if someone sent me a rude message or tagged me in a dumb post and then blocked me, I could simply go to their blog (which would be blank for me) and block and report them.

now, if somone does that, I cannot click on their blog. in fact, because I can't block or report them, they can keep sending me horrible things, or even do the same to others without any fear of consequences. in order to actually be free of them, I'd have to go onto the desktop dashboard which a lot of people don't use, go to blog settings, scroll all the way down to blocked accounts, and manually type in their url exactly and add them to my list of blocked accounts.

and also, there is no way to report them. if someone is being racist or antisemitic or homophobic, and they have you blocked, you cannot report them at all.

I'm not going to say that this change was made by the sympathizers on staff specifically to protect terfs and white supremacists who spend all their time harassing and stalking and abusing people online while making it harder for their victims to protect themselves or even make those people face any consequences for their actions at all...

but the fact that this change happened around the same time as the whole "scorched earth / partyjockers" situation where staff entirely disintegrated a post and all it's reblogs because op said that one of the people on staff was a hairy potty fan, it's a bit too suspicious for me to call it a coincidental change.

[moghedien]

So someone is in your inbox asking for money

I'm not going to say that every single instance of this happening is a scam, but in my experience, random people following you and then sending you an ask to ask you to reblog a post or donate, they are almost always a scam.

You may feel bad about ignoring them or deleting the ask, but doing so is probably going to be the best course of action. Not only so that YOU don't lose money but so that you don't give the scammer access to you followers.

But how could you know that the person is a scam and not the one instance where someone really needs help? Let's go over some ways to check for signs of a scammer.

this is the post I got in my inbox today. I've personally never dealt with this particular version, so I didn't immediately delete. I probably wouldn't have reblogged anyway, but I wanted to look into this specifically.

The first thing to do is go on their blog. In this instance, the post they want me to reblog is pinned, and it also has a donation link. I'm NOT going to click on the link because there is no indication at all to what this might lead to and I'm going to instead hover over link and see what url pops up

in this instance, the url shows me that I'm going to be redirected to paypal. IMMEDIATELY a sign that this is a scam. people can still scam with gofundme and other sites like that, sure, but at least with those sites, there is some accountability in that you can see if the donation goal is being met or not. with paypal, you're just blindly donating, assuming that this donation amounts are what the person says they're at.

And also this is not to say that honest people can't use paypal for donations, sometimes that's the only option. But if you're going to donate to someone via paypal, you should at the very least be personally aware of who you're donating to and that they are an actual person.

But let's look deeper just in case. The next thing to do is look for other sketchy signs on the blog. So I scrolled through to see what they were blogging about otherwise, and there were red flags here.

Just glancing through the blog, I could see that they almost exclusively posted about Taylor Swift and the Mandalorian. They posted A LOT within the past day (this is why you should have times enabled btw) and exclusively from the same four or fives blogs.

But maybe they just post a lot. You can actually very easily see their posting habits by looking at their archive.

We're going to go to the three dots and click "view archive"

You can also just type in "[username].tumblr.com/archive" for any blog and access anyone's archive as long as they have a public account. But what's the point of doing that. Well, in the archive, we can get a very quick overview of someone's posting habits.

And here I've circled in red the first and last thing this blog has posted in the month of February 2024 (the month I'm writing this). You can see that both of those posts were posted on the same day. Meaning all of their posts in the entire month of February happened on the same day.

But what about posts outside of February 2024?

Well there are none

You can sort posts by month and year and doing so for this blog shows that they ONLY posted in February 2024 and ONLY one day in February and it happened to be the day before I got an ask in my inbox asking for donations.

These are the most obvious tells, but there are other signs you can look out for.

For instance, all of their posts are without any sort of tags. They never comment on anything and their only original post was their one asking for donations. If you click on the search function in their blog, nothing comes up

There's also the fact that the blog is clearly targeting at making the people who WOULD care about someone needing insulin sympathetic. The fact that they use BLM, identify as a black man, have pronouns in their bio all are on purpose to make people who might care feel like this is a person who deserves help. the scammer is using your empathy against you. DON'T LET THEM. Be smart and always always think before you act, even if that action is just posting. You can help people in need without feeding the vultures that want to take advantage and want to use YOU to steal from your community

But let's just be REALLY REALLY sure this is a scam.

On whim, I copied the text straight from the ask in my inbox and put into google and then added "tumblr' at the end. You'll be shocked to know there were immediate results and not from this blog

First one was a reblog from over a year ago. the exact same wording minus the cost of the insulin and the call to action at the end

I clicked on the original poster for this and the blog was cleared out!

Minus them using the exact same photograph in their header as the blog that sent me an ask today, of course.

The second instance I found was slightly different wording, but using similar enough wording that it can be assumed came from the same scammer. This came from another ask in an inbox, but the receiver rightly called them out as a scam. The post is from two months ago and the blog that asked it as been deleted outright

All of this to say, there are always scammers on tumblr, but there have been a lot recently. This one happened to not be posing as Palestinians in need, but a lot are (in that instance, Palestinian bloggers have been vetting who is and isn't real so you can always check to see if they're getting support or getting called out from actual Palestinians). They won't always use these methods and won't always been this obvious, so even if you don't donate to someone yourself ALWAYS be thorough in your checking before you reblog a donation post. Make sure the charity its collecting for is REAL and if its a person asking for money, make sure that person is real as well.

You can help people without getting scammed or giving scammers access to your followers, and not reblogging every donation post doesn't make you a bad person or mean you don't care. Its important to be careful, and not being careful can do more harm than good. it makes actual people in need look sketchy and takes away resources that could have been given to them. So if you aren't sure if something is real DO NOT REBLOG IT

[genericpuff]

Okay, what the FUCK is Inklore?

My ULO pals and I have been deliberating on this one since it was announced. "Inklore", the brand new imprint from Random House Worlds - which is, in and of itself, an imprint of Penguin Random House - and Rachel Smythe Presents, an in-house program of sorts that's dedicated to graphic novels, specifically those that "tell updated, romantic versions of classic stories and mythologies, and caters to readers looking for bingeable, relationship-driven stories with a distinct visual voice."

Basically it's exactly how it sounds - they're creating an imprint for works like Lore Olympus, and using Rachel as the leading lady.

But let's dig a little deeper. Because the more I searched on Inklore, Rachel Smythe Presents, and Random House Worlds, the more it started to paint a picture of what's really going on here.

INKLORE

I talked about this in my recent analysis of LO's pacing problems, but Inklore launching in Spring 2024 conveniently lines up with what would seem like a reasonable end point for LO. Rachel's always lined up LO's episodes with real life dates and holidays - even when it's been at her comic's own expense - and while we've kept our minds open to the possibility that it could end later than Spring, there's no denying at this point that LO itself is dragging itself out, which gives me stronger reason to believe it's just trying to make it to March, specifically March 20th, which is the first day of Spring in the northern hemisphere. Because of this, our best predictions right now is that LO's series finale will either release on FP or unlock for free readers on either the 16th or 23rd of March (if it unlocks for free on either of those dates, that means we can expect the series to end behind the FP paywall on either April 6th or 13th, assuming they're aren't any more hiatuses, but at this point I doubt there will be.)

Moving on, let's look at the actual Inklore site-

Already you can get the vibe of what kind of work they're looking for through their imprint. This is for people like Rachel. Now, I'm definitely not going to rag on anyone's tastes, I myself am a weeb of epic proportions, but considering you're about to see what's really the highlight of this site, you'll get what I mean when I say this isn't for people like Rachel, this is for people like Rachel. Specifically Rachel.

RACHEL SMYTHE PRESENTS

Inklore seems to be just an imprint specifically for Rachel Smythe Presents, with a couple extra series tacked on to give off the impression of it being more credible than it is. It means the whole site can be dedicated to it, rather than having it shoved in haphazardly alongside Penguin Random House's other works. You'll see what I mean in a second, but let's magnify those questions real quick, shall we?

As soon as I saw the "we are not accepting unsolicited pitches for Rachel Smythe Presents", it dawned on me that Rachel's own fans don't know how imprints work. Why do I say that? Look no further than the comment sections on her announcement posts for RSP (which I'm abbreviating, but I assure you, it stands for "Rachel Sex Party"- /j)

Of course, there are plenty of "congratulations" comments and "please do xyz myth", in which case, please, don't let her touch more myths I beg you-

But then there are also the odd comments of people asking how to get involved themselves. People who are just, by all accounts, regular people on the Internet.

But wait, how do you get involved? Thankfully there's a handy URL in that FAQ telling us how.

And holy shit, it's hilarious.

Guys, it's so easy to get into Rachel Smythe Presents! All you have to do is finish a manuscript, find an agent who's willing to work with a new unpublished author (and hope that they're not a scammer), get your manuscript prepared for publishing and submitted to editors, and then hopefully land a book deal! Wasn't that so easy?? Thanks for demystifying the process, Penguin Random House!

Listen, okay, there's something to be said about how difficult it is to navigate the publishing world. While some of those difficulties are for good reason - to ensure that not just any piece of crap thrown on paper can get published - many more are rooted in privilege, racial gatekeeping, and sexism. It is still an industry being run by a lot of nasty old fucks who take full advantage of people desperate enough to get their book published.

All that aside, it's kind of hilarious - in a sad kind of way - to see fans of this comic assume that this project and its opportunities were ever made for them. It wasn't. It wasn't made for the Canvas creators, it wasn't made for the Wattpad writers, it wasn't made for the people who work in the medium that Rachel started out in to get where she is today. It was made for the people who are already 3 of the 4 steps into Penguin Random House's "helpful" guide on publishing. It was made for the Cait Corrains and the wannabe Rick Riordans.

At best, Inklore is simply a home that's been manufactured for Lore Olympus after it's done on Webtoons. It may remain on the WT platform forever - or maybe not - but Inklore gives it a way to be seen and acknowledged outside of its niche. Because, despite Webtoons attempting to make Lore Olympus a global phenomenon, it really hasn't sold well in other countries, especially those where it was translated which people from those countries have stated it's not translated well at all.

It goes to show that much of LO's claim to fame was manufactured within North America by Webtoons itself, and Inklore is just another one of those manufactured attempts.

Still don't believe me? Still think I'm wearing too much tinfoil?

There are still only two series that Inklore has to show for itself - and remember, it launches in two months - and of course the ones leading that charge are every single volume of LO, even the ones that aren't "new and upcoming" anymore.

And then there's their Instagram, which is just more of the same-

(wonder if they ever found a Marketing Manager? Not exactly the role you want to be left empty leading up to a launch, oop-)

But wait, doesn't that site layout look a little... off? Almost cheap, maybe? Am I being too harsh-

Oop, nope, it's the exact same template used for the LoreOlympusBooks.com website.

Wait a minute, what about the imprint that Inklore is attached to? Random House Worlds?

RANDOM HOUSE WORLDS

... Uhhuh. I'm not entirely convinced that Lore Olympus is in any way on the same level as fucking Star Wars but to the average onlooker, this would make Lore Olympus seem pretty big and important simply on the virtue of it sitting smack dab in the middle of a grid of massive franchises.

So I'll bite, where do these buttons go? They all lead to external sites selling books and merchandise (except for the Marvel Studios one, which hilariously doesn't have a URL attached, so that button goes nowhere LMAO)

... Oh. It's that layout again.

Not all of them have the same layout, mind you, but it seems to be the default layout for sites they just haven't buffed up yet. It would explain why the Star Wars and D&D sites are a lot more robust in their designs, while others just link back to Penguin Random House:

Now the Minecraft one does look better at first glance, but it's still just the same template as the LO site, with a slightly different layout, but working off the same design philosophy, like they just spent a few extra hours dragging things around and spiffying them up in a site editor.

So it seems a lot of the default sites are working off the same CSS stylesheets, which doesn't exactly look good for LO and Inklore's online identity.

But hey, it's gotta mean something that LO is sitting alongside such franchises as Star Wars, Marvel, Magic the Gathering, and Minecraft, right? These are some of the biggest franchises on the planet, and while LO does make a lot of money, it's still nowhere near the billions that these franchises generate every single year.

And that's what I would be saying, if I hadn't noticed the specific products that Random House Worlds was selling - all easily churned out merch, from cookbooks to spin-off titles, which aren't exactly the main draw for these franchises, simply stocking stuffers or otherwise fun gimmicks to try out.

(I actually own the Dungeons and Dragons tarot deck. It's shit. They don't actually tell you the suit of the cards, JUST the numbers, so you have to flip through the book and match up the pictures on the cards with the pictures in the book just to figure out if it's Cups, Pentacles, Wands, or Swords, which I'm sure you can figure out, if you're a tarot reader, is very inconvenient and doesn't make for a good card reading experience)

Point is, Random House Worlds seems to mostly be an imprint dedicated solely to the cheaper products and books they can make to pump up a franchise's merch count. Even the Critical Role site doesn't offer the campaign books, those are published by their own personal imprint Darrington Press and are offered on their main - and much better designed - site:

Instead it's selling printed versions of interviews and... mad libs.

Not made or even really endorsed by the Critical Role cast, because if they were, they'd be on the main site, where the good shit is.

Random House Worlds is, at least judging off what I've found here, the "trick the parents into buying it" imprint. It's simply there for parents to see, go "my kid watches / plays that!" and then buy a Beholder puzzle which their kid will undoubtedly start and then never finish and eventually throw out half-finished after all the pieces have been lost. It's the cheap merch money generating machine, with works written by people who were simply paid to write it, and not people actually involved in the larger franchises.

And this is the imprint that Inklore and Rachel Smythe Presents is going to be an extension of.

At best, Inklore will likely just be a home for Rachel's work post-Webtoons, with maybe the odd success outside of it. At worst, it comes across as nothing more than an ego project, another artificial attempt to place Rachel and LO on the same playing field as Marvel, Minecraft, Star Wars, and Dungeons & Dragons through the only means that they can - an imprint that specializes in off-brand books, which they're truly counting on people just seeing the logos and going "wow those are big franchises!" and associating LO with that status simply by affiliation - without it having anywhere near the actual level of prestige, household influence, or brand recognition.

Its readership is dying out, its stats dropping, and worst of all, the vast majority of people - of which its a very small amount - who have heard about LO without being a Webtoons user themselves have heard how infamous it is in its bad writing and poor art direction.

It has nowhere to go but down, and if you were hoping to be a part of Rachel Smythe Presents, then all I can suggest to you is to go through the very simple process of finishing your manuscript, finding an agent, finding an editor, and then (hopefully) landing a book deal with the 'esteemed' Inklore.

Good luck! ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ

[destielfanfic]

Group Ask #214

Relevant links to find lost fic

previous group asks - feel free to browse them!

spnstoryfinders

Guide to Finding Fic

Guide to Finding Lost Fic

PSA - Save Your Faves!

Lost and Found fic posts - when mods knew the answer!

when looking for fics similar to the ones you have read, check out our Fics like X Reference Post and Fics like X Tag

Before sending in a lost fic ask, please check out our Tags Page and see if the fic in question could be found under some plot/ trope/ pairing related tag! Big thanks to all followers who do check the tags before sending in the ask!!! Our anon is switched off for good but you can always ask for your url to be withhold either on the lost ask or the answer re fic.  <333

And even bigger thanks to all folks who help us to find lost fics! You guys are the real MVPs!!!

Ask #1 ( @thestartofsomething8059 ): there’s this fic…#1

Hello! Sorry to bother, but I’ve been trying to find this fic for ages and it beginning to drive me insane. I’ve checked all the tags it would be under but still no luck. The fic was essentially about Dean and Cas being overly coupley (but without actually having gotten together yet) and Sam being frustrated. I’ve checked the POV Sam tag, Oblivious Dean/Cas tags, and others like 5+1 things but nada 😞 Here are the specific scenes I remember from it: - Dean and Cas share a twizzler back and forth which grosses Sam out enough that he calls someone to complain (I pretty sure Charlie) - Shortly after this Dean and Cas argue about Cas having used Dean’s toothbrush - I’m pretty sure this fic also includes a scene where Dean is taking a shower and Cas comes in to just sit and talk to him and Sam is like “hey wtf?” And Dean just goes “no this is normal” That’s all I can remember with accuracy. I’ve read through several other similar fics like “Dude being Dudes” and “Sharing is Caring” and am sure it’s not those. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you so much 😊

Ask #2 ( @famousbread101 ): there’s this fic…#2

Please! You're my last hope 😭 I'm looking for a fic that I read years ago I'm pretty sure castiel was like. Pregnant or sick?? Either way he kept denying dean affection and Dean got fed up and left saying like "I'll get it somewhere else" and the whole fic is just cas being super sad and missing Dean It was haply ending and Dean didn't actually cheat tho

Ask #3 ( @bleedtogrow ): there’s this fic…#3

Hello! I’ve been looking for a fic for years and i can’t find it 😭😭 The only thing I remember was that Dean sang Heaven by Bryan Adams on his and cas’ wedding. If anyone knows which one it is plssss i need it

Ask #4 ( @little-apollyon): there’s this fic…#4

looking for a specific fic, of course I can’t remember the title or author. It’s in the Alpha Beta Omega universe, dean steals the impala from cas(technically kidnapped him and baby pulls a gun on cas) he left his abusive alpha who I think was one of Castiel brothers and he is making his way to Sam, they go on a road trip together and fall in love. I think they end up being true mates, hopefully it can be found and if it got deleted hopefully someone has a copy. I appreciate you all very much!

Ask #5 ( @sunshineggukie ): there’s this fic…#5

hey! ive been trying to find a fic that ive read years ago but i haven’t so far. it was a college au where dean was all ready to sleep his way through college and have as much fun as possible. on his first day though he bumps into cas and it’s like love at first sight. they start dating and i remember cas was a virgin and the fic was about 10-15k i think? i was hoping you guys could help me find it or that maybe another follower recognizes it

It takes a village to find a lost fic, every reblog is appreciated!

[ryanyflags]

On archiving lgbt/mogai content

Everyone is of course free to what they want, but during my time searching for terms, and archiving their sources, I have a couple of ideas that I think would be helpful.

Make a copy on sites specifically for archiving

Archiving posts using reblogs is great and all, but I think it's much better to make a copy of them on actual archiving websites, such as Wayback Machine and Archive Today (for Archive Today specifically, there are a bunch of different urls, such as archive.ph, archive.is, archive.li, etc. but don't be confused, as far as I'm aware, they are all the same site).

Tumblr blogs can and do get deleted (not to mention your information shouldn't be stuck with one social media company, if they ever go down you don't want your queer terms/history disappearing with it), so I really think it's much more reliable to make your own copies.

On Wayback Machine vs Archive Today, they both have their benefits and downsides. Mainly Wayback doesn't archive images, only links to them, so in the case the original source gets the deleted, the images will be gone too. Archive Today does archive images, but it kind of just.. exists. Unlike Wayback, which is an actual non profit organization in California. So I'm slightly concerned about the long term stability.

I think it's best to just archive it on both sites, in addition to saving the original link + reblogs, perhaps even a self made copy + offline copy if you are really concerned. (If you do go the last route, please chose a common, open, file format. Don't use a app/service that doesn't let you easily export everything to something like a .txt file, or uses some odd propriety format that isn't easily compatible/viewable in other programs.)

Enable the website version of your blog, don't only use @ version

If you post flags/terms on Tumblr, please enable the exampleusername.tumblr.com version of your blog, instead of only using the @ exampleusername version.

E.g. @ryanyflags is the @ version of my blog, and ryanyflags.tumblr.com is the website version.

The problem is the @ / tumblr view version isn't compatible with archiving sites. When trying to archive posts in Tumblr view, Archive Today would get stuck trying to download the website, and both would end up with "please login to view" and the actual post isn't saved. I have been able to get around it by reblogging to my blog, which has a website version, and archiving that instead. But I think it would be better to be able to archive the post on the original blog.

You can activate it by enabling "custom theme" in your blog's settings. You don't even have to actually customise the appearance, it only matters that the website exists. (Image of the settings below)

Example of a post in "tumblr view" as I call it, and "website view".

Don't change your username when you stop using a blog

For example, when deciding to not use/post to a blog anymore (which is perfectly understandable), some will change their username from "example-name" to "example-name-archive", or "-inactive", and other such variations.

All the un-archived links to all that blog's posts break. And it messes anything linking to it in general, I'd say.

Unless you want to delete any references(links) to your posts, or make it harder for people to find your archived content, just don't do this. I personally don't understand why changing the title of a blog to something like "inactive" wouldn't be sufficient, or what the point of it is. But it's up to other people to do what they want.

(I wouldn't mind if someone just wanted to change their username, I just don't get appending inactive to it.)

Use the archiving sites to save content under "read more"

This is an issue that has been brought to my attention before. When the original post gets deleted, the content under "read more" (or "under the cut") of the reblog disappears.

I've tested it out myself using Archive Today and Wayback, see here and here. It's just some text with a read more in the middle.

If you check, the original post has been deleted, actually, the whole testing blog is gone. But the archives have kept the content under read more.

So instead of copy and pasting read-more content in reblogs, I think just using Archive Today and Wayback is way easier.

(Also, I just realised I didn't test this out with Tumblr view, though with the above issues I'm not sure it would have worked at all. If anyone want to test it out themselves, well it's free.)

People say things on the internet are forever, and maybe some viral things are, but I don't think that's really the case. Cool stuff can disappear all the time, and relying on some companies just doesn't seem reliable to me. Best make copies on separate archiving sites, and make your own offline ones.

My focus is really just on flags. I have a whole file folder filled with pngs of all sorts of flags (I think 4000+ ?). I sort them however I want, I can look at them on any device, regardless of operating system, I can make as many copies as I want and transfer them to new devices, I can easily use them in any program if I want (like to reference to make other flags). It's great. I don't have to worry about any individual or company deleting it or anything of that sort. It's just my own copy. For everyone else that cares about terms, I imagine saving the pngs and definitions in markdown files would work well enough.

This is nothing but my opinion at this point, but I really think making your own copies (whether offline or on archiving sites) of stuff on the internet is the way to go.

[olderthannetfic]

I kinda understand “minors don’t interact” and similar things, but one thing I always laugh at is “don’t tag as [thing].” You know — the whole don’t tag posts with the word queer in them as q slur, don’t tag not-inherently-shippy art as ship, don’t tag character posts as kin, etc. First of all, what would you do if someone DOES tag it like that? Call the cops? Second of all, people are gonna tag things however they want, you’re gonna have to deal with that on a website like tumblr.

There’s a similar phenomenon on Twitter where people say “don’t quote retweet”/“don’t private quote retweet” (which is especially funny cuz everyone is gonna see that and go on their private accounts and quote retweet with nonsense to piss you off, lmao)

Like if you’re really SO FUCKING SCARED of your gay post being tagged as #q slur, your Death Note edit being tagged as #Lawlight, your fanart being tagged as #kin, you probably shouldn’t be on the internet. Do you have the right to not view queer as a slur, the right to not ship whatever, the right to not like fictionkin? Of course! But people also have the right to disagree with you and tag your post however the fuck they want. One time I saw someone tag one of my cosplays as [character] faceclaim, and I was a little bit weirded out, but overall it was harmless. I never once considered adding a banner saying not to tag my likeness as a faceclaim, because if I really want to prevent anyone from doing that, the solution will be for me to not show my face online.

Small tangent: When I was younger I used to have a private sideblog that was basically just a venting diary. No one had the password, and, because it was private, my URL wouldn’t show up in the notes if I reblogged something to that blog. Basically, no one knew the blog existed. And I remember sometimes I would see a cool post on my dash, or in tags, and it would be tagged as #dont reblog (this was before tumblr had the option to limit reblogs obviously). And if the post was cool (or edgy, because like I said… vent blog) and I was sad that I “couldn’t” reblog it, I’d reblog it to the side blog, where OP would never know 😭 Rebellious as hell wasn’t I?

That being said — and this might contradict everything I just wrote — I do think people that brag about not reading/not following DNIs are also a bit obnoxious. Not people who just make statements that they don’t read them, but people who make it known how much they hate their existence. It just seems kinda edgelord-y? Idk. Obviously it’s fine to not read them or like them but making it a huge statement is just like…ok? Congratulations? Should we throw you a party? Should we invite Elon Musk?

I have followers—and follow people—who have “Antis DNI” in their bio. I also have followers and follow people who have “Proshippers DNI” in their bio. No one will ever know what side I’m on 😜😜😜😜

--

[matan4il]

Most of the time, I don't bother talking about the hate and harassment I get, because I don't think haters deserve the attention. The person I'm gonna write about definitely doesn't deserve any, but they've started harassing others that I know of, not just me.

So this is basically a warning post for Jewish bloggers and bloggers who are allies to Jews, and a request for anyone who can, to report and block this person (if you want to warn other bloggers, then please consider a reblog, too). @staff, This is also for you, proof of a pattern of harassment and abuse. Please do something and protect your Jewish users and their allies.

They first commented here, denying the antisemitism of Hamas, with the url @grizzlyismyspiritanimal and they seem to change their url quite frequently. For now it's @fancowboy but expect that to change again. Since IDK if Tumblr will let the mention (@'ing their url) hyperlink to their blog, here's how you can check out what their current url is, so you can report and block them. Go to this post where they're tagged as @grizzlyismyspiritanimal and hover your mouse over their url, you'll see their blog pop up no matter what new url they changed to. Here's a screenshot of what that looks like:

Here's their first comment on my post, along with my reply. Tumblr arranges these comments with the oldest at the bottom, click to see the image better:

Of course they never provided a link sourcing their claim, instead they provided a link to an op ed, which was not written by anyone affiliated with Hamas. This link did not support their claim that "Hamas specifically stated," but that didn't stop them from ignoring the fact that they couldn't prove their claim. Next, they repeated an already refuted antisemitic conspiracy theory (and I linked them to a refuting source, which they just ignored), while using strawmen arguments (attacking statements I didn't make). Obviously, none of this addresses the point actually made in the post they were commenting on.

When I called them out on the antisemitism of their whole narrative, they pulled the "I can't be antisemitic, because I'm Jewish" line of defense, while also bragging in the same comment about not going the easy route by doing that:

I no longer believe people who say antisemitic things, and then use this defense, after several have been proven to have lied about being Jewish, but more importantly, and this is the point I made to @fancowboy, Jews are not immune to internalizing antisemitism, and repeating antisemitic narratives. But I was curious whether there was any sign of this person having any sense of a significant Jewish identity on their blog. When I went on there, one of the first posts I came acorss was an antisemitic one, claiming that Jews have stolen the Star of David from the Muslims... I know there are a lot of anti-Zionist Jews out there, and that many of them are very capable of saying antisemitic things, but I don't think even they would endorse this false claim.

What's ironic is that the post shares a screenshot from Wikipedia, which explicitly mentions that this Muslim kingdom that existed in the 13th century AD (roughly 700 years ago), adopted the six-pointed star, due to the Muslim belief that it was a symbol on the ring ("seal") of King Solomon, a Jewish king who lived about 3,000 years ago. In other words, this post literally points out that Muslims borrowed this symbol from Jews, not the other way around. And just for historical interest, the first archeological find of Jews using the Star of David is dated to the 6th century BC (around 2,600 years ago).

I pointed out to @grizzlyismyspiritanimal / @fancowboy that I no longer believe they're Jewish, because I don't believe any Jew would reblog this antisemitic lie. In response, not long after, this "I'm not a coward" and "you would've blocked me (aka fanatic)" person blocked me. Instead of addressing what I said, or taking responsibility for their wrongdoing, and deleting this antisemitic post. Our exchange started on Jan 5 IIRC, this post was reblogged by them on Jan 4, and as of Jan 25 it is still on their blog, as you can see here (post and current date highlighted in this screenshot):

A minute after they blocked me from the above blog, they commented on my pinned post with links to my fandom content from another blog, @verygardenerland and this comment made it clear that it was the same person. I made a mistake, I wanted my fandom space free from antisemitic harassment, so I deleted that comment, which means I don't have that piece of evidence that it's the same person, but I do have another bit of proof. Remember how this person claimed to be Jewish? This is how they presented it:

(again, using a strawmen, I never said all Muslims are terrorists, and never would, because it's simply not true, and if anyone made that claim to me, I would be correcting them)

Well, this is the VERY similar way @verygardenerland talked about their supposed Jewish identity, in a post they made solely to harass and DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) me:

Jews were almost completely ethnically cleansed from Muslim majority countries, so the likelihood of a random online stranger being a Jew from a Muslim country is generally incredibly low to almost non-existent, and two who just so happen to both harass me on my blog one minute apart is probably less statistically likely than winning the lottery.

It's poetic irony that the one comment the above post got from another blogger, is someone else also calling this person out on the antisemitism of what they're saying:

Gotta love the bonus misogyny with "bitch."

I'm also going to offer you this following antisemitic comment (which distorts the Holocaust, and refers to Jews insultingly as "the chosen ones"), which I also don't believe any person with an actual Jewish identity would make:

And here's also one of the last comments this person made from @fancowboy before blocking me on that blog and continuing from @verygardenerland. Just notice how we have the same antisemitic abuse themes from both of these blogs:

Once more, extra touch of misogyny with "that much of a pussy."

(I have to address the white phosphorus claim. There are 2 ways of using it in battle, one legal, the other's not. Israel stated that when using it, that's only in the legal way. There is no record to show the contrary. People just exploit the fact it's used, to pretend it's automatically illegal. But I accept this is an antisemitic libel against the Jewish state, that sadly some Jews might repeat. The rest is what makes me think this person isn't Jewish)

@verygardenerland noticed I write fandom meta, and harassed me on these posts. Here's one example:

Then they searched related tag/s, and proceeded to harass me by calling me names in comments they left on random posts from other fandom members. These are posts that had nothing to do with me. One of the people on whose post they were calling me a Nazi is someone I have never even spoken to. The OP deleted the harassing comment, but this time I did get a screenshot before that, so here it is, as an example:

Now, on top of all of the above, @verygardenerland also started stalking my main blog at the same time they made their first comment from this url, as well as my two back up blogs. One's last post was on Mar 2022, the other's on Apr 2021, so it's completely pointless to follow them, other than as an intimidation tactic:

And they sent me anon hate. The thing is, they made it explicitly clear through what they said and the language they used, that it's them. They sent more than one message, but the one I'll attach here was obviously meant to freak me out the most, because it falsely starts out as a fandom ask, and then transitions into abusive language, as well as telling me there's more blogs they're stalking me from, basically making it clear that even if I block this url, I'll still not be safe from their stalking and abuse:

From a certain point on, I told them that whenever they make a comment to me, all I'll do is just remind them repeatedly that they're an antisemite, which is exactly what I've kept to. That's when I even bothered to respond. I postponed blocking their second blog, 'coz I wanted to put this post together first. Now I'm done with them.

To wrap this up, here are some final screenshots of their antisemitic abuse, how they obsessively comment on my posts, or posts that in their mind are related to me, and how they have started directly addressing random people who are commenting on my posts, telling them not to talk to "it," meaning they're also using de-humanizing language when referring to me, and of course once more employing the DARVO tactic by accusing me of that which they're guilty of:

My activity feed yesterday:

And not just yesterday. Love the bonus hateful language towards those who are disabled...

And this is just one of their comments on a post simply mourning the death of Israeli soldiers, and putting it in the context of multi-generational Jewish trauma:

To summarize again, please:

report and block this person

reblog this post if you feel comfortable to, in order to warn others

@staff please do something to stop the abuse. Thank you in advance!

[discworld-heritage-posts]

What do you think you add? Do you think you make a poignant post better when after scrolling down through it we see someone saying it's "official"?

I'm choosing to interpret this ask as a genuine question (albeit one that's been worded a bit rudely) instead of a hate anon, because I wouldn't want to tarnish people's dashboards with hate anons.

Now, to answer your genuine question... The "Discworld Heritage Post" tagline I add to the end of posts has as much validity as I have authority to bestow it: none. Do I think my tagline makes posts better? Of course not! And I certainly don't think I make them official, (and neither my url or my pinned post claim that I do so).

I don't know what reasons other people had to start their own Heritage Posts blogs for other fandoms, but I will gladly tell you mine: I got into Discworld. I discovered the Discworld fandom in Tumblr. And, one day, while scrolling down some Discworld related tags, the idea just popped into my head. After checking that there wasn't a Discworld Heritage Posts blog already, I decided to make one.

I personally follow a few Heritage Posts blogs, and my reason to do so is probably the same as to why many people follow this blog: I wanted to see that kind of content. Tracking tags and being up to date on the most popular posts of a fandom is doable, but doing so for the dozens upon dozens of media I'm into is impossible, so I like to follow some Heritage Posts blogs to get some of those posts directly into my dashboard (it's also worth mentioning that sometimes, some iconic posts are made when people comment stuff on them, and those don't appear in the search tags, so following blogs that post about a certain fandom is the best way to come across some of those collaborative posts, because otherwise you'd rarely get to see them). So yes, I created a blog that, had it already existed, I would have liked to follow. Also, while other blogs with this gimmick usually limit themselves to reblogging, let's call them the "greatest hits", I've said since the beginning that I didn't care about how many notes something had. Be it cool art or a funny or insightful post, if I like it, I send it to my drafts.

However, none of those reasons are the main reason why I made this blog. The main reason is that I did it for myself. After exhausting all the content that showed up in the Popular Posts tab, I couldn't help but think of all the gold and treasure that wasn't there, buried and hidden due to the way Tumblr's search engine works. If you're familiar with the Discworld concept of "lies-to-children", that's what the "top posts of all time" is in Tumblr. A 20k post from 2016 will not be there, but a six month old post with 400 notes will show up. Surely there had been amazing Discworld posts and art posted in 2015 and 2013, but I wasn't going to find most of them unless I expressly went looking for them. And this blog was the perfect excuse to do so. As of replying to this ask, there's nearly 600 posts sitting in my drafts, and if I didn't have this blog I would have never discovered 90% of them. And those are the ones I've seen. I still have dozens of places I haven't searched.

I know that if I reblog a month old post with over 2k notes, a lot of people in the fandom will have already seen it. However, a 2k notes post from 2014, or a drawing with 40 notes from 2012 is something that is less likely to have hit people's dashes recently, or at all. When you come across the "Discworld Heritage Post" tagline in a post, please don't picture me as an uppity monarch performing the Tumblr equivalent of a knighting ceremony, or a stuffy museum curator deigning a piece worthy of being included in an exhibition. Picture me as a kid enthusiastically jumping and flailing my arms around while yelling "holy shit guys check out what I just found!!", because that's how I feel running this blog.

Ultimately, whether one of my posts does better or worse is indifferent to me, because they aren't my posts, or memes, or drawings. I'm just the intermediary. That being said, of course it's not indifferent to me, because more engagement means that was a post many people hadn't seen before, or had forgotten about, and one of my goals was to run a blog that would allow people to find those hidden or long forgotten gems.

When all is said and done, Heritage Post blogs are just another one of Tumblr's gimmicks. If we're not your cup of tea, you're free to ignore or block us. If you want to reblog something and don't want the tagline, you can reblog it directly from OP (or from another reblog if OP has deactivated their account).

[aheathen-conceivably]

Hi, sorry to bother you, I would like to ask, how do you make a page with all the posts? Like you do in the one that says "from the beginning". I'm new to this and I've been looking, but I can't find anything. Maybe you can give me some guidance! If it's not too much trouble, thank you very much!

Hey there, Nonny! It’s absolutely no bother at all, but I appreciate you being so considerate ♥️

So I’m sure there are people who could be much more helpful on doing this in an aesthetic or organized way, but we know that I’m a bit tech unsavvy. Therefore I try and do it all it the easy way. I taught myself mostly by looking at other blogs and figuring out their links, but I’ll try and explain it here to the best of my ability.

At its most basic, you’ll need to know how to add links to posts. If you’re a visual learner like me, I thought this tutorial may help:

But in essence, you highlight the word (or words) that you want to have the link (such as “From the Beginning”) and you find the icon that looks like two chain links. Then you paste the URL you want to link and voila.

Of course, you’ll also need to have the URL you want. This is why looking at other people’s blogs helped me, so I encourage you to do that, just because I think that’s a bit easier to understand than my written instructions.

But my links are organized around tags. So when you go on a blog, you can navigate it by tag. This groups all posts that have the same tag on the same page, and in the URL bar at the top Tumblr will show that tag. So for instance this is a link to my tag for the 1920s, and once I learn what that URL is, I can replace “1920s” with “1930s” or even words like “WCIF”. In that way it’s like a formula, where the “tag” part of the URL can be replaced with whatever you want. Similarly, you can add “chrono” to the end of the URL to view that tag in chronological order. This is how I am able to link “from the beginning” and “most recent” differently, as they direct to the same tag but in a different order.

The only thing that makes this a bit more complicated is that some URLs on Tumblr automatically open on a browser, while some are “mobile friendly.” This means that it allows users to open that link on the app rather than redirecting to a new page. I would again encourage you to look at the URLs on my linked page to see the difference between these, because it is subtle, but it is about the ordering of words. Of course, when doing your own links, you would be using your own blog title and tags, but it’s helpful as far as learning the “formula”!

I’m sorry if any of this is confusing! Due to aforementioned ~tech unsaviness~ I find explaining these things a bit tricky. But I still hope it’s somewhat helpful! And if anyone has anything to add or clarify please feel free to do so.

[phyripowritesthings]

I changed my URL back :) but anyway, robul! I've realized that a bunch of the robul I've posted on this blog has been like... sad, but then nearly everything on ao3 has been pretty Not Sad :0 this fic is here to buck one of those trends, in that it's very light-hearted and pretty silly! it's also given me a bunch of new headcanons, which is always cool! I want you guys to know that the placeholder summary for this was 'stupid idiots in love, too stupid to know they're in love', which covers it pretty well

.

(I'd Be) Better Off With You

pairings/characters: Bulgaria (Stefan)/Romania (Dragos), Norway (Einar), Belarus (Nadzeya), Sweden (Torbjörn), Hungary (Erzsébet), Moldova (Luca)

word count: 6473 summary: In which Stefan makes Dragos better food, Dragos makes Stefan wear better clothes, and literally everyone knows they're dating except the two of them.

Also on AO3!

.

By the time Dragos finally finishes up, it is very nearly dark outside despite it being early June.

With a sigh, he tidies up his shop and walks into his adjoining apartment through the back door. There, he realizes that the delicious smell he’s been noticing over the course of the evening, wasn’t coming from one of his neighbors’ kitchens as he’d thought, when he finds Stefan in his kitchen, humming under his breath and stirring a bubbling sauce in a pot.

“I didn’t think I had food,” Dragos says, by way of greeting. His stomach rumbles.

“You didn’t.” Stefan covers the pot and turns to him, leaning back against the kitchen counter. The shirt he’s wearing is threadbare, the hems actually frayed. It’s a shirt Dragos distinctly remembers telling him not to wear anymore, at least not in public, but then he supposes his kitchen isn’t public.

“Hm. Okay.” Dragos pauses. “Hold on, when did you get here?”

“I said hi to you! You were setting up your game.”

Dragos is sure he doesn’t remember that, but alright. It wouldn’t be the first time he got a little caught up in his preparations. Nor, of course, is it the first time Stefan has shown up unannounced in his kitchen.

“And what if I’d been eagerly anticipating takeout pizza, huh?” he asks him, even as he starts maneuvering around him to pull out plates and cutlery for two. Stefan turns back to the stove with a scoff and doesn’t answer. Dragos grins.

It’s nice, the way Stefan will take time out of his day to make sure he’s fed. There isn’t any reason Dragos couldn’t do it himself, of course, but he has to admit Stefan is a better cook. Besides, he seems to enjoy it, so, win-win. Especially if he can talk him into putting other clothes on at some point.

“D’you want wine?” Dragos asks, because he might not have had any food, but he certainly has that.

“It’s a Wednesday, Dragos.”

“And?”

“And I’m not twenty anymore.” Stefan looks at him with one eye. “Maybe one glass. Red, if you have it.”

Of course he does.

Stefan does only drink one glass of wine with his amazing pasta, which—yeah, he really isn’t twenty anymore, Dragos supposes, because he remembers him drinking far too much on a far too regular basis when they were that age. It’s probably a good thing he’s stopped doing that. Unfortunately, Dragos isn’t twenty anymore either, so despite having only two glasses himself, he’s slightly unsteady on his feet when he sees Stefan off later that evening.

He watches him go around back, through the small courtyard there that’s mostly filled with junk, and also Dragos’s bike, which he’s protective of but might as well be junk. Especially since Stefan accidentally kicks the front wheel on his way out, and Dragos giggles when he apologizes to the bike before clasping his shoulder and telling him it’s okay. Even if he is still wearing his shitty shirt.

Kindly, Stefan has left the leftover pasta for Dragos, which is good because he still has no other food, after all. Really, what would he do without him?

-

When it is time for his lunch break, Dragos quickly ducks out of the shop and into his apartment, where he heats his leftover pasta in the microwave. He carries the plate back into the shop, sitting down to eat at the table where they host their TTRPGs. Behind the register, Einar looks up from the many granny squares he’s been crocheting between customers.

“That smells nice,” he comments. “That’s why you didn’t want Nadz to get you lunch?”

With a chime of the shop bell, Nadzeya returns just then, brandishing cartons of fried fish from the local market, so Einar puts his crocheting down to take one from her, nodding his thanks. She sweeps into the side room in a cloud of black fabric and eyes Dragos’s pasta suspiciously.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Stefan made it.”

That makes her look over her shoulder at Einar, who shrugs.

“He’s bringing you lunch now?” she asks, pushing her sleeves up to dip a piece of fish in sauce.

“No, of course not!” Dragos laughs. “He’s got a job, you know. He made dinner last night, I’m lucky enough to get the leftovers.”

“I see,” Nadzeya says slowly, chewing on her fish.

Dragos shrugs and eats some more pasta. It really is very good. He’ll have to ask Stefan if he’d make it again. He could even make sure he keeps the ingredients on hand.

“So…” Einar is coming over to lean against the doorframe, fish in hand. “He stayed at your place?”

“What, where would he stay?” Dragos frowns. They both know he’s only got one bed, and his shitty couch, which he would never ask anyone to sleep on, least of all Stefan.

Einar and Nadzeya exchange an indecipherable look that ends with Einar shrugging once more and Nadzeya sighing.

“Guys, what’s up? I thought you liked Stefan.” Or maybe they’re jealous of his pasta?

“Oh my god,” Nadzeya mutters. “Yeah, sure, Dragos, he’s a nice dude.”

“Quite handsome,” Einar puts in, which makes her snort for some reason, though Dragos couldn’t say why. It is true; Stefan is quite handsome, with his bright green eyes and his perpetual stubble, even if he has no sense of fashion.

“Sure, but I didn’t think he was your type,” he just tells Einar, who, as far as Dragos knows, is more into tall blond guys, “though I’m sure I could—”

The bell over the shop door chimes to announce the arrival of a customer and Einar uncharacteristically rushes over to assist, so Dragos doesn’t finish his sentence. He turns to his last bit of pasta instead.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Nadzeya tells him, but she does that at least twice a day and Dragos has long since given up trying to figure out what it is he did wrong this time, so he ignores her, takes his plate back to his kitchen, and goes to see if the customer needs any help.

-

Stefan hears Torbjörn greet someone at the front of the workshop, but doesn’t pay attention to it until a shadow covers the chair he’s working on. He squints down at the wood, then up. The only clue he really needed was the ridiculous leather pants, but he smiles up at Dragos’s face anyway, putting his sanding tool down.

“Hey Dra,” he says, as he sits up and dusts off his jeans. “What brings you here?”

“Nothing, really. Well—oh!” Dragos shuffles his shoulder bag around to dig into it. “I got you a pastry. Only seems fair, yeah?”

He holds a crumpled paper bag out to Stefan, who has already closed his fingers around it when he looks up at his friend’s grin and notices… A glint.

Standing up abruptly, he leans close to Dragos, which only makes him grin wider, rust-brown eyes crinkling at the corners. As usual, his smile is slightly lopsided and Dragos is touching his tongue to a sharp canine, but what isn’t usual is the shimmer of metal beneath his upper lip, glinting silver.

“When the hell did you get that?” Stefan asks, incredulous. He saw him yesterday!

“Just now! It’s called a smiley piercing, isn’t that cute?”

That is cute, and Stefan thinks it’s very suited to Dragos, but he shakes his head in confusion and gestures with his mystery pastry.

“Dragos, you’re afraid of needles!”

“Oh, geez, am I?” He rolls his eyes ostentatiously, still grinning. “It’s not like I can see into my mouth, is it?”

The glint of metal is there every time he speaks, distracting Stefan. He frowns.

“You made me come with you when you got that tattoo.”

“Well—”

“The tattoo that is on your back.”

“That’s—no, that’s different.” Dragos pauses. Tilts his head, tucking some wispy hair that’s escaped from its ponytail behind his ear. “Did you want to come?”

“No?” Stefan thinks about it. “No. You can take care of yourself.”

Another smile, and Dragos brushes sawdust off his shoulders in that way he does; there must not be any in Stefan’s hair for him to finger-comb out.

“So you just… Came here to show me you got a piercing?” That just gets him a quirk of Dragos’s thin eyebrows. Alright.

“I guess I also wanted to tell you I’m not supposed to eat anything spicy for two weeks.”

Aw, really? Stefan wanted to make goulash. He must look disappointed, because Dragos grasps his shoulders and says, “Oh, I’m sorry!” with such an earnest expression that it makes him laugh. He touches one of his arms.

“It looks nice, Dra.”

A grin. Smiley, huh? How fitting.

“Anyway, I’m sure you’re busy, so I’ll leave you to it! Enjoy your pastry!” Dragos flounces off through the workshop in a little whirl of color. “Bye, Torbjörn!”

“Bye,” Torbjörn says, possibly sounding amused. It’s hard to tell, with him, especially compared to Dragos. Both because Dragos wears his heart on his sleeve, and because Stefan has known Dragos since they were kids.

“’S nice,” Torbjörn tells Stefan as he walks over to put his pastry safely away for now. “Used to bring Tuomi lunch when he worked ‘round here.”

“That’s sweet. Not really the same, though.”

Torbjörn and Tuomi have been married for over a decade, after all.

“Hm,” Torbjörn just says, which could mean anything, so Stefan shrugs and gets back to work.

-

If it were possible, Dragos is sure he would have broken the speed limit on his rickety bicycle, that’s how fast he rushes to the local hospital after he gets a cryptic call. Once there, he hurries to the second floor when the receptionist directs him up.

“Is it Luca?” he shouts, bursting into a silent hallway. For the first time in his life, he is mildly relieved to see Erzsébet Héderváry sprawled in a plastic chair, looking at her phone.

“Your brother is fine, Bălan,” she drawls. “Stefan fell down a flight of fucking stairs, though, and they won’t let him leave with me.”

“A flight of stairs? Is he—wait, why am I here?” Though he doesn’t understand why, he knows Erzsébet is Stefan’s friend, just like he is, so there is no reason he should have any more right to check Stefan out of this place.

“Well, his mother lives on the other side of the country.” Erzsébet is standing up.

“But…”

“Ugh, Bălan, just because you’re not fucking married yet doesn’t mean they won’t let him go with you.” She thrusts a bundle of fabric into Dragos’s hands, glaring up at him and jerking her chin at the door behind her. “Tell him he owes me one.”

And off she goes.

Dragos decides to ignore her, as he usually does, and walks into the hospital room to find Stefan sitting on the edge of a bed. He smiles when he spots Dragos, a sheepish edge to it. The only indicators of injury are a bandage wrapped around his right wrist and some scraping on both arms, and a bruise on his temple.

“Why did you fall down a flight of stairs?” Dragos asks.

Stefan bristles. “What do you mean, why? I didn’t mean to—and Erzsébet is exaggerating, I fell down the steps out front of her building!”

Yeah, that sounds like her. And yes, Dragos is biased against her, but still. He frowns, pushing his tongue up against his still-healing smiley piercing.

“You look stupid,” Stefan says, now sounding petulant, which makes Dragos smile. “Shut up. Anyway, they won’t let me go until they’re sure someone’ll watch over me. I guess I’ve got a mild concussion. And I sprained my wrist.”

“Hey, at least it’s your right!” Dragos tells him, trying to lift his spirits. And, “I’ll watch over you, no problem.”

That, at least, gets Stefan to smile as he stands up. Dragos unfurls the fabric Erzsébet has given him to find that it’s one of his own jackets, one he made Stefan take some time ago because blue just looks much better on him—and because Stefan has no idea it does, which means it’s up to Dragos to make sure he looks alright. It is a pretty chilly day for July, he supposes.

“Here.” Holding the jacket out, Dragos helps Stefan into it, careful not to jostle his wrist, and he dutifully buttons it up as well. “There you go.”

He smiles at Stefan, and the answering smile is soft. With the backs of his fingers, Dragos brushes the man’s bruised cheekbone.

“Ah!” A nurse, entering the room. “I see Mr Borisov’s partner is here!” He flashes a smile at Dragos. “Now, I’m sure you’ll be fine in no time, Stefan.”

“Thanks,” Stefan mumbles. “Dra—”

“Yeah, let’s go, then.”

They’ve made it nearly to the exit when he realizes, “We’re gonna have to take the bus, though.”

That will surely be annoying, but Stefan just hums, turning his face towards the weak sun when they step outside. His bruises don’t seem so bad in this light, especially when the breeze ruffles his dark hair over his forehead.

“’M glad you came out for me, Dra,” he says, and Dragos grins happily all the while until he has to drag his bike on to a city bus.

-

“Oh! Stefan!”

Startled, Stefan turns to the side room of the shop, from where Luca waves him over.

“What’s up?”

“Dra!” Luca calls, ducking back into the room.

“No need to yell,” Dragos says in a huff, though his face lights up when he sees Stefan, who smiles back.

Apart from the Bălan brothers, Einar and Nadzeya are also present, all seated around the large table, which is currently set up for one of their fantasy games. Stefan does not understand any of them; his only contribution over the many years he’s known Dragos has been to carve several small creatures out of wood, which Dragos has always been delighted by.

“Just the man we need,” Dragos is saying now, rising from his chair. Einar, who is at the head of the table, puts a heavy book pages-down and leans his elbows on it.

“Me?” Stefan asks. Dragos grasps his shoulders and gazes earnestly at him, eyes bright. Their eyes are perfectly level, which must mean he’s wearing heeled shoes again.

“Yes, you, Stef. We need—oh!” He looks down into the bag slung over his shoulder and grins. “Finally time for goulash, huh?”

Stefan nods. It’s been three weeks.

“Excellent.” The piercing is visible when he smiles.

“Dragos,” Nadzeya says, sounding annoyed and leaning back precariously on her chair’s hind legs.

“Right! We’ve got a problem!” Dragos gestures at the room at large, leaving one hand on Stefan’s shoulder. “Arthur’s bailed on us!”

“Dra, I don’t know how to play your—”

“Not that! Though you’re always welcome to try, you know that. No, see, there’s a festival coming up, and Luc’s friends are going as the Fellowship, okay?”

“Sure,” Stefan says, because sometimes it’s easier to just pretend to know what Dragos is talking about and circle back later.

“Right, and the four of us—” he gestures again—“are normally the White Council, but Arthur’s gone and so I thought you could be our Elrond!” He grins triumphantly, and Stefan just blinks at him.

“I have no idea what you just said.”

Nadzeya drawls, “The gist of it was, do you wanna dress up as an elf?”

An elf? Like Santa’s helpers?

“Cool elf,” Dragos clarifies. “Warrior and lord and all that. Very powerful. He’s played by Hugo Weaving!”

“I don’t know who that is. Also, played in what?”

“Lord of the Rings! I showed you Lord of the Rings, Stef.” He’s still holding one shoulder, squeezing or pulling gently with every other word as he’s wont to do. Stefan tries to recall any films about rings he might have been shown.

“Was that the movie with the… Like, little guys?”

Luca snorts, but Dragos nods, his expression caught somewhere between pained and amused.

“I don’t remember any elves.”

“Yeah, you fell asleep before they even left the Shire.” And, before Stefan can question what that means, “That doesn’t matter, though!”

“I mean,” Nadzeya says, “doesn’t it? Arthur knows basically the whole Silmarillion by heart, he’d be appalled. Maybe you should try reading a book, Borisov.”

Dragos immediately whirls around to glare at her, though Stefan just shrugs.

“I could try,” he says. “Pretty damn dyslexic, though.”

“Alright. Didn’t know that.” She tips her head towards him, and he nods back. Dragos turns to him again, light brown hair fanning around his face. He’s been wearing it up lately, claiming it’s too warm down, and it’s kind of nice to see it loose. It looks more familiar.

“So, normally I’m Elrond, but you’ve already got dark hair anyway, and we know you fit my clothes.”

“I’m sorry, why do we know that?” Luca interrupts. And then, immediately, “No, actually, do not answer that.”

Einar morosely mutters, “It’s gonna be completely innocuous.” Which, yes, of course, what other reason would there be? Stefan is content to let Dragos shove clothes at him, because it seems to make him happy and that is always a worthy cause in his book.

And so, he says, “Sure, Dra, I’ll dress up as this Allround character.”

Dragos beams, clasping both his shoulders.

“Who are you, then?” Stefan asks, because he knows Dragos will want to tell him even if it won’t mean a thing to him.

“Saruman! He’s like… The evil wizard. Einar’s Gandalf and—”

“Actually, since you’re someone different, we decided to switch too,” Einar cuts in. “Nadz’ll do Gandalf, I’ll be Galadriel.”

“Huh,” Dragos says, though he doesn’t turn to them. “Cool.”

Luca, for some reason, starts to blush while he stares wide-eyed at Einar, who smirks languidly at him. It’s probably a good thing Dragos doesn’t notice; despite the fact that Luca’s almost twenty now and goes to university, he’s still very much a kid to his brother. Stefan frowns at Einar in his stead.

“We, uh…” Luca clears his throat. “We wanted to go as Avatar, but there weren’t enough characters. And Leon kept calling everyone racist, though I think he was joking.”

“Oh! I’ve seen Avatar!” Stefan puts in. This is rare!

“What?” Dragos says, incredulous. “When did you watch Avatar and why was I not there?”

“I had a date, he took me. I don’t think I really got it.”

“Oh my fucking god, you mean the blue alien Avatar!” Dragos shakes his shoulders emphatically.

Yeah, there had definitely been blue aliens. “The guy tried to explain it to me, I think it was part two?”

“Who even thinks that’s a good date?” Dragos seems very impassioned now, which makes Stefan smile.

“I liked Blue Alien Avatar,” Einar says mildly.

“Oh, great! Stef, was this date a tall, blond dude, because he sounds like Einar’s type!”

He had been, actually. “I’d thought you might like him. He told me he does these historical dress-up things, too. Looked pretty neat.”

“Elves aren’t historical, Borisov,” Nadzeya says, while Einar leans forward with interest, chin in his hand.

“He kept trying to tell me about Rusvik.” Stefan shrugs. He still has no idea what that is. Might as well be elves. He also has no idea anymore what the guy’s name was.

“Huh,” Einar says, contemplative. “Y’know what, Stefan, that does actually sound like my type.”

“Fucking nerd,” Nadzeya snipes, somehow affectionately, as though she isn’t part of this strange group as well. Dragos smiles a conspiratorial little smile at Stefan, winking, and then tells him to go make his goulash and pushes him gently out the door, promising to fill him in on the elf business over dinner.

-

“Are you serious?”

Dragos chews on his lip and flails his hands apologetically. Stefan crosses his arms over his bare chest. Early morning sunlight streams in through the high window of the bathroom and across his shoulders.

“You have a fake beard and I have to shave,” he mutters. “How’s that fair?”

“You see why I’m normally Elrond.” Dragos bounces on the tips of his toes.

Stefan does fit his costume; they’ve checked. His chest is a little broader than Dragos’s, but honestly, that just means he fills out the robes better. Arthur’s Saruman outfit fits Dragos as well. He isn’t wearing it now, not yet, only having put a tank top on before telling Stefan to go shave before he put his clothes on.

“Anyway, I know you, you’ll have stubble again by the end of the afternoon. And really, you should see Nadzeya’s beard.”

Einar, of course, also fit perfectly into her Galadriel dress, apart from the stuffed bra he had to wedge underneath. He pulls it off, because Einar can pull everything off. It’s a real shame he’s not Dragos’s type. Maybe Stefan’s stupid former date will appreciate it.

Stefan is shaking his head but smiling wryly.

“The things I do for you, Dragos,” he says, running his fingers over the stubble on his chin. Dragos beams at him and touches his cheek.

“I’m sure it’ll look good. Besides…” He rests the fingertips of his other hand on his breastbone. “At least it’s just the facial hair, huh?”

That gets him a pained expression, followed by Stefan squirming away when Dragos moves his hand. Oh! He’d almost forgotten he’s ticklish! It seemed much more relevant when they were kids.

“Dragos,” Stefan says warningly, jaw clenching underneath his other hand. “Hey—”

Because Dragos wriggles his fingers some more, grinning with delight when Stefan gasps and grabs his wrist, squirming. He hits the sink when he steps back, inadvertently tugging Dragos with him.

“Oh my god,” says Luca, suddenly, from the bathroom doorway. Widening his eyes, Dragos turns to his brother, who is already in his costume.

“This is not what it looks like.”

“It… It’s not?” He looks between the two of them while Dragos takes a step back. Stefan shakes his head, crossing his arms again.

“Oh,” Luca says. “Are you sure?”

“Yes?” Dragos glances at Stefan, who shrugs, amused.

“Jesus fuck.” Luca turns and stalks away, throwing his hands up.

“Hey, language!” Stefan tells him before Dragos can, but Luca doesn’t react. And, “Hey, how come he gets a waistcoat and I have to wear robes?”

“Just go shave,” Dragos tells him, laughing, and he briefly touches his cheek again on the way out.

-

Erzsébet texts, ‘borisov ur such a pushover’, with a picture attached of Stefan in his Allround outfit, holding a sword, which he thought was actually pretty cool. Stefan blinks at his phone, pausing in eating his lunch.

‘whered you get that photo?’ he sends back.

‘luca. but srsly say no to balan sometimes’

‘I had a good time’

‘ugh. everyone i know is a nerd’

Stefan shrugs, returning to his salad. He doesn’t know, at this point, why Erzsébet dislikes Dragos, and vice-versa, but he thinks the two of them might have forgotten as well, so he’s not going to look into it at all. It’s probably something stupid anyway, knowing the both of them.

“Everything okay?” Torbjörn asks, across the table in their workshop.

“Sure.”

The man nods, eating his sandwich.

“’M takin’ next week off,” he says after a while. Stefan nods; he’d seen the schedule. Since it’s summer, it hasn’t been very busy, so he’ll be fine on his own.

“Special occasion?” he asks. Couldn’t be his birthday; that’s in June, and it’s August now. Torbjörn smiles minutely.

“Wedding anniversary. Twelve years.”

“That’s nice. Congratulations.”

“Y’ever think about getting married?” Torbjörn asks, lifting his cup of coffee.

Stefan laughs. “Sure, if I find the right person. Dragos has all these ideas about weddings, you know that? He’s a romantic, really. Probably knows what I should wear and all.”

Torbjörn stares at him with those piercing eyes of his, coffee raised to his lips and steam fogging up the edges of his glasses.

“I see,” he rumbles eventually. “And you’d let him tell you?”

“I trust him,” Stefan says. If anyone knows what looks nice on him, it’s Dragos.

“I see,” Torbjörn repeats.

“Anyway, next week—do you have any projects I ought to know about?”

-

Luca is looking uncharacteristically serious, which immediately has Dragos on edge when he opens the door. It’s not unusual for his brother to visit over the weekend; he has his own apartment now, with a yearmate from university, but he knows he’s always welcome in Dragos’s house. Even if Dragos is still a little insulted him and his odd friend group don’t use his specifically furnished side room to play Dungeons & Dragons. Luca says it’s too far away, but still.

“What’s wrong?” Dragos asks nervously.

Luca purses his lips. Swipes his ever-longer hair over one shoulder.

“I want to…” He frowns, seemingly thinking while he flops down on Dragos’s shitty couch. From the open window, the smell of fried food wafts into the room.

“You can tell me anything, Luc.”

“I know.” He smiles softly. “Okay, let’s say I need advice.”

“Okay, let’s say that,” Dragos agrees, leaning forward in his chair.

“What if there’s a… A guy, who’s my friend, right? And he’s always around?” Luca winds his hair around his fingers. “And I really like having him around.”

Dragos nods. He’s reminded of Luca coming out to him a few years ago, although that felt more matter-of-fact; he knew Dragos would have no problems with whatever his sexuality was. He must really like this guy.

“And this guy, he’s always touching me—which I like!—and he seems happy to see me whenever,” Luca continues. “And I like to help him out when he wants, you know? It makes me feel nice.”

“That’s great, Luc. It sounds like you don’t really need my advice—if you’d want to date this guy, I mean.”

“Yeah, you think so?”

“Sure!” Dragos leans forward to clasp his brother’s knee briefly. “Sounds like he’s into you!”

“Cool. So, uh…” Luca takes a deep breath. “Why exactly are you not dating Stefan?”

“What?” Dragos exclaims. Where did that come from?

“Those are all things you and Stefan do!”

“That’s… Luc, that’s different.”

“Why?” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not saying those things can’t be platonic, but I know you, both of you. They’re not!”

“Of course they are!”

“Do you touch Nadzeya that much? Does Einar come over and make you dinner?”

“Well, no—Nadz doesn’t like to be touched—”

“Stefan doesn’t like to be touched! You’ve told me that!”

With a gasp, Dragos says, “He doesn’t! Oh, do you think I’ve been overstepping his boundaries?”

“What? No, Dragos, that’s the point! His boundaries are different for you!” Luca flops backwards on the couch, pushing both hands into his hair. “You can’t be this stupid!”

“Hey.” Why is his brother so hung up on his love life, anyway? Or, lack of love life, as it were. Dragos had meant to go out to a bar sometime this summer, maybe meet someone, but then Stefan will be there with dinner and they’ll hang out and it’ll be too late. He never gets the sense Stefan minds, either. Maybe they could go out together.

“So there’s no guy?” he asks Luca.

“No, there’s no guy, Dragos. Not for me, anyway. Look, wouldn’t it make you happy to be with Stefan?”

“It already does.”

Luca stares at him. “God, I wish you were joking.” And, in response to Dragos raising his eyebrows, “No, that’s good, Dra. And if you were the type of person for a platonic sort of romance, then, you know, whatever. But you were the one reading me all those love stories when I was a kid. You’re a romantic at heart. I know you are.”

“Stef says that a lot.” Dragos smiles. It’s nice to hear.

“Oh my fucking god!”

-

“Hello, Stefan,” Einar drawls from behind the register, looping a green yarn over his fingers.

“Hi. Is Dragos in?”

“Out to get lunch.”

Stefan nods and makes his way to the door in the back of the shop, pulling his key to Dragos’s apartment out. He just needs to pick up a shirt that Dragos has said would suit him better; he’s going to dinner with Erzsébet and she insists he look ‘presentable, at the very least’. Her and Dragos agree that Stefan doesn’t know how to dress himself, and that’s the only thing.

It’s vaguely insulting, because he’s in his thirties, but at least Dragos will help him out, which is more than can be said for Erzsébet.

The shirt, found hanging over the back of Dragos’s couch, is a nice deep green, nearly black, and it fits great, so Stefan keeps it on when he leaves. He has no work this afternoon, so it’ll be fine.

When he opens the door, it almost slams into a customer, but the man jumps away just in time, narrowly avoiding a rack of trading cards.

“Sorry.” Stefan squints up at the man, who blinks back.

“Oh, Stefan. I didn’t know you worked here.” It’s the guy who took him to see Blue Alien Avatar, whose name Stefan still cannot recall even though he forwarded his contact info to Einar a few weeks back.

“He doesn’t,” Einar says, coming over to inspect the trading cards. And, frowning, “Is that that shirt Dragos bought yesterday?”

“He thought it’d look nice.”

“You two are precious,” Einar informs him flatly.

Blue Alien Avatar man adjusts his glasses, looking down at Stefan. God, right, that’s another reason that didn’t work; he’s just too tall. Stefan would prefer to date someone of his own height.

“So you’re… You live here?” the guy asks.

Before Stefan can clarify, Dragos bursts into his store and immediately exclaims, “I told you it’d look good on you!” He waves a panini around as he strides over. “You’re wasted on Erzsébet Héderváry, truly.”

“Ha, she wishes.” Stefan smiles when that makes Dragos laugh, and stands still so the man can adjust his shirt and gently muss his hair with one hand, wiping at something on his cheek with his tongue between his teeth.

Blue Alien Avatar guy turns to Einar and asks, “How long have—”

“They’re not.”

Dragos nods, satisfied, and holds his panini out to Stefan in invitation, so he folds his fingers over Dragos’s and takes a careful bite of it.

“Surely…”

“You see what I gotta deal with here, Eduard.”

Ah! That was his name.

“So no dinner tonight?” Dragos asks. Stefan shakes his head apologetically. “That’s okay. I’ll see you!”

“See you, Dra.” Stefan touches his arm and nods politely at Einar and Blue Alien Eduard as he leaves.

-

“Alright, I’ll give you a minute to—” Einar is interrupted by a rattling at the door of the shop that makes everyone look up. “What the hell?”

Frowning, Dragos gets up from the game table and pokes his head out of the window facing the street to see what the commotion is. The sun has not yet set but is low, and in its orange light, he sees that it is Stefan trying the locked door.

“Stef!” he calls, and leans further out of the window when Stefan peers into the sunlight at him. “What the hell are you doing?”

Stefan hurries over. He’s still wearing the nice green shirt and looks quite agitated, so Dragos leans over, resting his torso on the windowsill to grasp his friend’s shoulder.

“What happened? Did Erzsébet do something?” he asks with concern.

Blinking, Stefan shakes his head. In the orange light, his eyes are an almost translucent shade of green, and Dragos can see the brown undertones in his black hair, nearly gold.

“So why are you here? Are you okay?” Dragos touches Stefan’s forehead with his free hand, letting his fingers slip down the side of his face. He feels fine, sun-warmed but not hot. Inside, Luca asks something and Nadzeya grumbles an answer.

“I don’t… You know, it’s stupid,” Stefan says, voice low. He averts his gaze, pressing his lips together.

“I’m sure it’s not, Stef.” Dragos tugs him a little closer to the window so he can lean more comfortably on the sill.

“No, I’m pretty sure it is.” Stefan touches his wrist, fingers warm on his skin, and looks back at him. “We were at dinner, and someone thought we were a couple.”

“You and Erzsébet?” Dragos asks incredulously. He digs his fingers into Stefan’s shoulder. The nerve! He deserves much better than her!

“Yes! And I corrected the guy, immediately!”

“Of course!”

“Dragos, people think we’re a couple all the time!”

“Well—”

“And I never correct them!” His eyes are wide, almost frantic. “I just don’t!”

“But that…” Dragos frowns, and then he just looks at Stefan for a while, as Stefan looks right back, his fingers curled around his wrist. Because Dragos is still touching his face, basically cupping his jaw with one hand while he leans out of his shop window. The street is otherwise deserted, although he wouldn’t have cared if it weren’t.

Slowly, he runs his other hand up from Stefan’s shoulder, across his neck to his face as well. He rasps his thumb over the stubble on his jaw. Watches him part his lips and breathe out slowly.

“Why don’t I correct them?” Stefan asks, nearly in a whisper.

“Because…” Dragos meets his eye. “Because they aren’t wrong.”

“Fuck,” Stefan sighs, eyes closing briefly. “They’re not, are they?”

“Oh my god, Stef, we’re so stupid!” Dragos tugs him closer and leans further forward so that their foreheads touch, and he feels, more than hears, Stefan laugh. He tries to imagine, just for a moment, doing that with Einar, with Nadzeya, with anyone else, but… It doesn’t feel like it should even be a possibility. His boundaries are different for Stefan as well, he supposes.

“Have we really missed out on much, though?” Stefan is asking, wryly.

“You… You could make breakfast, not just dinner,” Dragos says, curling his fingers against his skin. “I could introduce you as my partner. We could—”

Stefan turns his face up and kisses him, slotting their lips together as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and Dragos is sure he almost tumbles out into the street, the way he melts into it.

“Well, and we could do that,” he mumbles, half into Stefan’s mouth, and feels him smile against his lips before pressing them back together. The little noise he makes when Dragos swipes his tongue over his lips is sure to be seared into his memory from here on out—just like the way his stubble rasps against his skin, the way his fingers curl into Dragos’s hair, tugging it out of its half-up ponytail, the way—

“Fucking finally!”

Stefan almost drags Dragos from his window when he stumbles backwards, and Dragos blinks dumbly at him before registering the voice from down the street and turning to glare at Erzsébet.

“What the fuck are you—”

“Dra?” Luca asks from behind him, peering out of the window as well. “Hi, Stefan.”

“Luca!” Erzsébet yells, though she’s coming closer. Dragos wants to say something else, but Stefan rolls his eyes, steps back forward, and kisses him again, and he decides he really doesn’t care.

“No way!” Luca exclaims.

“I know, right?”

There is only Stefan for a long while, then, tilting his head to meet Dragos’s mouth again and again, as if he’s making up for lost time because they’ve really been idiots, possibly for years. When Dragos finally resurfaces from kissing him, Stefan is flushed, his eyes are dark, and, for some reason, Luca is outside on the street with Erzsébet, as are Einar and Nadzeya.

“Guys?” he asks, blinking, his voice somehow hoarse. They weren’t finished with the game. But… He looks back down at Stefan as he touches the corner of his lips with a callused thumb. “Right. Come in.” And, when Stefan steps closer to the window, “The door, Stef!”

“Oh, good, they’re gonna be stupid in brand new ways now,” Nadzeya says, but Dragos doesn’t really care because then Stefan is inside and he can press him against the door, fitting their entire bodies together.

Stefan touches his face, his neck, with careful fingertips as if exploring him. He smells, as he always does, like sawdust and cigarette smoke, and Dragos has known that for years, but the way he smiles sends shivers down his spine. He grins, and Stefan grins back, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Oh my god, I love you,” Dragos blurts. He’s known that too, for years, he just didn’t realize how.

“Stupid,” Stefan mutters. But, as he leans so close their lips nearly touch again, he whispers, “I love you too.”

-

It’s dark by the time Dragos is done in the shop, and he eagerly makes his way to his apartment, only to find Stefan sprawled on the couch, looking at his phone. He smiles up at Dragos when he enters.

“What’s this?” Dragos lets himself be tugged down to sit sideways on the couch next to Stefan, and then gladly leans over to kiss him, his hair spilling around both their faces. Stefan tucks some of it behind his ear when he pulls back, licking his lips.

“What do you mean, what’s this?”

Dragos raises one eyebrow, which makes him laugh, eyes bright.

“I can’t just be at your place?” He sits up straight.

“’Course you can. I’d be more confused if you weren’t.” He puts a hand on Stefan’s thigh, stretched out on the couch next to him, and is pleased to note a hitch in the man’s breath. “You know several customers think we’re married?”

“Hm. How long have they thought that?”

Dragos grimaces, and Stefan laughs again, then suddenly blinks, falling silent. He meets Dragos’s eye and takes a deep breath.

“Maybe we should be married.”

“Maybe—what?” Dragos gasps. “Is that—Stefan, is that a proposal?”

“Huh, I guess.”

“You guess?” And, before he can reply to that, “I mean, yes, obviously we should get married—”

Stefan kisses him, hard, and Dragos lets himself be dragged back down eagerly. It’s a long while before they finally circle back—first to the shittiest proposal ever, which Stefan promises he’ll make up for as if he didn’t do just that, but Dragos is curious to find out what he’ll come up with anyway, and then to what Dragos had originally wanted to know.

He rests his chin on Stefan’s chest and looks up at him, asking, “So what’s for dinner, then?”

“You see,” Stefan says, flushed and rumpled underneath him, “sometimes, a man is eagerly anticipating some takeout pizza.”

[cha-melodius]

Oh my goodness, I've just seen your fic festival request post and am excited to sneak in to participate before it closes. I love your writing and your stories so very much!

My prompt suggestion is... firstprince in Edinburgh, Scotland... in particular, the Edinburgh pride parade (if I may be so oddly specific). AU welcome, canon welcome, makeouts welcome, ahem.

Thank you and good luck wrangling everyone's prompts!

(Firstly, I have to say I love your url and your profile pic! Secondly, this is heavier on the Pride and lighter on the Edinburgh as far as the details go, but I hope it delights. Inspired in part by a tweet shared on tumblr; rated M for dick jokes. Happy Bisexual Awareness Week!)

Something To Be Proud Of

(firstprince, 3.3k, M; read it below or on AO3) read all the fandom fest fics

Henry stares at the carbon copy of the email in his inbox and wills time to go backwards. Just a few minutes, that’s all he needs. Enough time to go back and keep autocorrect from transforming whatever he’d typed after ‘he’ in his pronouns after his name into… that.

Thank you so much for all your help. Together we can make this a truly exceptional Edinburgh Pride. Regards, Henry Fox (he/hung Sent from Outlook for iOS.

How had he not seen it before he hit send on an email going out to every volunteer on their mailing list? How had he not noticed?

Maybe no one else would notice either. No one looks at email signatures that closely, right?

~~~~~

Ok, he’s not delusional enough to think that no one noticed. He had, however, naively believed that everyone would recognise it for what it was and politely ignore his gaff. He gets away scot free for a few days, and then, at the end of an email sent by a volunteer that is mostly as expected, he sees:

Best, Alex (he/him) PS: not sure I did the pronouns right. Does ‘Pride’ over here include being proud of your big dick?

It’s a damned good thing that he wasn’t taking a sip of his tea at the time, or he might be wearing it instead. Once he’s finished choking on nothing and perhaps isn’t quite the colour of a tomato (oh, who is he kidding, of course he still is), Henry professionally answers Alex’s questions about the schedule for the day of the march. He pauses before the sign off, wondering if he should acknowledge the flub or pretend it never happened. In the end, he writes:

Regards, Henry (he/him) PS: Your pronouns look correct to me, but they are, of course, your choice.

He only checks the email about ten times before he sends it. Hopefully, that should be the end of it.

~~~~~

It’s not.

Apparently, Alex has more questions. Apparently the law firm he works for is one of this year’s sponsors and is interested in potentially running a free legal clinic associated with the festival. A noble endeavour, which Henry is only too happy to assist with. He makes a mental note to look into logistics with Kate, the event’s chair, and continues reading. Finding out that Alex is apparently mature enough to be a lawyer lulls him into a false sense of security, though. At the tail of the email, he finds:

PS: regardless of the size of your dick, I’m impressed by the balls it takes to not acknowledge the typo. Then again, maybe it wasn’t? PPS: I’m trying out new pronouns. How do you think (daddy/sir) would go over?

Henry does spit his tea all over his phone this time.

He doesn’t email Alex back right away, but that’s because he has to wait to hear back from Kate. It has nothing to do with the fact that the prospect of dragging this interaction out longer is both horrifying and vaguely thrilling. Henry has noticed that he uses Americanised spellings in his text, which seems to fit with his general demeanour. It piques Henry’s curiosity, even though the thought of actually having to face Alex in person still makes him flush automatically. Eventually he gets an email from Kate that includes additional questions for the firm, as well as telling him that he can pass it off to someone in sponsor coordination. He is, after all, just the volunteer coordinator for the march. This need not involve him.

He still emails Alex back with the questions. And:

PS: Although I support your creativity, I am concerned those pronouns may not be appreciated in a professional setting such as, for instance, a court of law. Just a thought. However, I do suspect they might be rather popular at Pride.

~~~~~

They keep on exchanging emails, even though Henry should have sent Alex’s contact info to sponsor coordination ages ago, even though it becomes clear that Alex is not the one who will be ultimately responsible for the clinic either. On every one, there is a postscript in which Alex makes some kind of joke about the size of Henry’s dick.

do you have to get all your pants specially made with extra room in the crotch

do you have to check your dick as luggage when you fly

have you ever used it as a tripod

is your dick in another time zone

do you call your dick Sir Richard because it’s that prominent

In turn, Henry responds as dryly as possible, which only seems to encourage him. Oddly for someone who is volunteering at the event, Alex seems to have a lot of questions about Pride itself, as though this is the first one he’s attending on any continent. They exchange emails almost right up to the day of the march itself, but if they do taper off, Henry is too busy to notice. Coordinating volunteers for something as big as Edinburgh Pride is intense, and the days tick by before he even knows it.

He’s standing off to the side at the volunteer check-in tent on the morning of the march, going over some last minute logistics with one of his staff, when a voice carries over the hubbub, deep and rich with an out-of-place American accent.

“Sorry, but I was hoping… is Henry here?”

Henry straightens up and turns toward the voice only to find perhaps the most stunning man he’s ever seen standing at the front table. Dark, curly hair, a sharp jaw, big brown eyes with the longest eyelashes Henry has ever seen— he’s actually impossibly beautiful. Unbelievable, really. As is the fact that he’s asking for Henry.

“Hello,” Henry says as he walks over to the front. “How can I help you?”

The man’s eyes snap over to him, and he very clearly looks Henry up and down and swears, “Jesus fuck,” under his breath. Then his eyes come back up to Henry’s face, and he swallows. “You’re not Scottish.”

Henry cocks an eyebrow at him. “Neither are you.”

“Yeah, sorry. I just— need to adjust what you sound like in my head,” he says nonsensically. “I’m Alex?”

Oh.

Oh, Christ.

Henry should have known, because how many other Americans could there be volunteering at Edinburgh Pride? That reality does nothing to help him cope with the situation presented before him, though, in which this is the man who’s been teasing him about the size of his dick for the last month.

“I, uh,” he says eloquently as he tries to pull himself together. There are far too many people standing around watching this exchange. “Hello. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Did your firm get everything sorted with the clinic?”

“Oh,” Alex says, blinking. “Yeah, thanks. Look, I’m sure you’re busy, but I have something for you?”

It kind of comes out as a question, and he’s scratching the back of his head uncertainly, so even though Henry has no idea what’s coming, he nods. Then Alex reaches into his pocket, fishes out something small and round, and places it on the table between them.

It’s a button. A pronoun button, not unlike the one Henry’s already wearing, but instead it reads: he/hung.

Henry’s eyes snap up to find Alex grinning at him with the kind of mischief that Henry honestly should have expected from him sparkling in his eye. “Wanted to make sure you were prepared,” he says with a little one-shouldered shrug. “I’ll see you around, I guess.”

Then he takes his volunteer t-shirt and saunters off—and Christ those jeans are ridiculously tight and doing everything for his arse—leaving Henry gawping after him. A moment later, one of his regular volunteers, Robin, bustles by, catches sight of the button, and lets out a sound that can only be described as a cackle.

“My god, it’s perfect,” they say. “Did he really make this for you?”

Henry can only sigh, dragging a hand over his face. “It appears so. Robin, can you do me a favour?”

“Make sure you’re working the same stations all day?” they surmise. Henry doesn’t need to look to imagine the knowing grin on their face.

Henry wants to say no. Just because Henry’s already managed to combine the affection engendered by their previous email conversations with Alex’s stunning good looks into a powerfully intoxicating cocktail of a crush—well, that’s on Henry and his poor decision-making.

Instead, he says: “Yes, exactly that.”

~~~~~ ~~~~~

Alex had only signed up to volunteer at Pride on a whim. He’s always complaining that he doesn’t know anyone in Edinburgh outside of his coworkers, and one such coworker—someone that he could safely call a friend—suggested that getting involved in the festival would be a good way to meet people. Alex had tried to explain that he wasn’t actually queer, but she’d just given him an odd look and told him that allies were welcome at Pride too. It had felt a little weird signing up despite her assurances, but also kind of good. He was finally going get out there and have a life beyond his job.

He certainly hadn’t expected to strike up a prolonged email exchange with the volunteer coordinator, Henry. He also doesn’t really know why he kept finding excuses to send him new messages, except for Henry’s responses to Alex’s stupid jokes made Alex imagine him rolling his eyes and trying not to laugh, which only egged Alex on further. It was fun. That’s all.

Nothing about any of this made him prepared to show up to the volunteer check-in tent  today and be plunged directly into a sexuality crisis. But that seems to be exactly what’s currently happening now that he’s been confronted by quite possibly the hottest man he’s ever seen. Alex doesn’t even get it because it’s not like he hasn’t been able to objectively appreciate attractive men before, and blond hair and blue eyes have historically never really done it for him. Even if they are combined with swooping cheekbones, and broad shoulders, and obscenely full, pink lips.

All he knows is that as much as this doesn’t make sense, it also suddenly does. Why he’d felt drawn to sign up in the first place. Why he spent the last month reading about the history of Pride in Edinburgh and around the world. Why he’d gone on a deep dive doing research about different sexualities, brushing it off as wanting to be informed before meeting new people.

Why he was so obsessed with Henry’s dick.

Jesus fuck.

He thinks he manages to hold a short conversation. Somehow he even gives Henry the custom button he brought as a joke, smiling the whole time like he’s not moment’s away from dropping to his knees. He flees the table safe in the knowledge that Henry will likely be too busy coordinating stuff all day and Alex probably won’t see him again. That confidence is shattered when, not even an hour later, Henry shows up at the station Alex is supposed to be working. He’s even wearing the joke button, under his regular pronoun button and next to a little rainbow flag pin. Alex is going to die.

“Oh hey,” Alex says in a reasonable facsimile of nonchalance. “Did you need me for something?”

“Not exactly,” Henry replies. “I’ll be working this station too.”

Yeah, Alex is definitely not going to make it through the day.

~~~~~

It actually turns out to be not as bad as he feared, despite how Henry’s volunteer t-shirt is probably a size too small (never mind that in the context of everyone else at Pride he looks downright conservative) and Alex keeps getting caught staring at his shoulders or his back or his waist. Henry keeps on giving him weird looks at the beginning, probably because he’s expecting Alex to be cracking crude jokes. Too bad Alex is way too wound up in his own head to think of anything at all.

They’re pretty busy all day, but they do get a chance to chat occasionally, mostly small talk stuff about jobs and how they both ended up in Edinburgh. Henry is there for grad school, apparently, and has been volunteering for Pride since he moved out from under his grandmother’s restrictive shadow. In turn, Alex tells him about applying for the law job on a whim, desperate to set himself apart from his parents, and how much he likes Edinburgh (despite the weather). As the day stretches on and the streets fill up, Alex feels himself relaxing into his skin again, undeniably enjoying the festivities as well as Henry’s company.

See, the other thing he never, ever expected is how good it feels to be here. All the people around him loudly comfortable in themselves, and the color and glitter and celebration— it’s amazing, but it’s not just that he’s watching other people be happy. There’s a kind of ecstatic joy that bubbles up inside him at the fact that he’s part of it, one that he feels down to his bones. A sense of belonging that he’s never really experienced before, and that, more than anything else, makes him more certain of his newfound revelation.

Straight people probably don’t feel like this at Pride.

At the end of the day, he’s helping pack up the main volunteer tent when he comes across a table full of pins depicting different pride flags. He dimly remembers seeing them when he’d checked in and thinking that none of them applied to him. Now, he stares down at them and bites his lower lip uncertainly.

“There’s a box for those under the table,” Henry tells him from across the tent, misinterpreting his hesitation.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Alex says, and Henry’s already turning back to whatever he’s doing when he manages to continue, “Hey, can I— um, can I take one of these?”

Henry stops, his brow creasing as he tips his head slightly. “Of course. That’s what they’re there for.”

“Right, thanks,” Alex says with a tight smile.

He puts his hand out, hesitates, then picks up one with pink, purple, and blue stripes. Stares down at it for another moment before he realizes he’s probably being weird and he’s pretty sure Henry is still watching him. He swallows hard, then pins it to his shirt next to his pronoun button.

No one jumps out to call him out for being an impostor. Henry offers him a careful smile, then turns back to his work like he knows Alex needs a moment to himself. He lets his fingers rub over the surface of the pin, feeling the little enamel ridges, and something settles under his skin, like an itch he hadn’t even been aware of until it was gone.

He feels almost normal by the time Henry walks up to him once they’re finished and everything is packed away in someone’s car.

“Thanks so much for your help today,” Henry says. 

“It was my pleasure,” Alex replies, and means it more than he can say. “I’m really glad I decided to sign up.”

“I realize you may very well be tired of my face at this point, but if you don’t already have plans, I was wondering if you’d like to go get a drink?”

Alex would like to make a joke about how it might be literally impossible to get tired of Henry’s face, but at this point he’d probably fuck up and confess his undying love for a guy he just met. “Sounds great,” he says instead, looking around at where a few of the other volunteers are lingering nearby. “Do y’all usually all go out together afterward?”

Henry coughs slightly and glances down at the ground for a few seconds as his cheeks turn faintly pink. “Well yes, a group of them usually do. But I was actually asking if you wanted to go out with me,” he says. “Just the two of us.”

“Oh,” Alex breathes as his stomach decides to do a backflip. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Spending all day volunteering with Henry was fun. Going on a date with Henry, being the sole focus of his attention, is intoxicating. Alex feels like he could sit here all night listening to Henry talk about his research on queer history, although that’s far from the only thing they talk about. As the night wears on and the pub slowly empties, Alex is buzzing with a few drinks and the euphoria of really clicking with someone, already wondering when would be too soon to ask Henry out again.

Henry shifts slightly so his legs press against Alex’s where they’re tangled together under the table—have been for several hours, actually. He’s playing with the stirrer in his empty glass, and a little teasing smirk sneaks onto his lips as he looks up at Alex.

“So you made me a custom pronoun button but forgot your own?”

“Ah, you know,” Alex replies with a shit-eating grin and a one-shouldered shrug, “thought it would be too distracting, what with how everyone would be hitting on me all day.”

Henry hums thoughtfully, biting back a wider smile. “If you wanted to avoid that, you probably should have chosen some looser trousers.”

“That’s fair. I suppose you had to go for the room in yours.” Alex pauses a beat. “You know, on account of the size of your dick.”

That makes Henry actually laugh and shake his head fondly. “I was waiting all day for that.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Alex says, chuckling along with him. It does feel like he owes Henry something of an explanation of why he was so weird all day. He looks down and licks his lips. “Can I confess something?”

“Of course,” Henry answers with a small, encouraging smile.

“A friend of mine suggested I volunteer for this because I wanted to meet people. Make new friends. But until today I actually thought I was… mostly straight?” Alex admits, trying not to wince as he stares fixedly into his empty glass. “Being part of this made me realize why I always felt a little like I wasn’t my whole self. So I was… kind of going through it a bit today.” He pauses, then adds, “Also you’re so ridiculously fucking hot that you kind of melted my brain.”

Henry laughs again, but it’s softer this time. Gentle. Alex kind of wants to sink into the sound. Henry’s cheeks are slightly pink as he extends a hand across the table, and Alex doesn’t hesitate before he slides his hand into Henry’s and links their fingers together.

“I’m glad to hear that, Alex,” Henry says. “I mean, the feeling like your whole self part. Not the brain melting part,” he adds, and Alex can’t help but laugh with him.

Henry doesn’t let go of his hand as they walk outside, and once they’re alone on the sidewalk he uses it to pull Alex close. He puts a hand on Alex’s hip and Alex has to tip his head up to look at him, and it’s a lot but he’s also pretty sure he’s never wanted anything more than to feel Henry’s lips pressed against his.

“I have a confession too,” Henry murmurs as he stares down into Alex’s eyes.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been dreaming of kissing you since the very first moment I saw you.”

Alex lets one corner of his mouth tug upwards. “What’s stopping you, baby?”

“Christ, Alex,” Henry breathes, looking momentarily overwhelmed, but then he’s pressing his lips to Alex’s, and Alex feels his blood sing. It’s brief and chaste and leaves him aching for more, but then Henry looks down at him with heavy lidded eyes and asks, “Given your recent personal revelations, would it be terribly forward of me to ask you back to my place?”

“Ask away, sweetheart,” Alex replies, then he reaches up to touch the side of the ridiculous he/hung button that Henry is still wearing for some reason. “I wanna find out how accurate this button is.”

(It doesn’t take long for him to find out that the answer is: extremely.)

[kindleaf]

Erlin, Albin for the obvious. Zirk for me. And as a curve ball. Also Luna.

[ask game] yayyyy so many :3c (under cut)

erlin:

how do i feel about this character?

gestures to my url. i'm normal. im literally normal. (favorite nadd character and maybe my favorite character ever. he's certainly up there.)

all the characters i ship romantically with them.

bev -w- truly no one else. no one else with bev either. no one can ever get involved with what they have going on at risk of their self esteem.

non-romantic pairings.

ofc egwene and erlin the siblings of all time forever. the most important guys. and then the rest of b-team obviously. him and hardwon make me cry. of course his other scoutmaster moonie as well. derlin. cran. probably ol cobb. i get weepy he has so many friends he's so LOVED...

unpopular opinion.

i'm a bev/erlin guy we all know this. and a large portion of his life is beverly and i love to discuss this i love to talk about the Themes And Motifs but i also think. maybe. both within the show and in fandom we could talk a little bit more about erlin and his desires outside of bev... we can look at his own tragedy as well... also he's gay. that's not unpopular i'm just saying it.

one thing i wish would happen/wish had happened in canon.

B-TEAM BONDING. ON SCREEN B-TEAM BONDING. PLEASE ON SCREAM B-TEAM BONDING. "MY FATHER FIGURE" BRIAN MURPHY ELABORATE.

albin:

how do i feel about this character?

LOVE HIM. loser wizard guy my favorite c3 character hands down. he's so sad. kicks him.

all the characters i ship romantically with them.

sol! mainly sol. sometimes i play dolls with him and calder, grem, or swag but it's mainly for the Bit and the Drama and the Sexual Ennui.

non-romantic pairings.

ma goblin and him are literally LITERALLY best friends bark bark ruff bark. they make me so happy to think about. also i have pretty extensive headcanons about him hanging out with the waterpark kids (liddy, tully, etc.) and maybe have a comic in the works for it hehe but i like that. and then also winch and callie. i think they should be FRIENDS.

unpopular opinion.

they should treat him better in canon before i start aggressively subtweeting jake and emily on twitter. be fucking nice to him he's literally just helping you and calder STARTED it.

one thing i wish would happen/wish had happened in canon.

i wish we had gotten to maybe see more flashbacks to launchpad with them in a more serious way? however the lizer fight flashback to albin crying out for help really does it for me i like that a LOT. i wish we'd maybe even gotten more of albin's story pre-launchpad but that's arcane knowledge that not even murph knows so. shrugs.

zirk:

how do i feel about this character?

i LIIIIKE zirk i think he's so interesting and fun. and ofc he's a blorbo in law. but i love alchemist characters by default and then ALSO he has mommy issues? let's fucking go.

all the characters i ship romantically with them.

uhhh not many? i don't really ship him but when people draw him with syb or henry i think that is a-okay!

non-romantic pairings.

him and fia. obviously. they are literally socialized together like kittens and they'll rip up your furniture if they're apart please do not separate. also i like your 🫵 zirk and hank jr stuff i think they should and could be friends even. also him and irina but that's mainly stuff i imagine in my brain. also i think him and tarragon could VIBE but i suppose we'll never know.

unpopular opinion.

hm. idk how unpopular this is with this certain audience but i literally hated the fucking through a bag scene so much. it sucks. it's not good. to me.

one thing i wish would happen/wish had happened in canon.

i would eventually like to see some third mates on their boat in the future :-) just to see what they are up to post All That Bullshit. and also for some zirk and irina interactions.

luna:

how do i feel about this character?

LOVE HER i love her role in the crick arc and i love her scene with melora and i especially love that we get a little peek into how the chosen recruits members because i am so horrible fascinated by how they function as a cult militia. i love her she's awesome.

all the characters i ship romantically with them.

i think shipping her with apple scrumper is literally just fun. so apple scrumper. also not romantic but i think her and moonshine could have a casual thing. in wolf beast mode.

non-romantic pairings.

also her a moonshine as mentioned previously. i think her and hardwon potentially also good friends and then this is so random i think her and tess from the bastards of none could literally hang.

unpopular opinion.

despite her relatively small role in the grand scheme of things i don't think luna is forgettable at all! i think she even brings about one of the most iconic parts of the series early on with melora's "you weren't cursed. you were born that way." i like her very much i think she was the most fun a tertiary npc could be.

one thing i wish would happen/wish had happened in canon.

i can't really think of anything specific i think her arc was very well done. i wish she had gotten to maim barret brisden if this counts.

[cyle]

the bizarre thing is that staff independently uses tumblr on their own blogs? so how do half of these changes even make sense to you all or improve the user experience? when you click on a post from mobile now it takes you to a separate page with just the post. what's the purpose of that? you can obviously clearly see the post on your dash why do i need to be taken to a separate page with just the post? isn't it more logical that you're clicking the post to be taken to the user's page? also do you know what happens when you click a post that the op deleted? you get stuck on a forever loading screen that does nothing but load no error message or anything just loading and there's no way to access the op's page. now i have to memorize a 33 character long url and go to search and type it up to go to op's page. i'm honestly just baffled how that makes sense and is improving user experience bc sorry for my naivety and utter ignorance but there seems to be 0 logic behind this change. good job on opening long posts in the dashboard instead of taking you to a separate page tho that's actually pretty neat o7

some of us who work at tumblr do use tumblr a ton, and we find bugs before you ever do, because we generally roll out changes to just us staff before everybody else. but of course, there are still things that fall through the cracks, and it sounds like you found a bug there with the deleted post issue. please file it to Support!

and in general, almost all of the changes we make are discussed internally and planned and whatnot, we know "why" we're doing things. i wish we were better at conveying that "why" in public, but even if we were, it still would not make complete sense to everyone. like i've been saying a lot lately: there are millions of people using tumblr. there is no "one way" to use it, so we're trying to do our best to make it the best for as many people possible.