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riddlesrizzler · 1 month ago

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Wrong Bunny

summary: Mattheo is confident he knows which bunny is girlfriend... right? characters: bunny! reader. slytherin boys warnings: the kidnapping of a poor, random, bunny word count: 1.1k

The Forbidden Forest had always been cloaked in mystery-even to those who’d spent their childhoods wandering the grounds of Hogwarts. Thick with ancient magic and shadows that moved when they shouldn’t, the trees whispered secrets that only the brave-or perhaps the foolish-dared to chase. Tonight, the moon hung high and heavy, casting silver light across the forest floor, transforming the darkness into something almost beautiful. Almost.

Deep within its winding paths were Mattheo, Theo, Enzo, Draco, and Blaise, their silhouettes weaving between the trees as their voices echoed with the kind of familiar bickering that only came from years of friendship. And then, of course, there was you-just not in the way they were expecting.

You’d taken off ahead of them in your animagus form, your tiny bunny paws nearly silent against the forest floor. The cool night air kissed your fur as you darted through fallen leaves and low-hanging branches, every movement light and free. This form-small, nimble, and unnoticed-was your escape. A sweet, quiet rebellion from the noise of everyday life.

The boys had long grown used to it. In fact, they adored it. They often joked that you were only invited on these nighttime escapades so they could watch you hop around like the world’s most enchanting pet. You never minded; their teasing was affectionate, and this freedom was a welcome reprieve from the chaos of school and stress.

But tonight was different.

They weren’t trailing you for entertainment. No, they were wrapped up in a surprisingly intense debate-about wizard’s chess, of all things. You could still hear their argument drifting through the trees behind you.

“That’s not how you play, Blaise!” Draco’s voice was sharp, filled with that ever-present arrogance that clung to him like a second skin.

Blaise huffed in return. “Please, Draco. You’re the last person who should be lecturing anyone about chess strategy. You lose every time.”

Theo snorted. “Honestly, just let Mattheo play both of you. At least he knows what he’s doing.”

Mattheo chuckled beside you-well, beside where you had been moments ago. “Not this again. I’m not getting dragged into this.”

“Too late,” Draco shot back. “You have to. I need someone competent to beat.”

Their voices faded into the distance as you continued forward, weaving through the trees like a shadow. The moonlight filtered through the canopy, casting dappled light on your fur, and for a moment, it felt like you were part of the forest itself.

Still, you glanced back, ears twitching. The argument hadn’t slowed. If anything, it had picked up in volume and dramatic flair.

“I’m telling you, you’re going to lose again,” Draco said, exasperated.

“You keep saying that, and yet, here we are,” Blaise snapped.

“You two are insufferable,” Theo muttered, clearly done with the entire conversation.

You continued your trek, hopping and twirling between mossy roots and fallen branches. The forest was alive tonight, every sound amplified-every crunch, every rustle, every breath. It made your heart race with a kind of thrill only the Forbidden Forest could offer.

But eventually, the distance between you and the group became noticeable.

“Wait-where’d she go?” Enzo asked, suddenly alert.

Mattheo paused, scanning the space ahead. “She’s fast,” he said, a grin tugging at his lips. “Told you she could outrun all of us.”

“She’s not just fast, she’s practically invisible in this form,” Theo muttered, eyes sweeping the underbrush. “But we’re still in the Forbidden Forest, yeah? We probably shouldn’t let her go too far.”

The concern in their voices was faint but genuine. You could hear them-faint echoes now-still tangled in arguments and worry, even as you slipped deeper into the trees.

Then came the rustle. Another bunny darted across their path, and chaos unfolded.

“There!” Theo shouted. “Was that her?”

Enzo squinted. “I think so?”

Without hesitation, Mattheo surged forward and scooped up the creature. It wriggled slightly in his arms, clearly not thrilled with the sudden attention. He studied it carefully, inspecting its fur and ears with intense focus. “It’s her,” he declared, despite the uncertain flicker in his eyes.

“Are you sure?” Draco asked, peering suspiciously at the bunny now curled up in Mattheo’s arms.

“Positive,” Mattheo replied, full of that same stubborn certainty he always carried when it came to you.

But you were already gone-deeper into the woods, your tiny form flitting between shadows.

“She always hops in this pattern,” Mattheo insisted. “I know it’s her.”

Draco scoffed. “You’ve officially lost it. You seriously think you can recognize a rabbit’s hopping pattern?”

“I’m right,” Mattheo replied firmly, not even looking up. “You don’t know her like I do.”

The others exchanged skeptical glances, unsure whether to believe him or stage an intervention.

Eventually, they made their way back toward the edge of the forest, the small bunny still nestled in Mattheo’s arms. But as the minutes ticked by, the truth became increasingly clear.

The bunny didn’t change back.

“She should’ve transformed by now,” Mattheo muttered, eyes narrowing.

Enzo raised a brow. “Are we sure that’s her?”

“I mean…” Mattheo looked down again. “…maybe?”

And then Draco lost it, laughing as realization dawned. “You’ve been carrying the wrong bunny this whole time?”

Mattheo blinked. “What-?”

“You kidnapped a random rabbit,” Blaise said, half in disbelief, half in hysterics.

And that’s when you chose to reappear-human again, standing right in front of them, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.

“I was literally right there,” you snapped, glaring at the group. “You forgot about me and abducted an innocent woodland creature?”

The boys froze, guilt washing over them like cold water.

Mattheo held the bunny out to you like an offering. “I-okay, I thought it was you!”

You sighed, dramatic and exasperated. “Seriously? Of all the bunnies in the forest, you chose the one that wasn’t me? The one that wasn't your girlfriend?”

The real bunny in his hands blinked slowly, as if thoroughly unimpressed by all of them.

Draco raised an eyebrow. “He’s never living this down.”

“Not a chance,” you agreed, though a reluctant smile tugged at the corner of your lips.

Mattheo smiled sheepishly, the corners of his eyes crinkling with relief. “Alright, alright. I'm sorry. Would it help if I said you’re still the best bunny?”

You rolled your eyes. “I better be. I’m the only one who won’t sue you for bunny-napping.”

Grinning, Mattheo stepped forward, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you close. “Next time, I’ll be more careful.”

“You better be,” you replied, but your voice had softened, warmth creeping into your tone. “I’m the only bunny you’ll ever need.”

Mattheo kissed your forehead, laughter in his voice. “And don’t you forget it.”

After all, to Mattheo, you’d never just be a bunny-you were his.

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supercap2319 · 3 months ago

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Clark Kent and his childhood best friend, a wizard, Clark has a bisexual awakening and gives up Lana for the reader, something cute, I'm kind of needy

Best Friends

Y/N watched with an amused grin as his best friend fell down at the dainty feet of Lana Lang? Again? He couldn't help enjoying the entertainment value of Clark Kent making a fool of himself for a girl who was too needy and popular. Clark could have his pick of dozens older, and more importantly, legal girls. They all fell for that farm boy sweetness and Boy Scout charm.

Clark had been crushing on Lana since the third grade and while it had been cute in elementary school, now, it was just sad. Like a bad Netflix rom-com, where the nerdy guy gets the very pretty, and very unattainable popular girl. It just wasn't fair in Y/N's opinion. Lana wouldn't give Clark the time of day, no matter how hard the farm boy tried. He just wasn't what Lana was looking for. Probably a gay best friend or even a friend, but not a lover.

It didn't matter anyways. Clark always got sick and pale around Lana, and they both knew the reason for it. It was that damn meteorite necklace that she always wore around her neck. It was a green diamond, tied by a silver cord. Lana started wearing it after the meteor shower hit Smallville. It was around the same time that Clark came into their lives.

Clark was an alien from another planet, who arrived in Kansas in a spaceship. Mr. and Mrs. Kent adopted him as their son, and the rest was history. At least until Y/N found out Clark's secret. It was third grade, and Clark had accidentally hovered in front of Y/N. It had shocked him, but he understood what it was like to keep a secret.

Y/N was from a long line of wizards with wands, spells, and magic. The whole nine yards, if you will. That's where their friend became stronger than anyone else in their friend group. Stronger than Pete's. Stronger than Chloe's. Y/N and Clark were an unstoppable duo, until it came to Lana.

“Hey, Clark. Hi, Lana.” Y/N said. He picked up a few of the books Clark had dropped when he was trying to act cool in front of Lana. He didn't hate but, man, he really wished he could portal her into another dimension. Clark would not be happy with him if he did that, but it was a comforting thought.

“Sorry, I didn't pick you up, man. I was up late last night finishing an article for the Torch, and Chloe will kill me if I don't have it in her snarky, dainty hands by the time the bell rings.”

“That's okay. I managed.” Clark gave Y/N a secret smile. An inside joke between them. They both knew Clark was referring to his super-speed. He must have used it to catch—beat the school bus to school.

Lana, was momentarily forgotten about. At least she was, until she cleared her throat, gaining both boy's attention. “Glad you weren't hurt, Clark. That was a pretty nasty fall.” Lana said, tugging a strand of hair behind her ear. Made her look so innocent and pretty, that Y/N wanted to gag.

Apparently, it worked on innocent farm boys, because Clark was grinning ear to ear, a slight blush on his handsome face. “Thanks, Lana. I'm fine.” Of course he was. He was Indestructible, until he got near that green meteor rock, and suddenly all Clark's powers and abilities were replaced by pain and nausea.

“I'm glad. See you guys around.” She turned on her heel and left, joining her friends in the social patriarchy that was high school.

……

That night, at the Kent farmhouse, Y/N and Clark were up in the loft (Fortress of Solitude as Clark likes to call it) working on an assignment for school. After this morning's disaster of America's Funny Home Videos, Clark had begged Y/N to sign up with him and Pete for the football team. Football was Y/N's style, but he did it for Clark. True, Mr. Kent was gonna be upset when he found out what Clark had done, but hey, it was worth it, right?

Clark had been wanting to join the football team since 6th grade peewee league, but Mr. and Mrs. Kent was afraid he might accidentally hurt someone with his powers, so they forbade him from competing in any sports. It was kind of sad, really. Clark never get to experience the highs and lows of being on a team of meathead jockstraps, as Chloe affectionately references to them.

“This is boring. Let’s take a break and order a pizza. I'm starving.” Y/N tossed his math book on Clark's desk. The taller boy shot him a pointed look. “And who says you're in charge? It's my fortress, I decide what we do.” Clark grinned.

“I've been making the decisions since we were in diapers, Kent. You can't be insubordinate now.” Y/N grins back. It was nothing serious between them. Just two super-powered teenagers looking to unwind after boring algebra.

“Oh, yeah? And who's gonna stop me? I have the phone right here.” Clark held up Y/N's phone with a grin on his face. Y/N waved a hand, and the phone came flying into his hands. “Checkmate, Clark. The guy with the wizard powers always wins. Just ask Harry Potter.”

In a blur, Clark had Y/N’s phone in his hands once again, waving it around in a teasing way. “I got the phone. Gonna order pineapple and anchovies.” He turns to walk down the steps of the loft, towards the ground floor barn. Y/N lifts Clark into the air using his powers and grunts. He's heavier than he looks. He turns Clark to face him. "You do realize there are about 6 different ways I can break free of this."

Y/N smiled interested. "Take your best shot, Kent.”

Clark smiles as he just starts spinning around in mid air thanks to Y/N keeping him up. At a human speed at first, but eventually it picks up momentum until he becomes a red and blue tornado. Y/n stumbles and loses his grip on him, and Clark lands feet first on the floor.

“You cheat!” Y/N accuses.

“Nah, I didn't cheat. You just suck at magic, dude. Or just plain suck, if you know what I mean.” Clark's eyes wiggled in a teasing way. Y/N growls and charges before feeling his back on the plush couch. Clark was on top of him, pinning him down. He grins and leans downward. “You're all mine, tough guy.”

“And just what do you plan on doing?” Y/N asked.

“This.”

Clark leans downward and kisses Y/N. It was soft and sweet, like taffy. Clark tasted like the powerade and peanut butter sandwich he had for lunch today. It was a strangely appealing taste. The kiss was something and everything that Y/N imagined with Clark. He had a crush on his best friend! He was so screwed.

A few moments later, Clark pulled back with a blush on his cheeks, replacing the cocky guy, who was just pinning him down a second ago. “Y/N? I think I'm bisexual, and I have a crush on you. Please don't hate me.”

“Hate you? Clark, you're my best friend. I could never hate you, but I will admit that I've been crushing on you too.” Y/N blushed.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really, but what about Lana?” Y/N asked. This was definitely not the way to win her affections. Not by kissing boys, who are your best friend in a barn loft.

“Who cares about her? I got someone even better.” Clark leans down once again, placing a chaste kiss on Y/N's lips.

#x male reader #male reader insert #male x male #clark kent #clark kent x male reader #superman #superman x male reader #smallville #dc comics #tom welling #Tom Welling x male reader #gay #bisexuality

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pearynice · 7 months ago

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5+1 Things

5 times Steve Harrington asks for a light and 1 time he doesn't need to

For @sidekick-hero for her BIRTHDAY 🥰 (I hope it's a fantastic one!)

Or read here on Ao3

It’s been six months since Eddie’s had a cigarette.

It’s the longest time he’s gone without one since he was 14, when he tried it thinking: this is what musicians do. Thinking he’ll write songs with nicotine stained fingers and smoke outside of music venues looking mysterious and unattainable. He also thought it would help him get that scratchy note to his voice that didn’t come naturally to a kid whose voice hadn’t even dropped.

It didn’t do that, of course. All it really got him, in the end, was a hacking cough and the inability to walk up a flight of stairs without wheezing. It got him yellow nails and brittle hair and cravings so bad they made him fucking itch—so he quit.

It’s the goddamn hardest thing he’s ever done. Nicotine is a bitch, apparently, and this might be the fifth time he’s promised himself he’s done, but it’s also the longest he’s managed to stick to it.

He hopes this time will stick.

He still carries his lighter around in his pocket, the thing hanging on like a vestigial limb, hard metal that he can never seem to separate himself from.

At least the lighter can’t kill him, and he likes the weight of it, even though it can’t be more than a couple of ounces. He feels off balance without it, a mental barricade more than anything else, sure, but to go without it makes him anxious. It makes him itch for what he’s denied himself for months, now—so he keeps it.

He likes to fidget with it. He likes to run his thumb along the trigger and hear the catch and the ignition, likes to feel the heat of the flame before extinguishing it again. It’s why he still takes his lunch breaks outside, because the sprinklers in the break room probably wouldn’t appreciate his habit too much.

The sun and sky, though, don’t give a shit.

He’s finished his sandwich, the peel of his eaten orange weighing down the empty bag of it, and he continues parsing through the Silmarillion. The prose is unfortunately completely fucking eye-watering, especially compared to the Hobbit, and despite his love for Middle Earth he still barely graduated high school, and he still doesn’t understand the blue wizards—

“Can I borrow a light?”

Eddie jerks from his reverie of Morgoth and Númenor and the Silmarils to find himself back on earth, with the new guy from sales looking quite pleadingly at Eddie’s lighter.

“Oh,” he jerks a little, like after a whole three seconds of processing he’s just realized the thing the guy is asking him for is, in fact, in his hand. “Sure.” He hands it over, and their fingers brush, and Eddie tries very hard not to let his hand linger.

“Thanks.” New-guy’s lips quirk, a small thing, barely there and yet Eddie feels it zing right down to his toes, the moles on his cheeks scrunching under just that twitch of his lips.

Eddie watches as new-guy shakes out a cigarette, holding it between his lips as he lights it.

Eddie tries not to stare.

He does anyway.

New-guy’s lips curl around the end, his cheeks hollowing around his inhale, and Eddie can’t take his eyes away from the two moles on the side of his neck, the way they move over flexing muscles before they disappear under a lungful of smoke.

“I think I might’ve lost mine in the parking lot,” new-guy explains, “didn’t realize until just now.” He says it like an apology, his face tilted down like he’s sorry for the inconvenience, and flicks the tiny bit of ash that’s already accumulated off the end.

“S’alright,” Eddie rushes, “anytime.”

New-guy’s smile grows, lines around his eyes appearing like the force of his grin is too much for his lips to bear all on their own, like his whole face has no choice but to express with them.

Eddie feels warm all the way down to the ends of his toes.

“Steve,” new-guy says, extending his hand. “I’m in sales.”

Eddie does not tell Steve he already knows this, having cornered Chrissy in the break room just last week to demand everything she knew about the new guy, which, admittedly, wasn’t even his name.

“Eddie.” He grabs Steve’s hand. Shakes it. “I’m in IT.”

This time, before he drops Steve’s hand, he lets it linger.

Eddie doesn’t really expect it to happen again.

He’s not trying to be dramatic when he says that good things don’t happen to him, but—

Good things don’t really happen to him. Not as good as very cute guys with very pretty laughs talking to him being anything more than a fluke.

But then, a week later, Steve shows up again.

He looks just as sheepish as before. He blinks up at Eddie through heavy lashes and asks to borrow a light, saying he’s sorry after he uses it too, and Eddie, just like before, promises anytime.

And maybe Eddie nudges the chair next to him a little, just to know if he’s reading things wrong, but Steve sits down. He sits and he stays and he smiles when Eddie talks and being next to Steve feels comfortable in a way Eddie doesn’t have much experience with, in that Steve’s presence feels like a reprieve. It feels like a bubble away from work and worries and every time he gets Steve to laugh it feels like a victory and every time Steve leans forward to hear him better Eddie feels warm all the way through his chest and every time Eddie goes outside to take his lunch he hopes against hope that Steve will be out there too.

They quickly become his favorite days.

They quickly become more and more frequent.

Sometimes Steve sits and talks and dozens of minutes will go by without even asking for a light and try as Eddie might to not to read into it, it feels like it means something.

Eddie’s never really given a shit about sports but he finds himself googling the Hoosiers and the Colts just so he can know what Steve’s talking about. He finds himself checking the scores to know what kind of day Steve’s going to have, finds himself packing an extra pudding cup when the Hoosiers had a particularly rough night.

He finds that Steve starts doing the same.

“I know what that means.” Steve says it smug, a self-satisfied little smile on his face like knowing what Eddie’s pin is referring to is a gotcha.

It makes Eddie want to run around in circles.

He looks down at his chest, at the jacket that’s adorned with pins and patches like he’s 18 and not 27. “Which one?”

Steve points, his finger brushing Eddie’s jacket.

It’s not the one Eddie expected. It’s one of the only ones that doesn’t have a band name emblazoned across it.

“Mercyful Fate,” Steve says, like he’s proud, and then, his brows furrowing, adds, “they’re horrible.”

Eddie laughs, a bright bark of laughter that travels easily across the patio, loud against the relative stillness. “They’re trash metal,” he explains, “they’re supposed to sound like that.”

Steve wrinkles his nose, and Eddie laughs harder, giddy, somehow, over someone telling him his music taste is garbage.

“Okay,” Eddie huffs, still smiling, “then who do you listen to?”

Steve tilts his nose into the air. “Sabrina Carpenter.”

That about sends Eddie out of his chair. He’s laughing so hard he feels tears well in his eyes and Steve starts kicking him, these playful little nudges that make Eddie scoot his legs closer.

“Shut up,” Steve keeps bemoaning, but he’s smiling, he knows exactly what he’s doing, and Eddie wants to watch Steve curl his lip at all of his music, wants to know the lyrics to every Sabrina Carpenter song without ever knowing their names.

“I’m taking your pudding cup,” Steve says, and Eddie can’t do anything about it because his eyes are still welling tears, and he’s regaining composure as Steve peels off the lid, “for making fun of me.”

And then Steve runs his tongue along the aluminum.

He does it slow. Eddie can see the pink of his mouth for a whole wonderful few seconds before it’s gone, again, before Steve’s licking his lips and Eddie remembers that he needs to pretend to be annoyed.

He lets Steve have the whole thing.

“I’ve never seen you smoke.”

It’s getting colder. Steve’s in a dark blue sweater that’s pilling on the sleeves and Eddie can see a sliver of an extremely fuzzy sock between the ends of his pants and the tops of his shoes. His nose is pink under the late fall breeze and Eddie’s itching to pull him closer.

He doesn’t. He swallows around nothing, instead, and runs his thumb around the worn metal of his lighter. “I quit a couple’a months ago,” he says, “I think all my friends’ nagging finally caught up with me.” He grins, and knocks his foot against Steve’s. “It fucking sucks, by the way. Don’t listen to any of them.”

Steve laughs, bubbly and warm, a sound that always makes Eddie feel like his blood is carbonizing. “I know I should,” Steve admits, and he’s looking at his cigarette, now, watching the end burn, “I just always have an excuse not to.” He takes another drag, and Eddie tries, once again, to be normal about the way Steve’s mouth wraps around the end, his lips pink and chapped.

Eddie wonders if he wears tinted balm. He wonders whether or not it would rub off on him if they kissed.

He wonders if Steve would let him.

“Might get easier soon,” Eddie says, “who wants to take smoke breaks in the winter?”

Steve’s grin falters. His lips drop for a fraction of a second before they quirk again, tighter this time. “Yeah,” Steve says, but he sounds different. His voice is no longer the slow, easy timbre Eddie’s grown so accustomed to and he feels suddenly unmoored without it. “Who wants to sit outside when it snows?”

Steve’s still smiling tightly, his shoulders tense, and takes another drag. He’s almost down to the filter, and it takes Eddie until Steve exhales again to realize that he’s an idiot.

“I’ve always liked the cold.” He tries to say it firm, tries to say it so it leaves no shadow of a doubt.

Steve looks to him, and his eyebrows twitch. He narrows his eyes like he’s trying to figure Eddie out, like his admittance could mean anything other than an all-out confession that he would brave any element to keep his lunchtimes with Steve, until his features relax again.

Steve leans back over the table, closer this time. He rests his chin against his palm and it makes Eddie warm all over again, like at this point he should really be a damn puddle on the floor instead of fully corporeal, and Steve ashes what’s left of his cigarette.

He pulls out another from an extremely crumpled pack, and really, Eddie’s told him more than once to buy hard packs and yet every time Eddie sees him Steve’s showed up with his soft pack shoved in his pocket like he doesn’t mind the fact they’re getting crushed.

“Light it for me?” Steve asks. He’s already bringing a new cigarette to his mouth. His lips are already around the filter and Eddie feels slow and stupid as he stares, as it takes him long seconds to understand that yes Steve is really asking him to do what he thinks he is.

The flame flickers against the wind and Eddie has to curl his palm around his light to prevent it from going out, the tiny flame finally steady as he brings it up to Steve’s face.

Steve watches him as he does. He’s still leaned forward. His cheek is still resting against his palm and his other hand is holding the cigarette, staring at Eddie as he brings the light to his lips.

They’ve never been this close before. Eddie can feel the heat of his cheeks. The weight of his stare and the breath through his nose and Eddie can hear his inhale as the end ignites.

Steve’s eyes glimmer gold against the glow of the flame and suddenly Eddie wants to see the way Steve’s eyes change colors under a thousand different lights, he wants to see what Steve’s eyes look like against the rising and setting sun and against the dark of the sky and alight with the glow of Eddie’s bedside table.

Eddie flicks the lighter closed, the cigarette lit, dimming the gold of Steve’s eyes.

He brings his hands away. He stays close. He rests his palm against his cheek, and asks Steve about his weekend.

Eddie didn’t see Steve at lunch.

He thinks maybe he’s sick. He thinks maybe he had an appointment or maybe he’s working from home, but Eddie spots him coming out of the restroom, his head low.

Which is fine. Maybe Steve had wanted to be alone, today. Maybe Steve hadn’t felt like talking.

Eddie tries to let it go. He does, but concern gnaws at his chest and it’s all he can do not to march over to the sales department and find out exactly what’s wrong.

It’s a good thing, then, when he looks out his window he sees Steve a story below, sat on one of the patio chairs, an unlit cigarette between his fingers.

Eddie brings his extra scarf with him. He nearly forgets his lighter.

The door hasn’t even completely closed behind him when Eddie can see the glistening of tears on Steve’s cheeks, his eyes red-rimmed and his eyelashes clumped, and Eddie wraps both of his scarves around him before either of them can say anything.

Eddie takes a seat. Pulls himself close, this time, doesn’t even think twice about it, and when Steve’s head drops against his shoulder it feels like love.

He lights Steve’s cigarette for him when he asks for it. His hair catches the light of it in a way Eddie knows he’d never notice until the flame is gone, again, until Steve is half in Eddie’s lap and Eddie is holding his hand.

“What’s wrong?” Eddie murmurs.

Steve inhales. His cigarette is crumpled. He presses himself closer. “Nothing,” he exhales, his lungful of smoke dissipating into the air in front of them.

His breathing is heavy. Every few seconds he sniffles, and Eddie squeezes his hand a little harder when he does.

Eddie doesn’t say anything else. Neither does Steve. Eddie doesn’t think about how angry his boss is going to be when she asks where he’s been. He doesn’t think about how cold it is outside or how he’s letting his afternoon tea grow cold on the second floor.

He thinks about how Steve’s tears are dripping down his cheeks to land on Eddie’s coat and Eddie runs his thumb along the back of Steve’s hand in a way he hopes feels like love in return.

The sky is cloudy. The sun is barely peeking through the clouds and he can feel Steve shivering against him, and Eddie thinks he’d be okay with being cold every day for the rest of his life if it meant Steve was warm.

He takes off his coat.

It gets colder.

Eddie’s had to start wearing his coat that’s all utility and zero aesthetic, and Steve grins big and dopey when he first sees it, plucking at Eddie’s front like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever seen.

“I wear this for you, you know,” Eddie says, because he does, because if all Eddie had to do was go in and out of the building his jean jacket would be enough, but he’s still taking his lunch breaks outside, and doesn’t regret a second of it.

Steve blushes when he says it too, further than the flush of the cold goes, across his cheeks and down his neck and Steve stares at him like he’s waiting for something else, for something that Eddie can’t see, until the moment passes, and Steve looks away.

It’s different, after that.

Subtle, but there, until one day Steve’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes and Eddie thinks, for a bit, that maybe it’s another day like the one two weeks ago. That maybe he’ll look over and see the tears again welling in Steve’s eyes, but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t and when Steve asks him for a light he takes the lighter from Eddie’s hand like Eddie hasn’t been the one to light it for him for the past weeks. He lights it and there’s a tension to his mouth that feels distancing in a way that Eddie’s not sure he can reach across.

He’s wearing his blue sweater again. Eddie can see the collar of it peeking out from under his coat. His ears are bright pink, must be freezing but Steve had told him, under no uncertain terms, that he does not wear hats.

It’d made Eddie laugh, when he’d said it. Made him want to see what Steve’s bathroom counter looks like. Made him want to see what Steve’s hair looks like before he styles it. What it looks like when he wakes up and what it looks like when he gets out of the shower, made Eddie want to know what it looks like after he’s dragged his fingers through.

Steve sets the lighter on the table. “I should probably buy a new one on my way home,” he says. He doesn’t look Eddie in the eyes. He slides Eddie’s lighter back across the table. “I think I might need to stop borrowing yours.” He says it sadly. Says it like it hurts him, too, and Eddie stares at his lighter as it glints against the winter sun.

“Oh,” Eddie breathes, and it feels like a piece of him escapes with it, floats off without the tether of Steve to keep it in place.

He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what he did wrong.

Steve draws up his leg to wrap his arms around. “I think I’ve been hoping to borrow the wrong thing all this time.”

He still won’t look at him. He’s gazing out past the small courtyard to the street, his eyes following a passing car and—

Suddenly Eddie wonders what the hell he’s been waiting for.

“Steve?” He can feel his heartbeat in his throat. His palms are already sweating and when Steve turns to him again he has to lick his lips because his mouth has gone dry. “Would you let me take you out sometime?” It comes out far more timid than he’d meant and he follows it up quickly with, “tonight?”

He hopes it’s the right thing to say. He hopes he isn’t too late. He hopes Steve still wants this, after weeks of Eddie not picking up what Steve was throwing at his feet. In his face.

Steve’s smile starts small. His rueful grin morphs into something real until he’s biting down on his bottom lip to try and contain the force of it, like Eddie could ever want anything besides the full force of Steve Harrington’s smile.

“Depends,” he says, his tone betraying the fact it doesn’t depend on anything else at all, “where are you taking me?”

Eddie leans in a little closer. He can see that Steve didn’t shave this morning. There’s a stubble on his cheeks and on his upper lip that Eddie wants to feel against his mouth.

“How about dinner?” He asks, even though the best restaurant in town has a whopping 3.7 stars on Google. “Or the zoo lights?” He amends, and Steve’s lip pops away from his teeth, his eyes sparkling.

“The zoo lights?” He repeats, a little teasing, a little giddy, and Eddie doubles down.

“I’ll buy you a pretzel,” he says, “I’ll even spring for that plastic they call cheese.”

They go to the zoo lights. Steve lets him hold his hand and buy him a pretzel and they share a hot chocolate that still has powdery clumps floating on the top and Eddie learns what Steve’s eyes look like against the brilliant colors of the string lights and under the glow of the moon and every one of them is more beautiful than the last, and Eddie thinks that just might happen in perpetuity, that every light Steve is under is the next most beautiful one because Steve is the one who’s under it.

And at the end of the night, when Steve lets Eddie kiss him, he wonders, again:

What the hell was he waiting for?

He can’t stop staring.

He can’t stop staring because he’s allowed, now, under no uncertain terms, and when they’d stumbled through Eddie’s front door he was a whole lot more preoccupied with touching than looking, and now, well—

Eddie can look.

He’s perfect, is the thing. Eddie always thought it was corny bullshitting when couples called their partners perfect because just looking at them Eddie knew, objectively, they were not, but—

But he’s the one who’s right. Because Steve is perfect, and he’s his. He’s in Eddie’s bed. He’s in Eddie’s bed, naked and perfect and still breathing hard.

Eddie promises himself that he’s going to count every mole on Steve’s skin. He’s going to kiss every single one as he goes. He’s going to memorize the maps of his muscles under his skin and memorize the feel of his heartbeat against Eddie’s palm and he hopes the sound of Steve’s breaths become his new lullaby.

“I can’t believe I let you come in me,” Steve breathes, “what the fuck was I thinking?”

Eddie laughs, and pulls Steve closer, presses his smile into the curve of Steve’s neck. “I seem to remember you begging for it.”

Steve hmphs, but the weight of his arms wraps around Eddie’s middle, holding him close. Steve’s hmph turns quickly into a content hum, and Eddie curls closer into him, kissing the column of his throat.

He’s hairier than Eddie thought he’d be. Sort of thought Steve was the type of guy to keep it trimmed, even waxed, a thought that Eddie now shudders in the face of.

He will never let Steve wax.

“Should we shower?” Steve murmurs, his lips so close to Eddie’s temple the words kiss him as he speaks. “Or do you use three-in-one?”

“I only use the little sample bottles hotels give you,” Eddie hums, snuggling closer, trying to push every one of Steve’s buttons, “I just add water when they get low.”

Steve makes a strangled sort of noise and Eddie’s kiss goes up his jaw. Up to Steve’s cheeks. The tip of his nose. “I have shampoo and conditioner, sweetheart,” he assures, “I even have that body scrub that smells like gingerbread.”

They shower. Steve washes his hair, scrubs the suds into Eddie’s scalp and pulls conditioner through the ends and Eddie’s never had someone wash his hair before, not in adulthood, at least, and as Steve massages his fingers into Eddie’s temples, the crown of his head, behind his ears, he feels himself free falling into in love.

Steve doesn’t let Eddie wash his hair. Bats his hands away when he tries, an eyebrow raised like he’s asking if Eddie’s serious, and so Eddie has to settle for rubbing the body scrub into his skin, which really isn’t settling at all.

Eddie gets to wrap Steve up in his clothes after, gets to see Steve in black sweats and his Slayer shirt that he’s had since high school, and, wordless, Steve grabs his pack, and Eddie grabs his lighter.

They lean out Eddie’s kitchen window. It’s started to snow, a light dusting that’ll be gone come morning but for now the flakes melt against his skin as he lights Steve’s cigarette, his hands curled close to his face.

The light in the kitchen is dim. Steve’s eyes are dark against the reflection of the moon and Eddie curls close, rests his head on Steve’s shoulder and tucks himself into his side.

Steve’s arm wraps around him. “I think I’m gonna quit.” He says it quiet, like it’s just for them, and Eddie doesn’t move from his spot against Steve’s chest but he hums his question, and Steve kisses the top of his head.

“I think you were my last excuse.”

🚬🚬🚬

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUDDY 🥳🎉 Thank you for being such an amazing person!

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #fluff #flirting #getting together #alternate universe #hurt/comfort #leigh writes

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talenlee · 2 months ago

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3.5e: The Prestige Classes of the Complete Warrior

The Complete Warrior was a book of all time. All the Complete books had their virtues and their vices, but the Complete Warrior was one of the first attempts by the designers in the lifespan of 3.5 to try and introduce some juice to the least powerful part of the game that was also, fundamentally, the most vital and popular. People love their human fighters, they love swords and they love archery and they love doing the cool fantasy things that wizards don’t do.

The Complete Warrior was a book that brought with it tools for the non-spellcaster, and how good or bad a job it did of it notwithstanding, one of the things it brought was a host of prestige classes. A prestige class is something like a Paragon path, but more retrictive and harder to implement. You need to fulfill requirements to get into it, and then each one gives you powers or benefits at irregular intervals.

I thought it’d be fun to look at them.

And then I found there were 30 of them.

Be pretty silly to look at all 30 of them, right? Pretty silly to take all these dusty archaic game pieces and one-by-one them to a general audience and discuss their design limitations or the idea of class fantasy, right?

Have to be a bit of a goober for that?

Bear Warrior

A barbarian whose rage is so potent they turn into a bear.

The Bear Warrior is a great place to start the list. It is 100% perfectly fine; you give up late-game Barbarian perks, your skills aren’t quite the same, and in exchange you get to do something that is new and cool but builds on what you were already going to do. Anything you ask a Barbarian to do, a Bear Warrior can do probably do about as well, but, and this is important, the Bear Warrior gets to transform into a big fighting bear.

Class fantasy fulfilled, mechanically reasonable, and doesn’t demonstrate an ignorance of the game rules.

Bladesinger

An artful melee spellcaster who can cast spells while fighting.

3.5 D&D had a longstanding puzzle for optimisers about how to make a type of character we called a ‘gish’ – a fighting spellcaster that could cast high-level spells, and fight in combat. The idea was a novel one that still appeals to me, since the power to do either side is going to be consumed by the things you need to feed the other half. The Bladesinger is one of many, many prestige classes in this tradition, and it’s actually decent.

This fulfills the class fantasy of being an elf, with a sword, casting spells and fighting at the same time. The name ‘Bladesinger’ has some truly broken history (back in 2e it was amazing), and this version carries that name, doesn’t make unreasonable demands of you to get access to it and delivers on the theme.

I kind of think of the Bladesinger now as a sort of robust middle-of-the-road gish class. It will do everything you need, it won’t ask you to do anything weird to get it, and while there’s more powerful and more flexible versions, there’s nothing wrong about using it and you get to do something most other gishes don’t (cheat the action economy).

Cavalier

A mounted knight who is good at being a mounted knight.

Here’s where we begin one of the first real drive-into-a-ditch problems of the Complete Warrior. See, Paladins are appealing to people who want to fight in melee, and that means there are some prestige options here for improving Paladins. This one, the Cavalier, is really only good if you are a Paladin, because mounted combat without a Paladin’s special mount options involves transporting around a mundane animal with maybe thirty hit points that can be crisped by a fireball.

What you get out of this class when you jump into is, uh, being a good mounted combatant. Like Paladins mostly already are. I want to give this modest praise for specialising, but the problem is, the Paladin who doesn’t take this route eventually gets Holy Sword, which is really amazing for charging cavalry Paladins, and this class doesn’t get Holy Sword.

It can get Holy Sword through wands I guess?

Dark Hunter

A hunter, but roguey.

Hey, hang on, hold this for a second.

Darkwood Stalker

A rogue, but huntery.

Alright, back. The Darkwood Stalker and Dark Hunter are close to each other in both what they’re doing and how worthless they are. They are both melee combatants that want to be good at stealth and reward that stealth with combat options that make you better from stealth, using the time honoured tradition of Sneak Attack. Know what else gets Sneak Attack? The Rogue, and the Rogue is a standard class that doesn’t need prestige class requirements. It’s also really good. In fact if you want to, taking a Rogue and specialising to make it tougher and better at melee will yield a better version of both of these prestige classes than sticking them onto a Ranger or Fighter or whatever ever could.

Oh, and the Darkwood Stalker brings in race-specific combat abilities, which is uh, bad. It gets a death attack which is terrible since it requires three turns of anticipation, only targets orcs, and gives a save-or-die. It is an ability whose upside is probably not as good as three multi-turn attacks, and it’s your capstone ability for don’t bother.

Bonus: When you get it, wizards have already had access to a spell that can save-or-die any target, even if it’s not an orc, and they get it at level nine.

Dervish

A fleet-footed combat dancer who moves through a battlefield to a rhythm that makes them untouchably dangerous.

The Dervish is a really cool class fantasy, it lets you specialise in something most fighters want, and it presents you with an interesting puzzle to solve if you want to use it well. Basically, you can attack and move, and you can do more attacks and more moves, but you have to be able to move into a new square every time, and you can’t move back into the last square you were in.

To maximise your Dervishing you need to map through a combat and the result is both effective and satisfying. Amazing class, absolutely worth the effort to get into it, and it makes you good at either enormous targets with uncomplicated terrain around them (like giants and dragons) or really widely spread out weak targets. Thing is, there’s a lot more than just those two options, and it gives you room to screw up and get yourself put somewhere really dangerous if you’re reckless.

Shame about the slightly racialised name.

Drunken Master

You’ve seen that guy in a Jackie Chan movie? Yeah, like that!

Oh boy, speaking of racialised names.

The Drunken Master is a monk prestige class that gives the monk the ability to fight with improvised weapons. This is something that the monk could already do through narrative description (hitting people into things like benches, tables, and ladders) but don’t worry, the Drunken Master is here to let you do that exact thing, but not as well.

This class is fine, but it’s not better than the base class it comes from.

Exotic Weapon Master

Well you tell me I shouldn’t pick up three exotic weapon proficiencies, but what if I did, mom?

This class is a big pile of special options but isn’t worth it. Nothing it unlocks is as good as you can get from other prestige classes that are less demanding. Exotic weapons are, largely, not worth using, since they are weapons and therefore they are all balanced around not making longswords and two-handed swords redundant, and that means that the best you can do is the Jovar or Bastard Sword, which are the same thing but slightly better. All the other fancy cool looking weapons fall behind on the math, and in some cases by a lot.

Remember, the tonfa is a club and it’s an ‘exotic weapon’ in this system.

This is a bunch of feats that aren’t good enough, in a trenchcoat, and should have been a modal feat instead.

Eye of Gruumsh

Hating elves and depth perception is a personality.

Stick your eye out! Become an Eye of Gruumsh! Get the special powers of Being Good At Fighting, which you already were!

Look, sometimes something exists to be a flavour option and then the designer gives up on making it so there’s any reason to want that flavour. This is what sometimes gets called an NPC prestige class; something that only exists so NPCs can take it to make them more interesting or specific as a combat encounter for players. You have to play a bad heritage to get into this class, then you have to focus on a bad weapon, and then you have to impose a material penalty on yourself, and then with all that, you get a perk that’s not useful as a player.

Bonus, the class is racist. Its bonuses are focused on being better at fighting elves.

Frenzied Berserker

The fantasy of raging so hard you hit teammates with an actual payoff.

The first big flaring red light of ‘this is a problem’ class in the book, though not necessarily for reasons you might imagine. The Frenzied Berserker is an extremely strong melee combatant whose drawback is that other players who don’t respect what you do can get hurt.

This is a bummer.

For them.

This is a rare example of a prestige class that is, ostensibly, delivering on what it promises and what it delivers is worth waiting for. It’s for people who want to play an out-of-control rager who is a danger to themselves and others. Where it gets weird is that by ignoring death rules, it can do some odd things with a bucket of water if you’re the kind of DM who doesn’t hold the reigns tight enough to say ‘I know the rules say you can return to 0 hp by sticking your head in a bucket, Dave, but we both know you know that’s stupid.’

Gnome Giant-Slayer

How do we compensate gnomes for being awful at fighting the things they should want to fight all the time?

Structurally, it is weird that the Complete Warrior got this when the gnome handbook, Races of Stone could have used it more. Then again, saying anyone could use this is overstating it, because nobody needed it. This is a prestige class about making one specific type of small character better at fighting big things, which seems a skillset that should be generalised and not at all related to a specific heritage.

This is also something like the fourth prestige class so far that wants the feat Spring Attack. It’s almost like that’s the only thing fighters can do that the designers can point to as a desireable prerequisite.

Halfling Outrider

The triple union of horse girl, good boy, and hobbit superiority.

I’ve written about this one before! The Halfling Outrider is part of the Supermount design, which didn’t exist until after this book was made. It’s a perfectly good class without that, and it does something the Cavalier doesn’t do – in that it’s something you can get into from multiple points and provides a reason to do so.

Hulking Hurler

Want to throw things at people? Like, really big things?

Okay, deep breath.

The Hulking Hurler is one of the most broken things in this book, and I mean broken as in ‘rules don’t work this way normally.’ The Hulking Hurler gets the ability to throw objects as improvised weapons, which then deals damage based not on the object’s design, but rather based on the object’s weight, and that’s a stat that scales up.

A 400 pound object, when flung, deals 5d6 damage. If it’s sharp, like a stalactite or jagged rock, it’s doubled, meaning that you’re flinging 10d6 damage at level 7. For a Hulking Hurler to fling one of those you need a strength of around 23, and it goes up from here. There are magic items for improving your carrying capacity, and for storing large items. Thing is, this number here is where the normal table maxes out, and carrying capacity and object weight damage do not scale up in the same way. When your strength goes 10 times over the cap in the book (so if you can hit 39), your carrying capacity quadrouples, and the damage goes up by 1d6 per 200 pounds. You start needing to do algebra homework on your damage dealing.

This gets ridiculous combined with the War Hulk prestige class from the Miniatures Handbook, but it’s worth remembering that even without that combo, this is still introducing into one whole combat economy (hit points and strength mods) another unrelated one (weight capacity).

Hunter of the Dead

A holy warrior that casts spells and purges the undead. Paladin? No, shh.

Sometimes a prestige class has a clear conceptual flavour but not a good way to deliver on it. This, for example, should probably just be a Paladin variant.

Invisible Blade

A sneaky stealthy fighter who fights with two daggers.

There’s a body of classes that are about giving you an existing feature, but worse. In this case, the class gives you sneak attack, but only with daggers, and then a way to surrender that sneak attack for a worse effect. Cool idea, but piss-poor execution meaning it’s just not worth it to care. Giving up 1d6 sneak attack for 1 point damage over time effect means that you have to wait 3 rounds to, on average, catch up with just sneak attacking.

Also, the Invisible Blade can add its intelligence to its AC, but that bonus is capped by its class level.

Essentially, this class has some cool ideas (bleeding sneak attacks and nimble defenses) but made sure to make them suck in case people got too eager to play with them. After all, this is the fighter book, not a wizard book.

Justiciar

You’re a fucking cop.

The ability to deal nonlethal safely (kinda nice, maybe worth a feat with some other perk), and then improvements to tying people up mid-combat, presenting a unique form of control that trades turns of damage knocking someone out for a few turns of grappling them in the hopes they then won’t escape artist or strength their way out of your restraints.

It’s a gimmick.

It’s probably a gimmick for an NPC.

If you’re really into the idea of dealing nonlethal damage, unarmed combat has plenty of support. The sap isn’t terrible. Hell, know how else you can do nonlethal damage? With the Merciful Enchantment from the Dungeonmaster’s Guide, which lets you inflict nonlethal safely and freely. and you can just buy it with gold.

Crippling strike is cool, but it’s not worth the investment of this class. A point of stat damage is also, something you can put on a weapon enchantment.

Also you’re a cop.

Kensai

Spiritually attuned weapon masters who want to express a really cool element of their weapon.

It’s kind of embarrassing how mystical this one has to be to justify what it is.

The Kensai is good at their weapon. It’s not always a sword, but this is 3.5, if you care about weapons, you care about swords. The Kensai is overwhelmingly going to be about doing a good job with its sword. The Kensai can spend experience to improve their sword, customising it without ever having to hand it to a wizard, and, spent right, this can be useful to bust through economy barriers. Depends on how your DM wants to handle XP I suppose.

Anyway, the Kensai also gets some cool abilities like using a concentration check to improve their body or transfer perks to allies, or do cool things with their attacks. It’s a good system and it casts its shadow onto 4th edition’s encounter and daily combat powers, which of course, nobody before 4e knew anything about.

Knight of the Chalice

A holy warrior that casts spells and purges demons. Paladin? No, shh.

Sometimes a prestige class has a clear conceptual flavour but not a good way to deliver on – hey wait I said this already. But it’s true! It’s a more specialised Paladin that doesn’t pay out worth the effort.

Look, demon hunting Paladin wannabes. If you want to attack outsiders, if you want your powers to be better at hurting outsiders, don’t look at your shitty spellcasting. Get a weapon and cast Holy Sword on it.

Knight Protector

A knight, who tries to protect people.

This is largely just alright, but it is important that this class is trying out ideas for aggro management that would become important in 4e when they were put in place more structurally.

Master Thrower

A thrower who is good at it.

Absolute piss.

This is here to make throwing weapons good, because throwing weapons are good in fantasy fiction because throwing weapons looks cool in fantasy movies. But the game system is not set up for that, because throwing weapons aren’t one of the chosen good types of weapons to do, like a longsword.

If you want to attack things at range, a lot, with a cool weapon nobody’s noticing, play a cleric, get into archery, and make your weapon invisible. The class fantasy here is obvious, and the delivery is terrible, but don’t worry, the alternative is also bad.

Master of the Unseen Hand

The powerful urge to use telekinesis to smash people into walls like a big splatty hand.

Hello, wizard prestige class, what are you doing here?

Well I know what you’re doing here, you’re trying to make something wizardy that feels fighty. The Master of the Unseen Hand gets to use the Telekinesis power and use it like a weapon at range. That’s really cool, and lets you do things like pick people up and throw them out of combat so hard they leave their boots behind (as per the class fantasy art). The way it works is a bit wonky, so talk to your DM ahead of time about whether it works the way it states it works or the way it seems to want to work.

You can even do something cool with this one! You wanna know how? It involves your character taking on levels of Savage Progression as a ghost.

Want to be good at this prestige class? Just die!

Mindspy

A spy, for minds, because high concept is hard.

What the hell is this doing here.

The Mindspy is an inexplicable rogue class sitting in the fighter book because I guess we needed some good space filler, to go along with the Cavalier, Hunter of the Dead and Knight of the Chalice.

Nature’s Warrior

A dangerous form-shifting warrior that stalks the woods and uses the forms of animals to attack its foes.

A class for augmenting wildshape, one of the best and most broken abilities the Druid has access to. Druids advance their wildshape by levelling up as Druid, and doing so also brings with it all the Druidic spellcasting and the other class abilities they get, which is pretty good and cool, even if you don’t get more base attack bonus. You have to ask yourself if you’d rather iterate one attack or get the full monster attack pattern that a bear or smilodon gets.

Point is, if you can wildshape, you wanna stay in the best class in the game for wildshape.

Still, it’s potentially useful for a ranger that wildshapes.

Occult Slayer

Wizards hate him, because of this one weird trick.

Noticing that wizards were better than all melee combatants, some classes were designed like competing organisms in an ecosystem. This is a fighter who is meant to be better at fighting wizards, which would scare wizards a lot if they had to ever care about things that made saving throws when they could just impose a bunch of negative levels with a level 4 spell.

It’s very hard to compete with an apex predator because they’re apexes for a reason. What a fighter could do is tackle a wizard with a grapple, but that might not work more than once. You’d need to be really good at grappling.

Order of the Bow Initiate

A kind of archery monk.

One of many classes that imagines swapping multiple attacks for single bigger attack is good. Since it doesn’t use skirmish or sneak attack (which both can be multiplied), and its overall damage output is extra d8s instead of extra d8s+all bonuses, it’s only good for overwhelming enormous damage resistance, which doesn’t exist in 3.5.

Unless you’re trying to shoot your way through something with hardness.

Basically, this is the class for shooting a castle wall to death, and that would be cool as hell, but nobody wants to do that. It’s a perfectly reasonable tool for a bad job.

Purple Dragon Knight

A refugee from the world of Faerun, with the knights of Cormyr, whose lore is large and tedious.

Novelty here is that there’s the dawn of another 4e mechanic (a challenge). Otherwise it gets to live alongside the Cavalier, and the other Knights, just generic mish-mash of ‘kinda a Paladin, but not as good.’

Rage mage

You wouldn’t want me to cast spells when I’m angry.

Know what spellcasters love? Losing spellcaster levels.

What the Rage Mage does as a class fantasy is be able to rage and also to cast spells. This is a thing that is perfectly reasonable to want to do and a novelty as a class, but doing so involves splitting your focus to get into the class and then making your execution of that class role worse, because you’re giving up spellcaster levels to do it.

Terrible idea, back to the drawing board, fix all.

Ravager

Servants of a god of pain that get to be good at inflicting and sharing pain.

I suppose the best I can say about the Ravager is that it lives up to its class pitch. It’s just a class whose prestige ability is ‘do a bit more damage.’ It’s another class that doesn’t compare well to (say) sneak attack, which is a repeating theme in this book of how many of these prestige classes could be replaced by just multiclassing rogue a little.

These four level classes are really bad.

Reaping Mauler

A grappling specialist.

Oh hey, it’s that thing that the Occult Slayer wishes it could do. The Reaping Mauler is straightforward, focused, and good at what it wants to do. Weird name, considering it neither reaps nor mauls, but what are you going to call some kind of specialist at wrestling and grappling? There’s no good word for such a thing, right?

Ronin

Samurai have codes of conduct; what if they fail to live up to them?

A samurai prestige class, which is to say, let’s take a piss-bad class and give it a weak prestige class that doesn’t improve its biggest problems. It does follow neatly in the tradition of the samurai, which is worse than a fighter, by giving it a prestige class that’s worse than a blackguard and worse than just multiclassing rogue.

Weren’t we just talking about that?

Spellsword

A wizard, a sword, some armour.

Hey, remember that Gish discussion from all the way up in the Bs, with the Bladesinger? Yeah! This is another example of a gish, trying to fix the 3e prestige class of the same name. Sadly, the Spellsword kind of sucks compared to even its most mundane competition, the Eldritch Knight in the Dungeonmaster’s Guide.

The evolution of this class fantasy in 3.5 is fascinating. By the end of the game’s life there was a core class that did this – full base attack bonus, full spellcasting, in armour, from day 1, and what they used to balance that class was its access to spells. Seems like the obvious way to do it in hindsight.

Stonelord

Dwarf fighters that lean into the aesthetic of being all about stone and rock.

One of the failures of imagination in 3.5 was that when you had to ask how to expand the fighter, you just gave it spells, and those spells replaced being a fighter. The Stonelord surrenders the feats of a fighter in the name of having access to a bunch of spells, which is something you could do with multiclassing into any number of casters, or even just buying magical items. Hell, you could multiclass rogue again, get Use Magic Device and skirt all this nonsense.

Tattooed Monk

A monk who uses tattoos to enable a host of interesting powers.

The way the Monk interacts with iterative attacks created a problem for potential multiclasses; you really needed to hit your +3 attack every 4 levels, which started at 0; that meant that you’d go 0-1-2-3, then, 3-4-5-6. That meant that if, say, you jumped into a Monk prestige class at level 6 (when most people were jumping into prestige classes) you’d get your 0-1-2-3, 3-4-4-5. Because of the special way monk attacks iterate, being at +5 at level 8 means that you’re behind on your Flurry of Blows progress, which feels weird as a way to handle that.

Anyway, yeah, it’s a monk, with tattoos. Those tattoos are cool magical abilities. Personally, I’d handle tattoos as magical items, the way that the game eventually did, but y’know, sure. It’s not like a class that gives you a bunch of magical items effects is uncommon.

It’s not good, but oh well.

Thayan Knight

A Red Wizard’s personal bodyguard.

The coolest looking class in the book, this is blatantly an NPC class. It’s not worth taking as a player, but its abilities are really annoying to deal with when you’re fighting an enemy red wizard with one of these as a cohort. Should just be some monster abilities.

It’s a dumb design, and a waste of book space. It tells DMs that this is how complicated and fiddly monsters need to be and that slows DMs down and makes the process harder to manage.

War Chanter

A bard whose focus shifts from generalised spells to highly effective combat buffing.

The War Chanter is a rarity in that it’s a thing that pulls you away from a spellcaster class, into a melee class and makes the transition worth it. Now, the caster class it draws from is the bard, a class whose spellcasting is usually an afterthought (or at least, a mid-thought), but the War Chanter really lays out the red carpet for the alternative. You get the full base attack bonus, better hit dice, and immediately get a way to toughen up in combat. Also, the requirements are positively reasonable.

Essentially, this lets you play a bard who fights, and sings as they fight in a way that everyone who hears it appreciates it or fears it. You get better songs than default bards, and you get to benefit from it yourself, and you get to mix and match them together as you level. Hell, the final ability is incredible, letting you turn a gaggle of nobodies into characters who fight as fighters of your level, making them amazing for amplifying pets and cohorts as well!

Warshaper

A shapeshifter who practices ways to make their body warping more powerful.

What the fuck is the Nature’s Warrior doing in this book when the Warshaper is here.

The Warshaper is a short class, which breaks the trend for those in that it’s good. It improves your ability to shapeshift, but it lets you access that shapeshifting in a variety of ways. That means your wildshape forms are stronger but if you say, are a character with inherent Alter Self or some kind of Polymorph effect, that counts too.

Look, the Warshaper isn’t good enough to stop a Druid, I don’t think, but it’s still good enough for anyone else who shapeshifts to at least think about it.

Conclusion

This was stupid and fun. I shouldn’t try and do something comprehensive like this again.

… though there are other Complete books…

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

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jq37 · 1 year ago

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Your sister who you love so much (even though you’ve never shown it) asks you to be her sister again, her true sister, in deed not just in name. And yes, of course that’s what you want. That’s what you’ve always wanted and now that she’s shattered your defenses and destroyed the ones who would pit you against each other and died right before your eyes, how could you refuse? How could your answer be anything but yes?

So you go home with her, not the ruins of your perfectly posh prison, but a new home which provides love and care and bunk beds and it’s so so nice. Ridiculously nice. Sickeningly nice. And a small, sick part of you almost misses your old home (if you can even call it a home) because yes, it was cruel and awful and you hated every second of it but you knew where you fit. You knew what your role was. You don’t fit in here. Everyone accepts you because they’re all so nice, but they don’t know how to volley back your sharp words or find a hidden, “I love you” within an offhanded insult.

And then your sister leaves to save the world again because that’s who she is. She’s the kind of person who goes out to save the world with her friends when she’s needed and you’re not. You’re not, not, not. Not on any count. You don’t save things, you destroy them. And friends? You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable for friends so of course that’s out. Your sister is 16 and she’s out saving the world for the third time and you, fully grown at 18, are a wanted criminal who hasn’t even properly graduated from high school. You can’t stop thinking about it and, without your sister and her friends occupying the house as a buffer, the ones who are left try to get you to talk about it so you make a rash decision, as you are wont to do. You leave, like a thief in the night. You can make your own way. You can. You’ll prove it.

You find a shitty apartment and pay for it with the ill-gotten spoils from one of your many exploits. You could probably pawn some treasure for more luxurious accommodations–there is that chest of rubies just lying around–but you don’t. That’s not what you deserve. And what if your sister needs help later? You don’t have access to your parental funds anymore which means she doesn’t either. You know she won’t ask anyone for help–you wouldn’t. But someone has to look after her. You’re an abjuration wizard. You protect people. You protect her. No, that’s a lie. But you want to make it not a lie. You want to start now.

If you’re saving the rubies then you need a source of income. You narrow down your least villainous talents to try and find a suitable job and hit on teacher. You’re good at magic, right? So how hard can teaching it be? Hopefully not as hard as securing the job, which proves trickier than expected because, oh right, you’re a wanted criminal who hasn’t graduated high school. But you dip into your villainous talents once more and tell yourself it’s for a good cause. You secure the job. You’re doing it. You’re making your own way.

You want to text your sister to see if she’s doing alright but you don’t want to intrude and you don’t want to answer any questions about what you’ve been doing because then either you’ll have to lie or explain that you’ve left again, right after you promised you’d be there. Both options make your heart ache, especially since it’s her birthday. So you wait until the house is empty (mostly empty–you’re never really alone in a haunted house) and enter the room you and your sister shared for too brief a time. You paint her walls with carefully rendered runes, filled with all your abjuration magic and stamped with your arcane mark. It’s a possessive bit of spellcraft. A selfish claiming of a climactic kill. You mean to make a different kind of claim. You are claiming your sister, as she asked you to months ago. You are telling the world that she will not be fucked with while you live. Your rooms were so close before. You could hear her. You knew every night she went to bed in the grips of a panic attack with no one to console her. She won’t have to feel unsafe in her own room again. You can make sure of that at least.

The sun rises one morning and you know that means your sister is alive and well and coming home. You teleport to Falinel to make sure she returns to her favorite dessert. It’s worth the spell slot and the chance of being recognized. The tower where they kept you is long destroyed and you know that this time, if you were ever captured or even killed, rescue wouldn’t be measured in a matter of months. It would be days. Hours even if your clever sister and her powerful divination magic put things together faster. The thought fills you with more emotion than you know what to do with. You leave a note. “I love you,” you think. “Enjoy the nemesis ward,” you write.

Practicing magic, as it turns out, is a very different skill than teaching magic. The children are loud and obnoxious and you don’t quite realize that maybe your expectations are too high between the hothouse you grew up in and your sister being the world’s greatest diviner, fullstop. You know you can always go back to the manor, but that somehow makes it easier to stick it out. You’ve always been taught that pressure provides the best results but there’s something about the security of a safety net that makes everything a bit more bearable. And so what if you have to take a second job involving a light criminal element. You’re only smuggling–that’s barely even a real crime.

Your sister who has saved the world thrice now, texts you and she wants help. She is looking to you for help. And you do your best to oblige. You offer your knowledge, you offer your rubies, you invite her over again and again. She sends you a text and deletes it. You’re not the diviner in the family but you drain your spell slots scrying for information you already know. Information that you'll hear from her own lips in just a few hours. “I love you.”

She finally visits and you’re not unaware of the state of your apartment. You know you’ve been too exhausted for an Unseen Servant or even a round of Prestidigitations but you know that your sister has seen your mind and there’s nothing messier about you than that. She teases you and you tease her back. She’s the only one who understands how to deliver a complement with a backhand so you can receive it without your skin crawling. The only one who knows how much tartness you need with your sweetness.

Later, she visits again. She sits in your filthy apartment and you watch trash TV and it’s the highlight of your week. Your month even. That should feel pathetic but, somehow it doesn’t. You want to tell her. She deserves to hear it from time to time without having to filter out the layers of prickliness that you add as second nature, a layer of armor as ever present as your abjurer’s ward. You may not be able to handle naked sentiment but she can. You’ve seen her with her friends. How affectionate they are. You’ve always been taught that loose lips sink ships but you have experience with ship sinking and this prospect fills you with much less dread. You tell her and it’s awkward and fumbling but you manage. Maybe loving people isn’t so different from loving cats.

You have a new job which is perfect because the school year is almost over and, blackmail or no, you aren’t sure how many times you’ll be able to get away with casting Sleep on your class to give yourself a break. Honestly, you should have applied for jobs in Leviathan from the start. Why would pirates care about your sketchy history and lack of credentials? You could teleport yourself to Leviathan every day but that would be a waste of a spell slot when the door to the Compass Points is right there in the manor (and if your sister happens to be there too then hey, happy coincidence). While you’re there, you might as well do your laundry. And stay for dinner from time to time. And spend time with your sister in your her room where your runes stand sentinel and your old bunk lays untouched. You don’t think you’re staring but later, as you go to grab a snack from the kitchen your sister throws you a casual, over the shoulder glance.

“You can just move back in, if you want.”

And would it really be that easy? Just like that? After a year of trying to make a point or a plan or a better version of yourself or whatever? Just like that?

You remember a year ago. You and your sister and words that will be burned into your mind forever.

“Despite the fact that you have not earned it, I do love you.”

Just like that.

You say yes. You stay.

#fantasy high #fantasy high spoilers #dimension 20 #d20 #spoilers #aelwyn abernant #you wanna hear something funny?#this was supposed to be a 3 paragraph post tops #I am boo boo the fool #adaine abernant #abernant sisters #i am back on my bullshit

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hollowed-theory-hall · 3 months ago

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Hello! In DH it says the potter cottage’s top floor was blown apart because of the curse back fire, do you think this effected Lily’s corpse? Petunia says that Lily “went and got herself exploded” so is it possible that her remains were damaged to some extent making it so she wouldn’t be able to have an open casket? What’s your thoughts on this?

That is definitely possible. I mean, the scene of Snape hugging Lily's corpse is movie only, Snape in the books wasn't even there, so yeah.

Honestly, that would make the scene Hagrid stepped into even more haunting and grisly. Even in PS, Hagrid mentions the house was destroyed:

“No, sir — house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin’ around. He fell asleep as we was flyin’ over Bristol.”

(PS, Ch1)

He could see it; the Fidelius Charm must have died with James and Lily. The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart;

(DH, Ch17)

I don't think Hagrid, who loved James and Lily, would ignore their bodies if they were there, so I wonder if James' body fell into the living room or something, so his position + the dark made it so he wasn't visible from the hall when Hagrid entered and Lily wasn't recognaisable to him in the rubble of the second floor + the dark.

Though it kinda sounds like the rubble fell outside the house for the most part. And it makes sense, it was blasted away by the curse, so Lily should be visible, even if she was damaged by the explosion (unless rubble fell inside too, which is possible). I mean, Hagrid didn't arrive immediately (it took him at least 20 minutes, I think, after the event), so it's likely the walls were blasted away and some of the remaining walls and ceiling caved in when some of the support was lost. So, I kinda think Lily was hidden by rubble if Hagrid wasn't crying about her and James, as he would have if he found them dead, I think.

Honestly, the whole scene would be insane to walk into:

Like, you climb up the stairs and the house looks like there was an explosion. The walls are crumbling, even on the first floor, but the second is worse. The walls are gone on one side of the house. The chill night air flows into what was once a hall, but now is littered with rubble of stone and wood where the roof caved in. The floors creak beneath your feet, threatening to give way as you walk towards a crib, the only thing that seems to still be standing, bathed in moonlight. Shockingly, the child in it is alive. Crying and bleeding from his forehead, but alive. Just like Dumbledore said he would be.

Like, that's an insane scene for Hagrid to walk into, so maybe I can understand not noticing James and Lily when he walks in when the house looks like it does... But I am wondering where he thinks James and Lily are and why he didn't get their bodies, I mean, this sounds like something Hagrid would do? Was he told they weren't there? Did he assume they weren't there?

But, for your question, yeah, it's possible Lily's body was damaged by the explosion/rubble, but I don't think that would necessitate a closed cascket, necessarily. I mean, they are wizards, so I'm sure there are ways to magically fix up a body for burial that are better than we can, and the damage probably wasn't too bad considering Harry and his crib remained undamaged. At least, that's what I assume considering what magic is capable of.

#harry potter #hp #hp meta #asks #hollowedtheory #anonymous #harry potter meta

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benkyoutobentou · 1 year ago

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LGBTQ+ Japanese Media for Pride Month

Happy pride month! There's no better time to read and watch queer media than June. I tend to read and watch mostly queer content, so I thought I'd drop some things that I've enjoyed over the years for those looking for something that they maybe haven't picked up before. Since lots of Japanese media tends to have multiple versions and adaptations, I'll be organizing this by representation rather than type of media. The version(s) that I've personally seen or read will be bolded. This will also be a little bit different from my usual Japanese media recommendation posts, as I will also be including media that I've read in English or watched with English subtitles. This is also an invitation for anyone to recommend things to me, especially ones that have LGBT rep outside of just gay and lesbian characters. I'm always looking for more stuff to enjoy!

MLM

同級生/Classmates (manga/anime movie): Two seemingly opposite boys meet during the choir festival at their all boys' school and develop a relationship. How could this not be the very first thing I recommend? This is one of my all time favorite BL series and one of my favorite movies as well. Seriously, I watch this at least three times per year (once being during June!). Nakamura Asumiko is one of my favorite manga artists, and this won't be the last series of hers on this list.

ひだまりが聴こえる/I Hear the Sunspot (manga/movie): This follows a college student who agrees to become the designated note taker for a deaf classmate. I love this series and one of my favorite things about it is how much the romance takes a backseat to other things happening in the characters lives. It also has a large cast of deaf characters! If you're looking for something with representation outside of only LGBT and doesn't focus too much on romance, this is a really great choice.

30歳まで童貞だと魔法使いになれるらしい/Cherry Magic! 30 Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard (manga/drama/anime): After waking up on his thirtieth birthday, a businessman discovers that he has gained the ability to read minds. And with that, he discovers that his male coworker has a crush on him. For such a zany concept, this series is very cute and sweet. It's also always nice to see something that follows older characters (ie. not high school or college).

美しい彼/My Beautiful Man (novel/drama/manga): This follows a social outcast who ends up falling in love with a boy in the friend group of his high school bullies. This isn't a sweet and heartwarming romance at all, but it's also not pure toxicity. The drama is extremely bingeable and the author is a juggernaut in the BL light novel community for a reason.

消えた初恋/My Love Mix Up (manga/drama): Due to an eraser mishap, a boy admits to having feelings for another boy in order to save his actual crush from embarrassment. This series is The Blueprint for me in terms of romcoms. It does everything right for me and the characters especially stand out. It covers topics from discovering your identity and first love to dealing with homophobia and it does it all spectacularly. I also think that the manga does visual humor extremely well.

スリーピングデッド/Sleeping Dead (manga): After being stabbed to death on a routine patrol, a popular high school teacher wakes up on a metal table. I have no words [words]. This is definitely up there in my favorites, I love it so much. If you like queer horror, this is definitely one you need to pick up. I also found it very funny and the characters were extremely charming.

僕らの地球の歩き方/Our Not-So-Lonely Planet Travel Guide (manga): A couple decides to travel the world together, promising that they'll get married upon their return to Japan. Probably my all time favorite manga ever. I love every single thing about this, especially how much this series loves the queer community. This manga is overflowing with love in all ways, and I'm overflowing with love for this manga.

きのう何食べ��？/What Did You Eat Yesterday? (manga/drama): This series is basically just snippets of a gay man's daily life. He likes to cook. And you know what? It's all the better for it. This series is award winning and such a great time. The main character is so relatable and it covers some great LGBT+ topics. Honestly, it's a crime that I haven't seen the drama yet.

WLW

独り舞/Solo Dance (novel): After a violent encounter, a Taiwanese woman makes the choice to move to Japan. When reading this, I saw it mention Qiu Miaojin's Notes of a Crocodile, which I had just bought, and now that I've finally read it, I can easily see the influences that Qiu's works had on this one. This is a tough book to get through emotionally, but ultimately a worthwhile read, especially if you're looking for something more on the literary side.

ささやくように恋を唄う/Whisper Me a Love Song (manga/anime): A girl confesses to an upperclassman that she loves her music, but the upperclassman misunderstands it as a true confession of love. I adore this series and the relationships in it. It has a huge cast of female characters and also has a driving plot outside of just the romance. I'm a sucker for series about music and this one is one of my favorites.

あさがおと加瀬さん/Kase San and Morning Glories (manga/anime movie): A shy gardener and a popular track star become friends and begin dating. This series is so cute! It feels like a GL staple to me and is one I've been following for practically as long as I've been reading manga in Japanese. It also has a sequel series called 山田と加瀬さん/Yamada and Kase San which follows the two of them after high school.

メジロバナの咲く/A White Rose in Bloom (manga): After not being able to go home for Christmas, a girl is stuck in her boarding school with one other student, who seems to not like her. This is another one by Nakamura Asumiko and there's something about her writing which always sucks me in. I can't get enough of this series, it has wonderful vibes, impeccable art, and I just want more and more of the characters.

欠けた月とドーナッツ/Donuts Under a Crescent Moon (manga): This series is a slice of life following two coworkers and their growing relationship. It's very slow burn and puts a lot more emphasis on the feelings of coming into and realizing your sexuality as an adult and dealing with compulsory heterosexuality. I really loved this series and how it focused on issues surrounding but not directly related to the central romance.

気になってる人が男じゃなかった/The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy At All (manga): A girl develops a crush on a worker at a music store after bonding over their shared love of music. Little does she know, he's actually the girl who sits next to her in class. This manga has taken the world by storm to the point of having a collaboration with Nirvana, and let me tell you it deserves every bit of hype you've heard about it. The art and characters are both stunning and is absolutely worth the read.

ハロー、メランコリック！/Hello, Melancholic! (manga): A talented trombonist enters a high school without a wind band, but is scouted anyway by a drummer looking for a new member to join her combo band. This is another one where the romance takes a backseat to other stuff in the plot, can you tell that I love that sort of thing? I also really loved the ways they talked about music in here, and I could definitely relate to it as a musician myself. Apparently, all the chapter titles are songs as well.

さよならローズガーデン/Goodbye, My Rose Garden (manga): A young woman moves from Japan to England to find her favorite author and is hired on as a maid. Her boss agrees to help her find this author so long as she agrees to help her with a grisly task. This is another really lovely series with gorgeous art. Set in the Victorian era, this does have some time period appropriate homophobia but overall it didn't strike me as a very dark manga.

Transgender

彼らが本気で編むときは、/Close Knit (movie): A young girl goes to live with her uncle and his transgender girlfriend. This movie is so sweet and cute! I watched it a couple years back now, but I feel like a lot of specific scenes have stuck with me. This is definitely a good heartwarming Pride month movie night candidate.

不可解なぼくのすべてを/Love Me For Who I Am (manga): A nonbinary teen is offered a job at a crossdressing cafe run by a classmate's family. Although this series has a cast with multiple LGBT identities, I chose to include it here because the main theme seems to revolve around gender. I do recommend this series if you're looking for a cute and sweet story about gender issues, but I did have some hesitations about the way lesbians are portrayed in this manga.

ボーイミーツマリア/Boy Meets Maria (manga): A boy who dreams of being an actor falls in love at first sight with a girl he sees dancing in his high school entrance ceremony, only to later find that she is actually a boy in his class. I feel like I always need to preface any recommendation for this manga by saying that a lot of people took issue with the way certain things and tropes are handled in this regarding being transgender. I personally didn't find it transphobic but I'm also just one person and can't speak for every nonbinary person out there. Regardless, I really enjoyed this. Be aware of trigger warnings when going into this one, it gets extremely graphic.

ボーイズ・ラン・ザ・ライオット/Boys Run the Riot (manga): Two high school boys bond over their shared love of fashion and start a brand together. I read this one a while back and never ended up finishing it but I do remember enjoying what I read! It's also by a transgender mangaka!

放浪息子/Wandering Son (manga/anime): This is a slice of life coming of age series that follows a middle school friend group revolving around two transgender friends. It's more of a slow paced series and a little bit on the more depressing side. The anime is also award winning and the manga was nominated!

星合の空/Stars Align (anime): This is a sports anime about a middle school boys' soft tennis team. I always hesitate to recommend this one because it was greenlit for a twenty four episode anime then cut down to twelve episodes during production. Rather than condense the story, the creator chose to animate only the first half of the series, so it's perpetually unfinished. Despite that, I still think it was a really wonderful anime and I would really love to see the rest of it one day because so much good stuff was set up!

Other/Multiple

しまなみ誰そ彼/Our Dreams at Dusk (manga): A gay teen is about to commit suicide after being outed to his classmates but sees a mysterious person jump from a balcony, which then leads him to a drop in center for LGBT people. I cannot say enough good things about this manga, it is phenomenal and is always my go-to for anyone looking for queer manga. It's heartfelt and beautiful and written by another one of my favorite mangaka, Kamatani Yuhki, who also happens to be X gender!

ヒラエスは旅路の果て/Hiraeth: The End of the Journey (manga): After the death of her best friend, a young girl decides to join a forgotten god and an immortal man on their journey to find death. Another Kamatani manga! This manga deals more with grief and mortality rather than queer identities, but if you want something with casually queer characters, this one is worth picking up. Also, this is one of only two manga to ever make me cry, and boy did I ugly cry at this one.

恋せぬふたり/Two People Who Can't Fall in Love (drama): Though I haven't watched this one, it's been on my radar for quite a while and I've heard so many good things. It's also harder to find series that have explicit aroace representation. This is about a woman who feels ostracized by her lack of romantic interest in anyone around her until she finds a blog about asexuality.

わたしは壁になりたい/I Want to Be a Wall (manga): This series is a marriage of convenience plot between an asexual BL fangirl and a gay man who never got over his childhood crush. I loved the relationship between the two characters and the depiction of a nontraditional family that still has love within it, even if it's not romantic.

Bonus- Music

I'm not one to look much in to the person behind the music, so I often don't know much about band members or singers of the music I listen to. However, there are two wonderful transgender artists that I listen to regularly in Japanese and couldn't pass up the opportunity to share their works with the world! Nakamura Ataru is a pop singer who also takes inspiration from traditional Japanese music. I love her enka styled songs such as 廃墟の森! The other artist is a bit more popular, and that's the rock band QUEEN BEE, whose lead singer is the incredibly talented Avu Chan. Avu Chan also voiced Inu Oh in one of my favorite movies, Inu Oh, which isn't (explicitly) queer, but is definitely worth watching anyways, even if just to hear Avu Chan's insane vocal abilities.

And so, those are (just a few) of my recommendations for Japanese queer reads to celebrate Pride month! If you have any recommendations for me, regardless of whether it's a movie or novel or manga or other, I would love to hear them!

#langblr #studyblr #benkyou posting #language learning #polyglot #anime #manga #lgbtqia #pride month #queer #sorry for overtagging but I WORKED HARD ON THIS #also yes i mostly read manga out of like. everything #so thats whats at the forefront of my mind #also im so sorry to many other series that i loved and couldnt add #heres to another year of reading a fuck ton of queer mangaね

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wynnyfryd · 2 years ago

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Trailer park Steve AU part 25

part 1 | part 24 | ao3

cw: throwing up, recreational alcohol & drug use

“Well, thank fuck I didn’t wear the Reeboks,” Eddie laughs.

Steve groans 'Jesus,' because he doesn't know what else there is to say to that. Eddie came out of nowhere. Materialized like some kind of freaky wizard. And that would�� that would be on brand, wouldn’t it?

Eddie the magician. Eddie the shapeshifter.

Maybe Eddie is Misty? Would explain why she left him all those dead rats when he first—

“Oh, fuck.” His stomach rolls at the thought, a hot-cold-nasty-sick shiver down his spine, and he bends forward to retch again. Hits the grass this time at least, right between Eddie’s boots; groans and spits drool into the dirt. Eddie smooths a hand between his shoulder blades, which is nice, even if everything else about this totally blows.

“Godddd,” he moans when the dry heaving stops. He lifts his head to apologize and nearly tips himself into the mess he just made.

“Whoa, whoa whoa, hey; easy,” Eddie shushes, steadying him with both hands. Warm palms against his biceps; firm grip.

“S’nice.”

“Yeah?” Eddie grins, private and soft. "Alright, arms up."

"Mmh?"

"Up! Come on, sweetheart, up you get." He loops Steve’s arms around his neck, wearing him like a cape. Steve giggles into his fluffy curls, nuzzles his nose into them because they're warm and Eddie smells nice, and time does that weird drunk thing where Steve slow blinks and suddenly they're a hundred yards away.

Edge of the creek, downstream from the falls where the water’s just a thin squiggle cut through smooth, mossy stone. Eddie's got Steve facedown across his lap, gathering up his hair and making a headband with his hands, and he's apologizing in advance for Steve-doesn't-know-what.

"Big breath," Eddie warns him, and then he dips Steve's face in the icy stream like he's battering fried chicken in a goddamn egg wash. Two quick dunks, the cold ripping through Steve's nerves; it's all finger-licking fucked.

"What the hell?!" Steve splutters when Eddie lifts him up, rolls him onto his back and smiles down at him.

"Mornin', sunshine!"

"Jesus Christ!"

Eddie's laughing at him hard. "Sorry, big boy. Had to wake you up somehow."

He brushes Steve's bangs off his face, and Steve pants up at him, wide awake now. Trembling. In the dark, Eddie's eyes look nearly black. Two inkpots full of moonlight.

“'M awake," Steve mumbles to distract himself from the sudden kick-throb behind his ribs. "Sorry I barfed on your shoes."

“Ah, comes with the territory.” Eddie kicks his legs out, rinsing the toes of his boots off in the stream. “Drug dealer, remember? Seen a lot worse than this at parties, sweetheart, I can promise you that."

Steve blinks at him. Still feels syrupy and slow like he's wading through mud. Sweetheart. The word's a fog machine in his mind. Hazy warmth; candy clouds. "If... If you're a drug dealer, then... should've woken me up with drugs."

"Oh?"

"Mhmm. Jus' rude not to, really."

Eddie's lips quirk. His eyes are soft, his fingers combing through Steve's hair, and Steve's head is still in his lap, even though it probably shouldn't be. "If you want coke..." he murmurs, his voice a low, fond rumble, "you can just ask for it."

"Yeah?"

"Sure, Stevie."

Steve watches with rapt attention as Eddie reaches into his jacket, pulls out a little baggie and holds it up in question. Steve gulps; nods.

Fuck yeah. He hasn't had coke in forever.

Eddie pours the smallest amount onto the back of one hand, licks the thumb of his other and presses it into the pile, coating it in white powder. He brings it up to Steve's mouth and rests it right against his lip — barest hint of pressure; not hovering, not pushing in. "Well, go on," he smirks.

Steve makes a questioning sound that comes out like a whine, a high, nasal thing in the back of his throat. His cock stirs in his jeans.

"Ask me," Eddie whispers.

"Can I have it?" Steve asks. He can feel Eddie's thumb against his lips as he speaks; has to stop himself from flicking out his tongue to get a taste. "Please?"

"Fuck," Eddie hisses between his teeth. "Yeah, baby." He presses into the meat of Steve's bottom lip; drags it down, exposes skin that's wet and warm. Dances over it with the pad of his thumb — the inside of Steve's lip, his gums, his tongue.

There's no mistaking the sound Steve makes for anything but a moan, throaty and deep as he sucks Eddie's thumb deeper into his mouth; hollows his cheeks, makes Eddie gasp. Makes him twitch his hips up under Steve, and it's good, and Steve feels like there are live wires where his veins used to be, the rush of the coke and Eddie's hands and Eddie's noises in his good ear, and—

"Hey!" someone shouts across the field. Eddie moves like he's been shot at, flinching away from Steve entirely, a hand pressed over his lap as he turns to see who's coming.

Steve lifts his head to look. His mouth is buzzing, lips full and flushed like he's been kissing someone. Kissing Eddie. God, he wants to. Wants to hike him up the falls, shove him hard against a tree.

But he can't. Because Jason Carver's here now.

Great.

—

part 26

gonna do the tag lists in separate reblogs from now on (with the tag "#trailer park steve au taglist" if you'd like to filter that content), comment and let me know if you want me to add you tomorrow (21+ only, please confirm your age if you're asking to be tagged)

#trailer park steve au #steddie #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #my writing #my fic #cw: alcohol #cw: drugs

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iamnmbr3 · 6 months ago

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Let me start by saying that I adore your meta. It's some of the most thorough, well-reasoned hp analysis I've come across & you have a talent for tenderly mining and polishing canon connections I've never considered. You've put into words so many of my feelings about drarry, hinny, and the characters as a whole -- why I love them, why I struggle with them, and why they still compel me after all these years. I'm slowly chipping away at your blog and won't stop until I get to page 1 I've found myself very taken with the Slytherins lately--especially characters like Millicent and Daphne, who are either offhand names or caricatures, as well as some of the older Slytherins we see mentioned, who seem to stay largely out of the war (or at least aren't important enough to it for a mention). There are a lot of widely accepted fanon personalities/interpersonal dynamics for the Slytherins, and they're always fun to delve into. But I often find myself struggling to separate canon from fanon. Do you have any thoughts on what we can extrapolate about the Slytherins in canon (apart from "mean, ugly, & stupid/vapid" as jkr describes nearly every Slytherin but Draco)? And if not, do you have any blogs/posts to recommend on the topic?

Wow. What can I even say. I've been staring at this ask since I received it feeling so warmed by your words. Thank you very much for such high compliments. It always thrills me to hear that people get some enjoyment/mental stimulation out of this blog and that my little ramblings are of interest to others.

To some extent, since the other Slytherins aren't that well developed (due to the fact that Harry was too busy constantly staring at Draco to notice anything about them - I mean he literally doesn't even know Theodore Nott's NAME till he sees him spending more time with Draco) there's a lot of room for people to come up with their own interpretations of their personalities.

That said, there is some info in canon we can go off of. For example, we see Pansy hanging out with Draco a lot more than Millicent or Daphne. We also know that none of their parents were Death Eaters. And given that Millicent and Daphne seem to stay away from Draco more later, maybe their families aren't quite as into the whole blood purist stuff as Pansy and her family are. Especially Daphne does not seem to really participate in any of the bullying we see a lot of the Slytherins take part in.

Personally, I always headcannoned that Daphne never liked Draco very much and that while she did hold some anti-muggle and anti-muggleborn biases (similar to those held by most of the wizarding world), her attitudes were more on the level of those held by Fudge or Crouch and she never actually went in for any of the really extremist blood purist beliefs or supported the Death Eaters or even had attitudes as extreme as Walburga Black (who thought the Death Eaters mostly had the right idea even if they went about it the wrong way). I also think she didn't much like the pettier behaviors Draco engaged in - the boasting, the bullying, the mockery, not to mention the weird Potter obsession - (or that the people Draco hung out with engaged in). I think she probably found him stuck up and arrogant and vaguely unsavory and tended to avoid him, even if she wasn't as horrified or enraged by him using slurs like Mudblood as someone like Ron or Harry would be.

I like the idea that after the war she and her sister changed their minds about their beliefs about muggles and muggleborns - even if they were never quite as extreme to begin with as those held by some. I headcanon that they two of them were both back at Hogwarts during Draco's 8th year - and that they actually ended up striking up a friendship - once the realized that he'd changed. After all, they were housemates for years. Plus they ran in similar social circles. And they all changed their minds, so that's a common bond. Daphne tells Draco point blank that she always thought he was a stuck up twat and Draco agrees that he was, which breaks the ice.

As for Pansy, I actually think she was more of a hanger on than a true friend. I think she and Draco drifted apart in 7th year. I don't especially like characterizations that whitewash the bad things she did - either the bullying or the bigotry or the "trying to hand harry in to Voldemort" thing - or that turn her into some ooc mary sue girlboss with no personality other than being a genius who is great at everything and also gets to be mean with no consequences because she's so cool so no one cares I guess. That's not to say I don't enjoy fics with Draco/Pansy friendship if it's done right. But yeah, based on actual canon I see her moving on to the next person once Draco's fortunes were shown to have irrevocably fallen by book 7. Plus it's arguable that she always expected to marry Draco since he was the best match (thru book 6 anyway) but that she always secretly harbored feelings for Blaise. And after the war she got to act on that. After all, in the train scene in book 6 she seems awfully interested in what girls Blaise likes.

For Millicent we have even less. We know she was a bully. I don't like seeing that ignored or seeing her girlbossified. I do like the idea of her going thru her own little redemption arc and trying to make something of herself. I also imagine that she and Draco kind of drifted apart though. I think she ever became a completely nice person, but I like the idea of her apologizing to Hermione and them ending up at the Ministry together and kind of tolerating each other - just one of the many instances of strange, uncomfortable relationships that pop up in the post-war wizarding society as it tries to put itself together.

As for Crabbe & Goyle, I really hate how often fandom seems to forget or gloss over the fact that both of them were actively participating in torturing other students and seemingly very into it. I think the way Draco treated them - as henchmen/servants - always grated on them but they accepted it due to the relative statuses of their families. When the power dynamic between them shifts though, starting book 6 but really post book 6, they seem to revel in Draco's degradation and fall from grace (and we even see hints of that earlier, like them laughing when Draco gets beaten up by Harry in book 5 and not intervening). I find that super fascinating, and I think they are darker, more twisted characters than people tend to give them credit for. Given all this, I don't see Draco and Goyle staying friends post war and I never get why Goyle having been an enthusiastic participant in the Death Eaters' crimes (in a way that Draco never was) so often gets forgotten. Usually post war he gets reduced to a simple minded sad boi who Draco needs to look after. And I'm just like ??? Where?? Especially given that the alternative provides so much more interesting story fodder.

#asks #Harry Potter #Harry Potter meta #Millicent Bulstrode #Draco Malfoy #Pansy Parkinson #Gregory Goyle #Daphne Greengrass #Slytherins #Slytherin #my meta

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sweetnesseternal · 7 months ago

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regarding my last post, which discusses the possibility of a current ancient falling to beastliness -

my "prediction" is that in the shadow milk / anniversary update, pure vanilla will NOT awaken, and will instead crack under the pressure. this will result in either him falling into despair (complete with a costume representing that state), or, at the very least, simply going home Changed, and not exactly for the better

there's a few reasons why i think this is a possibility:

it's an anniversary update and the stakes are high. getting more of what happened last time- ancient awakens and Good Triumphs Over Evil - isn't going to fly. it'd fall pretty flat, actually

the decision to awaken pv NOW would feel... misplaced? the ideal time for him to awaken is second to last, with wl going last

last time we saw him, we know shadow did not yet have a body. and given his special abilities compared to the other beasts, he's probably in the least of a rush to get one - he's powerful enough on his own. Plus, I think he can have a Lot of Fun with nilly even without one :) so no body = cannot get his ass beat, at least not physically

many people have pointed it out before: the avatar of destiny has quite a bit in common designwise with pure vanilla. and while it might be a glimpse at an alternate timeline or at a what-if situation, it may also be foreshadowing? unless it's nothing haha

as I said in my last post, enchantress IS an ancient who fell to beastliness. it's not impossible! if white lily can, in shock and grief and desperation, split into both beast and ancient, who's to say her closest friend, one she shared so much with, one she'd much in common with, one who felt he could have prevented all of this, would also not be able to find himself in such a situation - especially if pushed there by someone who knows all the right buttons to press?

best of all, a corrupted / fallen / despairing pv is an amazing candidate to bring back to the light. it would not be anywhere near as hard as it will be with enchantress, and yet it means that she is a candidate for being redeemed. as are the Actual beasts, by extension

as someone i know has pointed out to me, a wizard tower complete with mind games and stair sequences is NOT the place for a Grand Showdown. it's more of an exposition setting. from what we've seen with the art preview, pv is likely alone (hopefully he didn't bring those damn kids again, fuck them kids) and is likely looking to either glean information about sm at his old hq, or is actively looking to find and talk to sm in hopes of reasoning or bargaining ... and this could catastrophically backfire. The best that can happen is just that pv learns Something or Another from this, the worst is ... well, C: What's The Worst That Can Happen? It's Just A Little Hater Clown ............... Hee Hee

The only questions left, are how exactly this could happen. But that's what the story's for !! or what this would mean for gacha of fate? we'll DEFINITELY get a pv buff, at the least.

Either way, I Sure Hope Something Interesting Happens!!! squishes those guys together . puts them all alone in an empty room . pokes them both with sticks

#cr kingdom #cookie run kingdom #shadow milk cookie #pure vanilla cookie #crk #cheesy chat

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studentinpursuitofclouds · 20 days ago

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So we know the farmer has magic as they could see the junimo before the wizard event, I wonder if grandpa maybe saw the begin of magic in his grandchild, something that will grow to be so strong even stronger then his magic. However he remembers that ministry would take them away the moment they find out how much potential this small child has, instead of informing them he instead place a spell to kinda seal away their magic till they are ready (or asked a friend of his to ensure that their magic is contained till they are ready) The moment the wizard gave them the forest potion it basically open a typhoon of magic the farmer was holding in! So how would the many other wizards and adventures react to finding out what grandpa did and now they have a adult with even raw magic power to blow up the town at the wrong sneeze

Yes yes yes that's what I've always liked to imagine, you're so right, dear anon!

I've written about this before several times, because I love this headcanon and it's what I think is a good explanation for why the Ministry of Magic, who practice such a tradition (stupid tradition btw, and makes me feel sorry for Morgan), taking children with a "gift" away from their parents, couldn't see that power in Farmer? After all, according to Magnus and Lance, Farmer has an innate talent, they perform spells perfectly the first time, they can handle magical relics (although they're not trained by anyone to use these things), a strong connection with forest spirits, the ability to see the real appearance of elves (If we're also talking about Ridgeside Village mod) and some special connection with gems? (from East Scarp, Sword and Sorcery specifically, but it's just my OCs headcanon). So either Grandpa himself (or his one mystical friend) was able to hide Farmer's magic at a young age to allow them to control their own destiny (whether they want to be mage or not), rather than being torn away from their family and sent by some old farts at the Ministry to the other side of the world.

Though I can play devil's advocate here too, since an adult who can't use their own magic (especially one as strong as Farmer's) is essentially a walking bomb, and the Ministry is thus preventing a magical disaster. That said, I don't see the point of forbidding children from having contact with their family (at least a few times a week), because to me it looks like just some high ranked wizards/witches wanting to be assholes to 8-10 year old kids. Morgan then said that they were sort of allowed to send/receive a letter from their family, but still not enough.

Also lmao, "to blow up the town at the wrong sneeze," reminds me of that video of the sneezing hedgehog (WARNING: loud).

Anyway, thanks for the ask, and have a wonderful day 😊💖

_________________________________________

SVE adventurer/mage's reaction to the fact that Grandpa hid his grandchild's magical talent from the Ministry of Magic:

Magnus Rasmodius:

Magnus tilted his head slightly, hiding his gaze. Farmer's grandfather wasn't the only person who tried to trick the Ministry of Magic. The old wizard had seen how desperate parents hid their children, begged on their knees not to take their babies away, even fought for them, but what could an ordinary man do against a wizard. He himself had to write the third refusal to Morgan's parents... Magnus does not agree with some of the rules, but you can not leave children with the gift of magic without a teacher, because the child can accidentally bring trouble to themself and others, and ordinary people can not handle this. But Farmer's grandfather was probably the first who managed to hide it successfully. And how did he do it.... One way or another, Magnus is obliged to report it to the High mages. Though given the Ministry's strong interest in Farmer, he thinks they've already figured it out. Meanwhile, Rasmodius will keep an eye on his unofficial apprentice to make sure they don't get into trouble.

Jadu:

Is it true...? Jadu caught wind of the rumors that swept among the older wizards (he wasn't eavesdropping! It just... happened). Generally speaking, the young wizard has his own opinion about this rule.... But could have serious problems if someone finds out about his "free" speech. Jadu was such a child himself, and spent more than one night crying in his new room, not understanding why he was taken away from his mom and not allowed to talk to her. Maybe now, having grown up, he can understand the reason, but deep down he carries a grudge against some of the higher mages. But what will happen to Farmer now? If their magic was hidden from the Ministry's eyes before, what will they do to them now, as an adult? Taking them away by force is a bad idea, and since Farmer's power is as high as Camilla and Magnus said, it's only going to get worse. So they'll probably go for the carrot instead of stick... Farmer seems like a good-natured and decent person, and Jadu wouldn't want anything bad to happen to them.

Isaac:

On the one hand, Isaac doesn't really care what the mages have going on with that stupid Farmer. The Ministry wants to prevent a goddamn disaster, and that young idiot's acting like a spoiled brat by refusing to cooperate? Then stop coddling them and get some sense into them, for Yoba's sake! Isaac, on the other hand, despised some of the Ministry's dumb and abusive rules, and kidnapping (yes, kidnapping, and don't try to say otherwise) children from their families to be trained by someone they don't know was one of them. At this rate, it wasn't the first time the Ministry of Magic and the Order had to deal with renegades, studying and contemplating revenge for a broken childhood... He didn't trust Farmer and their family though, for only Ministry's level wizards could cast a spell that hid their magic. Something is fishy here... Isaac just wants to protect Castle Village and its people. Naturally, even to that annoying Farmer he wishes no harm, but if Isaac has to choose between one and the other, the adventurer will choose the safety of his home.

Camilla:

Camilla already knows about it. Sort of. Of course, none of these old farts from Ministry would tell her about that unusual situation with Farmer and their incredible talent in magic directly, so the charming witch had to get the information herself. And what she found intrigued her. No, she couldn't find anything the archives, but... Not only were there no reports or records of Farmer, it was as if someone had simply destroyed any mention of them. Hmm, interesting... One would have to keep an eye on Farmer to see if they themself know anything about it or their Grandpa's actions. The Castle Village witch can understand the old man's motives and sympathize with all those children, but the higher mages are right about something too (not everything, and she's not afraid to express it). Hm? The destructive power of their magic? No big deal, Camilla is sure it'll be fine! Farmer is pretty good at controlling their own mana flow already and is quite the good fella. Especially under her watchful eye, everything will be okay, hehehe~

Alesia:

Alesia doesn't usually get involved in the affairs of the Ministry's wizards and witches, obeying Camilla and the Order unconditionally, but in the time she's lived here in Castle Village, there are a few things she doesn't understand or accept, and one of them is this arrival of mages after children with a discovered "gift". No, the kids need to be trained so they don't accidentally injure or even kill those around them with magic, but after a few conversations with Jadu and some other adepts, the sniper realized that if you're taken away, they close all contact with your family until you reach a certain age and pass the mandatory exams. Which, in her opinion, is unnecessary and even cruel to children. But the fact that Farmer is now a danger to themself and the valley, the place where she was born and raised, is not good either. Given that the Ministry sometimes reacted to problems.... overreacted, Alesia hopes that the Ministry won't make any drastic decisions towards Farmer and will peacefully provide them with training to control their magic. Maybe, Magnus can help them...

Lance:

Lance remembers well the moment in his childhood when his parents sat him down and explained that he would soon be taken away to study spells. And though little Lance was sad to leave his home nest, he took it calmly, and the teacher turned out to be a very kind and good man. And as soon as Lance said goodbye to his family, he heard a shouting from the neighboring house, where two children were being taken away from their screaming parents almost by force. The same adventurers and the same mage as had taken him away.... The pink-haired understands Farmer's grandfather act, as on the part of parents and relatives, some strangers are just taking away their children. However, the huge uncontrollable flow of mana that Farmer has accumulated and ready to explode isn't good either. But he's sure that Magnus and Marlon will help their friend and apprentice in this, besides, Farmer has shown their abilities to Lance pretty well too. And maybe the Ministry will finally revise some of the rules, because the people are starting to get more outraged...

#sve #stardew valley expanded #stardew valley #sdv #sve lance #sve isaac #sve alesia #sve jadu #sve camilla #sve magnus #sdv wizard #sve headcanons #thanks for the ask!#In general I've always described the Ministry of Magic with a gray morality #And I think I've made them more evil in this headcanon #well i mean. what's the point to forbid children to have a contact with their parents?

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raaorqtpbpdy · 3 months ago

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The Casper Halloween Carnival

Ghost Powers vs. Rigged Carnival Games. Fight!

For the Prompts: People are shocked to learn that Danny's wickedly good at darts? {from @skarlettskwrl}, Tucker and Wes interacting (that's it, that's the prompt) {from @half-deadmagicperson}, and Danny enters an Invis-o-Bill costume contest at the Casper High Halloween party. It's a terrible idea, but he really wants that $50 gift card. {from @the-wizard-dipper}