#really want to try and develop this more at some point
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steddieas-shegoes · 2 days ago
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if you fall, i will catch you
for @steddielovemonth day 2 using Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper
rated t | 855 words | no cw | tags: high school, prom, slow dance, flirting, open ending but assumed getting together
🪩🕺💃🪩🕺💃🪩🕺💃🪩💃🕺🪩
Prom is stupid.
Steve didn’t even want to come. He didn’t have a date and nothing is more embarrassing than showing up to prom alone. Even the nerds come as a group, dancing and laughing together.
His mom made an appointment for his suit fitting and he couldn’t really explain to her that there was no need. She still thinks he and Nancy are on track to be married when Nancy graduates high school. He doesn’t know how to tell her that he’ll probably die alone.
Okay, that’s a little dramatic. He’s probably not gonna die alone.
But he may die unhappy, and that’s worse.
Most of the music hasn’t been terrible so far, at least. Only one slow song played and no one seemed interested in dancing to it.
Steve’s a fucking wallflower at his own prom. He never saw this coming.
He figures he could probably escape within the next few songs, no one would even notice his absence. He makes a mental plan to wait until one of the parent chaperones walks back to the other side of the room.
Then he’s off.
He manages to escape to the hall behind the gym, the one that leads to the auditorium and drama class, not the main building of the school. No one should be back here. It’s the perfect escape route.
“Never thought I’d see the day when King Steve is trying to escape prom,” a voice says from the end of the hall. The music from the gym is echoing in here, but the voice is much louder. It’s familiar, too. “Miss Wheeler too busy with Byers to dance?”
It’s Munson. Steve sighs.
“Why are you even here?”
“It’s my senior prom, too! Or should those of us not graduating not be allowed?” Eddie walks closer and Steve sees that he’s actually dressed up. It’s not a designer suit like he’s been forced into, but it’s nice. Eddie looks…nice.
“Wait,” Steve registers what he actually said. “Not graduating?”
“Yep. Apparently quadratic formulas are crucial to my development and I cannot enter society until I understand them.” Eddie kicks his foot across the tile, leaving a scuff mark from shoes that have probably been waxed beyond necessity. “And I guess dissecting a frog and turning in homework may have helped.”
“But aren’t you pretty smart?” Steve thought he was one of those dungeon dweebs like Dustin. Dustin’s the smartest person he knows, without a doubt, kid or not. He thought all the nerds who play that game were like that.
“Sure, I’m smart enough,” Eddie scoffs. “But I don’t play by their rules. I forget to do homework. I argue.”
“But if you know the stuff, they can’t fail you.”
“Ah, but they can. I don’t have the Harrington name to convince them to change a D to a C. It’s all good. Everyone expected it.”
Steve’s brows furrow, forehead creasing as he thinks about how many things people expected of him that won’t happen.
“Just because people expect it doesn’t mean you have to give it to them,” he says.
Eddie’s eyes widen and he seems shocked by Steve’s words. But the shock wears off quickly. Steve wonders if he imagined it.
“Right you are! Very wise words from the king,” Eddie bows dramatically.
Steve laughs.
Eddie glances up, tense until he realizes Steve’s not laughing at him, just at the entertainment. He stands straight and holds out his hand.
“I do believe such wise words should be repaid with a dance,” Eddie puts on a fake British accent, nose pointed to the sky, smirk playing on his lips.
Steve thinks this must be what it’s like to be charmed by someone.
“A dance?” Steve asks. “Here? With me?”
“It would be my honor,” Eddie loses the accent and turns his head back down so he’s looking right at Steve’s eyes. “Miss Lauper wrote this song just for us, after all.”
Steve’s confusion grows until he hears the song coming from the gym. He can only imagine how awkward it must be in the gym while some couples slow dance with chaperones watching their every breath. He reaches out and takes Eddie’s hand.
“The honor is mine, sir Munson,” Steve tries for an accent like Eddie had previously, but it falls flat.
Eddie pulls him close, but hesitates before he puts an arm around his waist. Steve feels breathless all of a sudden, like they’ve rocketed into space and he forgot one of those astronaut suits. He nods, giving permission for Eddie to take the lead.
When Eddie pulls him closer, they’re almost flush against each other.
Steve’s heart is racing.
“I didn’t know you were weird,” Eddie admits quietly. It sounds a lot like admiration. He’s swaying them back and forth gently, and Steve finds it’s easy to lose track of everything but the way Eddie’s hands rest on his body. “It’s nice to see you, Steve.”
It’s a lot more than what it sounds like.
As Cyndi Lauper plays, Steve wonders if this is how his prom was always meant to be spent: in Eddie Munson’s arms, falling.
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hitlikehammers · 2 days ago
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tremolo
…what if instead of learning clarinet or percussion, you could learn to read the music of hearts? 💕
rating: t ♥️ cw: love at first sight, car crash (off-screen), SUCH FLUFF ♥️ tags: ✨magical realism au, musician eddie munson, paramedic steve harrington, kinda soulmates (it makes more sense with the magical realism part), character study, softness
for @steddielovemonth day one: "Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet." —Plato
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It was just like learning any instrument, really.
At least what they tried to convince Eddie to believe at the tender age of nine.
But it was all about finding an aptitude, apparently. Developing a talent. Fourth grade rolls around and he fucks up blowing with a reed, manages to give himself a tongue splinter. Nearly passes out on the brass. Ends up with the choir lady looking over horn-rimmed glasses and narrowing her eyes at him less like a teacher and more like a fortune teller or something, scrying what’s to come of him, like she can see through all that he is and will be, before she goes scribbling something on his little slip of paper already marking all the failed kinds of music he’ll never get to make and telling him: go to Room 011.
But no one ever goes to Room 011.
He meets a petite woman with mousy hair and clothes that look like they belong to someone else, somehow. She introduces herself as Miss L. She looks like a Miss L., so he doesn’t think any further on the point.
You will not play much, really, she tells him, and the way she talks is kinda funny, like she learned words but not from people actually saying them out loud. Eddie kinda likes it, though. The playing is only for emergencies, and if you find your True Note.
Eddie doesn’t know what most of that means, except for the fact that the whole point of trying—and failing—at all the instruments was to join the school band with something to play. So if that’s not what he’s going to learn, then what the heck is Eddie meant to be doing down here—is what he wants to ask.
He manages a little politer version of the same, his nan’d be proud. His dad wouldn’t care even if he was around and not behind bars. His uncle might be happy that Eddie’s kept his nose clean just this one time. So he figures he does okay.
But really, he just wants an answer. He was supposed to get to learn music. It was the one thing that was keeping this whole year feeling like he could maybe, maybe survive it.
It also means he doesn’t have to take the art class that’s mostly kindergarten crafts instead of real art, so.
“You will be learning music,” Miss L. answers, more patient than most grownups; “you are here to learn how to read the songs that hearts sing.”
And that is, by far, in all of his whole nine years of living, the most fucking absurd sentence that Eddie has ever heard.
——
He’d kinda thought it was a joke, when he left that first afternoon to get back before Language Arts.
Turned out: nope. It was not.
He’d maybe thrown something slightly less childish than a tantrum, when what he got was a big set of earphones and a box the size of an Easy-Bake Oven, where apparently he’d be playing some kind of recordings to start his lessons.
“Do you not wish to learn?” Miss L. asked so simply, and Eddie…
Eddie reminded himself that no matter how foolish and stupid this was, it couldn’t possibly be worse than making construction paper collages with Elmer’s glue, so.
He put the headphones on and pressed play.
——
His workbooks didn’t look like anyone else’s in band—in fact, Eddie didn’t think he was actually a part of the class band, like, he wasn’t expecting to play at the spring concert with the flutes and the trombones, anymore. When he had sheets of staves to fill out they didn’t have straight lines. He didn’t draw different circles with little flags and bridges connecting them. He…
“When there are no keys, and there is no time signature,” Miss L. had explained, and it took time to make any sense; “you are the rules, and you feel what is a melody,” she’d tapped something that feltbeautiful, like daffodils blooming, though Eddie couldn’t say why; “and what is a warning.”
And then she’d tapped again, and it clenched in Eddie’s chest like a tornado siren, and…yeah.
That was kind of the best explanation he could have asked for.
——
It’s in middle school, when everyone else gets new band directors while Eddie sticks with Miss L., that it starts to…well.
That’s when the fact that Eddie’s alone in his lessons, and no one seems to know quite what he does—and the other kids who get that kind of treatment are usually the ones who can’t add or spell right, who have some kind of problem to work on extra hard—but it’s around then that Eddie starts being called names for it.
It’s not too bad, at first. Eddie’s worked for his two full years of elementary school lessons to get through recognizing the songs, suffers the point where recognizing becomes unbearable, overwhelming—Miss L. never left his side when he held his head in pain for all the noise, all the songs because they were everywhere, in everyone, and how was he supposed to learn what was right and what was good and what was just okay but then what was also everything the opposite when he couldn’t even think—
But she taught him the tools, the ways to sift through the chatter, as she called it. Because not all of it was a warning; not all of it was bad just because it wasn’t beautiful.
Some of the noise just was.
She showed him how to trust his own ear; his own song in his own chest as a guide, because that’s why he was here: he had a gift, an aptitude, built in and in need of development. Liked they’d said in the beginning.
He’s nearly thirteen when she teaches him how to write his own songs, in the not-notes and the no-tempos. In the nameless flow of sound.
It’s when his classmates overhear one of those works-in-progress, the taunting gets worse, starts to hedge toward unbearable.
Until Eddie asks if he can just stop: quit this. It’s not worth it. He doesn’t want to be a freak.
“It is a rite of passage, to ask this,” Miss L. says slowly, no judgement, and weirdly no pity; “but I should tell you first,” and her eyes narrow more than Eddie thinks he’s ever seen them.
“Your skill is already greater than any I have seen, and is only getting sharper, more keen.”
And hell if a teacher’s ever said something niceabout Eddie Munson, let alone something that sounds like flat-out praise.
“They cannot hear the music, this is why they say those things,” she flicks her wrist less like conducting a chorus and more like shooing a gnat, like that’s the appropriate amount of consideration the comments deserve. “Your task has always been to teach them what they do not know, to show them the wonder they are ignoring as they live and breathe.”
And while it really would have been nice to know that before signing up for this…this what, calling? Vocation?
While that would’ve been nice, Eddie…Eddie can at least mostly understand he wouldn’t have understood any of it in the fourth grade.
He barely understands now.
But he can feel it. He understands how to feel the music that fills all those gaps.
“This is common,” Miss L. turns back to him, steeples her fingers while humming something from the radio: not bad, but not beautiful. That’s what she means, he realizes. The radio plays common.
“This,” and she puts a hand over her own chest and keeps time with her fingers on the tabletop as she hums a wholly novel thing out of thin air, and Eddie has never seen someone else recognize the music, has never watched someone compose in the veins where the songs that hearts sing are played, let alone in real time; maybe she never had because he had to lean for himself, first.
But it is kind of exquisite to witness.
“This,” she stops, and raises a brow pointedly in Eddie’s direction; “is human, built in your cells.”
Eddie couldn’t name why, precisely, but he feels…shamed, but also empowered. So different, but they make an almost compelling melody together as they clash.
“They will call you freak before they call you prodigy,” Miss L. says it like a fact, which…kinda sucks to hear, in all honesty.
“They will label you insane, before they recognize you as genius,” and the way she adds that part makes him feel like that was her personal burden to bear, and he aches for her in it.
“They will cry out garbage and nonsense,” and here, these words: these are the ones Eddie knows immediately he’s meant to be hearing, be weaving into notes the strongest, the ones she wants him to keep closest and never lose:
“They will cry out worthless,” she spits out with a venom he’s never heard her use; “before they will sob in the face of your masterworks, and how they will breathe magic in the soul.”
And…Eddie doesn’t know exactly what to do in the face of the conviction she says that last part with. To doubt it, as he instinctively wants to, feels vile; the most egregious disrespect. He can’t bring himself to even try. So, he asks instead, voice rough:
“When will it change?”
Because despite everything: he doesn’t want to be a freak.
“That I cannot say,” she sighs, and she does sound sorry; “and it may never change at all.”
Eddie doesn’t know if he’s built to handle that, the possibility of never.
“But even if you leave, here and now,” Miss L. cuts into his despairing; “even if you stop your learning, the songs will never leave you.”
Oh.
Oh, so did they…did they teach him to hear a endless goddamn curse, and as a fucking kid—
“You would always have come to hear them,” Miss L. must read his mind, or maybe just his face; “just never with any place to funnel the noise,” and he…guesses he should be grateful. He nearly went mad in those early years, before she taught him how to make new melodies, concertos the likes of which even the great masters hadn’t penned, because they played in a different medium. Their notes and structured time were useful, but limited.
And if they never heard otherwise, how would even the most brilliant talents know what they were passing over, leaving behind?
“Do you still wish to leave?”
Eddie turns, almost having forgotten Miss L. was still sitting there, watching him. Almost having forgotten what he’d come to ask, to give up.
There’s no question left, now.
He gets out his notebook, his pen, and starts as he always does.
With the listening.
——
It’s a genuine distraction—the songs get louder with time, but Miss L. tells him that’s a sign of his skill growing, his notice of the equivalents of key signatures and ligature notes in the heartbeats he passes every day—but it costs him passing senior year once, and then again, and almost a third time until by the skin of his teeth, he manages. While every other teacher shames him for it, derides him as incurably stupid, or at the very least unambitious to the point of embarrassment, the extra years mean more time with Miss L., and Eddie…most days, Eddie is nothing but thankful.
More time means Eddie also learns that the songs he hears are as much a public service as they are an art form, as much a defense mechanism as a craft. He knows when bullies are on the prowl, and to make himself scarce for their screeching cacophonies. He knows when he has to be less of a coward and step in when a wild rhythm makes him sick with its fear.
The more he pays attention to the not-quite-beautiful songs—especially when he thinks on them later and stumbles upon nuggets of the exquisite inside every way they weren’t—the more he remembers years ago, out of almost nowhere, but maybe…maybe everywhere, like it’d been written in his heart’s song the day she spoke it:
“My first day,” he enters the same room—not the same-same room but the one in the high school that’s as abandoned as all of them have been, always Room 011—but he enters the room close to the end of the year, the last year, with the question thick on his tongue, and woven the same in his song as he closes the door and feels his heartbeat quicken for no reason and every reason, like he’s long learned these songs always do.
Miss L., for her part, just nods; waits.
“You said,” Eddie rolls his lips together; “emergencies.”
It’s a delay tactic. They both know it.
She’s kind to play along.
“Mmm,” she hums; “the slightest bits, yes, you can shift the rules to change the song, because you made the rules to begin with,” she eyes him carefully, then. “But only by bits, and in only the most dire moments.”
Yeah, yeah, sure. He never thought he could like…write lines to coax a heart to sing itself back from the dead or some shit. He gets the point.
Again, they both know: that’s not the point he’s here for, heart pounding high in his throat.
“But then you also said something else.”
This time, she doesn’t nod at all; just stares. Eddie has to clear his throat twice to make a sound so as to ask:
“What’s a True Note?”
Because Eddie’s had a couple flings here and there. And the idea of anything real with someone else, alongside the weight of this…talent of his, this training that’s defined half his life by now: it’s really nothing more than a stray idea. But Eddie can’t really hide from the fact that, somewhere along the way, he’s suffused that idea with so much promise and potential, but with no legs for it to fucking stand on.
And he’s about to graduate. About to go out into the world and…who the fuck knows what.
He needs to either hold onto this insane, silly notion of some cosmic meant-to-be match waiting for him somewhere, that it’s at least possible, and then hold on to it like burning—or let it go, and get on with the rest of his fucking life.
“Do you know how I said you could sway the rhythm just the littlest bit, in the greatest of need?”
Of course he did. She literally just said it.
“Your True Note will sing like you have never heard before,” she tells him like it’s not something…immense; “and that song will sway your rhythm so much more than the littlest of anything.”
She just fucking says it, like it isn’t already swaying the rhythm his heart sings in. Here and now.
“That heartsong will change your world.”
And all Eddie can even think to ask, to make more plain in it, is just one thing:
“Will I change theirs, too?”
Miss L’s eyes lock to his and hold for enough seconds where it should be uncomfortable, where his chest starts to grow unbearably tight.
“Hmm,” she considers finally; “if it is meant to be that way.”
Eddie wants to scream. It’s not enough.
And still somehow, it will have to be.
——
In the months that follow his freedom, he misses Miss L. Kinda desperately.
But the lack of structure, the openness of knowing he has to find a way to piece together all the snippets of song he’s bombarded with: it is the reason he ever picks up a guitar. It’s the whole learning heartsongs thing that he has to thank for it, a roundabout journey toward the destination he’d wanted from the beginning.
Or else, that he thought he did.
It’s not just guitar, though. He eventually learns the woodwinds without ending up with a splinter in his mouth. Figures out the different harmonies at hand in making sure he tempers the way he breathes for the brass. He loves the piano, and the cello especially, alongside guitar and double bass: he makes a trip back home specifically to see her and ask—Miss L. tells him it’s probably because of their strings, like hearts have, too.
It feels right in a way things haven’t felt in a very long time.
Which is really how he comes to not only understand, but to accept in his bones: no matter if they ever call him prodigy or genius, if he ever plays a concert hall or anywhere but on a street corner with an open case for change, he was made for this; built for this. The woman with the horn-rimmed glasses who sent him to the basement music room saw it in him. Miss L. proved it to him by teaching him to prove it to himself. He doesn’t know if he’d have picked it, but he knows it was never something he could have picked or turned down in the first place at all: it’s who he is.
He is the music. He is the songs that hearts use for singing. And maybe someday he’ll meet someone who sees it in him, and hears his song, and sings ecstatic. Maybe.
He hopes.
But either way: this is his life.
This is his melody.
——
It takes years before they do sob for his masterpieces, for them to be ready for a style and cadence they don’t understand because they will never comprehend the language, that speaks deeper than the logic required for any of those rules. It takes a long fucking time before they start listening with the lens of the first song any of them ever learned. But the time does come, and Eddie is grateful, because he’d genuinely feared the maybe-never he’d been warned about. He’s glad that’s not where he is, now.
But now? Things start to happen almost unbearably fast. Shows here and flights there, guest appearances and interviews, record labels and live recordings, a book deal he can’t even begin to think about. The world tips on its axis and Eddie only really considered that happening to him for one reason: because of a song so beautiful, in a Note so True—this isn’t that.
But everything still feels upside down anyway; totally off-kilter.
He’s crossed ten time-zones this time. He’s exhausted, but he has a performance tonight, just like he did in the tonight of the place he just left. The car he’s in on his way to the next venue is sleek, like they all are now; his team is already there preparing, so it’s just him and some local hires he hasn’t even had a chance to learn the names of yet, which he hates. He hates being privy to their songs and not even knowing their names, let alone their stories.
He jots the notes he gleans from how they sing without their words on the drive across town anyway. Waste not, and all that.
Eddie has the pen in hand, cap between his teeth, when the truck plows straight into them.
What follows would be unsurprising, if Eddie could process it from a bystander’s point of view—as it is, the only thing he knows in the melee is the music.
He is devastated, as he reaches out for the slowing songs around him, knowing in the back of his mind what their slacking tempos mean, and marveling with something like horror at how beautiful each one is as it starts to fade: still unique, still something Eddie could braid into a piece, certainly one to draw tears.
His own song is ebbing, he knows, but it’s less important than the sweet melodies around him, especially—
Oh.
Eddie thinks, with what may be the last thought left to him as pressure and heat and pain tingle at the edges of the music, almost too strong now to be drowned out by the notes that are what Eddie is at his core: but he thinks he may be too far gone already, because what he begins to hear is…
Exultant. It’s…
If Eddie believed in a heaven, this would be what the hosts there sang. When the idea of divinity is bandied about, they can only ever be talking about some cheap imitation of what Eddie hears now. Luminous. Effervescent.
Beautiful in a way that exceeds the word itself so deeply that it barely fits, obliterates the notion on sight.
And what a gift, Eddie muses as everything dims to black, to hear such Notes, such perfect music as the last thing he has to hold onto in the end.
To end on something that’s True.
——
The next tones Eddie hears are mechanical. He winces—not bad but certainly not beautiful—and then winces harder because wincing itself fucking hurts.
He holds himself still, seeks the song he knows in his own veins: yes, and he’d been so sure it was gone, because there’d be an accident, a crash, he’d been thrown, crushed, songs all around him were dying and he’d heard the magnificent symphony of otherworldly perfection so—
“I’m technically not supposed to be here,” a voice interjects, or no: drips in leisurely, like comfort, like honey; “because you’re a patient, and I’m,” and Eddie forces his eyes open to see the voice come out of a man, who is pointing at his chest: a uniform. Medical.
“I’m not dead?”
All signs do point that direction but…Eddie had been kinda fairly sure he was done for.
“God,” the man chokes like he’s pained, like the idea hurts him, and why; “no,” and he says that a little fiercely, protective almost; “though not for lack of an effort.”
He looks tired, as Eddie’s vision starts to clear some more. He looks radiant. Exquisite.
Beautiful.
“You saved me?”
Because Eddie clocks the uniform now: paramedic. The ones who come onto the scenes and try like hell to save who they can. Heroes.
“I helped,” the beautiful man says, like a hero would, of course. But…it still doesn’t make sense. If the man does this for his job, then Eddie isn’t special, so then why is he so vehement, and then what of all the fading songs Eddie remembers, because Eddie had heard—
“What about,” he starts, but there’s a hand over his quickly, soothing.
“Everyone’s here, different wards,” the hero-beauty tells him in lows tones; “we don’t know if they’ll all make it through the night, but,” he nods, like…this is enough.
And it is. Except…
“How?”
And where Eddie is baffled, his hero just quirks a brow.
“Don’t tell me you never covered emergencies?” he asks skeptically. “Most dire moments, greatest of need?”
And it’s with those words that Eddie’s world slows very quickly to a halt. The music swells in a way he’s never known: because it’s always present to hear.
Buts it’s never been so tangible to feel, not like this, and with such…magnificence, no lesser word could touch it. Maybe he truly is closer to death than not, maybe that’s the reason for the fervor in this man he doesn’t know—the choirs of the angels Eddie wasn’t banking on swells and is visceral, and this hero sits before him, speaks the words that have haunted Eddie more days of his life than not, and—
“This was where the music took my life,” the man pulls at his collar, indicative again: the heroism. He…he saves people, because he, he also hears…
“But I couldn’t have done it without you.”
His hand on Eddie’s tightens, like gratitude, and Eddie…gapes like a fucking fish, and then—
“There’s something else.”
“Not just here to check up on the fruits of your medical miracle?” Eddie’s tongue feels heavy, thick in his mouth; he feels sluggish all over, weighted down and like he can barely move because…this man hears the music that hearts make.
Can he hear the ineffable beauty, like Eddie can? He must, that’s how it works, so why is he not in the same amount of awe—
“Not just,” the man smiles small, but real, a little hesitant. A little…shy, maybe, before he straightens, leans a little closer.
“Watch that screen,” and he tracks Eddie’s gaze until Eddie’s fixed upon the ECG, the most disappointing distillation of the songs he’s learned to find so much wonder in.
But then the man is pressing Eddie’s hand to his own chest, which…is forward, given they don’t even know each other.
Eddie is maybe still on, or at least just-recently-off, death’s door, and either way he’s fucking thrilledwith this development, warm beneath his palm.
“Now count.”
It only takes a moment, to put the gestures together into a statement.
The beat under his touch matches the line across the screen. Exactly.
But this man’s not the one attached to the monitor.
“Got it?”
Eddie nods, and the man doesn’t hesitate, lifts Eddie’s hand and presses it back to Eddie’s own chest.
“Again.”
And that’s…that’s not the same rhythm as the one on the screen; the songs don’t match at all.
But Eddie can still hear the one that does—the beauty. The exaltation.
“Can you,” Eddie asks, lifts his finger that’s got a clip on it, and the man’s a professional, he’ll understand—looks less than conflicted about disconnecting Eddie from wires and leads before clipping his own finger and letting the screen shift to a new cadence.
The same one under Eddie’s hand, in Eddie’s own chest.
“Holy fuck.”
“Yeah,” the man barely breathes, and Eddie notices now how intense his eyes are, focused solely on Eddie, and…Eddie remembers the words that came after the ones about emergencies. About how little he could help, but that he could still do something.
But with only one person, it could be—
“You didn’t just sway my rhythm,” Eddie half-gasps; “you made it your own.”
And oh: Eddie never tied the song of hearts to the song of laughter, but from this man, the huff of incredulous joy that slips from him now—they’re made wholly of the same stuff.
Symphonic. Staggering. Weeping to feel this much, in the soul, to be privy to such a…
Masterpiece.
“Worked both ways, it seems.”
“I heard you,” Eddie blurts out, because it makes sense now; “before I, when I thought I was,” dying, when he thought it was all over; “like I’ve never heard anything before.”
And now: of course this man hears the heavenly movement Eddie thought was a mercy before the end but was instead the arrival of everything he’d ever hoped to one day find, literally coming to rescue him in more ways than one; but that song is somehow commonplace to this unfathomable angel on the earth.
And what this man hears stronger, louder, dearer seems somehow to be Eddie, the song he sings from the chest, in how it’s causing those caramel eyes to glimmer, and to barely blink lest they miss something in just…Eddie.
“You never stopped,” the man says with urgency, with feeling; “your song never stopped,” and then he’s closing his eyes and laying both his hands over his own chest, where Eddie’s heartsong is ringing full and maybe changing his world, because the song in Eddie’s chest sure as hell has already changed his, and—
“It’s extraordinary.”
And Eddie, in years of ridicule, in months of celebration, in all the ups and downs and doubts and hopes this life of songs and hearts and rhythms and beats has left him with, in all of it—
Those two words rewrite his whole fucking being.
“True Note,” Eddie mouths more than speaks before he scoffs; “shit, but that seems like a really fucking inadequate thing to call it,” and his eyes lift to take in the man who he knows, he knows is going to be his magnum opus, or more: is going to write the magnum opus they will be and breathe and share from here to all ends:
“To call you.”
And there’s the clearest sense of a trip in a beat, but who it belongs to isn’t clear, and maybe that’s the reality for them both now: every subtlety of the song is now shared, now theirs.
“You could start with Steve.”
Eddie looks up, breath a little heavy, but the smile on the man’s face is broad and kind of overjoyed, kind of looks like Eddie’s chest feels:
“My name’s Steve.”
And that?
Best damn title for a symphony Eddie’s ever fucking heard.
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✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here @pukner @ravenfrog @rebellatlas @sadisticaltarts @samsoble @sanctumdemunson @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @stealthysteveharrington @swimmingbirdrunningrock @theheadlessphilosopher @theintrovertedintrovert @themoonagainstmers @theohohmoment @tillystealeaves @tinyloonyteacups @tinyplanet95 @warlordess @wheneverfeasible @wordynerdygurl @wxrmland @yesdangerpls @yourmom-isgay @1-tehe-1
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jejelovescats · 1 day ago
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My analysis on Spy X Family chapter 111
well uhm today's chapter was something initially I though the chapter was too short to write about, but we did get valuable information, and writing isn't only about the present, it's also about the past and future so I've been thinking about this for a few hours and here's what I've found. First point I'd like to make was way back in chapter 1, we got a very brief introduction about Anya, it was stated that she was an unintentional consequence of research experiments and that she had later escaped the facility.
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Now since the chapter was quite short, many statements I make can be far-fetched. Alright now, when they said, "unintentional consequence of research experiments" they could've simply meant that the woman (who Anya refers to as "mama") could have just gotten pregnant and called that "unintentional consequence" and when stated "research experiments" they could have simply meant her mother. Now I said "the woman who Anya refers to as "mama"," because she could still be a woman who Anya has grown fond of and called 'mama', this is quite unlikely and I believe that she is her biological mother, still just a thought Now we ask ourselves, in chapter 111, was that a lab? my answer: yes, I do quite think so why? if you look closely, on the back of both Anya and her (probably) biological mother, there are strings holding the dress from behind like a lot of hospital clothing..
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And one panel that really stood out to me was this one. Some people theorized previously that if Anya were to have a biological parent, they'd be the reason of her being held captive in the lab. This has been debunked after today's chapter. It seems that Anya's biological mother wanted freedom just as much Anya did, she's a victim in this too. Another point I'd like to make is that Anya's mother probably helped free Anya (as stated in chapter one, all it said was that she escaped, doesn't mean no one helped her) since she knew she couldn't escape herself. The symbolism is symbolizing 🙂‍↕️
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Now this is where we ask ourselves, where is Anya's mom? my answer: Probably dead. Why else would she have cried on the interview day? She appeared to be very close to her mother in today's chapter and it would explain her tears. She could also just be trapped in the lab, but I find the first explanation more logical, even though they're both a possibility, that's just my opinion.
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Something else, are Anya's powers inherited? probably, they could have messed up with the mother's DNA and passed it on to Anya, and they experimented further on Anya to further develop her powers Last thing, the hair. we saw in chapter 1 that Anya had her hair in buns, as well as today with her mother, and present Anya always has those cone shaped hairpieces on her hair, we've never seen her without them. why? no idea I've gathered a bunch of theories that are plausible 1) they have some type/form of horns hidden underneath their buns 2) scars now the scars would make sense for 2 reasons 1) Donovan, who's probably a mind reader (though we can't verify Melinda as an accurate source) has scars on his head as well, now even though the placement isn't the same, they're still scars. 2) They want to convince their selves they're normal people
hear me out. A woman and her daughter are both trapped in a lab, being experimented on, they have scars, won't hiding them give them some sense of normalcy?
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And also, the fact that Anya asked Yor if she could read her mind, the poor kid is looking for anything that might remind her of her mother, in the chapter, her face wasn't shown, just like Loid's flashback. I also noticed while Anya was dreaming that she held bond quite tightly, I think that's because she was trying to hold out to her mother.
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well, I did NOT expect to write this much given the length of the chapter😂 can you tell that this was VERY rushed? Since loid did mention that she was sleeping before her bedtime, that probably means that when Anya sleeps again, she'll dream of her mother once again. well, that's me rambling! hope you enjoyed! please feel free to share your thoughts or any more thoughts you might have! okay but isn't baby Anya just adorable? SEE Y'ALL IN 2 WEEKS<333
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genericpuff · 2 days ago
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Hey y'all, Episode 67 will be out as soon as it's ready. I'm not gonna lie, coming off the back of a crazy holiday season, I was hoping things were gonna get back on track with the update schedule, but the last 2-3 weeks have brought about a whole new whirlwind of issues:
I took our cat to the vet a few weeks ago to get him checked out (esp because he wasn't eating as much as usual and we wanted to make sure he wasn't sick). The usual vet we go to has become a shithole, the doctor we got was extremely unhelpful and every interaction I've had with other members of staff there has been confusing and unpleasant. After an hour of an appointment that was more uncomfortable than it should have been, we were out $700 which was absurd, even for usual vet fees. After I shared the more detailed version of this story with friends IRL, some of them mentioned that apparently this particular clinic (among others throughout Canada) was bought by an American company. So that certainly explains a lot -_-
Car broke down and that cost like $800 to fix. Thankfully wasn't as expensive as the fucks at Canadian Tire quoted us, but it was still another huge expense on top of the vet bill.
Our shop moved locations this weekend, which took a lot of time to both prepare for and finally pull off over the course of the last few weeks. My new booth is at least set up enough to tattoo but there's still a lot left to do to make it comfortable.
Now my cat is potentially developing jaundice (sign of liver failure) which lines up with his blood test results from the vet showing increased liver enzyme levels or something like that (but they were apparently not enough of an emergency for the vet to actually do anything about it). I booked with a different vet clinic but they can't get us in until the 20th. So I booked an appointment for today with the emergency vet up the road. I'm terrified for him, he's an old cat so it was inevitable that his health would start to turn, but other than his increasingly picky eating habits and signs of jaundice, he's still acting like himself and it's breaking my heart that he could be hiding his own symptoms. I really just do not need a pet death on top of everything else that's going wrong right now.
As for the episode itself, it's not even that long, but the set design is pretty detailed and in our attempts to create some 3D models for ourselves, it resulted in bugs that had to be fixed on the fly. Thankfully I think we've finally got it down (and it's a recurring location so it's not like it won't be useful to have again in the future) but overall the episode production just hasn't gone as smoothly as it could have compounded by everything else mentioned above.
None of these are excuses, just reasons that have justifiably required my attention. Depending on how the vet appointment goes, I'll try and stream later tonight so that folks can at least watch some of the drawing progress for this episode. Episode 67 will be out by next Saturday at the latest, assuming I'm not able to get it out in the next day or two.
I know I'm a broken record at this point, but I'm incredibly sorry for the wait and I appreciate your patience with me. I'm begging for things to calm down soon.
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heylittleriotact · 6 hours ago
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𝐸𝓂𝒷𝒶𝓁𝓂𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝐹𝓁𝓊𝒾𝒹:
Used to preserve deceased individuals, sometimes only until the funeral, other times indefinitely.
(for @emmg who was thirsty for Emmrich porn avec whiskey dick and I am nothing if not accommodating)
Under the cut and on ao3
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Hours had passed since they first set foot in the high-class cocktail lounge tucked behind a secret entrance down an unsuspecting alleyway in Minrathous.
That should have been his first clue that this night was going to end up wildly out of hand. This was no humble tavern with a starving bard strumming their lute in the corner, singing about some woman named Sera while a harried barmaid slung pints of warm ale and unidentified meat to patrons, warding off the occasional pinch to her rear with quick fingers that told just how long she’d been tending bar in the city.
No, instead of a bard, there was a somber, balding man at a harpsichord in the corner, dispensing sophisticated chamber music, and there was no barmaid in sight: only a portly middle-aged Orlesian man who introduced himself to Emmrich and Amina as ‘Guillaume’ and walked with a labored gait that Emmrich suspected immediately to be caused by an active and rather nasty flare-up of gout.
There were no windows in this cocktail lounge, given its exclusive and ‘well-hidden’ existence, and the only light sources were small oil lanterns placed on each of the small round white-linened tables. 
A password. They had needed a password to be admitted into this place. 
While admittedly some part of him felt thrilled at the cloak-and-dagger charm and implication that attending this venue was somehow rebellious in nature, he did think it a bit ostentatious, even for his tastes, but Neve had suggested the lounge, going so far as admitting that it claimed the spot at the top of the list of venues to take dates she was really interested in.
Emmrich didn’t ask where she ended up taking the ones she wasn’t as optimistic about.
Guillaume hobbled over to their table and folded his white-gloved hands before inquiring if the monsieur and mademoiselle would like another beverage. They probably should have stopped two or three rounds earlier, truth be told, but conversation flowed so naturally - so easily - between them, and they simply never ran out of things to talk about.
Emmrich watched Amina lift the little leather-bound menu and squint in the dim light as she attempted to discern the feathery cursive on its pages. A thick strand of her bone-straight black hair slipped over her shoulder as she leaned forward, humming thoughtfully and tugging up the neckline of her plunging burgundy top as if the motion would do anything to protect her modesty. They were both more than a few drinks in, and she wasn’t a heavy drinker to begin with, so about an hour earlier when she’d beckoned him close over the table and whispered in his ear that she wanted him to cum in her mouth later, he knew she was properly in her cups.
He decided he was too as he tilted the empty crystal glass in his hand, watching the large cube of ice within drift over the bottom until it met the side. He’d had what… five or six whiskey cocktails and that one with the gin, vermouth, and olives? Spaced over the three or so hours they’d been here, there was no denying the light around the lanterns had developed a misty glow and he felt very relaxed… and increasingly distracted by the curve of her breasts peeking over the top that was doing its very best to conceal them. 
“I’ll try the Sazerac, please,” she primly closed the menu and held it out to Emmrich, who accepted it from her, arching a brow discreetly in her direction when he felt the pointed toe of her nugskin heel travelling sensually up the inside of his leg under the table, staring at him with kohl rimmed eyes and drawing her lower lip through her teeth like she was a housecat ready to pounce on a fat songbird - him. 
She knew what those naughty little shoes did to him, the minx. 
“One more of these, if you’d be so kind,” he lifted the empty glass and tried his best to sound cordial and unassuming as Amina’s foot meandered up his thigh and the sole of her shoe came to rest on his crotch, which enthusiastically responded to her attention. “And we’ll settle up with you as well, please: we’ve another engagement this evening we must be off to.” He grabbed Amina’s ankle to halt her taunting movements against him, and she shot him a coquettish smile over the rim of her tinted coupé glass before tipping it back and draining the remnants of the cocktail - some concoction of gin, wildflower wine, elderflower, and bitters, among other things… he’d had a sip: it tasted floral and lively like a late spring breeze dancing down a winding country road on a clear day.
Guillaume tipped his head and limped away, returning a few minutes later with the cocktails and a handwritten bill tucked into a little leather folder which he placed in front of Emmrich without hesitation after setting down the drinks. 
As soon as Guillaume was far enough away, Amina reached over the table for the folder, but Emmrich snatched it away, holding it out of her reach.
“This doesn’t concern you, darling.” 
Her outstretched hand did not move. “Don’t be ridiculous, Emmrich. This is hardly my first time at a place like this - I know this isn’t a cheap night.” How lovely she looked with that delicate rush of colour over her cheeks and nose.
Emmrich thumbed the folder open and skimmed over the bill, his expression stoic. “No darling, but I knew before we started seeing each other formally that you’re a woman of expensive tastes.” 
Expensive tastes to the tune of precisely two-hundred-forty-seven gulder… and an appropriate gratuity on top of that. He withdrew his purse from the inside of his waistcoat to start counting out coin. 
Amina knocked back half her Sazerac in one go and said confidentially, hiding the side of her face with her glass so no one but him could see her mouth, “You’re right about that, but there is something I know that you don’t, Professor Volkarin.” 
“What might that be, Ms. Ingellvar?”
She leaned close - almost close enough to taste the booze on her breath. 
“I’m not wearing any underthings.” 
His cock twitched and he felt the colour in his cheeks deepen further at the thought of her warm, wet cunt separated from him by only the expanse of table linen and expectations of public decency. It wasn’t that he needed to drink to feel attracted to her - no, that came as effortlessly to him as breathing - but in the haze of perhaps one or two too many fancy cocktails, his mind was consumed by thoughts of ravishing her for the remainder of the night and well into the early morning if they could get away with it. 
“What a charming surprise.” He counted out payment, set it on the table, swallowed a good deal of his drink, the burn of it doing little to quell the urgent desire to bend her over the table and bury himself in her then and there. “Finish your drink, darling, and let’s get you home, shall we?”
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She was already tugging at buttons and closures by the time they tumbled through the eluvian into the Lighthouse, giggling feverishly and twining around him like an affectionate cat. Her shoes were abandoned in the eluvian room, and her shirt was doffed in a careless heap on the floor at the top of the stairs to the library.
“Remember when I sucked you off by the bookshelf and you were soooo worried that someone was going to catch us?” She grabbed his hand and put it over her bare breast as she meandered unsteadily backwards towards the stairs to their respective rooms.
Filling his hand with the warm weight of her flesh and tugging at her nipple gently, he hushed her inebriated titter with his mouth over hers, knowing full well that he was far too drunk to be wandering around attached to someone at the mouth with his eyes closed, but not able to find it within himself to behave responsibly for a change. 
“Davrin very nearly did: you’re a bad influence, Ms. Ingellvar,” he purred, sucking her lower lip into his mouth and catching it with his teeth. She moaned into the slight hurt and threw her arms around his shoulders, then her legs, trusting him to catch her - which of course he did. He could drink the city of Minrathous dry and he’d never drop her. Not her. Not precious, beautiful, lovely, entrancing Amina…
He carried her all the way down to his bedroom, admittedly a little unsteady on his feet and taking extra care as he descended the stairs from the laboratory into the well-appointed cavern where he slept and kept his personal effects. 
Placing her gently on the bed, he did away with his boots and joined her, crawling atop her and devouring her with another hungry kiss as he slipped his hand up her thigh, past the bunched up hem of her skirt until his fingers met with the dripping heat between her legs. 
“I’m beginning to think you deeply begrudge smallclothes, darling. It seems you’re completely averse to wearing them unless absolutely necessary…” He circled her clit with his thumb almost tauntingly before slipping two fingers inside her, working them slowly, stretching her, slickness slowly travelling down his palm and the back of his hand.
Arching against his touch, Amina groaned. “I never did have much patience for pointless things.” 
She palmed him through his pants, humming approvingly when she found him hard and straining against the material. “I wanna kiss it,” she declared, her voice semi-slurred, looking up at him with glassy eyes. 
“You want to kiss it,” he corrected smarmily.
She poked him in the side, hitting a spot she knew was ticklish and making him flinch, but his fingers remained within her. “This is not… that’s not how one successfully goes about getting their dick sucked.” Despite the admonishment, her fingers worked at the closures of his trousers, and despite the turgid gracelessness of her motions, she managed to free him.
Leaving the comforting warmth between her legs, he fell to the bed, still completely clothed, and Amina slinked downwards, bending her legs at the knee behind her and crossing her feet at the ankles as she rested on her belly so he could enjoy the sight of her petite little soles and well cared for toes while she sucked him off because she knew he enjoyed that. 
How lucky he was. How unexpectedly fortunate to find himself on this harrowing but exhilarating adventure of a lifetime to begin with, and then to find companionship as well? True, genuine connection with another person that he hadn’t felt in years - he certainly hadn’t responded to that letter from Bellara requesting a meeting operating under the assumption he would find himself entangled with someone as wonderful as Amina... 
There was little refinement to her approach of pleasuring him - no slow, sensuous teasing with that tongue of hers, not tonight, oh no: her nose was already already buried in his pubic hair, and the tip of his cock was residing somewhere in the neighbourhood of her tonsils. Uninhibited by the numerous cocktails she’d downed, she was going down on him like he was her last meal and it sent his mind reeling to witness her so liberated and shameless in her movements and actions.
Her eyes met his and she let his cock slide from her lips, a fat rope of saliva still tethering him to her, and the naughty thing actually winked at him before a heavy bead of drool dangled from her open mouth and spread over him, the heat and depravity of it forcing the air from his lungs. 
Working the slick all over him with her callused hand, he watched her and something in his brain stopped working altogether when she lowered her head and enveloped him again, her sage green eyes locked on his the entire time.
Messy, sloppy, unseemly. Every memory of a polite greeting and an understanding smile held in sharp relief against the undisciplined young woman currently slobbering on his dick.
It was exceptionally attractive.
But then something was off. The steady thrum of his pulse beating hard through his nethers vanished with worrying haste.
Oh no… 
No-no-no-no… 
No?
He dared a glance at her and could tell in the instant before his eyes snapped shut from sheer embarrassment that she had indeed realized that something had changed as well. Specifically his cock, and the firmness of it - it was rapidly softening in her mouth… practically deflating in her hand, the blood fleeing from it deciding to circulate elsewhere at the worst possible moment. 
You loser, Volkarin!
He could practically hear Johanna’s snide tone in his mind. Why he was hearing her voice in his internal monologue at this exact moment in time was a mystery to him, but that didn’t change the fact that he heard it like she was kneeling on the bed next to him, berating him directly. 
Amina’s lips twitched upwards in a helplessly sympathetic expression that for the first time in his life had him considering that embracing death might not be so terrible as she continued to do her best to resuscitate his wilting manhood. 
A few drinks and your boudoir performance turns into a mummer’s farce! She’ll come to regret crawling into bed with your feeble bony carcass if this is the best you can do! Poor thing… her, to be clear - not you. I knew you were a lightweight, but this is pathetic!
Too much time had passed with neither of them saying anything - it was becoming increasingly awkward as moments ticked by and his traitorous loins continued to play shy. 
One of them had to say something. 
It had to be him. 
“D-darling–” he stammered uselessly.
Amina sat back, tucking her legs beneath her, his limp cock flopping against his trousers with all the sprightliness of a dead herring. She rubbed her palms on her thighs and blinked rapidly. “It’s… it’s fine!” The put-on shrillness of her voice told him that it very much was not fine. “If it wasn’t doing it for you, you could have just said so.” Her lip trembled and she looked at the pillow above his head instead of him. 
Fade take him: she thought he wasn’t enjoying himself - that she was the reason for his… impotence. 
“No, no, no, dearest - that’s not true at all!” He scrambled for words and her wrists so he could pull her close and try to at least undo some of the damage that had been done, knowing from the redness of her eyes and the knit of her brow that it was far too late: she resisted his gentle tug and stayed sitting on her knees between his legs. 
Of course they were both drunk, and where he found himself unable to perform, she found herself weepy. 
Oh dear.
What a mess he had made of an otherwise lovely evening…
“You must believe me that this isn’t your fault, darling. I… I’ve had too much to drink, I’m afraid, and, and this is tremendously embarrassing - I… this doesn’t happen often, really, I swear, and I want nothing more than to make love to you, it’s just… I just…” his face felt redder than it had all night and the amount of liquor he consumed had nothing to do with it. 
Amina hiccuped wretchedly and finally let him pull her down against him so he could wrap his arms around her and stroke her beautiful night-dark hair. 
“Let me make it up to you?” He murmured drunkenly, softly tracing the shape of her ear with a finger. “Just because I’m not up for it - much to my own chagrin, I must emphasize - doesn’t mean you need to go to bed unsatisfied, hmmm?”
“Please Emmrich, it’s not any fun if you’re doing it out of pity,” she groused into his shoulder, her dissatisfaction with his proposed arrangement apparent. 
What was he to do? He hadn’t run into this particular difficulty with a partner in so long that his memory strained to recall how he’d handled it back then. It seemed cold and uncouth to shrug his shoulders and call it a night, leaving her unfulfilled, but there was little chance of him finding arousal again in this state… not for a few hours at least.
“We… we could try again in a while, perhaps?” He offered weakly, hating himself, hating his uncooperative anatomy, and hating the very existence of the spirit known as whiskey. It would be a miracle if she wanted anything to do with him after this…
Amina heaved a tormented sigh, still not lifting her head from the space between his neck and his shoulder. “I don’t… I don’t want you to feel like you have to do things for me if you don’t want to. It just makes everything… weird.”
He shifted his shoulder, lifting her face from him and then cupping her cheek, forcing her gaze to his. “I do want to though, darling, don’t you understand?” Her fingers found his wrist, warming skin and gold under her searing touch. “I am consumed by thoughts of you from the moment sleep leaves me in the morning to the very moment dreams find me at night, and those dreams have been conquered by you too.”
His other hand skimmed up her thigh, back underneath her skirt, finding her heat again. She shuddered against his touch, still wet and engorged, and he bitterly wished his cock could replace his fingers. 
Would it be like this after he achieved lichdom? Certainly there would be… changes to their intimate dynamic, but would it be fraught with this same awkward tension that currently lingered unpleasantly somewhere between resentment and pity? 
He considered this previously unconsidered eventuality as he laid her down on the sheets and spread her open, filling his nose with the scent of her - feminine and lively: a natural blend of salt and sweetness and sweat that made his mouth water reflexively.
That scent would no longer exist for him after lichdom. Not without olfactory receptors lining the tissue of his nasal cavity. It was indeed difficult to the sense being replaced with something better, but being able to smell was vital to being able to taste, and as he lapped at her deeply, tonguing her hot flesh as one would indulge in a ripe, messy summer peach, something twisted in his chest, compounding the pre-existing misery caused by his inability to perform.
One hand gripped the top of her muscular thigh, the other stretched over her lower belly, covering it almost entirely, hovering over her womb that was hidden under a network of muscle and sinew.
He would no longer be able to taste her, nor would he be able to please her in this way either. 
Never again would he feel her warm juices dripping into his mouth and rolling down his cheeks, saturating the hair above his lip and dwelling there so that he would catch scintillating traces of her in the hours afterwards, making it difficult to concentrate on anything but the memory of her underneath him, chanting his name as he brought her over the edge.
He undid her with ease despite his inebriated state, knowing exactly where and when to lick, how hard, and when to introduce his fingers again, working them inside of her in tandem with his tongue against her clit. 
Touch would still be an option, he supposed, crooking his fingers towards himself and finding the rough, textured spot within her that immediately made her hips buck and her thighs clench against his head. She moaned his name and he placed a gentle sucking kiss on her clit, then told her she was a good girl before returning to his ministrations - and his ruminations.
Would she even desire that, though? Not being able to jointly enjoy each other intimately tonight clearly hadn’t sat well with her, so what were the chances that she would be satisfied - let alone eager - to find release by way of skeletal - albeit loving - hands, and whatever metaphysically similar connection he might unlock?
Would she even want him to touch her anymore once his flesh was shucked away eternally, replaced by linen wrappings and the illusion of a glamour that catered only to the sense of sight?
Her knees pressed against the sides of his skull so hard he thought she might crush it, but he did nothing to remove them or attempt to ease her grip.
How would he even kiss her without lips? Embrace her? Comfort her with his body that was rigid and hard and hollow and cold? 
How could he be anything for her in that form?
… What if she decided she wanted a child?
He liked to think that she would see past it - that her true feelings and affection for him would outweigh her apprehension and need for physical connection - that lichdom and all that came with it outweighed the confines of mortal flesh. But as Amina’s fingers curled in his hair and she gripped him hard as she spent herself, her sweet release gushing down his throat, he knew deep down that the chances of her seeing it that way was about as likely as his cock coming back to life tonight. 
Even still, he couldn’t find it within himself to think her shallow or unfair for it: while he was pleased at the sight of her panting and gasping for breath from his place between her legs, he missed at least having the option to incorporate his own anatomy into their activities, and it was just natural fact that having had a cock for the entirety of his life up until this point, the prospect of having to part with it wasn’t at the top of the list of things he looked forward to experiencing when he finally attempted lichdom.
He should be above such things. He should be beyond such attachments if he was truly ready for the gift of immortality.
He finished licking up every drop of her from her perfect sex, then tucked her in, then tucked himself in alongside her. He smoothed her hair as she nuzzled into him, exhausted and blissed-out as he knew she would be. 
“I’m sorry, darling,” he told her.
“Don’t be,” she mumbled sleepily, already dozing off, uncaring that they were both at least partially clothed. 
He wanted to do as she said, but as he watched her fall asleep in his arms he couldn’t.
Couldn’t let go of the sickly, creeping feeling that he was going to lose her when all was said and done, and this was only a glimpse of a not-too-distant future. 
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The next morning, despite the vicious hangover that was ravaging the insides of his eye sockets and his stomach, he dragged an equally hungover Amina to the market in Treviso and wouldn’t let her leave until he bought her three new pairs of shoes, an expensive new perfume to replace the passable but cheap label she normally wore, and a tasteful but very authentic gold anklet with half a dozen flawless sapphires along the chain. 
It was obvious to both of them what he was doing: making up for his dysfunction the night before. 
But it was more than that for Emmrich. This wasn’t just an apology - it was a promise: I might not be able to please you in the ways that you deserve and desire, but you will never feel unloved. You will never want for anything. 
That’s enough, isn’t it?
I’m enough?
He remained unconvinced.
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seafoamreadings · 1 day ago
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week of february 2nd, 2025
these are written predominantly for the *rising* signs but they are also intuitively "channeled" enough that they should work for any dominant energy you have! (try your sun if you don't know rising, or more advanced readers can try moon, anywhere you have a stellium, etc and see what works best for you!)
aries: venus moves into your sign this week. while venus is classically debilitated in your sign, it just means the energy is not very natural to her. venus in aries is actually lovely as a force for the beauty of justice, and she can make you quite charismatic as well. embrace aesthetics and a little romance.
taurus: while many parts of your chart are active this week, the epicenter of activity is your career, reputation, and public image/status. there are changes coming to this realm and you will do well to put some effort into aligning those changes with the legacy you want to leave, the imprint you wish to make on the world.
gemini: you have great money vibes this week, especially if you are pursuing higher education, spirituality, or foreign travel. jupiter also goes direct in your sign this week, likely bringing helpful people. remember, it's auspicious to also be a helpful person yourself.
cancerians: if you need to do any reputation damage control or prettying up your social media or resume/cv, this week is a perfect time, especially once venus is ensconced in aries. in general you're going to have sort of low energy, so get lots of sleep!
leo: if a friends to lovers story is your idea of fun it's quite probable this week. you'll need to be looking out for it but it will be unmistakable when you do see it. and if that's not really your thing (or in addition to it) you can still make the most of the week's astrology by doing something really nice for a close friend, and appreciating them when they are there for you.
virgo: it's not the sort of week that you can expect things to go according to even your most impeccably laid plans. lean into your natural mutability and embrace unexpected changes instead of letting them chafe and irritate you.
libra: good air vibes continue. these are hard times broadly but for you on a personal level many good things occur and beauty exists everywhere. try to spread some of that to people who struggle more to see it.
scorpio: no matter how developed and complete you may have thought your spirituality to be, your philosophical approach to it continues to develop at light speed this week. don't try to dig in your heels about it but go with the flow instead. you are meant to change and not stagnate, fixed sign though you may be.
sagittarius: your ruling planet jupiter goes direct this week and you may even instantly feel like any stuckness in your life is magically undone and you can move forward (or at all) again. if stuckness hasn't been an issue rest assured good things are occurring for you behind the scenes if not before your eyes.
capricorn: your week consists of mainly minor influences but there is overall a push that you should be having fun, and not forcing yourself to go through rote motions for money or corporate points. it's not a bad time to "touch grass".
aquarius: jupiter direct brings you fun and even romance if you're open to it, but at the same time ceres in your sign square uranus in taurus is a strange standoff that can put you in somewhat unhealthy situations. try to form, or improve, a healthy and stable foundation so that when wobbly aspects like this come up you can regain your footing easily.
pisces: a surreal quality continues into this week. but now you may find you are a little bit more in your head than in some alternate dimension or dreamscape. keep one foot on the ground, and continue to avoid excess or addictive tendencies. indeed, it's not a bad idea to relax at home and see what good fortune just lands at your doorstep for now.
watch the transit posts in real time to have the best guide through your week. want a little more? have a look at my patreon or ko-fi.
check out my etsy for a private reading or fill out this form to set up a reading through venmo, cashapp, or paypal.
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in-a-bucket · 3 days ago
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[Refulgence Post Mortem] OH HOW YOU HAVE WOUNDED ME IM NEVER GONNA RECOVER FROM THIS
seriously though, i'm just so devastated for ken, he sounds so drained. i am very happy that he was willing to open up to hama about kamimura, ken's been isolating himself but at least he's trying, he must have asked for hama's help with cleaning kamimura's room so i'm proud of him for trying. speaking of that, him saying he was so proud of kamimura making long term plans and have hopes and dreams for the future shattered my heart into a million pieces.
him saying "she ruined everything..." in regards to okazaki killing kamimura gave me some shivers, i don't blame him for hating her tho i would too.
but man, him wondering what the point is and how everything feels grey, it's just so dsaolk;sofkjofspjofsepjiopfjs to me. i think that even with him feeling and thinking like this, him allowing hama to help him clean out kamimura's room and tell him about kami tells me that there is still some small part of him that hasn't given up, and i'm holding on to that for dear life. just earlier that day when he was cleaning up the crime scene he refused ojima's help, but this time he let hama help out, that's a good sign i think.
there's been a lot of discussion on the server recently about ken dying this chapter as a victim or killer, cause he's making himself an easy target by isolating himself or he has no other connections besides kamimura so now he has nothing to lose and while i can't say those ideas don't come from anywhere, i really hope that's not what happens. i feel like it'd be way more interesting if gains the motivation to make new connections and try to make it out a live, so he can keep kamimura's memory alive and see his family again and find his own place in the world. that's something that's come up a lot with ken's character, that he isn't really sure what his future is gonna look like and he isn't sure what he wants to do with his life, and now with going on feeling more pointless than ever for him, i think it would be so cool to watch him develop and step outside his comfort zone and security to try and figure out what he wants for himself.
idk, i just really relate to ken in a lot of ways and find his character so interesting. i feel like there's still so much more to explore with him that i wish other tetro fans saw. idk this isn't a super coherent analysis or anything, but i feel like i can see an interesting path for ken's character to go that doesn't end with him dying this chapter or have it revolve around helping kamimura almost entirely, one of these day's i'm gonna write and actual good hasegawa ken analysis haha
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steamberrystudio · 2 days ago
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02/02/2025
Hallo everyone!  Tumblr devlog time!
Summary Bullets:
The last time I posted an update here was to talk about the Episode 2 public release. And now I am moving on to Episode 3. Let's jump in.
I have worked on some new sprites,
Received some new BGs
Worked on new outfits and variations
Staged sprite positions, entrances, and exits
Coded in the eye colour changes
Written up the recap for Episode 2
Coding the SFX and music cues
Started on Wil's expressions
Made some decisions about the next episode (more below)
Art:
I have been working on some new sprites as there are a couple of new characters that pop up in the next episode.
I've also been working on new sprite variations and outfits for some of the characters (including Wil)
There are a lot of new things that will be showing up in Chapter 5 because the crew goes to a new location which requires a whole new set of backgrounds.
Some of these are game-ready, others have to be cropped, prepped, and/or have variations made, however.
Writing
I haven't worked on any bonus content or anything but I did write up the recap info for Episode 2.
Recap stuff can be weirdly time consuming. I want it to be detailed enough it is informative for people but not a massive summary that takes forever to write up.
But other than that I haven't really done any writing...
Other Stuff:
I have been doing a lot of mostly small coding things - coding in the eye colour changes (which I always do before working on expressions) or adding in transitions for the menus, adding in music and SFX and stuff like that.
Before I get into the heavy coding things like the flowcharts or the expressions, there are all sorts of fiddly things that are nice to get out of the way first.
Then more fiddly things after the heavy things are done...
But for now I've been getting some of the smaller things out of the way so I can tick them off the to-do list.
I have started coding Wil's expressions but haven't gotten too far into that just yet.
I have decided that Episode 3 is going to *just* include chapter 5 instead of including 5 and 6.
I've gone back and forth since the beginning on whether I wanted episodes to include one or two chapters. 
I really like being able to do massive updates with 70-90k words because it gives players a lot of content to go through but in all honesty there are some drawbacks to doing it that way. I don't want to get into all those ins and outs but the point is that I finally decided I need to try doing a single chapter release and see if it works better for me, for all of you, and for the project.
Chapter 5 is still really big. On its own, it's over 60,000 words of content so it's not like it's a teensy li'l thing. It's still got some heft.
But yeah, that's my current stance on episode 3 and afterwards we'll see if I'm content to stick to single chapter updates released at a slightly faster pace. And if it helps my sanity.
Upcoming Weeks:
Mostly focused on sprite expressions and getting some of the BG assets ready for the game I think. 
Expressions, next to the CGs and flowcharts are basically the biggest chunk of STUFF to do so I want to get that out of the way early and then focus on other things before I tackle some of the other big development things.
That's all for now. See ya in a few weeks.
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candyswirls · 2 days ago
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Can we get Neoth panicking about Lilith's existence and thinking her a monster before realizing she's just like any other ten year old when she starts purring in his lap?
Well, and animalistic as well as cannibalistic due to the blood drinking, but she's fine, she just has the same markings as some African grass finch chicks have-
He rested his head on his fist, watching his grandchild. What did he do to merit this within her?
She had happily given him a wide, opened mouth smile. Those spots within her mouth and cheeks... inhuman. He felt guilt as she saw his expression and quickly pulled back.
What did this mean, though?
His mind ran through all the various gene-splicing he'd done when creating his sons. Was it his decision? What about Amar and Erda? No, he closely monitored the project.
This had to be his fault. Sanguinius had been worried. She wasn't growing and was turning a sickly pale shade. Weaker than usual. Duller.
She seemed interested enough in her hobbies, and he gladly indulged in it. He offered her a skull to carve into. He'd have been worried if this interest had Dorn not told him how they bonded over the shared aspect of each other's cultures.
Still, he questioned if this was the surface of something for more morbid.
She sat at the base of the throne steps.
"I usually use the tibia or humerus," she stated as she inspected the designs around the eye sockets.
"Not the femur?" He questioned, trying to keep the conversation going. He wouldn't ignore or dismiss her.
"No," she said. "It's too bulky for the types of designs and artistic vision I have. The really hard part is the small bones, though, like fingers. Lots of little details, and I am bigger than baselines. You have to be careful not to break them. It's considered bad luck and disrespectful to the dead."
He nodded slowly even though she couldn't see.
She continued, "Some say that I could just use astartes skeletons, but they don't offer their own for such purposes, and the ceramic infused bones are hard to carve into."
He raised a brow, "The bones are donated. An interesting aspect."
She looked up at him, "It's seen as a great honor to become a work of art and its also an honor to do it for someone. If you ever wanted I could carve your bones."
He stared a moment, and she laughed, "As if you'd ever die! No, but I think it's important to have that promise there."
He had seen the markings again but forced a smile through, "I am flattered at your offer. No doubt you would do well with my bones."
He was the master of mankind but right now, he had another important duty. Being a grandfather.
She stood and skipped up the steps. She kneeled at the throne, resting her elbows on his lap.
"Since it won't happen, I can show you what I'd do," she stated excitedly.
She pointed out each carving on the skull and what it meant. What she would do for him. How she would do things differently than this skull and others she'd carved into.
"I could use xenos or animal bones too and make you something," she offered. "I just need to find some really good ones."
Her glee was obvious.
He stroked her head, "Your father is very proud, I'm sure. I am as well. You take great care in your work. A worthy endeavor."
A smile crossed her face and she rested a head on his lap.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
He got the distinct impression that she needed to hear that. He continued stroking her head and hair and noticed a low and soothing rumble coming from Lilith. Purring. Like so many of his sons could do.
This put himself at ease as well. She'd be alright. She was very much a child. Only caring for her interests and wanting to have validation. She bore no ill will, and he'd have time to figure out something if anything did happen.
He just hoped there wasnt any romantic traditions with this. Throne forbid the day she developed a crush.
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mrsriddlenott · 4 hours ago
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~ Oh, It’s You ~
<<Prev THREE Next>>
[Series Masterlist][Main Masterlist]
Ex-Sneaky Link!JJ Maybank x Kook!Reader
This is an AU set 1 year after s4 however canon plot points won't really be mentioned.
After months of hooking up with JJ in secret, you both began developing deep feelings for each other, but when his friends, Kie especially, learn of your relationship and plot on it's downfall JJ leaves you reeling and confused as he enters a relationship with his best friend leaving you to wonder what you did to push him away so quickly. Unbeknownst to you however. the blonde was struggling more than he let on, wanting nothing more than to go his own path but feeling trapped with those who used to make him feel free. The only person he can think of now that makes him feel as open as he once did is.... you.
Warnings: emotional cheating(they almost kiss), ooc Kie, Depressed JJ but he doesn’t realize, lying and small amount of manipulation on Kie’s part.
~~~~
JJ’s fingers clenched against his phone, knuckles turning white as he waits for your response. Eyes darting between his phone screen and Kie’s angry face in front of him. “Don’t you want a life JJ” She spits at him like venom.
She seemed like such a different person now. JJ remembered when he trusted her with almost anything but whenever he thinks of her now he needs to stop himself from thinking of his dad. He can’t help but wonder if his mother was as easily manipulated by him as he’s beginning to realize he was by Kie.
Nothing he ever does is good enough.
“You said I needed a job and I have an interview, I don’t understand what the big deal is.” JJ sighed, still waiting for the feeling of his phone buzzing in his hand.
“I didn’t mean at some shitty little garage, that’s not going to get you anywhere in life. Working on cars is your hobby, you cannot make a livelihood off of it.” The way she said “you” so full of spite and anger made him feel so small, holding back his own anger as to not snap and make everything worse.
“I’m good with cars Kie, if I get enough legit experience I could open up my own garage.” JJ shrugs, only half enjoying the idea himself but wanting to please her. His eyes fall shut as she scoffs again, arms crossing over her chest while she gave him a disapproving look.
He didn’t want to do this, he hated when she talked to him like this. And when he got your text in the middle of one of their many fights, it felt so right that he should have known it was wrong. But he just couldn’t stay here, and he couldn’t admit to her that he had nowhere else to go after everything. His phone buzzed and his heart jumped, his eyes falling to the screen in his hand trying not to act weird as he read your text.
Y/N🤫💛 Are you sure that’s a great idea?
JJ wastes no time in typing out his response, ignoring the way Kie paces in front of him. She speaks angrily about him getting a job at Rafe’s fancy new nightclub instead, raising her voice with every word and glaring at his phone every second. His eyes roll despite how hard he tried to control them, knowing she hated when he did that but finding it harder and harder to be the perfect boyfriend she had imagined. “Are you seriously ignoring me? If you don’t want to talk about this maybe you should leave for the night.” Kie spat, anger clear on her face and JJ couldn’t blame her.
Jay Not sure if anything is a good idea anymore but ik u feel safe and i have nowhere else to go anymore
It took you much less time to formulate your next text as you read his. Your heart hurts at the pain he seems to be in, he seems so trapped in whatever worries he had right now. He seems hurt and lost, and you know him well enough to know he’s feeling like a burden so you quickly respond, leaving it up to him in the end.
Y/N🤫💛 The window will be unlocked, don’t feel like a burden Jay. I know things are weird between us now and they might always be, but I will never turn you away when you’re struggling. No matter what.
JJ read your text with slightly watery eyes, he felt lost and hurt, he was hurting the people around him just by his existence. He couldn’t be who Kie or John B wanted anymore, it was becoming too much. JB was a dad now and JJ understood why everything needed to become so serious so fast, he really did. But despite how happy he was for him and Sarah and their beautiful baby boy Jackson, he was terrified. The last few years felt like a blur, they went by so fast and JJ ignored it by telling himself he would be free in his 20s.
But he was wrong. It all kept piling on. He felt like in a blink of an eye he would be 30 and still feel absolutely nothing real. With a pang of guilt he bid a stressful goodbye to Kie as he left her house, knowing exactly where he would go, knowing he shouldn’t but knowing he couldn’t resist.
You were the only one that could slow everything down.
The sound of JJ’s bike outside your house had you shooting up from your bed, darting to unlock the window hoping your mom couldn’t hear the sound. She had heard too many tear filled rants about the blonde to ever accept him in her house but you just couldn’t resist him.
JJ quickly scaled the flower trellis on the wall outside your window just as you opened it for him, stepping back and attempting to discreetly watch him. His muscles were on full view from his cut t-shirt, constricting while he worked his way into your room, quickly turning to shut the window before looking back to you, catching you staring with a smirk.
“Hey Princess,” The nickname slips past JJ’s lips without a thought, so easily and smoothly as if he never stopped speaking it, his teeth tugging at his bottom lip as his eyes train themselves on you, “Thank you for letting me in.”
“You can’t call me that anymore JJ,” You breath out quickly before continuing, “And you don’t need to thank me.”
JJ watches you walk around your bed to retrieve the same blanket and pillow he used last time, handing them to him as you plop down onto your bed, “So what happened? You seemed different when we were texting earlier.” JJ scoffs at your words, sitting next to you, almost too close as he starts speaking.
“Me and Kie got into another fight,” He sighs, his eyes finding yours like a refuge before falling to his feet, “She’s been pestering me to work for Rafe so I got an interview at this garage close to her place to get her off my back but she doesn’t think it’ll be enough.”
“Well she doesn’t get a say, it’s your life Jay, don’t pick a job just to spite her. And I understand where she’s coming from, Rafe has basically become an overnight success in the last year but I agree that you shouldn’t settle for what she wants.” JJ watches you, waiting for you to push him one way or the other, but you dont. You wait for him clearly wanting him to choose for himself.
And JJ can’t remember the last time any one accepted, or even wanted to hear, his opinion.
“I don’t care how much everyone thinks he changed or how easily he can convince people, hell I don’t care if he has actually changed. A Cameron will never be my boss.” JJ states matter of factly and you smile up at him, his reserve and certainty always being some of your favorite aspects of his personality.
“I don’t doubt it Jay, and I personally think you’re too good to work for him anyway.” You giggle, and JJ takes note of the fact that is sounded exactly as it always used to. He almost forgot what it sounded like. JJ found himself reminiscing on every second he spent with you, how happy he was and how happy he could be again if he just took a leap of faith.
“I just don’t know what to do,” JJ averts his eyes from you, feeling lost in his own feelings and wants, “Nothing I ever do is good enough for her and it feels like this just wasn’t right, everything feels so forced.” The way his head falls into his hands almost breaks your heart, and you wish you could hug him even though you knew it was inappropriate.
“I can’t help with everything going on but my boss is hiring,” You grimace, your face twisting slightly, “I wasn’t gonna say anything because it’s for a janitor.”
JJ side eyes you with a weak smile making you laugh, turning on your bed to face him fully. “I’m serious JJ, it’s a good idea I swear.” You state with a bit of a giggle in your voice, instinctively gripping at his bare shoulder for only a second before retracting your hand quickly.
“How is that a good idea?” JJ laughs, the warmth of your hand lingering on his shoulder like a burn for far too long.
“Well A it’s not Rafe and B it’s not a random garage with no one you know. Mr.Barnes even grew up in the Cut, he’s way more down to earth than you would expect at first glance and he won’t treat you poorly. ” Your eyes meet his, a smirk growing on his lips at your words.
“So I’d get to work with you, every day?” JJ speaks slowly, words slipping off his tongue like they were somehow sultry. Against your better judgment you smile at his words, breaking eye contact while you try and form words.
“Well not every day, but I would be who shows you around and everything until you get the hang of the place.” You sigh, trying to ignore the excitement running through your body at his close proximity.
“What do you guys even do there?” JJ asks with a small laugh, wanting to hear you talk more than anything.
“Well I just answer calls and fix Mr.Barnes schedule mostly, and y’know take deliveries and stuff but it’s a security company so we more or less just give rich people protection.” Your eyes meet as he watches you talk, JJ can’t think of a better sight than your happy smile while you speak. He could listen to you talk about anything, genuinely. And he knew right then and there that he didn’t care if he was mopping floors and taking out trash, he was gonna take the job just to see you.
Your breath catches, your eyes meeting his again, this time letting them stay locked together. The intensity grows quickly making your chest feel tight, your irises feeling trapped in the strong blue gaze of his. A gasp escapes your lips as he begins to lean in instinctually, making you place a hand on his chest while you put distance between you both by standing.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” JJ stutters, eyelids closing tightly preparing for you to yell at him to leave, that he was a two timing piece of shit that needs to get out of your life for good. Instead you stay pacing in front of him eyes brimming with tears, “I shouldn’t have even thought- fuck I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine, lets just forget it,” Feeling bad for him, you stare to his reddening face feeling your own heat up. Knowing he has nowhere else to go, and despite the sense of worry settling deep in your chest as you decide to ignore this moment you let him stay. “We should probably get to sleep anyway.”
“Yeah yeah,” JJ starts, jumping up from your bed and avoiding eye contact as he prepares a spot to sleep on the floor.
~~~~
~ Taglist ~ (ask to be added❤️)
@slut4-gojo @cali-888 @marley1773 @agnxstic @apeachtea @juno2369 @bee-43 @definitelymentallyderanged
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heliomanteia · 7 hours ago
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From a more leveled perspective, I think this is the fascinating part about Solas' writing: it is so good (both in DAI+Trespasser and DATV) that it convinces people in the real world of similar biased perspectives that in-game characters have. It's rare when a character is so nuanced from every angle you have debates of Solas scale. You can have as many different opinions on Solas as there are people who pick his brain apart.
To me, introduction of Solas into DA universe helped shape its intentional path as a series. It assisted in developing a conceptual, narrative line that matched some of the first codex entries included in the first volume of World of Thedas: it depends on a story.
Solas is a prism that changes depending on the angle you look at him under. Dread Wolf walks between two clans and Solas disappears between definitions. You can't really pinpoint him, he is a character intentionally written with reflection in mind. He remains that character dependent on the player's (and his adversaries', and his friends', and his lovers', and his companions', and his—) perspective.
Every time I try to wrap my mind around Solas as a whole nothing coherent comes out, he doesn't want to be defined. He's knowledge personified, perhaps? "But so little personal history". He doesn't wish to be worshiped but he denies being vilified past a certain point. He has a line he doesn't cross. He's a horrible person from the perspective of everyone hurt by his actions. He's a hero to a specific group of people. He's a liar but never to himself. He's loyal to his fears. He manifests a narrative that supports him as a role. He's a tyrant in the making — and a rebel against tyranny.
Solas, to me, has always been a metaphor of changing narration, of importance of bias, of balance between ignorance and pride.
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rypnami · 16 hours ago
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Theiara Drabble
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self- indulgent theiara drabble about a time they see a dragon, feat. some stuff i made up on the fly (hehe get it) about the hebridean black. not beta read or edited so keep that in mind heeh. literally no plot i just wanted to write them.
word count: 1081 no warnings, just fluff and the classic theiara bickering lol. established semi-new relationship <3 idk if any of this makes sense byeee
tagging @amethystandemma since chatting w/ you about the dragon pics inspired me lol
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The Scottish highlands are, in Chiara's opinion, the most beautiful place in the world. Granted, she hasn't been to many places in the world, and perhaps being a Scot herself, she's biased, but simply nothing can compare to the rolling green of the mountains or the glistening water on the scattered lochs. Now that winter is, for the most part, over, and spring is finally showing its face, it’s the perfect time to take a long walk and enjoy seeing the sun for the first time in ages.
The only thing that could make the day better would be if she had someone to share it with- as luck would have it, she does. After quite a lot of convincing, she has brought Theseus Scamander in tow for this mini-adventure. They’ve been coworkers for a few years now, but recently it’s developed into something more. They haven’t technically labelled it yet, but it is certainly more than just friends, or coworkers that drive each other mental at any given opportunity. 
Where she has opted for more casual clothes for once- a simple white blouse and knee-length grey skirt, he is in his full blue overcoat, the grey blazer she’s rarely seen him out of, and his incredibly fancy shoes; perhaps not ideal for a trek in the highlands. It’s hardly different from what he would typically wear to work, as if they are about to be called on a very important case, and not out trying to enjoy themselves on one of their few days off. He does look good, however, so she can’t complain too much. 
They’ve stopped in an open meadow-like area, surrounded by hills and dotted with purple flowers. She flops down in the grass, just off the well-worn dirt path, and breathes in the freshness of the air. Her pale blonde hair spreads out amongst the green.
Theseus leans over her, eyebrows raised. “You’re going to get insects in your hair doing that, you know.”
“Spoilsport.” 
“I’m only sayingggg, I don’t imagine you, of all people, want crawly things all over you.”
Hm, true. Chiara hates just about anything with more than 4 legs. Honestly, who needs that many? What are they even used for? “You’ll pick them out for me.”
He sits down beside her, smiling slightly. “Of course I will. But… is this really what we came all the way out here to do? Have you lay on the floor?”
“It’s called appreciating nature. Try it sometime.” She sticks her tongue out at him. “And ‘all the way out here’ is an exaggeration. You can still see the hamlet.” Chiara points left, back down the dirt path, where just peeking over the rise of the hillside, the thatched roofs of Bainburgh are visible.
 
“Yes, but we could appreciate nature from there.” 
“If you’re going to whinge the whole time, you can just go on back and I can enjoy myself.”
“Hey, now, I didn’t say I want to go back.” Almost absentmindedly, he reaches over and starts playing with her hair. “Just pointing out that someone truly in awe of the natural world could do it anywhere.”
“Have a sense of adventure, Scamander,” Chiara huffs, sitting up and crossing her arms. “There’s more to see out here than at a mouldy old hamlet!” She gestures as a couple shaggy, long-horned cattle that meander by. "See?!"
“Ah, yes, we can see all the cows. I love cows. Very interesting.” A grin spreads across his face, and accompanied with the twinkle in his eyes, it would be obvious to anyone that he’s only trying to rile her. Unfortunately, Chiara has never been one for attentiveness to such things- or emotional regulation, honestly. 
“Cows are brilliant!” 
“Have you seen their expressions? It looks as though they operate on about 2 brain cells.”
Chiara narrows her eyes. “Two more than you have.”
Theseus chuckles. “Alright, alright. You know I’m teasing. I love spending time with you, wherever. Even amongst the livestock.” He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her in so she’s sitting in his lap. He rests his chin on her shoulder as Chiara leans back against his chest. “I’ll admit, it is nice to be just us.”
“Mm.” Chiara sighs. Yes, he might drive her up the wall sometimes, but she truly can’t imagine her life without him. “There’s not just farm animals around, anyhow. Could see… I dunno. Hippogriffs, maybe some Puffskeins, or- a dragon?!”
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up about a dragon-”
“No, look! A dragon!” Chiara gapes.
Overhead, a handful of kilometers away, is, in fact, a dragon. It is positively massive- so big, in fact, that she can still make out what it looks like rather clearly. It has a massive wingspan with orange membranes spreading between long, finger-like segments. It seems to have dark brown or grey scales, but a lighter underbelly. As it flies even closer, close enough that they can almost feel the wind from its wings, she can see what looks like a large, vibrant purple eye. 
Although there is something incredibly unnerving about such a powerful, dangerous predator so close to them… it’s also oddly mesmerising.
“It’s beautiful,” Chiara murmurs.
“It is.”
“What species do you think it is?”
Without missing a beat, Theseus answers. “Hebridean Black. Looks like a female, too. See, she’s got two sets of horns, one curling forward. Males have three, and they all curve back behind the ears.” He squints at the dragon as she flies away. “Her tail is also pointed- a male would have more of a club shape, for defence.”
Chiara stares at him, her jaw hanging open. “How in the hell do you know that? Just off the top of your head?”
“Oh. Er, I dunno.” He runs his fingers through his hair, smiling a bit sheepishly. “I- suppose it’s my brother’s fault. He’s quite passionate about magical creatures. My whole family is, really, but him especially. When we were younger, he used to always talk my ear off about beasts and creature identification…only ever listened to humour him, but I reckon I was paying more attention than I thought.” 
“That’s… unexpectedly sweet.”
“I beg your pardon? I am plenty sweet. All the time!” 
“Of course you are.” 
He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Yes, well. Perhaps we ought to go back inside, on the off chance she comes back around and spots us… I don’t fancy being dragon food today.”
“...Fine.”
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clockwise-works · 19 hours ago
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The Zora Royal Family
I don't really like uploading art without some sort of background, but I want to leave this open to continue adding the others and their families over time. So, for now, the finished Zora Royal Family baring King Dorephan, twelve-ish years Post Calamity, plus a little tidbit about each for this AU.
Link: 5 years after the defeat of Calamity Ganon, this timeline still experienced the Upheaval, but with some differences here and there. One such difference is Link, upon gaining Rauru's Zonai abilities, was left with markings on his face and body, those markings being the same ones the Ancient Hero himself had. I don't think he has Rauru's arm, I imagine it faded away once his spirit passed on, but the markings remained.
Mipha: Soon after being married and then the hatching of their first born, Mipha traded in her previous royal attire and jewelry for something new that signaled a new point in her life. Her original jewelry, passed down to her from her late mother, will be given out to each of their kids once they're a little older.
Sidon: When Lamina hatched, Mipha and Link, like any new parents, found themselves trying to balance raising a hatchling and attending to their duties. As a result, Sidon felt just a tad bit overlooked, given his still very young age. Link, to ensure Sidon knew he was included and would always be an important part of their family, gifted Sidon one of his own earrings.
Aryll: Unfortunately during the Calamity, Astor and Calamity Ganon's forces waged an attack on Hateno Village once they learned Link came from there. While the Champions and Zelda were able to save the Village, Link and Aryll's mother was sadly one of the casualties. With no mother and their father not being in the picture, Link knew he had to step up for his sister, Aryll only being 4. 2 years after defeating Calamity Ganon, Link and Mipha were wed. While not technically her parents, through marriage Mipha did become one of Aryll's guardians. Similar to Link and Sidon, Mipha worked hard to ensure Aryll was both included in their family, but welcome in the Domain as a whole. It was hard, trying to be a guiding maternal figure without overstepping and "replacing" her mother, but Mipha did her best.
Lamina: Lamina is their first hatched, and the first Half Hylian-Zora. While there was some debate early on over whether or not she'd even be eligible to inherit the crown one day, ultimately it was a battle Mipha refused to lose, fighting for her kid's right to be recognized as a Zora, no different from herself and her peers. Eventually, once Lamina was a little bit older, she came to realize her father wasn't actually a prince, it being one of the concessions he and Mipha took to appease Muzu and other conflicted Zora. Well, Lamina didn't take that info well, the young princess emotionally devastated that her father "wasn't being treated fairly." It was a long battle so to say, but eventually the Zora Council, relented and agreed on Link being titled a prince. The story goes that they agreed Link was overall a worthwhile addition to their community, but even if they never said it, the council knew they couldn't break Lamina's heart.
Solin and Serapha: The youngest additions to the family, these two are seemingly a miracle. Zora/Hylian children are already a very uncommon occurrence, and the likelyhood of even just one egg in a batch to fully develop was rarer. Years passed, and Mipha and Link essentially came to terms that they were already incredibly lucky to have one child. This remained the case until it came to light Mipha was carrying eggs once more. They've been through this before, unfortunately losing the eggs once before, so they kept their expectations in check. When the day came for the eggs to be laid, one was found to have been properly fertilized, the rest duds, or so they thought. There was a subtle rattle of one of the other eggs, and upon closer inspection, it too was in good health, resulting in the twins Solin and Serapha.
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shortbreadly · 2 years ago
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this screenshot has been tugging at my heartstrings since the owl house ended so i had to redraw it
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original screenshot
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deoidesign · 4 months ago
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Can you make a tutorial on how you world build and make ocs? I can't seem to make any people in my brain, but then when I try to come up with environments jobs, beliefs and little details to slowly come up with someone, I think: well I don't really know how people have influenced the world- it's a weird loop
To be honest, I don't think I can! Writing is an extremely personal process. The way I write is directly related to how I process things, what I find important in stories, years of my own analysis of my and other's writing, etc... The way you write will be unique to you, as well. But I can explain how I personally think of it.
The short answer:
Write. Write anything and everything, it's a tool to explore your ideas. Analyze your own writing, and write more. Then, as you discover which ideas you want to develop, write more to explore them more. You won't know what you want otherwise!
The long answer:
I think this kind of loop is common. It's easy to feel like everything needs to be done "at once," because our job as writers is to make elements logically fit with each other for our readers. But as you've discovered, developing multiple elements simultaneously isn't really possible, or at least is extremely difficult.
Personally, when I think of writing, I break it into three major elements; characters, world, and plot. As much as possible every scene explores one or more of these, and as much as possible these three things tie back into what I personally consider most important: theme.
Everything I do is in service of the themes I want to present. Without them my events feel aimless. It can take a while to discover them, but they're the core of my work. You will have to discover what you feel is the core of yours. Analyzing other media helps with this too.
Concepts in your brain exist in a state of infinite potential. But when you start writing you have to start making choices, which removes potential as you move forward... But you have to move forward anyways. If there's ideas you want to explore later, you can always explore them later.
What this ends up meaning, to answer your question, is that I don't think of my characters as "people in my brain" or my worlds as something people have influenced... Not at their core, at least. They are tools that I use to represent specific ideas. Obviously they're also my blorbos, but mostly they're serving a specific narrative purpose.
So above all else... Write. Write, and discover what you're writing about, and then start over and write with that in mind. Keep doing this. But you have to write!
#I wish there were a cleaner answer to this kind of thing#and I also wish that there were a way to answer that didnt feel like 'just do it lol'#but... genuinely you kind of just have to do it!#I find it helps to reframe writing as trying to figure out which ideas I don't like#then if I write anything that feels bad to me#it's not about being a bad writer or anything like that. it's just something I dont want in my story and I delete it.#like if you find yourself naturally coming up with worldbuilding elements. its okay to just start there!#you can start like 'I really want giant mushrooms' and then start thinking about how cool that would be#and like oooh what if there were really cool caves full of mushrooms and all glowy yeaaah#then you start building people from that. colonies of fungal people or something. this is still worldbuilding#then you might think now. whats a plot that could go with this and show off my cool mushrooms.#maybe the mushrooms are all connected and the main one is dying and no one knows why. it's a classic plot.#if you still dont feel like you can find a character in that. keep going! why is it dying? how can it be saved? can it? if not then why?#etc etc etc. when I am writing I actually ltierally write out 101 questions like this as I'm going and then I answer them#and if I cant answer them. then I figure out a different situation that doesnt bring that question up LMFAO#eventually you can decide you want a hero who idfk will replace the big mushroom or something. a sacrifice and immortality simultaneously#then you can be like yeah so my themes are probably about sacrifice. connection to others. love for your community. stuff like that#and then you can go back to your world and say. yeah I think that people should have telepathic communication on some level!#I'm just making all this up right now but I just want to illustrate somehow how this kind of cyclical process can actually be a tool#because it's not about getting it all right at once. its about leaning into the cycle and how it guides you through developing these#anyways idk if this makes any sense. if this doesnt feel like it works for you then it probably literally doesnt#but writing more and analyzing writing more is ALWAYS good#it will never make your writing worse to do those things.#unfortunately (said with all the love in the world) writing is an endless process of learning more about who you are and what you care abou#its wonderful but it's hard and theres no way to skip that process#good luck!#asks#anon#writing stuff#oh also if at any point you go hm. that big thing isnt working for me I think...
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doedipus · 9 months ago
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a large amount of time I've been spending on -untitled undefined scope original fiction project- since the last time I posted about it has been trying to develop the protagonist concept I came up with last summer or whatever into like, a character that would feel real and era appropriate.
it's fun research to do. naturally a lot of the details I assigned to her are things that I already think are cool, so it's been a lot of fun trying to trace her traits back through the relatively recent past, getting reminded of how much things have changed, or where the gaps in my intuition are, and then doing a flurry of reading to get a sense for exactly how someone like her and the people around her could have happened and what her life was probably like leading up to her present day. hopefully this results in some good good verisimilitude.
#I wrote a short story from her perspective over the holidays and then didn't know how to continue it#and then I got distracted by real life stuff for a few months#I forget if I posted about that#and then I've been picking through archive dot org for the last few weeks looking at this stuff#the last big rabbit hole was trying to get a better feel for era appropriate ts/tv subculture#the current one I'm looking at is how she would've gotten into language learning and how that would've worked#nettle has been prodding me about the setting thing lately so I've been thinking about that more too#probably the biggest hurdle by far is figuring out how I want to play that#and how I want the thing to be divided up#since the original coc scenario I'm developing this out of is centered on a flight from LA to honolulu#and the airport dungeon was definitely meant to be a hook for a larger campaign#some amount of it is going to cover protag lady's failed life in LA and some of it is going to be worse things happening in hawaii#but it's like. how much do I want to balance it one way or the other#and realistically how much does the aesthetics of 20th century air travel add to the story#besides me personally thinking it's compelling ofc#a lot of what I find compelling about hawaii is that it's an east/west cultural crossroads and realistically that's also true of socal#and I can wax poetic about socal as much as I want without worrying all that much about mishandling something#and there's also a lot of socal specific history along similar parallels to pull from that I'm more familiar with#I guess it comes down to whether curiosity re: 'doing it right' is enough of a motivator to do the increased amount of research#which I guess it has so far with the above character details. so hopefully that will continue#but it also feels like using machine translation a bit yknow. it's hard to know how effectively I'll be able to sanity check#although depending on where this goes I might be able to get other people involved to sensitivity read down the line#with most of the creative things I do I just have a tendency to always rely really heavily on figuring things out myself#I also want protag lady to have a Cool Car and idk how to get that from point a to point b narratively#this is like an entire second or third post's worth of tags but I don't feel like unfucking this so whatever. suffer. I guess.
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