#some romantic shit idk

[zingtastic]

Arsene (Ren) Lupin and Inspector Goro Akechi

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[recent-rose]

hey i dont go here but jayce's speech about viktor in s2e9 isn't him saying 'u should never have tried to heal yourself, you were perfect the way u were x3' it was him saying that viktor's physical health never made him any less beautiful, never made him any less important, never made him any LESS, period. he wasn't saying viktor didn't need to pursue a cure for his ills like come on his motivation to invent hextech was to help people. to cure disease. viktor's first and foremost among them.

he said what he said because it was the thing viktor craved to hear most in his life, and that is why those were the words that punched through his defences even as the machine herald: jayce loved him wholly and unconditionally, healthy or ill, good or bad, human or inhuman. he would always be loved just the same.

[linddzz]

Jayce is literally a guard dog from the moment he met Viktor and I just know that he can be wayyy worse in fics if people weren’t playing it safe

So small disclaimer that I can't say much about how he's portrayed in fics or if I have any thoughts there. Tbh when I'm first getting into writing my own stuff for a ship I don't read or seek out a lot of other fics for a mix of weird brain reasons. A mix of a lot of doubts from comparing myself, but also I like getting a solid feel of my characterization without too much general fandom influence getting in there or end up accidentally stealing a concept/dialogue that just sticks in my brain.

(exceptions tend to be made for mutuals who I know are excellent writers already in which case I will psych myself up to not fall into the self comparison issue dkdjdkdk)

ANYWAY!!! Tbh I'm not surprised that there's not a lot that goes super dark on the possessive Jayce OR possessive Viktor just because they are such a weird little mix of legit fun and goofy and dreamy eyed for each other, AND canon pretty much laid out the dark side of their relationship I think. Jayce had already been confronted with Viktor's impending death, they already had their conversation where he had to promise to destroy the hexcore, which was them both in a way accepting Viktor's death. And he immediately broke that the second he was actually confronted with that death.

It's not dark to me as in "grr no one can touch you but me I'm going to lock you up in the lab to make sure you can never leave me and nothing can ever hurt you" which is how most dark possessive fics/romance lit tend to go. And I guess it can be hard to tap into what IS very dark and fucked up about Jayce and Viktor's codependence in a way that doesn't erase how wholesome they can and do come across in canon.

The dark is in the devotional romance of it, the almost instant codependence, it's in how beautiful it all is (like how Viktor's evolved forms are both beautiful and deeply unsettling for all their elegance). It's in thinking for just a liiiittle bit and realizing that Mage Viktor is knowingly dooming timelines by sparking Jayce's fascination with magic (and by making himself the thing that starts Jayce's obsession).

The dark possessiveness for Jayce is best captured when the partner he broke his biggest promise to, whose heart he replaced with the hexcore, stumbled out as something metal and inhuman. The dark side of Jayvik is; when Viktor's voice came out warped and mechanical as he stared at his own hand with confusion and fear, asking "What am I?"

Jayce smiled, laughed with that bright loverboy earnestness, and said "You're alive!"

[timothyslucy]

they really weren't kidding about the rom-com vibes in this season.

[loveforaninstant]

hands the castlevania fandom a nocturne httyd au where richter is hiccup, annette is astrid, and alucard is an (older and wiser but no less sassy) toothless. is this anything.

[sanasanakun]

I get why JimCurly is popular cause hot yaoi and Jimmy is the MC but it's annoying how Curlya gets villainized as some ungodly immoral ship when JimCurly is far worse in terms of morality. In my opinion, Anya and Curly have the most interesting connection/relationship in the story. There's so much potential for depth, angst, understanding, resentment (on both sides), healing, etc. between them. Easily my favorite duo in the game to study with my microscope lol

[033h]

I booked myself a 90 min appointment in a sensory deprivation tank for Valentine’s Day fuck it let the voices consume me

[cosmicheartz]

Yknow I’m surprised that more ppl don’t make their lambs have more internal angst abt being a cult leader against their will and how it affects them mentally.

Like they weren’t really given a choice and while Yes, they did ursurp Nari the only other choice they had was dying if they gave the crown back and that’s pretty fucked up isn’t it? either dying again or having to take the role of the new death god.

I try to touch upon this with Solange, who hates the fact she’s a cult leader despite trying her hardest to distance herself from it post Nari ursurp ( ie calling it a Flock and trying to make it more of a community than a cult ). If it wasn’t for the fact Nari would have killed her Solange would have given Nari the crown back.

Deep down she knows that the cult roots will always be there. She hates that she has an obvious power imbalance between her and her followers and the fact she IS technically manipulating them despite not intending to. Even with Ellena who Solange knew pre execution and who sees Solange as less of a god/cult leader and more of an equal there’s still that power imbalance between them.

Solange tries her damned hardest to be as benevolent as she can despite the circumstances but she’s almost constantly wracked with guilt. At one point she completely stops doing sermons because doing them made her feel sick to her stomach afterwards.

She still does rituals but they’re relatively rare ( the only real consistent rituals she does are funerals and sometimes feasts )

Also the whole reason she doesn’t have kids in her cult ( outside of Mayberry and I think Webber? ) and forbids her followers from having kids is because she wants to try and minimize the “ damage “ she’s done regarding her cult/flock ( granted in doing so she’s technically causing more damage to her followers who desperately want kids )

[cottageivy]

ava during her volunteering at a ranch and hooking up with the ranch owners daughter era + the daughter in question

[thanatologie]

anyone that says emmrich never actually faces his fear isn't actually paying attention. hear me out, okay, i've talked before (so many times) about how i think for emmrich his fear of death is less actual thanaphobia and more...his fear of being alone. of living alone, of spending eternity alone - especially in a culture and a society that places emphasis on lovers being buried together; he's terrified of it. and a romanced emmrich is so terrified of his relationship with rook - and how he feels - that he's willing to try to end it on the eve of a battle one or both of them might not come back from, because he's worried it might not be the big damn love story he's been aching for his whole goddamn life.

and guess what! rook doesn't come back.

he spends almost a month making that damn dagger - and like the rest of the crew - trying to find rook to pull them out of the fade prison because he's lost them. he's lost them right after realizing his fear's gotten the better of him and he's staring down the barrel of eternity without them. he was already trying to backpedal the whole thing before solas pulled his switcheroo and you know rook telling him they'll talk about it at home was like...a constant refrain in his head that whole almost month they were lost.

(which raises a good point with the mortal vs lich path in this respect, because a mortal emmrich was ready to tear open the fade to get rook back, imagine how many lines a lich emmrich might cross, especially given his line about never letting them be parted in this or any other world again. i have thoughts about how emmrich doesn't come back wrong from that, no, but he definitely comes back changed, he's...off. i've seen speculation that lich emmrich isn't emmrich - which i don't buy - or isn't entirely emmrich - which is a little more interesting and there may be some truth to the latter, or it could be he thinks he's indestructible at that point and gets really reckless and less measured but that is another argument for another time.)

and basically the point i'm leading up to here is...you can complain all you want that he never uses the l word before the final battle, but even with harding pointing out he's gotten a little spacey and distracted and mopey with a relationship on the burner, and all the other pet names he uses so damn liberally (dearest, darling, flame of my heart), he's still holding a lot of stuff back. he's still holding himself back, quite a bit, until that moment when he finally (finally) tells rook he loves them. he never calls rook my love until after the fade prison in the mortal path, and it's just the once, as far as i can actually remember. and it's because of all of that shit above.

(lich emmrich does it earlier, because that this may be my last chance to say it comes a hell of a lot sooner, and he uses my love liberally after that point.)

this is intentional on his part. this man has skirted around using the word love so much ("very fond of you" my ass) that rook totally has the option to call him out on it and it's like a record scratch.

he's, i think, terrified of loving something that can die? and he's terrified of being alone. and ultimately a romanced mortal emmrich has to face both of those things, one after the other, between manfred and the fade prison. and i think, going forward, it's not going to be completely gone - in fact for a hot minute after everything it's probably exacerbated to a large degree and he's probably extra...like that for a while - but it makes him confront those things head on in...very blunt ways. here's a reminder of what losing someone you love deeply to death feels like. here's what losing someone you've given your heart to for safekeeping feels like. it's kind of disingenuous to claim his fears are left untouched, when he's given a one-two knock out punch and is left having to deal with the fallout of that.

eta: and none of this actually touches on the fact that it's him that tells rook to grab the dagger before they go poof, so he's siting with that constant weight on his chest, too, but we'll dig into that at a later time because it's cold and my fingers are starting to get stiff.

[mcdbutichangedit]

Would You Fall In Love With Me Again but its Aphmau as Penelope and {insert one of Aphmau's many love interests} as Odysseus.

[menlove]

Do you know where paul said 'this one' is about john? I can't find anything

yeye it's the audio interview in this post

Interviewer: Let me ask you about one of your new songs, ‘This One’. About a marriage? Paul: A relationship, yeah. Interviewer: And about not expressing emotions and feelings.  Paul: You get those moments where you always think; “I’m saving it up. I’ll tell him one day.” And you know what happens. A lot of people, John for instance, getting back to that subject. He died. Um.. I was lucky. The last few we- months that he was alive we’d managed to get our relationship back on track. We were talking, having real good conversations. Real, nice and friendly. George, actually, didn’t get get his relationship right. I think they were arguing ‘till the end, which I’m sure is a source of great sadness to him. And I’m sure in the feeling of this song that George was always planning to tell John he loved him, but time ran out. That’s what the song’s about. Like, there could never be a better moment than this one. Y’ know now. Take this moment to say… “I love you”

let's unpack.

first of all "a... relationship, yeah" is vague as shit & he can easily spin that around to say it's platonic if this ever came up again. but at the same time, it's interesting that he says "yeah" to that, confirming that the relationship in question (which he's about to say is his and john's) is similar to a marriage. and then this whoooole chunk

'I'm saving it up. I'll tell him one day." And you know what happens. a lot of people, John for instance (..)

(bold mine) so first of all, his VERY FIRST explanation of this song is saying it's something he wants to tell to a nebulous "him" one day. even if we're discounting john, noneeee of the lyrics in this song are very platonic, so at the very LEAST it's definitely confirmation of paul being queer. because he wants to tell "him" everything in this song. but then literally the very next sentence he's saying the "him" in question is, for instance, john. he's not necessarily saying the song is ONLY about john, as he also goes on to say the song might ring true for george about john, but he's saying his situation with john is the sort of situation he wrote this song about.

and a lot of people have used this quote to say he's shoving off his feelings for john onto george which is like. PARTIALLY true, i think he was trying to shift the focus off of him saying it was about john onto making it about george as well, but if you actually listen/read what he's saying that's not it at all.

"And I’m sure in the feeling of this song that George was always planning to tell John he loved him, but time ran out. That’s what the song’s about."

(bold mine) but he says "in the feeling of this song" so he's just saying that he thinks george can probably relate to the feeling of the song and relate it to his feelings for john as well. which is just. him again saying it's about john lmao he's just shoving george under the gay bus with him rip

and then:

"That’s what the song’s about. Like, there could never be a better moment than this one. Y’ know now. Take this moment to say… 'I love you'."

and that's about the gist of the song, really. and how many times has paul since john died talked about regretting not saying he loves him? i mean, the entirety of "here today" is about that. so taking that into account, and the amount of times he's admitted he never told him he loved him, his little bit up there about him and john making up and him being lucky for that doesn't negate the meaning of the song being regret at not telling "him" that he loved "him"

sorry, this got long. but i just see this quote around a lot w some interesting readings (& some blatant misinterpretation as well but what can ya do) so ! yeah it's pretty Unequivocally about john, or at the very least about a ""him"". which is insanely telling for a blatantly romantic song. when i tell you that this man is out to everyone but the public..........

[bread-wizards]

Every time Ashley is asked a ship question about Fearne, I am violently reminded that some people just don't understand how polyamory works

[r0zzk1ll]

"this man, is weird.. CRAZY weird.." "he was always very bright.."

[necrotic-nephilim]

i recently remembered DickTim Week 2024 is happening very soon and i looked at the prompts again to see if i could get anything out for it and. the Hades & Persephone AU prompt for day 1 has got me really thinking so here's a vague concept i plan to write.

i've been pretty burnt out on modern Hades & Persephone retellings because of how they always seem to fall into the same generic "innocent wide-eyed girl runs from her evil mean mother into the arms of a dark mysterious man because actually she went willingly and chose to marry him" which has gotten repetitive for my tastes. (for clarity i don't care if this retelling is your cup of tea personally, so long as you're not actively trying to rewrite the original myth and claim untrue things about it, if this is your favorite flavor i sincerely hope you enjoy the buffet i just have little interest in it since it feels overdone for me and exhausted of it's supposed commentary atp)

but? but. biblically accurate Hades & Persephone AU has me all kinds of interested. because wait listen so hear me out right. Hades!Dick and Persephone!Tim, obviously. i feel it'd be more loosely inspired by with themes and imagery (though playing with death and nature powers could be interesting, i haven't decided) rather than explicitly making them gods and all. but. something dark and fucked up where Dick and Bruce are especially estranged. maybe to do with Jason's return, maybe to do with them just clashing and having their usual explosive arguments. and Bruce knows the peace needs to be kept, if he and Dick are at odds then everyone starts to pick sides and things just fracture so he needs a peace offering.

and the peace offering is Tim.

Bruce (the stand-in for Zeus) offers up Tim. agrees to have Tim move to Bludhaven and be Dick's... whatever Dick wants him to be. knowing that with the implication comes the likelihood of Dick grooming Tim. and Tim has no real say and is hesitant to put up a real fight. he doesn't want this, he knows what this is going to imply Dick will do to him, but he also knows if he says no things have the possibility to just... fall apart. so he's the unwilling bride, dragged off to the metaphorical underworld (Bludhaven) with Dick, away from his family, his friends, the life he built.

and on the flip side, i think weirdly enough, your best pick for the Demeter stand-in is *Jason*. just, hear me out on that. not necessarily on the side of it being motherly, but on Jason being just estranged enough from the Batfamily to be the one willing to call it out for being bad and wrong and raising bloody hell to get Tim back. maybe it's because Jason wants Tim for himself, maybe it's truly out of a concern for Tim to have autonomy, i'm toying with the idea of it primarily being Tim's POV and him genuinely not knowing which of these is true. (and the truth possibly ends up being a complicated middle ground) and because i like Helena, i think you can use her as the Hekate stand in, the one who strikes a tentative alliance with Jason and tries to go find Tim and bring him back. Tim stuck with Dick, getting groomed and hyperaware of it, possibly even getting fucked the whole time as well, knowing he can't go back without causing massive issues for Dick and Bruce because well, Bruce did promise him to Dick. so he has to adjust his whole life, try to figure out being a vigilante in this new city with Dick breathing down his neck the whole time.

and then much like the ending of the myth, a sort of compromise is struck that's a shaky deal for everyone involved. Tim is put on an essential timeshare, going back and forth between Gotham, where he has friends and family and a support system, then getting dragged right back to Bludhaven with Dick in this brutal cycle that he slowly gets used to and stockholm'd into even liking it. Dick isn't so bad, once he gets used to the quirks of their unbalanced 'relationship'. the sex is even something he can adjust to as well. not quite a happy ending but one that sits in this realistic grey area that becomes Tim's life.

i will write this, eventually, but i don't know if i'll get to it before DickTim Week ends so by posting the idea i'm essentially putting it out into the world so the peer pressure holds me accountable. i just. really like the potential of making Hades/Persephone AUs as fucked up as they can be simply by adhering to the source material and making it a raw story of being stolen away and forced to like this new home you didn't ask for.

also a less fleshed-out aspect of this idea i have ties into Persephone becoming the Queen of the Underworld when she's taken and how the transition from Kore to Persephone could be reflected in Tim. how he makes the best of the worst situation and becomes something far more dangerous and dark when he's in Bludhaven, possibly takes on a new vigilante name/identity and leans into the worst quirks of his personality he tries to tamper because there's no point in not going full tilt Obsessively Weird if he has no choice anyway and it being one small way he takes back his autonomy, and that inevitably making Dick *more* into him, because he gets to see Tim finally just. let loose.

[offorestsongs]

literally most of the twst shipping discourse is just the most stupid shit ive ever seen but people who are super against Malleus/Leona definitely take the cake. i just cannot imagine making any discourse posts about what is essentially your most basic, standard, run-of-the-mill fandom enemies to lovers ship