#sometimes he thinks he does not like the person he has become

[sky-scribbles]

I'm going to say something controversial. I think there's something Veilguard does better than any other Dragon Age game. Namely: incorporating the companions into the plot.

Look, I love Origins as much as everyone. But to be frank: you could cut every companion except Alistair, Morrigan and Loghain and the plot could still work. Once you've finished the mission where you recruit a companion, there aren't other main quests that involve them in any way.

Oghren and Wynne could have stayed home after their recruitment missions for all the difference it would make to the main plot. Sten, Leliana and Zevran could vanish and nothing would change, because once they're on your team, they don't interact with the main plot at all. (There's the Temple of Sacred Ashes, I suppose - but even then, you'd be going on that quest whether Leliana and Wynne were there or not, and it's very telling that they can both die here and next to nothing in the rest of the game is impacted.)

Again: I love Origins. This doesn't detract from any of these characters being great, or from the story being great. It just means there's a layer of separation between the two. They're involved in the story, but they're not driving it, and you seldom get to see them have strong feelings about it.

DA2 is a huge step up. Your companions' personal stories are integral parts of the main plot. You can't do the Deep Roads expedition without witnessing Karl's death and its impact on Anders. You can't enter Act 2 without seeing Varric's brother betray him, or watching your sibling either die or begin a new path in life. Act 2's climax happens because of choices Isabela and Aveline have made. Act 3's endgame is all about Anders making one enormous decision. Even Fenris and Merrill, who have the fewest ties to the plot, have strong reasons to be invested in the Mage/Templar conflict.

And then Inquisition just... backslides. There are multiple companions you don't need to recruit at all, or can send away with zero alteration to the main plot. Your companions don't like Corypheus because he's bad, but no one - except maybe Varric - has any strong personal feelings about him. They have no personal stake in defeating him, not like Alistair has a personal stake in opposing Loghain, or Anders in opposing Meredith.

We go to the Winter Palace, and Vivienne is not made a part of that story. We have a whole subplot about the Wardens, and Blackwall only gets a couple of extra lines, if you even bring him. Their personal arcs could have been somehow impacted by these missions, and they're just... not. Sera is packed with internalised self-hatred that manifests as trying to distance herself from elven culture, to the point of sometimes lashing out at other elves. And despite all the missions you do where elven history features... Sera's growth past that flaw happens entirely offscreen between the base game and Trespasser?????

IMO, this is one of the biggest reasons why Corypheus is such a bland villain. He doesn't make anyone grow, except by starting a plot for them to be part of. He doesn't challenge them emotionally. No one is invested in him. Because no one interacts with the darn plot.

Veilguard, though? Veilguard keeps your companions interacting with the story the whole way through. The Treviso/Minrathous choice affects both Lucanis and Neve heavily, and impacts who they become for the rest of the game. These cities are personal to you, even if you're not a Crow or Shadow Dragon, because your companions love them.

The Siege of Weisshaupt is beyond personal to Davrin and Lucanis, both of whom are entrusted with major parts of the quest: trying to kill the archdemon and Ghilan'nain. Lucanis is affected by his failure to kill Ghilan'nain for ages afterward. Davrin is haunted by survivor's guilt; he should have died when he struck down the archdemon. He's alive. How can he live with that?

Whenever killing the gods becomes a possibility, Rook hands the lyrium dagger to Lucanis. When the squad go to fight the gods' dragons with the Wardens, Taash is the one to flush the first dragon out. When you infiltrate the Venatori, Neve tricks your way in, and everything that happens is especially weighty to Bellara, whose people have been abducted. On Tearstone Island, because of how Lucanis and Spite have grown, they strikes true.

Did you not hate Elgar'nan before that mission? Because you probably will after you watch him capture Bellara or Neve, and see his fellow god kill Harding or Davrin.

You know what's a great piece of writing? There's no reason Emmrich shouldn't have been an option to deal with the wards on Tearstone Island; he's one of the ideal options to take out more wards with the Veil Jumpers in the final mission. But you can't select him to do it. Because Emmrich has far less personal investment in the Elgar'nan battle than the other two. This is Neve's city. This is the monster who tries to call himself Bellara's god. The game makes sure the characters who take control of the Blight at the end are the ones with the greatest stakes in doing so.

One of your companions, not you, wrests command of the Blight from Elgar'nan. The final mission depends on how well you've come to know each companion's skills. They're just... always involved.

And they're invested, too. The companions all have serious personal reasons to hate the antagonists by the end. Lucanis and Neve have either seen their city burn, or know it happened at the cost of their friend's (and potential partner's) hometown. Davrin has seen his order devastated. These are Bellara's and Davrin's supposed gods, and instead of helping the elves reclaim their history and culture, they're trying to enslave the world. Harding learns that the Evanuris maimed and destroyed her Titan ancestors.

Emmrich and Taash have perhaps the smallest emotional tie - and sadly I do think Emmrich especially gets underutilized in the plot. But heck, Taash is still hella motivated by the way the gods are abusing dragons. And Emmrich is tied thematically to the main conflict. He's facing the question of immortality, while nigh-immortal beings are right in front of him, proving how that gift can be abused. The final choice of his personal arc is whether he's willing to embrace his personal, mortal attachments, at the cost of consequences that terrify him... you know, the same question that Solas faces at the end.

And don't even get me started on how everyone is emotionally tied to Solas. Harding and Neve watched him kill Varric in front of them. Everyone not dead or captured has to watch him drag Rook into the Fade. Just about every companion faces some kind of huge regret or failure at some point, in constant foreshadowing for Solas's prison of regret: both the literal one he sticks Rook in, and the mental one of his own making.

Veilguard has its problems, but it absolutely shines at keeping its characters involved and invested in the main story. It gives them things to do, it gives them reasons to care. For all the flaws this game has, this part is good writing.

[unfortunatelyphoenix]

Since I noticed a couple Ghost Prince Danny things I decided to make my own, even if I don't know much about the series.

Vlad being the ever stupid fruitloop he is decided to try and steal Pariah's things again and woke him up again. Wanting a rematch he immediately stormed back to Amity Park, but before he dragged it back into the Infinite Realms for round 2 he overheard Danny talking to his friends about how he got summoned by the Justice League and through some hilarious misunderstandings on their part now think that Phantom is Pariah Dark's son and in turn the Ghost Prince.

Pariah, who surprisingly is ALSO a little shit at times (and is pretty much being called a little baby ghost's dad), immediately jumps at the idea of actually doing this hilarious prank and steals the group for sometime and manage to strike a deal that as long as he doesn't do anything horrible he won't be stuffed back into his coffin and they can do the bit. This ends up leading to Pariah Dark acting like Phantom's less than good of a person dad who actually starts to reform because he's too committed to the bit. This ends up leading to him, and everyone else, discovering he has surprisingly good parental instincts, having caused everyone to stop and look at him in confusion the first few (hundred) times he instinctively did a good parent thing.

Eventually though, something happens where Danny needs help but can't go to his friends or family, he can't go to the JL for help since he doesn't trust them and he's made it instinct to never go to Vlad, so he goes to the one ghost he does trust with this, Pariah Dark. It's at this point that Pariah realizes that it's no longer a bit and that he's become the closest thing Danny has to an actual parent, because let's be honest here, even if Jack and Maddie are good here they're still severely neglective of Danny and there's only so much Jazz can do while being 2-3 years older than him, and all the other ghosts who help him are more like mentors than actual parental figures.

Usually a ghost would have their parents to teach them if they're there as well, but Danny doesn't have good human parents and he died before they did, pretty much leaving him an orphaned baby, and no Justice League, JL Dark, or GIW will stop Pariah Dark from being the parent Danny desperately needs.

[prettyboykatsuki]

neither of the miya twins handle a crush exceptionally well tbh. not even samu. he's more collected about the whole thing but sometimes he likes someone so much he just subconsciously avoids them as to not get sucked in.

but atsumu? atsumu handles crushes horribly. miserably. its bad. he is exactly as cool as people think of him with any person he has no serious feelings for. he's fun. he's flirty. he's kind of an idiot but in that charming, sexy way that makes you think yeah i'd hit.

but only if he doesn't like you. in fact the less atsumu wants to date you, the better he is. the second he realizes he harbors any kind of crush on you, he instantly becomes the most loser version of himself known to man. you get into petty scraps all the time. he always says things to get on your nerves. he's especially competitive (a subconscious kind of peacocking) for no reason.

it sucks for everyone. but especially him. because he does get closer to you through this weird, awkward way of behaving and so he gets all in your face only to go home and bury his face in his pillows thinking of you. blushing and kicking his feet. you get together through the sheer miracle of patience and time. but its rough

[gr1m-c0l0rs]

My WHB!MC’s relationship with the Kings

OVERVIEW: To Sunny, his relationship between the devils is strictly fwb, mainly because of his insecurity that the reason the devils only like him is because they see him as Solomon and not as his own person—no matter if the devils say otherwise. She does have a slight crushes on all of them and had thoughts about staying, but she quickly pushed down these feelings. Sunny really doesn’t want to stay in Hell for the rest of his life but he also doesn’t want to pull a Solomon and leave them forever (which sets up for future angst potential >:))

SATAN:

The first devil Sunny met and the first devil that got really close to

Helped Sunny realize that she was a sadomasochist (never really explored outside of vanilla sex with her other sexual partners on Earth)

Constantly has flirty banter with each other

Sunny gets really irritated easily which Satan loves, following behind him to egg him on so Sunny could hit him

Sunny retaliates by picking him up by his waist and teasing him on how small he is (of course this pisses him off a lot

MAMMON:

Literal sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship

Sunny gets incredibly flustered around him, not used to being spoiled

Tries to reciprocate by it’s kinda hard as she don’t have money (which she is embarrassed by, but Mammon finds endearing)

Was weirded out being called “Master”, constantly reiterating to Mammon to just call him Sunny, but eventually gave up and ended up loving being called it (big dominant looking men calling you master>>>)

Slightly jealous of how strong Mammon is, constantly teetering between “do I want him? Or do I wanna be him?”

LEVIATHAN:

Absolutely DESPISED Leviathan we they first met, especially since they tried to kill him when they first met.

Sunny thought he was ethereal at first, but when he tried to kill her, Levi went from a 10/10 to -3/10

They constantly bicker and hate-fuck sometimes

After learning about Levi’s childhood, Sunny did feel a little bit of sympathy about his situation; still has Levi’s name as “fuckface” on his contact list

Gradually becoming soft for Levi (so is Levi as well to Sunny) but wouldn’t dare admit it (not yet at least)

LUCIFER:

Sunny was absolutely terrified after meeting Luci, especially after learning that he still has beef with his whole bloodline due to Solomon

After eloping with him, Sunny became a little more comfortable with him (still a bit of underlying fear tho)

Tries to be polite and quiet around him, talking to Luci like a doctor and not like a best friend (goofs around with Gamigin whenever he goes to Paradise Lost tho)

Sunny likes to listen to his stories about God, Heaven & Hell

Always asks Luci if she could visit to have tea with him, whenever he gets overwhelmed by the other devils

BEELZEBUB:

Practically shares the same braincell

Sunny only saw Beel as a horny goofball until he learned the real reason why he wanders around, and now feels guilty for thinking that he didn’t have depth

Flirty banter pt. 2

After finding out that Sunny used to party on Earth, Beel always make sure to take him out whenever he gets stressed out about angels

Sunny likes to leave little trinkets and food in his coat pocket that is covered in his scent as a way to thank him (something Beel appreciates even though he wants the real deal.

BELPHEGOR:

Was really indifferent about Belphie at first but sees him as a cool dude to hang out with occasionally

His “don’t care” attitude annoys Sunny sometimes but brushes it off

Sleeping buddy (literally)

Watches anime at Belphie’s palace, and discusses about it with him (even if it’s a short amount of time)

When not cuddling, Sunny likes to help Beleth with work (sometimes even carrying Belphie on her back since he’s warm and squishy ‘like a pillow’)

ASMODEUS:

Sunny was (understandably) afraid hearing the stories about Asmo

After meeting him, Sunny ends up becoming slightly annoyed with Asmo’s antics

Sunny constantly threatens to spray Asmo with a hose (especially after finding out he doesn’t shower) which Asmo laughs it off

Likes listening to him gushing about his kids

Sunny feels nothing but sympathy about the loss of his first love Solomon and his second love, his wife, but doesn’t have the heart to break his heart a third time

HEIGHT COMPARISON:

[vodika-vibes]

All Of Me

Summary: When Rex and his Cyare get stranded on a planet far from the core, he decides to make the most of it.

Pairing: Captain Rex x F!Reader

Word Count: 888

Warnings: Reader is self conscious and shy, reader described as having hair long enough to hang over her shoulders.

A/N: I was in a Rex mood, so I wrote this. Also, my form list changed suddenly, so if I missed anyone in the tags that's why. Stupid google.

Click HERE to be added to my taglist

Her fingers are gentle as they brush through his short hair. It’s so soothing and relaxing that Rex can’t help but tilt his head back into her hand. Drowsily, he peers up at her, and affection swells in his chest at the soft look on her face, and the gentle smile that lifts her lips.

Rex is lounging in the hot spring, a towel around his waist to shield his modesty (as if it’s needed), and his beloved is sitting behind him on the edge of the pool, a towel wrapped around her body and her hair loose around her shoulders.

Her smile is becoming more and more rare these days. He’s more likely to see a stressed frown or a distracted look on her face recently. And, while he’s not thrilled about the fact that they were stranded here while on a mission, he supposes that there is a silver lining.  

“You’re staring,” Her voice is soft, and musical in a way that his and his brothers will never be. He falls in love with her all over again, every time she speaks to him.

“Can’t help it. You’re stunning.”

She averts her gaze shyly, “The things you say sometimes.”

“I mean every word.”

His beloved has always been self-conscious about her appearance. If he asked what she liked about herself, it would probably take her half an hour to come up with something that isn’t something she does for other people.

Rex, personally, thinks it’s ridiculous.

He could, and can, list ten things he loves about her without even thinking about it. He can talk about all of her good qualities for hours without getting tired, and without even mentioning her appearance.

He might be a little smitten.

It’s fine.

He’s allowed to be a little obsessed with his girlfriend.

A soft giggle pulls him from his thoughts, “You’re still staring, Rex.”

“I’m thinking about you.”

“Yeah? Good things, I hope?” Her fingers still trail through his short hair, and he sighs contently. 

“Only the best things.” He reassures her before he catches one of her hands and brings her fingers to his lips, “I love you, you know that?”

“I know, I love you too.”

“You deserve better than me.” Rex replies. He genuinely believes it. He’s a clone, and she’s an aide to a Senator. She could do so much better than him. But she only has eyes for him.

She just shakes her head, “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

He threads his fingers with hers, “Join me in the water, cyare?” It’s an offer and a plea. 

She looks momentarily surprised, “I didn’t want to crowd you.”

“You could never.” He holds her hand as she stands, and he supports her as she steps into the steaming water. And, when it looks like she’s going to step away from him, Rex doesn’t release her hand. Instead, he tugs her to sit next to him.

The water sits higher on her than on him, and the tips of her hair settle in the water. She really does look like some kind of fantasy princess. Absently, he reaches up to brush a stray strand of hair off her cheek, only for it to fall right back into place again.

“You have so much hair,” He teases lightly.

A smile lifts her lips, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It makes up for the fact that I don’t have any.”

A laugh falls from her, and Rex grins before he leans in to press his lips against hers. The kiss is chaste, little more than a brush of his lips against hers, but when her free hand comes up to wrap around his bicep and his name falls from her lips in a sigh, he’s helpless but to swoop in and kiss her again and again and again.

His hand settles on her hip, squeezing tightly and pulling her closer to his side. She’s not close enough. She’ll never be close enough. She could be sitting on him and still wouldn’t be close enough.

She sighs his name again, and Rex chuckles as he presses his forehead against hers, “You sound lovesick, beautiful.”

“It’s your fault.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Yes, he is smug about that thank you.

“Can I—?” She hesitates, “Um…nevermind.”

“Mm, speak your mind, cyar’ika.”

She won’t meet his gaze, “Can I sit on your lap?”

Rex doesn’t answer, doesn’t have to answer. Because as soon as she makes the request (it wasn’t a request, he knows that, but he’s choosing to treat it as a request) he’s pulling her to sit sideways on his lap, “How’s this?”

She hums a response, her soft fingers moving to trace the starburst scar on his chest, as she lays her head on his shoulder. “Perfect.”

“You never have to ask, cyare. I belong to you. All of me belongs to you.” Rex replies.

She turns her head to kiss his shoulder, “Well then. I’m a lucky lady.”

“I think I’m the lucky one, actually.” Rex kisses the side of her head and tightens his arms around her as he lets the conversation fall. 

Eventually the ship will return and they’ll have to go back to being Captain and Senator’s Aide, but for now they can just be together. And he intends to make the most of it.

@heidnspeak

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@wax-birds

[max1461]

One thing I will say, now that I've had direct experience with my mental meat severely malfunctioning: drugs are broad-spectrum, and personal exercise of... I won't say "virtue", but choice, can be targeted. I'm not saying that drug addicts can just choose not to be addicted or something, I'm not that naive. What I'm saying is: what are the full mental knock-on affects of dampening one's cravings? If opiate addiction is ruining your life this might be the least of your concerns, but if you're conceptualizing these GLP-1 agonists or any putatively similar drugs as some kind of general purpose "self-control booster", this is might be something you want to think about.

I often get a craving-like-feeling to do math, I'll have this moment where I'm like "you know what would be good right now? One of those group theory problems where you have the orders of a bunch subgroups and you have to deduce the order of the group" and then I'll go look for one online or whatever and solve it. This is, in fact, one of my more consistent motivators to do math, and if those cravings were less frequent I would probably know a lot less. A core part of romantic attraction for me is a craving-like-feeling for my partner; not just in a brute sexual sense but in a more abstract one. To have that lessened would be, from my perspective, essentially my capacity for romantic love being dampened along one of its axes. Would I want that?

When I was a kid, I played a lot of video games. Sometimes I'd play for hours a day. And I really cared about the medium; at that point in my life my ambition was to become a video game designer. When I turned about 16, I abruptly lost the immediate-term desire to actually play video games. I still cared about the medium just as much, I still had lots of thoughts on games and game design, but in a moment-to-moment sense actually playing games was no longer something I wanted to do very often. It ceased to be something I desired in a raw hedonistic sense. It was work. I would sit down to play a game because I was interested in it intellectually, but after 20 minutes I'd get burned out and have to stop. This shift probably altered the course of my life in a huge way—it reshaped something fundamentally about who I was and who I was becoming. I still care a lot about games as a medium, and I'm not in any way torn up that I didn't go down the path of trying to become a game designer. But it does disappoint me sometimes that I can't have anything like the relationship to games that I used to, because my brain has decided they aren't "fun" in that purely hedonic sense anymore.

Actually, this was part of a larger shift in my personality that occurred when I was a teenager, in which I became fairly anhedonic in most areas of life, and as a result shifted away from most simplistically pleasurable activities and towards endeavors that provided a more diffuse, harder to quantify form of gratification. Not because I'm virtuous—but because I'm meat, and the simplistic sources of gratification largely stopped working!

What I'm trying to articulate is something like... yeah, you're made of meat, which means in particular: you are made of meat. When you take a drug that alters your meat, there is a sense in which you become somebody else. And this also happens all the time for reasons you don't control. But that doesn't mean it's good or acceptable in the general case. Sometimes, often, it's bad! Or it's good and bad in ways that are hard to tally. The brain is complex, and, like I said, medications are broad-spectrum. They don't differentiate between the neurons that make you crave a burger and the neurons that make you love your wife, they modulate all the neurotransmitters the same. Actually the bodybuilder Mike Israetel specifically says in an interview somewhere that when he's on steroids, he loves his wife less. It's just physiological. And I believe him.

In the past few months I've had to take lamotrigine for seizures. Lamotrigine is also a mood stabilizer. I don't need my mood stabilized, in fact I rather like my usual array of moods. One of the things lamotrigine evidently does is induce a positive bias in processing of faces—response to angry and fearful faces is lessened, while response to happy faces is unaffected. Sounds great, right? But the visceral response to fearful faces is an important component of affective empathy. You don't want to hurt someone, in part it seems, because your brain has a visceral reaction to the real or imagined sight of their face in fear. Scores on the psychopathy checklist correlate with impaired ability to discern fearful faces, but no comparable impaired ability to discern faces displaying positive emotions. If you can't internalize someone else's fear or sadness, you can't empathize. I know that I don't feel like myself on lamotrigine. Now this is not to be taken as at all scientific; I've got a lot of weird brain stuff going on right now and I don't feel like myself anyway. But in any case, lamotrigine is meant to be one of the seizure medications with the fewest cognitive side effects.

You are made of matter, and messing around with the matter that makes you up can change you in unknown and unpredictable ways. Me growing up to become a linguist instead of a game designer, that reflects a really complex and multi-faceted shift in who I am and how I used my time. And it was brought on by all kinds of things, all sorts of personal development over the years, but a load-bearing component was probably the simple down-modulation of an impulse, a loss of simple hedonistic capacity that caused me to search out radically new uses of my time in my teen years. That shift was endogenous, but certainly a drug could have done it. So my point I guess is that no drug is... what word am I looking for, "apolitical"? That's not what I mean. But I'm saying something conceptually similar to what people often mean when they say no technology is apolitical. Except instead of the body politic I'm talking about the body itself, the body and mind. Uh. If you take a drug to "increase your willpower", it might turn out that you become someone you wouldn't have chosen to become, in ways you never even considered. You might be fine with that or you might not. But it's not so simple as taking the person-you-are and turning up a willpower knob, it's never that simple. I think a sort of techno-pessimism towards this notion of a miracle drug is very warranted.

Last week's WITH was about the pursuit of treatments that might do for addiction what GLP-1 agonists do for cravings for food, and the guest had an interesting point about how you can have phenomena with very complex causes (the main examples here being opiate addiction and the general rise in obesity) that do not require you to untangle or address those causes in order to procure solutions. Like, is addiction a disease, a social ill, a product of trauma, a failure of willpower, or all of these things?

It doesn't necessarily matter! It turns out that "craving stuff" is a pretty basic neurological feedback loop and it may be tractable to pharmaceutical intervention. Heck, GLP-1 agonists may be that intervention: people have reported (and clinical trials are being conducted to study) that these drugs, among their many effects, simply blunt cravings, to the point where people have as a side effect of taking them for diabetes or weight loss also found they helped cut down on drinking, or gambling, or using other drugs.

So even if GLP-1 agonists don't have all the miraculous effects reported (there are some reports they may be effective as an Alzheimer's treatment!), it would be crazy if we have discovered a drug that allows us to better marshal our faculties to decide which cravings to give in to, a drug that simply imbues us with self-control. And I think that's really interesting, because it's an outright clash between two ways of seeing the world: a moralistic one in which virtues are the product of individual decisions, and in which taking a drug to achieve some outcome that "ought" to be a product of virtue might be seen as cheating, and one that reminds us that, for better or worse, we are meat, and all our complex behaviors arise as the result of the state of the meat that we are--and from which view, refusing to acknowledge the mutability of your meat in aid of achieving your goals, or even broader social benefit (addiction is really bad and there very few good options to treat it), is simply goofy.

But a lot of people's reaction to the existence of GLP-1 agonists--or for that matter any medical intervention for things which are moralized as willpower problems--includes contempt founded on being wedded to that moralizing framework. I think a lot of moralism develops as a response to conditions of existence being imposed on us that are objectively pretty miserable, and that when we discover the occasional intervention that liberates us from that pretty restrictive framework, our attitude should be one of jubilation: hear, O ye people, that what was long believed to be an implacable trade-off of human existence is no more. But I think a lot of people's reaction is to double down: I had to suffer, or someone I know had to suffer, therefore you ought to suffer as well, or else our suffering has no meaning.

[scoobydoodean]

As monumental as the confession scene was, it kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth that Cas only confessed because he was going to sacrifice himself. Like, Dean's worthy of being saved, but he's not worthy of being loved in a way that's not going to wreck him long term?

Well, I think we can safely say Cas did not mean it this way and would be horrified if confronted by this angle, but that it would be well within Dean's perspective (built on his own experience) to think of it that way and become even more convinced that loving him is a death sentence and that everyone will always leave him. Multiple people have proved they're willing to die for Dean Winchester and there's nothing special about it (from his perspective). He wants some to live for him instead.

Cas doesn't really know how fiercely Dean mourns him when he's gone, and while I think he's cognizant of Dean's insecurities to some extent, I'm not sure he realizes exactly how deep they go. Even if Cas was told like "Well when you were dead, Dean spent months drinking himself into the ground" or "When you and Mary and Crowley were dead, Dean had a suicide kit and he used it and when you came back he said it was his 'big win'". I sometimes think Cas would have trouble processing that he'd have anything to do with Dean's bouts of depression because of his own hang ups.

See: Cas hearing Dean pray to Cas every night for a year, searching for him through Purgatory, and Cas never getting it through his head that whole time that Dean wasn't going to leave without him and wasn't interested in his self-flagellating isolation play to "protect" Dean (which—if we're being real—wasn't just about protecting Dean).

See: Cas hearing Dean stress throughout season 12 that he worries about Cas when he goes radio silent on them and that he wants them to communicate with each other and work as a team, and Cas going "okay" then stealing The Colt so he can go radio silent on them and get a win all by himself and decidedly not as a team because Cas does not want that.

Like. There is clearly a HUGE disconnect between them when it comes to how to communicate as a team and what it means to protect the people you love. More than that—their own psychological needs and desires for themselves as individuals seem to vary quite substantially (and they clash and create more miscommunication). They both crave safety and stability, but to Cas, safety and stability means knowing "I got a win, I did a good job, and now when I go home I feel respected and needed" and to Dean, "a win" means his family is safe. To Dean, safety and stability means, "We are all together in our home, and we tell each other where we're going when we leave. We handle things as a team and communicate with each other instead of going behind each others backs."

Cas really slots himself into the protector role and I think to an extent, Dean is willing to concede that role to him. See: Rocky's bar, where Dean imagines himself as retired and working as a barkeep. He's still perfectly capable of defending himself, but he doesn't go out looking for hunts. Sam and Cas are still hunting, but Dean feels psychologically safe about it because he knows where they are, and they always come home to his bar to see him and to be fed. In real life, Cas slots himself pretty aggressively into the protector role, but he doesn't communicate and doesn't always value teamwork. He doesn't realize while trying to "protect" their family that his aggressive tendency to isolate from them to "protect" them is 1) reminiscent of Dean's father and 2) distressing to Dean because Dean doesn't know (as a person who has lost many people he cares about including Cas multiple times) where Cas is or that he is safe or if he needs their help. Cas also doesn't see his tendency to lone wolf as abandonment and doesn't see any self-centeredness in it, but Dean does (and I don't think Dean is totally off—just like I don't think Cas was avoiding Dean in Purgatory just to keep Dean safe and for no other reason).

Anyway. All of this to say. I have said in the past that it is very possible that Cas would avoid Dean if he came back after The Empty took him. But say Cas did openly and with abandon continue to acknowledge that he loves Dean. I think if Dean withdrew from him, it would be so much fun if it was less out of timidness and fear and more out of anger. Dean knows what Cas is trying to say, but Dean doesn't feel understood, and he doesn't feel loved even if Cas loves him, and I could totally see a reality where Dean tries to give Cas a taste of his own medicine by making Cas chase him all over the country about it in a game of cat and mouse. Obviously, Cas is growing increasingly impatient and angry about this as he pursues his charge and intense sexual tension is building the whole time so when Cas finally catches up to Dean they aggressively fuck each other about it.

[concretejunglefm]

What do we think the guys would be like if they had a secret crush on you? Like if you were working on tour somewhere with them.

Personally I think Folio would be the most obvious one. 😂

Folio would be the most obvious but that's because he's just generally excited to be around you and you start to easily pick that up, especially when you're aware he likes to hang out with the crew when everything is being set up. Normally it's him and his drum tech hanging out, but suddenly he's starting to spend a little extra time with you, maybe inviting you over. Despite this there is a little awkward shyness to him, especially in the beginning. Once he loosens up it's easier, but his crush on you makes him a little shy at times, mainly when you're alone because with other people around he can bounce of their energy, but solo he finds himself a little more a loss for words.

Matt would not be obvious at all, perhaps the closest he could ever come to even allowing himself a slight acknowledgement of the fact is when he isn't as tough on you about your job. Firstly he really rides you hard on it, mainly because you're young and not as experienced, he wants to give the benefit of the doubt but you also know what you came into so he shouldn't have to. It'll be subtler things with him, such as picking you up lunch when you forget yours because you selflessly are putting everyone else and everything else ahead of yourself, as well as simply bringing you a coffee in the mornings when you wake up early, because you want to get a jump start on the day. The walls come down a little, but when he feels like there's a little too much comfort there he's quick to pull them back up and give you a hard time to remind you about doing your job correctly. Little does he know you kind of like that he gets so bossy.

Jolly is a subtle man who is merely observant. Usually he keeps to himself, perhaps engaging with you a little, even if he does have a crush, but the most of it comes from you both sharing a love of books. You're the talkative one between you, firstly when you spot him reading a book you've read, which prompts him to begin a conversation with you. It's brief, but it leaves his chest feeling a little warm and there's a bounce in his step, one which is noticeable to the other guys. Eventually his subtly extends to an occasional touch here and there, grazing hand along your back, brushing your arm, even offering you his hand as you climb down off the bus. The biggest tell, not to you but the other guys, is when he gifts you a book you mentioned wanting to read. Each stop he'll peruse the smaller bookstores where he can and when he finds one he mentally wrote down you mentioning, he picks it up and gives it you. "I haven't read this one." You'll tell him, while he offers a smile and soft "I know." Before walking off with all of the guys sharing a knowing look.

Noah is alot more shy and awkward than his stage persona would have you believe, yeah he has an ego and knows that he's hot, but that doesn't mean he assumes you fancy him, just because he happens to have a crush on you. You bond over your similar interests after he discovers you're not only an AOT fan, but a death note fan, it quickly moves from anime to music and he finds his crush becoming something gnawing at him the nights you both spend sat up talking over all of these shared interests. If you're not talking about them, you're texting and even sending memes. Sometimes he'll even invite you into his bunk to watch an episode or two before he finds you falling asleep, head against his shoulder.

When it comes to Nicholas he shares the same sentiment as Jolly in regards to giving you gifts as a sign of his crush, but unlike the Swede, they're usually hand made and smaller when on the road. Most consist of little drawings and doodles, he can't count the amount of times he'd actually attempted to do a self portrait of you, some more serious and artistic than others. Calling you his muse would be a cliche, but he can't say that you don't inspire him to draw sometimes, especially on the days off when you go on your little adventures, sometimes he'll even go as far as doodling a little flip book of those for you during his spare time.

[theomencometh]

Anthony's Realization

Fandom: Smosh Pairing: Ian Hecox/Anthony Padilla, Anthony Padilla & Dan Howell, implied phan Rating: T Key Tags: Feelings Realization, Getting Together, Friends to Lovers Word Count: 5,275 Read on AO3

Summary:

When Anthony’s realization finally hits him, the first thing that he does is take three slow, deep breaths. The second thing that he does is figure out when his next therapy appointment is, decide it’s too far away, and pull out his phone to text an expert.

When Anthony’s realization finally hits him, the first thing that he does is take three slow, deep breaths.  He closes his eyes, inhales, and tells himself that it isn’t a big deal.  And it truly isn’t, not really.  The thing about this realization is that it's not a surprise.  He may not have been aware enough to name what was happening, but by the time he becomes conscious of his feelings, he’s been living with them for long enough that it’s a natural part of him, nothing to be done.  He doesn’t want to fight it, it’s silly to deny it, and there are definitely worse fates in the world.  Still, it’s a huge fucking realization to have, and he takes a second to re-center himself in the middle of the office so he doesn’t do something stupid, like have a panic attack or grab Ian by the lapels of his jacket or start laughing hysterically.

The second thing that he does when he finally has his realization is figure out when his next therapy appointment is, decide it’s too far away, and pull out his phone to text an expert.

There’s no way that he can talk about this with anyone he works with.  Not only are there sometimes complicated boundaries with him being one of the owners, but if this got leaked it would spread around Smosh like wildfire, and he’s absolutely not ready for that.  In that instance, might as well stay away from everyone in the general LA area, just in case it manages to get back to anyone on staff.  Actually, there are too many people who know Smosh members in the entire country, so it’s best to discard everyone in the United States–no, everyone in all of North America entirely.

The answer is obvious.  There’s one other person who is uniquely positioned to understand what he’s going through and who would be willing to talk him through it, and that person doesn’t live in the country and talks more to him than anyone else at Smosh.

Anthony: hey, any chance you’re free to chat soon? could use your advice. nothing bad

He only has to wait a few seconds, which is impressive, because he didn’t consider calculating the time difference before he texted.

Dan Howell (youtube): oh hell

you’re not dying right

30 minutes sound good?

Anthony: no death, 30 min is good. Ttyl

Anthony grabs his jacket and heads out the door, calling a very general goodbye to the office at large so no one thinks he has just been burdened with self-knowledge that he will be obsessing over for the foreseeable future.

Anthony makes it home with no memory of the drive.  He barely has time to kick off his shoes and settle on the couch before Dan’s call comes through.  It’s a video call, but Anthony is still met by a dark screen, only half of Dan’s face illuminated with white light.  He’s probably in his room in the dark even though he’s wide awake, which feels so quintessentially Dan that it eases Anthony a little.

“Hey, thanks for calling,” Anthony says.  Dan squints at him suspiciously from the tiny phone screen.

“Of course,” he replies.  “Not every day I get to talk to my good friend Anthony Padilla.”

Anthony rolls his eyes, because Dan has been busier than him lately and they do send each other memes and funny messages sometimes.  It’s not like they’ve had no contact in the past few months.

“What’s up?” Dan asks, steamrolling past any reply Anthony might come up with.  Anthony likes that about him.  It may be hard to lock Dan into a genuine conversation when he doesn’t want one, but once he’s there he has single-minded focus and doesn’t let Anthony beat around the bush or procrastinate.  Anthony would be almost offended that it seems like Dan wants to get it over with if it wasn’t for the fact that small talk right now would be excruciating.

“I’ve, uh, had a bit of a realization recently, and I don’t really want to talk to anyone in the office about it.”

Dan levels him with a flat look.

“Are you fucking in love with Ian?”

Anthony groans, leaning back against his couch and giving himself a moment to cover his face.

He didn’t expect Dan to clock him so easily.  Can everyone tell?  Was Anthony himself the last person to know?  Does he have a flashing neon sign saying IN LOVE WITH IAN HECOX hanging above his head?

“How the fuck did you know?” he asks incredulously.  Dan laughs at him, loud and bright.

“Because if it wasn’t about Ian, you’d be talking through whatever it is with him as part of your “healthy communication” pact, and my largest skill set is navigating how to be a gay youtuber in love with your best friend and business partner. Also, I’m probably the closest gay person you know who isn’t associated with your company.”

Anthony laughs.

“Is it really that obvious?” he asks.  Dan shrugs.

“I know what I’m about,” he replies.  “Now, is it the gayness that’s a crisis or the Ian-ness that’s a crisis?”

“Ian-ness,” he responds immediately.  “Wait, actually…”

Dan waits while Anthony takes a moment, because that’s not right, not really.

He isn’t worried about his sexuality.  He came to the conclusion a few years ago that he would keep himself open to other possibilities, and he’s always been able to appreciate other guys.  The fact that Ian has a dick isn’t a problem.  Sure, he hasn’t felt particularly motivated to give someone a blowjob before, but he’s not bothered by the idea at all.  He’d like to have the chance, frankly, even if he’s bad at it and needs to practice a bit, especially if Ian is the one he’s practicing with.  But the Ian of it all isn’t a crisis, either.

“It’s not–” he starts, then stops.  Dan hums encouragingly.  “It’s not a crisis, really?  It’s Ian, you know?  This is probably the best case scenario for my first time falling in love with a man.”

“Fair,” Dan says.  “So what do you need me for, then?”

Anthony snorts.

“If I didn’t talk this through with someone, I’d probably end up blurting it out in a meeting tomorrow in front of everyone.”

Dan hums.

“Yeah, wouldn’t be the most professional moment, even for you,” he says.  “I take it this means you’re down bad.”

“Oh yeah,” Anthony confirms.  “Hit me like a truck.  Nothing even prompted it!  I was wrapping up for the day and wondering if I should ask Ian to grab dinner like usual and the idea made me so happy I thought something was wrong.”

“That’s fucking gay, Anthony,” Dan says.

“I know!” he groans.  “That was the problem, because that’s how I feel about him all the time.  This is how I’ve felt for months, and I’m just now realizing.  What the fuck?  How does that happen?”

“You were too caught up in the euphoria of being around him again to tell it was a proper crush.  Like a frog in boiling water,” Dan says, nodding sagely.  Anthony mirrors him, grateful that he doesn’t need to elaborate further.  Reuniting with Ian felt like finding a part of himself that had been missing since before he left Smosh.  He had no way of knowing that the rush he felt every time they hung out or the elation when he managed to say something that made Ian laugh was a symptom of something bigger.  It felt like it used to, except better because they’d both grown as people and weren’t emotionally stunted children anymore.  He didn’t realize that love had anything to do with it, at least not romantic love.  Then, once they’d stabilized properly, they bought Smosh and he had more things to distract himself with.  He loved being around Ian, he loved being at Smosh, he loved the fact that he could have both when he had missed them for years.  He didn’t feel the need to examine things closer than that.

“What am I supposed to do?” Anthony asks.  Dan snorts.

“Don’t do what I did, which was stalk the other person to the point where we were friends and then make him do all the romantic heavy lifting,” he says.  “The way I see it, you can either repress it so hard it disappears and you’re miserable, or you tell him in a private moment that you both can escape if it goes badly.”

Anthony frowns.

“Will it go badly?”

Dan shrugs.

“You know Ian better than I do.  What do you think?”

Anthony makes himself stop and genuinely consider the question, rather than respond with knee-jerk fears or defensiveness.  There’s decades of history including their friendship completely unraveling to consider, and Anthony doesn’t think he’ll survive losing Ian a second time.  But Ian has never run away because Anthony wanted too much from him.  He might not respond the way that Anthony wants, and he might not give Anthony the same openness and vulnerability that Anthony would be giving him during a confession, but he can’t see this being the thing that pushes Ian away for good.  It might be awkward for a bit, but they’re both adults.  Anthony can figure out how to manage his feelings, and Ian historically has been great at ignoring elephants in rooms and pretending like things are fine.

“I think it’ll be okay,” he says slowly.  “If he doesn’t feel the same or is weirded out, I think we’ll be able to move past it.  He’ll probably make some bad jokes to deflect, but I don’t think he’ll hate me, or ask me to leave the company or anything.”

“You think he doesn’t feel the same?” Dan asks.  Anthony shrugs.

“Who knows, with Ian.  I know he loves me, but that’s different than being in love with me, and he was repressing the shit out of his emotions for a while there.  I don’t know.  It’s been–things have been really good with us, recently.  And I think he’s in the same place as me, with the sexuality thing.  But that doesn’t mean that he’s in the same place as me with his feelings, too.”

Dan hums.

Anthony tries to imagine Ian smiling at him in that new, soft way he sometimes does, saying something like “don’t be stupid, Anthony, of course I love you, too”.  His heart speeds up at just the thought, feeling like it’s about to skip out of his chest, and he slams that door shut immediately.  No use in getting his hopes up or catastrophizing, not before he knows the actual outcome.  Better not borrow the joy or anxiety of the future, right?

“When are you going to tell him?” Dan asks.

“What happened to maybe repressing it and being miserable?”  Anthony replies.

Even though he can barely see anything from Dan’s side of the screen, he can see the look that Dan gives him.  At least it makes him snort.

“As your friend, I can’t in good conscience actually recommend that route to you,” Dan says.  “Especially because you’d be shit at it and would tell him anyway, but it’d probably be at the worst possible moment.”

Anthony can’t argue with that.  He’s not great at keeping things inside.  If he tries to repress this, it’ll bubble up before exploding, like a soda that’s been shaken then cracked open, spilling his feelings all over the place.

“I should probably tell him soon, then,” Anthony says.  Dan nods.

“Better to get it over with.  Rip off the bandaid.”

“Opposite of what you did.”

“Fuck off,” Dan says, voice high with indignation.  “I’ve been in a happy relationship for over a decade.  You asked me for help.”

“I did,” Anthony concedes.  “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Dan says, smarmy and pompous in a way that makes Anthony laugh.

He directs the conversation away from his realization and toward normal topics, taking his time to catch up with Dan properly.  It’s good to talk to him, just like it always is.  As allergic as they are to phone calls, it’s nice to be able to chat in real time, rather than allowing text messages to get lost in a flurry of notifications.  More time has passed than Anthony realized when another notification pops up at the top of his screen.  He trails off mid-sentence when he sees who it’s from.

Ian: you ok? you left the office pret…

While he’s reading, another banner appears.

Ian: dinner?

“What’s up, what just happened?  Why are you ignoring me?” Dan asks.

“Sorry,” Anthony says, shaking his head to bring himself back to the moment.  “Ian just texted.  He wants to have dinner.”

“The thing that started it all,” Dan says ominously.  “Sounds like the perfect opportunity.”

Anthony feels a dash of panic surge through him before it fades, leaving the hint of a bitter aftertaste.

“Already?” he winces.

“Why, do you need to let things settle?” Dan asks.  “You seemed pretty secure with everything earlier.  Do you think your feelings are going to change?”

Anthony shakes his head immediately.

“I have never been more sure of my feelings,” he affirms.  “I’m in this for the long haul.”

Dan holds his hand up in a there you go gesture.

“Right,” Anthony says.  “Pulling off a bandaid.”

“Guess I’ll let you go get your man,” Dan sighs dramatically.  “Text me what happens.  Whether it’s a celebration or you want someone to listen to emo music and cry with you.”

“Thank you,” Anthony says earnestly.  Dan rolls his eyes.

“Whatever.  Welcome to the gay disaster club.  Have fun.”

“Thanks for having me,” Anthony laughs.  “Talk to you later.”

Dan says a quick goodbye and signs off with a wave, and Anthony navigates over to Ian’s messages before he can second-guess himself.

Ian Hecox: you ok? you left the office pretty quick today

dinner?

Anthony’s thumbs hover over the buttons, not wanting to lie to Ian, but also not wanting to confess his feelings over text.  If he says he wants to talk to Ian about something, Ian might think it’s worse than it is, and Anthony doesn’t want to turn this into a big deal for him if it doesn’t have to be, but if he ignores Ian’s initial question and just asks him to come over with takeout, he’ll still think something is wrong, and he’ll think that Anthony doesn’t want to talk about it with him and therefore it’s something terrible.

His phone buzzes with another notification.

Dan Howell (youtube): you better be replying to him and not PROCRASTINATING like a LOSER

Anthony sends him the middle finger emoji, but it’s the encouragement that he needs.

Anthony: had something on my mind i wanted to think through, nothing bad

wanna come over? bring thai pls

Ian’s reply comes in immediately.

Ian: be there in 20

Anthony locks his phone and sets it down, letting out a long breath.  He scrubs his hands over his face, then through his hair, blinking at the blank tv across from him while he tries to organize his thoughts.

He can’t sit here for 20 minutes spiraling until Ian gets here.  He wants to smoke to offset the nerves thrumming through him, but he doesn’t want to overdo it and lose his sense of urgency, then decide to put the confession off because of it.  He needs to tell Ian tonight.

“Like ripping off a bandaid,” he says aloud, slapping his thighs and standing.  He spots a candle and lights that, at least, then busies himself tidying up.  His home isn’t messy by any means, but rearranging things and breaking out the duster to run along his bookshelves gives him something to keep his hands busy while he repeats a mantra of affirmations in his mind, not allowing any room for the negative and anxious thoughts to permeate.

A sharp knock on his door breaks him out of his thoughts while he’s unloading the dishwasher, immediately followed by his door opening and Ian’s voice calling “Honey, I’m home!”

Anthony’s heart flutters.  If this continues, he’s going to need to see a cardiologist.

“In the kitchen!” he calls back.  “Want a drink?”

“Water for now,” Ian calls back, no doubt setting their take-out up on the coffee table in the living room.  “We’ll see about later.”

Anthony grabs two glasses for them and fills them from the filter in the fridge, adding ice for himself but none for Ian because he says it gets too cold for his teeth these days.  They’re getting older.  Anthony is grateful that he’s present to see it.

“I got you your usual,” Ian says, gesturing to the container while Anthony carefully sets the glass in front of him.  He changed since the office, dressing down in sweatpants and an older Smosh hoodie that they discontinued before Anthony left.  He looks tired and comfortable, like he belongs on Anthony’s couch shoveling rice into his mouth, and Anthony swallows around the lump in his throat.

Yeah, he needs to tell Ian tonight.  He can’t keep living like this.  Self-awareness is a gift, because you can’t change things if you don’t know there’s a problem, but Anthony wishes the problem wasn’t being in love with his best friend in a way that’s overwhelmingly impossible to ignore.

They don’t talk about anything important while they eat, just chatting casually about whatever crosses their minds, from a weird squirrel that Ian saw yesterday to an artist that Anthony found on Instagram and really likes.  It’s easy and comfortable, and Anthony finds himself relaxing with every little joke Ian says that makes him laugh.  Ian doesn’t try to be funny outside of work, but he naturally has Anthony in stitches more than anyone else he’s ever met.  Anthony has laughed more in the two years they’ve been reunited than he did in the entire six years they were apart.

Eventually, the laughter fades away, Ian setting his plastic fork down and leaning back against the cushions, wiggling a bit to get in the most comfortable position possible with a content sigh.  He’s such an old man that way, but Anthony is right there with him, knees cracking when he stretches out.

“So,” Ian says, lolling his head to the side so he can see Anthony fully. “What were you thinking so hard about earlier?”

Anthony sighs.  He crosses his arms, but he doesn’t like how that makes him feel like a kid waiting outside the principal’s office, so he rubs his hands against his jeans instead.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Ian offers.  “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, it’s fine,” Anthony says before Ian can get the wrong idea.  “It’s not–I wanted to tell you, anyway.”

“Okay,” Ian says slowly.  Anthony takes a deep breath, then another one.

“I’m bi,” he blurts.

Not quite what he wanted to say, but baby steps.

“Officially,” he adds.  “I know we’ve kind of talked about it before, but I wasn’t really sure, and now I am.  I’m bisexual.  I like dudes, too.”

“Nice,” Ian says with a grin, leaning forward to give him a high five.  Anthony obediently slaps their palms together, and Ian’s fingers curl around Anthony’s hand, shaking him.  “Let’s go!  Solidarity!”

Anthony laughs, letting Ian break the tension like he usually does.  Their hands fall back against the couch, still clasped together, and part of the laughter dies in Anthony’s throat.

“Thanks for telling me, dude,” Ian says.  “I am, too, since we’re sharing sexualities.”

Ian’s thumb swipes over the back of Anthony’s hand and goosebumps erupt across his arms, thankfully hidden by his sweater.

“Cool,” he manages to say.  Ian smiles at him, open and joyful, and Anthony doesn’t know what emotion is playing across his face, but it makes Ian soften.

“Are you going to get emo on me?” he asks, light and teasing.  Anthony chuckles, but it comes out a little wet.

“I didn’t think I would,” he says honestly, blinking up at the ceiling and letting out a shaky breath.  Ian squeezes his hand, just a quick pressure and release, and Anthony returns it.  When he’s centered himself enough to look back at Ian, his best friend is still smiling at him.  It’s a smile that has no pretenses or expectations, just gentle acceptance.  He’s so much more open than Anthony ever expected him to be, even since they reconciled.  They both had to relearn how to read each other in these heavy moments, and Anthony now knows when Ian puts his walls up and why, and when he can give Anthony more of the vulnerability that he always craves.  Now, though, he doesn’t feel like Ian is hiding, despite the jokes and teasing.  He’s just here with Anthony, ready to take whatever confession he gives.

“That’s not all of it,” Anthony says.  Ian shifts, tucking a foot under him so he can face Anthony fully.  He still hasn’t let go of his hand, but Anthony doesn’t want to watch him do so later, so he does it himself, twisting one of his rings around to distract his hands from the sudden emptiness.

“I, uh,” he starts.  Ian’s steady focus on him is distracting, and it’s making his throat close up again.  He clears it, an incongruous sound in the otherwise quiet space.

“I realized I have feelings for someone,” he finally brings himself to say. Ian’s expression doesn’t change, maintaining a careful neutrality that Anthony is all too familiar with.

“Is that a bad thing?” he asks eventually, when too much time has passed for Anthony to fill in the blanks.

“No,” Anthony says quickly.  “No, it’s not– I’m not upset about it.  It’s just… scary.  But I can handle it.”

Ian’s eyebrows twitch with an aborted frown.

Damn, he’s botching this.

“It’s– if I had to fall in love with anyone, it’s best that it’s him,” he tries to explain.  “He’s– this is the best case scenario.”

Ian does frown this time.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re gonna let me down easy.”

Ian stares at him.  Anthony replays those words in his head and heat floods his face, everything burning.  He blinks a few times, but time doesn’t rewind and let him take those words back to tell Ian in a better way.  He’s always been shit at improv; he should’ve scripted this in those 20 minutes while Ian was grabbing them dinner and instead he’s making a mess of things.

“What,” Ian asks, no inflection.  Anthony opens his mouth, can’t get any actual words out, and closes it again.

“Deep breath, Anthony,” Ian commands.  Even though the inflection is still strangely empty, Anthony forces in a breath, then another one.

“Sorry,” he says.  Ian shakes his head.

“It’s fine.  But you need to use words, because I don’t know what the fuck is happening right now.”

Anthony gestures helplessly.

“I love you?” he says.  “In a gay way?”

Ian nods slowly.  Anthony wants the ground to open up and swallow him.  Maybe he can go stay with Dan and Phil for a few weeks or forever, since Dan’s advice got him in this situation in the first place, except he knows that he’s being irrational and everything should be fine once it stops sucking so bad.

He should’ve done this at Ian’s house so he could run away, rather than having Ian come to him and having to kick him out.

“You think I’m going to let you down easy?” Ian asks.  Anthony laughs, a high pitched, hysteric noise that he immediately hates and never wants to make again.

“Are you really going to be mean to me about it?” he asks.  His pulse is racing.  He’s going to die.  He’s actually going to die from confessing his gay love for his best friend.  This is pathetic.  This is terrible.  He’s almost 40 years old and it feels like he’s 15 and getting rejected for the first time, except worse.  Dan owes him so many drinks.

“Anthony,” Ian says, reaching towards him.  Anthony isn’t fast enough to lean away, and Ian’s hands cup his jaw, curling around his neck and threading through his hair to keep him in place.

“Stop freaking out,” he says, thumb swiping across Anthony’s jaw.  “Don’t be stupid.”

Anthony can’t even begin to formulate a response, because Ian leans forward and kisses him.  His brain completely short circuits at the gentle contact, even though it only lasts for a second before Ian is leaning back, carefully eyeing him.

“Huh?” he says.  Ian cracks a smile.

“I love you, too, you idiot.”

All of the tension leaves Anthony in a rush that makes him dizzy.  It’s a good thing that Ian is still holding him, hands anchoring him in the present while Ian gives him that new smile, the one that makes Anthony feel like Ian doesn’t want to be anywhere else if Anthony isn’t with him.

“Huh?” he asks again.  Ian chuckles, but it isn’t malicious, and Anthony smiles with him.

“Dude, did you really not know?” Ian asks.  “Courtney staged an intervention for me weeks ago.  Apparently she and Shayne have been making little bets since you came back.”

“Since I came back?” Anthony asks.  “No way.”

“They were delusional,” Ian agrees.  “I was not in touch with my feelings enough at that point.  I was just happy to have my best friend back.”

“And now?” Anthony asks.  Ian grins.

“I’ve been waiting for you to catch up.  What happened to you being in tune with your mind and spirit, bro?  Why’d it take you so long to get here?”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Anthony laughs, hands coming up to circle Ian’s wrists.  “I’ve never fallen in love with my best friend before.  I thought it was just you.”

Ian snorts, ducking his head and finally letting his hands fall from Anthony’s face, tangling their fingers together instead.

“That’s so fucking cheesy,” he says, but he sounds pleased.  Anthony flushes.

“We’re basically a friends to lovers fanfiction, Ian.  This was always going to be cheesy.”

Ian rolls his eyes.  When he looks at Anthony again, it’s through his lashes with a fond smile, like he’s taking pages out of Seduction 101.  Anthony is actually embarrassed at how well it works on him, face heating and breath catching.  His eyes wander down to Ian’s lips, and he forces them back to his eyes in a panic before he remembers that he’s allowed to do that.  Ian made that clear.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks.  “I wasn’t ready when you did it.”

“I don’t know, can you?” Ian replies automatically, then grimaces.  Anthony gives him a look, even if Ian’s immediate regret is clear.  At least they’re on the same page there.

“Yes,” Ian corrects.  “Actually, if you don’t I’m going to be upset.”

That’s all the encouragement that Anthony needs to lean in.  He takes his time, letting their noses brush and settling his hands on Ian’s waist before Ian gets impatient and closes the gap.  It feels entirely different than their first kiss.  Anthony goes into it with intention, pressing as close as he can without Ian's glasses getting in the way, and Ian responds in kind, hands snaking over Anthony's shoulders.  The scratch of Ian's stubble against his mouth sends shivers down his spine, much more addictive than Anthony would've guessed, and he fists Ian's hoodie tighter in response, shifting to try to get even closer.  Ian breaks the kiss before Anthony is ready, but all he does is take off his glasses and dive right back in, matching Anthony step for step.

Being this close is causing Anthony's head to spin, each change in angle and point of contact simultaneously making every nerve in him stand at attention and glaze over.  He can smell Ian's aftershave under the leftover Thai food and burned down remnants of the candle permeating through the living room, and Ian's hands feel incredibly warm through his sweater, even more so when one of them slides up his neck to dig into his hair.  The gentle scratch of nails against his scalp pulls the start of a whine out of his throat unbidden, and Ian immediately deepens the kiss, coaxing Anthony to open his mouth with a brush of his tongue.

Anthony wants to keep kissing him all night.  He could stay kissing him for the rest of his life and be perfectly happy, whether he keels over in a few minutes or a few decades.  This is their first time kissing with intent, the first time where it actually means something, but there's something so familiar about it anyway, the easy way that they move together and around each other, the compatible pressure and comfortable motions.  He pulls at Ian again, wanting to get even closer, and Ian shifts without breaking contact, pushing Anthony back against the arm of the couch and following him down.  It puts their bodies flush together, and Anthony wraps his arms around Ian's back, pinning him there, a warm line along his front.

A vibration in his pocket startles him enough that he breaks the kiss, blinking up at Ian in surprise.  He's haloed by the overhead light, mouth red and cheeks flushed, and he has never looked more beautiful.

"What's wrong?" he asks.  Anthony blinks at him, processing.

The phone in his back pocket vibrates again, loud enough that Anthony can hear it now that he's not distracted.  He forces one of his hands to release Ian's sweatshirt, lifting his hips to access the pocket and inhaling sharply when the motion makes him brush against Ian.

"Anthony..." Ian says, voice thick.  Anthony's phone vibrates again in his hand, drawing Ian's attention to it.  He sits back on his heels, finally giving Anthony room to catch a full breath.

Dan Howell (youtube): how are things?  have you told him yet?

celebration or crying

maybe silence is a good sign??

“Who is it?” Ian asks, tugging on the bottom of his hoodie.

“Dan,” Anthony says.  Then, for clarification, “Howell.  I called him earlier.  He wants to know how the love confession went.”

Ian plucks the phone from his hand in the middle of typing his reply.

“Hey,” Anthony protests halfheartedly while Ian swipes to the camera app.  Any additional bitching dies in his throat when Ian presses his lips to the corner of Anthony’s mouth, taking a selfie at the exact moment.

It isn’t the best picture.  They’re off-center and Anthony’s face equal parts enamored and very clearly caught off-guard, but Anthony doesn’t protest while Ian attaches the picture to Anthony’s message thread with Dan and sends it.  He locks the phone and discards it off to the side, something that Anthony is very okay with once Ian turns his full attention back to him.

“I know we need to talk about this soon, but I kinda want to save that conversation for later tonight and go back to making out right now,” Ian states.

“I’m fine with that,” Anthony says, already reaching for him.  He kisses Ian’s grin off his face.

Somewhere on Anthony’s coffee table, nestled among empty takeout containers and a stack of napkins, Anthony’s phone buzzes again.  Neither of them hear it.  When Anthony finally checks his phone the next morning, he’ll have a litany of text messages, equal parts sincerely happy and playfully disgusted.  For now, he’s more than satisfied to kiss Ian silly, everything else fading away until the world consists of just the two of them.

[significant-narratives]

hi anon! i know this probably isn't quite what you were looking for, but i'd like to give you a couple of sports poetry recommendations. some of them are more directly about sports than others, but i think they all do a wonderful job of showing the way that sports and sports fandom can function as metaphor for and reflection of humanity, the inevitable passage of time, and the ways in which people love.

where possible, i have included direct links to the poems themselves.

Biography of LeBron as Ohio by Sean Thomas Dougherty

if you're only going to read one poem from this list, let it be this one.

the subject of this poem is NBA star lebron james, who is considered one the greatest, possibly even the greatest, basketball player of all time. this poem examines what the man behind the myth. what does it mean to be 'just a kid from akron, ohio', as james is so fond of saying? what does it mean to come from 'the middle of nowhere' and become one of the greatest stars your sports has ever seen? it's an incredibly moving, heartfelt, and oddly personal piece. and i would highly recommend that you read it out loud. just trust me on this one.

Does LeBron think of dying? Does the grape think of dying as it withers on the vine by the lake? Or does it dream of the wine it will become?

WHEN I SAY THAT LOVING ME IS KIND OF LIKE BEING A CHICAGO BULLS FAN by Hanif Abdurraqib

one of my personal favourite poems of all time, this piece uses the once dynastic chicago bulls basketball franchise to talk about what it means to fall from grace, to lose what once made you great, to feel like the best version of yourself has become a distant memory.

as a side note, i would also recommend abdurraqib's book, 'there's always this year: on basketball and ascension'.

or I will say I promise that my legs just need another season, and then I will be who you fell in love with again.

Poem for My Father by Quincy Troupe

it's a bit difficult to summarize this one.

this poem is dedicated to the poet's father, quincy t. trouppe sr, a professional baseball player during the 1930s until the 1950s. quincy jr writes about his father, the impact of colonialism on individual identity, what it means to be black in america, and the game of baseball. you can feel how much love quincy had for his father in how he writes about him and his legacy.

crucially, this poem also touches on the racism that was present in major league baseball at the time of his father's career and what it meant for his father to play in the league at the time that he did.

father, it was an honor to be there, in the dugout with you

Wide Receiver by Mark Halliday

the inherent intimacy of being teammates on the same sports team chasing the same dream. that's it that's the poem.

so come on, star boy, fling a Hail Mary with a dream-coached combination of muscle and faith

The Bee by James Dickey

sometimes your coach is your father. sometimes your father is your coach. sometimes your coach haunts you long after you leave the playing field behind. sometimes your coach is the only voice you can hear. sometimes it's the only voice you want to hear.

and also bees are there.

Long live what I badly did At Clemson and all of my clumsiest drives For the ball [...] Coach Shag Norton, Tell me as you never yet have told me To get the lead out scream whatever will get The slow-motion of middle age off me

Poem with Bleating Heart by Robert Wood Lynn

because at the end of the day, sports fandom is just a metaphor for the way that humans love. for better or worse.

once again it is fall all around us there are sports teams praying for god to smite their opponents

Hi!

This is maybe a bit left of field, but I love your blog and you seem very knowledgeable so maybe you (or one of your followers?) have an idea.

Can you recommend some reading material on sports in general? It can absolutely be hockey related but I’m talking sort of bigger scope. More specifically, how (team) sports relate to society as a whole, what role it plays for humanity, maybe it’s history? What about the fan culture?

For context, I come from a pretty academic family where growing up there was this all encompassing prejudice of “it’s for stupid people” (which is clearly stupid in itself). I guess I’m trying to break the mold, but all of it is culturally very new to me.

It can be books, articles, essays, anything.

I realise I sound like a nerd, but. Maybe?

I love this q!!! I'm going to list some of my favourites, but I also haven't read everything (or even most things) so I'll leave it open to the floor to add to. If you have recs for this anon, please reblog with additions!

Moneyball by Michael Lewis and its semi-not-really sequel Big Data Baseball by Travis Sawchik are about the analytics revolutions in baseball - Moneyball about the original one that sparked from amateur mathematician Bill James' writings, and Big Data about the inception of the Statcast era about fifteen years later.

The Game by Ken Dryden is a biography by one of the greatest goalies and minds ever to play the sport. I would recommend almost anything written by Dryden, but this is really his masterwork.

17776 is a work of fiction written by Jon Bois, but I feel like it fits within the scope of your question anyway - thematically it seeks to ask and answer why we play sports and what they mean to us. It's also written and presented online for free and you can just google it, so you don't have to hunt through your libraries or buy a copy!

The Game of Our Lives by Peter Gzowski is a rarer one, especially if you're not Canadian, but I have a personal connection so I'll always recommend it anyway. It's written about Wayne Gretzky during his initial NHL season, and examines the way we think of greatness, what makes hockey players great (on a technical as well as social level), and the ideal of a Great Hockey Player as it relates to Canadian national identity.

Along that thread, I'll finally recommend the works of sociologist Kristi Allain, who's written multiple papers on the construction of Canadian identity both within hockey and within media discussing it, and the socialization and experiences of Canadian and non-Canadian hockey players.

[greenerteacups]

7 and 8 for Narcissa (or really, any member of the Black family - dealers choice)

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

I love talking about Narcissa, I'll take the chance all day!

I love that fanon Narcissa absolutely runs Draco's shit. He's portrayed as an über mama's boy, with I really jive with (obviously), since it opens up the chance to explore a relationship we basically never see in the actual books. Leaning into that also explains how Draco got so spoiled, when by all evidence Lucius isn't the most cuddly parent — he's scolding Draco in a lot of the interactions we read of them (granted, usually because Draco's doing some dumb shit). Canon Draco is always nattering about his dad, so I think he idolizes Lucius a lot more, but he's actually closer to Narcissa. As an only child in a family where his mother doesn't work, that interpretation makes a lot of sense to me, as does the idea that Narcissa would play more of an influential role in his adult life, once he'd become disillusioned with Lucius (especially in a postwar context).

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

Narcissa gets woobified in the fandom like you wouldn't believe. Especially postwar fics. No blood prejudice, no bias, no hateful language, and striking civility to all muggle-born characters, Hermione especially. A change which, in most cases, seems to occur spontaneously and apropos of nothing except the end of the war. I think people do this for two reasons: (1) prejudice not a sexy flaw for your villain to have, hence why many postwar Dracos don't seem to retain virtually anything of the ideology he has in canon, and extend that blanching to Narcissa in order to avoid conflict with him and his mother; and (2) Narcissa and Lucius are both extremely scary antagonistic characters in any Dramione story if you take them seriously, and sometimes people aren't trying to write serious scary antagonists. Sometimes people just wanna write slice-of-life low-stakes stuff. That's fine! People should read and write whatever makes them happy. It just drives me up the wall to read that specific characterization of Narcissa, because I think it's totally unrealistic. Narcissa married a Death Eater! Her sister was a Death Eater! She raised a Death Eater! She lived with Death Eaters for months, if not years! Yeah, she obviously doesn't give a fuck about the Cause if it threatens her family — cf. the "is Draco in the castle?" moment — but she would not have run in these circles if she hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid and kept it down. And plus, like: if losing the first war wasn't enough to create Woke Narcissa, why would the second one be?

The obvious reading of a postwar heel-face turn, if you take canon seriously, is that Narcissa is at best a morally agnostic opportunist who adopts whatever philosophy happens to be profitable at the moment. Which is a pretty dark character. And I wouldn't mind at all if that's how she was actually written, because I think there's a real foundation for that in the text. But in fanon, it usually scans like she's a fundamentally loving and charitable person who never really believed in blood purity, she just decided to marry into a eugenecist death cult for — y'know — tax benefits or something.

[galaxymagitech]

just an appendage (live to attend him)

For @casscainweek Day 2: Alone | Together

Because Cass totally has Eldest Daughter Syndrome.

Summary: Cass knows she’s supposed to be happy. But being the emotional pillar of her family and shoving herself into whatever role they need is killing her. (Cass is nineteen too. People forget that, sometimes. But she’s nineteen, and if Cass were someone else, it would matter.)

Characters: Cassandra Cain, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Duke Thomas, Damian Wayne, Stephanie Brown

Warnings: Blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to canonical sexual assault, messed-up family dynamics that might be considered emotional abuse

You can read it here or on AO3!

Cass knows she’s supposed to be happy. She’s living in a big house with her big family all together. Everyone is getting along. Her world is overflowing with love. Cass knows she’s supposed to be happy, but she just feels alone.

Cass is Batman’s daughter, but Bruce doesn’t need a daughter. He needs someone to remind him that he is human, that the family is human too. Bruce likes to push people away. Cass can’t let him. If Bruce pushes people away, he will fall, and the Bat will fall with him. And Cass’s family will fall with the Bat. Cass sees what his body is showing and what her family’s bodies are showing. The emotional chasm that words just can’t cross. And then, Cass becomes a bridge. If she must lie down so others can cross along her back, she will do it.

Damian will only cry in front of her—no one else. If Cass weren’t so insecure, she would feel honored. Trusted. Instead, she feels like she doesn’t count as a person. But Damian needs to cry sometimes. It’s good for him, Dick says. So, Cass wraps her arms around her little brother and tugs him close and does not speak. Cass is good at not speaking.

And Damian misses his mother. He can’t just go to Selina, and Bruce is Father, not Mother, which is not the same. So, if Damian whispers Ummi into her chest sometimes, Cass doesn’t say a word.

But Cass can’t be Damian’s mother. She’s just a placeholder. A doll with a comforting shape and arms to hold him. Cass knows she is helping. Cass knows she should be happy.

It still hurts.

Duke likes someone to play pranks with him. He always has an idea. Cass is always willing to help. When Duke is fake-smiling, Cass touches him gently on the shoulder and asks him “How are you?” and he tells her whatever is wrong. And Cass tells him how he’s feeling, which he often doesn’t know, because people are like that. Sometimes Duke argues, but he always agrees with Cass in the end, because she’s always right. She doesn’t like being always right.

Duke never asks how Cass is feeling. It’s not out of a lack of care. Duke cares. Duke cares so much. Duke loves Cass, and she basks in it, the fact that her brother loves her with the warmth of the sun. But Cass can read him: He always thinks Cass is fine, and Cass doesn’t know why.

Tim needs someone to remind him what his body is telling him. He ignores his body when it says he is hungry or thirsty or tired. So, Cass finds Tim and tells him on his body’s behalf. Her silly little brother, who needs reminders of when to eat.

Tim gets nightmares, sometimes. Now that Cass sleeps just down the hall from him, she can hear it when he cries out. So, she slips into his room and curls up next to him and watches as his breathing evens out. On nights when he doesn’t get calmer, he jolts awake, eyes like a rabbit, body tense with fear. “You’re here,” Cass tells him. “You’re home. You’re safe.”

Occasionally, Tim asks, “You got there, right? You got there in time?”

And Cass says, “Yes,” and wonders if someone would get there in time for her.

Tim isn’t the only one with nightmares. Cass splits comforting duty with Bruce and, when he’s at Pennyworth Manor, Dick. But when Cass has nightmares, she doesn’t make any noise at all. In all of her worst dreams, she’s silent, and she wakes up alone.

Dick tries to take care of everyone too. Cass looks at him and sees. She doesn’t know how to tell him she understands. But when Dick and Barbara fight, Cass is the one who picks up the pieces on both sides. Hand on shoulder. Tub of ice cream for Barbara. Takeout for Dick. Listening to the problems from both sides. Fixing them, because if Cass doesn’t fix them, who else will?

Dick thanks Cass, for taking some of the burden. For helping their little brothers. Cass smiles.

It’s not a real smile. Dick doesn’t notice.

Steph likes to talk. Cass sits across from her and they paint their nails. Steph likes to pause to let Cass say something. It’s nice. Cass’s brothers talk fast, and by the time she has gotten her mouth to say words, the conversation has already moved on. But Steph talks about college and boys and summer jobs, and Cass doesn’t really understand at all. So, she doesn’t have much to say.

Steph asks Cass about her problems. Cass is tired. Her head is aching with all the effort of putting the words in and spinning them around and putting the meanings out. She wants the words gone. She wants to rest. But over the last hour, Cass has watched as Steph’s shoulders relaxed, as her body grew calm. Steph needs this. So there is nothing, really, that Cass can say.

Cass doesn’t like Jason much, but she loves him. She loves everyone, but her family especially, and Jason is family. Cass tells Jason when he is being silly. He swings, emotions jerking around in a way that sometimes terrifies her. When he is too focused, too obsessed, Cass draws him back. When he is needs Bruce’s love, Cass assures him it is there. When he thinks everyone hates him, Cass reminds him that it isn’t true.

Jason also needs someone to call him Little Brother and remind him that he’s still young. He is nineteen and has a trail of bodies that makes Cass sick, but he is her brother all the same. She adds the little on because, despite his protest, it makes him feel safe.

Cass is nineteen too. People forget that, sometimes. But she’s nineteen, and if Cass were someone else, it would matter.

She thinks she wants a doll that she doesn’t have to cut with weapons. She thinks she wants a friend she doesn’t have to save. She thinks she wants to try dating a girl, but the thought is also terrifying. Because everyone she loves, she has to help, and it’s weighing on her shoulders and tugging her heart in a thousand different directions until it strains and rips and explodes. Cass takes care of a family; she can’t take care of a girlfriend too. But she wishes she could try it anyway.

It's a normal day, with a normal fight. Cass is at the dinner table with her family. Jason and Bruce are arguing, loud, loud, loud. They don’t understand each other. Cass understands them. If they keep fighting, Jason will storm off and go do something reckless. Bruce will brood and be upset. And Tim will be upset too, because when Jason isn’t there, Bruce looks at Tim with some of his Jason-love even though Tim needs Tim-love.

“Stop!” Cass shouts. Bruce and Jason fall silent. All eyes turn to Cass, who points at Jason. She has done this too many times. “You’re scared,” she says. It’s obvious, but Bruce never sees it. “You think he doesn’t want you.”

“No, I’m not,” Jason lies.

“And you!” Cass points at Bruce. No one tells her it’s rude to point. She wishes they would. “Scared too. Of yourself.”

Bruce looks down at his plate but doesn’t bother lying. He can’t lie to Cass, and he knows it.

Jason deflates. “I already forgave you, old man,” he says.

Cass leans down to Bruce’s ear, graceful as a dancer, and whispers, “Tell him. You love him. Tell him.”

“I love you,” Bruce says.

Jason looks away. Tim smiles. Bruce dares to smile too. The argument ends, and the family eats.

“Thanks, Cass,” Duke says. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Cass thinks about the times she has convinced Bruce to get backup. The times she has persuaded Damian not to go off on his own. The times she has held her family members close to keep them from fighting recklessly in their grief or anger or fear. “Die,” Cass says solemnly.

Her family laughs like it’s a joke.

[therookerydatv]

This is a non-Veilguard post but it is a Solas post and a Varric post so buckle in.

Background: I joined a Veilguard Discord server because I'm insane, and we were discussing Cole and the whole choice to make him a Spirit or more Human, and it almost got into an argument but thankfully it figured quickly, but I was still thinking about it because something about it all rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of people lamented their choice in making Cole more Human or cheered that making Cole more Spirit was the correct choice because of Solas' own regrets and pains that came about from him gaining a mortal body.

Subjectively I have always chosen to make him more human, but I guess me choosing as a player is different from within the context of Inquisition. In DA:I every choice you make has consequences, sometimes trying to backpedal out of a choice once you're far enough in will result in you not getting your way because that's what it all is, Choices and Consequences. As much as the result of Cole's change is on you the player, it's really a Consequence of your favoring Varric or Solas' method.

Solas' entire view of Cole's predicament is colored by his own negative experience of having a body and living in the physical world, waking up to a physical world where the Veil was created just amplifies that regret in pain, every instance of him trying to help with his Wisdom becomes something worse to him personally (All that Wisdom and he can't help himself) but with Cole he actually can help! He can fix this, with not only Wisdom but experience! He's become a person, he doesn't like being a person(and then he does because of the Inquisitor, I feel this is true romance or friendship), so Solas knows that Cole can 'return'(made) more Spirit and the confliction will end.

Varrics positions, his view, I feel is colored by the people he couldn't help, the ones he couldn't help get their revenge or solve their problem in time in a way where no one could get hurt (Cole literally reminds him of Anders just in reverse) And this time, Varric knows better, he knows how to fix this, he knows how to not blow up the Chantry, he can fix it this time. (This time the love will be enough!!)

Objectively, both are answers, I don't think either of them are right, because it's one influence over the other, but a choice has to be made otherwise he'd become a demon.

Solas and Varric are having their idealogical battle(custody battle) over which direction Cole needs to go in to avoid binding or demonhood(which college to send him to). The added layer VG adds to this and every banter Solas and Varric have is also fascinating, because outwardly it's an Elf and a funny Dwarf fighting over the tall awkward Human child, but after VG??? After those regrets??? Girl...

But I feel that reducing that scene to Solavellan at times is... disingenuous, when really, it's a Solvarric scene of we're being objective.

This is THE custody battle of all time. (My weed kicked in bear with me)

Solas' version of his world doesn't exist anymore, the world with no Veil and spirits essentially pillaging the bodies of the Titans to gain bodies doesn't exist anymore, the first victims of what the Elvhen did calls him Chuckles, a demonym in true friendly jest to him, it's the first thing Varric calls him when he reaches out to talk to him at the beginning of Veilguard, up until that point he calls him Solas, the Dread Wolf, Fen'Harel.

Varric is a result of years of time happening to the version of the World Solas brought about. Its...it's like God is talking to a creation of his that has every right to hate him, to want to desire to go back before all the bad shit, and instead Varric says, okay, get the anger out, how do you feel now? Empty? That's okay too, take your time.

Solas is a weary traveler ready to end it all and Varric is the equally weary traveler who says, tell me about it, and then talks your ear off so much you start believing in the world again.

Basically, Varric's method is to embrace the history and the scars, embrace the hurt and once it's done, get something to eat. Varric forgives but doesn't forget, his plan has Cole let go of his anger in the end, but Cole will remember the hurt he felt, and inflicted and so will the people he inflicted them on.

[beans-core]

Random thought:

I think Tyson would make gifts for Percy that are usually armor and weapons or other life-saving things because he cares the most about keeping Percy safe and alive. Tyson knows that Percy cares the most about surviving to keep his loved ones safe. So it’s swords and shields and daggers. But then Percy explains the notion of a gag gift, and Tyson loves it, so gifts from Tyson now have a 50% chance if being gag gifts. And of course, Tyson can’t make anything less than breathtaking, so the joke is never shoddy work.

Percy’s personal favorite is when a small handheld water gun that’s a perfect rendition of poseidons trident but itty bitty, and it shoots water out of all three prongs. Percy treasures it, and nicknames it Fork. When Estelle is old enough to appreciate it, he passes Fork down to her with Tyson’s blessing.

Tyson doesn’t make gifts for people outside his family as often, but when he does it’s always based on something he knows they like, and it needs to be useful above all else. Gifts are harder to be upset about when it’s tailored specifically to your interests and needs. It’s the best path to gift-giving success, and Tyson wants nothing but to make them happy.

When Tyson is hired to work as one of Poseidons blacksmiths, he grows closer to his dad, and would make gifts for him too. Statues and crowns and the like, because Poseidon doesn’t really need help to be strong, not that Tyson’s current skill level would be able to make a functional weapon for a god (one day, probably). Not only that, but because Poseidon is divinity, gifts don’t have to necessarily be useful. There’s more freedom to play around with the art of it considering it’s basically an offering.

Gifts for Sally Jackson are things like art and jewelry, because she’s a mixture of both. he knows that she’s divine too in her own unique way, but sometimes she doubts that she deserves to be decorated. Which is something he just can’t imagine, Sally Jackson being anything less than amazing? Not possible. He also knows that she doesn’t need to fight to be safe, because Percy will, but defensive items aren’t a bad idea at all. (Her favorite gift from Tyson is a beautiful locket that she has her family’s pictures in.)

When Percy goes missing, it’s the first time he gifts Sally something for offense rather than defense. It’s also when he decides that he needs to do some protecting of everyone else too: he makes Estelle an armored crib when she’s born (which is promptly baby proofed by her parents but still effectively protects her). He makes Paul a pocketknife that works in both humans and monsters, so if he’s being attacked he can fight back first and wonder if the assailant was monster or human later. Sally’s protective item is an improved version of Percy’s watch-to-shield thing but with an added detachable dagger that is, once again, effective for both humans and monsters.

For his lovely harpy girlfriend, he’ll make her anything and everything he can. She likes to hoard more than just words in her head once she has a permanent, structured living place. Not to mention tyson would build her the world if she wanted, so trinkets are fun and no trouble at all. Ella also likes to give him little gifts in the form of scavenged findings— pretty flowers, quirky metal parts, shiny rocks— so he’ll find a way to incorporate them into his crafts. A nice shell might become a pendant for necklace, a scrap of wood with a nice design might be shaped into a small sculpture, a uniquely shaped peice of metal could be put in the hilt of a sword. Ella doesn’t mind if these little bits she collected become gifts for her, but being a part of the process of someone else’s gift and knowing a part of her plus a part of Tyson made something so special makes her want to burst with joy. (Ella also recites him love poems/stories/etc as gifts. Rarely, she will go out of her comfort zone and purposefully mix up the words of stuff she remembers to make personalized romantic writings for him. It’s a high honor and Tyson absolutely melts every time she does it.)

[jinx-s-things]

Scream characters when they get jealous

Warnings: Jealousy, possessiveness, Toxic behaviour, mentions of violence and murder

Amber Freeman:

•Seeing you spend a lot of time with somebody else provoked Ambers jealousy. It makes her blood boil, it doesn’t matter who it is no one gets to flirt with you.

•She becomes overly possessive and watches carefully from afar then comes up from behind and intertwined her fingers around your shoulders.

•Quickly leads you away to get you alone, has her arms wrapped around you the entire time. lavishing you with kisses and praises.

•Clings to you the rest of the night not ever leaving your side, Amber definitely makes sure that everyone knows you belong to her.

•Finds the person that flirted with you and killing them as Ghostface of course.

•You knew that Amber was jealous this whole time but you love it when she gets all possessive.

Tara Carpenter:

•Tara never really gets that jealous but when she does she’s petty but also fears loosing you and insecure because she doesn’t think she is good enough.

•She has lost friends before because of this so she tries not to think about it much but she cannot help it when you’re talking to your friends.

•Tara doesn’t want to seem too possessive but she also wants you to know you belong to her so she pulls you closer to her while others talk to you.

•She pretends to be oblivious to what’s happening but is paying attention to everything that’s going on.

•She finds an excuse to pull you away and pretends nothing happened and tries not to overreact.

Sam Carpenter:

•Sam trusts you and she knows you’d never cheat on her but she can’t help but feel suspicious and annoyed.

•She stays with you the whole time but doesn’t say much until she says something sarcastic then pulls you away.

•You were quite obviously pissed off and then get into an argument, You two didn’t talk for the rest of the day.

•Sam later goes to apologise and says that she was being unreasonable, you forgive Sam and tell her you would never do that to her.

•You both cuddle each other while watching a movie for the night.

Jill Roberts:

•Like Amber Jill is very possessive of you and manipulative so she can easily get away with controlling you.

•Jill’s emotions can get in the way like she may lash out or become cruel.

•She doesn’t hesitate to kill the person you were talking to, I mean you seen what she did to Trevor.

•She wraps her arms around your waist slowly dragging you away.

Mickey Altieri:

• Mickey is obviously jealous but he is also chill about it, he’s not like crazy jealous.

•He trusts you but still gets a little possessive.

•There has been sometimes when it’s gotten to him but he plays it off and acts like nothing is wrong though he has a grip on your shoulder.

•You know Mickey would never hurt you but sometimes a look comes over his face.

•He tries to make other people jealous instead so he can feel better about himself.

•Kisses you everywhere from your head to your toes in front of the person you’re talking to.

Billy Loomis:

•Billy doesn’t get jealous that quick if he doesn’t think about it much cause he knows you’d never leave him and if you did he wouldn’t hesitate to kill.

•Really gets clingy towards you and when you mention it he gets defensive.

•He asks several questions about ‘where you were?’ or 'who you were with?’

•Billy always watching your every move so he can see who you’re talking to.

[l0relaii]

Hi! I saw requests were/are open, and I was hoping you could do a Josh Washington imagine where reader has been in an abusive relationship and she is still scared with whats happened in the past and Josh is helping her through her emotions and just being an amazing boyfriend?? Speaking from personal experiences, this would just mean a lot to me, I feel like Josh would be great in a situation like this. Would also love it if it ended with them making love and he's just so sweet and reassuring during! Thank you so much!

i'm so sorry to hear you went through an abusive relationship darling, i hope you're okay now!! i won't pry and ask you about the extent of the abuse so i'll just throw in some scenarios i found fitting

josh noticed you sometimes flinched when he made a sudden move

he thought it was a bit odd but maybe it was just your reflex 🤷‍♀️

or you'd close your eyes and your breathing would become a bit shaky if his voice got a bit louder, not necessarily is an argument

i think he's pretty much a loud guy in any setting, it's just the way he speaks

then you tell him everything you went through and it all clicks

all the times he saw your eyes filled with tears, or red and puffy after lying to him that you didn't cry, all the times you flinched and winced

it's all making sense now

he suffered alongside you. seeing you like that hurt him too.

knowing the person he loved was in pain was taking a toll on him, he felt so helpless sometimes

all the times you'd turn away his touch he got so sad. why wouldn't you let him hold you? kiss you? make you feel better?

it takes him a bit to understand your reactions and responses

of course he doesn't blame you for any of it, how could he?

that fucker. he'd kill your ex if he could. he's so angry, not at you, but at him for making you feel like this

you didn't deserve that, no one does

he explains to you that nothing that ever happened to you or that any past lover did to you was your fault

when you do get closer to him and let him in he's so happy with your progress.

he's always holding you and praising you for how good you are doing

if you ever have any nightmares he holds you throughout the night caressing your back, bringing you water talking to you about it if you want, even humming you soft tunes so you'll fall back asleep

and the love making is the best. he's so gentle and soft always giving and giving and giving never expecting anything in return

he's kissing every inch of your skin while holding you close to his chest, to his heart, so you'll feel it beat and know that he's there, he's real and he'll stay

he'll always be there for you no matter what