#truly the best man ever

[dearausten]

Frederick Wentworth taking time to comfort a grieving mother and indulging her to talk about her son... helping Anne with her nephew and making sure she gets a seat in his sister’s carriage because she’s clearly tired even though no one else noticed... going to see Captain Harville as soon as he hears from him because he (Harville) suffers from an old injury... breaking the news to Captain Benwick that his fiance had died bc Harville, the lady’s brother, couldn’t bring himself to do it... offering to accompany Henrietta home after Louisa’s accident and promising to look after her... spending the journey trying to comfort her and cheering her up... being the first to tell Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove about what happened to spare them the shock of seeing Henrietta so altered... taking care of Mrs. Smith and making sure she gets a property that will give her benefits because she is Anne’s friend...

[kelin-is-writing]

Happy Birthday to Mha’s best character and the absolute GOAT of Anime and Manga.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DABI 🔥🩵

[padfootastic]

harry’s ‘saving people thing’ comes from james potter and if you disagree, u can bite me because that is the TRUTH

[noodledevourer]

imagine having a war criminal psychopathic genocidal baby killer who met you three months ago for a dad and he's still a better parent then people who knew you since you were a baby

[stealingyourbones]

I’m about to cry I just spent 3 hours making ravioli and it’s so good ;-;

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

my favorite mulder moments from s5

breaking into the labyrinth of the department of defense in episode 1 to find the cure for scully, finding only a vial of water, and the ensuing devastation that crosses his face

in the beginning of episode 2, scully is in the hospital, and he reveals that he faked his death to come visit her (“you move pretty good for a dead man”, skinner says, to which he replies “i’m only half dead”). he's going utterly ballistic, screaming “i’ll calm down when i have a reason to calm down!”, and then nearly collapses as he sees her sick in bed. only skinner's threat of arrest after they come to blows can make him see straight

he sees CSM in the hall of the hospital where scully is recovering, and spits at him “please tell me you’re here with severe chest pains” <-LMAOOOO

and when CSM tries to win him over to the dark side through scully’s cure and showing him his “sister”, he absolutely refuses, saying “you murdered my father. you killed scully’s sister, and if scully dies, i will kill you. i don’t care whose father you are, i will put you down” (LOUD CHEERING!!!!!!!)

enduring bill scully's horrible attacks on his character, trying to sympathize with his pain despite how awful he is being because he knows what it feels like to lose loved ones for the Truth. he tells this man that is being so awful to him that he lost his father and sister in his quest for answers, so he can relate to the pain he feels- only to be met with more scorn

he comes into scully’s hospital room again later on, where she is sound asleep, and he lays his head next to her and sobs

defending scully in her absence at his big important hearing; explaining how she was sent to spy on him, but “that agent scully did not follow these orders is a testament to her integrity as an investigator, a scientist, and a human being” <3

and then he SOMEHOW guesses correctly that the mole is section chief blevins, who had been on the payroll of the biotech company for years... i want to unpack if he figured it out subconsciously or was just equal parts lucky and confident, but i feel that we will never truly know

he tells skinner that scully’s cancer is in remission, saying it is the best news he has ever heard, then cries in the hallway of the hospital, holding the bloody photo of him and samantha as kids

he meets frohike for the very first time in 1989 in episode 3 and declines his offer of bootleg cable by saying “no thanks, handsome”, which prompts frohike to call him "a man of taste". thus began his long tradition of flirting with the boys

he was RACING back to the motel room at the end of episode 4, banging on the door, telling scully to get in the car NOW, and narrowly saving her from the florida mothman who was hiding under the bed!!!! i <3 protective mulder!!!

in episode 7, he flies down as soon as he can to vouch for scully's capability to adopt emily. scully introduces him to her as “a friend”, and he starts making funny faces to get her to laugh right away. he points out that the girl’s adoptive parents were both murdered, and when scully says that she can protect her, he asks “yeah, but who’s gonna protect you?”; he testifies on her behalf, even though he says he shouldn’t, because he knows it’ll put her in danger

later, he confronts the doctor who refuses to transfer over emily’s medical files. he pulls out his gun, points it at the doctor’s head, and asks “why don’t you tell me whose life is worth saving, yours or hers?” - he's so quick to adjust to scully's news of having a child and so quick to draw blood on her behalf

they’re bickering about the case in episode 8, so mulder, in a rare moment of clarity, steps back to ask what they both agree on and says they can work from there. i was shocked! in a good way! after 5 years, he finally learned to manage their opposing viewpoints in a way that can get things done! (i am sure this will never happen again)

his tree climbing detour in episode 9, plus the legendary line “hey scully, is this demonstration of boyish agility turning you on at all?” (and then bonus points for his sad descent as he is needed back on the ground right after he got up there)

his complete inability to function without scully while she is on vacation in episode 10- he actually TWIRLS the phone line while calling her!!!

and when he calls her for the 800th time, he greets her saying “morning, sunshine!” while loudly thumping his basketball up and down until she has to ask him wtf that noise is... so he lies, saying there is construction outside his window, and yells, telling the nonexistent construction worker to quiet down <- LMAOOO it killed me!!! (his basketball thumping has always been used to indicate his inability to relax... truly there is no peace for him without the bestie in town)

he’s SOOOO jealous when scully thinks the cowboy sheriff in episode 12 is cute (he recalls him having a thick southern drawl with huge teeth, so when they have to fly back down, she points out that they are totally normal-sized, and he still disputes this fact until the very end of the episode)

in episode 14, he sprints to find scully after she was present for the mass burning; he runs his fingers through her hair when she is in the hospital for vasogenic shock

post-krycek breaking into his house and beating him up, warning him that the end of the world is coming, scully finds him in his apartment sitting in the dark. “what are you doing sitting here in the dark?”, she asks. “thinking” “about what?” “oh, the usual- destiny, fate, how to throw a curveball… the inextricable relationships in our lives that are neither accidental nor somehow entirely in our control, either”

calling scully back from a payphone in the pouring rain in episode 17 to help get her some information on her personal case <3

(he also really nerds out in that episode about eye imagery in the bible, apocrypha, and references jesus christ superstar... a man of culture)

((and he was SO protective of scully- he stepped in when the priest was being all shady, tried to advise her not to let him get into her head, and we got to see some incredibly rare emotional communication when he said “i’ve never seen you more vulnerable or susceptible or more easily manipulated, and it scares me because i don’t know why”. he was grabbing her shoulders and pulling her in close, telling her she should step away when she mentions the visions of emily… god. he was SO worried!!))

when he’s being tortured in episode 18, he tells the man hurting him over and over again that he will kill him, which i thought was really fascinating

being willing to risk all of the x files in episode 20 because he fully believes that scully is correct about gibson being the key to explaining them, even though skinner warns against it... that is complete trust <3

[gothsuguru]

gojo writers i now Formally understand the joy you all feel when writing about him

[chaoticmannamedoliver]

Felt like drawing marius, but it didn't turn out how i hoped.

Though i changed how i draw hair? At least im trying to, and i used a different eye shape as well.

[sweetlytempests]

i appreciate that the starbreaker fandom (and the jace stans specifically) all looked at the finale and said "well if brennan is gonna let this perfectly good twink go to waste, we'll take him." now he's ours and i think that's beautiful.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

winston my quant of billions

[brutal-nemesis]

E&T: Deep in the Bowels of Gluttony

I am forcing more CAVE WHUMP into your enclosure (with an added dash of inspiration from my favorite national park that I can never visit ✨)

Suggested Vibe: Duma’s Scourge from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (youtube)

←Previous - Masterlist - Next→

Ingredients: a lot of gore. eating is involved in the goriness if you couldn’t tell. it is also very gross. Wow! Oh and there is a little bit of burning

By the time Erebus finished crying, his hand had grown back.

He hadn’t even realized it at first, too caught up with gut-wrenching sobs to be aware of anything else besides how much his head hurt, how hard it was to breathe, how terrified he was to be in this strange place all alone, how he might never make it back home, or even back to his cell, how hopeless he felt, how-how-And then he’d noticed the stump of his left hand, no longer ending in a jagged tear, little strings of skin dangling off of it, but a-it was growing, it had to be, those little white nubs poking out of the mass of muscle had to be the bones of his hand, bones that had definitely been…Before he knew it he was crying in earnest again, his body’s sudden strange capability to repair itself overshadowed by the trauma of the past hour, fear and exhaustion replacing awe and relief, because even if he could heal, it didn’t change the fact that he was stuck here, now saddled with the possibility that not even death could set him free.

If there was one good thing about this world, it was the fact that he was more alone than he’d ever been, and no one knocked on the door to interrupt his crying, no one commented on the redness of his eyes or asked him if he was okay too soon after he’d started to calm down. He caught his breath slowly, peacefully, washing the tears off his face using the fresh water from one of the pools near the sea, scrubbing the dried blood from his perfectly healed arm, revealing a ring of scar tissue around his wrist. The thought that neither of these hands were the ones he was born with almost sent him into another spiral, but he shook his head and put it out of his mind. That was enough for today. 

Today…Frowning, he looked up at the sky. Its blackness hadn’t changed in the slightest since he’d arrived here, and something told him it wouldn’t anytime soon. Even back in the windowless cell, he’d had meals and Neteri’s visits to help him keep track of the passage of time, but now there was just…nothing. It was all down to whatever cycle of waking and sleeping he fell into, and given how tired he was now, he was ready to get that started. 

Walking back to his pack, left at the base of the cliffs, he noticed his leg was no longer in pain, either. Once he arrived, he pulled the knife out and used it to slice the stitches still woven through his flesh, wincing a bit as he pulled the thread out. The holes left behind healed quickly enough that he could ignore them and busy himself finding a good place to lay his bedroll for the…night? For now. 

He ended up settling down along the cliffside, too afraid to lie out in the open despite how quiet it was here, and it wasn’t long before his exhausted body gave in to sleep.

When Erebus woke up, the sky was the same empty black as before, and it was impossible to tell how long he’d slept for, but he felt rested enough despite the circumstances. So now he was just supposed to…wander until he found something? He considered flying to get a better idea of what was around, but he decided it would be better to save his strength for the next fight. Since crossing the sea was out of the question, he headed back into the rocky maze he’d first arrived in. Eventually, he found himself at the entrance to a cave, a gaping hole in the side of the mountain rising even higher than the cliffs around him.

If the demons were tied to elements like their counterparts, the dragons, then whatever one was tied to the element of earth was definitely in that cave. His instincts screamed at him not to go into the dark, cramped space where his wings likely would be more of a hindrance than a help, but if he was going to get out of this place, then he’d have to go in eventually. So best to get it over with while he was here.

Erebus had never been inside of a cave, but he’d heard about how beautiful they could be, and…how dangerous. But he’d be okay. He could heal, for some reason. He’d be fine. He could handle this. He had to.

Burying his doubts, Erebus headed inside the cave, almost immediately tripping over a small, rounded protrusion of stone. They littered the ground, and the ceiling, too, their lengths varying. He’d have to take care to avoid them, then. 

Soon enough, though, the ground began to slope downwards, and the dim gray light streaming in from the cave’s entrance began to fade, not enough for even his new eyes to see with. It wasn’t long before he was stumbling along in the dark, unsure how much progress he was making, or if he was even headed in the right direction. He could be a couple steps away from a dead end, for all he knew. Or even a cl-At that moment, Erebus’s boot caught on a rock, his desperate grasps for something to catch himself on meeting empty air, and now he was falling, spinning, bouncing off the uneven stone, everything was slippery enough to slide out of his grasp but hard enough to break his bones, faster and faster until-

Cold. Deep cold, water, he was underwater, he had to get to the surface, had to find it in this spinning dark void, no way to tell which way is up, which way is death, swimming flailing reaching-his hand broke the surface, and he worked his way up desperately, his sodden clothes and heavy sword making it difficult, but he made it, he breathed, he coughed, he dragged himself out and laid on the bumpy stone next to the water’s edge, panting as his body throbbed and stung with a hundred cuts and bruises. Of course he hurt himself before even finding the demon. Of course. If only he had some way to know if he was even going in the right direction, but no, he was just supposed to stumble around in the dark.

One of his horns hurt, and upon poking at it gently, he found that the tip had broken off, exposing the tender flesh inside. Not like they served any purpose, besides telling him where…wait. What he wanted most was to get out of here and go home. To get out of here, he’d have to fight all the demons. Starting with the one hidden somewhere in this cave. So, by that logic, what he wanted most was to find the demon in these caves. He closed his eyes, not that it changed anything, and drilled that thought into his head. He needed to find that demon. Wanted to. Had to.

Erebus couldn’t help but smile as his horns started to tingle ever-so-slightly. 

It took some time to get used to navigating the cave based on the feeling in his horns. The changes in sensation were rather subtle, so it was difficult to tell immediately after changing course if he was heading the right way. It would have been much easier if he could take a direct path, but the twists and turns of the cave forced him to switch directions constantly, sometimes leading him to dead ends or passages he was too large to squeeze through. Progress was slow, but he was making progress, he was, the tingling was stronger now, his scrapes and bruises from his fall earlier had healed, and his clothes were beginning to dry, despite the cave air being rather cool.

Well, now that he thought about it, the air had grown warmer than when he’d first entered. He’d been so freezing from his wet clothes that he hadn’t realized it until now, but it was definitely getting warmer. That had to be a good thing, right? It wasn’t getting any lighter, unfortunately, so he was still stuck feeling his way along through the darkness, nothing but the tingling sensation in his horns to guide him, but at least he wasn’t shivering as much anymore.

It was getting warmer and warmer, hot now, and humid, the stickiness of the air reminding him of summers back home. Were caves supposed to be this hot? He’d been grateful for the warmth at first, but now he was sweating profusely, the thick, moist air making it somewhat difficult to breathe as he clambered up slopes and squeezed through small gaps, the feeling in his horns growing so intense he was starting to get a headache, made even worse by the slightly rotten smell that was starting to permeate the air.

Erebus stopped at the edge of some sort of drop-off. It was impossible to tell how far down it went, only that it was longer than his arm. He’d been scared of this, of having to fly while blind. Out of breath, he sat to rest for a moment, letting the slight breeze cool him off a tiny bit, wishing it didn’t smell so rancid.

Wait…breeze?

The air was moving, pulsing past him in a hot wave, and then a cooler gust in the opposite direction. It was rhythmic, over and over, back and forth, in and…in and out. 

Breathing. It was breathing.

If-if Erebus could feel its breathing, and the intense heat from its body, its stench, then it must be close, just off that ledge maybe, after all this time wandering around in the dark he’d finally found the next demon. With renewed energy, he stood and drew his sword. He’d have to approach this carefully, making sure he didn’t fly straight into the wall instead of hitting his target. After waving his hand over his head and not feeling anything above him, Erebus carefully took flight. It was difficult to move so slowly in the air, especially as he started to head down, but he didn’t want to risk falling who knows how far and landing on who knows what. 

Feeling his feet catch on something, he tried to land, but the ground beneath was slippery and almost gave way beneath him, causing him to fall for the second time today. Thankfully, he landed on something soft, though it was weirdly wet and sort of slimy, like…Erebus cried out and scurried back, but everything he touched was the same, squishy and warm and smooth and…and…It was flesh. All around him. He-he’d somehow flown into the demon’s mouth, he must have, its breath was rushing by him with even more force now, the nauseating scent of rot all around him. He had to get out. He just had to fly up. He could do this. He’d be fine. 

But…where was his sword?

He’d dropped it in his panic, like an idiot, and now he needed to find it. He wouldn’t stand a chance against the demons without it, and then he’d never be able to go home, never see another person again, he couldn’t accept that, he had to calm down, had to focus. He wanted that sword more than anything. It was his way out.

His stomach sank when his horns told him his sword was below him.

There wasn’t any choice but to fall further into the belly of the beast in order to kill it.

He took his time lowering himself, but it was more difficult than before. The heat was making his head throb, not to mention the toll all this flying was taking on him. Being unable to glide was putting a lot more strain on his wings than he’d realized, and though he couldn’t quite feel it through the sheen of sweat covering his face, he tasted the blood dripping out of his nose. By the time the buzzing in his horns peaked and his hand wrapped around the cool hilt of the sword, the world was starting to spin, and he all but collapsed next to the blade, which had buried itself partway in the fleshy ground. 

Erebus didn’t know if he had the energy to stand. The heat and all of that careful flying had sapped all of his strength, leaving him sprawled on the hot, soft flesh of the demon’s insides. Was this it? Was he just stuck here until he fell further and ended up digested? The healing he had for some reason was slow, probably too slow to keep up with stomach acid. He breathed in deeply as the slightly cooler air coming in rushed past him, trying to calm himself down. The demon’s breaths were deep and long, so they were difficult for Erebus to match perfectly, but he tried anyway, the less rancid-smelling air coming in making him feel a little better somehow. But why would…memories of dust, Neteri’s forehead against his, the puff of her breath against his cheeks. Sharing breath. He was sharing breath with this huge demon, gaining a little of its life force as he did so. 

Once he felt well enough to stand, he did so, holding onto his sword for support. He could do this. After bracing himself as best as he could, he started to pull, wincing at the awful squelching sound the blade made as it slid out of the flesh it was buried in. It came out with a sickening pop, squirting what Erebus could only assume was blood all over him. Some of it even landed in his mouth, and it…it tasted good. Really good, like a rich, meaty stew. 

His empty stomach started to growl.

This was a demon. Not a person.

He hadn’t eaten in over a day.

No one would ever know.

He needed energy.

Hands shaking, he pulled out his knife.

Just a little bit. 

It was warm, wet, chewy, almost rubbery, the texture making him gag slightly, but he didn’t care, not when it tasted this good, buttery and savory, little hints of spice dancing through it, shifting from one flavor to another, and he was powerless to stop, grabbing more and slicing it off, shoving it in his mouth before he’d even finished chewing the last bite, his hands and face slick with that delicious blood, the perfect sauce to go with his meat, the fingers on his right hand had grown claws at some point, and now he was tearing away at the walls with his hand, ripping chunks off with his teeth, continuing to slice and shred long after he’d eaten his fill, even as the ground below started to shake, a guttural roar drowning out the sounds of flesh tearing and blood dripping, the force of it sending Erebus to the ground, snapping him out of whatever trance he’d been in.

What…what had he just done?

How could he be sure there wasn’t anyone else out there in the blackness? 

He could feel the ghosts of his parents watching him, watching their son turn into the monster he looked like. 

He had to get out of here. 

The walls shifted and pulsed as the demon’s breath sped up, roars and moans sounding out so loudly around him it made his head hurt. Its mouth might be closed now, trapping him inside. He’d have to find another way. Or just…make his own.

A large section of one of the walls had already been ravaged, cut and torn away during his frenzied eating, so he resumed work on it, slicing away chunks with his sword now, tossing them to the side instead of bringing them to his mouth. Progress was faster when he could focus, but it was almost impossible to tell how far he’d come, how much he’d carved away, how close he was to breaking through the skin. He came across a more rubbery section and ended up having to almost saw away at it, blood spurting all over him as he went, as if he wasn’t already covered in it. How whole body felt so sticky and sweaty and gross, and all he could think about was washing off somehow after he got out of here.

Blood was flowing out steadily now, coming out with more and more force, and soon enough it was all Erebus could do to hold onto his sword, his anchor buried in the fleshy wall, praying he wouldn’t get swept away by the jet of hot, sticky, delicious-smelling blood. H-he must’ve cut into a major blood vessel. Those shot blood out like crazy, from what he remembered. Maybe this would be enough to kill the demon? Then he’d just be…trapped inside its corpse. For now, it was still very much alive, its roars and moans starting to get louder, more desperate.

All of a sudden, the ground beneath him lurched, and Erebus’s sword slipped out of the cut it was in, sending him tumbling backwards, the river of blood sweeping him away before he could try to stand up, stab the floor, do anything to save himself, but he had to, he couldn’t fall any further down, couldn’t lose the tunnel he’d carved out in this sweltering blackness, couldn’t sink into the sea of blood and digestive acid that was likely waiting for him below, he had to stop somehow, the sword was too long, his wings couldn’t generate lift, nothing to do but desperately scratch at the slippery ground below, dig his claws in, deeper, deeper, deeper, hold on, arm trembling with the effort, he couldn’t afford to let go, to fall, the blood was coming with less force now, the tremors not as frequent, just a little bit longer until…

The great beast fell silent, fell still, its blood merely trickling by now, dripping in imitation of the water in the cave surrounding it. 

Erebus dragged himself to his feet, coughing up blood. He’d tried to keep his mouth closed during the whole ordeal, but some had still made its way in. Was the demon actually dead? It was hard to tell for sure, but he supposed it didn’t matter. He had to get out of here regardless, and any other escape route besides his tunnel was out of the question. Nothing to do but resume work, then, and hope he could get out of here soon.

Time crawled by as Erebus hacked away at the wall, and just when he was starting to think he wasn’t headed towards the surface of this thing’s body, his sword met with a different sort of resistance than before. It wasn’t like the blood vessel, more stretchy and tough, but he was pretty sure he was able to poke through, and soon enough he’d made a gap large enough for him to squeeze through. He didn’t realize how hot it’d been in there until he was sitting outside it, the cave air unbelievably refreshing after being swallowed up by that rancid heat. 

After feeling around a bit, Erebus decided he must be on the demon’s back or something. The slope down was pretty steep, enough that he wasn’t sure he could walk down effectively in the dark. His wings were still exhausted from flying earlier, so…scooting down very carefully it was. For the first time today, he was able to move downwards at a reasonable pace, not having to be careful of random rocks jutting out of the floor or ceiling. He was starting to get a bit excited to leave these caves and be able to see again. The water in the sloth demon’s domain would be perfect for washing all of this blood off of him, and there were few things he loved more than feeling clean. Already, he was starting to realize everything he’d taken for granted in his previous captivity.

He’d taken light for granted, too, and the moment he saw it, the moment he could see at all, he teared up a bit, but that might have just been because it was bright. Navigating the rest of the way down the demon’s body was much easier now that he could see, and it wasn’t long before he was back on solid ground, nearly running towards the cave exit. Finally. 

The dark, starless sky was a welcome sight, almost as beautiful to him as the small pools of water a little ways away. He was lucky this exit dumped him out closer to the water than the entrance he’d originally gone through had been. Curious, Erebus looked down at himself, and couldn’t help but wince in disgust. He was covered from head to toe in blood, most of it dried to a brownish-red, cracking a bit around his joints, little pieces of the demon’s flesh caked on here and there. His hair was sticky and matted with it, and the coppery, still tempting tang of it was all he could smell and taste. He’d never been so revoltingly filthy, and he was secretly glad no one was here to see it. 

It was a quick walk to the nearest pool of water, and while it looked a bit different than the other little pools from before, he paid it no mind. Water was water. He fell to his knees in front of it and stuck his hands in, ready to-HOT! Erebus pulled his hands out of the fiery water, screaming as they burned so intensely he could feel it in his very bones. All he could do was lie on his side and wait for them to heal, tears streaming from his eyes as he wailed. None of the water in the sloth demon’s domain had even been warm, so why was it nearly boiling all of a sudden? Unless he wasn’t…

“You really wanted to make a good first impression on me, didn’t you, intruder?”

Blinking away tears, Erebus looked in the direction of the familiar voice, his blood running cold when he saw who had spoken.

It was Shiori.

Next→

Tags: @dramaticcollapse @thehopelessopus @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @galaxywhump @as-a-matter-of-whump

@mnmlover2002 @tears-and-lilies @yet-another-heathen @rippedjeansandfadeddreams @starnight-whump

@unicornscotty @thebewilderer @kixngiggles @itallstartedwithharry @inky-whump

@redstainedsocks @lonesome--hunter @his-unspoken-words @susiequaz12 @its-mysweetlittlesecret-blog

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@suspicious-whumping-egg @befuddled-calico-whump @whump-in-the-closet​ @pumpkinsncoffee​ @aryox

[thefrogdalorian]

The scene in The Jedi where Ahsoka tries to get Grogu to use the Force made me realise how long it actually was at that point since we last saw him use it. He hadn't used it since he pushed back the fire from the Incinerator troopers in Redemption.

I wonder if he didn't use it very much after that point because he was trying to say to Din that he didn't really want to be a Jedi anymore. That he didn't want to be reunited with his kind and he wanted to stay with Din. If he didn't use his powers there would be nothing to train.

Until Din showed Grogu he loved him so much that he was happy to let him go. So that's when Grogu decided he should take that path and retrain to be a Jedi...

[tomwambsgans]

i don't believe that tom would have ever married shiv just for the plan, like he did feel something and did want to feel many things, but there were undoubtedly times that a certain veneer of feeling crumbled and made tom realize that beyond The Plan there was little substance. their wedding, insanely, being one of the most significant of those times.

like, tom's pragmatism and ladder-climbing re: his marriage to shiv is a strong enough factor to make him get roman of all people to be his best man, and make him willing to drop his surname despite all of his other hangups about his masculinity, and to disregard very many of his own desires for their wedding in the first place, and makes him behave agreeably to the fact that shiv is cheating on him...... but is not strong enough to stop him from confronting shiv about the cheating in the first place? he specifically asks if this is real, and if shiv even wants to have the wedding, like... the middle ground there is the space where tom has genuine cold feet about marrying her.

he has enough of a drive to be honest that he brings it up the night before the wedding, but he doesn't push the matter once shiv denies cheating even though he clearly doesn't believe it. why? because he's not trying to be that honest. he doesn't want to start a fight. he's not trying to end this whole thing on his own terms. he's looking for an easy way out--shiv making the decision for him, in a way that would have been believably out of his control. he's hoping to be ushered out a door and away from the mess that he's about to be locked in with. we know because once the wedding has happened, both tom and shiv are clearly behaving as though the door is shut. she's honest, and he deals with it.

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been trying to figure out a dynamic between neve and rye that I find more compelling, because right now there's not much of anything there for me to sink my little teeth into. but I think I've landed on something delicious with the idea that especially after minrathous gets fucked, rye looks at neve and sees myrna -- someone he feels he keeps letting down horribly no matter how hard he tries not to and can't quite achieve the approval of/connection with that he wishes so it's better to just pull away completely and disengage rather than stay in that unshifting shame. neve is (very understandably) measured and distant with him after what happened, and he's flashing back to his student days of myrna gazing at the perpetually hungover heartbroken heap of a person of him on the other side of her desk every time he missed the deadline of a paper or project like '...can we at least both agree that this is. a bit disappointing. especially considering your potential.' (and him all smudged black eyeshadow and numb ruefulness being like 'sure that's a very kind way to put it myrna thank you'.)

aside from the 'if I let him get too deeply into this he'll go the way of brom and it'll be all my fault (again)' element, neve thinks rye is dismissing her and her city/being a bit callous in the same way he was after varric's death (listen. how fucking wild must rook's reaction to losing a beloved mentor seem to the rest of the crew who aren't seeing the blood magic paper doll ghost varric the whole time, especially those who got to see them interact. you WOULD think 'there's something wrong with this guy. putting the job first is one thing just not seeming to react at all is another this is fucking freaky', wouldn't you, especially after seeing the warmth in that dynamic in action beforehand.) perfect storm of two people who grit their teeth and turn inwards in pain deciding that not talking about it is their best bet (NEWSFLASH: IT ISN'T) lmao

(rye spent his last year of watcher training on a mostly joyless bender and then got it together enough to finish the eternal orb project last moment in a fevered near-sleepless week instead of the half a year that was intended. emmrich is both astounded and distressed to hear this. "a week? but -- but that is an astounding accomplishment rook!! and also why in the maker's good light would you ever do that to yourself?" ("well you see there was no one to stop me from doing it like that but me. and under those conditions these things tend to happen".) rye was working through/looking up stuff around transitioning and doing every kind of OTHER high level watcher research through that whole time, but ultimately he's an excellent watcher and a terrible student, at least under traditional methods. adhd from here to the fucking moon. touched by something akin to divine inspiration in moments of high tension that pulls all the threads into one coherent unbreakable cord, a bit of a frayed mess in most other settings. in our world he'd be dropping out of a masters program at the very last hurdle in this moment maker bless and protect him)

[peachyteabuck]

wdym THEY DANCED TOGETHER IN THE DANCE BATTLE THE *OTHER ONE* SET UP!!!! WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY WERE GRINDING TOGETHER IN FRONT OF ALL OF US AND GOD AND THEY KISSSEDDDDD

[mossterunderthebed]