#unnecessary rules

[hyperblue]

i know tim would most likely already have multiple samples of his own dna while cloning BUT the thought of him just slashing across his palm in order to get his blood... deep enough to leave a scar that will forever remind him of what he did... in a desperate attempt to, if not get kon, but at least get something... like idk. kinda sexy if you ask me

[hitlikehammers]

AVOIDANCE: the only real solution to all of Eddie’s your falling-in-love problems!

(0 out of 10 participants in this approach have proven its INeffectiveness; talk to your ✨love interest✨today to avoid this heartbreaking waste of your energy!)

It’s not like they were bosom buddies for years and years. A week at the outset, a couple months since, and now they’re all back in their own homes living their own lives and Eddie can avoid the way he’s most definitely, one-hundred-percent certainly in love with Steve Harrington. Very effectively.  By simply avoiding Steve Harrington. 

rating: t ♥️ tags: post-s4, eddie munson and his newfound obsession/unprecedebtedly-close-to-love feelings for steve harrington, answer: avoid steve harrington like the plague, excellent and emotionally-mature ways of dealing with your problems! /s, primary hiccup in existing plan: forgetting steve harrington doesn’t take well to failure, (oops), miscommunication, boys so dumb, confessions, hint of angst (because eddie is a very silly boy with very silly ideas sometimes), self-confident!steve, steve harrington facing the issues head-on, feelings confessions, peak eddie dramatics, happy ending♥️

for @steddielovemonth day fifteen: “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”―Jane Austen, Emma

True fact: Eddie thought he was playing things cool. Thought he was totally copacetic, in, you know, keeping it all subtle. He can do subtle, y’know: being loud and proud, shouting on tabletops and shit, screaming at drunks—that was a choice, not a…a rule. He’s a freak, he’s an outcast, he’s a weird-ass motherfucker: he’d have had far more brushes with his actual-factual demise in this podunk town if he was literally incapable of blending in with the background, and not just kinda sickened by the concept, let alone the effort involved to appease fucking…normies.

So yeah, he’d…he’d thought he was flying under the radar. And anyway; why the fuck would Steve Harrington even notice eddies absence in his day-to-day? They were apocalypse ‘friends’. Hospital buddies at best.

They’re back in the real world now.

Eddie supposed Vecna or whatever the fuck his name is will come crawling back in the foreseeable future, but brighter minds than his are preparing for that shit. The sheepies will let him know if they need his assistance—pending what that assistance may or may not be worth dependent on how far along his PT journey he stands at that point.

But it’s not like they were glued to the hip. It’s not like they were bosom buddies for years and years. A week at the outset, a couple months since, and now they’re all back in their own homes living their own lives and Eddie can avoid the way he’s most definitely, one-hundred-percent certainly in love with Steve Harrington. Very effectively.

By simply avoiding Steve Harrington.

It’s kind of a foolproof plan, really. He starts wrapping Hellfire earlier, tells the little shitheads he’s gotta run, Wayne needs a hand with a revolving door of household projects now that they’ve got their own place with more than one bedroom. Gotta mount that hangers for that ball cap collection just right, you know, yadda yadda.

He thinks they gave up being suspicious without a week or two, now just hit him with annoyed eye rolls. God bless the scourge of self-centred teenage bitchiness playing directly into eddies hand.

What he failed to account for, however, about eleven weeks into his up-to-now flawless scheme, was…well. The leading man himself.

Showing the fuck up at Eddie’s door, which Eddie answered for once like a fool and now can’t back out of cleanly because there’s no truck in the drive—it’s clear he’s here on his own.

Motherfucker.

One thing can be said for the plan, in terms of like, general side quest observations—absence definitely made the heart grow fonder. Or at least didn’t contribute at all to the opposite. Which Eddie hadn’t been entirely sure was possible, because the speed and strength of how he fell with every fucking cell in him had honestly terrified the shit out of him on its own. But after avoiding Steve, nodding at best if he canoed paths and sneaking away when the man called out like he was gonna snake through a crowd at any of the number of the family dinners for interdimensional-trauma-survivors-anonymous that Eddie couldn’t weasel out of: it’d been clear pretty fucking quick.

The almost-indefensibly-absurd affection he’d developed for the King of Hawkins—it wasn’t just reign over the high school if the parents were so charmed, if the fucking hospital has cowed into acting and quick when they tried to hesitate in treating an accused murderer, as Eddie’d been regaled with by everyone but Steve, who shrugged his kinda crucial role in saving Eddie’s ass with a shrug and of course, man, like there was ever even a question—but his indefensibly overwhelming and absurd infatuation that spent every month expanding further to try and crack his fucking ribs, well.

It was chronic, at best. He wasn’t gonna shake it…any time soon.

Any time soon.

So: best to at least keep the catalyst at bay, stop it from causing the condition to worsen.

He’d made the mistake of thinking it couldn’t get worse already. Learn from your mistakes, and all the shit.

So what if it’s been months now and not only has the malady of being ass-over-nipple in-fucking-love persisted, but got so much fucking worse? Deeper? More, when that shit should have even been possible?

No. He just has to be persistent. Keep at the plan. Eventually, it’ll die off. It’ll whither and blow away. It’ll fucking fade—

He does, however, fail to calculate all contingencies.

Namely Steve Harrington’s incapacity to accept defeat.

He’s also too fucking scatterbrained to check the door before opening it when there’s a knock, just after Wayne’s left for his shift. When Eddie has no excuse to slam it back shut on the exceptionally exquisite face waiting when the hinges swing open.

Exquisite, but looking…pinched. Sour.

Pissed the fuck off.

And worst of all of it—because so far the list only server to underscore that unfortunate state of being fucking beautiful, on every possible level—but worst of it all, because it’s worst on its own but also because it twists, distorts all the beauty, and it’s so clearly Eddie’s fault because Steve is standing right here, and not elsewhere, after all this time.

Looking hurt, under everything else.

“I’m done with this, yeah?”

Eddie could run. He’d only make it to his room; Steve would probably be able to break down the door and get to him before he could slither through the window and run, but he’s still not 100%, right, he’s physically at a disadvantage anyway, it’s not even gonna be a question—

Steve’s got him cornered.

So he just stands. Blinks.

Doesn’t…know what Steve’s ‘done with’, but he feels his literally twist, wring like a dishrag, when he figures out the most likely answer is just:

 Eddie.

Even trying to keep the maximum distance, he either knows, and hates it, hates him, or…

He doesn’t know, and doesn’t need to. He just is over Eddie and his bullshit.

It’s in the heart-piercing distraction of either and both possibilities that Steve pushes past him into the front hall.

“What the fuck is your problem, man?”

Steve crosses his arms as the door latches closed, caging them in.

Eddie’s heart starts kicking hard, which is painful. He assumes that’s because it’s been pierced by the hurt still on Steve’s face.

“I thought we were, like, that at least we were friends?”

He says it like he also has maybe had thoughts like there’s something else they were, or could have been. That by association and context would be somewhere more than friends?

Eddie’s pieced-through heart switches to a double-thumping sort of thing that’s really just as confused as the rest of him.

Hurts like a motherfucker, too.

“Did I do something?”

Steve asks, finally sounds more defeated than any of the other things Eddie can pick up in how he holds his body, and honestly that’s what breaks Eddie’s resolve, of everything; after everything. After holding out this long and failing for the entire fucking effort, after hurting Steve, the last thing he could ever want, probably the main underlying reason he’s been running from him the whole goddamn time—to not hurt him.

He’s suck a fuck up. He’s such a fucking fuck up.

“You know how sunflowers grow?”

Steve startles a little, grows the slightest bit.

“They find the sun, and the grow toward it,” and Eddie’s not stupid enough to think the whole disaster that’s unfolding in front of him, from his own chest, his own fucking mouth—he’s aware.

He can’t do nothing, but he also doesn’t think he can sugarcoat this in a way that goes down easier; sand the rough edges to make it make better sense.

He has to wrench it raw and bloody from his ribs, caught on the jagged bone like the messy fuck he is.

“You were the sun,” Eddie finally says it out loud, and his voice is so small and wondering, he can’t hide it. “You were the sun and I woke up broken, I had to grow back so much and I did, because I had the tools,” he swallows, takes a shaky breath:

“I had the sun right next to me, to do all the growing toward. To…rebuild around.”

Eddie’s always been a weirdo, and outcast—he’s spent a lot of time in libraries; often hiding.

But he’s read a lot of random shit. And enough of it’s stuck to make some sense of this fucking mess.

Steve’s face gives nothing away. It’s usually so…so generous with its feeling, even if there are some feelings Eddie knows Steve’s careful to never let show.

But in the now, he just stares.

“Otters,”Eddie blurts out, fingers twitching, wrists shaking; “they hold hands when they sleep,” and he looks up for a second before looking away again, pulse a mullet in his throat.

“I used to hold onto your hand when I fell asleep in the hospital,” and he says it like it’s a secret, a confession, even though of all people, of course Steve already fucking knows. The part he doesn’t, though:

“I still reach, and how fucked that? Like I deserve it as a rule, like it’s mine.”

Like you’re mine.

He can’t say it. But he doesn’t have it. It rings out on its own.

“But then there are the trees that shoot up all tangled,” Eddie can’t remember what they’re called; “where the trunks split off into one another, or they’re so braided up together the share their bark, whole pieces left Bernal’s, naked but the other tree covers it, makes it strong and safe but only so long as they’re literally fused together indefinitely,” and Eddie hopes that one…that one explains itself.

He pauses, waits for any reaction.

No dice.

“Bats sleep in pitcher plants.”

That at least gets the slightest lift of the chin. Probably because it’s weird, and also…bats.

Right. So Eddie’s gonna have to spell it all out.

Which he kinda knew. The examples are fucking weird. But they’re…they’re true. They’re where he is.

“If I get too fucking close, I will destroy you,” Eddie says, because that’s the fear, right—or no.

That’s the fucking truth. Eddie always ends up with the tatters of the things he loves the most.

“I’ll take too much, I’ll take everything,” Eddie confesses, pleads in his tone to be seen, which Steve’s always been weirdly good at, and understood—the bigger gamble.

“There won’t be any stoplights, there won’t be a barrier or a boundary where I’ll know I’ve gone too far because I won’t even think of what that fucking is, what it could be to even watch for, like the barebones idea of ‘too far’, let alone what it looks like, I won’t,” and his breath runs out, so he gasps, and he thinks he sees Steve move to reach, to help, to steady.

He thinks.

It’s probably just wishful thinking.

“I won’t stop holding on just when I’m sleeping, I’ll,” Eddie licks his lips, because now…now he’sstarting to hurt, closer to what it felt like with teeth ripping his flesh than anything has felt, than any loss has threatened. He has to clear his throat, because otherwise the rest will just spill out like a sob:

“I’ll tear your bark so you bleed, and you’re exposed and you die off slow, because I was selfish, so selfish, I held to close, I fucking…” eddies voice cracks; his eyes fucking burn; “because I fucking demanded the whole of you, and damn the cost because I couldn’t process an end, why would I stop doing to even think to be logical and careful when an end to you was, is, well, fuck,” he huffs, and a tear spills out white hot down his cheek;

“It’s incomprehensible, because that would be the end of everything, that was made real fucking clear for me with the bats, both times,” and Eddie means that—he’s had time to think through the origin of his aching and it was early, it was any hint of being in the world without this person in it, too; “and the end of everything, well,” he shakes his head, some of his hair sticking in the single trail of salt on his skin:

“Tied up in you, so tight we couldn’t physically untangle?” His voice drops to a whisper, and he knows his smile has to look sad, but he means this is the deepest places his heart even holds:

“What better way to go?”

He maybes watches Steve’s throat bobbing. Maybe.

Probably not.

So Eddie just sighs. Because…none of that matters. None of that matters in the face of the core truth:

“Those pitcher plants dissolve things inside them, it’s how they eat,” he half-recites, retreating into those deep-heart places, where the feeling is most saturated, but hard to find, somewhere to hide as he whispers, cowers in himself as he flats his own flesh:

“I’ll leech from you for wanting too much just the same. I’ll fucking destroy you, Stevie,” he moans, feels his arms wrap around his chest, protective. Trembling.

“I’ll love you so hard I’ll suffocate you, I’ll tear you to pieces trying to get closer, trying to hold the heart of you closer to mine,” he doesn’t even make a conscious decision to press a palm over his flailing heart where his arm already holds, hugs himself so fucking tight. His lungs are sore. It’s tight, trying to breathe.

“It’s not an overstatement, though, the other plants, the flowers,” Eddie feels overwhelmed, suddenly, with a need to make clear that there’s only one person at fault for this, and it’s him—Steve didn’t deserve to get hurt. Eddie should have found a better way to keep him safe—from Eddie—from the very start. Because—

“You are my sun,” Eddie makes himself look up, look at Steve. “I didn’t realize how little I was growing even before spring break. I didn’t notice, how fucking thriving wasn’t even in my goddamn vocabulary, until there was you.” His breathing shudders again, followed by the rest of him:

“I turn toward you as a rule,” because here’s the thing. All these weeks and months.

Eddie’s been shrivelling. Eddie spends his nights dreaming of sunlight.

It’s inescapable.

He was going to have to find a more sustainable compromise soon, anyway. Might as well…lay it all out now.

He’s already ripped off his bark. He’s already prepared to dissolve in the acid, to burn for what it means to have left the feeling grow so big.

“I hope,” he coughs, starts slow, formal-like: “I hope you can do me the favor of just,” he has to clear his throat again; fuck, it’s hard; “politely ignoring that part. Like, even at a distance, it’s not something I can seem to stop.”

He was aiming for apologetic for that last bit, honest.

He fucking fails spectacularly, so. That’s cool.

“I swear, I won’t bother you,” he tries to convey how he’s sorry, for all of it, save for the core of the loving, because he as granted. A taste, no matter how it’s fallen to ruin; he’s selfish that way anyhow, to have seen some of the sun versus darkness alone for always.

Still:

“I won’t come near, I’ll do what I’ve been doing but better, I’ll be better, I’ll try harder, it will—“

Eddie thinks maybe he’s finally died. Of heartbreak, of whatever the Upside Down did to him. Of living without his sun for a long.

Any. All of the above.

Because the next thing he knows is pressure. Heat.

On his lips.

He barely processes responding before its town away: of course death wouldn’t be a reward. Not for him.

“Are you fucking telling me,” a voice bites out close enough to Eddie’s lips that he can feel how sharp they cut:

“That you have been avoiding me, running awayfrom me,” and Eddie knows that voice—

“Breaking my heart,” and fuck, fuck Eddie knows he knows that voice because when it’s hurting—and those words are irate and disbelieving and they’re hurt—

“Because you’re fucking scared of loving me too hard?”

And Eddie pulls back, opens his eyes: Steve.

Steve’s eyes are fucking vibrant with feeling, so many feelings. He’s…he doesn’t think he’s dead, because a lot of those feelings are ones Eddie’s not familiar with, and how would he know to place them there if he’s never known them at all?

He doesn’t know of it’s better or worse, to not be dead right now.

Because he just apparently got to feel Steve’s lips on his lips.

But then:

“Because that’s what you’re saying, right” Steve raises a brow, demands in posture as much as in tone:

“You’re in love with me.”

And then on the flip side of being alive-or-dead: he has to deal with the consequences of spelling out the answer to…that.

Which he’s apparently broken Steve’s heart over handling…the only way he could figure out. And still fucking it up.

“That sounds less than what it feels like,” Eddie whispers; it’s the only thing he can latch on to.

Steve’s eyes narrow at him, contemplate him.

“And you think me, of all people,” Steve finally asks, slow, his tone wrenchingly deliberate; “that Iwouldn’t meet someone loving that big and that much,” “and he huffs, shakes his head in searing disbelief Eddie almost wishes he could flinch from, but it’s so warm, it’s his sun:

“That that wouldn’t feel like there actually was a heaven, and I’d died and somehow made it there?”

Eddie’s breath catches, then stops entirely. He can’t seem to properly suck in another one because…

“That finding that wouldn’t feel like I’d won the lottery, like I’d figured out what it meant when people talk about a blessing, and all that shit?”

Because what…what it almost sounds like Steve is saying can’t actually be—

“That finding it, with you,” and oh, oh Steve is a lot closer than he was last Eddie processed the world around him, his chest is grazing Eddie’s chest when he seems to have no trouble breathing, just is doing it really deep and reallt fast—

“That it’d be anything less than a gift,” Steve murmurs half against Eddie’s lips; “a dream come to life?”

And Steve’s eyes flick up, and it’s when they land on Eddie’s and see him that his lungs shiver and he chokes out the only word he thinks his every molecule knows by heart:

“Steve?”

And Steve doesn’t move, neither. Loser nor farther away.

Doesn’t look away; doesn’t blink.

Just asks:

“Do you love me?”

And something in Eddie unfreezes, some string holding him up, holding him back snaps free and he just grabs Steve’s hand and presses it to his chest, like he needs to be tethered now that the string in him’s been cut, and the touch, this touch: Steve is really all he’s been wanting to keep him.

To keep him at all.

And maybe this is the one shot he gets.

But Steve, Steve said…

He presses Steve’s hand to his chest a little harder, because he’s bathed in the sun again. Their hands are linked, and they’re not asleep. He’s peeled off all the pretense, he’s as bare and vulnerable as he can possibly get. His heart’s beating into Steve palm. Eddie will happily fucking drown in this, dissolve and be…

He’s already consumed.

How is it any different, save that maybe, just maybe, beyond all odds and against everything he’s feared—

“More than I can hold in here,” Eddie scarcely finds the air to breathe; “more than I can say.”

“Then share it,” Steve says, the assuredness, the rightness in his gravity that’s always been at his core radiating forth and warming Eddie in a way he’s never known to feel before.

“Let me know it, let that feeling not be alone anymore,” and the words hold more than their syllables, by so much; “let it out to see the sun,” and then Steve’s flipping their hands so eddies the one caught agains this chest, but he’s always pulling them close enough that Steve’s knuckles are still catching the drum of Eddie’s pulse. It feels…

Eddie didn’t know what to expect, to let the feeling be felt beyond his own chest.

It’s breathtaking in a new way. It’s…

“Let it meet its match here, in how I feel,” Steve doesn’t suggest, just speaks, instructs, leads with a match to what Eddie feels, has been drowning in, save where it stole his air it’s breathing into him; where it took his light it’s reinventing the sun as Steve murmurs close, so close to his lips:

“Let it see how it was killing me all this time without you,” and Eddie whimpers for the cost of what he’s done, what he felt so sure he had to do—

“Let the feeling inside here,” and he presses his touch back to Eddie’s chest just a little bit firmer; “know how much sharing it’s like stitching my broken heart back to rights.”

Eddie’s exhales shakes so fucking hard; he can’t be this lucky. It can’t…he can’t…

But his heart’s beating so hard, so fast, so free.

So fucking alive.

“You can’t say it, big enough?” Steve pushes, his breath so goddamn��warm, his lashes so thick, Eddie wants to feel them on his skin like a blessing, a sacrament:

“You can’t say it? Then show me, instead.”

And Steve looks up at him before he grabs around the back of Eddie’s neck, pulls him close enough that speaking rubs their lips together, more combative than affectionate but still undeniably intimate as Steve growls:

“Fucking months, Eddie, Jesus,” and his grip is firm, but there’s no force, Eddie could pull back, Eddie could try to run, and fail, but how could he, how could he ever—

His hand’s crushed to Steve’s chest. The same wild thrum he feels in his veins is there.

Let it meet its match.

“Make up for it,” Steve’s breath trembles on Eddie’s lips, taunts him, begs him, asks so many questions.

Eddie flips their hands one more time, presses Steve’s hand to his heartbeat with nothing less than desperation until his ribs goddamn creak, and then he leans, makes the pressure bigger—

Meets the feeling in Steve with all the feeling in him with their lips on each other like they mean it this time, ready to dissolve in it. To grow themselves to protect around the soft parts. To keep their hands entwined for always.

To come alive inside this sun.

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here

divider credit here

[karliahs]

I think my goal with fic writing from now on is to be more shameless and have more fun. and actually thinking about it I think my goal in life might be to be more shameless and have more fun

[fyodior]

ok well i don’t have the content i promised i’d provide when i returned but i want to come back so hello everyone . i guess im here now

[theatrekidenergy]

Jack Abbot has a very specific type of AuDHD I cannot for the life of me put my finger on, but damn it it is there.

-> More explanation in the tags.

[theweeklydiscourse]

The Darkling and Alina’s reunion in Rule of Wolves is crazy. Alina does the literary equivalent of looking into the camera in a desperate attempt to convince the reader that her ending wasn’t incoherent and totally disappointing. The Darkling questions why she gave up her powers and her response is just: “ACTUALLY, I had even LESS agency in deciding my fate 😤 and was more passive than you thought! So take that!”And then proceeds to go on a tangent about how she’s abandoned her life of sin and greed, like some kind of guilty religious person.

[clowns0up-felix]

honestly u should be drawing what ur heart desires 👍 loz or arcane or whatever else. its ur blog. u are the big rat that makes all the rules

I AM the big rat that makes all the rules YAYYYYY!!!!!! YAY

BUT there does come this problem when you build a blog based on a franchise and then suddenly switch to another one……………………. idk y’all aren’t getting what y’all followed for huhhh ,, and then the people that start following me for arcane stuff are gonna be disappointed when I go back to loz soon,, CRAZY !!!! AUGH

And I can’t even really get myself to just post both things bc my brain can only properly house one interest at a time (which is why a side blog wouldn’t work)

THINGS ARE CRAZY IM IN THE TRENCHES (I made the trenches, I made the war , I am the soldier as much as I am the perpetrator…….)

[minothtime]

HWAT DO YOU MEAN THREE ENTIRE MILGRAM CHARACTERS ARE DEAD AND IN THE GROUND??? HELLO???? IT ISN'T EVEN SEASON THREE??????

AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU AMANE WHEN I GET YOU

[rowenabean]

Was hanging out with my friend and she said she was thinking about getting colour analysis done and I was like I've never had an assessment but i CAN do what I did for myself (look at your favourite clothes and find the mood board that matches). Would recommend 10/10 hanging out together activity

[juney-blues]

the anarchist position isn't a principled stance against unjustifiable hierarchies, it's just a lawless state where everyone sits around doing whatever they want and there is no more infrastructure or manufacturing of anything. when left to their own devices, people famously just completely lose all motivation to do anything, and dismantling the state, the entity that enforces law through violence, would be akin to loading up a game of The Sims and just leaving it running idly with no input, the titular sims wandering around aimlessly until they starve.

without a central authority maintaining law and order through threat of violence, society completely collapses! no one has ever or will ever do anything for anyone without the implict threat of jackbooted thugs shooting them in the head if they don't. there is no conceivable mode of society where this *isn't* the case.

"how would this part of society be run without a small group of people exerting their unquestionable will over a large group of people?" is a question you need to constantly ask to remind anarchists that their worldview just doesn't make sense!

if you can't *make* someone do something, then there's just no way to get them to do it!

asking nicely? using convincing arguments to persuade? just accepting "no" for an answer? (because if someone just doesn't wanna do something, they're probably being lazy, there's never any good reason for them to not wanna do it) all entirely unheard of. How will we govern if we are all equal?!?!

[moonyspetwolf]

Okay so I’ve seen like 20 videos on tiktok of people saying they have no idea how exy is played so I’m gonna make a post about how I understand the rules. I’m not really an athlete but I know a bit about sports and I also coincidentally went to the same school that PSU is based on

(I haven’t read the books in like 5 years so if I’m wrong about something feel free to correct me)

First thing, exy is played inside, not outside. The game can’t work in an outdoor stadium and I’ll explain why in a minute. The stadium is like a combination basketball court and hockey rink. Wood flooring and plexiglass walls surrounding the court. There are two goals on each end.

Okay so the lineup. From what I remember there’s 4 positions you can play on an exy team: dealer, backliner, striker, and goalie.

Backliner is pretty straightforward just classic defense. They protect the goal and focus on the other team’s strikers. I think it’s similar to basketball where they’re assigned a mark (opposing striker) who they have to cover during the game. That doesn’t mean they’re not free to move or check other strikers either, but basically they try to stop the other team from scoring any goals. I’m not sure if it’s against the rules for them to make an attempt on a goal or not.

Strikers are similarly straightforward. They’re straight offense. Their job is to get as many goals as possible. They work against the opposing team’s backliner and shoot at the goal

The dealer is the most confusing position but I think they basically control possession of the ball, so I think their job is to get the ball from the other team and make sure it gets to their strikers. At the start of the game or after any breaks they’re the ones who deal the ball and try to pass to their teammates. Idk if they operate similar to backliners or not, like checking, tackling, etc.

The goalie is the same as any other sport- their job is to protect the goal. Goalies have special racket that are bigger and heavier than other players. They also wear special padding to protect them since they’re constantly getting exy balls chucked at them and often have to use parts of their body to block them.

(Side note: if exy balls are anything like lacrosse balls they seriously hurt to get hit with. They’re dense and heavy, when they work up enough speed it feels like getting hit by a slightly bouncy cannon ball)

From what I can remember, at any given time there are two backliners, two strikers, one dealer, and one goalie on the court for each team. Players are subbed in and out as needed (I might be remembering the numbers wrong, maybe they have 3 backliners at a time idk)

Exy is a high contact sport similar to lacrosse, so players are free to use physical force against each other. They can check, tackle, and basically do whatever it takes to get the ball. Just like in hockey, players often get into fights. Excessive use of violence can get them flagged by referees, but it’s by no means a gentle sport. Players go into it with the expectation of getting thrown around and bruised.

Players wear padding and helmets to protect themselves, but bruises, sprains, concussions, and broken bones aren’t uncommon within the sport.

There are some basic rules for how the game is played. Exy is kinda like lacrosse in that players pass the ball back and forth with their raquets. I don’t know a lot about all the rules of lacrosse but I know exy has a rule about possession that’s similar to basketball. In basketball a player has to dribble the ball while they’re moving, if they hold it in their hands without dribbling for too many steps it’s called traveling and it’s a foul. Exy is the same, a player can only be in possession of the ball for 10 (?) steps before they have to pass it. If they carry it farther than that it’s traveling (idk if there’s a special term for it in exy speak). There are ways for players to get around this. They can either pass the ball to a teammate after they’ve taken their 10 steps OR they can rebound it off a wall, catch it in their racquet, and keep moving. This is the reason exy has to be played inside and not outside, so that the players can use the walls. If it’s played outside they can’t rebound the ball and they have to rely strictly on passing back and forth, which isn’t always possible especially if a player is being heavily guarded. I’m not positive if this possession rule applies to all players or only strikers, but it would make sense for it to be all players.

I can’t remember if the books say anything about who is allowed to shoot at the goal. Obviously strikers can but I can’t remember if there are any rules saying backliners, dealers, and goalies can’t score points

The game is played in 2 halves, a total of 4 quarters. I’m not sure if the book ever says how long each quarter is but it’s probably safe to assume each is 15 minutes, so a total of 1 hour playing time. However with timeouts, breaks, penalty time and other interruptions games usually last far longer.

The foxes are a unique team because they’re much smaller than pretty much any other team in the league. They only have 9 players by the end of the year, so they can’t sub players in and out as easily. Most teams have upwards of 18 people so the players are usually on court for a much shorter time and have more time to rest between playing time. In the foxes vs. Trojans game, USC decided to play with the same size roster as the foxes meaning they rarely got to sub out players, which is why they were so exhausted by the end. Throwing yourself around a huge court at top speed for an hour is tiring.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, I’m not an expert and it’s been a while since I’ve read the books but I think exy is a pretty cool sport :)

[drdemonprince]

your post about only communicating the minimum needed reminded me of the gricean maxims (concept in linguistics describing how people communicate)! your advice was very similar to the maxim of quantity :)

From the UPenn School of Arts & Sciences site:

Grice's Maxims

The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.

The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.

The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.

The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

[swallowtail-ageha]

Idk why but it always felt icky when like. People write down the phonetics of the accents a character is supposed have

[xiii-e]

//ooc posting: I NEED to find more fun/silly things to do with my two they are Not meant to be all agony all the time I swear- I just have a penchant for the dramatic and they're a little in the torment nexus o(-< but on god they will Have Fun too