#very half baked

[manicpixiedreamedwins]

Attempting to guess what this means:

Okay. I said I wasn’t going to obsess over this but here I am. I’ve done my best to group things here so let’s get into it.

🦊- There is a comic in Endless Nights about a monk and fox who keep making sacrifices for one another, over and over. They are reunited in the afterlife. Sound like anyone else we know 👀

🐇- I thought I had a connection here but I’ve been informed it’s unlikely ig. So go read this fic in place of what I was going to say and let’s imagine this is about Pierre together.

EDIT: @vovertherainbow saw the rabbit and the snowflake and wondered if that had to do with Niko (because I forgot she’s not already there, like in all the phenomenal aus we have made in this fandom).

I feel like they are onto something. Yes. Let’s find Niko.

❄️- They wanted to do a Holiday Episode. Edwin loves Christmas.

🌽- Look, I have no idea. Children of the Corn reference? I know they’ve referenced horror movies in the past. Evidently the drill killer Charles was talking about was a movie, “The Driller Killer”. (Credit to @dearheartdont for sharing 🖤)

🐴-In this Gameo George says Edwin rode horses in life. What did you know George 👀

EDIT: 🌽 + 🐴 WELSH COB. It's a horse. I am dumb. Thanks @deadboyslullaby ilu

📌- If you read this phonetically it becomes “a tack”. Attack on what? Who knows.

🏛️🎒- OKAY I need to yell about this. The museum and backpack are a mirror to the pilot episode. We see the boys running from the WWI ghost in front of the columns and Charles is digging in his backpack. Just. What does this mean?? What does this MEAN?? I mean I’m sure they’d be back in London for this season, but WHAT COULD HAPPEN HERE?? Would Charles be more prepared for… something? (Or would he miss again?)

Or it could be a case in Charles’ backpack

🏫- I suppose this is a school. If it is… do they get to go on that case to a university George wanted to go on? Or is this St. Hilarion’s?

🖤- I am imagining this as Charles’ mood ring shirt. What happened here?

(Jealous Charles? Does he figure something out about himself? This could go two very different ways, depending on if they are investigating a university or like… the place they both died).

🤫- He could just be telling us to shh or like. What if a character now has yet another something to contend with (NGL, I liked that this last season did NOT leave us with any major anguish and a hopeful ending.)

ANOTHER EDIT: Okay I am not good enough at the sandman verse for this. There's a House of Secrets. What's really interesting about this is referenced in The Doll's House and... our friend Despair makes an appearance.

So does Desire. (Are these the black heart?)

Okay. That’s all for me. I refuse to be stressed about this though because we had a wonderful season one, and in my heart payneland is figuring it out together somehow

[electraheartonvinyl]

Something something about women writers and big feelings

(Anne sexton “The Black Art”, Lorde “Writer in the Dark”, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women)

[rushinator]

So I finally watched Wish for the first time.

I had heard everyone say it’s bad and I wanted to watch it for myself to form my own opinion. I didn’t want to think it’s bad just because everyone says it is. And,… I like it, but it could have been better.

I liked Asha and thought she was a fun, but I also felt like she was missing something to make her more relatable.

I liked her friends, but I wish I could have seen more of them and see each of them get a chance to shine. I couldn’t even remember thier names.

A couple of songs were catchy, but not rememberable.

The villain didn’t feel evil enough for me and I couldn’t understand his motivation.

And yeah, Star should have been Starboy. I have to agree with everyone there.

Overall, I don’t think this movie is the worst of all time, I feel like it’s unfair to call it that. I wasn’t watching this begging for it to end, but it did feel like it had a lot missing from it.

The thing I did like the best was the animation. I know everyone was saying it looked weird, but to me I thought it looked nice and nostalgic with how much it reminded me of older Disney films. It felt like everything needed a lot more time in the oven before it was finished, but I’m sure Disney needed to get this out quickly for 100 years of wonder.

I would have loved for the songs to have better lyrics and be catchier, and for everyone to have more time to show off their personalities and motivation.

I feel like it doesn’t deserve to be called one of the worst Disney films. I think parts of it are good, but not all of it. It just needed more time.

Will I watch it again? Ehhh, maybe. But I’m glad I did see it. I just really wish the music was better.

[1-marigold-1]

Snowdrops

@treebarkweek day 1: flower/frost

Snowdrops are one of the first signs of spring and the end of winter :>

[matttheratkingart]

Ted missed a chapter or two

[meta-squash]

I think two of the most important things about Jack Harkness, two things that inform almost everything he does and the choices he makes, are this: that he is a soldier NOT a leader, and that his entire life since childhood has been awash in survivor's guilt (and his whole existence after becoming immortal is an even more extreme version of survivor's guilt).

Jack is not a natural leader. He can think on the fly and he's good at getting people to listen to him, but he's not good at control, or at being objective. He's a natural second in command, he's a soldier. He was brought up to do what other people told him to, and to improvise if he had to (Time Agency, etc). But I really don't think he wants to be the leader of Torchwood. Unfortunately, everything about him means that he has to be. He knows from experience that others having control over him is dangerous, others knowing about his immortality while he's a subordinate to them is dangerous, and he also knows that his own immortality gives him an advantage as a leader. But I don't think he's good at leading. He tries to be. But he's fumbling along, in a time period he's not native to and a planet he's not native to and an unfathomable lifespan, and as charming as he is I think he's often not good with people. He's detached where he should be personal and emotional where he should be detached (or at least more level-headed). He's often too extreme or not harsh enough when it comes to things like discipline or dealing with the problems/traumas/mistakes of his employees or even civilians. He can't handle his employees seeing him uncertain/vulnerable and it makes for huge problems over and over again.

But all of this does make sense because I think in the back of Jack's mind there's always this wheel spinning, these gears turning and turning and calculating the impact and trauma each of his actions or decisions or the events around him are going to have on his own emotions for far longer than normal humans tend to consider. Because the catalyst for any part of the life we see him leading is survivor's guilt. He lost his father and his brother on the same day, joined the military and lost his best friend, joined the Time Agency and lost his memories (and maybe thinks he did something terrible). Then he died, and when Rose brought him back, he was all alone on the satellite with nothing but the corpses of the people who had fought beside him and zero explanation as to why he survived, and he had lost Rose and the Doctor besides. And then all his life on earth since, he has lost coworkers and lovers and civilians he tried and failed to save and probably also aliens he tried and failed to save. And I think by the time he becomes reluctant leader of Torchwood, every action is, whether conscious or subconscious, taken with the intent of minimizing that kind of trauma and the impact of loss.

Except that I think that the survivor's guilt has another layer to it, which is that feeling of needing to sacrifice or absolve himself in some way. No one else is willing to make the difficult decisions, no one else will move forward with the painful and unpleasant actions, even if there's no other way, even though they will someday perish and no longer see the ripples of their actions. But Jack - who cannot die, who must live with the guilt or the pain or the trauma of those actions and decisions for the rest of his very very very long life - is the one who realizes that he must take on those painful responsibilities and must do certain things even though they're terrible, because it ends up being the sacrifice of one over the whole world. And every single time, he's guilty about it, and that makes him want even more to sacrifice his own hurt for the grief and loss of others.

So it's this strange cycle of wanting to protect himself from hurt and from loss and from the survivor's guilt, but being driven by guilt towards painful and/or self-sacrificing actions. Which then makes him fear being seen as vulnerable or uncertain, and he struggles to do things on a smaller scale or in a more level-headed way, because he's not supposed to be leading like this, it's not something that comes naturally, and if he makes emotional connections by being a leader, he'll end up trapped in survivor's guilt yet again each time one of his employees or friends or lovers dies.

It's just a terrible cycle and he's trapped in it for the rest of his existence. Although if he really is the Face Of Boe, then I imagine at some point he eventually finds peace with it all or something, but I think so long as he has a human-form he's stuck with this cycle of leadership and loss and sacrifice and mistakes.

I think it's really important that Jack is not good at his job as a leader. He makes a ton of mistakes, he fucks up so much and his employees or even civilians end up collateral damage, whether physically or just emotionally. He wants to be a good leader, I think, and he's trying, but he's fallible, and he's a stranger in literally every sense, and I think a really big part of his character is that he constantly is forced to live in this bizarre dichotomy where he has to be both very distant and cold and detached, and also very emotional and intense and personal. And any other person would collapse under the stress of repeating that over and over and over again for decades, but he has to figure out how to navigate this weight as an infinite existence that can't ever collapse or let it burn him up and kill him.

[bartholomew-junior]

wooooo revived!clover! i have so many thoughts abt this au and they cannot all fit here so take some doodles

@brewingcoffi

[purpurussy]

the version of dan and phil playing the sims which exists only in my head is so good I wish you guys could see this

my headcanon is that dalien and cassandra are besties and cassandra is very protective of him because he reminds her of her gay little brother (alexander goth is gay in every one of my saves and I recently saw a reddit thread where everyone was saying they hc him as homophobic which sent me because that is NOT my fruity little alexander 💀💀💀 anyway) and dalien prom-posed to her purely because he wanted to ask nicholas, but he was scared of asking a boy to the prom, so he asked her to be his beard essentially. but she rejected him because she's gay too (pro tip you can make literally all of your sims gay and the police can't stop you) plus that's basically her little brother 😭 so he had a breakdown after that and then he came out to her (she's the first person he came out to) and she encouraged him to ask his crush and she said she'll throw hands if anyone is mean to them 🥰 (side note she has actually kinda known for a while. and she has been one of the NPCs who randomly starts a fight in the school corridor before because someone said daliens hair looked gay or some shit so she tried to kill them lmfao)

now she is not a big fan of nicholas because she gets the vibe that dalien is more into him than the other way round and he's too preppy and he annoys her so she's always kinda side eyeing him. but she also loves 3rd wheeling their dates so she can be daliens guard dog/twink handler/#1 fujo because she supports him even though his bf is annoying. and she will be there to let dalien cry on her shoulder and also she'll key nicholas's car and put a stink bomb in his locker when the relationship inevitably crashes and burns <3

that is MY CASSANDRA GOTH now the constant bullying and slander needs to STOP .... she never did anything wrong by rejecting dalien they are both GAY and also best friends. dan and phil release her from this ridiculous love triangle prison please free my girl. she is not a woman scorned/spurned lover or whatever archetype. she IS a mean goth lesbian who is actually very sweet but only if you appeal to her emotionally curious nature. also this is not what polyamory is 💀

thank you for reading my thesis telling 2 youtubers who play the sims for a check how they should do their job 😁

[slitheringghost]

Voldemort and Manipulation of Power Structures

I wanted to explore one of the most fascinating parts of Voldemort's character, which is his immense consciousness of the power hierarchy and structures of magical society and his ability to manipulate them, as well as his consciousness of his own place in those power structures, and how he often plays on those weaknesses.

There are many ways in which he demonstrates this - i.e. he tells Quirrell “There is no good and evil, there is only power" and seems to follow that regarding his own beliefs; he sees himself in followers similarly disenfranchised as him (Harry, Snape, Ginny, Bellatrix, etc.), and we see him use this with them as a combination of genuine identification and manipulation; and we especially see this hyperawareness of the pureblood power structures that killed Merope in the locket protections (see my meta Slytherin Locket Cave: The Life and Death of Merope Gaunt and this addendum) and how that ties into his consciousness of the legal system and who is vulnerable and disposable to it.

In this meta I’ll explore some more of those instances.

1. Chamber of Secrets

His interactions regarding the Chamber attacks are particularly telling:

“It was my word against Hagrid’s, Harry. Well, you can imagine how it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student.. on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls

Well, how it looks... is that Armando Dippet, until Tom Riddle specifically clarified to him otherwise, was assuming Tom was Muggleborn, while there was a monster petrifying and hospitalizing Muggleborns for months and ended up killing one, and then told him he'd be safer at his orphanage. This is also something Tom plays on to Harry:

“My dear boy, you must see how foolish it would be of me to allow you to remain at the castle when term ends. Particularly in light of the recent tragedy... the death of that poor little girl.... You will be safer by far at your orphanage. As a matter of fact, the Ministry of Magic is even now talking about closing the school. We are no nearer locating the — er — source of all this unpleasantness...." “Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read.” [...] “I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up.” [...] “Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist. But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who’d opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had died in a freak accident. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again.”

Tom correctly points out Dippet’s embarrassment about the attacks and attempt to cover them up. Dumbledore says that “Dippet was very fond of Voldemort and convinced of his honesty”, yet that didn’t stop Dippet from initially seeing Tom’s life as disposable as other Muggleborns, and it’s clear Tom realized this fact.

2. Half-Blood Prince

There’s Tom joking about being the “half blood heir of Slytherin” with his friends, enjoying the irony of playing on his background:

“I don’t know that politics would suit me, sir,” he said when the laughter had died away. “I don’t have the right kind of background, for one thing.” A couple of the boys around him smirked at each other. Harry was sure they were enjoying a private joke, undoubtedly about what they knew, or suspected, regarding their gang leader’s famous ancestor.

And then the way he flirts with and manipulates Hepzibah Smith is particularly interesting to me, especially combined with his framing of Hokey and using Kreacher for the locket:

“Hurry up, Hokey!” said Hepzibah imperiously. “He said he’d come at four, it’s only a couple of minutes to and he’s never been late yet!” “Now then,” said Hepzibah happily, “where’s Hokey? Oh yes, there you are — take that away now, Hokey.” The elf obediently took the boxed cup, and Hepzibah turned her attention to the much flatter box in her lap.

“Now, now, not so fast, or I’ll think you’re only here for my trinkets!” pouted Hepzibah. “I am ordered here because of them,” said Voldemort quietly. “I am only a poor assistant, madam, who must do as he is told. Mr. Burke wishes me to inquire —”

Just like he recognizes the parallel between Merope’s treatment and a house elf/slavery, you can tell he’s noticing the same parallel with himself - and he’s playing into it.

Of course, plenty of his politeness with Hepzibah is necessity, but in the above quote he’s milking his “weakness” and playing the obedient servant - because he knows that power dynamic between them is what Hepzibah Smith is attracted to (and that she enjoys fussing over him as the “poor assistant” - i.e. Hepzibah feeding him with the cakes and telling him he’s overworked, etc.).

Then there’s his framing of his uncle - while the majority of the specifics of Morfin’s confession is revenge for his mother, you can tell Tom’s enjoying the irony of framing Morfin and getting him sent to Azkaban for killing Muggles as a fuck you to his pureblood relatives in general:

“And so what? Morfin gave a Muggle a bit of what was coming to him — what about it, then?” “Morfin has broken Wizarding law,” said Ogden sternly. “Morfin has broken Wizarding law.’” Gaunt imitated Ogden’s voice, making it pompous and singsong. Morfin cackled again. “He taught a filthy Muggle a lesson, that’s illegal now, is it?” [...] “Summons! Summons? Who do you think you are, summoning my son anywhere?” “I’m Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad,” said Ogden. “And you think we’re scum, do you?” screamed Gaunt, advancing on Ogden now, with a dirty yellow-nailed finger pointing at his chest. “Scum who’ll come running when the Ministry tells ’em to? Do you know who you’re talking to, you filthy little Mudblood, do you?”

“The Ministry, on the other hand, knew at once that this was a wizard’s murder. They also knew that a convicted Muggle-hater lived across the valley from the Riddle house, a Muggle-hater who had already been imprisoned once for attacking one of the murdered people. “So the Ministry called upon Morfin. They did not need to question him, to use Veritaserum or Legilimency. He admitted to the murder on the spot, giving details only the murderer could know. He was proud, he said, to have killed the Muggles, had been awaiting his chance all these years. He handed over his wand, which was proved at once to have been used to “kill the Riddles. And he permitted himself to be led off to Azkaban without a fight.

Of course this doesn't stop him being a total hypocrite and looking down on Muggles himself, just like his awareness of house-elf oppression and ability to use it doesn’t stop him from completely underestimating Kreacher.

Because one of the biggest ways Voldemort’s arrogance manifests is his belief in his ability to manipulate these power structures, how he sees himself as an outsider in magical society who is always chessmaster-ing it, his certainty that everyone else but him are simply too imprisoned by those oppressive structures to resist against and fight back against them - that he’s the only one that can truly rise above them.

[emeraldotter]

mage chick

[lavenoon]

TFW your curious human partner wants to watch you eat but you're maybe not quite ready to have them witness it, so you tease them out of it

@naffeclipse I looked at all the angst buildup from chapter 17 and just decided to ignore it to instead deliver post-canon fluff <3

[greghatecrimes]

feeling ill about the scene in Knight Fall where House and Thirteen are talking about Sam and Wilson getting back together, and House tells her "Wilson's not like us."

[thelongestway]

hey no shade but you know dungeon meshi isn't actually based off dnd right? there are definitely some overlapping concepts and it can be fun to analyze it through a dnd lens but really it's its own homebrew fantasy setting. just checking bc i nearly got in an argument w someone over dungeon meshi lore the other day only to realize it was because they were trying to apply dnd lore to it ahahaa

Oh yeah, absolutely, it's its own thing. You don't even have to go far to show how it's its own thing: for one, the whole set-up with the dungeons being what they are isn't found anywhere else in D&D-inspired material that I know. You could maybe reflavor Halaster's Undermountain to something like the Dungeon Meshi dungeons, but that would be another layer of homebrew. That said, I do have the feeling that Ryoko Kui grew up on the same kind of D&D material that I did - stuff like Elminster's Ecologies, or old school Greyhawk materials. Her story genuinely feels like an AD&D game run by an old-school DM, maybe even earlier in the editions (hi, Chilchuck and "I'm a rogue, I'm not gonna fight"!). I don't mean that she follows D&D canon in any meaningful sense--her stuff isn't set in Greyhawk, nor on Abeir-Toril, nor on Krynn, etc. But I do think she's someone who's inspired by old school stuff, even as she makes her work thoroughly her own.

An acquaintance of mine once wrote that long tabletop games gain a quality that she called "being well-trod". This is when the players and DM are so familiar with the world they live in that it becomes, well, lived-in. They don't need to look up rules anymore to extrapolate: they understand the logic of the setting, and they get the same kind of intuitive feel for the world that we do when living in our own world, in real life. A feeling of where the boundaries lie, and how things work.

This is how I feel about Dungeon Meshi and D&D. It feels like a work written by someone who walked the same paths that I did, and whose work is therefore both new and startlingly familiar. That's it in a nutshell, but then I also wrote a bunch of examples, which got very long, so cut for length and spoilers!

I wrote somewhere in the tags on my Dungeon Meshi posts that it's incredibly surreal reading a story that seems to be informed by the exact materials that you base your own homebrew games on. Kui takes her work in a wholly different direction than I did - but the disparate elements of the story would fit in like a glove, because they're based on similar logic. I could quite literally take any of the ecologies elements of Dungeon Meshi and put them into a given module I'm running, and it would need less adaptation than 5e material. And most of the cultural/racial elements of Dungeon Meshi? That, too. Where it's not a one for one match, it would so easily be explainable by "different continent".

Let's take the example you're probably here from: the Canaries and elves in general, and let's take elves in general first. In D&D, there's been a switch in models of elven aging throughout the years: from "they are literal babies up until 60-ish, and then have 40 years of actual adolescence" to "yeah they grow to full adult size at about the same speed as the other races, and are then just culturally considered too young to make their own decisions". I am decidedly not a fan of the second model - I think it takes away from the cool biologies early D&D thrived on. BG3's treatment of Astarion's age of death, for instance, keeps throwing me. Yeah, I get it: it fits in with the edition they're working off, but I hate it. That's not how things work on our Faerun! But then we get to Marcille's backstory, and we see that she has the problems old school half-elves did, and you're like "oh, well of course someone invested in weird cool biology as an author would interpret elves like that." Her treatment of age makes sense to me. She makes the races as alien as possible, and hits that vibe of "D&D-style fantasy is its own thing, with its own set of rules" that I love. In contrast, and unlike any prototypes I know, Kui takes her half-foots in a different direction! They don't live longer than tall-men, they live shorter lives, closer to goblinoids. And I think it's for the same reason: because it's that much cooler to have different experiences of life in humanoid races. This is decidedly Not D&D, but it would absolutely fit into that vein.

With smaller details, I keep joking around here that the Canaries are grey elves, and of course they're not. But then Kui keeps putting in these tiny little details - which can be either nods to existing material, or the same extrapolations that other authors drawing upon high fantasy tropes have made. The white ships that have travelled all the way from Tolkien's Valinor to Evermeet and now to Shima. The fact that the Canaries have basically the right color scheme for grey elves threw me completely: I was not expecting that! Elves being that specific brand of destructive that they are - jeez, the Canaries would be right at home in Myth Drannor, or during the Crown Wars. So I joke around about these specific dolts a lot, and I am having an inordinate amount of fun seeing if my predictions that come from running a Myth Drannor game for a good long while now come true. And it goes on. Marcille doesn't prepare spells, and the magic here is obviously not Vancian. But Mithrun's teleport shenanigans are literally stuff I've done in games. The differences between races in D&D aren't because of wishes made by mortals; they're built in by gods for their own purposes. But the towns that spring up around anomalous spots and that have to deal with the weirdness have the same vibe. Kui draws on a more extensive tradition than just D&D, of course, but she transforms the tradition in a very similar way to old D&D. Of course the elves' magic in Kui's work does weird and creepy stuff with soulbinding and immortality; that's been their dark side since Tolkien and Celebrimbor's work with Annatar, and then it turned into stuff like elves regularly sacrificing their lives in high magic rituals in Faerun. Of course Senshi's backstory is about the dwarves that have dug too deep - but they are, of course, distinct from gnomes, and the gnomes are a peculiar and interesting breed of arcana specialists. Of course Chilchuck is a Burglar - but he works on dungeon delving unions, of all things! It's a familiar transformation, so the world makes sense to me, and I love it. So yeah. Tl;dr: not D&D ofc, but the vibe is there, and I am having fun with it.

Also - can you tell me about the argument? I am super curious, and I wonder if the person you were arguing with was working from 5e material.

[tradingjack]

slept through most of may, whoops

have some very late mermay stuff ft. those trigun fellas

[monbons]

WIP Wednesday

I had to proctor the PSAT this morning, which was a mind-numbing drag. BUT! It also means we had a half-day, so I am free! I am on my way to treat myself to lunch, and then who knows what exciting possibilities the day has in store while my own kids are in school. (Honestly, I'll probably just nap and read for a bit.)

Chapter 4 of The Boy Next Door goes up on Friday. Find a snip and tags below the cut.

I close my eyes again briefly before I feel the swat against my bum. I whip back up to standing. “What was that for?” “Can’t have you falling asleep out here. Go help Ebb in the back.” Gran attempts to herd me away. “Get your hands dirty. I’ll take over the register.” “Fine,” I grumble. “But I’m taking one of these with me!” I grab a biscuit from the display case and wave it in the air, racing towards the back before she can swat me again. I’m not sure precisely how I’m expected to help Ebb. She’s an exceptional baker. Made it a few rounds on Bake Off even. Meanwhile, I get teaspoons and tablespoons mixed up. I tried baking a cake for Penny once. I even asked Gran for a recipe. Although Penny ate my lopsided creation, I could tell by the way she kept her hand over her mouth that it wasn’t very good.�� I find Ebb exactly where I expect—arms elbow-deep in a giant bowl. She’s wearing an apron that reads, “Don’t be afraid to take WHISKS.”

Hope your Wednesday is as half-fabulous as mine!

@thewholelemon, @raenestee, @cutestkilla, @bookish-bogwitch, @roomwithanopenfire

@iamamythologicalcreature, @emeryhall, @mooncello, @hushed-chorus, @rimeswithpurple

@artsyunderstudy, @aristocratic-otter, @arthurkko, @best--dress, @brilla-brilla-estrellita

@run-for-chamo-miles, @supercutedinosaurs, @whatevertheweather, @talentpiper11, @larkral

@shrekgogurt, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @youarenevertooold, @blackberrysummerblog, @messofthejess

@drowninginships, @valeffelees, @orange-peony, @facewithoutheart, @alexalexinii

@ic3-que3n, @skeedelvee, @fiend-for-culture, @katatsumuli, @stitchyqueer

@ileadacharmedlife, @theimpossibledemon, @letraspal, @rbkzz, @confused-bi-queer

[corrodedcoughin]

just thinking about musician eddie who ends up doing country music under a pseudonym similar to Orville Peck. Eddie having his rock and metal band but the influence of Wayne and his upbringing doesn’t leave him. So he puts on a mask and picks up an acoustic to be this character. A character that’s closer to his real life than he lets on. A deep voiced cowboy singing about the difficulty of growing up gay but how comfortable he is with his identity.

He only ever does small gigs under this name and the audience isn’t huge. But there’s one regular that turns up to every show, he’s never stayed to talk to Eddie after and Eddie’s never been brave enough to go up to him. He knows he’d let all his secrets out under the attention of those hazel eyes and pretty boy smile.

Tonight though? Tonight he might just risk it all because the gif is over. Eddie is standing at the bar and he’s being handed a drink he definitely didn’t ask for by a man he definitely wants to know more about.

Or!!! Alternatively!!!!!

Steve as an Orville Peck style country singer. Going it to gigs and shows and getting a name for himself as the mysterious masked singer who is a proud queer cowboy. Creating a character to share his emotions and experiences. He doesn’t think it’ll come to much, just a way to let himself be heard.

Only he ends up gaining a strong following. His audiences are small but they are dedicated, understanding the idea steve has created and the importance of it. He loves this group he’s made for himself and how comfortable everyone feels at his shows. There’s often full conversations between him and the crowd, letting everyone be involved in his performances.

Steve has every intention of this being a small time thing that gets him through the long work week. What he doesn’t plan for is one of his tapes being found by corroded coffin front man eddie munson. Eddie Munson who loves a mystery, Eddie munson who might be in a big time metal band but has grown up listening to country and know Good Music when he hears it. Eddie Munson who might be Steve’s number one fan and is planning on finding out who is behind the mask