#whole paragraphs even

[the-bineapple]

I love putting like half of a post in the tags it's just extra room for me to ramble <3

[doctordoombignaturals]

recently been infatuated with these two (ft. buster)

[royalarchivist]

Jaiden: [Reading Pomme's sign] "Rest in peace, Bobby <3" Rest in peace, Bobby! [Reading Leo's sign] "For Bobby, from Leonarda" Awww, that's so nice. [She opens the trapdoor to the grave] Can I get in here?

Jaiden: Oh, Bobby... Bobby! My baby! Poor thing... Oh, there's a couch. I love you, Bobby! I miss you every day. But... I'm doing well, despite that.

Jaiden: People think that I be goin' crazy! People think that, "Oh, I'm gonna turn evil!" No, I'm- I'm- I'm- I'm doing fine! I'm doing fine! I'm doing completely fine! Jaiden is a healthy being! No mental illness here! [She quietly laughs] Absolutely no mental illness in this body! [Laughs] Healthy!

[coern-art-very-cool-and-nice]

“An abnormal heat is occurring within the ceasing remnants of my mind”.

[corcjell]

I HATE IT SO MUCH when it is automatically assumed that, in a story, (and also real life) when a man is doing something nice for a woman that she must be his wife or girlfriend. ITS SO STUPID. on Barney Calhoun's wiki page it says, "The Blue Shift instruction manual features the sentence 'Buy flowers for Lauren', suggesting that Calhoun had a wife or girlfriend." like why are those the only two options???? can it not be his mom, or sister, or like a friend??? there are so many circumstances that add depth to his life and back story when its anything other than his girlfriend. it lets the player know more about him. maybe someone was mourning and he wanted to offer his support. maybe his mother was ill and he wanted to get her a gift. it makes me mad that he already has almost nothing going for him lore-wise. undecided major, his life is literally less of a priority than any of the scientists who work at Black Mesa. i want him to have something, ANYTHING interesting. we have his interest in aliens and the supernatural in Blue Shift, but its not regarded as canon by most official sources because it wasn't made by Valve. (even though a majority of half life fans, on tumblr at least, view the expansions as canon) he's just squished down to a single paragraph of description in the official half life book its insane! "down to earth", and, "a good friend to have in a fight". also he's fucking not in hl2 ep2, they send him off on a train and no one ever fucking talks about him again.

[bookwyrminspiration]

i cannot wait for the day the great gulon incident short story is published so people can stop fucking asking about it

[lastofthe20thcenturygirls]

(ln8 spoilers) jinshi thinking except for my godly looks i am just average and then his smartass goes and kills around five birds with just one brand. someone whose status is so high that even his name can't be said by anyone except the emperor jinshi branded himself with the crest of the empress vowing loyalty to her assuring her he doesn't wants to take the place of her son. one-upping his "bro" with this who refuses to let him leave the line of succession wouldn't let him become a commoner doesn't wants to let him become a servant to the royal family. only slaves get branded and if this ever got out there will be chaos in the court. gyokuyou tho considers jinshi like a brother and he did swear loyalty to her but if she ever tried to cross his family her clan's brand on his body would be enough to prove her as an adultress which would be bad for her and her clan.

and jinshi did this in front of these two people and maomao so now she is the only one who can see him naked and the emperor cannot order him to marry anyone which was something that was definitely gonna happen had he not done what he did. as a bonus he gets to spend more time with maomao after a long time and he did all this while saying the exact words: empress gyokuyou, your enemy i shall never be in front of maomao reassuring her because she once muttered i don't want to be an enemy to empress gyokuyou and he had heard her but before he could tell her that he had no intention of doing that either he couldn't because of the lishu incident. one of the major reasons maomao hadn't accepted her own feelings for jinshi one of the obstacles he promised to remove for her. even though he doesn't even know that maomao's concerns about her becoming gyokuyou's enemy had to do with his birth secret his true status. that no matter what he is the rightful successor. something jinshi himself isn't even aware of and yet without knowing that he did this to deal with it all in a single way most preferable to him: masochism

[feroluce]

For me, as much as I adore the theme of travel companions, henghill is more of a "someday" thing in that regard. I love Boothill being a weird loner Galaxy Ranger rather than a Nameless- man is undomesticated and belongs sleeping in the cargo holds of supply ships, threatening silence out of anyone that tries to report him. Let him be wild and free!!

I would LOVE it if Boothill just hitched a short ride off Asdana to whatever the Express' next destination is, though!

Like maybe the Express decides to stick around Penacony for a while, the same way they do other destinations, and Boothill is there anyway to investigate Oswaldo Schneider. It's rare to find a planet where the IPC is present, but doesn't actually have a lot of power; he can't pass this opportunity up!

And in that time, he sees a lot of Dan Heng.

Boothill gets text messages asking him to the quieter parts of the Dreamscape (he threatened and made a scene - it's called standing up for your rights, Dan Heng was given a room with a Dreampool by The Family for helping root out The Order) or mostly to the Express, where Dan Heng curiously asks him about Paths, about aeons and Emanators, The Rangers, all the worlds he's seen and places he's been.

Boothill isn't really surprised the first time they spend an entire night talking and discussing- after all, they'd chattered a lot that first day they met at the bar in the Reverie! But in talking so much, of course the topic of home comes up.

Dan Heng asks about Boothill’s homeworld.

Boothill tells Dan Heng it's gone now, and changes the subject.

Boothill asks about Dan Heng's past, before the Astral Express and the Nameless.

Dan Heng freezes up and closes off, and changes the subject.

In yet another moment of tacit understanding, neither of them ask again.

But this continues, all throughout their stint in Penacony, finding each other and seeking the other out for no reason other than good company. Dan Heng adds ridiculous amounts of data to the archives that Boothill dictates to him. They both know he could get that information elsewhere if he really wanted. Boothill finds he's kinda happy he doesn't.

And Boothill is someone who's hard to keep up with. He knows he is, and he has no problem with it. It's part of what makes him excel as a Galaxy Ranger. But there's something fun about how Dan Heng just rolls with it, and so effortlessly! Boothill finds something shady going on, grabs a guy who was preying on people, and has this dude held up by the collar with his feet swinging while he cackles right in his face, when Dan Heng shows up.

Boothill says they're just having a friendly chat. He makes zero effort to hide what he's actually doing. Boothill's new friend pleads for Dan Heng to help him, please! This guy's crazy!

Dan Heng materializes his spear.

The guy apologizes even harder, tells them he won't do anything shady ever again, promise, promise! Boothill's jabbers at him and shakes him around some more before Dan Heng taps the pole of his spear against the covered metal of Boothill's leg and tells him come on, he's already scared the man witless, they have a date to keep. Boothill drops the guy and watches him scurry off like a cockroach.

"So, now it's a date, huh?"

"...Come on, let's go."

They go to the Dreamflux Reef after that, because Boothill just so happened to totally by coincidence find that shady guy's wallet (read: robbed him blind) and he wants that money to go back to the native Penaconians before anyone else. Dan Heng follows, and stuffs all of the man's credits into the tip jar of the bar they go to.

And even when the Express embarks anew from Asdana (with Boothill hidden away in some corner or compartment, because the IPC finally got pissed enough to start looking for him under The Family's noses skzikske) this continues. The next planet is difficult to get to because of Stellaron activity; so they have to fly manually part of the way instead of warping. Boothill doesn't get his own room since he's only hitching a ride, but Pom-Pom graciously allows him to sleep on a couch-

("Thank ya, Fluffy. No hard feelings about before, right?" "You're lucky my other passengers like you. And no shoes on the couches!!")

-in one of the cars. And it becomes normal commonplace to find Boothill telling stories, and Dan Heng rapidly writing them all down, at obscene hours in the parlor car while Himeko and Welt ask if either of them even slept.

Boothill teaches Dan Heng all about his favorite drinks and liquor in general, how to aim and shoot a gun, how to hunt and track prey. Dan Heng teaches Boothill about a lot of the teachings of Lan and The Hunt from the Xianzhou, what it's like there, some of the culture, some of the fables and old tales.

Boothill still leaves when it's time to go. He's still got things to do and people to kill, after all.

But it never feels like he's very far. The archives are full of him, even if he's never mentioned by name. The article on the Galaxy Rangers is several times longer than it was before. There's new data on multiple planets and worlds.

There's one that's still just a header and title. Boothill doesn't know about it yet. Dan Heng hopes he can fill the page on Aeragan-Epharshel someday and show it to him.

And even if he doesn't stay, he does return. Boothill breaks in stops by any time he happens to be nearby. He's used to traveling without much rest, and only takes what he can easily carry on him- nothing that can slow him down or hinder him. He can't put a bullet between Oswaldo Schneider's eyes if he gets himself killed over something as stupid as being weighed down in a fight, after all.

Dan Heng is similarly sparse. He still sleeps in the archives, with nothing but his futon and old suitcase to mark the space as his.

But there's an old wooden guitar carefully propped in the corner, just waiting for its owner's return.

[purplepotatobread]

The Fool: *arrives at Fitz's house after 15+ years away from him

Fitz: that's a nice horse

[kindlespark]

i get why ppl say that babel was too 'telling not showing' with the cohorts' friendship; robin's internal monologue says his cohort were all in love with each other, but we mostly get dialogue of them fighting *cough* and letty being racist *cough*. i just think that that was kind of the point!

robin is a great flawed protagonist and most importantly an unreliable narrator, and the disparity between what he tells you and the dialogue scenes we actually get feels intentional to me, because you can feel the disconnect between what robin wanted and his reality. when he was still in love with babel, he wanted their cohort to be a perfect romantic ideal, wanted to think their fights were overcomeable, that ramy and victoire felt the same that he did. but the cracks were there from the beginning; their relationships were always fucked up. the effects of colonialism/imperialism robin wanted so badly to ignore had doomed them from the beginning. babel in ramy or victoire's perspective would be wildly wildly different because it's clear they did not have robin's privilege

i just love that robin is like truly such a damn liberal for half the book, never truly committing to hermes, holding onto his whiteness and desire to belong, and that this flaw is what dooms his relationship with ramy. people celebrate babel for its scathing critique of white feminism, and they should, but it's also so damning of liberal activism too imo. robin as a protagonist exemplifies the way fellow poc will often uphold racist structures for their own benefit and to avoid complicating themselves--and that this will always be a futile selfish endeavour. robin must, like all of us, come to the conclusion that he will never belong while this system remains intact, that his privilege isn't worth the suffering of those alike him, and that resisting it however he can is the only moral and just thing to do. wow i got sidetracked but robin swift wasian character of all time fr

[hanashiz]

Caption this

[i-dont-talk-for-days-on-end]

I know the reader is probably not supposed to think of William Baskerville as cute but I am so utterly smitten with Sherlock Holmes in each in every timeline that I just can't help myself ... Yes go on William and look at the world through lenses and ingest some dubious substances and roast those who try to insult you and be gentle to your Watson pardon me Adson and read the signs around you as the genre demands ...

[cherry-chaos-cola]

"you don't deserve to have Raymond on your island I expect him in boxes by morning"

[rustedleopard]

Still thinking about how Clover on the No Mercy Route likely would've given up their quest for vengeance and lived with Martlet had Axis not told them that he killed Integrity. The only real difference between Aborted No Mercy Run Clover and No Mercy Run Clover are a few more destroyed robots and the knowledge of what Axis did, which sent their LOVE skyrocketing to LV 19.

Look at them. They can't even look Ceroba in the eye after they inflict the final blow.

[flickeringquip]

(1) You can't help but wonder if you've gotten in over your head.

Pt. 2 of this post, feat. @thedolmainblog's Aiden. DIDN'T FUCK THE TAG UP THIS TIME.

gratuitous smut below the cut.

The blindfold is silky and soft as they slide it over your eyes, smoothing their thumbs across your cheeks as you take a shaky inhale. The darkness is all-encompassing, more so than you could have anticipated, and for a few tenuous moments you struggle not to be overwhelmed. Bound and blinded, this is more control than you've ever willingly given up before, and it's hard to ignore the whispers of fear that tighten in your chest.

"Breathe."

You exhale. Their voice is a welcome balm, giving your poor understimulated yet overwhelmed senses something to focus on beyond your uncertainty.

"Do you remember your safe word?"

"Avery."

"Good girl."

Aiden chuckles at your ensuing flush, and you huff at them, quietly grateful for the moment of playfulness as their hands move from your cheeks to your shoulders, sweeping down your sides just lightly enough to make you squirm a little, ticklish.

"The drug will take effect soon," Their hands settle on your hips, rubbing soft circles into your hips, "It's normal to feel hot, foggy, even a little dizzy, but let me know if you start feeling sick — the antidote is in my pocket. Understand?"

(1) You bob your head in a nod throughout their explanation — and startle when they pinch your hip, though not hard enough to even really sting.

This time.

"I want you to use your words when I tell you something, alright?"

For all that their voice is as pleasant as it always is, there is no questioning the command clear in their words.

"Yes."

"Yes. . ?"

"Yes Aiden, I understand."

"Keep that up, sweet girl," You hear them shift before their lips press against your jaw, smiling against your skin, "And you'll do just fine."

(1) Aiden, you find, is quite easy with the praise — a fact that's flustered you from the first, but is starting to really get to you right now.

Heat builds beneath your skin, your mind turning their approval around and around in your mind, something hot and tight twisting in your middle that has your thighs squeeing closer together.

Above you, Aiden laughs, the sound distinctly pleased as ther hands ghost featherlight atop your thighs.

"I want you to keep these spread nice and wide, pet, can you do that for me?"

"Yes," You'd been nodding before they'd even finished speaking, only just barely recalling what they'd said about using your words, "Ah, I mean, yes Aiden."

Even blind, you can almost feel the approval radiating off of them as they reward you with a proper kiss, leaving you more than a little short of breath by the time they pull away, lips trailing a blazing path down your throat—

"Ah!"

You jerk beneath them as they suck a bruising mark into your pulse, breath catching on a shuddery little noise as you feel them pull away.

The faint rustle of fabric is the only warning you get before silk is sliding around your neck, hyper-aware of every brush of their fingers against your throat. They tie it off in what feels like a bow, your pulse jumping beneath their touch as they admire their handiwork.

"It suits you — green does go so very well with pink."

(1) That they raise a hand to sweep their thumb across your cheek as they said that has you flushing all the rosier, knowing they weren't just talking about your hair.

Bound and blind, you only become more and more sensitive as they take their time with you, each moment just more time for the aphrodisiac to sink it's claws deeper inside of you.

Soon, even their featherlight touches are enough to have you whimpering, heat pulsing between your legs as you felt a familiar coil tighten in your middle. Their lips brush against your breast, fingers teasing along your thighs, so close yet so far from where you burn for more.

And then, after what feels like an eternity of faint, barely there grazes, their fingers swirl over your clit once, twice—

And then their touch is gone, and with it the climax you'd been so close to falling into.

The sudden denial takes you by surprise, a sharp cry tearing free as you struggle to comprehend what just happened. You strain against your bindings, disoriented and confused, still so caught up on the ever-growing blaze of pure need coursing through you.

"None of that now, darling," Aiden's voice only just pierces through the haze of your thoughts, aided by the feel of their palm running up and down your sides, the leather of their glove a balm to your frenzied senses, "Relax."

(1) And, despite the way the aphrodisiac has pure desire licking up your spine, despite how your denied pleasure only makes your need that much sharper, you obey.

You feel adrift in a veritable sea of sensation as you force your body to settle, trembling with the effort of staying still — and yet the thought of disobeying them does not even cross your mind.

How could it, when they felt like your only anchor, their presence all that kept you from drowning?

(That they were simultaneously responsible for your current predicament was ignored, second fiddle to the comfort and praise they provided.)

“Well done, Aster."

(1) You shudder, a sound perilously close to a whine catching in your throat — a sound that sharpens into a gasp as Aiden begins their teasing anew, beginning a cycle of delicious torment.

Your chest is still heaving, struggling to catch your breath against the sharp ache left behind by the denial, when you suddenly feel the bed shift and hear the soft whisper of Aiden's steps as they stroll away from the bed. It's perhaps a bit of a blessing that you're a little too far gone to panic, too distracted by feverish just to get anxious at being left like this.

(It probably helps that you know Blythe would never leave earshot with you in this state.)

It doesn't take them long at all to return, and you hear them drop a handle of things on the bed beside you as they drag a hand over your body, a line of heat following the path of their gloved palm. It lifts just before the dip between your thighs, and it's only when you slump back against the bed that you realize you'd arched up into their touch.

(1) You'd never been denied before — least of all while drugged — and you can't say you were prepared for the ravenous need that clouds your mind.

Even those thoughts scatter like light through a prism when you feel Aiden's hands beneath your thighs, spreading them a little wider as they settle comfortably between them, enjoying the way your legs quiver under their hands.

"How're we doing, pet? Having fun?" The question is coy, teasing as they ran their hands up your inner thighs, delighting in how you jolt as their thumbs brush against your dripping cunt — how even now you have the capacity to fluster as they spread your lips apart, the heat searing across your face rivalled only by the blaze winding tight in your middle, "You certainly look like you're having fun."

You open your mouth to reply — you're good, you remembered, you want to be good — only for your words to get stuck in your throat, replaced by a choked off mewl as they rub sudden, deliberate circles around your clit.

When they stop, you whine.

(1) You can feel them smirking down at you, even if you can't see it.

"What was that, Aster?" Their voice is sly, and you can feel the tips of their hair tickle against your skin as they lean forward towards you, "Were you saying something?"

And though you know a trap when you see one, what else can you do but fall into it?

"I— It's—"

Again you try, and again you fail.

The moment you start to speak, they resume their teasing — from rubbing soft circles around your clit to teasing fingers against your entrance, all of your attempts at speech crumble away the moment they start touching you. All you can think about is the need burning bright in your core, the way each teasing denial makes you that much more desperate for their touch.

The aphrodisiac has narrowed your world down to want and desire — and with every touch, Aiden narrows it further, down to pure, unrivalled need.

"Are you forgetting something, pet?" They click their tongue at you, tutting, something sly in their voice even as they sigh down at you, "And you were doing so well up until now. . ."

And even knowing they're playing with you does little to lessen the effect of their supposed disappointment, a plaintive noise tumbling free of you.

"And here I was, just about to reward you being such a good girl," They coo as you whimper, sweeping a thumb across your cheekbone - the gesture has no right to be as comforting as it is, considering how happily they'd led you into this little trap, "I suppose you'll just have to wait a little longer, hmm?"

(1) And wait you do.

As they roll you onto your stomach and discover a reaction you'll later wish they hadn't, no matter how the smack of their gloved palm against your ass has you mewling into their sheets, the line between pleasure and pain stretched gossamer thin as you fall deeper and deeper into your lust.

As they sink two fingers inside of you in the aftermath of your 'punishment'; There's something about the burn of pain that makes the pleasure all the sweeter, keening as your hips push back their fingers as they fuck you to the edge.

As they introduce you to something they strongly believe you're missing out on, all too eager to give you a practical demonstration as they tease a vibrator against your cunt and make a game of seeing just how quickly they can bring you to the edge, over and over again.

(1) You lose count of the number of times they bring you to the brink and leave you dangling there, time losing its meaning when all you can think about is the relief always hovering just out of reach, your entire world reduced to pleasure, need, and desperation.

Aiden's hands are cool against your face — damp from sweat and tears as you shake and sob through the effects of being denied once more — as they sweep their thumbs across your cheeks, lips brushing just beneath the edge of the blindfold.

It takes you far too long to realize they've removed their gloves.

"You've done so well, pet. So well. Are you ready for your reward?"

Their praise is warm honey down a sore throat, all that kept the sharp edge of need from becoming truly too much to bear — you don't notice the loosening of your blindfold until they're pulling it away, the dim light of their room all the brighter for how long you'd been blinded.

(1) You peer up at them, eyes wet and glassy, and it's fortunate they mean it this time because right now you're struggling to comprehend more than just their tone, nevermind being able to actually reply like they'd so deviously demanded earlier.

Aiden carasses your cheek and you rub against their palm like a trembling, touch-starved kitten.

"Aren't you a sweet little thing?" They croon, rewarding you with a kiss that has you melting beneath them despite the depths of your lust, mind too hazy to be anything but grateful for their affection, "Some pets get bratty and defiant when they're this needy, but not you, hmm? You're wired a little differently, aren't you?"

They drag their lips up to your ear, and you can feel their lips curve into a smile more sin than sincerity.

"If I told you I didn't want you to cum at all tonight, if keeping you all pent-up and desperate is what would please me the most," Their hands slide down your bust, your whole body jolting at the lightest pinch of their fingers, "You'd obey, wouldn't you, Aster? Even with all this need trapped inside of you, just begging to be released, you'd choose pleasing me over yourself."

And even though the thought has a perilous little cry tumbling past your lips, fresh tears blurring your vision at the thought of being made to stay like this even longer—

(1) You nod, because they're right.

You don't even hesitate.

Aiden groans in your ear before they pull back, eyes bright and cheeks flushed as they stare down at you with an undeniable hunger.

"I can't believe Blythe's been hoarding you all to himself all this time," They coo, rewarding you with another breathless kiss, "What a treat you are."

Their hands skate down your body, fingers dipping between your thighs with a single-minded purpose. Tension thrums through you, a bow strung too tightly and fit to snap as you try to brace yourself for another denial with an anxious whimper—

"You can relax, darling."

Aiden sighs the words down at you, sounding downright smitten — a tone at odds with the way they sink their fingers inside of you with a curl that makes your voice crack on a keen. Their fingers fuck into you at a pace that has you straining against your bonds, anxiety striking through you at how quickly your pleasure climbs. You would never be able to hold your own pleasure at bay, not now, not like this — but it didn't feel like they were about to stop, and the idea that you'd fail them this far in has a sob catching on your throat—

So caught up in your aroused anguish, you almost miss Aiden's words.

Almost.

"—Cum, Aster."

(1) And like that, your entire world fractures into white as you obey. You shake and squirm and scream as white-hot relief courses through you, intense enough to have yet more tears spilling down your face as you're finally, finally granted mercy.

It feels like absolution.

It feels like an eternity's past when last your senses begin to trickle back to you, a faint buzz to your senses that makes you wonder if you'd nearly passed out from the intensity. Aiden is there when you open your eyes again, a soothing smile on their face when you finally manage to open your eyes.

"That feels better, doesn't it?" Even the removal of their fingers has you quivering around them, beyond sensitive in the aftermath of such delayed gratification, "Don't worry, I know just one is hardly enough of a reward, what with how good you were for me."

You struggle to place their meaning, glassy eyes watching as they reach past you — your wrists are freed within moments, before Aiden slides out of bed with mild reluctance.

Which is confusing, considering what they'd said. What—?

Your head turned to watch as Aiden settles into the comfy armchair beside the bed, you aren't at all expecting the new hands — hot and rough and familiar — settling on your hips.

Blythe.

Your eyes meet — and you've seen the look currently on his face exactly once before.

Uh oh.

"Don't fret, love."

Black has swallowed much of the gold in his eyes as the full weight of his gaze settles on you — and it's only when the hot grind of his cock against your cunt has your whole body flinching with an overwhelmed mewl that you realize he's naked.

"I'll help you work the rest of that pesky drug out of your system in no time."

Oh God.

(1) When people had said drugs could kill you, you hadn't expect this would be the way you'd go.

[leejeann]

Pls tell me/us about your Cinderella Boy AU úwù

Oh hi Anon, I am SO GLAD YOU ASKED :D. I was literally working on it when I got this ask, very nice timing, friend

(i will, uh, try not to make this an excessive amount of paragraphs but bare with me, I'm a yapper).

So, tl;dr Cinderella Boy College AU babyyyy. Chase is a first year music theater major (he started a year late), and Buddy is a second year creative writing major.

(I don't actually remember if they're canonically the same age, but they are in this)

(also Deacon is here too, he's just over in med school but him and Chase hang out on weekends)

They meet through an Intro to Literature class that Buddy takes for his major and Chase regrets choosing as an elective credit. Eventually Chase has to accept that he Sucks So Bad at literary analysis and really doesn't want to fail a course in his first semester of college, so he reluctantly asks mr writing major to help him. Buddy agrees, with the trade off being that he's writing an anthology of short stories for a future capstone project and Chase has to read them and give feedback.

(Buddy says it's because he's aiming for a younger audience with some of the stories and if an idiot like Chase can understand them so can a kid. Secretly he just....doesn't have anyone else to ask and kind of just really wants someone else to read them so he saw the opportunity and took it. But you didn't hear that from me!).

They agree to those terms and off we go! Shenanigans and angst and rivals-to-lovers nonsense (my beloved) ensues!

Aaaand because i have little self control when I'm excited about an idea but no one irl who knows what the hell a cinderella boy is to talk about it with: a much longer explanation of the exposition is below the cut!

OKAY SO BASICALLY I had this funny idea the other day of a college AU where like the Intro to Lit class is an in-person/online hybrid, i.e., all the lectures and materials are posted online so people can enrolled in it as either an online or in-person class. Chase takes it in-person while Buddy couldn't fit the timeslot into his schedule and takes it online.

And like any basic college course, it has *drumroll* Online Discussion Posts! Objectively one of the most tedious assignments in any college class, and this class does 2-3 a week. This professor decided to try a Fun New thing this year, where all the posts and replies are anonymous to the students (he can still see them so he knows who did the assignment, obvs). Something, something, he wants to promote discussions between classmates instead of people just only ever replying to their friends or something. Chase wants to keep up his Branding™ and sign off his posts with his little tagline, but after the first post his professor says that "defeats the whole purpose" and "looks unprofessional." Chase signs off with a little star instead, which the professor reluctantly lets him do. (A few other students actually start doing it to with their own little symbols or emojis.)

Two weeks into classes and Chase is being DRIVEN INSANE by these discussion posts. No, no, not by the monotony of them. No, not by his lack of skill with literary analysis. Rather, there's one student in particular who just keeps replying to his discussion posts specifically and ALWAYS seems to have something to disagree with. And they're so pretentious about it. Chase knows it's always the same person because no one else in this mostly-just-an-elective-credit class is using words like "insufferable" and "colloquialism" and "alas" in a discussion post.

Something something, Chase does some sleuthing and figures out it must be one of the online students, which is annoying because he has no way to figure out who they are so he can tell them to lay off and chill the hell out. Until! Midterms roll around and some random new guy is just in the class for the test. Oh, it's just an online student who didn't want to deal with one of those stupid virtual proctor websites, and since he lives on campus anyway he asked if he could just take it in-person. Yeah, that's fair. But then the new guy says something (idk what yet) and the phrasing of it makes it click in Chase's head that Oh my god that HAS to be Buddy holy shit

(sidenote, in this story the name "Buddy" comes from Chase ranting to Deacon about the random anon student and sarcastically calling them Buddy as a joke. But then that nickname just sticks because when you're pissed off and ranting "Buddy" is so much faster to say that "that anonymous asshole from my intro to lit class" ya know? So like, save for Chase saying it in an angry reply to the anon student once or twice, he hasn't directly called Buddy, Buddy before until like he confronts him after midterms).

I haven't quite figured out the interim of how they go from "Oh my god that's the annoying anonymous dude" and Buddy not even realizing Chase is the Star-kid (.....ha) in those discussion posts–

((sidenote 2, electric boogaloo, the reason Buddy is so snarky on the discussion posts is because, naturally, he thinks literature is Very Important and that it's annoying how obvious it is that most of this class is just taking it as an elective so they aren't putting in any real effort to learning anything. The discussion posts are all literary analysis on short passages and his classmates do, like, the bare minimum for it. He doesn't just respond to Chase's posts in a snarky tone, but most of the students fully ignore his responses and do not improve and he decides they're a lost cause. Chase is also a lost cause, but sometimes Chase argues back and okay fine Buddy has to admit that's kind of entertaining. So Buddy always makes sure to respond to the one with the stupid little star at the bottom. As a treat))

–and to them being like, civil enough that Chase finally caves and asks Buddy to tutor him, but eventually they get there. And that's how we get to the rest of that tl;dr! Chase asks for help in class, Buddy agrees as long as Chase helps him with his creative writing projects, they start meeting up to work on classwork regularly and once a week or so Buddy brings a print-out of another short story for Chase to take with him after. And Chase does his best to return it with some amount of helpful annotations.

(I totally forgot until after I came up with that idea, but I actually kind of did that once in college. Except I wasn't a creative writing major, one of my good friends was. I was entering a short story in a competition once so I gave him a printed copy of it and he gave it back a few days later covered in annotations lol)

And I DO plan to include Buddy's short stories as their own things! I have a few ideas for them already, basically I'm going to write a few original short stories that I can insert as their own little in-between chapters whenever Buddy gives Chase a new one to read. They'd probably be posted at the same time as either the chapter before or chapter after it, depending on which chapter would make more sense to pair it with narratively.

I think the first will be some parody of Cinderella, because duh. But like less of a "Cinderella, but in a new setting" thing and more like from the pov of a totally different character, where the actual Cinderella plot is lowkey almost just in the background. Idk it seems fun and like something Creative-Writing-Major-Buddy would write. Or maybe I'm projecting because I just think it sounds fun to write. Or maybe both!

One specifically that's a minorly pivotal moment for them is actually just a short-story-ified version of a poem I wrote years ago, and the moment in the story is basically just Buddy felt it was an optimistic story, whereas Chase felt like it was really sad, and both are incredibly thrown off by the dissonance that realization creates.

Which is also kind of from personal experience actually! Small tangent, but that happened with the poem back when I first wrote it too. To me, it was a melancholy but overall optimistic poem about life. I shared it with some people and seemingly all of them thought it felt sad and almost hopeless. I was SO thrown off! Because I really felt like it was hopeful, not hopeless, but it felt like I was the only person who saw it like that. As silly as it sounds, that (plus a couple other personal reasons) made me struggle with writing anything for a long time because I was a little afraid of feeling so isolated by my own work again.

(In hindsight, I can see how it came across like that to them. It still remains one of my favorites that I've written though. I actually completely rewrote it to enter in a contest just a few months ago! The newer version is much better, and I think actually gets across the intended mood a lot more)

*ahem* So, uh, anyway! I amp all that up a bit in the story for the sake of ~drama~ of course, but that's where the general idea for that scene comes from. I've already written the scene actually! I just don't know how far into the story it'll happen yet.

I'm also still on the fence about how to include the keyple we know about in canon. I can't decide if I want to just make them like other students and/or friends who appear in the story, or if I just want to like really allude to them. Leave references in the stories Buddy writes or classwork they do or stuff like that, etc.

And I'm also-also on the fence about if I should give Buddy a fake name for sake of the plot. If I do, I'm definitely going to swap it for his real name once that's properly revealed. On one hand, being in a college setting it would make a lot more sense for Chase to find out his actual name early on, even if he still calls him Buddy to be annoying. But on the other hand, Buddy totally would refuse to tell Chase his name, also to be annoying, if doing that annoys Chase more than the nickname annoys him. But on a secret, third hand, it feels so weird to give Buddy a fake name lol. Like even if I wasn't a fast-passer I think it'd still feel weird.

Then again, depending on how slow I end up writing this, the free episodes might catch up to fast pass before I even need to worry about that and I can just use his actual name from the get-go.

Phew! That sure was fun to talk about! *scrolls back through this post* oh yikes, uh, well you asked for it anon! If you actually read this far down, thank you, bless, I warned you that I yap but I appreciate your fortitude very much lol

I have no idea when I'll start posting the fic bc I worry about like getting through a couple chapters, posting them immediately, then losing steam and just....dropping it or taking forever to update after. So I want to get at least a few chapters written before I start posting any, ya know? But I've been wanting to get back into creative writing for a LONG time so I'm really going to try to stick with it! Just, bare with me if it takes a while lol