Steve's kindness is, like all self-taught one, a mirage of borrowed expressions, a collage of habits picked from people he loved, a bit stilled but eager and well-meaning, sometimes a bit chopped at the sides, a growing want to let the good feelings out in front of the right people.
Eddie liked to sometimes watch him and find all the signs of other people in him, try to match them up to right people.
He would watch and think - this is Nancy's stubbornness to never give up on people and Dustin's loyalty, he would see him trying to give advice to Dustin and see Johnathan's akward pep-talks to Will. The way he would always try to have snacks for the kids screamed both Joyce's and Mrs. Henderson motherly kindness. His willingness to sit in silence, a steady presence, when somebody needed it shined with Will's warmth. How he fights for the people he cares about, letting his meaness be a defense for them all, a barier and a shield similar to Max's snark.
And whenever he found himself to be the matching person? It made him feel loved, so fucking loved and seen that he would choke on it.
Eddie sometimes would make a game out of it, to found the matching puzzle whenever Steve's kindness shone (and it was a lot of the time). It was always someone from the party and he would always find himself with a strange fond warmth whenever he realized who it was. And usually he was good at it, it wasn't really hard when he loved and knew all those people too
There were exceptions though. The first one was Robin and it wasn't for the lack of Eddie's knowledge and love for her and moreso because of the whole RobinandSteve being always so SteveandRobin, never really separate. Whatever was Steve's was also Robin's, their clothes, habits or sometimes even their smiles shone in the same way. They were mismatched in a funny melted together sort of way, his kindness was her and hers was his and it was hard to difference between the two when even they didn't know where one ended and the other began, they traded traits like they traded clothes, wore them bright pink socks with yellow soft sweater, a joke to cheer you up with a soft you can tell me anything in the same breath.
He didn't really knew whose kindness it was the innate one that must have been deep within Steve before he let it shine or Robin's. He didn't think it would really matter anyway, they would trade it between themselves like shiny cards anyway.
The other one was a smile. An unique one, one that Eddie swore he saw somewhere before and that lacked the freckles and a missing teeth except noone in the party had these two traits, at least not as Eddie knew them and he could never find that one puzzle. It was boyish and full of mischief, usually with a starry reflection in Steve's eyes.
The last one was a lift in his tone, the way he would make his voice honey-like sweet when he tells Robin her new haircut suits her or El's new shirt brought out her eyes. The intonation always made Eddie think of bubble gum and sugared summers.
He couldn't place the last two to nobody. At least not until Steve told him about Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins.
Obviously Eddie knew about them, but Stevie didn't talk about how they are. But how they used to be.
"Sweet." he said while passing the joint they shared laying on Eddie's bed, pressed from shoulders to their ankles. "Carol used to be sweet, warm with the naive love only kids hold" Steve's eyes were looking out the window of Eddie's room, as if he could see the young version of them just outside playing childlish games. "and Tommy used to be wild. But not like bad wild, more like he was always chasing trouble, adventure. Like kids do."
And Eddie couldn't see it, not with how the world twisted them into different people, cruel. More cold, all sharp teeth and autumn's rain.
Except he could, he could in Steve's special smile and the sound of his voice, he could see it and he could see the love that Steve Harrington had for them.
"They're douchebags now," he said when Eddie voiced it out loud "but I did loved them once, sometimes I feel like I've never stopped, they just... Grew out of my love, grew into something I couldn't."
It should be strange, to love something someone isn't anymore, but to Eddie it just spoke of the way Steve Harrington threw himself into love, how he never really stopped loving and caring. It was admirable, it was so lovable and it was so Steve-like. Earnest in the sweetest way.
It made sense that Steve Harrington would love people even through his expression of it.
345 notes
·
View notes
I haven’t been here long. What irritating changes have been made?
Credit where it's due, some changes have been good, like polls and stuff! But the big recent changes thus far that I would classify as irritating are:
- The UI change. This one may be less irritating for newcomers because it's basically the same layout as twitter and instagram, but for a lot of folks who've been here a long time, it feels cramped and like a loss of identity for the site. For many, the appeal of tumblr is that it ISN'T an algorithm hell like twitter or insta. Also, there's the annoyance of having to relearn where everything is, because it all got moved around.
- The users being lab rats for various tests the devs wanna pull out of nowhere without consenting to beta testing new site features- like the one that took away user icons on the dash for like half the site. They finally put them back after getting enough feedback that said NO, but users were so used to their feedback being disregarded that they were half expecting the change to be pushed through anyway.
- The Netflix tie-in advertising being pushed even to people who had PAID tumblr for a no-ads experience. Complete with them somehow thinking it would be a good idea to put an unescapable-by-scrolling spooky clown on peoples' dashboards that u had to use ublock to get rid of. While I'm not scared of clowns and often find them quite charming, it sucks that staff didn't take coulrophobia being a common fear into account.
- A wave of fully sfw trans posts being wrongfully marked Mature and staff doing little to nothing about it. Not sure if this is still ongoing, but it destroyed a lot of trust and good will. (LGBT+ users have been having to fight a constant war against censorship ever since the adult content ban on tumblr, so yeah... Nevar 4get the list of banned search words that would bring back no results, like 'girl')
- The site gradually moving away from customization. Tumblr is a BLOGGING site. But it seems to have lost sight of that fact, because most new users don't even know you can fully customize your blogs with css and stuff (an option that is now off by default for new accounts!), because of the in-dash viewer giving you only how blogs look on mobile, which is a lot more uniform. There, it's more like every other site- you get a banner and icon. Oh, but you can change colors and fonts from a drop-down list too, that's cool I guess. Though they recently took away custom color schemes on Message windows, just another little bit of personalization taken away.
- TUMBLR. LIVE. Basically tumblr teamed up with a skeevy dating app partner to allow for livestreams- but not the cool kinda livestreams like on twitch where you can draw or play games, no- to a site full of people who value anonymity, they decided to push phone cam only livestreams. Not only that but by agreeing to the terms, you're giving out tons of personal data including your location to said skeevy dating app partner and all of THEIR third-party ad partners. Needless to say, most people didn't wanna use it, so instead of users it's flooded by p*rn bots (which is ANOTHER issue we've been dealing with for a long time and have been getting an even bigger influx of FROM tumblr live) and scammers. And thus, since tumblr likes to put a carousel of current streams on people's dashes, you often get softcore p*rn thumbnails from the bot streams with no way to avoid it except for toggling off tumblr live entirely.
- Oh wait. That's right. You CAN'T toggle it off. Because you can only snooze it for a while until BAM, you're jumpscared by a carousel of ladies licking your screen again! But hey, at least they made the snooze 30 days instead of the 7 it used to be, right? Yeah, except for the fact that you can't get rid of the tumblr live button itself on the app anymore, and now it's front and center with a NEW notification tag on it, overlapping your dash and cramming useful stuff like the search button out of the way.
NOW- A lot of this stuff CAN be at least mostly fixed on desktop by installing ublock and xkit and tampermonkey + dashboard unfucker... But that's a lot of stuff just to make the site usable, you know?
93 notes
·
View notes
Day 8: Mountain/Chains
Prompt List
Pt. 6 of The Empire of Samadhi AU
Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6 (you are here) | Pt. 7 (coming sometime...)
(This is day 8 of the Monkie Destiny Challenge Prompt Month October 2023)
Wordcount: 2k
Summary: Red Son is the son of an old empire, Mei is the daughter of a new one. Red Son, consumed by fire, was put into an induced stasis sleep to stop the world from burning until his family can find a way to safely remove the fire. They find a way but he never wakes up. Hundreds of years later he awakes to discover his power resides within another as she stares at him with wide eyes on fire.
Split.
They reached the mountain at daybreak.
It wasn’t massive but it still counted as a mountain, albeit a small one. There were seals and spells lining the caverns on the inside of it, if nothing much had changed since Red Son had last visited the place. It was a little out of their way and put them a good half a day behind schedule to reach, but the mortals were insistent. Much to Red Son’s frustration.
Why they were taking this detour was simple.
Liú.
That little puppet Mk had tucked into his sash comfortably that morning, with his little puppet arms and face free of the fabric. He’d spent a needlessly long amount of time making sure he was comfortable, not being crushed. No matter how many times Red Son told him he likely couldn’t feel it, Mk wasn’t taking any chances.
“Just in case,” he had said that morning. “He might be conscious. It would be boring to look at the inside of a pocket all day.”
No matter how much Red Son scoffed at it, Mei chimed in that she thought it was a good idea so that was the end of it, and he could do nothing to convince him otherwise.
They were idiotic fools.
They were weird.
They chatted with the puppet all the way too, and on the way up the mountain, in-between complaints of sore feet and burning muscles from their upward decent. Red Son had to listen to their aggravating recap and their ‘Sifu Samadhi, he might look scary but he’s a softy,’ all the way up the mountain.
Red Son was not a softy.
He was going to kill them both the moment he had the fire just to prove that.
“He can’t hear you,” Red Son tried to tell them for the thousandth time.
“Maybe he can,” Mei said, sticking out her tongue like she did every time she replied.
Truly they were idiotic.
He had no doubt if Liú really was conscious as a little puppet, he would have rather been shoved into a pocket than listen to their whining. At least then the sounds would be muffled.
“Are we there yet?” Mei groaned. “We've been walking for ages.”
“Two hours,” Red Son said through gritted teeth, “is not ages.”
“It's dark out,” Mk complained, “I want to sleep.”
Red Son took a moment to breathe. If he pushed either of them off the mountain now he might never get his fire. “This little detour is costing us precious time. The sooner we reach the top the better. Unless you’d rather take a nap and watch the world burn from this vantage point?”
That at least shut them up for a while. Then there was nothing but annoyed noises and huffing and puffing.
Honestly they held up better than expected. Despite their complaining they were keeping up with Red Son’s, what would be considered, brutal pace for mortals.
They reached the top before sunrise.
Luckily the big open surface carved out remained which meant they wouldn’t need to clear anything. The last time Red Son had been here, there had been monuments and structures and even green life everywhere. He didn’t acknowledge the blackened empty state of it.
Red Son drew the circle in the ash and dirt himself, since he didn’t trust either of them to know what they were doing. It didn’t take very long, but it was long enough for Mei to complain again. Red Son ignored her. He scratched the letters into the dirt then snatched some of his fire from the rings and lit the spell. The fire filled the grooves quickly until every bit of lettering was illuminated.
“Now,” he said, dusting his hands off and turning to Mei. “First things first. This is going to cause quite a commotion in the middle of nowhere. Without any life disguising my power, we might as well be sending an invitation to that thing to come find us. So.” He stepped over to one of the edges of the flat space, purposefully not too far away from the circle, but not close enough to mess with the spell. “This is our escape route. If he comes, stand here, and it will take us out of here in a more permanent teleportation than I can currently provide.”
“Cool,” Mei said. “Where does it go?”
“Let me worry about that,” Red Son said, crossing his arms. “Now the spell. Not that I care but keep in mind that if you lose control at any point during the ritual, he will undoubtedly die.”
“What?” said Mk, shielding the puppet with his hand.
“No pressure or anything,” Mei muttered. She frowned at the spell.
“Hurry up, we don’t have all day,” Red Son snapped.
“You can do this, Mei,” Mk said. “I know you can.”
That made her crack a smile. They were both so strange. “Thanks Mk.” She seemed to brighten just a little bit. “Alright, let's do this.” She got into position and planted her feet.
Mk hurried forward and placed the puppet in the middle of the circle, gently brushing ash from the spot so there was a clear spot to place it down. He then scurried out of the ring, cursing as the hem of his hanfu caught fire. He stamped it out, giving a big bright smile when Red Son glared at him.
Mei took a breath, closing her eyes. She placed the palms of her hands together in a meditative movement, then her eyes snapped open and she stared with intense focus at the puppet on the ground. “Ready.”
Red Son nodded. He lifted his hand, breathed and released the puppet from the seal.
It was an awful twisting, crumpling moment, then there the puppet stood at its full size. Its one eye blinked.
“Now!” Red Son yelled.
Fire exploded over them.
Red Son thought just in time to yank Mk behind him to shield him from it. Red Son planted his feet, nearly slipping from the force of it.
“A bit of overkill,” he said through gritted teeth as he held the fire at bay. She likely didn’t hear him mutter it over the roar of the flames. That had been his intention. He wasn’t stupid enough to interrupt her focus on purpose.
The puppet cowered, shielding its face, but its feet remained glued to the ground, trapped by the spell. The flames washed over it. It wailed.
“Ignore it!” Red Son yelled to Mei before she could hesitate or ask. “Continue the ritual!”
The fire burned through layers of the curse.
“It's working!” Mk spoke like he could see it which was absurd.
Chains flickered into view. They connected to the puppets wrists and ankles, long and icy and blue. Deep churning gray ones wrapped around the rest of him as though they were holding him together. Those chains were much thinner and weaker than the blue, but both could be handled just fine. One part possession, one part curse. The seals on the chains lit up with light, exposed by the fire.
The fire flickered green. Red Son grit his teeth and said nothing.
“You almost got him! Keep going!” Mk yelled.
“I… am…” Mei grunted, straining and pushing the fire at the puppet, trying to keep it aimed at him. Some of it lashed out to the side, dangerously close to Mk.
“Focus, Dragon Girl,” Red Son barked.
“Both of you zip it!” Mei snapped back. “Stop yelling at me-”
One of the chains cracked.
“Keep going, you're doing it!” Mk cheered.
“I asked for quiet please!”
The puppets' eyes flickered from empty to wide and pained and human. The puppet-like designs on its skin seemed to start to burn off. Its screaming was muffled by the fire.
“This is really hard!” Mei yelled.
“Of course it is!” Red Son yelled back. “Keep going!”
A chain snapped.
“You’re doing it, Mei! You’re doing it!”
“Yeah!” Mei cheered. Her power surged and pressed firmer against the curse.
Red Son hadn’t sensed anything, perhaps due to the massive surge of power in front of him. But quite unexpectedly he exhaled and his breath was visible, even with the flames in front of him.
He snapped his head up to look at the sky to find frosty clouds looming above them and closing in. The air behind where the fire was not was growing cold.
Red Son hadn’t felt him coming.
They needed to leave. Now.
“Dragon girl! Stop the fire! We need to go-!”
He landed a short distance away at the edge of the space and the mountain shook with the impact.
Red Son stumbled, on his feet, some of the fire escaping past him and over to Mk.
The fire vanished.
“Mk, grab Liú,” Mei barked. If Red Son wasn’t distracted he might have been proud of her authoritative voice, clearly reminiscent of his own.
Mk jumped into action and ran forward, jumping over rocks. He scooped the puppet off the ground, and bolted back to Red Son.
The figure that filled Red Son with such dread started forward.
The fire blasted into existence again, all of it focused on the possessed creature.
“Leave it! We need to go!” Red Son yelled. He and Mk were already standing in the escape route, they just needed Mei.
Chains flickered.
Red Son realized that his uncle was walking into the circle they’d made for the puppet.
Chains, white freezing chains, thin and thick, wrapping around every limb, tight around every movement. There looked to be hundreds of them, some of them thicker than some tree trunks Red Son had seen, and only getting bigger, as they stretched out of sight. They wrapped around his wrists, his arms, his ankles, his legs, his tail, his throat, his torso, his head.
Every single chain link from big to small had a seal on it.
The horror that Red Son felt choked him for a moment.
“Wait!” Mei yelled. “Do you see that? Maybe I can-”
“YOU CAN’T!” Red Son roared. “LEAVE IT, MEI.”
He could see her hesitate. It was a split second of her really truly considering… Then she growled. With a frustrated yell, she hurled as much fire as she could at their pursuer before she abandoned the circle and sprinted towards where Red Son and Mk stood.
“Hurry!” Mk held out his arm to her. “He’s right behind you!”
Mei didn’t glance back, she just launched herself forward, leaping at them.
Red Son slammed his hand onto the ground on top of the spell to activate it seeing her trajectory. He didn’t pray that he’d timed it right, he knew he had.
That was the moment that everything went wrong.
Mei was jerked backward, the Possessed catching the back of her hanfu.
Mk lunged out of the circle and tackled him.
Mei was catapulted forward and bowled into Red Son, knocking him off his feet and partially out of the spell.
The possessed moved forward, Mei lunged for Mk, the spell activated just as she touched him and the mountaintop exploded.
The impact of Red Son hitting the ground face-first nearly knocked him out. It left him dizzy and disoriented for a moment.
He pushed himself up and staggered to his feet.
He looked for Mei first, expecting her to be a short distance away, buried by rubble or fighting his uncle, but very suddenly realized several things:
He wasn’t atop the mountain any longer. He was beside a running river, surrounded by trees. It was damp, not as dry, there was no ash or flame to be found.
He couldn’t feel the warmth of his fire at all, which meant it was no longer in close proximity with him.
His uncle, Mei and Mk were nowhere to be found.
His fire was gone.
Red Son punched a tree, splitting a fist-shaped hole into the wood.
Then he wordlessly screamed at the sky for more than a few reasons but mainly because that had really hurt.
Imbeciles.
| beginning | next (coming...sometime...) |
29 notes
·
View notes