Ok this is completely out of left field but hear me out. A royal!au with Diluc where he's a little known lord in the capital, and you're a bachelor/ette being taken to every ball of the season and getting paraded around to secure a good match. Diluc is incredibly rich and known in his lands for his kindness, revered by his soldiers, but he never really cared for the theatrics of high society nearer the capital. He was too young before his dad died, and he ran off during what should have been his debutant year, so nobody really knows of him besides trading partners. He always supplies the nobles with fine wine and meat from his herds but declines every invitation to actually come and attend an event in the big cities.
Until one time his wait staff and close trading partners manage to convince him, and he agrees to go to just one ball because he's in the area for business and the networking is always useful. He's not up to date with the current trends but gets a suit tailored for him ahead of time. He hasn't read any of the famous writers of the moment but he's still a learned man who can talk philosophy with all the men twice his age, who are charmed and all too eager to throw their kids at him, hoping for a chance to bring their families together.
You're one of the debutants and have had to sit through a dozen introductions while your parents try to secure a good match. You're not rich or important enough to have your pick of husband, but you're not poor enough to be completely irrelevant. Of all the bachelors running around and trying to charm you with their knowledge of the latest plays and wars, only one catches your eye. It's hard to not notice him, honestly. Diluc is tall and broad but doesn't hold himself like a man of war, fiery hair tied back from a handsome, brooding face while he stands on the sidelines and talks to some older nobleman. You've never seen him before, and none of your friends seem to know him either. He's the lord of a smallish county near the border, and you recognise the name from their generous sponsorships and rich wines.
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(continued from this and this)
“Yeah, I just told her to give them the cold shoulder. Don’t have to be mean or anything, just ignore ‘em a little. Play it cool. Drives girls crazy, ‘cause then they have to work to get your attention.”
Eddie stares at him.
“Holy shit, Buckley’s gonna die alone and it’s gonna be a hundred percent your fault. That is the worst fucking advice I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Steve actually looks offended, like his honor’s been impugned. “What the hell, man? I’ve picked up like a million girls that way. I’m telling you, it works.”
“Yeah, okay, now I’m seeing why my sage advice is required for this whole endeavor. That kind of thing might fly if you’re some alpha dog prom king, but lesbians are like…giant pandas or some shit, okay? The conditions have to be precisely calibrated or they’ll just hibernate in a cave by themselves eating bamboo forever.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” says Steve.
Eddie shrugs. “Whatever, I’m not a panda scientist. The point is…okay, let’s do a thought experiment.” Oh, this is a bad, bad idea. The Munson specialty. “Say you wanted to get a guy interested in you. How would you do it?”
“I’d just—” Steve stops, frowning. “I mean, girls usually just…laugh at guys’ jokes and stuff. Or wear, like, makeup?”
“How are you so awful at this,” says Eddie. “Jesus. I swear to god I remember you doing better with girls at school. Anyway, I didn’t ask what girls do, I asked what you’d do.”
“Shit, I don’t know. Isn’t that why I’m here?” Steve’s getting a little huffy, fidgeting. “I’d just…find a way to hang out with the guy, I guess. Laugh at his dumb jokes.”
“Yeah, sure,” Eddie says patiently. “But that’s what you do with friends too, right? And when you’re walking a perilous path far from the bright streets of heterosexuality, you probably don’t want to risk being too obvious, in case you’re wrong. So you gotta just…give them an opening to let them, like, signal if they’re interested. If they’re looking for a sign, they’ll take it.”
Steve wrinkles his nose. “Ok, but what if they’re not interested yet? Like…sometimes girls take a while to warm up to you.”
“Cut your losses and move on.” Admittedly, Eddie’s still working on that part.
“What? Man, I’m starting to think you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Eddie scowls at the skeptical look on Steve’s face. “Jesus, the disrespect. Why am I not telling this directly to Buckley, anyway? She’s the one in need of these hard-earned pearls of gay wisdom.”
Steve lets out a big, gusty sigh and tips his head back against the couch. “Because she said if I tried to give her any more help with dating, she’d smother me in my sleep and pin it on Dustin.”
“Attagirl,” says Eddie approvingly.
“But obviously she still needs help, so this is like—a stealth mission. For love.”
“For love,” says Eddie. “Yeah, okay.”
———
“Hey, can you—”
Robin whirls around at the unexpected voice and promptly trips over nothing at all, arms flailing out to avoid crashing into the library returns cart.
“Oh, shit,” says the stranger, reaching out a hand like she’s going to catch Robin’s elbow, but pulling back at the last second. “Um. Sorry.”
Robin blinks down at a girl in head-to-toe black, including dusty black combat boots. “Aren’t you hot,” she says, then wants to die. “I mean—like, just, with the heat and all, it’s a billion degrees out, I think if I tried to wear that much black I’d instantly dissolve like the Wicked Witch of the West.”
The girl stares back at her for a second, then bursts out laughing. It’s a nice laugh.
“As if. I’m from Utah, this is nothing.”
“Oh! Utah! You’re not—are you, uh, Argyle’s girlfriend?” The way Argyle’d described her, Robin had been picturing some kind of Elvira-themed ingenue in lace, maybe smoking like a 1920s flapper. This makes more sense for a real-life teenager, though: oversized t-shirt tucked into ratty black jeans, with some cheap-looking silver jewelry tied around her neck. Her eyeliner’s heavier than anything Robin’s ever seen in Hawkins, smudging messily a little in the heat that’s apparently nothing to her. It makes her look a little bit like a panda bear, but not in a bad way.
“Not anymore.” She grimaces. “Ugh, that sounds mean. We’re, y’know, still friends and everything. I’m Eden.”
“Robin,” says Robin, gesturing at herself like a loser. “Hi.”
“Hi,” says Eden, and smiles at her.
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God every day I think about Akane’s breakdown in door 3 because there really is no correct way to interpret that and every possibility makes me crazy. Like she sees this fucked up corpse whom Junpei (and the player, depending on how they play) believes is their friend Snake, but she knows that it’s Guy X. It’s a man she very intentionally put in the game for this very purpose, so that he could die horrifically and be displayed for everyone to see. And she has a full mental breakdown over being trapped in this room with the corpse, being trapped by Junpei, to the point where she rips out her hair and starts bleeding from how much she bangs on the door screaming to get out. And fuck, there’s so many possibilities like
Akane could be feeling genuine terror over the sight of the body, and with that remorse. She made this happen, she wanted this to happen, and now she’s forced to quite literally watch the damage she’s caused unfold. She can detach herself from his murder easily in other timelines where she doesn’t have to look at it, and she can sleep easy knowing that her hands are technically clean because she didn’t do the literal killing. But she can’t do that here, and she has to face the fact that not only did she happily cause this death, she failed her mission. She isn’t going to survive, and now this man is dead for nothing and everything is her fault
On the other hand, her entire breakdown could be completely fabricated in order to keep playing the role of the damsel in distress who is so innocent that the very sight of blood drives her to insanity. The interesting part about this is that if she could fake such a horrific breakdown, just how much of her personality a facade? We know she wants revenge, for everyone from Cradle to feel even an ounce of the pain she and so many others went through, but we don’t get to see the extent of how much she feels this way. We never hear directly from Akane about her feelings on any of the original organizers, just her note about her desire to punish them. She hates them, but does she see their deaths as a necessary evil, or does she feel joy and satisfaction at watching them go? It’s absolutely horrifying not knowing, not being able to see her true feelings, not knowing just how real or fake she is, the extent of her madness. Perhaps she doesn’t even know that herself
IN OTHER WORDS, it’s fucked
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