One day, when Steve and Eddie are still in the early stages of dating, both a little overwhelmed but sure of each other and excited to see where it’s going, Steve brings Eddie flowers when he comes to the trailer park for a date night. It’s the first-month anniversary of their first kiss, and he doesn’t say as much, because he’s pretty sure Eddie doesn’t care about those dates like he does - and it’s not like a one-month anniversary is some kind of great accomplishment anyway - but he wants to do something special and he decides flowers will make anyone happy, if only for the gesture. He gets a bouquet with bold, dark shades; purple and dark red and some greenery with sharp edges and thorns, to give it a little bit of Eddie: sweet, but still badass.
When Steve gets to the trailer, Eddie opens the door with a wide smile on his face - but it instantly disappears and gets replaced with a kind of shocked surprise when he sees what Steve is holding in his hands.
‘Got you flowers,’ Steve says, stating the obvious and leaning in to kiss Eddie’s lips. But Eddie is still frozen in the doorway - his mouth doesn’t even move when Steve presses his lips against Eddie’s.
Steve pulls back and squints at Eddie, trying to figure out what’s going on with him. ‘You alright there?’ he asks.
‘You got me flowers,’ is the only thing Eddie says; his voice is trembling and his eyes are still wide, fixed on the bouquet in Steve’s hands.
‘Should I... not have?’ Steve asks. His palms are getting sweaty against the stems of the flowers, but it doesn’t look like Eddie is gonna be moving to take them from him anytime soon. Panic starts to crawl its way up in his stomach as he wonders if he’s made some kind of huge mistake.
‘I um... I’m sorry. This was stupid, wasn’t it? Is it weird? You know I’m only used to dating girls and they always used to love it when I -’
‘What the hell are we even doing?’ Eddie suddenly interrupts him in a shrill voice with a panicked edge to it.
‘What - what do you mean?’ Steve asks, still unable to make sense of what’s happening.
‘I’m not the kind of person you can bring flowers to! I’m - I live in a goddamn trailer, for fuck’s sake! I’m not like any of those girls you used to date, Steve, and if you -’ He glances around him frantically, then fixes his eyes back on Steve’s face, a scared look in them. ‘We don’t even own a fucking vase, Steve, we never - I never - Jesus, they’re really pretty but I’m not - they’re too beautiful for this fucking trailer, you shouldn’t -’
‘Hey, woah, take it easy, alright?’ Steve finally understands what’s going on, and it’s breaking his heart that Eddie believes he isn’t even worth a bunch of flowers. He gently drops the bouquet on the ground, freeing his hands to be able to place them on Eddie’s shoulders in an attempt to ground him.
‘Take a deep breath for me, okay?’
Eddie obeys, taking a shuddering breath while blinking tears away from his eyes.
‘I know you’re nothing like those girls,’ Steve says, softly. ‘And I don’t care. If anything, it’s why I like you so much more. That’s why I think you deserve flowers, even if you don’t have a vase. Trailers deserve flowers, too, you know.’
Steve can see the tension disappear from Eddie’s body as Eddie lets out a heavy sigh. Then, his boyfriend suddenly launches himself into Steve’s arms, colliding into him with a force that almost has Steve tumbling down the steps leading up to the trailer’s front door.
‘You’re too fucking good to be true, Stevie,’ he murmurs into his ear.
Steve can’t help but chuckle at that, holding Eddie as tight as he can. ‘What, ‘cause I brought you some flowers?’
He can feel in the crook of his neck how Eddie is nodding.
‘How about I get you a vase next time, so I can keep bringing you flowers?’
‘I love you.’
Steve freezes. A second later, Eddie lifts his head to look at him. His eyes are wide and shocked, probably mirroring the look in Steve’s own eyes.
‘Shit, sorry, that just - um - that just slipped out,’ Eddie stammers. ‘That was - that was probably way too early, wasn’t it? I wasn’t - I didn’t mean -’
‘I love you, too,’ Steve interrupts him.
And the enormous grin that breaks through on Eddie’s face makes Steve decide instantly that he’s gonna get Eddie some sunflowers on the one-month anniversary of their first “I love you.”
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"Sans?"
"what's up?"
"I was only wondering, have you ever considered candle making as a profession?"
"uh, not really. why?"
"It is the perfect job for lazy people. After all, you only have to work on wick-ends!"
"oh man. i hadn't thought of that. sounds like they've got pretty wax hours."
"Yes, they do not want people to burn out."
"that's a smart move. i mean, it's repetitive work. you can be passionate about it but truly, how long candle love last?"
"You should never underestimate scent-imentality, my friend."
"Oh my GOD, get a room you two!!!"
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Maybe I'll make a post on this at some point but like, something deeply fucked up about TNP and Po3 that people have totally forgotten about is how badly they try to whine that "Tigerstar Had Good Traits :("
Firestar does it, Brambleclaw does it, and they keep doing this after it becomes this GRAND irony that Firestar almost gets Tiger'd to death in a fox trap because he was too trusting. Bramble gets his pity award of keeping deputyship and then cries to his son about how No One Saw The Good In Tigerstar :(
And it's wiiiiild that no one else in this fandom has done anything with the fact that Leopardstar broke the Warrior Code to appoint Hawkfrost, who had no apprentice, an extremely aggressive and warmongering Tigerclone who says things like "Tigerstar wasn't the worst cat to look up to." ONLY qualifying trait was being kinda like Tigerstar.
And she practically did that the SECOND Mistyfoot went missing. And then Leopardstar continued to be one of the most violent and xenophobic leaders through Po3, joining with WindClan to attack ThunderClan.
What I'm getting at is that like, a few years ago, with books like "Blackfoot's Reckoning" and "Shadow in RiverClan" it's like they suddenly decided to retcon in a bunch of "redemption arcs" in hindsight. They just pretended like there was this grand high reckoning with TigerClan, when there literally wasn't, and if anything that caused SERIOUS problems for the cast that the authors didn't fully acknowledge as such.
And now ppl haven't actually read the main series and are just working with their recent memory of all these retcon books.
But TNP and PO3 are still there, and you can go and see the ACTUAL timeline where Leopardstar is really not apologetic at all, and Blackstar is a useful stooge for the very next wannabe dictator that strolls in, in spite of the new side content that COMPLETELY mischaracterized them for their plots to work.
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my very serious writing advice for people who are trying to write more morally complex characters is to stop caring about their morality and focus instead on their individual motivations
it’s hard to articulate exactly what I mean, but the essence of it is basically: when a character does a murder, not only do I not care about whether they’re justified in doing so, it’s straight-up irrelevant. a character’s moral standing from some nebulous universal standard has no bearing on the plot or their interactions with other characters and has no use in the story for me as a writer. what does matter is why the character thought they were justified and then if it comes up to other characters, what they think about it.
you can obviously think about your characters’ morality but it’s not your job as a writer to interpret your stories for your readers and tell them how to judge your characters. your readers can see the evidence for themselves and draw their own conclusions. your job is just to understand why a character is motivated to act in a certain way and have it make sense
focusing on character motivations is a much more versatile framework than trying to give them specific personality traits or moral alignments, and frankly more useful to understand why a character would do a certain thing instead of just what they do. that way when something fucked up happens and your character starts acting differently, there’s an actual logical reason for it that isn’t you forcing characters to do things because it’s what’s required to make the plot go
when you write your characters with the understanding that people are not static and they act differently under different circumstances, complexity in character and morality follows naturally.
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