#had to make the gay tw warning post for this one

[mc-i-r]

Disposable Heroes

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four Ao3

A/N: Guys, I’m so sorry for the late update! Life has been crazy for me the past couple weeks but I hope that I can get back to writing more regularly. This chapter is the well-awaited Eddie pov, as well as a ton of backstory for him that I didn’t really plan on but it just kinda came out. This chapter is kinda rushed, I’m gonna be honest, but I wanted to get it out to you guys as soon as possible since its been awhile. There are gonna be some major warnings here so I’ll post them below. Take care of yourselves and stay safe, now enjoy!

Tw: homophobia, homophobic language, child abuse, domestic violence, referenced drug use, Eddie being incredibly gay

———

It’s a muggy Sunday morning, the summer sun burning through the last vestiges of chilled night air and frosted dewdrops as it rises from its slumber. Like the sun, Eddie rises as well. However, it’s with much less fanfare and grace due to the obnoxious pounding at his front door.

He groans dramatically, shoving his face in his pillow and willing whoever the fuck decided to bother him at—he glances at his alarm clock on the other side of the room, squinting to read the numbers—nine in the morning to go away. His wish must have pissed off some universal god because the knocking only gets louder, making the window above his desk rattle with every shake of the door.

With a sigh big enough to rival the windy intro of “Holy Diver”, he pulls himself to the door in a zombie-like state. Movements sluggish from his interrupted sleep, he misses the doorknob twice before finally turning it, throwing it open with newfound strength to find one Robin Buckley in all her glory. Her fist is raised and ready to knock again, her face the epitome of righteous fury as she glares at him.

“Uh, hey Buck. Whatcha doi—“ he begins, only to be interrupted by Robin shoving past him and barging into the trailer. He sighs, rubbing a hand over his face and pulling on his hair slightly before shutting the door.

Kids and their manners nowadays.

“Yeah, sure, come on in. Totally fine. I wasn’t sleeping or anything, noooo,” he says to himself before turning to face his intruder. Whatever Buckley is upset about seems serious, and from the icy look she’s giving him it also seems like it’s his fault. Her hands are on her hips like she’s in a Steve Harrington impersonation contest and plans on taking home a first place prize. Something in him squirms at the thought.

But, he is nothing if not a performer. So, of course, he puts on a show.

“Lady Buckley,” he declares in a posh British accent, bowing deeply with a flourish on his arm. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company on this fine morning?”

He’s expecting a fond eye roll, or a laugh, or huff, or something. He gets silence.

“Cut the bullshit, Eddie. We need to talk about Steve,” she demands.

Steve… Now isn’t that an interesting subject?

Now, Eddie has always been different. He was loud, and jumpy, and fidgety, and the other kids never wanted to be friends with him because they were scared. He was always covered in dirt, always barefoot because he either forgot to put on shoes or the ones he had were too small for his ever-changing feet. He would talk to himself, mutter little reminders under his breath or work through the questions plaguing his mind aloud because he just functioned better that way.

Then, at eleven, he found out just how different he really was. He was outside during recess when he fell off the monkey bars and scraped his hands and knees. He huddled on the ground, tears falling down his small cheeks because it hurt and his wounds felt like they were throbbing. Then a boy, James, ran up to him and asked him if he was okay. James had stark blond hair, a face full of freckles, and bright green eyes. He looked so concerned for Eddie, and was gentle when he picked up one of his hands to inspect the cuts littered there. It was that gentle touch that elicited a flutter of butterflies in his stomach, and ever since then Eddie knew.

When he had gotten home to the trailer that day, he felt confused. Other people in his class were constantly talking about who they “liked”; boys liking girls and girls liking boys. About how they would get all nervous around their crushes, and Eddie realized he had never felt that before. All of the girls in his class were just… girls to him. They never gave him that fluttery feeling James had. But… no one ever talked about boys liking boys. No one ever said if it was okay, so Eddie thought it must not be. That boys liking boys wasn’t okay. That he wasn’t okay.

It took awhile, but he finally confessed to Wayne that he liked boys, that he got all the little butterflies that boys were supposed to get about girls. Wayne shook his head and told him that he could feel butterflies for anyone he pleased, as long as they made him happy. They both cried that night, and ended up in a hug so tight they nearly fused together.

Since then, Eddie’s come to accept the fact that he’s gay. Has added it to his whole anti-conformist persona, even. So when high school hit he let himself finally be free. He joined Hellfire club, made friends with the upperclassmen who ran it, and learned all the intricacies of D&D that he never imagined he would. After two years, he met Gareth and Jeff who joined Hellfire much in the way he did. Then, Grant joined halfway through Eddie’s junior year and he quickly recruited him as well. He found his friends, his people, and he finally let himself be himself around them.

He told them he was gay after a long session of lazily practicing in Gareth’s garage and smoking, the weed having loosened both his limbs and his lips. They were all extremely chill with it, even after the weed had worn off. That, however, didn’t exempt them from making fun of him though.

Eddie was loitering in the hallway after school, waiting on Gareth to finish up a quiz he missed the week prior, when none other than Steve Harrington walked out of the pool room in nothing but those little speedos that leave zero to the imagination. Seriously, all those girls were right, holy shit. After he picked his jaw up off the floor, he noticed Steve was looking at him with that adorable little confused puppy look before a god damned smirk fell across his face. Eddie’s face, he knew, had to rival that of a Victorian nobleman fawning over a sliver of pale skin shown by a lady across the room with her face hidden by an elaborate fan because he was literally drooling for the man in front of him.

It got considerably worse when Steve leaned down to drink from a nearby water fountain, making Eddie’s mouth go completely dry with this blatant offering of ass right in his face. In hindsight, it might not have been an offering, per say, but it was definitely there and Eddie was definitely staring. So it really wasn’t a surprise that he jumped when Gareth tapped his shoulder, Eddie having not heard him come up behind him, and he turned on his heel so fast he’s surprised he didn’t get whiplash.

“Dude, you good?” Gareth asked. Eddie opened his mouth, squeaked out, “I’m fine” and immediately felt his face go up in flames. Gareth glanced over Eddie’s shoulder and he could see in slow motion the series of thoughts that crossed his mind. Gareth went from concerned to confused to understanding to smug so fast it was almost comical. When their eyes met, Eddie’s went wide.

“Don’t you dare say a word,” he hissed, and the smug look only intensified.

Once they got to his van, Gareth immediately rounded on him.

“Seriously? Steve Harrington?” Gareth teased. “Of all people, it had to be that douche?”

Eddie groaned and clenched his eyes shut. “I know, Garebear, now shut up before I push you out of the van.”

Of course, news about his little crush spread around his friend group like wildfire, and soon enough he was being teased by them relentlessly. Eddie knew his crush wouldn’t get very far, Steve was very clearly straight and in a happy relationship with Nancy Wheeler of all people. Still, Eddie couldn’t stop thinking about that smirk.

Just as his crush began to fade away, Steve showed up to school with a busted face and eye bags deep enough to rival shitty vampire Halloween make-up from a toddlers costume contest. Feelings came rushing back, the intense need to protect, to find out what happened and get justice for that pretty face.

Then it kept happening, and Steve showed up to school with a beat up face yet again. However, judging by his stumbling and droopy eyes, it came with a concussion this time. Just when Eddie was trying to figure out who did it, Billy Hargrove came stalking through the empty halls and all attention was focused on his scabbed knuckles. On the hungry glare he sent Steve’s way. On the way Steve shrank back a little on instinct.

And Eddie… Eddie just couldn’t leave well enough alone, now could he?

He walked up to Steve, brows furrowed. “Harrington?”

Harrington didn’t turn, eyes still focused on the spot where Billy had been before. Eddie tapped his shoulder. “Steve?”

He jumped that time, like Eddie had actually hit him, and spun to face him. Up close, his face looked a hell of a lot worse and Eddie had to suppress a wince just looking at him. Steve looked at him confused, though it was hard to tell between the swelling and assortment of bandages on his face.

“…Munson?” Steve began. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come up.”

He said it flippantly, with a wave of his hand towards his left ear like that explained everything. It didn’t, but Eddie felt like it wasn’t his place to push.

“You good, man? You look like you got in a fight with a dump truck and lost,” Eddie said. “Badly.”

He expected Steve to scoff and roll his eyes, push past him and hit his shoulder too hard to be an accident. He expected him to spit some barb and walk away, to leave Eddie there in the hallway alone. None of that happened, though.

Instead, Steve smiled. A little self-deprecating, but a smile nonetheless. He huffed a laugh.

“Make it a supercharged dump truck and you’ve got it right,” Steve joked at his own expense. It resulted in a shocked laugh bursting from Eddie’s lips, which he immediately stopped by smacking a hand over his mouth.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, pulling his hand away. “That’s not funny. I mean… your joke was, just not,”—he gestured to Steve’s… everything—“this.”

“It’s okay man, I know what you meant,” Steve said sincerely and Eddie doubted why he was ever called King Steve. The person who stood in front of him was the furthest thing from what those jocks supposedly worshiped that Eddie had to hide another bubble of laughter.

“Seriously, dude, did you even go to a doctor?” Eddie asked, and at Steve’s wince he knew the answer. He rolled his eyes and slung an arm around his shoulders, careful not to land too hard in case he was bruised there too, and led him down the hallway towards the nurse’s station.

“Uh,” Steve began. “Where are we going?”

“The nurse,” he explained. “Figured a look wouldn’t hurt, right?”

Steve’s shoulders relaxed a little under his arm, and Eddie decided to focus on him during their walk down the empty hallway. He noticed the way his hair bounced a little with every step, how a couple strands were threatening to fall from their perfectly coiffed positions. He noticed his moles and freckles, how he had a smattering of faint ones all over his face from time in the sun. He noticed how his nose was a little crooked now, with a bump on the bridge that wasn’t there before the weekend. He noticed how pretty his eyes were, with at least three different shades of brown all swirled together like melted chocolate with flecks of forest green nestled in the folds.

He noticed that Steve was looking at him.

They had come to a stop in front of the nurse, yet Eddie’s arm was still over his shoulders. He quickly retracted it, but Steve didn’t move away and neither did he.

“Well, this is your stop,” Eddie nearly whispered out. Steve smiled, just a small quirk of his lips, and his eyes flitted across Eddie’s face.

“Thanks, Eddie,” he started. Steve took a step backwards toward the station and did a little wave with his fingers that had no right being as endearing as it was. “See you around.”

With that, he disappeared behind the thick mahogany door and Eddie was left there alone, face full of flames and smiling like he was in fucking love with the guy.

Fuck, maybe he was a little bit in love with the guy.

That feeling didn’t waver, not even after seeing him in a skimpy sailor uniform as he scooped overpriced ice cream for toddlers in the Mall. Or, when he was pinning him to the rickety wall of the boathouse he was hiding in after seeing Chrissy murdered in front of him by some freaky wizard from an alternate dimension with a broken bottle to his beautifully freckled throat.

That feeling greatly intensified when he saw Steve take an honest to god bite out of a demonic bat and spit the flesh and blood out on the dried lakebed in the previously mentioned alternate dimension.

And, really, you can’t blame him for falling all the way when he found out exactly who dragged his half-dead body out of hell and saved his life.

So yeah, Steve was a very interesting subject indeed.

“Is… Is he okay?” Eddie questions as he straightens from his hunched position, head tilting to the side and making his bangs fall in his eyes. Robin throws her hands up with a mighty huff and a frustrated groan.

“Obviously not!” She exclaims. She starts pacing around his living room, back and forth in front of the coffee table. “He’s obviously not okay because you’ve been avoiding him and making him feel like shit for months and I’m actually really worried about him ‘cause he’s been doing stupid shit that can get him killed and I don’t know how much longer he can go on like this before it completely ruins him.”

As Robin rambles, her face turns a bright shade of pink. She finishes her speech, sucking in a deep breath as if she ran out of air. Eddie’s brows furrow.

“I haven’t been avoiding Steve,” he defends weakly. He hasn’t, not really. He just… he doesn’t want to get hurt.

Okay yes, Eddie is practically in love with the guy, but that doesn’t mean Steve feels the same about him. They’re friends, that’s it. Steve is going to find some beautiful girl and get married and have the houseful of kids he’s always wanted and Eddie will be here, still pining from afar. He knows it would be easier to just forget about him, and forget about the feelings clutching his heart like a starved hawk with its first fulfilling catch in months. That’s why he’s been slowly letting go over the past few weeks, trying—and failing—to get that stupid pretty boy out of his head. Of course, it’s not working, and every day he spends not talking to Steve feels like hell.

So no, he’s not avoiding Steve. He just doesn’t think he could survive it if he confesses and Steve rejects him completely. Staying away means he won’t accidentally reveal his feelings for the man, and judging by how much he’s feeling, it wouldn’t be very hard for that scraggly cat to come clawing and screeching out of the proverbial bag.

Robin, however, thinks the opposite because according to the look she’s giving him, she says he absolutely fucking has.

Eddie sighs. “Okay, maybe I have just a little bit but it’s not—“

Eddie freezes, stomach plummeting as Robin's rambling words take purchase in his mind. She said Steve was doing something stupid, something that could kill him. Flashes of a night now a distant memory play in his mind, one filled with panicked breaths, stilted tears, and a bloody bat with nails.

“Robin… What do you mean by ‘stupid shit’?” Eddie asks tentatively. Part of him wants to know the answer, while part of him fears the idea of ever finding out. Robin only gives him a confused look and crosses her arms.

“Eddie, that’s totally not the point of this conversation and you know it—“ Eddie cuts her off by waving his hands.

“Robin! Just…” he trails off. Should he tell her about Steve? He promised he wouldn’t but…

“Okay, I have to tell you something about Steve but please please don’t tell him I told you because I promised him I wouldn’t but if you also know something about him then I think you should know about this too,” he rushes out, words tumbling fast out of his mouth as his lungs scream for air. Robin’s icy glare has melted a bit, turning into one of anxiety and caution.

He sighs and flops down on the couch, resting his elbows on his knees as he looks down at his hands. He feels more than sees Robin sit next to him and he knows he has her attention.

“What happened, Eddie?” She prompts, and he takes it as a sign to continue.

“I had a visit from Steve awhile back, around four or five days ago,” he begins. “It was early in the morning and I couldn’t sleep so I was writing notes for a new campaign idea in the living room. I could feel that something was… off, so I looked out the window and there he was.”

He ran a hand over his face, pushing his bangs back and pulling on the ends. He glances over at Robin to find her looking at him. He squeezes his eyes closed for a moment before looking back at her.

“He wasn’t all there, Robin. Like… like he was trapped in his mind or something. I thought,” he huffs a deprecating laugh, “for a moment there, I thought he was cursed.”

He doesn’t mention that the image found its way in his head and can’t seem to find its way out, like a stubborn housefly who keeps banging against the glass hoping to be freed. The thought of Steve floating—eyes rolled back in his head while his lids flutter and his limbs shudder and break one by one—has kept him awake on more nights than he can count. The thought of him being subjected to his worst nightmares given life, all the lies that he tells himself turned to truth. The thought of Eddie being completely helpless, watching him die in agony in front of him.

He doesn’t mention that every night since then, he’s called Steve. He needed to hear his voice, to know he was okay. To know he was alive. He never got a call back.

“I got him to come inside but he didn’t stay long. Something spooked him, I think, I just… I don’t know, it was really weird. Like…” he trails off, unable to find the words.

“Like he was in fight or flight mode?” Robin suggests, and he nods.

“Pure instinct.”

Robin groans. “Shit, this is worse than I thought.”

“Wait, did he tell you?” He asks. Steve was so insistent on Eddie not telling her—made him promise, in fact—so why…?

“Well… after a very long, very emotional, and very vulnerable conversation, yes. He told me on his own terms though, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she supplies. “He… He didn’t tell me a ton of details, though. Not… Not like that.”

There’s a pause as Robin clenches her eyes closed and looks away from him.

“I didn’t know it was that bad,” her voice comes out just barely above a whisper, something he wouldn’t have heard if he wasn’t right next to her. Eddie stays silent, unwilling to break the solemn mood. Robin, however, misses that message entirely as she smacks his arm.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me, doofus?!” She accuses, giving him a half-hearted glare that is no less threatening. Eddie holds his hands up in surrender, unable to hide the exasperated look on his face.

“He made me promise!!” Eddie defends. “Plus he gave me those damn puppy dog eyes and I couldn’t say no.”

“He is really good at that, especially when he wants something. He says he has no clue but I bet you he does,” Robin whispers, almost conspiratory as if they’re sharing a terrible secret. Eddie can’t help but smile and shake his head. Screw Harrington and his stupid pretty eyes.

“Did he say anything else while he was here?” Robin asks after a moment of silence.

“No, that was the only thing he said really, other than an absent ‘I’m fine’ before he bolted out the door. It was a very uh… one-sided conversation,” Eddie explains. “He mostly gave only one or two word answers before he panicked and ran.”

“I’m gonna assume he didn’t tell you why he left?” She asks, and at the shake of his head she curses. “Fuck.”

“Fuck indeed.”

Robin shifts beside him, raising her hand to mindlessly chew on her thumbnail. He thinks the conversation is over. Or, rather, wishes it were over.

That universal god must really hate Eddie today because Robin roughly shakes her head and waves her hands around, letting out a huff.

“Okay, one problem at a time. That was totally not the point of this little talk and you know it, Munson,” she admonishes. “Why. Are. You. Avoiding. Steve?”

She punctuates each word with a, quite literal, punch to the arm. Eddie reels back, dramatically clutching his bruised arm and gives her a fake glare.

“Ow!!” He rubs his arm. For her incredibly bony arms, she really can pack a punch. He’s only half joking that it hurts.

“Answer the question!”

“Fine fine…” he takes a deep breath, knee bouncing with building anxiety before he stands up, unable to quell the urge to move. He paces twice in front of the coffee table before he has the nerve to look at her waiting gaze.

“So, as you know, I am a raging homosexual,” he states, and at his pause, she nods. “And I miiiiiight have a teeny weeny, itsy bitsy, enormous crush on him.”

The end of his sentence is rushed out, words jumbled together as he screws his eyes closed and waits for… whatever Robin’s response is going to be. He waits for five seconds. Then ten. Then twenty-five because yes he’s counting. If he knows one thing about Robin Buckley it’s that she doesn’t know when to stop talking so silence is a very rare occurrence for her and now its been a whole minute and something must be wrong so he opens his eyes to find her—

The only word that even remotely comes close to encompassing the expression on her face is seething.

He instinctively takes a step back.

“Edward Lee Munson you better explain yourself right fucking now or I swear to every god out there that I will rip out your spleen and feed it to the neighborhood dogs before you take a step out that door,” Robin all but growls out, eyes icy and cold as they stare through him. He’s quick to explain because he really quite values his spleen, thank you very much.

“Okay, okay, geez I get it! Fine,” he huffs. “I’ve been avoiding Steve because it’s hard to be around him.”

Robin only raises an eyebrow. Eddie groans. He really wishes he didn’t have to explain his big, fat, gay love this early in the morning.

“It’s hard because he’s so…. So Steve all the time. He’s so kind and caring and hot— god, Birdie, he’s so fucking hot—“

“Okay, yeah, I didn’t need to know that,” Robin interrupts.

“Sorry,” he says, a bit sheepish. “Every little smile he gives me feels like a swarm of butterflies are fighting horde-style to get out of my stomach. I just…

“I think I’m in love with him,” Eddie confesses. The way her eyes blow wide is comical, and he’s half expecting them to pop and burst like they do in cartoons.

“But I know better,” he gives her a sad smile. “I know that I’m not special, he doesn’t mean it like that. Like I want it to. And…. And I know he never will.

“I thought that distancing myself would make the feelings go away, make it… I don’t know, hurt less? But not seeing Steve at all… fuck, it hurts worse than dying and I know what that feels like. Now I don’t even have him as a friend,” he scoffs at himself, shakes his head a little and focuses on a framed picture of him, Steve, Robin, and Dustin from graduation on the wall. Focuses on how Steve’s arm is wrapped around his shoulders, hand gripping his upper arm as he smiles shyly at the camera. How Eddie himself is leaning into his side, tucked under his arm as if he belongs there. As if he’ll ever belong there. He looks back at Robin.

“But this is what’s best. I can’t have my stupid heart feeling things my brain knows it shouldn’t,” Eddie ends his little speech by flopping back down on the couch. Part of him regrets telling her, but another small, itty bitty part is almost grateful.

Eddie’s always had a way of caring too much, even from a young age. Wayne could tell you better than anyone that Eddie has always had a soft side. He could tell you that Eddie refused to let him kill any of the bugs that got into the trailer when the weather turned cold and insisted that they be put outside under the trailer where it was at least a little warmer. He could tell you that every time Eddie would see another person cry, he would too.

He’s just always been like that, so carrying this around with him everyday? It was becoming too much to bear, having to put on a face around everyone so no one could tell. So no one could see how it was breaking him inside. Wearing him down to the bone. Slowly, slowly killing him.

Robin sighs beside him and he had almost forgotten she was there. Her voice is quiet and strangely gentle as she speaks.

“Why do you think that, Eddie?”

What?

“What?” He asks incredulously and knows his face is in a similar state to his voice.

“Why do you think Steve wouldn’t like you like that? Has he said anything to make you think he wouldn’t?” She clarifies, which really doesn’t clarify anything at all for him because what?

“Um… are we talking about the same Steve? You know, Steve Harrington, Hawkins’ resident ladies man? Why the fuck would you think I’d have a shot?” He explains. “He’s so painfully straight and I am so painfully not, Robin.”

Robin just looks at him like she’s trying to read his mind. Or, rather, push a thought into his mind. Waiting for something to click. It doesn’t. Eddie rolls his eyes.

“Besides, Steve never tried to talk to me about the whole distance thing, so I just—“

“You know what happens when people assume things, Eddie,” Robin interrupts.

“—figured that he didn’t mind,” Eddie finishes with a glare. Robin closes her eyes and takes a breath as if calming herself. She pinches her nose, right between her eyes like Steve always does when he’s frustrated or tired, and turns to him. She takes his hands in hers, and her face is only a mere mask of calm, the tumbling waves of anger rolling just under the surface.

“Eddie,” she begins. “Have you ever thought of the possibility that Steve doesn’t talk about his feelings? That he would keep it all bottled up inside like he does with literally everything else?”

Well, when she puts it like that…

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Robin agrees. “I only found out about this whole… thing two days ago and that was only because I just so happened to catch him falling asleep at work. He wouldn’t have told me if I didn’t ask him, I know that for sure. He… Eddie, he honestly believes that this is all his fault. That he’s the one that fucked everything up between you and he kids.”

Eddie’s brain screeches to a halt. “Wait, what do the kids have to do with this?”

“You haven’t told them anything?” Robin asks, eyes going a little wide.

“Have I told a bunch of teenagers—whose opinions I regretfully respect—that I have a crush on their babysitter? No, I have not.”

“Okay, yeah that was a stupid question, sorry,” she amends. “Just… the kids are avoiding Steve and I can’t think of a reason why.”

“They’re what!? Wait, why haven’t I heard of this until now?” Eddie exclaims. Robin gives him a look that makes him deflate a little. “Let me guess, you only found out two days ago?”

“Bingo, we have a winner!” Robin fake cheers, raising her arms in a mock-celebratory fashion. She drops them with a huff. “They haven’t talked to him in weeks, Eddie, and I think it’s because you have been avoiding him.”

Her tone isn’t accusatory, but it still makes him feel like shit.

“They must have picked up the sense that something was going on between you two and assumed they should be avoiding him too,” she suggests. Eddie leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

“I don’t get how they could think that, though. I mean, Steve has been nothing but good to them for years now.”

“I know,” Robin agrees. “But they’re kids. Stupid, dumb, ungrateful kids, but they’re still kids.”

Eddie drops his head in his hands, pressing hard on his eyes until spots form behind his eyelids.

“I really fucked this up, didn’t I?” He asks it rhetorically, but Robin gives a noise of agreement anyway. “How do I fix this, Birdie?”

“You could start by talking to him,” Robin suggests.

Now isn’t that a terrifying thought?

Because knowing you have feelings for someone is one thing, but telling them? That’s something so far out of the realm of possibility for him that he’s never even thought about considering it.

“Have you lost your fucking mind, Buckley?” Eddie exclaims, looking over at her with wide eyes. “I’d like to keep all my teeth if you don’t mind. I mean, I know I’m not your type and everything but some poor schmuck would probably like to look at this face one more time before it's beat all black and blue.”

Robin only rolls her eyes at his rambling—which is rather hypocritical of her if you ask him, since she seems to treat rambling as an Olympic sport she plans on winning every time she opens her mouth. She grabs his face between her hands and honest to god shakes him.

“I can’t tell you everything, but I’m telling you to trust me and talk to him,” she practically demands, giving him a pointed look much like the one from before. Except he still doesn’t know what it means, as that final piece has yet to click into place.

He nods in her hold, partially afraid of her now, and she releases him.

“We need to fix this. Now,” Eddie insists. He looks over at her. “We need to talk to the kids.”

Eddie stands up, running to his room and groaning at the mess he left. Tossing his sheets and blankets back on the bed, he reaches under his bed for the walkie he knows he last saw under there three days ago. Except, it’s not there. He stands up, scrunches his eyebrows, and thinks.

Let’s see… it was next to the keychain that was on top of the VHS sitting on the books on the corner of the desk, then he moved it when he had to answer one of Lucas’ questions which he did while he walked around the trailer and he laid it down when he finished to get some cheese from the fridge, meaning—

Eddie runs back to the kitchen, finding the walkie on top of the fridge, right where he thought it would be.

“Got ya!” He grabs it and runs back to the living room where Robin is waiting very impatiently.

“Where even was that?” She asks but he ignores her, electing to set the frequency so he can talk to the kids all at once instead of answering her. He presses the button.

“This is Eddie the Banished calling an emergency Hellfire meeting pronto,” he orders into the speaker. “I repeat, emergency Hellfire meeting.”

He waits for a response. One minute. Two minutes. Three—

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Eddie mumbles, pressing the button again. “Over.”

Immediately, Dustin responds. “Hear you loud and clear, Eddie. Is this a code red situation? Over.”

“Nope, not a code red. More of a uh…” he glances over at Robin who shrugs. “Code yellow? I think. Over.”

“What the hell is ‘code yellow’? We don’t even have one of those,” comes Erica’s, as always, sarcastic remark. Eddie can faintly hear Lucas yelling in the background.

“Munson, you better not be shitting with us.”

“I promise you, Red, I wouldn’t. Not about this.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, people! You’re supposed to say ‘over’ when you’re done talking! Over.”

“Shove it, Dustybuns, the adults are talking.”

Eddie has to hold the walkie away from him at Dustin’s responding shriek. He presses a hand over his eyes. These kids are going to kill him one day.

“Guys, this is serious. Just get your asses over to my trailer as soon as possible. Robin’s already here, does someone have Little Byers and Supergirl?”

“I’ve got them. Over and out,” Mike responds.

“Erica and I are on our way. Over and out,” Lucas says.

“Be there in fifteen. Over and out,” Dustin declares. Eddie glances at Robin, sharing equally nervous and worried looks. This is not going to be fun.

Thirty minutes later, all of the kids are cramped in Eddie’s living room. Lucas, Max, El, and Mike are scrunched together on the couch, while Will and Dustin sit on the floor in front of them. Erica claimed Wayne’s recliner as soon as her and Lucas got there, refusing to move for the older teens.

Robin is standing next to him, hands on her hips again—really driving home the whole “Steve is my platonic soulmate” bit—as he stands there with his arms crossed. The two of them remind Eddie of disappointed parents about to tell off their kids, which, in reality, isn't too far off.

“Okay, what the hell?” Dustin asks, still breathless from the trek there. “I literally just got home an hour ago. Why did you call us and make us bike all the way here in the heat?”

“Because you deserve it for being shitheads,” Eddie defends and rolls his eyes. He’s met with a cacophony of dweeby teen voices as they retaliate.

“What did we do this time?”

“What?! We didn’t do anything!”

“What did Dustin do, now?”

“Me? Why am I the one being blamed? I wasn’t even here!”

“Because you’re too damn nosey, dude.”

“Ouch, Lucas. Ouch.”

“Hey!” Eddie yells, clapping his hands to get their attention. It startles them all enough to quit talking over each other and look back up at him. “Okay, I’m just going to get to the point. Why are you all avoiding Steve?”

Mike gives him a confused look and crosses his arms, his expression the epitome of teenage angst.

“We thought you hated Steve, dude. You would always leave the room whenever he was around with some shitty excuse so we just decided to do the same,” Mike answers. Dustin nods from his spot on the floor.

“Yeah, we all thought he did something or said something to you since every time we brought him up, you’d shut the conversation down somehow. It just… naturally progressed from not talking about him to not talking to him either,” Dustin explains.

“Steve stopped showing up to things, too. He used to help me practice but he’s not shown up in weeks,” Lucas adds.

“Mom’s gotten really worried about him. He’s not shown up to dinner in a while, either,” Dustin chimes in. He shrugs. “We just thought the feeling was mutual.”

Eddie clenches his eyes closed and throws his head back. Fuck, this is worse than he thought. He hears Robin shift beside him, and knows firsthand the look she’s giving them right now.

“Have any of you even considered asking Steve about this?” Robin asks accusatively. “Or even talking to him about anything other than rides or movie nights?”

Silence falls over the room, so thick and suffocating that Eddie briefly prefers the air of the Upside Down to this. He pulls his hair, scrunching down on the floor and balancing on the pads of his feet.

“This is all my fault,” he groans, twisting strands of hair frustratedly.

“It is,” Robin agrees and ignores the glare Eddie sends her way for that. “But we can still fix this.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Mike asks.

“Why does Eddie look three seconds away from strangling himself with his hair?” Max hesitates, sounding the most cautious he’s ever heard her. Eddie groans and avoids eye contact with the group.

“The reason I’m avoiding Steve isn’t because I hate him. It’s uh… quite the opposite, actually,” he explains, nervously fidgeting with his rings and pulling a thick strand of hair to hide his face. He glances at Robin, who gives him an overly enthusiastic thumbs up, and he rolls his eyes.

Max and Erica give him equally smug smirks while Will looks at him with wide, understanding eyes. The rest of the group, however, look confused.

“Wait, then why are you avoiding him?” Dustin asks.

“Dude, that makes zero sense,” Mike counteracts. El just looks lost, almost like she’s trying to read his mind. Which… he really wouldn’t be surprised if she could at this point. Eddie sighs.

“That’s not the point,” Eddie redirects. “The point is that an issue with me and Steve shouldn’t affect you guys’ relationship with him.”

“Yeah,” Robin agrees, and he deftly ignores the pointed look she sends his way. “Steve has been there for all of you for years.

“Dustin, wasn’t it Steve who helped you catch D’art when he escaped from your cellar? He bought pounds of meat for you to lure a demodog away with, then fought a pack of them by himself to keep you safe. Steve put himself in the line of fire again against said demodogs in the tunnels after he was beaten unconscious by Billy, then sacrificed himself to Russians just so you and Erica could make it out alive a year later.”

Dustin clamps his mouth shut from its gaping position—likely from him wanting to defend himself from the truth—and has the decency to look sheepish. Eddie turns his gaze to Lucas.

“Lucas, wasn’t it Steve who helped you train for basketball when you started to show an interest in it? He practiced with you every week, even after a long shift at work or when he felt like shit, just because you asked. Steve protected you against Billy because it was the right thing to do, and took a beating so you wouldn’t. Not many people can say they’d do that for someone else, especially not against anyone as vicious as Hargrove,” Eddie adds. Lucas drops his head in his hands, knee bouncing from his place on the couch.

“Max,” Robin begins. “Steve checked up on you every day after Billy died. He would bring you food or ice cream or a distraction, but he was always there. He would drive you to the arcade just to cheer you up, let you beat him at Dig Doug and Pinball just to see you smile. Steve was terrified to let you be the bait for Vecna, he… he kept telling me that he wished it was him instead. That he should be the sacrifice, not you.”

Robin wipes her eyes where they begin to tear up, and Eddie uses the pause to look at Mike. He still has his arms crossed, but the smartass look on his face has dwindled a little.

“Mike, I know you don’t like Steve because of him and Nancy, but you can’t hold onto that grudge forever. What happened between them had nothing to do with you, so there's no need to be mad at him for it,” Eddie states. Mike isn’t looking at him now, and something tells Eddie that the kid just needs a reality check. Hopefully, this will work. “Steve has been protecting you from the beginning, even when you were more than hostile to him. You’ve at least got to give him credit for that.”

Eddie looks around, sees the morose expressions on the kids’ faces.

“Steve has picked you all up countless times from Hellfire, waiting the entire session out in the parking lot while wasting away in his car. He was there rain or shine, snow or sleet, and he never missed a day. Not once,” he states.

Eddie first found Steve’s presence after Hellfire to be confusing, an anomaly. He didn’t know that the Steve the kids talked about was the same Steve he had a debilitating crush on in high school, not until he saw him waiting outside after the first session the kids attended, leaning against his maroon BMW like a Calvin Klein model. A ball of anxiety formed in his stomach at the sight, because one thing about Steve Harrington was that he’s unpredictable. Eddie just didn’t know if it was good or bad yet.

“You know, usually when people graduate they tend to stay away from high school, not willingly come back,” Eddie teased.

His words seemed to spark some life into Steve, as he jolted from his relaxed position against the hood to stand firmly beside his car. Steve ran a hand through his hair, and looked Eddie up and down.

“You’d probably know more about that if you managed to actually graduate, Munson,” Steve quipped, but it wasn’t mean. He had a smile on his face, and the air around him was friendly. Some of the anxiety churning in Eddie’s gut eased at the sight.

“Besides, who says I’m here willingly?” Steve asked rhetorically, as Dustin made his appearance by running up to him and immediately began talking his ears off about the new campaign. Steve turned his full attention on the boy, nodding along to certain comments even when Eddie knew for sure Steve didn’t know what the hell Henderson was talking about. The other kids soon crowded around the former jock, all talking so incredibly fast that Eddie was surprised the sound barrier survived their cracking voices.

Eddie watched as Steve glanced at him over the kids’ heads, giving him a loose smile and a shrug as if saying, ‘what can ya do?’

Soon, all the gremlins piled into Steve’s fancy car, still talking and gesturing wildly with their hands. Eddie had a passing thought that he should get Steve some earplugs or something to at least help drown out the noise. He immediately shook his head at the thought and jumped in his old, beat up van, driving home to an empty trailer and trying desperately to forget Steve Harrington existed.

“He always waits until the excitement starts to wear off before he takes you all home, letting you talk to each other for nearly an hour after each session despite the fact he never has a clue what you’re talking about. He always listens to you guys, no matter what,” Eddie supplies. “Did you guys know he has mixtapes for each of you?”

At the question, they all look at him with varying degrees of confusion and an all-too-late realization. Eddie huffs, while Robin mutters something under her breath that sounds a lot like, ‘of course they didn’t.’

“There’s one for each of you, filled with songs you like or mentioned liking at some point despite some of them not being his own taste. He listens to you, all of you, and it fucking hurts to know you don’t see that,” he exposes, and part of him regrets letting a bit of his anger out. Though, the kids need to know this is serious, that you can’t go through life assuming the worst in people, so if being angry is what it takes then so be it.

The kids have various emotions on their faces, ashamed and regretful being the two most prominent. Dustin clears his throat and looks up at Eddie, flicks his eyes to Robin, and returns them to his lap.

“I… I didn’t realize he did so much for us,” Dustin quietly admits, and a small part of Eddie cheers at finally teaching the kid a thing or two about humility.

“We’ve been taking advantage of him for… for so long,” Lucas breathes out. Max nods morosely beside him, and Will raises a shaky hand to cover his mouth.

Mike rolls his eyes, still petulantly crossing his arms. “Why should we even care about him? All he’s probably doing is wallowing in his fancy house or something.”

He says it with a layer of snark so thick, all the kids turn to him with varying levels of bitchy glares. Eddie, however, can tell his attitude is a mask, a way for him to hide how he’s truly feeling to prevent from being too vulnerable. From being too open. Eddie knows a lot about that.

It started when Eddie was four and he scraped his knee on the harsh gravel outside his parents’ run-down home in Kentucky. Tears rolled down his chubby cheeks as he ran inside to tell his mom, who he knew would take care of him. She told him to play outside, and not come in until she told him so, but his knee really hurt and he was scared they would have to cut it off if it bled too much. At least, that’s what Charlie—a kid who lived two streets over—said they would do.

When he stepped over the threshold, something felt off. The house was quiet, more so than normal, and it set him on edge. The TV was filled with static that grated on his little ears, and he covered them with his hands as he made his way over to turn it off. He picked up the antenna off the floor, wondering how it got knocked off the top of the TV in the first place. He looked around the living room, finding it in a similar state of disarray. He followed the trail of broken things before him; the overturned coffee table, a spilled ashtray, a stray pillow, and the chair his dad always sat on, pushed far out of its normal place. He questioned who could have messed up his house like this, leaving a big mess behind.

He found his answer when he ventured into the kitchen, just a few short steps from the living room, and found his mother laying on the floor. She was on her stomach, arms splayed out as if she tried to catch her fall and head turned to look at the doorway where little Eddie stood. Her eyes were closed but she was still breathing, the floral pattern of her dress moving with each breath. Shards of ceramic were spread out around her, littered with droplets of dark blood that spilled from a cut on her forehead. It dripped down the side of her face, along the curve of her cheek and onto the floor where it formed a small puddle. Her skin was pale in the artificial light of the house, the soft yellows doing nothing to soften the tones of her ashen face.

“Mama!” He ran up to her, falling to his knees beside her still body. He shook her, trying to get her eyes to open, but all it rewarded him was a pained grunt. His eyes welled with tears again, this time for his Mama, but nothing he was doing was working.

A shadow fell over the floor and he looked up to find his father blocking the light from the gold-colored light fixture above the kitchen table. His face was stern and dirty looking, his stubble well past the point of a five o’clock shadow and leaning more towards a sleazy strip club owner. There was a smear of blood on his face from his hand, which he noticed was bruised around the knuckles. However, the sight of what was in his other hand made him freeze, entire body going stock still.

In his father’s left hand were the remnants of the broken plate on the floor, the jagged edges cutting into his skin where he gripped it tightly. Matching blood littered the edge, and a splatter of the dark liquid traveled up his hairy arm and disappeared into his rolled up flannel sleeve.

He looked up at the figure before him, and the tears spilled over against his will.

“What happened to Mama?” He asked. “Why won’t she wake up?”

“‘Cause she’s sorry, son,” his dad answered, throwing down the ceramic and causing it to shatter against the floor. Eddie flinched, and his father caught the motion. He hadn’t been able to quell it, hadn’t learned how to hide his fear yet. The man scowled at him, lip curling as he grabbed Eddie’s arm and hauled him off the floor in one solid motion.

“She’s weak, Edward,” he began. This close, Eddie could see the redness of his eyes, and the deep purple bags that hang underneath. “Just like all women. Do you wanna be weak, boy?”

Eddie shook his head, and his father gripped his arm tighter. “Answer me!”

“N-No sir,” Eddie muttered, voice small and weak in the face of his father.

“Then stop that fucking crying, don’t be a sissy. I ain’t raising a fucking faggot, Edward.”

With that, his dad dropped his arm and stumbled into his bedroom down the hall. As soon as his figure was gone, Eddie turned back to his mom, crouching next to her. Sometime when his dad was talking, her eyes had opened and her breathing grew stronger. Eddie felt like it was nothing short of a small miracle.

“Mama, are you okay?”

“‘M okay, baby,” she replied, pushing herself off the floor with a grunt. She sat up with Eddie’s help, and frowned when she saw the reddened mark on his arm. “I shouldn’t have let him do that to you.”

“You were hurt, Mama. ‘S not your fault,” Eddie reasoned, pulling his arm out of her grasp to wipe at some of the blood on her face. “You’re bleeding, too.”

“Oh,” she began, reaching up to touch the wound as if she hadn’t realized it was there. “It’s nothing, Eddie, just a little scratch. Mama will be okay, promise.”

She didn’t look okay, this close, with her sunken-in face and slowly forming black eye Eddie hadn’t been able to see before. But his Mama was always right. Always.

“Pinky promise?” Eddie asked, holding out his little pinky. His Mama smiled, and raised a shaky hand to lace her pinky with his.

“Pinky promise.”

A year later, he was riding in the car with his Mama, backpack at his feet. She was dressed nicer than he ever remembered her being; a baby blue, short-sleeved dress hugged her slender frame, paired with white heels, white bug-eyed sunglasses, and a sheer white scarf she had tied around her hair. Her suitcase was in the trunk, but his father was nowhere to be found.

“Mama?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Where’s Dad?” He asked. His Mama cleared her throat before she answered, voice shaky.

“He’s not coming with us, Eddie,” she said. “We’re going somewhere far away from him. Somewhere new.”

“Where?”

“Have a look for yourself, honey,” she said, pointing to the window. Eddie crawled up on his knees to look out, seeing a sign welcoming them to a place called Hawkins. He sat back down in his seat, looking back at his mother.

“What’s here?” He asked. His mother smiled.

“Your Uncle Wayne. He’s my brother,” she supplied. “We’re just going to pay him a little visit, okay?”

A few short minutes later, they were parked in front of a small trailer, a gruff looking man waiting for them on the newly-built porch. They got out of the car and Eddie grabbed his backpack, slinging it over his shoulders before his Mama led him up the steps.

“Eddie, this is Uncle Wayne,” his Mama informed. He looked up at her and she nudged his arm, urging him to say something.

“H-Hello, sir,” Eddie greeted, sticking out his small hand for the man to shake. Wayne huffed a laugh and crouched down, causing Eddie to take a step back on instinct, before he took his hand and shook it.

“Nice to meet ya, Eddie,” Wayne began. He let go of his hand but stayed crouched. “You can call me Wayne, or Uncle Wayne, or Uncle, or—hell, Todd for all I care. Just none of that ‘sir’ business, you got me?”

Eddie smiled and nodded. “Sorry, si—uh, Uncle Wayne.”

“That’s better, boy,” Wayne said, smiling as he clapped his shoulder softly. Wayne had kind eyes, blue and soft around the edges. They weren’t mean like his fathers. Instead, they looked exactly like his Mama’s—save for a few extra wrinkles around the edges. “Why don’t you go on inside while your Mama and I talk?”

Eddie did as he was told, walking in the trailer and taking in his surroundings. It was small, smaller than his house, but cozy. A couple mugs were hung up on the wall, paired with three trucker hats and a framed picture he was too far away to see. An old, floral patterned couch sat on the long wall of the living room, a coffee table in front littered with an opened can of Coke and a half-eaten bag of chips. The windows were open to let light in, making the space feel much bigger than it actually was.

He stepped into the kitchen, just a pace away from the living room, and took in the red-toned wooden cabinets and cream countertops stained with coffee rings yet to be wiped away. There was a hallway to his left where he found a single bedroom and a bathroom. The bathroom was small, just big enough for a stand-up shower, toilet, and sink. A single toothbrush sat in the cup on the side of the sink along with a bar of soap and an almost empty tube of toothpaste. On the other side of the sink though, Eddie noticed an unopened toothbrush. It was blue and had sparkles throughout its plastic. At the bottom, there was a small dog sticker and it made him smile a little.

His attention soon wandered to the bedroom, where he found a little twin-sized bed and tons of boxes. The bed was bare, save for a folded up quilt near the bottom with a pillow on top. The boxes were filled with various things; clothes, books, a cassette player, shoes, and tons of other small trinkets. He sat on the ground, pulling a box closer to look through it. There were thin books near the top labeled ‘Hawkins High’, and he flipped through it to find pictures upon pictures of people. He read the names, sounding them out to see if he could get them right. Some of them were weird, though, and he quickly put the book down to look at something else.

There was a box of cassette tapes to his left and Eddie scooted over to look through it. There were tons of names he didn’t recognize as he rifled through the plastic cases, though one stood out to him.

He picked up the Fleetwood Mac tape along with the cassette player from a box near the closet, plugging it into the wall and putting the tape in. He eyed the front door, seeing it still firmly closed. Just then, the tape clicked, causing him to jump, and he pressed play.

The familiar voice filled his ears, and he smiled. He and his Mama used to listen to Fleetwood Mac back home in the kitchen while they made supper, singing along with the tape or the radio to fill the house with music. The sound of it brought a smile to his face, and he closed his eyes as he listened to the words.

Engrossed in the music, he barely registered that the front door had both opened and closed until a soft hand was laid on his shoulder.

“Eddie, baby, I have to go,” his Mama said, and he jumped to his feet. He kinda felt bad about going through Uncle Wayne’s things without him being there, but if they were leaving then he didn’t think he would get too mad.

“Where are we going now, Mama?” Eddie wondered. His mother’s face turned pinched, and she lifted her glasses to look at him directly. She wore make-up, much more than she usually did, and as she crouched down Eddie could see it was barely disguising a bruise along the top of her right cheekbone.

“Eddie, only I’m leaving,” his Mama corrected. “You’re staying here with Wayne.”

At that, his whole world fell apart.

His mother, his Mama, was leaving him. It didn’t seem fair that he couldn’t go with her, that he couldn’t stay with his Mama like he wanted to. Wayne seemed nice from their brief interaction, but he didn’t know him. Not like he knew his Mama.

His stomach sank to his feet, and it felt as if someone poured ice-cold water over him. His eyes grew wide as tears welled, spilling over his cheeks.

“Why, Mama?” Eddie sobbed, wiping at his face because he wasn’t supposed to cry. “Why can’t I go with you?”

“You just can’t, Eddie, I’m sorry,” she stated. It felt hollow, her explanation. Like she was hiding something.

“But why?”

“Because you just can’t, Eddie!” She snapped, and Eddie’s breath caught. She sounded mad, but Eddie had never heard her get mad, not at him at least. He didn’t know what he did, only that she wouldn’t let him go with her.

She took a breath and cupped his cheek. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“But- But you can’t leave me!” Eddie wailed. “Mama, please!”

She opened her arms and he fell into them, clinging hard enough to deem separating impossible. She hugged him back just as tight, and Eddie saw evidence of tear tracks streaking through her caked-on foundation.

“I know, baby, I don’t want to leave you either,” his Mama soothed. “But Wayne is going to take care of you, okay?”

Eddie looked over her shoulder to see Wayne leaning against one of the kitchen countertops, smiling sadly at him. Eddie screwed his eyes shut and buried his face in his mothers neck.

“You’re gonna come back, right?” Eddie mumbled before he moved to look at her. “Pinky promise you’re gonna come back for me.”

His Mama cried and wiped at her cheeks, smearing the make-up and making the bruises appear fresh on her pale skin. She held out a pinky, and Eddie laced his with hers.

“I promise, Eddie,” she said, leaning forward to kiss his forehead before getting to her feet. Her and Wayne shared a hug on her way out, and Eddie caught Wayne wiping his eyes too. He and his uncle stood on the porch as his mom drove away, waving until her taillights disappeared around the curve of the road.

That was the last time he saw his mother.

Unfortunately, it was not the last he saw his father.

He stayed with Wayne for two months until his father found him. They had grown accustomed to each other in that time, Eddie having warmed up to another parental figure and Wayne having gotten the basics down for caring for another being. Wayne insisted he start school in the fall, and he was two weeks in when all hell broke loose.

His father rolled up to the trailer in a fancy-looking sports car Eddie knew his dad didn’t have the money for. He stumbled out on the gravel, banging on the door until Wayne pulled it open.

“The hell are you doin’ here?” Wayne asked, standing firm in the doorway.

“I’m here to get my son,” his father demanded. He pushed past him and stormed the place until he found Eddie in the only bedroom—Wayne having set up a cot in the living room.

Eddie hadn’t expected to see his father again, mostly because he didn’t think the man really cared for him. That was prominent when he snatched Eddie off the bed and hauled him out of his room.

“Dad?” Eddie questioned. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m taking you away from here,” his father responded, glaring at Wayne who stood blocking the doorway.

“You’re not takin’ him anywhere, Al,” Wayne countered. He crossed his arms, looking far more intimidating than Eddie ever imagined. “He’s happy here.”

“He’ll be even more happy with me,” his dad insisted. “With his real family.”

“Son of a bitch, Al, I am his real family!” Wayne yelled. “You ain’t got the means for takin’ care of that boy, and you know it.”

His father stood toe to toe with his uncle, glaring at him. He whispered something Eddie was too far away to hear, but it made Wayne deflate completely.

Eddie didn’t want to leave. He found that these past two months with Wayne were filled with more happy memories than he ever remembered having back home. Wayne was nice, a little rough around the edges but he was a big softy inside. He cared about people, that much was evident in the way he was constantly helping people out around the park. He was a good person, so leaving him felt like his Mama all over again.

“Come on, son,” his father demanded, grabbing his arm and dragging him out of the trailer. Eddie looked back at Wayne, eyes stinging. He waved, and Wayne waved back. He watched the trailer from the backseat until he couldn’t tell which one was theirs, only facing the front when his dad snapped at him.

They rode for hours, far past the Indiana state line, until they ended up in a strange city filled with tall buildings and blinding lights that made Eddie’s eyes sting. They went through the city, stopping on the outskirts in a run-down neighborhood even more decrepit than his old house in Kentucky.

He spent two years with his dad in a city he came to know at St. Louis, but it never felt like home. Not like the trailer with Wayne, or anywhere his mother was. He learned how to hotwire cars and how to drive like a bat out of hell whenever his dad told him to. He learned that he was too much to take care of; his father constantly complained about feeding him, keeping him clothed, taking care of him like a father should. He learned that showing emotions would only get you hurt, that he had to hide them to survive. He learned what all the different white powders did to someone, how they would affect your mind and your body. How they made his father violent, or remorseful, or depressed, but never happy.

His father was on a bad trip when a rush of red and blue lights invaded their windows, sirens blaring and making Eddie’s ears ring. Their front door was kicked open, the old wood splintering easily under the force of a steel-toed boot. Police flooded the house, and Eddie was grabbed and dragged out before he had time to comprehend everything that was happening.

He was sitting in the back of a cop car with the door open, body completely still as police went in and out of their house. He couldn’t let them know he was scared out of his mind, that he was afraid of what they would do to him. He knew the best way to get through it was to show nothing at all. To be indifferent. Emotionless. It was the only thing his father taught him that he deemed useful.

His father was dragged out of the house by two policemen, kicking and screaming at them but Eddie couldn’t hear what he was saying, ears having gone deaf to anything other than the ringing in his head. Next thing he knew, his father had broken free and punched one of the officers, causing several to tackle him to the ground and handcuff him before practically throwing him into a car and hauling him away. All Eddie could do was watch, knowing there was nothing he could do to help him.

“You got somewhere to go, kid?” One of the cops that took him out of the house asked, leaning against the open door and blocking the flashing lights. Eddie nodded, and the cop took him back to the station where he called Wayne.

“Eddie, son, where are you? Are you okay? If that bastard hurt you, I swear to god—“

“Wayne,” Eddie began, his voice rough from not using it. “Can you come get me?”

A pause. “Sure, kid, where are you?”

“St. Louis,” Eddie supplied. There was cursing on the other end, muffled so Eddie couldn’t tell what was said but he knew Wayne well enough. Even after only two months, the man had become more like a father to him than his own dad ever was.

“I’m coming right now to get ya, just hold on tight, okay? I’ll be there ‘fore the morning.”

True to his word, Wayne showed up right before dawn in his beat up truck. He stormed the station like a madman, looking for him. He was rumpled, like he threw on just enough clothes to be decent before booking it all the way here. If he knew Wayne, that’s probably exactly what he did.

“Eddie? Eds, where are ya?”

“Sir,” the lady at the front desk interrupted. “I’m going to have to ask you to lower your voice—“

“Wayne!” Eddie perked up from the desk chair he was sitting at in the station, running around desks before jumping straight in his uncle's arms. Wayne held onto him just as tight, and he could’ve sworn he heard a sniffle or two come from the man.

“I was so worried, Eds,” Wayne whispered. “I tried lookin’ for ya, I swear I did, just—If I’d known he’d taken ya to another state I wouldn’t’ve stopped ‘til I searched the whole damn country.”

“I know, Wayne,” Eddie muttered. “I missed you too.”

As much as Eddie tried, he couldn’t put up that mask of indifference around his uncle. He could try, sure, but it never worked longer than five seconds before he saw right through it and it crumbled at Eddie’s feet.

“Let’s get you home, son,” Wayne insisted and before he knew it, Eddie was asleep in the passenger seat of the truck as they took the highway home.

Since then, Eddie and Wayne had become inseparable. There were no secrets between them, no masks. They weren’t needed, not when Wayne was more than good to him. They weren’t wanted, either, since Wayne made sure to remind him that showing emotions wasn’t a bad thing. That it was good, healthy.

It wasn’t until much later in middle school when he learned that having a mask was necessary sometimes. Especially when people started calling him a freak and a weirdo because he wasn’t identical to everyone else. Because he lived in a trailer with someone that wasn’t his biological parent and wore hand-me-down clothes that were baggy on him since his growth spurt hadn’t hit yet. He donned the air of indifference he had left behind long ago, letting the names and rumors bounce off his skin like water off an umbrella.

That need intensified when high school hit and the rumor mill grew exponentially. Suddenly, he was bombarded with accusations of Satanism, prison time, drug dealing—though that one was true—pet raccoons, and, at one point, an army of undead babies he sucked the life out of that he could command at will. Really, the shit people came up with was astounding, and Eddie learned to shove it all away. None of it was true—save for a couple things he would never, in a million years, tell another soul at Hawkins High—so he made sure to act like it was true. Let people believe what they want to believe. In the meantime, Eddie used it to his advantage to prevent anyone from getting too close. From looking past the barrier he put up between himself and everyone else.

So yeah, Eddie knows a little bit about where Mike’s coming from.

“Actually…” Robin starts. “Steve’s not doing so great—“

“What?!” Dustin squawks out, cutting Robin off and all but jumping up from his seated position. “Why the hell did you not start this whole damn thing with that?!”

“We were getting there, Henderson!” Eddie clarifies. “Now sit your ass down.”

Dustin—for once—does as he’s told. Eddie looks to Robin and gives her a nod, letting her have the floor.

“Steve’s got it in his head that he’s the only one allowed to sacrifice himself for us, that he’s only needed or wanted when he can put himself in the line of fire. So, like the caring dumbass he is, he’s been wandering around Hawkins at night because he’s worried that something will happen.”

“But I closed all of the gates,” El starts, head cocked and eyebrows scrunched like a confused puppy. “We are in no more danger.”

“I think part of him knows that, Supergirl,” Eddie explains. “But he needs to know for certain, to make sure you guys are absolutely safe.”

She nods, and sadness finds its way to her eyes. Eddie feels a pang of sympathy for her, knowing that learning how to live all over again is never easy.

“He’s not been sleeping much,” Robin continues. “It’s like he’s barely there anymore. Like he’s just… a shell.

“He thinks you all hate him. He thinks he deserves this for all the shit he did in the past, even though we all know he’s more than made up for it by becoming a decent fucking human being,” she spits out. There’s anger in her eyes now as she glares at a stain on the carpet, unwilling to look at the kids but needing to get her point across. “He broke down in my arms because this is the fifth fucking time the people he’s loved has left him and I think… I think this time broke him.”

She raises her head and looks over the kids, tears balanced on her lower eyelashes and threatening to spill over.

“You’re his family, the family he got to choose, and you still… you left. Just like everyone else has.”

The room fills with silence as the words sink in.

“How… How do we fix it?” Will asks, his quiet voice now loud. Eddie sighs and rakes a hand through his hair—a motion that keeps reminding him of Steve—before shoving his hands in his pockets.

“I know part of it is my fault, I admit that. I shouldn’t have just stopped talking to him all of the sudden, I should’ve… well, there’s a lot of things I should have done but I didn’t, so I plan on fixing that,” Eddie admits. He looks around the room, makes as much eye contact as he can to drive his point home. “You should too. A simple ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to cut it, not this time. Not for this.”

The kids all nod, and Eddie gestures to the door to dismiss them. They all look like kicked puppies with slouching posture and ducked heads, walking out of the trailer with their tails between their legs. Dustin and Mike are the first to hop on their bikes, ready to either apologize and get it over with or get as far away from his and Robin’s disappointed glares as possible. Before they can push off, Eddie calls out to them.

“Hey! Give it a couple days,” Eddie orders. “Steve… He’s going to need some time. Go to him when he’s ready, okay?”

He’s met with various nods and ‘will do’s as some of them take off, their knobbly knees hitting the handlebars of their too-small bikes. Then, he notices a particular brunette has yet to leave, her bike with little white training wheels still standing in the grass. Her big brown eyes lock with his and, even though there's a porch between them, he can feel the seriousness in her gaze.

“I miss him. He was always very nice to me,” El confesses. “He always gave me piggyback rides.”

Her face falls a little. “I did not know we were being mean to him.”

Eddie finds himself softening a little at her words.

“I know, Supergirl,” he winks at her. “That’s why you’re my favorite.” 

She giggles in response and hops on her bike, meeting up with Max who stopped to wait for her a few yards away. 

Eddie closes the door, falling against it with a thud. He groans, the sound bouncing off the thin door and out in the empty trailer. He turns to go to his room, preferably to wallow, before nearly jumping clean out of his skin. 

Well, he thought the trailer was empty, except there now stands one Robin Buckley who has resumed her unimpressed, hands-on-her-hips, "you're a fucking dumbass" position from earlier. 

"Jesus H. Christ!" He exclaims. A hand comes up to grab at his heart which is actively trying to beat out of his chest as his lungs grapple for air. "Birdie, I forgot you were there."

"Yeah," she deadpans. "Clearly." 

Eddie straightens up, and quirks an eyebrow at her rather over dramatically. Robin rolls her eyes.

"Well?"

"It's a deep subject," Eddie sarcastically responds. Robin, unfortunately, doesn't find that funny. "'Well' what?"

"Go apologize!" She yells. 

“Okay, okay, geez!”

Eddie pats himself down, looking for the keys to his van before Robin clears her throat. He looks over at her to see an unamused quirk of her eyebrow before she points to the hook by the door where his keys hang. 

“Thanks, Buck!” he exclaims, pressing his hands together in prayer to the saint she is. Grabbing them, he throws the door open and clears the steps in one jump, stumbling a bit on the landing but really, he’s quite proud of this rare athletic appearance. 

Jumping in his van, he slams a random tape in the deck, grinning a little at the song that plays first. Despite his obvious avoidance of the second track, the Master of Puppets album still holds a very special place in his heart. So it's really not a surprise that the song that just so happens to play first reminds him of the very man he’s going to see, sacrificial tendencies and all. 

He slams on the gas, tires squealing as he peels out of Forest Hills trailer park faster than he ever has before. 

He’s not running away this time; not running from a small cheerleader’s body trapped on his ceiling, not running from angry town hicks with their fiery pitchforks, and not running from a creepy interdimensional demon who enjoys sucking the life out of depressed teenagers. 

No, this time, he’s running to something. Running to Steve. 

He just hopes Steve will let him.

———

Permanent tag list: @tea-beloved @estrellami-1 @mericatty @bookworm0690

Fic tag list: @madcapromantic @hannahhook7744 @h3rmitsunited @willim-billiam-byerson @stuftzombie @acowardinmordor @zerokrox-blog @my-chemical-sexuality-crisis @grimmfitzz @ladygrimheart @bestwifehaver @blanketlicker @fishinforfiish @vi-an-te @orionchildofhades @7shrewsinatrenchcoat @whackyrach @stevie-crow @missmagillicuddy @1cookieburn1 @mightbeasleep @jettestar @lifeisnotsobadonceyoustopcaring @imyelenasexual @yikes-a-bee @that-agender-from-pluto @sufjuringstevens @gregre369 @sofadofax @lolawonsstuff @rajumat @ksierra674 @i-threw-my-name-out-the-window @justforthedead89 @vanillatwist @actually-races-erster @background-noise-headache @warlordless @largechaos @noctxrn-e @hope-can-be-your-sword @foundintheshallows @burningoffaroad @obliosworld @lemon-astra @midnightskeeper @venteraltus @lovelyscot @juleswashere3 @child-of-cthulhu

@phantomcat94 @davekat-has-consumed-me @weirdandabsurd42 @madamonsieur-silvrene @pottenloved247 @froggistain @mycatsstolemybiscuit @greatsportsprofessorathlete @m-owo-n @pickledcarrots0 @cringe-culture-is-dead-99

#stranger things #steddie #pre steddie #disposable heroes #disposable heroes mcir #eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things drabble #stranger things fic #robin buckley #robin gets to punch eddie like she wanted to #eddie munson backstory #i gave him a life oops #domestic violence #child abuse #homophobia #stay safe yall

[florenceisfalling]

to my followers unaware of what the fuck im talking about re: toonimal, txttletale, and tyler

tw for csa and transmisogyny

edit: check comments after reading

toonimal aka ezra orena is a tumblr user who also ran a website for "big three" paraphiles (pedo/necro/zoo), including those who are pro-contact and including minors. this obviously led to a bunch of pedophiles sexually engaging with minors and exchanging abuse material.

ezra was already known for being pro-contact in some spaces and had been called out for it. ezra was thus banned on aethy, which is an 18+ proship website, i assume due to the following rules:

there was mild pushback to the fact that aethy also banned ezra's callout, not just ezra; however, this was due to the fact that spreading a callout about ezra's website would also spread links to a pro-csa space:

despite the aethy ban, ezra wasn't called out in the mainstream (to my knowledge) until more recently, when a super huge google doc rolled in with evidence of the abusive behaviors on his website

also despite this, when this doc dropped, some people targeted and doxxed a completely unrelated moderator of aethy for something they had no involvement in.

the google doc. is bad. i understand the good intentions, but it includes irrelevant fantasy as evidence and, more importantly, does not censor victim names. it also does exactly what aethy mods were seeking to avoid by providing a platform for this site, rather than sending it to the proper authorities and letting it get handled properly. statement from an aethy mod:

however, the doc includes lots of evidence for toonimal and his site's users being abusers. its Bad. really really really bad.

because many people did not know toonimal was advocating for abuse prior to the doc being shared, toonimal had some popular posts on tumblr.

one of these posts is a post about "killing the cop in your head" re: accusing people of being degenerate or dangerous over fetishes and kinks that are taboo. while the post might seem weird with the context that ezra is a pedophile, this post was incredibly popular among people who didn't realize. it was just a solid discourse post at the time:

in fact, i checked, and i reblogged this post back in the summer, before i knew that toonimal was advocating for pedophilic contact. this post was not part of some "niche pedophile community." this post currently has 19,000+ notes. it does not mention contact with children. it mentions kink and shipping. drastically different from the content on ezra's site!

and even if you did elect to check ezra's about page before posting, ezra isn't an "open" pedophile. there's a reason his site was secret.

neither of these things mention paraphilias. you have to click on a separate link in the about page to see the tags/warnings that mention lolicon (which is fiction anyway) or illegal paraphilias. even after clicking on those, ezra still upheld on tumblr at the time that he was anti-contact.

the above screenshot is from 3 months ago. now, ezra posts things in the pro-contact vein, but again: he was denying this three months ago. his post was popular even back six months ago. in fact, ezra denied he was pro-contact a week ago, but when evidence popped up he just resorted to insults.

now that we've established that ezra being a pedo was not common knowledge and his post was literally just a popular kink discourse post...

tumblr user txttletale aka healed, who is a trans woman, reblogged it with the following comment months ago:

and later makes a post expressing her opinion on games like stardew valley having somewhat problematic elements to them. in response...

random tumblr cis gay man gets mad and says that healed aka txttletale "markets incest shipping and loliporn as an inherent part of queer sexuality" because she reblogged the toonimal post with 19k notes MONTHS before ezra was called out

reread the toonimal post. there is no mention of loliporn.

even if there was, thats a drawing. its fiction. just like the farming simulator is fiction. who cares

roadhogsbigbelly then doubles down and says that, well, healed might not have mentioned loli, but ezra would support loli. the problem is, again, ezra was not even entirely open about this. why on earth would healed be endorsing that solely by reblogging ezra's post?

then, people start to accuse healed of being in a secret pedophile community with ezra and other popular trans women on tumblr, like predstrogen and maia crimew

a bunch of them notably being from a group of bloggers who love to harass people over stupid shit, be exclusionists, and make conspiracy theories about "closet pedos" and generally just talk shit about anyone they deem below them - especially tgirl bloggers

most of this harassment operates on the idea that healed was mutuals with ezra or aware of ezra's behavior, meanwhile she reblogged ezra's post 3 reblogs down a chain and literally didn't directly interact with ezra at all. neither of them followed each other

people also brought up healed's past controversies, most of which have been apologized for or were simply not fucking relevant

even if healed did follow ezra, the insistence that loli aka drawings is what is sooo sketchy about ezra rather than the fact that he had a site full of ADULTS INTERACTING SEXUALLY WITH REAL MINORS is absolutely fucking batshit

also healed has posted stuff against loli and proship fic/art before. healed literally doesn't approve of that stuff fucking anyway which is imo hypocritical to the kink thing but still proves the accusations against her are false

roadhog guy continues doubling down on how ageplay/cnc/incest shipping/etc is Bad; yet argues that pup play is fine. he thinks ageplay is pedophilia but zoophilia isnt a problem to this guy i guess

despite the fact that the guy who made the pedo website is a trans dude and the victims in the doc were overwhelmingly transfem, random trans women who had no idea ezra was a creep are becoming the main targets of a ridiculous harassment campaign. its such blatant fucking transmisogyny it makes me want to crack my skull open

the neotrances/tyler friend group continues to be weird about it, including getting furious that healed defended herself from pedophilia allegations rather than vetting literally every blog she interacts with or trying to needlessly battle against adults engaging in consensual kink

i hate all of this. so deeply

ultimately my opinions are

ezra has done so many completely fucking awful things and deserves every inch of the backlash he received. he deserves no support for all of this. avoiding him seems to be the best course of action at the moment. part of that involves letting the legal shit go down rather than trying to out-twitter him and his friends over sex crimes. his site probably already had feds on it tbh.

having paraphilic feelings isnt a crime, but involving real children is. genuinely fuck all of the adults on ezra's site

aethy and its moderators experienced targeted harassment over shit they were uninvolved with. this included doxxing and harassing their families. this is especially cruel since they seem to be one of the few sources of common sense in the situation

the targeting of healed, avery, maia, and others: completely just transmisogyny. this shit is insane and nobody should be held to the batshit standards they were held to. please pay attention to this shit and dont let it happen again. don't let stupid discourse un-person a trans woman for something she literally didn't do.

raging about loli/ageplay/whatever the fuck is completely stupid, especially in this situation. when faced with an actual group of pedophiles who are targeting actual, living and breathing children, why do people scream about the fictional expressions of abuse rather than the real-world examples of it?

again. so much of this is just transmisogyny.

fuck tyler and his little clique . all to hell

the people who spread the doc tended to treat csa as a joke. the doc put victims on blast. the doc mishandled evidence.

apologies for any inaccuracies im somewhat late to the ordeal

#discourse #toonimal situation

[milknhonies]

I really need to state this. AI art is dangerous and hideous. It's obvious now.

Tw. Discussion of sexual harrassment, 🤢 the moral issues of AI

I kept scrolling my fyp seeing this one account I wasn't following and it made me severely uncomfortable. I had no choice but to block them after their posts were then all I was seeing one after the other on the algorithm 😬 I know the algorithm is based on "we think you might like this." Due to the tags.

What tags were they? #Henrycavill and #Chrisevans.

The AI art was porn/lewd semi porn. It was Chris Evans having gay sex with Henry Cavill in a river. And then Henry Cavill being Sexually harassed buy Roman people who were tearing clothes from his body and shoving their hands into the crack of his ass.

"Omg that's so hot." No it isnt. I know those actors may never see those photos but I know if I was the subject of those photos I'd be sick. They make them look confused and scared and the AI is just bad art overall being stolen computerised 1s and 0s.

Also- I am NOT homophobic! I'm just here to state that making two actors have sex through AI is also a violating appearance.

I hate to say this but what if some sick fuck replaced one of the actors with a well known child Actor 😐 AI has that ability. And you have gone out of your way and chosen to post this without any warnings or any tags other than the actors names. Must I also remind you there are children on this app? That is why it is crucial we have warnings and tags.

I'm guilty of using AI, we have all tried it at least once, but those images have long been deleted, and they were not used to be sexualised.

AI isn't just stolen art, it's violation of a person's autonomy.

Remember to pay your artists and be morally mindful of the content you post without tags and warnings.

#ai generated #ai is not art #ai is theft #ai is a plague #henry cavill #chris evans

[tokyogruel]

@mikomappi i would warn you not to instigate me but its too late.

also i know this was bc of a meme post but genuinely i cant get him out of my head, i need to talk abt him & scream

ok so heres the thing abt my interpretation of haruka: im insane

tw for mentions of SH and sui. i mean its. its haruka.

hes a dog who's warning signs have been ignored for so long that he bites anyone who comes near, he's autistic, he has dyscalculia, he has dyslexia, he has body dysmorphia

he has no impulse control, he bites himself when he's distressed, he just wants love but the moment he gets it, it terrifies him & he has to destroy it

he fears anyone who seems to have any amount of power over him.

in my opinion: he had a sister who he grew up being overshadowed by because he was older & amab and he detests her so much for his mothers actions, he no longer considers her to be family

he fears kids & he fears what he's capable of doing to other people, he doesnt want to destroy things but its all he thinks he's capable of, he cant cry anymore & he feels he used up all the tears he could possibly shed in one lifetime

he has blue hair & pronouns, he's gotten himself sick on expired medication because his mother never took him to the doctor, he whines when he gets a headache (often)

he is strangely attached to EVERYONE in milgram imo, in their own weird ways. we all know he's dedicated to muu but. if he was close to yuno he would see her as a mother, im fairly certain fuuta will intervene on his suicide attempt. he idolizes shidou for bandaging him up once or twice

he envies the affection mahiru doles out to others (& basks in the affection she gives to him) he glances nervously across the room at kazui & feels his chest tighten holding back non existent tears when 07 gives him a warm smile in return

hes not afraid of amane anymore but that only makes him avoid her more- he cant stand the thought of being responsible for hurting her somehow

he revels in how mikoto seems to mesh so well with everyone, & of course he notices 09s mood swings & temperment changes, its incredible that nobody else comments on it, when theyve pointed out when 01 has swings. he finds kotoko to be intimidating, but he's infatuated with how strong and confident she is, he wants to be more like her

he idolizes Es & craves their attention. he knows Es could care less about him, but he cant help but be drawn to them.

if he had an ounce of confidence he would be so unabashedly cringe & loud & would smother everyone with his feelings & love & attention

if he knew what a furry was he'd make a fursona & make being a gay dog fish dragon his personality

#sakurai haruka #milgram #haruka sakurai #milgram 01 #also i dont care how 'canon' any of this is #theyre headcanons that are really important to me #also i know i said hes AMAB but hes also so so transgender in a gay boy way #because i said so #creature speaks

[callsignbaphomet]

Okay, like I previously said Fallout version of Angelus is wild to me.

Btw TW for heavy subjects talked about here.

I like exploring different sides to them all in different AUs and Fallout is no different. Also, like I said in a post any info on them prior to 2023 when it comes to this AU is null and void. All that info is either eliminated or retconned.

Also I'm gonna try and better the tag system for better organization. Kinda got something in mind.

Anyway, I like writing and playing this version of Angelus 'cause it let's me explore a side to Angelus that the Oracle (Oracle is the original btw) version just doesn't have.

Oracle Angelus had a rough start. He suffered every type of abuse and my fucking gods do I mean EVERY TYPE OF ABUSE from as early as 1-year-old up to 13 or 14. Pretty much a little over a decade of nonstop physical, emotional and psychological torture. He did NOT get out of that unscathed. The trauma of it all still clings to him to this day. Had he been human he would've died like at 2, if he would've survived he would've been completely deformed and disfigured. But he's a werewolf so he somehow survived. Physically he has three scares from when his abusers tried to kill him. Two of the scars are from being shot in the chest and the third one is from being stabbed through the heart with a silver dagger. He actually scared which is basically impossible for a born werewolf but because his abusers never let him consume human hearts his immune system never developed. He even got fevers from infections. Anyway, it wasn't a good time for him and because of it a lot of mental problems arouse from it. He has C-PTSD, bipolar disorder, depression, severe anxiety, the abuse exacerbated his ADHD and also caused him to develop a severe eating disorder and it's not some cute and quirky "oh ha ha i'll just pick at this salad i gotta watch my weight ha ha." No, this man legit will starve himself as punishment because if he makes a mistake he thinks he deserves to be punished. He will actually layer on clothes so Jelani doesn't notice any weight loss but Jelani is always on top of that. They constantly check in on him and help him through it. He has some good days, some bad days and some catastrophic days but regardless he tries his best. He does have his moments of unfiltered confidence and times where he's shown he's very sure of himself and shown strength.

That's why I have this appreciation for the AUs because like for example the Fallout one he didn't have a messed up upbringing. Yeah, there's the whole being sold and the transphobic grandmother thing but it didn't affect him. He's cocky as hell, doesn't really take much of anything serious, in party mode almost 24/7, he's loud, explosive, confident, loves to eat, is extroverted, not insecure at all, no mental illnesses, rowdy, little bit selfish, morally gray and ambiguous, an absolute lil shit but with a good heart and more of a leader than a follower. Fallout Angelus is the extreme opposite of Oracle Angelus and it really puts Angelus as a whole into this perspective that I otherwise wouldn't have had a chance to explore this side of him if it weren't for this AU.

I was NOT kidding when I said Fallout Jelani kind of took the role of Oracle Angelus. He was very similar to Angelus but then he was assaulted (I know I put a tw warning but this is not a word I throw around so freely given that it's super charged. Not sure if anyone actually reads any OC posts aside from Arcade but still) and you know, it was a brutal and traumatic event and not even a month later he witnessed his father "die" which made shit far worse and this is post-apocalyptic America. Where in the blue fuck is he gonna find a therapist to work that trauma out? Fallout Jelani is pretty much Oracle Angelus.

And that was covering some aspects. In terms of sexuality he's still very much gay. I think that'll be the only aspect about him that'll never change. In Oracle he was born a male but he's actually intersex (both genitals and half a uterus, it sooooooorta works), on top of that he has a bit of a feminine body. He's very androgynous looking. In Fallout he was born a female and transitioned to male. In Oracle he's strictly a bottom HOWEVER, if Jelani (he's a switch and both subs and doms) asks he will absolutely top him because he feels 100,000% safe and secure with him. In Fallout he's 100% strictly a top while Jelani is 100% strictly a bottom. And he enjoys the fuck out of dominating Jelani.

Honestly this version of him is really fun. Oracle will always be Oracle but these AUs are so fun to explore different sides to all my characters.

#Angelus tag #fo: Angelus tag

[scoutsbiggestfan]

ok bc people noticed my other post heres some more yay!!! im gonna try to make this more organized, i typed the other post on my phone so it was a little messy. 

reminder some of this is shipping stuff. theres also gonna be some serious topics in here ...

CONTENT WARNING!!!!!! tw for substance abuse, eds, talk of dysphoria (idk if i need to tw that but im gonna just in case,!!), self harm

- all of the mercs are autistic and queer in some way. half of them are trans too heres my hcs for that... plus some other stuff ! - scout: trans (ftm) bi, autistic, adhd, dyslexic. he/him. ! - soldier: pan, autistic. he/him. ! - pyro: bi, nonbinary, aroace, autistic, adhd. he/she/they/it. ! - demoman: gay, autistic, adhd. he/they. ! - heavy: gay, ace, autistic. he/they. ! - engineer: pan, nonbinary, ace, autistic. he/she. ! - medic: bi, aroaceflux, autistic, ocd. any. ! - sniper: gay, ace, autistic. he/they. ! - spy: bi (pref for women), transfem, autistic, ASPD. he/she/they.

- talking about spy woo!! i feel like spy would have ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) but she does know about it and medic helps him and acts like a therapist if needed :D! 

- (tw for substance abuse) because of spys ASPD for a while they were dependent on alcohol. i feel like it played a part in his relationship with scouts ma and he reacted to “this is very bad for her and [scout]” by leaving them without saying anything. i think that she really wishes the best for the two and means no hard feelings against either of them

- (tw for eds) i feel like that with snipers antisocial behavior and autism he gained a lot of anxiety, self doubt, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. for a while he was almost completely dependent on the bare minimum (coffee and a few snacks every so often, probably) and didnt even really realize how destructive it was until medic pointed some of his behaviors out to him (privately, of course).

- (tw for dysphoria, self harm) scouts dysphoria was really bad for the longest time. i feel like he had no idea how to cope with it well, so he ended up self harming as a way to cope. he ended up using art as a way to cope instead, but he def got his surgeries done by medic.

- speaking of his surgeries, scout very much so appreciates the fact that medic did the surgeries for him. it may not look or sound like it but he is so glad medic offered to do it because it was one of the happiest days of his life

sorry for all the serious stuff... lets get a bit more lighthearted!! this is ship stuff x3

- ok for bushmedicine i feel like sniper did a lot of opening up so medic learned a lot of new things about him very slowly, but he LOVES every new thing he learns. like "oh, sniper just mentioned a favorite animal? thank you for telling me i will never forget it"

- engiespy... this is more of an idea i came up with, but i feel like engie confessed first, and spy was absolutely mind BLOWN that he had no idea how to respond and for once was just. shocked. and engie took it badly so then he felt really bad, and apologized... but he slowly realized he has feelings back, so he started hanging out with engie more (just checking in on him and seeing what hes working on) that eventually he just. told engie. who was super excited!!! (then they totally made out)

- sniperspy? hell yeah!! i feel like spy would be “totally shocked” that he likes this rugged, piss throwing, bushman. but yes he does love him... at finds him very attractive... which is new for him but he doesnt mind it because snipers hot ok. she would fight for him. sniper on the other hand was just? he just found spy super attractive, like “holy shit thats really hot, shes really fucking hot” but didnt say anything until spy said something first (because she was tired of waiting...)

- sniperscout?? yuppppppppppppp!!! sniper doesnt come around a lot on the days off, so scout took that as an opportunity to talk to him about stories hes already told the others. sniper (surprisingly) enjoys listening to him ramble, so scout comes coming around more often, and they just slowly grow closer. very opposites attract trope but i love it

#team fortress 2 #spy tf2 #sniper tf2 #engineer tf2 #scout tf2 #medic tf2 #pyro tf2 #heavy tf2 #demoman tf2 #soldier tf2 #tf2 headcanons #tf2 #i hope some of these are okay... ik they are pretty serious topics #queer #lgbtq #trans #scoutsbiggestfan hcs

[daz4i]

Top 5 Nikolai moments (I miss seeing you gush about him)

i miss gushing about him too ;-; so thank you for the opportunity >:3 it's unironically very good for my health. and sorry for the late reply hehehe 🥺

under a read more if it works bc it's. long (added pics and they take a lot of space :P) also tw for ig some slight gore and blood?? bc it's nikolai lol

1. one of my most favorite lines in the entire manga tbh:

he is the only one who gets me . also what happens next is extremely hot (he gets cut in half) (dw it's coming up later in this post)

2. bird speech:

he is the only one who gets me pt 2. also love seeing him be genuine. in the anime his voice acting is SOOOOOO good it's unreal. also he is so beautiful without his eye cover. look at him

3. the thing that came right before it:

1 god he is so hot when he stabs and goes insane (sorry for the horny on main it will happen again) 2 i just love the duality in this entire scene. this is my take but i think he does feel guilty for killing as he says afterwards, but part of his guilt is because he does enjoy killing and inflicting pain, so his words here^ are genuine, but are in fact his guilt speaking, he just exaggerates his enjoyment, and later expresses his guilt in a more direct way

(also this scene is so much better in the manga, i love his cartoonishness here, the blood splatters, the lines covering his face etc. the anime was very underwhelming in that regard)

4. arm moment (not in the manga yet ;0)

again. stellar voice acting. a very emotional moment, most emotional than we've ever seen him, and he seems so conflicted too! with the new context the most recent manga chapter added to what comes before this moment, it makes it clearer where some of his conflicted feelings come from, as well. i already wrote a whole analysis of this scene on the day the ep came out lol i won't get into it again

5. a two frame combo >:3 (easier to take from the anime. also i think they were well adapted!)

me when i'm normal and well adjusted. and gay

this is kind of a sequel. it was my original #5 bc i straight up forgot abt that^ somehow but it's the same scene so it counts. and i love this frame so so much you have no idea

along with fyodor's jesus imagery and nikolai essentially betraying him. what if i went insane and started biting people. this frame means so much to me you have no idea.......

also bonus frames that just don't have as much emotional impact but i wanna share them bc i love him and this is a post for me to gush about nikolai after all:

this entire page <3 he is such a good actor (unless you subscribe to that one theory that he actually died here and was written back into life with the page or smth. idk) (+ small cameo from my other main bsd f/o teeheehee :3)

unironically one of my fav frames in all of bsd just bc he's so pretty. and i love the ?. you're so right king keep on speaking your truth with no fear.

m. my cover photo. also one of my most favorite frames in the entire manga. also one of the most me coded frames that isn't dazai lol

my boy in his cryptid era

another moment i prefer in the manga sm and i had a very vivid image of how it'll look and sound in the anime and i was kinda disappointed it didn't end up happening (tbf. other nikolai scenes DID end up looking exactly the way i imagined they would lol)

me when i'm having an identity crisis and letting it out on my cat:

ok the last one ik you may be sensitive to bc it is the most gory thing here so i'm giving you a warning to stop scrolling here

(unless you wanna see anyway in which case this is just a warning to prepare you <3)

and another line to actually take up space

this is my equivalent of sfw sasuke

okay there we go:

i need to eat him so fucking bad

and that's all i have to share i think <3 might've ended up using like 80% of his screentime here ngl. worth it. i love him sm

#click read more to watch me go insane (and irredeemably horny) in real time

[marnerwrites]

TW: misogyny, brief mention of internalized homophobia, racism, whitewashing, and mentions of pr*datory behaviour.

I told myself that I would absolutely never make a callout post and yet here I am. I feel as if I need to do my part and protect other admins and groups within the rpc as well as clear the air since my roleplay has been mentioned in the rph/rpt tags. I am an admin over at @scatteredtaleshq. We’re a small next-gen-based Disney group that tries to foster an inclusive and creative safe space for our members. With that being said, I want to warn the roleplay community about two members we had named Red (musingsbyred) and Hanne. They applied at the same time and it was clear from the get-go that they were friends. Red applied as the Cheshire Cat with Chris Wood as the faceclaim and Hanne applied as Mr. Mittens from Pixar’s Soul with Melissa Benoist as the faceclaim. We had to approach Hanne and let her know that Mr. Mittens was canonically a man and she swapped out her character for Duchess from the Aristocats. They both then applied for Copper and Tod from The Fox and the Hound. 

The first red flag appeared when Copper and Tod’s bios were posted and Red asked for Tod to have a family with Vixey while identifying as gay and being in the closet about his sexuality. Red was insistent on having Vixey and their shared child in the group despite Tod having feelings for Copper, which felt strange to the admin team. It felt like they were trying to form some sort of plot point rooted in latent misogyny. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having two men in love or being in the closet about one’s sexuality, but don’t use their wife of convenience as a wanted connection. It’s not fair and sends a weird misogynistic message. With that being said, it was sort of brushed off because we didn’t feel as if we had proper grounds to approach them yet unless one of our members expressed discomfort. The next thing that unfolded was Hanne applying for Kida from Atlantis with Laura Harrier as the faceclaim. Since Laura is half white and both of Kida’s parents appear in the movie and are both people of colour, we told Hanne we would be more comfortable with her using a fully black faceclaim or a non-white fcoc. 

She apologized for choosing Laura and then continued to say that she was just trying to use someone she already had resources of and that Laura matched Kida’s ‘shade’. She then tried to argue the whole Laura being used as a faceclaim further and asked if she could get some “leeway” on it. There is NO leeway on white-washing characters. It’s unacceptable, especially after we provided some beautiful dark skinned women as options for Kida. Disney might’ve been racially ambiguous in terms of Kida, but we don’t have to follow that same route. We of course told her no and despite being dejected, she found an alternative faceclaim on her own. After that, two other issues arose with Red and Hanne. 

First of all, Red applied for the child of Sulley named Jasper Sullivan. She posted an intro establishing another family when we prohibit anyone from setting up a family that isn’t currently present to maintain creative freedom for future members. We asked her to remove that part of her bio and she proceeded to argue with us over the fact that ‘Hanne was intending to apply for a child of Mike and Celia’, which is something we wouldn’t have known about and neither would any of our other current members who might’ve wanted to apply for a child of Mike and would’ve gotten discouraged. Later that day Hanne posted two open starters despite not following our ‘you must answer 3 opens before posting another open’ rule. At this point, it felt like we had to approach them with a new issue every day and it was getting mentally taxing. Especially since both Red and Hanne weren’t following simple guidelines. Red flag number two came in the form of Hanne asking to change her character, Duchess, to Alice from Alice in Wonderland. 

For context: the admin team had an inkling that the two intended to ship their characters together. They were both first cats and both Chris and Melissa (their faceclaims) are partners in real life. But with Hanne’s desire to switch her character to Alice, we felt uncomfortable, to say the least. The Cheshire Cat being shipped with Alice when he knew her as a child seemed borderline pr*datory. But despite how uncomfortable the admins felt, we couldn’t say anything until our suspicions were confirmed. Everything sort of came to a head when Red asked one of the admins to DM her in the group chat. I responded with, we’d prefer to have issues be brought up through the main (as a form of protection for our admins — especially since we all deal with anxiety, we’re stronger as a cohesive team). They continued to express their discomfort at the fact that Logan Lerman (their faceclaim for Tod) was being used twice in the roleplay. 

For the record: he was already taken as a faceclaim when they applied. We explained this fact to her. Considering the fact we have such a long taken faceclaim page, it can be easy to miss certain faces. It happens to the best of us, especially mobile roleplayers because tumblr is a bit inaccessible but we try our best to keep things organized. They were combative and defensive and insistent on the fact that Logan wasn’t on any of the pages when they joined. Regardless of this argument, our group has a rule that allows faceclaims to be used TWICE. Which was further proof to us that they hadn’t been reading the pages. 

At this point, their tone was combative and argumentative and I can admit ours became a bit on the edge as well, especially since tone is difficult to interpret over text and it felt like they were trying to deny something when we sent them screenshots proving Logan was already taken when they applied. Eventually, the admin team concluded as a whole that we were just bumping heads with Red and that we needed to ask Red to leave. They had only been roleplaying with Hanne back and forth on Tod’s account since arrival, made it seem like replying to 3 open starters was a chore, and were making us uncomfortable for several different reasons. We needed to protect our space and do what we thought was best for every party involved. We explained to them the grounds we had for asking them to leave and they immediately became extremely aggressive and retaliated by posting screenshots onto the dash to cause ooc drama. While none of our other members left, they were made uncomfortable by the whole situation. Hanne left soon after as well, which was no surprise.

After that, Red went to several rpt/rph blogs and began to slander the group. They sent themself anons on the character sideblog they had for the group that no one except our current members would’ve been aware of. They also even went to an RPH pretending that their character sideblog (scaryjasper) was an entirely different person and not themself. Which is the blog they seem to be sending themself anons on because no one outside of our current members (who all chose to stay except one - would’ve been aware of). On top of that, they began to send anons harassing our members (we did not include these in our screenshots because we want to protect our members’ privacy) and sending racist anons to the main. We have never had an issue with any past members and this was extremely jarring to us that they were sending anons to multiple people spreading falsehoods. It isn’t fair to our members for them to be dragged into this and it’s not fair to my admin team who works so tirelessly to make sure everyone feels welcome, included, and safe to voice their thoughts and feelings.

With that being said, I just want to protect other admins from potentially experiencing this. I don’t want to comment or discuss this matter further. I just want my group and rpt/rph accounts to have a moment where they’re no longer harassed by this potentially dangerous individual and their friend who they may or may not be dragging into their toxicity. Especially since we have been informed that they have a history of harassing groups.

Also: If my only crime in my 10+ years of roleplaying is kicking out racist combative misogynists who love to fuel ooc drama, so be it. All of the rules they broke led up to one big decision in which we felt as if we weren’t jiving. Especially since they had both only been in our group for a total of 4 DAYS and this many issues had arisen. No one owes anyone an explanation for kicking roleplayers who make ANYONE uncomfortable or countless red flags. It’s your creative space and you deserve to protect that. I just want this all to be over and for our members to be left out of this as we move forward. I wanted to keep this private and professional, but they chose the alternative route so we should be allowed to share our side of the story as well.

Receipts can be found in the source link.

#rpt #callout cw #callout tw

[duckingwriting]

Find the Word

I was tagged by @tales-from-nocturnaliss and you can find her post here.

Rules: You're given some words to search through your WIP(s) for and post them. Then you pick new words to make your own victims tagged friends search for.

Loosely tagging: @author-a-holmes, @mrbexwrites, @rachaellawrites, @talesofsorrowandofruin, @kaiusvnoir, and leaving an open tag for anyone who wants to jump on in.

Your words are: Spill, Shirt, Soda, Sad

My words are: Marble, Broken, Velvet, Stairs

As always bellow the cut are my finds - Check individual TW/CW warnings since some have a bit more detail but the overall ones are: Sex,

Marble - From my still unnamed Sparrington Soulmate AU - TW/CW Sex, drunk sex, blow job

Looking down, straining at the rope holding his hands up, James realized that despite his own drunkenness Jack was clearly far more sober than him. But his eyes danced with joy and and something warm that set James' heart beating that much harder. James groaned and thrust into Jack's mouth again. He felt Jack choke around him while swaying back slightly. James watched through slitted eyes as the marble beads and other bobbles in Jack's hair caught the faint lantern light.  Jack lifted one hand to guide James' hips and control his movement. His other hand dropped between James' legs and began fondling his sack. James bit his lip, thumping his head against the mast as he struggled to keep from shouting out loud as Jack sucked and swallowed around his cock. 

Broken - From my Super Gay Ass Comic that I really need to name...

Panel stretches across bottom of page. Colors are now normal colored pages. About 17 year old Lykos is standing behind a grocery register with a smile on his face as he scans items for a small little old lady. The magazine stand is filled with nothing but front page overage of 16 year old Nik. Nik is smiling in all the pictures, if his family is in the pictures his parents proudly have their arms on him while his siblings are pushed to the background. Headlines are “16 year old drop out, rising to the top”, “Zoticus family catches another”, “Robbery stopped by 16 year old boy and family” ect. LADY All I see is about that child. I'm afraid my picture box is broken. LYKOS I can come take a look after visiting Mom this evening? LADY Oh! You're such a good child. Visit your momma. I can wait until your day off comes by.

Velvet - Arranged an arranged marriage werewolf romance. TW/CW for this snip: SEX Also a note that this one I was experimenting with style and I'm still not convinced this scene is going to make the final cut.

"Good girl," Duncan growled. One hand slipped up her shirt while pushing her back. He lightly cupped her breast beneath her shirt and began pinching her nipple. Beth whimpered but then it became a gasp as she felt his fingers beneath her underwear. She squirmed more when she felt his mouth on her stomach. Duncan growled deeper and nipped her stomach in quick succession leaving a small red mark. Beth whimpered a high-pitched moan as he pressed fingers through her slick folds. Duncan curled his fingers through velvet-like flesh with a small moan of his own. He shifted his hips to rub his shaft against her. He moved his mouth to her breast, pulling the shirt over her head. His teeth pinched at flesh before he began lightly sucking on a nipple.

Stairs - From my unnamed Underworld fanfiction. I'm still working my way through it for edits and the like but I'm excited to start posting it.

“I am curious. If she is your sister…I am curious why your father did not survive.” Lucian admitted. It made sense that if they were both turned by immortals then their shared parent should have as well. “I want to know what she knows either way.” Simone walked quickly across the street with the two men and up the stairs. The door was unlocked just as she had been told it would be in that note. Stepping into the apartment she immediately took in her surroundings noting that the males with her did as well. She almost missed the vampire in the corner. She stood perfectly still leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. Her eyes were the only thing that moved. Resting on each of the males before landing on Simone. “Didn’t think you’d come.” Her voice was light, almost a whisper afraid that if she spoke louder something would happen.

#tag games #find the word tag #SGAFC #sparrington #original werewolf story #werewolf story #underworld fanfiction #underworld #ocs #my oc shit #fanfiction #OCStory #originalwork

[single-use-ship-of-theseus]

Alright, I’ve only been here for years, figure it’s time to make a pinned post

About Me

Call me Theseus or Gray

He/him

Minor

White

About This Blog

Mostly reblogs, though I post my own thoughts sometimes. These are tagged #posts by me

I posts a combo of fandom and non-fandom stuff. Some of these fandoms are:

-Cosmere -BSD -Bands like The Oh Hellos, The Crane Wives, The Forgetmenauts, and The Collection -TMA -Good Omens -ORV -The Dragon Prince -Aaron Sorkin shows -Nevermore (Webtoon) -Catechism (Webcomic) -Ted Lasso -Genshin Impact -Our Flag Means Death -The Mechanisms

Some tags I use, for your browsing or blocking pleasure:

#Writing stuff: various tips and prompts #Aes: images and quotes that I like and aren’t associated with a particular fandom #Life stuff: life hacks, tips, and motivational/mental health stuff #Ask game: I’m trying to get better at remembering to do these. Feel free to send an ask even if we haven’t interacted before! #Undescribed: Original posts that I haven’t written an image ID for yet #Plant stuff: Stuff about caring for plants and how ecosystems work #writing by me: fiction that I’ve written #Food stuff: cooking related things #To Read

Spoilers in reblogs will be tagged as “[thing, using acronym if there is one] spoilers”

Spoilers in original posts will be tagged with both the full name of the media and the acronym, followed by “spoilers”

I’m not great at remembering to spoiler tag after a certain amount of time post-release of the thing, so please be aware that this blog is in no-way spoiler free or fully spoiler-tagged.

Content warnings will be tagged “thing,” “cw thing,” and “tw thing”

Send an ask, comment, or reblog if you’d like me to tag a certain piece of content with a warning

I add image IDs to stuff. If you see I’ve made an error, then send me an ask please!

Spam notes are loved, welcomed, and appreciated

I’m trying to keep this blog current-events free, as I just do not have the energy to deal with that here.

DNI Please

People who would rather not interact with minors

People who would send death threats to random strangers on the internet for any reason

People who don’t want to see the word queer

People who have a problem with ace and aro people, trans people, m-spec gays and lesbians, and otherwise don’t like it when people break the norms of gender and sexuality

Other Stuff

I used to be pretty active in the Genshin fandom and had a sideblog, but as I’m not really now I don’t use it anymore. If you’d like to look my old genshin posts, the blog is @albedid.

#Posts by me #pinned post #Note: I used the blue text + underline to indicate links #those aren’t meant to emphasize a particular thing they’re just there to make it clear that those are links

[lovelyjasmari]

Twisted Wonderland Reaction Part 14 ~ STOP PERCIEVING ME Edition

Hello everyone!

So I debated on weather to make a post abt this part of book 5 but I decided to anyway cause I have some kinda strong emotions abt it that I have to get out, preferably soon before the  en discourse begins to set in and I risk being nuked off the internet. Next reaction post will be 90% blind so there’s that. 

Warning: Pic heavy, swearing, emotional musings, slight Epel slander,  Vil simping and mention of my ocs (I try to keep it at a minimum). Also TW: Slight mentions of homophobia and my personal experiences with gender dysmorphia. 

Bonjour Honey!!! If you understand that reference, congratulations!! You have unlocked level 200 friendship access to me, please DM me to claim your prize~

Seriously are there no ad-blockers in Twisted Wonderland?!

I’ll say it once, I’ll say it again, Disney missed a huge opportunity playing it safe with Neige’s design and I hate them for it. Especially when we get to his SDC song. No spoilers but it’s pretty bad and I’m not just saying that cause I’m a Vil simp. 

Rook, sweetie, I usually love everything that comes from your mouth but this instant, kindly shut the hell up. You always struck me as someone who would appreciate beauty that is more dynamic and compelling and not so transient, please don’t fail me! 

And this right here, this is the seed Vil planted resulting in me really respecting and admiring him as a character. Carry on, my Pomefiore queen, crush Epel’s toxic way of thinking. We stan. 💙

Uhhh...it’s sounding like you wouldn’t mind that. Not that I’m judging. We don’t kinkshame in this house, for the most part. 😅

Ohhhh Kalim, my sweet sunshine, nice save cause Vil was really about to dropkick you here. And I’d probably let him too...

You truly are the fairest one of my heart. Now and forever. 💙

But seriously, these chapters really made me feel for Vil. I can appreciate the frustration he has of the world perceiving him in a certain way and then punishing him for those false assumptions. Especially since he seems not to be truly cruel, just incredibly tenacious. I’ve been suffering from people’s false assumptions of me for most of my life and I’ve yet to find a way to make people see who I truly am. But I think I could learn not to care about what they think, if I could one day be as radiant as Vil. 

More character development for my sunshine child! And for personal reasons that I’ve mentioned before, this moment made me even happier because it shows that even Kalim is capable of this level of introspection. It really makes me curious and excited for how his and Jamil’s relationship will develop in the future. 

Shut the fuck up Grim! Before I beat your ass with a stick! Christ, we’re having a deep moment and you had to ruin it with your fucking one track mind! You are seriously the worst! (half serious, half affectionate)

This cannot end well...

Your gluttony will be the doom of us all...

Everyone’s gansta ‘till Vil pulls out the ara ara~

👀👀👀 *bonks myself with my own stick* 

YESSIR!

OH FUCK NO! I CHANGED MY MIND VIL! I’LL SLEEP ON THE LOUNGE FLOOR WITH THE IDIOTS! THE SLEEP PARALYSIS RAT IS BACK!

Yes I can but I really wish I wasn’t. Also, Mickey having his OG design really throws a wrench in my Unreality theory I was working from for Yuulan’s storyline...not that I’m gonna fix it at this point though. 

Okay, WHO THE FUCK designed this new twistune?! Cause I’d like to have a word with them! No anger, just wanna talk cause I can usually SS most twistunes on easy and normal but this?! I JUST WANNA TALK

No not really, he was too busy pissing Danica off and she finally had enough...

Okay, so this was the moment that made me REALLY wanna punch Epel in the face and lowkey why I’m not pulling for him this week. The translation is also toned down some so if you understand what he’s saying, Epel comes off as VERY misogynistic here. It’s clear he’s dealing with some serious homophobia and by homophobia, I don’t mean hatred of gay people, I mean actual fear of being perceived in a feminine way which is just as bad (is there a word for that?Cause I know homophobia isn’t the one I’m looking for). Especially since some of his personal stories have shown that Epel does genuinely have some more feminine-perceived interests like embroidery, apple carving, etc. 

Once again, Vil is the right one in this situation. He can see Epel’s potential but because that potential is tied to society’s narrow perception of weakness and strength, Epel himself does not see it. Oddly enough, this is an issue that many of my female ocs deal with. Many of my main girls are very feminine and charming but they also posses incredible strength in various ways. Most of their stories focus on them balancing their strength with their femininity without forsaking their femininity all together. I don’t often see these kinds of stories in media but since I've struggled with my womanhood for so long, my characters are all the more important to me. Because strength is not mutually a masculine trait and there is power in grace. 

And I know some people have interpreted Vil’s actions and words towards Epel as harsh and even abusive but I don’t really.  As someone who has dealt with some serious gender related trauma and dysmorphia in the past, I really take issue with Epel’s comments here. Frankly, I feel like these ignorant societal notions cause as much dysmorphia in people as anything else. So I really cannot tolerate it. What’s more, I don’t really think Vil is trying to force Epel to change how he is, nor does he have contempt for Epel as he is, but he is trying to change his narrow way of thinking which is what’s REALLY holding Epel back. I’ll explain this further in a moment. 

I actually like blastcycle better than magic wheel, every now and then EN makes a translation choice that isn’t totally out there.

Awww, Ii really love Deuce and Epel’s interactions. There’s nothing heterosexual about them but that’s okay! ❤

DISNEYLAND!!!

Dumbass (highly affectionate)

Sweet, filthy farm child (also highly affectionate)

Another reason why I really haven’t taken issue with Vil’s actions yet. Even though he is harsh, Epel isn’t all in the right either and has some serious prejudices against certain types of people. Even after Vil vibe checks him more than a few times, he still hasn’t gotten what he’s trying to convey to him. He’s pretty hardheaded and sometimes gentle guidance doesn’t remedy that. 

If I’m being truly honest, out of all the boys who have OB so far, Vil IMO has been the LEAST problematic. I probably would not be saying that if it weren’t for some of the very specific experiences I’ve had in my life but really, Vil doesn’t seem genuinely cruel or malicious or even sus. Even Jamil was just a little sus though his grievances were equally as justified as Vil’s (but he went about things not in the best of ways). Now that may change since I stopped reading Book 5 at a certain point but as of now, if Vil is wrong for how he’s treated Epel, then Epel is just as wrong for his hardheadedness. 

But I want to make it clear I DO NOT DISLIKE EPEL AS A CHARACTER. His way of thinking is pretty common in more rural and conservative areas bible belt states and its only when some people grow up that they take on a different POV. And Epel probably has the same issue as Vil, being perceived a certain way by society and being punished for it. Hopefully with what Vil did for Epel’s family, he will soon understand what Vil has been trying to teach him. 

SEE?! HE IS LEARNING!!! 💖💖💖😊😊😊

OH GOD! FUCKING JUMPSCARE! They’re so sorry, Vil-san! Please don’t be too hard on them! They’re knuckleheads but they know better now! Have mercy!!

Ahhhhhhh, ahhhh, ahhhhh, oh god, is that who I think it is?? Does this mean...

MY DARLING DRAGON HUSBAND!! I squeezed my Malleus plushie so hard when he appeared! 💚

Really, if Lilia hadn’t run off so fast at the end of Book 4, I would have invited him to our holiday feast too! But concert tickets will have to suffice for now, please come over for ice cream when it gets warmer! 

Awww, he wanted to see us perform, he really is simping hard for MC and it’s adorable!

Goodnight, sweet prince. And with that, we conclude Book 5 part 2. Next time shit will likely hit the fan fast and hard and from what some of my friends playing JP have told me, it will hurt. So let’s enjoy this sweet reprieve for as long a we can. After the emotional roller coaster I’ve just had, I’m so happy I was able to make Malleus smile like this. 💚💚💚

#twisted wonderland #jas reads twst #long post #SHUT UP JAS

[chaoticgenders]

Long post warning lol, rant warning too. I need to get this off my chest, it's going on 7AM.

TW for drinking, transphobia, and just overall shitty parents/people.

My dad was talking about our family friends' (Who I'll call Dave from here on out, who I also don't count as a friend.) ex-girlfriend, I don't know her name because my entire family including Dave deadnames her. I'll call her Rose. Rose was an abusive piece of shit, apparently. I wouldn't know, I wasn't with my parents at the time when Dave was with Rose..so I know nothing about Rose other than her fuckin' deadname and the fact she's a transwoman. Dave, my mom (sometimes), but mainly my dad are extremely transphobic when it comes to her and it makes me peel off my skin.

My dad claims she deserves this because of how she acted and abused Dave, and he'll also go on spews on how Dave is gay. It usually comes out in all of them when they're drunk, unsurprisingly enough. On new years eve, I think in 2020, me and my dad were both drunk and we both had a small argument over it. My dad getting red in the face and telling me to "shut the fuck up" because I don't understand it. While I'm standing here apple pie in hand just wanting to have a good time, trying to hide the fact I might be some form of trans myself. I told my dad (from what I can remember I was shit faced lol), "Even if she's an abusive asshole, you don't deserve to deadname her! It's transphobic!" , and apparently my dad absolutely hated that response and my mom had to step and and tell me to calm down.

It was understandable, my dad is one thing angry when sober...but when he's drunk he's a lot more in your face and wouldn't hesitate to throw a punch. I let the topic go, but maybe every single time when they're drunk...they'll deadname her.

The biggest one was, I think, around last month. It's a long story on how this stranger got on our front porch but I'll just say she saw us cooking out and decided to join and be nice, I guess. She was very sweet I suppose, although made me dysphoric because she said I would get rid of my "girl face" when I went on T. (My mom also outed me as trans against my will, which made me wanna kill myself.) I digress, at one point someone deadnamed Rose (she's always a Hot Topic when they're drunk.) and I rolled my eyes and kinda stormed off, grabbing a beer from the fridge for my dad out of habit. My mom got so fucking angry at me, and when I came back my mom was explaining to the stranger that Rose was trans..and just outed another goddamn individual.

My parents will never understand the concept of being personal and secret. I've told my parents multiple times certian things they've done is ableist, transphobic, racist, etc. They'll usually give bullshit stupid ignorant excuses to me, claiming "Saying the N-word isn't racist! I grew up around black people that let me!!" which makes me so flabberghasted, or my dad (who's cishet) saying fucking slurs like tranny and faggot to my face, and even being bi-phobic. He literally married a bisexual woman.

Adding on to this, my dad literally said that most bisexual people have a higher chance of cheating. I got defensive because..I'm queer, abrosexual, and also label myself as bisexual so it just hurt. My dad passed it off as a joke as my mom did nothing and said nothing other than back me up a little by saying a myth of being bisexual was that they're cheaters and my dad got even more defensive and started saying it was a joke x3 (times three). Sure, whatever man, it's a "joke".

My mom is also a cunt, because she doesn't belive in pansexual people, genderfluid people, and barely understands nonbinary people. Same with my dad, when I came out as nonbinary, then as a transman. My dad told me to my face that "You'd need to do the surgerys out of the house" and "they/them pronouns don't even make sense" when he's literally like idk..40???

My parents barely misgender me now, I've trained them well (/hj), but I know for a fact my parents don't see me as a man. I know for a fact they just see me as Girl Lite.

Also the process to get my parents to use my pronouns was hell, because they kept using excuses.

Also, my parents are anti-neopronouns (and probably xenogenders), they've claimed its a mockery to trans people and when I try and explain they brush it off like my opinion as a TRANSman doesn't matter.

IDK I can't wait to move out, my parents have tried fucking everything to keep me here and I'm manifesting so hard I can finally just leave this terrible place.

My parents are racist, anti-MOGAI (i use mogai in replace of lgbtqia+, for future references), anti-everything I am and more.

I only semi-recently got 'accepted' by my parents as "might be autistic" because my cousin just got diagnosed with autism.

My parents also don't believe in DID/OSDD, the last time they talked about it, it was all stigma. It hurts living here man, i hate it.

Also, too add flame to fire, my mom fetishizes asians, japanese culture, and gay men. It pisses me off, my mom literally consumes yaoi and is so fucking weird w/ gay people.

#chaos chatter