#my brain goes places during art streams

[bruneburg]

what if tbhcreature life cycle

#thistbh #thistbh creature #thistbhcreature #i just made this during tonights art stream #my brain goes places during art streams #cursed #doodle #bruneburg #umbilical cord #balloon #stream #stream art #art i guess #meme

[marvelslut16]

Inseparable

Pairing: Reggie Mantle x reader

Synopsis: Reader and Reggie have been best friends since they were toddlers, nothing tearing them apart until Veronica their Junior year. This follows the rise and downfall of their friendship. Can they mend their friendship and be back to what they once were, will they be too hurt to fix their broken hearts, or will they finally admit their feelings for one another?

Word count: 2.6K+ (my hand slipped)

Warnings: Mr. Honey; he’s the worst villain to ever enter Riverdale, you can’t change my mind. Mentions of child abuse, nothing graphic past the mention of a black eye. Some angst. Spoilers for s4e4 technically, I still can’t believe what Mr. Honey did. 

A/N: I have like 11 requests I still have to get to, yikes. I swear I’ll do them soon, but inspiration hit and I ended up writing this. there isn’t enough Reggie love on Tumblr, plus I have a tiny crush on Charles Melton, so writing this was a win win. let me know what you think, and if I should write more for Riverdale. Veggie is better than Varchie (don’t come for me), but I still think Reggie deserves better than Ronnie. 

Growing up in a small town like Riverdale there weren’t too many kids to become friends with, but when you met Reggie Mantle on your first day of preschool you knew he would be your best friend for life. Archie was showing off on the playground by walking up the slide when the teacher wasn’t looking. The problem then being that Archie's foot slipped right as you were walking passed the bottom of the slide, and he slid down and ended up knocking you on the ground. You started to cry because he scraped your arm bad enough that it started to bleed. Reggie, whom you shared a table with in class, watched from the sidelines as your teacher helped you up and took you to the nurse, he got his revenge during arts and crafts later that day- ‘accidentally’ spilling red paint all over the front of Archie’s khaki pants. When Reggie made it to the table you quietly thanked him and shared your paint with him since the teacher said he couldn’t have new paint as a lesson to be more careful next time. 

As the years went on, yours and Reggie’s friendship only grew until you were inseparable; you two went on family vacations together, you went to every single one of his junior bulldog football games from the ages of eight to twelve, he went to your ballet recitals when you took classes in grade school even bringing you roses. Reggie was your rock at your grandmother’s funeral, you helped him pass his geometry class Sophomore year so he could stay on the football team, and you were the only person that he opened up to about his father’s abuse- having witnessed it with your own eyes a handful of times. 

Your mom was convinced you and Reggie would fall in love and get married one day, and your father was convinced your friendship would crumble and ultimately go down in a blazing fire. Going into your senior year you hate to admit that your father was right, his words bouncing around in your skull every time your brain shut off for longer than two seconds. Veronica Lodge moved to town Sophomore year, enticing every boy within a fifty mile radius with her upper East side charm. Reggie didn’t fall for Veronica right away, he fell for her junior year when he was helping her with La Bonne Nuit. And as cliche as it is, that’s when you realized you were in love with him, you had been for a while. The small nagging voice in the back of your head told you that it had been since that day in preschool. 

But you would grin and bear the pain, the soul crushing pain, if it meant that Reggie would still be in your life. And you did, for a while at least; until Reggie stopped calling and texting you back, until he stopped begging you to come to his games, until he stopped sneaking into your room every friday night after a game to go over the play footage where you would help him come up with new plays and tweaks to the old ones, until he started ignoring you in the halls in favor of making out with Veronica. You never hated the girl, she had been nothing but nice to you anytime you would interact, but God, you just wished she would disappear and give you your Reggie back. 

You resented Veronica, leading your interactions with the girl to be more tense and your answers clipped, and that was what led to the blazing fire your father talked about. Reggie offered you a ride home one day after school, and of course you jumped at the opportunity to spend time with him again. Instead of going to pops and talking like you thought you would, the two of you got into your biggest, and last, fight ever. 

It started with Reggie asking why you hated Veronica, where you defended yourself and swore that you didn’t. But he wouldn’t believe a word that came out of your mouth, continuing to press you as you two kept driving. The closer you got to the edge of town the worse the fighting got, your voice raising along with his. You accuse him of abandoning his friends, abandoning you, to be with Veronica all the time. He gets mad that you don’t understand why he’s with her all the time, claiming that you couldn’t understand not when you’ve never had a boyfriend. Something that he’s the reason for, since he scared all of the guys even remotely interested in you away with just one piercing glare or one lowly growled threat. 

The comment picking on your relationship status, or lack thereof, is the straw that broke the camel's back. You let loose just as you pass the sign thanking you for visiting Riverdale, the town with pep. Pep your ass, the small town is full of death and endless heartache wherever you look. You rip into Reggie, letting the hurt take over as you scream and scream at him-calling him a terrible friend. He finally screams back, claiming that you’re worse because you hate his girlfriend. He has to pull his precious car over, the car you helped him pick out when he turned sixteen, because he started swerving when you two got into a screaming match. 

The interaction ends with you getting out of the car on the side of the road leading into Greendale, slamming the car door behind you, knowing that he’ll get mad with how aggressive you’re being with his baby, his Bella. He does a sharp U-turn driving beside you, trying to coax you into getting back in the car with him. But you can’t do that, you can’t face him right now. So as you watch the taillights of the gun metal grey Chevelle disappear around the curve in the road you finally let the tears fall down your face, they stream harder and faster the closer you get to reentering the town with pep. 

Reggie had dropped your backpack off at your house when he got back into town, so it was sitting there waiting for you in your living room alongside your worried mother. You cried into her arms that night for hours, until you were all cried out, not caring that you look like a big baby. You had just lost Reggie, you had just lost your everything. You hadn’t talked to him since that day in the middle of your junior year, even after him and Veronica broke up and she went back to Archie like always. The days of your senior year seemed to fly by, October coming in what felt like mere days as opposed to months, and your last Halloween in Riverdale is today. 

You and Reggie would always wear matching costumes to trick or treat, and school just for fun as you got older, this always prompted your classmates to wonder if you two were finally dating. But that wouldn’t be happening this year, for the first time ever. You had even dressed up and sat on his porch in costume when you were six, handing out candy to the other kids so you could talk to Reggie, who was in costume too, through the window because he was sick with a 102.2 degree fever. You were dressed as Kim and Ron that year, his mom had even crocheted him a little Rufus to stick in his pocket. You couldn’t wait to get out of this town, away from Reggie, away from the places where you would see ghosts of your younger selves everywhere you went. 

Kevin calls you freaking out after he and Reggie got caught tp’ing Mr. Honey’s office. Kevin caved after Mr. Honey threatened to make sure he wouldn’t get into NYU if he didn’t. Kevin felt guilty for his actions, and even though you hadn’t talked to Reggie in close to a year you were worried about him. Worried what his dad might do to him when he hears he got in trouble at school again, and worried what the unhinged Mr. Honey might do to him himself. 

You don’t hear anything from Reggie the next day, not that you really expect to. You more-so hope he’ll call you, but you know what they say about hope- it breeds eternal misery. The day goes by at a snail's pace as you stare at your phone throughout the entirety of said day. You finally curl in on yourself and go to sleep after midnight, however sleep doesn’t stay for long. You’re awoken around two in the morning from your phone’s incessant ringing, in your dazed stupor you don’t realize it’s Reggie’s special ringtone- the bulldog cheer from Kim Possible. 

“Hello?” you ask hoarsely, making sure to stay quiet so your parents won’t hear. 

“(Y/N/N), can you talk?” your startled to hear Reggie’s voice on the other line. It sounds scratchy, like he was recently in a screaming match with someone. You open your eyes for the first time, finally accepting that you won’t be able to just roll over and slip back into your dreams. You glance at the alarm clock on your bedside table and your eyes widen at the time.

“It’s like two in the morning Reg,” you sigh, hoping he’ll wait till morning. 

“Can I come over?” Reggie’s pleading now.

“Later, we can go to Pop’s for lunch or something,” you yawn loudly into the phone in protest. 

“I’m already here,” before you can respond the line goes dead.

You can hear quiet, almost not there, footsteps outside your window as Reggie expertly navigates his way through the flowers and bushes outside your window. He taps on the window three times in quick succession, your old signal for when he would sneak over letting you know it was him at your window. You reluctantly get out of your warm cozy bed, stumbling to the window to open it for your former best friend. 

Your plans for just slipping back into bed anf hopefully nodding off while he talks go out the window as you come face to face with Reggie’s swollen face. He has a split lip and a black eye, you’re sure he has belt marks on his back too. You don't care that Reggie is climbing through the window a little too loudly, your sole focus now on fixing him up. Once he’s in the room you sneak to the kitchen and quietly grab an ice pack, stopping in the bathroom to grab rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, and ibuprofen.  

You hand him the pain reliever and your bottle of water, it’s not the first time you’ve shared, as soon as you shut your bedroom door behind you. He swallows the pills down with ease, and you both settle on your bed, a sad depressing routine. You don’t say anything as you clean his split lip, he winces slightly when the alcohol drenched cotton ball makes contact with his open wound. 

“Mr. Honey caught Kevin and I last night,” Reggie admits quietly. 

“I heard, Kevin told me,” you murmur unsure of where this conversation is headed, so you continue to dab at his lip.

“Mr Honey, he said that no one takes me seriously, no one since you. He said that he heard around school that I made my ‘persona’ bigger, became more of a prankster, after I lost you. He-he knew about my dad, (Y/N),” Reggie’s voice cracks, you can’t imagine what he must be feeling right now. “Said people at school are laughing at me, worst of all, you’re laughing at me.”

“Oh sweetie, no!” you're quick to jump in and defend. “I would never laugh at you, you know that. Never. No one else is either, he was just saying that to get a rise out of you.” Your arm moves without your permission, you push a strand of black hair out of his eyes before caressing his cheek softly. 

“He tp’d my car, that I get. That was actually funny,” Reggie hisses, you aren’t sure if it’s because you’re lightly pressing the ice pack to his shiner or because of what he’s about to say next. “But he broke Bella’s windshield, shattered her passenger side window, and busted her left headlight.” 

“I’ll kill him!” you jump up from your spot on your bed, no longer caring if you wake your parents. Reggie holds the ice pack to his eye with his right hand, cautiously reaching for your hands with his left. You calm down when his fingers intertwine with yours, sinking back down next to him. 

“I avoided going home all day, but when I did and my dad saw the car,” Reggie takes in a shaky breath, and you rub the back of his hand with your thumb. “He did, well he did this.” He uses your joined hands to gesture towards his face. 

You don’t say anything, instead just pulling him in for a hug. Reggie tenses at first before melting into your warm embrace. You pull him down onto the bed with you so you're laying side by side, he rests his head on your chest as you tuck the two of you in. 

“I know we haven’t talked in a while,” you let out dissatisfied hum as you card your fingers soothingly through his hair. “But you're the only person I wanted to see, the only person I ever want to see. It’s been torture without you (Y/N).”

“It doesn’t seem like it,” you say under your breath, but he hears you clearly with his ear pressed to your chest. 

“I was an idiot, I let my ego keep me from you,” he moves his head to look up at you, his brown eyes shine with sincerity. 

“Don’t do this right now Reggie,: your eyes fill with tears, “Don’t do or say anything you don’t mean just to make me feel better.”

Reggie moves his right arm from around your waist to brush away a stray tear that slipped out of your eye. He moves his thumb down your cheek to your lips, tracing them with the pad of his thumb. Reggie lightly tugs down on your lower lip causing you to uncage it from your teeth, when did you even bite it in the first place? 

“I love you (Y/N), I always have,” he looks away from your mouth so he can stare into your eyes. “And I think you have too.”

“I have, I love you so much Reggie,” he pulls your face down to meet him. The kiss is searing, and a little wet due to the tears leaking out of both of your eyes, but it’s perfect. You pull back when you get the slightly tangy taste of blood on your tongue. You immediately fuss over Reggie’s lip, said lip splitting again during the makeout. Reggie pulls you back down onto the bed and into his arms after you’ve dabbed at his lip with the cotton ball again. 

“How can I make it up to you?” his eyes shine with unshed tears as he stares lovingly at your face, almost like he’s mesmerized by you. “Not just tonight, but leaving you for Ronnie so I could try to get over you, and for every other night you’ve taken care of me.”

“Just never leave me again,” you whimper, which is cut off when he kisses you again. 

“Never,” Reggie’s never been more serious about anything in his life. 

You cuddle up to Reggie’s chest, his warmth and scent quickly lulling you into  a deep comforting sleep. You don’t care that he should sneak out the window and go home, or that your mom will find you two cuddled up in your twisted sheets when she comes to check on you at ten. All you care about is Reggie being safe, in your arms, and finally having him back in your life-but with one vast improvement to your relationship.

Permenent tags: @crimson-knuckled-queen​ @rexorangecouny @mrs-malfoy-always​

#reggie mantle x reader #reggie mantle #riverdale #riverdale imagine #reggie mantle imagine #reggie mantle one shot #reggie mantle x y/n #reggie mantle x you #riverdale fanfiction #reggie mantle fanfiction #reggie mantle deserves better #holden honey was an ass #if i ever see him again it'll be too soon

[uhlikzsuzsanna]

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read if you haven’t seen all of Season 1 of “Loki,” currently streaming on Disney Plus.

Ever since “Loki” first premiered in June, Kate Herron, who directed all six episodes of the Marvel Studios series, has had to pretend like she knew far less than she really does. For one, she couldn’t acknowledge that the homages to sci-fi classics like “Blade Runner” and “Brazil” that she’d baked into the elaborate sets for the Time Variance Authority — the cosmic bureaucracy tasked with maintaining the sacred timeline — were “meant to be sinister” rather than just “playful and quirky.”

For another, Herron was delighted to see fans theorizing after the very first episode that Kang the Conqueror — a character already set to appear in the Marvel Studios feature “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” as played by Jonathan Majors — was really pulling the strings of the TVA. But until the finale streamed last Wednesday, she couldn’t even hint that those fans were only half right: Majors does play the mastermind of the TVA, but he’s a variant of Kang referred to as He Who Remains. It’s only after He Who Remains encounters Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his female variant counterpart Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), and Sylvie plunges a blade into his heart, that the multiverse is reborn, creating the possibility for Kang the Conqueror to emerge.

Again, though: Herron couldn’t acknowledge any of that, even to those closest to her.

“Nothing has prepared me better for working with Marvel than playing tabletop games with my friends,” she says with a laugh. “It definitely taught me how to have a good poker face. You have to hide your hand — and sometimes lie.”

Now, thankfully, all of that is behind her — as is “Loki” itself. Despite receiving widespread acclaim for her assured, ambitious, and visually sumptuous work directing the show, Herron says she has decided not to return for Season 2 of the series.

“I gave it everything — in my soul, in my heart, everything,” she says. “I feel so proud of the work we’ve done. And yeah, I’ll be enjoying Season 2 as a fan.”

She’s quick to sing the praises of everyone she worked with at Marvel, and she says she’s “sure” she’ll work again with the studio. For now, however, she’s ready to take a holiday, and then turn to a project she’s writing herself “that’s really close to my heart that I really want to make.”

“It’s my own decision, but I just feel like my part with ‘Loki’ is finished now and I’m just excited to see where his story goes,” she says.

Before she parts ways for good, however, Herron spoke with Variety about bringing Jonathan Majors into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what she thought of the shocking revelation about infinity stones and what she would like to see happen in Season 2.

She always knew “Loki” would introduce Kang and the Multiverse…

From the very start, Herron says, she and head writer Michael Waldron knew that their six-episode run of “Loki” would always end with Loki and Sylvie meeting He Who Remains at his citadel, the result of which would cause the creation of the multiverse.

As Episode 6 makes clear, both of these events were massive turning points for the future of the MCU — and Herron still can’t quite believe she got to be the one to make them a reality.

“We were just, like, waiting to be told, ‘Actually, guys, we’ve had a change [of heart],'” Herron says. Instead, Herron says she and “Quantumania” director Peyton Reed participated in casting Majors in the role.

“I was just like, pinch me,” she says. “I can’t believe I was at the table for that, because I know it was such a big decision for them all.”

Herron also decided to have Majors provide the voices for all three “Timekeepers” who are supposedly at the head of the TVA, but are revealed by Sylvie to be nothing more than “mindless androids.”

“We didn’t have someone cast for those voices,” she says. “I remember thinking, well, ‘Wizard of Oz’ is clearly a reference for us. We should have the wizard. It’d be great if it’s Jonathan. So we sent him all the art of the timekeepers. And he just kind of came up with these incredible voices for each of them.”

…but not with a cliffhanger.

The most significant decision of the season, though, may be that it ends with a giant cliffhanger, when Loki discovers he’s in a brand new reality for the TVA in which Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) don’t even recognize him. But while Herron knew how this season of “Loki” would end, at first, she did not know that there would be any more seasons after it.

“When I started, there wasn’t a discussion of Season 2, exactly,” she says. “It was just that season of ‘Loki.’ As we got deeper into production, everyone was very happy, and obviously there’s so much to explore with Loki. It felt like we should continue the story. So I think the cliffhanger ending came in later in the process.”

Herron says she sprinkled in some hints to viewers that Loki is in a new timeline, like redressing sets to look slightly off, and recasting Eugene Cordero’s TVA receptionist Casey as a hunter headed to the armory in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. But her favorite bit is that the final line — said by Mobius to Loki — is the same as the first line spoken in the show, by a woman in the Gobi desert, also to Loki: “Who are you?”

“That was kind of the question of the whole first season,” Herron says.

She was just as shocked about the Infinity Stones as everyone else.

In the first episode, Loki discovers to his horror that not only does his magic not work inside the TVA, but Infinity Stones — heretofore believed to be the most powerful objects in the known universe — are just inert rocks there. The revelation sent shockwaves across the Marvel fandom; Herron was right there with them.

“That was in Michael’s script when I first got it to pitch [for the directing job],” she says. “I remember being like, ‘WHAT?! You put me through so much!’ But then I thought, ‘Oh, it’s kind of genius, because it shows how powerful the TVA are. Who are these people? What is this place?'”

Herron especially appreciated how her shock — and the audience’s — mirrored Loki’s own as the rug gets pulled out from under him. “I was quite excited by it,” she says. “It really shows you that there’s a new power in the MCU — and it’s not what we we spent the last decade dedicating our lives to.”

She told Kevin Feige she wanted gender parity among her crew.

Prior to “Loki,” Herron’s most high profile job was directing the second half of the first season of the Netflix dramedy “Sex Education.” She got the “Loki” job thanks to a 60-page pitch memo that filled out just about every detail of the world of the show. After hiring her, she says Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige asked her, “What are your terms?”

“This was the first time I was gonna get to hire my heads of department on a television show I worked on,” she says. “I was like, I’d really love [the crew] to be 50/50 across gender.”

Herron says she wasn’t out to fill any jobs on the film with a specific gender. But, she says, “There aren’t enough women in these roles. They’re out there. It’s a lack of opportunity. It’s not a lack of interest.”

She did end up hiring two women for critical roles that are still rarely occupied by women: cinematographer Autumn Durald (“The Sun Is Also a Star”) and composer Natalie Holt (History’s “Knightfall”).

“I felt like she was inside my mind,” Herron says of Durald. “We have the same taste. And I love the way that she talks about light as a character.”

Herron hired Holt unusually early for a composer, after she’d completed editing the first episode during the pandemic shutdown. She knew that the particular sci-fi film noir look of the show that she was developing with Durald needed similarly unique music, and she liked that part of Holt’s pitch was focusing on Loki’s identity as a character.

“Her music then started to inspire how I wanted to shoot other scenes,” Herron says. She’s especially enamored of Holt’s vision for her dynamic and foreboding theme for the TVA.

“She was like, ‘Oh, let’s have that theme be Kang’s’ — well, He Who Remains, I guess, in our show. But I hope that will go on to be Kang’s theme. That was the real fun of it is that you feel like he’s really played a hand now across the whole show, because you realize that music is his music.”

Herron, Durald, and Holt all deliver distinctive and superlative work that’s nothing like the MCU has quite seen before — and nothing quite like anything previously in their careers, either. And that’s entirely the point.

“I think for us, it was about just showing people what we could do and that we could do it at this level,” Herron says.

The episode in which Loki comes out as bisexual was inspired by Alfonso Cuarón and Richard Linklater.

Every episode of “Loki” features multiple extended scenes of two characters just talking to one another, a rarity in a comic book production. Herron says that cutting Episode 1 together during the pandemic lockdown and seeing the scenes between Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) play out so well “definitely gave us confidence” to continue that rhythm for the rest of the show.

That was especially true for Episode 3. Written by Bisha K. Ali (who went on to create the upcoming Marvel Studios series “Ms. Marvel”), the episode is essentially an extended meet-cute between Loki and Sylvie as they get to know each other on a planet doomed for total annihilation.

“Bisha’s reference was ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Children of Men,'” says Herron. “And it lit my brain on fire. It was kind of weird. It was almost like a bottle episode in the sense that we’re just with the two characters, but obviously, it’s Marvel, right? So they’re bonding in this Apocalypse, which also feels very Loki at the same time.”

That episode is best known for making Marvel Studios history, when Loki casually mentions that he’s had dalliances with both men and women. Herron says that when she first interviewed for the job, she asked if the show was going to acknowledge Loki’s sexuality, which had long been established in the comics as bisexual or pansexual.

“I think everyone wanted to acknowledge it,” she says. “It was just really about giving a care and consideration and doing it in the right way. I think everyone knew it was gonna be quite a big moment. So it was just really about doing it in a way that felt respectful. And honoring it.”

Herron also confirms what many fans had suspected, that she deliberately made the lighting scheme for the scene evoke the blue, purple and red of the bisexual flag. “We knew what we were doing with that scene,” she says with a smile.

She has a lot of ideas for what she’d like to see in Season 2.

Since Herron will be watching Season 2 of “Loki” only “as a fan,” she is also free to wildly speculate as to what she’d most like to see happen — like how, wherever Loki story leads, “we’ve opened the door” for the character to explore his sexuality with men as well as women.

Otherwise? She says she wants to know where Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) goes to when she leaves the TVA in search, she tells Mobius, of “free will.”

“I love her,” Herron says. “Gugu used to always call her an indoor girl, which made me laugh, but she is. She’s in the office, but she used to be this kick-ass Hunter. So I’m like, Okay, well, where’s her path going?”

Herron is also keen to learn more about Hunter B-15’s backstory — since she deliberately decided to hide it in the scene in Episode 4 when Sylvie shows B-15 her repressed memories as a variant.

“I was like, we shouldn’t see her memories,” Herron says. “It’s a character that thought they had power and realizes they have no power. It felt really powerful to at least give her some power in that scenario. The memories are private. They’re hers.” She pauses. “Also as a fan, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, who is she?!'”

“And obviously, you know, Loki and Sylvie?” Herron continues, on a roll. “He’s in a completely different reality. What’s going to happen to him? How will he get back? Or will he get back? And where’s Sylvie? She’s still in the Citadel? And the multiverse of it all. What the hell is going to happen?!”

Herron chuckles at her own excitement. “So I think there’s so many questions to be answered, and so much more road to travel with all our characters,” she says. “You know, I’m really proud that I got to set up Loki’s story here. But there’s so many different aspects of his identity and personality that’s yet to be explored. I’m excited to see where it goes.”

#Loki #Loki series #Tom Hiddleston #Kate Herron #Jonathan Majors #variety interview #2021.07.17

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 3

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1 and Part 2. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1 and 2. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one.

(Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

The Battle of Ostagar cutscene is one of the first big cutscenes that got made during production. When it was shown to the team for the first time, it was one of those moments where DG felt like “Awesome, this is a game!” Context: During the development of a game it feels more like doing a series of disconnected tasks and assets rather than working on a game, so seeing stuff come together at times like this is rad. The first time it was shown, it had temporary placeholder voiceacting.

Pathfinding is always a nightmare to do, especially in games which involve a party of NPCs. As soon as other characters are involved alongside the PC, it’s exponentially more difficult and takes up a lot more resources. The PC is the most complex thing going on visually on-screen, with so many moving pieces, and in party-based games you have four [etc] of them. So, some critique that’s made of the DA games in regards to this subject which compares it to games like The Witcher doesn’t really make sense, as The Witcher has a solo PC.

‘Weird mage hats’ didn’t really become a trademark ‘DA thing’ akin to their place of random pieces of cheese around the world until later games. For DAO, someone probably asked the artists to create “mage helmets”. Mage hats actually looked better in the concept art than they did in-game. What happened was that they were already modelled and then they didn’t have time to re-do them.

DAO was made for PC first. The plan from the get-go though was that it would be an all-platform release (PC/360/PS3). Games like these are always made for the “lowest common denominator” from among the various platforms that they’re being planned to release for. Games have to be made for the most stringent/basic of the platforms because this makes for less conversion rate. At the time of DAO’s development, the PS3 was getting weak graphically and getting old, and this was quite a limitation: “Why do we have to limit [crowds?] because of this one platform?” “Well, we just gotta”. The original models were a bit too detailed. Later on, the artists started making models that had lower polycounts that they could put in a bit more of. DA was never really focused on making environments realistic in an ambient manner (making environments less “gamey” and more lived in, like having crowded places). They could have put more emphasis there but this would have led to a resources issue. Ambience basically wasn’t a high priority. As a writer DG isn’t keen on this decision and naturally he wanted the world to look more realistic, but he noted that it’s easy for him to say this when this would be work that he didn’t have to do personally.

During DAO development, they might have just had a dev sphere originally that was called “tech design”. DG thinks this was later broken up into systems design, combat design and maybe level design. Level designers are the people that are the implementers of the plot. Narrative design is a branch of the level design spoke. System designers respond to requests from lead designers. Narrative designers and writers don’t interact with system designers much unless they have to. As an example of interaction here, system designers might come to writers and say, “Alright, so we’re doing combat, what are the sorts of things a mage can do in this world?” The writers would be like “Ok, these are the sorts of spells we imagined.” The system designers might then come back with “Ok, that fulfills 2 of the 10 things we need mages to be able to do in combat. Is it possible that mages could do [this]?” Sometimes it is, and other times it would be like “No, that’s really outside of the lore”. Still, sometimes said original-lore-breaking things would be added to the game a week later due to necessity and DG would be like “Oh ok”. This kind of stuff is an insight into how some aspects of the lore came to be or changed over time during development.

The system designers on DAO got a better idea of what could be done and what could not be done according to the lore as things went on. At first, DG had to keep telling them things like “It’s not that big a deal, but in the lore mages can’t teleport. Instant teleportation isn’t possible in the world”. The system designers needed a spell where someone could get from spot A to spot B really fast on the battlefield. DG said that that’s fine in itself, “have them turn into a cloud of bees or have a light that moves between the two places. We can use magic as a transition or as a speed thing, but what is against the lore is instant teleportation, to traverse distance like that”. At first the system designers weren’t on board with it, but they got on board with it later. 

This sort of thing doesn’t just depend on the system designers. It also depends on what the tech artists are willing to do. Sometimes a certain request made of them was too hard and they said they weren’t able to do it. Other times it was a matter of DG not communicating the request properly, or the tech artists had already done the work and so throwing out all their work to re-do it just because he didn’t communicate clearly wouldn’t have been cool. So sometimes the originally planned lore got contravened, and sometimes things other parts of the team implemented in the game became the new lore.

LE made an insightful observation at this point: You can’t think of game development as a cohesive series of decisions that everyone on the team is involved in. This simple isn’t how it works at all, especially on large complex projects. There are processes at some studios for decision-making, but most of the time, a bunch of decisions get made by system designers. Others get made by level designers, still others by narrative designers. Situations then arise where someone notices a certain decision and that that decision and another one contradict each other. This is where conflict arises and a solution has to be negotiated. This is why often in games we get elements in the end product that are dissonant, because it was discovered too late or by the time it was realized, it was too difficult to change. It’s actually a miracle that on a game of DAO’s depth and scope that all these things largely hold together. [My note: With this insight and the context below on documentation, it makes sense how BW sometimes appear to ‘forget aspects of their own lore’ or end up contradicting parts of the lore in different parts of the franchise]

Sometimes such things would be noticed in time and DG would go and say, “Can we not do that or do something else instead?” and the relevant parties would be totally accommodating and do it (depending on how much time they had or how much time it would take to remedy). Sometimes this worked out and sometimes it didn’t. For the most part, everyone wants to work together. DG couldn’t be involved in every aspect of systems design “like some kind of All-Watchful eye of lore”, so he had to rely on the people who were there knowing enough from the documentation. Not everybody reads every document however. There was so much documentation even back during DAO. DG can only imagine the sheer amount of world/lore documentation that now exists now in the run-up to DA4; he said he thinks that nobody at this point on the current team has read it all, as editor/lore-wrangler Ben Gelinas isn’t with BW anymore. Lots of legacy documentation accumulated very quickly. Sometimes, the old document would still be there. Over time it became harder for people to discern which was the most recent version of a particular document. Sometimes people didn’t update the relevant documentation after changing things. Lore documentation was particularly bad for this issue. BG wrangled all the documentation and created an internal reference wiki (essentially acting as a lorekeeper). He was constantly coming in and picking DG’s brain to clarify conflicting aspects or obtain the correct, in-date information etc (“Good on him”).

DAO was the first time DG was involved in voice-recording. Prior to that he was only on the receiving end, in that the recordings would come in and he’d review them as they did so. DAO is when BW set up their own VO department and where Caroline Livingstone came on. CL wanted DG and Mike Laidlaw to be more involved in the casting process. As a result, the writers then were to write casting scripts: like, ‘For Morrigan, can you write a 1 page script that goes through 3 big emotions? [like regular talking for a bit, then here’s a bit of heightened emotion such as anger, then here’s a part where they’re being funny if they were a comedic character] These scripts had to be kept short so that the recording that was made from it wouldn’t be more than 30-40 seconds in length.

For the initial VA sessions, DG and CL flew down to Technicolor studioin LA and they had all the major castmembers there (later on, recording sessions were done a lot more remotely; this became easier as BW’s setup got more sophisticated). The idea was that they would both be present live in-person for the first 2 or 3 sessions to help each VA find their ‘voice’, and for DG at the first session to sit down with each VA and walk them through who their character was, what DA was about, and help them figure out how their character should talk. Claudia Black was the first of these sessions and he was “a wreck” going into that one. It got easier after that however. CL gave directions into the soundproof booth and DG was present to give notes on things like pronunciation or the intentions behind some lines. He says he learned everything he now knows about VO direction from CL. The things and tricks CL can do to get a performance out of an actor are amazing. Sometimes an actor would get a bit fixated or stuck on a particular way of delivering a line. CL had atrick to help them past this; “I want you to clear your mind, and I want you to give me a version of this line that’s more yellow”. The idea is that they just had to break out of where they had been stuck in that mindset, and the thing was that it doesn’t matter what “yellow” meant, but what was important was what “yellow” meant to the actor. They could then take that new varied delivery and progress from there.

Alistair’s dialogue when the PC talks to Flemeth outside her hut was the first complex conversation DG wrote for DAO. It was the first one that had a lot of branching and fiddling to it. The hardest conversations to write are the ones with a lot of exposition, and when they do have exposition still making this interesting and natural. At this point in the game, the player has no agency, just reactivity. The devs talked a lot about this subject when they wrote the origin stories. Some of the stories allow the player to initially say no and refuse to join the Wardens, but you always end up being railroaded (the devs here ended up doing a form of the trope ‘But Thou Must!’). Do you give the player the option to say no? Is it important to allow them that option? At some point, writers have to accept that the player has some level of buy-in and is game to play. They discussed a lot where they sat on this and what is agency. “Maybe don’t worry about offering the player every possible choice, but about having reactivity.”

Loghain wasn’t okay with letting Cailan die. He didn’t sit and angst about it openly where the player could see, and once the decision had been made, it being Loghain, it was Made and Had To Be Done (he felt that it was something that had to happen). But he didn’t kill the son of the woman he’d once loved dearly as a random off-handed thing.

The Solas twist was planned from the beginning, from the DAO dev days. Such big things/broad strokes have stayed the same. However, some of the details have changed or been added along the way. They didn’t know for instance that Solas was going to be a companion; that was something they came up with when they were planning DAI. Flemeth’s true identity has never changed.

Zevran says Rinna was an elf, but WoT says she was a bastard child of a noble in line for the Antivan throne (the Antivan royal family being human). When asked if this was an oversight, DG said yes she was a bastard, but she may have been really far down the line of succession, i.e. technically in line, but would probably never have been allowed to take the throne in practise had that scenario ever actually arisen.

DA was maybe inspired a bit/some by ASOIAF. This was way before it was on TV of course. DG at the time had read the first book or so. He liked the fact that it was a fantasy setting but low-magic, and was about the people in the world and their politics rather than magic, prophecy and other high fantasy stuff.

It was only by DAI that the system designers decided that it was okay to think of banter as an “activity that players engaged in”. In previous games, the devs had inadvertently managed to ‘train’ players to immediately stop when companion banter fires so that they could hear it all (because if you do something else, it gets cut off). When the level designers put together the spaces, they accounted for what players would be doing i.e. how much time between combat. They didn’t however account for like “You’re travelling down this hall and there’s a banter for half of that space. This is an activity, so it’s okay not to put anything in there”. This is how the inadvertent training happened, when originally banters were supposed to be a thing that ran as you move around the world (as opposed to stopping and standing still). 

When asked if the Blight resulted from the creation of the Veil or pre-dates it: “I think you’ll probably have to wait on the game[s] for that answer, if it ever explains it”. He was also asked whether Arlathan is the Golden City. He won’t answer such questions naturally because they are “DeepLooooooore™~~ ♫”.

DG isn’t sure that he will play DA4 when it comes out. It’s not that PW and the team won’t do a good job, they will, it’s just that when DG plays RPGs he has an analytical mindset going on and finds it difficult to slip into the game and just enjoy. For DA4, as he was previously so involved in DA, there’ll naturally probably be an extra level of that with feeling like “What would I have done [for particular parts of the game’s design]?”. Alternatively he might instead feel like “Wow, this is awesome, here’s a game I would have made but didn’t have to do any work on!” DG stressed that it’s important to him to be fair about the work of his former colleagues - he wouldn’t want to come out and be like “I wouldn’t have made [this or that] choice”. He also noted that just because something might be a call he personally wouldn’t have implemented in the game, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad call. There are people out there where if DG intimated at all that there was an aspect of DA4 that he wasn’t keen on, he’s worried that they would pounce on it and use it as ammunition against the current team (who are his friends that he really cares about and wants to do well). He walked away from DA voluntarily and is happy his game will continue on. PW popped by in chat at this point and agreed that it’s definitely hard to play something that you used to work on.

Other assorted tidbits:

DG really opposed the part at the Battle of Ostagar where mabari are set to charge the darkspawn horde - “That’s not how you would use dogs [in war]”

There was supposed to be a cutscene where Flemeth rescues the HoF and Alistair from the top of the Tower of Ishal in her dragon-form. This was cut. DG remembered being angry about this like “nobody is gonna buy that you fall unconscious and then wake up in the hut totally rescued. [...] I guess I’m not always right”

When DG went to Beamdog there was a period where they thought about making a Baldur’s Gate 3. They put together a pitch and had a long series of discussions contemplating things like “What do we need from BG3? What do we expect it to have in order to have the BG name? What is needed and not needed to connect to from the previous games?”

DG isn’t sure who designed the DAO inventory system

PW in chat recalled a game writer from another company who was really ragging on DAI on the Christmas Day after release

Narrative designer and system designer are very different positions/roles with very different responsibilities

Simon Templeton as Loghain did all his voicework stuff in one take, which was very impressive

It would have been the marketing department that chose 30 Seconds To Mars for music. DA was really good at choosing up-and-coming acts for this that weren’t huge when they used their songs, but became huge afterwards

During work on Baldur’s Gate 2 was the most DG has ever crunched. He slept in the office a few times

“As soon as you get both Alistair and Morrigan in the party, that’s when it’s like ahh yes, this is a BioWare game”

Were Flemeth and Morrigan’s interactions with each other and the PC when Morrigan is being told to leave the Wilds and go with the Hero an act, considering that Morrigan did know about the OGB plan? No. That was The Plan, but said plan wasn’t like “Ok, she’s going to leave Right Now”

The elves and the inversion of the traditional elven trope are DG’s favorite part of the world/world-building

One of the original intentions for DAO was to make it so that the player wouldn’t need a healer in the party, or that there would be different kinds of healing, or that healing itself wouldn’t be a thing, but this just didn’t work out

The Imperial Highway used to be a really important part of the lore but it kind of got forgotten a bit

It’s kinda funny that after release some players expressed that Corinne Kempa’s accent as Leliana was “sooo fake”. It’s not fake, she’s actually a Brit that moved to France when she was young, so she has the exact type of accent that Leliana would have (Leliana was born in Orlais and is culturally Orlesian, but her mother was Fereldan and she considers herself as such)

They talked some about the need for documentation and how doing this can feel beurocratic and uncreative and how like you’re not working on a game or writing. PW in chat expressed that there was a year where they spent a lot of it working in PowerPoint and Excel, “so I feel this”

When they switched art directors to Matt Goldman, his first big complaint was about all the brown. He came to DG like “Is there a lore reason for or are you particularly in favor of the brown for story reasons?” DG was like “Uhh no” and Matt was then like “Ok good”

Console codes/commands aren’t usually stripped out of a game before release, they are usually still in the built, just disabled. The system itself is not removed but how to access said system is

BW doesn’t crunch as bad as we hear some companies do, and kind of prided itself on “not being terrible at crunch”. But BW’s “not terrible at crunch” is still crunch. We obviously don’t commend abusive family members for only abusing people on certain days of the week or whatever

Kate Mulgrew is American but she at times did the same thing a lot of the British VAs did, which was that the devs had a lot of struggle with getting them to say “darkspawn” correctly, with the emphasis in the right places. They’d say “dark SPAWN” as if it was two words with an adjective, and the stress put in the wrong place

Lack of children in DAI was a resources thing. They only had time to make a certain number of models. There was a series of meetings where they had to decide what things to cut. In the last meeting it was like ‘Here’s a bunch of things you don’t want to cut, we need to cut 4 of them’

They decided to put horned qunari back in DA2 because then they had the resources to do so. They then ended up having to explain why there were hornless qunari at the same time, and make this an in-world explanation as opposed to just ‘We didn’t have the resources, that was totally intentional’

Lots of players missed out on recruiting Leliana and/or Sten on their first playthrough and didn’t even know they existed/could be recruited. “Apparently we weren’t that great at pointing players in the right direction”

Tevinter is inspired by the Byzantine Empire (which wasn’t called that at the time incidentally, this is a name given by historians after the fact), what used to be the Roman Empire after the western part fell. This is the era Tevinter today is meant to encapsulate: decadent but clearly in decline, far away from the heyday and the heights of the former empire [source]

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[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

#dragon age #bioware #video games #morrigan #queen of my heart #alistair theirin #fav warden #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #solas

[simpbur]

hello! i would like ur 40 song wiblur playlist

anon thank you so much for asking <333 while it would’ve been easier to just drop the link i have so many thoughts about everything so i explained why every single song has its spot on this list which was IMMENSELY fun for me

(also: if anyone does want the link i can provide both apple music and spotify but if u would like the apple music link i’d rather it be through dms or an ask off anon that i can make private!)

another also: i bolded all the songs for ease of perusing if you don’t want the director’s commentary and bolded + italicized the ones that i think fit Very Well

another another also: wrote the second bit of this on my laptop and the keyboard is p funky so if there are any typos or things that do not make sense i will try to fix them asap haha

saint bernard by lincoln: this is one of those like. Dream SMP Songs that i added because it fits into so many different relationships and plot lines and arcs but i think there’s some connection to c!wlbur somewhere out there. idk i asked my friend and he said to add it so this one goes out to him

amnesia was her name by lemon demon: ghostbur song ghostbur song! mostly comes from this lovely animatic

o valencia! by the decemberists: okay this is one of those songs that only really has one lyric that fits but is an absolutely banger so it’s here anyway. you’ll also notice a trend of quasi love songs that i relate to c!wilbur’s perception of l’manburg and i think this song shows this in a really cool way, esp with the chorus (‘and i swear to the stars i’ll burn this whole city down’ is The Line)

achilles come down by gang of youths: another one of those Dream SMP Songs. i think this fits better with c!tommy but i like it too much to remove it. this is a somewhat common trend with the earlier songs on this playlist (i’ve been building this thing since january, for reference)

brave as a noun by ajj: another Dream SMP Song. i think certain verses fit better than others when it comes to wilbur’s character but that ones that work really work

harness your hopes by pavement: a song that is one here for vibes alone. i have no idea what these lyrics mean. all i know is that i heard it, thought of c!wilbur, and put it on the playlist. thank you all for being here

evelyn evelyn by evelyn evelyn: sad-ist made this a tommy and tubbo song (as she should) so it’s validity on this playlist is questionable but folks used to compare it to wilbur and tommy’s relationship during the pogtopia arc and i think some points were made there

the execution of all things by rilo kiley: i’m so excited to get here because this was the first song i put on the playlist that i think really works and i thumb nailed an animatic for the last verse and november 16th so! i think it’s a good l’manburg song and the last verse has some good ghostbur lines (‘and lately you’re all alone with nothing left but sleep/but sleep never comes to you, it’s the guilt and forever wakefulness of the weak’)

i’m just your problem from adventure time: this ones a bit tricky since at is my favorite show of all time and i cannot detach this song from its in-show context very well but there is a very cool animatic with this song that landed it a spot on the playlist

man burning by josh ritter: almost became an animatic but the audio i wanted to use (which i recorded at a josh ritter concert and it’s just him and his guitar and there’s echo and it’s very haunting and pretty) has my stepbrother singing in the background and i could not edit it out so. that will probably not happen. but anyways the only hole i would pick in this song is that it’s mostly about self sabotage which isn’t really applicable but i think the imagery is cool

mamma mia by abba: here me out. here me out. this is another song that fits so well and i have spent so many hours thinking about this and somewhere there is a note on my phone explaining how every single line relates to c!wilbur’s entire arc from founding l’manburg to the resurrection (made when we thought gbur was going to get resurrected in january) and just. the metaphorical ‘you’ is l’manburg does this make any sense (another almost animatic except now that wilbur’s actually back it might become an actual animatic)

the other side of paradise by glass animals: no idea why this is here other than being a Dream SMP Song. it’s good tho

infinitesimal by mother mother: they saaaaay it stared with a big bang but they saaaaaaaay it came out of a small thing latelyyyyy i’ve been feeling like a big bang You Know

curses by the crane wives: had a thing drawn out for this song showing the comparisons between c!wilbur and c!niki because of the chorus and i think the last two lyrics of said chorus are the best thing about this one

lonely eyes by the front bottoms: gotta admit that i have no idea how this song got on here but i’ve come to associate it with ghostbur based on vibes alone. it’s a friendly song he’s a friendly ghost it works. the other tfb song coming up fits a bit better methinks

king of new orleans by better than ezra: not to put better than ezra on my c!wilbur playlist but like. something about the whole ‘tasing something up to let it fall’ motif makes me think

get me away from here, i’m dying by belle and sebastian: another almost animatic song (there’s a trend here). not only does the story told in this song work i like the lines ‘play me a song to set me free/nobody writes them like they used to so it may as well be me’ in relation to my l’manburg

montgomery forever by the front bottoms: certain bits and pieces of this song fit so well, specifically the chorus and those bits in the last two choruses Yeah (’montgomery forever and ever and ever and now they’re blowing it up/(x2)/as you started laughing and crying and trying to explain how all you want to do is leave’)

don’t look back in anger by oasis: out of all my almost animatic songs, this one got the furthest. the animatic, which I got pretty far in thumbnailing, was about wilbur and tommy and kind of drawing comparisons between their characters, also about the revolution in general. maybe i’ll finish that animatic one day idk 

snow by ricky montgomery: i wish i had a link for this so bad but!! saw art on twitter!! with the lyric ‘bury me six feet in snow’!! and went ahfsdjfk!!

burning pile by mother mother: a Dream SMP Song. also a jam there’s no real specific connection for this one but i think it could fit in a couple of ways

rounds by the oh hellos: in the same position as snow except it was on tumblr..... @ whoever made this comic i saw these lyrics in your brain is massive and your art is incredible

lovely by mt. eddy: on here for vibes alone. there’s something in the lyrical content too, but my thoughts in that regard are not very fleshed out

adventures in solitude by the new pornographers: ah yes..... the song that prompted this all...... this is a beautiful and incredibly well written song and if you’re going to listen to any song off of this playlist i’d encourage you to listen to this one. it’s place of here is mostly cause of the chorus but the imagery in the verses could all represent a part of c!wilbur and i’d love to explore that more

caught in the middle by paramore: obligatory paramore song. i think it got on here because limbo = ‘middle’ but i’m not quite sure. on the verge of being deleted if i can find a better pmore song

delicate by damien rice: one of the oddest songs on this list and i am well aware that it sticks out like a sore thumb. a song that’s on here pretty much because of one lyric, which is ‘and why’d you sing hallelujah/if it means nothing to you’ which i related to both eret’s betrayal and how my l’manburg is hallelujah yknow

bang! by ajr: almost animatic song. i think we all know what the bang is here

somewhere only we know by lily allen: ik i said don’t look back in anger has the most potential to get made into an animatic but this song might actually take it place. on par with adventures in solitude in terms of how pretty of a song it is, and probably even moreso. it’s kind of turned into a ghostbur song in my head, and makes me cry like an infant child every time i hear it

a pearl by mitski: i cannot defend this song’s place on here past the line ‘it’s just that i fell in love with a war and nobody told me it ended’

eight by sleeping at last: the official c!wilbur song needs a spot on here <3 if i can dig up the clip of cc!wilbur talking about this song in relation to his character i’ll add it but until then yeah <3

always by rilo kiley: no idea why this is on here but it fits well!! could not tell you why!! banger!!

celebration guns by stars: it’s a hauntingly beautiful song about war, and kind of one of those that necessarily isn’t about wilbur but moreso his place in the story? idk how to explain it but yes

passerine by the oh hellos: it’s. it’s from the . the fic. yeah h

oh, you are the roots that sleep beneath my feet and hold the earth in place by bright eyes: added this after the real resurrection and i think it’s because fo the imagery? also the last verse

we are beautiful, we are doomed by los campesinos!: all i have to say is ‘i cannot emphasize enough that my body/is a badly designed, poorly put together vessel/harboring these diminishing, so called vital organs/i hope my heart goes first, i hope my heart goes first!’ has always made me think of pogtopia era wilbur :(

dead weight by jack stauber: no real connection other than eret played this song during a break during the ghostbur’s january ‘resurrection’ and i heard it and went :0

point me at lost lands by tired pony: gives me season on l’manburg vibes..... i love how free and passionate it sounds and that's p much the only reason it’s on this list haha

ghosting by mother mother: added this five seconds ago because i could not BELIEVE it was not on here. ghostbur song. mans sang it on that one stream with the reverb and everything. the lyrics ‘i will be kind and i’ll be sweet/if you stop staring straight through me’ hit particularly hard back when everyone thought that ghostbur was actually wilbur in disguise 

#oh man. oh man #this was so fun ty anon #i'll do some spell checking after i write my english paper but for now take this #wooo boy #also if i interpreted canon wrong i do apologize i am here to have fun and think about fictional character #anon #ask

[overlyimmersed]

So I've been posting a lot of Gravity Falls lately. I've had this thought flailing around in my head for a while, but I'm always nervous to talk about my opinions, especially when I get the impression that I'm on the less popular side of the issue. My emotions are squishy and I don't like conflict o-O but here goes anyway.

I don't really care for Lost Legends. I mean, it's fine. It's nice to get new GF content, "Face It" was really good and I liked that one a lot. And how can you not love getting to see more of Stan and Ford as kiddos? But I...really rather hate "Don't Dimension It".

It didn't used to be so intense, I read it and it was whatever, a cool premise, good art. It was fine. But the more praise I see for that story, the more my blood boils! Everyone is so...out of character! The only character that didn't behave caricature-ish was Dipper and that's cuz we barely saw him.

It felt like a fanfic. A bad one, written by one of the people who's a little too enthusiastic when the don't like a character. Namely Mabel here, and Ford to a lesser degree.

I know some people in the fandom feel like Mabel was incredibly selfish during the series, and while you can't argue that she did act selfishly in many instances it's not actually as bad as these haters like to think. Not only do some people blow Mabel's actions out of proportion, they also make Dipper out like he's completely selfless and victimized by his sister the whole time. Dipper acts just as selfishly as Mabel just as often. People like the cite "The Time Traveler's Pig" as evidence of Mabel's selfishness and Dipper's selflessness. That's hardly accurate. Dipper spent the entire episode breaking time law to manipulate Wendy and hurt Robbie. The entire episode is Dipper literally manipulating the time stream for his own gain.

But I'm not trying to vilify Dipper either. The fact is that they're fricking 12! Of course they're selfish! Think back to yourself at that age, and be honest about it. You were awful. I was awful! Kids in the throws of puberty are awful! Your brain is at it's most selfish and least sensible point. That doesn't make them monsters though. It just means they make a lot of mistakes interacting with others.

There was one time when I was around 14, myself and another girl had been very best friends for years, and this day I hadn't seen her at all. I spent the day wondering if she'd stayed home from school. But after the final bell, I finally ran into her. I noticed her hair was styled different and the first thing I said when I walked up, the first thing that whole day to my very best friend, was "wow you look awful!" And laughed. I wasn't trying to be mean, it just...happened. A stupid, thoughtless moment from a dumb teenager.

The point is, Mabel isn't anymore selfish then her brother is. Then any other person her age. And certainly not as self-centered and ditzy as she's portrayed in "Don't Dimension It". She never acted that badly in the show and it's just annoying. And I was fully prepared to just ignore it, but then everyone started talking about how good they thought that story was and it just got me all riled...

And as for Ford, his characterization was also off, though to a lesser degree. It's that bit where he and Stan are floating in space and calling for Mabel, Ford may not be super familiar with Mabel, or kids in general, but he has some common sense. That was just a bad joke. But even if it was simply meant to be a bit and could be over looked, that entire interaction is used both in the comic and by the fandom as evidence that Stan and Ford both are poor caretakers.

They're not the very most responsible people in the world, that's just a fact, but Stan has done a damn fine job looking after the kid all summer. It might be easy to forget because they're always called kids, and the kids in this show are drawn weirdly short compared to the adults, but Dipper and Mabel are TWELVE. They're not toddlers. Stan giving them space to go run around town and be kids is not hugely irresponsible. I and my friends did the same stuff at that age. Going all around our small town totally unsupervised, cuz we were old enough to keep ourselves alive for a handful of hours. We had learned the basic life lessons of not talking to strange adults and looking before we crossed the street and were old enough to flex some of our limited independence.

With kids age 12 and up, a caretaker only really has to keep them alive and give help WHEN ASKED to be good at it. 12 year olds don't need constant supervision and round the clock care. Stan made sure the had food every day, a safe place to sleep at night, and help with something if they really needed it. And when it became apparent he could no longer provide these basics (See Gideon Rises) he sent them home. Stan is a perfectly fine caretaker, at least to kids old enough to be alone for any amount of time. Not sure I'd trust him with a baby, but he did perfectly fine with a pair of pre-teens.

So yeah, bottom line is that I don't like "Don't Dimension It". It mischaracterized Mabel's selfishness, Ford's common sense, and Stan's caretaker ability to the extent of making them caricatures and it annoys me.

#gravity falls #thoughts #opinions #I'm not saying anyone's bad for liking it #this is just how I feel #I'm also not looking for a debate... #these are just my feelings and opinions #vent post #mabel #stan #ford #lost legends

[iconsumeheadcanons]

persona characters autism headcanons!

hi im autistic and i started my day with sun so now im !!!!!!!!! some of these headcanons are from elsewhere on tumbr, but i dont know where :(((  so i am hoping someone out there knows that n that everybody knows that i love them <3

(also go check out mollypaup and i think hypeswap if you havent already! they post some good stuff autism+adhd hc too!!! i think.. oh! and thieves-in-the-palace!!!)

P5

Joker

there was some artwork from someone on tublr..where they pointed out that he doesnt really talk outside the metaverse so--hes hyperverbal as joker and just near nonverbal as akiren

he stims ALL THE TIME. that phone thing, the pencil thing, the little tappy tap of his foot, pulling at his bangs when hes embarrassed/smug. someone get him a fidget spinner. he’ll prob learn to do tricks with it

he probably sucks at focusing in class, like i know its just the game design but hes always surprised out of his daily “star out the window at the nearby office building” when his teachers ask him questions

mona mentions when the pt is at Wilton for the first time (after they run into shido) that joker eats like shit, and that could have multiple causes at the start of the story of course, but when i first played i thought that joker was a picky eater and that the variety (and amount of food) at the buffet would be an Ordeal...

tho mona makes that comment bc joker looked pale after having a little ptsd moment from shidos voice, but i didnt know that the first time i played

maybe when joker makes a face at ryuji putting so much ginger in his gyudon? joker probably does not like pickled ginger lol

his favortive foods are all spicy, which is why the curry he makes for his friends is always ‘overly spicy’, and why kasumi makes him a curry bento and joker kept going “...?” .... “....?!”

overly reflective glasses have been a great plus for him bc now he never has to make real eye contact every again!

mona Soft. play with Ann hair. maybe Braid. nice

puns (Gorou the Goroumet)

he has so many options to be straight up rude sometimes in game. he probably no clue on his own, which is why he defaults to Not Talking. people probably mention his constant scary face, which is just him being nonexpressive, squinting at all the fucking bright lights, and Tired

executive function who? we do everything last minute folks

high pain tolerance, which is why he was the kid that was always climbing trees in elementary school to get basketballs unstuck from the branches

his sixth sense lets him see treasure and possible places to climb/crawl bc 1. Shiny? Steal it. Steal it Now. and 2. Could i fit in that? Time to Find Out

probalby a bit of a klepto too oops. he’ll return it tho!! but he has to do it dramatically or he’ll die

cant sit properly to save his life

smells and touch are Great, they can keep him grounded when his brain goes off to police or dead rivals or guilt or

if a friend hung out with him and gave him total reigns of the agenda, he would choose to nap on the floor while his friend does something off to the side quietly

hyperfocuses on handy tasks (i.e. lockpicks, coffee brewing, cleaning, his part time jobs) and some things like movies and books. everything else is a tossup

his (normal) navigation app is his most used app bc he still doesnt know where hes going, even though he only goes to the same few places in the city

hates being sweaty, literally cannot stand it. probably double exhausted during the summer

but Needs Compression so hes often Struggling

Futaba

paraphrase from p5d “i have no motor skills so i cant play rhythm games :(” need i say more? (i will regardless)

echolalia all the time, from anime, memes, the PT

those headphones she wears all the time? noise cancelling ear protectors babey

only talks about her interests, “normal” talking is Not Easy, but she is still communicative w others despite her worries. shes not “hard to understand” at all but she feels the anxiety nonetheless

only talks informally, cannot talk ‘politely’ with out imitating someone around her

shes had meltdowns and anxiety attacks in game :( i relate so hard

Technology. thats it

def had an egypt phase that pops up every few months. probably came from yu-gi-oh

has Immune to Bright Lights buff.  joker is very jealous

“Time to make like a tree and leave!” and 30 other iterations

video game metaphors are the only ones that makes sense to her

probably relates hard to robot characters in anime for their general androgyny and confusion about human emotions and connections

probably gets told that shes “too smart to be on the spectrum” by teachers >:( she fails their classes on purpose

wakaba’s autistic too that just how it is

the Connection that she establishes with Joker is so Warm. my life goals include adopting an older brother like futaba has lsdkfjslkfj

also eater of 5 foods only, i mean, she brings cup ramen to the beach. i just really admire her...

hides in small spaces for comfort

doesnt she have like uhhhhh hyperthymesia or something like that?

Yusuke

art

his entire social link is learning how humans work, which i relate

talks seriously all the time

“sarcasm? who is that? are you saying I was sarcastic?...how?”

cant remember to take care of his body, and madarame did not help with that either

lot of uncomfortable staring, hes overdoing the eye contact thingy

infodumps all the time, doesnt know hes doing it

needs a lot of support even if he doesnt think he deserves it. no one ever complains about helping him out tho

visual stims my friends

he didnt know that you could look up pictures on the internet but he does know you can stream live videos of waterfalls and fluffy animales!!

I am certainly in the mood

for something salty today.

he and joker are scared of math. numbers do not interact

Yusuke, futaba, and akiren are a trio and i know this bc their first day of non-thievery interacts is Akiren clearing Futabas room w/o permission, futaba hyperfocusing on destroying medjed, and yusuke rearranging futabas figurines so they are more visually appealing

morgana is a support friend for all of them bc igor knows they need it

P4

Souji/Yu

yes, he mostly wears gray semi formal clothes bc parents tell him to, no, he will not changes this

Schedule or Death

“sorry, could you repeat that?” “huh? oh yeah, i was saying that--” “yeah that’d be cool.”

cats, fishing, he just likes to be quiet. you can literally spend a day at the beach just to think if you want, and that is what yu want

has a lot of scripts for things (of which he shares with nanako!) but if he runs out he just stops talking..

inaba is a godsend bc its so fucking quiet and warm

he Yearns to hold his friends hands, but he shies away from a lot of touch (excepting yosuke, teddie, and nanako)

Cooking and Cleaning makes the world better. he and joker vibe together with this

unlike akiren, he strong arms any executive dysfunction into Be Productive or Else. his punishment is feeling the pure anxiety of having to make up for ‘lost time’. (another symptom of his workaholic parents)

writes everything down, notes are very neat, has pages dedicated for bad doodles when hes not feeling his usual Super Classroom Focus

Cannot handle secondhand embarrassment (most often caused by yosuke) and will quietly slip away to random cats or origami folding

hungry, crunch crunch folks. probably needs chewelry bc he used to chew on his shirt collars when he was younger.

cleans up after everyone in the food court, constantly worries about them accidently hurting themselves. likely spends half of group conversations watching peoples hands

he canonically eats expired food, nanako plz help your brother

really clumsy, but people only notice after they decide that he is a cool person

video games are too chaotic for him

exhausted every night from the pure amount of masking he does, if a friend spends the night (or is like yosuke) they will know his more comfortable weirdo self (tho everyone knows hes a weirdo eventually)

hyperempathetic, sometimes just understands animals and children better than peeople his age or older

Yukiko

her jokes

she and souji get in ‘trouble’ together, she and joker commit crimes together

she and chie have to coordinate outfits, its important

actually understands metaphors, but does not understand people

like me, had no clue that creepy kid was flirting with her

she is very angry when she has meltdowns that might involve slamming doors and shouting. her parents call these ‘tantrums’ and ‘unfitting for a polite daughter’ but really thats because her meltdowns tend to be caused by arguments w her family after a long day of school and TV world traipsing

the metronome meme, except hers goes between Loudest Person in the Room to Quietest Pin Drop in the Planet. she is completely unaware of this

her atmosphere brightens when chie appears. that is not only the lesbian energy within her, but also because chie is like her Favorite Person

Cannot wear Pants. No (tho she wants to try it! but she puts them on and her soul instantly squashes)

happy flappy lesbian! watch out!

Naoto

the pouty face. all the time lskdfjlasdkf

hes really snappy sometimes and i love that for him. he and akechi should fight just to see what would happen (please read Bang Bang Shoot Shoot on AO3)

“do not touch me or my hat, thank you”

no one has ever seen him shutdown and no one ever will (except for his grandpa)(and kanji)(and rise)

probably likes certain food textures and will stand for nothing less, probably feels embarrassed about his preferences with friends

constantly jumps between ‘everybody hates me so i should act like them so they dont hate me’ to ‘i refuse to be anything but very comfortable as myself, and i dont care that im making you upset sir’

he and souji are the king and queen of subtle stims, but for unhappy reasons :(

does not make jokes. cannot joke around. understand? yes, do? no.

loose clothes are the only good clothes, but all tags and obtrusive seams will be obliterated by kanji tatsumi

not very empathetic so he probably comes off as an asshole to strangers (like when he throws away his classmates confession letters without reading them) but he tries so hard to sound comforting when his buds are struggling.

his understanding of others emotions/reactions come from his learning as a detective, which seems cold+clinical to others, especially compared to souji, whos completely unexpressive but very introverted people person

P3

Hamuko/Minako/Kotone

big personality!! very people-oriented!! koromaru and her are buddies!! when shes having a real bad time, shes very quiet and expressions turn off

interrupts herself in the middle of conversations all the time. no one knows where shes coming from. her brains is thousands of km ahead of her body

bouncey legs, swingin arms, twirlly skirt, little somersaults! when will she stop? never!

very obvious music stims with her hands and arms! people are like “oh there she goes! happy as usual!” shes listening to minatos heavy metal playlist

switches from exhausted to excited within milliseconds. no one can predict, not even her

SEES has to ask her for context all the time cuz she’ll just continue shit from 2 weeks ago without warning

professionals will assume shes very childish bc of how chipper she is, but she is beyond mature for her age and only feels comfortable enough to have serious conversations if a person has proved themself able to handle it

collects every little thing. her room is a mess and she has to get rid of most of it every time she moves :(

hates cleaning! smells bad, feels bad hhhhhgggg

dont let mitsuru-senpai see her bedroom

gets lost in the middle of conversations with others bc shes thinking about a story connected to one(1) word that was said earlier

 no sense of time and place, she just sees her friends and goes “ah, this is the right place, then” but junpei and akihiko are also lost so now theyre all screwed

Minato/Makoto/Sakuya

no talkies, no walkies

his story in the movies is him literally learning how to function around people he cares for

doesnt get jokes, expressions, body language, empathy, subtlety, metaphors, physical contact, or eye contact. aigis is probably the only person he truly understands right away

he is still nice to people because he doesnt see a reason not to be, but also he has very limited energy so only his senpai and old people get his most polite-kindnesses

cannot describe feelings for the life of him. the team wont know hes injured or sick until hes passed out

everything is too loud, time to drown it out with my loud ass music

rocking and chewing stims, ryoji is the first person to point him out for these subtle stims (not accusingly of course, just general pure curiosity and love for the uniqueness of humanity)

likes to cover his face with whatever is available, lives like a bat in a dark dry cave

will wear anything that has pockets and his blue/gray/black palette

sleepy at all times bc he never has much energy

when he was younger he probably needed a lot of support, especially after his parents died, because he wouldnt communicate like a neurotypical and would shutdown for hours in the middle of school without warning. probably missed a lot of lessons and field trips out of pure overstimulation

eating at all times. no preference, just whatevers closest

his meltdowns probalby include humming whining noises and curling up in a ball, which makes people want to touch him, but that is the LAST thing he wants. put a blanket on him! play some music! do not talk and do not expect him to speak

aigis is the only person who can touch him normally bc her hands are cold and he likes cold

never nude, feels mmmmmmmmm without clothes and probalby wears a full robe in the hotsprings

will not do things that take more than one step w/o someone else walking him thru it, which Same

#my writing #p3 #p4 #p5 #persona 3 #persona 4 #persona 5 #ren #futaba #souji #hamuko #minato #vibes straight thru the sun #i sincerely hope the read more works #im so srry for grammar problems #i literally cant read rn

[starstruck-xavier]

Panicking Stranger

ao3 || wattpad || fanfic masterpost || main masterpost || inspired by this post <3

words: 1647 ships: prinxiety (no romance implied / they just met), background logicality, background dukeceit characters: roman, virgil, everyone else mentioned warnings: panic attack extra: thank you to @coconut-cluster for giving me the idea! i may write a follow-up involving those tags where they keep running into each other also loll

summary: “Can you tell me your name?” He’s confused and moderately concerned when he’s met with a shake of the head. “No? You don’t know your name?” The stranger nods, puzzling him even more. “Yes… Yes, like you do or yes you don’t?” He’s met with a frustrated huff of air. “You know your name but can’t tell me?” Roman feels like he’s reached a little for that last question, but then he receives a nod. Upon tilting his head with curiosity, the stranger pulls his hands away and holds them up. Can you sign?

The city is beautiful on these days. Waves of laughter rise above the base of chatter and the chitter of the birds in the trees while various groups of people mill about the public garden. Photographers, high schoolers ditching, adorable old couples, you name it. The spring weather is perfectly pleasant, not uncomfortably hot but not particularly chilly either, and the sun is framed by the distant terraces beautifully from the angle where the artist sits cross-legged by the bushes with his sketchpad, which has the name ‘Roman’ embellished into it in elegant cursive. He brandishes a variety of pencils and has colourful little paperweights scattered about him, protecting his drawing references from the gentle breeze. Everything is serene, calm, almost perfect.

The only thing that could possibly bring Roman out of his wistful trance is the sound of heavy footsteps, accompanied by equally heavy breathing. There’s a small thud some distance away, and he looks over to see someone about ten feet away on the grass. He looks visibly upset and shaky, with smudged makeup under his eyes and faded purple hair. His arms are secured tightly around his own middle as if he’s trying to cut off circulation to the lower half of his body.

“Hey, are you okay, buddy?” Roman calls out softly with his eyebrows furrowed in concern. It’s not often that he sees someone so distraught; perhaps at the college library during exam season, but never so out in the open. The stranger turns his head sharply towards Roman and pauses, then nods with a grimace that’s so obviously forced that Roman nearly ignores the yes and moves over anyway, but he decides to only press, just once. “Are you sure?” Another forceful nod.

Roman watches for a moment longer as the stranger goes back to hunching over himself and shakily breathing, wondering if he should ask again, but decides against it. If he doesn’t want to spill his brains to a stranger, that should be respected, he tells himself as he turns back to his sketches.

About ten minutes go by, in which he’s back to being fully immersed in his art. He has a pretty good light outline of the terraces and has even added in some birds and flowers for extra embellishment. As long as he can get this done on time, he’s confident he’ll get a top grade for this project. Just thinking about it makes him excited. He takes a short break, fishing around in his backpack for a water bottle when he catches a glimpse of that mysterious stranger again, and he looks more upset than ever, tears streaming almost passively out of his eyes and his body rocking back and forth. In fact, Roman instantly notices the telltale signs of a panic attack and feels a pang of guilt in his heart. Then, he hears a soft whimpering over the breeze and he decides he can’t just ignore him.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” He makes an agile movement over to the stranger and sits down in front of him. “Can you hear me?” The stranger looks up at him. He has one of his hoodie sleeves pressed over his nose and mouth and an awful, gut-wrenching sob escapes his throat, but there’s a glint of human recognition in his eyes, so Roman continues. “Take a deep breath in for me. C’mon, in…” He inhales with exaggeration and watches the stranger drag the air into his lungs like trying to breathe tarmac, just barely, the fabric of his sleeve hindering him. “Can I take your hand away from your face, sweetheart?”

There’s a moment when Roman suddenly regrets letting the nickname slip, unsure if it’d even be received well, but eventually, he’s holding a tearstained hand to his chest so that the stranger can feel his lungs expand and contract. They spend the next few minutes just breathing together, forgetting that they don’t even know each other, oblivious to everything else going on around them. The chitter of the birds and the chatter of the city dwellers go ignored because all that matters to Roman right now is calming this ball of nerves in front of him.

Once the stranger seems calm enough despite the tears and little hiccoughs, Roman reaches out to take his other hand and moves onto grounding exercises. “Can you tell me your name?” He’s confused and moderately concerned when he’s met with a shake of the head. “No? You don’t know your name?” The stranger nods, puzzling him even more. “Yes… Yes, like you do or yes you don’t?” He’s met with a frustrated huff of air. “You know your name but can’t tell me?” Roman feels like he’s reached a little for that last question, but then he receives a nod. Upon tilting his head with curiosity, the stranger pulls his hands away and holds them up.

Can you sign?

Oh. “Why, yes.” Roman speaks out loud but starts to sign with his hands while he talks out of habit. “I’m fluent in sign. Would you like to talk to me that way?”

The stranger nods and briefly swipes his hand across his teary face before signing again. My name is Virgil. I can speak but being overwhelmed makes me unable to for a while.

Roman nods understandingly. “Ah, you’re overwhelmed. Is there anything that usually helps you that I can do, Virgil?”

Just grounding techniques, I guess. Virgil makes a flicker of eye contact with Roman before looking down at the grass, but he seems to be trusting him.

“I was just trying grounding techniques by asking your name,” A playful smile tugs at the corners of Roman’s lips. “but I’ll continue. Do you know where you are?”

The public garden.

“Good. Are you in college or anything?”

Yes, I'm in English Literature. Virgil cracks a tiny smile. Sanders University.

“Hey, that’s where I go!” Roman claps his hands together excitedly, forgetting that he's supposed to be asking grounding questions yet again. “You might know my brother, Remus. He’s in English Lit too.”

The breathy laugh that leaves Virgil’s mouth is enough to fill Roman’s heart with warmth. Virgil’s smile reaches his eyes, and he looks almost ethereal suddenly, and on top of that, he then starts to speak. “Oh my god, that’s your brother?” His voice is quiet and a little hoarse, but Roman falls in love with it nonetheless.

“You know him?” Roman beams. He’s filled with a multitude of emotions, happiness being the main one as he’s successfully brought Virgil out of that awful looking panicked state and then made him smile.

“Yeah, you must be Roman, then.” Virgil says, then Roman suddenly remembers he never even told him his name.

“Ah yes, I’m Roman. I never told you, my bad.” He hums bashfully, but Virgil smiles again.

“It’s alright. Remus kinda rubbed me the wrong way when I met him, but he’s my good friend now. He’s talked about you a few times.”

Now it’s Roman’s turn to laugh. “Hopefully he’s not besmirching my reputation. However, I’m not surprised he conflicted with you. He does that with a lot of people. I'm glad you get along though.”

Virgil hums in agreement. “He told me you’re really loud and boisterous, but you’ve been rather calm with me.”

“I am quite loud usually,” Roman muses. “but I know when I need to be calm for someone else. When I saw you panicking, you were reminding me of a friend of mine, Logan. Last year he had a series of nervous breakdowns from work overload and I learned to help him through each one. The first time, I kinda panicked with him because I didn’t know what was going on and the noise made him worse, so I was quieter with him for the rest of them. I guess I saw him in you.”

“Aw,” Virgil wears a kind expression. “You’re a real good friend.”

The compliment only causes Roman’s heart to melt even more to the point where he’s not sure he’ll recover, smiling so widely his face begins to hurt. “Thank you so much, Virge. I really do try.”

“And, it’s a small world, isn’t it?” His voice starting to strengthen again, Virgil turns the questions onto Roman. “I’m sure my friend Patton has a boyfriend called Logan who had a massive mental break last year. He was telling me about it.”

Roman gasps with awe. “Oh, wow. We really should’ve been introduced sooner, huh? Anyone else we both know?”

Virgil thinks for a moment, then smirks playfully. “Remus’ boyfriend, Janus?”

“Boyfriend?! Ooh, he never told me he and Jan finally got together!” The two share a laugh, talking the hours away and forgetting about the circumstance that had them interacting in the first place. Virgil’s eyeshadow has smeared across his face after crying, but he’s unexpectedly enjoying himself today when he’d previously thought that today was going to be a bad day. Meanwhile, Roman had been enjoying today already, even if he’d only describe it as ‘almost perfect’. Almost. Then, it appeared to worsen when he saw that stranger having such a hard time, but now the stranger’s become a friend. Unknowingly, a friend of many other friends. And this means they’ll most definitely be hanging out much more often. And neither of them reject that idea.

Even after such an emotional rollercoaster, they can both still hear the usual waves of laughter rising above the base of chatter and the chitter of the birds in the trees. The weather is still pleasant, neither of them are too hot or cold, even with Virgil in that thick hoodie of his, and Roman suddenly remembers that his sketchpad and paperweights are still sat just ten feet away by the bushes, his drawing references protected by the gentle breeze. Gentle.

And it’s all gonna be okay.

#sanders sides #prinxiety #virgil x roman #roman x virgil #roman sanders #virgil sanders #ts roman #ts virgil #logan mention #patton mention #remus mention #janus mention #sanders sides fanfiction #xavier's fanfiction #sanders sides au #background logicality #background dukeceit

[bloggideon]

Moonlight

Zaterdag 2:53 am, September 2019

Ever since Sander could remember, he’s always had sleeping problems. During the day, he can immerse himself in his art and the hustle-bustle of the city. It’s easy for him to avoid the dark thoughts but during the silent nights, when it's just him in his bed, nothing to distract him, those thoughts crawl back up. When that happens, counting numbers down from 21 down to 1 in his head mostly helps him fall asleep. Help his brain focus instead of wandering off and the repetitiveness of it calms him down. But tonight is a different case. 

It’s a cold winter night. Sander is lying on his side, thighs up to his chest, arms wrapped around them.

21

20

19

.

.

3

2

1

He’s still wide awake. It’s not working. How many times has he counted so far? 7? 8? He can’t even remember anymore and doesn’t care to. He takes the blankets off him and sits up straight in frustration. Something is missing. It’s the first time he’s felt an itch like this. He looks around the room trying to figure it out. Eyes wandering from the buckets of paint and paintbrushes strewn on the floor to the wall painted in big bold strokes of black and grey. That was a few nights ago when he was on the verge of a manic episode. He painted for 5 hours straight, just strokes of black and grey repeatedly till he felt somewhat calm. His eyes linger on the wall for a few seconds, taking it all in till they settle on the closed window. That’s it. He gets up and opens it, illuminating the room with moonlight. He stands there staring at the moon for a few minutes. That’s it! The moon. That’ll calm him down. He’s in awe of its beauty. There’s a strange sensation growing inside him. He doesn’t know what it is but it’s comforting. It’s hopeful. A a shiver runs down his spine from the cold wind now entering the room, but Sander doesn’t care. He goes back and lay on the bed staring at the moon, counting down again

21

20

19

18

.

.

.

8

9

And this time, he falls asleep.

Zaterdag 23:00, October 2019

Sander knocks at a garage door and is granted access. He enters, taking his camera off his neck. There are a bunch of students spray painting different trucks. He finds a spot by one of them and starts taking some shots. Covered from head to toe in dark clothes and wearing a mask, he hopes it’s enough to not get recognized if the police catches wind of the illegal activity going on. A voice snaps him out of his thoughts. “Serious?”. Looking towards the direction of the voice, He sees a dark-haired girl pulling a brown-haired boy along with her. “Cute”. That’s the first thought that pops in his head. “Huh? That was weird”. He takes his eyes off the camera for a few seconds to fully take this stranger in. He looks at his brown curly locks and his dark brown eyes twinkling in the moonlight. “Beautiful. I absolutely need to capture this” he thinks as he starts taking photos. He’s completely mesmerized by this stranger, overwhelmed by a strange feeling stemming from deep inside of him. “Where have I felt this before?” He should be taking photos of the paintings, but he can’t take his eyes from that one truck and that one boy. All he wants is to run his fingers through those soft curls. To have this boy in his arms. To hear his voice. Just when he thought he can’t be more enamored by him; the girl takes off his mask and Sander witnesses a beautiful smile, completely forgetting how to breathe. “He is the one. He is the one. He’s definitely the one” he hears the voice inside him saying. Seeing that stranger kissing the girl makes him feel a tinge of sadness. For the first time, he pays close attention to her. Noor? That’s Noor! Just as he thinks about going over and talking to her so he can talk to the boy as well, his phone buzzes. He takes it out and opens the message:

Britt: Where are you? I need you right now. Call me asap.

He wants to stay and get to know the brown-haired boy, but he knows he has to leave, or Britt will get annoyed and he really doesn’t want to have another fight. Sander glances at the stranger one last time and then it hits him where he’s felt this before. That one winter night where he was battling insomnia but staring at the moon calmed him. Bingo.  He walks out of that place determined to get to know this stranger. This boy who rocked his whole world. He wants to know what makes him smile and what makes him tick. He wants to know his deepest desires and darkest secrets. He wants to know how he’ll feel in his arms. He wants to know everything about him.

Zaterdag 1:12 am, January 2020

Sander has never felt this in peace before. The lonely nights where he used to spend hours counting numbers trying to fall asleep feels like an eternity ago. In Robbe’s arms, he can fall asleep in an instant. Robbe. He still can’t believe this guy is his. That Sander is currently wrapped in his arms, face buried in his chest. Both his arms and legs wrapped around him in a tight embrace. Robbe. He says in his mind as he gets lost in Robbe’s fingers lightly running through his hair. In this very instant, everything is right in the world. He’s right where he belongs and where he always needed to be. His body fits right in with Robbe’s like two perfect puzzle pieces. Robbe. Sander kisses him on the chest, a light feather kiss.

“Robbe”, he whispers.

Another kiss on the neck and Robbe moans.

“Robbe”, he whispers again.

That prompts Robbe to grab his hair in a fist.

“Sander”, he whispers back.

Sander couldn’t help himself after hearing that sweet sweet voice, so he licks Robbe’s neck from his collarbone all the way to his chin getting a deep moan from him while the fist gets tighter. Robbe pulls Sander face up tenderly and kisses him on the lips once and then again going in for a deeper one. After a few seconds of their lips caressing each other and tongue intertwined, which feels like an eternity, Sander bites Robbe’s lower lip and let’s go which prompts another moan from Robbe, his eyes still closed and his lips searching for Sander’s. Sander smirks and places a finger on them. Robbe kisses it opening his eyes and looking at Sander. “Don’t you have to wake up early in the morning for school? Let’s go to sleep”, Sander says. He can’t stop staring at Robbe’s beautiful face in the moonlight streaming from the window. Robbe nods. His eyes now full of mischief, he licks the finger on his lips which sends a shiver down Sander’s spine. Sander grabs Robbe’s hands pinning them above his head and wraps his legs around him even tighter making him unable to move. He could feel Robbe’s breath hitch and his beautiful brown eyes looking at him filled with ecstasy. Bringing his lips close to Robbe’s but not too close so Robbe is unable to kiss him, Sander whispers, “You know exactly how to turn me on don’t you?”. “What do you mean”, Robbe smirks and licks his lower lip slowly and sensually while gazing at Sander with those beautiful brown eyes brimming with lust. Sander knows he can’t win against Robbe. Even when Sander has him completely pinned down, making him unable to move, Robbe has the upper hand. He has him completely wrapped around his finger.

He kisses Robbe and rests his forehead against him. Their noses touching.“You’ll be the end of me’, he smiles. Robbe rubs their foreheads together, “Alright alright, I won’t tease you anymore” he pauses and then adds “tonight. Let’s go to sleep”, Sander let go of Robbe’s hands burying his face back in his neck. Robbe wraps his left arm around him, his right hand immediately finding Sander’s hair and resting there. He inhales deeply taking in Robbe’s scent. It makes him calm.

“Goodnight, my love”, Robbe whispers as Sander lulls to sleep thinking about that one night where he saw a brown-haired boy who rocked his world. The brown-haired boy he decided he’ll get to know no matter what. The brown-haired boy who accepted all of him, his best and his worst. The brown-haired boy who he loves to death. The brown-haired boy who’s currently in his arms counting down from 21 for him.

#wtfock #wtfam #ficlet #fanfic #mine

[somekindoftuber]

vld youtuber AU (klance, part 5)

(I apologize if the tense changes all over the place, I’m writing this as a sort of stream-of-consciousness thing because I care more about getting the idea out than writing something that’s grammatically perfect. I’ll probably clean this up and make it an actual fic once it’s all done. Thanks for reading!! :D)

part one | part two | part three | part four

There is a definite shift in Keith’s demeanor after Lance’s last visit.

They play Overwatch a few times a week, and while Keith goes into stern-leader-battle-mode when the game is going, between matches he’s loose, candid. He laughs at Lance’s jokes and makes casual conversation about his job, the garage, tells funny stories about Kosmo. Lance tells Keith stories about the customers he has at the cafe. It’s nice to hear a softness in Keith’s voice that Lance hadn’t heard before.

Keith shows up in nearly all of Lance’s Overwatch videos, even if his mic isn’t recorded. They sort of fall into a rhythm, meeting online every Tuesday and Thursday night to search for servers.

“Y’know,” Keith says one night while they’re in queue. “I wouldn’t have figured you for a sniper type.”

“Eh?” Lance is in his Widowmaker menu at that moment, flipping between two skins to see which one he likes more. “What d’you mean?”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” Keith clarifies, and it sounds like he’s smiling. “You just seem like more of a Mercy or a support or something. You’re really…” he pauses. “Generous. Always helping people. Then you get in here and you turn into a cold blooded assassin.”

Lance laughs. “I’ve always played a sniper, though. Gotta have balance somewhere, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

.

They text a lot. It’s all small stuff, like pet photos or memes (which Keith doesn’t understand 90% of the time and Lance finds that kind of adorable). But it’s nice. Occasionally they’ll both have an early shift, and Lance will text Keith photos of the ancient espresso grinder, captioned “this thing wants me dead” surrounded with skull emojis. Keith’s sense of humor, Lance learns, is dry as cracker juice. He gets a photo of a broken rubber floor mat with the question, “what sound does a floor mat make when it splits right before a fitness class?” Before Lance can answer, he gets another photo of the same mat, this time with Keith’s middle finger pointing soundly at it. “That sound,” says the caption. Lance laughs so hard that his boss yells at him for being on his phone during a shift.

August comes to an end, and Pidge prepares for her final term. Lance helps by assisting in an apartment clean out, getting rid of literal clutter to ease Pidge’s impending mental clutter. Lance tries not to think about how this might be their last few months in this apartment together. He’s really enjoyed living with Pidge - he wasn’t exaggerating when he said she was like a sister. Pidge is an extension of his family, ever since they met at space camp all those years ago. She’d been a tiny, fluffy, indomitable ball of pure snark and Lance loved her immediately. Since then, they’d stuck together, seeing each other through some of the hardest times. Lance had cheered his lungs out when Pidge was handed her high school diploma, and in a few months, he’d see her walk across another stage in a cap and gown to receive her bachelor’s degree in Robotic Engineering.

It made him a little misty-eyed to think about it.

Pidge is playing Stardew Valley one afternoon (how the hell did she manage to make such an insanely profitable farm before the end of year one?) when she casually brings up one of Lance’s favorite fall events.

“You gonna go to the Founder’s Fair this year?”

Lance doesn’t even look up from his phone. “Uh, is the Pope catholic?”

“Good.” On the screen, Pidge’s character gives a bouquet to Penny. Dating everyone but marrying no one: the Pidge method. “Hunk is coming in for it.”

“Sweet.”

The Harborville Founder’s Fair was the highlight of every autumn. Right as the summer was fading away and the air was showing a hint of a chill, Oceanside Park would explode into three days of carnival rides, food trucks, fireworks, and everything in between. It was also the best time of year to surf - they didn’t get much in the way of waves here, but there would always be just enough in late September to rent a board. Lance had put in his time off request a month ago, buttering up his boss with the ‘this might be my last September in Harborville’ sob story. Which was sort of true, even if he wasn’t quite ready to face that reality yet.

Lance felt like he was getting closer to Keith. He wasn’t entirely sure if that was the case, but if nothing else, Keith seemed to finally be relaxing around him. There were one or two times when Lance could almost swear Keith was flirting, but he quickly shoved the thought aside. Nope, don’t go there. That’s assuming things. Assuming is dangerous.

.

The fair is in a week and to make up for missing work on what will be one of the busiest weekends of the year, Lance is working at the cafe nearly every day. He has more steam burns on his hands and wrists from making lattes than ever, and he thinks if he hears the word “pumpkin spice” one more time he might lose it. He hasn’t played Overwatch all week, too tired from extra shifts to do anything other than zone out to Netflix when he gets home.

He’s got two hours left in his Thursday morning shift, then he’s free for the whole weekend. He can practically taste the funnel cakes now - and the Rancho Alegre food truck, the only decent source of Cuban food in the entire state, will be there. God, he’s going to eat until he can’t move.

The morning rush has come and gone and the afternoon crowd isn’t here yet, so Lance is cleaning up the mess of coffee grounds and cinnamon around his work station when the bell on the cafe door sounds. He doesn’t look up as his coworker/supervisor Romelle greets whoever walks through, too preoccupied with wondering how the hell almond milk ended up underneath the grinder.

“Hello,” says the customer and Lance totally knows that voice. He stops wiping sour milk and looks up.

It’s Shiro. And right behind him is Allura and - oh shit. It’s Keith. He’s here, he’s here in the cafe and Lance had no idea he was coming and he probably looks like shit, overworked with bags under his eyes and his face breaking out from stress and he didn’t even shampoo his hair this morning because he was running late --

But then Keith smiles at him and wow. His hair is down and he’s wearing this black and red leather jacket and it should be illegal to look that good. Especially when Lance is such a mess.

“Hi,” Lance says, hating how his voice cracks. “What are you guys doing in town?”

Shiro is pulling out his wallet with his left hand. “We came for the fair. It was always one of my favorite things about going to school here.”

“Oh,” Lance squeaks.

They’re here for the fair. Lance might get to spend time at the fair with Keith. He forces himself to focus on the present before a dozen fantasies of ferris wheel rides and sharing cotton candy can take over his brain.

They all order drinks and Lance claims them before Romelle can even finish ringing them up. Shiro gets a hazelnut americano, Allura orders a tuxedo mocha, and Keith shyly asks for a latte. Lance can tell he doesn’t go to coffee shops often and makes the drinks carefully. He can’t embellish Shiro’s americano, but he uses chocolate sauce and extra foam to draw a bow tie in Allura’s mug. For Keith’s latte, he sends a prayer to the coffee gods to grant him latte art prowess. It works, and Lance is rounding out rings of coffee and foam, pulling through to form a perfect heart.

He slides the mug across the counter to Keith, who’s eyebrow shoot into his hair. He breaths a little “wow” and blushes, taking the mug and smiling. He’s wearing fingerless leather gloves. Lance’s heart flip-flops in his chest.

The three of them find a table near the window and sit, chatting and drinking their coffee. They’re too far away for Lance to hear what they’re saying, and even if he could, he’s on the clock, and the lunchtime regulars are starting to trickle in.

Would it be gauche to text his evening shift coworker and bribe him to come in early so Lance can leave?

Lance thinks Romelle can tell he’s pouting by the way she sides up to him.

“Hey,” she whispers. “Is that the guy?”

He follows her gaze and sees that it lands firmly on the table where Keith is sitting with Shiro and Allura. Keith looks up at Lance, and smiles a little before turning back to his brother.

“Yeah,” Lance whispers back, feeling his face heat up. “The one with the long hair.”

Romelle lets out a low whistle. “Quite the catch,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. “What about the girl they’re with?”

“Allura?” Lance thinks. “I don’t know her very well, but she’s nice.”

“She single?”

Lance rolls his eyes and starts on the next drink. “No idea, you should ask her.”

It’s slower today and Lance is thankful for it. With Keith in the room, he can’t focus on anything - it’s a miracle he doesn’t catastrophically screw up the drinks he’s making. There’s a break in customers and Romelle comes over to Lance where he loading a portafilter with espresso and waves her phone.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she says, and he does not like that voice. That’s her Supervisor Voice. “I’ll call Ryan in an hour early if you get me Cute Girl’s number.”

Lance puts the tamp down. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

He looks over at the table where Keith is sitting. They’ve all finished their drinks and will probably be leaving soon.

“Romelle,” Lance states. “You are an evil super villain and I love you. Consider that number yours.”

Fifteen minutes later, Ryan Kinkade is walking in and he doesn’t look particularly thrilled about it. Lance takes off his apron and motions at the jar of cash by the register.

“Ryan, you’re a lifesaver and my tips are yours. Thank you!” Lance clocks out before anyone can argue and walks over to where Keith and Co are sitting. He’s very much aware of how he probably reeks of coffee and looks like garbage but does his best to smile anyway.

“My shift is over, did you guys have any plans?”

Shiro smiles and stands. “I think we were going to head to our Air B&B and check in, actually. We could use a breather after that drive. We can meet up for dinner later, if you want.”

Inwardly, Lance lets out a sigh of relief because this means he’ll have time to take a shower and make himself presentable. “That sounds good! Any place you want to go?”

Shiro shrugs. “Is Vinnie’s still open?”

Lance lights up. “Oh yeah, still as good as ever, too! Want to meet there at, uh - “ He checks his phone, it’s barely 3pm. “Around five? We should beat most of the dinner rush that way.”

They all nod and the plans are made. They walk outside together and Lance watches the three of them get into a very nice Chrysler sedan - maybe Allura’s, given how she goes for the driver’s seat. Once they’re gone, Lance heads for his car and books it home. He immediately washes and exfoliates his face, then applies an anti-inflammatory mask and works at cleaning up the apartment. It was already fairly clean since Hunk will be crashing on the pull-out sofa bed for the weekend, and he has no idea of Keith will ever even see this place, but Lance doesn’t want to take any risks.

He shoots Pidge a text to tell her about their plans in case she wants to join. Hunk isn’t due until tomorrow morning.

Apartment clean(er) and his face mask dry and itchy, Lance hops in the shower and scrubs himself sore. Keith is here and will be spending the weekend here and Lance is equal parts ecstatic and terrified. He meticulously goes through his whole grooming routine, moisturizes, swabs, trims his eyebrows, even files his nails. He checks his reflection once he’s done and thankfully his face is less red, the stress acne barely noticeable.

There’s still about 45 minutes until he needs to be at Vinnie’s so Lance takes his time picking out clothes. He settles for a low cut tank top that shows off his collarbones and a beige button down over it with the sleeves rolled up, finishing it off with a pendant necklace and grey skinny jeans. He examines himself in the mirror and frowns a little. Does it look too much like date clothes?

He doesn’t have time to change because then his phone pings and it’s Shiro, saying they’re heading to Vinnie’s a little early. Lance all but throws himself out the door.

.

Vinnie’s is starting to get crowded, Lance can already see the line forming when he parks. He spots Shiro and Allura easily, their white hair making them stand out. They’d managed to claim a patio table - no small feat - and were chatting happily.

Lance joins them and it’s amazing how welcome he feels in this group, the way Shiro half-pulls a chair out for Lance. Keith is sitting to his right, his jacket draped over the back of his chair, the black t-shirt he wore stretching nicely over his chest. And if he didn’t know any better, Lance could swear he saw Keith’s eyes sweep down his neck and linger.

They ate and laughed and ate more, drinking fancy gourmet sodas. They make loose plans for the weekend - beach tomorrow, then the fair on Saturday, and maybe brunch before they leave on Sunday. Lance educates Keith in the ways of the garlic knot, the most sacred food item on earth. And when Keith shrugs and says they’re “alright,” Lance feigns offense, gasping and clutching his chest.

Pidge joins them later, looking utterly spent from a long day of classes. Lance gives up his seat so she can collapse into it. He kneels beside the table instead, passing Pidge the last of their pizza and appetizers. Keith gives him a look, then scoots over to one side of his chair, patting the other with his hand.

Lance short circuits, looking from the empty side of the chair to Keith’s face several times.

Keith rolls his eyes. “Get up here. That,” he points to where Lance is kneeling, “Is super bad for your knees.”

“Oh?” Lance slides into place, and it’s sort of uncomfortable with half of his ass hanging off the chair, but he can feel heat pouring off Keith’s body with how close he is. “You care much about my knees?”

Keith goes super red. “I’m a physical trainer,” He said, suddenly very interested in his soda. “It’s my job to care. Doing stuff like that will ruin them.”

“Right.”

Lance glances over at Pidge, who had a garlic knot halfway to her mouth and giving Lance the most predatory grin. He glares at her to shut down whatever evil plans she might be formulating.

They finally finish the food and decide to stop taking up a table, bussing it themselves to save the staff some work. Instead of a bar, they decide to head over to Lance and Pidge’s apartment to chill - half because Pidge isn’t 21 yet and wouldn’t be able to join them at most of the bars in town, and half because Vinnie’s was so loud that they’re all craving some quiet.

Lance is so thankful that his past self had the sense to clean a little more. They all sprawl out over the living room, Lance going to pull a chair from the kitchen to sit on so the guests can have the nice couch and Pidge can curl up in the easy chair. Lance offers up the ice cream sandwiches from the freezer and everyone takes one; Allura seems to be examining hers with great interest, like she’s never had one before.

Shiro talks a lot, mostly about what Harborville was like when he and Matt were in college. About their first apartment that should probably have been condemned, the dogs he’d walk between classes for extra cash. Eventually Lance’s cats come out of hiding to investigate, and Keith goes starry-eyed at Batou’s big green eyes and plush grey coat.

Pidge falls asleep in her chair just after nine. Everyone takes a second to coo at how cute she is before Lance bends down to scoop her up.

“Lemme put sleeping beauty here to bed. If she stays there she’ll be sore and cranky when she wakes up.”

He takes Pidge to her room and sets her on her bed, then wrestles her sneakers off her feet, setting her glasses on the bedside table and draping a sheet over her. When he goes back into the living room and sits in the chair he’d removed Pidge from, Allura gives him a fond look.

“You’re very sweet to her.”

Lance shrugs. “She’s pretty much family. Also, I have to do that all the time. I’ve found her face down on her homework out here more times than I want to count.”

They talk for another two hours. Lance feels a little lonely with Keith sitting on the side of the couch furthest from him, but then again, if he was closer, Lance isn’t sure his brain would work. Allura yawns wide.

“I think it’s time we turned in,” she states. “I’d like to get some rest before the weekend starts.”

Shiro agrees. Lance ends up seeing them off in the parking lot, waving as they drive away.

.

Hunk arrives just after 10am the next morning, armed with bags of groceries to pack a picnic for the beach. He puts Lance and Pidge on an assembly line in the kitchen, making pork sandwiches, vegetable rolls, hummus wraps, crab and radish tartines, potato salad, and chocolate-dipped clementine slices. He’d picked up a package of Lance’s favorite lemon cream cookies and Lance could almost kiss him for it.

With their precious picnic food carefully packed in an ice chest along with plenty of drinks, Lance shot a group text to Keith, Shiro, and Allura to ask if they were ready for the beach. He got confirmation quickly, and they agreed to hit the north shore near the lighthouse, where the sand was rougher but the tourists tended to be a little thinner.

Parking is a bitch but they find a spot, then wait by the trunk for Keith and Co to arrive. About ten minutes later Lance sees Allura’s Chrysler pull in to a spot. They walk over to meet them and Lance is practically bouncing, because 1) he gets to go to the beach, 2) he gets to go surfing with Hunk, 3) he gets to spend time with new friends, and 4) Keith is here. Everyone is in shorts and light shirts, Allura has this big floppy sun hat that is absolutely precious on her, and Keith’s face is shiny with sunscreen. Lance bets that fair skin of his will still be red by the end of the day.

They find a spot that’s decently clear and set up. Hunk, Keith, and Lance tackle the portable canopy that will hopefully keep them all from becoming completely sunburned while Allura and Pidge set out the sand blanket and arrange their stuff to keep the wind from blowing it away. Once they’re settled, the ice chest is opened and sodas and juice are passed around. The wind is strong today but not enough to be a problem for their canopy, and the waves are large and plentiful. Lance eyes the surfboard rental shack a quarter mile down the beach.

Once they’ve had enough of snacking and chatting, Lance gives Hunk fingerguns and they almost take off down the beach together, making a beeline for the surfboards. Rolo is working it as usual and after some searching they find the perfect boards and duck into the changing tent to get into their springsuits. Lance has the white and blue suit up over his hips and was about to pull it the rest of the way on when he remembers that Keith is sitting out there. Ever since Lance learned he was a Crossfit trainer, he’d started running and working out again. He wasn’t in as good a shape as he was when he’d been swimming competitively, but thanks to months of regular exercise, he at least sort of looked the part again. And maybe he wanted to show off a little. So Lance left the top of his springsuit open and hanging from his hips as they went back to the group with their boards.

“Showoff,” Hunk accused while they were still out of earshot of everyone else.

Lance subtly flexed his chest. “So? I worked hard for this.”

When they got back to the canopy, Lance did his best to act nonchalant as he set his board aside and started pulling his springsuit up over his chest. Keith was definitely looking at him. Mission accomplished.

His flirty nature satisfied, it was time to surf. Lance missed this so much, the first step into the ocean water was like heaven. He and Hunk paddled out until the water was smooth, then sat on their boards and waited. They didn’t have to wait long, Hunk caught the first good wave that came their way, riding it out and away. Lance caught the next one, and it was a crazy high. It just felt so good, cutting through the water with his board, turning, riding through tunnels of blue-green. The waves tossed him, wrecked him, dragged his body against the sand below. But every time, Lance would surface, shake it off, and paddle out for another go.

His legs finally started to shake, so Lance hauled his board back to the shore. Hunk was already sitting under the canopy again, changed out of his springsuit and sipping on a juice box.

“I was gonna give you ten more minutes before I dragged you out of the water,” Hunk said.

Lance didn’t reply, chest heaving as he caught his breath. His board hits the sand and he all but collapses onto the sand sheet, his ears ringing.

A water bottle appeared in his periphery. Lance looked up enough to trace the hand that held it back to Keith, who was wearing this cute little smile. Lance smiled back and took the bottle, downing half of it in one gulp.

Pidge starts pulling out food and Lance blindly eats whatever is handed to him, too exhausted to care what it is. It’s all delicious but with how many calories he burned surfing, he could probably be eating stale saltines and they’d taste like a delicacy. He leans back on the sand sheet and basks in the post-surf euphoria.

Lance notices everyone starting to get up. Allura is holding several frisbees with a gleam in her eye, and most of the group is rising to join her. Keith stands and, after fiddling with the collar of his shirt for a second, reaches back and pulls it over his head, letting it drop to the ground.

Lance is instantly awake because holy shit. Keith is ripped. He’s all tight skin and perfect muscles and - oh.

He’d been wrong when he’d assumed Keith’s tattoo was a wolf. It’s actually a lion, roaring fiercely, emblazoned in dark red ink over his left hip.

Keith takes a hair tie off his wrist and uses it to pull his hair up high on the back of his head. He shoots Lance a loaded glance before walking out into the sun to join everyone else for a game of frisbee tag. Lance memorizes the muscles of his back as he goes.

“Good god, you’re so loud.”

Lance sits up and turns to see Pidge, sitting in the center of the sand sheet in her shorts and green rash guard, with her phone in one hand and a cookie in the other.

“I didn’t say anything!” Lance protests. Pidge just cocks an eyebrow at him.

“Not with words, anyway.”

Lance frowns, then dares to look back out at his friends, finding Keith and tracking his movements across the beach.

.

They empty the ice chest of food and drink and, after several more hours of beach fun, they decide to pack it in and head out. Lance is going to remember this day for the rest of his life - the image of Keith glistening wet as he walked out of the ocean had finally taught Lance the meaning of the phrase “looks good enough to eat.”

Lance is so, so tired. Surfing wore him out but he still played a round of beach volleyball after that, and then swam some more. He’s going to be so sore tomorrow. He drives himself, Hunk, and Pidge back to their apartments to shower and change before they head over to the Air B&B where Shiro, Keith, and Allura are staying. Lance decides on a regular shirt and his favorite jeans, only bothering to put a single layer of moisturizer on his face.

The Air B&B turns out to be a whole house, with a yard and a little deck where they all gather around faded patio furniture as Shiro hands out beers. He gives Pidge a look as she takes one for herself.

“What?” She says as she twists off the top of the bottle. “I’m gonna be 21 in a few months, I’m in safe company, and I’m not driving.”

Shiro just sighs and sits down.

They talk and laugh for hours. Pidge only has one beer before switching to sweet tea, and Lance is a little relieved. He has no idea what drunk Pidge would be like and he’d rather not find out this weekend - he would be cash money that she’d be ornery as hell. Hunk orders some delivery from their favorite noodle place when Lance isn’t paying attention. Keith looks happy as a kid on Christmas with a giant bowl of pho in front of him, and Lance learns that Vietnamese food is his favorite.

They move inside once the sun goes down to keep from bothering the neighbors. Lance settles into a corner of the faded couch, and is too tired to panic when Keith sits next to him. Hunk launches into a story about his last term at school when he almost blew the breaker for the entire engineering building and Lance tries to pay attention, but he’s worn out and Keith is radiating heat like a furnace. Combine that with his full stomach and a couple of beers and he’s so, so sleepy.

Someone is calling his name and Lance inhales sharply, eyes fluttering open. It was Hunk, who’s smiling at him from across the coffee table. Lance is leaning on something warm and solid. He rubs his eyes and looks up.

He was leaning on Keith.

Lance’s eyes bug out but Keith just looks down at him with this tiny smile and a blush on his cheeks. Lance suddenly feels like the room is a million degrees as he carefully sits up.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to pass out.”

Keith laughs softly. “It’s fine.”

They all start to wrap up their stories and conversations. Lance doesn’t know what time it is but it feels late, and since they want to hit the fair tomorrow, they should all get some sleep. Hunk offers to drive home and Lance hands him the keys as Keith, Shiro, and Allura wave goodbye from the front porch.

He almost falls asleep again in the ten minutes it takes Hunk to drive them back to their apartment. Lance helps set up the pull-out sofa, then goes to brush his teeth. He’s practically nodding off at the bathroom sink when Pidge comes up to him and pulls out her phone.

“Thought you should see this,” she says, holding it up.

On the screen is a photo of Keith, and, with his head resting on Keith’s shoulder dead asleep, Lance. Keith is looking down at him and definitely blushing.

The toothbrush stills in Lance’s mouth as he swipes the phone from Pidge’s hand, using his thumbs to pull and zoom. Keith was smiling.

“Please send this to me immediately,” Lance tells her, words muffled from the toothbrush still hanging from between his teeth.

He’s in bed setting his alarm when he gets the text from Pidge with the photo attached. And if Lance hugs a pillow and kicks his feet a little at the sight, who could blame him?

.

Continued in part 6!

#youtuber au #text #klance

[iam93percentstardust]

Wave a Magic Wand Over this World

First of three fics for @heamarvel‘s Hallmark event prompt 11, in which Tony wonders if his relationship with Steve moved too fast:

“Don’t bring Steve,” Sunset says. “He’s boring.”

“Don’t bring Steve,” Ty says. “He won’t understand.”

“Don’t bring Steve,” Justin says. “He’s holding you back.”

And Tony tries to argue. He likes Steve, he wouldn’t have married him if he didn’t. But as it becomes more and more apparent that his friends don’t like Steve and Steve doesn’t like most of his friends (with the exception of Pepper and Rhodey, both of whom live out of the state), he stops asking his husband to come along. He wouldn’t say that it bothers him exactly. He doesn’t expect Steve to ask him to come along when he hangs out with Bucky and Sam (neither of whom much care for Tony) and he knows that spending all of their time together isn’t healthy for their relationship. It’s just that—

Well, it does kind of bother him a bit.

Maybe it’s that, when he goes out with his friends, they spend so much time bashing on Steve. He tells them to stop, and they do for a bit, but then they pick it right back up after Tony’s got a few drinks in him and isn’t entirely thinking clearly and so doesn’t have the wherewithal to tell them to stop again. Maybe it’s that, most of the time, when he goes back home, Steve easily disproves whatever his friends were saying about him. But sometimes, Sunset says that Steve’s boring and Tony goes home and crawls into bed beside Steve and Steve says that he wishes Tony wouldn’t drink so much. Sometimes, Ty says that Steve won’t understand and Tony looks up from babbling about his thesis to see Steve staring into the distance with glazed eyes. Sometimes, Justin says that Steve’s holding him back and Tony thinks about how his patents and the money left to him by his parents are the only thing keeping them from sinking below the poverty line.

Sure, Tony was the one who had encouraged Steve to leave football behind and go into art. He was the one who’d seen that Steve was miserable playing sports, seen that his passion lay in painting. He was the one who’d urged Steve to quit the team, change his major.

And maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if they didn’t fight all the time. But they do. Steve and Tony are two very opinionated people, who rarely share the same opinion—at least, not on the important stuff. They’re always on the same wavelength about the important stuff. But they don’t want to eat at the same places or watch the same movies or go to the same places. For god’s sake, they don’t even have the same friends! Isn’t that supposed to be the hallmark of a couple, that they share the same friends? And they’re both so terribly passionate that their differing opinions lead to knock-down, drag-out fights that end in either Steve or Tony sleeping on the couch before the other one gets too lonely in their bed.

They never say that they’re sorry. It’s just not something that they do.  Sometimes, Tony wonders if it would be better if they did. But they’re both too proud to admit that they were wrong, so they just say that they’re lonely and they go on from there.

Tony doesn’t even know what set them off this time.

No, that’s not true. He knows exactly what set them off. They’d been decorating the tree. Every year, no matter how busy they are, they always decorate the tree while some sort of Christmas movie plays in the background. They’d left it late this year until Christmas Eve. It had been Tony’s turn to pick the movie, except when he’d turned on Die Hard, Steve had groaned.

“Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie,” Steve had said.

Tony had maybe gotten a little too deep into the eggnog and so he’d childishly insisted, “Is too,” and the fight had gotten worse from there.

Steve had yelled. Steve never yells—he knows how much Tony hates yelling—but he’d yelled today. Tony had flinched, the way he’d always done when people yelled, and the ornament in his hand had dropped from numb fingers and broken neatly into nearly a dozen pieces. It had been one of Steve’s, an ornament from his childhood made by his late mother. Steve had been furious, had accused Tony of taking such good care of everything that belonged to him but never of Steve’s things. It had gotten worse. Steve had raised his hand too quickly, too sharply. Tony knows—he knows—that Steve would never hit him but in the heat of the moment, when he was already thinking of Howard, he hadn’t thought. He’d just reacted and so he had flinched back and raised his own hands to protect himself.

The look in Steve’s eyes had gone from fury to horror so fast. He’d started to stammer something out; what, exactly, Tony doesn’t know because he’d fled the apartment.

And now, hours later, he’s sitting in a bar pouring out his sorrows to the bartender, Louis or Lockley or—he peers closer at the nametag—Loki. He feels like he’s burning so he presses his glass, cold from the ice, to his forehead.

“Maybe I made a mistake,” he mutters. “Maybe we moved too fast.”

Loki hums and sets another drink in front of him that Tony promptly knocks back. “Would you do it differently?”

Tony stares at him. “What?”

The bartender gives him a very thin smile. He says more slowly, “If you could do it over, would you do it differently?”

“I heard you the first time,” Tony snaps. He thinks about it. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. How do I know it would be better?”

A shrug. “You wouldn’t. That’s the game, I suppose.” He sets one more drink down in front of Tony. Tony goes to grab it like he’s done the last five but Loki catches hold of his wrist. “Don’t drink it yet. You need to think about this. If you tire of that life and wish to come back to this one, you’ll have to find me again.”

He releases Tony’s wrist. Tony grabs instantly for the drink. He doesn’t know what Loki’s talking about and he doesn’t really care. He just wants to forget that the last several hours happened so he tips his head back and swallows the drink in three gulps. It tastes different, burns different, and the way the light caught the liquid was odd but he’s more than a little tipsy by this point and the comparison doesn’t register in his befuddled mind.

Loki’s smiling sharply at him. Tony doesn’t register that either. “So is Loki like a family name or something?” he babbles. “Like the god of mischief, right? What kind of—“

He doesn’t get to finish his question as Loki snaps his fingers and the world dissolves around him.

Someone is knocking on his front door.

Tony groans and slowly blinks his eyes, immediately throwing his arm over his face. Someone—Steve probably—left the curtains open last night and the morning sun is streaming through the windows. He rolls over closer to Steve’s side of the bed. 

“Steve, honey, can you get—" He stops and then props himself up on his elbow. Steve’s not there. In fact, Steve’s entire side of the bed is cold. He sits up further. He doesn’t know this bedspread. Where’s Steve’s mother’s quilt? Did he—is this someone else’s—oh god, he couldn’t have.

He throws the sheets off of himself and breathes a quiet sigh of relief that he’s still in his clothes. He takes another look around the room. It’s still his bed, still his dresser, the closet’s still in the far corner, and above him—yep, still the same old water stain. But he’s missing Steve, missing Steve’s things. The quilt’s the first clue but the easel under the window’s gone too and the jewelry box on the dresser. The painting Steve had done of a sleeping college-aged Tony’s been replaced with a photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The knocking on the door gets more insistent. “I’m coming, for fuck’s sake!” he shouts. 

There’s a pause before the next knock. Then—“Anthony Edward Stark, that had better not be you!” Pepper yells back.

He strides to the door, ignoring the pain in his head, and flings it open. “Who else would it be?” he asks, completely nonplussed.

Pepper’s all but vibrating with anger. “You promised me,” she snaps. “You told me you wouldn’t check yourself out of rehab again.”

That gives him pause. “Rehab?”

“Yes, Tony. Rehab.” She pushes past him and drops a stack of paperwork on his kitchen counter.

He’s still stuck on—“Like rehab rehab?”

She glares at him. “For the third time this year. I get that your ‘friends’ like to go out partying but do you have to go with them?” He can all but hear the air quotes around “friends.” He tries to move on from the rehab thing though he’s still turning it over in his brain. He’d only ever been to rehab once, during the first few months he’d been with Steve. Steve had said it was the scariest moment of his life, seeing Tony in the hospital because he’d given himself alcohol poisoning. Tony had poured every drink in their apartment down the drain the next day and then checked himself into a clinic. He still drinks but it’s nothing like what it used to be. Three times in a year is… a lot and doesn’t make any sense.

He glances at the paperwork. “What’s all this?” he asks, trying not to sound as lost as he feels.

“For the board meeting tomorrow,” Pepper says brusquely. 

“Board meeting?”

The angry line between Pepper’s eyes disappears. Her frown now is more concerned than upset. “The end of quarter report?” she asks. “Tony, are you feeling okay?”

He can’t let her know that he has no idea what she’s talking about. “Are you sure I have to be at this meeting?” he asks, brushing off her other question. He thinks it’s a much better idea that he stays home tomorrow and try to figure out what’s going on.

Pepper snorts. “You’re the CEO. Yes, you have to go.”

That can’t be right. He’s not the CEO of anything. He’s a grad student, living off of what little bit of money his parents left him after they died until he can get access to his trust fund. He’d let Stane take SI in return for being left alone for the rest of his life.

“Oh. And why are you dropping off my paperwork?” he asks, hoping it’s not a weird question.

Pepper frowns again. “How much did you drink last night? It’s my job, come rain or shine or even Christmas.”

It’s Tony’s turn to frown. “I made you work on Christmas?”

“It’s okay,” she assures him though the twist to her mouth says otherwise. “Not like I have anywhere else to be.” She straightens the stack on his counter. “Those need to be signed by tomorrow. Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

This, at least, he knows. Obviously, it means something different in this world—universe��whatever. But back home it’s an inside joke. “That’ll be all, Miss Potts.”

She bows her head and starts to go.

“Pepper,” he says suddenly. “What happened to Steve?”

“Steve? Do I need to track someone down for an NDA?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “No. Sorry. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

She smiles. Tony gets the oddest impression it’s a rare thing. “Merry Christmas, Tony.”

The moment she’s gone, he dives for his tablet. It’s a lot sleeker and more technologically advanced than what he’s got in his world. In fact, it kind of looks like something he’s got in planning stages right now. He flips it over to see SI’s symbol adorning the back. That would explain it he supposes. It’s his idea put into development. He flips it back over and powers it up.

He starts with SI. There’s a wealth of information on what happened four years ago when Howard and Maria Stark. He reads headline after headline: “Prodigal Son Comes Home,” “Obadiah Stane Arrested for Murder,” “Tony Stark Heads Stark Industries.” He’s more hesitant to search for Steve but he does.

To his immense surprise, there’s just as much information about Steve as there is about SI. Steve, it seems, didn’t quit playing football. He’d been recruited right out of college to play for the New York Giants and never left. It doesn’t seem right. Surely, someone must have seen how miserable Steve was playing football but when he turns on his TV, there’s Steve giving an interview with Jimmy Fallon about his latest season.

Steve’s smiling but he looks absolutely dead behind his eyes. It’s clear that he holds no love for the sport no matter what he says.

“Oh Steve,” Tony murmurs, utterly heartbroken. Steve had loved being an artist and Tony had loved that Steve had loved it. 

He resolves to figure out what’s going on, not for himself but for Steve. He knows that he doesn’t deserve his husband, knows that Steve’s far too good for him, but Steve doesn’t need to be in a world where he’s this miserable.

But before he can really get down to research, his phone rings. He debates picking it up. As soon as it stops ringing though, it immediately starts again.

“What?” he snaps into the phone.

Justin Hammer’s smarmy voice comes through the speaker, cheering, “Tony!” Tony’s never much liked Justin, too sycophantic for his tastes. But he’d come with Ty and Sunset and Tony does like both of them so he’s stuck with Justin.

“What do you want?” he says wearily.

“Heard you got out of rehab. Good, good,” Justin simpers. “Listen, me and the gang—you know, Ty and Sunset, maybe a couple other people—are going out tonight. You’re coming with, right?”

Tony frowns despite knowing Justin can’t hear it. “Don’t you have other people to hang out with tonight?”

“No. Why would we?”

“It’s Christmas,” he says slowly.

Justin laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “Such a kidder!” he says to no one in particular. “We’re better than that, Tones.”

Automatically, Tony says, “Don’t call me that.” No one calls him Tones, except Rhodey. Not even Steve calls him that.

Justin just laughs again. “This is why we’re such good friends.” Tony gags. “So listen, Ty’s got a new bar for us. Totally not our usual style but he says the waitresses are tens all the way.” And then he hangs up before Tony can tell him no.

He wants to tell him no. He does. He’s been thrust into a new world with new rules, a world without Steve in his life—and god how much that hurts—and he wants to take the time to ease his way into it. But he wants to know who this Tony Stark is, this Tony Stark without his Steve, without his great love. This Tony Stark who relegated his Pepper to a mere assistant. This Tony Stark who’s in and out of rehab. He wants to adjust to a life without Steve but he wants to know who he’s become more.

~

Maybe it’s because he’s thrown off balance that he sees it this time. Maybe it’s because there’s no Steve to be a buffer here. But he sees it now and he wonders how he could have ever missed it.

How could he have missed Sunset’s cattiness? “I love your dress!” she gushes to a girl at the bar, who glows with a compliment from the Sunset Bain, and then promptly turns to Tony to tell him how ugly she really thinks the dress is, no matter if the girl can hear it or not.

How could he have missed Justin’s lechery? Justin leers and touches and grabs for what isn’t his and the waitresses shy away but it doesn’t stop him. Why would it? He’s rich. They should be grateful they’re getting attention from him at all. Or, at least, that’s what he sulkily tells Tony after the owner comes to tell him to either sit his ass down or get thrown out.

But worst of all, how could he have missed Ty’s…everything? How could he miss Ty putting drink after drink in his hand? How did he miss those dark blue eyes watching him hungrily? He feels…slimy every time Ty’s eyes linger on him.

It’s then that he realizes—Steve’s not the one holding him back. These three are. He’d be willing to bet just about every last penny that he has that they’re the reason he’s spent so much time in rehab.

“I can’t do this,” he says suddenly and stands.

“What?” Ty says and stands with him.

Tony takes two steps away from them. “I can’t—I don’t—" He stops. “I’m going home,” he says firmly. And he is. He’s going to find that bartender—because it has to be him who put him here—if it’s the only thing he does this Christmas.

Ty tries to walk with him but Tony backpedals away quickly. “I can get back on my own,” he assures them.

He’s not entirely certain about the last part but he’s far more certain that he doesn’t want Ty anywhere near him when they’re on their own. He doesn’t know if Ty would actually try anything. He hopes not. Judging by that hot gaze though, he’s pretty sure that he would.

He turns and starts to make his way out of the bar but stops almost immediately. It can’t really be, can it? There’s no way that Ty actually picked this bar, this one out of the thousands in New York. But there’s no denying that raven black hair and flashing green eyes. He gets closer to the bar, hears Ty shouting after him that he’s an alcoholic, which is certainly true in this universe. He’s got no intention of buying a drink though.

“I don’t know what you are,” Tony snaps, “but you had no right to do this to me.”

Loki sees him approach and smiles smugly. “What do you think?” he asks, not even bothering to deny it.

Tony sneers at him. He’s sure that there are universes out there where he never even meets Steve and does perfectly fine. But he lives in his universe and in his universe, he has Steve and the truth of the matter is—he doesn’t want anything else. Sure they fight but he loves Steve dearly, certainly more than he loves anything else. He thinks that, if he were to be rid of the poisonous influence Ty and company have become, he’d probably be a lot happier, a lot more content. Steve should have been enough for him and he doesn’t know why it took him being thrown into another world for him to see it.

“I hate it,” he says flatly. “Send me back.”

Loki nods absently. “You’ve made your decision, then?”

Tony’s nod is a lot more decisive. Loki holds up his fingers and snaps them.

~

Tony doesn’t even wake up. One moment, he’s in the bar talking to Loki and the next, he’s standing outside his apartment. He goes to unlock the front door but it doesn’t click when he turns the lock. It isn’t locked. Cold fear sluices through him. This isn’t like when Tony was growing up; he doesn’t live in a great section of town anymore. But he has to know what happened so he pushes the door open.

“Steve?” he calls softly.

The lights are still on. The ornament is still broken on the floor. The only thing that’s changed is the absence of Steve’s jacket from the hook by the door and his keys from the bowl in the kitchen. He tries to call his husband but immediately hears the phone ringing from the bedroom so he hangs up. Steve didn’t even take his phone. He must have left in a hurry.

Tony’s pretty sure he knows where Steve went.

Or, at least, he hopes. It would be pretty shitty for him to come back after this whole thing only to realize that Steve’s gone out to Sam or Bucky’s tonight instead of out looking for him. 

Best he can do right now is wait. He takes another look at the broken ornament. It’s not so bad as he’d first thought. There’s a lot of pieces but none of them are little and they’re all pretty straight cracks. With a little bit of superglue, he’s pretty sure he could fix it enough so it doesn’t even look broken. He sits down to start repairs, ending up so engrossed in his work that he doesn’t even hear the front door open, just that it closes. Instantly, he looks up.

Steve looks utterly wrecked. Red-rimmed eyes, hair so tangled it looks like a bird’s been nesting in it, the whole works. He’s gaping open-mouthed at Tony working on the ornament.

“Hello,” Tony says quietly.

Steve abruptly shuts his mouth and runs his fingers through his hair, messing it up more. “You came back,” he says hoarsely.

Tony quirks his head in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I?” he asks honestly. Yeah, he’d mused to Loki about whether they’d moved too quickly but he’d never once entertained the thought of not coming back.

Steve huffs out a laugh but it comes out entirely unamused. “Why would you?” he counters. He looks down at his feet and takes a deep breath. “Sweetheart, I yelled at you. I promised you I’d never yell at you and I did and honey, I wouldn’t blame you if—you fixed the ornament.”

The sudden subject change throws Tony off but he follows Steve’s gaze to the repaired ornament. He feels a small glow of pride as he looks at it. He knows he’s detail-oriented, that he’s got steady hands but this—this is the best work he’s ever done. The ornament looks good as new, like it had never fallen from his hand. It sits there, still sealing from the repair work, but as beautiful as it’s always been. He smiles as he looks at it and then looks back up at his husband.

“I did,” he agrees. He stands and moves to take Steve’s hands in his. They’re half-frozen. He gently rubs them to start warming them up. “Your mother made it. Of course I’d fix it.”

“But I—”

“Steve,” he says simply. Steve shuts up. He leans up on tiptoe to press a soft kiss to the corner of his husband’s mouth. “I was always going to come back.”

He’s not sure if it’s the words or the kiss that does it but Steve slumps against him, arms encircling Tony’s waist and burying his face in Tony’s neck. Tony wraps his own arms around Steve’s big shoulders, feeling him shake under him. His neck’s getting a little wet and he just knows that Steve’s crying. It’s a little terrifying. Steve always seems like this big stoic, strong type of person. It’s always Tony who’s the emotional one and, as a result, he’s never been very good at comfort but he’s going to try for Steve.

“I know we’ve had a bad couple of months,” he murmurs. “But I’m not giving up on us. We’re better than this.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve sobs into his neck. “I promised I wouldn’t yell.”

“Steve, baby, you can’t possibly hold yourself to that. We’ve got seventy years together. You’re bound to yell at least once.”

“You thought I was going to hit you.”

“No,” Tony says firmly. “I never thought you would hit me.”

“Honey, you flinched.”

Tony hesitates. “Yeah, I did,” he says reluctantly. “But that wasn’t because of you.”

“It was because I reminded you of Howard,” Steve says dully, knowing Tony so well. “That isn’t any better.”

“It’s not like I’ve been perfect! God, Steve, the things that Ty and Sunset would say about you and they wouldn’t listen when I told them to stop so I just stopped telling them and I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have let them talk. I should’ve shut them up.” He stops, realizing that Steve’s gone tense against him. 

“But I’m done listening to them,” he continues quieter. 

“You don’t have to ditch your friends just because of me,” Steve says, pulling back to look at him.

“They’re not my friends. They never were. I gave them passes because we grew up together but they’re as toxic as Howard was and I’m done with it.” He presses his face into Steve’s chest. “I don’t want to be around people who don’t like you,” he sniffles, starting to feel a little emotional himself. He pities the Tony Starks who don’t have a Steve in their life. Steve’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him, even if these last few months have been kind of bad.

He can hear the hesitancy in Steve’s voice when he asks, “Am I as toxic as Howard was?”

Tony shakes his head emphatically. “You’re so good. I don’t know what I did to deserve you but I’m so glad I did it.”

“I yelled,” Steve reminds him again.

“Yeah, you did. But, Steve, it’s the first time in four years you yelled at me. You know how long it took Rhodey to snap? Three days. Steve, honey, baby, we can work through this. I know we can. Come on, it’s Christmas. Isn’t this supposed to be about new beginnings and shit?”

Steve laughs, a deep rumble that Tony can feel under his cheek, and he knows that they’re going to be okay. “I think that’s New Year’s.”

“They take place within the same week. We might as well just roll them into one.”

Steve pulls away entirely. “They’re not the same.”

And Tony grins because he can sense the beginnings of an argument. But it’s okay because they’re going to get through this one and the next and the one after that. But first—

He darts back in and presses a lingering kiss to Steve’s lips. “I love you,” he says, leaning back just far enough to feather the words across his husband’s mouth.

Steve beams and kisses him again. “I love you more.”

“Well, I love you 3000 so there,” Tony says childishly and dances away when Steve tries to grab for him.

“Put on a Christmas movie,” Steve tells him, “and if you insist on Die Hard, then fine, and let’s finish the tree and then, Mr. Stark-Rogers—” He pauses and drags a heated gaze down Tony’s body. Tony thinks of how Ty had stared at him and how dirty he’d felt afterward. This is nothing like that. This sends shivers up his spine and makes him squirm where he stands. “Then, I want to see you put on what’s in that box you think you’re hiding under the bed.”

“Steve!” Tony squeals. “That was supposed to be a present!”

Steve looks entirely unrepentant and frankly rather smug. “Should’ve picked a better hiding place then.”

Tony picks up one of the popcorn strands and throws it at him. Steve catches it easily, tosses it aside, and then tackles him to the couch. He runs his nose along the length of Tony’s, hands fitting to the sides of Tony’s hips.

“I love you,” Steve murmurs, placing tiny kisses along his jawline. “I love you so fucking much. I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving that to you and it’ll be the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Tony hums and loops his arms around Steve’s neck. He closes his eyes, relaxes his head back into the throw pillows, and lets Steve litter kisses across his throat and what little bit of his shoulders he can reach before his shirt stops him.

“Tree,” Steve says finally, regretfully, and rolls off the couch.

“Or, and hear me out here, we could not and just go straight to bed,” Tony says, stretching. God, he’s so fucking happy. He didn’t know that just getting rid of the trash in his life could make him this happy.

Steve’s eyes catch on where his shirt rides up but he still shakes his head. “Tree and then—”

Tony hops up. He presses one last kiss to Steve’s lips and agrees, “And then.”

#alle writes #mcu #heamarvel #stony #stevetony #angst with a happy ending #tw: alcohol

[brokenfoetus]

...Real Talk for a Moment....

This is gonna be a long rant post, so by all means... quickly scroll past. Parts may even be a tad emo feels for some folks for one reason or another... There’s no shame in skipping for reals.  A lot of days I can’t bother to read anything too in depth... anyway... HERE goes.... While I absolutely love art, and performance, and surreal awkward characterization of myself I call “THE END”. I also value truth, and being understood. My blog here started more as a journal for me to vent, and place to post music and art for me to look at in order to try and just relax during a very difficult point in my life. Every now and then I like to stop and ground myself and post in a sense about the actual me.  There’s frankly not anything magical here, everyone has a story and their experiences and struggles we all do no matter who you are. I suppose like I said, I just like to be understood where I am coming from typically can only be slightly grasped like anyone.  Even if you agree with views and relate to feelings, things become clearer with details.... hence my rants. I get it out of my system and state my perspectives all at once and anyone who happens to be curious gets to read it. Maybe gets to relate and frankly that tends to help us sometimes. It helps people realize they’re not alone in their situations.  Anyway.... I was born a tiny premature gremlin on the east coast of the U.S. I was raised a devout Catholic boy. At age 11 I was diagnosed with the chronic illness Diabetes. when the symptoms started my mother called doctors concerned. We had to wait a full month for my appointment.  It was rough. Some people don’t know of the disease, but most people generally are aware. It typically doesn’t seem all too dramatic to most since people think of it as old grandma and grandpa taking their pills and measuring their food. When you’re talking juvenile onset diabetes it’s different... severity can vary. but, I caught some sort of virus, with flu like symptoms... I was very very sick for a week or two.  Once it passed, I was okay but slowly started feeling gross in other ways.  By the time we got to see Doctors it was too late, and the damage done to my pancreas made it so it created pretty much no insulin. The only theory Doctors had at the time was the virus freaked out my auto-immune system so it made my body attack itself.  It seemed that my white blood cells had attacked my pancreas. I was 11, so... I didn’t know what diabetes was. I asked my doctor if there was a cure, and he explained that there was no cure. My little boy brain after feeling so awful for a month and a half assumed I was going to die. I burst into tears as I was very very afraid. My Doctor quickly explained I wasn’t going to die like I had assumed and that it can be treated. It doesn’t seem so scary most the time when you realize it can be treated. The thing is the hormone insulin can be quite dangerous, as low blood sugars are actually very much more dangerous than high blood sugars. Insulin allows glucose in the blood to travel into cells to basically use as fuel. without it sugar levels rise in the blood stream, and the body starts rapidly breaking down fat cells to use as fuel. Now, that happens normal some anyway usually after eating. Just not rapidly.... when it does, the fuel it breaks down creates ketones which can make the blood toxic... by making it acidic.... Like I don’t really think... there’s any way I can describe what high blood sugar feels like... or what it feels like when your blood starts to become acidic.... I can’t... but... minor low blood sugar attacks can happen to anyone just by skipping lunch or forgetting to eat... and those suck... bad ones... well... they feel like you’re dying. Not to be melodramatic about it all... but that’s all I can say to explain it... it just feels like you’re dying.  Probably because you sort of are..... The brain runs on glucose so when the levels get too low... your brain panics and tries to save itself and alert you. It’s not fun. It’s been many years since I had anything dangerous or serious in terms of low blood sugars but, a couple times in my life when I wasn’t doing very well emotionally and mentally I wasn’t paying attention or being careful with my insulin dosages and how much I was eating. I’ve had 3 grand mal seizures in my life when I was younger.... it’s hard to explain the experience... in mine... I don’t know.... It was like not existing at all, there was nothing. I woke to pain, I couldn’t see or hear it just hurt. Everything hurt head to toe. Then I could hear myself saying it hurt, then I could hear the people around me, and then I could see the people around me.  Then I knew what had happened.  I felt a bit guilty for scaring my loved ones so much.  That honestly made me more upset than the pain. The reason I spell all this out... is my life has mostly been surrounded by fear. I’ve been aware of my mortality and trying to avoid dying on a daily basis since I was a very young boy. The strange thing I suppose.... is after a while... you just get sick of being afraid.... you kind of stop being scared and just get angry... I was a shy timid nervous little dude.... I’ve had long long times where... I’ve felt worthless, I’ve hated myself, felt I didn’t deserve happiness, or love. I’ve let people use me, without standing up for myself. I’ve let people be toxic and cruel, while excusing their behavior. While at the same time condemning myself for any tiny mistake I may have made in any way. I’ve made myself a martyr in personal relationships, sacrificing myself and my feelings. I’ve frankly... done a whole bunch of fucked up things turned inward. The nice thing I suppose, is I don’t do that anymore.... I still make mistakes, and I like to take responsibility for them and make amends or fix them. You can get used to some really fucked up things. Especially when struggling with self worth. I used to think I was useless and undeserving. Today... I’m well aware I’m a PRETTEH PRETTEH GOFF BOI.... I have long time close friends who love me just as much as I do them. I have a wonderful beautiful lovely lady who has my heart and soul whom I want to spend every moment I possibly can with until my bones are dust.  Who helped me a great deal over the past couple years or so.  Helped me with myself and helped me believe in myself again. Just by being my friend and supporting me while I continue to be the eccentric artist asshole I am. and I have Scrambles... THE MOST CUTEST BLACK KITTEH KAT EVAR. I feel rather lucky to have all I do. I appreciate what I have very very much. I’ve been dealing with Diabetes since I was 11... and had been dealing with Severe Major Depression symptoms since my early 20s. over the past five years I finally started getting help, Turns out I don’t just have diabetes.... I have adhd and some kind of sleep disorder. we’ve been calling it narcolepsy but it’s hard to say exactly, it could be hypersomnia which is a super fancy way of saying I’m fucking always exhausted 24/7 which is pretty accurate.  That is usually caused by narcolepsy or something else but... who knows... still trying to figure that part out. I have discovered though that, being fucking exhausted non stop for 20 years will make you very depressed.  Sometimes depression makes you tired, and sometimes being tired makes you depressed. When I was a young lad, I gave myself one single life goal.... That was to finish an electro industrial album and play some live shows. I dunno, to some that might not be a big deal.... I never said it had to be “good” after all. But, when I was at a low point dealing with my stuffs, trying to take care of myself... I honestly spent most my days sleeping. I was awake maybe 4 hours a day.  Things felt very hopeless, that learned hopelessness made me believe things were pretty much pointless.  I would shrug... and talk to my psychiatrist about my suffering in a manner that people talk about the weather.  I didn’t even care anymore it was happening.  It was “oh well... is what it is.” Until I got angry, it was a good thing I was so frustrated.... because it meant I finally gave a shit again. I wanted to get better and I wanted it to hurry the fuck up. Anyway... I’m just rambling and ranting because I was thinking back a lot after doing a sleep study... probably the first in a series of them. I don’t have apnea so I mean... that’s good. I also got to see what some of my brainwaves look like... I also apparently wake up after dreaming some a lot... I also apparently yelled in the middle of the night hahaha. So back to the whole life goal thing.....my long time friend, who introduced me to shitloads of music and bands and has always been close through good and bad times.  Was saying how he knew it was something I’ve always wanted to do, so he wants to help me.  He’s starting to help me plan the performance and then later will help me setup my shows and come with me to what will be really awkward and silly first couple gigs I play.  An open mic night will be particularly hilarious to me, since instead of hearing shitty rock song covers, it will be an insane goth punk dude screaming distorted vocals to weird electro noises haha.  It’s taken a long time to get shit finally going... but... it’s getting there... it’s still going to take a lot more work... on both me and the music.  I have countless things I have to do, but I’m just happy I finally got angry enough to scream fuck it... and go for it... I love a lot of various kinds of work. I don’t really fit there very well though.  Now that the sleep disorder stuff has become worse over time... it’s not really possible anyway.  That’s okay though, since now I’m just doing what I’m actually good at.  Eccentric artist asshole has always been my key features.  xD So, here’s some photos of me before and during my sleep lab and random enjoyable crap I suppose... and my general mood.  It’s been a while....                                                  -The End-

#Me #Personal #Random #Pointless #Update #THE END

[hwas-housewife]

Okay you're closing the game tomorrow and I can't lose this chance to request for sannie kdnwhdnsns so San + prompt 24 + au prompt 21 + and you can choose how it goes, I'm sure you'll make a PIECE OF ART love ya beautiful 🥺

Prompt: “Stay the night. Please.” + Best Friend AU

Word count: ~2k

Genre: Fluff + angst

Warnings: undertones of a toxic relationship

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: ok wow this ended up sadder than I was originally going for so I am so sorry. I tried to bring it back to being okay by the end but I really don’t know how much I actually like the results, so I hope you like it still!

(also sorry it’s been so long since I put anything out)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your phone vibrated as the violent ringtone of your best friend screaming pierced the air. You can fully blame San for recording and changing it in the first place. However, you keeping it the clip of him screaming bloody murder into a mic was entirely your fault. 

Reading the caller ID, you sighed as your boyfriend’s name was spelled out in big letters. 

“Don’t tell me it’s that prick you call your boyfriend,” San’s insult didn’t even phase you. They never had gotten along quite well. And you were sure that him calling–again–was getting on San’s nerves the longer the phone was screaming. 

“It’ll only be a minute, Sannie. I promise,” you apologetically looked at him and grabbed your phone, heading for the outside of your best friend’s room. 

You were sure San mumbled out some more profanities while he paused the movie and you finished closing the door. Standing in the dark hallway, you took one more breath before pressing your thumb to the ‘answer’ button.

“Why haven’t you been answering my texts? God, I was so worried for you,” your boyfriend almost sounded sincere over the phone.

“I’m watching a movie. I told you it was best friend night,” your voice sounded weaker than you intended, “like every Thursday night,” the whisper left your lips with immediate regret.

“Oh, how could I forget. Thursday night. Of course! It’s not like you spend every single day with him anyway. Yet you can’t spare your boyfriend a text back when he’s concerned for you,” the sarcasm in his words hurt more than a boyfriend’s words should.

“I wasn’t looking at my phone, I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? An apology is all I get for the panic I’ve been feeling for the past hour. He could’ve tried something on you within that time and I would have no idea. Do you even know what’s been going through my head? You can be so oblivious sometimes.”

You hated it when he gets like this. He has always disproved of your friendship with San since day one. You just figured that a year and a half into the relationship that he wouldn’t be so reluctant to let you hang out with San.

“I’ve told you before, we’ve been bes–,” he cut you off before you could even finish.

“Best friends since first grade, so he would never try anything on me. You say that every time and yet I know what he’s actually like. The second he gets you far enough away from me, he’s going to take advantage of you. Just watch,” his voice was loud and aggressive and it was starting to freak you out. But you weren’t going to let him insult your best friend right in front of you.

“San would never do that. He’s a good person. How dare you accuse him of something so vile,” you spit the words out, venom in your voice. You were glad neither of the men could see you right now. Your hand holding the phone to your ear was shaking and tears threatened to spill out your eyes.

“Or is that something you’re hoping to happen? Is that why you get so defensive? Oh, I bet it is. You probably already are doing that. That’s why you haven’t been answering me. You were too busy with your hands,” he takes a pause, waiting to see if you’re going to build off his anger. 

However, you were still, frozen in shock. Your boyfriend just accused you of cheating on him with your childhood best friend. You. San. Cheating? You almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. 

“What? No words? I guess that’s what happens when you get called out. I just can’t believe it took me this long to figure out. I mean, I’ve always had my suspicions but I thought you were too much of a goody-two-shoes to actually do it. I guess the guys were right, girls like you look innocent and cute but are actually just a hoe looking for her next plaything.”

Tears now streamed down your face. The false accusations stung. They hurt worse than any other harmful words he’s thrown your way. He was upfront, but never this rude to you. 

You wiped your eyes, mustering up the courage to say what you needed to get out.

“I think we need a break,” your voice cracked, giving away your current state. 

He stopped his ramblings when he heard your words. You could only hear his angered, labored breathing on the other end of the phone.

“And for the record, I’ve never cheated on you.”

You clicked the end call button on your phone as tears fell from your eyes. 

Giving yourself a second to register what just happened, you let out a shaky breath. The tears morphed into sobs as you stood in the dark hallway. All you wanted was for your best friend to shush you and tell you it will be okay. 

With that realization, you faced the door and slowly turned the knob. San laid on your bed, scrolling through some social media on his phone as he waited for your return. Upon hearing the knob turn, he looked towards you with a smile on his face, ready to show you some stupid video he just saw.

But once he saw your red and already-puffing eyes, the smile vanished and was overtaken with a look of concern. He sat up, moving the bedding over to help you get under some blankets.

You slowly made your way to him, letting out hiccups and sobs. Finally, you sat down on the bed, pulling your legs up to your chest and looking into your best friend’s dark eyes.

His dark blue–almost black–hair covered part of his eyes as he grabbed both your shoulders gently, “What happened?”

“I guess I just broke up with him,” you gave him a teary smile, but it quickly faded as the reality of the situation kept returning.

San’s hands made their way around you until his muscular arms engulfed you. He brought your body to his, forcing your head to rest against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” were the only words he muttered as he caressed your hair, trying to hush your tears.

You sobbed for what you think was the greater part of an hour before you were starting to relax. You still sat, cuddled into your best friend as he rubbed circles into your arms, sides, wherever he could to try to calm your aching heart. 

Somewhere in the midst of the tears, he coaxed the two of you into a lying position. So now, your head rested on his chest as he looked up at your bedroom ceiling speckled with glow-in-the-dark stars. They had lost their glow years ago, but the memories of you and San putting them up and pretending they were the night sky still felt fresh in his memory.

“Sannie,” your voice was hoarse as you called him. He hummed for you to continue, “Stay the night. Please.”

It wouldn’t be the first time he stayed the night at your place. You’ve known each other for more than twelve years now, and sleepovers were mandatory best friend activities in your younger teen days. But this was different. You needed him right now, more than the time you embarrassed yourself in front of the entire junior-year class during high school. And he knew that you needed him.

“I wasn’t going to leave unless you were pushing me out the door anyway. I want to be here for you,” San’s words made your heartache more than it already was, and it brought tears to your eyes.

Your arms wrapped around his torso, squeezing him to you, “Thank you. You really are the bestest best friend.”

You looked up at him, a small smile on your face. His hand came down to brush some hair behind your ear, a gentle smirk on his face.

“But he really was a prick. You deserve someone better than him. So don’t let some singular brain celled human upset you this much. You’ll be able to find someone who will love you more than he ever did and they’ll make you happier than you could hope for. And that’s a promise,” San’s words were gentle but firm. They left no room for you to doubt what he said. 

He was always like this. Exuding confidence. You suppose that’s one of the things you’ve loved about him since you first met. It didn’t matter if he was giving you confidence for the test coming up or standing up to some bully who pulled your hair. San was always there to reassure you that things were going to be okay. He would pick you back up and on to your feet while taking care of your injuries all in one fellow swoop.

You snuggled further into his chest, giving him a squeeze of affection.

“I know,” you mumbled into his chest.

San continued to look at the stars, his signature smile sat atop his face.

“Remember when we put these up?” it was a question, but it felt almost rhetorical.

You turned your body so that you were laid on your back next to San, looking up at the stars as well. A smile graced your face as you reminisced with him.

“When was it, third grade?” you asked back.

His smile grew in recollection. San moved his arms to behind his head, letting the moments pass in silence before he finally responded to you.

“After that astronomy unit, you were so obsessed with space that your parents bought you these so you would stop complaining about never getting to go stargazing. And of course, you forced me to help you put them up the following day after school.”

You laughed at your younger self’s persistence. 

“I would apologize but it was a lot of fun. And after we put them up we shut off the lights to see if they worked. I think we laid there for hours until your mom came to pick you up,” you could feel your ex-boyfriend fading farther from your mind the more you talked about the memory.

“And then I was mad at you after that because my arms were so sore from reaching for the ceiling that I couldn’t play volleyball the next day,” you were both laughing at his anger towards you.

You turned your body towards his so that you could look at his face.

“Forgive me?” your voice was soft and your lips turned into a pout.

San looked down at you, reaching forward until his hand rested on your face.

“You know I can’t resist when you give me puppy dog eyes. Although I was quite devastated,” his smirk gave way that he was teasing you.

“Well,” you dragged out the word, “I can make it up to you tonight by bringing some old movies and making you popcorn?” You offered him a truce that you knew wasn’t necessary. But in your own weird way was a thank you to him for being such a good friend to you for all these years.

“Can we also have chocolates,” his eyes were hopeful.

“We can’t forget the chocolates,” you cheekily looked up at your best friend.

He sat up enthusiastically, “Then what are we still doing here? Go make the popcorn and by the time you’re back I’ll have a list of movies ready for us,” he said determinedly.

You sat up, returning his enthusiasm as you made your way out of your room.

“You better have at least one Disney princess movie on there or it’ll be your butt on the floor tonight,” you called out to him as you were making your way down the stairs and to the kitchen.

#im so sorry #its sad?? #and like i wanted it to be cuter #but lowkey san and reader def like each other #but reader hasnt realized yet #but san been known for a while #san #ateez #ateez san #svt mangos writing #svt mangos asks #littlerainpoet #choi san #ateez fanfiction #kpop #ateez fanfic #fanfiction #kpop fanfiction

[idratherlivefreetofail]

Screenshots from Streaming With The Mother Of Dragons (Emilia Clarke)! :D

Holy crap everyone! We CRUSHED this goal! We raised 250,000 dollars in just 4 and a half hours. That’s absolutely incredible and I am so proud of people in this community right now. It goes to show you that whenever people come together for something important so much good can happen because of it. That’s what these charity streams always prove to me. So pat yourselves on the back everyone! Even if you’re like me and can’t ever donate to these charities, you were still here. You guys were there watching, talking about it, making fan art and spreading the word which is important too. You were still a part of all this generosity even if you couldn’t donate anything. We may not have the power to change the whole entire world but can still make an impact on our own personal parts of it. :) But this was such a fun stream though! It’s really cool to see Seán do the stream with the person who created the charity he’s raising money for. His and Emilia’s personalities mesh so well together and that’s what made this stream so much fun to watch. Emilia was lovely and you can tell that this charity means so much to her because it’s something that’s so personal for her. She has such a huge genuine passion towards SameYou and that’s wonderful to see. Honestly I never really thought that much about what people go through when they have brain surgery and how recovering from that can take such a mental toll on you. It’s important that people who are recovering from this are in proper care and are being heard. I’m glad that SameYou exists and is not only helping people recover but it’s also spreading more information about recovering from brain surgery. I know that the money we raised is going to a great cause that will help so many people. I’ll be honest for a little bit. I haven’t felt good these last few months especially during the summer. I’ve been really struggling with my anxiety because my life is out of balance. Everything feels extremely confusing and overwhelming. I’m not sure what I want or what I need anymore and there’s still issues I have with myself and things that I struggle with on a daily basis. It’s been so bad these last few months that I’ve been slipping back into old bad habits that I thought I let go of years ago. The biggest one being a mentality that makes me feel guilty or like a bad person for enjoying and being passionate about certain things and people just because I heard people have extremely negative criticisms or hate over those things. Seeing all that negativity makes second guess my own feelings and opinions like they’re not valid and then I push away things that I know are good for me. I know it’s stupid and I don’t know why I do that to myself but I have such a hard time letting go of that. Sometimes I feel so alone with those feelings too because it’s hard to explain it to people. Plus it doesn’t help that I was having issues with my health insurance and had to completely go cold turkey off of my anxiety medicine for a while. I’m back on it now but adjusting back to it is has also been a struggle. The only reason I’m bringing this up at all is because I genuinely had so much fun watching this stream. One of the things I was second guessing my own feelings and opinions on was Seán and his videos. Not because of anything he did because when I’d watch the videos I was fine. Yeah I don’t like every joke that he says but that’s normal. xD But seeing a lot more negative opinions about him in these last few months online made me question my feelings and my own opinions even though I didn’t even agree with the negative opinions at all. It was just because my anxiety has been so bad and overwhelming. But this stream was a good reminder to myself of why I still enjoy him and his videos and why I still support him. Which is something that I needed. Sorry if that seems out of place and I don’t want to take anything away from this stream by talking about myself. But I just wanted to get that off my chest. I think one of the first steps to get over this toxic issue I have with myself is being more aware of it. Nothing is perfect and everything has a flaw and it’s okay to be aware of those flaws on the things you enjoy or be aware if something really is bad in a toxic, hurtful or abusive way. But don’t make yourself miserable over people’s own negative opinions on the things you enjoy doing or the people you admire because those opinions even if they make good points are not fact. It’s important to think for yourself when it comes to certain situations and you’re not a bad person for enjoying yourself or being passionate. As long as you’re not hurting anyone else or yourself and you’re open to learning, understanding and seeing something from a different perspective then that’s all that matters. Don’t let your brain push away the things that bring joy to your life. It’s almost October everyone. That means that there will only 3 months left of 2019. Let’s keep all this good and generosity going for the rest of the year! Let’s keep doing good things for the world! :D

-Vannessa

#Jacksepticeye #therealjacksepticeye #SepticShots #JackxEmilia #SameYou

[visander]

This is coming a little late but here's a list of my favorite fics from 2019!

Weight of Mistakes, @lynne-monstr (Magnus/Alec).

“They used to hunt us for sport, you know.”

It’s the last thing Alec expects to hear in the protracted silence after their lovemaking. He can still feel the echoes of Magnus’ lips on his skin, although the hum of satisfaction has faded from his body.

Back to the Start, @serendipitiness (Asmodeus & Lilith).

Some things don't change: Greater Demons cannot die. Magnus Bane is weak. And Edom will always exist.

Sk8r Boi, @J__writes (Magnus/Alec).

Magnus has three secrets: 1. Despite his bad boy ‘I hate school’ persona; he actually enjoys Chemistry and considered joining the science club Freshman year. 2. He did not learn how to ollie in ten minutes like he claims. 3. He just might sorta kinda have the biggest crush on Junior class nerd Alec Lightwood.

Lover to Lover, @firstaudrina (Meliorn/Jace).

During their alliance, Jace and Meliorn weren't exactly friendly; Jace was an amusement to him, someone to tease. Before that, they trafficked in sarcasm. Now Meliorn is something else. The only one who seems to get what Jace is going through.

The Element of Light, @magnuslightwoodalecbane (Magnus Bane).

What if Magnus felt just that tiny bit more guilty? What if he couldn’t find the strength to fight back?

Once Our Souls Meet, @anonlymous (Magnus/Alec).

Even after almost ten years trapped in Edom, Alec still complains about the dusty, stifling heat. AU where Magnus has to stay in Edom to keep the portal closed, and Alec stays with him.

Hurting for a Smile, @glorious-spoon (Clary/Izzy).

After Isabelle is turned into a vampire and goes rogue, Clary helps Raphael track her down.

It doesn't exactly go according to plan.

Hold on Hope, @mimsyborogoves (Ragnor & Magnus).

Ragnor cursed himself daily for faking his death too well. It had saved him from Valentine, true, and at the time, Ragnor had thought about how hilarious the look on Magnus’s face would be when he showed up on Magnus’s doorstep a few days later, alive and well and ready rejoin the fight against Valentine. It would have been fantastic revenge for the endless stream of pranks Magnus had always played against him.

And then Shinyun Jung had intercepted him before he could make it back to his friends, and the thought of Magnus’s surprised face wasn’t so funny anymore.

But he still hoped.

He knew that if anyone in the world could find him, it would be Magnus Bane.

Miscommunication, @tothetrashwhereibelong (Magnus & Ragnor).

Ragnor was upset that Magnus didn't invite him to his wedding, sure.

But that wouldn't stop him from attending it.

Phosphenes, @fictionalrobin (Magnus/Alec).

The kalon that is Magnus Bane never ceases to amaze Alec.

Just Be, @cuubism (Magnus/Alec).

Alec, stop thinking, Magnus says in his head. Just be.

Alec tries. He tries to just...be. In this room, in this life. In this body. But settling in this place is so hard when his brain keeps wanting to run away from it.

Who knew just existing could be such a big ask?

‘Til Death and Even After, @eraseallpicturesofron (Magnus & Ragnor).

“No one can ever, ever find out, you hear me? This will be between us, and only us.”

“Please. Who would I tell?”

Someone’s Looking Out, @serendipitiness (Clary & Magnus).

He's a little intimidating and a little strange (seriously, who calls people biscuit?), but Clary decides she likes the man she meets at her art exhibit.

Too Drunk to Cry, @lakritzwolf (Andrew/Lorenzo).

Regrets over last nights alcohol consumption not only because of the hangover. Did I really say that? Oh my god they're going to hate me now or think I'm ridiculous. (Spoiler: They don't.)

#Shadowhunters #Fic recs #Malec #so much Ragnor content #fic rec lists #2019

[thegodshavehorns]

Come Into My Parlor (4/5)

Chapter 4: A Game for Two

You don't tell Eridan. You can't - no, you don't want to, are too afraid that doing so will put your apprenticeship in jeopardy. It's also just... just plain embarrassing. You don't think this counts as self-deception, don't think the truth of the matter will stream into Eridan's head with all the subtlety of a gong. But the truth, damnably, is that you aren't completely sure.

And so, when the Thief reappears, you have nothing for her. "What a pity," she says, making an exaggerated show of disappointment. "I guess you'll just have to miss out on hearing about my sordid past with Tavros."

But she doesn't leave. The game carries on.

This is acceptable to you.

There's a loophole you've found in your agreement with the goddess, a tacit one that she's never called you out on. You don't phrase your query as a question, and she won't cut you off if you ask two.

She returns, again and again, and you query back and forth. On her end, Vriska enquires constantly about Eridan's long-term plans, of which you of course know very little, and then your plans, about which you know very little more, then about his personal life, then your personal life, all in between jabs and provocations. It's sadly predictable.

Her answers to your questions are infuriating; she responds accurately, but without real substance. Still, you are learning more about their old world, Alternia, and the interactions between the gods when they were young. Occasionally, you get hints, left in tantalizing drops, of what happened during their apotheosis. It's a very different kind of education than what Eridan gives you, and you're earning it in an entirely different way. Vriska isn't a mentor dropping nuggets of wisdom from her ivory pedestal. Vriska is a nut to be cracked.

It's hard to respect the Thief, the same way you respect your mentor. Her behavior is juvenile and erratic, and you can't resist psychoanalyzing her. You have always enjoyed books on psychology, and now that you have access to Eridan’s library your psychiatric acumen is at its finest.

She strikes you as restless. Unsettled, uprooted, unstable. Unhappy. She has all the power a divinity could ask for, and no use for it. You could almost feel sorry for her, if you could get past how utterly unsuited she is for goddess-hood.

You could pity her, almost. The past her, at least, the one that tried to psychically force others to like her, the one with so little ability to empathize with others that she literally blinded the only person who had ever befriended her. Her casual cruelty and elitism were clearly meant to cover up her terror of being of being seen as weak or useless.

Though, granted, some of it is so alien that you can't relate at all. Cradled as a child between the fangs of a spider, learning to tiptoe over webbing, then having to kill anyone weaker than herself to keep her monstrous guardian alive... not to mention the omnipresent threat of culling and the complete lack of adult supervision. You wonder what you would have done, in such circumstances.

"I had to give it all up," she admits, reclining on a couch in a way that is hilariously (and unintentionally, you think) reminiscent of old cartoons of psychiatry patients. "When I became a goddess. My lusus, my home, even my psionics."

"That sounds... difficult." By now, you've filled up dozens of pages with notes on the goddess' psyche. More pages on her mind, actually, than than on her origins.

"Well, I had plenty of incentive."

"Oh?" You wait for her to continue, but she doesn't offer anything more, so you probe indirectly. "I can't say I completely understand why you would miss that life. I realize that it may be culturally insensitive to say so, but frankly, being raised by your lusus sounds horrid. I'm amazed you didn't run away at the first opportunity." Like I did.

"Ha. Well, that is easy to say for you. But a young troll without a lusus, an orphan, made easy prey. Even I knew deep down that there were bigger and badder creatures out there than me, though of course it was my ambition to outlive them. And hey, I did! Not that it matters, now."

"Mmhm." You take notes automatically, hardly thinking about it.

"What about you, Lalonde?"

You look up from your notebook to find her meeting your gaze. "Sorry?"

"Didn't you leave anything behind for, ah, this? I know what humans tend to like. All this ice, snow, and cold hard truth can't be too comfortable for you."

You thin your lips. "There are more important things than comfort." Vriska is still looking at you, piercingly, and you fight back the desire to squirm. Eventually, you break eye contact. "I wasn't happy with my prospects at home. Eridan made a better offer."

"And your family? Your mother?"

Your gaze snaps back up. "What?"

The goddess grins. "You kept yammering about her, when we first met. Don't you miss her, here?"

"It... your behavior was reminiscent." You can't hold back a grimace. "Of some of her worse days."

Vriska sits up, resting her chin in one hand. "Is that why you keep asking me back?"

You study your notes. "No. I have already explained my motives to you. And-" you shake your head. "-it's my turn to ask."

You haven't had to interrupt a line of questioning like that in a while now. But this subject is making you uncomfortable, and-

-and you can practically hear Eridan chiding you already. Tell the truth. For yourself, if not for anyone else.

The Thief is waiting. "... It might have been a subconscious factor. I know you're not my mother, but I might be... offloading some of my inner existential frustrations onto you, in her stead. It is unwarranted, I know, but our... meetings, feel more controlled than interactions with her ever did." You look back up at Vriska. You can't quite place her expression. Her eyes have softened, but her lips are set in a thin, pensive line. Is it just you, or does she look... a bit younger?

Most likely, it's not just you. You've seen Eridan pull similar tricks.

You stare at each other, into her shocking blue irises. The silence goes on, stretching past uncomfortable and entering into.. something else.  Your next question is on the tip of your tongue, but you don't say anything. Your heart is pounding. You can't seem to look away.

--------------

You don't know what to think about her.

"My lusus made me do things to survive that others didn't have to. I hated it, but I told myself I liked it. Eventually, I did enjoy it. Having that power."

You don't like her. You don't like her.

"My mother always tried to make it up to me with objects. Grand gestures, extravagant even. I thought it was a way to rub her absences in my face, using generosity as a social weapon to make me forgive her."

She's reprehensible. She's cruel, conniving. Nasty, even. You don't like her.

"Of course, it's easy to look back now, and see how other people turned into objects for me. But, that's how it is for a god too, so I suppose it all just served to prepare me for godhood."

You understand her.

"Even now, admitting that my mother's motivations might be genuine, that it might be... her way of expressing love... it hurts."

Better than you'd like.

"In the grand scheme of things, why does any of it matter, cosmically?" you wonder, studying the grain of the leather on your chair. "Eridan tells me the universe is so vast even gods still discover something new on occasion. The Earth alone is larger than the human mind can easily grasp, and the Earth would fit a million times in the cores of the largest stars. Time stretches forward and back through ages mortal minds cannot comprehend, from the searing light of the Vast Croak to the final entropic void. Utter nothingness on both sides. We're sandwiched between one oblivion and another." You let out a long sigh. "And even in that sandwich, we're one molecule on a granule of salt."

The goddess sounds impassive. She doesn't seem interested in the mention of Eridan. She hardly asks about him at all anymore. "So why do you keep working so hard? Wouldn't it be easier to give up? A life of pleasure until you die works fine for most mortals I've met."

You shake your head, and look up to meet the goddess' eyes. "I cannot give in to hedonism. I don't want that. Eridan has told me about civilizations who choose to just... plug their brains in and overload their pleasure centers until they waste away in bliss. There are more important things than that. Why else do we exist?"

She smiles, less sharply than usual. "You expect me to tell you? Rose, we didn't make you with a grand moral purpose. We made you because we found a full universe more entertaining than a lifeless one. We were children. What else do you want from me?"

And you know, now, what kind of child she was. Morally deficient, fiercely competitive, cunning, jealous, abused, terrified.

You remember coming home to a 20-foot wizard statue, a work of art commissioned and installed just for you, on your 10th birthday. "Two feet... for effffery year!" your mother had slurred, then vomited on the floor.

"I don't want anything," you say, and pray that it's the truth.

-------

It's sometime after that conversation that you find out the Real Truth about who you are. What you are. And why you're here at all.

------

"Did you know?" You, breathless, wide-eyes, hands shaking. Your habitual self-control, carefully curated by necessity, has been thrown out the proverbial window.

"Nope. Never knew." She shakes her head. The Thief is calm, but looks slightly impressed. "Pretty good at keeping secrets under wraps, isn't he? Truth god, ha!"

"That's... yes, truth god. Gods. Shit."

She rests a claw on her lower lip. "I'd have thought you'd be excited. You finally have a chance to 'right' our 'wrongs.'" You can almost see the air quotes. "So, he told you everything?"

You sit down, pull up your knees, and rest your head against them. "Yes," you say, voice a bit muffled.

"Well...." She puts a hand on her hip and looks away. "I suppose I should offer condolences. Can't say I found out in the same way, but yeah, that must be rough."

"Yes." You close your eyes. "I'm not ready."

"Rose."

"I'm not. It's the truth. How could I be? There's still so much to know. And I'm not ready, I can't be a god, I can't be like you, I don't want this, I-"

"Rose."

You feel a hand on your arm. Cool, smooth, surprisingly light. You freeze, and the hand moves, sliding along the crest of your shoulder, your collar, your neck, your face. There, it stops. It's smooth. Not callused. It doesn't feel like the hand of a killer.

You note all this in a distant part of your brain. The nearer part is too shocked, she is so close, she's never laid so much as a finger on you, not since that first day you met.

Her hand cups your cheek.

"Rose," she says. "Shhhhhh."

------

The moment she leaves, you message Dave.

TG: okay but why the fuck are you telling me

TG: you think i'm some kind of god romance casanova>

TG: i mean clearly i have all the goddess babes over here

TG: worshipping at my fucking feet

TG: i'd better get used to the worshipping bit

TG: being all god in training that i fucking am

TG: god of players and babes

TG: that's gonna be my title

>TG: 'player of babes'

TT: Far be it from me to assume,

TT: But I believe that your divine connections are more involved with the 'mortal/god romance' habit than mine are.

TT: Seeing as my mentor has admitted to only rarely dabbling with mortal relationships, and never in flushed.

TG: right yeah that's a little hard to believe

TG: i mean he's had millions of years to fool around with this shit

TG: and you're saying he decided to be all 'nah that's gross' with everyone but other gods?

TG: sounds like he's just too squeamish to get up close and personal with alien junk

TG: but he is the god of truth so whatever

TT: Is this a way for you to admit that you have no knowledge of romantic quadrants whatsoever?

TT: Despite your boon companion and patron being the very literal goddess of such things?

TG: yo i didn't say that

TG: i know everything

TG: all the quadrants

TG: all of them

TG: so lay it on me

TG: what happened? she give you the ol' divine makeout session? things get hot and steamy in the prince's broom closet?

TG: does he have a broom closet?

TG: i assume he does but i dunno how much of a neat freak he is.

TG: Nep's pretty chill about it.

TT: I assure you there was no broom closet involved. Or makeouts.

TG: did she bite you in the hot tub?

TG: pap you up against the wall?

TG: shit it's like clue in here

TG: is it mrs peacock in the lounge with the  auspiticeship

TG: or mr green in the conservatory with the kissmessitude?

TG: i should patent this shit

TT: Hypothetical quadrant-related board games aside,

TT: It was indeed what is known as a 'pap.' And in my room, on the couch, if that matters.

TG: was it just a casual pap kind of thing? or was she trying to start something serious? how did she look while she was doing it?

TT: She looked, I suppose, like she was concentrating very intently. On me.

TT: Is that indicative of anything?

TG: fuck, i don't know

TG: talk to her

TG: ask her what it was all about

TG: she probably won't tell you and you might look like an idiot but it's worth a shot 

TT: And, what if her response is in the affirmative, that it was indeed meant to be a romantic solicitation?

TG: fuck if i know

TG: i'm not in a relationship with a goddess

TT: Are you quite sure? Some of the things you've said... you and the Rogue seem quite close.

TT: ...Dave? Are you still there?

TG: we're not morails rose

TG: it's platonic

TT: Protesteth thou too much, methinks?

TG: right

TG: you'd say that to any amount of protestething

TT: Why Mr. Strider, I'm wounded.

TT: In any event, thank you for the advice, limited as it may be.

>TT: I admit I find it somewhat galling that this form of relationship does not come naturally to me, and so I must fish for hints like this. But I will do my best.

TG: yeah, well, good luck

TG: hopefully she doesn't kill you when you break up

TT: Well, I would hope she would realize that I'm... relatively important to the other gods, now, and refrain. Or else not break up at all, I suppose. Or not get together in the first place.

TT: And this is one hope that I will not be telling my mentor of.

TG: good move

TG: otherwise he'll prince himself all over it

TT: A pleasure as always, Dave.

TG: seeya

-----

Still, you know with a certainty that few others can brag of that Eridan does not shy away from all mortal relationships.

There was a time, last year, when you and Eridan received a visitor at the manor, the first you could remember ever having. He was a large man wearing the sigil of Hope, showing his rank as an Angel, and not just any, but an Archangel of the Innermost Order of Truth. He didn't really look the part. You'd always imagined Angels as being somewhat scholarly, but this man looked like he belonged at a tailgate party, celebrating a sporting event somewhere in Middle America.

"Prince," he said, and knelt.

Eridan took the Archangel's hand and brought him to his feet, and you noticed his touch lingering. But no, that couldn't be right. Eridan had told you he'd never been romantically involved with a human, hadn't he? You must have been mistaken.

Eridan's Antarctic manor was his hive, a place of solitude for him alone. And for you. He'd met with other people plenty, gods and mortals alike, but never in his home. You asked him about it, and he responded unsatisfactorily.

"I like my privacy, but the highest ranking Angels know where I live."

The change in routine was jarring, seeing this other person in the halls, the library, the dining room, the study, often speaking with Eridan in a hushed voice. He stayed for days.

This was all wrong. If the Archangel was here to discuss the Order's business, why was it taking so long? And why here? Other people didn't belong here. You knew, of course, that it was Eridan's decision who should walk his halls. But having this stranger present in your 'home away from home' was decidedly galling.

Then, four days after the Angel's arrival, you sought out Eridan for the translation of an ancient extraterrestrial text, and ended up walking in on him and the Angel in the middle of a... pile.

You didn't even know enough at the time to be embarrassed, only exceedingly perplexed by the sight of your godly mentor reclining amongst opulent pillows, head on the Angel's lap, eyes closed and making a slow, cricket-like chirp-rasp. The human was brushing the Prince's hair and spoke in a quiet, low tone. At your entrance, the Angel had paused mid-brush, and mid-sentence, mouth open.

It was shockingly ill-considered, you think in hindsight, for them to be doing that in a public space, rather than somewhere in Eridan's quarters. Maybe Eridan hadn't wanted to open those rooms even to his moirail, or maybe he'd forgotten you were there.

You'd gotten 'the talk' after that. Not quite the one your school had given you, but interesting nonetheless.

Eridan had assured you that his moirallegiance with the Angel was a 'casual fling' and wouldn't be continuing, so you shouldn't expect to see the Angel around too much. And that was it, in terms of quadrants. He clearly didn't think it important for your education. Eridan has always been willing to answer your questions, but has offered surprisingly little information otherwise. You'd almost think he didn't enjoy romance at all, when he very clearly does.

Due to this and other factors, you determine that you are not going to ask him for advice about Vriska.

#vriska serket #rose lalonde #homestuck #homestuck fanfiction #trolls are gods #godstuck fic #godstuck #the gods have horns