#like. that is a catastrophic combination . not coming out of that one without it getting worse for a few weeks thereafter

[lucabyte]

even dogs pass the mirror test

[corroded-hellfire]

I just need pre-relationship AYW!Eddie all pent up and feral for Reader. I need him whimpering when he touches himself after Reader leaves for the evening. I need him trying to picture anyone else besides his kids’ babysitter but he keeps picturing Reader.

Your wish is my command! 😘

Warnings: male masturbation, smut, p in v, unprotected (wrap it up), older!eddie, babysitter!reader, the longing is real

Words: 2.4k

[As You Wish masterlist]

“Go to sleep now,” you grumble playfully, ruffling Luke’s curls as he smiles up at you from his bed.

“One more story?” Luke asks, though his voice betrays how sleepy he already is.

“Come on, buddy,” Eddie says from the doorway. “She’s been nice enough to stay for dinner and read you two bedtime stories already.”

A smile that steals Eddie’s breath grows on your lips as you turn to look at your boss.

“You make it sound like such a hardship,” you quip.

“I don’t think your union allows for overtime,” Eddie replies.

You let out a soft giggle and Eddie feels his insides begin to melt. It’s catastrophically unfair, the effect you have on him. Not in his whole life has Eddie met someone who so effortlessly turns him on and makes his heart race. As impossible as it is to ignore the feelings, Eddie tries not to linger on them for a few reasons. One, you’re a complete pipe dream. There is no way you, beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, and hilarious you would ever see a man over a decade older than you in the same light that he sees you. Two, and which he admits is arguably the bigger reason, is that he’s married. Sure, it hasn’t been a real marriage in…God knows how long. But it’s still a legally binding marriage that he hasn’t even attempted to separate from. Not for lack of want, though. It’s hard to see a point when it would cause the breakup of his boys’ family, and for what? So Eddie could be all alone in some smaller unfamiliar home that he struggles to afford on his own while caring for his sons, only getting to see them half the time he does now? No. He basically is doing it all alone right now, with the lack of input from Brittany, but at least Luke and Ryan are in the home they know and the two combined household incomes can give them a pretty good life.

Unfortunately, all the logic in the world can’t cure Eddie’s addiction to you.

“Close your eyes, sleepyhead.” You stand up from the edge of the four-year-old’s bed and lean over to press a kiss to his forehead.

The way you bend down towards the boy gives Eddie a spectacular view of your ass. He’s forced to dig his nails into the palms of his hands to suppress the groan that so desperately wants to escape. As much as he internally chides himself, Eddie can’t tear his eyes away either. He gets so few chances to just look at you, that he can’t bring himself to cut this precious time short.

“Night night,” Luke says through a yawn.

“Night, pal,” Eddie says.

You boop your index finger against the little boy’s nose before standing up straight and heading in Eddie’s direction. The two of you exit into the hallway and Eddie closes the door almost all the way–leaving it open just a crack to allow some of the hallway light in.

The two of you are silent as you walk to the living room, both silently dreading that it’s time to part for the evening. You swipe your bag up from the couch and slip it onto your shoulder.

“I guess I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow,” you say, reluctantly taking steps toward the front door.

“Thanks for staying longer than you had to,” Eddie says, walking you to the door like always. He feels like he should add the words “for the boys” to the end of his sentence, but he can’t bring himself to. As much as the boys adore you, Eddie knows he is without a doubt the happiest one that you stayed for dinner and until bedtime.

“It was fun,” you tell him. “I always have fun here.”

“Always?” Eddie teases, raising his eyebrows. “Can I remind you that you said that the next time Luke has a meltdown?”

“Sure,” you reply with a chuckle.

The electricity in the air threatens to spark at any moment as Eddie reaches around you to open the front door.

“Drive careful, sweetheart,” he says.

“No,” you tease with a playful smirk. “I’m going to drive recklessly. Run all the red lights.”

“Don’t give me reason to worry,” Eddie mumbles, knocking his shoulder against yours.

“Aww,” you coo. “You worry about me?”

Heat rises to Eddie’s cheeks and he desperately wills it to move back down his body.

“Alright, smart ass.” Eddie wrinkles his nose up and pretends to shove you out the door.

With a laugh, you playfully stumble down the walkway a few steps, acting as if his push was that strong.

“Oh, fine!” you lament over-dramatically. “I’ll be a good girl! Bye, Eddie.”

A good girl. Suddenly, Eddie wishes that heat and blood would stay in his face instead of rushing to his groin like it currently is.

“Bye, sweetheart.”

The moment you’re safely in your car and Eddie hears the engine start, he closes the front door and groans in time with the locking mechanism clicking into place.

“This just feels cruel,” he mumbles to himself as he rests his forehead against the cool wood of the door. He lets himself stand there until he hears your car rumble down the road and off into the night.

It takes a Herculean effort to push himself up and head deeper into the house. Out of habit, Eddie glances at the clock on the wall to see if Brittany will be home soon or not. It’s useless though—there’s never a set time she comes home. Who knows where she is or what she’s doing? Or who she’s doing. The pseudo-schedule the household used to follow has fallen by the wayside, so Eddie mentally tells himself to ignore it altogether. Easier said than done, of course.

When Eddie steps into the hallway it’s silent. No sounds of Luke sneaking out of bed to play with his toys or Ryan fumbling for his flashlight to read beneath his covers. Heaving a sigh, Eddie decides he might as well take care of the situation in his pants.

Despite Brittany not being home, Eddie locks the bedroom door behind him. Luke has also started the bad habit of opening any and every door without knocking first. So, better to be safe than sorry.

“Okay, think of someone else,” Eddie says to himself as he rids himself of his clothes. “Anyone else. Not her.”

It shouldn’t be hard to think of another woman to get himself off. Hell, for the entirety of Eddie’s teenage years, he could’ve jacked it to almost any woman and it would be great. Now he can’t seem to get this one specific, unattainable woman out of his mind.

He shucks the last of his clothes off and lays down on his bed, wracking his brain for someone who can get the job done. Julia Roberts? Nah. Jennifer Aniston? No. Cindy Crawford? Nope. Nicole Kidman? Maybe….no. Aunt Viv from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? The first, not the second one. Still no.

“Fuck,” Eddie groans, letting his eyes fall closed as he wraps his hand around his semi-hard shaft. He licks over his lips and tries to let himself relax. The only way Eddie is going to be able to take care of this problem is to think about you and he knows it. He also knows he needs to hurry up if he wants to finish before Brittany comes home.

The mere thought of the woman who sleeps next to him at night has him softening slightly in his hand. A snort of laughter comes out, Eddie finding that humorous. Objectively, Brittany is beautiful, but knowing the rot and decay that lays just beneath the surface ruins any attractiveness Eddie could ever find in her anymore. Even though he already knows what will happen, Eddie immediately switches his thoughts over to you to see the effect. It’s instant. His cock comes to life at the very thought of your name.

No shit, Eddie thinks to himself as he opens his legs a little wider. Because she’s literally a fucking goddess. God, those eyes. Eddie’s hand grips himself a little tighter and moves down towards the base.

“Say you’re a good girl again, baby,” Eddie mumbles under his breath. Fuck, he can’t believe he was lucky enough to hear those words come from your lips. Jesus, he can hardly imagine being lucky enough to come home to you at the end of the day. Walking in the door after work and seeing you is already what he looks forward to all day, he can’t fathom how he would feel if you greeted him with a kiss and stayed there with him and the boys all night. And once the boys go to bed it’s time for some fun.

“Please.”

The word tumbles from Eddie’s lips but he’s not entirely sure what he’s asking for. You to be there with him? You to be by his side always? You to be here, naked, with your hand around him instead of his own?

Okay, Eddie thinks, shifting to make himself more comfortable. There we go, think about coming home to her.

He begins to slowly stroke his cock up and down.

Eddie imagines walking through the front door and kicking his boots off. Your voice hums sweetly from the kitchen and it brings a smile to his face.

“What smells so good, huh?” he asks as he strolls into the room.

The sight he’s greeted by is almost enough to bring him to his knees. You stand at the counter, facing him, an apron on and a bowl full of cake batter held in your hands.

“Welcome home,” you say.

Dark brown eyes follow your every move as you slowly dip your forefinger into the batter and pop it into your mouth. Eddie finds himself holding his breath as you slide your finger out from between your plush pink lips at a torturous pace.

As if the first time wasn’t enough, you dip your finger back in, but instead of putting it in your mouth this time, you point your finger up and stick your tongue out to lick every speck of vanilla batter off of it.

“Oh, fuck me,” Eddie moans.

With a soft laugh, you set the bowl down and look up at Eddie through your thick eyelashes.

“Funny. I was going to say that to you.”

A rough growl reverberates from Eddie’s chest as he moves forward to grab you by the hips. It’s only once he has his hands on you that he realizes not only are you wearing the apron—you’re wearing only the apron.

“God damn, baby,” he mutters. Calloused hands slide back just slightly and come into contact with your bare ass. He drops his head forward to rest against yours with a helpless whine.

You giggle, tilting your head up to brush your nose against his.

“I like the sounds you make,” you tell him, voice thick with lust.

Before he responds, Eddie presses a few gentle kisses along your bare shoulder and up the side of your throat.

“I want to hear your noises, too.”

“Hmm,” you hum. “I don’t think that’ll be very hard to manage.” You reach up with your left hand and tug on the tied apron string resting on the nape of your neck. The front of the apron falls down, leaving your entire torso exposed to Eddie.

A guttural groan meets your ears as strong hands grab you by the waist and help you up onto the counter. Immediately, you spread your legs and Eddie stands between them, the two of you fighting with the apron to get it all the way off you.

Eddie tosses it over his shoulder as you wrap your legs around his waist, pulling the two of your bodies as close as possible.

“Eddie,” you whine, reaching up to bury your fingers in his unruly curls.

“What baby?” His breath brushes against your lips, sending a pleasant shiver down your spine.

“Need you.” Using your grip on his hair, you pull Eddie’s face down to crash against yours.

Mouths meet, lips dancing, tongues exploring, and teeth clashing. Strong yet gentle fingertips dig into your skin, yearning to hold you as tight as humanly possible. Nothing is close enough.

Eddie pulls back just enough to playfully nip at your bottom lip.

“Being such a good girl for me,” he rasps.

A smile tugs at the corners of your mouth as you run your nose along the edge of Eddie’s jawline.

“Wanna be so good for you. Wanna feel you, Eddie. Pretty please?”

A smug smirk grows on Eddie’s face as he reaches between your two bodies to unzip his navy blue coveralls. You shove the material down his hips as Eddie whips his white undershirt off over his head.

“Ready for me, princess?”

Eddie lines himself up with your entrance, glancing up at your face as he waits for your approval.

“God, yes!” You nod emphatically, wiggling your hips in an attempt to get him inside of you faster.

Eddie grins at your eagerness, putting both of you out of your misery as he pushes inside.

“Fuck,” he groans.

“Oh!” You whimper, clinging to Eddie’s shoulders.

The sweet little noises spilling from your lips only encourage Eddie. He pulls almost all the way out before thrusting back into your tight wet heat. It feels as close to euphoria as Eddie’s ever felt. He wants to spend forever between your legs, but it feels far too good to last long.

“Feels so good,” you whine.

“Yeah, baby?” Eddie asks. “Like when I…oh, fuck.”

Eddie doesn’t have time to imagine what he’d say next before hot cum starts to pour over his fist.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mumbles as his orgasm works its way through his body. His hand keeps going, milking his cock for everything that it’s worth.

Once he’s well and truly spent, Eddie lets his boneless body sink into the mattress. His arm flings over the side of the bed and his fingertips brush against his t-shirt laying on the floor. Blindly, he picks it up and wipes his coated hand off before wiping the cum off his abdomen, legs, and anywhere else it went.

“Holy shit,” Eddie sighs. His head falls to the side and his eyes slip closed. A goofy smile comes to his face as his mind returns to you. “Fuck, I’m so gone for her.”

[vapekingg]

eddie munson x fem!reader

It’s like a fucking skin flick, the scene that you and Eddie create on rainy nights spent in the back of his van.

Windows fogged up, water beating down on the roof above you, Joan Jett playing quietly from the radio up front. Eddie’s all touch on nights like this. All heavy breaths and body language.

He’s long peeled off his clothes, every last article, along with yours, and settled between your thighs. Eddie’s forehead rests at the curve of your shoulder, breath heating your already sweat-slicked skin as his hands explore every inch. He acts like it’s his first time every time, and it never gets fucking old.

“Like that, Eds…” Your nails glide along his bare back, fingers dancing over his flexing muscles like the keys of a piano.

Eddie loves when you talk to him. His hips stutter when you moan his name, forearm bracing his body above yours as he lifts himself up. Not much, just enough for him to pull his lips to yours.

His plush, pillowy lips open against your own, tongues finding each other like moths in the night. Cigarettes, weed, and cherry licorice linger on his mouth. It’s your favorite taste because it’s uniquely him.

Eddie cradles your face in his wide hand as he kisses you, his free palm tracing down your soft body until he reaches your thigh. He wants you closer, wants to be deeper, so he pulls your knee over his hip and slots himself there. His throbbing cock nestling against the back of your cunt, massaging that spot that turns your brain right off.

A slew of curses are muffled by his mouth, and you feel his proud smile grow against your lips.

“That good, baby?” He breathes into you.

It barely registers—his words—but when they do, you know what he needs. Eddie pulls his hips back and fucks into you a single hard, unforgiving time, arching your back off of the makeshift bed.

“Tell me it’s good,” he continues, voice strangled and desperate.

And fuck, is it good. Eddie’s narrow waist fits perfectly between your thighs. He never lets you go without, never allows you to feel unsatisfied even for a second. You were made for each other, combined at the rib for at least these sacred moments.

“So fucking good, Eddie…” your labored words are swallowed by his lips, another snap of his hips against yours.

Eddie moves his hand down your body, cradling your hips in his palms and digging his fingers into your soft flesh. He knows you, better yet, he knows what he’s doing to you. The knot that’s been tightening in your abdomen pulls itself again with each rut, each whimper, every nudge of his veins against your slick walls.

A clap of thunder follows a flash of lightening, and his face is illuminated above you. Bangs dripping with sweat, messy curls tied up into a knot at the back of his head or tucked behind his ears. His cheeks are flushed and mouth ajar, eyes heavy and half lidded.

“Wanna fuck you out here all night,” he sighs, mouth no longer moving with accord from his brain. Eddie lowers his lips to the shell of your ear and breathes.

“Make your folks worry their ass off. They’ll have Hops banging down my uncle’s door by morning, and you’ll still be here coming undone for me.”

You begin to move as one, your hips rolling up to meet his with every downward thrust. It’s frantic, uncalculated and messy. The van around you moves in rhythm with your lovemaking, jarring forward and then sinking back against its tires. It’s all closing in, the walls inside your mind inching closer and closer together as something magnificent builds. If Jim’s red and blue lights were to ruin things now, it might just be catastrophic.

“Need you to give it to me, baby.” Eddie rasps, lips sliding over your collar, chest pressed against yours.

And you’re going to. Every time your eyes flutter open, glitter decorates the corner of your vision. You’re right there, just on the edge of oblivion —

— Until he pushes you over.

With the slightest nudge of his hips, Eddie slots himself against your g-spot. He grinds his waist against your core, pressing himself against your clit and sinking his teeth into your flesh. You feel the heat. Your own body warming beneath him, Eddie’s cum spilling inside of you. His hips stuttered and you’re deaf to the obscenities spilling from your own mouth. All you can hear are his.

All the pet names. All the praise. The whimpering and begging for you to take it all. You’ll take it all for him. You always do.

The come down isn’t as quick.

Eddie’s body heaves atop yours as your mind falls back into place. You’re buzzing, every atom in your body vibrating on a microscopic level.

“I think the rain’s stopped, Eds.” You whisper, but Eddie’s already made himself comfortable with his arms locked around your waist and his head on your chest.

“I’ll drive us back to mine in a minute,” he whispers.

“No, Eddie.” You laugh, fingers combing through his damp locks. “I need to go home, I have a curfew.”

Suddenly, you can breathe. Eddie lifts himself off of you and leans over the front seat, light from the radio illuminating his pretty face.

“Curfew was twenty minutes ago, princess.” He smiles while leaning down again.

If you’re already late, might as well make it count. Right?

[nayruwu]

full entire analysis of The Shinya Scene in chapter 83

... because in all my years of being here i've only ever talked about it in bits, but now that he's back and my demons have caught up to me i guess it's time to look at the whole thing combined.

and yes, i will be talking about guren. a lot. because whether you like it or not, guren is the main character, and shinya's role to an extent revolves around him. yes, i also wish we knew more about him outside of that, but it is what it is. i'll work with what i've got.

i actually recently saw someone who was wondering why people shipped gureshin, or why they believe shinya is in love with him - and since this chapter was my personal 'awh fuck i guess this is what i'll be constantly thinking about for the next 6+ years'-moment, perhaps when you see someone wondering the same, you can send them this.

let's start with the basics! in case you forgot it all starts off with shinya asking byakkomaru for more power to try and save guren.

yay for character exposition!

normal people's personality traits aside, shinya largely turned out the way he did because of childhood trauma. if your friends are constantly taken away from you, eventually, you're gonna stop caring about others. if emotions like sadness or fear of death will make you more vulnerable to attacks, you're gonna stop being afraid out of pure necessity. the training facility required shinya to care about no one but himself and go through there with an absolute calmness and rationality that protected him but also turned him into an empty unfeeling husk that doesn't really know why it's even alive.

also, lovely touch that it's just always raining inside his heart. i'm sensing he might have experienced sadness of some sort.

don't really appreciate the "yet you still hold burning desires" without any indication of what they might be, although you can guess looking at the following pages.

i'll talk about this topic some more a few pages down, but it's quite interesting how shinya believes reaching for impossible goals is meaningless, pretty much says 'no one cares that you tried if you don't succeed', while simultaneously admiring guren so much for never giving up.

"Though you never managed to make mahiru yours, you still feel nothing." shinya expressed some jealousy in catastrophe about having his government assigned fiancée constantly talking about another kid, but he seems to acknowledge that such a feeling is useless, and eventually drops it. which is also probably how he could talk about it so freely to guren instead of letting it fester and turn into bitterness.

"It is believing that way which fulfills your desires." he knows it's not the only way to think, but it acts as a sort of defence mechanism which spares him a lot of the pain people that experience emotions normally go through. i imagine it feels quite relieving, to be able to save yourself from it.

and oh! byakkomaru asks him a question about himself and shinya grins and tells him he doesn't need to ask these things, because he's his demon, he already knows everything about him! how interesting. let's call back to that later.

interesting comparison here. i think what it really comes down to in the end is passion.

to be quite frank, shinya's entire existence is downright miserable. he was entirely on his own for most of his life, having no one to depend on, being constantly reminded of his worthlessness and stuck in that horrible place he knows he can't get out of. but that's just it. he knows there's no way out, and he doesn't question it anymore. he's accepted it. he doesn't outwardly want or strive for anything. (although of course, byakkomaru needs to draw power from somewhere. so we can assume those other 'burning desires' are sitting somewhere very, very deep inside to the point where he can't even put them into words - considering that when asked about his biggest wish in the official fanbook, he can't think of anything, and instead chooses something that might make guren happy. whatever he wants himself is probably so impossible to him he wouldn't dare reach for, or even dream of it. if you can't get it, 'the effort is meaningless'.)

meanwhile guren, despite the general degradation of the ichinose clan, starts out with much more, a clan that supports him fully, a parent that loves him, devoted followers and a beautiful home - which is all violently ripped away from him one after the other. he suffers so so much within the story, and yet he never stops trying, never falls into that sad routine, never accepts defeat, always burning 'like the sun' in a way shinya can't. and because he knows he can't, never could, he tries to help. he bases his entire self worth on supporting someone he believes to be good.

i do appreciate a good Guren Roast. guren acts strictly on his feelings, which is confusing but incredibly endearing to shinya, who would be long dead if he'd acted the same. which i suppose is why he's looking at him like... that™. a little reminiscent of shinoa longingly staring at yuuichirou and thinking "teach me more", except shinya is a guy, so he's not allowed to blush about it.

he then very casually mentions that he hates idiots, so therefore he hates guren. note this down.

and here we have it. the fucking "person who is a stone cold rationalist but suddenly throws all logic out of the window when it comes to love" trope. in MY shounen manga. fucking wow. all that talk about shinya not feeling anything and only ever acting logically but when it comes to guren he starts contradicting himself. that's certainly not suspicious at all.

alright here we go fuck you fuck you fuck you.

i've yapped on an on about this page way too much, but just for completion's sake:

byakkomaru uses the word "恋" (koi). and i'm not japanese, i don't speak japanese, but my embarrassingly extensive research has concluded that as opposed to "愛" (ai), which is the stable, general and intentional feeling of love you hold for family members or your actual romantic partner, koi is an exclusively romantic term for when you've fallen in love with someone without meaning to, and whom you're not in a relationship with. or - oh dear! - "It can also have a meaning of longing for something or someone." sounds oddly familiar, maybe?

because what shinya actually responds here in the japanese original is "it's just 憧れ". and while this little fucker of a word can be translated to 'deep admiration' (which, of course, fits quite well), it can also be translated to 'longing' or 'yearning' - which is a word that has also been used to describe guren and mahiru's feelings for each other, in which case it has always been translated as longing. huh. funny that.

other than that, let's look at it in relation to what else has happened in this scene!

first off - "you're my demon, you know that!" byakkomaru doesn't need to make assumptions about him. he knows shinya better than anyone else, probably even shinya himself. knowing that, it seems more like he's trying to make shinya acknowledge it, perhaps to pull out more of that desire that he needs out of him, rather than an actual 'well MAYBE you're in love just saying. it's entirely irrelevant but it kinda popped into my mind right now'.

secondly, shortly before byakkomaru's statement, shinya does that cheerful intentionally-lying-through-his-teeth, stating that he hates guren because he hates idiots. which is obviously fucking bullshit, and everyone knows it. he knows it. byakkomaru knows it. guren knows it. hell, my fucking grandmother that i haven't seen since i was seven years old knows it.

but seriously - he spouts obvious lies in a sing-songy voice and laughs off everything byakkomaru throws at him. and we know smiling is shinya's way to deal with stress. (it's quite obvious, but was also explicitly mentioned in catastrophe). acknowledging something like this outright, that you might be in love with your best friend who's also your ex-fiancée's ex boyfriend, that'd be incredibly stressful, perhaps even scary, wouldn't it? especially for someone like him who we just established has survived by not growing attached to people and locking away all strong feelings for most of their life. who's to say that his "it's just 憧れ" isn't also just a lie meant to avoid a direct confronation about his own feelings that is obvious to byakkomaru but not to the reader?

once again we're talking about guren's passion and the fact that shinya really, really wants to help him. awesome.

what's also interesting to note is the part where he says "i completely understand why mahiru chose him over me". something similar is said multiple times in catastrophe, where he goes on about finally understanding what mahiru sees in him and why she loves him. could be 'girls love this guy that's so much better than me i wish i could be like him'. could also be kagami trying to sneak "SHINYA'S FEELINGS FOR GUREN = MAHIRU'S FEELINGS FOR GUREN" past censorship. who knows. not me. i'm just cleaning personell. anyone seen the broom closet?

"Do you intend to die here?" - "Good question." Thank you Shinya very cool.

he really just doesn't give a shit does he. insert another paragraph about how he doesn't have anything to wish for or look forward to. guren come get your passively suicidal emotional support animal.

the statement of never having had a reason to live despite him outright telling guren that his life had meaning because he got to meet him implies that this realisation only came as he was dying. he had to die to be able to see any meaning to life. which is really fucking sad if you ask me, but it lines up with his development in the novels - as soon as you accept weakness you accept that it will kill you. as soon as it all makes sense, it's over. can't have shit in owari no seraph.

despite everything, shinya hates losing to guren. this is something that's always been difficult for me to understand because i can't relate at all and it just seemed kind of childish, but we can actually explain it pretty easily by looking at the circumstances of his upbringing once again. shinya grew up in an environment where not being the smartest, fastest and most talented, where losing meant immediate death. if he's the best, he gets to survive. if there's someone better than him, he'll be disposed of. of course someone close to him that's a better person, is easily loved by so many different people (especially mahiru, who from shinya's point of view was the only reason he was even allowed to exist), can feel like a threat. it's what makes his characterisation so fun to me, because if i just look closely enough, i can explain most of what he does and says. i am nowhere near as good at understand whatever is going on in guren's mind.

aaand this actually concludes my little essay! thank you very much for coming everyone. it was a blast. feel free to leave some marzipan in the tip jar by the door. toodles!

anyway. do i think shinya is in love with guren? yes. i don't think any author would put this much thought into something that in the end is just there for shits and giggles. there's the drama cd too, where shinya uses a phrase that is commonly used in writing to subtly confess to another person (i actually only recently realised it was used in The Stranger by the Shore as well, which is straight up queer literature). his fanbook entry states that he is not interested in women. he can neither sit nor stand up fucking straight. there are so, so many hints if you just look for them. now, do i think it will lead anywhere? although i wish it would, nope. everything that nods to romantic feelings is from shinya's side exclusively, and he's far from the only one that fell for guren. but what i am certain of is that he is meant to be read this way.

my personal interpretation of him and his feelings in general is that he is aware of them, and although initially it might have been terrifying, he eventually came to accept it as Just The Way It Is. i don't view it as unrequited love in the "senpai will never love me back😭💔" way, because i don't think in this universe he'd ever allow himself to even consider the thought of his feelings being reciprocated (and in the end he is loved back, just differently), but perhaps they're an assurance that deep down he is still human and able to feel like everyone else. of course it's natural that you'd want to be loved back, so we can put that on the "and yet you still hold burning desires" shelf. but well, this isn't based on facts, it's just what i personally find the most endearing to think about!

[boyfriendtodeathconfessional]

Last part of my hc that TPOF takes place in a post nuclear war setting. I'm combining Celia and Fox's routes, as they tie into each other nicely.

When Celia purchases the MC, she takes them to an abandoned office building. This has been her MO for the past three years, as her biography states she started kidnapping and killing interns when she was 29 (she's 32 in the game). We have every reason to believe this is the same office building and that she owns it. From her knowledge of the secret passage to the lower levels to the elevator only working with her keycard, she's intimately familiar with its ins and outs.

Speaking of the building, it seems as if the previous occupants cleared out in a hurry. They didn't bother to clean up, move, or take seemingly anything! This is even crazier when you consider how huge the building is. If we count the three basement levels, it's 11 stories tall! This was no mom and pop shop, this could have easily been a company HQ. Yes, I'm aware companies go out of business all the time. But it's rare for office buildings to be left to stagnate and even rarer that some rando like Celia is able to snatch up the property before any competitor. Perhaps some global event caused mass exodus from the building and also made the company sell it for pennies on the dollar?

During Fox's route, he can be asked not just who he is but also what he is. He gives a smartass reply of "Have you been living under a rock for the past five years?" So we know something happened within the past five years of the game's universe to make the larger world aware of the beastkin. It couldn't have been just one or two beastkin saying, 'Hey, check it out, cat ears. Look at me.' They would have been written off by the public as a hoax/genetic fluke/etc. This would mean they had to appear en masse, almost as if some kind of worldwide catastrophe happened, forcing entire communities to seek help from outside their enclaves, garnering global attention...

We're left to speculate on how Celia lured the interns to this random office building and the aftermath of her grisly activities. Police got involved. They started searching for the missing people... so she... buys a victim from Fox? As if police wouldn't come looking for the MC? Maybe they wouldn't...

If the police got all riled up over a few locals missing, how is Fox able to run an entire human trafficking network where he abducts people off the street and sells them to wealthy clients? Not only does he do this, but he advertises his activities by flyer! We find one for his shows in Celia's desk! He somehow has been able to get away with this for years. How? Why?

I feel Celia reveals a clue in one of her convos with MC. She talks about the staff at her home and how broken they are, as if someone or something had broken them before they got there. This isn't just one or two cooks/cleaners, but from her description, it's dozens. All these people, presumably coming from the same place and something they all experienced had broken them. Meanwhile, human trafficking seems to be Fox's main business, and business is good. I don't care how slick or rich you are, you won't be able to just pull people off the street without getting a lot of questions asked. So what if these aren't locals that Fox kidnaps/Celia and her husband hires?

Maybe all of Fox's victims are from a country that's been destabilized through the nuclear strikes and years of infighting/political instability. It would most likely be a country that's been marked as a high value target. One with a large population would be useful. If it were close by, it would make it easier to transport people, especially if many people from this country were fleeing to Canada as refugees. They would be scared and desperate and looking for anyone to help them. If they spoke the same language as most Canadians, that would also be a tremendous plus when they're put on the market... see where I'm going with this? -☢️

.

[drdemonprince]

It wasn't the main topic of your most recent post on substack, so I'm sending this here. In passing you talk about left-leaning neurodivergent people on social media, and the guilt and fatigue that comes from the constant avalanche of causes and events being shared.

One thing that stands out to me is how much of what I see is people borrowing grief from the future. This is probably partially due to people wanting to show that they care about it. However I feel it's more than that, because underneath that there's something else. It feels very similar to the catastrophizing autistic people in particular can be prone to. You know, where you get so lost obsessing over a hypothetical possible outcome that you complete lose sight of all the things that have to happen for it to come to pass. Things that are often unlikely to begin with on their own, but combined even more so. And then this gets shared and fractally further catastrophized upon. All pulling grief from the future for things that may not even happen.

Seeing all that is so exhausting, as there's often little to no distinction between what's actually urgent in the here and now, and what's an emotional resonance cascade about what *might* happen (and any actual information to be able to judge it has been lost due to the game of Internet telephone, or was never there (ie. a twitter screengrab.) Sometimes disentangling that mess is possible, but it takes a lot of stress and energy, on top of the stress and energy seeing people upset about it in the first place.

My question is two-fold:

How do you (gently) tell people that what they're doing is counterproductive when just sharing anything without checking whether it's actually urgent, not misleading, not just spreading panic and needlessly borrowing grief from the future? Because with the exception of people you know *well* and even then, that feels like a fool's errand, even if you can avoid the toxic positivity vibes that people might get from you if you try.

Decide if social media is at all worth it. I personally don't follow "big" accounts, but even outside that it's all just so... the enjoyable and interesting parts where people talk about their stuff or share what they do or made feel like they're being snowed over by all the rest. I could quit it all, but that doesn't feel right. It's a tricky question because I feel the specter of the toxic positivity crowd sweeping anything difficult under the rug or disengaging to ~protect their mental~ looming over me. (Not to mention that all the IRL social events around me go through a dizzying array of social media sites, so complete disengagement isn't possible anyway.)

(Yes, I appreciate the irony of asking this on social media.) I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on this.

Thanks for this all-too-relatable question, Anon! My thoughts:

How do you (gently) tell people that what they're doing is counterproductive when just sharing anything without checking whether it's actually urgent, not misleading, not just spreading panic and needlessly borrowing grief from the future? Because with the exception of people you know *well* and even then, that feels like a fool's errand, even if you can avoid the toxic positivity vibes that people might get from you if you try.

My answer is that you really don't. You can't convince someone to see the world your way or alter their behavior with your words. What you can do is take care of yourself and set an example with your behavior. By spending less time online digesting this bullshit, not involving yourself in petty,dissolve-on-your-tongue internet fights, not reacting when people send some dumb fuckshit to you, and surrounding yourself with more enriching sources of information and ways to connect, other people's online bullshit will bother you less, you'll see it less, and by virtue of contributing to it all less, you may slowly serve as a model for others who are looking to detach from it, too.

You can tell your close friends that you are spending less time online and trying to avoid alarmist bullshit, but not much good usually comes from engaging about it with anyone else. In fact, even posting a bad infographic in order to argue with it/disprove it only gives it more exposure, and some research on attitude change and persuasion finds that setting out to disprove a myth only leads to more people believing in it anyway. I did some laboratory studies on that back in the day. So I'd say it's usually better to just ignore/block/not read the BS.

2. (How do you) Decide if social media is at all worth it. I personally don't follow "big" accounts, but even outside that it's all just so… the enjoyable and interesting parts where people talk about their stuff or share what they do or made feel like they're being snowed over by all the rest. I could quit it all, but that doesn't feel right. It's a tricky question because I feel the specter of the toxic positivity crowd sweeping anything difficult under the rug or disengaging to ~protect their mental~ looming over me. (Not to mention that all the IRL social events around me go through a dizzying array of social media sites, so complete disengagement isn't possible anyway.)

I think my previous answer kind of alludes to the answer to this one. I find that I use social media less and less these days, because it does not help me professionally, socially, or emotionally very much at all. On the professional level, more social media usage does not translate to more readers or more interesting creative/collaborative opportunities. What does seem to pay off is speaking from true sincerity and passion, however often I am so moved, and then not engaging with bullshit in the aftermath of sharing it. So I post and ghost whenever I feel that I have something to say, never checking notifications/reactions/comments/etc for the most part.

Socially, social media use lately has been dismal for me. Seeing everyone's hot takes, bids for attention, trauma spirals, and petty fights makes me actively like humanity far less. And that's something I have already struggled with generally. I do not need to absorb every random person I've ever met's every random fleeting thought. It makes me socially anxious, far too worried about how people perceive me, and viciously judgement and hopeless myself. What social media IS useful for, socially, is finding events, as you've alluded to. So I do hop onto Instagram to check out my favorite party organizers, drag performers, mutual aid groups, trans beach day organizers, bars, etc to see what is going on. I don't do much beyond that these days.

Emotionally/psychologically, social media is stressful, alarmist, distracting, and occasionally informative and fun for me. Again your mileage may vary. My way of coping right now is to spend as little time on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook etc as possible, because very little of intellectual consequence happens there, and to selectively visit the specific tumblrs who put out posts that I like. I don't even scroll the feed. I have also replaced scrolling social media with reading Substacks and Medium articles and that has helped me a TON. I still get exposure to a wide array of humanity, including a lot of takes that I disagree with or find silly, but everything's a bit more measured and intentional and there's less fighting.

I do not know what will work for you, Anon, and I think for many of us this is an ongoing negotiation between competing needs. I consider saying fuck it and deleting everything pretty often. well, everything other than tumblr. I'm here to stay.

[zanypainterglitter]

Compilation of Acid-Forming Plants

All this happens on Cybertron, the Autobots and Decepticons are finally home after long adventures and fights on Earth, and it seems that it is going to end, but the soldiers, both Autobots and Decepticons, seem to start getting sick. They thought that the Cosmic Rust was sprouting again, until "flesh" began to protrude from their systems, gears and interior, but they were actually organic plants. They called this infection and apparently a new type of plant "Flesh Flower".

Although the flower and its vines, also called algae, are organic, they seem to also have metallic properties such as copper and iron, causing composition cells or electrolytic cells and thus one is infected by direct contact. The algae or vine is green and brown, the flower is yellow in the center with white, pink and light purple, all are capable of expelling spores or liquid like acid, they seem to have a yellow or blue color with a greenish tone. Infection can be avoided with decontamination and thorough washing, and if the algae are in their initial phase, they can be removed, although they may require surgery.

The flower will stick to the metal being like a worm and will try to enter its system, but if you are quick to notice this you can crush it but it must be washed and decontaminated because otherwise it will become infected anyway, or it can be through a wound through which a viscous substance comes out of the body, the first phase will begin to see symptoms of fatigue, joint problems that begin to take over the host's body until having any type of disability and in the process its lubricant will escape from its mouth that acquires a very sour taste, in the second phase algae will begin to grow from the victim's body but they can be confused with simple cables, heat and liquids can accelerate the oxidation and growth of the plant, the algae will begin to grow the cables and even the organs of the victim and from there begins the third phase where the parts made up of the vehicle will seem loose or hanging to the point of falling, being able to see them and show them this can reach the brain and coming out of the mouth along with an acid and viscous liquid that is mostly Infectious and also in my eyes of the host, it is infectious at this point, the fourth phase only look like a body that you can see the organs and the flowers are combining and absorbing it completely but they can be recognized although they are already completely controlled by the plant and the last phase is where the infected get trapped in the metal surface starting to grow roots from their body and sprouting but should not get close as it can still attack, in the end they become not only a tree but a perfect combination of organic and metallic, growing fruits in which they are not infected and are edible.

Shockwave is missing, while everyone is under curfew but some like the Decepticons prefer to fight the infection, Grimlock along with the Dinobots are considered patient 0 because many saw how his spark came out tentacles from the plants grabbing the other Dinobots forming Volcanicus and a beast without equal.

Optimus was sorry and sad because he told Grimlock not to do it but he failed to prevent the catastrophe, the medical autobots try to find a cure and take shelter in what remains of cities trying to rebuild them while the decepticons prefer to eliminate all those who are seen and are infected using bases to be able to eliminate all the flesh flowers, Starscream is suspicious that Shockwave must be doing something, but several decepticons and even autobots begin to have paranoia of everything that is organic to the point of hating it, which starts disputes because they suspect that others will infect them.

Discovering that the infected can communicate telepathically with each other, acting as a hive. It turns out that all this was a plan by Shockwave who was the real patient 0 and is practically almost like a queen wasp, he did this to have the population of Cyberton under control, since he got bored and fed up with the Decepticons finding the constant war and fighting unbearable that the only thing it did was waste resources so on Earth he managed to form the flesh flower with water and sea salts combined with chemicals creating a corrosive acid plant and with technical modifications he achieved the perfect infectious plant in his favor testing with it and then the Dinobots so that they could easily spread their corrosion.

Shockwave wanted to have the resources back on Cybertron, so he hoped that everyone would kill each other so that he would have food and a semi-rebuilt home and have a new generation under his logic and control but neither Megatron nor Optimus are going to allow it.

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

I've found that when I review a book that was on the whole quite good, but the element I was most interested in didn't quite play out the way I wanted it to, I tend to spend most of my word count on what I didn't like instead of what I did, so I'm going to try for a little more parity here. The Stars Too Fondly is a thoroughly enjoyable sci-fi romance with a lot to recommend it. It begins on a near-future Earth, twenty years after what was supposed to be the first of many missions to begin evacuating humanity to a new planet using a revolutionary new technology that would make interstellar travel cheap and easy failed dramatically and inexplicably on the launch pad, resulting in the cancellation of the program. A group of four postdocs who watched the failure live on television as kids break into the now-derelict launch facility determined to find out why the launch failed and what happened to the crew, all of whom vanished without a trace during the catastrophe. However, the ship inexplicably powers up and launches with them on board, and now they not only have to solve the mystery but also figure out how to survive their multi-year interstellar journey and return, with the help of the ship's onboard AI who, for some reason, has been programmed to be a perfect copy of the missing captain of the original expedition.

I really enjoyed the tone and setting of the book, which is much more Star Trek than it is The Martian, with much more focus placed on character drama, mystery solving, and moral dilemmas than logistical puzzle-solving. The influence of Star Trek: Voyager in particular are worn proudly in both plot elements - a holographic artificial intelligence with questions about her personhood, an unplanned years-long journey that the crew is trying to shorten - and smaller elements, such as the use of food replicators and even a direct reference to the show's most famous episode, Threshold.

The characters were solid and compelling, with engaging dynamics unique voices. I also, barring one personal gripe, really liked the book's exploration of queer experiences. If I found myself on an unplanned space mission, I would also be very concerned about how I was going to get HRT meds!

The book makes use of a combination of plausible hard sci-fi theories, which stopped me from giving the concept of a dark matter engine my usual obligatory eyeroll, and bonkers off the wall pseudo magic soft sci-fi. These elements synergized better than I was afraid they would, but the introduction of the softer elements was a little jarring. Also kinda like Star Trek actually.

The plotting was perfectly solid, though not extraordinary by any means. None of the twists and turns were particularly surprising, but neither did they come across as trite or formulaic. The themes weren't anything novel either, but they were well-supported and conveyed. The writing itself was mostly pretty good, with a few of the rough edges and structural oddities that I've come to expect from debut novels.

So now that I've actually given the book its due, I'm gonna dig too deep into what I found disappointing.

I've noticed a bit of a trend between the last few books I've felt really compelled by, and that's the idea of a character falling in love with someone who, by their very nature, they are not going to be able to have an "ordinary" relationship with. It's what drew me to Flowers for Dead Girls, which is about falling in love with a ghost. It's what drew me to Someone You Can Build a Nest In, which is about a psychologically and physiologically inhuman monster falling in love with a human. And it's what initially drew me to this book, which is about a human falling in love with the hologram of a dead woman - a space ghost, if you want, or a ghost in the machine, if you'd rather. All of these books take some pains to explore the rough edges of these relationships, where the participants' desires are stymied by their physical differences. However, where the previous two books end with the characters establishing an equilibrium of sorts where their needs are met, even if their relationship doesn't look like what society or their own imaginations expected them to look like, The Stars Too Fondly just neatly resolves things such that their differences are no longer a concern and they can have exactly what they imagined. And I found that to be cheap and unsatisfying, especially because the resolution only works if you really, really want it to work. When you start digging into it, it starts falling apart.

It's a symptom of a phenomenon I'm calling, "So You Want to Have Your Tragedy and Eat it Too". It arises when an author has an idea for a very compelling and evocative tragic event or outcome that results in rich character moments and strong thematic resonance and very profound emotions that they really want to explore... but it would also make the happy ending they want for their characters impossible, either because the rules they've established for their story mean that the damage can't be reversed, or because the change is such that, even if the conflict were apparently resolved, the characters have now been changed by the event that they can never be as they were before, and the happy ending is now emotionally impossible.

When this conundrum comes up in the writing process, the author has to decide - do they want to explore the rich possibilities of this tragedy, or do they want to go a different direction that allows for their originally desired happy ending. It's a difficult choice to make, and unfortunately, it's not uncommon for authors to think they can take a third option, that they can come up with a way to have their tragedy but still make things work out in the end. And the end result is a solution that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That's what happens here, to the point that it's hard to read the last couple chapters because the main character reads like she's deluding herself that everything is fine and she's happy. And you know, that could've been a really interesting - and tragic - direction to go on purpose and explore, but it wasn't on purpose, and it just winds up feeling like the book is trying desperately to convince the reader that everything is alright, really! I can't help but compare it unfavorably to the conclusion of Lovelace's arc in The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, which confronted the fact that nothing could ever be the same again so unflinchingly that it gave rise to A Closed and Common Orbit, one of my favorite books of all time (that I completely forgot when I was trying to list some of my favorite books in a conversation the other day and now I feel like I've betrayed it).

And while I have you here, I also really hate that they made the transfem side character super into astrology. That's a personal bugbear, and while it's one I have grudgingly tolerated the singular time that I have seen a transfem author do it, I really, really wish non-transfem authors would knock that shit off. Find a different quirky interest to give to your transfem characters.

Still, on the whole, I thought it was a really solid book with a lot of entertaining and compelling elements. Unless you are reading it primarily for the logistical and emotional challenges of a romantic relationship between a ghost and a human, I would recommend it without hesitation. If you are, check out any of the other books I referenced in this post instead (except maybe for A Closed and Common Orbit, but if you're the kind of person who would like those other recommendations, I bet you'd like it too).

[lionscion]

Post-Epiphany Epilogue Thoughts & Info

How He Felt About the Outcome

Ares, as part of the Academy 1F raid squad, cleared out his assigned portion of Garreg Mach quite early and had ample time to watch the showdown between Projectionist and Melanthios play out. It was above the bridge so Ares had a pretty clear view of it.

Naturally when Projectionist fell first he was not happy, and he was ready to fight Melanthios himself next, but then the portal opened up and sucked Melanthios away. I doubt he was close enough to hear their convo, but if Mel was struggling visibly, then Ares could at least tell something was fucky. Thing is tho, since Mel just disappeared rather than died, he can't consider this over exactly. He will have found a Shard of Melanthios to maybe give him a hint that the guy is dead but, again, Ares isn't gonna fully feel satisfied without more confirmation. (I'll go back and update this if the asks give us more info).

As is, the way the fight played out has left a real sour taste in his mouth, and just this past month as a whole. He's no stranger to war of course, it was his job, so war itself is Tuesday to him and not the root issue. The difference is his new job is being a king and learning how to rule and reconstruct a country, and not just reconstruct it but make sure it doesn't fall into that severe state of ruin again. He went to Fodlan to learn how to do this because Belhalla's Academy was blown up... He came here looking to learn how to end cycles and create new ones, only to just walk into them again this month with failing to stop another Leonster-esque raid, fail to get the guy responsible, etc. ...and now this school is blown up too so...like...🧍he traveled this far to see square 1 again but Fodlan-flavored.

Of course he counts himself grateful that they at least could retake the Monastery and all, and that his friends were there to help again and they're all ok. Again, square one just like Epilogue in FE4 yknow? Once again there is an air of hope going forward for rebuilding (all that vegetation suddenly eliminating the scars war brings to land was really something to him) and that's great but it's just. He'd rather not just keep repeating the same damn stage yknow? Like there was this greater sense of awareness this time around since he's already been thinking about how to handle this stuff, only for his efforts to fall flat in the face of the latest stress test. Essentially the dude's rigid expectations combined with a sense of lack of progress means he's still displeased. He's fine fighting or doing whatever for his goals, as long as he feels progress is being made towards them, but this has felt like spinning his wheels.

But what happens when he gets dissatisfied and frustrated?

Say it with me: HE 👏 DOUBLES 👏 DOWN 👏

He still isn't going back to Agustria (short of catastrophe) without Mystletainn regardless of the school situation, and Fodlan at least still HAS professors that are alive and willing to come back once everything is fixed vs... whatever the fuck is going on with Belhalla Academy (which for the sake of simplicity I'm assuming to be way more fucked). And no way in hell is he letting go of his goals either so those are still unchanged too.

So fine. Fuck it. We're doing this then. What's one more obstacle on the road to reconstruction?

What Is He Doing Now?

Despite his frustrating lack of progress, he's not letting this stop him as usual, and he is stubbornly gonna just work harder towards his goals of restoring Agustria and securing longstanding peace.

To these ends, Ares is not only gonna help fix the Monastery so he can resume his education, but he's also gonna treat this mess as a microcosm of Jugdral's issues to get some of the most hands-on learning about rebuilding he's ever had the chance to get up to now. He'd already been stewing on general ideas this whole time regarding rebuilding so he's gonna use this to test em out.

As a Lion this works out well for him because he gets to start immediately on reconstruction, so that's what he's doing. Anything and everything needed, he's doing it. Also, if you're his friend, or somebody important to one of his friends, you can even stay here at the Monastery and 'room' with him. Cause he's good at setting up camp of course, and he's set up in ruins plenty, so if you wanna stick around he can help with that. Would just be more survival flavored cause, you're in a rathole rn it's not gonna be pretty lol.

Basically due to the circumstances of this and how it overlaps with Jugdral's stuff, this has got him really thinking about Jugdral's situation, and exploring his thoughts about it more directly. He canonically does restore Agustria tho, and damn well at that so, I'm excited to use this to potentially touch on the early makings that eventually lead to that outcome.

[physalian]

Could you make a post about a character slowly losing their humanity while trying to hold onto it? It's a main theme in my current WIP and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to go about it.

Losing their humanity like “The Fly” or “Metamorphosis” where it’s a curse/transformation/sickness, and is both quite literal and mental? Or losing their humanity as in, a character has done unspeakable things and is spiraling into psychopathy?

There’s so many directions you could go here depending on what your genre, rating, and tone is. First, you have to define what humanity means to you as an author and what it means to your world and your characters. Murder might be the worst crime in one novel, and a casual occurrence in another. So, at what point is your character no longer “human”?

This is incredibly specific to your story and advice here is definitely not ‘one size fits all’ so I’ll do my best and I’ll use a very popular movie to back me up: The Dark Knight.

Harvey Dent goes from saint to savage in less than 3 hours, about… I think three weeks maybe in-universe? The movie pulls this off in a few ways:

Right off the bat, there’s hints that this character has a loose circuit somewhere. Comics fans know he becomes Two Face, but layman audiences are still thrown a bone with Harvey’s rather quick rise to prominence in infamously-crime-ridden Gotham. So, he’s not starting as Mr. Rodgers.

Harvey’s job puts immense pressure on him to perform with a lot to lose if he fails. This makes his room for error to avoid catastrophe very narrow and raises the stakes for every action he takes. In essence, any one mistake can be devastating, making catastrophe more believable in the story.

When he starts losing, he loses a lot very quickly. Harvey is bombarded with the mob gremlins trying to escape the law, the Joker running around blowing up holes in the justice system and raining chaos everywhere, his wishy-washy girlfriend who’s hesitant to accept his proposal, and increasing pressure to hand over his hero, Batman, to a maniac, to stop the murders, and he can’t do much of anything about it. Even with small victories, it’s one step forward and three steps back and he’s being fundamentally and existentially thwarted at every turn.

He’s desperate, afraid, and powerful, three *very* bad traits in combination. His slippery slide into madness gets a little steeper when he kidnaps a criminal and screams through an interrogation, then it drops off a cliff when Rachel dies instead of him in a so-called game of chance.

“Chance” here, and Harvey’s ability and presumption of control, is his whole identity. He’s Two-Face. He’s got a double-headed coin to rig his bets. When Rachel dies, he’s lost control over everything, and he just shatters. She dies and he lives and he abandons his core values to embrace Joker’s vision of absolute anarchy, because what’s the point in trying to fight fate?

All of this works despite this monster of a plot, where he’s not even the main villain, because he had so far to fall, and the world of Batman lends itself to insanity coming on quickly. Joker even says that “madness is like gravity, all you need is a little push”.

So without having any details on your WIP I’d have this to say:

Figure out what moral code or person or object your character holds most central to their identity

Circle the drain of destroying it, forcing the character to grow desperate enough to protect it, going to ends they normally wouldn’t with the best of intentions

Destroy that thing

Let them crumble in the aftermath as they can no longer reconcile their core beliefs with the world they live in, and lash out as the wounded animal they’ve become

[fantasyfantasygames]

Scramble World

Scramble World, Jenny J. Jensson, 2011

Scramble World is an extremely badly named RPG with a fairly generic premise and fantastic execution.

The titular world is one of those weird mixed-up dimensions where dozens of different worlds have crashed into each other for unknown reasons. You play characters from different RPGs, teaming up to prevent catastrophes or at least be there to help afterward.

The setting is like Torg, but without our world as the base and without the cosms having well-defined boundaries. It's like Rifts but again without our world as the base, and with all the most flavor-packed parts of each worldbook crammed into an area the size of Pennsylvania. And with less racism. It's a world whose major powers did not evolve in each others' presence, so their mutual existence explicitly does not need to make sense. Scramble World is in constant catastrophe and will be until the sky stops being red and worldbergs stop crashing through the bleed.

Remember We Were The First, where the alien species were all randomized in ways that made sense together? Well, here your character sheet is randomized. I don't mean that you roll for your stats, no, I mean you roll to see which stats you get. You get pieces of the character sheet, suggested locations to place them (you can change those), and half-pages of rules that connect to them.

One character might end up with a standard-six-stats block that goes 3-18, an extensive skill list, and a set of emotional attributes that trigger XP conditions. Someone else might have the same stats but they go -2 to +4, a set of Apocalypse World style moves, some Merits and Flaws, and a Vancian spell system if you choose to pursue it. It's an amazing setup. It was clearly well-tested: there was a character generator online to speed things up for you, using the same mechanics as the random roll tables, and I've never seen it come up with a non-viable combination.

Because there are so many options, some of them boil down to the same thing under the hood. For instance, everyone ends up rolling for (or otherwise generating) a Likert-scale success measure and comparing with each other to see what the actual winner gets. Each character sheet fragment has only half a page to get in, explain things, and get out, so a lot of things have to do double duty. Kudos to Jenny for keeping this as small as possible, even if "as possible" does a lot of lifting in that sentence.

There are lots of "world fragments" described in the book. Out of 304 pages (in 6x9 / A5 format), they take up about 200. Each one is roughly 5 pages, with one piece of art, descriptions of their leaders and common people, a few key landmarks, and a "heroes from here are like X" section. A corebook overflow supplement ("World Omelette") adds another 20 pages of rule fragments and 60 pages of world fragments. They range from "pastiche" to "homage", but none of them feel like "ripoff".

The art is taken from a dozen different types of action-oriented RPG stock art, thrown together with slashes or tears or glitches between them. I'd like to see a version that showcases a small number of artists rather than just stock art, but it's used very well for what it is.

I've already spent a lot of words on Scramble World, so I'll stop here, but hopefully you can tell that I really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

* For those of you who are less mathy, 1d100 has a max of 100, a minimum of 1, and an average of 50.5. All numbers are equally likely. 1d10 x 1d10 has a max of 100, a minimum of 1, but an average of 30.25. Not only is the average 20 points lower, but it's also more closely concentrated. Less than 5% of the results are 60 or above. 🌈The More You Know!⭐️

[spacevixenmusic]

Unfairly Maligned Games, Vol. 3

Games I loved that got low scores, review bombed, or have some other weird negative stigma attached to them that I think is unfairly earned.

NOTE: I don't believe in giving games a number score or a letter grade. Maybe I'm just bad at criticism or very easy to please, whatever.

Indivisible [2019]

Mostly only known as the "from the makers of Skullgirls" game, Indivisible is another prime example of a game that was crowdfunded as one thing but turned into another, and gets a bad rap for its association with the ever-present controversiality of Skullgirls' creators. That said, I still think - as always - that it's crucial to view a game for what it is, not what it isn't. And what it IS is an extremely engaging mish-mash of genres and endearing characters, oozing with style and appeal, that fills a very particular void left behind by some of the most classic RPGs of a bygone era.

At its core, Indivisible is a 2D Metroidvania/RPG hybrid with an unusual battle system that plays similarly to an old PSX game series called Valkyrie Profile. During combat, each character's gauge will fill up, allowing them to take action(s). Your four party members are each assigned to one of the four face buttons on a controller (e.g. A, B, X, Y), and pressing that button will - in real-time - execute an attack on the enemy. Using it in combination the D-Pad allows for several different types of attack. All party members' attacks can overlap simultaneously, allowing you to string together combos to really rack up the damage, or juggle enemies to prevent counterattacks and break their defenses. The Metroidvania and platforming portion comprises the rest of the game, with a heavy focus on using those same action skills to scale massive environments, solve platforming puzzles, and dodge spikes. Typical Metroidvania stuff.

Story-wise, in our modern world of RPGs that is dominated almost exclusively by Japanese and Scandinavian narratives, Indivisible is breath of fresh air that focuses heavily on South and East Asian mythology and themes. Heavy inspiration is taken from the cultures of India, Tibet, Mongolia, and the South Pacific. This is reflected not only in the characters and their various ethnicities, but in the game's approach to spirituality, reincarnation, second chances, and being a teenager hellbent on destroying god. Our main protagonist Ajna is a teenager studying martial arts who isn't quite as in touch with her spirituality as her mentor would like her to be. When war strikes the land and burns her home to the ground, she gets pissed and sets out on a quest for retribution, discovering in the process that she actually does possess certain godlike powers of destruction, and also that she can absorb certain people into her head, which is just a cute way of lampshading having a Party System.

I've seen Reviewers and big Opinion-Havers on the internet criticize the game's writing for having a bull-headed protagonist who boldly rushes into confrontation, unleashing her wanton destruction without first considering the catastrophic consequences for civilians. It's almost like they've forgotten what being a teenager and making poor choices is like. But I say fuck 'em. I say we need MORE stories about uninformed teenagers with immense godlike powers and no sense of nuance making rash decisions and fucking up royally. That alone is crucial to understanding the rest of the game's themes about atonement, reincarnation, and understanding why you believe what you believe in. That's what Indivisible is all about. In many ways, I feel like Ajna shares a common story arc with Korra from the Avatar series, and it's very cool to see how she learns to deal with the damage she's caused and what insight that gives her when facing down the Big Bad.

Of course, what is a good story without characters to flesh it out? The characters in this game are absolutely charming and multifaceted, coming from a wide array of different cultures and personalities, many of which are vastly underrepresented in not only RPGs but video games in general. Personal favorites include, but are not limited to, big booba water mom Thorani (based on a buddhist deity of the same name), Leilani the Hawaiian sharknado (spins around in a cyclone attack using a leiomano, a Hawaiian shark-tooth sword), lesbian pirate mom Baozhai (based on the famous Chinese pirate Ching Shih), and of course, local nihilistic swamp witch Razmi (a loose mishmash of Korean and Persian Zoroastrian shamans). The full cast of characters is enormous (well over 20 playable ones alone), and each one comes with a unique moveset and playstyle that not only keeps gameplay interesting, but matches their personality and the role they play in the story.

But if there's one thing I truly want to focus on when I gush about this game, it's this. Indivisible has one thing over most other games of its genre, something that modern RPGs in particular suffer heavily from a severe lack of, and that's its strong commitment to multiculturalism. Indivisible made a clear decision to not only feature characters from around the globe, but to blend their cultures together in interesting and exciting ways that don't diminish or water them down. Every character is allowed to shine in their own way without diluting what makes them stand out in the first place, which is why you can have a game that features a gunblade-wielding cowboy, a Namibian songstress, an armless Chinese dancer, a Kamen Rider knock-off, and a Mongolian archer who people keep mistaking for Pearl from Steven Universe. This sort of melting-pot cultural stew used to be common in classic anime and 90s RPGs, but kind of fell out of fashion with the rise of gacha waifu games and Elder Scrolls derivatives. Now more than ever, I feel like Indivisible is exactly the sort of injection the gaming world needs to rekindle those flames of pure imagination that the old classic era brought us.

All that said, one of the biggest reasons Indivisible will always have a dark mark next to its name is of course due to the fact that its lead designer (the studio head) was involved in a sexual harassment case that resulted in everyone on the team either quitting or being laid off, and the rights to the work and characters getting lost in the shuffle. Additionally, the game was still finished and released as intended, but did not feature any of the guest star characters that were promised during crowdfunding, most of whom were indie darlings of the time (Shovel Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, and Super Time Force to name a few). Naturally, this has left a sour taste in many folks' mouths, so it is somewhat understandable why the game would have a negative stigma attached. There are also a few bizarre and possibly off-putting cameos hidden among the NPCs (a few outdated meme references and Zone-tan, of all people), but these are entirely skippable and serve only as background extras.

Sour grapes aside though, I wholeheartedly recommend Indivisible for anyone looking for a fresh take on action RPGs. The neat hybridization of Metroidvania and real-time RPG with fighting game mechanics gives it a very unique identity, and if the compelling spirituality of the story doesn't grab you, the charm of the characters absolutely will. It certainly took me for a ride. My only word of caution is to follow the game's own suggestion and get good at Blocking in combat as early as you can!

[bluecatwriter]

A Blood of My Blood-universe scene of Arthur and Jack soon after returning to England, based on this prompt from @animate-mush: "Jack hopped up on whatever combination of pain medication is getting him through the catastrophic loss of one of his limbs just covering Arthur with sloppy kisses about it." Don't mind if I do.

(CW for medicinal drug use and mildly dubious consent)

*

Jack had been breaking a lot of things lately.

Earlier today, it had been a drinking-glass, hurled against the wall. Yesterday it had been a window-pane of the bedroom they shared, shattered by a paperweight from Jack's desk (the pane was now covered in nailed-down cloth to keep the winter chill out until a workman could come fix it). And now, as Arthur laid in bed and Jack sat at his desk, it was a book, which Jack was tearing out page by page with his single hand, crumpled paper falling like snow around him.

Arthur had stopped trying many days ago to make him stop. Jack was alive, and that was all Arthur cared about. Let him shatter and rip and shred the house apart, for what was broken in his own flesh— the ragged scar from his face across his throat, the severed stump of his left hand— was mending, cell by cell.

Losing his voice was the biggest blow, Arthur knew. Jack was not exactly a storyteller, not like Quincey (the name sent a sharp pain up into his heart, a flash of memory, Quincey's mangled body in the snow). But he processed things verbally, he communicated things verbally, and he could barely write with his right hand. Arthur had been scrambling to figure out solutions— a one-handed typewriter, an instructor to teach them both a modified version of sign language— but he knew that Jack didn't want solutions, he wanted his voice back.

So Arthur was quiet while Jack raged. He deserved a bit of raging, Arthur figured.

Arthur drifted in and out of a shallow sleep; he and Jack had shared a bed ever since they'd returned to Ring, but Jack went to bed much later than he did, and he had learned not to try to hurry him. It was probably far after midnight when the sound of ripping paper stopped, and Arthur heard the shuffling around that told him Jack had resigned himself to taking his medication for the night and crawling into bed.

Jack was on a couple different pain medications right now— grudgingly so, but without which he could not function. He always took morphine before bed, and Arthur cracked his eye open to see Jack wrapping the tourniquet around his left arm and injecting himself, staring blankly ahead, not even flinching. When he was done, he put everything away, dropped his glasses on the desk with a clatter, turned off all but one gas-lamp (they had learned to keep a light on, so that Jack could "talk" even if he woke up in the night), and shuffled over to the bed.

Arthur lifted the blanket and let Jack flop down next to him, face to face. Jack was staring a thousand miles away, lying on his left side with bandaged stump of his arm tucked against his chest.

Arthur scooted closer and held him, because of instinct, because of habit, because of terror that Jack would disappear like mist if he didn't put his arm around him and convince himself he was real. Neither of them could bear the thought of waking up from nightmares to find himself alone.

Arthur signed Goodnight. He could have spoken it aloud, but he wanted to show some solidarity. Jack didn't reply, just laid on the pillow as if dead.

With a sigh, Arthur closed his eyes and drifted to sleep again.

He had been asleep for some time when he found himself surfacing, and he quickly realized that Jack was crying. The sounds that came from his throat were strangled gurgles, and tears flowed down his cheeks. Arthur stirred and pulled him closer, soothing a hand over his arm as Jack's hand gripped his shirt.

"Are you all r—" Arthur began to ask, but in an instant Jack grabbed him by his hair and kissed him.

The kiss knocked Arthur's breath out; they'd been sharing a bed for weeks now, but had never done this before. He tried to pull back, to ask Jack what had prompted this, but Jack's hand clenched harder in his hair, his mouth hot and insistent, his leg hooking over Arthur's to pull his body closer. His mouth had a sharp metallic tang, scents of blood and bile, but the passion in his kiss sent Arthur's head reeling. When he took Jack's shoulders and firmly pushed him away, Jack made a whining sound.

"Jack," Arthur said, a bit breathless, "what are you— you— You're high on morphine right now, I can't—"

Jack's face wrinkled into almost a snarl, and he clapped his fingers together to sign Stop. In an instant he had sat up, pushed Arthur onto his back, thrown a leg over him to straddle him, and begun kissing him again— his mouth, his cheeks, his chin, his eyes, tears dripping down onto his face. Arthur tried to convince himself to resist again, to feel that he was somehow taking advantage, but he couldn't muster the will. Jack's hand in his hair, his lips moving with brutal desperation, his weight pinning him down: all of it begged him to let go, to give Jack everything he wanted.

He cupped Jack's face in both hands, his fingers gingerly grazing over the stitched skin on his jaw. At his touch Jack's movements slowed, and Jack settled his full weight on top of him, kissing him as if slowly gulping down huge draughts of water. Arthur held out a moment more before melting against the bed, opening his mouth to accept lips against lips, tongue against tongue.

Everything for so long had hurt so much, and this did not hurt. He gave in.

*

Jack awoke slowly, disoriented by the late morning light. Arthur's arm was thrown over him as usual, but it was bare, warm against his own naked skin. Jack stiffened as he remembered last night, and at his movement, he felt Arthur murmur and wake up behind him.

For a moment, they just laid there curled up together tensely. Then Jack shook off Arthur's arm and sat up, the cold air of the room raising goosebumps on his bare skin. Arthur looked up at him uncertainly, his eyes wide.

Jack swallowed, feeling a painful squeeze in his throat as he always did. He made a fist and circled it over his chest. Sorry.

Arthur sat up slowly, and Jack blushed and looked away. He spoke softly. "I'm only sorry if you are."

Jack's blush grew deeper. If he could've spoken, he would have said, I'm not sorry, really. Only mortified. Instead, he reached out and took Arthur's hand, squeezing it.

Arthur touched his chin and turned his head gently, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Whatever gets us through, right?"

Jack sank against him, pressing his face against his neck, and let out a breath as Arthur's arms came around him. Jack nodded against him, feeling a spaciousness in his heart that he hadn't felt before. 

Whatever got them through.

~~~

[constellaj]

One question about your Multiverse AU that I've always been dying to ask and have now gotten the courage to do so: How did the Geoff and Alejandro who got to become Vaquero meet and then subsequently fuse?

I'm also happy with just any tidbits about Vaquero because he seems like an incredibly interesting character.

Oh man that is one of my favorite stories !!! As always, pieced together with the help of @crystalfloe :)

So our multiverse has a pseudo-government, not necessarily in the collecting taxes sense, but in a very strict "detaining people with highly volatile personalities or magic powers" sense. So strict that you can be detained for something you did in a past life-- and you will be!

This is what happened to Geoff. Dude has no idea what he's in for, but one day he's shipped from a dinky little temporary holding cell into the massive, main DIDU complex (Dangerous Immortal Detention Unit).

He's supposed to go to some "rehab" program while he's here. A program that just so happens to be run by Alejandro!

Alejandro is a little more experienced when it comes to dealing with the multiverse; some might say too experienced. He's got a kind of terrifying powerset, and kind of hates his job as a therapist, but it pays well- and he really, really needs the cash.

See, Alejandro is a "pairhunter." Two immortals can "pair" with one another (almost always on accident) when their auras intertwine, giving them a powerful combined boost in magic. If this relationship is severed, however, the results can be unstable and catastrophic for the people who've paired. Oftentimes, without the support of their pair's original aura, their physical and mental forms break down until they're nothing but a conglomerate of goo wandering the multiversal plane, looking for their lost pair-- a creature known as a Pairhunter.

While it's unclear the circumstances that led to this Alejandro becoming one, we know his former pair was a Geoff-- probably an asshole, Aftermath-hosting one.

Pairhunters are almost always quarantined by the DIDU. Alejandro's employers don't know he is one, because he's found a temporary work around-- buying suspicious pills on the black market! Some lovely lady out there is extracting aura from a bunch of imprisoned Geoffs and condensing it into capsule form, which helps our little Al stave off total deterioration.

Geoff pills don't come cheap, though, which is why he has this job in the first place. Unfortunately, he leaves Geoff himself unattended in his office. More unfortunately, while rooting around for contraband (to bring back to the boys, bro!), Geoff finds and accidentally absorbs his medication.

Geoff has no reason to know it, but his power this lifetime is energy absorption. Pills made entirely of formless aura seep into your skin *quick,* especially if that aura is *yours.* He has no idea what just happened or even what those pills were.

What he *does* know is how panicked Alejandro is when he gets back. Total 180° from his usually suave, if disinterested, behavior-- talking about how he's going to lose his job and his mind. Geoff might be in jail, but that doesn't mean he's an asshole, so he does what you learn to do after a lifetime of prison; he grabs Alejandro and hides from the staff.

In a cramped little broom closet he sees something he hasn't before; a man breaking apart into abstract form, dripping onto the ground. Without the stabilization of those pills, Alejandro's basically done for. Confused and offput by this needlessly charming man in tears, Geoff does what a Geoff does best. He hugs the dude.

Turns out, when a being *made* of uncompressed energy and a being that *absorbs* uncompressed energy collide, they fuse.

Vaquero's first appearance is brief, but it changes the stakes. Even just those few seconds fused stabilized Alejandro better than a lifetime of pills. (Hugging your boyfriend is not a substitute for taking your antidepressants. This is fiction. go take your meds man). The two make a pact; Alejandro stops trying to mold Geoff into the ideal 'reformed prisoner,' and Geoff doesn't tell any guards what's happening. They continue their therapy sessions, of course, as scheduled, but those very quickly become nothing but the opportunity for Vaquero to form again.

And, naturally, over time they develop feelings for each other. Classic gay shit.

Unfortunately, every part of this plan is illegal, down to the act of fusion itself. Through a series of stupid mistakes and cocky attitudes, one guard (pseudoname Helix) develops his suspicions. Alejandro is pressured and interrogated. Worse, Geoff gets planned to move to deep solitary, with no hopes of ever seeing Alejandro again.

Who's ready for a good old fashioned prison break?

With Geoff's prison buds and Alejandro's knowledge of the complex, Vaquero manages to make it out into the central city-Hub of the multiverse. He loses Helix in a mostly condemned back alleyway, hiding in an abandoned building.

Once the lights come on, he realizes this place is perfect size for an illicit bar.

And so opens Club Vaquero, an underground and entirely secretive operation that hides the misfits and criminals of the wider multiverse. Run by a man you've never seen before, not at any Bridgette beach parties or Carlos soccer meets-- a man unlike anything you've seen in the multiverse before, a man with no parallel versions.

Let's just hope Helix doesn't hear about this place.

[stingslikeabee]

@a-nxkxmxrx sent: [ ache ] sender kisses receiver like they’re trying not to fall apart

[ from sealed with a kiss . accepting ]

The explosion had taken most of the residents by surprise, not to mention the way it worked as a triggering event for those who had survived the catastrophic platefall incident. Melissa still remembered that day vividly - although the Honey Bee Inn had emerged unscratched, the Wall Market took a heavy hit as a neighboring sector. Many were the refugees they welcomed, and for weeks the brothel was turned into a makeshift hospital and home for those with no place to go.

Months later, things had returned somewhat to normal - there were Shinra efforts to rebuild the city below, led mostly by Director Tuesti, but progress had been very slow. The destruction had been massive and their work was frequently interrupted by those desperate enough to loot the construction sites for valuables, as well as by Shinra personnel themselves. The platefall had exposed underground company infrastructure, forgotten and lacking repair - these were dangerous and needed to be addressed before homes could be rebuilt.

These tunnel networks, however, extended far beyond sector 7 - and Wall Market realized that it was also sitting atop a ticking bomb when that explosion happened. There was a lot of hearsay, from escaped monsters to just chemicals combining in an unfortunate way - but it didn't change the fact that the madame had once more been welcoming those injured into her own establishment, many of the honeygirls assisting to the best of their abilities with first aid and providing people with some food and temporary rest.

Alice had arrived in the middle of that chaos - for once, the inn was not a picture of elegant entertainment, but closer to a field hospital. The director had a strange look in her eyes, jaw clenched and hands balled into fists as she walked inside, barely sparing a word to the employees she had come to know by name and looking for Melissa only. Luckily for Alice, the brunette was on the ground floor - and as soon as she found the madame, the Shinra employee grabbed the other woman by the arm, urgently glancing at her little office space and taking Melissa there.

The former prostitute thought it had been something serious about Shinra - perhaps Alice was on the ground for damage control, or maybe she needed intel to make a decision on how to package the news about the explosion to the rest of the sectors. The older woman did not, however, predict the way Alice all but slammed the inn proprietress to the door, kissing Melissa with an intensity that took the air out of her lungs.

That was not a normal reaction for one so calm and collected - and it had the brunette responding out of instinct, but then gently touching Alice as if disarming an explosive mechanism herself. Slowly, but without ever lacking in affection, Melissa combed the red hair with her hands, touched the general with tenderness, murmured soft things in-between their kisses when Alice paused for air. At some point, they both dropped to the ground, sitting awkwardly by the door - and the tears came.

It took Melissa time to understand the reason - Alice had feared for her; the other woman had been desperate to go below the plate and see for herself that the madame had not been seriously injured in the explosion. Losing those she cared for (or loved) was not something the general handled well - the thought of going through it again seemed like a very heavy cross to bear.

"Alice, I am fine," Melissa said not for the first time, firm but with fondness. Her digits gripped Alice's face by the chin gently, using the other hand to wipe away the tears and to press kisses over the wet trails left behind, resting their foreheads together for a moment and letting them synchronize their breathing. "You're fine. We will get through this like we always do."

Honeyed hues met those infused with mako, smiling gently at her. "I have the best protector in all of Midgar - I know you will keep me safe, my darling."

[chichirichick]

Santa's a Little Late, but...

I had the honor of getting my wife from another life @anxietybard for the @sesecretsanta this year! Read the SoMa pining below or on AO3.

Title: Taking a Leap

Pairing: SoMa, background hints of Marie/Stein, Kid/Star

Rating: T

This wasn’t how I wanted to spend the start of my weekend, but that perfect little girl scout of a meister of mine just had to rope me into another one of her half-baked plans. “You know she has the combined genetic make-up of a dissection-happy scientist and a woman who breaks toilets.” 

“A toilet,” Maka corrected as if that made it any better. “And that was just a rumor.” Her prim little sashay ended at the mouth of the walkway. She turned on her heels, planted her fists on her hips, and that bottom lip popped into a pout before she seemed to think better of it. With as flat a line to her lips as possible, Maka griped, “I don’t know why you bothered to come if all you’re going to do is complain.”

This should not be my circus– should not be my monkeys– but staying home alone on a Friday night? I could count the number of Fridays—let's not mention other days of the week—I’d spent without Maka on one hand.

Way to make it sound like you’re a couple, loser.

Ah, and there was the spiral, right on cue. Not that this was anything new, but a few recent weird life events had sent me on more than one mental tailspin: this year, that idiot Star and our often emotionally stunted boss Kid had jumped an unexpected hurdle into each others’ beds.

To my fucking surprise, this ignited a shit-ton of issues for me– no, no, I have no problem with two dudes shacking up, even though thinking about either of those two having sex isn’t high on my list of joyful thoughts. It was just this goddamn hazy, dreamy truth that I’d always tried to hold on to: weapons always ended up with their meisters. I mean, there was no chance in hell that Liz or Patty could withstand more than a partnership with Kid, and Tsubaki already had the patience of a saint just being Star’s weapon, but… I don’t know. Just the idea that the sorta unbreakable bond weapon and meister have–

“Soul.”

Oops. I blinked as my brain scrambled back out of that catastrophic corkscrew to face the one I was in now. “Maka, are you serious?” I slapped on a slick grin for good measure. “I watched you make flashcards all week– I want to make sure Shelley has some fun.”

She rolled her eyes before spinning back to her original trajectory.

Mission accomplished– for now. I followed a few steps behind her, sorta mesmerized by the wave of her hair as she left it untied. That’s been happening more often… wonder if she’s tryin’ a new style or somethin’.

Wow, creeper.

My shoulders crumpled a little further as I sighed. Sometimes that little demon was a real piece of shit.

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

Soul being there shouldn’t have irked me, and I honestly don’t even know why I complained. Why I was pouting. Why I was unable to even laugh at his—well deserved—joke about the myriad of activities I had planned.

It’s just…

This was a test. A pivotal, life-altering test. 

I hear it: Soul being here for a momentous decision? Of course– or really, it should be of course– but there was a giant roadblock. One that, if you asked me straight to my face, I’d deny even if you were threatening to pull fingernails. In my head, though… the moment played back perfectly in my mind:

Marie, someone who had filled at least a quarter of the empty spot my mother had left behind, wheeled behind curtains to give birth to her long-awaited bundle of joy.

Soul, taking my hand and squeezing as he gently chided: “Don’t worry– she’ll be fine.”

Me, frozen, watching the fabric flutter before my voice—so alien, so far away—croaked from my throat: “I won’t ever be a mother.”

Any flashback to it still sets my teeth on edge, especially as the moment fades out on Soul’s shocked face. I captured each one of those syllables and squashed it down, all while hoping that Soul wouldn’t let it die. I wanted him to question me– to challenge with some Soul-icism that was a comforting mix of mocking and mollification. Because I know why I said it, but I’m all too sure he doesn’t.

And there it was: a giant roadblock.

Well, as if not being in a relationship wasn’t enough of a roadblock.

Sometimes Soul’s not the only one with that dark little voice in his head.

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

This was a disaster, and I hate to say I told her so, but I told her so. Okay, and yeah, I don’t actually hate proving Little-Miss-Can’t-Be-Wrong wrong. I’m not above smug satisfaction at being right, but watching Maka struggling against the will of a four-year-old had soured it just a bit. 

“I think it’s time for dinner,” Maka mumbled as the last of her confidence deflated.

“Actually–” Man, was I risking my entire life by grabbing her wrist and turning those tear brimmed eyes back to me. I was at a total loss as to why the hell she was taking it so personally, but I couldn’t let her drown in her own saltwater. “Shelley’s gonna make dinner. I’ll supervise.” You would have thought I’d dog-eared the page of her favorite book since the look I got was nothing but a bubbling cauldron of rage with a fine shimmering top of terror. What the fuck’s gotten into you?

“F-fine.” She fumbled over the word before forcing herself out of my grip. Without another peep, Maka disappeared into the archway to the living room, leaving me to feed a sigh to the ceiling.

“Do I really get to make dinner?” The hopeful little chirp sent my eyes back down to Marie’s mini-me. “Really, Soul?”

“Yup”—I ruffled a hand through her hair—“and just to warn you, I’m lazy. So you’re doin’ most of the work.” I made a show of drooping in the doorway, enjoying the way it made Shelley erupt into giggles.

“C’mon, Soul, c’mon!” There was plenty of tugging, dragging, and laughing involved before we made it into the kitchen. 

“Alright, show me the pots.” Not a second of confusion crossed that little face– Shelley instantly jumping into action and proving my point almost instantly. 

Well, my point if I had made a point with Maka, but Death knows she wouldn’t hear it. The irony? Kids this age are willful little know-it-alls who want to do, not be told, and least of all, be coddled.

Sound like anyone we know?

Since I had kept all that in mind, I was living the ideal: water boiling, sauce in a pot, and a very determined kiddo stirring with her big-girl spoon while I chopped. Shelley was practically preening while she inhaled the tomatoey steam. “Can we save some for Mama and Papa?”

“‘Course.” I couldn’t stop the laugh that followed as she wiggled with delight. Okay, so maybe the homicidal doctor gene didn’t pass down.

“Soul?”

I was busy trying to keep all my fingers intact so all I could do was hum out: “Hm?” 

“Is Miss Maka always so mean?”

My knife slowed, half because Shelley deserved careful consideration to her question and half because I needed to glance back at the door. No, there were no jade eyes scowling at me from the frame, but… ah, fuck it. “Not sure I’d call it mean. I know she doesn’t mean it that way, but–”

“Then why does Miss Maka keep trying to tell me what to do?” she complained.

“I know it sounds like she’s tellin’ you what to do,” I murmured, “but it’s more tryin’ to protect you.” I shrugged to buy time. What was her problem, anyway? What was the helicopter parent act that she had going on tonight?

“But I’m a big girl!”

Boy, did I want to snort out a laugh. There was too much irony again, and a part of me wanted Maka to be listening. “Yeah, you are, but when someone cares about you, sometimes they go a little haywire. Sorta wanna just wrap you up in their love to keep you from anythin’ bad.” Okay, so, maybe it wasn’t just Maka who should be listening. I stared down at my hands with a sigh, feeling the sting of that insight trying to needle into my brain. My heart didn’t want to budge, but… “Think you could take it as a sign she really cares, and we’ll work on it from there?”

Oh? And when are you gonna work on that yourself?

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

I wasn’t sure if it was my ego or my heart that was more bruised, especially as elation followed the pair into the dining room. Shelley was precariously balancing a bowl of salad—is she old enough to do that?—while Soul steadily carried a pot beside her. The objections were on my tongue when Soul’s stole everything away:

Let her do it, he mouthed.

Oh, yes, definitely a strike to my ego. It yelped along with a myriad of annoyed petulant pleas: How does he know what’s best? Since when is he a child whisperer? How does he know what’s right and I–

I flattened a hand over my mouth as if the words were going to flee from behind my teeth. It was all so dark, so ugly, and it was getting me nowhere. My eyes burned as Shelley joined me at the table. Soul was quick to turn back and retrieve the pasta before sliding into his seat. I honestly wanted to disappear. This was all a failed experiment because every ticking moment was proving me right: I was only capable of needing mothering, not giving it and–

Soul’s hand tightened around mine, making me jump. For a moment, I was sure I’d see heads bowed and “Grace” starting on Shelley’s lips, but Soul was just watching Shelley serve herself. The little girl was in the throes of victory—even though some of the tablecloth had suffered casualties—while Soul ran a gentle thumb over my knuckles.

Holding hands wasn’t anything exactly new, but this… I risked another glance at his face, and while the turn of his smirk spoke “cool as a cucumber,” the light pink of his ears was that well-honed hint that he was nervous. About what? Nervous that I was– yes, Maka, duh. Soul could be dense about certain things, but I had to admit that he wasn’t about people’s feelings. He could read a room just as easily as sheet music.

I let my stare linger from that peony stain to the strong set of his jaw before rising to scarlet eyes that were now focused on me. “You ready to eat?”

I squeezed his hand, watching as that made the corner of his mouth twitch. Whether tonight was a losing battle or not, one thing was clear: I had Soul with me. That was always enough. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

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Fuck, I was starting to think I was insane. Suddenly, Maka wasn’t Maka anymore. Or, I dunno, maybe she was more Maka than she was before? Again, fuck. Because whatever funk she’d been in at the beginning of the night had suddenly lifted as soon as dinner was over. I’d seen the girl hangry before, but…?

Or your lame little hand-holding actually worked.

As if that’d ever be enough.

It was Maka’s turn since we’d hit the toiletries stage of the bedtime routine. That means—again, what the fuck—she’d settled back into the observer role. No more bossing– no more worrying over whether or not an activity was gonna leave toes and fingers intact. Just an enigmatic smile and eyes that wouldn’t quit following me around the room. I couldn’t tell if I hated it or liked it– again, just insane.

“Soul!”

I jolted at the call before steadying myself for the mosey down the hall. Shelley was tucked to her chin, Maka sitting there with a book poised. I watched the scene, a smirk on my lips. “Whatdya need me for?”

“You have to do the bear voice,” Shelley instructed.

“Apparently my voice isn’t deep enough,” Maka added with one of the only self-deprecating smiles I’d ever seen on her. I didn’t like it.

That sent me striding, moving to plop on the other side of the bed. “Lemme see.” Maka angled the book my way. I glanced at Shelley, seeing that childlike expectant smile. Next was Maka, and… well, there was some sorta expectation there too that I couldn’t exactly get a fix on. I didn’t have time for that thought; my little Goldilocks wouldn’t wait.

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I’d made some lame excuse to stand in the kitchen. Well, popcorn was a fitting one at least since we had time to kill before Stein and Marie got home. Each pop! had my nerves tingling– little beats of gunfire to rip little holes in my heart. I guess it was all the melancholy of letting my dream die.

I wasn’t so stupid as to create white-picket fences. Mantles with family photos in neat little rows. The sing-song voice of children playing in the yard.

We were, at best, soldiers. In my mind, only pieces of that would even be possible, and even then…

Roadblocks.

Unrequited love. My neediness. My stubbornness. My… well, everything since tonight had shown me the obvious truth: I’m not made to be a mother.

Because that was the core covered in the mud of those words I had said to Soul. I had watched Marie in her sacrifice and knew—so deeply that it wrenched my heart from its place between my ribs—that my mother had never done the same for me. Sure, there was the actual birth, but the unconditional love that came after? And obviously that hadn’t been passed down. My patience today—or utter lack thereof—had been the final nail in the coffin. I was too stubbornly myself, and the self that I was most certainly didn’t fit the motherly mold.

“Yo.”

I just about jumped for the counter, spinning quickly to catch Soul with an eyebrow raised as he stood in the doorway. “What?”

“Are you coming in this century, or am I starting this movie by myself?”

“I’m just trying to make sure all the kernels are popped,” I grumbled as I turned back to the bag circling in the microwave.

“Alright, little miss perfect,” he teased before his footsteps got lost in the hush of the carpet. “Don’t blame me when you hate the flick.”

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Maka was fidgeting even though I was sure I’d picked a total winner of a film– some stupid puzzle of a thriller that she could use that big brain to tear apart for two hours. Instead, it was me she was tearing apart, and not being a bit sly about it. Her finger was toying with the power button and after a few more circles she finally took the plunge. I was stuck staring at a black screen.

“How did you know?”

“Know what?” I could be a little proud of the nonchalant, bullshitting tone I’d actually managed to put into that. I still couldn’t fix the arms that protectively crossed my chest or the bit of a grimace that was tainting the side of my smirk.

“You don’t have to be modest,” she pressed, green eyes starting an inquisition. “I want to know why–how you’re so good with kids.”

I shrugged, but the stone in her features told me I wasn’t off the hook. “Sorta– yeah, I had cousins and stuff.”

“And stuff.”

Woo-boy, I was toeing a line, but… there was Solomon Evans, and then there was Soul Eater. I’d never been too sure about burdening Maka with the old me, and this was sure it. Still, I dipped that toe: “Before my grandma died–”

The start of that brought her eyes wider, sweetness– softness coming to her eyes.

“–there used to be a mob of us. Mom’s got three brothers and a sister and each of ‘em wasn’t shy about having kids. Wes and I are the only pair.” I swallowed the old urge to button my lips because she was hanging off each word with a death-grip. “But they were all younger. Mostly babies and toddlers, so I got used to that kinda kid.”

She just nodded.

I cleared my throat. “But when Grandma died, our idiot parents just fell into fighting about inheritance and all that stopped.” I suddenly realized that secret had been a rock in my gut, and while it still scratched me raw coming up, its absence was a weight I didn’t fucking miss. “Got used to it, so I missed it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Sure, she could be apologizing for the shit my parents did, but I knew there was more to it. Her eyes were a little too shiny, and that button of her nose was turning a light pink. Maybe my sense had been lost along with that burden, since I couldn’t stop the whisper: “Why’d you ask Marie to do this?”

She flinched and her lips buttoned tight.

“Maka,” I pushed.

Her reply was a sigh, her fingers flexing on the channel changer and threatening to undo the silence. I grabbed them, ruining her chance for escape. “How do you know I asked?”

“‘Cause,” I muttered back.

“Don’t you think I’m responsible enough for Marie to just ask me?” Any playfulness in that was erased by her eyes falling away from me.

“Bookworm”—my throat burned with the love I couldn’t hide—“I know you. Doin’ somethin’ like this… what were you tryin’ to prove?”

She blinked, the liquid no longer just a shine in her eyes but small rivers down her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. I failed anyway.”

Her arms tensed, trying to pull back her hands but I slipped into a firm hold on her wrists. I wasn’t gonna let her get away, not if it meant she was gonna break somewhere on her own. “Failed at what?”

“I was no good at this,” she whispered as that horrible, un-Maka-ly smile plastered on her lips again. 

I wanted to roll my eyes. “Maka–”

“No,” she decimated that even with her softened voice. “I told you, right? I’m just– I won’t ever be a mother.”

Oh. There it was. Definitely not something I had forgotten, but we were sixteen. I fucking barely knew my own feelings let alone how to navigate hers. What I did know though? This was a deep hurt, and I most likely had this one chance to get it right. “The first time I held my cousin, I dropped him.”

Maka blinked, brows furrowing. “What?”

I produced at least half of a laugh thanks to the memory floating over my brain. “Not dropped-dropped, but yeah, he was nuts as a toddler and just threw himself everywhere, and since I didn’t know and hadn’t tried before, I made the mistake of trying to lift him when he was having one of those tantrums and pow!” 

“But–”

“But nothin’,” I spat. “You can’t just throw yourself into something and expect it to be second nature. Even meistering—you know, that thing that’s literally in your blood—didn’t come to you without practice.” I gave her wrists a shake for good measure since I could see the argument forming on her lips. “You think four hours with a bossy preschooler means you couldn’t manage a kid of your own?”

“Nothing I did was right,” she hissed.

“That ain’t exactly true,” I pressed. “You tried. That was the rightest thing you could do.”

The pause that came after had me just about ready to tear out my hair. It wasn’t until she fidgeted, sighed, and tossed her chin back towards me that she spoke again. “Rightest isn’t a word,” Maka corrected softly as her eyes finally met mine. Her smile was dull, but at least it wasn’t fake anymore. “And I don’t know about trying, but… Soul, this isn’t just you– ‘wrapping me up to keep me from somethin’ bad?’”

My stomach dropped. Of course she’d been listening—of fucking course—but did she get the insinuation there? Love. I had said love. Wrapping someone in love. And I– 

Well, no shit, Eater, she’s sure you love her in that lame weapon way. Don’t get ahead of yourself.

“I’m sorry– I eavesdropped.” For once, she did look a little guilty, but I missed out on it completely. I was staring at my hands, hoping that if the heat I was feeling was a blush, then at least the tilt of my head would hide part of it. “Thanks for standing up for me.”

“Like I said– you were tryin’,” I mumbled. 

The tangle of our hands was suddenly in the forefront of my mind, but as soon as I started to loosen my hold on her wrists, she slid her palms back into mine. “But you’re not messing with me, right?”

“Nah.” One syllable– that’s all I fucking had. She was holding my hands too tightly. I was suffering through slick palms. I was sure at least my ears were pink. I was–

“I’m glad you came.”

Okay, no more at least. If my whole face wasn’t a tomato, then Clapton wasn’t a guitar god.

“It’s funny…” The breathlessness of her laugh drew my eyes back to her face. I had seen that look on her face only a few times before: she was scared, but that elated kind of afraid like she was about to jump off some cliff. “I wanted to do this by myself, but I realized that it always ends up alright if I have you with me.”

Floor, say hello to stomach. Tongue, lose every last control over your muscles. Brain, bluescreen. Here was where that dark, oily voice would usually pop in to ground me again, but even that didn’t have the strength to overcome my hopes at that moment.

It’s not like I imagined white-picket fences. No stupid Macy’s photos in tacky frames. No kids clamoring around the backyard.

We were tools, right? Usually just means to an end, but… 

If there was one thing I did envision, it was having her with me. And sometimes, just sometimes, it was all the happy stuff that could come along with that.

“Soul?”

“Ah,” I tried, but my mouth was still full of cotton.

“I just wanted you to know that, okay?” Her fingers were slipping away. The fucking moment was slipping away, and I knew it, and–

“You’d be good at it,” I blurted.

Trajectory was momentarily paused, her hands hovering between us. “What?”

“Being a mom,” I stammered through, knowing that for once I had no plan. “Maybe it doesn’t feel like it now, but I know you. I know you’d learn, and I know you’d be good at it.”

I had hoped the crying was over with, but new tears blossomed in her eyes. “Oh.”

“And that’s– that’s not me keepin’ you from somethin’ bad,” I murmured.

She nodded, brought her hands back to her face, and did her best to clear the mess. Death, Maka might have been all blotchy and tear-stained, but I couldn’t help but think she was probably the most beautiful I’d ever seen. She was vulnerable, and for once, we’d actually talked about it. I couldn’t help but want that moment to last forever.

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 I wanted to imagine that moment as another thread woven into our connection, and I wish that I… well, all that I could urge myself to do at that point was to plant my head on his shoulder and turn the movie back on as if it were any other night. My bravery does have its limits.

 At first, his heart galloped like we’d just finished a practice fight with Star, but after comfortably melding together over an hour, any thumping was replaced by his gentle snore. I laughed at the predictability: Soul always had a post-stress coma. 

I lifted my head to examine the tilt of his chin, the way his unfussed bangs slightly fell over his eyes. Soul’s mouth was slack, grumbles starting on each inhale. Gently, I tested his cheek with my finger, waiting to see if he was truly dead to the world. He was motionless besides the temporary creation of a dimple.

Wise Soul-isms that I had waited years for danced across my mind: 

You can’t just throw yourself into something and expect it to be second nature.

That was the rightest thing you could do.

I know you’d learn, and I know you’d be good at it.

I was unable to deny the burn that brought to my eyes, and I let it engulf me again. A short, sweet deluge bubbled over my cheeks, rinsing away the last of the bitterness that I’d held onto that night. My other fingers joined in– not to poke, but to slide until I had cupped his cheek.

“Thank you for… being you, Soul.”

I leaned, and my lips brushed against his other cheek.

“Maybe, someday, I’ll know the right words for you, too.”

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Weird. Yeah, that was the only way to describe it. The feeling like you’re sure you left your wallet at home, but it’s in your damn pocket. Just something off and my brain was sending a muddled report. I tried to blame it on the disturbed sleep– Marie and Stein came home just an hour after I hit the true depth of my snooze.

Either way, gone was the storm-cloud Maka and here was the sunshine, her step light as we made our way back to the apartment. She was a few steps ahead of me, but somehow my little grumble was enough for her to turn a head over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Dunno,” I griped. “Wonderin’ if maybe Stein had the chance to poke around in my sleep.”

For once, Maka didn’t roll her eyes as expected. “Why would you think that?” Her attention faltered, the security door to the building pulling her in.

As I listened to the soft beep of the keypad, I let that marinate. Well, I dunno, Maka, you and I had a pretty heavy talk and then suddenly we weren’t. Yeah, okay, maybe that was the unevenness. Either way, I finally felt like I gained an inch tonight, so I wasn’t about to take a mile. “Y’know, just guts rearranged. Like somebody maybe had their fun while I was snoozin’.”

“Hm?” Her pitch faltered, climbing towards the roof.

Now, I had been joking—not that Stein wouldn’t take advantage of a free exploratory surgery—but that was definitely too much of a panicked frequency from her. “Maka Albarn–”

“I have to–”

Those lithe legs of hers were motoring up the stairs, already up to the next landing. Thankfully we weren’t teens anymore, and with my last growth spurt, she wasn’t leaving me in the dust. “Did that maniac–”

“He only ever did that to Papa, and–”

“Maka Albarn!” The final shout came with the slam of our door, pinning us in the quiet of the apartment after our cat-and-mouse chase.

Her shoulders were tense, back to me as she murmured, “It wasn’t Stein.”

“Uh…” was all I could manage. I didn’t think I was getting an affirmative, and my hands reflexively went to my gut to check my organs.

She pivoted quickly, eyes shining with determination. “It was me.”

“Uh…”

A few steps and she was back in front of me, face now just two inches from mine as she challenged me: “And all it was was this.”

Her lips—fucking Death, her lips!—were right there, an inch from mine. It didn’t matter that they planted on my cheek, I was still sent. Out of order. Gone. 

Maka tried to maintain her bravado, but the next still came with a little of a warble: “Now, is that all that bad?”

“N-no,” I stammered. Since all my sense was gone, and my hands moved of their own volition, grabbing her by the shoulders. “No, I– I–” Her face flushed pink, sending me partially into a panic. This was a misstep– not what she wanted, and I–

“You what?” There was an ultimatum in that question, and the shining clarity in her eyes had me knowing she had already decided something and it was just time for me to catch up.

“Normally don’t people do that sorta thing when someone’s awake?” That murmur ached in my chest with all sorts of want. “Y’know, s-so the other person has the chance to…”

“To?”

To panic– to overload– to– I swallowed that all and leaned in, lips just stopping a centimeter from hers. “To ask for more.”

Oh, thank Death she giggled softly. Maka worried her fingers in the sides of my T-shirt for a second before she tilted on tiptoes. A kiss. A real fucking kiss. Not just weapon and meister. Not friends. Not roommates living in limbo. 

I felt her smile spread before she let go, giving me unnecessary space. Jade eyes shined up at me. “I should have known my actions always speak louder than my words.”

I sighed– this one full of contentment instead of the urge to tear out my hair. This time when I leaned, just our foreheads met, enjoying that closeness just as much. “And I’m always here to catch you when you jump.”