BG3 Thoughts
So I was thinking about the 6 Origin Chars and how nicely they broke into thematically-resonant pairs that would also make good ships, and innocently wondered if those were the most popular ships for the relevant chars. So I clicked over to the AO3 page, and
IDontKnowWhatIExpected.gif
I get it, he's popular, but literally 8 of the top 10 ships involve him. Fine, I think, already dispirited by how predictably focused on white dudes fandom is, I'll check the individual character tags.
Can you tell which of those screenshots is from which individual character's tag without checking the image descriptions? Because I can't. The only chars to show up more than twice on his own list of "most popular romances" are Astarion and Gale, the two white dudes out of the 6 chars.
There's 4,100 Shadowheart fics on AO3, and roughly 2,000 are Astarion/Tav, Astarion/OFC, or Astarion/Gale. Maybe 1,000 are Shadowheart/Anyone, anyone at all.
I get that the sad white boy vampire is popular, I do. But there's a number of unique and interesting characters in this series, it'd be nice if people could spend some focus on them.
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DPxDC Confident!Danny
Okay, sure, I'm always down for a teenager Danny who is on the run/adopted by Batfam/needs therapy and cuddles. The young and tired Danny who just wants comfort so hard. Beautiful.
But.
What about a slightly morally gray adult Danny? The one who is not afraid of turning into Dan anymore, because 1) Clockwork already erased that future, and 2) he knows himself, and he knows what he wants and what he is capable of. It's not like there are only two ways - world destruction and the perfect hero.
Danny, who embraces being the King of Infinite Realms. Danny, who actually doesn't mind doing whatever the fuck he wants, going by his own moral compass. Danny, who knows he is powerful and doesn't bother trying to hide it. Danny with an attitude "I am what I am, don't like me - get lost".
He is still kind, sure, but he is not a people-pleaser. He can be a King, a hero, an anti-hero, a mercenary, a civilian, and even a vilain occasionally if he wants to. All at once.
Anyway, this has been sitting in my drafts for so long that I wrote a fic out of it.
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Steve: I actually met your uncle once before we were introduced. Like before the upside down stuff
Eddie: Really?
Steve: Yeah, it’s a funny story. He bought me cereal.
Eddie: …why? Or like, when?
Steve: Uh, it was in between me being too old to have a babysitter when my parents went out of town but not responsible enough to have a credit card. So like, I was nine or ten?
Eddie, to himself: That’s not old enough to be left alone
Steve: My parents used to just leave me cash but sometimes their trips ran over or they were delayed, and in the beginning, I didn’t really know how to budget.
Steve: This one time, their flight got delayed for a couple days or something and I ran out of money, and then I ran out of food so I had to break into my piggy bank.
Steve: I didn’t have the foresight to count my money at home and I guess I was taking too long at the counter-
Eddie: Because you were nine years old
Steve: -‘cause Wayne told me to put my money away and paid for my cheerios.
Steve: I don’t think I even said thank you, man. He tried to talk to me outside the store but I thought he looked scary so I ran away.
Steve: Real Kevin McCallister stuff.
Eddie:
Eddie: Baby?
Steve: Yeah
Eddie: What part of that was supposed to be funny?
Steve: ….Hmph, good point
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Eddie survives the Upside Down by sheer force of Steve Harrington's will. He, Robin, and Nancy come upon Dustin sobbing over Eddie's very alarmingly still body, and Steve doesn't even hesitate to heave Eddie over his shoulder and carry him to the gate. He refuses to think about whether or not Eddie is dead and this is pointless — he'll be damned if he doesn't try everything. They manage to get Eddie through and escape themselves before the earth starts ripping itself open, and Steve carefully lays Eddie on the bed in the RV, tearing down the road at an ungodly speed, driving straight for the hospital.
He's so singularly focused on not letting Eddie die that he doesn't remember about Erica, Lucas, and Max until he watches in horror as a gurney carrying Max comes flying through the doors of the emergency room, Lucas and Erica running behind it. The nurses stop the Sinclairs from following her through to the surgical wing, and Steve hurriedly vacates his seat, pulling the two kids into a hug, apologies pouring from his lips. Eventually, he stops babbling, and everyone takes a seat, Steve wincing as he does so.
The bites on his sides still smart, but he can — and will — wait to get seen himself until he hears something about Eddie. When they'd shown up, Steve carrying Eddie bridal style and screaming for help, everyone around them had thought Eddie was dead; after getting him on a gurney, a nurse yelled at everyone to shut up as she pressed a stethoscope to Eddie's chest, and the next thing Steve knew, Eddie was being wheeled away from them to surgery. Dustin had fallen to his knees, appearing to be praying to anything listening, and Steve nearly joined him. Somehow, Eddie was still alive. Steve refused to be seen until he knew that was still the case.
Hours pass before they're allowed in to see Eddie; when they are, it's somehow more horrifying than the moment Steve had found him cradled in Dustin's lap. Eddie is still motionless, but now he's paler, there's what looks like a hundred wires coming out of his body, and a tube is breathing for him. Steve hazily registers the doctors explaining that the blood loss was significant, as were the wounds littering Eddie's body, and that it's going to be a waiting game to see what happens next. He startles when he hears the gentle comment that if Eddie doesn't wake within a week, it's unlikely he ever will; Steve refuses to even consider that as a possibility.
Nancy manages to talk Steve into getting his own bites cleaned and stitched, which turns into taking him home for a shower and a change of clothes; they're still driving the stolen RV, and when Steve pulls back into the hospital parking lot, he hesitates before climbing out. Eddie's denim vest is still sitting on the sofa, bloodstained and ripped all over. Steve digs through the cabinets of the RV until he finds a sewing kit, and brings the vest inside with him.
He carefully washes out as much of the blood as he can in the bathroom sink, and plops into a chair at Eddie's bedside, pulling out red thread and a needle from the sewing kit. Nancy, Robin, and Dustin all exchange looks before simply sitting in silence, watching Steve carefully begin to repair every tear in the fabric.
Eventually, Nancy gets a hold of Wayne Munson, who enters the room, sees Steve hard at work on his project, and doesn't say a word — he just pulls a chair up next to Steve's, claps him on the shoulder, and reaches out to pat Eddie's leg through the hospital blankets. Neither Steve nor Wayne leave their spots other than to use the bathroom, and nobody tries to make them.
Three days into Eddie's hospital stay, the door opens, and Eleven, Jonathan, Will, Mike, and someone Steve doesn't recognize enter the room. Steve looks up, unblinking and on the verge of unseeing, before turning his attention back to the vest; two small hands reach out and cover his, and it's only then that he registers who's standing in front of him. Eleven is looking at him sadly, and hesitates only briefly before she leans forward to hug him.
He grips her tightly, and takes a shaky breath before holding a hand out toward the Byers brothers and Mike, and sooner than anyone can blink, there's a massive huddle of arms enveloping Steve. For the first time since leaving the Upside Down, Steve lets himself cry; nobody comments at it, nobody even acknowledges it — other than Eleven, who gently wipes his face with her sleeves when they finally separate.
More chairs are dragged into the room, and suddenly Eddie is the most popular patient in the hospital — tied with Max, of course, as the group takes shifts between the two rooms. Steve and Wayne are the only permanent fixtures in Eddie's room, just as Lucas and Erica are the only permanent residents with Max.
Steve finishes patching the tears in the vest, but Eddie hasn't woken up yet, so his fingers itch to keep going. He pulls out a spool of white thread, and outlines the jagged stitches he made before, carefully working his way over the entire vest once more. When he finishes that, he grabs black thread, and repeats the process.
He's in a sort of trance as he stitches away, conversations happening around him but sounding like they're miles away. It's not until someone physically stops his hands moving again that he realizes the words are being directed towards him; confused, he looks up and jolts so strongly he nearly tips his chair backwards. The person who stopped him working this time is Jim Hopper, and for the first time since the doctor gave them the stupid timeline, Steve feels hope. If Hopper can come back, Eddie can too. Eddie can too.
On day 6 of Eddie's coma, Steve speaks for the first time, tired eyes looking at Eleven beseechingly. "Can you... will you see if he's still in there?"
Eleven takes the bandana Wayne passes her and ties it over her eyes, one hand gripping Eddie's, the other intertwined with Steve's. She focuses on the steady beeping of the heart monitor and the wheezing of the oxygen pump, the sounds allowing her to drift into the in-between. She finds Eddie curled in a ball, hands clutching his sides, tears silently streaming down his face.
As she did with Steve, she gently reaches out and wipes his face clean, and waits for him to acknowledge her; he eventually looks up at her and his eyebrows furrow. "Who are you?" he asks, voice scratchy with disuse.
"Eleven," she says, holding out her hand to you.
"Henderson's friend?"
Eleven nods. "Come. Time to leave here. They're waiting for you."
She pulls Eddie to his feet and starts walking forward, focusing her hearing until she can isolate Steve's breathing pattern under the din of the hospital machinery. Her eyes fly open under the bandana, and she rips it off, turning to look at Eddie expectantly. For a moment, there's nothing and then —
Eddie starts choking on the breathing tube, Wayne starts yelling for a doctor, Steve breaks down in fresh tears, and the kids are cheering.
It's hours of examinations later that Steve is finally able to return to his seat at Eddie's side, everyone, Wayne included, giving him a minute alone with Eddie. When he enters, he notices Eddie is holding the vest, tracing his fingers over Steve's haphazard stitching.
Sheepishly, Steve raises a hand to rub the back of his neck. "Sorry," he mumbles. "I did the best I could."
The stitches zigzag across all the places the fabric had been slashed, both by demobat talons and sharp bushes in the Upside Down forest, and Steve's work has it looking like branches of lightning working their way across the vest. Eddie shakes his head and looks up at Steve, eyes wide and shining. "You fixed it."
Steve shrugs and Eddie shakes his head again. "Harrington.... Steve. You... you fixed it. For me."
Steve inches forward in his seat, and reaches out to grab one of Eddie's hands. "I dunno, I kinda think I fucked it up. But I could tell when you threw it at me that this was something that was important to you. I didn't let that place take you away, why would I let it take your things?"
Eddie laughs, head thrown back against his pillows, hand squeezing the absolute life out of Steve's. When he finally settles, he looks at Steve bashfully, head dipped down just enough that he's looking up at him through his eyelashes. "Talk about a declaration of unambiguous true love," he whispers.
Steve doesn't seem surprised or put off by Eddie's assessment; in fact, all he does is beam at him before lifting Eddie's hand to his face, pressing a featherlight kiss to his bruised knuckles.
"Take me out on a date first, Munson. Then we can start throwing words like love around."
As the room fills with the sound of Eddie and Steve's laughter, the rest of the group filters back in, including Lucas pushing a wheelchair-bound Max; Steve looks around at all of them and sighs around a soft smile.
They won.
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It's not a habit. No matter how often Dick chides him on it or Steph teases or even Duke looks at him for too long whenever caught.
It's not a habit.
Tim doesn't always search up his classmates, not if they're not at least a bit susupious and show signs that the current gotham villains have.
So yeah, it definitely isn't the first time he did this, but he clearly stopped many of them from becoming villains! Simply break into their home as Red Robin and say, "I have been watching you." it usually stops them before doing something.
He was planning on doing that to his new classmate, who just kept showing the same signs.
Danny Fenton, alias Phantom, the villain from Amity Park.
Tim knows teenage villains can redeem themselves, but from hsi research, Phantom had just disappeared!
Now he's here in gotham, in his class, studying the same thing Tim is.
How can he not break into his home to supervise??
Here comes the difficult part, Phantom doesn't seem to live in Gotham. No address, no cameras. Nothing.
A bug? Gets destroyed. Getting followed? He loses Tim every time.
Danny just keeps walking into different ares and disappears.
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