#TWO GOOD BOYS

[merrivia]

Will I ever get over the bond between Damen and Nikandros?

Never.

Warning: this is barely a meta and more just an outpouring of love.

This simile makes me weep. Nikandros is home to Damen, is feeling earthed and grounded and rooted to where he belongs.

The ‘ekthanos’. The ‘long walk’. The Akielon rituals of mourning. The result of what Kastor should never have done, by the brother Damen should have had.

The loyalty and the love here. No hesitation. This was so healing for Damen. I truly believe that Damen and Laurent could not have come together if Damen hadn’t been able to come back to himself. And so much of the latter is due to Nikandros.

That Nikandros is willing to risk his life like this just for the memory of Damen, to keep him alive in his mind. That he carried it on his person, a keepsake to remember Damen by always.

Nikandros doesn’t love Damen because he was the Crown Prince or is the King. He sees him for who he is and loves him for his unwavering goodness and unconditional love and loyalty, even if he knows it can make Damen blind to the truth. But equally, that’s why Damen loves him back. Nikandros gambles everything for Damen when he pledges himself to his cause.

Despite everything Damen has been through the one person who he can rely on never to hurt him is Nikandros. Even Laurent has hurt him in ways that Nikandros never would. Damen allows him to touch him and the pain Nikandros feels here, to know Damen was so grievously hurt.

I can't stress enough that Nikandros touching Damen is so meaningful here. It is, strictly speaking, a huge breach of etiquette to have unpinned Damen’s chiton, spun him around, touched his back. It’s out of pure shock and horror.

“Physically sick with the effort of repressing his anger”. Oh Nik.

Nikandros, who lost his father, wanted to honour him, and it wounds Damen that as the King, he has to take Ios from him. The fact their friendship survives this switch in status shows how strong it is.

He’s the only person he tells of Laurent’s plans, the only one worthy.

We also learn more of their past at the Kingsmeet:

That Damen felt a fierce pride in Nikandros' accomplishments; that he felt the loss of him so keenly.

This part always breaks my heart. When Damen returns from the Kingsmeet without Laurent and Jord goes for him:

The only who can recognises that Damen, big imposing warrior Damen, can feel pain, that he needs grounding with touch, that knows him- “…can’t you see—” he’s hurting…his heart is breaking.

And finally I love that he’s there and acknowledged in The Summer Palace, that he tried to protect Damen from Laurent in the aftermath of Ios as he didn't yet trust him:

And yet only some months later, he is teaching Laurent to wrestle, reconciled. Ignoring cute huffy Damen, Nikandros graduates to one of the few people in Laurent's inner circle and that is also lovely.

Damen having Nikandros is both a testament to how Damen, despite being the heir to the throne, treated like a god, was naturally grounded and loving, and why he remained so. True brotherhood and one of the best relationships in the whole book, a reminder of the power of your found family.

[saoirseuwu]

This is the most important thing in the new quest

[tyresdeg]

callum on cate’s instagram

[a-jasminator]

Edwin Payne is my favorite Disney princess

[chongoblog]

This might end up being part of a larger project, but I will die if I don't share it

[wasabi-gumdrop]

Kabru has a secret admirer in the castle!

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The indescribable tension between an overworked and underpaid smut writer, and his biggest fan hater.

(for @frummpets)

[egophiliac]

LET THE BOY HAVE AN EDUCATION

officially at the point where we're starting to see where it's all headed and I am just going NYEEHEEHEE in delight at it all. ahhh...next week can't come soon enough...

[raphaerolo]

Surf Au Fox! The Lifeguard! The least cringefail of the surf au crew (not a high bar)! Partially inspired by @amikoroyaiart 's Fox design which is top tier

Read @anaclastic-azurite fic here

(Closeup under the cut)

[procrastiel]

Saw this on twitter and had to redo it

[orionsangel86]

I am four episodes into Dead Boy Detectives and I cannot bring myself to skip this title sequence ever. This is Good Omens all over again. Like how can you not love skeletons dancing in bisexual lighting to upbeat spooky music?!?

[ffcrazy15]

There's this way of doing female-ness in Christianity that I call "pastel flower journal Christianity." I've got nothing against pastel flower journals per se, but for some reason people believe it's the end all and be all of female spirituality, and I think it's a real disservice towards young Christian women.

One of these days I'd like to start a prayer-and-reading group or something for young women, but there would be no floral themes or over-focus on how "God thinks you're beautiful even if the world doesn't" (a true statement, but it's wayyyyy too often the focus in women's spiritual reading). Instead we would be reading:

Seneca's Letters from a Stoic

Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning

Sheed's A Map of Life

Portions of Pieper's book on leisure

Kreeft's Three Philosophies of Life

Guardini's The Lord (or something similar)

Therese's Story of a Soul

and some select portions of the Nicomachean Ethics.

(Also they're all getting the porn talk. I don't know why we give the porn talk to young men but not young women. There's this idea that women don't use porn and they only need the talk about "guarding their heart." Bullshit. There's porn on the YA shelves of Barnes and Nobles and before that there were bodice rippers. Young women need the porn talk too.)

Every young woman needs to be getting a basic grounding in virtue ethics, logic, natural law, scholastic philosophy and Biblical hermeneutics if they're going to get by in today's spiritual landscape. Enough faffery and emotionalism in young women's spiritual education! Give them real food to chew on, not pasty sentimentalism!

[lockerlungs]

Alright but what if Godzilla slithered

[cloysterbell]

We’ll wait right here and we’ll, I don’t know, shoot the courier when he comes out.

[torsamors]

Patrick and Pete throughout the years

"I remember looking at Pete and Patrick and telling Pete, “You're the luckiest guy in the world because you found this guy." Patrick laughed. Then I turned to Patrick and said the same thing to him. They fit together so perfectly. Pete listens to electronic music and pop. He DJs. Patrick likes old soul and classic R&B. The fact that Patrick found this guy with this vision; Pete had everything for the band laid out in his mind. And the fact that Pete found a guy who can sing like that and take his lyrics and work with them - which is an art unto itself. It's really the combination of those two that really creates the sound and the songs. They're just really lucky they found each other."

- Bob McLynn