#but they got in some great kisses

[booasaur]

See (2019) - Haniwa and Wren » Kisses

Bonus:

[t00thpasteface]

me, my brother, and our mutual goth bestie went to an arcade yesterday and it was such a blast! i wore myself out playing ddr, my friend destroyed me in guitar hero and puzzle bobble, and my brother apparently got his cool, laid-back look validated by some rando while my friend and i were talking about how adam west understood the bat-assignment.

[kagooleo]

so with confidence I present my rarepair...fluffyriceshipping!

they were originally a joke ship (which was my last chance to get out) but they grew on me more and more throughout last year, and months later they've become my favorite pair to draw! their name was the funniest thing to make of them because i got to joke around with their jpn names

the tl:dr of them is that there's a lot of good drama to make of thirty-somethings with the weight of responsibility of their respective cultures on their shoulders, as well as their personal thoughts of the trainers of their respective regions, all this culminating together to be really compelling for me to develop, so I'll ramble a Whole lot more under the cut about them :D!!

~

ok now that the people that wanted to see more about what i'm crazy about when i'm not online are here you guys better prepare for the worddump lmao

before they meet its postgame and they’re both in their thirties (early to mid), lance post gsc/hgss still upholds his champion position and managing the dragon's den alongside any g-man/undercover rocket work on the side (in workaholic mode), riley post dppt is occasionally battling at the battleground but also holing himself up with patrols on iron island and doing egg research and training his aura (Also in workaholic mode)

i'd say all the work makes byron and roark try to get him a break from all that, convincing him at some point to take a vacation! see the sights my guy you've been workin yourself to the bone

it's canonically shown in hgss that riley does appear as a partner for the battle tower, so at some point he is in johto! the region resonates with his cultural sensibilities so maybe he revisits it again to instead actually relax there.

lance would probably catch his hat flying away when he's visiting elm's lab (a fellow egg researcher) in new bark and riley would have absolutely fell first for him (and i'm a sucker for meet-cutes,,,)

and from there they hit it off! being both skilled trainers in their own right they battle and go out to eat after and talk about their family (clair and the elders, for riley's case his family friends byron and roark), their culture (dragon clans and aura guardians), and then when they talk about their respective trainer kiddos (silver and dawn) something clicks between them (it’s a Really rough snippet but hopefully it’s decent)-

"Do you have any kids? I know the news loves to make up some kind of story about secret love affairs with a random person." the guardian says, awkwardly.

Lance smiles, "Oh, yeah! I have one but he's technically not mine." Riley chokes on his iced tea.

"I'm sorry?" A million thoughts roll through his mind as he processes his words said so matter-of-factly.

"Haha, sorry, sorry, I'm only partly joking."

"E-Elaborate..."

The champion explains the general gist of things as he's met him, Silver, his kid-by-odd-circumstance, was homeless for a while, but was training alongside some other up and coming trainers. Uncovering some Rocket related files, he learns he's the son of the boss of the entire organization, and after some on and off meetings he eventually got him a place to stay at the Dragon's Den, and soon after began living with him at his place when he warmed up to the idea of adoption.

There are times he gets overwhelmed with all that he's been through, and some nights its all too much. But Lance was there with him, stayed with him every step of the way, unlike the one who gave him that abandonment anxiety in the first place.

"He's my kid, not by blood, and maybe not by his family, either. But instead, by his own decision he chose to stay with me. I'd want him to keep the freedom he has now." Lance states, firmly. "And now he's grown up as strong as I believed he could. I'm proud of him, as much as he tends to deny that." Riley senses his draconic aura swell with pride, mixed with a humbling sincerity in his words.

"What about you? Any kids of your own?" the sudden flip of the question surprises the guardian briefly.

"N-Nothing adoptive but…I suppose it's similar, in a way to meeting them as you have."

The guardian's turn, now. Dawn was someone he met when he was training on Iron Island, and also served as a guide to get her through the caverns. When he felt something off in the aura surrounding the area, he eventually learned of Galactic causing the pokemon on the island to feel restless and agitated. With her, they were able to clear the island of their antics and even gifted her a Riolu egg on her journey. From there, he was impressed with how strong she was, and did hear from Cynthia that she raised his present up to evolving her into a Lucario. He couldn't have been happier.

That was the case, until he caught the aftermath of the events of Mt. Coronet.

What Cyrus did, the lengths he'd go to, and dragging the both of them into a mess that could have torn the world apart.

After that, Dawn stayed home for a while. Cynthia put him as a contact for her mom, who was really worried for her. With his aura and her friends, Lucas and Barry, they were a big help for her recovery. And eventually, after a lot of time and work, she became the region's champion. She messages every now and then to him, as processing any trauma is never an easy road, but he realized how lucky she was to have the people she'd met to keep her steady, and knew she'll be alright.

"I...still wish I could've done more for her," Riley says, quieter. "Cynthia told me about what happened in that other world, and it...it was a lot for Dawn, a lot of emotions to help her figure out." he finishes, sheepish.

"…I don't blame you for feeling that way, I wouldn't know what to do in a scenario like that, either." the champion says, unsure too.

"It's amazing, in a way. All these kids going through so much on their own. I'd be proud were it not so scary, realizing how young they are to go through what they have been through."

"There's only so much you really can do, as an adult. I've realized that fact a long time ago." Lance's aura felt oddly melancholic, as bright and pretty as it may appear. "It's either immediate or slow when things change for them, and sometimes you'll have to make a choice on the spot when the time comes for them to decide what they want to do." It sounds like he’s speaking from experience, but the melancholy makes it appear that he's had some regrets.

“I trust in them to find their own path, eventually. When they’re together, those kids are gonna be alright on their own.”

His reassurance helped, even if only by a small amount.

-

I should make some kind of master post about them at some point but WAH god I’m so happy I can actually put them together in pokemon masters, they’ve really grown on me and I’ve developed a lot for the both of them in my free time, but yeah this is the rarepair that’s been on my brain for ages now, a gaze into my goo brain 🤪

[tswwwit]

Hey man me again, it’s nearly 3am and i was curious. What would theoretically happen if someone (say a human bully, or a lesser uninformed demon or smthn of the sort) were to put down and talk absolute shit about Dipper with the anticipation of Bill joining in and/or being impressed and agreeing cause here’s this super cool and sexy guy surely he also thinks Dipper’s a useless freak right? How would Bill take this kinda confrontation about his husband? Would his reaction vary depending on wether or not Dipper was there? (I lowkey think it would but I’m just a worm in a bait bucket uk) (also sorry this comes across like a fucking critical thinking question from a middle school textbook)

At best someone talking shit about Dipper gets a long lecture about all the reasons Dipper is way, way cooler than them! And some broken bones. That's Bill's husband, he picked a great partner, and he is not going to pretend otherwise for someone else's ego.

The rant's absent if Dipper's around, but frankly? It'd be better for the bully/demon if Dipper was around to hear someone dissing him to Bill. In that Bill would refrain from the most gruesome acts within his mortal's sight.

Though if they're smart, they'll notice the way Bill's looking at them, and take that brief amount of time to run.

[yaz-the-spaz]

I can't believe we waited 7 seasons for Buck to kiss a man and it wasn't even the person he literally legally shares a kid with

[macey-wacey]

This arc has truly been the "mac gets everything she wants" arc

[fictionadventurer]

Well, now I know why Jo was crying.

[astaraels]

the soulmates au has officially hit over 21k words, I'm so excited! I love getting back in the writing groove and turning out a banger of a scene (literally and metaphorically lol). I skipped ahead a little bit to gallavich's first kiss (which will be at a different place than in canon) and it's making me melt with happiness. The early chapters are definitely more Ian-centric but it's really nice being able to give Mickey some time to shine, especially when this is where he hits the "ride or die" point with his love for Ian <333

[symbioticsimplicity]

Okay so @sothatwassomething made this here post and it made me a little feral, so here is the promised essay.

So, I watched this show when I was really young so I didn’t originally notice, but having rewatched it recently, it’s flagrantly obvious. Buffy’s male characters are fucking terrible.

The original post is about Buffy’s boyfriends but I’m including Xander because he has committed too many crimes to not get a mention.

He’s supposed to be the funny best friend character who’s kind of a dumbass but you love him anyway. That is not what comes forward though, not even close. He has a crush on Buffy from the moment he meets her and he does not hesitate to make it her problem.

He makes every effort to insert himself into her life and constantly oversteps boundaries. Not to mention constantly being at least low grade misogynistic, which is admittedly both a product of the show’s time as well as J*ss Wh*don being on the writing team, but still it’s gross for a show that’s supposed to be all about girl power to have a prominent supporting character that’s like that.

He also constantly devalues Buffy’s feelings (when she tells him she doesn’t like something he or someone else is doing he’ll try to talk around it to change her mind), ignores her misgivings (Literally every time something is afoot she pretty much senses it but he tries to tell her she’s wrong or paranoid more or less), gives her terrible advice (See the whole thing with Riley, just that whole talk when she said she wanted to break up with him the first time which honestly makes so little sense to me since he didn’t even like the guy), interferes with parts of her personal life without telling or asking her (multiple times gatekeeping other people from talking to her without asking if she’d like to talk to them, ie Spike at Joyce’s funeral), won’t listen when she’s upset over something (This happens so often I would just say pick an episode it’ll happen at some point), and worst of all tries to talk her into not believing her own thoughts and feelings.  It’s not isolated to a single episode or season either, he is just consistently this bad throughout the show.

Despite all that, the narrative treats him favorably and clearly tries to frame his actions as justified because he likes Buffy, like he’s looking out for her. He’s treated like the “nice guy” who doesn’t get the girl but probably should have. He gets along with Buffy, sure, but I genuinely think that’s only because the narrative forced them to.

Now juxtapose him with Willow. She’s introduced as the cute quirky girl who’s maybe a little nervous but sweet. That’s true for about the first half of the first season. Willow gets so much character development in a way that Xander never really does. It’s almost like meeting Buffy started her on a journey to line up all the little parts of herself she either hadn’t known were there or hadn’t thought she had room for.

She immediately bonds with Buffy and proceeds to be ride or die with her in a way that triggers personal growth for both of them. She helps her with her homework, makes every oportunity to spend time with her that she can with no strings attached, doesn’t pressure her to do things she doesn’t want to do, including telling them Slayer related things.

Willow is who Buffy goes to for emotional support, she’s who she tells her secrets to, and she proves that her trust is not misplaced over and over. There are a few times when she’s not as good a friend as she could be, but it’s rare, and it makes their relationship feel more realistic. She’s usually very supportive and takes the initiative to help Buffy in whatever situation they find themselves in. She started practicing magic as a way to be more helpful to the group and ended up finding a passion for it.

Willow and Buffy continually build each other up, and there’s a genuine sense of comfort between them. They lived together for an entire season, and almost every scene depicting that had so much domesticity to it. They were the calm, soothing moments in the middle of a season full of chaos and change. They give off comfy cottage lesbian vibes and I will defend that to my GRAVE. (Was lowkey frustrated when they made Willow a lesbian but DIDN’T put her with Buffy like why????)

Then we have Buffy’s relationship with Angel. Which. Oh God where do I start??? Oh, I know where to start, at one of my least favorite aspects!

So their entire relationship is an allegory, we know that. It’s the timeless tale of a girl dating a seemingly nice guy, everything being great, then when she “gives it up” to him, he suddenly turns into an asshole. (Especially with younger girls and older guys as was the case here) Great, thanks I fucking hate it.

But, in addition to that, they made Angel the flattest freakin’ vampire ever. Like if y’all think Edward Cullen wasn’t based on this mo’fo right here, I’m sorry but you’re wrong.

Buffy is great at banter, it’s one of the things the show is known for, but almost every quip she made smacked into Angel like a brick wall. Like yes, he is being eternally tortured for being the most massive douche in a whole species of assholes, but still. He has a lot more chemistry with freaking Cordelia of all people than with Buffy. He and Buffy get along best when they’re tragic and dangerous together, which yeah, is chemistry but it’s not long term, and it once again doesn’t suit the vibe the show is trying to foster.

Angelus had great chemistry with Buffy, but in the villain way which is actually one of the only ways she does get to have decent chemistry with a dude. But you know, he also stalked her, killed her friends, and generally terrorized her that entire time so not real great on the boyfriend vibes there. 

Now contrast him with Faith, who was also an absolute nightmare.

Faith was clearly intended to be a narrative foil to Buffy. But the minute those two got anywhere near each other, holy shit. There’s magnetism there, there’s tension, and most of it is sexual. It feels as if Buffy is being drawn into Faith both by the promise of freedom she’s never gotten to taste, and the allure of Faith herself. She’s dark, she’s dangerous, and she can absolutely keep up with Buffy in every way. She’s who Buffy could be if she weren’t bound by the rules she keeps to. (She’s who Buffy could be if she weren’t so well loved.)

She shows Buffy parts of herself she hadn’t known existed, makes her confront things about being the Slayer that she’d never put to words before. She understands her in a way that no one else really can, and she’s not shy about letting Buffy know that.

She immediately moves in close, and while the plot frames her as trying to get close to Angel because she wants what Buffy has, I think it’s also to do with wanting to be closer to Buffy. It would be easy to argue that’s part of the confusion of being young and queer and not knowing if you want someone or want to be them. Especially for a character as love starved as Faith.

These two got on like a house on fire and they were every bit as dangerous to each other as Buffy and Angel were, but in a way that made me want to watch them for as long as they could draw things out. Honestly they could have dropped everything and made out and I would not have been in the least bit surprised.

There’s bad blood, there’s distrust and hurt and apprehension but there’s still that same magnetism underlying every interaction. I HATE that this show was made in the 90’s-00’s because goddamn would I like to have seen where that could have gone.

Which leads us to my absolute least favorite of the boyfriend bunch, Riley. I wanted to like him. I really really fucking did. He seemed like he was going to be the all american himbo, and honestly Buffy being the girlboss she is could absolute have vibed and thrived with a himbo.

But no. That’s not what they did with him.

Rather than just giving Buffy a pretty, sweet boy to protect, they gave her another asshole with an agenda. First of all, ACAB. (I know he was technically some bullshit sort of special ops, I don’t care, they acted like cops, they’re getting lumped in) Riley was another case of a guy who seemed pretty nice on the surface but just turned straight to suck as they got to know each other better.

He was portrayed as a supportive boyfriend but just about every time it came down to actually supporting Buffy, he either failed to do so or gave her the absolute wrong thing. I don’t know if the writing team just got tired of writing for him or what, but his downward spiral was terrible.

It was entirely centered around Buffy being stronger and more competent than him.

Seriously.

In a show, that’s main selling point is having a heroine who’s literal job it is to kick ass and take names, we’re going to give her a boyfriend who gets his feelings hurt about that very thing?? Riley was the champion of the fragile male ego (I could go on about how his whole character was pretty much just a male power fantasy run wild but that’s a whole other post) and it was a pretty consistent theme throughout their relationship that he felt inferior to her. But at the end it just went off the rails. A vampire blood drinking den hooker?? Really Riley???

Not to mention he had all the personality of a dry biscuit. He wasn’t even Buffy’s type to be honest, which even he knew. Their whole relationship felt like Buffy trying to force herself to be normal, to force herself to be something she isn’t. (Cough Lesbian symbolism, cough cough.)

Which brings me finally to Spike, my beloved trash man.

First, it should be said that he absolutely has some of the flaws outlined above. He started out a villain and did his best to stay that way for quite a long while. That said, he also went through a lot of character development.

One thing that never changed however was his chemistry with Buffy. He plays off of her beautifully, although he has a good rapport with pretty much every character. He's great at their style of banter and his attitude has him fit in pretty nicely with their sass. He’s a great foil to Buffy in a similar way to Faith. He constantly tempts her to live outside her comfort zone, outside of what people think of her and he encourages her to seek out whatever it is she wants. Buffy is more reluctant to latch onto that in Spike (she’s already seen where that leads with Faith, and she has plenty of history with Spike that tells her he’s untrustworthy) but ultimately ends up pursuing him as well.

Spike, for his flaws both in their relationship and as a person does one thing most of the rest of these characters don’t or aren’t able to do for Buffy, which I think ends up drawing her even further in.

He gives her emotional support.

That’s something absent from a lot of Buffy’s relationships in any capacity (JOYCE I’M LOOKIN’ AT YOU HONEY YOU WERE A FUCKING TERRIBLE MOTHER) and I think it adds a lot more depth to their connection than Buffy has with Riley or even Angel.

Spike is shown multiple times to pretty much be one of the girls, it’s played for laughs but it’s still there. He watches soap operas with Joyce and genuinely gets invested in them, he’ll talk about boys with Dawn even though he really has no reason to, and in one of the earlier seasons he kidnapped Willow and pretty much just…vented to her? Talked about his problems and his feelings about them. It’s really rare for any of the characters to do that, much less any of the male ones. Spike for all his mischievousness and villainousness has quite probably the most emotional intelligence in the entire group. (Which I suspect is part of why he gets girlfriend-vibe privileges.) His relationship with Buffy was the shortest and they spend a good chunk of it trying to force it not to become deeper (which is also pretty telling in itself) but I think it settled into one of the best she had, if not the best. Had they gotten time to work through their issues, I think they probably would have been the best canon relationship Buffy had.

But this whole issue is pretty easy to see even in some of Buffy’s more brief interactions.

Kendra the Slayer. She was only around for a few episodes, was wildly different from Buffy, far more rule oriented but just as dedicated to her job and eventually loyal to Buffy. They had a rocky start, but ended up bonding pretty well before Kendra’s death.

That one dude Buffy dated for like three seconds before Riley appeared that broke her heart for literally no reason other than to emphasize that every nice seeming pretty boy is going to be a jackass underneath it all. They barely even spoke before Buffy had a thing for him. He was supposed to come off as charming but pretty much just talked about himself, used a bunch of lines, and was a cheating asshole. Willow verbally incinerated him. 

I don’t know how this show managed to be so utterly bad when it came to it’s hetero relationships, but it sure did. Almost every single male character (with the exception of Giles, Spike, and Oz before they volleyball spiked his character straight into the ground, pretty much) was crap in some capacity which lent itself to the reverse version of the “Every woman in this show is a cardboard standee so we have to ship the guys together” syndrome. Buffy had much more going with the women in this show and it’s a shame she never got to kiss one.

[winepresswrath]

GO2 has many fine features but unfortunately does make it a little hard to imagine aziraphale and crowley banging their way across history and refusing to talk about it. however! If, as some researchers believe, sexy kissing is a relatively recent invention* then we can still win. they just hadn't gotten around to this one thing yet, possibly because it acquired context and metaphorical baggage before it occurred to them to give it a go.

* admittedly for values of recent that mean "almost certainly more than 6000 years ago"

[wayfinderships]

Thinking about Snow in D.issidia. The whole section focused on him was so good but also ouch-

[4giorno]

FINALLY. THE ONE REASON I STARTED THIS NEW PLAYTHROUGH. compilation! <3

[hildegardladyofbones]

I don't think about this show at all anymore (they fucked up the beginning of s4 and I dropped it immediately) but god damn the showrunners knew what they were doing by establishing that John has a low pain tolerance and then amputating his leg few seasons over. The girlies were screaming, they were going wild and opening on ao3 in the next tab

[kissablelips-desireslure-vol1]

CRAZY HANDSOME RICH (2023)

LEE LONG SHI (as Thad)

&

THANATSARAN SAMTHONGLAI (as Frank)