#i said cute so many times in this post

[redrocketpanda]

I'm literally vibrating with excitement about my Wednesday Dungeon of the Mad Mage D&D game & need to yell about it here bc otherwise I won't be able to concentrate until then

Firstly, I am in LOVE with my character - and apparently so is everyone else, which is an absolutely unexpected delight to me

Temerity is a Zariel Tiefling Barbarian, descended from the hells with 2 cambions for dads. She's a tiny, petite little thing with rose pink hair & grey tips, who wears pastel coloured high fashion dresses & killer heels, is super nice in very country gal kinda way, and is essentially a pretty little princess with a pink warhammer making her way through a dungeon with her pals

In our first game (3 weeks ago), we were missing a player but our cute ragtag bunch had fun traipsing around and getting into trouble. Temerity spent 2 rounds of combat checking out a statue of a hot sharkman and then (almost) single handedly defeated it with a single throw of a hand axe - crit hitting it & causing 18 points of damage

Then, the next week, the mysterious missing player turns up at the table with the cutest fucking Half-Orc bard boy called Elrig who plays thrash metal on his triangle. He's big and threatening looking, with a shady background, but all of his scars are from falling over & really he's just a soft boy

CUE INADVERTANT ROMANCE BETWEEN THE PRETTY LITTLE BARBARIAN PRINCESS AND THE BIG INTIMIDATING HALF-ORC BARD????

I managed to somehow snag a bardbarian romance but with cute little gender twists in week 2??!!!

We only had that one session but there was already a little flirting going on between them. Elrig seems very impressed with Temerity's combat skills & upbeat personality, and Temerity seems very taken with this big, strong boy who isn't quite who he appears to be. Plus neither of them are very smart so it makes it even more fun

We also had a very fun duo moment when Elrig was intimidating some goblins (to just tell them to keep away) and Temerity was hanging off his shoulders speaking in infernal to assist with the check. We rolled a 28. Elrig just stood there looking scary whilst Temerity's there like "yeaaaaah, y'all should be scared! Look at him... look at.. look at those muscles *feels them* wow... they're uh... they're real big..."

And possibly the cutest thing to come of this so far is that me & the player have exchanged Pinterest boards with each other. They sent me a song called Princess of the Night, which they think Elrig sings about Temerity. And we also sent each other character playlists???

Anyway it's TOO FUCKING CUTE. Like I LOVE Temerity, and I've never had a D&D romance before so it's all very akshsksjsk to me. Plus all the players are really nice?! We even had someone send some temerity/elrig related posts in the discord group and I am sooooooo

[oceanwithouthermoon]

i posted abt this on my tiktok story but i need to rant more so im putting it here 😭😭 the way a lot of mikosai shippers (on tiktok, pinterest, reddit, etc) are is such a big reminder to me of why i hate the strictly romantic soulmates trope with every fiber of my being 😭😭😭 people who interpret soulmates as "that means theyre canonically together" regardless of how the characters actually feel about each other and if they ACTUALLY get together is so fucking gross to me oh my god its so fucking gross i hate forced romance so bad 😭😭 someone cant just say "hey, we're soulmates so you HAVE to date me and its literally weird and impossible for you to like anyone else because i said so!!" and also aiura WOULDNT do that anyway ???? HELLOOO???

you have no idea how many people ive seen call all saiki ships with anyone other than aiura "problematic ships" just because "theyre soulmates"

[heartorbit]

WAOT WERE U THE ONE TSUKASA COSPLAYER AT MIKUEXPO GIVING OUT MIKU STICKERS TO THE PJSK FANS

THATS ME!!!!! i didn't mean to just give them to pjsk fans help but i severely underestimated how many i should've made and cut out .. so i just ended up giving them to cosplayers or people who said hi to me .... T_T

THERE'S ALSO THIS SUPER CUTE BRACELET SOMEBODY RAN UP TO ME AND GAVE ME AND I TREASURE IT SO I NEED TO ADD IT TO THE POST AND SHOW IT OFF .. WAH!!!! ITS SO CUTE LOOK!!!!!!

[corviiids]

THANKS @kimdokjafan you are so kind and generous. ok im cashing in the first of three blank checks to talk about faith trust and pixie dust (most recent chatfic) because the last two directors commentaries were too serious so let's do a silly one.

some p5r spoilers, and this is mostly about sumire, and it's long again. do i need to keep disclaiming that these are long? you should know me by now.

i had this written for a while before i started formatting it because i wasn't really sure if i should post it? i feel like silly chatfic is something people go to for predominantly lighthearted nonsense so i was like, maybe there's too much plot and dramatic misunderstanding and i should just keep this one for myself. but then i was like well nothing matters and maybe someone will have fun with it. it's kind of terrible how much fully or mostly completed fic there is my docs that just doesn't see the light of day lol. write for yourself etc but i like sharing! too bad it comes with the mortifying ordeal etc. anyway that was a tangent

potato counter is a neopets game. there's no deep lore i just like neopets. i guess in this universe ryuji doesn't play neopets? or maybe he's just never played potato counter specifically. i also have a different fic where ryuji DOES play neopets. it's about neopets and ryuji and goro talking on neopets.

i think this might literally be the first time ive written sumi in a fic because i haven't actually written that much fic for royal, like, now that im looking, literally almost none? and none that had a group dynamic. so it was kind of fun to find her voice for the first time in a silly groupchat like this. i was worried people would find her exclamation marks annoying but i personally thought it was endearing so i added it in there.

every time i do a gag where a character corrects their own typo i have to code more stupid little bubbles to make it happen but i think it's worth it. all the effort that goes into making tgis look as much like a real chat as possible

this obviously doesnt take place in the canon p5/r universe, but im imagining sort of a postcanon sumi personality where she's more comfortable being herself and isn't borrowing kasumi's brand of confidence, but she's visibly a really anxious person without that kasumi veneer. i also think in this universe sumire is a fairly recent addition to the friend group, and while everyone likes her a lot and she really likes them, i kind of wanted to emphasise that feeling of being in a friend group where everyone's established and you're sort of a plus-one? you don't really fit yet. part of that is her being new, part of it is her anxiety, part of it is just the kind of person sumi is where she's so polite and self-conscious she ends up taking herself out of things with her own good intentions. stuff like her interrupting the flow of an existing conversation by greeting everyone instead of jumping straight in because she doesn't feel comfortable inserting herself, which means everyone else stops to greet her even though that doesn't normally happen in a friend group, or making a point of thanking everyone for being invited to events while the others take it as a given.

idk i love that she feels a bit out of place with the phantom thieves in p5r. and part of that is a natural consequence of being a new addition in royal who can't be naturally integrated with an existing dynamic but i honestly feel like the writing team realised that and acknowledged it, and really leaned into it, and that made it work incredibly well for me. like, it's part of her character that she's sort of an outsider. it's not like p4g's incredibly clumsy integration of marie and subsequent attempt to shove her down everyone's throat as the canon love interest in p4ga (knife). sumi has that outsider vibe on purpose and it makes me really like her dynamic with the thieves as an individual

goro also feels slightly out of place in these chats, but his conversational style blends more naturally with the other thieves at this point and he even uses their codenames sometimes. i keep saying my chatfic series isn't a real Series because the lore keeps changing, but if we accept that they're all kind of following a General Continuity, assume this takes place some time after the last fic in which ren added goro to the groupchat and they made an effort to integrate him into their friend group. he's kind of there now and has settled into being the weird boyfriend. that's his role.

every time goro says something like "ren and i" assume it's the text equivalent of him talking to the group with his arm around ren's waist.

ok i got really fond of this silly running joke where sumi brings up the weather when she's feeling uncomfortable. she's so polite. i like this thread because setting it up meant i got to tie it off like this:

this just made me happy lol i liked writing this. i tried to use it to demonstrate that despite goro's abrasiveness he obviously knows sumire pretty well, he's attuned to her quirks and knows how to tell when she's having a bad time with her anxiety, so he uses her little weather habit to ground her.

i honestly dont think goro and sumire could be considered close in p5r and as much as i like the "royal trio" in canon they're not really... like... friends? with each other? they're both attached to ren, so it' more a V shape than anything else. but that said, i really LIKE goro and sumi's canon dynamic. he takes a really grouchy but politely attentive supervisory role to her during their few forays into the palace as a trio where he doesn't really know her well but clearly identifies her as a harmless little tryhard who needs some guidance and steps into that role grudgingly, and she immediately looks up to him despite being very wrong footed by his ruthlessness, which i find incredibly charming. i think given time they could be good friends, they just didn't get much chance to know each other very well in canon. so i tried to kinda do that here.

once goro stops being evil and joins the group they all kind of tiredly accept that his role is to occasionally push a cup off a bench while smirking and refuse to clean it up. emotionally, i mean.

wait i need to backtrack chronologically to talk about akeshu.

in this scene they're in the same room lol talking and snickering while typing. im trying to get at that vibe of the annoying couple who is flirting with each other, via you. you know? like ostensibly they're talking to you (sumire) but everything they say to you is part of their stupid game. sumi is incidental to goro and ren teasing each other about flirting with someone else, goro is reporting everything ren says because his boyfriend is so eye-rollingly foolish in a cute way. they're very tickled by how amusing and charming they are. gross. disgusting. sumire im so sorry for putting you through this

anyway here are too many of my favourite jokes from the fic

[ct-multifandom]

I don’t usually make posts like this, but I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-intellectual junk lately, and I really think we need to put the word “pretentious” up on a shelf until people learn what it actually means.

It doesn’t describe someone who likes artsy-fartsy deep meaning media. People who are pretentious are fake. They’re posers trying to be sophisticated and unique, not like other girls. They pretend to only like stuff they think will make them sound cool when they talk about it. They want to act like they know something you don’t, and they want attention for it.

By definition, if you genuinely enjoy something, you can’t be pretentious. If it resonates with you, and you analyze it, and you don’t care what people think, that’s the polar opposite, actually. If you love obscure experimental prog music, if you watch underground high concept indie films through English teacher eyes, if you spend hours in a modern art museum reading each piece as a vessel for storytelling, if your backpack’s full of poetry books that inspire you, if you play underrated games that were someone’s passion project, if you have an interest in studying the classics or the masters, you are not pretentious.

Of course, some people just don’t like some stuff, and that’s fine, but that’s not what this is about. Don’t let anti-intellectuals shame you for enjoying things just because your interests are inaccessible to them, because they refuse to be brave and put effort into critical thinking. You’re not stuck up for refusing to overlook the craft of artists.

[faunandfloraas]

Aren't you supposed to bias seungmin? so why do you make gifs of other members

me if it was illegal to make gifs of other members ^^

[averlym]

"bad decisions, that's alright; look, i'm still alive"

[yardsards]

s1 luz was at least a little bit gay for willow i will not be told otherwise

idk if it was a full on crush but it was at least one of those types of nebulous not-quite-romantic not-quite-platonic "hahaha, unless..." type friendships that a lot of queer teens have, u know the ones

[darabeatha]

/ I've noticed that at this point I'm not even writing on any blog anymore, I just come and yell about some blorbo and leave. Rinse and repeat my lieges

[skelly-bean]

[frozenhi-chews]

[dodecademons]

Funny how like 90 percent of people wanting the wilds back hate to acknowledge the fact that it's partly their fault. I want the wilds to be renewed as well, however if I DARE say yall aren't ready for it and a small part of me thinks some viewers are undeserving I'm the bad guy. Right because the vast majority of you didn't openly admit to skipping over the boys parts in the show, smh. If you arent watching the whole episode why would they want to renew it? They want views, they want money. Do I want the wilds back? Of course. Do I think the gretchen clones deserve it? No. Be better.

[mymp3]

my poster from the con!

[dhmis-autism]

did another quick dhmis rewatch my thoughts are thusly:

duck and yellow friendship FOREVER I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

duck best character ever created ever invented

red guy still scares me and i had to skip the end of transport bc he made me so uncomfortable.

like somehow this rewatch made me like him LESS and he was already my least fave of the main 3

baker terry i love you goodnite

[softdreamlesssleep]

God, "I missed you" sex is the best

[blackjackkent]

The city is hovering on the edge between summer and autumn, and the night has just the slightest hint of a chill on the air as Hector climbs the stairs to the balcony of the Singing Lute Inn, where Karlach told him to meet her.

She's already seated at the table; he can see her fidgeting nervously as he approaches, and her head snaps up, startled, at the sound of his footsteps. Then the nerves are wiped from her face as she grins brightly.

"Hi. Hi! You made it!" she says eagerly. Leaning forward, she pushes back the chair next to her at the table; her eyes run over him from head to foot, drinking in the sight of him in this place so far from camp or combat. "You look nice," she murmurs.

Hector has been nothing but excited to come out and spend this time with her, ever since she suggested the idea - but now, to his own surprise, he feels a pleasantly warm, bashful feeling settle into his chest and realizes he is blushing a little.

Their relationship has been rather backwards and jumbled, he reflects. Months of hoping, wishing, pining after someone he could not even touch, let alone have... and then the collapse, barely over the course of a day, into passionate love - which was new enough for him, when it happened. This, a more traditional romantic moment, is perhaps even more unfamiliar to him now. But unlike so many of the things he has faced that were new and terrifying... this is new and joyful, because it is with her. He is safe, with her eyes on him, no matter what.

"So do you," he murmurs, looking back appreciatively, and he is gratified to see a similar dark flush rise in her cheeks as well at the compliment.

"Thank you," she answers with a bright smile. Shifting nervously in her seat, she picks up the menu hastily and peruses it with an intense studiousness.

"Hmm. Baldurian seafood stew. No thank you..." She peers at him over the top of the sheet. "What do you think you'll have?"

He is conscious of the surreal feeling that they are performing a play for each other, each of them trying to sort out what "acting normal" entails, with a little warm thrill as they successfully hit each beat in the scene. "The grilled rothe ribs sound good," he says with a slight smile.

She grins with an air of relief. "Just what I had in mind," she agrees. She waves eagerly at the innkeeper, a broad and rather surly orc gentleman. "Two of the rothe ribs, please," she says firmly. "And two glasses of..." She pauses, looks questioningly at Hector.

"Wine," Hector puts in, pointing at the item on the menu.

"And two glasses of wine," Karlach finishes, and nods with satisfaction.

As the bartender stalks off, she leans forward, resting her elbows on the edge of the table. Her eyes narrow, taking on a playful air as she starts to relax into the moment.

"So... you're an adventurer, right? How's that going?"

Hector grins, mildly bemused. "You've been by my side for a lot of it, you know," he points out.

She gives him an gentle nudge in the shoulder. "I know, but this is our *first date*, remember?" she says conspiratorially. "Tonight, you're a mystery to me."

His eyebrows lift in understanding, and he opens his mouth to try and answer in kind, continue the conceit of them being strangers to each other... but then he stops, and grins sheepishly. He's neither actor, liar, nor orator at the best of times, and if he is honest, he is finding the way she is looking at him... distracting.

"I'm not sure I can pretend I don't already love you," he says ruefully.

She hesitates, then laughs, shaking her head. "It's all I can do to keep my hands to myself anyway," she answers, and snorts softly. "We're terrible at this."

He reaches out, puts a hand on hers on the table, grinning at her slight discomfiture. "Want to get out of here?" he says teasingly.

Her eyes widen and her face flashes through a mix of eagerness and determination in rapid succession. "No! ...Yes-- No. We came to have a nice date, and that's what we're going to do." She crosses her arms over her chest and looks at him with a stubborn smirk. "Go on. Date me. I dare you."

Hector laughs softly. "You're right. So... erm... where did you grow up?" he tries, after a moment's thought, trying to determine what he might ask her if he had never met her before, if the scent and warmth of her were still things he had yet to experience. This is still not his strong suit - but he will make the effort if it will make her happy.

She brightens up excitedly and settles back into the moment with only a little awkwardness.

"Right here in Baldur's Gate, more or less," she says, gesturing out to the view of the city below them. "My folks are long gone now. But they raised me in the Outer City. Dad was a porter in town, mum did laundry." She smiles nostalgically. "Still think of her when I smell clean sheets. We were poorer than dirt, but my gods we had fun."

He leans back in his seat, just enjoying listening to the sound of her voice, her excitement, her happiness at being back in the city, all washing over him. He's heard some of this from her before - but not all of it. Perhaps this 'pretending to be strangers' bit has even more merit than he expected.

"What about you?" she asks him curiously.

(A/N: The three options here are "much like yours," "i don't like to talk about my past," and "I'm from baldur's gate too, I wonder if we crossed paths"; none of these are actually relevant to Hector's experience of growing up at the monastery. So we're going to skip over this line. XD )

He has told her some things about his life among the monks of Silverlight before - but fairly little about his childhood there. He finds himself starting to talk about it now, though. He has no real stories of joy and excitement like those she describes, and on some level he has started to realize just how barren his life was in these particular regards until he met her... but there were good memories too. He ends up telling her a little about the lessons he received - how he started being trained as a scribe before they discovered his fascination with the ancient tomes and texts of their historical library...

She listens with rapt fascination, just as he had listened to her, a slight, blissful smile on her face.

It's hard to say how long they sit there, caught in the conversation, trading stories back and forth; both of them have started to relax into this 'first date' conceit and Hector feels his cheeks starting to hurt from smiling. They're only interrupted by the eventual arrival of their food... which is wrong.

Two plates of seafood stew land on the table in front of them, along with the two glasses of wine. Karlach looks down at the plate with an air of some disappointment - but is met with a curse from the irritable innkeeper who stalks away when she tries to ask for a change.

Hector can see her struggling to mask the disappointment at the meal not quite going as planned, and she forces a smile back onto her face.

"Worst guy I ever met," she mutters wryly. "How about a toast?"

But, frazzled, she moves too fast, and the wine glass slips from her fingers as she goes to lift it, sending a spray of pale purple across the table - and over her lap. "Oh, SHIT," she snaps, and Hector can hear her voice crack.

Frowning, he reaches out and takes her hand in both of his. He can feel the increased heat of the engine in her palm and knows it for a sign of her agitation, and his thumbs drift over her knuckles gently, soothingly. "We can use my glass," he says mildly, and reaches to lift it between them. "To us."

He can see her relax, his voice and touch pushing away the frustration in favor of something warmer. She smiles slightly, nods agreement as he makes the toast, and her eyes track his intensely. The conceit of the first date is gone abruptly, and he sees the full depth of feeling in her eyes, everything they have built together in the months that he has been hers.

"May we live every day as if it were our last," she says softly. "'Cause you never know when your last will come." Before he can respond, she pushes up from her chair and leans across the table to press her lips against his fiercely.

As always, the oblique reference to how little time they have left makes his heart twist in his chest -- but now it is his turn to push that down and away. It has no place here. This moment is for her - for them - to feel, just for a little while, like they can say anything, do anything... like just for one night they are not trapped in the raging river of fate that is dragging them along.

Just for tonight, he thinks, and kisses her deeply, one hand sliding into her hair. Just for tonight... we have all of time ahead of us...

-----

It must be nearly two in the morning, he reflects vaguely sometime later, as he peers out at the curve of the moon and its position slowly descending towards the west. He's barely been aware of the passage of time; the last few hours have been some of the happiest of his life. Just like she promised... no monsters, no fights, no fears, just them, together, talking about whatever comes to mind, each sentence punctuated by a brush of fingertips against a hand or a cheek, a stolen kiss, a sip of wine...

And of course, the seafood stew, which really is dreadful, but certainly filling.

Karlach leans back in her chair with a heavy, contented sigh. "That was great," she mumbles, and flicks a glance at Hector with a slow smile. "The food and the company."

They've both had a little too much wine, really. Hector's lips have been fixed in a permanent, slightly giddy grin for at least the last hour. All the dark thoughts are far behind him now and he feels as if he is simply drifting, content to be near her, and has been forever, and will be forever still.

"Lovely having a normal evening amid the chaos..." he says quietly.

She smiles wryly. "Whatever do you mean? We're just two normal people... living normal lives... very, very normally."

But she can't maintain the facade again; her voice cracks just a little, and she reaches out abruptly, putting her hand over his on the table.

He stirs slightly, the happy buzz fading as he registers something serious and sad coming into her eyes.

"I know I can't stay forever," she says quietly. There's no attempt at jocular humor this time, no wry deflection or avoidance. Her voice is soft and flat, full of love and full of grief. "Here. With you. In fact, I feel like..." She swallows. "Like I don't have long left at all."

His face spasms with a failed effort to contain the fear that floods through him at those words. Every moment he knows it is on the horizon, and yet hearing her speak of it directly, as something looming even closer than before, feels like a dagger through his heart.

Her hand tightens around his, pulling him a little closer to her. "We've been through so much," she goes on. "And the worst is yet to come. I have every reason to feel terrified, hopeless... like giving up." She draws a breath and lets it out slowly, visibly struggling to keep composure long enough to finish speaking. "But to be here, with you, in the city I love, in this world I love so much... it's all I could really ask for."

She reaches out, cups her hand against his cheek, running her thumb along the edge of his beard. It's an affectionate gesture, of course, but it also serves to pull his face towards her, to nudge open his eyes so they meet hers squarely. "You hear me?" she says, suddenly fierce, her voice cracking again as the emotion starts to overwhelm her. "*You're* all I could ever ask for. I love you... and I know that whatever else this city will throw at us, we can handle it."

He is listening with such fervent attention that he feels a muscle start to ache in his neck. And though his instinct, whenever this topic comes up, is to recoil into grief... this time he forces himself only to listen, to let her words flow through him and strengthen him.

Maybe it will end. But it meant something. It meant everything. It will always have meant everything...

He will have that to hold onto, when the pain eventually finds him. As it will, no matter how hard he tries to look away.

"I love you too," he whispers unsteadily, looking back into her eyes, his gaze heavy with all the love he feels for her. In almost every other moment, he is so careful with what he shows, how he controls himself... but not here. There is nothing hidden, not from her.

She smiles, kisses him again, slow and deep, then rests her forehead against his. "Come on," she murmurs. "There's something I want to show you upstairs."

He has to take a moment and breathe several times before he trusts himself to speak. "What is it?" he asks.

She laughs, only a little shakily. "I rented us a room for the whole night. Just the two of us -- alone, finally."

In spite of the emotional strain of the conversation, he feels a flicker of eager warmth go all through him, and she grins at the expression on his face.

"After you," he says, and pushes himself unsteadily to his feet.

-----

He has only ever experienced their lovemaking in camp. And he had never had anything to complain of. She has always been more wonderful than he would have words to describe, no matter where they are. He wouldn't have thought to ask for more even if it had been an option.

But this... gods. A soft bed and her warmth all over him, the same hungry eagerness that has marked their previous encounters, and yet... slow.

They had claimed to each other that they were going slow, that first night back in the shadowlands - but it wasn't really. It was rushed and desperate, full of need and urgency - both from desire and from the necessary limitations of sex in a camp full of other people.

This... this is slow. They have all night, and no one to bother them, nothing to distract. He is free to take his time, explore every part of her as she explores him. And the look in her eyes as their bodies meld together is something he will never forget if he were to live to be a thousand years old.

He loves her... he loves her... he loves her... and he can feel her on the edge of slipping away from him, but he will carry this with him into the darkness when she is gone.

He loves her and he is losing her and he does not know what he will do without her.

But they have this.

They have this...