#seriously buckle up because i do NOT pull my punches LMAO

[genericpuff]

I'm ready to be emotionally destroyed by Demeter content in the future.

[silverselfshippingchaos]

Felix + KISS! :D

46 - mid fight.

Okay, I actually have a few ideas for this one so 👀 buckle up, my loves! These are all while fighting away enemies because, well, it's fire emblem-

This one is during the academy phase of the game, so they're still both students who've just started dating :)!

"You." Says Felix, cold as ever as he slams some papers down onto the table, sitting down next to Ash in the dining hall.

"Hello, Felix. To what do I owe the honor?" Says Ash, not looking up from the blessings of taste her salad was providing her with. Gulping down her salad, she looks up at him. His eyes. She'd always loved his eyes. Amber, sharp, and piercing. Intimidating, honestly. But ever so rarely, soft and filled with love. For her, of course. And swords, of course.

"Tch, stop being stupid. You see me every single day."

"I know I do, and it's always the best part of my day!" She says, smiling softly as she pushes away the (now empty) bowl of salad.

"O-oh?" Says Felix, the faintest of blushes yeeting itself onto his face.

"Of course. Now, what is it? You usually don't come see me during lunchtime, you're always training. Is something wrong?"

"Well... I need your help."

Ash gasps. "Felix?! Asking for help?! Oh my! I must be dreaming!" She laughs, "I'm joking. Mostly. What do you need me for?"

Felix takes her hand into his and softly rubs circles into it with his thumb, "I need help with my sorcery homework... I know you're a good mage, and I know professor Byleth said I should study reason... So help me. Please, Ash?"

Ash giggles, "Yeah, of course! And," She smirks, "If you don't mind me asking, what am I getting out of this?" She was joking (as she often did), of course, but teasing him was fun.

"I... Well... I'll help you with your sword technique. I know you've wanted to get better, especially after that one night we sparred... You do remember, correct?" He asks. "You better not have forgotten."

~~~~~~

Flashback

"Ash. Spar with me." Felix says, pointing his wooden training sword down at the figure sitting in the corner of the training grounds, her head buried in a book.

"Me?!" She asks, pushing up her red glasses and placing a bookmark in her book and setting it to the side. She looks the figure up and down, biting her lip. His amber eyes were are sharp as daggers, but she loved it.

"Yes, genius. Who else would I be talking to? Which other Ash is here right now? I've beaten almost everyone here, I need someone new." He grunts, tucking a stray strand of his dark blue hair behind his ear.

"Well then, love, I don't think I'll be of much help to you. I'm sorry." Says Ash, standing up from her seat on the ground, grabbing her book, and brushing off her pants.

"... You always start acting like this when I ask you to spar. Why?

"Oh, you wanna know why?! I'm sure you know exactly how it feels like to be a stand-in for somebody else in your life, don't you? It's fucking hard. My sister is one of the best knights the country has seen. Why even bother trying when I'm never going to be what everyone expects to be?!"

Felix nods his head slowly and gently hugs her. "I... I get it. That's how I felt when Glenn was around. Hell, that's how I still feel. So... Let's learn together, okay? We'll be the best. Just as good as your sister."

Ash's eyes go wide. "Damn... Has anyone ever told you that you'd make a great motivational speaker?"

"No. I often times prefer to let my sword do the talking, and I do not believe that is appropriate for most group settings unfortunately."

Ash lets out a chuckle and takes off her jacket, folding up the sleeves of her shirt underneath as she grabs a training sword. "Okay, pretty boy, let's go."

Ash nearly screams at how quick he moves, and it takes all her skill just to dodge out of the way of his attacks. Swords clash, and she's pushed back by the sheer amount of force he was pressing against her blade. "Damn, Felix. You're," Ash pants, "strong. Really damn strong."

She was beginning to tire out. She looks him up and down, only to sigh at the fact that he had no visible weaknesses. She'd have to create a distraction then.

"Hey, Felix?"

"What is it?" He responds, his moves not slowing down in the slightest.

She knocks her blade against his, leaning in a bit, only to gently connect their lips. He freezes against her, "O-oh. Thanks."

She smirks at the opportunity to sweep at his legs, knocking him onto the ground. She points her wooden blade at his neck. "Boom, I win. Get rekt, bitch."

He gasps, pushing himself back up to his feet. "Cheater!"

"I simply used my resources."

~~~~~~

"Hey," She shrugs, "There's no way I could have forgotten. You seriously don't have to, though. I hope you know that. I'll help you no matter what, I'm your girlfriend." Ash smiles at the thought.

He rolls his eyes, "Quit being sappy, just help me with this spell."

"Of course, Lixie."

Damn this is fun! This next one takes place after the timeskip, so it's five years later and during the war :)!

The battlefield was relentless and rough. Reinforcements kept on coming, and Felix was exhausted. Slice one down, move to the next. Slice one down, move to the next. Felix had to keep going. Some of his allies were behind him, shooting arrows and blasting magic.

Ash was on the other side of the battlefield, blasting fireballs and stabbing the soldiers who tried to charge at her. Felix felt a proud smirk on his face - She'd improved so much.

"FELIX!" Calls Sylvain, "Watch out! To your left!"

Felix gasps, seeing a flyer attempt to hit him. He dodged as best as he could, but he couldn't stop the axe from tearing into his arm. He screams. But he keeps fighting, the adrenaline pulsing through his veins.

Felix takes down as many Empire soldiers as he can, but he fails to see an archer taking aim directly at him.

The arrow hits Felix square in the chest, and he falls down onto one knee. "Fuck... Is this... going to be my final stand?"

"Felix!" Screams Ash. She casts Bolting and takes out the flyer, and starts immediately running over to Felix. "Sylvain, take out the archer for me, yeah? Cover us." She says, softly holding Felix, her hands soaked crimson.

"You okay, Lix?"

"I'm bleeding out."

"Y-yeah..." She says, taking a shaky breath. "I'm not... the best with blood, but it's okay."

Felix pushes her away and rises back to his feet, "It's fine. I-I'll be okay. If it makes you uneasy, leave me be." He reaches for his weapon and falls back onto his knees, "Or not."

"Okay." Ash takes a deep breath in, "I can do this." She casts the strongest healing spell she knows, and tosses Felix a concoction, which he gratefully chugs.

"Thank you. You did well. You're doing so well." Felix says, grabbing his sword.

"Wait!" Ash says.

"Yes? Make it fast, I'm trying to, you know, not get killed."

"I love you." She says, pulling him closer for a small kiss.

~~~~~~

Here's another one because I don't want to do my homework :) this time it's an actual verbal fight lmao

"Felix, can you shut up for once?! I'm sick of your attitude." Ash says, slamming her hands down onto the dark wood of her desk.

"Excuse me?! You're so fucking sensitive, you can't handle anything. You never think about how you bother other people, or worse, hold them back." He says, standing up from his seat on her (their, if we're being honest) bed.

"Oh, so now it's ME who's holding people back?! You're the one who never takes a moment to think about how painful your words can be. Has anyone ever told you that insulting people isn't a way to show affection? It hurts, Felix. It fucking hurts. But wait, you don't care, do you? You never care about anything other than your damn training and your stupid dead brother. You always go on and on about how the dead are dead and the living are living, but you never take a piece of your own advice."

At this point, Felix was fuming. He punches the wall next to him, "Don't you dare bring Glenn into this!"

"I just want you to care, Felix! All this insulting and being a fucking bitch is getting you nowhere. It's getting us nowhere. And frankly, I'm sick of it. Do better." She says, standing up and walking out of the room. She immediately flees to the training grounds, walking as fast as she can. All she saw was red and tears threatened to spill from her eyes.

Felix buries his face in his hands. "Damnit. I'm such a fool..." He takes a few moments to himself to calm down, before standing up and starting to search around the monastery for her. Where could she possibly be?

He wanders around the stone walls, taking in the chill of the cold night. He'd always liked the night. But the night felt different when he was alone.

Felix hears small sniffles coming from the direction of the training grounds. "... I made her cry." A pang of guilt hits him. Ash cried easily, and he knew that. She often joked about it. But very rarely was he the one making her cry. And he didn't like it one bit.

He walks into the training grounds only to see Ash huddled up in the corner, her head between her knees. They'd spent so much time on the ground of the training grounds together, laughing and smiling. But tonight was different.

"... Hey, Ash." He says, slowly approaching her. "Are you... okay?"

"I dunno. I'm fine. I'll be fine." She says, not even bothering to look up at him from her spot on the cold ground.

"I... thought about what you said. I think you might be right. I'll try to tone it down, I promise." He says quietly.

She looks up at him, her brown eyes shining in the moonlight. "Wait... Really?"

"Yes." He says, sitting down next to her, making sure to leave some space in between. "But... I also want you to hear me out."

She takes a deep breath and nods.

"I'm sorry for being rude. You know that I don't realize the weight of my words sometimes. I understand where you come from, I just... I'm scared of getting attached. I can't lose anybody else..." Felix blubbers quickly. He wasn't used to being vulnerable, it always made him feel weak.

"... Okay. I understand, Felix." Says Ash, scooting a bit closer to him and taking his hand into hers. "Let's just make an effort to understand eachother, yeah? No more dumb fights."

"Yeah." Responds Felix, gently pulling her onto his lap and kissing her. He wraps his arms around her back and finds himself smiling into the kiss. With her, he felt like he was at home.

[dragonofyang]

why do you love eridan so much??? hes a little shit murderer

Ohoho anon you just opened the floodgates for exactly why I love that he’s a little shit murderer so buckle up

He, much like I, has a flair for the dramatic, as well as just a very striking character design with a very pretty shade of purple so visually he’s right up my alley with all the gold and purple and a motherfucking cape. I adore that shade of purple and have for years before reading Homestuck, I’ve owned lipstick that color for ages now, so getting into fandom and cosplay and such just makes my appreciation for appealing character design that much stronger. I could go into detail of why I love the aesthetics of all the trolls so much but that’s a topic for another post lmao but if you wanna know which other characters I love for their visual interest it’s (in no particular order) Kanaya, Feferi, and Nepeta as far as the post-scratch trolls go. Ancestors are always my fucking jam aesthetically, too but then again what don’t I love about them.

But looking at him from the perspective of an English major he’s very interesting as a character. He’s rounded and has a concrete history both in life and in relationships with the other characters, as well as having just a very striking personality. If I were to read him in a book, I would not forget who the fuck Eridan Ampora is precisely because his characterization wouldn’t let you. Granted, this applies to pretty much any of the main characters of Homestuck, so why does he strike more of a resonance with me than some of the others?

Excellent question and one that I can only theorize has something to do with his design but it also has something to do with what I discussed just a paragraph ago: his personality and his relationships. The full argument is under the cut so this is your TL;DR, anon.

His most key relationships we see as far as canonical romantic ones are Feferi and Vriska, so it’s through his relationships to them I’m going to analyze his character, as well as his relationship with his ancestor Orphaner Dualscar. As a character, we see that he’s a megalomaniac and has his head so far up his ass he’s talking around his horns, but we also see that he’s a historian, a tactician, a sailor, and extremely inventive, as proven by his doomsday devices and the detritus around his hive that show his nightly life. Granted, this alone just makes him sound like a bad 80′s sci-fi villain complete with the douchebag cape, even with all the potential to show off his battle prowess and tactical skills, which we see somewhat but not to the extent that we see him be, as you put it, “a little shit murderer”. He’s also one of the physically strongest trolls, being able to ride his lusus without holding the reins and not falling off when he fires Ahab’s Crosshairs, which I find interesting purely because Equius is cited to be the strongest of the trolls, but the others aren’t really ranked by strength. Then again, Equius is an outlier who arguably can’t be counted for an understanding of typical trollian strength, a topic which has been discussed to death.

But what do we get when we put this master tactician and egomaniac together with other characters? We get *drum roll* ROUNDED OUT CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT.

Let’s start with Vriska. Vriska is his kismesis. He despises her and sees her as his rival in many ways and often tries to think of things to outfox her craftiness. She antagonizes and mocks him and spurs him to create doomsday devices, and essentially highlights the worst ways he can utilize his skills in the murder trade. She also is the wit to his brawn in a sense, preferring mind games while he prefers more physical devices, again: doomsday devices and killing outright (his orphaning) rather than maiming somebody via a proxy (Terezi) or tricking them into being nearly killed (Tavros). So together they’re the tag team of all the ways they can fuck your shit up, but he also is fairly gullible because he falls for Vriska’s shit, then gets mad about it which I feel makes his otherwise-terrifying abilities and undercuts them with his obvious inability to not take things seriously.

However, the gullibility doesn’t much showcase how insidious it is as a flaw for Eridan than when he’s around Feferi. While Vriska doesn’t hide that she loves tricking him and toying with him, Feferi, whether intentionally or not, also uses Eridan for her own means. Feferi is where we get a more tender side of Eridan, because where Vriska exacerbates his worst traits and how they’re expressed, Feferi tempers him and shows more of his emotional range as a troll. Through her we see that he has a capacity for empathy and that he’s also a whiny little bitch when he’s not shooting whale lusii out of the sky or plotting the apocalypse over tea. Feferi herself is conflicted with killing lusii to feed G’lbgolyb, she has a sea animal rescue for the cute critters (of which is a whole other essay on the ethics of cute conservation that I’ve seen analyzed before but can’t remember where). But because Feferi herself is conflicted with her duty as an heiress, she passes the burden of orphaning trolls across Alternia to Eridan, who accepts. You could argue that he takes the job because he’s just that murder-hungry, but you have to also consider this: Feferi is the troll closest to him. She is his one confidant and he cares for her as a moirail. It’s his duty to be there for her and to help ease the burden of the cruel Alternian environment and society, so he takes on a grueling job of immense physical and emotional tax so that she doesn’t have to do it herself. Arguably this is her shuffling guilt onto Eridan because “hey, I’m not killing them” and therefore using him, but Eridan takes on the task of murdering lusii and does so knowing that it’s not his place in Alternian society. So as much as he’s an Imperial loyalist and a hemocasteist, he also is willing to shuck certain roles aside if it’s for the well-being of trolls he cares for, which lends some absolutely delicious conflict to him as a character.

By taking on the role of orphaning trolls, Eridan cements himself firmly to the reader as the next Empress’ right hand. This puts him in the role of executioner of the throne’s will, as well as echoing the role and footsteps of his ancestor, Orphaner Dualscar. Eridan looks up to Dualscar, effectively his better in every way (both to him and in record), but Dualscar also falls prey to Serket mind games which ultimately leads him to his not-so-humorous death at the hands of the Grand Highblood. Eridan is ironically following exactly his footsteps, which only truly get thwarted by entering the Medium in their SGRUB session. In the Medium, we get more proof still of Eridan’s prowess as a young military leader, as well as see just how ruthless a highblood raised to be the cream of the Alternian crop can be as he mistakenly kills all the angels on his planet.

However, the brunt of his conflict and my point of interest remains with how Feferi juxtapositions him and shows the reader just how much emotional potential there is for Eridan. Eridan’s flushed feelings for Feferi grow, and he’s so hesitant to admit his feelings to her for fear of rejection (an understandable fear, especially at that age), but here’s the kicker: his ego and his hemocasteism set him up for the most ultimate of failure because he refuses to accept Sollux as the better choice because of his massive flaws of being a classist bastard. The two of them had always been at odds in the comic for a whole slew of reasons that gets the fandom hot and bothered for that pitch ship, but it comes to a head here where Eridan is proving his selfishness by trying to get Feferi to jump ship and join Jack with him. As much as he cares about saving himself, he still cares for Feferi enough that he feels he can bargain her safety if she comes with him, even though there’s no proof or guarantee he could spare even himself from Jack Noir. He fights first to try and protect Feferi (albeit his reasoning/methods are at odds with his goal) and then he fights for himself and his perceived status as a highblood being usurped by a lowblood competitor, ultimately culminating in his death.

So why do I love him so much? The answer is so deliciously simple but so complicated all the same. I love him because he’s full of contradiction and drama and because we can get such a full picture of him. I love him because he is the result of being one of Alternia’s best and brightest, without the moral complications Feferi faces or the hemocaste complications of the other up-and-coming trolls in the cast. He is, at least in part, what Alternia is and what it does to its citizens and neither he nor the writing pull any punches. He’s a well-written deuteragonist who you’re not meant to feel sympathy for or have his villainous actions excused by his past and without the moral complications of being a hero in the story. His actions ultimately paint him as an antagonist, but by the gods he leaves with as much flair as he comes in and remains one of the most striking characters of the comic to me.

So he might be a little shit murderer, but there’s a reason you remember him as being a shit murderer.

And by God if that isn’t wonderful writing.