#she can't handle it very well

[kittlesandbugs]

FHR: Past connections Pairing: Sidestep (Riley) & Danny Warnings: TFW you don't get along with someone but they want to get along with you lol Word Count: 541 Prompt: write an interaction between your blorbo and a character you've never (or not much) "made them" interact with yet.

"Hey, um… can I ask you something?" 

Has Ortega been coaching him? That's his line to weasel in through your defenses and get you to open up about something… or at least consider it. You give Herald a narrow look over the top of your sunglasses, but decide to throw him half a bone since he actually managed to land something of a hit on you in training today. "Fine, you can ask, but I don't have to answer."

"Yeah, those are the rules," he agrees too easily, and now you're certain Ortega has been coaching him. He nods to himself as he considers how to phrase his query, blue eyes bright and inquisitive under his bouncing golden bangs. "So, I met someone, a young girl, a few years ago. She said she knew you before you became Sidestep, and that you saved her from being kidnapped."

You freeze, cookie forgotten halfway to your mouth as you gape at him before snapping your mouth shut. How on earth could he possibly know about Sadie? 

"She said she couldn't ever forget you, and I was wondering if you remember her?" 

"Of course I do…" Fuck, she must be in high school now. Maybe even college. The first person you ever saved of your own volition, your own choice. The first step into actually living. Free, mostly. Still chasing human approval and acceptance like a dog, riding high on gratitude, reliant on gratuity. You shake your head, rattling those chains of the past loose. You're no one's dog now. 

"... that okay, Riley?" 

You jerk with the realization that he was still talking to you and scrub your face roughly with your hand. "Yeah, sure," you mutter before sinking your teeth back into the soft cookie he bribed your time with, not willing to admit you didn't hear a word he said. 

"So, what was her name?" 

"Why do you want to know that?" The growl of your tone makes him flinch just a little. Good.

"Well, I mean…" He flounders, trying to figure out where he misstepped with you. "It's kind of hard to find someone again without even a name to go on?"

Oh. Fuck. That was what he asked? To track her down? Reunite you? He's as big a meddler as Ortega. Bigger, maybe. Ortega, at least, has stopped stepping in your past like dog shit. Mostly. 

"No." You say it with the flat finality of a closed door, shutting it in his face. She doesn't need to know how far her hero has fallen. Bad enough that he still clings to what you were, despite your attempts to divorce him from such idealism. "Leave that girl alone." 

"But you said I could—" 

"I changed my mind!" The bark is punctuated with a smack to the table that startles him into silence. As all eyes in the café turn to you, you just as quickly turn them away as you rise, slapping some bills on the table. 

"Sidestep is dead," you hiss the stark reminder in his ear as you pass, resisting the perverse urge itching under your skin to shatter the window of his hope and reveal just what crawled out of that particular corpse. "Let her stay that way."

[magnusbae]

Oh I found another one!! God I love the sheer volume of content in this game!!! This is so exciting!! I love that there's always another thing, another person to find and meet—Wow! Just bravo supergiant games!! 😚😚😚

[stellerssong]

ok sorry the OTHER thing about lucienne is like. as previously stated she is dream's handpicked emissary from the waking world to the dreaming she's the diplomat in chief she's the translator she's the bridge. because the dreaming is, in a very real way, dream's own psyche, this is tantamount to giving lucienne a tremendous degree of access to his interiority and by transitive property also tantamount to entering into a deeply emotionally intimate relationship with her (unimportant for the purposes of this post whether that relationship is platonic or romantic).

now, in general, looking at the pattern of dream's close emotional relationships—dream doesn't share himself with people as a rule (beyond the access that all things that live have to the dreaming; but i'm talking about his self here, the one he doesn't like to acknowledge he even has), but when he does share with people, it's with people who have some shadow on the soul, so to speak. just looking at attested relationships in show canon, his deepest emotional connection seems to be with death, who embodies the duality of light and dark even better than he does himself. calliope is the muse of epic poetry—heroism and tragedy—and also bears the sort of divine pride that led her to cut dream off for hundreds or thousands of years when he wronged her. the less said about that other guy, the better, but he's no sunshine-rainbows-unicorns type—he's a soldier of fortune, a bandit and a killer, a man who profits from the sale of human life. even best bird matthew, in comix canon, had a sordid past that will maybe be partially retconned for the show but has still been gestured at.

dream likes the complicated ones. he's drawn to them. they speak to something in him that he won't acknowledge in himself (he has to be Whole, fully integrated, without reservation, because he is the king and he is the dreaming and if the dreaming ain't whole then the universe is in trouble—but he feels that ache nonetheless).

all that is to say: when people try to portray lucienne as dream's Designated Well-Adjusted Neurotypical Friend, i begin to harm and maim.

[heartshattering]

5 AM

Just me and my overactive mind facing the nighttime again 🙃

[mermaidsirennikita]

saw the "who's your most underrated Kleypas hero" question getting bandied about (again) today, and I must say, the only answers I'll accept are:

--John McKenna/Again the Magic (I'd argue that AtM is not the DEEP CUT newer Kleypas readers think it is; before I read it, it was definitely upheld as a classic of hers, but people who want the softer boys she writes in the Ravenels... may not like this one; however, McKenna fucks RIDICULOUS lbr)

--Alex, Lord Raiford/Then Came You (yes... he calls her a bitch.... and I'll be real this made me love him more... he carried her over his shoulder outta Craven's and bought her a bear I'm VERY confident in this choice)

--Kev Merripen/Seduce Me at Sunrise (thought he'd kill Win with his massive dick, tied her up and took her to his fuck cottage, is Heathcliff if Heathcliff wasn't horrible basically)

--Leo Hathaway/Married by Morning (fun bout wounded king, "haha" in the streets and "oh shit" in the sheets, notable for making Catherine ask him to touch her pussy in explicit and specific language)

[psalmsofpsychosis]

lmao

[lieutenantselnia]

I've been thinking about whether my way of naming my self-inserts might be a bit inconvenient ... to clear it up:

Selina with an i - My modern day s/i that I ship with Doofenshmirtz, she's probably the closest to my actual self, though I still take creative liberties in some aspects.

Selena with an e - My PotC s/i, I have two different AUs for her to ship her with both Barbossa and Davy Jones. She's a bit more like an oc, but I still also see her as a self-insert.

My original thought was to give them slightly different names, so I won't always have to mention about which universe I'm currently referring to. Since they're all based on the same "template" character though (which is just ... me I guess😂), I didn't want to give them entirely different names, plus while I didn't want to use my actual first name anymore, I still wanted a name that I can identify with. In my head it makes total sense, but I can see that this may also be a bit confusing😅

[yardsards]

adulthood is just visiting ur friends, saying "damn bitch, you live like this?" (affectionate) and aggressively helping them clean up while they politely tell you that you don't have to do that. and then having friends do that to you when they visit your apartment.

[m4niackkyun]

Hi. (Announcement in the tags)

[cynthffxiv]

I think my favorite thing in my fic so far is that while Emet is absolutely a tsundere it becomes superceded by his desire to be a bastard so for a while after he and Cynthia get together he is very over the top affectionate because she is a tsundere and easily embarrassed about her feelings and he goes "Oh this is the best entertainment I've had in thousands of years"

[royalphantompain]

Ugh

Probably gonna private this later

TW Illness and cancer warning

[lochley]

i think i can sometimes fast track lyta and g'kar's closeness early on in their couple years together but it's like... they're roommates in a cramped space who spend long stretches of time seeing literally no one else while traveling so they can speedrun their relationship a little as a treat.

[firelightfoxes]

on my hands and knees begging lichen to become potty trained already

[scare-ard--sleigh]

me white-knuckling the kitchen sink: i won't say anything i wouldn't want repeated in a running report, not everything that makes me tick needs to be commented on, may g,d or whoever grant me the serenity to ignore stupid stupid stupid human beings, etc., etc, etc.

[glitteronadumpsterfire]

[ladsofsorrow24]

i still find it hilarious that amongst all of the characters in part 1, the only one who is confirmed to be around denji's age is yoshida lmao