#where is the gremlin option

[moeblob]

Adam!

(my farmer gremlin in Fields of Mistria)

[arcanewonder]

a soft epilogue

[wellpresseddaisy]

Other people who like vintage and historic fashion: I want to recreate this gown from Worth or Callot Soeurs! Oh, maybe Charles James!

Me: I want to recreate a dress from this sketchy drawing of a young woman and her friend at College in 1926 from Costume in Detail. (I wouldn't say no to either, but I'm starting with the one on the right)

[carcarrot]

trying to eat my lunch at work is an olympic sport and brother im going for the gold

[aria0fgold]

One disadvantage of watching a playthrough is the fact that I see gremlin-like choices and I want those options to be picked so badly for the shits and giggles.

[akkivee]

choose your fighter: tiny kuukous who came into my house and beat me up with how cute they are edition

[tiredgremlintime]

Fuck this one vagabond in particular

[asparagusgremlin]

Boyf and i starting yakuza 6: oh this starts out so nice :) there's a few flaws so far but it's not too awful! I dont really understand why people dont like this game

Boyf and i now at the beginning of chapter 6: this fucking sucks jesus christ now we get it

[peaches-and-honey-and-the-moon]

Being an adult is so weird

[sunderwight]

With moshang I think I'm equally fond of the possibilities/concepts where either Shang Qinghua is ludicrously attractive to demons in a broad sense (but doesn't realize it), or, where Shang Qinghua is just some weird little gremlin and everyone else cannot wrap their head around why THE Mobei Jun is so smug about seducing this man.

Or a combination, where no demon in their right mind would ordinarily look at Shang Qinghua and perceive a sex icon, but because such a high-ranking demon has clearly done so, they go "well there must be SOMETHING going on there" and then look closer and before they know it they're on the slippery slope to being horny about a guy who could help file their taxes or arrange to have their clan base's faulty plumbing fixed.

Basically it's all good. Demons en mass going "yeah yeah big scary dudes who punch good are a dime a fucking dozen around here, but do you know how hot someone who can skillfully use an abacus is?" vs demons going "the ice king is a respectable ruler but he has garbage taste in men, we all just smile and politely nod while he insists the weird rat guy he fixated on as a teenager is a catch" vs demons going "I really don't see the appeal -- wait he did what? he killed how many guys at once with 1 trick? he betrayed WHOMST? and lived?! and he knows how to get my door to stop making horrible squeaky noises?! okay yeah figures the king would marry him" but every option is a winner.

I'm also a big fan of both Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua being not very attractive to demons in general, but it also being really common for demons to get super weird about first crushes and fixate hard on them, so in that sense they are completely normal choices for a couple of high-level demons to marry. Like the demon populace can appreciate the emperor actually landing his hot teacher and the king successfully marrying his teenage sweetheart. It's an idealized fantasy in terms of the scenarios, even if the actual guys are just weird humans. Nearly every average demon has lifelong daydreams about successfully seducing their first crush, so regardless of who those crushes turned out to be it's still a power move for LBH and MBJ to actually succeed.

Bonus if the fact that both SQQ and SQH are peak lords from the same sect leads to a bunch of demon kids developing crushes on the other remaining, unattached peak lords, and chaos ensuing. Especially for Liu Qingge. I think it would be funny for him to gain a flock of teenage demons with crushes, whom he keeps trying to fight off, only to discover that beating them up does NOT discourage them at all (actually makes the crushes worse). Or Yue Qingyuan getting mobbed like he's a pop star any time he makes a diplomatic visit to the demon realms. Sha Hualing deciding that she's just waiting for Liu Mingyan to become a peak lord before they make things official, since That's Obviously How It's Done, or Qi Qingqi doing a head count one day and realizing she suddenly has a bunch of unfamiliar "guest" disciples who sigh at her a lot and have funny-colored eyes...

[thevoidstaredback]

Saturday's at Wayne Manor are family days. The whole weekend is reserved for the family to come and go as they please, but the biggest events are the Game Days on Saturday from 11:00 to 16:00 and Sunday Dinner at 18:00.

Every Saturday is a Game Day, but the third Saturday of each month is Competition Day. The kids all choose their favorite games, and everyone competes against each other. It's very rarely missed by anyone, but there have been times when someone has had to tap out for one reason or another. Alfred keeps track of who's missed how many days. Barbra keeps the tally of who's won what and how many times. At the end of the year, on December 31st, the scores are announced.

Sunday Dinners are sacred. No one ever misses a Sunday Dinner. The last person who did Jason is still getting subtle jabs and looks from everyone and that was a year ago and he had a very good reason, thank you very much! Everyone is always present for Sunday Dinner because everyone still has a room and the option to stay the night between the two days. Most usually take up the offer, but there have been extenuating circumstances that have pulled someone from the Manor.

No matter any of that because everyone is here and everyone is staying the night. That means everyone is patrolling Gotham tonight. Almost everyone. Batwoman has offered to take over Bludhaven for the night, so that's where she's gone.

Bruce plans to present his idea of messing with his coworkers when everyone gets back to the cave after patrol. All his kids know who they all are, having been trained by him, so there's no risk or accidental reveals on his part. In actuality, the kids thought of it like a game. They even had a folder for it on the Bat Computer and everything!

Yes, that night, after everyone returned to the Bat Cave, he would gather his Chaos Gremlins and invite them to mess with the Justice League with him. He'd also try and get Alfred in on it. Family bonding, and all that.

Though, making his kids sweat was its own form of amusement for him. It was 3:00 when everyone finally returned. They all ran their own routes, watched over by Oracle, and their own times, but everyone was always done no later than 3:00. It was a rule that the Gotham Rouges had yet to pick up on because Batman went back out until dawn more often than not.

Anyway, Bruce has been the first to get back and had put on an act of being upset. He usually kept his Batman persona with his suit, so he was rarely ever this stoic while he was Bruce Wayne. He hid his smirk as he sat at the head of the meeting table in the Cave, waiting for his children to change and sit with him. Duke normally was asleep by now, but he'd asked the boy to be there, letting him in on the harmless prank while they waited for his siblings and Stephanie to arrive.

Once everyone was seated, he waited a total of thirty seconds, meeting eyes with every one of his children, before he spoke. "I'm very disappointed."

Dick's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. He'd known Bruce the longest - aside from Alfred - and had likely picked up on something the second he saw Bruce and Duke at the table. "At who?"

"The Justice League," It was amusing to watch the tension melt off of all of them when he shook his head, "We all know who all of them are, as well as everyone who trained under them, but they don't know who we are."

"Except Wonder Woman," Jason pointed out, "She figured me out when I came back."

Fair, Bruce supposed. Jason was always Diana's favorite. "I think they need some help," he said, "A push in the right direction, so to speak."

Stephanie had a smile on her face that promised mischief. "We're not telling them, right? 'Cause that'd be no fun."

"Course not!" Duke yawned, "B said we'd give them a hint."

"What did you have in mind, father?" Damian asked, stoic as always, but matching the gleam in Cass's eyes.

"We invite them to the Bat Cave," he said, "Show them around a bit. The only exits we tell them about, though, should be the Lane," How the ground vehicles get in and out. "-the Zeta Tubes," Obviously. "-and the elevator. But, we don't tell them what's upstairs."

Alfred seemed very amused from where he had taken his seat at the other end of the table.

"From there," Bruce continued, "We invite their civilian identities to the next Gala. Meet them. Hint about the Cave without actually saying anything. If I know Clark as well as I know I do, then he'll, at the very least, piece together that the Bat Cave is under Wayne Manor."

"And if we play it right?" Dick's grin was manic, "They won't connect who we are."

"Won't that be suspicious, though?" Tim spoke up for the first time, "They may not have put things together yet, but they aren't stupid. They're heroes. If we give them the pieces, they're gonna piece them together."

Damian was the one to answer him. "Batman and Bruce Wayne hate one another, though there is a grudging acknowledgement and respect."

"Give them the right pieces, with a few from the wrong puzzle, in the wrong order, we could totally have them fooled!" Jason explained.

The group shared looks between each other. Nothing needed to be said because the looks and movements said everything.

Alfred smiled and shook his head fondly. "You may plan this in the morning. For now, go to bed and get some sleep."

Part 1 Part 3

[spacedace]

It was the final hour. Doomsday at their door, with only hours left before the world was consumed entirely and every last living thing was devoured right along with it.

Summoning the High King of the Infinite Realms was the only option left, and even then felt more like choosing a firing squad rather than a noose at the end of the day. Pariah Dark might - might - accept the task of destroying the foe they faced, but tmit would come at a cost that was near equal to doing nothing at all. Provided the tyrannical ruler simply didn't let them all die, an entire planet dead was an entire planet to add to his endless armies.

They had to try. Stupid and suicidal as it was.

Zantanna and John worked in silence as they created the summoning circle, hands shaking and stomachs cramping as they worked under the apprehensive eyes of the rest of the League. They all understood that no matter what happened, they would all likely end up dead by the end of it. That the best case scenario meant that death was only the beginning of their problems.

Candles were lit. Insense burned. Blood spilled. Words spoken.

Nothing.

Nothing.

It failed, not so much as a flicker of magic. Which was impossible, they'd checked and confirmed a dozen times that they had the right ritual, that they were following the steps, they had done everything right way wasn't it working? What had they done wr-

"Ugh, gross is that blood?"

Elle Phantom, fifteen minuted late to the site of the ritual with both the boys Super, the most murderous Robin and a sugary abomination of an iced coffee from Starbucks, scrunched her nose in disgust as she looked at the summoning circle.

"This ritual is so out of date, where did you even find it? Wait is that Latin? Who tries to summon someone from the Ghost Zone in Latin?"

John had burned through every drop of alcohol and cigarette he owned hours ago while trying to find this bloody damn ritual and was very much not in the mood for the little hellspawn's color commentary on the process.

"I don't bloody well seeing you providing with any alternatives for summoning the Ghost King." He swore, turning away from the gremlin to tear through the ancient book he and Zantanna had discovered with the ritual inside.

There was a loud slurping noise as the undead hero sucked the last remnants of her drink through the straw. John's brow twitched, even Zantanna - who usually seemed endeared by the chaos goblin - looked at the end of her rope.

Then - "Oh, is that who you wanted to summon? Why didn't you say so?" She drifted over, handing her empty drink off to a disgruntled looking Batman, and began rummaging through the unused magival supplies left over from the - failed - summoning circle. "Here, give me like, five minutes."

John was fairly certain his head was about to explode.

"You know how to summon the Ghost King? You?"

Phantom rolled her eyes at him. "Duh, obviously."

"Obviously." Zantanna repeated, looking like she was half a moment away from having a breakdown. She didn't try to stop the ghostly girl, though, and to be fair neither was John. They were already fucked, might as well let the gremlin try her hand at it.

It took less than the five minutes Phantom had claimed she needed.

When she was done there was a significantly smaller circle on the ground. At the cardinal directions of the circle, written clockwise she'd drawn not any magical runes but instead what appeared to be the Roman Numerals for one, then two, then something akin to a sideways T with an additional mark rising upward from the long horizontal bar, then the letter L.

It had to have some kind of ancient magical significance John didn't know as Shazam made a noise like a dying goose and squeaked out the word Loss like it was a question. Phantom gave the Champion of Magic a sharp toothed grin before adding some words in a language John didn't know before she finally allowed gravity to pull her back to earth and plant her feet on the ground.

She wiped her hands together a bit dramatically, looking pleased with herself, but at that point John didn't care. He could feel the building magic, heavy and oppressive as she had begun her task. Unlike the circle he and Zantanna had attempted, this one was working.

He couldn't help thr nervous swallow he gave as Phantom then declared, with a strange amount of seriousness. "All that’s left are the words."

She took a deep breath, eyes closing for a moment, and the world went utterly silent around them. This, John could feel, this was the real deal. Fuck him sideways the hellspawn was actually doing it.

Phantom's eyes opened, glowing with that bright eerie green light of her power. Another deep breath and then -

"You are my dad! You're my dad!" He watched, any scraps of hope she'd instilled in him dying an undignified death as she gave a terrible little wiggle dance while she sang(?) Off key, "Boogie woogie woogie!"

Every last person on Earth was going to die and one of John's last moments was going to be spent watching the little undead shit do the Macarena. Well fuck him, he guessed.

Then there was the sound of the veil between the world's tearing in two and the fucking Ghost King was standing in Phantom's summoning circle screaming in a screeching falsetto:

"When will you learn? When will you learn that your actions have consequences!"

You know what actually at this point John would rather the apocalypse kill him.

[hawkinsbnbg]

While his ancestors were devoted to preying on virile men, Steve—a young succubus—chose to settle in Hawkins for a chance at a normal life.

Given his innate charm, he had become the top dog on his first day at school and reigned his subjects with an iron fist. That meant; no bullies nonsense, no ostracized students, and no making fun of less-privileged people.

Steve wasn’t a saint, mind you, but he always did what he deemed right, and reducing the high-school teenage toxicity helped assuage his headaches.

On the other hand, to cover up his tracks with some of the men (he had selected carefully) in the town, he played up the whole rich spoiled brat who had absent parents and was a womanizer part.

And for a long time, it worked.

It worked so well that Steve had become careless and slipped up.

After putting Nancy into a vivid dream of them having sex, he scented something foul and immediately knew there was a trespasser on his property.

That was how he had gotten to the pool in time to save Barb from a monster that resembled Snatcher.

Unfortunately, Jonathan Byers had caught him beating it on the camera and came begging for his help the following day.

Since Steve’s bleeding heart couldn’t take it, he ended up rescuing Will from the hellhole full of Snatcher-like creatures and flower-faced carnivores.

Naively, he had thought it was the end of it. But somehow, the Byers decided he was a part of them after he brought their youngest back from the underworld and always invited him over for dinner.

(Steve had shyly admitted to Joyce that it was kind of nice to have home-cooked meals with so many people for once. He had become the Byers’ permanent guest ever since then.)

Thanks to Will, he got to know The Party, learned about secret government labs and experimented children, and was dragged kicking and screaming into the Upside Down fiasco by the goddamm maternal he had for those gremlins.

(He guessed the list also included Nancy, Barb, Jonathan, Joyce Byers, and even Jim Hopper.)

Fast forward to S4 where everything derailed and went south so rapidly that Steve didn’t have time to respite. It resulted in his power being drained after having healed most of the bat’s bites and injuries he sustained.

Since they were on the run, his options were sort of limited, and although it would risk raising more suspicion on himself, Steve didn’t think Eddie would have the energy to mull over it too long once he was done.

Meanwhile, Eddie was perplexed and aghast when Steve Harrington pulled him to the back of the camper when no one noticed and proceeded to blow his brain the fuck out.

Eddie nearly combusted and died right then when Steve looked up at him through those pretty lashes, nuzzling his thigh and thanking him softly.

The sight went straight into Eddie’s spank bank and he didn’t even feel guilty about it. If anything, it just fueled his determination to kill Vecna so he could spend more time with his boy.

Much much later when everyone made it out alive and Eddie survived his horrible not-good spring break, he finally learned about Steve’s secret and offered the succubus a lifetime deal.

Eddie would be Steve’s personal charger for as long as he lived.

In response, Steve had jumped his bone right at that moment and didn’t stop until midnight.

Eddie had half a mind to worry about his kidneys’ welfare, but he soon decided it was future-Eddie’s problem. Present-Eddie was blissfully balls deep in Steve’s sweet hole and couldn’t care less.

[prokopetz]

The Gremlin Game Designer's Creed

Rules are toys, and the process of rules-mediated play consists of smashing their faces together like little girls making their Barbies make out. Unless a rules module is explicitly intended to be enacted solo, it should present a generous surface area for other rules to bite into. The most elegantly self-contained piece of rules design is, collaboratively speaking, also the most useless.

The principal function of "player characters" as discrete collections of mechanical traits is to furnish each player with an assemblage of shiny things to show off to other players. Mechanical abstraction is well and good, but if you abstract away the act of curating one's collection of shinies, player engagement will suffer.

The GM, if present, is a fellow player. Ensure that they have their own toys and shinies to play with. The failure of a game to provide these is often a major contributor to why nobody wants to run it!

The most effective way of encouraging players to do what you want is to make a number go up. This applies to both to rewards and to misfortunes; a number counting up to disaster a much more visceral motivator than a number counting down to zero.

Crunch is good. The defining feature of tabletop roleplaying is that rules produce stories. The act of interpreting the outputs of the rules and the act of telling the game's story are the same activity. Be mindful of what kinds of stories your rules want to tell; you may find that their opinion on the matter differs from your own!

Actually assembling your game's rules is as much a process of discovery as it is of invention. In the course of designing and playtesting, you may find that your own game has rules that you didn't know about. Where did they come from? It is a mystery.

Randomised outcomes should be made mandatory with care and restraint; randomised outcomes should be made available with delirious abandon. As far as is practicable, players should always have the option of asking the dice what unhinged bullshit should happen next. Corollary: lookup tables are your friend.

Players don't need your permission to depart from the rules as written; granting it is arrogant. By the same token, however, it should never be unclear to players whether they're departing from the rules as written. Let the thought process behind what you're writing hang out for all the world to see; folks will be rummaging in the game's guts anyway, so give them easy access.

If your game has a default setting, explain it as little as possible, but always let the rules and presentation reflect it. Seeing an entry for "poorly made dwarf" in a table of player character backgrounds will fire a group's imagination more strongly in three words than a chapter stuffed with worldbuilding lore could in ten thousand.

You don't need to be good at naming things as long as you're good at puns. Wordplay, alliteration and rhyme may also serve in this capacity, as, in a pinch, may a well placed dick joke.

[evilminji]

Okay... so it COULD be because, as a writer, I'm an ASSHOLE to my Characters...

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT'D BE FUNNY?

Danny, innocent, gets YEETED into DC. As ya do. And he's a bit messed up. But! He's a Baby Ancient in the making. Gonna be master of Spaaaaaace(~~~☆!) one day. Very exciting, only slightly relevant.

See, Ectoplasm? Dumb. That's why we need Cores and Brains etc. Never let Ectoplasm decide things. It WILL chose the "technically correct but now the buildings on fire" option EVERY SINGLE TIME. And you are running out of fire extinguishers.

Because it is dumb.

Very, VERY No Brain, Just Goo, Dumb.

And THIS Goo has a life to save. A Halfa too maintain in Peak Performance(tm). Because THIS Goo is VERY smart Goo(according only to itself) and TOTALLY knows what it's doing! Damaged meat bits? Oh that's EASY! You just FIX that! Replace with meat bits! See? It's BRILLIANT Goo. 10 out of 10 stars, me!

Small problem.

The instructions have been damaged.

PANIC.

Wait! No! We got this! We are Very Smart Goo(tm). And have Space Powers. This is FINE. We'll... we'll just FIX the instructions! Hand me a hammer! If we smash enough bits together, it'll sort? Of look right? Close ENOUGH? Yeeeeeah. We're GENIUS Goo~

Use THAT!

But where did they GET their ill begotten DNA? Well OBVIOUSLY the place all the OTHER DNA they had was stored, DUH? Keep up, says the Goo with literally no braincells making horrifying choices for an unconscious man. It's Earth.

As in... the planet.

It's not even HIS planet. It's AN Earth. A Planet CALLED "Earth" that dwells in the DC universe, not his, and is covered with ZERO(0) Fentons but plenty of superhumans and aliens. THAT planet.

The Goo grabbed the Very BESTEST Meat Instructions it could FIND! The Goo is also a collective and did not AGREE on what the "Best" WAS. But it's... okay, no, I can't lie to you, it is NOT fine.

But thankfully it IS stable.

Because Ectoplasm may be dumb and indiscriminate as super-bacteria with a flamethrower, but it is a MASTER at the jigsaw of Life. It can reanimate ANYTHING.

Including the now SINGLE MOST CHIMERAD MAN you've ever SEEN. Who is he related too? YES. His left knee is Kryptonian, the fingers on his right hand are Tameranian, his skin tone has shifted to the most ambiguously multi-ethnic tone imaginable (think that future of humanity mock up, where they combine every ethnicity on the premise that inter-racial marriage will becoming increasingly common up to the point where we all just kinda look averaged out thanks to the ease of travel) because it's trying to do all of them at once and none of them are willing to back down, because all of them got the instructions "Be Skin". He might have Slade Wilson's cheek bones and hair.

Danny wakes up and basicly is half Ectoplasmic Goo, half the extended Super Community.

AND CANT GET BACK HOME TO FIX IT.

Because of course this IS fixable. It's just medical shape-shifting. But without HIS template, undamaged. His body is REFUSING to change from what is OBVIOUSLY the CORRECT form. And he keeps getting clocked as "probably related to me".

With the Fenton Luck kicking in? The parts of him people manage to swab and/or get DNA from? Keep MATCHING them. Danny doesn't know WHO is behind this but-! *spots a giggle child with a cat* !!!!!!

You.

Klarion you little SHIT!

So now he's wearing a face that's BARELY his, running from very determined superhumans who want to parent him, trying to steal enough technology to build a portal. AND vowing to kick the witch boy's ASS.

This ISNT FUNNY, KLARION.

His body is Frankenstein's FEVER DREAM! Every time he gets hurt, it tries to "FIX" itself! He lost a chunk of his should back there and HIS ENTIRE BODY CHANGED SKIN TONES. He's pretty sure if he SITS funny, his teeth might fall out and regrow POINTY! He's handing you over to WALKER you horrible little gremlin child!

Just? Take the "Danny is related to X" and "Danny is sick" and turn them uuuuup. Make EVERYBODY concerned except Danny. This is just another fucked up adventure in a long string of fucked up adventures. Give him his DNA back. If he has to suffer the Fenton Luck then he should AT LEAST get to keep the Fenton "built like a tank"!

*gets hit again*

*is GREEN now for some reason* The fuck?

Garfield, aka Beast Boy: I HAVE A CLONE SON!?

Danny: Zone DAMN IT not another one!

@ailithnight @hdgnj @nerdpoe @the-witchhunter

[fire-lizard-ro]

Ratio as a dad (kinda). Written for my dear @pix3lplays (they already saw this when I initially wrote it).

CW: none it’s all fluff (kinda)

Reader gender: no use of pronouns (as far as I remember) but AFAB

Writing under the cut (SFW):

So when you tell him, he doesn't know how the hell to feel. You guys never really had the children talk, but you could tell that he wasn't really ready for that because of a mix of being too busy, not really understanding children, and never really thinking about it.

To him, children are snot-nosed, loud, emotional little gremlins.

But he never thought about children in the context of you and him. A child born of your flesh and blood. Something you have made together through the miracle (or simple science, as Veritas would say) of procreation.

It would take him a while to think of it that way.

Initially, since this is in the scenario where you're already married, I think that he would be fine with it so long as you're happy with it. He does his logical reasoning and thinks, "Oh. I have the means to raise a child and she wants it." So he doesn't really see a problem with it besides perhaps the stress it will inevitably put on you and having to deal with the messy and emotional rollercoaster ride that is children.

At some point while laying in bed with you after weeks of reading prenatal care and child rearing books, he begins to get curious. Curious about what it would really be like to father a child that the both of you made. That's how things start. Curiosity.

Would the child look like you? He would like that if they could resemble his lovely spouse.

Would they look like him? He would also like this as there would be no doubting who the father of your child was. A reminder of how the two of you were undeniably together.

Would they look like the both of you? He would enjoy this outcome the most as it would be the best of both options.

Would they have his intelligence that he prides himself on? Your smile that he loves, even if quietly?

Because of this process of beginning to be curios and thinking about the child yet to be born, it's not hard for him to subconsciously relate good feelings (and chemicals like dopamine and serotonin, he'd think) to the child themself.

You're happy when you talk about the child and what you'll do for them and how you'll care for them. He's happy when you're happy. He's pleased when thinking about how people will be able to see a physical manifestation of your love and belonging with each other. You're happy to be having his child. He's happy about that, too.

While your feelings regarding the child is like a warm spring day or a cup of hot tea just boiled, his are more mild, still. Like your tea, already cooled, or a warm blanket. There are positive feelings involved now, and even he cannot deny it (at least to himself).

He takes care of you well, following the advice of the books and experts to the T. Perhaps a little too closely because it's a bit overprotective. You're his. Which also means it's in his obligation to take care of you well.

But when the child is born... I think there's at least a spark there. I'm not sure it's enough to light that flame quite yet, but now... He realizes that this really is his child. His and yours. He has your pretty eyes but with his color. The curl of your hair and the slope of his nose. Oh. Oh...

This child...

As the years go on and he spends time caring for the child and spending time with them, he begins to find all these little endearing things about them. How they'll seek him out even in sleep. How they'll smile at him happily, the slant of it so much like yours. How they'll crawl and eventually waddle their way to him when they begin to cry... Even just the fact that he spends time with them is enough to grow this bond. And at some point, they're off to school and it's clear they did, indeed, have his intelligent mind. But they're far more soft around the edges. Much more susceptible to the inherent loneliness, boredom, and ridicule, even, that comes with such intelligence.

But... he gets it. He never really thought anyone understood him at that age and for him? It was lonely but he was irritated by it more than anything. He had thicker skin than his child at that age.

So when they come to him about it all, he can only try his best to let them know he gets it even if he doesn't know how to express such a thing.

Ever heard the saying, "Even a beast will love its child?"

He’s not a nice person. His personality is rough and no one would ever think he could be suited to something as delicate as fatherhood.

And yet…

While he's not one for grand gestures, I think the kid would be able to see he cares.

It's in the little things for him.

Talking about the things they're interested in at school.

Telling them about his work and the things he researches. Being patient with them unlike how he is with his students. ("They are grown. But you are not," he would say with a short pat to the head before going back to checking over their homework with care.)

Rewarding them for their achievements, even if it's with something small.

All sorts of small things.

(He'll never admit it, but you have a picture of the two napping while the kid was sprawled against his side, head tucked into his neck.)

Anyways ofisjgeo yeah-

Hopefully this isn’t too delusional goodbye- I was trying to make him a Relatively Good Dad for Pix while also making sure he was still mostly in-character. OTL