Sielutonlampikana - Hi

but it’s SO clear that visenya and rhaenys did 99% of the actual conquering and ruling and aegon was just a convenient man to be king. this is why grrm’s work is so compelling and frustrating in turns—he’s WILDLY aware of how gender and gendered violence in feudalism works, but there’s always just one element of critique missing even though he’s clearly aiming to criticize feudalism. and women keep dying in childbirth! and the princess of dorne is still unnamed! and we know more about tyrion’s missing uncle than minisa whent or joanna lannister combined!

mike’s still smart in s3 & s4 though. he came up with the sauna test in like two seconds. he’s the entire reason the cali crew found the location of the nina project. i made a whole list of all the smart things he’s done in the show (for Reasons) and i promise you he hasn’t stopped being scary intelligent, he’s just mostly forced to deal with emotional conflicts now, which he’s abysmal at because he’s a teenage boy from a family that doesn’t talk about emotions and doesn’t even know what he’s feeling half the time, much less how to say it (or if he should say it) in ways that aren’t clumsy and impulsive and unintentionally hurtful

au where Steve is a famous Disney kid and Eddie is a teenaged singer-songwriter. They get pushed together at events because they're close in age, but they just quietly dislike each other.

Steve's got a new show starting, a spinoff of the one that made him a household name. They hire a newcomer, Robin Buckley, to play his best friend and the two quickly become BFF in real life.

The show runs for two seasons but when it comes time to renegotiate contracts, neither star is interested. They're older now, ready to live life on their terms and not the company's, or in Steve's case, his parents.

As soon as the finale airs, Robin and Steve celebrate by going to a gay club. A few weeks later, an interview is released where Steve comes out as bi and talks about how his parents mistreated him; how they worked with the network to pressure him to be a perfect "all-American" kid even off screen.

Meanwhile, Eddie's an impossible level of famous. He's had number-one hits, won a Grammy, headlined an arena tour, achieved every dream he had for himself as a kid growing up in a trailer park in Indiana. He's not shocked by the news that Steve is leaving Hollywood, but he's flabbergasted that the guy isn't straight. When Eddie reads the interview, he gets this weird pang in his chest, almost like regret. But he never even liked Steve.

Steve isn't in the news again and Eddie doesn't think of him for a long time.

Steve goes to college. He loves it. Not because he's great in his classes, or anything, but because he's free to be himself for the first time. He makes friends and goes to parties and relaxes. He and Robin share an apartment.

After a few semesters, Steve decides to take a couple of theater classes, and is quickly cast in campus productions. In the vague anonymity of college theater he rediscovers his love of acting. No one has expectations of him, no one forces him to perform. He graduates and slowly starts appearing in small roles in Indie films, gathering critical acclaim. He feels good. Happy. Hopeful.

Eddie is blissfully unaware of Steve's career resurgence, experiencing his own musical highpoints, until the day where he's scrolling Twitter, sees a Variety headline that's getting a bunch of attention, "Steve Harrington in talks to star in Max Mayfield's first film." Eddie's livid.

"Maxine, what the fuck?" He growls when she answers his call.

They grew up together in the same Indiana trailer park. When she moved to Hollywood to start a career as a screenwriter, Eddie was by her side. And when her first script wound up on the Black List, his involvement on the soundtrack and original songs sealed her production deal.

She gives a long suffering sigh. "Munson," she grumbles. "I know you have a weird history with this guy, but I swear he's the right choice."

"He's a stuck up rich boy who's never been in trouble in his life."

"He's changed."

"Doubtful," Eddie sneers.

"Look. I'll set-up a meeting. Come hang out and you'll see what I mean." Before she hangs up she adds, "Call me Maxine again and I'll end you."

They invite Harrington to Eddie's recording studio. His hopes are not high for this meeting, so he's already a little thrown when Steve Harrington walks in, all grown up. He's in a crimson sweater, tight jeans, hair grown long so that it flops around his face in tousled waves that actually look genuine, windswept and golden. Eddie's eyes instinctively trace the scatter of moles on Harrington's face and neck, a pang of something hitting deep in his gut. Fuck, this dude is beautiful.

"Harrington," he greets, sticks out his hand. Eddie barely hears the answering, "Munson," because instead of a handshake, Harrington pulls Eddie in for a hug. Muscles bunch under the sleeves of the sweater, against Eddie's chest, and he's assaulted by the scent of cedar and sunshine and Steve. Eddie's not prepared for any of this.

They make small talk, Harrington sharing about going to college, falling in love with theater, Robin Buckley who he calls his soulmate. Eddie's head rings with how wrong he was about this guy; the pretty kid he grew up alongside who seemed to have the world in his hands. Max was right, he's perfect. Except.

"Let's get down to it, Harrington," Eddie says. Can't bring himself to call him Steve yet, feels that will somehow change everything and he's not ready. "I'll admit that Mayfield had the right idea about you, but can you sing? Play guitar? You have to perform my music, dude. That's not a small ask."

Harrington smirks, asks for a guitar. He gets it settled across his lap before he speaks. "I started taking piano lessons when I was 4. Voice and guitar at 7."

Eddie belatedly recalls that Harrington's parents were the worst kind of stage-parents, pushing their cute kid to perform even as he sobbed about wanting to play soccer with his friends instead of going to auditions. He has a moment of shame that he forgets as the other man begins to play. It's one of Eddie's biggest hits, a ballad about a teenaged broken heart from a kid whose name he can't even remember.

Harrington's hair flops in a swoop over his forehead, his fingers move across the strings with ease, skill. His voice is a rasp, close mimic to Eddie's own, but not quite deep enough. Goosebumps spread across Eddie's arms, his neck, and warmth pools low in his gut.

Steve finishes the song, looks up, cheeks glowing pink, honey eyes bright. Eddie's fucking gone for this guy. He wants so badly he might choke on it.

"Good?" Steve asks.

Eddie's embarrassed suddenly. Unsure. He tugs at his hair. "Yeah," he laughs. "Good."

He reaches out to take the guitar, the one Steve's already handing to him, and their hands brush. Eddie flushes. Their eyes meet and Steve smiles. Eddie's thoughts are consumed with the desire to kiss his plush pink mouth.

"You wanna get dinner? Just you and me?" Steve asks.

"Yeah, Steve," he laughs. "I'd love to."

🎬🎸🎬🎸

Fifteen Months Later

"Former Teen Heartthrobs Make Love Connection?"

Fans of musician Eddie Munson and former child star, Steve Harrington, were in for the surprise of their lives last night as the men arrived together for the premier of Harrington's new movie, Small Town Sins, written by up-and-coming screenwriter Max Mayfield, featuring original music by Munson. While Harrington's performance and the movie itself are garnering quite a bit of positive buzz, it's being overshadowed by gossip about Harrington and Munson's budding romance. They walked the red carpet together, pausing for photos as a duo, holding hands and flirting. When asked for confirmation of their relationship, Munson answered, 'we're bros,' before winking and pulling Harrington close.

There's a TikTok video embedded below the article, showing the men being interviewed on the red carpet. Their arms are loosely around each others' waists, and when their eyes meet they catch and hang for a beat.

"So, longtime fans of both of yours are going feral online right now because of the rumors that you two used to hate each other. Is there any truth to that?" An off-camera voice asks.

The men laugh. "We've always been great friends," Eddie answers.

"Eddie thought I was stuck up," Steve giggles.

"I did not." Eddie slaps at Steve, who gives him an affectionate smile.

"Liar," Steve answers.

Eddie leans into the camera like he's telling a secret. "Harrington here was afraid of me."

"Fuck off, I was not." They wrestle around for a couple of seconds.

Steve shrugs Eddie off, straightening his suit jacket. "Okay, maybe I was a little intimidated back then, but then this morning you found a pretty rock and cried about it."

Eddie shrieks, swatting at Steve until someone in a black suit and name tag shoos them down the red carpet.

Eddie walks off first, so he misses Steve withdrawing a hand from his pocket and saying, "Still have the rock, though." He flashes the red, grey, blue striped stone at the camera.

His gaze drifts away, landing somewhere in the distance, hazel eyes soft and heart-wrenchingly fond.

real

Chrys Watches Got [x] / requests for individuals [x]

Are you a "Mike pays special attention to how much Will talks" truther or a "Will is much more talkative around Mike" truther?

Currently obsessed with the idea of a Jaskier’s-immortal, it’s-modern-times-now AU where some of Jaskier’s songs have survived to the modern day. They’re not like, widely sung or anything, but people know they exist. Most of them survived as scribbled lyrics but in one or two cases the music survived as well. Those get sung at ren faires by the REALLY dedicated people.

And like, some of them are barely even the same songs anymore- verses got added and changed and lost over the years, somebody added a The Moral of This Story Is verse to “Toss a Coin” like a century after Jaskier wrote it and to the horror of everyone involved, it stuck, the second verse of “Her Sweet Kiss” got lost to time aside from the first line, so everybody knows it’s supposed to be there but nobody knows what it was-

The academic debates surrounding these songs are furious and intense. People kinda know who Jaskier was, in the sense of “we know there was a bard, at about this time, named Jaskier. We know when he was born, he flits in and out of the historical record for close to a century, and we can attribute these seven songs to him.” But then you’ve got the people saying “these songs are autobiographical and we can work out the details of his life from them” vs. camp “he was clearly just making shit up,” you’ve got Shakespeare-style authorship debates (”these other ten songs were also his!” “this song is weird and bad so clearly he didn’t write it!” “this song is weird and bad and that’s probably because it’s the earliest song we have from him!” “Jaskier didn’t write his own music!”), you’ve got some historians who study witchers very politely asking if they can play with the songs for a minute-

So. Many. Theses. Have been written about “Her Sweet Kiss,” with subjects ranging from “how many people is this song about, actually? Two? three? four?” to “who were these people to each other” to “can we pin down specific historical figures for these people” 

Meanwhile Jaskier’s a super obscure indie musician who occasionally tweets things like “The subject of whether or not I am gay is the subject of much scholarly debate. This isn’t just invasive, it’s stupid, if you’ve heard any of my songs you know I’m bi” and has REALLY STRONG OPINIONS on what those obscure, seven-century old ballads are about.

He sings “Her Sweet Kiss” at some open mic night and everybody’s like “Oh, that’s cool, you made up a second verse” while he grumbles under his breath that he made up the first verse, too, but nobody ever gives him credit for it these days

Okay so other than Lucas, none of Steve’s friends care about sports, and even for Lucas, it’s more about actually playing

But one day one or a few of them figure that maybe it’s about time they do Steve’s thing instead of Their thing

And they watch a game on the TV and they just don’t get it. They try to figure out what the commentators are talking about but suddenly it feels like there is so much context missing, even though Steve’s already explained most of the rules - so they ask Steve

And Steve, well, by this point he’s already absorbed in the game so he isn’t thinking about if they’ll care or be bored or think he’s weird, so he just starts rambling

He starts talking about all of the history and culture and politics of the sport. He talks about how certain teams have this rivalry that originates from political issues that have made the fans of the two teams obsessed with getting one over on the other. He talks about team members trading (and they didn’t even know people could switch teams like that, weren’t they supposed to play for their hometown???). And he talks about the racist dynamics that sometimes manifest and the demonstrations that sometimes take place. 

And they realise that maybe they’ve been making a lot of assumptions about something they don’t understand. And also that Steve is a fucking nerd.

Maybe it’s with Robin, and even if she still doesn’t care, they regularly watch sports together just like they regularly watch Robin’s artsy weird films

Maybe it’s with the Dustin, or all the kids, and they don’t really make a habit of it, but they respect his interest and hang out during games sometimes

Maybe it’s Eddie, and while Steve is distractedly rambling about all the information, he’s subtly writing notes, adapting some of this drama to his campaigns, maybe even introducing a gladiatorial fighting competition as a political tool between kingdoms

Maybe it’s Max, and she isn’t nearly as interested as Steve is, but she gets into it, like, yelling at the screen because what was that player thinking and it’s fun to vent her anger into something harmless and boding with Steve

Just… his friends appreciating that sports aren’t one dimensional hobbies for mouthbreathers

all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.

Still haven’t finished Blood, Sex and Royalty yet (planning on finishing it this Thursday) but one thing I do really enjoy about it is how the actors show moments of silliness/levity or just human moments of exasperation with their characters. Obviously this production has them act with modern mannerisms but there are ways of doing this more historically in character. I’m thinking Jeremy Irons as Robert Dudley groaning and resting his head on the table during a frustrating council meeting or his facial expression as he mocks the Duke of Anjou, or in The Virgin Queen when Elizabeth balls up a piece of parchment and playfully throws it at Robert’s head which triggers lightheared parchment fight between two old friends. It’s absolutely delightful.

I feel like sometimes period dramas get too caught up in making their characters super serious and in earnest all the time, especially if the characters are well known historical figures. But they were still humans too - they would have pulled faces, rolled their eyes, shared inside jokes with their friends and have moments of awkardness or bursts of emotions. They didn’t always have the perfect one-liner ready as a response. They were not cool and collected all the time, even if they were monarchs - and especially when they were not on display. I seriously doubt Elizabeth for example walked around in her private rooms, back straight and face impassive for example. Which is why when Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth audibly sighs with relief and her shoulders slump forward after her heavy coronation mantle is taken off of her, or when she gets flustered and frustrated preparing for her first big speech to Parliament, it feels so wonderfully human.

Shows like Wolf Hall, The Tudors and even the Starz historical dramas I think sometimes lean too far into presenting themselves as “serious” historical dramas that they make their characters larger than life and forget the fact that they also were human beings.