some canon-verse trans Hob for the lovely @five-and-dimes who recently got top surgery! 🥳🥰 congratulations, I'm truly so happy for you, my friend. please accept this humble offering
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“So, it actually started on a dare,” Hob says, on the day he tells Dream the story of him. Or of this part of him, anyway.
Normally, Hob gets a bit guarded the first time he tells someone he’s trans. It’s hard to predict with absolute certainty how people will react, especially ones he’s just become romantically involved with. He’s had it go poorly, to say the least, in the past.
He doesn’t feel that way with Dream. It’s not because there’s so much trust between them—they’re still new, after all. No, it’s something about Dream himself. For all his prickly and standoffish nature, being close to him feels like sinking into a warm lake, into a dark sleep where secrets and hidden wishes float up like glowing reeds to the surface. Deep, personal feelings feel safe with Dream; he cradles them in his hands and soothes them. Or that’s how it feels, when Hob is touching him.
Personification of dreams, indeed.
“A dare?” Dream echoes.
“Sort of," Hob says. "Got frustrated with people saying women should or shouldn’t do this or that or the other thing, so I decided if they felt so strongly about it I’d just be a man. Moved somewhere no one knew me, dressed differently, got stronger, practiced the sword—and that was that. No one seemed to care much, once you were at war. So long as you could swing a sword and not get yourself killed.”
“A choice, then,” Dream says. He’s listening very intently, hands folded on his knees, untouched tea on the coffee table before him.
“At first. Was only after I’d been living that way for a few decades—before and after we met—that I realized while there might be a handful of women out there living as men for the freedom of it, that they didn’t all like it. Given the choice they’d rather just be women in a more equal world. You know?”
Dream hums in understanding.
“But I didn’t want to go back,” Hob continues. “I felt like... who I'd become was the truth of me all along.”
“Identity, while not wholly immutable, is resilient against adversity and circumstance,” says Dream. “You found what your heart wanted you to be, if in a circuitous manner.”
“You seem very unbothered by it,” Hob observes, sipping his tea.
Dream frowns. “Why would I be bothered by it?”
“Dunno.” Apparently he can’t fully shake that this’ll put a wedge in us feeling. “People sometimes are. Feel deceived, or something like that. So they say.”
“If they are deceived, it is by their own assumptions,” Dream says, with disdain. “You should be as you dream yourself, Hob. No more nor less. Put aside these petty physical trappings.”
“I do actually have to live in these ‘physical trappings’ even if you don’t, you silly thing.” He can’t help laughing. “Besides, I rather like being some kind of living creature in the world, rather than what? A ghost? Best I can do is make this body as close to how it should be as possible.”
Hob’s come to like his body, for the most part, in the form that he’s made it. He didn’t always. But he needs a body of some kind to be alive, and he likes being alive. So what he couldn’t change, he made peace with.
Besides, they have hormone treatments nowadays. Brilliant stuff. Makes it so much better.
“Anyway, now you know. I wanted you to. Since we’re together.” It’s still a marvel. Together.
“Thank you,” says Dream, with evident sincerity. “It is a privilege to be gifted your secrets.”
“Not really a secret, but I get what you mean.” He takes Dream’s hand, just to touch him, and admits, “Telling it to you is like… I don’t know. Feels like when I was younger and first admitted out loud, ‘I’m a man. I want to stay like this.’”
It hasn’t been a proper secret in a very long time. But giving it to Dream is like the freedom of releasing a held breath, even so.
“I am the harbor and cradle of dreams,” Dream says in reply. He traces his fingers over Hob’s. Does Dream’s strange form just spring from the ether? Hob wonders. Or does he have to choose it? The way Hob chose his? “Dreams of being and becoming… these are most precious for they grow from tough soil. I can only protect them, I cannot create them. You must do that. And I expect that were I to find you in the Dreaming, there would be a fantastic garden there, indeed.”
Dream himself is the most fantastical thing. “Well, darling, just know your work is appreciated.”
Dream’s lips tip up in a tiny smile. When he meets Hob’s gaze again, his eyes have gone dark and starry. He folds Hob into a hug, and—
oh, it’s like being hugged by the universe itself.
Hob feels the light breeze of a warm dark night, when he’d lain by the dying fire in a war camp in the French countryside, and looked up at a million stars and first whispered to himself what if this is really who I am? Dream is that breeze and those stars. The dying embers that had lit him as he’d run his hands over his body and felt it differently than he ever had before, and been terrified because what would it mean?—but also thrilled and alive. Dream is the night wrapping around him in that moment, the night that was listening to his dreams no matter how quietly he admitted them, Dream is that and more and the voice in his heart telling him it would be okay.
A younger, more uncertain Hob would have needed this. Hob now is older, and he already knows who he is and what he wants, but he falls into Dream’s embrace all the same. A tear slips from his eye, and Dream kisses his cheek, wiping the tear away with his tongue before leaning their heads together.
“I could craft you any body you wanted in the Dreaming,” he says lowly. “However I think the one you have made with your own hands is more remarkable.”
Oh, God, he’s going to tear up again. “Dream, you are the most beautiful, wonderful thing.”
Dream hums in pleasure at the words, and lets Hob hold him close, lets him cradle his head to his chest, a dream kept close to his heart. One that he knew as soon as he saw it walk into the White Horse. Sooner even than he truly knew himself.
Then Dream looks up at him with a hopeful expression. “With these truths revealed, are we able to be intimate?”
Hob laughs so hard he has to tip his head back against the couch. “Wow. One track mind with you, isn’t it? I spill my heart and that’s what I get?”
Dream grumbles, tucking his face in against Hob’s neck to press his lips to Hob’s throat. “I find myself impatient of late.”
“Knew all along you were only with me for my body.” He’s grinning, though. Can’t stop.
“Well. Considering it is such a lovely one.” He plucks at Hob’s shirt buttons. Lecherous little nightmare.
It feels fucking good, though, to be desired.
“C’mere, then,” he says, and drags Dream into his lap.
Dream settles there with a purr, starts playing with Hob’s hair, but says, “I would not truly derail this moment, nor distract from your feelings if you do not wish it.”
“Oh, I wish it. You’ve no idea how much I want you right now. You’re like a prize.” He cradles Dream’s beloved face between his hands. “Stick around for long enough and you’ll get the most incredible Dream at the end of it.”
“Or at the beginning,” Dream says, and Hob’s heart swells so much to hear him voice that that he has to kiss him.
When he does, Dream makes a low, pleased sound, settling deeper in his lap. Yes, this moment, this life, is certainly the prize for all of those years hanging onto those dreams:
the dream of his lover
and the one of himself.
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I've got Vodial on the brain today, so we're starting with some worldbuilding stuff for it
First thing: because this is a fanfic set in a video game, based off several servers where the characters acknowledge respawn, there is respawn. This is a part of the universe, it's a part of daily life, no biggie
(for most people. sometimes. it can become a biggie. this is a plot point so we won't go too much into it here, but people vary so)
But! This means there's an entire set of things to explore about respawn. We as players see the lil' menu screen that pops up after death, but how does it work for someone living in that world? What does it feel like? Does it feel different between servers/worlds? What makes it feel different? What happens when you're playing on a different difficulty, does that change anything about it?
This got touched on super briefly in Blink of an Eye, which is set in the same world as Voidal, where there's a decent amount of narration about feeling the universe's love while respawning, and gathering code, and stuff like that. We can pretty reasonably establish this as the baseline expected way for respawn to go, because we gotta pick a baseline to identify what qualifies as unusual.
One of the big things with respawn, especially, is most of the time it heals the injury that finished you off--and generally all the ones before that, too--because that's how video games typically work and this is set in the world of a video game.
But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes things don't heal fully. Sometimes there's a scar. And while unusual, the characters in the story are functionally immortal as long as they want to continue living, so most people have met at least one or two who this has happened to (if it hasn't happened to them).
One of the really big things is that the universe loves you (end poem my beloved) and so working that into respawns is incredibly important from a storytelling perspective, even if the character isn't sure of why yet. And this makes it super extra important when that doesn't happen, because it's a sign something else is wrong. Something else is significantly wrong.
There's a ton of different ways I could keep talking about this, and I can and will go for actual hours, but for the sake of not dumping everything in one post I'm gonna end this one here
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Monstrous Devotion (It Will Devour You Whole)
Another piece for @m1d-45. It was meant to be short but as you can tell, got out of hand.
Desperation
You remember it well
How it sparked your blood
And got it to run
How it tasted of bitter and tang
Much like the sting of blood
You remember how it kept you alive
Made your nerves so sensitive
It prickled with every breeze
Every slight disturbance
How it kept your sleep light
And your dreams even lighter
Even now as you watch
The archons who adorn your body
With the most precious of gems
And the rarest of treasures
They who once tried to shed your blood
To water their blade
You see the warriors of each nation
Who tried to rend your soul from your body
Attend your every need
Degrading themselves as objects
As lesser than human
To try and exalt you higher
You feel more than you hear
As you watch once beloved characters
Stain themselves with sin
Desperation of their own
Rising to the surface
Their desperation is monstrous
Predator to prey
Your own desperation has not waned
It has only grown
Writhing under your skin
Fueled by fine jewelry
Silken clothes
And bloodstained manic smiles
Your forgiveness is not sincere
It is learned
Through a lifetime of pain
Of a death so vivid
You're desperate to stay alive
You are willing to do anything
But what once kept you safe
Will now be the one to deal a fatal blow
You already know this
Alarm bells ringing
With every minute move
But it's far too late
You're stuck in puppet motions
That are to never cease
Until the life drains from your eyes
Desperation made you learn to survive
And now that very same lesson shall be the one to end you
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it's nice that we're getting anything i guess, but, i'm gonna be what may come off as a little petty and whiny here; it'd be cool if either iteration of the gen 9 anime so far was actually about gen 9's characters instead of using them as cameos to promote original stories we have no investment in yet
it's like, i dunno, like the bait and switch with sonic appearing in wreck it ralph ads, except if wreck it ralph existing meant there would never be a sonic movie, and if you were invested in those characters and recognized they weren't generic platformer mascots, sucks for you, nobody cares
maybe they're just giving the DLC space to do its thing with them first (if they do anything at all...) but idk, i was cautiously optimistic about nemona in horizons, only for her to be a character of the day that the episode wasn't about, and pretty excited by "gen 9 prequel anime" only to find out it's going to be like, four short stories about OCs who have quick brushes with them. these are like the lacroix hint of what an anime about the game could've been like and you're left to imagine the rest yourself
i shouldn't be that surprised if the gen 8 anime reduced hero of galar hop to a character of the day with a level 5 wooloo in order to let the galaxy revolve around ash battling his brother because epic charizards, but man. what if it wasn't like that that now that ash is gone.
we haven't seen penny and team star at all because they're the hardest to talk about without bringing up the trauma of school bullying and the fear of being yourself at school when you're way too young to be dealing with all that drama responsibly. she's still learning to love and forgive herself and feel wanted.
arven's story is about, like, being a latchkey kid to a self-absorbed parent, being unsure how to feel about repairing the relationship or how seriously to take them saying they love him, and struggling to make friends due to misdirected resentment toward people he's jealous of for having apparently normal families and the stubborn self-reliance he was forced into. he's still trying to process things, find himself, and let people in.
nemona is supposed to have been a directionless lonely and depressed kid who hated being called gifted when everything was hard for her, until she met the player character and gained a peer who understood and appreciated she was a little different and she didn't have to mask her true self to have friends anymore. she's happy for now, but may still be under a little too much pressure to be perfect at the expense of her own personality, and probably won't deal well with being abandoned.
as much as they resonate with adults and are a little darker than usual pokemon fare, they're also smaller scale and realer. they are all stories that are explicitly about and meant to be relatable to kids going to school! y'know, your audience! you don't need to paint over them with 3-4 new characters and new stories every time like there was nothing there, or something shameful you need to sanitize and cover up! you can just use the game the way it is!
this got a little more heated than i intended, i just feel a little ridiculous waiting anxiously for loose scraps of a sign that this story isn't over and in the trash already and nemona's life-changing attachment to the player character isn't going to go totally ignored, as we are bombarded with what is supposed to be followup material that almost all seems eager to talk about literally anything else like they think the main story was a mistake they need to run away from
now, i'm not one to complain about original stories being told, but this was already a story that had room to grow. imagine a world where the gen 9 anime was actually about nemona, arven, penny, and the friend who brought them together. or what their lives were like before that friend came along. every episode. that would get me to watch the anime again and whatever movie came out for it. ask yourself why we don't have that, or even the traditional, like, 1-2 characters tagging along with the MCs per region thing that would leave us knowing them better than we know some irl friends
how was starting over with 100% original characters and new lore that might conflict hard with the upcoming DLC the safer bet? why is a 44 minute miniseries specifically for fans of the game making up OCs for them to get invested in and scrambling to tell their stories as quickly as possible before throwing them in the trash instead of being about the damn game?
sigh. i shouldn't get invested in a series that's about selling monster plushies just because it had one story that stuck with me
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Just read a perfectly fine fanfiction that took place in Germany but something that stood out to me was a chapter where the characters walk across a field and is approached by the farmer yelling at them to get off his land.
I’ve come across this plot point a few times and I feel like it’s worth telling writers that most of Europe has some version of Right To Roam. The laws aren’t the same in every country but generally you’re allowed to walk and rest on private property like fields and forests so long as you don’t destroy crops or leave trash, but not gardens or fenced in areas. Depending on the country you also have the right to pick mushrooms, berries, nuts and other edible things in forests but without chopping trees down or breaking branches. The owner of the land might put up a sign asking you to follow certain guidelines like no horses or keeping your dog on a leash but but there’s no real repercussions to not following the rules besides the owner eventually fencing the area off so people can’t enjoy it anymore.
I’ve personally walked around on a field while the farmer was harvesting potatoes with his big ass machine and collected the leftovers while my dog was trotting calmly besides me and he looked straight at me and didn’t care one bit because Denmark also has an old tradition of letting people collect what’s left as a form of charity (for my fellow Danes, that’s what “rev vi marken let, det er gammel ret, fuglen og den fattige skal også være mæt” means in the song Marken Er Mejet) This is just a tradition and not a law however so it depends on the farmer.
The very north of Europe like Norway and Sweden even give people the right to put up tents and camp on other people’s private land (except gardens and such). Again, the laws vary from country to country but as a rule of thumb you have more right to roam the further north you go and less the further south but if you want to write in a specific country look up the laws there.
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