#i know lots of similar au ideas exist but this specific ine has been eating my brain

[ardentwench]

Seriously can’t stop imagining Eddie getting a job as a radio show host personality or something where he can use a pseudonym and he can work without harassment since he’s still recognized as a murder suspect even if he was cleared, and that sort of work lasts him through the 90’s.

Then in the 00’s he’d still have some sort of part time behind the scenes work in the radio industry while transitioning to online focus and podcasts for a hobby. Maybe even being one of the first people to post on youtube for fun when it first launched before it became monetized, not a youtuber eddie au exactly where it’s his main thing but more like he has a space there too- or rather even maybe Eddie and the party had a collective channel (vlogbrothers style) where they uploaded vlog style dialogue videos back and forth taking turns sharing random thoughts and life updates to keep in contact with each others busy lives in a more personal way than over the phone. But this personal channel didn’t become popular or discovered until after Eddie created an online presence and did a face reveal. He’d probably try out live streaming as that got more popular too.

But mainly Eddie with podcasts, quite a few actually, where he does things like on one he plays and discusses music, one where he plays video games, and of course one that is him and the party’s dnd adventures since they more often than not have to play through virtual meet ups anyway, and he’d have one that’s just a general chat where he invites random guests/friends to talk about nothing and everything and get into debates and discuss different geeky topics. He has such seemingly random connections to the most interesting people who have made decent names for themselves (the party all grown up of course) and perhaps even inspired a few of them to make little side podcast series with him based on their niche interests. Steve doesn’t host anything himself but he is a bit of a serial guest star that pops up randomly everywhere in anything connected to Eddie (or the rest of the party.)

Half his popularity comes from being authentic and not a typical younger influencer, he’s just a guy that’s funny who likes to talk and likes sharing his hobbies and passions. Because he doesn’t focus on building his brand or worry about his internet popularity, just does his own thing for his own enjoyment, making money from it is a happy bonus but not his priority.

And Omg when he does a face reveal finally and he’s a middle aged good looking guy the fans go crazy and his popularity does grow, but it’s nothing compared to when the biggest reoccurring guest he has on named Steve finally does a face reveal too. Eddie always lays on the flirting heavy with Steve but Eddie is usually rather secretive and vague about his actual personal life, never fully addressing those topics but also not exactly hiding anything either, half the fan intrigue are little things about him/his past/his relationships/shared inside jokes among his oldest friends that with little to no context sound mysterious and wild. People eventually figure out by some casual comments that they must live together, have known each other since high school, must be best friends. So no one knows for the longest time him and Steve are actually married but of course they ship them and argue about if they’re reading too into things and if Eddie is joking when he makes certain insinuations of their relationship.

Maybe it’s not until he’s like on a side podcast he occasionally does with Robin, and like Nancy, that the topic of modern fandom and the application of queer baiting in media is brought up that Eddie laughs and shares that he, as an openly queer man, has been accused of queer baiting when it comes to him and Steve which is a ridiculous argument for multiple reasons, not least being because he a real life queer man interacting with his own husband ffs. It’s revealed quickly and succinctly in the midst of a larger spiel and being one of the less popular shows it gets overlooked for a good month before an avid fan catches the casual revelation and highlights it.

#steddie #i know lots of similar au ideas exist but this specific ine has been eating my brain #radio personality eddie #podcaster eddie

[urmomsstuntdouble]

some skater au yao + hk ramblings bc @mysticalmusicwhispers wanted to know more about them in the au

- he's 56 years old and has owned his casino for 30 years. He first got into the business of casino ownership because he thought it'd be a good source of passive income, but he didn't realize how much a job owning a casino would actually be and took over as the head executive manager person after about a year of struggling to manage another job plus the casino. He actually likes it more than he thought he would, because while it's a super stressful job and requires him to coordinate a lot of moving parts basically all the time, it does allow him to be in complete control of something, which he likes.

-yao is 56 because i think 5 and 6 look good next to each other

-hong kong is a skateboarder and local insufferable goose, and has a weird not quite father-daughter relationship with yao. she was born in hong kong and adopted by arthur, who’s doing the single dad thing. they lived in london until she was seven, and moved around a bit before settling in las vegas when leona was ten. she has come to realize that this was kind of stupid, but she can’t really do anything about it now. 

-yao and arthur aren’t really friends, but they do know each other from youth and sometimes hang out still

-that’s not actually how yao and leona met though. she and some friends (the gen z squad, which includes taiwan, seychelles, iceland, and macau) were being rascally middle schoolers and trying to see if they could trick anyone into letting them into a club. this was entirely based on macau having been asked one time by one of those people who stands on the street corner registering people to vote if he’d been registered yet. he had not, seeing as he was probably like 12 at the time, but it gave them the foolish confidence they needed to try to sneak into an adult establishment

-yao happened to be there that day when the kids were trying to get in, and he was like okay kids, what are you trying to do rn and they were like wym we’re clearly adults and he was like i know for a fact that you’re not, please leave or i’ll call the cops and that scared them right off

-they were also introduced later by arthur, and leona did get into a bit of trouble for trying to sneak into the casino. it was a whole thing

-leona is one of the youngest skaters in the au. she and seychelles are the only minors that hang about the skate park, and the adults there aren’t fully aware of their ages, so it’s assumed that they’re of a similar age range to everybody else. most of the other skaters are within like. 25-35 age range, and most of them assume that sey and hk are college kids or something, and they don’t correct that misunderstanding. they do tag along on some adult expeditions at times, although that’s mostly just going out into the desert to smoke. occasional gambling though

-leona and yao have run into each other a fair few times since they first met. she likes to hang out in the strip because it makes her feel like she’s an adult and independent, but she can’t hang out by the super famous casinos or hotels, because it’s easier to get into more trouble there, so she mostly hangs out in the moderately-well-to-do area, which is where yao’s casino is located. they also see each other decently often as a result of yao’s not quite friendship with arthur, as they do like to hang out from time to time but are both shut ins. yao owning the casino is actually a great way for them to hang out, because it’s sort of like his second home and it feels casual to him while also being the sort of place where you can go to casually get shitfaced, which is right up arthur’s alley. 

-due to yao and arthur’s whatever they have going on, leona has been able to talk to him a few times. she mostly thinks he’s just another old fart who talks too much about the economy (cursed idea but imagine if yao was one of those bitcoin people) but also has a casino, so that’s mildly cool. she does find herself slightly interested in the fact that he is chinese, because she feels a bit disconnected from that part of herself as a result of having been raised and grown up in the west. 

-leona’s casino hanging-out-at really gets started when she’s about 14. she gets upset because she’s been outed at school (she’s bi). though it’s not really a big deal if arthur finds out, seeing as he’s also bi, it felt like a really big deal for her and something she wasn’t ready for. she decides to run away, but doesn’t really know where to go, cause she doesn’t want to see anyone from school and doesn’t know where any of the adult skaters live, so she winds up at the casino. yao is ready to tell her to fuck off until he sees that she’s upset and his passive aggression towards her gets more passive and less aggressive

-he winds up taking her out to eat, and he tries to get her to talk about what happened but she refuses to engage. yao tries to give her a bunch of life advice instead, and she also refuses to engage (but still pays attention because he has a way of talking that makes him seem like everything he’s saying is some sort of law of the universe). 

-there  exists a bit of a rift between arthur and leona, because he’s really not that great of a dad. he has some other kids, but she’s the only one currently living with him. some are in college, some are adults who’ve moved away, but they rarely ever come home for the holidays or anything like that, and most of them have a strained relationship with him. leona is no exception, and she’s sort of like. god i can’t wait to move out. it makes her feel like she has a bit more say in her own life to hang out at the casino, which yao starts letting her do after he gets more analytical of her relationship with arthur. he feels like she needs a space to be herself, and also that he can provide that for her.

-speaking of, yao really likes to analyze people. that’s not specific to this au, i just think that he can sometimes get really analytical and treat other people like they’re characters in a book? like they’re a puzzle for him to figure out, and he sort of treats leona like that. she isn’t pleased with this at all, but that’s the price of being a minor who wants to hang out in casinos, so. 

-yao is pretty passive regarding leona and arthur’s relationship. he has put himself in the position that if they’re mad at each other, he might have to hear about it from both of them. or, worst case scenario- mediate. and he doesn’t really want to do that (he doesn’t really want to be invested in any of this, but damn it hong kong, you were so entertaining to examine) so he just sort of stands on the sidelines sipping a smoothie while they argue. 

-yao does however come to consider himself a better father figure towards hong kong than arthur. he never tells anyone about this, but he feels like, with all his unsolicited life advice, that he’s doing a good job. leona doesn’t really care, and thinks she could do without it, but he will not stop, so. he also helped her study for the sat, which was nice. 

-the idea of fatherhood is a bit tricky with these three though, because leona doesn’t really feel like she has a dad. she knows she has her biological father, and she has her adopted father, but she doesn’t know who her biological father is and we all know that arthur is bad at being a dad. she doesn’t know if she even wants a dad anymore tbh. one time she gets in an argument with yao and she tells him he’s not her real dad, and he just says, totally calm. you don’t have a dad. and that’s pretty shattering to her 

-even so, leona comes to abuse her casino-going privileges. yao doesn’t like this At All, and has threatened to call the police on her multiple times, but leona also threatens to tell arthur what he’s letting her do, so they keep it to this mutual agreement to not do anything about it. because of that, she sometimes brings in more kids, specifically the gen z squad and the ily trio. this makes her quite popular at school, which gets to her head sometimes

#that's all for this post i think #this mightve gotten too angsty #hk isnt a ball of angst she's actually quite charismatic and would probably be a bard in dnd #but ye #hetalia #hws #hws hong kong #hws china #nyo hong kong #skater girls au #ceros posting