Simon Riley who gets your initials tattooed over his heart, but not in the conventional way.
The idea of getting your full name spooks him, cause what if he gets captured and some enemy agent sees? It's just too much of a risk for him. But initials are safer. Twice as much if they're hidden behind roman numerals.
So he reveals his new ink one day, during a quiet moment a few weeks after he gets it once it's healed up. He explains what the roman numerals are (they correspond to letters of the alphabet: A would be I, B is II, and so on) and what they mean, and you spend so long marveling at Simon's dedication that it takes you a minute to notice something... strange.
"There's no number for my last name."
He takes your hand, puts it over the numbers, and puts his forehead on yours.
"That's cause I'm hopin' you'll let me put the number 18 there, love."
the visual inspiration for this was a combination of Frederic William Burton's Meeting on the Turret Stairs and also Bernardo Cavallino's The vision of St. Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin
this was supposed to be just a one off illustration to get the thoughts out of my system, but then I started thinking about medieval politics and warfare and plagues and a castle and home as both a place of refuge, a prison, and a tomb, so perhaps they will end up as ex voto characters as well.
you may say, hey! that rosary looks like it has too many beads! it's a fifteen decade rosary, probably. dominicans are really into marian devotions. it works out.
also. spiral style stair cases. oh boy. it was that unexpectedly more difficult than I originally thought it would be to draw. the more I think about it, the less I understand them, even though I had a million photos of the stairs in front of me while I was drawing it.
⭐ I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!
⭐ and other places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app
Any time Eddie reaches for Steve's hair, Steve stops him. Whether it's when they're kissing and Eddie wants to bury his hands in it, or something more casual, like when Steve is sitting in front of Eddie while they watch a movie and Eddie idly tries to play with it
The moment Eddie's hands start to stray backwards from Steve's face, or upwards from his shoulders, Steve stops him. He's actually grabbed Eddie's hand midair once
Everyone assumes it's because Steve's hair is Off Limits
It's actually because Eddie keeps forgetting he's wearing his dumbass chunky rings and they once got so tangled in Steve's hair that Eddie had had to slip his fingers out of them before he could actually work them free, and now Eddie isn't allowed to touch Steve's head unless he takes the rings off first
it's fascinating that those biphobes compare women liking astarion to women liking legolas and they mention a popular post that says "I never understood why so many straight women are into legolas. what do you think he is going to do? top you?" they bring this post up like some sort of proof "haha. so right. so true."
EXCEPT the notes on that popular post are filled with THOUSANDS of women commenting "no. I am gonna top him" and "bold of you to assume women can't top" and a lot of them are bisexual women commenting "I am bi and I only like men who look like a girl lol" honestly relatable Lmao
they act like that shitpost is pointing out some truth about how those women are silly. but the replies on that post show the stupidity of that assumption. people really don't get that feminine looking women don't just want to be rough handled by some masculine dude. and people have varied tastes and sexual desires. there is so much misogyny all tangled up in the biphobia. but it's subtle in a way that they don't notice their views on these matters are flawed because even when we point out what's wrong with these gender essentialist stereotypes, they ignore it and treat it as a joke "haha you all act like we wanted to behead bisexuals"