why are my two favorite tropes "seemingly powerful and dominating guy turns out to be kind of pathetic" and "silly goofball of a man turns out to be terrifyingly powerful"

Girlboss manwhore couple she’s killing he’s fucking nobody is doing the housework

There is one particular ship dynamic that never fails to wreck me, and I’ll call it Soulmates, But Not Like That. Not in a “some higher power has decided that we are destined to be together” way, but something that is almost the opposite of that. It’s that character who has been alone for a long time, and has maybe convinced themselves that they will be alone forever, and who has a lot of barriers to intimacy with most of the people around them, for whatever the relevant narrative reasons are. And then they just happen to cross paths with this ONE FUCKING PERSON who works for them, through some very specific combination of personality and circumstance and life experience and mutually compatible damage. And there is always the shock of what are the fucking odds, and underneath everything the terror of what if this doesn’t last. what if there’s no one else. I would just go back to being alone. I don’t know if I could do that after knowing this. Because when you finally let down that wall of emotional self-sufficiency the thought of having to put it back up again is painful. And in real life I don’t at all believe that there is only One Designated Person for anyone, but in fiction I do tend to gravitate toward characters who believe themselves to be The Only One in some way, and I will always be emotionally compromised by that dawning sense of oh. You are like me.

Still smiling, he cocked his head slightly to the side. Most people, after being surprised like this, would be more afraid or angry by now, and it’d be easy to see even if they tried to hide it. But this man… He was clearly trying to match Royce’s casualness, but there was something off about it. He could call it out and possibly escalate the situation, but for now he’d rather go along with it and see what kind of move he decided to make. “Oh, I’m from everywhere really. I travel a lot.” He took a few steps into the room, leaving the now empty cup on the very edge of the nearest flat surface. “I’ve been travelling south for the past few days, until I found this place.”

He tried a friendly smile. Fairly certain that it hadn’t come out right, he leaned back in his chair a little. Put the man at ease, maybe get his hand a little further away from whatever weapon it was at. At least, he assumed that was what was going on. “Yes,” he agreed cheerfully enough. “You have, haven’t you?” This would go better if Tom or Dave were here. He knew how to come off as deadpan rather than just him when it was the three of them. Alone, there wasn’t anything to mask it. “And where exactly do you come from?” He tried, going for the well-worn radio host persona. “A particularly interesting part of the Wasteland?”

“Oh, those.” He dismissed it with a small wave of his hand. “I’ve seen way worse. It wasn’t too difficult to get around most of it with a bit of thinking, so I thought maybe it was more supposed to be protection against wild animals and that kinda stuff?” He realised that didn’t sound very plausible, but if you said things in a casual enough tone people would often not challenge them at all.

Royce found the man’s tone quite amusing, and was glad that he was apparently willing to talk to him. If he decided to attack him, he was confident he could take the man down, but right now he’d much rather have a bit of conversation. This could be fun. “Anyway, what’s important it’s that I’m here, right? I’ve walked around a bit, I’ve had some of your tea; We’re practically friends already!” He gave him a big, charming smile.    

“And the bear traps, tripwires, and various. Other… Things?” He asked, keeping his tone in the realms of polite interest. “I mean, they are a bit of an unsubtle statement.” One that he wished people would heed. Outsiders were probably very nice, in their own horrifying way, but that didn’t mean that he ever wanted to get close to one.

Also, the man appeared to be drinking his tea. Some small remnant of English pride fluttered in horror at the idea of not asking before drinking somebody else’s tea. Savages, the lot of them.

Royce tried to hide a small chuckle by raising the cup of tea to his lips, taking a sip. People’s reactions when caught by surprise were always quite fun, and this had really been a good one.

He shrugged casually when he heard the man’s question, and leaned partially into the doorframe, one of his shoulders resting against it. For a few seconds, he just looked at the man without giving him much of a reaction, apart from his permanent slight smile, before answering. “How does anyone get in anywhere? I found a door, I used it.”

Of course, in practice, it had been a bit more complex than that. But it wasn’t totally untrue either.

His entire body jerked in shock and David let out a yelp, twisting around in his chair. The headphones fell off at the sudden motion, falling forward, and he grabbed for them hastily before they managed to hit the hard steel flooring. He looked up, heart going a little too quickly for comfort, and stared up at the man stood unaccountably in his- in the bunker. Their bunker.

“How on Earth did you get in here?” He demanded, drawing himself up a little. Maybe it was time to try and salvage a little dignity, since he wasn’t anywhere near his pistol and Tom was off somewhere in the depths of the bunker with Dave. Words it was, then.

Royce had not seen another person for days. And this was not good at all.

Ok, yes, that had sort of been the plan at first, when he had jumped into that particular world at that particular point of its timeline. He had been looking for somewhere desolate and empty to get away from everything and everyone, and hadn’t looked into any other details very closely. Otherwise he would have never stayed at a place like this for long – the post-apocalypse world was just what happened after all the actually fun bits, as far as he was concerned.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, though, after all the unpleasantness back in Yorith. Being alone had seemed so appealing. But he soon remembered solitude was just so boring. And being bored was not good for Royce, not at all. Made him reckless and unpredictable. Well, even more reckless and unpredictable than what was usually standard for him. So when he found the bunker, he didn’t hesitate and quickly found a way to get inside.

He had been in some abandoned buildings in the past few days (he had found the cowboy hat he was currently wearing in one of them. It kept the harsh sun out of his eyes and, in his opinion, went very well with his brown leather jacket), and was expecting this bunker to be more of the same, but it quickly became obvious that was not the case. Royce beamed. It seemed like people lived here, or had been doing so very recently, and that was great news.

He started walking around the place, which appered to be quite a lot bigger than he had thought at first. He went through a few rooms, found a kitchen and made himself a cup of tea before continuing the exploration while he drank from it. Soon he picked up on some noises and went down a corridor to open a door, and finally found someone! It looked like it was a man, human (but hey, you never really knew, right?), and… Well, he was sitting with his back to Royce right now, so he couldn’t say much more about him. He seemed to be using some kind of radio equipment, concentrating a lot on this task and wearing big headphones, so he hadn’t even noticed Royce yet. He smiled to himself, one hand still holding the cup of tea, the other one casually going to one of the knives at his hip.

“Hey there, friend.” He said finally, quite loudly, using his own version of Jackie’s American accent.

David liked analogue, sometimes. Binary was good for almost everything, blatantly superior in its clean simplicity. Discrete, separate. None of the messy blurred edges. He liked simple things, liked his life simple. Radio, however, was very, very simple. Older than him. And they’d perfected it, even so: they had all the right equipment, the best filters. So if he tuned by hand, twisting the dials ever so slowly to find a frequency where something was happening… Now, that wasn’t quite so complex, was it? Not at all messy.

He could let the computer do it for him, of course. Set it to search for voice or music. But… The act of looking, the careful listening in for signs of life made it a little more real, somehow. One of those stupid, funny quirks of the brain. And… There. A party of scouts, more advanced than the usual set of scavengers, phoning home to share what they’d discovered. David leaned in as if the movement would help him hear better, even as he felt for the volume dial.

Evil [I]

“She’s evil.” They said, and Royce burst into laughter, deep and unexpected. 

“Evil?” He said, when he finally caught his breath, and his grin turned into something sharp and wild. “Maybe so. And what of it?” 

If she was Evil because of who she inherently was, or for the things she had done, or both, then he was without a doubt a thousand times worse.

But these people, of course, didn’t realize that. They looked at Royce with his jokes and smiles and then at his companion, pure distilled hostility wrapped in black leather, and feared and hated her almost as much as they were charmed by him. 

Which was useful in its own way, of course, but still made him resent them deeply. He didn’t understand why they didn’t see what he saw, how fantastic she really was. Out of the two of them, he was the one they ultimately had the most to fear from.

“We’ll be gone from this place soon enough, don’t concern yourselves with such judgment. It’s a waste of time.” 

They backed away, spooked by the change in his expression, the discrepancy between this strange intensity and his easy going attitude from before. 

He turned around and started walking away. He had to find Jackie, tell her about this. If the people of the town already thought she was Evil, and he had almost certainly just put himself in the same position in their eyes, it was just a matter of time until the town got together, started talking, had some silly idea about attacking them and got themselves killed in the process. That was always pretty annoying, and took more time than he’d want to spend right now. They already had quite a packed schedule of murders to keep, after all.

“I’m a model roommate, I assure you. I won’t give you any trouble.” He said with a half smile, streching his arms, with that lighthearted ambiguous tone he had sometimes and always left people wondering if he was joking or not. “And well, I guess we’ll just have to try and keep the party from getting too loud, huh?”

While they walked towards the room, Roy thought if they might have to check in at reception, but almost at the same time decided not to bother with it since Jackie had probably bribed someone to allow them to have the rooms without it going on any records. Or threatened someone, perhaps, depending on how she was feeling that day. He knew which one he’d had his bet on.

He let Cutter open the door before dashing inside. Going straight for it, Royce laughed as he let himself fall on the left side of the bed, legs dangling from it. He didn’t take a single moment to look around the room or check his surroundings. He had been to enough motel rooms to be completely uninterested in the entire concept, they all seemed to be the same. Though Jackie had been around for a while now, and saved this one for him, so she’d probably taken some additional measures like installing a subtle trap to activate if the door was forced open, which was the sort of thing she always thought to prepare for, just in case, and Royce never worried about until something did happen.

“Ah, yes. Much better than sleeping in a car.” He said closing his eyes, approving of the mattress, which didn’t feel as cheap as one could have expected. Indeed, as motels rooms went, this one was quite nice and clean, decorated in warm colours, with the bed right in front of you as you entered, the door to the bathroom to your left and to your right, a small sitting area with a two person couch and a matching armchair making an L shape, with a coffee table completing the set. “We’ll be comfy here, I think.”

A match made in Hell [Cutter]

Nick clambered out of the car, bidding the air conditioned coolness farewell. “You may well be right,” he replied, “and I’ve got a lot of time, at least. More than I want.” The entirety of history, really. Maybe he should just nip off to one of the less deadly eras for a few years to think things through? Then again, he kept nearly getting eaten by things every time he stuck his head out of his own period. “Or maybe not enough. I’m still working on that one.”

He was still for a moment before he shook his head, dispersing the rather gloomy thought and smiling instead. “Sharing it is,” he declared, catching the key in one hand. The sign was indeed glowing neon red. “Here’s hoping they don’t just send us on our ear if we’re pissing off the other guests.”

It actually looked like a decent enough place. Maybe he’d watched too many cop shows, but he’d always thought motels were sort of seedy places, the kind you went to if you were down on your luck. 

“Mmm well I think most people can get used to pretty much anything, eventually. It only takes time.” Often it could be more time than most people actually had, yeah, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Royce turned off the engine of the car and unlocked the door, dropping the keys into his pocket and getting the one that Jackie had given him, looking at the keychain while he got out of the car to check for the number of the room. 

“Yeah, looks pretty crowded. There must be an event or something happening soon, we should ask around. Oh, and we’ve got room number twelve.” He threw the key to Cutter with a quick graceful movement, barely looking at him. “And hey, would you look at that, they’ve got the ‘No Vacancies’ sign light up.” Royce smiled, looking up to it. “I guess there really weren’t any free rooms, huh?” His smile turned into a grin. “What a shame.”

A match made in Hell [Cutter]

Cutter turned to look out of the window, thinking Royce’s words over. He couldn’t really imagine getting used to that kind of life. The one he had was strange enough, and every so often it still hit him like a sledgehammer. Every time he went through an anomaly, there was a sense of complete and utter… well, awe, yes. Terror too, a little. Enough to shake the apathy out of him and set things going again; there was nothing like a bit of healthy fear of the unknown to get you straightened out.

“Not sure how that could ever be everyday,” he said aloud. “Not for me, anyway.”

Time to quit thinking so hard, probably. A chance to relax and stop preoccupying himself with the whole world of questions that opened up every time he gave Royce and Jackie any amount of thought would do him good. Loosen him up a little, let him have a little fun. He smiled, trying it out for a moment before deciding it fit the way he felt for now.

He straightened, rolled his shoulders. “Busy, isn’t it?” He asked, looking around at the crowded space. “They aren’t going to have many rooms, I suppose.” Ah, well. He didn’t mind sharing.

Vest porn. ((Shrine of Hollywood))

*soft whimpering* 

I love like this because I don’t know of other ways to love. Yes, I know! It’s maniacal, suicidal, egotistical, but, that’s just how I am; That’s just me being me.

Kushtrim Thaqi (via kushtrimthaqi)

AF vandevorst spring summer 1999

“He’s got that same… charming boyish tumbling tumbleweed quality *sighs* it’s very seductive, i know’

damn if that’s not a perfect description of royce lmao

one day i will leave