#leonstamatis

blink hello!! let me try and sort out my favorites, with the caveat that i read half of these two years ago and my memory is pretty wobbly.

1. absolute favorite: book lovers! the first time i read it i cried. nora is absolutely my favorite henry protagonist, and her relationship with libby makes the book for me as much as her absolutely delightful romance with charlie does. i love a book where i can pretty unconditionally believe that the leads will make it out alright after the ending. the only one of her books i have a physical copy of – it's in pride of place on my shelf

2. beach read. the 'grumpy/sunshine' trope works for me here in a way it doesn't in so many other romances, because both of the leads have a lot of depth beyond that! which should be bare minimum for writing that trope, but. you know. i also really love the structure of their arrangement in the book, it makes for a really fun road for their romance to go down. + the post-canon story on henry's website makes me shrimp

3. funny story. i love these two chucklefucks!! love a roommates story, i love mess. even though this JUST came out last year i also need to give it a reread, but i remember being super fond of both miles and daphne when i read it the first time. i'm like 90% sure this is the one that has my second-favorite horny scene in her books as well but don't quote me on that

4. people we meet on vacation. i remember being decently high on this one besides the fact that i felt like the ending wasn't satisfying, but honestly i can't actually REMEMBER any of the stuff i liked most about it. definitely up for a reread if i get the time. only up here because:

(i did almost send “stop” to you with no other context or information and then had to. ahem. stop myself from doing it.)

declan tangles their legs with echo's and holds a necklace up to the light, a dim orange glow from the lantern above them. the silver glitters, intricate chains at the end slightly tangled from the escape, and they hook a claw in to unwind them, gentle. in between each intersection is a small embedded diamond.

"you ever think our lives give us a skewed view of what this kinda stuff is worth?"

they look past the necklace to echo, humming. "li-ittle bit. but the cra-aftsmanshi-i-ip..."

"we could learn," echo answers, a playful grin tugging at his lips. declan sticks their tongue out at him, and he reaches up to pinch it, laughing when dec jerks away. "y'remember the forges? not the ones we have here, the old ones."

"mh-hm!"

"see? bet we could."

they roll their eyes, placing the necklace down into the cotton-filled box beside them on the bed. "bu-ut we di-idn't have to spe-end the time! value in it."

echo leans forward and bonks his head into side of theirs, eyes scrunched as he looks at them, all fond. "yea, yea, i know dec. still, we gotta give this one to elegy, right?"

declan nods, runs their gloved fingers down the chains one last time before they put the lid on the box. echo's head falls to rest on their shoulder. his hand covers theirs on the box, and they grin, hide it in his hair.

i think it would be hard to overstate the amount of deeply questionable fake ah crew stuff that i read and wrote as a young person. (if you are not familiar, fahc is/was the gta let's play series by achievement hunter that spawned a huge universe of deeply inaccurate gang wars and heists. as an adult, let alone as someone who knows things about organized crime, it is all batshit insane and unrealistic, but that's part of the appeal.)

anyways on the macro level i just think it would be fun to slam dunk hermitpires into this setting. you've got all the possible archetypes from fahc. gang rivalry where nobody can tell how serious it is. unhinged explosives experts. kidnappings that end with incredibly dramatic rescues and a bloody enraged person kissing their kidnapped lover on the forehead, something that i'm sure that you, blink marquis, have never considered before in your life. you're welcome.

on the micro level i wrote about this a little once but the overall thought is ranchers (lol surprise) where like. if you assume that hermits and empires are rival gangs in this world, then jimmy and tango are rivals, but they're also probably not the most well-known people. so they meet at a bar or something and have a one night stand as perfect strangers, which turns into a two night stand that turns into fwb and then a relationship that gets blown up as soon as they accidentally discover that they're, y'know, on opposite sides of a major turf war.

pot kettle is my currently perpetually-in-progress compilation doc for a lot of pre-canon sauces scenes ive been writing lately!! specifically modded era, which is the time in which declan and their guys met for the first time. we weren't actually doing Lore when we played that server, but it's been so important and so vague for so long we finally started fleshing things out back there. heres a snippet of the first 10 dec scene in here

they tussle in the leaves for a minute before they manage to pin him, claws digging into his shoulders. “no! killing me!! without permission!!”

“you’re going to give me permission?”

“that’s not- maybe!” 10 raises his eyebrows again. declan’s face goes red, grip tightening. “shut up, not important! you made me immortal-”

“not true-”

“- or something-”

“objectively not true.”