1A: Obsessive; FANG (“vampire feature”) before (“has...following”) IRL (“small (i.e. abbr.) offline”) 5A: Defense of Octopi; S[yllabus]+C[actus] (“Firstly”) + ASK (“require”) + [lati]N (“ending”) + I (“-i”), all in reverse (“comeback”) 6A: Ok, my love; (DARKEYES)* (“fabulous”) - (“not to mention the”) [thic]K (“rear end”) 1D: Magic being; FAIR (“allowed in the rules”) + Y[ou’re] (“in first place”) 2D: Shoes; [bounc]E (“back”) inside reversed (“retro”) SKIN (“leather”) 3D: lost for words; hidden in (“throughout”) [argent]INAWE[‘re] 4D: He’s doomed; CLOSE (“to shut”) - (“down”) C (“almost” i.e. circa) followed by R (“right after”)
Clever surfaces that really required some digging to spot the parses; I enjoyed the journey, especially with 1D and 5A!
A few quibbles in the name of perfection: [small offline] is a bit awkward for an abbreviation indicator and [the thick rear end] should grammatically be something like [thick's rear end] (I'm also not sure about [has] as an equivalent linking word). As for [to shut down almost], I read this as you trying to use [almost] as a beheadment instead of a curtailment. [Down] as a deletion indicator and [almost] for "circa" for "C" is a bit too two-stepping and hard for me.
Thanks for solving, and thanks for the quibbles. To respond to a few: I don’t mind “has” as a linking word personally, as in “X has [as its components] the mixed up letters of such-and-such,” e.g. though I agree it’s a bit stretchier than “is” or “from” or whatever.
As for “almost”/circa/c. I agree that it’s far fetched. I have personally seen it in so many cryptics, that I thought it had currency despite being obscure, like “nene” or something in a regular crossword. If not, then I probably won’t use it again.
Not to be too forward, but can you elaborate on my “thick rear end”? (Sorry.) I get that it’s a bit stilted without the -‘s but I thought that sort of “newspaper headline” language was OK for cryptics. Would you need to use “-‘s”, “of”, etc. every time you select from another word? So like “pig heart” can’t clue for “i”, “sprinkler head” can’t clue for “s”? Maybe you didn’t mean that much by it since you said you were nitpicking, but I am curious since I feel like I do this type of thing a lot in my cluing.
Some setters definitely do what you're talking about; as you say, I'm just nitpicking things that I've seen (from personal experience) cause issues before. [Ok, my love has fabulous dark eyes (not to mention the thick rear end)] is [Ok my love] DEFINITION [has] = ANAGRIND [fabulous] ANAGRIST [dark eyes] DELETION INDICATOR [not to mention].
Now the DELETION itself is [the thick rear end]. Can you get to [-k] from that? Yes. Is it unambiguously clear? No. At a minimum I'd want to cut extraneous [the]—which leaves me wondering why it's not "his," "her," or "their" (all of which are equally extraneous). Just today, Kosman and Picciotto, who have published over a decade of quality weekly cryptics (first in The Nation and now on their Patreon, Out of Left Field), wrote about sometimes breaking "rules" for the sake of surfaces, so you're in good company, especially if you're acting deliberately!
Ok fair enough. I did spend a bit of time trying to drop the “the” because I do agree it is extraneous. I just gave up because i couldn’t find a clean surface and i figured it was grammatical enough, but i should probably just allow myself some more time to leave the clues and come back to them.
On another note, do you have a list of cryptic setters you follow/recommend? Don’t feel compelled to make one if you don’t have one, just intrigued since you occasionally mention blogs and stuff that you follow :)
There are many more I'm probably forgetting at the moment (and this is just US stuff), but https://dailycrosswordlinks.com/ does a good job of sharing links each day to cryptics both in the US and UK (near the bottom of the list).
5A: Defense of Octopi; S[yllabus]+C[actus] (“Firstly”) + ASK (“require”) + [lati]N (“ending”) + I (“-i”), all in reverse (“comeback”)
6A: Ok, my love; (DARKEYES)* (“fabulous”) - (“not to mention the”) [thic]K (“rear end”)
1D: Magic being; FAIR (“allowed in the rules”) + Y[ou’re] (“in first place”)
2D: Shoes; [bounc]E (“back”) inside reversed (“retro”) SKIN (“leather”)
3D: lost for words; hidden in (“throughout”) [argent]INAWE[‘re]
4D: He’s doomed; CLOSE (“to shut”) - (“down”) C (“almost” i.e. circa) followed by R (“right after”)