#THE WAY IT HOLDS THE HAMMER

[supercharged-streamer]

Honk shoo shooo

[turtleblogatlast]

Unironically think that each of the bros (+April) don’t actually get how impressive their feats really are so they just do what they do and on the off chance someone comments on those feats they all react like:

[thisisntreaver]

Love that theres three types of women in fable, unhinged and feral, smart and strong, and distressed mother with high blood pressure an I am obsessed with all

[wormonastringtime]

perfectly average glass of water

[kwanienies]

are u that addicted to seungkwan??? like he’s not even allat

[milkweedman]

rly wish i could knit or spin while lying down bc my migraine is a little better when im lying down but then im bored out of skull. but if i try to do anything that involves raising my arms for more than a minute it is absolutely agonizing so unfortunately, sitting up in bed with the lights off and knitting it is

[randomwriteronline]

"Pohatu!"

Huh.

Lewa sounds... Worried?

Something must have happened. Hopefully it wasn't a Makuta attack. It'd be weird if neither Krika nor Pohatu were there to fight with their siblings - although the Toa have no reason to believe their brother of Stone has any business with the Brotherhood beyond knocking their masks into the bog water with a roundhouse kick, so really there's nothing to worry about. If he mentions he met a Makuta they'll likely assume he simply came across one and was briefly busied with not being pummelled into protodermis hummus against the nearest tree.

He touches down bouncing once, twice, to slow his momentum before he comes too close to that coward's trap; his Le-brother lunges for him to wrap his arms tight around his neck in a nearly suffocating hug.

His own limbs encircle the other's back in a lukewarm embrace, half stunned, half puzzled.

Alright. Something has happened.

The question now is, frustratingly: what, exactly?

"Where have you been?" Onua, for once, is quicker than him and gets to ask first. He sounds almost... distraught.

Pohatu turns to him with the unpleasant feeling of being in the dark about something squirming familiarly around his heartlight: "Swamp?" he replies a little dumbly pointing behind himself. "There aren't that many places to be down here, I met a big bugger-"

"All these years?" Gali continues. She is not talking about the swamp. She is worried, heartbreakingly worried, just as much as her brothers. "What happened to you? Where were you?"

Kopaka says nothing, but he looks at him. His eyes seem guilty.

Pohatu looks back at him in earnest confusion.

"The Codrex," Tahu visibly struggles as he searches for the correct string of words in his choked up throat for a moment, torn between reaching out with his hand and holding back.

The fog clears instantly.

"You weren't in the Codrex," he tries. "You weren't with--"

Pohatu shoves Lewa off of himself with a stiff thoughtless movement: "Ah," he says. "Good."

The other five blank.

Something shifts in the world around them and tilts it all askew, paints the air with a strange imperceptible color that makes their heads light, their footing unstable, their eyes unfocused. Their Stone brother is the same - his silhouette has been changed by the adaptive armor but he looks the same, they recognize him, they know him, right? He is still their sibling, he is still the same, the exact same, in his usual body with his usual gaze and his usual voice, but then why - why does this Toa look nothing like him?

Tahu flinches when his shoulder is grasped.

"Do you remember the energy storm?" Pohatu asks, sounding the exact same and yet completely, impossibly, horribly different.

"What?"

"Do you remember the energy storm?"

"Pohatu, I - you - where, how did you-?"

"The energy storm, do you remember it?"

"You weren't with us, all this time- how did you get to-"

"ANSWER THE QUESTION!"

They recoil.

Pohatu doesn't shout like that. Pohatu doesn't speak like that, quick and far too straight to the point. Pohatu doesn't grind his fingers that hard into what little of a shoulder a piece of armor might expose. Pohatu doesn't stare that harshly. Pohatu isn't that furious.

"The energy storm!" he insists, snarling - Pohatu doesn't snarl - "Do you remember that!"

"Yes," Tahu spits out.

"Good!" and his tendons hurts when they are released.

Pohatu doesn't stand like that. Pohatu doesn't look at his siblings like that - with a growling scowl so sour it almost makes their stomachs twist. Pohatu doesn't look like Takanuva does since a shadow leech bit him, he doesn't look like the Shadow Matoran, he just looks like himself; but Pohatu doesn't act like that.

He gives them all a quick glance, looking for confirmation on their faces beyond the stunned concern. The storm's mention and his cold eyes seem to do the trick as he catches small affirmations.

"Call it a feeling or a hunch or what you will, but something tells me there's going be another one coming down soon," he tells them with that voice that is his own yet doesn't sound like him - to them, at least, because they had yet to hear this facet of it which he's allowed to stew silently with the rest of his bitter fury. "And it'll turn Karda Nui into a nice big open air common grave, if you five keep sitting around this chunk of metal waiting for our little siblings to get fried out of the air like Nui-Rama."

The information takes a moment to sink in.

He watches their eyes widen, understanding dawning within them. They know now as they knew then what an energy storm is, what it means, the destruction it brings.

They begin speaking, they ask him how he knows - he answers harshly, flippantly, relishing in how they wince back as if stung or bitten each time he responds to their kind tones with hisses and growls that are so deeply wrong to their audio receptors - they start planning, and he retains no information whatsoever of whatever Tahu starts prattling about (a strategy, of course, because he is the leader, and a leader makes strategies and plans escapes and runs away when the ship begins sinking) because he sees his foot shift, he sees his hand beckon the rest of them towards him, he sees him make his way toward the inside of the Codrex, and white hot rage bursts out of him in a shout that he can't hear himself.

He can only tell he's shouted because his body is tense as it leanse forward, his lungs are empty, and his disgustingly spineless siblings are shaken and terrified as they turn to him.

He's not letting them escape on their own this time.

"None of you will be doing anything until we get the Matoran out of here!" he roars again. "Especially getting into that thing!"

"It could hold answers - helpful tools," Onua speaks in his warm enveloping tone. A hand reaches out for him, to soothe him, to try and calm him, return him to his normal self--

He's swatted away sharply, so hard that his wrist hurts.

His brother glares venomously: "It doesn't," he decides snapping back at him, "You're just trying to escape again, aren't you?"

"Again?"

"Don't play dumb with me! You said you remembered!"

"But it wasn't--"

"We're doing it my way this time! And you'll better comply or upon the name of the Great Spirit I swear I'll crack that infernal machine open like a Pokawi egg if you try to set a single foot in it!"

"Pohatu!"

He has no idea who is speaking: the voices and masks and colors melt together, his head spins, the heat of his anger turns his thoughts into a tangled mess that starts wrapping tight around his lungs to squeeze every breath of air out of him; so he flies away, diving briefly into the swamp, terribly close to the water, before rising back up along one of the trees, towards the stalactites.

(Somewhere far away a chunk of stalagmite blows up, scaring the wits out of Bitil. As his heartlight flashes madly the Makuta curses the Toa of Stone under his breath.)

Someone calls for him.

He ignores them and continues flying.

He's so furious that he nearly crashes through the branches.

A sense of nausea builds up in his throat like vomit.

The voice reaches him, shouting his name almost right in his audio receptor: his arm is grasped, wrenched up, his body unbalanced and turned upside down. He twists in the air aimlessly for a few seconds before he manages to stabilize himself again and regain his bearings enough to search for whoever jumped him.

Gali floats slightly above him, her eyes disbelieving and hard behind her mask: "What is happening?" she demands to know.

Pohatu glares at her. Then, out of nowhere, his brows unfurrow, his face softens, he breaks into his easygoing smile: "Nothing," he blatantly lies with his playful tone and no intention of masking his rage nor his sarcasm behind it, "Nothing ever happens. Didn't you know that, sister? This afternoon we're going to have a tea party with the Makuta and wait for the energy storm to decide the air is a bit too brisk to come down this week, and then tomorrow we'll all attend a nice Kohlii match the Av-Matoran are setting up with the Piraka as the referees."

"Stop it!" she shouts. His little show unsettles her immensely, and the fact only makes him glad. "What's happening to you?"

He laughs: "Nothing, I told you," and he does a little loop to keep from shattering a fallen stalactite in half, "Nothing ever happens to me! Why would anything happen to me?"

It scares her even more. "I said stop it! You're not like this!"

Oh, he isn't?

He isn't like this?

If she knew. If only she knew.

She would hate him as much as he hates her again.

"What's wrong with you, brother?" she cries. She really does sound like she's going to sob. "What happened to you? What is making you act like this?"

Oh, but didn't she say she remembered?

Didn't they say they remembered?

Liars. Liars. Liars. The bile surges back to cover his eyes, to coat his mouth with its horrid taste. He can barely breathe.

"Nothing!"

"It can't be 'nothing'!"

"I said, it's nothing!"

"Pohatu, please!"

He thinks of driving his hand right through her heartlight.

Gali watches her brother stutter, suddenly frightened by something she cannot see nor hear not imagine, she watches him lose height for only a moment in which he seems to plummet into the bog below: before she can fly down to his rescue he spins up again, twirling away from her. She follows his trajectory until he lands, heavy and tired, on a sturdy enough branch.

He hears her touch down a few steps away from him much more gracefully. Keeping his eyes shut at least spares him from having to look at her.

He is a Toa. He has a code to follow. Even when it's hard.

Even when it would make it all so much simpler.

Even when it would be so deserved.

But he is a Toa.

Not a Bohrok.

Not a Rahkshi.

A Toa.

And he doesn't want to kill.

"Pohatu," she calls again, so gentle, so sweet. Her hand sits on his shoulder, pulls away slightly when he flinches at the contact, lays once more with an even lighter weight. "Brother, I'm begging you. Speak to me. Share what hurts you."

You know exactly what it is, sister.

All of you do, and you pretend otherwise.

You left me. You planned your escape and went through with it.

You left me to do the work of six Toa alone because you were too scared of dying like the Matoran you didn't care for.

It was your plan from the beginning, wasn't it? It must have been. Otherwise it makes no sense. I was never part of your escape either, was I now. Because I was never as good as any of you.

You left me. You left me, and you planned to leave me. You didn't tell me anything. You didn't care if I would have looked for you while I was dying. You didn't care if our little brothers would have called for you. You left us all to die and you planned for it. From the start.

You disgust me. You left me. You left me. You left me.

"I'm worried," he says, because that too is true.

Gali's arms embrace him kindly, pushing his head to lay on her shoulder. He'll let her believe the shiver that courses through him is out of a need for comfort instead of repulsion.

"We'll get them all to safety," she whispers. Her tone is soft, almost lulling him to sleep.

"When?" he asks. He feels so tired. "Is there even enough time?"

"There will be," his sister reassures him as her hand cradles his nape. "I promise they'll all be on their way to Metru Nui before the storm can start forming. We'll make sure of that. Me, our brothers, and you. United, it won't take long."

It wouldn't have taken long back then either, he thinks, but the bite in his thoughts is too weak to voice them. He is so tired. So exhausted from his anger. Gali is so comfortable. So kind.

It's a trick.

It's all a trick.

He has to remember that.

Anger helps him remember that.

His siblings hate him.

It's all a trick.

Just a trick.

The stuttering sound of a pair of rockets approching them has his sister turn slightly. Her grasp on him loosens, and he pries himself away from her hold despite some traitorous speck of his mind begging to be allowed to lean on her. It's a trick, he chastises it as he finally opens his eyes to see who's coming: just another dirty trick.

Lewa touches down almost next to them, jittery and anxious. He looks at Pohatu with a certain fear behind the goggles of his mask.

His brother replies to his frightened gaze with silence.

He and Gali speak - of what, Pohatu can't tell. He's so tired. When at last he forces himself to be mentally present to the conversation, it seems they have reached an agreement.

"I will reassure our brothers, then," she says. "We'll be there to help you before you know it."

"Heartthanks, Watersister," Lewa nods relieved.

They watch her disappear downwards again. So it seems they will be handling the first few evacuations on their own, and then the others will join them.

It's good to see they have a bigger sense of duty than they used to.

Or at least, that his rage scares them more than death.

Fingers grab him before he can lift off, in an unsteady grip: "Pohatu," his brother calls with a trembling voice.

When he turns to finally face him fully, Lewa looks at him no different than he did when he first arrived on the branch: frightened, concerned, jittering. He grasps his forearm with both hands, like he's afraid he'll slip away from him.

"We need to go," Pohatu tells him simply. He is so tired.

"You," his brother begins softly, but it takes him another moment to word his thoughts properly: "You... How... Are you?"

"Tired."

"Are there - offvoices, like the mindkraana, in--"

"I am just tired. Let's go."

He winces hard at the harsh words, but he holds onto him still: "Stonebrother - you were... You weren't with us. In..."

"I wasn't. Let's go."

"Wait - wait, please..."

He sighs. He feels so tired. So tired. Why is he so tired.

"If you weren't... If you..." Lewa struggles. He is deeply worried. For him. "Where... What... Happened, to you? During all this time?"

His legs ache and twitch to kick him off this blasted branch. His body screams at him to knee the Air Toa in the torso hard enough to cave his armor into his lungs.

But the building bitterness hemorrhaging from his every joint after he allowed his tightly compressed rage to blow out of him is eroding his strength the more poisonous it becomes instead of fueling him as it has so diligently done for the past one hundred thousand years, and he is so tired.

"Now isn't the time to talk about this," he snaps.

"But it will be?" his brother insists.

He is so, so, so tired.

"Later." he concedes. "Once all this is done."

"Heartpromise?"

Somehow, he manages to fake a convincing smile: "Heartpromise."

Lewa smiles back at him, heartlight a little lighter.

They lift off together.

[shadowxamyweek]

So wait, Amy, what's this performance of the Nutcracker again? You said you donated to get the link?

Amy: Huh? Oh! [Amy blinks, coming out of their comfy stupor as they sit up straighter.] Amy: There's a local kids ballet group that practice down the street from me. It's little-little kids all the way up to teenagers. The person who started it is actually an acquaintance of mine, and she's pretty awesome, and they really work to sort of break a lot of the taboos and gross culture around ballet. That's why I make a point to donate every year! A nice little bonus is that anyone who does donate gets free tickets and a link to watch the recorded performance. I couldn't go to the actual show this year, unfortunately, so this is the first time I'm seeing how they did! [Shadow's brow slowly knots itself.] Shadow: What do you mean 'gross culture?' It's just dance? [Amy sighs.] Amy: It's not just *dance*, it's *ballet.* One of the worst disciplines of dance to get into. The expectations, the way they want you to literally break your body. My toes still get numb sometimes, and I know it's because of how I was trained. And don't even get me started on the diet culture, eugh... [Amy points at the screen.] Amy: These kids don't have that. Tristana, that's the artistic director, she makes a point to put health above everything else. See those kids? Look at their feet. There's all different shapes and styles there, not just the 'perfect point' feet. Plus, look at all the body types! Most ballet companies would only bring on petite 'dancer bodies.' Heck, even this performance of the Nutcracker- oh wait, I didn't tell you- okay so these kids work to make their own version of the Nutcracker every year. It's a big deal. Most companies just pay the royalties to do the Balanchine one because 'ooo, it's Balanchine, ooo,' but honestly, that guy can go- [There's another coo from Rosie, and Amy pauses. She drops her arm and wraps it around Shadow to scratch Rosie between the ears.] Amy: Well... he can go do several different things that I won't say in front of Rosie, because I don't want her getting a potty mouth. Shadow: I see...

[thebirdandhersong]

I remember talking to a friend last week and saying that if I'm reading obsessively it either means I'm extremely happy or extremely in need of help. alas goodreads my good pal you have GOT to be kidding me

[psychesmoon]

TL;DR: life is good. i'm happy to be alive <3

It's crazy how trauma reframes entire experiences and closes you off from seeing people and their intentions clearly around you. Me and my sister finally sat down to talk about what happened when our whole family fell apart 16 years ago. Just trying to fill in the gaps for each other. And it's so crazy that for years I've convinced myself of so many things - that I don't matter to her or other people in my family. That I need to work hard to be important to them. Provide a reason for them to let me in. At a different point in my life I was quite sure they would all be better of if I would have just died.

And I opened up about that and as I was saying these things I could SO CLEARLY SEE from her reaction that it was so far off from the actual truth. That she never even thought that, not even for one second. She never ever felt that anything that happened was my fault. She wasn't ever angry at me or blamed me. In fact, she always simply just loved me, and was worried about me even if I didn't see it.

And she never stopped loving me. Even when things got very ugly around us, even when we didn't see each other for months, even when the only words we exchanged were just surface-level small talk. Like. The love never went away. No matter how weird or messed up I was, it never went away.

I don't know. I just feel so lucky to still be here and be able to have these experiences. Reconnecting and rebuilding connections from the ground up. I'm so glad I didn't give up. I'm realizing how much I would have missed if I believed all the bad things my brain was telling me for quite a while.

Something something... what's meant to be yours will find it's way back to you again. Or something.

[rohirric-hunter]

I'm just torn between whether I want to flesh out Winterhome into an actual functioning town or play up all the inconsistencies and nonsense until I'm left having to conclude that no one actually even lives there except during the holiday season and everyone rolls in from other towns about two months before Yule and starts getting everything set up.

[cake-nastyy]

Minnie Time!

[inspiredrawaw]

So I have a 4 year old nephew whose gotten into a couple things that I was really into when I was kid, starting with Pokémon and now sonic

And it’s been great because when his dad asks me questions I get to show off my knowledge on the topic and go into a rant on the characters

Bits it’s also sweet with my nephew because he’s been watching me play sonic frontiers and Pokémon

[leedee013]

Hi! Could I request some Etienne for WIP Wednesday?

prev

Etienne's tail swished back and forth across the floor. Jean took that as a "yes."

Only then did Jean look at his bed, set to a height that fit snugly over his dresser. He then looked at Etienne, who was definitely not tall enough to jump onto the bed.

He cursed under his breath. Of course getting a dog would require a massive amount of reorganizing in the room. He'd just hoped it wouldn't require such a dramatic change.

MASTERPOST

[hard-times-paramore]

Drive was a good movie if at least on account of how fucking autistic the protagonist was.