#am i stretching out the timeline a bunch?

[literallyjusttoa]

I have fully reworked and redesigned my Apollo timeline!! These designs are meant to depict Apollo from 2591 B.C.E all the way to 392 C.E., so a good 2,983 years of life lol. A lot of things have changed from my first and second versions of this timeline (which you can see here and here if you're interested) so I'm just gonna rewrite the whole things here for y'all to read and enjoy! (Also disclaimer as always I am not a mythology expert, and I am taking some liberties with dates and time periods so sorry if anything seems off!)

Baby: 2591 B.C.E

Apollo is born. That's pretty much all that happens here.

Fighting Python/Exile: 2591-2582 B.C.E.

Right after being born, Apollo goes off to fight Python. After this, he is exiled from Olympus for nine years due to his crime of committing murder. During those nine years, he spends most of his time as either a shepherd or a traveling musician, and observes mortals and their ways of life a lot.

Pre-First Punishment: 2582-2300 B.C.E.

After his exile, Apollo is allowed to ascend to Olympus. He takes on a form that is extremely similar to the mortals he's been living amongst for the past nine years. As the youngest member of the Olympian Council, Apollo is slightly naive, but desperate to prove himself to the rest of his family. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Apollo finds and mentors Chiron 2. Artemis and Apollo successfully convince their father to release Prometheus from his punishment. 3. Periphas, a king of Attica and priest of Apollo, was so beloved by his people that they honored him above Zeus. This angered Zeus, and he sword he would strike Periphas down and burn his home to the ground. However, Apollo begged Zeus to spare Periphas' life, and Zeus acquiesced. Instead, Zeus turned Periphas into an eagle, the same eagle that now rests on the top of his sacred sceptre.

Post-First Punishment (Troy): 2300-1250 B.C.E.

Back from his time as a mortal, Apollo is now the patron god of the city of Troy. He is extremely attached to his people, and has taken on a lot of their fashions and customs. He is a bit more reserved on Olympus because of the punishment, but he is still young and sure of himself, and is often one of the most active gods on the council. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Hermes is born. 2. The music duel with Marsyas occurs, and he is flayn. 3. Lots of cities are founded on the west coast of Ionia (Modern day Türkiye), many with myths surrounding Apollo. The city of Miletus was founded and named after a son of Apollo. Klazomenai claimed Apollo as their principal god. The city of Colophon becomes the seat of the Oracle of Apollo Clarius, and one of his sons, named Mopsus, lives there. Erythraea is also connected to Apollo's oracle, as it is the birthplace of Herophile. Once you add Troy to the mix, it seems as if Apollo just did a tour of Ionia and set up a bunch of towns along the way, which I think is pretty cool. 4. The seven against Thebes make their march to restore Polynices, Oedipus' son, to the throne. One of the seven, Amphiaraus, was a seer and favored by Apollo (and sometimes his son!). Amphiaraus was fated to die in battle, but Apollo found multiple ways to stretch out his final moments. He redirected attacks so that Amphiaraus was not harmed, and when the man's charioteer was killed, Apollo took the reins himself. When Amphiaraus finally passed on, Apollo wept over his corpse and let him be consumed by the earth, creating an Oracle at that spot.

Asclepius: 1250-1210 B.C.E.

Asclepius is born and Apollo keeps the same look throughout his entire life! Apollo doesn't have much to do with it, but the Argonauts set sail during this time.

Stealing the bolt/Killing the Cyclops: 1210 B.C.E.

This design only lasts a couple of weeks. In his grief, Apollo loses himself.

Second Punishment 1210 B.C.E

Apollo is given to Admetus as a servant for several months. The punishment doesn't last long, but Apollo's time with Admetus is essential in his journey to heal from Asclepius' death.

Trojan War: 1194-1184 B.C.E.

The Trojan War breaks out less than 20 years after Asclepius' death, bringing ruins and carnage with it. Apollo fulfills his duty as the patron god of the city, and viciously protects Troy from the attacks of other Olympians.

Post-Trojan: 1184-940 B.C.E.

The war was lost, and Troy was sacked. In the time following this, Apollo distances himself from mortals, desperate to escape the pain and grief of the last 70 years. This period of his life ends with the myth of Daphne. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Dionysus is born 2. Apollo saves Hemithea and her sister Parthenos and makes them immortal. 3. Apollo's oldest known temple is built in Thebes.

Daphne and Hyacinthus 940-776 B.C.E.

After the death of Daphne, Apollo is devastated. While he had been avoiding the mortal realm before, now he became increasingly uncomfortable on Olympus. He stayed in the mortal realm often, building up his reputation and setting up his popularity in Ancient Greece proper, which was just breaking out of the Dark Ages. Near the end of this period, he loves and loses Hyacinthus. Myths that occur during this time: 1. The cult of Apollo from Crete brings his worship to Delphi officially, and his temple is built at the site. 2. Apollo's music duel with Pan occurs.

“Main” Apollo 776-500 B.C.E.

Starting with the first Olympic games, This period is defined by glory and worship. Apollo's popularity in Greece increases exponentially, and this is only added to once he takes the reins of the sun chariot. He meddles in mortal affairs often during this time, growing into the persona we see of him today. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Niobe's kids are killed 2. Apollo falls in love with Cyrene, and gives her a city. 3. Tarquin purchases the Sibylline books. Sometime before this, Apollo curses the Sibyl of Cumae. 4. The Pythagorean cult is established, a group that religiously followed the teachings of Pythagoras. Alongside this, they mainly worshiped Apollo at Delphi. They used math to break down music, and believed "the universe as a whole was composed of harmony and numbers". 5. Phorbas, who is either a savage king of Elis or a giant, preys on travelers on the pilgrimage to Delphi. To put a stop to this, Apollo challenges the man to a boxing match, and kills him during the fight. Another Phorbas, this one hailing from Rhodes, is often confounded with this one. Apollo dated the second Phorbas, so I bet this was very confusing for a lot of poor Greeks. 6. The city of Megara fought for independence from Corinth, and claimed Apollo as their patron god.

"Classical" Apollo 500-300 B.C.E.

As Ancient Greece moves into it's classical age, and the height of it's glory, Apollo's worship continues to grow. In the 400's, Pericles and the architects of the Acropolis in Athens used the money held by the Delian league (An allied group of islands in the Cyclades, lead by Delos) to create their temple to Athena, which held the Athena Parthenos. This, alongside many other ways in which Athens attempted to take control of the rest of Greece, caused tension in both the mortal world and Olympus. Apollo begins to see cracks in the foundations of Greece, but can not do much about it at the time. Myths that occur during this time: 1. The Peloponnesian war breaks out. It lasts 27 years, with Sparta claiming victory over Athens in the end. Olympus continues to degrade as Athena and Ares spar. 2. Shortly after this, the Theban War starts. Sparta had won the Peloponnesian war and taken Athens place as the head of Ancient Greece, but many city-states took issue with this. Both Corinth and Thebes waged war against Sparta, with Thebes being victorious in this struggle. Thebes was Dionysus' city, and Corinth, Poseidon's. The Olympian council continues to splinter. 3. Apollo's first temple in Rome is built. The Temple of Apollo Medicus was constructed outside of the religious boundary in Rome, as Apollo was still seen as a foreign deity at this time, and so his worship was not permitted in the city proper.

Late Greece (300-146 B.C.E)

Greece is falling apart at the seams, with civil wars breaking out all over the region. Rome is growing stronger to the west, and eventually takes over Greece completely at the end of this period. Apollo attempts to ignore the signs of failure, keeping up a relaxed, even as the war begins to devour Greece entirely. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Dionysus journeys to India 2. Trophonius and Agamethus are killed.

Fall of Greece: 146-32 B.C.E.

Olympus falls, and will not come back together for a while yet. With each deity lost and unfocused, they all have to find their own way back to their former glory. Apollo is one of the last to return to the council, spending centuries wandering the ruins of Greece, burying his people and mourning the culture that had been lost. It is not until Augustus brings his worship to Rome that Apollo returns to Mount Olympus.

Rome 32 B.C.E.- 140 C.E.

Apollo is now one of the chief gods in Rome. Even though he is at the same level of power and popularity that he had during the height of Greece, it doesn't feel the same. Apollo drifts, going through the motions with very little passion behind it. It takes some time for him to warm up to his new civilization, which leads to:

Late Rome 140 C.E.- 392 C.E.

As Rome continues to grow and prosper, Apollo begins to grow fond of it's people. He interacts with them far more, and begins to once again meddle in their affairs, especially when it comes to the various emperors that ruled the nation. This trend continues until the eventual end of pagan worship in Rome. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Apollo meets, falls in love with, and eventually kills Commodus. 2. The Bacchanalia, which was a private cult festival of the Dionysian cult of Liber that was full of drinking and mingling of all social classes, becomes popular. This festival is obviously associated with Bacchus first and foremost, but there was a common rumour amongst members of the cult that you could meet Apollo at these celebrations.

And that's the whole thing! Hope you all enjoyed, this took a lot of time and research lol.

[nanaarchy]

Hey chat !!!! I'm going insane.

Ever since my first listen to TMA, I've had a huge question that NEVER got answered.

Never. Not in the whole series, not Q&As or the wiki or anything. I thought I would never find answers. I thought it would be forgotten. I thought it was a small insignificant detail and I'd have to live with never knowing the truth about it.

Now with TMAGP 19, I might finally know the answer.

Maybe. Maybe maybe. But It Could Be. And now I'm losing my mind at the implications.

((For the record, I know that the stories and worldbuilding are inherently separate - hell, there are even timeline differences in the cases I'm using as evidence. But the overlap might be important, especially when it comes to the Web.))

Spoilers for both shows below!

Its branches were exquisite, and delicate, swaying slightly from small eddies in the liquid, and they shone with every spectra. I must confess that to look upon it, one was – (sigh) filled with profound wonder at its exquisite elegance. [...] Even I, steeped in worldly matters as I am, recognized The Lord’s words to Adam, and was much dismayed at the implication. Isaac then plucked the delicate fruit with ungloved hands and held it before me. [...] The creature was taking root. Strands of its mottled brown hair were extruding downwards between the floor, seeking the dark earth below. Then, too, its back began to sprout, radiant branches unfurling and thickening before me, reaching upwards towards the sunlight with a seemingly insatiable desire. [...] I tell you here, Robert, it saw me, and it knew me. (TMAGP 19 - HARD RESET)

It was an ornate wooden thing, with a snaking pattern of lines weaving their way around towards the centre. The pattern was hypnotic and shifted as I watched it, like an optical illusion. I found my eyes following the lines towards the middle of the table, where there was nothing but a small square hole. Graham noticed me staring, and told me that interesting antique furniture was one of his few true passions. Apparently he’d found the table in a second-hand shop during his student days and fallen in love with it. It had been in pretty bad shape but he’d spent a long time and a lot of money restoring it, though he’d never been able to figure out what was supposed to go in the centre. He assumed it was a separate piece and couldn’t track it down. (MAG 3 - ACROSS THE STREET)

Re: Magnus Institute Ruins. By RedCanary on Saturday April 23 2022 12:17pm. The photos from the spelunk seem properly gone, but I did find an old wooden thing with a bunch of similar symbols on. Some kinda empty box, not really sure what for, though. Gonna see if I can get the light right for a decent pic. Edit: No dice, I’m afraid. Must be something up with my phone camera. Really not helping the whole paranoia thing either. Anyone know anything about photographic distortion? Gonna see if I can borrow my dad’s SLR tomorrow. (TMAGP 1 - FIRST SHIFT)

Adelard Dekker stood in the corner. He was straight and motionless, his lips moving rapidly, though no sound came out of them. In the centre of the room, stood a table carved from dark wood and wrapped all over with a sprawling, intricate pattern. And in front of that table was the thing that had said it was my cousin. It was long and thin, the tops of it bent against the ceiling and its stick-like limbs flailed from too many joints and elbows. Wrapped around it were thick strands of what I think was spider’s web, stretching back into the table, which I now saw pulsed along its carved channels with a sickly light. The face at the top of that gangly frame was like nothing on earth. (MAG 78 - DISTANT COUSIN)

Now... Now I get it. I get it. I finally gave an answer. Or, at least, I think we'll get a concrete answer soon. But I think I get it.

I think I get where the web table comes from. I think I know what it's made of. why it glows. why it had a hole in the middle. I think I might know how the web gained control and sentience so much faster than the other fears. and, if it still manifests in the same way in the Protocol universe, how it also quickly became "the manager" of other fears, as theories suggest.

More importantly, I think I know what was up with the mysterious tree from so, so long ago.

Now I have an answer.

Why was there an apple buried in Hill Top Road?

I opened the box and sitting inside was a single green apple. It looked fresh, shiny, with a coat of condensation like it had just been picked on a cool spring morning. I picked it up. I wasn’t going to eat it, I’m not that stupid, but more than bleeding trees or phantom burning, this confused me. As I took it out of the box, though, it began to turn. The skin turned brown and bruised and started to shrivel in my hand. Then it split. And out came spiders. Dozens, hundreds of spiders erupting from this apple that was rotting right before my eyes. I shrieked and dropped it before any of them could touch my arm. The apple fell to the ground and burst in a cloud of dust. I backed away and waited until I was sure all the spiders had left before retrieving the box. I smashed it with a crowbar, and threw the remains into a skip. (MAG 8 - BURNED OUT)

And now I have an answer. Maybe.

[angelbitezzz]

OKAY SO. Player replaces Bill. Design-wise, it depends how far you want the resemblance to extend. The good news is that UT is already a pixel-y game so the heart/SOUL is rather geometric. If you want it to really resemble Bill’s design (and, potentially, some backstory features??) I am sliding this (very rough) idea to the table:

(Made extremely quickly and badly in CSP.) It’s made out of three (approximate) squares to really reinforce the geometric visual. Ofc the eye could be weirdly organic like Bill’s, but that’s up to you. I do think an eye is fitting given that the Player bears witness to so much, is shown much more than they can ever hope to influence. Arms and legs are optional ofc. If you go without the limbs, you could even stretch the reference to the Xbox version of UT where if you disconnect the controller, you get a bunch of text about various body parts not being connected. (“No head is connected. No body is connected. No arms are connected…” and so on.)

(Maybe the heart shape isn’t their true form, merely the only one they can take to be visually comprehended here?)

Story-wise, I could see the Player seeing something of a kindred soul (no pun intended) in Gaster, wanting to show him the things they can see. (“There’s more to this than just your singular timeline in your singular universe” and “You could be so much happier if you do X, Y, and Z— believe me, I’ve seen other timelines” and “You’re the only one in this silly game who understands that there’s so much MORE! That there’s another existence. Just let me show it to you!” Maybe even a little bit of, “I’m doing this because you’ve always been my favorite.”)

Possibly originally well-intentioned, unlike Bill, but still neglects to really comprehend the cosmic horror they’re inflicting on Gaster. Do they encourage him to build something like the portal to escape this singular universe and timeline, only for it to go horribly? (You could tie in the machine in Sans’ basement…) Does he build it himself, because he desperately wants to witness the things the Player tells him about? Does he want to see the Player’s “true form”? (Is this a twisted love story? An “I will defy the nature of the multiverse to be in the same existence as you” story?) Is he doing this to sate his own curiosity, or to help others? (Basically— how much are you leaning into Ford’s character, and how much are you keeping in line with your Gaster/the UT storyline of wanting to solve a huge problem that affects everyone?)

Does the Player turn on Gaster? Or is it all a big misunderstanding? A mistake? Are they cruel, or kind? Given the nature of many UT players I would assume kind, at least at first. But this is your AU, not mine.

Anyway feel free to take or leave whatever, build on anything here, ignore it, change it— whatever! :3 Hope this at least gave you some ideas~

ohhhhhHhh I like these a lot. You're making me think THOUGHTS

[desultory-novice]

Why do I see Magolor using his ship to look into other timelines, to which he ends up stumbling upon the timeline where Adeleine and Noir end up fusing into that... thing and ultimately die. (Or any alternate timeline of Apologies really, they're all despressing and messed up!)

He probably turned the screen off pretty fast.

[Requiem For a Mask]

-

Magolor:  "Heheheh... Kirby and friends will be SO surprised when they see these masks!" (And I'm giving them a two for one deal! Am I generous with my genius or what?)

Magolor:  "But what to do for Adeleine? No offense, but from what I've seen, she's pretty boring--...I MEAN! She's a good girl with a stable head on her shoulders!" (...No one heard me say that right??)

Magolor:  "But that makes it hard to imagine a good alternate mask for her. Maybe she gets more interesting in another timeline? Lor...? Do me a favor and search her dimensional signature for me!"

-

BZZT KSSH

Adeleine:"...You're not allowed to leave, Noir." Noir:"...I don't want to leave you either..."

-

Magolor:  "...Hmm? This looks different. ...I'd heard she had a brother, long, long ago. Is that what he looked like before he got turned into...?" (...You know what? I'm not ready to go there...)

-

King Dedede: "Hey, I think these two are still alive...!" Waddle Dee: "But...what are they...?" Meta Knight: "They don't look like anyone else alive on this planet." "Frozen remains of an extinct species?" "But how are they the only ones who..." King Dedede: "What they are is kids in need of help, obviously!" Meta Knight: "...Well, Kirby? It's your decision." (Hey, don't go above me! I'm the king here...!) Kirby: "I say we help them!"

-

Magolor:  "Ahh, yes, yes. And they get rescued! Happily ever after~! Just what I expected from Kirby and friends! ...Only difference I can see with her here is that she's not wearing that hat. Boy! Does that girl have a forehead you could park the Lor on or what? Heh he--"

-

Noir:"Adeleine...!! What did you DO to her?!" Dee Child: "We didn't do anything! We just asked if...!" Dee Child 2: "The ground!! It's turning to snow...?" Adeleine: "N...No...ir..." Dee Child: "Is that...her doing...?" Noir: "Don't TOUCH HER! Stay back...!" "...Stay away...from BOTH of us...!!"

-

Magolor:  "...Hmm? What's happening to...?" "O-Oh... Ohh Stars......."

-

""Is ts He un rk tr sa MD oe rm ea TS he ah nT Jo ut sn tI Mg yn Hi eh at ry tr .e Iv tE He ug rn tu sl IP no MT yt Sn oa uW lI""

-

Magolor:  "......Shut it off, Lor. Back out. Cancel the stream. Now."

- King Dedede: "Don'tcha hear them screamin' in there?!" Meta Knight: "...Of course I can! Which is exactly why we nee--!"

-

BZZT KSHOO

-

Magolor:  "................"

Magolor:  "...Boring is good, I think."

-

Magolor:  "Let's stick to boring."

-

-

-

-

Zero III's dialogue reads: "It hurts more than just my heart. It hurts in my Soul." "I want to plunge everything into the same Darkness."

-

Since we're here, I just wanted to take this moment to regale how hair-pulling it is to write Zero III's dialogue!

It starts with thinking up something somewhat fitting for both siblings to say (Adeleine's dialogue always leaning towards sad or naive, Noir's always leaning towards rage or guilt) then stretching and twisting and trimming till they are the exact same number of characters, which generally means making a good guess, finally flipping Noir's backwards and painstakingly inserting each letter after Adeleine's, one by one, until I realize I was off by ONE letter and have to start the WHOLE PROCESS over again!

This happens about three times per attempt. All to come up with a dialogue quirk that NO ONE can read and that I have to spoil what they say at the bottom of the post anyway! XD

-

Also, Magolor's feelings on Adeleine do not reflect my own!! I think she is a good girl (/genuine) and I apologize for writing up a bunch of timelines where awful things happen to her! (...Looking at my Marx, Magolor, DMK and others, that's kind of a theme with me, isn't it? ^^;;)

And while the sadness will continue for a while longer, I can assure you that Apologies DOES end with Adeleine, Noir, and the rest of their new family both safe and content!

[candycryptids]

Hiya! I hope you're doing well today! I love your characters and how you've structered their bios! Since Chuusday is listed first, is she technically your official WOL or is it someone else? Do you canonically have a WOL in the first place?

Also, I find it SO sweet that you and one of your partners both play FFXIV and have characters paired together ;w; Did you meet ingame or long before either of you started playing? Either way I wish you both the best!!! <3 - gardenofballads 🌻

Awaaaah! Im doing pretty ok!!! Taking time to answer this as a wind down from Emerald Weapon Ex Brain Soupage. And I’m so glad! ;W; I think I butchered one of those “Get To Know An OC” thingies- uhh… oh [this one] actually! I chopped a lot out and I think added a couple different thingums instead because there was so much to that that it felt overwhelming to try to look at let alone fill out LOL but it was a really good jumping off point uvu;

And!!! Hilariously Chuu was my First XIV Character, so she’s dear to my heart for being the first one- but she very quickly made it known being the WOL even as an AU was something of a Joke (Her character showed great reluctance and even frustration at having to do So Much World Saving, maybe a side-effect of me rushing through MSQ to catch up with my other spouse [Who plays Talia, though they’ve got less time for XIV these days ;0;] and the rest of my friends who were all EndGame already at the time in Shadowbringers fhdjfjsjfs.) So I made…… many alts. Throwing spaghetti at the wall but I have SEVERE side-character/NPC brain and kept making “supporting cast” types =w=; it actually took me like. 3? Alts before making an ACTUAL WoL with my husband (Ishi’li and Kizuna) (as of Right Meow, they’re in post ARR, but we’ve been working on Keathan and Tuesday together because Keathan was… Keathan’s first character in xiv XD so we’ve been jaunting through the story together and experiencing every inch of it so we can pick and choose what The Boys™ get up to when we wanna focus on them x3)

🥰 I knew both speece during at least high school- but I actually knew Keathan as early as Elementary school hehe 😌 tho the speece didn’t proper marry until… i’unno, 2017? (For frustrating legal reasons, I’m not legally married, but. As it goes. Someday we’ll have money to visit the one state that has legal poly marriages. Also I struggle to remember our wedding year 🫢)

Since managing to make a Co-WoL with my husband I’ve managed to make one other Alt meant to be a Solo-WoL (Mochiie) but I have to really wrinkle my brain to sink time into playing him, since I’m trying to take screenshots throughout the story at what I find to be inspiring beats xD And even still he has an alt-universe where he’s just a side-character for the ‘Main Timeline’ (where there’s a bunch of spaghetti and like 8+ confirmed WoL’s and the Msq entourage looks HILARIOUS in canon, someday I’ll get all the data together and take pictures, but I think it’ll cook what’s left of my brain x’3) [it’s less concrete than anything I’ve posted about before or I’d try to explain it ;v;’ it’s just interesting mostly to see how the story gets stretched to fit around a larger community of heroes than a solo guy shouldering the whole burden lmfao.]

🌸🌸🌸…. I also hope you’re having a lovely week @gardenofballads !!!! I am tossing flower petals into the air around you !!! Thank you for the ask and well wishes n kind words 🥺💖 🌸🌸🌸

[user-needs-new-hyperfixation]

Anyway here's the WIP more-or-less canon-friendly Albert playlist (though there's still some Mycal notes in here, which is kind of a stretch for canon. Oh well.) It's very loosely ordered to go along with the timeline, and since it's WIP, it ends on a gloomy note RIP. And yes, I've been talking about this for weeks and it's only 24 songs. A bunch got syphoned off into the Fanon Albert/Mycal Playlist, which I'll probably also share eventually.

*creaky old lady voice* What is a Sp...Spootify? I don't know what that is.

Brief explanations for song choices:

Cross - religious angst

Fly Away - young Albert building up to that crossroad choice between suicide and murder

I Am The Fire - triumphant self-empowerment music for young Albert to murder his family to 😅

Fish in a Birdcage - Something about the cycle of Albert being caged (first in his childhood home, then in the Tower) until William frees him

Arsonist's Lullaby - for obvious reasons

Can You Catch a Flame? - idk I just think this is what Albert's internal monologue sounds like lmao

Don't Pray for Me - more religious angst

White Lie - Albert & William or Moriarthree angst

Pigeons and Crumbs - chucked this in for the pigeon mention, plus: "All alone but I'm in a crowded room I'm sinking in the quicksand tonight You pick me up and I shine across the sky Till morning then you color me in" is a good verse for either Will or Al towards their respective Holmes boys.

Play With Fire - because General Fandom Rules demand it

Hushh - ngl I literally stuck this in here almost entirely in honour of "What I wish for is your silence"/"My one demand is silence"/however we're translating that line these days

Up in Flames - Moriarthree/Lord of Crime/Moriarty Gang stuff

Used to the Darkness - Another kind of Albert & William or Moriarthree deal

Strange Birds - because I will awkwardly shove Mycal into every bird-related love song and this was slightly more canon-friendly than the ones that went in the Fanon Albert playlist

Flesh and Bone - vibes idk

No Plan - okay I had to stick ONE sexy nihilistic Mycal energy song in, canon-friendly or not. Imagine Mycroft as the cheerful agnostic balancing out Albert's angsty believer.

Icarus - drinking and fire and stuff lol. I feel like this is a good Holmes boys' POV song about their Moriartys

Maybe, I - MORE religious angst (kinda)

High Fire - Albert mourning William

Down - Tower era Mycal where the lyrics are gloomy but there's hope in the tune

Alive - Albert as a child and in the tower

Forest Fire - more Albert mourning William

Casualty - MORE Albert mourning William

Tower Above the Sun - assorted Rapunzbert vibes

[hollywoodsargeant]

i have finally read chapter 10 (another amazing chapter btw!) and i have some a lot of thoughts about things (sorry if this is really long, i just have a lot of thoughts after the entire break up with both of them)

i still love the fact that the both of them are so, nonchalant i guess?, by the fact that they’ve fucked before when talking to their partners, oscar being my favourite in this (i’ve said this before but he has brushed off logan seeing his dick and him come as ‘a requirement’ and left it at that)

logan breaking up with mia isn’t unexpected tbh, i feel like he would know that he wasn’t exactly a fan of mia making a ‘giant’ deal over the jersey thing (i still don’t understand the deal about that as an aussie) and then bringing up the entire fucking oscar thing and her reaction to it (which i get it, i would be surprised if my boyfriend had sex with his supposed best friend). anyways i’m excited to see what happens next with logan (he gets his first boyfriend perhaps??? maybe he figures out aviation??? let’s see)

oscar also breaking up with ben wasn’t exactly something i was thinking of until i got to the entire talking about sex part, i felt like he was like ‘wtf man though we’re on the same field yet you’ve made out, and now you’re only telling me you had sex with your best friend??’ so i can feel for him and what he was feeling there. also i feel like oscar was going to say something to ben abt the entire logan calling him baby thing, especially when he called oscar baby in front of ben, which imo pushed ben over the edge there (perhaps that’s why ben wasn’t wanting to wait or whatever for the break up and just said it straight up)

i’m interested to see how both oscar and logan will react/what they’ll do about the entire college thing, from previous chapters we already know logan doesn’t want oscar to leave him, but could it end up being the other way? if he goes with aviation and goes out of state and oscar is the one that stays in?

anyways i’ve extended my thoughts a bit too much and def repeated a bunch but i’m just excited for the story and what will happen next, thank you so much for this chapter and great work as always!

THANK YOU!!! <3 and do not apologize for the long message i appreciate it somuch i love hearing your thoughts and responding to them it makes me veryhappy :)

see they are both well. not convinced that it's normal to have sex with your friend, they're aware that their friendship is pretty not-normal even if they are convinced it's just friendship, but they are both very content in the fact that they did that and as with most things - it just fell into place with them. i know i've referenced a timeline in the fic before as if everything they've ever done is stretched out on this massive straight line, and neither of them are all that fazed by any of it, because it's just them. so oscar is pretty much like Yeah. logan seeing me come is a requirement in logan having sex with me. casual as ever. and ben is like ??? babe wtf. not sure if this makes sense i am just spitting here

rest in pieces logan and mia </3 he did seriously think mia was being dramatic about the jersey thing and he always thought that he's just not stupid enough to tell his girlfriend she's being dramatic... i'll be real i don't totally understand the drama in it either and it's something i witnessed firsthand but. i thought it would be fun petty drama for the fic. and i am very excited for what does happen next with logan there's a thing i know i've referenced before in short snippets but either no one saw them or everyone forgot but i stopped directly referencing it on here so if anyone can find that. gold star

(sorry for vagueing)

obv i knew i wanted to break up oscar and ben soon but i wasn't really planning on doing it this chapter until i was like. Oh well i could make logan talk about his breakup and then oscar thinks about his own relationship et cetera. which is then what happened. rest in peace to those three drowned fruit flies when i start talking about bugs that's how you know it's time to pack it up... and rest in peace ben. he kind of exploded a bit. clearly there was a time when he was very casual about it but -- and i'm p sure i had oscar Wonder about this -- in my head ben did assume all the kissing logan stuff was more in the past than it actually was, like a figuring-themselves-out in middle school type thing. so he was cool kinda teasing about it and calling logan cute or whatever but when it became apparent it was something that was happening recently he didn't really like it. cue jealousy

college will be fun! they have to send out their applications soon! i feel like a lot of ch10 involved vague college talk but that is truly the experience of being a junior/senior in high school. it was like all i would talk about with my friends at the end there

sorry this answer is 10 billion years long actually in case you couldn't tell i thoroughly enjoy discussing this fic. my beloved fic <3

[mischief-lies-and-stories]

Abandoned Loki Theories

My best friend and I tend to watch the same media, and Loki was no different. However, we no longer live in the same place, we have different schedules, and I am a much bigger Loki fan than she is (so I was much more likely to turn on the new episode as soon as I got home from work, no matter what). But since I want to remember everything I want to talk to her about after we both watch the episode, I have taken to making notes in my phone while watching. I usually condensed these notes into something more coherent before we talked, but I saved the original notes. I recently reread these incoherent, mostly caps-locked reactions, and compiled several ideas I had while watching episodes that I've since abandoned.

"Wait, is she a Timekeeper?" So this is a direct quote from one of my reactions, and I don't remember if I was referring to Renslayer or Sylvie, but I'm pretty sure it was one or the other. Obviously, since Renslayer didn't know she was a variant and the Timekeepers turned out to be fake anyway, I doubt either one is true.

C-20 isn't dead: Man, I hope this is still true; she and Sylvie had some great fake chemistry. I was once a spn fan (and my brain sometimes thinks I still am), and I refuse to accept death in shows if I don't see the body. But sadly I think if she was still alive she'd have shown up by now.

TVA planted memories of Sylvie's arrest as a child; she's really from post-Infinity War: So this was in part when I thought Sylvie was genderfluid like Loki, rather than a transwoman (as in consistently one gender), so the timeline as we know it was the same both events and gender-wise, and then at some point after faking their death, their gender shifted. Either Sylvie changed her name as an alias or as a fem name (or a name that better fits her just in her opinion; she can be Sylvie even if she's having a masc or nb day). But while I think it's possible for the TVA to have altered her memories (it's explicitly been stated that they can do it, after all), I think it's too involved for a side plot. There's too much else going on. Plus I think she's a transwoman not genderfluid.

Lamentis nexus event was a paradox; there can't be two variants together: I refuse to believe the nexus event was Sylvie and Loki falling in love (though that'd be a little paradoxical as well). I think the nexus event involves both of them, and I don't think it's for the reason Mobius thinks it is. But they were in the same place the entire episode, and the TVA didn't find them until right before they bit it, so I don't think it was just them together that caused it. I don't think it was love, at least not romantic. Loki doesn't even seem to consider this a possibility until Mobius suggested it. My new thought is this: either the catalyst is they both make the decision to trust each other (which is not something a Loki does often), or this is the moment Loki looks at Sylvie and for the first time sees the true scope of his own potential, stretching bright and beautiful and endless within this fearless, resilient version of him. This is a very subtle recreation of that one panel from I don't know which comic of a bunch of Lokis standing around and then they start whispering into each other's ears, "You can escape."

(I do not know if this is a legit panel or an edit, I'm sorry.)

Various people being Loki variants-- Renslayer, Kang, etc.: This one makes sense for why I abandoned it. Both have variants (in Kang's case, at least, canonically many) of themselves that we've already seen.

Classic Loki is Old Loki from AoA: His character design, his age, the fact that Old Loki canonically messes with the timeline, too, it made sense before hearing his backstory. And listen, seeing Kid Loki and Old Loki at the very end of the episode? I spent an entire week going feral with AoA thoughts. But the backstory doesn't match up.

[trenchcoatsbi]

I don't think I ever explained exactly how the relationships were in my timeline so here we go:

So Skizz and I were married and in a qpr (as you know by now. I talk about him a lot). We had a kid (love ya Holly). However, we were also in the larger Dogwarts QPR™. Ren and Martyn were married, BigB was dating Ren and the three of them got a child at the same time me n Skizz got Holly (via weird code magic. Might've been similar to the Eggs from qsmp? Could be the noncanon traffic game I keep thinking about).

I am certain I named that kid because only I could come up with Dogwood because obvious flower symbolism, but also I am the best namer out of everybody in that group (I am looking at Skizz for this. Specifically the dog from LL).

And I think I've talked about Fundy before, best son in existence <3 I'm still not sure if he had Yogurt or not, but I do know there were a bunch of other kids running around Helscraft.

ALSO, not sure about this but like. 80% sure Scar and Grian had something going on???? I don't approve of it in the slightest I fucking hated Scar (and Impulse. Nothing against them now, just like. Fucking 3rd Life left scars and I wasn't a hermit so I didn't know them outside of the games)

Also on the topic of hating Impulse, I am 90% sure me and Skizz didn't tell any of the hermits that we got married. Well, Grian and Ren don't count they are basically helsmits to me <3 this meant that Impulse had no fucking idea that his best friend got married to the person that hated his guts. I think it's halrous for some reason - Voidling Anon

(also yeah, we gotta stick together because we still need to help each other find the ones we need. As Tom said, we're going to make our own happy ending. It just might be without a few people, but we can make it work)

sorry for the late response lost the ability to type for a bit (<- forgot to stretch while drawing and all my joints decided to kill me)) anyway awww you're making me want to talk about life series stuff now but arhghg my timelines are such a pain to talk about :/ anyway your relationships sound sweet i remember vaguely dogwarts being qpr-ish in my ren mems so yeah :D but eh idk yknow memory fuckery happened i think i've mentioned it before. uhmm anyway yeah its actually fucking hilarious if you never told impulse about your guys' marriage. that's so silly

[sadkidwarexpert]

𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭

tw: grief, loss.

a/n: if you wish to be tagged in my works let me know.

tags: @daisycheols

I'm sorry that we don't last.

I've tried to tell you, traced it in the dust over your dresser, scribbled it in maroon cursive with the lipstick that's been in my mother's pocket for countless summers until it resided in mine for winters following my 18th birthday. I whispered it into your hair every time you cried into my shoulder, and hoped it lingered around like a perfume from the deeper woods, where I build a lair to never be found. I made the moon promise to keep you company, the stars to lend their faint light that would resemble yours once mine is snuffed out, the sun to cast it's warmth because the frost of grief wears down even hearts of fire.

We're finite, and what a bastard I am to dare engrave myself into the mural of your fate, to walk alongside that path in a parallel of my own. We're made of loss and longing, of a marrow that's stretching across time to hold our beings in one piece, like a crumbling building haunted by lives and ghosts of memories, held together only by a thin thread of humanity, the sliver of experience that ties us all into the same bunch.

The moment we're interwoven, when the red thread of my anger is knotted around the blue one of your serenity, our fabric bleeds the violet of bruises beaten into us by time, and we're stuck in the same frame, while snapshots shutter by like a million needles fired into skin once, because our timeline is tattooed with ashes of love that burnt and held us by the guts. Love that forced us to be, to crawl out of the void and let our fingers touch relief. Love that provided a vessel for the endless flow of tears. Love that sacrificed the bang of existence for the silence of isolation.

Love that rose like a phoenix every dawn, only to die by dusk and remind us that no matter how hard we held on, we could never hold enough, that even if I hold you close enough for my skin to morph into yours, you'll still be leagues far away.

•

©2023 sadkidwarexpert, Eboni.

[sevi007]

Garnered a free day so I managed to play some more FF8, and I just got to fly Balamb garden around and -

So. So so. Guys I have met Ellone - no, not sweet baby Ellone, but adult Ellone! And it’s not the first time we have seen her, I know that face from saving her from a bunch of monsters!

There’s actually a lot more that I could and probably should talk about, but Ellone’s appearance, the way she talks to Squall, and his subsequent flashback to himself as a kid has made my mental gears start turning, and so I’m now off to theorize:

(And I would like to point out, things like “close”, “you’re way off” or “getting there” are all welcome, but please try to avoid any spoilers yet, since I’m playing this for the first time. Thank you!)

Sooooo. Based on what I know so far, I’m gonna go ahead and say -

“Uncle” Laguna and Raine were like adoptive parents to Ellone. Ellone loving Laguna is, based on that, completely normal. But, and here starts the theorizing - the fact that she wants Squall to live through Laguna’s memories - especially Squall, because while the other party members have differed and sometimes been Kiros or Ward, it was always Squall who ended up in Laguna’s body - for me, that means there’s something important going on between Ellone and Squall, and LAguna and Squall. Ellone wants him to witness something. Or remember something? Both? 

So based on that, I’m gonna go ahead and say Laguna is Squall’s Dad. And since he helped raise Ellone, that would make Ellone kind of Squall’s sister - thus the trust. And as for Squall’s Mum? Well I would be my entire playthrough on the fact that it’s Raine! Okay,  At the last time I left them, Laguna and Raine weren’t a couple then - yet! I’m fairly sure they became one, and Squall’s their kid.

I think this would also fit from the timeline, since it was approximatley 17 years ago that Laguna was in Winhill (based on the fact that he ended up in Shumi Village during that time while trying to save Ellone from the mountains close by, meaning he knew her then already), and I think Squall’s around that age.

That leaves the fact of - where the heck are Laguna and Raine in all this? Squall lived in an orphanage!

So from the flashbacks, it’s probably save to say that Laguna went to travel the world and write about it. Kiros proposed that to him in the last flashback. He was hesistant, yes, but I mean it was his dream to become a journalist, and I will bet that Raine would have kicked his ass if he didn’t go and follow his dream (I imagine her to be a tough cookie!) I would bet Laguna’s out and about writing stories. Maybe those Timber Magazines which we can collect?

As for Raine... well I just WAS in Winhill (of the present) and it seems to be hinted that there’s a ghost... so, sadly, it looks like Raine is dead. (I’m actually boomed about this, and I only knew her for like, five minutes)

So that puts Laguna on a worldtrip (I assume he didn’t know that Raine was pregnant, else not even a hundred chocobos could have moved him from her side) and Raine, well, dead. Which made Ellone and Squall orphans - which explains the orphanage!

And going from baby Squall’s flashback (”Ell, I will do everything alone!”) I think it’s save to say that Ellone, as the older, and the one who was hunted for her abilities, left Squall behind in the orphanage for his protection. Which explains why he was alone - maybe also explains why he can’t remember her? Though that’s a stretch. Either he forgot about her because he was too young, or because of trauma of being left behind or.... I don’t know, spontaneous memory loss! Magic! Ellone messed with her time abilities! Or he got hit on the head. I don’t know, okay, on this part I’m still wonky! XD

Soooo. Squall, Laguna, Ell and Raine are family.

How close am I? =D 50 %?

(Also if that isnt’ clear yet, I adore this family. If they are one. They  will always be one in my heart at least!)

[cyrusoeriahi]

Today in huge red flags from kickstarters...

🌌ZeroSpace, via @Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starlancestudios/zerospace?ref=android_project_share

It's an rts with a whole buttload of features!

RTS with:

-open world

- 27 missions

- 40 "side story arcs"

-3 hours of branching cutscenes

-bunch of factions with their own units and buildings

-14 heroes

-1v1, 3v3, ai games

-massively multiplayer coop multiplayer

Oh and they name drop Baldur's Gate as a simile to the game.

Worth noting that Baldur's Gate 3 had over 400 people working on it and to the kickstarter this has *checks notes*..."over 35"

The risks and challenges section is also pretty barebones

1 paragraphs introducing some bullet points that might "influence [their] development timeline." One bullet point is "unexpected challenges" and there's nothing added to that.

They also have a bunch of starcraft pros and personalities name dropped as working on the game which strikes me as odd because the people who are very good at a genre are not necessarily going to be great at developing games for the genre.

They show a lot of gameplay of the 1v1, which is cool, but the advertising lists a LOT of features which is going to spread their small team thin if they keep the features advertised.

Oh and the massively multiplayer is listed as a feature in the first screenshot I provided but it's listed as a stretch goal later but isn't in the "stretch goals" image. Lol

There's about a million other red flags I see in this project but it's 3 am and I'm heading to sleep.

Just needed to get my thoughts out there. Can't see this ending well.

[hummingbird-hums]

I have always loved myself enough

03.05.2023

Hi. It’s been a while. Four years to be exact.

I just finished reading all the posts I made here, which were mostly talked about productivity and updates about my major project for bachelor’s degree. I got my degree btw! Officially a B.A. (Hons) now. I might post about how the major project and its exhibition went in this blog, but I can’t promise anything rn cuz, you know, life happens.

Long-story short, after four years of a completely unintentional hiatus, I ended up here. At the moment, I am pretty much aware that I’ve been going in and out of my depression zone for the last couple of months (has been diagnosed with severe depression in 2021 ahaaa), and I just finished ranting about it in my journal. And then I thought, “oh I think I need to put this in the digital world where no one (hopefully forever) not knowing who I am.” Hell, I forgot the username and all that (+ I revisited my previous blog as well) but I got the hang of it, so here I am now.

I have changed A LOT. That’s the first thing that I thought. And the timeline of my life feels like it stretches however it went in my mind, especially with Covid-19 in 2020. God, many things were surreal, I can never look at the world the same again.

And yet, this little blog of mine is untouched by whatever chaos happening for the last four years. This place, and my other blog as well, are like time capsules, reminding me how much things have changed.

One thing didn’t change, until today: my thought of not loving myself enough.

I have always done everything to make myself better each day in a world that makes me feel like I don’t belong in it, not realizing the amount of progress I made throughout the years.  I have always been a better person today than I was yesterday. It has always been like that everyday. I always thought I never gave enough attention and care to myself, but looking back and seeing who I am today disproves it.

All this time, I always give my best to be my best. I always love myself in a way that I understand that evolves everyday.

The person I was back when I wrote a bunch of stuff here in 2019 had no idea how much I am proud of them. I want to cry writing this because I really want to hug the past version of myself so much.

I have done an amazing job. I have reached milestones that 2019 me could only daydreamed. Thank you for taking care of me the best way imagined through these years. I am very grateful.

I feel kinda embarrassed knowing how much I used to pushed myself with whatever shitty situation I had back then. I am in a better and safer situation now (not economically tho, haha), I can do whatever I want and need with whatever I have now.

I am working my greatest to push the boundaries of my mind and outsmart the obstacle coming to my life.

–

Love, Hum

[dzpenumbra]

2/5/23

I haven't really been looking forward to this, to be honest. When I sit in silence and let my mind wander, it just goes right back to my loss. How could it not? I lost my former service dog to aggressive and out-of-nowhere cancer in June, and my cat over a nerve-wracking stretch of a week that led to organ failures. And I moved in between. It's hard to not be utterly disoriented.

This year has really just been nothing but grief. Mourning. And the transformations, the major redirection of life through massive loss. Like removing a giant boulder from the middle of a stream, it affects everything.

I don't know if I'm ready to talk about my loss. Part of me is being self-protective of judgement, which is flat-out fucking stupid. But most of it is genuinely not feeling okay engaging with those feelings at the moment, a.k.a. needing a break from that tingling vacuum feeling in the core of my heart chakra. So... maybe I can take this time to address why I feel like it's not okay to address those feelings. And the judgement. The tangential aspects of how this major loss is affecting me, rather than discuss the loss itself.

For context, I got Max when she was about 2 months old. She was born in the city where I live now, less than a mile away, which was a big part of why I decided to move here. I got her in the summer of 2006 (I think, I'm fairly certain), after I got back from the shitshow that was "living" in Littleton, Colorado. I might be getting my timeline wrong, it might have been 2007, either way. A long fuckin time. We got through a lot together.

I have been tempted to post on support group forums on reddit to... kinda just find people to talk to at a time like this. I told my mom yesterday, after a pretty big misunderstanding, that I really just wanted/needed to be around people. To not be alone, right now. But that's way too much to put on one person who's already very overwhelmed. Needing to be with people is a very strong feeling, and very alien to not be sharing my living space with a living being. I am, to the core, an animal person. Perhaps more than most people that even apply that label to themselves. I have been most of my life. Though at times I may have been naïve, childish and misguided as an adolescent - Kristoff Krane and I share a similar mournful tale on that front - I have tried to view all animals as peers. Peers who simply communicate in less complicated ways, and think/function/live in less complicated ways. We are just a more complex version of the same thing they are. I don't know if that makes sense to someone who didn't divine this concept from its inception, but... yeah. I learned pretty young, in my huge amounts of time alone with animals, to communicate with them in their language. Through their vocalizations, their body language, eye contact, etc. Sure, I'm not an expert behaviorist who has the accumulated training and knowledge of generations... but --- a group of young people is making a bunch of noise in the hallway... it's 1 AM... But, it's a Sunday, so I can chill on that grumpy old man shit. XD --- I don't have a doctorate in animal psychology or behavior, but I've always been pretty good at finding common ground. Maybe it's something I'd like to study, maybe dog training and that kind of thing could be a well-paying thing I do. I definitely have the experience. I was even going to do it... way back in like... 2012? Something like that? And live in a family friend's barn while they trained me in North Carolina... but it just... didn't pan out, I guess?

Why am I talking about this? The kids distracted me... Um... attachment. Yes. Bonding. There it is. Okay, so since I actually... have full-on conversations with animals... and I've spent the majority of my life, the majority of my social interactions with... animals. Not humans... I have built up very close bonds with creatures that people in my own family view as... lesser life forms. Like livestock... Like... living furniture or something. And I deeply struggle with that objectification. I understand that it serves a purpose, but... I do not like it. It inhibits my ability and opportunities to express love, to bond. Merely at the benefit of my own personal emotional protection. And the pain I feel right now, it is because I bonded with her - with both of my girls - at a very deep level. We were family. Through and through. With all the ups and downs, cherished memories and shameful regrets, that come with family.

And yet, I fear speaking in a public forum, asking for support in dealing with this... because I fear someone is going to go... It hurts me to even give this sentiment a voice... "It's just a cat, dude." I've heard it a thousand times. I don't even want to see it written hypothetically here. It makes my stomach turn. And the feeling that would come from reading that? The emotion and sensation that I'm feeling a mild grade of right now? I don't want that. I'm avoiding that. It's like... disgust and anger and peer-pressured shame all blended up into a shitty smoothie. It's like... the opposite of what I'm looking for. So... I've held off. I know it's stupid, really, but... I have. It's been that important for me to avoid that feeling... and knowing what I know about PTSD, it's likely the shame aspect I'm avoiding the most.

I scrolled up to check what else I was going to talk about, to explore. It was the judgement thing... but there was a second thing. I guess it was the avoidance of exploring my loss, her death, here tonight. A big part for me is... kinda trying to control my dream-mindset. My dreams the night before her death were insanely powerful. My dog, Cerry, visited me, she was so surreally vivid. I don't remember the narrative and I really do wish I had written it down, but... it's okay. It's not really a habit anymore. But I know very well how intense reliving that moment that happened just yesterday would be for me. And I do have pretty severe PTSD already. And I'm a very sensitive, emotional person. And I live alone. And I don't have any friends, or anyone to call. So... yeah. With that, I try to be... gentle, and try to not avoid or repress, but gently and kindly redirect to different thoughts, allowing myself to engage with my grief at a different time. I just really need to make sure I have that different time.

The sleep thing I'm being very protective about - I say at 1AM, I really need to go to bed like... ASAP - because I have that doctor's appointment intake on Monday. 8AM. Last night, I fell asleep watching Twitch, then didn't get to bed-bed until... about 4:30. Now it's 1. Sleep has been a bit rough. So... I just... I'm gonna do the best I can, but getting my ass in bed before midnight is just... super rare. So I'm really trying to preserve quality of sleep the best I can, to improve my chances of making that appointment.

A lot of these sacrifices, and strategies, etc. are adaptations to extended periods of isolation. Like... if I had a girlfriend... and I woke up from a night terror bawling my eyes out, like I do sometimes, especially when grieving... I would feel much more okay with that. She would comfort me, and hold me, and we would find the good and the love in the haunting memory. And take a painful moment and transmute it into love, into bonding. And of course I would do the same for her. But. When you wake up from a night terror alone? When there's no one there? That's another monster. Especially when you don't even have anyone to call. It's just you waking up and crying, scared, mortified, wanting to scream in anguish. And just... being in that moment. Like... a survivor in a post-apocalypse movie. God... like... I Am Legend, right? I only saw it once, wasn't that part of it? I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, so just skip to the next paragraph it you don't want spoilers but like... didn't his dog die? And there was like a whole grieving process, and he's like... completely alone now? THAT is the kind of thing I've been dealing with for like 5 years now. Sam, right? I remember the emotions around having watched that, despite being much more detached from my emotions back then. I looked up the Wikipedia entry for it and yeah, it's pretty spot on... in an exaggerated way, but like... same effect. I just have to take a more... "endure until the emotional storm passes, process, figure out what to do now" approach than... flying off the handle and seeking vengeance. Especially when you can't just go hunt down angiosarcomas and get revenge, you know?

This whole... avoiding dealing with traumatic thoughts until the time and place is right... that thing? It can turn into OCD real fuckin quick. But yeah, I have some pretty clear-cut examples of avoidance rituals in my family. I'm not perfect, but I've made insane progress considering where I came from. The things I'm struggling with the most are... the bathroom bath mat. Where she was hiding and spent most of the day on her last day. And when I'm doing yoga, I keep expecting to feel her nose up against me. There's that sinking vortex in the chest feeling again. Grief. Loss. Mourning. I don't cherish the bathmat memory, that one is very hard and I have to encounter it every time I pee. That's my ghost in the dark haunted bathroom. The yoga one is more cute, like a Casper ghost. But still hard.

That's as much as I want to talk about that right now. It's just too fresh, honestly. I want to fondly share her memory, I love her so so much. But it's still very recent, and the scary and disturbing images from her last moments come back a lot too right now, so... I really don't want to go there right now.

I'm going to go to bed. But real quick...

I always loved horror movies, especially psychological horror and supernatural horror. Like... Donnie Darko, and Coherence, and Triangle, Paranormal Activity, stuff like that. And post apocalyptic stuff too. I think in a lot of ways I found it... relatable. Even if I didn't know it at the time. Those movies/stories are always - and I've been saying this for like... over 15 years now - about the human condition. Night of the Living Dead was never about zombies, it's about the survivors. Paranormal Activity isn't about the ghost/demon, it's about Katie and Micah. Coherence isn't about time fuckery, it's about the choices the characters made in that world, in that situation. These are tales about how people choose to act in difficult situations. Perhaps advisory, perhaps cautionary. Maybe just... observational. It's really up to you what to do with them, what they mean to you. And these horror movie allegories have helped me a lot as metaphors to make sense of a lot of my mental health. When you've lost everything? You're a post-apocalyptic survivor. Check out those movies and look for a good role model, and beware the bad ones, which can display common pitfalls we can sink into in those situations. When you're grieving? Watch a haunted house movie. Sometimes you're the ghost, sometimes you're the one living in the house. The vibe is just... usually very familiar. Like... Mike Flanagan's ghost movies are super vivid and accurate representations of grief and loss, often like... blatantly obvious. And I have found them helpful.

Maybe it would be good for me to try to write a short horror piece of some kind. A short story? A graphic novel kinda thing? Maybe it could be a good way to process my grief. I'll put a pin in it. 1:30 means late for bed.

[luckycheesefoodie321]

I posted 3,361 times in 2022

351 posts created (10%)

3,010 posts reblogged (90%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@mxcrowe

@cottonskittles

@lunaisace

@derinthescarletpescatarian

@lithi

I tagged 496 of my posts in 2022

#kdrama - 211 posts

#extraordinary attorney woo - 193 posts

#spoilers - 118 posts

#korean drama - 63 posts

#asian drama - 60 posts

#percy jackson - 23 posts

#the umbrella academy - 20 posts

#pjo - 18 posts

#manga - 15 posts

#percy jackson and the olympians - 14 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#like i can handle letting suyeon be with a judgemental bitch bc she’s i’ve known you so long i don’t need to be nice to you anymore vibes

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

As someone who has absorbed MLB almost entirely through tumblr and has only watched a few eps here and there but really wants to get into it, I like to visit the tag whenever it trends and was curious about today and what was happening. But as it turns out @buggachat (??) Bakery Enemies AU is straight up just thriving and from what I can tell, is 90% of why MLB is trending atm XD

264 notes - Posted August 21, 2022

#4

The subtlety of Park Eun-bin’s acting that you know the difference between Young woo’s natural aversion to eye contact and her actively trying to play coy and avoid Myeong Seok’s gaze when he accurately deduced she definitely jumped in on the arrest on the train bc she couldn’t help herself

295 notes - Posted July 29, 2022

#3

When Steven finds himself in Dr Harrow’s office and Harrow let’s slip that his mum had passed away and he explodes at him so Harrow backpedals and actually picks up the phone to “call” the mum… and just the increasing distress on Steven’s face as he practically begs him not to bother his mum until Harrow holds out the phone and just the grief on his face as Steven finally admits out loud that his mother is dead…

Give Oscar the Oscar and 15 motion picture deals.

311 notes - Posted April 28, 2022

#2

Fun things after watching The Batman

The movie sets a more crime-thriller, film noir take on Batman that really hones in on Bats as the world’s greatest detective as opposed to throwing in a bunch of action scenes as has been the norm of late for “superhero” films. The action choreo that is there feels so real and like an actual real person fighting, making Bats feel more grounded as a person, and the action set pieces just compliment all the build up through the quieter moments. Literally 80% of this film is him looking around a room for clues or inferring some sort of deduction from a conversation and I’m here for itttt

The actor who plays Tim Drake in Titans plays the scared kid who doesn’t wanna beat up the random guy. Not the same Batmen but how fun if that was Tim Drake’s origin story in another timeline

This whole time Bruce is majorly projecting on the Mayor’s son his own trauma as a kid who lost his parents to a brutal murder. In both Bruce and Bats forms, he holds eye contact with the kid. When Bats comes over to help the people trapped under the tower, and the mayor-elect Bella Reál hesitates to take his hand (bc he’s a vigilante who in many ways represents everything she’s been campaigning against, also bc he’s masked and dangerous etc) the first one to take his hand and thus demonstrate his trust in Bats is the kid. And the others follow (literally that shot with the flare and everyone following in the dark water was so beautiful I cannot)

The repeated use of Ave Maria whether in full form or hints throughout the score as a signal of impending danger

That opening title screen just stretching all the way across the theatre screen. Magnificent

Despite the “I am Vengeance” line being the mic drop-ish line from the trailer, basically everyone makes fun of Bats for using it the whole movie and then it comes back in a sinister way right at the end

People initially laughing at the idea of Robert Pattinson as Bats now saying his is one of the best interpretations of Batman so far, especially in terms of the detective aspect of the character

This version of Bruce reads as much younger than the other interpretations of Bruce Wayne. Like all of them are “would rather do XX than go to therapy” to some degree, but this version of Bats leans hard into this and feels really fresh on the scene. Guess it helps that when he’s Bruce he doesn’t switch immediately into a three piece suit and actually wears normal clothes. And he’s only 2 years into the game. I think it also adds to this image bc the playboy personality is nonexistent in this version of Bruce. He’s attracted to Selina (or at least drawn to her and the kiss just pushed it in a more romantic direction), but he also doesn’t push it beyond the opportunities she has presented to him. So idk. That seems very young of him?? I guess to be so caught up in the Batman of it all that he doesn’t recognise the potential for him and Selina until after she kisses him.

The fact that Selina’s leather suit actually has some give and slight bagginess to it. Like yes it is form fitting, but there’s clearly wiggle room and that’s a small thing but v important I think that it isn’t skin tight. Bc all other scenes she’s dressed in what I would say are very revealing clothing, as part of her job at that club that exploits women’s bodies and looks for profit. In this outfit, she clearly has so much more control and ownership of her body, and despite the typically slinky and seductive image of Cat woman, her suit feels quite practical and more like a uniform or battle outfit.

Paul Dano was freaking brilliant as The Riddler. But I also kept thinking “yo it’s that guy from Little Miss Sunshine” XD

1,836 notes - Posted March 6, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Crap

Pads

Sexy

Stripper

Cramps

All words that you don’t realise have impact until you suddenly hear them in a pixar movie and you double take way harder than you thought you would bc wow they said that so casually… bc yeah a 13yo prolly does say crap and sexy on occasion… and hey periods are perfectly natural so duh ofc the mom would bring out a pile of pads for her pubescent daughter, and talk about using herbal tea for cramps…

but also you don’t realise that you’ve never heard any of these things in a movie geared for children and pixar managed to do it so casually that it made you blink for a hot second before being quite pleased that it’s been included… that things like periods are discussed so openly in a film and pads are acknowledged and named and shown on screen rather than acting like it’s taboo or unnatural (not only the mom but also Abby/Priya?? saying she has pads for Mei)… to theme a film specifically on the female puberty experience… the change in body odour (when Priya whipped out deodorant for Mei??? Love that), the discomfort in your own body, the mood swings, the sweating, in many cases a greater physical and emotional attraction to others… an experience which in the past has been so greatly hush hush and treated like a shameful secret…

Then you think to yourself wow imagine if pixar had managed to include the lgbt+ character they had been hoping to insert in what would likely be a very respectful but also casual and natural representation that does not define the character purely by their presence but by what they as a person bring to the story (betting my life on Miriam and the potential for a Mir-Mei ship) had the Mouse not gotten in the way.

And this was meant to be a fun post about how casually Abby said “stripper music” and how I actually double-taked at Meilin saying sexy, but then i had other thoughts…

2,539 notes - Posted March 12, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[thetomorrowshow]

i will make the sky collapse ch. 3

First - Previous - Read on AO3!

Ok this post is queued bc y’all will not believe how busy I am, so it’ll be on ao3 a little late

CW: referenced violence, food, brief allusion to suicide, spiraling thoughts (from mr. jack kelly himself)

~

Jack had been here all day. When he ran from the rooftop after the disastrous strike, he’d snuck in through the backdoor of the theater and curled up in a corner, shaking and gasping and barely holding back tears. He’d been so close to just throwing himself off the rooftop, close enough that he knew he couldn’t stay there.

Now he hid behind the various set pieces, trying to not disturb anyone who still might be working around here this late. Not that there should be anyone, now. He’d even completely avoided Miss Medda. The woman liked to believe that she knew everything that went on around the theater, and Jack was content enough to let her. He couldn’t be found right now, though. Not when his nose burned and eyes smarted and knees wouldn’t stop shaking.

He would talk to Medda in the morning. It was late now, and all the lights were out, so it wasn’t like he had much of an option otherwise. Talk to her, maybe paint a background or two . . . maybe she would pay him like she offered . . . then he would be out of here, as soon as he could get Crutchie.

Crutchie. His heart practically split in half, and a tear finally slipped down his nose. They got Crutchie. They took him to the one place Jack had tried to save him from his entire life.

He had plans to head there near dawn tomorrow--after he’d spent another day planning things out. It shouldn’t be too hard to get him--or it wouldn’t, had it been anyone other than Crutchie. Any other boy would figure out how to climb down the wall, but it would be impossible without all working limbs. Crutchie’s bad leg wouldn’t be able to support him at all, especially not after the beating he’d taken in the Square (and definitely not after whatever Snyder and his goons had done so far during his stay, but Jack didn’t like to think about that). Jack could go in the front, the only door . . . but there was no way someone wouldn’t see him. There was always a guard or three hanging around, if not the Spider himself. And how would he get Crutchie down the stairs all by his lonesome?

A tiny voice spoke up in the back of his head, one that he’d been pushing down all evening. You coulds just go, it said. Forget about him, forget about all of them. Just go.

I can’t do that, Jack wanted to cry. He’s my brother, I can’ts just abandon him to Snyder!

People don’t stay in our lives forever, Jack, it reminded him. He’d never make it to Santa Fe, anyhow.

Jack couldn’t deny that. Maybe on a better day, in a better month. Maybe when Crutchie was grown, and his leg had calmed down a bit. Not now though, certainly not tomorrow. If Jack was going to leave soon, he was going to do it on his own. He didn’t want none of the others to come with him, anyhow. Only Crutchie.

Jack drew a hand across his tear-stained face, wincing as he brushed one of his bruises. Maybe in the morning he’d have a clearer head, a better understanding of what on earth he was meant to do. It wasn’t like the strike could continue, after all. They’d all end up in the Refuge for sure, or even worse. He’d seen Romeo get socked by that cop, had no idea how he was doing. If they kept on striking, more police would come, better armed and with no qualms about a bunch of stupid street rats.

None of them, save maybe Les, had escaped with zero injuries. Everyone was bleeding and bruised and crying and Crutchie was in the Refuge, and it was all Jack’s fault for getting the riled up about this in the first place. They were just kids! None of them knew what a union was supposed to be, even if Davey knew a bit about them! They were just children playacting at being adults, thinking that the trolley workers were probably having a good old time with no work while they got arrangements for better conditions, not even caring that there were full grown men dying in that strike. People died in strikes, and Jack couldn’t let it happen to any one of his boys, not before they properly got to be a person yet.

So he would leave--no, sleep on it, but he was fairly certain of his choice. Leaving, having to trust that the others would quit the strike and just deal with the raise in prices. That Crutchie would be out in a few months and be good enough to get right back to business, and maybe smiling that face-splitting smile of his eventually. Jack had to believe that he’d--that they’d all--be okay.

He couldn’t stop the sinking feeling in his stomach as he balled his shirt up into a pillow, nor could he stop a few more tears from wetting his cheeks. This was going to be by far the hardest and worst thing he’d ever done. He just had to hold on to Santa Fe. Everything was going to be fine when he got there.

-

Medda had given him one of those disapproving looks of hers, which Jack tried to ignore as his face burned. It had turned to blatant concern when he didn’t refuse her offer of payment. She had let it go, thankfully, and now he was waiting for the base white layer of paint to dry so he could start with the reds and oranges of a sunset. He’d already been waiting for what felt like way too long, so he stuck his thumb to the corner of it. It left a print and came back white, so Jack sighed and wiped it on his shirt--his undershirt, he’d taken his blue button-up off as soon as he’d gotten the paint out.

He couldn’t just not do anything--he could feel his feet itching to go, his head clamoring for his conscious attention. He absently flapped a brush back and forth against his palm, wondering if he could start on another while he waited, get the base coat of that one done and drying while he started on the actual painting of the first one. First he ought to sign this one, though, before he forgot.

Jack always signed his work, usually just on the back of the piece. A quickly scrawled ‘Jack K--’ in black paint, something to set it aside from all the other set pieces. He also knew that the boards would get reused countless times, painted over and cut up and redesigned. It was nice to know that under all that change, his name was there.

He spun it around and cracked open the can of black paint, dipping his brush in lightly and placing it on the blank back of the slab of wood. He could do his name big, more noticeable but with a better chance of getting scraped off. Or tiny, in the corner, somewhere it’d probably stay forever. Then he realized that while he’d been considering, he’d begun painting.

A boy, small, but very clearly a newsie, by his bag. An anguished face. A crutch.

Jack nearly dropped the brush. Was his guilt getting that bad, that he was painting Crutchie out of nowhere? Well, he couldn’t leave him there all alone on the canvas, with such a terrible look on his face. So Jack dipped his brush back in the paint and began another boy, not himself--not now that he was leaving--but Davey, as he liked to think that as Crutchie and Davey would become good friends in time. But Davey needed Les, and Les needed other boys, but of course they couldn’t be painted into this. They were too busy being suffocated by Pulitzer--and with that thought, Jack knew what he was painting.

-

The landscape had started out as any random place, just like all of them did. Mountains, a valley maybe, warm colors and some purple thrown in to capture the magic of a stained-glass sunset, and suddenly it was Santa Fe, exactly as Jack pictured it in his head. This happened with every single backdrop, from meadows to beaches to forests. All of them were Santa Fe, even if they weren’t.

“You ever gonna paint somewhere else, Jack?” a voice asked behind him, as he surveyed his work so far. He chuckled, not turning around, holding his thumb out in front of him the way he’d seen real painters do. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he thought it looked professional-like.

“How could you tell, Miss Medda?”

“Boy, I can tell everything.”

Jack dropped his arm and set his brush down on the floor, wiping his hands on his shirt as he turned around. Medda frowned.

“You are wearing an apron, use it!”

Oh yeah, he was. He moved his hands to it belatedly, smiling a little when Medda laughed at him. She was dressed to leave, not in a costume like Jack had assumed she would be. Were the shows over already?

“I’m heading out for a quick supper,” Medda said, and Jack nodded. One of the shows was over then, the other would be starting soon. He hadn’t lost track of as much time as he thought. “Do you want me to get you somethin’?”

“Aw, don’t worry ya’self over me,” Jack waved off. Sure, he hadn’t had anything to eat all day, but he could grab himself something later. By the look on Medda’s face, she was going to worry herself over him.

“I’ll bring you a sandwich, free of charge,” she said, reaching forward to pat his shoulder. He winced; he hadn’t realized he had a bruise there. Medda gave him another look, then turned to leave. Over her shoulder, she called, “By the way, Jack, there’s someone here to see you. I told him to wait in box five.”

Jack froze. They’d found him. It had to be Davey, didn’t it? The other boys knew that he stopped by the theater every so often, but didn’t know about his paintings. They just thought he knew one of the actors, or was getting food from the back or something. Only Davey and Les knew he worked here on occasion.

Jack put off visiting the box until after Miss Medda returned and told him to get up there before she sent the kid off herself. It was time to confess, he supposed. Let them know he wanted the strike to stop, and was leaving anyhow. At least someone would be able to tell Crutchie where he’d gone. And Katherine, if she cared.

This time he remembered to wipe his hands on his apron, then bundled it up and threw it into a corner. The painting wasn’t done, but he wanted to let it all dry before adding his finishing details. Every time he’d painted before, he hadn’t waited at all and it always came out looking more smudged than he wanted, so he’d decided to experiment a bit. Maybe it would look okay.

He couldn’t put it off any longer, it was time to face the music--or, Davey, rather. Jack knew his way around the theater, so it wasn’t hard to avoid the milling patrons in the lobby completely and skip straight up to box five, ready to talk to--

Specs?

“Specs?”

Specs.

“Specs.”

Specs leaped up from where he’d been perching on the edge of one of the fancy theater chairs, looking guilty as anything. When he saw Jack, though, his face brightened. “You’re all right!”

“Yeah, better than ever,” Jack griped, his eyes caught on the nasty hand-shaped bruise wrapped around Specs’s forearm. “Whaddya need?”

“We’s thought you mighta gotten grabbed by Snyder,” Specs said, looking him up and down, no doubt taking in his relatively few injuries. “The Delanceys been sayin’ you ran. I think some o’ the fellas mighta believed it, but Race thought ya’d be here so I cames by as soon as I could!”

Jack hadn’t counted on telling anyone other than Davey where he was going, but maybe this was for the best. Davey was so new to this, there was no way he could be in charge. Race was the first to come to mind for his replacement, but Race was so stupidly impulsive that Jack wasn’t sure he would be able to keep the boys in line. Specs would do well, though, at least until a better choice came forward. Used to the life, but always a little separate from the others, focusing more on the job than the social aspect. Still, he could have fun, and he was quietly loyal. Yeah, Specs would make a pretty good replacement. Jack opened his mouth to say something along those lines when a dirty scrap of paper was shoved in his face.

“What’s this?” he said instead.

Specs looked nervous and abashed at the same time. “Letter from Crutchie,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I went ta visit last night and he askeds me to give it to ya.”

Jack stared at the paper, taking in none of its details, then shifted his gaze to Specs. His eyes looked honest, if a bit anxious, mouth curved hopefully at the corner. The scrape on his cheek was ugly, but didn’t look infected. Davey must’ve made them all clean up with soap. That was another thing he’d have to tell Specs to remember. If he was going to be in charge, he had to know that Elmer hated the texture of the soap so bad he wouldn’t use it and had to be threatened, that Race sometimes liked to impulsively smear dirt on his wounds to try and get sympathy when it got infected.

Crutchie had written to him.

Jack grabbed the letter so quickly it almost tore, sending Specs stumbling back. Now that he was focused on it, that was definitely Crutchie’s handwriting, starting out relatively neat and just devolving into larger loops and tinier scribbles as it carried on. The paper was dirty, the pencil smudged here and there, and a rusty stain in the middle of the paper that made Jack’s stomach turn as he imagined how it had gotten there.

“I’ll just be headin’ back,” he heard Specs say distantly, but Jack couldn’t look away from the letter. Crutchie had held this, just last night, and he had been alive. Well enough to write a whole letter. Well enough to still have his sense of humor (Jack snorted at his joke about the food, then remembered the sentence preceding it and immediately sobered). Maybe even well enough to escape?

His letter read that he was already coming up with escape plans of his own, which was a good sign for his morale. It also said, though, that he was exhausted and his leg was doing bad.

Well, there was no way Jack couldn’t visit him now. Early in the morning was best--probably when the moon was about halfway done setting--and from there he would see whether or not Crutchie would be coming with him. Then back to the theater to lay low for a bit and finish the backdrop (there was no way Jack would be able to even think about finishing it tonight), then catch a train to Santa Fe and be out of here forever. If Crutchie did come, though, he’d have to do at least two more sets, get enough money for the both of them to make the trip. And of course, he still had to speak to Specs about taking over. Davey would come for him eventually, so he had to come up with something to placate him.

Why did nobody tell him that running away would take so much effort and planning?

The show was starting soon, and that sandwich was still waiting for him in the back room, so Jack ducked out of the box, tucking the letter into his pocket. He had to get ready for a break-in tonight, there was no time to waste.