#and now we dont really talk anymore

[stardust-and-papercuts]

Lonelycore

No one knows where the fog comes from. You’re sure it exists though, you feel it blurring the world around you, enveloping you in a damp coldness that chills you to your bones.

The others notice it too, not the fog, but the effect it has on you.They cluck worriedly and tell you about how ashy-grey your face is and how thin you’ve gotten and how the bags under your eyes keep getting bigger. They tell you these things like you have never seen your reflection before, like you don’t sit in front of the mirror picking every flawed element that you are made of. You lean into the fog then, the familiar cold comforting you as you watch their faces slowly blur away. You are invisible, and you are safe.

The fog slowly gets thicker, and colder. You walk around astonished that people don’t notice the cloud of condensation that follows you. Your fingers feel stiff from the cold and your body shivers from the onslaught of the fog. You see people walking on the street, holding hands, hugging one another, sharing the heat you so desperately crave. Your body trembles, shivering in memory of the warmth you never really had. You put on a sweater. The fog thickens around you once more.

It’s cold, is the thing. It is so,so cold.You wait for someone, for anyone, to give you a hug. You wait for them to say words warm enough to melt the ice that fills your bones.You look at groups of friends and you ache to be like them, to laugh at nothing in the buttery glow of happiness. When was the last time you laughed like that? Have you ever been that happy? Your chest feels like someone has scooped out an integral part of you. You want to yell at them for being too loud; You want to beg them to include you, to make this pain go away somehow. You want so,so much. You look once more at the giggling group of friends and you are struck with the terrible, horrible realisation that you will never be one of them.

You fold yourself into the fog. You are invisible, and you are alone.

You can feel the colour slowly leaching out of you. You sit in front of the mirror for hours just to make sure you’re still there, to make sure you haven’t disappeared accidentally. People no longer comment on your looks, you phone no longer flashes with messages of people you wish you could call your friends. You open a chat and stare at the keyboard. There is dust on your friendship and dust in your lungs and dust on the person you used to be. You have been forgotten now. You switch off your phone with frostbitten fingers and stare at the bluish tinge of your palms. 

It is so,so cold.

You go to the beach one morning and look at the waves sluggishly roll out. The mist envelops you so thickly you can almost pretend the fog never existed at all. No one notices your absence, no one cares that you have seemingly ceased to exist. You know with a sudden, sharp clarity that if you looked in the mirror you would see nothing at all. There is a lazy river and it is uninterested in the way it pumps your blood. Your heart beats in time with the waves lapping on the shore. You are alive, and it does not matter at all.

You breathe in the ocean mist and make one last discovery.

You are the fog.

You are invisible.

Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?

(Or maybe that’s what you’ve always been, have you ever real at all? Has anybody ever ever noticed you? Who are you trying to fool? You’ve always been the fog.)

You walk into the fog.

It’s not cold anymore.

[3-aem]

MY BRAINS NOT WORKING AND THE CUTE BOY I WORK WITH KEEPS CORRECTING MY GRAMMAR THIS IS SO AHAIWIAKSDHDGRRRRHRNE

[flowerflowerflo]

chat is this flirting am i being flirted with

[godsfavoritescientist]

Building off of what I wrote in my fic "Sparks," I'm really compelled by the idea of Ford genuinely no longer being interested in sailing around in a boat with Stan by the time they were seniors in high school.

I like the idea of it not being just a symptom of the resentment that had been building between them, nor it being a dream of Ford's that only paled in comparison to west coast tech, but it being a genuine loss of interest on Ford's end. I think it complicates things even further in some really juicy ways.

Like, imagine going through high school slowly losing more and more interest in the dream you've shared with your twin and only friend ever since you were little kids. How do you break it to him? How do you explain it to him without making it sound like a rejection of him? Without it making him hate you?

How do you explain it without it feeling like a spit in the face to all the hard work he's put into a plan that started out as a way of him comforting you by telling you "it doesn't matter what people say about you, you're going to be an adventurer who sails away into the sunset and never has to hear their mockery ever again, and there will be babes and treasure and heroism, and then they'll all see how cool you really are!"

And all through high school you think to yourself, "he's going to move on to more realistic dreams any day now, and then I won't have to say anything about it!" But no matter how many times you mention something else he could do with his life that he seems interested in, or bring up the challenging logistics of traveling around long-term in a boat, he sounds just as committed to the childhood dream as ever, and completely oblivious to how apprehensive you sound.

So resentment grows, little by little. Because that's easier than confronting the soul-crushing levels of guilt that are building up inside of you, every time you don't take an opportunity to tell him you don't want to do the plan anymore. You don't have a single person in your life who modeled how to have difficult conversations for you. As far as you know, having this conversation with Stan would crush him into tiny little pieces and then he would hate you forever, and you can't stand the idea of losing the only friend you've ever had.

So tensions grow. A lack of interest turns into a bitter resentment that, if you were really being honest with yourself, is directed more at yourself than it is at Stan.

And then the falling-out happens, and it seems like you were proven right. Stan hates you now, and he's never going to forgive you for giving up on his dream. But two can play that game, so you try to hate him too. Because if you hate him too, then maybe it won't hurt as much that he never came back. That he never even turned up at school, or by the boat, or in through your bedroom window in the middle of the night. He knows what dad's like, and how he says impulsive exaggerated things when he's angry, and haven't you both dealt with his harsh words countless times before and been able to dust yourselves off and joke about it later? So why isn't he back at home, joking with you about how absurd your dad acted that night, being impossible and belligerent about ruining your dream, but at least now you're even, because you've ruined his dream too.

-

And now imagine you find out he risked the lives of everyone in existence to bring you back, right after you had accepted your fate was to die killing Bill. It would be terrifying and confusing and infuriating. If he cared so much, why didn't he do something to reconnect with you sooner? Why did he ignore you in favor of trying to make it big without you? Why didn't he take the infinitely safer and simpler action of reaching out to you without you having to track down his address and send a desperate plea for help? You were convinced that he didn't care enough to bother with you unless you had an important enough reason for him to come. But even then, he thought your plans were stupid. He didn't want anything to do with you, not even with the world at stake.

Did he save your life out of guilt? Does he pity you that much? It doesn't add up with what he did in the decade leading up to shoving you into the portal. And the dissonance between the version of him in your head that hates you, and the man who held out his arms to welcome you back to your home dimension, is so strong that you feel like you're being lied to again, like you're back in the depths of gaslighting and manipulation that Bill put you through, even though there's no way that's what Stan is trying to do... right? You can't figure it out, so you run away from it. You don't want to know the answer to whether or not Stan hates you, because you don't know which answer would hurt more, so you try to make him hate you more than ever, because at least then you would know for sure how he feels.

And in the end, after he sacrifices his memories for you, and for the world, things seem clearer. The layers upon layers of confusion and anger and hurt seem to have washed away like drawings in the sand, leaving behind the simple truth: that you two had an argument, and didn't move past it for forty years, and despite everything you put each other through, you both still want to re-connect.

So you sail away in a boat together.

And at first, it's wonderful. It's exactly what you want. It feels like an apology to Stan, and a thank-you for saving the world, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to heal the rift between you two, and it's good to be back on earth, and you wonder why you ever doubted the dream you two once had.

But then, after the first long journey you spend on the sea together, when you get back home to dry land, Stan is already talking about planning your next adventure out on the open sea. He recaps every adventure you had on the first trip, over and over again, and he wants to chat with you all through the morning and long into the night, and you don't have the words to explain to yourself that you don't have enough social battery for this, and suddenly you're slipping back into the horrifyingly familiar feeling of Stan being overbearing and needing space from him and how could you think that? How could you think that about him after everything he's done for you and everything he's forgiven you for? But the longer this goes on, the more you realize that you still don't want to spend the rest of your life sailing around with Stan. It's great fun in moderation, but the idea of your whole life revolving around Stan and going on adventures with Stan and being in a boat with Stan with no time to be by yourself thinking about your own things and figuring out your own dreams makes your skin crawl with a claustrophobic kind of panic that you still don't know how to put into words forty years after the first time this feeling grabbed you by the throat and ruined your friendship with Stanley.

But the first time this happened, it nearly ruined his life forever. You can't let yourself feel this. You don't feel this. You're happy to spend the rest of your life fulfilling Stan's lifelong dream, and making up for the time you crushed his dream, and sure, maybe he crushed your dream once too, and maybe it would be nice for him to support your dreams like you're now doing for him, but you can't say that. He saved the universe, and it would be horrible and ungrateful and cruel for you to try to voice these feelings, especially when you don't know how to voice your feelings without it making other people feel like you twisted a knife into their gut. So you try to pretend the feeling isn't there.

You go out on a boat with Stan again. You planned out another incredible journey together, and this should be fun, and you should be happy about this, but the unspoken feeling you shoved as far down in yourself as it could possibly go is eating you alive. The worst part? Stan is starting to notice. You have never been good at hiding your emotions. The trick to it has always been to convince yourself you don't feel it at all, and not think about it, and that has always worked like a charm. But whenever the emotion claws its way back up to the forefront of your mind, you can tell Stan knows something is wrong. So you can't even give him the happy ending he deserves. You can't even convince him that you want to be here on the open seas forever with him, like he deserves. And you keep trying and trying to hide it, but Stan keeps asking in roundabout ways, like "You're being awfully quiet, sixer," and "whats that look on your face?" and eventually it comes exploding out of you like a shaken-up soda bottle dropped on its cap.

And then it's like you're back at home in New Jersey again, standing in the living room while dad grabs Stanley by the shirt. It all comes pouring out of you, in the worst possible way, with the worst possible phrasing, like a pandora's box of monstrousness, and Stan tries to fight back against the sting of your words, but you're made out of acid and you're burning through him and you can see it on his face, and there's never any coming back from this, not this time, you'll just have to either jump into the ocean or become a monster forever, so Stan can hate you more easily again, and-

-and at the end of the outburst, you're still on a boat in the middle of nowhere in the ocean with your brother, in dangerous waters, and you have things to do to keep the boat running smoothly.

You can't run away from him. He can't run away from you. You're stuck here for at least a couple more weeks, even if you turned around and sailed back towards shore right away.

-

And the thing that compels me so much here, despite how unbelievably angsty it all is, is that it sets up a situation wherein the Stans might end up forced to actually address the decades of resentment and confusion and wanting-to-reconnect-throughout-it-all that they thought they could gloss over and heal with enough time spent adventuring together on a boat. They might end up forced to actually address the crux of the issue that drove them apart in the first place: Ford wanting a little more space to feel like his own person, and to feel like he's able to have his own dreams, too.

It wouldn't happen easily, nor right away, but if they were stuck together on a little boat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by magical creatures they have to protect each other from in order to make it back home alive, then after they had one fight where they brought up all the things they silently agreed to never bring up again, it would probably happen many more times, and each time it would leave them both angrier at each other than ever, until eventually something honest slipped through amidst all the saying-anything-except-what-they-mean bickering. And once enough of these honest moments slipped through, then they would have a thread to tug on to start to unravel the gargantuan knot of their decades of unresolved conflicts.

And then, eventually, maybe Stan could learn that he can have a good friendship with his brother without needing to be glued to him at the hip, and Ford needing a certain amount of alone time doesn't mean he dislikes him or wants to abandon him, and Ford could learn that he can be honest and have a meaningful connection with someone without it driving them away and making them hate him.

[the-meme-monarch]

well that's the worst nightmare I've had in a while

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[widevibratobitch]

something about being told im 'the leading person at this whole academy when it comes to interpretation and stage intelligence' by the husband of the woman im trying (not really. but i mean. who knows) to seduce... ok boy you got me. lets make it a polycule.

[orbdotexe]

Under pressure and request from both Osiris and Shin Malphur, Drifter seeks out the Young Wolf early in their exile. He's not sure he'd say it went well, but it certainly could've gone much, much worse. And hey; Shin was right, new friends are new friends. Alternatively: Two rogue Guardians play horse plinko with each other before agreeing to an exchange of favors.

I finally did it- A Questionably Fortunate Encounter's rewrite. I have no idea how I got the motivation to finish this, it wasn't even half done when I picked it back up, but here it is in time for TFE's (concept's) 2nd birthday! I am significantly happier with this than the original, you have no idea. It wasn't even a thousand words and now it's like 20 words from being 2k, and overall? Everything just has more character + an extra page of interaction and the end note being from Ghost instead of Drifter. and being accurate to more story details! I kept a lot of the parts i thought were funny tho, if moved them around-

[old ver. ao3] --- [new ver. ao3]

-

The Sundial. A ballsy idea from a mad warlock.

Knocking a few times on the side, he can’t help the chills down his spine at the whispers ringing in his ears.  “If you short-circuit the universe, you’re on your own.” He snips, his already uneasy grin wavering.

“If I make a mistake here, you might cease to exist,” the old Warlock says simply, though there’s a questioning edge to it.

Drifter only shrugs. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.”

Osiris squints at him as Drifter moves around the machine, checking the stability. “We haven’t talked about payment.” 

Drifter’s grin smooths out some, sly now. “If you live through this little experiment, you can be sure I’ll be back to collect.”

A simple ‘hm’ is the only response he gets for a few seconds, before Osiris starts again.

“There’s a Guardian you should meet.”

“Yeah, yeah, so I’ve heard. Some bigshot—Can’t wait.”

"Drifter."

—

The Warlock and that old Hunter had their points—The Young Wolf needed people on their side, and it's not like Drifter couldn't use the opportunity. He figured, if worst comes to worst, just say Osiris sent him. It seemed the best bet; he heard the two of them had been on good terms, and Osiris wouldn’t have sent him without reason.

This was, regardless, a horrible idea.

Which was very quickly weighing him down as he waited just inside their most recent hideout; a willing, sitting duck in the path of a hellhound. Then again, Shin would be waiting for him, just the same, to see if he really went through with it. A rock and a hard place, if both were unmovable walls.

—

Eventually, the Kingbreaker did show up—and they looked pissed—but they didn't seem to quite notice him, yet. 

Their Ghost, on the other hand, had stopped at the door, and was switching between glaring at him, and watching its Guardian. It was a bare hope, but he almost prayed for the Little Light to let the Guardian notice him by themself—for what good it would do.

Drifter had to admit, though, they looked like Hell—In both the shit way and the eternal punishment way—And he'd quite like to keep them from being his punishment, thanks.

They were never in the same place for long, constantly tapping their fingers or wringing their hands. He'd almost call it a nervous habit; if the jerky, almost corpse-twitching movements didn't make him feel like they'd pounce on him at any given moment. It gave the distinct impression of a Taken, a fact he took no comfort in. He had told Shin they would be unpredictable, but recordings didn’t capture just how much.

The Guardian’s posture was rather slumped, in spite of their twitchiness, but he was rather certain he was a pinch taller than them; though it could be their hunch. That dead-eyed and bone-deep tiredness that seeped off of them… The Guardian stumbled whenever they walked, off-balance. Injured, maybe.

They looked as unstable on their feet as he imagined they were mentally.

He rapped his fingers on the tabletop he was leaning against, a slight knot in his stomach building on the question of ‘How to get their attention without getting pinned as a threat?’

Questionably fortunate enough, and probably should’ve been expected; the tapping made them pause, and he'd almost compare the frozen movement to their namesake freezing to listen. They nearly looked like they'd been caught doing something they shouldn't be, or as if a sudden red dot (or dozen) had appeared on their chest. 

The Young Wolf then snapped to look at him, eyes narrowed and hand beginning to raise to their sword. Their Ghost noticed, and took it as a sign to speak up; "What do you think you’re doing here? Who are you?" For being the Ghost of an exile, its voice was strikingly uptight. Drifter had expected an edge to the voice, but not for it to be pedant.

"Mind your business, Ghost," he drawled. Their head jolted up a fraction. "Just want a talk with your Guardian, is all-"

Their Ghost flicked back a bit, only to be replaced by its Guardian stepping up close to him. Well… he got their attention, at least.

His gut twisted in knots as the seconds passed like that—far, far too close for comfort. "How about we just… back up for a moment, yeah? Think this all through?" Like he hadn’t. He should have told that Warlock and Shin to shove their requests back down their throats.

The Guardian tilted their head, the action more unnerving than anything else, reminding Drifter of a certain other Hunter, and he was unsure if it was an acknowledgement or a threat. They refused to look anywhere but his eyes, and he swore they leaned a bit closer.

He raises his hands to push them back a bit, but thinks better of touching them. He opts to just slide back a bit, instead– except they match his step. He does not take another one. That definitely wasn't good.

"I'll ask again: Who are you?" The Ghost hovers over its Guardian’s shoulder as they tilt their head to allow it to take the center of Drifter’s vision. Their dynamic is clear, but he tries to focus on them.

"Your old man Osiris didn't mention me?” Drifter tries to say, “I’m hurt–”

"You will be hurt–" the Ghost starts, just as the Guardian grips his collar. There’s a moment the Drifter is almost certain they were going to slam him into the wall.

"Alright, alright—” he tries to interrupt, “Just back up.”

It takes them a moment, and a couple glances between him and the Ghost, but they do back up, if not letting go of his collar. He tries to quietly let out the breath he’d been holding, nerves a bit strung. Their emotions are as on-a-dime as he thought. Damn this plan. The Ghost eyes him expectantly.

"You can call me Drifter; I run a little… operation outta the Tower." Their face somehow pulls even further in a grimace. “Now, I know how that sounds, but I’m not working with the Vanguard—Trust. Wouldn’t be here if I was: Heard about your… dislike of ‘em.”

He gives them a grin when they don’t make another move, though not optimistic. Watching every little change in their expression doesn’t give him much hope, either, given the hard line in their brow now. 

"That old Phoenix of yours pointed me your way, and I figured we both could make use of the others'... skills. I've got the connections, and you've guts enough to attack your own–”

The Drifter hardly has time to blink before his back is against the wall again, this time with a knife to his throat, sharp eyes glaring down at him—So it's like that. Osiris might've downplayed the sore spot; Drifter can’t even get away with a tease. He’s good at pushing buttons, but their reservations broke immediately.

He counts by the seconds as the Young Wolf silently dares him to say it again. 

While he decidedly opts not to and tries to think of a way to de-escalate his mistake, he has… an inane thought: They’re taller than him… Not by too much, but the thought gives him an idea potentially worse than even the meeting itself was; something mischievous glinting in his eye and, as an added bonus, giving the Guardian pause.

"...Kinky." Feeling their hold loosen somewhat and seeing their brow twitch, Drifter pushes the joke with a sly grin and a cant to the side. “I didn’t realize you swung like that, Killer…”

Drifter’s eyes flick towards the Ghost at the undoubtably horrified, near-static chiming it makes as it rapidly recoils. “Are you… trying to flirt your way out of this–”

The Guardian’s expression seems of someone entirely bewildered by a puzzle in front of them. As they loosened their hold in what he could only assume was disbelief, Drifter had to stop himself from laughing—in relief, at the absurdity, or at their reaction.

“Nahh… Just seizing an opportunity, you’d understand,” he says, as nonchalantly as he can manage. There’s a moment of silence, the Guardian and their Ghost both searching his face, and it's everything he can do not to break—Either into a sweat or into a fit of laughter.

"...what the hell is wrong with you?" is the only response he got from the Ghost, the top fold of its shell covering half its eye. Drifter can only assume it's meant to be a mimicry of a dead-stare.

"Many things!” He gives a toothy grin that splits his face as he chuckles, “Next question."

The Ghost makes a show of rolling its eye, while the Guardian still looks like their mind has shattered, eyes seeming to search the wall through him for answers. The Ghost seems to take notice of its Guardian’s… inoperable state, and pipes up again, terse, “So what do you want?”

He’s really going to have to cut a deal with the Ghost, instead, isn’t he? As Drifter slowly tugs the Guardian’s hand from his collar—which they thankfully do not resist—he gives the Ghost the greasiest side-eye he can manage. “Well, as I was saying before your Guardian interrupted me,” it mimics narrowing its eye as he speaks. “I hear you two need friends, and, well, I’m always looking for more of those.”

“Just get to the point,” the Ghost pushes, tone flat. The Guardian seems to only vaguely be paying attention.

“Them and I could both use the support, so I suggest an… exchange.”

“An exchange? What is that– You mean, glimmer?” The Ghost interrupts itself with flicking its shell around itself and letting out a short chirr. “Information? We have nothing you’d want in that.”

“Nah, I don’t want any of that. If anything, I’m offering—You two just gotta do some favors for me in return. How’s that sound?” At the mention of favors, the Guardian refocuses; eyes widening some before narrowing and scanning him in search of some catch. “Just a job or two; you scratch my back, I scratch yours, yeah? Nothing you wouldn’t already do, of course.”

At the skeptical, almost blank looks from both of them, Drifter’s grin tightens some. “Favor for favor make sense to you?” He’s tempted to ask if they’ve got cotton in their ears. The pair take a long glance at each other, and he can only see the slight twitching in both’s expressions. 

“...And how do we know we can trust you?” Finally comes an answer, again from the Ghost, but one that’s more assuring than it probably should be.

“Your old man asked me here, didn’t I say? I wouldn't risk this without a good word.” That, or without Shin over his shoulder. He turns his eye back to its Guardian and offers them a hand, “So, whaddya say? Give it a shot, hotshot?”

The Ghost trills in some semblance of worry as the Guardian cautiously eyes him and his hand, body canted away from him, before hesitantly taking his hand. Their hold is slight and feels like they would rather writhe away from him, but they hold just long enough to shake his hand.

“Heyy, don’t be like that, now. Friends take care of friends, yeah? Trust.” The Guardian grimaces at his words. Maybe that odd adage of insects had a bit more truth to it than he realized. 

They’re more scared of you than you are of them?

—

Hours later, the Drifter far gone, and his Guardian was still kind of distracted. Honestly, Ghost would be lying if he said he wasn’t mind-broke by that as well. Who, in any sane state of mind, would do any of that? Sneak into an ill exile’s hideout, startle and piss them off, and then try to make a deal? 

And why did it… actually work?

Ghost must be losing it.

[moonlit-orchid]

When your friend needs you to be there to comfort them, but you have no energy for serious conversations and so you're stuck wondering if youre being a selfish asshole or if youre justified in not wanting to be the one to sort their problems out

[hauntingblue]

Them doing a photo lineup of the mugis for the battle and when it's Robin's turn she just turns and does a blue eyed stare at the camera 😭😭

Look at her 😭😭

[incorrect-toriko-quotes]

i don't know if anyone's still around from the Boiled Pepsi Fiasco, but i'll have you know the Pilk ask is still in my inbox

[charliecuntcicle]

friendly reminder that karkat and kanaya will grow old and die and dave and rose will long outlive them <3

[needylittlegirl]

ahh i feel yucky

[bunnyreaper]

vent post feel free to ignore

it's genuinely weird being in a place with no best friends, no SO, no irl friends...

while i appreciate everyone's sweetness i genuinely don't think ive felt more alone, because while im surrounded by such lovely people i have no one to call my own anymore

[andromedasummer]

i ended up having a like. 30 minute conversation with some of those "freedom convoy" people. was at the bus stop. they were wearing trump hats. i ended up roped into the conversation because i was so taken aback at seeing one in public i was just. staring at it. ive never felt more depressed about someone elses life and beliefs than when i talked to them.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...