#and then moved to a planet where no one speaks it. after The Traumas

[kidrat]

guys I love them so much

Toby, Lou, and Tzipporah from left to right. minor characters under the cut lol this is a post for meeee

Top row: Toby's friends Josh, Spencer, and Aisling

Middle row: Tzipporah's little sister Yael. Her love interest Sturdy

Bottom row: Toby's parents Alexei and Ruby. His girlfriend Daisy. Who is dead! That's definitely not just Lou pre-transition!

[livwritesstuff]

heyo! loving the steddie dads. was wondering if either of them suffer from nightmares or ptsd after everything they've been through? and how they might deal with that on a day-to-day/anniversary basis.

Hi friend -- took some time on this one because this is a Topic for me.

Short answer – yes, 100%. I don’t think any person on the planet could experience that kind of thing and not come out of it with some serious issues to work through. 

Longer answer, and not to abuse my psych degree, but it’s really tough to say how they would be affected 10, 20, 30, etc. years down the line because PTSD and trauma are both so unbelievably complex – for many reasons, but in part because PTSD can do two things (sort of) simultaneously.

Wane over time

Completely and permanently alter the “wires” (neural pathways) in your brain

I think that there’s sometimes this perception in the ST fandom that every character in the show who experienced a trauma would have PTSD by default, but that might not necessarily be true. Stats actually show that the majority of people who experience trauma in some capacity will in fact not display PTSD symptoms. I think Mike and Dustin at the onset of season 2 are a fantastic example of how two people can go through the same events together and come out of it affected very differently.

(Sidebar: I think Stranger Things has a fantastic opportunity to show how varied the effects of trauma can be. Granted, I don’t think that’s the story they’re telling, but they totally could.)

Experiencing a traumatic event is not necessarily a one-way ticket to PTSD symptoms and/or a PTSD diagnosis – to be clear, this doesn’t mean that there are not lasting negative effects from that traumatic event, but it is still distinctly different from PTSD (in its official definition) – and right now it’s not clear why this is the case. 

I have individual thoughts about each character as it relates to what they specifically experience and how I think they would be affected by it long and short-term, HOWEVER I also recognize that I haven’t answered your actual question, so I digress.

Rather than dive into whether or not I think Steve and/or Eddie have PTSD, we’re just gonna call it capital-T Trauma and move along. You’re welcome.

Anyways, by the time Steve and Eddie (as they exist in this ‘verse) are in their fifties, I doubt that any residual effects of their Trauma would still be anywhere near debilitating. Generally speaking, they can go about their day-to-day lives without thinking about what they went through all that much.

I do think that those effects may temporarily worsen around anniversaries, but even that really isn’t all that noticeable by the time they hit the 2020s.

They’ll still occasionally have nightmares and I don’t think Steve ever fully lets himself believe that it’s truly done in a way that Eddie doesn’t relate to because he never had to experience what it’s like for it all to come back.

(Small potatoes, but I also don’t think Steve could ever own a dog no matter how much his daughters campaigned for a puppy when they were in elementary school).

I think the Trauma that Steve experienced shows itself in his adulthood when it comes down to raising kids. 

I’ve talked before about how Steve has a moment when Moe turns ten where it kind of clicks for the first time just how young Erica had been when he allowed her to get caught up in everything. He hadn’t been able to see it until he was a fully-fledged adult raising a ten-year-old, but he gets really hung up on it, and then he spends the next few years being like – Moe’s eleven, that’s how old Eleven was when she broke out of the lab; she’s twelve, that’s how old Will was when he got stuck in the Upside Down; she’s thirteen, that’s how old Dustin was when he almost got eaten by demobats in those tunnels. 

Then the girls start hitting their high school years and Steve starts realizing – oh, it wasn’t just the younger ones. I was also a kid still and put in a really fucked up position. It’s the thing that makes him truly see how few adults he had in his corner.

Eddie has a similar moment when Moe graduates high school and he realizes that his oldest daughter is as old as Chrissy ever got to be.

That being said I also don’t think Eddie gets as torn up over Chrissy as the popular opinion suggests but i’m a little afraid to voice that one lol

I definitely think Eddie and Steve never let themselves forget how Max, Chrissy, Patrick, etc. were vulnerable to Vecna’s curse because of a very specific circumstance – they were grappling with something internally that they didn’t feel they had the resources or people they trusted enough to address outwardly. Sure, they know that their kids aren’t at risk of being possessed and murdered by an evil monster, but the notion of bad things happening when people don’t have the support that they need is a very real phenomenon with very real consequences. By no means was that exclusive to Hawkins and it certainly didn’t go away with the Upside Down. 

I think that this becomes the crux of Steve and Eddie’s mentality behind parenthood – to make sure that their kids never feel like they can’t go to their dads for support, to never allow their children to be in a position where they have to suffer in silence. That, to me, is absolutely rooted in the parts of their Trauma that re-wired their brains irreparably.

Anyhooooo this is really just the tip of the iceberg imo but this is long enough already lol (but if anyone wants to hear more about the Stranger Things-Trauma paradigm, let me know because I could probably talk about it for hours).

[darthfrodophantom]

Friendship Blossoms (in the wake of shared trauma)

Summary: Nobody Knows AU. A week after the asteroid nearly destroyed the world, Sam is back at school trying to adjust to daily life after a traumatic worldwide event. That adjustment is hard enough, but the presence of her former best friend who was just revealed to be Danny Phantom complicates it even further. After not speaking for two years after he seemed to give up on their friendship, how is she supposed to act around him now? And why does she keep running into him around the school?

Phic Phight Prompt: AU where no one knew Danny was Phantom until PP (or some alternate big reveal of the author's choice). Sam and Tucker are sure that a famous hero like Danny Phantom is too cool to be their friend again, especially since they haven't talked since before freshman year of high school. Danny just wants to be part of the trio again and has no idea how to ask - for Pax

AO3: Link

Going back to school after an asteroid nearly destroyed the entire planet felt so anticlimactic. It felt so banal and normal. In some way it felt good to go back to a routine. The planet kept turning, so civilization kept moving on. People went back to work, cars returned to the roadways, prices for items returned to normal, and now school was back in session. It felt comforting that society could bounce back after such a terrifying tragedy, but it also seemed like no one had really recognized the collective trauma felt by the entire world. 

In a way, a week was not enough time to deal with the emotional ramifications that the entire world had almost died. That an unexpected asteroid had almost obliterated their entire planet and everything in it. That attempt after attempt to destroy or avoid the asteroid had failed. That their only saving grace had been a last ditch attempt by the Fentons of all people and the ghosts that had terrorized the city to turn the world intangible. It was a crazy idea. No one thought it would actually work, and yet the world threw so much effort into this insane plan because it had nothing else. 

She could still remember clear as day (too clearly - probably some newly acquired PTSD that refused to let her forget any moment of it) sitting with her parents, her grandma, and the Foleys in the safe room (of course her insane parents had a safe room) watching the news feed of the crazy attempt to turn the world intangible. She sat and prayed with them and actually cuddled with her mother for support as they waited with bated breaths to see if Phantom’s crazy plan would work. 

She forced herself out of her thoughts and back onto the cracked faux-leather of the bus seat in front of her. If she let herself, those memories of the day would consume her, and she knew that wasn’t healthy. Did she need a therapist? Probably. Could she get one now? Nope, because there weren’t enough of them to go around. Her parents agreed that going back to a routine would be good, that it was proof that the world kept spinning and kept moving and that life could get back to normal. She could see the logic there. Getting back on the bus felt familiar in a reassuring way, but it still felt too soon. It had only been a week, and she felt like she hardly had enough time to deal. Even the ghosts had been quiet and hadn’t attacked, so it was too soon even for them.

The bus slowed to a stop and Sam felt her stomach lurch with nerves. What could she possibly be nervous about? The school day would likely be pretty easy since it was everyone’s first day back. 

“You think he’ll be here?” Tucker asked from beside her. They spent most of the trip sitting in the comfortable silence of two friends who spent far too much time together, but the finality of the bus making its final stop outside of the school seemed to pull his internal thoughts out. 

She didn’t have to ask who he meant, because Sam had been thinking the same thing, and as her stomach churned again she realized the source of her nerves. “Does it matter if he is?” she replied plainly as she gathered her bag and got ready to file off the bus. 

“Well…yeah. Shouldn’t it?” Tucker pressed.

Sam shrugged. “Even if he is, it’s not like he’s going to talk to us.” She stepped off the bus and gazed upon Casper High. A strange sense of security washed over her that the school still looked exactly the same despite everything. She had complicated feelings about public schools, especially her time spent in one, but it felt reassuring to know that it still stood strong. Darn, maybe her dad had been right about her needing a routine again. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to tell him he was right at least.

“Well, no,” Tucker said with a sad sigh. “But it feels like it would be good to know. Just so we could like, prepare.”

“Prepare for what?” Sam barbed as she turned to give him a hard look. She could see that hope blossoming in his eyes and she had to squash it before he was hurt again by their former friend’s behavior. “Prepare for him to ignore us? Prepare for him to avoid us? How would that be any different than any other day of school?”

“Yeah but–”

“No, there’s no ‘buts’ here Tucker,” Sam interrupted. “He’s ignored us for two years. Two years. And you think that now is the time he’d talk to us? Now, when he’s apparently a superhero of all things? No. He’s a celebrity now. He has even less reason to talk to us now than he did before.”

Maybe that’s why she’d been struggling so much. She wasn’t just working through her own trauma, but she had to somehow acknowledge and accept that one of her former friends was a superhero. The superhero. Her former friend Danny Fenton, who had been thick as thieves with them throughout middle school before he ditched them, was Phantom: the ghostly superhero who protected the town from other ghostly threats.

That realization had left her spinning, sometimes into dangerous and dark places. How did this happen? When did this happen? Had he always been like this or was it a recent thing? Was her friend dead? Sure she had been mad at him, but she never actually wished him dead! That thought chilled her to the bone. Had her friend died and none of them even realized it? Did he die and she just continued on with her life as normal? Is that why he pulled away? Did he pull away because he died and none of them even noticed? Was she more to blame for Danny ditching them than she ever let herself believe?

That was absolutely a road she refused to mentally traverse. He pulled away. He stopped talking to them. He kept running away every time she tried to talk to him. He avoided texting until she finally realized that a string of fifteen unanswered texts was a sign enough that she needed to stop. If he was going through something he should have said something. If he died he should have said something. She would have understood. She could have helped him. He did all of this, not her.

A group of students rushing past them pulled her out of her maddening thoughts. A moment later another group ran past. Excited chatter echoed down the hallway and seemed to reach a fever pitch as sunlight streamed down the hall from the outside doors opening. The excitement of the student body charged the hallway around them with an uncomfortable buzz. Sam instantly knew what happened: their local celebrity had arrived.

As if confirming her thoughts, excited murmurs of “he’s here!” or “it’s him!” fluttered around her as students pushed in closer to the doors. They flattened Sam and Tucker against their lockers as more and more students flooded the hallway. Tucker was so close she could feel his breathing grow shallow, and she reached over to squeeze his hand because she knew he got claustrophobic. She was fine - enjoying tight spaces was almost a requirement for being a goth - but being surrounded on all sides by hard metal and smelly teenagers wasn’t the kind of tight space she enjoyed. 

A bubble of unoccupied space formed in the middle of the crowd of students. In the center of the bubble a familiar tuft of black hair caught her eye. Danny walked purposefully through the swarm of students with his hands tucked into his pockets and his head down. The students naturally parted around him as he moved through the hall, like water naturally parted around soap. Or how fish part around a shark. Everyone wanted to gawk at him, but no one wanted to risk getting near him.  Sam felt a twinge of sorrow for her former friend because no one ever wanted to be avoided like that. Well…no one except Danny. He seemed to love avoiding people. Maybe this was actually what he wanted?

As soon as he broke even with them, he looked over in their direction. Their eyes locked for just a moment before Danny quickly averted his gaze. He sunk deeper into his hunched shoulders and walked faster down the hall. The students clamored to part around him faster to still keep that natural distance. He moved out of sight as the student body followed from their safe distance, taking the crowd with him.

Tucker breathed in a couple large gulps of air. “Was that really necessary?” he complained as he stretched out and tilted his head towards the ceiling to bask in the open space around him. “I mean, yeah it must suck for Danny, but did they really have to force us into the crowd too? Horrible.”

Sam didn’t even listen to half of his complaints as she silently fumed. Why did he look away so quickly? Was he worried that their mutual acknowledgement of the existence of the other would somehow obligate him to talk to them? He’d learned a long time ago how to avoid that. But then why did he even look over at them in the first place if he wanted to avoid their gaze? It didn’t make any sense.

“Come on, let’s go to class,” she decided. She wanted to take advantage of the clear hallway while she could.

“Are you sure?” Tucker hesitated as he looked down the hall that Danny and his new throng of terrified admirers disappeared down. “It feels weird to–”

“No,” she snapped, still sore from the reminder that her friend had been through some shit and hadn’t even bothered to reach out. “It feels exactly the same way it’s been feeling. He’s avoiding us again, like he always does. Come on.”

They packed up their things and trudged off to class. The routine felt deceptively normal, even though they knew nothing would be the same.

~

Just like the rest of the student body, Sam’s thoughts throughout class focused on Danny. Not intentionally, but they just kept drifting to him. He sat in class with them, towards the back like normal. She purposefully refused to look at him, but she could swear that sometimes she felt his gaze on the back of her head. At one point she entertained the thought that he might be trying to get her attention, but that was silly. He didn’t want their attention and nothing he’d done in the past two years had changed that, and it certainly wouldn’t change now.

As soon as the bell rang for class Danny practically shot up out of the room. She couldn’t really blame him. People in class knew him well enough that they tried to talk to him. Ask him questions. Pester him with comments. Paulina tried to flirt with him, and Sam didn’t know why that bothered her as much as it did. She rarely heard him talk, so either he answered in a quiet voice or he avoided their questions. Well, he was good at avoiding, so that made sense. And as soon as he got the chance, he avoided them all again by fleeing the classroom. She didn’t know what salvation he expected to find in the hallways because it didn’t seem any better outside of the classroom, but the strange bubble must have seemed preferable to the questions.

She met up with Tucker next to their locker to switch out their books when the mass of students flooded past them again. This time they knew what to expect and waited it out as Danny walked past them again. Sam found it odd to see him in this hallway again because she knew that his locker was much closer to their next class and he didn’t actually need to go this way. Maybe he just enjoyed the walk?

“I kinda wish he’d talk to us,” Tucker lamented as their local celebrity disappeared around the corner. 

“I don’t,” Sam snapped, and she slammed her locker door for emphasis.

“Really? Do you really mean that? Or are you saying it as a way to act out?” Tucker pressed with a knowing look that Sam did not appreciate. She’d been friends with him for too long. 

“Shut up. I mean it.”

“But don’t you have questions?”

“Of course I have questions,” she countered. What kind of question was that? “I have so many questions. But I’ve had questions for two years and he hasn’t bothered to answer any of them, so why would he start now?”

“Well, I was kinda hoping that this,” Tucker gestured to the hallway like it was all the explanation he needed, “was the reason for a lot of it. And with that out of the way, I dunno, maybe he’d be more willing to answer them?”

“That sounds like wishful thinking,” Sam dismissed.

“Well…yeah…maybe it is. But I can still hope,” he shrugged.

Sam didn’t quite have it in her heart to tear down his hope even further, even though she knew it would crush him later when he realized it was forlorn. She liked to think of herself as a realist, and everything Danny had done since high school showed her that nothing would really change. The news coverage of his transformation and maybe an expose news article in the future would be the only answers they’d get about what happened to their friend, and she knew better than to hope for something more. 

Danny had shown them time and again he was unreliable: that when they needed him, he wasn’t there. When he promised to do something, he didn’t deliver. And he had no excuses or explanations ready, just a hollow apology that meant less and less every time he used it until he just stopped apologizing altogether. She could see now that some of that was probably because he was fighting ghosts, and she could be gracious enough to allow that as a good excuse, but he should have told them. He should have trusted them. He didn’t, and he let their friendship degrade to the point where even the shell of their former friendship crumbled into dust. She knew better than to expect anything to change or for some friendship to rise from the ashes, because those ashes had been swept away by the wind long ago. Hadn’t they?

She growled and walked off towards class without even announcing it to Tucker. He seemed to get the hint and rushed after her, but both of them remained quiet.

~

“Do you think he’s trying to talk to us?” Tucker asked as they scoped out an empty table for lunch.

“Again Tucker, that’s wishful thinking,” Sam sighed.

“But he seems to keep popping up around us,” he pointed out. “Usually we barely even see a glimpse of him.”

She had to admit that she’d had the same thought. She’d seen Danny’s face more today than she had the last full week of school. He kept walking by their lockers even if he didn’t need to and she kept feeling his eyes on her. He also sat closer to them during one of their classes, but she also had a feeling that was out of necessity to avoid the prying eyes and attentions of the class. Was he trying to see how they were reacting? Trying to gauge how they were handling the news by stalking them? Well if that was the case, then she was happy to see that her poker face of generalized displeasure seemed to be doing its job because it looked like he was still looking for an answer. A small part of her felt satisfied and preened at his uncertainty - about time for him to be left in the dark about something for a change. 

“It’s coincidence,” she dismissed. “He’s trying to avoid everyone else, and since everyone else avoids us, it’s putting him into our path.”

Tucker shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

Sam plopped her lunchbox onto their usual table and sat down. She actually felt excited about her lunch today; ever since the asteroid her parents made a concerted effort to embrace her as a person more and started buying more vegan-friendly food. She appreciated the gesture, even if it took literally the end of the world for them to finally see eye-to-eye. 

Tucker sat down across from her absent-midedly, and she followed his distracted gaze to see Danny enter the cafeteria. Immediately all the other eyes of the room fell on him and a strange hush settled across the large room. That was a bold move, entering such a crowded space. Danny must have also realized the error of his ways because he stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure of whether he should press on or run. She noticed a lunchbox in his hands, so the need to buy food clearly didn’t drive him to enter the cafeteria, so she had to wonder what insanity drew him in here. 

She would have found some secluded spot and ate lunch there. She knew he preferred a spot on the edge of the campus under a large tree because she’d seen him eat there far away from them time after time. She and Tucker tried to approach him there once, early on in their crumbling friendship when she thought they still had a chance to patch things up. He practically ran away from them when they approached. He yelled at them to take a hint and to stop bothering him. She never tried to seek him out at lunch again. It really had been the beginning of the end.

His indecision on what to do seemed to be his downfall. After a morning of keeping a safe buffer around him, the student body grew more brazen. Emboldened by the fact that Danny really hadn’t done anything ghostly or aggressive the entire day, they risked getting closer. And closer still. They closed the gap around him slowly. The volume of chatter in the room grew into a crescendo of questions and calls and shouts aimed at the ghostly celebrity.

Danny must not have realized what was happening until it was too late. They lurched forward as one unit until they were on top of him. Surrounding him. Touching him. Pulling him towards their table or their conversation. He held his hands up in defense, pleading with them to let him go, but none of them listened. He wasn’t a person anymore. He was a celebrity - an object that existed at the beck and whim of the population to fulfill their needs and desires.

Sam watched as Danny’s individual rights as a person disappeared under the horde of students. Anger boiled under her skin. No one deserved to be treated that way, but Danny least of all. Sure they had their beef. Sure he treated them horribly. But he was a hero. He had saved them and the school and hell even the world and he deserved better than this. 

She stood up and pushed her way aggressively through the crowd. She had no problems throwing the full weight of her combat boots onto the feet of people who refused to step out of her way. She fought through the masses as she screamed at them to leave him alone. She shoved people out of the way, kicked at their shins, and stomped on their feet until she reached the center. Surprisingly, Tucker followed after her. She couldn’t imagine how claustrophobic he must feel willingly plunging himself into this mob of students, but he pushed his way in nonetheless.

As soon as they reached Danny they formed a circle around him. She reached her arms back around to grab Tucker’s hands as they formed almost a protective cage around him. They couldn’t give him much of a buffer and she felt people press on her arms, but she tried. 

“Get away!” she yelled as she lightly kicked someone who got a little too close for her comfort. “You can’t just mob people! He has a right to his own personal space!”

The crowd didn’t seem to have any care for her protests and only pushed in harder. The sound of their cheers and questions almost deafened her and it swallowed up her verbal protests. This really wasn’t getting them anywhere.

“Danny, just get out of here!” Sam ordered as she craned her neck to catch a glimpse of him behind her. “Do something ghostly and get out of here! We’ll hold them off!”

She stood firm as she waited for Danny to save himself, but she didn’t notice any change. What was taking him so long? Why was he hesitating? Everyone already knew so there was no point in continuing to hide it. 

Finally she heard the students around her gasp and they stopped pushing against her. Danny must have finally used one of his powers to escape. About time. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold them off. But what the hell was he waiting fo–

A tingle followed by an unnatural chill raced through her body starting from her arm. Her stomach dropped as she fell, and she yelped until the ground swallowed the sound. She only saw soil around her, but she couldn’t really feel it. If she focused on it she maybe felt like a gust of wind passed through her when she fell, but it felt so faint and non-specific that she had to wonder if her brain just thought she felt the breath of wind because she knew she should feel something when passing through solid matter. 

Something tugged on her arm as she traveled quickly through soil and rocks and tree roots. That tugging sensation pulled upwards and she emerged from the ground and into the air. She felt weightless hovering above the ground for just a moment before Danny’s hand let go of its tight grip on her arm and she dropped down onto the padded grass. 

She clasped a hand to her chest and clenched onto the now solid material of her black shirt. Her wide eyes looked around and noticed the school in the distance - the building they had just been in before she traveled through the ground. She also noticed a large tree beside them - the same one that Danny always took refuge under. The same one where he told them to leave him alone. And yet this time he brought them here instead of chasing them away.

She finally noticed Tucker sitting in the grass next to her, so he must have brought him here too. She also caught his wide-eyed stare as he looked at his new surroundings with shock and maybe a little awe, but mostly shock. He clearly needed a moment to gain his bearings, and honestly she still did too, because they had just traveled through the ground. Not over it or above it, but through it. Something that should have been impossible for anyone except…well a ghost.

Danny must have picked up on their shocked expressions - in fact he seemed incredibly attuned to their reactions - and he immediately backed up a few steps and blushed. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he quickly apologized. His wide, panicked eyes looked desperately between the two of them as he tried to gauge their reactions further. “I probably should have asked and not just assumed I could–” He ran a hand nervously through his hair and ducked his head. “I just didn’t want to leave you there.”

“It’s okay man,” Tucker finally said as he fisted his hands in the grass below them. “It was getting a little cramped in there, so it’s good to have an out.”

She should have felt grateful he thought about saving them because otherwise she and Tucker would have been left in the middle of a dissatisfied crowd with only them to blame for Danny’s disappearance. And she was, but his stupid antics put them in that situation in the first place!

She stood up to glare at him properly and he recoiled slightly. That recoil gave her pause for just a moment. He fought monstrous ghosts. She’d seen pictures of some of them and they were horrifying or incredibly powerful. Phantom always stood firm against those ghosts. So why did he back away from her of all entities? She pushed on and gave him a light shove. “What the hell were you thinking?” He shrunk further against her onslaught. “Going into the cafeteria? That was stupid!”

Danny blinked slowly. If he had been building himself up for a response, he clearly did not expect that one. “What?”

“You’re getting swarmed everywhere you go, so you decide to go to the most populated room in the entire school? What kind of idiot does that?!”

“Oh. Um…” He grabbed at his arm and ran his hand along the hem of his shirt. “Well I…I was looking for you guys,” he admitted quietly. 

Sam dropped all her bluster as she regarded him with confusion. “You were looking for us?” He hadn’t actively sought them out since high school started, but now, today of all days, he finally decided he wanted to talk to them?

“Yeah I…I kept trying to talk to you. Don’t know if you noticed. It just never felt like the right time. Too many people or not enough time or you guys just looked mad. And you have every right to be mad!” he added quickly as if trying to preemptively stop an argument. “But then Jazz told me there would never be a right time and it was always gonna be awkward and boy was she right about that, so I just decided to go for it. Didn’t really think that one through though.”

“I don’t understand,” she admitted bluntly. “You wanted to talk to us? After everything now you want to talk to us? Did you want to make sure we saw the news? Because don’t worry, we definitely did.” That came out harsher than she intended, and even Tucker gave her a warning glare.

“No! Nothing like that! I just–” He let out a huge breath as his shoulders dropped in defeat. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I’m sorry I pulled away. I didn’t really know what to do. All of a sudden all this…stuff started happening and I didn’t know what to do. I thought about telling you, all the time, but I didn’t know how to explain it. And then I worried maybe you’d freak out or think I was some kind of freak or something and I just got scared. And then it just kept snowballing and I felt you getting more and more annoyed with me so I just pulled away.”

“You should have said something,” Sam snapped as she crossed her arms over her chest. Yes it felt good to have an answer. Yes it felt good to have a reason, but she realized that none of that actually mattered when faced with the fact that her friend knowingly hurt them because he didn’t trust them.

Danny winced, but he took the blows without argument. “I know.”

“You lied to us! You abandoned us! And with zero reasons!” she yelled as she lashed out against him with two years worth of pain and suffering that she’d kept bottled up inside. “You were afraid of us abandoning you? Well you abandoned us! You told us to never bother you again! How do you think that felt, huh Danny? Because it sucked! It hurt! And we had no idea why!” Danny winced at her onslaught, but she didn’t intend to stop. “And I think it’s rich that you could do it to us because you were too scared that we would do it to you.”

“Sam, come on,” Tucker spoke up as he tried to play the role of the peaceful negotiator. “Some of that isn’t fair.”

“No, it’s okay,” Danny said as he looked sadly between his friends. “What she’s saying is fair. I deserve it.”

Something about being given permission to rage angered her even more. “Damn right you deserve it! Friends don’t keep secrets Danny! And they especially don’t keep big secrets like this! You should have trusted us!”

“I know,” he sighed.

“I mean do you think so little of us that we would have disowned you or treated you any different because of this?”

“No! Of course not! I just…I didn’t want to take the risk. I thought I’d lose you,” he admitted quietly as he looked down at the ground.

“Yeah, well you lost us anyways,” Sam snarled. He looked up at her and she could see the hurt etched across his face and the rejection glimmer in his eyes. She’d gone a little too far there, and she recognized that, but he had! He kept this secret from them so he wouldn’t lose their friendship, and then he sat by and let it happen anyways! The only difference was he got to control when that happened. He got to do the breaking up instead of the one being broken up with.

“Ouch Sam,” Tucker remarked from the side.

She rounded on Tucker this time. “Oh no, you don’t get to act like you’re the level-headed one. You’re just as mad at him as I am! I know you are!” How many times had they sat and ranted in her room? How many times had Tucker been the first one to curse Danny under his breath because he ditched them again? How many times had Tucker gone on text rants about losing his best friend and Sam could only listen and try to help him vent as much as he could? No, he didn’t get to act all angelic about this when she knew that fury and that hurt burned in him too. 

Tucker didn’t back down against her ire and stood his ground. “Yeah, I am. What you did sucked bro,” he seconded as he turned to face his friend. Danny dropped his gaze back down to the ground. “But is this really the time? All day I was hoping maybe now we could talk. And hey look, we are. I don’t really want to spend all that time yelling at each other. That’s not gonna get us anywhere.”

Sam’s anger deflated because Tucker made a valid point. Did raging at Danny make her feel better? Absolutely. Did seeing that hurt on his face fuel some horrible vindication in herself? Unfortunately it did. But none of that would actually fix anything. None of that would give her or Tucker the answers they wanted and maybe even needed. And if Danny wasn’t going to argue and engage in a good knock-down argument where they both screamed at each other until neither of them had anything left, then she’d have to calm herself down to engage in a civil talk. 

“No, it’s okay,” Danny allowed. “I deserve the insults and the yelling. I was a jerk. I abandoned you, I shut you out, I lied to you, and I didn’t trust you. That’s not what a friend does, and I know it. That’s why I stopped trying to be one.”

“We could have helped you, Danny,” Tucker said sadly. “With all of this. You had to be going through a lot. We could have helped.”

“...I know,” he sighed as his shoulders sagged. “I wanted to say something. I kept hoping maybe you’d just figure it out. Not like this obviously. This is literally the worst. But by the time I felt like maybe it could be okay, we already weren’t talking and it just felt like it was too late.”

“Is it?” Sam asked with a much calmer voice.

Danny looked up with a raised eyebrow. “Is it what?”

“Is it too late?”

Danny shrugged as he scuffed his heel along the grass. “I guess that’s up to the two of you. I just…I really miss my friends.”

His voice broke a little on the word friends, and despite how angry Sam felt at him for the past two years of treating them like gum under his shoe (a nuisance he couldn’t get rid of fast enough until it finally dried up enough to scrape off and discard), her heart broke a little for him. She truly thought about his situation for a moment. How scared he must have been to tell them. How physically different he had become and the fear that would impact the way he related to everyone else. How alienating and isolating it had to be now that he was somehow a ghost and a person at the same time. Her stomach twisted and she felt so sad for her friend in that moment and the emotional turmoil he had to be experiencing. 

Yes he should have trusted them, but maybe she and Tucker didn’t do enough to show that he could trust them. Maybe they didn’t make the friendship seem safe enough that he could tell them anything? She hoped she did, but if she didn’t, then that was on her just as much as it was on Tucker. And despite offering to talk and promising to understand numerous times over text, if he didn’t actually trust that to be the case, then she could understand his hesitation. This was a big secret because it basically changed Danny into an entirely different person, and she had to accept that he wasn’t obligated to share it with them until he was ready.

Sam wrapped her arms around her torso and gave him a small smile. “We miss you too.” Her voice cracked a little too with emotion, but in this moment she didn’t actually care. This was a good emotion, and she didn’t have to hide it behind some tough exterior, not right now. 

“Yeah man, it hasn’t been the same without you,” Tucker echoed.

Danny smiled weakly as he wrapped his arms around himself in a self-hug. He gestured to the shade under the nearby tree. “Look can we…I know I have a lot to make up for, but can we talk? Like really talk?”

“I think we’ve all been needing to talk for awhile,” Sam agreed. And she’d do her best to stay calm and not let her own emotions cloud what needed to be said. She’d try to remember that she may not be blameless for the deterioration of their friendship, and she needed to be okay with that. And at the end of it, she probably had to be ready to forgive. She didn’t know if she had been quite ready to forgive him when she started the day, but she had a feeling she’d be a little more open to it now. 

“And then dude, I have so many questions.” Tucker’s excited voice broke the somber mood for just a moment. “Because this whole ghost superhero thing is awesome and I want to know everything!”

Danny chuckled a bit and ducked his head as a blush spread across his cheeks. “Really? It’s not like weird or freaky or anything?”

“No man, it’s so cool,” Tucker affirmed as he pulled him into a one-armed hug from the side. “And I’m dying to know more.” He paused for a moment with a wince. “Okay, poor choice of words there.”

“Or the best choice of words,” Danny offered with a laugh. 

“Yeah yeah, not all of us are insane and love puns,” Sam sighed as she shook her head, but she also smiled because it just felt so easy. Sliding back into the puns and the light teasing and the fun. It felt so natural and right and even though she knew so much bitterness existed between them, it brought a lightness to her heart to have that again. 

“Or are you just not used to them after I ghosted you for so long?” Danny asked with an exaggerated wink on the emphasized word.

Sam forced her lips into a scowl as she tried so hard not to laugh. She hated Danny’s puns, always had, but that one was legitimately clever. As Tucker cackled from the side, she couldn’t stop the corners of her lips from curling into a smile. 

“Are we here to talk or make stupid puns?” she finally asked when she knew she could keep a straight face.

“I mean, I can be here for both,” Danny suggested with a smirk. There, right there she saw Phantom. That confident, fun smirk. She didn’t know how she didn’t see it before. Well, probably because she hadn’t seen that smirk from Danny in over two years. She pushed that bitter thought out of her mind because that didn’t help their new mutual goal of clearing the air. She gave Danny an exasperated look and didn’t even acknowledge his statement before she sat down pointedly under the tree. The other two joined her on the pleasantly cool grass.

“Oh man, we left our lunch on the table,” Tucker groaned, but his stomach groaned even louder.

Normally she’d give Tucker a hard time for always thinking with his stomach, but her own hungry belly thought back to her abandoned black bean hummus wrap with resigned disappointment. She had been looking forward to that, but she didn’t think any of them should go back into the cafeteria right now.

Danny shifted nervously in the grass, a marked contrast to his previous joking nature. “...I can go get them,” he said, barely louder than a mumble.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Danny, you’re literally the last person who should go back into that school right now.”

He sighed. “No I mean…I can sneak in and get them.”

Right. Ghost powers. Somehow she kept forgetting. That realization had been on her mind so much since she saw the news report. It consumed her thoughts all morning and really, that realization was the only reason they could talk right now. How she hadn’t put the pieces together astonished her. 

Tucker also finally realized what he meant and his eyes grew wide. “Oh my god yes! Oh this is so brilliant. Yes yes, go get it!” he encouraged as he practically vibrated with excitement.

Danny hesitated for a moment as he bit his lip. He looked so nervous, and Sam’s heart went out to him that he was so scared to show this part of himself to his friends. Finally he nodded and stood with some renewed internal resolution. He took a deep breath as two rings of light appeared around his waist.

She saw the opposite transformation on the news footage. She’d replayed it over in her head multiple times since she saw it because her mind struggled so hard to accept it. But seeing it on a screen and seeing it in person were two very different things. One moment her friend stood there, and then the next there was Phantom. But this time when she looked at the face of their ghostly protector, she could see Danny in there now. That strange glow that emanated from his skin hid those familiar features before, but she could see them now that she knew to look for them. A strange energy lingered in the air after the transformation, one she could swear she remembered feeling around Danny before. It left the hair on her arms standing for just a moment, but it wasn’t unpleasant. She could get used to it. 

She was proud to say she only jumped slightly, but she made it a point to put on a reassuring smile as his glowing eyes searched their faces desperately for a reaction. Tucker looked about ready to vibrate out of his skin with excitement. “So cool,” he breathed out in awe, and Danny blushed.

She remained calm and just gave him a supportive nod. He smiled weakly back. “I’ll uh, be right back.” He disappeared from sight, causing Sam to jump again. A breeze blew past them, and she had a feeling that meant Danny had flown off.

“That was a test right?” Tucker asked after a moment when he was sure Danny was gone.

“Oh yeah, it was definitely a test,” Sam confirmed. He was making them prove they could handle this. Those fears of rejection still clearly gnawed at him, and before he threw himself completely into talking everything out and building a new foundation for friendship going forward, he needed to ensure this pillar was strong. Well she could do that. She didn’t care about him being a ghost or part ghost or whatever he was. She didn’t care about the powers or the ghost fighting. She only ever cared that he abandoned them. So if he needed proof that she was a solid pillar he could lean on, she could give him that.

“Do you think we passed?” he pondered with a slight frown. 

“Yeah, I think we did,” she said as she tucked her knees to her chest. “But we’ll know for sure if he comes back.”

It didn’t take him long. Danny made it to the cafeteria and back with impressive haste. Maybe he wanted to get back before they had the chance to leave, or maybe he wanted to maximize the amount of time they had to talk before lunch ended. Maybe he was just hungry. Sam really couldn’t say why, but she was grateful they didn’t have to put the talk off for too much longer. She spent a good amount of time blowing up at him (she refused to say she wasted that time because she really felt like she needed that), but she also needed the time to really talk with him. 

He appeared suddenly beside them, still floating in the air. Even though she knew he would be arriving at some point, his sudden appearance still caused her to jump. Tucker not only jumped but let out a slight yelp and placed a hand on his heart. “Danny! God you can’t–we are not making this a trend. My out-of-shape heart cannot take that. We need to figure out like a warning or something.”

Danny laughed as he sat cross-legged in the air. That flash of light transformed him back into himself - or rather the other form of himself - and he plopped down onto the grass beside them. He passed out their lunchboxes while a slight smile played across his lips. He seemed more comfortable with them, more like his older self. If he hadn’t just turned visible, floated in the air, and summoned a ring of light around his waist, Sam would have thought it was two years ago by how easy it felt to sit together as a trio again. They must have passed the test.

With a deep breath Danny looked at both of his friends. “Alright, let’s talk.”

It wouldn’t be perfect. It wouldn’t be easy. A lot of bad blood still existed between them, and one conversation wouldn’t wash away all of it. But it was a start. Maybe they could get back to where they were before, or maybe that friendship could blossom into something even better now that they had a shared understanding between each other - that remained to be seen. But knowing that they had a chance to talk, really talk, and air out their grievances and misunderstandings filled Sam with a warmth she hadn’t felt in years. Maybe she could finally have her friend back. And for the first time since the threat of that deadly asteroid shook the very foundation of the world, Sam actually had a feeling things would be okay. Life would move on, life would get better, and she would get better with her friend back at her side. Because sitting in the shade of the same tree in a circle with her two best friends made everything feel right in the world once again. 

Note: Thanks for reading everyone! I had a lot of fun with this one. It's my first foray into a Nobody Knows AU and I really enjoyed it! Also there's no way you could dangle a prompt that's a post-reveal and allows me to show the student body's reaction to Danny post-reveal without me latching onto it.

[ashgunnywolf]

Being a freak of nature is hard. Being the freak of nature spawn of two other freaks of nature is harder. Being the manifestation of the trauma of the two biggest fucking idiots on the planet is downright unbearable. Being stuck in a damned thermos for fucking YEARS? Torture.

It's only natural to want to burn all of existence to the ground. To make everyone else hurt exactly as much as he does. Who cares about the universe? No one who lives there ever loved him. Not all of him. Not the ugly parts.

And there's nothing left of him but ugly parts.

Danny, fool that he is, couldn't bear the vision of what he could become, so he quite literally bottled him up and ripped him out of reality and asked the undead god of time to pretty please keep this awful thing on your shelf where I don't have to look at it.

He couldn't even sleep in the thermos. Did time even pass outside the insulated metal walls of the thermos, in the halls of Clockwork's lair? It felt like eternity. Existing without sensation, drifting in limbo, unable to even move... Surely this was hell. What he deserved.

And when confronted with that wicked thermos again, all the oceans of anger and rage and hatred parted, and everyone could see what he really was.

Lonely. And scared.

He didn't want to be alone again.

He wasn't a version of Danny that was driven to madness. He was a Vlad who refused to accept that he was all alone, and he was a Danny who couldn't bear the reality of how alone he really was.

And more than that, he was that kindred energy drawn together into one being.

How dare others have families? How could anyone even think to feel things like joy and comfort when he was so alone? Didn't anyone CARE?!

And then this reality's Vlad gave him a body. He looked like Danny again. He was human again, something that can eat and sleep and shit.

When he was pulled from the stasis tank and given a towel to wipe the slime off his skin - he had SKIN again, real human skin with blood vessels and a pleasant pinkish hue instead of undead grey - Vlad called him Daniel.

"How do you feel, Daniel?"

He winced despite himself.

"What is it?"

"I... I don't know what to call myself," he admitted. "I AM Danny, but you know as well as I that half of me is you."

Vlad furrowed his brow. "I see." He sat in silence for a moment, then asked, "Would you like to choose a name? It doesn't have to be right now."

He shrugged. "I suppose."

Vlad placed a hand on his shoulder. "I can't imagine what you feel right now. You've been through so much..."

He wrapped his arms around himself, and it struck him how natural it felt to be so small again. "You know some of it. You lived it, to a point."

"Right." Vlad slouched, looking away. "Driven by what I thought was vengeance. But all along, I was just afraid of accepting the truth. That I was alone."

He interjected, "So was Danny. He was driven to cleaving himself in two because he couldn't bear the loneliness either."

He continued, "The two of you are more alike than you realize. Not only because you're both half-ghost. You're two of a kind. Why else would the worst parts of the two of you fuse so seamlessly... into this?" He gestured at himself. "Selfish, petty, vindictive... lonely..."

Vlad took the towel and ruffled it over his soaked hair. "I wanted Daniel to be my son. Not just to punish Jack. I truly wanted him by my side."

He chuckled. "I remember." He drummed his fingers on his knee, feeling the bones vibrate under his flesh from the gentle impact.

"If it's any consolation, he wanted you in his own way." He shrugged. "I can't speak to how he feels about you now, after everything that's happened..."

"That's alright."

"...but if I were to guess, I'd say part of him is still drawn to you."

Vlad raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

He was about to reply when his stomach gurgled. His eyebrows shot upward and he clutched his gut. "I'm... hungry."

A small smile crept onto Vlad's face. "So you are. What would you like to eat?"

He looked down at his feet and thought about it. "I don't know. What would you eat?"

"I was planning to have lobster with bechamel and a side of asparagus."

He nodded slowly. "That sounds good."

Vlad laughed. "Better than Daniel's usual diet of Nasty Burger, right?"

He snarled, baring his teeth - flat human teeth, not his fangs, so some of the bite was lost.

"Not a fan of Nasty Burger? Neither am I."

He glared at Vlad. "I do NOT want to talk about that."

Vlad held up his hands in surrender. "Fair enough."

Lunch... was nice. He hadn't realized how much he missed eating. Properly eating, not just tearing people's flesh with his teeth.

Vlad kept looking up at him from across the table and smiling. He tried hiding it from him, only doing it when he thought he wasn't looking, but it was obvious.

He didn't hold it against the man. He enjoyed the company, too. It was nice to not be alone anymore.

[magadauthan]

There was a lot of (justified) fandom fussing about the changes to Meryl's character in Tristamp. She's junior to a grumpy old drunk, where before she was the HBIC. She's as wet behind the ears as it gets and very naïve to the realities of the NML outback. She doesn't have any derringers. She's even shorter. And where is Milly wtf.

We all know by now that Tristamp is a reinterpretation and kinda-sorta a prequel to the main storyline, so some of those concerns have been addressed.

Meryl is the Everyman of the series and represents the viewer, and we grow alongside her as she learns about what props up her sheltered previous life in November. She's a cub reporter, so the expository monologuing that takes place when she and Roberto are around can be partially excused. She's finding out about the world, and gumption is all she has to run on. And sass. Lots of sass.

One major difference for her character arc is her personal tragedy. '98 Meryl and Trimax Meryl are office ladies who either got assigned the Vash detail or applied for it; Tristamp Meryl chose her story, as far as we know. '98 Meryl doesn't go through a major trauma other than what happens with Legato, and in Trimax, Vash is the trauma when he inadvertently downloads his memories into her.

Tristamp Meryl can't hold on to Tonis, and she loses her innocence in that moment when all her book learning and good intentions can't save him from losing his arm and falling. From then on, she has to live with the guilt, the same way Vash lives with his guilt over everyone who's suffered from associating with him and his own good intentions gone wrong (Rollo). Her burden is her own; she's not bearing it on behalf of Vash.

As the series moves on, she's told many times to stop, to back off, to go home, and she bears that additional burden when Roberto ultimately sacrifices himself for her persistence. Meryl tells Roberto he can leave, but he's no fool; she'll get wiped out in no time. He's not going to leave her out there by herself, and Vash and Wolfwood aren't going to look after her. That's not their job; it's his job. Meryl wants the scoop, in the classic teacher's pet overachiever paradigm. Roberto is there because his bosses said he had to keep her from getting herself killed in the process. He gets killed instead.

All of this is to say that Tristamp Meryl and her motivations have gone off in a very different direction than either of her progenitors, in ways that will keep her central to the plot. Which is a good thing - one criticism of Trimax is that the insurance girls disappear for long periods of time (not for nothing, but Livio and Elendira had a metaphorical peeing contest for an entire tankoubon.)

Zazie's interest in Meryl was another new wrinkle. Zazie is the voice of the planet, and it stands to reason that they felt more concordance with Nai. He styles himself as the speaker for the hivemind of Plants, which they understand on an instinctive level, and unlike the interloper humans, his mission statement is to eschew the rapacious consumption shown by the human trash. Sounds like a good deal, right? That's until Nai shows his hand and demonstrates that he does not give one single shit about anything but his agenda, and he doesn't mind wiping out the Wams along with the humans. It's the first time we see Zazie get worried. Maybe they made a bad bet.

They know Meryl-as-reporter and that her role is to speak to humans, which is what they're used to with Nai. She and they know the truth about JuLai and what Vash was trying to do. So, they pick Meryl as their new liaison with humankind, warning her that the bet has to pay off this time.

And Meryl of all people knows that trying isn't enough.

Her character design reflects her tragedy. She's wearing sunglasses, which may be a style choice but can also represent that she has something to hide. She's gone from wanting to be respectable to ditching her assignment and sneaking off to JuLai to pay her respects. She gets threats from her superiors about getting busted down to insurance duty for insubordination. She chooses to earn those derringers. Meryl Stryfe is the rebel who champions the weirdos, and she didn't do it for Vash; she did it for herself.

With all that in mind, it will be interesting to see how her relationship with Vash is different this time. I'd argue that they aren't close in Tristamp.

...yet.

[syndullqs]

𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥 — 𝒆𝒛𝒓𝒂 𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒅𝒈𝒆𝒓

summary — your scars have never been what you’d consider beautiful, until ezra bridger sees them

warnings — gn!reader, mentions of injury & past trauma, fluff, scars

requested by — @juliajempire

𝐘𝐎𝐔’𝐕𝐄 𝐀𝐋𝐖𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐊𝐄𝐏𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌 𝐇𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐄𝐍, your scars. a stain on your skin that you can never seem to get off, no matter how badly you wanted them to go away. birthed from years of war on your home planet, your scars were something that you were ashamed of. the loss they represented was something you didn’t wish to remember.

how you managed to keep them hidden for so long was something you asked yourself every day. living on the ghost with the ghost crew didn’t provide much privacy; at least you bunked with sabine.

she was the only one that knew, understandably. she was the only one that had seen them.

“you know, there’s no need to hide them,” sabine would softly encourage. you would shake your head.

“there is every need to hide them,” you didn’t like how they made you look; broken. you weren’t broken. you weren’t something to be fixed. you were just as capable as anyone else, even with scarred skin.

there was only one scar people could see if they looked hard enough. the tip of the scar stretched in front of your ear, but the rest of it ran down your collar bone. shrapnel would do that to you. ezra bridger had an eye for detail, and you hated it.

“where’d you get that?” he asked innocently, referring to the scar he barely saw.

“an accident,” you mumbled. you hated how curious he was and how he constantly wanted to know who you were. you didn’t blame him, per se. none of the crew knew that much about you.

“oh,” ezra, as he got older, knew when he needed to stop talking. relatively speaking. there were times where his mouth ran faster than his brain or his common sense. “i’m sorry,”

“not your fault, ezra,” you hummed softly, leaning back against the booth you both were sat in. you could feel his eyes on you still, but you didn’t give in; you knew what he wanted to know.

after a while, ezra pulled his eyes away but he didn’t move.

“i’ve always believed that scars were beautiful,” he blurted. you snapped your head in his direction. was he delusional?

“this jedi training is getting to your head,” you scoffed. you wanted to move, but something kept you there. something kept you glued to the cushions you sat on.

“no! i’m serious! they tell stories, stories we can’t always say with our mouths,” he was sounding strangely philosophical, but you just kept your eyes on him. no one’s told you your scars were beautiful and meant it.

“you’ve not seen my scars,”

“no, but i can sense them. through the force.” you raised an eyebrow at him, silently asking if he was being serious. based on his unchanging expression, he was. you were silent, processing his words. he’s not said anything to you about them, but how long as he known?

“it’s not the story that’s bothering you, though,” he pointed out. you rolled your eyes and sat forwards, placing your hands over your face. blasted jedi.

“scars aren’t pretty, ezra. they’re not exactly alluring,” you reasoned with a heavy heart. it was true; your scars made you feel like a monster. he didn’t see the ones that littered your back, the large on that cut deep across your collar bone and interrupted the peaceful harmony on your face. he didn’t see those. you did. you felt them.

“i’m,” you stopped yourself, feeling your chest tighten with the introduction of an old enemy, “damaged,” you managed.

“you’re experienced,” he corrected, “and for the record, your beauty never, ever, scared me,” he sounded lighthearted, a cheery tone to his voice but you were stunned. you lifted your eyes to meet his, your expression soft but broken.

“you think i’m beautiful?” you asked. even though you hated being this vulnerable, there really wasn’t another choice.

“i do,” he affirmed. you flicked your eyes away for a moment, allowing yourself to relish in the reality that your scars weren’t ugly. they didn’t make you ugly. it just meant that your story was painful, but they were marks of perseverance. maybe being vulnerable was good for the soul.

“thank you,” you hummed. he laid his hand on top of yours with a bright smile.

“anytime,”

THIS TOOK ME FOREVER IM SO SORRY also i apologize it’s so short i wrote this in between classes haha, so i hope you enjoy!!

[ursaspecter]

Danny Phantom a Glitch in Time Spoiler Free First Impressions Review

I'm in the hospital right now, so I won't be able to really sink my teeth into any analysis yet so bear with me on that front. But oh my god what a way to continue the series after 16 years of being cancelled!

I can definitely tell that this was made by and for fans of the show, and they had fun doing it too! Is it a groundbreaking mindblowing story? No, but I don't think Danny Phantom needs to be either of those things. It's a fun campy teen superhero drama comedy. There are some darker elements to it, but at the end of the day it's a lighthearted romp and I think it's important to keep that in mind!

That being said I think this is a great start to hopefully a series of these graphic novels. Danny Phantom has always took inspiration from comics like Spider-Man, so I think it's only fitting that these characters work so well in this medium. I also think it's a great way to make the series more accessable seeing as the original show does has its problems with flashing lights and overstimulation. The comic medium takes away those problems and gives the characters some room to breathe.

Speaking of characters, it's like they're taken right from the show and put into the page! I can't tell you how refreshing it is to see these characters actually be in character instead of what the fandom thinks their character is. Of course I loved seeing Dan again, or I guess he's Phantom now officially? I always wanted to see his return ever since I was 12 watching the show for the first time, but he never showed up! Well, now my 12 year old self can rest easy knowing he has such a great return to the series.

The art is just amazing as well. I love that the designs are updated but still stay true to Steven Silver's original work. Everyone feels more expressive and emotional, and the poses feel more fluid and dynamic. I think one limitation of the show's art style is how stiff and firm the characters felt.

Without getting too much into spoiler territory, I really appreciate how this decided to address Phantom Planet. Like it or not, it (and Season 3 as a whole) are still part of the series. It happened and we just have to accept that. Or maybe we don't anymore thanks to the ending! In any case, I think it was a smart way to handle the giant disasteroid elephant in the room so we can move on.

It was a bit of a quick read, but keep in mind this is intended for kids, and I'm an adult with an adult reading level. And that's perfectly fine! I'd rather have an action comic be snappy and have more punch than it overstay its welcome with a 900 page in depth character study of everyone's childhood trauma. It does a good job of being what it is, and I can't wait to see where the series goes next!

Also there was a cowboy part. Y'all know I love my cowboys. As soon as I get discharged and back home I'm gonna draw the gang in their western outfits. Except a little more historically accurate. Seriously, where 👏 were 👏 the 👏 suspenders 👏

Overall I give it a solid 7.5/10 based on my first read!

[lesbianmelkor]

THE WHORE SLEEPS BADLY: a playlist for Emilio Sandoz

notes on songs under the cut!! emilio art credit to @ferretteeth

Alone Together - Fall Out Boy

this is the road to ruin and we´re starting at the end!!! emilio deserves to have some angsty music and also. this song is about being alone without being alone and being trapped and being loved for the worst things about yourself. i don´t know where i´m going but i dont think i´m coming home!!

2. Be Afraid - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

this is a song about feeling like g-d is ignoring you and feeling like you´re not living up to your potential and also the lyric "we´ve been testing you and you failed to see how long that you could hold it in before you screamed, but you only exhaled" g-ddddddd.

3. Bite the Hand - Boygenius

another song about emilio´s relationship with g-d. "i can´t love you how you want me to"?? he comes home and he can´t do it anymore!! it´s gone!! he´ll bite the hand that feeds him!!! also. "i can´t hear you, you´re too far away" cause he left g-d behind him on rakhat.

4. Butchered Tongue - Hozier

This is actually a pre-priesthood linguistics song for emilio!! minority culture always having to speak in another language than your own, especially for taino emilio... and then speaking these languages that literally nobody else on the planet speaks!! crazy

5. Colorblind - Counting Crows

literally just listen to this song and tell me this isn´t how emilio feels. "i am covered in skin, no one gets to come in" and then the repetition of "i am ready i am fine"?? im pulling my hair out.

6. Cringe - Matt Maeson

so this is actually the stripped version which makes me crazy in its own right but. "oh i make you cringe now. don´t i make you cringe now?" matt said this song is about leading a lifestyle that the people around you don´t approve of and it just. this one. just trust me.

7. Cry for Judas - the Mountain Goats

you get it. you get it. "mistreat your altar boys long enough and this is what you get." "i´m still here but all is lost". it was ruined!! all was lost!! he thinks he is judas betraying g-d!!! you know what i mean.

8. Floating in the Forth - Frightened Rabbit

so the lead singer of frightened rabbit committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the firth of forth and he wrote this song about doing that before he did that and it just. just. it´s so important also remember this it comes up three songs later.

9. Graceless - The National

"G-D LOVES EVERYBODY, DON´T REMIND ME". this is a song about being in the world without being fully present and it kills me.

10. Leave My Body - Florence + the Machine

from the first line: "i´m gonna be released from behind these lines, and i don´t care whether i live or die" to the last: "moving up to higher ground, your history keeps pulling me down", this is a song about emilio trying to move forward as everyone keeps forcing him to relive what happened over and over.

11. The Modern Leper - Julien Baker

hey remember when i said remember the frightened rabbit trivia! this is from the cover album they released after their lead singer killed himself and it is sooooooo. this is a song about being fundamentally broken and diseased and the rest of the world ignores it but you know you´re unlovable. "i am ill but im not dead and i don´t know which of those i´d prefer"!!!

12. Never Quite Free - the Mountain Goats

this is a song about knowing that the trauma still hangs over you and you´ll never be able to escape it and it makes me cry. anyway. "it gets okay to praise the day, believe in sheltering skies and stable earth, but hear his breath come through his teeth". emilio is trying so hard to build a better life and sometime it just won´t happen!!

13. Prayer in Open D - Emmylou Harris

again from the first lyric to the last, this is a song about emilio sandoz. "there´s a valley of sorrow in my soul, where every night i hear the thunder roll like the sound of a distant gun over all the damage i have done" and it Gets Worse From There!!

14. Relative Fiction - Julien Baker

"cause i don´t need a savior i need you to take me home"!!! the religious trauma HITS when you´re trying so hard to be good for a g-d you no longer believe in!!!

15. Spent Gladiator 2 - the Mountain Goats

"stay alive. maybe spit some blood at the camera. just stay alive" what if your life and your pain was a spectacle and you dont know how to escape and you don´t even know what escape would look like. anyway.

16. Sun Bleached Flies - Ethel Cain

hey girls. hey girls. did you know g-d loves you but not enough to save you!! anyway religious trauma and having fallen in the eyes of g-d and not being able to fix it and just wanting to be safe and go home. "if it´s meant to be then it will be. i forgive it all as it comes back to me"!!! praying to go back to a home you know you can never return to. i am unwell.

17. Televangelist - Julien Baker

i hear you saying "jordan this is the third julien baker song on here" and all i can say is gay ppl with religious trauma understand emilio sandoz better than anyone else. anyway. "am i a masochist screaming televangelist clutching my crucifix of white noise and static. all my prayers are just apologies." you know what i mean.

18. 24 Frames - Jason Isbell

this is once again a song about g-d abandoning you!! "you thought g-d was an architect now you know he´s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow". it´s soooo good.

in conclusion: i am mentally unwell please appreciate the fruits of my insanity.

[shwoo]

🌵🍰 submitted: sorry theres so many, there were too many good questions! 📝, 🫂, 💕, 🌵, 🩷, ⌚

Oh, awesome, thanks! I... may have written too much in response.

(Bugsnax ask meme)

📝: Who is your favorite Grumpus to WRITE FOR?

This was hard! I'd say that Floofty is the easiest/most comfortable to write. There's something about their narrowly focused worldview and accidental rudeness that makes writing them feel very natural. The deliberate rudeness I do have to think about, though.

But the most fun is probably Clumby. I enjoy the contrast of a grumpy, pragmatic character with a ton of trauma and conflicting loyalties who wants to do the right thing, but isn't necessarily going to be nice about it. I'm speculating on some of those character traits, but I'm not pulling them out of nowhere.

Also, Chandlo, Snorpy and the Journalist are really fun to write as a trio. I think the Journalist has just enough in common with both Chandlo and Snorpy to bring out sides of them they wouldn't normally show to each other directly.

🫂: What grumpus would give the best hugs?

Well, apparently not Snorpy. Probably Chandlo or Gramble. Out of the characters with long arms, Chandlo is the strongest, and the most affectionate, although the Journalist's stance on affection is unclear. And Gramble has long arms for his size, and likes hugs so much that even his character description mentions it. So definitely one of those two. As long as Chandlo watches his strength.

💕: What's your favorite ships? (Either Canon, Non canon, or canon x oc!)

I like all the canon ships, but my favourite is Chandlo and Snorpy. They're two of my favourite characters (Nearly half the cast is my favourite character), and they complement each other so well. Now that they're communicating a bit better, they're probably going to be unstoppable.

I don't have any canon character/OC ships, but my favourite noncanon ship is Filbo and the Journalist! I ship it platonically, but I also enjoy the romatic version. Filbo and the Journalist are two more of my favourite characters, and I think they should be best friends and be extremely supportive of each other forever.

🌵: Thoughts about Cactriffy?

I have the unpopular opinion that it's not really sentient, and that Wambus or Triffany are the ones moving it around. Triffany uses it as a weapon in the final battle, so I don't think she's that bothered by it. I can't remember if Triffany puts it down before going to the ship, or if she just puts it away, and I guess it's weird that it's on the beach on the end if it's the second one, Possessions are kind of flexible in this game, though.

I don't know what's up with the letter you get, but maybe someone sent it as a prank or a joke after they saw the Journalist take an interest. Maybe Triffany.

…But if Wambus isn't creative, then who was Cactriffy has a favourite Bugsnak????

🩷: What's a fandom headcanon that everyone agreed on that you love? Do you have any of your own headcanons you wish to share?

I don't think there's any headcanons that everyone agrees on. Not even the one about Grumpuses hatching from eggs. Speaking of oviparous Grumpuses, I really like that headcanon! Grumpuses already canonically have some cool non-human traits (their giant sock puppet mouths…), and eggs open up some more points of difference. I like the idea of Grumpuses being bear relatives who re-evolved egg-laying, and their scientists being really confused about where they fit in at first. And maybe their pop culture sees egg-laying as a prerequisite to being sapient.

For a related headcanon, I think the natural history of their planet is similar to Earth's, but the ancestor of placental mammals kept colour vision, result in its descendents developing bird-like structural colour. So being brightly coloured like the Grumpuses is not uncommon among other mammals. Also, other animals tend to have the muppety noses and ping pong ball looking eyes, but the limited movement in the lower jaw is a Grumpus trait specifically.

⌚: what do you think some of the grumpuses were like before events? (I.e. as kids, as teens, etc)

I think about this a lot, but a lot of it's more about family circumstances than personality. Probably the most fleshed out is that the Journalist was a super weird kid, which was fine until they hit their preteen years and the social rules tightened up. They didn't realise things had changed, and kept making animal noises and cornering people to tell them about the latest Mothgrump sightings, until they lost all their friends and became a social outcast. Their parents were also different kinds of social disaster, so they couldn't do much to help.

After a few years, they focused really hard on observing people until they'd learned how they were expected to act. It didn't help them in high school, because everyone already knew them and they weren't very subtle about all the observing, but it did help in college. By this point they were wary of forming close relationships, but they had a lot of friendly acquaintances.

They seem kind of detached in the game, at least initially, so I was expanding on that and also being self-indulgent.

Also! I wrote a fanfic where it comes up, but Chandlo was skinny as a kid and bulked up so he could protect others better, and Snorpy had selective mutism as a result of being picked on for the way he speaks. Chandlo helped him get over a few years later, after finding out from Floofty why he was so afraid to speak. Floofty themself was pretty similar to how they are as an adult, just less experienced and less jaded.

A little later on Snorpy had a crush on every boy. Except Chandlo.

[breitzbachbea]

God I love enemies and I love hatred Blease Blease tell me about the hatred I’m beghing on me knees

Oh, where to START. Charlie and Robert have their own playlist, which I should remake on youtube so that I can share it. Big fan of "Hated You from Hello" by Downplay and "You're Going Down" by Sick Puppies being both sided, "Know It All" by Fivefold is so, so good for when Robert gets his revenge for Sicily in a later story and in turn "Thank You for Hating Me" by Citizen Soldier is a great Charlie song once he has had enough. Those aren't all songs on the playlist, just a little overview.

So yeah, these two and just how deep and visceral the hatred of each other runs is very important to me. Started with the homophobia, but even when Robert gets better, Charlie just ... still thinks he is the most annoying person on the planet. And Charlie in turn is never going to let Robert forget what he did to him, because if he has to live with the trauma, so has Robert.

However, the English are very good at making enemies and Robert in particular manages to be unpopular. Literally nothing funnier in the world than a good old Tarielle/Railey love triangle where Tahir is incidental. This isn't about him, this is about Robert and Arielle not wanting to share air to breathe. Read my latest drabble and see it in action. Or this Lego thing I wrote - Hugo isn't very in character, but the Robert and Arielle bitching is just. on point.

OH MY GOD, SPEAKING OF HUGO. LEMME JUST. I think those drawings by @c0ffinated speak for themselves. Very sad I cannot share the nsfw ones that make the point in the best way.

(First one is Hugo eating Alois' protein snacks in the middle of the night after a one-night stand. One night stand number 238493. And the fourth one is the Live German Reaction to the third one, because that's Katta and Selim. Katta says "This is such a shitfest here, I love it" and Selim "Got something of Asi-Tv" (<- slang for German reality TV. Think TLC kind of stuff). )

Alois is being an asshole about Hugo's weight, Hugo is being an asshole about Alois' lost legs, it's a good look on neither of them, somehow they still end up fucking all the time. I don't get it. Neither does Massoud, the poor soul in the second picture trying to help with Alois' leg. Leo thinks this shit is hilarious, like the Germans, Nathan (aph switzerland) doesn't have much of an opinion, Hugo tries to behave in front of Lilli, but oh my god, these two are driving Roderich nuts. He can handle Hugo on his own, but as soon as Alois is also in the picture .... it goes against all of his sensibilites. PLEASE read this Hugois One Shot, I am so proud of this one, it encapsulates all that is wrong with them so well. Also, if God wants it, I will actually get to write another one shot where Hugo is REALLY nasty. Has a breakfast brawl at the end. It's gonna be so good once it's done.

Okay, but to circle back to Robert, another petty feud he has with @swabianmapley's OC Siggy, who is one of the Icelanders. It's not really as intense, because it's for ... incredibly dumb and petty reasons and the Icelanders aren't high on the English priority list, but it deserves a mention. As do another two of Jani's OCs, the former right hand of Emil's dad, Rúnar, who did a runner when the old man wandered off into the ice, never to be seen again. But before that even he dated one of the Icelandic subordinates, Þóra, and they had an incredibly poor breakup. Hates his guts even before he left them all hanging and god knows, Leifur's other right hand Alex now has more than a few good reasons to throw him into a volcano if he ever showed up again, but Þóra would strangle the motherfucker on the spot if he showed his face in Iceland again. Also, while we are at the Icelanders - Leifur, Emil's dad, and Ansgar, Lukas' dad, never really got along. Business partners, yes, but also business enemies, never really being cool with one another. And then the sister of Leifur's wife moved to Oslo and his wife asked Leifur if he couldn't help her find work. So he asked Ansgar for a favour and whoops, they got married and now they are brothers in law. Whoops.

Okay, last Robert one, but since the Spaniards and the English also have bad blood (and Arthur is SO smug about it while Antonio is so passionate about kicking his face in), Robert and Diego don't get along. Robert usually is more eager about the fights because he's an adhd hothead like that, but only because Diego is a soldier doesn't mean he want to punch out his teeth any less. "Friends" by Sixlights is a great song - the chorus for them in general and the verses for the fucked up AU version where they dated and had a bad breakup.

On the bigger playing field, where there also little animosities nestled into the bigger ones like matryoshka dolls - The Empires of course don't get along. The English have beef with the Russians and Spaniards, the Spaniards are pissed with the Turks and vice versa, while the Turks also can't stand the Russians. Also - the Austrians and the Turks. Not sure where I stand on the Austrians and the Russians yet. But yeah, love the idea that Charlie and Harry have a conversation on a big event whether or not "their Kurdish friend" (Dilan) just doesn't like blondes, because she's bitching with Salomé (who, much like Francesco however, thinks personal grudges are uninteresting and also is the horniest lesbian on the planet who wishes Dilan wasn't straight), Alois, Robert and Viktoriya. Their convo also includes "Okay, but she gets along with the Dutch lass." "She's no natural blonde though." "Neither is Salomé." "... point taken."

Oh yeah, while we are at the Dutch: It's not an ACTIVE beef, they aren't really out here hating each other on a deep personal level, but both Nathan and Gavin resent the other AND that rotten Dutchman for all the money they are sitting on. Nathan and Gavin do a lot of banking and related illegal stuff, so they are direct competition. Tim doesn't care about either of their bs, he'd do business with them if the price was right. But, quote from an RP I had with Jani, by Tim about Gavin: "Some people like holding grudges more than they like making money."

Who else is there ... I mean, I absolutely love a good ScotFruk tug of war. Gavin and Arthur inheriting the nemesis relationships from their fathers, each of them want power and influence on the isles and then Arthur happens to on-off date Gavin's ex-boyfriend. And the Scot just can't help, even if he is not actively in love with someone anymore, he will always love all his sweethearts. Besides, the French are friends! François is a friend! And he deserves better than this cruel and petty Englishman! Meanwhile, Arthur is a jealous little bitch who can't properly express his love for Fran, but also can't stand the thought that the Scot puts his finger not only on his sphere on influence but the one man he loves. Bitchfest supreme.

Speaking of that, I have a note in my notebook for the next chapter of IP I will edit that says "Can anyone ask more about Lovi so that Michele can call him bitch boy unlimited". The fact that Michele hates Francesco, too, out of a mix of jealousy over not being the biggest siren in the room if Franci is there and because he doesn't buy his friendly shtick, plus he's afraid that Francesco could see behind his mask. But we are here for Lovi and Michele, which is a very ironic hate. In the hetaverse at least they are united in their mutual dislike for Feli and all the other Northerners. but in LFLS, Feli falls a bit to the wayside (though Michele has not much respect or love for him either) and it's all about these two. I think, aside from the fact that they also inherited a generational enmity, Lovino feels entitled to the land Michele is sitting on and Michele is fiercely protective of his independence ... aside from all that, they are too close for comfort. They see in each other who they could be, maybe all they should be but aren't, maybe all the sides of themselves they like the least.

... Yeah! I think that's a good start! :)

[insideous-beez]

Shout out to my WEIRD ASS DREAMS

TW: Planetary body horror, normal body horror, gore, fire, bullying, cheating, homelessness, zombies. None of these were distressing because it's all just story that my brain randomly generated.

Gonna try to be brief otherwise I might write a novel.

My dream last night included, in this order:

Me as a homeless child living in a grocery store where a mad scientist worked and his two sons of similar age to me bullied me by setting whole sections of the store on FIRE to trap me inside. Somehow none of the adults ever saw the evidence of bullying and assumed I was making things up when I told them.

Skip to different part of the dream where I am suddenly an adult (separate from the prior scenario, aka not the same person somehow but still me?). Zombie virus except it works by the rules of "if you don't move or speak they can't see you..." kind of. It takes a long time for them to process so if something else is moving that is not a zombie, it'll go after that first. The zombie part of the dream started in a hospital where I was trying to help my mom get to a recovery room after surgery (yes, unrealistic) but suddenly she didn't exist anymore and some dude handed out a ton of guns and we got to zombie survival.

Zombies suddenly didn't matter anymore because Uta from One Piece Film Red was holding a concert?

Another scenario change where zombies aren't an issue anymore and I'm heading into a mix of the Akademia with modern corporate skyscraper building vibes. Zhongli (from Genshin) is my husband, which made me happy until my brain was like "oh actually, backstory time, he is cheating on u." -_- k.

While one version of me is trying to figure out where TF Zhongli went when he suddenly started acting sus and sprinted up the fire escape (to meet with some lady he was cheating on me with) a completely different version of me is in outer space altering the fabric of reality by trying to identify and merge whole ass planets

Akademia!Me decides she wants to pet some dogs and cats to de-stress over being cheated on. Yes the animals are casually in the Akademia. It is here where I learn that, apparently, my dream just gave me the same backstory as Alhaitham and decided that was good enough. I accidentally release a dog from the little therapy kennel area and a fire drill begins so I use the chaos to sprint up the stairs and go to find Zhongli, who I apparently care about finding again? This is the last time you will see Akademia!Me. The rest of the dream is from Space!Me's perspective observing the fallout of merging planets.

Back to Space!Me. So, most of these planets are gas giants and some are like Earth but with more land and less water. For some reason, with my fancy technology, I've identified that there is a single "anti-virus" planet and the rest are "viruses." No, I don't know what this means. Space!Me apparently does and decides to merge them all to cure the "virus." One of these planets had the Akademia on it.

What happens when planets are merged? Apparently, they become flesh.

Giant flesh planet. Thankfully with an outer crust that is still mostly dirt for a little less trauma.

The visual that occurred was layers forming within the hollow planet the Akademia was on until it became a solid planet like ours, except, oh yeah, it's made out of muscle and flesh. Some of the flesh slivers broke out through the crust of the planet and pierced through people. Some craters in the planet suddenly got filled with flesh and earth. Anyone standing in these craters got their legs merged into the planet.

Space!Me, who is an unobservable third party, is cringing as she observes the kind of injuries that have occurred as a result of people being run through by spears of flesh and muscle. Some of them are alive and definitely shouldn't be.

The Akademia has a weirdly chipper and unaffected student council leader who sets up a white board and decides to continue lessons in front of the whole student body that is standing in the evacuation field, pierced bodies and all.

Then I wake up! WOW! WEIRD SHIT!

This wasn't even the full dream, I just think the earlier parts weren't interesting enough to describe. I wanted to show y'all the weird shit I dream up.

[jedwaiibw]

Dear Aubrey,

Hey, I hope you’re doing okay, I miss you, I’ll always miss you. I know you probably won’t respond to this much less read it. I know how you like to only communicate when all the planets are aligned or whatever. Lol.  I just thought I’d go ahead and write this anyway. They say closure isn’t something you can get in real life, it’s a fantasy, a fairy tale told to little kids alongside tales of Santa Claus, happily ever afters and virginity. But I’ve never been someone who could see the line between fantasy and reality. Maybe there doesn’t have to be one. Anyway, last we talked I told you I planned on reenlisting into the military. Well it seems like that is becoming a reality. It was a long road to get readmitted into the military. I had to do a lot of growing, a lot of unlearning and a lot of healing, not only so that I could get in but also so that when I venture back out into the world I don’t make the same mistakes I made all throughout my twenties. So that I don’t hurt people, allow others to hurt me, or hurt myself. This has been the toughest challenge of my life and it’s taken so much out of me and I’m grateful for it.  When I leave for basic training I plan to leave everything behind, to let go of everything so that I may continue to grow. I will be permanently deleting all of my social media, changing my phone number and changing my name, (legally this time lol) I finally found one that I like. I’ve done all of this before. I've changed my phone number numerous times, I’ve changed my name, I’ve deleted all accounts, I’ve moved away with no promise of return, I’ve done it all before. However the difference is before I did it out of fear, insecurities, cowardice, resentment, rebellion, all the worst intentions possible. This time I’m choosing to prioritize myself, to lead with love, to pursue growth and to let go of anything holding me back from who I’m meant to be. So I write this letter to you as a love letter, wrapped in a goodbye letter. Aubrey I met you at a weird point in my life, I had just blown up my first serious relationship and had been banished back to my depressing hometown. You were a saving grace in a dark time for me. One of the main reasons my previous relationship hadn’t worked out was because I couldn’t get past the fact that she didn’t look like anything I expected my “true love” to be. You did, you checked every box, and more than that I saw so much of myself in you. I saw a chance to give to you what I had so desperately needed but could not articulate. Because of that I loved you so deeply, but because of that I also never let you live as you. I was so caught up in the idea of you and us that I never allowed for you to be anything more than a reflection of me. For that I am so sorry, that dreaded night or nights where I would become enraged are some of my worst memories. I said that I was lashing out because of your marital status but that was never true. It was just the only thing I could articulate at the time. Like I said, in you I saw myself, but I also saw my Dad in you and in me through you. That night when I was on top of you attacking you, that was a direct reenactment of my worst fight with me and my father, except he was on top of me choking me while I squirmed beneath him. A lot of those violent actions were reenactments of my father.  I’m not mentioning this because I want you to excuse my actions or to pity me. Yes it’s true that hurt people, hurt people however those people who hurt people as a response to their own hurt still had a choice. I chose wrong. I am so sorry for that, I was a broken child trying to use you to heal traumas I didn’t even really understand. This will be the last time I ever speak to you, my hope is that this will give you some semblance of closure and help you with your journey to heal but more selfishly this is for my closure and for me to heal. I have to let you go in order to truly forgive myself. I hope that you’ll be able to look back on our time together in shades of gray and see the good alongside the bad. If I end up being a villain or even just a footnote in your life I am still grateful for all the memories we share. You are an amazing person that I admire so much, and that I one day hope to be like. I hope that you find someone who loves you for you and that you know your worth and never settling for anything less. This is goodbye Aubrey no need for any planetary alignment meetings at the end/beginning of the year. It’s time to close this chapter and to move on. I love you, and I wish you the best, truly. 

Xoxoxoxo 

Sincerely,

A faded memory. 

[quinntamsin]

"Target is most definitely a force sensitive," she growled while relaying the information to command. Her clan would want to know how she was doing, and quickly landed. Feeling the itch to enter the fray quickly.

Obi-wan Kenobi Part IV, we open with vague memories of Ben's trauma after his battle with Vader. We see him healing and said experiences in the tank is overlayed with images of Anakin's own experiences. This is a far more violent tank than we saw in Boba Fett. Leia has been captured, and we find that she is now in the halls of the Inquisitorius. Where we see REva is trying her best to gain an edge on Obi-wan. Even Leia's threats of being a priness do nothing and her hopes are quickly quieted. Rapidly back on Mapuzo and we meet Roken. A man who tried to hide everything and still lost it all. We switch to what appears to be the beginnings of the Rebellion along with elements of the Path. This move could start it all. It's coming together, a very stupid idea to recuse the princess, but one that might actually work. Tala is risking her life for the kid not just to save her, but to save the entire of the Path itself. I will say this, Reva is scary, but little Leia is standing her ground! She ignores the attempts to draw out info on the Path and instead redirects to Obi-wan's supposed death. I can see where the notion she could stand up to a torture droid comes from. Now Tala makes her way into the base of the Inquisitorius. Dressed in her Imperial Grey,s she seems to be able to make her way through. Will her data rod will give her toe right level of clearance. This entire base screams nazi, I mean hell there are even officers in fucking longcoats. Tala stares down t he head of security, but we can tell she's on thin ice. THere's a good chance that an alert from the sec-head will alert the inquisitors. The animal life on the planet is definitely pretty cool. I like the idea of base being halfway submerged. Plus, seeing a jedi going all frogman is pretty fun. Ah, more dark and white illuminated hallways. CLassic Empire. Ben makes quick work of a Sentry before we cut back to Reva. Who appears to be unable to break the defenses of Leia's mind. This definitely hints at the girl being a force sensitive. Revean starts to spin a bit more on her history, holding Leia's droid menacingly as Tala and Ben try to find the cell. The droid props in this series are top-notch, as well as the dark lighting in the entire base. Dammit, another officer finds Tala which means she's very close to getting murked. This is bad. I like Varma as an actress and I'm still salty over how they did her in GoT. Now, I want to mention that the Seeker Droid in this episode is purely fucking creepy. It has a clear "HAL" kill them feel with its red sensory eye. Switching to Tala choking out the meddlesome other officer was also a nice touch to the stakes of this episode. Ben really is far better than Luke at invading Imperial Installations. Third Sister, is trying hard to break Leia, and she's getting closer. The actress playing Leia looks like a kid close to breaking. This scary murderous lady who she knows will just slice in her half if she wants. And, Leia "seemingly" breaks, but asks to speak to her father. The trick doesn't really work before she's taken away for torture. Watching the Stormtroopers strap a fucking ten year old onto a torture chair is beyond messed up. Ben pops up just in time to see various Jedi bodies. They have killed hundreds of force sensitive to learn more and more about them.YOu can tell Ben might even know some of the people in here. And we see a Youngling in a Jedi training helm. Ben asks for a distraction as she pops draw away Third Sister, and give Ben time to things and she's quickly called on her line. Ben ends a few troopers with his saber showing that he's fighting his PTSD like a champ. Seriously, this is no laughing matter, trauma is serious people and the amount of fortitude this man has is astounding. Tala is likely uttering her last words right now and is going to die rather painfully. I really do hope they keep her. The fight in the hall is, damn, its good. This show is finally  catching up as we see even a black fucking Death Trooper trailing along with the Inquisitor. The fight cracks the window and we can see that this is likely a threat to raise the stakes or will be an out. Using the force Ben holds back the water and he is prepared to drop the water on the troopers with cold precision.Luckily, he got out, but we now are minus one death trooper. So fucking sad. LOL BEN using a terrible shoplifting trope to get the kid out is the best especially with Fifth Brother bitching and ignoring it. Seriously people wow y'all are blind! HOLY SHIT just as Reva is about to kill our heroes a pair of T-47 Airspeeders pop in and shoot everyone down! One of the pilots is killed by Reva who almost gets killed by Vader. Only her quick mouth saves her, and honestly Vader killing his own people is shown to be how stupid it is. Switching back to the small carrier of the speeders we see the down faces of the Rebel Pilots. "I guess we're soldiers now." The episode ends with everyone somber in the back of what almost looks like a blockaderunner corvette. Now we must keep going, as the Inquisitorius keeps up the hunt. Oh shit the DROID has the tracker!

Hottakes

So, the torture lead up really shows how -dark- Reva is as a character. Love it.

Heh swimming in was a good scene, the switch to the amberized fucking (seems very Fringe-like) Inquisotiral victims was dark.

Leia holding her own was a sign of how she is later on. Reva just isn't pulling punches.

Seeing Ben hold back the water was a good touch.

And fuck, Ben hiding the kid in an overcoat was so damn stupid, but fucking great how it works.

The idea of them using Airspeeders really shows how ramshackle the early Rebel cells were.

[steele-soulmate]

Tattooed Wings, CHAPTER 20, Peter Steele & OFC, Soulmate AU

SUMMARY: Mary Claire Bradley meets her soulmate- literally- the famous Peter Steele of metal group Type O Negative. But will obstacles including trauma, stalkers, and toxic family members get in the way of their life?

WARNING: mentions of child rape (nothing graphic) PTSD, milk kink

WORDS: 3039

“Good to see you again, Patricia!” Peter greeted the real estate agent with a grin and a hug. “Real quick, I want to introduce you to-”

I let out a scream as I lost my balance, falling off the pathway and into a bush off the beaten path. I laid there in pure confusement for a moment before Peter was picking me up out of the wildlife.

 “Are you alright, sweetheart?” he asked, concerned as he cradled me to his chest. I squeaked before hiding my face into his neck. “Come on, I’ll carry you from now on out, yeah?” I just curled my arms around his neck as he carried me up to where he had left the real estate agent in his rush to help me.

 “Patricia, this is Mary Claire, my soulmate. Mary Claire, this is my sister, Patricia,” he introduced us, rubbing his nose at the mermaid behind my ear.

 “Sorry, I’m the clumsiest being on this planet!” I announced before turning to my soulmate. “Peter, had I known that this would also be a hike, I would’ve worn my wilderness boots!”

 “Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured into my ear before turning to his sister.

 “When’s the baby due?” Patricia asked, falling into step as Peter began to trek further onto the property.

 “Thirteen weeks, give or take a day or two,” I answered. “Wow, it’s so pretty up here!” I twisted my head as I took in the green scenery.

 “Beautiful,” Peter murmured and I looked up to find him staring at me. I turned pink as I shoved his head away from me.

 “Sărbătorește-ți privirea în altă parte, ticălos nerușinat,” I scowled.

 “Come again?” Patricia only looked amused.

 “Romanian,” I explained. “One of the neighbors in my parent’s neck of the woods was a family from Romania and I would be over there so often that I just picked up the language like a little sponge.”

 “Wow.” She blinked, clearly impressed as she stood off to the side and let us walk around some. “Do you speak any other languages?”

 “English, ASL, Romanian, French, German and Russian fluently, and I also know bits and pieces of Irish Gaelic, Spanish and Italian,” I shrugged. “My mom wasn’t the most supportive of me learning another language so I just said ‘F you’ and I just learned.”

 “Oh wow,” Patricia blinked again. “I would’ve never guessed you were so well read.”

 Peter let out a quiet growl at her subtle insult but I just tugged on his hair for a moment, silently telling him to behave himself, before answering her.

 “Yeah, well as I said before, my mom isn’t the most supportive,” I shrugged again. “How many square feet is this lot again?”

 “It’s eight acres, but starts from those trees over there and ends at the road.” She pointed.

 “It’s perfect, if you ask me,” Peter beamed before turning to me. “Sweetheart?”

 “If you have big plans in mind, well then, I say go for it!” I returned the smile. Leaning my forehead to his cheek and getting rewarded with a kiss.

 “Yeah?” he murmured. “You think so?” I gently nodded my head. He turned to his sister. “Where do I sign?”

 ~xoXox~

 After the excitement of Peter buying the land, we found ourselves back at my apartment going over plans for the house.

 “I always wanted a fifties bubble fridge, ever since I could remember,” I was thinking out loud. “I really love the 1950’s rockabilly style- it’s so feminine and figure flattering, no matter what body shape one has!”

 “What’s the one thing that you want your kitchen to have?” Peter asked, pencil scribbling as he figured out the floor plan.

 “Storage,” I answered immediately. “I have a lot of kitchen stuff that I bought in preparations of moving out of my parent’s house.”

 “Okay,” Peter paused and leaned across the counter to kiss me again. “I can work with that.”

 “Peter,” I suddenly thought of something. “How many kids do you want again?”

 “How many do you want, sweetheart?” He stopped drawing to nudge at the mermaid behind my ear with his nose.

 “Peter, I mean if you want ten kids and we only have a four bedroom house, World War Three will commence without a doubt,” I informed him.

 “Tell you what,” he hummed. “Let me make it a dozen bedroom house and if we don’t have as many kids, we can turn the extra rooms into storage or whatever, does that sound good?”

 I nodded, happy with his solution before returning to browsing Pinterest for ideas. “Oh, this is cool.” I showed Peter kitchen counters that looked like waves on the beach.

 “You’re kind of hopscotching all over the place with interior design ideas, sweetheart,” he chuckled, leaning over to kiss me again, this time on my eyebrow.

 “I’m sorry,” I apologized in a meek tone of voice.

 “Closet size?” he asked.

 “About the size of the one that I currently have in my room would be swell, maybe a bit bigger,” I shrugged, watching as he stood up and went into my bedroom with my “on loan” Barbie pink tape measurer in hand. I followed him, deciding that I needed to milk my tits and take a nap.

 I entered my room, biting back a giggle as he stood at my closet doors, looking inside before getting down on his knees to measure. My causal eyes took him in. He was a bit shorter than I was at this height, and I only marveled at him as I went behind the bookshelf and quickly set myself up.

 “Sweetheart? What’s that sound- oh, never mind.” Peter rounded the bookshelf as well, freezing when he saw me with my tits out and connected to the milk machine.

 “Peter, come,” I whined, holding my hands out to him. He only chuckled as he did as I commanded, flopping onto the bed next to me and wrapping his arms around my waist.

 “I’m here, sweetheart,” he murmured softly, his eyes on my face as he cradled my cheek in his hand. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”

 “You never let me forget that,” I told him, giggling as he poked me in the side. “Hey, do you want to play Never Have I Ever?” He nodded, holding up ten fingers. “Okay then, you first.”

 “Never have I ever eaten something I shouldn’t have,” he started off, lowering a finger.

 “I’m guessing the typical eating dirt as a kid doesn’t count,” I teased, also putting a finger down. “I ate a worm when I was seven years old to get the classroom bully off my back.”

 “Did it work?” Peter asked me, clearly amazed.

 “Yup.” I answered. “Okay, my turn. Never have I ever… used my high school status in the name of good and evil.” I lowered another finger.

 “Okay sweetheart, spill,” he chuckled.

 “Okay so every year leading up to Valentine’s Day, there would be a ‘buy a teddy bear and we’ll have it delivered to the receiver’s classroom’ thing and every single year I would get at least a hundred teddies!” I laughed at the high school memory.

 “No duh!” Peter gasped.

 “Yes duh!” I confirmed my words. “And so anyways, what I did is that I would wrangle guys from the football team- who were like my own army of obedient servants, I swear- and we would deliver the bears to the special education classrooms and hand them out to the students there. They would be so overjoyed at getting a little Valentine’s Day treat from a cheerleader and her football friends!”

 “Wow.” Peter was looking at me with hearts in his eyes. “Okay, is it my turn? Never have I ever… let me think here, let me think… oh I know! Never have I ever finished a fight that someone else started.”

 We both lowered another finger.

 “Bar fights at faire, need I say anything else?” I raised an eyebrow.

 “Good point,” he clucked. “Okay sweetheart, it’s your turn.”

 “Never have I ever had a stalker,” I deadpanned, lowering a finger. “Kody Williams scares me- when I went up to the courthouse to see about securing a restraining order, the judge didn’t even look at the evidence I had to back up my case. He just patted me on the head and told me to go out with this guy and that he’ll forget all about me in a couple of weeks.”

 “No shit.” Peter had anger in his eyes.

 “Yes shit.” The milk machine turned off, letting me know that the bag was full and ready to be sealed. Peter took care of the bag while I reloaded the pump with a new bag. He came back into the room from placing the first full bag in the fridge and rejoined me on the bed. “Your turn?”

 “My turn.” He chewed his lip for a moment. “Never had I ever visited another country.”

 I lowered a finger with him.

 “My daddy has vacation homes all over Europe, so the family often vacations at one of those places,” I shrugged.

 “Where’s your favorite place to visit?” he asked me, leaning in and kissing me gently.

 “Italy’s cool- my daddy has family that lives in Puglia- that’s the heel of Italy,” I gave a brief description of the geography. “He’s Italian on his daddy’s side of the family and Irish on his mama’s side of the family.”

 “Ah.” He smiled, nuzzling our noses together. “Who’s turn is it?”

 “My turn!” I squeaked excitedly. “Never had I ever dyed my hair.”

 He lowered a finger, much to my surprise.

 “My natural color is a dark brown,” he explained. “And now I have to cover the grey.”

 “Silver fox?” I teased him, getting his hand on my waist.

 “Shut it, you!” he chortled.

 “I once dyed my hair bright blue in high school,” I told him, reaching for my cell phone and going to the Facebook app. I opened it and began to scroll through the pictures on my profile. “Ah ha!” I handed him the phone and he smiled as he looked at me in the West Side High School cheerleading uniform. I wore my bright royal blue hair in a teased ponytail and an equally brighter smile on my face.

 “Mom pitched a fit when she saw my hair,” I rolled my eyes. “Okay, your turn.”

 “Never have I ever gotten blackout drunk.” He lowered a finger. “Never?”

 “I cannot hold my liquor!” I laughed, sighing as the machine clicked off again. “It’s a running joke on grandpa’s side of the family because if I take even the tiniest sip of wine, I get piss ass drunk.”

 “I got to see that!” he chortled, taking the full bag of milk out to the fridge. “Okay, sweetheart, it’s your turn now!”

 “Never have I ever… shot someone.” I lowered another finger, leaving me with two still up.

 “You SHOT someone?” Peter’s eyes were huge and he inched towards me.

 “He broke into my parents’ house and it was just me and my sisters at home- we were thirteen years old at the time and perfectly old enough to manage the house overnight without our parents there,” I informed him. “We were in the front room watching Disney’s animated Little Mermaid- god, I hate that movie- when one of my mom’s ex-boyfriends breaks in the back door. I get my sisters up to mom and daddy’s bedroom and I go for Daddy’s handgun that he kept in his bedside table. I load it, take off the safety and shoot him three times. Once here-” I poked the dead center of his throat. “Once here-” I poked at his chest where his heart was beating happily. “And once here-” I motioned to his private parts. “Sammi was on the phone with 911 when he showed up at the door and I just fired blindly. The medical examiner couldn’t believe that little itty bitty thirteen year old me had killed a five foot eleven inch two hundred twenty pound guy before he had even hit the floor. He was convinced that there had been someone else in the house, but the security tapes showed that it was just the four of us in the house at the time.”

 “Fucking wow…” Peter pulled me into his arms and kissed me under my chin.

 “I was protecting my little sisters,” I said fiercely. “If anything were to happen to them, I would literally kill myself.”

 “Was your dad mad that you had used his gun?” he wondered, his hand now resting on my stomach.

 “Not really,” I shrugged. “He was more impressed than anything else, to be honest. I was so terrified that he was going to tan my ass though- he had always made a point to say that my siblings and I would be in big trouble if we even so much as bumped the bedside table by accident.”

 “Wow,” Peter kissed me, then baby girl. “You’re so brave.”

 “It’s your turn,” I murmured, shifting into a more comfortable position.

 “Let me think, let me think…” he hummed. “Never have I ever asked a crush out in front of a lot of people.”

 He realized what he had said and groaned when I didn’t drop a finger.

 “Oh Christ, do I have to tell you?” he whined as he dropped a finger.

 “Yes, you do!” I grinned manically at him as the milk machine clicked off. I quickly reset the pump and let Peter leave to go stash the now full bag into the fridge.

 “Okay so I was a freshman in high school and there was this pretty upperclassman named Sarah Miller. Her boyfriend had just broken up with her and so I asked her out at lunch later that day. She said no, of course.”

 “What a fucking cunt,” I sighed.

 “Yeah, looking back on high school now, I only liked her because she had huge tits,” he shrugged.

 “You are such a guy,” I groaned, shoving him a bit.

 “How about you?” He turned his dazzling green eyes onto me. “Did you date any?”

 “I wasn’t really allowed to,” I shrugged. “I was never really into the whole dating scene- I just did cheer and theater club. Mom and dad were fine with me going out and getting a cheeseburger and order of fries with the jocks after a game or hitting the mall with the theatre kids after rehearsals or like whatever.”

 “Oh, that’s cool,” he smiled. “Okay, who’s turn is it now?”

 “Yours truly!” I grinned. “Hmm, let me see, let me see… never have I ever… masturbated in public!” We both lowered a finger, leaving us with one up each.

 “Were you caught?” he asked with a grin.

 I shook my head and motioned to him.

 “Almost,” he winced. “God, I did some fucked up stupid shit in high school.”

 I raised an eyebrow.

 “Okay, so I was in the boy’s locker room and I just had to let loose a little bit of steam,” he confessed.

 “Who almost caught you?” I pried.

 “The football coach,” he winced at my squeal.

 “Were you on any teams in high school?” I asked.

 “Football my freshman and sophomore year, when I went to try out junior year, I was told I was too fucking tall,” he grumbled.

 “Oh man,” I winced. “That sucks.”

 “You have no idea,” he grumbled. “It’s your turn, by the way.”

 “My turn?” I raised my eyebrow. “Hmm, let me see, let me see… never have I ever used my stage fright to better my performance!”

 We both dropped our final fingers.

 “And it’s a tie!” I cheered as the milk machine switched off again, signaling the full bag. I tugged it off of my tit and readied it to go onto my second boob when Peter poked my leg.

 “Can I have your second jug? Please?” he asked timidly, his face lighting up at my nod. “Thank you!”

 He latched onto my nipple and I arched my back as pleasant tingles began to race through my veins. I grabbed onto the bedsheets as Peter bought his hand underneath my skirt, where he slipped his fingers underneath my underwear and began to flick at my little nub.

 “Fucking Christ,” I sighed, gasping as the oh so familiar knot began to wind tighter and tighter in my stomach, only adding to the feeling as Peter added his tongue to the mix. I squealed and bucked my hips as he continued to guide me towards the end of the tunnel.

 And then he slipped his fingers inside of me.

 I didn’t last much longer, cumming with a soft cry. I continued to cum for at least three solid minutes while Peter fed from me. He was gentle as he nursed me through my orgasm, taking care not to over simulate me too much. When he had milked me dry, he pulled his fingers out of me, eliciting a moan of disappointment at feeling empty again. He brought his fingers up to his face and stuck them into his mouth, cleaning himself of me with a quiet groan.

 “Fuck, you taste so delicious, sweetheart,” he hummed before stretching up to kiss me hard. I closed my eyes at his kiss and I knew no more.

  Sărbătorește-ți privirea în altă parte, ticălos nerușinat, feast your gaze elsewhere, you shameless scoundal, Romanian

 TAGLISTS ARE OPEN/ ASK BOX IS OPEN/ REQUESTS ARE OPEN/ PLOT BUNNIES ARE WELCOMED

 If you liked this, then please consider buying me a coffee HERE It only costs $3!!!

 PETER STEELE TAGLIST

@starchild0985​

[banned-books-daily]

Banned Book: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Intro: Extremely loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer in 2002. Banned in many school districts, including Illinois and Wisconsin. One of the top 100 banned and challenged books from 2010-2019. Challenged in most school districts due to “extremely vulgar language” and “sexual descriptions” (One passage about interacting with a prostitute)

Major Plot Points/Topics in Book: -Grief -Family -Self-Destruction -Self Preservation -9/11 -Trauma -Journeying -Mourning

Brief Synopsis: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a emotional novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. It follows Oskar, a young boy who embarks on a scavenger hunt through New York City, searching for connections to his father who died in the 9/11 attacks.

Trigger Warnings: -9/11 -Trauma -Dangerous Behavior

Small Note: I usually keep my opinion out of these, but I read this book and I have to say: it's a emotional rollercoaster. Also, the “banned” reason is ridiculous: there is vague talk of having sex from two older characters, and the word fuck is only mentioned three times. The ‘incredibly explicit material” complained about is simply children discussing hand and blow jobs (incorrectly, might I add) and reproductive organs. As 10 year olds learning about anatomy do. Yes, I’m annoyed it's been so fought against because it's simply an amazing book and no one should be kept away from it if they’ve seen Animal Planet or taken a basic biology class. 

Long Summary: Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy, has not been happy since his dad died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Unbeknownst to anyone except for Oskar, on the day of the attacks, Oskar’s dad called the house five times. Oskar was home for the fifth call but couldn’t bring himself to pick up the phone. They never recovered his dad’s body and buried an empty casket at his funeral. Oskar is furious that his mom has started to spend time with a man named Ron and worries that she has begun to move on. Oskar suffers from extreme anxiety and imagines whimsical inventions in order to cope. One night, he decides to look through his dad’s closet and sees a vase hidden on the top shelf. In trying to retrieve it, Oskar drops the vase, and when it shatters, he finds an envelope labeled “Black” that contains a strange key. After doing some research, Oskar decides to visit every person with the last name Black in New York City to try and discover what the key opens.

There is also a parallel storyline about Oskar’s grandparents. The novel includes letters from Oskar’s grandpa, Thomas, to his dad, and letters that his grandma writes to him. Thomas stops speaking not long after immigrating to America out of grief for Anna, his lost love who died in the bombing of Dresden. Thomas communicates by writing one-line sentences in notebooks. He explains that Grandma, Anna’s sister whose name we never learn, encountered him in a bakery and asked him to marry her. Grandma writes her own version of their meeting, which doesn’t quite match up with Thomas’s account. According to Grandma, when she reunited with Thomas, he asked her to pose for a sculpture. She agreed and started going to his apartment daily to pose. Although he started touching her for longer and longer in order to get her into the position he wanted, the sculpture still looked like Anna. Eventually, they had sex, and Grandma proposed. Throughout their marriage, they divide up their apartment into “Nothing” places, where they can go to not exist, and “Something” places. However, the lines blur. After Grandma becomes pregnant, Thomas leaves for Dresden because he doesn’t want to keep living any longer.

Early in Oskar’s search for the key, he meets Abby Black, an epidemiologist who lives in Greenwich Village. Throughout their conversation, he hears a man yelling from the next room, but Abby ignores him. Abby claims to know nothing about the key, but Oskar notices she seems to hold something back. Nevertheless, his search continues alphabetically down his list of people named Black. He eventually meets a man only referred to as Mr. Black, who lives in the apartment right above Oskar’s. Mr. Black is 103 years old, very wise, and hard of hearing. Oskar invites him to join him in the quest for the key, but Mr. Black hasn’t left the house in the twenty-three years since his wife’s death, and he’s turned off his hearing aids. He allows Oskar to turn his hearing aids back on. From then on, Mr. Black accompanies Oskar on his travels through the city, encouraging Oskar to get over his fear of public transportation. After they meet with Ruth Black, who lives in the Empire State Building, Mr. Black tells Oskar he’s done searching for the lock. Oskar is devastated.

Thomas returns to New York after 9/11 with a desire to try and live again. Grandma at first wants him neither to stay nor leave, but she eventually allows him to stay in the guestroom. She makes him promise never to let Oskar know he’s there. After Thomas sees Oskar for the first time, he starts following him around from a distance. Mr. Black eventually confronts Thomas and tries to protect Oskar. When Thomas explains who he is, Mr. Black tells him that he should be the one going around with Oskar. Not long after, Oskar finds Thomas in Grandma’s apartment and assumes him to be Grandma’s mysterious renter. Oskar tells Thomas the story of the key and plays him the messages his dad left on the answering machine. Thomas tells Oskar if he ever needs him to toss stones at his window. Oskar later asks Thomas to help him dig up his dad’s grave. Thomas agrees, and they bury Thomas’s unsent letters to his son in the grave. Afterward, Thomas tries to leave Grandma again, but she follows him to the airport. He doesn’t want to stay or leave, so they stay there, writing.

Not long after Oskar meets Thomas, he notices that there has been a single message on his family’s answering machine for months. He listens to it and discovers that Abby Black called him because she had information about the key. He returns to her house and learns that the key belongs to her ex-husband, William. Furthermore, Oskar’s mom knew about Oskar’s key quest all along and had called Abby Black, along with many of the other Blacks, to tell them Oskar was going to be coming. Confused and frustrated, Oskar goes to William's office. William explains that the key unlocks a safety deposit box that William’s deceased father left for him. William didn’t realize the key was in the vase until after he’d sold the vase to Oskar’s dad at an estate sale. Disappointed that the key had nothing to do with his dad, Oskar goes home. He formulates a plan to dig up his dad’s grave. He looks at a series of photographs he has of a man falling from the World Trade Center. He reorders the photographs so that the man floats back up and imagines his last night with his dad playing out in reverse.

[sinnew]

//vent/rant, religion, psychosis, completely disturbing, don’t read tbh.

i think i do feel superior to the vast majority of Xns, not just because i understand the variables that sways one to that religion and i feel very.. outside it, but because i studied it. it’s like the mindset i have when someone is speaking about depression or DID and i feel this weird sense of protectiveness over the topic. personal experience and knowledge on top of the agony at something’s hands gets me really passionate about the topic

the vocal minority are usually the complete fucking fools, like that one Xn who said planets don’t exist or how the wildfires in june are a “preview of hell”.

yeah they’re stupid, i get why someone is attracted to religion, or their minds are so closed that they make these deluded claims.

but i’ve also studied the religion and interacted with Xns firsthand across a wide spectrum of people i cherished and people i abhorred. i was trapped at that school, and had this horrible psychosis for several months while i was attending because of a different event. homicidal fantasies, seeing patterns everywhere, paranoid of being followed or watched, delusions of grandeur, feeling ostracized for existing, wearing long sleeves and pants in crippling heat because i couldn’t do otherwise, getting so overstimulated i left in the middle of classes multiple times, became so depressed i couldn’t stop crying and yet couldn’t move, the hallucinations of bugs all over me, the insomnia, the extreme outbursts due to ptsd, the crippling loneliness that followed me into every thought, thoughts of shooting myself in the head in the middle of my least favorite class, staying in my car as class started bc i just couldn’t stop crying,

and the way no one noticed.

(got sidetracked)

i really do feel superior over those people. the truth is they have no grasp over the meaning of the teachings they spew. many of them are so delusional, too. as if identifying as a Xn excludes you from doing any wrong. it’s so insane

[this reminds me of a day at my current school. one class, we were analyzing a short story and the whole class time turned into a debate/lecture about being Xn and beliefs. like a sermon. and i had a post traumatic episode where i just had to have a panic attack in my car after. i was completely outside myself. i couldn’t believe i was fucked up that bad. and i still have that trauma]