#anyway it gave me worms

[riality-check]

tw for mentions of substance abuse (part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7)

ao3

Steve Harrington has been awake for fifty four hours. With luck, he'll be able to eke out another eighteen. Three days seems to be the sweet spot, even if he only makes it there half the time and, of that half, it only works half the time.

It's better than nothing.

Maybe four days is the sweet spot. Ninety six is close to one hundred, and that seems like a good omen.

Omens don't really matter though. What matters is staying awake.

So, Steve chugs his coffee and walks into the conference room. Coffee isn't enough, not nearly, but it'll do until he gets desperate enough to take something.

He really does try to only take them when he's desperate. It's easier that way, to just do it when he feels like he needs to rather than measuring dosages and remembering times. Hours start to blur around hour forty of being awake.

He walks in, sits down in the chair closest to the door, and is met with a withering glare from Eddie Munson.

Listen. Steve isn't happy about this either, but at least he doesn't look like he stepped in dog shit on the way here. Then again, Steve doesn't have the luxury of ever looking truly unhappy.

Eddie is a rock star. Mean is part of his brand, while mean is the antithesis to Steve's.

Whatever.

"Are you kidding me?" Eddie says, still staring at him, but Steve knows he's not who he's asking.

"He's the best person for the job," Chrissy, Eddie's manager, says.

"We don't need him."

Someone taps Steve's left shoulder. He turns to see Jeff, the lead singer of Corroded Coffin, give him a warm smile.

"Nice to meet you, Steve," he says, and Steve shakes his proffered hand.

"Happy to help," he says, and it's only half a lie.

The drummer and the bassist - Steve would probably be able to remember their names if he wasn't so exhausted - wave their hellos from a few seats away.

"Hi, Steve," Chrissy says.

He takes another swig of his coffee and gives her a little wave in response.

"We don't need a pop singer to write lyrics for us," Eddie says, still not letting this go.

"Yes, you do," Steve says. He sets his coffee cup down on the table and opens the folder he brought with him. "I read through the lyrics of every one of your songs."

"You didn't even listen to them?"

"Would have taken too much time."

That's a lie. Listening, even with the lengthy guitar solos, probably would have taken less time. But Steve needs something to fill the hours when he's supposed to be asleep, and reading, that slow process with its ample, awakening frustration, is the perfect thing.

"You became so much less interesting after your first album," he says. "Every one of your songs talks about the same thing. Conquering evil, killing demons, blah blah blah."

"That's what's in right now," Eddie snaps.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve catches the drummer and Chrissy make the same motion. They pinch the bridges of their noses, clearly frustrated.

Steve sees why Chrissy wanted to talk to him.

"It is," he concedes. "But I also read the lyrics of every song by the bands with top ten hits. They don't talk about it nearly as much. They sing about other stuff. And they don't use an F major chord in every one of their songs."

"We don't-"

"We kinda do, Eddie," the bassist pipes up. "I'm a little sick of playing F."

Eddie takes a breath. Steve takes the opportunity to take a pill.

He found a way to make it less obvious for people who have something to say about it. Steve will take one from his pocket, yawn, cover his mouth, and swallow it dry. Easy peasy. They don't notice, he doesn't have to deal with people who don't get it making comments.

Except when he does, this time, Eddie narrows his eyes. Like he knows what he's doing.

Steve doesn't like that look.

"Have you read my stuff?" He won't ask if Eddie has listened to any of it. He knows the answer is no, if he keeps bringing up genre like that really means anything.

Eddie doesn't respond. He keeps those narrowed eyes trained on Steve and stays silent.

"Didn't think so," he says, and he slides over the thick stack of papers Robin stapled together for him last night. "Here's everything. Read it. Tell me if you like it. I'm only helping you if you give a shit. This goes two ways, and I don't want to waste my time if you think I'm wasting yours."

Eddie doesn't take the stack, but the drummer, sitting next to him, tugs them closer. "Thanks."

"Let me know tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Jeff says, eyebrows raised.

Steve forgets that most people don't actually take advantage of their twenty four hours.

"End of the week," he says instead, and he relaxes when Jeff does.

The drummer starts flipping through the pages while the bassist looks over his shoulder.

"Need anything else from me?" Steve asks Chrissy.

"I don't think so," she says. "I'll call you back to set up a time for Saturday."

He's amazed by the fact that someone as sweet as her works with someone as pretentious as Eddie.

"Sounds good," he says, and he walks out, trying to ignore the feeling of Eddie's eyes on him as he goes through the door.

It only halfway works.

The pill should kick in soon, within a half hour, maybe shorter because of the coffee. Maybe he'll write something. Maybe he'll work on the piano melody he's been tinkering with for the past week. Maybe he'll read the latest book Robin picked up from the library, something interesting enough to be worth the frustration of the moving letters, something that will still fill the time.

He'll make it to seventy two hours. Then he'll crash because his body is a worthless piece of shit, and he hopes this is the half of the time when he doesn't have any goddamn nightmares.

Maybe he should pop another pill, just in case.

[king-magppi]

Some more DHMIS stuff! (Doodles, more humanizations, etc) The funny puppet show gives me brainworms

[bevirspnsblmnt]

trad sketches I drew today and then cleaned up and enhanced in ps later

[cosmicgesture]

DP x DC Idea

ok hear me out- Ghost King Jason Todd. Bear with me a tick.

At the end of the first millennium of his rule, Pariah Dark was required and compelled by Zone Law to name an heir should he retire or shatter. (Not that anyone expected him to do either.) Still, it was a law of the zone itself, and it needled at his core worse than the Observants and their constant prattling.\

So, eventually, he grew annoyed enough by it that he declared his heir to be a liminal being. If that wasn’t controversial enough, he picked a random name that had yet to popularize in the mortal world, specified that the death was a violent one, and the death date? The death date was just numbers he happened to glance at in the moment, with the year set thousands of years away from the time the heir was named.

Pariah Dark figured, what are the chances someone with this name, of liminal nature, will die on this random date? Well, he knew of Clockwork (maybe knew him well, even), and knew there was always some slim chance. Still, he figured he could simply find his presumed heir and destroy him before he could try to claim the throne.

He didn’t expect to be locked up in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.

When he’s freed during Reign Storm and notices the date, it’s one of his priorities to send a lookout for the random kid who would happen to be his heir. Danny and co. lock him up before he receives any information, and that ends up being kind of that.

There’s discussion in the Zone after that, about a potential ruler. Some think right-by-conquest applies, but others argue the technicalities of the matter - Danny did not act alone, did not beat Pariah Dark without help. Thus, it doesn’t count as Conquest (though it does put him in the high recommendations for the next king’s knight). There begins the questioning then: did Pariah Dark ever declare an heir? Few were left who remembered such a thing, but it was confirmed that he had indeed, though the information about said heir was scant and somewhat inconsistent. One story said the heir’s name was Jackson, and that he died tragically; another called him Jensen and claimed he still lived. So the search began, with inconsistent clues. Any place in the mortal realm with enough ectoplasm to sustain a ghost was a potential hiding place for the heir. They started in Amity Park and spread to other towns and cities. Some ghosts sought out newly dead that had died the day Pariah was locked back up again.

But who’d’ve thought to connect that the same day the sarcophagus locked again, a boy named Jason Todd rose from his grave?

[egginfroggin]

*smacc*

It's ya boi. Major character death.

Emmet's fine, he's just a wee lil bit dead, that's all. Nothing some therapy won't help.

So I've had like no inspiration last long enough to really finish an illustration, so instead I'm trying to embrace the sketchy half-finished look.

Also, highlighter brush, beloved.

Have a good day! :>

(Program: Krita; time taken: about 1 hr. 40 minutes)

[zero-braincells-left]

GOOOOOOD MORNING AAHVMH GUYS…. PALS…

my youtube recommendations have had enough of this fucking song and animation that I’m taking it as a sign /lh

[sjonni33]

wormie hehe // ko-fi

[twyz]

WARNING:: For my born bug haters out there, there are LOTS of bugs where they don't belong in this drawing so I suggest looking away for this one!! Sorry folks!

HOOOOOO BOY THIS TOOK FOREVER!! I am never drawing this many bugs like this ever again because GOOD GOD

It was super fun to do tho!! I can't lie!! And it was nice to test my limits on the gross scale! Hehehehe

[thefirstknife]

BEL?!???

NIGHTMARES? HAUNTING?? ROOT?!!

HHELLO NEZAREC?!?? HI HELLO HI?!?!

My best friend?? my pal, my homeboy, my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my good time boy, my nightmare manipulatior?!?!!

HELLO?!?!

(low key sad hes not a fair weather ally but a raid boss but hey! who knows? maybe he'll have dialogue and this is just him having a grand time and seeing if we're up to snuff? coping so hard please 🥺)

Just now saw that you also sent me this, oops. Actually a good opportunity because I re-read my other reply to an ask and thought I sounded way too convinced about stuff we know nothing about. Things are rarely super clear to the point where we can be confident about new expansion story and raid.

The point about the nightmares not being exclusively his still stands (that we know of!), but as I mentioned back then, we still don't know if the nightmares are inherently tied to Pyramids originally or if the Pyramids are making them by using a resource they acquired from someone or somewhere. That's one of the things I hope we'll find out! Because it is absolutely possible that Nezarec did originate the nightmares and then distributed the source for that power to other Pyramid ships.

Looking back at the previous ask and all of this and the insisting on the "nightmare" and "dreams" stuff (which can be seen in the soundtrack names), it might be possible that they're attempting to consolidate certain aspects of the Darkness lore. It's definitely easier to tie a few things together and give us a banger raid than to leave it open. Cleaning up loose ends and all.

NO clue how this could possibly tie into what appears to be a beam of Light and plants overtaking a Pyramid and why the nightmares would be related and why Nezarec would be there and in what form. Like, there's definitely a ton of absolutely WILD shit going down in Lightfall and predicting anything is basically impossible so pretty much any theory might be right.

For all we know, he could even be in the form of an ally due to the Light beam perhaps? What got me re-thinking things is something I've noticed in the video Bungie posted about their process of making the soundtrack no less. So, in the vidoc (0:50-0:55) I saw this bit and noticed the statue with a scythe in the right side of the screen.

It intriguied me immediately because of the scythe, but you can't see much of it so there's no point thinking about it. But in the music video today? Immediately caught my attention because they showed more of it (at 4:50):

That's a whole ass creature. It looks less like a statue also. It looks kinda like a Tormentor? But not really: it has a head. At first I didn't want to bother with it more because there's literally no way to know, but then later all this stuff with the raid was revealed and it got me thinking now. Especially with your ask!

This is also presumably the Pyramid that gets hit by the beam, since we later see the cutscene with the Witness going through plants and there's a long corridor in the background which looks like this one. We have no clue what the beam actually does, but from looking at the raid image, it very clearly is in some way overtaking the Pyramid. Which is also the vibe I'm getting from the scene itself, as the plants are bursting in:

Anyway, I am losing my mind now with overthinking every single piece of footage. I would still love something new and wild in the raid, but honestly with how this stuff is set up, even Nezarec would be new and wild. Because like, how. Is this why the Witness wanted his body parts? But then again, it didn't get them because we stole them. But then again, they're on the HELM and we're heading into battle with it, unless we secured them somewhere before.

This raid image is absolutely wild to me. Nezarec could very well be a boss or a character. At least parts of him. Don't get super excited (I'm trying to keep not too excited), but at this point I simply have no clue. Well done Bungie, you have bamboozled me. For all we know, maybe the Traveler is a raid boss at this point (that's a joke. I hope).

I'll always mention something that I never see Nezarec fans mentioning and I talked about it in this post which is also your ask and also about Nezarec (😂). That he was known to the Hive, or at least to Sylok, as Nastareth, and worshipped through pain. Just for good measure.

Anyway, be prepared to be surprised as I have genuinely no idea what might be going on here or in Lightfall in general. We're truly in the wildest territory now. Forfeiting any predictions and theories and any strong opinions about what the raid will be about. It could genuinely be anything.

[rubberbandballqueen]

the best part abt being enrolled in a calculus iii course is that it means i finally passed calculus ii. i have been enrolled in no less than FOUR different calculus ii courses, three of which failed to work out for various reasons, and literally NONE of this (calculus ii being a necessary course for me to take in college) would have happened had it not been for NUMEROUS FACTORS beyond my control but it's fine it's cool i'm learning NEW MATH for the FIRST TIME in FOUR YEARS and i am LIVING

[ghostdrinkssoup]

it’s time for the usual hannibal notes/reactions (s1 ep9 aka the beach episode) except it’s just the silly goofy ones:

omg it’s the beach episode. every show needs a beach episode

^^ this comment made me laugh so hard I went to tumblr to make the joke NFBSJDJ I’M BACK NOW

man being an npc in hannibal would suck

NOT HANNIBAL CHATTING SHIT ABOUT JACK

abigail :(((( my darling baby I’m screaming and throwing up

I’m such an abigail apologist I forgot she killed a guy NDBSJHDJS

bev in a high ponytail 🤭💖

ALANA STOP

ALANA NO

YOU COULD DO BETTER QUEEN

ALANA I’M FREE TONIGHT I’LL PICK YOU UP AT 8

WILL IS NOT YOUR DAD ABIGAIL DO WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT <333

I would not listen to will’s mental health advice

I would not listen to HANNIBAL’S mental health advice

“just because you killed my dad doesn’t mean you get to be him” - SLAYYY GET HIS ASS

I hate how married will and hannibal are in this scene jesus christ /affectionate

HANNIBAL IS SO THREATENING FOR NO REASON

JACK’S INSTINCTS >>> so true king

will talks to hannibal like he’s his husband 😭 chatting shit about jack AGAIN (they keep doing this)

OH SHIII THE BEGINNING OF ALANA’S HANNIBAL APOLOGIST ARC

“you betrayed my trust” - SHUT UP

hannibal is so insane fr <3

whoever plays this old man is acting his ass off rn like he knew he was getting one scene and popped off

he’s giving carl from dbh

^^ is it the same actor ??

(narrator voice) it was indeed the same actor

HANNIBAL REALLY RISKING IT ALL TO CONFESS TO WILL (he knows he can manipulate him rip)

also something shifted after episode 7/8 now they’re going full husbands mode they have such Married energy

hannibal: “you know why” - WHY DID HE SAY IT LIKE THAT ALL COCKY AND SHIT okayyy

“who knows abigail better than you or I?” - I am gonna PUT YOU IN THE SOUP

“we are her fathers now” - they went from “we’re suddenly friends” at the beginning of the episode to “we’re suddenly husbands and PARENTS” the baby trap is so real

NOT THE SHOULDER GRAB

when he says you’re dads now and grabs your shoulder 😳😳😳😳

NOT THE SALAD SCENE LMAO

WILL LOOKS SO MAD

HE’S SO ANGRY ALL EPISODE

what is this family dinner someone get abigail out of here

NOT HANNIBAL SLOWLY SIPPING THE WINE WHILE WILL SASSES FREDDIE

^^ he’s supportive 🥰

this show is a comedy

why does this sound like a parent teacher conference?? “you must understand our concerns, we care about abigail” YOU BOTH KILLED HER DAD ????

“this book is about her innocence” *cut to shot of abigail eating human meat* 😭😭

“we all want what’s best for abigail :)” HANNIBAL IS SUCH A BITCH

how dare hannibal have the biggest dad energy in this scene I’m murdering him

and omfg the boundaries between will and hannibal are completely blurred now like jesus dude “will and I are going to protect you” THE MAN STILL WON’T CALL YOU BY NAME TO YOUR FACE GET A GRIP SOLDIER

[spectrumspace]

an abnormal heat is occurring within the remnants of my mind ☀

[ambivalentmarvel]

no one talk to me it’s la casa de asterión hours.

[71eh]

more friend ocs in hanbok 🌸 🌺 🌹 

short one is mine, other ocs belong to @spacesquidz, _cybes_ on insta, lemonydragon and crimsonkrim on twt respectively

[chradi]

Creature Moxie literally wouldn’t leave my brain, so here we are. If Moxie’s plant infection goes a completely different route, I’ll repurpose this design into a separate OC

[pancake-breakfast]

Words cannot express how much I love Attack on Titan. If I could only read one story for the rest of my life, it would be Attack on Titan. I would never have gone back to writing fanfiction if not for Attack on Titan. I would never have bothered to actually sign up for Tumblr (instead of perusing several blogs while not signed in for years and years and YEARS on end) if not for Attack on Titan.

I have friends online and in person that I wouldn't have if not for Attack on Titan. I have a friend in Japan who's a native Japanese person because of Attack on Titan.

A large part of why I went to Japan is because of Attack on Titan. With a friend I might have never become so close to if not for this story.

I insisted to my brother that he needed to let me start showing him anime, that we should try to do a weekly sibling watch party, because I wanted to eventually show him Attack on Titan.

It's reshaped how I think about love and hope and perseverance against all odds in the best ways.

It reminds me why I love stories. It makes fire run through my veins.

If I ever get around to finishing a story of my own... a non-fanfiction story, something that, perhaps, gets published and on bookshelves, it will be due in part to AoT.