#because she died protecting them!!!

[ipatrichor]

OKAY SO. content warnings for near-drowning, injury, death, and eldritch horror stuff typical of a call of cthulu oneshot. (dw tho i promise no pets die)

in the back of the cabinet under the front counter, there's a tiny coraline door that leads nowhere- just a white wall. however, when you touch this wall you go right through it into an unknown space beyond. ronnie spots it first and decides to ignore it until the old man who works with us, van (yes we called him old man van) crawls through and disappears at which point we investigate.

the premise is that we all work at 7-11. no one schedules the shifts bc the manager doesn't fucking care, so we've all showed up today. our group is comprised of:

- ronnie, she/her, a herbo with a dog who shits on the floor of the 7-11

- morgs (short for morgan), she/they, a punk lesbian who used to date ronnie before things ended badly

- cody, they/them, an amateur ghost hunter who's always high and has more parkour skills than sense

- eide (pronounced eed), they/them, a mystery with a backpack they keep almost as close as they keep their secrets.

ronnie's dog, commander ozzy, goes through and eide ends up following to retrieve him. thankfully commander ozzy didn't go far, and all eide sees is a room with winding tunnels leading away from it and pipes along the walls. when they return they tell us not to go in, closing the cabinet and keeping watch. the group splits- cody and morgs smoke outside and discuss their curiosity, eide texts an unknown party, and ronnie waits behind the counter.

eide goes to the back to snack on inventory while leaving their phone behind. morgs and cody return while the coast is clear, and cody takes their backpack and sneaks inside. two men come looking for eide, but ronnie and morgs lie and say they don't know an eide so the men leave. eide comes back out, learns what happens, and goes out into the front parking lot but is too late to catch them.

around this time, the manager comes back and insists on going after old man van despite ronnie's protests. after sticking his head inside, though, his sanity is greatly damaged and he returns nearly catatonic, barely aware of the world around him. ronnie does her best to deal with this, but is left with no assistance.

meanwhile, cody records their trip and leaves a trail of pencils. they begin to explore the tunnels while morgs keeps watch back in the 7-11 with cody's beloved pet lizard, galcan (short for galactic cannibalism). morgs glances inside to take another look, and while she does ronnie returns from stuffing the manager in a closet and yanks her out despite her resistance.

they argue, bringing up their messy breakup. morgs reveals that cody is in the tunnels, and ronnie is horrified and insists on going to find them and bring them back. the two do so, following the pencil trail.

eide comes back inside, finds them gone, and frustratedly enters the tunnels to find them. ronnie and morgs argue again, and morgs ends up splitting off from the group while eide finds a sacrificial dagger and ronnie follows the pencil trail looking for cody, who is having just a lovely time filming things.

they all hear a loud banging noise and rush towards it, reconvening in a cafeteria-esque room. galcan is happily returned to cody’s pocket, and a child's ball bounces by itself from a hallway leading to a weird door with an old-fashioned padlock and a tray of food next to it. ronnie is desperate to leave, and morgs teases her for being scared while eide investigates the food and cody films the door.

morgs promises to leave if ronnie goes and touches the scary door, which she reluctantly does. on the way out, though, a curtain separating the cafeteria from the kitchen moves somewhat and morgs just has to investigate. she calls cody over and the two joke around about the meat grinder and the gross hair in the sink. cody pokes it with a pencil and it feels squishy, which grosses them out. the drain starts to bubble and flood, alarming the trio who quickly make up their minds to leave- much to ronnie’s relief.

meanwhile, eide has gone further down the hallway, past windows that reveal only flat blue, and finds the bridge of a submarine. there’s a radar with nothing showing up, and a parascope that reveals nothing but more blue. the other three follow, and are trying to all get their shit together and persuade everyone to leave when something shows up on the rader. it’s getting closer, and when ronnie looks through the parascope she sees huge, indescribable creatures heading toward the submarine at impossible speeds. they slam into the submarine, loud bangs sounding and pipes beginning to burst.

they start running, only to find that there are several inches of water and rising on the floor. the pencil trail has been washed away, but ronnie remembers the way back and runs that way, cody pulling morgs along after her while eide pauses to investigate the strange door that’s now unlocked. they find a book and some information in a car’s glove box, and then take off to try and catch up with the others.

the water is rising fast, and as they come to an intersection all three see something that gives them pause. off to the right, ronnie sees commander ozzy swimming and runs towards him. on the left, cody sees galcan swimming and checks their pocket, confused to find her still safely inside. directly ahead, morgs sees a horrifying disproportionate creature waiting for them.

when ronnie reaches commander ozzy, instead of her dog she finds a piece of broken off pipe floating in the water and takes it. further down the tunnel is a green sign that she hopes will lead to an exit, and she wades toward it. eide catches up as the others follow her, all panicked.

the sign says exeunt, but cody points out that they’re in a submarine- any exit here will likely lead to the ocean instead of to the 7-11. despairing and resigned to swimming back through the tunnels looking for the original passage, they turn back only to find space bending around them and the green sign in front of them again. out of options, ronnie opens the door next to it. water rushes out into the rooms beyond, and they follow and quickly work together to shut the heavy door behind them to trap the water out.

they find themselves in a room with a single table in the middle, and a pitch black doorway on the other end with a bloody handprint on the wall next to it. with nowhere else to go, the group ventures onward- ronnie in the lead with a phone flashlight and metal pipe, morgs next with two knives she doesn’t know how to use, eide following and keeping their backpack close, and cody bringing up the rear with galcan and a vape pen because there’s no way they’re dealing with any of this sober.

as they move, the walls around them become narrower. they move, remaining metal but rhythmically expanding and contracting as if breathing. this tunnel ends in another room, empty except for what looks like a person sitting in a chair with their back towards the entryway. they breathe oddly, in a way that moves their whole body, and it’s the same rhythm as the walls.

ronnie, pushed to her absolute limit, wastes no time attacking the figure. she gets in a few solid swings with the pipe, refusing to stop as the others stare. the creature rises and turns, revealing itself to be a twisted abomination, and roars- lashing out at ronnie, who ducks out of the way and hits it again. she keeps attacking it until it lashes out and grabs her with a massive hand, squeezing and doing a fair bit of damage.

cody is afraid enough that it turns to anger, shouting ‘hey! that’s my coworker!’ and lunging. they latch onto the wrist and stab it, causing pain but failing to make it let go of ronnie. she manages to struggle out of its grip, but its other hand lashes out and impales cody through the ribs- missing vital organs and galcan’s hoodie pocket, but now dangling them from its hand as it moves.

meanwhile, the sound of the roar reverberating through her head and now cursed with the knowledge that the submarine itself is alive and the creature is just part of it, morgs examines the walls and pipes and starts turning nozzles, hoping to hurt the entity in some way.

catching on to her plan, ronnie hefts her pipe and starts smashing the pipes on the walls. these attacks cause steam to fill the room and hallway, gradually reducing visibility but also seeming to hurt the creature as the submarine itself screams.

kept functioning by adrenaline, cody starts sawing at the three fingers impaling them, trying to cut themself loose without removing the objects to minimize blood loss. it’s slow going, however, because all they have to work with is their pocket knife.

with the hand not wearing cody as a decoration, the creature swings at ronnie and morgs. morgs manages to dodge, rolling and coming up with knives ready and a wildness in her eyes, but ronnie is less nimble and gets slammed into a wall. behind them, eide finally pulls the secret from their backpack- a double barrel shotgun- and fires, staggering the creature. they then move to help cut cody lose, using the sacrificial knife they found earlier.

ronnie continues to attack the pipes, more steam spilling out and greatly impacting visibility. morgs tries to escape but gets turned around, running into the creature and getting grabbed. it knocks her unconscious and tosses her aside as eide gets cody loose, dragging them away to relative safety and reloading their shotgun.

ronnie, meanwhile, can hear the cries and yelling of her coworkers. she has a moment, remembering their frequently shit interactions and all the things she calls them assholes for, and decides- fuck it, if she’s going to die for her shitty coworkers, then so be it. she keeps breaking the pipes, even as the steam spilling out keeps burning her, until she’s gone.

ronnie is dead. morgs lies on the floor unconscious. cody still has three giant fingers impaling their stomach, likely bleeding out. eide stands functionally alone, their shotgun and their determination against the creature. they stand their ground, take aim, fire-

and everything goes black.

when they’re aware again, they’re sitting in a chair next to two hospital beds. in one lies cody, asleep but on the road to healing. in the other is morgs, who still has yet to awaken. her heart moniter flatlines, and all eide can do is watch, barely aware of the world around them, as the hospital fights to keep her alive and manages to restart her heart. whether she’ll ever wake up again or not, there’s no way to know.

[thelilylav]

We only see each other at funerals

(On Jason, Thalia, Nico, Bianca, and their parallels/connections)

The Titan's Curse (Rick Riordan), @/anxiousmaya_, Right Now (Gracie Abrams), The Battle of the Labyrinth (Rick Riordan), Joan of Arc (Mary Gordon), The Lost Hero (Rick Riordan), Episodes Toward and Elegy for Halley's Comet (Lindsey Drager), Jason Grace (Riordan Wiki), The Gods Show Up (Michael Kinnucan), The House of Hades (Rick Riordan), What the Living Do (Marie Howe), The House of Hades (Rick Riordan), Planet of Love (Richard Siken), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), Tangerine (Nolune), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), I Bet On Losing Dogs (Mitski), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), @/abhorarchive (Twitter), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), Seventeen (MARINA), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), @/rollercoasterwords, The Tyrant's Tomb (Rick Riordan), @/the-overanalyst, Where Things Come Back (John Corey Whaley), Grit (Silas Denver Martin), Softcore (The Neighbourhood), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), Frost (Mitski), @/moonbends, I'm Your Man (Mitski), Sun Bleached Flies (Ethel Cain), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), Three (Sleeping At Last), My Art

[earlgodwin]

"One thing that I've always said about Juan is that every action that he does is heartfelt and genuine. When it was the war against the French, he was there and he was going to go to war, even though he knew he was going to die. He saw them getting ripped apart, but he was there and he was going to do it. I believe if Lucrezia hadn't come over, he would have led all his troops into death. I don't think there's anything that he's done which was through general cowardice. In terms of his survival, he died how he lived, and that's laudable, in itself." — David Oakes.

[arcticwaters]

something something reckless dangerous decisions something something confronting mortality

[amaraudermind]

Something something Bruce love Gotham because it's his home, jason loves Gotham because it's in his soul, Duke loves Gotham because it's his family, Steph loves Gotham on purpose

[vulturevanity]

Thinking about ScarVi's overarching theme being The Truth Shall Set You Free. I am so normal about this

[uppastthejelliclemoon]

thinking about human!au demeter who had been under the assumption that macavity was single when they spent the one night together.

how she woke up as he went into the bathroom, and took a peek at his wallet on the side table, and saw the picture of serafina and her kids.

how her heart dropped, and when she met serafina, she saw an exhausted kindred spirit, pregnant with a baby girl who would be the same age as her own daughter. how they clicked, like they were meant to be sisters, but just lost their way for a bit before finding each other.

how she was so ridiculously overjoyed when serafina moved into the neighborhood, being able to watch the budding romance blooming between her new sister and tugger and mistoffelees.

how she got to have another sister, for just a little while, and how serafina loved her and bombalurina like they were her blood, how skimbleshanks and jennyanydots loved serafina like she was their own.

how when she met her nieces and nephew, and saw athena's hair on sekhmet's head, athena's frown on ares' face, and little persephone, barely a few years old, and she realized who their father was, and when she read athena's letter, everything grew cold.

every feeling she had when she saw the picture of serafina and her children in macavity's wallet came back tenfold. the pain, the anger, the guilt, the absolute fury.

and when macavity came walking into the backyard on the day of the memorial, eyes full of self-pity and hands offering gifts, private things that belonged to her sisters that he had no right to hold onto, demeter felt nothing but hatred in her heart.

demeter hadn't known about serafina and athena, or their sweet little babies that she would one day come to love as her own.

but macavity had.

and demeter would never forgive that.

[chamomileteainabuttercup]

Steve thinks soulmates sound romantic, he likes the idea that there’s someone just right for you and somehow you’ll find each other

Eddie is so viscerally pissed off by the idea of destiny pushing someone at him that he will rant for at least half an hour about how dumb that is and how important free will and choice are to actual love and how he and Steve are most definitely not anything as CLOYING and UNIMAGINATIVE as soulmates, in fact he would say destiny took its best shot at keeping them apart forever but they said UP YOURS DESTINY, while flopped across Steve’s lap while Steve puts daisies and clover flowers in his hair

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Hi! I thought for a moment about how Tsumiki could see Megumi's Shikigami. But when I reread the chapter and realized that she was wearing glasses, everything fell into place.

But what I was wondering was, does Shikigami really like Tsumiki on its own? Like, did Megumi summon each new shadow just so Tsumiki could spend time with them? Or are they influenced by Megumi's own feelings, who loves her sister very much?

See, I like it better if I don't give a definitive answer to it.

I will say that Megumi's not like, socializing them with Tsumiki. They love her from the first time they meet her.

But there's still a question of why they like her so much.

We could say that the shikigami are pure extensions of Megumi. They only do what he tells him to do. It's not that they're personally fond of his sister--Megumi is controlling them into acting like they are. He does it so she feels special, so that she feels loved, so that she get all that expression of open affection that he can't give her. It's a quiet way of loving his sister and making her feel good.

Or we could say that he's not controlling their actions when they do this. He doesn't know why they love her so much either. Maybe it's an expression of how much he loves her that he just can't contain. They're influenced by Megumi's own feelings and are a genuine reflection of how much he loves her.

See, I have an interpretation I like best, but I kind of like it being a reader-based determination. Is Megumi doing it to make Tsumiki feel loved? Or is it because he, at the end of the day, he just can't fully hide how much he loves her?

[strwbrymlkshake]

who up praying for downfalls 🤨

[lingeringscars]

I'm having a lot of feelings about 1x11 as is to be expected. Bellamy saying what he wants to say and then saying but I'm not the guy who says stuff like that to keep up his selfish asshole image despite clearly Caring So Much the entire episode. Immediately asking raven if it helped, knowing it didn't but hoping it did anyway. How clarke says only people who can be spared should go hunt, but when clarke, finn, and myles don't come back, it's raven, Octavia, Bellamy, and monty who go search for them, all arguably essential personnel.

And then when they find myles, Bellamy does exactly what he would have done if he had been there when they were attacked. He says they need to get myles, who is extremely injured, back to camp. He immediately says he's sorry to raven when he finds out that clarke and Finn were taken, because he assumes that means they're dead or worse, but he can focus on and save this one person, myles, who is in direct danger and in need of help.

[stiltonbasket]

in the flowers in the palace au, when did lwj realize that she was in love with wwx? It seems like she knows by the first part of the series, since lqr is trying to encourage lwj to marry and she's refusing, so did lwj fall in love when wwx was studying at the cr (if that happened in this verse)?

Lan Wangji's love realization happens when Wei Wuxian breaks into the Cloud Recesses to comfort her in "for myself, in my frenzied heart." This doesn't have much to do with Lan Wangji's refusal to marry; she was simply raised differently from most other girls in the FITP universe, because Lan Qiren and Qingheng-jun knew they could rely on Nie Mingjue to protect her after their deaths through NMJ's marriage to Lan Xichen.

During Lan Wangji's childhood, Nie Mingjue's father was a high-ranking general who controlled the most important military garrison in the empire, and LQR/QHJ were confident that Lan Wangji would be free to live the life she wanted (and stay safe from power plays within the Lan clan) as long as LXC had the Nie family behind her. Thus, LWJ was allowed to choose the subjects she studied after she came of age; and when she decided to pursue higher studies in music and weapons training instead of learning how to manage a household, QHJ didn't object.

By 21, Lan Wangji would have found it extremely difficult to fulfill any of the responsibilities of a gentry wife, so QHJ/LQR never considered marrying her off until Qin Su joined NMJ's harem as a concubine (signaling a loss of favor/power on Lan Xichen's part).

[apollos-boyfriend]

one thing about me is that i’m ALWAYS thinking about chapter 4 kokichi ouma

[2006aquamarine]

Literally I feel like y’all are more threatened by non-traditionally feminine women than they are by y’all.

[amaraudermind]

Shazam: Fury of the Gods is obviously about Billy and his journey as a hero and he's the main character or whatever but more importantly the movie is 100% centered around Freddy.

It's about Freddy's self-worth and struggles with being a hero and with how Billy acts about the hero thing(because neither of them understand the underlying reasons that they make the decisions they do) and it's about how unbelievably strong Freddy is and how he doesn't think he is strong even while he is doing things no one else can.

Freddy is constantly doing things that should not be possible for a person to do and he does them anyway but he doesn't think it's enough. It's not fixing everything so it's not enough and all he can focus on is what he can't do.

Even the final act which is very very centered on Billy is about how Freddy can't do anything about this whole situation. Where he is actively pulling off incredible feats but he isn't saving anyone so what good is this.

In conclusion: I am very normal about this movie

[devilbrakers]

OC DUALITY

was tagged by @morvaris​ to take this uquiz for my ocs >:) thank you nico this was super fun!!

tagging: @numbaoneflaya @time-is-a-lake @aartyom @nuclearstorms @girlbosselrond @druidgroves @malefiicarum @swordcoasts  @aldcaldos @sufferthorn @steelport @calenhads @lavinet​ and anyone else who’d like to join in !!

you and the hat man

oh boy you're fighting demons aren't you? it's like you're in a constant staring competition with something that's always in the peripheral. what the fuck. (at least, that's how people who don't know you would react). at this point you've probably gotten pretty familiar with the hat man. he's a reliable kind of guy. keeps to himself, sure, but you can trust him to be there. maybe a haunting isn't too bad if it's never left your side. you can only imagine what it will be like when he's not there any more.

god-hungry scientist and their abominable child

you stitched something together inside of yourself and gave it life with light from the sky and now it won't die and you can't kill it because part of you loves it and you're not quite right in the head or the person you used to be but at the end of the day it's simply a beast of sadness. you crave the mercy you didn't get from your creators and so i'm telling you please forgive yourself. please hold the monster by the hand.

moon curse of the werewolf

you have found yourself hungered or sickened or ambitious to the point of emotional carnage. you are fine, until you're not, and then you could rip someone in your way apart with your bared teeth by complete accident, and later claw at yourself in fits of pain trying to apologize. do you look at the moon that blessed you in her name, at her marred beauty and baneful eyes, and wish she could just crush that loving-hateful heart of yours before it crushes itself? every bite you take out of flesh is a response to the threads of silver bullets in you that haven't healed. the duality is that the human inside is howling too, gnashing, and without the wolf pelt, everyone can ignore it and turn away. at some point, you got tired of the moon being your only witness. now the wolf is there to make sure others know that you are hurt, and deserving of humanity, of attention to wounds. because that wolf loves you; all of you; and knows when you are hurt better than yourself.