#because that's what you deserve: to be heard. to be seen and to be seen properly

[acowardinmordor]

Risk and Reward

Steddie-adjacent. Tw: homophobia

I always love fics where Steve makes himself Eddie’s alibi while Eddie is still unconscious/in a coma. Knows that it will work because he knows in this town there is no way anyone would believe that Steve Harrington would come out if it wasn’t real. No one would believe it, because everyone knows that his parents are always gone, because his dad is in Congress railing against the gays and their depravity and how they deserve to die and burn.

Steve saying it. Signing an affidavit about it. Giving quotes to the ravenous press. It has to be true. And everyone who doesn’t think it’s disgusting think it’s the most romantic thing in the world.

The government was stepping in, all eyes were pointed at Munson, and he was going to be thrown in a cell for life. Or, to save the cost of the trial, he would have vanished somewhere between the hospital and the prison.

Steve coming out stops that. Airtight alibi, reinforced by the knowledge that there will be consequences.

Eddie is safe, and the government has changed tactics, is blaming dead Jason Carver for it all. Eddie wakes up six weeks later, shocked to wake up at all, and trusts his uncle enough to play along. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were dating the Harrington kid?’ Eddie knows how to tell a story that leaves space for a player to fill in their side. He tells stories about little moments and always describes things from his perspective. That way, if it contradicts the story that’s already out there, he can make a find quip about how he remembers it different.

When he finally gets a moment alone with his uncle, two days later, his guess gets confirmed. Wayne knows damn well that Eddie’s gayer than a maypole, and also knows that Eddie has called Steve his nemesis for years. Wayne knew from the second Steve said it that it was a lie, and knew it would work if it was believed.

The only thing confusing Eddie - well, the only thing in this tiny slice of his world - is why his fake boyfriend/no-longer-nemesis, isn’t in the hospital too, playing the part. If the guy was willing to say it at all, then he’d go all in. If there was one thing Eddie’d learned during those days, it was that Steve only ever did something at 100%

And yes, part of him feels terrible that Steve did this just to save him. He feels awful knowing that this is going to ruin a chance for a normal life. Wayne said the Indianapolis paper picked up a story about it. But at the same time, he’s so fucking grateful. Steve saved him. Again. And now, at least for a while, they’ll need to keep up the story. He’ll get to hang out with him, pretend they’re dating, stand close and cuddle closer. He also feels bad about how excited he is for that chance.

It’s the next morning when Eddie realizes his uncle dodged every question about why Steve wasn’t here. Wayne dodged almost every question after explaining what happened with Steve and the press and the Feds in the first weeks. Then, nothing.

The party visits him that afternoon, a veneer of joy stretched thin over something worse. Eddie’s first guess is that Red didn’t make it. But he hears her a moment later, complaining about ‘these stupid casts slowing me down’. The kids aren’t as good at dodging as Wayne is. Eddie gets the story quickly, such as it is.

The Harringtons came home from DC, gave a few speeches in praise of law enforcement against a serial killer. They visited the families of those that died.

They sent an assistant to find Steve in the hospital to deliver a message. No one else heard it, but the best guess is that it was a threat. Steve went with the assistant. They haven’t seen him since. When Dustin confronted the Harringtons at their last event in town, all they’d say was that ‘our son is getting the best help, and we love him dearly’

Eddie looks at Robin when he hears that for what it is. She drops the kids back home and begs a sympathetic nurse to let her talk to Eddie past visiting hours.

“It’s been a month since he vanished”

“Where?”

“We don’t know, we tried, even Hopper - he’s not dead - couldn’t find him. And this guy named Murray. We don’t know.”

“But…. ‘The best help’. You know that means…”

“I know”

“He’s, Christ, Buckley, he’s straight. Ladykiller. He’s straight and they sent him to some—“

“Yeah, but Eddie… I don’t know if I should… I guess, not that it matters now, and he never said anything, but he’s my best friend. He’s my soulmate. I know him and I think… if his dad wasn’t like he is… if he’d ever felt safe saying so… he knew they’d be furious when he came forward as your alibi, but he told me they’d just disown him, and it would be over. He was scared, but he was okay with what he thought was going to happen”

“I thought he hates me”

“He kinda did”

“Not anymore?”

“No.” There’s a pause where they both think about where Steve might be right now.

“Maybe he hates me again now.”

“I don’t think he would, but…”

And Eddie thinks how weird it is to see spastic Robin Buckley, who rambled in the Upside Down and always had more energy that she could contain, acting so subdued. No. So broken.

They both heard the Harringtons’ speeches and ads when he ran for office. They know what the man thinks about people like them. They both heard stories about what the places are like, where someone can go to ‘get help’

“Do you think I’ll ever get to thank him?”

“No.”

“Do you think we’ll ever see him again? You and the kids at least?”

She’s quiet for a long time, before she picks up her bag.

“If he ever gets to leave wherever they put him, and we ever see him, I don’t think he’ll be the person we knew anymore.”

[sadhours]

the diner - part three

billy hargrove x fem!reader

cw: 18+ minors dni, stalking, murder, toxic relationship, trauma, hallucinations, flayed!billy, peeping Tom, horror

He survived. Somehow— someway. Billy survived. Took care of what he should have so long ago. But that monster lingers, still alive within him.

You’re an innocent girl who works next door to him and he can’t help himself. Could you help him or is he too sick?

part one - part two

read on ao3

He’s fucked up royally. Went and got himself caught. Spent two whole weeks expecting the cops to show up to his apartment or his work. It never happened. Half expected his boss to mention it, ask him why he’s peeping through girls’ windows. Nothing. Yet he won’t dare go into the diner.

Doesn’t go to your house for a week. He drives by to see if your car is there but it’s not. Goes to your ex boyfriend's place first, doesn’t see your car and then he goes to your parents house. Confirms you’re there. But Billy doesn’t investigate further. He goes home. Drinks himself into absolute oblivion. Drinks so much he talks to Maxine. But she’s not really there. It helps him though.

“I killed him,” he tells her, voice is so rough from the vomiting. He has to make sure the slugs are all gone. Checks twice a day. Pukes every morning and every night. No slugs.

“He deserved it,” Max tells him. She’s on his countertop. She’s curled into herself, she’s got dark eyes and greasy hair. Her clothes are covered in the slop of the upside down. Her face looks as sunken in as his feels. She fidgets a lot.

“He cried,” Billy offers, voice flat and emotionless as he relives it. “I told him I wished I’d done it sooner. Brought him to the monster. So I wouldn’t have to do the hard part.”

Maxine is curious. Wants details. “How did you do it?”

“Stabbed him. I don’t know how many times— a lot. It was messy,” Billy whispers. Knows the apartment is empty, though he’s staring right at a sickly step sister. A burdened one. A step sister who isn’t really here. He checked in— knew she was alive. In a rundown trailer with a drunken Susan. Blames himself. He knows Susan took a lot of the brunt of Neil but he paid for everything. Even if he hit Susan, he took care of her— kept her clean. He told Billy how he’d found her. How he saved her and her little girl. And Billy hated them. Because he couldn’t be saved. But he hated Max most because Neil didn’t touch her. Susan was in the same boat as he was. She knew how Neil was. First hand. Max only seen it secondhand. Max watched as Neil hurt him. Max heard it when he hit Susan. Crawled into Billy’s lap, sobbed and clung onto him. Billy apologized, told her he wished it was like it was before. Where Neil only had him to hurt. Told Max that her mom didn’t deserve this. That he did. Rubbed her tiny back as she cried into his neck and told him she missed her dad.

“I hope he suffered,” the image of Max tells him. Has this sadistic smile that looks foreign on her young face. She looks supernatural. Like a demon, maybe like the devil on his shoulder as he recounts this devpraved moment of his life.

“I liked it,” he exhales, “I felt so fucking good when the life left his eyes. I laughed. I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Max grins and nods.

“I kept stabbing him. Blood was gushing out everywhere. I was fucking covered in it but I couldn’t stop,” Billy whispers, his own lips curling up like the little demonic step sister on the counter. “He looked so fucking pathetic and weak.”

“I’m proud of you.”

Billy feels warm all over.

“You saved us.”

It’s his imagination. Neil left them as soon as he heard Billy had died. Billy wishes he had died. But he… he didn’t. He remembers the monster penetrating his skin and muscle and organs. He remembers staring into the strange girls eyes as it happened. But then he woke up. In that hellscape. Had to live in it for god knows how long. Worked his way around, killing weird demonic creatures until he saw this… thing in a tree. Like a mirror. And he shoved his hand through it, and there was something on the outside. So he crawled through it. Found himself in the woods of Hawkins. Covered in slime and filth.

He didn’t save Max. Or maybe he did. He’s not sure.

Max keeps smiling this creepy smile. Billy feels safe. He talks to her for hours and hours that night.

—

Billy’s elbow deep in an old Ford truck. One of the farmers here. He told the fucker it was time to retire the truck. The transmission is fucked, flooded with fluid. Can’t hold onto gears. But the guy insists it’s a quick fix so Billy sent him off, told him he’d try his best.

And he is. He’s covered in oil and fluids. Hair tied up and sleeves pushed up past his elbows. He’s completely dismantled the engine. And he’s chewing on his lip as he stares down at the parts laid out on the concrete floor of the shop when the bell dings. Alerting him someone’s come in. He’s the only one here so he ventures out to the front. Sees a confused looking you. An uneasy look on your face when you see him and he gets it.

“Hi.”

“My cars not working,” you say. “It won’t start.”

“You try to jump it?” he asks, grabbing a towel on the counter and tries to clean his hands.

You fidget with the strap of your purse as you shrug and admit, “I don’t know anything about cars.”

He heaves a sigh, looks back at the dumb ford and looks to you, “Where’s it at?”

“In the parking lot,” you answer softly. “I-I don’t know what I did.”

“Hey,” he shakes his head, “Shit happens. It’s okay. It’s probably a dead battery. Did you leave the headlights on or something?”

“No!” you reply, shaking your head profusely. “It was fine on the way here, I don’t know what happened.”

Billy grabs his keys, “Let’s try to jump it. Go stand by it.”

You nod and rush out of the shop. He gets in his car, drives the short distance to yours and parks in front of it before popping the hood. He’s fucked kind of. Now you know what car he drives.

He grabs his jumper cables from his trunk and walks back around. “Open the hood,” he instructs you. He likes you following his orders. You obey, watching as he connects the cables and he tells you to go try to start it. Nothing. It clicks and clicks.

“Press down on the gas!” he calls to you and again, nothing.

The two of you keep trying for a while before Billy decides to run into the shop. Grabs the right battery and brings it back out. Replaces yours with the new one but your car still doesn’t start.

“Alright,” he sighs, “it’s probably the alternator. Let’s get it into the shop. Put it in neutral and I’ll push, you just gotta steer.”

It’s kind of a frustrating journey. He has to keep yelling at you to turn the steering wheel as he’s pushing it. He hopes you recognize how strong he has to be in order to push your car. But then he’s screaming at you again to push on the breaks. But eventually, the pair of you get your car into the shop. He tells you to take a seat and he disappears to find the parts he needs.

Then he comes to you with an apologetic face.

“I gotta order something. Might take a week or two to get here,” Billy tells you, braces for you to be angry like most the fuckers that come in.

You just look defeated, “What’s wrong with it?”

“I think it’s just the alternator,” he replies, “it’s really an easy fix. But I don’t have it in stock.”

“A whole week? How am I supposed to get around?” you reply, voice so shy and quiet and sad and it kind of makes his dick twitch. He ignores it.

He shrugs, “I… I mean… we work next door to each other. I could drive you.”

The uncertainty— perhaps fear, is clear on your face. So he clarifies, “I mean if no one else could.”

There’s this weird feeling weighing in. He creeped into your window. You both know it. But when he was caught, he ran and he ignored you completely until now.

“Can you at least drive me to my parents?” you ask.

Billy nods, “‘Course. Let me lock up.”

“Oh, you don’t have to like, stop what you’re doing and right now,” you tell him, eyes all wide and pretty.

He laughs and shakes his head, points to the Ford and tells you, “I wanna burn this fucking thing so really, I need the time away.”

“Worse than my car?” you ask with a smile and he nods.

“This thing is deader than dead. A fix that costs more than the fucking whole truck but this dude insists it’s not that. As you can see, I’ve taken the whole engine apart and uh— as I thought, the fucking transmission is full of metal shards. So yeah, worse than your car,” he explains as he scratches the back of his neck.

“You know a whole lot about cars, huh?”

“I hope so. It’s kind of how I make money,” he says.

You nod. Subtle smile on your face. Like you know something he doesn’t. He wants to. He walks away to lock the place up, walks you out towards his car and lights a smoke before he gets inside. He asks for directions but Billy knows exactly where your parents live.

“Thanks,” you tell him. “I really appreciate the help… I have no idea what I did to make my car break.”

Billy laughs, turns towards you and shrugs, “Sometimes they break, nothing you did to make that happen.”

“I probably did something, my dad tells me I have to let it warm up and I never do,” you say and look ashamed as you say it.

“He’s right, but that’s not what caused this. Your car is like 20 years old, stuff is gonna break,” he insists.

The ride to your parents house is awkward— silent aside from the directions you mumble out. Billy smokes one after another Marlboro, keeps his body aimed forward without a glance your way. But in the small interior of his beat up car, he can smell you. A mostly unpleasant smell from the greasy diner food but faintly he can detect some floral, citrusy thing underneath. Perfume, he thinks or maybe your shampoo. He wants to smell it uninhibited, fresh out of the shower and laid on a bed for him.

Upon arriving at your parents house, you flee with only a short goodbye. A barely there whisper. Not even a thank you, which Billy thinks is fucking rude. And you run into your parents house, closing the door without a look over your shoulder.

It fills Billy with anger, a familiar feeling. The emotion he’s always been quick to. Times like this he really misses his Camaro. Could put his boot to the pedal and zip off, leaving the anger with the burnouts in the pavement. But the Camaro is long gone and he’s driving a fucking Ford Capri and it not kept well. Rusted to shit and he’s had to basically rebuild the engine piece by piece since he got here. His boss is nice, helped him out a lot with stuff but Billy’s not sure how much longer he can stay here. Especially with you going and seeing him peeking into your window. But more than that, he don’t wanna leave without getting something from you.

[loustat-roleplay]

So, I've been putting a lot of thought into the types of storylines that I have in mind for these two. Currently, the one I'd really like to explore more is... what exactly happens after the reunion in NOLA?

Does Lestat go with Louis to the hotel? Does Louis brave the hurricane with Lestat in his shack/home? How long is it before Louis goes to Dubai? Is Lestat there? Just out of view?

There's so much to unpack.

Lestat is broken. Fragile. Weak. Louis is and will always be his strength.

There's an example of a starter I created as Lestat after this scene below. If you're interested in exploring this dynamic with me, my inbox is open.

Lestat swallowed hard as he kept his grip tight on Louis, part of him still afraid that this was all a dream – that the other would disappear and he’d awaken alone in his coffin as he did every night. He shifted his body as he heard the window breaking, shielding Louis with his back as glass flew at them. Not that it mattered. They were vampires, the cuts would heal quickly. However, something inside of him went into protective mode. He had always wanted to protect the man in his arms at all costs. “Louis,” he whispered, eyes closing as his grip tightened even more. Just the sound of his ex-companion’s name on his lips brought him some amount of comfort, a comfort that he hadn’t felt in years. He could hear the wind much louder now, the walls of his home starting to sway. It would hold, this wasn’t the first storm his home had seen. Sure, there would be damage to clean up afterward, but there was always damage. Lestat had endured, no, lived in that home for years. He wasn’t accustomed to modern life; it was a luxury that he had cut himself off from. It was a luxury that he didn’t deserve. Claudia was dead because of him, and she haunted him every day. How could he go on like it had never happened? How could he allow himself to eat, to experience pleasure, to live? His house was small, but it was all he needed, it was all he deserved. When the house started to shake, he forced himself to pull back, tears still streaming down his face as his eyes found Louis’s again. “It’s not safe for you here,” he told the other, shaking his head vehemently. “You should go before it gets worse. I – do you have shelter somewhere? Will you be safe?” He wrapped his arms around himself, unsure what to do with his hands now that they were no longer embracing. “You need to be safe.” Louis deserved to be safe. He needed Louis to be safe.

[ediblecucumber]

Platonic Yandere Omega Dad x Abandoned child Reader pt2

You don't know where it all went wrong, one day everything was fine and the next your omega dad didn't want to be a family with you and your alpha daddy anymore

What should have been another normal day was filled with screams and pleas, you've never seen your parents fighting, much less heard them scream like that

Your alpha daddy was crying and your omega dad was saying sharp words as he picked up a suitcase and got ready to walk out the door, before leaving your life he looked at you one last time, his eyes were so cold

After that whole day was a mess, your alpha dad was trying to balance his work schedules to be able to pick you up and take you to school and now he also had to cook and clean the house, all the calls and surprise visits from the child protection center had a very apparent effect on him as his healthy and shiny appearance was replaced by a tired and unbalanced

The worst part of all was the days in court, watching your omega father fight to keep the family dog ​​while making it very clear to the court that he was not interested in having joint custody of you hurt you deeply. Were you less important than a dog? Hearing him tell the judge that he never wanted to be a mother and that he was never interested in playing that role in your life tore your little soul to pieces Were all those happy days when he said "I love you" to you lies?

With a father who was barely holding himself together in front of you and another who seemed to have simply disappeared into the world, there was no stability in your life. You were clinging to the hope that everything would be okay until you heard the news

"Honey, your omega father won't be able to come to your birthday because... because... because he adopted two little girls and they don't feel comfortable coming to your party, I'm sorry, I wanted... are you okay?"

No, you weren't okay, in court he had I had said that I wasn't ready to be a mother but it seems that that was a lie, or rather, he wasn't ready to be your mother, that was the first crack

After that day the excuses didn't stop, there was always an excuse for his absence

"Sorry but I can't go today, my oldest has a cheerleading practice and I need to take her, take her and then go pick you up only to have to go back to pick you up would be a waste of time, you understand right? Of course you understand you're a big kid"

"Sorry I couldn't go to your 7th birthday, and my youngest girl had a rough day so we went out with her to the spa to have a relaxing day, I ended up running late but don't worry I'll send you something"

"Was today the day of your competition? Sorry, I forgot because I was too busy planning the twins' birthday party, you weren't upset, right? Don't worry, next time I'll definitely be there HE'S LYING"

"I can't go today, one of the girls started her first heat today and I can't leave her alone, these are omega things you wouldn't understand"

With each excuse your insecurity and anger grew, every time he mentioned the twins your self-esteem decreased and you started comparing yourself more and more to them, if you were an omega would he love you as much as he loves them? Could it be that the problem is you?

Years of accumulating resentment came to a head on your 13th birthday, that was supposed to be a special day and being the loving and caring father that he is, your alpha father spared no expense to make each of your birthdays more memorable than the last

In truth, he is trying to console you through material goods, he does not have much free time because he needs to work more to pay the alimony that the court determined he must pay to his omega ex-husband, the alpha father can even work less but that would mean lowering your standard of living something he would never forgive himself for doing, you deserve the best so if he had to work more to pay for all the things that you would be a little happier then he is willing to face nights of exhaustion and overload

Unexpectedly the night before your omega father answered the phone call and agreed to spend the morning with you, your alpha father tried to call him every day to make sure that your omega father would go for a walk with you or at least answer your questions messages, despite your best efforts the omega ex husband always ended up ignoring you and this broke the alpha father's heart because nothing hurts a father's heart more than seeing his son hurt

So that morning you put on your best clothes, fixed your hair and waited for your omega father he was an hour late but that's okay, the traffic must have been bad right? RIGHT!?

When he arrived you were almost bursting with happiness, saying goodbye to your alpha father you eagerly got into your omega father's car, you couldn't wait to find out what he had planned for you

After a few minutes with only you talking to fill the silence you both arrive at the mall, a little disappointed but it's okay, the place isn't as important as the company, you eagerly follow him like a puppy while he does some shopping maybe one of the purchases is your birthday present!?, you're a little hungry but you can ignore it so everything is fine until you hear those two voices

"Daddyeeee" waving his arms one of the twins is screaming while the other is laughing, immediately your omega father seems to forget about you and goes towards them

The way he hugs and kisses them is very different from the way he treats you, he was only away from them for a few hours but he's saying how much he missed them but with you... with you he spends months yarn without seeing you and never gave you a hug like that this was the second crack

"Daddy thanks for buying these gifts for us, you bought all the items on the list!? You didn't have to" oh so the shopping was for them... he spent the whole morning of your birthday buying gifts for them this was the third crack

"Of course you did, we're celebrating that you're now officially part of the cheerleading team, I'm glad practice ended in time for us to meet up to celebrate" so in fact the intruder was you, he's not here to celebrate your birth he's here to celebrate their victory, he only met up with you because he had free time while waiting for them

You saw the three of them laughing and moving away from you, slowly they got further away each moment until you entered a restaurant that you were eager to try with your omega father, you wondered if they would notice that you stayed behind, if they would notice that you weren't at the table

NO, they didn't notice, the dishes were ordered and you watched them eat in a happy and laughing mood, today is your birthday and he simply forgot about you, this was the fourth and final crack

Stunned, somehow while you called your alpha father you felt dazed, it was like one moment you were full of feelings and the next you were completely empty of them

Your alpha father arrived quickly, you almost didn't notice him realizing he arrived only because he hugged you and took you out of the catatonic position you were sitting in on the street in front of the mall

The way home was silent, despite the alpha father's best efforts to try to make you smile you remained silent, expressionless until you got home and as soon as you walked through the door the dam collapsed

SCREAMS AND TEARS, you were having a fit on the floor, your chest was tight and you couldn't BREATHE BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T COULD YOU BREATHE?!?! EVERYTHING WAS TOO MUCH, THE FEELINGS WERE TOO MUCH

You had a PANIC ATTACK and had to be hospitalized, your party was canceled HATE, HATE, HATE is what he feels for his ex-husband, how DARE he do this to YOU!!! HOW DARE HE HURT THE MOST PRECIOUS THING OF THE ALPHA FATHER!? If he could, he would KILL that man. Your alpha father had to miss work to spend the entire hospital stay with you.

You were eventually released and received a recommendation for a child psychologist who specialized in dealing with children who suffer from parental abandonment. Your alpha father was already doing the math to see how many sleepless nights full of work would be necessary to pay for the hospital, the medicine, and the psychologist.

You didn't know what your life would be like from that moment on, but you were sure of one thing, something in you broke and could never be fixed. A heart could only be broken a certain amount of times until the pieces were too small and uneven to be glued back together.

Unbeknownst to you, in five years' time, you would be forced to confront your omega father.

[yanderes-galore]

Can I please request yandere-daze prompts 16, 84, and 89 with Hosea?

Sure! I saw him more as a platonic yandere, but you can probably view this either way. Up to you. This is a softer/fluffier fic yet I still tried to show some dark undertones.

Prompts Here

Yandere! Hosea Matthews Prompts 16, 84, 89

"I would do anything to make you stay."

"Did they bother you again? Just let me deal with them!"

"This world doesn’t deserve someone as sweet as you."

Pairing: Platonic/Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Overprotective behavior, Slight manipulation, Violence, Bullying mentioned, Age gap (If you see this as romantic), Violence, Mentioned abuse in a past relationship, Murder, Blood, Dubious companionship/relationship.

"I don't want to be in the gang anymore."

Hosea pauses when he hears your words, old eyes glancing at you in concern. You looked nervous to speak with him... even when you trust him. He frowns... you've always had your doubts in the gang.

The Van Der Linde gang was known for being composed of misfits. Men and women society didn't want. You were no different, a young adult who came here on the run for one reason or another. From what Hosea had seen and heard... you dealt with an abusive partner at home and went to the gang to flee.

When you first joined Hosea recalls the bruises he saw on your skin. Your partner was particularly rough with you and you were so skittish. Despite this, you proved useful to the gang with a little teaching, and Hosea was often the person you relied on.

He's always wanted to keep you safe.

Ever since you joined, Hosea and Dutch have looked out for you. They've done that for many of the members in the gang. Although... Hosea has been particularly fond of you.

The one issue he's noticed you tend to have is doubt. Some of the other gang members, particularly Micah or Bill, have made it a hobby to pick on you. For one reason is was because you were young... maybe a bit older than Lenny but still one of the youngest. Another reason was they considered you soft compared to the battered men in the gang.

Hosea didn't care about these aspects when it came to you. You were a damn good pickpocket and your company was a nice change. Call it favoritism... but Hosea was always the one to watch over you.

He's fully aware of the arguments you get into. Teasing can go too far and it often leaves you hurt. You're good in a gunfight yet words from your fellow members seem to sting too much.

Hosea sighs when you look away from him, obviously thinking over what you said. Hosea isn't entirely sure if you meant it yet but beckons you closer to his seat. You notice, reluctantly meeting his gaze.

"There's nothing to worry about, sweetheart... Come, sit beside me." Hosea smiles, wanting to stay a supporting figure in your life. You nod, sitting beside the older man as he pulls you into a side hug.

"Now... what's got you thinking like that?" Hosea whispers, looking at you with concerned eyes. You look hesitant but sigh, leaning against him.

"I want a new start. The gang's been nice to me and all but... I'm tired of running—" You confess, feeling Hosea's subtle squeeze against your side.

"That's not the only reason, is it?" Hosea suddenly interjects, catching you off guard. You look up at him suddenly as Hosea sighs.

"Did they bother you again?" Hosea asks, tilting your head up to look in your eyes. His thoughts immediately go to Micah and Bill, two drunkards picking on you like they're so much better. "Just let me deal with them."

"N-No, Hosea... it's not just them...." You sigh, the older man's gaze softening. You're just so precious to him.... The idea of you leaving the gang is... unpleasant in his mind and heart.

"Not just them? Are you trying not to blame them? I assure you that you can—" Hosea insists, yet you merely shake your head.

"I'm just... I'm worried and wonder if this is really where I belong." You admit, making Hosea's heartache. You really were thinking of leaving...

He really wishes you wouldn't.

"Oh, dear, of course you belong here..." Hosea murmurs, pulling you into a proper hug. He feels you latch on to him, the gesture making him smile. You meant the world to him.

"This world doesn’t deserve someone as sweet as you." Hosea murmurs with a sigh. "The fools in this gang don't either... you belong here... don't you feel happy beside me?"

Hosea feels you briefly nod and he holds you tighter. Hosea's feelings towards you are... complicated. He cherishes you in many ways... He just wishes you'd see it.

He just wants you to see that you need him... even if the others pick and tease you... you'll always have him...

"I would do anything to make you stay." Hosea admits, pressing a soft kiss to the top of your head. You tense under the affection but don't protest. It felt comforting... Hosea always felt comforting...

Yet you're too naive to know how dangerous he can be.

You knew Hosea was an outlaw, an expert con man. You knew he was skilled with a gun and survived gunfights. You knew in that sense he was dangerous.

What you weren't aware of... was what he's done for you behind the scenes.

Hosea has worked hard to make sure your new life is pleasant. He's kept an eye on those around you in camp, keeping note of who's troubled you. But, the most intense thing he's done for you...?

Tracked down your past partner and... "paid him a visit".

You never knew of such a thing. However, Hosea is a masterful hunter, able to track nearly any animal. Tracking your partner was easy.

Spilling their blood across his home was even easier.

The law were left with quite the mess by the time Hosea fled. He never told Dutch, just saying he went out hunting to anyone who asked. Not like the gang could tell the difference between human and animal blood anyways.

It was worth it to him when he saw the look on your face upon reading the newspaper. You looked shocked yet... relieved. Hosea thought you looked... happy.

He'd do anything to see you smile... anything to keep you beside him and happy.

Even now, as Hosea watches you hold him, he smiles. You seem to be regretting your decision to leave the gang... and all it took was a few words. You were easy to convince and reason with.

Especially when it was him.

"How about we go sit in my tent, alright?" Hosea asks, watching you look up at him. "I'll get you something to eat then you can calm down with me."

Upon seeing Hosea's friendly smile, you nod and allow him to pull you up from your seat. You looked much happier now. It makes Hosea pleased he makes you happy

Yet as he walks you to his tent, he can't help but glance over around the camp. His eyes land on Micah playing Five Finger Filet... and Bill drinking his beer. The older man grits his teeth, tightening his hold around you.

Someday he hopes to make those two pay for harassing you every day...

He isn't sure how much he can take when he sees you so upset... maybe it's about time those two get what they deserve....

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

Both my parents actually suffer from HORRID emotional dysregulation and are prone to snapping and going into rages. My sister is the same way tbh. I am now realizing this is why they are constantly baffled by the question of whether or not I am mad at them.

I don't have external meltdowns.

I could. I don't let it happen.

I keep my rage on the inside and stay pretty quiet about it. It's just as strong as theirs [physically shaking nose bleed from high blood pressure kind of bad], but like as a kid I saw how terrifying it was to be around [dad breaking dishes, mom putting our lawn chairs into walls] and I just internalized that I wasn't going to wear that anger on the outside.

So my mother genuinely cannot tell if I am just being quiet or if I am silently hearing the dial-up noises of pure rage. This has lead her to both making strong and confident statements like "You are a pacifist who would never hurt a fly U.U" but also acting like I am secretly dangerous maybe... It's because she has never seen me snap.

She knows what her temper is like [throwing chairs through walls], she knows what my father's temper is like [pick up child and toss out door], and she can tell I am being tested, but she doesn't know what happens when I snap or where that breaking point is.

Her -perhaps unhinged- solution to this, my whole life, has been to do things that should obviously enrage me or shut me down completely, like ignoring important boundaries, repeatedly, punishing me for expressing emotions or needs at all, etc... And then to constantly ask me if I am angry with her when I get too quiet [right after near directly telling me to shut up].

It has occurred to me now, they have never once seen me lose my temper, so they literally just can't tell if I am angry at them. My sister is easy, my mother fights and screams with my sister constantly, my mother understands this. My mother doesn't have any grasp of feelings or boundaries that are not screamed at her [apparently, and I fear my sister is the same way]. Her and my sister are close despite constant fucking fighting because they understand each other.

They are trying to get me to engage the same way and it is not working. I realize now that this has been hard for them.

I was so successfully taught to suppress my emotions, by being punished for any outburst, that rage quiet looks the same as any other kind of quiet from the outside. To them anyway.

I did tell her. For the record. I used my words. I did tell her very calmly that my response to rage, in order to avoid doing the things that terrified me as a child, was to simply leave [the autistic urge to GTFO]. When a situation or person causes too much of the dial-up rage noise, I simply extract myself from that situation, up to and including never speaking to a person again. I explained this calmly. I explained it calmly 100 times and I explained that I explain myself calmly as my rage response 1-5 [also pretty much every other negative emotion tbh], and I told her that what came next was me simply opting out and fucking off. I told her this. I couldn't understand why she never took me seriously, or why she never fucking understood.

I couldn't understand what made her like this.

But it's the same problem I have with everyone else multiplied by a factor of 10.

If I am explaining myself calmly, they can't understand that it's actually serious or that I am actually upset. ESPECIALLY because they read me as "female" and women "aren't that rational" so if I am not screaming and crying about something, which I never do, people assume I can't be upset and it isn't serious.

And then after having my boundaries ignored too many times despite having calmly explained how and why it's a problem [shaking inside or not]... I leave. I leave and everyone gets upset like this is unexpected behaviour, even though I told them 50 times that is how I would respond if they kept doing *the thing.*

And for neurotypical people especially, they are expecting there to be a disconnect between what someone says they need or feel and what their actually boundaries and feelings are, and they expect the latter to be demonstrated with emotions. Telling them bluntly you do not function that way somehow never helps?

My mother isn't just looking for normal yelling or a few tears to know I am serious, whether or not I do those either [I don't], she's looking for an explosion to know there's a problem at all.

Fucked if I know how she proceeds through life this way in general or if this is just her expectation of her own kids???

And I couldn't get why my mother couldn't read my emotions and didn't seem to think I have any. It's because she's testing for the rage limit to see where my 'actual' limit is instead of taking my word for it. Never the fuck mind that she could simply *not* test at my boundaries instead of letting me have them. Separate issue.

I couldn't figure out what made her *like this*

She's expecting me to throw a giant meltdown violent tantrum at people when I have 'actually' had enough. Maybe she got away with those being like 5'4" in another time, but I am the size of the average man, I do not get to have giant screaming rages, whether or not people perceive me consciously as a woman, and least of all because a lot of people -at least unconsciously- read me as 'masculine' or at least always "they guy" of the situation compared to all other women and some men [bigger stronger and more rational, more able to just absorb the damage and let it go so the less rational screaming/crying one doesn't have to be dealt with]. Even if it was in me to be willing to terrify people [usually never], there are such limited instances where it wouldn't just blow back on me. Potentially very dangerously.

I am going to be the quiet calm one. You are going to have to let me use my words, bitch.

So she kept ignoring my boundaries until I had to cut her out of my life, and she probably doesn't understand and probably thinks it feels sudden -after 36 long years of bullshit- abrupt and unfair.

But I told her hundreds of times.

I probably should have just screamed at her.

[pubby-paws]

It's just constant. I reblog things I see sometimes that talk about trans women being banned, and every single post is talking about someone new. They're the only ones who get banned at this consistently of a rate. I have seen full cock and balls on this website that doesn't even get flagged(much less deleted), but anything that talks about being trans (ESPECIALLY about transfemmes) in a positive or even "wholesome" way gets flagged. Everything they do is scrutinized under the harshest possible lens for what MIGHT be "fetish content"(read: enjoying being trans), and they just ban them. Afterwards, they say "she was a filthy pervert, we swear, for real! Why would you need proof, just trust us! Not on OUR good Christian website!"

Honestly, even when they pull a reason out, I think they're making up something to justify the reality: they think that the existence of transfemmes is inherently a fetish, and therefore if transfemmes talk about being happy about any aspect of being trans, they are posting sexual content and deserve to be banned. More than anyone else on this website.

[ikishima]

.

[13eyond13]

.

[queerdesire]

Oh yes yes I should have tried harder because fuck 🥵

[esyra]

After the hospital bombing, I finally heard back from my grandmother and confirmed that several of my relatives were murdered by Israeli bombing. Seven of them, to be precise. Three are still going, including her. We've been talking constantly ever since.

Asked if it was possible to head south, and was told they did but were also bombed there. So they decided to go back home, in Zeitoun. Their home was bombed and they were pulled out of the rumble, then driven by ambulances to the al-Ahli Arab Hospital. There were people in every corner. Gazans sheltering, sleeping on the floor. Gazans dying on the floor, waiting for beds.

Four were declared dead on arrival, three were in need of surgery and other three were just bandaged. Then, a bomb was dropped in the parking lot that made parts of the ceiling collapse, like Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah reported in that horrific conference/interview. Those in need of surgery died.

By the way, just in case you didn't know: the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the third oldest in history, bombed by Israel a few days back, was located near the hospital.

When looking for new shelter, they saw schools with signs hanging outside, "We can't take any more families." They met families, sympathetic but already sheltering too many people. They're now staying in an apartment building they found empty. Sleeping in the corner of the living room. If the family comes back, they'll apologize and leave.

Told me she was saving her phone battery for when the bombing stopped, and she had to ask for help to rebuilt the neighborhood. But she doesn't think it's gonna stop anymore. The ones still with her are mute most of the time, like they're saving energy, but she feels lonely and wanted to talk. There's no internet and to connect to WhatsApp, people are buying "a card from the supermarket, there's a password and username." Not sure what she meant. Still, the internet is inconsistent and won't load neither videos or images nor pages, so she doesn't know what's happening on the outside world.

Told her there were a lot of people protesting to stop the genocide, she replied, "The bombings are getting worse by the day." The bombing yesterday was the worst she ever witnessed. The entire neighborhood is infested with the smell of death, of decomposing bodies. Bodies are piling up in the streets and she's not sure if it's because they ran out of places to store them, but most of them are in bags. The smoke of the bombings hide the blue sky—she hasn't seen the clouds for a while.

Asked if I could share their pictures, names and dreams with people and was told, of which I partly agree, "they're not entertainment." If anyone genuinely cared, they would be alive—I'd argue there are people who do care, but I'm not gonna lecture her pain. And they don't deserve to be used to fulfill someone's sick fantasy. Told me to remember what some Israelis do with pictures of dead Palestinians. And I do.

For those of you who are not familiar, many times before settlers got together to celebrate the murder of Palestinians. For one, in 2015, Israeli settlers set a house in Duma, West Bank on fire. An 18-month old baby, Ali Dawbsheh, was burnt alive. Both parents later died of wounds and only a 5-year-old, Ahmad, survived, although severely injured.

Two celebrations of their murder are widely known, one at a wedding and others outside the court in which two were indicted for the terrorist attack. In the wedding, guests stabbed a photo of the toddler, Ali, while others waved guns, knives and Molotov cocktails. Israel's Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was present.

That's what happens in an apartheid. Palestinians are so abused by authorities that their "innocent civilians" come to accept the brutality as necessary or are desensitized by our suffering. After all, it's been 75 years—get used to it!

So I won't risk the image of my loved ones, in fear they are used in these kinds of depravity. I will say, though, the world lost a young footballer. Lost a female writer and an aspiring ballerina. Lost a kind father, who was also a great cook, and a loving mother that enjoyed sewing and other types of handicraft art. Lost a math teacher and a child that wanted to become one.

People think Israel is testing new weapons on them. There's civilians arriving at the hospital with severe burns, which they thought was from white phosphorus, but apparently the pattern is different from the one caused by white phosphorus. It's widely believed Israel tests weapons in Palestinians.

Jeff Halper, author of War Against the People, a book on Israel's arms and surveillance technology industries, said: "Israel has kept the occupation because it's a laboratory for weapons."

They've ran out of drinkable water and the "aid" Biden sent was only for the South of Gaza and no fuel, for hospitals, was allowed in. Many shelves in the supermarket are empty. She said many are convinced that if they don't die from the bombing, they'll die from starvation or dehydration, or whatever disease will develop from the dirty water they're drinking.

Told me all people do now is pray, cry and die. Told me she hopes West Bank is spared. Told her Israel bombed a mosque in West Bank and dozens of Palestinians in West Bank are being murdered by settlers, so she bided me goodbye.

[bohemiandeer]

You know what hits me hard? When 5 to 6 year old children, all the way in Southeast Asia, knows about what's happening in Palestine right now. That children their age is getting bombed, that they're starving to death, that they're getting shot at, and sniped in the head. Because, just this past 2 or so months, I heard some of the little ones in the Kindergarten classes I'm TAing in as an Intern talk about it. Hell, one of the little boys downright said he didn't like Israel, because Israel is bad, because they do scary things. Another was questioning whether Palestine was bad too, because, "why else would they shooting at them?". A little girl in one of my classes doesn't want to finish her food at all, because she wants to save at least half her meat and rice for kids in Palestine, because she heard that, they don't have food. And that's just the ones I remember. Namely the inciting cases before their classmates slowly follow suit. The littles are fricking SCARED. We had to sit these kids down, and tell them that the topic is too mature for them at the moment, that they shouldn't even be concerned because they're KINDERGARTNERS, they're not even old enough to properly understand. The one teacher I was TAing for had to make a class announcement saying that. What gets me is, these are 5 to 6 year olds, the youngest I've worked with in this specific age group is 4. 5 years old on average, and they've already been exposed to the worst horrors genocide has to offer through the news and snippets of conversation among adults and hell, considering how many of them say they like to play games on Mama's phone, or their IPad, even from fricking social media. And the fact that, these literal babies, from all the way in Cambodia, has more empathy in their entire body and soul, than full grown fricking adults have in the nail of their pinky finger, gets me. FFS we as adults could LEARN from them I feel sometimes. I honestly don't know what to feel about it anymore. On the one hand, this is the next generation I'm working with. And if the next generation's default response to a tragedy such as Palestine, is what I've seen come up on occasion so far? Perhaps there's some bloody hope for this world after all. At least in this country. Especially since a majority of them already come from families who survived a genocide. These are the 3rd - 4th generation descendants of those who survived the Khmer Rouge. They've got grandparents at home, who no doubt are more than intimately familiar with what Palestine is going through right now. And it shows.

But on the other, it makes my heart sink because these are CHILDREN, these are LITTLE KIDS, they should be playing with their toys and watching cartoons and talking to their friends about everything from Spiderman to Speakerman to Kuromi and her friends, and be worried about whether or not they can go to playground that day, guranteed they're well behaved, or if Mama remembered to pack in their costume for swimming lessons that week. NOT JUST MY KIDS. But the little ones in Palestine too. They deserve better. They all deserve, so much better. Hell, it's come to the point that whenever I look at my kiddos right now, whether they'd be working in class, playing, doing something as mundane as eating lunch or getting ready for their nap. I think of the children their age in Palestine that didn't even get the chance to survive. I think of the ones whose memories from this age, is nothing but absolute horror and pain, rather than what has slowly become my normal, who never got to experience what my littles do on a daily basis right now.

Children shouldn't even be concerned about "War", about a Genocide. The last thing that should be on a 5 year old's mind, is pain, and suffering, and the worst horrors imaginable ever to be inflicted on a human being. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S INFLICTED, ON OTHER CHILDREN THEIR AGE. And for that alone, the world has failed them. Especially the kids in Palestine who didn't ask for any of this. They just wanted to carry on with life as kids do, the same way as my littles do on a daily basis no doubt, learning, playing, chatting with friends over their favourite cartoons and characters, worrying about whether they'd get to go to the playground or not that day.

I apologize for talking about this on this blog. I know my blog tends to be lighter in feel, a lot more unhinged and light hearted typically. I mean, I'm just a fricking nerd who likes to draw and write, and lurk about her favourite fandoms to consume and support what is shared among other nerds who also like to draw and write. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. About contemplating it, especially since I'll be back on a roll tomorrow, working with my kiddos again after not seeing them for 5 days straight because of Holidays. And, I just had to talk about it. This is something I felt I couldn't keep to myself this time, I don't think my soul'd be able to carry it. I had to talk about it.

FREE PALESTINE. Our children deserve better.

[txttletale]

Saw a tweet that said something around:

"cannot emphasize enough how horrid chatgpt is, y'all. it's depleting our global power & water supply, stopping us from thinking or writing critically, plagiarizing human artists. today's students are worried they won't have jobs because of AI tools. this isn't a world we deserve"

I've seen some of your AI posts and they seem nuanced, but how would you respond do this? Cause it seems fairly-on point and like the crux of most worries. Sorry if this is a troublesome ask, just trying to learn so any input would be appreciated.

i would simply respond that almost none of that is true.

'depleting the global power and water supply'

something i've seen making the roudns on tumblr is that chatgpt queries use 3 watt-hours per query. wow, that sounds like a lot, especially with all the articles emphasizing that this is ten times as much as google search. let's check some other very common power uses:

running a microwave for ten minutes is 133 watt-hours

gaming on your ps5 for an hour is 200 watt-hours

watching an hour of netflix is 800 watt-hours

and those are just domestic consumer electricty uses!

a single streetlight's typical operation 1.2 kilowatt-hours a day (or 1200 watt-hours)

a digital billboard being on for an hour is 4.7 kilowatt-hours (or 4700 watt-hours)

i think i've proved my point, so let's move on to the bigger picture: there are estimates that AI is going to cause datacenters to double or even triple in power consumption in the next year or two! damn that sounds scary. hey, how significant as a percentage of global power consumption are datecenters?

1-1.5%.

ah. well. nevertheless!

what about that water? yeah, datacenters use a lot of water for cooling. 1.7 billion gallons (microsoft's usage figure for 2021) is a lot of water! of course, when you look at those huge and scary numbers, there's some important context missing. it's not like that water is shipped to venus: some of it is evaporated and the rest is generally recycled in cooling towers. also, not all of the water used is potable--some datacenters cool themselves with filtered wastewater.

most importantly, this number is for all data centers. there's no good way to separate the 'AI' out for that, except to make educated guesses based on power consumption and percentage changes. that water figure isn't all attributable to AI, plenty of it is necessary to simply run regular web servers.

but sure, just taking that number in isolation, i think we can all broadly agree that it's bad that, for example, people are being asked to reduce their household water usage while google waltzes in and takes billions of gallons from those same public reservoirs.

but again, let's put this in perspective: in 2017, coca cola used 289 billion liters of water--that's 7 billion gallons! bayer (formerly monsanto) in 2018 used 124 million cubic meters--that's 32 billion gallons!

so, like. yeah, AI uses electricity, and water, to do a bunch of stuff that is basically silly and frivolous, and that is broadly speaking, as someone who likes living on a planet that is less than 30% on fire, bad. but if you look at the overall numbers involved it is a miniscule drop in the ocean! it is a functional irrelevance! it is not in any way 'depleting' anything!

'stopping us from thinking or writing critically'

this is the same old reactionary canard we hear over and over again in different forms. when was this mythic golden age when everyone was thinking and writing critically? surely we have all heard these same complaints about tiktok, about phones, about the internet itself? if we had been around a few hundred years earlier, we could have heard that "The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth."

it is a reactionary narrative of societal degeneration with no basis in anything. yes, it is very funny that laywers have lost the bar for trusting chatgpt to cite cases for them. but if you think that chatgpt somehow prevented them from thinking critically about its output, you're accusing the tail of wagging the dog.

nobody who says shit like "oh wow chatgpt can write every novel and movie now. yiou can just ask chatgpt to give you opinions and ideas and then use them its so great" was, like, sitting in the symposium debating the nature of the sublime before chatgpt released. there is no 'decay', there is no 'decline'. you should be suspicious of those narratives wherever you see them, especially if you are inclined to agree!

plagiarizing human artists

nah. i've been over this ad infinitum--nothing 'AI art' does could be considered plagiarism without a definition so preposterously expansive that it would curtail huge swathes of human creative expression.

AI art models do not contain or reproduce any images. the result of them being trained on images is a very very complex statistical model that contains a lot of large-scale statistical data about all those images put together (and no data about any of those individual images).

to draw a very tortured comparison, imagine you had a great idea for how to make the next Great American Painting. you loaded up a big file of every norman rockwell painting, and you made a gigantic excel spreadsheet. in this spreadsheet you noticed how regularly elements recurred: in each cell you would have something like "naturalistic lighting" or "sexually unawakened farmers" and the % of times it appears in his paintings. from this, you then drew links between these cells--what % of paintings containing sexually unawakened farmers also contained naturalistic lighting? what % also contained a white guy?

then, if you told someone else with moderately competent skill at painting to use your excel spreadsheet to generate a Great American Painting, you would likely end up with something that is recognizably similar to a Norman Rockwell painting: but any charge of 'plagiarism' would be absolutely fucking absurd!

this is a gross oversimplification, of course, but it is much closer to how AI art works than the 'collage machine' description most people who are all het up about plagiarism talk about--and if it were a collage machine, it would still not be plagiarising because collages aren't plagiarism.

(for a better and smarter explanation of the process from soneone who actually understands it check out this great twitter thread by @reachartwork)

today's students are worried they won't have jobs because of AI tools

i mean, this is true! AI tools are definitely going to destroy livelihoods. they will increase productivty for skilled writers and artists who learn to use them, which will immiserate those jobs--they will outright replace a lot of artists and writers for whom quality is not actually important to the work they do (this has already essentially happened to the SEO slop website industry and is in the process of happening to stock images).

jobs in, for example, product support are being cut for chatgpt. and that sucks for everyone involved. but this isn't some unique evil of chatgpt or machine learning, this is just the effect that technological innovation has on industries under capitalism!

there are plenty of innovations that wiped out other job sectors overnight. the camera was disastrous for portrait artists. the spinning jenny was famously disastrous for the hand-textile workers from which the luddites drew their ranks. retail work was hit hard by self-checkout machines. this is the shape of every single innovation that can increase productivity, as marx explains in wage labour and capital:

“The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10, or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The labourers compete not only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other, but also by one doing the work of five, 10, or 20; and they are forced to compete in this manner by the division of labour, which is introduced and steadily improved by capital. Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore, in the same manner in which labour becomes more unsatisfactory, more repulsive, do competition increase and wages decrease”

this is the process by which every technological advancement is used to increase the domination of the owning class over the working class. not due to some inherent flaw or malice of the technology itself, but due to the material realtions of production.

so again the overarching point is that none of this is uniquely symptomatic of AI art or whatever ever most recent technological innovation. it is symptomatic of capitalism. we remember the luddites primarily for failing and not accomplishing anything of meaning.

if you think it's bad that this new technology is being used with no consideration for the planet, for social good, for the flourishing of human beings, then i agree with you! but then your problem shouldn't be with the technology--it should be with the economic system under which its use is controlled and dictated by the bourgeoisie.

[earthtooz]

x : TO LOVE, TO CHANGE: *+ﾟ

in which: you tell veritas you love him. he gets upset with you.

warnings: contrary to what the synopsis implies, it's fluff, i promise. 1k words, first time saying ily, slightly cranky reader, no mentions of reader's gender, dr. ratio being so in love he becomes so soppy and lovestruck. confessions.

a/n: there's a phenomenon that happens whenever i write for dr. ratio, and it's that my heart literally lunges out of my chest and begins typing at the keyboard for me. i should get it checked out. anyways, this is to preemptively celebrate his release!!

“Why- why are you mad?” You exclaim, watching the way Veritas crosses his arms and pouts with the petulance of a child. His gaze has strayed away from your eyes, and all you can do is sit in his lap with your arms hanging at your sides, brain tirelessly racking for all the reasons that you could have angered him.

He doesn’t give you any clues, displeasure brewing in his eyes instead.

“Is it because I said ‘I love you’?”

The purple haired scoffs and sticks up his nose, hair bouncing with his actions whilst you jostle slightly on his legs from the quick action. As much as you love his side profile, you’d love it even more if he spoke to you about what is bothering him.

During this moment, the world stills. You think he’s genuinely mad, and Dr. Ratio’s fury-driven state is not something you should take lightly. Really, you’ve seen it multiple times, and though it has never been directed at you, you hope it never will be. Which is why you sit on his lap now, tensely anticipating his response, and for the answer as to what you did wrong. 

“I was meant to say it first,” he grumbles, losing the arrogance that fills his tone whenever he speaks, air filling with sincerity. 

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I was meant to be the one to say ‘I love you’ first.”

Your confusion is tangible at this point. Audible, if you will, because it rings like cicada sing. “Are you being serious?”

“Deadly.”

“You- why, then couldn’t you just have said it?” You sputter, slapping his defined deltoid, concern slowly melting into frustration. “Need I remind you that it was me who confessed to you first as well?”

“Yes, and it was positively the best day of my life.” He says that like it’s a simple fact. No sentiment, no heartfelt declaration, just another logical statement straight from a textbook of his life.

They say to be loved is to be changed, but no matter how much you love Veritas, all he knows is how to be an astronomical pain in your ass. Does he know how scared you were for his answer? You thought you did something unforgivable, or that he didn’t love you enough to respond in kind, or worst of all, that he wanted nothing to do with you anymore?

However, he's acting petty because he was not the first one to say those three words? You frankly don’t know why your heart beats for him as strongly as it does. In fact, you want to whack him over the head with his own codex.  

Placing your hands firmly on his shoulders, you shuffle out of your position from his lap, planting your feet onto the ground. “Oh, you are so infuriating! Pretend I never said anything, I’m going back to my office until you-”

Not even two steps away from him and a hand clasps around your wrist to drag you back to where you started: on Dr. Ratio’s lap. His arms come to wrap around you like chains, leaving no room to wrestle him out.

“I never said you could leave. Especially not after telling me you love me,” he grumbles lowly into your collarbone, breath tickling your skin.

“I’m starting to regret it.” 

“Can’t you at least say it again?”

“I don’t want to,” you grumble, arms snaking up to rest around his shoulders. “You don’t deserve it.” 

“Well, that’s a little harsh. Is this how you treat the ones you love?”

“You haven’t even said anything back,” you pinch his skin. “Talk about harsh.”

“Do you remember the first time we met?” he asks with a fond chuckle, not missing the opportunity to leave kisses in a trail along your skin, making his way up your neck. Then, when his eyes meet yours, you almost crumble in embarrassment at the memory he’s injected into your mind. 

You push him away and raise a hand to shield your eyes from him, clearly reliving a haunting memory. “Please don’t remind me.” 

“Y’know, it’s not everyday someone gets to scold me and be right. If you weren’t so beautiful, I wouldn’t have let it slide, but it’s not everyday a gorgeous genius falls into my lap with guts to challenge me.”

“I was… agitated that day, so stop talking about it, please. In fact, for my sake, please just forget that moment. Completely.”

“Forget about it? Completely?” The scholar asks with genuine shock lacing his tone. “I fell in love with you in that very moment, how can you expect me to stop talking about it? You rendered me a fool in love and expect me to not think about the very moment it happened? Sweetheart, it was a pivotal moment of my life!” 

“Not pivotal enough if you can’t even say ‘I love you, too’.”

“On the contrary, I have loved you longer. I yearned for you in wakefulness and in my dreams. I wished for you to look my way, and when you did, I never wanted your eyes to stray from me. How heartbreaking it was when they did.” His hand has snuck under your shirt now to rub circles on your skin. If he detached from you, he fears you’d slip away from him, and the worst thing you can give him is space. “Do you know how it felt chasing after you because you were the only one out of my reach? For three years, the only thing I wanted was to be yours. You made me an idiot.”

Stunned by his confession and the weight of it, you let him continue, sharp tongue softening. The only motivation you offer is a hand coming to cup his cheek, tucking aside his bangs so you can see his expression in its entirety. 

His gold eyes shine when they look back up at you. For the first time, you feel like you’re seeing the parts of him that Veritas hides from everyone else. 

“I love you.” He continues with heart wrenching devotion. “I’ll continue loving you until the streams stop, the rivers freeze, and the oceans dry. With three hundred thousand, eighty-three thousand, five hundred and seventy-one discovered planets in the cosmos, that phenomenon will approximately take-”

You seal his lips with yours in a gentle kiss, cradling his jaw and swallowing his words. Like wax to fire, Veritas sinks into you, completely helpless against your affections. 

But, oh, you love him, and nothing else in the entire universe matters.

© EARTHTOOZ 2024, do not steal, translate, repost my fics and do not recommend my fics onto any other site.

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Eartha Kitt (Anna Lucasta, St. Louis Blues)—My friend and I have a saying: NOBODY is Eartha Kitt. A thousand have tried, and they've all come up empty and will continue to do so. Everyone knows her for something: from "Santa Baby" to Yzma in Emperor's New Groove to Catwoman to making Lady Bird Johnson cry for the Vietnam War. She was a master of comedy and sex, an extremely vocal activist, and she aged like fine wine... I honestly don't know what I can say about her that hasn't already been said, so I'll stick to linking all my propaganda. Like what else do you want from me. She was iconic at everything she ever did. Literally name another. How can anyone even think of her and not want to absolutely drown?

Hedy Lamarr (Samson and Delilah, Ziegfeld Girl)—Look. I'm sure someone has already submitted Hedy Lamarr because she was spectacularly beautiful, and a very strong lady too: she fled both an abusive marriage AND nazi persecution at a very young age and rebuilt a life for herself pursuing her love for acting all on her own!! Her career as an actress was stellar; while she began acting outside of Hollywood (her very first movie, Ecstasy, won a prize at the Venice Film Festival), she conquered American hearts very quickly with her first movie in the US, Algiers, and then just kept getting better and better. If all this isn't enough, she was also an inventor: her invention of the frequency-hopping spread spectrum radio transmission technique forms the base of bluetooth and has a lot of applications in all kinds of communication technologies. I think that deserves a prize, don't you?

This is the final poll of the Hot & Vintage Movie Women Tournament. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

THIS POLL LASTS FOR 24 HOURS.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Eartha Kitt:

"A hot vintage woman who was not just known for her voice, beauty, poise, and presence, but also her unapologetic ways of speaking about how she was mistreated in the show business as a girl who grew up on cotton fields in South Carolina in the 1930s through the 1940s coming to Broadway first and then Hollywood."

"Have you watched her sing?? Have you seen her face?? Have you heard her talk?? How could you not fall instantly in love. She makes me incoherent with how hot she is."

"She can ACT she can SING she can speak FOUR LANGUAGES she is a GODDESS!!! Although she is (rightfully) remembered for her singing, TV appearances (Catwoman my beloved), and later film roles, her early appearances in film are no less impressive or noteworthy!! She’s an amazing actress with so much charisma in every role. She was also blacklisted from Hollywood for 10 years for criticizing the Johnson administration/Vietnam War, so. Iconic. Also Orson Welles apparently called her “the most exciting woman in the world.”

"She had such a stunning, remarkable appearance, like she could tear you to shreds with just a glance- but the most undeniable part of her hotness was her voice, and it makes sense that it's what most people nowadays know her for. Nothing encapsulates the sheer magnetism of her singing better than this clip of her and Nat King Cole in St. Louis Blues, she pops in at 2:49. Also I know it's post-1970 but her song that was cut from Emperor's New Groove is likely to make you feel Feelings."

"Even with as racist as Hollywood was in the 1950s and 60s, Eartha Kitt STILL managed to have a thriving career. She also once had a threesome with Paul Newman and James Dean, and called out LBJ over the Vietnam War so hard that it made First Lady Johnson cry. Eartha Kitt was talented, sexy, and a total badass activist."

Hedy Lamarr:

"The only person you can find both on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in the Inventor's Hall of Fame--her radio-frequency-hopping technology forms the basis for cordless phones, wi-fi, and a dozen other aspects of modern life. She was also passionate in her efforts to aid the Allies in WWII (unsurprising for a Jewish-Austrian Emigree to America), and her name served as the backbone for one of the best running jokes in what is possibly Mel Brooks' best movie. Look, Louis B. Mayer apparently believed he could plausibly promote her as "The world's most beautiful woman". Is an entire website full of people going to be less audacious than one Louis B. Mayer? I didn't think so!"

"Described as "Hedy has the most incredible personal sophistication. She knows the peculiarly European art of being womanly; she knows what men want in a beautiful woman, what attracts them, and she forces herself to be these things. She has magnetism with warmth, something that neither Dietrich nor Garbo has managed to achieve" by Howard Sharpe, she managed to escape her controlling husband (and Nazi Germany) by a) Disguising as her maid and fleeing to Paris or b) Convincing the husband to let her wear all of her jewelry to a dinner, only to disappear afterwards. Also she was particularly clever and helped develop Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum (I can't really explain it but anyway...)"

"Her depiction of Delilah and Samson and Delilah just lives rent free in my head. The woman was gorgeous."

"One of the most beautiful women ever in film, spoken by many critics and fans. Beautiful shapely figure, deeper seductive voice, and often played femme fatale roles. She was also brilliant and an inventor. Mainly self-taught, she invested her spare time, including on set between takes, in designing and drafting inventions, which included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a flavored carbonated drink, and much more."

"Gorgeous and brilliant pioneer of modern technology and the middle part."

[sneakygreenbean]

personal observations made by a new cane user:

you do not need to be in constant pain to own a cane.

folding canes have a clasp or band to keep them folded. losing the band is a pain in the ass.

you will get dirty looks

it does not matter what age you are. you will get dirty looks.

you have to hold it in the opposite hand as the disabled leg. this is fortunate, as I am right handed, so i hold it in my left hand to support my right leg.

people will try to steal your cane from you.

when standing still, I hold it in my right hand unless i need to do something right handedly. this does not work as well as i thought it would.

being visibly physically disabled is difficult. having a mobility aid will help with pain and movement, but some people don't get them because visible disability is treated with disgust.

if someone meets you for the first time, and you don't have your cane, then they will like you more, but they will not believe you are actually disabled.

if someone meets you for the first time, and you have your cane, they will not treat you the same.

the majority of other cane and mobility aid users I have met are homeless. I live close to a big city.

People do not want to see you being disabled.

you will not hear of the benefits of using a cane from anyone who does not use a cane.

no one will prepare you for the world of being visibly physically disabled. however bad you think we have it is usually not from the disability at all. I can deal with pain and I can deal with an indisposed left hand.

the hardest part of being disabled is the fact that no one will care until you make them care.

the disabled seats on trains are a suggestion

the disabled seats on buses are a suggestion.

you will have a different experience with using a cane than I have had.

your hand will become tired. you are using it as a leg.

your cane is legally a part of your body. this will not stop some people.

you are not your disability. but it will affect you.

i love you

theres always an invisible someone who has it worse. that person will not be affected or offended by your use of a cane. take the damn ibuprofen. put the folded cane in your bag. ask your friends for help. gd knows they need help sometimes too.

you will have to learn that things will be impossible to you. you may not run as fast anymore. you may not become a skater, like you always wanted to be. you may be left behind when everyone else runs ahead.

you deserve better.

your cane handle gets dirty. wash it.

some days pain is worse. some days you will feel it the moment you wake up.

no one deserves pain. the human condition is not to suffer. we deserve better. we deserve to be loved and not tolerated. we deserve to be seen better than from the corners of eyes. we deserve to be heard better than an afterthought at a meeting.

be quick to care for yourself. I love you.