#brain needs a reset

[ceilidho]

prompt: you and Price get in an accident (1.6k)

-

He comes into your life like nothing less than divine intervention.

A fender bender, of all things. It’s a bad day and you’re distracted, too busy thinking about your dad calling to tell you that he lost ten thousand from his retirement fund when the stock he’d invested in crashed and how you’re supposed to help him out of this mess, and the roads are slick with that last snowfall of early spring, still unsalted even hours after the snow started. 

So when you slam on the brakes at the last second after noticing the car in front of you stopped at a red light, your car slips on the ice and slides forward, hitting the back of the stopped car and sending it forward a foot. It’s quick and sudden, and though you stepped on the brakes early enough to avoid a worse collision, your head snaps forward with the jolt and the seatbelt yanks you back violently, winding you. 

Your hands go tight around the wheel, eyes so wide that they nearly pop out of your head as you stare at the car directly in front of you. All of the dread in the world pools in your mouth and then down your throat when you swallow, heart galloping in your chest. You almost can’t believe it for a second.

Then the car in front of you—a big, fuck-you SUV that only worsens your anxiety because of all cars to hit, it had to be someone with a fancy, brand new car that probably has a lawyer on speed dial—puts their hazards on and the driver’s side doors opens and reality snaps like a rubberband back into you. With shaky hands, you put your car into park and put your hazards on as well. 

“Oh shit,” you whisper under your breath. An understatement.

A tall man in a brown parka steps out of the car and stares at you through the windshield, a stern expression on his face. He has a beanie pulled down over his head and a full beard, and for a second, the mental image of a bear emerging out of its den flickers in your imagination, all snow-dusted and irritable. 

He’s grizzled and older than you. The only consolation is that he doesn’t match the image of the driver that you had in your head—no seven thousand dollar suit or bluetooth earpiece; instead, he seems like the kind of man who’d drive an old pickup or a schooner, wearing an Aran sweater and a skipper's cap, with a pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth. He seems out of place in the middle of the road in your small town. 

But he is real, and even though you watch him march over to you, you flinch when he raps on the window with his knuckles. 

“Roll the window down,” he instructs, voice muffled through the glass, and you do because the command cuts through the buzzing in your ear. When you do, he reaches into your car with one hand and pops the lock, then takes a step back to open the door. You’d freak out if the situation were different, but you must be in shock because all you can do is stare at him dumbly as he leans into the car and undoes your seatbelt. “C’mon, sweetheart. Out.”

It doesn’t take much coaxing to get you to step out of the car. All he has to do is step back and you get out, knees nearly buckling, like jelly under you. He holds your elbow to steady you. Your elbow feels delicate and tiny in the width of his palm. 

“You alright, sweetheart?” he asks, looking all over your face.

You want to answer him, but all you can do is whimper, “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, none of that. It was an accident. You alright though? Anything hurt?”

“Uh…I don’t…I don’t know.” It hasn’t really sunk in yet, you think. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be sore all over, but right now you feel fine. On the verge of shaking out of your skin, teeth nearly clattering together, but more or less okay. 

“Nothing too bad then. Wanna give me your insurance so we can deal with this, sweetheart?” 

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Let me just—” You move to reach back into your car to fetch your purse, but he stops you, insisting on getting it for you. 

And you let him, docile like a doll, watching as he leans into your car and across the seats to grab your purse, big frame looking comically large in your little car. Looking like he’d barely fit in the front seat if he tried to get in. 

He comes back out with your little purse in hand and opens it, handing you your wallet and purse by its strap. Your fingers are still shaking when you pull out your insurance information and hand it to him. Everything feels surreal and muted, and the tears are going to flow at any minute now if you don’t get a handle on it. 

He must notice because a knuckle fits under your chin and lifts your head up. “Hey, what’s wrong? 

“No, no,” you say, reaching up to swipe your fingers over your eyes. “I’m just—I’m really embarrassed. I’ve never been in an accident before.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about.” His voice is much softer now, pitched low in the way handlers talk to spooked animals. He puts his thumb to your chin, holding you in place. “No one got hurt. Could’ve been worse than it was, and we’ve both got insurance, so what’s done is done. I don’t look mad, do I?”

Trapped between his thumb and knuckle, you can only give a slight shake of your head. “No.” 

“Then let’s just take it one step at a time and no tears. Okay?”

You sniff. “Okay.”

“Okay. I’m going to call the insurance, so you get back in the car and sit tight, alright?” 

You nod. 

“Good girl,” he says, a hint of praise in his voice. “Put the heat on too. It’s too cold for that jacket.”

That makes you go warm all over, flustered and tongue-tied. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to expect a response out of you. The only thing he expects you to do is get back in the car and turn the heat back on, the warm air billowing into your face when he leans in to crank it up all the way. 

Though most of the sound is muffled from inside the car, you turn down the heat and crack the window open slightly to hear him give his name to his insurance company. John Price. Even his name evokes the image of him somewhere else in the world, settled into the nooks and crannies of history. 

John handles everything for you while you sit in the car like he told you to, settling everything with the insurance companies and calling for a tow truck right after that. You don’t realize that, of course, until the tow truck pulls up in front of his car and he comes back to usher you out of your car. 

“How am I supposed to get home?” you croak. The tow truck driver hitches your car to the bed of the lift and pulls it up, your little car looking pathetic all alone up there. 

“I’ll drive you home then bring mine in later.”

“Why can’t I drive my car to the garage too?” You’re petulant now that you’ve learned that he won’t bite, and you know it’s petulance because you don’t actually put up much of a fight to get your car taken off the tow truck. 

That petulance trembles when his expression grows stern again. “You’re getting it checked by a mechanic before you get behind the wheel again,” he tells you in no uncertain terms, eyes daring you to contradict him.

You don’t. It’s hard to argue with someone so adamant on your wellbeing. A mechanic in later days will tell John, with you by his side, that your car was mostly fine apart from some slight damage to the bumper, but that you made the right call to bring it in just in case the frame cracked during the accident.

John’s arm will be around your waist at the time and he’ll pull you tighter into his side when the mechanic says that. And what do you do but go with it, curling into his side like it’s natural. You’ll have already fucked him by then anyway. It’ll be no less forward than letting him take you for coffee and then back home, following you up to your apartment and into your bed. 

Now though, you let him usher you into the passenger seat of his car and shut the door behind you, the wind cutting off abruptly. It only comes back when the door opens on his side. 

You rattle off your address and watch bemusedly as he programs it into his GPS and hits save. You don’t have the temerity to question him, to poke a hole in the bubble of familiarity ballooning around the two of you. The real world seems far away in his car, like you’re in limbo, the rules different here somehow. 

“How about a coffee?” he asks at the next light, putting his hand on your thigh and shaking when you don’t respond right away. “Does a hot drink sound good right about now?”

“I guess?” you say. In truth, it sounds great, but you’re losing the thread of this conversation, your old preoccupations getting further and further away from you. 

John gives your thigh a squeeze, lingering for a beat before pulling away. “Good. It’ll be a nice little pick me up before we go home. My treat.”

All you can do is nod, your throat dry.

[respectthepetty]

Every week, I really struggle to watch Reset because I get so distracted with how beautiful Pond is. Not Armin, the character. No. Pond. The actor.

I'm not even reading the subtitles because I'm too mesmerized by his face to focus on the damn plot!

Now I have to rewind every two seconds because I'm not catching anything that's happening because all I can see is Pond's pouty lips and kissable neck every time he speaks.

I hate when man are this attractive. I lose all sense of reason.

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

So I'm still thinking about this and wondering who exactly is reseting time. Cause like, I think there are three timelines at least. We know two.

Timeline 2. The one we first saw. The 'present'.

That is the future of this version of 1999. This is 1999 - Timeline 2 ⤵

Then the first reset we witness brings him back to a different timeline in 1999. Timeline 3 and the one we will watch from now on I think.

In this one Armin remembers the second timeline.

But as I said in the tags of this post by @doyou000me I agree with them and I believe there's a previous timeline/reset. Timeline 1. The one where Armin and Thada meet for the first time and at least Thada falls for Armin. I think in this one Armin dies after being shot. Maybe he dies taking a bullet for Thada, hence this scene.

Thada started being a fan in the second timeline because of this. And maybe because he feels responsible for Armin's first 'death', he decided to stay away and just be a fan. Looking from afar. But maybe since that didn't work, he's taking a different approach this time and staying close by.

But the question I have is. Why doesn't Armin remember the first timeline and Thada does? And is Thada the one creating the resets??? And will there be more resets???

I love this timey wimey stuff and I wanna trust this show to actually explain this stuff, although my trust has been broken many times before, I really hope they do this one right. Please show, do not let me down.

[EDIT: If you read the novel, please, I don't want spoilers. I want to continue to guess wildly.]

[malenjoyer]

Hi everyone. I will try to slowly in private my old art since it seems to be something I have to manually do…

I wrote a super long post about how I’ve been trying to process everything: feelings regarding the impersonation, feeling of violation of boundaries, this weird sensation of adjusting to different perceptions of my online self when to me, I’m just a random regular guy.

I’m still processing it but I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want something I love so dearly to be tainted to the point of feeling like I should just blow up everything. I miss posting and I miss reading tags, I miss reading comments… I miss seeing the little snippets of thoughts.

There is still good in that and I still like comics. I want to thank everyone who’s been incredibly supportive so far. I like sharing a space with passionate people who love things I love

[anomalyaly]

[rueclfer]

touya probably sleeps like a fucking log and still expects you to still cuddle up and lay on his chest even though he's so stiff and doesn't cuddle back and his toenails are sharp as fuck and his pits stink and he snores and drools and hair is greasy and

[martyryo]

Got a mechanical pencil and made this cause I can't just doodle like normal people. Postal drawing because I finished paradise lost last night (it's not abt the dlc tho cause I wanted to add the silly asset icons mueheh)

[dtwof]

Anna-Eva Bergman (1909-1987), Becoming, Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo.

[why-the-heck-not]

19.09.23, tuesday

tired !! but nOT SLEEPY damnit

things done today:

2h lecture

4h of coding

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

I wish I could just enjoy things!

[aintnopartylikeaprideparty]

i was scrolling the stanarrator tag and thought this ad was abstract stanarrator art. its actually so fucking over for me dude

[terabyte13]

rivuler

[oifaaa]

My favourite type of compliment is when people tell me they like how I draw women with more realistic proportions especially right now bc ngl watching so much one piece at once has really been fucking with my brain

[thunder-opossum]

Ahaaahhhhhahahahahs 👍

[littletopo]

I had a dream last night where a crypto YouTuber was doing something called, and I quote, "Squatch-maxxing" where he would wear an elaborate bigfoot costume and disappear into the woods.

[delancydevinsmommyissues]

The island princess is like the only time i've enjoyed a plotline resembling a love triangle.

Like you have 2 characters with feelings for one another, but bc of the circumstances, feel like they can't be together/dont deserve each other, and the person who one of them has been told they should want to be with and is also trapped by the narrative is their no. 1 supporter, bc they know two pining idiots when they see them.

like ugh that's literally the best part of the movie for me so i dislike when people try to just make the island princess about tika hate