#frothing at the fucking mouth right now no joke

[twosetmeridian]

lately, i've been keeping away from all things twoset-related so i won't get distracted from some Important Real Life Things, so when i tell you i flew across the room like a looney toons character when i saw this picture, like holy fuck, i was unprepared

[commanderofwhat]

Do you think Dream ever tells Hob something, or shows Hob something, or even gives him something, and sometimes, for a second, thinks, "Roderick Burgess would be so pissed to see this"

If the immortality wasn't enough to send the bastard into a screaming fit, then it would certainly be bow favored Hob is to a being such as Dream of the Endless, much less fucking Death of the Endless just by being... normal? And cocky about it at the right time and right place and what does he do?

600 years of mundane ambitions, nothing vaguely grabbing at any real power, no study of the occult or even interactions or demands for more

Burgess sacrifice so much time, energy wasted at bargaining with a void until his death, Hob just got everything he wished for by just being lucky enough to end up as two universal forces /joke/

While Burgess rots in hell, Dream of the Endless shows Hob the Dreaming's Library and, yes, Dream revels in how much the old man would have frothed at the mouth to get his stained hands on such books, such knowledge and here was Hob, a peasant now every day professor, who mostly asked for a bit of Dream's time, not even for his benefit, mostly Dream is the one being given wines and teas and whatever foods Hob tries to sway Dream into trying.

Maybe sometimes hell shows Burgess the scenes of Hob tucking Dream of the Endless, a being that survived a century of airless imprisonment like he was the most fragile creature in the world before a movie night

Burgess had to use an entire ritual, a whole cult and countless workers to force the Endless presence, all Hob has to do it smile and shly look away while tugging at an ear to get a visit, a promise, a /deal/

Hob gets to have all the time imaginable and gets to now spend it lovingly close to the most beautiful creature ever conceive while Burgess rots for being the wrong kind of idiot

A scene of Hob being given a dreamstone, something Burgess would have literally killed for, just to let Hob spend even more lucid time in the Dreaming, to protect him from the ever increasing enemies of both the man and the Endless

[sil-te-plait-tue-moi]

Got shocked.

Quick summary: Before he knows why, Rust is fixating on you.

Warnings: Not much except it does get literally sick here kind of; sexism and really gross remarks; kind of workplace harassment; Rust being unsettling.

Word count: 3.6K

A/N: Erm this is not the second part to the Idler Wheel but I just thought I’d write this because whyyy not! It was kind of written quickly so if there are weird grammar mistakes just ignore them lmao 😭😭 might come back and edit when it’s not past midnight if you know what im saying. Anyhoo it’s September now?

***

The brain-rotting contents of his colleagues’ pass-time conversations was an unfortunate byproduct of Rust’s refusal to pay mind to his own thoughts. He needed it, he thought sometimes, though he’d rather not have had need for anything: it served as a focal point for his attentions, which, otherwise, might be directed inward at himself for too long.

He didn’t pay much attention to the exacts of it all. Bar last night, dick jokes, some wild sexual exploit from their twenties: once Rust had heard it once, he did not need to hear it again. Even before they spoke, Rust had had most of them figured out. He only had to watch them, his first day at the office. Still, initially, he let them tell their shit to him and believe like maybe they could be friends, like, maybe, Rust was one of them, too, that he was entertained by their boring fucking carousel of stories. Fucking arrogant. Plagued by the crack and froth of some dry ash-type taste, Rust would swallow it down. Just the first time, though. Not the second, and not any time after that.

No, he did not care for the details. More like, it was the tone of their voices that he could plaster his resentment on. Proud, girthy, spread over too much ground, self-important. For the most part, if he had to talk to one of them, more dogs than anything else, his throat would feel too full—his mouth, too. It was what it was: force-feeding. Why anyone in their right mind would pretend to enjoy it, Rust had no idea. Everything down here displeased him, but no less so than it had in other places. Everywhere he went, Rust came with himself, though he’d tried to sever that unwelcome tie a long time ago. If he was lucky enough, some floating sensation would find him, and Rust would get to leave the conversation for some worthy train of thought. Finally, he would get to pry apart a crime scene - in his head, he did not have to use gloves: he could play it like a tape, a thousand times, a thousand different ways.

Hear them now. Rust’s lip begged to curl, which was odd. It was then, coming to terms with the sensation of his instinct, its physical demands, that he understood that something was strange about this conversation.

Slow, crawling, his eyes made their way to Marty, who had scooted his chair over to Rust’s desk. With steely eyes, he took note of how his partner’s elbow was flopped over his paperwork, how his body was sprawled open wide so unnecessarily.

Rust removed a pen wedged under Marty’s forearm. He didn’t even shift.

With the aim of cleansing his mouth of that bitter swell, he took a mouthful of cold coffee, and another, and another. When he was alone, Rust took one sugar, but, here, it wasn’t enough. Shit, it was never enough to neutralise that foul taste. Sometimes, it grew so strong that Rust would take a little longer on his smoke breaks, making his way through one, two, maybe three cigarettes. Yeah, that usually quenched it. But it was no use inside - no, he needed an open sky above him, to let all the fumes out, like smoke from a smouldering kitchen. Something about four walls and a ceiling: how many men like them had sat there, sweat there, jawed there, pissed there, before them? It just made him sick, made his head spin.

There was no need to turn to know how the rest of them were arranged. So predictable. So deeply interwoven into their psyches: the strong belief that they deserved the space that they took up, and, shit, they took up a lot. Fighting for dominance of the conversation, pushing, shoving, overlapping, each trying to mark out a platform for themselves. He wouldn’t, and it unsettled them, just as they could never comprehend anything else that wasn’t like them.

Gradual-like, Rust let his mind melt back to the specifics of the conversation, the messy, brutal abstraction of their voices condensing into words and phrases, like ink-blots soaking back up into the brushes from which they were dispelled. It didn’t take long listening for him to understand that you had drawn the interest of the hoard.

Johansson would’ve said something—if he were here. The more Rust listened—to them inching closer to what they really wanted to say, hopping around the hot topic of women and their ways on them—the fatter his tongue felt, sitting big and swollen in his mouth like it shouldn’t have been there, like he ought to have cut it out by now.

With his spectre hands, he reached into his pocket, slipped a cigarette between his lips, lit it with one flick of his lighter. That click was enough to make his mouth water, most days, although not now. Breath scraped painfully through his throat, like sandpaper.

You were distinct from them - that was a fact. When he’d been thrown into the department, he found it odd that more remarks weren’t made to your face about most things: your capability, your temperament, your looks. More often, it’d be behind your back, huddled over in the office kitchen, passed around like a note in a fuckin’ middle school classroom. He figured it was because you were smarter than them, and they knew it. At least you were only a woman, they told themselves. They couldn’t beat you up, but they could do whatever they wanted to you in their heads. They could talk about how they’d pin you down if they ever got the chance.

That last comment only happened once. At least, only once when Rust was around. He’d ended up in the captain’s office, his fingers still twitching with the way that that pulse had begged and struggled for release.

His body ached with the effort to keep himself from shaking - the tremor in his fingers would not be eased by the deep, punishing drag of smoke into his lungs, nor would the dirt clouding his brain be cleansed and sanitised by the sting, the burn of the breath he held close to him, until it hurt his chest. No, he needed the sky—but he didn’t want to leave you either.

Rust’s head swung under a bout of nausea, which hit him like the impact of falling in a dream. Briefly, he closed his eyes, taking another drag, swallowing down the husk of it. It only made it all worse.

Punch him, he thought desperately, like maybe you could be telepathic, like maybe he was as well. Who?—he didn’t know. Any of them, all of them. It was all the same.

When Marty let out a bellow of a laugh, full and selfish and fucking stupid, Rust had to look at the photograph of the dead girl in front of him again to steady himself.

Delusion did not seduce Rust. Relying on what he knew to be true, he figured that you must’ve known what you were doing. You had worn your hair down today, not in a bun as was your usual - it hadn’t taken long for Bishop, this morning, to tug on a strand of your hair, like it was just waiting to be done, like bait on a hook. If he hadn’t done it, someone else would’ve. He was inclined to simply because you dared to exist in his presence. Even then, Rust’s throat had tightened, like this. So, even though his back was defiantly turned to the hoard, Rust knew—he knew—that, when you grunted softly, it was because it had happened again. Rust closed his eyes and willed that you would hit whoever did that.

People already knew the decision they were going to make, always, in some part of their minds, so Rust didn’t see the point in attempting to console or consult anyone about anything. If it was detrimental to a case, then he would explain this to Marty, calmly point out or even correct his mistake, but, on the most part, that was the extent of his reasoning. If his partner was in a bar, flushed and loose, and flirting with the twenty-one year-old bar-keep, he wouldn’t intervene. He hadn’t. Marty dug his own grave, and Rust let him. To do otherwise would be to overestimate the sensibilities of the other and to inconvenience himself. Fuck that. People didn’t want to be changed and Rust certainly had no interest in trying to. It was a losing game, a dumb one at that. Waste of time, waste of space. Rust knew better than to take up space - he would keep what he could close to his chest; otherwise, it was dead weight that needed losing sooner rather than later.

Everyone was begging to tell, to be fucking heard. It was a naïve, selfish way to look at the world: to assume that every other human put on Earth was someone to unload onto, to purify yourself with. Rust stared hard at the twenty-four year-old woman in the photo, sprawled over her bed, that long gash down her belly, like gutting a pig. He thought of how satisfied that the killer must’ve felt, to be able to finally share his urges with someone, to get to sit, placated, with their shoulders finally light.

He looked over the coroner’s report again, despite already knowing every statement on there, trying to fill your silence—which scratched over his eyes, the front of his brain, like claws—with the lull, the truth, of the case.

They were talking to you, now.

“Let’s get you down to the bar, buck,” somebody said to you, and he was pretty sure it was Geraci, oily, slick, fat. The skin over the back of Rust’s neck, thin, had crawled.

The boys liked to call you that—buck—like you hadn’t run the same track as them, jumped the same hurdles as them. You’d transferred from Brooklyn. Same shitshow, different department. They could tell, some of them said. City girl, high up on her horse. Not really, though. Your nature threw some people off at first, he speculated - you were not cold or brash, which he sort of thought maybe you ought to be, but, somehow, decidedly kind. Not gentle. There was a difference.

You were smart, and this was why you were not choking Geraci out right now. Did you want to? Rust could not get it out of his mind. He wanted to turn and look at you—not now, just some time—and figure it out. He had an outline, like the edge pieces of a puzzle all joined up. That was always a good start. Still, he didn’t appreciate it: the effort. It made you interesting, which was inconvenient. The people who worked here were not difficult to understand - their innermost desires were eager to be released, Pandora’s box, bursting at the very seams of their mouths, and, shit, Rust let it happen. It played out that way most times with the monsters he sat across from in the box: he would listen unflinchingly, and that was attractive to a lot of people, apparently. Someone who would not shy away. Maybe that was where Rust was misstepping with you. It wasn’t like him to be glad for things, but he was when it came to the orientation of your desks: your back was to his, and he did not have to look at you, and he was glad for it. He could not pin down why.

His knuckles were glowing, he was sure of it: if he looked down at them, Rust could’ve seen that illumination, his violence emanating from within, daring to break the skin like splitting, old leather. He could smell the embers already. Maybe that was you, though, or something else.

The heat bubbled up through his nausea. No, it was him - he would be up in flames soon, some sight to behold. His eyes pulsed against the thin skin of his eyelids, so he ruled out the option of closing them.

He flexed his hands slowly, passing feeling all along his weary tendons, before he continued typing, though the letters spun and jumped out at him like bugs in long-grass. Crickets in his ears, deafening. Was almost like he could understand them, some language he knew to respond to as a child, now long left behind. He was not alone, as much as he wanted to be.

When you spoke, Rust’s shoulders tensed, like a cramp. “I got business tonight,” you drawled, ever-polite, even sweet. That raw, thick, sugary taste oozed over his tongue, clogged his throat - Rust almost gagged.

Bishop’s voice emerged from the clatter: “What business you got on a Friday night? You got better plans?”

Fuck if you did, fuck if you didn’t.

A shrill whine speared through Rust’s head then, like a fissure in the Earth’s crust, his brain a liquid, churning beneath. He fought the urge to touch his own face, make sure everything was in its right place. He knew it would be, so he didn’t move. Sensation did not indicate reality. If it did, then Rust would have had to have discovered a whole other world a long time ago. He sat still, a statue, for several heartbeats. Then, he resumed his typing. A suspect’s alibi. He did not kill her.

“You don’t gotta spend a dime with us. We’ll take care of ye,” Howard added, and the hoard hummed and chuckled their agreement, a sick tilt to all of it. Rust wished his desk were anywhere else - he rarely wished for anything.

Conviction was not an area in which you lacked. You were a quiet, formidable force. Nobody at the precinct admired the way you worked the way it ought to have been. Not enough people gave enough fucks when you conducted interviews. Once, he had seen it. He had wanted to find Marty, and Marty was with Johansson, and Johansson had been on one side of the mirror, the other side behind which you were smiling warmly at a woman who had not long ago eaten about two thirds of her boyfriend, holding her hand. She had been twice your age at least, but you were the two-headed mother there, walking that fine line. For a moment, Rust had thought to himself that you would’ve worked him, wrung him out, if he was the one across from you. Not just a thought: a realisation. It unsettled him whenever he thought about it too long. What had confused him was your distinct lack of calculation. At least, he perceived it that way. Was it instinct that let you master that certain slope of your shoulders? No amount of practice could let him fabricate it to the same standard. Or maybe you had really felt it: sympathy.

But no. Once it was done, you’d exited, and your attention was searing. Rust had left before you had time to notice him.

Stoicism: you had mastered it, and Rust itched to know you, to understand how. How was the vein in your neck not throbbing like it would burst? How were your hands not fists, white-knuckled?

And you spoke through a smile, of all things: “That’s nice, but I can’t.”

“C’mon, buck, what kinda business you got that’s so important?”

Once again, Rust scoured over the coroner’s report, flit between the list of observable marks and wounds, correlating them with the visual aid of the photograph of the entire corpse. Total ten lacerations, eight of which had been on her stomach. Other two, on her face: slicing into each of her cheeks, those soft parts.

If he did this, Rust did not have to read into your answer, which was what his mind immediately raced towards, a bullet train, blindly searching in the darkness for some semblance of you. “My own,” you replied, and it did not mean anything to him because he was doing this.

Rust body itched to leap up and lay someone out, right then and there. His fist yearned for it, for the contact. For however often Rust felt like his body was not his, he had rarely considered the possibility that it might be in charge. People did what they would with him - his job was merely to take it. There was a strange sort of peace in that type of compartmentalisation, the kind where he could simply leave what apparently made up his person. If he was away from himself, he wouldn’t have to face whatever he was doing. An education in the dissociative state, an underutilised tool. He’d even had a course on it, he was sure. It was part of the reason he could keep his pulse so low, retreating so far into this meat shell that not even his blood flowed too close to the surface. But he felt it now, thrumming in his neck, a riptide. Taking his pulse now would do nothing to save it. The muscles there were stiff, flexing oddly under the strain of choking back on the natural instinct that, it appeared, was his. It tasted like vomit. Maybe that was real, though.

You were not some lamb that needed a shepherd. Fuck, he could never be one, not any version of him: he’d only be leading a thing to rot and ruin, and the parasite would get them, too. No, Rust wasn’t the shepherd. Never the shepherd. Rust was critical and cold. He might’ve been the wolf.

Ten lacerations. Raped.

The laughter of the hoard circled his head again, again, again. Someone must’ve picked at your hair - you grunted.

Abruptly, Rust stood up, like he got shocked because the room was on two different circuits. His spine like some iron rod, so unnaturally straight, his body so unnaturally tense, so unlike himself, he momentarily drew the attention of the other detectives all clustered together in the bullpen. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought they knew, that he was fighting for the wheel, that he was battling back the grey that had begun to vignette his vision. Why was he suddenly so tall? Not even that. Alive. He could hear it: life rushing, roaring, in his ears, crackling like a wildfire. Rust’s body, that strange entity, was momentarily reborn as something else, whose neck was never bowed, whose shoulders never rounded, who conducted itself like it was powerful. Maybe it was.

Marty eyed him like he had grown another fuckin’ head.

Despite the dissipating attention, murmurs to the side, you were still looking at him, too, with your eyes so hard, almost black, like two cherry pits. Rust was piloting, and he would not look away. No. He would look on, as he always did. No matter the electricity burn of your attention, which he preferred to avoid - the energy was coursing through him, bright, his veins fried and blackening. Beneath the surface, his being spasmed and seized. But he knew that you were no different than anything, so he looked.

If he didn’t, he would hit someone. That could be taken the wrong way.

Geraci’s hand was braced on your desk, just next to you, his fat, greasy palm covering some paragraph that you had no doubt been trying to read. Rust’s hands twitched, but he had managed to bring himself inward, had relaxed most of his body thus far, and he would not fuck himself over by letting fists form now.

So, Rust stared at you, cool, unrelenting.

He was surprised by the distance of his own voice when he asked you if you could come over to the files room just a minute and give your opinion on something for him. It was like his own mouth was at the end of a long, stretching tunnel, his words far away from him. He crushed his cigarette into the closest ashtray, annihilating it.

He tasted pennies there, in his mouth. Perhaps he had been biting his tongue. Perhaps it was just the look on your face.

Okay, you said, quiet-like, before you rose, prying yourself away from your desk. As you stepped past him, Rust let himself look at Geraci. People dug their own graves, but that did not cancel out Rust’s thirst to kill. That kind of justice lies in the bones.

Most likely, he just needed to sleep. It was coming up on four days, nearly, without, which did not aid in the dizziness that threatened the stability of Rust’s every step as he slowly turned to follow behind you.

In the files room, you were waiting for him, staring up at the flickering halogen bulb that illuminated this section, the chain still swinging from when you had just pulled it.

Rust stared at your back, far away from himself, almost stumbling back when he closed the door, sealing the two of you off from the real world. His anger flung about like a whirlpool behind his eyes, thrashing and throbbing. If he had mind to say something to you—which he did not—he wouldn’t have been able to anyways. Saliva pooled in his mouth, pushing under his tongue. He cleared his throat, delaying a gag.

When you began to turn to look at him, Rust almost begged out loud that you wouldn’t, his heartbeat thrumming in his throat, almost daring him to start panting for air like a dog. The assault of the light from the halogen bulb was invisible to you, so it could not be real. No, you were looking at him now. With his hand still gripping the handle like it could save him, like he could escape it, you, he almost closed his eyes, cringed away. But what was he?—some child? He could not. Sensation was not necessarily reality, and he was not sick, and you were not of concern to him. Still, he turned slightly, his body angled toward the door at which he still stood, refusing to step any closer. He couldn’t close his eyes—you could get the wrong idea—so, instead, he opted for the linoleum floor, careful to avoid your feet.

Fuck, he could feel your relief washing over him like a warm wave. It almost knocked him clear off his feet, and it left his knees weak, threatening to buckle. Once, he had gone out west, to the coast, with Sophia and Claire. Nothing like where he grew up: out there, in that endless cold, his pa used to warn against any and all large bodies of water, ice. Even when you thought the surface beneath you was safe, it could give out, and you’d fall through into waters you didn’t know could be so deep.

Rust had reason enough to believe that this might’ve been worse.

There was salt spray in his mouth, now. Your ebb and flow churned in his stomach like the beat of a drum, reverberating through his flesh, which he was suddenly very aware of.

You’d figured it out: he didn’t need your help. He didn’t need to be in here either.

Something tangible rolled around on his tongue as your eyes scanned over him, a meticulous, slow rake. It grit between his teeth, like a grain of sand or a seed or something. Rust swallowed it and then fought a proceeding dry heave, smothered by a bright feeling in his throat that only flared up when he heard your breath hitch, too.

You were polite to spare him, to stare at your hands. Wordless, you left him to go busy yourself with nothing in the back of the files room, melting into the shadows, concealing yourself behind a shelving unit.

Even though he couldn’t see you, though, your sweetness still flooded Rust’s mouth, inescapable. He knew you were there, thinking, maybe about him.

He almost wished he had done nothing.

[unicyclehippo]

Hmmm...how about a one word prompt of...Skin?

for @possibilistfanfiction i hope it makes u laugh

//

two

//

every week, superion talks to beatrice late tuesday night. at the end of every call, she asks to speak to you and you let her.

are you struggling with anything? she’ll ask, or what has your week been like? or, how are you, ava? she doesn’t ask that one often because it makes you hang up on her fast. like. what the fuck are you supposed to do? she says your name nicely, makes it sound like she wants to know about you, not the halo, and yeah. it’s a bit much to deal with.

‘we went to the thrift shop,’ you tell her week two, ‘and spent half the money you sent us on clothes. beatrice got new pyjamas.’ from the kitchen, beatrice sends you a betrayed look. you wave at her. you’re not going to tell superion that you picked out boxers for her—black, comfortable—and that you think you’re going to have a heart attack every night because beatrice has surprisingly buff legs, toned, and the first time she came out of the bathroom in boxers you had to put your hands under your head, pin them down with your heavy fucking skull so you didn’t touch her legs, her knees. how knees could be sweet, you have no fucking clue, but beatrice’s knees are sweet, soft in repose and then sharp and strong when she moves and. yeah. anyway.

‘i’ve never bought clothes before,’ you tell superion, and beatrice looks startled and a little sad and you laugh because it’s funny, actually, not sad. ‘i stole the hottest dress from this rich lady’s house—um, borrowed, i mean. they don’t really have high fashion here but i picked up some cute stuff. right, bea?’ beatrice ducks her head. ‘she says yes and also wants to know if spending this money means i’m your sugar baby now. or the pope’s. ow! okay, she didn’t say that but she did throw a pen at me. i’m your halobearer, that’s so rude!’

‘phase through it next time,’ beatrice suggests, and almost smiles when you flip her off.

//

‘hello, ava. is there anything you wish to talk about tonight?’

you have been thinking of things to say all week that’ll make superion hang up on you and so, when you pluck the phone out of beatrice’s hand, you’re grinning. she picks up on your energy and excuses herself to the bathroom.

‘so much. where to start? bea has been kicking my ass in training. i think she’s enjoying it. is that allowed? i thought nuns were supposed to not enjoy things.’

‘i’m sure any and all enjoyment pertains to the pleasure all instructors feel when their student shows improvement.’

‘no,’ you muse. beatrice is for sure eavesdropping so you raise your voice a little and say, ‘i think she’s a sadist.’

the bathroom door slides open half an inch, just enough for beatrice to shoot a forbidding look out at you. it’s undermined by the way some of her hair hangs free of her bun and the toothpaste smeared at the corner of her mouth and she’s brushing neatly and you want so badly to squash up next to her and clean your teeth there with her, in your stupidly small bathroom, so you forget all your nun jokes you’ve prepared and say,

‘all good here, supes. catch you next week,’ and hang up on her.

beatrice is in boxers that show off her knees. her sleep shirt is tucked into the waistband of her boxers, which is so endearing you think you might explode. you press your fingers to her hip and nudge her away from the sink so you can get in there and wet your brush. you do the same thing every night. she ought to know by now. she does know by now. you think she wants you to touch her, to lay your hand gently on her hip and make her space into your space. the toothpaste is minty and froths up as you brush enthusiastically. beatrice swishes her mouthwash. puts her hand on your wrist. you obediently shuffle away from the sink so she can spit neatly into it. 

‘short conversation with mother superion tonight.’

you shrug. ‘tired, i guess.’ it’s half true. you would have happily made a nuisance of yourself but tonight, you just want to brush your teeth next to beatrice and go to bed.

‘am i pushing you too hard?’

you consider the question. tuck your hair behind your ears so it doesn’t get in the way when you bend, spit into the sink too, like beatrice did. rinse. wash your brush, strick it into the polka dot toothbrush holder on the counter.

‘i want to learn. i’ll do whatever i have to do.’ beatrice eyes you like you’ve said something really interesting, which is worrisome because you don’t know what about that was interesting. ‘bedtime. wanna be little spoon tonight?’

beatrice goes pink at the offer and you can’t resist lifting a hand to her cheek, to touch it. she doesn’t pull away, but her eyes go wide.

‘sorry.’

‘no, sorry,’ you say almost immediately. ‘um. i’ll check the front door is locked.’ you run out of the bathroom, through to the kitchen and the front door. thunk your head hard against the wood and swear under your breath. blindly reach for the door handle. turn it gently. it hits the lock and you release it. you stand there for a few long minutes, hearing the sounds of the bedsheets and beatrice shuffling and the click of the lamp turning off and then the apartment is dark and still and there’s a longing right on the centre of your tongue, dry and empty like a wafer sucking the moisture from your mouth, and you want to pick up the phone and tell superion, i want to live. i don’t want beatrice to teach me how to fight, i don’t want you to know my name, i want this to be real. a home in the mountains and a girl who wants me to touch her. 

beatrice pretends to be asleep when you finally join her, crawling into bed and pulling the sheets up to your shoulders. you’re always careful about touching her, when and where you do it, and tonight is no exception.

‘bea?’ you whisper.

‘yes, ava?’

‘can i –‘ you reach over. hover your hand over her forearm.

beatrice shuffles in the bed. the lamps in the street outside are dim and they have covers that keep the light shining down to the street instead of filling the sky. it’s not enough to see beatrice by. you light the halo—the tiniest bit—and her expression goes awed and nervous all at once.

‘you shouldn’t.’

touch her? use the halo?

‘i want to. feels good.’ beatrice breaths out. she won’t say it, and won’t ask you, but when you move your hand to hover over her wrist, sidle close enough to hold her, she doesn’t stop you. ‘g’dnight, bea.’

‘goodnight, ava. sleep well.’

//

‘good evening, ava. i trust you are well?’

‘we got jobs!’

‘beatrice informed me.’

‘of course she did,’ you roll your eyes. catch sight of the brim of the pink cowboy hat still squashed onto your head you had been given tonight as a prize, the only thing you had wanted. it's a little small, maybe made for a kid, but whatever. ‘did she tell you it’s at a bar? she doesn’t drink but she’s killing it at the books. i don’t have the same hang ups – hans is teaching me everything about being a great bartender and it involves a lot of alcohol. i can – he’s german and i drunk him under the table. i think the halo helped. do you – can the halo heal being drunk, do you think? did i cheat? maybe i should give him this hat back.’

‘i will ask you not to test the limits of the halo in this manner.’

‘i know, i know, control the halo, don’t draw attention, blah blah blah—bea already gave me the speech. i’m being safe. it was just some fun, mother,’ you tease, feeling loose and good and happy. ‘the hat suits me, though. it’s pink.’

superion’s smile bleeds into her voice. you grin, imagining it. a smile on that stern face. that’s the best, that’s one of the things you love the most, making people smile, making people laugh, especially when you have to find the right way to come at it. this feels almost too easy? you’re just…telling her about your day and your job and the hat you won but you know that she’s smiling and you’re a little drunk so you decide not to think about whether she likes you or is showing some softer side of herself for your benefit and just enjoy it. 

‘you are entitled to some fun, ava.’

‘tell bea that. and her too. she can have fun too. she doesn’t have to drink, just relax a tiny bit. right?’

‘sister beatrice will attend her duty as she sees fit, you know that. and,’ she adds dryly, ‘i believe she is more likely to listen to you when it comes to relaxation.’

‘what you’re saying is i need to convince her. i need to tempt her.’

superion sighs. ‘drink some water, please, ava. look after yourself. and beatrice.’

‘yeah, always.’

//

there’s a girl who comes to your bar to flirt with you specifically. you know that because she told you, because she pressed her teeth to the pink of her lip and pressed against the hardwood bar, leaning over it to give you a good—really good—view of her chest and for a second you’d forgotten that there was anyone else in the bar when she looked at you so intently. and she told you.

‘you know i’ve been flirting with you, right?’

‘you? no way, this is a huge surprise,’ you’d teased, because she’s been super unsubtle.

the other night, she’d let the condensation from her beer bottle drip onto her chest and asked so sweetly for a napkin and laughed when you went tongue-tied and clumsy, dropping the cocktail shaker. which was fine because it was empty but it had clanged on the stone floor and hans had looked over with this stupidly knowing grin and only laughed when you flipped him off. 

‘sometimes girls don’t know,’ she’d shrugged. ‘and i don’t like to waste my time. you like girls?’

you spin the beer bottle in your hand, because it’s a fun trick and because it makes girls look at your hands. dani is no exception. you haven’t said it out loud before but you want to. should you wait for a special moment? or does the moment become special when you say it?

‘girls are incredible,’ is what you end up saying. it’s not that you’re scared, it’s just that beatrice isn’t here and some part of you kind of expected to say it to her first, the way she’d shared that with you. 

dani doesn’t take it as a cop out, thank god. she grins, big and bold, and tosses her hair back over her shoulder. ‘yeah. incredible. let me take you out, ava—dinner, dancing, drinks. what do you say?’

you should say no. for multiple reasons, but chief among them the fact that when dani used her water on her tits trick, you’d thought about beatrice and what her reaction would be if you tried it on her. probably, it’s a dick move to think about another girl when one is being so kind as to show you her tits. but. beatrice is a nun and dani is not. super not. she’s portuguese and taller than you—most people are, to be fair—and you like that the bar is lifted over where the customers sit so she has to look up at you, but you also like looking up at her and the way she crowds you a little, smirks down at you when you sit a little sluttily on the barstool next to her, hand on her knee. she wears, like, a dozen silver rings and her earrings dangle and glitter when she shakes her head, which she does when you make her laugh really hard, and when you think about kissing her it’s, yeah. good. it makes you a little tongue-tied and you stumble over your words and dani looks at you like she knows what you were thinking about which is. yeah. good. 

you say yes.

//

'—compromising our mission here, compromising the halo, compromising herself—'

'whoa! where does the halo come into this? i'm not whipping my top off for her, it's a date.'

beatrice glares at you. she's standing tall and straight—well, rigid—and with the dark clouds gathering outside the window you're a little worried god will mistake her for a lightning rod, but mostly you're worried that you've actually hurt her by agreeing to go on this date. but then she goes and says,

'this is a stupid risk, you can't just - just--'

and you hate being called stupid so instead of trying to calm her down, you rise up to meet her. 'just what? say yes when a girl asks me out?'

'yes!'

'why not?' beatrice glares over your head, unable to meet your eyes. 'give me the phone.'

'what? no!'

'yes, give me the phone.'

'i'm still debriefing mother s—'

'give me the phone or i'll debrief on my date,' you tell her, and you can feel the anger and spite spitting on your tongue and sparking in your eyes. now she does meet your eyes; hers are black with fury, her jaw tense, and you're doubly pissed because you'd said yes to the date because dani is hot and has this quick flirty humour and because she looked at you like she could eat you up and it's a hell of a feeling to be on the receiving end of a look like that, but beatrice... beatrice is pissed and you're nearly positive it isn't because of the mission, and god, whatever your rules are about thinking nuns are hot, she looks hot with her jaw clenched and the muscles of her neck and shoulders tense like she's thinking about keeping you from the door by whatever means necessary. but she is a nun and you're not an asshole, or entirely selfish, so you said yes to dani because if you can't kiss the girl you like, you should be able to kiss a girl you like. right? 

beatrice flicks a look over your outfit—high-waisted jeans, a shirt that shrunk in the one laundry load you did so now it shows off a decent strip of belly, and a blue sweater tied around your waist that you'd found over the back of the couch, in case it ends up raining—and she scowls.

'fine. fine.'

she grabs your wrist. your skin sears where she touches you—god, is this allowed? is this allowed? i'm gonna be thinking about this tonight in my alone time, is this allowed, dude?—and you open your hand, you'll take whatever she'll give you. you're so startled by her hand on you that you forget to be angry. if she weren't a nun, if she were a little more open, if she liked you the way you like her... 

she drops the phone into your hand. it’s heavy and you nearly drop it, focused on—god forgive you, or better yet, mind your own fucking business dude—her. ask me out. ask me on a date. look at me like you want to push me against the brick wall outside where we work together and kiss me. she must see some of that in your eyes because she drags in a shaky breath and all the anger leaves her. she doesn’t move away. you look at her lips. 

‘ava…’

your thumb flickers to mute the phone. ‘tell me not to go.’

beatrice huffs. ‘you want to.’

‘i’ll stay. i won’t go. if you ask.’

her hand goes to your hip. you want to know how much of her hand can fit there, on your skin where your top rides up. but she doesn’t touch you, even though you’re aching for it, even though she can see that you’re aching for it. it’s like there’s an invisible barrier that blocks her from moving those last few centimetres. 

‘i’m taking a shift tonight,’ she says. ‘hans is sick.’

‘oh.’

‘i won’t be home. after. i’ll be back tomorrow,’ she says hurriedly, before your heart can totally break. ‘but not tonight.’

‘i’m not bringing her home. you know that, right?’

‘it would be fine if you did,’ beatrice lies, and pushes past you into the kitchen to collect her things. 

you let her go. lift the phone to your ear. 

‘hey. what’s the company policy on halobearers going out with girls? also, like, your personal policy. not that it fucking matters, i’m gonna do it anyway, but i suppose i’m curious. lesbians…thoughts?’

beatrice slams the front door behind her. 

superion doesn't talk straight away—ha. you hear a chair dragging on stone and then a creak as she sits. 

'well,' she says, and you forget about beatrice as much as you can because superion doesn't sound angry or disgusted. only considering. and this question isn’t totally about beatrice, it’s about you too, and you don’t care what superion thinks of you, you don’t. but. 'there is nothing written to specifically bar halobearers from dating girls.' nuns, on the other hand, she doesn't say but you hear it loud and clear. 'as for my personal policies... they revolve around, and are cemented in, caring for and protecting my order and my girls.’

‘what kind of protection?’

‘physical and emotional strength is paramount, as you know. if you are being safe, and if it is something that will make you happy, then i have no reason to forbid it.’

you think on that for a minute. then, in a small voice you don’t recognise, you ask her, ‘are you excited for me? can you be excited for me?’ tears sting your eyes and the back of your throat prickles with heat like you’ve drunk hot sauce again, or whiskey, and before superion can say anything, you break in again with, ‘i’m going to be late,’ kind of brusquely. ‘bye.’

//

after dinner and dancing and drinks, all the things she had promised, dani offers to walk you home. 

you lean back against a lamppost and wind your fingers into the lapels of her lilac blazer and tug her forward, kiss her eagerly. the streetlight is almost the same warm gold as the halo, which is snug and silent between your shoulders. dani tastes like coffee, from her espresso martini. she kisses you, bold and unafraid. you’ve thought a couple times tonight about going home with her and you think about it again now, about letting her walk you home, about holding her hand as you let her into the apartment and pushing the same hand down the front of your jeans, into the underwear you bought new for precisely this reason, to where you’re slick between your legs and wanting but–

‘this was fun,’ you tell her, panting just a little. 

she groans. kisses your jaw, your neck. fuck. ‘why does it sound like you’re saying goodnight?’

‘i - well - you’re making it fucking hard -’ you say, and laugh, and your stomach twists a little because if you had said that to bea she would press her lips together and shake her head and the way her laugh escapes as a huff makes you feel like you could walk over oceans, shoot up into the fucking sky. you make that joke in front of dani and she laughs, sure, but then half a second later her teeth are on your skin over your pulse and neither of you are thinking about the joke. which is fair. but while you want dani to touch you, she doesn’t make you feel like you can take on the world. she kiss you again. puts her hands on your waist, thumbs sliding up to brush over your belly. hands sliding up until her thumbs are dipping beneath your shirt, fingers wrapping around your hips, and you feel fucking incredible, delicate and wanted and hot. but. 

‘dani, fuck -’

‘yeah, i know, saying goodnight.’ she sounds pretty wrecked too, which is a huge boost to your self-esteem because all you’re doing is clinging to her but apparently that’s fine. ‘you’re sure i can’t walk you to your door?’

‘if you walked me back, i’d take you upstairs,’ you tell her, and put a hand to her chest, push her gently away. ‘which - i had a lot of fun, but i can’t.’

dani nods. ‘text me when you get home though.’

‘of course, yeah.’

she takes a step back. out of the halo of the streetlight. you rake your eyes over her—she turned up in matching lilac blazer and slacks with this tiny white crop under the blazer and perfectly white sneakers, a few silver necklaces—and it reminds you a little of seeing doctor salvius for the first time, honestly, in her full pantsuit moment, and maybe you have a thing for women who look like they know what the fuck they want and how to get it. 

‘fuck.’

‘baby, i’m trying.’

you flip her off and push away from the lamppost. ‘thanks for tonight. i had a really good time.’

she smiles and watches you leave. you look back when you reach the end of the road and she’s still there, waves. 

by the time you get into the apartment, you’re considerably more drunk than you’d felt when you left the bar. you get the door unlocked, kick it closed behind you, and text dani as you struggle out of your jeans, kicking them vaguely in the direction of the wardrobe.

made it home thx for tonight

she doesn’t answer immediately. which is fair, she was drunk too and maybe she went back into the bar or whatever and you don’t really care but beatrice isn’t home and the apartment is quiet and cold and you’re standing pantless in the middle of the room and there’s a sinking feeling in your gut when you realise that you’re sad. it’s not fair. it’s not fair. 

the phone is hidden away under a loose floorboard, because of course it is. you hear the wood snap as you peel it up. you’re alive and super strong and drunk and it's fine, the phone shouldn't be hidden away anyway, you shouldn't be hidden away. you pull it out, call the only number programmed into this stupid, bulky phone. 

‘beatrice?’ 

‘no, it’s me.’

‘ah, ava. hello.’ 

you climb to your knees, push onto your feet. she sounds fine that you’ve called, totally unbothered. ‘i’m not struggling,’ you tell her. 

‘i’m glad to hear it.’

‘i’m fine.’ 

she’s quiet. you think about her towering over you. i know you killed yourself. you are a coward. you think about her standing in front of you, putting herself between you and harm. you are worthy. you are. 

‘i’m fine,’ you say again, anger hot on your tongue, hot down your spine. ‘i’ve been fine this whole fucking time but you keep asking so, so if you don’t believe me, let me tell you and maybe you’ll listen this time. i am fine. i’m not struggling. we’re hiding away from the fight and camila is in danger all the time and mary is gone and you - you talk to me but you don’t know me! you don’t know anything about me, and i know you don’t because you still think i’m going to run, or kill myself, but i never did, i never did and i won’t so stop asking me about my fucking life.’

‘ava,’ 

‘and stop saying my name! scolding me? poor crippled girl out on the streets—i have a job! i have friends! i’m really not fucking interested in what you think of me! fuck. you’re all the same. you nuns…you think b-because i’m not on my knees, crying and praying that i’m not grateful? i died! i’m alive! i’m grateful. you want me to thank you? you w-want me to learn how to be perfect from bea so that i’m worthy of the halo? so you don’t decide you’ve had enough of me? lighten the fucking burden of me? fuck perfection, fuck worthiness, fuck your god, and fuck your halo!’ you yell into the phone. anger stings your lungs; there’s not enough space around it for all the air you need. 

‘breathe, ava.’ superion’s voice is muffled by distance and the crackling of the phone line and the dizzy swirl of your head. ‘ava,’ she says more sharply. ‘breathe.’

you breathe in. 

‘good. again.’

you breathe in again, til your chest hurts with it. stumble over to the couch and curl into the arm of it, hand on your chest, feeling the trembling of your muscles, the desperation of your body to breathe, to live. 

superion can hear when you settle a little. ‘i am sorry. my questions have never been about doubt.’ you scoff. ‘if you had come to the OCS another way, i would have asked you these things. i would have taken the time to know you. it is not doubt, ava.’

‘then what the fuck is it?’

‘it is care.’

‘fuck you.’

‘ava,’ 

‘no! fuck you. you’re not my mother.’ you want to cry. you want your scars back. you want anything that tells you you’ve been wanted even once, even if it’s that—a sick, dreamy, drowning memory of a twisting road by the ocean, and scars where a parade of people worked to save your life. your skin is blemish free. ‘i had a mother.’ you pick yourself up from the couch. slam through the kitchen cupboards until you find the vodka hans gifted you. you pour a shot into a stripey mug, clear liquid sloshing onto the tabletop. ‘i had a mother and she died and you’re not her. and the nun who cared for me killed me twice, you know. so. fuck.’ you throw back the shot. it stings. ‘you’re not my mother and i hate your stupid god and you don’t get to care about me. i don’t care. i don’t care. it’s not fair. my mum would—i could’ve told her, i could’ve come home to her. hey mum, i went on a date with a girl tonight and it was really nice. but i can’t tell her because she’s dead and you’re a shitty substitute.’

you drink again. and then—because the anger doesn’t feel as good as you hoped it would and doesn’t do anything about the sadness unspooling in your stomach, glossy and tangled like the tape out of a cassette—you twist the cap back onto the vodka and set it back into the cupboard. 

superion says, ‘i’m not your mother. that’s true. but i am here to listen to you, and guide you. and i was unduly harsh on you but there is no doubt in my mind or my heart that you are worthy, not only of the halo but of the extraordinary life you will lead. and i am sorry that you cannot kiss someone and go home and call your mother.’

you’re standing, still pantless, in the kitchen and superion is being nice to you when you’ve just yelled at her more than you’ve yelled at anyone, ever. you sniffle. ‘a girl. kiss a girl and call my mother.’

‘yes. a girl.’

‘that’s important.’

‘i understand.’

‘it’s scary,’ you admit. ‘but it’s really awesome. and - and i don’t want to give any time to people and the church who think it’s a sin, i really don’t. because there are people who think - who have been made to think that it is a sin, that they’re bad and they’re not. they’re really wonderful, they’re beautiful and incredible and good. and i know you have faith in something, i don’t want - i don’t want to disrespect that - you love god and that’s cool or whatever. but if god has a plan for me, it’s shitty and it hurt and it’s not fair and i don’t want - i don’t believe in anything that cruel, i’m not going to and you can’t make me.’ you’re really tired all of a sudden. and very drunk. ‘i want my mum. do you have - you can talk to the pope, right? can he talk to god for me? can he make sure my mum is happy? i don’t believe but i think she did. can you - can you tell me if she’s happy? do you think she’d be proud of me?’

superion’s voice is thick with something you are too drunk to decipher. ‘yes, ava. she would.’ you feel turned inside out. like she’s touching raw, exposed nerves when she says, ‘thank you for talking to me.’

‘had to get drunk ‘n’ sad to do it. hooray.’ 

‘please drink some water and ensure the door is locked.’

‘’kay.’ you shuffle around to lock the door. pour a glass of water. it spills a little down your front but, whatever, it’s just water. ‘okay,’ you say again when you’re done. ‘sorry. for yelling.’

‘you are forgiven. and ava… you are fine. you are good. you do not believe, but i do, that God has made you in His image.’

‘wow. god’s really hot, huh? that’s cool.’ 

//

you sleep. beatrice is home when you wake up, sitting at the kitchen table with a book, a bowl of cut-up fruit, and a croissant. you don’t have a headache—thanks, halo—but your mouth is dry like you’ve eaten a mouthful of fucking sand and when you stumble out of bed to dunk your head in the kitchen sink, drinking straight from the table, she watches you, hawk-eyed. 

it’s only when you stand, wipe your chin with your wrist, and flop into the chair opposite beatrice, stealing a piece of her fruit, that you realise you are pantless. without pants. 

the tips of beatrice’s ears are red. her jaw is tight. ‘please put your pants away when you take them off,’ she says, and turns the page of her book even though you’re pretty sure she wasn’t done reading the last one. 

‘uh. yeah. i will.’

her finger taps against the spine of the book. ‘did you - was it fun?’

‘yeah.’ 

‘good. i’m glad.’ beatrice pushes the croissant over to you. ‘pain au chocolat,’ she says, and you realise that the croissant isn’t hers, it’s yours, she bought it for you because she never buys herself chocolate croissants. you think of her standing in the beautiful, warm bakery after a stupid long shift and buying you a pastry to eat after you went on a date with another woman and she watches your hands for a while as you split the croissant, which flakes between your fingers, smears buttery goodness everywhere. you break off a tiny bit and hold it out to her. ‘it’s  for you,’ she says, shakes her head. 

‘try it.’

she gives in. she gives in, beautiful when she does it. hungry. takes the little piece and pops it between her lips, which curl upwards, pastry melting, chocolate melting on her tongue. there’s a bit of pastry on her lip and the whole room is full of light. 

[batboyblog]

Seeing the post about Jasmine, I can literally feel an ulcer grow within me. Are people actually this fucking stupid? Spreading VERY blatant and easily debunakable misinformation? Are they MALICIOUSLY trying to sabotage shit? Also the antisemitism only grows stronger. You literally have spoken in support of Palestine multiple times and yet these people start to froth at the mouth when they find out you're Jewish, these people have the reading comprehension of a fucking brick!!! And seeing the quote by Malcom X... Literally that's the most disgusting shit to act like you're a white liberal when Jews are not seen as white, are seen as lesser than white, the lack of self-awareness this person has is stunning. Sorry to make such a long post but what the fuck, seriously what the fuck is people's problem.

what the fuck is people's problem is a great question that I really wish I had an answer for.

I mean on the antisemitism front I suspect that the thrill of bullying transcends ideological views, just because you say you're a socialist doesn't mean you're also a good person. Just means you have justify your behavior through a new lens, so its fine to accuse Pete Buttigieg of being a sexual pervert like some conservative Catholic, if you're doing it as a "joke" because he's "Neo-liberal" or whatever, or post snakes at Elizabeth Warren, or or etc etc as long as you come up with an excuse its fine to be horrible as long as you do in the name of leftism! or whatever.

as to the wider question? why blow up chances to make progressive change by supporting nonsense candidates who are just unfunny versions of Vermin Supreme? hm I don't know, but I suspect that for a lot of them, politics aren't really real to them. It's like ideological football for them, the most important thing is to "be right" and "win the argument" over in reality, we have to sometimes work with people we loath, sometimes we have to put up with shitty things to get what we really want, and always always always its slow work. Listen, in 1912 Teddy Roosevelt put forward the idea of a national health service, over 100 years later we're still fighting for universal health care. Now we've made important steps, everyone over 65 those who need it most, have health coverage through Medicare, others have been added to Medicare, we have Obamacare which regulates the health markets and helps people get affordable coverage and more people are covered now than every before. But people like we're talking about would rather than was Nothing for anyone, that everyone was not covered at all, than take an answer that helps people but isn't perfect.

Just isn't my style really, idk I just can't help but think about all the people whose lives got saved by Obamacare and just, what we should have let them die? progress builds it doesn't just appear nothing just happens, so each term you move closer, but each time a Republican gets it, they undermine, undo, go backward. I mean for example, Trump literally wants to get rid of the job in government that advices all the many federal departs on how to be greener and replace it with a guy who's job it'll be to push departments to use more oil and gas.... literally thats a thing, what a perfect example of what a Republican Presidency is about, going backward. Then when we have a Democrat rather than making progress they have to undo all the damage to get to baseline and then start improving.

I also think there's a small group of cynical grifters, when Democrats/liberals/people on the left whatever we want to call them, are scared and frustrated and upset, ie when a Republican is in power and elections are years away, they invest, money, time, energy into things to try to feel like they're making a difference or that they're heard, or validated. Left wing podcasts boom, left wing groups that are good at social media boom, people can become kinda stars and make money. Now many of those people drift off to normal life when there's a safe Democrat not doing horrifying shit every day, the money dries up. So the cynical crowd 1. tries to undermine Democrats to keep that feeling of frustrated hopelessness alive in listeners so they keep toning in and 2. they want Republicans to win! of course! its good for them!

[rayshippouuchiha]

Sorry Ray, this is the anon that sent a message asking for permission to ramble vaguely spoiler-y info about my favorite character at you ages ago. Not sure if you even remember, since it’s been a few weeks since you gave the go-ahead. It took me a while to get all my thoughts in order, because at any given time I will start spontaneously frothing at the mouth over thoughts of this character but I’ve never tried to put all of those feelings into words at once, so I kinda procrastinated a bit that first day, and then work got freaking CRAZY and I just couldn’t even get back to it until now. I think I was finally able to put it all together in a way that kinda makes sense, so here it is at long last. I do have to warn you it's gonna get pretty long though, so get ready, bc here we go.

Let me paint a picture of the scenario for you. We’ll start by imagining the typical "Groundhog day" deal; usually we can expect the people involved to be classified into two categories – first, the main character, who remembers everything and whose actions cause (and eventually stop) the loops, and then everyone else around them, who all remember nothing and don't even notice anything except for the "final" timeline.

Following the typical Groundhog Day tropes, we could expect our main character to either wish for the loop/wake up in it or some other such situation, then spend the remainder of their time in it trying out various different scenarios and getting into a whole host of shenanigans trying to escape it, while the rest of the cast react in various ways, usually starting out funny/light-hearted, then sad or angry as our MC fucks up more and more, then finally all becoming happy by the “final loop” where the MC gets their shit together and achieves the loop-ending conditions (usually by making everyone happy). In this particular piece of media I’m so obsessed with, however, our MC is not trying to escape the loop – they’re delighting in it.

We the “audience” don’t realize the true horror of such a thing at first, because we’re delighting in the joy of every one of the (masterfully crafted) characters reaching their happy ending, but it turns out that for the person with the time powers, finding the “happily ever after” is not enough. They’re used to the power of the loop now, are in full control of it, and are having the time of their life finding out just what happens whenever they try to change anything. They’ve been at it for so long that the people trapped in the loop with them have stopped mattering, and they’ve gone on to try literally everything they can think of to try, up to and including killing everyone, because they figure why should they care? No one would remember anyway, so they get to use their time powers to the fullest, no consequences, right?

Except, no, not in this case. Because there is a third category of character in this particular Groundhog day nightmare; one person trapped in the loop, but not controlling it, who knows.

At first, both MC and us the “audience” don’t know this. This character acts like a carefree, goofy, lazy jokester, pulling pranks and making puns, generally having laid-back fun all the time – the last person you’d expect to be going through something so awful. But pretty soon, signs start to appear that there’s more to him than meets the eye. If you watch him veeery carefully, it looks like he might have some kind of power over time and/or space? And then he gives a sort of cryptic warning that makes you go hmmm but then stop thinking about, because he goes right back to pulling harmless practical jokes on people as if nothing’s wrong.

But then there’s a sudden shift – he tells the MC that if he hadn’t promised the opposite they would have been dead already. It is an incredibly chilling moment, seeing this generally laid-back guy become downright menacing, but even then, some of the people seeing this unfold might not yet realize the horror of his situation because this happens during one of the “kinder”, initial loops. They might wonder why he would say such a thing, either not yet understanding the implications of the MC’s power or not getting where his hostility could come from, since up to that point he mostly behaves in pretty much the same friendly fashion. Other people can end up thinking he’s being too harsh, because the MC is using their powers for good, right?

Pretty soon, as we watch more loops unfold where the MC gets increasingly violent, we end up seeing that thought is wrong, and they absolutely deserve his hatred. Even so, this guy’s response to the ever-escalating brutality is actually… way too chill? Most other people in the world try to fight back at one point or another, but he never does. In fact, unless the MC has actively killed his family in that particular loop, he never stops acting friendly, even when other friends and acquaintances have died. This is of course, very intriguing, and we can’t help but wonder what his deal is as we go along this journey.

Then we reach the worst possible scenario, where the MC has killed every single person for miles around, and when he makes a final stand to try to stop them once and for all, we find out the whole truth - He reveals that he has known what the MC has been doing all along, has been dealing with similar loops for a long time, and as a result has become somewhat nihilistic.

After all, he has been at the mercy of this person (and their predecessor with a similar power) for an incredibly long time. Just, imagine what that would do to a person. This is not your typical “Groundhog day”; it’s not limited to a few loops lasting a week at most. Remember, these people are actively trying to do literally everything that could possibly be done. They’ve not only tried every iteration of everything there is to do in this place, but also talked to and killed every person in every possible combination, just to see how their loved ones or acquaintances react, to the point where they no longer see them as people. How long would that take? Depending on how creative and determined they were, it could have taken years, especially if they spent several days or weeks on every loop, as they surely would have.

Just imagine, what do you do, if you know time is looping, but it could take days, weeks, months, or years, before time loops back around to the “starting point”, but you never know and have no way to tell or predict when any loop will end? You can expect everything you know and worked for so hard for the past however long to disappear, just like that, like a snap of your fingers, and you have to accept it. There is nothing you can accomplish, you have no power to do anything. Any effort can be reversed, at any given time, at some points for no reason you can understand because everyone was happy, but still this being, this… uncaring demigod, resets again. And again. And again. So nothing you do matters, nothing you try changes anything in the long run, not really, because this apathetic, unsympathetic, almost sociopathic person controlling the lives of you and everyone around you cares about One Thing, and one thing only; their own enjoyment. Their curiosity. The “need” to know what happens. A need that drives them to do the unthinkable time and time again. Because, again, who cares? As far as they know, no one can remember, no one will know, there are no consequences. So they loop, and they loop, and they loop, over and over and over, until it must have been decades, maybe even centuries, since the loops started.

And I just, whenever I think too hard about this piece of media, and this character, and what you can find out about him, it wrecks me, okay? It just, destroys me. Because when we think about it, taking all of this into account, his behavior makes perfect sense. Characters around him talk about how he gives only the bare minimum effort, call him lazy, but of course he is. Of course being caught in an eternally-looping hell cycle would wreck your motivation, because why put anything beyond the minimum required effort into anything, if it could all be lost in an instant with no warning? Why try to stop this person, if any progress towards that goal could be turned back whenever the person with the time powers wishes? Also, of course he acts aloof and laid-back - he seems to have taken refuge in apathy, trying to show that he cares as little as possible, because how would caring help except for making him hurt more?

How do you process all of that? Even if he doesn't completely remember (and we have no way to know whether he does or not, because why would he let the MC [and the audience with them] know that he remembers, when they might use that against him just to see how he reacts to further loops? I know I wouldn’t), how do you deal with the knowledge, the weight of thousands of lives lived and lost, thousands of deaths for yourself and everyone you love that you can't help, that you can't stop, that you have no way to control or prevent, that no effort made and no dream fulfilled ever matters because nothing lasts? How do you stay sane?

But that’s not all! Now, the hidden hostility is the one that makes sense, while the friendliness he showed most of the time is the questionable one. Why bother acting so inviting? Turns out, as we find out during that last terrible fight, that it’s because he figured that maybe this person that has caused him so much pain, this individual whom he should see as an unfeeling demon, might be doing all of this because they were unhappy. He was secretly hoping they could be friends, so they would be so happy they became satisfied with their reality and let time run its course. And doesn’t that just break your heart? Even after everything, he hasn’t lost his caring heart, even showing at times that he’s worried about this monstrosity that has the potential to doom him, that he can never know which facet he’s going to get next; the friend or the killer. He sees this person who has caused untold amounts of pain to him and everyone he knows, but he still held on to hope that they might change, that they could be better, that the friend he found in the kinder loops was lying there beneath the surface somewhere; so he offered food and laughs and friendship and hoped for the best. GODDAMNIT *pounds fists against the walls*

Extra-heartbreaking fact: We can find out later that he has a way to keep track of events between loops – a place exclusively for him that time cannot touch. During one of the happier loops, where everyone’s dream gets fulfilled, he gets a picture with all of his friends and family together, including the abomination that made it possible, and he places it in the only location where the loops will not erase it - because he wants to remember this forever even if it hurts, even if the loops reset and they lose the memories, he wants to keep this… which means we know for certain that if the MC decides to reset time after reaching the happiest possible future he definitely knows they betrayed him. I am in agony goddammit. Like, I just imagine how he felt the times when the anomaly resets the loop and does it all again; everyone’s dream is fulfilled, everyone is happy, and he races back to that place, to put a picture commemorating the happiest day of his life in a spot where it will never go away… but there’s already an identical picture there. Can you imagine how that would feel? This person who’s earned your trust has betrayed you, maybe even a thousand times over, and whatever they said they feel this time they don’t care, they can’t, not really, or they wouldn’t have done something like this. It’s awful why am I thinking about this again why am I doing this to myself asdfghsrgsdfd *crying screaming frothing at the mouth*

Okay, going back to his final stand, knowing everything we know now, why does he try to stop the MC in that final battle, if nothing matters? Simple; turns out if the MC succeeds and murders everyone, they’d get strong enough to end time itself, and despite it all, even though he’s dealing with what must be severe depression, even though he holds no hope for himself and has nothing he looks forward to, he still wants the best for his family and friends. He still cares about them, wants them to have at least a chance to be happy, even if it’s just temporary, so much so that he’s willing to use every last bit of his considerable powers, every trick up his sleeve, every ounce of willpower still in his body to fight what he knows is an unwinnable battle, over and over and over, just on the one in a thousand chance that he can force the anomaly to stop, or convince them to try any other possibility. It just explodes my brain every time I take even a second to think about it *weeps*

Anyway, thus end my entirely-too-long rant about my favorite piece of media and character. Hopefully you enjoyed it even a little. Maybe think of it as an AO3 oneshot in this trying times? Lol

Thanks for hearing me out, love ya!❤️

Forgot to add one thing to my crazy long rant about my favorite character just now (see the previous “Groundhog day” ask if you need context sorry but I just had to add this):

It doesn’t help my obsession that I see people misinterpret him so often. It’s infuriating; they fall for the mask he wears and the role he plays, the ways in which his circumstances have forced him to act, they say “he’s so strong, how could he be so apathetic? How dare he not try from the beginning to stop this nightmare?” or “wow he’s still so aloof even when his friends die, he really doesn’t care about anyone but himself” and I’m just like… are we looking at the same person? Are we interpreting the same piece of media? Where have they been? How have they not noticed the million little ways in which he shows he cares? He clearly appears to be coping with serious mental health issues; he wants nothing, finds it hard to do anything but joke or sleep, may be eating less, doesn’t bother with getting anything for himself, and doesn’t seem to be able to honestly find anything to look forward to most of the time. He is a deeply hurt individual struggling basically alone (because no one else is aware and they can’t be made to remember, not for long) to survive a horrifyingly bleak situation but still he makes sure his family has everything they could possibly want or need, still takes care of his friends to the best of his ability, still makes sure to bring joy to others even when he admits he can no longer feel it himself, still finds it in himself to care about the “harbinger of doom” (so to speak), and is still a fundamentally kind person, who cares so, so much despite his best efforts to the contrary and I just- I love him, I love him so so much, and it makes me so angry how others fall for his façade of apathy and brand him as uncaring. He deserves the world, I know he’s fictional but I’d die for him.

Ok, NOW I’m done. Sorry again, just made an already long ass rant even longer lmao but tbh I have no regrets I feel free uwu

~~~

I can tell that this has got you by the entire soul and after reading this I honestly can't blame you because hot damn that's a lot.

[jade-kyo]

Season 15 post Restoration thoughts

Back when Restoration was first announced I rewatched the shisno trilogy to weigh the pros and cons of everything getting retconned. I’ve decided now that Restoration has aired to do another rewatch like that but this time more just general thoughts and headcanons

welp let’s get started!

Oh hey this is actually funny

Still say Dylan’s original cameraman was funnier, they should’ve kept him instead of Jax. Frank you will always be famous to me.

KAIKAINA MY BELOVED

Bringing back Vic was a big brained move fr

On the topic of Vic I’ve always liked the theory that he was actually one of the alpha fragments, specifically the love fragments… hmm things to consider

The whole situation on chorus is also interesting… further things to consider

Oh hey look at that Dr. Grey actually sounds like herself. What a wild concept.

The reds and blues are actually friends and act like it? WHAT A WILD CONCEPT

Grimmons closet sex you will always be famous to me

But also Church basically writing gay smut of his friends is very funny

Man this is actually funny. Wild concept.

Nah but there’s a legit joke about them getting a bad movie bro predicted the future

Canon band au

I love how all the things Carolina mentions happening are so low key compared to the others. Like yeah Grif convincing Simmons GoT was real is wild meanwhile there’s actual dinosaurs

Yeah the whole red team and blue team thing IS outdated. Concept wild.

Genuinely love how you can tell just how much Carolina loves these idiots and their shenanigans. Such a concept.

“No he means Church” frothing at the mouth

OH HEY THEY GENUINELY CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER AND ABOUT CHURCH. WILDEST OF CONCEPTS

“I’m not in the military anymore” yeah Grif that sure is a GREAT point. Concepts are wild.

But also can’t believe we’ve had to watch grimmons get divorced twice

PROTECTIVE TUCKER MY BELOVED

Dead beat dad Tucker jokes my BELOATHED

Man remembering the characters ranks. Really concept the wild.

“We’re having fish” bro why did you say it like that makes you sound like a cannibal 💀

Loco you will always be famous to me

“You don’t have to destroy the past to have a future” what a great way to show that you can let go of the past and trauma while also honoring the memories of those you lost. Concepts really do be wild sometimes.

Damn I think I’m coming back around on carwash- I am not immune to hand holding and funny take off your suit bits. Platonic or romantic they make me feral. I’ll take it either way.

Freelancer death room is a genuinely cool and fucked up scene

As much as I’m enjoying this rewatch I still can’t stand the Sarge butchering that starts in this season and just get progressively worse

SERIOUSLY VIC IS A FRAGMENT HE LITERALLY SAYS “it’s me!” IN REFERENCE TO THE ALPHA

Y’all were right Temple is totally gay for Biff

Oh god I forgot about the shitty animation

Also werent the simulation bases started after Tex fled from PF?? And also after Carolina went MIA???

Rip Biff bro did not deserve that but to be fair the second he said his girl was pregnant he was doomed by the narrative

Caboose cursing my beloved

Donut is a furry confirmed

TUCKER ASKING CABOOSE HIS THOUGHTS AND EVEN AGREEING AHDKGAKSH

While I am enjoying this rewatch I think I figured out what always bugged me about this season. The reds and blues are the wrong kind of dumb. Like yeah they’re idiots but you seriously didn’t consider once that the blues and reds might be lying to you? Especially after everything that happened on Chorus?? But especially Carolina and Wash not really questioning it??? Like idk it just feels off

Temple has so much potential as a villain cause like he’s not wrong… and I think evil sim troopers is such a cool concept…much to be considered

Oh actually acknowledging how much they’ve accomplished especially on Chorus?? Of concepts to be wild

Another thing that bugs me is this constant use of “good guy/bad guy” language. just feel off for the themes of RvB.

Ah yeah Grif’s volleyballs

Grif might be able to give Wash a run for his money on that Sarge impersonation

LOCUS!!!!!

Locus-Grif team up my beloved

METAL GEAR REFERENCE SPOTTED !

EVERYONE BEING PROTECTIVE OF CABOOSE

But also I think Caboose not understanding death is weird like yeah he’s dumb but again not that kind of dumb??? Idk just one of those things that doesn’t entirely sit right with me

I do like the interactions between him and the team tho

Loopy Wash my beloved

Again will never forgive what they did to Sarge

Locus is gonna steal yo kneecaps

Ah yes Church’s obsession with fucking up Wash continues.

Honestly in hindsight I don’t actually love Wash getting shot. It really feels like they just use him as an angst punching bag because he’s a fan favorite. And this is coming from someone who LOVES angst

Also I feel like Tucker rushing out is ooc when a big part of his arc on Chorus was him doing that, getting people killed, and then learning that sometimes you gotta think things through. Kind of the start of how they undid and then redid his arc

OKAY BUT GRIF AND TUCKER MOMENT!!!!!!

Okay again this weird insistence of all the enemies being comically evil shitty people is very antithetical to the core themes are RvB

Everybody shut the fuck up the Caboose and Tucker moment after Caboose ties the guys shoelaces together is so fucking cute holy shit I am frothing at the mouth I love them so much

My hatred for anything time travel related remains

AUDIBLE GASP

GRIMMONS WHY ARE WE HERE MOMENT MY BELOVED

Yeah Sarge your monologues ARE better. Sure wish they’d remember what those monologues actually meant for your character development. Wilds the concept huh.

Man Grif choosing to stay with his friends no matter what. Truly concept in my wilds.

LOCO NOOOOOOOOOO!!

Oh god they hit you with the Caboose feels that should be illegal

Still don’t like that Caboose got to say goodbye tho. I said it last time but it’s too- fairytale-ish. The themes of grief in rvb have always been about how it’s unfair and a lot of the times you don’t get to say goodbye and you don’t get closure but you still have to learn to let go and move on despite it all. Want it noted this is also a criticism I have of the Chex stuff in restoration.

Furthermore Tucker really was prepared to create a time paradox in order to bring back Church AND THEY JUST NEVER CIRCLED BACK AROUND TO THAT???? Bro Tucker grieves Church so much and they just never address it

Also Vic’s sacrifice is further proof that he’s an alpha fragment

GRIF SIBLINGS MY BELOVEDS!!!!!!

Dylan’s speech at the end is very good and it makes me love the simulation headcanon more cause that means it’s technically Church, or at least what Church believes/hopes the world would think of the reds and blues.

Also can’t believe Temple, Bucky, and Cronut are all still alive and they just never brought them back in any way.

ALSO CAROLINA SINGING AKHSKAHSKHDKSJ

CABOOSE DRUM SOLO

Alright then that’s seasons 15! …. On my hands and knees begging for forgiveness S15 TAKE ME BACK IM SORRY I WAS EVER MEAN TO YOU!

But in all seriousness I’m way more open to this as a possibility of what happens next than I am Restoration. This is just glorified fanfiction and like it’s fun! I have fun watching it! I’ve got my complaints but still at least it gets that these characters care about each other. It may not have the strongest writing but it’s not terrible and you’ll catch me rewatching it and enjoying it from time to time.

… do I have to watch s16- can’t I just skip it? Please no amount of Restoration sucking is going to make me like that season. I might just skip it and if I’m ever feeling more up to it I’ll circle back around to it. In all honesty I think 16 and Restoration are on the same level for me. Bad seasons that I mostly ignore but I will on very rare occasions rewatch them if not just to bitch and complain. I do think Restoration is a little better than 16 but still easily in the top 3 worst seasons of RvB.

Welp in that case you will most likely see me talking about s17 next unless I’m just really feeling the self hatred enough to watch 16

[pentrologram]

What Normal People Do - 5

Art fair! sorry to the ghost truthers i just realised simon has brown eyes and not blue… i changed it in chapter three. idk how i got it in my head that his eyes are blue :’) ao3! ghost/soap/gn!reader (established ghoap)

I Need You Here

Johnny has been looking for a job.

Simon knew this day would come, admittedly. Crafts from Hobby Lobby would only tide Johnny over for so long before his hands grew a mind, taking him away from the private little paradise they’ve built together.

Now, Johnny often sprawled over Simon’s laptop, searching for any hands-on job nearby. It wasn’t uncommon for him to come to Simon, asking questions about the workforce since all he’s ever known is the military. They talk about handyman jobs, which Johnny seems most attracted to, assisting artists at a nearby college or even teaching an art class at the college, which revolts Johnny.

“Ae don’t ken anythin’ about art, Si!” He protests when Simon taps into the job listing.

“Sure you do. Your sketchbooks, Johnny.”

“That’s nae college level!”

He does half of the application just to fuck with Johnny.

Johnny finds a listing at the clinic you work at for a janitor. He froths at the mouth while thinking about working in such proximity to you for four days a week, but the pay brings him back down to earth. While technically they’d be fine forever with their retirement money, having extra cash could never kill them. For twelve pounds an hour, Johnny decides he can do better.

Johnny calls it quits after a week of searching for jobs. Everything he found started too early or too late, had too many days or not enough. He was either overqualified or underqualified and he was beginning to think that maybe he should go back to the military and take a civilian job because nowhere else seemed to understand his need for flexible hours. He tells Simon as much.

“No, Johnny, you just need to find your thing,” Simon says, rubbing Johnny’s shoulders reassuringly as they curl up on the couch together, Riley asleep by their feet. “It feels discouraging now, yeah, but you just might not be looking at the right stuff, y’know?” Johnny huffs.

“I’m dyin’ of boredom here, Si,” he gripes.

“I wasn’t joking about teaching that art class, you know.” He says, quietly, after a second.

“There’s no way, Si. A’m not like that. I dinnae know value from shade.” He grumbles back.

“Well, it’s the twenty-first century, love. You can sell your work. Or teach an amateur class online.”

Johnny goes quiet for the rest of the movie. He’s quiet as he takes a shower, brushes his teeth and gives Riley her last walk of the day and quiet as he crawls into bed.

He spends the next day researching things about a platform called ‘Etsy’. He barely takes breaks to eat or drink and Simon has to manhandle him to wash his hair. He spends most of the night doing whatever the hell on Etsy and Simon gives up on forcing him into bed and just falls asleep.

By the time he wakes up at 1000, Johnny is slumped at his desk, the laptop dead in front of him and covered by some of Johnny’s old charcoal figures. He sighs and cleans up the mess on the desk before putting a pillow under Johnny’s head and throwing a blanket over him. Then he makes breakfast and puts a full plate underneath Johnny’s nose, to help him wake up.

He takes Riley for her morning walk after breakfast and they detour to your apartment to say hi. You’re chirpy, finally fully recovered from the breakup as it seems, and genuinely happy to see them. Riley loves up on your legs like usual while you idly chat.

“There’s another fair coming to town next week,” you bring up.

“But didn’t we just have the strawberry one?”

“Yeah. But the college nearby is opening a new museum so they’re hosting a tiny version of one of the exhibits in a fair and bringing a bunch of local artists in.”

“Really?” Simon says, mind already churning into high gear when you mention local artists. “Johnny’s gonna love that.”

“It sounds like it’ll be his speed.” You say.

Simon nods. He has something to chew on now and he says an abrupt goodbye before going back to the apartment, hanging up Riley’s leash. Johnny is quick to pounce on him, immediately yapping about the Etsy page he made and all of his old art he put up for sale and how he’s already sold five whole pieces and needs to go ship them out.

Simon praises him, because he’s done such a good job- because, well, he’s doing something to occupy himself without leaving the relative safety of their apartment and that alone is enough to soothe him.

He tells Johnny about the fair during dinner, and Johnny lights up like the sun.

“Oh, oh, Si, can we go wi’ the bon, please, Si?” He begged with his biggest puppy eyes.

“Nn. You’ll have to ask them yourself.” He says, which makes Johnny immediately jump up to go and do just that. He’s stopped, obviously, with a sharp tug on the neck of his shirt.

“It’s ten in the night, Johnny.” He says. “Eat your damn dinner.”

“But ye said-“

“I didn’t mean right now, you bloody maniac. Calm yourself.” He says. Johnny pouts and pokes at the rest of his mashed potatoes like a child.

When Johnny does get to ask you the next day, though, he looks fully prepared to guilt trip you into agreeing. You agree without resistance, only ever so gently coaxing Johnny into going on your off day next week as opposed to that very second. He agrees only because it’s you.

Needless to say, Johnny is nothing but unbearable during the wait; talking Simon’s ear off to the point where he thinks he’ll get a permanent migraine. Thank bloody hell he’s so easily distracted by shiny things- most of the time, he was able to redirect questions about you to a collection of cross-stitch sets he had bought years ago. That, and helping Johnny pack and mail the odd dozen or so artworks that he's sold for a good dollar help keep him occupied. The works are mostly charcoals on fancy mixed media paper, all of them vaguely an unmasked Simon or the dog. It doesn't seem to matter much to the people who're buying his stuff, though.

The day finally comes, though, and Johnny sniffs you out. It’s very bloodhound-esc. You don’t seem to mind all too much, looking content to be dragged around.

Johnny first takes the three of you to a little make-your-own painting stall hosted by an oil painter located a few hours out. Johnny is utterly concentrated, leaving Simon and you to foster a quiet conversation while you paint on the provided canvases. When Simon goes to pay, Johnny shows you his painting proudly; it’s a portrait of you and Simon hunched over your portraits while engaged in a conversation. He’s somehow captured the essence of the summer afternoon and you’re entranced by how he’s painted you; the sun is almost right behind you, in his painting, and it makes your hair glow and eyes shine, even as they’re downcast.

“Wow….” You murmur, and Johnny beams, proud. Suddenly the still life you had done of the stall is no longer impressive. Johnny still insists on seeing it, forcing you to show it to him. He might be a little too generous, but still. It seems as though he means it, so what else could you ask for?

Simon comes back and he nearly mirrors your response, but he doesn’t seem as surprised as you had been. Johnny also manhandles Simon into showing his painting, but Simon is a lot more resistant. It takes Johnny squirming under one burly, hoodie-clad forearm for Simon to relent and begrudgingly show him a heartfelt landscape of simple green grasslands. Johnny still seems earnestly honest, nattering about how natural the few flowers look.

Then you’re toted to a make-your-own pottery stall, which is a lot harder than it looks. Johnny (obviously) takes to it like a fish to water after one or two bad first attempts, but neither Simon nor you take to it as quickly or smoothly. You end up coaxing a few deep chuckles from Simon with your poor attempts, but you’re not afraid to laugh at him, too, when he doesn’t do any better. Johnny makes an elegant, tall vase and Simon manages a lumpy yet characteristic mug. Your bowl is cute and has a swirly design you're rather proud of. Again, Simon pays and registers the group to be notified when the pots (as poor as yours and Simon’s were) are finished with glaze and firing.

Lastly, since by this time it was beginning to get dark, you take photos in front of painted backdrops done by different artists. They're all unique and beautiful, each done in their own, unique style. Johnny takes twenty minutes to just appreciate the artistry before making you take photos in front of his favourite backdrops with him. It’s another twenty until you’re able to rope Simon into taking one photo.

Johnny looks so utterly inspired, clutching the tote bag that holds his and Simon's oil paintings with a starry-eyed look as he takes one more look around the fairgrounds. It's awfully adorable. He begs you to just peek into a few more stalls while you wait for Simon to go to the person who ran the little photo area and get the photos printed out for you, so when you inevitably parted ways at the doorways of your apartments, you had a small 3x6” souvenir- ready to be pinned up on your wall.

[mias-back-from-the-dead]

caught up to wwdits season five and oh my GOD

The turn to Everything Is Genuine with Guillermo's story clicking into place is fucking chefs kiss mua mua

(writing under the cut is mostly me spoilerly-gushing rather than any actual deep analysis)

Cuz like. there's the show-long trend of Nandor constantly pushing Guillermo away from vampirism has been treated as joke, framed as a joke the entire time, exacerbated with a wild amount of emphasis on how Nandor is characterized as a bit of a dummy in social interactions. Every time Guillermo gets closer to either a) Nandor and the other housemates or b) Belonging in Vampirism/being taken seriously as a threat he gets knocked back in one vicious way or another.

And so a lot of the energy in the fandom for the last few seasons has been "lol what if this is like that old romance drama trope where one party's actively putting distance and being cruel because it's what they think will be kinder in the long run for the other party, wouldn't that be so juicy? very regency drama! its way too sappy to be canon, Nandor's not playing the long game, they're OBVIOUSLY gonna play it off as a goof forever but let's play in this space :)"

but no

no that's ACTUALLY what's been fucking going on, at least for the last few years or so in-show!!!!! Nandor CAN'T keep pushing and insisting that he doesn't belong in the dynamic of the house anymore, especially in season 4 with all the bonding done co-parenting with Laszlo and weird family night stuff with Nadja. The group can cut off Guillermo mid-conversation all they want (probably out of rote habit) but literally everyone (except maybe colin? if he never gets his child-season memories back that is) would fucking take a stake for the guy. In Nandor's case literally.

Guillermo's gotten too close to them all so Nandor CAN'T keep running excuses for not turning Guillermo (forced diner comedy voice: haha wouldn't it be sooooo funny if you were a vampire? :)) other than the ACTUAL reason, which is that he's considered vampirism to be a curse for some time now, and KNOWS Guillermo would be miserable with it.

and he was right

Too much time elapsed between his late season 3 descent into "brutal vampire-hunter ready to murder Nandor if needs must" and the time of his turning. He gained and lost a boyfriend, he reconnected with his family, was at Nandor's side for an incredibly human journey of desperately trying to seek happiness via marriage.

The shampoo scene is SUCH a good depiction of it, overhearing all that just confirms Nandor's suspicions of what Guillermo needs. Sure, he knows that Guillermo likes the ceremony and pathos of his little made-up induction, but he knows he NEEDS a real choice to make. One that he's been hoping for (please do not bear the same curse as me, I know you would hate killing innocents) and dreading (does it make me a worse monster if I wanted you to revel in the blood in order to stay by my side), but under all his posturing he knows Guillermo's choice as easily as he would his own.

No more dismissiveness, no more pretending to forget serious things about Guillermo to push him away. He remembers the words spoken from Guillermo over a decade ago, the place where they first met, where he grew up and who his family is.

He knows Guillermo's choice.

I'm just. I'm just frothing at the fucking mouth about this because no amount of cutting Guillermo off mid-sentence is going to put that rabbit back in the fucking hat for season 6. There was still a decent bet on Nandor not turning Guillermo for bullshit and/or comedy reasons if their weird season 3 elopement thing went off without a hitch. For him to mayyybe seem he might not care, or not want to turn him due to purely selfish reasons (like when CEOs sabotage secretaries to keep them by his side).

There's NO way they're gonna sell that he doesn't care anymore and I'm SO FUCKING CURIOUS to see how that shakes out now.

[ooops-i-arted]

Gina Carano Sues Disney and Lucasfilm. According to Just Some Guy at 1 : 36 of the youtube video. Gina Carano was the one who put gasoline into the fire herself by intentionally starting a fight with trans people and mocking them for their importance in society.

I was sick the day the happened and @jennadknowsbest-blog was kind enough to tell me and boy let me tell you, despite feeling like crap I was laughing like this allllllll day

If you too need a good laugh, read the released document thingy. It's badly written on so many levels. (I saw it on Reddit but I think it's floating around Tumblr too. There are some golden comments on both.) Both from just a writing style perspective (it's written like a teenager's Star Wars fanfic) and the fact that her main argument is that "Pedro Pascal said mean things about conservatives and wasn't punished" when 1. most of the posts were apparently before he was hired as the Mandalorian and 2. it seems like pretty common knowledge in fandom that he was asked to tone it down and he did. I follow him on Insta and he rarely posts outside of promoting his own work, and it's largely "support this cause" or "I love my trans sister" instead of attacking/joking at anyone. (I guess his Twitter had more comments, but he's since deleted it afaik.) Overall, it's likely just a stunt to get the right-wing frothing at the mouth and Gina's name back in people's mouth, because she hasn't filmed anything since Terror on the Prairie (one of two Daily Wire films she was supposed to have, the other appears to not be happening anymore) and My Son Hunter (which was straight Breitbart propaganda). Shatpiro has used and dumped her and while I doubt she's hurting for money, I bet she's desperate to get the praise and attention and adoration that the Cara Dune role briefly brought her. Why else would she come crawling back to a company she's publicly trashed and accused of mistreating for the last several years? It doesn't make sense by her own logic! If they were so bad, why does she want back? (And who's gonna hire her now if they think she's a liability who's going to turn around and sue them?)

It's really disgusting though that Gina wants to claim she was discriminated against for being a woman while actively mocking minority groups. Her post appeared on my Insta fyp and I usually don't click because I know she's gonna piss me off, and I clicked and she did. At the time she had a story that said "Still beeping, bopping, booping" with a smirky picture of her. So all she's been told - we know Pedro talked to her because she herself admitted it on Twitter*, and while I'm sure there were plenty of people jumping on the hate bandwagon, there were also people trying to genuinely explain - and explained how this is hurtful to the queer community, she still keeps doing it and thinks it's funny.

That's what's unforgivable to me. Not that she said ignorant shit in the first place - we all have - but her refusal to learn and do better. She wants to say whatever she wants without pushback and so do her fans. The few times I've thought it's worth it to try and talk to someone about it, they always insist it's just her opinion and say something homophobic to me as well (last time I talked to a Cara Dune content creator on Insta, she said she "doesn't agree" with me being gay and "I can't expect everyone to agree with me." For wanting to exist as a gay person. Apparently I should just take it when people mock me or say I should burn in hell.) That's the problem with Gina and her supporters. They don't care, they don't want to think critically or debate, they want to say anything they want without consequence and brush off any conflict with "well it's just a joke" or "it's just her opinion."

Bigotry is not an opinion. You can't "not agree" with someone's skin color and it's the same with their sexuality. You don't get a fucking opinion on whether I have the right to exist as a queer woman.

Let's not pretend the things Gina says are in a void. People who flock to her believe the same things she does. That's why people have protested her attending FanExpo (this video goes into more depth thank you @jennadknowsbest-blog for sharing), when you invite people who, like her, think it's funny to mock anyone like them, it doesn't make a safe or welcoming environment for people like me. Sure one can brush off a comment or two - but where do you draw the line? When does it become harassment? And who is going to protect people like me from that harassment? How can I count on security from an organization that invited Gina and encouraged these people in the first place?

And I say all this as a queer woman who is able to chameleon myself very well because I've done it since childhood. Things are only getting more dangerous for people who are visibly queer. A nonbinary teen was just killed in Oklahoma. I live in a relatively blue area of a blue state, but that doesn't mean I'm completely safe. There are extremists out there, and they're only getting more bold - because people like Gina think it's amusing to fan the flames. Gina, at least, has faced some consequences for it. I doubt this lawsuit will go anywhere (either it'll be settled and Elon and Gina have some Own The Libs content, or they'll be dismissed/lose and they'll get some A Woke Judge Discriminated Against Me content). Gina will be happily on her way. Meanwhile, I get to wonder if the people around me who dismissively say "it's just her opinion" are the kind of people who don't think much about social issues.... or are the kind of people who will happily vote my rights away in the next election.

I assure you, if you have friends who are queer, they are listening to what you say about this case. Throughout all her tomfoolery, I've found Gina to be an excellent canary in the coal mine when it comes to identifying homophobes.

-

*She apparently later told Tucker Carlson that no one bothered to explain the pronouns thing to her, so we know she's a liar who twists the story as well, which is why I never take anything she says in good faith.**

**I'm very embarrassed I know this but I can't help but following up on stupid things she's doing. She fascinates me. She's like the inverse of a blorbo to me, like she pisses me off but she compels me. How can one person be this dumb. (Fr tho has anyone in her life talked to her about CTE??? Impulsiveness/aggression are possible symptoms....)

[georgieluz]

getting a few things off my chest about Gen Kill. sorry im in your inbox. but i am. you can publish this ask or keep it in the DM, both are fine.

First, actually the hardest series to watch in all three shows for me. I'm ok with the level of violence in the other two (as well as other trigger-warning content) but the level of civilian casualty in GK just really fuck with me. I find it very hard to want to rewatch GK, even tho I do like the show a lot.

Second, Both TP and GK, for me, are the anti-thesis and deconstruction of BoB. In two different ways. TP talks about another theater and how fucked up these stories are and basically pushes the audience away. Don't look, it's not a story to share (vs BoB that invite you to take part and be with the characters). GK is the modern day glory-seeking meaningless chaotic and toxic reality of the US military (vs BoB's fighting for the right thing, our officers are smart and capable). And they're both meta answers to BoB's more propagandistic story.

Third, ok, let's get silly lol. I have to say whatever is going with Brad and Nate is fucking homo. "Not to be homo sir, but I can kiss you right now" um what. And the eyes contact. Bro. Bruh. That being said... I ship BradRay xD Their bantering old-married-couple dynamic is more my speed, than BradNate victorian yearning dynamic xD

hello, no worries, it's all good, my inbox is always open for thoughts, insights and opinions! this got pretty long so i'm gonna put it under a read more so it doesn't annoy anyone

i published this bc i ended up adding a lot of my own thoughts about it and didn't want it to seem like i was directing them specifically at you or your opinion bc i do go off track a lot.

it was the hardest series for me to get into as well at first, for a similar few reasons. first of all, it felt like i was being dropped into a locked room with men who would hate my guts, and not just have bullied me in high school, but detest my existence too. so i think that atmosphere of over the top toxic masculinity instantly made me uneasy, but that's the point. that's the whole reason the articles, book and show exists really. to show how that mindset and atmosphere laid the groundwork for what happened. i think if they were to have made a show where we as viewers are allowed to laugh along with their jokes, enjoy their interactions, but not be forced to confront the realities of both the invasion and the people taking part, then it would defeat the message and themes that the show is trying to present to us. i think the civilian death, and basically the way the military treated civilians in general, has to make you uncomfortable, otherwise it's not doing its job as a text or piece of media. at least from the writer's perspective and what they wanted to say about what happened there, bc ultimately, everything is a construct with biases and a goal. so i 100% agree with you in that it's easily the most uncomfortable show to casually watch in that regard, but if it didn't show all of that, it wouldn't be a show with a purpose, imo.

i would personally put the pacific a bit closer to band of brothers than gen kill when it comes to discussing its propagandism actually. bc whilst it has the caveat of "this is the reality and brutality of war, it's horrific, you don't want any part of it" and "it's not all camaraderie and brothers being bonded for life", the show still has its 'heroes' who are depicted as sacrificing either their lives or their mental wellbeing for 'the cause', and it still carries the message of "yes this is terrible but it's needed". two things that propagandist themes can thrive amongst. just reading some of the more bootlickery youtube comments about the pacific shows how some of those people cling onto the brutality and harshness of that theatre of war, and the show itself, as a display of heroic bravery and badge of honour. i've seen a few commenters on reaction videos and stuff and they're basically frothing at the mouth about how it's so much more brutal than band of brothers, and they aren't saying it from a critical perspective either, which is what the show may have intended, but more from a "omg brutal war porn nice!!" kinda way. i know i'm rambling off point from what you said, but it's just some of my thoughts. i'm probably gonna ramble a bit in the rest of the post so don't see it as me disagreeing with your points bc i think we have pretty much the same opinion in most ways, but i guess your ask has prompted a lot of thinking from me so i'm just getting some of my thoughts out about the shows.

i think for me, i would say the pacific is a stepping stone between band of brothers and generation kill. i do agree in that it is pushing the viewer away from the idea of war as noble, in favour of saying "no! it's dirty and cruel and harsh and you won't survive it, even if you're alive when it's over" but it's also presented in the same way as band of brothers in regards to how we're supposed to view these men. there's many competent and intelligent guys making decisions and the humanity of those men is always on display. they're still shown as heroes, even if they're broken ones. so i think i can't fully align it with gen kill as a direct opposition to the messaging in band of brothers, but more one that says "ok, we've seen it from that perspective, now let's open up the casket up a little more and try to understand it looking through another lens".

whereas for me, gen kill sets explosives in the casket and blows that shit to pieces. there are no noble heroes competently achieving great feats, or sacrificing their lives for 'the greater good'. the people who do die, or get wounded, are seen as wasted casualties and missions gone wrong, fuck ups that we see in the corner of exterior shots to remind us that it's not all singing avril lavigne in a humvee, that there are consequences, even for the invaders. we see the destruction they inflict on civilians constantly, but the marines that get wounded/die are essentially proof of the incompetencies and fuck ups that even the most militaristic audience has to admit to.

the line of morality is non-existent, apart from a few people that we meet, but they have no power whatsoever. they can't actually do anything even if they disagree with what's happening. they stand by and they watch. we get nate who hates it, very clearly, but his whole thing is that he literally can't do anything. he has no actual power or impact on anything there. i saw a meme on here a few days ago where it was like "i'm competent at my job but i'm starting to think i'm just decorative" and it's funny and just a silly meme but it's also kind of the truth. we see him make a few decisions that go over the head of the initial orders, etc, but in the big picture, they have so little effect that it's a drop in the ocean comparatively. so the little competency we do have is ineffective. and even the more authoritative roles within the narrative that we get to see, like ferrando, are shown as not just making bad decisions, but actually not having much control over matters themselves. they're all floundering from top to bottom. there's no basilone or winters or ack ack there to make us sigh with relief as viewers bc finally, someone will make things right, make the right choice, do the right thing. instead we have these very complex people who have a lot of messed up flaws and shit within them, but some realistic relatabilities too. and sure, a good few of them want to do better and will call out certain shit they see in different ways (doc bryan, nate, espera, brad) but ultimately, they're forced to not just watch and let it happen, but a lot of the time, take part and be culpable for those actions too.. and it's not depicted as a noble sacrifice of their morality, it positions them as helpless and incapable. so the viewer doesn't get their usual hbo war heroes, which to me, feels like a direct answer to both band of brothers and the pacific in that kind of way.

i feel like walt's character shows us that (on a surface level basis but still). he's presented to us as the more appealing contrast to trombley. they're both young and in brad's team, two sides of a coin you could say bc we're shown immediately that trombley is the problem child and walt is the pretty golden boy that spends his scenes telling brad to get some rest or trying to fix the dodgy equipment they've got, or essentially is just trying to be helpful. but they both fuck up bad and kill civilians as an individual. we don't get to keep our clean innocent pretty boy. he fucks up. bad. his hands aren't clean. none of theirs are. not nate's, not even doc bryan's. he says that himself. walt clearly feels terrible afterward and that's the difference between him and trombley (though i will say i do think trombley is much more complex than we see on the surface), but walt doesn't get to escape the blood on his hands. even the most seemingly "innocent" characters never get to remain that in this show. there are no heroes.

and then the second point i mentioned above about the message of "yes was is terrible but needed sometimes" is the other thing that gen kill throws away and abandons. nothing, not a single thing, is depicted as needing to happen. yeah, they're told it's needed and honestly, a lot of those marines were brainwashed into believing it, but the whole point is that it wasn't. it was a colossal fuck up in every way and the show holds up a massive flashing neon sign showing us exactly how, but from the ground.

so absolutely fully agree with you that this show is positioned as a meta deconstruction to band of brothers themes, and even the pacific, especially when the shows are presented as a package deal, as hbo war so often is. it's all a lot more nuanced than what i've said bc i've just been rambling AGAIN, but i think there's a lot of dialogue going on between the three shows when you analyse them from further away that is really interesting to discuss.

so yup, definitely agree with what you said and thank you for dropping by my inbox to talk about this kinda stuff with me! i'm sorry if i went into too much detail or overtook this ask with my own opinions or anything but yeah. i think we all know by now that i tend to ramble when asked about anything!

NOW ONTO THE FUN PART!

it genuinely feels like bradnate have taken up residence in a very large part of my brain. i had heard a lot of people mentioning bradray on here before i watched, so i was expecting that to be the main 'ship' of the show, and kinda thought i'd probably end up getting onboard with that, but i actually only got platonic besties vibes from them. i'm always down for as much gay as possible, so i support it, but i just don't really see anything outside of platonic love between them? i do really enjoy their relationship and interactions though, and some of their scenes are my absolute favourites.

but i'm ALL about the victorian repression and yearning, so ofc bradnate is where it's at for me. as a gay man who repressed all his emotions growing up it just calls to me like a siren lmao. i think that's why i'm like a feral little gremlin about nate actually

[askthefivefallen]

How exactly does one play airball?

T: "YES, YES, AIRBALL, LET'S TALK ABOUT IT."

R: "Easy, girl, don't go frothing at the mouth right off the bat."

L: "Oh, just let her have this. She's passionate about it."

R: "Uh huh."

T: "Okay, so, the thing to remember is that airball was only ever played by the Exorcists. I tried asking Adam once if he wanted to play but it's, uh, I guess Winners can't feel pain but mortal souls have this thing called... what is it... oh, yeah, self preservation instinct that makes airball really scary. But, we're Exorcists, we're basically invulnerable."

A: "I think Vaggie and Lute would say otherwise."

J: "Not to mention the ones who died..."

T: "Okay, so we can be hurt and die, but not without other things happening first- if you focus on just having fun, you can't hurt anyone!"

A: "It was training, Tits, it was never fun."

L: "Would all of you just let her have this, please?"

T: "ANYWAY! So, you start with a ball and at least two goals. In the early days, we used more goals, but that made it too easy- and the goals are basically big hoops with loose nets to catch the ball from either direction. If you want a really chaotic game, you can technically reduce it to one goal that's set into, like, a wall or the ground, but it's generally more fun to have two freestanding goals."

J: "The last single goal game left twenty six Exorcists unconscious. I don't think 'chaotic' is the right word choice."

T: "After you have the field set up, it's a free-for-all. The overall goal, heh, is to score points by getting the ball into the goal however possible. But! Everyone else playing is supposed to try stopping you however they can! Nothing's barred- midair tackles, kicks, throws, driving you into the ground, all legal! There's also no out-of-bounds, so you can fly as far and as fast as you think your endurance can take you. It's a brutal game that emphasizes strong, powerful flying and quick decision making! Plus, there's no high like the adrenaline high you get from being chased down by three scores of Exorcists trying to stop you."

R: "Okay, to be fair, there is one restriction, and that's no intentionally fucking up others' wings. Our bodies are mostly invulnerable but we can lose feathers and the damn things can get pulled out of position; we can't compromise our flying ability, so targeting the wings specifically was never allowed."

T: "Oh, right, I forget about that all the time."

L: "Because you've never tried doing it; you only ever go for straight tackles."

J: "I never understood why it was okay to pull hair but not wings. Seems like they should fall in the same category, right?"

A: *opens mouth*

L: "If you're about to make a joke, don't."

A: *closes mouth and pouts* "You know I'm right, though. Most of us are into it."

T: "Wait, what?"

L: "Damnit, Ass."

R: "You know, I wouldn't mind playing another game of airball soon. Doing teams instead of a free-for-all is actually a lot of fun!"

T: "I know, right! I love the bonding that comes with team sports! And adding teams to airball doesn't change the overall game, just adds in passing and tactics. Lefty's really good at the strategy part of the team based version! Fuck, talking about it got me all excited- who wants to play a game right now?"

L: "I'll play."

J: "Can I join?"

R: "Ah, why not, it's a bit slow today. C'mon, Ass, you're playing, too."

A: "Who says I want to?"

R: "Fine, sit on the sidelines and be a cheerleader then."

A: "Fuck you, I didn't say I wasn't going to play."

L: "Ass, why are you like this..."

[simplynotcapable]

I’m curious, in that “Baelon is Visenya’s uncle ‘verse”:

A) how does that change - *if* it does - the relationship(s) between Daemon, Baelon, and Visenya?

Is Daemon more protective/platonically possessive of Visenya in that ‘verse? (aka “that’s *my* firstborn daughter you’re eyeing, nephew”)

B) if so, is Viserys having a grand old time, sitting there laughing about uncles, nieces, and karma?

Tangent - I really love that we know the words for family in High Valyrian and what they might imply about about family structures in Valyrian culture (for example, “kepa” being used for both father and father’s brother - especially since mother’s brother is “iapa” or “qybor”- suggests that a father’s male siblings might be seen as additional/surrogate fathers whereas a mother’s male siblings would take more of an “uncle role”). If I’m right, It definitely makes the creep/cringe factor of Daemyra in canon even worse 😬😂🤦‍♀️

Hi!!!

The relationship between Baelon and Daemon would still be largely the same, if not a little closer considering they’d be spending more time together.

I don’t think Visenya and Daemon’s would be much different from dragonglass and gold either, since she largely sees him as her father there anyway, but if anything they’d be less tightknit. Part of the reason the twins cleave so close to Daemon is their bad relationship with Viserys, and Visenya’s driving force is very much entangled with the fact that Daemon’s the only male authority figure she has that didn’t a) kill her mother and therefore show he does not give a flying fuck about the women in his life’s agency, and b) spend all his time around her bemoaning how she looks like said dead wife. In a life where Viserys is just her weird grandpa and she has two parents with a relatively healthy (psa: grooming is bad and never healthy kids, every modern!Daemon au should put him in prison for statutory) marriage, she isn’t really seeking that same validation from him. She’s always had from Daemon what she was missing from her relationship with Viserys, so she doesn’t have to go through the whole “love me please i’ll be worth it i swear just look at me” sort of thing that she does when Viserys is her father.

Daemon’s just her dad. He’s annoying. Makes kind of gross jokes. Keeps knocking up her mom even though there’s so gods-damn many kids running around that she wants to yank out all of her hair.

Daemon is 100% the dad that sits on the porch cleaning a gun when his daughter has their first date, so Baelon and Visenya’s friendship makes him very erratic. Just frothing at the mouth “what do you mean they went on a 3am flight alone i’m going to eat his pancreas raw” and “WHY IS HIS HAND ON HER BACK RIGHT NOW RHAENYRA” even though Baelon and Visenya have a mostly pretty platonic relationship for most of their childhood.

Viserys thinks this is karmic justice from the gods, is absolutely no help whatsoever, and uses it to very cheerfully fuck with Daemon all the time.

(Daemon: get your SON

Viserys: it’s perfectly innocent. what kind of uncle would seduce their fifteen year old niece?

Daemon:

Viserys: it isn’t like he’s bringing her to brothels

Daemon:

Viserys: or stealing her from her wedding

Daemon:

Viserys: that’d be an example of a bad uncle

Daemon:

Viserys: I’m calling you a—

Daemon: no yeah I got the message thanks)

I’ve never thought about the significance of kepa being a word for uncle and father, but that’s a really interesting point. The age gap and how young Nyra is when Daemon is starting to show interest is weird enough. Thinking about it through the lens of Daemon having this cultural responsibility to act as a father figure and instead being like “familial power as a stepping stone to being a child predator, a 500 page guide by Daemon Targaryen” makes it 1000x worse and also just more fascinating a dynamic than it already was.

Thank you!! 🩵

[yurigalactica]

Any assortment of 1, 2, 7, 9, 17, 21, 22, 30 for the music ask game! It's alot but I couldn't decide which ones lol. U don't have to answer them all just pick ur favorites

jokes on you jinx i am so obsessed with music and deep within my own brainrot that i will be answering ALL of them >:D 1. a song you can listen to on repeat

now this question in particular is really hard for me, because i tend to listen to a lot of songs on loop a lot. however most of the time doing so easily makes me sick of it and i have to take a break from listening to it for a few weeks. however one of the songs i listen to a lot and never seem to get bored of is Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales by Car Seat Headrest. especially the end bit, it really scratches my brain the right way, and it's really fun to belt out the harmonies in the car when you're driving through town in the evening

2. a song from one of your favorite albums

it's no secret that i'm a slut for los campesinos. everyone knows this about me. so it's kinda obligatory that i use one of their songs for these asks lmao. my favorite album of theirs in particular is definitely romance is boring (i just adore so many songs on that album!!! genuinely it's banger after banger, i highly recommend listening to the whole album.) my personal all-time favorite from that album is definitely In Media Res, just because of the ending bit with the trumpets. holy shit i get such a surge of dopamine when gareth campesinos goes "if you were given the option of dying painlessly in peace at forty five, with a lover at your side, after a full and happy life, is this something that would interest you? would this interest you at all?" just—AGH

7. a song that reminds you of your friend(s)

this one's easy—Dynamite by BTS. my irl best friend loves k-pop (stuff like BTS and Stray Kids), and while i don't listen to it on my own, i've gotta admit, she's got immaculate taste. dynamite is the one i hear the most around, playing on the radio (because it's mostly in english and i live in a country where most people i know speak english as a first language). so literally anytime i hear this song i find myself immediately thinking of her and going to text her about it LMAO

9. a song that reminds you of yourself 

this one was definitely the hardest to answer, and quite frankly, i sat at my desk for a solid hour trying to find a good one for this. but after some careful deliberation i had to go with Dear Wormwood by the oh hellos. the oh hellos are an incredible band and i genuinely adore all of their music, and highly recommend you listen to their entire discography. this song, though, holds a very special place in my heart—after all, it was my number one song on my spotify wrapped during 2020. it was the song i had on loop during the entirety of quarantine, when i was stuck in my bedroom, isolating myself from everyone in real life and online. during those months i didn't talk to any of my friends, not even over text. my only steady companion was my beloved spotify premium subscription. listening to this song over 500 times permanently altered my brain chemistry and i'm pretty sure it's the reason i have anxiety now /j

17.  a song with great lyrics 

holy fuck. holy fucking shit. To Tundra by los campesinos. i literally froth at the mouth anytime i think of this song oh my gosh. i made a whole post about it ages ago but i'll go on about it again. like "meet me at st. nicholas among the oaks, behind the church that sway like pig-tailed girls as summer wind whistles around your bare-skin knees and the forsythia leaves" KADGKKDFHKADFKHK THE IMAGERY AHHHHHHHH "and in a hazy daydream, our bodies married the stream and we broke down into pebbles and silt" SCREAMING SOBBING VOMITING /pos "we take on the burden of all these sad-eyed children with lilies bunched in our hands" i am literally going to eat a brick this makes me feel so many emotions

21. a song for the rain

Woman by the 1975, probably. there are a lot of good songs to listen to in the rain but this probably takes the cake just because of how echoey and melancholy it feels. i love it when artists do that kind of stuff with the guitar and make it carry out really long—and almost make it sound like it's wailing. it's one of my favorite electric guitar effects ever and i've always found that the 1975 does that really well! and as a guitar player myself how a guitar is played and how it affects the rest of the song is really important in my picking of a favorite song. this one in particular is very versatile, and i feel like you could listen to it not only in the rain, but at night in the car too.

22. a song for dancing 

Tongue Tied by grouplove!!! it's genuinely one of the most happy fun upbeat songs i know. it's like dancing in the kitchen while making cookies with your bestie at 2am kind of music. if you need to cheer yourself up and have an impromptu dance party with energy and excitement then this is the song for you!!! ultimate anti-depression song. and this also happened to be my most listened to song in my spotify wrapped 2021 if that tells you anything about how that year was for me /lh

30.  a song you recommend

Do Me A Favour by the arctic monkeys. i've been listening to them a whole lot more lately, mostly because i also admire their guitar work and also feel like their music vibe fits very well with a fic that i've been workshopping for a while and have not released yet. this one in particular is my ultimate favorite of theirs, probably because of the guitar and the lyrics that go together (but probably mostly because of how well it fits the overall vibe of the fic it goes with. and if you're interested in what it is, it's a benchtrio-centric mystery/horror au)

[trickstarbrave]

Hello! I am here to inform you that I would happily read a 10 page essay about Alduin's Bane. Spoilers are a highlight. Your Elder Scrolls lore is incredible and I am frothing at the mouth for more.

oh man now i have decision paralysis i have so much to talk about given the fic is over 150k (somehow. i cant believe i wrote that much) uhhhhhh im just gonna give some bullet points of what i can think of

>originally was going to just be a oneshot centered around the past that would have been the first 3-ish chapters but i liked it so much i had continued it

>hell i had debated actually naming eyja or not for a while lol

>originally fengr wasn't going to be in the story, but i actually liked him the more i thought about him. he is supposed to be the archtypical box art "dragonborn" bethesda markets (except two handed weapons instead of dual wielding). i thought he made a good foil and could help drive some of the character development and give eyja more to connect her to the world and also because i wanted to use him as a foil for another character

>i did intend for sheogorath to be the champion of cyrodiil. not everyone agrees with this theory but i liked it. i also hope i did a better job making the quest more interesting. i was really proud of connecting the weird, seemingly disjointed dream world quests to our main character's psyche and problems rather than being just a cheap joke

>i also LOVE sanguine if you couldn't tell. writing him was some of my favorite stuff. genuine chaos and debauchery. he technically had the right idea

>i had a big plan in mind for a side plot where The Gang currently (fengr, serana, eyja, alduin) run into cicero and the listener who were tasked with assassinating the dragonborn and instead ask for their help to take down astrid who they know is planning on turning on them. this was going to lead to a full blown assassination of the current emperor, but for the life of me i couldn't think of a satisfactory way to connect the plot to the rest of the story without feeling like i was forcing a block through a circular hole so it has been indefinitely tabled. if it makes it back in the story then it does but so far i'm not planning on it. but if you're wondering what happened to our dear little jester he is off helping rebuild the dark brotherhood with his wood elf listener

>in my fic to be mentioned later alduin actually got so angry he ripped off solstheim as a provide from mainland skyrim and flung it off into the ocean during a big ass battle

>i remember some ppl saying alduin could be akin to shiva. whether or not you like this idea or think it is credible i was a lil inspired by the myths of sati and parvati in the loosest of ways

>im still very proud that i made bleakfalls barrow originally designed and built to be eyja's tomb. in functions VERY much as a tutorial dungeon in many aspects with like blatant plot hooks in the form of the dragon stone and word wall that we just dont see in other tombs. not to mention it is very large and in your face, something you expect to be of bigger importance, and delphine wanted the dragon stone for some unexplained reason, so. head dragon priest's tomb it is. but alduin wouldn't actually let her be buried there, which only lead to credence to the mainstream belief that konahrik had defected or betrayed alduin and he had killed her in a rage.

>how she got the mask i just realized i never explained. basically my bullshit reason was she owns the mask. the mask was sealed off to wait for a new owner if one ever came, and then was lost to time. dragon priests arent really supposed to "die" in my telling of events so she got the mask by wandering in and it opened up for her assuming she was the original owner here to claim it. it does not do this for literally anyone else

>alduin kind of fucking sucked at sex. i hint at this in several ways but in their first lifetime he just fucking sucked at it. i cannot fully stress how just bad and clumsy he was. this immortal dragon god of the end of time was a complete virgin and it showed. if it wasn't for the fact he was a god she adored i dont think eyja would have put up with it. but luckily she taught him better.

>they were together i estimate in the ballpark of 60 years prior to her being killed. a very fun time for the people of skyrim given alduin wasnt randomly flying overhead to munch on them

>i wanna work more on serana and alduin's dynamic bc i think it is very funny. she's gotten over her panic into just normal rational fear and questioning her sanity of "wait the actual dragon god??? thats who im traveling with????"

>as far as dragon priests knew it was an open secret eyja and alduin were fucking. the general public didnt know but most of the priests knew. and most of the dragons but they were more confused by the concept of actually having sex which seemed weird in general

actual big spoilers under the cut for people who dont wanna see:

>fengr is, in the next little mini arc we're about to do with curing lycanthrope, about to be revealed as also a dragonborn. i like to imagine that was akatosh's back up plan or something. i wont reveal all of what the revelation entails to keep that fun and exciting

>also to be mentioned: molag bal has beef with alduin and eyja because her mask is actually made of daedric ivory. alduin went "i need a cooler material for her mask to be made out of" and went all the way to a realm of oblivion to kill one of molag bal's big ass daedra. this has lead to much of molag bal's beef with dragons

>several members of the thalmor were investigating the masks (this is canon) and took a particular interest in both eyja's and the time traveling unnamed mask. this wooden mask alduin had made in hopes it could bring eyja back (it failed)

>back to the sati and parvati myths uhhhh part of that has translated to miraak and his motivations. i hope you didn't have "miraak is past life eyja's ex" on your bingo card because you will not be able to check that off. miraak was her father.

>in that regard i had to think a lot about how having kids would be handled by dragon priests. i dont see miraak actually raising any children he had, and he probably had a variety of concubines and wives to sleep with as i imagine most of the other dragon priests did, but no time to actually get attached. so she probably only had some status and little interactions with him prior to this, but boy was miraak mad he couldnt just use her influence for his own gain. idk if i will get to mention all this part in my fic lol

>finding out one of his kids actually inherited his abilities led him down the path to trying to understand what dragonborn were. he thought he was a strange, special existence, but finding out there were more people like him made him wanna find out how they worked. this also invariably led to him experimenting on several of eyja's multitude of half siblings that died prior to him getting his hands on her. also prob wont get to mention all this in the fic

>in this vein i had the idea to make vahlok eyja's other parent but i didn't think it did much for the story so. i might go in the way of "helpful mentor" or just that he didnt fucking suck

[charliebug3]

Alright so I cannot sleep it is midnight and I've been listening to Eighth Wonder by Lemon Demon on loop for about 2 hours too long so I'm about to briefly become the least normal person on tesblr.

WHY I'M RIGHT: Abnur Tharn IS Zurin Arctus, Deranged Sleep-Deprived Edition

(Take all of this with a heap of salt. I am joking with the "I'm right" thing. I could be completely and utterly wrong but that's the fun of it, innit?)

So basically I stumbled upon an old concept by ESO's first Loremaster and I've never been the same since. Long story short the concept had Abnur Tharn turn into Zurin Arctus... somehow.

There's bits of that left over, methinks, in the way that House Tharn evidently, by Abnur's own admission, participated in keeping... political dissenters... under control. Now hehehe boy that's sure interesting. What um. I'm sure that will go well at some point in Tamriel's future, huh? Definitely won't ummmmmm uh something something Battlemage something cough.

There's also, of course, the way he's not particularly partial to continuing to serve under a banner that's committing mass atrocities. The willingness to give up everything for Cyrodiil. Eh, but those are just traits of someone loyal to a cause, hmm?

But regardless, none of that could mean anything. ZOS was forbidden to do anything with the Tiber Wars, or with Dragons, or with anything like that, right?

AND THEN ELSWEYR HAPPENED.

Whoopsie! Looks like the limits are off! Now comes the part where I get a progressively less coherent while making a bullet point list of things that Could be coincidence but um. Uh. Look it all makes sense together I promise.

• It's a little hidden in a line of dialogue during The Demon Weapon, but like right out the gate Abnur is directly looking for The FUCKING NUMIDIUM. Boom, first quest, it's literally right there. And where does he go looking? The Halls of Colossus. Y'know, the place where Tiber Septim and Zurin Arctus KEEP THE NUMIDIUM 300 YEARS LATER. Now of course it's a dead end this time and oopsie it's a Different horror released from the Halls but like. Come ON.

• Nahfahlaar. Hello? The crown jewel of Tiber Septim's army or whatever? He's literally just chilling in Elsweyr. And not only that, take a WILD guess who's the ONLY one present when Abnur pulls his silly little disappearing magic trick for gods know how long? Yeah I mean there's not much to say except there's a literal entire character directly from the Tiber Wars in this storyline. So we know for a fact the "no Tiber Wars" limit is off.

• Aeonstone. Hello, green crystal that amplifies the magic of souls (LITERALLY REFERRED TO AS LIFE FORCE IN MULTIPLE LINES OF DIALOGUE. FROM A VERY SPECIFIC CHARACTER.) to godly levels of power! Hmm! I wonder, just WONDER where else we might have seen this. Couldn't possibly be related to uhhhhhh the magic green crystal used to amplify someone's life force to godly levels of power. Y'know the um. The Mantella. I'm talking about the Mantella I cannot explain how much the idea that the Mantella is made of Aeonstone makes me froth at the mouth. It makes too much sense and there are like THREE people who know what Aeonstone is and does and hahaha GUESS WHICH ONE KNOWS THE MOST? Yeah it's. It's Abnur.

• Now of course there's the direct parallel of "I have lived too long and fucked up too much, I have nothing left please let me die" that's less spoken in Elsweyr than it is in Daggerfall but it is DEFINITELY still there. Like mr battlemage says "attacking Kaalgrontiid's lair would be a suicide mission" and then IMMEDIATELY is like "I am going to Kaalgrontiid's lair to attack him :)" hello??????? Ok.

• Can we just talk about the fact that of ALL the places to put the ESO storyline, it was, well. Elsweyr? The place where shit gets REAL fucked in the Tiber Wars, meaning everything we do and everyone we save in ESO: Elsweyr means NOTHING. Rimmen gets nuked by the Numidium. Senchal is home to a massacre at the hands of Tiber Septim's army. Hell, the third moon happens! In Daggerfall! ITS MANNIMARCO HE LITERALLY JUST HIJACKS KAALGRONTIID'S NEE MOON PROPHECY HGHGGGHHGBH- but boy all that amounting to nothing just. It fits. It fits so well, with the whole thing of giving up everything only for it to be taken advantage of and destroyed. And I mean. "Dying" (because neither Abnur nor Zurin actually got to die to Dragonhold or the Numidium, that'd be too easy) to stop something you ACTIVELY caused and were party to and it's 99% your fault and became so much worse than you ever could've planned for? Uh hehe. Yeah.

• I love the fact that we have literally no origin for Zurin (I DO NOT COUNT THE ARCTURIAN HERESY I DONT THINK ITS CANON. I THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW). All we know is that he's an incredibly powerful Imperial Battlemage who held the position of Grand Chancellor. Which I mean like. ESO literally gives us local incredibly powerful Grand Chancellor (it's implied that at full strength he can just casually KO a dragon and even weakened he can stand against Mannimarco (full power) long enough to not get completely obliterated). So like. It would at this point be a VERY smooth transition from one to the other.

• This is something that just completely drives me bonkers insane feral and may not actually be a connection, but uhhh the name of the Spymaster responsible for collecting info about Abnur for his Elsweyr Meet the Character article is. His. His name is FUCKING. ARCTUS. IM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP HIS NAME IS ARCTUS COVE. THAT IS NOT A COMMON NAME FOR AN IMPERIAL UNLESS I HAVE JUST COMPLETELY MISSED MULTIPLE OTHER USAGES OF THE NAME ARCUS. I JUST. AAAAAAAAAAAA

• Final little note but I think the little ESO green dragon imp pet from the Elsweyr event back in like 2019 with a model seen nowhere else in the game and a description that's literally a quote from Abnur is a. I think it's a Skakmat reference? From Daggerfall? Not entirely sure but it looks fairly similar to Skakmat's icon in Daggerfall's files. I dunno maybe I've fully lost it.

Anyway nonsense post over go about your day/night have fun. I might add citations and sources and corrections in the morning when I wake up and am coherent. Please don't kill me