#hard contract

[thelaurenshippen]

watching bridgerton and obviously there were a lot of things wrong with the way socializing has worked in the past, but honestly the idea of a "calling hour" is so appealing. office hours for friendship. you can show up unannounced at my home between 1 and 3pm. you must leave by 3pm. I may give you a pastry. lets bring that back

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: Hard Contract (1.5, LWT, 1972)

"I was just wondering what it was like to kill somebody."

"Well, that's a nice thought to start the day, innit?"

"In all my stint in the army, I never did. Not like -"

"Not like me."

"Yeah, well, you bagged a few terrorists in your time, didn't you? I was just wondering..."

"What it was like?"

"Yeah."

"Well, it... it was like... like nothing. You just sit on a roof and wait. For movement. The sun on a rifle. Just a flash, a glint. The first bullet gets you - or gets them, it's as simple as that."

"No involvement?"

"None."

[emacrow]

John is salty as fuck.

How the fuck Red Robin got a Favor Ticket from the infinite realm?!?

He has been spending a 4 year and 8 months trying to figure the right ritual to summon that bastard right. All he gets is a dog sized looking green blob ball thing looking thing that take one look at him, say oooo and disappears on him, and yet the coffee obsessed robin figured it out in one shot to save batman?!?

Fuck this! He ignoring batman asking questions about the infinite realm, he need hardcover 99% alcohol liquor right the fuck now.

He sticks his middle finger as he leaves through the portal, closing it on his way out as he plop onto his bed in the house of mysteries, groaning out his frustration.

If John was paying attention, he wouldn't notice several dozen blob ghosts laying on his back, silently oooing on his slowly developing core.

Meanwhile

In crime city, Jason had given trying to removed this greenish lazarus pit cat sized goop off him for the last 6 hours. None of the robin seem to see it beside Cass, but the rage seem to be sipping away.

Part 2 here <-

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[the-last-dillpickle]

One of those 'Oops we got blackout drunk and got married in Vegas' trope fics but it's Julian and Quark waking up married at Vic's

[mohntilyet]

my initial knee jerk reaction to lucanis/spite saying "family, enemies, contracts" was bad because it felt like an oversimplification but actually thinking on it i really love that lucanis forces himself into this box to make things make sense in his life. family is unconditional, enemies are to be killed, but contracts is so. interesting... man who promises mila that he will find her father because he does not fail contracts. the same man who tells effe that he will kill her slaver because he needs to turn her from a poor young woman that he sympathises with, into someone he can make a deal with. it's not kindness, it's not weakness, he's just fulfilling a contract, and crows don't break contracts. if he kills a bunch of racist blood mages during that process, then he's not breaking the rules, just bending them. a very convenient excuse to be a good man while still being a crow and assassin. and of course when spite is forced into him, he gets out of it with something familiar! by making another deal! something he could work with, something he HAS to work with, because being just an abomination is unthinkable. if he can work himself out of this problem like he's done with every other contract in his life, in his mind maybe there's some tiny chance that this becomes another job that he can claw his life back from.

[thimblings]

*Viago will remember that*

(random scene from the fic i'm writing in my head lmao. takes place after leaving the cafe in "Coffee with Crows", hence the bag for groceries. first image is Lucanis putting a Gladiolus [Sword-Lily] in her hair that he bought while in the market. not intentionally flirting, he's just ~like that lmao)

(i will continue to find excuses to not draw Lucanis's complicated casual wear and also put everyone else in casual wear so i don't have to draw armor uwu)

[10yearsofdnp]

March 12, 2015: A contractually obligated phlindfolded phakeup phelfie hits the phimeline! 💄🤪

[its-all-papaya]

finished hooking up with my coworker and opened my phone to immediately see the landoscar teammateship extension. serendipity is the word i feel.

[degenerateshinji]

NGHH.......HRGHRGH......AUGH.......those memories...........so dark.....

[kinaesthetiqueer]

BABY

YOU'RE MY

ANNGEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLL

[cementcornfield]

god what a wild year though for joe to have been followed by cameras constantly....

[skyrim-forever]

I don't really know how to express it in a way that doesn't make me cringe and delete but I Am Not Okay right now

Trying to tell myself it could be much worse but damn does that not make me feel better. I don't want to whine because it could be much worse and I should be grateful it's not but going through it while having my first PMDD episode in months is not helping me think properly!

[leveloneandup]

I don't want to be boxed in by any kind of label, any kind of definition. And honestly, one of the most beautiful things that Christen's ever given to me in my relationship was just complete freedom.

And even in my crazy ideas, because most of them is just the idea of freedom. It's not this idea that I'm going off and doing all these crazy things. It's just this idea that I'm independent. I'm my own person. And like even within our relationship, I'm my own person. I can be seen as an individual piece of it.

For the choice part, that's probably the part that I love, that makes things exciting for me. And the fact that I have somebody that's literally a new choice every day because she's like a thousand different things all at once, so it makes life super interesting...

But long story short, we're in a seven year contract.

Long story short, the contract. So then I take it like sports and I'm like, "Alright, how many years do you want?" and then at the end of a contract year, you come back together and you say, "Is this something you want to sign up for? How many years?" and you sign another contract. Or you just go your seperate ways and you say, "That was really fun."

It's an out.

Yeah, it's an out.

But to be fair, I have thought about this, kids probably complicate the contract. But for now, the contract seems pretty...

Epic?

Epic, yeah.

[lookingforhappy]

man everytime i think im feeling better about s4 i remember what happened and i just

[melrosing]

oh he’s feeling messy….