#i'm in a not-sad mood lately

[sysig]

An eye for a life, unquestionably worth it (Patreon)

[beedreamscape]

I think what is missing with 4-sided Dive that Talks Machina had was a third party to have those character discussions with. It's not the same with a fellow PC. Also someone with interviewing abilities, sometimes I feel like they meander so much.

And I do like to watch them talk, I do watch old episodes of AWNP, fireside chat, etc, but for discussing the game/campaign I think the mechanics of it muddles with the flow.

I personally feel no value is added from the tower of inquiry or the cup questions, though I don't mind the game playing at the end since at this point who had their curiosity satisfied can simply leave, but answering while playing which they tried doing at least once I watched didn't work at all.

Edit: Btw when I say no value is added I mean the format (being in a cup, pulling from the tower) and not the questions themselves.

[moonchild-in-blue]

🦋🖤

[taikanyohou]

god i have neverrrr everrrr everrrr been a morning workout kinda person i usually always workout after work around 5pm-ish, but since its october now and the days will start to get shorter and SAD will no doubt set in this year i wanna try switching things up for the first time and see what it does for my mood and body and brain if i workout in the mornings before work at 6am before or after i pray fajr salah instead.

[winepresswrath]

I think it would be an improving experience for the writers who think surprising their audiences or leaving them sad and unsatisfied is the pinnacle of artistic achievement and have not noticed that the easiest way to bring that about is in fact to be bad at your job and the fans who think it should be illegal to write an ensemble or fail to clearly signpost the endgame couples or whether there's a happy ending to spend some time together, creatively speaking. Hand in unloveable hand.

[whimsicalcotton]

.

[roseverdict]

ooPS I ACCIDENTALLY TOOK THAT ONE CRACK AU IDEA WHERE KAI IS EVERY INHUMAN THING THE OTHER NINJA WIND UP AS AT ONCE AND I MADE IT ANGST

join me and cry. also no beta i just cranked this nightmare sequence out over the course of the day lol

unrelated but i write in a notes app that doesn't allow bolding or italicing so i just do markup so i know what to do later and copypasting right into tumblr automatically formatted it??? fuckin wild man

~

"We just have to give him time. I dunno how I would feel if I was told I was a robot." "You mean a nindroid." "…yeah, whatever."

Kai and Jay, S1E7, Tick Tock

After the day he'd had, Kai was ready for a nice, restful night of sleep to take him the moment his head hit the pillow.

So, of course, the moment he collapsed into bed is the moment alarms go off, making him lurch forward and nearly fall off the bed.

Kai stumbles to his feet and flails blindly ahead of himself, managing to catch his balance by leaning on Zane.

Zane chuckles and lets him stay there a moment to regain his bearings. "This never gets any easier, does it?"

Kai blinks blearily at him "Whuh?"

"I said, 'Still feeling the taste of video game defeat?'" Zane calls over the blaring of the alarms.

"Maybe a little," Kai huffs good-naturedly. "Come on, let's go catch up to the others."

Zane nods, and the two of them rush out of the bunkroom to do exactly that.

Almost before Kai knows it, the monastery gives way to a snowy forest. He's lost track of the others, but he follows tracks left in the snow for what feels like forever-!

He's inside a tree.

It doesn't look like the inside of a tree. He doesn't know if he even saw the outside before entering, but in some part of his mind, he knows that this tiny little lab-shed is in a tree.

The eerie familiarity of the place gives him the creeps.

Kai wants to turn around and leave, maybe he can wait for the others to get here before investigating-

His hands move without his consent, one uncovering a blue sheet of paper with silvery designs on it, the other leaning heavily on a scepter of some kind.

His own face stares blankly up at him from the page.

As if in a trance, something in Kai's chest opens and there are switches and wires and golden snow that grows faster than he can leap back in shock and his insides feel like they're full to bursting with dark ice and he's about to EXPLODE-

Kai reels back in surprise from-

-the Fangpyre skeleton laid out in the bridge of the Bounty.

This is a completely natural order of events, save for the fact that his finger feels somewhat sore.

Kai shrugs and heads out. There's been Serpentine activity spotted at Megamonster Amusement Park lately, after all, and if that's not something for the Ninja, then he doesn't know what is.

He runs across Jay on his way out and snorts. "Who are you looking to impress, buddy? The snakes?"

"The Sea," says Jay.

Kai cleans out his ear. "What was that?"

"Hey, let a guy finish!" Jay snaps lightheartedly. "It's Nya, if you must know."

Kai knows he can trust Jay with his sister, no matter what happens, on some implicit level he can barely understand. Instead of saying this outright, however, he just smiles. "Break a leg, buddy."

Jay nods and scurries off, and Kai turns to follow when he notices a sickly-green tinge to his skin.

"What?"

He hurries to a mirror to find scales growing in over his skin, and even jutting out oddly from the panels in his chest and arm.

Even as he watches, however, the scales ripple and spread outward, soon turning as blue as the sky. His hair bleaches white, and as he grabs his toothbrush to pull back his lips- are those fangs?!- his reflection scowls at him.

"Hey, dummy!"

Kai yelps as his own words (when, when did he say this?!) are turned back onto him with more venom than he'd thought he was capable of.

"Yeah, I'm talking to you," snarls his reflection. "Would you get your head on straight and start doing your job?"

"My…my job?" breathes Kai.

(wrong wrong wrong something is very wrong)

"You know, protecting your family?" his double drawls. "That thing you claim is the reason you became a ninja in the first place? The fate of the world kinda rests on it!"

Kai shakes his head- he doesn't know what is going on here but he doesn't like it- and bolts outside, ignoring his double's enraged protests.

(Something tells him that if he stayed behind, he'd just get a fist to the face for his trouble.)

He's at the amusement park in a flash, a stupid little electric-blue tail poking out under his gi no matter how much he adjusts it. Eventually he gives up and glances around the deserted park for any sign of movement.

"Hey, Kai! Over here!" Cole calls, waving him over to the haunted house attraction.

Kai is quick to run over. "You find anything?"

"I think so. I saw something purple run in here," Cole explains. "I'd bet you money that it's Pythor looking for that scroll Master Wu told us about."

Kai nods. "You call the others. I'm getting a head start."

Neither of them state the obvious fact that he can't still be inside at sunup, or else.

"Got it," says Cole.

As Kai rushes inside, he swears he can hear Cole say something like, "It's so easy to be forgotten."

However, he's already inside, and the doors slam shut behind him before he can ask.

Nervously, he sneaks through the endless sprawling halls in search of the snake he's chasing. The entire place is dead as the grave, and it's just as quiet.

Then Kai finds the room.

There is no Pythor here, nor is there any scroll, but the moment he steps inside, it is as though the world around him solidifies.

Ironically enough, it feels as though the old man's ghost in the middle of the room is the source of the solidity.

"How did you get here, child?" asks the ghost shortly.

"The front door," answers Kai. He frowns. "You're not Pythor."

The old man lifts an eyebrow, stroking his pitch-dark beard. "Oh? I highly doubt thoughts of Pythor, of all people, would lead your consciousness to my little corner of reality. Not since you ninja fixed up this place and returned it to its status as a tourist attraction for me, anyway."

None of the old man's words make any sense.

"Ah, I see the illusion still has you," the old man says, as if he's piecing something together. "I suppose I will leave you to it, then. However, if anything follows you to the waking world, let it be this: A sword sharpened too often soon wears away into nothing. Just as a blade requires cleaning to retain its shine, so, too, does a warrior require time to reflect."

"What's that even supposed to mean?" demands Kai.

"If you remember after this, you will know," instructs the old man. "Now leave me. Your illusion has not yet run its course, and you are running low on time."

"You keep saying illusion-?" Kai tries.

"It's not really an illusion, but to say its name would mean cutting it off abruptly, and your mind is not yet finished," the man huffs impatiently. "Now leave me!"

There's a power in the words that had been missing the first time, and Kai is flung from the oddly-solid room and into nothingness.

The amusement park is completely gone at this point, leaving only a swirling mass of undead greens that rise up and blow past Kai without slowing his fall.

He crash-lands face-first on some kind of wood paneling, and he peels himself up and off it just in time to leap away from a spray of water.

Kai can't afford to be touched by water anymore.

There's a creaking sound as the ramshackle village around him is warped and twisted, and Kai barely has the presence of mind to leap to a miraculously-untouched portion of wooden deck.

Before him stands the Preeminent.

Behind the Preeminent stands a titan made of stone.

Off to the side, a sea serpent he knows implicitly to be Wojira races closer.

Lloyd and Nya are hidden away in one of the untouched alcoves nearby, and they frantically gesture him closer.

"You'll never be enough!" says Lloyd worriedly.

"How much more can you endure?!" adds Nya, reaching out her hand as if begging him to take it.

Kai tries to run to them, only for a rock crackling with purple energy to come crashing down, sending all three of them plummeting into the sea.

Kai feels like he should have poofed out of being the moment the water touched him, but instead, he finds himself adrift in the endless sea.

Emperor Garmadon's voice slithers into his ears as if the man is right behind him. "You're no ninja. You're barely even a half-rate elemental. How you could have ever thought you could be fit for the title of the Green Ninja is beyond me. Look at yourself. Can you even recognize your own face?"

Kai shakes his head furiously. So what if he has-

-mechanical wiring that's being shorted out from this much time underwater?

-cold blood that's only getting colder, a mind that's only getting drowsier, the longer he stays down here?

-a ghost's inability to touch water, all the while being surrounded by it?

-the weight of a prophecy dragging him down beneath the waves, lower and lower and lower-?

Wait.

Some part of Kai's mind sluggishly rebels, screaming at the top of its tiny lungs that nothing about this situation is real.

When Kai opens his mouth to shoot back a snarky comment at Emperor Garmadon, however, the sea just rushes inside of him, overtaking his every cell, his every breath-

The endless sea shoots into him-

-and rejects him.

Smoke bubbles out from the panels in his body, the scales sprouted along his arms are flung away with his fake skin as the water tears him to shreds from the inside out, agonizingly, viciously, the green light of the Preeminent grows and grows above the surface until it's all he can see-!

Kai opens his mouth and SCREAMS-!

-and then his alarm went off, and the nightmare was pushed back with each round of beeps.

Kai snapped awake, his skin clammy, his breathing loud, and his heart threatening to beat right out of his chest.

It took him a second, but he eventually sighed and slouched forward, burying his head in his hands.

It was coming up on the one-year anniversary of Kalmaar's attack on Ninjago City and Nya's subsequent sacrifice.

"It should have been me," said Kai brokenly, thinking about everything his siblings had given up and none of it at once.

Were he at the monastery, someone would be there for him to talk to.

But he wasn't. He wasn't at the monastery, and he hadn't been for months. He was in his room at his little dojo.

"It should have been me," Kai moaned, pulling his knees up and digging them into his suspiciously-wet eyes.

Were he at the monastery, he'd worry that someone could see him break down.

But he wasn't.

He wasn't, because Nya never could be again, and he felt a lot like the protagonist in that one dystopia series Nya had gotten into back when they both lived at the smithy. After everything the main character had gone through, her sister, the whole reason she'd done any of it, was just gone.

Nya was gone.

After all of them spent years flirting with death, the only friend he'd known since childhood was gone.

His voice was thick, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Not anymore.

"Why couldn't it have been me?"

[mirrorofliterature]

why are people hating on my boy

remus lupin has done nothing wrong, ever

except he has. and hasn’t.

I WILL fight.

[sysig]

DAX is just so expressive ♥ (Patreon)

[seance]

unstoppable force (wanting to use stromae lyrics to gif) vs immovable object (gifsets already getting 30 rb and 60 likes max on a good day on here)

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

me listening to fever of love while having a real fever

[dumb-fictionkin-sideblog]

me every single day of the week: i really need to tell my therapist about my obsessions

me on therapy day: idon'twannadothis

[shiningstages]

Me, wanting to open alchstars since life has been stress and bleh, though knowing I’m gonna see the cute “you were passed out for awhile and Vice was worried about you” dialogue: ...............maybe after my internship site visit today so I can reread that in full~

[valkyrietookmoved]

My day to take a break and I... Don't feel good... Neat....

[dorenarox]

What if I were different...