#idk if i should tag this as ooc or not

[jokingmaiden]

Catharsis Pt. One: Mikey Gets Pissed

i was thinkin abt how all of the kids really need a chance to just get all their feelings out after the movie. since mikey is essentially me, and i felt very qualified to write a raging outburst from a youngest-sibling-pacifist, i started here. i might write the rest if this is received well :P

(side note: i tagged this as ooc bc i don't have a lot of faith in my characterization skills)

Word Count: 2,351

Warnings: angry mikey, implied mystic violence, the beginnings of a panic attack, brief reference to leo's attempted self-sacrifice

“APRIL!!”

The sound cuts through her phone in a desperate plea, the sheer panic enough to make her think the Krang have returned somehow.

“Jesus, Donnie, what’s wrong? I don’t think I’ve heard you this upset since Leo broke your Atomic Lass bobblehead.”

“While that was a HORRENDOUS crime punishable by DEATH,” the purple-clad mutant explains in a huff, “this is much worse.” His picture on their facetime call hunches over the phone, blocking her view of the audible commotion behind him.

“What’s the situation?” she asks, voice lowering into one of serious inquiry.

“Well—”

“MIKEY’S GONE BALLISTIC!!” Raph’s voice interrupts, and April is treated to watching as an indignant Donnie’s expression fades into the background while Raph holds the phone a bit too close to his face to be taken seriously.

“I’ll be right over,” April decides, collecting her things. She pauses, though, at Raph’s next words.

“No. Stay where you are. I don’t know why Donnie thought it’d be a good idea to get you involved in this, but you can not come here under any circumstances. Capiche?”

“No, not capiche!!” April barks back incredulously. She throws her stuff down into her mattress hard enough to warrant a slight bounce. “What are you freakin’ out for? Mikey would never hurt anyone. He literally made your worst enemy into your dad. He’s a sweetheart!!”

Raph leans close to the phone, voice grim as his shadow overcasts the camera. “April, listen to me. You don’t know our little brother like we do. You haven’t seen him when he’s angry.”

“Because he doesn’t get angry,” she clarifies, brows furrowed. “I wouldn't be surprised if his head's full of cotton candy. You’re being ridiculous. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“April wAIT—” Raph pleads, but her thumb is disconnecting from the end call button before he can utter another word of senseless panic to her. He’s being ridiculous, and she knows it. Even with his weird new mystic powers, Mikey would never hurt a non-enemy.

Right?

April feels the slightest tug of doubt at the corners of her mind, remembering his craze during the worst pizza week of the boys’ lives. He was fully intent on hurting those punk weirdos. But he was easily pacified by Raph lifting him off the ground to incapacitate him and then feeding him pizza. Why would this be any different?

She climbs down into the manhole on the street, thanking her gradually-built-up noseblindness to the sewers. Her immunity made it much easier to resist the stink, even if she could still smell it for the first few minutes of traversing the sewer system.

Mikey shouldn't be a problem. Sure, Dr. Delicate Touch was scary sometimes, but he was just brutally honest. Mikey would sooner pull one of his teeth out than hurt someone in his family, she was sure of it.

Within ten or so minutes, and several cycles of internal reassurance, April makes it to their secret hideout. She steps inside and immediately keeps an eye out for Mikey, not bothering to try to put up any sort of mental nor physical defense; Mikey would never harm her. She knows it.

“Angelo?” she calls out, looking around the base cautiously still. “Guys? Anyone home?”

“April!!” a familiar voice greets, full of young, innocent glee. The orange-clad turtle of the quartet comes barreling out of the kitchen to pull her into a delightful hug, which she graciously accepts.

“Lil' bro!!” she greets, smiling brightly at him as relief floods her body. Of course he’s fine. Why wouldn’t he be fine? The boys were overreacting.

“I'm so glad you're here!!” Mikey cheers, leaning back to look at her. April feels her chest squeeze as she notices the pinprick of tears in the corners of his eyes. “My brothers all disappeared and I can’t find them!! I thought it might be some sudden game of hide and seek or something, but they just won’t come out!! I’m getting really worried.” Almost as if to emphasize the sting in her heart, his little pouty face erupts in heartbroken puppy eyes.

How could those jerks do this to their little brother? Not only is he not mad, but he’s also worried sick!!

“Don’t worry, little bro,” April assures, smiling brightly at him as her hand comes down to pat him twice on the arm. “They’re here. They actually called me a bit ago!! They seem to think you’re angry for some reason?”

Mikey's eyes sparkle with what seems to be hope, nodding along with her explanation. His smile widens as she states the last part of her story. “Oh, weird!! Good to know they’re still here. Can you pleeeeaaaase help me find them? I’ll look in Donnie’s lab, you check around here!!”

“Sounds like a plan, little man,” she sings, shooting him finger guns. He giggles happily and scampers off towards Donnie’s workshop, leaving her to head into the kitchen alone.

Her smile falls immediately.

A plethora of sharp objects are sticking out of the walls, embedded deep into the concrete. Other objects of various sizes are strewn about, some dented on the floor below clear impact zones as if someone twice Raph’s size had launched them with the intent to kill. And in the middle of it all is Leo, upside down, tied up with duct tape, and hanging like a spider’s next meal. He looks beat to hell and absolutely terrified. The moment April comes into his line of sight, he begins trying desperately to scream around strips of tape.

“Holy shit!!” April exclaims, running forward to pull the binding on Leo’s mouth off. “What happened here? Are you okay?”

“April, thank the great pizza place in the sky,” Leo pants, wriggling against his restraints. “Mikey’s lost his mind. Can you get me down? We gotta get dad.”

“Wait. Mikey did this to you??” she asks incredulously, a single laugh escaping her in disbelief as she pulls him down. He hits the kitchen island with a loud crash, and she wastes no time slicing him out of his taped cocoon with the nearest sharp object. “What did you do to piss him off this bad??”

“Well," Leo begins sheepishly, sliding off of the counter and kicking away the remains of the residual stickiness attached to him. "We maaaaay have ruined the mural he’s been working on since he was a kid in the east wing tunnel while sludgeboarding...?”

She blinks slowly at him.

"So, let me get this straight," April begins after a long moment of staring at Leo in pure shock. "After everything you went through a few months ago, the second all your wounds are healed, you decide to try out a completely new made-up sport? And not only that, you test it in the only tunnel Mikey has a claim on??"

"Well when you put it like that, we sound like terrible brothers," Leo laughs, the noise quickly dying off when April doesn't join him. He clears his throat of the awkwardness, looking away from her burning gaze.

"Look, I get it. We messed up big time," Leo relents. It seems as if he's about to continue, maybe to deliver a heartfelt and emotionally impactful speech, when his eyes widen suddenly. He stares over her shoulder at an unknown source of terror.

April turns around to see what Leo is gaping at.

Holy shit.

Mikey stands—no, he floats—in the doorway, Raph suspended in a cloud of orange glow behind him. The youngest turtle's eyes shine a bright topaz, interrupted in the center by near-yellow pupils.

"Oh, good, you found Donnie!!" Mikey hums happily. "The gang's all here."

He flicks his hand, and Raph goes barreling into the wall. As April's eyes follow the collision, she notices the purple-themed turtle standing in the opposite doorway, clinging to his tech-bo with trembling hands like it'll save him from his little brother's mystic rampage in any way.

"Mikey, buddy," April tries to soothe, caution in her voice. She takes a nervous step backwards, hips colliding with the counter. "Let's take a deep breath."

Mikey looks at her as the glow from his form disappears. He drops to the floor, tilting his head in confusion. "Why are you scared, April? I'm not mad at you."

"I'm glad," she laughs quickly, eyes scanning over the room for escape routes. "I just, uh, also don't wanna watch you murder your bros with your wack-ass emotion fueled mystic mumbo jumbo?"

Mikey gasps, offended. "I would never hurt my brothers!!" he insists, balling his hand against his chest like a Victorian lady clutching her pearls.

"YOU JUST LAUNCHED ME INTO A WALL," Raph protests, struggling to his feet with Leo's assistance as if he hasn't emerged from much greater falls unscathed before.

"Funny! Y'know what other wall you got launched into, Ra-pha-el?" Mikey hums, tapping his chin thoughtfully as he articulates each syllable of his brother's name. Raph shrinks in on himself, falling into his usual habit of trying to make himself smaller in the face of discomfort.

"Oh, right!! The wall with my life's work on it! The wall with the mural of all of us I was making!! The wall with the only accurate picture of gram-gram we had left!!!! The wall I can never remake again because I busted my hands open ripping a hole in space to save our idiot brother from his suicide attempt!! THAT WALL!!!!"

April flinches at Mikey's tone. He sounds...

She studies the way his hands tremble, betraying the crazed smile plastered onto his expression like a flimsy sealant over the cracks in an overfilled dam.

He sounds genuinely furious.

It would be terrifying, if it wasn't absolutely gut-wrenching.

She steps forward, watching as his tirade re-sparks the violent glow around him. He all but ignores her, continuing to scream at his brothers in blind rage, up until she takes his scarred arms into her hands.

It physically upsets her stomach, the way he flinches at the contact. He goes completely silent, almost ripping his hands away from her, but she holds him steady.

"April, go home," he orders. In any other situation, she'd be in disbelief of his audacity. Maybe the way his voice sounds more like it’s begging, or the desperate hush of his words, convinces her to pardon him from a meeting with the business end of her bat. "This has nothing to do with you."

"This is my family as much as it is yours, Angelo," she insists, trying to tug his again-floating form to the ground. "Talk to me."

He stares at her for a long moment. His full figure trembles under her grip. The glow fades around him, and he properly lowers back down to the floor.

"I-I..."

No other words escape him as the dam finally breaks. He collapses over her shoulder, sobbing loudly as his padded knees buckle under him. April may be quite strong now, but he’s still a large mutant turtle, so she opts to lower slowly to the ground instead of trying to support his full weight.

He curls around her, sobbing desperately and letting out pained mewls at each attempt to stifle his sound. His chest heaves, and April has to do everything in her power just to keep him steady.

“There there, big guy,” she soothes, rubbing a comforting circle into his shell. “It’s alright.”

With the switch from fury to heartbreak, Mikey’s brothers are on the pair in seconds. Raph scoops the two into his lap, wrapping his arms around the both of them for extra support. Leo leans over Raph’s shoulder, hand coming around the larger turtle's neck to gently rub his little brother’s head. Donnie sits cross-legged next to them, reaching into the pile to give Mikey’s hand a firm squeeze.

“I-I just,” the youngest turtle finally manages after several minutes of sobbing, “I don’t—hic—know what to do!! How am I ever gonna make art again like this??”

The brothers look at each other, then to April, all lost for words. She sighs, lifting a hand to Mikey’s cheek to gently draw his attention.

“Mikey. Your hands will heal,” April assures, but he only scrunches his expression, leaning away from her touch and into Raph’s chest to cry harder.

“What if they don’t?” he manages. It sounds as if he wants to scream it, but his hoarse voice corners him into a desperate whisper.

“…The original Michelangelo fell incredibly ill while directing the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica,” Donnie begins, staring down at his free hand with a concentrated expression. “Even in the last week of his life, he found ways to help with the building process. He even kept sculpting, even though he probably shouldn’t have considering the meager state of his health. He kept making art up until his last day.”

“And ol’ Angelo the first has nothing on you!!” Leo adds, nodding thoughtfully to himself. “If some ancient fleabag can sculpt til’ he drops, then there’s nothing capable of stopping our little brother from making amazing art no matter what.”

“Besides,” Raph chimes in, “creativity is like, your thing. If anyone can figure out a way to make art in new ways, it’s you. Maybe you can use your cool mystic powers or somethin’ to make stuff if your hands can’t anymore?”

Mikey sniffles, curled up and bleary-eyed from the encouragement of his family. “….You really think I can keep making stuff?” he asks, voice soft as if daring to hope too loud might shatter the illusion.

“‘Course you can,” April laughs, gently flicking him on the forehead. “You wouldn’t be Mikey if you couldn’t.”

With a big, toothy smile, Mikey pulls them all into a group hug. “I love you guys,” he sighs, sniffling as he holds them there. Leo leans in happily; Raph readjusts to make sure his arms are supporting everyone; Donnie tolerates the contact, for Mikey; April leans across her spot in Raph’s lap to give their little brother a proper hug around the shoulders.

A long, wonderful moment of this peace passes.

“I am still gonna tell dad about the mural, though.”

[suicideenthusiast]

can u guys believe i go outside

[kondietorei]

alas the classic outfit swap

bonus doodle underneath ^^

drew this after realizing i only drew one sea salt ice cream orz

[searchforahero]

wrote this brujay(?...) + sasha thing after reading batman & robin '09 #5 and it's been sitting in my computer for weeks. finally got around to cleaning it up a little. extremely normal about jason & sasha as a mirror to batman & robin.

Jason grips the sink hard enough that he feels it shift where it’s attached to the wall. Everything in the shithole him and Sasha are crashing in is crumbling, he should let go of the sink before it cracks too.

He looks up and is met with the sight of himself, washed out by the light in the mirror. The dressing room lights are nearly blinding, their light reflects off everything, off the mirror, off Jason, off the grimey porcelain of the sink. They make the rest of the world appear wavy, hard to interpret. They’re the only functioning light in the room.

Jason runs a hand from his jaw up to his hair, he has a prickly layer of stubble growing in. Looking at the dark shadow of his chin, he’s suddenly struck with his own resemblance to Bruce. His jaw is wide and strong, and he grows facial hair at the same rate Bruce had. He remembers when he was young how Bruce used to let it grow when he was stressed with a case, how Jason could tell a mission was over by the way the stubble would disappear.

He wants to stop thinking about Bruce. The old man was dead to him long before he died for real, yet he finds that he has thought of very little else since he came out of the pit. He tries to think of all the things he has done since his revival that have nothing to do with Bruce; his relationship with Talia, his confrontation with the Pretender, his stint as Nightwing, his feud with Black Mask. If he dwells on it for too long he’ll circle back to all the ways these things are still about Bruce, so he doesn’t.

Instead he turns to Sasha. She’s sitting with her back against the wall, knees curled up to her chest like she tends to, and reading a book. It’s a copy of Frankenstein from his main safehouse. She had bitched and moaned about his bookshelf looking like it belonged in an English classroom, but eventually she had picked that one out and begun reading it.

When he first saw her reading it he had given her a smug look, and she had hit him in the arm with it and told him she was just about ready to die of boredom. She looks engaged enough now. She’s gotten a good 100 pages or so into the book and hasn’t complained since she initially attacked him with the pocket sized paperback.

He doesn’t want to disturb her, so he turns back to the sink. It starts and jitters a bit when he turns it on. He looks down to inspect the tap and finds a small clump of ginger hair sticking to the side of the sink. It isn’t Sasha’s, her’s is obviously artificial, color just off the edge of natural, fibers not quite human, so it’s gotta be his.

He rubs his hand through the short hair at the base of his skull, up and down, up and down, in a familiar gesture. When he pulls his hand away he sees thin strands slip through his fingers and onto the floor.

He sucks in an inhale and breathes out a garbled “Hah- Jeez.”  His hair is falling out. He’s just on the cusp of 20 and his hair is falling out. He hears Sasha shift behind him, probably looking over to see what made him speak. He turns back to her and grimaces.

“My hairs falling out Sasha. I’m 19 and my hair is falling out.” He sucks in a breath as a memory hits him. It’s funny the things that slip his mind, regardless of how clear his recollection of his time as Robin feels to him. “You wanna know what I bet? I bet it’s all the damned hair dye Batman shoved on me. He used to make me dye it so I’d look like Grayson. I can’t believe I forgot he did that.”

He’s mostly muttering to himself at this point. He can tell Sasha’s still listening intently, she’s slipped her bookmark into place and closed the book, leaving it propped in the valley between her shins and thighs.

She always gives him her full attention when he speaks, even when he’s sure he’s boring her, rambling on about Talia or giving her glorified book reports. It feels like looking in a mirror, he sees himself looking at Bruce when she looks at him. How he used to absorb every word Bruce said, like he could put together the puzzle that was his life if he just listened hard enough. It makes him desperate to go unseen, he so badly wants this to not be about Bruce. He wants something for once in his life to not be about Bruce.

He wants to help Sasha because she deserves to be helped. He wants to work with Sasha because she is his friend. But he keeps catching himself thinking what would Bruce have done? and veering in the complete opposite direction. And isn’t he, in trying so desperately to make this not about Bruce, still making it about him?

When Jason looks back to the mirror he sees his face reflected. He looks older than he did the last time his hair was black. He’s bigger, his expression is grimmer, there are new scars lining his skin. Bruce had said he needed to dye his hair to look like Dick, but when he scrutinizes his face in the mirror, he sees not a reflection of Dick, but of Bruce.

He looks closely at the bridge of his nose, slope of his jaw, set of his shoulders, he looks so much like Bruce. He looks enough like Bruce to give the newest Boy Blunder a run for his money.

He stares at himself in the mirror until his appearance seems to warp and change, age lines, hair color, a little more weariness to the eyes. He’s so startled by what he sees that he stumbles while reaching down below the sink to grab his helmet. He shoves it over his head, it settles off-center, pressing his nose uncomfortably into itself.

Jason knows then, as he’s watching himself in the mirror, feeling the heavy weight of Bruce’s stare, that the man will never die, because he and Jason are one in the same. And that’s so funny that his breath catches in a half-wheeze half-laugh, that these hands that once tried to snuff out Bruce’s life, have now immortalized him forever.

[soulprompts]

i feel like it'd be pretty helpful to have a series of helpful pieces of advice and tips for new members of the rpc, you know? i mean we've all been there, we all know the learning curve is practically a wall. and sometimes it can be scary to admit we don't know what an icon is, or what purple prose involves, or how to trim a post, like it can be daunting to ask these questions! so i think i'm going to start doing lists of tips that i wish i'd learned in my first weeks of writing on tumblr, and if you guys have any wisdom you want to pass on to the new generation of writers here, fire away! a community can't succeed if we don't help one another.

[swiftfootedachilles]

im just gonna be honest gang obviously its gonna be easy for you to say youre in love with a character and theyre an angel when anytime they do something you don't like you brush it off as out of character

[berat-adil-emre-yukime]

Do you ever get that ✨aroace spectrum urge✨ to invade all of Europe, not just Denmark?

(For obvious reasons, I am joking, please do not send the UNSC or ONI after me-)

[spidersins]

angel dust: character inspiration

chloe ( don't trust the b in apartment 23 ) sarah lynn ( bojack horseman ) astarion ancunin ( baldur's gate 3 ) pietro maximoff ( xmen evolution ) tamaki suoh ( ouran high school host club ) max black ( 2 broke girls )

[luminouslotuses]

quackity: “-what’s the catch? why are you laughing??”

mouse: “i’m sorry, i’m just looking at your hairline–” [giggles]

quackity: “..you’re such a dick”

[spookyowlman]

// saw something on twitter (unfortunately the original post is gone) and it inspired me to do this

[piningpercussionist]

hi kim :3c fucking BOOPS you with my paws

What the- hey!

*Kim scrambles around for something in her desk drawers for a minute, before spinning back around.*

You better have braced yourself... Get booped right back, idiot!

(ooc)

She's booping you back with something similar to one of these:

[windcarvedlyre]

Having Komaeda brainrot is wild because you can read 10 different meta posts and fanworks about him and get 12 different characterisations.

Some are wildly wrong and rely on misunderstandings of the surface-level plot of the game, taking other characters' reactions to him as fact. Some are good-faith attempts that are still off, but understandable if the person has a life outside of thinking about the character; he's intentionally hard to understand and the official translations of some lines and his sarcastic-sounding english voice make it worse.

And then you run into people that write theses and 500-chapter masterpieces displaying just as much brainrot as you, meticulously going through his various appearances, pruning them based on quality, and combining them into a glorious, convoluted map through his many contradictions. People you deeply respect the dedication and critical thought of.

And you still have a different view of him.

[tsukasalover]

I mightve complained about this somewheree else before ? but i was originally planning on writing a one shot where rui and tsukasa cuddle during a sleepover ?? something like that because theyre both still awake but eventually tossed that over to the ideas for art/doodles pile because I cannot imagine it happening at all.

Like of course i can handle ships and all that romantic stuff with my favorite characters it can be really cute but i Hate writing anything with a romantic context so much. Especially when it comes to ruikasa simply due to the fact that i dont like most ways theyre portrayed in romantic relationships and my brain goes No.. No. Needs more funny oddball moments in this. Don’t dip into that corny stuff or you’ll look like one of Those ruikasa fans that doesn’t get them. Even if its not that bad. with aus like set in Entirely different worlds i can be a bit more free but if its based off of them in the canon universe (sorta) i get reaaally picky. i can let go of other people messing up sometimes because we’re just humans but if i got anyone in wxs really wrong id pack my bags. idm any criticism as long as people arent acting vicious and obnoxious but if i try and correct my own mistakes.. 🤕

is part of this also because romance almost never crosses my mind during my free time? absolutely. (exceptions are when my friends need someone to open up to while in relationships. i dont know how good my advice is but supposedly its helped) I could care less if it stays that way. Friendship is a powerful thing. this is always good when it comes to wxs though because its like Hell yes I dont have to overthink about what theyd be like in romantic relationships (i overthink about everything else with them though) and I Love Friendship Lalala Buuut if i ever get ideas for fics that are romantic and just want to have fun for once it gets scary real fast.

[billcipher-rpblog]

is it true your secretly a mlp fan?

NO.

[lingeringscars]

There is something really beautiful about Simone Biles being regarded as the best gymnast in history, and her still falling/making mistakes/not qualifying for bars final/not placing first always.

[starlight-daredevil]

YO!!

So, with July coming up hot and fast, you all know what time it is...

ALMOST STARLIGHT JUBILEE/BBQ!!

I'll be hosting a celebration on the 4th in Starlight City in honor of the holiday & my birthday, and EVERYONE IS INVITED!! It's been a hot minute since I've hosted one of these things but I'm excited to kick this one off the ground.

Expect stunts, fireworks, an all-you-can-eat BBQ buffet, the works!! Please contact me if you would like to add to the festivities in any form possible - music, shows, tricks, anything goes. More info to come at a later date?

Tickets start at $15 - reminder that half the proceeds will be going to charity!! ...while the other will probably go to paying Papa Louie off for supplying the food...