#story: fix it

[deacons-wig]

Modern fallout AU so far removed from the source material it's just Mine Now.

Anyway, this is Dean, he/they, bike courier, artist, joker, and future wifeguy

[chongoblog]

So a lot of political scandals just dropped in the last 24 hours

-NC Governor Candidate Mark Robinson's online posts were found, including some VERY graphic descriptions (like seriously, do not read if you're not 18) of him cheating on his wife, calling himself a black Nazi, and expressing support for reinstituting slavery. His email address was also found on Ashley Madison

-Robert F Kennedy Jr was revealed to be cheating on his wife with a reporter (and that isn't even the weirdest thing since federal law enforcement opened an investigation into him allegedly cutting off the head of a whale and taking it home with him less than 24 hours ago)

-GOP Senate candidate who is the CEO of a bank has been found accepting millions of dollars from what seem to allegedly be Mexican drug cartels.

-Finally, probably the biggest bombshell, according to multiple eyewitness testimonies within sealed sworn affadavits, Congressman Matt Gaetz allegedly invited a 17-year-old girl to a drug-fueld sex party

And we haven't even hit October, folks. Again, these are all still breaking news stories, so things are subject to change, but oh man oh man.

[crowkip]

yeehaw, baby!

[chloesimaginationthings]

Abby could befriend any animatronic from FNAF..

[glacierclear]

does a war cry still shed tears? does a weapon still need faith?

[doodledrawsthings]

got bugs on my brain recently

[clouvu]

yknow what. *undooms your yuri again*

[redysetdare]

enough stories about how someone learns to truely be happy through love. i want a story where someone is desperately seeking out love thinking it's the only way to be happy only for them to learn by the end that happiness is what they make of it and they don't need love at all to make it.

[s9fti3]

‘I can fix him!!’

Him in question;

[timote-shalome]

Me: *watching Stranger Things S5 Ep 1*

“Like, what do you mean Steve isn’t a bisexual hurt bbygirl with meanie parents and doesn’t have game nights with the kids in his big empty house and doesn’t have sleepovers with Robin and he isn’t in love with Eddie who came back from the dead as part monster with a split personality that’s also in love with Steve?!?!?!?!”

Me: *turns off TV*

[acornered]

I've never really self-identifed as butch because my style sensibility leans more toward effeminate gay man/eccentric grandparent but while my girlfriend was visiting, the clasps that held the shoulder strap of her handbag kept breaking (thanks temu), and finally I got fed up and fixed it by

a) wrenching off the old clasps with a pair of plyers and

b) replacing them with the only clasps I had on hand, which were 2 giant carabiners

and yeah, now that I think about it, that is incredibly butch lesbian behavior.

[raepliica]

(content warning: blood)

Sewed Up Heart

[ID: A Trigun comic done in grayscale with red accents. First, an anatomical heart gushes blood, forming a puddle which shifts into Vash's coat. Vash's gloved hands can be seen sewing up a tear at the hem.

Vash raises his hands, which are now bare and covered in blood. He looks sweaty and distressed, and he raises his coat to his face and cries into it. His clenched hands rip the sewed portion apart, and the red thread leads to a heart whose own stitches are tearing apart. The background gets darker and darker, and the red looks brighter and starker against it.

Then the background returns to white, and brown-skinned hands using embroidery scissors snip a red thread. Wolfwood holds up Vash's repaired coat, grinning proudly, and does a happy thumbs-up in Vash's direction. Vash lifts his head, seeming distant.

Wolfwood holds out the coat. As Vash puts out his hand to take it, the cloth is replaced so Wolfwood is dropping a sewed-up heart in Vash's hand. Vash rubs the coat against his face with a teary smile. End ID] ID CREDITS

[curseofdelos]

mentally I'm still here:

Nico insisting that neither of them are going to be sacrificed/left behind to satisfy the prophecy is a perfect encapsulation of his growth over the series and it makes me SO soft to think about

Nico as a character - particularly in BoO - doesn't have a lot of self-preservation. He doesn't really care what happens to him as long as the mission gets done. We see this most explicitly after he almost fades into nothingness after the Bryce Lawrence incident:

And again when he considers shadow travelling into Octavian's tent to assassinate him:

(Nico himself notes here that it was unlikely he would survive another jump. If Will hadn't stopped him, he probably would have died.)

In both cases, Nico was willing to risk death for the sake of ending the war. He puts very little value on his own life, and repeatedly argues to Reyna, Hedge, and Will that the possibility of saving camp (a place he never felt welcome at, might I add) is worth the risk of losing his life.

Even before Nico went on the quest with Reyna and Hedge, the others were concerned about his safety. Percy tried to remind him how unpredictable his shadow travelling could be, and Hazel notes that he has been acting strangely lately:

It's not quite clear what Hazel is worried about here, but my interpretation of this scene is that she's concerned that Nico isn't thinking - or perhaps, isn't caring - about what effect the constant shadow travelling will have on his wellbeing. Between Tartarus, the jar, and the Cupid incident, Nico's mental state is at its worst at this point in the series, and I think Hazel is worried he'll do something reckless - something he can't come back from.

And so in TSATS, when Nico is told that he's going to have to leave something of equal value behind in order to save Bob, the old him would have had zero issue sacrificing himself if that's what it took to ensure Will and Bob's survival. This version of Nico, who's been going to therapy w/ Mr D and opening up more and built a little support system for himself, can't fathom it.

Nico in BoO did not have a future. He had fully convinced himself that nobody cared about him or would miss him if he was gone - not Percy who fought for him at every turn in PJO, not his sister Hazel, not his new friends Jason and Reyna. He was ready to leave both camps behind because he couldn't see himself ever being happy there. He couldn't see himself being happy at all.

But now, in TSATS, he has a boyfriend that he loves, he has friends that he loves, and he has a community in Camp Half-Blood. He has experienced so much loss that losing someone else is his worst fear. The old Nico would have considered sacrificing himself to protect Will and Bob. At the very least, he would have kept that option in his back pocket as a 'just in case'; he wouldn't have sworn on the Styx that he wouldn't stay behind.

This Nico, however, is doing much better - not perfect, but better. He loves Will, and he wants a life with him, and he's not willing to give that up for anything. Nico has hope for the future, and he's clinging to that hope with everything he has. He sees a light at the end of the tunnel, and he wants to reach it. He's not willing to sacrifice himself because it means losing that future.

Gone is the cynical pessimistic Nico who assumes the worst because the worst is all he thinks he can have. Here is the Nico who has had a taste of happiness and is willing to fight to keep it. He's not going to sacrifice himself because he wants to live. He's not just fighting for Will here; he's fighting for himself too.

And seeing him go from "if it kills me, it kills me" to "it's not going to be me" makes me so ASDFGHJKL

[activatebutterflyshield]

[serendipnpipity]

Thank you for living your truth, @danielhowell. You've helped me live mine, too.

Image Description under the cut:

[illustrated YouTube notification: “Daniel Howell uploaded ‘Basically I’m Gay’”]

Five years ago today, I was lying on the couch in my family home, watching the words of a person I had grown to find pieces of myself in as he bared his soul to the world just to make somebody like me feel a little less alone. 

[girl lying on her stomach on the couch, looking at phone]

He said something at the end of that video,

[Illustrated video screenshot of Dan saying “You are valid. It gets so much better.”]

And I’ll never forget hearing those words. Never forget drying my tears, quickly, before my parents came back. 

[Three panels: girl wiping tears from face, putting phone down, silhouette walking through front door]

See, the girl on that couch was planning far, far away futures. She couldn’t believe his words just yet, but now she could hope to. 

[open shoebox with rainbow flag inside]

Five years later, today, I wish I could tell her:

You don’t have to move halfway across the country to set a flag out on your desk. 

[school building and stack of books]

Your parents are coming over tomorrow to help bring you home for the summer. (They’re only an hour’s car ride away.)

[cartoon sun and car]

And see that?

[rainbow flag in a mug with a cat whiskers design]

Yeah, that’s the one decoration you haven’t packed yet. 

And that something he said at the end of the video, I still quote it to this day. 

[computer playing the Dan birthday livestream with "Misty" on a Zoom call in the corner]

Better yet, I believe it now. 

[same girl, older and with shorter hair, holding mug with flag and looking back at someone off-camera that’s saying “Ready to go home?”]

Happy five years of Basically, I’m Gay!

[queenlucythevaliant]

clean your sword

i. Peter had thought many times about dying for his brother, killing for his sisters, as all oldest children do.

ii. He'd imagined it a hundred times: how if his mother and father were ever killed, he'd get some low-skill job and make sure Lucy's clothes still fit her as she grew. How he'd make fists and fight dirty if Susan was ever threatened. What he'd do if Edmund ever had to flee the country on a dark, windswept night.

iii. Yet when he heard Susan's horn that day, he still froze. Only for an instant, he thought, "this can't be my job, right?"

iv. The blood on his sword shone red when it was all over. When he wiped it on the grass, the stain it left was almost black.

v. They'd put Susan in his arms when he was two years old. Peter didn't remember it, but he knew he'd been waiting for her till then. He wasn't a real person until he was a brother.

vi. And when they walked back to the pavilion, Rhindon bumping Peter's hip, all he could say to his sisters was, "I'm sorry I didn't come faster."

vii. The High King was almost obsessive in the way he cared for Rhindon. When he grew older and required weapons larger than those made for a child, he obsessed over them too.

viii. He told the others, in no uncertain terms, that if it ever came to it in battle, they were to leave him and live. As their brother and high king, he commanded it.

ix. The first time Edmund risked himself for Peter's sake, Peter didn't speak to him for a week.

x. He was oiling his sword when Edmund found him. "See, the thing is, Peter, being brothers goes both ways. If you can love me enough to die for me, than I get to love you just the same."

xi. Peter agreed with him then, to avoid the argument. He was sick of not talking to his brother. Yet privately, he knew that Edmund was wrong. That sacrifice was Peter's special prerogative, as the first-born.

xii. Back in England, his mother noticed that Peter had become more fastidious. She didn't notice that his protective streak has grown - and maybe it hadn't, really.

xiii. It was uncanny, how Peter would always show up just when his siblings needed him. He'd round a corner, and there was Lucy stamping her feet and scowling at a bully. There was Susan, crying, and now his knuckles were bloody.

xiv. He cleaned the blood off in the sink so carefully. The water ran red for a second, and it almost seemed black.

xv. When Caspian asked for the High King's advice, looking so very young, Peter jerked his chin towards the sword a Caspian's hip. "Be ready to use that," he said. "Keep it clean, and close."

xvi. Susan forgot Narnia and she forgot Aslan. Yet selfishly, Peter still hoped that she would never forget how quickly he came when she called.