#you gotta step up

[vegaseatsass]

Woke up today thinking about Vegas sulking after he gets blacklisted and petulantly telling Pete "I'm NOT going to the safehouse alone."

It's YOUR fault I'm getting put in time out so you HAVE to come and keep me company and play house with me and if you think you can say no I will KILL YOUR GRANDMA

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

christ sometimes I just wanna. steal a time machine & go back & sit down next to my 9-year-old self and just like. let them pull out their pokemon card binder & gush about their holographic gyarados or whatever. I'd just smile & ask questions about motherfukcing bulbasaur & tell my kid self that I thought they were a neat person, & someday they'd find other people who thought so too.

like i'm a grown adult who honestly finds most kids stuff boring, but. damn if i could go back & hang out with my baby self & listen to them ramble...just so they knew someone was listening. i would in a heartbeat. thinking about u kid

[rainymoodlet]

there’s something minty going on in strangerville… ⚗️

[kiddokori]

his ass is NOT getting up for his 8am lecture

[jtl-fics]

Fluent Freshman - Part 07

PREVIOUS

The thing about Nicky knowing that FF knows Russian and therefore understands every single excruciatingly sweet, ear-reddingly spicy, or shockingly mundane thing that Andrew and Neil say to one another is that he is objectively the 3rd worst person to know this secret.

First place is, of course, Andrew Minyard the man who has now asked him about his family 3 times in the last week and a half. FF doesn’t really care if Andrew goes after the majority of his ‘family’ since it’s just his step brothers and step dad but Andrew might go after his Grandma too so he just says “We don’t talk” every time it comes up and deletes his entire chat history with his grandma that way Andrew won’t know how close they are. If that means that Andrew thinks that no one would look for him if he happened to disappear into a shallow grave FF doesn’t know. He’s already doomed so the least he can do is save his gran.

Second place is, of course, Captain Neil. Captain has mentioned quite a few times that a lot of people stay with friends or people they’re close with over Thanksgiving break. It’s meaner than Captain Neil usually would be off of the Court reminding FF that he has friends but none close enough who would want to spend a holiday with him. He plans to go see his Gran for Thanksgiving and she plans to feed him a truly ridiculous amount of food. It’s the same plan he’s had pretty much every year since he was 13.

Third place is Nicky Hemmick. Nicky is a very nice guy who got him a paperboy to hyperventilate into a couple times and would absolutely never intentionally OUT somebody and compromise their safety! Nicky’s talked with FF about some of his background so FF has full confidence that it’s never going to be something that Nicky intentionally outs to anyone. But there are two main reasons why Nicky is the third worst person to find out about this secret.

The first reason is that Nicky Hemmick just unabashedly loves gossip. FF has heard that with the graduation of the girls the previous year had gone Allison Reynolds who had multiple running bets on multiple teammates and a whole cache of gossip. Now Nicky has access to the ultimate accidental gossip magnet in the man who no one notices, who knows any language the Foxes speak and is too awkward to get up and leave when they start talking.

Nicky will never tell another soul his secret but he also HAS to know what Neil and Andrew are saying to one another and when Nicky lies to cover for him the charge is one free conversation translation.

He’s absolutely hooked on getting translations the since the first time he had asked what Andrew and Neil are hissing at one another one morning practice.

FF translated it awkwardly feeling like a creep and like he’s invading their privacy but Nicky had helped him eat the four slavic letter flashcards he had made up to help a friend study the language when Captain Neil and Andrew had come back early from a weekend alone in Columbia.

Nicky had even assured him afterwards that the ink was probably non-toxic and given him floss so he could get the flashcard wedged between his molars out.

So….

“Andrew’s mad that Captain Neil skipped breakfast because they’re working to make him eat something for every meal. Captain Neil’s mad because Andrew’s the one that kept him in bed so long that he didn’t have time to make anything.”

Nicky squeals in delight

The second reason, which is just compounded by the first, is the fact that Nicky had promised not to tell another Soul. However Nicky Hemmick, the romantic that he is, believes that he and his Fiancé Erik share one soul since they are soulmates. Therefore Nicky Hemmic had barely even registered FF’s tears of gratitude before he was calling Erik to tell him about FF.

The sheer number of close calls that have happened because Nicky HAS to tell Erik about something Andrew and Neil said to one another or something someone else is saying is the reason FF started getting ulcers.

Watching Nicky talk to Erik about him knowing Russian is like watching a member of the three stooges walk through a construction site blindfolded. FF nearly kills himself stopping Nicky from outing him numerous times and at the end Nicky’s smiling, unscathed and unaware of the sheer number of close calls he had sauntered through.

FF can’t wait to go home and bury his face in his grandma’s lap, stress eat two apple pies, and tell her about how he thinks he might just become an electrician or a plumber or an underwater welder because one of his language professors wants him to come and speak to a lower level class (a gen-ed with over a hundred people in it) about the usefulness of LATIN for all their majors since they can parse the meaning via root word and he had panicked and said ’Sure’.

***

The thing about being the only person on the team that knows that FF speaks Russian and is riddled with social anxiety is that it’s absolutely hilarious most of the time.

Every once in a while he has to step in to help the guy.

So sometimes he’ll eat flashcards. Sometimes he’ll distract his cousin with a salacious comment so FF can escape a dangerous conversation with his drunk friend. Sometimes he pushes FF to go talk to Abby about his tummy troubles. Sometimes he’ll hand over one of the brown paper bags he keeps in his backpack nowadays so FF can wheeze into it and sometimes he’ll assure his cousin that FF’s passing out after he offered to teach him how to use a knife was probably because of his stomach ulcers not because FF is terrified of Andrew stabbing him.

Nicky is the only member of the Foxes that FF regularly seeks out on his own to hang out with and Nicky just loves how hard Andrew and Neil are trying not to be jealous about it.

“I want to ask Smith if he wants to come spend Thanksgiving Break with us.” Andrew says out of the blue a week before the aforementioned break when it’s just Aaron, Neil, Nicky and himself in Nicky’s dorm room.

Nicky thinks about FF talking about going back to his hometown in Washington State and how he waxed poetic about spending Thanksgiving Break with his Grandma and how he was going to eat his weight in pie and Macaroni and Cheese.

“He’s planning on going and seeing his grandma. He won’t shut up about it.” Nicky says still glad that FF has a family member like his grandma.

Everyone else in the room look at him.

“He won’t shut up about it?” Aaron asks with an eyebrow raised. Aaron likes FF just fine and appreciates how FF has helped Katelyn start to grasp the fundamentals of the German language so quickly so she can understand what’s being said. “So what he said it twice?” He continues.

Nicky remembers FF’s ability for catastrophizing every conversation with the Foxes into one where it comes out that he speaks Russian and Andrew stabs him. As far as the other Foxes are concerned he’s a man of few words.

“He’s been talking about it all month. If I hear about his grandma’s apple pie recipe one more time I might demand he sneak a slice back for me through TSA.” Nicky loves stoking the flames, especially when the fire is harmless. He watches Aaron shrug and the skin around both Neil and Andrew’s mouths tightens. “You can ask him, the worst he can say is No.” Nicky shrugs.

Nicky is there when Andrew does ask him and he can see the prolonged internal scream of terror on the utterly blank face (or maybe he just imagines it.) and in a way Nicky is a little sad when FF shakes his head and says “No, I have plans with my Grandma.” In an utterly blank voice that means he has functionally blue-screened before turning and walking towards the nearest door so he can reboot in solitude.

“The offer stands if you change your mind.” Neil says and Nicky is impressed with the seemingly very casual thumbs up FF gives as he power walks away.

A little less than a week later Nicky finds Andrew next to FF and FF looking down at a cancelled flight notification after coming in from a truly monumental storm.

Andrew offers Thanksgiving in Columbia again.

Nicky tries to stop it from happening he can see that FF is a little lost in his disappointment over not being able to see his grandma and not thinking clearly but before he can snap him out of it.

“Sure.”

NEXT

Per your requests:

@i-have-three-feelings @blep-23 @dreamerking27 @andreilsmyreligion @belodensetdust @rainbowpineapplebottle @yarn-ace @iwouldlikesometea @lily-s-world @obscureshipsandchips @booklover242

[videogamelover99]

Something that drives me crazy about the punch scene in the Dead Apple flashback that I finally can put into words:

Before the Dragon Head Conflict, Chuuya and Dazai weren't partners. They became partners during the conflict, and were so good at working together that they became notorious in and outside of the Mafia. And then the bodies kept piling up, and Dazaj got dragged back into nihilism. And that is that made Chuuya pissed. Like, SB Dazai would not have made Chuuya pissed like that, because at that point he expects Dazai to be an asshole. It's only after they became partners, when Chuuya saw the humanity that Dazai was capable of, that seeing the old Dazai, the Dazai he hates, pop back up again made him pissed enough to punch him and say that Dazai does not look human to anyone.

And then Dazai cares so much about Chuuya's opinion of him that he ends the whole conflict. He cares so much. He straight up says "I'm fixing this cause my partner is upset with me" to Shibusawa in that bonus story.

Something happened in DBH before then that made them truly care about each other. To see each other as important. Like, if anything, what I want is a DHC Light Novel because that is when they became partners, and that changed everything.

[fernsnailz]

we're nearing the end of day two of the Team Dark Fest! here's how the polls currently look on tumblr and twitter:

here's the breakdown of current estimated votes across both polls, which is how we're gonna determine the final winner:

SHADOW: ~2,306 votes ROUGE: ~2,273 votes OMEGA: ~1,955 votes

this means that SHADOW is currently in the lead! but we still have 5 days left and plenty more voter fraud to ignore, so the tides could easily change. depending on how things look tomorrow, we may implement a NEW RULE to give the teams falling behind a fighting chance. 👁👁

that's all for now! thanks to everyone for participating so far, we've been having a blast reading all your comments and looking at the propaganda :] HAPPY TEAMDARKFEST!!!!!! 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

TUMBLR POLL IS HERE, TWITTER POLL IS HERE

[opportunityarose]

trans malcolm is so. imagine if the person the most accepting of you was your serial killer dad

[polcadotte]

The exact moment Luxu realizes he’s too gosh darn old for all this teenage angst.

[pickled-flowers]

Anyways it took me 10 minutes to overcome this last path 😭

[ryanthel0ser]

guess what im rewatching

[coquelicoq]

what i love about the Famous Actor Natori Shuuichi of it all is that...it's not just that he's famous and therefore widely recognizable wherever he goes. like yes that is very funny because he was an exorcist before he became a famous actor, which means he CHOSE, on purpose, a day job that would make it harder to hide his double life/secret identity from the hordes of his adoring public, but it's more than that. it's not just that he's famous, it's that he's famous specifically for being an ACTOR, aka a person whose job it is to dissimulate, to make believe, to inhabit roles and emotions other than his own. like he decided he was going to become as visible as possible (which again was literally not necessary! he could have gone into any other career for his day job!!) but in such a way that everyone would see him but no one would see him - they would just see his various made-up personas, including the Famous Actor Natori Shuuichi persona. i can't decide if he's a genius or if he just made so many absurd decisions that they canceled each other out and circled back around to working out. he's either playing 9-dimensional chess or he's eating the pieces. too soon to say.

[ccarrot]

Still on this but skk doesnt make each other worse THEY MAKE EACH OTHER BETTER

[thebaldergatescandal]

I cant find the post which goes into how Astarion wouldnt want the player character to be their one source of blood because

1. Thats immediately entering a relationship of dependence again and he wants to be independent

2. Thats not enough blood

Let me add counterpoint 3: vampire astarion being joined by a player character to hunt animals large enough for a proper meal (and bring back drained and butchered for the others) is such a good mental image that I immediately want 10 fanarts

You may say, astarion can hunt big animals just fine on his own but I say cmon medieval boar hunting was a whole thing it was a sport it was a group activity because the animal was so dangerous in its death throes

Cant you just picture Wyll on a horse with a boar-spear like its a game of polo and Astarion running on the ground like his hunting dog?????

Halsin taking wolf form for a spin to hunt in a pack of two and when someone passes by they ignore the tableau of animals feeding until it dawns on them that one of those red muzzled creatures with their face in an elk was a humanoid not a beast???

There are some good ass images right here.

[mokeonn]

Before I go to sleep I leave you all with this piece of advice: sometimes you don't actually have to answer big political questions, sometimes you can just say "I am not smart enough to know that, I just know the small things I do to help." Like you can often times completely avoid making a fool of yourself if you just say you don't know.

[kiaxet]

Once again, the latest update from @somerandomdudelmao has left me fully in my feelings, and so I come to you with ~900 words of emotion.

(This one is a rough one: content warnings for death, sibling death, self-sacrifice, and just general despair. Y'all have read the update. You know what we're doing here.)

~~~~~~~

It's supposed to be over.

Master Michelangelo-

(No, no, he's never thought of himself that way. No matter how many times he's been called Master Michelangelo, in his own head he's still just Mikey.)

-Mikey has given everything. He'd opened the portal, watched his own mystic energy - grown larger and stronger with each battle even as it consumed his youth and his very life as its fuel - tear through his arms, cracks traveling up his body until the force of it shattered his form, consuming everything that kept him bound to the physical plane in order to form one last-ditch attempt at setting things right.

He'd managed a wink and a smile, and then he'd died.

And yet he's still here. Why-

The promise. The caveat to the plan. Leo.

Leo had refused to leave him alone at the end, and Mikey will be damned before he refuses to return the favor.

Not that there'll be anything left to damn. The family's Ninpo is what connected them to the Hamato afterlife, and Mikey's is shattered, expended to give Casey a better chance at life. At this point, he's held together with the metaphysical equivalent of duct tape and spite - Donnie's favorite building materials when supplies ran short.

(Donnie's gone. Mikey failed him - failed to catch the infection, failed to cure it, failed to find his spirit amongst the Hamato ancestors. The Krang had obliterated him, and Mikey had failed to help until it was too late.)

(He can't find Raph among the ancestors, either. One more big brother failed.)

(He knows there won't be much left of Leo - not after Leo spent so long being Mikey's living shield, letting the Krang tear into his Ninpo time and time again in order to keep Mikey's intact - but he won't fail Leo. He can't. He can't.)

He's still here, for now, and that has to be good enough. He levitates, surveying a battlefield gone cold in the wake of an overwhelming Krang victory, and goes in search of his last remaining brother.

Leo's corpse isn't far - Mikey spots it near where the portal had been, face down in rock that had been blasted smooth and clean. Krang laser. There's no surviving those.

His gaze flickers upwards across the horizon, and he sees something glow near the corpse, a white outline coming into being before the color follows after, taking a familiar shape. It's-

It's Casey-

It's Casey, but he looks different. Better. His clothes are intact and clean - brand new, from the looks of it. His hair is washed and fluffy. His face and arms have filled out and his shoulders broadened, like he'd been getting good food and enough of it. He doesn't look like the Casey Mikey had made a portal for minutes ago; he looks like how they'd all wanted Casey to look, like he's finally getting what they would have killed to have been able to provide for him. He looks like a dream.

And that's how Mikey knows it's a lie.

It's the Krang. The Krang have done something, made one final twist of the knife that's been stuck in Leo's heart since the night they lost the Key - for all Mikey knows, they're going to use it to desecrate his brother's body, and he is not letting that happen. He zooms closer to Leo's corpse-

"We did it, Mikey, we got him out-"

-and feels the world tilt.

That's not Leo's corpse, because Leo's not dead. He's clinging to life, muttering nonstop in a voice barely above a whisper - he's not long for this world, but he's still here-

The lie cries out in Casey's voice and makes for his brother-

And Mikey lashes out, magic coming to his hands as easily as it ever did. It's not enough to incinerate the lie - the thing is too smart, too quick, and pulls back with only an injury to its arm. That's enough of an opening for Mikey to land in front of Leo, snarling at the lie wearing his nephew's face. "Don't. Touch. Him!" That's his brother. That's his brother. That's the only brother he has left, and he won't have him for long, but that doesn't mean the Krang can take him! "Whatever Krang trick you are-"

Spite, while fun, is no substitute for engineering. Donnie had told him that once.

The spite - and whatever else is holding him together at this point - gives out, the collapse manifesting as pain, and Mikey folds in on himself with a groan. He can fight - he will fight - but if the lie forces combat, then fighting will be the last thing he'll ever do, and Leo will die alone.

He can't. He just…he can't.

He drops to his knees, laying a spectral hand on Leo's head. Leo doesn't react - his Ninpo is shattered to begin with, and Mikey wouldn't be surprised if death's door has robbed Leo of his senses as it is - and just keeps talking.

"We got Casey through the portal, he'll be okay, he'll get to grow up without all of this, we did it, we- we- we did it, Mikey-"

Mikey kneels there, one hand on his inert brother's head as Leo's life slowly sputters out. Eventually he'll die, and what fragments are left of his spirit will disintegrate, too shattered by years of warfare to persist after death, and Mikey will let himself fade along with them. Together until the rapidly approaching end, like they'd promised.

He kneels, and waits for oblivion to come.