kn-1013

[kn-1013]

back to playing sally face again now that i have the book, so i don't have to pull up a walkthrough to look for all the VHS's for evelyn now.

one thing that's always bothered me about episode 4 is how quick it goes from having sal and larry explore the apartments and making plans to go right back later that night, to larry killing himself out of nowhere. i get that it's a) because larry's got the darkness creeping into him, b) that whole "depression takes people out of nowhere" sort of plotline, and of course, c) larry needs to be dead in order for the next parts of the game to progress, and on top of that, d) gabry likely had to cut a lot of content and/or was on some kind of time crunch, and especially considering he made this game by himself, i really don't blame him for it.

still, though, the pacing for episode 4 has always seemed incredibly off because of how quickly larry kills himself. you JUST made plans, dude, calm down.

unless something was directly telling him to kill himself for whatever reason behind the scenes, and we just didn't get to see it; be it the shadow plague, rosenberg, or something else. that's a bit of a fun headcannon to add in to make the entire thing feel a bit less off.

[kn-1013]

i haven't been drawing anything but a commission lately so have this. maybe i'll make it into a real drawing at some point

[kn-1013]

Exploratory Surgery #2

The Sally Face gang plus Travis all get high together.

Rating: T Word Count: ~1800 Pairing: None/Gen Warnings: Drug use and references to child abuse

A/N: this involves two of my very self-indulgent headcannons; that ashley has tourettes, and that sal has POTS. this doesn't change much about the characters but is some needed context.

========

“How’s it feel so far? Good?” Ashley turned her head to him and elbowed him gently, her eyes half-lidded and red. Her ear was pressed to the couch and there was a deeply inebriated grin on her face.

“I can confidently say I have never experienced this feeling before in my life.” Travis felt like he was going to start phasing through the overly soft couch he was planted on. He stared at the ceiling, his hands resting on his stomach, listening to the quiet Spice Girls song playing in the background. Maybe it’s the fact that he doesn’t typically listen to a lot of contemporary music, or maybe it’s the weed, but right now, Saturday Night Divas was the most beautiful song he’s ever heard.

In this moment, he could feel everything; the fabric of every piece of clothing on his body, the thick and stale air of the Addison Apartments, the softness of the couch and how his weight shifted the stuffing inside, the way Ashley’s body next to him shifted the couch even further, the sensation of his bruised and scraped skin, the weight of his own body, he could even feel the Earth’s axis. But unlike other times this happened, it wasn’t overwhelming. It felt fine. Unifying, even. He could feel the way that everything was connected.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Ashley asked, probing him for symptoms of greening out.

“I have no idea.” Travis looked back to the ceiling. Whether it was good or bad just seemed so insignificant to him right now. Right now, it just was.

Based on the way the others always acted when they were high, he was expecting more of a euphoric feeling when he tried it for the first time, but it didn’t feel quite like that to him. It felt like a relaxed, yet weighted clarity had dawned onto him. He was putting into words concepts he was acutely aware of but never consciously recognized. It was heavy, evocative, thought-provoking, stimulating.

“I think that’s a good sign.” Sal said from his spot on the floor. He’d been laying down on his back on the floor for a while now, since he took a couple of huge hits from the bong and his blood pressure dropped so badly that he nearly passed out just sitting up on the couch. Larry was digging through his kitchen for chicken broth and pickle juice right now.

“Should you even be doing this with your heart thing?” Travis asked, noting the way his heart was pounding in his chest a little bit, but Sal blew raspberries from behind his mask. “It’s fiiiiine, probably. I haven’t had a heart attack yet. I just need a little bit of salt or something, then I’ll be at least half as normal as I usually am.” He snorted.

Travis didn’t really know what that meant, but if Sal knew what he was doing, then he probably shouldn’t argue too much. Travis was acutely aware of how that was a mildly unusual thought process for him to be having, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care all that much. Right now, he just wanted to sit in the moment.

Larry walked back in with a mug of something hot with a straw in it in one hand, and a jar of pickles plus a plastic fork in the other. He kneeled down next to Sal to set them on the ground. Sal raised himself to his elbows to start getting up, but his arms and shoulders were visibly shaking from the effort, and he quickly plopped himself back down on the ground, snorting, and Ash quickly joined in.

“You have to feed me...” Sal said. “You have to feed me pickles like a baby bird.” Larry chortled highly. “Dude, I would do that for you… If you actually needed it.” He opened the jar of pickles and stabbed the fork inside uncoordinatedly a couple of times before pulling one out for Sal.

“Ew?” Ash said.

“But I do need it, Larry, I need it so badly. Feed my- my pickles, Laaaaaaaaaaryyyyyyyyyy-” His voice got progressively louder until Larry grabbed the plastic nose of his prosthetic and shook Sal’s face until he started laughing.

“Shut up, I feed you pickles. I do it every day.” Larry deadpanned, and Sal laughed. Without missing a beat, the blue-haired boy replied, “My beautiful pickle nurse saves me from the brink of death once more.”

Sal unbuckled the bottom straps of his prosthetic face so Larry could attempt to shove a pickle underneath it in what was probably not the most effective way to get this done.

Travis had a feeling that none of what they were saying was true, but he wouldn’t know. Maybe friends did pickle-nurse each other.

“This is proper procedure, right Neil?” Ashley asked, looking over to Neil on her other side. Todd was on the floor in between his knees, letting his boyfriend play with his hair.

“I taught Larry everything he knows about pickle-nursing.” Neil said, not even looking up from the little braids he’d been constructing and deconstructing repeatedly in Todd’s curly, red hair.

Todd seemed to stir for the first time in maybe thirty minutes. He wasn’t asleep, he’d just honked a little too much of that bobo and got himself a bit more blasted than he normally would’ve liked. His voice was quiet and words slurred together in a far-gone kind of fatigue as he asked, “What the fuck are we talking about?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it, baby.” Neil said, petting his head softly. “Okay, I believe you.” Todd said, leaning back into the couch. “I’ll believe anything you tell me.”

“Travis, which is gayer: pickle nursing or hair salon?” Ash asked, gesturing from Sal and Larry to Todd and Neil.

Travis continued staring straight ahead, having absorbed himself in the conversation around him. He felt perfectly content right now, listening to this.

“Hellooooo, Travis?” Ash begun waving a hand in front of his face, and Travis started to snap himself back into reality.

“Huh? Whuh?” Travis sputtered and blinked dumbly, before he processed what had just happened. “Oh my gosh.” He covered his face in embarrassment and began laughing drunkenly, all high-pitched and lacking inhibition. He fell over onto the soft armrest of the couch as his knees lifted themselves up until his feet were off the ground.

“What, whaaat?” Ash asked, grabbing his shoulder and shaking.

Travis peered at Ashley through his fingers, and she could see parts of the stupid, inebriated grin on his face, and his squinted, reddened eyes.

“I thought I was listening to the radio. For like, the past ten minutes.” Travis’s voice was strained from trying not to laugh again, and he failed this fight after he stopped trying to communicate.

Ashley burst out laughing at his stoned-up mistake, and Larry began laughing hard enough that he needed to lean over, his forehead resting his weight over onto Sal’s trunk. Sal himself had spat warm chicken broth all over the inside of his mask, and he quickly turned over on his side, laughing and sputtering wetly on the ground, with Larry on top of him.

In the middle of the childish laughter, a deep and stinging melancholy had struck Travis.

It used to be a lot like this. Him, Larry, Ashley. All wound up in laughter at Travis’s old-fashioned home, or Ashley’s contemporary one. In Larry’s musty, turpentine-smelling basement bedroom. He remembered the smell of that wooden tree house Mr. Johnson had built before he disappeared. He wondered if the some of the glitter he’d spilled in the carpet of Ashley’s bedroom that one time was still there in its minuscule, yet untouchable glory.

Does Larry still have that scar on his elbow from that time he fell down the front steps of Travis’s house?

Travis’s ankle never stopped clicking when he turned it a certain way after he fell on it wrong from falling out of the tire swing in Ashley’s back yard.

Sometimes he still heard Ashley involuntarily repeating something rather mundane he’d said so many years ago with the same tone and inflection as when he’d first said it. It was like a snapshot of that moment existed within her permanently whenever her tics made her say ‘I got peanuts!’

It used to be a lot like this. Easy, fun contentment away from their parents. Away from expectations or prying eyes.

But then they got older. Life started getting complicated. They couldn’t dismiss their parents’ expectations anymore. Grades started becoming important. They had to think about their futures.

They just changed.

…No, that’s not what happened.

Travis changed.

And he didn’t just change out of nowhere, he was made to change, molded into what he was now through closed fists and backhands. Through hair brushes and belts, buckle-side first. Empty locked closets and physical restraint.

All at the hands of his father, spitting verses of the holy book like venom.

His father took him like clay and Travis let him, until he became so deformed by that tireless anger that he couldn’t look his reflection in the eye anymore. Because when he looked into those angry brown irises, he found himself consumed wholly by his father’s.

…And now they were here, where Travis was pausing in the middle of a laugh with people who used to have reasons to care about him, letting that old, empty ache spread further within his heart.

As they continued to laugh, and as the laughter died down back into conversation, he found himself falling quiet again. The way they spoke so naturally without him intervening only served to remind him that he didn’t belong here anymore. Maybe he never did.

Travis’s eyes made their way back to the point where the ceiling met the top of the wall as he leaned back into the couch, letting the soft, old cushions absorb his weight and sink his body in.

Nothing he could say in this conversation would be as funny or as useful as something one of their actual friends had to say, and he knew that. He knew that he was incredibly out of place here, what with all of the inside jokes and referenced memories he was missing. The way that they seemed to stop trying to include him as he got quieter and quieter again.

He internally begged someone outside his head to bring him back, to want him, to even notice him, but he wouldn't ask out loud, and so it never happened.

So he sat back on the couch, feeling the weight of everything on his skin, everything in his body, the unifying feeling of his own gravity, and he tried to be content with what he could get as he quietly listened to the radio.

[kn-1013]

Exploratory Surgery #1

Sal notices that Travis is a bit space-y like he is, but it's a bit different.

Rating: E Word count: A thousand and something Pairing: None/Gen Warnings: Use of homophobic slurs

A/N: welcome to my new series called exploratory surgery. idk how many more of these i'll post but the general concept of this series will be me posting plot bunnies, darlings or drabbles that i can't/won't/shouldn't otherwise put into full fics, or they just haven't become full fics yet. you can think of them like 'sketches' in the same way that someone posts art sketches or whatever. idk i haven't slept, this one's vaguely about a niche headcannon i have for travis being able to see ghosts. please enjoy, or don't

========

It wasn’t unusual for Sal to be found staring off into the distance about something, what with the ADD diagnosis, chronic dissociation, and now these new episodes, where he’s getting fucking visions from god or something. His friends had started calling him Space-y Face because of how often they had to wave a hand in front of him to get his attention. ‘Hey, Earth to Sally!’ It was a whole thing.

That’s why he noticed that Travis seemed to have the same problem.

Some teachers seemed like they didn’t want to call out Sal for spacing out, they seemed reluctant to want to put too much attention on him, which was kind of annoying when he actually wanted to pay attention in class, because then he had to get his notes from other people or ask questions after. At least he could kind of appreciate the thought.

But they weren’t afraid to call out Travis when he was staring out the window, and make him answer questions in front of the whole class when he wasn’t paying attention. Considering he was a known problem child, it seemed like some kind of sadistic humiliation tactic to try and push him back in line or to punish him for being such an asshole, or maybe even because they simply didn’t like him, and they used him as some kind of scapegoat. Some teachers certainly hated their lives enough to do that.

Though, there was one thing that kept bugging Sal.

When Sal zoned out, he could sometimes be like a mola-mola fish, floating through the ocean, going wherever the current takes him without a second thought, or even a first one. Eyes visibly unfocused, blinking slowly, speaking slowly, mouth sometimes left agape if he wasn’t talking, (which made him glad he wore a mask, because he sure looked stupid like that). The entire time, it would kind of feel like he was moving backwards through a brick wall; it was hard to think or move, and everything felt so distant. On really bad days, it honestly felt like he took something, his head was so fuzzy.

Other times, he could be like a possum playing dead: completely frozen. Hours could pass that left his body sore and aching, where he hadn’t moved a muscle or thunk a single thought. That happened a lot around August 16th.

Either way, the big thing about Sal’s zoning out, according to how Todd’s described it, is that he seems incredibly distant and unfocused. It looks like he’s ‘inside’, as he described it—inside his own head.

Travis wasn’t like that at all, in Sal’s observations. When he stared off in the distance, it was like he was looking at something far away, even when he was staring at an empty corner. When the teachers called him out, he sometimes did some kind of double take, or his eyes kept drifting back into the spot he was staring at. He didn’t seem like he was inside his head, he seemed like he was looking at something that was right there, but Sal couldn’t really be sure what.

It reminded him a lot of whenever Gizmo started staring randomly into the distance, like he was seeing something nobody else could. He always wondered if animals could see ghosts.

Now he was wondering if Travis could, especially with the way he was currently staring at that roadkill.

Sal had been going for a walk around town on a Saturday afternoon and had ended up in a nicer part of town, the part that Ashley lived in. He was thinking about stopping by to hang out with her, when he spotted Travis, who also lived in this area.

Travis was across the street from him, on the other sidewalk. He was completely frozen, staring straight down at a dead cat near the curb.

Sal decided he felt like being a pest that day, so he walked across the street nonchalantly to over just behind Travis, who continued staring at the ground.

His gaze, shifted near his feet as Sal began approaching, but Sal’s mouth moved before he could process it, and his subsequent greeting startled Travis out of whatever daydream he was having about that dead cat.

“Hey, Travis, what’cha lookin’ at?” Sal said, almost instantly regretting it. He should’ve waited a bit longer to see what was going to happen next.

Travis jumped hard enough that his hair seemed to stand on end for a second, before he realized it was just Sal. Then he slumped his shoulders and rolled his eyes.

“What do you want?” He spat.

“Saw you blankly staring at a dead cat for no reason, thought I’d see what the fuss was about.” Sal tilted his head to the side curiously. “You know that cat or something?”

“No, never seen it before.” Travis’s voice was cold and bland.

There was a beat of silence, where Sal was staring directly at Travis. Silences like this tend to make people uncomfortable, and often makes them volunteer information they wouldn’t have normally simply by being asked. It was one of Sal’s special tactics for extracting information from other people, and it typically worked especially well, because most people already found Sal’s presence discomforting.

“Anyways, bye.” Travis began walking away.

Travis was weird though, it didn’t always work on him.

Sal caught up behind him, patting him on the back of the shoulder to get his attention again.

“You stare at stuff a lot, you know that?” Sal said, walking beside him.

Travis walked faster. “What, are you stalking me? Freak?”

“Is that a question?” Sal cocked his head to the side, appearing nonchalant as his legs struggled to keep up with Travis’s long strides.

“You’re a freak, no question about it.” Travis huffed, adjusting his book bag irritatedly and turning his head.

“It’s not hard to notice things about other people if you just pay attention. You can learn a lot about people by just watching them.” Sal’s voice was calm, factual, as if it were normal to just watch people all the time.

Travis had felt dread before, but not quite like when Sal had finished letting that sentence out of his mouth. Sal was about to describe some of his unconscious behaviors, and it was going to make him deeply uncomfortable, and there was nothing he could do about it, because Sal seemed to just love making him as uncomfortable as possible in every imaginable situation. That blue haired faggot just had to stick his plastic nose in everything.

“Like, you read a lot—like a lot, a lot. You’re ambidextrous, but I’ll bet you’re naturally right-handed because that’s the hand you punch with. You’re not very familiar with computers, and you like to be outside, but you’re not really jock levels of athletic, so I think you kind of just hang out there, usually in trees, 'cuz of the callouses on your hands. You ever been hiking? You might like it.” Sal’s voice was way too cheery and overall normal to be saying these things. Nobody knew these things about Travis, because nobody paid attention to him. They all hated him, because he was an asshole, and that was kind of the point.

The fact that Sal could just swoop in and watch him like a hawk when he wasn’t paying attention and learn all these things about him without even talking to him was terrifying in the same way he was terrified of God.

Travis recoiled harshly. “Ugh! You’re such a creep! Don’t watch me like that, what’s wrong with you?”

“What, it’s a bad thing to pay attention to your friends?” Sal sounded a bit disappointed. After that, he was disappointed? Over what? That Travis didn’t like being watched? He sure hoped this was just God working in mysterious ways somehow, because he hated this.

“I’m not your friend, you fucking stalker. Leave me alone.” He began to walk faster, and Sal started to trail behind. “To be fair, I’ve kind of just been seeing you around for a couple of years, now. I’m not even paying that much attention to you.” Sal shrugged, shortly before tripping on something on the pavement.

“That doesn’t make it much better, you fucking weirdo. Stop watching me!” Travis began racing back to his house, his face burning red at how much Sal had seemed to learn from him when he wasn’t even trying that hard. What would happen if he tried much harder? He really needed to stay away from this guy.

Sal gracefully recovered from his trip and stared off at Travis’s disappearing form, head cocked to the side. He just didn’t quite get that guy.

But boy, did he want to.

[kn-1013]

hey i have a minor surgery in a little bit and if anyone would like to commission me to help cover some of the costs, that'd be greatly appreciated. you can DM for info :)

[kn-1013]

it's amazing that gizmo doesn't have a death date in the book, implying that he has not died and will never die.

[kn-1013]

[kn-1013]

Exploratory Surgery #2

The Sally Face gang plus Travis all get high together.

Rating: T Word Count: ~1800 Pairing: None/Gen Warnings: Drug use and references to child abuse

A/N: this involves two of my very self-indulgent headcannons; that ashley has tourettes, and that sal has POTS. this doesn't change much about the characters but is some needed context.

========

“How’s it feel so far? Good?” Ashley turned her head to him and elbowed him gently, her eyes half-lidded and red. Her ear was pressed to the couch and there was a deeply inebriated grin on her face.

“I can confidently say I have never experienced this feeling before in my life.” Travis felt like he was going to start phasing through the overly soft couch he was planted on. He stared at the ceiling, his hands resting on his stomach, listening to the quiet Spice Girls song playing in the background. Maybe it’s the fact that he doesn’t typically listen to a lot of contemporary music, or maybe it’s the weed, but right now, Saturday Night Divas was the most beautiful song he’s ever heard.

In this moment, he could feel everything; the fabric of every piece of clothing on his body, the thick and stale air of the Addison Apartments, the softness of the couch and how his weight shifted the stuffing inside, the way Ashley’s body next to him shifted the couch even further, the sensation of his bruised and scraped skin, the weight of his own body, he could even feel the Earth’s axis. But unlike other times this happened, it wasn’t overwhelming. It felt fine. Unifying, even. He could feel the way that everything was connected.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Ashley asked, probing him for symptoms of greening out.

“I have no idea.” Travis looked back to the ceiling. Whether it was good or bad just seemed so insignificant to him right now. Right now, it just was.

Based on the way the others always acted when they were high, he was expecting more of a euphoric feeling when he tried it for the first time, but it didn’t feel quite like that to him. It felt like a relaxed, yet weighted clarity had dawned onto him. He was putting into words concepts he was acutely aware of but never consciously recognized. It was heavy, evocative, thought-provoking, stimulating.

“I think that’s a good sign.” Sal said from his spot on the floor. He’d been laying down on his back on the floor for a while now, since he took a couple of huge hits from the bong and his blood pressure dropped so badly that he nearly passed out just sitting up on the couch. Larry was digging through his kitchen for chicken broth and pickle juice right now.

“Should you even be doing this with your heart thing?” Travis asked, noting the way his heart was pounding in his chest a little bit, but Sal blew raspberries from behind his mask. “It’s fiiiiine, probably. I haven’t had a heart attack yet. I just need a little bit of salt or something, then I’ll be at least half as normal as I usually am.” He snorted.

Travis didn’t really know what that meant, but if Sal knew what he was doing, then he probably shouldn’t argue too much. Travis was acutely aware of how that was a mildly unusual thought process for him to be having, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care all that much. Right now, he just wanted to sit in the moment.

Larry walked back in with a mug of something hot with a straw in it in one hand, and a jar of pickles plus a plastic fork in the other. He kneeled down next to Sal to set them on the ground. Sal raised himself to his elbows to start getting up, but his arms and shoulders were visibly shaking from the effort, and he quickly plopped himself back down on the ground, snorting, and Ash quickly joined in.

“You have to feed me...” Sal said. “You have to feed me pickles like a baby bird.” Larry chortled highly. “Dude, I would do that for you… If you actually needed it.” He opened the jar of pickles and stabbed the fork inside uncoordinatedly a couple of times before pulling one out for Sal.

“Ew?” Ash said.

“But I do need it, Larry, I need it so badly. Feed my- my pickles, Laaaaaaaaaaryyyyyyyyyy-” His voice got progressively louder until Larry grabbed the plastic nose of his prosthetic and shook Sal’s face until he started laughing.

“Shut up, I feed you pickles. I do it every day.” Larry deadpanned, and Sal laughed. Without missing a beat, the blue-haired boy replied, “My beautiful pickle nurse saves me from the brink of death once more.”

Sal unbuckled the bottom straps of his prosthetic face so Larry could attempt to shove a pickle underneath it in what was probably not the most effective way to get this done.

Travis had a feeling that none of what they were saying was true, but he wouldn’t know. Maybe friends did pickle-nurse each other.

“This is proper procedure, right Neil?” Ashley asked, looking over to Neil on her other side. Todd was on the floor in between his knees, letting his boyfriend play with his hair.

“I taught Larry everything he knows about pickle-nursing.” Neil said, not even looking up from the little braids he’d been constructing and deconstructing repeatedly in Todd’s curly, red hair.

Todd seemed to stir for the first time in maybe thirty minutes. He wasn’t asleep, he’d just honked a little too much of that bobo and got himself a bit more blasted than he normally would’ve liked. His voice was quiet and words slurred together in a far-gone kind of fatigue as he asked, “What the fuck are we talking about?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it, baby.” Neil said, petting his head softly. “Okay, I believe you.” Todd said, leaning back into the couch. “I’ll believe anything you tell me.”

“Travis, which is gayer: pickle nursing or hair salon?” Ash asked, gesturing from Sal and Larry to Todd and Neil.

Travis continued staring straight ahead, having absorbed himself in the conversation around him. He felt perfectly content right now, listening to this.

“Hellooooo, Travis?” Ash begun waving a hand in front of his face, and Travis started to snap himself back into reality.

“Huh? Whuh?” Travis sputtered and blinked dumbly, before he processed what had just happened. “Oh my gosh.” He covered his face in embarrassment and began laughing drunkenly, all high-pitched and lacking inhibition. He fell over onto the soft armrest of the couch as his knees lifted themselves up until his feet were off the ground.

“What, whaaat?” Ash asked, grabbing his shoulder and shaking.

Travis peered at Ashley through his fingers, and she could see parts of the stupid, inebriated grin on his face, and his squinted, reddened eyes.

“I thought I was listening to the radio. For like, the past ten minutes.” Travis’s voice was strained from trying not to laugh again, and he failed this fight after he stopped trying to communicate.

Ashley burst out laughing at his stoned-up mistake, and Larry began laughing hard enough that he needed to lean over, his forehead resting his weight over onto Sal’s trunk. Sal himself had spat warm chicken broth all over the inside of his mask, and he quickly turned over on his side, laughing and sputtering wetly on the ground, with Larry on top of him.

In the middle of the childish laughter, a deep and stinging melancholy had struck Travis.

It used to be a lot like this. Him, Larry, Ashley. All wound up in laughter at Travis’s old-fashioned home, or Ashley’s contemporary one. In Larry’s musty, turpentine-smelling basement bedroom. He remembered the smell of that wooden tree house Mr. Johnson had built before he disappeared. He wondered if the some of the glitter he’d spilled in the carpet of Ashley’s bedroom that one time was still there in its minuscule, yet untouchable glory.

Does Larry still have that scar on his elbow from that time he fell down the front steps of Travis’s house?

Travis’s ankle never stopped clicking when he turned it a certain way after he fell on it wrong from falling out of the tire swing in Ashley’s back yard.

Sometimes he still heard Ashley involuntarily repeating something rather mundane he’d said so many years ago with the same tone and inflection as when he’d first said it. It was like a snapshot of that moment existed within her permanently whenever her tics made her say ‘I got peanuts!’

It used to be a lot like this. Easy, fun contentment away from their parents. Away from expectations or prying eyes.

But then they got older. Life started getting complicated. They couldn’t dismiss their parents’ expectations anymore. Grades started becoming important. They had to think about their futures.

They just changed.

…No, that’s not what happened.

Travis changed.

And he didn’t just change out of nowhere, he was made to change, molded into what he was now through closed fists and backhands. Through hair brushes and belts, buckle-side first. Empty locked closets and physical restraint.

All at the hands of his father, spitting verses of the holy book like venom.

His father took him like clay and Travis let him, until he became so deformed by that tireless anger that he couldn’t look his reflection in the eye anymore. Because when he looked into those angry brown irises, he found himself consumed wholly by his father’s.

…And now they were here, where Travis was pausing in the middle of a laugh with people who used to have reasons to care about him, letting that old, empty ache spread further within his heart.

As they continued to laugh, and as the laughter died down back into conversation, he found himself falling quiet again. The way they spoke so naturally without him intervening only served to remind him that he didn’t belong here anymore. Maybe he never did.

Travis’s eyes made their way back to the point where the ceiling met the top of the wall as he leaned back into the couch, letting the soft, old cushions absorb his weight and sink his body in.

Nothing he could say in this conversation would be as funny or as useful as something one of their actual friends had to say, and he knew that. He knew that he was incredibly out of place here, what with all of the inside jokes and referenced memories he was missing. The way that they seemed to stop trying to include him as he got quieter and quieter again.

He internally begged someone outside his head to bring him back, to want him, to even notice him, but he wouldn't ask out loud, and so it never happened.

So he sat back on the couch, feeling the weight of everything on his skin, everything in his body, the unifying feeling of his own gravity, and he tried to be content with what he could get as he quietly listened to the radio.

[kn-1013]

i find it so apt that todd's favorite genres are rap and electronic music.

rap is practically mathematical in how you craft rhythm and rhyme, coupled with the heavily electronic nature of the music as things like turn tables, drum machines, sampling, etc, all become more and more prominent aspects of the genre. on top of that, rap and hip-hop are just incredibly satisfying genres of music to my autism personally, so i see it completely.

electronic music is basically a given with the fact that during the 80s and 90s, it was still widely debated as to whether or not the synth and other similar electronic instruments could even be considered as such, because these were literally newly invented instruments that signified an entire new era of music that traditionalists were broadly against.

i just know todd isn't just dying on the hill that synths are instruments, he would kill for that hill. he's ready to defend the new era personally, with his own fists.

[kn-1013]

here's some out of context exploratory surgery

[kn-1013]

it has arrived...

[kn-1013]

The brothers bwahbwahbwah

[kn-1013]

oh please go right ahead and tag me if you draw it, i'd love to see it

imagine travis teaching sal or larry how to ballroom dance, because travis 100% went to cotillion as a kid

[kn-1013]

🥤 - for the ask meme?

this one is asking about fic recommendations, so sure i have a few. i've mostly been reading sally face fanfiction recently, as that's been the most recent fixation, but i'll try to include other fandoms, too.

(SF) misery fell by bluebottles is a great fic about sal and larry and travis becoming involved with each other after sal starts trying to help travis graduate. it follows canon quite a bit while obviously deviating for the sake of shipping, lol, but that makes this one feel pretty grounded in the source material.

(SF) bridges left to burn by 8ethespider8itch is a little more out there, where sal is in his 20s and moving to nockfell to start college, but oops, a good 80% of nockfellians are also monsters, including larry, travis and ash, the three of which are vampires. it's been a minute since i've picked this one up so i can't exactly remember the plot, but i remember really enjoying the concepts this one threw out, especially the collective trauma in how ash, larry, travis, (and others, iirc) became vampires, but i won't spoil that.

(SF) camp cornerstone by documentserver is the one i've been making my way through most recently, where sal and ash accidentally convince the rest of their friends to go to a church camp for the summer. even worse is the fact that the camp was being funded by the phelps ministry, so travis also has to be there against his will. i'm about halfway through and it's a really fun story so far. i can really appreciate the author being able to draw from their own life experiences as a lesbian to describe travis's inner turmoil with the fight between his faith and his homosexuality.

(DST) heart shaped box is a great fic exploring a ship i personally pioneered, which is wes/charlie. it's the only fic in the wes/charlie tag on ao3 that isn't mine, and i can appreciate that greatly. it's a fic that explores charlie's thoughts about wes back when she was still the grue, when maxwell was on the throne, and how she comes to the box he's kept in at nighttime. she talks to him, but even though he can never reply, she still hopes to free him herself one day. it's very sweet.

(MP100) reigen 1/2 by chubbyhornedequine is a fic i haven't checked up on in a while, i really need to, because the concept is frankly amazing. the idea is inspired by ranma 1/2, but instead of switching genders, reigen falls into a cursed pool and therefore whenever he's doused with water, he turns into a cat. it's just amazing, brilliant, please read it.

(MP100) area hysteria by c_c_cherry is a fic that i THOUGHT was finished somewhere around chapter 10, but apparently it's got a handful of chapters to go still. it's an amazing fic where reigen gets caught in the collapse of an old building for a couple of days, and then gets lost inside his own head. mob and dimple have to go in after his coma starts in order to save him. this fic does a great job at describing the reactions and behaviors of the other characters in the wake of reigen's disappearance, serizawa suddenly being in charge and not knowing what to do about it, mob having a meltdown, ritsu's terrified and realistic reactions to mob's freaking out, and much, much more. it's so good, i have to pick it up again and see what the new chapters have put out.

ok that's a bit of a long list but there you go. i haven't read any creepypasta fics recently so i can't recommend any of those, but if anyone has some fics to recommend me go straight ahead :)

[kn-1013]

one thing i think about a lot is the fact that travis has probably had his life carefully controlled by kenneth for basically the entire time. but eventually, maybe through sal's influence, as he becomes an adult, he gets less and less scared of his father's wrath.

what's his father gonna do, beat him? he's been doing that for years, travis can take it. what, kenneth'll kill him? he won't, but even if he did, travis is ready for it.

i like to imagine that him growing his hair out like that was one of the little acts of rebellion he allowed himself in order to gain a modicum of control over his life after everything that kenneth did to him.

[kn-1013]

The problem with commercial F/M romance is that it's written by the most heterosexual women alive and reading it you feel yourself slowly suffocating from the Gender of it all like a fish in a eutrophying lake. And what we actually need as a culture is F/M written by insane bisexuals violently allergic to heteronormativity

[kn-1013]

imagine travis teaching sal or larry how to ballroom dance, because travis 100% went to cotillion as a kid