#...now i know why lake wanted to escape that mirror so fuckin bad

[yardsards]

decided to try biting into a raw onion out of curiosity (warning for several misophonia-inducing noises)

[thiswasinevitableid]

Hii uhhh this is for mermay, but it's not one of the fills so please feel free to ignore this if it doesn't catch your interest!!

Idea;; within a mostly-canon setting, Duck is turned into a merperson (probably while they're trying to deal with one of the abominations, but that part's flexible) and has to deal with it while still trying to like,, function. He gets a magic disguise, but hijinks ensue.

Here you go! I attached this to "Summer rain" and another mermay prompt. It's SFW

The last time he went flying through the air and into the water while fighting an abomination, he almost died. So he’s none too pleased when he surfaces from being chucked in Lake Brahe.

“What the fuck Indrid?!”

“I’m so sorry” Mothman flaps above him, both sets of hands tapping together anxiously, “I promise this is for the best but I’ll admit the exact process might have been overkill.”

“You fuckin’ think??” Duck kicks towards shore, grabbing his hat as it tries to float away, “the others are still back there with that thing. And I fuckin hate bein’ chucked into things without warnin.”

“I don’t think there are people who do enjoy such things.” Indrid alights on the shore Duck is swimming towards.

“Well then don’t fuckin do them.”

“It is for your own good, Duck Newton.”

“Yeah, heard that one before.” He hits shallow water, wades to shore trying to shake his hat dry, “now c’mon, fly me back so we can-”

His legs crumple, sending him face first into the lake. Crawling is no good, his whole body contorting and shaking, his throat and lungs burning. He claws at the pebbles and sand, coming away with fistfuls, grabbing for something, anything, to pull him from the water, as if reaching shore will free him from the pain wracking his body.

The world is coming in photo negative now, flashes of color that don’t make sense, the crack of his bones filling his ears. He might he crying, the pain is too deep to tell what else he’s feeling or doing.

“Help” he rasps into the night air.

Human hands cup his face, guide his aching head down across bony legs, “It will not last much longer.”

“Am” he gasps, feels the Sylph turn their bodies for some unknown purpose, breathing easier after he does, “am I gonna die.”

“No. And before you ask, your powers would not have done much for you if you still had them.”

“Fuck” he whimpers.

“Agreed.” Indrid strokes his hair, “five more seconds. Four, three, two, one.”

Duck passes out before Indrid can say anything else. He’s roused by the footfalls of combat boots and wingtips down the beach.

“Duck, Indrid-OH HOLY SHIT!”

“He’s not-”

“No, Ned, he is very much alive. Had I not moved him when I did, he would have suffocated before you could get him to any water.”

“Thank god.” Ned must be by his head.

“Aubrey, can, can you, it hurts-”

“Ummmmm” His friend sounds like she’s trying to come up with a comforting explanation, “which part of your tail hurts?”

Duck sits bolt upright, then falls back into Indrid’s arms, staring at the deep green and silver tail where his legs should be.

“Well….fuck.”

---------------------------------------------------------------

“How are you doing?” Indrid, red glasses glinting and pink and yellow sweater hanging off his tall frame, perches on a rock.

“Great. I’m a regular, breakable dipshit who turned into a fuckin merman without warnin, I had to have Barclay call work and tell ‘em I got a flu so they won’t fire me for disppearin, anything my friends bring me to eat gets soggy, and I ain’t seen my cat in three days.”

“So...not good then?”

Duck raises an eyebrow. Indrid smiles, not his usual confident, casual one. He looks unsure, which is in and of itself kind of unnerving.

“No, Indrid. Not good at all.”

“Ah. Apologies, I sometimes have trouble parsing certain tones.”

Duck swims closer, “Sorry.”

“It’s quite alright. You have every reason to be angry and upset. Even with me.”

“Pretty sure you didn’t curse me.”

“No. But had I moved faster, gotten to you all sooner, you would not have been in it’s path at all.”

It’s so matter of fact. The same way Indrid talks about anything troubling.

“Certainly my most newsworthy failure”

“Had you not arrived at the cottonwood, it would have been rather bad for me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about the eye. It hurt, but I have felt far worse.”

“And I have yet more bad news; while I can make a charm that will allow you to be in your human form for up to six hours at a time, the properties of that abomination mean eventually you’ll have to return to water.”

There’s a flicker in the smile, so swift Duck wonders if it’s only because his eyes are no longer human, slit pupiled instead of round, that he sees it at all. Or if it’s because this is the first time they haven’t been surrounded by heat, noise, or danger.

“Indrid, you know I don’t blame you, right?”

“Of course, Duck. I was merely being thorough in my apology.” Now it’s his normal, wide smile, but too tight across his teeth.

“He was before my time.” Vincent grins as he sets the DVDs on a well-dusted shelf, “though if Woodbridge is anything like he is now, I doubt they got along. The other ministers say he was...determined when he left. Like he could conquer any challenge earth presented during his quest."

Indrid’s glasses slip down his nose and he pushes them up before Duck gets even a glance at his eyes, “Now, where did I put that pin…” He pats his pockets, freezes when Duck manages to set a hand on his shin.

“Indrid, I mean it. Didn’t blame you then, don’t blame you now. Hell, from the sound of it you saved my ass, big time. So, uh, what I’m tryin to say is thanks. For lookin out for me.”

He squeezes in what he hopes is a friendly fashion. Indrid chirps, once, face losing all trace of eeriness. Then he schools it back to normal.

“You’re welcome. Punching aside, I’m quite fond of you. I’m going to use this for your charm, if that’s alright.” A souvenir pin from the Monongahela's tenth anniversary sits between slender fingers.

“Holy shit, I been lookin for that for ages. I, uh, I try to-”

“Collect them, yes. I saw that in a conversation between you and Juno. I was going to give this to you anyway, goodness knows it took awhile to find it in the trailer, but now it can serve a greater purpose.” With that, he pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket. Duck’s image unfolds before them, Indrid smoothing it out and setting it on the rock as he begins working. Duck watches with interest, notices the process is much slower than it was when Indrid disguised Billy.

“Am I harder to get right than Ryan Gosling?”

“Yes. Well, not technically, no, but with Billy I just needed him to look human. I need you to look like, well, you. Such a fine specimen requires the utmost care.”

Duck’s about to toss back his usual line he gives to guys who compliment him, then realizes flirting with the Mothman might be weird, or that Indrid may not have meant it as anything more than some clinical, Sylph observation of humans. He tries to distract himself by swimming, but his tail still won’t do what he wants much of the time.

“You’ll have greater success on your back.” Indrid says without looking up.

He’s right, and Duck manages to swim without difficulty, tail shimmering in the sunset. The one time he glances at his friend, Indrid is staring at swaying and rippling in the water.

When the Sylph finally calls that he’s done, Duck speeds to the rock, let’s Indrid pin the charm to the collar of his undershirt that he keeps wearing because he’s still a human, dammit, just one with an inconvenient tail and he’s not gonna start skinny-dipping in a national forest. Again.

Duck flails when legs replace his tail, Indrid’s hand grabbing his a moment before he needs it to and helping him onto dry land.

“Satisfactory?”

“It’s fuckin perfect!”

“Wonderful!” Indrid claps his hands together, “what would you like to do? I may need to escort you for the first day, to be certain there’s no flaw in the charm.”

Duck studies the pink light tracing the angles of Indrid’s face, “Wanna meet my cat? She looks like a bobcat that lost a bar fight, but she’s sweet as can be.”

Indrid’s grin turns genuine for the first time all day, “I would like nothing better.”

The mothman becomes a staple of his life after that. With the charm, he’s able to help the Pine Guard track and slay the abomination, go to work, look after his house, and generally convince anyone not in the know that he’s totally fine. But he has to return to the lake every day, spends his mornings and nights there, even his lunch breaks when he knows he needs to give the charm a break then. It’s far enough away that he’s in no danger of being seen by civilians, but at least once Indrid had to fly him to it before they ran out of time (and Aubrey had to teleport them there, which made him nauseous).

Indrid keeps him company, sometimes with the others and sometimes on his own. He finds waterproof cards and games, listens to Duck talk about work and tells him about his travels. At first he worries Indrid is only doing it out of guilt, but as the weeks go by he comes to see that Indrid likes him. He laughs at his jokes, gives him as close to his full attention as he can, even scratches his scales with his mothed-out claws when they start driving Duck crazy with itchiness.

His friend always goes home to sleep, which is why, as Duck is drifting on his back, half snoozing and half star-gazing, the red eyes high in a tree come as a surprise. He’s on the other end of the lake, doesn’t seem to see Duck as he spreads his wings and flaps into the air. Then he nosedives, pulling up before he hits the water and then skimming across it in broad strokes. He shoots upward, spins, and then repeats the routine.

Duck’s seen him fly during fights and to escape the Cottonwood. Never like this, never so free and graceful. It’s such a joyful sight, makes Duck wish he had wings of his own so he could join him, dance across the stars and their reflections.

He swims towards Indrid, begins mirroring him on a whim, twisting, diving, and leaping as best he can in time with the cryptids flight. Pushes his tail to carry him faster, farther, all for the sake of keeping pace with the beautiful monster in the sky.

Surfacing after a particularly giant splash, a voice lilts down from the sky.

“Race you to the other side.”

Duck loses, but only just, cackles when Indrid buzzes him so closely he can feel the tickle of his feathers. When the mothman finally lands Duck swims to him, scooting up on land so he can watch Indrid fluff and clean his feathers.

“I come to this lake to practice flying without fear of being seen. I assumed you were asleep but, ah” his antenna twitch, “I’m glad you weren’t.”

Duck stretches, moans happily when Indrid gently glides his claws up his tail, “Me too.”

“Same time tomorrow night?” Soft hope flutters between them.

“Yeah.” He grins up at the cryptid, “bring your A-game, I’m gonna carb load tomorrow mornin so I can kick your butt.”

“I look forward to it.”

----------------------------------------------------

It’s been a month and a half since he transformed, which puts them smack in summer thunderstorm season. Duck’s used to it, though he’s more than a little nervous about what will happen if lightning hits the lake. Luckily, tonight it’s just soft summer rain instead of electricity and drops the size of robin eggs.

Indrid isn’t faring as well. The rain droops his antenna, compresses his fluff until Duck can see he’s still a twig under all those feathers. He shivers, chirrs in discomfort and shakes off his wings, but stays put on his favorite rock.

“There a reason you ain’t just turnin human? Could put on a raincoat that way.”

“I” Indrid sneezes, “I want you to feel comfortable. It can be so unpleasant, feeling like the only non-human in a place.”

Duck swims to the rock, flicking his tail up and down as he float, “You’re always changin form to make me comfortable.”

“Yes. Because I want you to not be unnerved by me.”

“But what about what you want?”

A feathery shrug, “That doesn’t matter.”

“Drid-”

Red eyes glare at him, “I am well aware of how I look, Duck. What people think of me. Would you have spent even a fraction of the time you have with me if your transformation had not forced it?”

“Y-fu-uh-I mean not no?” He sinks into the water as resignation becomes visible on Indrid’s inhuman features.

“I’m glad for our friendship, Duck. And I don’t doubt that you’re fond of me now. But please don’t pretend I was your first choice for company.”

“I mean...you weren’t. But that’s because we barely knew each other, hell, you only got back to town three months ago.” Duck takes the hand nearest him, “if this happened to me now? You might be the first person I’d want lookin out for me.”

Indrid chirrs, dips his head down to rub his cheek against Duck’s hand. Suddenly he wants nothing as badly as he wants to get Indrid warm and dry so he can run his fingers through every inch of those feathers.

“May I turn human?’

“Of course. Means you can come swimmin with me.”

Indrid, now in a tank top and yoga pants, cocks his head, “Why?”

“It’ll be fun?”

“My kind are not the strongest of swimmers.”

“Good thing I got a tail and gills, then. Besides, you’ll stop feelin as sticky from the humidity if you’re in the water.”

Indrid pulls off his shirt and pants, revealing duck-patterned boxers, and cautiously wades into the lake.

“Ooohhhh, that is so much better” his sighs, too blissed-out to notice the sudden drop, and only just manages to grab his glasses before going under. Duck zips forward, hoisting him easily into an embrace as he splutters.

“Blechhh, I despise the taste of lake water.” He clings to Duck, skinny legs teasingly tense around his tail.

Duck rubs his tail up and down his inner legs soothingly, “you, uh, want somethin to get rid of the taste?”

“Please.” Indrid smirks, clearly expecting a goof. When Duck tips his glasses up his forehead, he goes stone still.

“Can I kiss you?”

“This was not in any of the timelines.”

“Just came to me now. And that ain’t an answer.”

Indrid nods, tips his face forward to bring their lips together. Duck sighs, floats lazily backwards as Indrid slips his tongue between his lips. When they part, there are more stars in his eyes than in the whole milky way.

“Do you want some good news?” Indrid nuzzles his neck with an adorable trill.

“Lay it on me.”

“The futures just shifted; Aubrey and Janelle will have a cure for your condition tomorrow.”

“Hell yeah.” Duck flips them upright, Indrid “eeping” and holding tighter, “can’t wait to stop worryin’ about whether I’m gonna start suffocatin on land. And, uh” he nips Indrid’s lower lip, forgetting about his sharpened teeth until the Sylph lets out a little moan, “if you ain’t busy tomorrow night, like to take you on a date.”

Indrid beams, “I’d like that so very much. Though I will admit, I’m going to miss how this looks on you.” He squeezes his thighs around Duck’s tail.

“You can always whip me up one if we wanna, uh, relive the fun parts of this experience.”

“True. And with that in mind, my sweet; how do you feel about wings?”

[peanutxparker]

A (very long) list of all of my favorite AJJ lyrics because why not

Candy Cigarettes and Cap Guns (2005)

“Well my great grand-dad he died of cancer, from smoking too many cigarettes. But I must confess that he did quite profess to being the coolest motherfucker I ever met.”

“And cocaine is essentially vegan and they don't give a fuck anyway.”

“And I can't help but miss him even though he hit me everyday.”

“So fuck white people! (fuck white people!)”

“Heaven is a special place in hell where you can watch the people you hate get hurt.”

“You find me quite charming and I find it quite alarming ‘cause I'm gonna take your life. You find me quite charming and I find it quite alarming and I'm sad you won't be my wife.”

“What makes you think you can be so pretty? And what makes you think you can be so great? And what makes you think you can be so intelligent? And what makes you think you can be so far away?”

“What makes you think you can be so wonderful? And what makes you think you can be so keen? And what makes me think I can be so hurtful? And what makes me think I can be so mean?”

“Sometimes I feel like a cigarette, I'm wrapped in paper and I'm suffocating to death.”

“I don't want to be a cigarette anymore. I'll go to hell in my self death all day and night, so please just put me out.”

People Who Can Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World (2007)

“Rejoice despite the fact this world will hurt you. Rejoice despite the fact this world will kill you. Rejoice despite the fact this world will tear you to shreds. Rejoice because you’re trying your best”

“I'm afraid to leave the house. I'm as timid as a mouse. I'm afraid if I go out I'll outwear my welcome. I'm not a courageous man. I don't have any big lasting plans. I'm too cowardly to take a stand, I want to keep my nose clean. And it's sad to know that we're not alone in this and it's sad to know that there's no honest way out. In this life we lead, we could conquer everything if we could just get the brave to get out of bed in the morning.”

“And I give a thank-you to my father for not raising me, and I give a finger to my step-father for beating me, and I give props to myself for achieving, and god damn I’m glad that I survived, and god damn I’m surprised that I survived.”

“So I looked into your eyes and I saw the reflection of a coward you and I both hate very much and then I grabbed the knife and I let the blood out of your throat and I smashed those tiny mirrors inside of your skull.”

“If I don’t go to hell when I die I might go to heaven, might go to heaven. But probably not.”

“Just happy times and half assed rhymes and mimes because mimes are dears, but most of all I want no more tears.”

“No more racism. No more discrimination. No more fat dumb fucks keeping people out of our nation.”

“We’re all one big band across this land and we should sing in tune. Let us grow the balls to break the walls, we’ve got to do it soon.”

“And I hope our candles flicker and die so that our hearts don’t burn to the ground.”

“First we were babies, we're birthing and dying. Then we were children, we're playing and crying. And then we're teenagers and smoking and fucking. But now we're all grown up and we're sadly sighing.”

“And your manic depression, it comes and it goes. Your parasympathetic nervous system reacts and you're in fight or flight mode.”

“How's the world so small when the world is so large? And what made the world? Could I please speak to who's in charge? Everything is real but it's also just as fake. From your daughter's birthday party to your grandmother's wake.”

“I've tried to know which words to sing so many times. I tried to know which chord to play and I tried to make it rhyme. And I tried to find the key that all good songs are in. And I tried to find that notes to make that great, resounding din.”

“There's someone in your head waiting to fucking strangle you.”

“I've got essays, I've got finals due. I have got lots and lots of problems.”

“Welcome to this world, have as much fun as you would like while helping others have as much fun as you're having. Be kind to those you love and be kind to those you don't but for God's sake you gotta be kind.”

Can’t Maintain (2009)

“I wanna pick up the pieces and plant them in the ground. When a tree grows there I want to chop that tree down. Build it into a boat and float it in a lake. And with dynamite I will explode the thing that makes me make mistakes.”

“Sometimes I get so lonesome I can't breathe. Sometimes I get so scared that I can't speak. Sometimes I get so worried I can't hear my heartbeat. Anyway…”

“I wanna tear out my heart and give it away to a person more deserving one day. If all I see is the worst in everything that's all I'm gonna get, that's all I'm gonna get, that's all I'm gonna get.”

“And people freak me out. People make me scared. People make me so damn self-aware.”

“I get bronchitis twice a year at least. My lungs aren't the way they should be. And I smoke more than a mother fuckin chimney. I declare war on my body.”

“You will cough up crows that peck my eyes and I will do nothing but go blind.”

“We could live there together or I'll live alone, less happy but I'll live... unfortunately.”

“And no one will know how I truly feel ‘cause I can no longer differentiate between what is fake and what is real. I don't know how I feel.”

“And I will always appreciate bad days like this because they grant me a point of reference in regards to my happiness.”

“If the bridge that I was driving over collapsed while I was driving over it that may not be such a bad thing. I would finally meet my maker, I could meet the great creator, and I'd punch him for teaching me how to sing.”

“Don't know if I believe in god but sometimes I pray because the way I was raised keeps me afraid.”

“I hope I can forgive me for having the nerve to exist. I hope someone can help me make some sense of this.”

“Sense and sensibility and peaceful productivity, a pretty girl with broken wings is all that I desire. But there's so much hostility in all the things surrounding me. The awful glow of enmity is trying to stop my shine. So I try to look inwardly at all the things inside of me but sodomy and buggery keep bubbling to the top.”

“I met you once over the phone, you sounded sad and you seemed alone. You left me but I never left you. I never had the chance to.”

“If you spend all your heart on something that has died you are not alive and that can't be your life.”

Knife Man (2011)

“There's no one to blame. People are just fucking mean.”

“So if I see a penny on the ground, I leave it alone or fucking flip it. I'm a straight white male in America. I've got all the luck I need.”

“I've got a pile of broken mirrors and I'm walking under ladders and I'll spill a ton of salt because to me that doesn't matter.”

“You were dead by the time that I had found you. Your blood was spilled on the couch where we had first kissed. So I carried you west to the sea so I could wash you. Your body felt just like a back pack.”

“I hate whiny, fucking songs like this but I can't afford a therapist. Sorry guys, here's a solo.”

“Some days I feel like I'm the weakest and others the strongest. These days are the longest and I've got the weirdest feeling about this and I wanna go away for a while.”

“I wish I had a bullet big enough to fucking kill the sun. I'm sick of songs about the summer.”

“When you have no one, you are no one. Like I said, I used to work at the people pound. All these no ones clumped together, just like a human lost and found. If they left them all be someones there wouldn't be enough to go around. It's better for us all us if there are no ones. And I knew a lot of no ones round that time. They used to all be someones until something took their life and all their someones disappeared while they're stuck there waiting in a line. And for them now, no one seems to have the time.”

“They say ambition is an enemy of weakness and greatness is an enemy of fame.When I pick up my guitar and I try to write a song, I think of what my mentor used to say… “Who fucking gives a rat's ass Steve, just write a love song. Cus they'll keep your belly full and your wallet lined. Don't bother these nice people with your sad sack songs. If you ask me I think they're just a waste of time.””

“Inspiration is the best friend of my sorrow and sorrow is the best friend of my drink. Well I want to look myself in the eye tomorrow but I'm too worried of what other folk's will think.”

“And the troubles in my heart need to get let out. And the troubles in my heart need to escape. And I never liked writing poetry and I never liked doing pottery and God knows that I never learned to paint. So every now and then, I'll sing sad songs. Cus it keeps my spirit light and my conscience clean. And if you don't care to hear I don't mind if you go out for some air. Cus I'm happy that you're happier than me.”

“So I wish I had a cigarette for every time a perfect stranger asked me for a cigarette but I wonder what a cigarette will really do to help that person out. I wish to God I had some spare change for every time a perfect stranger asked me for some spare change but there's not enough spare change in the world to make such an empty gesture count.”

“You can hope it gets better and you can follow your dreams but hope is for presidents and dreams are for people who are sleeping.”

“You don't have it any better and you don't have it any worse. You're an irreplaceable human soul with your own understanding of what it means to suffer and that’s a huge bummer.”

“I'm afraid of the way I live my life. I'm afraid of the way I don't. I'm afraid of the things that I want to do but I won't. I'm afraid of God. I'm afraid to believe and I'm afraid of all the loved ones that I've made leave. I'm afraid that my dog doesn't love me anymore. I'm afraid of the social laziness that let Kitty Genovese die. And I'm afraid of the mob mentality that makes otherwise normal people go blind. I'm afraid of the way that the world works and I'm afraid of the words in my notebooks. I'm afraid that you all know that I am a pervert.”

“It's harder to be yourself than it is to be anybody else. I wish I were a little less of a coward but the big red bird that lives under the city doesn't give a damn about me and it dies every night. So I bought a knife. I am a knife.”

Rompilation (2012)

“I used to be a spiderman, I used to be a cowboy from hell, but not anymore. Now I'm just a clam and I live inside this shell inside this shell I am. God damn I hate my brain.”

“I'll dip my brain in medicine so that you can stand to be with me.”

“Give me your tired, give me your tired, give me your poor. When our government acts like this, I wonder what World War II was for and the rest of the country hates us more and more. Lady Liberty is not a whore.”

“This is not a protest, it's a tortoise slowly pushing through a race. I hope the tortoise keeps its patience while the hare continues to pepper-spray its face.”

“There is no enemy, there's only people that also love their families and they're scared that they won't have enough long after they are deceased. But how much money do they need? Love turns into fear, and fear turns into greed. There is no enemy, there's only dummies that also love their families.”

“And this is not a phase, it's just a matter of time, with diligence and peacefulness, you will reach them and you will change their minds. If you stay there long enough, they'll start to see you.”

“And when you pushed my face in shit how could that have made you feel like a man or like a monster. It's your fault that I can't tell the difference.”

“In the evening I try songwriting. I'm self loathing, but I love singing. I'll try escaping these evil feelings but they keep coming, they keep coming…”

“So the baby's gonna have a daddy, that's wonderful news. He won't be the greatest parent but neither will you! Gotta get out while you can, otherwise you're screwed. Your legs are broken and your eyes are black and blue.”

“And smoking is like hiring a hitman for five dollars a day, and as cool as that is, I don't wanna keep dying this way.”

Christmas Island (2014)

“Shoot him again ‘cause I can see his soul dancing.”

“If you give it to me I’ll give it back much harder. If you treat me like a son, then I’ll treat you like a daughter. Everyone has a future, everyone has a soul, everyone has a heart, they have a mind, they have control.”

“The Coffin Dancer dances like he has something the prove because he does. He sleeps a couple hours in the morning, hates the morning when he wakes up.”

“The Coffin Dancer dances like he wants to make a friend, but he does not.”

“Getting naked and playing with guns. There's a gerbil in the microwave, a baseball bat in everyone. Sharing kisses and building a bomb. We'll set it off like Microsoft in '94.”

“McDonald's PlayPlace before the Xbox, cake frosting, sweet talking, bedroom wall, covered in knives, touching God, burning shit. We'll make a wish and take a trip to Future Town like our daddy did.”

“Have you ever wanted to be, have you ever wanted to see someone better in the mirror? Have you ever wanted to go, have you ever wanted to know somewhere greener, somewhere cleaner. I bet you got something beautiful in mind.”

“I can’t handle astounding works of beauty. I think I like my pretty pretty ugly but the beautiful soul I witnessed in that movie was an entirely different kind of overwhelming. It was a dog that won’t stop barking. Like a cut that never stops bleeding. Arizona sunsets in the early evening. Or a grown man inconsolably weeping.”

“I am the Kool-Aid stains on the mouth of a kid whose name is most likely Cody. He had a juice box for breakfast and he carries a stick that he most likely found in the alley. Cody doesn't have friends and his parents hate each other and he wants to find a better way to love his family and after school he hangs out in the abandoned house behind the Arby's.”

The Bible 2 (2016)

“Oh, I love you cause I love you cause I can.”

“On your last night at Saint Mary's you were way too intoxicated to breathe. So I used your ribs as ladders and I climbed up on your chest and I jumped up and down just like a trampoline.”

“Confused and rude. Such a special kind of way to be cruel.”

“If I were one of the things, I'd be american garbage. The most beautiful thing. The most beautiful american garbage you have ever seen.”

“No more shame, no more fear, no more dread.”

“And if you don't want to feel the feeling, no one should ever make you feel the feeling.”

“I thought I saw you before I knew who you were.”

“I just wanted to rage but all I got was tired”

“I showed him all the books that I was raised on. Your Madeleine L'Engle(s) and D'Aulaires' Mythologies.”

“And his eyes became a beacon, an LCD projector, broadcasting all my memories in a clear and vivid picture. His tongue became a staircase, his uvula - The knocker of an ornate wooden door that lead me straight into my future. His throat became a hallway with a thousand baby pictures and I became forgiveness, I transformed into the closure that I lost when I learned about the tragedy of all of us. I lost it when I learned about the tragedy of all of us.”

Good Luck Everybody (2019)

“If you don't give it to them they'll starve to death and that's alright.”

“I've got the normalization blues, this isn't normal, this isn't good.”

“I'm detached and I'm distracted, all keyed up but unproductive, vacillating between being all excited and disgusted and then dozing lackadaisically in this bubble where I've made my mental home. Connection's more important now than it ever was, but I'd rather be alone.”

“And when we talk about the president, we're either pissed off or we're giggling about an atrocity he's committing or some stupid shit he's tweeting. He's a symptom and a weapon of the evil men who really run the show. The ones who melt down human beings into money like a cruel Sorcerer's Stone.”

“This is the golden age of dickotry, probably the last golden age of anything, and the ugliest word in the English language is anthropocene. Good luck, everybody. Good luck.”

“But before that, you'll be a doormat, for every vicious narcissist in the world. Oh how they'll screw you, all up and over, then feed you silence for dessert.”

“I'm sorry that you have to have a body, filled with infection, one hundred scabs singing in unison, eyes and hands, sometimes bullets, uninvited, passing through us.”

“Oh to be awake for such a shitty dream. A bullet in the head of every decent thing.”

“The lake of dead black children that America created is getting fuller than the founding Fathers even wanted. The ghost of great America was underestimated and now it rages like a cold sore on the lip of this dumb nation. Again we've slipped inside a pit of absolute despair. That's where we live.”

“Rewarding our worst cruelty, they destroyed our shared reality, and now they upsell us our dignity like some fucked VIP package.”

“There is no absolute, these days there's no such thing as truth and you don't need to be a dick about it.”

“I'm a burnout and a fool, oblivious to all I do. I move my lips when I read and breathe with my mouth open, wide open. Timid, meek, and cruel, this is the best that I can do. I need to speak my truth, yet here I'm broken wide, wide open. My resentment, big and strong, and all the things that I can't change. They'll buckle me beneath the weight. I will drive myself insane with all the things that I can't change. I hate all the things that I can't change.”

“You're a loudmouth and a tool, and as it turns out I am too, and you don't need to be a dick about it.”

“Because I know that you know what I need more than me and I know that you need me more than that.”

“For all the pussies you grab and the children you lock up in prison, for all the rights you roll back and your constant stream of racism, for all the poison you drip in my ear, for all your ugly American fear. I wrote you this beautiful song called Psychic Warfare.”

“I hate you with all of my heart. I hate you with all of my art.”

“I went back to the desert, little Midwest in me, and now I am colder than I used to be. I live in a fortress the shape of my body, and now there's a coldness, and it's shaped like me. Now I don't suffer any more bullshit gladly. Even though everything's bullshit now, here in 2019 and you can bet it's gonna be a bunch of bullshit too out in sweet 2020 or whenever this album's released.”

[severalbakuras]

i have made it.... i can watch the first episode of season threeeee.

i might do one episode a day to make it feel like less time until s4 comes out.

here we goooo

no new intro pffffff

red space best space

the beep noise kinda sounds like a heart monitor.

allura my girl <3

good speech coran

that’s a lot of blades are they like the shock troops for voltron now? are they robotic?

WE ARE FIGHTING DREAMERS TAKAMI WO MEZASHITE

another sick slow mo shot for lance (he looks like seasick after tho with all those blue lines)

THAT’S MY MAN HUNK

slightly less impressive alien designs like just spikes and doggie ears but at least they’re colourful.

‘oh hunk!’ joke counter: 1

wait so how long has it been since season 2 then bc kolivan seems surprised to learn that they can’t form voltron anymore like dude you know this right?? you should’ve had the ‘this cannot stand!!’ thing before this mission i think??

i feel like this suspicion towards the blades is not going to end well.

why do i feel like pidge hasn’t slept for weeks.

ARE THOSE KAMINA GLASSES CORAN

noah fence pidge but i don’t think matt would be happy to know you weren’t safe at home with mum just sayin

‘oh hunk!’: 2

keeeith ;A; TELL US HOW HE MET SHIRO I WANNA KNOW

HAGGAR BABE

“but he totally needs me looming over him it’s not creepy”

oOOH NEW GIRL. and she can stealthmode interesting.

i don’t think this counts as an oh hunk moment cooking is good encouraging boys to cook is good. (i know the #discourse on professional/celebrity chefs skewing male and shit but like for normal kids it’s a life skill that isn’t taught enough and especially to boys so yeah)

just... a galaxy? that is a v. small empire like i know galaxies are Huge but you could try harder zarkon sargeras has most of the universe down or on his side at this point along with like all the gods who created it (until they need a filler raid/instance boss lol).

fuck i should write my au thoughts on a warcraft crossover at some point i want some poor unlucky galra soldiers to crash into ice crown and find out why you don’t want to build anything out of saronite. i want allura (and coran) to meet velen and they can connect to him as a fellow leader escaping genocide and i want pidge and hunk to lose their minds at all the magi-tech and gnome vs goblin technology ‘war’. idk what lance and keith would do i guess keith would see if there’s any blacksmiths on azeroth who might’ve encountered a blade like his although he’s kind of the spelunking exploring type i bet either the explorer’s league or the reliquary would happily poach him to check out titan ruins. lance would probably... idk my first instinct is that he’d head to goldshire on the basis of considering himself a Cool Dude with an interest in cute girls but he’d probably take two selfies right at the front door to the inn and then immediately leave and spend the night sat by the lake feeding murlocs.

did i mention that some of my favourite aliens were the ones who had organic bodies and robotic voices or was it vice versa either way more of those please.

well keith’s not wrong tbh. tone’s harsh but he’s lost like The Most Important person in the world to him so i can’t blame him for getting upset. like also this dude asks to see voltron like he’s asking to see the new wheels on his coworker’s car or something.

and like. they do need to fight for themselves too like the symbol can live forever but even before they could form voltron it couldn’t be everywhere at once. voltron’s a robot he rusts and corrodes probably one day he will need to go to a space garage for his MOT or to fix his tail light and everyone will have to take care of themselves for a while.

so public opinion of haggar is not good if these two highly ranked generals are chitchatting in a galran sports bar.

exiled? lotor what did you do.

‘he fights alongside his men and isn’t entirely racist ugh what a twat’

(i’m not denying that he’s a twat because look at his fucking design and ‘permitting’ conquered worlds to live in pretty much the same way as they did pre-conquering was exactly what gengis khan did to keep control of his territories iirc i’m just saying these guys sound so petty hahaha)

he’s prettyyyy. fucking shit goddamnit. i hope you have beefy friends for me to love bc i have enough problematic prettyboy faves.

(fuckin give me some problematic prettygirl girls and beefy girls one day all i have for the latter is jasper and all i have for the former is sylvanas)

got that kingly presence i’ll give him th WHAT WAIT NO. WARCRAFT ORCS. LIKE ALL THIS HONOR IN COMBAT AND MIGHT = RIGHT AND HOW BEING A SNEAKY BINT IS SHITTY ETC ETC. dude heralds the warsong.

lotor you better not start any mak’goras i’ll be watching you.

(i’ll stop with the warcraft now)

(that’s a lie)

DREAMWORKS... HOW DID YOU KNOW...

hey invisigirl

can’t tell if the cat’s the general with their meat puppet or a cool faceless alien or an alien with a mask

youuuuu look like keith. like dead to rights that’s styled hair blue keith with lipstick.

lotor is possibly the most anime of the whole cast at this point.

he’s got lines under his eyes like he just wants to go to bed and honestly #mood

oh you sneaky bitch lotor. now how did he meet those four i wonder they seem to like him on a personal level given by the smiles. like they’re all stated to be half-galra kinda. so our options are the unpleasant garona halforcen-esque one which makes the galra Really Fucked Up (probably not) or the lotor style conquering which is Still Kinda Fucked Up (this one is the discourse bait and a little more likely) or like lotor tracks down civilian populations of galra on non-galra home planets that might not even know there’s a war going on all the way on the other side of the galaxy and recruit from there.

like say............... EARTH, MAYBE????????????

(LISTEN LOTOR MAKES A POINT OF STOCKING HIS TEAM WITH HALF GALRA PEOPLE.)

(KEITH IS HALF GALRA.)

(i’m just SAYIN.)

(d. do i ship lotor and keith. am i one of Those People. i mean i have my ot4 of keith/shay/allura/hunk which is The Best (and i’m literally the only person who ships that so my city now) but i’m allowed one incredibly shit ship per fandom right?)

(what is the ship name i hope it’s leith so i can make leaf puns but it might already be in use as an alternative to klance)

(can’t be as bad as jaina/garrosh right?????)

be still my heart is dreamworks going to let keith and lance have an emotional moment without immediately throwing a joke about it in afterwards?

... kinda? it’s a good step for lance but i don’t think it really helps keith out. like ‘oh man wasn’t shiro the best? now i didn’t know him anything like you did and i totally hero-worshipped him and i think this is what he’d think’.

allura gets it though good job a+ mirroring his words to pidge back when she tried to leave voltron too iirc.

new black paladin im not.... ready,.,.,.,.,..,,,.

[daggerdove]

A really long ramble about rewriting SitD and why sometimes ideas just stick with you and refuse to die.

I’m going to take a break and write in first person, since this is me talking about my experiences writing this story after all, it makes sense.

To set the stage, I am fourteen years old and watching The Lost Boys for what is probably the fourth or fifth time within the month of June.  I latch on to movies sometimes, for a while it was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I remember watching How to Train your Dragon on close to repeat, sitting in front of Practical Magic for hours at a time.

In the summer of 2011 it was The Lost Boys.  You see I had come out of my twilight phase before this point, I was buried in The Tale of the Body Thief, in Daniel’s unwilling surrender, in Vampire Academy because the struggle of Rose Hathaway was so endlessly interesting to me.  In Shattered Mirror and In the Forests of Night, because Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was barely older than me when she published her first books.

I had written vampire stories before.

Christa Morgan was still the sharp tongued huntress she had always been, fighting for her life and trying not to let her best friend die like the rest of her family had.  But I had hit a rock with her story long before this point, a mountain pass I could not find my way through.  

Aria and Melody were on hold while I thought over the consequences of a world where eye color could denote whether or not you’d killed someone you were related to.

Then I was buried in fanfiction to extend this universe that there seemed to be so little of.  My obsessions grew far and I was hungry for whatever was written well, though my standards at the time were admittedly low.  I’ve revisited some of those stories lately, to find them holding up surprisingly well.  

So I sat down to extend the universe myself.

Alexandra Blackwood was born of that endeavor, and like me at this start, she was fourteen.  Turning 15 on September 9th.  She wasn’t a self insertion, how Christa started out, she was brash and scared and all around a pretty broken kid.  I’d settled on her upbringing being shit from the start and I pulled from relatives and friends lives to give life to how these things had affected her.  There wasn’t a lot to go off of at first, it was generic as they come when fanfiction sprung from this movie.  Another kid goes off to Santa Carla and falls in step with the boys.

In this case the only original Lost Boy I kept was David, since in the novelization of the movie there was a post-end scene of him having turned a handful of surf nazis, one being Shane who would move up to Luna Bay with his own crew of exceptionally violet buddies.  I liked the idea of having a new group of people, especially since while I felt comfortable in David in the way I always feel comfortable writing those of questionable morals and exceptional cruelty: I didn’t feel comfortable in my abilities to capture Marko, Paul, and Dwayne.

Making people scream over my lack of ability to do so was not something I wanted.

And thus Eric, Kyle, and Jesse were born.

Only two of them survived into this edition of the rewritten mess, only one of them stayed in his semi-original state (Jesse, my green haired ball of energy).  I wrote the story very fast for my pace at the time, I flew through chapters like it was nothing until about 14 or 15 in.

That’s when things started getting weird.

See by this point I was working simultaneously on this mess of a fanfiction, and writing a companion that had the copyrighted materials removed, hence David becoming Daniel, and Santa Carla becoming Twin Lakes (a little town barely a mile across just below Santa Cruz, in case anyone wondered).  I changed the story very little in the first rewrite, which I have since trashed and can no longer see the light of day, though it may still exist on a flash drive somewhere labeled ‘Safe - 23036’ which was the word count at the time.  Pretty impressive for a 14 year old who had never written more than 10k before and that being over the course of years rather than a handful of months.

I had a cheerleader though.  There was this woman in Australia who got very attached to both versions of my story, and needed something to read after putting her kids to bed.  So whenever I hit a rut I reminded myself I had someone waiting for this, waiting and excited, and forward I plowed.

Back to things getting, weird.  The longer Alex waited to feed the less cohesive her mind became, she had dreams that lasted days and hallucinations about real people that she hadn’t even met.  Things that, if I remember correctly, still got cut from the last-most-recent rewrite, the one before this one, the one with a little over 2 dozen chapters and a handful of alternate endings and off shoots because gods know I can’t make up my mind.

Well, scratch that, looks like I did include that weird bullshit in the last rewrite.  Go me, those chapters are absolutely a confusing pile of shit.  But apparently I wanted to keep them.  That rewrite happened in, oh I dunno, 2014 or so?  Maybe it was 2013, I think it might have been.  I don’t know for sure, but I do know it got a huge overhaul and moved further away from The Lost Boys so that it could stand better on its own.

By this time I think I had changed Alex’s age to match mine again?  16 or 17 or something around there, just because I remember going back and reading and thinking ‘What dumb fuck 14 year old lets herself join a bunch of fuckin vampires, and what vampires allow that???’  So I upped her age a bit, which I’ve done again in the current version, to match my own age, again, making her 20 going on 21.

I remember the first time I finished these stories, it was maybe halfway through January of 2012 when I started the sequel, having set up for it at the end back in December.  Kayla Raes was born of probably the least thought out romance of all time, rest assured I’ve built up Alex and Isaac’s relationship much more this time.  But at this time they were just, together, because reasons?  I guess?

Now more than half that characters in this damn book are queer, so whatever.

Anyways.

Kayla Raes, who inexplicably has David/Daniel’s eyes and doesn’t think to question it when these fuckers show up and offer her immortality.

Which she takes and then after realizing that she’s still being controlled, kills the FUCK out of David/Daniel and unfortunately Isaac dies in the process and there’s some bullshit going on there but we don’t need to go into “Free” I really don’t follow that ending anymore.

Originally Alex either killed Isaac or escaped with him in the end.

Because I didn’t even touch on the fact that her parents were worthy targets.

It didn’t even really come up until I did I one shot AU of my own damn story called “Feral” where the boys would just feed people vampire blood, drop them back in the streets, give them a week to kill someone and if they didn’t, kill them.  Alex attacked a woman in the streets, demanded answers from Daniel, originally she turned here, like she killed the woman and that was the end of it.  I wasn’t sure where I was bringing the story from that point.  But it did spawn the beginnings of this rewrite.

Of Alex becoming a vampire without killing Isaac.

Now, shoot forward to what is the very beginnings of 2017, I haven’t so much as touched this story in years, I do occasionally re-read it for the parts I enjoy.  The scene in San Francisco for the sake of cementing Alex’s fear of trying to run away from Daniel, the image of his hair soaked red and the bones of that last girl cracking under his hands.  The opening of Alex discovering the whole vampire thing, of almost killing Isaac in the shop, shaking and calling 911 and not quite knowing what else to do or what she’s done.  Jesse leaving to go find his sister Sarah after years of her being a missing persons case, finding her dead just outside Chicago with a broken arm and two bullets in her head.  Things I still loved the descriptions of, things that still flowed the way I felt they did the first time I’d written them.

But oh gods the mess that was most of the story.

I opened with a clean slate.

With one single chapter written.

Alex discussing the possibility of killing her parents with Daniel.  She’s been fighting for months now, and the pain is so bad most of the time she can barely leave bed.  Daniel is emphasizing her lack of time, and how worried they are getting about her. By this time the ‘they’ is different, still Jesse, but Eric and Kyle are gone and there is now a girl named Moira, who is small and fiery and slow to like people.  

They talk about her parents, about how nobody could blame her for wanting to see them dead and gone.  She’s afraid to go back and Daniel offers to kill them for her if it turns out she can’t bring herself to do it.

They go, she kills them, everything is fine.

That was how this rewrite started.

That was the only thing I had cemented in my mind.  The vision of her obliterating everything that had caused her pain in the past and using it to move forward.  To start a new life.

I also moved this shit to the east coast so that I was more familiar with the setting.  Since I’m a Vermonter and I know Maine and New Hampshire pretty damn well, especially the coastal parts of Maine.  She did still spend time in Santa Cruz, but I left that to memory.