#Grieving is Normal

[scramratz]

[vamp-bites]

Tfw u allow urself to grieve ur mother for the first time in 150 years

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

This is the most haunting Gabe ever looked

[arabella-strange]

just an average day and then I remember that William Shatner pressed to produce a no-dialogue short film revisiting the major moments in the life of Jim Kirk – with CGI young Kirks, approval from Paramount and ST and the Nimoy estate, Michael Giacchino score, named after a TNG episode about Spock, on and on – purely so he could have it culminate in older Kirk sitting before a sunset and holding older Spock's hand together in wordless peace, together, and then all oxygen leaves my body and I am deceasèd

[distant-screaming]

natalie goodman. god. the way gabe haunts diana + dan in a visual, literal way but he haunts natalie in a more metaphorical way - looming over her, a shadow that she cannot seem to escape from but also not something that physically haunts her. because, yeah, natalie never met him, she has nothing to imagine him from, but also like... he died. he's dead. she outlived her older brother. she's replaced him (they had her to replace him). (and yet she hasn't, not really, she never will, because there is still a tiny onesie for a boy lying in a basket and she didn't know her brother's name for years and her dad's gaze focuses on a spot to her left, sometimes, and she knows neither of them see her).

[eightofpents]

adrien: father doesnt love me because he's always gone

everyone: fuck gabe im gonna kill him for hurting this boy

me: noooo dont waste your time with emilie trying to keep her forever T-T

[rains-starlight]

(xavier ramble that i posted on discord and now u get to read here <3)

so. my main faves are xavier (main), rafayel, and caleb. and i was thinking... what's pulling me to xavier over the other two? (especially caleb LMAO) i feel like i'd commonly go with the outspoken clingy dramatic boys (raf) or the 'childhood best friend' archetype (caleb) but something about xavier captivated me.

when i first started looking to him, i felt like there was waaay more than meets the eye for his character, and that's intentional, since he wants to live a quiet life, but has so much history behind him.

aside from differences in personalities and preferences (i love raf but irl im not a sea or seafood person, and i love caleb but.. but nothing. xavier just pulls me in more LMAO), xavier to me truly has that sneak attack for your heart.

he's awkward, and silly, and insanely powerful on the battlefield. he loves reading comics, playing video games, and being delusional about his cooking skills. he's a rock that you can always depend upon in a quiet life. he's cheeky and gets easily jealous, but would much rather pout and be sulky than direct that to you. its adorable. as xavier and caleb are jokingly deemed the 'possessive' duo, caleb's possessiveness to me could go left (affectionate, i know why), whereas i feel as though xavier's stems from just wanting to capitalize on your attention. he has someone in his life that he cares deeply about, its only natural for him to be a little clingy about it.

on top of the fact that he's just a good friend in of itself, keeping an eye on you and making sure you take care of yourself without crossing a boundary. he loves being around you so much so that he admires the person you are, and wants to be that type of person himself. he relishes in being recognized by you in a world where he's only ever known as an entity to be utilized, rather than a person who has feelings and passions.

'this is the first time someone's asked me to play support' he says, which sounds normal at face value, but its definitely something to be unpacked: he's not used to being the person that supports, he's used to being the leader, the strong hunter that needs no one to finish the job, the crown prince that's above all else, the leader of the backtrackers, the elusive lumiere… now he just gets to be xavier that supports his friends. he thinks of himself as a nobody, someone who used to be 'everything', not out of personhood, but out of necessity. being able to be seen by someone he loves despite everything is by far the greatest joy in life he could ever have. and i love him SOOOO MUCH FOR IT!! im sure all of the lads love mc and they make their life better by being in it, but for me, there's something so comforting and lovely about xavier growing into a person he wants to be because someone he loves makes him want to figure out who he is for himself. because the person that loves him will love him at his core regardless of who he decides to be. thats why he gets jealous because mc looks to lumiere, and im sure she's picked up on that too. he loathes the idea that she loves someone that isnt him. obviously, lumiere IS him, but it's not 'him' in the sense that it's a persona, an idea, a hero. xavier… simply thinks of himself as a man who quietly lives in his apartment and goes to work like everyone else. he doesnt have a tether to anything other than just wanting to live life the way he wants to, after living so many lives that were not given by choice. at least… not until mc.

but as an addendum to this rambling, he's just!!! great and i love his personal journey and how it intertwines with mc at the core of it. im happy he gets to be in a world where he can live a quiet life!! and his joy is by far something that leads me to him over the other lads.

-- (i love him in his entirety and i think i havent found that spark with the other lads yet. caleb is a close second though, his relationship with mc is so silly and they have such a sweet bond that im sure he cherishes. his devotion, affection, and love languages are to die for.

but i think xavier's way of being there for you and picking up the cracks when you cant or before you even realize appeals to me more. thinking about precious bonfire clips i saw and how he took every opportunity to stay by and support mc and how he looked after her, made sure she was having fun, and allowed her to use him as a scapegoat so that she didn't get burnt out or the call where he saw she was alone at a team building thing at the bar and offered to leave with her since she wasnt really keen on hanging out to begin with he's just. so sweet. hes always thinking about the small things and wants his favorite person to be happy because it makes him happy :> this doesnt even go into the smaller nuances or traits that i love about him. maybe i'll do a post about it or just how personality wise i feel like if i were to bond with anyone irl xavier would be #1 in a landslide.)

[teekays]

good afternoon to thrunheads only

[shuuen-no-cimory]

Although, such behaviors were deranged, Yoshihide still hold endearment much like any other human.

(Hell Screen, Ryunosuke Akutagawa)

[thecorefrisk]

Snippets I will eventually string together (will be updated & edited as time goes on):

‘ “Why did you… never present? When you were with us?”

Sable stills and stiffens. Hands, hands, hands- too warm, too hot, too heavy- they grabbed at her, too gentle, too gentle for the crime being committed—

She forces her fingers to continue on with their petting, running her nails through the cat’s fur in a manner that was more for her than for him. “What do you mean?”

Sable could feel Damian’s eyes upon her. She could feel how they were trained onto her figure, rooting around for anything in her body language that could tell him everything without further questioning.

There wasn’t.

He put his paintbrush down gently, turning to face her. His feet touched the ground now instead of swinging mid-air on the tall chair he insisted he would grow into. (And he had.)

“Well..” the boy began carefully. Usually, he prefers a blunter approach, to cut to the chase and not waste any valuable time, but… that approach wasn’t the one that worked on her, was it? “You have been here much longer than I have.”

Sable carefully lures out any defensiveness or snappish feel as soon as she felt it rise in her body. He doesn’t deserve that. And it would just be suspicious. Another reason for him to prod. “Yes?”

Sable doesn’t like when Damian got like this. Gentle voiced, careful, as though a bomb was ticking just meters away from the two and she had the detonator in her hands. And he didn’t know if he could trust her with it.

“And yet…” he pauses, rethinking his words. Hesitating. She felt like snapping at him. But she doesn’t. Because she isn’t an animal. (She can control herself.) “When the time for your presentation should have come… it didn’t. We were all awaiting it and yet somehow- somehow you were… still a pup at the age of sixteen.”

She hums, her gaze casted down onto the fur against her palms. “I don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t get to ask my mother many questions about the age of her presentation. It could have been the environment, the air of Gotham isn’t exactly the cleanest. Or perhaps she had been a… late bloomer as I was.”

Damian’s fists clench in his lap. “A late bloomer…”

It was likely something in the way she had said it. The emptiness of her voice. The detached way she spoke of it all. But they both knew she was lying, avoiding the real answer.

But, for now, Damian doesn’t push and Sable didn’t continue.

He turns back to his painting. She continues messing with Alfred.

Neither shared another word for a long time after that. ‘

‘ She lifted the head up to Ra’s’ eyes, her glare locked onto his green, green eyes. She tossed it over to him. It fell only a foot or two away from him and rolled over lay limp and bloody at the man’s feet.

“Give me back my brother.” She raised her stolen blade. Though it need not be clarified, Sable still raised her sword in a silent show of what she was willing to do if he did not abide by her demand. ‘

‘ In Wayne Manor, Sable always felt like… she was on the outside looking in. She wasn’t a vigilante, and she didn’t help them perform those duties like Alfred and Barbara did. She was simply.. there. A ghost in her own home, barely a whisper in the wind.

There would always be jokes she had to force herself to laugh at but didn’t get because she simply wasn’t there. Arguments she didn’t know the origin of. Recitals and parent-teacher conferences missed for something she’d never truly be able to understand. Times where she’d have to clench her fists in her lap and smile as her little brother walked off into the Gotham night and what could be his death.

Sable was ashamed to admit it, even silently, but she often found herself having to stomp down jealous, frustrated tears as one of her siblings had to gently correct her on someone’s allergies or informed her of some hobby or thing they did that they never found the time to share with her. Another thing she had to find out from someone else.

It shouldn’t have felt like such a big deal to her but it was. It was just so frustrating— putting in so much effort and time and love into them only to never actually be a part of their lives.

There are portraits she’s not in, family photos she wasn’t there to be a part of, shenanigans that they never thought to include her in.

It was childish of her, but yes, she was jealous.

Jealous of not only the bonds they had— bonds that Sable seemed to be entirely separate from— but of other families who never had a child running around unattended. The families who made sure to include every member. The families who made a point to make it to school events. The families who simply… got each other.

Because no matter what she did, what she tried, she always found a way to mess up. If she makes a pie, someone’s allergic to one of the ingredients. If she tries to ‘put herself out there’ and invite someone to hang out with her, they always seem to slip through her fingers.

(Sometimes Sable wondered if she was simply too boring for them. Too bland. That maybe they’d stick around if she was someone worth giving attention to.)

(She tried to be fun. Took on more hobbies than she could handle, went into more competitions than she could handle, hell— she started figure skating.

But she couldn’t pretend to be someone she wasn’t. She couldn’t become someone else.)

It wasn’t to say that she didn’t know them at all, that they were strangers to her. She did know them— it just never seemed like she ever knew them enough.

It was as though they all had this secret language and somewhere along the chaos that had been her joining the family, they’d simply forgotten to teach her. And now it was too awkward to ask to learn.

She’d say completely normal things and get weird looks, she’d try to show affection to one of her siblings and they’d reel away from her without explanation as to why as though she carried some deadly disease yet they’d welcome it other times, their scent full of distress or shock, just- anything she did was always wrong even when she got it right, and if she got it right, it was only for that moment.

But, again, it wasn’t like they were complete strangers to one another. Sable is close with Tim. Or was, at least. Sable had been dumped onto her father just around the time he’d lost a child while Tim had more so… simply appeared one day. And suddenly they were friends because what else were they supposed to become when they were simply two people in a grieving man’s house.

Tim was usually the one with the more direct approach towards Bruce. Sable, on the other hand, needed to be gentler because looking at her seemed a little more painful than it was to look at Tim.

(She had only found out just why when she’d decided to explore the attic and found an old portrait of a smaller version of her father along with a two smiling people— man and woman— who looked out into the world with kind, loving eyes.

Sable had walked out of that attic with the knowledge that, to Bruce, she was just another person to grieve in the end. That she looked too much like a dead woman for him to ever look at her properly, for him to look her in the eye and see her and not the mother that never truly got to raise him.)

But eventually, Bruce got better. He still had his moments, but he didn’t need them to be his crutches anymore.

And with that, slowly, Tim’s life became devoured by one she couldn’t be a part of. For as much as he had, at the start, told her pretty much everything about what it was like to be Batman’s Robin, he grew to be more suspicious, private. Secretive.

(Sable could do nothing but watch as the life of a vigilante swallowed every other part of her brother’s life, leaving behind only a domino mask and a baton ready to be wielded at even an ally at a second’s notice.)

So, it was safe to say that they weren’t as close as they used to be. (To the fault of neither party.)

And, to the almost offensive surprise of the rest of her family, Sable was rather close to her little brother— the pup of the family. Damian.

They were only half-siblings, and when they first met, Damian had been more inclined to spew threats and call her a ‘bastard child’ more often than not, but it seemed that patience actually did win out when it came to the boy. Despite his animosity, and her own slight and irrational envy, Damian and her did develop a genuine sibling bond.

It was a bit like approaching a stray cat. You had to make sure you looked the least bit threatening to them before deciding to approach them.

And having food in hand worked. But that worked on any person with an appetite. (She’s sure Jason only comes to Sunday brunch because he knows good food is guaranteed.)

It took a while, and some effort, but they did get to the point where Damian felt safe enough to sleep in her room during those nights that Dick wasn’t over or couldn’t answer calls. It took a lot of trust from him to allow himself to let his guard down around her, and she’s very proud.

But even with the close relationship they had, there were still things she didn’t know. Places she didn’t get postcards of, paintings he never told her about.

And boundaries he only knew how to enforce through violence.

Sometimes, people didn’t want to be touched. Sable understood that. Sometimes, she doesn’t feel like giving nor receiving any hugs.

But it was hard to guess how a person didn’t like to be touched. Where they didn’t like to be touched.

It had been an accident. They had been in the kitchen where she had been showing him how to make a stew that she only really knew how to make because she had to run the Scottish table during Culture week despite clearly not being Scottish.

She had gone to pat his head, it looked like she was reaching for his neck, and suddenly, there was a knife to her arm.

His face had dropped in thinly veiled shame and horror, the kitchen knife shaking in his grip as he pulled it away from her as to not accidentally slice her arm.

So she stopped patting him on the head. Then, she stopped reaching for his hand so he didn’t get lost in the crowd. Then, she stopped touching him at all.

And even when she was doing nothing, she did it wrong.

‘

[buff-muffin]

Thinkem bout a modern AU where Ace and Sabo obviously being two or three years older in school, were experiencing things years before Luffy would. Things like prom, grad and all that. But because he could COME to these events they did their best to get him envolved as much as possible so he wouldn’t feel left out. And when years rolled around, Ace and Sabo are well into collage each on different sides of the country. They still come down to help pick out an outfit for him and be there for his graduation. After all he was there for them.

Jus…

Luffy manages to graduate by the skin of his teeth and a LOT of work from all of the east blue gang. No teacher thought he would make it and it really was a moment of celebration. And as Luffy takes that paper thingy, and looks over the crowd. He thinks if only for a moment, no one is there. Gramps is Busy, Makino is running the bar, Dadan and the others of the Share house all have jobs they gotta go to.

Then all of a sudden he hears the loudest cheers in an almost quiet room. And there are his brothers, Dadan trying to wrestle them down and Makino laughing with Woop Slap. His brothers from schools hours away. His brothers who are in collage and following there dreams. His brothers are here just like they promised three years ago when they graduated. Completely forgetting to thank the teacher, he runs down the steps and Usopp has to stop him from going to them right away since there were still other students. So the rest of the ceremony he’s sitting on his chair like he’s going to explode quietly whispering to all them “ My brothers are here!! They made it!!” And all of them can’t even be mad cause Luffy deserves it for all the effort he puts in

[giiyus]

i still can't get over how genius the lyrics are in next to normal. like aftershocks and light?? i still quote lines from those songs because of how beautiful they are

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

Y'ALL IM ACTUALLY CRYING OVER RE:DRACULA

ive been listening to the audiobook on road trips and i just got back from a con this weekend so i hoped to finish it on the drive back

When i tell you. That the finale battle where Quincey died just at the moment of sunset. Where Giancarlo Hererra wrung my heart out like a wet rag with his acting in those few lines he got.

That that scene not only finished at the exact moment that i got home. But that it was also exactly at sunset.

I wasn't just listening to the audiobook yall I was there

[alienatedbug]

Now that Yaitabashi’s interview is out, I hope more people stop dumbing him down to ‘boy in a dress’

[palamedespoetry]

actually i'm not keen on discussing the plow™ or whether odysseus was "justified" for killing palamedes or not because it's the only story people talk about in regards to palamedes at the expense of. everything else. so it's basically annoyed my interest out of the subject i think

[nekhcore]

so. about that patch 3.4,