#I have started dozens of stuff that never goes anywhere

[sylkiddsey]

Proving A Point

Sylvie fixes Matt a drink and joins him in the living room. Julia’s been going through a sleep regression, and they have both realized they aren’t falling asleep anytime soon. Instead of struggling to get her to sleep, they’ve decided to let her stay up.

It’s easier and this way, they can spend extra time together. The boys are both staying with friends, so they like to take advantage of the quiet.

“She’s out,” Matt whispers.

The problem is, she fell asleep in her swing chair. They both know if they move her, she’ll wake up screaming.

“At least she’s finally sleeping,” Sylvie replies, sitting on the couch. “We’ll just keep her there for now.”

Matt climbs off the floor and joins her. He grabs her legs and swings them into his lap, massaging her calf. “I think that’s wise.”

Sylvie cuddles into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I miss this.”

“Staying up till three in the morning?”

She chuckles. “No. Not that. You and me. You know, just us together without any distractions.”

Matt kisses her. “Me too. Now that we have all this down time, I’ve been meaning to ask how the new candidate has been?”

Sylvie grabs his hand, intertwining their fingers. “He’s great. He seems really nice and he’s also freakishly strong.”

“What do you mean freakishly strong?” Matt asks.

“The guy is very muscular, Matt. He’s jacked. He practically lifted a car on his own,” Sylvie explains.

It was super impressive. The new guy, Denny, isn’t even in his thirties yet and he’s already ripped. She didn’t know a human could be that strong.

Matt scrunches his face. “You sound so surprised a firefighter could be so muscular.”

“Trust me, you’d see where I’m coming from if you met him. He bench pressed my partner at the station like it was nothing. He did like fifty reps, Matt.”

Denny offered to lift her, but she politely declined. It felt too awkward when she barely knows the guy.

Matt squeezes her thigh, grazing his fingers against the skin exposed from her night shorts riding up. “Should I be worried you’re so impressed with this guy?”

Sylvie nudges him. “Oh come on, baby. You know it wasn’t like that. I just didn’t know a human could do that so easily. That’s all.”

“Okay, I’m starting to take offense here,” he chuckles. “May I remind you that your husband happens to be a pretty capable firefighter?”

He’s such a dork. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him until she needs air.

She brushes her nose against his. “You definitely don’t. I know just how capable you are. Denny’s just younger. He probably has more stamina.”

Matt scoffs against her lips. “Hang on. First, you're talking about how jacked this guy is and now I’m old? Yes, I’m probably quite a few years older but I’m not ancient.”

Sylvie can’t help but laugh at the genuine offense on his face. She didn’t mean it like that.

“I never said you were,” she says. “Matt, I’m just saying that Denny is in his twenties. He has youth on his side but you’re not old. Not old at all.”

“You honestly believe I can’t do what he did, can you?” He asks.

Sylvie doesn’t say anything. Matt’s very strong. She knows that but he’s also a bit older than the candidate. It doesn’t make him inferior, just a little bit at a disadvantage.

Matt moves her legs off his lap.

“Hey, where are you going?” Sylvie asks, slightly panicked. She thought they were just playing around but maybe he’s genuinely upset? “Matt, please.”

He stands and holds out his hand. “I’m proving to my wife that I’m not a washed-up firefighter.”

“I never ever said you were.”

He flexes his fingers. “Stand up, babe.”

She grabs his hand and lets him haul her to her feet. “Matt, you don’t have to do this. I think you are incredible. This is silly.”

“I need to get that other firefighter out of that ridiculously beautiful head of yours.”

“He is not in my head. Trust me, you are the only man on my mind. There’s no reason to get jealous.”

He gives her a look and then sits down on the rug. “This isn’t about jealousy, Sylvie.”

It sure looks like it. She has no clue what he is trying to prove from the floor.

Matt grabs her hand and tugs her down with him. She gasps in surprise when she lands on his chest.

“What on earth are you doing?” Sylvie laughs, trying to keep her voice down. “Is this what sleep deprivation does to you?”

“I’m proving a point,” Matt grins. “Lay flat.”

“I’d rather lay like this,” Sylvie charms, hovering her lips over his. “We could make out like teens on the living room floor.”

“Yes, to that but we’re doing my thing first. I’m benching you. Stay still.”

Before she can process, Matt has one hand under her breasts and the other on her thigh. He pushes her into the air which leaves her giggling. She goes up and then back down against his chest.

“You are crazy,” she laughs. “And your grip on my thigh tickles.”

“Still thinking about the candidate?” Matt teases, pushing her above his head.

“I was never thinking about him, but I am impressed.”

“I might push around a lot of paperwork these days, but I still have a few moves.”

Yeah, she’d agree. Although she never once thought he was losing his skill.

“Will you put me down?” She chuckles.

“Not until I out do that amateur.”

“Baby, I can’t make out with you and prove to you how impressed I am from the air. Put me down so I can kiss my hot firefighter husband.”

He lowers her onto his chest, wrapping his arms around her. “That’s more like it.”

“You know I love you.”

He nods. “Yes, I do. It just doesn’t hurt to remind you that I’m not that old.”

Sylvie kisses him, moving her lips to his neck. “I have never thought that. You look as good as you did the day I met you.”

“Okay, now you’re definitely sweet talking me.”

“Okay fine. That’s not true.” She skims her fingers through his hair. “You actually look better. I’ve always been a huge fan of distinguished Captain Matt Casey.”

He smirks. “Is that so?”

“Yep.”

He runs his hand down her back, resting it on her ass. “I happen to really love PIC/hot mom Sylvie, so I guess we are on the same page.”

He knows how she feels about his hand placement. He’s starting something they probably won’t finish.

“How long do you think we can make out before our sweet daughter ruins the fun?” Sylvie asks.

“Probably five minutes if we are lucky.”

She pulls him closer, mumbling against his mouth. “Oh well. I’ll take it.”

[goodlucktai]

one of the rotten ones

rottmnt word count: 2k pairing: don & leo, don & OC title borrowed from anthems for a seventeen year old by yeule part of the archer au :) read on ao3

x

“I don’t think Gio likes me,” Donnie blurts. 

He’d feel self-conscious if he was pressed to admit it anywhere else, but he’s in the infirmary, and the only one around to hear him say so is his twin. 

They’re moving into hour two of Leo’s “faves” playlist and the fourth consecutive Taylor Swift song even though he swore he put it on shuffle. Leo is going through cabinets and shelves systematically, updating inventory on his phone, while Donnie infodumps about energy storage and projectile dynamics and the breaking strength of crossbow string. 

Donatello’s base knowledge of this particular ranged weapon is severely lacking, which is a significant personal problem for him now that he has a sibling with a preference for archery. He needs to be the world’s leading expert on the subject yesterday. He has half a dozen half-formed plans for things like sonar bolts for 3-D mapping, which may or may not have been inspired by the Jupiter Jim Pluto Vacation run.   

Only every glance at the project folder simply labeled ‘G-01’ causes an uncomfortable feeling to squirm to life in his stomach, not unlike the Krang tentacles that had attached themselves to his carapace on the day the world didn’t end. 

Donnie isn’t good at people. He doesn’t know how they tick, and there are no reliable lines of code or handy user manuals that he can fall back on when he’s mystified by human behavior. 

His siblings don’t have the same problem. Leo is perceptive to a degree that borders upon clairvoyance, Mikey is the single-most emotionally intelligent member of their family, Raph is more charming than he gets credit for, and April can talk her way through any closed door, police tape or VIP-only entrance. None of them fumble the way Donnie does when a social interaction goes off-script, like it’s a volleyball that got served his way without the ample warning he needs to be anything approaching passable at the sport. 

But he knows he’s not imagining it—the way Gio seems to brace himself when Donnie comes into the room, like he’s expecting a confrontation every time. Like the last thing Donatello could want with him is something good. 

Donnie can be a lot. They all can. They come by it honestly, equal parts chaotic lab experiments and their father’s sons. And not every structure is built to withstand hurricane winds. Not every person is equipped to deal with a Hamato level weather event. 

But he has never seen Gio flinch away from anyone else. 

So he did what he always did when confronted by something outside his formidable repertoire—he took it to Leo. 

There had never in Donnie’s life been a problem that couldn’t be made into their problem. It came with twin territory. 

And Donnie’s twin in particular is good at translating Donatello and translating other people for Donatello, and jumps on any chance to be helpful and feel wanted, and absolutely loves problems. It’s one of the most annoying and endearing things about him. If there is any trouble within a hundred miles, Leo will find it. He will worm his way into the center of it and then puzzle his way out from the inside. Most other clever and curious people were satisfied by the daily Wordle; Leo would chew through a wall unless he had something more hands-on to occupy his mind with. As polar-opposite as the two of them could be in, in that regard, they were one and the same. 

It’s somewhat reassuring to Donnie that Leo’s immediate reaction is plain incredulity. He looks baffled, like Donnie has just started throwing stuff around the room for no reason. 

(He knows better. In the medbay, of all places, that would be a death wish. Leo runs a tight ship here and only here.)

“Sorry, you don’t think Gio likes you?” Leo says slowly. “Our Gio? The guy who let you infodump about the mycelial networks of fungi to him for almost two hours, all because Mikey mentioned he was making mushroom stir-fry for dinner?” 

Donnie scoffs, but he can’t help but feel warmed by the reminder. Gio had settled right in, the way he always did once he was sure of his welcome, and watched Donnie talk like nothing more interesting existed on this side of the equator.

“His eyes didn’t even glaze over,” Leo goes on, doing what he always does and pressing the advantage. “That’s a new personal best in this family. Even April started looking for a window to climb out of at the thirty minute mark.”

“There was bound to be at least one other mutant turtle in the New York metropolitan area with an appreciation for botany,” Donnie says imperiously, tilting his chin up. 

But the worry is still there, firmly rooted, trying to flower. Leo must be able to tell because his frown deepens, playfulness evaporating by the second. He pauses the music and sets his phone down. The room rings in the sudden silence, but it’s not uncomfortable, because it’s a room Donnie exists in with his twin. 

“I just want him to like me,” Donnie says. It’s a childish want, it makes him feel half his age, but it’s true. 

He was never one of those human kids lingering near the playground, on the edge of the classroom, desperate to fit in. He was never on the outs because he never had the chance to be. But this is probably what that would have felt like. 

Giorgio is quiet by default, absorbing everything with dark brown eyes, always pausing to think before speaking in a low, flat register that is becoming as familiar to Donnie as Raph’s comforting rumbles and Mikey’s energetic shrieks and Leo’s sweet or sly laughter. 

He hasn’t been anything but kind since he got here. He saved Leo, brought him home from a place it should have been impossible to come home from, so Donatello would put up with any manner of assholery from that quarter in exchange—but it’s not that at all. 

Once Gio’s initial guard goes up and then comes down, once they outlive that moment of consideration that verges upon scrutiny without ever crossing the line, the eldest turtle softens for any younger one like clockwork. He indulges whatever noise or nonsense they’ve brought with them like there is no better use of his time. 

It doesn’t seem like a lie. But Donnie is the least qualified person he knows to make that judgement call. 

There’s a lot at stake if he’s wrong, is all. 

Leo looks like Donnie has taken a melon baller to his insides just for fun. 

“I’d know if he didn’t like you,” Leo says with absolute certainty. And he probably would. And he would take it so personally. He wouldn’t let Gio know a single moment’s rest until the spotted turtle had a coming-to-Jesus moment and acknowledged his wrongdoings in canceled Youtuber apology video format. 

Since that isn’t the reality they live in—and Leo’s daily relentless pestering of Gio is harmless and little-sibling-shaped and decidedly not mean-spirited by any stretch of the imagination—some small part of the tight, unhappy feeling in Donnie’s heart has no choice but to accept that as the compelling argument it is. 

“He probably misses you, Tello,” Leo adds, something softening in his face that it hurts to look directly at. “His you, I mean. I know I would be a train wreck cosplaying as a person if I had to go someplace I’d never see you again. Can you imagine how screwed-up I’d be?”

Donnie’s whole soul shudders at the idea, at the nightmare that almost came true when the portal closed around the Technodrome and as good as severed Donnie clean down the middle. At the glimpse of a life he’d be forced to live with one leg, one lung, one arm, one eye, half a heart. 

“That’ll never happen,” he says, a little too loud. 

“You’re stuck with me,” Leo agrees. He means it, Donnie can tell—even after that almost-nightmare he put his family through, he means it. It’s one thing to take the nuclear option at the actual on-paper end of the world, it’s another to sit in a safe, warmly-lit room with his twin brother and try to conceive of an existence in which their dynamic duo was whittled down to a solo act. 

When they were little, Donnie once tried to explain how big the unobservable universe was. He told Leo that light from the big bang hadn’t reached Earth from all the way over there yet. It was a concept he struggled with as a child, that something could be so unknowable and immeasurable.

“That’s how big my ‘I love you’ is,” he said, all of seven years old and putting it into words the best way he knew how.

“I love you bigger than that,” Leo said promptly. 

“Ugh, you can’t,” Donnie said, frustrated at his twin for always trying to one-up him, for not understanding the huge thing Donnie was trying to compress and fit into his hands. “It’s not possible.”

“It is,” Leo said firmly, eyes gold to match Donnie’s, warm and shining in a way that was all his own. “I do.”

And then Leo went on to prove it. In a way Donnie never would have wanted him to—in an explosion that split the sky and left flash burns in their eyes, and the hollow pain of a surgical removal as the still-beating heart of their family was cut away, and the discordant electronic fuzz where a beloved voice had been rushing through last words, replaced by the sound of a radio without a signal, a device unpaired—but he proved it in a thousand other ways, too. 

He was even proving it now, this afternoon he spent leaning on a forearm crutch and ambling around to various shelves and cabinets to keep up with his stock of medical supplies that had been severely depleted in the weeks after the invasion. Leo had carried bandaids and lidocaine spray in a tiny tote bag since he was two feet tall. He couldn’t stop bad things from happening but he could try to make the bad things better. 

He’s looking at Donnie like he would right every wrong for him if he knew where to start. Like the unobservable universe was small enough to fit in his pocket compared to the lengths Leonardo would go for Donatello. 

Leo is the younger twin, but sometimes the only thing there is for Donnie to do is shuffle over and bonk their foreheads together and believe him. 

“If Gigi hated you, he wouldn’t be a Hamato,” Leo announces, muffled and silly and entirely correct. “It’s a required qualification. You must have missed that meeting with HR.” And then, because it’s important, he whispers, “I promise, okay?”

“Okay,” Donnie whispers back. 

At about that moment, TSwift’s I Think He Knows comes on, proving once and for all that there is actually no way Leo’s playlist is on shuffle. The weighted moment they’re holding on tight to transitions into a lighter one that gets flung haphazardly around as an immediate life-or-death struggle for the phone ensues. 

Stalemate is only reached when Splinter barges in to read them the riot act for daring to roughhouse while they had a non-zero number of broken bones between the two of them. Leo is bright-eyed with mischief and already fast-talking their way out of trouble the same effortless way April can rattle off her brothers’ favorite coffee orders, and Donnie’s worry has been soundly evicted, all its belongings in boxes in the yard. 

Sitting around has never been his style. He’s a turtle of discovery and invention. And now that he’s been reassured that the absolute worst-case scenario is not on the table—that it, in fact, was never on the table to begin with—curiosity rears its head and snaps up the dregs of anxiety like a hungry wolfhound who mistook it for an unattended rack of lamb. 

Hypothesis: Georgie isn’t being weird out of dislike of Donatello. Leo’s certain he’s not, so certain that he was willing to promise, point-blank and absolute, instead of being tricky and sly in the name of cheering Donnie up instead. Leo even offered a much more palatable alternative, but further evidentiary support is required. 

So after dinner a week later, as the whole family crowds comfortably around the banana split bar spilling across the entire kitchen island and argues over which toppings Gio and Casey should stack their bowls with first, Donnie blurts, “Can I see your crossbow?”

Giorgio really is one of the clowns in this circus. He proves it by putting his ice cream down, and picking the bow up from where it was relegated to the bench seat where everyone tosses their coats and shoes when they get home, and passing it right over. No normal person would put a loaded weapon in Donnie’s hands just because he asked nicely. 

As if in tacit agreement, both of Casey’s eyebrows shoot toward his hairline and Raph makes incredulous scoffing noises. April says, “You did not just—” at the same time Splinter blusters, “Purple, you fire that thing off in this house even once and I am grounding you from everything you know and love, including Orange!” and Donnie screeches, over Mikey and Leo’s hysterical laughter, “I can be trusted with projectile weaponry!”

The crossbow has been carefully maintained, but it hasn’t been used in weeks that Donnie is aware of. They’ve all stuck pretty close to home since the invasion, and it’s not like Gio knows anyone but them—it’s not like they need firepower for grocery hauls or pizza runs, though, knowing their luck, that could change any given day. 

But Gio still cleans it regularly, and he’s become a familiar sight at the kitchen table; parts spread out on an oil-stained rag, meticulous and methodical with the one belonging he brought here with him from the future other than the clothes on his back and the colorful friendship bracelet on his right wrist. 

It’s important to him, clearly, but he’s letting Donnie handle it with an indulgent look on his face. Like there are no better hands to leave it in than his little brother’s. 

Because he’s at risk of having a whole emotion about that out loud, where his entire family is assembled to witness it, Donnie quickly turns his mind onto the much safer road of gadgetry.  

He has never actually held a crossbow before, has never built or used one, but he’s been doing a lot of research. He has a lot of ideas. He wants to print mechanical broadhead arrows with explosive tips, or tear gas canisters, or EMP charges. It’s a brand new world of creative chaos and that’s not even touching all the build customizations Donnie has in mind. His fingers are already itching to dismantle and reassemble the machine into something better, something that won’t ever fail, something his big brother will love. 

Only—huh. What feels like a low-level electric current thrums to quiet life like it was waiting to be noticed by the right pair of eyes, just enough of a static shock to get his attention and guide his hand to the rail. Glowing purple does the work of an allen wrench in seconds and a handful of screws clatter to the table. Donnie removes the scope in one sure motion, and moves on to snap the rail from the stock. 

Raph says, low and warning, “Donnie,” intimately familiar with gremlin gadget mode and all the kitchen appliances and shared toys destroyed in Donnie’s early years in the name of science. But he’s not breaking this time, he’s just looking. 

He flips the rail over in his hands and finds the source of that odd electricity-conductive feeling. Hidden on the underside is a small embossed logo that Donnie would recognize anywhere, because it’s his.

“A-ha!” he says, absurdly pleased with the discovery. “A Genius Built mod.” 

The rail was one of the first things he’d had in mind to upgrade, but it looks like he’d beaten himself to the punch. 

“With a custom rail, we can add whatever attachments we want to the stock, way beyond just an average scope or a rangefinder,” Donnie says eagerly, his mind darting ahead in three different directions at once. “The world is our oyster, Georgie!” 

He can’t help grinning. His logo on Gio’s prized possession is that last little bit of evidence he needed. He’s never been happier to be wrong, and will endure Leo’s smugness for an unheard of two entire business days before initiating retaliation. 

No version of Donatello would put that mark on anything unless he really cared about it. 

And Gio wouldn’t lift the rail from Donnie’s hands, and touch his thumb to that stylized “D” as if to prove to himself that it was real, an expression of painful wistful longing on his face, unless he really cared, too. 

[vertumnanaturalis]

some messy morning headcanon babbling about the main cast's future kids or other related four gen stuff while it's on my mind

I am not gonna list every possibility for every possible ending or love interest for Sol here but prolific parent Sol is said to parent "dozens of children" - with a plural s! - while in peace timelines the council asks them to keep it in the low twenties, and the only number that really fits both criteria is twenty four. Twenty Four. Twenty Four fucking children holy shit oh my God Sol what the FUCK-

If Cal doesn't end up with Sol and Tammy is either dead or with Sol herself, he eventually settles down with Helio hydroponics farmer Bluebell "Belle"; They have an insane ten children together, including two sets of twins, as they both are eager to help the colony grow as much as possible.

If Sol and Cal stay together and Tammy is still alive, she eventually settles down with a pair of Helio soldiers, Pyrite "Py" and Obsidian "Obi", having been a surrogate for one of their three kids together, and then going on to have the trio's collective fifth child (the one made "the old fashioned way").

If Cal and Tammy either start dating in game or start dating in the epilogue, including Echinacea the two of them go on to have an even more insane twelve children together, including a set of triplets and a set of twins.

If Vace and Anemone aren't broken up, then they canonly have three kids together in the epilogue. (While text in the game files covers if they stayed together after Vace got therapy, I'm fairly certain that the game itself requires them to be broken up for Vace's final love event to happen.)

If Vace gets the therapy he needs, then he later goes on to have four children with fellow Helio soldier Hyacinth "Cici"; they attempted to go for an even mix of boys and girls, but they grew up to be all girls.

The one pregnancy Marz will surrogate is for Helio soldier Protogenos "Gen", another one of Rex's lovers; Although the kid does call Rex dad, there's never any assumption she's their mom.

The children Tang might create with her genetics are the only ones not fully accounted for in my headcanon list atm, and this is just because it would include needing to make a paradox not-sibling for each child for timelines where Tang does not give her dna to any children; The only two that I've settled on right now are a pair of twins born to and raised by Helio (ex-)soldiers Intelligentsia "Jenna" and Bastion "Bas", with both parents having their own twins

Rex, forever the maddest of lads and a prime example for why you need to spay and neuter your cats and dogs, could have anywhere from eight to seventeen children calling him dad from four to eight co-parents (with many of them not being in relationships with one another), and that's before any possible children he might have with Sol are added into the mix; Irregardless of how he's not the biological father of many/most of those children, I think that Tangent wants to strangle this man a little anyways

Bonus round! Auntie Seedant (or Nannie Seedant now) could have anywhere from nine to eighteen grandchildren; Stratus will eventually go on to have to children with his future partner doctor Enlightenment "Ten", Cumulus is guarenteed to have seven children with his future partner xeno whisperer Effervescence "Ves", while Cirrus might be a co-parent six children with farmer Nectarine "Nena", and we already covered Anemone's maybe kids above; Nimbus never has any direct children of his own, but he has a lot of kids in his own way, growing up to be (one of) the colony's future teacher(s)

[theeeveetamer]

Fields of Mistria initial thoughts

As you may or may not know I am a total sucker for farming simulator games. I don't usually go for Early Access games, but Fields of Mistria seemed extremely promising even though it's just launched into Early Access. So I want to talk about a few of the things I really like about it (and maybe a few that I don't). I will probably be drawing comparisons to Stardew Valley since it's the current preeminent Farming Sim of our time (but I'm not dissing it I love Stardew Valley as well. I think Fields of Mistria does a good job of taking what worked about Stardew and tweaking some things to improve even further)

But the tl;dr if you want it: I think this game is worth the money even in its current state

Trying to keep things as spoiler-free as possible, not that it's hard since the story isn't really too far yet in early access

Things that I like:

1 There is a wide range of cosmetics! Also, you don't have to store them anywhere. You "unlock" them, and then you can change your clothes, hair, skin tone, etc. at any time from the character customization menu. I'd have to check because I don't have the game right in front of me atm, but I think you can even change your name and the name of your farm at any time as well?

2) You don't actually need to have materials on hand to construct farm buildings, nor do you need to pre-clear the space! You buy the blueprint from the carpenter shop, which goes to your inventory. You take it back to your farm yourself and lay it down. Once you lay it down it spawns a drop box for materials, and you can put the materials in at your own pace. This makes it super easy to just drop a couple of wood in at the end of every day until it's done. This is a godsend for me especially, since I never remember to bring all the materials with me when I want to build things in Stardew

3) Speaking of convenience: you don't need to have any materials on hand when you're crafting! This is a godsend because when you initially start the game, all the crafting stations are in town and you have like no bag space. It'll just automatically withdraw things from your chest

The downside is, if you were trying to save stuff you have to be careful (the game will indicate when it starts drawing from your chests to craft the next item though, which is nice!)

4) Also speaking of convenience: shops are open and unlocked 24/7, and you don't have to have someone working there to buy things! This means if you realize you forgot to re-plant your crops at 10 pm you can still pop up to the general store to buy more seeds before the day is done

5) The romance events are all interesting and done well so far! I've only seen a couple though. It also appears that triggering them is based on completing a request on the community board, so you can't miss them like you might in Stardew

The downside is that there's so many community board quests that it's easy for these to get buried. I'm sure I've picked up half a dozen that I just haven't done yet because I haven't gotten around to knocking out some of these requests

6) I like that progressing in the mines requires you to collect items from the previous set of floors in the mines. It's good incentive to go back and collect more resources while still feeling like you're advancing

7) Dropping stuff on the ground and leaving it there won't de-spawn it. That means you can go around and "collect" resources, leave them there, and then circle back in a few hours or even a few days!

8) There's at least one older bachelor and bachelorette option! For the guys you have fellow farmer Hayden (who has a bit of a dad bod build) and the town's doctor Valen (she's a bit more masc looking). I'll take it

9) You can bang a dragon. They haven't completed the story enough to get events with him yet in Early Access, but he's a dragon. nuff said

10) You don't have to upgrade your tools in sequence, and equipment is separate from your cosmetics. This means you can skip straight from the worn pickaxe to the silver one!

Things I don't like (honestly most of these are minor nitpicks that can/might be improved upon):

1 I do wish there was some more body diversity, especially among the women. With the exception of Hayden pretty much all the romance options are pretty/handsome and slender (with pretty decently sized chests in the case of the women and pretty decently sized muscles in the case of the men)

I know they can design different body types because one of the Saturday Market vendors is a bit bigger (but she's not a romance option obviously), so why not?

2) Pretty much every item sells for less than it would if you were to craft it into something else. E.g. Iron ore sells for less than iron bars, and iron bars sell for less than an iron pickaxe

This is kind of half positive, half negative. It's good incentive to craft stuff! On the other hand, I'm a massive video-game hoarder so if I know I might be able to craft something that's worth more down the line I'll just save the item. This has turned my organization into a nightmare, and because I sell almost nothing money is much harder to come by

3) Backpack and storage management is. Woof. You start out with only ten item slots, and if you're like me and you carry all your tools all the time then that's going to fill up fast. At the start you'll only have ~2 slots to actually carry things other than tools. I think it only goes up in increments of 10 too, so even with the third bag upgrade you have about 30 slots (for reference, Stardew starts you with 12 and goes up in increments of 12 before capping out at 36)

I don't think this would be a problem if they just gave you a separate "tool bag" inventory where you could keep all your tools all the time, that didn't also take up bag space. Tools taking up bag space is honestly one of those "we should be over this by now" things in farming sims, IMO

4) Speaking of the bag... this is probably only a consideration if you play on controller, but the controls for swapping between items could use some work

If you've played Stardew with a controller then you know how it works. The left and right bumpers will swap between bag "tabs" and the triggers will move you between items in the currently selected tab. I haven't played around with trying to remap it, but by default Mistria doesn't do this.

Instead one of the triggers is to use a magic spell, the other is to throw items, and the bumpers are to swap between items in your bag. This means if you're on tab "A" and you need an item in tab "C" you need to manually press the bumper 10+ times until it scrolls aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way around to tab "C"

I think if you play with keyboard and mouse then you can just tap the different tabs so it's less of a problem

5) Minor nitpick, but when I play with a controller it doesn't get rid of the cursor. The cursor is pretty big and chunky so this is pretty distracting (I play on a dual monitor setup so I just move the mouse to the other monitor while I play, but it'd be nice if the cursor stayed gone while I played

6) So far the magic is a bit underutilized. I think I've only used the restore spell a handful of times when I was deep in the mines or fishing (fishing takes SO much energy). You have VERY limited magical stamina so you're probably not going to be using spells too much

I'll try to add to this if I think of more, but this is the stuff that's sticking out to me right now!

[whchenlvr]

hi!! so english is not my first language so idk if i'm writing it right, can i request a eunjang + union boys reacting to reader having a panic attack?

when you’re having a panic attack ;

weak hero x gn!reader

gray yeon

➤ you’d never had a panic attack. he has

➤ when your breathing picks up to the point where you’re hyperventilating, panicked tears begin to stream down your face

➤ gray was supposed to meet you at your house to study at 3, and you watch in agony as the clock ticks to 6. he was never late, and you wouldn’t have worried so much if not for your friend spam-texting you that the union is coming for your school

➤ there’s a knock on your door, but you’re limbs feeling like they’re prickling with sleep. you can’t stand from your spot on the floor no matter how hard you try

➤ thankfully for you, gray knows your lock code

➤ your vision is dotted with black spots, and when gray appears before you, part of you thinks he’s a hallucination

➤ “c-can’t.. breathe…” you manage to choke out, desperation clear in your voice

➤ “okay, sweetheart, it’s okay now. i’m here. you’re going to be okay.” he says in an extremely calm voice, carefully patting your hair down in an attempt to soothe you

➤ it works, and you can feel your pulse calming beneath your skin. you breathe, focusing solely on the feeling of his hand in your hair

➤ “i’ll stay with you tonight, okay? i’m not going anywhere.”

donald na

➤ you’d just gotten off the phone with your neighbor, and they told you that the mailman left your gate open, and your dog got loose

➤ you started to panic immediately, knowing your dog was still young and liked to slip out of his collar. sure enough, you found the fabric on the floor when returning home

➤ you searched until it was dark out, and then you searched some more. everyone you asked said they hadn't seen him, and your anxiety was reaching an all-time high

➤ after the failed search, you had enough sense to make your way to donald's apartment, hoping he might be able to help

➤ donald opened his arms for you the minute he saw your shaking self, and tried to soothe you as your tears stained his shirt

➤ “can you take a breath with me? that’s good, darling.”

➤ it took some more time in his arms for you to calm down enough to speak, and when you told him what happened, donald flashed you an assuring smile

➤ "my guys have gotten lazy. i'm sure they'll appreciate a good game of hide and seek."

➤ sure enough, your dog was returned to you, and you nearly cried with joy as donald hugged you again. "don't hesitate to come to my first next time, alright?"

ben park

➤ when ben finds you curled up in the school bathroom one evening, hunched in on yourself and struggling to breathe, his mind instantly goes to the worst scenarios

➤ he would cup your face in his hands and force you to keep your eyes on him as he breaths with you

➤ “when you’re ready, i want you to tell me what happened.”

➤ once you managed to catch your breath, you told ben all about how you failed a test and dropped nearly a dozen ranks. it shouldn’t have been a huge deal, but this could cost you your chance at a scholarship

➤ you could tell ben was trying to come up with comforting words, but he didn’t care for school as much as you do, so he wasn’t sure what to say to comfort you

➤ “okay, uh, are there retakes available? extra credit?” “no” “then… i’ll help you study for the next one!”

➤ you found yourself smiling, surprised at how quickly ben managed to cheer you up

➤ “are you sure? i know how much you hate this stuff…”

➤ “yeah, but you need me. we will study until our fingers fall off and you’ll get your perfect score. so please don’t worry, okay? i love you.”

jake ji

➤ you never liked to appear weak in front of jake. it wasn’t that you were afraid, you just liked being his pillar. you didn’t want him to ever worry about you

➤ but when news broke about the war between the union and eunjang, you couldn't help it

➤ "jake?" you called, afraid to disturb him but very scared at how hard your heart was beating against your ribs. your stomach felt hollow and useless in your body

➤ he didn't look up, and you were about to leave when you accidentally knocked a bowl off of the counter. it shattered against the floor, and you dropped into a panicked crouch

➤ "don't move, are you o—" he saw your trembling hands and stopped. "y/n, are you okay?"

➤ "i'm sorry, i, it's just a bowl, i'm..." you didn't stop stuttering out nonsense until jake carefully took your hands in his before you accidentally hurt yourself

➤ "what's going on, lovely?" and you broke into sobs

➤ you fell forward into jake's chest and he wrapped his arms around you as you told him your concerns for his safety. "this isn't like the other fights, jake. you could get hurt. you could get killed."

➤ "that's not going to happen," he soothed gently, "you know that's not going to happen." but you didn't stop crying or trembling until you were out of the room and completely in your boyfriend's arms

➤ "y/n, listen. you're going to be fine. i'm going to be fine. so please, don't scare me like that again, okay? we're going to be fine."

gerard jin

➤ you’d just been told by your parents that you were moving across the country for your dad’s job

➤ since your bedroom is on the first floor, gerard has a habit of tapping on your window to visit. when you don’t answer your phone, he decides to go over

➤ he sees you sitting on your bed, back turned to him, and doesn’t think much of it until he hears your quiet sobs slipping between your fingers

➤ “y/n?” he called into the quiet, and you felt yourself break. “they’re taking me away from you, from everything! i can’t—i can’t—“

➤ gerard was by your side in seconds, taking you in his arms and pulling you tight against his chest

➤ “didn’t…” you gasped out, fingers digging into his biceps as you try to calm yourself. “didn’t.. wanna leave.. you,”

➤ “i know, honey, i know.” he kissed your head, letting his lips linger against your hair as you forced yourself to slow your sobs. “but i’m not going anywhere. not now, not ever.”

wolf keum

➤ there was no reason for you to panic, so you weren’t sure why you woke with your heart beating a million miles a second, your cheeks sticky with tears

➤ checking the time, you realized it was only 2 am. you didn’t want to disturb your boyfriend, but your limbs tingled as your breathing sped up

➤ not even five minutes after receiving your jumbled text for help, wolf was in your bedroom and at your side

➤ “what happened. who did this?”

➤ “no, i’m—“ you hit your chest with a flat hand, “panic attack.”

➤ honestly, wolf wasn’t quite sure what to do or how to treat a panic attack

➤ worried you might pass out, he squished your face between his hands to meet your eyes. “slow down.”

➤ you think just having him there with you helped, because the fact that his two rather blunt words were able to calm you surprised you both

➤ you were still shaky, but wolf didn’t make any attempt to smother you. he pulled his hands from your face to instead hold yours and laced your fingers together

➤ “better?” “better.”

[bonefall]

Snowbird Ann here: x_x I have Fennel growing in my front yard. That stuff...it tastes like black licorice and it's stringy like celery. But when it goes dormant, it leaves stalks that would be great building materials. Med cat/builders could get a fresh stalk, soak it in water to make it bendy and shape it into whatever. If I remember I'll go out and snap a picture of the dormant Fennel tomorrow.

Fennel is actually suuuuuuuuper useful for dozens of reasons. It's related to parsley and has been naturalized all over the world because humans find it so useful.

The cats could use it for:

-Funerals This herb can be STINKY. This could absolutely be one of the funeral herbs that elders rub onto the deceased, especially since it's non-toxic.

-Cooking It's full of fiber meaning it can be a good supplement even for cats, if not consumed in excess. It's also got potassium, manganese, calcium... They can't taste sweet but that licorice-y flavor would come across just fine. It's actually used in sausages a lot.

-Alcohol If your Warriors drink responsibly. And know how to distill. Mead made from honey would still be easier but fennel was used for health tonics in the middle ages... and then eventually got used to make absinthe.

-Insect repellent This one's actually huge because the OTHER big bad bug buster is mint... and all mint is toxic to cats. This is a really good non-toxic insect repellent for warriors next to lavender.

-"Toothpaste" Not like, a PASTE but, a sort of... sticky mouthwash poultice. Fennel's actually super good for oral health, eliminates bad breath, and fights plaque buildup; and remember, Our Friends Mint & Co is toxic to cats. You can make it into an oil and help a warrior with a gum problem. It's especially good at fighting streptococcus, which is one of the most common infectious bacteria in wild cats.

-General medicinal purposes Helping clean eye infections is just one medicinal use, fennel is useful for all sorts of ailments. It's anti-inflammatory, it's antibacterial (but not as good as honey), can help with digestion...

Historically it's also been associated with helping to treat colic in babies and estrogen-related issues like menopause and milk production, which is actually NOT proven with modern studies... but I think the idea is just cool enough to hand wave the science away, I would use it just to have an herb for colicky kits. It's weird that colic has never shown up in canonical kits before!

But...

Building use?

Probably not. You've noticed it's stringy-- that's actually where fennel gets its name. Fennel = Foenum = Latin for Hay. It's more like hay in consistency than twine and would be too soft to build with.

For strong material, you're just gonna want plain old wood. Twigs, branches, anywhere you can find fennel you're also going to find bushes or trees that'll make better beams.

For twine? Skip the fennel entirely with its short stalks and just get some tall grass. Or, if you've got long-haired cats, they can make yarn out of shed fur if they collect enough of it. Better yet, if you've got access to flax? Then you're REALLY cooking with fire, that bad boy can be made into fabric, rope, clothing... Don't even get me STARTED on industrial hemp, you could weave reality itself out of that popstar. Paper, clothes, canvas, shampoo, lamp oil, rope, bombs, you want it? It's YOURS my friend--

Anyway

TL;DR stick to the herbal uses for fennel. You're better letting dormant fennel re-grow because it's better in the paws of your medcats than your warriors.

[annabelle--cane]

I mentioned wanting to make a post like this a few weeks ago and then forgot, so have this absolute behemoth to make up for lost time: let's talk martin and defensive rejection of choice.

the short of it is that while martin obviously wants control and agency over his life, the first few times he makes big moves to actively take that control, they blow up in his face by either doing nothing or leading to something worse, and that makes him afraid of being responsible for doing anything wrong in the future. it doesn't quite scare him away from taking any control of his life at all, it's a bit more complicated than that, but much of his arc in s5 involves him progressing from trying to influence jon's decision making while rejecting any choice given directly to him to making three big choices in the last half dozen episodes that seal his (and everyone else's) fate.

the long of it is, uh. Long. without counting transcript exerpts this is about 1.3k, so if you want to hear my reasoning for saying the above you might wanna strap in.

for most of the first three seasons, we don't see martin making a lot of choices, he mainly just tries to keep things stable. he gets displaced from his flat? okay, cool, move into the archives and carry on like normal. the archives get attacked and everyone deteriorates afterwards? okay, cool, try and keep jon from burning himself out, listen to tim vent so he doesn't start running himself ragged either, don't shake things up too much by forcing anything. elias is a magic murderer and everyone's trapped? okay, cool, just read statements, keep an eye out for the others, keep everything together.

we can extrapolate where this tendency towards maintaining stability comes from; he's had a very precarious life where a lot of his options have been taken away by poverty and abuse, it's probably always been too dangerous for him to try and make big leaps to change his situations. this is in contrast to jon, whose gut reaction to most problems is to take the option that lets him (often literally) throw himself at it as soon as possible.

as a turning point in mag 117, we get martin talking about his plan to trick elias and get him arrested.

I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be safe, like my plan’s not dangerous, but it’s, it’s mine. This last couple of years, I’ve always been running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but, but now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good, weaving my own little web.

[...]

Anyway, I guess I’m just sick of sitting on my hands drinking tea and hoping everyone’s okay. This way, I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but I’m ready. And I want to. Also, I get to burn some stuff, so that’s cool! I just really hope everyone makes it back.

he's sick of not being an active agent. maintaining stability hasn't gotten him anywhere, he knows how he wants things to change and how he can make it happen, and he's now willing to do it. it's a similar moment to one basira has in this same episode, she also talks about having previously been resigning herself to the situation and now being ready to push back against it, but where her arc continues on from this point of deciding to make choices to eventually being about what kind of choices she makes, martin's stalls a bit and never quite gets to that stage.

he goes through with his plan for elias, and it works without a hitch. it deals him quite a lot of hurt, but he planned for and expected that. elias goes right off to prison, sent down by the evidence martin and melanie stole.

and it doesn't do anything to help anyone.

tim, jon, and daisy die. one monster boss is replaced with a new monster boss. melanie gets more volatile. basira gets more paranoid. his mother dies. the archives get attacked. martin played his hand, got hurt in the process, and got absolutely nothing from it.

here we see another pattern starting to form. in mag 158, when he talks about why he joined with peter, he says that he told himself it was just to protect the others and didn't confront his real, personal motivations. in mag 154, he at first tries refusing jon by saying he wants to see through his plan with peter, but when jon presses it he switches to saying "I won't because you don't really mean it, this is a bluff so you have a reason to not do it and you wouldn't even if I agreed." here, martin starts taking decisions he wants to make, acting on them, and coming up with reasons for why it was never actually his choice to go with them, taking the responsibility for his choices off of himself and putting it on to others.

but we then get mag 158 and his big heel turn of rejecting peter's plan! and it works! and then the world ends as a direct result of that choice! luckily, we don't have to wonder how he felt about this, 'cause he talks about it directly in mag 186:

ALSO MARTIN: You feel guilty about everything. [...] The end of the entire world?

MARTIN: If I’d done what Peter had asked… If I’d not chickened out, and just killed Elias when I had the chance…

ALSO MARTIN: Really? Really? That’s how you’re choosing to remember it? Chickening out?

MARTIN: I remember it was the wrong choice.

the big ritual happens and he feels like his choice, the first "proper choice" he made in a while, was wrong enough that the the end of the world is on his shoulders. as a result, we then see him defaulting back to some old habits of trying to be a comforting, stable presence while jon's having a time of it in the cabin, with any decisions of what they do still ultimately up to jon. after this, though, things start to get a bit weirder.

he pushes for jon to start killing avatars; he pushes for jon to specifically kill oliver banks; when jon gives him the choice between walking into the burning building to kill jude perry or going around, martin outright rejects choosing either; he pleads with jon to do something in callum brodie's domain; he goes silent when jon directly asks him what he should do.

because martin doesn't like not actually having any agency, because of course not, no one likes that, especially no one in this kind of environment. what he said in mag 117 still holds true, he's long since had enough of being reactive and neutral. what martin really doesn't like is feeling responsible for anything. if the choice is jon's, then he'll make his thoughts crystal clear and try to guide him towards an decision, but the second it's put on him, he'll outright reject it. at this point, martin's ideal way of functioning would be never having to personally put anything into action while jon makes every decision in the way he wants.

he chills on this after jon stops the murder spree, but he still doesn't have much cause to make choices for a while until he's told his domain's coming up. he watches the whole thing with jon and jordan kennedy, and that seems to strike something in him, because the next time there's a choice to be made, he makes it. when the time comes for them to save or doom another victim in a domain, martin decides that if the inspector would like being a torturer, then they should leave him, and that is exactly the bit of development that lets him into his domain. the main point of mag 186 is letting martin get used to the idea that his avoiding decisions is a problem and something that he can't keep up.

MARTIN: I don’t know, all right? I don’t know.

ALSO MARTIN: And that’s okay for now, but I just want us to have thought about this stuff properly before it comes up. Because even if that’s not it, chances are it’ll be something else you don’t want to do, and we need to make a proper choice. We can’t just react out of shame or fear or whatever.

MARTIN: What, like with Peter and Elias?

ALSO MARTIN: Yes.

MARTIN: That was a proper choice?! I chose wrong!

ALSO MARTIN: But you made a decision. Your own decision. Regardless of the outcome.

it's a big turning point for him in a lot of ways, this is also the first time he actually considers the idea that he might have to kill jon, but it also sets him up to close this last part of his arc. in the final stretch of episodes, he makes three big choices:

he follows annabelle when she turns up and says she has a way to turn the world back.

he agrees with melanie, georgie, and basira over jon and decides to go with the plan of passing on the fears.

he believes in that decision enough that he predicts and plans around jon's lying and sends the others to light the gas main early.

all of which contribute to sealing the events of the finale. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[inkandpen22]

Dazed and Confused (S 1: 4/?)

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Female!Reader

Warnings: mild language and violence

Word Count: 3.1k

Part Summary: Steve and Y/N spend the weekend together and on Monday, Nancy can’t remember a thing... 

Masterlist

I woke up early with a headache and decided the best course of action is a hot shower. I let Steve stay in bed, after the tough night he had he deserves it. 

After hopping out of the shower, I turn down my radio and quietly bop to 

Culture Club. I wipe down the foggy mirror and start my hair routine. It takes a lot to get the voluminous hair of the decade. Once I'm done, I emerge back into my bedroom to grab a change of clothes, leaving my radio going. 

"Morning," Steve voices, staring up at the ceiling. 

I jump, squeezing my towel around me. "Oh uh, hi, sorry! I thought you were still asleep!" 

He lifts his head and realizes I'm in a towel. His eyes grow wide. "Oh shit! No, my bad! I uh... I'll go downstairs!" He rushes to climb out of bed. 

"No! No! It's okay! I'll go get ready in the bathroom! Let just me grab some stuff!" I hurry over to my dresser. 

Steve settles back down with a sigh, clearly happy to be able to rest after the night he had. 

"Have you been up long?" I ask. 

"Nah, just thinking about last night and what happened with Nancy..." he states solemnly. 

"Well, it's Saturday," I remind him of the perk. "My parents are gone to Chicago for a business trip for a few days, which means we can hang out here. A nice big chocolate chip pancake breakfast," I suggest, heading back toward my bathroom door. 

"Sounds nice," he grins. "And then we could go to the mall, maybe rent a movie?" 

"Splash?" I request. 

He nods, meeting my gaze again. "Deal." 

I move to head back into the bathroom to get ready with a content smile. 

"Hey Y/N?" He rushes out, flying up from his laid position.

I hum, turning over my shoulder. 

"Do you-" oddly, he stops himself, shaking his head. "Never mind," he laughs. 

"You sure?" 

He nods, "yeah. Don't worry about it." 

I shrug and head back into the bathroom. Weird. 

________________________________________________

Steve and I are curled up on my couch, watching Splash, one of my favorite movies. A bowl of popcorn and M&Ms shared between us, along with a blanket. 

I shake my head, immersed in the movie. "I love- 

"Tom Hanks," Steve chuckles, tossing some candy into his mouth. "How many times have you seen this movie?" 

"At least a dozen," I confess. 

He glances over at me. "You have a problem." 

"Tell me about it," I smirk proudly. 

Abruptly, the phone in the hall starts to ring. I huff, hopping up off the couch to get it. 

"Want me to pause it?" Steve checks. 

"Nah, I've seen it," I giggle and pick up the phone.  "Hello?" I greet. 

"I need you to come over, right now!" Dustin panics. 

I frown, glancing at Steve through the archway in confusion. "Now? Why? What's wrong?" 

"I've found a giant slug!" He rushes out. 

"A slug," I repeat in annoyance. "Seriously, Dustin." 

"I've named it Dart!" 

"I'll see it on Monday," I move to hang up. 

"No! You have to come over now!" He insists. 

"Kinda busy here," I grumble under my breath. 

"Busy? How are you busy? You're never busy." 

"I am too! I have company!" I tell him. 

"You don't have company, Steve is over," he argues. 

I hurry over to the window, the phone cord following behind me. Steve watches me in curiosity as I scan up the road at Dustin's house. "Are you watching my house again?" 

"That's not important!" He shouts, clearly guilty. "Why are you hanging out with Steve?" 

"Why do you have a giant pet slug?" I fire back. 

"Fine, just bring him too!" 

"We can't, we have plans." 

"Son of a bitch, you're really no help at all you know that?" 

I scoff. "Oh save it, I drive you to school every day. Bye!" I hang up the phone. 

Irritated, I walk back over to the couch and pull half the blanket back over me. Thankfully, I didn't miss anything good in the movie. 

Steve hands me the candy bowl. "What was that about?" 

"I don't have any biological siblings but I do have a little brother," I remark, making him snicker. 

_________________________________________

On Monday morning, I blast Night Ranger through my Walkman as I unload my bag into my locker. Dustin wouldn't shut up about his stupid slug all the way to school. He was pretty annoyed that I didn't come in and see it this morning. I assured him that I would stop in when I drive him home. Suddenly, I feel a hand on my shoulder and I spin around, removing my headphones. 

Nancy nervously rocks on her heels, gripping her books to her chest. "Hey, have you seen Steve?" 

I frown. "Not yet, why?" 

"Have you seen him since Tracy's?" 

"Yeah..." I reply hesitantly, wondering where this is going.

"Well, he hasn't answered my calls all weekend," she tells me in a hushed tone, glancing up and down the hall for eavesdroppers. "Whenever I left a message, his mom called back and said he was out. Do you know what's going on with him?" 

"I don't..." I drag out, debating on if I should tell her the whole truth. "After a certain point, all I remember is Billy hitting on me and Steve driving me home." I stick to what I know for sure happened. 

Her face changes from concern to confusion. "Wait, he drove you home? I thought he drove me home." 

"No, I mean unless he drove you home and came back."

She whines, glancing down the hall anxiously. "I better go talk him. I'll see you later!" 

I nod and mumble an 'okay.' I watch as she hurries down the hall toward the gym where Steve likely is hiding. I slip my headphones back on with a sigh. This won't be good. 

____________________________________

I walk out of Algebra with my friend Veronica, gushing about the newest Elton John album. Abruptly, a hand wraps around my wrist and I yanked away from her. 

"Woah! Jesus!" I blurt out and my eyes land on Steve as he hurries me down the hall. "Okay Harrington, where are we going?" I laugh nervously. 

He releases my wrist and presses his hand to my back. "McDonald's, a park, anywhere, I don't know! I just want to get out of here." 

"But I still have chem before lunch," I remind him. 

"You can afford to miss one class," he laughs. "Your GPA is what 3.9999-" 

I roll my eyes but comply nonetheless. "Well, there goes my perfect attendance." 

Steve and I run by McDonald's and enjoy our milkshake and fries in the parking lot. Steve has the radio quietly going in the background as he fills me in on the details of his talk with Nancy. In summary, it didn't go well. 

"So she doesn't remember any of it?" I clarify. 

"Appears not." He rolls his eyes, shoving some fries into his shake. 

I nod, processing it all. Then, I remember what happened Friday morning. "I forgot to tell you. Jonathan came up to me on Friday and accused us of sneaking around behind Nancy's back." 

Steve nearly chokes on a fry. "What?" He coughs. 

"He saw you climbing out of my window," I explain. 

"Well-" He starts to panic. "Well did you tell him we're just friends?" 

"No, I told him we're having a wild, passionate, affair," I sass. "Of course, I told him!" 

He releases a sigh of relief, holding his chest. 

Geez, he's so dramatic. 

"Maybe I should apologize to her," he determines. 

My brows scrunch together. "For what?" 

"Good point... Do you think he'll tell her?" 

I shrug, how am I supposed to know? "I don't know. Probably not," I remark a tad more annoyed than intended. "Have they talked lately?" 

"He drove her home that night. I told him to," he tells me. 

"Oh..." I mumble, allowing my focus to wander outside. 

Steve shifts in his seat to face me. "Do you think he knows I was at your place?" 

"I don't know..." 

He huffs, tossing his head back stressfully. "How did things get this fucked up?" 

I reach across the divider and place my hand over his gently. "It'll work out." 

He sighs, his eyes meet mine worriedly. "You really think so?" 

I hum to reassure him, but frankly, I have no idea. I just don't have the heart to tell him the truth. Plus, it hurts to watch him worry about Nancy when a piece of me is selfishly happy that they're over. 

__________________________________

Masterlist

[philhoffman]

Y’all I am so overwhelmed I don’t even know what to say. A little digging this morning led to me one of the best sources on the world wide web I’ve ever found — a PSH fan site from the LiveJournal days (before my time!), active from 1998 to 2004. Articles, interview transcriptions, photos, links to other fan sites, real-time updates about Phil and his career throughout the early 2000s.

I just spent hours going through the whole thing and some adjacent sites and it’s fucking spectacular. I’d say most of the photos are now missing (understandable! I was overjoyed to get any decent quality photos at all from a 24-year-old abandoned website) and there are many broken links, but it’s navigable. You can find most of it here, thanks to the Wayback Machine.

The historian in me is overjoyed by this capsule of early internet fandom and the PSH fan is overjoyed by all the love he was getting at this point in his career. So fucking cool getting a look at the original PSH community online, our predecessors! Dozens of great updates about potential movies, new releases, his theater work, how cute he looks. Phil knew about the site and was both amused and characteristically flattered/embarrassed by it, of course.

I’m getting embarrassingly emotional about this tbh. I really feel very grateful that I get to share neat finds like this old website with our community of Phil fans here on tumblr and anywhere else I meet them. With Phil’s birthday this week, I’m thinking about him extra hard. I miss him and sometimes the idea that he isn’t here, that there aren’t any new films or plays or performances or bear hugs to take in and never will be, really starts to get to me. But whenever I feel like that, almost inevitably, I find something new. When I finished his filmography, it was the Queen Latina tape surfacing (the funniest possible discovery amidst my grief). Right now, it’s this brilliant fan site. I’m sure in the future there will be more, whether it’s another lost performance waiting to be found or just a strong feeling. There’s always something. A little nudge. It’s very sweet and it’s so very Phil. He’s still with us in so many ways, we just have to find him and hold onto him.

Goes without saying I’ll be posting all the best stuff from Daryn’s site for the next few weeks. Stay tuned over the next few days for Phil, in college, singing and shouting and jumping around with his roommates’ band. (I’m telling you, you really gotta check out that site.)

[nikosheba]

Marco -> Jake????

Oh my god where do i start i'm sorry this is gonna get long

One: young teens in the 90s who joke constantly about being in love with their best friends almost never grew up to be Completely Straight (if you are a teen who jokes constantly about being attracted to, being married to, and being in love with your best friend, just gotta say, start examining that now, it'll save you time). I'm compiling a giant text doc of snippets where Marco makes Very Funny Jokes about how into Jake he is (saying he gets all tingly when Jake takes charge, pretending they're married, asking if Jake has a kiss for him, calling him, "Hey, Handsome!" my folder is actually getting huge). If you made dozens of public jokes about how extremely into your best friend you were and you are at least 30 years old and you ARE completely straight now, let me know. (only olds!!! if you're born after 1990 life is legitimately different for you!!! seriously!!!! I'm not saying queer kids now have it easy but It Was Different!!!!)

Two: Marco joins the war for Jake. Marco goes on the Rachel for Jake. Marco's entire reason for making all the biggest choices in his life that will destroy him are for Jake. He even says in #15 that his entire identity is the funny and smart one who would follow Jake anywhere without blinking. Every other character has a crisis of wondering whether they should actually follow Jake! Cassie, his girlfriend, goes against his orders when Tom grabs the morphing cube (50). Rachel goes off on her own (37). Tobias loses faith in Jake completely and sees him as a manipulator (by 33, again in 43, completely after the war). Ax disobeys and incapacitates him when he thinks he has a good reason (52). Marco never does. He'll sneak around or try to weasel out of stuff, but he never has a moment where he loses faith in Jake. Even at the end, Jake goes around asking everyone to follow him - except Marco. He already knows Marco will follow him. He even tells Cassie that he doesn't have to ask, he knows Marco will follow him. Ouch!

Three: Marco aggressively pursues girl after girl after girl but he doesn't actually care about any of them. He deliberately chooses the most un-gettable girl around ( Marci, the "prettiest girl in school," Rachel, Jeanne, etc.), and if they ever DO show interest back, he gets nervous and tanks whatever it is (falling asleep on his symphony date in #25, dropping the eagerness in MM4, immediately turning around and joking to Jake as soon as Jeanne rejects him then never mentioning it again during the months they're on the ship, as if he's done his performative part and that's over with).

Four: Just to be clear: I very much headcanon Marco as not being entirely aware of this aspect of himself during the series. I could go either way on whether he's figured it out about himself by the time they get on the Rachel. I absolutely do hc Jake as being sadly 100% straight, which is a pretty rare headcanon for me to have about anyone, fictional or nonfictional lmao. (I'm also an enormous fan of Jake/Cassie, this isn't me saying Jake/Marco is my ship, but I absolutely, completely do believe that Marco --> Jake is a thing). There's also the fact that he already dealt with a HUGE loss of status - specifically, he went from "having the perfect family" and "living almost next door to Jake" to living in an apartment in the bad part of town. He's already gone from "the same social rank as Jake" to "significantly lower," and acknowledging there's something else about him that would demote him again in the same way? That would be terrifying.

Five: I'm just going to say: Look at these two descriptions from #5:

[image ID: Two screenshots of The Predator, Animorphs #5. The first one reads: "Jake is my best friend, even though, unfortunately, he is kind of a pain sometimes. He's one of those serious-type guys. You say the word "responsibility" and he snaps to attention. He's the kind of guy who always seems like he's bigger than he actually is. That's because he has that whole "I'm in charge, and you can trust me" thing going on. He has sensible brown hair, and trustworthy brown eyes, and one of those confident chins. He also has a great sense of humor and is very smart, and I would trust him with my life any day, any time, not that I would ever tell him that." The second image reads: "Rachel is Jake's cousin, and a total babe who, unfortunately, is also totally insane. See, somehow, underneath all that perfect hair and perfect teeth, there's this lunatic Amazon warrior-queen, just fighting to get out. Here's what Rachel'll say whenever we decide to do something so dangerous it makes you want to wet yourself: "I'm in! Let's go! Let's do it!" End Image ID]

I'm just saying. Which Berenson does it sound like he's really into?

Six: I'm projecting! I was a queer kid in the 90s who was in love with my best friend and I'm completely projecting! Because it genuinely looks like Marco is going through all the same things I went through!

[icycoolslushie]

THG Thomastair AU

“I wish we could find sanctuary,” Thomas said. “You know, with shelter and such.”

“But Thomas,” Alastair said, “you are my sanctuary.”

TW/CW: If you're reading this, you've probably read The Hunger Games books or watched the movies so this has the same stuff as in them!

Idea // OG post // Ask

Disclaimers: This has headcanons along with snippets. Hopefully it's not OOC. Any Persian is what my Iranian friend told me. I like to headcanon that all the districts have their own language. Warning: The plot might be non-existent. Also, if you see any kind of mistakes (grammar, spelling, etc.) please let me know! Kinda long :)

Thomas is from District 7

Alastair is from District 11

The president is Josiah Wayland

The Head Gamemaker is Maurice Bridgestock

Eugenia is part of a group to overthrow the Capitol

Barbara and Oliver died in a previous Hunger Games

It was like it was in the books

Alastair used to be in a relationship with Charles Fairchild, son of the mayor of District 11, Charlotte Fairchild

Risa is Sona’s sister so Alastair’s aunt

Alastair volunteers for Cordelia

Cordelia struggles with him and finally says in “I love you” in Persian (dooset daram) before Alastair goes on the train

Cordelia is like Prim

Alastair’s mentor is Ragnor Fell

They be sassy together

Thomas’s mentor is Charlotte

Alastair’s stylist tells him Alastair should dye his hair back to black

In the opening ceremony, Thomas dresses as a tree and Alastair thinks how Thomas makes “a boring costume look beautiful”

Alastair has a suit on with leaves embroidered on it which Thomas later tells him “it was like nature blessed you”

Jem may or may not be an Avox Jem is Alastair’s Avox

Thomas Tanner is Thomas’s Avox

For training Alastair throws spears and pulls a 8

Thomas uses a broadsword in training and pulls an 8 as well

Thomas gets a compass rose tattoo from his stylist for the interview

The arena has a structure that looks like the Eiffel Tower at one end

The arena is covered in forests, except for the Cornucopia

When the canon sounds, Alastair runs toward the Cornucopia and escapes with a dagger to the forest

Thomas runs straight (ha!) into the forest

9 children die in the initial bloodbath

Alastair and Thomas both spend the night in trees about ten minutes away from each other

In the morning, Alastair hears rustling and eventually confronts Thomas

They first try to kill each other, but then they hear someone else and work together to fight the District 9 male tribute

Alastair puts his dagger at the tribute’s throat and stabs him there

Alastair doesn’t want to partner up and vice versa

“Alastair—I think you’d be a great person to team up with, but I . . . I don’t want to team up with you. I don’t want to team up with anyone. We—we might survive till the end, and then—” “No, Thomas, I understand. We’ll pretend this never happened. We’ll go our separate ways.” Thomas nodded, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Part of him had been hoping Alastair would disagree with him, even when it was reasonable. He ignored it and set about laying the food they’d gathered.

But they gather food and decide they’ll have a meal together and then go their separate ways

They make a meal of some fruits they find on trees and on the ground

Thomas just cannot eat the celery

They part ways

By the second night, fourteen people in total are dead

Thomas goes to the Eiffel Tower structure the next day

He climbs onto the first level and greets Alastair

Alastair’s leg is wounded

Alastair explains that the Careers fought him

The Careers include Augustus Pounceby and Clive Cartwright

“Tell me. Tell me who hurt you. I’ll kill them.” Alastair had never seen anyone so angry on his behalf that it unnerved him. “It doesn’t matter, it was the Capitol—” “Don’t,” Thomas said quietly. “Don’t try to downplay it. I want to make them pay.” Alastair paused. After a minute he said, “It was the Careers. The District 1 and 2 tribute. Augustus and Clive. They climbed onto here and started fighting me. I gave Augustus a good cut on the arm and Clive a nice scar on his cheek but they overpowered me. Augustus stabbed my leg. They left laughing.” “They didn’t finish you off?” Alastair shook his head. “I think they . . . wanted me to suffer. It isn’t like I can go anywhere, and I have no allies, so probably wanted to come back tomorrow and then finish me off. But it’s not like I’m going to last that long.” The last sentence caught Thomas off guard. “What?” “Aren’t you going to kill me?” Thomas thought about the District 1 tribute, Augustus, who had been saying that Barbara was weak before the Opening Ceremony. That Barbara, who had gotten him out of a scuffle with a Peacekeeper, was weak. That Barbara, who had volunteered for her cousin in the Reaping, was weak. He thought about the hate he had felt for the Career. Then he thought about graceful, elegant, bleeding Alastair in front of him, the way he had hugged his sister, the way he guarded himself, and decided. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you.”

Thomas bandages Alastair’s wound

“Alastair, you’re hurt. Please let me wrap your leg in leaves and vines.” “Thomas, you don’t understand. I’ve always bandaged my own wounds. It’s not going to change now.” “Sometimes,” Thomas said, “it’s better to let others take care of you. They do a better job than you realize. Alastair, please. You’re bleeding. Let me help.” Alastair saw something in Thomas’s eyes: truth. He thought back to how many people would want to help him: his father, his mother, his aunt Risa . . . when he was young. As he grew up, all of them faced the same cruel system and all of them were expected to take care of their own wounds. Now, here was someone willing to help him when he should be killing him. It gave Alastair such a feeling of care and belonging that he nodded. It wouldn’t hurt to let someone take care of him for once.

They eventually decide to team up

Thomas makes a meal out of things he finds in the forest

He and Alastair eat it

Alastair heals from his wound

By that night, nineteen people are dead

Augustus, Clive, and the District 8 female tribute are still alive along with them

Alastair takes first watch during the night, Thomas takes the second

Alastair gently moved his fingers across the compass rose tattoo that Thomas had gotten from his stylist. He felt Thomas’s pulse. He promised himself that that pulse would go on even when his own didn’t.

The next day Alastair and Thomas set off (Alastair’s leg is healed)

Augustus and Clive are waiting for them

Thomas kills Augustus, attacking with A LOT of force

Clive gets a good hit on Thomas with a sword on his left arm

Alastair and Clive fight, Clive flees finally while he’s bleeding from a dozen cuts

Alastair bandages Thomas’s wound with leaves and vines

“I love it when you say my name. Say it again.” “Thomas—Thomas, you’ve lost too much blood. You’re going delirious.” Thomas sighed softly. “I would go delirious if that meant I could hear you say my name one more time.”

They get a sponsor gift: a whole meal of steak and sides, which they finish that day

When Alastair bites into an apple, Thomas wants to kiss him

Both of them fall asleep at night

When they wake up, they’re in a prison; a Capitol prison

They were in prison. But even if they were in hell, Alastair wouldn’t have minded. They were together.

They lie in each other’s arms, seeking warmth

“Why are we in prison? What did we do?” Alastair demanded, getting up as Josiah Wayland stuck his ugly face in front of the bars. President Wayland’s lip curled. “It isn’t you that did something, it’s your family.” Thomas gasped sharply. “Eugenia.” The president smiled cruelly. “So you do know her crime.” Thomas swallowed. Alastair put his hand in Thomas’s. “What did my family do?” Alastair asked, trying to change the topic. “Why, your sister did the same thing,” Josiah Wayland said. This time Alastair gave a sharp gasp. Thomas squeezed his hand, and Alastair drew a bit of comfort from him. But his mind was on Cordelia, his little sister, what would happen to her— Wayland, the monster he was, smiled wider as he saw Alastair and Thomas despairing their sisters’ fate.

Cordelia joined the same rebel group Eugenia was in

“But why are we here? What did they do that you had to take us out of the Games?” Thomas demanded when he had finally calmed down. It seemed that all the Lightwood siblings would all die in their youth. “As soon as they are in our custody, they will be executed. In front of you two. Everyone thinks the two of you killed each other. After they’re dead, both of you will be executed.” Thomas swallowed. “Why? Why will you execute us?” “Your sisters should have thought about your safety before they did what they did. At least you’ll be able to tell them goodbye. If the executioners give you the chance,” President Wayland added before he gave another cruel smile and left.

Thomas and Alastair despair over their and their sisters’ fates

“We’ll fight them. I don’t care. We’ll fight the Capitol. We’ll make them pay for what they did to Barbara and Oliver and Jem and Will and Tessa and my mom and every single person they hurt. We’ll make them pay, Alastair.”

Thomas sighed. “If only we had hope.” “I don’t think about hope, Thomas. I think about you. You’re my hope.” And now I’m going to lose you, Alastair wanted to add, but he didn’t. And then I won’t have any hope left.

“The odds were never in our favour, Thomas,” Alastair whispered, closing his eyes. Then he added softly, “And they never will be.”

Letter addressed to Alastair Carstairs, District 11 male tribute of the 56th Hunger Games, from Charles Fairchild, son of the mayor of District 11, found crumpled in a trash bin of the Training Center floor 11

Taglist: @della-vacker-supremacy @themadhatter999 @writeforjordelia @theenchanteddreamer Also tagging @jurdan-my-beloved who originally requested the headcanons and @youngreckless Lmk if you wanna be added or removed!

[nataliedanovelist]

GF & MvsM - Wanna Talk About Dinos?

This crossover was inevitable. It just works too well. Maybe one day i’ll write a fic about how the folks at Gravity Falls handled the robot-apocalypse. Probably shrugged it off. “Eh. We’ve had worse.” Haha! What if Stan and Ford, cuz they were out sailing, had no clue what happened and when they came back they were like, “Wait, what?”

For now, please enjoy this fic of Aaron making a new friend...

(credit goes to @stephreynaart for her OC Jacob) ~~~~~~~~~~ “Hi, would you like to talk to me about dinosaurs?”

Aaron asked this question more times than he could keep track of, but that wasn’t going to stop him from asking it. It started as a dare from his big sister two years ago, but now it’s a fun hobby. When fifth grade isn’t overwhelming him, scaring him with mountains of homework and horror stories about how hard middle school is going to be, and when he’s run out of YouTube videos to catch up on, he is on the hunt for fellow giant-lizard-lovers like a hungry Ceratosaurus.

“No, okay bye.” But it did get a little tiring to always cross out names and phone-numbers on the phone book with red ink. Hey, a dinosaur of a way to find phone-numbers was appropriate. He read the next number, dialed it, and after a ring or two he asked, “How would you like to talk with me about dinosaurs? No, okay thank you.”

Aaron crossed out another name and sighed, taking a break since he reached the end of a line of numbers. Maybe he should just be grateful for Abbey and accept that no one else wants to talk about the Jurassic Period. Or the Cretaceous Period. Or the Triassic Period. But then a big, old, gray-tinted ad distracted him. He grinned, thinking it would at least be fun to give them a call, and he dialed the number.

Private home phone-numbers were fun, but businesses were also fun! Poor, bored workers would gladly talk to him rather than crabby Karens, and they got paid for it! So Aaron smiled as the phone rang, and he grinned when someone picked up.

“Thanks for calling the Mystery Shack, you’re talking to Mr. Mystery himself! How may I befuddle or bewilder you?”

“Hi! How would you like to talk with me about dinosaurs?”

“Oh, dude! I’d love to, but I’m scheduled for a tour of the Oddity Museum in three minutes.” The man said, and Aaron grinned continuously, because it sounded like Mr. Mystery really wanted to talk with him about dinosaurs. “But hey! Can you hold on for one minute, I think I know a guy!”

“Yeah, sure mister!” And Aaron was greeted by the sound of a catchy jingle about buying t-shirts and mugs and snowglobes. He smiled and wiggled his feet along to the music as he looked outside at the beautiful late-fall afternoon, entertained while he waited.

~~~~~~~~~~

Soos was on the hunt. He planned out the house in his head. Abuelita was taking a nap upstairs, Melody was organizing the upcoming tour, and Stan took Jacob out for ice cream, so he might be…

The owner of the Shack grinned when he stopped at the doorway and saw the man he was looking for, sitting in Stan’s chair, reading a book.

“Uncle Ford!”

The old sailor smiled up at the young man. “Yes, wh-...”

“Do you think you could answer the phone for me? I have a tour and I think this customer’s request is right up your alley.”

“Uh… sure, but w-...”

“Thanks, you’re the best!” And Soos was gone before he could address Ford’s confusion.

Ford was a bit lost, having little to no business with business, but he had learned at this point to trust Soos, so he picked up the phone beside him and was immediately greeted with a sweet, “How would you like to talk with me about dinosaurs?”

Ford grinned and closed his book. “I would love to! All three periods are equally as fascinating to study, but the Triassic contains some of my favorite dinosaurs!”

A young voice gasped on the other line. “Mine, too! Everyone thinks the Jurassic period is so great, and it’s pretty cool, but the Triassic gave us Plateosaurus and the Brachiosaurus!”

“That’s very true! You know, it’s very interesting, maybe depictions don’t include feathers at all, which is a bit frustrating, but perhaps after the news has spread they will incorporate more feathers on merchandise and textbooks.”

“YES! That’s what I wanna do when I grow up, help draw better-accurate dinosaurs!”

~~~~~~~~~~

The phone rang on Sunday. The Shack was closed today, so Stan lazily answered it and was greeted with, “Wanna talk about dinosaurs?”

“Sixer, phone for you!”

Ford ran into the living room, elbowed his twin out of the chair, and took the phone. “Hello again, Aaron! Now, where were we? Right, so Australopithecus. … No, I don’t think… Oh! No, homo habilis was erect, Australopithecus was never fully erect.”

“Maybe he was nervous.” Stan groaned, getting to his feet.

Ford shot him a look as thankfully the young boy on the other end didn’t catch that and happily shared some more fun-facts about homo habilis.

~~~~~~~~~~

While most college students were excited for Spring Break so they could get drunk or lose their virginity, Katie was excited because her family had planned a special secret roadtrip. She was careful to keep up with her family and talk to her parents and brother frequently, but Aaron had a hobby he wasn’t talking about that his parents found out and were thrilled about. Aaron had made another friend.

Rick and Katie did some research and the tourist attraction sounded right up their alley! In the middle of the woods, tons of weird stuff, and a fun roadtrip filled with diners and attractions. They decided to surprise Aaron, and they made up a lie that they would spend Spring Break in California with Katie so she could show her family around San Francisco, when in actuality they would be traveling up the state to the Redwood Highway and see the oddity place, and maybe even allow Aaron to meet his new pen-pal. Or, um, phone-pal.

So after bombarding Katie with hugs the Mitchells threw her luggage into the car and drove off. Aaron turned to Katie and excitingly asked, “So where are we going first? Can we go fix the Golden Gate bridge by painting it gold?”

Katie laughed and ruffled his hair. “Maybe later, right now I wanna show you guys this fun store right outside of town. Here, check out the videos I made for my classes!” And she pulled out some airpods and gave one to Aaron.

“Cool!”

Rick and Linda smirked at each other as they drove north. By the time they reached a little diner in Redding, CA, it was very clear to Aaron that they weren’t in San Francisco anymore. “Come on, just tell me where we’re going!” The boy begged as he fed Monchi a fry.

“The best kind of prizes are the surprises.” Linda quoted.

“Eric, Deborahbot5000, where are we going?”

“Sorry, Aaron, we cannot give that information.” Eric said, he and the other robot sitting politely in their seats, happy to be a part of the social interaction.

“Yes, Mother will bury us if we disobey.” Deborahbot said matter-of-factly.

“What?! No I won’t, sweeties.”

“Won’t you ground us?”

The family laughed and Aaron let the topic go; if he was honest, he loved a good surprise. The big family stopped in a motel just at the California-Oregon border, and the next morning after muffins and coffee and orange juice they were on the road again, passing dozens of trees that made Rick feel at home. Katie happily recorded the trip, trusted to be the documenter for another fun roadtrip, with hopefully not as much mortal peril.

Aaron watched as they left the highway for a simple road, and they passed a big sign. The boy gasped and caught what was happening. “No WAY! Really?!”

“You know, I hear this Mystery Shack even has a Sasquatch.” Rick commented while Linda pulled out a pamphlet from the glove box.

“It says here it’s full of odd things you’ll never see anywhere else, even a dinosaur footprint…”

“Wasn’t there a rumor of there being a Bottomless Pit?” Katie asked, pointing her camera at Aaron to get his reaction.

“Thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!” Aaron cheered, hugging his Dad’s neck and kissing his Mom’s cheek.

“Hey, no worries, buddy.” Rick eased, fixing his shewed glasses. “We wanted to see this place, too!”

“Why don’t we eat a quick lunch and then we’ll take the backroad for the attraction? There’s a coupon in here for a diner made from a giant log!”

And so after being served by a pretty blonde teenager at Greasy’s, they drove through town to get to the backroad. Signs made them confident that they were going the correct way, as well as Eric and Deborahbot5000’s GPS. Then as they turned a corner, a big triangle-shaped building came into view. Aaron grinned at the giant sign with a missing letter. People were already leaving, arms full of souvenirs and one or two already wearing their new hats or t-shirts. Once Rick parked in the Free Parking Lot, Aaron spilled out of the car and ran for the shack, but he stopped.

Katie caught up to him and patted his back. “You cool, man?”

Aaron shrugged, holding his hands in front of him and his shoulders up to hide his face a bit. “I-I dunno… What if… What if he doesn’t like me?”

“Hey, I get it.” Katie admitted. “When I first met my friends I was really nervous. I had talked to them online for weeks and I was worried it wasn’t gonna be what it was all cracked up to be, but it was. Your system worked! You found another dino-lover! You earned this moment. Just take in a deep breath and be yourself, cuz you’re a pretty cool dude.”

Aaron smiled up at his big sister. “Thanks.”

Trusting Eric and Deborahbot5000 to watch Monchi and make sure he used the bathroom, the Mitchells went inside the shack. On the porch there was an ice cooler, a sign reading schedule times for tours of the Oddity Museum, a Help Wanted sign, and two rocking chairs with a game of checkers between them.

Inside the store a few customers filled up the gift shop, alongside t-shirts, snowglobes, a vending machine, a door beside ti that read Employees Only, a bookshelf full of comic on one side and old newspapers claiming alien sightings on the other, a fish tank holding a monkey-mermaid, and barrels full of spaceship keychains and dino claws. A new section called Camping Stuff caught Rick’s eye, selling backpacks, lanterns, flashlights, batteries, canteens, and compasses. Katie opened a comic called Lil’Stanley and laughed at the swears, taking a pic and sending it to her friends’ group chat. Linda looked into the barrel full of patches and grinned at all the fun designs, while Aaron stared happily at the mer-monkey.

The Employees Only door opened and closed and Rick watched as a man in a suit, fez, and eyepatch walked up to the lady at the register and kissed her cheek. The woman smiled lovingly and left while the guy who resembled a gopher checked a customer out. Rick waited until the buyer left to approach the register, leaning an arm on the counter.

“Welcome to the Mystery Shack, dude!”

“Thanks! So, this is gonna sound weird, but my son Aaron talks to a guy here about dinosaurs…”

“No way!” The owner interrupted excitedly. “Good to see you, dudes! I’m Mr. Mystery! Wow, you guys came a long way, huh?”

“Nah, only from California. My daughter is attending art school there.”

While the men chit-chatted and Linda joined them, Katie noticed a guy walking up to Aaron and looking at the mer-monkey. She smiled and tried to read the comic without being too nosy, but she kept her senses on her brother.

“Hm, quite fascinating, isn’t it?” The man in the blue hoodie said. “But I think my favorite is the fossilized footprint. Could be Nanuqsaurus hoglundi.”

“The Polar Bear Lizard?” Aaron clarified, touching his chin as he looked at the dino-print, his back to the man he was talking to. “Maybe, but they’re from Alaska. It’s possible plate tectonics did cause some fossils to be relocated here, but it could also be a Nanotyrannosaurus lancensis footprint.”

“The Dwarf Tyrant? Could very well be. Would you like to talk about dinosaurs after your tour?”

Aaron’s eyes widened as the voice was finally familiar to him. He turned and looked up to find an old man smiling up at him. He had fluffy gray hair with a white stripe running around his scalp, wrinkles by his eyes due to smiling, a cleft chin, glasses, and wore a blue hoodie with a maroon sweater underneath. His hands were behind his back and he smiled down at Aaron warmly, while the boy was jittery and overly-excited. He took in a sharp breath and had to fight every muscle to keep from leaping through the screen door. 

“H-H-Hi…” He peeped. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Y-Yeah, sure! I’d love to! I’m Aaron! Er, wait, you already knew that.” And he held out a hand to shake.

His phone-pal, Ford, chuckled and got on one knee to be eye-level. “Greeting, Aaron! It’s nice to formally meet you.”

Aaron shook his hand and noticed something. He had six fingers on his right hand. A quick glance told Aaron he also had six fingers on his left hand. Aaron grinned with sparkling eyes at his new friend, while the old sailor smiled warmly at the boy that reminds him of his niece and nephew when they were young.

[tenthgrove]

Yandere La Squadra- Formaggio, Melone, and Ghiaccio

Warning: It goes without saying that these headcanons are darker than my usual stuff, so if you are uncomfortable with ideas such as abduction and forced relationships, beware I go into them here. Extreme violent abuse and non-con (beyond low-level touching) are not present, however, since I don’t write for these themes.

Formaggio

Formaggio falls for someone he meets by chance, most likely somewhere like a bar, bowling alley or cinema. Regardless, after a couple of random encounters in which he gets to briefly chat with you, Formaggio starts to seek you out on purpose. It isn’t long before he starts to develop a crush.

However, despite Formaggio’s attempts to come off as friendly you soon start to take him for a creep. You begin to consciously avoid him, going as far as to stop going to the places he tends to find you.

After a brief period of feeling spurned, Formaggio comes to realise that his initial hopes for a normal relationship were never very viable anyway. Say you’d accepted his early advances and gone on a few dates? How long until you start to question his friends and work life? No, the only way this is going to work is if he takes the more drastic route and abducts you.

Formaggio gets your living details with the help of those in the squad more suited to that kind of task. He doesn’t tell them why he needs to know all this. After a short period of stalking you in his car to memorise your routine, he forms his plan. He knows convincing you to come with him will be hard, but he doesn’t want to hurt you either. It seems he’ll have to rely on trickery to make you follow him blind.

Late one evening while you’re home alone, Formaggio sets fire to your neighbour’s house. As you run out the front door, panicked and confused, you don’t question the friendly voice promising to drive you to safety. You climb right into Formaggio’s car. By the time it dawns on you what’s really going on a few minutes later, it’s already far too late.

Formaggio eventually wants to have as close to a normal relationship with you as possible, but until you can be trusted not to run from him you’re going to be (loosely) chained to his bed. Look, he fixed his TV and even *cleaned up* for you! Would a shitty boyfriend do all that?

Tries to bribe you into forgiving him with food. Even if you give him the silent treatment, he’ll plonk himself down next to you and throw an arm around your shoulder, occasionally stuffing snacks into your mouth to feel like he’s treating you.

If you misbehave lightly, he’ll make a show of not being bothered by it, thinking his forgiveness will convince you he’s not that bad after all. However, if you’re really uncompliant, Formaggio will shrink you down until you apologise, always showering you with affection once you’ve swallowed your pride and told him what he wants to hear.

Secretly, Formaggio is excited by the possibility of you trying to escape and having to be dragged back. Once or twice, he might ‘accidentally’ leave the key to your chain on the nightstand, letting you have a few blissful hours of freedom before he takes you back. He’ll only punish you lightly, however, since he did set you up for this after all.

All-in-all, Formaggio can’t wait for the day you return his affections, and will woo you over in whatever corny ways he can think of.

 Melone

Melone is the sort of yandere to make the conscious decision to seek out a darling before he even has anyone in mind. With all his eccentric beliefs in astronomy and other personality pseudosciences, it’s only natural Melone would believe his special someone is out there just waiting for him to find them.

After having investigated several dozen candidates who he for one reason or another rejected, he finally lays eyes on you while stalking someone you know. It’s love at first sight, and as he lays in bed at night perusing all your social media profiles, he can’t find a single thing that doesn’t compound his earlier suspicions. He’s finally found you. His soulmate.

You are granted a few blessed final weeks of normalcy before Melone acts. This time is used to set up the room that will accommodate you. It is furnished with a lavish double bed, a large collection of clothes (Melone insists that regularly changing your clothes, even if you aren’t moving around much, will provide a sense of routine that will help with your mental health), a safe filled with various medicines to mediate your mood, and several forms of restraints that are various extents of restrictive, to be switched between depending on your behaviour.

What the room doesn’t have are windows- they’ve been completely bricked up. Your room is also padded wall to wall with sound-absorbent foam. Nothing from the outside world comes in, nothing goes out. Until you love him, your entire life will consist of Melone and this room.

When the time comes to take you, Melone will break into your house and drug you in your sleep, so that you’re completely unaware of what’s happening until you’re safely in your new home. He will sit at your bedside non-stop until you wake up, adamant to be the first thing you see when your new life begins.

The first few months of living with Melone are essentially a covert form of behavioural training. When you are nice to your new boyfriend, your life gets better. When you shun him, you stay at the current level of restrictions on your freedom. It is simple psychology that this will inevitably lead you to accept him more.

If, say, you were to misbehave extremely, such as by consistently trying to run away or physically attack him, then the ultimate punishment would be forcing you to create a junior that then becomes your guard. Although Melone will take every precaution to make sure no harm comes to you from your new child, he knows you will not enjoy the process, or the presence of the freakish being that calls you its parent.

Eventually, once you have a consistent track record of many months of good behaviour, Melone intends to let you live practically as freely as you did when you met him, even letting you leave the house regularly for hours at a time without supervision. However, even when you have no use for the room he initially kept you in and are no longer forced to be there, he won’t get rid of it. He enjoys looking back on those tender first months of having you. You won’t ever make him put you back there, will you?

  Ghiaccio

Ghiaccio holds his affections close to his heart, and for that reason, he will most likely fall in love with a childhood friend, or someone else he has a prior fondness for. Perhaps after a number of years out of contact, you suddenly move into his vicinity without knowing it. Ghiaccio sees you through the window of a café and is instantly struck with all the feelings he repressed from his youth.

In the coming weeks, Ghiaccio is filled with an intense paranoia. He wants to have you, to at very least be able to let you know he’s there, but he’s terrified of you getting hurt. Wait, do his enemies already know about you? That aside, will someone as weak as you *ever* be safe in a city like this? Ghiaccio knows he would never forgive himself if anything happened to you. That means he can’t sit still until he makes sure he does something about it.

Even still, your abduction is an impulse. That’s not to say he didn’t consider the idea before, even going as far as to make some casual preparations like getting new locks for the front door and spare room. However, he never had a concrete plan. All that convinced him to take you was a sleepless night. After several hours of tossing and turning, head filled with terrified thoughts of something bad happening to you, he decided he needed you *now*.

Ghiaccio doesn’t have much of a plan, but being so much stronger than you he doesn’t really need one. He bursts through the door of your house and drags you to his car, frantic explanations of what’s going on doing little to calm your terror. Freezing over your lips and wrists with ice, he puts you in the trunk and drives you home.

Ghiaccio tries his best to be patient and accommodating with you. He lets your room be your private space and doesn’t force physical contact on you, though he’ll occasionally plead with you to let him hold you when he’s feeling stressed. He dreams of the day you’ll stop being scared of him and he can have you whenever he wants.

Spends a lot of time trying to justify his actions. But even if you run away, he can’t bring himself to hurt you. Instead, he’ll bind you to a chair in his basement and rant for what feels like hours about how this is all for your own good, and you just don’t see that. He ends up practically begging for you to just stay with him without a fight.

The process of wooing you over is a lot of trial and error, inviting you to do activities with him he recalls you liking and encouraging you to be emotionally open with him. Eventually, through the sheer force of time, his efforts become successful and you start to reciprocate his affections.

However, given Ghiaccio’s paranoia it’s unlikely you’ll ever be able to go anywhere further than the corner shop without his supervision. It’s not that he doesn’t trust you, he’s just terrified of something happening to you. That said, he feels bad about restricting your freedom and will work hard to give you a good life.

[sagamemes]

the sheridan tapes  📼  part two.   here and under the cut, you can find over 130 lines of dialogue from the horror podcast the sheridan tapes, specifically from episodes four to six, edited for roleplay purposes. some of these focus heavily on survival, war, science, and spooky stuff, but a lot can be used by anyone.  tw:  war, unreality, a mention of cannibalism, implications of manic behaviour.

❝  god, i hate snowstorms like this. not just getting caught in them, but the storms themselves. it feels like the earth’s trying to bury me alive every time it locks in like this. like nature’s rightly pissed off at all of us and doing its level best to crush us to death.  ❞

❝  that’s what yom kippur means:  the day of atonement.  ❞

❝  that wasn’t the first time i’ve caught him in my office, going through my stuff.  ❞

❝  normally i’d be annoyed at someone calling me young lady.  ❞

❝  thank you… you are so warm… thank you for letting me in.  ❞

❝  suddenly, everything fell into place. i made more progress than i had in about half a year.  ❞

❝  the thing i remember most was catching disapproving glances from my father every time i went to the library.  ❞

❝  why does time only run forward?  why does cause need to precede effect?  ❞

❝  no one knows if they can trust me with casework or not.  ❞

❝  i didn’t say i was interested.  ❞

❝  [he/i] was taken off duty and sent for psychiatric evaluation the next day.  ❞

❝  coffee. i was making coffee.  ❞

❝  i didn't mean to get stuck out here.  ❞

❝  that just goes to show how small humans really are in the grand scheme of things:  take away our tools and our toys and our technology, and we’re still just as vulnerable as we ever were.  ❞

❝  she was good at that:  making you feel like you were safe, like you could open up to her.  ❞

❝  i’m just going to cover that one up. no harm in keeping it out of sight for the moment.  ❞

❝  maybe there was someone in the stairs.  ❞

❝  i think i did the lion’s share of the talking, which almost never happens.  ❞

❝  i couldn’t get to sleep... i figured i’d get a head start today.  ❞

❝  i’m afraid i don’t have all of the details of your involvement with the… tragic events in [place]. and i don’t think i’m the only one.  ❞

❝  i’m still not sure i understand the whole tradition.  ❞

❝  whatever it is, it’s chasing me. i can hear it’s footsteps in the snow, i can hear it—  ❞

❝  when you work nights here, the less you really think about them, the better.  ❞

❝  honestly, i just can’t get it out of my head.  ❞

❝  snow is one of nature’s simplest and most effective ways of killing you dead if you aren’t prepared for it.  ❞

❝  i wish you’d tell me what you’re doing here. i could lose my job if anything gets broken or if you end up getting hurt in there…  ❞

❝  would you say you… considered her a friend?  ❞

❝  would you mind saying your name again?  for the recording?  ❞

❝  if that was true, then there was something—and as a scientist, i hate to say this—supernatural going on in that lab.  ❞

❝  most of them didn’t make it. a lot of them died afraid and alone, too.  ❞

❝  i know you don’t like listening to these things, so i just wanted to help you out with…  ❞

❝  if i could sleep, then trust me, i would.  ❞

❝  i’m guessing the new owners are trying to make this place seem less creepy than it already is.  ❞

❝  my schooling was expensive and unremarkable.  ❞

❝  a lot of them died afraid and alone, too:  ideal conditions for the making of poltergeists, in my experience.  ❞

❝  look, i’m sorry, but this really isn’t a good time for anything, so if you wouldn’t mind…  ❞

❝  basically, i was picturing a slightly creepier morticia addams. i couldn’t have been more wrong.  ❞

❝  now i have to deal with [name]’s aspirations to write drama..  ❞

❝  i promise i won’t get you sacked.  ❞

❝  i’ve never been very religious, but for some reason… it made me think of hell.  ❞

❝  i think it may have been a thank you.  ❞

❝  i’m working the graveyard shift and i noticed the lights were on.  ❞

❝  i shouldn’t be here. no one asked me to come in this early.  ❞

❝  everyone around here looks at me like i’m some kind of leper.  ❞

❝  i had to go home for a few hours. i’m already on thin ice around here, and i didn’t want to get in more trouble for screaming obscenities up and down the wall.  ❞

❝  it was… darkness. no, that doesn’t do it credit, the whole place was dark. this was just... void.  ❞

❝  if i’d seen her anywhere else, i’d think she was an athlete or a backpacker.  ❞

❝  better scientists than me have been bashing their heads into that particular wall since 1927.  ❞

❝  i just want you to know that… whatever you really are... you’re safe here.  ❞

❝  goats being goats, it would just come back the next day looking for food.  ❞

❝  i would like you to leave my office now… and i’ll ask you not to tamper with evidence in the future, understood?  ❞

❝  no, of course, i don’t have signal out here, so i can’t just call triple-a.  ❞

❝  what are you doing in my office—at four goddamn thirty in the morning?  ❞

❝  you ever wonder where the line is?  you know, between human and not?  ❞

❝  the funny thing i’ve noticed about war:  no matter how terrible the fighting is, there always seems to be too much waiting. too much quiet. too much sitting around, bored to tears between fits of chaos and violence, lost in routine while waiting for the other shoe to drop.  ❞

❝  a lot of people condemn them for that. we’re so sure we’d never resort to that—that we’d rather die than cross that unspoken boundary.  ❞

❝  i’ve been at the [workplace/institution] for ten years now. that’s long enough to know that the ones who ask questions are the ones who can’t cut it.  ❞

❝  the program blew every fuse in the lab. including the lights.  ❞

❝  it was soon after they left that i began to have trouble sleeping.  ❞

❝  perhaps we never knew each other as well as most friends do, but… we cared for one another.  ❞

❝  most of her questions are a bit above my pay grade.  ❞

❝  i’m trying, i’m trying! i can’t get the door open!  ❞

❝  i don’t know why she needed my help:  i think she had a better grasp of it than most science fiction writers.  ❞

❝  we both had places to be afterwards, so we kind of rushed. i really wish i’d taken the time to say goodbye.  ❞

❝  i guess some things just… don’t want to stay buried.  ❞

❝  it was completely against orders of course, but no one really noticed or cared that far from the front.  ❞

❝  i offered to buy him a cup of coffee.  ❞

❝  newspapers praised them at the time:  saw them as heroes of exploration and paragons of pioneer courage.  ❞

❝  i signed a lot of big, scary nda’s during my time there.  ❞

❝  i did the only thing that came to mind:  i took a grenade from my belt, removed the pin, and threw it.  ❞

❝  i doubt this storm will last more than a couple of days, and once it lets up we can sneak out of here and get going again. very, very carefully.  ❞

❝  given enough time, everything will rot away to its elementary components, and that, you can’t reverse.  ❞

❝  i really can’t see anything from inside the van.  ❞

❝  i knew there were a few experiments that dealt with some pretty high-level theoretical concepts, but i wasn’t directly involved with any of them.  ❞

❝  it’s a strange choice, but then again, he’s a strange man.  ❞

❝  i know, it sounds ridiculous. trust me, i’ve done everything i can think of to make that conclusion go away.  ❞

❝  scared the bejeezus out of a bunch of skiers, but they were nice enough to let me in after deciding i probably wasn’t a ghost.  ❞

❝  please… it burns my skin… please…  ❞

❝  i forgot how fast storms blow in up here.  ❞

❝  it’s not like i felt out of control:  it felt more natural than breathing.  ❞

❝  i didn’t know what i was doing, not at any conscious level. but one step seemed to lead to another, then the next, and then the next.  ❞

❝  it’s called a butcher’s shop in some places, but a mortuary in others. as much as i’d love to imply there was some sweeney todd style recycling going on here, i think the place has just been a lot of things over the years.  ❞

❝  god, these things are creepy as hell.  ❞

❝  if you wouldn’t mind, please, tell us what happened? in your own time, of course.  ❞

❝  it took a few long, nerve-wracking days to work up my courage and visit the section again.  ❞

❝  it’s not that odd to think that people ate each other out there.  ❞

❝  i didn’t think there was a ghost in my room or anything like that, i just kept hearing noises whenever i was about to fall asleep.  ❞

❝  i downed half a dozen energy drinks at 6 and called it dinner—i know, i know, it’s a nasty habit i picked up in grad school.  ❞

❝  they told me that the cpu and motherboard had somehow been melted into a solid lump of plastic and silicon.  ❞

❝  i mean, [name] was a pain in the ass, but at least he didn’t…  ❞

❝  my schedule was full, but i had something else fall through at the last minute. i had your number on my desk, so i thought i may as well call.  ❞

❝  i wonder if it was afraid, or if it even realized what was going to happen. it probably didn’t.  ❞

❝  i need to get more coffee. or punch someone. whichever’s more convenient.  ❞

❝  god, if that’s really how i sound…  ❞

❝  people think i write horror, but i don’t really think that’s true. i just write fiction with all of the comfortable little lies taken out of it.  ❞

❝  i have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.  ❞

❝  i think he felt something about this place… some influence or power that needed to be destroyed, so he tried to do it the only way he knew how.  ❞

❝  well, it’s a tricky thing. the more realistic you make them, the more… unreal they start to look. i think it’s something about the eyes.  ❞

❝  i offered to stay late, just to smooth things over.  ❞

❝  maybe i can get some writing done while i’m stuck here…  ❞

❝  no child could grow up in a jewish home surrounded by books and not read at least one story about golems.  ❞

❝  i just wasn’t a good student, despite my love of reading.  ❞

❝  i have to say, i like your jane doe.  ❞

❝  she was a scientist herself.  maybe not formally, but her way of thinking, her insight, her methods... they were scientist’s qualities.  ❞

❝  seriously, what do i need to do to get a little privacy around here, a little dignity?  hang a  ‘ do not disturb ’  sign on the door?  change all my locks?  ❞

❝  maybe it was stupid, but i figured, ‘ hey, early december, not a cloud in the sky—should still be fine, right? ’  ❞

❝  jesus, [name], i wasn’t born yesterday.  ❞

❝  maybe doing this while it’s still dark outside isn’t the best idea.  ❞

❝  more than a century and a half have passed, and this place is still just as dangerous as it was then.  ❞

❝  now, [mr./ms./mx. name], i’m sure you know why you’re here.  ❞

❝  the [event] was a bust—only about a dozen people showed up all afternoon.  ❞

❝  i never put much stock in the idea of inspiration, but for the first time in my life, it felt like i wasn’t pushing myself through the muck of miscalculation and guesswork towards a solution. i was being pulled towards an answer that already existed.  ❞

❝  it felt like i was a few steps from finding out something fundamental. some truth about our universe that no other scientist had ever dared to dream of.  ❞

❝  huh. that’s… that’s weird. i could’ve sworn there wasn’t a sculpture back there before.  ❞

❝  apparently, no one had told them what i was doing, and i wasn’t actually cleared to leave.  ❞

❝  maybe he’s trying to make amends. keeping watch over these half-living things to make sure no harm comes to them.  ❞

❝  i expected the building to be wreathed in shadow and overgrown with cobwebs, but it's actually really nice.  ❞

❝  sorry, i was trying to get my recorder working, but it froze up on me so i had to find a tape for this old…  ❞

❝  okay. just… don’t get me sacked, alright?  can’t exactly retire on this salary.  ❞

❝  but if it was real—i don’t know if i somehow created it, or if it was feeding me information about itself before it appeared.  ❞

❝  i’ve never had a manic episode before, and i was well below the level of caffeine needed to cause intoxication. as far as i can tell, there isn’t a medical explanation for what happened.  ❞

❝  i don’t get the appeal of meeting real celebrities. it’s just a cheap shock of recognition, and nothing more.  ❞

❝  whatever this… thing was, it sounds pretty dangerous.  ❞

❝  are you familiar with temporal asymmetry?  ❞

❝  i just want to make that abundantly clear:  this /wasn’t/ the plan.  ❞

❝  right then, now let’s get started. please state your name and rank for the record.  ❞

❝  though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light.  ❞

❝  a cracker of a book, young lady.  ❞

❝  no wonder they’re keeping them in storage. they’d give anyone nightmares.  ❞

❝  i was just going to finish out my shift unless… you want me to stick around?  ❞

❝  i went to the university, but don’t remember much of the years i spent there.  ❞

❝  having to study textbooks and essays day in and day out took all of the joy out of reading for a long time.  ❞

❝  we call paradoxes paradoxes for a reason:  no matter how plausible they seem, they can never really happen.  ❞

❝  i don’t know what happened to me that night. i still don’t even know if what i saw was real.  ❞

❝  when we look into the void for too long, we find the monsters instead.  ❞

[odos-bucket]

So I was reading @andillwriteyouatragedy​‘s incredible Brand New Day where Bruce and Clark adopt a young Dick Grayson together, and was thinking about a sort of companion story where they take in Jason together too. Using that story as a rough reference, I’m gonna say they’ve been together for a decade or so here. Dick is somewhere in his late teens. I’m figuring Clark probably offers to tag along on Bruce’s annual trip to crime alley every year. Bruce always politely declines. It’s basically become a part of the day’s bleak tradition. Clark is surprised when for once his offer is accepted. Later on, if pressed, neither of them would be able to pinpoint what was different about that night that made Bruce decide that it might be okay to have some company for once. Clark probably feels weird about it at first. Even though he’d asked Bruce if he wanted company, and Bruce had said yes, which he never would have unless he’d absolutely meant it (and Clark knows that). It still feels a little like he’s intruding on something private, even sacred. Then of course they get there, and there’s nothing going on. Superman’s senses don’t pick up the slightest hint of disruption anywhere in the neighborhood. Maybe they start patrolling around it anyways, maybe they just wander for a couple of blocks. Sooner or later they overhear someone talking about how it’s this night every year that Batman comes calling. Local criminals have picked up on the fact that if they just keep their heads down for this one specific night they can pretty much avoid him. Bruce is all grumbly about it, and immediately goes into ~strategy mode~ like, “Okay, I’ll have to start coming here on different days, on an irregular schedule.” He immediately opens up a dozen different tabs in his brain with calendars, and crime statistics, and is thinking a mile a minute, because that’s what he does. He’s kind of agitated about needing to change something that’s been a ritual for so long (because Batman has OCD, fight me) and he’s annoyed at himself for being bothered by it. Absolutely none of this sudden inner turmoil is detectable in his expression or body language. But Clark knows Bruce, knows how he reacts to things, and that there’s no way he’s not annoyed right now. He says, “Sounds like tonight will be a bust if we stay here,” then when Bruce grunts in response, continues, “We could go back to the manor. Watch a movie.” Then after a pause. “Or we could patrol somewhere else.” A moment passes. When Bruce says, “Okay,” Clark isn’t sure which suggestion he’s agreeing to, but they start back towards the car. It’s not a long walk, but they aren’t moving particularly quickly. By the time they get back to the batmobile it only has one wheel.

Clark frowns as he walks closer, before being stopped in his tracks by a surprising sound. It’s a sound that he recognizes immediately, that he hears all too infrequently. Bruce is laughing. Clark’s mouth quirks into a half smile. He takes a few steps forward, thinking about just picking the whole thing up and flying it back home. Then from a few paces ahead he hears Bruce’s low, gravelly Batman voice say, “Hi there.” Once he’s tuned in to the idea of another presence nearby, it becomes obvious to his advanced senses that someone is lurking behind the car. “Shit,” a small voice says. Bruce takes a few steps closer. “Planning on finishing the job?” He gestures to their remaining wheel. Clark shifts until he can get the kid partially in his sight without the aid of x-ray vision. He’s small, and looks to be somewhere in his pre-teens. “I got no idea what you’re talking about,” he says quickly. “Oh really?” Bruce asks. The boy glares at him. “Nice tire iron,” Bruce continues. “Comes in handy.” “I bet it does.” No sooner than the words are out of Bruce’s mouth, the tool is colliding with his shin. The boy shoots out from behind the car, and down a nearby street. Clark starts toward Bruce, who quickly gestures for him to go after the kid instead. He catches up with him in less than a second. When his hand falls onto the kid’s shoulder he freezes, muscles tightening throughout his body, and heart rate speeding up rapidly. The fear response is so sudden and extreme that Clark finds himself pulling away as if he’s been burned. The anxiety around being feared is something he’s mostly left in his past, but there’s a deep rooted insecurity within him that it still prods at. The kid stumbles when he starts to run again, and by then Bruce has caught up. They hang back, but trail after the boy at a distance, until they reach a condemned building a few blocks away. “Should we go in?” Clark asks. “Probably where my tires are,” Bruce says, before climbing through an uncovered doorway. It isn’t hard to find him again. There aren’t too many heartbeats in the area to distinguish between. When Bruce opens the door to the dilapidated room, the boy’s pulse rate jumps through the roof. Nothing changes externally about him though, and Clark wonders whether or not Bruce can tell that he’s afraid of them. There’s the slightest vibration to his words when he speaks. “Okay, take your stupid tires already. I’m sorry, all right? Just leave me alone!” Bruce isn’t looking at his tires. He’s looking around the room, no doubt noticing the same things that Clark has, mold, water damage, a broken window. The place is freezing. Then in the corner there’s a cardboard box with some pasta and canned goods in it, a small stack of books, and a mattress on the floor. “Do you… live here?” Bruce asks. “Yeah. What of it?” Bruce takes a few more steps into the room. “Where are your parents, son?” Clark asks. “Mom’s dead. I dunno where Dad is; don’t really care, if I’m being honest. Now take your stuff and go already!” He’s holding the iron up again, wielding it in a manner that’s clearly meant to be threatening. Bruce plucks it out of his hands with relative ease, inspects it, then turns it around and hands it back. “Move your thumb up like this, and you’ll have a sturdier grip. And don’t stand with your legs so far apart, it’ll put you off balance.” He sighs. “What’s your name?” “… Jason.” He grabs the tire iron back, shuffling to adjust his grip and footing, keeping his stance defensive. Bruce looks around the place again. “You can’t stay here, Jason.” “Oh yeah? Says who? I can take care of myself! Been doing it for long enough.” Bruce glances up at Clark, who can see the wheels turning in his head, before looking back at Jason. “I’d really like the wheels of my car back,” he says carefully, then hurries to continue before Jason can interject. “Can I make you a deal? We’ll buy you dinner if you reattach the batmobile’s tires?”

There’s a fast food place a couple of blocks away that’s open 24 hours. Jason agrees to accompany them, but walks a few yards behind. The employees at the place aren’t at all phased by the appearance of the two vigilantes. Bruce inspects a suspicious stain on one of the walls, while Jason and Clark look at the menu posted above the counter. They order- Bruce gets two of what Jason asks for- then go outside to eat. Bruce is lost in thought as they exit the restaurant, wondering what it would take to bring free food trucks to the area. Jason’s halfway done with his meal by the time they sit down on the sidewalk. “Do you go to school around here?” Bruce asks, wanting to put together a fuller picture of the boy’s situation. Jason gets a distant look in his eyes in response to the question. He finishes chewing slowly, swallows, then shakes his head, clearing his throat before replying. “No. Not for a long time now.” He shrugs. “I got all I needed to out of it.” “You had some pretty advanced reading material back at your place for someone who didn’t finish middle school.” Bruce recalled seeing The Odyssey amongst his few possessions, as well as a couple of Shakespeare plays. Jason shrugs again. “Reading’s not that hard.” “Some people find it very difficult,” Clark says. “Some people are stupid.” Bruce cuts in before Clark can start on the gentle reprimand he can see him preparing. “Ever think that maybe you’re just smart?” Jason gives him a curious look, like that really wasn’t a possibility that he had considered before, then takes another bite, and stares off thoughtfully. “So, Homer,” Bruce prompts. Jason nods. “It’s a fun story. Odi-seuss is a dick though.” Bruce resists both the compulsion to correct his pronunciation of ‘Odysseus’, and Alfred’s voice in the back of his head urging him to tell the kid not to swear. “What makes you say that?” He asks instead. Jason looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Gee, I don’t know, maybe all the pillaging, and murdering he does throughout the entire book.” “Poem,” Bruce corrects. “What?” “The Odyssey is a poem.” “Wait, really?” Bruce hums an affirmative. “Huh… cool. But the point still stands.” “I’m inclined to agree with you. Have you ever read The Scarlet Pimpernel?” Jason shakes his head. “It’s been a personal favorite for a long time,” says Bruce. Clark shoots him an amused grin. “I’ll keep an eye out for anyone throwing out a copy,” Jason says. Bruce frowns. “You have a library around here.” The remark earns him an unamused snort. “It’s a Gotham library; people don’t go there to read books, they go there to buy, sell and/or ingest drugs, and they tend not to be too happy with anybody who’s lingering around while they’re doing it.” Bruce feels a pang, not for the first time that night. “Jason,” he starts, before realizing he isn’t sure what to say. Jason keeps angled to watch him expectantly as he rises to deposit his napkins and bag in a nearby trashcan. “We’d like to help you,” Clark says. “Yeah,” Jason scoffs. “Right. Just how do you plan on doing that? Because I’ve heard that before. I’ve done the whole foster care thing already, and I’m not about to go through it again.” “No,” Bruce is quick to agree. “But there are residential schools in the city. We could help you to get enrolled in one.” Jason seems taken aback by the offer. “…Why?” He asks slowly. “Well for one, because kids should be in school. You’d be provided with room and board for the duration of your time there, which would leave you with less to worry about.” He reaches out to pass Jason the second takeout bag. He’s still lingering at a distance from them. “At least think about it?” “No. I mean, like, why?” Bruce’s eyebrow raises, tugging at the material of his cowl. “What’s in this for you?” Jason continues. “Why do you even care?” “It’s our job,” Clark says. “You’re job is to beat up bad guys.” Clark smiles when Jason mimes punching someone, before saying, “Our job is to help people.” Jason purses his lips. “Don’t boarding schools cost money?” “Most of them offer scholarships,” Bruce says. “I have a few friends who are deans. I could make the necessary introductions to ensure you a place at one of their institutions.“ Jason’s arms are crossed high over his chest, and his expression is set like he’s deep in thought. “I don’t want to end up stuck somewhere where someone else is the boss of me.” “How about you at least come with us to check a couple of these places out,” Bruce suggests. “Just see how you feel about them. No commitment.” Jason’s nose scrunches up. “Where exactly are these places?” He asks. “It varies,” Bruce says. “All within the city.” They watch the boy chew on the inside of his lip for a moment. “Just to see,” he says eventually. Bruce nods. “I’m not getting into a car with you,” Jason adds. “We can take the bus,” Clark offers. Jason raises an eyebrow at that, and his mouth quirks almost into a smile. “Batman and Superman are gonna ride on Gotham’s shitty public transit?” “Why not?” Clark asks. “… Okay,” Jason says, still plainly unconvinced. “Let’s meet back here,” Bruce suggests. “Tomorrow?” Jason takes a minute, but eventually starts to nod. “Sure,” he says. “Why not.” They part ways after Clark disposes of his empty bag. The heroes return to their car.

While they’re driving back Clark says, “I know that look.” Bruce pauses to take stock of his own expression, and makes sure to neutralize anything on his face that might be out of the ordinary. Clark continues, unbothered by the lack of response. “It’s your ‘I’m already deeply emotionally invested in this kid’ look.” Bruce hums noncommittally. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight,” Clark adds. Bruce doesn’t either, but that’s par for the course at this point.

Part Two

[mndvx]

please enlighten me as to how much this episode sucked 🤭 bc from what i'm reading, it was even worse than last week

Turns out we finally found which episode of Titans is the worst!! (So far, at least.)

I have a feeling that the finale will be the most absolute insane pile of dog shit this show has ever had. And it's had a lot lately!! They really baited us into thinking there was a slight chance of it being good with the first four episode. I'm so mad.

Last week was a filler episode. And it was bad. But they really outdid themselves with this one, it's... yeah it's the worst episode of Titans, so far.

The GCPD is incompetent, that we already knew. So it's not really surprising when Random Nameless Cop #4 ends up being easily bought by Jason/Crane after we saw him have a little feely chat with Barbs about someone he knew dying from the fear induced riots or whatever

but before that, Crane sends all of gotham a little fanvid he made in his garage using footage from episode 1, not in any way shot differently, it's just episode 1 intro fight against Gizmo Guys copy pasted with a few flashing random buzz words, like "thief" "con-man" or whatever and him narrating about how the titans are bad guys and the reason why gotham's water is poisoned and says he put a bounty of 500K on the titans dead or alive. We get a little montage of every main character seeing the vid. With Conner and Komand'r spooning together in the living room d'aww and Gar reading up on Lazarus Pits then having a little DCney Prince moment with the bats in the cave before Kory comes in to tell him about the video.

So with that, what does Dick do? First he tells Barbara he's gonna fix this(tm) then he goes back to the batcave (off screen) and i guess tells the rest of the team (off screen) to get into a parking lot or something?? where they get surrounded by dozens of people and like... Fight four of them before Dick tells them to come back??? Also, at some point during this Dick is like "Me staying here, it's a mistake I should be with you guys" and Kory tells him "No! You got a bounty on your head, it's safer" so why is Gar not staying in the cave with him, he's not invincible either!!

Meanwhile, Donna is taking a taxi to get back to Gotham, because I guess she can't teleport anymore, that must've been some of that Purgatory juice that sent her from Themyscira to that other Wayne Manor to save Bruce (who we hear NOTHING about. I mean good, we're not here for him, but she literally just stopped him from kiling himself in another country and now she's on the way to Gotham all alone... That's weird

Same thing about Tim, we saw him come back from the dead last week, but he's nonexistent in this episode. No one, not a single person all titans included, even speaks about him or even vaguely mentions him being shot or asks if he's okay or anything.

and then that random Lydia amazon shows up saying she's been following Donna "for 10 minutes" which is really weird, because Donna definitely was moving for longer than ten minutes, i mean she was IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, so how the fuck did you show up specifically on that road to Gotham just ten minutes ago, CAN YOU TELEPORT LYDIA??? I guess she can because then she slams Donna down and she wakes up in some random woods she calls "The Training Grounds" like it means something. blablabla this is the B Plot i guess? It's dumb, it's pointless. It's Lydia fighting Donna for way too long, some random shit about Lydia's daughter Angela dying and how she's sad or whatever who cares, then telling Donna she has to rise, she was born to lead people etc etc (can you tell how hard they're trying to make a spin off happen?) before Donna can finally go back to going to Gotham (no she doesn't get reunited with the team.)

Dick and Babs meet in a bar for some reason, random pointless and annoying reminiscing about their past before Dick tells her he's gonna turn himself in as Nightwing, pay bail then vanish from Gotham so the people can supposedly keep faith in the GCPD and not turn against them?? idk, if Nightwing vanished like that right after being caught by them, I wouldn't trust them to protect me but that's just me!

Jason and Crane have a weird and cringey chat (again. they had one before as he prepared his fanvid, talking about... Breakfast?? Jason was annoyed and didn't get the point of it, same) and he goes on this rant about how Jason needs to believe in himself and all that, makes him go "Red Hood!! Say it with me! Red Hood!" for like... what felt like at least a whole minute before he suits back up and goes back to being the murderous little shit he CHOSE to be, Molly calls him and asks him to stop he says no i have to </3 (you don't dumbass)

Dick tells everyone his plan, they all eventually agree because that's totally not gonna go wrong 🙄🙄 so they suit up and go to the GCPD to make a little show of their surrender. The cop that was bought out apparently has a lot of friends bc most of the cops present during the thing start acting up and one of them pushes Komand'r first (geoff johns, i'm in your walls with a knife) which is only so Conner can go "HEY BACK OFF 😠😠" before they then start attacking everyone. You already saw Kom gets shot, so yeah... That happens. Con stopped one bullet and stood there just 🖐🏻😠 while another was shot and hit Komand'r in the stomach or something, the most boring fight scene ensues (gar gets shirtless yay! sorry.) Barbara kills the cop who had his gun drawn on Dick and she's later on arrested by Vee for it, which... what the fuck??

so everyone left after the whole boring fight, separating and hiding. Kory and Kom go to a church where Kory decides to use her powers to try and heal the bullet wound that is KILLING her sister, and Komand'r somehow (unconsciously) absorbs all of Kory's powers, which makes Kory mad and go on a whole thing wondering if this was her plan all along, making Kory care for her so she could betray her or something. Komand'r says it's not the case and asks what will it cost for Kory to trust her etc. (honestly this whole episode is badly written, but 🥺🥺 Kory admitted she cared about Kom). then they have another argument, because Kory wants to return to the Titans and help them, but Komand'r tells her they should leave and go somewhere alone the two of them, and that Kory is a queen and was never meant to be fighting a war that's not hers and they then separate because Kory is not going anywhere. Komand'r then leaves, Kory asks where she's going and Kom tells her she's not "the only one with unfinished business" which... what? So yeah, now Komand'r has Kory's full set of powers and Kory is COMPLETELY depowered. 

And then we have a little montage of the city going to shit and full chaos, with Barbara being arrested for killing that other cop. Donna beats up a soldier who wouldn't let her come in Gotham. Because of course she comes back when everything's gone to shit, how convenient.

Gar is all alone in an empty warehouse type of place, after having been shot with a tranquilizer dart while the whole fight in the GCPD happened, (which was like half a day ago, idk how animal tranquilizer work but that must be strong stuff because he's still a little knocked out from it) he sees a raven that then turns into our beloved little Rachel!!! She tells him she found him because she felt his energy, and they have a quick recap chat where he tells her Jason and Crane turned the city into chaos she doesn't react in any particular way, so i guess she knows Jason is evil? whatever. the good thing about this scene is Rachel using her powers!! (and Ryan Potter's abs)

Then we see Dick and Conner on their own, with Conner insisting they need to go out there and help people but Dick being the dumbfuck he is tells Conner they can't, that they need to stay hidden and not be caught, so going back to Wayne Manor is also out of the question. But CONNER IS INVINCIBLE!!!!! FOR FUCK'S SAKE GRAYSON!!!!

And for our last scenes, Jason and Crane are in Wayne Manor. He makes Jason destroy a painting of Bruce and his parents because of course you have redecorate the place now that it's yours, Jason has quick flashbacks of his conversation with Bruce in Crime Alley in the shitty episode all about Jay and angrily stabs the painting like 20 times?? And Crane actually says "Welcome to Crane Manor", it wasn't just the synopsis being cringe!

ANYWAY. TERRIBLE FUCKING BAD EPISODE.